MTG Salvation

Very nice, very threatening.

No Regisaur Alpha seems like a mistake; haste is key towards setting up sick Polyraptor turns.

Territorial Allosaurus is probably better than Goring Ceratops if Dominaria cards are being considered.

Mirage Mirror is worth considering as it helps you go actually infinite with Bellowing Aegisaur and some other enranges.

Quote from Hawk7915 »

No Regisaur Alpha seems like a mistake; haste is key towards setting up sick Polyraptor turns.

Territorial Allosaurus is probably better than Goring Ceratops if Dominaria cards are being considered.

Mirage Mirror is worth considering as it helps you go actually infinite with Bellowing Aegisaur and some other enranges.

I had both Regisaur Alpha and Territorial Allosaurus in my original list, but I felt they are still both underpowered for multiplayer.
The thing is that you are putting a lot of your Dinosaurs into play off Gishath, Sun's Avatar, so you're already past the attack phase.

Same reasoning with Territorial Allosaurus, probably not going to be casting it with kicker that often.

I'll have to check out the Mirage Mirror combos

Alright, been running this deck a lot the last couple of days, and it is a scary deck, I've won all my games except one.

Because Thaumatic Compass is running in most decks (as it should be), it's transform land Spires of Orazca is a hoser for Gishath. So I'm leaning hard on Field of Ruin. Hour of Promise is most certainly going to get it, if you don't draw it naturally.

Another thing I've found is that you can get huge hits off Gishath, put a lot of your best creatures into play, and then a board wipe happens. It is possible to get grinded out of big threats, if you come against several mass creature removal decks.

So with both Field of Ruin and getting back creatures in mind, I've added The Mending of Dominaria.

Added
+ The First Eruption
+ The Mending of Dominaria
+ Wayward Swordtooth

Removed
- Deathgorge Scavenger
- Goring Ceratops
- Drover of the Mighty

A friend of mine has been trying to play this deck and he just basically folds to a boardwipe every time after a big Gish trigger. People won't even block him, they'll take full damage and just let him flip bodies on the board to kill. He also struggles with creatures bigger than Gish/Ghalta. I was playing Tezzeret and landed a couple construct tokens from Karn and they were sitting around 15-20 p/t most of the game. A lot of the enchantment/artifact removal got soaked on things like Noxious Gearhulk (who I was abusing with Decoction Module, they eventually killed the module too) and a Mechanized Production on an etherium cell. Reusable removal like Tezzeret or recurring creatures like Chupacabra are a serious problem for the deck. I agree with you that spires is a problematic card, I've watched it slow him down a ton. That being said, it is a scary deck if people don't have what they need when he gets rolling, it just usually seems like someone in the pod has something to shut him down.

Quote from Lumovanis »

A friend of mine has been trying to play this deck and he just basically folds to a boardwipe every time after a big Gish trigger. People won't even block him, they'll take full damage and just let him flip bodies on the board to kill. He also struggles with creatures bigger than Gish/Ghalta. I was playing Tezzeret and landed a couple construct tokens from Karn and they were sitting around 15-20 p/t most of the game. A lot of the enchantment/artifact removal got soaked on things like Noxious Gearhulk (who I was abusing with Decoction Module, they eventually killed the module too) and a Mechanized Production on an etherium cell. Reusable removal like Tezzeret or recurring creatures like Chupacabra are a serious problem for the deck. I agree with you that spires is a problematic card, I've watched it slow him down a ton. That being said, it is a scary deck if people don't have what they need when he gets rolling, it just usually seems like someone in the pod has something to shut him down.

Well it does have more game than just Gishath, Sun's Avatar. Casting Wakening Sun's Avatar or Zacama, Primal Calamity will often close the game enough. I've gone infinite with Forerunner of the Empire, Bellowing Aegisaur, Polyraptor.

One game I was just literally grinded out of anything relevant, hence the The Mending of Dominaria.

In multiplayer there is always at least one opponent where Gishath can deal good damage, and I almost never cast it into open mana. Patience is needed, and there is enough pressure in the deck, that opponents cannot simply not tap out to some degree. If I already have a good board presence, then I'm not going to cast Gishath and put even more creatures onto the battlefield. Force your opponents to deal with what you already have. Once they have gone for a board wipe (and the options are limited for creatures with toughness greater than 3) then you can do the follow up Gishath.

But it is a wind-up deck. Often because you don't do a whole lot during the initial stages, opponents go from attacking you solely, to turning their attentions to other players who are rolling early. This surprised me quite a bit, so have to admit a lot of the success has been due to perceived inaction/weakness.

Yeah, I noticed he was winning when people just kind of ignored the "big dumb dino deck". The rest of the group has grown more used to his lines of play now and just answer appropriately. I do like The Mending of Dominaria as a kind of second chance at going off (provided no Scavenger Grounds). His problem was when he tried to play it safe with only a couple creatures out, recursive removal just kind of shut him out of any actual threats (like I mentioned, for me it was Tezzeret's -2 that could nuke any creature he dropped on the field shy of Carnage Tyrant). Zacama is always a huge threat, I often sit on instant removal like Vraska's Contempt when people are playing him (obviously you respond to ETB and nuke it before they get their mana back), I've played vs it too much in commander to let it stick around. Spell swindle is also a huge problem for dinos, that's a lot of mana they can leave open while tapping out every turn when they counter avatar or Galta. Have you found hard counters to be a problem at all? I feel like most people I've seen are running the cat/lizard.

I personally haven't had problems with counter spells, there is normally too much going on in a 4 player game for the "control player" to be specifically holding up a counterspell every turn, so if you suspect something, then just don't play in to it and they will get punished by falling further behind.

But I'm playing randoms, and with different decks each time, so I can see a meta getting used to play patterns and knowing how to balance their removal as well.

The last game I played, and it was pretty epic, I did get stuck with too many cards in hand at the end of the game and not the ability to deploy them in a timely manner, and they just got dealt with one at a time. I had the "problem" that I basically had most of the good threats in my hand, so casting Gishath at that stage was only going to get a medium to mediocre haul. If only there was a Brainstorm in Naya...and standard

Quote from darrenhabib »

Quote from Lumovanis »

A friend of mine has been trying to play this deck and he just basically folds to a boardwipe every time after a big Gish trigger. People won't even block him, they'll take full damage and just let him flip bodies on the board to kill. He also struggles with creatures bigger than Gish/Ghalta. I was playing Tezzeret and landed a couple construct tokens from Karn and they were sitting around 15-20 p/t most of the game. A lot of the enchantment/artifact removal got soaked on things like Noxious Gearhulk (who I was abusing with Decoction Module, they eventually killed the module too) and a Mechanized Production on an etherium cell. Reusable removal like Tezzeret or recurring creatures like Chupacabra are a serious problem for the deck. I agree with you that spires is a problematic card, I've watched it slow him down a ton. That being said, it is a scary deck if people don't have what they need when he gets rolling, it just usually seems like someone in the pod has something to shut him down.

Well it does have more game than just Gishath, Sun's Avatar. Casting Wakening Sun's Avatar or Zacama, Primal Calamity will often close the game enough. I've gone infinite with Forerunner of the Empire, Bellowing Aegisaur, Polyraptor.

So I am building an enrage brawl deck and I wanted to touch on a couple of your claims about your infinite combo. your combo can only trigger 5 times. As soon as the cycle starts, a copy of Polyraptor enterring the battlefield, triggers Forerunner of the Empire causing 1 damage to each creature(including itself), which triggers Bellowing Aegisaur and Polyraptor. Bellowing Aegisaur puts a +1/+1 counter on each other creature, which will prevent Forerunner of the Empire from killing itself after the second time a copy of Polyraptor enters the battlefield, but unfortunately Bellowing Aegisaur does not put a +1/+1 counter on itself(it says "each other creature"), so its effect can only trigger 5 times in a single phase before it dies and breaks the cycle.

Its an interesting idea though, and if Bellowing Aegisaur did put a counter on itself, you could have added Frilled Deathspitter in the cycle to change the combo to an automatic win as Frilled Deathspitter would deal 2 damage to an opponent infinitely until all opponents life is 0.

Quote from Trev »

So I am building an enrage brawl deck and I wanted to touch on a couple of your claims about your infinite combo. your combo can only trigger 5 times. As soon as the cycle starts, a copy of Polyraptor enterring the battlefield, triggers Forerunner of the Empire causing 1 damage to each creature(including itself), which triggers Bellowing Aegisaur and Polyraptor. Bellowing Aegisaur puts a +1/+1 counter on each other creature, which will prevent Forerunner of the Empire from killing itself after the second time a copy of Polyraptor enters the battlefield, but unfortunately Bellowing Aegisaur does not put a +1/+1 counter on itself(it says "each other creature"), so its effect can only trigger 5 times in a single phase before it dies and breaks the cycle.

Its an interesting idea though, and if Bellowing Aegisaur did put a counter on itself, you could have added Frilled Deathspitter in the cycle to change the combo to an automatic win as Frilled Deathspitter would deal 2 damage to an opponent infinitely until all opponents life is 0.

You're right, it's not infinite, but it's basically some mathematical formula which is more than enough.

What you do, is you double the Polyraptors each time, then don't use the Forerunner ability until the very last Polyraptors is created each time, then let it deal 1 damage to all of those.

I did a gold fish example, and I reached Magic Online token limit, lol. I've attached an image of the results below. Imagine this will double I think maybe another 3 or 4 times.
There will be some maximum amount you can create, the threshold will be doing 5 damage to a certain amount of them (Polyraptors toughness to a physical number of them dying) and Foreunner has 9 toughness also (+6/+6 from the Bellowing Aegisaur, as the Aegisaur dies but still puts the sixth +1/+1 on the stack). Quite complicated, but the end result is at least a thousand. I suspect it's 1024, double each time for a maximum amount of 10 times because of Forerunners toughness. But there maybe some causalities in more than 5 damage being applied to some of the earlier created Polys.

If anybody wants to work out the exact number, that would be great

[Edit]
Actually I've taken out some of the enrage trigger cards, The First Eruption and Path to Mettle, as they are just too situational on having your enrage creatures, and just found them to be dead cards in hand for a lot of the time in games.

Often in multiplayer you can politic, and get a player to attack or block into an enrage creature if needing to be triggered to get some big threat off the board. For example if you have a Needletooth Raptor or Trapjaw Tyrant, you can convince another players to attack/block with a small creature, so that you can get the biggest other threats off the board, like a Tendershoot Dryad that is taking over the game.

I've added Combat Celebrant as a means of getting in extra damage, especially good against board wipes, as you can get the mass removal player with some hits in off Gishath first trigger, with a real chance of killing them before they get another turn.

Added
+ Combat Celebrant
+ Drover of the Mighty

Removed
- The First Eruption
- Path to Mettle

Ah I see what you mean. well at least its a good thing its not an infinite combo that results in a draw. and taking out those cards was probably a good move. my deck however is completely devoted to burn spells and dinosaurs with enrage. I thought it would be an interesting way to build a deck and im really happy with it so far. my commander is Zacama instead of Gishath as he can deal targetted damage repeatedly, most of my dinos have enrage and my strategy is far more about activating enrage with burn spells or enchantments, worst case scenario i use my burn spells against my opponent. ill post a list eventually

Quote from Trev »

Ah I see what you mean. well at least its a good thing its not an infinite combo that results in a draw. and taking out those cards was probably a good move. my deck however is completely devoted to burn spells and dinosaurs with enrage. I thought it would be an interesting way to build a deck and im really happy with it so far. my commander is Zacama instead of Gishath as he can deal targetted damage repeatedly, most of my dinos have enrage and my strategy is far more about activating enrage with burn spells or enchantments, worst case scenario i use my burn spells against my opponent. ill post a list eventually

Actually it is important to note that Foreunners ability is a may, so you can stop at any time you want.

Heroic Intervention + Polyraptor + Forerunner of the Empire = infinite dinos, so the ability to stop is important.

Goreclaw, Terror of Qal Sisma enables casting 12 of your dinos at 2 mana less.

Decided the Silverclad Ferocidons has been the least useful creature in the deck. Fairly easy to navigate around and high mana cost if you draw it and don't get to put it into play for free. Often I found I never had the time to cast it.

Added
+ Goreclaw, Terror of Qal Sisma

Removed
- Silverclad Ferocidons

No need to worry about them stopping dinosaurs

Mark rose water just gave dinosaurs the beeble scale

They got a 3

Of course, they've already been back in Dominaria and M19.