MTG Salvation

On its own Polyraptor seems pretty mediocre for an 8 drop. It dies to removal, has no etb, and doesn't end the game if you untap. The reason I think it'sworth discussing is Forerunner of the Empire. With Forerunner in play you get 7 copies of Polyraptor and do 3 damage to all creatures. This does leave you venerable to fumigate, but besides that you are pretty much guaranteed to win. Since forerunner tutors up Polyraptor, the only barrier to this one card combo is the casting cost. One option is ramp, another is to cheat on the casting cost using an effect like Etali, Primal Storm, and the third is some form of reanimation. The shell is pretty wide open since you really only need 5 slots for the basic combo. Thoughts?

I have a feeling this compo triggers infinately, and you need a way to stop it or else the game ends in a draw.
CMC is an issue, but I have a feeling this might fit nicely in a jund dinosaur reanimator deck with [car]dJourney into Eternity[/card].

Oh nice! The forerunner ability is a "may", so I think you can stop it at whatever you want, like 4 million. Not draw-forcing.

Yes, I didn't see that!
Theoretically, the combo is infinite, but you don't get to keep every token. The first will die after 5 triggers. So you get 5 raptors max.

Forerunner dies to his own ability after 3 triggers. You get 6 tokens because the tokens also have the cloning ability.

Ok so now we figured it out mates, who builds first ? ^^

Quote from headminerve »

Ok so now we figured it out mates, who builds first ? ^^

Not good, but here's a target to improve.

Wow! The export to BBCode works very well. Just some extra blank lines.

I like the line T2 ramp > T3 Forerunner > T4 Swordtooth + Pyroclasm the board, but keep your Forerunner and Drover.

I don't quite get the single Knight of the Stampede nor the single Raging Regisaur. Any clue ?

Quote from headminerve »

I like the line T2 ramp > T3 Forerunner > T4 Swordtooth + Pyroclasm the board, but keep your Forerunner and Drover.

I don't quite get the single Knight of the Stampede nor the single Raging Regisaur. Any clue ?

It was a quick target to start discussion with some random one-ofs that I would want to test. I can't and won't defend it.

If I were to be defensive, I would say the following. Knight just dies to Glorybringer, but is super-good ramp. Raging Regisaur is on-curve and interacts with all the other Enrage creatures.

Show me your better list, please.

MMMh ok. I'll rather discuss the metagame and how I'd approach deckbuilding.

Let's start with how fast Polyraptor can be cast post-Forerunner :
T2 ramp, T3 Forerunner, T4 double ramp (Knight or the usual 2-drops), T5 Polyraptor. It will happen very rarely because it requires a very specific curve + the Forerunner to live. So this plan is a finisher, a lategame plan, not a combo we can cheat in the early game. In this kind of list, we don't need more than 1x Polyraptor because it's always a dead card, and not so good of a card if there's no Forerunner to combo with.

If we take into account the aggro MUs : Ram Red, Vehicles and Tribals, we need early plays, like a ton, and by T4 we need to stabilize. Forerunner is not a good stabilizer on its own, so we need to stabilize sooner. A card that could both stabilize and synergize with Forerunner is Raptor Hatchling.
Because the problem we have with such a deck is that most of our early plays do "nothing" (Commune, Migration, Stomp, Rage) and we have to expect our early creatures to die (Drover in particular). Hatchling enables our removal spells by Turn 3, like Ranging Raptors will do if we can ramp correctly. The more of these early plays we have the better.

Now if we take into account the control MUs : UWx Approach, UBx, we need to splash for a third colour in order to stop their win conditions, or annoying cards like Settle the Wreckage, just to name one. Here's some of what we get (+ some incidental dinos):
White : Trapjaw Tyrant, Gideon's Intervention
Blue : Nezahal, Primal Tide, Negate
Black : Tetzimoc, Primal Death, Duress
Another thing in those MUs is that Enrage will rarely trigger because there's no creature in front of us and their removal spells don't deal damage for the most part. We then need Forerunner to draw cards, ramp lands and kill that useless Hatchling !

I doubt this is the right approach though, and I'm not sure a Jund build with Liliana, Death's majesty would work either. Nonetheless you want a list, take that my friend :

I haven't gotten a chance to test, but after thinking about a list like yours (meaning ramp) is probably the better shell. Since forerunner dies to pretty much everything, we probably don't want the polyraptor combo to be your only wincon. I still am going to try and play around with a list using Aid from the Cowl with forerunner to stack the deck. I might add blue for the brainstorm merefolk as well.

Neat ideas ! i'm curious to see what you'll come up with.

this is my first draft, but after some testing I think it will be too slow to keep up with the meta. It is consistent, but usually takes until turn 6 to go off and can be disrupted by Vraska's Contempt among other things since they can just respond to the trigger. It's cute, but I'm thinking the ramp version might be the way to go.

I cut white from the deck and it's much more consistent now. This is the latest list. The sb is mostly theoretical at this point.

Here is a 5-0 MTGO list with four Forerunner of the Empire: https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/912798#paper . Maybe working a Polyraptor into this framework will work.

Best shell for Polyraptor is most likely a trash can.

I played online and used Raptor Hatchling, Forerunner of the Empire, Frilled Deathspitter. Cast Raptor Hatcling, then Heroic Intervention and boom. Mill your opponent 2 life per a dinosaur or save up and use it to pop off an elaborate Polyraptor trample.

I shoehorned a Polyraptor into an MTGO 5-0 deck to become this as I suggested above. It hasn't been crazy good, but it's been fine. There's a mini-report in the main dinosaur thread, if anybody is interested.

I think the biggest problem with raptor combo is that is can be disrupted with removal so easily. I have been having success pulling it off in one turn using aid which fixes this. It won't ever be teir because it struggles with RDW, but I have had good success with the following list. Maybe it deserves it's own thread.


I'm testing lay claim in the sb as another card to flip off of cowl that also answers scarab god. Thrashing Brontodon might also be a waste of a slot. I haven't played the god pharaoh's gift matchup enough to be sure it's useful and I haven't run into ixilan's binding that much.

I think if you are ramping into raptor there may be better curve toppers. Let us know if it works out though.

I think most people forget Heroic Intervention is a thing. I didn’t know what the card was until a friend of mine ran it in a merfolk deck. It sets up an infinite combo with either Raptor Hatchling or Polyraptor, a Forerunner of the Empire, and Frilled Deathspitter. The great thing about it is that you can play this straight as a R/G dinosaur deck until you want to combo off and the opponent may not see it coming.