Gishath - Semi Dino Tribe with Enrage synergies Deck ver 0.3
With Ixalan comes a new tribe, Dinosaurs! Currently with just the Ixalan set alone, dino support honestly is a bit disappointing, but that doesn't stop us from building our favorite Dino tribal deck. Building Gishath is still very much possible with the available pool of dinos we have, just that we need to get more creative in the card choices to pair with the dinosaurs. Hopefully with the new Ixlan release in Jan2018 we will get more dinosaurs with better utility.
Dinosaurs as a tribe
I do feel that this is a section that needs to be covered at the very start before getting to the deck list since dinosaurs is a new tribe. What are the pros and cons of the tribe? Answering this will allow us to see the kind of synergies we are going to look for when we build the deck. In the 1st Ixalan set, we get a glimpse of what this new tribe has to offer:
Creatures are generally high power and toughness
Mana curve falls on the higher side
Has a unique mechanic which is Enrage (is dealt damage mechanic), with interesting triggered abilities for them
Low reliance on ETB abilities except for a few of the dinosaurs which are 5+ mana and above
Lack of low casting cost utility creatures
Most low casting cost creatures have combat centric abilities
Little to no "own tribe matters" cards
"Own tribe matters" here refers to cards which either boost own tribe (like Dinosaurs get haste or +1/+1, we do have those) or cards which care about other same tribe on the field (like P/T equals to number of Dinosaurs or get +1/+1 for each Dinosaur etc). With this it is much easier to map out what kind of support cards a dino tribal deck will employ. We need to provide focus support in the following areas:
Have enough mana accelerant to push out the utility Dinos faster, since most utility Dinos are higher in curve
Enough protection for on board Dinos since they are so costly. Will be hard though as recursion is somehow lacking in Naya colors with white being able to resurrect low cost creatures mostly.
Have some methods to trigger the Enrage ability as it forms the bulk of the creature utility
Have a way to boost the tribe's efficiency/abilities as a whole since tribe alone doesn't support it much
(Personal criteria) Have some way or means to push through damage without attacking in the situation where the combat route isn't applicable/feasible.
As the current pool of good dinosaurs is relatively small (as of now there are only 19 dinosaurs are in the deck), the deck needs a sub theme to keep the deck somewhat viable in the meta I'm in. I've chosen to expand on the enrage mechanic to keep the sub theme inline with the Dinosaur tribe since they are mainly about the enrage mechanic.
So onward to the decklist.
Why you should consider this deck
This is the deck which is suitable for those who:
Wants to satisfy the inner Timmy in them
Likes to explore various jank~equse synergies which aren't easy to pull off
Likes experimenting with a new tribe which still can't pull its weight yet
Willing to spend time to tune and test out strategies
More aggro centric with a hint of combos.
This deck might not be suitable to those who:
Likes spikish plays, every card must be powerful and top tier
You might be wondering, does Gishath even have combos? The entire tribe looks like pure aggro based. The answer is "Yes! Do not underestimate this Naya Dinosaur." As you see, this deck is built with the Dinosaur theme in mind, hence combos must be strictly Dinosaur based only, or at the very least Dinosaurs must get involved. Meta Naya combos such as Yisan roll into KikiBoring isn't welcomed here.
Whenever Gishath, Sun's Avatar deals combat damage to a player, reveal that many cards from the top of your library. Put any number of Dinosaur creature cards from among them onto the battlefield and the rest on the bottom of your library in a random order.
Apart from the really powerful combat abilities Gishath has, its 2nd ability is what makes Gishath so formidable and impressive as a Dinosaur Tribal Alpha. It is able to call upon other dinosaurs into the battlefield based on how much damage is dealt to an opponent. If an opponent takes 3 damage, we can reveal the top 3 cards and put any number of Dinosaurs into play.
This is a nifty ability to allow us to cheat big creatures into play, but it comes with 2 weaknesses.
It is greatly dependent on what the top cards of the library are
The trigger happens after the combat damage phase, which the creatures that come in can't attack even if they have no summoning sickness
For the 1st weakness we can cover with cards that manipulate the top of the library, such as Worldy Tutor and Congregation at Dawn. We can also 'revive' Dinosaurs which died too by bringing them back from the graveyard to the top of the library too, with cards like Noxious Revival and Reinforcements.
The 2nd weakness is a bit harder to cover, as going for 1 turn around the board our precious cute Dinosaurs might get boardwiped to extinction. In most cases this can be solved by creating more attack phases, so that Gishath and the herd can attack again and again in the same turn.
But this posts another set of problems, much of the deck will need to cater to give the turn more attack phases and also give the herd haste. Currently in Ixalan we only have 1 dinosaur which grants haste, so we need to more deck slots to fit cards which grant haste.
So how do we make Gishath's initial bite so powerful that everyone will not forget about it? They should remember that a dinosaur's bite is more painful and dangerous than a Dual wielding Samut (human) can ever do. We go the combo route, so that as long as the dinosaurs which Gishath brings out can close the loop, Gishath's bite becomes lethal.
Dino Combo 1: Gishath's Tender-loving Bite
Pre-requisite: Dual Nature and Gishath on the battlefield, Congregation at Dawn in hand. Effect: Infinite combo off, kill off all opponents.
How to use the combo:
Have Gishath bite an opponent for at least 2 damage. With the reveal top cards trigger on the stack, cast Congregation at Dawn and search for the following two Dinosaurs:
Both Burning Sun's Avatar and Changeling Titan ETB
Dual Nature triggers along with both dinosaur triggers, stack it in a way that Burning Sun's Avatar trigger trigger first
Deal 3 damage to target opponent
Dual Nature trigger for Burning Sun's Avatar then resolve, create a token which deals 3 damage to target opponent
Changeling Titan original ETB then resolves, champion Burning Sun's Avatar (exiling it)
With the original Burning Sun's Avatar exiled, the avatar token also exiles
Dual Nature's trigger for Changeling Champion then resolves last, creating a token of Changeling Titan
Changeling Titan token ETBs, champion its own original Titan
Since the original Titan is exiled, Burning Sun's Avatar is returned back to the battlefield
Since the token lost the original, it also leaves the battlefield, which brings back the original Changeling Titan
Restart from 1 and loop until every other player dies.
So we have a powerful way to close out the game if we need to (we just need a 2 damage bite :3), next is the other interactions in the deck. We just can't have the alpha dinosaur do all the work.
Dino Combo 2: DO NOT engage/enrage the dinosaurs
Ixalan introduces a new mechanic which belongs to Dinosaurs, the Enrage mechanic. It is a triggered ability which whenever the creature is dealt damage, it will trigger the enrage ability. This paves way to interactions with cards that deal damage to our own creatures, such as Pyrohemia
There are more ways to use this enrage ability, to our advantage. Enters the best buddy with all the enrage dinosaurs~
Shaman en-Kor has the ability to redirect any kind of damage dealt to him to any other creature we control, in this case a Dinosaur with enrage ability. Since the ability triggers in the form of 1 damage by 1 damage, 3 damage dealt to the shaman with the redirect will trigger enrage 3 times! We can draw 3 cards with Ripjaw Raptor or deal opponent 9 damage with Sun-Crowned Hunters!
What's better is the 2nd ability of Shaman, he at the cost of 1W, can redirect any damage dealt to any creature (yes even to opponent's creature) to himself, to be redirected and spread out to the Dinosaurs. How neat is that? We can "save" players creatures by redirecting their damage to the shaman and use it to further grow our dinosaurs with cards like Rite of Passage, or to search for lands with Ranging Raptors. Wait... there is more to come.
Ulvenwald Tracker can allow our dinosaurs to fight other creatures, the Shaman can reroute the damage all to dealt from the fight to our Dinosaurs with enrage.
Cards like Heroic Intervention/Boros Charm give indestructible to our creatures, this makes it an interesting interaction when the Shaman, Tracker and Sun-Crown are online together with Gratuitous Violence. A 5/5 of ours fight will deal 10 damage to an opponent's creature, in which Shaman en-Kor will redirect back to himself, then distribute it 10 times (10 damage) to Sun-Crown Hunters. Sun-Crown's enrage ability will trigger 10 times, dealing 60 (30x 2 due to Gratuitous Violence) damage to opponent(s). This is just with using 2GW off the activation of Tracker and Shaman.
Enrage mechanic is boosted with the addition of the card Boros Reckoner (Really hope for a Dino functional reprint of it, which I think is very likely since cards like Sun-Crown Hunters is already printed). This allows another route to close the game with the deck without over relying on alpha swinging with Gishath.
Deck Combo: Aggravated Gishath
This aren't some unique combo as Aggravated Assault is known to combo with elves a long time ago, but since quite a number of our creatures are big fatties and are combat phase oriented adding this becomes a no-brainer. With Gishath having power of 7 and above, Selvala is able to generate infinite mana together with infinite attack phases when used in combination with Aggravated Assault. Infinite Attacks is what Gishath is good for, imagine an opponent running away from a huge T-rex, as the more he runs the more Dinosaurs come running after him.... lol.
It is kind of slow though, since aggravated assault happens at sorcery speed. And we do need the haste dinosaur to give all other dinosaurs haste in order to work. Other haste enablers which are good include Ogre Battledriver, Samut, Voice of Dissent, Xenagos, God of Revels and Fires of Yavimaya. In terms of ability wise, Ogre Battledriver is one of the best as it pumps up all creatures with a +2/+0 and haste. Xenagos will be much better though as he is tutorable "creature" with the tutors available to our deck and makes Gishath much more dangerous. The God also makes extra attack steps more attractive too since it triggers at the beginning of each combat step.
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To be further updated.
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Edit: 1/10/2017
-1 Farseek
-1 Heroic Intervention
-1 Kodama's Reach
-1 Otepec Huntmaster
-1 Priest of the Wakening Sun
-1 Sneak Attack
-1 Huatli, Warrior Poet
-1 Krosan Verge
-1 Unclaimed Territory
+1 Aggravated Assault
+1 Insult // Injury
+1 Legion's Initiative
+1 Red Elemental Blast
+1 Shaman of Forgotten Ways
+1 Tempt with Discovery
+1 Xenagos, God of Revels
+1 Cavern of Souls
+1 Thespian's Stage
That changeling combo is actually pretty damn good- And I say that as someone who really does not like changelings! I like the use of Shaman en-Kor, great way to spill damage across a bunch of enrage creatures. Also, reinforcements is one of those cards I never knew about until now, that is definitely something I want for my own Gishath deck.
As for a card to remove, I personally would get rid of Greater Good, because I dislike willfully discarding three cards. Maybe Changeling Berserker? Seems like a bit of work for just a 5/3 haste. For one more mana you get Charging Monstrosaur which is a 5/5 trample, haste.
Bow of Nylea is pretty bad. It is 5 mana to get your first effect, which is very slow. You already have a lot of top-deck manipulation and 2 ways to get stuff from your library.
Gratuitous violence and other doubling effects can be great, but I find they are usually 'win-more'. Test it out, I guess.
You shouldn't cut dinosaurs, because in the next set you will get new ones to replace the bad ones. Keep those slots flexible.
If you need another cut, Farseek is a card I've been cutting more and more. It fixes mana, but it is a 1 for 1... Your fixing is already good. Fertile Ground is a great ramp spell when paired with Garruk Wildspeaker. Something to think about.
That changeling combo is actually pretty damn good- And I say that as someone who really does not like changelings! I like the use of Shaman en-Kor, great way to spill damage across a bunch of enrage creatures. Also, reinforcements is one of those cards I never knew about until now, that is definitely something I want for my own Gishath deck.
As for a card to remove, I personally would get rid of Greater Good, because I dislike willfully discarding three cards. Maybe Changeling Berserker? Seems like a bit of work for just a 5/3 haste. For one more mana you get Charging Monstrosaur which is a 5/5 trample, haste.
Thank you for the comments and suggestions. Like what you said Greater Good might not be a good card after all for this deck, since the decklist doesn't have any way to revive our fallen Dinosaurs other than wait for Gishath's trigger. Will have to explore more into it though. Changeling Berserker is there for redundancy in case I don't have access to Changeling Titan, since it is one of the 3 changelings which have "Champion a creature" mechanic. Coincidentally all these 3 changelings are in Naya colors too.
So far I dropped Urza's Incubator for the time being, not because the card isn't good. It is more of I can't find my Urza's Incubator. Will have to purchase one first then I'll think of what to drop = =|||.
Thanks for the suggestions and comments. I forgot to check out the errata dinosaurs. Will try to get a copy of Magmasaur to try.
Yep Bow of Nylea feels pretty bad, I was planning to use Elixir of Immortality to replace it. For this first run I just run with whatever I have and tweak from there.
Priest of Wakening Sun is bad, I've replaced it with a eladamri's call instead. Like what you said, Green Sun's Zenith is a must for the deck as 1st priority will be to get one of the Enrage green dinos (ramp or draw) + Shaman en-Kor online to maximise ramp and draw power.
Aura fixes are great if we have more land untappers, will try to incorporate them more in the deck, thanks for the suggestion. In Naya we have more of such fixers too like Trace of Abundance, but it doesn't work with Garruk sadly. At least it gives some protection from stripmine.
Gishath EDH play session after action report no.1.
Played Gishath for a number of games during my weekly EDH session. Got a gist of what is working and what is not for the deck, the strengths and weaknesses too. Some games is really "no meaning" (a local term where the current game session is really do nothing for most of the game), but quite a number of times I am able to dish out some damage before becoming extinct.
Gishath can be explosive, this is turn 5 in one of my games.
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Gishath is primarily a very aggro based deck, and it succumbs to lots of things which aggro folds to. Personally I think for this deck the main problem isn't to fight through all the boardwipes and stuff. Naya has really good counters against boardwipes and mass bounces. The main problem for Gishath is it totally can't fight through "Loam foggers"
Try fighting through this with a Dino deck and you will realise how futile/"no meaning" it is.
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One of neat tricks for Gishath to fight against boardwipes and bounces is Eerie Interlude and Teferi's Protection. These 2 are really good to add for Gishath. Just be careful not to keep your commander in exile via Eerie Interlude in case an opponent decide to Stifle the return to battlefield trigger. I got caught in that once.
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The next main problem Gishath decks currently face is the lack of good/utility Dinosaurs for the deck to capitalise on. From what I see, the problem isn't when Gishath attacks and flips nothing, it is even when there are things to flip (with Congregation at Dawn backing) there aren't any worthwhile Dinosaurs that can ETB and make an impact. Most of the time with congregation at dawn, I'm grabbing 2 enrage dinos + a 1 damage pinger to let me get 2x enrage triggers.
Carnage Tyrant is a low impact, dumb beater for EDH. It wouldn't be the top priority to cast even when I can dig out and cheat it in for free using Gishath's call the herd ability.
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Ahh Invoke Prejudice. This card is another card which give the dino deck "no meaning". Have huge troubles fighting against this card as most of the dinosaurs have too big casting costs.
No meaning game... when Talrand runs Turn3 Rhystic Study into Turn4 Invoke Prejudice.
There are some cards which outperform than what is expected of them. Really good imo.
The first is Bow of Nylea. I do find that this card is a keeper for Gishath. The deathtouch it gives is really relevant and makes Gishath able to trample 6 damage over most of the time since it only needs 1 damage to kill any blocker with deathtouch.
The return up to 4 cards activated ability also helps to recycle dinosaurs back to the library for more tutoring and cheat in goodness.
Selvala, Heart of the Wilds is really good, another card which I tested is Shaman of the Forgotten Way, works beautifully for the deck too. Both of them have toughness of 3 which is really good to dodge 2 damage aoe spells.
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The Dinosaur reduction cards, such as Otepec Huntmaster, Kinjalli's Caller are really bad pulls, even when during early turns. Most of the time I find that if the card slots they take up are much better off as land tutor than anything else. Priest of the Wakening Sun is also another bad card for Gishath. 6cc just to tutor for a dinosaur is really bad.
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Some cards that my friends play which I think are worthly to include into Gishath.
Widespread Panic is a good include for the deck. Firstly it prevents opponents from spamming tutors such as Mystical Tutor, Vampiric Tutor and such. It's symmetrical effect doesn't affect Gishath much at all as Gishath doesn't care much about whether the card it top card or top 2nd card.
It also forms a neat little trick for Gishath to employ when its reveal top of library trigger is on the stack... by cracking a fetch land, search for a land put onto the battlefield, then put a Dinosaur from your hand to top of the library for Gishath to cheat in. A good slot in imo.
Fo the Loam Foggers, you may want something like Insult // Injury.
Wow, thanks for the recommendation. This is so going into the deck. Wild Slash looks good too.
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Card changes to deck 1/10/2017
Swap some dinosaurs to key category and others to other dinosaurs category. Dinosaurs in these 2 categories denote the 1st and 2nd string respectively. 2nd String dinos are those which are swappable with other dinosaurs as they get release in future. The main reason is that most of them are low impact which don't contribute that much. Sadly Carnage Tyrant is part of 2nd string it is mostly a big beater without contributing in utility, especially in my meta where mass removals are much more preferred than single target removals.
Dino Supporters changes
Otepec Huntmaster and Priest of the Wakening Sun are removed from the deck. Though they provide some dinosaur cost reduction and tutoring, it is too slow and weak when drawn in mid/late game. Most of the dinosaurs are cheated in with Gishath, which makes tutor to hand dinosaurs with the Priest not really worth it. Eladamri's Call is a much better replacement for Priest of the Wakening Sun, but I have no space for it. Perhaps replace Sensei's Divining Top with it.
Added Aggravated Assault. This card makes dinosaurs hit more and be more aggressive. Combos with Selvala, Heart of the Wilds. Insult // Injury is added into the deck due to meta call, specifically to fight against "Loam Foggers" which is a weakness of an aggressive dino deck. Xenagos, God Revels is a companion card for Aggravated Assault, turns Gishath into a very dangerous commander since it is easy to rack up 21 commander damage with these 2 cards online.
Ramp changes
Farseek and Kodama's Reach are replaced with Shaman of Forgotten Ways and Tempt with Discovery. Shaman is a good card to run as it gives a fair bit of ramp with a good 2nd ability. Tempt with Discovery is a mega ramp should everyone choose to be tempted. But it may be a double edge sword if opponents choose to get a Maze of Ith which will cause big problems for Gishath. Mwonvuli Acid-Moss might be a better alternative. Have to do some testing since Maze of Ith is a common staple in my meta.
Protection changes
Legion's Initiative replaced Eerie Interlude. Both cards are good, but Legion's Initiative gives a +1/+1 boost to Gishath and allows our creatures to come back to block should an opponent decide to cyclonic rift then attack.
Red Elemental Blast replaced Heroic Intervention. This is also more of a meta call as my meta is mostly blue based. It helps against irritating enchantments such as Invoke Prejudice and helps protect against blue counters such as Stifle and Time Stop.
Other changes
Huatli, Warrior Poet is dropped due to being low impact. Sneak Attack dropped as most of the Dinosaurs are cheated in with either Gishath's ability or Selvala's Stampede.
Krosan Verge is switched to Thespian's Stage. With so many new flip lands like Lost Vale around this card become really good to use to gain more utility the aggro deck is lacking. Having double Slayer's Stronghold or Sunhome is good too.
Edit: 2/10/17
Added Boros Reckoner to expand on the enrage synergies sub theme. Gives the deck slightly more punch now. Boros reckoner also helps to divert some damage to the enrage dinosaurs too which is great. It also allows a non-combat phase win with the following combo in case I get "Loam Fogger" locked out.
Here is my take its a bit more planeswalker heavy and my manabase isn't as fancy but heres what i've thrown together enjoy + critque or whatever
Thanks for commenting on this thread. No worries about the manabase, I also started my decks with the default mana base like yours then slowly upgrade it over the years.
Speaking of mana bases, there are really cheap options which will benefit the deck greatly. I'll list the land upgrade changes with a maximum ceiling of $10-15 for all the lands. Check lands are great too and they are currently being reprinted in Ixalan (but since they are standard legal their price might be a bit higher than usual).
With some of the new duals updated in the landbase, cards like Farseek, Nature's Lore, Skyshroud Claim becomes available to use. Noticed that you have dedicated around 7 slots for mana ramps, it will be great if there are more slots dedicated to it as dinosaurs are mostly high casting cost.
I would like to suggest dropping Collective Voyage as it benefits your opponents more than you. The lands enter the battlefield tapped and we don't have any ways and means to untap them to use the very same turn we cast collective voyage. Furthermore if we choose to pay 3 mana (for 3 lands), opponents might not want to top it up but they still get 3 lands for contributing nothing.
Steely Resolve is a double-edged sword as it turns off quite a number of cards in the deck. Once it is out most of the Planeswalkers' abilities that target our own creatures to give them abilities can't be used. Ulvenwald Tracker, Mirror of the Forebears, Kindred Boon can't target our own creatures too. Planeswalkers are really good with Dinosaurs but I don't have enough space for them... I so want to run Domri Rade and Arlinn Kord, how are they faring in the deck?
There are some really interesting card choices in the decklist. How is Chaosphere? It looks pretty neat with paired with Dinosaurs making the flying creatures cry lol. Uncage the Menagerie looks good too especially when we have quite a number of creatures with similar casting costs, although I find that the dinosaurs will be much better when they are in the library (but I want my reckoner, mana dorks to be in my hand too hmm).
I haven't been able to do any testing myself, but Akoum Hellkite seems pretty decent with an indestructible Ranging Raptors. Any thoughts?
Yep, Akoum Hellkite works inline with Ranging Raptors. In the same vein having Lotus Cobra + Pyrohemia + the raptor can also snowball the enrage triggers on multiple dinosaurs including raptor too.
i actually noticed a lot of the things you mentioned. adding krosan verge and a couple of the dual type lands the ramp has also been treating me well but i'm considering sticking drover in over ravenous dagger tooth for that actual extra ramp slot but between adding the krosan verge and that i think i might be frcing a flood. i agree with you on collective voyage how does traverse the outlands sound? i haven't had steely resolve out enough to decide how good/bad it is but all dinosaurs ahve shroud certainly sounds good on paper. Arlinn has been awesome especially her front side + surprise dinos with vigilance are good but domri has been avoiding me i'm considering throwing in a planr portal just to help get some of the awesome enchantments. Btw i also traded obelisk of urd for collective blessing and that is considerably better
i actually noticed a lot of the things you mentioned. adding krosan verge and a couple of the dual type lands the ramp has also been treating me well but i'm considering sticking drover in over ravenous dagger tooth for that actual extra ramp slot but between adding the krosan verge and that i think i might be frcing a flood. i agree with you on collective voyage how does traverse the outlands sound? i haven't had steely resolve out enough to decide how good/bad it is but all dinosaurs ahve shroud certainly sounds good on paper. Arlinn has been awesome especially her front side + surprise dinos with vigilance are good but domri has been avoiding me i'm considering throwing in a planr portal just to help get some of the awesome enchantments. Btw i also traded obelisk of urd for collective blessing and that is considerably better
Ravenous daggertooth shouldn't be considered as a land ramp until we have a reliable source to enrage it when it. Drover is great in the deck as most of the time it will be a 3/3 when a dinosaur is around. In this deck as much as we can, try to get mana dorks that has a base toughness of 2 and above, so that we wouldn't neuter ourselves when we want to cast cards that mass trigger enrage.
In Gishath's case, Collective Blessing is much better than Obelisk of Urd, since most of the time we will be swinging our creatures into the red zone, will be hard to spare some creatures to tap for convoke.
Traverse the outlands does work a lot better, we get more as dinos are generally fatties. Hitting 5+ lands on casting traverse will be the norm in this deck. Do watch out for removal spells and mass bounce such as cyclonic rift though. It will be good if you can cast this when the board has at least 2 creatures with 3 power or greater to minimise the chance of the spell fizzling when an opponent remove your creature in response to casting Traverse the outlands.
I've been wanting to try this out, but given the small number of dinosaurs I run, it will most likely brick 80% of the time T_T, How has this been working out for you? What is a good number of dinosaurs to run so that this combo will be viable and not brick? If add in Cream of the Crop will it work out better?
i actually noticed a lot of the things you mentioned. adding krosan verge and a couple of the dual type lands the ramp has also been treating me well but i'm considering sticking drover in over ravenous dagger tooth for that actual extra ramp slot but between adding the krosan verge and that i think i might be frcing a flood. i agree with you on collective voyage how does traverse the outlands sound? i haven't had steely resolve out enough to decide how good/bad it is but all dinosaurs ahve shroud certainly sounds good on paper. Arlinn has been awesome especially her front side + surprise dinos with vigilance are good but domri has been avoiding me i'm considering throwing in a planr portal just to help get some of the awesome enchantments. Btw i also traded obelisk of urd for collective blessing and that is considerably better
Ravenous daggertooth shouldn't be considered as a land ramp until we have a reliable source to enrage it when it. Drover is great in the deck as most of the time it will be a 3/3 when a dinosaur is around. In this deck as much as we can, try to get mana dorks that has a base toughness of 2 and above, so that we wouldn't neuter ourselves when we want to cast cards that mass trigger enrage.
In Gishath's case, Collective Blessing is much better than Obelisk of Urd, since most of the time we will be swinging our creatures into the red zone, will be hard to spare some creatures to tap for convoke.
Traverse the outlands does work a lot better, we get more as dinos are generally fatties. Hitting 5+ lands on casting traverse will be the norm in this deck. Do watch out for removal spells and mass bounce such as cyclonic rift though. It will be good if you can cast this when the board has at least 2 creatures with 3 power or greater to minimise the chance of the spell fizzling when an opponent remove your creature in response to casting Traverse the outlands.
I've been wanting to try this out, but given the small number of dinosaurs I run, it will most likely brick 80% of the time T_T, How has this been working out for you? What is a good number of dinosaurs to run so that this combo will be viable and not brick? If add in Cream of the Crop will it work out better?
i run a bit more of the crapier dinos to get the engine going. i think ~20. Its supported by deck manipulation to help land them.I just wanted to at least mention the card since it seems like a big flavor win for the Dinosaur type and a fun build around me
What about Homura, Human Ascendant? If you are running earthquake effects you can kill him when ever you want for x=4. Love the deck and am excited to try my own version out soon.
SO domri rade is awesome every thing he does is perfect. Steely resolve is a fun little trick but will hurt long game. you have to limit the cultivatey ramp cards cause this deck runs out of basics quickly so like you said farseek and such is much better. Huatli warrior poet isn't great but oddly enough Huatli dinosaur knight's been killing it. garruk wildspeaker is killing it with the bounce lands garruk caller of beasts is just not good enough due to gishath's ability. some of the silly support is gone but forbidden orchard is helpful for enrage especially when ulvenwald tracker is out. kindred boon is not cutting it helpful but isn't great ultimately thinking heroic intervention or boros charm over it. tempted to stick in Odric, lunarch marshal in cause all creatures having gishath's abilities sounds stupid and great
i run a bit more of the crapier dinos to get the engine going. i think ~20. Its supported by deck manipulation to help land them.I just wanted to at least mention the card since it seems like a big flavor win for the Dinosaur type and a fun build around me
Icic, I should go try it once though. It looks like a really fun interaction to play. However I need to increase my dinosaur count... the current iteration of the Gishath deck I ran today only has 19 dinosaurs, and there are a number of instances that I get 0 dinosaurs on Gishath's trigger.
14 damage dealt but 0 dinosaurs on reveal T__________T.
What about Homura, Human Ascendant? If you are running earthquake effects you can kill him when ever you want for x=4. Love the deck and am excited to try my own version out soon.
In my opinion Homura will be a "win more" card. It is quite hard to block Gishath already especially when Bow of Nylea is in play. It will just trample all the remaining damage (Gishath damage - 1) over even when the blocking creature has protection or is indestructible. More so when some doublers are in play, such as Gratuitous Violence.
These are mainstays for Gishath, especially the bow. This bow won me so many skirmishes until it made the Gishath deck really scary (according to my friends).
SO domri rade is awesome every thing he does is perfect. Steely resolve is a fun little trick but will hurt long game. you have to limit the cultivatey ramp cards cause this deck runs out of basics quickly so like you said farseek and such is much better. Huatli warrior poet isn't great but oddly enough Huatli dinosaur knight's been killing it. garruk wildspeaker is killing it with the bounce lands garruk caller of beasts is just not good enough due to gishath's ability. some of the silly support is gone but forbidden orchard is helpful for enrage especially when ulvenwald tracker is out. kindred boon is not cutting it helpful but isn't great ultimately thinking heroic intervention or boros charm over it. tempted to stick in Odric, lunarch marshal in cause all creatures having gishath's abilities sounds stupid and great
Love Domri Rade, I would test him when I can get a copy. Steely Resolve is a hard sell for Gishath imo, it makes it really hard to use pinger abilities to trigger the enrage mechanic. A number of lands like Slayer's Stronghold and Sunhome can't work when Steely Resolve is in play too.
After today's game session, I find that cards like Asceticism and Heroic Intervention do deserve a slot in the deck. It might be a meta call, but lands such as Maze of Ith. Kor Haven are really irritating to play against. It neuters almost the entire gameplan for Gishath with it out. Acid-Moss and other land destruction just doesn't cut it since most players that play it can recur it back somehow.
Asceticism will be a better card to run to replace Steely Resolve.
Hmm Odric is a good card to try too, but if the commander is neutered, most of the other dinosaurs don't really provide good abilities to spread to others. Will have to run other keyword soups such as Samut, Voice of Dissent together with Odric.
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Just finished today's EDH session. Will update the decklist once I've finish the AAR (after action report) for Gishath. The deck is becoming a force to be reckoned with, even with only 19 dinosaurs. :3
This Gishath deck is really shaping up to be quite fun to play. Although the deck runs a really low number of dinosaurs (19), it is still a dangerous deck for opponents to face down. It is doing relatively well with other 75% typed decks. I think is due them underestimating what this tribe can do.
Commanders which Gishath faced off (3 to 4 player FFA games):
Kess, Dissident Mage - Control with Isochron+Dramatic Reversal, Storm Aetherflux infinites
Thrasios, Triton Hero / Tymna the Weaver - Token based deck with Good Stuff control
Teferi's Protection is a top tier, 100% must include card to for Gishath. As our dinosaurs are very expensive to cast, protecting them becomes really important. This card so far has protected me from various wraths from Cyclonic Rifts to Living Lands + Wrath of God. Yes land destruction is norm in my meta.
Shaman en-Kor has also proved itself again and again in this deck, too bad there is only 1 creature that has his ability, can't really get additional cards for redundency.
Pyrohemia + Ranging Raptors + Shaman = 2 land ramps every turn with just R
Even without any damage dealers like Pyrohemia around, the shaman can still "steal" damage when creatures attack each other. Like in the example above, the Shaman "steals" 4 damage from a blocker dealing 4 damage Gishath, and spreads it to Snapping Sailback. Since the 4 damage is transferred 1 damage at a time, the dinosaur's enrage trigger will trigger 4 times total, allowing it to survive the 4 damage with the +1/+1 counters added. This makes the card Rite of Passage extremely valuable for the deck.
Insult // Injury is really scary. The Kynaios and Tiro player got a shock when I swing in with a Insulted, Gratuitous Violent Gishath when he happily thought that his Maze of Ith can stop the Dino alpha from attacking in. Do take note on the rulings for damage doublers and tramplers though. We still have to assign lethal damage to the blocking creature first before it doubles.
4/18/2017: If a creature with trample you control would deal combat damage to a blocking creature this turn, you must assign its unmodified damage. For example, a 3/3 creature with trample blocked by a 2/2 creature can only have 1 damage assigned to the defending player. It will then deal 4 damage to the blocking creature and 2 to the defending player.
With the current ramp package, this deck actually ramps pretty fast and is quite ok with mana so far.
Some other thoughts on Gishath. With last week's changes, the deck becomes more dangerous as it gives more focus on Gishath being a Voltron commander. This is one the direction which Gishath players can consider when they build the deck. If we look at Gishath's power, it already puts an opponent on a 3 turn clock, with ample combat based evasion keywords which support it. Next is the ability Gishath has, it is linked totally to the amount of damage dealt to an opponent. So the taller (more damage) Gishath deals, the more cards we can dig into our library for dinosaurs.
With this in mind, the number of dinosaurs can be lower the more we build Gishath into a voltron styled commander. A double-strike (via Boros Charm/Sunhome) with a Stonewood Invocation will close the game fast. Gishath deals 24 commander damage via 1 attack and can reveal top 24 cards for dinosaurs, really dangerous bite.
So this deck is smashing surprisingly well...almost too well its starting to take some of the fun out of the game (stupid commander damage killing my opponents too quickly) the main decks i'm losing too are things like Edric because the combo out too quickly. i added lightmine field and Ghostly prison to the board as ways of combating those decks beyond the board wipes already in the deck.but beyond that this deck repopulates the board quickly i love playing it and i don't see an end to it anytime soon
So this deck is smashing surprisingly well...almost too well its starting to take some of the fun out of the game (stupid commander damage killing my opponents too quickly) the main decks i'm losing too are things like Edric because the combo out too quickly. i added lightmine field and Ghostly prison to the board as ways of combating those decks beyond the board wipes already in the deck.but beyond that this deck repopulates the board quickly i love playing it and i don't see an end to it anytime soon
I love it, especially Domri Rade and Arlinn Kord planeswalkers. How are they performing for the deck?
Vs combo and prison decks I'm having some problems too. Especially when multiple locks (Winter Orb + Frozen Aether/Kismet) with the commander Derevi is in Gishath totally can't operate. Need to rethink some strategies and card choices.
9/29/2017: If multiple sources deal damage to a creature with an enrage ability at the same time, most likely because multiple creatures blocked that creature, the enrage ability triggers only once.
Ahh, got alerted on the ruling on enrage. This makes Shaman en-Kor not as effective in triggering multiple enrages on a single target creature on a single damage instance. It is still a keeper in any Dino deck imo though, to effectively trigger off multiple dinosaurs' enrage with just 1 source of damage. Another card is needed to close this loop especially when we want to use the rite of passage combo, Arcbond.
Hence, am currently testing on a slightly tweaked build to see if there are some ways still gain multiple enrage triggers besides on wiping with pyrohemia. Will update the main post with the rulings and changes after my tests today :3
Doesn’t shaman of en-kor damage go one at a time not all at once?
Due to damage happens all at once, even if it is redirected in a split manner of 1 damage each, it is still treated as 1 instance of damage (at the same time). Which in this case the enrage triggers only 1 time due to the enrage rulings.
However, this isn't the case for all kinds of spells and effects. Unlike cards like pyrohemia/Starstorm which it is 1 instance of damage even if redirect via en-Kor abilities, cards like Fiery Confluence is treated as 3 separate instances of damage. So for fiery confluence enrage will trigger 3 times (if use the 3 deal 1 damage to each creature mode).
11/4/2015: If the first or second modes are chosen multiple times, each of those modes represents a separate damage-dealing event. For example, if your opponent casts Fiery Confluence choosing the second mode three times, and you control Guardian Seraph (a creature with the ability “If a source an opponent controls would deal damage to you, prevent 1 of that damage”), you'll be dealt a total of 3 damage.
Hope in future we have more cards which can deal damage as separate events per spell. We need cards like Pyromatics or Savage Alliance that can target our own creatures.
Played a few games with Gishath yesterday with a different playgroup, so different meta. The added Starstorm and Arcbond makes the deck feel more robust and am able to handle players that are going for wide strategies while giving our dinosaurs enrage triggers. BUT...
The deck is severely lacking in dinosaurs to help keep the pressure before Gishath is out or when Gishath is neutered. In short we do need more good dinosaurs before this deck can be treated as a force to be reckoned with.
It is kind of sad that the only worthwhile dinos in the entire dinosaur list we have now amount only up to 12, and 3 of them are Changelings. The rest that aren't listed are either 2nd string or downright bad, especially Carnage Tyrant.
It only has 2 toughness do you have a way to give it indestructible or something?
Most of the time Wakening Sun's Avatar is just a vanilla 7/7 when it is cheated out. It can't be tutored with the traditional green creature tutors besides Eladamri's Call and Worldly Tutor and have to naturally draw into it to make the "kindred dominance" ability work.
In the face of wipes I'll Boros charm/Teferi's Protection if I have or run Winding Canyons + Changeling Berserker to "champion" (save) the key creatures. Against damage most of the time there isn't much of a worry as Shaman will redirect/spread damage out to other dinosaurs/creatures.
Deck ver 0.3
With Ixalan comes a new tribe, Dinosaurs! Currently with just the Ixalan set alone, dino support honestly is a bit disappointing, but that doesn't stop us from building our favorite Dino tribal deck. Building Gishath is still very much possible with the available pool of dinos we have, just that we need to get more creative in the card choices to pair with the dinosaurs. Hopefully with the new Ixlan release in Jan2018 we will get more dinosaurs with better utility.
Dinosaurs as a tribe
I do feel that this is a section that needs to be covered at the very start before getting to the deck list since dinosaurs is a new tribe. What are the pros and cons of the tribe? Answering this will allow us to see the kind of synergies we are going to look for when we build the deck. In the 1st Ixalan set, we get a glimpse of what this new tribe has to offer:
"Own tribe matters" here refers to cards which either boost own tribe (like Dinosaurs get haste or +1/+1, we do have those) or cards which care about other same tribe on the field (like P/T equals to number of Dinosaurs or get +1/+1 for each Dinosaur etc). With this it is much easier to map out what kind of support cards a dino tribal deck will employ. We need to provide focus support in the following areas:
As the current pool of good dinosaurs is relatively small (as of now there are only 19 dinosaurs are in the deck), the deck needs a sub theme to keep the deck somewhat viable in the meta I'm in. I've chosen to expand on the enrage mechanic to keep the sub theme inline with the Dinosaur tribe since they are mainly about the enrage mechanic.
So onward to the decklist.
Why you should consider this deck
This is the deck which is suitable for those who:
This deck might not be suitable to those who:
Decklist
1x Gishath, Sun's Avatar
// Sun's Avatars
1x Burning Sun's Avatar
1x Verdant Sun's Avatar
// Key Dinosaurs
1x Regisaur Alpha
1x Ripjaw Raptor
1x Goring Ceratops
1x Thundering Spineback
1x Sun-Crowned Hunters
1x Raptor Hatchling
1x Raging Swordtooth
1x Ranging Raptors
1x Kinjalli's Sunwing
1x Bellowing Aegisaur
1x Ravenous Daggertooth
// Other Dinosaurs
1x Carnage Tyrant
1x Deathgorge Scavenger
1x Snapping Sailback
// "Dinosaurs"
1x Chameleon Colossus
1x Changeling Berserker
1x Changeling Titan
// Dino Supporters
1x Shaman en-Kor
1x Ulvenwald Tracker
1x Gratuitous Violence
1x Insult // Injury
1x Aggravated Assault
1x Xenagos, God of Revels
// Abusing Enrage
1x Pyrohemia
1x Rite of Passage
1x Boros Reckoner
// Planeswalkers
1x Garruk Wildspeaker
1x Warstorm Surge
1x Dual Nature
// Top of Library Manipulation and Tricks
1x Cream of the Crop
1x Sensei's Divining Top
1x Scroll Rack
// Ramps and Rocks
1x Mana Crypt
1x Sol Ring
1x Fellwar Stone
1x Nature's Lore
1x Cultivate
1x Mwonvuli Acid-Moss
1x Skyshroud Claim
1x Oracle of Mul Daya
1x Mirari's Wake
1x Selvala, Heart of the Wilds
1x Shaman of Forgotten Ways
// Recursion
1x Reinforcements
1x Noxious Revival
1x Bow of Nylea
// Cheat'Ins
1x Selvala's Stampede
// Tutors
1x Congregation at Dawn
1x Worldly Tutor
1x Green Sun's Zenith
// Draws
1x Sylvan Library
1x Greater Good
1x Elemental Bond
// Protection and Removal
1x Unexpectedly Absent
1x Teferi's Protection
1x Legion's Initiative
1x Beast Within
1x Swords to Plowshares
1x Chaos Warp
1x Boros Charm
1x Red Elemental Blast
1x Command Tower
1x Exotic Orchard
1x Cavern of Souls
1x Sacred Foundry
1x Stomping Ground
1x Temple Garden
1x Canopy Vista
1x Cinder Glade
1x Fire-Lit Thicket
1x Rugged Prairie
1x Wooded Bastion
1x Clifftop Retreat
1x Rootbound Crag
1x Sunpetal Grove
1x Plateau
1x Savannah
1x Taiga
1x Ancient Tomb
1x Windswept Heath
1x Wooded Foothills
1x Sunhome, Fortress of the Legion
1x Slayers' Stronghold
1x Kessig Wolf Run
1x Winding Canyons
1x Thespian's Stage
7x Forest
2x Plains
2x Mountain
1x Eladamri's Call
1x Widespread Panic
1x Asceticism
1x Wakening Sun's Avatar
1x Reclaim
1x Penance
1x Hua Tuo, Honored Physician
1x Sneak Attack
1x Deathmist Raptor
1x Iroas, God of Victory
1x Unclaimed Territory
1x Samut, Voice of Dissent
1x Ogre Battledriver
Statistics:
Average Casting Cost: 3.46
Number of Dinosaurs(including changelings) in deck: 19
Link to deckstats: https://deckstats.net/decks/5022/815352-gishath-rawr
Interactions and Combos
You might be wondering, does Gishath even have combos? The entire tribe looks like pure aggro based. The answer is "Yes! Do not underestimate this Naya Dinosaur." As you see, this deck is built with the Dinosaur theme in mind, hence combos must be strictly Dinosaur based only, or at the very least Dinosaurs must get involved. Meta Naya combos such as Yisan roll into KikiBoring isn't welcomed here.
Let us break down Gishath's abilities one by one.
Apart from the really powerful combat abilities Gishath has, its 2nd ability is what makes Gishath so formidable and impressive as a Dinosaur Tribal Alpha. It is able to call upon other dinosaurs into the battlefield based on how much damage is dealt to an opponent. If an opponent takes 3 damage, we can reveal the top 3 cards and put any number of Dinosaurs into play.
This is a nifty ability to allow us to cheat big creatures into play, but it comes with 2 weaknesses.
For the 1st weakness we can cover with cards that manipulate the top of the library, such as Worldy Tutor and Congregation at Dawn. We can also 'revive' Dinosaurs which died too by bringing them back from the graveyard to the top of the library too, with cards like Noxious Revival and Reinforcements.
The 2nd weakness is a bit harder to cover, as going for 1 turn around the board our precious cute Dinosaurs might get boardwiped to extinction. In most cases this can be solved by creating more attack phases, so that Gishath and the herd can attack again and again in the same turn.
But this posts another set of problems, much of the deck will need to cater to give the turn more attack phases and also give the herd haste. Currently in Ixalan we only have 1 dinosaur which grants haste, so we need to more deck slots to fit cards which grant haste.
So how do we make Gishath's initial bite so powerful that everyone will not forget about it? They should remember that a dinosaur's bite is more painful and dangerous than a Dual wielding Samut (human) can ever do. We go the combo route, so that as long as the dinosaurs which Gishath brings out can close the loop, Gishath's bite becomes lethal.
Dino Combo 1: Gishath's Tender-loving Bite
Pre-requisite: Dual Nature and Gishath on the battlefield, Congregation at Dawn in hand.
Effect: Infinite combo off, kill off all opponents.
How to use the combo:
Have Gishath bite an opponent for at least 2 damage. With the reveal top cards trigger on the stack, cast Congregation at Dawn and search for the following two Dinosaurs:
So we have a powerful way to close out the game if we need to (we just need a 2 damage bite :3), next is the other interactions in the deck. We just can't have the alpha dinosaur do all the work.
Dino Combo 2: DO NOT engage/enrage the dinosaurs
Ixalan introduces a new mechanic which belongs to Dinosaurs, the Enrage mechanic. It is a triggered ability which whenever the creature is dealt damage, it will trigger the enrage ability. This paves way to interactions with cards that deal damage to our own creatures, such as Pyrohemia
There are more ways to use this enrage ability, to our advantage. Enters the best buddy with all the enrage dinosaurs~
Shaman en-Kor has the ability to redirect any kind of damage dealt to him to any other creature we control, in this case a Dinosaur with enrage ability. Since the ability triggers in the form of 1 damage by 1 damage, 3 damage dealt to the shaman with the redirect will trigger enrage 3 times! We can draw 3 cards with Ripjaw Raptor or deal opponent 9 damage with Sun-Crowned Hunters!
What's better is the 2nd ability of Shaman, he at the cost of 1W, can redirect any damage dealt to any creature (yes even to opponent's creature) to himself, to be redirected and spread out to the Dinosaurs. How neat is that? We can "save" players creatures by redirecting their damage to the shaman and use it to further grow our dinosaurs with cards like Rite of Passage, or to search for lands with Ranging Raptors. Wait... there is more to come.
Ulvenwald Tracker can allow our dinosaurs to fight other creatures, the Shaman can reroute the damage all to dealt from the fight to our Dinosaurs with enrage.
Cards like Heroic Intervention/Boros Charm give indestructible to our creatures, this makes it an interesting interaction when the Shaman, Tracker and Sun-Crown are online together with Gratuitous Violence. A 5/5 of ours fight will deal 10 damage to an opponent's creature, in which Shaman en-Kor will redirect back to himself, then distribute it 10 times (10 damage) to Sun-Crown Hunters. Sun-Crown's enrage ability will trigger 10 times, dealing 60 (30x 2 due to Gratuitous Violence) damage to opponent(s). This is just with using 2GW off the activation of Tracker and Shaman.
Enrage mechanic is boosted with the addition of the card Boros Reckoner (Really hope for a Dino functional reprint of it, which I think is very likely since cards like Sun-Crown Hunters is already printed). This allows another route to close the game with the deck without over relying on alpha swinging with Gishath.
Deck Combo: Aggravated Gishath
This aren't some unique combo as Aggravated Assault is known to combo with elves a long time ago, but since quite a number of our creatures are big fatties and are combat phase oriented adding this becomes a no-brainer. With Gishath having power of 7 and above, Selvala is able to generate infinite mana together with infinite attack phases when used in combination with Aggravated Assault. Infinite Attacks is what Gishath is good for, imagine an opponent running away from a huge T-rex, as the more he runs the more Dinosaurs come running after him.... lol.
It is kind of slow though, since aggravated assault happens at sorcery speed. And we do need the haste dinosaur to give all other dinosaurs haste in order to work. Other haste enablers which are good include Ogre Battledriver, Samut, Voice of Dissent, Xenagos, God of Revels and Fires of Yavimaya. In terms of ability wise, Ogre Battledriver is one of the best as it pumps up all creatures with a +2/+0 and haste. Xenagos will be much better though as he is tutorable "creature" with the tutors available to our deck and makes Gishath much more dangerous. The God also makes extra attack steps more attractive too since it triggers at the beginning of each combat step.
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To be further updated.
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Edit: 1/10/2017
-1 Farseek
-1 Heroic Intervention
-1 Kodama's Reach
-1 Otepec Huntmaster
-1 Priest of the Wakening Sun
-1 Sneak Attack
-1 Huatli, Warrior Poet
-1 Krosan Verge
-1 Unclaimed Territory
+1 Aggravated Assault
+1 Insult // Injury
+1 Legion's Initiative
+1 Red Elemental Blast
+1 Shaman of Forgotten Ways
+1 Tempt with Discovery
+1 Xenagos, God of Revels
+1 Cavern of Souls
+1 Thespian's Stage
Edit: 2/10/2017
-1 Tauren Mauler
-1 Tempt with Discovery
+1 Boros Reckoner
+1 Mwonvuli Acid-Moss
WUBRG Reaper King - Elf Tribal WUBRG | Tribal Fun
WRG Gishath, Sun's Avatar - Dinosaur Tribal WRG | Rawr!!!
WUG Derevi, Empyrial Tactician - Enchantress Tactics WUG | Enchantments Focused
GBG The Gitrog Monster - Land Shenanigans GBG | Lands/Mill Focused
WBW Kambal, Consul of Life Allocation Matters WBW | Life Gain/Loss focused
UBR Kess, Dissident Mage of the Lotus UBR | Spellslinger
BGB Hapatra, Vizier of Poisons - Counters & Tokens BGB | -1/-1 counters focused
As for a card to remove, I personally would get rid of Greater Good, because I dislike willfully discarding three cards. Maybe Changeling Berserker? Seems like a bit of work for just a 5/3 haste. For one more mana you get Charging Monstrosaur which is a 5/5 trample, haste.
Walking Ballista goes infinite with any of the effects that put +1/+1 counters on him.
So does Crystalline Crawler and Pyrohemia with any of those effects.
Bow of Nylea is pretty bad. It is 5 mana to get your first effect, which is very slow. You already have a lot of top-deck manipulation and 2 ways to get stuff from your library.
Gratuitous violence and other doubling effects can be great, but I find they are usually 'win-more'. Test it out, I guess.
Priest of Wakening Sun is not good. 6 mana to tutor a dinosaur? Summoner's Pact maybe? Green Sun's Zenith? Eldritch Evolution? Birthing Pod? Works well with the Dual Nature tokens.
Priest is a weak tutor and should either be cut or replaced.
You shouldn't cut dinosaurs, because in the next set you will get new ones to replace the bad ones. Keep those slots flexible.
If you need another cut, Farseek is a card I've been cutting more and more. It fixes mana, but it is a 1 for 1... Your fixing is already good. Fertile Ground is a great ramp spell when paired with Garruk Wildspeaker. Something to think about.
8.RG Green Devotion Ramp/Combo 9.UR Draw Triggers 10.WUR Group stalling 11.WUR Voltron Spellslinger 12.WB Sacrificial Shenanigans
13.BR Creatureless Panharmonicon 14.BR Pingers and Eldrazi 15.URG Untapped Cascading
16.Reyhan, last of the Abzan's WUBG +1/+1 Counter Craziness 17.WUBRG Dragons aka Why did I make this?
Building: The Gitrog Monster lands, Glissa the Traitor stax, Muldrotha, the Gravetide Planeswalker Combo, Kydele, Chosen of Kruphix + Sidar Kondo of Jamuraa Clues, and Tribal Scarecrow Planeswalkers
Thank you for the comments and suggestions. Like what you said Greater Good might not be a good card after all for this deck, since the decklist doesn't have any way to revive our fallen Dinosaurs other than wait for Gishath's trigger. Will have to explore more into it though. Changeling Berserker is there for redundancy in case I don't have access to Changeling Titan, since it is one of the 3 changelings which have "Champion a creature" mechanic. Coincidentally all these 3 changelings are in Naya colors too.
So far I dropped Urza's Incubator for the time being, not because the card isn't good. It is more of I can't find my Urza's Incubator. Will have to purchase one first then I'll think of what to drop = =|||.
WUBRG Reaper King - Elf Tribal WUBRG | Tribal Fun
WRG Gishath, Sun's Avatar - Dinosaur Tribal WRG | Rawr!!!
WUG Derevi, Empyrial Tactician - Enchantress Tactics WUG | Enchantments Focused
GBG The Gitrog Monster - Land Shenanigans GBG | Lands/Mill Focused
WBW Kambal, Consul of Life Allocation Matters WBW | Life Gain/Loss focused
UBR Kess, Dissident Mage of the Lotus UBR | Spellslinger
BGB Hapatra, Vizier of Poisons - Counters & Tokens BGB | -1/-1 counters focused
Yep Bow of Nylea feels pretty bad, I was planning to use Elixir of Immortality to replace it. For this first run I just run with whatever I have and tweak from there.
Priest of Wakening Sun is bad, I've replaced it with a eladamri's call instead. Like what you said, Green Sun's Zenith is a must for the deck as 1st priority will be to get one of the Enrage green dinos (ramp or draw) + Shaman en-Kor online to maximise ramp and draw power.
Aura fixes are great if we have more land untappers, will try to incorporate them more in the deck, thanks for the suggestion. In Naya we have more of such fixers too like Trace of Abundance, but it doesn't work with Garruk sadly. At least it gives some protection from stripmine.
WUBRG Reaper King - Elf Tribal WUBRG | Tribal Fun
WRG Gishath, Sun's Avatar - Dinosaur Tribal WRG | Rawr!!!
WUG Derevi, Empyrial Tactician - Enchantress Tactics WUG | Enchantments Focused
GBG The Gitrog Monster - Land Shenanigans GBG | Lands/Mill Focused
WBW Kambal, Consul of Life Allocation Matters WBW | Life Gain/Loss focused
UBR Kess, Dissident Mage of the Lotus UBR | Spellslinger
BGB Hapatra, Vizier of Poisons - Counters & Tokens BGB | -1/-1 counters focused
Played Gishath for a number of games during my weekly EDH session. Got a gist of what is working and what is not for the deck, the strengths and weaknesses too. Some games is really "no meaning" (a local term where the current game session is really do nothing for most of the game), but quite a number of times I am able to dish out some damage before becoming extinct.
Gishath can be explosive, this is turn 5 in one of my games.
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Gishath is primarily a very aggro based deck, and it succumbs to lots of things which aggro folds to. Personally I think for this deck the main problem isn't to fight through all the boardwipes and stuff. Naya has really good counters against boardwipes and mass bounces. The main problem for Gishath is it totally can't fight through "Loam foggers"
Try fighting through this with a Dino deck and you will realise how futile/"no meaning" it is.
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One of neat tricks for Gishath to fight against boardwipes and bounces is Eerie Interlude and Teferi's Protection. These 2 are really good to add for Gishath. Just be careful not to keep your commander in exile via Eerie Interlude in case an opponent decide to Stifle the return to battlefield trigger. I got caught in that once.
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The next main problem Gishath decks currently face is the lack of good/utility Dinosaurs for the deck to capitalise on. From what I see, the problem isn't when Gishath attacks and flips nothing, it is even when there are things to flip (with Congregation at Dawn backing) there aren't any worthwhile Dinosaurs that can ETB and make an impact. Most of the time with congregation at dawn, I'm grabbing 2 enrage dinos + a 1 damage pinger to let me get 2x enrage triggers.
Carnage Tyrant is a low impact, dumb beater for EDH. It wouldn't be the top priority to cast even when I can dig out and cheat it in for free using Gishath's call the herd ability.
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Ahh Invoke Prejudice. This card is another card which give the dino deck "no meaning". Have huge troubles fighting against this card as most of the dinosaurs have too big casting costs.
No meaning game... when Talrand runs Turn3 Rhystic Study into Turn4 Invoke Prejudice.
Krosan Grip and Red Elemental Blast are needed for the deck.
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There are some cards which outperform than what is expected of them. Really good imo.
The first is Bow of Nylea. I do find that this card is a keeper for Gishath. The deathtouch it gives is really relevant and makes Gishath able to trample 6 damage over most of the time since it only needs 1 damage to kill any blocker with deathtouch.
The return up to 4 cards activated ability also helps to recycle dinosaurs back to the library for more tutoring and cheat in goodness.
Heroic Intervention > Boros Charm for this deck. I hardly have to use the double strike effect of it.
Selvala, Heart of the Wilds is really good, another card which I tested is Shaman of the Forgotten Way, works beautifully for the deck too. Both of them have toughness of 3 which is really good to dodge 2 damage aoe spells.
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The Dinosaur reduction cards, such as Otepec Huntmaster, Kinjalli's Caller are really bad pulls, even when during early turns. Most of the time I find that if the card slots they take up are much better off as land tutor than anything else. Priest of the Wakening Sun is also another bad card for Gishath. 6cc just to tutor for a dinosaur is really bad.
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Some cards that my friends play which I think are worthly to include into Gishath.
Widespread Panic is a good include for the deck. Firstly it prevents opponents from spamming tutors such as Mystical Tutor, Vampiric Tutor and such. It's symmetrical effect doesn't affect Gishath much at all as Gishath doesn't care much about whether the card it top card or top 2nd card.
It also forms a neat little trick for Gishath to employ when its reveal top of library trigger is on the stack... by cracking a fetch land, search for a land put onto the battlefield, then put a Dinosaur from your hand to top of the library for Gishath to cheat in. A good slot in imo.
Volcanic Fallout
Another great card to run in Gishath. It triggers enrage most of the time, and kills off pesky cards such as Aven Mindcensor and Containment Priest.
-------------------------
Will be posting new decklist changes soon.
WUBRG Reaper King - Elf Tribal WUBRG | Tribal Fun
WRG Gishath, Sun's Avatar - Dinosaur Tribal WRG | Rawr!!!
WUG Derevi, Empyrial Tactician - Enchantress Tactics WUG | Enchantments Focused
GBG The Gitrog Monster - Land Shenanigans GBG | Lands/Mill Focused
WBW Kambal, Consul of Life Allocation Matters WBW | Life Gain/Loss focused
UBR Kess, Dissident Mage of the Lotus UBR | Spellslinger
BGB Hapatra, Vizier of Poisons - Counters & Tokens BGB | -1/-1 counters focused
8.RG Green Devotion Ramp/Combo 9.UR Draw Triggers 10.WUR Group stalling 11.WUR Voltron Spellslinger 12.WB Sacrificial Shenanigans
13.BR Creatureless Panharmonicon 14.BR Pingers and Eldrazi 15.URG Untapped Cascading
16.Reyhan, last of the Abzan's WUBG +1/+1 Counter Craziness 17.WUBRG Dragons aka Why did I make this?
Building: The Gitrog Monster lands, Glissa the Traitor stax, Muldrotha, the Gravetide Planeswalker Combo, Kydele, Chosen of Kruphix + Sidar Kondo of Jamuraa Clues, and Tribal Scarecrow Planeswalkers
Wow, thanks for the recommendation. This is so going into the deck. Wild Slash looks good too.
-------------------------------------------------
Card changes to deck 1/10/2017
Swap some dinosaurs to key category and others to other dinosaurs category. Dinosaurs in these 2 categories denote the 1st and 2nd string respectively. 2nd String dinos are those which are swappable with other dinosaurs as they get release in future. The main reason is that most of them are low impact which don't contribute that much. Sadly Carnage Tyrant is part of 2nd string it is mostly a big beater without contributing in utility, especially in my meta where mass removals are much more preferred than single target removals.
Dino Supporters changes
Otepec Huntmaster and Priest of the Wakening Sun are removed from the deck. Though they provide some dinosaur cost reduction and tutoring, it is too slow and weak when drawn in mid/late game. Most of the dinosaurs are cheated in with Gishath, which makes tutor to hand dinosaurs with the Priest not really worth it. Eladamri's Call is a much better replacement for Priest of the Wakening Sun, but I have no space for it. Perhaps replace Sensei's Divining Top with it.
Added Aggravated Assault. This card makes dinosaurs hit more and be more aggressive. Combos with Selvala, Heart of the Wilds.
Insult // Injury is added into the deck due to meta call, specifically to fight against "Loam Foggers" which is a weakness of an aggressive dino deck. Xenagos, God Revels is a companion card for Aggravated Assault, turns Gishath into a very dangerous commander since it is easy to rack up 21 commander damage with these 2 cards online.
Ramp changes
Farseek and Kodama's Reach are replaced with Shaman of Forgotten Ways and Tempt with Discovery. Shaman is a good card to run as it gives a fair bit of ramp with a good 2nd ability. Tempt with Discovery is a mega ramp should everyone choose to be tempted. But it may be a double edge sword if opponents choose to get a Maze of Ith which will cause big problems for Gishath. Mwonvuli Acid-Moss might be a better alternative. Have to do some testing since Maze of Ith is a common staple in my meta.
Protection changes
Legion's Initiative replaced Eerie Interlude. Both cards are good, but Legion's Initiative gives a +1/+1 boost to Gishath and allows our creatures to come back to block should an opponent decide to cyclonic rift then attack.
Red Elemental Blast replaced Heroic Intervention. This is also more of a meta call as my meta is mostly blue based. It helps against irritating enchantments such as Invoke Prejudice and helps protect against blue counters such as Stifle and Time Stop.
Other changes
Huatli, Warrior Poet is dropped due to being low impact.
Sneak Attack dropped as most of the Dinosaurs are cheated in with either Gishath's ability or Selvala's Stampede.
Land Changes
Unclaimed Territory is upgraded to Cavern of Souls. Uncounterable Gishath ftw.
Krosan Verge is switched to Thespian's Stage. With so many new flip lands like Lost Vale around this card become really good to use to gain more utility the aggro deck is lacking. Having double Slayer's Stronghold or Sunhome is good too.
Edit: 2/10/17
Added Boros Reckoner to expand on the enrage synergies sub theme. Gives the deck slightly more punch now. Boros reckoner also helps to divert some damage to the enrage dinosaurs too which is great. It also allows a non-combat phase win with the following combo in case I get "Loam Fogger" locked out.
Boros Reckoner + Boros Charm + Insult // Injury
WUBRG Reaper King - Elf Tribal WUBRG | Tribal Fun
WRG Gishath, Sun's Avatar - Dinosaur Tribal WRG | Rawr!!!
WUG Derevi, Empyrial Tactician - Enchantress Tactics WUG | Enchantments Focused
GBG The Gitrog Monster - Land Shenanigans GBG | Lands/Mill Focused
WBW Kambal, Consul of Life Allocation Matters WBW | Life Gain/Loss focused
UBR Kess, Dissident Mage of the Lotus UBR | Spellslinger
BGB Hapatra, Vizier of Poisons - Counters & Tokens BGB | -1/-1 counters focused
1 Kinjalli's Caller
1 Priest of the Wakening Sun
1 Otepec Huntmaster
1 Khenra Charioteer
1 Adaptive Automaton
1 Ulvenwald Tracker
1 Raptor Hatchling
1 Sky Terror
1 Deathgorge Scavenger
1 Kinjalli's Sunwing
1 Ranging Raptors
1 Ravenous Daggertooth
1 Territorial Hammerskull
1 Fungusaur
1 Ripjaw Raptor
1 Charging Monstrosaur
1 Raging Swordtooth
1 Regisaur Alpha
1 Snapping Sailback
1 Sun-Blessed Mount
1 Bellowing Aegisaur
1 Burning Sun's Avatar
1 Carnage Tyrant
1 Thundering Spineback
1 Verdant Sun's Avatar
1 Wakening Sun's Avatar
1 Changeling Titan
1 Chameleon Colossus
Planeswalkers:
1 Huatli, Dinosaur Knight
1 Huatli, Warrior Poet
1 Garruk, Caller of Beasts
1 Garruk Wildspeaker
1 Arlinn Kord
1 Domri Rade
1 Samut, the Tested
1 Mirari's Wake
1 Door of Destinies
1 Herald's Horn
1 Kindred Boon
1 Kindred Summons
1 Mirror of the Forebears
1 Obelisk of Urd
1 Pillar of Origins
1 Sol Ring
1 Shared Triumph
1 Steely Resolve
1 Vanquisher's Banner
1 Cultivate
1 Kodama's Reach
1 Collective Voyage
1 Chaosphere
1 Always Watching
1 Explosive Vegetation
1 Congregation at Dawn
1 Harmonize
1 Dual Nature
1 Bow of Nylea
1 Elemental Bond
1 Beast Within
1 Swords to Plowshares
1 Gratuitous Violence
1 Uncage the Menagerie
Land:
1 Command Tower
1 Exotic Orchard
1 Unclaimed Territory
1 Myriad Landscape
1 Gruul Turf
1 Selesnya Sanctuary
1 Boros Garrison
1 Jungle Shrine
1 Transguild Promenade
1 Forbidden Orchard
1 Rupture Spire
1 Path of Ancestry
1 Vivid Meadow
1 Vivid Grove
1 Vivid Crag
1 Blighted Woodland
1 Evolving Wilds
1 Terramorphic Expanse
1 Stone Quarry
1 Tranquil Expanse
1 Timber Gorge
1 Temple of the False God
1 Rith's Grove
5 Forest
5 Mountain
4 Plains
Here is my take its a bit more planeswalker heavy and my manabase isn't as fancy but heres what i've thrown together enjoy + critque or whatever
Thanks for commenting on this thread. No worries about the manabase, I also started my decks with the default mana base like yours then slowly upgrade it over the years.
Speaking of mana bases, there are really cheap options which will benefit the deck greatly. I'll list the land upgrade changes with a maximum ceiling of $10-15 for all the lands. Check lands are great too and they are currently being reprinted in Ixalan (but since they are standard legal their price might be a bit higher than usual).
1x Cinder Glade
1x Slayer's Stronghold
1x Naya Panoroma
1x Scattered Groves
1x Sheltered Thicket
Temples are cheap too with their scry being helpful if you need them
1x Temple of Plenty
1x Temple of Triumph
With some of the new duals updated in the landbase, cards like Farseek, Nature's Lore, Skyshroud Claim becomes available to use. Noticed that you have dedicated around 7 slots for mana ramps, it will be great if there are more slots dedicated to it as dinosaurs are mostly high casting cost.
I would like to suggest dropping Collective Voyage as it benefits your opponents more than you. The lands enter the battlefield tapped and we don't have any ways and means to untap them to use the very same turn we cast collective voyage. Furthermore if we choose to pay 3 mana (for 3 lands), opponents might not want to top it up but they still get 3 lands for contributing nothing.
Steely Resolve is a double-edged sword as it turns off quite a number of cards in the deck. Once it is out most of the Planeswalkers' abilities that target our own creatures to give them abilities can't be used. Ulvenwald Tracker, Mirror of the Forebears, Kindred Boon can't target our own creatures too. Planeswalkers are really good with Dinosaurs but I don't have enough space for them... I so want to run Domri Rade and Arlinn Kord, how are they faring in the deck?
There are some really interesting card choices in the decklist. How is Chaosphere? It looks pretty neat with paired with Dinosaurs making the flying creatures cry lol. Uncage the Menagerie looks good too especially when we have quite a number of creatures with similar casting costs, although I find that the dinosaurs will be much better when they are in the library (but I want my reckoner, mana dorks to be in my hand too hmm).
--------------------------------------------------------------
Was searching through my cards and found Fiery Confluence, seems like a really good card to put in the deck. Any thoughts on it?
WUBRG Reaper King - Elf Tribal WUBRG | Tribal Fun
WRG Gishath, Sun's Avatar - Dinosaur Tribal WRG | Rawr!!!
WUG Derevi, Empyrial Tactician - Enchantress Tactics WUG | Enchantments Focused
GBG The Gitrog Monster - Land Shenanigans GBG | Lands/Mill Focused
WBW Kambal, Consul of Life Allocation Matters WBW | Life Gain/Loss focused
UBR Kess, Dissident Mage of the Lotus UBR | Spellslinger
BGB Hapatra, Vizier of Poisons - Counters & Tokens BGB | -1/-1 counters focused
Yep, Akoum Hellkite works inline with Ranging Raptors. In the same vein having Lotus Cobra + Pyrohemia + the raptor can also snowball the enrage triggers on multiple dinosaurs including raptor too.
Emeria Shepherd + the 2 available enchantments Warstorm Surge/Gratuitous Violence also forms a loop with the Raptors too, provided every basic land that comes in is a Plains.
Maybe can try a landfall package in the deck too hmm, but it might take up a lot of slots. If so what landfall permanents can we run?
WUBRG Reaper King - Elf Tribal WUBRG | Tribal Fun
WRG Gishath, Sun's Avatar - Dinosaur Tribal WRG | Rawr!!!
WUG Derevi, Empyrial Tactician - Enchantress Tactics WUG | Enchantments Focused
GBG The Gitrog Monster - Land Shenanigans GBG | Lands/Mill Focused
WBW Kambal, Consul of Life Allocation Matters WBW | Life Gain/Loss focused
UBR Kess, Dissident Mage of the Lotus UBR | Spellslinger
BGB Hapatra, Vizier of Poisons - Counters & Tokens BGB | -1/-1 counters focused
Ravenous daggertooth shouldn't be considered as a land ramp until we have a reliable source to enrage it when it. Drover is great in the deck as most of the time it will be a 3/3 when a dinosaur is around. In this deck as much as we can, try to get mana dorks that has a base toughness of 2 and above, so that we wouldn't neuter ourselves when we want to cast cards that mass trigger enrage.
In Gishath's case, Collective Blessing is much better than Obelisk of Urd, since most of the time we will be swinging our creatures into the red zone, will be hard to spare some creatures to tap for convoke.
Traverse the outlands does work a lot better, we get more as dinos are generally fatties. Hitting 5+ lands on casting traverse will be the norm in this deck. Do watch out for removal spells and mass bounce such as cyclonic rift though. It will be good if you can cast this when the board has at least 2 creatures with 3 power or greater to minimise the chance of the spell fizzling when an opponent remove your creature in response to casting Traverse the outlands.
I've been wanting to try this out, but given the small number of dinosaurs I run, it will most likely brick 80% of the time T_T, How has this been working out for you? What is a good number of dinosaurs to run so that this combo will be viable and not brick? If add in Cream of the Crop will it work out better?
WUBRG Reaper King - Elf Tribal WUBRG | Tribal Fun
WRG Gishath, Sun's Avatar - Dinosaur Tribal WRG | Rawr!!!
WUG Derevi, Empyrial Tactician - Enchantress Tactics WUG | Enchantments Focused
GBG The Gitrog Monster - Land Shenanigans GBG | Lands/Mill Focused
WBW Kambal, Consul of Life Allocation Matters WBW | Life Gain/Loss focused
UBR Kess, Dissident Mage of the Lotus UBR | Spellslinger
BGB Hapatra, Vizier of Poisons - Counters & Tokens BGB | -1/-1 counters focused
i run a bit more of the crapier dinos to get the engine going. i think ~20. Its supported by deck manipulation to help land them.I just wanted to at least mention the card since it seems like a big flavor win for the Dinosaur type and a fun build around me
Icic, I should go try it once though. It looks like a really fun interaction to play. However I need to increase my dinosaur count... the current iteration of the Gishath deck I ran today only has 19 dinosaurs, and there are a number of instances that I get 0 dinosaurs on Gishath's trigger.
14 damage dealt but 0 dinosaurs on reveal T__________T.
In my opinion Homura will be a "win more" card. It is quite hard to block Gishath already especially when Bow of Nylea is in play. It will just trample all the remaining damage (Gishath damage - 1) over even when the blocking creature has protection or is indestructible. More so when some doublers are in play, such as Gratuitous Violence.
These are mainstays for Gishath, especially the bow. This bow won me so many skirmishes until it made the Gishath deck really scary (according to my friends).
Love Domri Rade, I would test him when I can get a copy. Steely Resolve is a hard sell for Gishath imo, it makes it really hard to use pinger abilities to trigger the enrage mechanic. A number of lands like Slayer's Stronghold and Sunhome can't work when Steely Resolve is in play too.
After today's game session, I find that cards like Asceticism and Heroic Intervention do deserve a slot in the deck. It might be a meta call, but lands such as Maze of Ith. Kor Haven are really irritating to play against. It neuters almost the entire gameplan for Gishath with it out. Acid-Moss and other land destruction just doesn't cut it since most players that play it can recur it back somehow.
Asceticism will be a better card to run to replace Steely Resolve.
Hmm Odric is a good card to try too, but if the commander is neutered, most of the other dinosaurs don't really provide good abilities to spread to others. Will have to run other keyword soups such as Samut, Voice of Dissent together with Odric.
----------------------------------
Just finished today's EDH session. Will update the decklist once I've finish the AAR (after action report) for Gishath. The deck is becoming a force to be reckoned with, even with only 19 dinosaurs. :3
WUBRG Reaper King - Elf Tribal WUBRG | Tribal Fun
WRG Gishath, Sun's Avatar - Dinosaur Tribal WRG | Rawr!!!
WUG Derevi, Empyrial Tactician - Enchantress Tactics WUG | Enchantments Focused
GBG The Gitrog Monster - Land Shenanigans GBG | Lands/Mill Focused
WBW Kambal, Consul of Life Allocation Matters WBW | Life Gain/Loss focused
UBR Kess, Dissident Mage of the Lotus UBR | Spellslinger
BGB Hapatra, Vizier of Poisons - Counters & Tokens BGB | -1/-1 counters focused
This Gishath deck is really shaping up to be quite fun to play. Although the deck runs a really low number of dinosaurs (19), it is still a dangerous deck for opponents to face down. It is doing relatively well with other 75% typed decks. I think is due them underestimating what this tribe can do.
Commanders which Gishath faced off (3 to 4 player FFA games):
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Teferi's Protection is a top tier, 100% must include card to for Gishath. As our dinosaurs are very expensive to cast, protecting them becomes really important. This card so far has protected me from various wraths from Cyclonic Rifts to Living Lands + Wrath of God. Yes land destruction is norm in my meta.
Shaman en-Kor has also proved itself again and again in this deck, too bad there is only 1 creature that has his ability, can't really get additional cards for redundency.
Pyrohemia + Ranging Raptors + Shaman = 2 land ramps every turn with just R
Even without any damage dealers like Pyrohemia around, the shaman can still "steal" damage when creatures attack each other. Like in the example above, the Shaman "steals" 4 damage from a blocker dealing 4 damage Gishath, and spreads it to Snapping Sailback. Since the 4 damage is transferred 1 damage at a time, the dinosaur's enrage trigger will trigger 4 times total, allowing it to survive the 4 damage with the +1/+1 counters added. This makes the card Rite of Passage extremely valuable for the deck.
Insult // Injury is really scary. The Kynaios and Tiro player got a shock when I swing in with a Insulted, Gratuitous Violent Gishath when he happily thought that his Maze of Ith can stop the Dino alpha from attacking in. Do take note on the rulings for damage doublers and tramplers though. We still have to assign lethal damage to the blocking creature first before it doubles.
With the current ramp package, this deck actually ramps pretty fast and is quite ok with mana so far.
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Gishath deck building thoughts
Some other thoughts on Gishath. With last week's changes, the deck becomes more dangerous as it gives more focus on Gishath being a Voltron commander. This is one the direction which Gishath players can consider when they build the deck. If we look at Gishath's power, it already puts an opponent on a 3 turn clock, with ample combat based evasion keywords which support it. Next is the ability Gishath has, it is linked totally to the amount of damage dealt to an opponent. So the taller (more damage) Gishath deals, the more cards we can dig into our library for dinosaurs.
With this in mind, the number of dinosaurs can be lower the more we build Gishath into a voltron styled commander. A double-strike (via Boros Charm/Sunhome) with a Stonewood Invocation will close the game fast. Gishath deals 24 commander damage via 1 attack and can reveal top 24 cards for dinosaurs, really dangerous bite.
WUBRG Reaper King - Elf Tribal WUBRG | Tribal Fun
WRG Gishath, Sun's Avatar - Dinosaur Tribal WRG | Rawr!!!
WUG Derevi, Empyrial Tactician - Enchantress Tactics WUG | Enchantments Focused
GBG The Gitrog Monster - Land Shenanigans GBG | Lands/Mill Focused
WBW Kambal, Consul of Life Allocation Matters WBW | Life Gain/Loss focused
UBR Kess, Dissident Mage of the Lotus UBR | Spellslinger
BGB Hapatra, Vizier of Poisons - Counters & Tokens BGB | -1/-1 counters focused
1 Ulvenwald Tracker
1 Priest of the Wakening Sun
1 Otepec Huntmaster
1 Raptor Hatchling
1 Drover of the Mighty
1 Shaman of the Forgotten Ways
1 Ranging Raptors
1 Deathgorge Scavenger
1 Territorial Hammerskull
1 Ravenous Daggertooth
1 Khenra Charioteer
1 Ripjaw Raptor
1 Odric, Lunarch Marshall
1 Fungusaur
1 Changeling Titan
1 Snapping Sailback
1 Harbinger of the Hunt
1 Sun-Blessed Mount
1 Charging Monstrosaur
1 Raging Swordtooth
1 Regisaur Alpha
1 Samut, Voice of Dissent
1 Bellowing Aegisaur
1 Burning Sun's Avatar
1 Gisela. Blade of Goldnight
1 Verdant Sun's Avatar
1 Thundering Spineback
PlanesWalkers:
1 Domri Rade
1 Arlinn Kord
1 Samut, the Tested
1 Garruk Wildspeaker
1 Huatli, Dinosaur Knight
1 Sol Ring
1 Elemental Bond
1 Always Watching
1 Bow of Nylea
1 Herald's Horn
1 Song of the Dryads
1 Door of Destinies
1 Mirari's Wake
1 Berserker's Onslaught
1 Vanquisher's Banner
1 Collective Blessing
1 Lurking Predators
1 Dual Nature
Instant/Sorcery:
1 Enlightened Tutor
1 swords to plowshares
1 Prepare // Fight
1 Uncage the Menagerie
1 Eerie Interlude
1 Cultivate
1 Beast Within
1 Congregation at Dawn
1 Explosive Vegetation
1 Harmonize
1 Hunter's Prowess
1 Hour of Devastation
1 Traverse the Outlands
1 Selvala's Stampede
1 Kindred Summons
Land:
1 Canopy Vista
1 Scattered Groves
1 Cinder Glade
1 Sheltered Thicket
1 Vivid Grove
1 Vivid Meadow
1 Vivid Crag
1 Command Tower
1 Rupture Spire
1 Jungle Shrine
1 Exotic Orchard
1 Transguild Promenade
1 Path of Ancestry
1 Forbidden Orchard
1 Unclaimed Territory
1 Stone Quarry
1 Gruul Guildgate
1 Selesnya Guildgate
1 Gruul Turf
1 Selesnya Sanctuary
1 Temple of the False God
1 Grasslands
1 Myriad Landscape
1 Blighted Woodland
1 Krosan Verge
1 Evolving Wilds
1 Terramorphic Expanse
5 Mountain
5 Forest
4 Plains
So this deck is smashing surprisingly well...almost too well its starting to take some of the fun out of the game (stupid commander damage killing my opponents too quickly) the main decks i'm losing too are things like Edric because the combo out too quickly. i added lightmine field and Ghostly prison to the board as ways of combating those decks beyond the board wipes already in the deck.but beyond that this deck repopulates the board quickly i love playing it and i don't see an end to it anytime soon
I love it, especially Domri Rade and Arlinn Kord planeswalkers. How are they performing for the deck?
Vs combo and prison decks I'm having some problems too. Especially when multiple locks (Winter Orb + Frozen Aether/Kismet) with the commander Derevi is in Gishath totally can't operate. Need to rethink some strategies and card choices.
Ahh, got alerted on the ruling on enrage. This makes Shaman en-Kor not as effective in triggering multiple enrages on a single target creature on a single damage instance. It is still a keeper in any Dino deck imo though, to effectively trigger off multiple dinosaurs' enrage with just 1 source of damage. Another card is needed to close this loop especially when we want to use the rite of passage combo, Arcbond.
Hence, am currently testing on a slightly tweaked build to see if there are some ways still gain multiple enrage triggers besides on wiping with pyrohemia. Will update the main post with the rulings and changes after my tests today :3
Shaman en-Kor + Arcbond + Rite of Passage + some enrage dino is a good start.
WUBRG Reaper King - Elf Tribal WUBRG | Tribal Fun
WRG Gishath, Sun's Avatar - Dinosaur Tribal WRG | Rawr!!!
WUG Derevi, Empyrial Tactician - Enchantress Tactics WUG | Enchantments Focused
GBG The Gitrog Monster - Land Shenanigans GBG | Lands/Mill Focused
WBW Kambal, Consul of Life Allocation Matters WBW | Life Gain/Loss focused
UBR Kess, Dissident Mage of the Lotus UBR | Spellslinger
BGB Hapatra, Vizier of Poisons - Counters & Tokens BGB | -1/-1 counters focused
Due to damage happens all at once, even if it is redirected in a split manner of 1 damage each, it is still treated as 1 instance of damage (at the same time). Which in this case the enrage triggers only 1 time due to the enrage rulings.
However, this isn't the case for all kinds of spells and effects. Unlike cards like pyrohemia/Starstorm which it is 1 instance of damage even if redirect via en-Kor abilities, cards like Fiery Confluence is treated as 3 separate instances of damage. So for fiery confluence enrage will trigger 3 times (if use the 3 deal 1 damage to each creature mode).
Hope in future we have more cards which can deal damage as separate events per spell. We need cards like Pyromatics or Savage Alliance that can target our own creatures.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Edit:
Played a few games with Gishath yesterday with a different playgroup, so different meta. The added Starstorm and Arcbond makes the deck feel more robust and am able to handle players that are going for wide strategies while giving our dinosaurs enrage triggers. BUT...
The deck is severely lacking in dinosaurs to help keep the pressure before Gishath is out or when Gishath is neutered. In short we do need more good dinosaurs before this deck can be treated as a force to be reckoned with.
1x Sun-Crowned Hunters
1x Ranging Raptors
1x Ripjaw Raptor
1x Bellowing Aegisaur
1x Burning Sun's Avatar
1x Verdant Sun's Avatar
//Dino Lord
1x Thundering Spineback
//Dino Hosers
1x Rampaging Ferocidon
1x Kinjalli's Sunwing
1x Changeling Berserker
1x Changeling Hero
1x Changeling Titan
It is kind of sad that the only worthwhile dinos in the entire dinosaur list we have now amount only up to 12, and 3 of them are Changelings. The rest that aren't listed are either 2nd string or downright bad, especially Carnage Tyrant.
Back to the drawing board.
WUBRG Reaper King - Elf Tribal WUBRG | Tribal Fun
WRG Gishath, Sun's Avatar - Dinosaur Tribal WRG | Rawr!!!
WUG Derevi, Empyrial Tactician - Enchantress Tactics WUG | Enchantments Focused
GBG The Gitrog Monster - Land Shenanigans GBG | Lands/Mill Focused
WBW Kambal, Consul of Life Allocation Matters WBW | Life Gain/Loss focused
UBR Kess, Dissident Mage of the Lotus UBR | Spellslinger
BGB Hapatra, Vizier of Poisons - Counters & Tokens BGB | -1/-1 counters focused
Isn't that kindred dominance attached to a dinosaur but it's dinosaur by default.
If I may ask. How do you keep Shaman en-Kor alive
It only has 2 toughness do you have a way to give it indestructible or something?
Most of the time Wakening Sun's Avatar is just a vanilla 7/7 when it is cheated out. It can't be tutored with the traditional green creature tutors besides Eladamri's Call and Worldly Tutor and have to naturally draw into it to make the "kindred dominance" ability work.
In the face of wipes I'll Boros charm/Teferi's Protection if I have or run Winding Canyons + Changeling Berserker to "champion" (save) the key creatures. Against damage most of the time there isn't much of a worry as Shaman will redirect/spread damage out to other dinosaurs/creatures.
WUBRG Reaper King - Elf Tribal WUBRG | Tribal Fun
WRG Gishath, Sun's Avatar - Dinosaur Tribal WRG | Rawr!!!
WUG Derevi, Empyrial Tactician - Enchantress Tactics WUG | Enchantments Focused
GBG The Gitrog Monster - Land Shenanigans GBG | Lands/Mill Focused
WBW Kambal, Consul of Life Allocation Matters WBW | Life Gain/Loss focused
UBR Kess, Dissident Mage of the Lotus UBR | Spellslinger
BGB Hapatra, Vizier of Poisons - Counters & Tokens BGB | -1/-1 counters focused