MTG Salvation

Introduction
Hello and welcome, to this, my first public EDH guide! It's been a very long time since I've delved this deep into magic and it feels good to be back! This guide is not too well geared for competitive spirits, but more for those that want to jump into a fun new tribe that likes to swing wildly at your opponents. Oh and dinosaurs, it’s also about dinosaurs.

For literal decades players have wanted to see the word “dinosaur” on the type line of creatures old and new, and at long last it has arrived! Dinosaurs are one of those animals that have enough grounding in both reality and fantasy that allows them to show in odd places, such as D&D and now Magic: the Gathering, making paleo nerds like myself very happy. Ixalan wastes no time getting us into our new creature type bringing us a legendary dinosaur for Commander/EDH right out the gate. Gishath, Sun’s Avatar is our premiere dinosaur tribal general, and that is exactly how we‘re going to build him!

Play Gishath if you Like:

• Dinosaurs
• Aggro decks
• Tribal decks
• RGW colors

A Quick History of Tribal

The Commander



So this is Gishath, our commander for the dinosaur tribal deck. In order to make a deck around him, we must first understand how he works. So we’ll take some time to analyze the different aspects of his card to better understand how to use him.


To start, he’s got a converted mana cost of eight mana. That’s a steep cost to pay, even in EDH, but he more than makes up for it with his abilities. Thanks to him having green, we have access to the most mana ramp of any color, which will give us a ton of ways to speed him out faster. Cards like Cultivate and Kodama's Reach can assure we get both white and red mana for his eventual casting. And since this is dinosaur tribal, you can get great use out of Urza's Incubator and Herald’s Horn to make him cost even less.


Obviously his creature type has some matter to it, Dinosaur Avatar is a *****in’ typeline, no? And of course he is legendary. All this means is that our tribal theme is on point. Woo.


Now THAT is a nice way to start off a card! Those three abilities in tandem mean we don’t need any cards wasted on getting him there. So auras and equipment aren’t really too big of a deal with him. You may want to make him hexproof or indestructible, so Champion’s Helm, and Darksteel Plate may still be in your deck, but that’s about it.


Here’s where the tribal part comes in. Whenever he hits a player, you get dinosaurs. Now the fact that he has built in trample means you’re likely always going to get something, right? Be advised you reveal equal to the damage dealt, not his power, so you’re not always gonna get the full amount. But you’ll get something, and that is what matters. Any cards that increase the power of Gishath means you’re gonna hit for even more cards, and it just so happens that our three colors are absolutely great at buffing creatures (more on that later). Now when he does grab dinos, they go straight onto the battlefield, meaning any applicable ETB effects will trigger, but since you are not casting the dinosaurs, any tribal ability that states “when you cast a creature of the chosen type” will not be affected. This is important since you want to maximize how your deck runs once Gishath is on the battlefield.


For the cost and the abilities, these are respectable stats. If he connects to an opponent unhindered, that’s seven potential free dinos! And with a power of seven, he can make a fearsome comm-damage general and opens up possible voltron style builds. Six toughness does put him in kill range with a lot of late game creatures though, so we will need to buff and protect him, or make him straight up unblockable. +1/+1 counters are a great way to make him bigger, and the ever popular Rogue’s Passage is our new best friend in the land department.

Basic Strategy
Our strategy for dinosaur tribal is pretty simple at heart, we’re an aggro deck. We need dinosaurs. We need cards that buff those dinosaurs. We need to play Gishath as quickly as possible. Most importantly, we need to hit with Gishath to increase how wide we can swing with our dinosaur army. Now there are so many options for making that work. We’re gonna go over them all, and once the deck is complete I’ll go over why I picked some choices over others.

Card Choices

The Deck


Why I Built This Way
So now that you’ve seen the list I’ve built and noticed what I put in and more importantly, what I didn’t, let me explain why I built the deck this way. There’s a lot of different cards and strategies that make Gishath work well. You can fill it with fight cards for enrage or top deck manipulation to always get a hit, but I went and threw a little bit of everything into the deck and didn’t focus to much on one strategy over another. And that is because I was more concerned with treating the deck as a whole as dinosaur tribal and not “Gishath spits out dinos.” Don’t get me wrong, Gishath swinging into a 5+ dino drop is immensely satisfying, but there are gonna be times where 8 mana might be an issue and people see a big fat target for removal. So that means the deck should be able to run just fine without the big guy himself. To that end I made sure that the choices I made would make the deck run smoothly with or without him on the board. Lots of enchantments means all the creatures have a bigger impact, lots of mana fixing means that with or without Gishath, the large number of high cost creatures can come down at roughly the same speed as Gishath himself.

Plus I like the deck as more of a simple drop and swing style aggro deck with lots of enchantment buffs rather than some weird combo style tempo engine. So far in testing the deck has about a 75% win rate (over the course of tenish games inside a couple days at least) and the big thing has been either mana flood when dinos are needed or building up into running out of gas. Getting Gishath out tends to be pretty easy, but not hitting anything can be a problem. I’ve only had one game where none of my swings landed dinos, and that game sucked. However removal tended to be the biggest issue. Once people see how bad it can get when Gishath connects once, he gets hit repeatedly. I had him costing 16 mana at one point simply because I got all the right mana fixing and my opponents kept getting good removal. So maybe a bit more protection would be a good idea if you have the same trouble.

Putting It All Together
So everything is in place and you now have a rough idea of how to handle the deck. But there are a lot of other decks that other people play, and they don’t want to be devoured by dinosaurs. So what exactly is Gishath good at and bad at? When is a good time to go on the attack or when should you sit tight and play defense?

Opening Hand
A good opening hand has one of a few things. You either want your first three or so turns set up, or you want your turn three to really start pushing you forward. In some cases if you feel like you can make a couple turns work into some decent draws, risk it. A good starting hand for the aggro aspect is anything that will let you hit the ground running. Cost reducer or mana ramp + a dino that will benefit from hitting the board quick. When going for more of a set-up for later hand, try to go for something that really lets loose around turn three and gives you a presence for the turns to come. Such as major cost reduction, tribal synergy, heavy mana ramp, etc.
Mulligans can be risky in some cases, everyone has that one card they always want to play, but never can. It happens. My group does a partial paris for mulligan, so that card you are so desperate for can stay. But not everyone does a partial paris mulligan. Generally if you can’t get one of the two scenarios, or somewhere in between, mulligan.

Early Game
So this very much ties into the opening hand scenario above. Early game you want to drop down your small dinos, your mana fixing, and generally any cheap artifacts and enchantments that will boost your combat prowess in the turns to come.
Kinjalli's Caller or Birds of Paradise are optimal turn 1 plays for instance, especially if you’ve got something like Deathgorge Scavenger to eat their early graveyard, or Rampaging Ferocidon to set a good early game threat down. So then on turn three you can either do some mana fixing or ideally, more dinos.

Things like Urza's Incubator into three or more three (or less) cost dinos is an example of a good “late” start, because with incubator they’ll be a single colored mana each (in most cases anyway). Or perhaps you have the perfect turn four set up, but lack the land. You have a T3 Cultivate though to set up that perfect turn four.

Mid Game
Once you’ve got some gas, start laying on the enchantments and more powerful dinos. You want lots of feathery bodies with lots of feathery buffs. With an all-star opening hand like above, this is when you should start playing any 4-5 cost dinos and enchantments. If you got a really good mana fixing kind of hand, you should be able to drop Gishath now and start swinging away. This is also probably the time where your removal is going to start coming in handy, so always remember that in the face of overwhelming adversity, “tap some mana, blow your ***** up” is always an acceptable answer for what to do with your turn.
Great enchantments for this portion of the game tend to be things like Gruul War-Chant for evasion and buffs, as well as Mirari's Wake for more buffs and more importantly: MANA!

Late Game
By this time, you should have Gishath out, or an army of dinos, preferably both. True Conviction is your all star late game enchantment and when combined with Aggravated Assault, things get dirty. At this point in the game, your worst fear is a board wipe, like Wrath of God. Maybe you’ll get lucky and all your creatures have been protected by Kindred Boon, but it’s not always going to be there. Use your Privileged Position if you’ve got it. In the face of a wipe however, fear not. You can reload your deck with Elixir of Immortality and a little more mana on your next Gishath cast.

Aggro
There are a bunch of different “styles” of aggro. We’ll be talking a little about tokens and tribal, since those are the kinds of aggro I tested this deck against.
Tokens come with one of two strategies. Be faster than their token generation, or annihilate their tokens. The guy with the three 1/1 tokens might look appealing until he throws them all under the bus to only give you a hit of four. However the tapped out player with only a 2/2 blocker gives you a 5 hit, and maybe he’ll let you through anyway for the full seven. But then again the token deck can get out of hand quickly. Tokens by themselves aren’t really a big issue, but good token production can mean six tokens that can kill Gishath when put together. That problem only worsens once you realize that the token deck has many ways to make their entire board bigger. So if you’re running a lot of small mass damage cards like Pyroclasm, the token deck is not gonna have a good time. Then there's the token buff cards. Token decks tend to run a lot of artifacts and enchantments as well, so in a lot of cases you want to definitely save your removal for the big swingy card that they want to drop to buff the token army. If you can manage to swing on tokens often enough to get them in the defensive, you should have no problem. However tokens by nature can be pretty aggressive so hopefully you don't end up backed into a corner by a bunch of guys with swords.

Big creature aggro decks tend to be things like dragons and angels where as massive board presence aggro decks tends to be things like zombies and goblins. These are the cases where your spot removal is gonna come in handy. These types tend to rely on certain “lords” to give the decks more fuel, and those lords are exactly the targets you want. If you can keep the zombie horde from reaching critical mass, you can win. Dragons and Angels on the other hand… well big beefy fliers are a problem and one we can’t solve easily without an atrocious amount of flyer removal. Spidersilk Armor can be a good fallback in these instances if you can draw into it or tutor it up. However sometimes the war cannot be won kids. Dinosaurs went extinct, dragons still burn ***** to the ground. Unless this is Reign of Fire, in which case dragons burned the dinosaurs into extinction. Really as a straight aggro deck we have issues with heavy removal and counter, with problems when the other aggro deck gets steam faster. Same problems aggro decks have always had. However everyone’s meta is different so maybe yours is casual enough that none of this matters.

Combo
Haven’t really played against any combo decks yet. I’d assume the matchup is pretty much “be aggressive, kill combo pieces, survive.”

Control
Counterspells are cheap and Gishath is expensive, end of story. Casting Gishath when the blue mage has open mana is probably not the best idea, but if you have other things to do, see if you can’t fake him into countering something you see as important. Never play into control, play around it. Plus with others in the game, maybe their hand can get worn down into nothing before you get a chance to cast Gishath so he hits the board unaccosted. At that point, spot removal is your big issue. Now there’s no real way around this unless you’re making him indestructible and/or Hexproof. With this deck we have Kindred Boon and Privileged Position, but not much else. So if you’re in a removal heavy meta (I’d say I am, but I’m the removal heavy person with most of my decks) then maybe you should run a little more, Steely Resolve and Darksteel Plate are cheap to cast options for protection.

Things I Neglected and Why
So there are a few seemingly obvious ideas that I didn’t go for. For instance, there are quite a few spells that allow you to grab creatures from the top of your library and put them into your hand or straight onto the battlefield. I dislike those kinds of cards for this deck specifically on the merit that it will take away from Gishath. Now if you’re going for more of a speed aggro dino deck, go for it, grab all the dinos and just blitz it. Lurking Predators, Kindred Summons and the like are great for this. Something else I neglected was “when you cast” triggers for creatures. A lot of good support cards like Vanquisher's Banner require the dinos to be hard cast. Now no that doesn’t utterly ruin the deck since we will be casting dinos just as much as getting them for free, I’d just rather make sure that the bonuses I get are geared more towards them being on the field rather than how they get there. Why didn't I use changelings? Yes changelings are powerful, however I've always seen them as kind of a cop-out to fill out tribal space with creatures that don't get a lot of support. Yes we're a new tribe and we don't have decades worth of support, but it's just personal choice that I don't use changelings. You however can use them to your heart's content.

About the Author & Special Thanks

Deck Revision

It's because Ripjaw draws cards on a good body and Tyrant is nigh unstoppable. Those kinds of creatures always have a high price tag.

Deck Updates

09/26/2017
Added in my reasons for not using changelings to "Things I Neglected and Why."
Removed Kindred Charge
Removed Command Beacon
Added Scavenger Grounds
Added Akromna's Memorial

Never really liked changelings, so I gave some details in the main post. Kindred charge has yet to make a difference, however given how quickly the deck ramps up, Akroma's Memorial makes an excellent damage booster with tons of utility. I also wanted to give Scavenger Grounds a shot with its easy mass graveyard removal, so it gets some time to shine.

Quote from TetzaHexloq »

Very dissapointed this wasnt a deck for Commander 2017. We may never see tribal commander decks again and this would have been a solid spot for some commander focused dinosaurs and pirates.

I kinda figured we weren't getting dinos before their debut, but I wouldn't put it past wizards to give dinos some real future support with how popular the tribe has been right out of the gate. Plus we have an entire second set to get more goodies out of, which is exciting considering just how much we got out of this set alone.

Quote from purklefluff »

This deck needs akroma's memorial really bad.

Also all the effects that grant extra combat steps. There's that spell with flashback (forget the name) but also Godo, bandit warlord which fetches you some critical equipment (such as lightning greaves or Darksteel plate) and lets you crack in twice with your vigilant dinos

Yes, godo isn't a dinosaur, but fitting in with the theme doesn't have to mean literally being a dinosaur. There are other ways to build a theme.

It seems like we had the same idea with Memorial! AS for extra combat stages, yes we have Aggravated Assault, but I'm thinking I want to find a spot for World At War. Godo wouldn't be bad if I was using my usual suite of equipment, but I neglected it this time around in favor of more all inclusive buffs.

Quote from illakunsaa »

I don't want to sound like a dick but I think this deck is really bad. Even if you get the nuts with Gishath and hit 7 dinos off the top the dinos themselves are just bad. None of them (apart from from one) have any etb effects so opponents can just go untap into wrath or play fog. Cards like moment's peace represent crippling tempo loss for you.

Well dinosaurs are a new tribe, not something like zombies or dragons that have decades of support. You can't expect a brand new tribe to suddenly fill out every little possibility, especially with this being the first set. I'm sure we'll get good stuff in the next set and in the future, but for now we work with what we've got instead of writing it all off because there's not enough support in the tribe. Besides, every creature deck gets shot out by wraths and repeated fogs, that doesn't mean the strategy is moot.

Quote from JDviant »

I'd run Leyline of Punishment over Gruul War Chant. Menace can be good, but Leyline shuts down quite a bit.

Scavenger Grounds is playable graveyard hate that doesn't take up a spell slot. I also think the flexibility of Chaos Warp/Beast Within would be very welcome.

Punishment wouldn't be a bad thing to test, that's for sure. I don't think it would be a big issue with what life gain we do have most of the time anyway. I totally forgot scavenging grounds was a thing, def wanna see about trying to find a nice spot for it.

Blessing is definitively a good idea if you've got mill or titans in your meta. I like command, I just don't think I'd use half of it often enough to justify all four modes.

Yes, we really haven't been active on this site very much. I'm convening outside MTGS currently with the rest of the clan to decide whether or not we want to retire here or try and keep it active.

Speaking of you all, you can post your vote here if you'd like.

I will get back to KoolKoal before the deadline on this issue. Though I do thank you for the heads-up rather than just killing it off.

Comment Hidden

Gilded Lotus, Battle of Wits, Akroma's Memorial, Door to Nothingness...

This is possibly the best core set ever.

Not going to jump right into the various mini convos going on, just going to give a little insight to OP about why I wear jewelry.

Let's get that out of the way first: I'm a guy, and I wear jewelry. Two rings (one on each hand), a necklace (with pendant), a chain bracelet (more like a chain I have wrapped around my arm, and a watch (some people consider it jewelry).

I wear jewelry for the personal value of sentiment. Every other of jewelry I wear has symbolized something in my life that has meaning to me. Something I like to be reminded of without looking at a photo or dredging up a story from the past. Just something that is on my person that I can look at and think about.

For instance the ring on my left hand is shaped like a feather, it reminds me of my deceased daughter and how she will always be with me (hint: I called her my angel). The other ring was a gift from my fiancee when we got together. The pendant on my necklace is half black half white. It symbolizes the various struggles of good and evil that have gone on with my life and the very thin line I walk between them. The chain I use as a bracelet was a gift from a very dear friend who is no longer with us.


Jewelry isn't always about "ooh shiny" or "this symbolizes my love for you" or anything like that. It can very simply be a reminder of what makes you who you are.

Because you can't thank your own posts. This is a common trait with these things

I'm also a huge fan of flickering our ETB dinos. Conjurer's Closetseems like a worthy addition if you want to flicker things, as well as Ghostway

I also think Pariah's Shield could make a good pairing with Kindred Boon as a way to get extra enrage.

It's about time! My feathery dino body is ready!!!

Two tech cards that I dig in here are Gaea's Blessing and Primal Command. These two cards can do what Elixir can, but Gaea's Blessing can also protect us against mill strats due to it's "From the library to the graveyard" effect. Command gives us a litany of effects, and it can get us gas back for the Dino King's hits.

Quote from ilovesaprolings

you are agreeing with me without even understanding it.
vedalken HAVE A VERY SPECIFIC LOOK: "blunt-nosed, blue-skinned intellectuals". this NEVER CHANGED.
then MINOR THINGS CHANGE through the blocks, like number of arm.

now look at sliver
THEY HAVE A SPECIFIC AND SPECIAL LOOK: "Slivers have that eyeless, sharp head shape, that single claw, and that snaking body"
and while a LOT OF MINOR THINGS CHANGED, like number of tails, different shaped talons, wings and so on THE SPECIFIC LOOK REMAINED THE SAME.

now, they screwed everything. the specific look is dead. the new slivers doesn't even have a new specific look: while battle sliver and steelform sliver looks similar, blur sliver and sentinel sliver have NO ELEMENTS IN COMMON.

You're a hard man to love, you know that?

I'll try one last time to explain my position, because at this point I'm belaboring it and truth be told I'm sure no one really, truly cares about what I think about Slivers. My wife just shakes her head and smiles at me.

Your argument is that Slivers used to have a classic look that, while not always present (like on the cards I've discussed), existed on many of the cards that represented Slivers - that look being the three characteristics you keep mentioning. With the new art direction that look has been removed, and not only that, the new look itself doesn't show any defining characteristics because the new slivers don't have any bodily structures in common.

Please brother, believe me when I say I understand this argument. I know it inside and out. It's not a difficult concept to understand.

What you're not understanding is my point, and it requires a paradigm shift in order to fully appreciate it. Every other race in Magic, save two, has a defined form. An Elf looks like an Elf, a Goblin looks like a Goblin, a Rhox looks like a Rhox. They follow a certain set of guidelines when it comes to art direction, although the plane that they inhabit can certainly amend these rules to some degree - Mirrodin being the obvious one that comes to mind. The reason their form is locked is because, as far as we know, they operate under the same guidelines as real world Humans when it comes to evolution. That being: It will take a significant amount of time for new structures to become a part of that organism. If the Elvish species wants to naturally grow a third arm in the middle of it's forehead that property has to be selected for in it's population. This is a long, long process if done naturally, and we'd expect to see it develop in card art along the way. If M14 packs are cracked and we saw Elves with arms on their foreheads we would be a little miffed, and justifiably so.

Here's my point, bolded only to make it stand out: Slivers do not follow these rules.

For Slivers, evolution is instant. If they need wings, they grow them at the exact moment they need them. We've seen consistent characteristics on Sliver cards for the past ten years, the three you mention, but there is absolutely no reason in the lore why they have to be present. None.

If that eyeless, sharp head shape became a detriment to the Hive, it would change. If that single claw stopped being sufficient, it would change. If that snaking body was the thing keeping the Hive from achieving victory, it. would. change.

This is my point. This is why the six new Slivers not having a consistent feature doesn't bother me: consistency is not a trait the Hive has in spades. Slivers are constantly evolving new and different mechanisms to advance the Hive. That constant evolving nature is the exact opposite of consistency. Until M14, we hadn't seen art that changed any of the Big Three characteristics. That's fine! I know why they did that - because to a degree consistency is a good thing when it comes to art. Being able to instantly identify a Sliver based solely on the art isn't a bad thing.

Wait, stop. I know what you're doing. You think I just negated my whole argument with that statement, and you're beginning to write a quick response right now mocking me for it. Come back to me, friend. Please, let me finish.

The problem with the classic Sliver look is that it is extremely limiting. We have seventy-six Slivers, and many of them look very, very similar. The comparison I've been using is Quick Sliver and Fury Sliver. Two cards with completely different abilities that have art that is utterly interchangeable. Doug himself mentions in the article you referenced that the look is so consistent it's difficult to find new directions for how they could look. When the consistency hampers the art to that degree, it stops being a good thing. If the art of every human card was simply a bust of Random Guy A or Random Gal B standing straight, that would get old very quickly. It's boring to look at, even if the card text is different. What's the point of art if everything looks the same? And sure, you can rotate the field of view to show different aspects, but what's really the difference between a left-facing Sliver and a right-facing Sliver?

Fortunately for artists, Slivers are not confined to any one form. They can literally evolve any characteristic they need. Humanoid, avian, flying spaghetti monster. This is extremely freeing from an artistic point of view, because you can literally draw a Sliver any way you like. You hate that about them, I know you do, but unfortunately for you it's true. It hasn't been done before, so when the new art came out it was jarring because they changed that which was previously consistent. And this is the problem most people who don't like the new direction have - they want some visual characteristic to unify the species.

I get that. I really do. I'm not saying that's a dumb thing to think, or calling anyone stupid for thinking it. What I am saying is that it is allowable in the lore to depict slivers without the characteristics that had previously been present in most Sliver art. And anyone who says it simply can't be done doesn't really understand slivers. It'd be like saying you can't draw two humans wearing different shirts because every human up to that point was drawn wearing the same shirt. They may not like it - that's fine. They may wish it hadn't been done - that's fine too. I'm not judging anyone for how they feel about this change. I'm simply defending the choice to show them in different forms by attempting to point out that the lore allows them to do it.

There's also a practical aspect to this to change in art direction that was caused by NWO - it's now easy to tell the old Slivers that affect all cards apart from the new ones that only affect your cards. That's another point of contention, one that I won't go into because this post is too long as is.

Those are my thoughts on the topic. If you think I'm right, great. If you think I'm wrong, great. Thank you for reading if you read it, and if you ignored it then no harm, no foul.

It turns out that the melting ice caps aren't the cause of the rising ocean levels, it's OP's river of tears.

Hai!

After many months of random rumors, negotiation, corgis, and everything, I can somehow announce that MTGSalvation is being acquired by Curse Gaming.

It's been a pretty slow acquisition and I'm sure you guys heard about it back and forth on the forums, and making it official will hopefully let me clear up the situation for everyone.

1. I'll be the new guy to blame whenever something goes wrong on the site. I will try to jump in on the community progressively but everything remains in the hands of the existing team. You might have seen my name on a couple of other websites I created/ran in the past like MMO-Champion, Diablofans, Reign of Gaming, and a bunch of other stuff.

2. The main goal today is to stabilize the site, get used to everything here, and decide on what we can do in the future. You should see improvements but they will take a few weeks, the sale is very recent and we're not going to rush anything, especially before we get any kind of community feedback.

This is a half-official announcement, I'm mostly using it as an opportunity to say hi to the community now that the site has been moved to our servers and that we can actually fix things if problems come up.

I'll probably have more for you guys in the future but for now I just want to open a line of communication and address any questions you might have.

Hope we'll get along and stuff. Please ask absolutely any question you might have about the whole thing in this thread, I'll try to reply to them as best as I can.