Budget Dinosaur Deck Gishath Commander: Magic the Gathering

Going over my cheap budget dinosaur MTG commander deck that uses Gishath. The most expensive part of this deck is Gishath sitting at around $16 right now. This deck is also easily upgradeable by buying other big dinosaur cards or better removal or even land ramping cards. Really fun deck that allows for the creation of a huge board of dinosaurs.

⌚Time Stamps:
00:00 Intro to Deck
00:42 Commander
01:24 Big Dinos
03:28 Mana Ramp
06:11 Draw Cards
08:05 Enrage Cards
12:10 Support Creatures
18:24 Removal/Destruction
21:15 Lands
23:17 Upgrades

🎶Music by Ottom

[bobwilson]

As someone who has played a Gishath deck for over a year and continually upgraded it, I have many notes:

1. Thrasta absolutely sucks in this deck, because it's a dead card if you draw it. You will likely never be able to cast it with this deck, at 12 mana, and the cost reduction only really works well in a storm spell-slinging deck. Even if you did cast it, 12 mana for a 7/7 with trample and haste is really bad value. You can only ever afford to get it out with Gishath, and even then there are better big beaters to put there.
2. Burning Sun's Avatar has way too much red mana requirement than I would prefer to reliably cast it when you have 6 lands on the field, and I'd personally prefer ripscale predator, but that's more of a personal preference. It's ETB ability is also lackluster for a 6-drop creature.
3. Commune with Dinosaurs is a TERRIBLE card with this deck. Why? Because you *don't want to put dinosaurs into your hand*. You want to leave them in the deck so they can be brought out for free with Gishath. Every dino you draw is one less that can be cheated out.
4. For ramp, rather than adding cost reducers and mana dorks, it generally just works better to add even more land ramp, as removal/direct damage spells/goading/board wipes will clear your squishy mana dork/cost reducers. Other cheap ramp cards like migration path (2 lands tapped), explosive vegetation (2 lands tapped), grow from the ashes (2 lands untapped), and explore the underdark (2 lands tapped and 1 to hand), which all put two or more lands onto the battlefield, are more useful in ramping up to Gishath's 8 mana cost than those creatures. If we're not working on a budget, mirari's wake or regal behemoth(erratta'd to be a dinosaur) both double your mana and can be super useful.
5. Shaper's sanctuary actually works really well, I hadn't thought of that, thank you
6. Samut is a much better planeswalker than you realize for this deck, her +1 ability is actually better than her -2, because she can give gishath double strike as soon as he comes onto the field, meaning that you can look at upwards of the top of 14 cards of your library rather than 7, per turn. On that note, a way to easily and vastly improve the power of this deck is to use more cards that give gishath double strike or unblockable. Cards like duelist's heritage, berserker's onslaught, sunhome, fortress of the legion, rogue's passage, and key to the city are all super useful in maximizing how many dinos you put on the field per swing.
7. Several of the supporting creatures *could* be cut, but I agree that if you are on a budget, you work with what you can get
8. 33 lands is way too low for this deck, that is indeed a mistake. Just cut all of those lackluster supporting dinos, like relentless raptor, sky terror, etc. and replace them to get up to 38 lands. It will be very hard to get up to 8 mana for gishath quickly with only 33 lands.
9. Boros (red/white) lands like temple of triumph are a bad idea in this deck, since green is by far the most common color in this deck, especially considering you need it for most of your best creatures and for almost every ramp spell. Stick to selesnya (green/white) and gruul (green/red) lands instead
11. Because this is a creature-heavy deck that cheats out a lot of creatures, rampaging ferocidons is actually anti-synergistic with our deck. It will especially harm us if we get a bunch of dinos off of Gishath's trigger, much more so than our opponents
12. If we're operating on a budget, there a lot cheaper cards than heroic intervention that protect against boardwipes in white. Cards like eerie interlude, unbreakable formation, rootborn defenses, and make a stand are all better picks if you are operating on a budget. And if you're not operating on a budget, teferi's protection is objectively better than heroic intervention.

Anyways, thank you for listening to my rant, and have a great day

[clearcannon]

I like this deck idea, I bought cards based on a few vids and am waiting for them in the mail. I hope that he is as fun as he sounds. I just wish we could ramp ridiculously faster. It would be funny to have him out like turn 3 or 4 and make him unblockable

[joshuarael]

Just started playing mtg and starting a dino deck, what's your opinion on zacama?

[zmaagiic]

You Need to have the Forerunner of the empire to use the polyraptor with the marauding, without something that could stop the combo Is useless

[grojik]

i hope this deck goes down in price at least a little bit

[chrisroach]

Best deck I built was gishash love it favorite commander and card live dinosaurs since I was a kid worth the money recommend

[akrona]

Oof, right when i find a nice entry point with friends this deck has gone up quite a bit, cant get it for much less than 100$ now.

[nathanaelmcmahan]

I have a similar budget deck for modern that runs the Neobrand engine.

1. Ditch 2 cards for Allosaurus Rider.
2. Use Chancellor mana to cast Neoform.
3. Play Gishath
4. Attack
5. Draw cards from dinos
6. Ditch 2 cards for Fury of the Hoard
7. Attack with Gishath and haste dinos
8. Profit.

Rarely a 1 turn kill, but possible. Usually 3-4.

[Westblader]

Loved the video, thank you so much! Just wondering, since you play Yu-Gi-Oh, do you play dinos there too? I see that Cydra mat, both favorite decks of mine, keep it up my guy!