Dinosaurs After Ixalan! Gishath's Road to Becoming Relevant!

Gishath Roar

Gishath, Sun's Avatar debuted in Ixalan, a main-line set introduced to MtG in 2017 that pitted armies of merfolk zealots, conquistador vampires and an empire of native humans (oh, and pirates, I guess?) against each other in a struggle for power over a secret treasure hidden deep within the weaving islands of (you guessed it) Ixalan.

Ixalan is already interesting enough with the 4-way power battle going on, but what if I told you that the Empire of the Sun, i.e. the humans of Ixalan, worship and live in an almost Dinotopia-esque relationship with titanic dinosaurs? Yeh, that's the stuff. The Dinosaurs are worshipped in 3 forms, all representing the day cycle of the sun. The Wakening Sun (Morning), The Burning Sun (Midday), and The Verdant Sun (Evening). Cards were created for the Avatars, dinosaurs that represented them in physical form. Wakening Sun's Avatar is a rampaging Styracosaurus, the Burning Sun's Avatar picturing an Allosaurus blasting full-pace at someone unfortunate, and Verdant Sun's Avatar is a Diplodocus (or maybe a Brontosaurus? I just love dinosaurs). 

Unfortunately, these awesomely destructive beasts weren't printed as legendary creatures, which wasn't a huge problem, as their effects weren't exactly "legendary status" in themselves. A board wipe, life gain and spot removal don't all exactly scream "let's put 99 cards with this!", unless you're that sort of player. Thankfully, Dinosaurs as a creature type debuted in Ixalan also, so WotC gave us an entirely unique commander to go with them. And thus, Gishath, Sun's Avatar, a feathered Giganotosaurus, was born.

At a whopping 8 converted mana cost, Gishath is a 7/6 Vigilance, Trampling and Stomping monster! He (or she, who knows) slams into your opponent's face the moment they enter the battlefield, flipping cards off the top of the deck and cheating out EVERY SINGLE DINOSAUR they see! The possibilities are seemingly endless, but are they actually?

So, as was mentioned earlier, Ixalan didn't just debut Gishath, but it debuted and defined Dinosaur as an official creature typing in magic. This came with an exclusive mechanic, Enrage. Requiring to take damage is a fairly easy to force mechanic, with plenty of cards in the game having the ability to swipe the board for small amounts of damage. Lots of dinosaurs came with Enrage (but not all of them, especially the most playable ones), and a tiny few even came with an ability to slap damage on their own brethren, rampaging first and asking questions later. The Empire gave Dinosaurs some Human-typed creatures that support them much better than most dinosaurs did. Otepec Huntmaster gives haste AND a -1 casting cost. Kinjalli's Caller, another cheap -1 casting cost enabler(low to the ground redundancy is always good) and Priest of the Wakening Sun, while slow, offers a neat way to stay afloat on life in the early game, and follow up with the key dinosaur you need later on. Huatli was introduced, a new planeswalker trapped on Ixalan who is basically Dinosaur mommy, but both her set version and structure deck versions are then and now both fairly unplayable.

Problematically, even though there were 36 dinosaurs printed in Ixalan, there was a narrow amount of playable dinosaurs, enrage or not, in Ixalan. The list of really playable examples on its release only ended up being around 8-10 cards or so. Raging Swordtooth, Ranging Raptors and Regisaur Alpha were all GOAT cards in the deck, but singularly being rather lackluster and even their synergies weren't very strong. It was very quickly dismissed by most players as another casual, stompy tribal deck. Kinjalli's Sunwing and Rampaging Ferocidon earn themselves honourary mentions, but technically don't synergise at all. Wakening Sun's Avatar is on cast from hand, costs eight mana and three of it is white so it's not going to interact with Gishath or the deck very well. Burning Sun's Avatar is literally just 6 mana for 2 Lightning Bolts, which is strong enough as a dinosaur to justify a slot. Verdant Sun's Avatar only really acts as a Trostani, Selesnya's Voice in the 99, but seeing as Trostani is technically in Gishath's colour identity anyway, just proves to be an overcosted form of redundancy so you can float life in the hundreds, which is nice but unnecessary. The avatars were all must-includes in most Gishath lists on release but that easily could have been due to the small sample size of dinosaurs available. 

Carnage Tyrant is a great example of a powerful dinosaur printed in Ixalan, but to the deck's instant casual playerbase, forking out upwards of thirty bucks for a solid but non-synergy reliant dinosaur that only held value because it was a bomb in standard at the time didn't have a lot of appeal. Basically every dinosaur released in Ixalan was simply a large body, usually with some text that made it hard to interact with. Rivals of Ixalan dropped next, and OH MY GOODNESS they upped their game. 

Polyraptor! Making an army of 5/5 tokens that keep duplicating themselves (exponentially) really gave the deck the boost it needed. Elder Dinosaurs! Etali, Primal Storm (a Spinosaurus; tall as a mountain) makes the deck even more interesting, casting dinos off the top and huge pieces off of other players' decks, too. Zetalpa, Primal Dawn (a Quetzalcoatlus of titanic proportions) is a keyword-soup of a commander (that's right, they're all legendary) that synergises greatly with Odric, Lunarch Marshal and again proves to be another large body Gishath has access to that's hard to interact with. Ghalta, Primal Hunger (I want to say Saurophaganax, but it's probably a boring old T-Rex) needs no explanation. He's 12/12. There was an Elder Dinosaur printed for each colour of the pie, but we're not going to go over the black and blue examples as they're not relevant here. Trapjaw Tyrant eats your opponent's most valuable creatures and holds them in its mouth, Silverclad Ferocidons acts as a sort of Grave Pact for Enrage decks and Wayward Swordtooth gives you an additional land drop and for a three cost 5/5 not being able to attack or block for a while is a good trade-off.

That's not all! Temple Altisaur makes sure you can attack and block safely, triggering enrage at it's smallest necessary impact, Crested Herdcaller, while only a 3/3 for five mana, basically enters with a token copy, so you're essentially going to end up with 6/6 worth of power and toughness, which is pretty justifiable, especially if it's for free off the top of the library. Cacophodon (likely a Sinoceratops, that's right I'm back on the nerd bike) untaps your most important permanents, even lands! Knight of the Stampede continued the tradition of the Empire support, costing four mana but giving an insane -2 casting cost to all dinosaurs in your hand. Raging Regisaur is a seemingly worse version of Raging Swordtooth, but it resolves every combat if able, so there's that. Zacama, Primal Calamity was the Dinosaur Commander of Rivals of Ixalan, and while useful and an auto include in Gishath, deserves its own deck altogether, and in extension its own article

So Dinosaurs were released in Ixalan, got supported in Rivals of Ixalan, and even during this they errated (essentially edited the text of) a few stragglers in much older magic to incorporate the dinosaur typing. Deathmist Raptor is a neat deathtouch enabler with Odric and Ridgetop Raptor has the same interaction but with double strike. Fungusaur already essentially had enrage, and 'saur' in the name, so the transfer was elegant there. I personally really liked that Regal Behemoth saw the errata, too, as it's a huge piece of a lot of my decks already and it's right at home in Gishath.

Yeah, Ixalan exists, Trent. What's your point? Well Gishath was a deck that, while popular when new, has fallen deep into the mess of casual commanders with linear play-styles that don't see much support and unfortunately doesn't see enough play. While it's casual nature is inarguable, it only feels fair to look at the last 2-3 years and see how many more toys Gishath has been sneakily given over the more modern era of magic, and how they stack up.

Battlebond, a supplementary set released soon after Ixalan block, introduced a whole new plane to the multiverse. That didn't include dinosaurs. Ixalan was very fresh, so it's likely that WotC didn't want to over-saturate the game with the tribe. Plated Crusher was reprinted, but remained a beast. Raptor Companion was reprinted, but had just come out a very small time prior, and is a 3/1 vanilla creature. A new half-set of lands was released, entering untapped as long as you have 2 or more opponents, which were an auto include in all commander decks they fit into. 2 of the 3 possible pairings that fit into Gishath were actually printed, so that counts. 

Dominaria gave us Territorial Allosaurus, a 5/5 for four mana that, when (for some reason not enraged but) kicked, fights another target creature. If the kicker wasn't a whole three mana more it would be more relevant, but a seven-drop 5/5 that fights isn't very powerful, let's be real. Traxos, Scourge of Kroog might be a Mechanosaurus Rex, but he ended up with the Construct typing. Such wasted potential.

Magic Core 2019 was next, offering way more useful and diverse (also entirely green) creatures to the tribe, which compared to Battlebond and Dominaria wasn't hard. Runic Armasaur is an awesomely green way to draw cards, and in a Commander environment can net a player a tonne of advantage over very few turns. Gigantosaurus (missing a letter, WotC?) was another awesome include, at a whopping 10/10 for only half the mana! Oh, it's all green? Well, to be honest Gishath won't care anyway. Colossal Majesty references Ixalan as well as supporting a deck of large creatures, so it's no leap of logic to include this powerful enchantmentColossal Dreadmaw, an uncommon 6/6 creature i avoided to mention earlier, got its third reprint here, being printed in Ixalan, Rivals of Ixalan, Masters 25 and now Magic Core 2019. Palladia-Mors, the Ruiner (Nicol Bolas' sister), was an Elder Dragon released in Gishath's exact colours, but she didn't benefit dinosaurs at all, either. Not even a little.

Rampaging Brontodon saw its release in the Magic Core 2019 Gift Pack, so while technically not in the set itself, was still an awesome addition to a still relatively slim but powerful dinosaur roster.

Dinosaurs don't exist on the Plane of Ravnica, which could explain the lack of support for them there, but it is disappointing that there was no effort made to include some form of them in Guilds of Ravnica and Ravnica Allegiance. Maybe an allosaur/pterosaur-riding Boros legionnare? Maybe the Gruul have a stampede of ceratopsians (along the lines of an ancient army of Wild Ceratok) or even a huge ankylosaurus mounted by giants? You mean to tell me that Nikya is "of the old ways" but that doesn't include the oldest ways? Could the Selesnya, with all of their grand trees and vine-draped villas, not have included some brachiosaurus-like gargantuans that graze on them? Pteramander is a salamander drake, by the way. Seems lazy, but we'll have to respect the fluff and skip over them for now.

Now, here's where we get a little upset. War of the Spark gets released. Huge selling point of the set involves planeswalkers from all over The Multiverse gathering for an inescapable war with a mad elder dragon god! For some reason, Huatli herself shows up! Ixalan is now linked with Ravnica! Finale of Devastation shows a monstrous tyrannosaur whipping up stinging sands with it's Goliath tail, mowing down Lazotep-coated zombie warriors! Huatli's Raptor is by her side, destroying it's enemies with a huge- oh, it's a... 2/3. It has Vigilance, though? Ok, well it's enter the battlefield trigger- proliferate. Oh... At least the big T-Rex thing is- not in the set. Huatli, the Sun's Heart is a new planeswalker and her passive ability might help? No, no it's a toughness-based card. Great. She has a new raptor in the background of that card, and i'm reaching here, so it must be in the set! Nope. Unfortunately, this was the only dinosaur-typed creature that was offered this entire block, and it won't be making it into the deck. 

There is a form of the deck abusing Snapping SailbackBellowing Aegisaur, Fungusaur and Vigor-style cards in order to incorporate +1/+1 counters and the proliferate mechanic, if you really really need to play Huatli's Raptor but the red identity of Gishath doesn't offer enough that's truly useful and you might find yourself better off using a +1/+1 counter-based or proliferate-based commander, like Shalai, Voice of Plenty or Atraxa, Praetor's Voice.

Modern Horizons, an ironically very impactful set for Commander players everywhere, reared it's ugly head next. Again, no love for dinosaurs. I found myself particularly fond of Lava Dart though, as having access to an instant-speed, zero cost enrage trigger was something i could get behind. But again we saw another set with no dinosaur-typed creatures. Interestingly enough, we had a sliver trilobite get released, which was the first of its kind, and supported the 'prehistoric origins of the sliver' story, which heralded The First Sliver (or as it could have been, The First Sliversaur, but that's very wishful thinking).

Magic Core 2020 gave us some amazing additions. Shifting Ceratops, an auto-include in Gishath decks everywhere. Protection from blue and can't be countered was very helpful in feeling like you're playing with some real impact that could stick. The trample, haste and reach ability synergised with Odric again, so there was a whole suite of toolbox options for a miniature Odric engine. Marauding Raptor was so good for the deck, that it made it's way into every single Gishath build on the planet the moment it was released. Another -1 casting cost creature that's also a dinosaur itself, triggers enrage AND buffs itself is all insane. Also, being a cheap red creature, it gave us a neater colour pie in our builds! Thrashing Brontodon gets reprinted, and removal is looking nice on dinosaurs, but still pales to cards like Aura Shards or Bane of Progress, who are both in the colours Gishath likes. Ripscale Predator gets a reprint, slamming Dinosaur into its typing. Rotting Regisaur was black, but even then the card is awesome, and it had been quite a while since we had seen a single good dinosaur, so getting three in one set made Gishath players rejoice everywhere. 

The Commander decks of 2018 didn't offer anything of value to dinosaur decks. Loyal Guardian barely helped the already lackluster +1/+1 counter-based builds of dinosaurs. Commander 2019, in stark contrast, offered us one of the best dinosaur cards ever printed: Apex Altisaur. This is the one card dinosaur players have been asking for. A 10/10 for nine mana, and only two of it green, that enters the battlefield, fights a creature, then fights another creature and another creature. Again and again until either Apex dies, or everything else does. Or, you could just get bored, as it's totally optional (fight up to one target creature). This card is bonkers, and instantly became the coup de grace of every dinosaur deck out there. Ghired's Belligerence is a very flexible card in this deck, being a board wipe, targeted removal, a board presence or even an enrage enablerGhired himself is a pretty good dinosaur commander, too. Think about that.

Throne of Eldraine feels like it was designed without many other formats, besides Standard, in mind. Eldraine felt like every card existed in it's own little vacuum and barely affected the world around it, or cared little about the negative impacts it had on the game as a whole and went wild with reckless abandon. There were examples of cards like Oko, Thief of Crowns and Once Upon A Time, which impacted other formats disgustingly and saw numerous hits on one or more banlists, or in Oko's case, five. Other cards, like Outlaws' Merriment and Harmonious Archon, seem like they're a whole strategy by themselves, but don't see nearly as much play as other cards of their ilk.

Finally, Theros Beyond Death was released very recently into the world, and believe it or not there were no Dinosaurs. Funny that a set all about Greek Mythology and it's philosophies didn't include a Walking With Dinosaurs segment, but maybe having a manticore fighting a gryphon fighting a troodon would've been too intense. Storm's Wrath from the set is an awesome boardwipe, and with enough set up, could trigger a lot of enraging dinosaurs and maybe they even might just survive, if they're big enough or have indestructible. Ilysian Caryatid is a great, coloured-mana generator for decks with big creatures, so that too is a neat, plausible include.

So, just over 2 years later, 10 sets (both supplementary and main sets) and 2 Commander sets later there are a whole 8 new dinosaurs to play with. With an already small pool of playable cards on release, it is rather unfortunate to see WotC not giving dinosaurs some more love. The pattern seems to be that dinosaurs get printed, then they don't for two or so packs, then they do, then they don't for a couple of packs again. Theros and Eldraine together had a combined zero dinosaurs, so it could be likely that Ikoria might print one or two big ones, as it is a set about Behemoths, and dinosaurs are just the OG behemoths. Dinosaurs are awesome, and I expect more to be printed soon, and we can only hope they hit the bar that Apex Altisaur set.

Dinosaurs take your fancy? Maybe you're more of a Demon elitist, or a Zombie enthusiast. No matter what takes your fancy, head over to singles.vaultgames.com.au and check out our inventory! We promise you'll find something that suits you!