Let's get into the patented Deck Tech Teardown.
The Land Base:
The initial build of this deck was tri-color, using Kinjalli's Caller and Siegehorn Ceratops to build up a board state, but I've found that it dilutes the focus away from the creature-punish strategy and makes it much, much easier to get color locked. This iteration of the brew is limited to G/R, and is markedly more consistent for it--so much so that I play it with just basics. If you're looking for competitive viability, this is an easy area of improvement. Just swap in some of the fetch lands you've got laying around, and bam, you're top tier ready.
The Low End:
Here's where the bulk of the deck sits, with a good number of 1-cmc spells to clear the opponent's field and occasionally dig for a clutch dino. One thing of note is that by using Reckless Rage as our burn spell of choice, we can often blow up things that are designed to dodge a Bolt for the exact same cost. It may seem bad that it also deals damage to one of our creatures, but with a suite of utility dinos this is actually another upside--often when you lay a Ranging Raptor, your opponent goes out of their way to avoid dealing any damage to it, but with one Mana you can pop something on their side that’s toughness 4 or less and also ramp a land, and then usually swing with the raptor anyway for bonus damage or another land. There are also a few copies of Drover of the Mighty to get early Mana for casting and also keeping a disposable 3/3 later on for chumping or even crewing in a pinch. Towards the later game, Shake the Foundations is one of the precious few refill pieces in the deck, and it also can act as a weenie sweeper, and trigger for our angry dinos. There are also a few copies of Siege Modification, which can make any dino a powerhouse or even help us go wide by making vehicles permanently into creatures.
The High End:
Immediately above our 3-drops, we have a Forerunner of the Empire that is great for several reasons. First, he lets us tutor a dino, which could be a Ferocidon if we need to replace one that got removed or late game to put a bomb like Ghalta or Polyraptor on-deck. Also at 4 is the better of the vehicle options we have: Untethered Express. This card alone can be an absolute monster if your opponent can't find an answer, doubly so if you can Siege Modification for immense trample damage. As unlikely as a late game is, dropping one Polyraptor often means they will exponentially replicate into dozens of copies. This is hilarious, but take care not to play one with a Ferocidon still in play, lest you inadvertently deal 100 damage directly to your own face.
The Strengths:
This deck absolutely shreds through token and flicker builds, but as I said it's designed to be a favorable matchup against any build that features creatures. Evasive decks that avoid combat with Flying or Intimidate still pay the tax, and often have to throw their best pieces under the bus, er, train just to keep their life total up.
Another good matchup for it is Life Gain. It's essentially a hard counter, so long as you keep a Ferocidon on the field, and often you'll be dishing out enough to keep them on the backfoot from the early game on.
Most often you’ll be able to outpace other aggro decks and, depending on the composition, you’ll have a good chance of dealing enough damage to keep midrange builds from getting to late game, giving you a solid shot against most of the field in most metas.
Weaknesses:
Control decks can often absolutely shut down the deck before it gets started, and something like Nexus of Gate doesn't run creatures at all, pretty much nullifying our main strat. If you're lucky, or good at reading, it can be beneficial in these matchups to not Siege your Vehicles, in order to get around sweepers. It's also important to note that Crewing a vehicle can be done by a creature affected by summoning sickness, as it's not an ability on the creature itself.
One other build that can wreck our whole strat is anything with hand hate, mostly owing to the lack of refill. Ideally, you just shouldn't play with anyone who runs Thought Erasure as a general rule, really, not just limited to this deck. (Sorry, Dimir, but you know it sucks)
So, that's the rundown on this uniquely 90's deck! Let me know what you think of it, if you have any other suggestions to make it as broadly viable as possible, and what kind of other decks you'd like to see covered! (Street Sharks, anyone?)
