I believe in Naya Dinosaurs!
This deck looks to have an explosive opener with Siegehorn Ceratops and enrage self-triggers like Savage Stomp and Tilonalli's Crown. With a good opening hand (Siegehorn Ceratops, Tilonalli's Crown, and mana to cast them) you can present a 7/4 Trample on turn 3. With a great opening hand (the above plus Savage Stomp) you can have a 10/7 Trample on turn 3.
From there Siegehorn Ceratops passes the play to Forerunner of the Empire and good value Enrage dinosaurs like Ranging Raptors and Ripjaw Raptor. Regisaur Alpha, and Carnage Tyrant round out the mix with one-of's of Trapjaw Tyrant and Ghalta, Primal Hunger.
It works like this: Forerunner comes down. Tutor up a dude (depending on the state of the board I am usually looking for Regisaur Alpha, Ghalta, Primal Hunger, or Trapjaw Tyrant. Regisaur gives all dinos haste and lays down a 3/3 tramply dino dude, which triggers Forerunner twice (one for the Regisaur and one for the token) doing one damage to each creature twice which will hopefully let you draw two cards off of Ripjaw Raptor, and/or tutor up two basic lands to the battlefield via Ranging Raptors, and/or put four +1/+1 counters on your Siegehorn Ceratops and/or exile two of your opponents things with Trapjaw Tyrant. Plus the two damage will hopefully clear out some of the dorks from your opponent's board.
Playing any enrage dino with a Forerunner on the field will automatically trigger that dino's enrage, so you're laying down a dude and drawing a card or tutoring up a land or exiling things or building your dorks. I like to use Trapjaw Tyrant for some surprising (and easily repeatable) removal.
For end game we're running Carnage Tyrant and Ghalta, Primal Hunger. Ghalta will nearly always be a 12/12 Trampler for 2 green mana. If she has haste from Regisaur Alpha then she usually comes down and swings in before the opponent has a chance to do anything about her.
Lastly we have Savage Stomp for removal with a +1/+1 counter and an Enrage trigger and we will never ever cast it for more than 1 mana. We have 3 copies of Thud to replace fking and close out the game. Flinging a Ghalta, Primal Hunger or Carnage Tyrant, or even a beefed up Siegehorn Ceratops will win most games.
With the obvious exception of Ghalta, Primal Hunger the mana curve caps out at 6, so we don't have to spend a lot of energy ramping up, but we do have a couple of tricks up our sleeve to speed up our game a little. Thunderherd Migration is a very efficient land grabber when you have a dino to show, though sometimes I will pay full price if I don't want the opponent to know what I have, or if I want to trick the opponent into thinking I don't have anything (or if I legitimately don't have anything lol). Ranging Raptors gets a lot of lands when it's doing its job, so we should be able to ramp sufficiently off those two.
3 colors is a challenge, but we are able to make it work fairly well. With Sheltered Thicket and Scattered Groves rotating out it hurts us a bit. This is where I am going to have to play with some ootions. Sacred Temple is an obvious replacement for Scattered Groves, but We aren't getting one in Gruul colors and that hurts. Right now I just replaced the Sheltered Thickets with basic mountains, but I might do Timber Gorge instead.
Otherwise Landbase is a bunch of basics for Ranging Raptors and Thunderherd Migration to find. Then dual lands that produce green and something else. Lastly we run 1 copy of Unclaimed Territory. We could probably get away with running more, but it feels bad if Unclaimed Territory is our only source of a certain color of mana and we need to cast a sorcery, instant, enchantment, or a human (Forerunner). If you look at our mana costs we don't really need that many white sources, but we really want to have white mana in our opening hand so we can play our turn two Siegehorn Ceratops. It doesn't hurt us at all, since most of our white sources also produce green, and most of our stuff just needs green and something else. It works out.
Sideboard is going to be personal to your meta, but most notably I run 4 copies of Rile to switch out Savage Stomp in match-ups that don't run creatures. Unfortunately, without stuff to enrage off-of, our dinos feel kind of sluggish, so Rile lets us trigger Enrage ourselves, gives the dude Trample and draws us a card (all for 1 red Mana?!). It's like they say, "If you want something done, you have to do it yourself."
I've also got a Polyraptor to switch out with the Trapjaw Tyrant in match-ups that don't run a lot of creatures. It costs 8 to cast, which doesn't feel nice, but when it fires off with a Forerunner on the field it sure is fun. 7 5/5's on the field is no joke, especially if Regisaur Alpha is there to give them haste. Remember Forerunner of the Empire's second ability is a "may" ability so you don't have to kill off your stuff if you don't want to, but it's often worth it.
I am thinking of main-boarding the Polyraptor maybe in exchange for one of the Siegehorn Ceratops or something. In play-testing I have found the 8 mana to be a bit steep and unreliable, and tutoring it up with Forerunner of the Empire and showing it to my opponent feels bad because I don't usually like them to know what's coming. You can't argue with those numbers, though. 7 5/5's for 8 mana is damn reasonable. Hasted with Regisaur Alpha makes Polyraptor a pretty solid win con. We can get hamstringed pretty easily with some well-placed removal (although I have found that few people at my FNM know which creature they need to be using their removal on, hint: Forerunner of the Empire).
Overall the deck works very well. It is obviously stronger when facing off against creature-based decks, and it is especially fun when playing against decks that are running Goblin Chainwhirler. Often they forget about our enrage so they lay it down and we draw cards and get lands from it, then the other copies sit in their hand as a dead card the rest of the game.
I've been working on this deck pretty intensely for the last year, and I feel I have a well-tuned Naya Dino deck here. That being said, I am very open to suggestions for improvement. Please leave me comments. What has worked for you? What cards are there that I am clearly not thinking of that will make this deck shine even more? I must know!
Now get out there and Savage Stomp those jerks!
<3 Mahoot
