Gruul Dinosaurs is an aggressive stompy deck that goes over the top of aggro decks. The deck has insane draws where you can play your entire hand in one turn similar to Convoke. The interaction of choice is Reckless Rage to trigger enrage. We do take a hit when it comes to our Sideboard and our mana base.
DECK LIST
Deck List: Budget Gruul Dinosaurs
MAIN DECK
Creature Breakdown
Marauding Raptor, Elvish Mystic, and Llanowar Elf all provide the decks ways to drop down our four or five drops earlier.
Thrashing Brontodon allows us to destroys artifact and enchantment. This functionality is useful against Engimatic Incarnation.
Itzquinth, Firstborn of Gishath: A solid body dinosaur that allows us to increase the amount of removal we have in the deck.
Regisaur Alpha gives multiple bodies while also providing our dinosaurs haste.
Pugnacious Hammerskull and Ghalta, Primal Hunger provide us giant bodies that apply pressure eariler in the game.
Ripjaw Raptor provides us with card advantage as we bulldooze through our opponents threats.
Noncreature Breakdown
Setup Pieces: The deck runs four Commune with Dinosaurs to find a dinosaurs or to make sure we hit our land drops.
Removal Suite: We are running four copies of Reckless Rage in the deck. This triggers enrage, while also taking out most creatures. Bushwhack acts as a fight spell that triggers enrage or makes sure we hit our land drops. Domri, Anarch of Bolas is a key piece of ramp in the deck that also functions as a removal spell. A key advantage of Domri is it makes our dinosaurs uncounterable. That helps bridge our control matchup.
Sideboard Breakdown
Removal Suite: Two Fry for matchups where we need to answer Ledger Shredder, Greasefang, Convoke Threats, Teferi, Wandering Emperor, and etc. Two copies of Tears of Valakut to answer Shredder and Phoenix. One copy of Pyroclasm for aggro decks.
Combo Interaction: Running two copies of Giant Cindermaw, which allows the deck to prevent life gain versus Angels and Quintorius.
Graveyard Interaction: Running two copies of Deathgorge Scavenger to slow down Phoenix and Greasefang matchups.
Thrashing Brontodon: One additional copy in the board for decks that heavily rely on artifacts or enchantments to win the game.
Damping Sphere: Running two copies to help bridge the gap against Lotus Field that wins by turn five. It turns their Lotus Fields into a land that produces one colorless mana.
Chandra, Torch of Defiance comes in to help bridge the gap against control.
Lukka, Bound to Ruin provides repeatable creatures against control, while also providing a mass sweeper against aggro decks.
Sideboard Guide
Rakdos Prowess
Azorius Control
Izzet Phoenix
Jund Sacrifice
Enigmatic Fires
To look at the upgraded version of this deck check out the other article discussing it. The first upgrade I would recommend is replacing two forests and two mountains for four stomping grounds.
Link to the list: Upgraded Gruul Dinosaurs
Azorius Control
Mono Black Demons
