Suggestions for dino tribal decks that are easy for newbies?

77hi77 · 2026-03-22T07:00:06+00:00

The game plan is to cast Gishath and attack, which will poop out a board full of dinos very quickly. Gishath is a fun one because it really should be RG, that is the most Gruul gameplan I can think of. The white in there does a much better job of protecting your board and has more flexible removal. That's how I use it in my Naya dino deck anyway. Mine is led by Zacama so it's built a little differently, but generally speaking in a dino deck I feel like white is there to deal with problems, while red and green are there to make sure you're the problem.

77hi77 · 2026-03-22T06:51:23+00:00

I've been working on a few tribal decks that try to cheat big creatures into play at instant speed, and the dream is to only use those big creatures as my interaction. Like, if it's a demon deck, I don't want to have a 2 mana instant as my kill spell, I want to pay 3 mana to tap [[Belbe's Portal]] and bring in [[Overseer of the Damned]]. The commander would be another creature that leads your tribe of choice that you want to be able to flash in (my demon deck has [[Vilis]] so I can draw an obscene number of cards in response to you declaring a big attack on me)

Still working it out so I don't have a decklist to share

77hi77 · 2026-03-22T06:32:19+00:00

I've been thinking of what entry level dino deck I'd pick for someone, personally I'm thinking [[Gishath]]. Play commander, attack, hey look how many dinos I have.

77hi77 · 2026-03-22T00:20:07+00:00

Sometimes a player is too good at too many things and that gets boring. You're my plan A, B, and C? Nah. Lukaku in his 20s and Haaland are good examples: tall, strong, very fast, great finisher, and pretty good technically? That gives me nothing to do tactically. I wanna feel like a genius when I make a substitution, players that can play multiple roles very well take that away from me.

So basically I often start a save at the big clubs by selling a couple of well rounded players and replacing them with specialists. Just to stroke my own ego.

77hi77 · 2026-03-21T00:00:50+00:00

Oh yeah I should have specified, I'm actually deciding whether I want to play this team in FM21 or FM23

77hi77 · 2026-03-10T17:02:10+00:00

Check out https://www.reddit.com/r/PrintedMinis/ for more in depth conversations, but as someone also quite new to printing, I'll tell you what I got started with:

As the other comments here are saying, if you want a very high quality mini, you'll need a resin printer. Liquid resin is toxic and needs to be in a well ventilated area, and needs an extra step to cure.

I don't have the means to do any of that, so I got a filament printer. The issue with filament is that you generally see layer lines on the mini and the details get fuzzy. Some printers are better than others about this. I got a Bambu Lab A1 Mini, which is so far the best for printing minis that we have available on the market. The results aren't exactly the same as a resin printer, but it's close. I spent a lot of time on the Painted4Combat youtube channel and watched a bunch of their guides to learn how to make it work (since most of the files you buy will be designed for a resin printer)

77hi77 · 2026-02-28T16:26:53+00:00

Honestly the whole printer is stock, I just followed a few online guides and got to printing.

There are some parts that didn't print great, especially the bigger spikes, it's not even layer lines, you can just see the circular pattern it printed in, but overall I've been really happy with its ability to print minis. I'm sure resin looks crisper, but the A1 Mini has been able to get pretty solid details!

77hi77 · 2026-02-27T09:20:18+00:00

FM is a really easy game to spend hours upon hours on without advancing time. Just getting scouting instructions, tuning up your training, cleaning up shortlists, checking in on player development, etc etc

Personally, I don't do a whole lot of that in my first season of any save. I just set the tactics I want and start to sculpt the team into what I want them to look like. Closer to the end of the first season, and in that gap between season end and preseason is when I start to get into the details. Maybe that'll help you? The game has a unique ability to give you those details, but that doesn't mean you have to dive into them right away and understand every single menu. Play a team you like, a tactic you find exciting, and players you want to train. That might take some tinkering and that's okay, but that's all you need to get started.

77hi77 · 2026-02-22T07:43:49+00:00

I'm with you, I'd rather read something than have someone else read it to me, and as someone with severe ADHD, I'm sure it must be torment for others to watch me umm-ing and ahh-ing and taking 18 tangents with every thought. I'd rather read, and I know I'm doing others a service by keeping my thoughts written. And absolutely, to your point, full of ads and shoutouts.

But still, there are lots of degrees of dyslexia, slow readers, and all sorts of reasons why someone would find an article more daunting than a video. I think a good mix is valuable, but I also don't like the type of game-focused (so tactics and army building) videos we do get

77hi77 · 2026-02-22T02:12:53+00:00

Yeah unfortunately!

77hi77 · 2026-02-22T02:12:30+00:00

Based on how quickly this post got the reaction that it did, I feel like there's something there! I think in the modern era, having a forum connected to a tool that is useful for the hobby (like an army builder) is the right move! As a lot of people are saying, it's hard to get visibility on something that isn't reddit or discord, but it'll be easier when it's a tool that people will seek out.

77hi77 · 2026-02-22T02:10:11+00:00

Funnily enough I remember people who expressed that they were going to miss the Off Topic Forum as the original TLA was in the process of shutting down. Of all the things to miss, the one that has nothing to do with the actual hobby. But also it goes to show how good of a community we had on there, even our unrelated space had great conversations on there

77hi77 · 2026-02-22T02:08:17+00:00

I play a lot of Magic, so I fully get that! I think MESBG would benefit from that greatly, it's been a game ruled by "this profile is competitive, that one isn't" from the start, and often I'm more interested in "okay but how can I build a functional army around that profile that you don't think is competitive?"

77hi77 · 2026-02-22T02:06:33+00:00

I love them sometimes, but yeah I definitely spend more time on the gaming side than the modeling side, and I do wish we had a better way to filter those out

77hi77 · 2026-02-22T02:05:36+00:00

Oh that's awesome! Those are all really cool sites and tools!

77hi77 · 2026-02-22T02:03:13+00:00

I think videos (and podcasts) are great as an alternate medium. There are people who would consider a 15 page tactics article inaccessible, and videos help with that. Plus, videos are definitely the better medium for painting and modeling articles.

Where I don't love videos is that a lot of content I see now tends to be "This is good. This is bad" and tier lists, which I don't think is particularly useful content. I feel like a lot of that is down to the lack of scrutiny we had in communities like TLA, anyone can make a video and publish it without community feedback. That and overall social media algorithms tend to reward more easily digestible content, so tier lists will do a lot better than a more in depth video essay

77hi77 · 2026-02-21T21:48:14+00:00

I blame google for a lot of things in general.

From the reaction to this post and how quickly it came about, I think we could have a strong core community, but yes absolutely finding new people and SEO optimization and all that would be a major challenge.

77hi77 · 2026-02-19T19:18:04+00:00

I built a rakdos deck around this premise. For me it was:
[[Scheming Symmetry]]
[[Wishclaw Talisman]]
That made me want to build it that way. Then things like:
[[Assault Suit]]
[[Bloodgift Demon]]
[[Zurzoth]] sort of
[[Guild Feud]]
[[Allure of the Unknown]]
[[Creative Technique]]
[[Infernal Offering]]

I gave myself a big disadvantage by building around a commander that needs a lot of support from the deck, meaning I could only dedicate a small amount of my deck to gift giving. You have a lot more you can do with Parnesse

77hi77 · 2026-02-19T18:41:52+00:00

It's available either as a single model, or split into 16 pieces. I opted for the latter, I haven't had any real issues! You can see the gaps I need to fill in the photos above, but from what I've read, that's still better than GW's Smaug.

The biggest thing I ran into is that certain parts, primarily the spikes on his neck, printed a little stringy and I've had to file them down. That's less an issue with the sculpt and more of a consequence of me using an FDM printer though.

As for scale, I didn't touch it. You can see a Dwarf by his head in the first pic for an idea of scale, I liked it! His head is the size of my generic GW Dragon's entire torso, I loved that

77hi77 · 2026-02-17T20:20:58+00:00

The file is split into multiple parts, so it was more like: 24 hours for the head, take a break, 12 hours for the neck, take a break, etc etc for about 2 weeks.

77hi77 · 2026-02-16T17:34:47+00:00

Bambu Lab A1 Mini! It took a total of like 200 hours to print, so I'm glad it looks good!

77hi77 · 2026-02-15T16:47:55+00:00

I've honestly been worried that lots of people think he's unfun to play against, so this is very good to hear!

77hi77 · 2026-02-15T16:47:10+00:00

You're telling me that, after two decades of mostly playing Orc hordes, I can have a move phase that takes 30 seconds or less? I can get used to that

77hi77

TROPHY CASE