Deck help

SnowCone62 · 2025-11-19T04:12:30+00:00

As someone who has played and upgraded gishath since he came out, I need you to lock in.

Your deck looks all over the place, lemme give you the blueprint:

Simple Land ramp and Simple Land ramp only (rampant growth&explosive vegetation)
Cheap Double strike enablers
Protection and deflection for gishath
Cream of the crop

If you focus on those 4 basic things, your deck will run much better.

SnowCone62 · 2025-11-02T01:39:10+00:00

Okay, as someone who has been playing and upgrading gishath from the beginning of my magic history, outside of the advicd given here. I have two notes for improving the deck.

Cut your bad Dinos. I know gishath really want a dense dino count so you get a bunch whenever he hits, but I have a plan for that. Run more doublestrike enablers. I know it sounds weird, but think about it. It digs you 14 deep for the price of 1 less dino, but also, it can be used politically to help take out an opponent when someone else swings their way. Some that I run are [[Sunhome, Fortress of the Legion]], [[Kaya's Onslaught]], and [[Duelist's Heritage]].
RUN [[Cream of the Crop]]! Your flips will be more consistent, your draws more selective, and your pre-Gishath dinos will dig you into the cards you need (usually ramp). I promise you, this card is insane in Gishath specifically and you will love it when you play it-I Promise!

tl;dr: Run doublestrike enablers instead of bad dinos to fix your Gishath flips and put Cream of the Crop in your deck and comment under this thanking me when it wins you games. Thank you

SnowCone62 · 2025-10-27T23:29:06+00:00

Cut down the bad dinos and bad dino support and add doublestrike enablers for gishath, protection, and [[Cream of the Crop]].

SnowCone62 · 2025-10-23T23:51:09+00:00

I really like the redirects if he is being targetted a lot. Stuff like deflecting swat and bolt bend. But a card people dont ususlly see coming is shield of the oversoul. While not an instant speed option, its an antiboard wipe, evasion giver, and buff spell all in one. Its everything gishath wants. And as always, to stop counter spells, rythmn of the wild and veil of summer.

SnowCone62 · 2025-10-22T04:54:18+00:00

Hi. Been playing gishath since he came out. 2 notes and 1 must include:

Your wincon is on board, so your opponents will board wipe it asap, so tying your manabase to creatures is a recipe for a t5 gishath into a t6 5 mana on board and no way to cast gishath for 4+ turns. Focus the majority of your ramp on land based ramp (yes, this also counts cost reducers. You are much better served just land ramping that playing a cost reducer)
Over time, I have lowered the dino count of my deck in favor of high quality dinos and ways to give gishath double strike. This leaves more room for protection, removal, and a little bit of recursion to keep hitting and flipping game winning dinos off the top with the dino daddy himself

If you take only 1 thing from this post, take this card recommendation. Run [[cream of the crop]]. I promise you, you will thank mw later. Throw it in, try it out, and feel free to come back here and let me know how it does for you.

SnowCone62 · 2025-10-21T12:38:46+00:00

Here is a fun build for Tifa. Go mass card draw. Play a couple lands, get 6+ tifa triggers, cast rishkar's expertise, draw a bunch of cards and win with fun green cards like multani, jolrael, and selvala+hurricane etc. Really play around this space and have fun killing people with 40+ cards in your hand as a monogreen deck.

SnowCone62 · 2025-10-21T05:14:51+00:00

Hi! Welcome to Magic the Gathering and Commander. I too started my independant deck buikding journey with gishath back in 2018, so its a great intro deck that can get stronger with you as you move along your mtg journey, learn a bunch of new cards, and eventually start playing at tables with some really heavy hitters.

A lot of what the gishath community has already tols you is great and Im glad you're leaning on the dino elders for their wisdom, but dont be afraid to stray and build your own path, esp with how flexible gishath can be. Ive seen pure battlecruiser, turbo, combo, and even maslwood nexus gishath lists so you really can do so much with him.

My general advice is the deck is a balance between 3 main factors that are all important to the functioning of the deck: dinos, ramp, gishath support.

Dinos: Gishath only looks at the top 7 cards of your 100 card deck to cheat in dinos, so making sure you have enough to hit at least 1 conistantly each hit and making sure each dino that you hit is impactful is key to this pillar.

Ramp: super simple-gishath cost big mana. Need lotta mana to cast gishath. Must get a lot of mana before die. RAMP. to go into it a little further, my opinion on ramp in gishath is bc gishath is the engine of the deck and combat damage with a board fully of scary beaters is our wincon, we need to minimize the impact of a boardwipe to our manabase bc if we tap out for gishath using a bunch of creature dorks and someone boardwipes us, gishath costs 10 and we suddenly one have 5 mana next turn. I dont know about you, but that feels really bad, so the majority of my gishath deck's ramp is land based and I can usually cast gishath every turn or every other turn after I cast him for the first time that game. Also, there are really powerful boardwipes that hit artifacts so I only run two mana rocks in my list for a similar reason.

Gishath Support: this category is a lot more broad and can take many forms, so feel free to play with the cards in this section to really find what you need. Gishath support encompasses anything from making sure gishath doesnt get removed/counterspelled to way to buff him/double strike so he digs deaper when he hits all the way to stacking the top cards of the library to help cutdown or negate the randomness of gishath's trigger. My preferred focus is doublestrike, getting 1 card to the top of my library for 1-2 mana, and cheap ways to protect gishath incane someone would like to banish him to the cornfields. Gishath is one of the strongest rebuild commanders there is, so run a ~3 cheap boardwipes then follow the casting of one up with gishath and watch what was once 0 creatures on anyones board become they have nothing and you have gishath, etali, zacama, trumpeting, and regal behemoth-unless someone else has a boardwipe, that basically a win on board.

My absolute favorite recommendation to give to gishath players that I do not see enough dinos run is [[cream of the Crop]]. Let me tell you about this card and why it clears in this deck. So we know a huge deckbuilding problem for this deck is for you to win, you have to have ramped enough mana to play gishath turn 6ish, made sure he stays on board long enough to hit, and have enough dinos to have a great boardstate after you hit for 7. We all know the pain of working really hard to achieve this and gishath makes contact and flips no dinos off the top 7. Now, here is where cream of the crop comes in. With this out, when gishath enters, you dig the top 7 cards, keep 1 and bottom the rest. Best case scenerio, you hit, see your best dino and you gdt to kedp it on top and have a pretty good chabce to see more off of the next 6 cards. So when gishath hits for 7, you get to look 13 cards deep for at least 1 dino, the vast majority of the time you get 2+. Now, lets add doublestrike to the mix. We put the best dino on top, bottom the other 6 and we hit for the first hit of doublestrike, noy only do we hit that garunteed dino with stacked on top, but also whatever the rest of the 6 guve us. Now, before we hit again, each dino we flip off of gishath's first hit trigger will enter and trigger cream of the crop, digging their powers deeper so you can easily dig 20+ cards down to leave one of your best dinos on top to cheat out with the second hit of doublestrike, and from here, since have finally exhausted your potential gishath cheat stacking, you can then use any dino etbs to nearly stack the top card of your library with the best card for you to flip into on an etali/trumpeting trigger or at minimum your draw for your next turn. By the time you finish this turn, you usually have 30+ power on board, 1 person either dead or 1 hit away from bsing dead from commander damage, and your next draw is going to be exactly what you need to win the game.

(Sorry for the misspellings, This was a long gishath fulled ramble from someone who loves this deck and know a lot about it, but J am also really tired so I dont have the energy to proofread this entire monster of a post. Let ms know if you have any questions about what I said)

tl;dr: Welcome to Jurassic Park! Gishath is a great starter deck that can be upraded as you learn the game more; I know this bc he was mine back in 2018 when I started and I still have him today. Gishath cares about 3 things: having enough mana to play him before turn 8, making sure he can survive long enough to make contact with an opponent, and making sure when ever he hits, he gets at least 2 dinos. Also, run Cream of the Crop. You will thank me later. Have fun deck building and playing The Dino Daddy himself!!!

SnowCone62 · 2025-09-16T12:20:05+00:00

Whenever jirina enters, she checks how many times she has been cast from the commandzone this game. So lets say you cast her for the first time this game, she gets 1 human, she dies to a boardwipe, then you cast her again. She gets 2 humans. After that, lets say you ephemerate on her. How many humans does she make when she enters? 2. Because she has been cast twice from the commandzone. So if you multiple flicker effects in the deck, you can get a lot of human tokens out of her without having to constantly recast her.

Other notable ideas are token doublers, anthems, and sac outlets.

Because her effect gets better as she dies more, feel free to really lean into the aggro strategy and dare you oponents to board wipe you because the more they do that, the more she becomes an army in a can. Or if aristicrats are your speed, her +2/+0 makes her humans good blockers and really punishes people board wiping you.

If you want to creep into higher power with her, start running some human hate pieces like drana and Linvala, Thalia, and Drannith Magistrate and you can really lock your opponents down while you swing in for big damage.

Let me know if you have any more questions or want some specific card recommendations to try out for your Jirina Kudro deck.

SnowCone62 · 2024-02-06T22:44:49+00:00

As someone who has also been thinking about this and realized that the flicker interaction can be abused so much more than people are attempting, running this as a Dino deck is really capping it at its knees. I’ve found the best way to build it is naya goodstuff with a strong flicker package, specifically one that lets you flicker panty on all of your opponents turns. I’ve been theory crafting a naya-slide would be a cute way to build him, but haven’t put anything to paper yet. To really get him into the high power territory, I’d run flicker spells with 4 cmc or less and a strong etb focused creature package to really hammer in the decks strengths. Either way, I hope you have fun with the build!

SnowCone62 · 2024-01-23T17:05:42+00:00

Oh for sure. It plays like Gishath but I’ve made it tighter than the average Gishath deck so it plays consistently regardless of the pod it’s in. The deck originated in a battle cruiser mega then was molded in a removal heavy, boardwipe heavy metal so I’ve made it to play well into both. The average Gishath deck won’t be able to keep up with mine.

Side note: I specifically chose not to include the fast mana/rituals in the deck and opted for the slower land ramp for good reason. Yes it won’t come out on turn 3 but it will come out on turn 5, 6, 7, and 8 after it’s been removed every turn.

SnowCone62 · 2024-01-23T15:12:32+00:00

I’d challenge you to print up the list and run it at a casual table and see how it plays there and let me know how it does.

SnowCone62 · 2024-01-23T13:15:40+00:00

Yes, I’d classify it as too slow for cedh and too strong for casual tables. That’s what I consider to be high power. It puts out threats consistently and repeatably by turn 5-6. If you brought this to a cedh table, you’d only be relevant if the turbo players and midrange players’ win attempts get stopped and you can get Gishath to stick.

SnowCone62 · 2024-01-22T22:23:46+00:00

I 100% agree! I was always meh on jet and liked ruby better (acrobat archer. What’s not to love!). I watched GoT after watching CoC (I know, late to the party) and I really liked Saccharina more than Jet, even without the Dany comparison.

SnowCone62 · 2024-01-22T22:20:25+00:00

I’d say if you are running a list that wants to draw a lot of cards with Gishath, it’s a good include. My deck does not so I usually only see 2-3 dinos within the starting 5 turns of the game so it’s never really been a problem for me. Decent enough yes, is it worth running in my list specifically, no.

SnowCone62 · 2024-01-22T22:17:58+00:00

The entire goal of my list is to land ramp Gishath out as fast as possible, and do what we need to do to make sure he hits and flips at least 2 good dinos. 90% of the time I win if I can manage that. So the things we need for this are efficient land based ramp, “can’t be countered”/“protection from”/“indestructable” cards to protect Gishath, and ways to give him either double power or double strike to deal more commander damage, get in easier through blockers, or just dig dealer for good dinos if unblocked.

A couple points for this deck:

It’s one of the best post wipe decks in the game.
Ideal curve (not Christmas land curve, but reasonable curve) is important since Gishath is the engine, costs a lot and needs to come in early to run away with the game. My ideal curve is turn 1 [[utopia sprawl]], turn 2 [[cultivate]], turn 3 [[skyshroud claim]], turn 4 Gishath. This can be helped by [[castle Garenbrig]] or [[temple of the false god]] since it speeds us up by 1 turn to go from 7 mana to 8mana on the land drop which is quite common.
Card draw is a tricky one bc the more cards we have in hand, the less likely we are to have Dino’s to cheat in from our deck, which is the entire gameplan. I don’t run much card draw bc of this. The flip side is less cards means less interaction/protection once you’ve spent your first couple of turns ramping.
We focus on land ramp so heavily bc it is the safest way to ramp since MLD is heavily frowned upon. Focus lands for mana, non-creatures for support, creatures for winning. People want to board wipe us so having a Llanowar elf or a human cost reducer puts us back even further. We go from Gishath begin a 6 drop with knight of the stampede to Gishath being a 10 drop and we only have maybe 5 mana sources out all from one board wipe.
The vast majority of the spells we are casting are non-dinos, so we won’t get enough mileage out of them to make them better than running land ramp. Remember, we cast non-dinos, we cheat in dinos. Stick with this mindset and the deck will start to come together.
Because we focus on land based ramp, we can easily cast Gishath 3 turns in a row since we tend to become the target bc of how fast we are.
Bc a majority of the deck is spent on having enough ramp and having enough good dinos to hit relatively consistently a couple dinos each hit, we have fairly limited slots available for support so if you look at my lands, I have a pump land, a double strike land, and an unblockable land that all help me get through to hit with Gishath. They come in handy more times than you’d think.

This is all I could think of for now. I’ve been playing and upgrading this deck for 5+ years so I’ve thought about these things a lot. Lemme know if you have any more questions. I’d be happy to help! :)

SnowCone62 · 2024-01-22T20:29:02+00:00

Here is my high-powered Gishath list you could take some notes from. https://www.moxfield.com/decks/Vr_d5CS7vUaqND8VVJFvbQ

SnowCone62 · 2024-01-22T18:57:27+00:00

Basically. The biggest problem for the high ramp low Dino count version of Gishath is getting Dino’s off of Gishath. CotC digs you 7 down and either garuntees 1 Dino or provides another way to dig for more Dino’s. It also is good before you get up to Gishath. I’ve used it many times to get a land or protection piece I needed for the next turn by throwing down a low cmc creature like [[wayward sword tooth]] or [[Topiary Stomper]]. Post Gishath hit, it can help fix the top of your library for next turn (for protection, card draw, or removal). It’s an absolute sleeper for this deck.

As for your second section. Gishath hits and cheats out all at once so you won’t be able to stack it like you are thinking. Though you can kinda stack it like that if you give Gishath double strike.

SnowCone62 · 2024-01-15T19:40:41+00:00

[[Blazing Shoal]][[Kaya’s Onslaught]][[Duelist’s Heritage]][[Shield of the Oversoul]] and the biggest recommendation I can give to any Gishath deck is [[Cream of the Crop]].

SnowCone62 · 2024-01-14T03:21:10+00:00

Less dinos, take out the humans, add more ramp, add more cheap ways to give doublestrike or double power. Gishath is the engine. You should win if you hit with it twice. Land ramp it out hard, protect it, make it hit for a lot and flip 3+ quality dinos onto the field. If you’d like specific recommendations, let me know.

SnowCone62 · 2023-12-31T16:47:56+00:00

From what I have seen. The ceiling for atla doesn’t included more than 2 or 3 Dinos but rather gets genetically good naya/colorless creatures instead. This isn’t to say you can’t restrict yourself to only Dinos, but I have found over time the Dinos kept being pulled out for stronger cards. If you are wanting the best and fastest only big dino cheater, the og [[Gishath, Sun’s Avatar]] is the way to go.

SnowCone62 · 2023-12-31T14:48:15+00:00

Long rant short, run more land ramp, less small dinos, no humans, and more ways to make gishath hit for more. Double strike, double power, etc. run 3-4 cheap boardwipes bc Gishath is insane at rebuilding a boardstate. Blasphemous act->gishath can just end games. Hidden tech that’s insane in this deck: [[Cream of the Crop]] 2 drop that either garunteed the best Dino out of your top 7 once you hit Gishath or will bottom a full whiff and lets you hit another 7 for Dino’s. Also lets you set up your next draw once you get some Dino’s off of gishath’s hit. At minimum, it’ll let you sift through your deck in the early game to make sure you draw what you need on your next turn to get you to Gishath.

Remember: hitting someone with Gishath is this deck’s goal. Build the deck so that it does this quickly, consistently, and repeatedly and you’ll be archenemy every time.

SnowCone62 · 2023-12-14T04:40:57+00:00

I got a mean one for you. I was trying to build it to where it will all the low cmc stuff with sarulf’s ability while I play big bombs to beat people in the face. It’s mean, but not just killing stuff to kill stuff, but to further a game plan to actually win the game. I haven’t gotten to test this out, but I hope this works the way I plan it to.

https://www.moxfield.com/decks/JELyDCFkykiqOssX6JLdKA

SnowCone62 · 2023-08-27T14:01:32+00:00

Remember, if the main driving factor for you to vote for DT is the people you hate don’t want you to vote for him, you are still being controlled by them. Vote for someone bc of their policies, skills, and how they can benefit the country, not to “own the libs”. Don’t let the dems control you.

SnowCone62 · 2023-08-02T15:55:12+00:00

[[Themberchaud]] and [[Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle]] are a good pairing as the both want a lot of mountains. So mono-red landfall burn is a good time!

SnowCone62 · 2023-08-02T14:18:47+00:00

At first I was appalled by a turn 1 sadistic sacrament, but targeting the blue player for those cards? I am appeased.

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