Faster than Ever Before!

Introduction

This is the second version of my Gruul Fast Dinosaurs deck. In this version, I wanted to remove some top-end cards to make it less likely to have a starting hand with exclusively 5 mana cards. Trumpeting Carnosaur can be channeled for 3 mana, and Gwenna, Eyes of Gaea helps to get big creatures out while also untapping at casting any of the big dinos in the deck.

Some other changes were to go up to 26 lands to ensure that you are not too dependent on mana dorks, which might die to sweepers. This also meant that I had to reduce the number of mana dorks so that there are only 3 Ixalli's Lorekeepers, 3 Intrepid Paleontologists, and 2 Gwenna, Eyes of Gaea to prevent drawing only mana producing cards but no payoff cards.

I also wanted to have some early removal against aggro decks, and I settled on 3 Triumphant Chomps and 3 Lightning Strikes, both of which can kill some early creatures. Triumphant Chomp is also able to deal with Sheoldred, the Apocalypse when you have a dino in play. Part of the reason to include Lightning Strike was that I considered it to be better than any of the small 2-mana dinos. It can kill creatures, planeswalkers, and opponents at instant speed.

I also removed the aggro tag from the deck, as it is now clearly midrange. I think that midrange dinos work better than small ones. If you want low-mana cost aggro cards, I think it's better to go with a regular mono-red aggro deck, which sports several small creatures with haste.

Previous Version

The previous version of the deck is here: Gruul Fast Dinosaurs (LCI)

Format

• The deck is for the Standard format with The Lost Caverns of Ixalan being the last legal set.
• The deck is probably Tier 1.5 or Tier 2 caliber.
• The deck can be played in both Bo1 and Bo3.
• The deck is pretty fast, and thus it's suitable for quickly grinding a large number of wins in the MTG Arena ladder.

Source

This is my own brew, but some changes in this version were inspired by Gruul Dino Aggro by hellogoodgame.

Strategy

Mulliganing Aggressively

Because the deck has several big mana cards and not so many 1 and 2 mana cards, you need to mulligan your hand, if you don't have low mana cards, especially if you are on the draw.

Cavern of Souls

There are only two types of creatures in the deck: Dinosaurs and Druids. Therefore, if you draw two copies of Cavern of Souls, you have all your creature cards covered and made uncounterrable.

Ixalli's Lorekeeper, Gwenna, Eyes of Gaea, and Trumpeting Carnosaur

You can use mana from Ixalli's Lorekeeper and Gwenna, Eyes of Gaea, to channel Trumpeting Carnosaur, because it is a creature card and a dinosaur source.

Mana Base Statistics

• Total of 26 lands
• 18 lands produce green mana
• 18 lands produce red mana
• 4 lands produce colorless mana and possibly colored mana

Starting Hand Probabilities

Bo3 (No Hand Smoothing)

• At least two lands: 89.6 %
• 2–5 lands: 87.4 %
• At least 1 green mana: 93.0 %
• At least 1 red mana: 93.0 %

Bo1 (Hand Smoothing)

Ranked Queue (Best of 2 Hands)

Hand smoothing in the ranked queue takes the best of 2 different starting hands (of 2 different deck shuffles).

• 2–5 lands: 98.40 % (approximately)

Play Queue (Best of 3 Hands)

Hand smoothing in the play queue takes the best of 3 different starting hands (of 3 different deck shuffles).

• 2–5 lands: 99.80 % (approximately)

Land Probabilities

Probabilities are for on the play / on the draw.

Land Count

With 2-Land Starting Hand

• At least 3 lands by turn 3: 70.54 % / 84.40 %
• At least 4 lands by turn 4: 42.81 % / 61.94 %
• At least 5 lands by turn 5: 23.67 % / 40.86 %

With 3-Land Starting Hand

• At least 4 lands by turn 4: 82.67 % / 90.64 %
• At least 5 lands by turn 5: 58.75 % / 73.07 %

With 4-Land Starting Hand

• At least 5 lands by turn 5: 89.26 % / 94.08 %

With Any Starting Hand

• At least 3 lands by turn 3: 84.63 % / 90.19 %
• At least 4 lands by turn 4: 71.64 % / 80.17 %
• At least 5 lands by turn 5: 56.71 % / 67.24 %