Treasuresaurus Rex

Hello Alchemist,

Just closing the hell week at work now and finally I can share with you a brew I’m bringing into Dominaria Standard. I wrote about the first iteration of this deck here using Indomitable Creativity dinosaurs. After testing, the Naya build and using servo and vampire tokens just didn’t work. Creatures are far more vulnerable to removal and I found myself using them to block and then run out of things to sacrifice to Indomitable.

I spoke with Andrew Tolson who piloted a similar UR Indomitable deck to a 9-2 record in a grand prix and walked him over my iteration — A dino shell within a UR control base.

Andrew used treasure-generating reactive spells like Hornswoggle, Depths of Desire and Spell Swindle to foil the opponent’s plans, leave treasure behind and sac them to bring into play a combination of dinosaurs and Regisaur Alpha to give them haste.

If we trust probability, paying 3 for Indomitable Creativity’s X-cost should net you 2 elder dinosaurs and 1 Regisaur. In some cases, you might get 2 Regisaur and 1 elder dino. What’s not good is netting the 3 elder dinos and no Regisaur because you expose your threats to removal. The goal is to always swing the turn you cast Indomitable.

I am forecasting a lot of decks will play Dominaria’s best creatures and why not, there are a ton of powerful legends in the uncommon slot.

History of Benalia has shown a very steep price spike in the last couple of hours and having two 2/2 bodies across 2 turns for 3 mana and a pump ability to setup a strong attack step is no joke. This is why I decided to play with Fiery Cannonade in the main over Sweltering Sun.

Looking at the deck list, the shell behaves like a UR control. You draw and pass the turn with open mana to cast spot removals pre-combat or counter the opponent’s plays.

Supreme Will and Glimmer of Genius helps refill our hand with answers and also lets us dig for our Indomitable Creativity. One of Andrew’s losses caught on camera was him trying to find the Indomitable Creativity and take over the game against the mono red opponent.

Dominaria didn’t give us a whole lot of options as a top curve finisher like a replacement for Torrential or Combustible Gearhulk. However the check lands help us keep our mana coming into play untapped. We’re cutting down on the fast lands which aren’t really fast if you draw them mid-game. Another point that Andrew reminded me off is to make sure we have the ability to cast our creatures if we don’t draw our Indomitable Creativity. We’re splashing 9 green mana producers to make sure we get at least 1 green mana available for Regisaur Alpha.

Against heavy control match-ups that run a ton of creature removal, we can shift the deck into an even more controlling configuration by upping our counter spells to protect our new win condition, Chandra, Torch of Defiance.

Struggle to Survive replaces Depths of Desire against GPG and Scarab God decks. Survive helps keep graveyards clean and it also gives us another try to setup our win if our treasure makers and Indomitable Creativity gets countered.

Against decks that have no way to deal with enchantment and artifacts, Mechanized Production is a great tech card I learned from Andrew. With this in play and a Spell Swindle in hand, we can effectively cheat a quick win by enchanting a treasure token.

I am pretty excited to test drive this in my next FNM and improve my mana base once Dominaria is out. Speaking of Dominaria, is there anything you want me to play with? Let me know by leaving a comment below!

See you soon!

Vanson