Scrap Dinosaur (Combo/Control)

So the idea behind this one is simple, which is to be highly reliant on a mix of hand traps and trap cards backed by UTC, but with common Apollousa starts backed by the occasional Rank 4. The list emerged close to fully formed, this is a very "feelsy" Dinosaur deck rather than a meticulously crafted statistical engine. Some spicy tech is a pair of Token Collector, which combos really nicely with Lost World, but also provides a recurring way to kill Brave tokens and gut Auroradon's schtick.

No Kaiju, which is weird, but again, I have no explanation. This is literally a 40 card pile of cards I would want to run in Dinosaur, so I'm trying not to sully that.

Changed things up, mostly just down Extravagance and Solemn Strike and up Zefra Divine Strike, but also incorporating the Scrap package. The deck needs its extra deck more than the extra cards, but while space is tight I think it might be a good shell for Divine Strike, which IMO is actually kind of insane if you can make the extra deck space for it.

Kept the basic structure, but I'm above 40 cards now, to facilitate more babies, which was starting to come up. This does water down the Spell negates slightly, but seems to be working okay. It feels mostly like the same deck, except the combos can extend further sometimes.

Okay, so round 1 I "felt" it out, round 2 I bumped things up to see what I liked... Round 3 is when I did some maths, and made some hard cuts. So, I like this deck in this meta. Lancea is not that common, while it has some utility against Brave and DPE+Scythe, it isn't really as big a blowout, and Drytron isn't everywhere maining it. Scythe isn't free to play against, and I feel like there are some decks in this meta where that is basically true, but also the deck has a lot of plays it can make even if the Scythe goes off. NS Baby/Pill is hilarious against DPE+Scythe, provided you've answered the Brave Engine. Token Collector is already an insane combo piece in Dinos, but is also actually a hyper-relevant engine of a hand trap that reads "FU" vs Brave, and the deck has room for 15, count em, 15 interactive cards, with only a few minor sacrifices to get there. The basic idea is simple - decide whether to play around Nib or not, decide which Boss monsters to make, and then use them in tandem with interaction to narrow your opponent's lines of play down. Let's go through the card by card.

3 Lost World. So, back in the day, I thought this card was insane going second, but often unplayable going first. I've only sort of changed my mind about that - the protection from targeting alone is super clutch, there is no HOPT on the damn card, it combos off with a few cards just by itself, (including Token Collector+Dino). The card basically has 2 modes - going first it is either a complete waste of cardboard, or it just took over the game, THEN it is completely bonkers going second. Run this card. TBH I'd love to run a Terraforming, I think mathematically the 4 allowed copies works pretty well, but given the ratios of the deck at that point, and the ratios I wanted to run in the interactive suite, and the fact that too many Lost World can be bricky, it seemed like the 1 card to cut to keep everything where it needed to be. 41 cards actually fs things up a lot for where this version was going. This + Scrap Raptor is full combo, this + Oviraptor is full combo, it is insane with Scrap Wyvern in general, and my fave start for this deck is the occasional weirdness where you're using Accesscode Talker to pop a Lost World Token to start your actual Dinosaur combos (it does happen, and it hilarious), although I've since included Knightmare Cerberus to do that job quite well since that happened, so it is probably not a thing you'll ever do going first anymore.

3 Fossil Dig. So, these are effectively 3 more copies of all of your main Dinosaur combo cards and extenders, this is the glue that holds the combo together. I agonized slightly on whether to include 2 or 3 of these at some point, but I do think the full 3 copies are pretty close to necessary, even if it does open you up to more interruptions than some other starts - it does so marginally, and is otherwise the card that ties the consistency together.

1 Foolish Burial is effectively another copy of Misc, because Misc starts are insane. You give up the protection, but it does the combo, and realistically there are still a lot of great choke points when you Misc anyways, the important thing is specialing a Dino. It actually doubles as a third copy of token Collector, and in a pinch usually has something to send for value (usually Giant Rex, which sort of makes it a "free" extender, or a baby, which Oviraptor specials to extend combos, usually using the Scrap engine). But ideally, this is either Misc or Token Collector.

1 Misc. This is such an important card in the deck, it makes it very hard to interact with my Dinos if I see it in the hand. Probably more importantly, it specials dinos from the deck out of the GY, usually Archosaur to pop baby search pill, or else banishing itself and Archosaur to special baby, then use Oviraptor to pop baby (summon baby, summon Scrap Raptor, etc). The main card in the deck! Also, Sometimes this is Pankratops, and that's always fun.

2 Oviraptor made the final list. The math is like this - this is 7 copies of Misc I have to start my combos, just under a quarter of the deck, or rather a card I am very likely to open. There are also 5 copies of Oviraptor itself to start plays, counting the 3 Fossil Dig. That means I'm reasonably likely to see 1 copy, but reasonably likely not to see 2 - now consider that 3 of those redundant copies are actually full combo with Oviraptor, and that Oviraptor gets searched out by Archosaur + Baby, which is still full combo... But meanwhile, I'm pretty unlikely to see both actual copies of Oviraptor at the same time (and worst-case scenario, a back-up for follow-ups or to destroy with UCT is pretty sweet anyways) and I literally cannot clog on this card - there aren't technically enough copies. I did consider a 3rd copy for the grind game (sometimes, weirdly enough, full combo will use 2 Oviraptors even though the 2nd is bunk, killing followups) but mathemathically it really was a choice between Fossil Dig and Oviraptor, and the fact that Oviraptor x2 is not full combo and Oviraptor + Dig is makes things feel a lot better this way.

2 Token Collector have to make the cut. Honestly, it could be 3 in this deck, however, my mentality towards hand traps and cards in general with a HOPT has shifted - it isn't that I think they are bad, or would never run 3, but it seems like there's a glut of good interactive cards that exist in the format, and I'd rather run a pair of hand traps to do a job and know that I'm less likely to see multiples of the same hand trap, and this has actually even been increasingly true of my engine cards too, particularly when there are consistency cards I can run instead of my engine card. With Foolish Burial there are a lot of great Token Collector combo starts, and the fact that the card is often insanely live as a combo piece (sometimes even literally being the card that pulls a bad hand together) makes it do double duty. I think it is great to have this here with Brave being everywhere, and Auroradon still, y'know, existing, being present, and while I'm not convinced it should be a Dino staple, this format it puts in work being 2 of my interactive cards vs Brave going second (3 going first) and a good combo piece that's also a lvl 4 extender (and maybe STILL an interruption??). This mentality towards HOPT hands traps could shift, but I think it would take Maxx "C" or something equally as powerful and centralizing to do that tbh.

I'm running 1 Ash because I heard 1 Ash = GG.

Okay, okay, this is card #3 vs Brave engine, which is what I'm maining for. It makes the cut because it is flexible, and because I'm trying not to run too many HOPT cards next to each other.

Ghost Ogre is actually good right now, which makes me a liar, because I swore Ghost Ogre was just always bad. But it is good - it can help answer Gryphon Rider and Adventure in a great way and has some actual utility against a lot of the engines these Brave DPE decks tend to merge well with. Also weirdly good against a lot of the Rogue decks that might have a chance of countering this Meta, since many of them have either a Field Spell or a Continuous Spell or Trap that they use to game the system. It definitely helps that against "The Meta" it is THE thing that does the job, and that against the Rogue decks that actually stand up to the Meta it still does work. Ofc you still can't count on it to singlehandedly win you games the way some higher impact cards can, but it also is just the best at what it does right now.

1 Called By was always making the list, but I'm being a cheatyface and pretending this is a good answer to DPE+Scythe. If you're worried about the Scythe lock it can do work, and it can also catch out DPE (assuming you dealt with the Gryphon Rider) or even in some sitchs be the way you keep Celestial from helping them outgrind you, so it does have applications. But also, the card is just nuts in general, and obvy ends up being a great way to answer hand traps going first (which is why it is kind of cheating to think of it as a tool against DPE+Scythe engines - you'll often use it on something else first!)

1 Cosmic Cyclone is also coming in on the basis of being a DPE + Scythe card, and it does technically keep the Scythe lock from going up. But it makes the cut over something more obvious like Effect Veiler for being a very good very specific out for problematic Spells/Traps that TECHNICALLY has utility against DPE + Scythe. Funnily enough, it has utility against Adventures too, which makes it kind of a nice bridge between the two suites.

3 Imperm is 3 Imperm. The card is obviously nuts in general, this is one of those hand traps that always makes my decks even when I'm not too keen on running a lot of hand traps. But also, in this meta, you can hold one copy for Verte or burn an extra on Dagda, or even hold onto it for your turn and use it to push through your board. The fact that it isn't a HOPT, as well as the silly stuff you can do with the spell negate, at least on occasion (even if they never play into it, I can set it where I want, capiche?) makes it something between a staple and an all-star (and I'd argue they might even want to consider semi-limiting it, it sees at least as much play as Called By did back when they limited that). These are copies 3-5 of the anti-DPE package.

So, we have 5 "Solemns" and 2 of them are Judgment, and 3 of them are Zefra Divine Strike. Divine Strike is basically just Strike stapled to Judgement, except you can't negate summons, and it costs a space in your extra deck... Sign me up! These are primarily here to answer Spells and Traps, particularly blowout Spells and Traps, but also particularly Countertraps. Divine Strike is well worth running over Judgment, it can end chains the same way Strike can while also answering Counter Traps and Spells - freaking wild, and well worth the 3 spaces in the Extra deck. It does mean no Extravagance, but TBH I've had some serious problems with Extravagance in Dinosaur for as long as I can remember - I dunno, I feel like Dinos needs MOST of its extra deck, and then has a FEW extra slots it doesn't need, but randomly banishing Secure Gardna and seeing a low-end UCT you can no longer make feels bad, and that kind of thing happened to me in Dinosaur a lot with Extravagance. Regardless, my approach was to pile on spell negates, pretty reasonable since Apollousa is the main boss monster we're trying to make, if only to bait out the Nib, and we're running Imperm. Still, that both of these flex as answers to Monsters as well as ways to end chains and respond to Countertraps make them a sweet suite.

2 Archosaur and 2 Pill is pretty standard. It is pretty simple logic - you would run 1 of each, but if you see the first copy of either your combo would often get killed and/or gimped in that case, so you run 2 of each, which works great actually, because Archosaur + Baby is full combo, and Baby + Pill (or even Archosaur + Pill or Archosaur + dino) equals an easy cheesy UCT. I actually love these numbers given the little packages of 5 (1/8th) the deck creates because, oh, look at that, 3 Dig + 2 Archosaur = 5.

Holy Babycerasaurus Batman! Yep, I'm on all 3 Babies (+1 Petiteranodon). There's some reason for this. It largely does, in fact, boil down to the card not being a HOPT. In your usual combo, what I typically call "full combo" you'll use up either 3 babies, or 2 babies and 1 terano. That means, really, you only need to run 2 babies and 1 terano to do full combo. And in terms of starting hands, 2 Babies, 3 Fossil Dig and 1 Petiteranodon for the "mini" combo is actually acceptable, to say the least. It may even be better, at least in some ways, since you can NS baby and pop baby in hand for some of your combos, but the third baby is just UCT bait. But the deck summons babies from the deck like wild, it pops babies in the deck like wild. A 3rd baby is the difference between access to Pank and not. A 3rd baby is the difference between 2 Lost World being redundant, and 2 Lost World being freaking wild. A 3rd baby just in the deck sometimes is all the difference. Also, having all 3 Baby when Baby is needed for most of your combo starts does slightly improve the number of hands that combo off. It also slightly increases the general "brickiness" problems created with some hands (For instance, it makes possible the 5 "baby" hand, and while that is an extreme case, 2 babies and 3 hand traps remains sad) but I think the trade-off is quite acceptable considering the utility this offers you during your main combos. Giant Rex is the "unnoficial" baby. This guy makes Rank 4 Xyz plays and Lvl 8 plays possible mostly, but is a decent little beater in his own right, and you're basically choosing between this guy and Petitteranodan at the end of your main combo, depending on the rest of your plays and your matchup.

The Scrap engine is here. Scrap Raptor is a Dino and can be summoned off of any baby (including terano). It can pop itself to instantly make Scrap Wyvern, which in turn can extend your plays by popping babies, or even better, popping Lost World tokens to pop babies from the deck. It can also just pop a baby by itself before going into Wyvern - Wyvern pops Raptor, Raptor searches Chimera, NS Chimera, Summon Raptor, BOOM Rank 4 Xyz. With a little work this can also help set up Omega, and with Apollo you can force Nib while enabling UCT, meaning if they Nib early it might not be enough, but if they Nib too late they've just given you a lot of free advantage. Also, just nutty going second. Raptor + Lost World is a great combo by itself, which weirdly enough really helps the deck by creating more Dinos that just straight combo with Lost World by themselves.

2 UCT, 1 Pank. What is there to say? UCT is like, the main point of playing Dinos, especially right now. Pankratops seems a little weak this format, but the card is always insane, just generically, and this is Dinosaur, where free Panks from the deck are just, like, always on the table. I want more Panks, quite badly, which is probably a good sign this is a good limit.

In the extra deck, we have 3 Zefra Metaltron. TBH this just enables our Strikes, but you will occasionally use Metaltron as a stepping stone for Apollousa and Accesscode, and oddly enough, the banish ability is actually pretty relevant, since the deck can flood the board. However, in general, don't summon this card, unless you really have to - this is a brick for Divine Strike. If you just, like, run 3 Judgment and tech in stuff like Red Reboot and Feather Duster you'll make back all of those points against Trap decks, but lose a lot of utility against generic board breaking spells, as well as the ability to end chains. Solemn Strikes could end chains as a replacement for these as well, but again, you lose points against Backrow and Sweepers. Mind you, don't feel married to 3 Divine Strike if you have other tech calls to make (main or side). There's every chance that Ice Dragon's Prison and I:P is better in your meta - but consider this - Divine Strike really does do the better part of both of the best Solemns.

Scrap Wyvern is nuts, this is the main combo engine of the deck, the Needlefibre as it were. This is the broken Link 2 that pulls it all together going first, AND pops cards going second. I actually forgot this one in the feelsy list, but by the second attempt it was in.

1 Unicorn. I like Unicorn. Wyvern into Unicorn into Accesscode is just... Really good. Especially if you made an Almiraj somewhere.

1 Knightmare Cerberus. This one is... Weird? But I kept running into situations where I simultaneously wanted a generic way to pop a Lost World token and a way to discard, and this is that. Also, under Wyvern it draws a card, so that's neat. This could really be Tornado Dragon or Phoenix if you're expecting a lot of Eldlich or Geist or even backrow heavy versions of other engines, and those might be better at the rogue level for locals. But Cerberus is still an interactive card most of the time, and is also a weird consistency card in this deck. It's a lot easier to make a Cerberus to start combo plays than Accesscode after all.

Apollousa. Just a way to make sure you bait the Nib, make the Nib math hard. Also, I've heard it negates monster effects sometimes. Bagooska will help this not get beaten over.

Accesscode. What is there to say? If I'm going second, I want to pop a bunch of cards and beat in for game.

Evolzar Laggia is the only Evolzar to make the cut in the deck. Dolkka is better in terms of pure value, but this deck actually specifically needs ways to negate Spells and Traps a lot more than monster effects, so Dolkka seems redundant, whereas this is just good insurance.

Bagooska is great. Go you drunk animal, go! I'm fond of this card with Apollousa, but I'm also fond of this card going second to really force people's hands. Don't make this with Token Collector or Giant Rex tho, unless you really need to.

Abyss Dweller is Abyss Dweller. Not only is it generically quite good right now, it adds to the complexity of the simplified game state, or to put in another way, it reduces the lines of play opponents have to make in a situation where their lines of play are already limited by other factors. Also, UCT can eat it pretty much right away, and in a pinch it can even send something like a Giant Rex to the GY right away to help extend while creating a floodgate effect. Obviously, its utility will vary by matchup, but I like that it does some work against both of the "main" engines this format, for obvious reasons.

Almiraj and Linkuriboh are here to make a bunch of easy cheesy UCTs and fill the GY with Link monsters with different attributes. Summon Kurbioh or Almiraj early and often, before summon 5 if you can, to help ensure Pill isn't trash.

Omega is a grind game card. If your opponent's plan is to burn down their hand to disrupt you, making Omega becomes more appealing, but weirdly enough the best thing about the card is recycling Misc. Also great with the Gamma in the side. This is the card you use when you're pretty sure you can simplify the gamestate and live the turn, but aren't sure if your board will be broken. For example, against Tenyi and Swordsoul cards, you might be really hard-pressed not to end up in a pretty simplified board state no matter what, or against Prank-Kids as well, or against Rank 8 Spam. Sphere Mode is going to hurt, and there's no way of getting around it. Even weaker, grindy stuff like Salad might just keep you from making much aside from UCT and then just set up for the long haul. But limiting your opponent's options, setting yourself up for recovery, and knowing something is coming back at the start of your turn? That's priceless.

Side deck is wild man. Okay, I wanted more Cosmic and 1 Reboot, and that is pretty standard for me. But I decided I didn't really need Evenly, and I'm really not feeling it right now. Instead I decided to pile up on 2 ofs of hand traps, all chosen on the basis that they have some utility against Brave, DPE, or Scythe (or more than 1) while also being blowouts depending on the engine run with Brave, DPE + Scythe. At that point, I was also running all of the hand traps that scare me, including literally Ghost Ogre (wait, that's not correct is it?). So, I decided throw in 2 Gamma, which is half-decent as an anti-handtrap card in this deck sometimes and is also insane going second a lot of the time, and 3 Crossout, which now has amazing targets, including Gamma, for 5 more anti-handtrap cards to go with Called. I also included 1 Driver, because Gamma deserves a friend, and Gorramit I do too!

I'm an idiot, but a smart one. Solemns in, reading the card explains the card! XD