I've actually never played Jodah, but thats a good comparison. Lack of comments I guess means there aren't a ton of folks interested in dino tribal. Maybe too overdone at this point? I was thinking to write up a primer, but... there are so many new fun overpowered dinos!
Scion of Calamity
Hunting Velociraptor
Dinosaurs on a Spaceship
Ghalta, Stampede Tyrant
Wrathful Raptors
Flaming Tyrannosaurus
Bonehoard Dracosaur
Ravenous Tyrannosaurus
I got to play a game with Pantlaza at the helm. I REALLY like this commander. Costs a whopping 3 less than Gishath to cast. You get immediate benefit on ETB as well. I think this commander really solves the some major problems I had with Gishath:
1. struggling to be consistent = not enough card advantage. You needed a certain density of Dinos to make Gishaths trigger hit hard enough and there aren't enough dinos with card advantage. A lot of times if I didn't draw into the right cards I found find myself doing nothing at the table.
2. alleviating table hate towards my giant trampling beatstick. A lot of deck real estate were cards to protect Gishath and enchance his trigger (i.e.
Aggravated Assault or
Duelist's Heritage ) . It became more of a voltron deck than I had anticipated. It wasn't uncommon to spend 12mana to recast Because of the mana cost, it wasn't uncommon either to waste a whole turn to cast Gishath just to get him countered or removed immediately.
3. ramp isn't quite as crucial since Pantlaza basically allows you to circuvent mana costs or rather cast 2 spells for the price of one. And the way the deck is built, you likely are going to cast a dino to discover into a non-dino spell which is in my opinion far better. I was always loath to get a Gishath trigger and see all my ramp, draw, and removal go to the bottom of my library!
4. I found Gishath to be bit too linear aggro for my enjoyment. Pantlaza is perhaps more of a build around commander in some ways. I'm going to try a
Hunting Grounds,
Lurking Predators,
Scroll Rack package. You can also blink dinos outside of your turn for more discover triggers, which means I will probably slot in stuff like
Ephemerate or
Eerie Interlude instead of
Heroic Intervention or
Boros Charm. I like when a commander points in another direction with these types of cards.
For all those reasons I really think Pantlaza is the better dino tribal commander, at least for me.
In my game though I did find myself missing
Aggravated Assault. I ended up losing because one of my opponents was able to tap down all my dinos preventing me from killing him and preventing me from blocking the next turn.