Veloci-Ramp-Tor precon upgrade guide

Pantlaza discovers for a Dinosaur’s toughness, and 9 of the 34 Dinosaur cards in the 99 have less toughness than they cost mana. Nine swaps for $47.52 leave only 5 of them short, lift the ones that pay back more than they cost from 11 to 14, and cut the always-tapped lands from seven to five.

Every count here is read off the shipped decklist and read again after the nine swaps go in. Prices are the cheapest printing in print as of October 2026, which for several of these cards is a recent reprint and not the original.

What are the best Veloci-Ramp-Tor upgrades?

Ranked by what each card does for this list. The slots they take come from the cuts.

1. Terrian, World Tyrant ($0.22): a vanilla 9/7 for {2}{G}{G}{G}. It has no text and needs none, because when it enters Pantlaza discovers 7 off a five-mana body.
2. Pugnacious Hammerskull ($0.20): a 6/6 for three that discovers 6. Its stun counter only arrives when it attacks while you control no other Dinosaur, and this deck has 34 of them.
3. Agonasaur Rex ($0.61): an 8/8 trampler for five that discovers 8. When the mana is wrong you can cycle it for {2}{G} instead, which draws a card and puts two +1/+1 counters on a creature, with trample and indestructible until end of turn.
4. Guardian Project ($13.04): draws a card whenever a nontoken creature enters under a name that nothing else you control, and no creature card in your graveyard, shares. The box is singleton, so nearly every creature qualifies.
5. Beast Whisperer ($4.27): draws a card whenever you cast a creature spell. A creature cast from hand with both engines out draws two.
6. Ghalta, Primal Hunger ($0.95): printed at twelve mana and reduced by the total power you control, so it costs far less once a few Dinosaurs are out. Its toughness is 12, so the discover finds any nonland card in the library.
7. Bonehoard Dracosaur ($14.87): a 5/5 flying first striker that exiles the top two cards each upkeep for you to play that turn, and pays out a 3/1 Dinosaur for a land or a Treasure for a spell.

Stomping Ground ($7.04) and Temple Garden ($6.32) take the slots of two Thriving lands that always enter tapped, and Rogue's Passage goes to make room. Every pick gets its argument below.

Pantlaza reads toughness, and the box was priced in mana value

Pantlaza's trigger fires when it or another Dinosaur enters, and it discovers X where X is that creature's toughness. Discover exiles cards from the top of the library until a nonland card of mana value X or less shows up, then lets you cast it free or take it into your hand. It happens once a turn. So the number that matters on a Dinosaur is its toughness against its cost: a creature with more toughness than mana value pays back more than it cost, and one with less is paying a surcharge.

Eleven of the 34 Dinosaur cards in the 99 clear that bar. The widest margins come from three-drops: Wayward Swordtooth is a 5/5 that also lets you play an extra land each turn, Runic Armasaur is a 2/5, Topiary Stomper a 4/4 that fetches a basic, and Thrashing Brontodon a 3/4. Each discovers 4 or 5 for three mana.

Nine fall short, and two of those are worse than short. Deathgorge Scavenger is a 3/2 and Majestic Heliopterus a 2/2, the only two Dinosaurs in the box with toughness 2, so each discovers 2 for the price of three or four mana. With Marauding Raptor out, each creature that enters under your control takes 2 damage from it, which kills either of them on arrival.

The trigger asks if you want to discover, and the ruling on Pantlaza says it stops triggering for the turn only once you decide to. Declining a small trigger leaves the turn's discover for a bigger Dinosaur. That matters most for Bonehoard Dracosaur's 3/1 tokens, which arrive in your upkeep and would discover 1. Progenitor's Icon adds a trick on top: name Dinosaur and the next Dinosaur spell you cast that turn can be cast with flash, so one cast on an opponent's turn gets that turn's discover as well as yours.

After the swaps 14 Dinosaurs have more toughness than mana value, and the three new ones are Hammerskull (6 against 3), Rex (8 against 5) and Terrian (7 against 5). Five still fall short: Temple Altisaur, Wakening Sun's Avatar, Regal Behemoth, Regisaur Alpha and Thundering Spineback. Temple Altisaur and Wakening Sun's Avatar are argued for below. Regal Behemoth makes you the monarch and adds a mana for each land you tap while you are, Regisaur Alpha makes a 3/3 trampler and gives your other Dinosaurs haste, and Thundering Spineback gives them +1/+1, which adds 1 to every discover that follows. The shortfall is the price of their text.

Seven lands enter tapped, and the green count doesn't move

Seven of the box's 39 lands never enter untapped: Mosswort Bridge, Jungle Shrine, Myriad Landscape, Path of Ancestry and the three Thriving lands (Bluff, Grove and Heath). Six more are conditional and 26 enter untapped. With 17 cards at three mana, a tapped land on turn three costs a play.

Stomping Ground and Temple Garden replace Thriving Bluff and Thriving Heath. A Thriving land makes its own colour and one more chosen as it enters, so both could already make green, and the shocklands keep both colours and enter untapped for 2 life. This is a speed change and not a fixing one. After the swaps always-tapped lands go from seven to five, conditional lands from six to eight and untapped lands from 26 to 25.

Rogue's Passage is the third land out. Five lands in the box make colourless only: Arch of Orazca, Kessig Wolf Run, Myriad Landscape, Rogue's Passage and Temple of the False God. Kessig Wolf Run adds trample and power, Arch draws, the Temple makes two mana once you have five lands, and the Landscape ramps. Rogue's Passage pays {4} to make one creature unblockable, which I rate the weakest job of the five, in a deck with double pips in all three colours. That leaves the list at 38 lands.

The audit puts 31 sources behind green in both lists. Sixteen spells want two green sources by turn three after the swaps, up from 13 in the box, and the audit wants 36 sources for a 90% chance where this list has 31 and 83.9%. The four new double-green cards (Terrian, Rex, Beast Whisperer and Ghalta) widen the gap while Verdant Sun's Avatar leaves it. I left it alone. A fix would take red or white, which are short on their own double pips too (red is 77.7% to have RR by turn four, the weakest double-pip figure on the list), and Cultivate, Rampant Growth, Migration Path, Thunderherd Migration and Topiary Stomper all fetch a basic, so they can find a Forest when green is what's missing.

One small gain: Farseek names land types and not basics, so it can fetch Stomping Ground and Temple Garden as well as the Canopy Vista and Cinder Glade already in the box. The fetch enters tapped, and paying 2 life for the shockland's own clause doesn't change that.

Four cards in the deck ask you to choose a creature type: From the Rubble, Progenitor's Icon, Secluded Courtyard and Unclaimed Territory. Name Dinosaur on all four. That leaves out the five Humans (Wayta, Atzocan Seer, Otepec Huntmaster, Drover of the Mighty and Ixalli's Lorekeeper) and Beast Whisperer, which can't use the any-colour mana from the two lands, though each of those six costs four or less.

Two draw engines for a deck that waits on damage

Apart from Lifecrafter's Bestiary, which asks {G} for each creature spell, the box draws on combat damage (Curious Altisaur), on damage taken (Ripjaw Raptor), off an opponent's activation (Runic Armasaur) or for five mana and up. Beast Whisperer and Guardian Project don't wait for any of it.

A creature cast from hand or by a discover draws off both. A creature that comes back without being cast, like the Dinosaur From the Rubble returns each end step, draws off Guardian Project alone. Tokens draw from neither, including the 3/3 Dinosaur from Regisaur Alpha, the 3/3s Thundering Spineback makes and Bonehoard Dracosaur's 3/1s.

Bonehoard Dracosaur is the engine that isn't a draw spell. It exiles two cards in your upkeep and lets you play them that turn, so a land you can't play (you've already made your drop) or a spell you can't afford is lost, but the Treasure and the 3/1 Dinosaur it makes soften that. It's also the fifth card in the deck that wants {R}{R}, and red is the colour the audit finds least likely to be ready for its double pips.

Ghalta deserves a line on cost. His printed {10}{G}{G} falls by the total power you control, so Pantlaza alone makes it {6}{G}{G}, Pantlaza plus Wayward Swordtooth makes it {1}{G}{G}, and the floor is {G}{G}. That's also why the average mana value in the summary above reads high.

Nine cuts, and the priciest is a $10.49 enchantment

Xenagos, God of Revels is the one cut that returns real money. It isn't a creature while your devotion to red and green is under seven, and Xenagos supplies only two of those symbols itself, so until seven symbols are in play it's a five-mana enchantment. The beginning-of-combat trigger works either way and doubles a creature's power, so this isn't a bad card. It's an off-type one, because Xenagos isn't a Dinosaur and never triggers Pantlaza, and it takes a slot that a 9/7 for five fills.

Deathgorge Scavenger and Majestic Heliopterus are the two toughness-2 Dinosaurs described above. The Scavenger exiles a graveyard card, gaining 2 life for a creature card and getting +1/+1 for any other, depending on the card, and the Heliopterus gives another Dinosaur flying when it attacks. Neither is bad text, but both are small bodies on a commander that pays for big ones.

Verdant Sun's Avatar costs seven for a 5/5 whose only text is gaining life equal to the toughness of itself and each creature after it. That's a discover 5 at seven mana. Bellowing Aegisaur is six mana for a 3/5, and its counters on your other creatures only arrive after it has been dealt damage. Both slots go to cards that cost less and discover more.

Sunfrill Imitator is a 3/3 for three that becomes a copy of another Dinosaur when it attacks. Becoming a copy isn't entering the battlefield, so the copy never triggers Pantlaza and never triggers the copied creature's own enters ability. It's a combat trick sitting in a deck whose strength is what happens as creatures arrive.

The three lands that leave are covered in the lands section above.

What stays despite the cost, and four cards I priced and passed on

Apex Altisaur costs nine and is a 10/10, so it discovers 10 when it enters, fights a creature you don't control as it does and fights again whenever it's dealt damage. It's one of the 11 Dinosaurs whose toughness beats their cost. Zacama, Primal Calamity untaps all your lands if you cast it, which refunds a hard-cast nine mana, and a discover that casts it untaps whatever you'd already tapped that turn.

Wakening Sun's Avatar destroys every non-Dinosaur creature, but only if you cast it from your hand. Keep it for the hand. If a discover puts it into your hand instead of casting it, it sweeps from there as normal.

Temple Altisaur is a 3/4 for five with the toughness shortfall noted above, and I'm keeping it for what it does to your own sweeper. Chandra's Ignition has a creature you control deal damage equal to its power to every other creature, yours included. With Temple Altisaur out, each of your Dinosaurs other than Temple Altisaur takes 1 of it, so the sweeper turns one-sided against everything that isn't one of your Dinosaurs. The cost is that Wrathful Raptors only reflects the damage actually dealt, which prevention cuts to 1. If you never plan to cast the Ignition, this is the next card out.

Scion of Calamity deserves a note for the table you play at. Myriad does nothing against a single opponent, so in a two-player game it's a 5/5 for five. In a pod each token copy that enters is a Dinosaur entering, and it can trigger Pantlaza.

Mosswort Bridge is the tapped land I'd keep: its hideaway card plays free once your creatures have 10 power between them, and Pantlaza (4) with Wayward Swordtooth (5) is nine of that already.

The Humans earn their slots with their text. Otepec Huntmaster makes Dinosaur spells cost {1} less and gives one haste, Drover of the Mighty is a mana creature that grows to 3/3 beside a Dinosaur, Atzocan Seer makes any colour and can sacrifice itself to return a Dinosaur card to your hand, and Ixalli's Lorekeeper is a one-drop whose mana pays for Dinosaurs. Wayta, Trainer Prodigy fights for {2}{G} and tap, or for {G} and tap against two of your own creatures, which this deck can use as removal.

Devil Dinosaur ($29.75) is the best card I left out and I'd buy it first once the nine are done. It's a 5/5 trampler for four that gives your other Dinosaurs +1/+1 and hexproof, and the extra toughness counts when Pantlaza reads it. I passed because $29.75 is more than half of the whole list's cost. Gishath, Sun's Avatar ($4.96) costs eight and has 6 toughness, which is below its cost. Trapjaw Tyrant ($6.31) needs {W}{W}, and white is already 3 sources short for its double-pip cards. Sacred Foundry ($10.28) fixes red and white, and the gap on this list is green. None of the four is a Game Changer.

The upgraded decklist

The full hundred with the nine swaps in: 38 lands (25 untapped, eight conditional, five always tapped, against the stock 26, six and seven), 34 Dinosaur cards in the 99 as before, and no Game Changer in either list. The nine adds come to $47.52. Hover any name to see the card and its current price.

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“Load into the deck builder” opens this list in your account, pinned to the printings the box shipped, ready to edit or save. “Copy decklist” gives you plain text for Moxfield, Archidekt or Arena, with no account needed.

FAQ

Which Dinosaur should I play first with Pantlaza out?

The one with the most toughness for its cost, which usually means a three-drop. Wayward Swordtooth is a 5/5 for three and Pugnacious Hammerskull is a 6/6 for three, so either one discovers 5 or 6 for three mana. The trigger only works once a turn and only after you choose to discover, so a small Dinosaur's trigger is worth declining when a bigger one is in hand.

What does Ghalta, Primal Hunger actually cost in this deck?

Twelve mana minus the total power you control, with a floor of {G}{G}. Pantlaza (4) and Wayward Swordtooth (5) bring it to {1}{G}{G}, and any third creature with power brings it to {G}{G}. Ghalta's own toughness is 12, so when he enters, Pantlaza discovers 12, which finds any nonland card in the library.

Does Wakening Sun's Avatar sweep the board when I discover into it?

No. Its trigger checks that you cast it from your hand, and a discovered card is cast from exile. You still get a 7/7 Dinosaur and a discover 7 when it enters, but the non-Dinosaur creatures survive. If discover puts it into your hand instead, you can cast it from there at full price for the sweep.

How much do the nine swaps cost?

$47.52 at the cheapest printing of each card, as of October 2026. Bonehoard Dracosaur ($14.87) and Guardian Project ($13.04) are $27.91 of that, so skipping both leaves a $19.61 version that still gets the new Dinosaurs, Beast Whisperer, Ghalta and both lands.

Which creature type do I name on Secluded Courtyard and Unclaimed Territory?

Dinosaur, on all four choose-a-type cards. That leaves out the five Humans (Wayta, Atzocan Seer, Otepec Huntmaster, Drover of the Mighty and Ixalli's Lorekeeper) and Beast Whisperer, so those six cheap creature cards can't use the any-colour mana. Every other creature in the deck is a Dinosaur, Elder Dinosaurs included.

Can I pay life for Stomping Ground and Temple Garden every time?

Pay only when the tempo matters. Each costs 2 life to enter untapped. Farseek names land types and not basics, so it can fetch both of them as well as Canopy Vista and Cinder Glade, but a fetched land enters tapped even if you pay the 2 life, so don't pay it then. Cultivate and the other basic-land fetches can't find them.