Meme or Dream? "But No One Told Me Dinos Are Bad in Historic."

A few months ago, Wizards started publishing decklists from Magic Arena. To qualify for publication, a deck needs to win at least six matches in a row at platinum rank or better. This sounds simple on its face, but some incredibly janky lists end up being published every time lists are published. This has led to speculation that a bug in the system allows decks that didn't actually win six matches in a row to be published or, for the most tin-foil-hatted crowd, the idea that Wizards just publishes whatever it wants, to make the metagame look more diverse than it really is. 

This week, we had a relatively normal-looking batch of decklists from Arena, although one Historic deck caught my eye: a Dinosaur tribal deck featuring one copy of a bunch of seemingly random Dinosaurs more common on Commander tables than in 60-card formats, like Gishath, Sun's Avatar, Zacama, Primal Calamity, Etali, Primal Storm, and friends. The deck is so committed to the Dinosaur theme that it even has one Huatli, Warrior Poet—a planeswalker that was even considered underpowered for Standard but does have a Dinosaur in the art and make Dinosaur tokens. At first, I figured all of the one-ofs were because the deck was on a Dinosaur toolbox-tutor plan fueled by Forerunner of the Empire, but this thought quickly faded when I realized the deck only played two Forerunner of the Empires, even though it has a bunch of tutor-target one-ofs and engage synergies. While the deck looks at least semi-functional, it also is built around Dinosaurs, so is it really at least semi-functional, or did someone miss the message that Dinosaurs aren't typically thought of as a playable tribe in constructed formats? Is Historic Dinosaurs a meme or dream? Let's find out!