By: Travis Allen
@wizardbumpin
Don’t miss this week’s installment of the MTG Fast Finance podcast, an on-topic, no-nonsense tour through the week’s most important changes in the Magic economy.
No matter which conversation thread you choose to look at after this weekend’s initial Kaladesh-legal SCG Open — the breakout performance of vehicles as an archetype, Aetherworks Marvel swinging for the fences and sort of getting there, or Chandra, Torch of Defiance mostly hanging out on the sidelines — there’s one giant narrative that none can escape.
Of course, I’m talking about the fact that 32 copies of Smuggler’s Copter that showed up in the top 8. It wasn’t 25% of the top 8. It wasn’t 40%. It wasn’t 50% or 60% or 75%. Literal 100% of the top 8 played four Smuggler’s Copter. Every single deck.
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Skysovereign can’t kill copter or cruiser. True.
But… copter can’t drive itself. Neither can cruiser.
Tell me something… How many vehicle decks out there are using X/4’s or X/5’s or greater to crew vehicles? Probably not many.
So, Skysovereign ETB’s, kills one of their crew. Next turn it attacks, kills another of their crew. They’re going to run out of cards eventually. Even if it ETB kills one of their crew, and attacks and kills another of their crew, and they block with one of their fatties, chances are you just 3-for-1’d them for 5 mana.
Killing the crew hasn’t been a great strategy. Unlike equipment, the turn they cast the creature they can “crew up” the vehicle and use it.
Yes, they may only get 1 attack in per creature, but with things like Copter and Depala they will be building advantage with each of those attacks.
I’m with Lockheed here. Skysovereign would be good at keeping pilots out of the copter, but because summoning sick creatures can crew, and because the copter improves your hand every time you attack, you’d be fighting an uphill battle to keep it grounded. I could end up wrong, but my suspicion is that in general, trying to prevent your opponent from crewing vehicles isn’t going to be particularly productive. A better line of play will be to remove the vehicles themselves or make attacking unprofitable/irrelevant.