Kaladesh spoiler season kind of went zero to 60 in seconds, but now that we’re off to the races, we might as well get in the car…
…or the helicopter.
Smuggler’s Copter is a weirdly strong aggro card with tons of powerful synergies. Evaluating a new card type can be tricky, as we don’t really have experience with this sort of card yet. Vehicles are sort of like creatures mixed with Equipment. They have three major differences from Equipment:
● They don’t scale with the creatures tapped, instead encouraging you to exactly meet their threshold requirement, which can involve multiple creatures.
● While Equipment sort of have “haste” when you play and then equip them in the same turn, Vehicles instead get their haste-like ability when you cast a creature and then use it to Crew a Vehicle that same turn.
● They don’t put your creature in danger, instead risking the Vehicle.
While I expect a number of vehicles to show up in high-level Constructed, Smuggler’s Copter is probably going to be one of the best (if not the best, depending on what all gets spoiled).
To start with, how good would a 3/3 artifact creature for two mana be? I’d be surprised if they would print that, as that is quite a bit better than most colors get for two-drops. Red decks, for instance, have often been willing to play 3/2s that can’t block, and artifacts even have some good synergies at the moment.
Next, we factor in that Smuggler’s Copter loots whenever it attacks or blocks. That is huge! Yes, we did have to tap a creature to crew the Copter, but we effectively turned our creature into a Merfolk Looter for the turn. That’s upside! What’s better, attacking for one or looting? Not only is looting usually better, it’s usually better than attacking for two. Just look at Merfolk Looter.
Already, we’re talking about too good of a baseline with serious upside. Now, stack flying on top of everything else! That’s actually a really big deal. Flying is a strong ability, particularly for attacking planeswalkers, but it’s also a serious color-pie bleed. Red aggro doesn’t usually get cheap fliers, for instance.
As if that wasn’t enough, Smuggler’s Copter also dodges sorcery-speed removal. Planar Outburst? Ruinous Path? Chandra, Torch of Defiance?
This card is absurd.
And speaking of Chandra, Torch of Defiance…
Just to make sure we’re all on the same page, this is a good card, but it’s not Jace, the Mind Sculptor
I knew Jace, the Mind Sculptor. This, my friend, is no Jace, the Mind Sculptor.
Don’t you see! They are manipulating you! The four abilities! The art. The depth of play. The fact that it’s Chandra’s homeworld.
This card is absolutely awesome. Like, really, really awesome. There are lots of awesome levels before you get into “too good” territory.
And then you have to go through several levels of too good before you get to Jace, the Mind Sculptor.
So you’re not into Chandra, Torch of Defiance?
What? No. The card’s great. What part of “absolutely awesome” was confusing?
The caveats?
Let’s start with that absurd top ability.
Chandra, Pyromaster was an all-star throughout its Standard life and has shown up in Modern and Legacy many times. The key ability was her zero, which is similar to Chandra, Torch of Defiance except for three major differences:
● Chandra, Torch of Defiance can’t play lands.
● Chandra, Torch of Defiance can turn any card into a Shock to the face.
● Chandra, Torch of Defiance gains a loyalty from using this ability.
While not being able to play land is unfortunate, getting to deal two damage instead is frequently better in many red decks. Additionally, I think the option to turn anything into damage is worth more than getting to play the card later in the turn. Plus, the new Chandra can come down and deal two immediately, if nothing else.
Even if those two parts are close, gaining a loyalty is absolutely huge. It’s not just the extra damage required to kill Chandra, Torch of Defiance, but also what you’re building towards. The new Chandra has an extremely powerful ultimate that isn’t very far away at all. After you ultimate, it takes very few additional spells to kill your opponent, and there’s very little they can do to get out of it.
Already, we’re talking about a great card, and if it had anything else it could do of value, we’d have a star.
Both of her other abilities are great.
The -3 is such a crucial one, and so strong, it will help define the format to come. We’re talking about a Flametongue Kavu, but instead of leaving you with a 4/2, you get a ridiculously powerful planeswalker that can draw a card every turn.
As if that wasn’t enough, Chandra also has a +1 that produces two red mana. A mana accelerator that costs four and produces two is already an attractive proposition, and that’s not even counting the other three modes. Chandra’s mana ability is actually extremely well-situated. You can drop her and then immediately make mana to cast Oath of Chandra to help protect her.
Not only do you get to kill the creature, you even get the extra two damage in the end step!
Incendiary Flow, Harnessed Lightning, Smuggler’s Copter…there are many great follow-up plays you can make, and that’s just the turn you cast her. Once you untap, she ramps you straight into seven!
It’s like Chandra draws a card each turn with selection:
● “Get a random card this turn/two-damage” split card (and gain a loyalty, which is kind of worth a mana)
● Red Dark Ritual (and gain a loyalty, kind of worth a mana)
● Collective Defiance a creature (trading three loyalty instead of having to pay mana)
Plus, if you ever get to tick her up three times, she threatens to win the game almost on the spot.
Chandra is absolutely absurd on power, on flexibility, on most reasonable metrics. However, she has weaknesses. There are some cards that work better against her than others. She’s going to help define what “good cards” are. For instance, I’d hate to play midrange creatures with four or less toughness that don’t have a good enters-the-battlefield trigger or some anti-removal ability.
Talk about losing the game on the spot. Come on, let’s actually make it hard, though…
It’s gonna be hard to not try to make Gisela work, but she’s the poster child of the experience we’re talking about here. Of course, the situation is much more nuanced, but in general, Chandra doesn’t bode well for Gisela.
While Chandra is quite good against medium-sized bodies, she’s much less effective against tokens, Vehicles, and five or more points of haste.
Just saying…
Anyway, let’s get down to business.
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It’s not a perfect fit by any stretch of the imagination, but I think this card might actually be solid. Costing the same as Chandra, Torch of Defiance is a really tough position to be in, but Skyship Stalker actually makes an excellent five-drop (since you can cast it and give it haste immediately). It’s also pretty respectable at attacking planeswalkers. For instance, if they drop Chandra, Torch of Defiance and plus her, you can attack for three points of haste in the air and leave Chandra too low to kill the Dragon.
That said, it’s probably getting hit by too many copies of Grasp of Darkness and the like to have too big of an impact on the format. We’ll see.
One of the keys to making Smuggler’s Copter work is getting a good Crew. Pia Nalaar, for instance, is absolutely perfect.
Turn 2 Copter, turn 3 Pia Nalaar is an excellent curve. The 1/1 Thopter token makes a great Crew member, and Pia ensures they can’t just use a single removal spell to Fog you for the turn. As if that wasn’t enough, Pia can even pump the Copter (or throw it, if things go south in combat).
Scourge Wolf is not a great Crew member.
It’s bad enough to exert Falkenrath Gorger or whatever, but to miss out on four damage is terribly inefficient. That said, I do generally think Scourge Wolf has benefited a lot from the new set. Smuggler’s Copter is an artifact that frequently ends up in the graveyard, producing an exotic type for your delirium. If they can’t kill the Copter, the looting quickly and effectively sets up delirium itself. Additionally, Chandra, Torch of Defiance means we’ve got a good planeswalker for red aggro.
Fiery Temper is a pretty reasonable card in its own right, but Smuggler’s Copter is absolutely awesome in conjunction with it. Looting is already sick, but cantrip Lightning Bolt, too? I don’t know how much discard you really need to play, but I could imagine Fiery Temper without any other discard outlets being reasonable.
I don’t particularly like Insolent Neonate, but this Copter isn’t going to Crew itself. Besides, Falkenrath Gorger is a mondo combo with Smuggler’s Copter, so we’d like some Vampires to help live the dream. I don’t love Village Messenger, as the haste is frequently wasted Crewing. Still, it’s an option, and maybe there’s going to be a new one-drop in Kaladesh. We could also just end up playing two colors.
How badly do you want to make Scourge Wolf work? It provides an exotic type, of course, but there are also some new cards that work well with it. Pia Nalaar can throw a Thopter enchanted with Skin Invasion, but there’s also this little number:
Lathnu Hellion looks great to me. It’s a really strong Hellspark / Keldon Marauder variant. It’s also a great creature to put Skin Invasion on, since it’s going to die anyway. You even have a one-turn margin in case you play the Hellion on turn 3.
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I like where your heart’s at, but this is just a textbook case of getting too fancy for no reason. Too many suboptimal choices for such dubious payoffs.
An alternative direction we could go is just lean into the madness angle:
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Spells (18)
If Madness surges in popularity and strength, it’s because of Smuggler’s Copter. However, that card’s going everywhere. Potentially more interesting is the question of Key to the City.
Key to the City is a discard outlet that doesn’t require mana, but it’s also an unkillable looter. Looting away extra lands is already interesting since you get the card back the following turn. However, in a madness deck, it’s actually a potent source of card advantage that makes us more interested in cards like Stromkirk Occultist and Bloodmad Vampire.
Of course, we could also splash a second color. Black is an obvious choice, contributing Asylum Visitor, Bloodhall Priest, and lots of other possible Vampire and madness synergies.
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Smuggler’s Copter having flying means we could build a Vampire deck aiming to dominate the skies, but the above list is focused on pushing the madness angle.
One cool side effect of playing Key to the City and Smuggler’s Copter is the possibility of having an artifact to power up Unlicensed Disintegration.
Unlicensed Disintegration is an easier-to-cast Murder in the right deck. However, when you can meet the conditions, the extra three damage is the difference between Mind Rot and Blightning. Make no mistake about it, this is a helluva card that provides a strong incentive to find a way to get some artifacts into your deck.
I’m going to be keeping an eye on what support gets revealed for a possible Vehicle-centric strategy. A number of the Vehicles are good on their own, and there are a couple of interesting rewards. The real question is going to be assembling the best Crew.
Looking at another madness angle, we could play blue for Wharf Infiltrator and Just the Wind.
Creatures (16)
Lands (24)
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Probably goes without saying, but Spirebluff Canal is amazing.
These lands are really strong. They are particularly at their best in aggressive decks that want to curve out while being less exciting in three-color ramp decks with lots of tapped lands eating up precious early-turn land drops.
We might also consider green for Noose Constrictor.
Noose Constrictor is an awesome card, but green really doesn’t bring that much else to the table.
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I guess we do get Voltaic Brawler, which seems awesome, but that begs the question, “Why are we a madness deck instead of an Energy deck?”
Voltaic Brawler is a 3/2 to start with, but it attacks like a 4/3 trample creature for the first two attacks. Additionally, even if they kill it, you’re up energy for powering your Lathnu Hellion. If we actually slant more in the Energy direction, the Brawler just gets better and better.
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What? No Smuggler’s Copter?
Okay, that might just be crazy talk.
It is.
I was just thinking that it might be the case that we just want to push the Energy theme with cards like Thriving Grubs and Longtusk Cub.
Yeah, those are the quality draft picks you registered instead of the best two-drop artifact beater since Arcbound Ravager.
Look man, this is in anticipation of them revealing more good Energy cards. I just wanted to see where we are so far. How much more do we need to make Energy aggro good?
How about Smuggler’s Copter, for starters?
Fine, play Smuggler’s Copter. I’m just saying, without any 1/1s, we’re losing damage. Without Fiery Temper, we’re missing the card advantage. Hell, this list has a lot of creatures with three or four power.
Sounds like an error on the designer’s part.
Sometimes, it’s useful to step outside the conventional wisdom and try seeing how hard you can push a theme.
While we’ve been focused on Smuggler’s Copter and Chandra together, Chandra has lots of potential homes outside of red aggro.
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This is kind of an awkward first sketch of B/R Midrange, but the idea is that Chandra, Torch of Defiance and Liliana, the Last Hope are two of the best planeswalkers in the format, and Ob Nixilis Reignited and Chandra, Flamecaller all add up to a lot of triggers for our Oath of Chandra and Oath of Liliana.
Unlicensed Disintegration is just Murder a lot, but we kind of need that anyway. We could be packing Filigree Familiars, but at least we do have Pia and a Gearhulk.
I’m not sure which one we want, or if we should just be playing more Chandra, Flamecallers. One way to find out…
In general, drawing one of your cards is better than one of your opponent’s. However, drawing one of the top four of your opponent’s cards is quite a bit better than drawing a card. Additionally, Gonti has deathtouch, which is a pretty great ability for a mid-sized two-for-one. Gonti looks great to me. We want some creatures for Liliana to get back, anyway.
Of course, we could also lean back this way, but without Read the Bones and with such a strong desire to play the Oaths, maybe we don’t want to.
Creatures (9)
- 1 Greenwarden of Murasa
- 4 Sylvan Advocate
- 1 Emrakul, the Promised End
- 1 Ishkanah, Grafwidow
- 1 Filigree Familiar
- 1 Noxious Gearhulk
Planeswalkers (11)
- 1 Ob Nixilis Reignited
- 1 Chandra, Flamecaller
- 3 Liliana, the Last Hope
- 4 Chandra, Torch of Defiance
- 2 Nissa, Vital Force
Lands (23)
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Ambitious.
Nissa, Vital Force and Grapple with the Past both target permanents, which makes Oath of Chandra and Oath of Liliana more attractive than sorcery equivalents would be. Nissa is also a mondo combo with Sylvan Advocate, which gives the land she powers up an extra +2/+2.
Of course, Nissa herself is attractive for so many reasons we can’t do justice to today, but at the very least, we can try a list that uses her a little more conservatively.
Creatures (10)
- 2 World Breaker
- 2 Sylvan Advocate
- 2 Hedron Crawler
- 1 Ulvenwald Hydra
- 2 Emrakul, the Promised End
- 1 Ishkanah, Grafwidow
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I’m not sure when it became okay to just print two great Regrowths per set, but here we are.
R/G Ramp is reasonably well-suited to exploiting Wildest Dreams, which can use it as a Recollect (which isn’t great) or “kick” it to draw tons of extra cards in an attrition war. Having an outlet for tons of extra mana is something Wildest Dreams does in spades. It’s particularly interesting that both Chandra and Nissa can produce extra mana while also giving us plenty of planeswalkers for helping make delirium.
However, R/G Ramp doesn’t use the extra cards that well. Wildest Dreams is probably at its best in some kind of grindy midrange deck or in control decks…
…and for control decks, well, for control decks, I’ll be back Wednesday!