Piloting Pilots In Commander!

I really can’t contain myself: I’m super-stoked to build decks around Kaladesh‘s super cool Dwarf, Depala, Pilot Exemplar! She has obviously been pushed, starting with her stats being a 3/3 for three mana, and then piling on lots of relevant game text. Well, it’s only relevant in decks with a fair number of Dwarf and/or Vehicle cards, but the rewards for doing so are plentiful.

A deck with lots of Dwarf cards suggests looking for tribal synergies, which means playing out multiple creatures to the battlefield at once. This opens you up to card disadvantage to an opponent’s singular mass removal spells. A deck with lots of Vehicle cards also requires you to play creatures to the battlefield, and if your opponent can keep your creatures off the battlefield, then the vehicles just sit around looking silly and useless.

Depala mitigates those vulnerabilities by letting you dig for more Dwarf and more Vehicle cards. That means you can feel free to flood the battlefield with Dwarf Crew members, and you can also recklessly charge your Vehicles at your opponents without too much concern for them dying in combat, assuming you’ll be able to take down one or more of your opponent’s creatures in the exchange.

Of course, Depala doesn’t just automatically fill your hand with Dwarf and Vehicle cards! You’ve got to spend mana, and each mana lets you dig one card deeper into your library. If we consider that land cards will be a miss and account for 40% of your deck, it quickly becomes apparent that we’ll need a lot of Dwarf and vehicle cards to ensure that Depala hits on each activation.

If I were Magic Hall of Famer Frank Karsten, now would be when I’d break out the spreadsheet showing how many hits I should have in my deck to have a reasonable chance of getting one or more cards for each activation, on a sliding scale of mana per activation. I love spreadsheets more than most, but figuring out that sort of math isn’t something I enjoy too much, so I’m going to go a simpler route: maximizing the percentage of the deck that will be filled with potential hits.

Some of these are obviously pushed on the power scale for Standard and will be solid performers around the Commander table: Smuggler’s Copter and Skysovereign, Consul Flagship, for example. For Commander, things get a bit tricky, since we can only have one copy of each card and so far there are only eleven Vehicle cards, so we’ll play them all. Dwarfs have been historically such a weak tribe that I contemplated forgoing the tribal route and just let Depala search up and boost Vehicle cards, but having each card looked at providing just a 1/10th chance of being a hit means that’s not a good idea. Assuming Vehicles are a hit and show up in other sets, we might eventually get to that point, but not now. If we want to maximize Depala, we’ll need to call on Dwarf cards.

Most of the new Dwarf cards range from solid to playable, but there aren’t that many of them, so I had to roll deep through Magic’s history to scrape together the following motley crew –get it, Crew?

Few of these will strike fear in the hearts of your opponents, but they can Crew your Vehicles decently enough, and if you can get some tribal synergy cards going things might start looking formidable. It doesn’t take too much help to turn Aerial Responder into an all-star—Dwarven Bloodboiler and Dwarven Lieutenant can make the card scary quite easily.

Dwarven Recruiter is obviously a very sweet combo with Depala, so make sure you’ve got lots and lots of mana on hand to scoop up the cards. Duergar Mine-Captain is a sweet inclusion alongside Vehicles with its untap ability: for each two mana you spend, you can Crew another Vehicle and give attacking creatures +1/+0 until the end of turn.

I don’t normally advocate land destruction in Commander, but there’s no doubt that Dwarven Miner – and the similar Dwarven Blastminer – are quality cards. You can play the hero to the table by using your land destruction powers for good, nuking offensive land cards like Gaea’s Cradle or Maze of Ith, or going after someone whose mana-ramping is out of control. Also, if someone plays a spell that’s killing off all your Dwarf cards, I don’t think anyone can blame you for sniping one of their nonbasic lands for revenge.

To further boost our mediocre team we can take advantage of some solid tribal cards:

Cryptic Gateway is just a solid tribal card overall but I think it’s particularly nice with Depala—you could tap Depala and another Dwarf to put Cryptic Gateway’s ability on the stack, resolve Depala’s triggered ability to dig for Dwarf cards, and then drop one of them onto the battlefield with Cryptic Gateway.

I decided not to run Shared Animosity because I don’t see attacking much en masse like you would for a tribal deck like Goblins.

Start Your Engines is a slam dunk inclusion into this deck and can certainly surprise an opponent or two with a lot of extra damage out of nowhere; it’s basically your Overrun!

Iroas, God of Victory isn’t a Dwarf but its abilities seem perfect in a deck like this—with Iroas out, you can really send your Vehicles into the red zone with reckless abandon!

Here’s what I’ve got cooked up:

Depala, Pilot Exemplar

Bennie Smith

Test deck on 09-23-2016

Commander

Creatures (24)

Lands (38)

Since we’ve got white in the deck, we can run the Land Tax plus Scroll Rack engine, but if we just draw Scroll Rack, we can do some similar work with Depala, Pilot Exemplar – just Scroll Rack cards you don’t want to the top of your deck and Depala’s triggered ability will put them on the bottom of your library.

Until we get more quality Dwarf cards and more quality Vehicle cards, I’d definitely consider this to be relatively low-powered and a fun choice for a casual game. If you wanted to juice up the power level a bit, it would be pretty easy to add Aggravated Assault and Sword of Feast and Famine, along with Enlightened Tutor to find the missing piece of the infinite attack combo.

How would you go about building a Depala, Pilot Exemplar deck for Commander? Are there any cards I’ve overlooked? Do you have any questions about any of my choices?

Driving Through Standard

So Commander isn’t the only format I want to run Depala, Pilot Exemplar in, through. On a whim I noodled around with a list to see what a Dwarf/Vehicle deck might look like in Standard, and I was surprised to find it actually looks promising!

W/R Pilots

Bennie Smith

Test deck on 09-23-2016

Standard

Creatures (21)

Planeswalkers (4)

4 Gideon, Ally of Zendikar

Lands (24)

Spells (11)

Toolcraft Exemplar might seem like an obvious missing card, but I didn’t want to include too many juicy targets for the +1 ability of Liliana, the Last Hope. Veteran Motorist and Selfless Spirit just felt like stronger cards that are worth that risk. The plan is that Selfless Spirit and Archangel Avacyn help mitigate the problem of having all my potential Crew destroyed by mass removal and leaving my Vehicles sitting around useless. Gideon, Ally of Zendikar can also provide some Crew potential, not only with his 2/2 Knight Ally buddy; if you need him, Gideon’s not opposed to activating and climbing into Skysovereign, Consul Flagship. I know Chandra, Torch of Defiance is crazy good on her own, but I think Gideon is a stronger choice for what I need in this deck. What do you think?

I’ve got 23 hits for Depala’s activated ability, so I should nab a card for each three mana spent. I could probably increase that by cutting Harnessed Lightning, but I wanted some additional removal besides Fairgrounds Warden and flipping Archangel Avacyn (and triggers from Skysovereign, Consul Flagship), and the instant speed could be quite helpful.

I’m very curious to hear if you think this might be able to make some noise in the new Standard, at the least for some Friday Night Magic tournaments. Anything you can think of to make it stronger?

New to Commander?

If you’re just curious about the format, building your first deck, or trying to take your Commander deck up a notch, here are some handy links:

Commander Primer Part 1
(Why play Commander? Rules Overview, Picking your Commander)
Commander Primer Part 2
(Mana Requirements, Randomness, Card Advantage)
Commander Primer Part 3
(Power vs. Synergy, Griefing, Staples, Building a Doran Deck)
Commander Starter Kits 1
(kick start your allied two-color decks for $25)
Commander Starter Kits 2
(kick start your enemy two-color decks for $25)
Commander Starter Kits 3
(kick start your shard three-color decks for $25)