Side Car

My 4 color EDH deck experiment continues. This week, I'm taking you on a tour of a deck without green. A lot of these 4 color decks so far have an additional mechanic or theme stapled on them. 4 color isn't well explored in the game, so there is a lot of design space left unexplored. I'm certainly not afraid to explore that space. But this deck came about in a different way. I started with the theme first.

I have certain philosophies when it comes to building decks. In one of my earliest articles, I did an equipment build in Sultai. I learned a couple things with that deck: number of creatures, number of equipment, and reducing equip costs. The number of creatures is really the driving factor here. I got around the potential of not having creatures to equip by using the Partners With mechanic. Each creature with Partners With comes with a tutor, a limited tutor that finds the other half of the pair. If I play this right, I'll always have a creature on the field and one in hand to rebuild after a boardwipe. So I did some digging into the mechanic. I looked at all the color combinations and pairings of Partner options.

At the time I started drafting the deck there were only about 24 pairs of cards with the ability.

One pair is Will Kenrith and Rowan Kenrith, but those aren't creatures, so I only had 23 pairs of creatures available to me. That distinction will be important a little later on. I had one other problem with my available cards: I don't play Universes Beyond cards. I want to play Magic cards in my Magic deck. A guy (Owen Grady, Raptor Trainer) and his dinosaur (Blue, Loyal Raptor) are a cool pair, but this is not Isla Sorna. So I was out 6 more pairs of creatures. Is 17 pairs of cards enough? Yes, for what I needed them for.

There are some really dynamic options here. Regna the Redeemer can net me 2 token creatures at the end of every turn. Gaining life isn't terribly difficult, so it's not uncommon to make 6 tokens in a turn cycle. It's even easier with Krav, the Unredeemed out there. I'll pay the one mana so he can eat a token and draw me a card and gain me a life. Kamber, the Plunderer also powers up this life gain strategy. The passive life gain also works to trigger her each turn. All Kamber and Regna's tokens can feed Laurine, the Diversion's ability and let me Goad creatures. Goad is a mechanic where more isn't always better. If opponents don't have solid creatures, it's not worth it to Goad. If I'm down to a 1v1 scenario and don't want to be attacked, Goad is only a liability. There was this one time where an opponent played a Phantasmal Image and I Goaded it to death, immediate death.

I already had a limited card pool when I first looked at my options. This was going to be a 4 color deck, so I had to cut a color out of my choices, which had a cascading effect on my available cards. I built a quick table and counted my options. There was no clear choice as the proportions were rather equal. So I cut Green. Why? A lot of the pairs wind up caring about counters like Soulblade Renewer and Yannik, Scavenging Sentinel. Others require attacking but aren't hearty enough to survive most combats unassisted like Pako, Arcane Retriever. The second reason to cut Green was the lack of synergy with artifacts. Where did that come from? Well, that was the real goal of the deck: playing Vehicles.

Vehicles are one of the newer card subtypes in the game. Not that new, but we don't get new types every set. I like vehicles because they're harder to deal with. They're not creatures all the time so they can dodge more board wipes and even targeted removal. I built a Vehicles deck like this years ago headlined by Kykar, Wind's Fury. With that deck, I learned a similar lesson on balancing the number of creatures to the number of Vehicles. I believed having creatures in hand was a great way to get around the threat of boardwipes and still fuel my Vehicles to victory. It turns out, it works.

I like Vehicles that animate themselves or are worth animating multiple times a turn cycle. Mizzium Tank fits in the former category. Each of my Vehicles is a noncreature spell so the tank keeps accruing counters and magically beomes crewed, no tapping necessary. For only 2 mana Peacewalker Colossus can turn another Vehicle into a creature without crewing it. Heart of Kiran is great because of Vigillance, so I can get in for a good bit of damage on my turn and then still use it to block in the air. The loyalty counters ability is mostly useless here, but with a pair of Partners With Planeswalkers in my colors, I could change the deck and have that option in the future.

The other thing I look for in a Vehicle is dedicated removal. Nautiloid Ship is great graveyard hate. After that, I can use it to get creatures my opponents own onto my side. In the same vein, Dermotaxi hits a key creature in the graveyard. The best part is using Dermotaxi to further profit and turn creatures against their owner.

The general flow is simple. Play some support cards, then play some vehicles. Play a partner to tutor the second half, then use it to crew a vehicle and attack. On later turns, I can wipe the board. That can't be it since I would get no value off playing the second partner. I fixed that. I'm going to reshuffle those creatures back into my deck so the Partners with ability will trigger again. Hallowed Burial is a fun boardwipe that gets around indestructability and dies triggers. The cards just get shuffled back into the deck. Sorry token creatures. After I cast Burial and tuck my partner creatures away, I just play the second half of the pair, get the freshly tucked creature back and crew a vehicle with the creature I just played.

I can also protect myself from enemy removal and progress my strategy. Chaos Warp is a well loved red removal spell. I can use it as a protection spell and shuffle my own creature back into my deck if it's being targeted and tutor it up relatively quickly. Likewise, Oblation can tuck away my own creature and reward me with cards in hand. Audacious Swap is a welcome addition to this category. I already want to shuffle permanents into my deck to save them, but getting to ramp or free cast a spell is a great addition. With the amount of recursion, especially for artifacts, I have spread throughout the deck, I certainly have sacrificed a creature to the Casualty ability. If free casting is good, then double free casting is even better.

There are only so many spells that tuck a creature safely back into my deck. More often than not, I'm going to have partner creatures die. You may think that would upend my cycle of tutoring up my recycled creatures. That's not the case. There is a set of cards that let me shuffle cards from my graveyard back into my library. I'm lucky that many of them happen to be artifacts. Reito Lantern and Reito Sentinel are simple artifacts that move cards from the graveyard to the bottom of the library. I can actually extend the ability to opponents' graveyards, not just my own. I've used this as a form of graveyard hate. When an opponent wants to target a card in his graveyard, I move it along. Barkform Harvester is just a little cheaper to cast and activate than most of these other spells. I'm most happy to include Elixir of Immortality. That used to be my pet card. I tried to force it into tons of decks when I first started playing to underwhelming results. Here though, it sits around and puts a bunch of cards I need from the yard to the library.

There are 2 unique cards that really accelerate my vehicle plan (pun intended). Depala, Pilot Exemplar is one. She pumps up my vehicles and helps me draw more of them. I'll never say no to an on theme conditional draw effect. It gives a deck character. Greasefang, Okiba Boss is the other accelerator. This Rat Pilot does card advantage in a different way. I get to put vehicles from my graveyard right to the battlefield. Sure, they go back to hand at the end of the turn, but that's not always a downside. Reckoner Bankbuster goes through charge counters rather quickly. Greasefang lets me pull it out of the graveyard and get access to those counters all over again. It's better than letting the card stay in the graveyard.

Finding a commander to headline this deck was strangely difficult.I have access to one of the stronger original 4 color commanders in the game, Breya, Etherium Shaper. She's a top 50 commander and the second most popular of the C16 commanders, behind only Atraxa, Praetor's Voice. I was comfortable she would be a strong presence in the command zone. And she was. Breya gives me 2 creatures to crew Vehicles and is a source of removal in her own right. Giving up 2 artifacts each time I activated her ability was more than I cared to do on average, but the flexibility was a welcome addition. There was a problem though, her casting cost. At 4 specific colors, I wasn't casting Breya as often or as early as I wanted to. Not getting that early creature removal when I needed it was frustrating. So I went back to the spirit of the deck.

This build is full of partner cards. It felt more natural and in line with the spirit of the deck to use partner commanders as well. I'm not the kind of eck builder to let theme overpower function. The deck has to play well. If it doesn't, the deck isn't going to get played. Except when I build a deck around a specific creature type, I'm only including creatures of that type, Jank factor be damned.

I went back to the drawing board and looked at my options for partner commanders. A lot of the available pairings provide one Legendary Creature that advances the plan, but not all pairs. There was one pair where both creatures propell the deck forward. Silas Renn, Seaker Adept and Akiri, Line-Slinger are that pair. Silas Renn is a great blocker because of Deathtouch, and at 2 power it can crew a lot of my available options. I really like his ability to recur my scrapped Vehicles. He's not a great attacker since he isn't evasive, but I pick my opportunities well to let him get in for damage. Akiri is a great attacker on the other hand. Since she has Vigilance, I like to attack with her because I can still use her to crew a Vehicle later on if I get attacked. Her power scales with the number of Artifacts I have, so she can crew several of my Vehicles even if that is the only artifact out there. She also threatens opponents with commander damage if the game goes on long enough. The other thing I like about having these two in the command zone is their mana cost. Akiri is only 2 mana while Silas Renn is 3. Worst case scenario, I have 2 mana on turn 2 that don't match Akiri. On turn 3, whatever color I get next, I can cast one of my commanders. That consistency really made the deck feel smoother than Breya, Etherium Shaper.

Let's drive into the deck list.

Silas Renn, Seeker Adept		Akiri, Line Slinger
Peacewalker Colossus	Blaring Recruiter	Artificer Class
Mizzium Tank	Blaring Captain	Commit//Memory
Heart of Kiran	Brallin, Skyshark Rider	Day's Undoing
Reckoner Bankbuster	Shabraz, the Skyshark	Oblation
Shorokai, Genesis Engine	Chakram Slinger	Zoyowa's Justice
Dermotaxi	Chakram Retriever	Requisition Raid
Nautolid Ship	Kamber, The Plunderer	Wear//Tear
Smuggler's Copter	Laurine, the Diversion	Winds of Abandon
Raider's Knave	Khorvath Brightflame	Audacious Swap
Cultivator's Caravan	Sylvia Brightspeer	Hallowed Burial
Silent Submersible	Krav, The Unredeemed	Chaos Warp
Cosima, God of the Voyage//The Omenkeel	Regna, the Redeemer
Marauding Dreadship	Rhoda, Geist Avenger	Time Wipe
Prodigy's Prototype	Timmin, Youthful Geist	Reito Lantern
Spring-Loaded Sawblades//Bladewheel Chariot	Trynn, Champion of Freedom	Reito Sentinel
Subterranean Schooner	Silvar, Devourer of the Free	Epitaph Golem
The Beligerent	Greasefang, Okiba Boss	Barkform Harvester
Weatherlight	Depala, Pilot Exemplar	Elixir of Immortality
Etherium Sculptor	Chromatic Lantern	Obelisk of Esper
Foundry Inspector	Jeskai Banner	Obelisk of Grixis
Jhoira's Familiar	Mardu Banner	Gem of Becoming
Temple of Enlightenment	Temple of Epiphany	Temple of Triumph
Temple of Deceit	Temple of Malice	Temple of Silence
Mech Hanger	Bojuka Bog	Scavenger Grounds
Blast Zone	Evolving Wilds	Terramorphic Expanse
Island x6	Plains x6	Mountain x6
Swamp x6

These 4 color decks are all over the place. Some inherently work better than others. This one worked well. There's plenty of support for Artifacts and Vehicles out there. Balancing the number of Vehicles and Partners was more of an art than a science, so I'm sure I could keep tweaking the deck. I'm still left with the feeling that 4 color decks don't have a true identity on their own. This mashup of themes that I've been doing is a fine standin for now, but something has to be done for 4 color identity.

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