Greasefang, Okiba Boss is one of the more fun and flavorful Commanders out of Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty, and it’s my solemn duty to deliver you a fun Vehicles deck that takes advantage of her particular mechanic. This won’t be on the level of some of the Azorius Vehicles decks in terms of power level, but it will be fun to play. What’s the plan for this deck?
- Get Vehicles in the graveyard for Greasefang’s triggered ability.
- Crew those Vehicles and beat down!
- Find ways to get more value out of the Vehicles, either by sacrificing them for some effect or otherwise.
Some of our plans are a little more complex – this one’s nice and simple. Let’s get started with the Vehicles – we’re playing 21 of them!
Not all of these Vehicles are created equal, but let’s start with the two-drops. Smuggler’s Copter plays double duty as a Vehicle and a discard outlet. Reckoner Bankbuster is kind enough to give us even more cards even when we can’t crew it, and of course, Mechtitan Core is too much fun not to play. Colossal Plow is a bit hard to crew, but if you can make it happen, it’s quite worthwhile. High-Speed Hoverbike provides some utility while Mukotai Soulripper also acts as a sacrifice outlet for excess artifacts.
Our mana gets an upgrade from Aerial Surveyor and Cultivator’s Caravan alike, while Daredevil Dragster can come back over and over to draw us cards. Peacewalker Colossus makes crewing easier, and Renegade Freighter… okay, it’s here to up the Vehicle count.
Surgehacker Mech is fantastic here as a repeatable source of removal via Greasefang, and Bomat Bazaar Barge is the same for card draws. Weatherlight finds us more Vehicles to play, and the rest attack pretty darn well.
I made sure to include some expensive Vehicles to give Greasefang’s ability a bit more punch. Don’t worry, we’ll have plenty of ways to put them where they belong: the graveyard. Thundersteel Colossus is nice and easy to crew, with Demolition Stomper easily being the worst of the bunch. So why play it? You’ll see.
Getting cards into your graveyard was solved years ago – right around the time of Mercadian Masques, in fact! As I’m so fond of saying, Spellshapers are the solution to this problem. Sure, there are other, arguably “better” ways, but this is a really fun opportunity to play some cards that don’t see the light of day too often. Sliversmith and Icatian Crier add power to the board, making it easier to crew all those Vehicles you’re discarding and bringing back, while Notorious Assassin and Mageta the Lion clear the way. Seriously, what other chance do you have to play Mageta?
Yes, here are some of the “better” ways of discarding cards. Key to the City may not start a Vehicle up, but it does help you get one through, while Pack Rat swarms the board with potential new pilots. Armix was one of my first thoughts as I brewed this up, as it gives us discard triggers and powerful removal.
Once those Vehicles return to the battlefield, we might not want them back in our hand after Greasefang is done with them. So what do we do? We sacrifice them! The lands make it easy to fit these effects in the list, while Deadly Dispute and Reckoner’s Bargain pay us off with draws and more. Finally, Oswald Fiddlebender is the reason we’re playing Demolition Stomper – that way, we have a full curve of Vehicles from mana values two to eight!
If you want to keep your Vehicle on the board after Greasefang is done with it, blink it out and bring it back as a new object! That way you won’t have to put it back into your hand. If you like this kind of effect, feel free to add Sundial of the Infinite and Conjurer’s Closet to your deck as well – I left it at one of these effects since I think you won’t realistically want this more than occasionally.
Of course, all of our vehicles need pilots, right? Let’s scare up some of the best in the land.
Hotshot Mechanic, Giant Ox and the tokens from Born to Drive are great at crewing most anything you’d like. King Macar may be low on power, but you want to be untapping him to get that great trigger, so you might as well use him to crew (or even over-crew) things. Ovalchase Daredevil is a fantastic recursive way to crew your Vehicles as well.
Let’s protect our investment in our fantastic Vehicles! You may remember some of these from my recent upgrade article, and that’s not a coincidence – these cards are great for our purposes. Bronze Guardian is a huge threat that also protects our artifacts, while the rest of these focus mostly on the protecting aspect. Lightning Greaves also flexes into keeping Greasefang safe, which is great.
When all else fails, bring things back! Brilliant Restoration turns a full junkyard into a 21-car garage, while the others just take things one at a time.
It’s nice to have a few more ways to make tokens that can help us crew Vehicles, and both of these cards are great options. Hidden Stockpile triggers off Greasefang putting a Vehicle back in our hand, among other things, and Digsite Engineer turns a little extra mana into some fearsome Constructs.
Just a couple of extra utility friends to help things run more smoothly. Aeronaut Admiral is particularly sweet as it sends all of our Vehicles into the sky! Foundry Inspector makes things a little cheaper while Drumbellower lets us play defense. Speaking of defense…
A little removal never hurt, and I love having cards like Anguished Unmaking available. So flexible!
Damn is such a fantastically flexible wrath option, not that Farewell is any slouch. Of course, with Mageta the Lion around, who needs these, right? …Right? Okay, yeah, we still need these.
Finally, a little ramp to round things out. Map and Keeper are both catch-up ramp, with Keeper providing some extra tokens for our Vehicle-crewing needs, while Solemn is just a solid card in general. Add to that the requisite suite of mana rocks, and we’re ready to move on to the lands! We already saw some in the sacrifice section, but here’s the remainder.
Artifact lands help cards like Armix and Ovalchase Daredevil do what they do. They’re low-cost and high-impact!
A little interaction in the mana base is always nice, and these three plug some holes that the rest of the deck isn’t equipped to handle.
We have some serious goodies in the utility land world! Buried Ruin and Takenuma help with recursion, while Castle Ardenvale, Mishra’s Factory and, of course, Mech Hangar help turn the keys on our Vehicles. The rest aren’t totally necessary, but they sure are nice to have.
Finally, some duals and fetchlands to go along with seven Plains and three Swamps!
That’s the whole deck. We’ve ended up fulfilling our goals, and with an average mana value of 3.31 over non-lands, we’ve kept the curve down to an acceptable level. Let’s take a look at the full list – see you next time!
