I know a lot of people got really excited by the advent of the Mechtitan Core and obviously, the idea is neat but I am feeling a bit disappointed. This is supposed to be, uh, Voltron.
Voltron, or Power Rangers, regardless, it always consists of 5 different, unique pilots, with each one piloting a specific thing, and then they combine, and then you know, you have Voltron, or the Megazord. Also, it always has a sword and a shield.
You need that. The sword, to hit things, with that sort of “schiiing” sound that I think is actually a door opening or something. Anyway, yes:
Mechtitan, a Legendary 10/10 Construct artifact creature token with flying, vigilance, trample, lifelink, and haste that’s all colors.
Okay, that’s close, but all that investment, and then you are going to attack someone for 10 damage? You’re investing a lot of effort to get this thing. Now the obvious route is to use artifact creatures with ETB’s or leaves play abilities in order to form the Mechtitan Core parts but you don’t make Voltron by just grabbing 2 random cars and an ambulance and maybe a combine harvester and a crane or something. Okay actually that sounds like a badass Transformer but that’s a digression.
If I am making a Mechtitan Voltron deck, then I want it to be 5 specific vehicles and 5 specific pilots and then to kill people.
Each pilot needs to belong to a color and pilot a specific vehicle. Unfortunately, a lot of the iconic creatures that are representative of various colors and are legendary are really low in power, or too high of a mana value. Using Sisay, Weatherlight Captain to tutor means we have to be careful about how big our search targets get, she maxes at being able to fetch 6 mana value Legendaries unless you start modifying her.
The Voltron Pilots:
- Kenrith, the Returned King
- Sidisi, Undead Vizier
- Glacian, Powerstone Engineer
- Godo, Bandit Warlord
- Kodama of the East Tree
The Voltron Vehicles:
- White – Parhelion II
- Black – Weatherlight (Okay, there’s not a lot of legendary vehicles)
- Blue – The Omenkeel (MDFC of Cosima, God of the Voyage)
- Red – Heart of Kiran (yes this is a trifle arbitrary)
- Green – Esika’s Chariot
So the basic game plan of the deck is pretty clear – we’re trying to grab pilots and their vehicles to enable the Mechtitan Core. Once you have gotten it, then equip some swords and flails to it and kill your opponents with yout 10/10 flying, vigilance, trample, lifelink and haste creature. If you can get the Inquisitor’s Flail on it that will double its damage dealt (and taken, but it has first strike) and if you can grab Embercleave that’ll give you double strike meaning you’ll just kill people out of hand with your actual, 5 legendary pilots, 5 specific vehicle Voltron-ed up Voltron. There’s also Blackblade Reforged, which can easily be worth another 7 or 8 power given how much land fetch is in the deck.
That’s a lot of moving pieces though, this is essentially a 13 card combo, which takes a lot of resources, meaning a lot of ramp and a lot of tutors.
To get things moving you want to ramp and ramp and ramp….
Turn 1 you are hoping for one of your creatures or a Sol Ring. Whenever you have the opportunity to grab lands into play you should focus on that, so that you are thinning your deck. If you are getting near to having mana of each color for Sisay, then you’ll want to get her out ASAP. Once you do, you can fetch Rhys the Redeemed, this will give Sisay +2/+2, letting you fetch things with 3 CMV, and you’ll probably want to go for Magda, Brazen Outlaw next.
From there there are a lot of options and you kind of have to play it by ear, but you basically have to keep ramping and searching, hopefully 2-3 times a turn.
- Esika, God of the Tree will let you tap your legendary creatures for mana.
- Depala, Pilot Exemplar lets you grab more of your vehicles quickly, and can be tapped with Esika or else to power up one of your vehicles.
- Blackblade Reforged can be fetched instead of Depala or Magda, and can be equipped to Sisay to let you search for much bigger objects.
- Chromatic Orrery will provide you mana fixing and give you a tutor per turn with Sisay, so if you get Sisay’s power up to 8, you will probably want to grab it.
Several of the tutors in the deck key off of sacrificing artifacts, and Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer, Monologue Tax, and Smothering Tithe will give you tons of easily sacrificable artifacts in the form of Treasures, which can also be used to pay for Sisay searches.
This is a fun deck, that actually uses a ton of different mechanics and has a ton of tricks to it. Playing the deck ought to be rewarding as it won’t go down a purely linear path, and involves a kind of hilarious, overwrought concept. It’s really a Rube Goldberg way of killing your opponents, which is why I felt it was fine to run a bunch of really powerful cards in a really lower-tier deck. You’re going to need cards like Demonic Tutor or Transmute Artifact even though those are top tier tutors, since the things you’re tutoring for aren’t really all that good in actuality.
Here is the deck breakdown:
Next week it could be a variety of things. New Capenna is coming out soon, I’m working on a concept for a commander cube that is modular and expandable, and I’ve had some insights into how to build up some of the Street Fighters as Commanders.
