From the Brim to the Trim - Budget Engines and Grounded Opponents
(Greasefang, Okiba Boss| Art by Victor Adame Minguez)
Vroom, Vroom, Vrooooooooom!!!
Greetings and salutations from a place where summer is all about the sweet sweet rain and not scalding temperatures and I hate heat and... Hem, sorry, got sidetracked. Anyway, I'm Arnaud, and I'm thrilled to take you on a journey of budget motorbikes, uncanny carriages and unorthodox transportation methods.
After conspiring with Wort last time, I offered you the three usual choices. Last, and by quite a stretch, came The Gitrog, Ravenous Ride, with 70 votes (25%). I won't lie, I was kind of hoping see the giant toad get a better reception. I've been playing this bad boy recently, and let me tell you: it's a blast. Second came Zevlor, Elturel Exile, with 94 votes (34%). Looks like global targeting will have to wait for another chance. Our winner, by a clear margin, is therefore Greasefang, Okiba Boss, with 113 votes (41%). So let's get our hands dirty.
First, it's a cool looking Rat, riding a motorcycle that looks like it just came out from Tron. Second, 4/3 for are decent stats. However, the spice comes from the ability: reviving a vehicle for free, giving it haste, before sending it back to our hand. I'm foreseeing a lot of juggling already.
For the sake of efficiency, I decided to stick with the budget selection on EDHREC this time. There are already 248 cards available, most of which are actually in our price range. No need fill the list with additional clutter, I already have enough problems getting rid of stuff as it is!
Without further ado, let's get to our first cuts.
First Trim – The Cardboard Chainsaw Massacre
A quick word for those of you who may yet be new to this series. Here at the Trim Academy, we're all about budget. No cards worth more than $1 shall survive. Well, technically $1.10, to give us some wiggle room (you never know how prices swing).
So, let's see. As things stand, after updating the list to the cheapest versions available, there are still 14 cards in the $1-$2 range, 3 of which are below $1.10. Let's have a closer look at the best options here for a slightly updated budget.
- The Eternal Wanderer: This looks spicy. The only ability you really care about is the first one. Reanimate something with Greasefang, then flicker it so it stays permanently on the field. Oh, and in a pinch, this is also a nifty board wipe or temporary removal.
- Claim Jumper: A newcomer from Outlaws of Thunder Junction, helpful to catch up with those pesky ramping green mages.
- Matzalantli, the Great Door: This would be a no-brainer, allowing you to replace expensive vehicles with new cards, while feeding your commander. The other side is more anecdotal.
- Unmarked Grave: Another yes-we-want-it staple for the deck. Getting your best vehicle right where you want it could help you end games. Beware however, this could lead to repetitive patterns.
- Ripples of Undeath: A recent toy from Modern Horizons 3. This is all we want in a card: mill, and potential card advantage, at a reasonable cost.
- Ugin, the Ineffable: Six mana is a lot, but the cost reduction for your vehicles is well worth it.
This leaves us with:
- Swords to Plowshares: As articles go, the best removal in white keeps flirting with the $1 threshold, sometimes above, sometimes below.
- Bojuka Bog: Same as above, and I have absolutely no scruples keeping this priceless outlet.
- Leonin Abunas: I'll keep this as an option, as giving hexproof to your raging machines is basically life insurance.
After this short trimming, we still have 237 cards to wade through. If you ever needed proof that vehicles can be cheap, I guess you have it right there.
Second Trim – Cardward Scissorhands
Before we get to the fun part, we have to make sure we get enough resources and keep enough gas to keep the engine running. Not to mention a few kill-switches for our opponents.
As things stand, this is what we have to choose from:
Not bad, not bad at all. I'm especially impressed by the various synergies built in these cards. A lot of draw spells require you to sacrifice an artifact/creature, discard a card or mill yourself. While these are often seen as card selection if not drawbacks, in this case they'll serve us nicely. Some of the ramp is also tied to vehicles entering the battlefield or attacking. I like the idea of recursive ramp, but I still think we need a solid package to make sure we're not too dependent on external factors to cash in. I'm likely to keep a healthy amount of draw to keep the graveyard stocked.
With that in mind, let's get rid of:
| Draw | Ramp | Removal | Wipes |
Getting to these cuts took rather longer than I expected. Usually the "veggies" are among the easiest ones to trim down, but I'm really impressed at how good all of these candidates were. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if some of you expressed outrage at this or that card being removed. At any rate, we still have a long way to go. 168 cards and counting.
Third Trim – Cutting Off the Rough Edges
Now that the boring part has been dealt with, let's see where these wheels take us. There's a lot to unpack here.
Obviously, the core strategy relies on getting massive vehicles on the battlefield, ideally cheating them with our commander, in order to hit hard. To keep them around, we can either sacrifice them in order to get them back the turn after, or blink/flicker them so they don't have to go back to our hand on the end step. This should already keep our hands full. I'm quite reluctant to keep anything with a crew cost higher than our commander's power, for consistency.
But there's more.
- There's a hefty recursion package, which I like quite a lot, as our commander will quickly become a juicy target for our opponents' removal spells.
- There are a bunch of protection outlets, and while I'd like to keep some life insurance, there's probably too many of those.
- There are also quite a lot of tutors. You know how I feel about those in budget builds. I might keep a couple that look really fun to tinker with, but the rest will have to go.
- There are quite a lot of discard outlets. Neat, but trimmable.
- Finally, there's a bunch of miscellaneous stuff that I can't really cleanly categorize.
So where does all of this lead us to? We want to keep a decent number of beefy vehicles (probably around 20 or so), ideally with interesting ETB or attack triggers, to make sure we can consistently conduct our strategy. We need a few more outlets that allow us to get stuff back from the graveyard, if the initial plan was to fail.
Reanimate, bash, rinse and repeat.
With that in mind, let's dabble with the engine's parts.
| Vehicles | Recursion | Protection | Tutors | Discard | Misc. |
Nice and clean. We're down to a lovely 110 cards, and you all know what this means. Time for the last stretch.
Final Trim – Cutting Off the Rough Edges
It's been an interesting journey this. As we're closing in on the final iteration, I'd like to reinstate how impressed I was by all of this cohesiveness, even from the very start. I haven't seen many Greasefang decks out there, but that recursion engine is giving me good vibes.
At any rate, here's my final cuts, with some assorted comments. As usual, none of the following spells are bad, it all comes down to a matter of personal taste.
- Ovalchase Daredevil: Overall too expensive for what it offers.
- Pack Rat: This could technically make for a solid plan B, along with feeding the graveyard. But I have the impression this is slightly too mana intensive and/or slow for our deck.
- Jo Grant: Cute, but we already have so many ways to send our vehicles to the garbage tank that I feel like is slightly too expensive.
- Mysterious Limousine: One of the most underwhelming among remaining vehicles, despite it being an efficient removal outlet.
- Supernatural Stamina and Undying Malice : Recursion will have to wait.
- Kitsune Ace and Gearshift Ace: I kinda like the idea of giving our vehicles some protection, but I'm running out of ideas here.
- Cloudshift and Flicker of Fate: For lack of better choice.
And here we go, let's hear you roar!
Conclusion
Before we leave this tiresome commander, I would love to hear from you, get some insights, if you wheel. How would you drive this? Would you go full-auto, or take a break?
All jokes aside, I also wanted to thank you all once more for reading through these. It's been a blast insofar.
See you in two weeks!
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Arnaud Gompertz
Arnaud Gompertz has been playing Magic since 4th Edition, back in 1995. He's been an assiduous EDH enthusiast since 2012, with a soft spot for unusual and casual Commanders. He'll always favour spectacular plays against a boring path to victory. Aside from mistreating cardboard, he's a dedicated board games player, loves a challenging video game and occasionally tries to sing with his choir.
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