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Depala - Vehicles, Little People, and MLD [Primer]

Commander / EDH Artifact Budget Casual RW (Boros) Tribal Vehicle

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Land (37)

Removal & Wipes (8)

Other Spells (6)

Draw (1)

Vehicles (13)

Mining & Miners (9)

Vehicle Buffs (5)

Planeswalkers (2)

Commander (1)

Commander: Depala, Pilot Exemplar

Dwarfs (10)

Rocks & Ramps (8)

Maybeboard

Other (7)

Depala - Vehicles, Little People, and MLD

Dwarves!

Please UPVOTE if you like fast cars and small people!!

This is a Depala Vehicles & Dwarfs EDH deck (with mining/land hate sub-theme). Early playtesting within my group is very good, particularly for 1 on 1 but it also works in multiplayer.

So, the main little people of the deck! Depala, Pilot Exemplar is here to host the show and she's a great way to buff your dwarves (and your crewed vehicles) as well as tutor a whole bunch of them into your hand. Every time she taps to crew a vehicle you can pay some mana, mill your deck, and fill your hand with dwarf and vehicle cards.There are a number of solid utility dwarves in the deck too:
  • Dwarven Recruiter lets you put as many Dwarf cards as you like on top of your library. Think about it.... you do this, tap Depala, Pilot Exemplar, pay some mana, and draw all of them straight into your hand!
  • Restoration Specialist lets you recover an artifact AND an enchantment from your graveyard for 3 mana. That's insane.
  • Toolcraft Exemplar is a handy 1-drop that suddenly becomes a 4/3 during combat on your turn when Depala is on the board. Got 3 artifacts? Now that 4/3 has first strike as well.
  • Gearshift Ace crews a vehicle to give it first strike.
  • Renegade Wheelsmith comes onto the board, stops a creature from blocking, then crews a vehicle. Simple.
  • Veteran Motorist gives the vehicle he crews an additional +1/+1 to go with the +1/+1 from Depala, Pilot Exemplar and lets you scry 2 when he ETB.
  • Duergar Hedge-Mage is a nice little dwarf that lets you remove an enchantment and/or an artifact.
  • Duergar Mine-Captain crews a vehicle, then you pay 2 mana, untap him, and give that vehicle +1/+0 before making him crew another vehicle, etc., etc.
  • Fairgrounds Warden is just a little bit of handy removal on ETB and he's quite tanky at 2/4 with Depala, Pilot Exemplar on the board.
  • Sram, Senior Edificer helps with draw as you cast more vehicles.
What are dwarves good at? Mining of course! This lot are great at mining and so are the techniques they choose to use. Many other commanders disagree with mining, but the R/W Dwarves just can't get enough of it.
  • Dwarven Miner can tap to destroy nonbasic land. This is incredible. Expect this poor thing to get nuked from orbit when your opponent sees it.
  • Dwarven Blastminer - See above!
  • Dwarven Driller - This miner is great for making your opponents choose between land and life.
  • Mine Layer - He must be a miner, he's got "mine" in his name. Right?
  • Armageddon - SUPER MINING! MINE ALL THE THINGS!
  • Dwarven Landslide - Solid way to use your own lands for prospecting.
  • Seismic Spike - A mana-friendly way to mine your opponents' land.
  • Star of Extinction - A bit of a "wipe" as well as a way to mine, but we like it.
  • Violent Impact - Already done all the mining you need for now? Cycle for something else! Like a nice car to drive?
  • Strip Mine - Does exactly what it says on the tin.
Not every creature in this deck is a dwarf, but they all have a good reason to be there:
  • Combat Celebrant - Got a decent board state and swinging for a big hit? Do it TWICE! Could also be used as a pseudo vigilance for all creatures for one turn.
  • Aeronaut Admiral gives ALL of your vehicles flying. ALL OF THEM!
  • Iroas, God of Victory shouldn't need much explanation.... He not only is a 7/4 with indestructible but he gives your crewed vehicles menace and prevents combat damage to them when they attack.
  • Leonin Abunas - This cheeky kitty will give all your artifacts hexproof. All of them!
There are 14 vehicles in this deck so I won't run through all of them. A couple to note are:
  • Peacewalker Colossus which is not only a great vehicle in itself but lets you crew your other vehicles without tapping creatures by spending a bit of mana.
  • Smuggler's Copter was banned in standard for a reason, and that's because it's amazing. The card draw on this crew 1, 3/3 flyer (that's 4/4 flyer with Depala on the board) is amazing.
You need some rocks and you need some ramps. This is EDH after all...
All good EDH decks should come with ~5 spot removal and ~5 board wipes. Or so my good friend Betulas tells me and seeing as he usually beats me he's either lying to trick me or he knows what he's talking about.
  • Path to Exile, Swords to Plowshares, and Wear / Tear are all decent, cheap, instant speed removal in RW.
  • Blasphemous Act, Fumigate, and Wrath of God are all great if you need them. The bonus is that as long as you use them BEFORE you crew your vehicles, they aren't creatures, so they don't die!
  • Dusk / Dawn - This is a great selective wipe. Most of the creatures in this deck are below power 3 so it should hurt your opponents a lot more than you (as long as you aren't crewing your vehicles!!) but as an added bonus you can get most of the creatures back out of your graveyard for the aftermath cost.
  • Caught in the Brights can also help out when needed and while more expensive than Oblivion Ring it can also permanently exile the creature it targets.
  • Daretti, Scrap Savant and Chandra, Torch of Defiance are both great cards that will help you if you get them out with some creatures to defend them.
  • Siege Modification and Aerial Modification are no-brainers. Slap them on a vehicle, it gets a buff and you don't have to crew it any more! Just beware not to go wiping them though now they are creatures all the time....
  • Boros Charm is a handy instant to have in your hand. Especially to make your permanents indestructible until end of turn for just TWO MANA!
  • Start Your Engines should be a great swing & win card under many situations, especially just after you wipe all creatures and they can't block....
  • Lightning Greaves - A solid way to spend 0 mana to equip on your fresh vehicle to give it haste!
  • Enlightened Tutor - A nice quick way to tutor out that particular vehicle you need, or perhaps grab the Aerial Modification to go for your big swing?
  • Refurbish - Helpful if someone removed your key artifact/vehicle.
There are a number of standard lands in here so I won't list them all, but I will mention the following:
  • Buried Ruin is great if you aren't hurting for mana but something important died.
  • Dwarven Ruins is actually probably worse than a simple Mountain but I don't care because there's a theme going here :)
  • Rogue's Passage is so so handy for helping your big vehicles get through when they're facing chump blockers or even nastier stuff, like deathtouch.
  • Inventors' Fair will tutor you any of your artifacts directly into your hand.
  • Terramorphic Expanse and Evolving Wilds are dual purpose. Yes, they can help you get that basic land you were hurting for, but also do not forget that they force a library shuffle when you have seen with Sensei's Divining Top that all the next 3 cards are useless to you.

So yeah. Depala and her 13 dwarves, and their 13 vehicles to get around in. It is not a deck full of complicated mechanics that mean your turns take 30 minutes each and have your opponents checking their watches. It is, however, fun as hell to play and it'll win a few games for you too.

Sitting on the maybeboard for now:

Thanks for reading and if you liked it, put it in a folder, or feel like commenting then please do and please don't forget to upvote!

So I made 6 swaps and I can't tell if they were bad or not yet.....OUT:
  • Chromatic Lantern - It's only a 2-colour deck and 70% is white. This doesn't ramp up well like the other rocks do.
  • Consulate Dreadnought - I needed to drop a card and this one always feels tough. Crew 6 for power 7.
  • Rout - It's expensive and I have 5 other wipes in there.
  • Skullclamp - I can't believe I've dropped this but I don't have many outlets for it. Not much stuff is designed to die and not much has toughness 1 for some quick draw, especially since I removed some of the thopter/servo makers below.
  • Sram's Experise - Also can't believe I dropped this, but I don't know if I have enough utility for it. It might make it's way back in....
  • Thopter Engineer - The main reason to have this was for the haste enable and this is not needed so much with the Lightning Greaves addition, below.
    • IN:
  • Lightning Greaves - Just such a solid card and it has more utility than the Thopter Engineer did.
  • Aradara Express - A power 8 meance creature seemed too good to pass up.
  • Refurbish - This is a nice way to get an important element from the graveyard back out onto the board.
  • Dusk / Dawn - A really nice selective wipe & recursion mechanic for our mostly low power Dwarfs.
  • Leonin Abunas - I just discovered this card as I start to look at cat tribal. It gives all our artifacts hexproof!
  • Akiri, Lineslinger - I removed this card as janky from a Breya deck but in this deck I can see it having legs, particularly to help crew all the artifacts that are giving her extra power.
    • A single swap: Ninth Bridge Patrol out and Combat Celebrant in. There aren't enough outlets for the Patrol to get big (if your dwarfs are dead, +1/+1 isn't going to help a lot) but the Celebrant can give you double combat phases every other turn!.
    A few tweaks, particularly to the mana base to remove some unnecessary stuff and streamline things a little. Playtesting needed to see if it was worth it!
    A few tweaks having put together my new "shared cards" system for EDH, which has freed up some cards from other decks. More changes may come soon.
    A little update:

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    72% Casual

    28% Competitive

    Revision 19 See all

    (6 years ago)

    +1 Thousand-Year Elixir maybe
    Top Ranked
    Date added 6 years
    Last updated 6 years
    Exclude colors UBG
    Legality

    This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
    Rarity (main - side)

    6 - 0 Mythic Rares

    25 - 0 Rares

    31 - 0 Uncommons

    14 - 0 Commons
    Cards 100
    Avg. CMC 3.32
    Tokens Emblem Chandra, Torch of Defiance, Emblem Daretti, Scrap Savant, Morph 2/2 C
    Folders Op Decks, EDH, Check it, DOPE edh, decks, Interesting Commander Decks, Archived Decks, Cool Decks, Interesting, Fun Decks I Like
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