There was a thread discussing Fleetwheel Cruiser, but I wanted to make a topic dedicated to all of the vehicles.

Several people hopped on this one because it's relatively cheap (for shops), can attack by itself, it's bigger than Slash Panther (with trample), and it's easy to crew.

I'll not go into much on this one since it was covered in the other thread I feel.

This was also one people were considering at the time since it functions as removal, has flying, and crews for relatively cheap. Sadly can't be crewed by Phyrexian Revoker, but it's not too tough to get this bad boy rolling.

The Copter really stands out to me; it's cheap, has flying, a good body, lets you loot, and only crews for 1! You can jam your thopter tokens in there from Hangarback Walker. I think this has a fairly decent shot of at least making it into testing. Really impressive card in general (imo).

Lastly, this one was spoiled very recently, and it looks promising. Similar to the Cruiser, but it's cheaper, and bigger when attacking. It doesn't get to attack by itself sadly, but it might be worth it.

I don't feel like any of them other than the fleetwheel really stand to see play, because fleetwheel can trade for something or eat a walker and get shut off for the rest of the game and still provided it's value while still just sitting around being an artifact that will make your opponent not want to Hurkyls you.

Crew costs are anything but minimal, and these suffer the same issues as enchant creatures or equipment in that they are contingent on you having other things to make them do much anything, so your opponent just needs to take on the other things and they should be fine.

The Skysovereign is cute, but 5 mana for 3 damage and then potentially dead with a higher crew cost seems like much more of an investment than fleetwheel is. There will be times where Trike is just better, specially with ravager. There will be other times where Dismember is going to be your go to.

I think the Skysoverign is an automatic inclusion in decks that play 4 Triskelion among Revokers, Ravagers, etc. Skysoverign is superior to Triskelion provided you have the crew, but because it's legendary won't see more than 1 copy in addition to 4 Triskelions.

Fleetwheel Cruiser like you said seems like a solid contender in recent versions of shops. Revoker, factory, mutavault, etc are all great options to easily enable this guy turn after turn.

Skysovereign will probably be anywhere from 1-3 in decks based on how good it is. One of the big caveats of playing shops in the past has been how bad the removal besides dismember was.

Smuggler's Copter can work in some sort of shell, but I don't think it's what current versions of shops need.

Renegade Freighter wasn't really something that was on my radar, but I think I'll stick to Cruiser. The only upside I see is that it has one extra toughness while being blocked.

Cultivator's Caravan, on the other hand, caught my eye. This card could easily allow for more options to play with actual colors of magic. I would love to splash blue power and tezzerator type cards into my shops deck.

One card that has been on my radar going through gatherer has been Haunted Plate Mail. This card enables all artifacts and vehicles to always be enabled when you want them to. This combined with factories and mutavaults can really foil Oath's plan.

A new form of terra nova with vehicles. Lands and ghosts driving vehicles. Who needs Batterskull? Pffft.

There was always a tension between cards like Crucible, Smokestack and (to a far lesser degree) Batterskull with the number of Sphere effects that you played. The heavy concentration of Sphere effects in nearly all Shop decks is one of the reasons why Staff of Nin didn't see more play. The card is borderline unplayable at six, and is significantly worse at seven, eight, or nine mana.

I admit that I was tricked at first by a casual glance at all of these cards; I did not initially consider that Thorn of Amethyst would hit every single one of them. That, combined with needing creatures in play, makes the cost of playing and activating these cards significantly more onerous.

A few of these cards would have seen a lot of play in 2008 (and before), when Shops typically ran either Spheres or Thorns, but never both. Today, because of the added tax of all the Spheres, I sincerely doubt that any of these vehicles are going to be good enough to influence the metagame. In order to fully take advantage of these cards, you'd have to run virtually no Spheres. That's beyond dangerous for the deck with one Chalice, one Lodestone, and not much disruption for decks like Mentor.

I'm all for being proven wrong, but that's how I feel.

I'm really happy with all of these cards seeing print. My knee jerk reaction is that the only one that had haste and can attack without a crew is playable. But all of them have their own intrigues.

At the very least it opens up design. Which is a beautiful thing. I don't know if I can make a deck that makes these cards shine. But I'm glad they exist

The only one of these that seems marginally playable in anything "vintage-looking" is Smuggler's Copter. I doubt it's functional with the loss of lodestone, but Tiny robots could run this, as that deck eschews spheres for a speedy clock. I can see this attacking for a lot on turns two and three with a cranial plating and a memnite pilot.

Also just want to note that the crew mechanic gets hit by Null Rod, if that hasn't been discussed before.

Upon further review, the Skysovereign is a mighty impressive magic card that will see play.

It does things that colorless decks have never really had access to, specifically:

It's a playable removal spell.
It's a recurring removal spell.
It gives a bonus to your creatures power/toughness.
It gives some creatures haste.
It wins the war in the sky.

Yeah, Kevin and I compared Sky Sovereign extensively to Trike in our podcast recording last week. Card is really good. Surprised its got no buzz here.

It feels like the utility of being able to move damage to any number of targets with Trike, plus the synergy it has with ravager still make it a more impressive card for shops.

Does Sky Sovereign replace Umezawa's Jitte in lists which can support equipment? Without the ability to support equipment one can't support vehicles. Both require creatures but Sky Sovereign requires a minimum power of 3 which means that a single Mishra's Factory or as single Phyrexian Revoker is not enough. Triskelion also dodges Thorn of Amethyst. In summary, it could require some modification to current lists in order to be viable.

Trike dodges Thorn, but this costs one less than Trike, so it's a pretty balanced trade off. Also, this deals much more damage and more quickly than Trike under many conditions. Trike dealing three damage to destroy a creature on the table makes it a 1/1. Whereas this Bolts something, and then does 9 damage the next turn (if you can crew it).

@Water0 said:

The Copter really stands out to me; it's cheap, has flying, a good body, lets you loot, and only crews for 1! You can jam your thopter tokens in there from Hangarback Walker. I think this has a fairly decent shot of at least making it into testing. Really impressive card in general (imo).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbIGuLXCziU

@Prospero said:

I admit that I was tricked at first by a casual glance at all of these cards; I did not initially consider that Thorn of Amethyst would hit every single one of them. That, combined with needing creatures in play, makes the cost of playing and activating these cards significantly more onerous.

I agree with Nick, I feel like the most important factor of evaluating Vehicles is that they get their cost increased by Thorn/Thalia effects, which doesn't seem like where you want to be with a creature-combat card in the metagame right now. It's going to be real rare that a Skysovereign costs less than a Triskelion or a Duplicant. The effect is very good but I'm not sure if it's the best use of 6-8 mana right now.

Obviously new effects are hard to evaluate, and if vehicles end up being very easy to crew they might be fine.

@Brass-Man said:

It's going to be real rare that a Skysovereign costs less than a Triskelion or a Duplicant.

Really? In any game without Thorn effects, but any other Sphere, Skysovereign will cost less than Trike

And with a Thorn effect they cost the same.

Its going to be more rare that Skysovereign will cost more than Trike. You'd need two Thorn effects in play at the same time.

I expect Skysovereign to see a good deal of play.

@Smmenen said:

@Brass-Man said:

It's going to be real rare that a Skysovereign costs less than a Triskelion or a Duplicant.

Really? In any game without Thorn effects, but any other Sphere, Skysovereign will cost less than Trike

And with a Thorn effect they cost the same.

Its going to be more rare that Skysovereign will cost more than Trike. You'd need two Thorn effects in play at the same time.

I expect Skysovereign to see a good deal of play.

I am anxious to try Skysoverign , I proxied an entire shops deck so I might be able to do so sooner than the mtgo release. It seems good to me, but I admit I'm not the ultimate authority on Workshops.

When the opportunity cost of playing a card is Triskelion, it is probably both very good and mostly meaningless.

@Brass-Man This is why I'm hopeful for Smuggler's Copter and Fleetwheel Cruiser. 1 and 2 are very low power requirements to get a substantial upgrade to your creature.

@Water0 said:

@Brass-Man This is why I'm hopeful for Smuggler's Copter and Fleetwheel Cruiser. 1 and 2 are very low power requirements to get a substantial upgrade to your creature.

Yea but 2 cards for a 3/3 flyer isn't exactly a bargain either, and in a lot of cases that is not what you are committing, it some cases that is exactly what you are committing. Fleetwheel seems to have what it takes to make play test since it can function without another creature on the table for one turn, but I cannot see something that is basically an equipment card upgrade being so desirable.

In honesty, this card is comparable to Spidersilk Net if your are just trying to stop a Trygon from coming in, except net is better under spheres than this is.