Everyday we stray further from God.
Anyway, I have an irrational love for this and will be attempting to jam it next format, it likely won't go well and everytime I do a solitary tear will trickle down my cheek, but enough of my major problems onto the deck:
Mardu Cardu
What happens to Mardu?
We lose a lot of powerful rares and mythics such as Archangel Avacyn
, Thalia, Heretic Cathar, Thought-Knot Seer, Needle Spires + Shambling Vent
and Gideon, Ally of Zendikar (Along with a crazy amount of powerful sideboard options)
The Biggest Problem
Thraben Inspector being gone is a huge problem, a one mana creature with respectable stats that both powers up our artifact synergies and offers cheap simple card advantage
Can we replace Thraben Inspector?
No, but that won't stop me trying, this card was absurd and irreplaceable to a point, which point you ask? Well a big part of Mardu's powerful strategy was the ability to play a larger landbase and have cards such as Needle Spires + Shambling Vent + Thraben Inspector
giving extra flood protection, but we lose that.
Zoo/Aggro?
So towards the last ProTour a lot of pros took to playing more 1-drops in their lists and accompanying these 1 drops with Ramunap Ruins + Shefet Dunes
which rewards us for having more aggressive creatures.
Turn 1 Artifact and Creature
We have one of these, and its very good, Bomat Courier is an aggressive one drop which offers the artifact bonus and a form (of lesser) card advantage, Bomat Courier is definetly a weaker card than Thraben, it dieing to a removal spells leaves you without everything it offers, unlike Thraben, but it's all we got.
Planeswalkers
The reason Mardu had such a large landBase to allow for a transformative sideboard in which you could bring in powerful on colour Planeswalkers, but with rotation a lot of these planes walkers rotate, including the ever popular(ha), mainboard mainstay, Gideon, Ally of Zendikar who leaves a gap in the 4 drop slot and the power of a permanentthat is hard to remove and offers insane flexibility, as of now Mardu has 3 options:Gideon of the TrialsChandra, Torch of DefianceHuatli, Warrior Poet
None of these offer too much of what BFZ mythic had, yes Gideon of the Trials becomes an indestructible creature but a weaker one that doesn't banner your board nor does he offer a repeatable creature for free, Huatli offers a free creature and a way to break board stalls such as BFZ Gideon's banner, but Huatli cost 5 mana, which, despite the rotation Avacyn, has more powerful options. Chandra, whilst being the most powerful planeswalker we have as an option, she doesn't fill the slot in how we would like.
So what do we do?Gideon of the Trials welp, I know he's not Gideon, as I already stated, but he offers aggression for a decent cost, which may allow us include a smaller landbase and stay much lower to ground and if you want to include a planeswalker he might be the best option because I'm not sure Chandra is what you want in your mainboard with the Mardu strategy.
Fleetwheel Cruiser?!?
So yes, this card, I think I want to play Depala, Pilot Exemplar since I believe Pia Nalaar becomes worse without Archangel Avacyn
in the deck, but with playing Depala I think we want to maximise her ability whilst allowing us to play a more aggressive style and keeping synergistic,
Fleetwheel Cruiser
fits this bill in theory, it's ability to enter crewed and attack without having to remove another creature from combat. Time will tell if this "vintage playable" vehicle is good enough here, but it's worth a shot.
Weldfast Engineer
A creature that existed in early vehicle builds maybe be good enough to come back in some number with a list of this nature? Now this is also a maybe but with Bomat Courier + Fleetwheel Cruiser
added to the list of artifact creatures in the deck the ability may be consistently powerful enough to be here.In The End
It doesn't even matter.
But I seriousness nothing I've said here is the definitive answer to Mardu post Ixalan, but more some points to think about, the list I have provided will be where I'm starting off with, but most definetly not where I will finish off.--I'm lazy and I'm yet to think this part through--
