Overhaul and Recharge: Standard Daretti Battleship

Note: This article was translated from Chinese by AI and may contain errors. Read the original Chinese version.

Before We Start

Edge of Eternities introduced a variant of Vehicles, the “Spacecraft” mechanic suited to the cosmic setting, represented by Extinguisher Battleship, with bigger bodies or hull abilities, but Station requires a higher power than a Vehicle’s crew. To solve a mechanical problem, you have to let a professional handle it!

Card Analysis

●Daretti, Rocketeer Engineer
Legendary Creature – Goblin Artificer
Daretti’s power is equal to the greatest mana value among artifacts you control.
Whenever Daretti enters or attacks, choose target artifact card in your graveyard. You may sacrifice an artifact. If you do, return the chosen card to the battlefield.

The former planeswalker Daretti is an artificer with a miraculous touch. Whenever it enters or attacks it does a Trash for Treasure, and fixing junk artifacts into a cosmic battleship is a piece of cake; its power also changes with the greatest mana value among the artifacts you control, so one creature alone can station a huge warship. From his design the deck’s strategy is very clear: Spacecraft / Vehicle reanimation. The decklist is as follows:

Decklist

Like other reanimator decks, this deck’s strategy is to use looting to send Spacecraft into the graveyard and then use reanimation effects to pull them onto the battlefield. The main reanimation effects are this article’s featured Daretti, and the four-mana artifact-reanimating sorcery Tune-Up, also from Aetherdrift.

The Spacecraft we are reanimating this time is Extinguisher Battleship. When Extinguisher Battleship enters, it deals 4 damage to every creature and destroys a noncreature permanent; paired with Tune-Up it can be reanimated as early as turn four to sweep the board and blow up the opponent’s land, giving it very strong suppressing power, and Daretti’s toughness happens to be just outside the sweep’s range, so reanimating with Daretti not only keeps him alive, but he can also directly station Extinguisher Battleship to knock out the opponent. The other reanimation target prepared is Valor’s Flagship; pulling it in with Tune-Up turns it straight into a creature, and the 7/7 flying, first strike, lifelink body is a strong blocker and finisher; it can even cycle itself into the graveyard, so you need not worry about not drawing a looter to discard it, and it can pay the extra cycling cost to make a Pilot, giving it a chance to serve as a backup win condition. Two more Boommobile are added to provide reusable direct damage in the late game.

As for looting, given that Daretti needs to sacrifice an artifact to reanimate, I used artifacts that discard and draw on entering as the main looters: Saheeli’s Lattice and Melded Moxite. Both are filtering artifacts that can discard one and draw two when they enter, without losing cards in hand. The additional looting engine is Chandra, Spark Hunter, who takes on discard-and-draw, making artifacts, sacrificing artifacts and finishing duties all at once, perfectly fitting every aspect this deck needs. Incidentally, Collector’s Vault is also a fine choice, with the strength of being reusable and making Treasure for acceleration, but it loses cards from hand and is less efficient, which doesn’t suit my taste so I left it out; readers can adjust this themselves.

Finally, the removal. I chose Torch the Tower, Abrade and Get Lost, covering all kinds of single-target threats across the board, and when necessary you can also send your own artifact down to dig it up again.

Gameplay Demo

Basically, ordinary aggro and midrange decks have a hard time resisting a turn-four Extinguisher Battleship; even if it lands a turn later it still deals heavy damage, and even against decks with nothing to sweep, a land-destroying 10/10 flying trampler is no joke. Your own life total problems can be left to Valor’s Flagship; the main deck can handle the common permanent-based graveyard hate cards, and dragging the game into the late game and hard-casting things is not a bad approach either, so you won’t be helpless just because reanimation gets hated out.

Conclusion

The components and structure of this deck were basically established back in Aetherdrift, but at the time it lacked a high-suppression artifact worth reanimating, so its power was clearly insufficient and it had little chance to show up. Only when the Spacecraft of Edge of Eternities supplied this missing puzzle piece could it finally make it to the table. This archetype still has quite a lot of room for development, and readers can swap in their favorite artifacts; perhaps it will shine in tournaments.