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The sinking of the RMS Titanic was one of the greatest maritime tragedies in history, and it was nearly repeated when a spaceship of the same name nearly crashed into the Earth in order to commit insurance fraud.Magic: The Gathering’s version allows you to do what Max Capricorn couldn’t, and crash the ship for fun and profit!
Now that Vehicles can be commanders, it’s time to take a look at how to turn the legendary cruise ship into the focus of your next deck. We’ve got a complete build guide with all the details you’ll need. Here’s how to cruise to victory with the RMS Titanic!
Rising of the Day
Mountain x28
Spinerock Knoll
War Room
This deck is a comfortableBracket Two: Coredeck. A commander that sacrifices itself whenever it deals damage is enough of a gimmick to rate a Bracket One: Exhibition rating, butthis deck features multiple ways to play around RMS Titanic’s limitation.
The Commander
Hailing from the BBC’s popular and long-running Doctor Who series, RMS Titanic is a spacefaring replica of the ill-fated cruise ship of the same name. It’s a7/1 legendary Vehicle with flying, trample, and crew 3 that costs three generic and one red manato cast.
RMS Titanic has one more ability: When it deals combat damage to a player,you have to sacrifice it, but you also get Treasure tokens equal to the amount of damageit dealt.
With seven power,RMS Titanic makes enough Treasure tokens for you to re-cast it during your second main phasewith the commander tax, and you’ll still have one extra Treasure for later. This breaks down immediately, though, since the next time you’ll need more mana than the amount of Treasure it can make.
Despite the RMS Titanic’s drawback, itfits remarkably well with red’s complicated relationship with artifacts. Red decks are more likely to sacrifice artifacts than to cast them, but Treasure tokens, which only provide short-term mana acceleration, fit red’s impulsive play model.
The other side of red’s artifact interaction is the fact that red is the best color for recurring artifacts from your graveyard. Leveraging spells and effects like Trash for Treasure,you can reuse RMS Titanic over and over again without paying the commander taxby sending it to and returning it from your graveyard.
Building The Deck
With seven base power,RMS Titanic could threaten to take out a player with commander damage in just three turns, if it stuck around after combat. Therefore, the rest of the deck is built to bring your commander back into play without paying the commander tax, increase its damage, and get payoffs for making Treasure.
Red artifact recursion is a recurring theme in this deck, but there’s one part to remember: whenever your commander is sent to your hand, graveyard, library, or exile,you may choose to put it into the command zone instead. Keyword: May.
to bypass the commander tax,you’ll usually want RMS Titanic to go into your graveyard, not your command zone. This will allow you to use spells and effects like Trash for Treasure to bring it back for even less than its base cost, let alone its taxed cost!
Increasing RMS Titanic’s damage output is also important, because it does two things: bring you closer to victory via combat or commander damage, and create additional treasure. Equipment is less useful here, since they’ll be unequipped when RMS Titanic stops being a creature, but there are other useful tools.
Red hasplenty of effects that can double or triple the damageyour creatures deal, allowing RMS Titanic to hit like a battleship while giving you a ton of Treasure. That’s on top of buffs like Unleash Fury, which can double its power before those damage enhancements are applied.
“Beat your opponents with your commander” is a valid strategy, butit’s a good idea to have a backup plan, too. Red token decks usually focus on creatures, but for this artifact deck you can include creatures like Reckless Fireweaver, which have effects like Impact Tremors for artifacts instead of creatures.
Finally, remember thatVehicles can’t attack on their own. RMS Titanic needs creatures with total power three or higher to crew it, so there’s a slight lean towards creatures that can crew your commander solo.
Ramp
This deck doesn’t need much rampoutside the standard mana rock package: the commander only costs four mana, and creates enough Treasure to keep the deck running. However, there are a few specialized mana rocks that can be useful.
Cursed Mirror is a multipurpose tool that can help in a lot of situations. It’s a basic mana rock, normally, butit can also come into play as a copy of any creature. Not only can you copy your opponents' creatures, you’re able to also copy your own creature to duplicate their effects, or even use it to crew your commander.
Another mana dork that fills a similar niche is Iron Myr. In a mono-red deck, it’s basically anArcane Signet on a body, with the downside that you can’t use it on your first turn. But it can still help crew RMS Titanic, generate mana, and block in a pinch.
The third special one is Dowsing Device, which doesn’t make mana on its own but turns into a land once you have three other artifacts. And if you crew RMS Titanic before playing Dowsing Rod or a couple of other artifacts, it canbuff RMS Titanic to get you even more Treasure.
Since the deck is mono-red, Ruby Medallion is a de facto mana rock that reduces the cost of most spells by one generic mana. This is oftena bigger advantage than Arcane Signet, since it applies to multiple spells per turn.
The Fire Crystal is an upgraded version, with a similarly upgraded cost. In addition to reducing the cost of your red spells by one mana,it also gives all of your creatures haste, and in a pinch you can make an expensive, temporary cloneof any of your creatures.
Draw
Red isn’t the best color for card draw, but there are a few staples that do the job.
In any token-centric deck, Idol of Oblivion is a must-have.Any time you make a token, you may tap it to draw a card, which means that you’ll get to use it almost every turn in this deck. Then, late in the game, you can sacrifice it for a big 10/10 Eldrazi.
War Room gets better the fewer colors your commander has, making it a staple for mono-red and green decks with few other draw options. It makes colorless mana, butfor three mana and one life you may tap it to draw a card.
The last big draw opportunity is single-use spells like Big Score, Unexpected Windfall, and Seize the Spoils. Each of these allows you to trade two cards in your hand for two more cards,helping you find the bombs you need and putting artifacts in your graveyard to reanimate later.
A special shout-out goes to Academy Manufactor, whichturns each of your Treasure tokens into a Treasure, a Food and a Clue. You’ll be making a lot of Treasure tokens, so you’ll receive a bunch of Clues as a bonus. Each Clue can be sacrificed to draw a card, sothis can easily be your biggest source of card advantage.
Ping & Fling
Since you’ll be making a lot of Treasure and reanimating HMS Titanic as often as possible, adding a handful of cards that ping opponents when you get artifacts can pay off big.
Ingenious Artillerist and Reckless Fireweaver are the best versions, since they hit each opponent for one damage per artifact as they enter, butIngenious Artillerist is the better of the two. Since it has a power of three, it can also crew HMS Titanic by itself, making it more likely that you’ll get Treasures faster!
Hedron Detonator fills another niche, not only pinging opponents but also helping with the draw problem. It allows you tosacrifice two artifacts to exile the top card of your library, which you’re able to then playany time before your turn ends.
If you look closely at RMS Titanic’s text, the Treasures it makes aren’t dependent on it being sacrificed. That means you can put the ability on the stack, hold priority, and sacrifice it to another effect. And what better effect than Fling?
Fling is a classic instant that allows you to sacrifice a creature and deal damage equal to its power to any target. So you can absolutely attack an opponent, put RMS’s ability on the stack, and then Fling it at the same opponent, another one, or a problematic creature or planeswalker. It’ll die anyway, so you might as well make it someone else’s problem.
There are a few cards with similar effects to Fling. Thud doesn’t make the cut, since it’s a sorcery and can’t be used with an ability on the stack, but Kazuul’s Fury sure can! It’s slightly more expensive than Fling, but it has another mode, allowing you to play it as a land in a pinch.
For repeat offenses, you could put Fling on an Isochron Scepter, but Bloodshot Cyclops does the job without needing two mana per use. Just tap him to throw any of your creatures, and do the same thing again next turn.
In a pinch, Bloodshot Cyclops can also sacrifice itself to its ability.
