Drunk Drivers aren’t the problem, Drunk Crashers are the problem. Looking at you Captain Rex Nebula.

Have you ever wanted to cosplay as a drunk rat racing down the airways of a Neon Tokyo? Commandeering giant vehicles only to lose them and find them again the next day? How about have a crash so CATACLYSMIC that everyone is set back to one land, one creature and one artifact?

If so Drunk Driving is the vibe for you. I wanted to start with this deck as my first deck tech because it encapsulates the kinds of things I enjoy in Magic. The deck is a multi-layered cake of small advantages. It grinds on an axis that isn’t seen that commonly and seeks to bully decks that focus on going tall over early board presence. Each theme fits into the other to make a solid synergy core.

In addition it’s one of the decks I actually have on me in Armenia. Drenched in a perfume that makes it smell like gasoline and fit snugly into it’s deckbox I plan to show off various bling for the deck I have when possible in this post.

The core idea of drunk driving comes from the classic legacy deck known as dead guy ale. That being: Establish a threat early and back it up by shredding your opponents hand. Drunk driving combines this philosophy with pioneer all-star Greasefang Okeba Boss.

Greasefang allows us to reanimate a vehicle once per turn until end of turn every turn. This combined with “classic” vehicles like Parhelion II and new busted cards like Rolling Hamsphere create a surprisingly fast clock coming out as early as turn 2. At end of turn Greasefang bounces the vehicles back to our hand. But with the help of our secondary and tertiary package we can ensure that our fatties continue to come down turn after turn. Those packages being…

MASS DISCARD AND OTHER VARIOUS EVIL LAUGHTER

Mass discard serves two purposes. The first is simple. Your opponents trashing cards every turn is awesome! In a world with big green ramp, rhystic study, and increasingly greedy mana bases, consistent hand discard keeps decks from getting off the ground just long enough for us to go under them. Secondly if you remember, Greasefang after reanimating a fattie returns it to our hand. With consistent discard we can both put our fatties in the grave for our first trigger and for follow up turns. This allows us to treat our symmetrical effects as pseudo card advantage, discarding and reanimating the same vehicle over and over again.

Officer I swear that wasn’t me it was the previous copy of me…

Given there’s only 6 effects in the game that allow us to force everyone to discard at least once a turn we need some more consistency to keep our vehicles on the field and not stranded in our hands. The first includes flicker effects. Both fast and slow flickers allow us to return vehicles after they have been crewed by Greasefang to continue to be crewed on following turns. As well as serving double duty as protection spells in response to someone trying to permanently remove a game piece.

We also play several sacrifice effects. Cards like Braids, Arisen Nightmare allow us to sacrifice our vehicles at end of turn for advantage. As we control the order of triggers we can stack Braids effect to resolve before Greasefang bounces our vehicle back to hand, putting it back in the graveyard for next turn.

What happens when we crash?

As previously mentioned this deck wants to go under the more common “tall” decks. Or decks that want to make tons of mana and draw tons of cards for some big omega strike turn. Sometimes we just aren’t fast enough to aggro these decks down but don’t worry. We can tactically crash and the resulting explosion sneak away like the grease slicked rat we are.

Introducing… Cataclysm

Cataclysm reads “Each player chooses from the permanents he or she controls an artifact, a creature, an enchantment, and a land and sacrifices the rest”. The keen reader will already be going wait that’s so busted here. You see all this deck truly needs to operate is a discard outlet, Greasefang, and a vehicle in the graveyard. In other words, one creature, and one enchantment. This puts us far ahead other decks who rely on having more of a board presence or more mana to work with.

This effect is so good that we’re willing to play cards like Tragic Arrogance and Cataclysmic Gearhulk even if they don’t neuter mana the same way. The deck doesn’t run typical board wipes in favor of these sacrifice effects.

An extra bit of spice comes from the slow flickers previously mentioned. Targeting an extra vehicle or utility creature before your cataclysm resolves means you get to keep it post cataclysm. Putting us even further ahead while our opponents are left choaking on our dust. This is why the deck favors cards like Long Road Home or Touch The Spirit Realms over more traditionally efficient cards like Cloudshift.

Removal

The flicker effects also mean that in addition to the more traditional removal options that Black and White present we also want ETB based removal. Especially on vehicles who will be entering every turn.

New vehicles like Demonic Junker and Unidentified Hovership fit in right at home with previous legacy sideboard “all-star” Skysovereign, Consul Flagship. Combined with the best creature based removal like Solitude, Loran of the Third Path, and Skyclave Apparition, the deck has answers to just about anything that could threaten it.

We want to use this removal in order to stop engines. Typically we won’t care about big creatures as we can literally fly over them and out race any aggro based strategies. What we are concerned about are card draw and other army in a can cards like Koma. Any card that can single handedly overcome the card disadvantage presented by this deck should be eliminated with maximum prejudice.

Of course we’re allowed to have cards that single handedly overcome our own oppression

Creatures like Tymna and Breena allow us to keep up the aggro and fill up our hands. Breena does give cards to others but they won’t get to spend them with the amount of damage Breena stacks up on our utility creatures.

We also play more typical card advantage engines like The One Ring (as does every deck optimizing for anything card is busted) and Trouble in Pairs. The majority of the time when tutoring for cards you’ll be looking for one of these effects.

Other Cool Inclusions

Cynical Loner feels like it was made for this deck. It’s dies easily on attack but we usually tap her to crew a vehicle. And then she tutors whatever vehicle we need right into the graveyard. She makes hands keepable all by her lonesome and will just win games if left unanswered.

Solitary Confinement is just one of my favorite cards ever. Any card that says skip your draw step is going to be good. We can keep it out forever with a Greasefang and a vehicle to bounce every turn. And in exchange we can’t be damaged at all and we have shroud. Which can be surprisingly useful these days.

That’s about it…

The rest of the deck is more damage, card draw, and removal. This deck knows what it wants, to smash a car into your face, and it does so with relentless determination. The deck includes a few more cards for resilience like Reanimate and Sevinne’s Reclamation. Afterall the deck needs Greasefang to operate and doesn’t play much ramp. You often cap out at around 6 mana so casting Greasefang multiple times sucks.

If you’re looking for a list that successfully ports Dead Guy Ale or really any low to the ground aggressive deck try this one out.

Here’s the decklist: https://moxfield.com/decks/wEWJ6fbUXk6LC9P3MFURiQ

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