I'm not especially familiar with the history and
development of vehicle mechanics in trading card
games. The only one I've personally played with
was in the original Star Wars trading card game
from the 90s, and it worked rather differently
from Magic's, partly because they were a card
type all their own and not related to characters
(creatures). Some of them also had a "permanent
pilot", which meant they could effectively fight
on their own at lowered power if you didn't have
anyone to crew them at the moment. Magic,
though, takes a more literal implementation of
the concept, in which you basically can't use
the vehicle unless you have another creature;
I'm sure both have upsides and downsides from
the point of view of game design, but the
requirement certainly makes something like
Smuggler's Copter a little more balanced. It's
still a very strong card, because I doubt there
is any other circumstance where you'd see power
higher than mana cost plus flying plus card
selection in one place at the one time. The set
is very much designed to help you crew things,
too, with its multitude of ways to generate
tokens.
First new card of Kaladesh, and it’s one of the
fancy and exciting new Vehicles. These are
quasi-equipment permanents that let you tap
other creatures to make them into creatures, and
these creatures can then bash your opponent.
Typically, Crew costs tend to be low enough and
the mana costs on the Vehicles also low enough
to make this a good deal. Not being creatures
until you Crew them means they dodge some of the
sorcery-speed creature removal, too, and the
creature is tapped as part of the vehicle’s cost
(so you can tap a freshly-summoned creature to
Crew).
Smuggler’s Copter is one of the cheaper Vehicles
in terms of mana cost, and it’s pretty good;
it’s able to start swinging as a 3/3 with
flying on turn 3, more than likely, and it loots
on impact. Both of these are very good, and Crew
1 means almost any creature will do in terms of
getting it off the ground.
It’s cheap, it does reasonable amounts of
damage, and it gets you through your library. As
far as rares go, this is a solid horse in
Limited and may make it in Constructed.
