How They Brew It - Dan Lewis Hits You with a Car

Michael Celani • October 1, 2024

Deckbuilding
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School of Hard Knocks

Good evening, pupils. Welcome to my Dojo, located in the strip mall on 153st Street between the Rosati's and the Danish butcher (the one that slices baked danishes, not the butcher that is Danish or the butcher that butchers Danes). I am instructor Michael Celani, and I've earned more belts than a Kingdom Hearts character.

Some martial arts are about redirecting energy. Some martial arts are about quick, decisive strikes. I'm here to tell you that all martial arts are bullshit compared to my brand of picking up stuff and hitting your opponent with it.

Meet Dan Lewis

, leader of our Dojo, and his we're-only-playing-him-for-the-colors friend, The Fourteenth Doctor
. They're pioneers in the field of whackology; that's karate-speak for hitting people with things. He'll give you the technique, the theory, and the skills to defend yourselves in the type of harsh, cruel world that saw fit to invent the revolver.

Hitting You Up

Our Dojo's philosophy is that everything is a weapon, especially Food

. Dan Lewis
 transforms every noncreature, non-Equipment artifact you control into a power-boosting Equipment with equip .

You're not limited to equipping just mana rocks

, artifact lands
, and mechs
, though. Mr. Lewis
 can teach you to Danhandle any valid artifact, including tokens.

The plan: scrounge up enough junk around you and use it as improvised weaponry, thereby running an Equipment deck with almost no Equipment. We'll focus on abilities that care more about the quantity of our weaponry rather than the quality...

...and find ways to get around the cost to turn our creatures into a walking one-person armory army!

But if that sounds too straightforward, don't leave just yet. I know you'd rather be anywhere other than school, but trust me: there's a reason this deck is called Dan Lewis Hits You with a Car.

Raiding the Evidence Room

To begin your training, you must visualize the weapons within yourself and within your surroundings. Concentrate. Could the alarm clock be a weapon? How about the toaster? What about the empty can of Mountain Dew you refuse to throw out? You must get creative! If you can't, how are you going to rescue your kidnapped daughter from Liam Neeson in Taken? Sorry if I'm fuzzy on the details, it's been sixteen years since that movie came out. Anyway, let's sort out how we're hoarding artifacts that we can equip with Dan Lewis

.

One of the easiest ways to get artifact tokens onto the field is to investigate. Investigating creates a Clue

token, which can then be sacrificed by paying to draw a card. Focusing on investigation solves two problems in our deck: it makes artifacts for our creatures to equip, and it lets us pay mana to restock our hand in case we don't find any of our draw engines, and if my corrupt cop of an uncle taught me anything, it's that there's all kinds of ways to fabricate evidence.

Police Investigation

Like a hacker group that's really bad at covering their tracks, some cards just spew out extra evidence for doing the things we were gonna do anyway. Malcolm, the Eyes

and Elmar, Ulvenwald Informant
 require us to hit the very lofty goal of playing two spells in a turn, and since a good portion of our deck is cheap mana rocks, that shouldn't be a problem. Lonis, Cryptozoologist
 clues
 us in every time we cast any of the decks twenty-nine other creature spells.

Wojek Investigator

rewards us for sucking at the game expertly curving out and leaving our hands empty with up to three Clues
 a turn. If any of our creatures get removed, Merchant of Truth
 digs up dirt on who did it, and as an additional bonus buffs lone attacking creatures for each Clue
 we control. It's an extremely dangerous attacker, since its built-in flying means it's perfect at carrying all the evidence it's collected. If you're on the other side of getting hit, Search the Premises
 investigates for each creature attacking you, meaning you're either going to discourage your opponents from taking potshots or be rewarded for the pain.

Evidentiary Hearings

Other cards make a bunch of Clues

at once, often with an additional bonus added as a consolation for the fact that they don't actually draw you anything. Officious Interrogation
 is a Call the Coppercoats
 for artifact tokens, and if you've ever played with that card, you know it can be explosive against any sort of go-wide list. Ethereal Investigator
 usually makes three Clues
 the turn it comes down and can generate some chump blockers over the course of the game. Ezrim, Agency Chief
, another great Voltron target, also comes down with two Clues
 which it can use to protect itself or beef up your life total.

Making your Case


We might as well bake in some more Clue
 synergy if they're going to be the main token we generate. Alquist Proft, Master Sleuth
 upgrades your Clues
 from mere cantrips to copies of Sphinx's Revelation
, which can be devastating if you're allowed to activate it on your antecedent's end step. Martha Jones
 makes your walking arsenal unblockable for a turn, which can set up some cheeky commander-damage wins out of nowhere. Finally, Kellan, Inquisitive Prodigy
 sacrifices your own Clue
 tokens for free when he attacks, though, if you found one, you're better off targeting any of your indestructible artifact lands, like Darksteel Citadel
, instead, because it turns out Kellan
 doesn't care if his target actually gets blown up.

All The Stuff That's Not Clues

We're not all-in on Clues

, though. If they're attached to sufficiently powerful cards, other types of tokens can show up, too. Samwise Gamgee
 is the Food
-focused variant of Lonis, Cryptozoologist
, and his activated ability is a key recursive piece in case any of your important legendary cards get sniped. Great Desert Prospector
 can easily make four or five Powerstones
 when it enters, and those tokens have a big advantage in that they can pay for their own equip costs. Bootleggers' Stash
 is extremely flashy and not very practical, but it feels incredible if you can stick it alongside Puresteel Paladin
.

Tying these all together is a copy of Academy Manufactor

, which outright triples the amount of Equipment you'll be generating throughout the game. A Manufactor into Officious Interrogation
 might as well spell victory for you.

Discount Destruction

Anyone can pick something up and smack a dude with it, but it's all about the technique that elevates it into an art form. Yes, you can wield a frying pan, but did you know that there are actually one-handed frying pans and two-handed frying pans? It's all about the length of the grip.

Even with the vast array of knicknacks that we can hit people with, Danhandling each one still costs , and with the quantity of Food

and Clues
 we're cooking and fabricating respectively, putting them all on a single creature could take several full turns worth of mana. That's where these cards come in.

The easiest way to deal with an equip cost of is to reduce the equip costs of Equipment by . Conveniently, cards in this category reduce the equip costs of Equipment by . Unlike most methods of discounting activated abilities, such as Biomancer's Familiar

, equip abilities generally don't have a floor on how low they can go. All you need is one of these, and every artifact you control can be swapped around for .

And we're digging deep for these effects, because they're more precious than someone who believes they can pump their own gas in New Jersey. The deck's only Equipment (Bladehold War-Whip

) and the deck's only planeswalker (Nahiri, Storm of Stone
) both earn their spot thanks to this.

Another method of paying for the equip cost is the same method I use when I file my taxes: don't. Simply attach all your stuff to a creature without paying, and you're good to go. Ardenn, Intrepid Archaeologist

may not help us with any of our combo finishers that require an equip cost of , but if you have twenty Clues
 sitting around, your "combo" should actually just be smacking a guy for that much damage.

But if you're like someone skilled in animal husbandry and want to get the most bang for your buck, then you need Puresteel Paladin

. You only need three artifacts to make equipping stuff free, and it comes with the absurd benefit of causing literally every single artifact that enters to cantrip. It's the best card in the deck, and you should give serious thought to searching it up if you happen to come across Imperial Recruiter
 or Eladamri's Call
.

Becoming a Master

Now that you know how to properly identify that an umbrella is just a slightly less pointy sword, and which end of it to hold and which end of it you whack your enemy with, it's time to advance to the next level of improvised combat. Don't think of the umbrella as merely a stick you bludgeon pickpockets with: think about it as an extension of yourself. If that sounds cliché, I'm sorry; we had to make a class for literally every kind of improvised weapon, and it's hard to be original and inspirational for all of them. You want poetry, go take the chairbending course.

We generally have two ways of strategizing with Equipment. The standard way is to go tall, by equipping a ton of stuff to a single creature. This can knock out opponents very quickly, but the strategy is vulnerable to spot removal and other control effects. To combat this, some Equipment synergy pieces have moved away from the traditional Voltron strategy and instead supported an archetype that relies on a wider board. A more diffuse board is harder to interact with, but not quite as explosive as a single silver bullet creature. To craft a well-rounded deck, our list will include choice cuts from both strategies.

Wide, Wide World

Our first trick is simple: if you wear it, they will come. Cards like Kemba, Kha Regent

and Valduk, Keeper of the Flame
 reward you with armies for suiting them up, and since our deck has way more Equipment than any reasonable deck should, we're going to become a problem fast. Chishiro, the Shattered Blade
 is slightly different, since it creates a token every time an Equipment enters, but the difference is largely inconsequential given how frequently we'll be investigating.

Wide boards mean wide buffs, and luckily, there's ways to turn Equipment into power-and-toughness boosting stat sticks for everyone, not just a single creature. Kellan, the Fae-Blooded

provides a +1/+0 boost to your board for each Aura and Equipment attached to him. If that's not enough, he can also search your library for any Aura or Equipment you want. Barring finding the last piece of a combo, you'll generally want to grab Elemental Mastery
. The play pattern is simple: with Elemental Mastery
 on Kellan, the Fae-Blooded
, suit him up with as much Equipment as you can, then summon an army of 1/1s that get buffed up thanks to his ability. In this way, your Equipment pulls double duty, because it not only affects how many creatures you create, it also affects how big they are, too. You can pull a similar trick with Heavenly Blademaster
, who (for no reason) cheats the equip cost on all your tokens.

Buffing up a single creature also makes this deck a good home for Overwhelming Stampede

. It's not uncommon to have chains of ten Equipment or more on a single creature in this deck, and that means Overwhelming Stampede
 is going to make even small armies extremely threatening for a turn.

Tall, Tall Mountain

But as long as we have a ton of artifacts lying around, we may as well leverage the power boost that Dan Lewis

grants them. Some cards from the previously mentioned segment pull double-duty here; Kellan
, for instance, also has double strike, meaning if you can get him through a crowded board state with a Rogue's Passage
 or Martha Jones
, you're golden. Alternatively, you can also increase the buff each individual Equipment brings. Stick a Bruenor Battlehammer
, or slap a Strong Back
 on something with flying, and your Equipment suddenly goes from a measly +1/+0 buff to a terrifying +3/+0 buff each.

Vehicular Manslaughter

Congratulations, pupil. You've not only learned how to identify and pick up a weapon, you've turned using it into an art. Nobody can stop you now... except, of course, for the Omega Wasp. But there's one last, forbidden technique you have to learn before you can truly be called a master: hitting people with a car.

Captain Rex Nebula

turns any nonland permanent you control into a Vehicle artifact. Crucially, doing this removes all other card types on that permanent for the duration of the effect. As long as you don't aim him at an Equipment like a dunce, Rex's
 target becomes a noncreature, non-Equipment artifact, and therefore legally capable of being Danhandled. You're not hitting your opponent with a car; you're hitting your opponent with a car.

On the surface, this seems completely pointless: whatever you envehiclify simply becomes another Equipment, and thanks to the timing of Rex's

trigger, you'd only be able to equip it after combat. But there's one last, crucial piece the puzzle to be revealed here: if you were to target an Aura with this ability, you can use this to swap Auras around. The rules state that anything on an Aura that says "enchanted creature" really just means "attached permanent," so the card doesn't actually care if it's attached because it's enchanting a creature or attached because it's equipping one.

In this context, Splinter Twin

and Burning Anger
 become extremely powerful, especially if you've reduced equip costs to . You could make an infinite number of temporary creatures, including those that investigate when they enter the battlefield, thus leading to infinite Clues
 and infinite Equipment; or, you could simply dome your opponents for tons and tons of damage by equipping all the junk you've got to your creatures and moving Burning Anger
 over to each of them in turn.

By the way, enchant abilities - that text that says what an Aura can be legally attached to - only work on Auras specifically. As long as it's an Equipment and not an Aura, you could totally equip Weirding Wood

to your creatures to generate a bunch of mana. Be careful with this, though, as you'll have no way to staple it back onto a land before the turn ends and Weirding Wood
 will die to state-based actions once the continuous effect produced by Captain Rex Nebula
 wears off. There's not much you can do about that unless you happen to have a Dryad Arbor
.

But who cares about the practical applications? Let's take this interaction to its logical conclusion by equipping one of our creatures with Spellweaver Volute

, a card that makes no sense. The point of this card is (ostensibly) to give you free copies of instants in graveyards whenever you cast sorceries. Were we to equip a creature with Spellweaver Volute
, then the next time we cast a sorcery spell, we create a copy of the equipped creature card.

Now, we could put that copy onto the stack and cast it, exiling the original card that Spellweaver Volute

is attached to... except that the rules say that copies of cards are created in the same zone as the original card, which in this case, is already the battlefield. So, you can cast a sorcery, make a copy of the card on the battlefield, and since copies of cards can exist on the battlefield, it just stays there, without sacrificing the original!

This would be actually useful if the deck included more than eight sorceries, but you're eventually gonna pull it off and flabbergast everyone at your table. This slot used to be Nadu, Winged Wisdom

, an objectively correct inclusion for this deck, so don't look at me.

Graduation Ceremony

Congratulations, pupil. You have officially mastered the art of picking up things and hitting people with it. Go and make us proud by getting in brawls at antique shops and electronics stores, and make sure you take my brother's course as well: the art of picking up people and hitting them into things.

Like How They Brew It? Hey, me too! Come check out our Discord and meet up with a bunch of like-minded weirdos brewers. And then, check out the other stuff I do on my website, including a ton of other Magic-related projects. Hope to see you chatting with us soon!

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Michael Celani

Michael Celani

Newly appointed member of the FDIC and insured up to $150,000 per account, Michael Celani is the member of your playgroup that makes you go "oh no, it's that guy again." He's made a Twitter account @GamesfreakSA as well as other mistakes, and his decks have been featured on places like MTGMuddstah. You can join his Discord at https://gamesfreaksa.info and vote on which decks you want to see next. In addition to writing, he has a job, other hobbies, and friends.