Vehicles have been with us for a while now. So much so that they sort of blend into the background when they're not deliberately put front and centre of a set like Aetherdrift.

Vehicles as a motif have been with us for even longer. Mark Rosewater recently published this article detailing the histo-ry of Magic's attempts at representing vehicles. It's a fascinating look back through Magic design history, but today we're going to explore Vehicle with a capital V.

Artifact - Vehicle

It seems so obvious, now, that it's hard to imagine a world without vehicles. The way they work is both elegant and flavourful: of course a vehicle can't operate without someone to pilot or drive it. Here's how Wizards of the Coast describe it in their Aetherdrift Mechanics article: "To ac-tivate a crew ability, you tap a number of other untapped creatures you control with total power greater than or equal to the number after crew."

Okay, maybe that's less elegant, but essentially it means your 2/2 creature can crew a vehicle with Crew 2 in its text box. Two 1/1 creatures can do the same thing, so can a 3/3. We just care about total power of the creatures meeting the designated crew cost, so you are allowed to overshoot.

On the most basic vehicles, such as Air Response Unit, that's it. You're ready to go. You typically get an upgrade in power. In the above example, your lowly 1/1 can crew a 3/3 creature with flying and vigilance. Fairly basic stuff, but a solid bump in power. This is balanced out by the fact that the 1/1 is no longer available for attacking or blocking itself, but that tension is one of the things that make vehicles so popular and fun to play with.

Of course, there are vehicles with much more going on than that. You've got basic enters abilities, like Debris Beetle; triggered abilities like Rangers' Aetherhive and even activat-ed abilities on cards like The Last Ride. There are "when this attacks" abilities all over the place, which definitely help to sweeten the deal of having to tap multiple creatures.

At What Cost?

Perhaps most interesting of all, though, is the alternate crew costs that have adorned a slew of cards through the years. They have been with us since the very beginning, with standard all-star Heart of Kiran leading the way back in Aether Revolt. These are used sparingly, though, due to their added level of complexity, but can be extremely powerful if the cost isn't balanced.

This design space pairs nicely in Aetherdrift with exhaust. Several cards in Aetherdrift allow a vehicle to become a creature without crew-ing, such as Spire Mechcycle's own exhaust ability or via a card like Tune Up. Coolest of all, I think, is Midnight Mangler's spin on this: it just is a 3/3 on your opponent's turn, making it a very nice early blocker that can still attack for three when required, with a little help. This card won't be making any waves in constructed, but it's definitely a fun and in-teresting design.

It's Not All Upside

So, what are the downsides of vehicles? We've already covered the fact that you typically need to tap two creatures just to attack with one, but that's not all. Vehicles do get to dodge some removal: sor-cery speed removal is very hard to use against them, and a savvy player can avoid Murder effects by simply not crewing a vehicle into open mana. However, they are open to a whole host of removal spells that normal creatures aren't. Shatter and Disenchant effects become a lot better in a format where vehicles are commonplace. Having a crewed vehicle get bounced often feels even worse than a regular creature, since it's effectively a two-for-one in your opponent's favour.

You also can very easily fall into the trap of having too many vehicles and not enough regular creatures to crew them. This is especially true in limited, where you typically have much less control over what you draw and when. Even bombs like Thundering Broodwagon are significantly neutered if you don't have any creatures in play. It's almost impossible to have too many creatures in a deck, since they typically don't need any support, but vehicles come with some logistical baggage you need to account for.

If you can work around these drawbacks, though, Vehicle has proven to be a very versatile subtype. Every time vehicles are a focal point of a standard set, at least one gone on to help define the format. Indeed, most of the time this leads to at least one card getting banned, I'm looking at you Smuggler's Copter and you Reckoner Bankbuster.