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Oviya, Automech Artisan is one of the many legendary creatures introduced inMagic: The Gathering’sAetherdrift set. This mono green commander is rather simple, built around cheating creatures and Vehicles into play for just one mana.
As with many mono green decks, Oviya is a Stompy commander. A Stompy deck is one that is generally mono-green and plays primarily creatures that can deal a ton of damage quickly. It is an aggressive strategy meant to win by combat as quickly as possible by flooding the battlefield with creatures and starts attacking with them right away. If this sounds fun, Oviya is the perfect commander for you.
Surrak and Goreclaw
x28 Forest
Reliquary Tower
War Room
The decklistcontains 33 creatures, seven sorceries, six instants, 16 artifacts, three enchantments,and34 lands. Many of the non-creature spells help either with combat, ramp, or untap creatures.
Key Cards
Oviya, Automech Artisan
The commander of the deck, Oviya, Automech Artisan isone of the main ways you’re getting creatures on the battlefield. For just one mana and a tap of Oviya, you can putany creature or Vehicle directly on the battlefield.
Oviya puts the creature onto the battlefield directly. If a creature has an effect that triggers when it’s cast, itwill not trigger, so it might be better to wait to play those until you can cast it naturally as opposed to cheating it out.
Oviya doesn’t require a lot of mana investment, letting you get it onto the battlefield early to then skip alot of your rampingto get your best creatures out. There aremultiple ways to untap Oviyaas well, which will let you keep flooding the battlefield quickly to overrun your opponents before they can set up defenses.
Kodama Of The East Tree
Kodama of the East Tree might not be a partner commander in Oviya, but it makes the perfect partner card to Oviya. With Kodama on the battlefield, you essentiallyget to cheat out an extra permanent with lesser mana value than whatever Oviya put into play.
Youwant to get Kodama of the East Tree on the battlefield as quickly as possible. Even without Oviya, there are other ways to put permanents onto the battlefield to trigger Kodama.Kodama’s effect isn’t once per turn either, so you can take advantage of them all to run out your entire hand if you wanted to.
Surrak And Goreclaw
Surrak and Goreclaw provide a lot of extra value for all of your creatures. Itprovides all your creatures trample, gives them a +1/+1 counter, and gives them haste for the turn. All of these effects are excellent, especially in creature-focused decks like Oviya.
Themain attraction to the deck is the haste enabler. While everything else is nice, Surrak and Goreclaw enable you to start attacking with your creatures right away. Thisdoes not apply to any token creatures, so it’s not a catch-all, but there aren’t many in the deck to begin with so this restriction will rarely come up.
Thunderhawk Gunship
Thunderhawk Gunship is one of the best Vehicles you can include in the deck. Itcomes along with two 2/2 tokenswith vigilance, but its strength comes fromgiving all your attacking creatures flying when Thunderhawk Gunship attacks.
Most decks will struggle to block flying creatures, especially an entire battlefield of them. The stats of your creatures are going to be high, soswinging with your entire battlefield with Thunderhawk Gunship attacking can likely lead to the end of the game.
Unnatural Growth
An Oviya Commander deck is heavily combat-focused, so Unnatural Growth is the perfect enchantment for it. Unnatural Growthdoubles your creatures power and toughness every combat, letting you best creatures deal massive damage with just one attack.
Unnatural Growth triggersevery combat, not just your own. This helps to turn your creatures into better blockers that will make it harder for your opponents to attack into you.
When mixed with other cards that grant more evasive abilities, Unnatural Growth cantake someone’s life totals down to zero in just one swing. While you can’t cheat Unnatural Growth out like your creatures, with how quickly you ramp you can get it on the battlefield early in the game.
How To Play The Deck
An Oviya, Automech Artisan Commander deck is all aboutflooding the battlefield with creatures and turning them sideways to attack your opponents constantly. Since you cheat out powerful creatures with high stats, you can keep yourself safe from attackers with powerful blockers while you continue to set up for your big swig to win the game.
You can’t always rely on having Oviya on the battlefield, but other cards share similar effects. Monster Manual, Smuggler’s Surprise, and Elvish Piper all can put a creature onto the battlefield without paying their mana costs.
Youwant to get down creatures with big stats as quickly as possible. Cards like Impervious Greatwurm, Blightsteel Colossus, and Darksteel Colossus are great choices, as they are hard to remove once you get them out.Mana dorks and low-cost creatures are the ones you want to cast normally, as it’s better to save Oviya’s ability for creatures that are much harder to cast.
Theprimary win condition of the deck iswinning through combat. You have multiple ways to get large creatures onto the battlefield and raise their stats, making it easy to have devastating combat steps that can potentially one-shot an opponent even if they’re at full life. It can defend itself well until that point thanks to the big toughness the creatures have too.
Youwant to keep attacking as much as you’re able to,taking out your most threatening opponents first. It is important to keep pushing your advantage, as you want to take your opponents out before they can draw an answer to your battlefield which can be hard to come back from.
Thebiggest weakness of the deck is its susceptibility to board wipes.If a board wipe resolves, building back up before an opponent takes you out can be a struggle. In addition, it’sweak against decks that can make a ton of creatures like token decks. While it can defend against strong creatures, it can’t block a battlefield of creatures with a large number of them.
