Dress for Success: Piloting the Nitro Mechanoid

With the majority of Rathe currently enjoying the Outsiders expansion and the underhanded strategies born of the Pits, myself and many other Mechanologist specialists continue to tinker away in our Metrixian workshops above. Still obsessed with the cards introduced in Dynasty, one card has consumed my focus: the mechanically groundbreaking and truly unique Construct Nitro Mechanoid.

Nitro Mechanoid opened up a new strategy for Mechanologist players, one which focuses on pulling off a big, flashy combo finisher... if you can manage to assemble the key cards fast enough to construct it. After a few months of tireless research, hundreds of games, and countless deck revisions, I can’t quite say the Mechanoid will be winning the next ProTour - but it certainly has some steam behind it! To my fellow Mechanologists, I hope this article and strategy breakdown can provide some insight into the deck and help you pilot the Nitro Mechanoid to victory.

This Classic Constructed decklist focuses on playing out Construct Nitro Mechanoid and pulling off the High Octane combo in the most consistent and efficient way possible, while allowing a pivot to a familiar hybrid aggro list for those matchups where Nitro Mechanoid may not be the best option. The sideboard gives us access to our strong combat chain enders: Maximum Velocity and Payload. It also carries a small pistol package for midrange play via Induction Chamber and Plasma Purifier.

Winning with Nitro Mechanoid comes down to two things: how quickly you can construct it, and how soon you can combo off with it. The short and simple breakdown looks like this:

To play Construct Nitro Mechanoid, it asks us to meet a few conditions.

The first is to control 4 pieces of Mechanologist Equipment (head, chest, arms, legs) and a Weapon. Luckily, these can be chosen and put into play at the start of the game.

The next is to control 3 Hyper Drivers. Fortunately, Dash’s hero ability allows us to start with 1 in play, so only 2 others need to be found. By running 5 other Hyper Drivers in our deck (and 3 copies of Dash’s specialization Spark of Genius), that gives us a total of 8 hits in the deck! If you have a 59 card deck after grabbing one at the start, you should see a Hyper Driver every 7.4 cards drawn - though being a card game with random draws, it's possible to get them all out as early as turn 2, or spend half the game pulling out your hair as they are nowhere to be seen. Most often, you can get out your needed Hyper Drivers between turns 3 and 6.

Over the first few turns, play out your Hyper Drivers and block with your other cards / armor. Try to take as little damage as possible while denying your opponent’s on hits. Be mindful of High Octane if you draw into one too early; you will need to find these later to combo off, and should avoid blocking with them whenever possible.

If you have the opportunity to arsenal, 0-cost boost cards (Zero to Sixty and T-Bone), Hyper Drivers, and Construct Nitro Mechanoid should be your top considerations. Your arsenal is a valuable tool in playing out Nitro Mechanoid as soon as you can; it gets much more difficult if you trap something else in there and aren't able to play it out.

If you have extra cards in hand at the end of your turn, pitch them into Teklo Plasma Pistol to keep them in your deck for later.

During these early turns, it is important to hold back boosting. It may be tempting, but it can seriously make your gameplan more difficult. Boosting triggers your Hyper Drivers, causing them to lose a steam counter and possibly destroy themselves. Red Hyper Drivers have 3 steam counters, yellow ones have 2. Once destroyed, it may take many more turns to find another in your deck to play. Boosting can also banish key win condition cards like Construct Nitro Mechanoid and High Octane. Sometimes your opponent may not attack or set up and pass, leaving you with a large hand. Depending on the number of steam counters on your Hyper Drivers, you could take the turn to play out your hand and boost, forcing some cards out of an opponent's hand or getting some early damage - though patience and pitching your hand into Teklo Plasma Pistol will sometimes be the correct answer. Playing a non-boosted attack or shooting with Pistol for 2 damage when able to early on can make a big difference in closing the health gap at the end.

With 3 Hyper Drivers in play, it is now time to construct the Nitro Mechanoid. Hopefully while you were blocking and playing out Hyper Drivers, you were able to arsenal or keep a Mechanoid in your hand, along with a 0-cost boost card (you have 18 total in deck, so they should be easy to draw into). It's okay if you need to block out for a turn or two until you find them or an open window to go for it.

With a cost of 4 to play Construct Nitro Mechanoid, it can be awkward to pitch for it directly from hand. Fortunately, it's possible to play it with only 1 other card - as mentioned before, either a Zero to Sixty or T-Bone. When you boost one, all 3 of your Hyper Drivers will trigger, giving you 3 resources. Because you did not boost earlier in the game, they all should stay in play as they have remaining steam counters. Then pay 1 to activate your Teklo Foundry Heart, banishing 2 cards and generating 2 additional resources. Now you should have enough to play out Nitro Mechanoid!

By this point you could have anywhere from 35 to 5 health remaining; usually it will be around 15, but even at 1 health you are still very much in the game.

Once built, Nitro Mechanoid is the most powerful weapon, item, and armor in the entire game. Having an attack of 6 (from Galvanic Bender’s ability while underneath) and 8 materials, the Nitro Mechanoid represents 47 damage! The overpower ability also gives it evasion, allowing more damage to slip through. Defensively, it has 5 armor with temper, giving you up to an additional 15 health while defending with it.

Now you can transition to the offensive. Using the armor to block out your opponent's threats, you can hold cards and boost freely while adding on a Nitro Mechanoid attack at the end of the chain to push an additional 6 damage.

This is where High Octane comes in, allowing you to close the life gap or win the game outright. Try to arsenal and set up a 5 card hand; hopefully you still have 2-3 High Octanes in deck, so you should see one shortly. Take some damage and block using the Nitro Mechanoid to keep the cards for the combo.

With a 4-5 card hand and High Octane, each action point becomes a free attack with Nitro Mechanoid! Boosting 4 times results in 5 action points at the end, which is 30 additional damage. Often I find myself able to wait it out and play 2 High Octanes in a single turn, which with 4 boosts is 9 action points by the end - and you can unload all the materials from Nitro Mechanoid for the full 47 damage on top of the 4 boost cards you played!

Even with a single High Octane, the big swing can easily make your opponent start blocking to prevent lethal damage. You should have the tempo now, so set up big hands and keep boosting into them. Keep an eye on your remaining Nitro Mechanoid materials, but with a few more boost attacks and overpowered swings you should be able to beat them down to nothing.

Hyper Driver (and Spark of Genius)
I believe the 3 red and 3 yellow Hyper Drivers is the best ratio, having access to 9 total Hyper Drivers through Spark of Genius makes the deck run much smoother and faster. Having to block a lot in the early game, it is difficult to keep many cards in hand; so using a 0 cost boost and triggering all three Hyper Drivers plus Teklo Foundry Heart is a great way to pay the 4 resources for Construct Nitro Mechanoid while only requiring one card. This is the reason I do not find blue Hyper Drivers particularly good, as with only 1 steam counter they will break the first time they are used.

Blessing on Ingenuity
This card being absent will most likely be the biggest surprise to anyone who hasn't tried running Mechanoid themselves. I find it can lure players into playing recklessly and lengthen the amount of time needed to build your Nitro Mechanoid. Promising to return lost Hyper Drivers, it encourages boosting earlier in the game; but I've found that boosting early can remove necessary cards from your deck, like High Octane or Construct Nitro Mechanoid. Beyond that, if you are boosting, you are often blocking less and taking more damage, not leaving you with enough health in the end to swing tempo and combo off safely. Having to rely on finding a Blessing of Ingenuity and letting it resolve costs you multiple turns and more damage taken. It also bricks your hand at the end of the game where it conflicts with High Octane and the need for aggressive boost cards to close out.

Sink Below, Unmovable, etc.
While defense reactions and other non-Mechanologist cards may help with your defensive abilities, they greatly hold back the deck and can make you lose games outright. Boosting one away or banishing one off of Teklo Foundry Heart on a key turn can be a huge setback, as you cannot break Achilles Accelerator to regain the action point because you need it as material for Construct Nitro Mechanoid. They can greatly lower the damage output on your High Octane combo turn as well, which you need to pull off to close the health gap.

In the end, I hope this deck breakdown helps you understand, explore, and play Nitro Mechanoid more efficiently. While the deck has a massively powerful payoff, I feel it is still a piece or two away from becoming truly competitive. Having access to a few defensive Mechanologist class cards without the fear of missing a boost would help the setup turns the deck must first live through. Also, more cards that allow deck filtering would be useful in the setup phase. With only 4 Mechanologist Equipment currently in the game, some other options instead of Viziertronic Model i and Achilles Accelerator would be fantastic, as you are unable to use / break them without giving up the Mechanoid. Nitro Mechanoid being an Item, Equipment, and Weapon allows it to be targeted by multiple removal types in the game, so having a way to recur or protect your pieces could also help the deck combat these cards.

Overall, this new way to play Mechanologist has only been out for a short time; and I believe with further card support from LSS and more players tinkering with Nitro Mechanoid decks, that we will one day have it see more mainstream play. It's an exciting time to play Mechanologist, and I am looking forward to future expansions that develop the class and this strategy.

Metrix has to be the next set, right?