When it comes to new Magic: The Gathering cards, it’s best not to judge books by their covers. Aetherdrift is a great example. The Aetherspark, the game’s first-ever Equipment planeswalker and Headliner card of the set, is scarcely seeing play in any format. Nesting Bot, on the other hand, a cute little 1/1 Robot with a few fun abilities, is showing up all over MTG Standard.
For enfranchised players, this won’t be too much of a surprise. Efficient early creatures tend to take up more meta space than gimmicky four-mana artifacts, after all. What is surprising, however, is the range of decks that are running this unassuming uncommon. Whether you’re Jeskai or Orzhov, going wide or running the Aristocrats playbook, Nesting Bot has something to offer.
Nesting Bot In MTG Standard
- Mana Value: W
- Rarity: Uncommon
- Type: Artifact Creature – Robot
- Stats: 1/1
- Card Text: Start your engines! (If you have no speed, it starts at 1. It increases once on each of your turns when an opponent loses life. Max speed is 4.)
When this creature dies, create a 1/1 colorless Servo artifact creature token.
Max speed — This creature gets +1/+0.
To read through the text box on Nesting Bot is to see how far MTG creatures have come over the years. It’s just a 1/1 for one, sure, but it also packs three different abilities, all of which are relevant. Right out of the gate, getting to Start Your Engines on a one drop is a big deal. The Max Speed mechanic is generally pretty cumbersome, but the earlier you get it going the better it is. The potential to do so on your first turn is fantastic.
Nesting Bot has a built-in payoff for hitting Max Speed, too. It’s nothing on the level of Muraganda Raceway’s extra mana or The Speed Demon’s card draw, but it’s a nice bonus to have. Once you’re at Max Speed, it becomes a 2/1 for one. Savannah Lions isn’t particularly juicy these days. That card is in Standard right now, in fact, and I bet you didn’t notice. That said, when it comes bundled with everything else Nesting Bot has going on, it looks a bit more attractive.
Tying the whole package together is Nesting Bot’s middle ability, which gives you an extra 1/1 Construct token when Bot dies. We’ve seen plenty of creatures like this over the years: Doomed Traveler, Blisterpod, and even Infestation Sage in Foundations. These cards have always made good chump blockers and sacrifice fodder, and Nesting Bot is no exception. While its token doesn’t fly or make mana, it is an artifact, which makes it relevant in a whole new strata of Magic: The Gathering decks.
A Bot Of Many Talents
Thanks to this bristling bag of tricks, Nesting Bot has nestled its way into a number of MTG decks in Standard. Perhaps the most notable among these is Boros Tokens, also known as Boros Convoke. This was the king of the Standard meta for a while before Bloomburrow turned Aggro on its head with its hyper-efficient Mice. It’s only a minor player now, but Nesting Bot still fits the strategy perfectly.
As the name implies, this is a deck all about going wide and maintaining a consistent board presence. Nesting Bot helps you do both, giving you resilience against board wipes thanks to its death trigger. Crucially, it also enables one of the deck’s most powerful cards: Gleeful Demolition.
Going turn one Bot into turn two Demolition gives you four bodies on board and one mana open, which lets you Convoke out Knight-Errant of Eos on turn two. This was already possible via Novice Inspector, but extra redundancy is a big deal in Aggro decks. Nesting Bot is also seeing a lot of play in the Jeskai variant of this deck, which operates on the same core game plan but splashes blue for Spyglass Siren. Right now both of these decks are confined to tier two according to MTG Decks. Knight-Errant of Eos doesn’t rotate until September, however, so there’s still time for a comeback.
The other place Nesting Bot is seeing Standard play is in Orzhov Sacrifice. This is a bit of a Combo/Midrange mashup, slowly bleeding opponents down with drain effects over time while also packing explosive potential thanks to Raise the Past. Nesting Bot is a fantastic piece of sacrifice fodder for the deck, which also starts your engines for Zahur and Gas Guzzler. It’s a fringe meta player currently, but Nesting Bot has a guaranteed spot in it.
Command And Conquer
The fact that Nesting Bot is seeing play in MTG Standard isn’t hugely surprising. Efficient one-drops tend to perform well in the format, after all. They’re significantly less useful in Commander, however, which makes it all the more exciting that Bot is also seeing play there. According to EDHREC, the card has been added to nearly 2,000 decks already. That’s not bad at all for a mere 1/1 uncommon.
By far the most common among the decks running Nesting Bot are Max Speed lists: Mendicant Core, Guidelight, Samut, the Driving Force, and Zahur. This makes a lot of sense. Max Speed is a bit of a parasitic mechanic, so any deck built around it needs to run as many cards with it as possible. As I mentioned above, the potential for starting your engines early is too good to pass up for decks that care about doing so.
So far so obvious, but we’re not dealing with a one-trick Robot here. Nesting Bot also slots into multiple other Magic: the Gathering archetypes, all of which have established niches in Commander. Take Aristocrats, for instance. Commanders like Teysa Karlov and Elas il-kor are running the card, simply due to it being two bodies for one mana. Finding sacrifice fodder outside of black and green can be difficult, and that’s a niche Nesting Bot fills well.
The artifact angle is also important to keep in mind here. For Commanders like Breya, Etherium Shaper who care about having lots of artifacts in play, this is a resilient artifact at a low cost. If you’re in white and need to turn on Affinity or Metalcraft Nesting Bot is a no-brainer. It’s great to see low-cost, low-rarity cards like this succeed in multiple MTG formats.