Single Scoop: A Pirate's Life (Historic, Magic Arena)
Arghhhhhhhhhhhhhh. It's time to go looking for treasure with one of the best tribes to hit the seven seas! Are pirates going to be tier 1 anytime soon? Probably not. I just wanted to play pirates because Amazonian and I recently had a pirate brew stream and I just couldn't get enough of the tribe. Yo Ho, it's the pirate's life for me!
Gameplan
The deck relies on getting early pirates and then being as disruptive as possible.
With cards like Kitesail Freebooter, Thoughtseize, and Lookout's Dispersal, we're bound to pick apart an opponent's hand so that our pirates can force our opponents to walk the plank (which isn't in the deck, unfortunately). Once we've disrupted our opponent's hand, we begin setting up with a bunch of different pirates. We've got cards like Deadeye Tracker as a way to eat up the opponent's graveyard. We've also got Hostage Taker to steal creatures and artifacts which is pretty sweet considering that there are a decent amount of artifact decks running around! Kira, Great Glass-Spinner isn't a pirate but it is there as a singleton to blank our opponents' removal! Let's just say Kira is an honorary pirate!
Thanks to Jumpstart, we've got another lord effect in Corsair Captain! Best part is that it's not legendary so we can play multiples. On top of Corsair Captain, we've got Admiral Beckett Brass as another lord effect that can be played on unsuspecting opponents to steal their nonland permanents.
A few other singletons were added as flavor cards like Coastal Piracy. If I were look for an effect like this, I'd probably play Reconnaissance Mission as that card can be Cycled but we're pirates so we're committed! How is Embercleave more flavorful than something like Pirate's Cutlass? Well, it's the pirate tribe's "cursed artifact"! Is that a reach? Probably but it's nice to have some sweet combat tricks.
Conclusion
The deck is more for fun than anything else and is in need of quite the power boost to truly keep up with most things in Historic but it can steal games with its disruptiveness. It's kind of like a slower and clunkier Mono-Blue deck but we get to have twice the fun with Pirate puns. Another thing that is sweet about the pirate tribe is its ability to play Fiery Cannonade. Having an instant speed one-sided sweeper always helps against Goblins. I do hope we get more pirate support somewhere down the line as I'd love to see what a competitive pirate deck looks like! For now, we sail into the night with the victories we were able to steal and call it a successful expedition!
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-Your Friendly Neighborhood PirateAvenger
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