Hello! Valuebear here, welcome to R/B pirates! My new aggressive take on standard post RIX. Here is a breakdown of the cards and game plan.
Daring Buccaneer The best 1 drop in the deck, if it is in your opener and you cant turn it on you have to mulligan, it is a bad hand. This card alone basically makes the archetype viable.
Rigging Runner Buccaneer 5-8, having first strike means you arent unhappy to play it on T1 without raid enabled, as it trades with a lot of early plays and makes combat math hard for your opponent as they may fear a pump spell. If you do enable raid it becomes better than buccaneer and eats a whole host of creatures.
Kari Zev, Skyship Raider just such a solid 2 drop. Kari has seen a ton of play in Ramunap red deck for a while now, so the power level of this card cannot be questioned. She also hold the pump from neckbreaker very well.
Fathom Fleet Captain the proverbial army in a can. With the absurdly high number of pirates in the deck turning on the captain's ability should just be a matter of having the mana. If left unchecked just like Goblin Rabblemaster or Brimaz, King of Oreskos the Cap will just end the game. As an aside, given the menace ability on both him and his tokens, the pump from neckbreaker goes a long way in closing out a game.
Dire Fleet Poisoner the removal spell on a stick. The versatility of this card in insane! From trading with a cub/hydra in energy or giving a blocked creature deathtouch to trade with anything short of Hazoret the Fervent, including Glorybringer which is a huge problem for this deck. To pumping a creature to swing through lethal damage, the impact this card will have will be incredible.
Dire Fleet Captain this card is in a weird place for me. It has a high ceiling, but it's floor is the lowest for 2 drops that I've got in the deck. For that reason I'm continually going down on numbers, and I may be removing it entirely for a more proactive card like Fell Flagship. As for the upside, it if played on curve it shouldn't attack for less than 3, which just makes it a very efficient creature.
Ruin Raider the source of card advantage in the deck, the Bob effect is easy enough to trigger in this deck. And given the low mana cost in the deck it should provide enough advantage to out weigh the cost. If more than one card is drawn from it then it has done more than enough to warrent it's inclusion.
Captain Lannery Storm Another weird card for me. I'm always a little underwhelmed by the 2/2 body but it does provide a number of helpful synergies/effects for the deck, these are; helping Dire Fleet Captain grow to a 4/4 on curve or 3/3 if my 1 drop is dealt with. It provides a hastey top deck and if I'm short on lands I has the potential to ramp me into my Dire Fleet Neckbreaker for these reasons I feel like it is a solid include.
Dire Fleet Neckbreaker this this the card that made me excited to build this list. I was stupidly excited for this card. The first thing I noticed was you didn't need to attack with it to gain the buff. The thought of dropping this on a board with a couple of menace guys made me salivate. That is of coarse the best case scenario, at worst it attacks by itself as a 5/2 which will trade with most creatures in standard. The other scenarios include pumping the runner to either a 3 or 4 power first striker, captain storm and the buccaneer to both 4 power. In all these scenarios the result is a must block attacker, this means the neckbreaker is a must answer finisher.
Lightning Strike just solid removal that works on early creatures and can go face in the middle to late game. The best burn spell we'll get in standard.
Fatal Push the best early game removal we can get. It'll clean the way for all the early pressure we want to apply. Also the synergy with the treasure tokens from Lanery storm means we can remove mid-game threats. This doesn't apply to threats like Glorybringer, The Scarab God and Hazoret the Fervent but hopefull before the 5 drops hit we'll have a board state where we can push through the final bits of damage.
The mana base is just the basic tribal mana base, 8x dual with summit and territory then filled out with the corresponding basics, any utility land slots are still up for debate.
As for the sideboard, I'm really excited that I can run 4x copies of a Pyroclasm in an aggro deck and have it be proactive. Fiery Cannonade allows you to blast your way through decks like Ramunap red with reckless abandon. The tempo swing from playing this T3 or T4 can be devastating. I can see it being the game breaker on the merfolk match up as well.
Abrade is just additional removal, it allows me to run more creature removal + artifact hate in the same slots, what's not to love!?
Kitesail Freebooter comes in against more controlly matchups, allowing you to take a removal/counter spell and slam in with an evasive threat, also works wonders with the neckbreaker pump.
March of the Drowned also for the control/grindy match up. It recurs any 2 threats previously destroyed by the opponent for 1 mana. If it is to the point where we am casting march, we should have enough mana to replay those threats in the same turn, meaning the pressure does not let up.
Chandra's Defeat really efficient removal in my colours. Lots of red creatures to target plus Chandra, Torch of Defiance sees play, I also expect Angrath, the Flame-Chained to see play so this 1 mana kill the big red thing seems really good.
Unlicensed Disintegration unconditional removal, I think I'm happy to pay an extra mana for Terminate in standard. It hits those glorybringers, and scarab gods for a turn. If we are lucky enough to have a treasure token lying around it can deal an extra 3 damage helping to close out the game.
For now that's all! Any feedback is greatly appreciated, as are suggestions on the mana base.
