Budget Pirate Aggro

Standard* JakeHarlow

SCORE: 39 | 24 COMMENTS | 16705 VIEWS | IN 12 FOLDERS

FNM - 03.01.19; 1st Place, five rounds of Swiss —March 1, 2019

After several weeks of hiatus, I returned to this Pirate deck. The local FNM meta is different now, post-Mythic Championship Ravnica Allegiance. There are lots of Sultai Midrange lists, as well as the obvious Mono-Blue Tempo. There were also the usual Esper Midrange, Esper Control, and Mono-Red Aggro type lists running around — as well as the new Gruul Aggro builds with Zhur-Taa Goblin. Would Pirates be good enough? I’d made no changes to the sideboard. I ended up going 3-1-1 in Swiss, and winning my Top 8 match, for a 1st place finish (due to tiebreaker percentages). My observations were the following: 1) my current sideboard works very well; 2) Drill Bit seems very strong right now, and I am considering running some number in place of Duress in the mainboard; 3) Fiery Cannonade is amazing against Mono-Blue Tempo. Of further note is the fact that while I played solidly, I won a couple of my matches because my opponents played very poorly. As in, they would have won if had they not made certain serious mistakes. Better lucky than good, I guess.

• Round 1 Esper Control: 2-1 Win

It’s the Teferi guy again; he’s switched to Esper instead of Jeskai, and my deck is even better against this version (since we don’t have to contend with Deafening Clarion). Going into the tourney, I really wasn’t feeling motivated to win or play my best — I’ve been dealing with some depression lately and it can make putting forth effort difficult, even in recreational contexts. I kept a fairly cruddy six after sending back a 6-land seven, and proceeded to flood out. Teferi popped down and I had very little going on. I scooped and proceeded to the next game. Sideboarding, as far as I recall, was ten in, ten out: -4x Rigging Runner, -2x Dire Fleet Poisoner, -4x Lava Coil; +1x Bedevil, +2x Price of Fame, +2x March of the Drowned, +3x Drill Bit; +2x Sorcerous Spyglass. Game 2 went a lot better, though I was still pretty disinterested in the gameplay. I don’t exactly remember my line of play, but I do recall opening with a Duress, into a Kitesail Freebooter, followed by a Drill Bit and another Freebooter, followed by another Drill Bit. I think I counted five pieces of hand disruption. My opponent was out of cards rather quickly, and conceded under only modest board pressure from my Pirate team. Game 3, I continued to have issues drawing playable sevens, but opted to keep one with one land. I failed to draw the second until my third draw, which almost proved fatal to me. I opened with a 1-drop, which helped me do a few things while I was on my otherwise “one land, do nothing” plan. I managed to get a third land, and by that time I noticed that my opponent had sideboarded into a midrange list with Thief of Sanity and Basilica Bell-Haunt. He landed a Thief and we started to trade blows. I had two Dire Fleet Neckbreakers in hand but no fourth land in sight, with the needed cards consistently being binned by the enemy Thief. I was still able to put together a wide menace board with Fathom Fleet Captain, while my opponent cast several of my Pirates off of his Thief. I never was able to resolve a Neckbreaker but I went wide enough with menace to close the game out. My opponent should have won, but misplayed by attacking with too many creatures on his final turn. Leaving one back would have made it impossible for me to swing lethal damage at him, and thus I’d lose. But the opponent made a mistake and paid for it. Hmm. Okay.

• Round 2 Gruul Aggro: 1-2 Loss

My only loss of the night was to this Zhur-Taa Goblin-sporting Gruul Aggro list, piloted by one of my good friends. Game 1, I continued my theme of drawing unplayable hands, mulliganed down to 5, and died to his aggro. I put in some Cannonades and yanked some Duress and Kitesail Freebooters for some extra spot removal (Freebooter is garbage against Kraul Harpooner). I don’t remember Game 2 very well, but I do recall that my opponent went wide onto the board with Pelt Collector and Zhur-Taa Goblin, and I blew everything up with a Fiery Cannonade. My friend proceeded to draw only lands and removal for the rest of the game, and I was eventually able to win. Game 3, I had to mulligan to five because it was just that kind of night, and then failed to draw a single nonland card from the top of my deck. I died quickly. I think my friend ended up in 2nd place that night. Good for him!

• Round 3 Naya Dinosaurs: 2-1 Win

My opponent was a rude little kid with a bad attitude and a weird deck. I won’t go into detail, but the little bugger was extremely snippy, rude, and couldn’t be bothered to pay attention to our game. Whatever. He was on a fairly cruddy Dino build, sporting Wizard's Lightning, of all cards, with no Wizards in sight. Very strange. Game 1, he saltily mulliganed to four, taking an estimated fifteen minutes to do so. I beat him promptly. Game 2, I lost when he resolved a fat Dinosaur and then cast four copies of Savage Stomp to wipe my board and make his creature gargantuan. I actually think he may have been playing more than the legal four maximum copies of the card, since in Game 3, I believe I saw five total copies. Game 3, I hit him with the mother lode of hand disruption (this is where I saw five copies of Savage Stomp; I had him discard four from his hand in one turn, and then he smiled at me as he proceeded to topdeck a fifth — are you kidding me, dude?). He proceeded to make a gigantic dinosaur and kill my board with removal. He was out of cards, and he greedily attacked with his win con into my flashed-in Dire Fleet Poisoner (yes, he knew about it because I had revealed it previously to Daring Buccaneer). Then he lost. Kid was a douche, he deserved to lose. Next.

• Round 4 Boros Aggro: 2-1 Win

This guy had a bit of a weird, unfocused build. It had many of the Boros staples like History of Benalia and Aurelia, Exemplar of Justice, but it was also running Swiftblade Vindicator, Angelic Exaltation, and Glass of the Guildpact. Very weird. I mulliganed to five in two of the three games...this wasn’t a very lucky night for me. I was run over in Game 1, and in Game 2 and Game 3 he overcommitted to the board and I blew him out with a Fiery Cannonade, while finding spot removal for Aurelia, Exemplar of Justice.

• Round 5 Gruul Aggro: 0-0-3 Draw

My opponent was on his usual Gruul plan but we were both locked for Top 8. So we drew in. Fine by me.

• Top 8 Mono-Blue Tempo: 2-1 Win

Knew I was going to have to face this eventually. The arguably best deck in the format was no joke...and my opponent misplayed enough times for me to punish him and win. Game 1 I died super quick, having mulliganed to five (again) and not drawing particularly well. Game 2, I outpaced his aggro and blew him out with a Cannonade. Game 3, he had a Pteramander with two Curious Obsession attached to it. I was getting pummeled, but I kept landing enough menace creatures to threaten his life total and played enough hand disruption to pluck away the most relevant cards. He repeatedly countered my Dire Fleet Neckbreakers — I don’t think I resolved one the entire night. The critical moment came when I dropped a Fiery Cannonade to wrath his board apart from the double-aura’d Pteramander. He had another Pteramander, which he intended to adapt on his next turn. In order to save it, he responded to my Cannonade by targeting his Pteramander with Dive Down. Fair enough. I swing in. He blocked my Daring Buccaneer with the 1/4 Pteramander, forgetting that it still had 2 damage marked on it from the Cannonade. It died to combat damage from my 2/2. It was a pretty big error that ended up costing him the match, as he needed two big fliers to threaten lethal in the air next turn. I swung in with the menace crew and beat him. Fathom Fleet Captain ended up being my best card of the night. It really turned out to be the difference in several matches.