This deck is based off the Lost Caverns of Ixalan "Ahoy Mateys" Pirate precon, upgraded a bit.

I originally had a Pirate list brewed since before Commander Legends, but I struggled with consistency and ultimately ended up scrapping the deck idea with the release of Commander Legends and not having the motivation to try and further upgrade the list. Now that they printed a well-balanced precon with the return to Ixalan, however, it's much easier to tweak this list and upgrade it using some of the good cards I found for the original pirate deck idea.

Thassa, Deep-Dwelling enables some very silly shenanigans for the deck, as expected. The goddess of the sea granting her blessing to seafaring pirates should naturally make for some very powerful synergy, including the following:

  • Flickering pirates with good ETB triggers (make treasure, mill cards, tap creatures down, exile creatures, tutor cards, copy creatures, etc.).
  • Flickering pirates reanimated by Admiral Brass, Unsinkable to remove their Finality counters - it resets their base power and toughness but it gives them a new lease on life.
  • Flickering pirates reanimated by Whip of Erebos to also give them a new lease on life - since Whip specifies to exile instead of anything else and Thassa already exiles, there's no change to Thassa's flicker, and the creature that returns is a new object with no memory of the Whip's ability.
  • Flickering opponents' creatures that you've gained control of until the end of the turn - similar to the Whip, if you stack the flicker trigger before the "return to its owner" trigger you can flicker the "borrowed" creature and it'll re-enter under your control as a new object with no memory of the "return to its owner" trigger that subsequently fizzles. If they were temporarily turned into a Pirate then that gets reset too, but it's better than losing the creature entirely.
  • The infinite combo described below.

One semi-accidental combo in the deck is Forerunner of the Coalition + Thassa, Deep-Dwelling + Timestream Navigator + Lightning Greaves (or any haste enabler if you run something else like Hammer of Purphoros). If you have the City's Blessing you can activate the Navigator for an extra turn and put it on the bottom of your library, then at your end step use Thassa to flicker the Forerunner and return the Navigator to the top of your library for your extra turn. Recast the Navigator, give it haste, rinse and repeat. Since you're not actually netting any cards in this process you won't deck yourself, and when the Navigator enters the Forerunner's ETB trigger will drain your opponents with each of your infinite turns. The only exception is if an opponent has an effect that offsets the 1 lost life per turn like a Soul Sister, in which case the two of you will be left standing unless you can remove that effect. Also worth noting is the Monarchy, since that draws you another card each turn - if you are the Monarch when you start this combo, you should be fine, you just need to make sure your remaining library has more cards in it than the highest life total among your opponents so you don't deck yourself.

Of course, you could throw Glint-Horn Buccaneer in for an easy combo with Malcolm, Keen-Eyed Navigator, but I don't like how easy that combo is personally so I don't include it.

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94% Casual

Competitive

Date added 2 months
Last updated 1 month
Key combos
Legality

This deck is Commander / EDH legal.

Rarity (main - side)

10 - 0 Mythic Rares

44 - 0 Rares

24 - 0 Uncommons

10 - 0 Commons

Cards 100
Avg. CMC 3.11
Tokens City's Blessing, Copy Clone, Map, Pirate 2/2 B, Salamander Warrior 4/3 U, Skeleton Pirate 2/2 B, The Monarch, Treasure
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