Thanks mostly to Rivals of Ixalan, there's a surprisingly large number of low-cost unblockable creatures in Standard right now, so why not cram a bunch of them into one deck and peck our opponents to death without ever having to do any pesky combat math? As an upside, all the cards we could possibly want are naturally really inexpensive so the deck ends up being really budget-friendly without having to make any concessions!
Can't Touch This is a tempo deck focused on flooding the board with unblockable creatures and other cheap permanents to support a light Ascend subtheme. We can get the City's Blessing as early as turn 4, at which point we become almost unstoppable. But enough proselytizing: onto the cards!
Unblockable
Our creature package is extremely low to the ground with three 1-drops, one 2-drop, and one 3-drop.
Slither Blade and Mist-Cloaked Herald start us out as 1-power, 1-mana Unblockables. Slither Blade is obviously a little better with its extra point of Toughness, but this is rarely very relevant. For the most part, these cards are interchangeable: they let us start the beats early and give us something to power up with cards later down the list.
Siren Stormtamer isn't literally unblockable but it can usually chip in for at least a few turns before our opponent gets down any Flying or Reach creatures they might have, if they run any at all. Stormtamer is mostly here for its activated ability, though, so we're not too upset if our opponent gets down a Whirler Virtuoso or something.
We're only running three copies of Daring Saboteur since making it unblockable is kinda expensive, but our games can often go a bit long so having a mana sink and draw-fixer is very important. Plus the 2 power is nice. There's a case to be made that we should just run River Sneak in Daring Saboteur's place but I've found River Sneak to be almost always strictly-worse than Mist-Cloaked Herald, whereas Saboteur has real upside. It's also a pirate, which is relevant later down the list.
And finally, Slippery Scoundrel is our big finisher, clocking it at an absolutely enormous... 2/2. Whomp whomp, I know, and it only gets Unblockable if we have the City's Blessing, but the deck is geared to get there very quickly and the Scoundrel even gets Hexproof as well for our troubles. Get to Ascend and strap a few power-ups onto this dude and it becomes an oppressive threat.
Unstoppable
To speed up our clock while adding permanents to the board, we have playsets of Curious Obsession and Honed Khopesh.
Curious Obsession is a bit risky since it's an Aura, but it replaces itself after just one hit so the floor is pretty high while the ceiling is in the stratosphere. Against decks without a preponderance of removal, this little Enchantment is a card-drawing machine, letting us churn through our deck at breakneck speeds (and then immediately spill all our cards onto the board since they're so cheap). As long as we play around removal while casting Obsession, we're pretty ok with whatever happens from there.
Meanwhile, Honed Khopesh isn't the flashiest piece of Equipment in the world but it's cheap, it's a permanent that's difficult to remove, and it gives us the extra power we need to close out games fast. I do wish something like Bone Saw or Bonesplitter were in the format, but Honed Khopesh is a reasonable substitute. The Toughness boost does help against damage-based removal sometimes so it isn't totally wasted.
Unanswerable
Our little guys are vulnerable to almost all the removal in the format so we come ready to protect them with Lookout's Dispersal, Spell Pierce, Unsummon, and Siren Stormtamer.
Lookout's Dispersal is in here mainly to protect our creatures from removal and Wraths, but it's also a nice way to hamstring our opponent's clock. Whether you're countering a Fatal Push, a Longtusk Cub on curve, or a giant dinosaur in the lategame, Dispersal is a great way to spend two or even three mana. Only three of our five creatures are Pirates so we won't always get the cost reduction but we get it often enough that I'm happy drawing Dispersal in multiples every single game.
Yes, I know, I look like a maniac for main-decking Spell Pierce but it has been the real deal in testing. We want to be casting two spells a turn while Equipping Honed Khopeshes and making Daring Saboteurs unblockable so we need the cheapest interaction possible to protect our stuff and Spell Pierce is it. Negate is just too expensive, as weird as that sounds.
We need some way to interact with our opponent's resolved creatures, though, and Unsummon does that very efficiently. Killing Eternalized or The Scarab God tokens is obviously the best-cast scenario in most circumstances but even just bouncing a big threat or clearing +1/+1 counters is often enough of a tempo swing to let us win the race. We can also just bounce our own creatures back to hand, of course. Any time your opponent throws a kill spell at one of your dudes and you have an Unsummon ready to go, you can just decide that you'd rather have the creature in hand than a bounce spell.
Siren Stormtamer is back again to round out our disruption package. She's a great way of protecting our Curious Obsession-holders that also helps count toward Ascend and she turns
Lookout Dispersal
online as early as turn 2. That's a pretty great deal for just 1 mana and I wouldn't be caught dead running less than a full playset of this little Pirate.
Uninteresting
For lands, we're just running 21 basic Islands. Nothing fancy. We have so many one-drops that there isn't much space for colorless lands and Ipnu Rivulet doesn't really do anything for us, so basics should serve us just fine. There's a case to be made for going down to 20 lands but 21 feels like the right number to me. Even though we're an aggro deck, we do actually want to play out a bunch of lands to help us Ascend, plus we want to be able to cast multiple cards per turn even in the lategame while activating our cards on board.
Unmatched
For the sideboard, we have a bunch of powerful options in our colors. Crook of Condemnation comes in against God-Pharaoh's Gift and The Scarab God decks. Glyph Keeper is our tech against hardcore Control as a resilient lategame finisher to compete with their lategame finisher; the mana cost is too high for us to want to mainboard it but we're likely to get to 5 and even 7 mana in grindy matchups. We can also bring in Chart a Course for grindy or removal-heavy matchups, allowing us to churn through our deck even without Curious Obsession online. Expel from Orazca is all-purpose bounce for when Unsummon isn't enough, and it even helps take advantage of our light Ascend theme. Next, Sea Legs helps us neuter creature aggro when our opponents spill out too many threats to bounce or counter, though it can also target some of our guys to help them dodge Shock or Magma Spray; I recommend swapping this out for Aether Meltdown if you find Pirate decks are popular in your meta. And finally, a few copies of Admiral's Order are here for when we absolutely, positively need hard counters.
Until Next Time
Thanks for reading this far, and I would love to hear any suggestions you might have! The sideboard in particular could use some work as it's mostly speculative right now.
