Sooo gonna build this for fun. But why no River Sneak?

Nevermind my question.

have you thought about adding red to have access to Storm Fleet Sprinter (another very good unblockable) and Buccaneer's Bravado (great combat shenanigan for pirate decks and possible even an early finisher)?

Thanks for commenting!

The deck actually started out as Izzet Pirates but I found dropping red and focusing on low-cost unblockable Blue creatures worked out much better. Storm Fleet Sprinter is fantastic but it's not so much better than Slippery Scoundrel that it's worth risking color inconsistence, if it's better at all. The curve also can't support two 3-drop creatures and Hexproof is better than Haste.

I adore Bravado, but I don't think this is quite the deck for it. Our creatures rarely get so big that Double-Strike does all that much for them. Plus I'm trying to keep the buffs as permenants whenever possible.

That said, I do still like the idea of Izzet Pirates and I could see Sprinter and Bravado making it in if I ever figure out a decent build of that deck.

Buccaneer's Bravado works great with Curious Obsession as double strike means double draw. Red allows you to use Tormenting Voice to get rid of that 5th land that won't ever be useful in exchange for 2 lovely new cards. While we're at it, Chart a Course would be nice as well

This simplicity of this deck makes me smile. I appreciate your posting it.

Offer a small suggestion on sideboard, instead of crook of condemnation, play Silent Gravestone. It will nullify GPG and U/B control as well as RDW late game khenra plays.

@colton815:

In testing this deck, I find we actually hit Ascend very consistently, usually around turns 4, 5, or 6, and in the meantime, we have other spells we can cast.

As for color consistency, two-colors doesn't sound all that greedy but it's actually a much bigger deal than you'd think since this deck is so low to the ground. More than half the spells in the deck cost just 1 mana, so there are twenty draws that require just Blue mana to cast. Split the deck into a second color and it can very easily lead to awkward turn sequences with even just one of our lands as a Mountain. Spirebluff Canal is the only Blue-Red dual land in Standard that comes into play untapped, so even if we wanted to quadruple the budget by adding just that card to the deck, we'd still run into a lot of opening hands without it. Being able to go just one color is a huge advantage right now for aggro decks.

@Pandajka:

You make a good point about Curious Obsession, though even still that isn't enough to justify splitting colors. Chart a Course is strictly better than Tormenting Voice so we already don't need to split for this effect, but I honestly don't want to run either of them. Drawing a few too many lands doesn't matter that much when we're drawing so many cards off Curious Obsession and pitching excess lands to Daring Saboteur. Basically, we can replicate most of these effects pretty easily with Blue permanents, thus feeding into Ascend. We get to have our cake and eat it too!

@Chasedrk1:

Thanks! I'm a bit skeptical of Silent Gravestone, to be honest. It shuts down GPG and The Scarab God, but Aftermath cards still work just fine, as do Embalm and Eternalize creatures. You have to crack Gravestone to deal with them, which is quite expensive, whereas you only have to crack Crook in an emergency. That said, not having to leave up mana to slowly exile stuff is pretty nice, so I'm definitely planning on testing Gravestone.

Switch out Expel from Orazca with Unsummon. 1 cmc bounce spell at instant speed is great in a low curve deck.

The added flexibility of being able to bounce anything and the Ascend bonus make Expel substantially better than Unsummon for us. Plus, we're already so stacked at the 1-CMC slot that putting our board interaction at 2-CMC is perfectly fine.

Ascend will hardly ever be activated in a deck like this. it's aggro without going big OR wide. You do have some counter magic, but creatures are still not very protected. Storm Fleet Aerialist would be perfect for this deck. You can also cut down on the lands. You have a super low curve as it as and an aggro decks' worst case scenario is flooding.

Ascend is actually pretty easy to get to for us since most of our cards are super-cheap permanents. I know it seems like a Sealed-only mechanic but it's been pretty easy to get for us, just as long as we don't get pinched on mana early.

Curious Obsession, meanwhile, helps dig us out of flooding situations, though we don't mind flooding too much since we do have some places to put our mana (and it helps with Ascend).

Storm Fleet Aerialist might be a reasonable replacement for Daring Saboteur, but I really like the inevitability of all our creatures being literally unblockable. I might try 4x Aerialist for 3x Saboteur and 1x Islands. That might be a bit more consistent overall, even if the ceiling for Saboteur is much higher.

I know the ascend mechanic is not just a sealed mechanic. The problem is how vulnerable this deck is. All of your creatures have either 1 or 2 toughness. This makes it hard to have a solid board state that you can depend on. One Path of Mettle  ^Flip could wipe out 3-4 of your creatures and setting you back monumentally with ascend. You do not have much card draw in this deck and will be top-decking most of the time. Chart a Course is definitely needed in the deck.

Yes, that's what the Siren Stormtamers, Spell Pierces, and Lookout Dispersals are for. Honed Khopesh and Curious Obsession also do a decent job of getting us out of Shock range and they can sometimes get us out of Lighting Strike range as well.

As for Chart a Course, there simply isn't room. Curious Obsession draws us all the cards we could ever need while also helping us work towards Ascend.

The flip side of having unblockabke creatures that that they have low power & toughness. I do like Siren Stormtamer for it's ability to counter anything targeting you or your creature. However, there is a lot of cheap removal that cam kill your guys and easily pay the mana price. And listen, i know all decks have their strengths and weaknesses. I am not saying this is a bad deck. If I didn't like it, I wouldn't be putting in the time for these comments. Through some playtesting, Curious Obsession performed quite well. May still want a copy or 2 of Chart a Course. Out of curiosity, what deck do you think is the best matchup for this deck and which is the hardest?

Siren Stormtamer isn't Cursecatcher: it just hard-counters. Spell Pierce can run into issues with countering spot removal around turn 4+, but even so I find it's pretty good at keeping us in business as we build out our board. Once we've gotten in a few hits with Curious Obsession, we don't even care too much about what happens since we can just rebuild.

Hmm, that's a good question. The best matchup is probably Midrange since they take the hardest hit from tempo swings, but I don't know that we have any particularly good or bad matchups. We're reasonably good against other Aggro decks since we can usually slow them down pretty well, Control has a hard time 1-for-1ing a bunch of 1- and 2-CMC creatures and we can counter their sweepers, and we can easily disrupt Combo decks. Our biggest issue is just getting out-powered by decks with better cards, but even still, Spell Pierce can counter a turn 4 Chandra, Torch of Defiance just as well as a Divine Verdict. At the end of the day, though, Red or Black Aggro are probably our toughest matchups since bouncing their stuff is less punishing and they can sometimes overwhelm our anti-removal.

Ordered this deck to play at my next FNM. Thanks for the work that's gone into it and in making it affordable for people like me that aren't inclined to blow 300 on a deck.

Divine Verdict can't actually counter or kill a PW... But I get your point. I know Siren Stormtamer is a hard counter. That is what I like about it. It's the only hard counter in your deck. The only thing that I caution is that there are 2 main decks right there right now: Super low-to-the-ground aggro (+Dino's)and Control. They are often going to have the mana to pay for those other counters often in the mid game. I mean, they're obviously good cards, but I'm just saying that there should either be something else in the deck that boosts your team to protect against those burn spells and end the game that much quicker. Or some other form of protection in the form of counters or hexproof to keep your creatures alive. There is a lot of red spells that can take out your creatures with things like Abrade, Lightning Strike, Shock, and Magma Spray. These are the most common red removal spells in the meta and all of which can deal with your creatures. I do like how Stormtamer is your best option against those, but it also counters sweepers because they target you. Dive Down seems like it should be a 4x in the side board. And maybe one other form of hard counter? Like maybe take out 1 Lookout's Dispersal and 1 Spell Pierce and put in 2x Negate? Just a suggestion. I definitely like where this deck is going. It's a nice build.

@Kazrigos:

Glad you like it, and good luck! I would appreciate any suggestions you might have after playing it on the front lines. I didn't build the deck with a particular metagame in mind so some adjustments may be necessary as the meta settles.

@Pabs4444:

Sorry, I meant Spell Pierce can counter either, not that Divine Verdict can deal with planeswalkers. It's possible that we could use some Negates as the meta settles, but for now, I've been really happy with Spell Pierce. I just really don't want to have to leave 2 mana up unless it's for Lookout's Dispersal, and I want to keep as many cards as 4-ofs to maximize consistency. That said, I could see mixing up the counterspell soup to deal with a particular meta. If you're fighting nothing bow low-to-the-ground decks, the Spell Pierce loses a lot of utility and Dive Down or Negate would work better.

Great deck, just wanted to add that God-Pharaoh's Gift doesn't target so Silent Gravestone is worthless in that match-up. +1

Oh an actual suggestion tho, since your guys are mostly unblockable why not use Prying Blade instead of Honored Kwhatever to reach Ascend faster? To me it seems very scary to commit that many creatures just to get Ascend by T4.

It might be worth testing, but my inclination is that the 2-mana equip cost kills it. You technically get the second Mana back as a Treasure if you connect right away, but in the meantime you're vulnerable to removal.

@jellowsmurf:

Ah, I missed your first post. You're right that Silent Gravestone doesn't stop GPG from eternalizing but it does prevent Refurbish from getting GPG back from the graveyard.

Admiral's Order worked very well in my testing on this deck over Spell pierce. Not sure if its to much for the deck or not though.

That seems kinda risky to me. Admiral's Order works great against Settle the Wreckage but keeping three mana up to deal with Fumigate is tough. That said, I do really like the card so I'm glad you've been finding success with it!