Before I present the deck list and my “analysis” of the deck here is my get out of jail disclaimer about these decks.

“I’m not claiming these are the best decks in the world, they certainly are not top competitive decks. They are hopefully fun, affordable (subjective I know) decks. I don’t try and keep to a target price point. I try and use as many cards in my collection as possible to keep my costs down. I’m certainly not a master deck builder claiming this deck will win tournaments, if it is fun to play and does it thing then I’ll be happy.“

Sufferer’s of this blog will remember not too long ago, a couple of Standard Showdowns back, I played the daughter of the owner of the FLGS in one of the rounds. She had constructed a pirate deck the evening before that needed some work. There were a few one of’ s, which meant it wasn’t consistent.

I liked the idea/theme of the deck. It just needed some tinkering. So I’ve done some tinkering and come up with a Dimir Pirate Aggro deck.

Like my friends daughter I will be using Hostage Taker and Forerunner of the Coalition. Although if memory serves me rightly she only had one copy of Hostage Taker. I can’t remember the other cards she had in her deck. Which is probably best. Starting with a clean slate so to speak.

So I went through the stack of cards digging out all my pirates. I’m not splashing red, so those pirate cards are out. Which was a great way to eliminate a load of cards. It was hard enough getting down to the 75 for this deck as it was from the two colours.

So this is an aggro deck. It needs to hit the ground running. Sadly none of the cards have haste. So it needs to be swinging in for damage turn 2 the latest. Turn one is play a land, and a one drop. Turn two play a land, play a duress, and hit for damage and drop another one drop. Turn three is hopefully another land and the first Forerunner of the Coalition. And so on. That’s the prefect start.

I thought the Timestream Navigator will provide a useful distraction to the opponent, and if allowed to be used that all important extra turn. Who needs Nexus of Fate?

Between Hostage Taker and Kitesail Freebooter there is removal to take care of the creatures Walk the Plank can’t deal with (basically her dad’s merfolk deck).

Naturally the sideboard has a plan to take out those nasty Carnage Tyrants and Ghalta’s that one or two players are using in our local meta in the form of Dino Hunter. And the sideboard has more removal and hopefully a way to get rid of token spam.

So I’m excited to play this deck in a few test games now. The lands could be better. I’d like the Dimir shock land and check land in this deck. But that’s an expense I’m not going to splash out on. I definitely don’t want guild gates in here they would slow the deck down. It was hard enough using the two Submerged Boneyards. Maybe I could put in a couple of Evolving wilds. The ratio of the basics also needs tweaking to be more in favour of swamps.

Ok here is mana curve for the deck.

I’m happy with that. The CMC is about what I want for this type of deck.

Ok here is the deck list I have come up with for this initial Dimir Pirate Aggro deck.

Creatures:30

4 Grasping Scoundrel
4 Siren Stormtamer
4 Dire Fleet Poisoner
4 Kitesail Freebooter
4 Timestream Navigator
4 Forerunner of the Coalition
3 Slippery Scoundrel
3 Hostage Taker

Spells:8

4 Duress
4 Walk the Plank

Lands:22

10 Island
2 Submerged Boneyard
10 Swamp

Sideboard:15

4 Dinosaur Hunter
1 Warkite Marauder
4 Deadeye Rig-Hauler
3 Golden Demise
3 Vraska’s Contempt

What would you change?