I think it was mentioned earlier in this thread that Vial is a nonbo with Chalice, it also that the Rishadan Pirates start at CMC 3, whereas you can start using Vial in decks like D&T and Goblins with 1 counter.Originally Posted by sco0ter
Obviously you would cut Chalice then and add creatures like Siren Stormtamer and/or Deadeye Tracker to have a good curve.
One sweet thing about a Death and Pirates build is that you could protect Ramirez DePietro with Karakas.
UB is hardly and issue so far as Hostage Taker can be cast of Cavern and Dimir Signet helps with the casting cost as well.
Vial doesn't work in this deck. The tax pirates are 3, 4, 5 CMC - that takes way too long to charge.
Vial isn't good here. Cutpurse is a turn 4 vial play at the soonest. The idea of DNT is that you can immediately get value out of DNT with a proper mana curve. The idea of stompy decks is to have broken turn 1 plays with chrome mox and sol lands.
I'd be kind of interested in running a small Trophy Mage package in this deck.
Just off the top of my head, things worth getting with the card:
3Sphere
Tangle Wire
Crucible
Swords of X and Y
Aethersphere Harvester
Of those, the former three help with mana denial and the latter two turn your garbage pirates into legitimate threats. I'd wonder about trying something like this:
4 Skyship Plunderer
4 Rishadan Cutpurse
3 Rishadan Footpad
3 Trophy Mage
3 Hostage Taker
4 Chalice of the Void
2 Thorn of Amethyst
1 Trinisphere
2 Tangle Wire
1 Sword of Body and Mind
1 Umezawa's Jitte
1 Crucible of Worlds
3 Chrome Mox
3 Dimir Signet
4 Wasteland
3 Ancient Tomb
3 City of Traitors
4 Cavern of Souls
3 Underground Sea
3 Island
Trophy mage puts in mad work for me. I prefer Sword of Feast and Famine and Sword of Fire and Ice myself though. Mostly because if SOFI connects once then its usually game. Tangle wire was somewhat disappointing when I tested it though.
So more serious post here after the whole joke thing is over.
If you really want discuss a pirate stompy list you should think about some stuff:
Compare it to all other stompy-shells around, why "pirate" (yeah its sounds cool! to have a sneaky pirate deck) over other established lists.
Dragon Stompy: Has a lot of lockpieces and either wins via fast beaters or hides behind bridge to let plaineswalker do the job. Bonus Points for only be a red based deck and no color issues. Land Hate via Moon effects. Comes with Chalice & Trinisphere to tax&prevent efficent spells.
Sylvan Plug: Now with Ramunap Excavator and possible Playset of Garruk Relentless clearly buildable as mono green (but can work with black and black/white splash too). Plug offers good lock pieces, solid green beaters and library&zenith to stabilize the whole stompy-draw based problem. Land hate via Wasteland+Excavator (Knights) and Choke. Comes with Chalice & Trinisphere to tax&prevent efficent spells too.
Eldrazi Stompy: Colorless nightmare with good beaters and a more aggro based playstyle. Tend to only play a small amount of Wasteland or Unique lands cause its better to cast a good threat than prevent your opponent plays. Clearly creature heavy shell with and high amount of eldrazi based sollands. Comes with Chalice & often enough Thorn maindeck to tax/prevent efficent spells. Playset Thought-Knot Dude for more Maindeck Combo hate (or hand interaction).
Thalia/White Stompy: Pairs human creatures with eldrazi (bonus points uncounterable with cavern) and overall run a very solid shell with good creature mix that can interact with your opponent or disrupt him. Land Hate via Wasteland (Thalia 2.0). Comes with Chalice & Thalia (aka Thorn on a stick) to tax/prevent efficent spells too. Playset Thought-Knot Dude for more Maindeck Combo hate (or hand interaction).
Than we have more fringe stuff like demon, soldier, sea stompy, staxx stuff etc.
Lets talk about the Pirate relevant cards:
So what offers Pirates/blue-based Stompy over the builds above? All Rishadan Pirates are heavily overcosted. They can more or less only beat your opponent if your lock is already working and needs to be paired with other prison/tax elements to profit (otherwise your opponent will simply pay x or sac something unimportant and is fine with your little pirate)
First in a pirate/human shell Cavern of Souls is one of the best things you can have to pass counterwalls with your pirates (for example: dazing a threat and follow up with wasteland is often super hard for stompy lists to recover).
Cavern leads to a more creature based deck (similiar to Thalia Stompy) which means less space for lockpieces, walkers, equip etc. - that isnt bad overall because while lockpieces are fine, multiple are often usless and overall none of them beat your opponent to dead or handle a creature that still entered the battlefield through/before your prison elements. Spell based interaction like Instant/Sorcery are often a trap cause its only a oneshot and stompy works better with permanents (you can still add some support spells - but as mentioned before - your opponent will only die to creatures/combat damage in most cases, stacking a hand with spells that might be good sometimes isnt the right way because without cantrip-shells you need stuff that is usefull in most situations/against every deck).
Talking about prison stuff besides chalice:
Thorn of Amethyst was already mentioned before. Best part about that artifact is, that it is castable turn 1 via Solland/Mox which can be huge against combo decks or if you are on the draw. Taxing non-creature spells in legacy is often a good idea because format is still spell based with a lot of cantrips and efficient low cost interaction paired with a fragile/greedy mana base. It offers a good support for Rishadan Pirates. Problem is, Thorn will also tax your stuff so paired with non-creature spells might be troublesome especially if mixed with cc4+ stuff like Planeswalker, Parallax Tide etc. Bonus Points that you can stack it so multiple cards arent useless.
Trinisphere is the other common prison artifact. Compared to thorn it will also affect creatures which can be nice too since format also likes efficient creatures like Delver, Deathrite etc. Since most stompy creatures are cc3 anyway, trinisphere will be more annoying for your opponent in most cases. Multiple Spheres dont stack and cc3 often means only "turn 2" in terms of combo hate.
Tangle Wire not common in current stompy decks this piece will force the opponent to interact and will also affect the board, even if a creature already passed your prison/lock elements. This can be huge because follow up with rishadan pirates will nearly guarantee your opponent most sac something. But the price is, that isn't as onesided as the other artifacts above so it will tap down your own stuff too. It can be managed since you can your chalice/tangle wire etc. too. Bonus Points to offer interaction with Skyship Plunderer and Hostage Tacker can set it back too - and finally they stack (which is rarely needed). Interaction with Skyship Plunderer may favour builds with Parallax Tide and/or Planeswalker (Jace) too.
Creature based interaction:
As some of you already mentioned every stompy shell needs ways to answer creatures from your opponent that pass or ignore your lockelements. This is much more important for pirate stompy cause rishadan dudes have weak bodies too and even the small legacy creatures can block/trade with them easily. Flying creatures like Skyship Plunderer paired with Jitte are a good idea for combat situations, Hostage Takers (while need a splash) are super solid since they work in a lot of situations and can also reset your own Rishadan Pirates/Tangle Wire stuff. Walking Ballista is also an easy way to get a growing colorless threat. Or use Emerge Eldrazi (Wretched Gryff, Distended Mindbender, Elder Deep-Fiend) to transform your useless pirates.
-------------
Have fun to brew something spicy up!
TEAM MtG Berlin
Mindlock Orb could be an interesting card.
if you want to run heavy thalia build you could run tundras and caverns along with the masques pirates + thalias in a tangle wire build. still probably sucks more than traditional stompy lists, but at least you'd have some good matchups.
-rob
So Im still running the meme deck and so far Thorn has been absolutely great for me. Took the deck through a gauntlet with some of my legacy test group and so far it's feeling like an actual deck.
I'll slowly be collecting the pieces for this deck too. Good to see you have some success with thorn
As soon as your opponent has mana, they're extremely overcosted, underwhelming creatures.
Is it really the Pirates that are good? Or is it that the other components that win the games mostly, e.g. Trophy Mage for CoW + Wasteland or equipment, or the lockpieces?
Of the three, footpad seems like the best one to me. Skyplunderer and hostage taker are the best pirates imo
But all of those can be played off a Cavern naming Human. There's no reason to invest too heavily into the pirate theme.
Fell flagship and sirens ruse are the only reasons to stay within theme. That said, i still think that the skyship plunderer serves a good purpose in the deck.
Isn't this true for every stompy deck? Your lock piece the formant can't adopt too (mainly chalice or Moon) and what big dragon, planeswalker, or eldrazi kitchen table card you play after that is basically irelevant. You can put any reasonable payoff card your timmy heart desires into deck and it won't matter for your win%.
blue at least has the payoff of being able to pitch cards. i would still rather play sea stompy, but have no idea what it would look like these days.
-rob
Except it does depend if your beaters can actually disrupt or increase consistency, too.
While being hard on the mana, Skyship Plunderer does seem interesting with Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas - it can make his nuke ready within the same turn it comes down.
Just to keep the thread alive 12 more hours..:
Why not add Rishadan Port to the mix..
4 Ancient Tomb
1 Cavern of Souls
2 City of Traitors
1 Flooded Strand
1 Island
4 Polluted Delta
4 Rishadan Port
1 Swamp
2 Underground Sea
4 Wasteland
2 Deadeye Quartermaster
2 Dreamcaller Siren
2 Hostage Taker
4 Kitesail Freebooter
2 Rishadan Airship
4 Rishadan Cutpurse
4 Rishadan Footpad
2 Siren's Ruse
4 Chalice of the Void
3 Chrome Mox
1 Crucible of Worlds
1 Sword of Fire and Ice
4 Trinisphere
1 Umezawa's Jitte
Sideboard:
3 Engineered Explosives
2 Pithing Needle
4 Leyline of Sanctity
4 Leyline of the Void
2 Toxic Deluge
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)
Reply With Quote