Avast, ye scurvy dogs! Do ye know what today is? Shiver me timbers, ye don’t? Why, ’tis National Talk Like A Pirate Day, yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!
Yes, believe it or not, there is a National Talk Like A Pirate Day, which falls on September 19th. It happens to be a holy day in the Meddish household, when I haul ol’ Squawky out of storage, find me eyepatch and me hook and begin and/or end every sentence with “Yarr!”
If I’m lucky, I can usually make it to lunch before people start beating on me.
Therefore, this being Talk Like A Pirate Day and this being a Magic website, what could be more appropriate than a Pirate deck! Yarr!
But, much like the many buried treasure maps being written by illiterate sailors, there’s one minor problem with this plan: for some strange reason, despite the many tribal mechanics that have been built into this game, and in lieu of the fact that everybody loves Pirates…there just aren’t that many.
A quick Gatherer search, in fact, reveals that there’s only ten Pirates – ten! – in the entire creature-dom of Magic…and two of those are actually Ships.
Still, that won’t stop a creative deckbuilder. But first, a little history of the Pirate deck. Pay attention, there will be a quiz later.
I remember, many years ago, building my first Pirate-themed deck, around the time Fallen Empires came out if I recall (and, at my age, that’s no sure thing). A tri-color monstrosity, it ran Pirate Ship, The Drowned, Reef Pirates, Ramirez DiPietro, Sindbad and even Orcish Spy – the art with the eyepatch, of course, yarr!
And, in case you couldn’t guess, no, the deck wasn’t very good. Sure, there was a little synergy between Orcish Spy and Reef Pirates, but that was about it.
The heyday of the buccaneers was Mercadian block, when the trifecta of pay-or-sac-a-permanent Pirates – Rishadan Cutpurse, Rishadan Footpad and Rishadan Brigand – were printed. Jay Schneider, one of the old mad geniuses of Magic, had a pretty fun although not quite Tier 1 deck built around reusing their sacrifice ability with healthy doses of bounce.
In fact, one of the first articles I wrote for Star City, over five years ago (man alive, has it been that long?) was about that very deck.
4 Seal of Removal
4 Waterfront Bouncer
4 Gilded Drake
4 Boomerang
4 Powder Keg
4 Rishadan Cutpurse
4 Rishadan Footpad
4 Temporal Adept
1 Rayne, Academy Chancellor
2 Extravagant Spirit
3 Misdirection
4 Faerie Conclave
4 Rishadan Port
2 Dust Bowl
13 Island
Sideboard
4 Counterspell
3 Annul
3 Hibernation
4 Chill
1 Misdirection
This deck, of course, shouldn’t be confused with another deck called “Pirates,” a mono-Black monstrosity that made a few splashes in Odyssey Block Constructed, which had a similar resource-denial theme. This early version was designed by Johnny Chapman.
24 Swamp
4 Faceless Butcher
3 Slithery Stalker
4 Millikin
4 Braids, Cabal Minion
3 Ichorid
3 Crypt Creeper
4 Nantuko Shade
4 Mesmeric Fiend
3 Zombie Infestation
4 Chainer’s Edict
Sideboard
2 Grotesque Hybrid
2 Stalking Bloodsucker
1 Ichorid
2 Buried Alive
3 Cabal Therapy
3 Mutilate
1 Slithery Stalker
2 Screams of the Damned
If you’ve seen Pirates of the Caribbean, you could probably make a case for throwing a few Zombies into a Pirate deck (hence, The Drowned, or even Vodalian Zombie, too).
But for our Pirate deck, we’ll stick with the base blue Mercadian block version, which means the Brigand, Cutpurse and Footpad all find a home here. Bounce is good, so we’ll include Waterfront Bouncer (no doubt busy throwing Pirates out of his bar after too much grog), Seal of Cleansing (since Pirates would not doubt see a lot of seals out on the oceans Blue) and Boomerang (which comes from Australia, which was originally a penal colony, which, of course, means there had to be Pirates there).
You know what else would be good? Talas Warrior! Who? What, you say? You don’t remember this Portal card? Think Phantom Warrior…but as a Pirate! Well, blow me down!
Card drawing has to be an integral part of any blue deck, so how about Coastal Piracy, yarr! Make those Mercadian Pirates do double duty! In keeping with the deck’s theme, Treasure Trove wouldn’t be a bad idea, either.
Since resource denial will be a big part of the deck built around Mercadian Pirates, we’ll want to play with Rishadan Port, obviously. If you’re feeling a little gutsy, throw in Saprazzan Skerry for a short-term mana boost.
Still, we need a little something else in the deck. … Like…Ninjas! Sure, they’re like pirates…sort of…like, Japanese pirates, you know. With neat pointy throwing stars and stuff like that…
Oh, come on. Work with me here. If we throw in a few copies of Ninja of the Deep Hours, this provides an additional card drawer and another Pirate-bounce mechanism, replacing the slow and fragile (albeit more versatile) Temporal Adept.
What else do we need? Swords! You can’t swash a buckle without your cutlass, matey! Thanks to Mirrodin block, we have a versatile arsenal to choose from, the best of the lot being Sword of Fire and Ice, although Leonin Scimitar would do in a pinch, I suppose, and Umezawa’s Jitte would be quite the prize as well.
So, in the end, we end up with this, which is (mostly) nautically themed and actually not half-bad:
4 Seal of Cleansing
4 Rishadan Cutpurse
4 Rishadan Footpad
2 Rishadan Brigand
4 Talas Warrior
4 Waterfront Bouncer
4 Sword of Fire and Ice
3 Ninja of the Deep Hours
4 Boomerang
3 Coastal Piracy
4 Rishadan Port
20 Island
If only there was a Pirate lord. Elves, Goblins, Zombies, almost every other race has one. Why not Pirates? Something like this, mayhaps:
The Pirate King
1UU
Legendary Creature – Pirate Lord
All other Pirates gain +1/+1 and “Whenever this creature deals combat damage to a player, it’s controller may draw a card.”
2/2
When I win the Magic Invitational, I’ll get right on it.
You’d have to admit, a Pirate King would be pretty spiffy. I’m sure Yawgatog could whip one up really simply, and from there, all you’d need is a good color printer and some rubber cement. Amaze your friends! Scare your enemies! Get thrown out of tournaments!
If you’re looking for a fun theme deck for Casual Tuesday (or whichever day you play casually), I say, haul out the jolly rogers and Captain Morgan’s and the pirate talk.
Just don’t go unarmed. Consider yourself warned, matey! Yarr!