This week’s daily series counts down the five most evil decks in Magic history. These are not necessarily the best decks ever, just the ones that made playing Magic the equivalent of having a root canal – and having one every other round all day. These are the decks people really, really hated.
Some of these are old decks – thank gawd. You kids now, what do you know? Take it from us geezers. Remember how we say we used to walk ten miles to school, through blizzards, and how it was all uphill both ways? It was like that, only real.
The first deck on my enemies list is Pirates. I know that may not make everyone’s top five, but 1) it sort of represents all land destruction decks, 2) it was slower than most, but more relentless, and 3) Ingrid, my wife, played Pirates a lot. I was her main playtest opponent. I have played hundreds of matches against the deck.
It makes my list of five most hated decks.
It wasn’t that the deck killed you – it was how it killed you. Affinity is probably the worst thing many of you new players remember. Pirates, when it was working, was almost as bad as Affinity – but slower. If Affinity was like being savaged by wolverines on PCP, Pirates was like being gummed to death by a tree sloth on Valium – the pain lasted forever.
Here’s a typical game, Ponza against Type Two Pirates.
Pirates: Island, go.
Victim: Mountain, go.
Pirates: Island, Boomerang your Mountain, go.
Victim: Mountain, discard, go
Pirates: Island, Hoodwink your Mountain, go
Victim: Mountain, discard, go
Pirates: Island, go.
Victim: Mountain, Fire Diamond
Pirates: Accumulated Knowledge, Force Spike the Diamond.
Victim: draw, (swear) go
Pirates: Island, Rishadan Cutpurse – sac a Mountain, go.
Victim: Mountain, go
Pirates: during your end step, Accumulated Knowledge.
Pirates: main phase, Island, Boomerang Mountain.
Victim: Float a mana
Pirates: declare Attack phase, (victim takes mana burn), beat for one, go
Victim: Mountain, go
Pirates: End step, Accumulate Knowledge for three cards.
Pirates: Island, Temporal Adept, go.
Victim: Shock the Adept EoT
Pirates: Mana Leak
Victim: Mountain, Hammer of Bogardan the Adept
Pirates: Counterspell, Accumulated Knowledge for four cards.
Pirates: Island, Rishadan Cutpurse (sac Mountain), Hoodwink Mountain, bounce Mountain with Adept, go
Victim: Mountain, discard, go.
And on
and on
and on
and on.
It’s turn 8, Pirates has beat for a couple with a 1/1, but the Ponza deck has one land, no other permanents in play, and will never get any. Pirates will finally win about turn 200.
Ingrid played a Standard version of Pirates, back when T2 was Mercadian Masques and Saga block. It had nine to ten pirates – four each of the Cutpurses and Footpads, and one or two Rishadan Brigands as finishers. It had eight bounce spells, a mix of counters and some card drawing. It could also get a double Temporal Adept lock.
The deck could also run Morphling as a finisher, but Rishadan Brigand fit the “theme” better. The “theme” being “slow, painful and annoying.”
In the days before Chrome Moxen, Wayfarer’s Bauble and Talismans, mana acceleration was primarily Green, with Birds and Llanowar Elves, or Diamonds. Pirates could, with a good draw, keep a non-Green opponent from playing anything. Against a Green opponent, Pirates had Washout and Hibernation – and Masticore in the sideboard. [Or they could run a Black version that splashed for Perish. Mmm, Pirates. – Knut]
In rare cases, the Pirates deck might actually allow an opponent to cast a creature. Pirates decks would then steal the creature with Gilded Drake, then bounce the Drake.
Death by enforced mana screw is never fun. It is even worse when you have the lands in your hand – turn after turn after turn. You just want the Pirate player to stop for one single turn and let you play Magic.
But they don’t.
With the release of Nemesis, Pirates gained an entirely new method of annoying the opponent: Parallax Tide. Tide allowed the deck to remove lots of land, if Pirates had not been able to stall the opponent’s initial drops and had had to bounce creatures and use counter spells instead. Parallax Tide also combined well with Ankh of Mishra. With Ankh in play, you could remove five opponents lands from the game, then bounce the Tide. The lands returned, the opponent took ten damage from the Ankh, and you could repeat it again the next turn.
Because cruelty knows no bounds, the deck also ran Tanglewire.
Pirates is an old deck. Kids, you have no idea what you missed. Want three reasons to be grateful you are alive now, not then? Trepanning as a headache cure, togas as daily wear and losing to a deck full of Mercadian Masques cards.
Pirates decks made it into Extended. Craig Stevenson played Pirates at PT: New Orleans and wrote an article about it. Here’s a quote: “My God, it’s fun. The best part is watching your opponent simmer to a rage, emitting swearwords only known to sailors and pikeys.”
Craig is a sick, sick man.
Pirates was never really a tier one deck. It suffered from bad draws. If Pirates drew the wrong stuff, the opponent could get a bit ahead on lands and the Pirates deck would struggle to reestablish the lock. But when it worked, Pirates was just gawd-damned annoying. Erik Severeid once described dealing with network executives as “like being nibbled to death by ducks.” Being beaten by a functioning Pirates deck is a lot like that, only slower and more painful.
Extended will rotate this year. A lot of cool decks will disappear, and that will be sad. You can take some solace, however, in the fact that Pirates will go with it. It will never again be played in any sanctioned format.
One down, four more days to go. It’s all downhill from here – finishing with the most evil deck of all time on Friday.