MTG Salvation

As others have noticed, there are an awful lot of cheap flyers in Ixalan, and Favorable Winds is now standard legal. Here is my first crack at taking advantage of this:



First run through a friendly standard league I went 3-2. Two losses to Temur Energy, wins against UG Pummeler, UR Prowess, and combo eternalize (anointed procession plus hour of eternity wackiness).

Initial thoughts:

Whirler Virtuoso is always going to be a problem for this kind of deck. Beating it will involve Favorable Winds and a lot of luck. Harsh Scrutiny did seem fairly good against Temur Energy in general.

When you play a bunch of cheap creatures plus Favorable Winds you run out of gas quickly. Chart a Course is great to refuel and should probably be a four of. It's possible this deck wants Ruin Raider in the sideboard for grindy matchups. The new Jace and Daring Saboteur might also help via looting. The issue I see is that we can't really protect Jace and the Saboteur and Raider fly.

The mana is a little wonky. We really want to play a one drop on turn one and the mana isn't quite smooth enough to guarantee it. It's possible we want Aether Hubs as one shot dual lands, but that makes the catacombs worse and seems bad in general. Fetid Pools works well with catacombs and would fix the numbers problem but we really want those first few lands to come into play untapped.

I found both Plunderer and Aerialist to be underwhelming. It's possible the deck needs to go all-in with four of each and a couple of copies of Jace or it should cut them entirely for Saboteur.

Lookout's Dispersal is sweet. Extremely sweet.

Nimble Obstructionist is also nice in this deck. Leaving up mana could mean counterspell, removal, or a flash creature. The cycling can even randomly be good. Good times.

Dreamcaller Siren never felt great to me. It seems like it should be good when obstructionist is good but in practice I was disappointed. It's possible I was just unlucky. Double colored spells are also a little shaky with the mana base.

Sorcerous Spyglass should probably be in most sideboards. It randomly hoses decks and many of those decks won't be bringing in artifact removal against us.

Hostage Taker felt poor. All the problems of sorcery speed removal in general with the added bonus of giving the target back after it inevitably dies after your opponent untaps.

This feels like it should be a competitive-ish deck. The major obstacles that I see are the mana base and the problem of just getting overrun by more powerful cards. When everything comes together it is a very fun deck to play, though.

- Favorable Winds, its not good enough. Same with blight keeper. If you get to 8 mana they should be dead, running 4 seems pointless.
What about Duress? ,Spell Pierce.
Also running black some better instant creature kill...dont know what yet.
Would absolutely play 4x Aether Hub

I actually ended up going UW with some success.



Sideboard is still pending, but I find white has more on offer right now than black for flying creatures. Basically, you just have to slow them down enough to pick away their life total and then go in for the win. Hope of Ghirapur is probably one of the best one drop flying creatures in the format right now.

Why not go with Red as the splash color ?
It opens up burn (Lightning Strike and Shock) for removal and reach and more creatures like Enigma Drake/Bloodwater Entity
(needs a healthy number of spells).

You could also play Whirler Virtuoso yourself by adding some more energy support like: Harnessed Lightning/Aether Meltdown as your removal and Glimmer of Genius for card draw.


#The first idea can look like this:


#And here is the second:

I had Blight Keeper in there on the theory that we really wanted turn 2 revolt. We actually don't care about it that much. We do want a turn 3 revolt trigger if we're running Ruin Raider. Also, given that you are running flying pirates, I think Fell Flagship is actually a better anthem than Favorable Winds just because the discard is relevant more often than the +1 toughness. The flyers in standard also lack some beef compared to the standouts of the past like Mantis Rider.

Given all that, I've been having decent success with a less aerial but more piratical tempo deck:

It ran pretty smoothly to a 4-1 finish in a friendly league.

This is based heavily on the article PV wrote about pirates. I think he underrated Ruin Raider. The card isn't quite Bob but it's pretty close. Fathom Fleet Captain is pretty amazing. It turns the corner fast and takes over games if left unchecked. Hostage Taker gets much better when you have other high quality creatures to soak up the removal.

Right now the deck wrecks UW approach, fights on a fairly even playing field with aggro decks, and struggles a bit against giant monsters. I think we could probably lose one land for another Chart a Course and ditch the Skysovereign for some sort of Temur/Dino fighter (possibly The Scarab God).

I think there also might exist a much more controlling version of this deck, something like:

At that point you're talking about a pretty different deck though.

hi there!
I`n new on standard, this is my first deck, cause i liked so much this theme. The list o choose was more all-in build, win the race



Unclaimed Territory is a must for tribe deck, help to play till T1
Aethersphere Harvester Linf link and crew 1 or good block, its so good
Pirate's Cutlass in my testes this cutless give much power as redundant power if no Favorable wind .. If it, more strong. The same drops as Fell Flagship, but enter attaching and dont "lose" some creature to crew.

P.S.:
1. I'n without [[Chart a Course]], but i want to fit it, refile our hand is good.
2. I looked for March of the Drowned as a good choise at least for side, against control decks seens good

This was my first view with the deck. I hope to grow it.