MTG Salvation

5 mana and it only returns to hand? This will be good in limited and nowhere else.

I hope that Fancy hat Pirate leading the boarding party is a more cast-able/useful Pirate lord than Admiral Brass Bracket is. Bracket ability is powerful, but very win more and being a 3/3 for 4 mana(3 colors) with Abrade and Lightning Strike and Harnessed Lightning around stinks.

Captain's Hook at 3 cost went from maybe pleayable to nope, nope, nope. Seriously, you LOSE THE PERMANENT if it gets detached, why have it cost so much? Also, we already have one or two other promo Evolving Wilds, another one over the tens of thousand other cards we could have a promo of is irksome.

I don't know if they will do this as it significantly affects the value of boxes that don't have one. I would rather them make better cards for standard and older formats, rather than make bad standard cards and cram hard-to-get super mythic rares of older cards into boxes.

Day 2 gone:
Top 8: 2 4-color Energy, 2 Sultai Energy (both Jessup brothers), 2 UW Approach, 1 Esper Gifts, 1 RDW

Sultai Energy takes first against RDW.

U/B Pirate Tempo Early Primer, I can't promise it will be a Tier 1 deck as of now, but the shell is there and can definitely win you some FNMs:

My original list was close to this:


I went 2-2 at FNM with this build. Problems I found with this build: clunky and slow and underpowered. I found myself having to tap-out to play threats as I did not have enough removal to draw-go the first few turns, but I found myself losing creatures to early removal/counters as I couldn't hold off on playing anything.
Cards that performed poorly:
Daring Saboteur - I want to keep my draws (spells to cast early, and lands later for casting more than one spell a turn), I found the looting to be more of a pain than a gain and the cost to make her unblockable is too high.
Ruin Raider - Do NOT play as a four of, he is not Bob and more than one on the board is bad. Even with his draws I felt eh for him, 2 toughness is really bad, but I think we need the draws so 2, but no more.
Fell Flagship - I really REALLY wish this gave +1/+1, but it doesn't and I never found an opportunity to crew it as my opponents could easily handle a 3/3 (vehicles really took a hit after Kaladesh).
Perilous Voyage - Found this half-answer to not be good enough, if it could bounce our own stuff (maybe to save a Hostage Taker or Fathom Fleet Captain) I would like it more.
Deadeye Tracker - His explore is too expensive and clunky and slow, if the body had an ability (any ability) Vigilance, or First Strike, or Menace, I could see playing him, but having to tap to Explore and hoping our opponent has to cards in the yard, plus it taking up two mana is too much cost for an exaggerated Scry 1.

Cards that Impressed:
Hostage Taker - While fairly killable, its ability to steal the opponent's things and open up a hole in their defenses is pure gold, play 3-4 as even in multiples I wasn't sad to see it. That said this is a turn 5 play, not 4, you want 4 mana to cast it and another 1 mana to use a Siren Stormtamer or Spell Pierce to protect it, play 4 period.
Siren Stormtamer - okay for early beats, but its ability to protect later threats is the real reason it shines.
Lookout's Dispersal - Mana Leak+, it is essentially Counterspell until turn 7+, play 3-4.
The Scarab God - This card is the new Mythic to beat (not Carnage Tyrant) its grind power is through the roof and one of the reasons we want to keep our lands and not loot them, play 2 split how you want among MB and SB.

Cards that were okay, but not great:
Fathom Fleet Captain - We only have one good 1 drop and I found his 2 power Menace to be a little slow when he doesn't really get to swing and make a token until turn 3 at the earliest. The cost of the token is fairly high too, He must attack, you must have another non-token Pirate, and must invest 2 mana, I found his ability to be clunky and don't expect to get it off more than once. He is the second best of our two drops though, so play 3-4.
Kitesail Freebooter - As a turn 2 play, it was not that good, my opponents want to blow up my stuff so him taking one of their early removal spells only to be hit by a second one in their hand, really just played as it would normally. But he is one of our few Evasive creatures, so we want ot get him down early to help trigger Fathom Fleet Captain (see the dilemma), play 3-4.

Cards that I think are traps:
Jace, Cunning Castaway - 3CC walkers always draw attention, everyone wants to see the next LotV, this is not it, in fact he might be the worst of the 3CC walkers printed. This walker is made of "IFs", IF his +1 ability allowed you to draw a card (rather than loot) after dealing combat damage to a player with a creature I could see playing him, IF his -2 ability made a flying 2/2 Illusion token I could see playing him, IF he started with 6 loyalty (and his ultimate cost was raised to -8), so I could make a subpar 2/2 token with his -2 ability and Jace could still absorb a hit and survive, I could see playing him.
Walk the Plank - this might get its time in standard when Kaladesh rotates, but right now we have a whole suite of Instant speed responses: 2CC counterspells, Lightning Strike, Fatal Push, etc...


My next attempt at aggro tempo:



Update: Next test list is up, all Instants in main for pure Tempo, write up for other cards still pending. 10/02
I merged two redundant Pirate Tempo threads here. Apologies for any confusion from the interleaved threads. - hoser2

Quote from Lumovanis »

Am I the only one that really thinks this Jace is just clunky and bad? He's useless in control, he doesn't help the aggro or midrange gameplan... why are people cramming him into anything blue? Is it just because he's a blue planeswalker?

It is because he is a 3CC Planeswalker and everyone wants any 3CC Planeswalker to be the next Liliana of the Veil.... none so far have been, but that doesn't stop people. I agree I think he is a little too clunky.

Day 1 gone, a quick breakdown: The three "safe" decks have all emerged on top, but maybe not the exact builds people were expecting. Sultai Energy (closely followed by Temur and 4 color Energy), UW Approach, and Red Deck Wins. A lot of people in the Twitch chat were crying about the lack of dinosaur presence and some were hoping for a Pirate deck to show up. Most played/impressive cards out of Ixalan: Hostage Taker and Search for Azcanta, only dino to show up on camera: Deathgorge Scavenger. Most on camera deck was the several variants of Energy. Best Tier 1.5 decks that were shown (closest to breaking into the meta, IMO) Esper God's Gift and Grixis Improvise. Most unique deck that could break into the meta (probably a Tier 2 deck, maybe 1.5) Esper Tokens (with Marionette Master). Only Ixalan Tribe deck to show up on camera (you will never guess it)..... GW Vampires! Mono White Vampires with green splash for Rishkar and Blooming Defense doing some work.

Quote from SirFrancois »

unfortunately havent had time to watch your streams, but skimmed through them. How has delirium skeins doing for you? I'm on the fence on that card and would prefer bringing in a playset of pack rat sb for playset of smallpox out, to change our gameplan from black control, to black aggro

Haven't gotten a chance to side it in as I have not faced a deck with Leylines or other player hexproof cards.

I will post on the forums, where I have threads, when I am streaming. I am going to try and stream tonight, probably around 7pm CST. I will be playing in the tournament practice lobby until I get the Lilianas (Blackmail has been working surprisingly well). All my streams I record and post to my Twitch videos area and to my Youtube channel.

My list is "budget" right now, I am a little ways off from getting the Liliana of the Veils and am running 4 Blackmails in her place. Everything else is close to Tom Ross's list, in tonight's planned stream I will do a quick once over of my list.

Quote from zcowan »

Hey, I just recently purchased this deck after playing Lantern Control/Jeskai/Elves for a while, I figured it was time to spice it up! I was wondering if lists run any other form of creature removal like Damnation other than the fatal push 4x and LoV?

Bontu's Last Reckoning in the SB and maybe a single Dismember in the 75.

Starting stream now: Twitch: broodwarjc
I will post the recordings later. Just doing Tournament Practice mode, nothing fancy. My first time streaming

Games here: https://youtu.be/PrEtwAetHwg
I need to up my recording quality next time, the card text isn't very legible. Still new to this.

Quote from genini2 »

Quote from D90Dennis14 »

Quote from Ember_Twilight »

I am so disappointed Hull Breach didn't make it into Ixalan

I doubt we'll see it in Modern (moreover in Standard), it is probably better than any other artifact/enchantment removal in the format for its cost
(making Ancient Grudge/Destructive Revelry and others obsolete).

Not really. The number of times you get 2 for 1 value on Hull breach in modern is pretty low. The only deck I can think of that this is really great against is WR Prison and almost every other deck either runs exclusively artifacts or exclusively enchantments. Not to mention that the damage on Destructive Revelry is important for burn decks and the flashback on Grudge makes it good against lantern or against affinity going in on separate creatures.

Could also give 8-rack fits.

I got this deck on MTGO, haven't gotten the LotV yet, but even playing a "Budget" version without her I am doing pretty good in the Tournament Practice Lobby. Had 2 players quit the entire match after I dropped 4 Discard spells on them in Game 1. Actually got to play out a match against BW Tokens and BG Midrange. Smoked both of them with continuous disruption and either Mutavault beat down or stringing them up on the Rack. This deck has always seemed to suffer from the lack of a one-mana universal removal spell and Fatal Push answered the call. Haven't played much too top tier, one of the players who quit the whole match was playing Jeskai Control and didn't like when I made him discard his Snappy. I will try to record and post some matches later.

Pirates, not for being big (Dinos get that nod), but being the closest to a competitive deck right out of the first set.