Happy New Year! Let's Steal Everything!

Happy New Year All!

Intro

Feels good to be back and writing again! We’re picking up right where we left off with a slight twist to the usual format. Instead of the usual month-to-month upgrade with purchasing cards over the year, I’m going to write a complete upgrade guide for four of the precon decks that released in 2023. Then over the course of the year of releases, we’ll look at each set and see what are the best cards to consider going into each of the four decks. And if everything goes well I’ll be able to sprinkle in some gameplay videos using the decks so we can see them in action!

So without further ado, here’s our deep dive guide into the Ahoy Mateys Precon while using Don Andres, the Renegade, at the helm!!

Out of the box the whole deck is pretty well built. It’s a Grixis (Blue, Black & Red) deck that focuses on pirate creature cards and all of the in-game tropes we expect from pirates. Just like real pirates, the ones in this deck care about being aggressive, looting treasure, and in the case of the backup commander, theft!! The deck is flavorful in how it spans each of those categories but our upgrade guide will be focusing on theft more than the rest! 

Don Andres, the Renegade (who I will just keep referring to as Andres) is a four-mana 4/3 Vampire Pirate with “Each creature you control but don’t own gets +2/+2 has menace and deathtouch, and is a Pirate in addition to its other types.” It also has “Whenever you cast a noncreature spell you don’t own, create two tapped treasure tokens.” In our upgrade guide we are focusing 80% into the first ability and 20% into the second ability. We want to be stealing as many of our opponents best creatures as possible and turning them sideways with some pretty decent evasion due to the menace and deathtouch. Late in the game when we have tons of disposable mana we want to cast things out of our opponent’s full graveyards and hopefully some haymakers off the top of their deck!

The Upgrades & Cuts

As with every upgrade we’ll go over some cards we’re taking out and what we’re replacing them with. If we were keeping Beckett Brass as the commander, the cuts would be a bit harder to make than they are with Andres at the helm. We are no longer focusing on the heavy pirate synergies. We are focusing on thieving our opponents’ creatures and spells! Even while Andres makes our stolen creatures into pirates, they won’t trigger any pirate ETB triggers and if Don Andres gets removed they cease being pirates anyways.

What goes out

While not a complete list of what to remove, these cards are the least synergistic for what we want to be doing. We want to get rid of these first and then pick and choose what other cards to remove from there. 

Azure Fleet Admiral - This card is just a monarch payoff. While it is easy to keep the payoff with stolen creatures getting menace and death touch, there are better options at the four mana slot.

Amphin Mutineer - This creature can exile some of the biggest threats on the board, but giving your opponents a 4/3 in its place isn’t worth it especially when we want to be capitalizing on menace creatures.

Angrath’s Marauders - I was on the fence about this card, but 7 mana is way too steep. It’s also on a creature. So it’s one swift removal target away from essentially wasting your whole turn casting it (with no guarantee of it paying off.)

Kari Zev - This card is almost taunting us as we remove it because an actual Ragavan would fit perfectly into this deck.

Daring Saboteur - It’s just a looter. A combat and mana dependent looter at that. Only good for pirate combat damage synergies, but we’re removing most of those from the deck too.

Arm-Mounted Anchor - We’re getting a lot of pirates out of the deck so the draw two discard two isn’t that great in this deck. 

Admiral Brass, Unsinkable - Pirate Reanimator is cool theme that merits keeping in a lot of the other cards on this cut list. Unfortunately, with Andres at the helm we won’t be needing many of the cards that pivot around this singular card.

The Grim Captain’s Locker - As mentioned above this is a fantastic card if pirate reanimator was still the theme of the deck. If we could use this to get creatures out of our opponent’s graveyard, it’d be another story.

Port of Karfell - Same as above with the Grim Captain’s Locker and Admiral Brass. We aren’t playing pirate reanimator so no need to lose a land slot on this.

Broadside Bombardiers - We want to keep our stolen creatures to swing with and not as sac fodder. Even though this is good when you only have someone’s creature until the end of turn, it's still not good enough to make the cut.

Captain Lannery Storm - It doesn’t have anything to do with our commander or our gameplan besides sometimes making some blockers. It’s ok at best in the early game and terrible in the late game.

Departed Deckhand - Just another filler pirate. It’s great for your creatures who need to deal combat damage to get in but this could be much better used for another thieving card. 

Warkite Marauder - Unless there is something extremely oppressive on the board that you need to turn off, this card doesn’t do much besides fly.

Gemcutter Buccaneer - We don’t need our treasures to be equipment. We need them to cast our opponent’s stuff.

What goes in!

Reanimate - Exactly the kind of card this theft deck wants. It’s a one mana to steal the best dead thing. There are cards in this deck will mill our opponents for some better options to reanimate too.

Relic of Sauron - A fantastic Grixis mana rock that can be cracked for cards as the game goes late and you don’t need excess mana anymore.

Lidless Gaze - This spell can capitalize on Andres’ second ability as well as his first and being able to cast it again later from the graveyard is a great upside to it.

Grima, Saruman’s Footman - This is the perfect card for Andres’ second ability as it guarantees a successful cast. It also comes with the word “may” so you don’t have to cast someone else’s Blasphemous Act unless you really want to.

Subjugate the Hobbits - While I’ve cut other cards for being too expensive, this card is super worth it. This grabs all of your opponent’s creature tokens and even though it only grabs generally small creatures, Andres’ pump ability will make up for their mana cost limited size.

Arcane Denial - I’m a fan of this counterspell because of the drawing cards attached with it but if you want to sub in any other cheap counterspell, be my guest.

Extract from Darkness - By turn 5 you’re definitely going to hit something good with this card from at least one person’s graveyard. 

Roaming Throne - This is essentially some flex ramp as it can double up on Andres’ 2nd ability with the added bonus of triggering some of the pirates that are still left in the deck. 

Geth, Lord of the Vault - Geth is a great addition as it lets us get creatures from our opponents’ graveyards repeatedly. It’s a steep cost at 6 mana but it is repeatable and it does fuel any of our other “grab from their graveyard” targets.

Breeches, Eager Pillager - Breeches is two things. One, is adorable. Two, is a great value piece as you’ll consistently have multiple pirates swinging and activating all three modes.

Beguiler of Wills - This can be a bit risky as you don’t want to use this on an empty board but it is repeatable. This can be a surprise hit though because some high mana-value creatures with crazy abilities have a low power for balance reasons. This card is a great example of the tradeoff of good ability for low power.

Gonti Lord of Luxury - Gonti is a classic thieving creature that I’ve always been a fan of. I’d keep this slot as a flex card where you can test out other options. Without another upgrade in mind this is a proper fit into the deck.

Grenzo, Havoc Raiser - You will almost always be able to deal combat damage every turn with an army of creatures with menace. So it’s good to be able to goad the scariest threats before you find a way to steal them for yourself.

Rhystic Study - I’m lucky and grateful to have one so no reason not to add it to the deck. Everyone at the table is already going to hate you for stealing their creatures so might as well really lean into it.

Sower of Temptation - There’s not a ton of permanent theft cards so one’s that are dependent on a creature needing to stick around are welcome.

Roil Elemental - Stealing stuff for taking basic game actions. Nothing better.

The Ruinous Powers - Casting off the top of someone’s library is already random so not getting to pick who exactly you target isn’t that big of a deal. 

Mind Flayer - Just a nice 3/3 that comes with a stolen creature too. 

Bribery - This lets you pull out a combo piece from your opponents or just find their biggest threat and put it on the battlefield under your control.

Agent of Treachery - In this shell, this card can consistently be a source of card draw. And we can keep using those drawn cards to continue staying above the three stolen creature threshold.

Dragonlord Silumgar - It’s always nice to have at least one flyer! And with deathtouch on its own it is a vicious blocker to try and get around. 

Gisa, Glorious Resurrector - This is another great way of getting creatures to swing with. Even though it’s only once it’s only 4 mana to have Gisa camp out and generate value for the board.

Mob Rule - This card is just perfect for the deck. More times than not, you want to take all the big creatures assuming the smaller creatures won’t be able to deal with the onslaught.

The Beast, Deathless Prince - This generates card advantage if you’re able to send the creatures back where you got them. Also it makes for a great blocker if you are keeping him untapped.

Callous Oppressor - This card takes a bit of politicking but for just three mana it’s totally worth it. If the opponent you pick has a scary creature or doesn’t want to lose their commander, they’ll try to protect it, letting you pick anything else on the board. The only two ways this can backfire is if someone is running changelings or if someone is playing a typal deck and essentially protects their whole board.

Wrap-up & DeckList

So this deck is now all ready to go to “borrow” your opponent's spells! It is a little slow in the early game if you don’t hit your ramp pieces, but it really shines once you have enough mana to steal one or two things a turn. I recommend stealing your opponent’s commanders as most folks pick a commander and pick 99 cards to maximize its value. If their commander is an integral linchpin to their deck, you can catapult ahead by cutting them off of it.

So this deck is the first of four I’ll be tracking and upgrading throughout the year. With each set release I’ll put out an article about which new cards you should look out for. Always remember that packs are for draft and buying singles is how you get what you want. 

And as always, play nice & no shoving.