Deck of the Day: Pirate Aggro

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Pirate Aggro created by Dragonguy • last updated 2 years ago

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Hello everyone, my name is Dragon and I welcome you all to another Deck of the Day!

What is ‘Deck of the Day’?

The goal of these short write-ups is to regularly introduce you to the exciting decks and archetypes that are popping up constantly and are being rediscovered in the meta of Patch 2.11.

Each day, we’ll be showcasing one list that we think is worth your time. We’ll then follow it up with a commentary to cover the deck’s origin, its gameplan, and, in the end, we’ll be giving it a preliminary verdict.

We hope you’ll find the decks we share entertaining, and let us know what you think about this new format!

Today, I wanted to highlight one of the more powerful aggro decks currently in the meta and commemorate the first player to reach Master rank in the Americas.

They were using exactly this archetype – which goes to show how great this deck is for climbing right now. Without further ado, here is the deck you should know and respect if you still aren’t – Pirate Aggro!

Origins

Pirate Aggro, also called Pirate Burn, is an archetype that dates back to the Rising Tides expansion.

One of the first decks I ever played was a budget version of Pirate Aggro, so the archetype holds a bit of a special place for me. The deck uses Miss Fortune and Gangplank as their champions, and branches into Noxus for burn spells and early units.

This specific list was used by Arax to become the first player to hit Masters in the Americas shard this season – congratulations to them!

Gameplan

The plan of this deck is to go face. We have 12 one-drops, so you should be looking for an aggressive opener.

With the plethora of low-cost units at your disposal, you should be able to go wider than most opponents early in the game, which will allow you to push some solid early damage.

In the mid-game, we will try to close out the game through either Gangplank, or the suite of burn spells this list runs. The newly buffed Make it Rain is featured as well, as it can fulfill multiple key roles for the deck, such as clearing away small chump-blockers and advancing Gangplank’s level-up on a defensive turn.

One key thing about this deck is that you need to be really aggressive with your units, and be sometimes willing to take suboptimal trades if it means pushing damage. If you have burn in hand such as Decimate, you need to prioritize putting your opponent in range of that burn over keeping units such as Miss Fortune alive.

Always keep track of spells that Zap Sprayfin will draw you. As a 2|2 elusive, Zap can be ok at pushing in damage, but the real reason we run him in the deck is that he guarantees a burn spell in hand, which for this deck will either be Make it Rain or Noxian Fervor.

Verdict: 9 out of 10

This deck has felt very powerful in the games I’ve run with it, and is quite capable of ending games early. After all, this was the first deck to make it to Masters. Still, despite it’s clear strengths, it still has some weaknesses.

One is that the list is susceptible to early board clears. While we are generally safe from the ping effects, many of our units can get cleaned up by cards like Avalanche, which can slow down the deck enough for opponents to stabilize.

The deck also does not do well in the late game, meaning if your opponent can survive the early onslaught they can take control of the board and leave you down to just your burn to close out.

Still, the list is still very strong, as many decks have trouble dealing with the early onslaught of units. Even if the opponent deasl with them and stabilizes control of the board, they are still at risk of just dying to burn spells. There’s a reason this deck is also featured as Tier 1 on our RuneterraCCG Tier List.

Thank you all for reading, and I hope I’ve inspired at least some of you to go out there and fire all cannons on your opponent Nexus!