Batten down the hatches mateys, ’cause we be settin’ sail on an epic adventure! At the helm of our nostalgic voyage is none other than the flamboyant pirate, Ramirez DePietro! Join me as we explore this deck’s unique blend of fun, flavor, and old school charm.
Going Nuclear
While old school Magic is my main focus, I also love playing the casual kitchen table format known as Commander with my original playgroup. However, our playgroup struggles to keep our decks casual and fun because they can’t compete with one or two more powerful and highly streamlined Commander decks in our group. No one likes to lose all the time, and as a result all decks are now streamlined and highly competitive.
Wizards of the Coast did not help by designing all new sets with the very popular Commander format in mind. Legendary creatures are often more than not central engines for Commander decks that either provide a huge advantage or slow the game to a crawl. Power creep has gone too far and as a result, games either end too quickly or take hours. We went from finding silver bullet solutions in our decks to going for the nuclear option.
To address this issue, I encouraged using a limited card pool in hopes of fostering fun and creative builds, ensuring a more balanced and enjoyable play environment. I tried Pre-Modern for a while, but that too has some nasty potential. Old School 93/94, on the other hand, proved too limited for diverse creative builds.
The Swashbuckling Hero!
My newest Commander (EDH) deck, combines the timeless charm of old school Magic with the dynamic, social gameplay of modern Commander. While this deck follows the contemporary Commander rules, it has a card pool restricted to sets from Alpha to Alliances — the golden age of Magic. By extending the card pool beyond 93/94 with Fallen Empires, Homelands, Ice Age, and Alliances, I’ve opened the door for more interesting and diverse plays without sacrificing the charm and aesthetic I love of the 93/94 era.
The result is this amazingly fun deck centered around Ramirez and his fleet of Pirate Ships. Because, let’s be honest, what has more fun and charm than a good ol’ fashioned swashbuckling adventure? Each ship in the fleet brings its own set of cards that follow in line with their respective mechanics. This deck is by no means a competitive powerhouse but a flavorful tribute to the era that shaped our love for the game. Grab yer spyglass ‘n lets ‘ave a see!
Your Commander: Ramirez or Skeleton Ship?
While Ramirez is clearly the flavorful commander in this deck, he’s not the best option to put into the command zone. With a converted mana cost of six, a heavy color requirement, and essentially being a vanilla 4/3 first strike creature, he doesn’t offer much strategic advantage. The Skeleton Ship, on the other hand, has a built-in mechanic that interacts with several other cards in our deck. I would recommend starting with that, but choosing the stylish and flamboyant pirate earns you extra style points!
Skeleton Ship
Ramirez’s fleet is composed of six formally commissioned ships. First up is the Skeleton Ship. Skeleton Ship has the ability to tap and put a -1/-1 counter on target creature. This ability allows it to weaken or potentially destroy smaller creatures over time, making it a versatile utility card in combat situations and has some powerfull interactions with other ships and their crew. The following cards are in line with Skeleton Ship:
Chain Stasis allows you to untap Skeleton Ship to put an additional -1/-1 counter on a creature. By chaining this ability, you can continuously tap Skeleton Ship to weaken multiple creatures on your opponent’s side of the battlefield. This can effectively neutralize threats or reduce the effectiveness of your opponent’s creatures over time. This card also works on the many pingers in this deck!
Contagion, Serrated Arrows and Torture provide more options to put additional -1/-1 counters on creatures.
Spirit Shackle provides yet another way to weaken your opponent’s creatures. Together with cards that forces creatures to tap this card contributes to a control-oriented strategy by reducing the effectiveness of your opponent’s creatures. This synergistic approach aims to maintain board advantage and ensure your opponent’s threats are minimized.
The War Barge
War Barge is the next ship in the fleet and has the ability to give your creatures islandwalk until end of turn by paying 3 mana. This means that as long as your opponent controls an Island, your creatures with islandwalk can’t be blocked. This deck has multiple ways to create Island on your opponent’s side of the table. But it also function as an enabler for one of the coolest assassins in the game, a classic old school combo! Can you guess it?
You guessed it! The Merfolk Assassin! By using War Barge’s ability to grant islandwalk to an opponent’s creature you can then tap Merfolk Assassin to destroy the creature with islandwalk. This combo allows you to eliminate a key threat on your opponent’s side of the battlefield, potentially disrupting their strategy or removing a powerful blocker.
Speaking of Assassins, the Royal Assassin has a tap ability that reads: “Tap: Destroy target tapped creature.” This powerful ability allows you to eliminate any tapped creature on the battlefield, making it an effective deterrent against attackers and a potent removal tool for your opponents’ creatures in combination with other cards, remember Chain Stasis from the Skeleton crew? But that’s not the option…
You can use Icy Manipulator to tap down an opponent’s creature during their turn, making it vulnerable to Royal Assassin’s ability. Similarly, Norritt’s ability to force a creature to attack. Norritt’s other ability is also quite usefull with Skeleton Ship or the Merfolk Assassin, remember you can use the War Barge multiple times on each turn!
The Pirate Ship
The third ship in the fleet is the infamous Pirate Ship! Pirate Ship has an ability that allows it to tap and deal 1 damage to any target. This ability is colloquially referred to as a “ping” ability. This boat is crewed by many other “pingers” like Prodigal Sorcerer, Cuombajj Witches and the Zuran Spellcaster.
Reveka was often referred to as the “Queen of Pingers” because of her “enhanced” ping & repeat ability, dealing 2 instead of 1 damage. While Reveka itself doesn’t untap the next turn she does have an innate damage-dealing ability, its tap ability effectively turns it into a source of continuous direct damage, every other turn. Remember, don’t forget Chain Stasis!
The Pirate Ship is also armed with the same devastating weapons to deal additional damage to your opponent or to creatures on the board. Both Rocket Launcher and Triskelion can fire deadly rockets, while Aeolipile provides some additional projectiles.
This package makes the Pirate Ship a serious, devastating boat in Ramirez’s armada. But we’re only halfway; there are more ships and crews to explore!
Ghost Ship
Pirate Ship is primarily offensive, focusing on dealing damage and controlling the board through direct damage effects. It pressures opponents and provides a continual threat. Ghost Ship, on the other hand, is more defensive due to its regeneration ability, which helps it survive and protect against removal and combat damage. It’s better suited for blocking and surviving longer in combat scenarios.
Because this deck doesn’t run a lot of big creatures, we need to get some early defense up so we have time to set up our controlling board state. These cheap and sturdy blockers with regeneration do a lot of heavy lifting early on in the game.
Merchant Ship
Merchant Ship has several restrictions and conditions. It can only attack if the opponent has an island, and it gets destroyed if you control no islands. Despite its restrictions, Merchant Ship provides a life-gain ability when it deals damage to an opponent, which is not really beneficial in this deck. But flavorwise it is an auto-include and does come with an very cool Arabian Night crew!
Old Man of the Sea has a unique ability to gain control of creatures with power equal to or less than its own. This control lasts as long as Old Man of the Sea remains tapped and the controlled creature’s power stays within the limit. The effectiveness of Old Man of the Sea can be enhanced by cards that can modify creature power, cards like Skeleton Ship, Torture, Contagion and Serrated Arrows and of course our next crew memeber!
Sorceress Queen’s ability can change a creature into a 0/2 until end of turn. By using Sorceress Queen to lower the power of high-power creatures, you can significantly shift the balance of power in your favor. You can subsequently ping it to death or gain control of it, for example during combat, using Old Man from the Sea. Turning a big attacker into a chump blocker, killing the biggest threat on the board.
Sindbad allows you to draw a card and reveal it. If it is a land card, you keep it; if it is not, you discard it. Even though you might discard non-land cards, the ability to draw and possibly keep land cards can still provide a form of card advantage, ensuring you don’t miss land drops and maintain a steady mana base. Sindbad is also useful in reanimation strategies discarding creatures you want to reanimate.
As you can see, the Merchant Ship boasts a crew of very powerful utility creatures. You might find yourself in a situation where you wish you could run multiple copies of them because they are that good! Well, you can with Clone! It can copy your creatures or your opponent’s big, fat creatures. Merchant Scroll can also help with that, giving you the ability to tutor for creature removal.
Reef Pirates
We talked about how Sindbad can fill your graveyard with potential reanimation targets, but what about your opponent’s graveyard? Well, this is where Reef Pirates comes sailing in! Whenever Reef Pirates deals damage to an opponent, that player puts the top card of their library into their graveyard. The crew of this ship contains members you would normally expect to find in a beautiful and lush reef.
Benthic Explorers has the ability to untap a tapped land an opponent controls to add one mana of any type that land could produce. This allows you to effectively “borrow” mana from your opponent’s lands.
This ability gives you access to different colors of mana, depending on the types of lands your opponent controls. It can help you fix your mana base or provide extra mana for spells, enabling you to cast more powerful spells sooner.
Fun Fact: The artwork for Benthic Explorers became one of the most recognizable images associated with the Alliances set. The vibrant depiction of merfolk in an underwater scene encapsulated the exploratory and diverse themes of the set. It became emblematic of the Alliances set as it was the artwork depicted on all booster packages.
Giant Oyster, Spiny Starfish, and Tangle Kelp provide additional defensive options. Spiny Starfish is a strictly better version of Wall of Kelp, a card that is not included in this deck. Tangle Kelp is a strictly worse version of Paralyze, but it fits the theme of the deck. Giant Oyster traps creatures, making them weaker over time. You can use Skeleton Ship or pingers on the creatures trapped inside the oyster to finish the job even faster.
The Fleet
We now have explored the six ships comprising Ramirez’s formidable fleet, each vessel offering unique strategic advantages and thematic depth. From the versatile capabilities of the Pirate Ship and the relentless control of Skeleton Ship, to the defensive prowess of Reef Pirates, each ship contributes distinctively to Ramirez’s naval strategy. Now, we shift our focus to the next segment, where we delve deeper into other key elements shaping the legacy of this iconic commander.
Part of the Ship
Some cards in this deck evoke imagery that vividly brings to mind the various components of a ship. As we delve into this next section, “Part of the Ship,” you will find cards that symbolically embody elements you might find aboard a seafaring vessel. From Vexing Arcanix standing tall as the ship’s figurehead, to Barl’s Cage suspended from the mast, or Oubliette serving as the ship’s brig, these cards not only enrich gameplay but also spark the imagination with their thematic ties to maritime themes.
The ship’s figurehead! Vexing Arcanix holds nostalgic value for many players who experienced Magic during the Ice Age. It introduced a psychological element to gameplay. Players could target an opponent who then had to name a card. If the revealed top card of their library matched the named card, they added it to their hand; otherwise, it was sent to the graveyard, and the player took 2 damage.
Barl’s Cage can be tapped to target a creature, preventing it from untapping during its controller’s next untap step. Oubliette provides a unique form of removal; when Oubliette enters the battlefield, target creature phases out until Oubliette leaves the battlefield. Phasing out isn’t a zone change, the creature is still on the battlefield, but for most rules and effects it counts as not existing. So a commander can’t be returned to the command zone, it just stays phased out. This card is bonkers in Commander!
A ship, no matter how grand or sturdy, is rendered useless without a clear course to follow. To chart a course across the vast seas, sailors rely on two essential tools: a map and a compass. The map provides the necessary details of the terrain, coastlines, and landmarks, offering a guide through unfamiliar waters, much like how Lim-Dul’s Vault offers insight into things to come. Meanwhile, the compass ensures direction, pointing towards true north and guiding sailors through storms and calm seas alike. Some cards, like Mystic Compass, rely on your opponent controlling an Island, granting you this precise ability.
Part of the crew
Pirates often recruited sailors who willingly joined their crews. These recruits might be dissatisfied with their current ship or enticed by the promise of adventure, camaraderie, and potential wealth. Pirates would also attack and capture other ships or raid settlements. They might force prisoners from these captured ships or plundered settlements to join their crew, often offering them a choice between joining or facing dire consequences. This deck has a few ways to ‘persuade’ new recruits.
The infamous Davy Jones, for instance, is often depicted as the captain of the Flying Dutchman, a ghostly ship that sails the seas and collects the souls of drowned sailors, offering them a choice between death and service aboard his ship. Now, we talked about reanimation targets before, Animate Dead and Dance of the Dead can bring creatures from any graveyard back onto the board under our control.
While loyalty among pirates could be strong within certain contexts, such as shared goals or successful leadership, it was often tempered by the realities of survival and personal gain. Pirates’ flexibility in loyalty allowed them to navigate the dangerous waters of piracy, forming alliances or changing sides as circumstances dictated, making their loyalty dynamic at best. The following cards help you to ‘persuade’ some temporarily new deckhands.
The Seven Seas
Now that we’ve assembled our fleet, gathered our crew, and laid out our charts, it’s time to plot our course across the seven seas. With everything in place and everyone ready for the journey ahead, we can set sail with confidence, navigating through uncharted waters and braving whatever challenges lie ahead.
As we embark on our journey across the open sea, we must prepare for the myriad dangers that await us. The deep waters are home to Giant Sharks, Sea Serpents, with their immense size and strength, lurk beneath the waves, ready to strike with terrifying force. The sea itself can become a formidable foe, manifesting as a colossal Water Elemental, wielding the ocean’s power to create massive waves and whirlpools.
This deck relies on our opponents controlling an Island to unlock its full potential. Key cards like Magical Hack and Phantasmal Terrain transform opposing lands into Islands, ensuring our strategies can flow smoothly. Additionally, our trusty Compass, represented by Mystical Compas, serves as a reliable backup, converting lands into Islands. With these tools at our disposal, we can consistently leverage our deck’s strengths, turning the tide in our favor no matter the initial landscape.
Deadman tell no tale!
Removal spells are super important. These spells let you get rid of troublesome cards like big creatures, annoying artifacts, or game-changing enchantments that could otherwise take over the game. With removal spells, you can break up your opponents’ plans, stop them from getting too powerful, and give yourself a chance to shine. Since we are bound to Alpha to Alliance we don’t have alot of options withing our two colors. Counter magic is our only option to get rid of enchantments and artifacts so be wise when to use them. Don’t counter creatures when you have other options to deal with them. They help make sure the game stays interactive and fair, so no one player can steamroll the rest of the table.
While your creatures provide a decent amount of removal, it is good to add more. Since Commander is a multiplayer format with lots of different decks, creatures are swarming the board, having flexible removal options is key.
“Pox” is the main boardsweeper in this deck. I love this card! It speeds up the game by cutting down life totals significantly, disrupting hand, and mana base. It forcines players to quickly adapt to a drastically altered game state. It’s a powerful card that can quickly change the tide of a game, making it both a potent tool and a game-changer in multiplayer formats like Commander. Players are brought closer to defeat, making every subsequent action more critical.
Its ability to convert mana into direct damage and life gain makes it Drain Life a versatile and powerful card in various situations. It can be an excellent finishing move in a game. It works very good with mana acceleration cards like Lake of the Dead. It can also remove a threatening creature while also significantly boost your life total. This dual-purpose ability helps you stabilize and recover, buying you more time to turn the tide of the game.
Plunder
Speaking of mana acceleration, this deck packs a few solid mana rocks. Mana rocks, such as Sol Ring, Sol Grail, and Fellwar Stone, provide additional mana sources beyond land drops. This acceleration allows you to cast spells earlier in the game, gaining a significant tempo advantage.
Card draw is also essential in Commander for maintaining consistency, gaining resource advantages, recovering from setbacks, finding key pieces, maintaining pressure, and synergizing with the deck’s strategy. It ensures you have the tools and options you need. Black and Blue offer some of the best card draw spells in the game. As always with a flavor build I tried to stick on the theme. So no Ancenstral Recall or Braingyser but Pirate themed cards like Greed.
Demonic Tutor is an incredibly powerful tool. It helps you find key pieces and ensuring that your deck performs at its best. Its ability to search for any card makes it a staple in any black deck. It allows you to search your library for any card and put it into your hand. This flexibility means you can find exactly what you need, when you need it; whether it’s a specific land, a combo piece, a removal spell, or a card draw engine. For me it is an auto include.
Land Ho!
IIn this final chapter of our deck tech, we set our sights on the crucial land base that anchors our strategy. While we won’t delve into every individual land, we highlight a selection that ensures our voyage is smooth and efficient. Besides the usual suspects like Underground Sea and Underground River, this deck runs Storage-lands and Sac-lands from The Fallen Empires for additional acceleration. Maze of Ith provides critical defense, neutralizing attacking threats without tapping for mana. Thawing Glaciers offers consistent land fetching, ensuring we never run out of resources. Lake of the Dead supplies explosive mana generation at a strategic cost, allowing us to cast powerful spells early. Soldevi Excavations enhances our mana base while providing card filtering to keep our draws optimal.
Arrrgh!
In summary, this Commander deck combines the nostalgic allure of old-school Magic with the social and dynamic gameplay of the modern Commander format. Centered around the charismatic pirate, Ramirez DePietro, and his eclectic fleet, this deck celebrates the golden era of Magic while utilizing the rich card pool from Alpha to Alliances. The ships and their crews each contribute unique abilities and thematic depth, from the versatile Pirate Ship to the defensive Ghost Ship. Supporting spells and artifacts ensure a balanced, interactive experience, while a strategic land base guarantees smooth sailing. Whether you’re tapping Skeleton Ship to weaken foes or using Mystic Compass to ensure islandwalk, this deck promises a swashbuckling adventure full of flavor, creativity, and old-school charm. So grab your spyglass and set sail with Ramirez and his fleet for a memorable journey across the high seas of Magic: The Gathering!
The Edge-Man 
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