What did we have before Rivals?
Yes, there are other good ones as well, like we saw during the Pro Tour in a monowhite aggressive deck, but we are going for a more midrangish version here, albeit with some synergies.
This is probably way too slow against various energy decks, but this is probably the kind of deck I would enjoy playing.
We didn’t get many Explorers in the new set, but some… Well. Okay. We got [scryfall]Jadelight Ranger[/scryfall].
[scryfall]Ghalta, Primal Hunger[/scryfall] was spoiled early (or was it leaked, not sure, it was shown to be a promo card of some sort anyhow). It has kind of a unique bonus, if you ramp through creatures, so let’s see what we can come up.
Big Red has always been one of my favorite archetypes. Ben Stark already showed us that it’s possible, but now we have new tools. The two that feels the best are [scryfall]Etali, Primal Storm[/scryfall] and [scryfall]Dire Fleet Daredevil[/scryfall]. There’s also, possibly, [scryfall]Rekindling Phoenix[/scryfall], if the metagame is right.
I’ve sort of being looking forward to this, but there’s a problem. There just isn’t anything that would make a pirates deck better. I mean, there’s a couple of really strong Pirates. I like [scryfall]Warsail Marauder[/scryfall] and [scryfall]Dire Fleet Daredevil[/scryfall], but they both have problems. The Marauder’s ability just doesn’t do much, if all creatures you control already have evasion, and Daredevil is of the wrong color.