Aaaarrrrggghh, me hearties!

It’s time for another installment of Daily Arena, and a look at another one of the preconstructed decks the folks at WotC gave us with the March 22 refresh of the Magic Arena Closed Beta.

Today we are looking at The Brazen Coalition, which is a B/R Aggro Pirates Tribal deck. This deck’s main goal is to play out a lot of low-cost creatures quickly, and attack attack attack, gaining extra value off tribal synergies to unload a bunch of damage onto the opponent and hopefully win before they stabilize.

Here’s some video footage of me playing the deck in two games against the same R/G Dinosaur Tribal deck. In Game 1 I lose due to burn keeping me from getting a good aggressive start and the opponent following up with very good creatures (2 Glorybringers!), and in Game 2 my opponent gets stuck on 2 lands long enough that I almost win by default. Ah, well, so it goes.

Edit: Here is one more game that didn’t come down to mana screw. I probably could have won a turn earlier, but had an irrational fear of a Negate vs. my Lightning Strike.

And another game with the Brazen Coalition precon…Dire Fleet Poisoner is so good!

My opponent should have used his Vona more…not sure whether I deserved that win.

At the beginning the game messed up my resolution settings and made it so I couldn’t access my hand properly, so I just conceded.

Here’s the deck list:

The Brazen Coalition

Before discussing individual cards, I want to mention that in a deck like this a lot of the good-but-not-bomb-level aggressive cards are fairly interchangeable, so I’m only going to specifically mention the very top-tier creatures in the deck along with the ones I think can be removed. The cards in between can have multiples added basically however you choose, just keep an eye on the mana curve, as this deck has a much lower one than the control decks I discussed in earlier articles.

Okay, let’s look at that cards…first, the stars of the deck.

Dire Fleet Poisoner is great both offensively and defensively. You can play it early to push through extra damage (and even as a trick to win combat), and later on it can ambush your opponent’s large creatures and kill them out of nowhere.

Captivating Crew is repeatable Threaten on a respectable body. The worst case for this is a 4/3 for 4, which isn’t the worst thing ever, but when you can steal their best creature and hit them with it over and over again, that is just gross. God forbid you ever get to 8+ mana and start taking two at a time.

Fathom Fleet Captain is already a great aggressive card as a 2/1 menace for 2, and once he starts bringing along his menacing crewmates, things just snowball out of control.

Dire Fleet Ravager hits both players’ life totals hard, but leaves you with a 4/4 Menace Deathtouch that is very difficult for your opponent to block without losing one or two good creatures. This is the top of your curve, and though I’d like to have one more in the deck for consistency, I probably wouldn’t want more than 2.

Walk the Plank kills everything but a Merfolk, at very low cost. Running into the all-Merfolk deck is rare enough in the current Arena metagame that I think you want at least two of these in your deck.

Pirate’s Cutlass (as you can probably tell from the name) is a great equipment for a Pirate Tribal deck. It doesn’t suffer from Aura drawbacks, and the fact that you’re going to get the first equip for free makes it a no-brainer.

Cinder Barrens is insurance for the rare cards in this deck with two-colored pips. You might add one more, but probably not more than one more, since it has the drawback of potentially slowing down your mana base at a time when you can’t afford it.

As far as removing cards to make room for a higher density of better ones, these are what I’m looking at:

Daring Buccaneer is a great turn 1 play, but later than that its utility drops off sharply. A lot of the time, I’d rather just have another Fanatical Firebrand or one of the good aggressive two-drops.

Fathom Fleet Firebrand can do some real work and I can see why it’s in the deck, but like Daring Baccaneer, I just don’t like it as much as most of the other 2-drop Pirates that are available.

Storm Street Swashbuckler is great when it works and mediocre when it doesn’t. I’d rather play a card that is always great.

Grasping Scoundrel is aggro filler. The fact that it’s almost worthless on defense makes me want to trade at least one of them in for something better.

Rigging Runner is great if you can play a 2-drop on turn 2, attack with it and then play Rigging Runner along with another 2-drop on turn 3. I’ve had enough games where I could only play this as a 1/1, though, that I have no problem putting it on the chopping block.

Dire Fleet Captain looks like just that card you want, but with all of the menace options floating around, as well as card like Dire Fleet Neckbreaker that give you value much more quickly, it’s not my favorite choice.

Buccaneer’s Bravado is a decent trick, don’t get me wrong, but in this deck configuration I would generally just rather have another copy of one of the instant-speed burn spells.

Fiery Cannonade is great against Merfolk and Vampires, but often falls short against control decks playing larger creatures, and Dinosaurs where all you’re doing is giving you opponent free Enrage triggers. I’d leave one in for the matches where it’s great, and trade the other one in for a piece of instant-speed targeting burn/removal.

March of the Drowned can do good work bringing back your Pirates that fell in the line of duty, but I’d almost always rather just be able to make one of the opponent’s best creatures Walk the Plank.

Fell Flagship seems really good, but I’ve played a lot of games with and against it where it wasn’t as good as it seems like it should be. This might be controversial, but I think I’d rather just have a second Pirate’s Cutlass, which has yet to disappoint me.

Edit: After discussing this with a friend offline, I thought it might be useful to add more detail. Basically, most times I play this I never crew it because I want the pump and making this a creature opens it up to all of the removal currently floating around this format. Often when I play against it, opponents rely on its pump to trade in combat, and if I just hold back a Lightning Strike, I can end up blowing them out in combat. Pirate’s Cutlass, on the other hand, pumps power and toughness and can help you win in combat where you wouldn’t, otherwise. The free first equip you get is quite good and makes it my go-to Pirate artifact.

So, as far as a budget upgrade goes, I’d suggest something along these lines:

The Brazen Coalition (Budget Upgrade)

And if you can afford the rares and mythics, maybe something more like this:

The Brazen Coalition (Upgrade)

As always, feel free to hit me up here or on reddit with comments on the article, or contact me at @DailyArena on Twitter, or through the @DailyArenaMTG page on Facebook.

Peace.

Joseph Eddy is a Father, Husband, Son, Brother, Software Developer, and Gamer. Magic is his favorite hobby, and he’s looking forward to seeing you all on Arena. He streams Magic Arena on a weekly basis (or more), but currently is unable to keep to a set schedule.