Hi all!

Rivals of Ixalan has officially been spoiled, and we have quite a few updates to a very underrated archetype and deck in Standard! Tempo is a tricky deck to play and requires patience, knowledge of your opponent's deck, and knowledge of your own deck in and out! You have to know what to counter, what to remove, and when to play a certain card. Thankfully, Rivals of Ixalan has given us some MUCH needed updates to the deck!

Without further ado, let's dive in. :)

Creatures!

Siren Stormtamer sits at the bottom of our curve at 1CMC, and is a wonderful card in a tempo deck. In essence, it's a Cursecatcher, however it targets abilities as well, as long as they're targeting a creature we control. On the plus side, he's a 1/1 flyer which if left uncontested, will slowly eat away at our opponent's life. As is the tempo way. :)

Kitesail Freebooter is a decent card here, as it's duress on a stick. It's also a 1/2 flyer which will either get in for some free damage, or eat our opponent's removal spells, if we don't manage to take them first with this card. Card advantage is a good part of a tempo deck, and this helps out with that.

Warkite Marauder is already solid in this deck as it's effectively a 2/1 for 2 flier, which isn't bad but it's nowhere near Standard playable. The great thing about this card is the effect, it turns your opponent's Bristling Hydra or The Scarab God into a 0/1 without abilities. This is key here because it can't block, and if you have any removal in your hand, this would be the best time to play it.

This card can be easily sided out against control because it's not very necessary there.

Dire Fleet Poisoner is by far the best Pirate printed in Rivals of Ixalan as far as I'm concerned. It is invaluable to our strategy and we desperately needed a good Flash creature, and we got one! Poisoner is the absolute nuts here. It's a 2/2 for 2 with deathtouch which is great, but what we're really using it for is a combat trick. If our opponent feels like blocking anything we have, we can flash this in and easily kill that creature. The best part about playing this in our type of deck is that we have Siren's Ruse to recur this back into our hand and play it again as often as we want. Bouncing our creatures is super vital and very effective.

Fathom Fleet Captain is very good as well. If we don't need to counter anything or we're playing a slow deck, he can flood the board very easily with 2/2 Menacing pirates. We can also protect him easily with Siren Stormtamer or our countermagic.

Hostage Taker is a staple in any U/B Pirate deck, especially with Siren's Ruse and the amount of counter spells we're playing in the main board alongside Siren Stormtamer she's decently well protected and can perform very well.

Non-Creature Spells!

Every good tempo deck needs ways to remove creatures and counter spells, both of which are very available in Standard right now.

Fatal Push is probably one of the best removal spells ever printed. Any deck playing black in Standard that can afford the cost of them should always play a full play set of Fatal Push.

Lookout's Dispersal. The majority of our creatures as pirates, so this card will only cost us 1U and counters a target spell unless our opponent pays 4. This is a great card if it comes down late and our opponent doesn't have the mana to pay. Mana leak, but butter. :)

Chart a Course is important to our card advantage plan and works pretty well for us, as it's usually going to always be a draw 2, discard none due to our pirates having high evasion and being able to fly above our opponent. Drawing 2 cards is always great, and it's even better in a tempo shell.

Siren's Ruse will bounce all of our Pirates when we need them bounced. Hostage Taker, Dire Fleet Poisoner, and Warkite Marauder can all be bounced to return their effect or save them. We can effectively attack with Warkite Marauder, exile it momentarily, draw a card, and save it from getting blocked.

Sideboard strategy!

So, there's a ton of great sideboard cards in U/B colors right now, and I tried to adapt a U/B control shell for our sideboard, because odds are if we're losing we're going to want to control the board a bit more than we already are.

First things first, we have Ravenous Chupacabra in the side, and I'm toying with putting him in the main somewhere. Post-board we kind of turn into Pirate Control and drop a little bit of our tempo and side in this alongside The Scarab God and some others. Chupa is a dope card and the ability to destroy threats we can't deal with effectively is going to be great, plus we can bounce him very easily in our deck with Siren's Ruse, though he's not a pirate so we don't draw a card.

Duress is an obvious choice here, especially if our opponent is playing a super heavy control deck or even something midrange like Temur. Remove their key spells, remove their creatures, win the game.

The Scarab God is always the nuts in any UB deck. He has nothing to do with our tempo game plan, but as stated earlier, we can turn into UB Pirate Control out of the board in a way. Scarab God alone can turn games around, especially when he can reanimate our dead pirates and we can rebuild.

Gifted Aetherborn is another great bear that's going to come in against any aggro strategy. Lifelink and deathtouch is a great combination for us.

Negate is perfect. We play two Spell Pierce in the main in addition to a play set of Lookout's Dispersal. Those all have mana costs that can be paid off, so Negate is great when we need to hard counter something.

Unsummon is necessary here as well because we can really out-tempo our opponent pretty easily with it. It's not an insanely overpowered card and can often be a dead draw late game, but against an opposing The Scarab God, Hazoret the Fervent, or any other ridiculously strong creature, Unsummon can bail us out fairly well.

Last but not least, Spell Pierce comes in against removal heavy decks and is a nice surprise out of the board. Most people are expecting Negate or Lookout's Dispersal but a Spell Pierce out of the board may be all we need some times to counter an Approach of the Second Sun or really anything. It's pretty solid and I like playing it.

AND THAT'S IT!

I am really going to appreciate all of your help and suggestions here as there are so many good cards to play with in the tempo strategy. I'll be constantly trying out new things over the next few months, but I love this strategy. Your opponent won't expect U/B Pirates, and it's a very fun deck to play with.

Please comment below with all of your suggestions, additions, removals, and anything else you'd love to discuss!