Ahoy Mateys Upgrade Guide: 10 Easy Changes You Can Make

Last updated on November 27, 2023

Admiral Brass, Unsinkable | Illustration by Jason Rainville

Whelp. I’m not getting through this upgrade guide without this song popping up in my head at least once or twice, so let’s just get it out of the way now:

You’re welcome.

On to the Ahoy Mateys precon from Lost Caverns of Ixalan Commander (LCC). All the fun of being a pirate without the need for all those torrent websites. Yeah, I’m talking about you. Don’t worry though, these are more of your “plunder the open seas” pirates, after all.

Channel your inner Hook and set sail for Magic’s first pirate-themed Commander precon. I’ll be your Cap’n today, so follow my lead and let’s take this precon to the next level!

Deck Overview

Siren's Ruse | Illustration by Ben Maier

Ahoy Mateys is one of four typal Commander precons released alongside The Lost Caverns of Ixalan (LCI). Since LCI doesn’t have as much emphasis on the main factions of Ixalan as its predecessors, Wizards used the Commander line-up to show them some love.

This is a Grixis () pirate deck captained by Admiral Brass, Unsinkable with Don Andres, the Renegade as second mate. For the most part, the deck only cares about casting pirates and attacking with your crew. Not a lot of strategic depth here, just down-and-dirty swashbuckling. You’re your typical typal creature deck committed to casting and attacking with pirates, and pretty much nothing else of note.

Strengths and Weaknesses

Unfortunately, the deck’s totally binary out of the box, with a single-minded gameplan of attacking with pirates. Any other themes are incidental or under-supported at best. Perhaps you can look at this as a strength though; I’m usually in favor of using Commander precons as onboarding tools for new players, and the pirate theme is simple and focused enough for someone just getting into the format.

The deck’s one gimmick is a bit of a double-edged sword. On one hand, pirates haven’t been used as the focal point of an entire Commander precon before, so it’s something new and interesting at least. However, pirates aren’t printed as frequently as merfolk and vampires, or even dinosaurs, so it’s the deck least likely to get meaningful support moving forward.

On a positive note, the reprint quality is great. This deck alone features Black Market Connections and Pitiless Plunderer, which together would’ve cost around $30 before being reprinted here. Timestream Navigator, Port Razer, Vanquisher's Banner, Herald's Horn, and Windfall are other value reprints worth highlighting.

I’ll be taking a budget-friendly approach to deck upgrades. I’m not looking to build a cEDH deck; rather, I want to find affordable ways to reinforce the deck’s themes and synergies and make it slightly more viable at semi-competitive casual tables. I’ll keep it to 10 total upgrades; I’m not trying to build a new deck from scratch here.

Breeches, Eager Pillager

Suggested Cut: Don Andres, the Renegade

Breeches, Eager Pillager is the most piratey pirate who ever pirated. You’re looking at a potential Treasure, draw, and mini-Falter on each combat step. It makes sense it wasn’t included in the precon, since it gives you a reason to buy into the main LCI set, though the price could increase if pirates wind up being a player in Standard.

Even as the alternate commander, Don Andres, the Renegade isn’t well supported here. Some pirates steal your opponents’ cards, but it’s not a strategy this deck is actively building towards. You could push the precon in this direction, but as it stands there are only 6-7 cards that support the theft theme.

Daring Piracy

Suggested Cut: Distant Melody

Daring Piracy was designed to easily enable raid, the mechanic associated with pirates during our first visit to Ixalan. Raid isn’t very important here, but just spitting out a pirate every turn is good enough, even if it jumps ship on end step. Several creatures care about pirates entering the battlefield, and they’re perfect to feed to Broadside Bombardiers or poke in for chip damage.

I’ve never been a huge fan of Distant Melody. So many cards offer repeatable card advantage (Bident of Thassa, Breeches, Brazen Plunderer) or card advantage stapled to a body (Hostage Taker, Dire Fleet Daredevil) that you don’t need to spend an entire turn on a draw spell that doesn’t affect the board.

Siren’s Ruse

Suggested Cut: Dire Fleet Ravager

Siren's Ruse is a sneaky inclusion here. It’s a blink spell that almost always replaces itself, and many of these pirates have great ETBs. The real trickery is resetting a finality counter that Admiral Brass, Unsinkable put on a reanimated pirate. It’s such a low opportunity cost to run this card, and it gives you some protection that’s otherwise severely missing from the precon.

Dire Fleet Ravager can walk the plank as far as I’m concerned. It has no inherent synergy other than having pirate in its type line, and it usually puts you in critical territory as well. A tad expensive for what it’s trying to accomplish.

Forerunner of the Coalition

Suggested Cut: Timestream NavigatorYou could just run Vampiric Tutor and friends, but for those of us who aren’t power-maxing their pirate typal deck, Forerunner of the Coalition will suffice. It sets up your next draw, possibly setting up a mill with your commander, and the persistent ping effect adds up over time. Nothing egregiously powerful, but synergistic nonetheless.

Timestream Navigator was a welcome reprint, but this deck doesn’t utilize it well. It’s a non-aggressive card in an aggro strategy, one that’s going to pull everyone’s attention towards you even if you’re not much of a threat. It doesn’t even work well with your commander since it tucks itself in the library instead of hitting the graveyard.

Kitesail Larcenist

Suggested Cut: Storm Fleet Negotiator

Kitesail Larcenist is another pirate from the main set that I recommend adding. I’m normally not a fan of temporary removal effects that eventually give the cards back to your opponents, but this one contributes to combat while moving problems out of the way. You could turn one of your own permanents into a treasure and sacrifice it to reanimate with Brass, but I’m not sure how often that’ll come up.

I’ll let you in on a secret with Storm Fleet Negotiator. Don’t be the person at the table spending your mana to give everyone cards. You’ll get some handy Map tokens, but those are only so useful, and gifting your opponents extra cards isn’t wise for the deck that’s constantly attacking them. Who do you think those extra cards are going to be aimed at?

Emberwilde Captain

Suggested Cut: Azure Fleet Admiral

Piracy and monarch feel good together, but Azure Fleet Admiral’s not cutting it. Let’s upgrade this to a slightly better monarch pirate with Emberwilde Captain. You lose an occasionally evasive creature and instead add a super cool djinn to the crew, one that burns anyone trying to steal the monarch away.

Aether Snap

Suggested Cut: Blood Money

Aether Snap has seen print in previous precons, but it always felt a little out of place. However, you can use it to sweep away tokens and remove finality counters from tour pirates. Be careful not to lose too many of your own tokens, though you can always filter your Treasure mana into this spell to make good use of them.

Blood Money is strong but super expensive. It refunds most of your mana on a one-turn delay, but this isn’t really a Treasure deck. You can find uses for Treasure, sure, but there aren’t many artifact/treasure synergies present, and the deck doesn’t need 20+ mana to do anything super splashy. I’m low on the big Treasure payout cards here.

Entomb

Suggested Cut: Windfall

Entomb is somewhat pricey for this list, but it pairs amazingly with Admiral Brass. Search up a pirate, dump it in the ‘yard, put it back into play. I like the sound of that sea shanty.

I imagine Windfall is here for similar reasons; it’s meant to put pirates in your graveyard while drawing into more cards, but I don’t like Windfall in decks that don’t deliberately break parity on it. Too often this draws you a new hand at the expense of distributing 5-10 extra cards to your opponents. I’ll repeat: Don’t spend your mana on effects that benefit everyone equally.

Power Conduit

Suggested Cut: Pitiless PlundererThe charge counter text on Power Conduit is mooter than a freebooter, but this little gem works wonders with Admiral Brass. What if instead of finality counters, we had +1/+1 counters? Make your pirates’ deaths a little less final and pump up your party instead.

The reason Pitiless Plunderer appears on top lists is because of its infinite combo potential, not because it randomly generates Treasures, which as I’ve already said are only so useful in this precon. A 1/4 for 4 barely contributes to combat, which should be the focus of the deck. Be happy to add this card to your collection, but recognize it’s not a great fit for this strategy.

Familiar’s Ruse

Suggested Cut: Departed DeckhandIt seems like there was a conscious effort to limit the number of counterspells in the LCC precons. I noted a lack of stack interaction in the merfolk deck, but there’s not a counterspell in sight here! Not saying you need to pivot to hard control, but you are a blue deck, mates. I love finding decks that make good use of Familiar's Ruse. It’s technically strictly worse than Counterspell, but you can usually turn that additional cost into an advantage. Namely, you can pick up a pirate with a finality counter on it to counter a spell and reset that pirate’s fate.

You want a healthy number of 2-drops, but Departed Deckhand is a lousy card. It dies to a light breeze and the activated ability is exorbitant. This isn’t M19 Limited, you can’t spend an entire turn making another 3/3 temporarily unblockable. God forbid you play against an actual spirit deck.

That’s All, Me Hearties

Entomb | Illustration by Seb Mckinnon

Wow, an entire pirate precon upgrade guide and not a single “argh!” joke in sight! Are you proud of me? If you’ve ever wanted to channel your inner Jack Sparrow and sail the seven(ish) seas, Ahoy Mateys is probably the deck for you. Full disclosure: It’s tough to shuffle a 100-card deck with a hook hand.

Have you gotten your sea-faring mitts on this deck, and have you changed anything around yet? What’s working for you, and what new cards did you add to the list? Let me know in the comments below or over in the Draftsim Discord.

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