(Mary Read and Anne Bonny | Art by Wei Guan)

Pirate Queens

Hello fellow brewer and welcome back to Brew For Your Buck, where we swap out the top 10 most expensive cards in a deck with 10 budget cards that add a unique twist. By the time you read this, October will be nearly over, but to honor Breast Cancer Awareness Month, I wanted to write an article in honor of all the ladies in my life. Cancer sucks, and for those of you reading that have been affected by it, directly or indirectly, keep on fighting! To encapsulate the strength of those fighting breast cancer everywhere, today's commander(s) are two of the coolest women in history:

I'm a history nerd, especially for the golden age of piracy, and the history surrounding these two are incredible. In an age where having a woman on board a ship was considered bad luck, these two were strong, ruthless, and kicking butt all throughout the Caribbean. If you don't know much about them, I encourage to you to read up, as you'll feel like you're reading an adventure novel instead of actual history. Let's take a look at the average list on EDHREC and build a deck worthy of their story!

The average list is already a good price to start, only $163.10. As we'll see, most of the value is tied up in the top three cards, but here's the top ten as usual:

1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer ($29.44)
               2. Amulet of Vigor ($23.14)
               3. Alchemist's Talent ($15.45)
               4. Ral, Crackling Wit ($6.15)
               5. Gamble ($4.55)
               6. The Indomitable ($4.50)
               7. Xorn ($3.63)
               8. Imposter Mech ($3.39)
               9. Double Down ($2.61)
               10. Academy Manufactor ($2.59)
               11. Pongify ($2.51)

Total Value of Cuts: $94.33

Ragavan, Amulet, and Talent make up 42% of the cost of the whole deck, so even just removing those three is a great starting point. So much so that we're going to break the sacred rules of the Brew For Your Buck process, and keep Xorn in the deck. Why? Well, we have enough savings from the top-heavy cards, and because it enables some ridiculous game winning combos for the deck, and I want to build around them. To be clear, keeping Xorn and removing Pongify means we miss out on $1.12 of savings. I say that's worth it!

Replacing the expensive lands leads to an additional $30.30 in savings, for a total of $126.63. I did replace those four lands with Islands, since Mary and Anne (M&A for the rest of the article) care about discarding them.

Additions

Xorn Combo

M&A's static ability might not seem broken, but in conjunction with Xorn and another card, things get kinda nuts. I present to you Gilded Assault Cart ($0.07), a little known uncommon from Kaldheim:

With the pirate ladies and Xorn on the battlefield, discarding Gilded Assault Cart will create two Treasures, which you can then sacrifice to bring back the cart. Combine with a repeatable discard outlet, and you have a loop of Treasures entering, Treasures being sacrificed, infinite self discard, and infinite cards leaving your graveyard.

In the deck, we already have Reckless Fireweaver, Ingenious Artillerist, and Glint-Horn Buccaneer as finishers for this combo, and we even have the discard outlets. Transplant Theorist and Skyswimmer Koi can allow you to draw your deck with some clever trigger stacking:

1. Tap M&A to discard the Cart, trigger M&A, which makes two Treasures thanks to Xorn.
2. Theorist or Skyswimmer trigger, and in response, sacrifice the two Treasures to return the Cart to your hand.
3. Resolve the Theorist or Skyswimmer trigger, drawing a card and discarding the Cart.
4. Repeat until your whole deck is in your hand.

Now that we understand the mechanics of the combo, let's add some cards to find the pieces, protect the win, and take advantage of our loop.

Finding the Pieces

What I just described is sweet, but since it's a four card combo we need ways to find the pieces. Reckless Handling ($0.10) is our replacement for Gamble, and it's primary purpose will be to find Gilded Assault Cart. The random discard isn't even a downside, since we can always get Assault Cart back if we happen to bin it. Trophy Mage ($0.59) does the same, and both can grab a bunch of the other helpful artifacts in the deck as well. To find Xorn, which happens to be an Elemental, we have Flamekin Harbinger ($0.82). We can even use M&A to draw Xorn from the top of our deck after Harbinger puts it there.

In addition to the above, we already have Loyal Inventor in the list, a card that I've never seen before and is just a Fabricate with our commander out.

Protecting the Win

Now we need to protect the win. In higher power circles, cards like Force of Will and Fierce Guardianship excel by being free countermagic to back up a combo attempt. We don't need to break the bank on those. Instead, we get to feature one of my all time favorite budget cards, Foil ($0.42). Foil is especially great in this deck, since discarding an Island and another card can even make Treasures if M&A are on the battlefield. You could even use it to discard Assault Cart to get the combo rolling if you had to!

Commandeer ($1.00) is another mana-less way to protect the combo, and is trivial to cast for free especially once your whole deck is in you hand. There is also the very flavorful bonus that it is a nautical term, and can allow you to "commandeer" all sorts of fun, opposing spells.

Did I say we were done with tutors? Thanks to a recent reprint, Muddle the Mixture ($1.50) is now under $2, our general threshold for adding cards. Not only is it a counterspell that can help protect our combo, but it serves double duty by also being able to tutor for Reckless Fireweaver to win the game, or the two discard outlets that we'll add in the next section!

Additional Synergies

We'll wrap up by adding a few pieces to increase the redundancy of the combo. First off, we'll add repeatable discard outlets Ghostly Pilferer ($0.15) and Aquamoeba ($0.02). They might not be super exciting, but give you two additional ways to fuel the combo while ensuring so you can get Treasures outside of just activating M&A.

Finally, we'll throw in Gush ($0.81). It's another free spell that can dig us closer to the combo, and pull unneeded Islands back into hand for discarding. You even get the mana right back when you discard them.

Honestly, there are so many directions you could go with the additional synergies that it was hard to just pick a few. If you want to be more all in on the self-discard and madness life, you could throw in cards like Circular Logic and Fiery Temper. Maybe with the "death race" set we have coming, there will be even more sweet Vehicles to add. And of course, Treasures aren't going away anytime soon. Let me know what else you'd add in the comments below!

Wrap Up & Savings

Let's see what we saved:

Yea, with the final deck being under $50 I think it was okay to leave Xorn in for all the fun. I'm glad we got to cover an Assassin's Creed commander too, since that set felt lost in the shuffle of all the releases this year.

To my wife, mom, sister, and all of the other strong women in my life, I love you all! Let's keep the fight going against cancer in all its nasty forms, and I'll see you next time when we brew for your buck!

Follow me on Twitter @BrewForYourBuck

Please note: card prices listed in this article are accurate at the time of writing, but prices can vary over time and between locations.

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Brian Cain

Brian played Magic intermittently between 2003 and 2017 when he fully embraced his love for Commander. Finding ways to maximize the value of each piece of cardboard in the deck is one of his favorite things to explore, especially if it involves putting lands in the graveyard! Outside of Magic, Brian works as a consultant in the marine industry, turning his passion for boats and ships into a career.