Standard: Upgrading the Theme Deck - Pirates

With the release of Lorwyn Eclipsed, Magic is introducing a new wave of sealed products for Standard—the Theme Decks. These are 60-card lists built around a specific theme. These decks will be available alongside every in-universe release in 2026 and offer an accessible entry point into the game and the Standard format.

It's worth noting that, while legal, the primary goal of Theme Decks is not to replace the Challenger Decks released up until 2022: Challenger Decks used an established structure of a known format archetype and provided a pick-up-and-play product for players to jump straight into the format at their local store.

The new product, on the other hand, seems to target a more casual audience rather than a competitive Friday Night Magic event, to the point of not even including a Sideboard, placing it closer to the old Intro Packs. According to the official Wizards page, they were made to play against other 60-card Theme Decks, and both the lists and the themes presented on the product box seem to steer almost completely away from the idea of providing an easy entry into playing tournaments at your local store.

For the physical game, Theme Decks become—despite everything stated above—the best entry point for a new player into Standard. Therefore, we are presenting in this series of articles upgrade guides we can make for each one, focusing today on the Pirates list.

Much like the Angels deck, Pirates takes three mechanics with synergy between them and blends them into a functional list. In this case, the version above proposes a Looting archetype that uses the sub-themes of Pirates and Artifacts to discard and draw cards, growing its primary threats.

Our main win condition involves using creatures that grow when we discard cards alongside Inti, Seneschal of the Sun, which grants them evasion and ensures card advantage with our looting effects.

To guarantee explosive turns with Looting, the deck has Fearless Swashbuckler as its core, whose ability depends on having Pirates and Vehicles to work but technically grants +2/+2 to Marauding Mako and Scrounging Skyray while being a 3/3 with Haste itself. For vehicles, Subterranean Schooner and Gastal Thrillroller offer solid options, while Magmatic Galleon seems a bit out of place for what the deck proposes and could have been a fourth or second copy of the other vehicles.

To reinforce the theme and focus on Fearless Swashbuckler, Spyglass Siren is a cheap Pirate that benefits from the Explore on Subterranean Schooner, and Staunch Crewmate helps find the necessary pieces for the engine to work.

The list also includes an efficient package of interaction and reach, including Broadside Barrage which also fuels the looting strategy. Spell Snare seems a bit loose for such a proactive strategy, mainly because it's a card that depends on a specific Metagame to be good. However, if this deck was designed to be played against the Angels deck, its inclusion makes much more sense considering its primary targets would be Giada, Font of Hope and Youthful Valkyrie.

Unlike the Angels deck, making appropriate upgrades to the Pirates list was considerably more challenging. On one hand, it would be easy to just say "build the Izzet Looting deck from Standard," but it's so mechanically different from what the product in the box proposes that it wouldn't make sense to just modify it until reaching that point—somehow, what comes in the box needs to be used as a foundation to improve the deck.

The main issue is that the original list has too few ways to enable Looting, and the primary one—Fearless Swashbuckler—is easily replaceable by Tersa Lightshatter or Winternight Stories without major deckbuilding concessions. Without it, the entire vehicle shell becomes redundant, and none of the vehicles by themselves seem good enough to justify inclusion—this deck wants Smuggler's Copter, and the closest thing available costs three mana.

The Pirate base in Standard today is also too weak at creating a viable creature-type-based list, and the version above itself forgoes trying creature-type interactions, focusing almost exclusively on engines for Marauding Mako and Scrounging Skyray. We will follow the same logic for the upgrades.

Maindeck

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The mana base in Theme Decks is horrendous. It's understandable that these lists, being introductory products, don't offer many copies of dual lands, let alone ones that enter untapped. Therefore, the priority to ensure the consistency and speed needed for Standard involves adding a full package of twelve duals with Steam Vents, Spirebluff Canal, and Riverpyre Verge, plus the utility lands Agna Qel'a to trigger looting effects with a land and Soulstone Sanctuary as a complementary threat.

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All the discard effects we use also draw cards, so Tiger-Seal becomes an aggressive drop that complements the pressure from Marauding Mako in the early turns.

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As mentioned, the Fearless Swashbuckler and vehicles engine is too conditional, so we swap it for a package more consistent at triggering at least one loot effect per turn: Fear of Missing Out and Kaito, Cunning Infiltrator have a "pseudo-combo" once Delirium is enabled, enabling hit-kills if we have a creature large enough to defeat the opponent in two attacks, since it won't be blocked—good targets for this combination include Captain Howler, Sea Scourge.

Duelist of the Mind works as a cheap enabler with removal spells, turning them into looting for Tiger-Seal and Marauding Mako, and Tersa Lightshatter provides the more relevant part of Swashbuckler's ability without needing as many deckbuilding concessions, as long as we have two cards in hand to discard.

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Frostcliff Siege has a dual function, granting Trample and Haste to creatures we control or serving as a source of card advantage in combat, and it has solid interactions with practically all the cards we included in the upgrades.

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Glacial Dragonhunt provides more board interaction while also guaranteeing an extra draw to attack with Tiger-Seal on turn two and deal damage to a creature, while increasing the power of Marauding Mako and/or Scrounging Skyray. Furthermore, alongside Duelist of the Mind, we get two draws and two discards.

Sideboard

The best upgrades for Theme Decks aim to create a viable strategy for Friday Night Magic levels and weekly store events. Therefore, we aim to include a Sideboard that is broad enough for various situations, rather than focusing on a more rigid Metagame like that of Challenges or major tournaments.

Chandra, Spark Hunter is an attrition tool that interacts with our game plan, and the vehicles created by her are a great way to dodge sweepers.

Spell Pierce answers, for one mana, a dozen cards that could be harmful to our game plan, and even though it's very situational in some cases, it complements the deck's more proactive game plan well.

Soul-Guide Lantern is the standard answer against graveyard strategies that can guarantee an extra draw to trigger Tiger-Seal and Duelist of the Mind, and also adds another card type to the graveyard for Fear of Missing Out.

We diversify our board interaction to work universally in some cases while answering specific threats in others.

Abrade handles medium-sized creatures and destroys artifacts. Iroh's Demonstration can deal with a single threat or multiple tokens in the same slot and complements Pyroclasm as a cheap sweeper that most of our creatures can dodge.

Sear can deal with Planeswalkers and creatures at instant speed, allowing us to respond to a trigger or use it at the end of a turn. Obliterating Bolt works against Planeswalkers and stands out by exiling recurring threats or creatures with death triggers.

After these changes, the list will look like this.

We've managed to establish a proactive strategy with plenty of board interaction that keeps its engines running for many turns without running out of steam, guaranteeing at least one loot effect per turn. Combined with Frostcliff Siege and Captain Howler, Sea Scourge, we also have a means for an explosive game capable of winning even against a wall of blockers.

Further upgrades would likely involve taking some pieces from current Standard Izzet decks and moving in different directions: it's possible to focus even more on the looting mechanic to turn it into card advantage with Quantum Riddler, or follow an Aggro line with Monument to Endurance, similar to how Boros lists did last season.

That's all for today!

If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment!

Thanks for reading!