Tides of Fortune Commander Deck

A fairly recent development, but I've recently gotten back into Magic: The Gathering's commander format with a couple of friends, and I've been re-energized by the deck building experience. This particular one started as a bit of a joke among friends, who noted that the Ahoy Mateys preconstructed deck got very little love from buyers. Taking a look at it, I decided to turn an unloved deck into an homage to a mostly unloved set. What emerged has turned into my favorite deck of all to play, and it's completely unique among the tables I play with.

Edward Kenway, the New Commander

While I think that Admiral Brass, Unsinkable is a fine card, and a decent commander for a "Davey Jones Locker" kind of theme, I wanted something a bit different. Enter my friend, Edward Kenway. While Edward Kenway isn't a particularly novel commander, it seemed much more fun to me. Let's take a closer look. As a 5/5 creature, Edward can easily attack from a place of relative safety, but he's also pretty good at crewing vehicles when things get dicey.

His first ability enables copious Treasure token generation by tapping assassins, pirates, and vehicles. Most of the time, this is by attacking, but crewing vehicles often gives you a two-for-one, giving even the more persistent effect pieces something to do. The second ability enables a theft kind of mechanic, grabbing the top deck card of any player that one of said vehicles smashes into, which further promotes the theme of preferring to attack with crewed vehicles.

Deck Composition and Strategy

With this commander change, I turned the focus of the deck to Assassins, Pirates, and Vehicles, and tried to generate as much treasure as possible (Pieces of Eight!), while stealing spells from my opponents to further my own game plan (Pillage and Plunder). The base of treasure tokens provides all the ramp I need to establish the engine, and then shifts into using my opponents' cards against them in fun and varied ways. Most of the cards in the deck support these two major objectives. Additional subthemes are buffing assassins and buffing pirates with anthem type effects (Sea Shanties!).

Fundamentally, this is a creature deck, that will likely swing for lethal damage at some point, and it lends itself to a fairly aggressive push. In an ideal start, three or so lands, a vehicle, and a pirate or assassin that you can cast on the turn after the vehicle goes a very long way. If either of these generates a treasure token or two along the way, even better. From here, move to getting Edward into play as quickly as possible to increase the treasure token generation. Save your interaction for board wipes, and to clear a path to your opponents to keep value generation up.

As you look to close out games, you may grab a particularly horrible value piece from your opponent, such as an overrun effect, and this is always a reasonable option. I've managed to snag an Unnatural Growth before, and this immediately ended the game. Port Razer can be a particular all star here, as it enables you to start hitting every player each turn, and Angrath's Marauders can make these swings particularly painful.

Other potential win conditions include treasure generation with Revel in Riches, which is fairly easy to pull off the volume for, if you can protect it, or token sacrifice burn through Agent of the Iron Throne. Finally, Ramses, Assassin Lord can quickly turn the most vulnerable opponent into a sudden win for you.

There are a couple of infinite combos in the deck as well, but these are not the focus. I'd consider a win by these conditions to be a bit more meme-like, but they're in there because they fit the theme of pirates and treasure payoffs without much trouble. It's a casual deck, so I'm probably not fishing for these combos, but if they happen, awesome.

• Malcolm, Keen Eyed Navigator and Glint-Horn Buccaneer - This one is particularly fun. Glint-Horn Buccaneer's activated "draw a card, discard a card" enables his discard burn trigger to hit the entire table, and every time he hits the table, you generate more treasure tokens thanks to Malcolm, meaning you can keep doing this until the table is dead. If you get Malcolm on the battlefield, you can fish for Glint-Horn through a handful of pirate tutors, then cast him, go to combat, and trigger the loop.
• Time Sieve and Edward Kenway - It's probably worth saying that Edward Kenway is the easiest way to trigger this, but if you can manage to start a turn with at least five treasures, and generate at least five of them on your end step, you can keep sacrificing them to Time Sieve for infinite extra turns. Find the win condition of your choice (Agent of the Iron Throne will incidentally burn the table out as you cycle through treasure tokens to fuel Time Sieve, as an example).

The Decklist

I'm always updating decks, and the latest iteration can always be found here, or on Moxfield.

If you have suggestions, I'm always opened to hearing them. If you've built Kenway similarly, or in a completely different way, I'd love to hear from you and learn about any sweet tech you've picked up for him. Good luck on your voyage! May your treasure tokens be many, your ill gotten gains be plentiful, and your opponents be walking the plank!