A Pirate's Life

Happy Friday or Good Friday if you are into that. Most of us are probably sitting around enjoying your day off and wondering what to do. I guess I should feel honored you decided to come here and see this week's Reader Post. Or maybe not since it really is the only post of the week I don't write. Well this week we are looking at Hearthstone and Slickriptide's wanting to make a Pirate themed deck.

I've been thinking a lot about Gang Up in anticipation of BRM. One of the problems of the pirate "tribe" is that their synergy is with things that are not pirates; typically weaponry. If you put enough pirates in your deck to effectively exploit those synergies, then you usually end up with too few non-pirate cards to make an effective overall strategy, and those non-pirates have no synergy with the pirates. 

In thinking about this problem I had imagined a "Press Gang Leader" card that would be a minion with a trait that read, "All of your minions are pirates". The effect would be that any minion you played would activate a "when a pirate is played" card (Ship's Cannon or One-eyed Cheat), would receive a Southsea Captain's buff, and would be a potential draw for Captain's Parrot (which would be borderline overpowered, or maybe just flat out overpowered).

The problems are obvious enough that I never posted it as a suggestion. Now, I see instead a card that lets me play a pirate and then put three more copies of that pirate into my deck.

I'm finding this to be pretty interesting.

Granted, it would be way better if they went into your hand, but this deals with one of the biggest problems that pirates have - If your deck runs well with pirates, it probably runs better *without* them. 

Gang Up lets you put in a handful of pirates and include the cards that make your deck *good*, then play one pirate and pull a bunch more of them out of thin air. You still have to draw them, of course, but now you have a way to circumvent the 30-card deck size.

I won't even start on the glory of a deck with seven Captain Greenskin's in it. If only this card had been around in the days of Stupid Pirate Tricks...

Rogue is clearly the hero to aim this strategy at. Since GvG, Valeera has a bunch of weapon boosting tricks and she has always had one of the best card drawing engines outside of Warlock. If her weapon is destroyed she just shrugs and pulls out another. In fact, destroying her own weapon is one of her things.

This opens a lot of potential. If your deck is already packed with pirates then you have six more opportunities to fire your Ship's Cannons. Potentially six more 3/3-with-taunt Dread Corsairs that can be played for free with a 4+ weapon. Six Southsea Captains. Six Bloodsail Raiders, boosting their attack off of your boosted weapon.

The flip side, of course, is that Gang Up can probably be used to better effect on something else that isn't a pirate. That's the way of the world. However much that happens to be true, the fact remains - This may be the single best card so far for a pirate-themed deck to include.

I have always wanted to see a pirate deck work, but just like any themed deck there tends to be gimmicks involved for it to be successful. Not that they aren't fun to play though! Enjoy the start to your weekend even if it is not a long one!