Legends Legends - Ramirez DePietro
Welcome back to Legends Legends, where we set sail for the lands of ages long past, specifically 1994's Legends expansion and the original run of 55 legendary creatures.
Here, we strive to build, if not powerful, at least playable Commander decks based around this huge run of vanilla and french vanilla creatures. Regular readers will note that these legends are often overcosted and come with off-color or irrelevant abilities, and today's deck is no exception!
Today, we're taking a long walk off a short plank and drowning in a sea of Pirate cards with Ramirez DePietro, one of the first Pirate creatures ever printed (despite not receiving the actual "Pirate" type until its reprint into Master Editions III). This deck revolves around doing what Pirates do best: stealing stuff and amassing wealth. Get ready to loot anything and everything that isn't nailed down!
General Thoughts
Ramirez DePietro is, understandably, very underwhelming at the helm of a Pirates deck. A 4/3 with first strike for six mana is a pretty unfavorable trade, making it hard to justify even casting him in this deck. Mostly, we'll use Ramirez as bait to surprise our opponents with Fake Your Own Deaths and other similar, instant-speed interaction to distract from our true gameplan: using our opponents' cards against them. This deck is simple, but it requires you to know your opponents' decks fairly well. I expect it'll perform best when matched up against a pod you're familiar with.
Our Ramirez DePietro Commander deck is divided up into two broad categories: cards that steal our opponents' stuff, and Pirates for holding down the fort. We'll also need a ton of Treasure generation so we can keep up with those green ramp decks at the table and cast spells exiled with our Nightveil Specter-esque effects.
Me Loot!
Recent readers may have noticed I've been obsessed with Acquire and Bribery lately. They're two of the easiest ways to deny your opponent access to one of their big haymaker creatures, or to just swipe their Lightning Greaves or Sol Ring out of their deck, just to piss them off. In a similar vein, we have Praetor's Grasp, which, while cheaper, requires us to use our Treasure tokens to cast anything that isn't blue or black. Pulling straight from an opponent's library is one of the best ways to neuter their broken combos, too, so don't be afraid to yoink an Ashnod's Altar or Laboratory Maniac just to keep them off of the combo win.
Control Magic and its cousin, Soul Ransom, are about as basic as a theft spell can possibly get, and they're great investments when used to steal something with a much higher converted mana cost. Opponent just dropped their Etali, Primal Storm? Now it's ours! Grip of Phyresis is great for grabbing Swiftfoot Boots off of those annoying commanders or stealing a Sword of the Animist to halt someone's ramping before it gets out of hand.
Desertion and Aethersnatch are best for denying opponents access to their best ETB effects, instead letting us dominate the board with their Archon of Cruelty, or stealing a Darksteel Forge before the artifacts player can stick it to the field alongside their Wurmcoil Engines and whatnot.
Both Shadow of the Enemy and Mnemonic Betrayal will grab creatures from our opponents' graveyards, perfect as the follow up to our Damnation or Deadly Derision, but if we don't have the mana available we can always cast Beacon of Unrest and just snag a single creature or artifact. Whispersteel Dagger fulfills a similar role and makes our relatively wimpy commander a bit more of a threat in combat.
While Covetous Urge, Petty Larceny, and Siphon Insight give us a smaller pool of cards to steal, they can hit the stack in the early game while most opponents' hands and libraries are still full of juicy loot to swipe.
I've found Subjugate the Hobbits to be absolutely brutal versus any tokens-heavy deck, making it one of the best ways to clear a go-wide deck's board. While Expropriate doesn't necessarily do the same thing, there's no reason your opponents should ever be voting for "time" instead of "money."
Finally, the best thing we can steal from an opponent is their entire turn. Worst Fears and Mindslaver both give us control of an opponent, and all of their spells/permanents, for one turn. This can completely flip the balance of power in a multiplayer game!
Me Hearties!
No Pirate captain is complete without their crew, and we have a veritable armada of Pirate creatures ready to board. Many of these creatures support us in stealing cards or creating Treasure tokens, as well!
Corsair Captain is your typical lord effect with the added bonus of reimbursing one of the mana we spent on him into a Treasure token. Sailor of Means also hits the board and drops some Treasure, while being a semi-hardy body for blocking some early game pokers. Skeleton Crew is another Pirate lord and, while we aren't running any other skeletons, we'll still see a bit of a benefit from March of the Drowned and Back in Town when we cast them.
Hostage Taker is one of the best ways to both Banisher Priest a permanent and steal it later on, while Kitesail Larcenist can shut down problematic effects on our opponents' permanents easily for its mana cost. Warkite Marauder works similarly, removing problem creatures from the combat equation.
Fathom Fleet Captain is our best option for going wide on the board, creating a steady stream of fresh recruits for Ruthless Knave to sacrifice for more Treasure tokens.
Kukemssa Pirates is another great way to grab those Sol Rings and Arcane Signets from your foes; we can guarantee they get through by using Departed Deckhand and Rogue's Passage.
Forerunner of the Coalition is the only Pirate-specific tutor in Magic, and we'll most often use it to tutor up the "good" version of Ramirez, Ramirez DePietro, Pillager, for consistent access to stolen goods.
There are two non-Pirate cards in this deck: Nightveil Specter and Rev, Tithe Extractor. Both let us exile and cast a card from the top of an opponent's library, with Rev also giving a creature deathtouch and generating a Treasure token to boot.
Me Treasure!
Treasure generation is paramount to this deck's success. Without enough Treasure, we won't be able to cast anything we're trying to steal. We can afford to get reckless with cards like Tempting Contract since we plan to take the best spells from our opponents anyway, and we're running countermagic, like Hornswoggle and Spell Swindle, instead of traditional Counterspells to stay on theme.
Should we find ourselves with an abundance of Treasure and no spells to steal, we can always lean into our Revel in Riches and hope for a victory from that end. If not, it's still a great way to passively generate extra mana each turn.
Malcolm, Keen-Eyed Navigator makes getting Treasure each turn easy as pie so long as there's an undefended opponent lying around, and Deadeye Plunderers are an excellent sink for the extra mana we might have lying around at the end of the turn.
Finally, our Goldvein Pick works great on any Pirate we plan to make unblockable with either Departed Deckhand or Corsairs of Umbar.
Mana Base
We're running 36 lands in this deck plus five mana rocks. That may not seem like much, but combined with the Treasure generation from our Pirates and spells, we should see enough mana each game to cast as many of our opponents' spells as possible.
Budget
Archidekt estimates this deck's cost to be around $200 if you're savvy with your TCGplayer purchases. That's pretty cheap compared to some of our other Legends Legends! Only a few outlier cards even break the $10 mark.
Rev, Tithe Extractor is our most expensive card at $35. Its price is based solely on the fact that it has a single printing from a Jumpstart set, making it fairly difficult to get a hold of. Even though she's very effective at throwing gas on our larceny-based Commander deck, we could do without her and just run another cheap tutor (I'm thinking Diabolic Tutor) to fetch up Ramirez DePietro, Pillager more consistently instead.
Besides Rev, Revel in Riches is still somehow $18, another card in desperate need of a regular reprint. This one hurts a little more to cut, considering how many creatures tend to die over the course of a Commander game, but I could see it being replaced with some generic advantage generator, like Distant Melody.
Ramirez DePietro Decklist
Wrap Up
Pirate kindred decks are used to running red alongside blue and black for access to easier Treasure tokens and reckless attackers. Not so with this Ramirez DePietro Commander deck. Instead, we'll play the long game, controlling the board and feigning weakness until we can make our play and capture our opponents' most powerful creatures and cast their most powerful spells before they can. Why waste money buying a Cyclonic Rift when my opponent already has one in their deck?
This is, of course, not the only way to build around Ramirez DePietro. Here, we've tried to marry the theft mechanics common to blue and black cards with a crew of Pirates for a thematic and flavorful deck, but there are definitely stronger entirely Pirates Kindred decks out there. I wonder if there are any good Voltron builds using Ramirez, too? If you've got an idea, shout it out in the comments!
Thanks for reading!
