Ixalan is finally here and I’m very excited to sail the seas and fight some dinosaurs! First up, I wanted to try a red/black Pirate draft:
We just came off the blazing speed of Amonkhet block, so what better way to start Ixalan than by trying to speed our way through our opponent’s with the Dire Fleet?

I’m having trouble placing the format right now personally. A lot of the cards seem very low power, but that simply means we need to adjust our expectations of what a “good” card is. Dire Fleet Interloper was a good example of this. It’s definitely not great, but it over-performed for what my expectations were once I got to play with it in the game. The black/red combination has a lot of Menace and stacking that can really overwhelm your opponents in this format. With so much Menace I’d be remiss not to mention another stand-out card from our deck today – Sure Strike. I’ve always had a soft-spot for this card as it can lead to some incredible blow-outs when played properly and I think it’s even better in this format thanks to the high amount of Menace in the decks that want it and a relative scarcity of instant speed removal to punish it. If you’re going aggressive I’d definitely keep an eye out for them and I think I’d feel bad not having at least one in my red-based aggro decks.

A final lesson:

Vraska is the stone-cold nuts

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