Budget (Cheap) Pirate Warrior Deck List Guide – Mean Streets of Gadgetzan

Pirate Warrior is one of the strongest and most popular decks in the current meta. Since the games are very fast, usually decided by turn 5-6, it’s a great deck choice to grind the ladder with. The deck was already solid pre-Gadgetzan, and new early Pirate additions made it even better.

Pirate Warrior is one of those all-in Aggro decks, where outside of some early game trades, you generally don’t care about what your opponent game plan is and what he does – you want to punch his face with everything you have and kill him before he can stabilize.

The deck is filled with a lot of aggressive minions, Charge minions, weapons, weapon buffs and direct damage – everything to deal as much face damage as possible in short time.

One important note, however, is that because of how popular the deck is, most people are adding anti-Aggro techs to their own decks, making it weaker, especially past rank 10. Anti-Aggro techs don’t mean a guaranteed win against Aggro, though, so it still should be good.

Budget Aggro Pirate Warrior Card Replacements

High Priority Replacements

1x Blood To Ichor => Patches the Pirate – Patches is probably the main reason why the deck got so popular after Gadgetzan. The card is insanely strong, because you start about 80-90% of your games with an extra 1/1 Pirate with Charge on the board, which gives you a solid advantage right away. The deck is still good without it, I’ve seen a lot of Pirate Warriors easily winning the games where they drew Patches instead of getting it for free. But it’s #1 crafting priority when it comes to this deck.

1x Argent Horserider => Sir Finley Mrrgglton – A second highest priority card after Patches. The thing that kept Warrior from going Aggro for a really long time was the Hero Power. If Warrior had Hunter’s Hero Power, it would be a crazy strong Aggro deck a long time ago. But Armor Up holds little to no value outside of the Aggro mirrors. Any other Hero Power is better, as it allows you to deal damage (e.g. Hunter or Mage), spawn extra minions (Paladin, Shaman), cycle through your deck (Warlock) or even just keep your minions alive longer (Priest). Sir Finley is a great card in this deck, because there are no bad Hero Power choices – each one is better than Warrior’s most of the time.

Low priority Replacements

Arathi Weaponsmith => Leeroy Jenkins – Leeroy is used as a way to deal the final blow. On top of all the damage you already deal with weapons and other Charge minions, you’re often just a few damage short of killing your opponent and that’s when Leeroy comes handy. While the mana/damage ratio isn’t too good and the Whelps that you spawn can kill it immediately, it doesn’t matter, because you just want a single high damage card as your finisher. Still, Leeroy isn’t as necessary in the deck as the other two Legendaries, you can do without him much easier, so it’s in the low priority replacements.

After those replacements, the deck will become viable even in higher ranks. If you’re looking for an alternative, you should try N’Zoth Control Warrior.

Budget Aggro Pirate Warrior Mulligan Tips

High Priority (Always Keep)

• N'Zoth's First Mate & Small-Time Buccaneer – Highest priority 1-drops, both insanely strong and combo really well with the rest of your deck.
• Blood To Ichor – Great card in every matchup, as it makes your trades better WHILE summoning a 2/2 minion at the same time. And all of that for just 1 mana.
• Bloodsail Raider – The only proactive 2-drop you want to play, so you keep it in your opening hand if you can.
• Fiery War Axe – Great weapon, in faster matchup it will be used as a board control tool, while in slower matchups it’s 6 or more damage. Combos really nicely with weapon buffs.

Low priority (Situationally Keep)

• Southsea Deckhand – With N’Zoth’s First Mate or Fiery War Axe. By itself it’s just a vanilla 2/1, but it gets way more value if you have a weapon equipped.
• Acidic Swamp Ooze – Against classes that play early weapons, insane in mirror matchup.
• Frothing Berserker/Bloodsail Cultist – In slower matchups, with turn 1 and 2 plays already in your hand. Frothing is better if you have a minion-heavy curve while Cultist is better if you have N’Zoth’s First Mate and especially if you will equip Fiery War Axe on turn 2.
• Dread Corsair – With Fiery War Axe. 4 mana 3/3 Taunt is way too slow, but a 1 or even 0 mana (if you buff your FWA) 3/3 Taunt is amazing tempo play in the early game.
• Upgrade! – You can keep it with another early weapon. I also tend to keep it as a desperate way to get weapon if I have hand that requires it heavily – e.g. both Small-Time Buccaneer and Southsea Deckhand. They are weak without a weapon, and even 1/3 one is enough to get extra value from them.

Budget Aggro Pirate Warrior Strategy Tips

• Go face. That’s all, thanks for reading.
• Just kidding. But no, really, you want to go face A LOT. But not all time, like many players do. That’s a mistake and sure, you don’t always get punished for it, but you might. First of all – minions are mostly for face damage and weapons are mostly for killing opposing minions. When you use weapons to kill enemy minions, you “waste” some damage, but you protect your minions in exchange, keeping them alive and letting them deal more damage. Trading with minions also might be correct. For example, you might want to trade your small minions to protect the bigger ones – especially Frothing Berserker.
• However, don’t trade anything and go full face when you’re close to lethal or you’re getting close to AoE turn from your opponent (e.g. turn 5 against Priest – Excavated Evil). There is no reason to protect your minions if they’re getting AoE’d down anyway.
• If you play in a slow matchup, especially if you already have Mortal Strike in your hand, you might intentionally not Armor up to get closer to 12 health (=6 damage instead of 4). I wouldn’t recommend that in fast matchups, where your health is way more precious, though.
• If you’re very close to lethal and you have Frothing Berserker on the board, remember that your 1 attack minions have 2 “attack” when there are minions you can bump into. Instead of going face for 1 damage, if you attack opponent’s minion, Frothing gets extra +2 Attack. It might give you the extra damage you need to kill your opponent.
• Try to use your weapons/Chargers/Heroic Strikes first and save Mortal Strike for the finishing blow. You and your minions can be stopped by Taunts – Mortal Strike can’t.
• Since Ooze is a popular tech, try to keep your weapon at 1 durability all the time. Even if you have Upgrade! in your hand already, swing with that weapon – waiting with attacking until you buff it just gives you extra 1 damage, it’s really not worth a potential weapon destruction punish.
• Heroic Strike is NOT counted as a weapon for the sake of Small-Time Buccaneer, Southsea Deckhand or Bloodsail Raider – it’s a pretty common mistake among new players.