The Project

This is the second in a short series of posts (first one is here) featuring budget casual Standard decks I’m building around LCI rare Roaming Throne. Other than Roaming Throne, all cards in these decks are common or uncommon.

I’ve tested and tuned these decks. You probably shouldn’t bring any of them to a tournament, but I’ve been jamming them in Bo1 Standard Play on Arena, and I promise that they’re at least capable of winning sometimes.

If you have cheap Roaming Throne lists of your own (for Standard or any format), I’d love to see them!

By the way, here’s the Scryfall search I’ve been using to find creatures to combo with Roaming Throne. Add t:pirate or t:goblin or whatever creature type you want to this:

f:standard r<=u (o:when or o:"at " or keyword:backup or keyword:training or keyword:blitz or keyword:ward)

UR Pirates

https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/6022337

4 Goldhound
4 Spyglass Siren
4 Staunch Crewmate
4 Captain Storm, Cosmium Raider
4 Talas Lookout
4 Roaming Throne
4 Diamond Pick-Axe
2 Invasion of Kaladesh
2 Quick-Draw Dagger
4 Idol of the Deep King
8 Mountain
8 Island
4 Secluded Courtyard
4 Swiftwater Cliffs

This might be the strongest, most synergistic budget Roaming Throne deck I’ve built, and part of the reason why is that it’s the first one that cares about Roaming Throne being an artifact. Finding a Throne with Staunch Crewmate, then using it to add two counters to something with Captain Storm, is a pretty good line of play.

Speaking of Staunch Crewmate, almost every nonland card in this deck is either a pirate or an artifact, so Crewmate should very rarely miss.

Dowsing Device might seem like a natural inclusion here. I tried it out, but this deck already has plenty of ways to increase a creature’s power, and most of them are faster and/or more versatile. On that same subject: I chose Quick-Draw Dagger over Mirran Banesplitter because it protects the creature better and is easier to move around. But Diamond Pick-Axe is the star artifact here. If you can equip it to Captain Storm and have a Throne naming Pirate in play, the Captain’s attack will make two Treasures and distribute four +1/+1 counters.

I was unsure about Idol of the Deep King at first. Its damage-to-mana-cost ratio is pretty bad – I much prefer to get three damage for two mana rather than the other way around. But Idol makes up for it in other ways, particularly by providing two artifact ETB triggers for Captain Storm. After testing, I think it’s earned the full four copies.

Talas Lookout, on the other hand, is a bit of a weak link. It has a trigger that’s ripe for duplicating, but on its own is below-rate for Constructed formats. If you have room in your budget, the first upgrade I’d make to this deck would be to replace Lookout with some combination of Malcolm, Alluring Scoundrel, Breeches, Eager Pillager, and/or Kitesail Larcenist, all of which see competitive play and have some very interesting triggers.

I’ve seen at least one person playing a Pirate deck with Roaming Throne in the ranked queue. So we might really be on to something here!

BW Humans

https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/6022339

4 Lunarch Veteran
4 Doomed Dissenter
2 Resolute Reinforcements
4 Panicked Bystander
4 Fleshtaker
3 Bereaved Survivor
4 Roaming Throne
4 Hero of the Dunes
3 Corrupted Conviction
4 Rite of Oblivion
8 Plains
8 Swamp
4 Scoured Barrens
4 Secluded Courtyard

The general idea here is to juggle your token-producers between the graveyard and battlefield until you have enough creatures to attack for lethal. Hero of the Dunes does a lot to help that moment come sooner. While you wait, you should be able to stave off early aggression with a lot of lifegain.

Rite of Oblivion provides versatile, repeatable removal for a price this deck is usually willing to pay.

In case you were wondering, Panicked Bystander’s and Bereaved Survivor’s transform triggers technically do get duplicated by Roaming Throne, but it doesn’t matter; they’ll still only transform to their back faces and stay there. (I’ll admit, I was half-hoping to watch them oscillate back and forth just for the comedy value.) However, their other triggers do duplicate productively.

Look, I know, okay, Humans shouldn’t be a viable creature type to build a deck around. WotC has multiple fantasy worlds full of immense possibility and they keep making dumb old unthematic humans, and statistically, if you make enough cards of the same type, there will inevitably be some subset that happen to be powerful enough that a deck full of them will work. It’s happened in multiple competitive formats, and it’s what happened here. But don’t knock it 'til you’ve tried it. Turning a single Doomed Dissenter into two or three zombies and gaining a bunch of life in the bargain is pretty fun.

BR Goblins

https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/6022343

4 Scrapwork Mutt
4 Splatter Goblin
4 Zoyowa Lava-Tongue
4 Deep Goblin Skulltaker
4 Twinshot Sniper
4 Roaming Throne
4 Mishra’s Research Desk
4 Fanatical Offering
4 Bitter Triumph
11 Swamp
5 Mountain
4 Evolving Wilds
4 Terramorphic Expanse

Zoyowa Lava-Tongue and Deep Goblin Skulltaker pull us in a clear direction for this deck, and that direction is down. Twinshot Sniper joins them to provide some versatility: it can be early removal (that turns on Descend), or a great ETB ability to duplicate later on.

The only problem is that the low-rarity Goblin selection kind of peters out after that. I added Splatter Goblin to fill some space on the curve, but the times when you get to double its ability and actually have it matter will probably be pretty infrequent. If you can afford to upgrade, I imagine Stalactite Stalker would be great in that slot.

Bitter Triumph, Mishra’s Research Desk, Fanatical Offering, and off-type creature Scrapwork Mutt are role-players that help us descend when we need to. The Unearth cards are a little awkward in that their second lives go straight to exile rather than the graveyard, but they’re still pretty playable, and I haven’t found any better tools for achieving the same effects.

For this deck I’m eschewing my usual “Secluded Courtyard and a tapped dual” manabase in favor of, basically, eight copies of Evolving Wilds, in the hope of providing more opportunities to power our Descend cards.

Sometimes this deck feels like a collection of junk, but sometimes, like when you’re getting multiple Zoyowa triggers in a turn, it’s amazing.