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Admiral Brass, Unsinkable

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Admiral Brass, Unsinkable

At a glance

  • Commander: Admiral Brass, Unsinkable
  • Colors: Grixis
  • Archetype: Dimir-leaning mill control (self-mill recursion engine in Grixis shell)
  • Power tier: mid

Cards

The real card

When Admiral Brass enters, mill four cards. At the beginning of combat on your turn, you may return target Pirate creature card from your graveyard to the battlefield with a finality counter on it. It has base power and toughness 4/4. It gains haste until end of turn.

Note on the scout’s paraphrase: the assignment text says she “recurs a creature from your graveyard each combat.” The PRINTED text only returns Pirate creature cards — not any creature. THE PRINTED TEXT WINS, so the deck is built so the recursion targets are Pirates with strong ETB/dies triggers. Her own ETB mill-four also self-feeds the yard (so her recursion has fuel) and chips the same mill plan. commander_oracle_ok = true.

Gameplan

This is a UBR control deck whose two win axes braid together:

  1. Mill the table out (primary wincon / inevitability). A dense package of repeatable opponent-mill creatures — Cathartic Adept, Merfolk Mesmerist, Vedalken Entrancer, Persistent Petitioners, Doorkeeper, Drowner Initiate, Sage’s Row Denizen — plus combat-mill evasion (Crosstown Courier, Shriekgeist, Reef Pirates, Eye Collector) grinds libraries to zero. Burst mill (Mind Sculpt 7, Tome Scour 5, Compelling Argument 5, Memory Sluice 4) accelerates a chosen target toward a deck-out.
  2. Pirate recursion grind (engine / backup). Admiral Brass returns a Pirate each combat as a 4/4 haste with a finality counter (so it survives the first death — exiled instead of dying). Targets are ETB/dies value Pirates: Fathom Fleet Cutthroat (repeatable creature kill), Rishadan Cutpurse (repeatable edict-ish tax), Bigfin Bouncer / Deadeye Rig-Hauler (repeatable bounce), Plundering Pirate / Sailor of Means (Treasure ramp+fixing), Talas Lookout / Trove Tracker (card advantage on death), Gutless Plunderer (selective self-mill dig), Azure Fleet Admiral / Crimson Fleet Commodore (monarch card engine). Looping a value ETB every single turn out-attritions the table.

You stall with edicts, hard removal, counters and burn, keep the recursion engine humming, and deck opponents out. Inevitability is decking + a turn-after-turn ETB lock, NOT draw-go-into-a-wrath (there are no true board wipes at common in this identity — see Weaknesses).

Key synergy lines

  • Brass + finality counter = a recurring threat that can’t be cheaply answered. The first removal/block “kills” the Pirate into exile, but you simply return a different Pirate next combat. Spot removal trades down against you.
  • Sage’s Row Denizen + the blue creature flood mills 2 every time any blue creature you control enters — and a huge slice of the deck is blue creatures, so it ticks constantly.
  • Doorkeeper scales with your defenders/creature count; in a creature-dense build its activated mill is meaningful, and it blocks all day while you durdle.
  • Persistent Petitioners is a singleton here (the “any number” clause is moot at 1 copy) but still a fine repeatable , mill body that the Advisor clause can exploit if it survives.
  • Fathom Fleet Cutthroat looped by Brass is a soft removal lock — pair it with a Lightning Bolt / Shock / Reef-Pirate combat damage to satisfy its “dealt damage this turn” clause and kill something every combat.
  • Treasure Pirates (Sailor of Means, Plundering Pirate) recurred by Brass double as the three-color fixing the manabase wants.

Role breakdown (honest counts of the actual list)

  • Lands: 37 — high end for three colors. 21 nonbasic fixers (Command Tower, Path of Ancestry — scry on Pirate casts, Sulfur Vent BRU, Grixis Panorama fetch, 3 guildgates + Gateway Plaza, 3 indestructible Bridges, a stack of UB/BR/UR duals, Dimir Aqueduct) + 16 basics (7 Island / 5 Swamp / 4 Mountain, weighted to the U-heavy curve).
  • Ramp / fixing: 9 — Chromatic Star, Mind Stone, Prophetic Prism, Sphere of the Suns, Manalith, Commander’s Sphere, Dimir Locket, Rakdos Locket, Pelargir Survivor (ramps instant/sorcery + late mill). Most double as color fixing.
  • Card advantage: 9 — Night’s Whisper, Sign in Blood, Read the Bones, Notion Rain, Costly Plunder, Deadly Dispute, Thought Scour, Compelling Argument (cycles), Captain of Umbar (repeatable loot). (Plus incidental draw on monarch / dies-Pirates not counted here.)
  • Spot removal / interaction: 11 — Diabolic Edict, Cruel Edict, Geth’s Verdict, Devour Flesh, Fleshbag Marauder, Murder, Terminate, Defenestrate, Counterspell, Lightning Bolt, Shock. Edict-heavy on purpose: gets through hexproof/big finality-counter blockers and is the closest thing to mass pressure available.
  • Mass / pseudo-wipe: 0 — no true wipe exists at common in UBR; compensated with extra edicts/interaction + the inevitability plan (see Weaknesses).
  • Payoffs / enablers (rest): the opponent-mill creatures, burst-mill spells, and the Pirate recursion value bodies that execute both win axes.

Curve sits mostly at 1–3 MV with the commander and a handful of payoffs at 4–5.

Manabase / fixing note

~30 fixing sources (21 nonbasic fixer lands + 9 rocks/ramp, several rocks tapping any color). U is the primary pip (mill core + Counterspell), B second (removal/draw), R is a light splash (Terminate, Lightning Bolt, Shock, the red Pirate value bodies) — basics and dual taplands are weighted accordingly so the R splash is castable without flooding on it.

Pilot notes

  • Mulligan for 2+ lands and at least one fixing source if you have a red card in hand; you can often cast the U/B half on time and let rocks/Treasures catch up the R.
  • Pick ONE opponent to mill out and focus your repeatable tappers + burst mill on them; don’t spread mill across the table or you deck nobody.
  • Hold edicts for the scariest single threat (or to break through a finality-counter wall). Counterspell is best saved for an opposing wipe or a graveyard-hate piece (your whole plan lives in the yard).
  • Once Brass is online, every combat: return the highest-value Pirate ETB you can. Treasure Pirates early (fix mana), Fathom Fleet Cutthroat / bounce Pirates mid (control the board), monarch Pirates when safe (card lock).
  • Watch your own library: this build self-mills a bit (Brass ETB, Mire Triton, Gorging Vulture, etc.). You are NOT trying to deck yourself — keep an eye on your count in long grindy games.

Weaknesses

  • No board wipe. Wide aggro or a go-wide token deck can outpace the edict-and-spot-removal package. Edicts are your pseudo-sweeper but they’re one-at-a-time.
  • Graveyard hate hurts twice — it shuts off Brass’s recursion AND can interact with your mill payoff if an opponent has graveyard payoffs (you may be “helping” a reanimator deck). Mill the graveyard-value player LAST or not at all.
  • Speed. Mid power, lots of taplands; this is a durdle deck that can fold to a fast combo or an early beatdown before the mill clock closes.
  • Singleton Petitioners means the 12-mill mega-mode never goes online — it’s just a body.

Decklist

⬇ Download as .txt — paste into Moxfield, Archidekt, or MTG Arena.

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