Danger! Plunder Patroll Dragoon toolbox Primer (11/22)
Meet the Fiends that make up the Plunder Patroll! These little green trolls hop on ships to right what's wrong! Hand traps, dark monsters, light monsters? They're all threatening and need to fight off the Plunder Patroll ships! Won't you join me with this rogue deck primer?
This primer will focus on many types of Plunder Patroll Deckbuilds. This is based on my competitive PlunderI Patroll deckbuild and its has been a 6 month work in progress. It's a formidable rogue deck whose price tag has been easy to swallow over 25ish weeks and during a time when many staples were reprinted. They've done decently well in tournaments in no small part due to the Attributes of the current Meta archetypes. Plunder Patrolls have a series of very bizarre but easy to learn lines of play once you know what your opponent is playing.
T'he Plunder Patrolls are series of cartoon styled Middle-Age trolls who crew a mix of Nordic/Anglo Saxon Ships based on your opponent's attributes. All have main deck monster cards have mechanics when sent from the Hand or Monster Zone to the Graveyard, and all the extra deck monsters have effects that can be negated with Ash Blossom. I'm not kidding around when I say the deck has very weird lines of play. Don't let that stop you from playing the deck because the combos aren't hard to learn and the little Pirate trolls and their ships are so gosh darn cute.
CORE: The core of a Plunder Patroll deck is as follows:
16-22 cards and a tight extra deck space. You don't want to run more than 40 because they really need their field spell for a boost.
Whitebeard, the Plunder Patroll Helm x3 (tuner + searcher)
Redbeard, the Plunder Patroll Matey x2 + (resilient captain)
Blackeyes, the Plunder Patroll Seaguide x2+ (returns lost captains to hand)
Bluebeard, the Plunder Patroll Shipwright x3 (extender)
Goldenhair, the Newest Plunder Patroll x2 (immortal)
Plunder Patroll Shipyarrrd x3 (searcher + atk boost )
Plunder Patroll Booty x1+ (monster reborn + attribute changer)
2 of each extra deck captain/ship. 1 Jord. Even if you can’t cheat them out, you'll regret not having the ship than having it.
Read the cards on your own, the whole mechanic is a novel and half. Where they get interesting is the support you can throw into the deck. I've been toying with ratios and builds since my original Budget Plunder Patroll Rocks build in April and know quite well many of the interactions. I've also tried many different variants of Plunder Patrolls deck and will run down some of the pros and cons of each build.
Red-Eyes Dark Dragoon:
5 cards
Dragoon is an S tier card with F Tier monster but allows you to discard as cost. On activation of Red-eyes Fusion, you cannot normal or special summon but you can still set. These both work for plunders because many cards do not care if they are sent from the field to the graveyard. Thus, you can get away with setting monsters such as Whitebeard, Goldenhair, or Morphing Jar, which don't mind getting flipped up and sent to the Graveyard or discarded. As such, you will hopefully leave yourself open to finding Red-Eyes Fusion. The motivation of this deckbuild is to add as much Ash Bait as possible to get fire monsters in the gy.
The field spell can recycle all any garnet in your hand anyways if you need to close victory.
Danger! Plunder Patrolls:
2-8 cards
As many Plunders don't mind being discarded, Dangers are very helpful to special summon and add cards. Stick with lvls 4 and 8, namely Danger Mothman! (lvl4), Danger Bigfoot (lvl8), Danger Thunderbird) for better deck consistency.
Note that you should always have as many cards in hand when you discard because when you activate a Danger! card, you don't actually want to discard the monster.
Kaiju Plunder Patrolls:
4+ cards
If your opponents are not playing your archetypes, give them the archetype! Kaijus are just generically splashable anyways, but avoid going over 3k attack because sometimes they just can't get big enough.
Adamancipated Plunder Patrolls Rocks!::
About a dozen cards
Budget build. It works because you want to special summon Adamancipator Dragite Risen with plenty of water monsters to negate spells and traps and just enough rocks to use Risen’s ability to bounce cards back to hand. Not as powerful in higher levels because they can get stunned because there are too many activated abilities and cannot overpower opponents if going first.
Brave Engine Plunder Patrolls: 8 cards
A very splashable going second build that focuses on getting Fateful adventure which actually has synergy with the deck because you get a discard outlet and a way to prevent your equipped creatures from being destroyed by battle. Going second, find Rite of Aresmir with Water enchantress of the Temple to get a bounce and an omni-negate.
It's very frustrating how easy the Brave engine is to use, so much so that they populated so many tournament meta decks in early 2022. I'm personally very bitter that they have not been nerfed in the TCG as they have in the OCG and Master Duel as a wag of the finger against splashing this deck everywhere. The September 2022 OCG Banlist even went so far as to nerf the brave engine entirely by banning wandering gryphon rider and limiting rites and enchantress, making the brave engine only useful in decks that equip such as plunders.
However, I can understand why the TCG didn't bother hitting the brave engine because they have been powercrept by Tears and Splights.. My personal opinion is that the Brave Engine works well in the grind game, but Plunder Patrolls are better if they go faster and avoid the Brave engine altogther. The engine can be slimmed to 4 cards: Gryphon, Enchantress, Rites, Adventure, but it’s not fast enough. Plus, they burn a large hole in your wallet for just a mediocre deckbuild. Nonetheless, Brave plunder Patrolls entered the meta for a very good reason in early 2o22, so feel free to use them if you wish or have the core.
Plunders are a formidable rogue deck, but they're deathly scared of cards that banish instead of send to GY such as D Shifter, D fissure and Macro Cosmos. Imperial Iron Wall slows the deck a lot, so watch out. Also, all the extra deck monsters abilities can be negated with Ash, so try to use as much ash bait as possible!
Runicks (8 to 12)
Tactical masters brought up a whole new tactic of stun cards and infamous mystic mine and messenger of peace decks. Runicks are not bad for plunders to stop the OTK decks and cheat out level 4 monsters from the extra deck and extend. Runick engine has to take up a significant chunk of the deck but is a formidable build.
Immortal Phoenix Gearfrede (2)
Use his ability to equip plundera and cheat a big monster out. Just an extra boss monster the deck can summon.
I hope this inspires you to build or fine tune plunders; they're very resource intensive but catch many players by surprise.
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