Captain Vargus Wrath

The anthem here scales off a resource the format's rules invented and almost nothing else pays attention to: how many times you've recast your commander from the command zone. Most Pirate lords cap at a static bonus or key off attacker count; this one turns the command tax (the two-mana surcharge each time your general dies and returns) into an offensive multiplier. A game that punished you for losing your commander twice now hands the Pirates a +3/+3 swing on the third cast, this 1/1 legend included, since he shares the Pirate type and pumps himself on his own attack. The design reads as a deliberate inversion: the more the table has stripped your leader off the battlefield, the harder your board hits when it comes back. That the trigger lives on a fragile two-mana body is the honest cost, since the anthem only fires when this creature attacks, so the payoff depends on repeatedly sending a small legend into combat and keeping it alive long enough to swing. It rewards a build that leans into the recast loop rather than fighting it, treating repeated commander deaths as fuel instead of a setback, and it only functions in the one place where command-zone casts are a countable event: a mechanic with no meaning outside its native rules space.