How do you defend against pirates?

Considering they have you kilt at turn 3 with the pirate weapon and board covered. What can you reasonably do?
That is only 3 turns to get cards to stop them. I was lucky to get the worm thing to kilt the swordfish weapon but they still had all the pirates buffed top notch and kilt me.
Can a dev tell me how to stop the pirate stuff?