[Deck] GW/x Maverick

[Koby]

Thalia is pretty good, but have you guys thought of black as well? I'm a big fan of Goyfs and not so much Stoneforge/mom.

Checkout the Rock/Junk thread for builds eschewing SFM/Mother of Runes.

[sdematt]

Come on over to the Dark side of the Maverick...free hugs!

-Matt

[KobeBryan]

Come on over to the Dark side of the Maverick...free hugs!

-Matt

I think the only benefit of going black with mav is dark confidant and pernicious deed. Other than that, there isn't anything else worth splashing for.

[Dzra]

Might be a nitpick, but this deck shouldn't be played with the idea "I have an answer". It's the converse rather - "I have a threat, deal with it!". The whole point of the deck is to maximize the effectiveness of those threats. Against some strategies, Maverick does take the control role such as against Reanimator; but only because Jin-Gitaxias is so debilitating. Every other creature is manageable.

Ah yeah, let me revise. I should say the deck isn't about dropping threats blindly. The strength is that it can find the right threat to ruin your day. "I have an answer" is the wrong attitude, but it's not just "threat, threat, threat;" it's Ooze for GY, BSkull for aggro, KotR for Stoneblade, etc. But it's deeper than that, sometimes you want to run out Ooze vs Stoneblade, sometimes you need Pridemage, Jitte, SoLS... any number of things. The deck loses flexibility when your gameplan is dude -> Jitte.

Definitely you have to weigh things like SFM VS Elspeth (or whatever else), but I still hold that in terms of the deck's general gameplan, SFM fits better. Elspeth is a good SB card.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

The thing is that the format is increasingly run by 1-2 toughness creatures and full of blockers. It's difficult to think of times where a Jitte is significantly worse than a relevant Sword in most matchups, and it's easy to think of times where Jitte is way better than the wrong Sword.

[Water_Wizard]

Jacob,
You mind answering the questions in the comments sections here: http://www.starcitygames.com/events/..._brett_pa.html

Congrats on placing. The way the article is written, it doesn't provide much detail about board state, etc. I'm Dave Yarber in the comments section.

[Koby]

Sure, in game 2 I had a fresh cast Mom and Dryad Arbor with and active Mom. He then attacked with a Lackey so I tried to block / kill with the active Mom. That's when the Pyrokinesis was fired in response, which confused me since he could have done it to connect with Lackey and find Gempalm.

Game 3 was just a punt as I started getting frustrated from not drawing a land since game 1 after multiple mulligans. I should have blocked Lackey and Pathed the Chieftain.

[TheXile]

Show and Tell based combo decks are a serious problem for us. I don't know that we can even the odds, but we can fight them. Game one though is probably a lost cause. I bring in three Ethersworn Canonist from the board. With Thalia as a three of main and holding kotr as a snt target to grab karakas, we can deal with Emrakul and use SoLas to race Progs. In the Hive Mind game get Thalia online asap and keep Teeg in to stop them from hard casting Hive Mind. Keep mom in as an answer to slaughter pact and bring in the bog to dig for a black source. I play test Hive Mind a lot and we are way under game one, and will rarely win two straight against them, but you have to try.

Actually I haven't had much issue with Show and Tell at all. I will admit that hivemind can be an issue, but that's why you play 4 wastelands. There deck plays almost NO basics (and often skimps on lands anyways) so you can try to mull to turn 2 KoTR and waste-lock them. Thalia is also a HUGE bane to them. She couples very well with the waste-lock plan and basically says all of your opponents spells cost 1 extra and a few of yours do (and since against that deck Swords is useless) that eliminates often 40% of the spells she effects in your deck (with the others being GSZ and Sylvan Library/Elspeth or some other 2 slots). I did beat a Hivemind player who turn 3 show and telled (because I had Thalia out) , got my KoTR into play and proceded to wasteland him into oblivion (though at the time my board was the Maverick "Stax" style board with Armageddon's and Thorn of Amethysts). And I got a Thorn on my draw which let me get to the point where he had to draw a sol land to play any pacts (though I didn't know at the time he didn't have any pacts). What really helps is the fact that if they show and tell Progenitus or Emarkul we have built in outs to them.
Emarkul-use KoTR to fetch Karakas and wallah..you're opponent screwed themselves and sped your game plan up. They SnT Progenitus, get a batterskull/SoLaS. They often can't race you that way.

[xfxf]

I'm curious about your match-ups in general. Maverick is good at beating blue but combo, burn, goblins, anything with black and perish (pox, junk, aggro loam) is at best equal matchups if I'm not mistaken. How would you guys rate your matchups?

[Koby]

I don't feel as though Goblins or Burn are bad matchups like Combo; they just require careful and tight play to pull ahead.

Combo
* Reanimator 45/55 Game 1, 65/35 Game 2
* Hive Mind 25/75 (improves to nearly 80/20 with Angel's Grace SB plan)
* High Tide 35/65 Game 1, 40/60 Game 2 (requires hate bears to win)
* ANT/TES 30/70 (requires hate bears and a good bit of luck)
* Belcher 10/90 (good luck...)
* Spanish Inquisition (ditto)
* Combo Elves 30/70 Game 1, improves with Canonist Game 2

Burn 45/55 but highly dependent on the build of Burn/RDW and Maverick

Goblins 45/55 (Mother of Runes and Jitte are the key, Batterskull helps slightly but Jitte and SoFI are better)
Merfolk 75/25 (Do people still play this deck?)

Pox (unfavorable) depends on which disruptions they pack. Smallpox is the worst against Maverick, Sinkhole is just annoying but not enough to make a difference, Liliana is bad for us too.

Aggro Loam (highly unfavorable) - a better "Pox" deck with more removal and faster clock

Junk (favorable) - Mother of Runes + white creatures are the key to winning (SFM -> SoLS usually just destroys them)

[Fade]

I'm curious about your match-ups in general. Maverick is good at beating blue but combo, burn, goblins, anything with black and perish (pox, junk, aggro loam) is at best equal matchups if I'm not mistaken. How would you guys rate your matchups?

Burn - unfavorable
UW - very favorable
RUG - very favorable
Any NO - slightly unfavorable
Combo - unfavorable, but still winnable
Pox - Even
Junk - favorable
Goblins - Evenish
Aggro Loam - unfavorable
Affinity - slightly favorable

These are just my opinions, but I don't go into a certain mindset when a match is unfavorable or even unfavorable. Maverick has a lot of game and the deck rewards tight play more than any I ever played before. I also feel that Maverick can win against any matchup and it's mostly about the little decisions you make in a match that determines the outcome. There have been a number of times I lost a match due to misplays I made where I could have have won it if I played a bit tighter. This allows me to recognize my play mistakes and learn from them and help me with decisions the next time I come across a similar situation. The only combo matchups I am very afraid of are Belcher (too fast) and High tide (can wait forever and can win through most of our hatebears). I'm never too worried against storm as my record against the deck is 50-50 with most of my losses going to a game 3 where I could've won if I played better. Burn is still a bit of a problem and depends a lot on whether you have a Stoneforge or Jitte in hand.

[xfxf]

Thanks Koby. I'm thinking about picking up this deck for a while but can't justify the move from Brainstorms to Savannahs to myself considering the wide open metagame. Are you still planning on a new primer?

Edit: And Fade too! Some people can write a whole paragraph before I can write two lines :D

[Koby]

I finally have a weekend that's relatively free (at least from Magic tournaments) so I'm going to hammer out a good bit of the primer.

[KobeBryan]

I don't feel as though Goblins or Burn are bad matchups like Combo; they just require careful and tight play to pull ahead.

Combo
* Reanimator 45/55 Game 1, 65/35 Game 2
* Hive Mind 25/75 (improves to nearly 80/20 with Angel's Grace SB plan)
* High Tide 35/65 Game 1, 40/60 Game 2 (requires hate bears to win)
* ANT/TES 30/70 (requires hate bears and a good bit of luck)
* Belcher 10/90 (good luck...)
* Spanish Inquisition (ditto)
* Combo Elves 30/70 Game 1, improves with Canonist Game 2

Burn 45/55 but highly dependent on the build of Burn/RDW and Maverick

Goblins 45/55 (Mother of Runes and Jitte are the key, Batterskull helps slightly but Jitte and SoFI are better)
Merfolk 75/25 (Do people still play this deck?)

Pox (unfavorable) depends on which disruptions they pack. Smallpox is the worst against Maverick, Sinkhole is just annoying but not enough to make a difference, Liliana is bad for us too.

Aggro Loam (highly unfavorable) - a better "Pox" deck with more removal and faster clock

Junk (favorable) - Mother of Runes + white creatures are the key to winning (SFM -> SoLS usually just destroys them)

The hive mind matchup...does it really skew that much in mav's favor with angel's grace?

they still have the emrukhal plan.

[Philipp2293]

Which is not great due to Knight/Karakas against Maverick and even boarded out by some Hive Mind Players.

[Koby]

The hive mind matchup...does it really skew that much in mav's favor with angel's grace?

they still have the emrukhal plan.

The Emrakul plan was/(is) never strong against Maverick due to Knights/Karakas. Angel's Grace essentially counters the Hive Mind plan completely, so ya it does feel like an auto-win with the inclusion of Angel's Grace + aggressive mulligans.

[defector]

@Koby.
I agree with your assessment there completely, but can we run angels grace in a diverse metagame? Hive mind has one great advantage in that it isn't played a lot, so we rarely devote our sb slots to dealing with it. My playtest partner happens to play hivemind, so I am blessed to see it every weekend, but then I never pack anything for it for a major cause I figure I am going with one of maybe five hm players that will be there. If we could make a 25 card board I think we could make every game 2 50/50:) but in the inevitable compromise it seems like we get to choose ahead of time which combo decks will get us. At least we beat the rest of the field and if we run into our prepared for combo mu we can get a win out of it. I think that with Thalia we are at 50/50 with burn, maybe even 52/48 in our favor. I think U/R Delver is rough for us and that has been left out of the discussion so far, or maybe that's just my misfortune, but I have been smashed by U/R Delver almost every time I play it. Other than that the deck really does reward tight play, we can steal a lot of wins just through preparation. The deck really rewards format knowledge and we rarely lose to scrubby decks.

[KobeBryan]

@Koby.
I agree with your assessment there completely, but can we run angels grace in a diverse metagame? Hive mind has one great advantage in that it isn't played a lot, so we rarely devote our sb slots to dealing with it. My playtest partner happens to play hivemind, so I am blessed to see it every weekend, but then I never pack anything for it for a major cause I figure I am going with one of maybe five hm players that will be there. If we could make a 25 card board I think we could make every game 2 50/50:) but in the inevitable compromise it seems like we get to choose ahead of time which combo decks will get us. At least we beat the rest of the field and if we run into our prepared for combo mu we can get a win out of it. I think that with Thalia we are at 50/50 with burn, maybe even 52/48 in our favor. I think U/R Delver is rough for us and that has been left out of the discussion so far, or maybe that's just my misfortune, but I have been smashed by U/R Delver almost every time I play it. Other than that the deck really does reward tight play, we can steal a lot of wins just through preparation. The deck really rewards format knowledge and we rarely lose to scrubby decks.

I don't think you can afford to use 4 sideboard slots to fight one matchup. Its too much.

I say roll the dice and see if you match up with hivemind. if you do, just take it as a game loss.

[Water_Wizard]

Sure, in game 2 I had a fresh cast Mom and Dryad Arbor with and active Mom. He then attacked with a Lackey so I tried to block / kill with the active Mom. That's when the Pyrokinesis was fired in response, which confused me since he could have done it to connect with Lackey and find Gempalm.

Game 3 was just a punt as I started getting frustrated from not drawing a land since game 1 after multiple mulligans. I should have blocked Lackey and Pathed the Chieftain.

Thanks for the response. I'm just confused about one part - "connect with Lackey and find Gempalm" I understand he can Pyro before declare blockers, forcing you to lose 2 and tap the active mom, thus allowing lackey to connect, but are you suggesting he lackey in a gempalm or by find gempalm do you mean with a matron and then cycle it to kill your other mom?
I can see his line of reasoning, as I would probably do the same thing, but are you suggesting it's better to under-utilize the removal spell in order to increase board presence?

[Ayiluss]

I have a question regarding to a maverick-merfolk mu. I know nobody plays merfolk right now but I still have the deck I made a while ago. So I went to the friend, lent him my merfolk deck while I play with my maverick. I really like this deck but here I came across to a problem. It maybe sounds funny but I couldn't beat him, it wasnt even close. He countered everything relevant I played while making a pressure on me with throwing out creatures, mostly lords of course to make his creatures even bigger, what was too big of a deal for me. I simply couldn't compete with so many creatures he put out (I never have so many of them out on my own). I got feeling it's just too fast to do anything good to save me a day. Since it should be fairly easy mu for maverick I would be really appreciated if anyone gave me an advice of how to beat merfolks coz I'm getting a bit frustrated.