Has anyone had success with Titania? I really want to break this card ever since the GP
Part of me wonders if Titania is better than Dark Depths at the "make 20 damage worth of tokens in 1-2 turns" because she only takes up 1 card slot as opposed to 2.Originally Posted by Warden
To me she seems like a cross between Sigarda and the Dark Depths combo. I'm a huge fan of the DD combo personally (much to my chagrin) but next chance I get to go to an 8 rounder I'll test Titania out and post my thoughts here.
Thanks, much appreciated.
I go back and forth between wanting to revamp my list with Cradle + Titania vs DD/Stage. Stage flying has stolen games against stalled boardstates. However, Titania can single-handedly make an army.
Against decks like Miracles, the land recursion + sudden army is strategy-changing. Fetchlands become tokens. Wasteland-ing your own stuff is suddenly 2 tokens. Against midrange decks, she's very problematic -- as her initial wasteland recursion or fetchland recursion = helps your resource war while giving you a token.
I've basically been on hiatus since December, but when I got her into play I usually won. She was usually a panic button for situations that any other card couldn't pull me out of - racing TNN, recovering after terminus, going wide against Pyromancer or what have you. I don't know if DD or Sigarda had the capability to do that.
Titania & DD combo both aren't too excellent vs Miracles, both are wiped by Terminus, DD can be repeatable by Life from the Loam, Titania can be researched by GSZ, but they doesn't win which Gaddock can.
Titania & DD are excellent vs midrange - namely BUG / BG/x midranges decks which will raise after ban. Anyway from my point of view DD can still win faster and dodge removal + Liliana (but can be disrupted by wasteland). Best answer here is probably Sigarda since it can also help vs Anihilator, sure its slower clock, is worst in defense vs lethal dmg on board, but its mostly un-removeable, by those decks.
Anytime Sigarda has resolved, I have won the game. DD combo, to me, is way too clunky on an already somewhat punishing mana base. Dryad Arbor in your opening hand is bad, Dark Depths is the worst. I think the DD Combo is more suited for a Lands based deck. Before it was too slow during the Treasure Cruise Era, now Wasteland is definitely going to be a thing again. Titania seems good on paper and in play testing on cockatrice works really well with Knight and can have protection to board wipes with Karakas. That being said, she is soft to removal, doesn't have evasion and doesn't stop Liliana, Eldrazi, etc. There were times that I was playing her and though "man I wish you were Sigarda".
I've tested DD and Sigarda in SCG opens with about the same amount of success. For the most part they are interchangeable in that they kind of end up being the big threat that seals the deal after the opponent finally runs out of removal trying to kill Knights/moms/thalias. However, where you ever remember either of the two is from when they save your ass. With this in mind, here is what my experience has been with both of them during the corner case scenarios.
Dark Depths:
DD saves you when you have no right to be saved. I have resolved a Knight while almost dead, topdecked a combo piece in the untap step, and dealt 20 damage the following turn when I should have died to a horde of whatever. I have had supposedly bad match ups end as early as turn four because my turn two Knight followed by a turn three 20/20 attacking on turn four for lethal ended ended the game. DD has the come back appeal and fans of it will always remember the time they resolved a late game Knight and followed it with two activations (due to a Scryb Ranger) leading to a win with only 2-3 hitpoints left when the opponent was in the teens of hitpoints.
If DD was a Marvel super hero, it would be the Hulk. Absolutely backbreaking when active, but has a tendency to turn against you every now and then.
Sigarda, Host of Herons:
To say that Sigarda is the best finisher in fair creature history would be a massive understatement to the power she possesses. Simply imagine a 5/5 True-Name Nemesis that can't be countered by Pyroblast and you start to see just how relevant this monster is. Countless games I have resolved a Sigarda and watched as my opponents groaned helplessly while holding a handful of removal spells. When you want to run a threat that ends the game after a board stall, there is few more dependable than the GW morphling. She is not the sexiest of the options, she doesn't have the cool turn four kill of Dark Depths, nor the beautiful synergy of Fetch/Waste/Knight + Titania--but when you need something to stick and get the job done, something with evasion, durability, and doesn't die to zealous persecution, there is none more dependable, more flexible, and more "jack of all trades" as Sigarda. No trump has sealed the deal/saved me more than Sigarda, no trump card has ever been as reliable as Sigarda.
If Sigarda was a Marvel super hero, she would be Captain America. Not very flashy, doesn't really have much to offer save being ridiculously (and surprisingly) durable. But has a tendency to always get the job done while earning lots of respect from those around her (even the opponent usually).
----------
Titania I have not used in a tournament setting yet, so I will not pretend to know how good she is in the course of an 8-10 round open with 200+ players in it. The only thing I can talk about is from my limited cockratice testing.
What I like about Titania is for weird things like the fact that annihilator triggers will make you end up with 3-4 (sometimes more) 5/3 tokens representing a lethal counterattack. What I like about her is that you can put her trigger on the stack, respond with a fetch/wasteland, get that land back, and then use it again. What I like about her is that Loam/Light and Shadow/Titania feels like a fair dredge deck. What I like about Titania is that she can be almost as fast a clock as Dark Depths while still taking up only one card slot. She's also very good at making 2-4 random tokens vs spot removal heavy decks so that she's almost as good as hexproof (if they kill her immediately) and completely negates removal completely if they don't kill her immediately.
What I don't like about her is that you can just bolt her after her trigger to prevent you from getting a cheap activation of her ability. What I don't like about her is that True-Name still trumps her due to lack of evasion. What I don't like about her is that you actually do run out of tokens, that sometimes she really is just a 5 mana 5/3 that brings back a maze of ith to save you from dying.
I haven't brought her to non-cockratice setting. But if I were to compare her to a Marvel super hero, she's so far felt like Wolverine. Kind of the best answer for everything, but often times you feel like you're designing your whole game plan on her instead of just letting the overall strategy play its part.
This list is fantastic. The living wishes open many doors! Going to give this a brew this week.
The containment priest maindeck seems weird ?
The list is interesting, but there are several things about that list that are quite weird, aside from the complete lack of Pridemage or Thorns in the board instead of a Thalia, as I already mentioned.
I agree that the single Containment Priest in the MD seems completely random. I'm also suprised that there's no SoFaI in the MD, given that all your threats are only tiny wimps and the Sword is clearly better vs control and combo than Jitte.
Why Duress in the board? How is that better than Thoughtseize? Why not Tidehollow Sculler as Wish target?
If I would build a list, the first draw would probably look like this:
1 Forest
1 Plains
1 Swamp
2 Bayou
1 Horizon Canopy
2 Marsh Flats
2 Savannah
2 Scrubland
2 Verdant Catacombs
4 Wasteland
3 Windswept Heath
1 Karakas
3 Dark Confidant
4 Deathrite Shaman
4 Mother of Runes
2 Scavenging Ooze
3 Stoneforge Mystic
2 Gaddock Teeg
2 Spirit of the Labyrinth/Qasali Pridemage
3 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
4 Aether Vial
1 Batterskull
3 Abrupt Decay
1 Swords to Plowshares
1 Umezawa's Jitte
1 Sword of Fire and Ice
4 Living Wish
SB:
1 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
1 Qasali Pridemage
1 Ethersworn Canonist
1 Containment Priest
1 Orzhov Pontiff
1 Scavenging Ooze
1 Stoneforge Mystic
2 Zealous Persecution
1 Gaddock Teeg
1 Tidehollow Sculler
3 Thoughtseize
1 Karakas
Edit: The SB could probably use a Phyrexian Revoker, too.
Thomas Herzog finished in the Top 32 of the recen SCGOpen and another Player with a similar list placed 9th. I'm hoping for some reports
It seems to be that Abzan Maverick is the Splash for the Moment or is Punishing Fire too bad atm?
Started a report, but then I only got 3 rounds in before I realized writing a report for 15 rounds was going to take way too long.Thomas Herzog finished in the Top 32 of the recen SCGOpen and another Player with a similar list placed 9th. I'm hoping for some reports
As a consolation, I give you the results of each round:
Day 1:
Rd1: BUG Delver 2-0
Rd2: Mono-Green Post 2-1
Rd3: Reanimator 2-0
Rd4: Elves 2-0
Rd5: Elves (Hoey) 0-2
Rd6: Mono Black Pox 2-1
Rd7: Elves 2-1
Rd8: BUG Delver 2-0
Rd9: Elves 2-0
Day 2:
Rd10: OmniTell 1-2
Rd11: UWR Blade 2-0
Rd12: Shardless BUG (Briksza) 0-2
Rd13: Storm (Wienburg) 0-2 - Lucky as hell on two accounts
Rd14: Shardless BUG 1-1-1
Rd15: Death and Taxes 2-0
Thx for the info! would you mind to give more insight in those matches vs. Shardless BUG? Was it just bad luck or is the matchup bad anyways? In my experience it happens to be quite a grindfest.
Also curious how you won so many matches against elves. Did they just have slow draws?
In regards the the Shardless matches, I knew that I was facing Shardless before I sat down for the match, but lost both die rolls. In my game 1 against Rudy, he castcaded into a turn 2 Visions and then had removal after that for every creature I played. Game 2, I mulled to 6 against his 7 and faired better. At one poin I had a 14/14 Knight coming in, but he chumped with an Agent and drew a Nihl Spellbomb right after that, undoing everything I had worked for at that point and then DTT'ed on the same turn. Rudy's list was geared to be better against creature decks, packing mainboard Toxic Deluge, Lilianas and DTT.
The second match against Shardless was a grindfest where I was able beat the initial Goyfs, discard and have him empty out his hand. It came down to him having 3 Deathrites and 2 Strix left. I am able to Waste one of his 3 black sources and play and equip a Jitte on a Thalia. I have to use my counters to gain life as I'm at 5. He attacks for 2 and drains me for 4 more. I Library, but can't find a Plow and have to take a Courser and play a land I leave on top. Since I'm at 6, I die to exact damage after taking control. Game 2 I am on the play, and am able to go with the standard mana denial plan to keep him off the board. Game 3 is another grind where we just don't get to finish, although he had just cascaded into Visions, so he looked better off than I was when the game drew.
In regards to going 3-1 against Elves, I just have a very strong boarding plan against them. In fact, the only reason why I lost my second game to Hoey is because he raw drew his one 'Hoof off the top (had a Teeg in play with double Mom).
1mpulse, thanks for posting about your experience at Indy.
I read your post after GP NJ (I think?) and enjoyed your analysis of what cards you were currently playing aND how you thought Maverick should be built.
With that in mind, I was wondering if you could comment on whether you would make any changes to the deck you ran at Indy.
Specifically, how did Courser of Kruphix treat you during the event? Was three Thoughtseizes the correct amount or did you find yourself wanting a fourth to board in? How about main deck Abrupt Decay? Do you think that it would have been good to run some main deck like some other lists did? How was Banishing Light? What do you think of living wish in Maverick?
Also, I have been struggling with a Maverick list similar to yours against Shardless Sultan and Miracles. Do you have any thoughts on these match ups or how to side for them? Could Bitterblossom in the board be a good choice?
What do you think of Spirit of the Labyrinth in main deck Maverick these days? Do you think Maverick is relatively well positioned post-TC ban?
I know these are a lot of questions, but I respect your opinion on Maverick very much aND I would love to hear your thoughts.
Thanks for the updates and fighting the good fight with a deck we all love!
Cheers.
I actually don't remember if I wrote a tournament for GPNJ not. I feel like I probably did.
There wasn't anything I would change about my list. I've been playing the deck for a very, very long time, so I am always confidant my list is where it needs to be. Before the event I strongly considered going back to 3 Pridemages, over the Courser or a Decay in the board. Didn't regret it though. I stated testing Courser the week Treasure Cruise came out to have my own form of card advantage, it was fantastic in the UR meta, and I still consider it a reasonable choice now since it is a card that helps you grind.
I play 4 Thoughtseizes in the board, so, yes I think 4 Thoughtseize is correct. Lets you hit combo decks on a different angle. I don't play mainboard Abrupt Decay because it is either a pretty good card, or a pretty bad one, depending on what you are playing against. I don't think Decay is better in the main than a Plow because Plow allows you some great tempo plays. I 2 it in the board as a catch all against against mostly midrange decks, or deck it makes sense to bring it in (i.e. Delver, Blade, DnT and Tribal decks, not Miracles).
Banishing Light is always solid. It's another catch all and is important to me against Show and Tell and Miracles and is really good against the random decks you can face in Legacy like Metalworker, Enchantress, Ensnaring Bridges, ect. I think if you are talking about Living Wish, you are talking about a different deck. Spirit of the Labyrinth has always seemed poor to me. He's fragile, so he only makes cards like Pryoclasm, Massacre, Electricky, GB Charm and Marsh Causalities a bigger problem for you than they need to be. While there are a lot of decks out there that love to cantrip, Spirit does noting if they already had what they needed and were going to combo you anyways (See: Show and Tell and Storm). Thalia and Teeg are better cards that do more in more matchups.
I don't particularly feel like Maverick is favorably positioned, but I don't feel it's bad right now either. The Cruise meta was stronger place for the deck as it had a great UR matchup, since so few of their cards actually did anything and once they missed a beat they were out of the game against a deck like Maverick. Right now I'd say it's just a 40/60-50/50-60-40 deck against everything out there, but as always, playing tight and knowing what you are doing will always give you a chance against everything.
I honestly didn't do a lot of testing against Shardless before the event, pretty much because I had played against it in the past for a while now, and not too much really changed (or so I thought, now some builds play DTT and Golden Fang. Not sure or not if this changes anything). Before, I counted Shardless as a pretty good matchup for Maverick, because our deck kept a pretty good job of keeping up with Shardless's quantity cards with our quality cards. Plan A was always to control their mana in the early game (Plow Deathrite, Waste/Thalia, Knight for Wasteland over and over), but I was only able to get myself into a position to do this in one game in the 5 I ended up playing against the deck (I was only able to be on the play once in 5 games). Between Tom and I, we went 0-2-1 against the deck at Indy, which as I mentioned before, doesn't reflect what my past findings in regards to the matchup.
Miracles I've never had too much of a hard time with either. For me, the matchup resolves around getting Teeg, Library and/or Swords of LS/FI. Since they can't clock you, Library is really good to keep all your draws good, and the Swords make every creature you play a must answer. I also play 2 more Teegs in the board for Miracles (and Elves), so I can be more aggressive with them. Pretty much, you just always need to keep a clock on them, that way they can't get the breathing room they need to find and cast a big Entreat.
I liked Antrim's sleekness of list and Sideboard so I turned it into a Punishing Fire version (my meta is way more delver & midrange with far less combo):
4 Deathrite Shaman
1 Dryad Arbor
1 Noble Hierarch
4 Mother of Runes
2 Qasali Pridemage
1 Scavenging Ooze
4 Knight of the Reliquary
2 Stoneforge Mystic
1 Gaddock Teeg
1 Courser of Kruphix
4 Green Sun's Zenith
4 Swords to Plowshares
3 Punishing Fire
2 Sylvan Library
1 Umezawa's Jitte
1 Sword of Fire and Ice
1 Sword of Light and Shadow
2 Bayou
3 Savannah
4 Windswept Heath
4 Verdant Catacombs
1 Forest
3 Wasteland
1 Karakas
3 Grove of the Burnwillows
2 Taiga
SB: 2 Thoughtseize
SB: 2 Surgical Extraction
SB: 2 Pyroblast
SB: 1 Choke
SB: 2 Oblivion Ring
SB: 2 Zealous Persecution
SB: 2 Gaddock Teeg
SB: 2 Containment Priest
I wanna sleeve up my maverick deck again after some years of dormancy. My meta is full of different decks (BUG Delver, Elves, D&T, RUB Delver, MUD, Reanimator, Miracles (1x), Merfolk, Stiflenought)
Do you think it is a good option in a meta like this one i have listed?
Thanks for the responses 1mpulse!
I know this is not an original idea, but I was wondering if Dark Confidant has a place in G/W/b Maverick in the current environment.
Using 1mpulse's list as a base, I added 3 Dark Confidants. To add 3 Dark Confidants I took out one Sylvan Library, the Courser of Kruphix, and one Qasali Pridemage (I moved him to the board). It may be the case that going deeper into black makes the main deck too inconsistent, and the things I removed to make room for Dark Confidant are mostly card advantage engines themselves anyway, but it seems that Dark Confidant may have a much larger impact on the game when he hits the board. Given that we have such a low average CMC and multiple ways to gain life main deck (Jitte, SoLaS, Deathrite, Scavenging Ooze), it seems like the life cost wouldn't be too bad. He also adds another must remove creature to a deck already full of them (Mom, Thalia, Knight, and sometimes Deathrite), which means any deck relying on spot removal has that many more targets it needs to spread its removal out on. Of course, this is also a downside when facing decks with board sweep, and Bob does die to absolutely everything.
I imagine the pros don't end up outweighing the cons and that adding Dark Confidant ends up making the deck less consistent unless he lands and sticks, but when he does even for just a turn or two, he puts us so far ahead.
Anyway, this is what I came up with:
Creatures: 25
4 Deathrite Shaman
4 Mother of Runes
1 Noble Hierarch
4 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
3 Dark Confidant
2 Stoneforge Mystic
1 Scavenging Ooze
1 Qasali Pridemage
1 Gaddock Teeg
4 Knight of the Reliquary
Non-creature Spells: 12
4 Green Sun's Zenith
4 Swords to Plowshares
1 Sylvan Library
1 Umezawa's Jitte
1 Sword of Fire and Ice
1 Sword of Light and Shadow
Lands: 23
4 Windswept Heath
4 Verdant Catacombs
2 Savannah
2 Bayou
1 Scrubland
1 Plains
1 Forest
4 Wasteland
1 Horizon Canopy
1 Gaea's Cradle
1 Karakas
1 Dryad Arbor
Sideboard:
4 Thoughtseize
2 Containment Priest
2 Gaddock Teeg
1 Qasali Pridemage
2 Banishing Light
2 Abrupt Decay
2 Zealous Persecution
I would love to hear any and all thoughts on Bob in Maverick.
IMO, the issue with Bob in maverick is that you already have Mom, Thalia, Arbor/Hierarch. The blowouts of Forked Bolt, Deluge, or ZP/Charm start becoming more of an issue than they are already. I believe D&T typically stops at about 11 X/1s and they're notoriously weak to sweepers. Personally I don't like running even 8 x/1s, but there's only so much you can do. This makes you have to question Mom/Thalia, which inevitably leads to playing junk.
That's just IMO, but I think that's where the tipping point starts. Cutting Mom or Thalia make discard more necessary/attractive, which makes Bob more attractive, which makes Decay better (you're deeper into black now, so you can use it more reliably) which makes hierarch worse.. etc..
There is nothing wrong with KotR Junk (i happily ran that for ~6-8 months) but it certainly stops looking like maverick very quickly due to how the packages work together. That's not to say you can't run Dark Maverick, it's just that you'll likely start moving away from Maverick's core as you optimize the list.
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)
