Moat is probably a concession to Eldrazi primarily. With access to Dark Depths, you can win over it without much difficulty.Originally Posted by Claymore
Gorzgen has probably played Punishing Maverick more than anyone and has consistently done well with the deck since 2011. I would put a lot of trust into this list.
Yep, I'd definitely wager moat is for eldrazi.
Fabian is a punishing maverick beast, he pretty much sticks to his guns and I think he has been playing GW since the survival days and even before. He is truly dedicated to the archetype and probably has the most amount of success with the punishing version.
I'm so torn between Cradle and the DD combo. I think you definitely can't run both. Right now, against a lot of decks like BUG or Eldrazi the DD combo seems like a nice, quick finisher out of a bad situation. On the other hand is the combo bad against Miracles, which is still dominating.
Also, is there a reason why all lists play rather Sword of Light and Shadow than Batterskull? I think Batterskull is a good threat these days against a lot of decks. Also, the Cradle allows fast plays if there is no Stoneforge on the board.
I like it because it on a Gaddock Teeg is pretty much game over for miracles unless they find a council's judgement. That said, I'm thinking of testing out batterskull.
Hm... I see, a Teeg with SoLaS is the dream against miracles, but to me it seems difficult to achieve and probably they will find their Council anyways... But Mother plus Teeg is also nearly a complete lock (except for double Sword or something), which can be assembled more naturally in my eyes.
I dislike SoLaS against other decks. I don't like its trigger very much. Also the argument "Decay proof" does not hold as they can just Decay the Sword itself. SoFaI is so much better in my eyes. In general I tend more to play only Jitte and SoFaI alongside 2 Stoneforges or just 2 Jitte and instead of Stoneforges other value creatures or Decays.
I think with Eldrazi around Batterskull becomes slightly better than it used to be. The main reason to play Sword of Light and Shadow the way I see it is because of Miracles, protecting any creature from StP is very good and EOT fetching Dryad Arbor to keep pressure up is very good too, it's not all about Gaddock.
I'll post the Sword of L&S pro list again, thanks to Google (I failed at finding it using the source search functions):
Sword of L&S has e.g. the following applications:
- Equip a bird for infinite blocking of Marit Lage.
- Equip Gaddock for soft lock vs Miracles.
- Equip Dryad to force Terminus from Miracles, then fetch it back eot and equip again.
- Protection from Monk and Angel tokens
- Life gain vs Burn, Grixis, etc.
- Qasali Pridemage recursive artifact/enchantment destruction.
- Block and attack through Batterskull equipped on a germ token.
- Good vs D&T for winning a damage race and protecting key creatures.
- Life gain for extra card draw through Sylvan Library.
Nice to see a Maverick list doing so well. But when playing P.Fire and no Thalias I tend to think that you might as well play Aggro Loam and get juicy card draw and Chalices.
It basically wins alone against Shardless BUG, which is one of the most played deck. People keep saying Sigarda is better but I found many times I was able to come back just drawing tons of cards.
That makes sense... I'll have to test more. Though, because of the reasons above, I find myself fetching it with stone forge very often. It's mostly only good because the colors of protection are just so relevant... the ability to fetch creatures back is irrelevant quite often, like you said. I've run into several games where it's enabled me to swing past swarms of mentor tokens for the win, or block a gurmag or germ token to stall, for instance.
I have recently had similar thoughts about the different SFM packages and am going to try a list based off of Thunderpork's and just run 2x copies of Jitte. I think there are certain situations where SoLaS and SoFaI are better situationally then Jitte but I feel like the Jitte would still be pretty darn good. Maverick lists always feel so tight because of the awesome cards and directions we can take the deck so freeing up a few slots by omitting SFM might be worth the trade off.
This was my list that I ran at the GP NY., legacy challenge. I came 13th place. I also wrote a TR on reddit.
https://www.reddit.com/r/MTGLegacy/c...dark_maverick/
http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/gideons-dark-maverick/
Nice finish. Did you enjoy the DD combo? Or did you sometimes wish you had access to a Cradle for insta equiping somthing to push through a Jitte?
In general I don't like something like 3 Mother of Runes. It looks strange in a way. In the current meta I'd rather go to 3 Thalia, 4 Mother. More and more decks are not really impressed by Thalia these days... Also, I'm not a fan of the 5th dork in general, but why Birds over Noble? Just for the flying thing?
There are times where I want to see the DD combo. I really want to shift over to Deathblade, but for now I'm fine killing my opponents with a 20/20.
Birds: Its supposed to be a noble, but sometimes I need to fly over the air with a sword.
I've been wondering about the same question about the number of Thalias verus Mother. I don't know. I"m still figuring that out.
DD/Stage is really nice and always lurking. Being able to break the symmetry can be huge. But i feel that it doesn't happen as often as in Aggro Loam for an example. And a lot of times having DD or Stage (to a lesser extend) feels super clunky. Staring at it and wishing it were a Swamp or a Gaea's Cradle. Speaking of the latter i would rather drop the DD/Stage combo in return for Gaea's Cradle and Sigarda, Host of Herons.
On a side note, i have been running a one-off Tarmogoyf and am pretty happy with it. It is a fairly quick clock (vs combo aswell), but most of all, it is a solid wall vs Eldrazi that can be fetched with GSZ. Coupled with MoM or equipment, it can end games fairly quickly.
Edit: Ow and did i mention that Scryb Ranger is freaking awesome in the deck, even without DD/Stage.
Kagu-Tsuchi カグツチ (Jund NicFit)
Rhino's Abbondanza (Junk NicFit)
4c Aggro Loam
So I ran tireless tracker last night as a 1 of and so far I am pleased. He drew me a bunch of cards and could get pretty big. So far my thoughts are that triggering tracker to get clues is pretty easy considering we have fetchlands, knight of the reliquary and scryb ranger. For the same reason it's easy to get clues, having 4-5 dorks, KOTR, Scryb Ranger and Gaea's Cradle make popping the clues not as painful as you would think. He definitely seems like a card that shines in the mid to late game when you might have excess mana or start to run out of gas. His 3/2 body certainly not the best, was usually good enough that playing him early didn't feel "bad" and he could put decent pressure on an opponent.
I am still open to the idea that he doesn't cut it, might be too slow or that a card like courser fits the role better. But so far I really like him.
The point is, that DD combo is "unfair". Getting out Sigarda or durdeling around with Cradle leaves your opponent a few more turn to handle the situation. Getting the combo eot ends the game immediately. Especially against Nic Fit/Eldrazi/Mervolk/Elves you want to finish the game asap. I think these days an occasional "win button" is a good thing.
I really love Cradle and there are also little combo turns in which you play Stoneforge, get euqipment, get Cradle, insta euqip, attack, etc... I think all in all it's a matter of taste. I just hate it when the ground is crowded and you durdle around with Knights and equipment. Sigarda is nice, but rather slow and also "dies" to Terminus, Toxic Deluge, Council's Judgement. Marit Lage also dies to a lot, but when playing correctly you at least dodge a ton of sorcery speed removal.
From time to time I try a one off Crop Rotation. It gives some flexibility concerning the combo and can get utility lands like Karakas if you play against Reanimator stuff.
Concerning Tracker: I somehow thing this is a little strange. Do you not just want to play The Gitrog Monster in that spot? For me it seems worty to pay 2 mana more for a less vulnerable, reasonable sizeed and highly efficient draw engine.
Courser is nice, imo. He gives you a little top manipulation and with a Library in game he is insane. Also, not dying to Bolt is cool. The life gain is also relevant against fast aggro decks.
I actually also played Gitrog. I went away from my usual list and wanted to try out these new cards. Gitrog was also really good. In one game he died after the second turn I played him but I was still able to draw 5 cards off of him. For now I liked Gitrog too. He did a good job of drawing cards and his body was really nice. I wanted Tracker to be a card that could come down as early as turn 2, put pressure with a decent body with potential to be huge and draw me cards. He did all those roles. I think the question of Tracker being worthy comes down too A) is he efficient enough? B) Are his abilities what we want/worth the card slot?
I can't answer those questions confidently but so far I like Tracker.
I tried both Gitrog and Tracker and so far I like the former more. It doesn't die to Bolt or Decay and that's nice, and you draw cards immediately without investing mana. Courser is insane with Library, usually I search for it when I've already a Library resolved.
I put tracker in my deck over the slot of courser. I won't deny that courser is great. I have played courser and tracker and for that role I think either is fine. But I think both have their pros and cons. From my experiences Tracker was more explosive than courser in that once he got going the other deck wanted to kill him immediately. To get him online also didn't seem to take much.
He single handledly won me the match against nic fit that got a t2 siege rhino. I plowed the first rhino and had a board stall with a second rhino where neither of us could trade favorably. I dropped tracker, he didn't have the removal and tracker grew to be a 9/8 and re filled my hand.
I had a similar situation against goblins where we were trading 1 for 1 and we both had run out of the majority of gas for our decks. I dropped Tracker played a fetch land the next turn and was able to draw 2 cards and tracker was at a point where he couldn't deal with it and how many cards I was drawing.
He just seems to draw cards much better than courser at the cost of having to invest mana into him. With how much ramp we have and especially mid to late game when we have excess mana I will take that trade off.
Before I was unsure of tracker but I am on board with him now.
Also I based my list that I 4-0'd my lgs last Saturday with off yours Thunderpork! Your list helped me look at the deck differently and I really liked it!
Cool, I'm glad to be helpful.
How did you grow him so fast? Ok, getting the clues is a quick process as you play a land/fetch land every turn. But for growing him 9/8 you have to pop 6 clues = 12 mana. In my eyes that's a rather slow process and not very impressive as he anyways dies to every removal spell. I mean, we want do play stuff in our turn, don't we? So, if you play something on your turn, you may have 1-2 mana left open. That's about 1 clue every turn. Of course, in a late game scenario you can pop more clues but in my eyes, there is better stuff that does not die to a Lightning Bolt for late game applications. In a way we want to close the game and not durdle around with card and clues, so stuff like Sigarda/DD combo seems to have more impact on games as Tracker.
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