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Generally speaking, against decks that are slower (stoneblade, BUG control, miracles) you do not want to be pulling the combo. It is the best tool against those decks. It's down to meta. I personally wouldn't because I see no point in doing so. But, feel free to do so if it fits your play style more.Quote:
Originally Posted by Hanzalot
I blew the dust off of my deck and decided to finally drag myself off to a tournament. I ended up doing fine all things considered, although I'm still really salty about how badly I ended up throwing one of my games.
Here's my list and a short report:
Lands:
8x Plains
4x Karakas
4x Wasteland
3x Rishadan Port
3x Flagstones of Trokair
Creatures:
4x Mother of Runes
4x Serra Avenger
4x Stoneforge Mystic
3x Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
2x Phyrexian Revoker
4x Flickerwisp
3x Mangara of Corondor
2x Aven Mindcensor
Spells:
4x Swords to Plowshares
4x Aether vial
1x Sword of Fire and Ice
1x Sword of Light and Shadow
1x Umezawa's jitte
1x Elspeth, Knight-Errant (Couldn't find a batterskull on time.)
Sideboard:
3x Enlightened Tutor
3x Rest in Peace
2x Ethersworn Canonist
2x Oblivion Ring
1x Serenity
1x Phyrexian Revoker
1x Stony Silence
1x Phyrexian Metamorph
1x Grafdigger's Cage
My sideboard changes were largely arbitrary and based on gut feeling instead of any sort of sane game plan.
Round 1: Welder MUD 2-0
Round 1 I played against a red Goblin Welder MUD build. It was a fairly one sided game in my favor. I either had answers to his threats or managed to deny him from getting out enough 2 mana lands with wasteland/port. Still confident this is a pretty good matchup for us.
Round 2: UW control 2-1
A much more even game than round 1 but the game played out more or less the same. Much removal and many answers were thrown about until I slowly got ahead with aether vial and having more answers. Another matchup I feel is fairly solid. Didn't have all that much trouble.
Round 3: BG 0-2
I got completely rocked this game. He had more answers than I did and actually managed to deny me from getting enough mana. It's like he was doing what I wanted to do but better.
Round 4: Junk 1-1-1
An ungodly grindfest. Me and my opponent had played eachother fairly often in various local tournaments so we both knew eachothers' decks. The game eventually ran to time because both of us had so many answers the games took forever. We agreed on a tie since it didn't look like either of us could pull out ahead. This matchup was a lot harder since I couldn't stop Deathrite Shaman from stabilizing his mana fast enough and he had Abrupt Decay to break my Jittes. Engineered Plague isn't all that nice either.
Round 5 or how I learned that I may be legally blind: Sneak and Tell 0-2
Game 1 I get blown out by sneak attack into griselbrand+emrakul. Game 2 I get off to a more promising start by tutoring up an ORing with Enlightend Tutor to block off show and tell plans. I also manage to get a Phyrexian Revoker through to block sneak attack. He manages to pyroclasm one so I had to tutor up another (since I sided one in). Eventually he bounces it EoT and intuitions during his turn. Here, we come to a decisive point. I have a vial at 3 and an Aven Mindcensor in hand. Now, here is where I completely forgot what Aven Mindcensor does and instead decided to vial in Mangara because that can remove Sneak Attack right? He then got 3 Sneak Attacks with Intuition and I proceeded to realize I'm really dumb.
So there I was, at 2-2-1 placing 13th out of 30 people. Overall, I feel like I could have done better had I not thrown completely in game 2 of round 5. Was happy with the other games though.
For what matches do yoou guys bring in Cataclysm?
Slower control matchups (BUG, Esper Stoneblade, Miracles). It's basically a 4 mana balance against those deck. I also bring it in against goblins and occasionally merfolkQuote:
Originally Posted by dave8
A suggestion; running hatebears.deck to fight a combo meta is not an unreasonable choice. Now you want Moms to protect your hatebears in this situation, but can only run four obviously and have no way to tutor for them. However a card similar in functionality that you can tutor for is Lightning Greaves, which you can pre-emptively put on Thalia or whoever to protect them from any bounce or Grape Shot or whatever.
Further suggestions:
I'm not sold on the Mangara + Aether Vial + Mother of Runes + Karakas "combo." If you don't have a Karakas Mangara is pretty shitty, basically just a slow O-Ring that dies to Bolt; you run 4 Karakas to counter this but besides the strain this puts on the budget, this means a bunch of your lands kill each other delaying your own mana development. And without Vial/Mom even Mangara and Karakas together are fairly fragile, often at best paying 4 mana a turn to net +1 card advantage and no board advantage to clear out removal, if they're not just using Jitte or P-Fires. And of course a lot of decks run their own Karakas, the split-second answer to Karakas. In fact I've only seen this deck get the combo going when it was relevant once.
So my suggestion first of all would be to go down to 1 Karakas to reduce the vulnerability of your manabase, essential if you want to be casting and using a lot of equipment. Now this is too low to draw it naturally very often of course, but you can cut some of the clunkier three-drops to add Knight of the Reliquary, which besides being a huge beater is a powerful hate "bear" in its own right- hate colossus really- grabbing a host of powerful answers like Maze, Karakas, Wasteland, and possibly maindeck Bojuka Bog. You could even think about something like Yavimaya Hollow in the board to deal with Supreme Verdict or Deed or to save hatebears from burn.
Now as long as you're in green, I would cut Aether Vial for Green Sun's Zenith and let's say Noble Hierarch. These cards don't have the ability to avoid counterspells, but they have much greater late game utility and help you actually get out your equipment, and help you pay for removal and such through your own Thalias, counter-act the loss of tempo from using Wasteland, and help get you out of Daze/Spell Pierce range. You can also run several cards that are helpful to your hatebear strategy that can be grabbed with GSZ; Gaddock Teeg, Scavenging Ooze, Qasali Pridemage, Eternal Witness to grab back Wastelands/StPs/Equipment, maybe even Thrun for the control decks (and he's a powerful carrier of equipment.)
Of course you still don't want your cards countered, but I notice a lot of them are humans so why not just run a couple Cavern of Souls?
It seems to me that this green splash is really what Death and Taxes needs to polish its approach, running superior cards like Knight and GSZ over essentially filler like Mirran Crusader, Serra Avenger, Flickerwisp et. al., although further exploration might be warranted; going three colors into black and adding Deathrite over Hierarch, for instance, and fitting some discard into the mix.
Pretty much when you put everything that you say here and make a deck of it all you don't have anything like Death and Taxes anymore. You make it into Junk which I'm not saying is a bad thing, but it's decidedly a different deck.Quote:
Originally Posted by TheInfamousBearAssassin
Weird.Quote:
Originally Posted by Fry
Question: Why is that different deck not strictly better than the first deck with worse cards because it's monocolor? I mean Maverick and Junk can run Thalia and Wasteland. They can even, if they want to, run Phyrexian Revoker. Only with Knight of the Reliquary instead of Mirran Crusader, and Green Sun's Zenith instead of Aether Vial. Which seem like strict upgrades.
Also when you run equipment being able to fetch Dryad Arbor eot is pretty sweet.
Oh geeze I forgot Sylvan Library, that card's also a kick in the nuts against control.
What about Junk or Jund type deck?Quote:
Originally Posted by monovfox
Are you trolling IBA? You are basically suggesting to run Maverick instead of death and taxes. Anyway you have to be careful with statements like "strictly better".Quote:
Originally Posted by TheInfamousBearAssassin
Vial vs. Zenith is not a question about strictly better. One allows for more tricks and blow outs. The other one brings consistency. Btw. M@verick from thesource is an expert of running a GW vial deck with annoying hatebears. He has a lot of success with it and can probably comment best on vial vs. zenith and GW versus mono-white.
Monocolor vs. GW is also not only about running the most powerful cards. Staying in white you can play 4 rishadan port which complements the other aspects of manadenial/taxing and vial nicely. The trickier stuff like vial on 3 bringing a "pro green double striker", a "blinker" or a "fetchland hater" can be tough to play correctly against. I think you also underestimate the Karakas/Mangara combo. However Karakas which you seem to see as a liability has also a lot of value protecting your Thalia, which the opponent usually wanst to get rid of right? Bouncing her and vialing her in again immediately is also a feature Maverick does not have.
Death and Taxes also has the factor of playing more tricks and since much less popular the chance is very high that your opponent makes mistakes not knowing what to expect, whereas people usually figured out how to play against maverick.
There's a link at the end of the OP that gives a shitload of information on D&T and its interactions and synergies. After reading it I definitely felt that those "bad" cards like Flickerwisp seem to be the best cards in the deck.
Weird.Quote:
Originally Posted by catmint
Contrariwise, I don't think we should be too careful here. Of course one understand that Sleight of Hand is not "strictly" worse than Brainstorm in every conceivable situation, but it is enough to understand that in the context of the Legacy metagame there is no reason to run Sleight of Hand over Brainstorm.Quote:
Anyway you have to be careful with statements like "strictly better".
The monoblue version of Delver decks are forced to run cards that RUG or BUG Delver don't run, although they could, excepting Back to Basics. And in situations those cards are better than say, Bolt and Abrupt Decay and Tarmogoyf. But in the context of the Legacy metagame they are not better. And again, those decks could[ run Vapor Snag or whatever. And in certain situations that would pay off. But in the context of the metagame, RUG and BUG Delver are strictly better than Mono-U Delver.
You could run Rishadan Port in GW Maverick. The problem I think is that people have consistently found Port underwhelming over the years so that only a few Goblins players who haven't gotten the memo and Lands.dec run it in Legacy.Quote:
Vial vs. Zenith is not a question about strictly better. One allows for more tricks and blow outs. The other one brings consistency. Btw. M@verick from thesource is an expert of running a GW vial deck with annoying hatebears. He has a lot of success with it and can probably comment best on vial vs. zenith and GW versus mono-white.
Monocolor vs. GW is also not only about running the most powerful cards. Staying in white you can play 4 rishadan port which complements the other aspects of manadenial/taxing and vial nicely.
It could though. In fact the earliest lists of Maverick ran Aether Vial. They cut it because it was worse than Noble Hierarch and Green Sun's Zenith.Quote:
The trickier stuff like vial on 3 bringing a "pro green double striker", a "blinker" or a "fetchland hater" can be tough to play correctly against. I think you also underestimate the Karakas/Mangara combo. However Karakas which you seem to see as a liability has also a lot of value protecting your Thalia, which the opponent usually wanst to get rid of right? Bouncing her and vialing her in again immediately is also a feature Maverick does not have.
I mean we could sit here and think of situations and reasons why the deck should run True Believer or [card]Burrenton Forge-Tender[/card], but they would still not involve arguments that couldn't apply equally to Maverick. The truth is that in Legacy it's really really really easy to run a two color deck. Three colors isn't even very hard.
Now I'm the last person to argue for efficient metagame theory and say that because Maverick doesn't run white hate-bear X that means it's bad. Maybe Mangara is much better than I think, although by definition I don't think so. But say I'm wrong. What stops you from running Mangara in Maverick? The combo indeed seems much better there because you don't have to run more than 1, maybe 2 Karakas and still have more access to it when you want it because you can tutor for it.
See again: What are the powerful cards that D&T uses that Maverick doesn't, but that couldn't just be fitted into Maverick, which seems better placed to take advantage of Thalia and Wasteland?Quote:
Death and Taxes also has the factor of playing more tricks and since much less popular the chance is very high that your opponent makes mistakes not knowing what to expect, whereas people usually figured out how to play against maverick.
@Mav vs DnT "debate"
But Maverick can't beat miracles, and is actually sometimes too reliant on GSZ. They're different decks. Maverick is an aggro deck, DnT is a control deck. While maverick is certainly not a bad deck, neither is DnT. Wasteland + port + vial + thalia is absolutely brutal against a lot of decks. Knight of the reliquary is kinda subpar since deathrite shaman became a card. On the other hand the utility of GSZ is nice... with green creatures. All of the creatures in DnT are not green, which makes them harder to fit them into a GSZ deck, as it is significantly harder to cast a white-sun's zenith that searches your library for a creature and not get a judge called on you. Cut from a similar idea, went into different directions. Death and Taxes is much more synergetic than Maverick (proved at the GP).
This seems like a glib reply designed more to duck the issue than to think about it.Quote:
Originally Posted by monovfox
Why do you think Maverick can't beat Miracles, but presumably believe that Death and Taxes can?
And Maverick is certainly not an aggro deck, at least not by any definition that doesn't include D&T. That's obviously nonsense. The only thing it has that's good at beating is Knight, which is comparable to Mirran Crusader except being a better beatstick on its own and actually functioning as a hate bear; it's far better against control and combo since it can do things besides try to attack with equipment.
Maverick already runs Thalia and Wasteland. It could run Port but Port has been pretty underwhelming in most peoples' experience; however, if you think they're wrong you could add it to Maverick. Similarly with Aether Vial, which was in early Maverick lists but then dropped. Knight can in fact grow through active Deathrite Shamans and can still chaingun Wastelands, tutor for Maze/Karakas/Bog etc.. The idea that Knight became bad since Deathrite was printed is specious nonsense that suggests you haven't actually played with the card in this metagame.
"Synergistic" here is a meaningless buzz word so I'm going to ignore it. Yes, existing Maverick lists already can't GSZ for Thalia. On the other hand, you can't Stoneforge Mystic for Thalia anyway. Why even run a tutor if it can't grab every card in your deck you might want is the question, I suppose.
Relying entirely on results from one tournament to avoid improvement is dumb. Deadguy Ale and VaporBlade never broke the meta. The winning Flash list from GP Columbus had no reason to run Sylvan Safekeeper over Benevolent Bodyguard. Lists that top 8 or even win a GP are not definitionally perfect; no one thinks that in more commonly supported formats, and there's no reason to think it of Legacy just because the GPs are more infrequent. Looking at the Strasbourg lists, what would be ought but improved by simply, for instance, replacing Mirran Crusader with Knight of the Reliquary, a much more powerful card?
But is knight of the reliquary really that much more powerful? It gets nuked by grave hate, pitching needle, among a variety of things. Then we have a pro-green pro-black double striker that can block Goyfs all day, and is really hard to actually deal with it. Maverick has a bad matchup in miracles, you should be aware of that. While sure, these toolboxes are nice, death and taxes doesn't need those becuase the deck can handle a lot of situations with broad answers. You guys need specific answers in the main in order to be effective
Synergy>raw card power.
Jack, nobody holds a candle to your glibness, buddy. It is clearly on display here. Glib. Smarmy. Arrogant. Lots of excellent character traits to go with your clear lack of understanding if how the deck plays.
You haven't spoken a word about improvement of the deck. You came into the thread and told people who know a lot more about it than you to ditch the deck in favor of a completely different deck. From here I expect you to say something mean spirited designed to insight me into an argument with you wherein you insult me over and over in thinly veiled statements that are ostensibly about the thread topic, but are actually just your modus operandi. I'm not interested in anything you have to say about this deck. My 3 year-old has more insight. And I'm certainly not interested in your psychoanalysis. Go infect some other thread with your poor interpersonal skills and need to make yourself feel better at the expense of others.
Boys, IBA is a troll. He has been banned from all of the other magic websites, some of them multiple times. You truly are best off ignoring him. He has nothing constructive to add here and trying to reason with him will only result in him annoying you.
Welp, nothing in Finn's post worth responding to. Let's go back to the adult conversation.
Why is Mirran Crusader hard to deal with? Exactly one removal spell that's commonly played in the format, Abrupt Decay, fails to deal with it. Unlike Knight it dies to Bolt and Punishing Fires. This is a more than equitable tradeoff already in terms of avoiding removal. But Crusader needs equipment to be a serious threat, which Knight doesn't; and it is only good at beating. Knight by contrast is good at hosing different strategies and at blocking, even against flyers (with Maze of Ith.)Quote:
Originally Posted by monovfox
It's a pretty evident huge gap in power level unless there's literally no other fair deck in your metagame than BUG. Even against Jund I'd rather have Knight since it's better to trade a creature for an Abrupt Decay than for a Punishing Fire.
I don't understand. They're both 2/2s.Quote:
Originally Posted by TheInfamousBearAssassin
Cute.Quote:
Originally Posted by Zupponn
You're adorable.Quote:
Originally Posted by TheInfamousBearAssassin
See, you're not bringing up points besides "you're biased because you play the deck". I never once said I thought maverick was a bad deck, I just think DnT is a better deck in proper hands (like a new player playing ANT vs a veteran playing ANT).
@your point about stoneforge mystic
stoneforge mystic fetches what I need it to fetch. I also have free space to have 4 thalias, while you don't. Tutoring is not something this deck really needs all that much (except for equips).
@Finn, I'll debate with him a bit more in order to better inform my opinion on him, since I don't know him and I'd at least like to see another side of this "issue"
This is so obviously untrue that I feel no need to expound further, and will simply assume you were using it as some sort of turn of phrase since you then go on to address my points anyway.Quote:
Originally Posted by monovfox
And for 4 Stoneforge Mystics! That's more than any Maverick lists I've seen recently. But I'd like you to think about what you mean when you say you "have free space."Quote:
I never once said I thought maverick was a bad deck, I just think DnT is a better deck in proper hands (like a new player playing ANT vs a veteran playing ANT).
@your point about stoneforge mystic
stoneforge mystic fetches what I need it to fetch. I also have free space to have 4 thalias, while you don't. Tutoring is not something this deck really needs all that much (except for equips).
There are effects that are essentially universally desirable. All other things being held equal, for instance, I don't suppose that there's a deck that doesn't want the effect of Force of Will or Brainstorm, which is why they're the most played cards in Legacy.
However, not every deck plays Brainstorm and Force of Will. There are generally two reasons decks don't "have free space" for these two cards, and by extension why they don't have room for any given card they don't run;
1) Dissynergy; the most obvious example being in the case of a deck's available colors; Jund, Junk, and Naya Zoo can't cast Brainstorm without going into a fourth color, which would be very dangerous to their manabase; and they certainly don't run enough blue cards to support Force of Will. Other forms of dissynergy exist; decks like Zoo or Patriot Act would rather run Path to Exile over Swords to Plowshares, despite the latter generally being a more powerful card, because it interferes with their strategy of single-mindedly smashing face. Likewise, a WUG Tempo deck wouldn't run Path to Exile alongside Stifle and Wasteland. Non-goblins can be added to goblins but there is a high cost to doing so; and so on.
2) Lack of efficiency/power/relevance to the metagame: The card doesn't actively do anything to interfere with the deck's strategy, and the deck could cast it, but it simply isn't a good enough card. RUG Tempo doesn't run Ghazban Ogre for instance, even though the old 9-land Stompy lists did. Control decks could run Fact or Fiction, but Jace is better in the same slot and he's very rarely a 4x.
The third reason of course would be budget, but that's less strategic and more to do with the secondary market on Magic cards.
But all (valid) reasons for not running a card pretty much fall into these categories.
Now, is Maverick as a deck so tight with synergies that it can't afford to run cards that run outside of its core strategy? Well... no. It is essentially a goodstuff deck, not based around some underlying core theme besides value and somewhat mana denial. It can play up the hatebear angle or not depending on the metagame.
So then when you say that Maverick doesn't have "free space" for, say, Phyrexian Revoker, it's a strange declaration, because the only reason that could be the case is that it's running better cards than Phyrexian Revoker. Which is hardly an argument in favor of D&T being the better deck.
Now, to clarify, I am not right now attempting to say that Phyrexian Revoker is bad; nor even that it's bad in Maverick per se. I have in fact been a vocal critic for years now of the way people have been building and playing the Maverick deck. The GP top 8 list at least didn't have Scryb Ranger so that's some progress. I am by no means saying that Maverick is optimally built or that the addition of any given card you like from D&T couldn't improve it.
What I in fact suggested was adding some cards that are very very powerful but happen to be in a second color. Now, two color decks are dead easy to manage in Legacy with the manabase available. Even tribal decks, where all of the good tribe cards tend to be concentrated in one color, can and do often and easily splash into another. Three colors is somewhat vulnerable and four color decks are fragile, but two colors is easily manageable.
What's odd is the reaction, which has been; Adding Knight of the Reliquary and Green Sun's Zenith to the deck would make it Maverick, and Death and Taxes is a better deck than Maverick, therefore we cannot add Knight of the Reliquary and Green Sun's Zenith to Death and Taxes.
And that sounds more like articles of faith than actual arguments. Are you sticking mono-white for any actual strategic reason, or just because you consider it part of the deck's "identity" and would immediately start thinking of it as Maverick if you swapped Crusader for Knight of the Reliquary?