Well, pfire decks are beaten best with Scavenging Ooze and Shamans. Try to get an Ooze into play which can grow 3/3 immediately (but be careful, if they have mana open and you only 1G available you need to stall the game until your next turn. I think that's obvious but many people make mistakes there.). Then you can start eating their grave. Without the Loam engine these decks are pretty slow. Same is against Lands decks. All you need is to get rid of Loam. I recently play 2 Scavenging Ooze main, and only 1 Pridemage. I think that Stoneblade decks are not really being around right now but lots of Loam/pfire/graveyard stuff.Originally Posted by Cpt-Qc
But it's a tempo game and probably very depended on who is on the play. You definitely need a one drop, having an active MoR favors us pretty strong against these decks.
I definitely recommend one bigger creature than KotR. The best in vacuum is Sigarda, as she has evasion, hexproof, is 5/5 (blocks most Goyfs) and the 2nd ability sometimes matters a lot (against BUG/Jund decks. Sometimes you even get her into play via Sneak and Show which stops Emrakul's trigger.). But outside of the vacuum in a Miracles meta right now Thrun ist probably the better choice. He lands save, survives Verdict and with Karakas you even can navigate through Terminus. He is also great against BUG/Delver decks. Uncounterable is pretty strong in my opinion. For that reason I even play 2 Cavern of Souls.
Scavenging Ooze/Deathrite can work against P-Fire like Stuhl mentioned, but are tricky since they also die to P-Fire.
Surgical Extraction is great against P-Fire, and is pretty effective against some other combo decks, especially if you're also playing Thoughtseize in the side.
Rest in Peace is another option that's quite strong vs. a number of decks.
Loam + Wasteland can also do work against P-Fire decks which can only initiate the combo themselves with Grove of the Burnwillows.
IMO Equipment decks tend to go to time for me a lot more often. They have the chance to have outs via gaining health and things without putting you in a winning position; hoping for that topdeck. I've gone to more aggressive decks in order to make games more win-big-or-go-home kinda deals. I found, FWIW, that Revoker does the same kinda thing. Unsure how to solve that dilemma. I think it's best solved with Flyers or other evasive dudes so that when you equip you tend to connect and thus end the game.
That said, grindy midrange decks (which are my forte) will drain you since you're often playing to outs and topdecks that still take more turns to put you into the winning position than a combo deck takes for a whole game. Yesterday, for instance, I had my second TNN coming up, but not enough to cast; so I laid down something to hold off the opponent so I could get to the next turn, lay TNN #2 and begin swinging with the first one while walling off his dudes. That's a gameplan I can't execute for a turn, takes 4-5 turns to get there and will require re-evaluation upon changes. It's just the way midrange is.
This is why more aggressive decks have become my thang of late; as the Delvers, Goyfs, etc tend to make-or-break earlier in the game, leading to a lot less drawn out games; thus less draining, more chance to scout, etc..
My only advice on this front would be have a Scryb for equips to fly over, a Sigarda to end the game against things like Jund, and maybe add ramp dude #5 or #6 to speed you up, and thus bring you to winning/losing states faster. If you're using library, you could swap to Courser in the short run to reduce number of evaluations you have to make; reduce the number of neat things to fetch with KotR/GSZ and simplify the deck so you have a more deterministic losing/winning state so you know when to concede.
Conceding bad games is a big deal with midrange when you go against Miracles, Midrange anything, or Lands.
Yeah, I should have conceded the first game against loam when he had the full engine going but I'm not used to doing so as with combo there's always that topdeck chance that can win you the game.
In both games against pfire the opponent got fire + grove before I could grow an ooze. I thought it was my best chance but once he had grove + another red source I was pretty much locked out although but game dragged on. At one point I got to 6 mana with GSZ in hand and over 20 life so I was pondering my outs, which is why I would have liked Sigarda. just getting her out I could have raced in 3 turns.
Also I already have scryb and it is awesome. It won me a game against DnT with 2 deathrites on board and no black mana (mana + drain + heal each turn). In the pfire matchups tho I sided it out since it's just too easy to kill with pfire.
Wait, so you would bring in Thoughtseize against a fair deck? I do have 3 in my side but I usually bring them in against combo, not against grindy matchups.
I'd feel odd about that myself, I tend to side out my discard if it's in the main because they're dead topdecks. However, they do act like removal buffers so you can "answer" more things. IMO depends on the fair deck. You'll probably put them in against Delver because going long is unlikely, one of you will gain an advantage; so TSeize may not be a bad thing. Against Jund, Shardless, Miracles, or similar; it's bad. It's not terrible for getting an equip out of a SFM deck's hand, but I think that if you're going to do that, you want Cabal Therapy since you can do it early and it's fine in the grave. I think any more than 2 discard against a fair deck when you're not running Bob + Lily, you have an issue. This is part of why it's fine for Jund, DGA, and similar.
No, I'm saying Surgical is good in conjunction with Thoughtseize against most combo decks. Being able to take an Infernal Tutor or Show & Tell from their hand and pro-actively Surgical it is quite strong.
Without discard to enable it, Surgical becomes a lot narrower against combo (since if they have cast their thing and it went to the graveyard you are probably in bad shape), and basically just fulfills a dedicated graveyard hate role for the likes of Dredge, Reanimator, and Punishing Fire/Loam decks.
Ah, that makes more sense. Yeah, I didn't include Surgical in my 75 before but I do now. I will know the feeling of surgicaling a pfire someday and it will be bliss I am sure of it.
That and it makes a great combo with discard against combo as you said.
Maverick was a popular deck a couple of years ago. I don't have enough knowledge of the metagame of Legacy to figure out why it's popularity has declined to a niche deck. Because it is a toolbox deck wich supposed to have awnsers for most of the other strategies, which ones are to hard to awnser?
Can anyone enlighten me please?
Other decks got stronger or evolved. Maverick, suffering from Goblins syndrome, didn't.
Terminus get printed.
I hear they got twisters miles wide in the Midwest.
Miracles is not the worst match up, is it?
I think with Punishing Maverick, Dark Maverick or the Stage/Depths combo that is not really true, is it? those 3 are strongers/evolved versions...
Anyone a good explaination?
Well... Punishing Maverick is just a worse Jund, Dark Maverick is a worse Rock/Nic Fit and Stage/Depths doesn't do that quite as well as other decks do so, you know...I think with Punishing Maverick, Dark Maverick or the Stage/Depths combo that is not really true, is it? those 3 are strongers/evolved versions...
Anyone a good explaination?
The situations are quite different. Goblin could hardly receive 1 "playable" card per 5~8 sets. While every good new printed green creature card, may be a potential buff to a 4Zenith deck.
IMO, the primary flaw of Maverick's playing strategy is: Being a Fair deck. Legacy of today, is very very unfriendly to fair decks.
I hear they got twisters miles wide in the Midwest.
The field kinda diversified. Decks that were formerly good match ups got new additions at a faster rate than Maverick, and bad match ups became more common (like Elves). That being said, I think Maverick is poised for a bit of a resurgence. It never stopped being a good deck. It just isn't blue, and in legacy that hurts.
And that, children, is Goblins syndrome.
Just fair decks gets little unfair cards like TNN, Young Pyromancer or Shardless Agent while other decks like control get's tools to break the Gaddock lock - read Council's Judgement.
Meta shifted a lot, it's important to keep going and assemble changes in deck. Maverick still have decent chance against decks like Eldrazi, all Tempo decks (BUG/RUG) some Blade decks etc.
I have to disagree. Maybe you could underbuild. I just think Maverick deserves more play and with addition of some of the new kids on the block it can handle well in big events....
I have been playing Punishing Maverick for a long time and I think now is a great time to dust off the deck.
Here is my list. I need 1 more card to complete the sideboard.
--(etutor) SFM punishing maverick--
21 Creatures:
Mother of runes 4
Knight of the reliquary 4
Deathrite shaman 3
Stoneforge mystic 3
Quasali pridemage 2
Gaddock teeg 1
Scavenging ooze 1
Noble hiarch 1
Birds of paradise 1
Dryad arbor 1
15
Non-Creature spells:
Green Sun's Zenith 4
Swords to plowshares 4
Punishing fire 3
Umezawas jitte 1
Batterskull 1
Sword of fire and ice 1
Life from the Loam 1
Lands 24
Forest 1
Plateau 1
Savanna 2
Taiga 2
Bayou 1
Grove of the burnwillows 3
Horizon canopy 1
Wasteland 3
Karakas 1
Wooded foothills 3
Windswept Heath 4
Thespian stage 1
Dark depths 1
E-turor board:
Enlightened tutor 2
Pithing needle 1
Phyrexian revoker 1
Tormods Crypt 1
Engineered plague 1
Etherswon canonist 1
Reclamation sage 1
Bajaku bog 1
Oblivion ring 1
Surgical extraction 1
Krosen grip 1
Choke 1
Gaddock teeg 1
Blank 1 (used to be null Rod, but with SFM it doesn't seem to fit so well)
The cards I have considered for sideboard are:
Pyroblast
Toxic deluge
Zealous persecution
Null rod (even with SFM package)
Another Krosen grip
Armegedon
Fiery Justice
Elspeth, knight errant
Please let me know if you have any ideas for the current meta. I am most likely going to play a singleton pyroblast or deluge.
True-Name Nemesis and Council's Judgment (which felt like it was printed explicitly to fix the mistake of TNN) are the two big offenders IMO. Maverick is fundamentally a Mother of Runes deck, and suddenly midrange blue had a creature that could brick wall us when we don't have a Mom, or swing past us when we do. The race changed dramatically. Then, along comes Council's Judgment and suddenly we can't perfectly protect our array of hatebears anymore. It wasn't just Terminus, we can stop that with Teeg. Wizards has systematically printed cards for other deck types that have diminished the power of protection from a color. Eldrazi are just the most recent in a long line.
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