I was just adding why people choose feast and famine md over all the other swords. Probably should of made that more clear.
The choice is made because the protections, and the ability being pretty decent.
I don't run it because I use Mirran Crusader and in general my builds have very little problem outfighting enemy green aggression. I find much better use personally from SoFaI (equip to Scryb Ranger, Birds, Aven Mindcensor if you use it to fight Vendilion Clique and Delver; best ability, also, provided you have Batterskull and Jitte as lifegain options) and SoLaS (probably the sword that best combats enemy removal, via protections and a pretty helpful ability in many instances, although combating removal is generally a game you want to win with massive threat density moreso than equipping things slowly).
SoBaM and SoWaP are just worse and it's very hard to justify using either instead of the other three I'd say.
1. Is NO out of date or is it still effective in the meta?
Natural Order posts plenty of Top 8 results as Bant (and some RUG ... also in Nic Fit) but I have not seen it used successfully in a shell that looks anything like Maverick for a few months. Hard to say -- combo might be pointlessly hard to line up with Thresh/Team America running around and no counters.
2. How do you feel about Aven Mindscensor? I see a lot of people using it MD, and some not at all. I use to use it but it wasn't as effective for me since no one plays sneak and show or hive mind anymore.
It's really a metagame decision I think. I find it a bit overrated in terms of how common it was for a while in our Maverick builds and it is something I would rather not run if I can help it, and I miss it very little (if it cost one less or contained a green in CC I would always run it) ... nevertheless it's somewhat helpful against a wide range of prominent enemies in every category (combo, aggro, midrange, control), including the mirror.
If you don't run it though I think you should try to run two Scryb Rangers and one of 4 Noble Hierachs should be a Birds of Paradise instead.
3. Is Sylvan Library that much better than Mirri's Guile or Top?
This is pretty good territory to explore. I think the former two are better than Top, yeah, (in Maverick) but I can't necessarily explain my feeling here.
As far as I can tell the card draw from Library is pretty helpful and something you can use to very good effect once or twice actually in most cases that you have it -- being able to is nice even if you don't typically draw -- also if you're just running one of this slot then I'd think you want a more powerful effect that you'll be happy when it shows up -- that said one advantage of Mirri's Guile is Spell Snare hitting the library a lot.
I was intrigued by the thought of a single copy of Absolute Law in an Enlightened Tutor sideboard, vs. Threshold and decks like it, with the intent of protecting the support cast/structural foundation in creature-heavy aggro-midrange, like Elves as someone mentioned -- in my case I play Maverick and you want to protect e.g. mana dudes and Mother of Runes -- from bolts and Grim Lavamancer in particular.
It seems difficult to work this though, at least if you don't want multiple copies. (Which would be itself unjustifiable IMO.) Against burn, they are perfectly happy aiming for your head instead of your creatures anyway. Whereas against the Can.Thresh-type decks, Enlightened Tutor telegraphing the play is somewhat undesirable, the single copy is highly likely to eat e.g. spell snare, and plenty of the builds are not massively dependent on red for removal. Probably just as well to side in more removal instead, or just using Choke, if you want to gum up the enemy machine guns.
I wouldn't say it's not worth testing though. Maybe others could report more success with that tech.
The champion looks amazing but by the time he gets going its normally too late and he is no where near as good if you don't have a plating or Ravager to make him bigger.
Yeah, but he's less likely to eat removal when you swing for the win than anything else (everything else is very likely to eat it) and probably has the best evasion too.
Incidentally, if this was a point of confusion, you are of course perfectly allowed if you wish to blow up your fetchland in response when you are passed priority after Smallpox is e.g. played and is sitting on the stack before it resolves, in which case you pay your activation costs immediately and if nothing else happens the effect of the fetch (fetching a land) will resolve first from the stack, but you still will have to do everything Smallpox requires, sacrificing if there are things to sacrifice on the board, when Smallpox resolves subsequently -- perhaps sacrificing the land you just fetched. That is valid.
Can't sacrifice something twice to two different requirements and there is no way to have the fetch target 'in transit' when Smallpox resolves -- when something is allowed to resolve from the stack (as neither player has elected or been able to respond further) you carry it out in full and no actions can be taken mid-resolution; the ship has sailed.
I agree with the above and it's a good include. Especially given the recent results at Indianapolis. Having it in there to grab with Knight is a lot of insurance.
Well... you don't draw the card if you run less than 3...
The idea is overlap, for example let's say in the list I posted, your match calls for grave hate. If you put in the two Crypts, two Relics, and two tutors, this is six slots that may keep one's butt alive long enough to take advantage, except that one of the pairs of cards is much slower and telegraphs to the opponent exactly what you are doing and what's coming -- Enlightened Tutor. Note that your opponent expects hate and sideboarded in Echoing Truth, counterspells, et cetera. Having two copies of Tutor is used because of versatility and because sideboard room is limited, but my point is that it's better to draw what you're going to be Tutoring for in a particular board than a Tutor that you will use on it. Also, it's often nice to have another available after using the actual hate card once.
Likewise with e.g. Canonist. You have 4 slots fighting storm combo.
Contrast with a list of 4 Enlightened Tutors and 1 Canonist. You have 5 slots (taking up 5 slots of the sideboard), but the Canonist is alone and they know it's coming. Or with 4 Enlightened Tutors and 1 Crypt and 1 Relic etc. It's slower and IMO flat out worse for the specific purpose of grave hate than the quantities of the six board cards I suggested.
This all said, I admit my ease is with much more aggressive decks than D&T. D&T is more comfortable being slow and less obsessed with brute speed when faced with certain combo decks, and also I suppose has more opportunity to use Enlightened Tutor for general versatile purposes, not just picking up a critical sideboard piece, so bearing in mind that you guys seem to favor 3 or even 4 Tutors I'm not saying you're wrong. This is just my reasoning behind 2-of Tutors in the appropriate context.
No clue, but assumedly he's tutoring for Mirror Entity regularly, otherwise there's no point to the rebels at all. I can see how that could win a few games occasionally, actually. Done quickly and turning birds of paradise and defiant falcons into dangerous beaters. Not bad.
Thanks for the reply. Hmm, I disagree a bit. There are 2 Enlightened Tutors there. I'm not a fan of the full 4x Enlightened Tutor with singles if that's what you mean. It's badly slow and telegraphs exactly what you're doing ... the ideal situation is you just drawing the card and that's what running some of the tutor and some of what you're going to be tutoring for does for you sometimes. I usually play Maverick and in those lists I generally run 2 in the board. You guys have a few more artifacts to search for if you're running Revoker, and if you put in the Dazes you might have a little more time before their combo goes off (in say a storm matchup) but I still kinda think running 2 Tutors and then actual copies from the sideboard of whatever you're boarding in is preferable.
Yeah, maybe one less canonist, although I go back and forth on this. One is ideally all that is needed, but sometimes they do get to bounce it early. If you prefer -1 Relic -1 Crypt then I'd put in some other form of graveyard hate there, like +2 Jötun Grunt. Yeah, that sounds like a pretty good change.
Placed 4th out of 137 in a Milano event. Note the 2 Ramosian Lieutenant, 1 Defiant Falcon (why not 3 of these instead of the lieutenants, incidentally), and 1 Mirror Entity! OMG. Also uses 2 Crop Rotation, only 3 GSZ's, a different Sword in the Batterskull slot, and is low on lands.
I'm testing lists with Vials, though not 4 -- I'm using 4 GSZ and either 3 Vials (reasonable being as GSZ is there) or 2 Vials (strange because it's worse if you're not drawing it early ... still might be something to this though. I dunno.) Probably going to use 3 if any, cutting my last Sylvan Library.
You can run 2 Mindcensors, either in the board or in maindeck -- not a resolved question either way I'd say. Using 3 seems a bit more common but there's this list though, for example (first place out of 137, September 17): http://www.thecouncil.es/tcdecks/deck.php?id=6848&iddeck=49704
Which kind of looks like yours, with the 4 Stoneforge Mystics.
I think though that your creature count is low for Maverick. So making room for 3 Mindcensors is a way to move toward this.
Ultimately I think that Vial is definitely something to be experimented with now that Misstep is gone, but I think its inclusion means we have to cut things like Sylvan Library, maybe even one of the 3 equipment slots, not creatures. Just MHO.
Karakas, which doesn't bounce Jitte unfortunately, is just a way to bounce some stuff that gets reanimated. Something you can fetch with Reliquary. In practice this doesn't end up happening a lot and grave hate will save you more often than this does, but anyway the inclusion of one (replacing a plains or an extra fetch, assumedly) is something many advocate for simply on the basis of it not hurting much. I go back and forth on the decision.
I think 21 lands including Dryad Arbor + Maze of Ith is the lowest I'd want to go, yeah, although you're welcome to test, particularly with the Vials.
I played a bunch of testing games tonight against a guy testing this list! My deck is a somewhat unusual build of G/W Maverick, but basically similar to the more aggressive builds (that e.g. maindeck 2 Mirran Crusader) in its basic wheels of functioning and its speed/clock.
My impression was that you may benefit from an extra land or 2, and, particularly, something either in the sideboard or in the maindeck to seal the aggro match-up. It lost 5 out of 6 games to Maverick as it is, but I think it is close to being more comfortable with in the aggro match. I might suggest:
-2 Weathered Wayfarer (I know it's a good way to fetch Karakas and I like Wayfarer but ... with 2 copies if you want it I would try and somehow splash green lightly and make it a Knight of the Reliquary which is less conditional and provides beatdowns as well. I dunno. Just trying to make room.)
+2 of something. My ideas off the top of my head were +2 Elspeth, Knight-Errant or +2 Jace the Mind Sculptor (maybe better since it helps against both aggro and other things) or +1 Batterskull +1 Stoneforge Mystic ?)
Various thoughts.
At the same time, and particularly if you do the change above, in a couple of games it appeared more land would have been helpful due to Wasteland:
You could make one of those swords Umezawa's Jitte. Both a (correct) sword and a jitte can wreck an aggro opponent, but actually I think the 1-mana-faster aspect of jitte is more important than a lot of people suspect.
Daze vs. Stifle ... hmm. I dunno man, I know Stifle is terrific and everyone wants to kick some butt with it now that Misstep is gone but this is maybe worth looking at depending on the rest of the build. -1 Wasteland -1 Karakas +2 (anything that can fetch a Tundra) if you did that -- or some transformation like this, yeah.
I'm not sure of the particulars of any debate between Stonecloaker and Flickerwisp in terms of a Death & Taxes build, besides knowing that they both can combo with Mangara, but Stonecloaker would have survived being blocked by my Scryb Rangers, which is cool and so is the grave thing (might give you a little maindeck grave hate which is lost in the move from monowhite with Jotuns) but I guess Flickerwisp has its particular efficiency and uses too.
Anyway, here's a build. Take it with a grain of salt of course; from an opponent interested in the conversation:
If you want you could knock off a Brainstorm (which would be f'd up ... I admit) and either add back the third Vendilion Clique or just make it a boring ol' 60-card-deck, if you're not a gangsta like me.
Elspeths in sideboard could be Retribution of the Meek or something else. Could drop 1 Canonist or a grave card, I'd probably do a grave card over Canonist, for Sword of Fire and Ice or Sword of Light and Shadow.
Revoker or Meddling Mage is also entirely up to you.
The question I had at the moment was what card have you guys had the most success with as graveyard hate (tormod's crypt/relic/loaming shaman)?
They all have their moments. Tormods is good in the mirror because you can shrink their kotr to 2/2. Relic is also good in mirror, but maybe not as good vs dredge as you will not be able to exile 1 card/turn, and then needing to popping it and exile your own grave too.
With reanimator gaining popularity, I personally think Loaming Shaman is too slow. I like to play with Scavenging Ooze maindeck, so I have a chance game 1 vs reanimator and dredge.
I agree. Ooze is a decent creature anyway as a GSZ target and can steal the fire of enemy Tarmogoyf or enemy Knight of the Reliquary, doing minor graveyard-control duties and yeah, at least plausibly might save you game one against full-on graveyard combo decks, if you can figure out what's happening fast enough.
As for the sideboard on top of that, leaning lately towards the Enlightened Tutor sideboard seen in some recent Mav' placings, with 2 or 3 Enlightened Tutor, and Wheel of Sun and Moon. Not completely sure on this however.
Match 1: Zoo
Game 1: I get stuck at 3 mana and he eventually gets past my Prison and Martyr life gain
In: Journey to Nowhere x3
Game 2/3: Go as plan. Lock the early mana up with Prison/Tabernacle effects. DoJ, Sacred Mesa for the win.
Match 2: 5 Color Aggro
Nothing really here, weird deck, he play all the any mana lands and reflecting pool. I win 2/3 on Sacred Mesa and DoJ's.
Match 3: Goblins:
Game 1: He steadily burns me and I dn't see much creatures so I put him on burn
In: 3 Leyline Out: Magus
Game 2: He drops a bunch of Goblins. Prison and DoJ save me this match
In: 3 Magus Out: 2 WSZ and 1 Sun Titan
Match 4: Merfolk
Game 1: Emeria + Solemn + Sacred Mesa = bad times for the.
Game 2: He got 5 lords on on T4? So sick.
Game 3: DoJ and Mesa get me there again.
Match 5: Burn
Too easy. Turn 2 Martyr and bust for 15 life. Then I use Staff to gain a few life a turn. Game 2 sawme open with a Leyline
Match 6: Zoo
Game 1/2 goes as they should with a T3 Prison followed by a DoJ and Mesa gets me there.
Match 7: Hivemind
Game 1: He starts with a cloudpost, so I know i have to go aggro. He plays a T4 Hivemind and gets me.
In: 3 Spreading Seas 3 Aven Mindcensor
Game 2: He gets mana screwed thanks to me
Game 3: He goes of T4 again.
I lose so hard to Combo. I need a way around that
Well, Angel's Grace can produce a pretty humorous Hivemind loss.
The choice is made because the protections, and the ability being pretty decent.
I don't run it because I use Mirran Crusader and in general my builds have very little problem outfighting enemy green aggression. I find much better use personally from SoFaI (equip to Scryb Ranger, Birds, Aven Mindcensor if you use it to fight Vendilion Clique and Delver; best ability, also, provided you have Batterskull and Jitte as lifegain options) and SoLaS (probably the sword that best combats enemy removal, via protections and a pretty helpful ability in many instances, although combating removal is generally a game you want to win with massive threat density moreso than equipping things slowly).
SoBaM and SoWaP are just worse and it's very hard to justify using either instead of the other three I'd say.
Natural Order posts plenty of Top 8 results as Bant (and some RUG ... also in Nic Fit) but I have not seen it used successfully in a shell that looks anything like Maverick for a few months. Hard to say -- combo might be pointlessly hard to line up with Thresh/Team America running around and no counters.
It's really a metagame decision I think. I find it a bit overrated in terms of how common it was for a while in our Maverick builds and it is something I would rather not run if I can help it, and I miss it very little (if it cost one less or contained a green in CC I would always run it) ... nevertheless it's somewhat helpful against a wide range of prominent enemies in every category (combo, aggro, midrange, control), including the mirror.
If you don't run it though I think you should try to run two Scryb Rangers and one of 4 Noble Hierachs should be a Birds of Paradise instead.
This is pretty good territory to explore. I think the former two are better than Top, yeah, (in Maverick) but I can't necessarily explain my feeling here.
As far as I can tell the card draw from Library is pretty helpful and something you can use to very good effect once or twice actually in most cases that you have it -- being able to is nice even if you don't typically draw -- also if you're just running one of this slot then I'd think you want a more powerful effect that you'll be happy when it shows up -- that said one advantage of Mirri's Guile is Spell Snare hitting the library a lot.
It seems difficult to work this though, at least if you don't want multiple copies. (Which would be itself unjustifiable IMO.) Against burn, they are perfectly happy aiming for your head instead of your creatures anyway. Whereas against the Can.Thresh-type decks, Enlightened Tutor telegraphing the play is somewhat undesirable, the single copy is highly likely to eat e.g. spell snare, and plenty of the builds are not massively dependent on red for removal. Probably just as well to side in more removal instead, or just using Choke, if you want to gum up the enemy machine guns.
I wouldn't say it's not worth testing though. Maybe others could report more success with that tech.
Yeah, but he's less likely to eat removal when you swing for the win than anything else (everything else is very likely to eat it) and probably has the best evasion too.
Can't sacrifice something twice to two different requirements and there is no way to have the fetch target 'in transit' when Smallpox resolves -- when something is allowed to resolve from the stack (as neither player has elected or been able to respond further) you carry it out in full and no actions can be taken mid-resolution; the ship has sailed.
You can bounce Gaddock to protect him too!
Just always experimenting with the manabase, me.
The idea is overlap, for example let's say in the list I posted, your match calls for grave hate. If you put in the two Crypts, two Relics, and two tutors, this is six slots that may keep one's butt alive long enough to take advantage, except that one of the pairs of cards is much slower and telegraphs to the opponent exactly what you are doing and what's coming -- Enlightened Tutor. Note that your opponent expects hate and sideboarded in Echoing Truth, counterspells, et cetera. Having two copies of Tutor is used because of versatility and because sideboard room is limited, but my point is that it's better to draw what you're going to be Tutoring for in a particular board than a Tutor that you will use on it. Also, it's often nice to have another available after using the actual hate card once.
Likewise with e.g. Canonist. You have 4 slots fighting storm combo.
Contrast with a list of 4 Enlightened Tutors and 1 Canonist. You have 5 slots (taking up 5 slots of the sideboard), but the Canonist is alone and they know it's coming. Or with 4 Enlightened Tutors and 1 Crypt and 1 Relic etc. It's slower and IMO flat out worse for the specific purpose of grave hate than the quantities of the six board cards I suggested.
This all said, I admit my ease is with much more aggressive decks than D&T. D&T is more comfortable being slow and less obsessed with brute speed when faced with certain combo decks, and also I suppose has more opportunity to use Enlightened Tutor for general versatile purposes, not just picking up a critical sideboard piece, so bearing in mind that you guys seem to favor 3 or even 4 Tutors I'm not saying you're wrong. This is just my reasoning behind 2-of Tutors in the appropriate context.
Yeah, maybe one less canonist, although I go back and forth on this. One is ideally all that is needed, but sometimes they do get to bounce it early. If you prefer -1 Relic -1 Crypt then I'd put in some other form of graveyard hate there, like +2 Jötun Grunt. Yeah, that sounds like a pretty good change.
Placed 4th out of 137 in a Milano event. Note the 2 Ramosian Lieutenant, 1 Defiant Falcon (why not 3 of these instead of the lieutenants, incidentally), and 1 Mirror Entity! OMG. Also uses 2 Crop Rotation, only 3 GSZ's, a different Sword in the Batterskull slot, and is low on lands.
Interesting, no?!
BTW, this is the resource: http://www.thecouncil.es/tcdecks/tipo.php?archetype=Maverick&format=Legacy
Great site, that.
You can run 2 Mindcensors, either in the board or in maindeck -- not a resolved question either way I'd say. Using 3 seems a bit more common but there's this list though, for example (first place out of 137, September 17): http://www.thecouncil.es/tcdecks/deck.php?id=6848&iddeck=49704
Which kind of looks like yours, with the 4 Stoneforge Mystics.
I think though that your creature count is low for Maverick. So making room for 3 Mindcensors is a way to move toward this.
Ultimately I think that Vial is definitely something to be experimented with now that Misstep is gone, but I think its inclusion means we have to cut things like Sylvan Library, maybe even one of the 3 equipment slots, not creatures. Just MHO.
Karakas, which doesn't bounce Jitte unfortunately, is just a way to bounce some stuff that gets reanimated. Something you can fetch with Reliquary. In practice this doesn't end up happening a lot and grave hate will save you more often than this does, but anyway the inclusion of one (replacing a plains or an extra fetch, assumedly) is something many advocate for simply on the basis of it not hurting much. I go back and forth on the decision.
I think 21 lands including Dryad Arbor + Maze of Ith is the lowest I'd want to go, yeah, although you're welcome to test, particularly with the Vials.
A lot of the ranking G/W Maverick builds sideboard 2.
Anyway ...
I played a bunch of testing games tonight against a guy testing this list! My deck is a somewhat unusual build of G/W Maverick, but basically similar to the more aggressive builds (that e.g. maindeck 2 Mirran Crusader) in its basic wheels of functioning and its speed/clock.
My impression was that you may benefit from an extra land or 2, and, particularly, something either in the sideboard or in the maindeck to seal the aggro match-up. It lost 5 out of 6 games to Maverick as it is, but I think it is close to being more comfortable with in the aggro match. I might suggest:
-2 Weathered Wayfarer (I know it's a good way to fetch Karakas and I like Wayfarer but ... with 2 copies if you want it I would try and somehow splash green lightly and make it a Knight of the Reliquary which is less conditional and provides beatdowns as well. I dunno. Just trying to make room.)
+2 of something. My ideas off the top of my head were +2 Elspeth, Knight-Errant or +2 Jace the Mind Sculptor (maybe better since it helps against both aggro and other things) or +1 Batterskull +1 Stoneforge Mystic ?)
Various thoughts.
At the same time, and particularly if you do the change above, in a couple of games it appeared more land would have been helpful due to Wasteland:
-1 Vendilion Clique
+1 Misty Rainforest
and maybe -1 Stifle, +1 Windswept Heath.
You could make one of those swords Umezawa's Jitte. Both a (correct) sword and a jitte can wreck an aggro opponent, but actually I think the 1-mana-faster aspect of jitte is more important than a lot of people suspect.
Daze vs. Stifle ... hmm. I dunno man, I know Stifle is terrific and everyone wants to kick some butt with it now that Misstep is gone but this is maybe worth looking at depending on the rest of the build. -1 Wasteland -1 Karakas +2 (anything that can fetch a Tundra) if you did that -- or some transformation like this, yeah.
I'm not sure of the particulars of any debate between Stonecloaker and Flickerwisp in terms of a Death & Taxes build, besides knowing that they both can combo with Mangara, but Stonecloaker would have survived being blocked by my Scryb Rangers, which is cool and so is the grave thing (might give you a little maindeck grave hate which is lost in the move from monowhite with Jotuns) but I guess Flickerwisp has its particular efficiency and uses too.
Anyway, here's a build. Take it with a grain of salt of course; from an opponent interested in the conversation:
1 Sword of Feast and Famine
1 Batterskull
1 Umezawa's Jitte
4 Mother of Runes
2 Meddling Mage
3 Stoneforge Mystic
2 Geist of Saint Traft
2 Vendilion Clique
2 Flickerwisp
1 Stonecloaker
3 Mangara of Corondor
4 Brainstorm
3 Daze
3 Stifle
4 Tundra
3 Wasteland
4 Flooded Strand
2 Island
2 Plains
4 Karakas
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Polluted Delta
1 Oblivion Ring
1 Stony Silence
2 Elspeth, Knight-Errant
1 Ensnaring Bridge
2 Red Elemental Blast
2 Ethersworn Canonist
2 Enlightened Tutor
2 Tormod's Crypt
2 Relic of Progenitus
If you want you could knock off a Brainstorm (which would be f'd up ... I admit) and either add back the third Vendilion Clique or just make it a boring ol' 60-card-deck, if you're not a gangsta like me.
Elspeths in sideboard could be Retribution of the Meek or something else. Could drop 1 Canonist or a grave card, I'd probably do a grave card over Canonist, for Sword of Fire and Ice or Sword of Light and Shadow.
Revoker or Meddling Mage is also entirely up to you.
I agree. Ooze is a decent creature anyway as a GSZ target and can steal the fire of enemy Tarmogoyf or enemy Knight of the Reliquary, doing minor graveyard-control duties and yeah, at least plausibly might save you game one against full-on graveyard combo decks, if you can figure out what's happening fast enough.
As for the sideboard on top of that, leaning lately towards the Enlightened Tutor sideboard seen in some recent Mav' placings, with 2 or 3 Enlightened Tutor, and Wheel of Sun and Moon. Not completely sure on this however.
Well, Angel's Grace can produce a pretty humorous Hivemind loss.