Green Sun for Zero: Primer: Punishing Maverick

ATTENTION: The content of this post has been migrated to the Punishing Maverick Primer I am now managing on The Source. This post will no longer be maintained.

I. Introduction
Punishing Maverick is a variant of GW Maverick splashing Red primarily for Grove of the Burnwillows and Punishing Fire. Punishing Maverick was first put on the map at GP Amsterdam in late 2011 as a way to tune standard GW Maverick to beat the mirror match. The deck saw a lot of success in 2012, but declined along with the Maverick archetype as a whole beginning with the release of Return to Ravnica. After that, Maverick decks shifted towards being predominantly GW splashing Black. Furthermore, in early 2013 Punishing Jund appeared as a Punishing Fire midrange deck to challenge Punishing Maverick. Since then Punishing Maverick has dwindled in popularity, but is still played by Maverick veterans and offers many unique advantages.

II. Deck Theory
The innocuous synergy between Grove of the Burnwillows and Punishing Fire was initially discovered in Extended. It has since become apparent that the theoretically infinite supply of Shocks enabled by this combination is extremely potent in Legacy. Here is how Punishing Fire lines up against creatures in the current Legacy metagame.

Punishing Fire was first adopted in Maverick decks at the end of 2011, primarily as a way of gaining an edge in the Maverick mirror. It turns out that the Punishing Fire/Grove of the Burnwillows combination slots very naturally into a GWx Maverick shell for several reasons:

Knight of the Reliquary allows you to tutor for Grove of the Burnwillows. With a Punishing Fire in your graveyard, your Knight essentially can tutor for a burn spell. This flexibility means you do not have to play a full set of Grove of the Burnwillows, which can be sub-optimal or awkward as a strictly mana producing land.

Swords to Plowshares allows you to trigger your Punishing Fires without needing Grove of the Burnwillows. Punishing Fire will trigger at any instance of your opponent gaining life. Grove is the easiest way of causing this to happen, but any incidental lifegain by your opponent (such as Batterskull or Glimmerpost) triggers your Punishing Fires. Like the above interaction, this one allows for greater flexibility in abusing the card Punishing Fire, which a Naya-colored deck is uniquely situated to do due to its staple cards.

Punishing Fire adds an axis of interaction to the deck that isn't creature-based. Maverick traditionally plays very much into the board, leaving it vulnerable to sweeper effects, particularly against control decks. Punishing Fire allows you to pressure the opponent's life total or Planeswalkers without committing resources to the board. Its recoverability means even with no cards in hand you are able to interact, and it also requires a different kind of answer from the opposing deck than your creatures do.

A Red splash in Maverick primarily for Punishing Fire comes with several other noteworthy implications:

Thalia, Guardian of Thraben, a Maverick staple, becomes more disruptive to your own gameplan since the Punishing Grove engine is very mana-intensive. Thalia is still a strong card in many matchups and can have a place in the 75, but without this card in your maindeck you will have worse combo matchups in game 1. There are few matchups where you want both Punishing Fire and Thalia in your deck, so you can decide which one to play main and easily switch for the other after sideboarding.

A Red splash and a Black splash in the same Maverick deck are not mutually exclusive. A 3.5-color Punishing Maverick deck is possible due to the fact that the deck is heavily GW, with numerous mana creatures (including the powerful Deathrite Shaman) facilitating color splashes. This version undeniably has a shakier manabase than a GWr version, but can incorporate most strengths of both color splashes and has been the best performing Punishing Maverick variant since 2013. Note that discard cannot be reliably played in this version, because discard necessitates access to untapped Black mana on turn 1 in the matchups where it matters most. With Black as only a splash, this scenario may be too unlikely.

Strategically, The difference between a Maverick deck with Punishing Fire and one without comes down to improved midrange and control matchups, at the cost of worse combo matchups. It is important to note that Punishing Maverick does not necessarily have bad combo matchups, and post-board still has access to a lot of the same tools as GWb Maverick.

Punishing Fire is rarely a dead card in game 1 since it can target the opponent. Furthermore, most fair decks struggle to interact with the Punishing Grove combination without access to their sideboard, so having this engine in your maindeck should greatly improve your game 1 MW% against fair decks.

Ultimately, deciding which Maverick deck to play comes down to your expected meta, playstyle, or preference.

Deck Comparisons

Its pertinent to compare Punishing Maverick with other fair, midrange Punishing Fire strategies, and analyze the advantages of Punishing Maverick over them:

Punishing Jund
This undeniably powerful deck is the polar opposite of Maverick in many ways, being built around high card quality and raw card advantage rather than synergy and card selection. There is a general perception that Punishing Jund made Punishing Maverick obsolete, which is incorrect. Notable advantages of Punishing Maverick over Punishing Jund:

Consistency: Green Sun's Zenith grants Punishing Maverick a huge edge in consistency, allowing moderation between mana screw and mana flood and selection of the best creature for a given matchup and board state.

White VS Black: Punishing Maverick has access to powerful White permanent-based hate cards like Thalia, Gaddock Teeg, and Karakas, which Jund really has no analog to. This results in combo matchups playing out differently between the two decks.

Better Punishing Fire Deck: Punishing Maverick can abuse the card Punishing Fire more efficiently and reliably due to also playing Knight of the Reliquary and Swords to Plowshares, as discussed above. Jund has to play more Groves in order to draw them naturally, and as an R/G land Grove conflicts with the high density of BB spells (Hymn to Tourach, Liliana of the Veil) in the Jund deck.

4C Aggro Loam
Punishing Maverick has become compared with or confused for 4C Aggro Loam, an archetype that has become much more visible since GP Lille in the middle of 2015. The two decks share many cards, and again there is a false perception that Aggro Loam has made Punishing Maverick obsolete. Notable advantages of Punishing Maverick over Aggro Loam:

Consistency: The full set of Green Sun's Zenith grants Punishing Maverick an edge in consistency, and Maverick is also less reliant on specific cards to function optimally.

Efficiency: Punishing Maverick is more efficient as it isn't encumbered by the deckbuilding restrictions of Chalice of the Void and plays numerous 1CMC spells. Aggro Loam plays loads of 2CMC spells and as a result can struggle to curve out, use all its mana, and cast multiple spells in a turn. These tempo losses can be exploited by other more efficient Legacy decks.

Threat-Density: Aggro Loam has a strong dichotomy between setup (Lands, Mox Diamond) and payoff cards (Knight of the Reliquary, Liliana of the Veil). While Aggro Loam's best draws are more powerful than Punishing Maverick's, on average Punishing Maverick is more threat-dense and has higher card and topdeck quality.

III. Deck Construction
Due to its toolbox-y nature Maverick is inherently a highly customizable deck. I will briefly list what I believe function as the core cards of a Punishing Maverick deck. Outside of the below listed cards, almost every other card in the 75 can be considered a flex slot. The Sample Decklists section thereafter displays a range of further card choices, which again come down to your expected meta or personal preferences.

Green Sun's Zenith - Enables the creature toolbox that is one of Maverick's distinguishing features, while improving your deck's consistency. This mutable spell is relevant at every stage of the game.

Mother of Runes - Protects your key creatures to give you a huge edge on offense or defense against opposing creatures or removal spells.

Knight of the Reliquary - Your primary threat, functioning as both a large beater and generating a lot of utility with the land-tutoring ability.

Dryad Arbor - Turns your Green Sun Zeniths into ramp spells with an X of zero. This unique card also has a range of interesting interactions.

Noble Hierarch/Deathrite Shaman/Birds of Paradise - Mana creatures are the workhorses of Maverick, which is a mana-hungry deck. Each have their own merits, but your choice of which to play should primarily depend on weather you are splashing just Red, or Red and Black. Thanks to GSZ, it is easy to play a mix of different mana creatures.