Keep on Punishing

While not a well known Legacy player, Fabian Goerzgen has a quietly impressive resume including two Legacy GP Top 8's and one BoM Top 8. No matter where you see his name, the deck next to it remains unchanged: Punishing Maverick.

This archetype is clearly a labor of love for Goerzgen, who has played it for longer than I've played competitive Magic and twice as long as I've played Legacy. Its a crazy amount of time to invest in one archetype from my insignificant perspective. Punishing Maverick hasn't been a top-tier strategy for years now, yet Goerzgen isn't just playing the deck-he's continuously putting up strong finishes with it.

The latest was at last weekend's 400+ player MKM Legacy Series event in Frankfurt, where Goerzgen split Top 8 with this list:

PUNISHING MAVERICK, 5/15/16
Creature Spells (21) 4x Mother of Runes 3x Deathrite Shaman 1x Birds of Paradise 1x Noble Hierarch 3x Stoneforge Mystic 2x Scavenging Ooze 1x Qasali Pridemage 1x Gaddock Teeg 4x Knight of the Reliquary 1x Aven Mindcensor	Noncreature Spells (13) 4x Swords to Plowshares 4x Green Sun's Zenith 3x Punishing Fire 1x Umezawa's Jitte 1x Batterskull
Lands (26) 4x Windswept Heath 3x Wooded Foothills 2x Savannah 2x Taiga 1x Bayou 1x Plateau 1x Dryad Arbor 1x Forest 3x Grove of the Burnwillows 1x Horizon Canopy 1x Maze of Ith 1x Karakas 3x Wasteland 1x Thespian's Stage 1x Dark Depths	SB: 2x Enlightened Tutor SB: 2x Choke SB: 1x Gaddock Teeg SB: 1x Ethersworn Canonist SB: 1x Reclamation Sage SB: 1x Bojuka Bog SB: 1x Tormod's Crypt SB: 1x Pithing Needle SB: 1x Null Rod SB: 1x Phyrexian Revoker SB: 1x Moat SB: 1x Engineered Plague SB: 1x Sylvan Library

Most of the comments I read regarding this list around the internet were quite amusing, permeated by a general misunderstanding of how the deck works and how it could be successful. Their confusion is somewhat understandable: the deck looks more or less like a relic from 2011.

Goerzgen truly demonstrates that experience is one of the most important ingredients of success in Legacy. No matter what the archetype is, if you love it and invest the time and effort in learning its intricacies, you can perform well with it at the highest level. This is a lesson all Legacy players can take to heart.

Check out my Punishing Maverick primer to read more about the archetype and see Goerzgen's past lists.