Punishing Maverick Update

After a few months of playing mostly Stoneblade decks, I reached the conclusion that Stoneblade was virtually unplayable as the format shook out to be dominated by Czech Pile. Considering the power of Punishing Fire in a sea of Deathrite Shaman + X decks, it was only natural that I returned to Punishing Maverick.

I've now been playing Punishing Maverick almost exclusively for over two months and testing all sorts of configurations. One thing that quickly became apparent was that the 4th Punishing Fire is necessary in this meta. Another reality of the meta is that Stoneforge Mystic is a flimsy threat in a non-Blue deck against the various Kolaghan's Command decks, and even against Grixis Delver due to cards like Stifle, Cabal Therapy, and Ancient Grudge.

These conclusions led me to do significant testing of lists without Stoneforge Mystic, in order to accommodate the 4th Fire + some other grindy cards. Here are some cards I tried in the slots normally occupied by Stoneforge Mystics and Equipment:

• Tireless Tracker - I got Tracker out in maybe 8 games but it never felt backbreaking. There was one spot I recall Zenithing for it instead of Knight to immediately make some Clues. This card definitely has potential and I'm willing to try it again. There's something to be said for having a continuous source of actual card draw.

• Ramunap Excavator - Adding to the long list of recently printed 3-drops fighting over flex slots in Maverick, Excavator has some strong synergies with the deck. My main concern with this card is that its another engine that is graveyard-based like Knight and Punishing Fire. For this reason, I generally prefer Tracker as it attacks from a slightly different angle. 

• Domri Rade - Any 3 mana planeswalker warrants a serious look in Legacy. I played Domri in a few events in 2014 and 2015 and he was never stellar. The +1 ability "misses" a lot since Punishing Maverick doesn't have a very high creature count. However, it enables you to bootleg some library manipulation in tandem with shuffle effects. The -2 ability has interesting implications with Exalted, Mother of Runes, and Punishing Fire, but isn't a reliable source of removal. One advantage I consider Domri has over a different grindy noncreature, nonartifact permanent like the 2nd Sylvan Library is that he functions against a Leovold. In testing Domri did tremendous work against a totally unexpected deck - Lands. I resolved him against Lands in 3 different games and won all of them...2 of them with the emblem! It turns out that once you have an active Knight and Scavenging Ooze, it becomes very hard for Lands to kill you or Domri. From this position its easy to make the Emblem, which evades Maze of Ith and makes all your creatures hit much harder. In the third game, I used Domri to immediately fight down a Tracker with my Knight, and my opponent scooped shortly after.

• Voice of Resurgence - While appearing to be a killer of control decks, Voice of Resurgence was downright embarrassing against the Swords to Plowshares/Terminus/Counterbalance combination out of Miracles, rendering it unplayable. However, in the new meta of control decks playing Fatal Push and Kolaghan's Command, this card's stock has increased drastically. It is also very effective against Delver and Burn.

After trying these cards I realized that while not always good, Stoneforge Mystic is a fairly efficient threat and has applications against an impressive range of strategies. Jitte ruins many creature-based decks and you're frequently happy to have more "looks" at it via Stoneforge Mystic. Playing against combo? Grab your Sword. Blood Moon or Ensnaring Bridge? No problem. Most of the cards I replaced Stoneforge Mystic with were either too clunky or too narrow. So I concluded the best course was to play the 4th Punishing Fire and limit the SFM package to 2 Mystics/1 Jitte/1 Sword.

All this being said, here is my current list:

Punishing Maverick, 9/30/17
Creature Spells (20) 4x Mother of Runes 3x Noble Hierarch 1x Birds of Paradise 2x Stoneforge Mystic 2x Qasali Pridemage 1x Scavenging Ooze 1x Gaddock Teeg 1x Scryb Ranger 1x Voice of Resurgence 4x Knight of the Reliquary	Noncreature Spells (15) 4x Green Sun's Zenith 4x Swords to Plowshares 4x Punishing Fire 1x Sylvan Library 1x Umezawa's Jitte 1x Sword of Fire and Ice
Lands (25) 4x Windswept Heath 3x Wooded Foothills 3x Savannah 2x Taiga 1x Plateau 1x Forest 1x Plains 1x Dryad Arbor 3x Grove of the Burnwillows 1x Karakas 3x Wasteland 1x Thespian's Stage 1x Dark Depths	SB: 2x Surgical Extraction SB: 2x Pyroblast SB: 2x Crop Rotation SB: 1x Bojuka Bog SB: 1x Reclamation Sage SB: 1x Grafdigger's Cage SB: 2x Ethersworn Canonist SB: 1x Gaddock Teeg SB: 1x Wear / Tear SB: 1x Scavenging Ooze SB: 1x Fiery Justice

The only spicy card that has stuck around is Voice of Resurgence, which is efficient enough and good enough in the right matchups that I think it warrants a maindeck slot over the 2nd Ooze, which I have moved to the SB.

Here are some updates on other cards I was testing:

• Always Watching - This has been a nice card and functions as intended. I've had it out in about 5 games and only lost 1 of those. However, hitting WW to cast it has been a slight concern. This card got squeezed out of the 75 to fit the SFM package, Voice of Resurgence, 2 Oozes, and the Cage.

• Wear / Tear - I honestly haven't drawn this card much, but it still feels useful and I bring it in often.

• Sudden Demise - I've switched this slot back to Fiery Justice. While Sudden Demise is stronger against "wide" strategies like Elves and Death & Taxes, Fiery Justice is still good against these decks while being way better vs Delver and generic midrange decks.
  

• Sword of Feast and Famine - This card is still worse than Sword of Fire and Ice overall.

Overall, my current run with the deck has been quite successful at the local level, producing over $200 of store credit so far. Notably I am 9-0 vs Lands and 5-0 vs Burn in sanctioned matches...playing 0 Deathrite Shamans! This should demonstrate that Deathrite Shaman isn't as crucial as some people think. There's an argument that you should play Deathrite Shaman in this deck right now mainly to interfere with your opponent's Shamans - but this interference goes both ways, and as a mana-hungry deck we don't like to have useless mana dorks.