Tournament Report: 10th @ SCG Classic with Punishing Maverick, 9/23/18

Miracles has reared its ugly head once again with a victory at GP Richmond. The deck was certain to become more popular as a result. Bad news for Maverick players. In order to have a fighting chance in this matchup, I needed to seriously re-evaluate some of my card choices. After consulting other Punishing Maverick and Miracles players, this is the list I arrived at for this year's SCG Legacy Open in Baltimore:

Punishing Maverick, 9/22/18
Creature Spells (21) 4x Mother of Runes 3x Noble Hierarch 1x Birds of Paradise 3x Stoneforge Mystic 2x Qasali Pridemage 1x Scavenging Ooze 1x Voice of Resurgence 1x Gaddock Teeg 1x Scryb Ranger 4x Knight of the Reliquary	Noncreature Spells (16) 4x Green Sun's Zenith 4x Swords to Plowshares 3x Punishing Fire 2x Sylvan Library 1x Umezawa's Jitte 1x Sword of Fire and Ice 1x Batterskull
Lands (23) 4x Windswept Heath 3x Wooded Foothills 2x Savannah 2x Taiga 1x Plateau 1x Forest 1x Plains 1x Dryad Arbor 3x Grove of the Burnwillows 1x Karakas 3x Wasteland 1x Horizon Canopy	SB: 2x Choke SB: 2x Pyroblast SB: 2x Crop Rotation SB: 2x Thalia, Guardian of Thraben SB: 1x Surgical Extraction SB: 1x Bojuka Bog SB: 1x Reclamation Sage SB: 1x Gaddock Teeg SB: 1x Council's Judgment SB: 1x Elspeth, Knight-Errant SB: 1x Nissa, Vital Force

• The 2nd Sylvan Library is one of the best cards against Miracles, and is fantastic right now with fewer Abrupt Decays, Leovolds, and Lightning Bolt-based Delver decks in the format than before. 

• Thalia, Guardian of Thraben has replaced Ethersworn Canonist as a threat that is also good against combo, but far superior against control.

• Pyroblasts have joined Choke as general anti-Blue cards.

• Council's Judgment has replaced Fiery Justice due to its ability to reliably answer Jace, or Back to Basics/Counterbalance if necessary.

• Nissa, Vital Force has joined Elspeth as another high-impact, resilient threat. Nissa might be one of the best threats against Miracles: she hits fast and hard, and can buy back troublesome cards like Library and Choke.

Conveniently, most of this technology lines up well against Grixis Control and Sneak & Show, two other prominent decks. The cost of these modifications is that we have given up ground against Death & Taxes, Elves, Reanimator, Shadow, and Storm.

My Saturday did not go very well.

Round 1: Grixis Control (1-2)
Round 2: UWR Mentor (0-2)
Round 3: A.N.T. (0-2)
Round 4: No show!
Round 5: RUG Landstill (2-0)
Round 6: UB Shadow (2-1)
Round 7: Miracles (2-1)
Round 8: UB Shadow (1-2)

After the first three rounds, my tournament was the poster child of "things gone wrong". I had some mopey draws against Grixis. I mis-identified what turned out to be a Mentor aggro deck as Miracles. My Storm opponent cantripped into a kill after a seemingly poor Ad Nauseam down to 1 life. The only highlight of the day was triumphing over actual Miracles.

Nevertheless, I decided to play the same 75 in the Classic on Sunday, believing it was still a good place to be. Around 120 players showed up for the event so was 7 rounds. Here's how my matches went:

Round 1: Sneak & Show (2-0)
Round 2: Omni-Tell (2-1)
Round 3: Eldrazi Post (2-1)
Round 4: Eldrazi Aggro (2-1)
Round 5: UW Delver (2-0)
Round 6: ID
Round 7: BR Griselbrand (0-2)

Final Record: 5-1-1, 10th place

Unfortunately I was paired down in the final round and had to play what turned out to be a bad matchup. So it goes.

Interestingly, despite the prevalence of Miracles it failed to place in the top 32 of the Open or the top 16 of the Classic. We'll see how well Miracles fares in the weeks leading up to Eternal Weekend in what is likely a meta well prepared for it. For now, I will more or less stick with my current configuration and see where things end up.

Props to Mark and TK for putting Punishing Maverick on the map in day 2 of the Open - playing Dire Fleet Daredevil in their decks no less!!

Maverick in GP Richmond Side Events

Unfortunately, I couldn't take the time off work to compete in the main event at GP Richmond. Nonetheless, I went up to Richmond to hang out and jam some Legacy side events.

It was natural to start with Punishing Maverick, as I hadn't played it since the banning of Deathrite Shaman.

Punishing Maverick, 9/1/18
Creature Spells (21) 4x Mother of Runes 3x Noble Hierarch 1x Birds of Paradise 3x Stoneforge Mystic 2x Qasali Pridemage 1x Scavenging Ooze 1x Voice of Resurgence 1x Gaddock Teeg 1x Scryb Ranger 4x Knight of the Reliquary	Noncreature Spells (15) 4x Green Sun's Zenith 4x Swords to Plowshares 3x Punishing Fire 1x Sylvan Library 1x Umezawa's Jitte 1x Sword of Fire and Ice 1x Batterskull
Lands (24) 4x Windswept Heath 3x Wooded Foothills 2x Savannah 2x Taiga 1x Plateau 1x Forest 1x Plains 1x Dryad Arbor 3x Grove of the Burnwillows 1x Karakas 3x Wasteland 1x Horizon Canopy 1x Maze of Ith	SB: 2x Surgical Extraction SB: 2x Choke SB: 2x Crop Rotation SB: 2x Ethersworn Canonist SB: 1x Bojuka Bog SB: 1x Reclamation Sage SB: 1x Fiery Justice SB: 1x Gaddock Teeg SB: 1x Wear / Tear SB: 1x Phyrexian Revoker SB: 1x Elspeth, Knight-Errant

Event 1, Saturday Double-Up
Lands 2-1
Grixis Control 2-0
UWR Delver 2-1

Event 2, Sunday Double-Up
Lands 2-1
Moon Stompy 2-0
Eldrazi 2-1

Apparently winning with Punishing Maverick is too easy, so I decided to play a last event on hardmode with GW Maverick. My list was inspired by Julian Knab's recent MTGO 5-0:

GW Maverick, 9/2/18
Creature Spells (25) 4x Mother of Runes 4x Noble Hierarch 3x Thalia, Guardian of Thraben 3x Stoneforge Mystic 2x Qasali Pridemage 1x Scavenging Ooze 1x Voice of Resurgence 1x Gaddock Teeg 1x Scryb Ranger 4x Knight of the Reliquary 1x Sigarda, Host of Herons	Noncreature Spells (13) 4x Green Sun's Zenith 4x Swords to Plowshares 2x Sylvan Library 1x Umezawa's Jitte 1x Sword of Fire and Ice 1x Batterskull
Lands (22) 4x Windswept Heath 3x Wooded Foothills 4x Savannah 2x Forest 1x Plains 1x Dryad Arbor 1x Karakas 4x Wasteland 1x Horizon Canopy 1x Gaea's Cradle	SB: 3x Surgical Extraction SB: 2x Choke SB: 2x Ethersworn Canonist SB: 1x Reclamation Sage SB: 1x Scavenging Ooze SB: 1x Oblivion Ring SB: 1x Gaddock Teeg SB: 1x Pithing Needle SB: 1x Phyrexian Revoker SB: 1x Path to Exile SB: 1x Always Watching

This deck was put together in a hurry and wasn't exactly optimized. There should have been another fetchland instead of the 3rd Mystic, with Sword of Light and Shadow instead of Batterskull. Also, Phyrexian Revoker in the sideboard should have been an Elspeth or Armageddon (I forgot my Armageddons at home, doh!).

Event 3, Sunday Regular
Esperblade 2-1
Aggro Loam 2-0
Miracles 1-2

This event went slightly worse. Notably, I won a game against Loam with Always Watching and Sigarda equipped with Sword of Fire and Ice. My round 3 pairing against Miracles made the "bug" in my sideboard super punishing.

In total, I won 1,200 tickets which I turned into over $200 in cash. A chunk of this cash was exchanged for signatures by Christopher Moeller. I visited his booth about four times on Sunday because I kept discovering cards he had illustrated!

Some conclusions reached over the weekend:

• Reanimator seems to be on the downtick (especially with the presence of maindeck copies of Reanimate in the Death's Shadow decks) and Lands is still a fantastic matchup (haven't lost a sanctioned match against Lands since Jan 2017). Therefore, I think the 2nd Surgical and 2nd Ooze aren't needed in the 75 of Punishing Maverick.
• I suspected Voice of Resurgence would get way worse in the new meta, but there is enough Grixis and Delver that its still fine.
• Maze of Ith is not worth running without Ramunap Excavator or Loam.
• Owen Turtenwald's UW Delver deck looks sweet. I'm not sure when I'll have a chance to try it though.
• The side event structure at GPs has gotten way worse than it was in the past. The $20 events are horrible EV unless you go 3-0, and while the $35 ones are better in that regard, spending $20-35 to play only three rounds of Magic is off-putting.
• Mama J's is good (get the fried catfish), but not worth a 1 hour+ wait if you're hungry.