{"id":1345,"date":"2012-07-11T00:00:15","date_gmt":"2012-07-11T04:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ajmtg.com\/?p=1345"},"modified":"2012-07-10T20:57:56","modified_gmt":"2012-07-11T00:57:56","slug":"gp-atlanta-legacy-report-day-2-with-maverick","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/ajmtg.com\/?p=1345","title":{"rendered":"GP Atlanta Legacy Report – Day 2 with Maverick"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u00a0haven’t\u00a0written much since Grand Prix Atlanta was a few weeks out. \u00a0The two weeks prior to the event, I was doing nothing but testing when I got off work at 6pm to about 12am with Team Average Joes. \u00a0Even after everyone left I would jump on MODO for about 1-2 more hours of testing before I went to bed. \u00a0The weekends\u00a0weren’t\u00a0much better as I filled it up with Legacy testing at every opportunity, be it IRL (In Real Life) or on MODO.<\/p>\n

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From this point we will keep the articles coming out as before but with a little change. \u00a0Instead of trying to publish an article for every day of the week, we\u00a0collectively (Average Joes),\u00a0will be posting them only on Monday, Wednesday and Friday as we have them. \u00a0This is due to time it takes to constantly come up with content plus living an actual life. \u00a0Sometimes its just myself cranking out articles with others\u00a0occasionally\u00a0contributing, which is fine, but I\u00a0didn’t\u00a0want this to become a second job (which I feel it has). \u00a0I wanted to enjoy writing as a hobby but trying to have content 5 days a week and being almost the only person trying to make that\u00a0happen,\u00a0it\u00a0just\u00a0became too much for me. \u00a0This way it allows others to still contribute as before but it will give time to space articles out for the people who might not read on a daily basis. \u00a0It will also give us time to make sure the content we showcase is genuine and without haste. \u00a0All that aside, lets jump into my Grand Prix Report!<\/p>\n

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For the hours and hours we poured over testing, we found that Sneak and Show was probably the best overall deck as it seemed to have answers for a lot of different strategies while also being able to land a game winning threat and win with it in a couple turns. \u00a0Once we figured this out, we started looking at strategies to beat it instead of wanting to play it. \u00a0We did this for two reasons. \u00a0One: We did not\u00a0collectively\u00a0own all the cards to allow any one person to play the deck. \u00a0Partially due to a player using his Show and Tell<\/a>s for Reanimator and the other, the cards we needed were going to be almost\u00a0impossible\u00a0to get in time which leads me to number Two. \u00a0Two: Since we<\/em> found the best overall deck was SnS, others probably found out the same thing and were going to try and play it. \u00a0After talking to a few other play groups, they pretty much came up with the same information we did which further confirmed that, that deck was probably going to see a lot of play (at least in theory).<\/p>\n

Our team chose to play the following decks: Josh Rial – Reanimator, Brandon Math\u00e8ny\u00a0– Dredge, Bryan Elliot – Esper StoneBlade, and myself with Maverick. \u00a0Yes, we all had different decks but unlike Standard, its hard for everyone to have all the Legacy cards for any occasion as they are far more expensive and just overall harder to\u00a0acquire. \u00a0Knowing we all had to have at least a good matchup with the so called “best deck”, we all tried different things in our decks to be able to combat it. \u00a0Play testing Lands against SnS, we found it was almost a stone cold killer against it. \u00a0This was probably due to the Lands list we were testing was not the StarCity winning list from a few weeks back, but a custom one I have always been working on. \u00a0It had Knight of the Reliquary<\/a> and Crop Rotation<\/a> main which allowed me to “beat” any one threat they sneaked into play. \u00a0Using that, I liked the matchup Maverick had with all the other decks so I borrowed the winning tools from Lands to make a pretty techy list.<\/p>\n

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After playing with it for a few nights against the big bad wolf and the other decks in our Gauntlet, I found that I had a weak spot against Esper StoneBlade. \u00a0This was because they play Lingering Souls<\/a>, Jace, the Mind Sculptor<\/a>, and Perish<\/a>, all three of which were way harder to deal with than I initially\u00a0thought. \u00a0 I needed to figure out a way to even the playing field for that deck without compromising its current strategies against the decks it was already beating. \u00a0I talked with a friend of mine Benjamin Stevens (who was not\u00a0part\u00a0of our regular play test group) as he was also going to pilot Maverick for the GP. \u00a0We swapped lists to see what we both had figured out in our separate testing and brainstormed to see what we could do about our weak matchups. \u00a0The two ideas I had to potentially answer it and also be good for the mirror was A) Sun Titan<\/a> or B) Stoneforge Mystic<\/a> and Sword of Light and Shadow<\/a>. \u00a0We chose B which would allow us to break through the spirit tokens to beat Jace or just gain some life and rebuy a Perished creature. \u00a0It also was good in the mirror for pretty much the same reasons. \u00a0Having cards in the board that are good for multiple matchups is usually what you want to accomplish as sideboards can be very tough when trying to\u00a0squeeze\u00a0in the last few cards.<\/p>\n

The things I learned from Ben’s\u00a0list\u00a0was Stirring Wildwood<\/a> was good against RUG, playing an extra Karakas<\/a> in the board, and Crop Rotation<\/a> in the board (which I never thought about using even though it was in the lands list). \u00a0Doing more testing the night before the GP and having two different list, we both fine tuned our choices. \u00a0We both agreed that Elspeth, Knight Errant<\/a> was way better than Garruk Relentless<\/a>, and that Linvala, Keeper of Silence<\/a> deserved a main deck slot. \u00a0We ultimately cut Gaddock Teeg<\/a> since in the matchups we thought would be showing up, it did nothing. \u00a0We ended up not playing the exact 75 cards, but our lists were almost identical\u00a0within\u00a03-4 cards. \u00a0Here is the list I ended up running after staying up until 2am the night before the event:<\/p>\n

Maverick<\/h4><\/div><\/div>