Hello and welcome back to the ‘Zenith! It’s a great feeling to be posting new content thanks to the assistance of some of the more active Legacy Maverick players right now.
Eternal Weekend is just around the corner and I know many players are interested in their options for GSZ decks. I want to focus on Maverick today, but I think there’s a great amount of competitive choices for players of all types. Nadu, Cradle Control and GWx Depths seem like great options if you have the reps under your belt. Here’s my recap on how Maverick performed at the 2024 Eternal Weekend events.
So – when is Eternal Weekend this year?
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania—hosted by Card Titan – October 9–12, 2025
Lucca, Italy—hosted by 4Seasons – November 27–30, 2025
Yokohoma, Japan—hosted by Hareruya – December 13–14, 2025
Typically, the European and American Eternal Weekends are streamed on Twitch; however, I’m unsure of the plans for the Japan-based EW.
I feel Maverick is currently a bit of a rogue deck to bring to a tournament such as Eternal Weekend. Not many players would expect it, and some might never have played against it (at least recently). This in itself can provide a competitive edge when your opponent isn’t familiar with certain card inclusions and interactions in Maverick decks. Talon Gates is a great example of a card some players might not expect in your Knight of the Reliquary toolbox, which could catch them off guard. If they see Talon, do they assume you may also be running Bojuka Bog and start caring about their graveyard? Do they need to respect that? My opponent just put a GSZ for 4 on the stack—what the *** are they getting?!
Opponents might be more familar with Green-White Depths, potentially even thinking you’re playing Depths and feel they need to respect that. I’ve had that come up many times locally where a player has kept removal for what they believe was an incoming Marit Lage only to fall to my go-wide creature set.
For this article, I reached out to Stancil9, who put together the Abzan list that’s been putting up results; Schryver, who took Abzan Maverick to 11th place in Eco-ternal; Lorkac, who has been doing well with GW Maverick; and Mark Strassman for some guidance.
Hey Stancil, when did you get into Magic?
I started playing casually with my brothers around Thero blocks, we jumped straight into modern during Khans of Tarkir.
My first competitive magic deck was a modern Melira Pod deck and I switched to playing Collected Company Devoted Druid combo during the summer while I was in college. I played sparsely during college from 2016-2019 and picked it back up again in 2023 around March of the Machine.
When did you get into Legacy?
When I first started playing magic I remember watching a lot of the SCG tours and thinking Legacy was so cool. As someone who never saw appeal in jumping from deck to deck and would rather try to master one, Legacy seemed to be the most appealing format. I’d always wanted to play the format but it was always unattainable (both in terms of price and play opportunity). When I got back into magic as an adult I knew I wanted to play Legacy and the city I’d moved to had a scene so I bit the bullet and got my first duals.
When did you get into Maverick?
I’ve always been very drawn to green toolbox style decks. In modern I played Birthing Pod, Devoted Druid, and Yawgmoth. With this in mind, Maverick seemed like it would be a good next step. I also knew I wanted to play a Wasteland deck. Green/White is my favorite color combination, the deck has tutors for both lands and creatures, and is at a low(er) price point and having interesting play patterns so Maverick seemed like an obvious choice as a deck I could spend time to get good at.
Why have you moved towards an Abzan build? Where do you see the current benefits vs other builds?
Abzan versions of Maverick exchange a slightly worse manabase for slightly stronger cards. To mitigate the effects of making my mana worse I’ve tried to run the cleanest manabase possible (10 fetches, no tapped lands, and three Once Upon a Time.
I’m only running four cards in the main that require black (3x Bowmasters and 1x Grist) and four cards in the sideboard (4x Thoughtseize). I think that this is a good mix of flexing into a third color for the power while also staying responsible and not overdoing the splash.
Below I’m going to detail the four cards I’m splashing black for and why I think they’re so strong at the moment:
Thoughtseize:
In a deck without Force of Will, Thoughseize is the next best way to proactivly answer threats before they resolve. This is especially important in matchups where threats replace themselves by drawing at least one card – notably The One Ring, Mystic Forge, and Nadu.
Thoughtseize also serves as a fantastic answer to “win on the spot” cards like Show and Tell, Balustrade Spy, Doomsday etc. Thoughtseize fits the bill of being powerful, flexible, and good vs a lot of the best decks at the moment and can give you the time you need to resolve a thalia/teeg/ouphe.
Orcish Bowmasters:
The slots in the deck for non-green hatebears are limited, but the rate on Bowmasters is high enough that I think it’s one of the draws of being in abzan. Curving a mana dork into Wasteland + Bowmasters is incredibly strong since usually blue decks will cantrip into it to draw out of the hole. Bowmasters also takes pressure off your other creatures since blue decks usually clamor to get it off the table and it provides extra pressure on beans and ring decks.
Grist, The Hunger Tide:
Out of all of the black cards in the deck, Grist is the most flexible since it can be fetched with GSZ. It serves three major purposes:
1) Fetchable way to kill Murktide Regent
2) Fetchable way to kill flipped Tamiyo
3) The best card to fetch with GSZ when you suspect removal/sweepers but want to continue building out your board.
It is irreplaceable in all of those roles which makes it powerful and flexible.
Prismatic Ending:
While not technically a black card, and not specifically unique to abzan the ability to Prismatic Ending for three colors is a huge boon for this deck. Legacy at the moment has a lot of very important three CMC permanents that are answer or lose on the spot.
Spending GWB for sorcery speed removal is not great, but it works when you need it. Having 6-7 removal spells for threats like Barrowgoyf, Nadu, Blood Moon, Bombardiers, DRC etc. while also having the flexibility to be able to remove problem non-creature permanents like flipped Tamiyo, Cori Steel Cutter, and Blood Moon give the deck the density of removal it needs to hang with the powerful threats in the format.
Would you take this list to a competitive event such as Eternal Weekend?
If I had a competitive event this is definitely the list I’d bring. This deck has the Maverick core of manadorks, Knight, Thalia, Wasteland and a supporting cast of cards that are both powerful and particularly relevant in legacy at the moment, such as Thoughtseize, Prismatic Ending, and Gaddock Teeg.
Here’s the decklist:
This list has tools to beat any deck, but especially the top decks in addition to the brewers advantage of being sharp against their play patterns while they’re (likely) not sharp against your own.
How do you feel Maverick is positioned in the current Legacy metagame?
At the moment the major players in the Legacy metagame are a known quantity which is good for a deck like Maverick. The top of the metagame consisting of land light cantrip based decks plays well into the Maverick gameplan of Thalia + Wasteland. The other thing lots of the top decks have in common is Tamiyo. If you want to win in Legacy right now you need to be able to reliably beat a flipped Tamiyo. This version of the deck has both a density and variety of ways to beat both flipped and unflipped Tamiyo which I think is a big part of the list’s recent success.
This version of the deck is also fairly strong against the top deck of the format: UB Reanimator. Endurance, Keen-Eyed Curator and sideboard cards make you strong against the reanimate plan and 7 removal spells makes you strong against their creature backup plan as well.
There are obviously matchups that are not favored for Maverick, particularly stompy decks. Moon Stompy though I think has gotten slightly better since they started incorporating Urza’s Saga into the deck, a well timed Force of Vigor goes a long way vs them and Prismatic Ending can fight back against Chalice and Moon effects. Eldrazi is the other popular stompy deck in the metagame at the moment, but I’d suggest you just try to dodge that matchup.
Any tips for players wanting to pick the deck up / enter Legacy with Maverick?
If you’re just entering Legacy and picking up Maverick I think the best thing that you can be is unafraid to lose. If you’re just starting out you will do a healthy amount of losing as you learn. I think that the deck is very fun and feels super rewarding to win with because you have to really earn your wins.
Your margins are pretty thin and so even simple decisions like what land to fetch on turn one can come back to bite you if you’re sleepwalking through your matches. Despite taking some losses though enjoy playing, the cards are sweet, the play patterns are sweet, and everyone’s list is a little different which makes winning feel much more unique.
I took the Abzan list above through a league myself as I returned to streaming yesterday. Find the video below with match timestamps for viewer ease.
Next is Schryver, a Maverick player who took Abzan Maverick to an 11th place finish in the recent Eco-ternal event.
Hey Schryver, when did you get into magic?
I started playing in the summer of 2016 right before Eldritch Moon was released after one of my buddies brought up the idea.
I went to the store and bought myself and a couple friends each a Shadows Over Innistrad starter deck (I chose the UG one with Tireless Tracker) and we were hooked immediately. I took a break from playing over the last few years, but got back into MTGO and playing in person earlier this year.
When did you get into Legacy?
I was intrigued by Legacy from the start but didn’t want to spend the money on dual lands and none of my friends were interested in the format. I decided instead to try Modern and chose RG Ponza as my first deck because land destruction and large creatures seemed cool.
I played at one or two local weeklies and against my friends, but they didn’t enjoy having their lands destroyed so I decided I would focus on Legacy where Wasteland was legal.
When did you get into Maverick?
Maverick is the deck I started with and basically the only one I have played in Legacy. I’m not sure how I discovered it, but I think the price compared to blue decks plus the appeal of Wasteland, Thalia, Knight, and Green Sun’s Zenith is the reason I chose it. I have messed around with Madness decks and other random brews here and there, but Maverick will always be the deck I play the most and plan to bring to large events.
Why have you moved towards an Abzan build? Where do you see the current benefits vs other builds?
Since I started playing again my lists have mostly been Green/White and focused on Scythecat Cub (#catgud) and I have been doing pretty well (winning and then splitting the finals of back-to-back small local monthly events) but never getting any 5-0s in MTGO leagues.
I’m always tinkering with the main deck and sideboard so naturally I was undecided on my list for the Eco-ternal Weekend event. I noticed that stancil9 in the Legacy Maverick Discord had been having a lot of success with an Abzan list so I tried it in a League the night before. I had my doubts about how good Bowmasters would be and figured I would miss Mother of Runes (not too much) and Scryb Ranger (a lot) but I ended up going 4-0 and was impressed enough to register 74 of the 75 (Can’t leave home without Ramunap Excavator).
I would say the main benefit of Abzan is access to Bowmasters as extra removal for X/1s and another creature that is good against cantrip decks while you are hopefully wastelanding the opponent out of the game. It also somewhat helps against The One Ring which is tough to beat once resolved (ban please?).
A more reliable way to create the third color for Prismatic Ending is also important with the amount of Barrowgoyf’s around. Thoughtseize in the sideboard improves the combo matchups where you otherwise are just hoping to survive a turn or two before you can get a hatebear in play. There’s also the planeswalkers – Grist is obviously great, but I have just started experimenting with Kaya, Orzhov Usurper as repeatable removal and another way to shrink the graveyard to stop Murktide (with the added bonus of life gain and reach).
Would you take this list to a competitive event such as eternal weekend?
I would definitely take this list to a competitive event, but I would first try to practice against some more matchups and see if there are any improvements to be made. I’m not currently planning to attend EW but wish I was.
How do you feel Maverick is positioned in the current Legacy metagame?
Maverick is in a pretty nice spot. I believe we have good matchups against Mystic Forge, Cloupost, UR Cutter, and Lands with solid matchups against most other top decks.
Nadu and Moon Stompy are scary and tough but beatable. The uptick of go-wide Guide of Souls decks is a bit concerning without Scythecat Cub in the list, but otherwise I am fine playing against anything that isn’t trying to kill us on turn 1.
Any tips for players wanting to pick the deck up / enter Legacy with Maverick?
The deck is a lot of fun and pretty cheap on MTGO, especially if you already own Wasteland, so try it out. Locking your opponent out of the game with hatebears and tutorable land destruction never gets old. Make sure to win the die roll against combo decks and always have multiple Choke available in your sideboard!
Shout out your local store & community
Shout out to;
- The Arizona Magic Series and all the stores that host events (monthly proxy-friendly Legacy/Modern/cEDH events to qualify for that format’s invite-only event at the end of the year).
- The Maverick Discord
- Everyone who consistently streams Legacy and especially Maverick (Strassdaddy) on Twitch.
- All the Legacy podcasts that keep me entertained during the week.
- You (Douges) for being an ambassador for the deck and giving me the chance to share my thoughts.
Maverick fiend Lorkac was also happy to share their thoughts on Green-White Maverick and their recent results with their list.
When did you get into magic?
My first foray into Magic was when my dad bought me an Ice Age Tournament Pack with zero context as to what Magic the Gathering was, what a Tournament Pack was, or what a Trading Card game was.
Which means I didn’t even get into magic until Urza/Masques standard, with my Mother of Runes + Wall of Glare decks losing on the first few turns to Bargain Combo decks in Type 2 before it was eventually renamed into Standard.
Back then I mainly played the “Standard” format with its Dazes, Gushes, Grim Monoliths, Tangle Wires, Rishadan Ports until Kamigawa came around and I stopped playing Magic for a long time.
When did you get into Legacy?
Around the time of Dragon’s Maze I started coming back into Legacy. Not because of the set, but mainly because of the SCG streaming circuit providing great visibility for eternal formats that wasn’t just Forum posters meeting up on Apprentice like I did for a bit when I dabbled in Vintage back in the late 90’s and early 00’s.
While I initially thought it would be best for me to come back to magic playing Modern since it was the most supported Eternal Format at that time—I quickly found out that stopping before Kamigawa meant I had essentially zero relevant cards in the modern format.
However—my Mother of Runes were calling to me and so I ended up eventually building out proxy decks for Legacy.
When did you get into Maverick?
Right from the start.
Back in Invasion standard I had been playing a 4C Control deck brew with Sterling Grove doing a bad Enlightened Tutor impersonation searching out hate pieces like Circle of Protection: Red as well as Teferi’s Moat.
It was the kind of deck that needed UU on T2 for Counterspell, WUB for Dromar’s Charm on T3, 2WW on T4 for Wrath of God, while needing easy access to G mana through all those same turns to have access to Sterling Grove.
So of course my friend convinced me that Maverick was the GW deck that tutored for answers like I used to do, so I should be playing it.
I was a fool!
However, when push came to shove I did build Maverick where I went through the same evolution everyone goes through when initially playing Maverick. First treating it like a silver bullet deck to snipe at the metagame before transitioning into a generalized midrange deck leveraging fast mana + lock pieces.
However now I have moved further and have started treating it more akin to a tempo deck, with a stronger emphasis on its aggro roots than its prison one.
Why have you moved towards a straight GW build?
By having a stronger emphasis on tempo than prison, this emphasizes two specific shifts in deck construction—lower mana curve + lower land count.
Wanting to run 2-3 basic lands, at least 14 G/W sources, all while staying at around 19-20 lands + Dryad Arbor leaves very little room for a color splash.
I could either go down to just 1 Basic forest to add a 3rd color to my low land count, or I could go up to 22~ lands + Dryad Arbor to make room for the 3rd color + basics, but I can’t have all three options of low land count, 2-3 basics, and a third color.
A lower curve along with a higher amount of basics allows the deck two things—a more stable mana base along with less propensity for flooding. This is critical as instead of trying to win with strong top-end closers, my list emphasizes faster aggression + evasion to put the opponent at a big enough back-foot that light disruption impacts them more strongly.
Where do you see the current benefits vs the other builds?
My current tempo build is built around Frenzied Baloth + Exalted effects to apply heavy early game pressure on my opponents.
Haste + Trample means that my opponent is worried about my top deck draws akin to the top decks of Lightning Bolt decks. This makes racing more difficult for them they’d need to keep back their bigger threats if they want to be on defense, otherwise they might just die to a top deck haste threat.
The other reason for Frenzied Baloth is its ability to turn off both counter-magic and Chalice of the Void is very crucial in its ability to put tempo in your favor. This makes it so tempo decks can’t just lean on free counter magic to feel safe, and forces them to use up their removal earlier in the game instead of holding back for critical moments.
The last piece is the damage prevention nullifier. While it’s primarily used against The One Ring, removing the ability for Mystic Forge and Blood Moon decks from stalling out the game with the legendary artifact—it also breaks through Maze of Ith locks. The importance of breaking Maze of Ith locks is because we are currently in a metagame where the primary control deck of the format is Lands, and now that it has cut Red in favor of Urza’s Sagas and Malevolent Rumbles—they lean much more heavily on Maze of Iths and Glacial Chasms to stay alive, both easily beat by Baloth while your pasteboard Force of Vigors and mainboard Knights answer all their Urzas Sagas.
The Baloth is not great in the later parts of the game, hence the need for the tempo orientation. The higher curve of both Abzan and Naya lists means they often get to more powerful cards the later the game goes, while even the more Stoneblade focused GW Maverick lists have the power of equipment to push things through.
My version’s late game stops at Knight of the Reliquary, and so it often needs to close things out before its tempo oriented threats become irrelevant.
Would you take this list to a competitive event such as eternal weekend?
Yes—the two main strategies to beat at EW are gonna be Daze/FoW decks and The One Ring/Maze of Ith decks, both get neutered by Frenzied Baloth + Hatebears.
How do you feel Maverick is positioned in the current Legacy metagame?
The TLDR is that it’s a bad deck to pick as a plan to target the metagame—sort of.
Because of Orcish Bowmaster, generalized hate bears are no longer reliable in the format. The lack of a reliable generalized hate bear that hurt all decks (something akin to Thalia Guardian of Thraben) means you need to build your Maverick list to attack a specific metagame, and if you guessed the meta wrong, you get punished immediately.
With enough meta knowledge, you should be able to tread water with Maverick, but there are a lot fewer free wins out there for this archetype compared to before. The lack of free wins and the need for deeper format knowledge just to break even makes the deck hard to “run hot” compared to some of the more popular Tier 2 decks in the format.
Any tips for players wanting to pick the deck up / enter Legacy with Maverick?
Pick Abzan first, then adjust based on personal play style once you’ve gotten comfortable enough to go 50% with the deck.
The closest thing to a catch-all hate bear is Orcish Bowmaster, while the most reliable interaction is Thoughtseize. Lean on those cards while you learn how the core of the archetype’s structure functions and you will quickly learn how to adapt and adjust the deck to better represent how you enjoy playing in the Legacy format. There are stronger effects than both Thoughtseize and Orcish Bowmaster, but these two are rarely the wrong effects for most matchups.
When you want to be more surgical in your strategies—evolve from there.
Shout out to Merlion – a new store in the SF Bay Area who’s been proactively supporting and growing the eternal community there; shoutout to them and all they do for Legacy players.
I also reached out to father of Legacy Maverick Mark Strassman to get his general advice for players looking to play at Eternal Weekend.
When choosing your Maverick list for EW, think deeply about the decks you want to beat, and the decks you want to dodge. You will not be strong against all the potential decks in the field, and having 1-2 sideboard cards for bad matchups is not enough to swing the match up in your favor in my opinion.
If you are a strong Legacy player, I think you can win a lot of games playing very tight against the population that doesn’t plat Legacy that often, but wanted to participate in the event. This population of players will likely net deck, and not have near the number of matchup reps that you will have. This means studying the top decks is very important as the general population will likely play the exact 75 someone else did well with at an event that took place recently.
The best advice I can give for those who want to do well is do these five things leading up to the event that do not have much to do with the game of Magic.
1) Get that brain warm. Make sure you play a game or two of Magic before round 1. Getting into the zone from human being navigating to a convention center, having your cards, and finding your seat to a Planeswalkers talks time. Look at it like warming up before playing a sport or working out.
2) Take care of your inner animal. Ensure you have food packed and water near you. If you are hungry, dehydrated, need to use the bathroom etc, you will be at a disadvantage. Pack layers of clothes as convention centers can get cold, and your body temperature may fluctuate between rounds. If your round takes really long and you didnt have time to use the bathroom tell a judge and they will ensure you don’t get a game loss for being late to your next round.
3) Trust your gut if you get a read. Unlike MTGO, you can read people when playing. Poker is a game that greatly rewards people’s ability to do this, and its a very real thing. If your gut tells you they have something, trust it even if statically it seems unlikely.
4) Don’t be a target. I grew up in Philadelphia which is a big city with lots of crime. If you are carrying a backpack with thousands of dollars of cardboard, watch your surroundings especially outside of the convention center. If you go for drinks, leave the backpack in a safe place before letting your guard down.
5) Randomized doesn’t just happen. Be sure to shuffle your deck between rounds, especially if you have a very long round and you have some time between rounds. Your human ability to move the cards in your deck to sufficiently randomized them takes time. If you do not do this properly especially after long games, you may really mess ruin your chances of winning. If you say board out all 4 Swords to Plowshares against a deck when you reassemble your deck after match 3, you should take your time to ensure that you sufficiently randomize your deck when the match is over. You can also ask a judge for time to do this if you are cutting it close after a long match.
A huge thank you to Mark, Matt, Kevin & Alex for their contributions above. As I haven’t been as active as I would have liked over the past few months, it’s fantastic to have these players in the Maverick community who are putting up some impressive results.
I hope this article has given you an insight into where Legacy Maverick is currently positioned, what the typically list looks like and some tips on tournament experience.
For all players heading to Eternal Weekend – play well, play fair.
Douges
