Maverick vs. Goblins: The fairest Legacy showdown
GoblinLackey1 and myself decided to reignite the age old war between goblin and human. We hosted a set of exhibition matches both pre and post board to see where the match up currently is, what cards are powerhouses and where both decks struggle with their own weaknesses.
GoblinLackey1’s stream can be found here:
You can find my stream (Maverick’s point of view) here:
Conclusions:
Overall I believe Goblins got ahead, especially in the post board games. This was actually pretty surprising to me. I know Maverick doesn’t have a great time against decks that can go wide fast (Elves, Goblins, Pyromancer decks) but I felt post board we would have edged out Goblins. Zealous Persecution was the big game breaker I was digging for the majority of games as Goblins has a great ability to go wide and not care about my x/x Knight of the Reliquary’s.
Maverick has a tendency to rely on 1 or 2 heavy beaters to win the game which Goblins has some great defences against with creatures like Mogg Fanatic that produce more and more chump blockers until they find a spot to swing in for lethal (or near to).
Aether Vial vs. Green Sun’s Zenith is also a big part of the matchup with Aether Vial allows Goblins to flood the board faster especially in the early game but GSZ allows for great late game top decks and tutor-ability for cards like Scavenging Ooze to really get back in a game.
Goblin Trashmaster and Goblin Cratermaker have really given Goblins some new tools at attacking similar archetypes like Death & Taxes, but doesn’t punish Maverick to the same effect (who usually only run 2 equipment pieces compared to 3 equipment, 4 Aether Vials and some artifact creatures in Death & Taxes). Overall I believe the matchup between Goblins and Maverick to be tough, but not as bad as some of the other fair decks in the format.
Cratermaker’s other ability is also relevant against Maverick so the number of targets between it and D&T, especially given the resources Maverick has to invest in GSZ to grab certain 1- and 2-toughness creatures, is not very significant.
D&T has a very easy matchup against Goblins and really, with reasonable draws Maverick should be close to 50/50 against it. Thalia is surprisingly relevant, Mom makes ground combat a nightmare, Ranger and Birds have inherent evasion even without Mom, Maverick’s spot removal is vastly more efficient, and Maverick’s sideboard is much more likely to be packing applicable answers for the matchup since Goblins is so much softer to combo.
This isn’t to say that it’s a great matchup, but in my experience it’s not nearly as unfavorable as something like Elves, which doesn’t really care about any of Maverick’s answers (with the glaring exception of Zealous Persecution, which is usually a straight-up GG if it resolves at the right time). Having payed all three decks, I’d say that Elves should be able to farm on both of the others since it can generally just ignore what they are doing while having the ability to just win from nowhere, while Maverick and Goblins are pretty close to parity. I should acknowledge that my perception could be skewed by my recent experience of having success in paper against Gobos.
AWESOME website, by the way. I’ve been eagerly awaiting it since Maverick is now my Legacy deck of choice. Please keep it coming.
Great comment.
I’d like to quote: “AWESOME website, by the way. I’ve been eagerly awaiting it since Maverick is now my Legacy deck of choice. Please keep it coming.”