Understanding the Maverick: Clips4Lyfe
Hey, and welcome back to the ‘Zenith! I’ve been wanting to get back into fresh content as I work out a content plan for 2025, and what better way to start than by continuing the player profile series, Understanding the Maverick? I present to you our first guest of 2025 and Green-White Maverick specialist Clips4Lyfe.
Hey Clips! How’d you first get into Magic?
I first got into kitchen table Magic with a close friend after our senior year of high school. I had experience playing Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh! a bit, and the idea of playing the OG TCG was intimidating yet simultaneously enticing.
We had a blast going through his old shoebox of cards from 7th/8th Edition and making decks. Vizzardrex was a house that summer. We had no idea how to properly play the game, and it was awesome!
From there, I bought the Army of Entropy Shadowmoor theme deck (the current set at the time), and I was hooked.
How’d you get into Legacy? What brought you into Maverick?
Continuing from my kitchen table days with my good friend, we started branching out into buying packs and finding other people in college to play with. This got me heavily invested in Standard at the time—well, Standard-legal cards at least (from what I read online, that’s how you were supposed to do it!). It had been at least a year since I started, and we were now cracking open a ton of Zendikar.
Standard was Shards-Zen at the time, so I built an exalted-themed deck and fell in love with the Bant shard. We drafted often at the kitchen table, and my buddies would give me all the fetchlands they opened because “this is so bad; why would you want to deal 1 damage to yourself to get a land?” As young me brewed these landfall-themed strategies, I came across a sweet “combo” with Knight of the Reliquary and Lotus Cobra to make a ton of mana and a big Knight.
I built a Naya toolbox brew with Knight of the Reliquary, Noble Hierarch, Lotus Cobra, and a sweet Fauna Shaman package featuring Stoneforge Mystic and Vengevine loops! Baneslayer Angel was the GOAT back then, and I saved up a lot of trades to get a couple to make my deck more competitive. It was an incredible era for me.
Standard turned into Modern, and as I couldn’t keep up, some friends introduced me to a sweet format that was picking up speed called Elder Dragon Highlander around 2010/2011.
I was able to build Rafiq of the Many with all of my favorite cards I’ve mentioned. Our leftover binder piles became more optimized over time, which led to arms races and eventually into cEDH. I was heavily into the cEDH scene from around 2013 to 2017 (whenever Partners became a thing). As I got better at cEDH, I grew tired of the multiplayer aspect, where politics are inevitable (even in cEDH). At that point, I turned to Legacy, and I’ve never looked back since.
Shoutout to a great local venue called Knight Ware Games in Studio City, CA, where the owner would lend out full Legacy decks (for free!) if you wanted to play. I picked up BUG Control (I heard this card Deathrite Shaman was broken, so I had to play it. Can’t go too bad, right?), went 0-6 in a local 2K, and was instantly hooked by how intricate the gameplay was. My [poor] micro-decisions and sequencing actually mattered.
Most people who know me know I’m primarily a Jeskai Stoneblade player and have been on the deck ever since DRS was banned. But my love for Knight of the Reliquary and all the cool Standard cards like Green Sun’s Zenith, Noble Hierarch, and Stoneforge Mystic, backed up with my love for toolbox piles in EDH, has always brought me back to Maverick. Even though my best finishes are with Stoneblade or Miracles, the majority of my passion project these days is playing, mastering, and tuning Maverick.
Why are you playing Maverick in 2025? How do you feel it’s positioned?
Maverick is easily my favorite deck to play. I find it very difficult to pilot, very punishing yet rewarding for small micro-decisions that most people wouldn’t notice, and I get to play with some of my favorite cards of all time. TL;DR: It’s really freaking fun!
That being said, I feel it’s overall not well-positioned right now (but overstated by the community) and hasn’t been for quite some time. We’ve had some decent metas over the past few years (Grief meta and DHA no-Oko meta come to mind—shoutout to everyone’s favorite 3-mana Kaya builds), but overall, not great.
When creature-centric combo strategies run rampant in the meta, Maverick generally has a hard time. Maverick also struggles most against Ancient Tomb/Stompy piles, which are more popular than ever.
I think if you give up the Eldrazi matchup (I don’t think there’s any realistic tech that doesn’t warp the entire deck and make you lose to everything else), you have a decent chance against the rest of the field. Nadu can also be tough; sometimes they just have it before you can close the door, and there isn’t a great hatebear that directly covers its ability.
However, I find that a lot of these decks are beatable if you play and sideboard tightly, make proper micro-decisions, identify your role in each position, and play aggressively to your outs—both literally for the top of your deck and in an overall game plan sense of “What board state am I trying to create here to make me overwhelmingly favored?” I find that incredibly rewarding, and therefore, I still think Maverick is playable in 2025.
What are some of the pros & cons you see for each archetype (GW, Naya, Abzan)?
Green-White: Most people know me in the Discord as the GW guy. The question I get the most is “Why aren’t you splashing?”. I like to propose a counter question, “Why should I be splashing?”.
I find Maverick’s manabase to be very vulnerable in today’s Legacy scene, particularly because removal spells are everywhere and dorks tend to die before you untap with them.
Gone are the days where Delver just played 4 Bolts and all permission spells, or UW control was on 4 Plows and some sweepers.
I am of the camp of mastering a core deck/strategy before trying to tweak it. I think you need to justify a splash with essential haymakers before committing to one. GW has a stable manabase; the more you splash a third color, the more likely you’re going to have games you lose to your own manabase outside of your control. I want to maximize my deck before putting myself at risk of losing to myself.
A good friend of mine who is an insanely strong Legacy player used this analogy:
“I’m a big F1 fan. I was watching this interview recently which funnily enough applies to life and professional racer Alex Albons explains that to move up the ranks to the pinnacle of motorsport, F1, you have to go through f2 f3 go karts etc first. When you first sit in a car. you need to feel it. Understand it. And push it to its limit of performance. THEN your team will augment and tune up your car to further enhance performance. In professional racing it has to be in that order and not the other way around. So you don’t put someone in a car, find out they have gaping holes in their driving abilities, then mask it by tuning up the car. No, you need the driver to improve their skills first before tuning up the car.”
So the MTG analogy is that most people drop in on any archetype or deck. They barely understand it or can execute its game plan. They end up losing and respond with “I can’t win with it, therefore it must be because the deck needs to be changed.”. The issue with this is you end up ignoring those who have tuned the list for years and know how to win and play the deck inside and out. Like what the F1 pro was saying, you end up adjusting the car to poor performance which caps your ceiling, rather than optimizing skills first and ultimately raising the ceiling of both the driver and the car.”
Clips & Gary Fox put together a fantastic piece of content – a Deep Dive on Green-White Maverick!
Abzan (GWB): Abzan is probably my first splash choice. I think Grist is a unique and powerful toolbox card in any fair match up. Thoughtseize is great, especially online where it is the wild west of combo decks in MTGO leagues.
If you want to commit further to your 3 color manabase, Orcish Bowmasters is a splashable option and easily one of the strongest pound for pound cards in the format right now. I think the biggest con to Abzan is the tendency of people to oversplash cards because black has the most pushed cards in recent sets.
One example is that I see a lot of Plague Engineers and Opposition Agents in lists. These are very strong cards in the right meta – but put you at risk for having a house built on sticks. Maverick already runs too many 3 drops, and with a shaky manabase, it is easy for opponents to aggressively attack your mana and manadorks, and leave you stranded with a bunch of 3 drops in hand that take too long to develop.
Another example is that with all of these new black cards (like Bowmasters and Barrowgoyf), Abzan creates a tendency to splash these cool value cards. While these cards are powerful in a vacuum, I don’t think Maverick is a strong value deck that wants to go into a grindy long game. You have lower value top decks in the late game by virtue of being a mana dork strategy (who wants to top deck a Mother of Runes or Noble Hierarch on turn 6?).
Most other decks can easily out-grind Maverick these days – whether it is Nadu/Feferi shells, Fury, Yorion flicker value, The One Ring, Uro, Forth Earolingas, Mycospawn loops, etc. In my personal opinion and experience, I’d rather try to get under these decks than create a “weaker version of midrange jund”, where going toe for toe on the grind plan is very difficult to stay on par with the value threats of the rest of the format in Abzan colors. Not saying it’s impossible, but to me it’s capping the deck’s ceiling compared to the grinder strategies today.
Naya (GWR): Naya is another great option. You get Red blasts which can snipe FoW combo decks in addition to fair blue, which will always be in some shape at the top of the meta. Mawloc might even be a better reason than Blasts to splash as an incredible, tempo focused, threat off ‘Zenith that scales with time if you draw it. Minsc and Boo is one of the best top end planewalkers that Maverick can run. The biggest con of Naya is the manabase.
You are also playing splash colors against decks that run manadisruption; ie Pyroblast vs tempo strategies instead of Abzan where you get Thoughtseize vs combo decks that don’t run Wasteland, Harbinger of the Seas, Back to Basics, etc.
The biggest reason I don’t run red splash personally, is that I find fair blue strategies to be my most favored match ups on GW. The opportunity cost of making a good match up great to lose more slots to match ups I struggle with doesn’t make conceptual sense to me.
Do you have any cool tech you think more Maverick players should play around with?
Absolutely! Powerful cards I think are underexplored right now are triomes over surveil lands in 3 color versions, Elvish Reclaimer with or without Depths, Hushbringer, Palace jailer, Pithing needle, Zealous persecution, Orcish bowmasters as 4 of, Thalia, Wight of the Reliquary shells without Knight of the Reliquary (heresy I know).
Newton style Fiend Artisan builds with value oriented go wide threats like Ajani and Bowmasters with 4 cradles and no Knights, Urza’s Saga packages, etc.
Do you have any thoughts on ‘sacred cows’ Mavericks need to drop to move forward (similar to Newton’s take on Elves over the years)
From a competitive standpoint, I also try to avoid making a worse version of an existing archetype (GWx Depths, BANT Nadu, Yorion value decks, Cradle Control, etc) and focus on maximizing the strengths of what makes Maverick strong (ie a mana denial centric gameplan).
As far as the “sacred cows” of maverick, I actually think the opposite is true; that more players should test and hone decision making and skill sets with true and tried builds before making changes.
Do you have any advice for players looking to become a Maverick?
The most common mistake I see is people taking a proven list, and cut core cards for pet or situational bullets, thereby weakening the core gameplan of Maverick. I strongly encourage people, if they can, to extensively learn the ins and outs of the deck before making any changes. Or, talk with the creator of a proven list and why they chose that card so you can learn how to master it before writing it off for something else.
I say this all with a competitive mindset. Of course if you just want to jam cards that bring you joy and that’s your primary objective with the game then absolutely go for it! Just promise to post screenshots in the Discord of that blow out board state you made with Titania so we can all get in on the fun lol.
Lastly, what’s your current build of GW Maverick?
Here’s a list I’m currently experimenting with which does have a light splash for Grist, the Hunger Tide.
Where can people find / reach out to you?
You can find me in the Maverick Discord! I’m pretty active there, come join us!
Here’s some additional video content Clips was involved in:
Eternal Weekend Deck-Tech with Clips4Lyfe
GW Maverick Co-Stream with Karador
A huge thank you to Clips for their time and more importantly, their influential role in the Maverick community.
A big thank you as well to my current Patrons and their support! If you’d like to get behind my content, check out my Patreon!
If you’d like to check out previous interviews from the Understanding the Maverick series:
Understanding the Maverick: Harry Hacckett [Harry1232]
Understanding the Maverick: RascalYote
Understanding the Maverick: Connery Knox [Achillies27]
Understanding the Maverick: Mark Strassman [StrassDaddy]
I’m really looking forward to getting myself back into the format this year after a break at the end of 2024. Let me know in the comments if you have any questions for Clips or ofcourse reach our through the Discord.
Take care, play fair
Douges
Fantastic to read the view from this treasure player from our community!
Thanks!