M:tG Cribbs #32: Maze’s End in Standard

Posted on February 17, 2014 by RYANCRABBS

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  1. Hey man I am really enjoying the videos so Keep them coming! I definitely think the deck needs Revs since it is basically a fog and draw spell which is insane and I was thinking Kiora might be extremely cool in here as she lets you “Explore” while being very good after wrath, forcing them into committing into the second one more.

  2. The deck isn’t bad just has a few to many answers to it. I though maybe adding Pyxis to it would give it added flavor and a second option of getting lands out.

  3. Had fun watching that deck! I agree with your analysis, this version has some cards which ain’t necessarily “must have”, while skipping on cards that could make it better.
    I guess the Kiora mentionned above could be a good addition, fogging the biggest creature, giving some card draw and the possibility to put another gate, or even, if she can survive through various fogs etc., give you a possible other win condition.
    Pyxis could be really fun, but is way to unreliable – and if it gets killed some key cards can be gone forever.

    I think the main weakness of that game is still the after-first game side-boarding. It often wins the first game because it is a surprising deck (faced it once), but many decks do have replies to it in the sideboard, and then it’s really harder to make another win.

    Anyway – very fun deck and with some improvements it could probably even win some games rounds! ^^

  4. Man, a deck that wants to fog a lot of play lands.

    I think what this deck needs to be competitive is some sort of planeswalker that fogs and lets you play extra lands.

    Let’s keep our fingers crossed

  5. Thanks for the feedback. Like everyone has said, Kiora is a must add for the deck. It does everything this deck wants to do, fogging, drawing cards, and playing lands. And it does all that while being an alternate win condition too. The changes I would make to the main deck are -4 Merciless Eviction, -1 Bow of Nylea, -1 Negate for +2 Urban Evolution and +3 Kiora.

  6. hi, i would definitely suggest to play some coursers of kruphix and gatecreepers vine. vine servers as a chumpblocker early in the game and it fixes your colours a lot. courser will smooth your carddraw a lot. kiora seems nice too.
    i dont rly like urban evolution since its so costly. you can play that on turn 6 (tapped lands) and in that stage you either need fog or wrath.
    so i would suggest:
    +3 gatecreeper vines
    +3 courser of kruphix
    +2 kiora
    - 3 negate
    - 2 urban evolution
    - 1 bow of nylea
    - 1 merciless eviction
    - 1 detention sphere

  8. Also casting Merciless Eviction to get rid of Erebos was a mistake due to it getting rid of your Crackling Perimeter. After 2 more guildgates, burning him out with perimeter presented a quicker clock for your opponent.

  9. To me, it feels like some of your opponents made some pretty big mistakes, to be honest – you played much better, but your deck was poorly optimized (I played Maze’s End myself for some time on MTGO).

    For example: Round 1, Game 1, your opponent over-extended quite heavily into a deck that usually runs 4x Supreme Verdict main deck.

    In Round 3, your opponent missplayed his/her Skullcracks quite a bit, he could have blown you out with them.

    In Round 4, Game 1, your opponent played a Fanatic of Mogis after a Riot Control had resolved. I would never do this, unless I definitely lose next turn without those 4 power on board. He/she basically wasted a ton of damage from that ETB trigger.

    You played really well, but sometimes you could have banked your fogs a little longer, especially against non-burn heavy decks. I know it seems like you’d never run out of fogs when you have like 4 in your hand, but a fog that prevents less than 4 damage is not worth to be played unless you’d get into lethal range otherwise.

    I’d advice you to run 4 Urban Evolution, 2 Sphinx’s Revelation, 1 Crackling Parameter and 1 Elixir of Immortality main deck, those alternate win cons really help and can let you win games out of nowhere.

  10. Hey all, I’ve been playing this deck for quite some time now to a decent amount of success and thought that I would share some of the changes that I’ve made over the past few months.

    Regarding the main deck: The addition of Kiora in the main has already been covered – and for good reason, since she is just bananas in this deck (all of her abilities are relevant in this build). As for the card draw engines, I’ve come down to 2 Urban Evolution, 1 Sphinx’s Revelation. Yes they’re awesome to draw late game and it’s tempting to play more of these effects, but the fact is that drawing too many too early means game over against pretty much any non-control opponent. I believe that 3 is the correct number here. I also like playing 2 Heroes’ Reunion over 2 defend the hearth. It may sound weird, but in this deck it often acts as a “proactive” fog, allowing you to fire it off whenever you have the extra mana to do it. Chances are, this card will negate a future attack when you might not want to hold mana up otherwise. Same goes for when you are forced to use a fog effect against an attack that is threatening less than 7 damage – the card actually provides you an additional buffer of life on top of what you are preventing! It’s also MUCH better against red decks that are packing burn spells against you.

    As for the sideboard, I’ve found that running 3 Saruli Gatekeepers over the 3 Gainsays is actually just amazing. They gain you a massive amount of life when they come down and by the time you side them in, the opponent has already boarded out any spot removal that would be able to kill them. Any direct burn spell is also too small to remove them unless they want to 2 for 1 themselves (Mortars doesn’t count, since the card is dead against us anyway). Gainsays are good and all, but our control and mono-blue matchups don’t need much help in the counter department anyways. Finally I like 3 Abrupt Decay over the 3 wear/tears, since in this deck it is basically an uncounterable version of the same card. It hits pithing needle (the most important target in post-board games), underworld connections, detention spheres AND kills creatures too, making it an awesome card in a lot of different match-ups!

    Hopefully that wasn’t too long, but it’s awesome to see Maze’s End get some love here. I’d love to see more videos of it!