[DTB] UWx Miracle Control

[Minniehajj]

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Who Could Have Predicted? An Unexpected Miracle: The Return of the King


I. Overview
II. History
III. Card Choices
IV. Sample Decklists
V. Tips/Tricks
VI. Closing Thoughts
VII. Further Discussion


I. Overview

Miracles still lives! Miracle control has existed for quite some time, and has gone through numerous iterations since the printing of Terminus, up until April 24th, 2017, where the lynchpin of the deck, Sensei's Divining Top was banned. Since then, Miracle control has become a deck centered around the concept of card advantage, in the form of Predict and Jace, the Mind Sculptor alongside with tempo-recovery and enabling of Terminus. With the banning of Sensei's Divining Top, Miracle began to play more library manipulation effects; the most recent being Portent alongside the cantrip suite of Ponder and Brainstorm to manipulate the top cards of the library. It relies on a hard to answer win condition, namely Entreat the Angels and Monastery Mentor.

All in all, Miracle Control has evolved since its lynchpin card got banned, and now exists within Legacy as a UW(x) control deck with many viable build paths, that seeks to 2-for-1 the opponent and take control of the game. With tools ranging from Snapcaster Mage to Terminus to Ponder to Counterspell, each card in the deck is a premium spell that has broad applications. With these qualities combined together, the Miracles pilot can sculpt the perfect hand with ease.

DISCLAIMER: It should be noted, that this deck is not easy to play and requires a lot of time and effort to master. Because the deck presents the player with hundreds of options and lines, making the perfect decision becomes much harder, especially when the calculations begin factoring in future turns. However, if playing a powerful control role is your cup of tea, this is the deck for you.

II. History

Placeholder

III. Card Choices

Creatures:

Snapcaster Mage: Any creature played in Miracles is played for its ability to disrupt the opponent and/or generate value. Snapcaster is the most common creature played in almost every Miracles variant. Considering the deck runs a good amount of cheap instants and sorceries the card is perfectly at home in this deck. While ideally used to flashback something, it is also perfectly fine to to use Snapcaster as an Ambush Viper when the game state warrants doing so, like when you want to get the pressure going early against a combo deck.

Vendilion Clique: The second most common Miracles creature for the main deck. This card is not always featured in the main deck as Clique is hit-or-miss against fair decks. However, most lists run at least two in the sideboard for combo and control matchups. In a Delver heavy field this card is probably better left in the sideboard. If you expect more combo and blade decks though it might be better to have Clique in the main, depending on the rest of your deck’s configuration. Cliques provides a lot of disruption, alongside a clock, which the deck sorely needs in some matchups.

Monastery Mentor: A powerhouse card in the pre-ban iterations of Miracles, Monastery Mentor allows you to convert all of the "air" the deck contains, the cantrip cartel, and gain incremental advantage as the game goes on. Eventually it'll win the game, and FAST. The downsides of this card include requiring resources to commit to make it powerful, while also being a 3 mana 2/2 vanilla creature, so it is slow and inefficient up front. However, Miracle control contains a suite of spells that work very well with Monastery Mentor, and is probably the current best deck in Legacy to facilitate the existence of the card. It can play both offensively and defensively, but it needs resources.


Spells:

Brainstorm: Assuming you have played even a little legacy you have certainly come across the format’s most iconic card. With Brainstorm and fetchlands every deck gets to play magic at a more consistent rate than usually since inherent gameplay variance like mana flood, dead draws, and such are significantly mitigated against with Brainstorm and other cantrips. This legacy staple is particularly important in Miracles as sometimes hands get cluttered with uncastable Miracle cards that need to eventually be put back on top to become live again. In addition to helping the deck making clunky miracle cards live again, Brainstorm has two other essential functions. Since it is an instant speed cantrip, we can use it to trigger miracle cards on our opponent’s turn.

Ponder: Arguably the second best cantrip in the format, Ponder is a fantastic addition to the deck’s arsenal of weapons. Much like Brainstorm, the card excels at mitigating gameplay variance and can be used to set up Miracle spells and chain cantrips.

Portent: One of the cards exclusive to the post-ban iterations of Miracles, it's essentially a worse version of Ponder, but has the unique capability of setting up opponent-turn Miracle triggers. It also allows you to play around such effects as Leovold, Emissary of Trest which definitely is relevant in Legacy today.

Predict: The lynchpin of this new iteration of Miracles, Predict is a very interesting card, and before the ban (and to some less extent, even now), polarized a lot of the Miracles and control community. Predict, at face value, is an instant speed draw two, but requires setup. Before the ban, the setup was relatively easy since you always were able to manipulate the top of your library with Top, Counterbalance, Jace, and cantrips, but it's a bit more difficult now. However, the card is extremely important because a control deck can never truly pull ahead if all it's doing is trading one-for-one. Predict is one of the only true 2-for-1 effects within Legacy, creating literal card advantage in a format that, strangely enough, is rather lacking. There is a lot of theory behind the card, and was quite dominant in the pre-ban iterations towards the end, but is now a critical piece of the deck. A means to pull ahead, a means to instant-speed a miracle, and a means to start a counterbattle on the opponent's end step are all quite powerful.

I have a short primer on the card, pre-ban, located here. (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?20529-DTB-Miracle-Control&p=956685&viewfull=1#post956685)

Force of Will: The card that holds the format together. Being able to stop combo decks on the play with your opening hand is vital. In a deck whose goal is to make land drop the chances you can hard cast this in the late game is reasonable enough. Not only necessary against combo decks but may also be necessary against decks with cards or angles of attack Miracles can have a hard time deal with. There will be many times you will be siding Force of Will out. However, Force of Will is one of the format’s most powerful and intricate tools available to blue decks. Don’t auto-side it out in every fair MU just because it generates card disadvantage. Sometimes you need it so as to not die to cards like Aether Vial.

Counterspell: Since we are a slow deck that seeks to go into the late game, it is important for us to have some hard counters in addition to Force of Will. Good ol’ Counterspell is our best option in that regard.

Spell Pierce/Spell Snare/Flusterstorm: If you want to play more countermagic, you can play either of these or both in some combination, but they are quite narrow at times.

Swords to Plowshares: Arguably the best removal spell in the format. It does not get more efficient than removing any creature for one mana and a card. Always play between three to four.

Terminus: The removal spell to end all removal spells – Terminus. Released in Avacyn’s Restored, this card was a huge upgrade for UWx Control in Legacy for two major reasons. First, the card has a virtual CMC of 1 – this is the most efficient option available for the deck and a strict upgrade from its predecessor, Wrath of God. With all the selection and filtering present in the deck, accessing this card’s effect for the low cost of 1 mana is extremely easy to do. The low price of 1 mana also helps play around taxing counters like Spell Pierce and Daze. Second, the “Miracle” trigger enables Terminus to be cast at instant speed. This allows the Miracles player to cast the removal spell at times more opportunistic, whether it be during the opponent’s upkeep, end step, in response to a Brainstorm, or even after the opponent unsuspectedly deploys more creatures. Instant speed also means mana can be held up for counterspells instead. Terminus is also unique in that it gets around "dies" or destroy effects by putting creatures on the bottom of the library, which is almost always an upside compared to a lot of wrath effects. Without top, it's a lot less feasible to maintain the End Step miracle, but it's still completely powerful as a 1 mana draw step wrath, adding an unfair element to an otherwise fair control deck. Portent and Predict also enable it on the opponents turn, albeit at different times.

Supreme Verdict : The other wrath the deck can play. While Terminus is more efficient, Verdict is always going to be reliable and doesn't necessarily rely on being "enabled." Verdict certainly has weaknesses: Requiring WW in the mana cost, as well as being 4 mana, make it difficult to align against any mana-taxing strategies like Death and Taxes and Delver w/ Stifles, and it also guaranteed to be a sorcery, making it hard to cast multiple spells in the same turn if you cast a 4 mana sorcery. Ultimately, it's up to you to decide if this sort of effect is something you're willing to play.

Unexpectedly Absent: A new edition to the post-ban decklists, UA takes up what once had cards like Council's Judgment or Engineered Explosives, it started seeing play as an instant speed answer to troublesome resolved permanents. It also has some seemingly cute synergy with cards like Portent and Jace, the Mind Sculptor, as well as Predict. These interactions are far more powerful than they might first appear, and was a massive part of the first few iterations of the post-ban Miracles lists. Still played in many iterations, it creates a crux on turn 2 where the Miracles player could cast Counterspell, Predict, or UA, and creates a focal point for the opponent. Very powerful psychological factor as well.

Engineered Explosives: Another anti-permanent answer card, EE is utilized very well in conjunction with Mentor, often generating 2-for-1 value while also acting as a powerful psuedo-sweeper. Played more in the Red or Black splash versions of the deck. Utilized heavily against Chalice of the Void decks, as well as
any token or "wide" strategies such as Elves. An all around great, and sometimes hyper-efficient card.

Council's Judgment: Was played a lot more often in the pre-ban iterations of Miracles, Council's Judgment is rather inefficient but has the higher upside of getting rid of pretty much any problematic nonland permanent. Excellent against True-Name Nemesis and Leovold, Emissary of Trest this card has the upside, when compared to UA and EE, always costing only 3 mana and having the ability to get rid of planeswalkers.

Entreat the Angels: The other important Miracle card of this deck. While Entreat takes a good amount of setup, it helps this rather slow deck close out games quickly. This is the main reason that so many lists run Entreat as one of its win conditions still, and is resilient to any resource taxation, as well as being primarily uninteractable, outside of countermagic.


Planeswalkers:

Jace, the Mind Sculptor: Needing no introduction, Jace, the Mind Sculptor is one of, if not, the most powerful planeswalkers in all of Magic: The Gathering. Considered “better than all”, each of Jace’s four abilities are extremely relevant to the Miracles game plan. First and foremost, Jace’s value comes from the fact that he is a card advantage engine that doubles as a win condition. Jace’s Brainstorm ability is disproportionately powerful in Miracles than in other decks because it has the added benefit of resetting uncastable miracles. Additionally, since the deck has such concentrated raw power, each Jace Brainstorm pushes you forward by a huge amount, making it all the easier to drown the opponent out. The ultimate is also a realistic win condition that closes games quite frequently. However, this typically occurs once the game state has been locked down. As a control deck, the ideal deckbuilding scenario is one where there are as few win conditions as possible, as win conditions don’t always contribute to the deck’s primary game plan. So, that Jace is a win condition that forwards our plan and more makes it easily overqualified for slots in the list. The other two abilities of Jace are also amazing. Fate sealing (the +2 ability) is fantastic in that it allows you to disrupt your opponent’s draws while filtering your own. In conjunction with the cantrip suite, fate sealing yourself allows you to blaze through your deck at the same speed as Brainstorming each turn – the tradeoff here is sacrificing card advantage for a means to close the game, which can be correct in certain situations. Fate sealing the opponent deflects cards they might draw that can’t be easily handled. Lastly, the Unsummon effect on this planeswalker is relevant in that it is a pseudo creature removal spell that buys time to stabilize. For example, using the -1 ability on an Insectile Aberration is great since the opponent must now recast the Delver of Secrets AND have it flip, while also eventually buying back your own Snapcaster Mages in order to generate additional value. Jace’s only real downside is that it costs a whopping four mana, which sometimes is difficult to cast in a format like Legacy.

Gideon, Ally of Zendikar: A walker that saw play in some small spots pre-ban, it's started to see a lot more testing in the post ban world. Gideon is unique because it cannot get bolted, isn't blue so it can't get pyroblasted, and costs more than 3 mana so it cannot get decayed, or killed byFatal Push for a multitude of reasons, Gideon excels at any fair matchup because it's extremely difficult to kill and will quickly create a dominant board presence. While still on the level of "fringe," Gideon is very powerful as the format continues to get more and more fair.


Utility Lands:

Karakas: Karakas is a strong utility land in Legacy, having wide applications across various matchups. Great against Leovold (sometimes), and other legendary creatures like Emrakul, the Aeons Torn, Griselbrand, and Iona, Shield of Emeria. Karakas is also very useful alongside your own legendary creatures, such as Venser, Shaper Savant as well as the aforementioned Vendilion Clique to create a sort of "lock" on the opponent and win via your value threats. There is, however, a cost associated with the inclusion of Karakas is that it is, at worst, a white source that gets wastelanded, but also doesn't tap for blue mana. Because Miracles is rather mana-color intensive, not all Miracles builds can facilitate the inclusion of it. To this end, Karakas is often only played in the UW versions of neo-Miracles, as the manabase in the splash variants is difficult to keep consistent while also playing Karakas.


Common Sideboard Choices:

Pyroblast /Red Elemental Blast: There are (arguably) two reasons to be splashing Red in neo-Miracles, and access to sideboard Blasts is one of them. The blasts excel at opposing blue strategies and opposing card advantage battles, namely any deck that utilizes Snapcaster Mage, True-Name Nemesis, Leovold, and Jace, the Mind Sculptor. A one mana counterspell for all of these effects, the card is extremely powerful and can be utilized extremely well with your own Snapcaster mages to break open blue mirror matches.

Blood Moon: The other reason for most people to consider playing the red splash, Blood Moon is very polarizing and powerful in a bevy of matchups. Since our own fetchlands are a lot less powerful without Top in the deck, it's less of a detriment to shut them off, so Blood Moon seems more appealing. Used to shut down popular strategies such as 4c Leovold decks or Lands, Blood Moon is often a meta-dependent card and can sometimes be, simultaneously, the least sideboarded card AND the most powerful card in your sideboard.

Back to Basics: If you're not playing red and still would like a lot of what Blood Moon does, Back to Basics is both a good replacement, but also sometimes an upgrade! The weakness in comparison to Blood Moon is that it allows the opponent to continue making land drops and cast spells, but Back to Basics doesn't ever really mess with your own mana, and still turns on fetchlands. Often sharing the same effect, there are a few cases where one is better than the other, but definitely a strong consideration when building a sideboard.

Flusterstorm: One of the sideboard counterspells of choice for most Miracle pilots. Usually played as a two or three-of. Usually brought in against any combo deck, Delver decks with Stifle, and the Mirror. Extremely powerful alongside Snapcaster Mage as well, but kind of a pain to resolve correctly on MTGO! Beware!

Surgical Extraction : The premium choice for graveyard hate for Miracles, due to it being "free," and not interfering with Snapcaster Mage's graveyard abilities. Since one of the premiere decks of the format is RB Reanimator, having a free form of disruption is extremely critical, and Surgical just does everything the deck wants to be doing against opposing graveyards.

Disenchant/Wear//Tear: Referred to as an anti-annoying card, these cards were often grouped together and played based on your mana considerations. If you had a glut of red, and perhaps a mountain, Wear//Tear was often played because of its fuse upside, while Disenchant has no such requirement and is able to be played solely off of white mana. You see less copies of these cards than you used to, mainly because most decklists have access to main deck ways to interact with the cards you're normally using this on, Unexpectedly Absent. That being said, if lists move away from UA, then they will also be forced to add more copies of these in their sideboards.

Pithing Needle: Generic hate. Mainly used for Sneak attack, Mother of Runes, Thespian's Stage, Aether Vial, Equipment, with many many other applications.

Izzet Staticaster/Pyroclasm/Kozilek's Return: An additional red-based anti-creature effect, which one you use is often based on which matchup you want to target, while maintain\ing ancillary effectiveness against other decks. For example, Staticaster shines vs something like Infect and Elves, while still maintaining utility against Grixis Pyromancer/Delver and a slew of other decks, as it is a source of persistent removal. The one-of effects, Pyroclasm/Kozilek's Return, are primarily impressive when against a lot of x-2 decks, since they can kill both Young Pyromancer AND Deathrite Shama in one swoop. If you play these effects, these considerations are very important to make.

Ethersworn Canonist: A card that only saw fringe play before the ban, this card/effect is rather important now since neo-Miracles is not able to lean on Counterbalance against the slew of combo decks that Legacy has to offer. Canonist is an anti-storm card, that you utilize against combo decks to primarily protect the Queen and hose them. While it has some dyssynergy alongside Snapcaster Mage, the power level of what it has to offer is often worth it alone.

Leyline of Sanctity: A somewhat strange inclusion, at first glance, some lists have shifted away from Canonist as storm players begin to play more answers to the card, and towards Leyline which is often just as powerful, while less of a clock. Leyline offers some utility against Burn, as well as the Twirl/Lejay Grixis Pyromancer deck that attacks Miracles's hands. Definitely a strong consideration if you want to maintain your game plan without disruption against these decks.

Containment Priest: Always a mainstay consideration in any white deck in Legacy, Containment Priest is very good at what it does. Hosing Show and Tell decks, as well as reanimation strategies and creature tutor strategies (Green Sun's Zenith and Natural Order), Containment Priest is quite powerful at accomplishing what you need her to do. Being 2 mana, however, requires that you play her alongside other cheaper, more efficient effects, and protect her as best as you can.


IV. Sample Decklists

Stefano Garcia's Soothsaying Miracles:

3 Counterbalance
2 soothsaying
3 monastery mentor
3 Snapcaster mage
2 jace, the Mind Sculptor
3 swords to Plowshares
4 Terminus
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Council's judgment
2 Counterspell
4 Force of will
4 Brainstorm
4 ponder
2 predict
4 Polluted Delta
4 Flooded Strand
1 Arid mesa
2 tundra
3 Volcanic Island
4 Island
2 Plains

Sb:
2 blood moon
1 Counterbalance
2 wear / tear
1 Izzet staticaster
2 surgical extraction
1 containment priest
3 Flusterstorm
2 Pyroblast
1 Red Elemental blast

Anuraag Das's Miracles from QFP: Black Lotus Event:

1 Arid Mesa
4 Flooded Strand
4 Island
2 Plains
4 Scalding Tarn
3 Tundra
2 Volcanic Island
3 Snapcaster Mage
4 Brainstorm
1 Council's Judgment
1 Counterspell
1 Entreat the Angels
4 Force of Will
4 Ponder
3 Portent
3 Predict
1 Supreme Verdict
3 Swords to Plowshares
3 Terminus
1 Unexpectedly Absent
3 Counterbalance
3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
2 Search for Azcanta


1 Disenchant
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Entreat the Angels
3 Flusterstorm
3 Pyroblast
1 Snapcaster Mage
2 Supreme Verdict
3 Surgical Extraction

Nicklas Lallo's Miracles:

3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
3 Snapcaster Mage
1 Entreat the Angels
4 Ponder
3 Portent
1 Supreme Verdict
4 Terminus
4 Brainstorm
1 Counterspell
4 Force of Will
3 Predict
3 Swords to Plowshares
1 Unexpectedly Absent
3 Counterbalance
2 Search for Azcanta
2 Arid Mesa
4 Flooded Strand
4 Island
2 Plains
2 Scalding Tarn
3 Tundra
3 Volcanic Island


1 Council's Judgment
1 Disenchant
1 Engineered Explosives
3 Flusterstorm
1 From the Ashes
1 Monastery Mentor
1 Null Rod
3 Pyroblast
1 Red Elemental Blast
2 Surgical Extraction

Callum Smith's Miracles:
3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
3 Snapcaster Mage
1 Council's Judgment
2 Entreat the Angels
4 Ponder
3 Portent
4 Terminus
4 Brainstorm
2 Counterspell
4 Force of Will
2 Predict
4 Swords to Plowshares
2 Counterbalance
2 Search for Azcanta
1 Arid Mesa
4 Flooded Strand
4 Island
1 Misty Rainforest
2 Plains
1 Polluted Delta
1 Scalding Tarn
3 Tundra
3 Volcanic Island


1 Council's Judgment
1 Counterbalance
1 Disenchant
3 Flusterstorm
2 Monastery Mentor
2 Pyroblast
1 Red Elemental Blast
3 Surgical Extraction
1 Vendilion Clique

V. Tips and Tricks
1. When playing against Wasteland Decks, and you have a fetch and a Predict you've set up, you can fetch, hold priority, cast Predict, to play around your opponents ability to "get you" via wastelanding your fetch land.


VI. Closing Thoughts
Miracle Control continues to exist in Legacy, as a staple of the format. A natural gravitation towards anyone that played the old deck, its strengths and weaknesses are bit more polarized. I believe that this deck is here to stay and definitely deserves both respect and consideration when considering any Legacy tournament you might play in today.

Special thanks to Anuraag Das, Callum Smith, Marcus Ewaldh, Nicklas Lallo, Anders Thiesen, Angelo Cadei and the rest of the Miracles cabal on helping both put Miracles back on the map in a post-Top world, as well as the work on this primer! Special thanks to Anthony DeLorenzi for the formatting and notation assistance!

VII. Further Discussion

The Miracles Discord Server is a good place to chat with other miracles enthusiasts:https://discord.gg/erDdV5a
The article by PV called Countering Spells: https://www.channelfireball.com/articles/countering-spells/
The article by Nick Spagnolo called Casting Blue Spells: http://magic.tcgplayer.com/db/article.asp?ID=9237
The article by Reid Duke called Control decks: https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/lo/control-decks-2014-10-06
The article by PV called Reducing Variance: https://www.channelfireball.com/home/pvs-playhouse-the-art-of-reducing-variance/
The article by PV called Technical Play: https://www.channelfireball.com/home/pvs-playhouse-technical-play/
The article by Mike Flores called Who’s the beatdown: http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/fundamentals/3692_Whos_The_Beatdown.html
The follow up article by Zvi Mowshowitz called: Who’s The Beatdown II: Multitasking: http://magic.tcgplayer.com/db/print.asp?ID=2754
The article by Reid Duke called Thoughtseize you: http://www.starcitygames.com/article/26855_Thoughtseize-You.html
The article by Chad Ellis called The Danger of Cool Things: http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/fundamentals/3689_The_Danger_Of_Cool_Things.html

[Minniehajj]

Miracles FAQ And Deckbuilding Rant by Nicklas Lallo (ItIsUnfair)
Source Google Doc for suggesting:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Kz8-adPGaM_PkIqR2eKc3YoMYpsrWHmTp2yWJ4xVcso/edit?usp=sharing

Mountain
The reasons to play with a basic mountain are in my opinion 2: Either, because you play with From the Ashes (FTA) and never want to end up with 0 red sources left in your deck. Or, more commonly, because you want to board in a significant number of red cards (especially sorcery speed cards) against decks with wasteland and possibly Life from the Loam. So what does that actually mean?
If you want to play pyroclasm against d&t you should probably have a mountain. But it is also possible to play with 3 Volcanics.
If there is a very common matchup with 4 wastelands where you need to board in all your blasts and possibly more red cards you should probably play a mountain.
What do I recommend? Right now, I would not play a basic mountain, the reason is that right now the main blue decks that you want blasts against are all playing either 0 wastelands, or very few. Go back like 1 year from now when Shardless was the main BUG deck (before Leovold essentially) that we really needed blasts against (Ancestral+Jace) but who also often had up to 4 wasteland, mountain especially out of the sideboard, was very common and it made sense. But now the meta is different. Stoneblade decks that play wasteland are less common (they usually opt to splash a 4th color instead (bant+Leovold)), and the same is true with the BUG decks, now they play 4 colors for Leovold+red, and can’t fit any wasteland or only very few, so there is less reason to play mountain there. The other main blast matchups are largely unchanged, namely things like the mirror and show & tell decks. One reason to play mountain would be if you really really want a high number of blasts against the delver decks, but I don’t think that is necessary right now, maybe that could change if they started playing like 4 TNN in the future though.

3rd Volcanic
The 3rd volcanic is often seen in lists that have multiple red cards, but no basic mountain (Assuming for the moment that 2 volcanics are the norm). I don’t think this is necessary if your only red cards are 3 blasts and nothing else, especially since shardless is so rare now a days (more or less replaced by a similar deck without wastelands). But if you decide to play more red cards, like 4 blast, 2 wear//tear, maybe a blood moon, then yeah, I would certainly advise that you add a 3rd volcanic. The mana base of 3 Volcanics 3 Tundras, 4 islands, 2 plains, 8 fetches is one of the most common ones right now. A 9th fetch is always nice with all our cantrips, cb, azcanta, etc, but it will require you to sacrifice something else, such as maybe this volcanic (if you have few red cards), the 3rd tundra (if you have few double white cards) or the 4th basic island. Or of course, if you play 21 lands (at which point the sideboard basic mountain is one of the most common solutions instead). So, if you have more red cards than only 3 blasts I like playing the volcanic, but if you only splash for those 3 and nothing else you are probably better of with another fetch instead of the 3rd volcanic.

Sweepers
The best sweeper is really Terminus. It is one of the main reasons why this deck is viable at all. We have access to some of the best removal in all of legacy in both Terminus and Swords to Plowshares. But there is always a small argument for splitting your removal into different cards, cards like Sanctum Prelate, Stifle, Meddling Mage, or Gaddock Teeg, all gets much worse if we have varied our removal suite. I would argue that Supreme Verdict is a good 1:of right now, and so is possibly Pyroclasm, Kozilek’s Return, and EE. Let’s talk shortly about each one:
Verdict is the most expensive at 4 mana, but it does work against almost everything: Delver, elves, d&t and eldrazi. The main disadvantages of verdict are: Rishadan Port can easily stop it if they have a good read on you; Doesn’t work against Teeg decks; Is so costly so you can rarely play both SV and another spell during the same turn. The last one is probably the biggest, since it is one of the main reasons why Terminus is so good, we win a lot of games against creature deck by untapping, drawing and casting terminus, and then landing a proactive value card on an empty board, such as Jace the Mind Sculptor.
Pyroclasm is really nicely costed to deal with cards like thalia or empty the warrens tokens. I would argue against playing with it unless you play a basic mountain though, but more about that in the d&t section.
Kozilek’s Return The instant speed makes this a real blowout against decks like elves and any stoneforge mystic decks. The main disadvantage with both this and pyroclasm is that they don’t kill everything. Namely eldrazi decks completely ignore these cards, but also most BUG decks right now have too many cards that survive, like Gurmag Angler, Leovold, True-Name Nemesis. So if you do decide to play with these right now it is almost only for decks that have Stoneforge Mystic, Empty the Warrens, or Elves. Another big reason to play with these two red sweepers is Monastery Mentor, if you play a deck with 3 or 4 Mentors I think these gain a lot of value again, since you can still use it with Mentor out compared to Supreme Verdict or Terminus. Another common reason to play this over Pyroclasm is against Death & Taxes, since it gets around the protection from red out of Mother of Runes, and you can’t get ported out of red.
EE is a good catch all answer, the main reason to play it is really that it can function as both a sweeper and as a disenchant effect, even though the sweeper part is only true against very low curve decks or against any token strategies. It is really nice to be able to board out all your terminus against storm, but the card is not really a reliable sweeper against many other decks. If the delver decks go back to RUG (with nimble mongoose) again then EE gains a ton of value once more, but now that they are mainly grixis with stifle it is not at its best. I still like playing the 1:of EE, but the 2:nd copy that was common last year has lost a lot of its appeal. EE also works great with Monastery Mentor, as you can usually cast it cheaply (1 or even 0 mana) in order to gain as many triggers from mentor as possible the same turn you played it just to trigger mentor, and then potentially blow it up later.

Counterbalance
So even though we can no longer establish the classic and dreaded Top+CB lock counterbalance still shows up in some decklists, why you may ask? Well there are a few reasons, I’ll try to outline them here:
Against decks like storm we could really use this effect g1, and no matter what cmc is on top it is almost always relevant. Especially since we have so many dead cards in the main deck in this matchup we can’t really attempt to grind them out with cantrip for more and more counterspells anyways.
This type of effect is very useful in the deck, and it is somewhat disconnected to the frequency of successful flips strangely enough. You see, we need some kind of card in the deck, that incentivizes the opponent to stop slow rolling creatures, every turn they should be faced with the decision to either play all their creatures and lose to Terminus, or slowroll their creatures and get punished by this card. That card can be anything, but it should preferably be a permanent that generates card advantage over time, something that is difficult to remove, and that can’t be ignored. Jace serves this function to a certain degree, but it is still a 4 drop so it can easily get say spell pierced or dazed, and also we can’t play that many copies. I mention this a bit more in the section “Number of Proactive vs Reactive cards”. Another card that can have a similar purpose for us here is actually Search for Azcanta, the discussion about if that card is good or not I won’t try to take here though. But it is worth considering that some number of cards with this type of effect are almost assuredly necessary in order to make a good miracles deck, it is mostly a question about finding what cards do it the best. If we don’t have this, good players can easily figure out a strategy that abuses our weaknesses (like never allowing terminus to kill multiple creatures).
Even without top we have a fairly high percentage to counter a spell with this deck and that is still powerful. Also the true hard lock of top+cb and floating 2 common cmcs on top forever was surprisingly often a win-more scenario, and it turns out that just winning is enough. Sure, I’m not trying to say that the card hasn’t gotten worse than it was pre ban, but it is still a powerful effect together with all our cantrips.
I’m not trying to say that you must play Counterbalance. There are still a number of problems with the card, like if you cast it and then miss all the flips it obviously wasn’t worth it. I’m just trying to explain the reasons why someone might play it, and what function it serves in the deck. If you think the card’s power level is too low I recommend you to find other cards that can fill this role and solve the problems we otherwise use CB for, cards such as Ethersworn Canonist against storm decks post board.

Unexpectedly Absent
This card is a bit weird. In my eyes it works best together with Predict, and Portent. Firstly it should be noted that UA was first introduced into miracles right after the ban of top, when we were experimenting with the lists and found that the sideboard map didn’t work out like we wanted it. At that time UA was first added as a card that you could play multiples in the main deck in order to cut disenchant effects from the sideboard (before this it was common to use 3-4 slots in the sideboard for cards like Disenchant, Wear//Tear, EE, and CJ).

The main deck UA was included as a card that could both act as a cheap and good catch all answer (CJ is 3 mana and sorcery speed, urgh), but also as another way to setup predict. Around this time we were playing a deck that had just cut all its counterbalances and wanted other ways to generate card advantage and stop combo decks. So we added extra predicts (up to 4 copies) for the card advantage engine, and also added extra Counterspell (up to 3 or 4 copies) for the anti combo, now since we had just added 7-8 new instants, we really wanted our removal to also be instant speed so that we could have all the flexibility and hold up predict/CS/UA/snapcaster at all times. Maybe this story won't help you much in deckbuilding though, so here are some tips:
If you play UA you need some other good answer for TNN since UA can’t get it (compared to CJ).
If you play UA you need a significant number of white sources (since it costs WWX).
If you play UA you need a significant number of ways to manipulate your opponent's library. Sometimes it is fine to cast UA for 0, and then have them re-play their card next turn, this is mostly against Chalice of the Void (CotV) since it gives you a 1 turn window to cast all your stranded cantrips which is often enough, or against big cards that are bad tempo (like if you have a mentor out and they cast keranos or batterskull then UA=0 will usually be enough to win). But most of the time you don’t want them to redraw the card, or you at least want the option to stop it, since you can’t always hope for them to fetch at an opportune moment. I wouldn’t play UA without at least 5 -non jace- cards that interact with my opponent's library, primarily Predict & Portent.

Disenchant
So, this is obvious to most of you, but you need some kind of disenchant effect, cards like Chalice of the Void exist in legacy. The reason why we often play the card Disenchant instead of say Council’s Judgment or Wear//tear are these:
CJ - Disenchant is an instant, it makes a huge difference against some decks, namely Stoneforge Mystic decks. It also costs less mana. Against these decks you have enough creature removal as it is, so if you know that all you need is artifact removal in those situations then this is much better. Instant speed makes a big difference since it allows blowouts when they want to use their equipments, but also because it allows you to hold up Counterspell. The extra mana also is huge, it is 50% more mana after all, but specifically when you want to try to snapcaster it it matters a lot. Also, against certain sideboard cards from the opponents it once again makes a huge difference if it is an instant and cheap, the most notable example is Choke.
Wear//Tear - Wear//Tear is a more powerful version of Disenchant for the same or less mana, so why would you play Disenchant? The reason comes down to fetching mainly, and secondly to the basic mountain again. If you are not going to board in any other red cards against a deck, say D&T, RG Lands, or Eldrazi, than your Wear//Tear, then fetching gets really weird, since you will often have to preemptively fetch out your volcanics just so that if you later draw a Wear//Tear you can cast it, but that has some obvious downsides. So I would say that if you have enough other red cards so that you would be boarding in more than just Wear//Tear in these non blast wasteland matchups then you should play Wear//Tear over Disenchant since you will be fetching red sources anyways, but not otherwise. Also, trying to split 1, 1 between these two makes little sense, don’t do it.

2nd Arid Mesa vs extra blue fetch
The second Arid Mesa gives you more white fetches obviously. I would argue that you should play this if:
If you play Blood Moon or Back to Basics in your sideboard it is very important to have find both a fetch for basic plains and a fetch for basic island in the first 3 turns, so it would make sense to skew your fetches slightly closer to 50-50.
If you play a high number of WW cards (Other than Terminus) as well as 2 or 3 basic plains. For example if you main deck 3 or more cards that all cost WW (CJ, UA, Gideon, Entreat) I would also want more white fetches. In these decks you usually want to have on turn 4: Plains, Plains, Island, Island. So it makes sense to once again skew your fetches slightly closer to 50-50 blue & white. You still want slightly more blue fetches though, since cards like ponder can filter your draws as long as you have found the first basic island.
If you play with a basic mountain. If you play with a basic mountain you should really try to get all 10 fetches (4 Strand, 4 Tarn, 2 Mesa) if possible. But in these cases it is not so much about cutting any other blue fetches.
I would not play the 2:nd Arid mesa if I didn’t have any WW cards (The builds with Mentor+EE and only 1 basic plains) since you don’t need to draw white fetches as often, and also because these lists sometimes have so few targets for mesa that you could run out of them very early.

Flash VS Slam
Decide on your gameplan in each matchup. Can you play completely reactively, do you have the best answers and enough of them? The whole thing about “who’s the beatdown”, this is especially important in the mirror, because in most other matchups we are obviously the more controlling deck (any creature deck), or at least the more reactive one (combo), but in the mirror that is only true for one of the two players. Of course this all goes back and forth depending on what kind of hand you draw, but you should also keep this in mind when building the decklist. For example:
If you are playing straight UW, with few predicts and no blasts, and you are playing against a heavy blue deck, say the mirror, then you are most likely going to see the best results by just repeatedly slamming threats, curve out that turn 2 CB, t3 Mentor, t4 Jace. Yeah it is stupid and not at all elegant, but you can’t play the draw go game against someone with better EoT plays and better late game counterspells.
If you are playing a high number of Flusterstorms you should probably be more aggressively slamming stuff in all matchups in general, compared to if you had more CS. Flusterstorm is great at making sure your mentors resolve, and also easy to leave up mana for while also casting other spells (like Search).
If you think it is best to play the “flash” playstyle, that is, not making any decisions until after your opponent has had their turn, and then use your mana in their EoT. Then you need to add additional plays for their EoT in your decklist, 4th snapcaster, extra predicts, extra Cliques, maybe Venser, stuff like that. You should also have more countermagic in general.
No matter what playstyle you believe is best in the current meta you need to understand that these are just small deviations from the norm. You will still need some powerful sorcery speed threats to play in the “flash” decklists, stuff like CB maybe, or Mentors, stuff that punishes people who don’t respect you but instead tap out during their turn all the time. And the same is true the other way, even if you jam your deck full of curve out powerful shit like mentors and Search for Azcanta, you still need to be able to play the instant speed game fairly well if the matchup demands it, for example when you play against Sneak & Show or other combo decks it is probably stupid to tap out for a mentor on turn 3 when you could keep a Counterspell up.

Number of Proactive vs Reactive cards
So I already explained a little bit about why you need both of these things. But to expand upon that, in some matchups it is really important that you can play one of these, and in others it is really powerful to be able to play the other. For example against an eldrazi stompy deck with a cavern of souls in play you would probably do much better to just play more in sorcery speed, since you usually get much more payoff for each mana invested in those cards. So the thing it really comes down to is adapting. And in order to adapt you’ll need to make sure you can map your sideboard. You need to have a mix of both proactive and reactive cards in your sideboard, and roughly enough so that you can swap out proactive cards in the main deck against reactive ones from the sideboard when you just need to be all reactive (for example against belcher) and the same is true the other way around, if your opponent is playing something super duper fair like Nic Fit you just really need that each card in your deck pack as much of a punch as possible, you know exactly what they’ll do each turn, so you just need to be able to deal with it. A good thing is that our cantrips let us draw the correct cards for each situation, to a certain extent, so even a fairly small number of “perfect” cards can make a big difference. In general I would try to have at least like 6 proactive cards in the main deck, stuff that people can’t ignore, that forces them to react to you and not the other way around. This includes: Search, CB, Mentor, Jace, Gideon, Entreat. I would also try to not only have reactive cards in the sideboard, even though they usually make up the majority of the sideboard.

Good rules of thumb
When building my deck I use a lot of shortcuts. This is because we have in the past tried a lot of stuff, and we now know that certain numbers are incorrect, and can get ignored, and that other are correct (or approximately so). These are my rules:
4 Answers to CotV. I see a lot of lists that seem to pick their sideboard cards randomly, but the truth is that the sideboard numbers are very much connected to the main deck cards. It it somewhat fine to go down to 3 of these, especially if you play Spell Snare. But in general I think 4 has proven to be very good. And what I mean by this is that if you want to beat for example Eldrazi Stompy, then you almost always benefit more from the 4th disenchant effect before any land hate effects. But more on that later. The short thing is, don’t be greedy and skip these. Don’t play only 2 of them and believe that you will be fine since you have force of will.
White sources. If I play with at least 4 cards that cost WW (other than terminus) such as Entreat the Angels, then I want 5 White sources (usually 3 Tundra 2 Basic plains). But if I play with no WW cards in the main deck and only 1-2 in the sideboard then I can go down to 4 such lands (2+2 or 3+1). I would not go down to only 3 lands that produce white mana in any list, and also not up to 6. These numbers are well tested and work.
Basics. I always want at least 4 Basic island, and never more than 6 (possible in builds without red). If I play Entreat I want at least 2 Basic Plains, if I play only mentors 1 is possible. 3 Basic Plains is possible in some Back to Basics builds but I wouldn’t play it at only 20 lands.
Number of lands. 20 Lands is the norm today. At least in the builds with 2-3 Jace & 2 Entreat. In the past we have experimented with this a lot. We saw decks with 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, or even 23 lands. The short answer here is to only differ from the 20 Land norm if you make the corresponding changes to your curve, for example if you play 3-4 mentors, no Jace or other 4 drops, no Entreat, no CJ, then you can probably play only 18 lands, especially if you have a sideboard mountain. The same is true from the other direction, say you want to play more than 5 cards that cost 4 or more (like 4 Jace + 2 ETA, or 2 Jace, 2 Gideon, 2 Nahiri, or any Future Sight builds), then you should probably play a 21st land.
1 plan B in the sideboard. This is obvious and most people do it already, for example if you have ETA in the main it is usually a good idea to have mentors in the sideboard so that you don’t get too predictable, but I wouldn’t go too deep on this because that would only be wasting sideboard slots. Even just 1 slot in the sideboard is enough. For example most of the lists with Mentor in the main have either 1 EtA, 1 Gideon, or 2 Cliques in their sideboard now a days.
I want at least 18 lands that can produce blue mana, including fetches. So that means that if I want to add a 3rd plains I go up to 21, same with Karakas, Cavern of Souls, or basic Mountain. There are some exceptions, for example if I play with way fewer UU cards (fewer CS, fewer snapcaster/Cliques and no CB) I can go down to 17. But you have to understand that every time your first 3 lands include 2 non blue lands it is awful and most of your turns will just be ponder go. And also that when regarding whether to keep or mull you always need at least 1 blue land. Now that you don’t even have top as a colorless cantrip there is almost no opening hand without blue that is keepeable.
If you play blasts I like at least 2 volcanics, I have tried 1 volc 1 basic mountain multiple times but it will bite you so I don’t like it. The most common scenarios where this backfire is either when you have a basic mountain in your opening hand (urgh), or if you have drawn the volcanic and you tap the volcanic to play something, say ponder, brainstorm, or CB, and then play a Flooded Strand, you obviously didn’t want to crack the fetch before the spell, you might have even found the fetch of the cantrip, but you are also unable to blast something this turn, this comes up a lot in my experience.

Answers to Chalice
You need them. I aim to play 4 of these. If you play less than 4 you should ask yourself if you have compensated for that in some other way or if you just want to gamble and hope not to play against CotV (bad idea). Of course Chalice is not the only non land non creature permanent that you need to answer, but if you have this one in mind primarily you will usually end up with sufficient numbers for most other things (It turns out Disenchant can also kill Pithing Needle & Food Chain for example).

Splitting your answers
This is a fairly common thing for control decks, and Miracles is by no means the first deck to do it. The basic idea is that you want as much flexibility as possible, even if that means you won’t always have the most copies of the most mana efficient card at all times. It really boils down to the idea that you would rather draw 1 each of A & B instead of 2 copies of either one, because at least for the first card the opponent casts that you need to deal with, you will have as much flexibility as possible. For example the split of 1 EE 1 CJ has been very common in miracles for quite a while, because both cards have their distinct advantages and disadvantages it is very difficult to evaluate which really is better, and to a certain degree it doesn’t matter, even if you find that say EE is better by some sliver of a percentage in the average case, then you’ll still get into a number of situations where EE can’t get you out but CJ could, and then just having the ability to draw CJ is very important, especially with the high number of cantrips and card selection this deck offers. The same thing is also true for other answers, you’ll see people who add Supreme Verdict to their deck even if they only have 3 Terminus. Or people who play 2 Flusterstorm 1 Spell Snare 1 Spell Pierce. This idea really gets amplified by the fact that we have snapcaster in the deck as well. Because when you draw your Snapcaster Mage in the mid to late game and look down at your graveyard to see what options you have, then it doesn’t matter if there is a 2nd or 3rd copy of any card there, the thing that matters is how many different 1st copies you can find.

Pyroblast & REB
The idea behind the split is that you dodge cards like: Surgical Extraction, Meddling Mage, Cabal Therapy, and possibly others. The interaction with Misdirection isn’t really a relevant thing when determining which one to play, but it could theoretically come up when you play. However if you play with a very high number of Monastery Mentors in your deck it might be worth considering ignoring the split and just play pyroblast, since it can always unconditionally provide you with a prowess trigger for lethal even if there are no blue targets around. All these things are very small percentages of course, so it largely doesn’t matter. It is kind of at the same idea as having the same art for each basic land of the same kind so that the opponent can’t figure out how many copies of each you play.

Karakas
Ok, Karakas is cool, I get it, you can do some nice stuff with clique & venser, but do you need it? Well, it turns out that no, not really, Miracles has in the past been able to put up some really impressive results even without Karakas. Anyhow, here’s my thoughts in a list:
Karakas can act like a 5th white source in a deck that needs it.
Karakas should never be played in a list without Clique.
Karakas is very good in a few matchups such as Show & Tell decks or Reanimator decks. If you are playing a list with 1-2 Karakas you can possibly go down a little bit in sideboard cards against those decks (-1 Containment Priest for example).
If you play Karakas you probably want at least 3 legendary creatures.
Karakas is almost always too greedy in a 3 color build. You already have enough other requirements from your mana base to fit a karakas here. It is possible but I would advise against it. Double so if you are thinking about playing with a basic mountain.
Karakas is usually really awkward in a straight UW build. One of the main reasons to play without the red splash is that you can blank wastelands in order to gain virtual card advantage much more often, and also that you can get to play with multiple copies of Back to Basics, neither of these two things work very well with karakas.

Mentor
Mentor could require an entire FAQ of its own. But here are some short things:
If you play main deck mentor you want more cantrips. You want to be able to chain spells into more spells in order to trigger it efficiently. I would play at least 13 cheap cantrips (usually: ponder, portent, brainstorm, predict).
If you play main deck mentor you want your other non creature cards to cost less mana, for example CB/Search > Jace, or EE > CJ, so that you can more easily play one of them during the same turn that you play mentor.
If you play sideboard mentors the above things are not quite as important, but you should still keep them in mind while sideboarding (if you board in mentor don’t board out predicts for example).
The threat of mentor forces many decks to keep in removal against you. Don’t let your opponent know if you have the mentors in your sideboard or not. This is not really a thing on mtgo but in paper you should not give away free information.
Main deck mentors require you to play more ways to stop certain removal spells from resolving, for example in a ETA list you can play more removal and fewer counterspells, and your counterspells can include stuff like Spell Snare that hits very few common removal spells, but a lot of other stuff. If you play Mentor instead you gain more from playing counterbalance or flusterstorm, and can at the same time cut a little removal (usually the 4th terminus) since mentor provides you with another way to control the board.
Main deck mentors benefit from more tempo-oriented cards. Cards that can trade up in mana get much better if you have 3-4 mentors, mentor provides you with a way to take over the game while your opponent still has spells in hand that they didn’t have time to gain value from (inf value from life from the loam engines comes to mind as an obvious example), here we have stuff like: Force (don’t board it out as much), daze, UA, Flusterstorm. But we also try to avoid stuff that trades down in mana since our hands could otherwise get very clogged up with 3 and 4 drops, so slightly fewer copies of: Jace, Supreme Verdict, CJ.

Number of Wincons
You are a control deck, you only want to spend the absolute minimum number of slots on something as unimportant as winning the game. But unfortunately you need stuff here. I really try to not play more than 3-4 white wincons + jaces. You can add more stuff (2 entreat + 4 mentor + gideon) of course, but there are some seriously diminishing returns, at least if you still want to play a UW control deck, if you believe that it is better to play more midrange, I would recommend you just play stoneblade or esper mentor, or if you dare, my sweet mentor 16 cantrips deck: http://mtgtop8.com/event?e=15948&d=298167&f=LE .

Backup plans
You probably want one. If you only play say 4 Mentor main deck and nothing else in the 75, it is easy to get hated out, but if you just have that 1 entreat in the sideboard for example, you can laugh at your delver opponent when they play a Dread of Night. The same is true the other way around, if you only have Entreat you will get shit on in the mirror when your opponent boarded in 4 Flusterstorms and 3 mentors.

Why are you playing Clique
Against combo decks such as Storm or Sneak & Show you eventually need to kill them, you can try to just have infinite card advantage and it works alright up to a certain point, but you will get some serious diminishing returns, and it is also really annoying for them if you can attack them from multiple directions, so instead of adding that 5th blast or 4th fluster you should really consider some kind of hatebear. And Clique is the most versatile one. Another option is Ethersworn Canonist or the 4th Snapcaster, you just need something to deal the damage, to force them to react to you and not just wait around forever until they draw their Boseiju or Defense Grid or whatever. Another reason to play with Clique is if you play a particularly high number of Jaces or Counterbalances, since Clique allows you to curve Clique -> Jace against other blue decks when they are just trying to hold counterspells up, this was very common if you wanted to win the mirror before the top ban, since it forced the opponent to both tap some lands, and use some countermagic, right before you untap, so that you could then more easily win a fight over say CB on your own turn. Another small but relevant reason to play Clique is that it kills Jace the Mind Sculptor in one hit, a card that can very strong against miracles if you don’t come prepared, for example if you don’t play red you’ll need to consider things like this so that you have more outs to get rid of a resolved Jace.

Why are you not playing Clique
While it is true that Clique is the most versatile anti-combo creature it is also the one that is the least impactful most of the time. It can almost always get boarded in and it really helps the sideboard math in multiple matchups, but it is also almost never that amazing. If a list is not playing with clique it is because they want more narrow but also higher impact cards. Other reason why someone might not play with Clique right now is:
They don’t play any mentors or CB and just want to completely blank Abrupt Decay and similar cards post board if the opponent decides to leave them in the deck.
They believe that Baleful Strix is too common and want to use these slots to other cards that are higher impact in such BUG matchups.
They already have enough other creatures or win conditions that (for example 4 mentor 2 entreat) that they don’t think they can afford to add more “wincons” into the sideboard but need the other slots for high impact reactive cards (surgical, blast, fluster, disenchant, etc).
Curve considerations
I think most of you have this in mind already. But seriously, don’t jam 6 different 4 drops into the deck (Nahiri, or Moat, or whatever) without making sure you change other stuff. Like add a land or cut that Supreme Verdict. Also consider the fact that snapcaster is not really a 2 drop, it is most likely a 3 drop with some rarely used kicker. I see some people try to replace their 2 drops with additional snapcasters while also adding mentors or cliques.

High number of cantrips vs unnecessary stuff
Ok. Here is the one that really gets me frustrated. I see way too many people, especially those who are new to the deck, cut the cantrips and add random shit they don’t need, like main deck Back to Basics or Gideon when they already have 2 ETA. The thing is this, this deck already have some absurdly powerful cards, all it needs is to have the correct cards at the correct time, sure you can cut all your portents for blood moons, and they might win you a game every now and then, but the number of games you lose because you miss your 3rd land drop or because you can’t find a terminus in time is going to be significantly higher. Our deck does play more cantrips than almost any other non combo deck in legacy, but it also makes sense, the whole idea with the miracles cards is that you need to manipulate your draws to make them powerful, and if you could reliably do that with only 8-9 cantrips then every blue deck would play some number of them, or at least some other deck. So in short, don’t cut the portents because you want to add more “fun offs”, and also if you add all the cards you think you should have into a pile, and find that it is 61 cards, then I would really recommend you to go through all other cards multiple times over and find something to cut there before you take the easy solution and just cut a cantrip. I don’t say that you need to play 12 of the 1 mana cantrips in every list, but your goal should probably be to do that as often as possible, or to be as close as possible. Clarification, it is not necessarily about the number of cantrips, but rather, you should aim to be as consistent as possible. The deck already have some incredibly powerful tools, just casting Terminus followed up by Jace on the correct turn is amazing and the main reason this deck is so powerful, and I believe you will lose more to not finding the terminus during the correct turns than anything else (some hyperbole but still). And in the same way, if you believe that you can do this more consistently with a lower number of portents or similar, than that might be better of course. Right after the ban when everyone was experimenting with everything and no one was having any success yet I wrote this post on the mtgthesource forum, and then proceeded to pick up some 5-0’s immediately to prove my point: “You are all playing way way too few cantrips. The reason miracles was so good was because it was very consistent. If you count top as a cantrip most lists had 12-16 cantrips. Now most of you seem to think you can do the same with only 8-10 while replacing the other cards with useless stuff. You can try that for a while but you will never find it as consistent, the stuff you get to play in the extra slots might look good though. Trying to go down on cantrips when you don't have top is insanity, you should go the other way and add more. We all know that the deck can sink a mana or two into cantripping almost every turn and be fine, otherwise we wouldn't have been able to use top before the ban.” Other than the simple 1 mana cantrips we do have other cards that also increase other consistency in different ways, for example Search for Azcanta could help us to not draw any white cards in blue matchups. So if you play many of these cards you can cut a few cantrips. Also you want to weight the number of cantrips in your deck against the cards that you dig for, if all the spells that you dig for are tempo-negative or they don’t play to the board, cantripping for them is much worse, since you are essentially spending extra mana on them you will need to recuperate that when you cast the cards that you find of your cantrips, Terminus is an excellent example of a spell that is great together with cantrips since even for 2 mana more it is still worth it. If you start cutting these cards, either during deckbuilding or sideboarding, you should also consider shaving a cantrip, and the opposite is true as well, if you add more such cards you can have extra cantrips. Example: 1. If you sideboard out terminus and board in Counterspell you probably want to shave cantrips. 2. Long before the top ban Reid Duke played a list with 4 Jace the Mind Sculptor and Supreme Verdict (1 main, 1 side) as well as only 3 Terminus, since these cards are more tempo negative than the “normal” setup at the time he had fewer ponders and extra lands instead.

Sideboarding maps
If you want to share your decklist, or if you want to bring your deck to a big tournament. You should seriously consider writing a proper sideboard map. It will teach you a lot about how many slots you need to have for each opponent. Apart from the obvious things like “oh I want to board out all removal against sneak & show so I’ll need an equal number of sideboard cards to board in” you should also consider what The Brainstorm Show recommended in their episode about sideboards, which is to put a score on each card in each matchup, so that you make sure that you make significant upgrades, and so that the more widely boarded in cards (like Clique) can get compared to more narrow cards (like containment priest).

Storm
For the storm matchup you need both counterspells and hate permanents. Yes, it is technically possible to just have a ton of countermagic but it will almost assuredly not be the most slot efficient solution. Cards like Ethersworn Canonist or Leyline might seem very narrow, but something like that is needed, you can’t pretend that storm isn’t a thing or that you will be fine with only your 2 Flusterstorm.

Eldrazi
You mainly need an answer to Chalice. If you have that you are usually good, Chalice is easily the number one most common way they beat you. Cards like Blood Moon or Back to Basics also do work here of course. You mainly want to make sure that you can board out all dead ish countermagic like Counterspell or Counterbalance and instead board in cards that directly interact with the board. Also having just a 1 off clique somewhere in the deck is surprisingly useful as they sometimes open up with hands that have 2x Ancient Tomb, and then you can just aggressively cantrip towards your clique and punish them, Ancient Tomb is supposed to have a drawback, but if your only attacking creatures are Angel Tokens then it doesn’t really matter if they are at 20 or 6 life, you still need to do all the same setup with hitting extra land drops and triggering the miracle draw.

4c Loam
Once again, cards that interact with the board are better than countermagic. You want to really diversify your answers here since they have a ton of different threats that best get answered by different removal. Also, jace is awesome against all these “fair” decks. While sideboarding this is a matchup where you usually cut a little bit of everything but not all the copies of any one card, yeah, it is weird and reminds us more of playing a combo deck.

Lands
Respect Tireless Tracker, Respect Marit Lage. Surgical is awesome, and early Mentor can easily outclass punishing fire. This is one of those matchups where if you don’t play any nonbasic land hate effects you should really consider a 3rd surgical instead of the containment priest in order to make the sideboard mapping work.

Mirror
While not super common right now miracles was the biggest (and best) deck last year at this time, and many people still have the cards laying around. Here you need to really keep the “flash vs slam” gameplans in consideration. The best way to beat the mirror is to play both the best proactive cards (Cb, Mentor, Gideon, Search, Squadron Hawks) and the best reactive ones (blasts). Right now I would not board out any Jaces here, but if we go back to to a meta of 4 counterbalance that could change. There is a ton to say about this matchup but I’ll save most for some other time. Some small things that could be worth keeping in mind:
Mentor is very good in the mirror. It dodges most of the common counterspells (fluster, snare, blasts) and require your opponent to dig for a sweeper, if they play supreme verdict that is also a tempo positive trade for you, but even if they use Terminus they usually had to “waste” multiple cantrips to find it instead of finding blasts or predicts or such.
If you play a UWR CB mirror you should respect CB a lot, for example, before the ban I had the rule: If I’m on the draw and I have the opportunity I always fake a blast on turn 1 (never cantrip if you can leave up a fetch). That is not quite as necessary now since those 4 blast 4 CB mirrors are much less common, but similar things are worth keeping in mind.

Death & Taxes
Here is a matchup where I see a lot of people making mistakes. First, regarding red, you really have to decide during deckbuilding, are you going to play like a two or a three color deck post board here. And since it is right now possible to have a favourable matchup against Death & Taxes without boarding in any red cards I really prefer that. So don’t play that 1 of Pyroclasm or 1of Wear//Tear and force yourself into fetching volcanics against a deck with this much mana denial. Just find another card and then play like a straight UW deck whenever possible. And if you decide to play with red, then make sure that you bring the best stuff and accept the worse mana, play those wear//tear over disenchant if you are going to board in Pyroclasms and a basic mountain anyways. Simply decide first and then go all out of that. Secondly, work on the sideboard math properly here, if you play 4 CB and want to take them all out you probably need more sideboard cards to board in compared to if those 4 main deck slots were 2 predicts 2 UA. Just think before you add cards, it is that simple.

Delver
The solution is not to play 30 lands, but if you have a sideboard mountain you should board up to 21 lands. The answer is also not to play infinite 1 for 1 removal, since you will need more lands in play than they do at any point in the game you will also need extra card advantage to make up for this, otherwise you will just die empty handed with 6 lands while they have 3 lands and 1-2 creatures. Last, you need to threaten something proactive, some delver decks have gone to great and ridiculous lengths in the past to punish us if we just tried to play reactive magic, Winter Orb is probably the best example of this. It doesn’t really matter what proactive cards to play though, it could be search, or CB, or mentor, the point is that they should always feel afraid, they should have some pressure on them to play out that extra creature instead of slow rolling to play around terminus, they should not dare to brainstorm back or sideboard out that force of will and be left shields down even though it is bad card advantage, etc etc. You just really need to make 100% sure that the lategame is yours, that their pathetic attempt at “grinding card advantage” is not enough, so that they need to be aggressive even in the face of terminus or supreme verdict or EE.

Shardless BUG and 4c pile (hymn + jace decks)
Blasts are great, swords to plowshares are fairly poor but you need to leave in like 2 copies since you don’t want to terminus for every single lone deathrite. Since most of these decks have switched away from wasteland in favour of more greedy mana themselves we can also rely more on only 2 Volcanic Island than we could before (when we almost always had to play either a 3rd Volc or a basic mountain). Another thing that is important to keep in mind against Hymn+Leovold decks is that you want to make sure that the cards to play in order to gain an advantage (predict, CB, Jace, etc) do actually play to the board, you don’t want your entire “advantage” to be in the form of cards in your hand, but instead in the form of permanents on the battlefield if possible, this makes it so that any hymns that come later than turn 2 or turn 3 get much much worse. But you of course want to do a bit of both, especially since Abrupt Decay could otherwise destroy your day and take away your day and everything you have fought for.

Reanimator and RIP
I see a lot of people adding Rest in Peace into their sideboard right now and I don’t really understand, it is possible that I’m missing something but it is also possible that they are just modern players that haven’t used their brains. So here is the thing. RIP is great against slower graveyard decks, it kills dredge hard, it makes those mongoose+deathrite+goyf decks look pathetic, yeah, it seems great right? Wrong. No one is playing that BUG deck, even just goyf is super rare right now, also dredge is not that common, and we could just containment priest for them. What else? Oh right, snapcaster, against almost every deck that you want graveyard hate you also want to keep in snapcaster, and that is not a combo. What else? Reanimate. Right, reanimator, against reanimator RIP is bad, it is just way too slow, you need to mulligan every hand that doesn’t have a force or some other kind of turn 0 / turn 1 interaction, you basically need to play surgical here or else they just kill you. And if you survive to turn 2, well then you don’t need RIP anymore, you are already like 80% favored to win, don’t bother with sideboard cards for the win more situations. What else? Lands, lands is probably the 2:nd most common GY deck right now, and it boards in 4 krosan grips because they have to respect blood moon, just play surgical on them, one of those will forever cripple them enough. Yeah, before I started playing legacy I also hated Surgical, but now I see why you need it here. However, if you decide to play a list without Snapcaster Mage in it, then I would once more consider RIP, if only because it is quite good against those BUG decks with Deathrite+Snapcaster+possibly less common others (Kess, Goyf, Lilia LH minus ability), but only now because you suddenly don’t have any cards of your own that interacts with said graveyard, if so I would still play at least 1 Surgical because of Reanimator though.

4th snapcaster mage
This is a value card, it also makes sense that a 4th would be great since we already play 3, why not a 4th? Well it turns out that the main deck doesn’t really have enough good flexible 1 mana spells to make a 4th snapcaster than good in game 1, honestly even the 3rd is kind of mediocre. But postboard this usually changes, we have a lot of cheap cards in the sideboard, like Flusterstorm, pyroblast, disenchant, surgical, so in g2 & g3 snapcaster is truly awesome, and a 4th copy would be awesome as well, but now the question is mostly, is it worth a sideboard slot, or would you rather just play another answer directly? That is up to you, but this is the reason that some play it and some don’t. You can play it in the main if you want to “save” a sideboard slot as well, but you will have to accept that game 1 is going to be worse, since you’ll draw a lot more of those double snapcaster hands that only have cantrips and no interaction in the GY while you are playing against a combo deck.

****END OF PART ONE****

[Minniehajj]

****PART TWO****

Nonbasic hate
Nonbasic hate is very powerful, but the slots are very difficult to find. If you don’t play any you will need to have some other gameplan against those decks (basically, ask yourself the question of how you beat punishing fire, or eye of ugin searches). Anyhow, here’s a summary of the most common hate cards:
Blood Moon - This one stops everything, sure that eldrazi player could have a basic wastes but don’t bother considering that now. This is the best answer to those annoying 4 or 5 color value decks that just pile up all good cards they own. Some of them are seriously playing 1 basic island and 2 Hydroblasts because they have no other good way to beat this. Others have to always keep up G+B and a abrupt decay in hand during the late game because if they tapout they would instantly lose to Blood Moon. The disadvantages of moon is: It is the card that punishes us the most on this list, since we can’t fetch any more; Since it is usually cast with just one W and one U in play you should consider this while deckbuilding and sideboarding, and favor mentors instead of entreat as your wincon for example; It requires tuning your fetches slightly, since you want to really make sure you had access to a basic white source before you play it and not just a tundra.
Back to Basics - This is the card that do the least damage to us (you can still fetch out additional basics, and use the shuffle effects to improve the cantrips), but could also be the easiest to ignore or beat for the opponent, for example your opponent can still make a Marit Lage token through it. If you want to play this in a 3 color build you will most likely need a basic of the 3rd color, or make sure that you don’t board in any cards of that color in the same matchups as you board in B2B (Similar to how Joe Lossett did in his legends build pre ban).
Ruination / From the Ashes - These are worse against BG Depths than any of the previous, and they also more or less require you to play a basic mountain, but otherwise they are quite sweet. A well times Ruination can really ruin someone's’ day.
Dwarven Blastminer - This is a troll and a jerk card. Fun, but don’t play it.
Search for Azcanta & Karakas - While playing with these cards you have to weigh the land hate against these lands’ utility in the matchups. Sometimes it is just the case that if the land hate resolves you don’t care because you are going to be winning anyways and this stuff is just win-more, but other times not. Overall Search is the best with Ruination / From the Ashes, since you can usually set it up so that there is no conflict at all, you might even get value if From the Ashes feeds the GY enough to flip Search afterwards. But Search is still fine with B2B and Blood Moon, you’ll just not flip it if you draw both but keep the scrying (milling) machine going, it also turns out that this scrying gets much more useful when you can no longer fetch under a blood moon in combination with your cantrips. However with Karakas it gets worse, and if you really want to play with 2+ copies of nonbasic land hate I would recommend you to not play any copies of Karakas in the same list.
Advancing your game plan
This is going to be a very theoretical section, maybe a bit too abstract, but I’ll try to come up with some concrete examples towards the end of it. While most sections up till now have mostly talked about Tempo-advantage, and Card-advantage, and possibly attacking from multiple angles and diversifying your answer, there is still one very important point I have skipped. And that is the idea of your game plan.

The idea is that every turn you should try to advance your game plan if possible. Especially game 1 you rarely have the perfect mix of interaction in your deck to really lock the opponent out from ever achieving theirs, so if you don’t advance yours but just try to stop everything that your opponent is going, then they are still slowly slowly going to advance theirs (kill you), so you really need to do this.

This mostly comes up when playing, but also a bit during deckbuilding. For example, when playing you might sometimes run into games where your current suit of interaction aligns very poorly to what your opponent is trying to do, most notably this comes up against Storm and against Lands. So what do you do? Well you try to complete your own gameplan as fast as possible, ignore things you can’t deal with, and deal with the others as well as you can, kind of like patching up a leaking ship while trying to race past the finish line. For example the lands deck might have Life from the Loam together with Ghost Quarter, and many builds don’t have any way to permanently stop that game 1, so what you really need to do then is focus on hitting every single land drop, forcing any explorations, maybe even force a loam, save 2 fetches in play and 2 white sources in the deck, and then try find entreat the angels while you still have enough mana left. Basically, play to your outs.

The most notable mistakes I see here are when people haven’t thought far enough ahead, they cantrip badly in the first few turns and miss their land drops because they see some good interactive cards like CJ or Terminus, and then they lose because they didn’t make any progress, and eventually the opponent got past their interaction. You should always remember that the entire reason you play with cards like Terminus, Counterspell or Swords to Plowshares is really so that you can survive long enough to play out your real gameplan and wincon. The interaction in the deck is a means to an end, and don’t forget the end.

For example, if you are playing a Entreat the Angels build of the deck, you should really try to hit a land drop every turn of the game if possible. Sure, there are some exceptions, and you shouldn’t throw all thoughts of value out the window in order to advance your game plan, like sometimes you should be patient and wait for a setup card instead of cycling a predict with a unknown top card. Another thing you should keep in mind is that you sometimes need say no to that miracle trigger on entreat on turn 5, because that is your only copy of ETA and you’ll need to set it up to make sure it resolves against daze, spell pierce, or force, much later.

The opponent should always feel like they have a timer ticking above their head, like they have to do something or else you will just get into a lategame that very much favours the miracles deck. And in order to make this happen you need to always make progress towards that end game. Not necessarily every single turn (we can still win even if we miss a land drop), but you should make sure you don’t suddenly stop making progress for a long time. This is also why we play so many lands. Progress also isn’t just in terms of land drops, it could be in other forms, it all depends on the matchup, for example in the mirror progress is very much in the form of cards in hand and number of card advantage permanents in play, and the game plan is usually all about resolving those important card advantage spells, but if you do, then suddenly other cards such as ETA that the opponent could cast later mean much less.

You should also remember to ask yourself if you really do have inevitability in each matchup. Because when you do it is quite easy, you can miss a land drop or two and just play the game of card advantage, and then you can win with whatever sometimes later when you have drowned the opponent in cards. But when you do not have inevitability, then that is where things get tricky, for example against that annoying Eye of Ugin or Punishing Fire + Grove, then you really need to make sure you make progress towards your wincon. Because if the game goes too long then suddenly mana is plenty (tempo doesn’t matter) and suddenly card advantage don’t matter either (It is really difficult to grind against Eye of Ugin searching up Reality Smasher or Ulamog/Kozilek every turn).

How does this relate to deckbuilding? Good thing you ask. The primary question you should ask yourself when designing the deck is “What is my game plan?”, sure it might depend on the matchup, on your hand, or whether this is pre or post board, but you should always have a plan, and the entire 60 card deck at any time should be built with this plan in mind. For example, if you play with monastery mentor in the main deck, then you should consider how you are going to make sure mentor can do its thing. Especially game 1 most other decks have a lot of removal which is otherwise somewhat dead again us if we don’t have mentor, what is your plan against that? You can either say that blanking removal is a dead concept, and that the opponent would just brainstorm such cards away anyways, and just try to grind 1 for 1 until the opponent runs out of actual cards and ignore the virtual card advantage idea. Or you could play cards that protect your mentors, for example CB with a 1 on top is very likely to keep mentor alive against most of the decks in the format, so then your game plan suddenly becomes: Hit your early land drops, Gain enough card advantage to resolve my threats, Resolve CB, put a 1 on top, Resolve Mentor, Trigger Mentor multiple times.

Another example is the obvious 2 plains one. If you play with entreat the angels you should probably have 2 basic plains in your main deck, because when you have ETA in the deck the idea of having WWX up every single time you draw a random card becomes very important for your game plan, just in case it turns out to be this miracle card. And the best way to make sure you can keep WWX in play (When X is usually just a great number of basic Islands or Volcanic Islands) at any time, is really to play with basic plains, just to stay safe from those wastelands.

Do Something

The idea is of course that we can wait for the opponent, that we can sit back with a grip full of answers and play draw go forever. Or at least until we are well into the late game and topdeck an entreat or something. But is this really the best strategy? Not quite, as I said in the previous section we want to do some stuff. We are a control deck, but that doesn’t mean we can be purely reactive. Legacy is a format where you need to both interact and also have a strong game plan of your own that your opponent gets forced to interact with. There are many decks out there that we are not perfectly equipped to just play draw go against, where our answers don’t line up well against their threats, at least in game 1. This is why we need some number of proactive elements in the deck as well. Previously this was almost always Counterbalance, but even main deck Back to Basics saw some play. In addition to this there is always Jace as well. The idea is that we should actively try to build an advantage every turn, if we believe that the opponent has no interaction in their hand (or only of the wrong type, for example flusterstorm and abrupt decay against Jace) we should make sure to play something that gives us a real advantage before the opponent gets a chance to draw out of the situation, or before luck screws us over (for example getting flooded). Also if we have unspent mana during a turn, because the opponent didn’t force us to use all our mana to interact, then we should preferably use that mana to increase our advantage, Sensei’s Divining Top was a great example of this, where we used top to filter our draws every turn if we didn’t have to use all our mana to interact, and then over a long period of time we were essentially guaranteed to draw “better” than our opponent.

This is why cards like Predict are commonly played in the deck. Because if you play against a deck that only interacts with you on the battlefield, say they only have creatures and removal spells of various kinds in their deck, then we can easily outclass them and gain a huge advantage by spending a few mana to gain card advantage every now and then while their hand is full of the wrong type of interaction. Magic and especially legacy does contain a lot of trading 1 for 1, but if we can deny the opponent the opportunity to trade their cards against ours until we have a significant numbers advantage in cards then we can much more easily win. When we are finally up 4-5 cards we can trade off the remaining cards in their hand, and then win with our last 4 cards that they have no interaction for left.

So if you even find yourself with a hand full of only interaction while playing, and then cast your last cantrip in hand, say a ponder, and see more interaction, but nothing else, then you should probably shuffle, even if that interaction was likely to do just fine trading 1 for 1, what you are really looking for should be some cards that pull you ahead, you already have enough 1 for 1 trades in your hand to keep you alive for the foreseeable future, and should focus more on what happens next.


****END OF PART TWO****



Callum Smith's (Whitefaces) Miracles Matchup + Sideboard Guide:

Source Google Doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YSymCjzSgkIrg-mPSq0aPlI1VEIYM3ZYtm7kgO7h6sI/edit?usp=sharing

Miracles Matchup Analysis and Sideboarding Guide

In this document I aim to cover most of the tier one and two matchups you might face, and how I approach them along with some sideboarding tips.

One point I’d like to make is that I don’t believe copying straight sideboard tables will do anyone much good, since we are a reactive deck it’s our job to be answering what the opponent is doing. This greatly affects how we should be sideboarding, as well as how we should be playing out the games. There are some fast and loose rules that can be abided to, but you also have to trust yourself to make the right decisions too.

Also keep in mind that what I’ll be writing below will also be tied to the list I’m playing, small changes can have pretty big effects. Also please take everything below with a grain of salt, it’s not gospel, just how I like to approach the matchups at this time. Everything is prone to change.

Miracles – Callum Smith

· 3 Snapcaster Mage
· 3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
· 2 Entreat the Angels
· 4 Terminus
· 3 Portent
· 4 Ponder
· 4 Brainstorm
· 4 Force of Will
· 2 Counterspell
· 2 Search for Azcanta
· 4 Swords to Plowshares
· 1 Council's Judgment
· 2 Predict
· 2 Counterbalance
· 3 Volcanic Island
· 3 Tundra
· 4 Island
· 2 Plains
· 4 Flooded Strand
· 1 Scalding Tarn
· 1 Polluted Delta
· 1 Misty Rainforest
· 1 Arid Mesa

Sideboard
· 1 Council's Judgment
· 2 Monastery Mentor
· 1 Vendilion Clique
· 1 Ethersworn Canonist
· 3 Flusterstorm
· 3 Surgical Extraction
· 1 Disenchant
· 2 Pyroblast
· 1 Red Elemental Blast

I won’t be going into any deckbuilding discussion here, Nicklas Lallo aka ItIsUnfair wrote a fantastic FAQ recently on that which should cover a lot of questions. Find that here - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Kz8-adPGaM_PkIqR2eKc3YoMYpsrWHmTp2yWJ4xVcso/edit

Grixis Delver

One important thing to note is that you should try and establish what build they’re playing quite quickly. There are three main ones, Cabal Therapy, Stifle or two+ copies of Spell Pierce. Knowing which build you’re facing let’s you build a gameplan around that information.

Cabal Therapy builds are the most grindy, they lean on clearing the way for Young Pyromancer more than the others and games can go longer. Because of Therapy you want to be playing to the board as much as possible, Search for Azcanta is a good example, and Counterbalance is phenomenal here.

Generally I sideboard out 2 Force of Will, 2 Counterspell, 1 Jace and 1 Entreat the Angels for 2 Monastery Mentor, 2 Flusterstorm and 2 Pyroblast.

Force of Will is the worst vs this build of Grixis Delver because of the Therapy package as it punishes us for being more reactive and trading down a card, and I keep a copy of Entreat for similar reasoning, it’s Therapy proof and the games go longer than the other versions. Flusterstorm is also worst vs this build as the information gleaned from more peeks at our hand allows them to play around it more, or Therapy it away if needed. I cut Counterspell vs all versions of Grixis Delver, the cost of flexibility is too high and we’re basically never trading evenly on mana, and that’s part of what they’re taxing with soft counters.

Stifle is arguably the most aggressive version and they have the most ways to disrupt a Terminus, making Young Pyromancer and True-Name Nemesis especially scary. If you see multiple TNNs you may want to board in more Blasts, or if it’s from the Stifle build consider a couple, but it makes you weaker to Stifle and Wasteland obviously.

The first few turns are the most important and you need to be prioritizing getting their creatures off the battlefield via Swords and fetching up basics lands. Stifle gets poor very fast and their late game is a lot weaker than Therapy versions, so just play to survive here and think about card advantage later. You can punish Stifle draws by not doing anything too, if the Delver player is forced to leave up a mana every turn, this is giving you time to make land drops. If I have a land heavy hand and suspect they have it, I’ll actually run out fetches first and sometimes not even crack them if they tap out. It’s like a pseudo Rishadan Port.

A very nice trick with Flusterstorm vs Stifle to keep in mind is if you have any fetches, crack them in response to the opponent casting a cantrip. If they Stifle it you can usually eat the cantrip too. Sometimes if you’re lucky you can bait two Stifles with this. But even without this trick, Flusterstorm is one of the best ways to fight Stifle as it’s usually uncounterable.

Vs Stifle I keep all copies of Force of Will in, side out 1 Jace, 2 Counterspell, 2 Entreat the Angels for 2 Monastery Mentor, 3 Flusterstorm. Search isn’t at its best vs Delver generally, this is probably a flaw in the way this 75 is built, but it’s a ‘rampant growth with suspend’, which is what you want vs Stifle sometimes. I don’t bring in any Blasts as usually that involves fetching up Volcs, with our duals and fetches being attacked it’s too much to ask, except for the TNN example above. This is something you have to decide on the fly.

Vs the Spell Pierce builds you want to tread a line between the two when playing game one, and after sideboard they have access to Cabal Therapy so I’d sideboard quite similarly to that. If you’re playing in paper try to see how many cards they’re siding in/out, it can tell you if they’re bringing Therapy in or not. Search and Entreat get better if they are, FoW worse etc.

The general idea against all delver decks is that we want to lower the overall average cost of our spells, especially our interactive spells, as much as possible while still keeping the ability to grind them out with more and better card advantage spells later. Swapping Counterspell for cards like Flusterstorm and Pyroblast is the best example of this. With a lower curve we run a lower chance of getting destroyed by their tempo plan, but we must still keep in our card draw to ensure that we are the control deck when the game goes long.



Miracles

Since we’ve mostly adopted Counterbalance again, a lot of the old rules for the matchup are true. I’d advise you to read some of the content that is already out there if you’re not well versed in it already.

Game one you want to draw the least white cards as possible, it’s sometimes even worth shuffling off a cantrip if you don’t have access to a Brainstorm yet as they’re pretty close to a dead card. Search, Counterbalance and Jace are huge haymakers and can swing games singlehandedly, try to keep these off the board at all costs.

For sideboarding you want to be cutting all Swords, at least one basic plains (you can cut both If you’re greedy), down to two sweepers, Supreme Verdict is better than Terminus in the matchup due to the amount of countermagic and it pitches to Force if you have them. I bring in 2 Monastery Mentor, 1 Vendilion Clique, 3 Flusterstorm, 2 Pyroblast and 1 Red Elemental Blast. Take out 4 Swords to Plowshares, 2 Terminus, 2 Plains, 1 Portent. Cutting a cantrip isn’t ideal and another flaw in my 75 as it is, but it’s the worst of the 61 cards left.

If you are playing some other build than this one things could change dramatically. For example if you know you have 4 mentors and believe that your opponent has 0, then you could easily cut all Terminus.

If you believe that your opponent is not playing Counterbalance that also changes things a lot, card’s like Force of Will becomes a lot worse, and the game is much more about raw card advantage suddenly. Another card people are playing is Gideon, Ally of Zendikar, if they have that or other walkers you’ll want the second Council’s Judgement too.

4 Colour Control (Czech Pile)

This is a matchup that we’d been struggling with a bit, but the addition of Search for Azcanta and Counterbalance has flipped it. You’re playing a long attrition game, card advantage is key and their scariest cards are Hymn to Tourach, Leovold and Jace usually. If you can beat these the rest falls into place quite easily.

Similarly to Cabal Therapy from Grixis, because of Hymn you want to be playing to the board, this is why Search and CB have changed the matchup so much. Some builds are starting to adopt Decays again, but generally preboard they don’t have many answers for Enchantments. They have access to Blasts after board so keep that in mind when sequencing these two, it’s usually better to lead with Counterbalance which is better to be answered on the stack, this can take away the line of them cantripping for a Blast. Predict is also a key part of the matchup, unless you’re in a really tight spot try to avoid cycling them early. We need to use every card advantage option we have available to us.

They play some frustrating creatures for a control/midrange deck, you need to respect DRS and Leovold so unfortunately we need to leave in enough removal. I side out 2 Swords to Plowshares, 1 Terminus, 4 Force of Will, 1 Plains for 1 Council’s Judgement, 2 Monastery Mentor, 2 Flusterstorm, 2 Pyroblast and 1 Red Elemental Blast.

The reasoning for Swords being a generally poor card in the matchup is because it only trades at parity with Deathrite Shaman, Leovold will trigger and Strix and Snapcasters have already accrued value. While in the literal sense we lose the matchup to creatures, it’s only chip damage they’re hitting us with. It’s not a winning axis to fight on by trading a card for their two for ones, in tandem with Hymns and Kommands we risk being run down by cards, and their value creatures will keep coming. In retrospect to Grixis Delver, I don’t see DRS as a must answer, it’s still threatening early, but I try to turn it into a way to gain a card with Terminus rather than Swords it. As we head into the mid and late game he becomes very low impact and it’s an angle I’d like to try and monopolize on. We take every scrap we can in the matchup.

Lands

Another matchup where a lot of tips and tricks from pre-ban can be used. There is so much to say about it that I’m going to avoid going into too much detail here or I’d go on a large tangent, but learning how to play around GQ and Ports is a big part of it, always have access to X+1 white mana when passing your turn, where X equals the number of ways for your opponent to GQ/Port/Wasteland you (assuming the combo is on the table). Counterbalance is insane game one and you should try to establish that and float 2cmc where possible. Once assembled, find a Jace and keep brainstorming 2s to the top, if you’re able to, put two 2cmc cards back, this protects Jace from Punishing Fire in your draw step.

I side out all 4 Terminus, 2 Counterspell and 1 Council’s Judgement for 2 Monastery Mentor, 1 Vendilion Clique, 3 Surgical Extraction and 1 Disenchant. If you see multiple Tireless Trackers in game two it might be worth boarding in a Terminus or two again for game 3.

Sneak and Show

This matchup is actually pretty simple, stop their dumb cards from resolving and hope they don’t have more things than you. Of course there’s a little more to it than that, but that’s the gist.
Game one, like the mirror, try to avoid drawing white cards. Sometimes you’ll get an Emrakul with a Terminus, but it’s rare, if Griselbrand hits the battlefield you’ve probably lost. Counterbalance is a great way to follow up a ‘first wave’ of their Show and Tells and Sneak Attacks, cutting off cantrips can be big. Otherwise until their hand is depleted you need to play a ‘flash’ game, try and brainstorm early to be able to run out a snapcaster for some value and get a clock going. A turn two CB can also punish a weaker hand from them by turning off cantrips, if you have no other interaction going on it’s probably worth slamming.

Sideboarding I take out 4 Swords, 4 Terminus, 1 Plains, 2 Entreat the Angels, 1 Jace, 1 Portent for 2 Monastery Mentor, 1 Vendilion Clique, 1 Ethersworn Canonist, 3 Flusterstorm, 2 Surgical Extraction, 1 Disenchant, 2 Pyroblast, 1 Red Elemental Blast. Keep in mind that sometimes they have Grim Lavamancer, if you suspect it or see it G2 and go to a G3, you might want to have some CJ or STP.

BUG Delver

BUG.dec is generally a very good matchup for UWx as Jace is so hard for them to beat, Swords is also phenomenal when none of their threats go wide.

You plan in this matchup is to resolve Jace pretty much. He takes over the game so easily, after that you kill everything and it’s fairly easy sailing. Entreat is also a lights out card.

I’m still undecided on the best way to approach the matchup, one way is to blank Abrupt Decay by siding out CB, Search and not bring in Mentors. Or you can overload them, you can also mix this up between games if you suspect they’re bringing in/taking out Decays. There’s some room for mind games here, try and see how many cards they’re bringing in/out.

From the sideboard BUG can bring in Planeswalkers, namely Jace, so you should be prepared for that with some blasts. I like bringing in the second CJ too, so you can trim on some other removal. They also have access to Sylvan Library which is one of the best cards against us, two copies of CJ should be enough of a hedge against that without bringing in a Disenchant.
Flusterstorm is OK, your main target is Hymn or opposing Forces, but it can be narrow at times. Snagging a Brainstorm is also pretty strong as they’re a clunky deck and need it to fix hands more than other Delver variants. It’s a bit better on the draw as you’re then protected from turn two Hymns, and on the play you have a couple of turns to play out cantrips and hide lands/spells you need on top.

So generally I’d be looking to bring in 1 CJ, 0-2 Monastery Mentor, 0-1 Clique, 0-2 Flusterstorm, 2-3 Pyroblast (3rd if they’re on TNNs and Leos) and cutting 2 Forces, a Terminus, 0-2 CB, 0-2 Search.

Knowing what exact list they are on here is huge, if they don’t have any TNN or Leovold but instead multiple Tombstalkers or extra Lilianas you could easily cut a Terminus or two post board, against those lists it is never going to be the creatures that you actually lose to, but instead their noncreature permanents, so you don’t want to get flooded on removal. Also, BUG has no reach, no Lightning Bolts or Fireblasts, so it is fine to take a few more hits while you cantrip to set up that perfect terminus against them.


Eldrazi Stompy

This matchup is basically all about Chalice of the Void. If you can keep it off the table you will likely win unless the game goes very long and they start activating Eye of Ugin.

Prioritize killing their creatures before gaining card advantage, you want to stay out of range of Reality Smashers if possible. In game one, don’t play out Counterbalances, they’re blanked by Cavern and the high cmc of their deck, it’s better to hold onto them in case you draw a Brainstorm or to pitch it to Force. Also keep Thought-Knot Seer in mind, you want to be hiding your bomb cards like Entreat and Jaces when possible, don’t draw them off cantrips early if it can be helped, and avoid tapping out for extra cantrips if you have a lone Swords in your hand because you’ll need to cast it in response to the trigger. Also because of Cavern, if you have an opportunity to play a Counterspell, do it. It can become a dead card without warning. Portent is one of the better cards to stabilize, if you deal with their first wave I like to aggressively Portent them off cards that matter, it’s one of the few ways we can ‘interact’ with Eye of Ugin, don’t let them draw it. Jace +2, Predict and Snapcaster also help lock up games like this. Bear this strategy in mind when playing out cantrips early, if you don’t need to hit a land for your land drop, it’s sometimes better to play Ponders over Portents.

Two cards to keep in mind in this matchup that can be blowouts are Warping Wail (usually on Terminus or Entreat) and All is Dust. You can usually get a read on them by how the opponent plays.

Sideboarding you take out Counterbalances and Counterspells, it’s also sometimes reasonable to shave a cantrip or two vs Chalice decks if you don’t have enough to bring in. I board in 1 CJ, 2 Mentor, 1 Clique, 1 Disenchant for 2 CB, 2 Counterspell and 1 Portent.

ANT (Ad Nauseam Tendrils)

This is one of the matchups where experience is king, the player who knows how to approach it from their end will win more on average, though we do have some haymakers like Counterbalance to mitigate this. It’s important to get a clock going, so like the Sneak and Show matchup try to play a Brainstorm early to set up getting a Snapcaster on the battlefield at the end of their turn. Also try to find a Counterbalance as fast as possible, if you manage that you sometimes need to decide on floating 0s, 1s or 2s, all have reasonable hits. If you have countermagic you can play in your hand it’s usually best to float a 1cmc to protect it from discard. If it’s your only piece of interaction, float a 2 for Infernal Tutor. 0 cmc hits LEDs and Petals, it’s less good than 1s or 2s, but good to keep in mind.

A flipped Search is also a fantastic way to ‘play around’ discard by activating it in response to their business spells, it’s also a way for us to bury them in countermagic as the game goes on. Because of Search, their best approach now I think is to go under us, keep this in mind and be prepared on the first couple of turns.

I side out all 4 Swords, 2 Terminus (leave in the last two for potential Empty the Warrens, and something for Xantid Swarm or Dark Confidant), 1 CJ, 2 Entreat, 1 Plains for 1 Vendilion Clique, 1 Ethersworn Canonist, 3 Flusterstorm, 3 Surgical Extraction, 1 Pyroblast and 1 Red Elemental Blast.

If you see, or even just suspect Xantid Swarm, it could be wise to leave in extra copies of Swords to Plowshares, we rarely did this before the ban, since we could still maintain the counterbalance+top lock even after they attack with it and silence us, but now things are slightly different and we will now almost always need to stop Xantid.
TES (The Epic Storm)

Due to Search being such a powerhouse vs combo decks looking to go long, I actually believe TES to be a harder matchup than ANT at the moment. This has always been the other way around in the past as ANT could grind us with multiple Tendrils. Our setup phase in the early turns is slow and we struggle to hide interaction as well as we used to without Top. You still want to approach how you play the matchup similarly to ANT but with a few changes to sideboarding. TES doesn’t use its graveyard, so I wouldn’t bring in Surgical Extractions. It also leans on Empty a lot more so I’d be looking to leave in all Terminus. It’s also a bit more all in, so if you can stop the first wave that gives a good opportunity to play a Mentor and pressure them. It can also beat smaller Empties.

Side out 4 Swords, 1 CJ, 2 Entreat, 1 Plains and 1 Jace for 1 Vendilion Clique, 1 Ethersworn Canonist, 3 Flusterstorm, 2 Monastery Mentor, 1 Pyroblast and 1 Red Elemental Blast.
Death and Taxes

Against DnT you play ‘UW Jund’, kill everything and if you survive until Entreat or Mentor you usually win. This is one of the matchups where Entreat can shine as Mentor isn’t at it’s best vs equipment.

Vial is their scariest card, if they lead on it and you have a Force, Force it. It’s going to be dead otherwise. If they don’t have a Vial then the power of the deck is hugely mitigated.

I tend to keep the full set of Forces in, it’s good against vial, if you need tempo to cantrip for land drops, their 4cmc haymakers like Gideon, Cataclysm etc. It’s a very versatile card and the disadvantage isn’t what the matchup swings around.

One of the scariest things they can do is set up Mother of Runes plus a Prelate on 6, because of this if they have a vial on one and you have the option to cantrip or hold up stp, always hold up the swords.

I take out all other countermagic, so 2 Counterbalance and 2 Counterspell for 1 Council’s Judgement, 2 Monastery Mentor and a Disenchant.


Aggro Loam

Another Chalice matchup, but Punishing Fire is also a big threat. Game one an active Fire can keep Mentor or Jace in check, this is where Entreat is at its best. CB floating twos can help to keep Fire in check, but they also play Abrupt Decay so it’s less reliable than vs Lands.

You want to be playing to the board where possible because of Liliana too, so getting an early Search, Jace or Entreat down can give you a big boost to use your reactive cards as you draw them to disrupt rather than answer. We don’t always have the tools to grind them out in game one, so we have to take an aggressive stance, but choose your spot wisely. Games can start slowly so make sure you know your plan as the pace of the game becomes apparent. Preferably you want to play a “Turbo Angel” decks here, just hit every land drop and then cast Entreat for as much as possible as early as possible, this way you blank the biggest portion of their deck, and don’t have to do the impossible in finding a permanent solution to Life from the Loam or Punishing Fire in game 1.

In this matchup I trim on the removal and try to overload on threats. I tend to take out 1 Swords, 1 Terminus, 1 Portent, 2 Force of Will and 1 Counterspell for 1 Council’s Judgement, 2 Monastery Mentor, 2 Surgical Extraction and one Disenchant.

Surgical is pretty much just for Punishing Fire and along with Snapcasters two copies is plenty, trimming a Counterspell is because it’s only situationally good, and with Snaps it’s a virtual two copies which is fine.

Dredge

Dredge has been gaining popularity recently so while I don’t think it’s at the state where we need to play things like Rest in Peace yet, there’s a good way to approach the matchup.

Preboard is pretty horrible, but with Terminus and Swords we do stand a chance, it’s not as bad as other decks’ matchup game one. Try to save Swords for their Ichorids, and remember to throw Snapcasters out there if they’re attacking to take out Bridge from Belows. After sideboard you should almost never try and Surgical Dredgers. One reason is because most lists now have incorporated Street Wraith which can lead to an uncounterable blowout, the other is if you can surgical Bridge and Ichorids, they can’t do much. Alternatively you can Surgical Narcomoebas and Ichorids, leaving them having to hardcast their dudes then use Therapy to get Bridge triggers. This is my plan for any deck with Surgicals, Snaps and a sweeper. Take those two out, they’re then just left with Narcomoabas and maybe some zombie tokens which are easy to clean up.

I take out 2 Search, 2 Counterspell, 1 Council’s Judgement, 2 Counterbalance and 1 Plains for 2 Monastery Mentor, 3 Flusterstorm and 3 Surgical Extraction. Some versions still play Careful Study, then along with Breakthrough that’s enough targets to bring in Blasts on the play. Blasts can also kill your Snapcasters or Cliques in a pinch to get rid of Bridges.

Black Red Reanimator

BR Rea has waned in popularity recently, but it’s still present enough to have plans for. Unlike UB where they have countermagic, if you can live a few turns BR is very easy to out grind. Swords and Jace are fantastic especially.

Preboard you’ll sometimes just lose to a fast hand or redundancy, it’s a high variance game. You should always counter the effect putting a creature in the graveyard, like an Entomb, if able. They play a large amount more reanimation spells than this effect. Postboard you have Surgicals, so it’s often better to let them resolve. There’s a rule of thumb that you should mull hands without two pieces of 0 cmc interaction, but I wouldn’t recommend doing this to a T, assess every hand in what it’s capable of stopping. Also remember that Flusterstorm can get through a Chancellor trigger, the Chancellor will counter the original copy but all storm copies will go on the stack.

I take out 2 Entreat, 2 Terminus, 2 Predict and a Plains for 1 Vendilion Clique, 3 Flusterstorm and 3 Surgical Extraction. Disenchant is also fine to bring in, it can hit Animate Dead with the trigger on the stack and the creature will never enter the battlefield. Sometimes they keep no or one landers with Chrome Mox and you can punish that.

[FZA]

Great work on this primer Minniehajj :smile:

[DracoOccisor]

Thank you for your time and effort invested into this Primer!

I think I can speak for all the Topless Miracles players when I say that we appreciate your work in trying to support this archetype.

[AppallinglyDull]

Very nice!

I'd love to see some further discussion of general gameplay strategy. One topic is Portent -- especially when it is correct to Portent the opponent vs. yourself (i.e., how aggressive to be with Portent).

Someday, a sideboarding guide for the main-deck Mentor version would also be of interest. (I'm never sure how 'correct' my sideboarding is.)

[crowe_1]

Thanks for all the hard work. I've been looking forward to this SB guide for quite awhile.

[Minniehajj]

Very nice!

I'd love to see some further discussion of general gameplay strategy. One topic is Portent -- especially when it is correct to Portent the opponent vs. yourself (i.e., how aggressive to be with Portent).

Someday, a sideboarding guide for the main-deck Mentor version would also be of interest. (I'm never sure how 'correct' my sideboarding is.)

Will definitely be addressing these points!

[FZA]

Will definitely be addressing these points!

Any reason why you don't recommend bringing in Back to Basics against Shardless? You recommend them against Jund, and Shardless has a manabase that's about equally as greedy as Jund, and also sometimes plays Creeping Tar Pit as well. I think BtB is great in that matchup. I know there's also the temptation to leave in some Forces to deal with Ancestral and Jace, but Forces are awful otherwise and you have red blasts/snapcasters to deal with those.

Honestly though you should probably add an entry for 4c Control too, as much as I love Shardless it seems like most people have shifted over to that deck due to its improved combo matchups.

[Tel'Lythari]

Real glad to see that we've made it to 'Established Decks' :smile:

[jdmdave]

Good work

[Lord_Mcdonalds]

It only took a banning but Miracles finally gets an updated primer

Good work

[Dice_Box]

It only took a banning but Miracles finally gets an updated primer

Good work
Yea, just on time too.

[Sefir]

Congratulations for the hard work! The new primer seems great! :smile:

Nice for the deck to return in the DTB too.

EDIT: Mainly for history/nostalgia reasons, a link to the old primer can be added. :wink:

[Hrothgar]

Very good work, Minniehajj!
I hope now that we have a primer, we continue to discuss with the same passion and dedication, improving ourselves and THE archetype.

[Quasim0ff]

Welcome back. Right where we belong. Shout outs to Whitefaces, Alakazimdk, minnifer, Sam roukas, Johan Steurs and ozmandiguy.

Sent from my ONEPLUS A3003 using Tapatalk

[Kobal]

Regarding your sideboarding suggestions, what is the reasoning to bring in Monastery Mentor in the mirror? I always thought that was one of the weaker matchups for that card.

[Quasim0ff]

Regarding your sideboarding suggestions, what is the reasoning to bring in Monastery Mentor in the mirror? I always thought that was one of the weaker matchups for that card.
Because white cards shouldn't be in and it doesn't get flusterstorm or rebd.

Sent from my ONEPLUS A3003 using Tapatalk

[Kyuuri117]

Awesome! Though the large paragraph about JTMS needs to be reworked. It mentions interactions with counterbalance and divining top, as if those cards were still in the deck. Seems like it was copy/pasted from somewhere.

[Minniehajj]

Awesome! Though the large paragraph about JTMS needs to be reworked. It mentions interactions with counterbalance and divining top, as if those cards were still in the deck. Seems like it was copy/pasted from somewhere.

Someone on reddit point this out, it's fixed now!

[Agrippa91]

The paragraph about Back to Basics makes it sound like it was just better than Blood Moon, but it has 2 major weaknesses:
1. It can be killed via REB which is especially bad against red delver decks like Grixis who don't have an answer for Blood Moon once it resolves. Thus it's not as much of an "I win if this resolves on an empty board" card.
2. Decay decks they don't have to constantly keep up BG when they fear a Blood Moon. Here too it slows them down the game until they have a decay while Blood Moon has the potential to just win the game when they don't have basics out.

That said Blood Moon of course renders your fetchlands useless. With Predict allowing you to plow through your deck Blood Moon seems like the better option though.

[melaar]

Thank you very much Minniehajj, very good job ! It's up to us to play now.

[Richard Arschmann]

The paragraph about Back to Basics makes it sound like it was just better than Blood Moon, but it has 2 major weaknesses:
1. It can be killed via REB which is especially bad against red delver decks like Grixis who don't have an answer for Blood Moon once it resolves. Thus it's not as much of an "I win if this resolves on an empty board" card.
2. Decay decks they don't have to constantly keep up BG when they fear a Blood Moon. Here too it slows them down the game until they have a decay while Blood Moon has the potential to just win the game when they don't have basics out.

That said Blood Moon of course renders your fetchlands useless. With Predict allowing you to plow through your deck Blood Moon seems like the better option though.

If B2B was of a higher power level than Blood Moon, it would be harder to justify splashing red, since the deck's manabase has become a bit more shaky post-ban. Blood Moon is more powerful than B2B unless your opponent is playing some sort of heavily red thing that runs a lot of nonbasics, in which case it's probably not going to come in.

Also, for the primer, let's not forget that Ethersworn Canonist is just as busted against Sneak & Show as Storm. It turns those high-intensity counter wars where you Force the Force and Red Blast the Force and Flusterstorm the Red Blast into a simple yes/no question of "Do you have a counterspell" (and yes, we usually do). They're going to have to get rid of it or play Boseiju and they don't really excel at either of those things.

[twndomn]

Feels like the article was under the pressure of time, sort of a broad stroke approach. While I am grateful for the content as it's decent, it can certainly go more in-depth.

For example, the discussion on Pyroclasm/Kozilek's Return can go further. K. Return, though cost one more mana than Pyroclasm, it can easily escape Port being an instant, And it escapes Mom's protection.

The unfortunate omission: From the Ashes

The card can be flashback-ed and it has ruined Eldrazi on SCG camera in the past. I had plenty of blow-outs with that card.

[Whitefaces]

Feels like the article was under the pressure of time, sort of a broad stroke approach. While I am grateful for the content as it's decent, it can certainly go more in-depth.

For example, the discussion on Pyroclasm/Kozilek's Return can go further. K. Return, though cost one more mana than Pyroclasm, it can easily escape Port being an instant, And it escapes Mom's protection.

The unfortunate omission: From the Ashes

The card can be flashback-ed and it has ruined Eldrazi on SCG camera in the past. I had plenty of blow-outs with that card.

The metagame has completely changed, do you think From the Ashes deserves a place in 75s? If so, why?

[KZhang]

the section on Portent could be expanded as well, that it can target opponents, and the use case for that.

@Min: i realized that there are many comments on how to improve the primer, and they can be quite overwhelming. do let me know if you need any help yea?

[Hrothgar]

The paragraph about Back to Basics makes it sound like it was just better than Blood Moon, but it has 2 major weaknesses:
1. It can be killed via REB which is especially bad against red delver decks like Grixis who don't have an answer for Blood Moon once it resolves. Thus it's not as much of an "I win if this resolves on an empty board" card.
2. Decay decks they don't have to constantly keep up BG when they fear a Blood Moon. Here too it slows them down the game until they have a decay while Blood Moon has the potential to just win the game when they don't have basics out.

That said Blood Moon of course renders your fetchlands useless. With Predict allowing you to plow through your deck Blood Moon seems like the better option though.

Blood Moon simply can win some games alone, this is another fundamental difference between Moon and Back to Basics imho. Many times Terminus followed by Moon is gg vs BUG, Bant, 4c Leovold.

[twndomn]

The metagame has completely changed, do you think From the Ashes deserves a place in 75s? If so, why?

I am not sure if the criterion to include a card is directly related to the metagame. Many lists don't run Karakas post SDT ban, yet that card is mentioned. Is FtA any more fringe than say... Gideon, Ally of Zendikar? Leyline of Sanctity might be a good call at this point in time, what about 6 months, or a year from now? If we are going to include Gideon and Leyline for the sake of a primer, I just don't see why not FtA. A card might be less popular in a particular point in time, but might see a revival in the future, hence using meta as an argument is counter-productive for the comprehensiveness of being a primer.

[Minniehajj]

the section on Portent could be expanded as well, that it can target opponents, and the use case for that.

@Min: i realized that there are many comments on how to improve the primer, and they can be quite overwhelming. do let me know if you need any help yea?

I'll definitely let you know! I intend on addressing these points later, but this was written in about 7 hours of nonstop writing so I needed to take a break and have a lot of other stuff I need to do. I'll definitely get to adding these points.

[Munchyman]

is it possible to add a SB guide for Grixis Control? I keep losing to it in the leagues.

[Whitefaces]

is it possible to add a SB guide for Grixis Control? I keep losing to it in the leagues.

I'm going to try and write some more up to date sb tables as well as explanations soon. But in the meantime, sbing will change depending on your maindeck of course.

What I'm playing at the moment is

3 Snapcaster Mage

3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor

4 Ponder
4 Portent
4 Terminus
1 Entreat the Angels

4 Swords to Plowshares
4 Brainstorm
3 Predict
2 Flusterstorm
4 Force of Will
2 Counterspell
2 Unexpectedly Absent

3 Tundra
5 Island
2 Plains
1 Karakas
4 Flooded Strand
4 Scalding Tarn
1 Arid Mesa

SB:
1 Flusterstorm
2 Surgical Extraction
3 Leyline of Sanctity
2 Monastery Mentor
2 Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
2 Back to Basics
1 Disenchant
2 Containment Priest

Vs Grixis Control (assuming the Young Pyro with Cabal Therapy one), I go roughly like the below, but sometimes switch things up depending on how they play. Esp G2 if they don't fetch around B2B/Moon I'll consider B2B. I think it's a pretty even matchup, though Therapy can be brutal. Just keep in mind that Grixis Control, 4c control, 4c Leo etc, all these piles are different. Vs Leo decks I wouldn't side out as much removal for example, and wouldn't bring in Leyline vs the non therapy builds. The Leo versions are more colour intensive than normal Grixis so I'd consider B2B after G1 too, but if you do that don't side out a plains etc.

-4 Force of Will
-1 Plains
-2 Swords to Plowshares
-1 Terminus

+1 Flusterstorm
+3 Leyline of Sanctity
+2 Monastery Mentor
+2 Gideon, Ally of Zendikar

[KZhang]

I'm going to try and write some more up to date sb tables as well as explanations soon. But in the meantime, sbing will change depending on your maindeck of course.

What I'm playing at the moment is

3 Snapcaster Mage

3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor

4 Ponder
4 Portent
4 Terminus
1 Entreat the Angels

4 Swords to Plowshares
4 Brainstorm
3 Predict
2 Flusterstorm
4 Force of Will
2 Counterspell
2 Unexpectedly Absent

3 Tundra
5 Island
2 Plains
1 Karakas
4 Flooded Strand
4 Scalding Tarn
1 Arid Mesa

SB:
1 Flusterstorm
2 Surgical Extraction
3 Leyline of Sanctity
2 Monastery Mentor
2 Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
2 Back to Basics
1 Disenchant
2 Containment Priest

Vs Grixis Control (assuming the Young Pyro with Cabal Therapy one), I go roughly like the below, but sometimes switch things up depending on how they play. Esp G2 if they don't fetch around B2B/Moon I'll consider B2B. I think it's a pretty even matchup, though Therapy can be brutal. Just keep in mind that Grixis Control, 4c control, 4c Leo etc, all these piles are different. Vs Leo decks I wouldn't side out as much removal for example, and wouldn't bring in Leyline vs the non therapy builds. The Leo versions are more colour intensive than normal Grixis so I'd consider B2B after G1 too, but if you do that don't side out a plains etc.

-4 Force of Will
-1 Plains
-2 Swords to Plowshares
-1 Terminus

+1 Flusterstorm
+3 Leyline of Sanctity
+2 Monastery Mentor
+2 Gideon, Ally of Zendikar

Love the list. Looks very streamlined. Especially the 2x Gideon. A few questions.

1) do you miss having clique in your 75?
2) do you feel a need for the 4th artifact removal? EE or another disenchant?
3) is the containment priest mostly for the Show & Tell matchups?

[Crimhead]

Not a deck I play myself, but I'm glad to see the new primer and I happy that Draw/Go is alive and well.
Kudos to Minniehajj and to everyone who has helped put the deck on the map. :)

[Whitefaces]

Love the list. Looks very streamlined. Especially the 2x Gideon. A few questions.

1) do you miss having clique in your 75?
2) do you feel a need for the 4th artifact removal? EE or another disenchant?
3) is the containment priest mostly for the Show & Tell matchups?

Thanks! The md feels pretty solid, sb can do with some work though I think.

1) A bit, I've been playing with 1 in the md recently over a Portent and liked it, but it was never extraordinary, and with the two Flusterstorms md slow combo is helped in that regard, so the sb slots for Cliques can be used for more problematic matchups. I feel like some heavy hitters like Gideon are needed vs the midrange decks of the format atm. I really want a second Entreat too, but it would probably be in a Mentor or Gideon slot.

2) I don't feel like it's needed, but I wouldn't hate another Disenchant, though its application is actually quite narrow at the moment if you look at the top decks. I've found that the UAs in the md carry a lot of weight of these sb options, 3 has been a good number of this effect in the 75.

3) Yeah, SnS and Elves mostly, but they're my least favourite cards in the sb at the moment.

I've not been able to play the deck that much the last few weeks though due to being busy and playing other decks (As Foretold is too much fun), so I'm going off playing at my LGS once and two leagues recently.

[KZhang]

Thanks! The md feels pretty solid, sb can do with some work though I think.

1) A bit, I've been playing with 1 in the md recently over a Portent and liked it, but it was never extraordinary, and with the two Flusterstorms md slow combo is helped in that regard, so the sb slots for Cliques can be used for more problematic matchups. I feel like some heavy hitters like Gideon are needed vs the midrange decks of the format atm. I really want a second Entreat too, but it would probably be in a Mentor or Gideon slot.

2) I don't feel like it's needed, but I wouldn't hate another Disenchant, though its application is actually quite narrow at the moment if you look at the top decks. I've found that the UAs in the md carry a lot of weight of these sb options, 3 has been a good number of this effect in the 75.

3) Yeah, SnS and Elves mostly, but they're my least favourite cards in the sb at the moment.

I've not been able to play the deck that much the last few weeks though due to being busy and playing other decks (As Foretold is too much fun), so I'm going off playing at my LGS once and two leagues recently.

1) With the Pt 1 adjustment, my MD is actually identical to yours, aside from adjusting the manabase to support the red blasts. i really liked the idea of the clique MB, seeing how soft we are to combo G1.

2) i really miss having Gideon in my board, so having been toying dropping EE for it, but at the same time, I'm worried about being softer to COTV. So i torn between Gideon, EE or the 2nd Containment Priest for that slot. Judging by your experience, it seems like 1 maybe sufficient.

My Decklist for reference

3 Snapcaster Mage
1 Vendilion Clique

3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor

4 Ponder
3 Portent
4 Terminus
1 Entreat the Angels

4 Swords to Plowshares
4 Brainstorm
3 Predict
2 Flusterstorm
4 Force of Will
2 Counterspell
2 Unexpectedly Absent

3 Tundra
3 Volcanic
4 Island
2 Plains
4 Flooded Strand
3 Scalding Tarn
1 Arid Mesa

SB:
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Flusterstorm
2 Surgical Extraction
2 Pyroblast
1 Red Elemental Blast
1 Disenchant
1 Containment Priest
2 Monastery Mentor
3 Leyline of Sanctity

[fwannmacher]

I just can't like the idea of using Mentor in this version of the deck. For sure Terminus is worse than it was, but it still a pretty good card and I value it more than the Mentor. Even post board the Mentor feels clunky to me. It's like turning a control deck into a midrange one.

About the red splash, I think it is unnecessary as well because we should have a good matchup against Delver and Eldrazi is falling in the meta.

Has anyone ever tried a green splash for Mirri's Guile? I know it is a target to otherwise dead Decays, but it helps assembling Terminus or any other response you need. Furthermore, with two of them in play and fetches we can do something near what was done with Top.

[Sefir]

In the last tournament that took place at my local game store, we were only 10 players (What kind of monster prefers a warm shinny beach next to the crystal-clear sea than a good, sweating game of legacy MtG in the local cafeteria? Traitors….) and I took 1st place. :smile:

Decklist

4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Portent
4 Predict
4 Force of Will
3 Snapcaster Mage
3 Swords to Plowshares
3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
3 Terminus
2 Counterspell
2 Flustrestorm
2 Unexpectedly Absent
1 Supreme Verdict
1 Entreat the Angels
4 Flooded Strand
4 Scalding Tarn
4 Island
3 Plains
2 Tundra
2 Volcanic Island
1 Arid Mesa

SB
3 Leyline of Sanctity
2 Blood Moon
2 Monastery Mentor
2 Surgical Extraction
2 Teferi’s Response
1 Pyroblast
1 Red Elemental Blast
1 Izzet Staticaster
1 Engineered Explosives


Round one: VS Elves, 2-0
I have played this matchup a bazillion of times... G1 He tries not to overextend in the fear of Terminus and he was right, since my Ponders and Brainstorms had revealed me 2 Terminus and 1 Verdict in the first 3 turns. Jace on empty board with FoW backup for whatever nasty was easy to win from there. G2 was the exact opposite. My opponent, after looking at my hand and stripping me of a Terminus with a t1 Thoughtseize went all in after realizing that there was no other removal in my hand, mass or otherwise. I stop his t3 Glimpse with a Force, but he still draws some cards utilizing his visionaries. In my t3 I blind-predict in desperation and of course, I missed. I did drew a Flusterstorm though. The opponent gets greedy and produces a ton of mana to bring a GSZ for Behemoth and that got Flusterstormed. Still, his small elves full-scale attack was a 2-turn clock. In my t4, I draw a Brainstorm. I cast it on his turn while he casts a Natural Order (I don’t know if he played around something or went for the overkill. I was dead on board already), praying for a topdeck Terminus. The cards revealed, a FoW and an Izzet Staticaster. I counter his NO and slammed Staticaster killing 3 Symbiots. After that, I managed to barely stay alive while Staticaster killed whatever remained on board, ending the game with 3 Angels 3 turns later.
Round two: VS High Tide, 2-0
Quite possibly the most boring matches I had. Both me and my opponent tried to accumulate Counters for the upcoming High Tide/Cunning Wish from his side or the upcoming Jace from my side. He was able to draw more than I did, but the main Flusterstorms were real MVPs here. After the counterwar for his Cunning Wish was over, I was able to kill him with Entreat. G2 I had the perfect draws. I had t0 Leyline. I Flusterstormed his High Tide. I surgicaled both his High Tides and Cunning Wishes. And all that, with a Mentor on board. The game ended fast.
Round three: VS Lands 1-1
The most difficult matchup in the entire day. G1 is something I consider unbeatable!! And that, it was. I can’t Sword Marit Lages for an eternity! But he CAN bring her into play for an eternity with his Loams. When he killed me, he was on 78 life…...G2 was quite a different story. I surgical his Loams early on and I am able to establish a Blood Moon on board on t3. He never finds Krosan Grip, I am wise to destroy his 3(!!!) Moxes with Engineered Explosives and he conceded. G3 was a grindfest. He keeps me out of WW with his Ghost Quarters (I used both of my Teferi’s Responses, but he kept recurring his GQ with Loam) and when I finally manage to surgical them (and his Dark Depths too with a Snapcasted Surgical) it was too late. I was left with a single Tundra in the deck, always afraid to fetch it in the face of 2 Wastelands (when I could. After a while, he started wasting my fetches as well. He had Loam all along of course). Meanwhile, his Tireless Tracker grew bigger and bigger. I manage to stabilize Jace after Jace, going the Tracker up and down to his hand for a while, until time got us both. I never saw either Blood Moons or Monastery Mentors here.
Semi-finals: VS Death & Taxes, 2-0
The opponent was a close friend and his deck was actually one that I borrowed him with (I own a variety of decks), thus I knew EXACTLY what was in his deck and what wasn’t. It was the less aggressive R/W version with Magus of the Moon and other silver bullets main. Still, he manages to almost get me G1 when he brings down a Sanctum Prelate for 1. We live in the era where, in the D&T vs Miracles matchup, a resolved Sanctum Prelate DOES NOT name automatically “6” ladies and gentlemen. Very annoying though. I am not able to find UA in the following turns and he manages to have a well-established board with Equipments and creatures, while Thalia ensures I will never hardcast my Terminus in time. I do manage to find a Supreme Verdict though. I clear the board and sweep to a clean victory. G2 was much easier. He doesn’t overextent to more than 3 creatures in fear of mass removals. He tries to get me while I brainstorm with a vialed Spirit of the Labyrinth, but I easily Sword it. At one point he became the Monarch with a Palace Jailer hitting a Snapcaster of mine and he drew a ton of cards out of that. He Ports my Plains and I play Teferi’s Response, destroying his Port, while drawing a Terminus from the top (that was my play of the day and it was GLORIOUS to behold) and sweeping the board in the process. I manage to survive easily (also using a Snapped Teferi’s Response to a Flickerwisp) and I kill him with a massive Entreat. He was still the Monarch when he died.
Finals: VS B/R Reanimator 2-1
G1 my opp. is on the play and he reveals Chancellor. Then he plays Swamp-> Thoughtseize (strips my FoW) -> L.Petal -> D.Ritual -> Entomb -> Exhume Griselbrand. Is this the point when you punch your opponent? I really wanted to punch my opponent there!!! God, I hate that deck…. I HATE IT!!!! G2 I am able to keep a good hand with Leyline of Sanctity, FoW and StP while my opponent mulls to 5. He manages to put a Sire of Insanity into play t1 and I sword it. It was easy from that point on with lots of Portenting his library and a Snapcaster beatdown kill. He did mention afterwards that he would have tried to Unmask me had the Leyline not be there. G3 I mull to 5 and I manage to keep a totally respectable hand with Flusterstorm and Surgical Extraction. He mulls too down to six, but he is on the play and he reveals Chancellor, proceeding to Swamp-> L. Petal -> C.Brutality me, discarding a Griselbrand and stripping me from my Surgical. He can’t reanimate the same turn, but he knows I can’t play Flusterstorm next turn with his revealed Chancellor. I topdeck my second Surgical. Sometimes life is sweet on me. I target his Griselbrand next turn in response to his Animate Dead, leaving him with just a Chancellor in his Hand and an unimportant graveyard. The game was essentially over.

Conclusion:
1) I belong to those who don’t really like Mentor. Entreat is certainly as much a viable option for winning condition as Monastery Mentor is. While I could see that a fast MM against the Lands G1 could have taken the game for me, or at least given me more possibilities to race the Dark Depths combo, I can’t neglect the fact that in general I don’t want to put MM on the table unless I have backup in the form of at least 2 counters to ensure Mentor resolving/his survival from removals. Up to that point (having the Mentor, the counters + the correct land base to utilize everything) I have already used the majority of the cantrips available and (quite probably) I already have an established Jace too. As a result, MM keeps attacking as a lone 2/2, 3/3 at most. Of course I’m mostly talking about G1, since most people remove their removals against me post –sb. Before the Top ban we could do the double Top trick in the endgame and finish the game quickly. Now this option is gone. Entreat on the other hand can be more of a game changer in my eyes, and that is often without preparing the board for it. Am I wrong in this way of thinking? If not, in which other matchups do you people think MM is more preferable than Entreat except Lands? What are the matchups were we actually want to play aggro and not really care of our opponents removal? I am thinking of removing MMs completely.....
2) Also regarding Lands, it is a hard matchup. Without Top we are unable to keep up with their pace, especially g1 where Surgical the Loam/ playing Blood Moon or Back to Basics is not an option. I feel that even with Mentor main, they are much faster than us in finding their combo for the kill. Other than praying, what is your line of play against the Lands matchup fo g1? Any advice would be appreciated.
3) We have a lot of things in the Sb to experiment and I like it! So many options! Staticaster was once again great against Elves, but this is a good mathcup anyway. I don’t think I liked him very much. He will probably be replaced by a 3rd Surgical Extraction. 2 is a small number. When we play matchups that we need them, we really need them. Leylines were good too, still proving to me that their usefulness goes beyond Burn and Storm (two difficult matchups, mind you), stopping the opponents targeted discard when needed. I still prefer it to Ethersworn Canonist, who can be destroyed by Smash to Smithereens and Fragmentize and I never really missed her despite playing against Elves and High Tide. While Blood Moon was crucial for my G2 victory against Lands, 3/5 decks I played against were almost monocolored and the landbase of Reanimator didn’t really mattered. There were decks with more fragile manabases in the tournament, but I didn’t face them. I think next time I will go -1 Volcanic and +1 Tundra on the main, -1 Izzet Staticaster, -2 Monastery Mentor, +1 Surgical Extraction, +1 Gideon, +1 Mountain on the side.
4) I liked the solo Verdict too. While I didn’t face any matchups where the uncounterability mattered (As I would if I played against delver or stoneforge decks, for example), it shined where it should, providing inevitability and nearly 0 setup.
5) Main Flusterstorms are cheat. I love them.
6) Teferi’s Response looked excellent on the first try! I believe that against delver decks they will perform even better. They protect the land base while also providing good CA at the form of 3 for 1. I definitely recommend it for testing.

[Munchyman]

Recently I added a Moat to my SB with main deck being Entreat build. With the aid of jtms fateseal, I was able to beat a D&T deck I was way behind on. My main fateseal target was Flickerwisp.

Has anyone been using moat in their board?

[Tel'Lythari]

If not, in which other matchups do you people think MM is more preferable than Entreat except Lands? What are the matchups were we actually want to play aggro and not really care of our opponents removal? I am thinking of removing MMs completely.....

I'm also not a fan of MMs, but having said that, I can't deny that they often add a different dimension to what we're doing, which can be gamechanging in certain MUs. I'm just not a fan because I often don't play well when they're in my 75 (MMs change the way I play, still haven't got that figured out).

From my experience, MMs come in handy against MUs where we do not have the inevitability. Lands is one example, while others include Eldrazi (Post/Stompy) and Burn (if Leylines are not present in the SB) etc. These are some examples that I can think of from the top of my head. :smile:

[KZhang]

2) Also regarding Lands, it is a hard matchup. Without Top we are unable to keep up with their pace, especially g1 where Surgical the Loam/ playing Blood Moon or Back to Basics is not an option. I feel that even with Mentor main, they are much faster than us in finding their combo for the kill. Other than praying, what is your line of play against the Lands matchup fo g1? Any advice would be appreciated.

We are huge underdogs g1.
My g1 plan is really just a fast Entreat. IMO, it's actually harder to race with Mentor as it turns on their punishing fire. so i prefer Entreat in this MU as well.
Secondary plan is to slam a Jace, and fateseal aggressively, and hoping they don't draw the punishing fire.

Leylines are almost awesome against Grixis decks. makes probe and therapy look silly.

[AppallinglyDull]

On the subject of Monastery Mentor: This is my theory-crafting, and I'm not the best player, so take it for what it's worth.

From a deckbuilding perspective, compared to some of the recent Entreat builds, a deck with 3 Mentors is generally sacrificing one Counterspell + one Terminus. Cutting a Terminus makes some sense, as you don't want to sweep away your Mentor and the Monk tokens do a decent job of creating board stalls in some situations, acting like a pseudo Moat. So you're down a piece of countermagic in the main, but in the sideboard, you have some free slots since you don't have any Mentors in the side. And because you have a threat instead of more defensive measures in the main deck, it incentivizes you to play a little more aggressively in some situations. But it also allows you to not care about 'wasting' your win condition, since you have multiple (setting Jace & Snapcaster beatdowns aside for the moment).

I suppose I view Mentor as serving a few different functions:

1. As a late-game play when the game is under control, it is a win condition.
2. As an early or mid-game play when the game is unstable, it can be a bridge to the late game.
3. As an early or mid-game play when the game is potentially quiet, it can be a win condition.

#1 is pretty similar to Entreat. Mentor is more fragile and a bit slower in these situations, but hopefully by this time the difference isn't substantial. But Mentor enables #2 and especially #3 in a way that Entreat doesn't. By running multiple maindeck Mentors, you can run one out without too much fear of it being killed in situations where it might win the game. Sometimes it will die right away or after making only a single monk, and hopefully buy you time to find a Terminus / Jace / etc. But other times, the opponent just won't have the answer and an early Mentor will win you the game.

Brian Braun-Duin wrote an article for TCGplayer (http://magic.tcgplayer.com/db/article.asp?ID=13743&writer=Brian+Braun-Duin&articledate=1-19-2017) a while ago with some thoughts on Mentor that I think I agree with:


I don't view cards like Mentor, Jace, Blood Moon or even Counterbalance as win conditions. I view them simply as means to an end. I see people too often playing scared to drop their Counterbalance into an answer or play their Mentor out unprotected on turn three, but those are the plays you have to make. I view these cards as expendable and often jam them as early as I can and force them (sometimes literally Force them) to have an answer. Yeah, sometimes they have the Spell Pierce for your Counterbalance or the Daze for your Monastery Mentor. In that case, you get to just keep playing the game. But when they don't have those cards, well, they're probably just dead.

When you play the game this way, it puts a lot of pressure on them to keep up. Normally, Miracles is playing from behind and trying to leverage Sensei's Divining Top at the right times to wrest control of the game before it's too late. Well, I find that it often ends up being too late when you're facing down the kinds of threats people are playing today, like True-Name Nemesis, Liliana of the Veil or Leovold, Emissary of Trest.

With the Mentor version, you have a quick way to turn the corner and sometimes you also get to force them to play from behind, which is not where Delver decks traditionally thrive. When they are trying to play catch-up and are spending their turns answering your threats, you are in the driver seat. Now that's what I call control.

...

Playing with these kinds of powerful game-ending effects and playing them proactively and without fear is how Miracles wins a lot of these games. As it turns out, Mentor is a more powerful threat than almost anything your opponent can be doing. If they don't have an answer to a Mentor, you'll outrace Delver or Death and Taxes or whatever creature deck they are presenting. If they do, then maybe the turn they spent killing your Mentor allows you to successfully stick a Jace the next turn.

I think some of the assessment has changed since the Top ban (you can't Top on upkeep and replay Top to get a one-mana Monk every turn, so it's a little harder to be as aggressive with Mentor), and I think that without Counterbalance it makes sense to be a little more cautious running out an early Mentor since it's harder to protect, but I think the general principles still apply: Mentor allows us to quickly become proactive, force the opponent to 'have it', and if nothing else buy time to find a Terminus / Jace / etc.

[twndomn]

From my experience, MMs come in handy against MUs where we do not have the inevitability. Lands is one example, while others include Eldrazi (Post/Stompy) and Burn (if Leylines are not present in the SB) etc. These are some examples that I can think of from the top of my head. :smile:

There used to be a point in time when MM refers to Meddling Mage. It's weird to me people use MM for Monastery Mentor.

In the post SDT ban Miracles, you never have inevitability, assuming you refer to the inevitability of Counterbalance-Top lock pre-ban. You'll never get to CB lock your opponent and sometimes a combination of Snapcaster + Lightning bolt via Grixis player's top-deck is all it takes to decide a match.

Part of Mentor's strength is its interaction with single or double Tops. BBD wrote the article of jamming Mentor in a time people were spending resources such as Decay on Counterbalance. Now People have Push and/or Bolt maybe Decay to deal with Mentor. While I still play the card, I wonder if it's better off for Mentor to be in an Esper shell than in Miracles.

[Lormador]

Kind of a valid question at least, which is strange because before the ban the idea of an Esper Miracles was a very effective way to troll this thread. The value of blasts in Legacy is still high, because how could it not be, but surely less high than it was before. It used to be the best way to deal with CB and JTMS in the mirror. Half of that is irrelevant now and the matchup is less common quite generally, and meanwhile two combo decks are in the DTB section, both of which are solid discard targets.

[El_Drazi_Landscaping]

Hey guys,

I'm really intrigued by Miracles and want to give it a try. What do you guys think of the viability of an Esper build? I was thinking of making a build similar to Callum Smith's in the primer with a couple of Underground Seas in the main and some discard in the board to fight through combo.

The main reason for this is $$. I have a couple of Underground Seas, but no red cards, Volcs, and no flusterstorms.

Sent from my FRD-L04 using Tapatalk

[WinterRat1]

Recently I added a Moat to my SB with main deck being Entreat build. With the aid of jtms fateseal, I was able to beat a D&T deck I was way behind on. My main fateseal target was Flickerwisp.

Has anyone been using moat in their board?

I have used Moat in my board but I don't get to play often, and when I have played I've either not been in matchups where I've brought it in, or when I did bring it in I didn't draw it, so unfortunately I cannot tell you how it worked out for me.

I am interested in your experiences with the card though; it's good to know others have thought of it as an option too.

[Richard Arschmann]

Moat is a fine SB card for an Eldrazi-heavy meta.

Esper Miracles w/ Thoughtseize sounds like a straight-up combo muncher. It seems bad in a meta with a lot of fair decks.

[gh0st_b1rd]

Could always play Esper Miracles with a regular UW Maindeck and proceed to bring in a slew of discard spells vs any unfair deck after board. Also you get access to SB cards like Engineered Plague as well.

[El_Drazi_Landscaping]

Could always play Esper Miracles with a regular UW Maindeck and proceed to bring in a slew of discard spells vs any unfair deck after board. Also you get access to SB cards like Engineered Plague as well.
Yeah, this is exactly what I was thinking. Something like this:

Main Deck

Creatures:
3x Snapcaster Mage

Instants and Sorceries:
4x Brainstorm
3x Counterspell
4x Force of Will
4x Predict
4x StP
2x Unexpectedly Absent
1x Entreat the Angels
4x Ponder
4x Portent
4x Terminus

Other:
3x Jace, TMS

Land:
4x Flooded Strand
4x Polluted Delta
1x Scalding Tarn
4x Island
2x Plains
3x Tundra
2x Underground Sea

Sideboard:
1x Blue Elemental Blast
1x Containment Priest
1x Disenchant
1x Engineered Plague
1x Ethersworn Canonist
2x Inquisition of Kozilek
2x Monastery Mentor
1x Nihil Spellbomb
2x Surgical Extraction
2x Thoughtseize
1x Vendilion Clique

I have an additional question: what is the Eldrazi matchup like? I have always struggled against it when playing other decks.

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[gh0st_b1rd]

I have only been playing against it with maindeck Mentors, so I guess the short answer is answer CotV whenever possible and a willingness to at least 2-for-1 yourself when removing a threat thanks to the fact that they are threat-light.

But more often than not you lose because they played Chalice and you have a handful of cantrips, Snaps and lands.

Other than that its just a deck full of idiots. If there was ever a caveman tribal deck, it was never Juggernauts, it was always Eldrazi. Its not hard to outsmart cavemen when they cant swing their nihilist grail at you.

[twndomn]

Feels like I got trolled or people just misunderstood me. Esper Miracles is not good. I'm just saying Esper Mentor in this meta might be competitive, but it would be a totally different deck. More like a deck that utilizes free spells like Probes and maybe 0 mana artifacts, but to discuss further means derailing this thread.

Back to Miracles, is soothsaying that horrendous? From post Top ban to GP:LV to now, feels like I went full circle. If the format is full of fair decks, either running SFM (including DnT), or just completely ditch Decay and enchantment removal (like Grixis YP), it's worth the effort to experiment, might just work in this meta, something like this:

4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
2 Predict
3 Counterbalance
3 Soothsaying
4 Force of Will
2 Counterspell
4 Swords to Plowshares
4 Terminus
1 Council's Judgment
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Entreat the Angels
2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
2 Monastery Mentor
3 Snapcaster Mage

20 usual lands

[Richard Arschmann]

2) Other than praying, what is your line of play against the Lands matchup fo g1?

I like to scoop fast and try to convince them I'm on UWx Stoneblade if they don't completely brick. Say something like "Well, the only way I'm winning Game 1 is if I get a super fast Jitte on True-Name" and hope they buy it.

[Hrothgar]

I like to scoop fast and try to convince them I'm on UWx Stoneblade if they don't completely brick. Say something like "Well, the only way I'm winning Game 1 is if I get a super fast Jitte on True-Name" and hope they buy it.

Ah ah, oh Jesus...:laugh:
This is not properly "competitive" advice..:laugh:




2) Also regarding Lands, it is a hard matchup. Without Top we are unable to keep up with their pace, especially g1 where Surgical the Loam/ playing Blood Moon or Back to Basics is not an option. I feel that even with Mentor main, they are much faster than us in finding their combo for the kill. Other than praying, what is your line of play against the Lands matchup fo g1? Any advice would be appreciated.

G1 is not simple:
Fetch for basics.
Double Plains are relevant because of Unexpectedly.
The two common way to win are a fast Mentor, countering his Crop Rotation (who want to tutoring Glacial Chasm / Tabernacle).
Resolve Jace as fast as possible and scry his top: you don't want Punishing Fire and you want to win by ultimatum.
This are the only ways to win a "normal" game.


G2 is too simple because you have a lot of response: Surgical in primis.




Feels like I got trolled or people just misunderstood me. Esper Miracles is not good. I'm just saying Esper Mentor in this meta might be competitive, but it would be a totally different deck. More like a deck that utilizes free spells like Probes and maybe 0 mana artifacts, but to discuss further means derailing this thread.

I quote this.
Iimho "standard" Miracle with 0-2 Mentors in Esper configuration is not good.

Anyway UWB Mentor Miracle is a nice deck.
I have play it for a tournament and he give me satisfactions.
You can read my report here:

http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?20529-Miracle-Control&p=1016437&viewfull=1#post1016437

6-1 in this tournament (losing by Burn, that anyway is a bad matchup for all Miracle versions).
I think UWB is a different, funny, approach.
In a combo meta is very good because of his proactive nature.
Seize, Snap, Seize...or any discard + Surgical...are strong piece of play.



Back to Miracles, is soothsaying that horrendous? From post Top ban to GP:LV to now, feels like I went full circle. If the format is full of fair decks, either running SFM (including DnT), or just completely ditch Decay and enchantment removal (like Grixis YP), it's worth the effort to experiment, might just work in this meta, something like this: LIST...


I don't have try the Soothsaying version of new Miracle.
I don't know if a classical Balance version is good now.
All the times that i see some good player test this card, i'm not impressed.

[AnziD]

Ah ah, oh Jesus...:laugh:
This is not properly "competitive" advice..:laugh:



At GP Vegas:

R8 - 20 minute game 1 vs Lands. I lose the match
R11 - 10 minute game 1 vs Lands. I conceded game 1, won g2 and 3.
R13 - 5 minute game 1 vs Lands. He found Grove + P. Fire and I scooped.

Unless your Lands opponent is really bad, its usually not worth the time to try and cheese a win with Mentor/Jace unless your hand is REALLY good, and even then its iffy. We just dont have a way to interact. Since the GP, I've added 1 Blood Moon which gives me *something* to dig for w/ Predict and Snapcaster Mage. They can't beat that card G1.

[Ingo]

Since the GP, I've added 1 Blood Moon which gives me *something* to dig for w/ Predict and Snapcaster Mage. They can't beat that card G1.

There is a way out of G1 Bloodmoon, in gambling together Loam and Vortex. It's a longshot though, especially versus a deck with counterspells.

[RobNC]

There is a way out of G1 Bloodmoon, in gambling together Loam and Vortex. It's a longshot though, especially versus a deck with counterspells.

There's also Mox Diamond. Makes it incredibly difficult for Lands but not impossible.

[Drzed]

At GP Vegas:

R8 - 20 minute game 1 vs Lands. I lose the match
R11 - 10 minute game 1 vs Lands. I conceded game 1, won g2 and 3.
R13 - 5 minute game 1 vs Lands. He found Grove + P. Fire and I scooped.

Unless your Lands opponent is really bad, its usually not worth the time to try and cheese a win with Mentor/Jace unless your hand is REALLY good, and even then its iffy. We just dont have a way to interact. Since the GP, I've added 1 Blood Moon which gives me *something* to dig for w/ Predict and Snapcaster Mage. They can't beat that card G1.I was thinking of something like that. Why not using bloodmoon to lock the board after a terminus has cleared eventual shaman and creatures. It incidentally destroys alot of decks giving some free wins. Id like to test a couple copies but 1 is probably correct.

Sent from my MI 5 using Tapatalk

[Pdingo]

Hei Guys

I played a 39 man Tournament today with my UWr Miracle list.Sadly i missed the top 8 and finished just 10th place with it but the loses was really unlucky..

// UWR Portent Miracle

// 60 Hauptdeck
// 1 Artifact
1 Engineered Explosives

// 6 Creature
3 Snapcaster Mage
3 Monastery Mentor

// 19 Instant
4 Force of Will
3 Predict
4 Brainstorm
2 Counterspell
4 Swords to Plowshares
2 Flusterstorm

// 20 Land
3 Volcanic Island
3 Tundra
4 Island
2 Plains
4 Flooded Strand
3 Polluted Delta
1 Arid Mesa

// 3 Planeswalker
3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor

// 11 Sorcery
4 Ponder
4 Terminus
3 Portent


// 15 Sideboard
// 1 Artifact
SB: 1 Engineered Explosives

// 4 Creature
SB: 3 Ethersworn Canonist
SB: 1 Containment Priest

// 10 Instant
SB: 2 Wear // Tear
SB: 1 Flusterstorm
SB: 3 Pyroblast
SB: 3 Surgical Extraction
SB: 1 Unexpectedly Absent


Match 1 against DnT (You can see it here on the stream the very first match,, will post the stream later) 2:1

g1: he had a revoker with SoFaF equipped and i have a mentor and 1 token.. i have a second mentor, a counterspell and a flusterstorm in hand.
But not enough mana to play mentor and let the mana for CS open. So i decided to play the pressure way and play mentor with 1 mana open for fluster storm. He play eot the 1off Crusader into hardcast jitte..
Was not sure if this play was correctly but just to wait against dnt is not really great in this boardstate.
g2 and g3 i just overrun him with jace and mentor

Match 2 against my lovely Teammate with aggro loam
G1: I keepet a slower hand top with mentor and jace.. he mull to six and played t1 bob into t2 lili and at one point i could turn the game but never found my terminus:(
G2: Mull to six with 5 and 1 ee (I kept it for the scry and not die to chalice witch is pretty ok against aggro loam) I drawet just land from the tops so i lost..

Match 3 Elves 2:1
G1 Never found a terminus
G2 Found the terminus
G3 Cannonist won almost alone with counterback up

Match 4 12 Post Stompy 1:2

G1 i have a fast mentor with double fow back up but he played 2 ulamogs in a row and i lost it after..
G2 Mentor and jace won it.
G3 Was a awesome game.. i can resolve a jace witch buy me a lot of time.. At the end of the game i handled him 2 Ulamogs and played mentor and jace with no mana open (Nothing relevant in hand) and then he played the 3th ulamog..
i can handle the ulamog again and he found the 4th ulamog..i was like wtf..

Match 5

UB Reanimator 2:0

Not much to say i just won bouth games.. Game 1 i drew into everything..:P


Match 6

Dredge 2:0

G1 I played around the bridges with snaps and mentor finish the grindgame..
G2 Hate and mentor win..

I was happy with the list.. I tried to maximum out the win condition with 3Mentor /3 Jace /3 Snapi.. i really think without daze you still have to play at least 3 mentors.. and i really don't like the ETA anymore without top..
Stream Link: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/161325031

I play the first match:)

Greets Pascal

[AppallinglyDull]

Hei Guys

I played a 39 man Tournament today with my UWr Miracle list.Sadly i missed the top 8 and finished just 10th place with it but the loses was really unlucky..

...

Thanks for the report & stream link! Quite jealous of your basics. :)

A couple questions on your list:

1. Why Wear // Tear over Disenchant? It seems like Disenchant is just a bit easier to play since we're almost always fetching a white source, whereas with Wear // Tear we have to choose between being able to cast Wear and playing around Blood Moon, for instance. Do you find yourself casting both halves very often?

2. I see you're on the 3 Tundra / 3 Volc with 3 Blasts in the sideboard. Do you plan to bring in any Blasts against Delver decks (hence the 3rd Volc in the main)? Or are you just running 3 Volcs for extra access to red in other matches? (I've been debating whether to even attempt to bring in Blasts against Delver, with or without a third Volcanic Island. Curious to hear your thoughts.)

[Pdingo]

Thanks for the report & stream link! Quite jealous of your basics. :)

A couple questions on your list:

1. Why Wear // Tear over Disenchant? It seems like Disenchant is just a bit easier to play since we're almost always fetching a white source, whereas with Wear // Tear we have to choose between being able to cast Wear and playing around Blood Moon, for instance. Do you find yourself casting both halves very often?

2. I see you're on the 3 Tundra / 3 Volc with 3 Blasts in the sideboard. Do you plan to bring in any Blasts against Delver decks (hence the 3rd Volc in the main)? Or are you just running 3 Volcs for extra access to red in other matches? (I've been debating whether to even attempt to bring in Blasts against Delver, with or without a third Volcanic Island. Curious to hear your thoughts.)


Hei

Thanks men!:)

1. I mean not much changed with the manabase since the Ban.. I mean i always played wear/Tear and 3 volc and never had Problems with wastelands..Wear/Tear is the better Card for me..
I have to say i use bouth side's alot.. specially against aggro loam. Why play around Blood Moon?

2. I always board three blasts in against Delver.. Why we should not board in them? That's just bad not to board them in against a deck witch most of them is blue..
It Counters important Card like BS, Delver or even TNN. Or it wins the Counterwar:) Also the 3 Volc did always great.. sometimes they waste your Tundra then your volc and now we can search again for a volc;) But just 2 Volc is probably to less.

[AppallinglyDull]

Hei

Thanks men!:)

1. I mean not much changed with the manabase since the Ban.. I mean i always played wear/Tear and 3 volc and never had Problems with wastelands..Wear/Tear is the better Card for me..
I have to say i use bouth side's alot.. specially against aggro loam. Why play around Blood Moon?

2. I always board three blasts in against Delver.. Why we should not board in them? That's just bad not to board them in against a deck witch most of them is blue..
It Counters important Card like BS, Delver or even TNN. Or it wins the Counterwar:) Also the 3 Volc did always great.. sometimes they waste your Tundra then your volc and now we can search again for a volc;) But just 2 Volc is probably to less.

Sorry, I didn't phrase the first question very well. For Blood Moon I was mostly thinking of the Moon Stompy decks where I want to fetch basic Plains & Island but then can't cast Wear on a Chalice. And I'm also playing Unexpectedly Absent, so I want white mana more than your deck does I guess. Probably overthinking it.

Regarding Blasts and Delver, I've read a lot of 'sideboarding guides' for Miracles (mostly the Counter-Top version) and it seems like a lot of people don't like to bring them in unless they have a basic Mountain (for example, Philip Schonegger's old Miracles primer at SCG (http://www.starcitygames.com/article/29085_The-Miracles-Primer--Part-1.html)). Maybe it's just a personal preference / risk vs. reward.

[Pdingo]

Sorry, I didn't phrase the first question very well. For Blood Moon I was mostly thinking of the Moon Stompy decks where I want to fetch basic Plains & Island but then can't cast Wear on a Chalice. And I'm also playing Unexpectedly Absent, so I want white mana more than your deck does I guess. Probably overthinking it.

Regarding Blasts and Delver, I've read a lot of 'sideboarding guides' for Miracles (mostly the Counter-Top version) and it seems like a lot of people don't like to bring them in unless they have a basic Mountain (for example, Philip Schonegger's old Miracles primer at SCG (http://www.starcitygames.com/article/29085_The-Miracles-Primer--Part-1.html)). Maybe it's just a personal preference / risk vs. reward.

No Problem;)

The Wear and Tear gets just better in this match up.. just fetch on the Island and plains first if they're not in the Hand (When they not have t1 Moon) and if you have the Island and 1 plains you can just Play any dual/Fetchland for the red mana (Cause of moon) and normaly you can take out the chalice and the moon to the same time;)

I think it's just personal Preference with pyroblast.. But specially now you have to Play Mentor.. so pyroblast and Mentor are nice together, specially in the delver match up.

[Munchyman]

I didn't jump to Miracles until after top ban. I noticed that virtually every miracles deck that ran Entreat the Angels ran a total of 2 copies pre ban.

I've been switching back and forth between mentor and Entreat. While running Entreat I have felt in many games I wanted two because of discard spells. Anyone else have this problem or notice this?

[btm10]

I've gone back and forth on SB Mentors, but I'm very happy with 2 MD Entreats. It makes finding one to set up the win easier and often lets you fire off a small Entreat for 2-3 in the midgame to force your opponent to answer it or lose. At worst it's a split card where one half is Mind Twist + Time Walk and the other half is 'win the game'.

[fwannmacher]

I didn't jump to Miracles until after top ban. I noticed that virtually every miracles deck that ran Entreat the Angels ran a total of 2 copies pre ban.

I've been switching back and forth between mentor and Entreat. While running Entreat I have felt in many games I wanted two because of discard spells. Anyone else have this problem or notice this?

There are two situations here: do you play IRL or MOL? In IRL matches you dont need to win fast, so 1 Entreat is enough. But in MOL matches the things are a bit complicated because of time.

[Munchyman]

I play both online and RL. Time is certainly an issue online. I find regardless of my builds. The matches I do lose. At least half of them are due to time.

I still think that only partially answers my question.

I do have some really cool tech I've been working on. Well... least I think it cool. Another blast from the past. I'll spoil it before the weekend. It's been really solid for me. And causes a lot of rage quit online.

[fwannmacher]

I play both online and RL. Time is certainly an issue online. I find regardless of my builds. The matches I do lose. At least half of them are due to time.

I still think that only partially answers my question.

I do have some really cool tech I've been working on. Well... least I think it cool. Another blast from the past. I'll spoil it before the weekend. It's been really solid for me. And causes a lot of rage quit online.

I've been playing with only 1 Entreat and without any Mentor MB or SB and I have no problem closing the game. Sometimes Snap beats are enough and sometimes Jace can close the game pretty fast. For sure it is harder when you lose the first game, but you can handle that with more experience.

[Minniehajj]

I play both online and RL. Time is certainly an issue online. I find regardless of my builds. The matches I do lose. At least half of them are due to time.

I still think that only partially answers my question.

I do have some really cool tech I've been working on. Well... least I think it cool. Another blast from the past. I'll spoil it before the weekend. It's been really solid for me. And causes a lot of rage quit online.
Are you Rockey on MTGO?

[Munchyman]

Nope same handle as on here.

[crowe_1]

Apparently Miracles took down a 209-person tournament in Japan a few days ago:

http://mtgtop8.com/event?e=16326&f=LE


19 LANDS
1 Arid Mesa
4 Flooded Strand
5 Island
1 Karakas
2 Plains
3 Scalding Tarn
3 Tundra

7 CREATURES
3 Monastery Mentor
4 Snapcaster Mage

32 INSTANTS and SORC.
4 Brainstorm
1 Council's Judgment
2 Counterspell
2 Flusterstorm
3 Force of Will
4 Ponder
4 Portent
4 Predict
4 Swords to Plowshares
3 Terminus
1 Unexpectedly Absent

2 OTHER SPELLS
2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor

SIDEBOARD
1 Cast Out
1 Containment Priest
1 Counterbalance
1 Ethersworn Canonist
1 Flusterstorm
1 Force of Will
1 Hydroblast
2 Invasive Surgery
1 Leyline of Sanctity
1 Pithing Needle
2 Surgical Extraction
2 Vendilion Clique

It was a side event at GP Kyoto. Good to see the deck still alive and well. I think this is the biggest win for it thus far?

Stand-outs:
- 19 land straight UW with one land being a Karakas.
- Only three FoWs in the main with one in the board, perhaps suggesting an overly fair expected metagame. He was down a land and still cut a FoW.
- One-one split between Council's Judgement and Unexpectedly Absent in the main.
- One-one split of Canonist and Leyline of Sanctity in the board. This guy really pushing to have his cake and eat it too with the 1-1 splits haha. Seriously, a singleton Leyline doesn't seem worth a slot so I'd be curious to hear how often it was relevant.
- Pithing Needle makes an appearance along with two Invasive Surgeries to stick it to combo. I don't know that there's a way to enable the Delirium naturally without a creature or Jace being killed/countered but it's decent even without. Maybe one could have been Flusterstorm #4?
EDIT: - Somehow missed Cast Out. This SB seems well-equipped to beat Sneak n Show.

[Richard Arschmann]

Congrats to Kobayashi Tatsuumi for their win at the GP Kyoto side event, I think 209 players is the largest paper event Miracles has taken down yet although I'm not certain.

Would it be most accurate to say that the intellectual heritage of the Miracles deck is principally Alan Comer's Turbo Xerox deck from 1997? It is convenient to say that Miracles (and all control decks) are descendants of Brian Weissman's The Deck from 1994, but The Deck (in the form I've played it in Old School events) has a bunch of really strong sorcery speed spells as well as a ton of mana sources (around 26 with the jewelry, I believe) Turbo Xerox has neither, and instead focuses on cantrips and counterspells with a very low land count.

[Minniehajj]

Apparently Miracles took down a 209-person tournament in Japan a few days ago:

http://mtgtop8.com/event?e=16326&f=LE


19 LANDS
1 Arid Mesa
4 Flooded Strand
5 Island
1 Karakas
2 Plains
3 Scalding Tarn
3 Tundra

7 CREATURES
3 Monastery Mentor
4 Snapcaster Mage

32 INSTANTS and SORC.
4 Brainstorm
1 Council's Judgment
2 Counterspell
2 Flusterstorm
3 Force of Will
4 Ponder
4 Portent
4 Predict
4 Swords to Plowshares
3 Terminus
1 Unexpectedly Absent

2 OTHER SPELLS
2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor

SIDEBOARD
1 Cast Out
1 Containment Priest
1 Counterbalance
1 Ethersworn Canonist
1 Flusterstorm
1 Force of Will
1 Hydroblast
2 Invasive Surgery
1 Leyline of Sanctity
1 Pithing Needle
2 Surgical Extraction
2 Vendilion Clique

It was a side event at GP Kyoto. Good to see the deck still alive and well. I think this is the biggest win for it thus far?

Stand-outs:
- 19 land straight UW with one land being a Karakas.
- Only three FoWs in the main with one in the board, perhaps suggesting an overly fair expected metagame. He was down a land and still cut a FoW.
- One-one split between Council's Judgement and Unexpectedly Absent in the main.
- One-one split of Canonist and Leyline of Sanctity in the board. This guy really pushing to have his cake and eat it too with the 1-1 splits haha. Seriously, a singleton Leyline doesn't seem worth a slot so I'd be curious to hear how often it was relevant.
- Pithing Needle makes an appearance along with two Invasive Surgeries to stick it to combo. I don't know that there's a way to enable the Delirium naturally without a creature or Jace being killed/countered but it's decent even without. Maybe one could have been Flusterstorm #4?
EDIT: - Somehow missed Cast Out. This SB seems well-equipped to beat Sneak n Show.

Thank you for this! Very interesting decklist! The biggest takeaway is that the Japense Miracles Masters, of whom the winner here is a part of, appear to be working on the deck and playing it again, which is excellent news!

[Drzed]

Actually if you check the decklists on hareruya website this list is pretty much the "stock" miracles list in Japanese tournaments. Interesting take on the 4 snap 3 mentor creatures package with a split on UA and council. There is also a spicy list with as foretold and mentors that 6-0 a 40 people tournament .

Sent from my MI 5 using Tapatalk

[zyprian]

Interesting lists over at Hareruya.
Why do you think sometimes there is one single Counterbalance in Side?
What would you bring it in against?

http://www.hareruyamtg.com/en/k/kD05584K/

[JackaBo]

I've been playing new miracle at my weekly LGS and last wednesday I played it to a 3-1 finnnish.
I play a rather stock list with 3 jace+ 1 entreat as main wincon. I also run a new Gideon, as a test, in place of the fourth portent. I run a 4/2 split of swords and UA.

My board is 2 fluster, 2 BtB, 2 cliques, 2 canonists, 2 surgical, 2 disenchant, 2 mentors, 1 BeB.

I started out beating Grixis delver 2-0 and UR delver 2-1.
Then had some interesting games versus Reanimator and and Dark depths.

M3G1 versus Reanimator.
I keep a hand of FOW and double swords. He reveals chancellor. Plays ritual, thoughtseize me for one sword, therapy himself for the chancellor then reanimate it.
On two lands I swords the chancellor but I forget that the reveal trigger is still in effect so the spell gets countered and I die shortly after.

G2 I'm on the play with FOW + counterspell hand. I counter his two first reanimation attempts: Since reaimator started to play Collective brutality I've been countering the reanimation spells instead of binning-spells. When it was just Careful study and Entomb i think that was worth it. Do you guys agree on this? Anyway, I played a clique and then a jace and he scooped.

G3 He puts in a Sire on turn 1 and I have to discard my entire hand. Luckily I draw a land and and when I'm at 7 I topdeck portent (and he forgets his chancellor trigger), look at three card and shuffles.In his upkeek I draw a mentor that hits the bin at his EOT. Now I'm at 1 and I slam a topdecked swords to his sire. I have trouble rebulding as I canot fetch nor fow. I get a clique into play, chosing not to take his Daze eventhough I hold a fow and are at five lands. Next turn he goes for reanimate and i hard cast FOW that gets dazed, he puts griselbrand to play. He draws 7 and passes. I land my Gideon and "mazes" his Griselbrand. From the fresh cards he exhumes a chancellor (which also gets me my mentor back), and animate dead another chancellor. I play a cantrip for a token and goes for the emblem with gideon. He swings with the chancellors at gideon and Grisel at me, i chump with clique. I draw a jace that will get countered by the chancellors and eventhough it will pump my army of monks I can not present lethal.

Now, I did side out terminus for countermagic and surgical. On the draw, however, sometimes countermagic doesn't do the trick (due to chancellor). Do you think that terminus is worth keeping in on the draw, and if so how do you board?

Next game I face turbo depths.I know he's on it so I make sure I keep hands with a swords.
First games we slowly build upout lands and I terminus away a safekeeper and then a hexmage.
Eventually he starts going for the combo but I have swords each time and he's out of cards but at 58 life.
I entreat for 3 and beats him to death with a snapcaster in hand should he present another 20/20.

I board out a land, a portent, a predict and 2 terminus (he made marit lage during my eld step each time).
I boarded in 2 surgical, 2 flusterstorm and 1 mentor.

Next game he goes for a turn 2 marit lae i swords it. he tries to surgical my StP i fluster it. I surgical his DD and the game's over.

This matchup felt very easy being able to deal with the token using maindeck cards. It felt a bit wierd not running needle in the board however, do you guys run it?

Entreat felt very strong over all. I consider running 2 instead of the Gideon.

[Poron]

it might be a paradox, but now.. isn't it time for Null Rod to go mainstream? :laugh:

[klaus]

Would it be most accurate to say that the intellectual heritage of the Miracles deck is principally Alan Comer's Turbo Xerox deck from 1997?
No offense, but who cares? :laugh:

[gh0st_b1rd]

No offense, but who cares? :laugh:

To be fair, if it hadn't been for the Hatfields and their love for Portent and going deep on the Turbo Xerox idea, I doubt we would have found Portent as a way to revitalize the archetype. Also, we should keep in mind that they were the players to popularize Top and Counterbalance in Legacy first, before it became a force in Extended.

Then again, testing is good enough I suppose. That guy just introduced an awesome idea in the form of running 19 lands.

[crowe_1]

Interesting lists over at Hareruya.
Why do you think sometimes there is one single Counterbalance in Side?
What would you bring it in against?

http://www.hareruyamtg.com/en/k/kD05584K/

It's probably decent at stalling Elves and ANT? The Azorius Charm kind of has me screatching my head. Could be Unexpectedly Absent. I guess it has upsides in the mana cost and the cycle ability (enables Terminus) but the versatility of Absent to hit any nonland permanent is more useful IMO, at least at face value. Has anyone here tried Azorius Charm?

[Nestalim]

It's probably decent at stalling Elves and ANT? The Azorius Charm kind of has me screatching my head. Could be Unexpectedly Absent. I guess it has upsides in the mana cost and the cycle ability (enables Terminus) but the versatility of Absent to hit any nonland permanent is more useful IMO, at least at face value. Has anyone here tried Azorius Charm?

Mostly the lifelink which is broken with Mentor.

[mistervader]

Had a top 8 run today with the deck. First time I ever played Miracles and went with the stock UW list. Too drained to do a report, but I won vs Eldrazi twice, once vs Stoneblade, lost vs Grixis Delver, and drew against the mirror.

I messed up my top 8 vs Dredge. I may have overboarded against it, and mana screwed myself in game 3. Any ideas in dealing with Dredge?

[Kyuuri117]

Would it be unreasonable to run 2 blood moons in the main board of the UWr list? We're usually fetching up basics first anyway, just seems like an easy throw in. Sure, you aren't gonna get the "got you!" moment in the sideboard games, but I feel like people are expecting a blood moon more game 2 anyway.

[crowe_1]

Had a top 8 run today with the deck. First time I ever played Miracles and went with the stock UW list. Too drained to do a report, but I won vs Eldrazi twice, once vs Stoneblade, lost vs Grixis Delver, and drew against the mirror.

I messed up my top 8 vs Dredge. I may have overboarded against it, and mana screwed myself in game 3. Any ideas in dealing with Dredge?


Good finish! I think the plan vs Dredge is to counter their initial draw spell and Surgical on Ichorid but I could be wrong.

[Hrothgar]

Great news!

Johannes Gutbrod 1st place at mkm series in Prague with Mentor Miracles.
Kevin Wagner top 4 at mkm series in Prague with Miracle (lose in semi-finals from Johannes).

Congrats to the players!
Unexpectedly result? :wink:

:laugh:

[crowe_1]

Good stuff! Congrats to the winners!

Edwin Pena piloted Miracles to a 2nd place finish at Snapcasters' "Legacy Quest for Power 4" tonight as well, and congrats to him! Hopefully decklists are up soon.

[stnikolauswagne]

I am the guy who lost to Johannes in the semis of prague, pretty sad that we couldnt get an all miracles finale.

I switched over from a 21 land 1 entreat 0 mentor deck to a 20 land 2 mentor decl after the trial on the day before (top 16,yay) due to time limitations, ocerall the deck felt strong, though the brain-drain over the course of 12 hours is definitely exhausting.

Quick recap of my matches:

Bye
2-0 vs Elves
2-1 va Bug Lands
2-0 vs Grixis Delver
2-0 vs Jund
2-0 vs Grixis Delver
0-2 vs Grixis Delver (JPA)
2-1 vs Grixis Control
ID vs RUG Lands
2-1 vs Esper Delver
0-2 vs Mentor Miracles

[AppallinglyDull]

Great news!

Johannes Gutbrod 1st place at mkm series in Prague with Mentor Miracles.
Kevin Wagner top 4 at mkm series in Prague with Miracle (lose in semi-finals from Johannes).

Congrats to the players!
Unexpectedly result? :wink:

:laugh:

Just to put decklists here for easy reference:

Johannes Gutbrod – Mentor Miracles

3 Tundra
1 Volcanic Island
4 Scalding Tarn
4 Flooded Strand
2 Arid Mesa
4 Island
1 Plains
1 Mountain
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
3 Portent
2 Counterspell
1 Flusterstorm
3 Daze
4 Force of Will
3 Snapcaster Mage
4 Monastery Mentor
2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
3 Swords to Plowshares
4 Terminus
1 Engineered Explosives
2 Predict

// Sideboard

2 Flusterstorm
3 Pyroblast
2 Blood Moon
1 Surgical Extraction
2 Ethersworn Canonist
1 Vendilion Clique
2 Pyroclasm
1 Wear // Tear
1 Relic of Progenitus


Kevin Wagner – Miracles

4 Flooded Strand
4 Scalding Tarn
1 Arid Mesa
3 Tundra
2 Volcanic Island
4 Island
2 Plains

4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Portent
4 Swords to Plowshares
2 Counterspell
4 Predict
2 Unexpectedly Absent
3 Snapcaster Mage
2 Monastery Mentor
3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
4 Force of Will
4 Terminus

// Sideboard

2 Flusterstorm
2 Pyroblast
1 Red Elemental Blast
2 Surgical Extraction
2 Ethersworn Canonist
2 Containment Priest
2 Wear // Tear
1 Entreat the Angels
1 Blood Moon

[Minniehajj]

If you want to watch the Semifinals (Mirror match) they recorded it! Find it here:
http://series.magiccardmarket.eu/2017/07/31/semifinal-video-johannes-gutbrod-vs-kevin-wagner/

[stnikolauswagne]

Spoiler Warning: I play terribly in that semi, including a missed portent trigger and also some pretty questionable sequncing and a questionable jace activation. All around unclean play on my part, though playing mtg for 12 hours eventually gets to you.

[JackaBo]

Is there a consensus about maindeck mentors now? They always felt so vunerable and EtA always so powerful to me. I have only played 2 mentors in the board though. Maybe it's the second or third mentor that actually is a wincon.

[Richard Arschmann]

I'm beginning to think Mentor is better than EtA because it allows you to go as fast or slow as you want. This Johannes Gutbrod list looks really exciting because you can play a fast G1 against decks like Storm and Burn with the full playset of Mentor. You may even be able to stop Lands with it.

This is a really compelling list. Johannes has solved one of the critical problems that has been beguiling Unexpected Miracles players since the ban in that all of the WW-costing spells have been removed, barring hardcast Terminus. This allows him to run a basic Mountain, although I can't help but wonder if a second Volcanic would be better with the Dazes. It is also fetchable off Flooded Strand.

[Munchyman]

As promised, here is my secret tech I’ve been working on and complete list with a report of my tournament experience at MTG First Game Center’s Quest for power 9 #4 Mox Sapphire.

Secret tech: Orim’s Chant. This card has been one of my all-time favorites that never see’s play. Let me preface. I purposely went to MTG First two days prior to the event just to pick up 3 Korean copies of the card because I knew at least half the people I was going to play against was going to call a judge for an Oracle check. Sadly, I was only able to pick up Japanese versions. I got 4 Oracle check calls. One person had never even seen the card before. I was all smiles every time. Was also told I was someone’s Hero 3 times by players sitting next to me just for using the card. I couldn’t ask for better reactions lol.

4 Snapcaster Mage

1 Entreat the Angels

3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor

4 Swords to Plowshares

4 Brainstorm

4 Ponder

3 Portent

3 Orim’s Chant

2 Flusterstorm

1 Predict

3 Counterspells

1 Unexpectedly Absence

4 Force of Will

3 Terminus

5 Island

2 Plains

1 Karakas

3 Tundra

4 Flooded Strand

4 Polluted Delta

1 Arid Mesa

SB

3 Monastery Mentor

2 Ethersworn Canonist

2 Back to Basics

2 Surgical Extraction

2 Disenchant

1 Containment Priest

1 Isochron Scepter

1 Supreme Verdict



Match 1 Bye

Starting the Day of Right @ 1-0 with perfect breakers.



Match 2 against 4c Stoneblade 0-2

G1. He plays turn one forest than DRS followed by turn two Wasteland into Birds of Paradise. I put him on 4c Stoneblade. He gets a turn three Stonforge mystic tutoring up s Sword of Fire and Ice. I Eot Brainstorm setting up Terminus. Turn four I drop Jace and started to tick up. The next 3-4 turns is when I started to lock out his turns with Orim’s Chant, followed by another Chant, followed by Snapcaster Chant, and a top deck chant until I made my first mistake of the event. I had Jace up to 11 loyalties. I had 5 lands plus Jace on board with a Force and Jace in hand. He casted a True-Name with only had one card hand. A Sword of Fire/Ice and 4 lands in play. I gambled and hard casted FoW which gets Dazed. Had I pitched my Jace I believe I would have won game one.

G2. I tried to jam mentor and Back to Basics not playing around daze. Game lost. We still had 15 mins left in the round. Had I not punted G1 there was more than enough time for G3. Record 1-1

Match 3 against Elves 2-0

G1. I played very well. I played at least two Terminus and countered 3 Natural Order. Played Jace. Between Fate Seal, Portent and 3-4 Orim’s Chant and a Snapcaster Mage on board chipping away. He had enough and concedes.

G2. I side in 2 Ethersworn Canonist, Containment Priest and Isochron Scepter. I jammed a turn two Isochron Scepter with Orim’s Chant attached. He soon concedes after locking him out with mentor and Jace on board. His quote. “Apparently Miracles still beats Elves, I should have played Shardless Bug” Record 2-1

Match 4 against Goblins 1-2

G1. He plays a Mountain and pass. I Portent him and soon find out I’m against Goblins. I make the remark along the lines of “Oh, Nooooooo. Not Goblins” of Course this prompts him to talk about how great Goblins is against Miracles. He follows turn two with Cavern of Souls drops a gobo. The rest of the game went like this. An onslaught of Goblins with 3 Caverns of Souls and Wastelands my Tundra. I concede.

G2. I side out all my counter. Bring in Mentors, Disenchants, Containment Priest and Supreme Verdict. I quickly show him what two Monastery Mentors on board backed up with Orim’s Chants can do.

G3. This game I make my second big mistake of the event that cost me the round. I side in Isochron Scepter knowing he would side out Tuktuk Scrapper. I had a Turn Two Sceptor Chant Lock on him. My mistake was. I had twice not revealed Terminus. And let him tick an Aether Vial to 5. Instead I was trying to find a second plains to hard cast Supreme verdict. I got over confident with chant lock. I needed two more turns to Jace ultimate him out of the game. He vials in EoT Siege-Gang Commander. Sacs two creatures than his turn sacs 3 for the kill. I knew I should have just wiped the board with terminus earlier. I had two terminus set on top of the deck when he killed me. It was bad sequencing. I still feel this match-up is favorable with Orim’s Chant. In fact. I was running a Double Gideon of the Trials plus an Entreat the Angels list after the Ban and never once lost to Goblins online I’ve never seen so many Rage Quits. Record 2-2.

Match 5 against Eldrazi Stompy 2-1

G1. Turn one He plays Ancient Tomb into Chalice. At some point in the game I Unexpectedly Absence away the Chalice and Counter it next turn. Kids, Rule Number 1 Playing Miracles. Don’t Fear Chalice. Rule Number 2. Never concede a game until the very end. He ends up playing a Smasher and Swings for 13 damage. This would have put me to 5. My Orim’s Chant kept him from ever getting attacks in prior. The only other damage I’ve taken was from my own fetchlands. With only a Jace in hand I concede. I look at my next card and it was a Terminus. And he had zero cards in hand.

G2 and G3. Mentor and Orim’s Chant did all the work. Record 3-2

Match 6 against UB Reanimate

G1. His turn one fetches for U. Sea. Careful Study pitching a Griselbrand. I had a hand along the lines of. Snapcaster Mage, Flusterstorm, FoW, Orim’s Chant, Brainstorm, Flooded Strand and Terminus. I draw a second terminus. Play a Strand, pass and Smile. He plays another U. Sea. Casts Reanimate I save my Counters. Cast Brainstorm keep two lands with two terminus on top. Griselbrand enters play. He draws 7 which puts him at 4 life. He discards down to seven with another Griselbrand and a Tidespout Tyrant in the bin. My next turn is terminus. I than Orim’s chant his upkeep. He gets a little frustrated and asks me the name of the card 2-3 times than informed me that he never even seen the card before in his whole life. After the fourth Oracle request of the day. /smile. I follow this up with Snapcaster Mage and Orim’s Chant in his next upkeep. He fetches and tries to FoW but I have a hand full of counterspells with a FoW in hand aswell. He Dies on my Turn 4 with a Snapcaster Mage crackback.

G2. He Pitches Baby Jace to the Yard with a Careful Study. Turn Two he reanimates it. I Unexpectedly Absence Baby Jace to the top of his library. I stall him a few turns with Orim’s Chant. He plays Baby Jace that flips next turn which looted Iona into the bin. He Exumes in Iona naming white. I get a Mentor off the Exhume. With a hand full of counterspells and a brainstorm. He casts a Show and Tell which quickly gets countered. I Brainstorm Find JTMS and a Surgical Extraction. I cast Jace. Bounce his Iona. He follows up killing his own Jace targeting Exhume. He only has a Griselbrand in the bin which gets Surgical Extracted. He concedes, starring down a board with JTMS, Mentor, 3-4 tokens and grip full of cards. Record 4-2

Going into the last round. With my breakers I have a chance getting into top 8 if I win out.

Match 7 against Esper Stoneblade 0-2

I was matched up the gentleman who had beaten my teammate round 1, whom ran my almost identical list but chose to Main deck 1 Scepter and two in Side at last moment.

G1 and G2. It wasn’t that I played badly. Stoneblade just isn’t the best match up for Miracles. He also knew my deck having played against it Match 1.

Record 4-3




The Entreat the Angels Version is phenomenal against a Heavy Combo Meta and D&T. I found myself siding into Mentors almost every match except for Elves. I casted Entreat the Angel only twice the whole event… Back to Mentors and Orim’s Chant online.

[mistervader]

Good finish! I think the plan vs Dredge is to counter their initial draw spell and Surgical on Ichorid but I could be wrong.



Yeah. I think that's what I did wrong. Game 1, I counterspelled his blind Cabal Therapy when I should have let it through. He then went YOLO after that into double LED into Breakthrough into insane stuff. I won game 2, then got mana screwed on 1 Island and no other lands I. game 3 even after a mull to 6 and a scry down. I also boarded in Leyline of Sanctity which I feel was an overreaction to Cabal.

[B88]

I'm beginning to think Mentor is better than EtA because it allows you to go as fast or slow as you want. This Johannes Gutbrod list looks really exciting because you can play a fast G1 against decks like Storm and Burn with the full playset of Mentor. You may even be able to stop Lands with it.

This is a really compelling list. Johannes has solved one of the critical problems that has been beguiling Unexpected Miracles players since the ban in that all of the WW-costing spells have been removed, barring hardcast Terminus. This allows him to run a basic Mountain, although I can't help but wonder if a second Volcanic would be better with the Dazes. It is also fetchable off Flooded Strand.

Well, me and Johannes we tested the deck so much and our work has a relly good payoff i think! :cool:

Johannes is a great driver and i hope that the deck will get more credits than before, when it was considered an "unusual" deck.

[Hrothgar]

I am the guy who lost to Johannes in the semis of prague, pretty sad that we couldnt get an all miracles finale.

I switched over from a 21 land 1 entreat 0 mentor deck to a 20 land 2 mentor decl after the trial on the day before (top 16,yay) due to time limitations, ocerall the deck felt strong, though the brain-drain over the course of 12 hours is definitely exhausting.

Quick recap of my matches:

Bye
2-0 vs Elves
2-1 va Bug Lands
2-0 vs Grixis Delver
2-0 vs Jund
2-0 vs Grixis Delver
0-2 vs Grixis Delver (JPA)
2-1 vs Grixis Control
ID vs RUG Lands
2-1 vs Esper Delver
0-2 vs Mentor Miracles

Congrats man, your final result was great (you have faced a lot of Grixis).
Your switch result right, for sure Mentor is more fast then Angels.
In the "new classic" Miracle Topless shell, imho Mentor (2x) is one of the two right wincon (with Jace too).

[screallix]

Johannes Gutbrod wrote a report: https://snapcardster.com/blog/its-a-miracle-back-to-back-victory/
and also gave an interview: https://snapcardster.com/blog/meet-the-pros-johannes-gutbrod-legacy/

Well written

[AnziD]

Would it be unreasonable to run 2 blood moons in the main board of the UWr list? We're usually fetching up basics first anyway, just seems like an easy throw in. Sure, you aren't gonna get the "got you!" moment in the sideboard games, but I feel like people are expecting a blood moon more game 2 anyway.

If I had to register a 4 Predict Miracles list tomorrow, I would be playing a maindeck Blood Moon.

[Munchyman]

Today I played 5 matches with a tweaked Chant list. I went 4-1 my loss was due to timing out vs the UW Stax list that just 5-0 recently. I really think Orim's Chant is the nuts especially online with all the combo decks. Or am I just going into the wrong direction?

List:


4 Snapcaster Mage
1 Entreat the Angels
3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
1 Isochron Scepter
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
3 Portent
3 Swords to Plowshare
3 Orim's Chant
2 Flusterstorm
2 Predict
3 Counterspell
1 Unexpectedly Absence
4 Force of Will
3 Terminus
5 Island
2 Plains
1 Karakas
3 Tundra
4 Flooded Strand
3 Polluted Delta
1 Arid Mesa

SB
3 Monastery Mentor
2 Ethersworn Canonist
2 Back to Basics
2 Surgical Extraction
2 Disenchant
1 Containment Priest
1 Supreme Verdict
1 Vendilion Clique

Maybe a better player than I willing to test the list out?

[Hrothgar]

Hi Munchyman.
Your Orim's Chant tech seems nice.
I don't know if this is a right way to go: for sure the classic Miracle list works great and the Mentor works great too.
This 2 builds are tested by the players all over the world and this give us a lot of feedback.
Your results seems good, we need to test the tech.
Losing by a UW Stax list have no relevance because UW Stax do not exist in the real meta.

PS: 14 sideboard cards?

[JackaBo]

I played again yesterday. Won versus infect and Esperblade. Lost versus death and taxes then had to leave. How do you guys board versus white weeny? I took out my 7 counters and added 2 mentor, 2 clique, 2 disenchant and 1 BtB.

I like scepter in the orim's chant deck, but i dont like orims chant all that much. Why not just put UA under scepter and its gg versus fair decks. CS would be nice versus combo.

[twndomn]

I played again yesterday. Won versus infect and Esperblade. Lost versus death and taxes then had to leave. How do you guys board versus white weeny? I took out my 7 counters and added 2 mentor, 2 clique, 2 disenchant and 1 BtB.

I like scepter in the orim's chant deck, but i dont like orims chant all that much. Why not just put UA under scepter and its gg versus fair decks. CS would be nice versus combo.

Kozelik's Return is your best SB card, as it's an instant and it gets around Mom.

[JackaBo]

Kozelik's Return is your best SB card, as it's an instant and it gets around Mom.

Yeah, right now I'm playing UW because of the terrific mana-base. If I would move on to UWr I would certainly put that card into consideration.

I did som testing versus a friend who plays DnT yesterday and came up with some rather untuitive result.
My original plan was to board out 3 counterspells, 3 FoW (since there's vial and cavern of souls), which is rather intuitive. I brought in 2 mentors (who are more or less a moat), 2 cliques (to take away Equipments, control his drawphase and not being taxed by Thalia) and 2 disenchant (for revoker, vial and equipments). However, what i felt is that the deck becomes way to clunky with these cards in. New Miracle is a great deck when you're at five plus mana, but is very weak in the early game since you run so much air. You need to be able to cast your cantrips to find your business cards. In the face of wasteland, port and Thalia your early game is very taxed and Death and taxes can be very explosive. Like, a turn 2 Thalia off plains and port can be very problematic. A turn 4 Thalia off a vial @ 2 is not all that devastating since by then you have had 3 turns of cantripping, developed your mana and set up your draws. So what i did was remove the cliques and put back 2 FoWs. this may seem very bad versus a deck who can play around counters as much as Death and taxes but hear me out. If he plays a turn 2 Thalia I wanna force it to bridge to the mid-game. This deck if any can recover from the card disadvantage. If he plays it off vial sure, I cant force it, but by then the Thalia is not that dangerous anymore. It's sort of the same logic I've had keeping force in playing BUG versus Eldrazi , when that deck was a thing. I he plays a turn 2 TKS I need to force it or he will take my strix. If he plays it turn 3 off a cavern that's OK because then strix is already in play.
Also, from my experience, post board Death and taxes bring in more targets for force of will: Coucils judgement and possibly needle for jace, and Gideon, AOZ. Plus if you keep the board clean they may start to hard cast their equipments.
TLDR: Keeping FoW in versus Death and taxes felt better than boarding it out. It buys you time to develop your mana. When you have enough mana you will win. What do you guys say?

[Whitefaces]

Agree, I leave in 3 Force of Wills.

Currently I sideboard

-2 Counterspell
-2 Flusterstorm
-1 Force of Will

+1 Disenchant
+2 Monastery Mentor
+2 Containment Priest

Not super thrilled with bringing the Priests in, but they're OK at stopping vial and some Flickerwisp shenanigans.

[Hrothgar]

In UW version your best cards are:

- terminus in primis
- monastery mentor
- plow + snap into plow
- engineered explosives
- unexpectedly absent is not bad
- jace after terminus can be gg

+ from sideboard

- another explosives
- containment priest
- disenchant + sometimes snap into disenchant is not bad
- vendilion clique
- gideon, ally of zendikar
- council's judgment

You can't counter all his cards.
You need to setup Terminus in the right time and enter in control mode or play (and defend) a faster Mentor to take the board.

[Nestalim]

In UW version your best cards are:

- engineered explosives






EE is pretty underwhelming in strict UW.

[Whitefaces]

I've always been very underwhelmed by Clique vs DnT. I don't have them in my sideboard at the moment, but I wouldn't bring them in if I did.

[JackaBo]

Agree, I leave in 3 Force of Wills.


I've always been very underwhelmed by Clique vs DnT. I don't have them in my sideboard at the moment, but I wouldn't bring them in if I did.

Great that you came to the same conclusion.

This deck is certrainly gaining on me. I have been playing it in between leagues ever since I knew I was set for the finals and didn't care for wins and losses.
Now I'm considering running it the next season.

[Whitefaces]

Great that you came to the same conclusion.

This deck is certrainly gaining on me. I have been playing it in between leagues ever since I knew I was set for the finals and didn't care for wins and losses.
Now I'm considering running it the next season.

What league is this you're talking about?

[Hrothgar]

EE is pretty underwhelming in strict UW.

After the Sensei's ban, the cards who give us trouble have converted mana cost 0-1 and sometimes 2.
In a meta dominated by Grixis Delver, Chalice decks and with a good presence of Elves, Engineered Explosives give us a very flexible slot who can used in 2 colors list too.

Obv in a 3 colors list, EE is better then in a 2 colors list, but in a 2 colors list EE is not weak as he seems.

[JackaBo]

What league is this you're talking about?

Eh, just the local league @ the LGS in Stockholm. They run league every week and three tournaments each season. Then finals for the three tournament winners and top 13 of the league.

[Noloam_]

hello people. What is your sideboardplan vs burn/UR delver? Im running the UW shell with 3 mentor and 3 snapcasters. I tried multiple hydroblasts, but that was not that effective. Im now trying 2 stoneforge and 1 batterskull, allong with counterbalances (im sold on these) and 1 hydroblast


Current sideboard:

1 back to basics
1 disenchant
2 surgicals
2 counterbalances
2 invasive surgery
2 stoneforge mystic
1 batterskull
1 hydroblast
1 v clique
1 cannonist
1 containment priest

[AppallinglyDull]

For those who haven't seen it yet, an interesting article on 'new Miracles' by Rich Cali: https://www.flipsidegaming.com/blogs/magic-blog/the-new-look-miracles-in-the-new-metagame

[AppallinglyDull]

Also, this is a very strange card from the new Commander decks. Apparently the rules will also change so that tokens phasing out does not cause them to disappear like 'blinking' them does, so this should still work with monk or angel tokens on board. Not sure it deserves a slot, but it has utility against Storm, Elves, Sneak and Show (phased-out lands can't be annihilated!), as well as against board wipes like Toxic Deluge.


Teferi's Protection | 2W

Instant

Until your next turn, your life total can't change and you have protection from everything.
All permanents you control phase out.
(While they are phased out, they're treated as though they don't exist.
They phase in before you untap during your untap step.)

Exile Teferi's Protection.

[JackaBo]

Eh, just the local league @ the LGS in Stockholm. They run league every week and three tournaments each season. Then finals for the three tournament winners and top 13 of the league.

1-3 last night.

Won as expected versus grixis delver. Games were close and fun, 2-1

Then it started going downhill. 0-2 versus lands. I made some mistakes but mu feels unfavoravle. Maybe a rest in peace is warrented here, or red splash for blood moon/from the ashes.

Then MUD 1-2. Mu is actually ok, i've faced it twice and won last time. Mistakes were made g3 though, where i jammed mentor instead of holding up StP for blightsteel.

Then finally 0-2 versus grixis pile. I mean that deck was designed to beat old miracle and has crazy CA. Admittedly he was the better controlplayer all along were I was the one jamming threats then loosing the counterwar, then unable to fight over him playing jace. Scooped to jace @ 12 both games. More practice needed.
Next week I'm jamming mentor miracles, lets see how that goes.

[Whitefaces]

hello people. What is your sideboardplan vs burn/UR delver? Im running the UW shell with 3 mentor and 3 snapcasters. I tried multiple hydroblasts, but that was not that effective. Im now trying 2 stoneforge and 1 batterskull, allong with counterbalances (im sold on these) and 1 hydroblast


Current sideboard:

1 back to basics
1 disenchant
2 surgicals
2 counterbalances
2 invasive surgery
2 stoneforge mystic
1 batterskull
1 hydroblast
1 v clique
1 cannonist
1 containment priest

I've found UR Delver to be really tough, Burn even harder. I play Leylines and they help with these matchup quite a bit, hopefully those CBs will be similar for you. Please let us know how they go, I'm tempted to try them again.

Otherwise I feel that the SfM package might be a bit slow, though you may be able bridge the gap with enough countermagic for it to do its job.


For those who haven't seen it yet, an interesting article on 'new Miracles' by Rich Cali: https://www.flipsidegaming.com/blogs/magic-blog/the-new-look-miracles-in-the-new-metagame

Nice article, thanks for sharing.


1-3 last night.

Won as expected versus grixis delver. Games were close and fun, 2-1

Then it started going downhill. 0-2 versus lands. I made some mistakes but mu feels unfavoravle. Maybe a rest in peace is warrented here, or red splash for blood moon/from the ashes.

Then MUD 1-2. Mu is actually ok, i've faced it twice and won last time. Mistakes were made g3 though, where i jammed mentor instead of holding up StP for blightsteel.

Then finally 0-2 versus grixis pile. I mean that deck was designed to beat old miracle and has crazy CA. Admittedly he was the better controlplayer all along were I was the one jamming threats then loosing the counterwar, then unable to fight over him playing jace. Scooped to jace @ 12 both games. More practice needed.
Next week I'm jamming mentor miracles, lets see how that goes.

Tough breaks.

Lands is really hard, if you don't have dedicated sb hate (like B2B or Blood Moon) even postboard games will be tough. G1 is heavily in their favour. MUD I've found to be favourable too, mostly thanks to UA, sometimes they get you. And yeah, Grixis can be tough too, I was struggling with the matchup until trying out Gideon, AoZ, he's amazing vs these midrange piles if you get a chance to try it.

[JackaBo]

Tough breaks.

Lands is really hard, if you don't have dedicated sb hate (like B2B or Blood Moon) even postboard games will be tough. G1 is heavily in their favour. MUD I've found to be favourable too, mostly thanks to UA, sometimes they get you. And yeah, Grixis can be tough too, I was struggling with the matchup until trying out Gideon, AoZ, he's amazing vs these midrange piles if you get a chance to try it.

Yeah I did run B2B but felt it didn't do enough. He could keep recurring GQ thanks to mox and basic forest. B2B doesn't really stop the combo from happening either.
I did side out 3 counterspells as I mostly want to be able to counter spells turn 1, and 4 Terminus since they need to be set up at instant speed or they're useless. I put in 2 flusterstorms for countering gamle and rotations, 2 B2B, 2 mentors and 1 disenchant.
But yeah that match-up is horrible. Maybe a Sanctum Prelate in the board could tilt it?

Thanks for the advice on big Gideon, i will ty him out at some point.

I have som Projects I'm going to test, one is miracle mentor. Another, much more spicy, is BANT miracle with counterbalance and mirris guile. The idea is that mirri would set you up to "always" countering 1-drops (or 2 drops versus certain decks) making counterbalance a one-sided chalice - and turning brainstorms into counterspells. It can also help to find teminus and keep it floating if need be. Also should work well with predict. Green doesn't give much more unfortunaly. I wouldn't mention this horrendous spice unless counterbalance was mentioned above.

[Noloam_]

Yeah I did run B2B but felt it didn't do enough. He could keep recurring GQ thanks to mox and basic forest. B2B doesn't really stop the combo from happening either.
I did side out 3 counterspells as I mostly want to be able to counter spells turn 1, and 4 Terminus since they need to be set up at instant speed or they're useless. I put in 2 flusterstorms for countering gamle and rotations, 2 B2B, 2 mentors and 1 disenchant.
But yeah that match-up is horrible. Maybe a Sanctum Prelate in the board could tilt it?

Thanks for the advice on big Gideon, i will ty him out at some point.

I have som Projects I'm going to test, one is miracle mentor. Another, much more spicy, is BANT miracle with counterbalance and mirris guile. The idea is that mirri would set you up to "always" countering 1-drops (or 2 drops versus certain decks) making counterbalance a one-sided chalice - and turning brainstorms into counterspells. It can also help to find teminus and keep it floating if need be. Also should work well with predict. Green doesn't give much more unfortunaly. I wouldn't mention this horrendous spice unless counterbalance was mentioned above.

im testing counterbalance for quite a while sideboard. Since the japanese dude played 1 side and ended up winning a 200 man tournament. I think it is great already in UW, with the amount of cantrips you are playing. It also has some nice interaction with predict

[Drzed]

http://www.hareruyamtg.com/en/k/kD08498W/ this guy top 4ed a 70 man tournament with 3cb maindeck.

Sent from my MI 5 using Tapatalk

[AppallinglyDull]

Yeah I did run B2B but felt it didn't do enough. He could keep recurring GQ thanks to mox and basic forest. B2B doesn't really stop the combo from happening either.
I did side out 3 counterspells as I mostly want to be able to counter spells turn 1, and 4 Terminus since they need to be set up at instant speed or they're useless. I put in 2 flusterstorms for countering gamle and rotations, 2 B2B, 2 mentors and 1 disenchant.
But yeah that match-up is horrible. Maybe a Sanctum Prelate in the board could tilt it?

I have a few Lands players (either RG, RUG, or Turbo Depths) in my local meta, and after playing against them multiple times over the past few weeks, am really questioning whether non-basic hate enchantments are even the right approach. They are expecting it, are able to play around it (basic Forest, Mox Diamond), and their answers to it are more or less unstoppable (Krosan Grip, Abrupt Decay). I imagine there are times when an early Blood Moon can lead to a win, but in my (albeit limited) experience thus far it simply hasn't been a very strong or reliable plan.

Which, to beat a dead horse, leads me to question whether Blood Moon is worth the slots, or whether they could be better spent on other cards. I might try a basic Mountain (to support Pyroblasts against Delver) and another Disenchant effect (maybe EE) in place of the two Blood Moons I've been running and see how that feels. Really not sure where that leaves the Lands matchups though. It feels pretty rough, all in all.

Sanctum Prelate is an interesting idea. Meddling Mage might be a little more one-sided, but obviously can't shut down Life from the Loam and Punishing Fire in one card -- though it also doesn't shut off Disenchants, Predicts, etc. at the same time.


* * *

Since we're on the subject of lands, a mini-report from last night. Pretty poor showing, though I feel like I got some pretty bad matchups. Still, lots of room to improve.

0-2 vs. Burn: Even when I was able to Terminus away three creatures, counter a couple spells, and resolve a Mentor, I had taken too much damage, drew two lands in a row, and died to Exquisite Firecraft + Fireblast. This feels very bad, and I'm not entirely sure what to do here (apart from adding Counterbalance back into the 75, perhaps, and maybe not even then).

1-1-1 vs. Tezzerator: Game 1, I missed finding an Unexpectedly Absent to deal with a Tezzeret ready to -4 and drain me for 22, I think. Game 2 I won by keeping him off Ensnaring Bridge and storming off with Monk tokens despite two Chalices on 1. Game 3 he had two Chalices on 2 and two Ensnaring Bridges, I had a Jace, and he had a Thopter-Sword combo assembled, but we went to turns and neither of us could win.

0-2 vs. Turbo Depths: Game 1 I failed to find any meaningful pressure before he found a Life from the Loam. I gave it a couple more turns and then conceded to save time. Game 2, I was able to Surgical the Life from the Loam, but had to fight through two Tireless Trackers attacking for 5+, and after running out of resources was overwhelmed by a large Manabond + Stage-Depths combo. In game 2, I had a turn 3/4 Blood Moon, and he had two Krosan Grips in hand.

0-2 vs. RUG Lands: In both games, I kept one-land hands with multiple cantrips and was able to find lands 2 and 3 without much trouble, but as a result couldn't search for answers. In game 2 I had a Blood Moon but had to play a Volcanic earlier, and it got Wasted before I could cast the Blood Moon. Maybe a mistake on my part, and I needed to hold the Volc until I was ready to play the Blood Moon. But at the same time, he had a Forest and Mox Diamond active, and an Engineered Explosives which he cast for 3 anyway (which, given his board, he could have done even under a resolved Blood Moon). In both games, he found a Tabernacle before I could pressure him, and between his Wastelands and Ports, I was off paying for Tabernacle in the upkeep or casting Jace in the main phase. No real avenue to victory that I could see.

[phg22]

I've always preferred From the Ashes for the purposes of screwing over lands. Its work is undone over time by loam, not instantly and inevitably by grip.

Prelate only stops non creatures, you can still Snapcaster. She's strong vs lands. If you stop molten vortex or seismic assault and have an answer for Marit Lage, they're basically locked.

[AppallinglyDull]

I've always preferred From the Ashes for the purposes of screwing over lands. Its work is undone over time by loam, not instantly and inevitably by grip.

Prelate only stops non creatures, you can still Snapcaster. She's strong vs lands. If you stop molten vortex or seismic assault and have an answer for Marit Lage, they're basically locked.

Ah, quite right. Not used to playing against a Prelate not set to 1. :\

I like the idea of From the Ashes as well. It also works with Surgical Extraction. I did try a game 3 against my RUG lands opponent treating Blood Moons as From the Ashes just for testing, but never had the chance to cast one, so no insight from that game. Perhaps I'll try one or two next week.

[JackaBo]

Ah, quite right. Not used to playing against a Prelate not set to 1. :\

I like the idea of From the Ashes as well. It also works with Surgical Extraction. I did try a game 3 against my RUG lands opponent treating Blood Moons as From the Ashes just for testing, but never had the chance to cast one, so no insight from that game. Perhaps I'll try one or two next week.

Yeah From the Ashes seems good. I like that it's not undone with a Krosan grip.

If you land a prelate on two versus lands, you're in a good spot and not being able to predict doesnt matter. My Lands opponent boarded in spheres so there's another two-drop that's denied.

[Hrothgar]

Interesting 5-0 today on MTGO:

3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
4 Monastery Mentor
3 Snapcaster Mage

4 Ponder
4 Portent
4 Brainstorm
3 Predict

2 Counterspell
2 Flusterstorm
3 Force of Will

4 Terminus
4 Swords to Plowshares

1 Arid Mesa
4 Flooded Strand
4 Island
2 Plains
4 Scalding Tarn
3 Tundra
2 Volcanic Island


2 Flusterstorm
1 Force of Will
2 Blood Moon
2 Containment Priest
2 Ethersworn Canonist
3 Pyroblast
2 Surgical Extraction
1 Wear // Tear


In this days many player trying 3 Force of Will.
Maybe this list (no Explosives, Just 1 Wear in side) is weaker the others to Chalice (and with 3 Force of Will in main) but seems solid.
Anyone trying 3 Will here?
I remember 3 Will just in DTT period! :laugh:

[Drzed]

Interesting 5-0 today on MTGO:

3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
4 Monastery Mentor
3 Snapcaster Mage

4 Ponder
4 Portent
4 Brainstorm
3 Predict

2 Counterspell
2 Flusterstorm
3 Force of Will

4 Terminus
4 Swords to Plowshares

1 Arid Mesa
4 Flooded Strand
4 Island
2 Plains
4 Scalding Tarn
3 Tundra
2 Volcanic Island


2 Flusterstorm
1 Force of Will
2 Blood Moon
2 Containment Priest
2 Ethersworn Canonist
3 Pyroblast
2 Surgical Extraction
1 Wear // Tear


In this days many player trying 3 Force of Will.
Maybe this list (no Explosives, Just 1 Wear in side) is weaker the others to Chalice (and with 3 Force of Will in main) but seems solid.
Anyone trying 3 Will here?
I remember 3 Will just in DTT period! [emoji23]Well if you treat fow as a "last ditch" stop to combo having two flusterstorm main help alot, so it's probably ok to trim a copy. Fow is so bad at stopping combo decks nowadays and meh at best Vs fair decks; the card feels a bit less necessary than usual in this meta. I don't have the guts to cut the 4th copy tho [emoji23]

Sent from my MI 5 using Tapatalk

[crowe_1]

http://mtgtop8.com/event?e=16547&d=302355&f=LE

This list made Top 4 of a 70-person tournament recently. Runs zero Mentors AND zero Entreat, with the Gideon Ally of Zendikar filling that slot. I suppose it's constant pressure even after a Terminus plus can make Snapcasters more formidable. Blocker every turn if you're fortunate enough to be playing against a "normal" creature without evasion, which is pretty rare these days. Thoughts? Anybody else rocking Gideon with any success?

[Whitefaces]

I like it! Gideon has been so impressive.

[itrytostorm]

http://mtgtop8.com/event?e=16547&d=302355&f=LE

This list made Top 4 of a 70-person tournament recently. Runs zero Mentors AND zero Entreat, with the Gideon Ally of Zendikar filling that slot. I suppose it's constant pressure even after a Terminus plus can make Snapcasters more formidable. Blocker every turn if you're fortunate enough to be playing against a "normal" creature without evasion, which is pretty rare these days. Thoughts? Anybody else rocking Gideon with any success?

Awesome! I've always loved AoZ and seeing him in the main brings me a tear of joy. How did you side for 4c Pile and Grixis Delver?

[JackaBo]

Had a blast playing mentors main last night. Winning some seriously bad match ups.

List:
http://docker2.deckedbuilder.com:3001/d/323092

Match 1 versus burn. Double fow and a counterspell stabilize me at 2. He's on one land after a fireblast. I start beating with mentors, carefully cantripping into tokens. He topdecks a mountain and prices versus my one non-basic. I swords a token to survive then swing for the kill next turn.

G2 i board in 2 fluster and 2 blue blasts. Out comes one of jace, terminus, predict and karakas. This game he chips away with swiftspear. I blueblast eidolon on the stack. He gets me down to like 11 then i established mentor. I win with counters in hand. 2 blue blasts were good this game.

Match 2 versus grixis control. He's new to the deck and plays very slow. I even remark on it but wont call for a judge in these semi-casual events.
G1 i win the fight over his jace then land my own. Evetually wins with mentor.
G2 i board out 4x swords and in with 2 blue blasts and 2 b2b.
He redblasts b2b, and i sweep mancer + tokens with terminus. Then he lands angler and goes after my cantrips with counterspells. I totally thought he'd board it out. I concede to save time.
G3 i take out B2B and in with 2 swords. I redblast a mancer and lands a jace. When he redblasts it I land another. From there the game is mine to lose. I think i brainstorm too much because I can't ultimate jace before time's out. I would have won had he played faster and had i started fatesealing earlier. I had a grip full of answers and allowed him to only draw lands and do-nothing-cards.

Match 3 versus a UB omnishow brew with chalice and CA cards instead of cantrips. Both games he lands chalice, both games I handle it with UA. I feel very much in control and he never gets to cast show and tell at any point. Sideboard: out with 3 terminus, 4 swords and 3 ponder. Reasoning was he plays chalice so i want less air. And versus decks who rely on topdecks i actually prefer portent. In with 2 of each of flusterstorm, surgical, B2B, disenchant, clique. In game two B2B won the game as he ran no basics at all.

Match 4 versus loam pox.
Game one he get loam and ravens crime going. I discard my 2 UA first thinking my best plan is mentors plus cantrips. Then he lands liliana and i have no answers. I get a jace online allowing me to keep up with lillianas discard. Then he ultimates liliana and i have to give up jace to preserve lands. I concede shortly after that. This MU feels horrible.

G2 i board out 3 terminus, 4 swords and a fow thinking i will fight his spells rather than Marit lage. In comes fluster, clique, surgical, b2b. I land a jace and counters every loam he plays denying him landdrops and new cards. He threatens Lage but is scared of swords so he never goes for it. Jace goes all the way and clique keeps me safe from Lage.

G3 i make a mistake and fetch so i can't counter his liliana. I land a jace though and can UA + fateseal on liliana. From there on i take over the game and when he make a last ditch effort with Lage I'm ready with UA.

3-0-1 was the final result, a great result considering the decks i faced.

[crowe_1]

Awesome! I've always loved AoZ and seeing him in the main brings me a tear of joy. How did you side for 4c Pile and Grixis Delver?

Not my list. Just found it during my rounds.

Also, @JackaBo, in my relatively limited experience I find I tend to win the "nonfavored" matchups like Lands and Chalice.dec, but lose versus some of the "easy" matchups like Stoneblade. Not really sure why. Good job on the 3-0-1 though!

[kentheide]

Not my list. Just found it during my rounds.

Also, @JackaBo, in my relatively limited experience I find I tend to win the "nonfavored" matchups like Lands and Chalice.dec, but lose versus some of the "easy" matchups like Stoneblade. Not really sure why. Good job on the 3-0-1 though!

My take on that is this;

Against decks like Lands and Chalice you can firmly establish the win by using your own blowouts or just not letting chalice resolve. Against decks like blade, grixis and 4c there are so many microdecisions going on between both players. If you stumble on one of them it sort of kicks of a chain reaction that leaves you way way behind. And the way those decks work they just aren't going to let you catch up again.

[crowe_1]

My take on that is this;

Against decks like Lands and Chalice you can firmly establish the win by using your own blowouts or just not letting chalice resolve. Against decks like blade, grixis and 4c there are so many microdecisions going on between both players. If you stumble on one of them it sort of kicks of a chain reaction that leaves you way way behind. And the way those decks work they just aren't going to let you catch up again.

Yes there are a lot of little decisions. This version of Miracles is the hardest deck to play I've ever used, and I've used many. Grixis I haven't really had trouble with. I think part of it vs Stoneblade/Deathblade is that True Name really sucks and Terminus isn't always available to get rid of it. Essentially once True Name resolves they often only need to sit back and counter Terminus. I even run an E. Explosives main but it's not enough sometimes. Then one of my losses was versus a random Elspeth, Knight Errant. Sitting there with two REBs ready to take out their Jace, while they beat in with a white Planeswalker feels bad man. Haha

[JackaBo]

Yes there are a lot of little decisions. This version of Miracles is the hardest deck to play I've ever used, and I've used many. Grixis I haven't really had trouble with. I think part of it vs Stoneblade/Deathblade is that True Name really sucks and Terminus isn't always available to get rid of it. Essentially once True Name resolves they often only need to sit back and counter Terminus. I even run an E. Explosives main but it's not enough sometimes. Then one of my losses was versus a random Elspeth, Knight Errant. Sitting there with two REBs ready to take out their Jace, while they beat in with a white Planeswalker feels bad man. Haha

Yeah after four rounds my head is mashed potatoes. I would think twice before taking this deck to a longer tournament. Like, the deck has potential to beat up anything, it just asks so much of you as a player.

[scry_me_a_river]

Hey!

I have just started playing with the deck. Do you know any streamers or events with video coverage of New-Miracle players?

Thx and kind regards:-)

[Kyuuri117]

Yes there are a lot of little decisions. This version of Miracles is the hardest deck to play I've ever used, and I've used many. Grixis I haven't really had trouble with. I think part of it vs Stoneblade/Deathblade is that True Name really sucks and Terminus isn't always available to get rid of it. Essentially once True Name resolves they often only need to sit back and counter Terminus. I even run an E. Explosives main but it's not enough sometimes. Then one of my losses was versus a random Elspeth, Knight Errant. Sitting there with two REBs ready to take out their Jace, while they beat in with a white Planeswalker feels bad man. Haha

REB is a large reason why the better Food Chain players bring in something like Garruk Relentless post board. Same concept. Think this sort of thing is getting more common. Having 1-2 copies of council's judgment in the 75 is probably a good idea these days.

[silly]

Here's a question. Is Hydroblast good against Lands?

I'm currently on the Mentor version with maindeck Daze. I played against two different Lands pilots yesterday and was sort of uncertain about how I should sideboard. I ended up taking out x4 Terminus and x4 Daze. I put in all of my nonbasic and graveyard hate Surgical, RIP, Blood Moon, From the Ashes. For the remaining four slots I put in Spell Pierce and Hydroblast, but I wasn't sure whether or not those cards were actually good in the matchup. Hydroblast wasn't that exciting, but I assumed it had to be better than Daze.

[thecrav]

Had a funny with with Miracles this week. Posted it here: https://blog.seemsgood.com/17-august-2017-single-match-report/

[prepare4robots]

Had a funny with with Miracles this week. Posted it here: https://blog.seemsgood.com/17-august-2017-single-match-report/

How's future site?

[thecrav]

How's future site?

It's unbelievable. The person who told me to play it told me it was better than Jace. Multiple locals have said that the game is usually over when it resolves.

It's not uncommon to get +1 card every turn. Fortunately, you'll get even more than that.

The following happens almost once per game:

Draw card for turn
Cast Ponder off of the top of the deck (+1)
Draw card off Ponder (+2)
Play land off the top (+3)

Last week, I did that play and followed it up with 2 Predicts targetting myself. I paid 3UU and "drew" something like 12 cards.

[ParkerLewis]

I respond that it's unlikely that a Jund deck is able to counter a spell

I lol'ed.

[prepare4robots]

Would love some feedback on my latest build. Basically taken 'Daze Miracles' and replaced the Dazes with Fluster Storms main deck. This is a concession to the more proactive nature of 4 x Monastery Mentor, but trying to include an all around better card. Ultimately it's given me 3 more spots in the side board that filled with From the Ashes and Kozilek's Return. Numbers probably aren't right, but both cards were stand outs in old-Miracles so wanting to test them in the current meta.

// 60 Maindeck
// 7 Creature
3 Snapcaster Mage
4 Monastery Mentor

// 20 Instant
4 Brainstorm
4 Swords to Plowshares
2 Counterspell
4 Force of Will
3 Predict
3 Flusterstorm

// 20 Land
2 Arid Mesa
4 Flooded Strand
4 Island
1 Plains
4 Scalding Tarn
3 Tundra
1 Volcanic Island
1 Mountain

// 2 Planeswalker
2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor

// 11 Sorcery
4 Ponder
4 Terminus
3 Portent


// 15 Sideboard
// 4 Creature
SB: 2 Containment Priest
SB: 2 Ethersworn Canonist

// 9 Instant
SB: 2 Surgical Extraction
SB: 2 Disenchant
SB: 3 Pyroblast
SB: 2 Kozilek's Return

// 2 Sorcery
SB: 2 From the Ashes

[MorphBerlin]

Draw card for turn
Cast Ponder off of the top of the deck (+1)
Draw card off Ponder (+2)
Play land off the top (+3)

Technically this is only plus 2 cards not 3

[crowe_1]

Future Sight seems like it would be good versus Storm if you could leave a counter on top of the deck. If you survive that long.

I agree that it is heavily synergistic with the deck. Is it too much mana though?

[RankaLee]

Ive recently swapped over to the mentor daze MB build from the UA build and I can deff say that it feels much more proactive and alot of the times ppl dont want you to uptap with mentor so they have to play off curve. and now that your playing daze aswell they have to maybe leave up 2 mana. so far that is what it feels like but ive only been playing at LGS and FNM and never went to time. XD since DNT and Grixis Delver has been top meta/DTB has anyone thought about running teferi's response ?

[cdnza]

Has anyone in this thread played much with Grixis? I'm curious to know what the perception is. I've played maybe 10-20 matches with UW and was just wondering about the other cantrip/jace deck of the format. There are obvious comparisons to draw between pyro/mentor and bolt/swords and such, but I wondered if anyone had any firsthand insights.

[JackaBo]

My experience is that's it's easy to go to time and that it's rather even. G1 it kind of revolves around who runs away with a jace. Post board pyroblasts make jace a lot worse. I do think we have an edge: Mentor is way better than peezy, STP way better than push and bolt and terminus is better than marsh casalties/whatever they run. The biggest concern is snap kcommand loops IMO.

[itrytostorm]

So I went 4-1 in a league yesterday with counterbalance. Definitely much harder to play than regular Miracles (which was already taxing). If I can, I will try to track how many spells get countered in 4 categories: countered without me knowing the top, countered by me having prior information on what the top card was, countered using a card to set up the top, and not countering. I think then it'd be a little clearer if counterspells would be better in more instances.

[JackaBo]

So I went 4-1 in a league yesterday with counterbalance. Definitely much harder to play than regular Miracles (which was already taxing). If I can, I will try to track how many spells get countered in 4 categories: countered without me knowing the top, countered by me having prior information on what the top card was, countered using a card to set up the top, and not countering. I think then it'd be a little clearer if counterspells would be better in more instances.

Such statistics would be useful. Perhabs also what kind of spells were countered, eventhough that might be too much work.

[Noloam_]

i 5-0'ed with this list today. i went 4-1,4-1,4-1,2-3 :(,5-0

dci: 1049389968
jerko jovic
UW miracles

Mainboard:

3 snapcaster mage

2 jace the mind sculptor

3 counterbalance
4 ponder
4 brainstorm
3 portent
4 predict
4 swords to plowshares
1 unexpectedly absent
1 councils judgement
4 terminus
2 counterspell
4 force of will
1 entreat the angels

5 island
2 plains
4 polluted delta
4 flooded strand
1 arid mesa
3 tundra
1 karakas


Sideboard:


1 surgical extraction
1 Grafdiggers cage (still need to buy a 2th surgical)
1 hydroblast
2 invasive surgery
1 back to basics
1 gideon, ally of zendikar
1 disenchant
1 containment priest
1 ethersworn cannonist
3 leyline of sanctity
1 monestery mentor
1 disenchant

[Stefanogs]

I Just 5-0 on Mtgol with my soothsaying list (= Opponent: D&T, Grixis Control, Grixis Delver, UR Delver and Monored Storm.

3 Monastery Mentor
2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
2 Counterspell
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
2 Portent
2 Predict
1 Council's Judgment
4 Terminus
4 Swords to Plowshares
4 Force of Will
3 Snapcaster Mage
3 Volcanic Island
2 Tundra
2 Plains
4 Flooded Strand
4 Polluted Delta
1 Arid Mesa
3 Counterbalance
4 Island
2 Soothsaying

1 Red Elemental Blast
2 Pyroblast
2 Flusterstorm
2 Wear/Tear
1 Vendilion Clique
1 Surgical Extraction
1 Containment Priest
1 Ethersworn Canonist
2 Blood Moon
1 Pyroclasm
1 Snapcaster Mage

[cdnza]

I Just 5-0 on Mtgol with my soothsaying list (= Opponent: D&T, Grixis Control, Grixis Delver, UR Delver and Monored Storm.

3 Monastery Mentor
2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
2 Counterspell
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
2 Portent
2 Predict
1 Council's Judgment
4 Terminus
4 Swords to Plowshares
4 Force of Will
3 Snapcaster Mage
3 Volcanic Island
2 Tundra
2 Plains
4 Flooded Strand
4 Polluted Delta
1 Arid Mesa
3 Counterbalance
4 Island
2 Soothsaying

1 Red Elemental Blast
2 Pyroblast
2 Flusterstorm
2 Wear/Tear
1 Vendilion Clique
1 Surgical Extraction
1 Containment Priest
1 Ethersworn Canonist
2 Blood Moon
1 Pyroclasm
1 Snapcaster Mage

This looks so interesting! Got a little report for us, for even perhaps just a summary of how it's been performing?

[itrytostorm]

I Just 5-0 on Mtgol with my soothsaying list (= Opponent: D&T, Grixis Control, Grixis Delver, UR Delver and Monored Storm.

3 Monastery Mentor
2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
2 Counterspell
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
2 Portent
2 Predict
1 Council's Judgment
4 Terminus
4 Swords to Plowshares
4 Force of Will
3 Snapcaster Mage
3 Volcanic Island
2 Tundra
2 Plains
4 Flooded Strand
4 Polluted Delta
1 Arid Mesa
3 Counterbalance
4 Island
2 Soothsaying

1 Red Elemental Blast
2 Pyroblast
2 Flusterstorm
2 Wear/Tear
1 Vendilion Clique
1 Surgical Extraction
1 Containment Priest
1 Ethersworn Canonist
2 Blood Moon
1 Pyroclasm
1 Snapcaster Mage

Decided to try it and went 3-2 and 5-0. Soothsaying actually overperformed.

[twndomn]

I Just 5-0 on Mtgol with my soothsaying list (= Opponent: D&T, Grixis Control, Grixis Delver, UR Delver and Monored Storm.





Decided to try it and went 3-2 and 5-0. Soothsaying actually overperformed.

I wrote about the Soothsaying experiment on Page 3, finally people tried.

http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?31855-Primer-UWx-Miracle-Control&p=1017821&viewfull=1#post1017821

Even with CB in Miracles, I'm convinced it's just inferior. At this point, the best deck utilizing Mentor is either Daze Mentor or Esper Mentor. Esper Mentor has nothing to do with Miracles and Daze Mentor is more about tempo than the classic control.

[Noloam_]

i prefer draw-go miracles, without any mainboard mentors. Blanking removal game one + big cardadvantage, is a solid gameplan

[Jsang]

i prefer draw-go miracles, without any mainboard mentors. Blanking removal game one + big cardadvantage, is a solid gameplan

+1
But I would suggest adding a 2nd entreat the angel in the main. An early entreat (like for 2) could stabilize a board state and enable a quick route to win.

[Noloam_]

+1
But I would suggest adding a 2nd entreat the angel in the main. An early entreat (like for 2) could stabilize a board state and enable a quick route to win.

yeah i am really debating if i want +1 entreat and -1 predict/portent or +1 jace and -1 predict/portent

[itrytostorm]

yeah i am really debating if i want +1 entreat and -1 predict/portent or +1 jace and -1 predict/portent

They published your list. Very nice :)

[Drzed]

I don't understand why playing counterbalance without mentor. The best thing you can do is setting up a 1 cc spell on top and casting the monk with full 1cc removal protection..

Sent from my MI 5 using Tapatalk

[Noloam_]

I don't understand why playing counterbalance without mentor. The best thing you can do is setting up a 1 cc spell on top and casting the monk with full 1cc removal protection..

Sent from my MI 5 using Tapatalk


you will understand it as soon as you see how long my games last. Balance usually catches 2-5 spells if you play a long game. And it increases your (UR)delver match, storm match + it kills the mirror

[Drzed]

I can understand but it seems it has more to do with your playstyle than anything. Vs decks like Ur Delver I prefere to control just the right amount before turning the angle and killing. I played alot of CB before the ban (even in Delver SB) and the card was mediocre in a lot of matchups. Using it as a controlling tool AND as a protection in those matchup where CB can't do much (d&t) was the best way to play it imo. I could be wrong but it always worked well for me this way. Anyway it's great to see your progress with CB and keep us updated.

Sent from my MI 5 using Tapatalk

[Noloam_]

I can understand but it seems it has more to do with your playstyle than anything. Vs decks like Ur Delver I prefere to control just the right amount before turning the angle and killing. I played alot of CB before the ban (even in Delver SB) and the card was mediocre in a lot of matchups. Using it as a controlling tool AND as a protection in those matchup where CB can't do much (d&t) was the best way to play it imo. I could be wrong but it always worked well for me this way. Anyway it's great to see your progress with CB and keep us updated.

Sent from my MI 5 using Tapatalk

yeah dont get me wrong. im not saying that it is as good as it was before the ban. it is way way worse and it is bad in some matched indeed. But that also goes for terminus and plowshares. What i am saying is that miracles is a vallue deck and counterbalance fits in that strategy nicely. It is also nice to drop a permanent once in a while, instead of holding infinite cards in hand after several predict.

[Drzed]

yeah dont get me wrong. im not saying that it is as good as it was before the ban. it is way way worse and it is bad in some matched indeed. But that also goes for terminus and plowshares. What i am saying is that miracles is a vallue deck and counterbalance fits in that strategy nicely. It is also nice to drop a permanent once in a while, instead of holding infinite cards in hand after several predict.

Yeah sure I was just talking about the (endless) debate of mentor Vs entreat and it just seemed to me that mentor was more synergic with a CB. But as I stated It's just theory and entreat is probably better for a slower deck playing CB.

[god_campbell]

you will understand it as soon as you see how long my games last. Balance usually catches 2-5 spells if you play a long game. And it increases your (UR)delver match, storm match + it kills the mirror

Perhaps you would be willing to record some matches or better yet stream with the deck so we can see how your playstyle is.

[Noloam_]

Perhaps you would be willing to record some matches or better yet stream with the deck so we can see how your playstyle is.

90% of the time i play while working in the office. i think the wont appreciate a cam on my monitor. But perhaps there are also streaming possibilities, for which i only need to run certain software? is anybody familiar with that?

[Stefanogs]

90% of the time i play while working in the office. i think the wont appreciate a cam on my monitor. But perhaps there are also streaming possibilities, for which i only need to run certain software? if anybody familiar with that?

OBS Studio. Very easy. (=


edit [one day after]: another 5-0 with sooth list (=

edit [2]: and one more 5-0 =) 10 win streak \o/

Edit [two days after]: one more! 15 win streakkk

[god_campbell]

Ya Im pretty close to legacy completion on modo just need 3 more fows and a couple sb cards *cough* surgical *cough* then I will bee moving my mainly modern over to a more legacy focus.

You just need to download OBS u set screen capture and add a mic or a cam or what ever and boom u have a simple stream setup to broadcast games to the rest of us.

[CBXZero]

i 5-0'ed with this list today. i went 4-1,4-1,4-1,2-3 :(,5-0

dci: 1049389968
jerko jovic
UW miracles

Mainboard:

3 snapcaster mage

2 jace the mind sculptor

3 counterbalance
4 ponder
4 brainstorm
3 portent
4 predict
4 swords to plowshares
1 unexpectedly absent
1 councils judgement
4 terminus
2 counterspell
4 force of will
1 entreat the angels

5 island
2 plains
4 polluted delta
4 flooded strand
1 arid mesa
3 tundra
1 karakas


Sideboard:


1 surgical extraction
1 Grafdiggers cage (still need to buy a 2th surgical)
1 hydroblast
2 invasive surgery
1 back to basics
1 gideon, ally of zendikar
1 disenchant
1 containment priest
1 ethersworn cannonist
3 leyline of sanctity
1 monestery mentor
1 disenchant

I'm planning on piloting a similar list at a tournament this Saturday, any advice you can give for piloting?

[Noloam_]

I'm planning on piloting a similar list at a tournament this Saturday, any advice you can give for piloting?

slam counterbalance into the face of daze and make sure you dont cut portent vs aggro ;) (for terminus). keep me posted on your results

[Hrothgar]

Another 5-0 on mtg for the Soothsaying/Counterbalance list:

http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/mtgo-standings/competitive-legacy-constructed-league-2017-08-31

[Stefanogs]

I recorded my league today with same sooth list. 5-0 again =)

R1 - Dark Maverick
R2 - Czech Pile
R3 - Merfolk
R4 - Grixis Delver
R5 - Death & Taxes

Turn on subtitles for a few comments.

Part 1 (R1-R2): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1d_myJH5FeY
Part 2 (R3-R5): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XerDvgpy_wM

[god_campbell]

I recorded my league today with same sooth list. 5-0 again =)

R1 - Dark Maverick
R2 - Czech Pile
R3 - Merfolk
R4 - Grixis Delver
R5 - Death & Taxes

Turn on subtitles for a few comments.

Part 1 (R1-R2): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1d_myJH5FeY
Part 2 (R3-R5): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XerDvgpy_wM

Thank you for the content! I always appreciate any effort to showcase play style and play lines to better improve as a player.

[WinterRat1]

I recorded my league today with same sooth list. 5-0 again =)

R1 - Dark Maverick
R2 - Czech Pile
R3 - Merfolk
R4 - Grixis Delver
R5 - Death & Taxes

Turn on subtitles for a few comments.

Part 1 (R1-R2): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1d_myJH5FeY
Part 2 (R3-R5): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XerDvgpy_wM

Thanks for the videos, they were very informative!

I liked how Soothsaying served multiple roles (pairing with CB and acting as another cantrip) and Counterbalance of course isn't as good as it was with Top, but it does attack them along a different axis and if it picks off even 1 card, it's at least a 1 for 1; anything more and it generates positive value. At the very least, it gives them something else they have to consider. Interesting build!

[itrytostorm]

I recorded my league today with same sooth list. 5-0 again =)

R1 - Dark Maverick
R2 - Czech Pile
R3 - Merfolk
R4 - Grixis Delver
R5 - Death & Taxes

Turn on subtitles for a few comments.

Part 1 (R1-R2): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1d_myJH5FeY
Part 2 (R3-R5): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XerDvgpy_wM

Congrats on crushing. Why the 3 Volcanic over 3 Tudnra?

[AppallinglyDull]

I recorded my league today with same sooth list. 5-0 again =)

R1 - Dark Maverick
R2 - Czech Pile
R3 - Merfolk
R4 - Grixis Delver
R5 - Death & Taxes

Turn on subtitles for a few comments.

Part 1 (R1-R2): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1d_myJH5FeY
Part 2 (R3-R5): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XerDvgpy_wM

Very interesting stuff! I really like the power of Soothsaying in the later game, where it helps draw into action even better than Top did. I think you Soothsaying'd for 6+ a few times, which has to feel pretty great! :laugh:

Would you consider adding a third copy of Soothsaying to the list, or does two feel like the right number?

Also, is the reason you activated Soothsaying for X=1 at the end step when you didn't have a fetchland just to decide whether to activate for X=2+ on upkeep? I think most of the times you just ended up drawing the card so it looks a little strange, but I assume this is the reason?

[Stefanogs]

Very interesting stuff! I really like the power of Soothsaying in the later game, where it helps draw into action even better than Top did. I think you Soothsaying'd for 6+ a few times, which has to feel pretty great! :laugh:

Would you consider adding a third copy of Soothsaying to the list, or does two feel like the right number?

Also, is the reason you activated Soothsaying for X=1 at the end step when you didn't have a fetchland just to decide whether to activate for X=2+ on upkeep? I think most of the times you just ended up drawing the card so it looks a little strange, but I assume this is the reason?



i'll kp only two soothsaying. The card is really bad on first turns :p.

Yes, this is the reason why i look at the top card on eot. ^^


Itrytostorm: i run 3 volcanics to avoid cb. Ved_x tested the list today (you may watch on twitch) and he loses one game only because he was running 2 volcanics that got wasted. You may run 1/2 volcanics + 1 mountain alongside scalding tarns to avoid this. I do prefer 3 volcanics because we don't run red cards md, so i don't want basic mountains.

[trivial_matters]

I'm playing Mentor Miracles with Daze.

When playing against Death and Taxes, what are must counter cards? Is it worth FoWing a T1 Vial? How about T2 Stoneforge Mystic or Thalia?

I find Thalia to be quite annoying because her taxing effect slows us down a lot. Also, with a Karakas in play for the opponent she is difficult to get rid of.

Is the most reliable win condition a fast Mentor?

[Stefanogs]

I'm playing Mentor Miracles with Daze.

When playing against Death and Taxes, what are must counter cards? Is it worth FoWing a T1 Vial? How about T2 Stoneforge Mystic or Thalia?

I find Thalia to be quite annoying because her taxing effect slows us down a lot. Also, with a Karakas in play for the opponent she is difficult to get rid of.

Is the most reliable win condition a fast Mentor?

I think fow t1 vial is correct decision, because we run 0-2 answers to it md. I don't like to fow sfm or thalia... you need to avaluate your removals, cantrips and lands to see if you'll have effective answer for them.

I do think that both mentor and jace are mvp on this matchup.

[Minniehajj]

3 Monastery Mentor
2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
1 Counterspell
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
2 Portent
3 Predict
1 Council's Judgment
4 Terminus
4 Swords to Plowshares
4 Force of Will
3 Snapcaster Mage
3 Volcanic Island
3 Tundra
2 Plains
4 Flooded Strand
4 Polluted Delta
1 Arid Mesa
3 Counterbalance
3 Island
2 Soothsaying

1 Red Elemental Blast
2 Pyroblast
2 Flusterstorm
2 Disenchant
1 Izzet Staticaster
1 Vendilion Clique
2 Surgical Extraction
2 Containment Priest
2 Blood Moon

I 5 0d a small local event last night with this. While I was very skeptical and very ....uh... Vocal about my disdain for soothsaying here, seeing Stefanogs do so well with it consistently drove me to at least try it. It was kinda ridiculous how powerful indexing for 7 on repeated turns in the late game can be, and, in conjunction with CB, kinda created some busted and unfair interactions. The format is hella soft to it for the time being so it's possibly seeing some success because it's unexpected, but I fully intend to at least keep trying and tuning it myself.

Countertop is still broken, I can confirm. I intend to try increased numbers and see how good/bad it can be.

I'm still skeptical, but it's definitely much better than I originally have credit.

[AppallinglyDull]

I'm going to try to trade for a couple Soothsayings (I know, they're only like $2.50 each, but still...) and test this as well. I've been sticking with the 'traditional' Mentor + UA build but am intrigued. And having Counterbalance back in the deck would feel nice vs. Burn, which I've lost to two weeks in a row. :rolleyes:

One thing that strikes me about this deck is that Mentor has fewer spells to trigger it, since you're cutting some number of Portents, Predicts, etc. for enchantments that we don't necessarily want to deploy in multiples. Along with Soothsaying's ability to sort of 'float' cards the way Top did, would this build perhaps prefer Entreat the Angels?

[Noloam_]

Yeah im am really surprised that almost nobody runs entreat. That card is lights out vs so many otherwise unwinable situations

[twndomn]

Countertop is still broken, I can confirm. I intend to try increased numbers and see how good/bad it can be.

I'm still skeptical, but it's definitely much better than I originally have credit.

There is no Countertop, only CounterSoothsaying.

At this point in time, people seem to forget that Miracles is supposed to float cards, like all the SDT tricks have never existed.

[cdnza]

I recorded my league today with same sooth list. 5-0 again =)

R1 - Dark Maverick
R2 - Czech Pile
R3 - Merfolk
R4 - Grixis Delver
R5 - Death & Taxes

Turn on subtitles for a few comments.

Part 1 (R1-R2): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1d_myJH5FeY
Part 2 (R3-R5): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XerDvgpy_wM

Loved watching these! Will try this list out next time I play :)

[mistercakes]

wondering if anyone has tried a singleton alhammarret's archive?

the deck is mostly running cantrips while brainstorm and jace produce an unforgiving amount of card draw. just wondering.

[Nocley]

Been playing the soothsaying list for a bit online these past few days. Went 3-3 in the challenge today, and a 4-1 league followed by a current 2-0 right now.

I've been very underwhelmed with soothsaying, I'm not convinced that they're neccessarily better than say a pierce/snare and another predict (and likely trimming a Counterbalance for another pierce/snare). CB has overperformed and been just as insane as it was before. The issue with soothsaying though is that the mana is way too intensive, I've always been choking with hitting what I need when I need to then dig aggressively. How are you playing the soothsaying activations?

However, while I did test out a singleton Entreat, I do feel Mentor is actually better here, makes it easier to worry about floating not as many things - I was never able to setup the Entreats well at all, and then it was just a dead card in hand, when else I would have been looking at a mentor and a hand of permission, which is fantastic.

[CBXZero]

I went 4-3 at the event I went to on Saturday, small breakdown of my matches:

Decklist: https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/749811

Rd 1: 2-0 Bug Control

Game 1: My opponent wasn't sure what was going on, but some early counterspells and swords took care of early threats. Eventually I played Jace and my opponent played Lilliana. Lilliana eventually ulted and my op said I can keep either Jace or everything else, I kept Jace and ulte'd a couple of turns later to win
Game 2: I was able to counter Lilliana this time and felt great doing it. Op wouldn't let my Jace stick this time, then played his own Jace, but we got a soothsaying and a Counterbalance down and eventually Entreated for lethal

Rd 2: 0-2 infect

Game 1: I killed everything except Inkmoth and then died to Inkmoth
Game 2: I kept a hand that looked like it could dig for the answers I needed and didn't find them, then died to inkmoth.

Rd 3: 2-1 Elves

Well timed terminus picked up games 1 and 3, won with Jace game 1 and Entreat Game 3

Rd 4: 2-1 Burn,

Game 1: I exhausted my opponent's resources, slammed Jace, and then +2'd my way to victory with countermagic up
Game 2: I had leyline but he got tons of creatures and quickly ran me over
Game 3: I killed the creatures, drew into leyline, then Jace'd for the win
Side Note: Thank you burn player for giving me plenty of time to eat, first time that I had at least 10 minutes to eat

Rd 5: 1-0-1 UR Planeswalkers?

I wasn't entirely sure what my opponent's deck was but here's how it went:

Game 1: I started with a great hand and opened with a Turn 1 portent targeting my op, I saw 2 Magus of the Moons and a Blood Moon, chuckled since my hand had basics and a single fetch in it, then left it (top to bottom) as Magus, Magus, Blood Moon. My opponent then brainstormed on my end step and laughed with me. I took care of both Magus of the Moons, and my opponent drew into Chandra, then Jace. I countered his Jace, put Chandra on top of his library in response to a fetch and then played Jace and won.
Game 2: I sided in 1 copy of Hydroblast for the Chandra, which my opponent got to see with an early surgical. Trinisphere hit the board which slow'd the game to a hault. I played Unexpectedly Absent on a different problematic card and it ended up getting surgical'd away so I couldn't flash it back later. Hydroblast took care of Chandra and then we had a stalled game that went to turns, and drew me the win

Rd 6: 1-2 UR Delver

Game 1: I had a decent hand, but my opponent just put down threat after threat and I couldn't keep up. Terminus would have been fantastic but never found it
Game 2: I found an early terminus after my opponent over-extended, resolved Jace, and my opponent scooped to save time.
Game 3: Repeat of game 1, except I found the terminus and it got countered.

Rd 7: 1-2 Bant Deathblade

I can't actually remember the order of the games, but some notable things I learned in this match:

1. Unexpectedly Absent into Predict is awesome, but my opponent cracked a fetch in response to Predict to stop card advantage.
2. Removing Batterskull and Jitte is what picked me up the 1 game I won
3. When you play Back to Basics, you probably shouldn't give them mana off of Jace (He played Pithing Needle off the land I gave him)


Overall I thought the deck performed great. I think had I made better mulligan decisions against Infect and played better against Bant Deathblade I might have been able to win those matches. I won almost every game I soothsaying'd for 5+. Counterbalance also performed well (excluding me forgetting my trigger twice that day) without soothsaying, and was definitely worth the slot in the deck. I need some more practice with the deck before my next tournament though, but was happy with the results it put up.

[Drzed]

After some testing what's the general impression from everyone on counterbalance and soothsaying (not necessarily together)? Counterbalance is great as always as a control tool and doubling as a mentor defence but on soothsaying I'm a bit sceptical. It's true that in the endgame soothsaying for 4 or more is usually really really good (if you are in a normal boardstate or not completely hellbent you are in a great shape to win) but in the early and mid-game is just not great. What I want to understand is if soothsaying is worth playing or it's simply better to play 4 portent and some number of counterbalance.

Sent from my MI 5 using Tapatalk

[Excrempus]

So far I've liked it only played it once at my locals so far which isn't really great for it since we have people still running a play set of decay. Soothsaying came down in one of my games indexed for 7 and then I was able to efficiently use my mana to get through a pocket of cantrips and lands. Finding the cards I needed to win the game. Overall the night wasnt great lost a couple games due to not drawing lands bit that's magic.

Sent from my SM-G955U using Tapatalk

[Whitefaces]

I tried it at a LGS last night and it was great, looking forward to playing it more. Two SS three CB felt like a sweet spot off the bat.

[Nestalim]

I feel like both cards are pretty bad in early (CB can do wonder but still, it doesn't help at keeping the board clean) so I think that one SS and two CB could be enough with all the way we have to dig in it.

[Goldensun]

Hi guyz,

(Before anything sorry for my english level)
I'm testing since 4months only the match up vs grixis delver I played at least 200match versus.

I reccorded some match on youtube : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVelF10vvbI&list=PLc0VYlJOdSpOIE2PJu5YhmGSOWIYyxSGB

If you want more match just ask me, if you have tips or u see missplays I will be happy to discuss about them.

I tried plenty list, with entreat the angels, scroll rack (great with cb, terminus, hand full of lands. But in my meta there is a lot of Kcommand MD), daze, BTB MD, surgical MD.. And finally.

My current list:

// 60 Deck principal
// 5 Creature
4 Snapcaster Mage
1 Monastery Mentor

// 2 Enchantment
2 Counterbalance

// 19 Instant
4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
4 Swords to Plowshares
2 Counterspell
4 Predict
1 Flusterstorm

// 20 Land
1 Arid Mesa
1 Plains
3 Island
3 Tundra
2 Volcanic Island
4 Scalding Tarn
4 Flooded Strand
1 Mountain
1 Misty Rainforest

// 3 Planeswalker
3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor

// 11 Sorcery
4 Terminus
4 Ponder
3 Portent


// 15 Réserve
// 2 Artifact
SB: 2 Engineered Explosives

// 2 Creature
SB: 1 Vendilion Clique
SB: 1 Izzet Staticaster

// 9 Instant
SB: 1 Flusterstorm
SB: 3 Surgical Extraction
SB: 1 Wear // Tear
SB: 3 Pyroblast
SB: 1 Red Elemental Blast

// 2 Sorcery
SB: 1 Council's Judgment
SB: 1 Pyroclasm


// 1 Jetons
// 1 Creature
1 Monk

My current SB plan vs grixis delver: -4 predict -3 portent -2 counterspell -1 jace +3 pyroblast +1 red elemental blast +1 flusterstorm +1 pyroclasm +1 izzet staticaster +2 engineered explosives +1 council's judgement

If you think that I should side in other way please ask me.

CU

PS: sorry for the first video the quality is lower

[Swampfoot48]

Hi guyz,

(Before anything sorry for my english level)
I'm testing since 4months only the match up vs grixis delver I played at least 200match versus.

I reccorded some match on youtube : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVelF10vvbI&list=PLc0VYlJOdSpOIE2PJu5YhmGSOWIYyxSGB

If you want more match just ask me, if you have tips or u see missplays I will be happy to discuss about them.

I tried plenty list, with entreat the angels, scroll rack (great with cb, terminus, hand full of lands. But in my meta there is a lot of Kcommand MD), daze, BTB MD, surgical MD.. And finally.

My current list:

// 60 Deck principal
// 5 Creature
4 Snapcaster Mage
1 Monastery Mentor

// 2 Enchantment
2 Counterbalance

// 19 Instant
4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
4 Swords to Plowshares
2 Counterspell
4 Predict
1 Flusterstorm

// 20 Land
1 Arid Mesa
1 Plains
3 Island
3 Tundra
2 Volcanic Island
4 Scalding Tarn
4 Flooded Strand
1 Mountain
1 Misty Rainforest

// 3 Planeswalker
3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor

// 11 Sorcery
4 Terminus
4 Ponder
3 Portent


// 15 Réserve
// 2 Artifact
SB: 2 Engineered Explosives

// 2 Creature
SB: 1 Vendilion Clique
SB: 1 Izzet Staticaster

// 9 Instant
SB: 1 Flusterstorm
SB: 3 Surgical Extraction
SB: 1 Wear // Tear
SB: 3 Pyroblast
SB: 1 Red Elemental Blast

// 2 Sorcery
SB: 1 Council's Judgment
SB: 1 Pyroclasm


// 1 Jetons
// 1 Creature
1 Monk

My current SB plan vs grixis delver: -4 predict -3 portent -2 counterspell -1 jace +3 pyroblast +1 red elemental blast +1 flusterstorm +1 pyroclasm +1 izzet staticaster +2 engineered explosives +1 council's judgement

If you think that I should side in other way please ask me.

CU

PS: sorry for the first video the quality is lower

Goldensun, thank you for the information. I definitely respect your diligent approach to analyzing this matchup! I must admit that this was one I loved to see prior to Top getting banned, but feel like I'm on the wrong side of now.

[veeohla]

I've been testing with a 1 of Dragonlord Ojutai. He tends to be a blowout against most decks

[Whitefaces]

After trying Mentor, Gideon and Entreat a bunch, I've found the angels to be one of the best ways to fight the 4c menace. Since we're trading resources so heavily, Mentor isn't always reliable, Gideon can be taken down with chip shots from Strix, Snaps and bolt/kommand (though he's still very good). Entreat is very hard for them to interact with, it's also a good way to fight Punishing Fire decks, or any fair decks for that matter. Setting it up really isn't too difficult in a deck with this many cantrips and brainstorms. We can't reliably play it EOT anymore, but let's face it, that was totally busted. Playing it 'naturally' is still very strong.

This is the list I've been happy with recently. I'd really like to get the 4th Portent in there, but struggling on the cut.

3 Snapcaster Mage

3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor

4 Ponder
3 Portent
4 Terminus
2 Entreat the Angels

4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
4 Swords to Plowshares
3 Predict
2 Counterspell
2 Flusterstorm
2 Unexpectedly Absent

3 Tundra
3 Volcanic Island
4 Island
2 Plains
4 Flooded Strand
3 Polluted Delta
1 Arid Mesa

SB:
2 Surgical Extraction
2 Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
2 Blood Moon
1 Disenchant
1 Flusterstorm
2 Pyroblast
1 Red Elemental Blast
2 Ethersworn Canonist
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Izzet Staticaster

[procobrito]

What about the new "ghost quarter" for ixalan? It can help to remove a problematic land without decrease our lands in the field. Against 3c and 4c, is basicly a sinkhole in a landslot.


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[Whitefaces]

What about the new "ghost quarter" for ixalan? It can help to remove a problematic land without decrease our lands in the field. Against 3c and 4c, is basicly a sinkhole in a landslot.


Enviado de meu SM-G900MD usando Tapatalk

It's not really an effect this deck is looking for, the option to play Wasteland is always there, or Blood Moon after board. The cost of playing a land that taps for colourless is very high in Miracles, so until you activate it it doesn't cast very much. Even basic plains feels very bad in the deck.

[Irenicus2110]

@Whitefaces:

As far as I remember you played a strict UW list without red-splash after the Ban. Since Alakazimdk and others seem to do well without the splash at the moment I am considering trying UW too. I`ve always seen Blasts as essential before top&balance left the format, but right now I am not sure anymore - even in the face of 4C Controls rising in power.
What made you change your mind about the splash?

[Tenken]

Hey, new to the forums as well as this deck in legacy but after reviewing the sideboard guide for the U/W Miracles list I have a question! Monastery Mentor looks to be sided in for a large percentage of these popular match ups. Is this due to decks sideing out removal while we side into threats or perhaps something I overlooked entirely?

[kentheide]

@Whitefaces:

As far as I remember you played a strict UW list without red-splash after the Ban. Since Alakazimdk and others seem to do well without the splash at the moment I am considering trying UW too. I`ve always seen Blasts as essential before top&balance left the format, but right now I am not sure anymore - even in the face of 4C Controls rising in power.
What made you change your mind about the splash?

Anders (Alakazim) has said lately that he wants to move towards the red splash if only for blasts. Mostly because Leyline is not that great anymore so that frees up the SB slots needed.

[Hrothgar]

What about the new "ghost quarter" for ixalan? It can help to remove a problematic land without decrease our lands in the field. Against 3c and 4c, is basicly a sinkhole in a landslot.


Totally useless/nonsense slot.
The purpose of the deck do not need lands control and, in some trouble matchup like Lands or Eldrazi, Blood Moon is a better permanent who win alone.


About the splash:



FOREWORD: I play Mentor Miracle version with Daze.

Last week I've play in a tournament trying without the splash and lose only by 4c.
I try many sideboard version, principally because Leyline fo Sanctity is a strong card for now (he save us from discard spells in primis, who give many problems with the 4c control who can flashback Hymn to Tourach) but i feel some slots problems to add her into a splashed list..principally because some RED slots are very good.
After a lot of trying, i think (this is a different vision from mine of two months ago) who Blood Moon is a real strong card in Miracle Mentor. And with few Abrupt Decay then before, the opponent need to choose among Mentor/Moon/Other (Balance?).
This make difficult cut out the slot for 3 Leyline of Sanctity.

Anyway: the RED splash, who can seems not essential in this meta evaluate the rise of the Black (who can give more value to Flusterstorm (vs Hymn or Seize or...Kolaghan), anyway assume relevance vs two/three iperstrong cards: Snapcaster Mage imho in primis, Jace and Force of Will (remember who our opponent keep Will vs Miracle).
Red splash is very relevant imho.

[ET1]

Hello all,

I'm fairly new to the deck, picked up miracles a few months ago when the portent versions were just starting to show up post top-ban. Now new-miracles seems to have changed quite a bit with little consensus on a stock build. Outside of maybe twice I've played a different version of this deck every time I've played it. Has there been any consensus on which version is best suited for the current metagame?

Soothsaying usage seems to have dropped off a bit, I briefly tried it, but was not a huge fan of the clunky-ness of an early soothsaying. Some people seem to have come full circle and gone back to playing the harder-control of 3 jace, no mentor, with entreat & jace as the win conditions. Haven't seen too many results with the 4 mentor/daze builds.

[Hrothgar]

At the time there is no stock list for Miracle because the deck changing trying different solutions.
Counterbalance/Soothsaying list not affirm itself and Gideon seems very good.
Many player try Entreat (I'm not sure about it) without Counterbalance.
I play Miracle Mentor with Daze and, like many player I suppose, try some different solution because of consistency of 4c Control who dominate the meta with recursion of Snapcaster/Kolaghan,
Imho the deck is good, not easy to dominate obv, but suffer some too easy interaction of the tier deck of the format (and Lands who is not in Deck to Beat section but is tier 1).

The discard spells now are strong and we, without Sensei, suffer more then before this kind of spells.
Vs Miracle, Snap who flashback Hymn seem strong and many time there is not recoverable.

[ET1]

At the time there is no stock list for Miracle because the deck changing trying different solutions.
Counterbalance/Soothsaying list not affirm itself and Gideon seems very good.
Many player try Entreat (I'm not sure about it) without Counterbalance.
I play Miracle Mentor with Daze and, like many player I suppose, try some different solution because of consistency of 4c Control who dominate the meta with recursion of Snapcaster/Kolaghan,
Imho the deck is good, not easy to dominate obv, but suffer some too easy interaction of the tier deck of the format (and Lands who is not in Deck to Beat section but is tier 1).

The discard spells now are strong and we, without Sensei, suffer more then before this kind of spells.
Vs Miracle, Snap who flashback Hymn seem strong and many time there is not recoverable.

Coincidentally mentor w/ daze has been my favorite version thus far. I've now had a decent amount of experience both playing miracles against hymn decks and playing hymn against miracles and it is a very brutal card to resolve against miracles. Gideon I have yet to try, but seems promising. The issue I had with entreat was drawing it very early in games and then later having a hard time getting a good set-up for it, but that is likely due to some relative inexperience with the deck. I've only played lands once thus far and the match-up seems kinda brutal, I feel like entreat is likely pretty good in this match-up.

[PhilLesh]

What are people’s thoughts on Search for Azcanta in miracles?

[Goldensun]

Thank you for the spoil, I will test 1 off instead my third mentor

[trinkets]

Any reason why anyone would rather play U/W Miracles instead of U/W/r, besides budget/flavour reasons?
I see the deck doing decently well in MTGO, but the number of Counterbalance's is still pretty inconsistent. Anyone care to comment on that?

[t3hdh]

Any reason why anyone would rather play U/W Miracles instead of U/W/r, besides budget/flavour reasons?
I see the deck doing decently well in MTGO, but the number of Counterbalance's is still pretty inconsistent. Anyone care to comment on that?


I switch it up between U/W and U/W/r based off of how many wastelands I expect, I also like being able to play back to basics over bloodmoon so as to not kill fetches.

[Hrothgar]

If you want blast effect and Blood Moon, play uwr, simply no other reason imho.

[trinkets]

I see. I was just wondering if the U/W version was strictly worse, since it seems to be less popular. Is that the case, or are they up to par?

[Hrothgar]

Imho or a meta choice (for a little tournament, where you know if you opponent not playing many blue decks - and we want to play Leyline of Sanctity) or a budget choice for Volcanic.

In substance: UW version is solid, no doubt about this...but blast effects are very good vs U based and Blood Moon give us some gg. If you know your meta (and don't need blast/Moon), UW is a good choice.

[Kobal]

So what would you consider the best strategy to fight Czech Pile and friends with UWr Miracles?

- Enough Red Blasts in the board, as well as Blood Moon?
- Which win condition, Entreat or Mentor? Maybe even Gideon, Ally of Zendikar?

[Whitefaces]

In my opinion the best build to fight 4c is with two Entreats md and 3-4 Blasts in the sb. A Snare in the md does a lot of work too.

The first Entreat is used to deplete their resources, they can use Strix + Kommand or Push + SCM etc to fight through 3-4 Angels (if they can't they die of course, or if you disrupt them enough). This gives you the time to find a second and close it out, I've been really happy with Entreats for a while now. It makes the Delver matchup a bit worse as Mentor is better there, but given the state of the metagame at the moment I feel like EtA is better positioned. There's so many grindy decks with spot removal which EtA is completely unfair to.

Gideon is also very good vs 4c, and Mentor is fine out of the sideboard, but both are interactable with cards like bolt/kommand and chip damage from strixen and snapcasters to take down gideon, and Hymn or Leo to shut down the Mentor 'engine'. Entreat is only really answered by FoW, which is answering any other threats you bring to the table anyway, or Flusterstorm. Fluster is very easy to bait out with Predicts in the matchup, or since you have access to Entreat you have such a superior late game that you are given the luxury or playing a lot more reactively. It's not uncommon to make land drops and are able to play around Fluster fine.

[Hrothgar]

For sure blast are strong vs Snapcaster but 4c is a Black-base deck and we need to counter his Hymn with Flusterstorm imho.
Our snap are strong and Blood Moon is not bad vs 4c.
Blood Moon don't totally block 4c because of basic Swamp and Island + Deathrite, but anyway can help us a lot.

I've win some games thanks to a super fast/protected Mentor.
This is a good plan in g1 if have the right protection for discard.
Maybe not the best but good.

I don't like Entreat but is good vs 4c, as is good vs Jund, Shardless and other grinding matchups.

Predict is very strong here because help us to restore the hand destroyed by discard.

[Stefanogs]

Please, join the discord chat about Miracles:
https://discord.gg/3bhfek

[Hrothgar]

Please, join the discord chat about Miracles:
https://discord.gg/3bhfek

Thx :smile:

[ET1]

Looks like Daniel Miller just missed out on top 8 with miracles. Anyone know if he posts on here or the list that he played?

[Fgi_88]

Hi Guys! Today i've reach top8 in a Local league (35 players).

I'm playing Soothsaying Miracles, my list is the Stefanogs' one but i'm playing -1 Balance +1 Entreat and -1 Volcanic +1 Karakas.

Now a small report of the tournament:
R1 Elves: g1 (OTP) i've kept an hand with terminus, Jtms, Swords, 3 lands and a portent. Terminus won the game in combo with Jtms.
g2 (OTD) a blind flip of balance countered a lethal Shaman of the Pack. Gid Ally won 2 turns later.
R2 BRUG Delver: g1 (OTP) several cantrips but 0 removal... lost to 1 flipped delver.
g2 (OTP) Terminus into Jtms won the game
g3 (OTD) t1 Soothsaying, t2 Balance, t4 Blood moon and easy win.
R3 Eldrazi Aggro: g1 (OTP) I thought i was against goblins so i kept and hand good against Goblins... lost to a t1 chalice of the void with multiples copy of Swords in hand....
g2 (OTP) Kept and hand with disenchant, Fow and a couple of cantrips. He started with t1 chalice, t2 i've countered his thorn of ametist plus disenchant on chalice. t4 mentro plus brainstor and gg 2 turns later.
g3 (OTD) My opponet put in play 3 ancient tombs and he didnt' see any differnt land all the game... the tombs killed him softly :)
R4 BUG Midrange: g1 (OTP) I've lost to liliana of the veil ultimate into jtms ultimate.... was however a long grindy game!
g2 (OTP) i've kept and hand with 2 fetches and a lot of cantrips. Never find the 3rd land...
R5 Infect: g1 (OTP i know... i was luck with the dice today) Oppo mulled to 4... easy win
g2 (OTP) multiples swords, reb and 2 terminus won the game
R6 Sneak and Show ID

Top 8 BUG delver: g1 (OTP) can't find any removal... i had 6 lands and soothsaying! Incredible game... lost to a singleton TNN
g2 (OTP) same as the game before... 1 swords and gg....

Was my first tournament with Mircales and the deck seems pretty strong

[Goldensun]

Congratz fgi88 for your performance.
How did you sb vs brug delver? I see That you win g2 thx to hace. As a lot of people tell me to don't keep jtms vs red delver deck I would like you have your (or from others) opinion and sideplan vs brug delver and why not pile

[Fgi_88]

Congratz fgi88 for your performance.
How did you sb vs brug delver? I see That you win g2 thx to hace. As a lot of people tell me to don't keep jtms vs red delver deck I would like you have your (or from others) opinion and sideplan vs brug delver and why not pile

Against Brug delver i've boarded out the full set of Fow and the 3 balance. My side in was: 3 REB, 2 Blood Moon, 2 Flusterstorm. Side out jace is not a wrong idea but i've the superpower to open my starting hand always with 1 or more terminus... so jace is not only a win condition but also my 5-6 brainstorm. Also miracles have few ways to win the game and only 2 mentors against a deck running push, Bolt and decay are not enough in my opinion.

[Goldensun]

We have the same superpower... that's why after the top ban I played several month with scroll rack which is totally awesome with cb, terminus, protect from discard. Pity pile is in the meta and play too much kolaghan commands.
Why you in fluster over cb? Cb van can win the game alone and protect mentor right? I prefer draw a cb than a counterspell in this mu

[Fgi_88]

We have the same superpower... that's why after the top ban I played several month with scroll rack which is totally awesome with cb, terminus, protect from discard. Pity pile is in the meta and play too much kolaghan commands.
Why you in fluster over cb? Cb van can win the game alone and protect mentor right? I prefer draw a cb than a counterspell in this mu

Flusterstorm is there to fight Hymn to tourach, post board he put in Abrupt decay so CB is less strong.

[BadAtMTG]

Any chance I could get an invite to the miracles discord? Old one is expired :(

[Whitefaces]

https://discord.gg/TNgwYd

[beherast]

hey there,

new miracles player here and new to the source.
I wanted to hear some opinions on a basic mountain as an sideboard option in an UWr miracles list.

Also, do u sideboard in blood moon against delver variants since the top loss? before i always considered countertop-lock enough with blast effects, but now im not sure yet.

[zerzab11]

@beherast: Welcome to the source!
Mountain is good in lists featuring a heavy red splash (e.g. 2 Pyroclasm + 3 Blasts +1 Wear// Tear in the board). This helps against Delver or D&T to get a "safe" manabase and still being able to sweep the board.
Generally Mountain is a very controversial card. I for my part like it, mostly in lists with only 1 basic Plains to avoid being screwed of double U in the earlygame, due to having 3 non-U basics postboard.
So I'd say the decision depends on your sideboard and on your expected metagame.
Atm I'm playing with 3 Volcanic, cause BUGx-Midrange deck with 0-2 Wastelands are more prominent than denial-Delver or D&T.

In the past I've tested a lot of miracle variants (Entreat, CB, Mentor) to some quite good results in local tournaments (back to back wins with ~20 ppl).
While I don't know which list is the best in an open meta, I'm coming to the conclusion (along with many miracle-friends, who had this conclusion even earlier), that 12 Cantrips (4 Portent) are the way to go with this deck.
The flexibility and constancy of this deck are some of the major draws to Miracles over other Control strategies atm.
3 Jace seems to be pretty important, too imo, as you need your win-buttons or topdecks in the Czech/BUG MU's a lot.

[KHicks]

Might I obtain an invite to the Discord chat? Previously posted links not working, and thanks!

[Stefanogs]

https://discord.gg/e2G7mRG


^This link will never expire.

[WinterRat1]

https://discord.gg/e2G7mRG


^This link will never expire.

Thanks for the link!

[koten]

Has all the discussion in this thread been moved to the Discord chat?

[Minniehajj]

Has all the discussion in this thread been moved to the Discord chat?

Mostly, yes, it's quite active and much easier to have an actual discussion than it is on a series on forum posts

[god_campbell]

I tried that discord link but it says its expired....

[Sefir]

Does anyone know what happened in SCG last night?

I heard that a Miracles player had the first seed (13-0 or something) and then he was dqed!!

[god_campbell]

I think i seen it was for improperly discussing splits or something to that effect.

[trinkets]

Yes, Daniel Miller discussed prize splitting in association with a result before the swiss was over (afaik from the stream commentators).

[Richard Arschmann]

Despite the DQ, Matt Kuranda ran it back to an 8th place finish with a U/W list that ran two Search for Azcanta and two Unexpectedly Absent.

http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=116974

[koten]

I think i seen it was for improperly discussing splits or something to that effect.

Damn! I was waiting for them to post his decklist then noticed his name was gone all of a sudden. Anyone happen to know the list he was on?

[Mattincognito]

Getting back into Legacy, and strangely enough I am much more into this deck now then ever before. Top made the games so tedious and slow, but now the deck operates much more as a midrange control deck (at least to me) than a pure control. This makes it more appealing. Just bought into the deck on MTGO and trying to play as much as I can with my busy schedule. Again I am much more into a midrangey version so cards like Gideon and Mentor are right up my alley. Cannot see myself playing Entreat anytime soon. Here is my first draft (understand that its standard but lmk if I made any really dumb changes.)


4 Scalding Tarn
4 Flooded Strand
3 Snapcaster Mage
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Swords to Plowshares
3 Counterspell
3 Terminus
2 Unexpectedly Absent
3 Tundra
1 Arid Mesa
4 Portent
3 Predict
4 Force of Will
3 Monastery Mentor
2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
1 Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
1 Karakas
5 Island
2 Plains

2 Containment Priest
1 Invasive Surgery
1 Council's Judgment
2 Flusterstorm
2 Ethersworn Canonist
1 Back to Basics
2 Surgical Extraction
1 Supreme Verdict
1 Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
1 Disenchant
1 Pithing Needle

[funnywille]

Damn! I was waiting for them to post his decklist then noticed his name was gone all of a sudden. Anyone happen to know the list he was on?

It was one of the wackier decks I've seen. I played him in round 8, I think.
In the maindeck, I saw double Back to Basics, Gideon, Ally of Zendikar, Unexpectedly Absents, Entreat the Angels and Counterbalances. I believe Mentors were in the board, though I'm not 100% on that.
Everything else seemed normal; Predicts, Jace, Snapcasters, Swords, Ponders, etc.

[koten]

It was one of the wackier decks I've seen. I played him in round 8, I think.
In the maindeck, I saw double Back to Basics, Gideon, Ally of Zendikar, Unexpectedly Absents, Entreat the Angels and Counterbalances. I believe Mentors were in the board, though I'm not 100% on that.
Everything else seemed normal; Predicts, Jace, Snapcasters, Swords, Ponders, etc.

He has been doing very well with his eccentric lists. If I am not mistaken he had Top 8'd EW 2016 and Eternal Extravaganza 7. Came in 9th at EW 2017 and was the top seed after round 13 at SCG DC before the DQ. Very impressive results from him!

[Richard Arschmann]

Daniel Miller's 13-0 list can be found in this excellent Sean Brown article:

https://www.mtggoldfish.com/articles/this-week-in-legacy-scg-open-washington-dc

It is UWR with Counterbalance (but no Soothsaying), one Gideon, Unexpectedly Absent, Council's Judgment, a basic Mountain, no Volcanics, and a Wear/Tear. Crazy stuff!

[koten]

Daniel Miller's 13-0 list can be found in this excellent Sean Brown article:

https://www.mtggoldfish.com/articles/this-week-in-legacy-scg-open-washington-dc

It is UWR with Counterbalance (but no Soothsaying), one Gideon, Unexpectedly Absent, Council's Judgment, a basic Mountain, no Volcanics, and a Wear/Tear. Crazy stuff!

I love the work Sean puts into his articles each week.

[phg22]

Am I off base to say red with no Volcs seems pretty indefensible, card availability aside? Being forced to get a mountain for blasts against combo seems dreadful, especially with the amount of UU in the deck.

[Hrothgar]

The basic mountain is great vs Delver decks for sure.
Obv this choice lose power vs other control decks.
In the right meta could be the right solution.

[spym4n]

Here in Brazil we had yesterday the CLC (Legacy Circuit), a championship with several monthly stages in several different cities. Yesterday was the last stage and we had a Miracles as champion.

The deck pilot was Stefano, the current Brazilian Legacy champion. There were about 30 players and the list was the following:

03 Snapcaster Mage

02 Jace TMS

04 Force of Will
04 Counterbalance
02 Soothsaying
02 Predict
02 Counterspell
04 Swords to Plowshares
04 Terminus
01 Council's Judgement
02 Monastery Mentor
04 Brainstorm
04 Ponder
02 Portent

04 Polluted Delta
04 Flooded Strand
01 Arid Mesa
04 Islands
02 Plains
03 Volcanic Island
02 Tundra

Sideboard:

02 Containment Priest
01 Engineered Explosives
01 Wear // Tear
01 Disenchant
01 Red Elemental Blast
02 Pyroblast
03 Flusterstorm
02 Blood Moon
02 Surgical Extraction

[Whitefaces]

I played in MKM Barcelona yesterday, thought I'd do a quick write up of it. I wasn't taking notes but I'll try to remember the games roughly.

Ended up 9th with a difference of 1.5% in breakers, bit of a bummer. Especially annoying as I lost a win and in for Modern the day before.

This is the list

3 Snapcaster Mage

3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor

1 Search for Azcanta

1 Engineered Explosives

4 Ponder
3 Portent
3 Terminus
2 Entreat the Angels
1 Council's Judgment

4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
4 Swords to Plowshares
3 Counterspell
3 Predict
1 Flusterstorm

3 Tundra
2 Volcanic Island
4 Island
2 Plains
4 Flooded Strand
2 Scalding Tarn
1 Polluted Delta
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Arid Mesa

Sb
2 Monastery Mentor
2 Surgical Extraction
2 Disenchant
2 Pyroblast
2 Ethersworn Canonist
2 Blood Moon
1 Flusterstorm
1 Containment Priest
1 Pyroclasm

Round 1 vs Death and Taxes 2-0

G1: Opponent is on the play and leads with a vial which gets forced, without it he's only able to curve out and I can easily remove all the threats and Jace takes over. Search for Azcanta made an appearance but only after the game was locked up.

+2 Monastery Mentor
+1 Pyroclasm
+2 Disenchant

-3 Coutnerspell
-1 Flusterstorm
-1 Search for Azcanta

G2: They lead again with Vial off a Port, my hand has a bunch of StP, cantrips and lands so I'm OK with it for now. They then drop another which I force as I'd found a CJ for the first, they then play another. Two turns later they play the fourth. All these vials left them low on creatures so I wasn't under any pressure letting Jace and soon after a Mentor take over.

Round 2 vs 4c Pile (Tomas Mar) 0-2

G1: He simply played better than me this game. I played passively while he used Brainstorms early to get Snapcasters out there, with the damage adding up I was forced to fight over things that usually wouldn't matter in the matchup.

+2 Monastery Mentor
+1 Pyroclasm
+2 Pyroblast
+1 Flusterstorm

-2 Force of Will
-2 Terminus
-2 Swords to Plowshares

It's probably a mistake to not bring in Blood Moons, but I know he plays a lot more decays than usual. He said after he was leaving up decay almost all the time.

G2: I wasn't able to answer a turn two Sylvan Library before it'd drawn three extra cards, discard into Jace then ran me over.

Round 3 vs Bant Deathblade 2-1

G1: Coming off the back of playing badly for a loss so early I kept a sketchy one. Tundra, Brainstorm, Counterspell, Counterspell, Predict, Jace, Swords. I lead with Tundra intending to Brainstorm eot vs almost anything, opp plays Island go. I think maybe it was a mirror, but he didn't seem like a Miracles player. The Brainstorm gets Spell Pierced, I fail to draw a land and then the Tundra gets wasted. I die after not finding any more land for too long, but see enough of his deck to know what I'm against. Crucially they Dazed a Swords on a Clique which didn't matter as I was dead to a TNN anyway, which was great info to have.

+2 Pyroblast
+2 Blood Moon
+1 Pyroclasm
+1 Disenchant (hadn't seen SfM g1, would otherwise bring in 2)

-1 Entreat the Angels
-1 Flusterstorm
-2 Counterspell
-1 Force of Will
-1 Swords to Plowshares

G2: They have Noble into Meddling Mage on Terminus, then SfM grabbing skull which hits the table along with a DRS and a second Noble soon after. This leads to a blowout turn 6 of Pyroclasm into Jace bounce the germn with double force backup. A Daze on the Jace gets forced as does a followup TNN on their turn, Jace easily buries them from there.

G3: Opp kept a threat light hand which I realise after they pass turn 3, I Portent them and get Jace onto an empty board soon after.

Round 4 vs Elves 2-1

This is vs a friend from Germany who is a very skilled player with the deck. While Elves is generally a good matchup, it's not one I'm excited to face here.

G1: They have a hand that goes all in on turn three on the play with a GSZ for 8, but I have the Fluster for it and an EE to mop up the board on my third turn. Jace takes over from there.

I'm still unsure on Canonist in this matchup, I decided not to bring them in this time.

+1 Containment Priest
+1 Flusterstorm
+2 Monastery Mentor
+1 Pyroclasm
+1 Disenchant (hedge for Choke)

-1 Plains
-2 Counterspell
-1 Search for Azcanta
-1 Force of Will
-1 Entreat the Angels

G2: He plays the value game this time and after forcing a Glimpse I run out of gas quickly and can't find a Sweeper or Jace, the little green men swarm me.

On the draw I bring the Force of Will back in for the last Counterspell.

G3: Similar to game two, except my deck decided I shouldn't lose this match, despite trying my best to anyway. This game I truly played terribly, but there's no justice in this world. After grinding until about turn ten, I'm facing lethal on board with just a land in hand. I draw a Ponder which shows me Predict, Scalding Tarn, Terminus. Well then. I Terminus with them attacking for lethal, but they unload the rest of their hand following it, presenting lethal again. The second card I'd drawn off the Predict was another Terminus which I hardcast. I'm now at 3 life and my opponent drew a Llanowar Elf for their turn with a Pendelhaven in play. I draw a Portent, showing me Entreat, Swords, EE. Well then pt 2. This is the first of two attempts to lose the game. I'd missed a Swords to Plowshares a few turns before, putting them on 21, but I had 19 down. So I cracked a fetch to Entreat for 5 angels in their upkeep, shuffling away the other removal to set up lethal. I realise this in their turn, so I'd given them an out of DRS or GSZ, but they don't get it. They draw a 1/1. Following that, I then attack with 3 Angels on my turn, which then also gives them an out of an Abrupt Decay to remove one of the two angels on defense. I again realise straight after, but there's no punish. If you read this Jan, sorry!

Round 5 vs Miracles (Johannes Gutbrod) 1-1-1

Before pairing went up were we joking about hopefully avoiding each other, womp womp. Since there were so many interactions this match I don't remember too many details unfortunately.

G1: I'm able to cantrip into a bunch of counterspells and snapcasters with a followup Jace while avoiding drawing white cards, which is ideal for g1 of this matchup. An EOT snapcaster draws out a Counterspell letting me untap on T6 with Jace, counterspell of my own and a force. Jace resolves and takes over.

-4 Swords to Plowshares
-1 Engineered Explosives
-2 Plains

+2 Pyroblast
+2 Monastery Mentor
+1 Flusterstorm
+2 Surgical Extraction

I actually think Surgical as a 1 or 2 of, depending on configuration, is pretty good in the mirror. I knew I'd be facing 3/3 Fluster/Pyroblasts after board vs my 2/2, so felt quite unfavoured going into these games.

G2: We both cantrip the first few turns until they cast a Mentor turn 3, which I Counterspell. I cantrip for a proactive play, but find a Terminus and sense with the 'slam' of Mentor t3 and no fighting over it there was another to come. Sure enough, another mentor comes down which is OK to resolve, the Terminus then resolves too. I surgical the Mentors while he's tapped out and see a truly disgusting hand of Blast, Blast, Fluster, Force, Force, Jace and Snap. I found a spot with an Entreat to deplete all the cards, but he'd drawn another blue card for the turn so was able to keep Jace. I had a Brainstorm to dig for a blast but didn't find it, Jace quickly does what he does best.

G3: Both games had gone pretty long, so we're low on time and play fast from the beginning. I have a T2 Search for Azcanta which he's forced to aggressively find a blast for, which doesn't happen. It flipped turn 4 letting me play a Jace with Fluster/Blast backup. After a Brainstorm, J gets blasted. He plays a Jace of his own which also gets blasted after an activation. We carry on trading resources until time is called. We're both almost empty handed, with the flipped Search looking like it'd take over the game, but it's too hard to say for sure. We discuss one of us conceding, but end up thinking a draw here and both of us winning out might be good for T8.

Round 6 vs Moon stompy 2-0

I won't split up the games here as they weren't too interesting. I had answers for everything and made Angels quickly, the match was over in about 10 minutes.

-2 Terminus
-1 Portent
-1 Flusterstorm

+2 Disenchant
+2 Monastery Mentor

Round 7 vs BG Depths 2-0

My memory starts to get a bit hazy here.

G1: I'm able to float a Swords on top of my deck with cantrips until all their discard spells are depleted, Marit goes farming and I'm able to play Jace on a board of an Urborg.

-1 Terminus
-1 Entreat the Angels
-1 Search for Azcanta
-1 Counterspell
-1 Force of Will
-1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
-1 Predict

+2 Blood Moon
+1 Flusterstorm
+2 Surgical Extraction
+2 Disenchant

G2: Again I use cantrips to float useful cards until turn 6 where my opponent has a board of a Dark Confidant and the combo, I brainstorm into a Blood Moon with a second Brainstorm and a Terminus in hand. They are forced to make Lage in resp, letting me upkeep the terminus. Jace then fateseals any Abrupt Decays away.

Round 8 vs Grixis Delver 2-1

I knew even with a win this'd be a sweat.

G1: I don't know what my opponent is on, so keep a fine hand of cantrips and lands. They lead with a DRS on the play, followed by a Delver, Young Pyromancer and a TNN. EE takes care of the Delver and DRS, the Pyro goes farming but I can't find an answer for the TNN. I get wasted twice this game as I'm left at 1 and 1 mana short of Portenting a Terminus on the last turn.

+2 Monastery Mentor
+1 Pyroclasm
+2 Pyroblast
+1 Flusterstorm
+2 Blood Moon

-3 Counterspell
-2 Entreat the Angels
-1 Search for Azcanta
-1 Jace, the Mind sculptor
-1 Predict

G2: I have a double stp and snapcaster hand and am able to remove everything they play, brainstorm plays around some therapies and a Mentor hits the table. It gets bolted fairly quickly, but snaps and tokens finish up.

G3: I have a fairly nice hand with a swords, some cantrips and fetches for basics. They lead with a Delver, and when I crack a Strand for an Island exclaim 'oh, you don't have the swords this time'. This tells me they don't have a Daze in hand which was quite crucial for how the game played out. With a Portent I find a basic plains, Flusterstorm and Pyroclasm, perfect. Delver doesn't flip and they play fetch go. I draw the fluster and play Plains pass, they Brainstorm end of turn. In response I cast the Swords and get rewarded, they crack the fetch to Pierce the Swords and Fluster eats both the Pierce and Brainstorm. They apparently had a land heavy hand, Mentor soon hits the table, a bolt gets forced and they concede.

End result 6-1-1

Thoughts on a few choices

Search for Azcanta - the jury is still out on this as I rarely drew it. I still think it has a lot of potential, needs to be played more.

EE maindeck over a 4th Terminus - I think the 4th Terminus is better. EE didn't really perform much this day.

2 Volcs - This was a mistake, a third Volc over a blue fetch is likely better.

Pyroclasm - I think this card is phenomenal at the moment, would even like access to a second somehow.

C Priest - This was a bit of a meta call, I'd seen a lot more SnS at the last MKM than I expected. Also Europe has some very strong Elves players, I generally don't like it in our sb though.

[twndomn]

EE maindeck over a 4th Terminus - I think the 4th Terminus is better. EE didn't really perform much this day.


This is also my conclusion but for different reason. EE can't deal with Gurmag, while StP is often spent on DRS. EE can't deal with Nissa from Elves, or opposing Jace. Ever since Hans won EW with Jace SB, this strategy appears to be gaining popularity. I don't think EE and 4th Terminus are interchangeable. The configuration is often 1 EE + 1 CJ. Currently 2 CJ might be better off in this meta, as in -1 EE +1 CJ.

[Hrothgar]

Very good result.
Imho is a mistake do not sideboard-in Moon vs 4c because of his intense non basic mana base.
EE imho is in maindeck ALSO as mass removal, but his power is destroy Chalice.
I don't think that Terminus and EE have the same use.

[Whitefaces]

This is also my conclusion but for different reason. EE can't deal with Gurmag, while StP is often spent on DRS. EE can't deal with Nissa from Elves, or opposing Jace. Ever since Hans won EW with Jace SB, this strategy appears to be gaining popularity. I don't think EE and 4th Terminus are interchangeable. The configuration is often 1 EE + 1 CJ. Currently 2 CJ might be better off in this meta, as in -1 EE +1 CJ.


Very good result.
Imho is a mistake do not sideboard-in Moon vs 4c because of his intense non basic mana base.
EE imho is in maindeck ALSO as mass removal, but his power is destroy Chalice.
I don't think that Terminus and EE have the same use.

Yes you're both right, I should have expanded a bit more on the EE vs Terminus thing. They're not totally analogous. The Pyroclasm in the sideboarded also comes into the equation as another sweeper to have five, where before I had four Terminus in the main and an EE in the sideboard. I went for this configuration to have two maindeck answers for Chalice, but after thinking about it some more, Search is also a very good proactive card to find what we need to combat it game one too.

Council's Judgment was really solid for me on Sunday, in my head two feels super clunky, but it's not unreasonable.

And I agree with you Hrothgar about Moon. Despite him holding up Decay for it, it's still a correct card to sideboard in, a mistake for sure.

[twndomn]

So recently I saw https://www.mtggoldfish.com/articles/this-week-in-legacy-mkm-barcelona MKM Barcelona result, which has Rip-Helm Miracles.

Most people in the community would believe that Rip-Helm is a less competitive version. However, given the current meta game, is it?

I'm personally not a fan of RiP + EF. Even if you hide behind that mini-combo with that Moat in that list, you could still just die to a Flickerwisp. The combo itself is rather clunky. Most people dislike E-Tutor, and E-Tutor in RiP-Helm build makes sense, is it possible to apply it to other builds?

Land
1x Arid Mesa
4x Flooded Strand
5x Island
1x Karakas
1x Mountain
2x Plains
3x Scalding Tarn
2x Tundra
1x Volcanic Island

Enchantment
1x Blood Moon
1x Counterbalance
1x Leyline of Sanctity

Creature
3x Monastery Mentor
3x Snapcaster Mage

Instant
4x Brainstorm
1x Counterspell
2x Enlightened Tutor
2x Flusterstorm
4x Force of Will
1x Predict
1x Kozilek's Return
4x Swords to Plowshares

Sorcery
1x Council's Judgment
4x Ponder
3x Portent
2x Terminus

Artifact
1x Engineered Explosives

Planeswalker
1x Jace, the Mind Sculptor

I know Jace, CS, Council, CB, and Karakas appear to be greedy due to the UU and the WW. However, every time I took out Karakas, I got run over by opponent's Leovold/Thalia. Leyline of Sanctity is surprisingly good if your LGS has a lot of Turbo Depths and Storm.

See how many times you surprise your opponent by EoT E-Tutor up Blood Moon/White Leyline and then cast an enchantment on your turn with Flusterstorm back up.

[Pdingo]

Hei guys

I played my lovely Miracle again in a Tournament. 1k Legacy Lucerne @Gameplace.

I did top 8 with but i lost the quarter:(

anyway 6 Rounds Undeafetet.

2:0 Dark Dephts Reanimator
1:1 Jund (Without Pif but more Bolts and Discard) I would probably win it if there would be no time, Had a Jace on 5 but can't do the Ultimate at this Point.
2:0 Lands
2:0 Czech Pile
2:0 Foodchain
ID

Top 8:

1:2 Aluren https://go.twitch.tv/videos/200658573 at 5:30 i think.

It was a really strange version and i did not know that he played aluren until he won g1 with double aluren into win. I would play completly different! i was a little confused in the end haha..
G2 I have to much cards.. I mean basically every removal is pretty strong.
G3 Was a fight. In the end he was on 4 Life and i had a snap on the field and 2 mana open for a second snapi and i go for the win route and he had a random decay in hand. I never saw one so i have to do it.
Anyway after a few turns he found more business than me with the library and i drow 3 Lands in a row in the end that cost me the game:(

My List:

// UWR Portent Miracle 2

// 60 Hauptdeck
// 7 Creature
4 Snapcaster Mage
3 Monastery Mentor

// 19 Instant
4 Force of Will
3 Predict
4 Brainstorm
2 Counterspell
4 Swords to Plowshares
2 Flusterstorm

// 20 Land
3 Volcanic Island
3 Tundra
3 Island
2 Plains
4 Flooded Strand
3 Polluted Delta
1 Arid Mesa
1 Misty Rainforest

// 3 Planeswalker
3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor

// 11 Sorcery
4 Ponder
3 Terminus
3 Portent
1 Council's Judgment


// 15 Sideboard
// 2 Artifact
SB: 1 Relic of Progenitus
SB: 1 Engineered Explosives

// 2 Creature
SB: 1 Containment Priest
SB: 1 Vendilion Clique

// 10 Instant
SB: 2 Wear // Tear
SB: 1 Flusterstorm
SB: 3 Pyroblast
SB: 3 Surgical Extraction
SB: 1 Kozilek's Return

// 1 Sorcery
SB: 1 Pyroclasm

The List is really Strong! But i have to say i never played a Deck that is harder to play than this. You really have to know other Decks and how they work. One wrong small decision can cost you the Game.
Anyway Great Tournament and my Teammate won with my Bug-List so i'm happy for him:)

Greets Pascal

[Kobal]

Search for Azcanta - the jury is still out on this as I rarely drew it. I still think it has a lot of potential, needs to be played more.

My first thought when someone mentioned trying this card in Legacy was that in a format that has Abrupt Decay and more importantly Wasteland this seems like a bad choice, especially in a deck with no other worthwhile Abrupt Decay targets and lots of basic lands.

What was I missing? :eyebrow:

[Pdingo]

My first thought when someone mentioned trying this card in Legacy was that in a format that has Abrupt Decay and more importantly Wasteland this seems like a bad choice, especially in a deck with no other worthwhile Abrupt Decay targets and lots of basic lands.

What was I missing? :eyebrow:

I thought the same at first. I tested it a Little bit (of course i Need more testing). I Cutted 1 snapi and 3 Mentor and put the Mentors in sided. I added 2 EOT und 2 Search.
EOT as a random one off feels really bad without a top engine. This Enchantment/Land generate you some specific advange.

+ Better topdeck controll..+predict Combos)
+ If it's flipped you can choose a Card of the top 4 and put 1 in Hand. (probaly the best of the 4 and put the other bad Cards bottom to draw maybe a new good Card in the drawstep)
+Tempowin with the mana. T4 Flip with a land in Hand are t4 jace with flusterstorm backup in somesituation.
+Tempo lose for the oppenent when he have a wasteland(for example we have t4 the flip and already 4 lands in Play, now if he not already used the wasteland he uses his wasteland for the free land and we can still search a Card:)
+Better entreat enabler even if you put it in the Hand then you need just a Combo Piece for put it back on top.
+you can choose to flip. If he has wasteland in some Situation you can just not flip it

-Maybe bad topdeck in some Situation. It can also be a good topdeck.
-Decay or REB are probably the worst Situation for it. But i mean Mentor eats decay also and snapi eats REB. i think it is Fair.


That are my thoughts about it.

Greets Pascal

[korstructure]

Two lists from Miracles heavy hitters and a couple of talking points:

Anuraag Das' most recent list from SCG Team Event this weekend - https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/833493#paper

Search for Azcanta - Anuraag is playing three copies of the card! This is also a big departure from his Eternal Weekend list, which featured none.

Entreat the Angels - He chose to play two copies, which brings us to...

Daniel Miller's most recent list, from the Classic at this SCG Event (2nd place) - https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/833560#paper

Entreat the Angels - two copies here

Counterbalance and Back to Basics - two copies MD of each; this keeps with what Daniel has been playing for a month now.

Would love to have some discussion on these card choices, especially Search for Azcanta!