Miracle Control

[C Rayz Walz]

Hanni- I agree with you about mental Misstep and honestly, the more I play with that card if it is not in your opening hand I don't find it to be as strong. I this deck already runs a bunch tone of removal and I can't see cutting it just like Hanni said. Decks like merfolk and tempo base decks benefit from this a lot more than this deck deck.

.nemesis- I personally don't like your mana base and while firespout is good I would rather just run moat vs the decks that you would want firespout vs. Beast with in just seems not as good in this deck as vindicate and I do love that new card. I feel if you want a versatile card I would rather have vindicate.

[HokusSchmokus]

Hanni- I agree with you about mental Misstep and honestly, the more I play with that card if it is not in your opening hand I don't find it to be as strong. I this deck already runs a bunch tone of removal and I can't see cutting it just like Hanni said. Decks like merfolk and tempo base decks benefit from this a lot more than this deck deck.

.nemesis- I personally don't like your mana base and while firespout is good I would rather just run moat vs the decks that you would want firespout vs. Beast with in just seems not as good in this deck as vindicate and I do love that new card. I feel if you want a versatile card I would rather have vindicate.

Why? Beast within is INSTANT vindicate, with a minor flaw that can still be used as a win condidtion/chump blockers if your opponent does not have the right targets.

[GGoober]

It is hilarious to Beast Within and then Shackles the token and win with it, just pointing it out :P

[.nemesis]

It is hilarious to Beast Within and then Shackles the token and win with it, just pointing it out :P

That's why I considered it in the first place. It also gets hit by Firespout while we're at it.

Plus, if you have a redundant SDT, you can tap it EOT to draw a card, then Beast Within it to generate a Hill Giant for 3 mana without any loss of card advantage.

The point is, Instant speed is so huge, it should be worth the drawback of giving your opponent a free dude almost every time.

[melie]

Love the deck but I'm really unimpressed with Predict. It's to cluncky imho. It's not only slow but it messes up the top of your deck which is very awkward if you have counter-top in play. Also, I don't find it that important to have actual cards in hand with Top in play. I'm only playing 2 atm but I find them to be the 2 worst cards in my deck by far.
The problem is that you just can't cut them because you'll end up with to few 2cc cards. In my UWb version I played Lim-Dûl's Vault (one of the most underrated cards in Legacy?) which I liked a lot better because it also serves as kind of a counterspell with Counterbalance in play. Now I don't think that splashing black is worth it (+ Vindicate) so I went searching for alternatives but couldn't find any good 2cc cards that this deck could use. Again this can be solved by splashing black for 2cc removel (GftT or Edict come to mind) but I like the 2 colour version of this deck to much. I also tried Impulse but I don't think we need an effect like that.

Now I came up with the idea of playing Enlightened tutor. Yes, it's not a 2cc card for Counterbalance but it can fetch one so it also counts like a counter (just like Lim-Dûl's Vault). And because we also have 1 and 3 cc artifacts it plays perfectly with Counterbalance in play. This way you also get a lot of maindeck and sideboard utility card options. I'm playing 2 atm and I think it's a big improvement over Predict. Also, the most powerfull cards in our deck are all artifacts / enchantments, except for the Walkers.

I know a lot of people don't like Enlightened Tutor for it's card advantage but I'd rather have a card that can fetch all the awesome enchantments/artifacts in our deck and also acts as a counter with Counterbalance than having a Predict, which you can only play with certain cards in play or in hand and that also messes up the top of your library.


EDIT:: Because of the obvious synergy with Tutor I'm also testing Thopter/Sword combo in the deck atm instead of Elspeth. It still has all the cards the deck normally has only -3 predict + 2 ETutor -2 Elspeth + 1 Sword of the Meek + 2 Thopter Foundry. I'm pretty impressed with the results so far but I don't know if it still should be posted in this forum topic (it only has 5 cards total different maindeck though).. Also I don't think there is a clear winner. Each win condition has it's own pro's and con's.

[Wiseman4]

What don't you like about running the three colors? I would think that the option of siding Dark Confidant should be more than enough, along with Lim Dul and Vindicate, to add the third color

[melie]

What don't you like about running the three colors? I would think that the option of siding Dark Confidant should be more than enough, along with Lim Dul and Vindicate, to add the third color

I didn't say I don't like the build. It's just that I play in a metagame full of Wasteland in which the 2 colour manabase is just awesome. Also the only black cards I really mis are Lim-Dûl's Vault and Duress out of the board. I find Oblivion Ring almost exactly the same as Vindicate in actual play. So for me it's just a question between a very resilient manabase and playing Lim-Dûls Vault. Thanks to my burning hatred against Wasteland, my choice is quite obvious :)

[routlaw]

I almost wish the deck's name was Countertop MakeYourLandDrops, because that's the huge difference in this deck vs. other Counterbalance builds I've played (and I've played all the modern ones, ranging from Martell-style 4c to Thopters) . Accumulating lands while exerting enough board control to not die is literally the deck's first early and mid game. This deck plays seven expensive bombs (Shackles, Jace, Elspeth), and the importance in resolving these cards without stumbling over your land drops can't be overstated in a majority of matchups.

Keep in mind that splashing in this deck necessitates running more blue dual lands, since you need every Island card on the board that you can get for Shackles. So when you splash for a color/card, you are doing so directly at the expense of your mana base stability. Throwing in a basic swamp in this deck when splashing or black, for example, is not workable in this deck like it is for the red in Supreme Blue. I'm not saying you can't splash a color, but there's a cost in doing so. Splashing two additional colors while playing this deck's finisher set seems near impossible unless you have found a magical fairy Legacy metagame where people don't play Wastelands as a four-of in their aggro decks.

Beast Within-this card is a quality card, but it is conditional. Oblivion Ring or Vindicate aren't conditional, they just make a large range of problems go away. If you have Shackles online and grabbing dudes you've usually won the game, even if the opponent doesn't yet know it. It also means splashing green which is so much worse than the other two options (red/black). I'd rather have the other colors and their more robust sideboard options than green here. This card could have some implications for other CB builds (such as Bant decks with Goyf/Knight/Monk, or Supreme Blue builds with MD Firespout), but it really wants to paired with your own (better than a 3/3) creatures to mitigate the conditionality of the card.

Dark Confidant - Potentially worth looking into a a sideboard gotcha when the opponent boards out removal, or maindeck over Predict in a build with Misstep as a four-of since that card is so good at protecting Bob.

I think once you start discussing decisions like maindeck Enlightened Tutor or Lim-Dul's Vault, awesome as they may be ( and they are very good cards ), you're starting to veer the deck away from it's basic premise of cheap one-for-one answers followed up by expensive card-advantage bombs, and pushing it more towards sacrificing cards for speed in assembling game-breaking combos or lock pieces. Both are very legit ways to build a modern Legacy control deck, but I don't know if those cards are in keeping with the design ideals of this deck. I've considered playing a Enlightened Tutor sideboard here since boarding in cards that win games upon resolution in certain matchups is really what you need to do with a sideboard plan, but the hatebear plan is so synergistic with the rest of the deck that I can't quite justify it. Peacekeeper in particular is just insane in decks that can win with Jace, The Mind Sculptor.

[Hanni]

@ Predict

I don't find Predict to be clunky at all. It's not a spell that needs to be cast early. Unless you had to mulligan hard, you don't need the card advantage early, and you have other spells to be casting. Getting a draw 2 out of Predict is extremely easy by the time I actually need to refuel my hand.

Screwing with the top of the library with Counterbalance in play is fine. Think of it as a shuffle effect (like a fetchland). Sometimes, you actually want to Predict to see a fresh top 3 so that you can counter whatever spell the opponent plays with Counterbalance (digging for the cc required). Or sometimes you just wanna dig to find the answer that you need. Othertimes, you have a Brainstorm in hand and cast Predict, and can use Brainstorm later to put back whatever cc you need to have back on top of the library.

I think Predict is a perfect fit for what this deck wants out of it, unless they print another 2cc blue draw spell that is better (and I'm not holding my breath for that). If you're not satisfied with Predict, I really don't know what to suggest. Nothing else in that spot really fills the function that it's intending to do, which is to be blue for FoW, 2cc for Counterbalance, and add some additional card advantage and card quality. For me personally, I will not be dropping Predict anytime soon.

@ Beast Within

I can see the pros and cons for this card, but I'm content sticking to my U/W version for now. If the demand is high enough, I can add Beast Within to the list of playable spells for the green splash in the Primer.

[Wiseman4]

I would say splash black for vindicate before beast within, that way things like Lim Dul's Vault and the sided Confidant can happen. Also, black allows for perish, plague, and extripate in the sideboard.

[HokusSchmokus]

I don't find green to be a bad splash color at all.
Instant Vindicate, Krosan Grip, Submerge, Firespout, are all good cards imho.
Krosan Grip was the one thing I always missed.

[routlaw]

Piloted this to a 4-1 finish in a 20-man tournament yesterday, getting 4th on the 4-1 breakers (same record as the winner). Split matches were Merfolk, beat Affinity twice, and beat GW Maverick+NO. My main deviation was a black splash (two Seas, one less Tundra and island) for some Perish and Plague expecting tons of green dudes/Progenitus and Merfolk, and I only own one Peacekeeper (something that I am fixing ASAP) and couldn't borrow any at the event. I ran a 1/1 split Moat/Humility and cut a Pithing Needle. Maindeck was otherwise unchanged.

Oddly enough the black SB card I really wish I had was Darkblast. For all the worries of big green dudes, there sure are a lot of 1 toughness and 2 toughness creatures running around in the format, and Darkblast has some sick synergy with Top.

Quick MU notes:

Played Merfolk twice as mentioned. Won the first match 2-0, lost the second match 2-1 after winning G1, then seeing 2 lands (both in my opener w/ Top) in about 17 cards in G2, and then mull to 6 and die to silvergills into mutavault/ lord spam nut draw w/ double misstep.

Plague was somewhat win-more here, it was a lockout piece but you needed two in play and that took so long that you were likely winning w/ Shackles anyway. Peacekeeper would have done the same thing on resolution. Not having more Needles hurt, you actually really do want three to stop Vial, Mutavaults, and then Coralhelm.

Misstep was a huge PITA to play against. All our one-drop spells are insanely powerful and provide the early interaction this deck needs against Merfolk to just not get run over. Playing around Daze isn't hard, playing around Cursecatcher isn't hard, but you can't really play around Misstep. There's redundancy in the one-drop slot in this deck , but early on you are riding the ability to play cheap interaction/filter until you get your bombs online, and having one of them stopped is rough and having two of them hit is probably going to make you stumble enough to where Merfolk can get that "two creatures and a mutavault, swing for 8" turn that usually means you've lost.

Affinity really suffers from having no way to stop your own cheap interactions, and then suffering badly due to having poor overall card quality of the deck in the late game. Your SB is insane against them. They have a very hard time beating an Elspeth. Tezzeret is really their out in the matchup, as long as you leave in the o-rings and bring in the needles (for plating/blinkmoth/inkmoth, and Tezzeret) they just have a hard time getting anything going.

The GW list took me three games to win-the player had a full set of Pridemages, Zeniths, and I think maindecked Beast Within and boarded in Grips. That's a lot of hate. I was able to CB lock game 1, which was the only game in the entire day that I got mileage out of Counterbalance. That's just unfortunate pairings though.

Thoughts:

I'll be running the exact 75 with a split of Moat / Humility next time. No splash though, once you hit six non-basics you really start to lose your edge against Wasteland, and you might as well be running a wilder manabase that just plays just enough basics to not lose to moon effects or Price of Progress like the Supreme Blue lists do and just fight through the Wastelands.

Mental Misstep in Merfolk makes the deck much harder to play against. I'm not sure what the right response to it is, or even if it is a real problem. But getting plows and paths on lords and mutavaults countered when carefully playing around Daze and Cursecatcher is just huge. They can't win without those creatures-I have the tools to stabilize.

Peacekeeper is still bananas though and I think it's the best way to stabilize the matchup. I'm a believer in the recommnended full playset, it's just better than slower options like Llawan or Plague.


The "bombs" the deck runs are truly sick and shouldn't be messed with. You want to see multiple shackles in a long game w/ a creature deck so the three count is right. The Planeswalker count is also just right. I don't know why people are so against the Predicts-the marginal card advantage from it is deceptively strong (much like the card draw from Silvergill Adept) and puts you in a mode where you "always" have the counter or removal for their plays.

The list felt well-tuned (aside from my changes) and I really enjoyed it. I never went to time in any of my matches, but I am used to playing w/ Top and didn't dawdle, always planning for my own turn during my opponent's turn-I think this is key for avoiding draws. Honestly, once you get past the early turns the deck just goes into "prison" mode for most decks and you just have EOT Top, Jace fateseal or Elspeth token beats, pass turn going on most of the time.

[YoullBeDead]

What are your thoughts on using "Long-Term Plans" as a tutor rather than Enlightened?

The Top makes it a stealth tutor for anything, whether to setup the "Counter"-balance with exactly what is needed or to top/draw any card in your deck directly into your hand as an instant. Plus its a three for counterbalance itself.

[routlaw]

It's still a variant of a card disadvantage tutor, which (at least mainboard, an e-tutor based sideboard would be interesting though I am not sure if it is necessary ) is something that this deck is trying to avoid. Unlike decks like CounterTop Thopter or the Gearheart turbo-tutor lists with the new Tezzeret, this deck has a strong focus on having versatile one-for-ones and then playing the deck's seven "trumps" and Predict to generate card advantage.

Tutors are there to provide consistent access to powerful virtual card advantage tools in a control deck. Enlightened Tutor, which has resiliency to discard effects and can access a number of powerful cards of that type in this deck, would be the choice if running a topdeck tutor effect. The issue there is that if you are running multiple copies of E-Tutor maindeck, then you might as well play Thopter/Sword combo, which in turn brings you to playing a much different deck.

(Would love to see a alternative e-tutor sideboard for this deck. I advocate them pretty hard in non-blue decks with white because of the ability to reliably deploy hate fast against decks where they need it, and wouldn't mind trying an alternative strategy to the "man plan" of Peacekeeper and Meddling Mages. Though I'm not sure I would ever want to play a U/W/* Jace deck without Peacekeeper in the board ever again. That card is insane.)

[YoullBeDead]

For the cash strapped, what do you think of ensnaring bridge as an alternative to Moat?

[eluvial]

Ensaring Bridge seems pretty bad when our goal is to maximize card advantage. Humility, Wrath of God, Shackles are all better.

[melie]

My current list:

MAIN
4 Flooded Strand
3 Polluted Delta
1 Marsh Flats
4 Tundra
7 Island
2 Plains
1 Kor Haven
4 Sensei's Divining Top
2 Vedalken Shackles
4 Brainstorm
4 Counterspell
4 Force of Will
4 Counterbalance
2 Predict
2 Jace, the Mindsculptor
4 Swords to Plowshare
2 Elspeth, Knight Errant
2 Path to Exile
2 Oblivion Ring
1 Enlightened Tutor
1 Humility

SB
4 Meddling Mage
4 Peace Keeper
2 Pithing Needle
2 Relic of Progenitus
2 Aura of Silence
1 Engineered Explosives

As you can see, there's only a 2 card difference; -1 Shackles, -1 Predict, +1 Enlightened Tutor, +1 Humility.
I actually like the change a lot. I've allready explained in detail why I like ETutor in this list in a previous post but to sum it up again;
- Acts as a hard counter for 1, 2, 3 cc cost spells with CounterBalance in play
- Searches all you game breaking artifacts / enchantments
- Gives you a virtual extra copy of each SB artifact or enchantment
- Let's me shave another Predict (still think this is the worst card in the deck)
- With only 1 I don't think your deck gets significantly slower so I find the card disadvantage doesn't outwheigh the pure card selection. + It's alsmost like a Demonic Tutor with top in play.
I also included Humility 1x main. Humility is always best in g1 before sideboarding and can single handedly win you a game so I like my 1 copy main (2 virtual with the ETutor).

SB is also a little different because of the '1 extra copy' you get form each enchantment or artifact card with ETutor in the main.

Thoughts?

[Dalapin]

With the release of NPH, what are the changes to this deck going to be?

[YoullBeDead]

Just a mention, I was fiddling with this with a Black tint to it and tried out Merieke Ri Berit just as a lark. Turns out to be a friggin riot, with Jace to bounce her, its gimme-smack you-bounce her-gimme another. She's easy to kill but by the time they've been attrited of critter answers shes ready to dance. It was worth it if just for the comic relief.

I really like the deck Hanni, suprisingly resilient.

[Hanni]

As you can see, there's only a 2 card difference; -1 Shackles, -1 Predict, +1 Enlightened Tutor, +1 Humility.
I actually like the change a lot. I've allready explained in detail why I like ETutor in this list in a previous post but to sum it up again;
- Acts as a hard counter for 1, 2, 3 cc cost spells with CounterBalance in play
- Searches all you game breaking artifacts / enchantments
- Gives you a virtual extra copy of each SB artifact or enchantment
- Let's me shave another Predict (still think this is the worst card in the deck)
- With only 1 I don't think your deck gets significantly slower so I find the card disadvantage doesn't outwheigh the pure card selection. + It's alsmost like a Demonic Tutor with top in play.
I also included Humility 1x main. Humility is always best in g1 before sideboarding and can single handedly win you a game so I like my 1 copy main (2 virtual with the ETutor).

SB is also a little different because of the '1 extra copy' you get form each enchantment or artifact card with ETutor in the main.

Thoughts?

Looks pretty good. I may try that list out when I get the chance to.

With the release of NPH, what are the changes to this deck going to be?

No changes. Mental Misstep is a really strong card for other control decks like Landstill, but it isn't a counter that this deck really needs. Opposing Mental Misstep's can be a pain (especially in multiples), but there's no remedy for that. The sideboard addresses those sort of matchups anyway (like Peacekeeper vs Merfolk).