I have never had a problem with Miracles, sure it's a tough matchup but it's one I usually win too. Maybe it's because the local players aren't very good (I'm not really sure) or maybe it's their build (usually a Venser/Mentor/Jace win condition build). One thing I notice is that you're only running 2 tops, run (and resolve) more. Top really takes the wind out of Jace's sails. They can only effectively 0 and minus with him on the board and that's much easier to get through because he'll either minus to death after a couple turns (just costing you some mana, or best case rebuying your ETB triggers) or his 0 enables a Terminus, all the while you've used your top to defend multiple good threats. If they minus, stick to just one threat on the board to make them keep minusing, it actively makes their Terminus bad.Originally Posted by Arianrhod
Also, as was mentioned in the previous post by I think sdematt, a wide variety of cards is good. Just attack them from lots of different angles with low numbers of a lot of different cards. It's unpredictable for them and all accomplishes roughly the same thing.
Which Delver list are you referring to? I mainly play against Grixis, UR, and BUG, very little against RUG but I've found the trick in them all is the same, you just want to get a lot of card advantage. Accumulating resources is key, we can usually be the beat down deck in the match which means forcing the opponent into a control role. Make them focus on answers while generating more resources and you'll eventually get something they can't answer. Also, strongly prioritize fetching basics in the early turns so the only thing that's going to slow your development is a Wasteland on Arbor or a Stifle on a fetch.
@Baneslayers: You're welcome :)
To be fair, you had 2 in the list and 2 Baneslayer in the SB. Just run Baneslayers at that point. I think Angel-Fit works at Mythic. Half the players fully know we're running them but they still get there.
@Dromoka: Bitch is ugly af but my god blue has NO IDEA what to do with it.
@Sakura: I betrayed him and the deck sucked. He really is amazing in the deck. I wish others played him.
Hard removal pkg for Mythic should be something close to
3 Deed
3 Decay
2 Path
1 Toxic
1 Vind
/10
My experience with Abeyance is real. The card shuts down Miracle based cards and keeps a Jace or top from activating that turn. Also, 1 Vexing Shusher in the board? It dies to StP, but when it forces through a key GSZ, Rhino, or PW, it's back breaking.
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Edit:
I've been having success with this list against Lands and Miracles: 4 Tops is not too many. Whenever you have more than you need, just draw something then flush it away, or, tap to draw, hold priority, then blow it up with Deed. Tireless Tracker is really good. It's either card advantage or a decoy. He also comes back pretty well with Meren. I know most don't but main deck Qasali. He almost always has a relevant target, and he pumps your EXPERIENCE! plus exalted can shorten the game by a turn or two.
Cheers guys, great stuff from everybody over the past week!
1 Courser of Kruphix
1 Deathrite Shaman
1 Eternal Witness
1 Meren of Clan Nel Toth
1 Qasali Pridemage
1 Scavenging Ooze
1 Sigarda, Host of Herons
1 Tireless Tracker
4 Siege Rhino
4 Veteran Explorer
4 Sensei's Divining Top
2 Pernicious Deed
3 Abrupt Decay
4 Path to Exile
1 Vindicate
4 Green Sun's Zenith
4 Cabal Therapy
1 Sorin, Grim Nemesis
2 Bayou
2 Savannah
1 Scrubland
3 Forest
2 Plains
2 Swamp
2 Phyrexian Tower
1 Karakas
4 Verdant Catacombs
3 Windswept Heath
2 Deathrite Shaman
2 Ethersworn Canonist
1 Gaddock Teeg
1 Glissa, the Traitor
2 Abeyance
1 Golgari Charm
3 Surgical Extraction
3 Thoughtseize
Last edited by TTX; 04-25-2016 at 10:02 PM.
So I went 4-1 on a league tonight, jammed 2 Abeyance in my side. It seemed quite amazing each time I drew it against 2 storm, 1 miracles matches. One point miracles had a Jace out and I used it to cantrip and shut off Jace for a turn. Against storm, I drew into my single Trinisphere from the side, played my 2nd land, and then Abeyance'd on their turn to ensure the sphere wouldn't get discarded out of my hand.
My only loss was to Jeff Hoogland on Big Red, I didn't think to include the Abeyances until siding for game 3 - figure he could go to play a Seething Song or something and I could fire it off in response. I don't expect to win that type of match anyhow.
Other news, Tireless Tracker continues to perform. Completely shut down a stoneblade player with Sigarda + my own equipment game 1, then Tracker in next game made 3 clues before dying for an effective 4-for-1 after I cashed them all in the next few turns, finding my Tsunami to shut him down.
I'll keep testing my own Abzan brew but those two cards have been great so far.
One can cry like a bitch when losing to Miracles or one can try to do something about it. The former will not change the outcome of the Miracles MU, the latter will most definetely not make it worse. Now humor me and explain why the former should call the latter disappointing? You disappoint me man, sticking your head in the sand and hoping for things to somehow magically change in your favor. How is that more useful than what we're trying to do? Look man, this is a labor of love, why do you think we're putting so much effort into it? Heck, look at it as you would at a relationship. Sometimes in a relationship you've got to work on the issues you and your significant other have. That's what we're doing, rather than take the easy route and run off to the corner whore.
Doesn't say a word for a week, opens his mouth the minute another screams disappointment. You sir, are a badass.
Apart from the obvious drawing lands from the top, the most value I usually get out of it is when it shows me that something I really need is on the top of my library when I'm about to crack a fetch/do whatever to mess that up. That has won me games.
Read, man. I was talking about Sigarda maybe not making the cut due to space restrictions that seemed to be there at the time. It's not that I didn't want to run Sigarda, but at that point there was a slim possibility I simply couldn't. There's a difference. Besides, to repeat matt - you cannot simply keep throwing Siege Rhinos and Sigardas at a deck that has 1 mana sweepers and expect the end result to change. Adapt or die, it's pure Darwinism.
@matt: Be that as it may, why shouldn't we look beyond Slaughter Games for something that does the same job but is maindeckable? It'd be nice to increase the odds of also taking game 1. I also really hate the idea of running a Taiga. May your poops give you joy.
@Navsi: Be a little creative. Ramp doesn't necessarily need to be a T1 thing. The last time I got to play physical Magic I ate a Siege Rhino with my Phyrexian Tower, dropped a second Phyrexian Tower and ate something else to drop 2 Siege Rhinos in 1 turn. I couldn't have done that without the Towers, which gave me the boost in mana I needed to do that.
@Brael: I'm not saying we should cut Siege Rhino/Sigarda, I'm saying we may not be able to fit them in. There's a difference. In light of the list I arrived at yesterday, it looks like we at least can fit in Sigarda.
@Arianrhod: Thank you for your support. You're also spot on about what we want for GSZ and the deck in general. WotC needs to print a BG creature that can kill other creatures when it ETB.
Why do you always have to take things personally? The work you guys are doing is great and the passion you are putting in your work is laudable, but I feel like you guys are going a bit crazy with some of your choices/math and +1ing Ricardios post was the quickest way to express my opinion, unfortunately I can't keep up with all the math you beautiful people are doing bar commenting each individual though process. That post of yours reminds me some posts from the storm or elves thread, keep it classy next time.
@thread: in the 2 matches I have been able to play since my last post abeyance has been decent enough for me to want to keep testing it more. My gut feeling is that without games I feel extremely fragile and defenseless against miracles, because sg is a permanent solution to the problem while abeyance it is not.
B/c the internet does not come equiped with intonation and as such some things come across as aimed at a person. Also, "Echelon, you disappoint me" and "Yeah, I agree" seem rather specific, especially if it's 2 consecutive posts posted 11 minutes apart after we've been at it for a number of days. But that's probably just me. Anyways, after that Newtons third law kicks in.
Besides, it's rather easy to not do a thing yourself, yet critique others on their effort and instead of putting effort into that just stick to "Meh, it's different from what we normally do so it must suck" or "Meh, numbers suck". It's hypocritical, it conveys a lack of understanding and it's rude. If that's really the only thing one can contribute, one might as well not contribute at all.
I 100% agree with rubblekill. This number thing is going nowhere. As an example:
Instead of theorycrafting, play a few games and you will see that Sigarda is an absolute key card and 100% uncuttable. I would say it is THE most uncuttable card in the deck. Cut literally anything else before Sigarda.
The part about the disappointment was not included in my "I agree", it was a personal thing between you two. I thought it was obvious. If you read my post it was not negative as you are portraying it now, sorry if you got offended. It truly is hard for me to convey my thinking in the least amount of words possible in English, maybe that makes it seem like I am an angry teenager? This is enough OT for today, you keep doing the math I will keep reading, believing in what I said yesterday, no need for some petty drama.
Did we come up with a finished list yet? Can you definitively say we've cut Sigarda? We haven't. You can't, so what the fuck are you bitching about? And do you honestly think none of us ever has had a Sigarda on the field or that we don't know how powerful Sigarda is? Seriously man. Why do I even bother..?
I have a hard time keeping up with everything at the moment too, so part of it probably is on me too. I'm sorry for lashing out. It's frustrating to see so much work being brushed aside with as little as "Meh".
Alright, back to business. I want to see this through to the end. Yesterday I left off at:
19-20 lands
2 Phyrexian Tower for 1 ramp slot
4 GSZ
4 Veteran Explorer
3 Deathrite Shaman
1 Dryad Arbor
1 Sakura-Tribe Elder
4 Cabal Therapy
3 Pernicious Deed
1 Sorin, Grim Nemesis
I really want to add Tireless Tracker, Eternal Witness and Courser of Kruphix, counting all as CA & finisher. So that's:
19-20 lands
2 Phyrexian Tower for 1 ramp slot
4 GSZ
4 Veteran Explorer
3 Deathrite Shaman
1 Dryad Arbor
1 Sakura-Tribe Elder
4 Cabal Therapy
3 Pernicious Deed
1 Sorin, Grim Nemesis
1 Tireless Tracker
1 Eternal Witness
1 Courser of Kruphix
Makes 24, with 16-17 slots worth in 15-16 available slots, divided in:
8 interaction/removal
5 CA/library manipulation
3-4 finisher
to go.
1 double duty slot to go. Every double duty slot we manage to go above that, frees up room for whatever we want.
Hey Guys,
It's been a while since I last posted here, but I followed the discussion over the last week and I am very interested in where this new approach leads us. As many here already mentioned, since we can't manipulate our draws as easily as blue decks do, I think it's even more important to have a good deck foundation. Being open to new things is important here, that doesn't mean any of you will have to cut things like Rhino or Sigarda, since it seems that at least 3 decktypes are crystallizing themselves. (and I'm saying this as a guy who thought of trying a BUG version and adding sigarda there, since you can shuffle her away with brainstorm. I am hopelessly in love with her)
Hats off to everyone who is contributing in this conversation! I'd like to contribute as well, since I have a little knowledge about statistics, but I have absolutely no idea how to use that knowledge in the context of mtg
Keep up the good work!
@helvetios: All you need to do to contribute is to try and form a list using the requirements model we put up, that is all. I can repost it if you want.
@other contributors: I know you disagree on the high requirements I set and try to uphold, but try to see this through to the end. After this the SE methodology really kicks in and we evaluate which requirements are too strict (or not strict enough) and adjust our lists accordingly. Lowering them well before the end just sets us up for failure. Concluding that they're too strict to be realisable however is a perfectly viable outcome of the end product, provided that we actually get there.
@Echelon: I need to head out now, but I'll come up with a list in the evening :)
@Echelon
The big worry that I have here is that both of us seem to be stretching your rules, just in opposite directions.
- I have been shaving the card number requirements down where possible to 10/15/15/15 or so. Personally I don't think that playing subpar cards simply because they fulfil multiple roles is worth it.
- You've been stretching your definitions to keep the numbers high instead. I get your reasoning, but I still don't agree that we can group Deed in with the filtering cards, Arbor/Tower with ramp, or Witness as a finisher.
IMO we have to be more precise with our category definitions:
- Ramp: cards which, when drawn in the top 8 cards of the deck, allow us access to 4+ mana by turn three.
- Interaction: cards which provide ways of removing the opponent's threats, whether from the hand or the battlefield.
- Finisher: cards which either present a <=5 turn clock (i.e reliably swing for 4+) or uninteractable damage (i.e. DRS, Sorin), or both.
- Library manipulation: cards which get cards from our deck or graveyard into our hand faster than our natural draw, or give us selection.
Yeah, we're both going in different directions. I'm wondering though - in the list that I've put up so far, what multipurpose cards seem subpar to you? So far I've put up nothing we normally don't run, have I?
Brael stated a while back (page 245, post #4897) that Eternal Witness/Courser (or even Dryad Arbor) could be viewed as a finisher just as well since we put a lot of effort in clearing the opposing board. I agree with that. A finisher should be anything that, when left unchecked, kills your opponent. And does so with >1 damage/turn. Some cards do that job more easily than others, but I have no problem with doing it via bugbites.
CA is anything that causes you to end up with more cards than your opponent (or lets you filter through more cards than you would normally see). As such, any card that typically is played out as X for Y < X should be counted as such as you aim to end up with +(X-Y) cards over your opponent.
One of the reasons I don't like treating Witness etc as a win condition is the comparison to Shardless. It's been mentioned at several points in the past in this thread that one of the reasons we have such a good matchup against Shardless is the deck's small number of true threats - Shardless Agent's 2 power beatdowns and Baleful Strix's 1/1 stats don't present a threatening enough clock to cause us trouble. It's the same the other way round- finishers which present 8+ turn clocks just aren't a problem for the majority of our opponents. We're giving them too much time to protect themselves, and it's also blanked by any creature in their own deck.
Card Advantage is a point I get you on. I understand the definition, but I don't agree that that's what the category should be. The definition I'm trying to make for those cards is library manipulation - we need a number of cards which smooth our draws, which get us removal when we need it and a finisher when we want to end the game. Deeds are great and should definitely be in the deck, but they don't help us to dig for whatever bit of our deck we are missing. Sometimes we need a Deed, yeah, but sometimes you're facing down a threat that demands Path, or you've just swept the board and need to jam that Sigarda. That's the category of cards I'm trying to define here. Sweepers are just a form of interaction. There just isn't a good word for it - "library manipulation" excludes Witness, draw excludes Top, filtering excludes Truths, etc.
We need to differentiate. Split CA from library manipulation/filtering. Most blue decks out there run 8 Ponder + Brainstorm, which we can probably agree on is pure library manipulation/filtering. To mimic that we'll need 8 of those too. Out of the 15/16 slots we defined as combined library manipulation/CA, that leaves us with 7/8 more pure CA slots to fill.
The same goes for the finisher category.
Updated slot distribution:
21-22 land
15/16 interaction/removal
8 library manipulation/filtering
7/8 CA
14 ramp (be a little liberal when it comes to these)
8 beaters (bugbites category)
7 gamechanging finishers (4 CMC+)
Where GSZ cannot count as beater + gamechanger. We'll just put it under the heaviest hitter category.
Does this make more sense?
I don't know if non-finisher beaters are something we necessarily need. Sure they're nice to have, the ability to turn a Witness sideways is nice, but it's not like they are actually needed to fulfil a specific role the deck wants. Not having access to any 2-power men doesn't actually negatively impact our plan in the same way that having no removal, or no true finishers does.
I think we're going to end up more on 6 CA / 8-10 card selection, by the way. The only real CA we commonly run is in sweepers and Truths (and now Tracker) - but we always have at least 8 selection cards at minimum (3 Top 4 GSZ 1 Witness).
I think we do need the smaller bodies. If our number of big bodies matches the number (or is smaller than that number) of removal spells our opponents have, we'll have a hard time coming out on top. We need those small bodies to soak up a bunch of removal so our real threats survive. The question is how many big bodies do we need and how much cannon fodder should we have? I mean, we get a lot of fodder regardless of whether we specify them or not.
I'm torn on viewing GSZ as full fledged card selection. It can't get you removal where you often do want it.
I also think Courser of Kruphix (due to the number of shuffle effects we run) should be viewed as a card selection card.
The advantage of our bigger bodies is that they are often resistant to those same removal spells. Obviously Swords and Force are relevant, but Bolt and Decay don't catch any of our big threats really, and playing more little guys is just giving them targets. We don't need to put the fodder in its own category because the number of creatures that fit it isn't relevant to our game plan.
If Witness is selection, Zenith -> Witness is selection too. I didn't include Courser in the ones I mentioned because it isn't a core card - it's a fringe option if you want to hedge harder against aggro strategies - especially now that Tracker already provides a more effective midrange beater/CA option.
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