[Article] How to kill Miracles - Part 2

[Hopo]

Which sadly has become the general motto of the format

This is what all other constructed formats are all about. It escapes me why legacy players stay still and let miracles do its thing without resistance.

[Crimhead]

Which sadly has become the general motto of the format

Or play a deck that is soft to Miracles but has enough other good matches to be competetive (like Storm or Delver).

Just don't play a tier two deck and complain about a tier one deck mopping the floor with you! If you're playing Elves or Maverick in a hostile meta, you're not really trying very hard.

[Ingo]

If the argument is "the roughly 4-6 sb slots you're dedicating to beating my deck isn't enough", doesn't that speak to the fact that your deck is too good?

I don't think we should put too much hope in sideboardcards, as it means your maindeck will remain soft to Miracles. We'll still loose game 1 and have to win 2 games, granted with hatecards, but Miracles will its own counterhate to level things out. If you want to consistently beat Miracles, we should be looking at the maindeck.
That's why I like things like maindeck Winterorb (tempo), Boseiju (lands), ... as they're maindeckable cards that that make preboard games vs Miracles better, but staying in line with the deck's core strategy. I'm sure there are likewise cards for other decks as well. Are there no possibilities through Green Sun's Zenith? Chalices + Cavern of Souls for creatureheavy decks?

[Quasim0ff]

You're right. It's his fault for wearing really sexy clothes.



The repeated attempts to rationalize why the rest of the metagame has lost to miracles for the last two! plus years actually make me laugh. If your argument is that people need to SB more for the vastly overperforming 18% of the metagame, doesn't that lead to the conclusion that miracles is a format-warping deck and needs correction? Have we ever gotten to a two plus year metagame where the problem was somehow (incredibly) that people just plain hadn't caught on and needed to sideboard more against the best deck in the format? Do miracles players really think that everyone else is that stupid?

If the argument is "the roughly 4-6 sb slots you're dedicating to beating my deck isn't enough", doesn't that speak to the fact that your deck is too good? That if every other deck is expected to devote more than half their sb to making this one matchup slightly better than 50/50, maybe you're actually the problem?

But that's basically how magic is. You can't expect to do well against a control deck, if you don't try to constraint it. Miracles is a strong deck, and devoting 4-5 slots is not enough. Just like if you want to, consistently, beat dredge, you gotta adapt.

[Lemnear]

But that's basically how magic is. You can't expect to do well against a control deck, if you don't try to constraint it. Miracles is a strong deck, and devoting 4-5 slots is not enough. Just like if you want to, consistently, beat dredge, you gotta adapt.

To a certain extend. Losing game 1 and devoting at least half your sideboard to that matchup in the delusional idea that you win 2/2 postboard games that way is a flawed plan we know from the 6 years of Vintage MUD reign

[Dice_Box]

But that's basically how magic is. You can't expect to do well against a control deck, if you don't try to constraint it. Miracles is a strong deck, and devoting 4-5 slots is not enough. Just like if you want to, consistently, beat dredge, you gotta adapt.

Thing is though, for all Dredges power it is shut down with little effort. There is no single card like Leyline for Miracles. The best you can hope for is something like Needle or Orb, things that don't lock them totally, in the case of Orb fuck you too and lastly, they can easily remove thanks to their manipulation.

I have 4 Grip, a Boseiju and 4 Tracker. I personally don't give two fucks about Miracles but then again, I don't sideboard if your playing Delver. I am one of the lucky ones. Not everyone can do that.

[ESG]

Chalices + Cavern of Souls for creatureheavy decks?

Most creature decks are already playing one or both of these, or are playing countermagic. Eldrazi runs both. Merfolk runs both. Aggro Loam runs Chalice. Goblins runs Cavern of Souls but is still going extinct. Death & Taxes and Elves play some number of Caverns now.

To those who say that people haven't adapted, this is untrue and oversimplified. You can skew a deck further to gain percentage points on Miracles -- such as playing Null Rod in your main deck -- but this is only a profitable strategy if you expect to play against the deck multiple times in a tournament. For at least a year now, I have exclusively played decks that I feel have decent matchups against Miracles. Being a brewer, I defintely would prefer to switch things up and play other decks, but so many decks are poorly positioned against either Miracles or the rest of the format that it doesn't make sense. Legacy is at a much higher power level now, and that makes for a much more narrow and constrained deck-building experience. As I said before, some players enjoy a wide-open metagame where lots of strategies are viable, and others prefer more narrow metagames.

@Hopo: Stop with this nonsense about other formats adapting. Standard has had plenty of periods of domination by one strategy, but the format rotates. Modern has seen a succession of bans. Even Vintage has had more B&R shifts than Legacy.

[Ingo]

Most creature decks are already playing one or both of these, or are playing countermagic. Eldrazi runs both. Merfolk runs both. Aggro Loam runs Chalice. Goblins runs Cavern of Souls but is still going extinct. Death & Taxes and Elves play some number of Caverns now.

I should have been more clear, because it's the chalice that really hits Miracles, not Cavern (breaking Chalices' symmetry, dodging Counterbalance is a bonus). The decks you've listed with maindeck chalices have a positive Miracles matchup (Eldrazi, Aggro Loam). No idea how the Merfolk/Miracles matchup plays out, but I can imagine that vial/chalice is favored versus Miracles.

So what would happen if you'd add maindeck chalices to Goblins, D&T and Elves? Goblins has a positive Miracles matchup, additional chalices would make the matchup even better but probably doesn't make the deck better versus the rest of the field. D&T would probably fare well with chalices, as suggested in a previous post. I have no experience with elves, but I often read that playing through a chalice1 isn't that hard? Perhaps a viable Elves deck with maindecked chalices is possible with Caverns, although it wouldn't be able to glimpse chain?

[dte]

So what would happen if you'd add maindeck chalices to Goblins, D&T and Elves? Goblins has a positive Miracles matchup, additional chalices would make the matchup even better but probably doesn't make the deck better versus the rest of the field. D&T would probably fare well with chalices, as suggested in a previous post. I have no experience with elves, but I often read that playing through a chalice1 isn't that hard? Perhaps a viable Elves deck with maindecked chalices is possible with Caverns, although it wouldn't be able to glimpse chain?

That is something I tried (elves with CotV). And the clear answer is no, it is not worth it.
Hell, most often I do not even SB it in against most delver decks or non-storm combo decks.
CotV is not that great against elves (certainly way poorer than most non-elves player imagine) because elves can play through it but mostly because elves have a lot of ways to remove a CotV (4 GSZ, 1 sage, 0-3 CoS MD, +3/4 AD SB), especially against deck that do not play countermagic (making the 4 GSZ and Sage way more effective).

Additionally, miracle has (again) a lot of answers to CotV: FoW, Council, CB lock, Wear-Tear, SDT (having already SDT let you play a lot and potentially lock with CB, find your terminuses, council, ...), ...

CotV is an ok card to have in elves SB (being very good vs storm and good vs miracle), but far from MD material. However running more CoS is doable.



In D&T I do not play the deck so cannot really answer but I believe it is something worth pondering about.

[Zombie]

The problem with adding more Caverns to Elves is the manabase, which is already hilariously awful for what's essentially a monocolour deck.

[Barook]

It escapes me why legacy players stay still and let miracles do its thing without resistance.

It's not like people aren't trying since over two years. The problem is that it just isn't effective.

The main problem is that you can tune your deck to get better vs Miracles - at the cost of being crap against the rest of the format, which simply isn't worth the opportunity cost. That's the crux. There are no Magical Christmasland cards that suddenly turn Miracles into a 90/10 match-up, simply because too many of their problematic cards are very hard/nigh-impossible to attack or your hate cards die to their hail of flexible removal.

As for D&T, the deck runs a number of crucial 1-drops themselves, so running MD Chalice isn't exactly the best plan. To add to that, you can't cast it before T2 anyway, which is sometimes too slow. As for Cavern in D&T, it does come at a cost - double white cards are getting less likely to be castable, same for StP, activating SFM becomes harder. Note that D&T already runs less than the optimal amount of white sources (15 isn't ideal) and only gets away with it most of the time due cheating with Aether Vial. Each Cavern replacing a white source makes the issue only worse. Imperial Taxes can afford more Caverns due to mana fixing requirements and the deck having alot of humans, at the cost of speed and higher chance of mana screw.

[Lemnear]

Chalice is mediocre given you can't stop the T1 SDT unless you run Sol-Lands and them being able to FoW it or remove it with W/T later. It shares the same issues with Winter Orb. One restricts mana, the other blocks Ponder/Brainstorm. Both fold to CounterTop @ 2, W/T, FoW, etc.

[Hopo]

It's not like people aren't trying since over two years. The problem is that it just isn't effective.

The main problem is that you can tune your deck to get better vs Miracles - at the cost of being crap against the rest of the format, which simply isn't worth the opportunity cost. That's the crux. There are no Magical Christmasland cards that suddenly turn Miracles into a 90/10 match-up, simply because too many of their problematic cards are very hard/nigh-impossible to attack or your hate cards die to their hail of flexible removal.

I don't talk about tuning random decks unplayable but playing more decks that don't auto-lose to it. Tezz, infect, eldrazis, shardless, goblins, 12-post etc. are all reasonable decks that are well positioned against miracles even if they might lack on other fronts. Or like has been mentioned, choose a deck that might struggle against miracles but crush most of the meta, like storm.

If metagame turns hostile for miracles, miracles will decline. I feel that this change is not possible by fine-tuning sideboards. Players need to start playing decks that beat miracles. As an example: If you play something like straight elves many years in a row and keep losing hard to miracles kicking you constantly out of top8's, you are out of your mind to not switch decks.

The issue with legacy might just be that people are so super invested in single decks and they might not be able to switch to another due to financial reasons. That, of course, sucks.

[dte]

If you play something like straight elves many years in a row and keep losing hard to miracles kicking you constantly out of top8's, you are out of your mind to not switch decks.

I would say that if after years playing elves you keep losing hard to miracles the solution is not to play another deck, but to try to have a better understanding of the MU.
I would really strongly advise the elves player to try playtesting with miracle against elves, if not already done.

Playing another deck may be a solution if it is for a deck that you understand better, but otherwise I'm afraid it will still be "I didn't win because I faced some bad MUs" result, the bad MU will just be something else than miracle.

[Lemnear]

Tezz, eldrazis, shardless, goblins etc. are all reasonable decks that are well positioned against miracles even if they might lack on other fronts.

If metagame turns hostile for miracles, miracles will decline. I feel that this change is not possible by fine-tuning sideboards. Players need to start playing decks that beat miracles.

If such decks would indeed rise, Miracles would sideboard Moat and call it a day

Edit: fixed quote

[Finn]

Fighting Miracles...

During the Treasure Cruise era, I worked on a deck that had a pretty darned good matchup against Miracles organically. The reason was that it ran Archive Trap and Extirpate in the main with Snapcasters to recur. You can see how good they are in tandem, but actually both are pretty good just by themselves, as they can nerf the miracle mechanic. I'm sure you can see where this is going. But the advanced idea at the time was to dull the point of the opponents' decks by removing key cards. My thinking was that due to the extra high number of cantrips in Miracles and Delver decks, they would have few real cards and mostly filler. So, nabbing two would put them in a tough spot. The plan was not robust enough and ultimately failed against most decks, but not against Miracles.

I dunno. If the usual stuff does not work, this just might. Shardless decks in particular might make good use of these tools. Does Shadless even need help against Miracles in the 6-7 sb slot range?

[Ingo]

Chalice is mediocre given you can't stop the T1 SDT unless you run Sol-Lands and them being able to FoW it or remove it with W/T later. It shares the same issues with Winter Orb. One restricts mana, the other blocks Ponder/Brainstorm. Both fold to CounterTop @ 2, W/T, FoW, etc.

(Almost) any card can be FoW'ed, the T1 SDT as well, so that's no argument. If Miracles drops the T1 top, congrats, looks like a good opening hand. If he has top + Fow, even more congrats. And if there's counterbalance as well, the game probably's already over.

There's no point in 'this card can be FoW'ed' or it's blocked by counterbalance, because it's true for 99% of Legacy viable cards. Point is, chalice does not have to be backbreaking, if it lands pre-top, things are looking extremely good. If it lands posttop, there's still brainstorm, ponder, swords and Snappy flashing them back that are getting stopped (goodluck finding Council's Judgement). And if chalice is found post-countertop, sure it was a measure for nothing. As for W/T, that's why decks should aim for maindeck cards instead of relying on the side.

[Hopo]

If such decks would indeed rise, Miracles would sideboard Moat and call it a day

There is little point in this discussion when you just cold-bloodedly claim stupid things like Moat being an answer to Tezz, 12-post and infect. Try to stick to things that hold true. If miracles is the monster you claim, there should be no need to rip ridiculous statements out of one's ass.

[Lemnear]

There is little point in this discussion when you just cold-bloodedly claim stupid things like Moat being an answer to Tezz, 12-post and infect. Try to stick to things that hold true. If miracles is the monster you claim, there should be no need to rip ridiculous statements out of one's ass.

How do Goblins or Eldrazi beat Moat? Sorry for the extended quote instead of cherrypicking like you did here.

Edit: I fixed the quote to make it more clear.

[Hopo]

How do Goblins or Eldrazi beat Moat? Sorry for the extended quote instead of cherrypicking like you did here.

Eldrazi has worldbreaker, maybe something else. I don't see them winning too easily through a Moat. Goblins lose against it. What did I cherrypick? It was all in your reply. Bottom line: it's not my fault that you claim untrue things. Veiling an insult in a non-apology i just lame.