[Article] How to kill Miracles - Part 2

[Sidneyious]

What? Miracles is the #1 deck at filtering and finding cards in it's library. It's the entire point of the deck. It's why it can run sorceries that are only good when you draw them for the first time on a turn. The whole package enables the deck to find its sideboard cards faster and more consistently than any other deck available.

High tide has more digging ability, more tutoring, can fetch SB cards, and grab win conditions at instant speed.

It just needs lands to build a critical mass, as it is I run 8 counter magic and only a couple times have I spiraled into land and counter magic.

Which I can try to combo again because I have more counterspells.

I'm about to try the countertop package so I can cut down on mb counterspells

[Hopo]

There was a post earlier about Infect having a good miracles matchup; there's a lot going on there, but the important thing is that a 3cmc spell lacking "cannot be countered" is not good answer to CB/SDT lock - congrats if you won the 'no 3-drop in top 3' coin flip, you didn't make a dumb/smart choice nor did you become worse/better at magic...you flipped a coin.

What are you referring to here? Invigorate? That contributes only to those random fast wins. Majority of the time miracles dies to nexus.

I don't get it. You also state that Krosan Grip is not a good answer to cb/top. Everyone knows that's not true. Sometimes counterbalance gets it but come on, that's not even close to a coinflip.

[Fox]

Again, somehow Miracles players out there seem to not win literally every tournament ever, in fact there are large legacy tournaments without Miracles in the t8 - this despite having Brainstorm, Ponder, SDT and Jace to find every answer in the history of Magic and having a lot of people willingly show up to tournaments with decks that are weak to Miracles.

You do realize the levels of bastardization of the format caused by the card Counterbalance right? Otherwise irresponsibly constructed decks are slipping through cracks that shouldn't exist and warping the meta game. That card is so oppressive that fair decks maladapting to miracles aren't being told by combo to go back to the drawing board and submit a more correct, competitive list. This is partially hyperbole but: miracles can't beat a standard deck, and it protects poorer deck construction from combo - it can become the victim of it's own success, but you kind of need to ruin the format to hate it out of top 8s.

@Hopo if you watch games of Infect vs miracles and understand how the infect deck operates, you're talking about really bad all-ins or giving them ~double Ancestral draw steps to put a stop to nickel and diming their poison total. Just because it can work, doesn't mean it's good nor desirable to get to this point...it's certainly not interactive in any healthy sense.
Now with K-Grip if someone knows what they're doing and miracles doesn't have 3-4x 3-drops in their top ~5 cards such that they can maintain permanent 3-drops on top through Split Second mechanics and draw steps, K-Grip should work. Just know that even if they have 1x 3-drop in that top 3, you will get next-leveled as they rearrange their top 3 (not moving the 3-drop) and move to draw it passing priority - in this way K-Grip is an unreliable card...and your skill at the game of magic doesn't matter if you chose wrong, and any choice here amounts to a dumb coin flip, albeit a slightly more complex coin. You guess wrong, you lose. You guess right, they have to play real magic for a bit (i.e. use a card from hand to stop a card from opponent's hand). This isn't a fair exchange.

[Hopo]

@Hopo if you watch games of Infect vs miracles and understand how the infect deck operates, you're talking about really bad all-ins or giving them ~double Ancestral draw steps to put a stop to nickel and diming their poison total. Just because it can work, doesn't mean it's good nor desirable to get to this point...it's certainly not interactive in any healthy sense.

I have quite a good grasp on how the matchup plays out. I still don't understand what you are explaining. It's quite obvious that bad all-ins lose the game but stating the obvious hardly gets you nowhere. Infect plays counters and pump spells of three different CMCs so it's hardly the goldfish

Now with K-Grip if someone knows what they're doing and miracles doesn't have 3-4x 3-drops in their top ~5 cards such that they can maintain permanent 3-drops on top through Split Second mechanics and draw steps, K-Grip should work. Just know that even if they have 1x 3-drop in that top 3, you will get next-leveled as they rearrange their top 3 (not moving the 3-drop) and move to draw it passing priority - in this way K-Grip is an unreliable card...and your skill at the game of magic doesn't matter if you chose wrong, and any choice here amounts to a dumb coin flip, albeit a slightly more complex coin. You guess wrong, you lose. You guess right, they have to play real magic for a bit (i.e. use a card from hand to stop a card from opponent's hand). This isn't a fair exchange.

Trust me, the matchup features lots of mind tricks but you just presented the only one that Grip can't handle like it was always like that. It's not rocket science to test the waters with Brainstorm or something else before launching Grip. Sure, I have lost to the scenario you described but you make it sound like only the miracles player knows how to play magic and it always works out for them ("you will get next-leveled").

[Crimhead]

Are you seriously claiming that Brainstorm + Ponder + SDT + Jace is unreliable to find answers to matchups Miracles is actually favored against?

Almost by definition Miracles can find answers for the decks it's favoured to beat! It has trouble in matches where it's unfavoured (eg, because they don't have time to find the answers or are locked out of deck manipulation).

This has to be the most convincing evidence presented of Miracles' domination: Elves sideboarding Chalice of the Void. 20-plus cards locked out on both sides. Sure, why not?

This is evidence that (some) people would rather contort a tier 1.5 pet deck than switch to an actually competetive deck. If anything, this stubborn (and all too common) refusal to meta-gaming properly only serve to enable Miracles' status as the formats top deck.

Miracles is not going to decline because of people tweaking Elves, Deathblade, or any other deck that Miracles naturally preys on.

Oh please. You didn't just quote but BOLDED decks like 12-post and tezz as decks that Moat would be sideboarded against.

lmfao! Not a lot of objectivity here sometimes.

[Jonathan Alexander]

I like that Philipp wrote an article about beating Miracles (even including a decklist that crushes Miracles and has plenty of other good matchups) and people are still complaining about decks X, Y & Z not being able to beat Miracles.

Also, just for the record, Canadian was never bad against Miracles, the matchup has been at least slightly favourable for Canadian until Mentor.

[Crimhead]

I like that Philipp wrote an article about beating Miracles (even including a decklist that crushes Miracles and has plenty of other good matchups) and people are still complaining about decks X, Y & Z not being able to beat Miracles.

This!

Apart from displaying entitlement, it's not even relevant to the topic.

Maybe somebody should write an article on How To Play Decks That Get Creamed By Miracles So You Can Bitch About The Deck?

[Megadeus]

Almost by definition Miracles can find answers for the decks it's favoured to beat! It has trouble in matches where it's unfavoured (eg, because they don't have time to find the answers or are locked out of deck manipulation).

This is evidence that (some) people would rather contort a tier 1.5 pet deck than switch to an actually competetive deck. If anything, this stubborn (and all too common) refusal to meta-gaming properly only serve to enable Miracles' status as the formats top deck.

Miracles is not going to decline because of people tweaking Elves, Deathblade, or any other deck that Miracles naturally preys on.

Since when is elves a supposed tier 1.5 pet deck?

[dte]

Since when is elves a supposed tier 1.5 pet deck?

please, don't feed the troll. When I read that I wanted to answer, my fingers were itching on the keyboard, but I decided not to to avoid the tedious and topic-unrelated discussion.

The same discussion is going on over and over again. Philipp wrote an interesting article, following that some interesting points have been made. If you want to write any of the following:
- miracle is overpowered (or not);
- miracle can adapt to a proposed solution (or cannot);
- any card in miracle does (or doesn't) deserve a ban;
- people should adapt by playing another deck.

Please consider that anybody on the source has probably repeatedly read that already, and restrain yourself.
Or go on the ban topic, or create one named "miracle. Love & hate." or whatever, but do not post here without content, question related to the topic or answers related to question asked, please?

[Sidneyious]

Note that I just debunked this strategy in the post right above yours. It does not work agaisnt a deck with counterspells.

By that logic all decks lose against counter spells.