The weekend before last I drove to Baltimore for EE5 with the Work-4-Wizbux Rubes, a collective of NY legacy players for my last tournament of the year. I finished 10-0-2 overall, with intentional draws in rounds 8-9 to lock 5th after swiss. Lists are posted here.
The discretionary slots were designed by fellow W4WR Devin, who kindly gave me his list to abuse in the MTGO leagues for the weeks leading up to the event. I liked most things about it, but had trouble beating decks that could win long games against Miracles by default, like Burn, Show & Tell, and Eldrazi. I also thought the popularity of Eldrazi would push fast combo out, giving those decks a chance to go further than they might otherwise.
As a result, I cut the 2nd maindeck Counterspell for the Explosives in the board and cut the 3rd sideboard Flusterstorm for 2 Monastery Mentors. That was the biggest change, but there are a ton of small details that I think makes this list powerful for a long tournament. The Mentors are great, but ultimately flexible for fields with more stack-based combo. In that case I would likely try 1 Kozilek's Return and replace the 3rd Flusterstorm.
These were my pairings:
R1 - BUG goodstuff 2-1
R2 - Death & Taxes 2-1 against a fellow W4WR, his report is here. I was unhappy with this pairing since he's a much stronger opponent than I'd like in round 2 and his list is about 6 months ahead of stock DnT technology, which flips the matchup from favorable for Miracles to solidly favorable for DnT. Game 1 a pair of Prelates ran me over quickly and game 2 I had a great hand to overpower his early attack, followed up by multiple Predicts to gas me into more cards. Game 3 he kept a somewhat greedy hand and never saw a 3rd non-Karakas land.
R3 - MUD 2-0
R4 - Uw Omniscience 2-1 Sideboarded Mentors took me by surprise in g2, but more so the fact that he had 3-4 Pieces of the Puzzle. Lists like this have begun popping up on MTGO and are quite strong, but a weak hand in g3 that put Emrakul into play off Show and Tell let me smooth out a glut of Terminus floating on top of my deck without costing too many resources. Soon after I assembled the soft lock plus JTMS to pull the game out of reach.
R5 - Miracles 2-0. I thought I played g1 well but was punished by exactly JTMS to slip past my soft lock, bounce a Snapcaster and pump a monk token to kill my JTMS. I Snapcast Predict to dig out of desperation and found my second JTMS almost immediately to seal it with the lock already in place. G2 I ran an early Counterbalance out to eat a red blast but to my surprise it resolved. He attempted a Mentor, to which I Brainstormed in response (no 3 in hand). He Forced, I Forced his Mentor, he Forced that too. Checked Counterbalance for 5s or 3s and saw Terminus. By then he was out of gas and I closed the game after a long but ultimately lopsided back and forth.
R6 - Punishing Jund 2-0
R7 - Colorless Eldrazi 2-0 This was an on-camera feature match here against the player who eliminated me from EE4. He mulled to 5 game 1 and still very nearly won, such is the liability of Miracles' UU spells in the matchup. As with much of the day, this round felt like a lot of small things broke my way and I walked away with the slip.
R8 - ID
R9 - ID
I don't split prizes in high stakes tournaments, so we played everything out in top 8.
QF - Naya Maverick 2-0. Neither game was particularly close. In g1 he went all-in early on Stage-Depths + Mother of Runes and got Terminus'd. In g2 the Mentor transformation slipped under a Teeg/Mom-reliant hand and ate Knights until he ran out.
SF - Cadei Miracles 2-1. Game 2 I mulliganed to Island, Strand, Tarn, Pyroblast, Counterspell, Counterbalance, JTMS. The judge offered my choice of mulligan to 5 or allow my opponent to thoughtseize me. I chose the latter, he took Pyroblast, and with perfect information was able to aggressively resolve the lock early. G3 was on camera here. I was surprised by how aggressively he played a postboard game where he didn't already know my hand, which nearly cost me. A couple of weighted coinflips both fell my way on the critical turn 3 and from there I played cautiously from a hugely advantageous position to ensure nothing slipped away.
F - Grixis Delver 2-1 was also on camera here. Having rewatched these games several times I'm mostly happy with my play right up until Entreat the Angels in game 2. I mistakenly went for 2 instead of 4 angels and cascaded mistakes to lose an almost insurmountable advantage. To Justin's credit, his play was phenomenally tight in a horrible situation to lock it up on a razor's edge. Game 3 my fatigue started to show and the last few turns broke poorly for me until Angels off the top bailed me out, to no credit of my own. I still missed the onboard lifegain, but drew Ponder into JTMS to put myself out of reach of Lightning Bolt.
With that, the tournament was over. I won 4 pieces of power and a framed picture of the store credit chips. We drove the 3.5 or so hours back to New York and I walked into my apartment at 4 am with work only a couple hours away.
Last edited by IsThisACatInAHat?; 11-02-2016 at 04:19 PM. Reason: Archetype correction
Great success!
Sammy Rouks, too dreamy.
all your links point to the same twitch recording without timestamps, the api is:
t=<number>h<number>m<number>s
for example, https://www.twitch.tv/talesofadventu...1760?t=1h30m0s
So if you're in the finals of a GP against 12Post, you wouldn't split?
I thought Wizards wouldn't organize a split (unlike SCG), but the two of you can always have an outside agreement?
Nice result, congrats on the win! Please ban Top.
This. 100% this. I once split a top 4 where I argued that it was insane to not split because the split was better than 2nd place. Gerry T simply asked, "Would you have won more by getting 1st?". That's the real question, and the answer can only be to not split. Also your opponents don't like it, which is +EV for you.
Languages and dates for every set. For all you true pimps.
It's pretty incredible that even someone who has gone so far with Miracles honestly believes that we should ban Top. I hope Wizards is paying attention.
Wow that was a pretty bad typo, thank you for catching it.
Play for the glory of a plastic cup and your name on the internet, the small bucks will follow. More importantly, when Jupiter Games was a thing Bryant and Eli ran the elimination brackets and I couldn't buy a win after the cut. Both advised me not to split locals to gain confidence for when it mattered. On that note, it's amazing how many people get nervous when they suddenly feel like there's something to lose.
Doubt aside that either side was ever not just talking past one another, it depends on what you think the format should look like.
- "Miracles is oppressive to me winning with the cards I like and want to play, therefore it should be banned."
- "Miracles does not meet the criteria for oppressive strategies, therefore it should not be banned."
I'm sure if I were personally attached to some on-and-off playable creature deck I would be pro-ban and pretend there were a legitimate reason for it too.
Great success!
You can also do both, split prizes and play top 8 for glory. That's what we did at BoM Strasbourg.
Regarding your list, why Entreat over Mentor main when you have so many cantrips + predict ? I agree that Entreat is the highest impact solo-spell, but I feel like not having to have forced choices with early brainstorms outweights this.
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