[Article] Eternal Europe: Army of God

[Mon,Goblin Chief]

Well, I told you I had a new Miracles-build.

http://www.starcitygames.com/article/26145_Army-Of-God.html

Let me know what you think about either the writing, the deck or the reasoning - and enjoy, obviously!

[Spigore]

Hi Carsten,

Nice to see your work on Miracles.
As much as I enjoyed playing Moat in Caw Cartel, is this the card that Miracles needs?
The meta is swarmed with flipped Delvers, DRS, and Team America plays Tombstalker.
I haven't tested this list yet, and I definately will give it a spin, but on paper, Moat looks a little narrow.

Thumbs up for Tithe, I've been playing this little gem and it definately satisfies!

[kiblast]

As an old Caw Cartel player I love to see how you are constantly pushing the UW control archetype one step farther. Thanks a lot for your work!

[alphastryk]

Interesting direction to take the deck. I think Miracles already is a 'stall until combo' deck in those types of matchups, you just took it to the extreme. Definitely an interesting way to look at things, I'll probably give it a try sometime.

[Jayman]

Very nice article and build. I pretty agree on all your points and I myself have been experimenting on miracles lists that forgo some of the removal. I do not know about tithe as of yet though. It is very powerful along with brainstorms, fetch lands and Jace but without a brainstorm effect they seem kinda lackluster unless you are hungry for land drops. I have been trying an Accumulated Knowledge, Snapecaster, intuition engine myself but with deathrite Shaman everywhere and R.I.P versions of miracles I gind it that it gets shut down. Do you think there are some other good card advantage engines for the deck to consider?

[Jayman]

Oh btw Moat main is genius its such a house against Jund and BUG and tribals ( if you can survive till 4 mana)

[Tammit67]

I like it :)

[Spigore]

Hi Carsten and all,

Are you still around?
After some playing with the deck I've noticed that the deck still hass issues with beating RUG Delver.
Mongoose in particular. RUG Delver gives you a very hard time casting your Entreats.
To reliably Entreat for X=2-4 you need to have CounterTop in play to get rid of all the pesky countermagic and Stifle.

The deck performs very well but definately needs work.

[luckme10]

Moat? Wait, what about Abrupt D...

Ah.. I see what you did there.

[Piceli89]

Necro.

These days I was pondering about the fact that Terminus is more and more weak.
As you (Carsten) correctly mentioned in your article, it's definitely strong just against a part of the metagame:

- Elves (although a good player will slowroll grinding CA with Symbiote and Visionary);
- Merfolk;
- Goblin, but just to take time, otherwise inevitable card advantage will win it if EtA doesn't show;
- Maverick.

Terminus is also good against Jund to stop a start like Deathrite Shaman + Dark Confidant, since Miracle doesn't play Spell Snare.
The problem I find with the deck, though, is that it plays an excessive mass of cards that are dead or don't work on their own: Counterbalance, Terminus, Entreat, Jace (at the beginning), and so on. This leads often to clunky hands that are relying on Brainstorm a lot or need time and turns to setup properly, thus can be punished hard with a simple discard spell.
Think about a possible scenario; you open with:

Island, Jace, Terminus, EtA, Brainstorm, Cspell, Fetch;

Your unkwown opponent, on the play, leads with Thoughtseize, takes Brainstorm.
Good luck, you're starting basically with 5 cards.
(Not to mention builds with Rip, Blood Moon md, Etutor...)

Another "meta-problem" is that people adapted to play around Terminus, and very rarely a good player will give you a 3x1 with it. As said, even the decks above have more or less consistent ways to play around or to make up for it.

I find these to be the reasons why Miracle is slightly struggling as of later, in a world where midrange decks are curving out constantly with very strong individual pieces. Ironically, a deck like Stoneblade has much more fluidity and chances of opening with good sequences, if it wasn't for the Punishing Fire weakness and the raw power of Entreat the Angels.

To reduce the number of Miracles is definitely a good proposition, but don't you think you're too light against creature decks with that new configuration?
I feel that adding 2 Stoneforge Mystic and a Batterskull gives you a ton of advantages, mainly:
- other 2 cc-2 drops to fill the CB curve, which is notoriously low on that in Miracle;
- another angle of attack;
- a card advantage tool;
- a good 2-drop against BGx decks which they are usually quite weak to;
- additional shuffle effect for Top and Brainstorm;
- good spell against tempo decks;
- lifegainer;
- another target for Decay.

Moreover, Batterskull under an active Countertop is fits to lots of archetypes.

I know that it has already been tried ton of times and MiracleBlade is an estabilished variation, but I feel the deck should push more the good cards on their own and slightly decrease the 1-for-1s (reduce number of counterspells, and so on).
Let the core of 4 Force, 4 Plows, 4 Brainstorms, 2 Pierces, 2 Counterspell, 4SDTs, 3 Jaces, 3 CBs, 2-2 Snap/Clique, the rest should be proactive bombs.
Tithe is surely strong from time to time when you happen to 2x1 with it, but how much does it perform good on a consistent basis? Wouldn't you rather play the safe, estabilished 22-landers and cut out another slot?

What do you think? I feel Miracle needs a bit of tweaking to keep up the pace of BGx decks without losing too much ground against everything else and, most of all, trying to reduce its inherent clunkiness.

[nedleeds]

Are we really at a point where people consider maindeck Moat genius? Fuck that's sad.

Edit: noticed necro.

[TsumiBand]

Are we really at a point where people consider maindeck Moat genius? Fuck that's sad.

Edit: noticed necro.

It's not a super old necro though, this is like a month old. Moat was tech a month ago?

[nedleeds]

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRsxuwYfCycRLjFTfZccoyWbpCPuNrOULBsI-9CCJe7zas0Rscx

MOAT! In blue white control!!!! Who knew!!!!!

[alphastryk]

It's not a super old necro though, this is like a month old. Moat was tech a month ago?

I'm pretty sure Moat was tech in 1995. It was also in the old Caw Cartel lists that Miracles evolved out of in the first place.

[nedleeds]

I'm pretty sure Moat was tech in 1995. It was also in the old Caw Cartel lists that Miracles evolved out of in the first place.

http://www.classicdojo.org/history/thedeck2.html

Yeah it was a card. We aggro players had our Flying Carpets though.

[Piceli89]

Less spam and more content, thanks.

[dsck]

Think about a possible scenario; you open with:

Island, Jace, Terminus, EtA, Brainstorm, Cspell, Fetch;

Your unkwown opponent, on the play, leads with Thoughtseize, takes Brainstorm.
Good luck, you're starting basically with 5 cards.


I have faced this problem a lot, quite often the deck just shits on itself and does nothing if you lose your library manipulation. So the next logical step is to try to make it a little more resistant/consistent. I like Raphael Levy's build (though list below has some of my own changes):

2 Vendilion Clique
2 Snapcaster Mage
1 Disenchant
2 Counterspell
4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
4 Swords to Plowshares
2 Entreat the Angels
4 Ponder
4 Terminus
2 Counterbalance
2 Elspeth, Knight-Errant
3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
4 Sensei's Divining Top

1 Karakas
2 Plains
4 Scalding Tarn
3 Tundra
4 Flooded Strand
5 Island
1 Mystic Gate

SB: 1 Counterbalance
SB: 1 Disenchant
SB: 1 Rest in Peace
SB: 2 Path to Exile
SB: 1 Ethersworn Canonist
SB: 1 Enlightened Tutor
SB: 2 Flusterstorm
SB: 1 Humility
SB: 2 Surgical Extraction
SB: 2 Spell Pierce
SB: 1 Leyline of Sanctity