Bongo
09-29-2014, 10:26 AM
The genesis of the deck started when I was repeatedly getting clunky hands with Miracles. The deck is very powerful, but sometimes it just gets hands and draws that suck - think double Terminus against Sneak and Show. Besides their inherent clunkiness, Miracle spells are sometimes straight blanks against Combo. No wonder that the number of Ponder steadily increased, there was a need for more library manipulation. While Ponder is great, there is also an opportunity cost to it - it's one less mana to activate Top, one less Mana to hold open Counterspell and one less Mana to pay for Daze or Pierce.
So that led to the following question: What if you cut White entirely from Miracles? Most of the time, the blue shell is what makes the deck tick, and the recent Miracle builds have been turning to Red sideboard cards like Pyroblast and Keranos. From there the idea was born to replace White with Red, staying in two colors to reduce the vulnerability to color screw/Wasteland.
While Swords to Plowshares is great, Lightning Bolt as a replacement isn't far behind in efficiency. There are even cases where Bolt is better (like against Planeswalkers). So that leaves Terminus and Entreat. In the current metagame, most creatures have 2 toughness or less, with the notable exceptions of Goyf, Griselbrand/Emrakul and TNN. As a slow control deck, you still need some form of mass removal. Enter Volcanic Fallout and Punishing Fire: Fallout is the nuts against Blade and Delver decks, and does some work against Elves. Punishing Fire gives the deck an additonal card advantage engine that deals with some of the biggest problems current Miracles have: opposing Planeswalkers (Jace, Liliana) and value creatures (Dark Confidant, Deathrite, Stoneforge).
With this removal suite, basically all you need to worry about is Goyf and TNN. The fatties like Griselbrand don't really count because they get cheated into play through spells and in those matchups you wanted to take out Terminus and other removal anyway. The best way to combat TNN is on the stack, which is where Pyroblast and Counterspells come in. Goyf gets handled by Snare, Repeal and Jace.
The current list is this:
4 Sensei's Divining Top
4 Counterbalance
4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
4 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
3 Counterspell
2 Repeal
2 Spell Snare
2 Ponder
3 Punishing Fire
4 Lightning Bolt
2 Snapcaster Mage
3 Volcanic Island
4 Scalding Tarn
1 Mountain
7 Island
3 Polluted Delta
3 Grove of the Burnwillows
1 Cascade Bluffs
SB: 1 Engineered Explosives
SB: 2 Ensnaring Bridge
SB: 4 Red Elemental Blast
SB: 2 Blood Moon
SB: 1 Keranos, God of Storms
SB: 1 Vendilion Clique
SB: 2 Flusterstorm
SB: 2 Pyroclasm
This deck has the following advantages:
1. Solid manabase with 23 lands (including 9 basic lands), which helps immensely against Delver. It doesn't fold to manadenial and even has the capacity to run Blood Moon in the sideboard.
2. Favored against Miracles: It runs 4 copies of Counterbalance and Jace. Besides 4 Blasts and 2 Cliques in the side, it has the Punishing Fire engine, which gives the deck inevitability. The mere presence of Lightning Bolt forces the opponent to +2 Jace, if he even manages to land one.
3. Better matchup against Shardless and Jund: With Punishing and Blood Moon, you have excellent trumps to negate the card advantage from Cascade and Liliana. Keranos is also boss.
4. Opposing creature removal is practically useless, the 2 Snapcasters have done their jobs when they resolve.
Some random notes:
- Ensnaring Bridge is an underrated card and very strong against Sneak and Show as well as all Delver lists that don't have Abrupt Decay. It's one of the few answers to TNN available in this color combination.
- Explosives is an additional mass removal against Elves and Goyf.
- Repeal in combination with Top gives you a small draw engine. Repeal is an out against a lot of unexpected cards (even bounced a Dream Halls once) and useful to bounce Pithing Needle in postboard games.
- Spell Snare is extremely underrated. Basically, it only sucks against Sneak Show, against every other deck there are plenty of juicy targets.
- Dig through Time is an experimental slot. Theoretically, the deck has enough spells support it. Has been pretty good so far.
- Cascade Bluffs is there to smooth out the mana where you draw too much Groves or conversely give you enough red mana to play multiple Punishing Fires.
Sadly, the deck is not unbeatable and there are some kinks to work out. Since I don't have enough time to do this myself, I'm turning to you - any creative input or criticism is welcome!
Some of the kinks mentioned above are:
1. Big creatures that are out of direct damage range (Goyf, TNN, Batterskull) backed by Wasteland to kill my Groves.
2. Fast combo. The sideboard should help, but against good pilots it is very tough, especially on the draw.
3. 12-Post. The deck seems like a nightmare if I cant land Moon quickly.
4. Merfolk. Caverns invalidates Counters, the creatures are quickly out of Burn range and Wasteland plus Counters complicate things.
So that led to the following question: What if you cut White entirely from Miracles? Most of the time, the blue shell is what makes the deck tick, and the recent Miracle builds have been turning to Red sideboard cards like Pyroblast and Keranos. From there the idea was born to replace White with Red, staying in two colors to reduce the vulnerability to color screw/Wasteland.
While Swords to Plowshares is great, Lightning Bolt as a replacement isn't far behind in efficiency. There are even cases where Bolt is better (like against Planeswalkers). So that leaves Terminus and Entreat. In the current metagame, most creatures have 2 toughness or less, with the notable exceptions of Goyf, Griselbrand/Emrakul and TNN. As a slow control deck, you still need some form of mass removal. Enter Volcanic Fallout and Punishing Fire: Fallout is the nuts against Blade and Delver decks, and does some work against Elves. Punishing Fire gives the deck an additonal card advantage engine that deals with some of the biggest problems current Miracles have: opposing Planeswalkers (Jace, Liliana) and value creatures (Dark Confidant, Deathrite, Stoneforge).
With this removal suite, basically all you need to worry about is Goyf and TNN. The fatties like Griselbrand don't really count because they get cheated into play through spells and in those matchups you wanted to take out Terminus and other removal anyway. The best way to combat TNN is on the stack, which is where Pyroblast and Counterspells come in. Goyf gets handled by Snare, Repeal and Jace.
The current list is this:
4 Sensei's Divining Top
4 Counterbalance
4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
4 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
3 Counterspell
2 Repeal
2 Spell Snare
2 Ponder
3 Punishing Fire
4 Lightning Bolt
2 Snapcaster Mage
3 Volcanic Island
4 Scalding Tarn
1 Mountain
7 Island
3 Polluted Delta
3 Grove of the Burnwillows
1 Cascade Bluffs
SB: 1 Engineered Explosives
SB: 2 Ensnaring Bridge
SB: 4 Red Elemental Blast
SB: 2 Blood Moon
SB: 1 Keranos, God of Storms
SB: 1 Vendilion Clique
SB: 2 Flusterstorm
SB: 2 Pyroclasm
This deck has the following advantages:
1. Solid manabase with 23 lands (including 9 basic lands), which helps immensely against Delver. It doesn't fold to manadenial and even has the capacity to run Blood Moon in the sideboard.
2. Favored against Miracles: It runs 4 copies of Counterbalance and Jace. Besides 4 Blasts and 2 Cliques in the side, it has the Punishing Fire engine, which gives the deck inevitability. The mere presence of Lightning Bolt forces the opponent to +2 Jace, if he even manages to land one.
3. Better matchup against Shardless and Jund: With Punishing and Blood Moon, you have excellent trumps to negate the card advantage from Cascade and Liliana. Keranos is also boss.
4. Opposing creature removal is practically useless, the 2 Snapcasters have done their jobs when they resolve.
Some random notes:
- Ensnaring Bridge is an underrated card and very strong against Sneak and Show as well as all Delver lists that don't have Abrupt Decay. It's one of the few answers to TNN available in this color combination.
- Explosives is an additional mass removal against Elves and Goyf.
- Repeal in combination with Top gives you a small draw engine. Repeal is an out against a lot of unexpected cards (even bounced a Dream Halls once) and useful to bounce Pithing Needle in postboard games.
- Spell Snare is extremely underrated. Basically, it only sucks against Sneak Show, against every other deck there are plenty of juicy targets.
- Dig through Time is an experimental slot. Theoretically, the deck has enough spells support it. Has been pretty good so far.
- Cascade Bluffs is there to smooth out the mana where you draw too much Groves or conversely give you enough red mana to play multiple Punishing Fires.
Sadly, the deck is not unbeatable and there are some kinks to work out. Since I don't have enough time to do this myself, I'm turning to you - any creative input or criticism is welcome!
Some of the kinks mentioned above are:
1. Big creatures that are out of direct damage range (Goyf, TNN, Batterskull) backed by Wasteland to kill my Groves.
2. Fast combo. The sideboard should help, but against good pilots it is very tough, especially on the draw.
3. 12-Post. The deck seems like a nightmare if I cant land Moon quickly.
4. Merfolk. Caverns invalidates Counters, the creatures are quickly out of Burn range and Wasteland plus Counters complicate things.