Top32 at Ovino8 (Milano, Italy, Europe)

So, I am back from this years Ovino. I went there with friends of mine, 5 people on the way down, 6 on the way back, all in one car. As one can imagine the car drive was quite... interesting. Nontheless we had a good time driving because our GPS was misleading us serveral times which was amusing at least. I won't go into detail too much in any way. Most of us were playing at Modern where about 200 people were showing up. I top32ed at my first ever Modernevent with UWR Geist. The format was fun but you know, it's not Legacy.

What would I be playing in Legacy? Well, easy choice, Miracles as always. Normally I prefer the RIP-Version but in Italy Miracles is a very popular deck, most likely the most popular. You just can't look forward to playing mirrormatches when you have so many dead cards in your deck. So I decided to play Snapcaster/Clique-Miracles at the event:

http://i44.tinypic.com/258uo9c.jpg

The others were bringing: RUG, BURG, ANT, ANT, ANT, so I was the only one playing Control, just as always. Why does nobody like Miracle? :D

400 people showed up, and we were all ready to go!

Round 1 vs Jund
I: He starts out with creatures, I sweep them all, then he starts to P.Fire me. I find a Counterbalance which gets Decayed with me being at 7. 2 dmg per turn, time to find Angels. With him being at 19 and me at 3 (virtually 1) I entreat and of his turn with Counterspell backup to hit his Lightning Bolt.
II: He lacks creatures but has Sylvan Library and Liliana of the Veil. Then he plays Choke. No problem, I just EE for 3, land Jace and win from there.

1-0

Round 2 vs Reanimator
I: He brings strange creatures like Sphinx of the Steel Wind and other useless stuff I just don't remember, I just swords them all and Entreat for the win.
II: T1 Top, T2 RIP, T3 Balance.

2-0

Round 3 vs Sneak Attack
I: He mulls to 5 and starts with: Ancient Tomb, Lotus Petal, Show and Tell bring Emrakul. I bring Tundra, and brainstorm to find either Karakas or Terminus. I find neither nor so I scoop.
II: I open a hand with with Top, 2 Lands, 4 Counterspells being Force of Will, Flusterstorm, Spell Pierce and Red Elemental Blast. Despite me not finding Counterbalance he did not resolve any spell that cost more than 1 this game.
III: He gets through a fast Blood Moon but lacks follow up buisness. I just Wear//Tear his Moon and continue countering everything he has. Somewhen I entreat with 2 mana up, either for Counterspelling his Force of paying for Pierce. He pierces, I pay, he concedes.

3-0

Round 4 vs Junk
I: He starts with discard, then drops Goyf which I kill, then he drops Knight, which I kill. After that he plays Elspeth, followed by Sorin, which I scoop against.
II: He again manages to get Elspeth into play, but I got Jace at that point with Clique and Snapcaster in play. He has Gaddock Teeg + Karakas aswell. So we play about 20 minutes to break the others stealmantle, I tempo him serveral times with my bunchload of removal, and in the end I am able to force him to bounce his Gaddock Teeg. On the way down it get's countered. I then Entreat for 5. We both check on how much he is = 20 and he concedes. It's 2 minutes on the clock and we draw. (this is my second non-ID)

3-0-1

Round 5 vs Miracles
I: I know I am probably going to have to play the Mirror, so I keep Balance, Clique, Jace and lands. I die to T1 Top T2 Balance.
II: Here I open with the following: Tundra, Volcanic, Strand, Top, Balance, Clique, Red Elemental Blast. Easy to bring this one home.
III: Here we both have Counterbalance, he blows it up with EE to bring his Top, I then bring my Top and my second Balance. He plays Academy Ruins and kills my Balance. So I just play my third to keep him busy while I set up double-protected Jace. Before playing Jace I try to make him believe I have Angles on top so he wastes yet another turn to play EE again. Jace fateseales him into death.

4-0-1

Round 6 vs Elves
I: I open with removal and Counterbalance, Jace seals the deal later.
II: I flip 2 lucky blind balances on 1 and 4 and win from there.

5-0-1

Round 7 vs RUG Pyromancer
I: Easy Matchup, I get through the Top-Balance-lock and kill his Mongoose and his Pyromancer. He has one Token left, I am at 9 life. Shouldn't be problem as I have a bunchload of Outs. Well, I died to the 1/1 token while I draw yet more Balances, Tops and lands.
II: I lock him out once again and find the removal in time.
III: This is where my concentration starts to fade. I have the line of play in my head, sadly though it only worked when the top card of my library as in my hand. I realize this when I presented my deck for the Shuffle.

5-1-1

Round 8 vs RUG Control
I: I know his deck and he is obv. very weak to a Balance-lock. He scoops fast as I start to counter everything with 2 and 3 on top and 2 Tops in play.
II: I board in RIPs against his Goyfs+P.Fires. He seemed to have them in the Sideboard so I die with bad cards MB.
III: Here I fake-resideboard boaring out 2 Brainstorm, 1 Island, 1 Jace for 2 Pyroclasm and 2 sideboarded Terminus. I take back the Brainstorms, Island and Jace and he resideboards too, bringing back in the P.Fires. He dominates the early game but I then play a Balance, he Swan Songs, I REB, he let's it resolve and Swan Songs again. I Pierce, he pays. I Fluster, he let's it resolves and Forces. I Fluster it. After I have the Balance I start countering everything he does and lock him out. I get Jace and start fatesealing, he get's EE through and starts burning me down... on his last extraturn he ponders, shuffles, tops, brainstorms, plays jace, brainstorms and finds a BloodBraidElf... I die.

5-2-1

Round 9 vs 4-color-Cascade
I: He mulls to 5, it isn't really a game.
II: I answer all his stuff, including BBE-->Shardless-->Mystic but struggle to find a win-con in time. I get all my Entreats countered so I just cast Snapcaster on Entreat and win from there.

6-2-1 worth Top32. It was a fun event, Miracles didn't disappoint me once again. It's just hard to take that I lost to two very easy Match-Ups... RUG isn't really hard to beat. Well that's how it goes. I improved quite a bit from last year where I punted with Esperblade. I'll be there next year too, was a pleasure meeting all the people, once again :)

Greetings

Nice read and congrats on the finish!

Congrats on your finish!

I liked your version of Miracles a lot, so I took it out for a spin at my local weekly event. It runs incredibly smoothly, and it's definitely my favorite version of the deck for now.

Thanks!

Yeah this version right now gives you alot of flexibility and options! There is only one thing that can stop you - and that's you! I for myself could have avoided both losses and the draw had I played a bit better :D

Greetings

It was fun meeting you, although getting beaten two times in two days wouldn't have been necessary ;) Hope I'll get my chance for retribution at some kind of GP.

Florian

Haha, revenge? I don't think so! :D Plus my score against Germany is kinda good, 2-0-1 - but yes, 2 times beating you, hihihi :D Greet Timur from me!

Greetings

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Einherjer

Round 1 vs Jund
I: He starts out with creatures, I sweep them all, then he starts to P.Fire me. I find a Counterbalance which gets Decayed with me being at 7. 2 dmg per turn, time to find Angels. With him being at 19 and me at 3 (virtually 1) I entreat and of his turn with Counterspell backup to hit his Lightning Bolt.
II: He lacks creatures but has Sylvan Library and Liliana of the Veil. Then he plays Choke. No problem, I just EE for 3, land Jace and win from there.

---

This is strange. Joe's Legend-angel version was the feature match on stream for MTGDeal tournament against Jund in the Top 8. His game was not even close, he got run over by Jund game 1, despite you had zero RiP MD and Joe had 1. Game 2 he started the game just like yours, even with a CB on the board and Jund had no creatures in play, but one resolved Choke later from Jund ended Joe's run.

:eek: for the blurry image.

Any idea of what other decks were in the top 25? I'm doing a metagame analysis article And would really appreciate it. The tos have been really slow....

Slow... yeah, that was the word I was thinking of....:rolleyes:

I will post any information as soon as they post it on Facebook :D

Greetings

Well done at the event. Your list looks awesome and has certainly motivated me to sleeve it up again.

Good job and I actually like your list, and I'm not the biggest fan of Miracles. I'll have to sleeve it up soon :)

Thanks guys for all the kind words!

Greetings

For anyone of you interested, here's the coverage of he semifinals between UR Delver and Jund:

http://www.mtgq.it/english-ovino-201...ibak-vs-padve/

Enjoy the hilarious english :laugh:

P.s. Sorry Philip for polluting your topic :wink:.

Is that a ponder beside the jaces in your list? it's hard to tell, I wanna sleeve it up for test purposes and just wanna be accurate.

Yes, the good old 1of Ponder in order to play 22 lands. Keep in mind that this list was for a very specific metagame plus it was before Nemesis. If you wanna play my updated list - this is it:

4 Tundra
1 Volcanic Island
5 Island
2 Plains
4 Flooded Strand
2 Arid Mesa
3 Counterbalance
1 Counterspell
3 Spell Pierce
4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
3 Terminus
1 Supreme Verdict
3 Entreat the Angels
1 Vendilion Clique
4 Swords to Plowshares
3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
4 Sensei's Divining Top
3 Snapcaster Mage
1 Ponder
1 Karakas
3 Scalding Tarn
SB: 3 Rest in Peace
SB: 2 Red Elemental Blast
SB: 2 Pyroblast
SB: 2 Wear // Tear
SB: 2 Flusterstorm
SB: 1 Vendilion Clique
SB: 2 Supreme Verdict
SB: 1 Mountain


Greetings

EDIT: Took a look at the picture, nice guess on Ponder, you really don't see alot of this card :D

Late congrats. Out of curiosity what where your boarding plans? Do you take out a majority of counterspells against BG/X decks? No love for blood moon? I am helping a friend with this deck and I have the same main you played in this tournament except

-1 tundra
- 3 Polluted Delta
- 1 E.E.
+ 4 Scalding Tarn
+ 1 Terminus

My current board with this 2 snap/2 clique/1 ponder list is:

3 RIP
3 Pyroblast
2 Blood Moon
2 Flusterstorm
1 Supreme Verdict
1 Entreat the Angels
2 Wear//Tear
1 Venser, Shaper Savant

Boarding Ideas:

vs. BG/X (jund, junk, mav)
- 4 Force
- 3 Pierce
- 2 Counterspells

+ 2 Blood Moon
+ 1 Supreme Veridct
+ 1 Terminus
+ 2 Wear//Tear
+ 3 RIP

vs. DnT
- 1 Force
- 3 Pierce
- 2 Counterspells

+ 2 Blood Moon
+ 1 Supreme Veridct
+ 1 Entreat the Angels
+ 2 Wear//Tear

vs. Combo (Storm)
- 4 StP
- 1 Verdict

3 Pyroblast
2 Flusterstorm

vs. Combo (sneak Attack)
- 4 StP
- 1 Supreme Verdict
- 3 Terminus ? (not sure here)


+3 Pyroblast
+2 Flusterstorm
+2 Wear//Tear
+1 Venser, Shaper Savant

Vs. Control (stoneblade, miracles, Rug control)
- 4 Force of Will
- 4 StP


+3 Pyroblast
+2 Flusterstorm
+2 Wear//Tear
+1 Venser, Shaper Savant


Vs Temp (GRIXIS/RUG/UR)
- 4 Force

+ 3 RIP
+ 1 Blood Moon

Vs. UWR TEMPO
- 4 Force
+ 2 Wear//Tear
+ 2 Pyroblast

Please note that these boarding ideas are to help a friend get ready for GP DC. All comments and suggestions are welcomed.