Uwg/r Miracle Intuition

As a spin-off from the UGbw Yorion Intuition deck I posted a couple of weeks back, I decided to try and trim down to 60 cards to see what it would look like.

The easiest way I found to do this was by building it as 3c Miracles instead of 4c Snowko.

The Mystic Sanctuary package is concise in space; it offers a tremendous amount of removal with just a few cards.

Trimming down to 3 colors instead of 4 (maindeck) made building the manabase much easier, and is the trade-off that had to be made to support the colorless lands in the manabase.

I trimmed way back on a bunch of fun tech too, and had to streamline quite a bit to make it all fit, but I feel like I ended up with a better deck overall.



My current deckilst, as of July 2024 (post MH3)...

UGW/r Intuition Miracles

Lands (25)
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Flooded Strand
1 Hedge Maze
1 Tropical Island
1 Tundra
1 Volcanic Island
1 Savannah
1 Island
1 Forest
1 Plains
1 Mystic Sanctuary
1 Lonely Sandbar
1 Boseiju, Who Endures
4 Wasteland
1 Thespian's Stage
1 Dark Depths

Creatures (2)
2 Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath

Spells (33)
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Intuition
2 Life from the Loam
4 Exploration
1 Spell Pierce
1 Force of Negation
4 Force of Will
4 Swords to Plowshares
3 Prismatic Ending
2 Terminus

Sideboard (15)
2 Stifle
2 Minor Misstep
1 Flusterstorm
2 Veil of Summer
1 Force of Vigor
1 Pyroblast
1 Red Elemental Blast
2 Surgical Extraction
1 Supreme Verdict
1 Forth Eorlingas!
1 Stony Silence

Is there a way to get up to 24 lands and add 2x Waterlogged Grove? I'm a big fan of Exploration accelerating mana; adding Grove can turn it into an engine with Loam. I know that Loam is already an engine by itself but having a way to just draw extra cards against Snoko/miracles could really break those mirrors open. The only place I can see cutting would be something like -1 Ponder, -1 Intuition. It pushes the deck in a grindier direction, which may not be what you want considering your primary win condition is Depths, especially where Intuition is your main strategy for achieving Marit Lage.

I miss the days of playing Intuition for Loam/Eternal Witness/Lingering Souls or Raven's Crime/Loam/Wasteland. Setting up crushing value piles is so much fun.

I had a Waterlogged Grove in the Yorion version, but had to trim it out to get the deck down to 60 cards.

Waterlogged Grove would certainly make the deck better against the other midrange decks of the format, but I'm not sure that it is needed. I don't cast Life from the Loam every turn unless I'm trying to jam a 20/20 until it sticks, I'm trying to generate upwards of 8 2/2 zombie tokens every turn, or there is value in going for a Waste-lock. Otherwise, I just cast it every few turns as necessary to keep making land drops, until I no longer need the extra lands (or cards in hand for Brainstorm). This lets me focus on using my cantrips to dig for business spells instead of lands.

The deck grinds out the midrange matchups pretty well if it is able to resolve an Intuition, because making a swarm of zombies every turn is way more powerful (and nearly unstoppable) compared to what they are capable of doing (Uro/Oko).

I don't really miss the old days. I'd much rather transition from a control deck into a combo deck and straight up kill the opponent, than to durdle around and try to leverage the card advantage from Life from the Loam into a win with weaker fair cards.

Felidar Retreat looks like an interesting card for the sideboard that could potentially replace Entreat the Angels as a backup win condition vs graveyard and land hate. Ultimately I still like Entreat better with Mystic Sanctuary, since it can be tutored with Intuition and makes a much more immediate impact when cast, and is a threat that's not reliant on Exploration and Life from the Loam in postboard games, but still cool nonetheless.

I think I'd like to cut a basic Island for an Underground Sea. It just makes way more sense with Astrolabe to leverage into black.

Blast Zone is too slow.

I'm also going to cut a Loam for a Jace. Jace and Terminus is still a really strong combination, even in an Oko meta. I'm a bit worried about losing Loam to a Negation, so I might still want to fit a 2nd copy back in, but I definitely think the deck needs a copy of Jace.

Thoughtseize is also a strong card.

I'm also considering a 1-of Counterbalance, but not entirely sure about that yet. I like that it's additional disruption that can generate card advantage, but it's probably too slow for what this deck is trying to do.

I'll tweak up the list in the opening post a bit.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Mr. Safety

Is there a way to get up to 24 lands and add 2x Waterlogged Grove? I'm a big fan of Exploration accelerating mana; adding Grove can turn it into an engine with Loam. I know that Loam is already an engine by itself but having a way to just draw extra cards against Snoko/miracles could really break those mirrors open. The only place I can see cutting would be something like -1 Ponder, -1 Intuition. It pushes the deck in a grindier direction, which may not be what you want considering your primary win condition is Depths, especially where Intuition is your main strategy for achieving Marit Lage.

I miss the days of playing Intuition for Loam/Eternal Witness/Lingering Souls or Raven's Crime/Loam/Wasteland. Setting up crushing value piles is so much fun.

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There's still a deck that does the grind with Raven's Crime, bit it's a different deck. It's a Jund Lands deck that focuses on resource denial. My list runs Burning Wish, since the deck can afford it costing more than gamble due to having cards like Assassin's Trophy, Smallpox, Raven's Crime, Punishing Fire, etc. Burning Wish tutoring for Devastating Dreams is especially brutal, and it also gives you access to Flame Jab. You essentially grind the opponent out of all resources, utilizing Exploration and Life from the Loam, and eventually kill them with Field of the Dead. It's basically taking the fast combo kills out of RG Lands by cutting Dark Depths and Thespian's Stage and replacing them with more resource denial to further focus on that gameplan.

Back to not splashing black. Red Blasts deal with the 3cc Planeswalker's, Abrupt Decay doesn't deal with Leyline of the Void, and Return to Nature/Wilt is an easier to cast answer to Blood Moon.

Court of Grace seems like an incredibly strong card that may warrant a spot in the sideboard.

Well, the bans certainly change this deck, possibly for the better.

Without Oko in the format, it becomes more difficult for Delver and midrange decks to deal with Planeswalker's. Abrupt Decay potentially sees less play without Astrolabe, and it will be much more difficult for midrange to splash for Pyroblast if they still intend to run Uro, and if they do, they'll be more susceptible to Wasteland.

Losing Oko myself makes my own ability to deal with Planeswalker's more difficult, so that's possibly an issue.

I still feel like the deck gains a lot overall, and becomes much better positioned in the metagame as a strong midrange contender in place of Snowko.

The Oko's can be cut for Narset's. As for the Astrolabe's, I'll be be cutting them for the 2nd Jace and the 2nd Loam. I'm torn between going up to the 4th Exploration, or adding a Sylvan Library for the last spot.

I'm going to cut the Snapcaster's for Uro. Without Oko, Uro becomes a lot harder for the format to answer, and it plays well with Intuition/Loam.

The sideboard is going to need tweaked to answer the new metagame once the dust settles from the new bans, so I'm not sure what to do with it yet.

Prismatic Ending is such a perfect fit for this deck. The mana requirements make it significantly easier on the manabase compared to Council's Judgment. It's much more mana efficient at killing Delver of Secrets without blowing up my own Exploration compared to Engineered Explosives. Teferi can make it instant speed, it exiles, and it deals with the majority of problematic permanents that we would need it to deal with.

Your deck dies to anything resembling TNN. You also are under a huge amount of pressure to answer everything the opponent plays [even spamming Terminus vs non-TNN types] b/c you lack flying deathtouch cantrip walls.

You're also playing Exploration over Sylvan Library. You have even less rebuild potential vs mild amounts of yard hate. Everything falls onto undefended PWs, leading to the negative feedback loop of "loses to TNN-types."

I'm not sure why TNN is something I should be worried about whatsoever, but okay.

I do think I need to make room for a copy of Sylvan Library and a copy of Prismatic Ending in the maindeck. I can definitely cut back down to 3 Exploration, which was how many I was running before the Oko and Astrolabe ban... but I'm not sure what other card I'd like to cut just yet.

It's literally anything that resembles TNN, so like Hexdrinker, anything + Mother of Runes, QB + Karakas, and any other Shroud/Hexproofs. UR Delver is also likely to run actual TNN.

Terminus deals with most of those problematic creatures pretty well. Simply racing with Marit Lage or 2/2 zombie tokens also works. TNN as a clock is pretty slow, not even out-racing an Uro.

I get what you are trying to get at, but I'm not really worried about difficult to deal with creatures that present a pretty slow clock.

This deck is designed to either out-grind or out-race, depending on the matchup and/or gamestate.

The thing about Uro is that should be worried; you are going to get hit by yard hate. That same yard hate hits Loam/Exploration and Intuition, turning them into dead draws.

The only somewhat reliable thing left in your deck is Field of the Dead. After this it's pretty much panic-killing any dude an opponent plays to desperately protect your PWs. It takes very little deckbuilding effort to reduce this deck to a pile that will mill out and never threaten a win.

Just that slightest amount of yard hate, and you're on this Bridgewalker all-in without PW shields. It's a very easy strategy to enact when you're drawing so many cards without text.

What graveyard hate are you talking about, exactly? It's not like the opponent simply draws into a single piece and then all of my gameplans are completely ruined.

Most graveyard hate is going to deal with one thing at a time. If my opponent pops Nihil Spellbomb to deal with Uro, that doesn't also deal with me following up with an Intuition into whatever a turn or two later. It's not too often that I have multiple pieces exposed at once.

Even the most powerful pieces like Rest in Peace can be dealt with or played around. And in the event that somehow I lose all of my various angles/outs, it's not really that crazy to just play a Miracles gameplan where I drop Jace, sweep the board with Terminus, card advantage ahead in resources for a few turns, and then fateseal into a win, is it?

I can beat Surgical Extraction on Loam with a Brainstorm. Teferi preventing the opponent from responding at instant speed can circumvent a lot of hate too. And it's not like I don't have countermagic and other tools available to deal with the hate either.

This deck is certainly more dependent on its graveyard than a typical Miracles deck, but it's range of threats is incredibly diverse. A single graveyard hate piece isn't going to just shut this deck down at all, and even multiple pieces isn't necessarily going to do that either.

Also, most decks don't have graveyard hate until postboard, where I can modify my deck to either try and beat the hate (with cards like Flusterstorm, Wilt, Null Rod, etc), or potentially transform into a more dedicated control deck with more removal, and potentially even an alternative non-graveyard dependent threat (like Entreat the Angels, Primeval Titan, or Monastery Mentor). The sideboard for this deck is pretty fluid in that regard.