why do you always get to play vs the biggest mongos with the biggest mongopiles? #jelly
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Ended up going 6-3 at the DC Open today... lost R2 to Jadine (RUG Delver player in the finals), R7 to Jake (Shardless player in finals), and R8 to BUG Delver. Next time...
I just felt like sharing this nice picture of yesterdays Legacy Open in Graz, organised by myself, where I made Top8 but lost the quarterfinals.
The pic is about myself facing off against Adryan in a quite nice mirror match which ended in a draw, unfortunately.
http://i60.tinypic.com/2vikn7n.jpg
Greetings
My eyes, my eeeeeyes! Look at all those white bordered lands on both sides! :eek:
Very well spotted, Sir. I am currently working on a new sideboard. But as I am not the kind of guy (anymore) who posts unfinished stuff you'll have to wait a little bit more until I am totally sure that this new sideboard is superior to what I have been advocating before, but it looks rather promising, admittedly. :)
And yes, we will totally meet at GP New Jersey, I want to meet as many people as possible!
Greetings
As said via PM, no, sorry, but thank you very much for the offer. It's not a completly different sideboard or anything, just a way to include Stoneforge Mystic to the sideboard that I was proposing before. It's no backbreaking change, just an improvement to what has already been there! Other than that I think that I am very close to being done, but not quite yet.
Greetings
are you still playing Clique? no Karakas and 1 thougthness make it pretty easy to break..
I do still play it, yet I still stand at the same position as I did before. The card is backbreakingly good in some MUs and lackluster in the rest, that's why both of them are still in the SB. Being vulnerable doesn't really matter vs Control and Combo and Karakas is just way to bad to consider it in this version of Miracles.
Greetings
Dual Lands are ugly. I don't see why i should waste money so that they have a black border^^ I want the Magic Online lands so bad :( They must look amazing in RL and foil :(
You have to mention that i did win the 2nd game only because of Entreat^^ (we both had Countertop and Jace)
Yes I was killed by Entreat the Angels, and yes, I still stand by my decision of removing every single Entreat the Angels from my deck in the postboardes games of the mirror match.
Greetings
Watching all the Miracles mirror in Munich, I also quite often see Entreat just randomly run away with games.
The question for me isn't so much whether I should leave Entreat in, but if it's worth it to leave in a dedicated answer for Entreat like a Terminus or not. I want counters/Clique to be enough, but sometimes they just aren't... just variance or error in boarding?
I think your answer to entreat post board, at least with ein's list, is a pair of engineered explosives. Between things like Elspeth, Batterskull, and whatever other shenanigans miracles players like to bring in post board, playing board control is the way I like to go.
Entreat is very good in the late late game or in the situation where the both players have CB. But it is probably not worth the hassle. It is a mulligan at the start and ofthen it forces you to play badly. Resolve CB, keep something with cc2 on the top and laugh! :-)
where can I see some of the matches you are talking about? Thank you
Also, if BUG (both shardless and Delver) become a big thing, why don't we start playing some land disruption (Stifle? which is huge in the mirror too) and some Divert?
Pyroclasm would also be a huge return, leaving them with just Tarmogoyf to deal with.
Whenever you SB you want to have the worst 15 cards in any given MU to be in your SB afterwards.
With my list against a stock miracle list, i always have 1 Entreat postboard, because it's better than Keranos (which i play MD, because he's so good in the bad/tough MU's). Keranos does suck pretty hard in the mirror, because he is a sorcery speed spell that costs 5 (and can be blasted) and even if he does stick for several turns, you still can lose. Try that with a Jace TMS or with Angel tokens you have access to several turns. Yes Entreat is clunky, it's a white card (more blue cards are always better) and super dead without a setup but i still keep one because it's better than all the other 15 cards i have in my SB after boarding.
In addition to that Entreat is a skill intensive card to play, because you can outplay your opponents with it (in the mirror, i don't think it's skill intensive somewhere else) and can really punish some bad plays.
If i know the opp does play SFM, I'm inclined to keep both Entreat, because they become much better.
There's once I ran into another Miracles, not the same build. After some counter wars, we have depleted our hands. He has both CB And Jace, I have nothing. Instead of Jace-brainstorm, he started to fate-seal me, since I didn't have a hand. After he bottomed a card, I drew into Entreat, a natural Miracle, made all the Angel tokens while leaving 2 lands open to not get Spell Pierced. He started mad-digging using Jace (since bouncing an Angel token will still make my attack lethal), but only to extend his hand.
Bottom line: You'll spend your resources on fighting over a CB or a Jace, no way counters alone would take care of Entreat when it happens. Run more Cliques sounds like a good compromise to me.
So let's run multiple Council's Judgments and Explosives but cut Entreat because it's dead and clunky too often. 3-mana for a removal spell that wants you to let Jace and Counterbalance resolve, so you can tap all your mana and hope to remove them. If you want to Explosives your opponent's Counterbalance mid-late game, there's probably a 30-50% chance you also have one in play. You also have to tap at least 3 for this one, at sorcery speed. These are safe cards? This is a mirror; you don't outscale your opponent and not dying doesn't give you the win. In fact, with no Entreat, they outscale you.
This is coming from a guy who always plays the least amount of win conditions in Control mirrors. I even refused to run Ętherling in Standard, from the start. But Ętherling is ludicrous to try and resolve in post-board games, similar to Keranos. Entreat is actually easier to land than a Jace, assuming you eventually Brainstorm in your 10-15 turn mirror match. If you take identical lists and give one guy 2 Entreat, and the other guy 2 Explosives post board, do you really think the Explosives guy has a higher win %? Threats are inherently better than answers in even matchups, unless the answer is somehow extremely efficient, or something else special. Judgment is a crappy Red Blast and Explosives is so inefficient and clunky I get mad most the time I draw it. Do I play it for 0, early on? Then they can just shuffle their Entreat away and I'm down a card. Do I hold onto it? Entreat kills at instant speed when the game goes long. Guess I hold onto it so I can kill a future Counterbal...oh wait, I just drew my own...
But maybe that's just me. I'm not claiming I'm a pro with this deck.
Top 8ed sundaya 96 people tournament with Einherjer's list -1 Snapcaster +1 Vendilion (Maindeckl -1 Vendilion +1 Sulfur Elemental (Sb) my girlfriend and another guy with our identical decklist and sideboarding plans both ended up losing the win and in (my gf screwed it up misplaying).
I made a misplay because i didn't know how keranos worked properly causing my only non - won ( draw) of the swiss.
Brace yourselves, report is coming
Really thx to Einherjer for the effort he put ulon writing the miracles primer
A lot. To know when to go for it or when to shuffle it away and how to setup it. You have to analyze the gamestate and figure out if it's good and how you want to use it.
You make some good points but Explosives is the most reliable answer one can have to Countertop in the mirror, because you can play it for 4 and 5 and it deals with multiple CB on your opp side. If both players have Countertop and nothing else there's no need to play Explosives.
As i said before the numbers of Entreat postboard depends on your 75. Stuff like Explosives, Councils Judgement etc. are better the majority of time.
It is the Counterbalance that will win you the mirror. Who cares what is going to happen 7 turns later? What is he going to do with all those Ponders, Branstorms, Casters you will counter? Most importatnt is the cc2. Counter as many spells as possible but focus on his CB. He wont even get that many lands I am afraid to make Entreat all that good. And when he will go for it all you need is a Clique, Counterspell, Fow - you can counter his counters with the CB. Assuming this will be the turn 10+ you will have everything by then. You can kill him easily with Snapcaster like we usually do with the CB lock.
Has anyone tried out a snapcaster mage in the sideboard? I really like it in my current build (2 snapcasters main). The best cards in each matchup are either stp, brainstorm, reb or other sideboard cards. G1 I think we don't have enough targets for more than 2 snapcasters and I don't think more ponders would make any difference as flashing those back are pretty bad.
I find flashing back ponder is aggressive, but not necessarily bad. I wouldn't do it turn 3 unless I 100% had no other choice, which is a bad situation to be in, but to me it seems like a great way to get early filtering and a late game deck shuffle. Snap in the board has crossed my mind but IMO we want to keep the main deck as generic as possible, and keep the cards in the sideboard as soely matchup improvers. Thus, I'd say either keep 3 in the MD, or cut one for something else (Clique perhaps?). Snapcaster adds consistency and a clock at the same time, and I don't think that's good "board tech"
I don't think I'd ever run terminus, but I have 2 copies of EE that come in in some quantity. My point earlier was that I'd cut them before cutting Entreat.
I used to run 1 in the board; the card gets so much better post-board. It seems awkward but I liked it. I only had 1 maindeck at that point, though.
What are people's thoughts of being on the draw against BGx decks? Online it's been pretty amazing, but the first time I tried it at the DC Open, I got smashed in games 2 and 3 by a t2 Shardless into blind Ancestral. Is the t2 play so powerful that I should fear it in this circumstance or would it still be correct to play on the draw those games?
I would imagine that third color matters quite a bit. Either way, you should still be on the play unless some bit of wisdom has drastically changed (in which case, my apologies.) The extra card isn't worth being behind a half turn.
Ein's article describes Turn 2-3 is around "the fundamental turn." Getting to yours sooner is good. You have a full extra turn to set up terminus or CounterTop. Compare this to being on the play where you've only Ponder'd/Topp'd and your opponent has a 3 turn clock on the board (Goyf + DRS.)
IIRC, there is specifically one deck in legacy that still chooses to be on the draw correctly, which is manaless dredge.
EDIT:
If that's not your question; I'd go back to my first statement. That third color tells the thread whether you're going to deal with equipped creatures and lingering souls, whether you're dealing with a deck that can reliably eat Jace and creatures, or a deck that is trying to blow you out with CA from Visions/Shardless, etc..
Being on the draw means that they will have the opportunity to discard the Brainstorm or Top sitting in your hand. GBx matchups are not about out-carding them; it's about overpowering them.
Agree. Don't try anything fancy, just play more powerful spells. In my Esperdeathblade list i play 2 Grave Titans for Jund/Shardless BUG. They can have Tarmogoyf, Deathrite, Liliana and Decay in their hand. My Grave Titan beats all of them. Same goes for Miracles, reach the lategame and play powerful cards they can't beat. It's not about card advantage mainly, it's about reaching the lategame without being virtual dead (because they have stuff like a Jace and a full hand, and you have nothing) or dieing before.
I would really like to find a spot for Lightning Bolt.
it works as well as a StP (often), but it reaches Planeswalkers too. It goes nuts with SnapMage
Lightning bolt has been discussed before. I don't personally like it because it makes you want to fetch a mountain or volcanic island very early in the game. I'd say Keranos is a better option for a lightning bolt effect, as it both does not require you to go find a red source early, and it can deal with multiple creatures and planeswalkers in the late game. Miracles has huge staying power, and can filter every draw with top, making it a solid option.
Swords is just better creature removal, as the life gain is negligable, and only requires one of our primary colors that we are already fetching for other spells in our deck.