Miracle Control

1) Did you just take "MTGO" to describe "real games"?

2) Given that we are discussing 4cc-boms out of the SB it's inevitable to compare it to Jace and I don't see how Chandra advances your gameplan in any state where a wide range of other options isn't clearly better.

3) How does Humility make sense in a deck that opts to kill with 4/4 flying Angels? Moat is a million times better...

4) "Funny" is that you take "an Enlightend Tutor in the MB" to justify running an enchantment/Artifact toolbox in the SB

Lemnear 0 - Polish Tamales 1

1) Did you just take "MTGO" to describe "real games"?
How about Oarsman's SCG Open recordings? Is that good enough for you?

2) 3) 4)
"Funny, that never really happens in real games. Just saying. I've watched enough Oarsman streams to know it's never that simple, otherwise he'd be 4-0 every time. I haven't found games to be straight forward and simple like that." Polish Tamales has already answered that.

I think really Miracle's list need to drop counterbalance lock.

Just watching on that event http://www.mtgtop8.com/event?e=5637&d=232677 : 2 Miracle top 8 and 0 counterbalance.

The card is bad versus decay/vial.dec. The right place for CB is in sideboard now : like Raphael Lévy did it at GP strasbourg.

What do you think about that ?

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Originally Posted by twndomn

Lemnear 0 - Polish Tamales 1

1) Did you just take "MTGO" to describe "real games"?
How about Oarsman's SCG Open recordings? Is that good enough for you?

2) 3) 4)
"Funny, that never really happens in real games. Just saying. I've watched enough Oarsman streams to know it's never that simple, otherwise he'd be 4-0 every time. I haven't found games to be straight forward and simple like that." Polish Tamales has already answered that.

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Oh, did Oarsman run Chandra and dropped a line about Humility during the stream? Never heared that watching Bryant Cook makes you an TES expert at itself...


@no Counterbalance
You'll just loose to storm, Burn, Zoo and other crap. Getting CB decayed is only a problem of you try to be the Hardcore-control-deck without a way to swing the pendulum

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Originally Posted by Lemnear

1) Did you just take "MTGO" to describe "real games"?

2) Given that we are discussing 4cc-boms out of the SB it's inevitable to compare it to Jace and I don't see how Chandra advances your gameplan in any state where a wide range of other options isn't clearly better.

3) How does Humility make sense in a deck that opts to kill with 4/4 flying Angels? Moat is a million times better...

4) "Funny" is that you take "an Enlightend Tutor in the MB" to justify running an enchantment/Artifact toolbox in the SB

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Yo, I didn't post here for a dick measuring contest. Back off, especially with this Min/Max bullshit when we all know there's several builds for this deck and there hasn't been a finalized list everyone agrees upon to net deck.

Sides your rep as a Storm player... what is your rep exactly? Right, a local Storm player in Europe. Ok, Cause Reid Duke started off in MTGO and look where he is now. A lot of pro players use MTGO as a testing grounds, so I wouldn't exactly talk shit about the community there.

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Originally Posted by Polish Tamales

Yo, I didn't post here for a dick measuring contest. Back off, especially with this Min/Max bullshit when we all know there's several builds for this deck and there hasn't been a finalized list everyone agrees upon to net deck.

Sides your rep as a Storm player... what is your rep exactly? Right, a local Storm player in Europe. Ok, Cause Reid Duke started off in MTGO and look where he is now. A lot of pro players use MTGO as a testing grounds, so I wouldn't exactly talk shit about the community there.

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Reid Duke didn't make his name in a format that is comletely warped and almost non-existent on MTGO.

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Originally Posted by YamiJoey

Reid Duke didn't make his name in a format that is comletely warped and almost non-existent on MTGO.

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He got his start there with the basics and deck building theories. He does have decent runs here in the states when he does brew Legacy lists for SCG events, streaming on MTGO and articles, so I wouldn't discredit a player with strong fundamentals in most sanctioned formats that includes Standard/Modern/Legacy, something not many people here in the forums can say.

As for Legacy's lack of presence on MTGO, it's a smaller community than say some parts of Europe and folks in the Mid-East in the States, but there's more higher level players there than your typical first round opponent at an SCG event.

On the topic of Land Tax + Scroll Rack, LSV recently posted a series of videos where he plays a UWb Tax-Rack style Miracles deck on MTGO:
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list...86xSgCiwVj2PWs
The decklist seemed pretty bad, but the Tax-Rack engine was impressive at times. At the end of the series though it seems that the deck wasn't as strong as a regular UWx Miracles deck, but possibly worth testing 1-5 slots in an Enlightened Tutor build. What does everyone else think?

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Originally Posted by Jimp

On the topic of Land Tax + Scroll Rack, LSV recently posted a series of videos where he plays a UWb Tax-Rack style Miracles deck on MTGO:
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list...86xSgCiwVj2PWs
The decklist seemed pretty bad, but the Tax-Rack engine was impressive at times. At the end of the series though it seems that the deck wasn't as strong as a regular UWx Miracles deck, but possibly worth testing 1-5 slots in an Enlightened Tutor build. What does everyone else think?

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It's difficult to say. It's really slow to set up from the videos. I'm not sure how his games will be against more aggressive lists, but once he gets where he wants, it locks up the game most of the time.

I didn't like his playstyle. It didn't exactly speak to get control, win game. He durdled around a lot more than I think I would have in his place. He didn't even recognize the uses of Daze within the build right at first. Anyone besides Lemnear testing Tithe? How's that going for ya, Lem? Still good results, or has it plateau'ed?

-ABC

Moving on; I've recently upped to my additional Fetchland, and I'm loving it. After having some more practice against Maverick so I can learn to play around Thalia, I realised just how good Teeg was against us. I always assumed it was just annoying, but it's game-breaking. Especially with the Mum he had out at the time. I may look into playong a second Karakas somewhere. If I do, then I might want to find room for some Cliques to help with the combo MU, too. (And against some slower decks it's just sweet to pick a dead Top with them.)

I've also cut back to 4 FoW main, and just the 1 Misdirection in the board, but I'm still not sure about any of it. Against Decay I want two MD's, but against everything else I hate them, and I'm just running out of room in the board at this point.

Also I'm currently playing Ethersworn Canonist as a Storm disruptor. Should there be another card I am aware of, because it seems pretty loose?

As for Cannonist, other things Storm hates that this deck runs are CB (obviously), RiP, Flusterstorm, Mindbreak Trap (this one gets a lot of flak, mainly because it's usefulness is limited). I don't know how helpful this is, but just in case, you know?

Oh yeah, hang on to your Brainstorms, too. They save you from discard and stuff. Also, if I had a dollar for every time someone BSed into a FoW when I tried to combo off in desperation, I'd have enough to buy one of my very own.

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Originally Posted by twndomn

The ridiculousness ends here. Why am I not surprised that a guy from Paris and a German guy quoting a European tournament result and worshipping another European named Levy?

You European Miracle players cut corners, that's a fact. You guys cheat. You completely ditched Rest in Peace, try to join the bandwagon of graveyard utilization by Snapcaster Mage. Some of Europeans cheat less by having RiP in the SB, but the info you posted had 1 Relic, O-N-E. Yes, in a smaller localized meta filled with non-dredge combo decks, Snapcaster is fine. However, stop applying that as the universal truth, when clearly lots of people don't care what's going on in your European cities.

Then, you two Europeans again try to use the same fallacy on Counterbalance.

I am not dismissing Levy or that Biava guy blindly. I am sure they've made some intelligent choices based on their local meta, arriving at the conclusion that Snapcaster is a go and Counterbalnce is no-go, as his approach to his LGS. You two are parading your European builds way out of proportion. At your rate, you might as well evangelize your European builds on TV, type Spanish or French in other European Legacy websites or something.

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I expect you to talk about Klaus as "german guy" here, because I wasn't ever talking about Euro tournaments, Levy or to ditch Counterbalance.

I'll ignore the whole trans-atlantic-hate nonsense here and don't think that Snapcaster is still a valid option in Miracles with all the RIP, DRS and Ooze in the metagame blanking it. I, for myself only run RIP in the side and cut all the Enlightend Tutor stuff because I had recurring issues with the card disadvantage and the still questionable toolbox-characteristics. RIP in MB is a metagame decision which isn't fitting for the current metagame I face.

Get a grip on yourself.

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Originally Posted by Secretly.A.Bee

I didn't like his playstyle. It didn't exactly speak to get control, win game. He durdled around a lot more than I think I would have in his place. He didn't even recognize the uses of Daze within the build right at first. Anyone besides Lemnear testing Tithe? How's that going for ya, Lem? Still good results, or has it plateau'ed?

-ABC

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Tax + Rack was a lot of durdling as I tested it myself. To make it short: It's slow as hell and I noticed that you can't afford skipping landdrops or such just to turn on Land Tax aside the fact, that Tax is too easy to manipulate from your opponents. Tithe however takes much less slots and is really filthy with fetchlands if you crack those, keep priority and play Tithe in response digging up 2 Tundras or Plains near every fucking time without meaningful restrictions for pure cardadvantage

If you are not that greedy (against Daze 4 example) it still ups my Virtual landcount and ensures that I don't miss my first 4-5 landdrops, therefore I made those bold Statements about dropping Jace (you are able to ignore most taxing counters with that flurry of lands) and setting up quadruple Entreat to go stompy against almost all non-combo decks. For combo I still have the Counterbalance MB and to catch removal for Jace/Angels while locking out decks like Elves, RUG Delver and more.

I upped the count of Entreats because Counterbalance isn't able to control the game endless because of A.Decay and the more various manacosts of threats in the meta. You can't catch every Tarmogoyf, SFM, KotR or Clique even if you have Counterbalance + SDT active ... that's a sad fact, but I try to become less dependent on CB. I often see my Balance decayed eot and my opponents dropping Tarmogoyf, but rarely care if I make an Army of Angels in his end-step ;)



Edit: stacking SDT's mana-ability, then fetchland, next Tithe and finally SDT's draw ability is an insane interaction to get rid of additional Tops for value

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Originally Posted by YamiJoey

Also I'm currently playing Ethersworn Canonist as a Storm disruptor. Should there be another card I am aware of, because it seems pretty loose?

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Canonist really shines with Etutor as it is a proactive thing to Tutor for that is likely better than blind flipping Counterbalance against combo. Against Storm and Omnitell, it can buy you the time you need to either assemble Counterbalance + Top or Venser + Karakas, as either of those are pretty much hard locks with Canonist.

Also, I don't think dropping Counterbalance is anything close to a good idea. Counterbalance is unreliable against Abrupt Decay. That's it. In almost every other MU, it is amazing. Abrupt Decay decks generally fold to Entreat. Counterbalance and Entreat are both good cards. They do not have to be exclusive.

Funny enough, I talked with a friend of mine about Miracles yesterday because he was playing Miracles without Counterbalance.
I think this is a mistake. Even though Miracles itself is a bad Counterbalance deck per se, it's still necessary to generate cardadvantage, needless to say that it changes the opponent's lines of play to your favor.

Furthermore I believe that Counterbalance is one reason why you don't get wrecked by Elfball (although they now run Abrupt Decay to deal with it) beside Terminus. And yes, it happened that my friend got destroyed two times by Mono Red Burn due to the lack of Counterbalance.

I'd thus conclude that 4 Terminus and 4 Counterbalances are mandatory in your 75 (4 MD or 3 MD, 1 SB, that's what I'd do for both cards depending on the meta).

The part about Humility vs. Moat is tricky, there really is no way to tell which card is unconditionally good. In a meta with a lot of SneakShow and Reanimator, Humility is clearly superior as it blanks Snow and Tell into obesities very well.
Mind that Entreat the Angels still behaves like Decree of Justice under Humility which is very good still.

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Originally Posted by Adan

Funny enough, I talked with a friend of mine about Miracles yesterday because he was playing Miracles without Counterbalance.
I think this is a mistake. Even though Miracles itself is a bad Counterbalance deck per se, it's still necessary to generate cardadvantage, needless to say that it changes the opponent's lines of play to your favor.

Furthermore I believe that Counterbalance is one reason why you don't get wrecked by Elfball (although they now run Abrupt Decay to deal with it) beside Terminus. And yes, it happened that my friend got destroyed two times by Mono Red Burn due to the lack of Counterbalance.

I'd thus conclude that 4 Terminus and 4 Counterbalances are mandatory in your 75 (4 MD or 3 MD, 1 SB, that's what I'd do for both cards depending on the meta).

The part about Humility vs. Moat is tricky, there really is no way to tell which card is unconditionally good. In a meta with a lot of SneakShow and Reanimator, Humility is clearly superior as it blanks Snow and Tell into obesities very well.
Mind that Entreat the Angels still behaves like Decree of Justice under Humility which is very good still.

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Good to see some constructive posts. :)

I agree some # of counterbalances belong, however I definitely don't think the number is 4, I personally have never wanted more than 2-3.

3 Terminus is also an entirely reasonable choice, depending on the meta. More people are prepared for it now, so having lots of sweepers is getting worse.

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Originally Posted by Adan

Furthermore I believe that Counterbalance is one reason why you don't get wrecked by Elfball (although they now run Abrupt Decay to deal with it) beside Terminus. And yes, it happened that my friend got destroyed two times by Mono Red Burn due to the lack of Counterbalance.

I'd thus conclude that 4 Terminus and 4 Counterbalances are mandatory in your 75 (4 MD or 3 MD, 1 SB, that's what I'd do for both cards depending on the meta).

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It's amazing how bad Miracle control is against burn without counterbalance.

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Originally Posted by DragoFireheart

It's amazing how bad Miracle control is against burn without counterbalance.

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I'd go a step further and say it's near horrible against anything that overloads on 1cc spells. That counts Zoo as well as storm. It's pointless to tune the deck against your round 5+ opponents if you lose your first 2 rounds to Kird Ape

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Originally Posted by Lemnear

I'd go a step further and say it's near horrible against anything that overloads on 1cc spells. That counts Zoo as well as storm. It's pointless to tune the deck against your round 5+ opponents if you lose your first 2 rounds to Kird Ape

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Yes. Even decks with Abrupt Decay it's still worth having as it forces them to use it on the CB. And we need it for Storm decks. 3 is probably the minimum and 4 for more combo heavy metas.

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Originally Posted by YamiJoey

Also I'm currently playing Ethersworn Canonist as a Storm disruptor. Should there be another card I am aware of, because it seems pretty loose?

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Ethersworn Canonist is the best card to deal with storm in the sideboard. The simple reason for this is that it provides a clock. No amount of storm hate really matters if there is no clock to back it up, since the storm player will have plenty of time to pile up more anti-hate and construct the perfect hand still. Let me repeat that, preventing your opponent from winning does not mean that you have won the game. Miracles is a slow deck, and thus needs this clock. Canonist puts the storm player on the defensive, and the combat damage it will do if unanswered can win you the game directly, or even just make it increasingly hard for your opponent to use Ad Nauseam to where they no longer will be able to combo off even if they deal with canonist. For this reason, there is really no other card that can take canonist's place.

Additionally, Canonist is very strong against decks that need to resolve one crucial spell and want to protect it with counters--Omnitell or even Reanimator for example. Canonist makes it so that if they try to resolve their key spell, then they are unable to protect it with counter(s) anymore. As with storm, it also provides a much needed clock to help close the game out faster. Really, don't underestimate how far a disruptive 2/2 can go with this deck (post sideboard, of course).

Since I kind of hate being so narrow in my sideboard cards, I like to supplement my hate with Enlightened Tutor. I usually run a minimum of 2x Tutor, 2x Canonist, and 2x Rest in Peace to have 4 must-answer cards against Storm and graveyard decks, while only using up 6 sideboard slots. You can run other artifacts/enchantments to take advantage of tutor as well, depending on what you might expect for the meta.

As for the counterbalance debate, you almost always want 4 between the main and sideboard. Counterbalance is great at single-handedly winning games against a lot of random decks you might face (burn, elves, anything not in the DTB section usually...). While it's usually not quite as powerful against the decks you'll run into at the top tables, in a medium to long tournament you need the power of counterbalance to dominate the random decks that you will run into. Even in the matches where counterbalance doesn't just win you the game, it almost never is going to do absolutely nothing for you; it should always get at least one spell, whether that's removal on the balance itself or just one good flip.

The main risk for counterbalance, in my eyes, is that it can sometimes feel too slow. This can be true, but really what this means is that it puts a slight design constraint on the lists we create. We need to make sure to have enough lower cc or tempo cards in order to not get bogged down with our counterbalances. And in general, I don't think this is a problem since the core of Miracles generally will have enough cards to handle the game until counterbalance can become relevant. As a result, counterbalance is a very low-risk card to run, while having a huge reward: namely, completely stealing games that otherwise would not be winnable.

From my experiences, these games where counterbalance will single handedly win you the game are a lot more than you might expect. It still surprises me how many games I steal with counterbalance, and whenever I doubt my choice of running them I simply think back to my last tournament and compare the times when balance was completely useless (almost never) to the times it straight up won games (almost always at least once in even small tournaments).

I do not like counterbalance in multiples though, so I am happy to run 3 in my mainboard with the 4th in the sideboard. It becomes even more powerful when running multiple enlightened tutors in the board, say with canonist as talked about above, since it gives you even more ways to access coutnerbalance in the matchups it really matters.