Miracle Control

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Originally Posted by twndomn

And then Braverman played like <insert angry words here> in the final. Why didn't he use Clique to clear way for his Jace, instead of rushing his Jace to get it countered? Why did he feel the need to Snapcaster flashback a StP to target a Delver when he hasn't set-up CB-T? I understand it's like 1 am ET, but that was his rare opportunity, he seemed to just lose his patience.

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Yeah, not to diminish a second place finish because that was a great performance, but I am very confused about some of his plays. He played the first five or so turns of game one beautifully, playing around Daze and Pierce like a champ. Then with zero pressure against him, he almost arbitrarily seems to decide to just jam Jace when he has double Clique in hand? Needlessly aggressive doesn't even cover it.

Game three as well. REBing a Delver with Plow in hand is questionable enough against American, but leading with Volcanic Island and playing into Daze at the same time to do it? Likely that sequence lost him game three right there. Playing fetches/basics and taking two or three Delver hits is well worth playing around Daze/Pierce and Wasteland all at the same time. Still a great finish, but definitely some sloppy play in the finals.

I've been wondering what situations you don't want to play a top on turn 1, so this might make for some interesting discussion about a topic I don't think has been discussed much (if at all). Most things came up in testing and involved having a 1cc counterspell with a top in the opener. I found them to be particularly interesting, so hopefully you guys do too. Anyway, here are the scenarios that I can remember right now:

1) If you're on the draw and your opponent plays a (potential) blue source and passes, do you play top? If you only have fetches you probably shouldn't go for it since the opponent might have stifle. If you have a non-fetch land, then the main problem here is that you're likely running into a spell pierce. Does this decision change based on the rest of your hand?

2) You're against Sneak and Show on the draw. You have a good hand - Spell pierce, top, counterspell, Clique, 2 basics and 1 fetch. Do you play top right away, or do you play around the potential turn 2 Show and Tell off an ancient tomb? I'm inclined to believe you have to wait here, because if they have the show and tell you just lose, whereas you will be able to play top safely on turn 3 and have ways to disrupt them along the way still.

3) You're against Miracles on the draw. They led with a top. You have a top and spell pierce and 2 lands, but no force. Do you go for the top on turn 1? By doing this you play your top around pierces and counterspells and can start maximizing your mana/searching early. The risk is that if they have counterbalance, you're incredibly far behind. What would you guys do here? Does the rest of your hand influence your decisions? (Maybe you also have balance for example.)

If anybody else things of other interesting scenarios, I encourage you to add them to the discussion.

@ Valtrix...

Each of those situations is very dependent on the contents of your hand. Having access to a Force in situation 1 and 3 would certainly change my answer and also if I have access to brainstorm.

Not to mention are these game 1 situations where I know nothing about my opponent?

In situation 2 though, I would try to get a read on my opponent any way possible but assuming he gives no indication either way I would likely jam top straight away because every better draw brings victory a hair closer to your grasp.

In situation 1 you don't know what your opponent is on, but you know in the other matches. For 2 and 3 I specifically mentioned that you do not have force though, but it's good to also comment how the scenarios would change based on the rest of your hand. Sometimes these exercises can be difficult to answer though because the entire hand really can dictate your line of plays. But regardless, I think that most people would probably just want to jam top right away (I usually do), so I thought it was important to think about some times when we might not want to based on my own playtesting experiences.

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Originally Posted by Valtrix

If anybody else things of other interesting scenarios, I encourage you to add them to the discussion.

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You can come up with infinite number of scenarios, based on what you know about your opponents. Therefore, it's overly complicated to go over them. Should start with unknown opponent.

Against unknown opponent with no information available, there're only 2 scenarios:

1. You play first, you have 7 opening cards, at least 2 lands and at least 1 of the 2 can find or produce blue, 1 Top, 1 one-cmc counter, no FoW.

2. You play second, you have 7 opening cards, at least 2 lands and at least 1 of the 2 can find or produce blue, 1 Top, 1 one-cmc counter, no FoW.

These restrictions would leave mulligan issue aside, double karakas/plains out. Having FoW and a blue card makes your decision simpler. Once those issues are not in discussion, look at these 2 scenarios closely.

The underlying question is the possibility of your opponent combo off turn 1. Sure, there are several horrible things can happen on your opponent's turn 1.

1. He's on Oops-all-spell (Undercity Informer / Balustrade Spy)
2. He's on Tin-Fin (Griselbrand storm)
3. He's on Belcher
4. He doesn't play a land, or he goes land, breakthrough.

Other turn 1 combo decks have much lower probability. Yes, storm could win turn 1, but I personally would lean toward turn 2. Other than turn 1 combo, another annoying turn 1 play is: Sol-land (ancient tomb), Chalice for 1. Turn 1: land, Aether vial. Feel free to add more annoying turn 1 plays.

Now we have the context, I go over my take. Given the above context, if I play first, I am willing to take the chance and do land-top. The reasoning is the mathematical distribution. Say you are a combo player, will I be the unlucky guy in which you dump the turn-1 nut on? How many turn-1 nut draw do you get in a day of tournament? In all likelihood, I don't believe you'll have it right then and there. If I play second, I will almost always do: land, go. This is because you gain a lot of information from your opponent's land, or no land at all. Oftentimes, from the information I've gained, I don't want to play Top anymore.

Assuming you don't know what your opponent is on, I would jam t1 Top every time on the play. On the draw, you should be able to pick up a lot of information just based on what land they play. If they play a Blue land or any Blue fetch and pass then I am unlikely to go for it. Daze is not something I want to play into and Spell Pierce is fairly likely from just about any Blue deck.

There are quite a few t1 plays that will alert me to what they are playing. For example...

T1 Underground, Tropical Island, or Tundra into a Ponder is probably one of the Delver decks.
A Volcanic Island into a Ponder either means Delver or Sneak and Show.
An Island into a Ponder is probably Sneak and Show, but could also be some other combo deck (doubtful to see a Daze).
Anything into Preordain is almost certainly a Storm deck of some sort (again, most important is that it likely won't have Daze).

So if I do know what they are playing or have an idea of what they are playing then I will always play around Pierce/Daze. If I'm pretty sure that I won't be Pierced or Dazed, then there are really only two times that I won't play Top on t1.

If I know they play discard, I have a Brainstorm in hand, and I have something else besides the Top that I want to protect. For example, I'm playing against ANT and my hand is Island, Tundra, Polluted Delta, REB, Brainstorm, Counterbalance, Top. Playing T1 Top exposes my Counterbalance to any discard, leaving me pretty empty. Likely I will play out the Tundra and pass, although now I'm pretty committed to Brainstorming some time during their turn (either in response to discard or just EoT) because I have to hide my Top so that I can play Counterbalance on t2 (otherwise I'll just be in the same situation again). It's also important that I had two Blue lands so that I could cast Counterbalance without fetching away the Top.

The second reason is much simpler. If I know that I'm playing against a very quick combo deck and have one mana permission in my hand (REB, Pierce, Flusterstorm, etc) and no other way to interact then I'll wait to play the Top. The downside of this is that against Sneak and Show if I don't play Top t1 then I'm probably unable to play it until t3 (when I can again play around their Pierce), so if I do have another way to interact (FoW, Venser, ORing, Karakas, etc) then I will probably just snap off the Top anyways.

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Originally Posted by Dzra

If I know they play discard, I have a Brainstorm in hand, and I have something else besides the Top that I want to protect. For example, I'm playing against ANT and my hand is Island, Tundra, Polluted Delta, REB, Brainstorm, Counterbalance, Top. Playing T1 Top exposes my Counterbalance to any discard, leaving me pretty empty. Likely I will play out the Tundra and pass, although now I'm pretty committed to Brainstorming some time during their turn (either in response to discard or just EoT) because I have to hide my Top so that I can play Counterbalance on t2 (otherwise I'll just be in the same situation again). It's also important that I had two Blue lands so that I could cast Counterbalance without fetching away the Top.

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While I agree with you on most points, i would start different in this case.
If i see REB in my opening hand when I know my opponent is on Storm, i am leading with the fetch T1 on the play to be able to REB his first cantrip and have access to Brainstorm against T1 Discard.
Not sure which line of play is better, but i feel like REB doesn't gain much value later on.

The only problem with that is let's say your opponent goes t1 cantrip and you REB. Now do you play t2 Counterbalance or t2 Top? T2 Counterbalance puts your Top at risk to discard, while t2 Top might mean that you just die when they untap. None of the scenarios are totally cut and dry, but I feel that landing Counterbalance and Top is the priority here. Now I mean if you don't have a Counterbalance or something else important to do for t2, then by all means REB t1 and Top t2 might be your best plan. REB is nice and catches cantrips and Chain of Vapors, but there's always a pretty fair chance that they don't even need to cast any cantrips to just kill you.

In that case, in my following turn going land + Top seems right to me.
You still have a land open to brainstorm against potential discard, and if they dont you can just top.
I never think that tapping out for a blind Counterbalance is worth it, so that following line is kind of clear to me.
If they try to kill you on turn 2 your best bet is to dig for force, even tough its not much.

Going for T1 Top, T2 Balance is also fine, but it happened to me alot of the time that my CB got discarded.

played in a small local tournament last night, went 3-1. no prizes or anything, just for fun. i have a more important tournament coming up (with a big prize) so i am looking for suggestions.

here is the list i ran:

list

4 brainstorm
4 swords to plowshares
3 counterspell
1 spell pierce
4 force of will
4 terminus
2 entreat the angels

4 Sensei's divining top
3 counterbalance

1 snapcaster mage
3 Vendilion clique
1 Venser

3 Jace

37 spells

6 islands
3 plains
3 tundra
1 volcanic island
2 karakas
4 flooded strand
1 polluted delta
1 scalding tarn
1 arid mesa
1 march flats

23 land

sideboard

1 entreat the angels
1 spell pierce
1 disenchant
1 pithing needle
1 engineered explosives
1 moat
1 celestial purge
1 humility
2 rest in peace
2 flusterstorm
1 batterskull
1 enlightened tutor
1 back to basics

counterspell is my hero, so often i did almost nothing for the first couple of turns that is was always a good card.

my sideboard - moat, batterskull and enlightened tutor are probably on their way out.

1st matchup was sneakshow. we went to 3 games, mostly i just frustrated him with lots of counters. venser worked well with show and tell to seal the final game. 1-0

2nd matchup was elves. swords/terminus lots of elves, countered the few bad spells. won in 2. 2-0

3rd matchup was death and taxes. this gave me a problem. first game i was doing well, but i made a critical mistake. he continuously tapped down my 2 plains during my upkeep and i made the mistake of NOT using the top to draw my topdeck entreats/terminus in response. instead, i just drew said cards and they were dead. won't make that mistake again. back to basics almost saved me here, but it came too late. second game was really bad, his first 3 plays were aether vial, pithing needle calling top and revoker calling jace. i had 1 jace in play and 1 in my hand and died...guess i should have sided them out. 2-1

4th matchup was pox. counterbalance+top+jace won both games. 3-1

A couple of questions:

1) We have such great cards vs creatures in terminus and swords to plowshares (especially terminus of course). i'd like something similar in the sideboard that deals with other card types. disenchant is nice, but it is a 1 for 1. anyone run something like hurkyl's recall or capsize or devastation tide? maybe nevinyrral's disk? venser is one way of doing this, but he requires karakas. seems like everyone had pithing needle in their sideboard, i want to be able to deal with it.

2) I didn't get the chance to practice against any storm/belcher/turn1win decks. Does my list look properly prepared for that?

all advise is appreciated.

martyrX

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Originally Posted by martyrX

played in a small local tournament last night, went 3-1. no prizes or anything, just for fun. i have a more important tournament coming up (with a big prize) so i am looking for suggestions.

here is the list i ran:

list

4 brainstorm
4 swords to plowshares
3 counterspell
1 spell pierce
4 force of will
4 terminus
2 entreat the angels

4 Sensei's divining top
3 counterbalance

1 snapcaster mage
3 Vendilion clique
1 Venser

3 Jace

37 spells

6 islands
3 plains
3 tundra
1 volcanic island
2 karakas
4 flooded strand
1 polluted delta
1 scalding tarn
1 arid mesa
1 march flats

23 land

sideboard

1 entreat the angels
1 spell pierce
1 disenchant
1 pithing needle
1 engineered explosives
1 moat
1 celestial purge
1 humility
2 rest in peace
2 flusterstorm
1 batterskull
1 enlightened tutor
1 back to basics

counterspell is my hero, so often i did almost nothing for the first couple of turns that is was always a good card.

my sideboard - moat, batterskull and enlightened tutor are probably on their way out.

1st matchup was sneakshow. we went to 3 games, mostly i just frustrated him with lots of counters. venser worked well with show and tell to seal the final game. 1-0

2nd matchup was elves. swords/terminus lots of elves, countered the few bad spells. won in 2. 2-0

3rd matchup was death and taxes. this gave me a problem. first game i was doing well, but i made a critical mistake. he continuously tapped down my 2 plains during my upkeep and i made the mistake of NOT using the top to draw my topdeck entreats/terminus in response. instead, i just drew said cards and they were dead. won't make that mistake again. back to basics almost saved me here, but it came too late. second game was really bad, his first 3 plays were aether vial, pithing needle calling top and revoker calling jace. i had 1 jace in play and 1 in my hand and died...guess i should have sided them out. 2-1

4th matchup was pox. counterbalance+top+jace won both games. 3-1

A couple of questions:

1) We have such great cards vs creatures in terminus and swords to plowshares (especially terminus of course). i'd like something similar in the sideboard that deals with other card types. disenchant is nice, but it is a 1 for 1. anyone run something like hurkyl's recall or capsize or devastation tide? maybe nevinyrral's disk? venser is one way of doing this, but he requires karakas. seems like everyone had pithing needle in their sideboard, i want to be able to deal with it.

2) I didn't get the chance to practice against any storm/belcher/turn1win decks. Does my list look properly prepared for that?

all advise is appreciated.

martyrX

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I've never seen three vendilion clique's main--I've more commonly seen 2, and I personally feel like that is too many mainboard when I'm using it in my test gauntlet. 22 lands seems to be the industry standard, though I think some of the top players have been pushing down towards 21. So I'd probably cut the 2nd karakas, a clique, and a marsh flats for a 2nd spell pierce and two ponders. As far as options against non-creature boardstates, I have to ask--what are you facing down that's doing that? Most decks that commit a bunch to the board typically don't have the card advantage engine, so 1 for 1's aren't necessarily bad in that regard. Turn one pithing needle would probably be fairly annoying against miracles, but I have no experience with that since I never board it against miracles for most decks I run through my gauntlet. as far as t1 win decks, the only way to beat the true all-in decks is force of will on the draw and spell pierce/flusterstorm on the play, but that's really only a couple of decks: cheerio's, Spanish inquisition, TES, Belcher and Oops all spells variants (balustrade spy decks). Anything else that nuts you turn 1 is pretty much that, a nuts draw, and a counterbalance lock is generally enough to win the other combo matchups. And TES going off turn 1 is usually goblin tokens, so you have a turn or two to dig for an answer.

I wouldn't cut the enlightened tutor, because the virtual 2nd copies of humility and back to basics and the virtual 3rd of rest in peace are very, very strong against the appropriate decks. Speaking of which, I'm assuming you boarded humility against Death and Taxes, because that card hurts them real bad. Locally, one guy at the shop I play at runs an oblivion stone and an academy ruins as his 22nd land, but he's also mainboard 3 entreats and no cliques, only a pair of snapcasters and a venser.

Three Cliques is fairly standard for a lot of lists, especially in the 23-land, double-Karakas lists. The main thing that I don't like has to do with the Red splash, which is basically absent. Marsh Flats cannot fetch Volcanic Island, which might not be too relevant now, but it will be relevant when you realize that you should add a second Volcanic (or a Mountain) and REBs in the SB. I won't go into it too much because it's been talked about at least infinite times, but REBs are honestly worth main decking in many cases and I would never even consider leaving without them in the SB at least. The counter split of 3 Counterspells and 1 Pierce is definitely not standard, but I can live with that. You really want the REBs though.

Yeah wouldn't a second Arid Mesa be almost strictly better? I doubt many people will be surgicaling your fetch lands or Pithing needle naming them when you have much jucier targets for those abilities

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Originally Posted by Dzra

Three Cliques is fairly standard for a lot of lists, especially in the 23-land, double-Karakas lists. The main thing that I don't like has to do with the Red splash, which is basically absent. Marsh Flats cannot fetch Volcanic Island, which might not be too relevant now, but it will be relevant when you realize that you should add a second Volcanic (or a Mountain) and REBs in the SB. I won't go into it too much because it's been talked about at least infinite times, but REBs are honestly worth main decking in many cases and I would never even consider leaving without them in the SB at least. The counter split of 3 Counterspells and 1 Pierce is definitely not standard, but I can live with that. You really want the REBs though.

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I wasn't aware that there was a standard for double karakas-23 lands lists. The miracles list I have in my gauntlet is basically einherjer's list, with the variance being whether I playtest g2/g3 scenarios with a stonforge mystic package like PVDDR's list or with einherjer's more typical board plans. I didn't even notice the volcanic, when I saw no blasts anywhere I basically assumed he was straight UW miracles. But yeah, especially considering that, you should have blasts and the full set of flooded strands and a 3/3 split on arid mesa's and scalding tarns.

I finally settled on a topic for my MTG Madness - article. I'll write about the Miracle variant I played at the GP, take a look at the parts that worked very well, aswell as at the parts that could need some reworking. Finally I will present my new list that should be superior to my GP-Paris one, which I thought would be the best one. :D

In case anybody of you fellow Miracle-players is going to BoM, let me know via PM and I might share my newest list with you :)

Greetings

the list is UW with a tiny tiny r, the only reason i am running a volcanic is for engineered explosives. it could have just as easily been an underground sea. when i playtest with reb, i find the manabase screws me. 2 plains 2 islands 1 mountain...that is a lot to gather. i prefer to fetch basics whenever i can, wasteland is everywhere and this deck wants all the reliable mana you can give it. that being said i'm sure regulars here know better than I, so i'll give it another go. perhaps the decks that i want REB for don't disrupt our manabase too badly?

i'm not a fan spell pierce...to me it is a kind of necessary evil. often it is dead and i wish it was counterspell instead. thus the 3/1 split and i've been considering replacing it with misdirection, maybe this is where i introduce REB. of course vs early game shenanigans i'll load up on the soft counters.

regarding non-creature boardstate - not totally non-creature, but the death and taxes player had a pithing needle (top), aether vial and phyrexian revoker (jace). it was bad and there was little i could do, i had counterbalance on board...hurkyl's recall would have been helpful.

regarding fetches, my selection is a matter of what i currently own. i shall upgrade as advised.

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Originally Posted by amalek0

I wasn't aware that there was a standard for double karakas-23 lands lists. The miracles list I have in my gauntlet is basically einherjer's list, with the variance being whether I playtest g2/g3 scenarios with a stonforge mystic package like PVDDR's list or with einherjer's more typical board plans. I didn't even notice the volcanic, when I saw no blasts anywhere I basically assumed he was straight UW miracles. But yeah, especially considering that, you should have blasts and the full set of flooded strands and a 3/3 split on arid mesa's and scalding tarns.

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Yea, I think that is close to the list that joe lossett runs. that build runs 3 cliques and 2 karakas'

Joe Bernal is on camera with Esper Miracles, I wonder why he chose that route.

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Originally Posted by HSCK

Joe Bernal is on camera with Esper Miracles, I wonder why he chose that route.

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It's atrocious, of course Painter won that match. There's nothing to wonder about it, it's an Esper Stoneblade deck disguising itself by throwing in some Miracle cards and Counterblanace Tops to it. It's wishy-washy half-baked. There's an Esper Stoneblade top 32 from SCG Seattle by Gaudio, Bernal would have been better off just play that build.

So I went to SCG Milwaukee yesterday. I ended up playing punishing miracles. I went 5-3-1 unfortunately, but all my non-wins were my fault. I played against UWR delver (W), Pod Nic Fit (W), Death and Taxes (L), BUG Control(D), Esperblade(W), BUG control (D, my Jace needed 5 more turns to win from ult, sad day), UW Miracles (W), Omnishow (L). I haven't had any local legacy for two years, so I only get to play (real) legacy about once every 4 months. It's pretty hard to keep up mechanically with this style of deck without getting to play much. On the bright side, I won a box at an 8-man win-a-box the day before! My list is below.

// Lands
3 [ZEN] Arid Mesa
4 [FUT] Grove of the Burnwillows
3 [A] Tundra
2 [R] Volcanic Island
1 [PC2] Plains (5)
4 [ON] Flooded Strand
3 [IN] Island (1)
1 [A] Plateau
2 [ZEN] Scalding Tarn

// Creatures
2 [MOR] Vendilion Clique
2 [WWK] Stoneforge Mystic

// Spells
3 [CS] Counterbalance
4 [CMD] Punishing Fire
4 [CHK] Sensei's Divining Top
2 [BRB] Swords to Plowshares
4 [FNM] Brainstorm
4 [AL] Force of Will
3 [ZEN] Spell Pierce
4 [V13] Jace, the Mind Sculptor
3 [AVR] Terminus
1 [NPH] Batterskull
1 [AVR] Entreat the Angels

// Sideboard
SB: 1 [MOR] Vendilion Clique
SB: 1 [BRB] Swords to Plowshares
SB: 3 [4E] Red Elemental Blast
SB: 1 [RTR] Rest in Peace
SB: 1 [DKA] Grafdigger's Cage
SB: 1 [M10] Pithing Needle
SB: 1 [MM] Misdirection
SB: 1 [RTR] Detention Sphere
SB: 1 [CH] Blood Moon
SB: 2 [ARE] Enlightened Tutor
SB: 1 [TE] Humility
SB: 1 [IA] Pyroblast

I was incredibly happy with the list all day. It performed incredibly well and I had so many powerful things to do. Fire/groves was an all-star and I was incredibly happy that I ran it. Pretty much every game revolved around fire/groves dominating the board state. It destroyed Jaces and Lilianas all day, as well as almost all creatures. With normal miracles I'm pretty scared of walkers resolving, but they just didn't do anything against me yesterday after they resolved. In fact, this was one of the main draws for me running fire/groves. My deck has a weaker game against unfair decks G1 because I'm a bit heavy on the creature removal, although I felt pretty comfortable post board with the amount of hate that I could bring in. Groves actually got there for lethal damage one game, and I won about half my games with Jace and the other half with Batterskull. I didn't ever need to use Entreat except vs. Miracles (and then it got hit with Terminus anyway). That said, I was happy to have it and the extra 3 was actually really relevant for balance several times.

Anyway, I took some notes and I'll get to writing a real report (even if my play mistakes are embarrassing) soon, but I have to finish a paper today first.