Miracle Control

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Originally Posted by Ghost588

It was great all day. I cannot wait to test it out more. I'm not sure how much I would like 4 mentors, or what to cut for them. I love having 3 snaps as my meta is very creature heavy. Having terminus and stp is a must.

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My instincts tell me that if you're playing 3-4 Mentors, Terminus is not as important or desirable. An unanswered mentor can glum up the board quite well.

I've been fooling around a little online with a 4 Mentor list, zero Terminus, zero Entreat, okay it's not really Miracles but Countertop Mentors. It's probably not quite right, but I really feel if you're that heavy on the mentor plan, Terminus just gets in the way. Unlike with Entreat, you usually can't just win with Mentor in 1-2 turns.

OTOH, if you're shaving mentors to say 2, I think some Terminus makes a lot more sense, since in that case you're looking to hold off on your mentor until you have control of the game, and Terminus helps establish that.

Am I crazy here?

Hey guys this is a question that I have had recently. With a good number of lands and BGx midrange decks locally I have started running 1 blood moon in the board. Now my question is do I bring blood moon in against delver? I mean it's good when it ends the game when I drop in early but it's obviously gonna be tough to resolve early and if I slam it late then do I really need it since I should be stabilizing in the late game and winning by then anyways? Also I know that blood moon is not worth bringing in vs d&t or goblins just for port but is it worth bringing in against infect since they only play one forest, it shuts off inkmoth and we can kill hierachs?

Also, I've read Phillipp's side boarding articles in the past and read about boarding counterbalance out vs shardless bug but he never really talked about Jund. Although they are similar decks Jace is definitely worse against Jund. So my question is do we board out CB like vs shardless or keep them in and try to overload targets? Also I have noticed people, including myself, playing less/no rip and grave hate overall and I was wondering how much you guys miss stuff like rip or relic vs BGx midrange and lands. Is the matchup basically the same or does it make a huge difference. Sorry if people have seen these same questions posted on this thread as I'm sure these are not uncommon questions but I really wanted to know everyone else's opinions. A final question though, how do you guys feel about the surgical extractions in lossett's current list?

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Originally Posted by ThanhHa

Hey guys this is a question that I have had recently. With a good number of lands and BGx midrange decks locally I have started running 1 blood moon in the board. Now my question is do I bring blood moon in against delver? I mean it's good when it ends the game when I drop in early but it's obviously gonna be tough to resolve early and if I slam it late then do I really need it since I should be stabilizing in the late game and winning by then anyways? Also I know that blood moon is not worth bringing in vs d&t or goblins just for port but is it worth bringing in against infect since they only play one forest, it shuts off inkmoth and we can kill hierachs?

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I think you've answered your own question. I don't see the value having Blood Moon against Delver, except maybe 4-color Delver. Most people would have needle in the SB, and then bring needle in against nexus. I doubt you have both needle and blood moon. Moon shuts down both Nexus and Pendlehaven.

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Originally Posted by ThanhHa

Also, I've read Phillipp's side boarding articles in the past and read about boarding counterbalance out vs shardless bug but he never really talked about Jund. Although they are similar decks Jace is definitely worse against Jund. So my question is do we board out CB like vs shardless or keep them in and try to overload targets? Also I have noticed people, including myself, playing less/no rip and grave hate overall and I was wondering how much you guys miss stuff like rip or relic vs BGx midrange and lands. Is the matchup basically the same or does it make a huge difference. Sorry if people have seen these same questions posted on this thread as I'm sure these are not uncommon questions but I really wanted to know everyone else's opinions. A final question though, how do you guys feel about the surgical extractions in lossett's current list?

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No, the MUs against BGx and lands are different, regardless graveyard hate or not. These MU are just different in the general sense when approaching. BUG Delver, Shardless BUG, Jund are all different.

Surgical is a versatile card. You can surgical for value in fair deck MUs, accidentally hurt Storm, and then ok against various graveyard decks. However, it is a frequently misused card.

Don't bring in blood moon against delver. Miracles has no problem locking delver decks out of games. We just need a little help from the SB to make us better at stabilizing against them.

It depends on your list, sometimes you can even leave CB in vs shardless. I usually take them out vs shardless though. Jund is different though. We need CB against them because of punishing fire mostly. Also, they have less ways to dig for answers to CB. Jund (and 4c loam) are the only decks in legacy where I am sad I do not run any GY hate and thats because they have both punishing fire and decays. Vs lands, we can lock them out with meddling mages and CB. Vs reanimator all our coutners, hatebears and CB are good. Vs dredge, we have a positive game 1 matchup vs them we don't really NEED GY hate to beat them.

I think surgical is fine if you use it correctly. I'd sooner play surgical than RIP in miracles.

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Originally Posted by matunos

My instincts tell me that if you're playing 3-4 Mentors, Terminus is not as important or desirable. An unanswered mentor can glum up the board quite well.

I've been fooling around a little online with a 4 Mentor list, zero Terminus, zero Entreat, okay it's not really Miracles but Countertop Mentors. It's probably not quite right, but I really feel if you're that heavy on the mentor plan, Terminus just gets in the way. Unlike with Entreat, you usually can't just win with Mentor in 1-2 turns.

OTOH, if you're shaving mentors to say 2, I think some Terminus makes a lot more sense, since in that case you're looking to hold off on your mentor until you have control of the game, and Terminus helps establish that.

Am I crazy here?

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No. That's pretty much how my games went. in testing i've had to use Terminus once while I had a mentor in play to make the game winnable for me. I still like my list. maybe I will drop down to one Entreat. I don't think I could ever remove it completely. It's so good it so many situations. Also, my meta is totally different so I had to adjust to it :)

I don't see why Joe is not posting this himself, other than the possibility that he's busy.

Anyway, if you're running a Miracle build that MD Red Blast effect, Cliques and Karakas, how do you SB? We know Philipp Schonegger has written like... dozen of articles on SB already, but that's for Ponder Miracles. So how different can they be?

Well, Joe published one this week. Rather than waiting for him on next week, if you're heading into a tournament this weekend, might want to read it.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/xmsagi7380...acles.pdf?dl=0

Well it's been about a year since I've played Legacy, but just getting back into it again. I see there's some new additions that everyone is running these days (I.e., Dig Through Time, Monastery Mentor, and Cavern of Souls).

Have people given up on Keranos and the Stoneforge package? Also, it looks like JtMS and Entreat have been getting cut :cry:

I'm trying to pick a list to stream on Twitch before making my own tweaks. Any suggestions?

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Originally Posted by princeofperasia

Well it's been about a year since I've played Legacy, but just getting back into it again. I see there's some new additions that everyone is running these days (I.e., Dig Through Time, Monastery Mentor, and Cavern of Souls).

Have people given up on Keranos and the Stoneforge package? Also, it looks like JtMS and Entreat have been getting cut :cry:

I'm trying to pick a list to stream on Twitch before making my own tweaks. Any suggestions?

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Keranos is pretty poor when every1 have access to REB.

SFM isn't really appealing when it get's trumped, hard, by Mentor.

Jace is still played in traditional miracles, just not mentor miracles.

EtA is poor compared to Mentor.

Has anyone done a decent amount of testing with the Mentor build? I've played around 6 or 7 matches on Cockatrice with it. It feels very strange and like it's missing something, but besides my 1-2 loss to BURG Delver. I haven't dropped a game yet with the deck. It is Cockatrice, though.

I'd love to hear the thoughts of other people who have played the deck.

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Originally Posted by Dat_Gentleman

Has anyone done a decent amount of testing with the Mentor build? I've played around 6 or 7 matches on Cockatrice with it. It feels very strange and like it's missing something, but besides my 1-2 loss to BURG Delver. I haven't dropped a game yet with the deck. It is Cockatrice, though.

I'd love to hear the thoughts of other people who have played the deck.

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I've played 12 matches with it - making a change to the deck after the first 6.

I initially started out with almost the same 60 as Claudio Bonnani, except with +1 STP -1 Pyroblast. My sideboard was different because I don't like cards like Blood Moon and so on. The STP/Pyro change is because my local meta is a bit less blue than a GP meta. I would probably go for a 2nd main pyro at a larger tournament, but I like 4 STP too much, so I'd find room elsewhere.

My conclusions were:

1. Mentor is very fun and very strong. 4 is not too many, since it allows us to run one out early to stabilize or force an answer from the opponent. If not answered immediately, mentor is a 3 turn clock at most (2 attack phases is all it needs). It feels a LOT less clunky than Entreat, and dodging flusterstorms and spell pierces is very nice. It does turn on opponent's removal, but you can pretty much always get 1-2 tokens even if they have the answer right then. If you can cast 2 spells you can dodge bolt which is a huge blowout.

2. Daze felt really bad. It was a bit hard to evaluate this card since the ceiling is so high (turn 1 top, turn 2 CB dazing their force is unrecoverable for example), but far too often it was a dead card. A few times it did cute things like save a mentor or a land from wasteland, but ultimately I decided that it is too unreliable (and the name of the game is reliability - this is why we play so many cantrips.)

3. Terminus is just as good as ever, and I missed having the 4th. as much as it may seem a nonbo with mentor, we play 4 mentor and a million shuffle effects, so playing a mentor to force an overextension into terminus is a very valid play.

4. I missed the 3rd snapcaster. I absolutely LOVE snapcaster in the traditional ponder miracles, and would play 4 if there was room (there isn't). I was very conflicted about going down to 2, since snap is essential in making it out of the early game against some of the really aggressive decks. with 3 snaps, it's not uncommon to cast 5-6 STPs in the course of a game. going down to 2 (and 3 STPs) makes this impossible.

5. As powerful as a finisher mentor is, not having any other win condition in the main felt a bit fragile. I missed the mainboard Jace (which cannot be played with Daze, I feel).


So with these conclusions, I decided to cut the dazes and play more of the cards that I missed. I ended up with the following list, that I played to a 3-2-1 finish yesterday (though I really could've done better):

Creatures
3 Snapcaster Mage
4 Monastery Mentor

Spells
4 Sensei's Divining Top
4 Counterbalance
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Terminus
4 Force of Will
4 Swords to Plowshares
2 Dig Through Time
1 Counterspell
1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
1 Pyroblast

Lands
4 Flooded Strand
4 Polluted Delta
2 Arid Mesa
3 Tundra
2 Volcanic Island (should be 3, but I only own 2 atm)
4 Island (should be 3)
1 Plains

Sideboard
2 Vendilion Clique
2 Flusterstorm
2 Wear//Tear
2 Surgical Extraction (I chose this because 3 snapcasters + free casting goes well with mentor)
1 Meddling Mage
1 Ethersworn Canonist
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Counterspell
1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
2 Pyroblast


I was very happy with the change from the Dazes to this list. 1 Jace main and 1 in the board is nicer than 2 in the board, as having a g1 Jace can be very useful against slower opponents. I also am very very happy to go back to the 3 snapcasters. Having the third snap and the fourth terminus allowed for a more controlling playstyle, similar to pre-mentor miracles, which is where we want to be. The dazes (and the comparative lack of removal) pushed us towards running out our mentors early, which is not what we want to do in my opinion. My matchups for the day (and brief report from what I remember)

M1 - RUG Delver (0-2)

Very close to stabilizing in both games, but too many stifles and mongeese (3 and 2 of each in both games) made it difficult. I did make some mistakes which led into me running into a stifle and a daze that I shouldn't have, so it was definitely sub-optimal play by me that lost me the match

M2 - Grixis Delver (2-0)

This went much better. Game one was control, plowing and terminusing until landing mentor +2 tops. Game 2 was a bit closer since I couldn't find a terminus when he played Young Pyro, so I ended up having to play my mentor to keep his pyro at bay. Luckily he didn't have bolts, but more creatures, so we ended with him having Clique, Flipped Delver, Pyro and 4 tokens to my Mentor +3 tokens. His clique put my top in the bottom but I had 2 brainstorms on top, one of which found me a second top, and I won game 2 after forcing him to chump with all his creatures, followed by an attack for 60+

M3 - Miracles (1-1)

This is, predictably, the match we drew. We were both playing reasonably fast, but the first 2 games went long. Game one started with him playing land and nothing for the first 2 turns, while I played turn 1 top, turn 2 CB. 20 turns later, I landed Jace, then mentor and he scoops. Game 2 happens somewhat similarly to my opponent's advantage, except that he doesn't land the top quite so quickly. Still though, he uses brainstorms aggressively to make his turn 2 counterbalance stop my plays, and plays a turn 4 Jace that I don't recover from. Game 3 again goes long, with my opponent ending up with a Jace and me ending up with a counterbalance but no answer to his Jace. He ticks his jace up to 13 while I frantically dig for some answer. I find a jace of my own at some point and start digging. Just as they call time, I brainstorm into a pyroblast that he cannot answer. The board state as time is called is Him: Top, lands, snapcaster. Me: Jace, top, counterbalance, lands. It definitely was my game in the long run, but we ran out of time.

M4 - BURG Delver (2-0)

2 games go quickly here as my opponent struggles to present early pressure and scoops to CB/Top/Jace game 1, and 2x Mentor with 2x Tops in game 2.


M5 - Grixis Control (2-1)

I don't remember much about this match, but I lost game one after he played Kolaghan's Command, Snapcaster'd it again, then played dig into dig. Game 2 I keep a hand with 2 pyroblasts and I have counterbalance. I play turn 1 top, my plan being to get to 3 lands and play CB with pyro backup. He plays a land and nothing on turn one, so I play my second land and pass. On his turn he mainphase brainstorms, which I pyroblast, and he passes with no land drop. The game gets easy from there on. Game 3 I don't remember, but I win it in the end.


M6 - Omni (1-2)

Finally I get paired against omni; if I win this match I'll make prizes for the day. Game 1 goes fairly quickly after he forces my turn 2 counterbalance and 2 turns later plays a show and tell I can't answer. I had brainstorm + mentor in hand, so CB would've been great. Game 2 is a good game where I keep a hand with Force, Counterspell, Pyroblast and other stuff. At the end of his 4th turn I play a Clique which takes Show and Tell out of his hand and then starts beating. The next few turns I counter 1 intuition and 2 Digs, and he scoops after that. Game 3 I keep a brutal hand: 2x Force, Top, CB, 2x Fetchlands, Ponder, Brainstorm. Unfortunately he plays turn 2 boseiju, turn 3 Show and Tell putting Emrakul directly in. Nothing to do about that play, so I die.

Overall it felt a lot more solid than with the 3 dazes, so I'm really looking forward to trying it more. The sideboard can still be tweaked I think - I'm unsure if I like Canonist or Meddling Mage better - but I think it's the right direction to go. And yes, I like it better than Entreat miracles. I also like that we can go down to 20 lands without really having any problems. Regarding boseiju, someone suggested running a 1-of Dust Bowl in the board, but I think that might be way too narrow.

Anyway, that's my experience with the deck so far, Any comments are appreciated

Nice report. I agree with your assessment of Daze. I find it interesting that though people have been pushing Mentor as a way to finish mirrors faster, you still ended up drawing the MU. Just some food for thought. Though it could be attributed to only have Mentor as your win-con and not Jace, like you said you missed.

From my limited testing, I've found Daze to be pretty necessary without Jace, though I don't think I'd play it alongside Jace. When your curve tops out at 3 (or 4 if you play Mentor + spell or Snap + Counterspell) you really don't miss having the extra mana very much and you want every possible opportunity to protect your Mentor or at least extract value from it.

i've been noticing a trend over the past few months regarding the cards Snapcaster Mage, Dig Through Time, and Jace, the Mind Sculptor in Miracles.

At first I kept hearing things like "because you're playing Dig Through Time, you're able to reduce the number of Snapcaster Mages. They interfere with your graveyard, less necessary, etc."
Now lately I've been noticing that these people who were playing 2 Snapcaster Mages, 2 Dig Through Time, and 3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor are now reversing the numbers and playing 3 Snapcaster Mages and only 2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor.

I've been wondering why this is?

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Originally Posted by drocker23

i've been noticing a trend over the past few months regarding the cards Snapcaster Mage, Dig Through Time, and Jace, the Mind Sculptor in Miracles.

At first I kept hearing things like "because you're playing Dig Through Time, you're able to reduce the number of Snapcaster Mages. They interfere with your graveyard, less necessary, etc."
Now lately I've been noticing that these people who were playing 2 Snapcaster Mages, 2 Dig Through Time, and 3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor are now reversing the numbers and playing 3 Snapcaster Mages and only 2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor.

I've been wondering why this is?

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Ambush Viper beats is a valid strategy.

I would try in miracles 2.0 besides Mentor a second win strategy. Maybe Jace or Entreat. I played against lands with slaughter pact on Mentor....gg

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I may not be a miracles master but the way I see it after playing miracles 2.0 for a few weeks now I feel dazes are poor except for the surprise factor it provides. I feel people also like daze for the "free value" it provides with mentor. Honestly it's like people forget the deck is still a control deck with counterbalance and top first before it's a mentor deck. Still I think the mentor main is really strong in a different way similar to the 4 color goyf counterbalance decks from 4 to 5 years ago but updated with newer cards and better mana. We still play top, CB, and Jace but no entreats, cut the green and replace the goyfs with mentors, and firespout can be replaced with terminus. Essentially miracles with mentor over entreat.

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Originally Posted by drocker23

i've been noticing a trend over the past few months regarding the cards Snapcaster Mage, Dig Through Time, and Jace, the Mind Sculptor in Miracles.

At first I kept hearing things like "because you're playing Dig Through Time, you're able to reduce the number of Snapcaster Mages. They interfere with your graveyard, less necessary, etc."
Now lately I've been noticing that these people who were playing 2 Snapcaster Mages, 2 Dig Through Time, and 3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor are now reversing the numbers and playing 3 Snapcaster Mages and only 2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor.

I've been wondering why this is?

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Because Snapcaster'ing back DTT is awesome. My favorite example was a game in which my opponent was above 10 and had Teeg + Karakas. I won this game by tempo'ing him out with STP as unsummon, which allowed me to Snapcaster back DTTs, which found me more Snapcasters, DTT, and STPs. I would've lost that game if I had less than 3 Snapcaster or less than 2 DTT in my deck.

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Originally Posted by presquepartout

I would've lost that game if I had less than 3 Snapcaster or less than 2 DTT in my deck.

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Neat plays. While i agree with you on 2 Dtt and 3 Snappys being a good number your example is pretty bad. If you had 1 karakas in play you wouldnt have had to waste your swords on teeg to win. Does that mean we have to play a karakas maindeck?
One game isnt siginificant at all! If you play 100+ games with different configurations you could make such an argument.

Edit: Misunderstood your post, even so, your example is worse.

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