Miracle Control

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Originally Posted by Pdingo

So i played a weekly yesterday on our local store and did 3:1..

2:1 Grixis Delver
1:2 °Aggro loam(really close one but on the 3th i cant find more lands and he had the garruk and i the council judgment but not the lands to cast it..
2:1 Goblins
2:0 Grixis Controll

I was unsure how to board against aggro loam..
What do you think about the match up? How do you board?

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This is a short excerpt from Phillip's article on aggro loam

Aggro Loam / Punishing Blue / 4C Control


The last match-up that we are going to address is AggroLoam/PunishingBlue/4C-Control which you can read here!

OUT: 1 Terminus, 1 Counterbalance, 1 Force of Will

IN: 2 Wear // Tear, 1 Surgical Extraction

Now this match-up is very interesting on multiple levels. While the first game relies heavily upon the very early game it kind of changes when you move into postboarded games. In the first game Force of Will is crucial at dealing with a fast Sylvan Library or Chalice of the Void but once you move to G2 and G3 your density of cards that can answer such a play is increased due to Wear // Tear enabling you to shave the 4th Force of Will. Couple this with the fact that the opponent is also very likely to reduce Mox Diamond, setting you both up for a slow and grindy game rather than the swingy one that the preboarded one seems to be

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Originally Posted by CutthroatCasual

And I'd probably board something like this:

+1 Meddling Mage
+2 Monastery Mentor
+3 Pyroblast
+2 Wear / Tear
+1 Kozilek's Return MAYBE if they're on the Imperial Recruiter or Recruiter of the Guard build and not the Leovold build (though the Leovold build IMO is objectively better so there's no reason they should play either of the Recruiter versions)

-1 Council's Judgment
-2 to 3 Terminus
-4 Counterbalance

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You realize that StP is borderline useless when Aluren decides to combo off, correct? Unless You're on Daze Mentor tempo plan, keeping Terminus is necessary against mid-range value plan.

If you lose to Aluren, one obvious occurrence is Therapy -> Baleful Strix -> Flashback Therapy, maybe Strix would find him another Therapy. Once your hand is shredded, Aluren feels it's safe to combo off. To counter that, try to have SDT floating a Red Blast effect. However, it's possible Aluren to bring in Needle/Null Rod hate.

I would give Surgical a try. I'm not suggesting Surgical on Aluren as the first option. Countering Recruiter and then Surgical that would cripple Aluren, by a lot, and I would consider that first. No matter he goes mid-range value or combo route, he needs Recruiter. If he's on BUG Recruiter-less, then the Surgical choice should be even easier.

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Originally Posted by Nicklas

As someone who plays Esper Miracles I can assure you, that not having access to any red blast is a huge downside, especially in the mirror match. Counterbalance and JTMS are your biggest enemy (and friend of course) and having an answer to both of them at the cost of just 1 (or 3 with Snappy) mana is amazing.
I think you need very good reasons to give up on red and play black instead. What strong SB cards did you think of?

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The cards I can find attractive would be: Notion Thief and Engineered Plague/Dread of Night.

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Originally Posted by CutthroatCasual

Responses are not necessarily answers. Spell Pierces, Spell Snares, and Counterspells aren't going to stop hatepiece if you don't already have them in hand and are able to cast them when you need to. Believe me, I used to share the same train to thought, especially regarding the Spell Pierces, when it came to noncreature spells that I didn't want to resolve in the early game (Chalice, Library, Vial, etc.) but I realized that Pierce was just too narrow of a response, even if it was a "better" one in those situations. Plus, Pierce is really, really bad after turn 3 or 4. So that's why I cut it for an Engineered Explosives, which doesn't hit 4-drops (by design since we're not a 4c deck) but is almost never a dead draw since it's so versatile.

I do very much like your 1 MD Karakas, as I run one myself as a pseudo-removal spell. And with Sneak Show and Reanimator becoming more popular, I think Karakas's utility is scaling up. Though I'd never run a 2nd one, especially not in a non-Legends Miracles build.

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It is absolutely true that Wear//Tear is a better answer to Null Rod. I agree completely. I'm not really leaning on Spell Pierce/Spell Snare/Counterspell to fight Null Rod or Pithing Needle or anything in particular, because they are narrow in the sense that they can't beat a resolved card, by their design. That being said, they are in the deck, and they do answer the cards in question at least some of the time, so it makes sense to me to count them among the answers. Given that I have Spell Snared a Sylvan Library in a post-board game before, for example, it would be silly to say that Spell Snare doesn't count as an answer to Sylvan Library since it can and does function that way. I'd call it a weaker answer than, say, Wear//Tear, but I also think that it can be worth playing a variety of answers rather than just a few very targeted ones. In the same way that I'd rather play a Hydroblast effect against Sneak Attack over a Wear//Tear, (though I think I currently am priced into playing both, but given the choice...), sometimes a counterspell is better than removal, and sometimes it is not. I prefer to have a variety of kinds of answers because it makes me much more difficult to play against. It's the same reason why I play exactly one Karakas, because sometimes they can beat everything but Karakas. I'm not leaning on Karakas to beat the Sneak and Show. I also have REBs, BEB, Spell Pierce, Force of Will, and potentially things like Pithing Needle and Terminus and Supreme Verdict and Council's Judgement. I think the deck is better when the opponent has to play around five or six cards instead of one or two.

The real take-home point is that, since Miracles is reactive, and since Miracles has extreme control over what is in hand or on top of the deck at any point, Miracles will always have the advantage when the opponent is unsure about what to play around. To extend this example even further, if Sneak and Show is trying to beat Terminus, the answers are Force of Will, Spell Pierce, Flusterstorm, or Sneak Attack and more than one creature. If it is trying to beat Supreme Verdict, the first 3 answers don't do anything, but Sneak Attack is much, much better. Same for Karakas. If it is trying to beat Hydroblast, Sneak Attack is pretty much the only card that is bad. If it is trying to beat Spell Pierce, it has to go late, and even then Sneak Attack is always going to be worse than Show and Tell, though sometimes it will be negligible. If it is trying to beat Jace the Mind Sculptor, it has to go fast, and Show and Tell is always going to be worse than Sneak Attack. If it is trying to beat any two of those cards (Karakas + Hydroblast, for example), then the path they are forced down gets extremely narrow, if not disappears altogether. All of these situations are drastically different, and a lot of the time the Sneak and Show player will not know exactly what to play around when sculpting with cantrips, particularly since Miracles is also sculpting with cantrips and rapidly changing hands. That puts Sneak and Show at a disadvantage because all of their lines of play are answerable in one form or another, and because Miracles is just better at swapping out answers, and because Miracles will likely have all of it's mana available when the fight comes, whereas Sneak and Show has to invest some of it to begin things. That is not to say that Miracles wins 100% of the time against Sneak and Show, but when you build your deck with a wide variety of answers, it puts a tremendous amount of pressure on the opponent to play around or play through a dozen different scenarios instead of just two or three.

I would also say that Spell Pierce's value and shelf life varies dramatically based on what kind of deck you are playing against and what kind of cards you are trying to answer, which is why it is split between the main and sideboard. I've cast effective Spell Pierces against a lot of different decks, on turn 1 and on turn 15. In just this tournament, I cast it turn 12 or 13 against a BUG Delver opponent trying to hardcast a Force of Will. It just depends on the situation. It is fair to say that it is less likely to be good later in the game, but I think it is an oversimplification to say that it is bad across the board past turn 3 or 4. The real reason why it is in the deck is to answer a thousand different cards, rather than to be the perfect answer to one specific card. That gives it a lot more value and a lot more situations where it is live, and leads to fewer situations where I have mismatched answers, like holding a Disenchant against a Liliana of the Veil or an Engineered Explosives against a Null Rod. And, as a zero-to-two of, depending on matchup, it is very easy to shuffle away when it is not needed, and there is value to flexibility in Legacy. We're discussing Aluren, for instance, which up until a month or two ago was fairly fringe. Spell Pierce has got to be way better against Aluren than Flusterstorm, even though Flusterstorm is the "better" card in a vacuum. But Spell Pierce is less focused, so it's a better card at beating random craziness, which has always been a part of the fabric of Legacy.

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Originally Posted by mike1987

This is a short excerpt from Phillip's article on aggro loam

Aggro Loam / Punishing Blue / 4C Control


The last match-up that we are going to address is AggroLoam/PunishingBlue/4C-Control which you can read here!

OUT: 1 Terminus, 1 Counterbalance, 1 Force of Will

IN: 2 Wear // Tear, 1 Surgical Extraction

Now this match-up is very interesting on multiple levels. While the first game relies heavily upon the very early game it kind of changes when you move into postboarded games. In the first game Force of Will is crucial at dealing with a fast Sylvan Library or Chalice of the Void but once you move to G2 and G3 your density of cards that can answer such a play is increased due to Wear // Tear enabling you to shave the 4th Force of Will. Couple this with the fact that the opponent is also very likely to reduce Mox Diamond, setting you both up for a slow and grindy game rather than the swingy one that the preboarded one seems to be

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Did the same but boarded in 2 clique's as well, for eot garruk/lili beat or to take a card in his hand..also the contaimnent priest would be a choice in my sb..
But still unsure if it's necessary?

Just a small little report from the Teams tournament at SCG Baltimore. I’m Aaron Kasprzak and our team finished in 10th. My personal record in the tournament was 12-2-1. Decklist is at:

http://sales.starcitygames.com//deck...?DeckID=111738

R1: 2-0 v BR Reanimator
R2: 2-0 v Infect
R3: 0-1 v Brian Braun-Duin on Miracles. We just started G2 when my teammates lost their matches. Pretty crazy game 1 though, where I dug myself out of his Jace, Countertop, Mentor vs my naked Counterbalance to setup my own Countertop. Died to his Jace -12, which I couldn’t find an answer for.

R4: 2-0 v Ben Feingersh on 4C Loam
R5: 1-1-1 v BUG Delver. Draw should never have happened. Opponent was playing super slowly and wasted a ton of time, i.e. asking me “Cards in hand?” every single turn when all I did was play land and said go. I had the game 100% locked up and Entreated for 1 less than I should have forcing a draw.

R6: 2-0 v Enchantress
R7: 2-1 v Miracles
R8: 2-0 v Max Tietze on 4C Loam
R9: 2-0 v BUG Control with a maindeck Pithing Needle (Had to call a judge on this lol)
R10: 2-0 v Burn
R11: 1-0 v Anuraag Das on Miracles (He made a couple of misplays in Game 1. My teammates won their matches while we were in our Game 2, which he would have won against me)

R12: 0-2 v Sam Pardee on Reid Duke BUG (Got run down by Jace Game 1. Game 2, he needled my Top and I desperately needed to find a Brainstorm for about 4 turns and found it on the turn I was facing lethal).
R13: 2-0 v Dylan Donnegan on BUG Delver (Feature match for Round 13. I know a lot of people are going to knock Rudy for his sloppy play on camera, but he got pretty sick on Day 1 and did a lot to help me carry the team on Day 1)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgQf68A-P3E

R14: 2-0 v Patrick Sullivan on Burn (4 SB Exquisite Firecrafts lol. Scary)
R15: 2-1 v Sneak and Show (Definitely the most stressful match of the tournament. All 3 of us were 1-1 going into our third games simultaneously. I aggressively fought his cantrips during all postboard games)

Obviously, was hoping we could have done a bit better than 10th but the tournament was a tonne of fun and hopefully they do more of these in the future. Had some good talks and pickup games with Anzi after the event and I think with the state of the Legacy metagame, going forward I would certainly advocate a full set of 4 Rebs in the sb.

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Originally Posted by hyp3r1on

Just a small little report from the Teams tournament at SCG Baltimore. I’m Aaron Kasprzak and our team finished in 10th. My personal record in the tournament was 12-2-1. Decklist is at:

http://sales.starcitygames.com//deck...?DeckID=111738

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Congrats!

Who were your teammates and what was your team name?

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Originally Posted by lordofthepit

Congrats!

Who were your teammates and what was your team name?

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I've heard from fairly reliable sources, that 2/3rds of his team is part of one of the quickest expanding religions in the world, where one of them even holds a rather high position in said clergy.

I also heard from... mostly everyone else, that the last team member is a Foe of said clergy.


Congratulations patrunkenphat7 (aka Marbles) aka Aaron kzrzrzraty, on your excellent finish!

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Originally Posted by twndomn

You realize that StP is borderline useless when Aluren decides to combo off, correct?

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If your opponent only has 1 Harpy, you can hit Strix with Harpy cast on the stack provided they don't have a Stalker (though a 2nd STP would stop that as well). Unless there's an interaction somewhere I'm not seeing. Of course, a good Aluren player would wait until the coast is clear, but as a Miracles player it's your job to prevent the coast from being clear :cool:

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Originally Posted by hyp3r1on

Just a small little report from the Teams tournament at SCG Baltimore. I’m Aaron Kasprzak and our team finished in 10th. My personal record in the tournament was 12-2-1. Decklist is at:

http://sales.starcitygames.com//deck...?DeckID=111738

R1: 2-0 v BR Reanimator
R2: 2-0 v Infect
R3: 0-1 v Brian Braun-Duin on Miracles. We just started G2 when my teammates lost their matches. Pretty crazy game 1 though, where I dug myself out of his Jace, Countertop, Mentor vs my naked Counterbalance to setup my own Countertop. Died to his Jace -12, which I couldn’t find an answer for.

R4: 2-0 v Ben Feingersh on 4C Loam
R5: 1-1-1 v BUG Delver. Draw should never have happened. Opponent was playing super slowly and wasted a ton of time, i.e. asking me “Cards in hand?” every single turn when all I did was play land and said go. I had the game 100% locked up and Entreated for 1 less than I should have forcing a draw.

R6: 2-0 v Enchantress
R7: 2-1 v Miracles
R8: 2-0 v Max Tietze on 4C Loam
R9: 2-0 v BUG Control with a maindeck Pithing Needle (Had to call a judge on this lol)
R10: 2-0 v Burn
R11: 1-0 v Anuraag Das on Miracles (He made a couple of misplays in Game 1. My teammates won their matches while we were in our Game 2, which he would have won against me)

R12: 0-2 v Sam Pardee on Reid Duke BUG (Got run down by Jace Game 1. Game 2, he needled my Top and I desperately needed to find a Brainstorm for about 4 turns and found it on the turn I was facing lethal).
R13: 2-0 v Dylan Donnegan on BUG Delver (Feature match for Round 13. I know a lot of people are going to knock Rudy for his sloppy play on camera, but he got pretty sick on Day 1 and did a lot to help me carry the team on Day 1)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgQf68A-P3E

R14: 2-0 v Patrick Sullivan on Burn (4 SB Exquisite Firecrafts lol. Scary)
R15: 2-1 v Sneak and Show (Definitely the most stressful match of the tournament. All 3 of us were 1-1 going into our third games simultaneously. I aggressively fought his cantrips during all postboard games)

Obviously, was hoping we could have done a bit better than 10th but the tournament was a tonne of fun and hopefully they do more of these in the future. Had some good talks and pickup games with Anzi after the event and I think with the state of the Legacy metagame, going forward I would certainly advocate a full set of 4 Rebs in the sb.

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Hi Aaron, congratulations on your finish! Great to see someone taking the traditional list for a spin. The reason why you recommend a full playset of rebs would presumably be cause of the rise of TNN BUG? The matches i foresee bring a playset of them in will only be against show and tell, mirror and TNN BUG. Will you board 4 rebs against delver decks? or will you decision change if you play a basic mountain?

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Originally Posted by mike1987

Hi Aaron, congratulations on your finish! Great to see someone taking the traditional list for a spin. The reason why you recommend a full playset of rebs would presumably be cause of the rise of TNN BUG? The matches i foresee bring a playset of them in will only be against show and tell, mirror and TNN BUG. Will you board 4 rebs against delver decks? or will you decision change if you play a basic mountain?

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Hey, thanks! I've always been an advocate of the traditional style lists and have been playing them forever. Traditional delver decks don't really exist in the meta anymore. It's a lot more common to play against BUG Delver decks with access to postboard Jaces, "Jarvis Delver" style decks, Noble BUG or other BUG Control style decks that are interested in playing long. Grixis still exists, it's just a lot more uncommon.

I was actually testing a list with a sb mountain fairly heavily before scg Baltimore but decided against it last minute because I didn't have enough reps in with it. Having a stockpile of rebs and the mountain really allows you to play a strong reactionary game vs bug decks, stopping all their big plays of tnn, leovold, jace, snapcaster etc. This sb plan is also obviously big game vs the mirror, snt etc.

The only issue I have with the sb mountain is it feels like a waste of a sb slot a lot of the time and I think md mountain is very, very bad.

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Originally Posted by hyp3r1on

Hey, thanks! I've always been an advocate of the traditional style lists and have been playing them forever. Traditional delver decks don't really exist in the meta anymore. It's a lot more common to play against BUG Delver decks with access to postboard Jaces, "Jarvis Delver" style decks, Noble BUG or other BUG Control style decks that are interested in playing long. Grixis still exists, it's just a lot more uncommon.

I was actually testing a list with a sb mountain fairly heavily before scg Baltimore but decided against it last minute because I didn't have enough reps in with it. Having a stockpile of rebs and the mountain really allows you to play a strong reactionary game vs bug decks, stopping all their big plays of tnn, leovold, jace, snapcaster etc. This sb plan is also obviously big game vs the mirror, snt etc.

The only issue I have with the sb mountain is it feels like a waste of a sb slot a lot of the time and I think md mountain is very, very bad.

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There's a lot here that I've found to be true in my limited time with this deck, too. I played against three BUG decks in the recent tournament, and every time I felt like I could never have enough REBs. I also feel like the Mountain is a wasted SB slot, but I think I'm of the opinion that it's a necessary evil, just because I don't want to play with more than two Volcanic Islands, and even that is pushing it for me. I hate drawing Volcanic Island in any wasteland matchup, but without access to at least three red sources (or two when one is a basic Mountain) it feels very unstable. But I agree completely that a maindeck Mountain feels terrible, though depending on what Ponder/Land combination I was playing it was something that I tried a few times.

I will say that the Mountain was one of the best cards for me against BUG Delver decks, just because it took away all of the timing issues of trying to keep up REB while working around Wasteland. I could just fetch when I knew they didn't have Stifle (which was most of the time for those decks in particular, but I always had to have it on my radar) and have red mana for the rest of the game. It just feels so bad to have a land in the sideboard, but I guess I'm more immune to that than most since I've played a lot of Vintage where that's a pretty common sideboard decision against Stax. It helps me a lot more to think of the 3 REBs and the 1 Mountain as a package that is very strong against Wasteland blue decks, rather than to try and rationalize away the Mountain. I find that when I'm only bringing in Mountain when I need more red mana, it's rarely actively bad, and seeing it as a part of the plan against Wastelands makes me feel much better about what sometimes feels like a wasted slot.

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Originally Posted by CutthroatCasual

If your opponent only has 1 Harpy, you can hit Strix with Harpy cast on the stack provided they don't have a Stalker (though a 2nd STP would stop that as well). Unless there's an interaction somewhere I'm not seeing. Of course, a good Aluren player would wait until the coast is clear, but as a Miracles player it's your job to prevent the coast from being clear :cool:

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This would be true but a good Aluren player will never cast Harpy with Strix on the battlefield.

What actually happens is Aluren casts Harpy with the Strix in their hand and then when Harpy enters the battlefield they flash in the Strix in response to the bounce trigger. If you try and Swords the Strix here the Aluren player just pays 1 to return Harpy and by flashing it in again they bounce Strix to dodge Swords.

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Originally Posted by kombatkiwi

This would be true but a good Aluren player will never cast Harpy with Strix on the battlefield.

What actually happens is Aluren casts Harpy with the Strix in their hand and then when Harpy enters the battlefield they flash in the Strix in response to the bounce trigger. If you try and Swords the Strix here the Aluren player just pays 1 to return Harpy and by flashing it in again they bounce Strix to dodge Swords.

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I don't have much experience with this matchup, so how do we stop the chain in the most effective manner?

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Originally Posted by mike1987

I don't have much experience with this matchup, so how do we stop the chain in the most effective manner?

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Countering the Harpy is your best bet in scenarios like this, with Pyroblast/RB, Snare, CS, FoW etc. As kombatkiwi pointed out, StP is incredibly ineffective at stopping a good Aluren player.

Want to watch 5 rounds of Miracles action on Youtube with commentary..... ?

https://thelibraryatpendrellvale.com...-video-series/


Hope you enjoy it!

Sib

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Originally Posted by kombatkiwi

This would be true but a good Aluren player will never cast Harpy with Strix on the battlefield.

What actually happens is Aluren casts Harpy with the Strix in their hand and then when Harpy enters the battlefield they flash in the Strix in response to the bounce trigger. If you try and Swords the Strix here the Aluren player just pays 1 to return Harpy and by flashing it in again they bounce Strix to dodge Swords.

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That's what the 2nd STP (or REB) is for, though REB would have been used on either of those two birds on the stack.

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Originally Posted by Whitefaces

Countering the Harpy is your best bet in scenarios like this, with Pyroblast/RB, Snare, CS, FoW etc. As kombatkiwi pointed out, StP is incredibly ineffective at stopping a good Aluren player.

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So if we want to fight this MU exclusively on the stack, do you suggest keeping in CB?

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Originally Posted by CutthroatCasual

So if we want to fight this MU exclusively on the stack, do you suggest keeping in CB?

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That's not what I said at all? I honestly don't know about leaving in CB, I haven't played the MU enough.

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Originally Posted by Whitefaces

Countering the Harpy is your best bet in scenarios like this, with Pyroblast/RB, Snare, CS, FoW etc. As kombatkiwi pointed out, StP is incredibly ineffective at stopping a good Aluren player.

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Not sure if I am missing something but why not just counter the parasitic strix instead?

Harpy is super scary coupled with Glint, Agent or even Baleful Strix. And it protects Leovold as long as their Aluren sticks. They'll easily find another PS if they got their Harpy.
Parasitic Strix on it's own sucks.