Terminus is mostly irrelevant against Thrun, because a) you still have plenty of Zeniths and other effects that shuffle, so it's not like he's gone for long, and b) if Thrun + Equipment is your gameplan, Terminus is your first Surgical Extraction / Therapy / Thoughtseize target.
GSZ Thrun can be countered though.Originally Posted by Navsi
The matchup is terrible. Thrun is not the "answer" to Miracles. He's a green hexproof that hits for 4. That isn't enough in my books.
Idk what Miracles lists you're facing, but I regularly see Terminus, Verdict, Council's J, Containment Priests (goodbye GSZ) game 2/3. If the player has them, there's also the issue of Mentor and his homies, Koronos (UR God), and SFM + Batterskull coming out. While you're correct STP doesn't wipe him away, nearly everything else they do annihilates him.
My best Nic Fit results have come from Rhino-based Junk lists playing tight. If I'm on Junk, I do my best to ride Planeswalkers and Sanctum Prelate in conjunction with the Teeg(s) I already run.
Slaughter Games has been feast or famine for me in my experiences. Even they don't do enough. Hell, I've lost matches where I slaughter'ed "Entreat" only to be Jace'd out of the game thereafter. I've also lost games where a fast Entreat wins. Nobody wants to admit it online, but dying to 3x 4/4 Angels is also a thing.
Why would you slaughter entreat? That just seems wrong. Leave a deed in your 60 and slaughter terminus instead so you are free to commit to the board.
Has anyone tried Leovold yet?
True, but then Thrun is still in your deck - and GSZ is hard to hit with counterbalance, so there are only a few hard counters available to Miracles.
Thrun helps because he forces miracles to have very specific answers at the right time. I'm also running equipment which helps a lot with making his clock relevant.
IMO trying to tempo Miracles with Rhino is am awful idea - Rhinos don't provide CA and are easily 1 for 1ed by Miracles so you'll get ground down unless the Miracles player screws up a while lot. I'd much rather play a list heavier on Leovold, Tracker, Witness and probably Strix / Stoneforge since they make Miracles fall behind on card advantage.
Not saying it works 100%, but it's better than Rhinos in my experience
IIRC, he burned a fast terminus to prevent Veteran. Plowed another. I had a read on him to turn off entreat. It's one of the few ways they win, so turning off win-cons is the logic. Unfortunately Jace came out the next turn. Feed doesn't do as much as you'd hope in the match against a stronger pilot. They can bait the first deed activation and follow up with another ridiculous finisher. The Mentor lists are particularly hard for this exact reason.
Take it for what it's worth: Rhinos race. You can argue, but the best results I've had involved Rhinos coming down. Jace can't afford to bounce it. GSZ turns into lethal after a few hits.
Rhinos always got the job done for me, but the games are always decided on razor thin margins where Rhinos get there 1 turn before I face lethal. That's why I started looking for something else. Perhaps that's simply win more thinking, but I don't play this deck because I like just barely crossing the finish line.
Despite having it in my list for about 2.5 months now, I still have very few games worth of actual experience with it. But something I'm trying in my build is the Mentor/Top combo. My line of thinking was that I'm already running 4 tops, and I'm running Cavern of Souls that usually name human (coincidentally, most of my list is humans) so why not throw the combo in? I have more CA than Miracles as it is, so I can assemble it easier and I've got the grind power to go just as late.
I do wish I had better feedback to report on it. The Mentors are a SB plan for me right now, but with me traveling over most of the past summer I just didn't get a chance to play very much Legacy. Hopefully, with school back in session now I can squeeze in a few tournaments here and there at some point.
I will say though, that I'm absolutely in love with my Caverns. I've played a bunch of games online where people have Chalice, and I assume it should work out the same against Counterbalance. It's nice to just push through those effects.
Regarding the Rhino build, currently going full force on them. Tireless Tracker plays a very good "filler" role where we can play an even more aggresive game.
4 VetEx
1 DRS
1 Scooze
1 E. Witness
3 Tracker
4 Rhino
1 Thragtusk
1 Sigarda
4 GSZ
3 SDT
1 Pruths
4 Therapy
3 Deed
2 Decay
4 Pte
1 Vindicate
22 Lands
Kagu-Tsuchi カグツチ (Jund NicFit)
Rhino's Abbondanza (Junk NicFit)
4c Aggro Loam
@Bobmans: I'd go -1 Painful Truths, +1 DRS. With 3 Tireless Trackers you're going to be very mana hungry. Maybe also cut a spot removal for another DRS.
Why that many? DRS easily dies to own Deeds. Also, Exploer, Therapy and SDT are turn 1 moves with higher priority.
When Slaughter Games sided in, usually opponent is on Combo or Control decks, and they don't play wastelands. 1 Taiga is enough for paying 2BR.
I hear they got twisters miles wide in the Midwest.
I must be doing something something horrendously wrong then. I'm on Rhino build and play a shit load against Miracles (I only play on MTGO). It's an absolutely miserable match-up. The only time I won against Miracles was when I was, by sheer luck, able to make him discard countertop, brainstorm and top and he was left top decking for some turns. Other than that, they do circles around anything you want to do and the Rhinos are just swords or terminus fodder. As much as I love this deck, it's just so bloody horrendous to play against Miracles that I'm seriously considering trading it for something else since it's pointless to try and fight miracles. Oh, and just in case you wonder, my question last page about Thrun was not entirely innocent, I've tried it and, quite honestly, once they bring out the Mentors, Thrun is a lightweight. Miracles is a flipping beast of a deck. #banthatbloodydeck
Yeah, the best I am able to achieve against Miracles is an unintentional draw.. lose/concede game 1 and then proceed to slowly bleed them out in G2 (using Slaughter Games).
It is a very bad matchup.. which is quite easy to understand - we try to kill them mostly with creatures and they have 7 MD StP (including Snapcasters) and 4 Terminus + 2-3 JtmS.
G1 Sigarda is imo your only out, but it is hard to race them since we need a lot of setup (discards) before trying to resolve her and if we do resolve her, it usually means they have Entreat on top :)
G2 is, depending on sideboard, very winnable, but it will take a lot of time and you will probably run out of time for G3. We can however still easily lose to a fast Jace + counter backup.
Given that we have such a hard time against Miracles and fast combo, it is hard to recommend this deck to anyone. It is my go to deck when I care about the journey not the destination ;)
I've been going for this plan:
- Land a Deed and leave it in play
- Extract / Teeg / Slaughter Terminus. Teeg is by far the worst option, but he's ok if you have Sylvan Safekeeper or a Sword of Protection from White.
- Make a threat that can't be killed by Swords.
Deed can kill CB if you really need to resolve something specific, and prevents them from killing you out of nowhere with Mentor or Entreat.
If Terminus isn't available, you can afford to actually commit to the board and not get blown out. Particularly relevant with 2-for-1 guys like Tireless Tracker (who is a beast here) and Eternal Witness, Stoneforge/Strix.
Thrun with Equipment, Sigarda, and basically any planeswalker force them to Council's Judgment or lose. Even with Snapcaster, it's pretty bad for them.
For the umpteenth time: Planeswalkers, kids. Trying to fight Miracles with creatures is just downright stupid.
Tried that with varied results, but same end result. The planeswalkers are either:
a) too slow, Mentor or Jace will get there before you.
b) get countered, Miracles these days are running cards up to 6 mana, I've read somewhere that they would be screwed if you tried to cast anything above 4 mana, yeah, right. Look at this thing:
https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/472960#online
(BTW, my excuse for my rambles today are 'bad day at the office').
Yeah, right. It will rise your matchup against Miracles to 50%, while also making the Delver matchup a coin toss.
This. And with powerful must-counter sorceries/enchantments.
4 rhinos build is simply not viable online. Garruk, Sorin and Elspeth(s) can confirm that.
Against Delver, you have to play tight with the PW build and manage wisely your means of gaining life.
Depending on your read with removal, DRS can be a higher priority play than Top.
Look at these 2 sequences:
T1 Land, DRS
T2 Land, Top. 2 mana spare
T1 Land, Top
T2 Use Top, Draw, Land, DRS. 0 mana spare.
You push your first activation until 1 turn later but you also get much better tempo.
Also, it has to do with how many sources of a color you have. Wasteland is part of it, but not all. Such as with your SG example, you probably have to hit 2 fetches because you need black and you need red. The mana just runs much smoother if you also have DRS's. Note that the DRS's also push you to casting it on turn 3 rather than 4.
Last, Explorer is not a T1 play. If you T1 Explorer you're just going to see it eat a StP. In my first sequence you have 2 mana available to go Therapy, Explorer, Therapy (and if you hold the Top until post ramp you're immune to Daze). In the second example, you also have the mana to ramp on T2 but you won't be using the Top pre draw step.
The actual priority for 1 drops is something like this (varies a little by hand and matchup)
Therapy/DRS/Thoughtseize (if it's in your SB)
GSZ
Top
Nothing
Explorer
I mainly play in paper. I usually win games 1-0 (most common) or I draw them at 1-1. It's very rare a third game finishes but game 3's aren't favored. Here's the trick to the match, Vets hurt you more than they help. You need alternative sources of ramp because Miracles uses the mana better than you do unless you've got a Tracker down. This also means you need a lower curve because you need to operate off of +1 mana ramp rather than +3.
Makes sense, but doesn't that last sentence go directly against using planeswalkers, since they are actually far more mana intensive?
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