[Article] How to kill Miracles - Part 2

[Barook]

How do Goblins or Eldrazi beat Moat?

Eldrazi has Worldbreaker and All is Dust. There's also Endbringer, but pinging your opponent to death isn't a very realistic scenario before the Miracle player has removal for it.

Blood Moon and especially B2B are more problematic, imho.

[Lemnear]

Eldrazi has worldbreaker, maybe something else. I don't see them winning too easily through a Moat. Goblins lose against it. What did I cherrypick? It was all in your reply. Bottom line: it's not my fault that you claim untrue things. Veiling an insult in a non-apology i just lame.

What do you want from me? You list a few decks you consider good against miracles (and only miracles), I quote the whole bunch pointing that sideboarding Moat invalids some if these deckchoices made for Miracles in particular and you cherrypick stuff like 12-Post out of that list to ridicule my point about how easy Miracles can adapt IN CASE these decks would become more common (which is pointless from the start, because some of these are not well positioned in the meta despite Miracles presence).

Eldrazi has Worldbreaker and All is Dust. There's also Endbringer, but pinging your opponent to death isn't a very realistic scenario before the Miracle player has removal for it.

Blood Moon and especially B2B are more problematic, imho.

I could have named Bloodmoon as well as an easy to adapt SB option for Miracles to fight 12-Post, Shardless and Eldrazi, but then Hopo would slap me with "but Goblins!" just because it was in the same line I quoted

[Chatto]

How do Goblins or Eldrazi beat Moat? Sorry for the extended quote instead of cherrypicking like you did here.

Edit: I fixed the quote to make it more clear.

Goblins cannot beat Moat, unless they splash Green or White for a Disenchant-effect or are able to stick a lot of creatures to sac to Skirk Prospector, which enables you to ping your opponent with Goblin Sharpshooter... All of this must be done in one turn. I pulled the latter off, exactly once, and almost ten years ago (don't think it was against Miracles though)

In other words: Moat is pretty hard to beat.

[dte]

(Almost) any card can be FoW'ed, the T1 SDT as well, so that's no argument.

That' one of the most repeated seemingly truism in legacy, and it is totally false.

Every spell you play represent an investment. To get a DRS FoWed is much less of a loss than getting a TNN FoWed.
Here, CotV represent a very high cost on deck construction. Getting it FoWed can be a huge setback. Much more than having your daze on the opposing T1 SDT FoWed, for instance. That is why nobody ever argue that daze is not good because it can be forced, while you'll often read it as an attack against, say, NO.

And globally, FoW is one of the reason why non-U deck try to rely a lot on cards that cannot be FoWed against miracle (the otherwise being of course CB): Decay, CoS, Bosejiu.

[Hopo]

I could have named Bloodmoon as well as an easy to adapt SB option for Miracles to fight 12-Post, Shardless and Eldrazi, but then Hopo would slap me with "but Goblins!" just because it was in the same line I quoted

Oh please. You didn't just quote but BOLDED decks like 12-post and tezz as decks that Moat would be sideboarded against.

But that's none of my business.

[Ingo]

That' one of the most repeated seemingly truism in legacy, and it is totally false.

Every spell you play represent an investment. To get a DRS FoWed is much less of a loss than getting a TNN FoWed.
Here, CotV represent a very high cost on deck construction. Getting it FoWed can be a huge setback. Much more than having your daze on the opposing T1 SDT FoWed, for instance. That is why nobody ever argue that daze is not good because it can be forced, while you'll often read it as an attack against, say, NO.

And globally, FoW is one of the reason why non-U deck try to rely a lot on cards that cannot be FoWed against miracle (the otherwise being of course CB): Decay, CoS, Bosejiu.

Ofcourse it's true that depending on the card you'll FoW, you'll get more value out of it. Point is that you cannot make this a guideline to discuss cards, since the shortlist that's Forceproof is pretty short, as you pointed out yourself.

[iatee]

Miracles can't beat Goblins without Moat, but Goblins can't beat Moat, but Moat can't beat Disenchant. Unless Miracles has a Counterspell. But then what if Goblins has another Disenchant? But then what if Miracles has another Counterspell? But then what if Goblins has a Red Elemental Blast? But what if Miracles has a Force of Will? But then what if Goblins has another Red Elemental Blast?

The idea that a card or strategy is bad because...'answers to it exist' is inane. There are answers to everything, answers to those answers, and answers to the answers to those answers. Moat is a good answer to some decks in the format, but Miracles won't always find it and can't always afford the SB spot (or the card itself...)

This theoretical world where Miracles always and forever has the answers to every problem it ever faces doesn't match the real world where Miracles actually loses a lot, even sometimes to its good matchups, because a good percentage of the time it can't find or resolve its answers.

[dte]

Ofcourse it's true that depending on the card you'll FoW, you'll get more value out of it. Point is that you cannot make this a guideline to discuss cards, since the shortlist that's Forceproof is pretty short, as you pointed out yourself.

On the contrary. You should use it to discuss cards, as a good card is either one that cannot be forced, one that does not put you in to much trouble if it gets forced (i.e. low investment), or one that win the game if not forced.
FoW is an important card.

The idea that a card or strategy is bad because...'answers to it exist' is inane. There are answers to everything, answers to those answers, and answers to the answers to those answers. Moat is a good answer to some decks in the format, but Miracles won't always find it and can't always afford the SB spot (or the card itself...)

It is absolutely not inane. and all the game is exactly about which cards are not or badly answered by the likely answer that miracles currently have. So cards that are heavy investment and are soft to StP, Wear-Tear or FoW should not be considered as good.
A card that can be easily answered but is light investment, such as phyrexian revoker, is however acceptable (but not great).

Discussing about what miracle can do to adapt, however, is inane. If miracle players are in a spot that they should adapt, then it means that what they had to adapt to was a good idea.
And when they had adapted, then you can think again of something else.

[Julian23]

iatee, that really was a Trump-level of oversimplification and strawmanning.

You really should read dte's previous post. He's providing a great explanation of why "it can be countered" is an important and relevant argument.

[square_two]

This theoretical world where Miracles always and forever has the answers to every problem it ever faces doesn't match the real world where Miracles actually loses a lot, even sometimes to its good matchups, because a good percentage of the time it can't find or resolve its answers.

What? Miracles is the #1 deck at filtering and finding cards in it's library. It's the entire point of the deck. It's why it can run sorceries that are only good when you draw them for the first time on a turn. The whole package enables the deck to find its sideboard cards faster and more consistently than any other deck available.

[rufus]

...
This theoretical world where Miracles always and forever has the answers to every problem it ever faces doesn't match the real world where Miracles actually loses a lot, even sometimes to its good matchups, because a good percentage of the time it can't find or resolve its answers.

We can think of miracles as a deck full of generic answers. That makes miracles very strong against opponents who are looking to win on the back of a small number of high impact cards - in particular, that means that individual sideboard cards are unlikely to have more than a marginally positive impact. That perspective suggests that sideboarding against miracles should be at least as much about what cards you take out as about what cards get put in, and that it's very hard to turn around a poor miracles match-up with sideboard options.

[Lemnear]

This theoretical world where Miracles always and forever has the answers to every problem it ever faces doesn't match the real world where Miracles actually loses a lot, even sometimes to its good matchups, because a good percentage of the time it can't find or resolve its answers.

Are you seriously claiming that Brainstorm + Ponder + SDT + Jace is unreliable to find answers to matchups Miracles is actually favored against?

[Finn]

I'm happy to stay out of the fray. A couple of facts though:

1. Goblins was notorious for killing opponents before they got to four mana and a sweeper back in the day. Landstill in particular had to fetch all basics to sometimes have a chance.

2. A very friggin long time ago, The Deck was able to dominate the game of magic by simply landing Moat and only giving a shit about a handful of cards coming from the opponent, giving the deck massive card advantage and easy victories. It would be the same in for Goblins.

You guys are close to debating which of these scenarios is going to unfold. It might be as simple as who is on the play.

[Bosque]

Eldrazi has worldbreaker, maybe something else. I don't see them winning too easily through a Moat. Goblins lose against it.

Goblins lists commonly splashed white for Thalia back in the day. It wouldn't be too crazy to run some other ETB white creatures to deal with enchantments or to run Disenchant or Wear//Tear if it really became an issue.

[Finn]

Goblins lists commonly splashed white for Thalia back in the day. It wouldn't be too crazy to run some other ETB white creatures to deal with enchantments or to run Disenchant or Wear//Tear if it really became an issue.

Note that I just debunked this strategy in the post right above yours. It does not work agaisnt a deck with counterspells.

[Ingo]

On the contrary. You should use it to discuss cards, as a good card is either one that cannot be forced, one that does not put you in to much trouble if it gets forced (i.e. low investment), or one that win the game if not forced.
FoW is an important card.

And chalice is exactly such a card, for reasons already stated.

I am not saying that FoW'ing a chalice isn't a good move, especially as chalice implies constrictions in deckbuilding which are painful without chalice. On the other hand, we shouldn't exaggerate the impact of Force vs Chalice, because if it was such an issue, T1 chalice decks (Eldrazi, Aggro Loam) would not have a good matchup versus Miracles. The restriction itself, foregoing on low cc-cards cards (like in Eldrazi) or packing Caverns, or Green Sun's Zenith, ... is actually a bonus versus Miracles, as it's more likely to dodge counterbalance.

[Fox]

It's important to know if we're talking about a Snow-Covered Mountain Goblins list or not. I have no pity for Goblins list that don't even pretend to feign the much feared Goblin Ski Patrol against Moat.

There was a post earlier about Infect having a good miracles matchup; there's a lot going on there, but the important thing is that a 3cmc spell lacking "cannot be countered" is not good answer to CB/SDT lock - congrats if you won the 'no 3-drop in top 3' coin flip, you didn't make a dumb/smart choice nor did you become worse/better at magic...you flipped a coin.

[Zombie]

2. A very friggin long time ago, ~DECKNAME~ was able to dominate the game of magic by simply landing ~CARDNAME~ and only giving a shit about a handful of cards coming from the opponent, giving the deck massive card advantage and easy victories.

This sounds familiar.

[iatee]

We can think of miracles as a deck full of generic answers. That makes miracles very strong against opponents who are looking to win on the back of a small number of high impact cards - in particular, that means that individual sideboard cards are unlikely to have more than a marginally positive impact. That perspective suggests that sideboarding against miracles should be at least as much about what cards you take out as about what cards get put in, and that it's very hard to turn around a poor miracles match-up with sideboard options.

This is a good point, but it's also actually hard to turn around *any* poor matchup with a few sideboard cards. Which goes back to what I said before - if your biggest issue is losing to the best and most played deck in the format, don't show up with a deck that has a bad g1 against it. There are lots of decks that don't.

If you're walking into a wall again and again the solution doesn't need to be 'ban wall', there's also the solution 'stop walking into a wall'.

Are you seriously claiming that Brainstorm + Ponder + SDT + Jace is unreliable to find answers to matchups Miracles is actually favored against?

Again, somehow Miracles players out there seem to not win literally every tournament ever, in fact there are large legacy tournaments without Miracles in the t8 - this despite having Brainstorm, Ponder, SDT and Jace to find every answer in the history of Magic and having a lot of people willingly show up to tournaments with decks that are weak to Miracles.

[Lemnear]

This sounds familiar.

Lol.