Venomous72, in your Miracles advice when you say Path do you mean Path to Exile; and if you mean Path to Exile, do you mean Swords to Plowshares?
Additionally most Miracles lists don't have Karakas in their 75 anymore, so Iona on white is a real problem for them. Landing one narrows their outs to Council's Judgment and Jace, the Mind Sculptor.
Originally Posted by GreatWhale
I super meant Swords, yep.
Iona is good. I bring her in against Miracles. All the lists at my local shop run 2x Karakas so my advice is biased toward that.
EDIT: I realize in that post I forgot to mention Iona entirely, but yes I agree with PirateKing. Iona is better in this matchup than your other Legendaries. I don't run her in the main anymore but I would replace a Griselbrand with her most likely, and an Elesh with Inkwell.
I think Miracles is largely off RiP now, instead relying on Surgical + Snapcaster for all their graveyard hate needs. You're still bringing in Decay obviously because you need a way to deal with counterbalance, but you can be a little more judicious with it's use now. I'd bring in all the discard you have plus the pithing needles and take out all the lotus petals because you're in for a slow grindfest against Miracles postboard. I'd probably also take out the Daze, especially on the draw.
From nothing came teeth.
Personally, I've had more success against D&T with Elesh Norn, Ashen Rider, Grave Titan and Tidespout Tyrant than with Inkwell Leviathan. D&T can quite frequently Council's Judgment the Leviathan (especially if the Leviathan lands t2/t3) or outrace it with Aether Vial + flyers + Batterskull. Equipping Batterskull or Jitte to a flyer gives D&T way too much life gain.
Against D&T, I typically end up winning the games where I get to animate 3+ times, draw 1-2 answers to their hate cards and wipe their board 1-3 times. Feels like a war of attrition to me. We have better filtering tools than they do for the long game, but both of their Thalias are nasty and most of their SB stuff is nasty as well.
Yeah Elesh is good against Death and Taxes. The game I won I got her and Grisel out after Thoughtseizing away Batterskull.
Thank you, your input is much appreciated.
Is there no consideration for sideboarding out FoW against BUG or other grindy decks? Or should it also stay as a 4-of to protect griselbrand?
FWIW as a Miracles player, most of us are not running RiP currently due to the speed of BR Reanimator, so you can usually just expect Surgical and maybe Containment Priest as hate cards. Show and Tell is what scares me the most, it's a 3 which is hard to stop with Counterbalance (as opposed to all the 1/2 cmc reanimator cards) and Surgical does nothing against it. So I think going full on the Show and Tells against Miracles might be the way to go.
Nobody plays Legacy anymore, the tournaments are all too crowded
You are probably correct on Show and Tell in the general meta. My meta is inbred with Reanimator so we have a crap ton of Containment Priest running around in the Miracles sideboards.
I keep Force in against BUG to try and stop Surgical. They almost always run 2x in the sideboard. Sometimes slow rolling and waiting for a Force/Daze/Thoughtseize/Card Redundancy is the way to go.
For example, last night in Game 2 against Aluren, he snap kept his 7 (spooky for me) and I had the turn 1 Elesh (land, petal, petal, entomb, exhume, study) but had no interaction so I just Brainstorm/Pondered my way to a redundant reanimate spell + 2 dudes in the yard (I careful studied pitching Elesh and Titan). I went for Exhume first, he Forced, followed up with Reanimate and won.
One thing I do in games two and three, if I suspect surgical (I always suspect surgical), is that I will bait it out with my second best threat. In this case it was Elesh Norn. If she got Extracted that would suck, but I would still have Griselbrand, but if she does reanimate I probably win.
Is there a consensus on the number of reanimation cards we should be running at this stage? I cut back my mainboard stuff to the core eight (quads of Reanimate and Exhume) with two S&Ts in the sideboard. Reason I ask is that it feels like, if we need to reanimate multiple times in a game, I'm wondering whether eight is sufficient.
What control suite are people running at this point? I'd been running only 4x Force, 3x Thoughtseize mainboard, but I've started to run into problems against heavy control, so I cut my three Researchers for Dazes. Won't get to test that configuration for a while, so I'm interested in any input and info on what's good. Delvers seem like a difficult matchup at this point; there's so much redundancy to their countermagic.
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PM me if you want to contribute!
I highly recommend 3x Daze and 4x Force in the mainboard. My disruption suite is:
4x Force of Will
3x Daze
2x Thoughtseize
1x Collective Brutality
CB was insane last week and I could see myself cutting my mainboard Show and Tell for another one, but not sure yet.
I'm 4x FoW, 3x Daze, 2x Thoughtseize, 2x Collective Brutality and I've been loving it (0 Show and Tell in my 75, I just don't like the card honestly). CB is a little slow but it's so good against DRS and Miracles which are basically the two pillars of the format right now. I cant ever see going below 2 in my total 75.
From nothing came teeth.
Yeah I have thought about the 2x CB but Show and Tell has saved my butt so many times. Last week I beat turn 1 Grafdiggers by brainstorming into Show and Tell Griselbrand, drew 7, then Show and Tell Grave Titan.
Show and Tell is actually decent against Miracles since the CounterTop lock usually misses it.
I've found Show and Tell to be a card that looks a lot less useful than it ends up being. It's been really good against decks like Delver, where you often have to build up your manabase and bait countermagic with reanimation spells and Entombs, and also where the opponent probably doesn't have anything comparable to cheat into play and is relying on Deathrite Shaman to do a lot of work.
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PM me if you want to contribute!
Agreed, especially the U/B/g builds playing 3-4 S&T in the 75. I remembered my top 16 scg open list from 3 years ago - it's a straight U/B build that maximizes S&T with 2 city of traitors in the side, along with a healthy basic land count. The issue with S&T against delver is it's so hard to resolve between daze, fow, pierce, fluster, pyroblast backed up by wasteland and discard occasionally. The higher mana count makes it very easy to play around all the tax counters.
As you all probably saw the news, I think one question needs to be asked: Is Green for decay even necessary anymore?
Since there is no Counterbalance to lock us out, should we transition to mostly bounce spells and Collective Brutality for drs decks? Most of the BUG decks play some amount of wasteland and I never really liked bringing in decays against them so we could free up 3 sideboard slots while also making our manabase stronger.
With one less prime White deck in the meta, I think it's safe to say that RIP will be even less of a problem (even if BR pretty much chased that away). We can now focus on discard and drs hate, both of which are available in Collective Brutality.
Brutality and Pithing Needle are both better answers to DRS than Decay, IMO. Needle is especially good since it blanks multiple copies and they're likely to not have decays of their own to deal with it post-board.
I also think Inkwell Leviathan gains some points as a reanimation target, now that Terminus is no longer a thing it might once again be the go-to target against control decks (other than Griselbrand).
Overall the Miracles ban seems to be a good thing for Reanimator, even though it wasn't exactly a terrible matchup.
Nobody plays Legacy anymore, the tournaments are all too crowded
That's a super interesting thought and my gut reaction is probably yes, you can drop green unless you know your meta is chock full of chalice of the void. Even then I'll probably just play a couple Echoing Truth to be a catch-all that also handles stupid Leyline of the Void. Even if Stoneblade makes a comeback, I cant imagine they'll be playing much RiP.
Good luck fellow disciples of Griselbrand! May your metas become overflowing with Elves.
From nothing came teeth.
exactly my thinking... if there are better removal alternatives, why even bother with decay anymore? It still takes care of Cage and RIP I guess but we don't see these cards very often anyway.
Elves was already on the rise before, this is gonna be one hell of a feast for Griselfriends :D
Abrupt Decay isn't necessary anymore IMO. There has never been any Miracles in my area (aside from myself) and I have been fine with Echoing Truths and, more recently, Show and Tell.
What does kind of suck for us is that there is now almost no reason for fair decks not to play Deathrite Shaman. It will potentially be even more omnipresent than it already is.
I'm leaning to agree that Abrupt Decay isn't needed now, but I've also never had much difficulty in casting is either, and I'm not sure I can think of a catchall to offer some equivalency. Echoing Truth is close, but puts you into a narrow window to have the nuts to back it up right then, which was always hard in a BUGy world where holding onto it while waiting for the other half of your combo gets you killed by a Thoughtseize.
I'm tempted to move even harder into red to pull more from Izzet Charm and maybe even Pyroclasm to make sure the swarm of annoying x/2s don't hold me back. I've really enjoyed Sulfur Elemental in the board against D&T, it's safe to entomb if you suspect Containment Priest, you won't lose a silver bullet like Inkwell Leviathan, but he's not uncastable.
While it's true there will probably be an uptick in drs, there will also be one in combo decks. In the end I think they will even each other out so there is no need to worry.
Also, drs is way easier to play around than surgical so I'm happy if people think they are safer when they truly aren't.
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