Daydream question to Miracles players.
It seems like Miracles is more the top deck than it was in its early days.
Why is that? B/c it doesn't seem like the ?minor? additions of Monastery Mentor, Council's Judgment, Wear // Tear, etc. have changed it that much/would take it to another level.
Have the builds simply been optimized?
Is the meta more favorable?
More people playing it?
Am I wrong, and it's not any more dominant?
It's because we take a pile of medium-powered cards and it just all works so well together. Nothing in the deck (aside from Brainstorm and maybe SCM and Jace) is inherently broken or OP on its own unlike cards in other decks like Leovold and DRS and Dark Confidant and CotV and SnT and other combo spells. We can't just slot in Terminus or ETA in any random deck playingand win, unlike slotting in Leovold in any BUG deck and getting a massive upgrade.
The deck's synergy is the reason why it's so good. We don't rely on a single payoff spell, rather we rely on the entire deck working well together. It's not like in Delver where they can land a Gurmag or Goyf or even a flipped Delver and ride it to victory. While sometimes CounterTop gets there, most decks have ways around it now so it's not nearly as game-ending as a big fatty with protection.
And that's why it's so hard to pick a card to ban from the deck: nothing is inherently busted so WotC can't be like "Well [card] was too good so we're getting rid of it." like they could for DTT and TC. The only reason to ban something from the deck is to shake up the metagame, and not because the deck is oppressive or anything. It's been at the top for so long simply because it just works so much better than other decks in Legacy.
The purpose of any moat is to impede attack. Some are filled with water, some with thistles. Some are filled with things best left unseen.
It's certainly not a new card but I think Predict is largely responsible for Miracles' current level of dominance. Without Predict, Miracles is still a very good deck but is vulnerable to strategies that can generate more card advantage like Shardless BUG for example. With Predict, Miracles is able to keep up card for card with these decks and so at this point we don't have many bad matchups left.Originally Posted by Lava Snacks
Nobody plays Legacy anymore, the tournaments are all too crowded
Agree.
I think we're at a stage where Predict is no longer just a trend as twndomn says and is now an integral part of the deck for the majority of players.
Not sure if it's discussed before but how do you guys normally approach the death and taxes matchups with prelate and recruiter now? Recently I have been having some issues and have been losing quite a bit to that deck. Mystic for fire ice, prelate coming down on 1 or 6 via vial. Not to mention some Thalia karakas and flickerwisp shenanigans.
I do know th game plan is to clear the board and win via entreat or jace but all their cards seems pretty good against us. Would appreciate some tips from the death and taxes slayers over here
I win alot against DnT right now.. Try to control the board state..You can also still win on 1 or 2 life so..
Mentor helps a lot! G1 Try to force Vial..if they don't have it's good anyway. Also predict is really sweet in this match up:)
I board in:
3 mentors
2 Wear/Tear
-3 CB
-1 FOW
- 1 Jace
If you don't like the Match up i prefer kozilek'z return as a 1off.
Thanks for the replies. Interesting! Sounds like Predict can take a lot of the credit.
It's both Predict as well as the widespread slowing down of the metagame that allows us the time to capitalize on it. Since the metagame is slow to the point where Night's Whisper is a playable card, Predict shines a lot.
Why are you boarding out JTMS vs DnT, he's insane.
Well really depends. Sometimes i board out 1 Counterspell otd instead...I want to control the Board and play mentor and entreat.
He's good but sometimes he just does nothing specially when vial is on the board.. Also i think it depends on the list i play.
I can't speak for the wide world of sports, but within my own circle of friends a lot of people have moved to Miracles who didn't used to play it. I know for me I always felt the deck was one B&R update away from getting nuked, and I felt it would take a lot of effort on my part to learn to play it well. If it's getting banned anyway, why invest the time? Eventually, though, I kept looking at numbers and it's hard to justify not playing it. I looked about 6 weeks ago and I was playing against miracles 8-10% of the time online but it was 18% of the winner's metagame according to MTGGoldfish. If we had the Hatfield's old TMI column on SCG nowadays I feel quite confident it'd be showing us just how much Miracles overperforms the number of people playing it.
Eventually I gave up trying to play the decks with the style I would rather play and decided to join the clergy and see what's up. I figure one of four things will happen:
1. I'll get good at the deck, like it, stick with it, and win a lot.
2. I'll get good at the deck, learn a lot from it, go back to other decks and be better at playing against Miracles because I understand it better.
3. I'll get good at the deck just in time for them to ban it.
4. I will not get good at the deck and will retreat in shame to start counting to 10 again.
I'm pretty much OK with all of these. Within my playgroup I'm not alone. About 2 months ago Bob Huang had asked me to bring him Food Chain cards to our weekly tournament, and then that day I got a message from him that basically said "screw it I'm tired of trying to beat miracles I'm just gonna play it." My friend Tom has basically the same experience, coming from Delver and 4C Loam. One of our D&T players finally switched. If what I'm seeing at my shop is happening in a macro sense elsewhere, it would explain seeing more miracles nowadays.
It's honestly just becoming way too hard to pretend Miracles isn't the best deck and play what I want. When there's a more even format I'll play ANT and try to outplay everyone with my skill with the deck. But when there's a deck that's just head and shoulders above the rest of the field in the way Miracles feels right now, I can't justify that. In three weeks at my local shop with various builds of the deck, I've gone 3-1 each time, and two of my three losses are to the mirror. I'm an above average magic player (as my string of 6-3 results in 9 round tournaments will attest), but I'm by no means a great player, and I'm winning with this deck with basically no practice, just picking it up and using my knowledge of the legacy metagame to guide my plays. I still punt constantly by forgetting exactly what's on top of the library and in what order, but I'm getting there.
My wife, by the way, is an Elves player who may never forgive me for playing Miracles.
TL;DR: I think it's just more people playing Miracles than were playing it before.
I'll take Jace over Counterspell in this matchup everytime
This is exactly me. I've played the deck off and on since Dig was banned because control is my 'default' playstyle, but I don't enjoy CounterTop. I haven't made the switch to Miracles as my primary deck yet because I keep hoping that something gets banned, but you'll see a lot more of me here if nothing happens on Monday.
To add: some DnT lists are playing Ancient Tombs now to power out SFM-fetched equipment in the event that she gets Swords'd before they untap. Also, they're playing Sword of War and Peace now so the MU is getting much more hectic for us.
The purpose of any moat is to impede attack. Some are filled with water, some with thistles. Some are filled with things best left unseen.
no, they are playing ancient tombs to power out palace jailer. Getting to cast swords w/o sfm is also nice, but that's not the real argument, at least not from Thomas Enevoldsen, who is the one who started doing it (and is the best dnt player in the world, not close.)
The thing with Miracles is, literally every set they print an aggressively costed value creature targeted towards eternal formats. Terminus is like the Sarlacc pit and R&D is feeding Miracles a steady diet of busted creatures. I remember a time when playing tempo/midrange meant Tarmogoyf/Mongoose...
The creature power creep is only accelerating and at this point, what would happen if they did ban Miracles? Would Legacy become a pile of Midrange with fringe combo like Standard and Modern? People talk about Miracles being the best performing deck, but that' because BUG decks are separated into so many different categories, despite playing nearly the same gameplan. Nobody calls Predict Miracles a separate archetype from Legends.
I know people will always hate on the best deck, but essentially what's happening is they're asking for Miracles to get banned so that some combination of BUG Midrange can become the default "best deck" in Legacy. I'd rather Legacy be the one format where that honor goes to a Control deck. People were talking about Predict being the reason Miracles dominates, but I think it's been a slow progression from back when Schonegger and other European players started running 4 Ponders and tilting their lists towards beating Wasteland decks. I think that's all been possible because perhaps 40% of the field at any given Legacy tournament is on some sort of Delver or Deathrite brew. Maybe I'm off with that estimation but it would be interesting to calculate, if the numbers were available.
Thank you so much for saying this point, I felt like I was alone in thinking that this was an awful double standard that most of the Legacy community makes. And I agree. The main thing with miracles vs the rest of legacy is the ability of miracles to constantly adapt so much. You can tailor a build of miracles to be competitive during ANY portion of a metagame, even one that is particularly hostile the core of the deck, because it's simple engine, the glue that holds it together, is the cantrip cartel. Once people finally understand that and attack that aspect of Miracles, then we might have rational discussion on how to truly target the deck.
People are doing that, though. BUG has adapted Leovold. D&T attacks it with Thalia + Revoker. Delver has adapted Winter Orb. Et cetera.
Historically, those type of decks are supposed to get crushed by UW Control. Swapping creatures won't matter much cause they all die to Terminus. If you turn off Top you're just making me cast it as a sorcery speed 1-mana wrath. The decks that historically matchup well against UW Control are using some kind of blitz aggro or a creatureless CA engine that goes over the top of the Control deck's incremental advantage.
If Miracles is a problem, it's got to be because it somehow has a good matchup against decks like Infect or Loam, the decks it's supposed to be poor against. Only was a deck like BUG is going to be good against UW Control is if there's a huge power imbalance, or it has a creatureless plan B attached to it, like Aluren.
The probably with attacking our cantrips (with something like Chalice for example) is that you are forced to not play 1-drops yourself. Which basically limits your deck choices to super boring stuff like Eldrazi or Big Red.
People want to beat Miracles, but they also want to not play a boring deck, and so they opt for an interesting deck that loses to Miracles rather than a boring one that beats it. Or they just join the bandwagon instead lol.
Nobody plays Legacy anymore, the tournaments are all too crowded
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