Honestly, that seems to be hideously bad. I'd much prefer to simply counter the visions for free, than to spend two cards to redirect it to me. I usually side out my FOW against BUG because it's such bad card advantage - and that's all the match is about. I don't see much difference with misdirection. What happens if they have a hard cast force for your Misdirection? Now you're down two cards, and they are up two cards! I've watched several BUG players hard cast a force to push through a vision. It's just that good.Originally Posted by matunos
If I'm going to do anything to a Visions, I'd prefer to REB or Pyroblast it. Short simple answer, and leaves our resources open without sacrificing excessive card advantage to attempt to make it target me instead.
Yeah, for every play you make there is a hypothetical counter-play your opponent can make, and vice versa. In your scenario, you're relying on Countertop to counter an Ancestral Visions against a deck that plays an uncounterable two cmc destruction spell; so what happens when your opponent decays your Counterbalance before Visions is cast?
Of course if you have countertop and a land in the top 3 you can counter the visions. If you have a 5-drop in the top 3 you can counter FoW, and so on. If you have a red blast in hand, you can try countering visions (but they can still FoW that). Maybe you can hardcast Misdirection. Maybe you can Pierce their FoW. The possibilities are endless.
I suspect if all you had was a FoW that you couldn't hardcast, you would try to altcast it to stop the Visions from resolving. Misdirection wouldn't be any different, except that you're 1 life up and if you're successful, 1 card ahead.
I don't generally SB out Counterbalance against BUG either, so we agree on that, and I would SB in red blasts, as well as Misdirection (were I playing it in the SB). I don't think the debate is on if you try to misdirect a visions if you can; it's do you put the Misdirection in the board in the first place.
On Venser, Shaper Savant: There are lists that run him MD, some run him only in the SB, and some lists don't have him at all.
Against which decks is he most effective? What's the reason for having him MD?
Venser is close to a hard lock in the late game when you have Countertop softlock and Karakas. He's really great against Reanimator or Show and Tell, and is pretty solid against SFM, Liliana, and the mirror.
It's just another one of those cards that control decks like to 1-of as its effectiveness situationally ranges from decent all-purpose answer to blowout.
oarsman, looking at your list from San Diego, I saw an extra Entreat in the SB. I'm guessing it's for the GBx decks (and Jund in particular). Did it seem to help in those MU's or was it on the clunky side? I've also been thinking about Sulfur Elemental, but it is very narrow. How did that perform?
Also, because of the GBx decks running around, I'm starting to like Spell Pierce a lot less. Is anyone else cutting way back on these?
I've cut Pierces a while ago and never looked back. Added another SCM, CS and a Ponder. This change not only smoothes out the CB curve, it enhances the mid and lategame as well. That being said, I still like them as a 3-4 of in my SB.
Joe ended up 88th at SCG San Diego but at least he won the Standard tournamentcongratulations! I would like to read his thoughts about the tournament and the deck considering the last changes he did.
Hey guys. I made what I felt were some significant changes to my deck for this week. I'll get something written up in a couple days but I know some of you saw the list in the coverage from SCG san diego. I didn't do well, although the 88th place finish is a little deceptive since I dropped before the last round so some of us could go have dinner before Jason played the top 8. Despite not doing well, I don't regret the alterations I made. I played heavy burn decks three times and only beat one of them. I definitely made some errors that I would like to blame on being worn out from playing type II, but that wouldn't be honest. I'll put the link in here again when I am done writing in case anyone wants to read more about it.
You should have cut Spell Pierce when Show and Tell stopped showing up in numbers. When you're not running a tempo game Spell Pierce is a very niche card [because you can't use it to counter removal, making them pay 2 isn't relevant, etc].
You did win Standard in a tournament of huge size.
Hey guys,
I'd like to discuss my current weapon of choice and tune it a bit towards a BUG / Jund heavy meta.
4 FOW
4 STP
4 BS
4 Jace
4 Top
4 CB
2 CS
2 EtA
2 SCM
2 Terminus
2 Verdict (very happy with the split)
1 Ponder
2 EE (replaced D. Spheres)
37
2 Arid MEsa
4 Strand
3 U Fetch
4 Tundra
2 Volc
2 Plains
4 Island
1 Karakas
1 Academy Ruins
2 Pierce (undecided)
3 REB
3 RIP
3 Clique
1 Elspeth (undecided)
1 Terminus
1 PtE
1 Disenchant
---
Thanks for your input!
What's there to discuss? You didn't explain your card choices, why should people spoon-feed you anything? Long story short, you're screwed, if you have to play against BUG(s) all day. You're better off playing other decks. If you really want to play Miracle, you should try divert/misdirection, according to oarsman.
Thanks for the spoonfeedaration.. every single card included has been discussed before. No remarkable choices either - except maybe the MD-SB swapped Cliques and Pierces, neither of which have an impact in the BUG / Jund MUs.
Divert and Misdirection seem rather so so at first glance despite being able to save CB, which is an unreliable scenario unless you run 4 Misdirection effects, which again is overkill due to the limited SB space.
That being said - I haven't tested either and would love to get some more feedback from guys who have.
Thanks in advance.
The mainboard is fine. Honestly, there's not really a whole lot of crazy things to do with the mainboard at the moment. You have standard all-purpose control cards, throw in some white removal and you're good to go. However, I do have some thoughts about the sideboard.
I truly think Disenchant is just a poor SB card. I'd rather pay the extra one mana for Detention Sphere or Oblivion Ring every time, even if they can still be removed. The extra flexibility on targeting makes it completely worth it. Being able to answer planeswalkers is incredibly important. Also, Oblivion Ring is not embarassing against decks wanting to win with creatures decks which may run other targets in small numbes, things like Choke, Liliana, or Equipment come to mind first.
I like at least two pierces in the board, unless you really know the meta you're facing. They end up being really important in metas which are a bit more wide-open as a catch all, but if you know your meta would be more creature-based I would probably run some extra removal instead of the pierces.
As for the path to exile, I would always have 4 Terminus before considering any other types of removal spells. I know that you've been moving away from it a little lately, but I think its overall power level and ability to swing games far exceeds any moments of awkward casting because of the miracle mechanic. Especially when compared to the drawback of path to exile I think Terminus #4 is just much stronger.
I know that you really like Clique, but I just don't like the third copy in the board. It's useful for sure, but mostly as a semi-expensive hand control type of card. For this role, I actually appreciate the third counterspell quite a bit. Many disagree running actual counterspell in the board, but this is something that I have done for a long time and have actually always been happy with it in many different builds of blue-based control decks. In my experience, counterspell is a much stronger card in boarded games as it gives you more answers to any hate card they may bring in. Additionally, the main complaint with counterspell is that it's sometimes awkward to cast, although I find this much less a problem in boarded games once your control deck has been streamlined with the rest of your sideboard against whatever you're playing. It's extremely flexible, and useful against almost every deck. In more open metas I also like having the added stack control with a lower number of spell pierces.
I'm not sure on Elspeth either. She can be good, but sometimes I feel that she's really slow and low-impact. I would consider replacing her with the third Entreat the Angels or Baneslayer, which I feel might be able to be swing more games for you.
If you're looking to free up a slot in the main, I think you could safely drop down to 3 Counterbalances.
The bottom half of my article is about Miracles. There isn't a ton of new material here, mostly just me still trying to figure out what to do in a field full of Abrupt Decays.
http://blog.mtgdeals.com/oarsman/sta...dard-champion/
I'm sort of starting to be in the camp of just play Counterbalance and make them deal with it. Jund isn't going to be able to dig for Abrupt Decay. The BUG decks are scarier since they can dig, but Delver isn't particularly threatening as the deck is still cold to all our sweepers. The worst is probably Midrange BUG or Shardless BUG since they can both accumulate a lot of CA on us with Jace/Liliana or Visions. Top is pretty near invaluable and as long as we give them plenty of targets for Abrupt Decay, they'll be hard pressed to answer everything.
I'll present you my newest take on Miracles during the BUG-era. In short:I splashed for RIP/Field/Helm.
But why would I do that? Abrupt Decay negates both combos while producing even some CA. They dont have 20 Abrupt Decays. Especially Jund should normally only find 1-2 Decays, as they lack blue to dig for answers. My plan is simple, provide the opponent with a lot of decayable targets. So many, that they simply cannot deal with all of them on the back of Abrupt Decay alone. Even versus BUG, not even counters will assure, they can get rid of all of them. And pretty much every single piece is powerful versus these decks. Okay, but for now, decklist:
Lands:
6 Island
4 Plains
4 Tundra
4 Flooded Strand
3 Polluted Delta
1 Windswept Heath
Counterspells
4 Force of Will
1 Counterspel
Combo 1:
4 Sensei's Divining Top
4 Counterbalance
Combo 2:
3 Rest in Peace
2 Energy Field
1 Helm of Obedience
1 Enlightened Tutor
Removal:
4 Swords to Plowshares
4 Terminus
1 Detention Sphere
Noncombo Wins
3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
2 Entreat the Angels
Brainstorm:
4 Brainstorm
Sideboard:
Additional Combo:
1 Enlightened Tutor
1 Rest in Peace
1 Helm of Obedience
Additional Removal:
2 Detention Sphere
2 Supreme Verdict
1 Porphyry Nodes
Additonal Utility:
1 Back to Basics
1 Elspeth, Knight-Errant
1 Cursed Totem
Creatures:
4 Geist of Saint Traft
While the Mainboard should be pretty obvious, according to my introduction, the sideboard may need some explanations. First of all I like to have more combopieces available g2, if need be. It might seem to be a lot of removal in the side, but you can board Spheres and Nodes vs various Show and Tell builds too. Back to Basics is just too good in the current meta, especially in some grindy controlmirros. Now there are 4 slots to go, and I'm still not completly sold on those. I always tended to have about 4 creatures in my Miraclebuilds. Peacekeepers, Elementals, Cliques or Vensers. And all of them had been effective. As I do not run any Karakas in the Mainboard, due to manaavailibilityreasons, I cannot play any Cliques or Vensers. I don't think that this deck needs Peacekeepers, at least not now. And I can't run my beloved Sulfur Elementals (<3) cause im on plain UW. I still want to have the option to close a game in a very fast way, which led me finally to Geist of Saint Traft. It does not get hit by removal boarded in vs my combo - Abrupt Decay and offers a very threatening clock. Some may say I may need Karakas to protect them, but this is pretty much wrong. In the matches where I board in Geist, I don't think that I even bother protecting it. If it doesn't win on the spot, then it wasn't worth it - in addition to this, Karakas makes the manabase worse. (I love playing Enegery Field without RIP, presenting the opponent only Basiclands and a Divining Top. Works fine.
I'd like to hear your opinions on my take.
Greetings
EDIT:Though I test -1 Tundra +1 Heath atm... mooar basics.
so basically what you are trying to do is overload your opponents abrupt decays. this strategy is great game one as long as you are able to keep the board equal. however i have tried the idea and you can just get blown out after board especially if they board in grip or deed.
Grip is just another Decay, whereas Pernicious Deed is totally brutal. But I've played various types of all BUGdecks and I can't really think of any of them, besides Landstill, that wants to run Deed. You always have Shaman and most of the time Confi or Goyf too, so this card isn't a big concern to me.
Thanks for the input in any way.
Greetings
Hey Joe,
I just wanted to say that I have a ton of respect for you as a player, after watching some of your SCG tournament play. I'm just curious if you playtested the Stonblade, (ala Kobe Spaeth and Joe Bass) build of the deck with stonefoge and batterskull, while moving counterbalance to the board. It seems like a powerful option,in some of my testing. I imagine you have played around with the idea at one point or another. If so, just wondering what your thoughts are on the build, and if it could be a good direction to take U/W in. Thanks!
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