Hey, do you bring in Rest in Peace against BG/x Decks with deathrite and tarmogoyf i.e. Shardless, Jund, etc. If so, do you side out the snapcasters in this situation?Originally Posted by supachai
Do you do the same with RUG delver?
Thanks
Yup, these are my boarding plans against the three decks. I change it up sometimes depending on specific cards I'm afraid of, like Choke.
Shardless:
-3 Force of Will
-1 Counterspell
-2 Spell Pierce
-2 Snapcaster Mage
-1 Engineered Explosives
+1 Pyroblast
+2 Red Elemental Blast
+2 Rest in Peace
+1 Misdirection
+1 Terminus
+1 Entreat the Angels
+1 Venser, Shaper Savant
Jund:
-3 Force of Will
-1 Counterspell
-2 Spell Pierce
-2 Snapcaster Mage
-1 Engineered Explosives
+3 Rest in Peace
+1 Terminus
+1 Entreat the Angels
+1 Misdirection
+2 Wear//Tear
+1 Venser, Shaper Savant
Against Jund, I will often keep the Explosives and board out a Counterbalance instead. In both these matchups, Entreat the Angels is key. Entreating for 4 tokens or more, especially in response to their attack, is usually gg.
RUG Delver:
-3 Force of Will
-1 Misdirection
-1 Counterspell
-1 Venser, Shaper Savant
-2 Snapcaster Mage
+3 Rest in Peace
+1 Spell Pierce
+1 Flusterstorm
+1 Engineered Explosives
+1 Terminus
+1 Entreat the Angels
The RUG delver match up has honestly been really easy though. Certainly much less scary than Jund and Shardless.
Hope that helps!
Last edited by supachai; 09-23-2013 at 10:45 PM.
22 lands including Ruins is greedy, not impossible. I wouldn't do it.
In most likely cases, even if you activate shackle, you are probably holding an opponent's creature as a blocker. If your opponent top-deck an Abrupt Decay, he might just kill you on that turn.
So far, only oarsman has proven that 4 CB is fine in legend-angel list. Your list is probably ok if you live in Europe. Since you're using Snapcasters not RiP, you might as well replace CB with Ponder, like other the European lists.
If you board in Miracles for the whole range from Tempo to Midrange and likely control matchups (more Entreats), why don't you run more of them anyways in the Mainboard to adress these common matchups and adress combo via the SB?
Pretty much the same issue I see here with your boarding of RIP for the Snapcasters. You could pretty much MD the RIP's with that boarding habits and have a better G1 against ANT and Reanimator as well
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You do bring up a good point. But allow me to defend my choice for a bit. It is true that Terminus/Entreat comes in against almost any deck with creatures, from Jund to Goblins to Death and Taxes. There's a couple reasons that I don't simply play 4 main yet board it in a lot.
1. First of all, there are matchups where it is almost completely dead (ANT, TES, Sneak Show, OmniTell, Burn). Playing 3 means I rarely see more than 1, which is usually easy enough to Brainstorm/Clique/Jace away. Playing 4 means I see 2 far too often, and it's stuck in my hand. I only want that many Terminus when I know it isn't going to be a dead card. RIP has the same issue of being a dead card in an even greater amount of matchups.
2. In game one, I want to have a shot at beating anything. This is why I have a wide range of counter magic in the main and yet in a lot of matchups it all comes out. While it's lackluster against a fair amount of the meta (Midrange, aggro, etc), you NEED to have them there for the unfair decks, namely combo. In other matchups it is a catch-all: it can still counter an opposing Jace or a Batterskull or even a creature if need be. Post board, we can specialize our deck to deal specifically with the threat at hand. Terminus is better at dealing with creatures than counter magic. REB is better at dealing with Jace, Wear // Tear is better at dealing with artifact and enchantments, etc.. Even in a matchup like Tempo (which is good anyway), Terminus does a lot more for us than a Force of Will (due to card disadvantage), despite not being great. This is also why I have Snapcasters main. They are a good catch all-recurring Swords against aggro and countermagic against control and combo. Of course in matchups where I need RIP more (anything with Deathrite, Goyf, Bridge from Below, or reanimation), Snapcaster comes out because there is now more specialized hate.
3. With tight play, 3 Terminus, 4 Swords, 2 Entreat, plus my creature suite is enough removal to get me through the aggro, tempo, and midrange matchups. Post-board, we simply add cards to make the matchup more generous.
Truth be told, Terminus only comes in for about half my matchups. I think that the 3-1 sideboard split is certainly justified. Has your playtesting told you otherwise?
I admit, I could probably design my MD - SB interaction better so that everything slots in perfectly, but I haven't played Miracles that extensively in each matchup to figure out the perfect build. I actually struggled a lot with the build since I realized I was boarding out Force in so many matchups. It actually makes me curious if it's better to just cut way down on the countermagic in the main and then board in all of it in in the combo matchups. Definitely could be interesting. The thing with that is, it probably guarantees our loss against combo game 1 (forcing you to win both games 2 and 3-which can be ruined by a run of bad luck), while not necessarily guaranteeing our win against Jund/BUG (two more difficult matchups imo). The way I have it set up, I have a fair shot at beating both game 1, giving me a bit more leeway games 2 and 3.
I think that this is a pretty good approach actually. While I wouldn't cut FoW entirely from the MD, I think that combo has a distinct advantage game one anyways in that you probably don't yet know they are combo. Unless you know what they are playing beforehand, having anti-combo cards in hand game one is very incidental. Since you will rarely get many turns to dig through your deck to find anti-combo cards, if your FoWs weren't accidentally in your opening hand then you will likely lose the game with four FoWs floating around in your library. The different with cards like Counterbalance (and RIP) being that while good against a lot of combo decks, they are also great against a wide variety of non-combo decks and will help you make a plan when thinking about mulligans.
No worries, I usually don't post deck lists because I think they clutter things up. If anyone ever wants my deck list, they can always just message me.
Like others have said, I probably wouldn't run a colorless land in this deck. A ton hinges on, and even a couple (like Elspeth and Entreat) on
. When facing Wasteland/Stifle decks, drawing a colorless land could mean the difference between a win and a loss.
I chopped down my MB countermagic to FoW and Counterbalance with Flusterstorm, Meddling Mages, RIP and Runed Halo coming in from the side for parts the anti-creature-package and some Jaces. Cliques and Venser are still solid.
Proved more successful to focus on the Tempo-/midrange-matchups and tackle combo with the SB.
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I would actually keep 3 Fow versus Canadian Thresh. For example;
You lost game1 and are on the play:
Play fech, fetch island, pass.
He goes land, nimble mongoose.
You fow and pitch jace.
Now he can either fow back (parity, which favors you beeing the slower deck) or let fow resolve. It's not totally unresonable that he will be out of creatures and has to dig for another. Overall you buy 2-3 turns which let you play actual magic . This leads to my next point; Side out most counterspells and get better topdecks. Counters like Counterspell, spell pierce and flusterstorm are not good in this matchup because you will often be behind on board. With the exception of sulfuric vortex you don't really care about anything that is not a creature. I rather have a high density of answers to the board than having counterspells to protect my answers from getting countered. If you flusterstorm a fow to get RiP through, then grats. what if you only have 2 lands with rip and flusterstorm in hand? what if you just have the flusterstorm? what if you have 3 mana, rest in peace and nothing more? Maybe your next draw is that flusterstorm, should you wait? Fow is bad because it's card disadvantage and easily stopped by REB. It does have the upside of beeing able to counter anything at any time though. It's great where a counterspell is _needed_ and that is to stop an early threat or to force a miracle through. Because Fow has "built in protection from Daze" compared to i.e spell pierce the card-disadvantage might actually be better. If you have cards in hand when you loose to Canadian Thresh then maybe you can keep some fow's in next time?
This is what I sideboard versus RUG;
-2 predict -2 counterspell -2 spell snare -1 jace -1 fow
+1 entreat +4 reb (I run a mountain) +2 rip +1 engineered explosives. Reb is first of all an answer to delver but can also just trade for a brainstorm.
I have tried blood moon but I think it adds to much inconsistency. Sometimes you are to much behind for it to make a difference.
When I instead of tempo face a lot of discard i still want to maximize my topdecks but I no longer care about tempo. Sideboarding versus shardless for example;
-2 spell snare -4 stp -4 fow -2 counterspell
+4 blasts +1 ee +1 entreat +2 rip +1 venser +1 clique +1 needle +1 blood moon. Here blasts are unconditional jace-removal and also stops creeping tar pit, notion thief, force of will and ancestral visions. Sometimes it's even worth killing an agent to protect jace.
I mentioned this in an earlier post but got nothing in response. Is everyone happy with Misdirection as a way to fight shardless? I can really see the upside of doing that to abrupt decay, hymn and ancestral vision... but do we really need this loopsided card to win?
Jund is less driven by CA than Shardless so I keep my plows over the blasts (but otherwise sideboard the same as I do versus shardless). If they have choke I would consider keeping a few counters.
It might be correct to keep in Force against RUG, but it is almost certainly incorrect to Force a turn 1 Nimble Mongoose, especially when you don't know what else they have in hand. Mongoose will remain a 1/1 until turn 3-4 at the earliest. We end up taking 2-3 damage, but we have that time to dig for Explosives, Rest in Peace, Entreat, or Terminus. Force would only be for dangerous cards like Sulfuric Vortex or maybe a large Goyf when we're in a pinch. I will probably try keeping in two Forces in place of a Swords and a Terminus and see how it goes.
I think the argument can certainly be made to board in REB. I like that it stops countermagic when you really need something to resolve and hitting Delver on the side is nice. The problem I have with it is that I would need to fetch Volcanics, which can be wasted. Since you are running a basic Mountain it's probably a better choice for you, but I think I will stick with Spell Pierce/Flusterstorm.
I agree with your SB plan vs Shardless (although I'd probably still keep some Swords). I'm still unsure if I want to keep Misdirection or not. Usually snagging one Hymn, Thoughtseize, Abrupt Decay, or Visions puts me far enough ahead to get there. I can't remember when I wished it were a Force.
Last edited by supachai; 09-24-2013 at 08:42 PM.
I totally agree with this. I think having some FoW isn't bad against tempo, but I don't think I'd ever use it to counter their threats, especially early in the game. I would use FoW almost exclusively to stop their Stifles on lands and Stifles or other counter magic on key spells like Terminus or Counterbalance. REB is great because it can shoot Delvers (their only real threat post-RIP) as well as help you resolve your spells. I also like Flusterstorm and Spell Pierce a whole lot against tempo. Flusterstorm is especially Daze-proof. Our spells are more powerful than theirs. Use your counter magic to resolve your powerful spells, not counter their dudes that our removal covers already.
Take the following scenario:
* G1, turn1, on the draw
* opponent turns out to be on RUG and drops a T1 Mongoose.
* Your hand: 2 Island, 1 Tundra, 1 STP, 1 FOW, 1 Jace, 1 Counterbalance
This is why I'd FOW the Mongoose (obv. pitching Jace):
* our only 3-4 outs are Terminus and possibly a miser S. Verdict
* I don't count EtA here, since it's not only vulnerable to Stifle but also Pierce, making it an unreliable solution, plus it's an endgame spell, and thus irrelevant at that point.
* finding those 3-4 outs w/o cantrips / Top might take a while
* also our white source is wastable = not reliable
* successfully FOW'ing Goose might buy enough time to reach 4+ land drops rather unharmed
The given scenario could evolve like so:
* they FOW back (a feasible move imo) --> fair trade
* they Daze our FOW: that's kinda uncool, but at least costs them significant tempo (Dazing on turn one hurts their tempo considerably more than later on)
* FOW resolves --> great: We've just gotten rid of their meanest menace, bought some time plus get the info that they're not holding Daze.
* T2 they drop nothing and keep up their mana for Stifle --> great, we've just bought ourselves another essential turn
* and yep: I'd definitely FOW that Goose even if I didn't hold STP (making us more vulnerable to a T2 Goyf), since I prefer facing down a 3/4 goyf on turn 2-3 over a Nimble Menace on turn 1
The scenario above has many variations, of which I just considered a very small amount. The basic idea beyond my approach, and I think many of you would agree: buying time is the sole aim during the early game against fast aggro. I'm aware countering that Mongoose is not scientifically proven the correct move, but I've experienced too many games in which I took a couple of pings from one and eventually 1-2 hits by a thresh'd one and then mercilessly got burned to death.
Allowing RUG or any other opponent with a certain counter suite to resolve a hexproof guy puts them in the driver seat. All they have to do is protecting their threat against 3-4 outs, instead of finding and resolving another one.
As we were talking about the post-board matchup, you actually have Terminus, Explosives, and Rest in Peace. Brainstorm, Top, and Ponder can also help you dig. In my deck post-board, that's 18 cards that can potentially dig us out. We will probably see 3 more cards (not including the extra ones from Top/Bstorm) before the Mongoose gets threshed. I'd bet my chances on that and save myself the card disadvantage. Plus, if they drop a Goyf, Delver, or a second Mongoose next turn I would certainly rather have waited for Terminus, Explosives, and Rest in Peace. I'm sure in the preboard matchup, there are fringe cases where Forcing the Mongoose is correct but in general it is a play I would really not want to make unless I have to.
Part of what I learned playing Miracles is that you have to play it like a control deck. We cannot think about the deck in terms of immediate plays, but rather a long-term goal. Our plays must help us get to a position where we can win. To get the most out of our plays, we usually want to wait until the last possible moment to make it, so we have the most information and can make the most correct play. I will gladly trade the 2-3 life (sometimes I'll take even bigger hits) just to get more information before making a play. There is no need to be proactive, especially that early in the game, since we have no idea what the opponent's next move is. If I throw away a Force and a Jace to save myself 3 points of life and lose out on potential future card advantage, I'm playing a losing game.
Thanks for the shoutout, yep it was my: Here is that post you were talking about: http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/s...l=1#post745168
At the moment my manabase for Miracles (which I'll be bringing to Ovino8 this weekend) is the following:
4 Tundra
4 Flooded Strand
4 Polluted Delta
1 Arid Mesa
2 Volcanic Island
4 Island
2 Plains
1 Karakas
Yes I know 4 Tundra is not what everybody else is playing but I got a few reasons behind it:
Playing around Wasteland: Many will claim that 4 Tundra will suck against Wastelands. Well it does not. Why, you may ask? Well, let's take this on a more general approach. How to play around it? First there is the way everybody knows, Island, Island, Plains, Fetchland - this'll work negating the Wastelands. But what if I start with Tundra against Unknown? Will I fetch for Island next turn, if my third land in hand is Volcanic/Karakas/Tundra? Nah, I'll be probably just getting the next Tundra, and with the next Fetchland, the 3rd one, after one or two of them being Wastelanded I'll grab another one. Our Fetchland-Configuration is not 9 Flooded Strand, according to this flaw I prefer playing a bunchload of Tundren :D
Greetings
Have you tried a 1-of Mystic Gate or Glacial Fortress? Choke is a real card, and Mystic Gate especially allows us to generate UU with just another Plains under Choke (or when we can't find other blue mana). Has proven to be very useful. Either way, I love the Miracles mana base. 6 basics and zero colorless sources makes us incredibly stable and resilient.
I tried both of them, and yeah sure both a strictly better than a Tundra as the game progresses. But I don't need any extra power for the lategame, I need immediate power in the earlygame, where the first interactions take place. Both of them are incedribly bad as 1st land. You can't Pierce and you can't Brainstorm in T1-3, which is necessary against certain decktypes - aka Storm, End of T1 Brainstorm into Balance with a manacost of choice on Top is viable.
I have played a lot of games, both on Cockatrice and irl, local tournaments, Grand Prixs, Ovino7 and hundreds of Cockatrice battles and I died to Choke once in real life and about 10 times on Cockatrice. This is a fair percentage for a hatecard. I wouldn't wanna add a worse Tundra just for the sake of beating a Choke somewhen in the following two years to come... If the meta would warrant it, I'd def. play Mystic Gate but right now I don't see the reason for doing so. Against most Choke-Decks I still have 2 Counterspell alongside the Counterbalances. Sometimes I keep in Pierces and sometimes I bring in Wear//Tear - not like I am plain dead to this (rarely seen) card.
Greetings
The problem with this is that miracles do not want to miss landdrops. I like the overload on duals-approach in decks with a proactive gameplan. I advocated this for esper-stoneblade together with 3-4 wastelands a while back. If you get wastelanded having mystic/bob/delver/whatever at 1-2 mana you don't reallty care. If you miss a landdrop where your goal is jace, entreat and terminus (even at 6 mana) those cards drops ALOT as realistic plays for every land wasted. Sure, you won't get color-screwed (as you explained above) as you will not run out of white/blue sources so easily, even with just blue fetchlands but you have to consider the cost of durdling with top and resolving jace (preferably w/o range of spell pierce). As weird as it may sound I actually prefer the minimum amount of duals and max out on basics and fetches (where 9 or 10 is my "max" for not taking to much damage). As long as you don't run to low on sources for your cards this will get you a more solid manabase versus wasteland (and when you don't face wasteland you can still go easy-mode and fetch duals).
To put this approach in your example above, if you run 4 tundras the risk of having them in hand while having a fetchland in play is twice as high if you run 4 compared to 2 as I have. You will therefor not be "forced" to fetch a tundra as you "allready have another wasteland-target coming".
My manabase for reference;
4 flooded strand
3 scalding tarn
2 arid mesa
2 plains
5 island
1 mountain
1 karakas
2 volcanic island
2 tundra
18 sources for blue. 12 sources for island.
14 sources for white. 8 sources for plains
12 sources for red. 6 sources for mountain.
compared to your manabase it's +1 mountain +1 island -2 tundra.
This has served me quite well. WW can be hard sometimes but as long as you find one basic plains you can allways fetch that tundra for the one-shot with entreat.
If I want to up my count for white sources I would add mystic gate or replace an island/volcanic island for it.
edit: Also, well written Klaus.
There's also a subtle benefit from FOW-ing creatures rather than saving it to push removal through (which is basicly the same, except it takes more mana and you take more damage) and that is information. If I fow my opponent's turn 1 play (dodging daze) and he fow back I have less things to worry about from his hand, the card he pitches also tells me a lot about the rest of his cards. As long as you are 100% reactive and your opponent has no threath in play his cards gets worse and yours get better. He might even be "forced" to play more lands. Saving FOW to be able to kill two creatures is just win-more-thinking. Playing spell pierce and flusterstorm of your own does not fit in your gameplan, rather your opponent's. You basicly only fuel your opponents (otherwise dead) soft-counters! Pierce nagging a Ponder is certainly better than a lot of things but it's not Ponder that kills you and by playing Spell pierce you only make your topdecks worse.
I was strictly referring to a preboard game. And yes: of course, we have cantrips, but in the hand I investigated, we didn't.
As for Goyf and Delver: we're still holding STP as an immediate answer. // EE is not a core card, which is why I ignored its existence for analytical reasons, and RiP again does not apply for G1s, unless you're going with a RiP Helm version, which I personally think is terrible in general, unless your meta consists of an extremely high amount of gy based strategies.
Just to be clear: I wasn't promoting FOWing T1 Geese as a general approach, instead I presented a scenario that made this move feasible. What fringe cases come to your mind beyond that?
That's exactly the reasoning behind my approach to the given case. I even took it further and boiled it down to the #1 objective of surviving the early midgame as unharmed as possible against tempo decks featuring burn spells.
Jace is the first card I'll gladly pitch to FOW against Aggro archetypes boasting Daze/Pierce, since he's simply irrelevant during the first 6 turns (aka. the early game) - and that's exactly when the winners of most of such games are decided.
The only time I could see myself casting a Jace on turn 4-6 is when I'm facing a desperate board state and am forced to bounce a Delver or Goyf just to have Jace eat some dmg and die to survive another 1-3 turns and eventually find a sweeper.
That's a bold understatement: Geese will cost you an estimated average of 7-10 life if resolved on turn 1, with a cantripless hand such as the one above. And let me tell you I have seen a turn 1 Goose go all the way more than once.
I understand your reasoning and I think both approaches are viable, though I see on little flaw in your argument.
You claim that your manabase is better against Wasteland in the lategame, which I think is wrong. You play 1 more real Basic Land. Basic Mountain is a whole different story. Let's just say 2 more nonwastelandable sources. Meaning you won't get Wastelanded early on but in the Midgame when you have to play Tundren. Well, I think we are both overexegerating the importance of 2 land slots at a whole. Both versions can easily play Basic Lands up to T4. Mine can do this, yours too. Both will be wastelanded after that simply because we play wastelandable sources. The main thing I see here is if you can't run out enough Basiclands soon 4 Tundra is superior, but I see your way of working around this, by simply playing more basic lands. Wasteland will get us, this or the other way, but based on testing I did last week (though it wasn't concentrated on the manabase) I got manascrewed against RUG 2 out of 16 times. One more time RUG was able to colorscrew me - making 3/16 which is fine by me. Anyways, a small one sided sample is no proof that my version is better.
My conclusion would be the following:
Wasteland does affect our deck, even though not as much as it does affect others, but we cannot play around it completely. You can either try to overload on Duals or to play more Basics. Both will grant you a way to play "around/with" opposing Wastelands. Either way it will slow you down sooner or later. It ofc is better to get slowed down by it as late as possible but being able to drop an U/W land after another turn after turn has some merit too, in the early game.
Are you fine with that or should we discuss this topic in a real way, I am fine with taking this topic serious and writing a lot more than I did if you feel like I am wrong.
Greetings
That's basically what I ended up with too. I strongly recommend -1 Delta +1 Arid Mesa though: getting that second basic Plains is key to setting up a safe EtA against mana denial strategies imo. Also, we're likely to fetch a basic Island with the Strands from our opening hands, making sure to have a safe mana source to cast our early cantrips.
I also prefer to go with 1 Delta, 1 Rainforest, 1 Tarn - one day some Sinkhole.dec opponent might just opt to Extirpate your Deltas - I know super fringy case, but there's no downside to splitting up those U fetches.
Basically exactly my approach. It's not a clear dogma though - of course you need more info to determine whether fetching a Tundra over a basic Island is the correct call*, but yes: more often than not I see myself going for another Tundra against Wasteland.dec, since being cut off white completely can hurt much more than being sure to keep an unwasteable blue mana source.
-
* cases that ask for this approach: holding multiple STPs or intending to set up an EtA / Moat / Elspeth / Supreme Verdict
Here's my mana base for reference:
4 Flooded Strand
1 Polluted Delta
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Scalding Tarn
2 Arid Mesa
4 Tundra
2 Volcanic Island
4 Island
2 Plains
1 Karakas
Last edited by klaus; 09-25-2013 at 01:40 PM.
Currently playing:
3 Plains
5 Island
1 Mountain
1 Karakas
4 Tundra
4 Scalding Tarn
1 Arid Mesa
3 Tundra
1 Volcanic Island
1 Glacial Fortress
Though I can see the argument for an additional Volc here. I play the RiP/Helm build, with a Blood Moon and Engi in the Main deck. I have currently only been screwed when against Wastes when I was desperately trying to land a Blood Moon against a Maverick opponent and couldn't afford to find my single Volc. Other times I have been fine. (I played 4 Tundras at the time.) I think this mana-base is perfect for us, and I use an almost identical one in my Bant variant, replacing all Red with Green, though I am hoping to throw in Punishing Fire's and Groves at some point.
The conspiracy goes deeper than you might think.Can I pay you for not posting in this thread?
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