Miracle Control

[Dzra]

Assuming you didn't mess with the default settings, go back a few pages to page 265.

Yeah, I mean this does get brought up pretty frequently, although it's still an interesting question. Possible solutions could be:

1. Promotion/Exposure from Joe's stream.
2. The use of a chess clock online.
3. More card availability/fluidity (allowing people to more easily switch to the perceived tier 1 decks).

It's likely some combination of these and perhaps some fourth factor... It's obviously hard to say, but I think it's still interesting.

[Einherjer]

Hey Einherjer, has SCG told you anything about when (or if) your article will be going online?

Just returned from the wilderness of Sweden. Will stay in the country for another week but I got an Internet connection now :)

Article should be coming on TUE or WED, hope you like it and dont forget to comment on the scg-site, as it could enable me to write more for them, itd mean a lot to me:)

As soon as I am back home Ill start streaming.

Thanks and Greetings

[oarsman]

Something along the lines of "well, at the end of the day this comes down to playstyle" is being used incredibly inflationary all over these boards, despite being overly simplifying & misleading.
When discussing approaches / strategies / deck building (card choices) / meta choices / etc., it's actually impossible for several dozens of nerds to agree on semi-controversial stuff. Well, welcome to the interwebz - I know... buuut: in my opinion the actual "right and wrong principle" holds true for most of such discussions.

I do think playstyle contributes somewhat to my build of the deck. There are two reasons why I play 23 land, which is more than other builds.

1: It was the only way I could fit in the 2nd Karakas
2: I know that I will keep an unreasonable number of low land hands, and I need the top cards of the deck to contain land that extra fraction of a time in order to do that.

[twndomn]

I cannot stress enough about the land count. Since Joe mentioned about the 23 land count thing, I would like to elaborate on why I strongly disagree with Ein's 21 land count. Long story short, refer to the article here:

http://www.kibble.net/magic/magic10.php

Most people just use some MWS, Excel, or online deck analysis tools, but never bother to study the math behind it.

21	48.98%
22	53.85%
23	58.60%

The values right there are the reason I'm unsettling about going down to 21. You might believe it's ok, since you'll just Brainstorm out of it. However, there's also a 60% chance of having zero brainstorm in your opening 7. In conclusion, don't do it.

[Ltj999]

Yeah, I mean this does get brought up pretty frequently, although it's still an interesting question. Possible solutions could be:

1. Promotion/Exposure from Joe's stream.
2. The use of a chess clock online.
3. More card availability/fluidity (allowing people to more easily switch to the perceived tier 1 decks).

It's likely some combination of these and perhaps some fourth factor... It's obviously hard to say, but I think it's still interesting.

Yeah agreed. I feel like the online meta has contributed to what seems to amount to a "boogie man" status of miracles as of late. Its been making me second guess playing it over something thats still competitive but maybe slightly tier 1-1.5 like elves...

[Shawn]

I feel budget is the biggest issue with deck selection; Elves and burn are very common and relatively inexpensive for legacy decks online and Miracles is one of, if not the cheapest good blue deck. I've also played against a lot of Storm and Belcher, which are also affordable decks online.

[Cipher]

I do think playstyle contributes somewhat to my build of the deck. There are two reasons why I play 23 land, which is more than other builds.

1: It was the only way I could fit in the 2nd Karakas
2: I know that I will keep an unreasonable number of low land hands, and I need the top cards of the deck to contain land that extra fraction of a time in order to do that.

Yeah, playstyle is huge. Not agreeing at all with Klaus here. People follow patterns and make plays which promote certain cards and marginalize others.

[Ltj999]

Hmm as anyone thought to have Elspeth Knight Errant in the main? I'm trying to figure out what to do with one open slot in the main given a fair deck meta. I lost big time in a miracles mirror recently with Elspeth in the main and it seems like a nice addition that can either go on the aggro plan when needed, or help us chump block our way into a winning board state or terminus...

[Adryan]

One can have a bad opinion on Keranos, but he's strictly better than Elspeth. Except at dying to TNN, Punishing Fire etc.

I cannot stress enough about the land count. Since Joe mentioned about the 23 land count thing, I would like to elaborate on why I strongly disagree with Ein's 21 land count. Long story short, refer to the article here:

http://www.kibble.net/magic/magic10.php

Most people just use some MWS, Excel, or online deck analysis tools, but never bother to study the math behind it.

21	48.98%
22	53.85%
23	58.60%

The values right there are the reason I'm unsettling about going down to 21. You might believe it's ok, since you'll just Brainstorm out of it. However, there's also a 60% chance of having zero brainstorm in your opening 7. In conclusion, don't do it.

You do realize those are the chances to have 4 lands in play at turn 4 without any library manipulation...?

[twndomn]

One can have a bad opinion on Keranos, but he's strictly better than Elspeth. Except at dying to TNN, Punishing Fire etc.

You do realize those are the chances to have 4 lands in play at turn 4 without any library manipulation...?

Yeah~, you gotta consider these scenarios. Some hands are snap-keep when some hands are not as obvious. Say you're running 21 lands, your opening 7 are land, land, CB, Entreat, StP, Pierce, and Jace. That means your next 2 out of 4 cards drawn will have to be lands, in order to make this instance as a valid occurrence of the 48.98% listed above. You have worse than the chance of a coin flip, order for that to happen. I personally am not comfortable about that. If my math is incorrect, please do point it out.

[Cipher]

Yeah~, you gotta consider these scenarios. Some hands are snap-keep when some hands are not as obvious. Say you're running 21 lands, your opening 7 are land, land, CB, Entreat, StP, Pierce, and Jace. That means your next 2 out of 4 cards drawn will have to be lands, in order to make this instance as a valid occurrence of the 48.98% listed above. You have worse than the chance of a coin flip, order for that to happen. I personally am not comfortable about that. If my math is incorrect, please do point it out.

But the Ponder lists have 8 draw spells and Top. You're 90% to draw at least 1, and 70% to draw 2 by turn 4. A single one gives you 3 effective draws, which adds a 20% probability to hit 4 on 4.

[klaus]

@Oarsman & Cipher:

I understand where you're coming from, but tending to keep actual mulligans (sorry if I'm exaggerating here) is in no way validating "play style" as a sound approach of arguing choices. If you know your weak spot (I know I have a couple myself), try to consciously improve them instead of trying to make it appear as if you can't.

Anyway, play style is a misleading term to begin with. imo "personal preferences for vague reasons" often times nails it better.

@ afb0032:

thanks for elaborating on this. hope you didn't take offense by my somewhat harsh undertone!

[lordofthepit]

Just returned from the wilderness of Sweden. Will stay in the country for another week but I got an Internet connection now :)

Article should be coming on TUE or WED, hope you like it and dont forget to comment on the scg-site, as it could enable me to write more for them, itd mean a lot to me:)

As soon as I am back home Ill start streaming.

Thanks and Greetings

Looking forward to this! Thanks!

[afb0032]

@Oarsman & Cipher:

I understand where you're coming from, but tending to keep actual mulligans (sorry if I'm exaggerating here) is in no way validating "play style" as a sound approach of arguing choices. If you know your weak spot (I know I have a couple myself), try to consciously improve them instead of trying to make it appear as if you can't.

Anyway, play style is a misleading term to begin with. imo "personal preferences for vague reasons" often times nails it better.

@ afb0032:

thanks for elaborating on this. hope you didn't take offense by my somewhat harsh undertone!

Not at all, just wanted to clear up the ambiguity from my original post.

[Cipher]

@Oarsman & Cipher:

I understand where you're coming from, but tending to keep actual mulligans (sorry if I'm exaggerating here) is in no way validating "play style" as a sound approach of arguing choices. If you know your weak spot (I know I have a couple myself), try to consciously improve them instead of trying to make it appear as if you can't.

Anyway, play style is a misleading term to begin with. imo "personal preferences for vague reasons" often times nails it better.

It really does mean more than you're allowing yourself to acknowledge. You should have a clear objective each time you shuffle up in a matchup. Against a deck like RUG Delver, for example, most people will focus on hitting land drops By Any Means Necessary. You'll always have a few mircales players who are going to take a more proactive approach and tell themselves that they win when Counterbalance-Top is on board. These players will more aggressively try and make plays, will crack fetches to bait a tap-out, not wait out tax counters, etc. This second type of player is going to see more mileage out of certain early game effects. Maybe he boards in a pile of Flusterstorm, and has no idea why everyone can't understand that the card is obviously a 4-of.

Same thing also goes for Einherjer's Ponder version. It's a bit of an exaggeration, but he's basically goldfishing the combo matchup with Counterbalance and the 4 extra cantrips. If you have that mindset, Spell Pierce is going to increasingly become a weaker card, and you'll notice that each Ponder you add makes your gameplan smoother and smoother.

I do agree that people use the phrase in lieu of an actual argument, but you have to acknowledge playstlye to understand the differences between all these lists people are running. The idiosyncrasies of each list are largely a result of each designer trying to force games to flow in a specific way.

[Adryan]

From a mathematical standpoint there is always a perfect list for any kind of deck in an expected metagame. You may not know exactly what you're playing against but you can have the information how likely it is to run into certain decks/archetypes. Or is any american player here expecting lots of Goblins, Meerfolks at their next SCG Open?

All this talking about mindsets, personal preference, playstyle... It's very unprofessional, but let's be serious. Nobody here is professional and lives from Magic. Furthermore Legacy is not a PTQ format, so there is no really teched out Miracle list. There is a perfect miracle list out there, with maybe 1-3 different slots depending on the expected metagame and everyone who plays something different is doing it wrong. But because no one invests the energy and time and has the intelligence to build such a list and convince everyone he's right in a professional way, we use stupid lines like playstyle, personal preference etc.

It's kind of funny how everyone tries to avoid sentences like Snapcaster Mage build is better than Legend build or vice versa.

[oarsman]

From a mathematical standpoint there is always a perfect list for any kind of deck in an expected metagame.

But this deck is not going to be the same for different players.

A less skilled/experienced player might expect to do significantly better with a weaker but less complicated build of a deck than he could with a super teched out list.

[Cipher]

From a mathematical standpoint there is always a perfect list for any kind of deck in an expected metagame.

Only if your deck is straightforward enough that a scripted AI could play it. Mono red or whichever Delver deck, maybe, but when you play a blue deck that revolves around hidden game zones (Your opponent's hand and the top of both players decks), you would need Deep Thought to compute every perfect play.

It's kind of funny how everyone tries to avoid sentences like Snapcaster Mage build is better than Legend build or vice versa.

Well, just plain stating that Ponders are worse than Legends is pretty pointless, but I will say that I doubt it's a good idea to cut Pierces and run your deck like a combo/control hybrid. Maybe sometime I'll get a chance to test it.

[Adryan]

Today the daily was a lot of fun. I never thought about bringing Humility in other MU's than Sneakshow, but i figured out i can board it against Goblins and MUD where they are really good. I think those are the only 3 MU's where it's worth bringing in. The first is rather obvious, but the other two are fringe decks i didn't think about.

Keranos is simply super awesome. I love him especially against Painter decks, where they bring in all the hate you can imagine for Entreat the Angels. You just need to find the small window to resolve him, and then it's usually GG. All in all they are super sweet high impact 1ofs, nothing insane, but high impact like SB cards shoulld be.

[Ltj999]

Today the daily was a lot of fun. I never thought about bringing Humility in other MU's than Sneakshow, but i figured out i can board it against Goblins and MUD where they are really good. I think those are the only 3 MU's where it's worth bringing in. The first is rather obvious, but the other two are fringe decks i didn't think about.

Keranos is simply super awesome. I love him especially against Painter decks, where they bring in all the hate you can imagine for Entreat the Angels. You just need to find the small window to resolve him, and then it's usually GG. All in all they are super sweet high impact 1ofs, nothing insane, but high impact like SB cards shoulld be.

could you post your list please? SB sounds interesting I would love to see your whole list.