Miracle Control

[exallium]

Agreed this is one of those decks where there's no 'one true way' to build and even play the deck.
I would be willing to write a bit more indepth about my thopter foundry build if people are interested in the reasoning behind the card choices and such.

I'd be absolutely interested! Honestly, the more shared info the better.

[TheArchitect]

Paying 3 cards, 2 Mana and delving 6 to counter a spell seams like a shit trade to me.

Edit.
I think I just talked myself out of playing the card.

It's not a 3 for 1. Its a 1 for 1. DTT is literally a counterspell in that situation. You only have to do this in desperate stations. A lot of times you won't even need to counterspell whatever is on the stack after you see the 7. Like if your opponent casts Lilana of the veil, often any miracles player would cast counterspell if they had it in hand. Imagine instead of counterspell you have DTT. You cast it and see: FoW, BS, Vendilion clique, Top, 3 land. You could take FoW and BS and your DTT is basically a counterspell where you had to delve and pay 1 life. But youd probably just take top/BS and Clique and now you can just ignore the lily. But imagine it is a sneak attack being cast instead of lily... Now the FoW+blue card option is pretty nice to have.

[AnziD]

@AnziD: Have you actually played against the BUG Delver Cruise decks much beyond what you reported about? I don't mean to offend you or anything but the matchup seems fine for miracles still. At worse it is even rather slightly favorable, which just means you have to play as tight as possible.

I mean I am probably not playing 100% optimally, but I think it is bold to say that this matchup is slightly favorable at worse. The new trend is to play Stifles and that makes the matchup even harder. When you throw TC into the mix everything just gets tossed in the air. I'm curious as to why you think it is favorable with Ein's list?

[Kylehyde]

I'm not so sure the BUG matchup gets harder with treasure cruise. What is BUG usually cutting? Hymns, thoughtseize, Liliana's, Stifle, bobs, Tombstalkers? Besides the tombstalkers, I think cutting the others is a good thing for us.

[Valtrix]

As I mentioned earlier, I have a Google Docs up for work on a community primer. I wrote up a brief introduction, organized the page better so it will be easier to add content, and threw in a list from the most recent SCG Open with a 1st Miracles placing. Special thank you to Klaus for getting things started by writing about Terminus. If we all contribute a little bit we can get together a really nice document I believe.

Remember, you can make direct edits to the appearance of the page, just as if you were editing somebody else's paper. Any changes need to be approved before they get implemented into the document. Before approval everybody will still be able to view you proposed changes though, so there's no issue with doing work and then not having it show up. Approval basically means a person with edit privileges clicks accept for your changes--it's not some process that will take a lot of work. Currently only myself and Klaus have these privileges on the page, but if you're interested in doing that role as well with us send me a message and I can give you the privileges. The edit control is just there as a safety precaution to ensure that we get the best possible document written up.

[Arianeira]

@Klaus
How is Dig through time working out for you?

I really like Dig Through Time in my Sultai deck for Standard but haven't tried it in Miracles yet.

Not sure I like relying on Entreat and Jae with no flash creatures at all. I like the flash creatures to attack planeswalkers and give an end of turn option as well as disrupt with Clique.

@Adryan
I tried out Bob Huang's UR delver deck and it really surprised me how much I like it the drawing cards is nuts with all the cantriping into Treasure cruises.

Haven't tried playing against it with Miracles yet but counter top still shuts off most of what they draw off Treasure Cruise.

@MattiasNL
Your Thoper Miracles looks pretty good for the MTGO online meta. Will have to try that on MTGO at some point. I was running miracles with Stoneforge main deck because of all the burn in the online meta.

How is Thoper Miracles against, Combo, Elves and Death and Taxes? Seems runing less Terminus would be a liability against creature decks or does Batterskull and Thopter tokens hold up aggro pretty well?

@exallium
Treasure cruise is good in BUG delver but what exactly do you cut for it? You can't run Dark Confidant and Treasure Cruise. Dark Confidant is the biggest threat out of BUG delver that was the card I was most scared of out of BUG Delver if you can't get rid of it immediately. If they are cutting 2-3 Dark Confidant for Treasure Cruise that is ok since they trading their draw engine for a different one. Cruise nerfs Tarmogoyf and eats Deathrite food but Dark Confidant is vulnerable to removal. BUG also tends to hold Abrupt Decay in hand and things like Liliana don't go to the graveyard right away.

@Kylehyde
I think they cut some number of Dark Confidant if they run it since flipping an 8 to Dark Confidant is terrible. Hymm is still very good if opponent does not draw a Treasure cruise.

[YamiJoey]

There's a misconception about Hymn being bad now. If my opponent is busy casting Ancestrals to counter my Ancestrals, I want my Ancestrals to find me random card advantage. Ancestral drawing three 1-1's loses to Ancestral into Hymn, a 1-1, and almost anything else. It is easily castable, and can just hit a Treasure Cruise.

[Lemnear]

There's a misconception about Hymn being bad now. If my opponent is busy casting Ancestrals to counter my Ancestrals, I want my Ancestrals to find me random card advantage. Ancestral drawing three 1-1's loses to Ancestral into Hymn, a 1-1, and almost anything else. It is easily castable, and can just hit a Treasure Cruise.

The only problem is with Hymn having low impact if drawn off TC aka castable turn 4+

[YamiJoey]

The only problem is with Hymn having low impact if drawn off TC aka castable turn 4+

That has always been true. The difference is that with Cruises in decks people will have cards in hand in the late-game. If anything it's better.

[Lemnear]

That has always been true. The difference is that with Cruises in decks people will have cards in hand in the late-game. If anything it's better.

I see a problem if your opponent has already enough lands in play to cast his spells drawn with TC. What if your opponent draws like Wasteland + Delver + X turn 4 after topdecking a TC?

[Ltj999]

anyone have any suggestions of the merfolk match-up? I seems pretty darn grindy and I always feel on the back foot, not unwinnable by any means but would love some suggestions (beyond the obvious countering of aether vial)

[Dragonslayer_90]

I mean I am probably not playing 100% optimally, but I think it is bold to say that this matchup is slightly favorable at worse. The new trend is to play Stifles and that makes the matchup even harder. When you throw TC into the mix everything just gets tossed in the air. I'm curious as to why you think it is favorable with Ein's list?

Sorry about my last post. I guess my writing got jumbled up because I was in a hurry to make the post. What I meant to say is that Team America is at worst at least even now. By that I'm referring to discard builds. As for stifle builds, I don't have enough experience with Ein's deck against that particular build to say how the match up is. I'd imagine with the inclusion of Stifle it is probably slightly unfavorable as its like a RUG Delver deck with Abrupt Decay, but that is just based on how good stifle can be against Miracles. Thus, my advice at this point would be to just find a way to test the matchup in order to figure it out. I'm sure this deck has some way to solve the problems you're having

[YamiJoey]

I see a problem if your opponent has already enough lands in play to cast his spells drawn with TC. What if your opponent draws like Wasteland + Delver + X turn 4 after topdecking a TC?

Then your Hymn is just as bad as it always has been in that situation? It's still slightly better. Your opponent could well Cruise -> Goyf -> Go. Hymn -> Removal is probably winning you the game there. Other plays may not have done. I'm not saying that Cruise means everyone has a full hand all of the time, I'm saying that late game people are more likely to have more cards in hand than they used to. If two players decide they're going to Cruise back to hand size for a turn or so and set up some resources, interrupting that with some disruptive card advantage is going to be the difference you need.

That's not the point, anyway. If we were to discuss this we'd need to do it on the TA thread or something, not here.

RE: Merfolk:
The current problem is that Merfolk isn't a highly played deck, and has a lot of different builds going around. I've seen Stifle-Waste variants, the Factory/Vault versions. My G/F used to play a 4 Stifle, 4 Daze, 4 Force, then just Creatures. Some play Brainstorm, some play White. These all play out very differently. You need your opening not to be soft to one of these, and decent against them all. The only real advice you can get, is play Snapcaster Mage and Swords. Aggro requires you to interact relatively quickly. They have a T3 Goldfish, usually T4, but hold up a decent chunk of disruption for us trying to cobble something like an Entreat for game together, or resilience in the face of Terminus and StP. You need to overload them with removal, and very often it is correct to play into the Daze so that you're not worrying about it when it comes to trying to land a bigger Spell.

[Valtrix]

Hey all! Thanks a lot for the participation on the community Primer. We're now up to 7 pages of content (which is only slightly inflated due to decklists). I put the link in my signature in case you want to contribute later and don't have the page saved or don't want to look up my original post. Dragonslayer_90 also offered to help be an editor for it, so we're now up to three editors including Klaus and myself.

As for Merfolk, you can always play fire/groves :D That's how I beat our local player on Merfolk anyway. I actually really like Porphyry Nodes against them. It buys a ton of time early game, which is where I always feel most scared against that deck, and it can't even be hit by cursecatcher! It can hurt you later if you're facing an army and need removal now, but I think the early/late game tradeoffs are worth it in this case. Supreme Verdict is also not bad in that regard, since you know if you get to 4 mana you can get a hard reset. Some other solutions are snapcaster + REBs and swords.

[lyracian]

LEGACY REPORT - WINNER @ 9 WITH OVINOGEDDON UWR MIRACLES
http://www.metagame.it/articoli-lega...-miracles.html

Google Translate makes it just about readable. Some of it sounds like an acid trip thought...
"
G1: I win the die and childbirth moor
G1: I win the die giving birth Polluted Delta step.
"

[Einherjer]

LEGACY REPORT - WINNER @ 9 WITH OVINOGEDDON UWR MIRACLES
http://www.metagame.it/articoli-lega...-miracles.html

Google Translate makes it just about readable. Some of it sounds like an acid trip thought...
"
G1: I win the die and childbirth moor
G1: I win the die giving birth Polluted Delta step.
"

English version will be online within one week.

There will also be an (english) article about the 2nd place at Ovino.

Greetings

[Ltj999]

So I'be had a ton of practice vs most "fair" decks as the meta I play in is pretty BUG, BANT, and Delver heavy, which I have a pretty good handle against. But every once in a while when DnT shows up I just get my butt kicked. Outside of the obvious "FoW aether vial" how do you approach this match up? With main decked spirit of the labyrinth and aven mindsencor there is just so much I'm playing around.

Thoughts?

[Ocean]

DnT I feel like if they have vial its almost impossible. You can get blown out at every single point of the game and they always have 3-4 cards in hand. Otherwise its good.

Hm, I think there is no effective way of fighting tc against bug, you just have to eat it, land a balance/rip and pray to god they dont have too many decays/golgari/pulse. Dont know how the rest of you are feeling about it.

[FoolofaTook]

DnT I feel like if they have vial its almost impossible. You can get blown out at every single point of the game and they always have 3-4 cards in hand. Otherwise its good.

Hm, I think there is no effective way of fighting tc against bug, you just have to eat it, land a balance/rip and pray to god they dont have too many decays/golgari/pulse. Dont know how the rest of you are feeling about it.

DnT vial active is really tough for most blue-based lists. Miracles at least has Terminus to sweep and reset. On the bright side DnT is fresh meat in front of Elfball so the meta is managing the problem for big blue.

As a BUG player I agree on TC being a really tough thing for Miracles to manage against us. It's the same thing for us against UR Delver. BUG almost has to eat the TC's and manage the fallout because going hellbent or nearly so trying to keep them from resolving TC is a disaster if they get it off anyway. I had a game recently where UR Delver resolved two TC's against me and I still won when I finally got the opportunity to resolve my own. On the first two throwing TC to FoW seemed like a horrible idea given the massive CA difference if I failed to stop it.

[barcode]

As long as my counterbalance is online I don't really care if treasure cruise resolves. They're going to have more spells countered by counterbalance?