Long story short, it's a dead end. Soon you realize you want to play more Mentors, then you'll reach to the same conclusion about RiP and Helm, just as what you wrote about EF. If you want to keep those cards in the deck for name-sake, then you should just stop trying to get big jump in competitiveness. Accept the mediocrity of running these cards and move on. Also, Goblins cannot defeat EF + RiP game one. It might have Wear//Tear in the SB and that's it, I have seen Anarchy only once in my life.Originally Posted by Lormador
All your likes suggest that you should just play main stream builds because these main stream Miracles cards like Mentor are competitive and they are the reason you are winning, not because of RiP and/or Helm. You should not invest in anything until you realize what's more important to you: the cool factor of the fragile combo or winning matches in competitive Legacy. Once you have made up that mind, you already know what cards you should be running.
I would sooner play a 3rd Volc than a MD Mountain, which casts actual ZERO spells MD.
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.
You don't play SDT?
***Snickers***
Mountain lets you free spin tops, and lets you have access to blasts in wasteland matchups, like not-stifle delver and shardless BUG. That reason is enough to want it's inclusion. We've had this discussion time and time again and that's always been the reason why mountain is fine for some builds, even desirable in some cases.
I tried a couple of Counterspells in the deck without Snapcaster Mage, and they were just barely OK. I haven't tried Snapcasters in the deck, feeling that this is a bit of a nonbo with Rest In Peace. I get the idea that Counterspell isn't quite good enough without SCM.
Basic mountain would be pretty good in this version of the deck, ensuring fully powered EEs, getting consistent Blood Moons through against Delver decks, and allowing for reliable blasting out of the board against a deck that's a little fiercer than it would be against the usual SCM varieties.
@twndom
Thanks for the input. I was, in fact, a big fan of those 3 Snapcaster / 4 Ponder builds back before the TC/DTT era (when I switched to Delver decks until those cards got banned, and even for awhile after). It probably is worth the experiment of going back to the mainstream build at this point to try it out once more after all this time, at least for an event or two. I do miss just killing everything with a barrage of StPs and blasts.
I took issue more with the way he said it, with the implication that you actively want a basic Mountain regardless of what list you're playing. What you said is better Minniehajj, that it is fine for some builds, not all. If a list runs 2-3 REBs PB, there's no reason to devote an entire land slot for a card that comes in for g2 (and g3). Fearing Wasteland is pointless because normally you'd only cast 1, maybe 2 REBs all game so those 2 Volcs are expendable while also providingwhen needed/if they're still around.
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.
That's reasonable.
I like to play my basics maindeck, and mountain makes you immune to wasteland against both DnT, Shardless as well as Delver, all matchups where you want a non-wastelandable red source.
I was obviously talking about my preference in lists. I'd not devote any space to builds I don't play, as I can't really provide useful information in these scenarios. I've been playing lists with predict, where Basic Mountain is execllent.
Dear Miracle enthusiasts,
Recently, I played the BoM at Annecy with a good 3-0 start, followed by a poor 3 loses in a row. I was playing a short Terminus List (only 2 copies) with four Daze (my post was in page 500 I think). With Dig gone, the main deck wasn't optimal and Daze is definitely not a counter I will run anymore. But the red cards (Bolts) were very fine. So I updated my liste to something more robust, but I still have some interrogation about including Counterspell instead of Shock main deck and a couple of Clique in sideboard (because of UU requirement).
Here is where I am :
MAINDECK
4 Monastery Mentor
2 Snapcaster Mage
4 Swords to Plowshares
4 Lightning Bolt
2 Sudden Shock (Fire // Ice, Counterspell, Spell Snare ??)
4 Sensei's Divining Top
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Counterbalance
4 Force of Will
1 Engineered Explosives
3 Terminus
4 Flooded Strand
4 Scalding Tarn
2 Arid Mesa
3 Tundra
3 Volcanic Island (2 Volcanic + 1 Mountain?)
3 Island
1 Plains
SIDEBOARD
1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
2 Flusterstorm
2 Pyroblast
2 Wear // Tear
2 Vendilion Clique
1 Izzet Staticaster
1 Surgical Extraction
2 Rest in Peace
2 Containment Priest
My feelings is that with this list "as is", I can shave a Volcanic for a main deck basic Mountain. But with that change, I fear that the mana base will makes some difficulties to support all the UU Spells (counterbalance, clique, Jace). Do you have any experience with a list like this ?
With the Mentors (soo strong), I was looking for a pro-active not cmc1 spells. Shock looked fine, and Split Seconde is a good point to get ride of an Ooze, Shaman, etc. I played several games with this list and while the burn package do great things, I wonder if Fire/Ice or Counterspell/Spell Snare (all of them are Force-pitch compatible) could be better than the Shocks. I'm currently in the army for few weeks and won't be able to test it deeply. I think a couple of Counterspells or a mix with Spell Snare could be much better. Candidates for Sudden Shock slot's are Fire // Ice, Counterspell, Spell Snare, Jace,... Who else ? So any advise on the 2 Sudden Shock slots are much welcome.
Last edited by kravkenov; 05-18-2016 at 05:23 AM.
IT IS TWO AND A HALF MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT
At this point you're no longer playing Miracles but UWR Mentor with a CounterTop package.
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.
Agreed. It's almost impossible to give advice because markkugel is not really playing Miracles anymore.
I keep hearing about Miracle builds with Nahiri. Is this an accepted thing now? If so, is their a current list? If not, is this just an isolated trend at the moment?
It's a pretty stock miracles list with 2 Nahiri as well as a singleton Emrakul. Like, -x Counterspell, -2 Flexslots,.
http://mtgpulse.com/event/24578#331063 This is a list that made 5-0 (in the hands of Andrea Mengucci).
Nahiri may actually be a package with staying power. Verdict is still out on her potency. I think we'll have our answer at GP Columbus.
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.
From the man himself:
"I missed Top 8, but I learned a lot of things:
Nahiri, the Harbinger was not a good card outside of the Miracles, BUG Shardless, and Jund matchups. It was clunky and slow in all the matchups I faced (none were the aforementioned decks).
I faced 3 decks with main-deck Karakas, where my Nahiri, the Harbinger didn’t help me win the game. Legacy is such a wide open format that you can’t be prepared only against three of the thousands of decks.
Jace, the Mind Sculptor is perfectly fine for that because even if your opponent is beating you down, you can simply Brainstorm, put a Terminus back, it’ll soak 3 damage, and you’ll have what you wanted. In addition to that, it’s a blue card to pitch with Force of Will, which is very important against combo.
Legacy players can be afraid to try out new cards—it's easy to assume that old ones are always better. But it's valuable to try out new cards in preparation for big events to see how they behave, and to see if there’s a chance to break the format.
Nahiri, the Harbinger did not break the format, however, and I won’t be playing her going forward in Legacy."
JTMS is JTMS, no replacing there for me.
Been testing Nahiri in latest mtgo league. Running 2 Nahiri and 1 Emrakul instead of 2 Mentor and the 3rd Jace. May run it in a local legacy event this week.
Seems pretty good so far.
Won me the game versus miracles mirror where Jace would not have he showed me a red blast at the end of the game. Had to win with a Snapcaster post Emrakul swing but it basically won the game.
Was decent versus Eldrazi killing an Eldrazi and needed to attack Nahiri so that bought me a turn but still lost that game.
I like Nahiri a lot in the Jeskai control modern deck where the opponent can take damage from shock lands and you have bolts as finisher but in legacy verdict is still out in legacy you have Jace, The Mindsculptor provides card advantage which also costs 4 mana.
Key thing. You MAY discard a card to draw a card with the +2. So you don't have to discard if you like your hand.
Nahiri
Pros
Does not get Red blasted.
Can Win faster then Jace.
Gets rid of pesky enchantments.
Swinging with the spaghetti monster is awesome.
Exiles creatures instead of bouncing them.
Cons
Does not provide immediate card advantage of Jace.
Does not pitch to force of will.
Can not put miracles on top of your deck.
Ultimate does not always win since a single Emrakul swing is not always lethal. Where Jace Ultimate wins.
Can only exile tapped creatures.
You have one more card (Emrakul) in your deck you don't want in your hand along with your miracles.
Hey Minn I notice that in the more recent lists, specifically the one AnziD's been playing on stream, foregoes the SFM package in favor of a Mentor, a Predict, and another SCM. What are your thoughts on this? Are you still playing SFM?
Just chiming in, it seems more of a personal preference thing than any sort of advantage. They're both solid packages with advantages and disadvantages (though the disadvantages are mitigated since they're the SB plan so when you don't want to run them then they're not clogging up your deck). The Mentor one may be more efficient but the SFM one has more raw power. Can't really go wrong with either in any meta aside from super skewed ones (i.e. people are all running black for Dread of Night or people are all running Hushwing Griff/Torpor Orbs.)
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.
My apologies but this is completely wrong.
The inherent difference between SFM and Mentor is threefold: 1) Mana Investment and 2) Offense vs. Defense and 3) Card Slots
SFM is a card that has a much lower mana investment overall, since it's 2 mana one time and you just hold up everything after that. It also stabilizes you more quickly than mentor does from a dangerously low life total. This makes it overall better vs. delver decks than mentor normally would be. There are also some neat tricks you can do with SFM that you can't with mentor, like utilizing top and terminus plus SFM activations to wrath the board and leave yourself with a batterskull ready to attack, etc.
The problem with SFM overall though is that it interacts with hand disruption, which mentor bypasses, and costs 3 sideboard slots (you absolutely should not play this maindeck IMO), and it dies to warping wail, which is more relevantly seen than typical mentor hate.
Mentor is the more powerful card by a lot, because it stabilizes you with dudes to block with, rather than life total, but 3 mana (realistically, more like 4 mana) is a LOT more than 2 mana, and it requires you to sometimes play your cards in a suboptimal sequence in order to maximize value quickly. It's not a high cost, but it IS a cost to playing the card, which cannot be ignored. It can be played Maindeck because it doesn't really interact with your opponent's removal much. In our build, you never play mentor unless you absolutely have to, or have counter/top/Jace/predicted your opponent into the dirt/etc already. It's never really at odds w/ terminus because the whole point is setting up a board state that kills your opponent. It's a better hedge to have in game 1's as well.
To answer the question, I am personally not playing SFM anymore, but that's mostly due to the card slot issue over anything else. We've tested many configurations with each, and I'd love to be able to fit SFM into my deck again, but I don't see anything that necessitates its usage. I also don't think you're analyzing the slots either. SFM wasn't "replaced" by anything, the entire 75 was reconfigured. You cannot analyze a slot 1 for 1 because that's now how card selection works. You have to look at the 75 as a whole, identify the problems the main deck has, and build a sideboard utilizing that. Ideally, it's "clean" meaning you take out x cards and you bring in x cards and that philosophy should apply to every matchup. We aren't bringing in predict plus snapcaster 4 plus mentor in the same matchups where we board in SFM, it's a completely different deck than when you have access to SFM.
Hope that clears things up a little! Feel free to let me know if I can clarify anything for you.
I have been playtesting a fair bit against Eldrazi lately both in paper and online, and I am having real issues beating the deck. It's pretty clear that it's a majorly unfavoured match-up, but there are still Miracles lists top8'ing so either it's beatable or getting to top8 involves not pairing against Eldrazi. When I see a t1 ancient tomb + chalice, t2 TKS and t3 Reality Smasher I just want to lay down and cry.
If I am on the play I can mostly play around a chalic for 1 if I get a t1 divining top. Counter Balance feels mostly useless in the matchup and I am not sure if I should be keeping them in post-board.
I am siding in the following cards;
+1 Moat (for obvious reasons)
+2 Back to Basics (shuts them down, but keeps my fetches open - like it better than blood moon)
+2 Wear // Tear (kills chalice, trinishere, thorn etc)
+1 Pithing Needle (for Eye of Ugin, but this is probably a debatable card to side in against this matchup since they dont have alot of targets)
+1 Monastery Mentor (to generate early blockers and survive, maybe even steal a kill)
Eldrazi is part of the reason why many of us have moved towards a MD Engineered Explosives. That's something worth considering.
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.
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