All B/R update speculation.

[Zombie]

The thing that's usually bothered me about Miracles (given that I rarely play permission but do play 25-30 creatures) are how their threats take over the board in a way you just don't claw back from. You don't beat 16 power of angels direct from the stack.

You can bleed Countertop+Terminus to death. (Except that a broken token generator will just fucking kill you)
You can overwhelm Countertop and win before some manner of broken token generator kills you. (Except that Terminus destroys your clock)
You can force Terminus and rebuild while holding permission for Entreat or try to be fast enough. (Except that Countertop makes it hard to rebuild and get enough on board economically to force Terminus and have stuff left to rebuild with)

No individual facet of the deck - the sweepers, the I Win buttons, the prison pieces - is insurmountable. Together, they cover each others' asses very, very conveniently so that what strategy wins against two is taken down by the third. It's a further problem that two of the axes work on the stack so nonblue decks' solutions are limited or nonexistent.

Shardless and D&T do decently because they can mitigate some of those - permission for Tinker and endless gas, constant flow of small threats that dodge Countertop. Eldrazi just gum up the works and dodge CB well via mana cost and Cavern, plus their cards are individually good clocks so they can kill Miracles before the Entreat/Mentor hammer.

Right now, it's a good idea to just make your stuff uncounterable. Such interactive, wow.

Axe any one facet of the unholy triangle of bullshit and you open up a natural angle of attack for a wider variety of decks.

Personal opinion: I don't want to see Top gone, specifically. The more nonblue card selection that's playable in the format, the better. If any other part of the bsfest bites the dust I won't shed a tear.

[rufus]

The thing that's usually bothered me about Miracles (given that I rarely play permission but do play 25-30 creatures) are how their threats take over the board in a way you just don't claw back from. You don't beat 16 power of angels direct from the stack.

You can bleed Countertop+Terminus to death. (Except that a broken token generator will just fucking kill you)
You can overwhelm Countertop and win before some manner of broken token generator kills you. (Except that Terminus destroys your clock)
You can force Terminus and rebuild while holding permission for Entreat or try to be fast enough. (Except that Countertop makes it hard to rebuild and get enough on board economically to force Terminus and have stuff left to rebuild with)
...

That's true, but it's also the nature of control decks.

[Quasim0ff]

I could swear people in this thread called Brainstorm unfair, because it renders Discard less efficient to fight combo decks, if the combo player uses the card defensively. There is no difference if you use your Ponder to setup Entreat or to dig for S&T. There is no difference if you use brainstorm to find a Plow to remove a creature or to find a Decay for Chalice. Its not a question of the deck. You can use the cantrips to setup offensive and defensive actions in any deck which runs them

Let's be real: If Miracles is at the point where they are looking for an Entreat, they've likely already won and we are at turn 7+. If you, as a Delver/Stoneblade/Sneak pilot are at turn 7 and cantripping for gas, you're pretty beat. There's quite a fundamental difference between the decks. Most decks have an aggressive approach to (most) matchups; Miracles doesn't. It's build defensively, which means it has a ton of cards it doesn't use well, but are needed.

[Lemnear]

Let's be real: If Miracles is at the point where they are looking for an Entreat, they've likely already won and we are at turn 7+. If you, as a Delver/Stoneblade/Sneak pilot are at turn 7 and cantripping for gas, you're pretty beat. There's quite a fundamental difference between the decks. Most decks have an aggressive approach to (most) matchups; Miracles doesn't. It's build defensively, which means it has a ton of cards it doesn't use well, but are needed.

The fundamental question here is still, if you want to argue that Miracles has more issues setting up Terminus/Entreat with Ponder/Brainstorm/Jace rather than with SDT in addition than a deck like Reanimator has to setup their wincondition with Karakas or Leyline of the Void on the table?

[Quasim0ff]

The fundamental question here is still, if you want to argue that Miracles has more issues setting up Terminus/Entreat with Ponder/Brainstorm/Jace rather than with SDT in addition than a deck like Reanimator has to setup their wincondition with Karakas or Leyline of the Void on the table?

There's currently.... 0? decks playing Leyline. Very few decks play Karakas; Mainly Death and Taxes as well as Legends miracles.

Yes, I would argue that setting up Terminus to be optimal is harder than setting up to beat Karakas (as Leyline is not a card in legacy.), as they have several needles for it, as well as non-legendary creatures. There's a reason they play Grave Titan as well as Archetype of Endurance these days. Terminus is NOT a proactive card - Reanimate is. That's a HUGE difference.

I wonder how many of the people posting here, actually have played Miracles. It's not easy to pilot. It has a learning curve that is, very likely, the steepest in the entire format. It's a control deck with an insane amount of decessiontrees through a game; It obviously performs better than most decks in a strong pilots hands, due to them being good players.

[Noctalor]

That's true, but it's also the nature of control decks.

Having no weakness is not the nature of a control deck.
In the history of MTG control decks always had something they just couldn't handle, Landstill had troubles dealing with Vials, Landeed had an unwinnable burn MU, stoneblade had problems dealing with punishing fire, Lands if considered a control have a hard MU agaijnst combo, can get hated out the game, shardless scoops to moon, has to deal with denial.


Miracles:

- Has the best manabase in the format by far
- Has the most cantrips in the format by far (much more than combo decks)
- Has the best single target removal spell against aggro/aggro control, the second best one in the format anyway
- Has the best sweeper ever printed in MTG
- Has CTop, one of the main ways for control to overcome burn and storm
- Has Entreat which is a spell able to both win the game instantly and dismantle the opposing board in combat
- Has Mentor a 3 drop able to outrace aggro decks
- Has the best grave hate possible
- Can play REBs
- Can play Moon


The main ways to beat miracles are:
- Not letting it play MTG -> Chalice / Winter Orb
- Having spells that just can't be countered -> Cavern / Decay / Vial

Now, Decay is just an answer, it wont win you the game, is just useful to fight counterbalance, we then have 3 artifacts, that can be both countered and disenchanted, cavern is the only real hoser against miracles, but in order to play it you must have a tribal strategy, and well, tribal decks lose to terminus.

The main bullshit factor is the arrive of Mentor, before you had the option to do chip damage sitting on a cavern, getting terminused a bunch of times but being able to rebuild, now you this gameplan gives miracle plenty of time to get a terminus ready to be casted in EOT, untap, cast mentor and 2/3 tokens, out-tempoing any creature based deck that starts with an empty board.

[Lemnear]

Just to clear it up for me: We are not judging the powerlevel of cards depending on if they are used for offense or defense, do we?

[Kingbrago]

The point is that setting up a big reanimate will win you the game no matter what, when to set up a good terminus you need to be able to find it at the right moment + set up to cast it.

Which is not that easy and may require several cantrips (bs to get it out of hand/ponder to find it ) and at that point you have to chose whether you will cast it next turn or the turn after + another BS if you want to cast it at instant speed.

Thats a LOT of work for a spell that will not always result in a win. Getting it at the right time is possible but requires a lot of resources without top (and thats why non-top brainstorm decks dont play miracles cards ...)

Envoyé de mon SM-A500FU en utilisant Tapatalk

[Quasim0ff]

Just to clear it up for me: We are not judging the powerlevel of cards depending on if they are used for offense or defense, do we?

No, we are discussing your point that Miracles functions just as well without top as it does with, because it can just setup via ponder/jace/brainstorm. I'm arguing it doesn't, and you are saying (paraphrased.), that there's no difference in finding a game winning spell and surviving untill you need to do so again.

[Lemnear]

No, we are discussing your point that Miracles functions just as well without top as it does with, because it can just setup via ponder/jace/brainstorm. I'm arguing it doesn't, and you are saying (paraphrased.), that there's no difference in finding a game winning spell and surviving untill you need to do so again.

I did not say "just as well" nor did I say "there's no difference", I said that Needle/NRod/etc does not prevent Miracles from following its natural gameplan against non-combo decks. Moreover you side W/T anyways to get rid of any limitation later on.

[rancOr_]

It's not just the sb 'hate' cards like Choke etc that are good vs Miracles.. If you want to beat Miracles be a bit thoughtful. Planeswalkers, Spell Snare (criminally underplayed),Sword of fire and Ice,..
I see a lot of pple constantly ranting about Miracles, yet the vast majority doesn't even try to beat Miracles by tuning his list a bit more towards Miracles, its not that unbeatable U just have to be prepared like with any other deck.

[maharis]

Lot of good points from Lemnear, Noctalor, Zombie about how Miracles subtly warps the format.

One thing a couple people touched on but didn't explore was the power of Snap-Plow for Miracles. That is another angle of attack which negates one of the traditional ways for creature decks to beat control: win fast. Plow your DRS, snap-plow your Goyf is essentially a 2 for 0.

I understand that Countertop has been around a long time, but I don't necessarily think Terminus was the card that put it over the top. I think that card was Snapcaster Mage because it allows the CT player to live longer by recycling STP or blocking, and winning the game in a pinch. You'll notice that in the 4 decklists printed from the open SCM is the only creature that appears in all 4. In fact it's the only creature that appears in the 9th place list at all.

That's not to say that set up correctly, Terminus isn't a pretty busted card. But it introduces deck building and sequencing decisions that are tradeoffs for a big turn. Snap-Plow and Countertop are the compact, all-upside engines that allow the Miracles player to make the (arguably) suboptimal deck building and sequencing decisions that allows them to execute their super-wrath.

Also -- if your contention is that people need to play more big-mana threats like planeswalkers or hateful enchantments to beat Miracles -- don't forget that the deck still has Force and occasionally actual Counterspell in addition to Countertop with 3 and 4 drops in the deck, PLUS removal from W/T to STP to Council's Judgement. Sorin, Lord of Innistrad is one of the best cards in the format against Miracles, but finding and resolving one vs. the Snap and Countertop engines is incredibly difficult.

I still think the card that has to go is Counterbalance. It is the card that extends games and warps decks towards playing BG just to have access to Decay. Ux control won't die as long as Snap + Force + interaction of your choice are in the format.

[Chatto]

It's not just the sb 'hate' cards like Choke etc that are good vs Miracles.. If you want to beat Miracles be a bit thoughtful. Planeswalkers, Spell Snare (criminally underplayed),Sword of fire and Ice,..
I see a lot of pple constantly ranting about Miracles, yet the vast majority doesn't even try to beat Miracles by tuning his list a bit more towards Miracles, its not that unbeatable U just have to be prepared like with any other deck.

Ehm, isn't that what they are discussing in previous posts, and how it is so damn difficult to hate Miracles out?

[Barook]

In the end, if Wizards decides that Miracles in its current form is stupid, it depends what their goal is. Vandalize already pointed it out:

a) Ban Terminus, making them more vulnerable to creatures and mana denial (good luck trying to deny Terminus from a basic Plains),
b) ban Counterbalance, making them weaker to Combo and Burn or
c) ban SDT, killing the entire deck and weakening a few fringe deck only a handful of people care about anyway as collateral damage

If they do, either a) or c) seem to the be most likely cases. a) to make creatures matter more again without completely killing the deck, or c), simply because SDT has a history of being banned in several formats for power reasons and extending round times.

[Lemnear]

It's not just the sb 'hate' cards like Choke etc that are good vs Miracles.. If you want to beat Miracles be a bit thoughtful. Planeswalkers, Spell Snare (criminally underplayed),Sword of fire and Ice,..
I see a lot of pple constantly ranting about Miracles, yet the vast majority doesn't even try to beat Miracles by tuning his list a bit more towards Miracles, its not that unbeatable U just have to be prepared like with any other deck.

Except that there is no backbreaker for Miracles like there are for various combo decks for example. For boarding against miracles you have to adress a lot of different angles, starting from counterbalance to SDT to sweepers.

Pithing Needle @ SDT is a joke of a boarding plan compared to LeylineOfSanctity against Burn, Thalia against Storm or LeylineOfTheVoid against Dredge.

Good luck, fitting all the Miracles hate you might need to fight all the angles in a single sideboard and still trying to claim the deck isn't massively warping the metagame around it ;)

Ehm, isn't that what they are discussing in previous posts, and how it is so damn difficult to hate Miracles out?

Yeah. That why this thread is pointless if no one bothers ro read posts of the last page and starts the same stuff over and over again :/

[Stuart]

Also -- if your contention is that people need to play more big-mana threats like planeswalkers or hateful enchantments to beat Miracles -- don't forget that the deck still has Force and occasionally actual Counterspell in addition to Countertop with 3 and 4 drops in the deck, PLUS removal from W/T to STP to Council's Judgement. Sorin, Lord of Innistrad is one of the best cards in the format against Miracles, but finding and resolving one vs. the Snap and Countertop engines is incredibly difficult.

And to reiterate an earlier point, Miracles is capable of playing Back To Basics and/or Blood Moon. Both those cards make it harder/impossible to land big-mana threats.

[iatee]

This unbeatable deck with no weaknesses still seems to lose a lot.

[Svyelunite]

This unbeatable deck with no weaknesses still seems to lose a lot.

Amen. Just check out those SCG Open results. 4 copies in the top 32, only 1 top 8'd and it was the master himself. Also, they were all pretty different. Heck, the list Harlan Firer ran was almost an aggro deck...

[Spam]

I don't know, miracles is really a strange beast. Every time I win against the deck, it feels more about luck rather than preparation. Truth is miracles has a 50/50 shot against any deck, which rewards skilled players imo.
Not sure it needs a ban, but in a few sets it might reach a critical mass of good cards (or maybe we're already there).

[Kingbrago]

About hate cards, maybe it's only a personal opinion but I don't think it's a good thing if total hosers (on the level of leyline vs burn) exist against a fair, non-linear deck.

Such hosers are there to limit the power of hyper linear strategies (dredge, burn, storm, reanimator), or greediness of 3/4 color decks (blood moon against color intensive decks). The unfair elements of miracles can be hated out, but the whole deck cannot be hit by a single hate card because it is not a hyper-linear deck with diverse angles of attack (or of defense).
A perk of playing a non linear deck should be that you have a wide range of answers and can't be hated out by SB cards. The less linear your deck is, the less likely you are to get blown out by a single card (eg Belcher is more likely to outright lose to a single card than ANT)