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Main » Articles » Revisiting Miracles

Revisiting Miracles

Max Sjoeblom
Posted on December 6, 2012
 Reddit

Hey there! I haven’t written much about Legacy after my two-part tournament report from Grand Prix: Ghent. If you weren’t reading my articles at the time, you can find the articles here and here. Therefore, I thought I’d revisit the deck I played back then and see how it has changed in the four months or so since then.

Another good reason I have for revisiting this topic is the fact that we have Legacy Nationals coming up this weekend. Legacy Nationals is an unofficial event, as Wizards does not organize any kind of National Championships anymore, but we’ve had this event in Finland for a while now. It always draws a big crowd, with the event currently being sold out at a hundred and three players. This might not seem like much compared to the numbers of players from other areas, but it is quite a lot for a country with not that many players. I’m not even sure if I’ll be able to play in the event since I was a bit late to register, but I have my hopes up since I would really like the chance to play some competitive Legacy. I’ve only played a couple of tournaments since Ghent, and in both of those, I played W/U Miracles. I’ll try to base my ideas in this article on the experiences from those tournaments as well as things that I have been reading online.

It’s a Miracle

To start out, I would like to present the original list I played back in July at Grand Prix: Ghent to a Top 8 finish.

"Original Miracle List"

Choke
The first changes I made to this deck were to cut the Glacial Fortress for another Island and replace the Oblivion Ring with Detention Sphere. Glacial Fortress is particularly bad when playing Vedalken Shackles, and even if I wasn’t playing the artifact, I’m pretty sure I would rather have another basic land. Glacial Fortress is mainly just there against Choke, but drawing your one copy when the opponent has the Choke is not very probable. And speaking of basic lands, I love the feeling of playing or fetching out a basic land for the first five turns of the game. The dual lands are good to have, and you often need to fetch one, but denying your opponent the chance to screw with your game plan with Wasteland is worth so much—you truly only understand it when you play a lot of games with the deck.

On the topic of Wasteland, I really think that you should not be running it in this kind of deck. Your most important resource is your mana, and you want to hit those land drops for the first six turns. There are not many Legacy decks with better late games, and since you are not killing people very quickly, trying to screw them with Wasteland will almost never work. The only exception that I can think of is if you play Stoneforge Mystic somewhere in the seventy-five. This means you are playing Batterskull, and then you might need Wasteland to get rid of Maze of Ith so that you can actually push some hits in with your Equipment.

Moat
When I played in a recent tournament, I ran a Supreme Verdict in the sideboard, as I couldn’t get my hands on a Moat, but I would really recommend playing at least one Moat if you can find one. As far as other card choices go, the cards that I am the most unsure about are the Spell Pierces, Snapcaster Mages, and graveyard-hate cards. Snapcaster Mage is not all that good, but having access to another copy of Brainstorm in the midgame makes it worthwhile I think. Brainstorm is probably the single best card in the deck, as the effect is so huge with miracles that it sometimes feels as though you are drawing more than three cards, as you are able to set up one or two more. As far as adding cards, I feel that the fourth Jace, the Mind Sculptor would be good, and finding room for the fourth Terminus in the main deck could also be good.

I currently have eight cards that are only good against decks with creatures, and I would like to keep it at roughly this number, since going over ten anti-creature cards suddenly means your first game against combo decks becomes progressively worse. As far as graveyard hate goes, I’ll discuss this in more detail in the following section, where I cover one of the most important additions to this deck that Return to Ravnica has to offer.

Rest in Peace

Rest in Peace
This card has been making waves in Legacy lately. I’ve seen it been run as everything from a sort of combo piece with Energy Field to just a regular Leyline of the Void effect. My current opinion is that I don’t want to run it in the main deck but that it’s good in the sideboard. I don’t really like the whole Energy Field idea, as it seems to require a bit too much setup, and it still doesn’t guarantee victory against many decks. Many people have advocated playing Rest in Peace in the main deck, with the reasoning being that it is at least reasonable against most decks. It’s true that it turns off many of the creatures played in Legacy, such as Tarmogoyf and Nimble Mongoose and that it messes with and Knight of the Reliquary, Snapcaster Mage, and many other cards.

While this is certainly true, Rest in Peace still somewhat interferes with your own plan, as it shuts down Snapcaster Mage. You would probably cut those if you end up running Rest in Peace, so that is not a big deal. What I do think is a big deal is that with a control deck like this one, you really want to limit the number of dead cards that you have in your deck, even with the help of Brainstorm and Jace, the Mind Sculptor. Rest in Peace also doesn’t totally stop Knight of the Reliquary, as you still need to get rid of it at some point. It might seem that I don’t care much about Rest in Peace, but believe me, it does have its merits, and when it’s good, it’s really good.

I’m currently contemplating playing either two or three in the sideboard, most likely cutting the two Grafdigger's Cages along with the one Nihil Spellbomb. Surgical Extraction still has its uses in other matchups, so I think it deserves its place in the sideboard. I would probably bring in Rest in Peace against R/U/G Delver, as it kills two-thirds of the deck’s creatures, but against something such as Junk, where the deck has Tarmogoyf and Knight of the Reliquary along with other creatures, I would not really like to bring it in. Against most of the actual graveyard decks, such as Reanimator and Dredge, Rest in Peace is naturally insane, even if 2 mana can sometimes be too much.

Metagaming

Luminarch Ascension
For our Legacy Nationals, I am expecting Maverick and R/U/G Delver to be the most popular decks. There has also been quite a lot of MUD and a bit of W/U Miracles, so I should probably prepare for those. Besides these decks, I expect there to be a ton of different decks present, and I feel that W/U Miracles is really good in a diverse field. Luminarch Ascension is among the better cards in the mirror match, but I haven’t quite figured out what the best card against MUD is. The cards that give me the most trouble are Chalice of the Void and some of the noncreature expensive cards that the deck runs, such as Karn Liberated and Staff of Nin. Engineered Explosives is good in that it destroys Chalice of the Void handily, and counterspells in general are good against the expensive cards. Some dedicated hate such as Serenity could also be worth playing.

It’s always important to try to generate a feel of the local metagame, especially in a format such as Legacy, where your sideboard plays such a huge role. In Standard, the sideboard cards are not as potent, and you can’t run hosers and hate cards in the same way that you can in Legacy. Sometimes, you play a whole tournament without needing those graveyard-hate cards a single time, and sometimes, you play against Dredge and Reanimator for several rounds in a row. Choosing your sideboard is always a bit of a gamble, as it is not often you have the luxury to cover all bases. This is all a part of deck-building and preparing for a tournament, and being in tune with the metagame can often pay off in these areas.

What to Play?

Here is the list I am planning on playing at Legacy Nationals.

"Miracles 2.0"

Spell Pierce
As you can see, this list incorporates most of the ideas I’ve talked about. The changes are not very big compared to the original list, as the core of the deck is still very much the same. I cut the one Spell Pierce from the sideboard, as I was not sideboarding it in all that often. I am still thinking about playing the fourth discard spell over the third Rest in Peace, but that is mostly a decision based on whether I expect more graveyard based decks or more traditional combo decks.

As always, if you have any comments, questions or suggestions, feel free to use the comments section below or contact me directly via Twitter. If you would like to hear more about this deck, I’d be glad to write a tournament report of the Legacy Nationals—if I even get to play that is. Also, if you have any ideas of what you would like me to write about in the future, all ideas are greatly appreciated.

Thanks for reading,

Max

@thebloom_ on Twitter

Maxx on Magic Online

You can find my music on: http://soundcloud.com/bloomlive

TAGS articles, constructed, analysis, deck lists, legacy, max sjöblom

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