Miracles in Philadelphia

The SCG Team Open in Philadelphia has come and gone and, as per usual, it was a blast. Every time I read an article about team events, the author always sings the praises of them, and I am no different. Playing with friends is great, the overall energy in every match is awesome, and it’s very difficult to have a bad time with it. If you have the option available to you, but you’re on the fence for whatever reason, just do it and you will definitely not regret it.

As for my event I chose to play Miracles, as per my decision in my last article. Here is my list for reference:

My team ended at 6-2-1, barely missing day 2. Seeing as my teammates played Mardu Vehicle and Titan Breach in Standard and Modern, respectively, an astute reader might be inclined to assume that I, the Miracles player, was the one who picked up the draw. While, it is often wrong to make assumptions like that (shame on you, faithful reader!), this time, the assumption would be correct. In fact, if my teammates weren’t so good, or playing such fast decks, it’s possible that we would have even more draws because I had 2 rounds I did not finish. If this doesn’t sound great, that’s because it isn’t, and I don’t feel great about it. In fact, despite thinking Miracles is very good (I still do) and practicing a lot with it online I think I made the wrong deck choice, in hindsight. There are a number of factors that I didn’t consider, either fully or at all, that contribute to this line of thought, and in this article I will try to break down what I think made this a poor deck choice for me, specifically.

First and foremost, I didn’t take into account how many user-generated issues there would be with me playing the deck. This deck is quite mechanically challenging and I did not practice it nearly enough in paper. At this point, most of my Magic playing is done online, and I am technically proficient at executing the Magic Online program. Magic Online has its flaws, but there are a number of features that greatly facilitate the Magic playing experience, like remembering triggers and shuffling. Miracles is a deck that has a lot of these mechanical operations: Remembering to draw off of Portent, shuffling the deck every single turn, looking at the top 3 cards of players’ libraries, and so on. While I didn’t make many mistakes in executing these in Philly (I never missed a Portent trigger, somehow!), it is much more cognitively taxing to remember all of these things in paper versus online, and I don’t think I was fully prepared for that.

Even further, Miracles is a very decision-heavy deck. Every turn, tons of micro-decisions need to be made. There are so many cards that need to be set up and just as many cantrips to set them up, and they all need to be sequenced in a specific order. All of these decisions need to be made in the context of a game of Magic, as well, where your opponent is trying to execute a plan and/or disrupt you on every turn, leading to a fluid shift of gameplan with every spell cast. On top of all of that, this version of Miracles is also on the slow side of winning, so all of these complicated, important decisions need to be made with speed and efficiency so that the game can end in a timely manner. While I haven’t had much issue with this on Magic Online, the experience in paper was much different for me, and I played much more slowly than I expected. I knew this would be a factor, but I misjudged how big of a deal it would be during the event. Combining the decision-heavy nature of the deck with the technically challenging aspect was a losing combo for me in Philly and definitely a valuable lesson learned for the future.

Adding to the mental challenges I had playing the deck was a poor diet and overall maintenance of my physical well-being that can sometimes be associated with 9-round Magic tournaments. It can be difficult to get enough sleep the night before and eat properly during the event. Often times, even if there’s enough time to get food, I can forget that I even need to eat in the midst of battle. This is seriously problematic when it comes to playing a long Magic tournament because of how much thought and effort gets put into every round. I found this to be an even larger problem when it came to playing Miracles. As I mentioned, the deck is decision-heavy, which is an issue by itself, but furthermore, the deck is slow, so every game takes a long time.

Without proper physical maintenance, it can be incredibly difficult to focus on all of these choices and correctly assess all of the situations that can come up. Even beyond the poor focus in game is how draining the experience is. I have never been so mentally exhausted after a tournament as I was after this. My energy levels were so low throughout the entire following day that I hardly wanted to do anything (in fact, doing nothing was such a nice contrast that it was an amazing day). The lesson of eat and sleep well for a tournament is a difficult one for me to incorporate in my life, but after Philly, I think I have finally learned my lesson.

Finally, I didn’t consider how my deck choice would influence my impact on the team during the event. Because I always needed to focus on my game, I was barely able to help my team make any in-game decisions. This was a huge factor in thinking I made the wrong deck choice because this is one of the best parts of playing in a team event. I felt like I was playing in my own world far too often, and, honestly, felt like my teammates could have made a better choice of teammate for this reason. Being able to make group decisions on complicated turns, or fully think through a mulligan decision can be some of the most important qualities of these events. Not only was I so involved in my game that I couldn’t help my teammates, they don’t have any substantial Legacy experience and weren’t able to help me, either.

While I do think Miracles is still a very powerful and well-positioned deck, I was not fit to play it at this event. While I learned some very important lessons about myself and errors in my testing process, I wish I learned these lessons in a different context. I feel like I did not do my teammates justice and didn’t give them the Legacy player they deserved. Next time, i’m going to make sure I consider all of these factors and make a choice that is more well-informed and make decisions throughout the event that are more helpful my health. As a final note, if you are going to pick up Miracles, make sure you are prepared for the various mechanical and technical aspects that come along with it.