Taking Miracles Deep into Worcester Legacy Classic
I realized recently that I missed playing in Magic tournaments so I decided that I would play in the SCG Legacy Classic in Worcester a few weekends ago. I was excited to battle and spent the last few weeks testing and tuning Miracles to my liking. I was enjoying the deck a lot in testing and was happy to take it to Massachusetts and make a run for top 8.
Here’s the list I played:
I talked about the main deck in my last article so I won’t go over my choices again. The sideboard was still in flux at that point and even through the tournament I was unsure with my choices. I liked the idea of Engineered Explosives but only having access to 2 colors of mana is definitely a knock against it. Playing a total of 5 of Flusterstorm/Spell Pierce in the 75 seems excessive on paper but I really liked the ability to push through a Mentor. Plus, with so many cantrips I don’t want to flounder around digging for interaction against combo decks. I wanted to increase the chance of naturally having disruption against most combo decks.
The rest of it just ended up filling out my cuts really well but I don’t think my approach was diligent enough. I ended up not forming really concise game plans against the decks I was expecting and I should focus more effort on that in the future.
The event itself was 8 rounds with more than 170 players, which is a pretty reasonable turnout and a good day of Legacy.
Omni-Tell 2-0
I was quite fortunate to draw a lot of counter magic in the first game. My opponent did resolve a Dream Halls after the initial fight over Show and Tell but I was able to play a Jace, counter Omniscience, and start killing them with Snapcaster Mage.
Game 2 was a lot of the same: Wait until they did something, win a counter war, and then pull ahead. This would not have worked against Boseju, but I suspected that they didn’t have more than 1, if any, because of Dream Halls.
Goblins 2-0
This is a matchup that I neither expected, nor wanted to play against. With Top-Miracles this was a tough deck to beat and I didn’t see any reason that it would be different here.
They started with a Vial off of a Port which I Force of Willed. Unfortunately, they had an aggressive follow up with Mogg War Marshal, Goblin Chieftain and Goblin Trashmaster but I was very lucky to find Plow + Terminus to stabilize and use Back to Basics to lock down their entire manabase. Phew, bullet dodged.
Game 2 is a little bit of a blur, but I definitely remember a key turn in which I had Monastery Mentor in play and Swords to Plowshares and Predict in hand. They had 2 Goblins in play and some number of cards in hand. I could have Plowed a creature with 0 mana open but the way they paused suggested that they might have Gempalm Incinerator. It would have been correct to wait anyway, but I definitely had a read on the situation. I decided to wait, untap first and be able to protect my Mentor from a Goblin-themed doom (they did have the Incinerator). Mentor promptly took over the game from there.
I don’t actually know how this matchup is supposed to play out, but having a more focused Mentor-based plan seemed like a solid approach and might not make it as bad as I thought.
Mono-Red Prison 2-0
Having so many basic lands is excellent in this matchup, so the only real concern was an early Chalice of the Void for 1 or Trinisphere. Game 1 the first card to stop was a Magus of the Moon, which I was able to answer with a Plains and Terminus. I was able to stop any other card that mattered that game with counter magic. Game 2 the card was Trinisphere, which I forced, and then I developed enough to ignore or answer the rest of the threats from there.
This is a pretty good matchup for Miracles, I think, and this match didn’t really play out too unexpectedly.
BR Reanimator 0-2
In terms of the match nothing really interesting happened. I either didn’t have disruption or he got rid of my disruption with discard and he put Griselbrand into play.
I have had a lot of trouble against this deck recently, regardless of what deck i’m playing. I don’t think i’m respecting it enough with my sideboard choices and should likely be running more Surgical Extractions than anything else. However, I also suspect that i’m keeping hands that aren’t actually in a keepable range.
If i’m on the play, I tend to keep cantrip heavy hands with the intention of finding one of my 6 pieces of free interaction. Thinking back on it this is probably incorrect. Not only is there a real fail-rate associated with this, but the odds of them being able to beat a single piece of disruption is very high.
I think i’m more likely to do well against that deck by mulliganing aggressively. Even finding a hand with a single piece of disruption is going to do more than a hand with 4 cantrips.
Mulligan decisions have always been the most difficult for me and I am going to keep working on that in the future.
UW Stoneblade 2-0
Game 1 was a great, drawn out game. I thought I was winning by a lot with a beat down plan, then losing by a lot to a Batterskull, and then my opponent flooded out and I took over the game with a Jace.
Game 2 wasn’t quite that interesting, as my opponent didn’t find a second land for the first 4 or 5 turns. There were some close moments despite this, but the mana advantage really allowed my to leverage my cards better and close out the game.
Grixis Control 0-2
This is the first time of the day that I was not only terribly punished for some of my deck building choices, but my lack of a cohesive plan really shone through. I never felt like I had a really good grasp on what I should be working towards in either game. While I did play against this deck a reasonable number of times in testing, it was clear that I didn’t form a good understanding of the matchup during that time. When it comes to intricate matchups like this one I think I need to make sure I focus on the right things when playing test games. It felt like my opponent had a better understanding of how to win the matchup and I felt behind the whole time.
In terms of deckbuilding, playing 3 Tundras really came back to bite me when it came to resolving Back to Basics. It slowed them down, but hurt me roughly as much. I didn’t hate only running 1 Tundra when I was testing Miracles, but I felt like I wanted access to more white sources if I was running 3 Mentors. It didn’t work out here and I think I should have tested some different manabase options.
Matches like these always let me know that I have a long way to go and as disappointing as losses are i’m happy to have a reminder that I need to get better.
Food Chain 2-0
When my opponent led with Verdant Catacombs, Forest, and Birds of Paradise I highly suspected that they were on Food Chain. It could have been Maverick or Alluren but I went with my gut as I cast my first few cantrips and luckily I was right. While this seems like a tough matchup, I was able to protect a Jace in play for almost the entire game by throwing away Swords to Plowshares on Griffins and eventually win the game using the 3rd Mentor.
I don’t remember much about game 2 but I do remember Mentor taking over the game pretty quickly. Monastery Mentor was definitely the MVP of the day and I was happy to be playing 3.
Death and Taxes 0-2
Here is where I was certain that I built my deck incorrectly. Including a Spell Pierce over a Preordain, playing 3 Tundras, and only playing 19 lands can lead to having a bad time against Thalia, Rishadan Port, and Aether Vial. I wasn’t able to get ahead of 2 lands in the first game and ended up getting stuck with Predicts and my lone Spell Pierce in my hand. While it is slightly results-oriented to think that if the Pierce was a Preordain I would have fared much better, this is exactly the situation I was sacrificing in order to play Pierce. In other words I had this coming.
In game 2 I drew a bunch of removal but never really resolved a card that let me get ahead, like Jace. This is the kind of situation that I wish I had Search for Azcanta for. I only really have Jace and Mentor as permanents that let me pull ahead and they are both pretty clunky and awkward against Thalia and Port. Search is pretty cheap and can really take over a game if unanswered. They do have Wasteland, so i’m not sure it’s the perfect card but I think it would be a step in the right direction.
On top of this, cutting Accumulated Knowledges makes my card advantage engine a bit too clunky in this matchup. More so, Knowledge would have been greatly beneficial in my Grixis match so despite not enjoying playing the deck when I had the card, I should have tried to find a way to keep it in.
Record: 5-3 ( 27th place )
In the end, I was a bit disappointed with the finish. I think my choices in testing directly cost me at least 2 matches which is good to identify at the very least. I think when I am making somewhat drastic changes from the norm I need to pay closer attention to the situations in which they don’t work out. I may be too tunnel-visioned towards my changes sometimes and employ too much confirmation bias. Going forward I am going to try to be more critical of my changes and really try to find the fail-states for them.
I did have another goal going in to this event, though: Find a version of Miracles that I enjoyed. I really hated playing some of the more common versions of the deck so one of my original stated goals was adjusting the deck to be more fun for me. I did have a great time playing this deck and I consider that a huge success.
In fact, I am going to keep iterating on this deck and will definitely consider taking it to my next Legacy event. The next few items I want to test are:
- Adding the 20th land.
- Using Search for Azcanta as a sideboard plan in grindy matchups.
- Safely adding Red to the sideboard without messing up the mana in key matchups.
- Pushing the limit of how many dual lands I can run.
- Returning to Accumulated Knowledge.
I will definitely be working on this in the coming weeks and I will keep everyone updated in a coming article. For now, though, thanks for reading along and I will see you next time!
Community
Related Products
Accessories
