I started the culling process with 9 potential decks and
decided to whittle them down with great sweeping cuts in order to give me one
deck that would get constructed. It occurs to me that I’ve invented something
about as original as a reality TV show by doing this, but hey – it’s not like
any of us watch those, right?
Right?
The first category I eliminated was decks that are
already showing promise in Standard. These are all decks that I’ve seen plenty
of lists for and know back and forth. They’d be interesting entries for later
blogs, but when all the work has been done already, it doesn’t seem profitable to
try and recreate an untuned list when tuned versions exist already. Based on
that, I cut RW Humans, Grixis Kamikaze, UG Self-Mill (Heebs actually has this deck) and
UR Delver (Marshall is running this and reports that it’s a blast).
From there I turned to decks that appeared to be inferior
versions of other decks. Mono-Green Infect was interesting, but I don’t think
you gain anything at all from being mono-green. You’d be significantly better
served by adding Blue for Artful Dodge, at the very least. Wild Defiance is an awesome
card though. I also cut UB Zombie Mill for being both a subpar Zombies deck,
and a subpar Milling deck. If you want to do one or the other – great! But I
don’t think the mixture of the two is going to be viable.
That left us with three finalists on the Island – Ramp Land
Destruction, WRb Tokens, and Miracles. While Ramp Land Destruction was clearly
the most interesting of the three, I also think that it’s least likely to be
viable. The Developers have made a conscious push away from Land Destruction in
recent years, which does a lot to damage it as an archetype. I think that the
best angle to take for this one is a Beast Within/Bramblecrush/Acidic Slime
strategy using Deadeye Navigator to lock them out of the game in conjunction
with Mist Raven/Aether Adept and Acidic Slime.
WRb Tokens was a close contender, but I felt it was very
similar to the things I’ve done already in all my tokens write-ups. Adding
Hellrider and Rally the Peasants are more or less the only changes I’d make,
plus stretching the mana base significantly. I can’t see this being much better
than just straight BW.
So, Miracles in Standard! If you follow the professional
scene at all, you’ll know that the most recent Pro Tour was just played in
Barcelona.
 |
| Brian Kibler
@bmkibler
Not a bad view from the hotel room
|
Man, I really need to win a PTQ.
If you followed the coverage, you’ll also know that it
was won by none other than Alexander Hayne, who piloted a block deck that he
amusingly called Hallelujah! The deck is a UW Control shell that uses the
advantage of extremely powerful draw steps to cause miracles to be less luck
and more a simple matter of time. With that said, his version was designed for
the block format, and porting it over to Standard will make things a little
more powerful, at least in the abstract.
I’m going to start out on a limb here and say that we
should change the colors he chose. Hayne played UW straight, but the manabases
in block are much more restrictive than what Standard has available.
To that end, I’d like to splash Red for Desolate
Lighthouse and Bonfire of the Damned. Both of these cards are extremely
powerful effects that synergize very well with the game plan. That, however, is
something for later on. For now, I think that we should start with the deck’s
primary colors.
White
White has everything a miracle deck needs on a raw-power
scale. We get to run Terminus, arguably the most powerful of our miracles, and
Entreat the Angels, which will be one of our primary kill conditions. Any spell
that makes multiple evasive flyers seems exceptionally good in my books. Because
the format is so aggro heavy, I wouldn’t be against running Day of Judgment in
some numbers. Any deck running white should have some number of Oblivion Rings
as well, simply as a catch all solution to problems.
Some other cards that I think merit consideration are
Timely Reinforcements and Gideon. Again, it may seem like overkill against
aggressive decks here, but they really are the vast majority of the format, and
we should be able to sideboard against control.
-----
An aside here about deck construction: At most competitive
events, there will be a lot of decks, and a lot of rounds. You can usually
afford to lose one, sometimes even two, and make it to the top tables. This is
because it is impossible to have a
winning matchup against every deck in the room. It just doesn’t happen.
When it does, something has gone horribly wrong and needs to be banned. If your
deck beats everyone, it’s overpowered, and if there isn’t enough diversity in
the opposing decks, that’s equally bad. One way or another, someone will beat
you. The real question is how to minimize how often that happens.
Back during Caw’s height, right after Splinter Twin hit
the scene in a big way, Valakut players were stuck with a problem. They couldn’t
beat Splinter Twin. It wasn’t that they were losing more than they were winning
– they just couldn’t put a dent in it. They had no defense against a
4-toughness creature that could – allowing only instant speed responses – make infinite
copies of itself and kill you while backed up by counterspells. At first, many
tried adding tons of Flame Slash and other removal for the deadly combo, just
to try and make the matchup into something you could fight.
The breakthrough came later. If Splinter Twin had an 80%
game win percent against you, you weren’t going to turn it around without a
complete transformational sideboard for them. It wasn’t worth your whole
sideboard just to make the matchup 50-50. They ignored the matchup and hoped
not to hit it, instead improving their %’s against the rest of the field.
-----
Blue
While the miracles available in white are potent, Blue is
where the dynamics of the deck start to come into their fullest. We have Think
Twice and Thought Scour to draw cards on their turn. Temporal Mastery serves as
a ghetto-Explore, which is just fine. We’re buying time and draw steps, which
is all this deck wants to do.
Ponder serves to fix our draws and ensure that we get
lands and spells when we’d like them, Devastation Tide is nearly as good as
Terminus, and locks the board down in combination with Tamiyo and Gideon.
Red
While red has a number of spells that I’d consider in a
deck like this, I’m going to have to say that I don’t think they’re better than
the ones we already have. Pillar of Flame is a good answer to a number of
relevant threats, but it’s fairly low impact compared to the rest of the deck.
Slagstorm is more of a color commitment than I’d be willing to make. Bonfire of
the Damned, however, serves as a late game fireball and board wipe all in one.
We could do much worse.
On the other hand, once I started actually putting the
deck together, I realized that the amount of slots we have for cards is already
extremely tight. I found myself cutting core cards to attempt to fit in the
Bonfires. It may be correct to do this, but without extensive tests, I wouldn’t
be comfortable with it. I cut the Bonfires from the maindeck, leaving us with only a very light
splash for Desolate Lighthouse, and a single Bonfire in the sideboard, just in case.
Here’s the deck list that I came up with.
Some of the highlights of the deck include Gideon and
Tamiyo, who effectively act as a tag-team. If both of these are on the field at
once, it’s very difficult to lose. Tamiyo can tap something down for Gideon to
kill. Gideon can taunt their team, allowing Tamiyo to draw you a ton of cards
unopposed. Gideon can protect Tamiyo as she builds to her ultimate while
protecting Gideon with her own tapdown.
Gideon’s ultimate is perfectly serviceable as a win
condition, and Tamiyo’s can also serve as a rapid fire Angel factory with
Entreat the Angels, or an alternate win condition with Thought Scour milling
their deck dry (when you’re not pointing it at yourself for a virtual Ancestral
Recall.)
And while they’re doing this, a single miracle of any
sort sets your opponent so far behind that coming back would take something
even more miraculous. I can’t explain enough how much these two walkers were
made for each other. They dovetail perfectly. I’m considering building a deck
designed to emphasize these two even more than they already are.
With 13 main deck aggro hosers, the matchup should be
great against any deck that turns guys sideways. Since this is the vast
majority of the current metagame, this makes this a very well positioned deck.
On the other hand, I think that we’re very very weak
against Control and Ramp. While Control is probably a matchup we don’t need a
spectacular amount of hate for, given its relative absence from the metagame,
Ramp is pretty much inexcusable. The plethora of bounce and board wipe spells
should help there, and we can always shut them out with planeswalkers, but I’m
putting some Dissipates in the board to help slow them down. We may not be able
to counter Primeval Titans anymore, but we can certainly stop Green Sun’s
Zenith and enough Ramp Spells that we’ll get to deploy Tamiyo and Gideon to
victory.
I’d wanted to do some testing on Magic Workstation (my
online testing service of choice), but unfortunately, my evening last night was
booked solid with other things, so I’ll have to leave you with this deck
untested. It’s likely far from ideal, and could use some definite tuning, but
the principles are there.
During the quarterfinals of the Pro Tour, John Finkel
commented that you could probably write a computer program to determine how
many times this deck just wins the game. During the last IQ I was at, a Zombies
player snap-kept a triple Gravecrawler hand, only to fall victim to the turn 2
Terminus flip. One of the shining words of advice for any format is to do the
most unfair thing that you can, and every miracle in this deck does exactly
that – gaining massive value for little cost.
Top deck your way to victory, my friends!
-----
This weekend, I’ll be attending the Redcap’s Corner PTQ
in the Philadelphia Convention Center. It starts on Saturday at 10am, and
promises to be good fun. The format is Standard. If you’re planning on being
there, let me know, and we can chat about our decks. Who knows, maybe you and
your deck could be featured here next week! I also hope to attend a Game Day on Sunday, but we'll see how that goes.
This Tuesday will be the first entry in a series aimed
mostly at beginning deck builders. We’ll go into some of the fundamentals of
building a deck, and talk about some common issues with freshman attempts at
putting together a pile of sixty and winning with it.
Thanks for reading, and as always, I’ll be watching the
comments for any questions from you guys. Keep reading, and I’ll keep watching.
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