The Enemy

When Sensei’s Divining Top was banned from Legacy, there was lots of speculation regarding what would rise from Miracles’ ashes. Would Elves and Storm become dominant in the absence of CounterTop, or perhaps decks would cut Abrupt Decay and bring Tarmogoyf back into the format? Over time, the one constant that seemed to remain was the relative power of Deathrite Shaman, the so called “One Mana Planeswalker”.

After the dust settled many began to agree that the “the best deck” was/is Grixis Delver. The Honda Civic of Legacy, Delver is a tempo deck that uses cards like Deathrite Shaman and the deck’s namesake, Delver of Secrets, along with a suite of other powerful threats and cheap disruption. Cards like Daze, Spell Pierce, Wasteland, and Force of Will are brutally efficient and put your opponents at a disadvantage long enough to kill them with a ‘innocuous’ 1 mana 3/2.

Not only is the deck extremely efficient, but it also thrives because its spells are flexible: cards like Delver, Deathrite, Wasteland, and Daze will have applications in just about every matchup. Grixis Delver also gets a number of “free wins” where a single Wasteland wins the game or you are the first to resolve a Deathrite. This is especially noticeable in post board games when paired with powerful discard in Cabal Therapy coupled with Gitaxian Probe.

The Solution

Despite knowing this, I will not be sleeving up Delver of Secrets for GP Seattle 2018. Instead I’ll be opting to cast Blue and White spells. My name is Rugved Karhade and I’m addicted to drawing cards. I quit Hearthstone and started playing Magic in 2015 during Khans of Tarkir, and my first deck was Esper Control during Dragons of Tarkir where I first experienced the rush of resolving Dig Through Time.

My introduction to Miracles was when I first saw Anuraag Das almost draw his entire library while trying to win a close match against Team America (BUG Delver); enter the greatest love story of the 21st century. I immediately began to play leagues of Miracles on Magic Online under the handle VedX, playing faithfully for the next year, and I’ve hardly slowed down. In fact, I had been playing so much recently I was reflexively informing my opponents I had effects in their upkeep (from Portent), while I was looking at a hand full of Dark Rituals and Infernal Tutors.

Testing

The more I tested the more it began to be apparent that since the Sensei’s Divining Top ban, we were no longer favoured in the Grixis Delver matchup. Miracles no longer had the consistency to draw the right cards at the right time for every matchup, and Terminus often came 1-3 turns late leaving at as a much less than favourable position, 4-6 life lower than we’d like.

The reason we struggled with the Grixis matchup went beyond just consistency, the shell simply wasn’t good enough vs Grixis. Lightning Bolt would serve as important reach and Surgical Extraction would effectively strip Terminus from our deck, a problem that we never had preban. Perhaps, if UW Control wasn’t an effective strategy then perhaps UW prison had potential: Counterbalance was a key card of the deck’s engine before the banning, and had disappeared from Miracles during the Summer of 2017. After testing it we realised the reason: the cost of playing Counterbalance was very high. In lists featuring 3-4 Counterbalance there was a heavy stress placed on cantrips, they served as answers to threats, countermagic and also organised the top of our library.

Our testing to create a list with a better Delver match up began with the introduction of main deck Back to Basics (this was a few months before Jim Davis’ debut with B2B Miracles on the SCG Tour). The logic behind Back to Basics was that it requires far fewer resources than Counterbalance to be effective. However, the problem with this approach was that although my win rate was nearing 60% vs Delver, I still had issues with flooding out in the mid game. I lost far too many matches after stabilising at around 4-8 life thanks to a long-awaited Terminus, only to watch my opponent rip a True-Name Nemesis before I was able to find a Jace, the Mind Sculptor or Back to Basics.

Frustrated, and with those losses fresh in my mind, we started to brainstorm ways to extend our mid-game power into late-game domination before the opponent had a chance to recover.

For weeks, I tested the same list trying to tinker with the number of Predict and Search for Azcanta, constantly fiddling with the numbers in the stock list to create some semblance of consistency. This finally ended when Anuraag thought of a way to minimise the amount of flooding in the mid game in a simple way: 2 Preordain.

Philipp Schönegger, one of the retired legends of Miracles was once featured on the podcast Everyday Eternal (17/4/2015). When asked about his specific “Ponder” build (before Ponder saw common play) he said, “What if I draw the wrong cards? What if I draw the Sneak and Show cards vs Delver? That’s not how I want my deck to be built”. The reasoning behind the inclusion of 2 Preordain was simple: it allows us the cheat on the 20th land, reduces the chance of flood in the late game, and was a significantly better draw than the 4th Portent in the mid to late game when hellbent.

This was not the first mention of Preordain in Miracles either; Wilson Hunter’s GP Columbus Top 8 list featured 1 Preordain as well as 19 lands, as did Phillip Braverman’s Stoneblade Miracles at GP New Jersey . With the addition of this new tool, it was time to decide what else to include.

Tools and Card Choices

Card Filtering and Advantage

A staple in every blue Legacy deck, starting a deck without 4 of these is a mistake.

After European Miracles took over, I don’t think anyone has sleeved up UW control without 4 of these This cantrip. looks at the most number of cards for 1 mana and helps dig to answers.

A recent inclusion to this deck, and a necessity as Sensei’s Divining Top got banned. Portent allows us to have more early cantrips, and is a good way to trigger Miracles in your opponent’s upkeep.

Although not traditional, Preordain has seen play as 1-2 ofs in Miracles before. The reason for its inclusion is based on the logic that it’s better than the 4th Portent and also better than the 20th land.

The card that got me to play Miracles. Often after resolving this spell feels like an Ancestral Recall, although it’s usually mill a bad card and drawing 2. There are two major problems with Predict: a) It is not a 1-card engine and requires set up from another cantrip (t1 Preordain doesn’t work) and b) it encourages bad cantripping in order to set up, and if countered can put you very far behind since there is often no way to shuffle the bad card away. To put this in context imagine casting a Ponder in the early turns, you see Terminus Predict and Snapcaster Mage. Seeing the Predict tempts us into trying to resolve it and milling either Terminus or Snapcaster depending on their relevance, but if it gets countered you’re stuck drawing a bad card.

An extremely powerful enchantment, and at 1U even the scry effect is often relevant. This card once flips makes grinding with Czech Pile and BUG midrange decks very easy.

Removal

The best removal spell in Magic, 1 white, exile a creature. The life gain is almost never an obstacle in a deck as slow as Miracles.

A 1 mana wrath effect that works against indestructible creatures. This is what makes Miracles such a powerful deck. Miracles quickly become the best deck in the format when it got access to 4-6 extremely undercosted Miracles after the printing of Avacyn Restored.

Although not nearly as mana efficient as Terminus, the uncounterable clause often makes this a valuable inclusion in Force of Will matchups.

After the Sensei’s Top banning, Unexpectedly Absent shot up to a 3-of, especially in UW lists. It’s an easy way to get rid of problematic permanents and a nice way to set up Predict. The downside is that it is not easy to cast at xWW and is often not good enough alone (unlike Council’s Judgment) to get rid of planeswalkers.

This card is incredibly flexible. However, it usually isn’t amazing- it is a mediocre wrath, a slow answer to Chalice of the Void, and doesn’t answer anything that costs more than 3 mana. However, it is one of the best cards to play in your deck against Elves and Death and Taxes since everything has a low CMC.

Prison Tools

This card is repeated card advantage. Not only does it convert all your cantrips into potential counterspells, but it’s also a good win condition vs decks like Storm or Delver

The most powerful lock out tool vs decks like Lands, the way it’s deployed should be thought of as : bait your opponent into tapping low and then slam it with Flusterstorm backup. Your opponent is usually just dead, barring an Abrupt Decay.

This card often gets free wins on it’s own. The effect it has is very powerful, but is a double-edged sword, turning off fetchlands and even more so against Dark Depth decks.

Often seen in Japanese lists, this card is very good vs decks like Eldrazi and passable vs Sneak and Show. It’s generally a meta call and not something I’d take to a Grand Prix in the US.

This was once seen as the only way to consistently beat Eldrazi, although it may not be worth the sideboard slots in the current meta. Moat is far too weak against Deathrite Shaman, Daze and Delver of Secrets to see consistent play now.

Win Conditions

I would never sleeve up this deck without Jace. This card is the most powerful planeswalker ever printed, untapping with it usually means winning the game.

An incredibly powerful white win condition. The highest upside for this card is that it’s generally non-interactable for non-blue decks (how does a deck realistically beat 24 power of flyers?).

Despite being one of the most broken creatures ever printed, this card is often relegated to the sideboard for poor matchups because it dies to incidental removal in game 1 (which is often boarded out after).

Although this card is pretty resilient for the most part, the 5 CMC makes it very hard to justify. There are metas where this is playable though so it’s still worth mentioning.

A relic of the past, SFM/Batterskull hasn’t seen play for a long time and likely won’t return unless burn/zoo somehow becomes a large portion of the field.

Sideboard

Without basic mountain I don’t board in pyroblast/red elemental blast against Delver. This card is very powerful vs Delver and midrange BUG decks with wasteland.

Recently a 4-of in Miracles lists, this card is obviously a very important answer to combo, but also provides defense against decks like Czech Pile, limiting the power of Hymn to Tourach, Snapcaster Mage, and Kolaghan’s Command.

In my opinion, this card is the only reason to play UWr. Pyroblast is the premium way to answer Snapcaster Mage and Jace in postboard games.

The most efficient spell at doing what it does: killing Blood Moon and Chalice of the Void.

This card is the best card to get rid of non blue permanents such as Gideon, Ally of Zendikar, Liliana, the Last Hope, and Chandra, Torch of Defiance.

Taking all these factors into account, we built the first version of the list with Preordains:

Preordain Miracles v0.5

After testing this list further and making some brief changes to the mana base, we found that despite solving some of the issues of late game flood, it was still hard for Miracles to close-out the game against Delver. With a timely Spell Pierce, Delver could change the entire flow of the match, halting our momentum and resulting in a loss. After bringing this problem to light, we decided to test a card that hadn’t seen much play since Czech Pile rose in popularity over the last year: Vendilion Clique.

The original problem with Vendilion Clique was that it was extremely fragile. In a format full of Baleful Strix, Kolaghan’s Commands and Lightning Bolts, you don’t want to be casting a 3 mana 3/1 that may give you some small amount of information and then die to a card that had already earned its value. The reasoning behind Clique’s inclusion was the need for a way to safely deploy threats in our main phase without being overly worried about having to sit back and wait for more permission.

With this reasoning in mind, we cut 1 Search for Azcanta and the maindeck Back to Basics for 2 Cliques. We also decided on the inclusion of a 5th wrath and a 3/2 split between Terminus and Supreme Verdict to better play around Surgical Extraction as well as be able to regularly resolve a wrath on turn 4 against Delver.

Preordain Miracles v1.0

Even though Vendilion Clique was originally wanted as a “Gitaxian Probe”-esque effect in the matchups where information was valuable, I began to test it and its value versus Delver became quickly apparent as a potential blocker despite its inherent clunkiness. Often times when cast, it traded with a Lightning Bolt, a Force of Will or their Delver of Secrets while providing the information of what to play around. I still remember the moment I realized Clique was still powerful: I was playtesting as Grixis Delver against Anuraag’s Miracles, and after attacking with a Delver he flashed in Clique. In response to the ETB trigger, I bolted it, and much to my dismay he responded with a Flusterstorm. Annoyed I was forced to bolt it again, burning 2 cards and still giving him the trigger to rob me of my True-Name Nemesis. In the following turn he untapped, cast a Jace and unsummoned my Delver.

After testing 3-4 different variations, ranging from 1-2 Vendilion Cliques, and 2 Gitaxian Probes, finally settled on this:

Preordain Miracles v1.5

Results

After testing over 20 leagues with Preordain (and recording around 10), I realized that the more we optimized our Delver matchup, the less we were able to grind with the 4c menace starring Hymn to Tourach and Leovold, Emissary of Trest. After reducing the number of Search For Azcantas and Predicts, it became far more difficult to grind out longer games, which prompted the inclusion of the sideboard Search for Azcanta. Despite Clique being rather weak in that and similar match ups, the information it provided was still useful and in postboard games it allowed for devastating early sequences involving Jace, the Mind Sculptor.

Although the sample size of the recorded results is in no way impressive, it’s certainly enough to give us an indication of whether the changes were having the intended results. . In fact, Anuraag took his own build of Preordain Miracles to a 2nd place finish in the 3/18/17 Magic: The Gathering Online Weekly Legacy Challenge, losing to Sneak and Show in the finals (Boseiju is a powerful magic card). Thomas Mechin also took a similar 19 land preordain list to the finals of the French Nationals and took the whole tournament down with an incredible record.

Here’s a link to the videos of Anuraag in the challenge:

I also played a league of Preordain Miracles on stream losing a 5-0 to timing out with lethal in play at the beginning of combat:

These are my win rates over the last 10 leagues as well as the raw data dump:

VedX Miracles Testing

Opponent Matches GW% MW% Grixis Delver 15 74 93 Czech Pile 8 57 50 ANT 7 61 71 Miracles 7 71 71 TES 6 69 83 Moon Stompy 5 77 100 BR Reanimator 4 45 50 Death and Taxes 4 67 75 BUG Delver 3 75 100 Turbo Depths 3 57 67 Maverick 3 86 100 Eldrazi 3 14 0 Sneak and Show 3 50 67 Eldrazi Post 2 40 50 RUG Delver 2 50 50 Lands 2 67 100 4c Loam 2 80 100 Mono W Stompy 2 80 100 Helm Control 1 67 100 Esper Deathblade 1 67 100 Death's Shadow 1 100 100 Deadguy Ale 1 100 100 Aluren 1 67 100 UB Reanimator 1 67 100 Tezzerator 1 0 0 Manaless Dredge 1 0 0 BUG Control 1 33 0 Grixis Pyro 1 100 100 Doomsday 1 100 100 BUG Nicfit 1 33 0 Bant Post 1 0 0 Burn 1 67 100

Conclusion

Although this list likely won’t be my finalized list for GP Seattle, it certainly is pretty close. Preordains have been amazing and a 93% match win rate vs Delver definitely indicates positive results. While the match-win percentage may not be as high in tournaments as it was in testing, this build seems to resolve some of the challenges non-Preordain miracles faced.. Others have mentioned testing Preordain in different shells, be it UW (no red), or a more aggressive mentor shell.

There are still significant issues in the Miracles shell: weakness to Chalice of the Void, as well as awful matchups against Burn and Sneak and Show. That said, the deck provides unique tools that can overcome Grixis Delver in addition to any other midrange deck optimised for a long game.

Despite my positive results, the challenge isn’t over. You’ll see all of us Miracles grinders playing our weekly leagues making small changes, testing controversial strategies and logging each result methodically in the pursuit of once again making Miracles the best deck in the format. I hope to see you all at GP Seattle as I remind my opponents, this time for good reason, that I have effects in their upkeep.

Rugved

[Ed: Follow Rugved on Twitter @VedKarhade and find him on Twitch with an unmade bed in the background here. He is too humble to promote himself]

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