Real Life — overrated in my opinion — and a slightly hyperactive dog have taken more of my time recently, leaving little for grinding leagues with various brews. I wasn’t even going to play GP Birmingham since I’d originally booked a trip away for that weekend well before the GP schedule had even been released. However, circumstances can and do change. The trip fell though, leaving a free weekend for the GP and the burning question of what to play.

This might be a contentious opinion, but I personally think that Legacy is in a really healthy and interesting place right now. Grixis Delver is the consensus best deck and likely the actual best deck in the format, but it isn’t completely broken. Czech Pile and variants of the 4 colour good-stuff archetype exist in the same general space as Grixis Delver, but there are lot of different ways to configure and tune the lists for a given meta. Sure, there are a lot of Deathrite Shaman mirrors, but at least there’s a decent amount of play to the control mirrors even if the Delver mirror is a miserable coin-flip.

Extended aside on “best decks”

Magic players these days seem pretty happy with the term “best deck” but what do we really mean by the concept? In general, a given format can be in one of two states: broken or not-broken (‘healthy’ for lack of a better term). A broken format is one in which there is one deck that is strictly better than any other strategy — for example, Necro decks from ’96 Standard and possibly Caw-Blade from New Phyrexia Standard. It just didn’t make sense to play any other deck in those environments. In mathematical terms, the equilibrium metagame for those two formats should have been 100% Necro decks or 100% Caw-Blade decks.

In a ‘healthy’ format the best deck isn’t strictly better than any other strategy. Taking a rather extreme example of a healthy format, in a rock-paper-scissors game we’d expect a third of the players to bring rock, a third to bring paper and a third to bring scissors (hopefully while walking). If for some reason — object availability, lack of knowledge, whatever — the meta isn’t a third of each a player could benefit by showing up with the underrepresented strategy. The rock-paper-scissors game doesn’t have a best strategy — each is equally viable. However, imagine a weighted rock-paper-scissors game in which, say, rock only beats scissors 90% of the time. Scissors is now the best strategy, but it shouldn’t be 100% of the meta because rock can still prey on it. The equilibrium metagame would consist of > 33% scissors, < 33% rock. < 33% paper, but all strategies are still present. It’s still possible for players to gain an edge through strategy choice if the metagame for a specific event doesn’t conform to the equilibrium breakdown for some reason. Nic’s article talks about metagame maths in quite a formal way, but hopefully this hand-wavy example gives the gist of the results.

In reality, we might want to use a less strict definition of what it means for a format to be broken. A given deck taking over 50% of the equilibrium metagame (or maybe even the observed meta game) probably isn’t desirable. It’s possible that the Necro and Caw-Blade eras weren’t even ‘broken’ under my rather extreme definition and that, say, the equilibrium meta should have been something like 90% necro, 5% anti-necro decks and 5% miscellaneous in ’96 type II.

Historically, I suspect that people had a tendency to underplay the best deck for a variety of reasons. Card availability and budget constraints affect deck choice — Caw-Blade was likely underplayed because Jace was (and still is) expensive. People generally play Magic for fun rather than for profit and may enjoy playing a particular pet strategy even when it isn’t really the optimal choice. There’s also a strange subset of Magic players who just want to be different and play their own brews. Weird.

Despite being the consensus best deck before Top’s banning, I feel that Counter/Top Miracles was still underplayed because of time constraints and complexity concerns. I played Grixis Delver at GP Prague in 2016 — the last GP I played actually — rather than Miracles partly because I was worried about going to time. Grixis Delver, on the other hand, isn’t *that* hard to play, has game against most decks, has a very solid nut draw and can usually close games out fairly quickly. While the cantrips add a layer of skill to the deck, it’s usually correct to be fairly aggressive with them and Probe lets you see what you need to play around and dig for. There’s a real chance that Grixis Delver is currently overplayed. Although there isn’t really sufficient data to draw any conclusions, the poor conversion rates for Delver from GP Seattle could be one result of this.

TL;DR: It’s only correct to play the “best deck” if it’s underplayed, which historically has been the case, but might not be true for large Legacy events today.

Birmingham

Anyway, returning to Birmingham, Grixis Delver was out because I thought it would be overplayed. It didn’t seem worth metagaming Grixis to a crazy mirror breaker build since GPs still have a lot of random decks — more so than Leagues online. The presence of Deathrite in the format makes mana-denial strategies less appealing unless you go all-in like Lands and have a repeatable answer to the Shaman. Death and Taxes feels like it probably has a good Grixis Delver match-up, but a poor Czech Pile match-up and is inconsistent without deck manipulation. Moon Stompy doesn’t seem interesting enough to play and has the same consistency problems. (Also, I don’t own the right Chandras.) Czech Pile is mono-good cards, but has so many dead cards vs combo and still sometimes loses to Wasteland.

To a certain extent, deck choice in Magic, especially older open formats, is about choosing what to lose to. In a healthy format there isn’t a deck that can magically beat everything else. Fairly early in my testing process I came to the conclusion that I just wanted to play Magic at the GP. Every time I’d join a league with a sweet 3-5 colour brew I’d end up being locked out by Moon Stompy or Wasted off a key colour by Grixis Delver. Jim Davis is absolutely bang on the proverbial money in his article on UW Miracles: basic lands are really, really good at the moment. Miracles seems like the most powerful, consistent basic-heavy deck so was the obvious place to start. The only problem is finishing rounds in time:

Deck

Aggro Miracles

This is basically a mash-up of Claudio Bonanni’s Mentor Miracles deck and Jim Davis’s UW Miracles list, combined with a few of my own ideas from testing various other aggressive UW decks online. I actually threw this together at about 10pm Thursday night before the event, finishing sleeving at about 1am, but had tested a bunch of similar lists in the weeks running up to the GP with various janky ideas like Myth Realized, Gideon of the Trials, main-deck Pyroclasm in UWR builds, Nahiri, the Harbringer as a finisher, crazy stuff like Hoofprints of the Stag, a Bant build with Counterbalance/Mirri’s Guile, Ancestral Vision as a card-advantage engine over Predict, even a fun-of main-deck Stifle (spoiler alert: it was hilarious).

A few notes on card choices:

4 Brainstorm / 4 Ponder / 3 Portent / 2 Predict: 13 cantrips! Cantrips are sweet. You need cantrips to set-up Predict, Terminus and Counterbalance. Predict is one of the most efficient blue draw-engines in the format.

18 lands. This might seem a little low, but cantrip-heavy decks have a tendency to flood out. While you can fix your draws over the short-term with cantrips, over the long run you’re still going to draw your non-cantrip cards in the original deck build ratio (i.e. 1 Mentor for every 6-7 lands). Cards like Mentor and Counterbalance ask you to play as few lands as possible so as to maximize the chance of drawing gas to trigger prowess or to blind counter a spell. My goal is to run the fewest number of lands required to allow the deck to function, then enough cantrips to hit the third land to drop a ‘bomb’ like Back to Basics or Monastery Mentor.

Jim’s three basic plains seemed a little dubious to me. Non-blue sources are really bad when your deck is trying to chain cantrips together or, in my case, cast a turn two Counterbalance, but Jim’s list needs a critical mass of white sources to support Council’s Judgment and to have reliable access to white to Plow their turn one Goblin Lackey. My list is only running six ways to find the one-of Plains (4 Flooded Strand, 1 Windswept Heath and the Plains itself), which is possibly too greedy to reliably play around Wasteland, hence the second Plains in the sideboard.

3 Mentor / 2 Terminus: Terminus is probably the best removal spell in the format, but it’s awkward to set-up. The premise behind this build is that Mentor is good enough without a sweeper — spot removal into Mentor into cantrips is likely better than whatever the opponent is doing, assuming you can protect Mentor for a turn or two. Terminus is strong enough that it’s worth running a couple, especially since we aren’t dropping our threat until at least turn three, but we shouldn’t really need to draw one once we have a Mentor in play.

4 Plow / 1 Path to Exile: The aforementioned spot removal. While Path doesn’t exactly combo with Back to Basics, the fifth one CMC spot removal effect is a concession to Grixis Delver’s popularity.

2 Counterbalance: I’ve tried to jam Counterbalance into a lot of different decks since Top was banned, including the sideboard of Grixis Delver. The card is fairly high variance. Sometimes it’s your only interaction and you just have to drop it turn two and hope that it does something useful, which it rarely does until you set it up with a cantrip. At this point I think the card is a bit of trap. I understand that it combos with all of the cantrips in Miracles and that it transforms Jace from very good to utterly busted, but for the most part I’d prefer to play a card that is guaranteed to do something the turn its played. With that said, Counterbalance is a necessary evil in this list. With Daze in the deck it’s useful to have a proactive turn two play to fight over. Mentor is a fragile threat that often taps you low and in theory Counterbalance allows you to protect Mentor with enough preparation. Finally, the deck needs a critical mass of effects that reveal the top card of the deck for Predict. Cutting the Counterbalances from Miracles tends to make Predict worse.

2 Spell Pierce / 2 Daze: Counterbalance answers their one CMC cards, these deal with the rest. Obviously both cards get a lot worse the longer the game goes on, but the plan is to win the game quickly, then be drinking cocktails in the bar before Pierce is dead.

Cheap interaction is really good when your deck is durdling around with cantrips. I’ve found Miracles a little weak to some early non-creature spells like Hymn to Tourach, Sylvan Library, Liliana, the Last Hope, opposing Search for Azcanta or Counterbalances and Pierce does a good job of answering most of the things that Swords to Plowshares and Terminus can’t.

2 Back to Basics: Sometimes you’re delayed en route to the bar and Back to Basics helps to keep Daze and Spell Pierce live a bit longer. More seriously, though, Jim Davis’s article really nails this better than I ever could. The card seems really well positioned right now.

2 Gitaxian Probe: Magic is a lot easier when you know what’s going on in your opponent’s hand! The motivation for Probe came from a couple of recent losses vs Storm online where I Surgicaled my opponents for information post-board, then promptly lost to Past in Flames. Obviously I should have just been patient in those games, but the information asymmetry in the match-up is unbearable! Storm decks generally have a good idea of the control deck’s hand through Probe, Duress and Cabal Therapy while the poor Miracles player typically has no clue whether the Storm player is trying to set-up Ad Nauseam, Past in Flames, Empty or Tendrils.

In theory, the information from Probe can guide decisions with Counterbalance. Portent and Probe combo well together in a variety of ways — Probe can immediately draw you into the top-stacked card, or the information from Probe can be used to Portent an opponent off a key card or effect. Miracles often wants to cast a cantrip turn one and Probe tells you what you need to dig for. Finally, it helps to keep the lands flowing and Monastery Mentor pooping monks into play.

1 Detention Sphere: This card is terrible. Three is a lot of mana for something that can be fairly low-impact and dies to Pyroblast effects. However, the deck needs a main-deck answer to problematic permanents — Chalices or resolved planeswalkers — and the mana-base just can’t support Council’s Judgment. I also like having two clean answers to Empty the Warrens in the 75 (EE being the second) — Terminus is just too clunky to set-up vs Storm in my experience.

The Sideboard

Most of the sideboard should be fairly self-explanatory. I want four answers to Chalice of the Void in the 75, so the two Disenchants and Engineered Explosives round out our Chalice-removal package along with the main-deck Detention Sphere. At the moment I like four graveyard hate cards, although this might be more of a concern for online play where there’s more RB Reanimator.

2 Delver: I’ll concede that Delver of Secrets is somewhat spicy and that I mostly ran them for a laugh. To be honest, I largely modeled a lot of my sideboard off Whiteface’s (aka Callum’s) Miracles sideboard guide. Classic Miracles often brings Mentors in place of Entreat in post-board matches to side-step stack-based interaction, but they’re already in the main here, so what’s a mage to do? The main-deck spell count is very high in this build anyway — we have 18 lands, 4 enchantments, 5 creatures, and 2 planeswalkers main, so 31 spells that flip a Delver. Depending on the match-up, I think it’s often correct to cut some combination of Back to Basics, Jace and Counterbalance when sideboarding, which only increases the spell count further.

Delver sucks because people are generally bringing Red Blasts or leaving in Decays against you and Delver dodges neither. However, it trades at mana parity or better with any removal spell and Red Blasts are going to be good against what we’re doing anyway so there’s some value in just trying to overload them.

I like having access to a cheap, aggressive threat against combo and in the mirror. Tapping out for a Mentor is really awkward against combo decks, but it’s important to be able to present a clock. At some point threats are better than disruption and we’re a little more reliant on soft counters in this build than with a more conventional Miracles list so a clock is even more desirable.

In general, I’d consider bringing in Delver whenever I’m cutting Terminus, but there are a decent number of match-ups where it’s worth playing both. (Elves, probably BUG Delver, maybe some Miracles builds.)

Plains: The main-deck mana-base is pretty greedy. I originally added this for the Rishadan Port and Ghost Quarter decks where it’s useful to have multiple basic Plains in play, but I’d also bring this in vs Blood Moon decks or against opponents playing Spheres or tax effects.

Tournament Report

Armed with a healthy six hours of sleep and unhealthy Full English Breakfast, I nearly manage to miss round one by spending too much time chatting with friends who had byes. Sideboard notes are approximate since I’m running off a flakey memory.

Round 1 vs UWR Control: (1-2):

If I’d been paying more attention I’d have realized that Julien, my opponent, had top eighted the Eternal Weekend Legacy the previous weekend with his sweet UWR Control Deck and that would probably have helped my sideboarding here!

G1: He rapidly gets ahead thanks to Search for Azcanta, and solid play. Thankfully a top-decked Back to Basics shuts down his FBB duals and Search. Spell Pierce answers Gideon and he scoops.

SB: Not 100% sure what I did, but I cut Terminus, which was definitely wrong.

G2: He Pyroblasts all my worldly possessions, makes a Geist and I die.

G3: He Pyroblasts all my worldly possessions, makes a Geist and I die.

Round 2: ANT (2-0):

G1: All I remember was that he stripped my hand apart. Then I managed to land a Back to Basics, which allowed a Daze to do something useful.

SB: -4 Swords to Plowshares, -1 Path, -2 Terminus, -1 Plains, -2 Back to Basics, +2 Delver of Secrets, +2 Flusterstorm, +3 Surgical Extraction, +1 Snapcaster Mage, +1 Vendilion Clique, +1 Engineered Explosives.

G2: He mulls, plays Volcanic and pass. I Probe, see Confidants and lots of black spells, but no cantrips or black mana. Portent messes with his scry and I manage to keep him off black mana while a Delver beats down.

Round 3: Elves (2-0):

G1: I have the Force for his Natural Order; Mentor races his board.

SB: -2 Back to Basics, -2 Daze, -1 Jace, -1 Mentor, +2 Delver of Secrets, +1 Snappy, +1 Clique, +1 Containment Priest, +1 EE. (Pierce is ok vs Choke, GSZ and the 5 mana planeswalker, Daze isn’t great against mana dork.dec, Jace is hard to protect, I’d rather beat down in the air than have to worry about combat maths on the ground.)

G2: I think I Clique away Choke and beat-down in the air.

Round 4: Food Chain (2-0):

G1: He leads with Relic of Progenitus. Probe reveals Trinket Mage, Baleful Strix. I Force a Manipulate Fate at one point, then land a Mentor and cantrip to victory.

SB: Not 100% sure here. I think I brought in EE and maybe Disenchants, while cutting Counterbalance (bad vs their curve). I did deliberately leave in Back to Basics because I thought this was a bad match-up and that was one way to cheese a win if he didn’t fetch his basics.

G2: He fetches non-basics and I “get” him.

Round 5 vs local legend Claude on Miracles (0-2):

G1: This is an epic. We both end up with Counterbalance and Jace in play. Claude answers my first Mentor, I answer his Entreat and Council’s Judgment, but Claude eventually resolves a Snapcaster and manages to flashback Council’s Judgment to deal with my Jace, then ultimates his own.

SB: -4 Plow, -2 Terminus, -1 Path, -1 Plains, -1 Back to Basics, +2 Flusterstorm, +2 Delver (obv), +2 Disenchant, +1 Snapcaster, +1 Clique, +1 Hydroblast. I left in Back to Basics since I couldn’t think of what else to cut. It might be correct to bring in Surgical for the opponents Pyroblast though!

G2: He wins as time is called. As with several day one matches, I don’t fully remember what happened, but it probably involved him Pyroblasting all of my cool stuff.

Round 6 vs Eldrazi (2-1):

G1: I think my opponent punts this game. The key play is that I have Mentor and he has a Ballista on three (along with some other stuff). He attacks, I block with a monk. Then post-combat he removes two counters from the Ballista to deal two to the Mentor. In response I blind Predict, pumping the Mentor, then point out that the Ballista has one damage marked on it.

G2: I think I punted this game since I die to a Jitte despite holding Force and blue card all game.

G3: I Force his Chalice, then we both flood out until I draw a Jace, after which point only he floods out. I was sure he had All is Dust in hand, so played very conservatively this game. It turns out he was just holding an Ancient Tomb, which isn’t quite as scary.

Round 7 vs ANT (2-1):

G1, G2: I don’t fully remember. I expect I lost game one and took game two.

SB: -4 Swords to Plowshares, -1 Path, -2 Terminus, -1 Plains, -2 Back to Basics, +2 Delver of Secrets, +2 Flusterstorm, +3 Surgical Extraction, +1 Snapcaster Mage, +1 Vendilion Clique, +1 Engineered Explosives.

G3: My opponent played a lot better than I did here and I very nearly lost despite having a Counterbalance in play and an insane hand of multiple Flusterstorms and Forces. He managed to grind me out, makes about a billion Goblins, then sets up Infernal Tutor for something mean on his next turn. Thankfully I Ponder into Force, EE, which was fine, because it turns out that “a billion” is actually closer to eight in Goblin arithmetic.

Round 8 vs Grixis Delver (2-1):

G1: I think I take this on 1-2 life thanks to a Counterbalance.

SB: -2 Spell Pierce, -1 Jace, +2 Flusterstorm, +1 Hydroblast, +1 Engineered Explosives, +1 Plains?

G2: He makes a Liliana, the Last Hope.

G3: I have the feeling that my opponent wants to Bolt a Mentor, then Surgical them all out of my library so I played very conservatively this game holding a Mentor in hand until I drew a Hydroblast to protect it. He did Surgical some stuff later in the game so my read might have been correct.

Day 2:

Round 9 vs Turbo Depths (2-0):

G1: Path to Exile FTW!

SB: I sideboarding incorrectly since I forgot about Sylvan Safekeeper. I should be keeping Terminus in against these decks.

G2: I make an early Delver and Counterbalance, opponent drops two Hexmages and begins to race. I think I end up leaving the Delver back on defense in case he has Crop Rotation into Dark Depths + make a 20/20. Mentor helps gum up the ground and the opponent starts making 20/20s. Delver has to block because he has Crop Rotation into Sejiri Steppe for a Plow, but Mentor takes the game from there.

Round 10 vs Aggro Loam (2-0):

G1: Opponent opens with Mox into Teeg. I Probe and see Bob and Liliana, but no second black then hold up Spell Pierce for a potential turn two Liliana. He makes a Bob, I manage to cantrip into spot removal, then I think I find a Snapcaster to clear the Teeg and drop a Jace for the ol’ gg.

SB: -2 Gitaxian Probe (bad vs Chalice), -2 Counterbalance, +2 Disenchant (good vs Chalice), +1 Engineered Explosives, +1 Snapcaster Mage. I didn’t bring in Surgical for Punishing Fire or Life from the Loam, which was probably a mistake.

G2: I mull, Force a turn one Bob, then he drops a Chalice and starts Loaming and cycling lands. I’m losing pretty badly for the most of the game, but drop a desperation Mentor on turn 3. He Lilianas with mana open, I Daze to make a monk, then have to jam a Brainstorm into Chalice and cycle Predict to make some more monks. Mentor eventually runs away with the game.

Round 11 vs Miracles (2-0):

G1: Probe reveals Jace, Force, not many lands and about a million white cards. I have a lot of blue cards in my hand. The key play is that I Pierce a Brainstorm on his turn three — he Pondered first so couldn’t pay and I knew that his hand sucked from the Probe — then untap and make a Jace with Force back-up, which then allows me to untap into Counterbalance + Mentor.

SB: -4 Plow, -2 Terminus, -1 Path, -1 Plains, -2 Back to Basics, +2 Flusterstorm, +2 Delver (obv), +2 Disenchant, +1 Snapcaster, +1 Clique, +1 Hydroblast, +1 Surgical Extaction.

G2: Turn. One. Delver.

Round 12 vs Sneak and Show (2-0):

This was a feature match, but probably not appropriate viewing for minors.

G1: I know that JPA93 is on S+S because he beats me online all the time. Thankfully I keep something like Force, Spell Pierce, cantrips + Mentor. There’s no way I’m tapping out for Mentor until we’ve traded a few resources, but I should be able to answer his first combo attempt so I try to leave up mana and play a waiting game. Ponder draws me into a Counterbalance, which is usually mediocre in the match-up because the combo pieces are all relatively high CMC, but it can be useful against their cantrips. As the commentators pointed out I should probably have Predicted in response to the Through the Breach/Pierce/Force stack — I’d deliberately stacked a Force below a Mentor to have access to the Predict line, but then I got a little focused on the idea of drawing two with Predict since the match-up can sometimes get a little grindy. (Obviously, pitching a card to FoW is about equivalent to only drawing one with Predict in terms of total card advantage.)

SB: -4 Plow, -2 Terminus, -1 Path, -1 Back to Basics, -2 Mentor, -1 Plains, +2 Fluster, +2 Delver, +2 Disenchant, +1 Containment Priest, +1 Snapcaster Mage, +1 Vendilion Clique, +1 Surgical, +1 Hydroblast. I spent a long time trying to decide if I wanted two Back to Basics for Boseiju, Who Shelters All. I probably did. The Disenchants were partly to hedge against Defense Grid, but can be good against Sneak Attack if they have to pass with no mana up.

G2: I mull to Delver, Containment Priest, Surgical, two lands + something else. Delver eventually flips and Containment Priest turns out to be pretty good against his Boseiju-Show and Tell-Sneak Attack line.

Round 13 vs Moon Stompy (2-0):

G1: Mentor is better than Rabblemaster; Daze is better than Fiery Confluence.

SB: I mess up and forget to cut Counterbalance. Normally I’d do something like -2 Probe, -2 Counterbalance, -2 Back to Basics, +2 Disenchant, +1 EE, +1 Hydroblast, +1 Clique, +1 Snapcaster. (I don’t think we bring in Delvers vs Chalice decks. Jace is good because it can beat Ensnaring Bridge.)

G2: He mulls to turn one Chalice, then a potential turn two Chandra, but I have Force for the Chalice and Portent him off the second red source.

Round 14 vs Elves (2-1):

G1: I do some cool things with Counterbalance and Brainstorm.

SB: -2 Back to Basics, -2 Daze, -1 Jace, -1 Mentor, +2 Delver of Secrets, +1 Snappy, +1 Clique, +1 Containment Priest, +1 EE.

G2: Choke is mean :(.

G3: I mull to Brainstorm, Delver, Terminus, Plow, and two lands. Brainstorm at some point reveals a second Terminus, so I hold the Delver until I’ve wiped the board twice.

Round 15 vs Grixis Kess (0-2):

G1: I keep a one-lander and am punished for only running 18 lands.

SB: Probably something like -3 Force of Will, -1 Path to Exile, -1 Swords to Plowshares, +1 Snapcaster, +1 Clique, +2 Flusterstorm, +1 Hydroblast. (I don’t like Force vs Hymn to Tourach. Path to Exile is bad because our goal is to Back to Basics them.)

G2: I keep a one-lander and am punished for only running 18 lands.

To be fair to my opponent, he played a lot better than I did this round. I overvalued Counterbalance, while he played around it beautifully, beating me at every single decision point.

Final Thoughts

So 12-3 overall, good for 21st place, three pro points and $500. Not bad for a deck constructed after three pints of beer the evening before the event!

To be honest — and this is likely true of any decently performing deck at a GP — I think I was very lucky with my mach-ups. I’m not totally convinced that the Grixis Delver and 4c Control match-ups are *that* good with this build. Sure, Back to Basics can be back-breaking against both decks and Counterbalance can do a lot of work. Hymn to Tourach from 4c Control is particularly good against Mentor since you’re usually low on resources by the time you have to jam Mentor, which means you’re less likely to be able to protect it or to generate value. Naked Mentors don’t last long in the match-up at all. Against Delver, we might still be a little light on removal.

The sideboard Delvers might be more fun/crazy than good, although they definitely overperformed in a lot of the match-ups at the GP (as did Daze). Unfortunately, they don’t play especially well against the Baleful Strix decks, which is one of the match-ups where I feel that additional post-board threats would be useful. Back to Basics underperformed relative to my expectations, but that’s probably a result of the more combo-oriented match-ups that I faced here.

In terms of changes to the deck, I think I want to try to fit a Gideon, Ally of Zendikar into the sideboard for Miracles and for 4c Control since more four drops is exactly where you want to be with your 18 land deck. Vendilion Clique might be the cut. I’d also like to cram an additional removal spell — possibly the 3rd Terminus — somewhere into the 75, but it really isn’t obvious where that goes. In a fair meta, you could probably skimp a little on graveyard hate and cut the third Surgical.

Like and Follow The Library at Pendrell Vale: