Miracles players rejoice! The Brainstorm Show is back on the deck and this week we are providing you with a lengthy discussion about our approach to building the deck in anticipation of GP Columbus. Wilson and Phillip have worked to produce the leanest, most flexible list they could while still taking advantage of the heavy hitters in many Miracles builds. This is a list designed with the wide-open GP field in mind. We hope you enjoy the analysis and find our sideboarding map useful.
The Miracles discussion starts at about 24:00. Below you will find the decklist, as well as a detailed sideboarding guide:
The Brainstorm Show’s GP Columbus Miracles List
Spells (34)
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
1 Preordain
2 Predict
4 Sensei’s Divining Top
4 Swords to Plowshares
4 Terminus
1 Counterspell
4 Counterbalance
4 Force of Will
2 Engineered Explosives
Creatures (7)
4 Monastery Mentor
3 Snapcaster Mage
Lands (19)
4 Island
2 Plains
2 Tundra
2 Volcanic Island
4 Flooded Strand
4 Scalding Tarn
1 Arid Mesa
SB
1 Mountain
4 Pyroblast
2 Disenchant
2 Blood Moon
1 Entreat the Angels
1 Vendilion Clique
1 Surgical Extraction
2 Flusterstorm
1 Spell Pierce
Sideboard Map
Mirror:
+1 Mountain
+4 Pyroblast
+2 Flusterstorm
+1 Spell Pierce
+1 Vendilion Clique
-4 Swords to Plowshares
-4 Terminus
-1 Plains
Grixis/RUG Delver:
+1 Mountain
+4 Pyroblast
-4 Force of Will
-1 Counterspell
BUG Delver:
+2 Flusterstorm
+1 Spell Pierce
+1 Vendilion Clique
-4 Force of Will
Death & Taxes:
+2 Disenchant
+1 Entreat the Angels
+1 Vendilion Clique
-4 Counterbalance
(On the play, board in Spell Pierce over single Counterspell)
Eldrazi:
+2 Blood Moon
+2 Disenchant
+1 Spell Pierce
-4 Counterbalance
-1 Counterspell
Storm:
+2 Flusterstorm
+1 Spell Pierce
+1 Surgical Extraction
+4 Pyroblast
+1 Vendilion Clique
+1 Mountain
-4 Swords to Plowshares
-4 Terminus
-2 Plains
Sneak and Show:
+4 Pyroblast
+2 Flusterstorm
+1 Spell Pierce
+2 Disenchant
+1 Vendilion Clique
+1 Mountain
-4 Swords to Plowshares
-4 Terminus
-2 Engineered Explosives
-1 Plains
Lands:
+2 Blood Moon
+1 Vendilion Clique
+1 Surgical Extraction
+1 Entreat the Angels
+2 Disenchant
-4 Terminus
-1 Counterspell
-2 Predict
Elves:
+2 Disenchant
+2 Flusterstorm
+1 Entreat the Angels
-4 Force of Will
-1 Counterspell
(Judgment call here: might keep Force of Will vs. an inexperienced opponent because they could go all in the Natural Order plan)
Shardless BUG:
+4 Pyroblast
+1 Spell Pierce
+2 Blood Moon
+1 Entreat the Angels
+1 Vendilion Clique
+1 Mountain
-4 Force of Will
-4 Counterbalance
-2 Engineered Explosives
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AnziD is Anuraag Das. Reid Duke actually popularized the version of single Predict before Das, but Duke wasn’t the first person to run Predict either.
Your SB plan against Mirror cannot possibly be correct. You’re saying if opponent’s Mentor ever resolve because they win the counter war, you might as well concede: you would be at 18 lands and your EE and CJ aren’t even clean solution against monks. Jace is always important in the mirror. Miracles by definition does not have real ways to generate CA, Jace is a few ways that it can. By being CMC 4, it’s an actual reason for you to turn the game around under opponent’s CB lock.
This version is pretty much all-in on Brainstorm + Snapcaster flashback plan to put Terminus back on top of library. If you are ever behind or your opponent has an active DRS on the table, your flashback plan might not actually work.
I know why you haven’t thought about Explosives before. All the BUG and Shardless decks now run Null Rod in the SB.
You call it streamline, but I call it a struggle to find lands at 19, playing cantrips is what you would be doing on the early turns, and that’s before Exploration and/or Port lock comes into the picture. You would have very few natural opening to do turn 1 SDT, turn 2 CB, 19 pretty much says you will have a lot of one land or no land opening hands.
Shardless players should Not board out Goyfs, they should board out some Liliana against Miracles.
MTGO record is skewed; we all know paper Legacy without clocks is drastically different from the online meta. It’s not just about the sample size, is it possible that someone who plays tighter and has invested more time practicing would perform better than the original creator(s) of DeMentor?
Lots of points to address here, t, and I’ll try to respond to each –
Miracles SB plan: I assume you are suggesting leaving in Terminus for our Miracles opponents’ 2 Mentors? You didn’t explicitly say that, but it seems that is what you are suggesting. That approach ‘feels’ safe, but you are sacrificing quite a bit by leaving in cards that are otherwise dead in the matchup just so we can deal with two creatures in their deck. Couple this with the fact that we are running twice the number of Mentors to trump their Mentor plan. We’ve had a lot of success with focusing on winning the Counterbalance + Top subgame and then putting serious pressure on our opponent with our playset of Mentors while they rely on cards like Jace that get Pyroblasted and killed by monk tokens. Also concerning Jace – it’s only ‘actual’ card advantage if it sticks around for more than one turn. Post-SB in the Miracles mirror it generally doesn’t even resolve, and it creates a massive tempo advantage for the non-Jace player when it’s countered. I prefer to stick with Predict plan as actual card advantage and CounterTop lock for virtual card advantage, as those strategies are efficient and flexible.
Jace needed for Terminus: with a trillion cantrips and deck manipulation I don’t think the deck requires a four mana Brainstorm for our Termini. Like Phil pointed out in the episode, this may be different for decks running six maindeck miracles and no Ponders or Preordain like in the ages of old.
The Shardless sideboard Null Rod comment is sort of silly because as you can see in our SB plan that we are actually boarding out Engineered Explosives against Shardless. Not only that, but I think it is strange to not run a card in your maindeck because you expect one archetype to maybe play a sideboard Null Rod.
Land count – how many lands do you recommend? 20 or 21 I assume (note we run 20th in the SB)? You are over-exaggerating how this affects your probability for turn 1 Top, turn 2 Counterbalance, and you are not taking into account the other side of the coin like drawing a dead land in the midgame over a Preordain. You use Lands with Ports and Wastelands as an example – our configuration is actually favored against Port and Wasteland over stock manabases because we have a higher density of cards that are either basic lands or that can find basic lands and basic Island specifically. The lands we trim from the stock lists are a Tundra and an Arid Mesa, neither of which are great to turn 2 a Counterbalance with against Lands.
I agree Shardless players shouldn’t board out Goyfs… But Liliana is one of the best cards against us! I pray they board out their Lilies this weekend…
Sorry, I’m not sure what you’re trying to say with your last point, so I can’t really comment on that.
As always, thanks for listening and commenting!
Hey Wilson! Minniehajj on the source here, I’m one of the original innovators of Predictable Miracles, working on very close association with Anuraag Das (AnziD) and I think a lot of the differences you addressed are based on simply a difference of philosophy. I’d love to discuss in more detail with you and/or Phil over the way you built your deck vs the way we built ours and see if we can address some of the issues we have with each other’s builds? I’d ideally like to do this before GP Columbus so if you guys have some time this week, let me know! I know we want the best possible list for the GP and we put just as much time into developing the archetype as you guys do, so perhaps some additional insight would be helpful for both of us! If you’re interested, feel free to shoot me an email, as I’ll leave it below. Thanks, and great cast again, as always!
Yeah man, that sounds great! I have 16 hour work days today and Thursday, but I can probably chat about this tomorrow or Wednesday. If you use Facebook feel free to friend request us there, and maybe we could have a group chat discussion? Our full names in case you didn’t know – Wilson Hunter, Phillip Braverman, and Paul Michel. Thanks!
Requested you guys! I’ll start a group chat with y’all after everyone’s accepted! Super excited to get a short discussion in before the GP!
“If I’m not playing a Jace, I’ll generally say it’s probably correct to not be doing that.”
“Thats very big of you, Phillip. I appreciate that.”
I don’t know why but this had me fucking rolling. Good luck in Columbus.
Thanks for the great podcast. Can you link to any YouToub or Twitch videos of this version of the deck in action? Would be great to see how this build and sideboard plan pan out. Again, thanks for the great content!
Thanks for listening! We haven’t recorded any videos on this deck, but if people continue to show interest (or maybe if one of us does well at the GP) we will consider posting some video content.
The miracle thread on The Source isnt toxic overall its mainly a couple wannabees with no actual tournament results making all the noise. It sucks these few kind of ran out the posters worth reading.
Wilson, congrats on the top 8. Hopefully this will lead to some videos with the list 😜😜
+1 ^
Interesting that you went back to W//T over Disenchant. Why is that?
They wanted to bring in W//T in the mirror now, over EE, so they opted for W//T being stronger than disenchant in that regard. Also, hai!
Hai2u!
WT in the mirror huh? I’ve never really been a fan of that. I also like Disenchant over WT in general lol.
Hey guys, catching up with the show after a Legacy hiatus. Love the list, can’t wait to try it out, but I have some questions, specifically about playing around Null Rod & Pithing Needle post board. I find that most decks have at least one of these two, if not both, and almost always bring in at least one Disenchant in the dark. In your sideboard plan for Shardless BUG, you don’t have Explosives, Disenchant or Force of Will post board, are you just hoping to dodge Needle & Null Rod? Same goes for BUG Delver, Null Rod seems like it wrecks us postboard in that MU, especially since the Explosives are still in the deck. Am I missing something? Is it reasonable to continue bringing in Disenchant in the dark as a hedge card?