One of the comments I got multiple times concerning Enter the Dragon ( my shot at getting Worldgorger Dragon some play) was roughly this: “What
you’re doing looks really powerful, but how much of that is the shell and how much the actual Dragon combo finish?” This really is a brilliant question to
ask someone who’s high on a brew they’ve been trying out – it basically forces you to objectively evaluate what your deck is doing. Even more importantly,
it points the finger at the thing to look at as far as learning something larger about the format is concerned.
In this case, the thing we’re pushed to evaluate is how much of the deck’s power level is actually tied to it correctly enabling Dig Through Time in a
quasi-control shell. With my latest list for Enter the Dragon, there’ve been multiple games and even whole rounds I’ve won without ever going into
Dragon-loop mode. Turns out drawing a bunch of extra cards while answering whatever your opponent is trying to do until you’re in control and win with any
efficient win condition is a powerful strategy. Who’d have thunk it?
Here’s the list, for those interested:
Creatures (6)
Lands (21)
Spells (33)
The main change here is switching from Oona, Queen of the Fae to Tasigur, the Golden Fang as the animate-able win condition, allowing the deck to hardcast
a decent threat for low mana when the gamestate calls for that instead of having a true six-drop that is mostly too expensive outside of comboing out. If
you don’t see how Taz wins, once you have infinite mana (yeah, yeah “arbitrarily large amounts of”) you get to mill over your whole deck, put every spell
into your hand, and then use either Cunning Wish for Stroke of Genius or – assuming access to red mana – a repeatedly-recurred Lightning Bolt to end the
game.
So as I played this deck more, I recognized two linked glaring weaknesses in the deck. First and foremost, the deck’s removal was more conditional than I
was really happy with. Lightning Bolt kills Delver of Secrets and Stoneforge Mystic really well, no question. However, it’s quite lackluster against
Tarmogoyf, Tasigur, the Golden Fang, and Gurmag Angler (yes, really). This in combination with the somewhat shaky manabase – the deck needs access to
multiple black mana when going off, especially when you want to protect yourself with discard on the same turn, and having four colorless lands doesn’t
help much with that – meant that I ended up losing to green-based Delver strategies more often than I was comfortable with.
Now, fixing that issue wouldn’t be too complicated – Abrupt Decay and Swords to Plowshares are easily splashable into a U/B deck – but it would either make
those mana issues I mentioned truly massive (if splashed as a fourth color) or force me to abandon Desolate Lighthouse (so that red could be cut for the
removal color). The problem with the second approach? I’m reasonably convinced that Desolate Lighthouse is what really made Enter the Dragon tick by
providing it with a tool that could fill all the necessary roles at the cheap cheap cost of just a land drop – so cutting it basically removes one of the
fundamental edges the deck has. While that reasoning might be flawed, to me it implies that changing the removal suite also means abandoning the Dragon
combo.
The real turning point for me came when I realized while looking at my sideboarding plans that I really wanted to play even more of a control game against
Delver postboard – maybe that’s just wrong, but they retain a lot of interaction – meaning that I would further de-emphasize the combo postboard
against just about any fair deck, only relying on it being a full-fledged combo kill instead of a combo-esque finisher in a clear minority of my games.
Maybe aiming for a true combo-control deck was overly ambitious? I decided to pursue this line of thought and see where it’d lead me.
The first thing I ended up contemplating at that point was a rather unusual Sultai list, though I never got beyond the conceptual stage with this brew
(foreshadowing). If someone out there is interested in trying to take it to the next level, make sure to share your results. I’d love to know how this does
in the real world:
Creatures (6)
Lands (22)
Spells (32)
The concept is simple: the list mirrors that of Enter the Dragon very closely, and thereby allows us to play a control game similar to Enter the Dragon,
but instead of insta-winning with a high-risk combo finish, the deck would try to take over the game with the Thopter-Sword combo once it had established
some measure of control, and if that was disrupted, well, the combo is low-commitment enough to just keep playing your regular game until you’ve found a
replacement Thopter Foundry to start the Thopter production back up again.
The reason I never ended up building this list was that at that point I was reminded of my experiments with the Golddigger win condition and how
underwhelming I’ve always felt the Thopter-Sword combo really is. You see, Golddigger always felt very strong, but it had a huge problem finding a win
condition that would reliably close the game in a timely fashion while not taking up too much space. I tried Young Pyromancer, I tried Thopter
Foundry/Sword of the Meek, and I’ve considered Monastery Mentor (I’ve not gotten around to really testing that one sufficiently though). One of the things
I tested that seemed to do the trick quite well were two copies of Sensei’s Divining Top to enable two copies of Entreat the Angels.
Given that I was moving further and further away from the idea of a true combo finish that could be pursued as an earlygame strategy unto itself and
towards something that time-efficiently would close a game in which I had taken control. Entreat seemed like basically the ideal card to provide that
functionality, which left the whole “combo-killing early is so good against some decks” draw of the dragon deck.
That begs this question: Where does the ability to combo-kill early come up the most? Once again thinking about how I positioned myself with Worldgorger
Dragon in different matchups, the answer was surprisingly clear cut. You want to play for a fast combo-kill mostly against non-blue fair or fringe
strategies (like Lands) and against opposing combo decks. You know what works really close to a combo kill against combo decks while being extremely low
commitment? If you just said “Counterbalance and Top,” congratulations (maybe), you’re thinking the way I do.
Sensei’s Divining Top. Counterbalance. Entreat the Angels. You know where this is going, right? Yep, I had found a way to talk myself into thinking about
Miracles again after having abandoned the deck for something more unfair reasonably shortly after helping to put it on the map a couple of years ago. Only
this time I was coming from a somewhat different direction – trying to get as much Dig Through Time-ing done as possible. Crafting a list wasn’t too hard,
and this is what I’ve been playing for the last two weeks, getting to a ridiculous 17-0 record in matches over the course of the last couple of local
events since I started playing it:
Creatures (1)
Planeswalkers (2)
Lands (22)
Spells (35)
I mentioned last week how I like to play and build Miracles as two quasi-linear decks jammed together, and as it turns out, Dig Through Time is utterly
brilliant at making that happen while also giving Miracles a third gameplan that covers the one area the deck was uncharacteristically weak in before:
winning the card advantage war.
Traditional Miracles lists like Philipp Schonegger’s are great at
controlling the game and finding the right answer at the right time thanks to combining a ton of library manipulation with efficient answers and the
ability to recur them with Snapcaster Mage. What the deck couldn’t do is just pull ahead on resources and win by default like some of my favorite control
decks of old and Worldgorger Combo. It always had to grind things out and establish an endgame – be it CounterTop, Jace, or a massive Entreat. By fighting
only over these few things that mattered and following up with Dig Through Time, I was consistently able to take matches of Miracles with both Golddigger
and Enter the Dragon. Giving Miracles access to Dig Through Time changes this dynamic completely, allowing the deck to still win games the way it has
traditionally done while leaning on Dig Through Time in matchups where neither Counterbalance nor Terminus are able to get the job done on their own.
Basically Miracles can now play as Golddigger when that’s called for – pretty awesome.
If that was all Dig did for the deck, it’d already be a card definitely worthy of consideration. Yet it does so much more. Because Dig digs (sorry) so deep
into the deck, it’s excellent at finding the right half of either of your linear gameplans for the situation and matchup at hand. If you have a miracle in
hand, finding a Brainstorm or Jace to enable it is usually trivial when resolving Dig Through Time. If you have Counterbalance and need the Sensei’s
Divining Top or vice-versa, Dig Through Time is your man.
One non-trivial improvement I’ve realized playing the deck concerns the deck’s bane: the clock. Because Dig Through Time is so good at allowing you to
combine miracles with a Brainstorm effect, it suddenly becomes a lot easier to find and execute the “end of turn Entreat for lethal” play that is the
deck’s most efficient way of ending games you’ve already managed to take over. With this list, I find myself using Jace, the Mind Sculptor as a Brainstorm
machine instead of a win condition much more frequently simply because it’s usually faster (and safer) to locate an Entreat while filling your hand with
answers along the way.
Alright, now that I’ve spewed off about how awesome Dig Through Time is, let’s take a short look at why the deck looks as it does.
Controlling the board:
4 Terminus
Swords to Plowshares is everything I was looking for with Enter the Dragon – cheap removal that takes care of almost any creature threat no questions
asked. Terminus is just awesome in the matchups where you want it, and I wouldn’t consider running less than four (unless that number is zero due to
metagame concerns) because what makes it so good is that you can locate it early and often to take advantage of the reduced mana cost – and that works
better the more copies you run. Council’s Judgment finally is the flexible answer for anything that slips through the counter-shield the deck has always
wanted. Three mana makes it rather clunky, but having access to one means the world against things like Liliana of the Veil, especially given how easily
Dig Through Time plus all the other library manipulation allows you to locate one-ofs.
Controlling the stack:
Counterbalance is your other linear gameplan and close enough to your own combo kill against a lot of decks to allow the deck to play a similar game to
Enter the Dragon in those matchups. There is no way less than four is correct. Force of Will is the most powerful tool to control the earlygame in the
format, and you now even have Dig Through Time to help make up for the inherent card disadvantage incurred. Too good not to play. Counterspell is the
Council’s Judgment of stack control. A little expensive in a format as tempo-based as Legacy, but so powerful in the mid- to lategame and as a flexible way
to make sure the opponent won’t break through your defenses with something unexpected that you definitely want access to it.
The one card conspicuously absent from my on-stack interaction set up is Spell Pierce. Spell Pierce is sometimes awesome, and very dead the rest of the
time. It’s a card that significantly weakens the lategame power a deck like this is built around, and it’s a weakness against a number of strategies in the
earlygame that rely on creatures. Omitting it from the maindeck is an admission that Miracles tends to lose anyway in game 1 against combo decks (that have
a solid draw – if you get to Dig, you can often just bury them anyway). Most of the time you don’t manage to set up an early-ish Counterbalance-Top lock.
Given that fact, I’m a big fan of just ripping off the feel-good band aid that is Spell Pierce and accept that combo will be tough game 1 (the sideboard is
pretty stacked) to gain a solid amount of extra percentage against everybody else – and I’m playing in Berlin, where there’s a higher percentage of combo
decks than any other place I know of. It isn’t like you don’t have a plan against combo – it’s just of a very linear, combo-control-esque variety.
Controlling Your Draws:
3 Ponder
I don’t think Brainstorm and Top are worth discussing in this deck, so let’s start with Ponder. I love how Philipp has managed to get four of them into his
list; however, I’m not ready to cut that 22nd land even if it’s just a non-basic Plains in the majority of my games. Given that I wanted access to every
other tool in this list, that meant cutting that fourth copy in spite of how good the card is, especially with Dig Through Time in the deck. Speaking of
DTT, in spite of how much I’ve been talking this little goody up at this point, there is a limit on how many delve spells a deck can easily support and
between Counterbalance, Sensei’s Divining Top, and a lot of timing-sensitive cards, Miracles isn’t the fastest deck to fill its yard, limiting the number
of Digs you can support and cast at peak efficiency. Three has been feeling perfect so far.
That leaves the singleton Snapcaster Mage. I’ve been pretty vocal about disliking Snapcaster Mage in Miracles, especially multiple copies, and I stand by
my argument that the 2/1 body isn’t enough value for something that always costs us at least three mana and needs the correct tools to already be cast once
to do anything meaningful. That being said, having access to a single Regrowth-effect is quite powerful in a deck that has a small package of powerful
answers to be located by your library manipulation engine. Some games you just need a second Council’s Judgment or Counterspell, and Snapcaster Mage is
much more flexible than running additional copies of either. It also enables a somewhat wonky but very powerful additional way to take over the lategame:
Once you have a stocked graveyard and enough mana, you can keep bouncing Snapcaster Mage with Jace, the Mind Sculptor to stretch your answers even further.
While exceedingly clunky and rather tough to set up, this is still a pretty decent soft-lock to drive home the lategame with that I’ve been happy to have
access to so far.
Winning the game:
With only four dedicated win conditions – and the alternate route of Snapcaster beatdown basically a pipe-dream given only a single copy in the deck – this
is probably the Miracles list with the least ways of ending the game anybody is playing at the moment. I haven’t had the slightest issue with that so far
as my theoretical justification – Dig Through Time should be able to find me a win con when I need it, and I don’t want to draw them when I don’t – seems
to be working out exactly as planned. Turns out that you don’t really need many copies of your game-ender when it’s either very hard to interact with for a
multitude of opponents (few decks can reasonably deal with four+ angels) or deployed only when you’re already in control of the game.
Simple Sideboarding
The sideboard I’ve been using is pretty straightforward. The on-stack interaction and Vendilion Clique allow you to turn into something completely geared
towards fighting on the stack against the format’s different combo-decks and in control mirrors (becoming linear deck option number one), and the
additional removal enables the deck to play a totally dominant board control game (linear deck option number two) while Engineered Explosives also gives
you more play against non-creature permanents such as Counterbalance and Liliana of the Veil. Pithing Needle serves the same role while being particularly
awesome at dealing with Show and Tell’s threats (it can stop either Griselbrand or Sneak Attack depending on what you’re weak against this game) and Aether
Vial.
Finally, the three-card package of Ethersworn Canonist, Rest in Peace, and Enlightened Tutor as a redundant copy of either reinforces your ability to play
as a fake combo deck against other combo decks by essentially providing you with a cheap permanent that works as a one-card-combo for as long as it remains
in play against Storm and graveyard strategies while also having strong utility in other matchups. Canonist is awesome against Sneak Attack, for example,
keeping them from fighting back to protect their combo pieces. For what it’s worth, I’ve considered just cutting Needle and these three cards for two
Ethersworn Canonist and two Containment Priest to push even further into the one-card-combo against certain strategies territory postboard.
Innovation?
Is this the most innovative deckbuilding I’ve ever done? Heck, no. In fact, this list is quite close to what’s been established since Avacyn Restored made
the whole deck possible in the first place. If you try to make the deck as linear as possible, there aren’t that many slots to play with, after all. The
reason I’m sharing all this today isn’t because I think I invented the wheel here but as a mix of a cautionary tale – always make sure you take a good hard
look at why your brew is winning – and because the last time I’ve had a deck perform for me on this level was when I played Caw Cartel in the
Mental Misstep era (and I’m still reasonably sure that deck broke that format – only almost nobody realized).
Seriously, this deck has been slicing through everything my opponents have thrown at me like a hot knife through butter for enough matches now that I start
to take these results seriously (including beating Infect twice, reportedly a terrible matchup for Miracles traditionally), and from the way it’s been
humming, there are no signs of it slowing down. Given that I haven’t seen Miracles doing exceedingly well lately, I can only assume that I’ve either
stumbled upon the correct way to build the deck with Dig in the format or that the deck is still massively underplayed compared to its actual power level
(or both). Whatever the truth, if you can handle playing real fast and enjoy controlling the board and drawing a ton of cards, you should try sleeving this
up. Something miraculous might just happen for you!