This week on brew corner we’re going to take a very well known archetype in Miracles and try to solve that pesky issue of closing out a game without ruining the consistency. Rather than going the standard Jeskai configuration I went with Bant to use the Natural Order package.
The tricky part here was trying to maintain the curve of the deck so that it can still assemble Counterbalance/Sensei’s Divining Top lock to shut down all the low-to-the-ground Legacy decks. Legacy is a very diverse format with a wide card pool. You can control an entire game with Counterbalance before an opponent can potentially dig out of the lock with any number of the random cards that see play.
Miracles needs to have an efficient way to close out a game, and rather than just increase the threat density with small interactive creatures, I have added a few combinations of cards that can take over and close out a game quickly. Here is our mess of a Bant Miracles deck.
NO Miracle Thopter Blade
| Lands (21) 1 Dryad Arbor 4 Flooded Strand 4 Island 4 Misty Rainforest 2 Plains 3 Tropical Island 3 Tundra Creatures (7) 4 Noble Hierarch 1 Progenitus 2 Stoneforge Mystic Spells (32) 1 Batterskull 4 Brainstorm 4 Counterbalance 4 Force of Will 2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor 3 Natural Order 2 Ponder 4 Sensei’s Divining Top 1 Sword of the Meek 3 Swords to Plowshares 2 Terminus 2 Thopter Foundry |
It’s not too different than your average Miracles deck in that it runs the full set of Sensei’s Divining Top, Counterbalance, Brainstorm, Force of Will and is loaded with fetchlands, a few Swords to Plowshares and Terminus all alongside Jace, the Mind Sculptor. Naturally, what is different here are the numerous amounts of ways to win a game in order to speed up that process for the deck.
Spells—Combos
NO Bant was a very popular deck multiple years ago. NO being short for Natural Order, the deck was based on having access to some tempo plays being able to start on a Noble Hierarch, into Knight of the Reliquary up to Jace, the Mind Sculptor and into Natural Order for Progenitus to close out a game quickly from there. Having access to countermagic, cantrips, and removal, the deck was able to leverage having the ability to just get access to some tempo plays to gain an advantage and finish you off finding Progenitus. If that didn’t work, they still had Knight of the Reliquary to put the beat down on you.
Thopter Sword combo is often a great way to stabilize a board and eventually overwhelm your opponent. The combo uses Thopter Foundry and Sword of the Meek to make as many tokens as you have mana. The way this works, for those who do not know, is that you sacrifice the Sword of the Meek to Thopter Foundry to gain a life and create a 1/1 Thopter token. The 1/1 Thopter Token causes the Sword of the Meek to return to play and attach to that token. This again sets up the Sword of the Meek to be sacrificed again to creature another 1/1 Thopter Token yet again returning the Sword of the Meek to play. For this reason every one generic mana that you can create can be converted into one life and one token.
Creatures
Noble Hierarch is here for ramp as well as a green creature to sacrifice to Natural Order. It can allow us to set up an early Counterbalance and have mana to react to an opponent’s spells, rather than that to blind flip. It also can fix mana for us very easily by providing each mana that we could potentially need.
Stoneforge Mystic is here because it can help us find either a Sword of the Meek to pair with a Thopter Foundry, or in the right match up can find us a Batterskull if that is enough to win.
Naturally as a NO Bant deck we also have the singleton Progenitus to dig out of our library with a resolved Natural Order. Protection from everything can be a very nice way to ensure a win through combat damage. The 10/10 body isn’t too shabby either.
Spells—Removal
Here we have a similar removal package as any stock Miracles deck. Swords to Plowshares for spot removal of creatures, Terminus for a field wipe. One of the differences is that there are no Snapcaster Mages to buy back cantrips and Swords to Plowshares. We are also missing any copies of Council’s Judgment which would likely at least be in the sideboard if not a copy or two in the mainboard.
Spells—Planeswalkers
Here we have Jace, the Mind Sculptor as per usual in any Miracles deck. Jace is a very powerful Planeswalker capable of protecting himself with his -1 ability to return a creature to its opponents hand. His +2 controls what can potentially be drawn by an opponent to try and dig out from under Counterbalance lock. His 0 ability being a brainstorm is a way to dig through the deck and find win conditions which will never kill him no matter how many times it is activated.
His ultimate is hopefully new to a lot of you. It removes your library and graveyard from the game and makes your hand your new library. I have been on the receiving end of this many times and what I will note is that if the cards in your hand couldn’t stop this from happening in the first place, what are the odds that redrawing these cards one at a time will help you win after the fact? It is a terrible feeling and another reason that Jace, the Mind Sculptor is such a powerful Planeswalker.
Sideboard
I currently do not have a sideboard built for this deck. A few options I would consider would be:
Council’s Judgment—Great card to answer any nonland threat from our opponent.
Vendilion Clique—Great versus combo decks and having an additional threat against other control decks, including the mirror.
Rest in Peace/Helm of Obedience—Great answer to graveyard based strategies and could open up the ability to also be on Rest in Peace/Helm of Obedience combo out of the side for an alternate attack route post board. For those unaware of this combo, Rest in Peace has a replacement effect that sends cards into exile when dying, discarding or milling rather than the graveyard. Helm of Obedience will put cards into the graveyard when activated until either a creature is placed there (in which case Helm is sacrificed and that creature is put into play under that players control) or until X cards are placed into the graveyard. Because Rest in Peace exiles all cards that would go into a graveyard, Helm of Obedience never sees a creature or X cards put into a graveyard and will not stop milling until there is no library left to mill. Then you get to pass the turn and watch as your opponent fails to successfully draw a card.
Initial Thoughts
I honestly really dislike the Miracles archetype. I hate having to always plan for not getting caught under a Counterbalance lock. I hate having to be concerned with long grindy games where I spend more than half the time in the match watching my opponent durdle around with a Sensei’s Divining Top and several fetchlands. One of the cards that I have loved recently is Monastery Mentor because it helps Miracles take over and win a game in rather quick fashion. I do not particularly like the idea of losing to a Standard card, but I will take it over the former.
The reason that this brew came into existence was because of these issues that I have with Miracles. I will note that a lot of very good Miracles players exist that rarely go to time because they can run the deck quickly. This version of Miracles could make it easier to entice an opponent to scoop earlier with several inevitable win conditions as well as many ways to assemble them. I hope to see some Miracles players encouraged to run variants with more ways to actually close a game out rather than drag a game out twice as long as it needs to go. Perhaps even think outside the box to help everyone around you get to actually play real magic without long periods of no real board progression.
If you liked this new idea for what Miracles could look like check out my previous article on Playing with Counterfits.
Happy brewing to each and every one of you. If anyone has an idea for a brew that they would like to see, I will gladly take requests and challenges in the comments. 🙂
Aaron Gazzaniga manages a restaurant and in his off time has been an avid magic player/brewer since 2003. Having begun in Odyssey Standard Block and always favoring control and prison style decks, we come to this moment in time where Aaron finally gets to talk about and share his ideas.