Before I begin I want to just say another “Thank you” to everyone who said they enjoyed my first article about Magic. Truthfully I do not know what to say. KYT knew about my situation and asked me to write about it and I kept hesitating. After several other people prompted me I decided to give it a shot. Frankly, I was not sure if what I wrote was too self indulgent, if it was too much of a sob story or in some cases too disturbing for people to read. Everyone, to my surprise, liked the article to some degree and I have received nothing but positive feedback. Even people involved in my life, who did not understand why I got back into the game mentioned that they now know why I started playing again after giving it up years ago.
Now on to the heart of this article, everyone wants to win a Grand Prix or a Pro Tour, yet a huge aspect of the game is coming up with a deck. I know the drill. Making a competitive deck is hard, it’s a challenge and it might be best for myself and many of you reading this to simply net deck a tier 1 list and work on improving play decisions. The fact is, I simply have too much fun making my own decks, I don’t get to play Magic nearly as much as I would like, but I do have time at home (and at work) to think of ideas and cards I would like to try to use in a deck. Many individuals have given me advice and ever so slowly I am learning to take those teachings to heart.
Here are the keys to making a deck, most of you know this but I think it is worth stating here nonetheless:
1) Have a plan. Usually a primary win condition and a secondary one is a good idea. The idea of good synergy in a deck is when those plans work well together without getting in the way of one another. Delver is a great example of this, it has a clear primary win condition but there are so many other cards it can work with to help win the day. A turn two flip is great but it can win in many other ways.
2) Have a strong mana base. Know what your deck can do and figure out how best to use those cards you NEED to get out. Some decks never want to miss a land drop, some decks are truly happy seeing four lands and may never want to see another one. In the end you need to know what your deck is doing and then figure out how to best support that strategy with mana. This is something I am still working on. To improve you need to understand your cards and you need to practice, practice and practice.
3)Bring it together. Once again, it is key to understand your deck and the lines of play it wants to do, but you need experience to figure out how the deck runs, not just in magical Christmas land but those times when you mull to five or get flooded. You need to know what cards are primarily boarded out and what cards are brought in. At the same time you need to ensure you are using the best cards for your deck to do what you want it to do, this may not always be the cheapest card that reaps the highest value.
4) Lastly it is good to know what you might be facing. Testing rogue brews vs other rogue brews will not help that much if you go to a tourney filled with G/R agro and Delvers. You need to be able to figure out what those opposing decks can do to figure out the weaknesses in your own deck as well as the lines of play they might use during a match.
My new Brew:
If you guys didn’t know Alex Hayne won PTQ Barcelona, I personally was going nuts cause Alex is a great guy and has been giving me some deck building advice with some incentive that if he ever uses my deck in a PT there might be a little something something for me. Suffice it to say any rewards Alex has planned for me are going to be sitting around for awhile. Watching him use miracles was….miraculous to say the least after that my mind got going thinking of a Miracle deck of my own but with a twist.
Chris Lansdell mentioned it in one of his articles, basically I came up with the following thoughts:
Miracles are all expensive except when you cast them, a lot of people made mention of using them again with [card]Noxious Revival[/card]. I wanted to go further with this concept. In a way Phyrexian mana cards are similar in that you can do things for cheap but at the cost of life instead. [card]Dismember[/card] comes to mind as an example. The card I have always liked but never quite found a room for was [card]Mindshrieker[/card]. By itself this card is a mana intensive 1/1 flier that has a pump/mill ability that can be an absolute blowout to win games. It is essentially a card that LOVES huge casting cost things. We all know that to win a game of Magic you can’t just play the most expensive things. The beauty of Miracles and [card]Mindshrieker[/card] is how well they go together.
My next thought was what miracles to use with [card]Mindshrieker[/card], green had pump miracles and I immediately thought of Magical Christmas Land. [card]Mindshrieker[/card] getting miracled for a +6/6 boost, [card]Noxious Revival[/card] + self mill for a 13/13 on turn three. Other wonderful scenarios popped into my head. [card]Ponder[/card]s to set up self mill targets was an easy thought. Delver and running miracles is another good thought. I knew I wanted to be Blue and Green, the miracles just seemed so good for me. [card]Temporal Mastery[/card], [card]Blessings of Nature[/card], [card]Revenge of the Hunted[/card] all were easy cards for the deck.
I quickly assembled the cards for the deck:
[deck title=Miracle Grow by Joshua Lemish]
[Lands]
4 Hinterland Harbor
9 Island
9 Forest
3 Evolving Wilds
[/Lands]
[Creatures]
4 Mindshrieker
4 Delver of Secrets
3 Birds of Paradise
3 Invisible Stalker
[/Creatures]
[Spells]
4 Ponder
4 Revenge of the Hunted
4 Blessings of Nature
3 Temporal Mastery
3 Act of Aggression
3 Noxious Revival
[/Spells]
[Sideboard]
3 Dismember
3 Phyrexian Metamorph
3 Ratchet Bomb
1 Act of Aggression
2 Corrosive Gale
3 Naturalize
[/Sideboard]
[/deck]
The deck needed a few tricks. I thought of the Phyrexian Mana Cards. I had thought about [card]Phyrexian Metamorph[/card] as a card to use but I still had a slight removal problem. [card]Dismember[/card] came to mind. A card that had a three casting cost but one that I could fire off for one mana. Another card that came to mind was [card]Act of Aggression[/card], a five casting cost card that could be cast for three. In the end I opted for three Act maindeck and three [card]Dismember[/card] in the sideboard,
I was excited about the deck, It had a fast Delver element that was triggered by A LOT of spells that could cause a lot of problems. I started to test a bit and kept falling in love with some of the plays I saw.
Turn 1 Birds, turn 2 [card]Blessings of Nature[/card] leads to insane early games with a 4/5 mana generating bird of doom. I have had turn two plays of Delver flipped by a [card]Temporal Mastery[/card] then attacking, taking another turn and using a [card]Ponder[/card] to cause even more miracle insanity. Alas this wonderful feeling did not last. I didn’t test enough vs real decks.
I went to FNM and had a 1-3 evening. What did I learn?
1)The deck is still weak to removal, you can’t flip a pump miracle if they kill your little guys. [card]Thought Scour[/card] is a card and you might noxious something back on top of your deck or set up with [card]Ponder[/card] only to have it get milled by your opponent.
2)Variance is a pain, yes you might get a [card]Mindshrieker[/card] and a [card]Ponder[/card] and can set up all sort of bad juju but it doesn’t happen as often as you might want and nothing is worse then milling a land for no gain.
The deck can run really hot and can be quite impressive but consistency is crucial and the deck is a true glass cannon. It simply falls apart at too many areas.
This had me thinking of some potential changes.
Do I run counters? It might help but not fun for self mill and not that strong. [card]Counterlash[/card] came to mind as a fun one. Imagine [card]Cancel[/card]ling a [card]Slagstorm[/card] and dropping down a [card]Temporal Mastery[/card]. [card]Geist Snatch[/card] was another potential spell but ultimately I don’t think it did enough (or was fast enough) to protect the early game. Getting a Delver, Shrieker or even a Birds out and pumping them full of green miracle juice is what you really want to be doing. The deck needed more threats and ways to keep the miracles valid.
Two Cards I will be adding to the deck:
[card]Inkmoth Nexus[/card]: A sweet manland, acts as a threat, somewhat hard to remove and can benefit from the miracles.
[card]Spellskite[/card]: A 0/4 is not impressive but we all know what a pain [card]Spellskite[/card] can be. It makes things that much harder to remove and frankly not a bad target for miracles itself.
Lastly, another card that I wanted to add and I think I might make room for is [card]Vanishment[/card]. A five casting cost miracle that pushes something to the top of a library is interesting when you consider [card]Mindshrieker[/card]. You have a Gideon? I [card]Vanishment[/card] you then Mill you, must be nice.
Inkmoth is easy enough to fit in the deck and I can see myself fitting two to three [card]Spellskite[/card]s. The [card]Vanishment[/card]s may end up as sideboard and switch with [card]Act of Aggression[/card]s.
I am by no means a pro and I am still very much re-learning many things since returning to the game. The biggest thing to learn is how to accept feedback from other people and that is where I hope an article like this helps. Not only do I think this deck is fun to use but if you have any tips, feedback or advice go ahead positive or negative. I think it can help not only myself but anyone else trying to make a deck or two.
Joshua Lemish is a local rogue deckbuilder from Montreal. A few years ago, he had a stroke. Magic has been a big part of his recovery process.
