I you wanna get funky, sideboard insidious will. I did it for fun and acutally got someone with it! Not sure that the number of banefires is up there to justify IW in a competitive setting like a GP, but the lulz when you do get them are real. But, in reality, your best hope is commit (perhaps with a shuffle effect like field of ruin) and kill them before they kill you.
In my opinion, the biggest draw towards miracles has always been counterbalance. The way I always viewed miracles was as a counterbalance lock deck first and foremost; then, given that you want to manipulate the top of your library anyway, you get the miracles aspect "for free". Under this premise, you need instant speed ways to manipulate the top card, and the only reliable I found of doing this are three:
telling time (actually pretty decent, but having only 4x telling times makes this somewhat unreliable... yes, snaps could be counted as TT 5-8, but realistically you want snaps for other purposes.)
Without the counterbalance combo, I'm skeptical miracles will be better than plain old control. The closes "miracles" deck I found that is close to competitive is the UW taking turns deck that Nassif sometimes streams. It uses temporal mastery main, living end as the mainboard sweeper, andterminus as a sb sweeper option. I added entreat the angels as an extra way to finish the game if for some reaosn the infinite turns plan bombs out (or even as a way to make blockers if I need to buy time).
I was going ot post about some of the spoilers but was afraid it was not allowed. I thought the same thing about damping sphere.
Also,
Wizard's Retort
1UU
Instant
This spell costs 1 less to cast if you control a Wizard.
Counter target spell.
wonder if snaps makes this a viable option to split with logic knot (obv, knot is better turn 2, but this is a better flashback when the opponent is flooded and can just pay for knot, or when knot would otherwise force us to keep spells we want to save for future snaps, like cryptic). Also, all the control faeries (mistbind, spellstutter, clique) are wizards... perhaps a Ux flash aggro-control deck might be viable? Anyway, that'd be too far form our archetype so probably not the place to discuss.
Yup, I played a list somewhat similar to the one @micarc posted, and found that the charm -> Jace line is very good. While I'd love to pair Esper charm with K-command, I'm skeptical of our mana can handle it. I'm still getting the feeling for the deck so I'll test pure esper a bit more, but I'd be very curious to see if the red splash is worth it.
I'd love for the Weatherlight or the Predator to become vehicles in Dominaria. They've been depicted as artifacts before, but now that we have vehicle subtypes, I'm pretty sure they could come back. If this happens, could we have some of the original crew members grant their respective vehicles a bonus if they crew the vehicle. For example, a Gerrard card could say "If Gerrard crews a vehicle named "Skyship Weatherlight", [effect]".
I'm not a big lore expert, so perhaps these vehicles and/or crew members are all destroyed/dead, but if not... could something like this happen?
Let me preface this by saying I'm not a very accomplished modern player, having mostly played std (I got into the format after standard started going down the toilet, and even then I haven't played in a super regular fashion). However, I had some decent MODO success with a draw-go Esper Jace shell. The trifecta of ancestral vision, esper charm and Jace has felt super powerful.
Charm emptying their hand into Jace fateseal is a pretty hard lock to get out of, but I suspect this is well known.
I posted about visions+Jace a couple of pages back and people were skeptical, but I found those cards can really complement each other. Filling your hand with answers prior to landing Jace has been super relevant. The burst of cards also lets you fateseal out of bolt range in situations where you'd normally have to brainstorm in order to fix your hand. Sure, its too slow vs something like burn, but against slower decks it's felt truly broken (though I have beat a couple of burn players on the back of surviving until the visions-Jace 2 punch comes online).
I don't quite remember the manabase or the sideboard (i copied them from some other deck I saw online), I only remember that it had the 4x field of ruin and 3x surgical extraction "combo" for tron/cavern of souls decks. The rest of the deck is as follows
I agree doomfall is a good card, and for me it really boils down to how much you value the thoughtseize mode. In my personal play style, I don't, because I use thoughtseize effects mainly as a way to clear the path to landing a big threat (or making sure that if I tap out for a large threat my opponent won't have a good followup to punish my tap out). Paying 3 mana for this sort of thing is too much. I now some other players use thoughtseize effects as "removal" of sorts, but I never liked that plan, as it sets you behind in tempo. But its all about playstyle and the kind of play patterns your deck pushes you towards.
My thoughts on carnage tyrant: If (and this is a big IF) you want to primarily use doomfall for the edit effect, I think Vona's hunger is a much better card (instant speed and scales better as you accumulate land). Sacrificing a tyrant can even be a benefit over exiling as you can reanimate it.
EDIT: Ps, don't forget that commit can actually "counter" a carnage tyrant. Also, Bontu's last reckoning is a thing.
I love the Arch, and in non-scarab grixis/UR control I actually went up to 27 land to accomodate it (why play scarbless grixis or simply UR? many reasons, but long story short is that its not obvious the advantages outweigh the costs, so i wouldnt recommend it). But I think there are 2 reasons UB does not run arch.
1)The interactive spells in grixis was extemely cheap (it was all 1 mana or 2 mana for removal, and 3 mana only for disallow), so it was really easy to interact+arch as soon as arch was on. With a glut of 4 mana removal spells + scarab god activations, the deck is really mana hungry. 6 mana for 1 card is too bad a rate.
2) It feels much more win-more in UB than scarabless grixis. If you are UB you presumably run scabby, wich means: (a) you already have at least 4 card advantage engines (2 azcanta, 2 scabs), one of which actually kills the opponent and (b) scarificing creatures to a flipped blood fast really helps to stabilize, and this is after you drew 4-6 cards, at 2 mana each. This is a much more efficient rate than the arch.
TL;DR: the moment you put scabs in your deck, it makes your deck mana hungry in a way that makes arch not good; also, in UB arguel draws at a better rate and has late game synergy with scabs.
I love Efro's deck, and the 3-2 glimmer/illumination split + 2 commit is a big part of it. Vs Red, VContempt is great, but having the 4 slot clogged is tricky. I used to run 3 contempt and 4 glimmer, but inverting the numbers and having 2 illuminations really helps unclog the hand. Commit is a great card, as many midrange threats generally gain value upon etb (think Scabs at 9 mana, vraska, Liliana, and others) so countering is much better than removing in these matchups (specially w/ shufle effects like field of ruin). I think he got a pretty good division of numbers.
I would not play hostage taker nor aetherborn. 4 toughness is way more toughness than 3 in terms of dodging removal and/or coming out of combat alive. I'd suggest Contraband Kingpin. Specially if you are straight UB, you don't want to trade your contempts with scrapheap scrounger, as you'd rather save that for hazoret or chandra, so you need another way to deal with the robot, and kingpin is a far better response than aetherborn.
Secondly, hostage taker has the same issues you mentioned with Scarab G. If you want to play it and activate in one turn, you probably need 8-ish mana (most things you'd really want to steal are 4 mana). If you were weary of saving 9 mana for scabs, you should also be weary of saving 8 mana for hostage taker.
I think violent echo is much more powerful than it seems. This is a 1 mana source of repeatable removal/win condition that later in the gamme (when you are flooded and 2 mana is easy to spare) completely locks the opponent out. Alternatively, you can play this as a 1-3 of in a red aggro deck as flood insurance, playing the role ramunap ruins did. I could easily see this being too powerful (if RR got banned, I could almost see this going the same route, since it imposes even less deck building restrictions as RR did, which at least asked you to play deserts)
Next, Boiling Lake
Land
When Boiling Lake etb you may put a boil counter on it. If you do, it etb tapped. t: add U to your mana pool. t: add R to your mana pool. Activate this ability only if Boiling lake has a boil counter on it.
Ok, so I have a question as I am moving to a UW deck of sorts and I am considering the Miracles game plan. Seems like the deck is using a lot of top of the deck manipulation spells and effects, could we start to look into running Counterbalance somewhere in the 75?
Between Riverwise augur printing and Jace unban I played miracles with counterbalance (I haven't played it since because I can't afford Jace right now, but next month I'll be coming into some $$ so I might pick it up again). Anyhow, this was my experience: we have very few efficient ways to manipulate the top of the library as a response to an opponent's spel, so counterbalance is really a gamble. Telling time was great in this regard, and I had a Teferi, mage of Zhalfir+riverwise augur "combo" to manipulte the top at instant speed. Besides that you are left to the mercy of scry effects and hope that whatever you see on top matches the opponent's cmc. Jace, not being able to respond to an opponent's spell, sadly does not really make counterbalance more playable.
Without the counterbalance combo, I'm skeptical miracles will be better than plain old control. The closes "miracles" deck I found that is close to competitive is the UW taking turns deck that Nassif sometimes streams. It uses temporal mastery main, living end as the mainboard sweeper, andterminus as a sb sweeper option. I added entreat the angels as an extra way to finish the game if for some reaosn the infinite turns plan bombs out (or even as a way to make blockers if I need to buy time).
Also,
Wizard's Retort
1UU
Instant
This spell costs 1 less to cast if you control a Wizard.
Counter target spell.
wonder if snaps makes this a viable option to split with logic knot (obv, knot is better turn 2, but this is a better flashback when the opponent is flooded and can just pay for knot, or when knot would otherwise force us to keep spells we want to save for future snaps, like cryptic). Also, all the control faeries (mistbind, spellstutter, clique) are wizards... perhaps a Ux flash aggro-control deck might be viable? Anyway, that'd be too far form our archetype so probably not the place to discuss.
I'm not a big lore expert, so perhaps these vehicles and/or crew members are all destroyed/dead, but if not... could something like this happen?
Charm emptying their hand into Jace fateseal is a pretty hard lock to get out of, but I suspect this is well known.
I posted about visions+Jace a couple of pages back and people were skeptical, but I found those cards can really complement each other. Filling your hand with answers prior to landing Jace has been super relevant. The burst of cards also lets you fateseal out of bolt range in situations where you'd normally have to brainstorm in order to fix your hand. Sure, its too slow vs something like burn, but against slower decks it's felt truly broken (though I have beat a couple of burn players on the back of surviving until the visions-Jace 2 punch comes online).
I don't quite remember the manabase or the sideboard (i copied them from some other deck I saw online), I only remember that it had the 4x field of ruin and 3x surgical extraction "combo" for tron/cavern of souls decks. The rest of the deck is as follows
3 Snapcaster Mage
Draw Spells (14)
4 ancestral vision
2 search for azcanta
4 Esper Charm
3 Jace, the mind sculptor
1 Sphinx's revelation
4 path to exile
4 fatal push
1 condemn
3 logic knot
4 Cryptic command
2 Supreme Verdict
If anyone who has better knowledge of the format and wants to help out a relative modern noob with MB/SB suggestions, please do
Are you sure about this? I searched the PT standings and it seems like Wafo didn't even play.
EDIT: Ps, don't forget that commit can actually "counter" a carnage tyrant. Also, Bontu's last reckoning is a thing.
1)The interactive spells in grixis was extemely cheap (it was all 1 mana or 2 mana for removal, and 3 mana only for disallow), so it was really easy to interact+arch as soon as arch was on. With a glut of 4 mana removal spells + scarab god activations, the deck is really mana hungry. 6 mana for 1 card is too bad a rate.
2) It feels much more win-more in UB than scarabless grixis. If you are UB you presumably run scabby, wich means: (a) you already have at least 4 card advantage engines (2 azcanta, 2 scabs), one of which actually kills the opponent and (b) scarificing creatures to a flipped blood fast really helps to stabilize, and this is after you drew 4-6 cards, at 2 mana each. This is a much more efficient rate than the arch.
TL;DR: the moment you put scabs in your deck, it makes your deck mana hungry in a way that makes arch not good; also, in UB arguel draws at a better rate and has late game synergy with scabs.
Secondly, hostage taker has the same issues you mentioned with Scarab G. If you want to play it and activate in one turn, you probably need 8-ish mana (most things you'd really want to steal are 4 mana). If you were weary of saving 9 mana for scabs, you should also be weary of saving 8 mana for hostage taker.
Next,
Boiling Lake
Land
When Boiling Lake etb you may put a boil counter on it. If you do, it etb tapped.
t: add U to your mana pool.
t: add R to your mana pool. Activate this ability only if Boiling lake has a boil counter on it.
Between Riverwise augur printing and Jace unban I played miracles with counterbalance (I haven't played it since because I can't afford Jace right now, but next month I'll be coming into some $$ so I might pick it up again). Anyhow, this was my experience: we have very few efficient ways to manipulate the top of the library as a response to an opponent's spel, so counterbalance is really a gamble. Telling time was great in this regard, and I had a Teferi, mage of Zhalfir+riverwise augur "combo" to manipulte the top at instant speed. Besides that you are left to the mercy of scry effects and hope that whatever you see on top matches the opponent's cmc. Jace, not being able to respond to an opponent's spell, sadly does not really make counterbalance more playable.