Updating Miracles to a faster metagame - Miracles 10.0

Intro

Let's address the elephant in the room

It is an embarrasing time to be Teferi, Hero of Dominaria. A lot of the fair decks are packing clean answers to it, or threats that cost less and do more. The games he wins are spectacular and they make it feel less bad when you die in a game where you were unable to deploy him. But when many decks are sideboarding a 1 mana answer to him in Active Volcano, it is time to reconsider.

Decks like Infect, Prowess, Hypergenesis and even Manabond can either kill you or put you in a losing position way before you can deploy him. The games you win with Teferi could be won with pretty much any other win condition. Teferi was just the flashiest.

What's changed in Miracles since the last time?

Let's start with the boring stuff

Port Town allows us to hold Swords to Plowshares on 1 and Counterspell on 2. Prairie Stream doesn't. Also, the popularity of Active Volcano makes non-island duals more attractive. Of course, it's much worse in the late game, but it's pretty clear we're more interested in surviving the early game than anything else.

Will I ever become a Seachrome Coast gamer? I'm not sure, but it looks more and more reasonable every day.

Okay, onto the meat and potatoes.

Miracles is now a Stoic Sphinx deck. I have gotten rid of Sailors' Bane, because the Sphinx is the single most efficient flash threat in the format. He comes down on the End Step after your opponent casts a Minsc & Boo, Timeless Heroes or a Grist, the Hunger Tide, swings at the Planeswalker and then you only have to deal with the leftover token, something our deck is very capable to do. In the case of Grist, the Hunger Tide, you can largely ignore the token: You have a 5/3 and they have a 1/1, you're winning that race. These two in particular were really hard to answer cards, so having a non-counterspell answer to it that also pressures your opponent and allows you to keep your mana up is huge.

Sphinx also comes down the same turn as most Initiative creatures. This means if you can deploy a Sphinx and have a removal spell, you can let the Initiative trigger resolve, deploy a Sphinx, steal the Undercity, get your land drop for the turn and kill the Caves of Chaos Adventurer with your Fateful Absence. Now you're massively ahead rather than playing from behind like we used to do with Sailors' Bane. A control deck gets massively better when you're allowed to let more things resolve without getting into an unwinnable scenario.

Speaking of, Fateful Absence has taken the mantle of March of Otherworldly Light, a card that was great when it was good, and kind of awful when it was bad. In the previous example, we're allowed to leave 3 mana up. March would have required us to spend 5 mana to answer that Initiative creature. As long as Caves of Chaos Adventurer and Undermountain Adventurer are legal and cheap, March just does not cut it. Fateful Absence is kind of mid every single game. There aren't a lot of matchups where it's dead, it answers a lot of things sort of cleanly (the funniest by far is the fact it kills Minsc & Boo with the enters trigger on the stack, which makes Boo a 4 mana 1/1 with a clue attached), but I'm never mad when I get to kill an Oko, Thief of Crowns after it makes a food.

Of course, it also destroys creatures. It's worse than Plow, but perfectly serviceable most of the time.

Once Get Lost rotates out of Standard and becomes affordable, we instantly cut it for the far superior choice, but for now, Fateful Absence will do.

I explored Sphinx of Forgotten Lore (as Snapcaster Mage is obviously a card I would be interested in), but the 3 power really did come up short in many situations: My threat needs to be able to double up as a Hero's Downfall and while Sphinx of Forgotten Lore does a pretty neat Solitude impression by targeting a Swords to Plowshares, not being able to answer planeswalkers cleanly was an issue.

We are still talking about Teferi, by the way. I just want to explain what I was interested in when I finally decided it was time to let my favorite Planeswalker go.

I know. It's not sexy. But it's efficient and it gets the job done. It is amazing at stealing the Initiative (or the Monarch if that ever comes into a game). It allows you to keep playing draw-go without being completely passive, it's early pressure against Control, it's blockers against creature decks, it pressures Planeswalkers, it gives us a wider range of threats we're allowed to let resolve. It's everything we want as a win condition.

I know, that's a lot of cards that mostly do the exact same thing.

First, I wanted my threat to be Instant speed. This means a lot of these are out.

All of these have some extra value attached to them. White Sun's Zenith goes back into your deck and you're allowed to cast it multiple times per game, and it makes 2/2s, but it's way more expensive. You only get more P/T than with Secure the Wastes once you spend 6+ mana, which is not a guarantee. It's also way less reliable at stealing the Initiative, since on turn 4 you're making a single 2/2 (and that's if you have 3 white mana available, which is a really big if!)

Decree of Justice and Valor's Flagship are mostly the same card as we're never casting them. They are definitely better into countermagic, but again, they feel too slow in too many matchups.

Grand Crescendo, on the other hand, I could see myself trying if the format ever slows down, which I'm doubtful of. Indestructible creatures are kinda neat when you're trying to block and survive.

What about the sideboard? Did anything change?

Yeah, Gaea's Blessing became Celestial Purge. Harbinger of the Seas already deals with Trenchpost, which was the only reason the Blessing was in our sideboard. Purge is an upgrade over Fateful Absence in most of our hardest matchups. At risk of repeating myself, it answers Grist, the Hunger Tide, Minsc & Boo and even Caves of Chaos Adventurer.

Are you looking at any cards to try in the deck?

Yeah. Skrelv's Hive is one I'm thinking about, but it's a sideboard tool at best and mostly good into matchups I already feel confident about.

Okay, give me the updated list

Here you go!