Bant Miracles Primer: The Purgatory
Written by Nathan Flachaire (a.k.a AronGomu)
"It is finished. My deck is 1,500 Force of Wills. You have no chance of beating me."
"If fun in Magic is zero-sum, I will take all of it."
"Should your adversary fail to yield, they shall endure an everlasting wait; some name it the Purgatory."
The Legacy Constraints
There are unofficial constraints that dictate what is competitively viable in Legacy deckbuilding. Knowing those constraints inform what control must be able to beat to compete.
Since control does not apply pressure in the traditional sense of lowering an opponent's life total incrementally, Bant Miracles will face every win condition an opponent presents as they will have the time to deploy them. Therefore, answers to what those win conditions might be must be somewhere in the Bant Miracles' 75.
Daze + Wasteland
Daze/Wasteland decks typically comprise a quarter of the Legacy metagame. three-plus-mana, sorcery-speed spells getting Dazed is often synonymous with losing the game. Daze countering a two-mana spells is not insurmountable. Unless a card effectively wins the game once resolved, you cannot justify running it if it does not adhere to the curve restraint imposed by Daze. This pressure is even steeper if the card in question is not a relevant color for a pitch spell like Force of Will.
Entomb + Reanimate
Bant Miracles must have a plan to overcome Atraxa, Grand Unifier or Archon of Cruelty in play on turn two.
Ancient Tomb
Ancient Tomb decks deploy diverse, overpowered threats ahead of schedule. Specific counterspells fail to effectively combat these decks as threats include creatures, enchantments, artifacts, and lands. Countermagic can't cover everything but Bant Miracles must have the capacity to handle any threat presented.
Life From The Loam + Wasteland
Bant Miracles must have a pland for the inevitable endgame of Life from the Loam recurring Wastland.
Urza's Saga + Thespian Stage
Bant Miracles must have a plan for infinite, instant-speed, uncounterable construct tokens.
Painter + Grindstone
Bant Miracles must have a plan for the combination of Painter's Servant and Grindstone, which mills an entire library to end the game.
Grindstone is often tutored into play in a way that can't be countered via Urza's Saga. Additionally, the combo is often backed by five-plus copies of Pyroblast/Red Elemental Blast.
Instant Speed, Uncounterable, Flying 20/20
Bant Miracles must have a plan for Marit Lage in play as it is difficult to interact with opposing manabases.
Sowing Mycospawn + Eye of Ugin
Bant Miracles must be designed to withstand a kicked Sowing Mycospawn asymetrically Armageddoning it's manabase while simultaneously having the tools to stop the inevitability of Eye of Ugin's activated ability.
Too Much Grave Hate
Bant Miracles must diversify their win conditions so as to not fold to an opponent who over-indexes attacking the graveyard postboard.
Stack-Based Decks
Bant Miracles must have a plan for combo decks like The Epic Storm, Oops, All Spells, and Doomsday, all of which only care about a specific set of cards in the format and are designed specifically to beat them.
Force of Will-checking is not enough to survive.
Initiative/Monarch
Bant Miracles must have a plan to ensure the Initiative and Monarch mechanics never enter the game.
The Phases In a General Sense
These are not the phases of a turn. Rather, they are the phases of a game and the play patterns therein each. Intimately understanding the game's phases are important, as timing is one of the most powerful tools control strategies can use to leverage advantage.
- Development: Legacy is fast. Four or fewer lands in play is considered the development phase. Control mages often die during this phase since their mana is constrained and managing interaction while developing is one of the macrotype's biggest challenges.
- Sculpting : The sculpting phase is when the control mage can leverage the time rewarded for surviving development. It is here that cantrips power level increases, as they allow us to sculpt a hand for the impending threats of the matchup.
- Winning : Once the game is effectively won, most opponent's will not concede. To overcome the pressure of the round clock, control needs a win condition that must actually end the game in the opponents' eyes.
Bant Miracles Construction
Bant Miracles is constituted in five parts:
- Core Manabase
- Answers
- Card Advantage
- Stability
- Win Condition
Core Manabase
The core manabase is comprised of fetchlands and the lands that actually produce mana: dual lands and basic lands. Any other land is considered a mana source that doubles as a spell.
If a land is included in the manabase and cannot contribute to the color requirements of casting spells, they should be avoided.
Answers
Answers include counterspells, removal, and prison pieces. The cheapest answers that interact with the broadest scope of threats are the best options.
Answers, whether one-for-ones or sweepers, should trade up or at mana-parity. Lock pieces should cost three or fewer mana or the risk of the game ending before it can be deployed is too high.
Card Advantage
Any card that generates an additional card of resource falls into this category. Mana is the largest bottleneck for card advantage. The best sources of card advantage are those not constrained by mana.
For example, Up the Beanstalk only requires two mana to generate card advantage. The conditions to convert card advantage are in the attributes of the cards, not the mana necessary to cast them.
Stability
Anything that enables the execution of the control game plan — surviving — falls into the stability category. This includes cantrips, surveils lands, and Mystic Sanctuary. They trade time for timing.
Win Condition
Bant Miracles wins by answering the opponent's deck and every threat therein. The opponent actually conceding requires a win condition. What that win condition is does not materially matter.
The most important aspects of a win condition is how little it can disrupt the development and stability phases of the game and how insulated it is from the opponent's cards that would otherwise have no relevant text against you.
While three Mystic Sanctuary plus Thwart deterministically means you can never deck as long as you have access to your graveyard, most opponent's will not accept this as a reason to concede in high-level tournaments.
Stable Manabase
Since Wasteland is a constraint of the format and Bant Miracles cannot afford to adhere to an all-basic manabase given Legacy's speed, Bant Miracles' design must assume the development phase includes two lands being Wastelanded.
Value of Not Playing Creatures
Bant Miracles should not play creatures that trade with opposing removal without favorably trading, whether that be for mana or card advantage. Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath replaces itself and gains life even if answered immediately. Similarly, it can be recast if countered on the stack.
Murktide Regent is an outlier for its synergy with Up the Beanstalk and the efficiency of being a two-to-three-turn clock.
Core Card Choices
Nothing is mandatory but the reasons to play Bant Miracles are:
- 4 Ponder
- 4 Brainstorm
- 4 Force of Will
- 4 Swords to Plowshares
This is the core of every UWx control deck in Legacy. Some people sometimes cut some number of Ponder. They are always incorrect.
- 2 Terminus
Terminus the reason to play without creatures. It is the most efficient sweeper in existence. I consider it a two-mana spell because there is often a need to Brainstorm it on top of the library or cantrip such that it can be drawn as the first card in a turn to trigger Miracle.
- 4 Up the Beanstalk
Up the Beanstalk is the best card advantage engine in the format. For 1G, it often draws four or more cards. It triggers off Force of Will, Terminus, Murktide Regent, Set Adrift, and Temporal Mastery. Speaking of...
