As Legacy's resident Miracles mage, I'm constantly thinking about how to utilize cards in new ways to adhere to the guardrails of the format.
At the time of this article's publication, Wasteland is present is more than half the decks comprising the metagame, which hampers playing more than two colors. Miracles is base 
, but more often than not, my need to solve a specific problem does not exist in those colors.
Most of 's tools are 's countermagic and 's removal. There are, however, many tools that obsolete countermagic, including Cavern of Souls, Veil of Summer, Hexing Squelcher, Allosaurus Shepherd, Teferi, Time Raveler, Mistrise Village, Kaito, Bane of Nightmares or ignore it, like Urza's Saga or cast triggers (e.g., Eldrazi, Ugin, Eye of the Storms.
I often yearn Thoughtseize or Duress as a way to get ahead of those countermagic-blanking/ignoring cards or massive haymakers like opposing Planeswalkers or The One Ring but to meaningfully splash a third color requires too heavily increases exposure to Wasteland. What is are honest mages to do?
I've tested Curse of Silence before. Printing a taxing effect like this on a one-mana spell instead of its typical 3+ mana alternatives (e.g., Anointed Peacekeeper, Elite Spellbinder), is likely as close of a bleed as can get to discard-esque effects. While it pays you back the card off its cantrip if they pay the tax, if the goal is the prevention of the spell and not taxing mana, Curse of Silence is insufficient. It would be most potent with early, aggressive pressure, which steers into wholly different archetypes.
If taxing effects are insufficient in a hyper-efficient format, we turn to ways to disrupt their future. "Portent, target you" is arguably the most underrated disruptive spell in Legacy.
By targeting the opponent, you gain the information of three Mishra's Baubles and can rearrange the opponent's future. Of course, everything currently in their hand will need to be contended with, but if their future is significantly weakened or effectively dealt with ahead of time, you can better map how to align your answers with their threats. Infomation asymettry remains powerful yet underexplored outside of Thoughtseize strategies.
If the top three cards of their deck present threats you cannot deal with in time, you can make the opponent shuffle into randomness.
Strengths & Weaknesses
Porent, of course, is now without flaws. The delayed cantrip has the upside of triggering a Terminus or passing the turn to go up to eight cards in hand, but has the downside of getting ravaged by Orcish Bowmaster or the inability to develop a much-needed land drop the turn its cast.
The value of Portenting the opponent is a massive variable. Sometimes, it's contextually equivalent to multiple Timewalks. Othertimes, it's delayed Ponder. Portent's variance makes it an easy cut when trimming a decklist to 60 cards, especially when competing against Ponder or Mishra's Bauble, which have implications for Delirium, Flurry, and recursion.
Mortent
I'm looking for as many ways as possible to get more Portent in decks right now but in a way they never have before. I've played more Portent than most, but rarely targeted the opponent early or proactively. Typically, "Portent target you" was reserved for when the board was already stable to lock the game up.
What if we played Portent more like Thoughtseize than Ponder? Would that change the dynamic of difficult matchups in this metagame? I'm not entirely sure, but am going to find out.
Featured image: Portent by Liz Danforth
