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Much Abrew: UW Miracles (Modern)


Hello, everyone! Welcome to another episode of Much Abrew About Nothing. Last week during our Instant Deck Techs, our Modern option—UW Miracles—came out on top, which means we're heading to Modern this week to see if the addition of a Brainstorm to the format (in the form of Riverwise Augur from Rivals of Ixalan) is enough to make the archetype function. We know that Terminus and Entreat the Angels are powerful options in a control shell—it wasn't that long ago that they formed the foundation of the best deck in Legacy—but Modern has never really had a working Miracles deck because it's much more difficult to manipulate the top of your deck to set up the miracles. Is Riverwise Augur enough to change the equation? Let's get to the video and find out; then, we'll talk more about the deck!

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Much Abrew: UW Miracles (Modern)

Discussion

  • Heading into our matches, I thought that UW Miracles looked like a fun, novel deck but that it probably wouldn't be all that competitive. After running through our league, it seems that the deck is way, way better than it looks on paper. While we technically finished 3-2, both or our losses were extremely close. It's possible that we tapped incorrectly against Goryo's As Foretold (although in all fairness, this might be hindsight bias because the tapping that would have kept us alive seems wrong in about 99% of situations), and I still feel like there was probably a way we could have won the first game against Affinity, but I'm not exactly sure what went wrong. 
  • While Riverwise Augur looks strange in Modern, it was surprisingly strong. Not only does it offer a way of putting our miracle cards back on top of our deck from our hand, which is the main thing Modern Miracles was missing, but even without miracles, the endless shuffle effects in the deck offer a great way of improving our hand. 
  • The second key piece of the deck is Opt because it gives us a way to cast our Miracles at instant speed. We saw a great example of this against Infect, where we were able to get a Terminus on top of our deck and Opt during combat to sweep away a lethal (and hexproof) Inkmoth Nexus. While firing off Opt on Turn 1 is fine, there's a lot of value to holding onto the instant-speed cantrip to use our miracles at instant speed later in the game.
  • While Entreat the Angels is a great finisher, Terminus is by far the biggest reason to play Miracles. A one-mana wrath is insane in its own right, but the fact that Terminus puts cards on the bottom of their owner's library rather than to the graveyard is often an upside. This not only gives us a way to deal with decks like Dredge or various reanimation strategies but also puts our Snapcaster Mages and Riverwise Augurs back into our deck. Thanks to Field of Ruin and our fetch lands, we can then shuffle and draw them again to keep the grindy value train running. 
  • Perhaps the biggest weakness of UW Miracles is dealing with non-creatures. The best example of this was against Jund, where Chandra, Torch of Defiance and Liliana of the Veil were problematic. While Celestial Colonnade and Entreat the Angels give us a way to kill planeswalkers in the late game, both of these cards are pretty slow. Finding room for something like Detention Sphere would go a long ways toward shoring up the biggest weakness of the deck while also giving us an out to things like Ensnaring Bridge, a card that is quite literally unbeatable with our current main deck. 
  • Another possibility would be including a hard counter or two. While Remand is great in the deck, since it gives us another way to cast our miracles at instant speed, having a couple of Negates or Logic Knots would give us another real answer to planeswalkers and non-creatures like Ensnaring Bridge.
  • The only other main-deck concern is the number of finishers. While Celestial Colonnade is a backup if something goes wrong with Entreat the Angels, having our one Elspeth, Sun's Champion in the main deck instead of the sideboard could be worthwhile, just in case.
  • As for the sideboard, we could probably squeeze in a Detention Sphere there as well, along with a Relic of Progenitus. Otherwise, it seems pretty reasonable, even though it's really hard to cover all of the bases in a format as wide as Modern.
  • Overall, UW Miracles was impressive. While this build is almost certainly an early build and the rough edges need to be smoothed over, the deck ran way better than it looked on paper and felt as if, with a bit of tuning, UW Miracles could end up joining the long list of "real" decks in Modern. 
  • So, should you play UW Miracles in Modern? I think the answer is yes. The deck felt like it could compete at the FNM level right away and was close to being good enough to compete in bigger events as well. If you played Miracles in Legacy or are looking for a new take on control for Modern, gives UW Miracles a shot. I think you'll enjoy it and probably even win some matches!

Conclusion

Anyway, that's all for today. Don't forget to vote for next week's deck by liking, commenting on, and subscribing to Instant Deck Tech videos. As always, leave your thoughts, ideas, opinions, and suggestions in the comments, and you can reach me on Twitter @SaffronOlive or at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com.



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