This week we return to Eldritch Moon by exploring Tamiyo, Field Researcher. You may know her as the Planeswalker that said, “the moon is perfectly large enough to hold Emrakul, why don’t we Imprison in the Moon?” She is obviously a very intelligent and astute character in the storyline given her specific role as a researcher and observer. Rather than a member of the Gatewatch, she is a wise and powerful helper.
I really loved her part in the story and I felt like the new Tamiyo was actually a decent card with her abilities offset by the fact that she is a three color Planeswalker. The fact that she starts with four loyalty is fine on its own, but she also gives you the ability to gain value not only by attacking, but also making it difficult for your opponent to attack. If she selects creatures that your opponent controls with her +1 ability, then they either attack and let you draw cards or they don’t attack in which case she has acted essentially as a Fog. Her ultimate is Ancestral Recall plus Omniscience, which is certainly nothing to underestimate in a deck with multiple cantrips, Planeswalkers, and board wipe spells. On that note I bring you Bant Control.
Bant Control
Here you may recognize many of the cards as a Miracles build, except we have not only exchanged Red for Green but we have also removed Counterbalance. Part of why I wanted to remove Counterbalance is because with Tamiyo we want to be doing things more proactive and it really isn’t necessary as long as we can dig to answers and make our land drops. I have included more win conditions than your average Miracles deck as well as a Spicy 61st card that Jerry our official new writer can be proud of.
Creatures
Here we have a pretty stock Miracles selection for creatures. We start off with two Monastery Mentor. It allows us a quick way to close the game while casting the spells we are already planning on casting.
Snapcaster Mage is a staple in these style decks since it can recycle our spells, be a chump when we are under attack, and can turn around on the offensive when we are ahead.
Vendilion Clique is another Miracles all star. Clique can act as disruption against combo decks and as a three power flyer does a great job going on offense.
Spells
Dig
Here we have the usual suspects in Brainstorm, Ponder, Jace, the Mind Sculptor, Sensei’s Divining Top and Oath of Nissa. Oath was something Kate and I have been playing around with for a bit now. Mostly in 12 Post style decks like Walker Texas Ranger but here the Oath still acts like a Ponder and can help make mana for Tamiyo easier. It is also possible the sideboard could include an additional Planeswalker or so since we can easily fix mana through Oath of Nissa for some fun options like Kiora, Master of the Depths or get greedy and try something off color like Sarkhan Unbroken. Making Dragons in Miracles is a bit off from the usual Angels battle plan but with Doubling Season in play the Sarkhan starts at eight loyalty and every turn we use his -2 we make two 4/4 Dragons because of the token ability. This means if we never add loyalty we can make eight 4/4 Dragons over four turns.
Removal
Here we have Swords to Plowshares for our simple efficient answer to any one creature aside from True-Name Nemesis and anything with protection.
Aiding Swords in the spot removal slot we have a single Council’s Judgment to permanently answer any problematic non-land cards on the battlefield.
For sweeper spells we have the older favorites of Supreme Verdict for its uncounterable clause as well as Terminus for the efficiency. Both of these spells have been or are staples in Miracles for their effect against aggressive decks.
Supreme Verdict works well by getting around counter magic as well as just killing whatever creatures are on the board, regeneration aside, which we don’t really see in Legacy these days.
Terminus is usually a one mana sweeper effect that essentially gets rid of any creatures by stacking them on the bottom of each players deck. Shuffle effects aside, these creatures generally won’t see the light of day again for the remainder of the game.
Planeswalkers
Jace, the Mind Sculptor naturally gets the easy inclusion. Being a power house in heavy control decks due to his ability to dig through your deck and then win the game when you have a firm grip and plenty of cards in hand. He is no slouch in Legacy and is likely one of the more well known cards ever printed due to his ability to bounce a creature, sculpt a hand and win on his own.
Tamiyo, Field Researcher has the ability to protect herself with her -2 ability to tap down potential attackers. Her +1 can help us draw cards by getting in the red zone or forcing our opponent to attack and give us some cards drawn. Getting to the ultimate of Tamiyo makes us far more efficient and allows us to get much more value from our copies of Sensei’s Divining Top especially in multiples with Monastery Mentor.
Spice!
Doubling Season gives us the ability to overload the board with an Entreat the Angels or Monastery Mentor due to its doubling tokens effect but It also has an interesting interaction with Planeswalkers. For those of you not familiar with this interaction: Doubling Season reads that when an effect would put one or more counters on a permanent, it puts double that many instead. This also includes Loyalty when a Planeswalker enters the battlefield as well as when a loyalty ability is activated.
If Doubling season is on board already, Tamiyo enters with eight counters. That is enough to use her -7 ability and still have one loyalty to boot. When Jace, the Mind Sculptor enters play he will have six loyalty and his +2 will add four leaving him with ten loyalty. Did you think he was hard to kill before? Good luck killing Jace on this battlefield. Doubling Season when paired with Planeswalkers can be a fast end to the game. I wanted to include Jace, Architect of Thought because with Doubling Season in play he can immediately search both players library for a card and cast them. Imagine doing this with your Sneak and Show opponent? Yes, I will cast your Emrakul and then bludgeon you to death with her.
Initial Thoughts
This deck seems like it could potentially be a lot of fun to play at your local game store. I can’t speak to the actual viability of this build, however I am sure that with an experienced Miracles pilot that the deck could be optimized to put up results.
Other options for the deck could be more Terminus and no Vendilion Clique very similar to the Monastery Mentor builds. Oath of Nissa could be unnecessary and potentially should be the third and fourth Ponders. I like the idea of having additional win conditions in the extra Entreat the Angels as well as the creature package for control and closing out a game.
Happy brewing to each and every one of you. If anyone has an idea for a brew that they would like to see, I will gladly take requests and challenges in the comments. 🙂
Aaron Gazzaniga manages a restaurant and in his off time has been an avid magic player/brewer since 2003. Having begun in Odyssey Standard Block and always favoring control and prison style decks, we come to this moment in time where Aaron finally gets to talk about and share his ideas.