Summary
Goblin Charbelcher and Timesifter are both one-card wincons in decks with no lands and high mana costs. That's a heavy deckbuilding restriction, but both miracles and cycling cards fit well by having high costs with cheap, useful abilities. On top of that, miracles and cycling work well together, since you can cycle to hit a miracle on your opponent's turn.
"Lands"
The deck runs no actual lands, and instead runs every modal double faced land with high mana cost in white and blue. Across the format, white has three such playsets and blue only has two, so we also run Step Through to fetch Umara Wizard
. If that's too cute, Glasspool Mimic
works too, but it makes the Timesifter softlock less safe.
Cycling
Cyclers can work well with Timesifter, since they can have high mana costs while having cheap cycling costs. Street Wraith cycles for no mana, and the rest cycle for 1. Windcaller Aven is the hardest to pay for, but we run it as a one-off an alternate fetch target for Step Through.
Cyclers essentially make the deck smaller, which helps with a thin manabase. But more importantly, cyclers enable...
Miracles
Miracles are a great way to fit Timesifter's deckbuilding requirements. They have high mana costs, but they also offer strong removal for low cost. And removal works well for our gameplan. With so many deckbuilding requirements, it's easier to tear down the opponent's board state than it is to build up our own. We just need one wincon to stick to win, so symmetrical wipes barely affect us.
Miracles can be unreliable. But, crucially, miracles can trigger on your opponent's turn, which the cycling cards help to enable.
This leads to an interesting play pattern, where as long as you are hitting land drops, cycling cards should be conserved and used on your opponent's turn. Ideally, they should be used while holding up at least one white and one blue mana (often thanks to Street Wraith), which would afford any of the miracles in the deck. But in a pinch, leaving up one white mana is enough to hit the white miracles, Terminus or Banishing Stroke.
Hitting a Temporal Mastery on your opponent's turn before dropping a wincon on yours is a great way to protect that wincon, since the opponent will not get another turn before the wincon takes effect.
Stray Points
- The deck isn't going to survive until later turns without hitting a miracle, but if it does, it can buy even more time by starting to cast miracles for their full cost. And the cycling, wizardcycling, and modal double faced cards make for an odd collection of spells when they are actually cast, but they do have their time and place.
- The deck favors aggressive mulligans, since you will usually have a couple dead miracles in any hand. It's important to start with both white and blue mana.
- Step Through is more effective than I expected. It adds good consistency by fetching lands early and cyclers late.
- Keruga, the Macrosage fits the deck as a companion, but it only has marginal gains. Consider not revealing it in game 1 to conceal more information.
- This archetype wouldn't necessarily need to depend entirely on miracles, but any alternative would need to at least work at instant speed. Running miracles and sorcery-speed cards together introduces a conflict where it is no longer clear whether you should be cycling on your opponent's turn or on your own.
- The deck is ultimately jank, but it is unique and synergistic, and I think it's very fun to play. I recommend giving it a shot in more casual settings, and any thoughts or ideas are appreciated.
