Avacyn Restored previews which started last Monday revealed a new card mechanic called Miracle. Quoting from the mothership, Miracle is a new keyword that allows you to cast some instants and sorceries for very little mana when you draw them. As you draw an instant or sorcery with miracle, if it’s the first card you’ve drawn this turn, you can immediately reveal it. When you do so, you may cast it for its miracle cost.

It don’t matter whether it’s an instant or sorcery; if you choose to cast it, you do so right away, even if it’s at a time (such as your draw step) when you couldn’t normally cast it. You’re not required to reveal a miracle card, even if you could pay for it. You can always choose to just draw it as normal.

You draw the first card “this turn” means that Miracle can also be played on the opponent’s turn. For example, card draw triggers on the Consecrated Sphinx.

Here are the previewed Miracle cards so far:

The latter two are powerful cards which their Miracle costs are waiting to be abused. The first deck archetype that came up in mind is the Blue Red Delver, and here is my proposed initial decklist:

UR Miracle Delver by Mark Ian Alloso
Lands
10 Island
1 Shimmering Grotto
6 Mountain
4 Sulfur Falls

Creatures
2 Invisible Stalker
4 Snapcaster Mage
4 Delver of Secrets
4 Stromkirk Noble

Spells
4 Ponder
3 Vapor Snag
1 Incinerate
2 Thought Scour
2 Faithless Looting
4 Mana Leak
1 Mutagenic Growth
2 Runechanter’s Pike
2 Noxious Revival
4 Thunderous Wrath

The card choice aside from the typical includes:

Faithless Looting – an added support to card draws plus it can dump Thunderous Wrath on the starting hand. Also fills graveyard for pike and snapcaster use.

Noxious Revival – combo’s with the looting to return discarded or previously casted Wraths. Also gives you options in dire situations.

Thought Scour – this is typically used nowadays and the inclusion of only two in the deck.

Runechanter’s Pike – this equipment steals games and can get your opponent low enough for burn range.

Your possible issue here is the mana conflict as you might lack the Red mana in case you’ve revealed the Thunderous Wrath. Looting and Revival helps you set that up later on. Anyhow, we’ll just see if Red can offer more Miracle spell goodies as the card previews continue until April 28th.

Until next post!

The third set of Innistrad, code-named “Roll”, is now revealed as Avacyn Restored. This announcement was made at the mothership last Thursday, stating that this expansion will be a large set and considered separate when drafted. Quoting from the announcement page,

This means that Innistrad Block Constructed will be composed of all three sets, but Avacyn Restored will be drafted by itself. Sealed events will use six Avacyn Restored booster packs.

Here is the additional information about the set:

Set Name: Avacyn Restored

Block: Set 3 of 3 in the Innistrad block

Number of Cards: 244

Prerelease Events: April 28-29, 2012

Release Date: May 4, 2012

Launch Weekend: May 4-6, 2012

Game Day: May 25-26, 2012

Pro Tour Avacyn Restored Dates: May 11-13, 2012

Pro Tour Avacyn Restored Location: Barcelona, Spain

Pro Tour Avacyn Restored Formats:
Swiss:
Innistrad Block Constructed
Avacyn Restored Draft
Top 8:
Innistrad Block Constructed

Official Three-Letter Code: AVR

Twitter Hashtag: #MTGAVR

Design Team:
Brian Tinsman (lead)
Mark L. Gottlieb
Dave Guskin
Kenneth Nagle
Bill Rose
Mark Rosewater

Development Team:
David Humpherys (lead)
Mark Globus
Dave Guskin
Erik Lauer
Billy Moreno
Matt Sernett

And here is the set’s expansion symbol: