I. Introduction
This is a currently work in progress.
This thread is reserved for the mill deck: Holy Crab / Eight Crab (
Ruin Crab &
Hedron Crab). There are several deck builds out there taking advantage of graveyards and "milling-effects", and then doing damage and life loss with spells and creatures. This deck primer is dedicated to building a PURE milling deck, with primary focus on winning the game by milling your opponent to 0-zero cards. We are a dedicated team of MTG enthusiast working on this deck. Please join us in this thread and contribute to the final product. All types of suggestions are appreciated: Tips and thought will be credited in this primer :smile:
The termonilogy.
Milling is a Magic slang to describe the act of putting cards from a deck into another zone to deplete the card in the opponents library. Cards that mill the opponents deck normally put those cards into the graveyard, but exiling them or putting them into any other zone in the game can be counted as milling aswell. Milling can be a successful strategy due to the fact that a player who can not draw a card from his library when he is required to, due to the library not containing any cards any more, loses the game. The graveyard is a public zone, allow the mill player to see what he got rid of and making it easier to calculate what options the defending player still has available. (Source: fandom.com)
From the Comprehensive Rules (August 7, 2020 - Double Masters)
Quote:
- 104.3c If a player is required to draw more cards than are left in their library, they draw the remaining cards and then lose the game the next time a player would receive priority. (This is a state-based action. See rule 704.)
Quote:
- 10/1/2009 The landfall ability triggers whenever a land enters the battlefield under your control for any reason. It triggers whenever you play a land, as well as whenever a spell or ability (such as Rampant Growth) causes you to put a land onto the battlefield under your control. It will even trigger when a spell or ability causes another player to put a land onto the battlefield under your control (as can happen with Yavimaya Dryad’s ability, for example).
- 10/1/2009 When a land enters the battlefield under your control, each landfall ability of the permanents you control will trigger. You can put them on the stack in any order. The last ability you put on the stack will be the first one that resolves.
Types of mill.
To avoid misunderstanding while discussing this thread, we have chosen to divide the "mill-effect" into two main categories. Please try to use these two terminologies:
☆ Landfall-mill: making the opponent mill cards by activating the landfall trigger off our Crabs.
☆ Spell-mill: making the opponent mill cards by casting spells or other activated and triggered abilities.
II. History
Why is it called milling?
Well, now we get to peek behind the scenes of Magic slang and see how it gets created. Most Magic slang comes about because a card gets released that does something that no other card had previously done in Magic. People wanting to talk about that ability tend to use the card name as a shorthand for the effect as it's the most obvious thing that connects to it. If there is a keyword or an ability word or even a word used in the title of multiple cards using this ability, then Wizards have done the job to help name this ability. Often, though, the cool thing starts on a single card. The card was named
Millstone. In the beginning, you "millstoned" another player, but with time "millstone" became "mill" as "mill" is actually a word, and a verb at that, so it sounded better. Now, what does a millstone - either of a pair of stone wheels used to grind or crush things - have to do with putting cards from your library into your graveyard? The answer, I believe, is this. The library represents the mental capacity of the planeswaker. The hand is what they are currently focusing on mentally. If a spell is in your library, it is something you know and eventually you'll be able to recall it (a.k.a. draw it). Milling is a mental attack where you are going after knowledge inside the planeswalker's head. Ref the wording on
Millstone: "More than one mage was driven insane by the sound of the Millstone relentlessly grinding away." Discard spells, by the way, are spells that attack the player's current thoughts: "Oops, did this blow to the head make you forget what you were about to do?". The word millstone can also mean a mental or emotional burden. The Antiquities designers Skaff Elias, Jim Lin, Dave Petty and Chris Page, and yes, back then much of the naming was done by the design teams, were being clever with wordplay. The name was both a real thing and a description of an emotional upheaval.
Early days.
The history of milling actually starts before
Millstone was printed. Even in the beta testing of Magic, there were decks that won by running the opponent out of cards. In the deck that Charlie Catino played where he kept using
Timetwisters to keep shuffling graveyards back into libraries. He would deck you by playing
Swords to Plowshares to remove all your creatures from the game, thus shrinking your library so that he would eventually deck you. And yes, the original playtesters did truly playtest the game.
No more cards in library?
This brings up the first question about milling. Why did Richard Garfield make you lose the game when you ran out of cards in your library, known in Magic slang as "decking"? Any guesses? As with any good design, the reason is quite simple. It was the easiest answer to the question "What happens if I run out of cards?" Remember, barring Charlie's deck, most games back then that came to decking dod so because they ran long. The decking rule helped keep the long games from running any longer. Once an alternate way to win existed, players were soon attracted to it as a means of winning because well, that's what gamers do. In the early days, decking was a win condition for decks that prevented anything from happening. It was a way to win without having to devote a card to actually winning the game. All this changed though when
Millstone came out in Antiquities. Instead of milling being a passive win condition, it became an active one. All of a sudden, a deck could aggressively mill the opponent. The Antiquities designers were nice enough to also give deck builders a tool to make sure that they weren't decked, a little artifact called
Feldon's Cane.
(Source: wizards.com + Mark Rosewater)
III. Card Choices
These are mentionable cards that are undergoing furious play testing:
Artifact
Creature
Enchantment
InstantUnexpectedly AbsentCling to DustCrypt IncursionInto the StoryThwartChain of VaporThought ScourFatal PushMurderous CutBrain FreezeMission Briefing
- Conditional: needs cards in GY.
- Can become a 5th Glimpse the Unthinkable.
- Makes Archive Trap and Surgical to be cast for "0".
BrainstormCounterspellDazeArchive Trap
- Conditional: Opponent may avoid to search and you need to have it in hand when they search.
- Potential a free 13-mill card. Lots of fetch and tutors in legacy.
- You might mill away all fetch lands
- Late game ist a 5CMC/1 CARD/13 card mill card.
Drown in the Loch
- Conditional: need cards in opponents graveyard to work.
- The best of both worlds: counter and removal.
- Synergi with the mill-concept. Can easily destroy high CMC creatures by turn 4-5.
Visions of Beyond
- Semi-conditional: needs 20 cards in ANY graveyard, but can still be used as a EOT card draw.
- Card advantage.
- This deck needs food (cards) in order to beat faster combo/tempo decks.
- Synergi with the mill-concept. Its basically a "
Ancestral Recall".
Trapmaker's SnareCrypt IncursionDream Twist
- Non-conditional: works every time.
- Card advantage
- 6 mill for 3 mana.
- Possible storm counter?
Surgical Extraction
- Conditional: combo cads need to be in GY.
- With a fast-turning opponents GY, this is a good hate card against combo decks and opponents StP, AD and other creature removal.
- Works great with big GY.
- Great agaist Dredge/reanimator/loam decks. They are a bad mathc up for us, lets make it to our advantage.
Path to Exile
- Conditional: opponent may choose not to search.
- Triggers Archive Trap.
- Diss-synergi with surgical.
Land
Sorcery
PlaneswalkerAshiok, Dream Render
- Non-conditional: works every time.
- Stalls a lof of decks due to fetch lands and tutors in legacy. But again this keep opponent's do draw(mill) extra cards.
- Dis-synergy with Archive Trap, Visions of Beyond ++ (?)
- Gives us "extra-life" since the opponent most likely attacks Ashiok, instead for our life total.
- Most cases we get 4-8 mill for 3 mana and stops opponents fetches for 1-2 turns, due to opponent attacking Ashiok.
- Exile opponents library: good against Dredge, Reanimator, ANT, Goyf etc.
- Note: only stops search effects controlled by the opponent. So Scheming Symmetry, PathE, Quarter works.
Jace, Memory Adept
- Non-conditional, works every time.
- 5 CMC is heavy in Legacy.
IV. Decklist
The ORIGINAL Millstone deck, Michael Loconto, #1 prize Pro Tour in 1996.V. Sideboarding Guide
Hexproof
VI. Matchup & Videos
More info coming soon.
VII. Links & other Resources
VIII. Contributors
Special thanks to @Ralf @FTW and @Zoid
☆゜・。。・゜゜・。。・゜☆゜・。。・゜゜・。。・゜☆゜・。。・゜゜・。。・゜☆゜・。。・゜゜・。。・゜☆