Disclaimer: I have looked here and must be using the search function wrong as I didn't find anything even trying to specifically play this. I found similar lists under Modern, but nothing here, yet this is reliably a turn 4 or 5 win, with a reasonable counter package. Curious to play it more, especially live, and see how it goes. I would welcome constructive criticism. I have wins with fraying sanity tricks, as well as outright grindy 7-turn mill wins utilizing counters.
Okay, I know mill is a hard win condition to meet with all the sexy graveyard stuff getting played right now. Playing around with this here at home, it matches decently against my Ur Painter, not so great but still sees some wins against my Bg Eva Green-ish deck, and houses my tabernacle-less variation of Combo Elves. Interested to hear some thoughts on the playability; I pack a few extra Tormod's Crypts and so far they have come into play when I need them (even using one to remove the graveyard of the Ur Painter deck, preventing a next-turn win from Welder shenanigans).
I have considered but not yet tinkered with the following ideas:
- Adding in Thoughtseizes and/or IOK for some early hand disruption
- Removing the JTMSs for additional counters/control options; specifically, I have thought about trying to utilize a counterbalance package, removing the JTMSs, Counterspells and the Visions of Beyond for 4 Counterbalance and 4 Ponder. I do like Visions as a hand-refilled, especially after your first four turns or so
- I chose Ghost Quarter over Field of Ruins because of the wider range of lands I can destroy; I understand my opponent won't be forced to search their library, so I can slap them with an Archive Trap, but I will take a simple Strip Mine on their lands any day.
4 Fraying Sanity
4 Archive Trap
4 Mind Funeral
4 Glimpse the Unthinkable
4 Hedron Crab
4 Force of Will
4 Brainstorm
2 Daze
2 Counterspell
4 Visions of Beyond
2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
2 Tormod's Crypt
4 Ghost Quarter
4 Watery Grave
2 Flooded Strand
4 Polluted Delta
1 Underground Sea
1 Swamp
4 Island
Access to black allows for fun sideboard options like surgical extraction and other card-specific hate, as well as all of the hand disruption stuff that I also enjoy so much.
Last edited by nexus blue; 10-27-2018 at 08:08 PM.
I have played around with the concept of mill in legacy. To my experience, it just isnīt viable for competitive play. The issue is, that mill is basically a worse form of burn. worse, because the ratio of manacost to Cards milled is bad. Let me put this into an example:
The best 1 cmc mill spell is Tome scour, which puts a meager 5 Cards from the library to the graveyard. With 60 Cards in the deck and no Mulligan (that means 53 Cards to mill in a game) that would be 9,4% of what Needs to be milled in order to win. The best 1 cmc burn spell is lightning bolt, dealing 3 damage. That is 15% of what Needs to be burned in order to win. Yes, this math is slightly off, depending on who starts and of course, because the deck gets smaller every time the Opponent draws, but it will never come anywhere Close to the 15% of lightning bolt. And this doesnt take into account, that lightning bolt can alternatively kill a creature or planeswalker.
Even burn struggles with running out of gas sometimes. Same goes for mill to an even larger extent. In short: Mill lacks the versatility and explosiveness, that makes burn so dangerous.
Secondly, Mill struggles with Card selection. If our gameplan is dedicated solely on mill, we will be beaten by literally any threat, even of fair decks. If we use a counterspell core, we will run out of gas even faster.
Lastly, in an enviroment, where you can make mill work (mostly kitchentable Magic), it will be boring as hell for your friends to play against. Playning Mill is like playing against a Combo deck, that just takes 4 rounds longer to kill you.
All this being said, Mill isnīt a super bad deck. It can have devestating early turns and does in fact kill consistently - just a few rounds too late to be viable. The real strength of Mill is the disruption. With Surgical Extraction and Extirpate, you can hurt the gameplan of many decks in the first two rounds. Especially Combo decks, that didnt go off round 1 are hit hard by this.
Furthermore, the colorcombination opens up our Options by a lot. Whilst burn traditionally struggles with carddraw, we have access to many good Cards. These are: Brainstorm and Visions of Beyond. Especially the latter is a real powerhouse in mill. Also, there are some viable tutors, that may allow us to deal finishing blows or fish for deciding cards: Lim-Dûl's Vault and scheming symmetry. Both allow us to dig and especially scheming symmetry is broken in a mill deck: 1) we will possibly mill this turn, so whatever he may have dug up will go directly into the graveyard and 2) it Triggers the conditions for Archive Trap. Note however, that he may just Chose not to search for a Card.
Imagine a round like this: Swamp into scheming symmetry, play Archive trap, play surgical extraction. You now have: milled 14-17 cards, possibly exiled a crucial Card to his gameplan and put the Card that you Need right on top of your deck. All in all I dislike the counterspell core.
Of course this is heavy goldfishing and far from the usual case. But Mill has quite a few interactions, that can hurt a lot if unchecked.
Cards I would consider for UB Mill:
Good cards:
Glimpse the Unthinkable
Probably the best millcard. straightforward and cheap.
Mind Funeral:
People either love or hate this Card. If I recall correctly, it mills 12 cards in average. Sometimes more, sometimes less. What it will do however is to get rid of 4 landcards. This is around 18% of their manabase.
Hedron Crab:
make them laugh, when you put it down. Make them cry, when it dawns of them, that it triggers twice for each fetchland played and used. Now imagine two of them. (T1: Island into hedron crap. T2: Hedron Crab into Fetchland (mill 2 x 3 cards). Use fetchland (mill 2 x 3 cards again). That is 12 cards without any actuall millcards played. Also they provide an emegency Body to block things.
Archive trap:
Will go off at some Point. Either by their own doings or because of interactions with scheming symmetry or ghost quarters.
Brainstorm:
Obvious Card draw
Visions of beyond:
Even better Card draw
Surgical extraction/Extirpate
decide for more explosiveness early on vs. uncounterable. Split them to your liking. 6-8 is fine.
Scheming symmetry
In other decks, this Card means Card disadvantage. Whatever you look for, it must be better then what they fetch up and compensate for the Card you just played from your Hand and the mana you spent. In this deck, you break that symmetry by milling away whatever they were looking for. Enables Archive trap.
Lim Duls Vault:
An odd choice. It basically lets you dig through your library for some lifepoints to search for lethal. I won quite a few games when they were left with ~25 cards and search for a mind funeral. People tend to fetch many lands out of their decks, making mind funeral very powerful.
Shelldock Islands
I am not sure about this Card. It can provide for devestating and even deciding mid game turns but it also can be utter crap. Mostly feels like win-more. Probably not good.
Ghost quarters
Once they realized, that it enables your Archive trap, it turns into a Strip mine.
Twincaster mage
Some say this is too slow. But at turn 4 or 5, when you are able to recast a glimpse or a funeral, this can be a gamewinner. I like it.
Average cards:
Jace's Phantasm
A solid Body with flying, often in turn 2
Baleful strix
I have an odd love for this Card, despite it doing nothing for the gameplan.
Fraying sanity
For my taste, this Card is too slow. It hits the board turn 3 and does nothing. If you can cast one or two spells with fraying sanity online, you might have won, tho. Note, that it Triggers at EACH end step.
Haunting echo:
It is too expensive. But if you can cast it, it wins the game.
Everything else is subpar.
Regarding the Sideboard you Need:
leyline of the void x 4 (nothing worse then to get emrakulīd)
ensanring Bridge/Propaganda (stop those creatures)
Whatever your meta dictates.
Crab is old news Scheming Symmetry + Archive Trap is all you need to be doing. Add in mill Ashiok and you're good to go.
IMO the main reason Ub mill doesn't work in Legacy is not just that it's a worse burn, but you can just do things like Painter's Servant+Grindstone much more efficiently leaving more deck slots to interacting with the opponent.
Non-interactive mill works too. Mono U mill is one of the oldest competitive decks in Legacy. They just use Brain Freeze and High Tide and Turnabout to mill more cards faster than a deck with 20-24 mill effects could achieve.
If you want to build UB mill, building around resolving multiple Archive Traps seems best. Trapmaker's Snare can find Archive Traps, as can Scheming Symmetry + Brainstorm/Ponder. Still, does that mill the opponent faster than High Tide or have more interaction than Painter?
Snare looks bad, but it's 2 mana to mill 13 instead of 2 mana to mill 10. It can also find Ravenous Trap to exile their GY for free, Mindbreak Trap to win a counter war or beat Storm, or some other SB Trap options.
Hedron Crab is still good. It mills at least 6 cards for 1 mana, better than any other 1cc mill spell, and will probably do 12+ in a game while blocking things. What else is that efficient?
Edit: Ashiok, Dream Render has a great -1 but the static is terribad with Archive Trap.dec.
//Spells: 33
4 Archive Trap
4 Force of Will
4 Brainstorm
4 Visions of Beyond
4 Scheming Symmetry
4 Thoughtseize
3 Trapmaker's Snare
3 Glimpse the Unthinkable
2 Force of Negation
1 Toxic Deluge
//Creatures: 7
4 Hedron Crab
3 Baleful Strix
//Lands: 20
4 Polluted Delta
3 Misty Rainforest
2 Prismatic Vista
3 Underground Sea
2 Island
2 Swamp
4 Ghost Quarter
//Sideboard:
3 Defense Grid
3 Surgical Extraction
1 Mindbreak Trap
1 Whiplash Trap
1 Ravenous Trap
1 Permafrost Trap
1 Dread of Night
1 Plague Engineer
1 Mind Funeral
1 Brain Freeze
1 Winds of Rebuke
Brain Freeze is tech against Storm. It probably won't work, but you hope to catch them in a position where you can mill the remainder of their library in response to a cantrip, instantly killing them.
Permafrost Trap is tech against beat down, particularly Marit Lage. If they played a green creature that turn, you can tap down Marit Lage/Hogaak/whatever for 2 turns to buy time.
Mind Funeral is strong against some decks with low land count. It's a 1-hit kill against Belcher or Oops All Spells (aka Oops You Have A Draw Step First). Against 12-16 land decks, after you've milled a few cards and cast Surgical Extraction on a 4-of land or resolve a few Ghost Quarters, Mind Funeral could take most of their deck in one hit.
Another angle could be to be build the deck to combo Wasteland effects with Extirpate effects to strip their deck of multiples (especially fetches) so that 2 Mind Funerals become lethal.
The devil is in the details - Ashiok does not stop forced search effects the Ashiok owner caused. Ghost Quarter-type effects are not stopped; in general though these effects are weak in that they have a "may choose not to" clause. Scheming Symmetry is a forced search through Ashiok the opponent *cannot* opt out of. The card the mill player tutors: Archive Trap - now cast any cantrip.
It doesn't stop the forced search. However it does stop all the "free" Traps you would get from regular fetchland cracks, which is bad in my 7x Archive Trap deck. My build is centred around resolving 4 Archive Traps FTW, supported by 7 tutors and 8 cantrips. Scheming Symmetry is the only part with a forced search, but the rest of it is easier to pull off when opponent just walks into a Trap.Originally Posted by Fox
Maybe stopping the opponent from fetching/tutoring altogether is stronger than getting that mill faster. You can manascrew them, slow mill with Ashiok, and wait to set up Scheming Symmetry + cantrip. Although that line seems too slow for Legacy and more viable in Modern.
Ghost Quarter effects have a "may" which lets them opt out, but that's where bluffing comes in. They don't know if you have Trap, so they don't know which choice is optimal. Either GQ becomes 4xStrip Mine or it enables Trap. Both have upsides. Opponent has to choose without knowing what you have.
Yes, but Painters and Brain freeze deck are played entirely diffrent. They are, at heart, Combo decks and they Center around finding Combo pieces and protecting them. That they win by the same condition (milling) is like saying, that a storm deck with empty the warrens is just like an eldrazi ramp deck, because they both win by beating the Opponent with damage to their face.
UB Mill is much more about controle
I have mixed Feelings about making your gameplan mostly revolve around Archive trap. Especially if you add trapmakerīs snare, there are decks with only few to non search effects. And forced searches are often optional to your Opponent. The danger is, that you have a deck with 7-8 dead Cards.
Then again, most decks do search their deck at some Point. And Archive trap is a great Card, if you can make it happen. I am just not sure, wheather Trapmakers Snare isnīt Overkill.
Mill is combo or control-combo. You need to resolve a sequence of non-interactive spells to win, and those spells don't really advance your game state until the combo is finished (opponent is milled to death).
Imperial Painter is control/combo, using things like Blood Moons and REB to disrupt the opponent until it assembles A+B to mill the opponent. The mill is extremely compact, allowing it to run more control pieces than a deck playing 20x Tome Scour/Glimpse the Unthinkable. Blue Painter is similar. Although Painter is "combo", it runs some of the same risks as mill (e.g. Emrakul wrecks you), but at least by doing it in one shot it avoids fueling the opponent (Dredge, Reanimator, Loam, delve, Goyf, Snapcaster, Arcanist, etc..). That's why I brought it up. UB mill needs to resolve more cards to mill the opponent (5-7 card combo, like Burn), which gives it much less room for control slots, so it can't play control as well as Painter could while giving the opponent more potential upsides from mill. More risk, less control.
Brain Freeze is the comparison if you want to play mill non-interactively, like Burn, just jamming 30+ mill effects and trying to race the opponent without control elements. "Racing mill" is slower than Burn, but also slower than Brain Freeze. If you just want to cast a bunch of instants and sorceries to get the opponent's library to 0 as fast as possible without having any board state, High Tide just does that faster than Tome Scour and friends.
I think these 2 decks are part of why mill has not made it into Legacy. Anyone looking to race by mill was trumped by Solidarity and Burn, and anyone looking to play mill-control had both less tools and less explosiveness than Painter or other A+B combos. Even SneakShow runs better control than Glimpse.dec can.
Yeah it's a bit all-in and needs to be tested. It loses badly to Surgical. The gameplan is based on my above points. Basically, that UB mill traditionally needed to resolve 5-7 mill effects to win, which restricts its speed (too slow) and limits its ability to play control (too many deck slots on mill and too much tapping out to mill). Leaning on Archive Trap is the solution. It's the most efficient mill spell in Legacy. It costs 0 mana, can be tutored by cards that cost 1-2 mana, and you only need to resolve 4 spells to win. That opens up both more deck slots and more mana for interaction.I have mixed Feelings about making your gameplan mostly revolve around Archive trap. Especially if you add trapmakerīs snare, there are decks with only few to non search effects. And forced searches are often optional to your Opponent. The danger is, that you have a deck with 7-8 dead Cards.
Then again, most decks do search their deck at some Point. And Archive trap is a great Card, if you can make it happen. I am just not sure, wheather Trapmakers Snare isnīt Overkill.
Yes it's weaker against the few decks that don't search (0 fetches and 0 tutors), but Scheming Symmetry is a mandatory forced search that can also set up combo chains. If they don't search from GQ, they're letting you play 4x Strip Mine which seems good for the control plan. You could also splash green for Assassin's Trophy for better board control. The printing of Scheming Symmetry and Force of Negation (more free interaction) may be enough to make this plan viable.
Trapmaker's Snare doesn't just find Archive Trap, it also finds Ravenous Trap (aka instant speed Tormod's Crypt) to exile problems from the GY, which should be very important for this deck. Sometimes Snare will be dead, but it can be pitched to 6 Forces or buried with Brainstorm...
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