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Thread: Eight Crab - The new Mill.

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  1. #1

    Welcome to the new mill: Holy Crab / Eight Crab

    ☆゜・。。・゜゜・。。・゜☆゜・。。・゜゜・。。・゜☆゜・。。・゜゜・。。・゜☆゜・。。・゜゜・。。・゜☆


    With the release of the new crab (Ruin Crab) from Zendikar Rising, is this the final piece we needed to lift Legacy Mill to top tier?


    (Source: mtggoldfish.com + wizards.com)

    I. Introduction
    II. History
    III. Card Choices
    IV. Decklist
    V. Sideboarding Guide
    VI. Matchup & Videos
    VII. Links & other Resources
    VIII. Contributors

    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

    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)
    • 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.)
    • 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
    Helm of Obedience
    - Semi-conditional: needs Leyline for win con.
    - Averages 4-6 cards every time, as a non combo.
    - Alternative SB win con when SB in Leyline/RiP?
    Profane Memento
    Ensnaring Bridge
    Mesmeric Orb
    - Non-conditional, works every time.
    - Brutal against Elves and other stompy decks.
    Keening Stone

    Creature
    Enchantment
    Instant
    Unexpectedly Absent
    Cling to Dust
    Crypt Incursion
    Into the Story
    Thwart
    Chain of Vapor
    Thought Scour
    Fatal Push
    Murderous Cut
    Brain Freeze
    Mission Briefing
    - Conditional: needs cards in GY.
    - Can become a 5th Glimpse the Unthinkable.
    - Makes Archive Trap and Surgical to be cast for "0".
    Brainstorm
    Counterspell
    Daze
    Archive 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 Snare
    Crypt Incursion
    Dream 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
    Field of Ruin
    - Non-conditional: forces opponent to search.
    - Activation cost: 1 mana. You do need 2 lands to activate it, but considered that you get 1 land back untapped.
    - Targets: non-basic land.
    - Triggers Archive Trap.
    - Triggers our Crabs, landfall.
    - Side note: Replaces itself.
    Shelldock Isle
    Cavern of Souls
    Nephalia Drownyard
    Cephalid Coliseum
    Ipnu Rivulet
    Drownyard Temple
    Ghost Town
    Undiscovered Paradise
    Polluted Delta
    Oboro, Palace in the Clouds
    - Non-conditional: works every time.
    - Landfall trigger.
    - The non-tap activated ability makes this card dodges Wasteland/Bloodmoon/B2B etc. even if the card is tapped.
    - Landfall-mill synergi: Bounce, repeat for landfall trigger.
    Island
    Swamp
    Prismatic Vista
    - Non-conditional: works every time.
    - Fetch lands
    - Landfall trigger.
    Duskmantle, House of Shadow
    Ghost Quarter
    - Conditional: opponent may choose not to search.
    - Activation cost: 0 mana.
    - Triggers Archive Trap.
    - Target: all lands.
    - Triggers our Crabs, landfal, if you target your own land.

    Sorcery
    Council's Judgment
    Damnation
    Pilfered Plans
    Tome Scour
    Mind Funeral
    Scheming Symmetry
    - Non-conditional: works every time.
    - Triggers Archive Trap.
    - Synergi with Ashiok, Dream Render.
    - Opponent are forced to search.
    Glimpse the Unthinkable
    - Non-conditional, works every time.
    - Slow speed, sorcery.
    Haunting Echoes
    Bitter Ordeal
    Maddening Cacophony
    Supreme Verdict
    Fractured Sanity
    - Mill 14 cards "non-target" OR mill 4 cards "uncountreable" and "non-target" + cantrip.
    Tasha's Hideous Laughter
    - "Nnon-target". But does Legacy have enought low CC cards...?
    Sanity Grinding
    - Mono blue/devotion mill? Synergi with the bolt-lands as Sea Gate Restoration. Probably other "devotion" comboes/synergies? [/LIST]

    Planeswalker
    Ashiok, 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
    If your local meta has a lot of POX, Mill type decks there is a chance your opponent's SB in Leyline of Sanctity. Having 1 Tropical Island or Tundra main deck gives you access to Reverent Silence, Light of Hope, Allay, Feed the Swarm, Krosan Grip and Ratchet Bomb. These are all good SB enchantment removals.

    VI. Matchup & Videos

    More info coming soon.

    VII. Links & other Resources

    VIII. Contributors

    Special thanks to @Ralf @FTW and @Zoid

    ☆゜・。。・゜゜・。。・゜☆゜・。。・゜゜・。。・゜☆゜・。。・゜゜・。。・゜☆゜・。。・゜゜・。。・゜☆
    Last edited by t000; 08-10-2021 at 12:42 PM.
    Regards

  2. #2

    2nd post reserved for updates

    • 17 September 2020, reserved the thread on MTS.
    • 18 September 2020, updated the II. History section and added the the original millstone deck to IV. Decklist section.
    • 8 August 2021, added Fractured Sanity, Tasha's Hideous Laughter, Bruvac the Grandiloquent and Sanity Grinding to the deck.
    Last edited by t000; 08-08-2021 at 08:49 PM.
    Regards

  3. #3
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    Re: Eight Crab - The new Mill.

    We were already working on UB mill in a different thread. 8x Crab makes it even better.

    Archive Trap is by far the most mana-efficient mill effect, at 13 cards for 0 mana. Instant 4x of.
    - Best mill-to-mana ratio in Legacy
    - enabled by fetchlands and tutors
    - Pitches to FoW and FoN.
    - Can be tutored with Trapmaker's Snare (questionable card, but surprisingly versatile due to Mindbreak Trap vs Storm and Ravenous Trap vs GY decks)
    - Can be recast for 0 mana via Mission Briefing (also works on FoW and FoN)

    The biggest drawback of Archive Trap is that the opponent can avoid searches to play around it. But the card is still too powerful not to play in mill. Luckily there is an amazing enabler that forces library search: Scheming Symmetry.

    Symmetry both forces the opponent to search (enabling Trap) and finds you the next mill effect, or any other situational answer you might need. The downside of Symmetry is mitigated by mill: you just mill the card they tutored for. 8x Crab has high synergy with Scheming Symmetry, because you can crack a fetch to mill them at instant speed if they try to cantrip into the card in response to other mill. Crab makes the Archive-Symmetry engine even stronger!

    Ghost Quarter also enables Trap and answers problems like Dark Depths and nonbasic-heavy combo decks, which would otherwise race mill. They can choose not to search, but then you get away with running 4x Strip Mine which isn't exactly bad either.


    After Trap and Crabs, the quality of mill effects drops off significantly. Some possible options are:
    Glimpse the Unthinkable (UB for 10 cards)
    Mind Funeral (1UB for 4-20 cards, gets better if you extract a land first)
    Memory Sluice (1 mana for 8 cards if you have Conspire from 2x Crab)
    Ashiok, Dream Render (3 mana for 4-20 cards, but stops fetchlands from turning on Trap)
    Jace, Memory Adept (5 mana for 1-card mill wincon, but expensive)
    Surgical Extraction (0 mana for 3 cards, plus permanently eliminating a card from their deck and fighting GY engines)

    Most of those effects aren't that great value for the mana and card spent, or are too conditional to get consistent payoff.

    Often you just get better value spending 2 mana on additional Archive Traps (2 mana for 13 cards):
    1U: Trapmaker's Snare at instant speed to find Trap
    UU: Mission Briefing to flashback Trap
    UU: Twincast or Narset's Reversal on a Trap on the stack (timing restrictions make this the least reliable)
    UB: Scheming Symmetry for Trap + blue cantrip to draw it

    With that in mind, we had a rough shell like this earlier


    //Creatures: 8
    8 Hedron Crab

    //Mill Spells: 10
    4 Archive Trap
    2 Trapmaker's Snare
    2 Mission Briefing
    2 Glimpse the Unthinkable

    //Other Spells: 24
    4 Force of Will
    4 Brainstorm
    4 Thoughtseize
    4 Scheming Symmetry
    3 Ponder
    3 Visions of Beyond
    2 Force of Negation

    //Lands: 18
    4 Ghost Quarter
    4 Polluted Delta
    2 Misty Rainforest
    2 Prismatic Vista
    3 Underground Sea
    2 Snow-Covered Island
    1 Snow-Covered Swamp

    //Rough Sideboard:
    4 Leyline of the Void
    1 Ashiok, Dream Render
    1 Ravenous Trap
    1 Mindbreak Trap
    2 Glimpse the Unthinkable
    3 Eliminate
    2 Plague Engineer
    1 Spell Pierce


    There's an argument to have 1 Ravenous Trap main, or to run a couple Surgical Extraction main, just so you don't accidentally walk into Legacy's many GY engines in G1.

    You might also want to go up to a higher land count with 10 fetchlands to make Crabs better, though Crab will eat all of their removal 100% of the time.

  4. #4

    Re: Eight Crab - The new Mill.

    Quote Originally Posted by FTW View Post
    We were already working on UB mill in a different thread. 8x Crab makes it even better.

    Archive Trap is by far the most mana-efficient mill effect, at 13 cards for 0 mana. Instant 4x of.
    - Best mill-to-mana ratio in Legacy
    - enabled by fetchlands and tutors
    - Pitches to FoW and FoN.
    - Can be tutored with Trapmaker's Snare (questionable card, but surprisingly versatile due to Mindbreak Trap vs Storm and Ravenous Trap vs GY decks)
    - Can be recast for 0 mana via Mission Briefing (also works on FoW and FoN)

    The biggest drawback of Archive Trap is that the opponent can avoid searches to play around it. But the card is still too powerful not to play in mill. Luckily there is an amazing enabler that forces library search: Scheming Symmetry.

    Symmetry both forces the opponent to search (enabling Trap) and finds you the next mill effect, or any other situational answer you might need. The downside of Symmetry is mitigated by mill: you just mill the card they tutored for. 8x Crab has high synergy with Scheming Symmetry, because you can crack a fetch to mill them at instant speed if they try to cantrip into the card in response to other mill. Crab makes the Archive-Symmetry engine even stronger!

    Ghost Quarter also enables Trap and answers problems like Dark Depths and nonbasic-heavy combo decks, which would otherwise race mill. They can choose not to search, but then you get away with running 4x Strip Mine which isn't exactly bad either.


    After Trap and Crabs, the quality of mill effects drops off significantly. Some possible options are:
    Glimpse the Unthinkable (UB for 10 cards)
    Mind Funeral (1UB for 4-20 cards, gets better if you extract a land first)
    Memory Sluice (1 mana for 8 cards if you have Conspire from 2x Crab)
    Ashiok, Dream Render (3 mana for 4-20 cards, but stops fetchlands from turning on Trap)
    Jace, Memory Adept (5 mana for 1-card mill wincon, but expensive)
    Surgical Extraction (0 mana for 3 cards, plus permanently eliminating a card from their deck and fighting GY engines)

    Most of those effects aren't that great value for the mana and card spent, or are too conditional to get consistent payoff.

    Often you just get better value spending 2 mana on additional Archive Traps (2 mana for 13 cards):
    1U: Trapmaker's Snare at instant speed to find Trap
    UU: Mission Briefing to flashback Trap
    UU: Twincast or Narset's Reversal on a Trap on the stack (timing restrictions make this the least reliable)
    UB: Scheming Symmetry for Trap + blue cantrip to draw it

    With that in mind, we had a rough shell like this earlier


    //Creatures: 8
    8 Hedron Crab

    //Mill Spells: 10
    4 Archive Trap
    2 Trapmaker's Snare
    2 Mission Briefing
    2 Glimpse the Unthinkable

    //Other Spells: 24
    4 Force of Will
    4 Brainstorm
    4 Thoughtseize
    4 Scheming Symmetry
    3 Ponder
    3 Visions of Beyond
    2 Force of Negation

    //Lands: 18
    4 Ghost Quarter
    4 Polluted Delta
    2 Misty Rainforest
    2 Prismatic Vista
    3 Underground Sea
    2 Snow-Covered Island
    1 Snow-Covered Swamp

    //Rough Sideboard:
    4 Leyline of the Void
    1 Ashiok, Dream Render
    1 Ravenous Trap
    1 Mindbreak Trap
    2 Glimpse the Unthinkable
    3 Eliminate
    2 Plague Engineer
    1 Spell Pierce


    There's an argument to have 1 Ravenous Trap main, or to run a couple Surgical Extraction main, just so you don't accidentally walk into Legacy's many GY engines in G1.

    You might also want to go up to a higher land count with 10 fetchlands to make Crabs better, though Crab will eat all of their removal 100% of the time.

    I player UB mill for a while in modern so I can share a bit of my experience, since the deck looked similar.

    You should play at least some removal because you auto lose to a resolved creature + counters.
    Crabs main are kind of bad since they give your opponents targets for their removal.
    I think they are better in the sideboard once the opponent has taken their removal out.

    Some individual cards:

    Glimpse the Unthinkable is the bread an butter card of this deck since it always works.
    Mesmeric Orb - surprisingly good if you can't close it out early.
    Surgical Extraction / Extirpate - would run at least a few to not lose G1 to spaghetti monsters. Can also buy a lot of time.
    Oboro, Palace in the Clouds can be good to if you run out of lands.
    Fraying Sanity looks good on paper but is not so good in practice unless you can get it out earlier with petal or something.
    Ashiok, Dream Render sometimes actually cockblocks you depending on what you do so you have to be careful.
    Mind Funeral is crazy good since land counts in legacy are low and you should have milled already enough cards to make it really painful.
    Bonus: Devastation Tide is fun with Symmetry if you're in trouble.

  5. #5
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    Re: Eight Crab - The new Mill.

    Quote Originally Posted by Zoid View Post
    I player UB mill for a while in modern so I can share a bit of my experience, since the deck looked similar.

    You should play at least some removal because you auto lose to a resolved creature + counters.
    Crabs main are kind of bad since they give your opponents targets for their removal.
    I think they are better in the sideboard once the opponent has taken their removal out.

    Some individual cards:

    Glimpse the Unthinkable is the bread an butter card of this deck since it always works.
    Mesmeric Orb - surprisingly good if you can't close it out early.
    Surgical Extraction / Extirpate - would run at least a few to not lose G1 to spaghetti monsters. Can also buy a lot of time.
    Oboro, Palace in the Clouds can be good to if you run out of lands.
    Fraying Sanity looks good on paper but is not so good in practice unless you can get it out earlier with petal or something.
    Ashiok, Dream Render sometimes actually cockblocks you depending on what you do so you have to be careful.
    Mind Funeral is crazy good since land counts in legacy are low and you should have milled already enough cards to make it really painful.
    Bonus: Devastation Tide is fun with Symmetry if you're in trouble.
    Good points.

    When I tried testing UB mill in Legacy (moderate success, but never got that far), I ran 0 Crabs main and boarded in 4 Crabs postboard when their removal comes out. Otherwise like you said, maindeck Crab just soaks up their otherwise dead removal. The problem is with 8Crab that is not easy to do. You lose too much SB space. To play 8Crab at all, I think you need Crab main.

    Maybe with 8 Crabs main it will be harder to answer all? Even if they have an immediate answer, the failcase is "U: Mill 6" with a fetchland, which is better than most other mill effects still.

    4x Glimpse is probably correct. With Crabs main I moved the other 2 Glimpse to the SB (extra mill once they start playing around Archive Trap), but main may be better.

    I don't like Mind Funeral in Legacy. It has potential, but this is also a faster format with combo decks that win before you hit 3 mana and tempo decks with Wasteland, Daze, Spell Pierce, FoW, Veil, Thalia, Port... It is just too easy to have that card blown out to invest 3 mana in one effect.

    Devastation Tide looks like good silver bullet tech. Sadly you can't Miracle it off a cantrip that same turn, which means the opponent gets to draw their card first (if you didn't have a Crab to mill it) and that could just lose you the game. It seems like another card that would be much better in Modern, with less explosive opponents and without Legacy's cantrips to draw the symmetry card this turn. 95% of the time I cast Symmetry I draw the card the same turn. That's why I have 10 1-mana cantrips plus Mission Briefing.

    What creature removal would you run maindeck? Fatal Push? Eliminate? Maybe it's just correct to splash green for Oko, Thief of Crowns...

    EDIT: If you go to BUG, you get
    Abrupt Decay for removal that beats removal + counters and also hate pieces like Chalice
    Oko, Thief of Crowns for cheese that beats fair.dec and turn Crabs into Rogue Elephants
    Crop Rotation which enables dumb stuff with Crab landfall as well as 1-of Bojuka Bog main
    Veil of Summer to protect Archive Trap from counters and Crab from removal and your hand from discard
    It may even be correct to board in Uro as an alt win condition against control, using Crab to mill yourself for fuel.
    Green is too broken until Wizards fixes things with bans

  6. #6

    Re: Eight Crab - The new Mill.

    Quote Originally Posted by FTW View Post
    Good points.

    When I tried testing UB mill in Legacy (moderate success, but never got that far), I ran 0 Crabs main and boarded in 4 Crabs postboard when their removal comes out. Otherwise like you said, maindeck Crab just soaks up their otherwise dead removal. The problem is with 8Crab that is not easy to do. You lose too much SB space. To play 8Crab at all, I think you need Crab main.

    Maybe with 8 Crabs main it will be harder to answer all? Even if they have an immediate answer, the failcase is "U: Mill 6" with a fetchland, which is better than most other mill effects still.

    4x Glimpse is probably correct. With Crabs main I moved the other 2 Glimpse to the SB (extra mill once they start playing around Archive Trap), but main may be better.

    I don't like Mind Funeral in Legacy. It has potential, but this is also a faster format with combo decks that win before you hit 3 mana and tempo decks with Wasteland, Daze, Spell Pierce, FoW, Thalia, Port... It is just too easy to have that card blown out to invest 3 mana in one effect.

    Devastation Tide looks like good silver bullet tech. Sadly you can't Miracle it off a cantrip that same turn, which means the opponent gets to draw their card first (if you didn't have a Crab to mill it) and that could just lose you the game. It seems like another card that would be much better in Modern, with less explosive opponents and without Legacy's cantrips to draw the symmetry card this turn. 95% of the time I cast Symmetry I draw the card the same turn. That's why I have 10 1-mana cantrips plus Mission Briefing.

    What creature removal would you run maindeck? Fatal Push? Eliminate? Maybe it's just correct to splash green for Oko, Thief of Crowns...

    EDIT: If you go to BUG, you get
    Abrupt Decay for removal that beats removal + counters and also hate pieces like Chalice
    Oko, Thief of Crowns for cheese that beats fair.dec and turn Crabs into Rogue Elephants
    Crop Rotation which enables dumb stuff with Crab landfall as well as 1-of Bojuka Bog main
    Veil of Summer to protect Archive Trap from counters and Crab from removal and your hand from discard
    Green is too broken until Wizards fixes things with bans
    Mind Funeral is good against xerox type decks which most likely slow you down significantly.
    Your deck just sucks against storm in general since you don't do anything to stop them and fuel Cabal Rituals and PiF.
    Main deck the best chance is to disrupt them with Surgicals if you don't mill their 1 wincon by accident.

    Scheming Symmetry in general allows for a few silver bullets which I find appealing.
    Obviously given that you don't die next turn.
    Allows for more diversity in the SB.
    Unless you're desperate, you only Scheme if you have Traps or other mill.
    Also motivates at least a 1-off Funeral as Scheme target.

    For removal, probably a split between Push and Eliminate, depending on the meta.
    I liked Ensnaring Bridge but that may be too slow.
    Also Oko, but then again, Oko is ok.

    That leads me to the point that once you start splashing green your deck just becomes just a worse BUG pile.
    But that's the format I guess.
    One appeal of UB is that you can actually run a lot of basics and maybe 1 USea.
    If you go full crab.dec 1-2 more lands might be ok.

  7. #7

    Re: Eight Crab - The new Mill.

    Brain Freeze is another 2cc card that can do some milling.

    I wonder how far a deck can get by really leaning into the landfall end of things with ramp spells for extra triggers and lands like Ipnu Rivulet, Cephalid Coliseum or Nephalia Drownyard.

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