[Deck] Mill Burn

[Knuckles29]

Just want to discuss the concept [EDIT] Doug Linn brought up about a budget critical mass of good mill spells

1cc-
Tome Scour
Vision Charm
Memory Sluice

2cc-
Glimpse the Unthinkable
Dampen Thought

3cc-
Mind Funeral

add support like Howling Mine, Ideas Unbound, Careful Study, Stream of Consciousness, maybe Jace...

Besides "top beats this...", is there any other input?

[Really sorry Doug, I was typing from memory and forgot it was your 'Tapping into m10' article]

[hi-val]

Have you got a link to that article? I've mentioned it a few times in mine and I'd like to read his thoughts on it. I was thinking today that Brain Freeze will always mill at least 6, but I don't know really how good that is. I found that Ensnaring Bridge was good for holding off the beats, Haunting Echoes was a good alternate-win and Extirpate main is -3 more cards on a mill and can knock out a lot of win conditions/make Mind Funeral better.

I think you also want 4 Top in the deck so that you see a milling card every turn.

[JeroenC]

Yep, I've always wondered why nobody building mill decks never mentions Haunting Echoes. If you mill 10-15 cards and you Echo the opponent, I think that's just about game mostly.

[Elfrago]

Sanity Grinding? Twincast?

[Darkenslight]

Just want to discuss the concept Sean McK. brought up about a budget critical mass of good mill spells

1cc-
Tome Scour
Vision Charm
Memory Sluice

2cc-
Glimpse the Unthinkable
Dampen Thought

3cc-
Mind Funeral

add support like Howling Mine, Ideas Unbound, Careful Study, Stream of Consciousness, maybe Jace...

Besides "top beats this...", is there any other input?

If using Memory Sluice, then see also Grimoire Thief, which exiles the top three when tapped.

Also, there's Memory Erosion, which mills 2 when an opponent plays a spell.

Then add some counters and you're set.

Sample list:

Land

3 Underground Sea
2 Watery Grave
3 Polluted delta
3 Flooded Strand
6 Island
3 Swamp

Mill

4 Tome Scour
4 Vision Charm
4 Memory Sluice
4 Glimpse the Unthinkable
4 Mind Funeral
4 Grimoire Thief
4 Drowner Initiate

Stuff

4 FoW
3 Daze
4 Spell Snare
2 Sleep
4 Extirpate
4 Thoughtseize

[caenel]

Just an idea, but since you are all shooting for the 'mill the oppenent' win, wouldn't Extract be a good card to be maindecked?
Because since there is no backup plan, you have an auto-loss against any deck sporting Gaea's Blessing and hard times against decks sporting Progenitus or Darksteel Colossus.

I'd really go for 3-4 Extract (or effects like it) maindeck.

Another option would be to put in a backup kill condition against decks running any of the cards mentioned above, but that would make the deck less focused, no?

Any thoughts?

[Grollub]

I don't think going "burn mill" is a viable strategy, instead of aiming for a 20 point target you shoot yourself in the shin and make it 60. The "mill bolts" are worse than Shock in terms of killing since the target is so much bigger, and offer zero protection.

If aggressive mill can be competitive I think aiming for an accelerated Haunting Echoes after a Glimpse or Mind Funeral (and native disruption) is the way to go. As currently burn will be better at killing by "direct damage", a weaker form counter-burn deck will most likely not solve anything.

I wouldn't mind be proved wrong. ;)

[rufus]

I don't think going "burn mill" is a viable strategy, instead of aiming for a 20 point target you shoot yourself in the shin and make it 60. The "mill bolts" are worse than Shock in terms of killing since the target is so much bigger, and offer zero protection.

It's more like 50 since there's an initial draw 7, and 3 more will, most likely, be gone by turn 3, and the 2-3 CC grinding spells are comparatively superior to burn spells of a similar cost. This concept comes up pretty regularly, and last time I ran the numbers, it was still short 2 quality grinding spells.

[TorpidNinja]

To get a deck like this off its ass, you'd really need a modal spell that can either burn a creature or mill for a certain amount at a relatively low cost. Say, a CC2 spell which burned a dude for four/milled for four. Guess it'd need to be black.

[Grollub]

It's more like 50 since there's an initial draw 7, and 3 more will, most likely, be gone by turn 3, and the 2-3 CC grinding spells are comparatively superior to burn spells of a similar cost. This concept comes up pretty regularly, and last time I ran the numbers, it was still short 2 quality grinding spells.

Considering 50 point target Glimpse is 1/5th, Funeral on average about the same - even the most bombtastic mill spells are outclassed by simple spells like Price of Progress and Fireblast. The low millers are not even 1/10th, so even a mere Shock is better. Now add super charging 'goyf and having no influence on the board, the current mill spells are in no way superior to burn. If they printed 1 or 2 in the power range of Glimpse, the critical mass might be reached, but even then I still think traditional burn would be better.

[rufus]

If they printed 1 or 2 in the power range of Glimpse, the critical mass might be reached, but even then I still think traditional burn would be better.

Traditional burn would be different. The grinding decks would basically have to be disruption/grinding, with the goal to finish on turn 4 with 11 cards -- 5 grind cards, 3 lands, and 3 disruption cards or something like that.

Ultimately (and this is also something that comes up in all of these threads) what really kills the viability of the deck is that it's very hard to outperform Soldarity or Painter/Servant.

[DrJones]

Ultimately (and this is also something that comes up in all of these threads) what really kills the viability of the deck is that it's very hard to outperform Solidarity or Painter/Servant.Well, Painter/Servant is still easier to counter than 30x mill spells: you only have to worry about one card. :wink:

[Elfrago]

Wizards is really trying to make Mill competitive.
Just wait, they'll print better Mill cards.

[ykpon]

just a thought: we can use Phyrexian Dreadnought and Altar of Dementia. together they are at least "mill 12 for 3" and without Altar Nought can be a nice alternative wincondition paired with Vision Charm we already run. though, it's still a very bad deck :rolleyes:

[Knuckles29]

Most of my discussion is a generic cop-out of "Budget"

Deadnaught is WAY more than I am willing to spend, he is good, but not needed where I play.

Grindstone took off and is unaffordable to anyone who wants the deck to be under $50

Glimpse the Unthinkable is the high money card in the proposed list, I'd say it is $8-10 off any random person you will meet at a prerelease type of thing

Most of the premise for the idea is that it uses commons like Tome Scour as the Lightning Bolt parallel

The Haunting Echoes point is well taken but I was thinking more along the lines of Extirpate to handle Blessing/Dredge and the fact it is part of the 1cc machine gun fire of spells that this could conceivably achieve

Grimoire Thief had not come to mind (it does now), I had Initiate and Sage of Epityr on a rough draft to maximize Sluice

Perhaps Ensnaring Bridge is the card I needed to hold back the tide.

The more I put down the rough draft, the more it really is a poor man's Solidarity. 1cc Mill and Draw spells with counters like Daze, FoWill/Foil, and other Xerox ideas. I will have to wait to get my M10 commons and I will dry run it in a week or so.

[Nekrataal]

You can translate between Burn and Mill. Considering you have 50 cards to Mill a Glimpse is worth 1/5 of total ressource which can be compared to a (1/5 * 20 LP = 4 LP) burn spell for 4 damage. Tome Scour is nothing more then a Shock then. Vision Charme is worse. Mind Funeral can hit for more since the average land count is low in legacy and everybody tries to thin his library with fetchlands, so I would expect it to hit for 12 or more on the average which resembles about 5 damage for 3cc.

[kicks_422]

What everyone fails to consider in these parallelisms between mill and burn is that burn spells can easily be negated with popular cards in the format (e.g. Jitte on a Goyf, Swords to Plowshares on a creature, SB BEB's, etc) while mill spells are not being answered. Gaea's Blessing is rare, and Feldon's Cane is just nowhere.

Burn spells take down life points and mill spells take out cards in the library. Well, duh. But burn doesn't really do anything against the opponent aside from taking down the life points, while mill spells take potential answers/threats out before they get into the opponent's hand while winning. Burn kills, but mill kills and kind of disrupts at the same time.

Well, at least that's what I think. I could very well be wrong, but I'm just tired of seeing people compare Lightning Bolt to Vision Charm like they're just timeshifted versions of one another.

[Zinch]

Burn spells take down life points and mill spells take out cards in the library. Well, duh. But burn doesn't really do anything against the opponent aside from taking down the life points, while mill spells take potential answers/threats out before they get into the opponent's hand while winning. Burn kills, but mill kills and kind of disrupts at the same time.



Well, that could be true against some combo or control decks with only a few finishers, but against any other deck, if you take random cards from the top of their library, you are not disrupting them

[TorpidNinja]

Well, that could be true against some combo or control decks with only a few finishers, but against any other deck, if you take random cards from the top of their library, you are not disrupting them

This is a really important point that a lot of beginning (or even longtime) MTG players find difficult to grasp: milling infrequently "does" anything till the endgame (where weaker players will find their judgment impaired by the threat of actually being milled.)

I find the best way to explain this is by offering an alternative way of looking at it: if I were to take those same milled cards from the bottom of your library instead of the top, would you care? Of course not - barring a Brainstorm - because you don't think you have access to those cards anyhow. But, since the deck is largely randomized, the cards at the bottom of the deck may as well be the cards on the top. In short, those cards don't matter in terms of deck productivity (save for the case you just gave.)

[JeroenC]

I always put the example as this:
The good card the opponent need *could* be the top card. But what if you're milling 10 cards, and your opponent wins because that good card is that 11th card you didn't mill? Equal chances of either one happening.
Edit: also, burn has the option of throwing a wrench in combo's plans, especially if they mostly rely on their life totals as an Engine (Ad Nauseam or Doomsday).

[TorpidNinja]

It seems a matter of design space really: there's not a lot of cards which make use of the deck as a - direct - resource. Arc-slogger aside, I can't seem to find any that fit the bill. Until this aspect of play starts being utilized by Wizards R&D, there's not going to be real viability.

That said, I seem to remember a control deck used a while back that used Jace as a secondary win condition for the purpose of decking.

[rufus]

This is a really important point that a lot of beginning (or even longtime) MTG players find difficult to grasp: milling infrequently "does" anything till the endgame (where weaker players will find their judgment impaired by the threat of actually being milled.)

Honestly, in Legacy, milling the opponent (into GY) is going to be a negative in quite a number of match-ups - probably vs. anything with a goyf. One more thing that the combo plan has going for it...