Ub Mill

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.

I have played around with the concept of mill in legacy. To my experience, it just isn´t 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 isn´t 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 emrakul´d)
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.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Fox

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.

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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.

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.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by FTW

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.

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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

Quote:

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Originally Posted by FTW

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?

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I have mixed Feelings about making your gameplan mostly revolve around Archive trap. Especially if you add trapmaker´s 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 isn´t Overkill.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Valech

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. UB Mill is much more about controle

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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.

Quote:

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I have mixed Feelings about making your gameplan mostly revolve around Archive trap. Especially if you add trapmaker´s 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 isn´t Overkill.

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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.

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...

UB Mill has been on my radar for a long time. I haven't played Magic for some years but when I recently checked the cards that have been printed in the latest sets, I came to the conclusion that Mill could very well be viable now. That has mainly to do with the printing of Scheming Symmetry, Mission Briefing and Fraying Sanity.
I don‘t agree that Mill is a worse Burn deck. Given that our deck doesn't kill before turn 3 in most cases, our opponent has 50 cards or less that we have to get rid of. If we take 50, milling 1 card equals to 20/50=0.4 damage.
For our 3 best mill spell that means:
Archive Trap deals 13*0.4=5.2 damage for 0 mana, easily the best Mill spell in the deck and better than any burn spell.
4 x Hedron Crab normally deals between 6*0.4=2.4 and 15*0.4=6 damage for 1 mana, which is very good.
4 x Brain Freeze normally deals between 9* 0.4=3.6 and 18* 0.4=7.2 damage for 2 mana.

Before talking about the deck more, let‘s have a quick look at a possible list:

UBr Mill

4 x FoW
2 x Force of Negation

4 x Brainstorm
4 x Ponder
2 x Mission Briefing
4 x Visions of Beyond

4 x Archive Trap
4 x Hedron Crab
4 x Brain Freeze
3 x Fraying Sanity
1 x Surgical Extraction

3 x Scheming Symmetry
1 x Reforge the Soul

4 x Chrome Mox
3 x Ghost Quarter
4 x Polluted Delta
2 x Flooded Strand
1 x Scalding Tarn
3 x Island
1 x Swamp
1 x Underground Sea
1 x Volcanic Island


SB:
4 x Leyline of the Void
2 x Flusterstorm
1 x Toxic Deluge
...


Scheming Symmetry is a reliable way to turn on Archive Trap, so you don‘t need to fire off the Trap at the first occasion for fear it being the only opportunity. SS let‘s you play Mill as a combo deck and pool Archive Traps until you have found Brain Freeze and/or Fraying Sanity to mill shit out of them.
Moreover, it can search for Reforge the Soul that lets you refill your hand while dealing 7*0.4=2.8 damage to the opponent when you run low on Mill spells. SS can also search for special hate cards post-board like Flusterstorm or Toxic Deluge.

Brain Freeze plays very well together with Chrome Mox, Trap, Forces and draw spells and easily deals more damage than Glimpse the Unthinkable.

Depending on the opposing deck you can play Mill in 3 different modes:

- Control mode against faster combo decks with the help of Forces and Mission Briefings turning into Force No.7-8
- Aggro mode: when your hand contains Visions of Beyond, it can be the right play to fire off 2 Mill spells early on and refill your hand via Ancestral Recall.
- Combo Mode: when your hand contains Brain Freeze or Fraying Sanity, it can be the right play to pool Mill spells and fire them off in one turn.
Possibly lethal combinations:
T2/3 Fraying Sanity into T3/4 Scheming Symmetry+Trap+Trap
T2/3 Fraying Sanity into T3/4 Scheming Symmetry searching for Trap+Trap+draw spell
T1 Crab into T3/4 Trap + Mission Briefing + Brain Freeze
...

Other cards to consider:
Trapmaker's Snare
Ashiok, Dream Render
Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver

For me the deck looks very strong, but unfortunately I don‘t have time to playtest it. I would love to hear about your experiences with the deck.

Mission Briefing is brilliant. I never noticed that the card doesn't give flashback like Snapcaster and friends, it just says "you may cast that card". Reusing Archive Trap for 0 is very strong, and it also reuses Forces too.

Brain Freeze is an interesting approach. You can even go off on their turn, with instant cantrips and Archive Traps, building Storm from their own spells, and it pairs really well with Fraying Sanity.

Because you are even more comboy and can go off on the opponent's turn, a 3rd Force of Negation seems good.

Trapmaker's Snare deserves some consideration because it not only finds Archive Traps but it can also get you a Ravenous Trap in response to Emrakul trigger, which is pretty much the difference between winning and autolosing against any Emrakul deck (Surgical on Emrakul still leaves you too far behind). It also helps keeps graveyard-based decks in check when you mill them into gas.

First of all, I LOVE Mission Briefing. It entirely flew under my Radar and is a great Addition. Also replaces Snapcaster Mage in every Iteration of this deck, that I came up with.

Also, in this type of mill deck I kinda aggree with the counterspell core you came up with. It Plays a lot more like Combo, just as you said, and we cannot afford to lose our mill spells.

That being said, I have some issues with your approach.

1) All of your mill spells or effects are conditional. Archive Trap only mills, if the library is searched, brain freeze only mills (effectively), if stuff happened during that turn, Hedron Crab only mills, if lands are played, Fraying Sanity only mills (effectively) if other mill has happened this turn. You claim, that you can play in some sort of aggro mode, if you have visions of beyond in your starting Hand, but it should say "if you have visions of beyond and some way to make mill possible" in your Hand.

2) I like the addition of Reforge the Soul. I am not sure if splashing red is worth it, tho.

3) Brain Freeze needs three other spells being played before to be more valueable then glimpse the unthinkable. Of course it has other advantages, like being instant, but it doesn´t enable visions early on and is reliant on cheap/no cost spells.

4) Fraying sanity might still drop one turn too late, although that might be no issue with Chrome mox.

I will try this deck and Report back.

The ideal scenario Brain Freeze seems something like
T1 - Cantrip to sculpt hand
T2 - Mox, Fraying Sanity.
T3 - Pass. Opponent cracks a fetch and cantrips. Archive Trap. Opponent counters. You Force it, mill 13. Brain Freeze 5 copies, mill 15. EOT Fraying mills 31 (13+15+3 other cards to GY). Total = 59 cards.

Or: Archive Trap mill 13. Brainstorm. Brain Freeze 4 copies, mill 12. EOT Fraying mills 27. Total= 52 cards.

Come to think of it, it's pretty bad without Fraying Sanity. Even Archive Trap -> Mission Briefing -> Archive Trap -> Brain Freeze is 4 mana and not lethal without Fraying Sanity (36-39 cards). Even at instant speed, that 2 mana might as well be spent on Trapmaker's Snare for Archive Trap, since most storm scenarios require getting off an Archive Trap for 0 mana anyway. I think I prefer my approach with Glimpse and Trapmaker at 2cc instead of Brain Freeze as they should mill more cards on average against a non-Goldfish.

Archive Trap is conditional but at least you can force the condition with 4x Scheming Symmetry, and most decks do fetch or tutor on their own. The condition for Brain Freeze is much harder to meet. The condition for Hedron Crab is easy to meet with enough fetchlands, that's like saying Deathrite Shaman was too conditional. Just run 10 fetches.

4 Polluted Delta
4 Prismatic Vista
2 Flooded Strand
2 Underground Sea
2-3 Island
1-2 Swamp
0-1 Volcanic Island

That makes 16-17 lands with high color consistency and room for utility lands.

Fraying Sanity makes me wonder about Stompy Mill, with that 2U cost. I'm cringing thinking about the UB stuff, the loss of cantrips for both Brain Freeze and selection, the crab, and Visions of Beyond. And Trap is pretty awful with the 'sphere side of stompy. But 4 Traps and 4 Trapmaker's Snare work ok with Chalice, and you can hide under Bridge.

Stompy lands and Dimir Signet could get you to Haunting Echoes territory? :cool:

Hmmm Stompy does slow down the game enough to let mill do its thing. Unfortunately you lose Scheming Symmetry, so Archive Trap becomes more of a wild card. You lose Hedron Crab and Visions of Beyond too. That tilts towards using Planeswalkers to mill, especially backed by Ensnaring Bridge and Forces.


//Lands: 19
4 Ancient Tomb
3 City of Traitors
4 Polluted Delta
2 Misty Rainforest
2 Underground Sea
2 Island
2 Swamp

//Artifacts: 14
3 Chrome Mox
4 Chalice of the Void
4 Dimir Signet
3 Ensnaring Bridge

//Enchantments: 4
4 Fraying Sanity

//Planeswalkers: 7
4 Ashiok, Dream Render
2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
1 Jace, Memory Adept

//Spells: 16
4 Force of Will
4 Archive Trap
4 Glimpse the Unthinkable
4 Mind Funeral

//Sideboard: 15
4 Leyline of the Void
3 Tangle Wire
3 Trinisphere
2 Force of Negation
2 Force of Despair
1 Haunting Echoes



The problem is once you're playing UB Stompy, why not just play HelmLine to make more room for control and mill with fewer cards?


//Lands: 20
4 Ancient Tomb
3 City of Traitors
4 Polluted Delta
2 Misty Rainforest
2 Underground Sea
2 Island
2 Swamp
1 Academy Ruins

//Artifacts: 18
3 Chrome Mox
4 Chalice of the Void
4 Dimir Signet
3 Ensnaring Bridge
2 Trinisphere
2 Helm of Obedience

//Enchantments: 6
4 Leyline of the Void
2 Web of Inertia

//Spells: 8
4 Force of Will
4 Lim-Dul's Vault

//Planeswalkers: 6
2 Narset, Parter of Veils
2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
2 Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas


Etc..

Hi,

From what I have seen from the last expansion Throne of Eldraine, two cards stand out to me as relevant for the mill deck:

Vantress gargoyle
Drown in the Loch

I especially am interested to test Drown in the Loch; the flexibility of handling both spells and creatures seems like a neat feature. And filling the opponents graveyard is already handled by the rest of the deck.

The Vantress gargoyle reminds a bit about Jace's Phantasm; however in this case it already starts big. Can this one perhaps be a beater in the mill deck? Sideboard in when milling library isn't a viable wincon?

Gargoyle is interesting. It's bigger from the beginning, but it also can't attack and may not be able to block, so that may not be more useful than Jace's Phantasm.

IMO the most valuable card from the set is Mystic Sanctuary, which can stack another tutor or mill spell on top of your library. It works well in the fetchland/Crab build.



//Creatures: 8
4 Hedron Crab
4 Baleful Strix

//Spells: 32
4 Archive Trap
4 Force of Will
4 Brainstorm
4 Visions of Beyond
4 Scheming Symmetry
4 Thoughtseize
3 Glimpse the Unthinkable
2 Mission Briefing
2 Trapmaker's Snare
1 Toxic Deluge

//Lands: 20
4 Ghost Quarter
4 Polluted Delta
4 Misty Rainforest
3 Underground Sea
2 Island
1 Swamp
1 Tropical Island
1 Mystic Sanctuary

//Sideboard: 15
3 Abrupt Decay
3 Surgical Extraction
2 Force of Negation
2 Plague Engineer
1 Ravenous Trap
1 Mindbreak Trap
1 Whiplash Trap
1 Mind Funeral
1 Brain Freeze


If there's room for more creatures, the first one should probably be Snapcaster Mage.

Then for beatdown plan B Thing in the Ice might even be better than Jace's Phantasm (which is better than Gargoyle in a deck where every effect mills at least 10 cards). Thing at least manages their board too, aside from being a dumb beater.

Scheming Symmetry has a lot of synergy here and is an automatic 4-of Imperial Seal:

• With Hedron Crab: tutor for any card you need, play a land and mill opponent's card
• With cantrip: tutor for Archive Trap, cantrip, then Trap away their card and 12 more for 0
• With Mission Briefing: tutor for Archive Trap, cast Briefing to surveil it into your GY and cast it for 0
• With Archive Trap/Snare/Glimpse in hand: tutor for anything, then mill them
• With Surgical Extraction: tutor for anything, then extract something good from their GY and reshuffle their card
• With Ghost Quarter: Strip Mine their land, forcing them to decide whether it's worth it to lose the land or lose the tutored card... Even better if you mill them anyway after

It's not the worst idea to have mesmeric orb. Crushes that Karn deck.

Unless there is some combo I'm missing, the main reason to run Orb would be to make Scheming Symmetry 1-sided, not for the actual cards milled.

To be worth 2 mana it needs to mill more than 10-13 cards. How often will it do that before you die unless you're playing a very slow control deck?

After some testing the deck needs more gas in game 1.


//Draw: 19
4 Scheming Symmetry
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
3 Visions of Beyond
2 Trapmaker's Snare
2 Mission Briefing

//Mill: 14
4 Archive Trap
4 Hedron Crab
4 Glimpse the Unthinkable
2 Ashiok, Dream Render

//Protection: 8
4 Force of Will
4 Thoughtseize

//Lands: 19
3 Ghost Quarter
4 Polluted Delta
4 Misty Rainforest
3 Underground Sea
2 Island
1 Swamp
1 Tropical Island
1 Mystic Sanctuary

//Sideboard:
1 Ravenous Trap
1 Mindbreak Trap
1 Whiplash Trap
1 Brain Freeze
2 Plague Engineer
1 Toxic Deluge
2 Force of Negation
3 Abrupt Decay
3 Surgical Extraction


Notes:
-4 Brainstorm + 4 Ponder badly needed for consistency
-Visions of Beyond often does nothing, so 3 copies is enough
-Ghost Quarter was bad in multiples, too much card disadvantage and colorless mana
-Hedron Crab eats removal quickly, sometimes the easiest thing to board out
-more Glimpse and Ashiok added to have more mill power
-Symmetry was never symmetrical. This deck has redundant ways to break it.

Strongly considering SB plan of 4 Leyline of the Void + 2 Helm of Obedience (-2 Briefing, -3 Visions, -1 Snare). No one will expect it. Leyline is important to beat GY decks. Scheming Symmetry/cantrips can find Helm FTW.

Isn't Ashiok going to stop your Archive Trap from working? It seems like you're invalidating one of your best mill cards with her.

Ashiok, Dream Render only stops search effects controlled by the opponent, not ones controlled by you. Scheming Symmetry and Ghost Quarter still turn on Trap.

Ashiok only stops the "natural" traps, when they fetch or tutor. In my playtesting people play around Archive Trap (e.g. don't crack their fetchlands, or wait and crack them the same turn you use GQ/Scheming, or wait and crack multiple fetches all in one turn). They can afford to play slow since I have very little clock without Archive Trap. Most Trapping happens when I turn it on, not when they turn it on, so Ashiok doesn't change much. If they are forced to crack a fetch, it's usually turns 1 and 2 before Ashiok would land.

Archive Trap is still the most explosive tool and worth building around. But because they can play around it, I need alternate angles of attack. Ashiok helps with that. It's a single card that can take out a lot of library, disrupts the opponent, distracts attackers, and acts as MD gravehate. Its biggest drawback is shutting down Visions, but that beats losing the game to graveyard threats.

Testing these changes:
-4 Hedron Crab (moved to SB)
+2 Force of Negation (from SB)
+1 Ravenous Trap (from SB)
+1 Toxic Deluge (from SB)

Hedron Crab eats removal too easily, while the maindeck lacks ways to interact with the opponent. This gives me more game 1 interaction and blanks their creature removal. Then G2/3 when they board out removal and start playing around Archive Trap, I can board in Crabs to get another angle of attack.

Cool to see that you are still testing the deck!
Has anyone tried the list that I posted on the first page?

What do you guys think about Narset's Reversal?
scheming into trap into narsets into trap into Mission briefing into trap. mill 39 for 5 mana.

After seeing Tyler Marklyn's lists, this is where I want to be
https://www.mtgtop8.com/event?e=18376&d=314083&f=LE



//Spells: 42
4 Archive Trap
4 Force of Will
4 Daze
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Visions of Beyond
4 Scheming Symmetry
4 Surgical Extraction
4 Brain Freeze
4 Glimpse the Unthinkable
1 Dead of Winter
1 Murderous Cut

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

//Sideboard: 15
4 Hedron Crab
2 Brazen Borrower
2 Ensnaring Bridge
2 Force of Negation
1 Fatal Push
1 Liliana's Triumph
1 Flusterstorm
1 Spell Pierce
1 Ashiok, Dream Render



The reactive free spells FoW, Daze and Surgical help set up storm turns for Brain Freeze on top of interacting with the opponent.

I still think Hedron Crab eats removal too easily and is a better as a postboard surprise, but maybe you need it main to increase the G1 win%.

I kept 2 Ghost Quarter because I find players play around Archive Trap and Tyler's videos show him stuck with Traps he can't cast.

Sideboard is still up in the air. Brazen Borrower helps answer problem permanents UB struggles with while doubling as a win condition/PW killer.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Valech

What do you guys think about Narset's Reversal?
scheming into trap into narsets into trap into Mission briefing into trap. mill 39 for 5 mana.

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Not sold on it. It's just a weird Twincast.

Trapmaker's Snare does the exact same thing for the same mana in that situation, but it can also help when you don't have any Traps in hand. Narset's Reversal only does something when there's a spell on the stack.

If they FoW/Pierce the original Trap, both Narset's Reversal AND Trap get countered (nothing gets copied, nothing goes back to your hand). That's awkward.

I am still testing this deck, but I have next to no time for big events and tournaments.

I found a singleton Bitter Ordeal to be a deadly Card against permanent heavy decks and Combo decks. Sadly, it is 1 Mana too expensive to stay in the deck :/ It´s just a good Feeling to Play Archive + Ordeal and mill 13 and then another 13 specific Cards.

Is this deck viable?

I lost interest when Breach was a strictly better mill deck and then Companions took over, but maybe this is worth exploring again.

Scheming Symmetry is a 1-sided tutor with mill effects, and even better with cantrips to get the card immediately. It also turns on Archive Trap.

Between that and Visions of Beyond and Brainstorm, the deck has a lot of ability to dig into relevant cards.

There's also Vantress Gargoyle and Jace's Phantasm for a SB man plan.