Eight Crab - The new Mill.

[t000]

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

Hedron Crab
- Our hero.
Ruin Crab
- Our hero.
- Dodges hexproof by generalising targets "each opponent": Leyline/Veil etc.
Vantress Gargoyle
Jace's Phantasm
Hedron Crab
Thieves' Guild Enforcer
Snapcaster Mage
Phenax, God of Deception
Walking Atlas
Bruvac the Grandiloquent

Enchantment

Leyline of the Void
Rest in Peace
Teferi's Tutelage
Fraying Sanity
Drowned Secrets
Psychic Corrosion
Sphinx's Tutelage

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.

Creature (2)
2 Blinking Spirit
Sorcery (6)
1 Balance
4 Wrath of God
1 Recall
Instant (13)
4 Disenchant
4 Swords to Plowshares
4 Counterspell
1 Deflection
Artifact (11)
3 Millstone
1 Feldon's Cane
2 Fountain of Youth
2 Icy Manipulator
1 Ivory Tower
1 Jayemdae Tome
1 Zuran Orb
Enchantment (6)
2 Hallowed Ground
2 Land Tax
2 Control Magic
Land (24)
1 Wizards' School
4 Island
4 Adarkar Wastes
4 Mishra's Factory
7 Plains
1 Ruins of Trokair
1 Strip Mine
2 Svyelunite Temple
Sideboard
1 Control Magic
2 Aeolipile
1 Jester's Cap
2 Serrated Arrows
2 Circle of Protection: Red
1 Divine Offering
2 Hydroblast
2 Sea Sprite

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

• Running the Numbers on Teferi's Tutelage (Redit): https://www.reddit.com/r/lrcast/comm...eris_tutelage/
• ThatMillGuy (YouTube): https://www.youtube.com/c/ThatMillGuyShaf
• Star City Games: https://articles.starcitygames.com/p...rus-in-modern/ *modern

VIII. Contributors

Special thanks to @Ralf @FTW and @Zoid

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