This + thoughtsieze is the reason I think I am going to skip over this card. When you give good players all the perfect information for the entire game it is not good times for you.
Except you can just overwhelm them with card advantage. Play this turn 2-3 and domri on another turn and just go nuts. As long as they have information you have card advantage.
This is kind of where I got when I put this together. Detention sphere and jace help turn ephara while staying close to mono white aggro.
Archangel of thune and azorius charm are both independently good but together win the game
The big problem is he is a 2/1 which makes it har for him to swing through anything. Against control if they have any removal they get to use it, at sorcery speed before you get value off your dude
mill is not a weak deck in general. There's a reason Glimpse the Unthinkable hit more than 20 dollar in magiccards.info M-Price.
You definitely don't play in last season standard to see that the Esper Control win con is Nephalia Drownyard.
But mill need to outrace aggro in the 20-60 race.
And on this deck, untill Supreme Verdict rotates, I think this strategy is not that viable. Unless, of course, your meta doesn't have supreme verdict.
EDIT : Deck which plays supreme verdict is most likely control, and I think mill is a viable option against control, plus, we can count Sphinx Revelation as "voluntarily mill self"
Drown yard control could win with anything though, they only chose mill because it was stuck on a land.
I don't think they could fairly price "Instant: CARDNAME deals X damage to target creature or player, where X is your devotion to red" at any reasonable cost that would see constructed play, so this is the best we're going to get.
Searing blaze needing landfall is rarely relevant in formats with fetchlands as you just fetch and cast it. I see that still being the go to in legacy, though if in a deck like burn (without lavamancer and fetches) then this could be played
Just to clarify that at the end of said article, the author said he cannot "argue with the people who tell us in articles that they’ve observed the thinning effect of fetch lands except to point out that thinning is an extremely difficult thing to see during a game." Basically, he can't say that they are wrong because it is difficult to discern the exact amount of thinning the cards do.
Also, he was mostly referring to Legacy, which has far more burn spells than Standard, and said that "only a suicidally reckless aggro deck can afford 4 life for a card, and those decks can’t afford to wait 20+ turns for it." This is a vastly different area than Type 2.
Using the cards strictly for deck thinning is a bad idea, yes, but the decks that use them do not use them just to thin their deck out, but to ensure that they get the right land as well. Plus they have 2 less cards in the deck: the one they cast and the one they got. That is a total of 8 cards in the end if they run 4 copies of the tutor.
I used to run Evolving Wilds and Terramorphic Expanse to both thin my deck and ensure I got the right type of land I needed. But that was ages ago, it seems.
My point is that the effect if deck thinning is minimal at best to the point of being a non-factor for card evaluation for the most part. It's not truly "irrelevant" but it gets close. In the case of Liliana you would have to keep her alive a long tome before you would get a noticeable difference.
You obviously are highly informed. 2 reasons farseek was played was color fixing and deck thinning. Any avid Jund player from last season could tell you that answer.
Edit: Just to touch base, ignoring a pro side of a card just because you said so is bad logic in general.
Farseek was played because fetching shock lands was awesome especially on turn 2. Deck thinning from removing lands is very marginal unless your removing several or drawing a lot of cards. A lo of statistics have been done for this in legacy regarding fetch lands, land counts and "real" cards drawn.
It is a very minor upside unless Liliana sticks on board for 4-5 turns but it is a upside.
So I've been theory crafting a little bit and came up with this list. The main thing that I want is some more early dudes. the only one I can think of however is tithe drinker which is kind of small for this deck. It doesn't block well but lifelink and extort are awesome.
Normal edh decks can be built primarily with cards you have lying around then spending 50 or so to complete the deck. You won't have a blistering turn 3 or 4 combo deck but you can still have a fairly decent commander. And once it's built you can slowly upgrade the deck.
I don't know what PDH is so I can't offer refrence on that
Because I need to get stuff from my hand to the grave as well as find reanimation spells. Looting does this very effiecently, also the fact that my reanimation is spread between instants sorceries and aura's makes it hard to use cards like trackers instinct
So I'm running a mineoplasm reanimator deck and ideally I want to have looted by turn 2. Creatures or spells work equally well for me. Ideally I'm looking for around 3 more if you guys could help me out.
Except you can just overwhelm them with card advantage. Play this turn 2-3 and domri on another turn and just go nuts. As long as they have information you have card advantage.
This is kind of where I got when I put this together. Detention sphere and jace help turn ephara while staying close to mono white aggro.
Archangel of thune and azorius charm are both independently good but together win the game
Drown yard control could win with anything though, they only chose mill because it was stuck on a land.
I mean fanatic of mogis already does this at a fair cost.
My point is that the effect if deck thinning is minimal at best to the point of being a non-factor for card evaluation for the most part. It's not truly "irrelevant" but it gets close. In the case of Liliana you would have to keep her alive a long tome before you would get a noticeable difference.
The statistics of deck thinning
Farseek was played because fetching shock lands was awesome especially on turn 2. Deck thinning from removing lands is very marginal unless your removing several or drawing a lot of cards. A lo of statistics have been done for this in legacy regarding fetch lands, land counts and "real" cards drawn.
It is a very minor upside unless Liliana sticks on board for 4-5 turns but it is a upside.
it seems pretty bad against midrange and control though. I could definitely see sideboard play but it seems weak in the maindeck play.
4 Desecration Demon
4 Gray Merchant of Asphodel
3 Lifebane Zombie
2 Obzedat, Ghost Council
3 Sin Collector
//Enchantment (2)
2 Underworld Connections
3 Devour Flesh
3 Doom Blade
3 Hero's Downfall
2 Ultimate Price
//Enchantment Artifact (3)
3 Whip of Erebos
//Sorcery (3)
3 Thoughtseize
4 Godless Shrine
2 Mutavault
2 Orzhov Guildgate
3 Plains
10 Swamp
4 Temple of Silence
I don't know what PDH is so I can't offer refrence on that