I really want to make a deck with Mesmeric Orb. I'm a casual player at heart and love building decks with interesting or underused cards, but I also like my decks to be efficient, so I'm really looking to build something that can run fine without Mesmeric Orb in play or can find it efficiently constantly. At the moment I'm leaning towards making a double edged mill deck with Psychic Spiral as the finisher, but I'm still trying to figure out how I can make the deck work consistently. I made an incomplete deck with some cards I have laying around and would love any feedback you guys have. I need some protection and a way to self-mill constantly and use my graveyard as a resource as well as graveyard recursion options.
As you can see it's a little mill focused right now. I'm debating if I want to focus on mill or if it would be better to put this in a control shell and throw in a few cards to tutor for my combo pieces. Any suggestions are welcome. If you guys have a completely different build that you'd like to share using the orb I'm all up for hearing about it.
I've found Chill of Foreboding to be mostly sub-par. Milling 5 for 2U is most of the time rather meh compared to the continuous mill provided by Mesmeric Orb. 7U for Flashback is far too much to ever see use. I do have a not yet finished "mill everyone"-deck, and when I tried out the Chill of Foreboding, I never once reached 8 mana. Ghoulcaller's Bell seems like a much more promising option in the long run.
Rootwater Diver can recur both of those artifacts if need be.
Should you decide to run a lot of flashback cards, Runic Repetition might be viable as well.
A few questions. Is it mono blue aside from artifacts? Also what's your budget like? If you run alternate colors with dual lands you can run a recursion package with cards like Unburial Rites. Just wondering.
A card you may definitely wish to consider is Muddle the Mixture. It's one of my favorite tutors as it has dual functions in decks that run it. Spellskite may also be considered to protect your orb.
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1. Try to run playsets of cards (meaning 4 of a card). This way your deck will win more consistently and you will draw your better cards more often.
2. Make sure to focus your deck on one single idea that can win you the game and make sure all the cards in your deck contribute to that idea. You have a limited number of cards so make sure all of them count. For example, your deck could be a Elf Tribal deck, an Aggro aggressive deck or maybe a Control deck.
3. Card advantage is very important. You need to understand that cards the draw you more cards are extremely helpful. The more cards you have in your hand the more options you have. With more options you have a greater chance at winning the game.
4. Removal is also quite important. Most decks more or less should run at least some removal.
5. Last but not least, make sure your deck is exactly 60 cards! Even 61 is not acceptable. Good luck in deck building!
In my multi-player group we had one person run a mesmeric orb deck, if you really want to get into all the mill, great cards are some like Fog Bank, Tezzeret the seeker, and Copy artifact. With Copy artifact alone you go from having access to 4 orbs to having access to 8. You will also want to run Elixir of Immortality, you can search it out with Tezzeret and it gains you life. Also, with my experience, you don't want to mill yourself, just hold back and wait till you have a few orbs out, protect yourself and Tezzeret with Fog Bank, and wait out your opponent.
(EDIT) You also want cards like Propaganda so they are forced to tap when they want to attack, only to hit a few Fog Banks.
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Lots of great suggestions! Things have unexpectedly become a little busy for me lately so I may not have as much time as I thought to work on this deck anymore, but I'm still interested in working something out.
Quote from BladewingX »
I've found Chill of Foreboding to be mostly sub-par. Milling 5 for 2U is most of the time rather meh compared to the continuous mill provided by Mesmeric Orb. 7U for Flashback is far too much to ever see use. I do have a not yet finished "mill everyone"-deck, and when I tried out the Chill of Foreboding, I never once reached 8 mana.
Ghoulcaller's Bell seems like a much more promising option in the long run.
I kind of considered Chill of Foreboding as Mesmeric Orbs 5-8, but as a 1 (or 2) shot effect. My hope with playing them is that with the 5 cards I mill I'd be able to dig deeper into my deck, possibly into a Mesmeric Orb that I could recur somehow. Agree that it looks to be a bit underwhelming, maybe I'll cut it down to 2 copies for now and see how it works. I think Ghoulcaller's Bell would be too slow for what I'm trying to accomplish
Quote from Imovefasteronmyown »
A few questions. Is it mono blue aside from artifacts? Also what's your budget like? If you run alternate colors with dual lands you can run a recursion package with cards like Unburial Rites. Just wondering.
A card you may definitely wish to consider is Muddle the Mixture. It's one of my favorite tutors as it has dual functions in decks that run it. Spellskite may also be considered to protect your orb.
Definitely thinking of adding more colors. I don't have an actual budget, but I try to keep my decks within a reasonable price (i.e. under $500). I wouldn't be buying dual lands for this deck, so it may be difficult for me to extend past 2 or 3 colors. I'm not too worried about the cost of the mana base at the moment though. Unburial Rites is a good consideration. I like your suggestions of Muddle the Mixture and Spellskite. Will definitely try and fit those two cards in the deck.
Quote from Bobbert Zhubert »
Aphetto Alchemist can be used to untap himself and than you can completely mill yourself than Psychic Spiral for the win.
Someone suggested Basalt Monolith which seems like a better choice with the build I'm leaning towards. Will keep this in mind though if my deck takes a different direction. Thanks for the suggestion!
Quote from slave »
Lookup the deck "Booberry"
FYI;
Mesmeric Orb & Basalt Monolith = Library > Graveyard
3-4x Narcomoeba & Dread Return = Angel of Glory's Rise = Laboratory Maniac & Azami, Lady of Scrolls = WIN!
Build in some Fabricate with typical blue filter and a single Phantasmagorian to drop combo pieces in hand, and you're set.
Have fun.
I've seen that deck before, though with the cephalid/shuko combo instead. No idea it could work with orb/monolith as well. I'm generally not big on netdecking as I prefer to come up with my own original ideas. I'm also not big on combo decks that have key cards that don't do anything for you without the other pieces. I like the idea of the deck though since it's accomplishing the same thing I'm trying to accomplish so I'll look into borrowing some elements from it.
Quote from Greywolf »
In my multi-player group we had one person run a mesmeric orb deck, if you really want to get into all the mill, great cards are some like Fog Bank, Tezzeret the seeker, and Copy artifact. With Copy artifact alone you go from having access to 4 orbs to having access to 8. You will also want to run Elixir of Immortality, you can search it out with Tezzeret and it gains you life. Also, with my experience, you don't want to mill yourself, just hold back and wait till you have a few orbs out, protect yourself and Tezzeret with Fog Bank, and wait out your opponent.
(EDIT) You also want cards like Propaganda so they are forced to tap when they want to attack, only to hit a few Fog Banks.
I thought about making a control build and adding more support for mill with cards like Memory Erosion. At the moment I think I'm more focused on a build that can take advantage of my own graveyard but if I feel it's too clunky for my own taste then I'll probably look into a build more like what you described. Thanks for the suggestions!
Quote from Selvaxri »
I'd say Mind over Matter + Telekinetic Bonds, but that's an absurdly costly combo for basically "1U, discard a card: Mill 2."
Possibly Awakening if you want to add green. Jangling Autmaton, Thundermare, Shrieking Mogg could be interesting against creature based decks.
Turnabout and Breaking Wave could come handy.
Some interesting synergies but I don't like how a lot of them are dependent on Mesmeric Orb. They seem too clunky without it. Awakening could be interesting if I decide to throw in a playset of Chronic Flooding.
Based on some of the suggestions I think I'm going to try and go with a build centered around milling myself and recurring artifacts like Mesmeric Orb, Basalt Monolith, and Spellskite. I'm thinking Life from the Loam can help here with a few copies of Buried Ruin. Not sure how effective it would be in practice. I'll see if I can perhaps get a decklist up later this week.
What about Gaea's Blessing? If you mill it into your graveyard you get all the cards back to your library, which allows you to play multiple Mesmeric Orb without worrying about milling yourself dry.
What about Gaea's Blessing? If you mill it into your graveyard you get all the cards back to your library, which allows you to play multiple Mesmeric Orb without worrying about milling yourself dry.
Well, considering that I'm aiming to make Psychic Spiral my win condition, I'm not too worried about milling myself
Dreamborn Muse comes to mind as a similar symmetric mill card. If you want to go the tap opponent's stuff route then Gulf Squid does that, but so does Mana Short and Drain Power. You can also run cards like Windfall and Memory Jar as Draw 7s. Works well with reanimation too.
Tutors to find them + some assd removal/permission. And then the Eldrazi Titans to keep from milling myself. It was ok. Tossing in so much prison, it wasn't particularly popular. It was reasonably effective though.
Foiled out the 4x Orbs though, that was pretty tight.
4x Chill of Foreboding
2x Psychic Spiral
2x Mystic Retrieval
1x Increasing Confusion
As you can see it's a little mill focused right now. I'm debating if I want to focus on mill or if it would be better to put this in a control shell and throw in a few cards to tutor for my combo pieces. Any suggestions are welcome. If you guys have a completely different build that you'd like to share using the orb I'm all up for hearing about it.
Ghoulcaller's Bell seems like a much more promising option in the long run.
Rootwater Diver can recur both of those artifacts if need be.
Should you decide to run a lot of flashback cards, Runic Repetition might be viable as well.
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A card you may definitely wish to consider is Muddle the Mixture. It's one of my favorite tutors as it has dual functions in decks that run it. Spellskite may also be considered to protect your orb.
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1. Try to run playsets of cards (meaning 4 of a card). This way your deck will win more consistently and you will draw your better cards more often.
2. Make sure to focus your deck on one single idea that can win you the game and make sure all the cards in your deck contribute to that idea. You have a limited number of cards so make sure all of them count. For example, your deck could be a Elf Tribal deck, an Aggro aggressive deck or maybe a Control deck.
3. Card advantage is very important. You need to understand that cards the draw you more cards are extremely helpful. The more cards you have in your hand the more options you have. With more options you have a greater chance at winning the game.
4. Removal is also quite important. Most decks more or less should run at least some removal.
5. Last but not least, make sure your deck is exactly 60 cards! Even 61 is not acceptable. Good luck in deck building!
FYI;
Mesmeric Orb & Basalt Monolith = Library > Graveyard
3-4x Narcomoeba & Dread Return = Angel of Glory's Rise = Laboratory Maniac & Azami, Lady of Scrolls = WIN!
Build in some Fabricate with typical blue filter and a single Phantasmagorian to drop combo pieces in hand, and you're set.
Have fun.
(EDIT) You also want cards like Propaganda so they are forced to tap when they want to attack, only to hit a few Fog Banks.
Possibly Awakening if you want to add green. Jangling Autmaton, Thundermare, Shrieking Mogg could be interesting against creature based decks.
Turnabout and Breaking Wave could come handy.
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"Do ya feel lucky? Because you'd better start runnin' while you still can."
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I kind of considered Chill of Foreboding as Mesmeric Orbs 5-8, but as a 1 (or 2) shot effect. My hope with playing them is that with the 5 cards I mill I'd be able to dig deeper into my deck, possibly into a Mesmeric Orb that I could recur somehow. Agree that it looks to be a bit underwhelming, maybe I'll cut it down to 2 copies for now and see how it works. I think Ghoulcaller's Bell would be too slow for what I'm trying to accomplish
Definitely thinking of adding more colors. I don't have an actual budget, but I try to keep my decks within a reasonable price (i.e. under $500). I wouldn't be buying dual lands for this deck, so it may be difficult for me to extend past 2 or 3 colors. I'm not too worried about the cost of the mana base at the moment though. Unburial Rites is a good consideration. I like your suggestions of Muddle the Mixture and Spellskite. Will definitely try and fit those two cards in the deck.
Someone suggested Basalt Monolith which seems like a better choice with the build I'm leaning towards. Will keep this in mind though if my deck takes a different direction. Thanks for the suggestion!
I've seen that deck before, though with the cephalid/shuko combo instead. No idea it could work with orb/monolith as well. I'm generally not big on netdecking as I prefer to come up with my own original ideas. I'm also not big on combo decks that have key cards that don't do anything for you without the other pieces. I like the idea of the deck though since it's accomplishing the same thing I'm trying to accomplish so I'll look into borrowing some elements from it.
I thought about making a control build and adding more support for mill with cards like Memory Erosion. At the moment I think I'm more focused on a build that can take advantage of my own graveyard but if I feel it's too clunky for my own taste then I'll probably look into a build more like what you described. Thanks for the suggestions!
Some interesting synergies but I don't like how a lot of them are dependent on Mesmeric Orb. They seem too clunky without it. Awakening could be interesting if I decide to throw in a playset of Chronic Flooding.
Based on some of the suggestions I think I'm going to try and go with a build centered around milling myself and recurring artifacts like Mesmeric Orb, Basalt Monolith, and Spellskite. I'm thinking Life from the Loam can help here with a few copies of Buried Ruin. Not sure how effective it would be in practice. I'll see if I can perhaps get a decklist up later this week.
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Well, considering that I'm aiming to make Psychic Spiral my win condition, I'm not too worried about milling myself
It included things like
4x Propaganda
4x Pendrell Mists
4x Power Sink
Tutors to find them + some assd removal/permission. And then the Eldrazi Titans to keep from milling myself. It was ok. Tossing in so much prison, it wasn't particularly popular. It was reasonably effective though.
Foiled out the 4x Orbs though, that was pretty tight.
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