I haven't played MTG in a long, long time (since 8th grade in the mid Nineties). However, I've got some friends who play regularly and competitively. I'd like to build a deck to play very casually with them, and when I asked, to a person they all said go Commander.
I don't have an interest in spending a lot of money on what will likely be a very casual thing, so they've all suggested starting with (or sticking solely to) one of the premade Commander decks.
If I wanted to go two color UB mill, control, and general trickiness, which one of the decks should I start with?
Commander 2014 mono colors: Peer Through Time (Blue) Sworn to Darkness (Black)?
Commander 2013 three color decks: Eternal Bargain (Blue/Black/White) or Mind Seize (Blue/Black/Red)?
Commander 2011 three color and the only one with blue and black: Devour for Power (Blue/Black/Green)?
Which one should I pick, and what cards - or what type of cards - should I look to pick up to augment and twist it into just a Blue/Black deck?
What I'm looking for:
Budget: Cheap. Just casual, occasional play with friends here.
Card types: Whatever works best for a mill/control style.
Creatures: No fairies if possible. Other than that, not looking for any sort of tribal theme (which I imagine is hard enough to pull off with the 1 Each rule in Commander).
Since I want to go mill/control, from what I've read, Wrexial, the Risen Deep is probably the Commander I should go with. And augment big mill cards for him to play with.
Past that, I'm just in over my head here.
I don't believe there is a way to do this without feeling like you wasted money on something that doesn't work.
Fair enough.
So my options are either stick with one of the premade combinations or spend considerably more money building from scratch? I was assuming - perhaps incorrectly - that starting with one of the premades for a decent price would allow me to get a base of usable cards that I could then build from to get to a UB deck.
You could start with the Devour Power deck to get something that works okay and then drop $30-$50 on some cards to help it along. You'll get a deck that should work okay, but once you give it a few runs through I think you will find it "clunky." That deck will give you a good 3 color land base and 5-6 Mill cards AND a few staples to make things run smoothly. But those things can be bought for way less than the deck will cost you. The pre cons are amazing for the price, but they aren't going to mill people because that's not what they were designed to do... and mill is terrible unless it's all in.
The mill deck in my meta focuses on using the opponents creatures and spells in thier grave with Wrexial at the helm, larvaz, Mimeo and a bunch of others work.
Winning the game is not nessairly via mill but the use of the opponents deck facilitated by the milling.
sardistic sacarment is very important for removing edrazi.. and late game they have used it to remove lands then mind grind people to death.
Try to use cards that do something other just mill, like Geralf from the blue precon which seems ok.. the 2011 precons are hard/expensive to get a hold of now, so it is easier to build the deck from stratch in that case. but the mimeo one of course. I guess jeleva works but the grixis one is the most expensive.
Yeah, just be aware that while it can be fun, mill in Commander is really hard to pull off. If your friends relegate their competitive play to 60-card Magic and enjoy playing underpowered things in EDH, you should be fine. If you sit down at an unknown table, you can honestly probably expect to lose.
Gals is right that none of the pre-cons are really going to give you the best start to a mill deck. Personally, I might go with three color and pick Jeleva, Nephalia's Scourge because simply resolving her a few times puts you well on your way. Unfortunately, it's probably one of the harder pre-cons to obtain. You will probably have better luck brewing a budget list yourself and starting from scratch.
Here's a short list of relatively cheap cards that I'd consider pretty much essential for such a deck:
The most effective mill deck is probably going to feel more like combo than it is control. If you're okay with that, the best ways to win are probably a tuck spell + Tunnel Vision, Hive Mind + Doomsday, or something like that. The one-shot mill effects (even something as efficient as Glimpse the Unthinkable) are just taking out a small fraction of a single opponent's deck. You need strong, repeatable effects.
The mill deck in my meta focuses on using the opponents creatures and spells in thier grave with Wrexial at the helm, larvaz, Mimeo and a bunch of others work.
Winning the game is not nessairly via mill but the use of the opponents deck facilitated by the milling.
The deck was a lot of fun to play. Since mill, commander damage, and zombie token swarm were all reasonable wincons, I could switch strategies over the course of a game. It was always pretty slow and clunky, though.
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Modern: Kiki ChordWBRG
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EDH: Kuon, Ogre AscendantBBB
That's a good point regarding getting mill to work with the large deck sizes of Commander. Also some good ideas on what cards to pick up and how to make it all work.
Since milling is pretty rough on Commnader, what are some other viable UB strategies I can - or should? - pursue? I like the idea of tossing cards into the graveyard via Black cards. But, being so out of touch with the game these days, I don't know how or if that's viable.
Think I'll just suck up the cash, keep reading, and assembling a deck piecemeal and go from there instead of trying to shoehorn a premade deck into working order.
Based on information here, Reddit, and general Google searching (now that I know some of the jargon), I went ahead and ordered thirty cards to start building this thing.
I've got the WIP on TappedOut. Can't post links yet, so search there for "UB Mill, Control, & Graveyard Shennanigans" and you'll find it.
I'd appreciate your feedback on how to keep up the mill/graveyard trickery base I'd like to move toward. I picked up a lot of the cards that got mentioned (save for the expensive and very expensive ones) along with some others I saw that seemed relevant to the deck's theme.
Thirty cards. I'll go pick up thirty basic lands and figure on ten dual lands.
That gives me thirty more to go. I'm not sure what direction I need to go and how to get there. As others have mentioned, it's hard to go hard mill in Commander, and I figure I need at least one backup strategy in the deck, right?
At the very least, I think I need to avail myself of blue's counterspell powers and pick up some cards along those lines. Any suggestions?
I'm not willing to go past $1.99 on a card, and would really prefer to get sub 75 cents if possible.
How do I show the deck here on this forum? I've seen deck lists, but not sure how to use them or insert them into my posts? Is it a syntax thing?
So, here's just a long list in lieu of the fancy format:
Great ideas. I didn't see these before I ordered tonight, but will definitely incorporate some of these that I didn't pick up for the rest of the deck.
Oona, Queen of the Fae is probably my favorite commander for trying to mill down an opponent, because it grants some creature presence through milling. What you do with those creatures is up to you, though. Of course, she's less effective against more colorful decks.
And I totally agree about one-shot mill cards. They usually under-represent unless you are able to recur them, but that's still a quick way to make dead cards in hand.
As it stands, I feel overwhelmed with options. I don't know what I should be building towards.
I've got those base cards I linked to on the way. I've addded everyone's suggestions along with cards I've seen in other UB controlish decks to a list of "Maybe" cards to the deck on TappedOut. But now I've got almost 70 and need to winnow them down (and still sort out my lands situation in a budget friendly manner).
For a non-mill Blue/Black control build, you can make a decent Dralnu, Lich Lord relatively cheap - you will just be missing out on some of the higher end counters & mana fixing for the most part. For this, I would recommend the White/Blue/Black or Blue/Black/Red pre-constructed decks as a starting point. Your primary focus with this kind of deck would be value instant/sorceries, with a combo win condition. Things like Divination and Night's Whisper are very good here, where normally I wouldn't even play them in Commander.
I'm not sure I understand the question - card drawing is a critical resource in M:tG, and one of the most valuable effects in the game. Both Divination and Night's Whisper, along with comparable cards are good and see competitive constructed play (usually in Standard environments). However for Commander, I have found that with the exception of counters & removal, non-repeatable Instant and Sorcery effects tend to loose a lot of value, and I would run things like Phyrexian Arena or Mulldrifter above these - they simply aren't good enough.
In a Dralnu, Lich Lord deck though, this changes because they are repeatable. The comparably minor advantage of exchanging one card for two is now exchanging one card for four, while retaining the low casting cost.
As you build your mill deck, here are a few suggestions that might help. There are some pretty disgusting combos that you can pull off, and being in U/B makes most of those things easily tutorable. You might want to run a lot of the Ravnica block Transmute cards (Dimir Infiltrator, Dimir Machinations, Brainspoil, Perplex, and so forth) as they are dirt cheap, useful in their own right, and can get you an important combo piece for a small investment of mana.
Lantern of Insight - An innocent little artifact which is tutorable with Trinket Mage and Dizzy Spell. This lets you control what cards people are going to draw next. If you see something that could disrupt your combos, mill it into oblivion with one of you other mill cards. Someone mentioned Dakra Mystic, which can serve a similar function. Info from the Lantern can make even a lowly Mindshrieker into a truly horrifying menace
If you are running Phenax, God of Deception as your general or one of the 99, you better put in Eater of the Dead. It is possible for Eater to mill away an entire library in one turn if creature density is sufficient. I once had a 60 card casual deck that utilized the unwieldy Hair-strung Koto for this effect. It worked, but Phenax is a tool which is far more efficient.
Altar of the Brood - This will mill a lot of cards and net you a lot of zombies in combination with Undead Alchemist. It will mill lots of cards from tokens generated with Oona, Queen of the Fae. A note on Hair-Strung Koto - the creatures can be tapped even if they have summoning sickness. This can be very relevant in combination the Undead Alchemist, where milling cards can generate more creatures, which can then lead to more milling.
And speaking of Oona, Queen of the Fae, she combos really well with Illusionist's Bracers to double the milling/token generation. Ashnod's Altar lets you turn each token you generate into 2 more cards to exile on the next activation.
If you are playing Wrexial as your commander, you could consider Whelming Wave. Whispersilk Cloak is a good way to make sure you deal damage to people not playing swamps or islands. Duskmantle Guildmage can pack a punch in a mill deck.
I suggest you make a deck, and start playing it. The more you play, the more you will know what needs to change. You may find that you want to focus more on mill, or more on effects that trigger when you deal combat damage (Blizzard Specter, Hypnotic Specter, Silent-Blade Oni) and cards that make your creatures unblockable (Vela the Night-Clad). You may be more aggressive with your milling or play a controlling deck that wins the long game.
As someone who exclusively plays edh (commander), and also started in the mid nineties, it is the best format! It will remind you of the glory days.
I would recommend looking through the premade decks, and find one in the colors, general idea of what you want, get that, and then modify it.
I would NOT suggest starting from scratch, but I would also suggest against a mill strategy, with one exception I will mention later. The reason mill doesn't usually work well is there are generally eldrazi's around that reshuffle, or other effects that do it, and many decks use their graveyard as a resource, so trying to mill them, unless you can do it QUICKLY, or can nullify what they do, is generally going to be frustrating. The ones I've seen that have worked also tended to be on the pricier side.
The strategy that DOES work well, is helm of obedience. With planar void (hurts you but only costs 1), leyline of the void, and rest in peace (hurts you too), helm of obedience never sends cards to the yard, thus never hits the 1 card to yard, and exiles the entire library. That combo is in a couple of my decks. With all of the black tutors, including the cheaper ones, or more expensive if you want to really get it, you can get the combo, somewhat frequently, and since blue is the strongest color, black being third (I think and will argue green is 2nd best in edh) blue/black can be strong all around, reasonable combo-control decks.
Build it into a solid blue/black general, I like oona, but there are plenty of others. Oona also exiles cards, and is very strong against mono colored decks. Combine oona with big mana/infinite mana generation, and again, you effectively are milling them.
I loved milling back in the day, but remember it is a different format than trying to mill 40 or so cards, with 4 millstones in your deck. Trying to mill 70-80 cards, with not much GOOD redundancy on the mill theme, makes it much harder to pull off.
If this as it sounds, is your first foray into EDH, I really would recommend against milling, as you probably will spend a lot of time (maybe not money) on building it, and probably be rather unsatisfied with the results. I hate it when new players enter the format, try to build the deck they really want, lose a lot, hate the format, and never play it again. It really is the best format, but it is also a format that really can't be built on paper; you need to play something to understand how it works. You can build 60 card decks on paper, and they basically will work, making some slight changes. Every edh deck I build, I start on paper (android app Decked Builder props), and wind up with about 150 cards in it... so get a deck, and modify it.
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I basically only play EDH:
Damia, Jenara, Xiahou Dun, Mareth, Nekusar, Oloro, Kresh, Deretti
I have almost all the good mill cards and have tried building a mill/control deck in UB. Its hard man, and I don't think any of the precons are going to give you really what you need. Devour for power will give you the most I think. Honestly what i've seen work and what im still trying to build respectivly is more of a control deck with strong mill options using Phenax, god of deception or Dralnu, lich lord
I've only just recently entered into EDH so take what I say with a grain of salt. I've also been a huge fan of U/B Mill decks throughout my time with Magic (also started playing in 95') and my one and only EDH is U/B Mill based with Phenax, God of Deception as my Commander. I'll include some cheap combo's below that have helped me win a few games.
Apologies if some of these have been stated above already.
Phenax, God of Deception + Eater of the Dead = Repeatable, free milling. As long as there's a creature in your opponets' graveyard, you can keep the mill going until they're decked.
Hinder + Tunnel Vision = Cheap... yet highly effective. If someone gives you s**t for this, remind them that you're playing a deck that has one of the more difficult win cons.
Phenax, God of Deception + Knacksaw Clique = Theft with a hint of repeatable mill. Can't tell you how much I love this guy. Does a few things and does them well.
Mindcrank + Duskmantle Guildmage = Cheap, infinite damage/mill loop that will make people hate you. Again, we're mill and I feel justified in adding this combo to my own deck. Milling isn't easy.
Guiltfeeder If they don't have an answer for him, you've likely just won (or at least knocked 1 player out)
Consuming Aberration Plays well with milling and can get massive. If you can't get him through for damage due to chump blockers, he'll tap with Phenax and mill big.
Havengul Lich He's a little more than you said you wanted to pay but believe me when I tell you that he's worth his weight in gold. He allows us to cast critters out of ANY graveyard, including your own. Great way to get Eater of the Dead back (because he IS gonna draw the hate). Don't forget that he gets that creature's abilities as well! EDH is all about nasty creature abilities. This fella is an All-Star.
Alter of Dementia Also a touch pricey but it serves to "go over the top" with milling. It allows for a good deal of value when your enenmy drops a board cleaner or spot removal. Go ahead and sac that 33/33 Mortivore or Nighthowler or Wight of Precinct Six or Bonehoard and hit their library. I recommend getting some of the mentioned creatures into your deck as well.
Some other cards you might want to consider...
Lightning Greaves Keep that creature you just summoned alive for a few turns and allows you to tap it for mill the same turn it comes out. A must have for EDH
Decree of Pain Board Wipes are key. Might as well draw some cards while you're at it.
Thousand Year Elixir Let's your creatures (or any permanent) tap for mill the turn it comes out.
Hope this helps some and wasn't redundant. Good luck!
Spent a lot of time this past weekend doing a lot of reading and referencing things, making multiple trips to the store to pick up better cards, raiding friends' extensive card collections, and generally trying to get a handle on a viable UB deck (I'm stubborn, I know).
That said, I think I've got a good number of viable cards and wincons here, but now I'm over the 99 card limit and at a loss as to what is worth keeping and what I should toss. At this point, I'm done purchasing and acquiring cards; this is what I've got to work with.
My goal is ramp up my mana, then start chucking cards into graveyards to power certain creatures and sorcery cards - and keep enough Blue counters and Black removal cards to keep people's attention away from me while I set things up.
If you could take a look at my deck here and offer some suggestions on what to cut (there has already been some helpful suggestions in this thread), I'd really appreciate it:
Are there any artifacts or enchantments that deal damage for milled cards. I'm running a sub mill theme in my nekusar deck but dont have anything that takes life for it. Would like to find something
Are there any artifacts or enchantments that deal damage for milled cards. I'm running a sub mill theme in my nekusar deck but dont have anything that takes life for it. Would like to find something
I haven't found anything directly; it all is combo stuff that it takes to setup.
But I'm a noob; don't take my word for it.
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I don't have an interest in spending a lot of money on what will likely be a very casual thing, so they've all suggested starting with (or sticking solely to) one of the premade Commander decks.
If I wanted to go two color UB mill, control, and general trickiness, which one of the decks should I start with?
What I'm looking for:
Past that, I'm just in over my head here.
WUBRGPauper Battle BoxWUBRG ... and why I am not a fan of Wayne Reynolds' Illustrations.
Fair enough.
So my options are either stick with one of the premade combinations or spend considerably more money building from scratch? I was assuming - perhaps incorrectly - that starting with one of the premades for a decent price would allow me to get a base of usable cards that I could then build from to get to a UB deck.
WUBRGPauper Battle BoxWUBRG ... and why I am not a fan of Wayne Reynolds' Illustrations.
Winning the game is not nessairly via mill but the use of the opponents deck facilitated by the milling.
sardistic sacarment is very important for removing edrazi.. and late game they have used it to remove lands then mind grind people to death.
Try to use cards that do something other just mill, like Geralf from the blue precon which seems ok.. the 2011 precons are hard/expensive to get a hold of now, so it is easier to build the deck from stratch in that case. but the mimeo one of course. I guess jeleva works but the grixis one is the most expensive.
Pioneer:UR Pheonix
Modern:U Mono U Tron
EDH
GB Glissa, the traitor: Army of Cans
UW Dragonlord Ojutai: Dragonlord NOjutai
UWGDerevi, Empyrial Tactician "you cannot fight the storm"
R Zirilan of the claw. The solution to every problem is dragons
UB Etrata, the Silencer Cloning assassination
Peasant cube: Cards I own
Gals is right that none of the pre-cons are really going to give you the best start to a mill deck. Personally, I might go with three color and pick Jeleva, Nephalia's Scourge because simply resolving her a few times puts you well on your way. Unfortunately, it's probably one of the harder pre-cons to obtain. You will probably have better luck brewing a budget list yourself and starting from scratch.
Here's a short list of relatively cheap cards that I'd consider pretty much essential for such a deck:
Under $1:
Dreamborn Muse
Sadistic Sacrament
Trinket Mage
Tormod's Crypt
Scrabbling Claws
Relic of Progenitus
Under $5:
Sol Ring
Archive Trap
Consuming Aberration
Jace, Memory Adept
Memory Erosion
Mind Grind
Keening Stone
Jester's Cap
Mesmeric Orb
The most effective mill deck is probably going to feel more like combo than it is control. If you're okay with that, the best ways to win are probably a tuck spell + Tunnel Vision, Hive Mind + Doomsday, or something like that. The one-shot mill effects (even something as efficient as Glimpse the Unthinkable) are just taking out a small fraction of a single opponent's deck. You need strong, repeatable effects.
Hope that helps.
Draft my Peasant Cube.
I played Lazav, Dimir Mastermind this way. Traumatize a green player, Lazav becomes a Seedborn Muse, then mill everyone for buckets of cards with Sands of Delirium.
The deck was a lot of fun to play. Since mill, commander damage, and zombie token swarm were all reasonable wincons, I could switch strategies over the course of a game. It was always pretty slow and clunky, though.
Modern: Kiki ChordWBRG
TokensWB
EDH: Kuon, Ogre AscendantBBB
#FreeContractfromBelow
That's a good point regarding getting mill to work with the large deck sizes of Commander. Also some good ideas on what cards to pick up and how to make it all work.
Since milling is pretty rough on Commnader, what are some other viable UB strategies I can - or should? - pursue? I like the idea of tossing cards into the graveyard via Black cards. But, being so out of touch with the game these days, I don't know how or if that's viable.
Think I'll just suck up the cash, keep reading, and assembling a deck piecemeal and go from there instead of trying to shoehorn a premade deck into working order.
Although you won't win by decking. You get the benefit of using milled cards.
Based on information here, Reddit, and general Google searching (now that I know some of the jargon), I went ahead and ordered thirty cards to start building this thing.
I've got the WIP on TappedOut. Can't post links yet, so search there for "UB Mill, Control, & Graveyard Shennanigans" and you'll find it.
I'd appreciate your feedback on how to keep up the mill/graveyard trickery base I'd like to move toward. I picked up a lot of the cards that got mentioned (save for the expensive and very expensive ones) along with some others I saw that seemed relevant to the deck's theme.
Thirty cards. I'll go pick up thirty basic lands and figure on ten dual lands.
That gives me thirty more to go. I'm not sure what direction I need to go and how to get there. As others have mentioned, it's hard to go hard mill in Commander, and I figure I need at least one backup strategy in the deck, right?
At the very least, I think I need to avail myself of blue's counterspell powers and pick up some cards along those lines. Any suggestions?
I'm not willing to go past $1.99 on a card, and would really prefer to get sub 75 cents if possible.
How do I show the deck here on this forum? I've seen deck lists, but not sure how to use them or insert them into my posts? Is it a syntax thing?
So, here's just a long list in lieu of the fancy format:
Great ideas. I didn't see these before I ordered tonight, but will definitely incorporate some of these that I didn't pick up for the rest of the deck.
And I totally agree about one-shot mill cards. They usually under-represent unless you are able to recur them, but that's still a quick way to make dead cards in hand.
Edit: Oh, nevermind, Wrexial wants to cast stuff from opposing graveyards.
Diluvian Primordial
Undead Alchemist
Altar of Dementia
all seem like good includes.
As it stands, I feel overwhelmed with options. I don't know what I should be building towards.
I've got those base cards I linked to on the way. I've addded everyone's suggestions along with cards I've seen in other UB controlish decks to a list of "Maybe" cards to the deck on TappedOut. But now I've got almost 70 and need to winnow them down (and still sort out my lands situation in a budget friendly manner).
http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/ub-mill-control-graveyard-shennanigans/
Any ideas on where to go with this?
A Dying Wish
To Rise Again
Chainer, Dementia Master
Muldrotha, the Gravetide
Atraxa, Praetors' Voice
In my ignorance, is there a hidden value to drawing yourself beyond simply getting more cards into your hand?
In a Dralnu, Lich Lord deck though, this changes because they are repeatable. The comparably minor advantage of exchanging one card for two is now exchanging one card for four, while retaining the low casting cost.
A Dying Wish
To Rise Again
Chainer, Dementia Master
Muldrotha, the Gravetide
Atraxa, Praetors' Voice
Lantern of Insight - An innocent little artifact which is tutorable with Trinket Mage and Dizzy Spell. This lets you control what cards people are going to draw next. If you see something that could disrupt your combos, mill it into oblivion with one of you other mill cards. Someone mentioned Dakra Mystic, which can serve a similar function. Info from the Lantern can make even a lowly Mindshrieker into a truly horrifying menace
If you are running Phenax, God of Deception as your general or one of the 99, you better put in Eater of the Dead. It is possible for Eater to mill away an entire library in one turn if creature density is sufficient. I once had a 60 card casual deck that utilized the unwieldy Hair-strung Koto for this effect. It worked, but Phenax is a tool which is far more efficient.
Altar of the Brood - This will mill a lot of cards and net you a lot of zombies in combination with Undead Alchemist. It will mill lots of cards from tokens generated with Oona, Queen of the Fae. A note on Hair-Strung Koto - the creatures can be tapped even if they have summoning sickness. This can be very relevant in combination the Undead Alchemist, where milling cards can generate more creatures, which can then lead to more milling.
And speaking of Oona, Queen of the Fae, she combos really well with Illusionist's Bracers to double the milling/token generation. Ashnod's Altar lets you turn each token you generate into 2 more cards to exile on the next activation.
Hope this helps, and good luck!
I suggest you make a deck, and start playing it. The more you play, the more you will know what needs to change. You may find that you want to focus more on mill, or more on effects that trigger when you deal combat damage (Blizzard Specter, Hypnotic Specter, Silent-Blade Oni) and cards that make your creatures unblockable (Vela the Night-Clad). You may be more aggressive with your milling or play a controlling deck that wins the long game.
8.RG Green Devotion Ramp/Combo 9.UR Draw Triggers 10.WUR Group stalling 11.WUR Voltron Spellslinger 12.WB Sacrificial Shenanigans
13.BR Creatureless Panharmonicon 14.BR Pingers and Eldrazi 15.URG Untapped Cascading
16.Reyhan, last of the Abzan's WUBG +1/+1 Counter Craziness 17.WUBRG Dragons aka Why did I make this?
Building: The Gitrog Monster lands, Glissa the Traitor stax, Muldrotha, the Gravetide Planeswalker Combo, Kydele, Chosen of Kruphix + Sidar Kondo of Jamuraa Clues, and Tribal Scarecrow Planeswalkers
I would recommend looking through the premade decks, and find one in the colors, general idea of what you want, get that, and then modify it.
I would NOT suggest starting from scratch, but I would also suggest against a mill strategy, with one exception I will mention later. The reason mill doesn't usually work well is there are generally eldrazi's around that reshuffle, or other effects that do it, and many decks use their graveyard as a resource, so trying to mill them, unless you can do it QUICKLY, or can nullify what they do, is generally going to be frustrating. The ones I've seen that have worked also tended to be on the pricier side.
The strategy that DOES work well, is helm of obedience. With planar void (hurts you but only costs 1), leyline of the void, and rest in peace (hurts you too), helm of obedience never sends cards to the yard, thus never hits the 1 card to yard, and exiles the entire library. That combo is in a couple of my decks. With all of the black tutors, including the cheaper ones, or more expensive if you want to really get it, you can get the combo, somewhat frequently, and since blue is the strongest color, black being third (I think and will argue green is 2nd best in edh) blue/black can be strong all around, reasonable combo-control decks.
Build it into a solid blue/black general, I like oona, but there are plenty of others. Oona also exiles cards, and is very strong against mono colored decks. Combine oona with big mana/infinite mana generation, and again, you effectively are milling them.
I loved milling back in the day, but remember it is a different format than trying to mill 40 or so cards, with 4 millstones in your deck. Trying to mill 70-80 cards, with not much GOOD redundancy on the mill theme, makes it much harder to pull off.
If this as it sounds, is your first foray into EDH, I really would recommend against milling, as you probably will spend a lot of time (maybe not money) on building it, and probably be rather unsatisfied with the results. I hate it when new players enter the format, try to build the deck they really want, lose a lot, hate the format, and never play it again. It really is the best format, but it is also a format that really can't be built on paper; you need to play something to understand how it works. You can build 60 card decks on paper, and they basically will work, making some slight changes. Every edh deck I build, I start on paper (android app Decked Builder props), and wind up with about 150 cards in it... so get a deck, and modify it.
Damia, Jenara, Xiahou Dun, Mareth, Nekusar, Oloro, Kresh, Deretti
Apologies if some of these have been stated above already.
Phenax, God of Deception + Eater of the Dead = Repeatable, free milling. As long as there's a creature in your opponets' graveyard, you can keep the mill going until they're decked.
Hinder + Tunnel Vision = Cheap... yet highly effective. If someone gives you s**t for this, remind them that you're playing a deck that has one of the more difficult win cons.
Traumatize and/or Keening Stone, Mind Grind + Duskmantle Guildmage = Mana Intensive combo that hits like a ton of bricks.
Phenax, God of Deception + Knacksaw Clique = Theft with a hint of repeatable mill. Can't tell you how much I love this guy. Does a few things and does them well.
Mindcrank + Duskmantle Guildmage = Cheap, infinite damage/mill loop that will make people hate you. Again, we're mill and I feel justified in adding this combo to my own deck. Milling isn't easy.
Guiltfeeder If they don't have an answer for him, you've likely just won (or at least knocked 1 player out)
Consuming Aberration Plays well with milling and can get massive. If you can't get him through for damage due to chump blockers, he'll tap with Phenax and mill big.
Havengul Lich He's a little more than you said you wanted to pay but believe me when I tell you that he's worth his weight in gold. He allows us to cast critters out of ANY graveyard, including your own. Great way to get Eater of the Dead back (because he IS gonna draw the hate). Don't forget that he gets that creature's abilities as well! EDH is all about nasty creature abilities. This fella is an All-Star.
Alter of Dementia Also a touch pricey but it serves to "go over the top" with milling. It allows for a good deal of value when your enenmy drops a board cleaner or spot removal. Go ahead and sac that 33/33 Mortivore or Nighthowler or Wight of Precinct Six or Bonehoard and hit their library. I recommend getting some of the mentioned creatures into your deck as well.
Some other cards you might want to consider...
Lightning Greaves Keep that creature you just summoned alive for a few turns and allows you to tap it for mill the same turn it comes out. A must have for EDH
Decree of Pain Board Wipes are key. Might as well draw some cards while you're at it.
Thousand Year Elixir Let's your creatures (or any permanent) tap for mill the turn it comes out.
Hope this helps some and wasn't redundant. Good luck!
Spent a lot of time this past weekend doing a lot of reading and referencing things, making multiple trips to the store to pick up better cards, raiding friends' extensive card collections, and generally trying to get a handle on a viable UB deck (I'm stubborn, I know).
That said, I think I've got a good number of viable cards and wincons here, but now I'm over the 99 card limit and at a loss as to what is worth keeping and what I should toss. At this point, I'm done purchasing and acquiring cards; this is what I've got to work with.
My goal is ramp up my mana, then start chucking cards into graveyards to power certain creatures and sorcery cards - and keep enough Blue counters and Black removal cards to keep people's attention away from me while I set things up.
If you could take a look at my deck here and offer some suggestions on what to cut (there has already been some helpful suggestions in this thread), I'd really appreciate it:
UB Graveyard Hijinks
I haven't found anything directly; it all is combo stuff that it takes to setup.
But I'm a noob; don't take my word for it.