This has been requested a number of times by now, so since I have some time between rounds in this sealed event I’m attending right now (just drew into top 8 :cool:), I figured I might as well make it: The official "Why Milling Is Bad" thread! (or something like that)
By "milling cards" I of course mean cards that put a number of cards from the top of a player’s deck and put those cards into their graveyard.
Claim: milling is good to combat enemy bombs.
Wrong, except in certain narrow circumstances. If your opponent will reliably go through their entire deck, like if they’re an incredibly slow and controlling blue deck with an insane amount of card draw, then randomly milling them for a few cards can be pretty solid. However, a deck like this will only come together every now and then, and many such decks have some kind of recursion, such as Mnemonic Wall, Rescue from the Underworld and March of the Returned in Theros, both of which make milling your opponent advantageous for them. They could also have cards like Nemesis of Mortals or Tymaret, the Murder King, which also turn mill cards into liabilities.
Also, here is a fact: without taking random scry effects into account, the difference between milling the top cards and milling the bottom cards of the opponent’s deck is purely psychological. Whether you happen to mill their bomb or get them closer to it by removing irrelevant cards from the top of their library is 100% chance and blind luck, and statistically, the probability of drawing a certain card is exactly the same before and after milling any number of cards that doesn’t deck them (at the point of the milling taking place, of course – after knowing what has been milled, the numbers change).
Claim: milling is a reasonable win condition.
In very few formats has this been true, though there have been a few. However, it is important to remember that every mill does nothing unless it kills them – not unlike Lava Spike-kind of cards. Cards that are decent on their own and provide incidental mill are perfectly fine, but you should rarely rely on them to be your win conditions, and you should under very few circumstances play cards that do nothing but mill them. If you draw two Tome Scours in your opening hand, you have essentially mulliganed to five already, seeing as those Tome Scours won’t impact the board or the hands at all – they’ll do absolutely nothing until you have decked them. And seeing as you are two cards down, it seems unlikely that you’ll be able to survive until you draw the necessary amount of Tome Scours (and similar cards) required to actually kill them.
In some particularly slow formats, cards like Millstone have been serviceable win conditions, but there is a long step from Millstone, which is going to win the game on its own if you can defend yourself long enough, to Tome Scour, which is a one-shot effect and requires a whole package of cards to go along with it in order to do anything.
Claim: milling gives you information.
True, and incidental mill can therefore be nice, but this information is often negligible and also runs the risk of making their recursion effects (if any) way stronger. As usual, the information is not worth playing marginal cards that also mill a couple of cards – it should be a card that is already serviceable, as the milling part is barely an upside at all.
Claim: you should target yourself with your incidental milling effects.
This is true a larger percentage of the time than you’d think. Every time you have cards with flashback in your deck, if you have Gravediggers, Raise Deads or Mnemonic Walls, or any other cards that are interested in your graveyard, you should mill yourself. Also, since you don’t want to enhance their cards that care about their graveyard, you should mill yourself in the dark even if you have no interaction with the graveyard at all. After all, you run the risk of filling up their graveyard only for them to blow you out with March of the Returned.
In conclusion:
Cards that mill should generally be played only if the card is decent without the mill part.
Milling them doesn’t affect the probability of them drawing the card they want.
Without additional information, the default should be milling yourself with incidental milling effects.
Anything else to add? Questions or comments? Post post post!
There are some screenshots of the decks I built, what I learned, and how successful I found the strategy to be when it is forced blindly.
TL;DR - In this format, I found it surprisingly effective. I didn't win every draft and I definitely had hot and cold streaks, but in the end I had more success than I thought it would when I began.
Without additional information, the default should be milling yourself with incidental milling effects.
IMO this is more format (and deck color) dependent than you give it credit for.
You mentioned cards/mechanics like Gravedigger or flashback which allow you to get value from your GY. But there are also cards like Death's Presence which allow you to get value from your opponent's GY. Additionally, milling can screw up tutors; mill your opponent's (or your own) single Mountain and you can cut off the splash no matter how many Terramorphic Expanses are in the deck.
If the format doesn't have significant GY action for either player, the informational aspect tiebreaks towards milling the opponent.
If the format doesn't have significant GY action for either player, the informational aspect tiebreaks towards milling the opponent.
I think if there's a single gravedigger effect in *either* deck, the tiebreaker is towards milling yourself, to either give yourselve that advantage, or deny it to your opponent.
I think Gatecrash is a definite exception, as there were plenty of cards that benefitted from the opponent having a full yard. So yeah, there are certainly exceptions to the rule I posted there, but Magic is a complex enough game that there are always going to be.
As for color dependence, I reckon "without additional information" covers that.
Here is a thread I made in 2011 during triple Innistrad where I decided to force the Mill Deck for the entire month of November:
Like I said, there are some formats where aggressive mill is playable, with Innistrad being one of them (though I definitely wouldn't say it was among the better decks). Triple Ravnica (old Ravnica) was another, and the mill deck in triple Shadowmoor was a pet deck of mine. Merfolk in Lorwyn often won with Drowner of Secrets, but calling that a mill deck would almost be like saying Esper in Standard was a mill deck because it won with Nephalia Drownyard. Dampen Thought was a thing in both triple Champions and in Modern Masters.
But aggressive milling is only good if you're actually decking them. And doing that requires something special, and most likely the format being built to accomodate it. Most aren't.
I need to just mock this up in pamphlet form and carry some copies around so I don't have to go through the effort of arguing the point myself when it comes up.
I think Scry is going to trick people into thinking milling their opponents is better in this format than most. I'm actually surprised I haven't heard this argument more:
"If your opponent just Scry'd and kept something on top, you know it's something good that you're milling. And if he just put everything on the bottom, then the odds that you're milling away lands are lower. Every Scry makes milling better!"
It sounds interesting, but it's much ado about nothing. The fact that your opponent left a card on top does not mean that card is his best. It just means it was better than putting it on the bottom, for whatever reason. Maybe just because it was a non-land and he didn't want to risk drawing a blank. You're not significantly changing his odds of drawing a great card if you then mill him for 4. Maybe now he gets a land, but maybe now he gets a better non-land and it's pure chance. Scry =/= Tutor.
I'm really glad someone took the time to discuss scry + mill. With online prerelease this weekend, I was just starting to wonder about this. Now, I don't have to waste my limited brainpower!
I think Scry is going to trick people into thinking milling their opponents is better in this format than most. I'm actually surprised I haven't heard this argument more:
"If your opponent just Scry'd and kept something on top, you know it's something good that you're milling. And if he just put everything on the bottom, then the odds that you're milling away lands are lower. Every Scry makes milling better!"
It sounds interesting, but it's much ado about nothing. The fact that your opponent left a card on top does not mean that card is his best. It just means it was better than putting it on the bottom, for whatever reason. Maybe just because it was a non-land and he didn't want to risk drawing a blank. You're not significantly changing his odds of drawing a great card if you then mill him for 4. Maybe now he gets a land, but maybe now he gets a better non-land and it's pure chance. Scry =/= Tutor.
I appreciate that we're trying to avoid having people overvalue mill, but this isn't quite accurate. Consider a card that said "do X, then you may mill your opponent 1." You would usually prefer not to do so in Theros because of March, Wall, Nemesis, Mender, etc. If your opponent just scried and bottomed, you're correct that nothing changes and you still shouldn't mill them. If your opponent just scried and kept at least one card however, it implies they feel that card's value to be above the average for their deck, given the curent situation. Ignoring the cases where you know your opponent is terrible, you should probably assume they made judgement correctly as they have information you don't. If they did make that judgement correctly, you would want to mill them 1.
Mill 4 after scrying is the same as mill 1 (good) + mill 3 (statistically irrelevent). You are still reducing the expected value of their next draw from [presumably above average, given context] to [average, given context]. The problem is the graveyard synergies the other 3 mills risk. You have to judge whether (utility of first mill)-3(disutility of their potential graveyard synergy+missed utility of your graveyard synergy) is actually positive, which is difficult without some idea of how much graveyard synergy they have. Thassa's bounty is safer as it's only (utility of first mill)-2(disutility of their potential graveyard synergy+missed utility of your graveyard synergy).
tl;dr You should probably never mill a Bx deck unless you are close to killing them that way or they just kept multiple cards on top (Omenspeaker, Prognostic Phinx, Magma Jet, Artisan's Sorrow, or Horizon Scholar). You should probably only mill a Ux or Gx deck if they kept multiple cards or you're in game 2 or 3 and you've seen little synergy from them and/or you have little/no graveyard synergy. It's basically always a good idea to mill a WR deck post scry keep. In all situations where you aren't trying to kill them with it, milling your opponent with Thassa's Bounty is a better idea than it would be with Returned Centaur.
Edit: For thoroughness's sake, bottoming off scry isn't technically irrelevant to mill. If they have nine cards left in their library, and they've bottomed five times when they already had enough land, that Returned Centaur is looking pretty good. Basically that's a case of "milled them all the way out," in terms of card quality, it just doesn't result in a decking win.
That's it! Sure there are other spells that remove cards from graveyards, but those are no-brainers like Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver.
Both of the commons are marginal. Despite saying "Draw 3 cards" you can't fill your deck with Thassa's Bounties. It's just too slow and has no immediate impact for 6 mana.
Returned Centaur goes from a decent card if you have recursion, in which case it's obvious that you mill yourself, to a marginal blocker if you don't have recursion. Both cards can be cut from main decks.
Assuming you are playing these cards, the default seems to be to mill yourself unless your opponent just Scry'd something to the top (and they don't have a lot of recursion that you know about) or for whatever reason you expect that the game is going to come down to library size. That seems easy enough to remember.
One interesting card is Pyxis of Pandemonium. I don't consider it playable, but it would be funny to side it in against a deck full of Scry. It would become a bit of a shell game -- do you Mill them every time they keep something on top? Or do they start keeping bad cards on top, knowing you're going to Mill them? There's no right answer. (Except maybe "Don't play Pyxis," that's probably the right answer.)
I'm not sure that I can agree the default should be milling yourself; if you have instants in your deck, you are losing a significant amount of their power by showing them to your opponent. Milling your opponent trades potential GY interaction for definite information.
Also, in the Mnemonic Wall scenario, it feels to me like you're limiting their use of the card to one instead of two, assuming they were gonna get to it within a turn or three. So while you are increasing their options for targets, you are also making it so they get less activations out of one of their cards, thereby decreasing their overall options, for a net worth of 0. 0 + small benefit of information= mill your opponent.
Obviously this depends on the decks; if they have two March of the Returned and a Mnemonic Wall and you have one instant and no sweepers, mill yourself.
Also, regarding Mill as a win-con, it doesn't take a pro to sideboard vs. mill.
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I'm not sure that I can agree the default should be milling yourself; if you have instants in your deck, you are losing a significant amount of their power by showing them to your opponent.
Them knowing some cards in your deck isn't *that* much of an advantage. And if you have multiples of a card you can even bait them (yes, Voyage's End is already in my graveyard).
Milling your opponent trades potential GY interaction for definite information.
The problem is that definite information isn't nearly worth as much as the graveyard interaction. And it doesn't justify running otherwise unplayable cards like Pillarfield Ox, otherwise known as Returned Cetaur.
Also, in the Mnemonic Wall scenario, it feels to me like you're limiting their use of the card to one instead of two, assuming they were gonna get to it within a turn or three. So while you are increasing their options for targets, you are also making it so they get less activations out of one of their cards, thereby decreasing their overall options, for a net worth of 0. 0 + small benefit of information= mill your opponent.
The difference is that what's in the library is unknown, and what's in the graveyard is known. If gravedigger effects returned a creature at random, they would be pretty marginal. However, it's always going to return the *best* target. Similarly, when you draw a card you only have a tiny tiny chance of drawing your bomb. But you have a 100% chance of returning your bomb with the wall.
Obviously this depends on the decks; if they have two March of the Returned and a Mnemonic Wall and you have one instant and no sweepers, mill yourself.
No, I think you're still missing the point.
1. Revealing information from your deck (vs from their deck) is an incredibly marginal cost/benefit that it basically factors as nothing.
2. Milling a card from your or their deck that can subsequently be used has a real and active effect on the game.
3. Milling as a win condition is fine, but it requires repeatable effects (which don't exist in Theros) and is almost always an inferior strategy to winning through conventional damage.
Also, regarding Mill as a win-con, it doesn't take a pro to sideboard vs. mill.
Really? I would argue otherwise. How big does your deck need to be to defend against repeatable mill effects? Most people significantly lower the quality of their deck when they increase their deck size, so although they are increasing the mill clock, they are also slowing their own deck down and increasing their clock too, so might not be increasing their chances of winning.
So while you are increasing their options for targets, you are also making it so they get less activations out of one of their cards, thereby decreasing their overall options, for a net worth of 0.
Barring library manipulation like tutoring and to a lesser degree scry, remember, milling from the top of the random stack of cards is no different than milling from the bottom of those cards. i.e. milling your opponent when they have mnemonic wall means they have more targets, period.
You may theoretically reduce the number of times they can use a card, but that card isn't "theirs" to use until they draw it.
Carpe- I originally thought this didn't apply here, then realized how stupid that was. Thanks.
Merl- in terms of "potential GY interaction," what I meant was "the potential of GY interaction in their deck," not the potential of the milled cards or the potential of GY cards in their deck to be in their hand. If their deck is likely to have interaction, or certainly does, then it's a different story. Also, I'd like to be clear that I don't think running Returned Centaur for the information he'll give you is a good idea; if you need the Ox, run the Centaur. Re: sideboarding, sorry for being unclear again; I am referring to the Tome Scour deck, not the Walls + Millstone deck (which I consider control decks, not mill decks.)
That's a really good point about Mnemonic Walls, etc., though. I clearly have some seriously flawed logic in this regard; no shame in that, though, this game is crazy.
However, I remain unconvinced that the information is negligible if the decks contain a significant number of instants; playing your opponent's deck is a big part of next-level Magic. Perhaps I am misled.
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Also, here is a fact: without taking random scry effects into account, the difference between milling the top cards and milling the bottom cards of the opponent’s deck is purely psychological. Whether you happen to mill their bomb or get them closer to it by removing irrelevant cards from the top of their library is 100% chance and blind luck, and statistically, the probability of drawing a certain card is exactly the same before and after milling any number of cards that doesn’t deck them (at the point of the milling taking place, of course – after knowing what has been milled, the numbers change).
:nod::nod::nod:
There are way too many perfectly rational and intelligent and experienced players who seem to be incapable of understanding this.
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To add against incidental mill, there are times where it literally helps them. I can't count how many times my opponent's have given me a free Time Walk by milling a useless land or meaningless spell off the top of my library. Sure, there have been times where they milled my best card/combat trick/removal but it is still purely chance. There was even this time Where my opponent milled 6 lands out of 7 attacks across two games with Daxos of Meletis (I still lost but it was hilarious).
I say milling should only be considered when it is:
By d) I mean there have to be other cards in the format that help toward this goal. I never played Alara limited but I'm guessing Mind's Funeral and Nemesis of Reason were not superstars in a format with Cascade, great creatures and great removal. How many common mill cards are there in M13, two? That's why the Mind Sculpt deck doesn't work. Jace is an exception though, as is Oona. Even in the blazingly fast M12 you could craft a reasonable deck around him. Still, you were much more likely to lose the games where you didn't draw him. And Oona... let's say I've only seen someone lose after untapping with Oona once and it involved a dumb amount of luck.
To add against incidental mill, there are times where it literally helps them. I can't count how many times my opponent's have given me a free Time Walk by milling a useless land or meaningless spell off the top of my library. Sure, there have been times where they milled my best card/combat trick/removal but it is still purely chance. There was even this time Where my opponent milled 6 lands out of 7 attacks across two games with Daxos of Meletis (I still lost but it was hilarious).
Sure, but this is a non-factor due to it being completely random. They might as well pull cards out from anywhere in your deck (not just the top card), and it wouldn't change the likelihood of what you drew. Of course, we can grumble when it turns out that their Returned Centaur randomly milled both our Whip of Erebos and our Pharika's Mender, along with Gray Merchant and Keepsake Gorgon, but that's another thing entirely
Sure, but this is a non-factor due to it being completely random. They might as well pull cards out from anywhere in your deck (not just the top card), and it wouldn't change the likelihood of what you drew. Of course, we can grumble when it turns out that their Returned Centaur randomly milled both our Whip of Erebos and our Pharika's Mender, along with Gray Merchant and Keepsake Gorgon, but that's another thing entirely
I meant that incidental mill is just as likely to help my opponent than it is to hinder him, which further strenghtens the points made against it. To be fair, the amount of times I got a Time Walk out of being milled overcomes by far the number of times I was hindered or blown out.
Of course, it took 3 rares and 3 uncommons to be remotely playable, and the life loss on the guildmage is actually what won me most games after a Mirko Vosk bash.
Of course, it took 3 rares and 3 uncommons to be remotely playable, and the life loss on the guildmage is actually what won me most games after a Mirko Vosk bash.
Tell that to the guy who milled me 2 games in a row with Ashiok... I suppose I *could* have sideboarded in a ton more cards, but what is the point exactly? Unbelievable.
Not to mention, what anti-mill cards are there in Theros?
Tell that to the guy who milled me 2 games in a row with Ashiok... I suppose I *could* have sideboarded in a ton more cards, but what is the point exactly? Unbelievable.
Not to mention, what anti-mill cards are there in Theros?
Tell that to the guy who milled me 2 games in a row with Ashiok... I suppose I *could* have sideboarded in a ton more cards, but what is the point exactly? Unbelievable.
Not to mention, what anti-mill cards are there in Theros?
You could also make Nemesis of Mortals cheaper to cast or make its monstrosity easier to activate.
The problem with a card like Ashiok, however, is that it gets out of hand incredibly quickly. Unless you have an extremely aggressive deck, you can't really expect to outrace the uptick on Ashiok if you reasonably expect the other player to continue building anything resembling a board presence. Assuming you didn't mulligan, and assuming a turn 3 Ashiok, you are dead to his mill around turn 8 or 9. Considering also that it exiles the cards, and gives them possible free board presence.
In honesty, the graveyard based strategies are rarely amazing enough to really factor in most of the time. Pharika's Mender and Spellheart Chimera require the opponent to be in a very specific color combination to matter, and Spellheart is rather marginal in most limited decks. Mnemonic Wall is a decent card, but more often than not I prefer to cut it for something with more impact at 5 cmc. March of the Returned is also fairly marginal from experience, although not "bad". Just not what I'd like to do most of the time. I've often seen cards like that become dead cards in hand, begging for something else. Rescue and Nemesis are probably the most commonly played, and Nemesis is hit-or-miss. Rescue can be amazing with enters the battlefied abilities, particularly with Gray Merchant. It's also a fine way to get back some important creatures for "cheap" As for Nighthowler, being a rare I don't particularly bother to consider it unless I actually see it. Specific rares come up so rarely that it's honestly not worth your time to consider them as a possibility, particularly in draft.
So really, in most decks milling you or your opponent in THS is effectively "neutral". The only two that I reasonably expect to see are Rescue and Nemesis. I've seen cute things with Mneumonic Wall, but it's really a niche card. I have never seen anything amazing come from that card, and if they play it to get something from the yard they may as well have time-walked themselves. Rescue doesn't really require much in the graveyard at all, leaving Nemesis as the main graveyard interaction card in the non-rare slots. And if you are hedging your bets on one specific card, you're really doing it wrong.
Of course, the only mill cards in THS really is Returned Centaur and Thassa's Bounty(For non-rare, of course). One could argue that enough Centaurs and a bounty or two in a U/B build could make a mill deck work. I doubt it. I've been milled out exactly once in the format from Centaur, and that was due to a clogged board-state. I can also count the number of times where it would have mattered on one hand(I.E. game drew out *way* overmuch where milling for a few would have changed the outcome). Aside from pulling Phenax or Ashiok, mill just isn't supported at all in THS limited (Both of which can mill for a metric ton in short order).
The point is, in most games milling your opponent is a neutral thing. I have never played a draft where Nemesis, Mneumonic Wall, Spellheart, etc were at all priorities to think about in THS. They are non-issues most of the time (And if my opponent is seriously working towards them, I'm probably in a very good spot). Mender is fine, but require a very specific build to work. Mill isn't supported, but frankly neither is the graveyard as a resource in much of a meaningful way.
Other than giving a little bit more credence to graveyard strategies than I think they deserve in THS, the OP is pretty dead-on. There are exactly two mill cards in THS that I would ever feel really happy about playing, and those are Ashiok and Phenax. But both are unique in that they are repeatable, and come with added utility that doesn't get in the way of the mill overmuch (Ashiok is a CA engine if you wish him to be, and Phenax is a great defensive or offensive creature+added utility in board stalls, which can happen-milling for 10-15 a turn while leaving blockers open is a fine way to win in limited).
I'm actually currently playing a Standard mill deck. The problem with most mill decks is that they load up on all the mill cards they can, and have no way to protect itself. I think the best way to do it is build a control deck that has a few dedicated mill cards as the win condition. I'm currently playing Esper with 2 Jace Memory Adept and 2 Ashiok. The rest of the deck is basically counter & removal. A couple cards that are worth using anyway have some bonus mill (Pilfered Plans is pretty much Divination otherwise).
One thing I will say about mill that is to its advantage: It's one of the least-preventable things you can do to your opponent. There are very few things that can prevent an ability on the stack that is putting cards from a library into the graveyard. This is quite a bit different than things which deal damage (the main method of winning).
EDIT: and I forgot we were talking about sealed/limited, which makes my post besides the point anyway.
There are some screenshots of the decks I built, what I learned, and how successful I found the strategy to be when it is forced blindly.
TL;DR - In this format, I found it surprisingly effective. I didn't win every draft and I definitely had hot and cold streaks, but in the end I had more success than I thought it would when I began.
Playing Mill in Innistrad seems very dangerous with all the potential free interactions you're giving the opponent....
But I do disagree with the blanket statement that mill is not good win condition for most formats.
1) In Born Sealed, Phenax, God of Devotion is a ridiculously good win condition even though it sucks without the mill part. UB has a number of cheap guys with high toughness (0/5 for 1U, 0/6 for 3, 3/3 for 1B, 2/4 for 3B with mill 4) that play the control role while doubling as Phenax enablers. A lot of people agreed Phenax was the scariest single card at Born prereleases with the potential to end the game in 2 turns. Less good in BTT draft since first picking Phenax is pretty high variance.
2) Jace, Memory Adept is pretty amazing in any core set Limited event. You obviously don't just build a mill deck, but if you have a decent Ux control shell, Jace's mill can end the game in 2-3 turns. Without the mill, this card would probably be significantly worse.
3) I found Dimir mill surprisingly strong as an archetype in triple Ravnica draft, even with Scavenge being a thing (mostly because Scavenge was so slow). Although this was mostly because people highly undervalued Dimir mill, so cards like Mind Grind would wheel as 11th picks and you could count on picking them up without wasting valuable picks. There were also decent Incidental effects like Balustrade Spy. Consuming Aberration was also just highly playable in any UB deck, mill or not. Every time I opened one, I forced UB mill-control won a number of drafts off it with opponents going busy calling me a "n00b" while they were losing.
In Standard though, I laugh every time I try to see someone pull it off. My budget Izzet tempo deck is like 10-0 against random mill decks, inevitably killing them in one hit with a 22/3 Spellheart Chimera with double counter backup.
Using Jace, Memory Adept (and similar busted rare/mythic bombs) as a counterargument against the "milling is a reasonable win condition in few formats" claim seems pretty weird. Like, certainly I am not arguing that a card that said "put the top 100 cards of target player's library into that player's graveyard" would be bad just because I say milling is generally a poor way to try to win the game. It still is, it's just that when you have cards like that, milling isn't the strategy, you're just a regular deck with a card that says "I win" on it.
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By "milling cards" I of course mean cards that put a number of cards from the top of a player’s deck and put those cards into their graveyard.
Claim: milling is good to combat enemy bombs.
Wrong, except in certain narrow circumstances. If your opponent will reliably go through their entire deck, like if they’re an incredibly slow and controlling blue deck with an insane amount of card draw, then randomly milling them for a few cards can be pretty solid. However, a deck like this will only come together every now and then, and many such decks have some kind of recursion, such as Mnemonic Wall, Rescue from the Underworld and March of the Returned in Theros, both of which make milling your opponent advantageous for them. They could also have cards like Nemesis of Mortals or Tymaret, the Murder King, which also turn mill cards into liabilities.
Also, here is a fact: without taking random scry effects into account, the difference between milling the top cards and milling the bottom cards of the opponent’s deck is purely psychological. Whether you happen to mill their bomb or get them closer to it by removing irrelevant cards from the top of their library is 100% chance and blind luck, and statistically, the probability of drawing a certain card is exactly the same before and after milling any number of cards that doesn’t deck them (at the point of the milling taking place, of course – after knowing what has been milled, the numbers change).
Claim: milling is a reasonable win condition.
In very few formats has this been true, though there have been a few. However, it is important to remember that every mill does nothing unless it kills them – not unlike Lava Spike-kind of cards. Cards that are decent on their own and provide incidental mill are perfectly fine, but you should rarely rely on them to be your win conditions, and you should under very few circumstances play cards that do nothing but mill them. If you draw two Tome Scours in your opening hand, you have essentially mulliganed to five already, seeing as those Tome Scours won’t impact the board or the hands at all – they’ll do absolutely nothing until you have decked them. And seeing as you are two cards down, it seems unlikely that you’ll be able to survive until you draw the necessary amount of Tome Scours (and similar cards) required to actually kill them.
In some particularly slow formats, cards like Millstone have been serviceable win conditions, but there is a long step from Millstone, which is going to win the game on its own if you can defend yourself long enough, to Tome Scour, which is a one-shot effect and requires a whole package of cards to go along with it in order to do anything.
Claim: milling gives you information.
True, and incidental mill can therefore be nice, but this information is often negligible and also runs the risk of making their recursion effects (if any) way stronger. As usual, the information is not worth playing marginal cards that also mill a couple of cards – it should be a card that is already serviceable, as the milling part is barely an upside at all.
Claim: you should target yourself with your incidental milling effects.
(by incidental I mean cards like Returned Centaur, which is primarily a Pillarfield Ox, and not cards that are devoted to a milling strategy, such as Curse of the Bloody Tome)
This is true a larger percentage of the time than you’d think. Every time you have cards with flashback in your deck, if you have Gravediggers, Raise Deads or Mnemonic Walls, or any other cards that are interested in your graveyard, you should mill yourself. Also, since you don’t want to enhance their cards that care about their graveyard, you should mill yourself in the dark even if you have no interaction with the graveyard at all. After all, you run the risk of filling up their graveyard only for them to blow you out with March of the Returned.
In conclusion:
Here is a thread I made in 2011 during triple Innistrad where I decided to force the Mill Deck for the entire month of November:
http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=375160
There are some screenshots of the decks I built, what I learned, and how successful I found the strategy to be when it is forced blindly.
TL;DR - In this format, I found it surprisingly effective. I didn't win every draft and I definitely had hot and cold streaks, but in the end I had more success than I thought it would when I began.
Thread | Draft
IMO this is more format (and deck color) dependent than you give it credit for.
You mentioned cards/mechanics like Gravedigger or flashback which allow you to get value from your GY. But there are also cards like Death's Presence which allow you to get value from your opponent's GY. Additionally, milling can screw up tutors; mill your opponent's (or your own) single Mountain and you can cut off the splash no matter how many Terramorphic Expanses are in the deck.
If the format doesn't have significant GY action for either player, the informational aspect tiebreaks towards milling the opponent.
Practice for Khans of Tarkir Limited:
Draft: (#1) (#2) (#3) (#4) (#5)
I think if there's a single gravedigger effect in *either* deck, the tiebreaker is towards milling yourself, to either give yourselve that advantage, or deny it to your opponent.
As for color dependence, I reckon "without additional information" covers that.
Like I said, there are some formats where aggressive mill is playable, with Innistrad being one of them (though I definitely wouldn't say it was among the better decks). Triple Ravnica (old Ravnica) was another, and the mill deck in triple Shadowmoor was a pet deck of mine. Merfolk in Lorwyn often won with Drowner of Secrets, but calling that a mill deck would almost be like saying Esper in Standard was a mill deck because it won with Nephalia Drownyard. Dampen Thought was a thing in both triple Champions and in Modern Masters.
But aggressive milling is only good if you're actually decking them. And doing that requires something special, and most likely the format being built to accomodate it. Most aren't.
"If your opponent just Scry'd and kept something on top, you know it's something good that you're milling. And if he just put everything on the bottom, then the odds that you're milling away lands are lower. Every Scry makes milling better!"
It sounds interesting, but it's much ado about nothing. The fact that your opponent left a card on top does not mean that card is his best. It just means it was better than putting it on the bottom, for whatever reason. Maybe just because it was a non-land and he didn't want to risk drawing a blank. You're not significantly changing his odds of drawing a great card if you then mill him for 4. Maybe now he gets a land, but maybe now he gets a better non-land and it's pure chance. Scry =/= Tutor.
Thanks!
~M
I appreciate that we're trying to avoid having people overvalue mill, but this isn't quite accurate. Consider a card that said "do X, then you may mill your opponent 1." You would usually prefer not to do so in Theros because of March, Wall, Nemesis, Mender, etc. If your opponent just scried and bottomed, you're correct that nothing changes and you still shouldn't mill them. If your opponent just scried and kept at least one card however, it implies they feel that card's value to be above the average for their deck, given the curent situation. Ignoring the cases where you know your opponent is terrible, you should probably assume they made judgement correctly as they have information you don't. If they did make that judgement correctly, you would want to mill them 1.
Mill 4 after scrying is the same as mill 1 (good) + mill 3 (statistically irrelevent). You are still reducing the expected value of their next draw from [presumably above average, given context] to [average, given context]. The problem is the graveyard synergies the other 3 mills risk. You have to judge whether (utility of first mill)-3(disutility of their potential graveyard synergy+missed utility of your graveyard synergy) is actually positive, which is difficult without some idea of how much graveyard synergy they have. Thassa's bounty is safer as it's only (utility of first mill)-2(disutility of their potential graveyard synergy+missed utility of your graveyard synergy).
tl;dr You should probably never mill a Bx deck unless you are close to killing them that way or they just kept multiple cards on top (Omenspeaker, Prognostic Phinx, Magma Jet, Artisan's Sorrow, or Horizon Scholar). You should probably only mill a Ux or Gx deck if they kept multiple cards or you're in game 2 or 3 and you've seen little synergy from them and/or you have little/no graveyard synergy. It's basically always a good idea to mill a WR deck post scry keep. In all situations where you aren't trying to kill them with it, milling your opponent with Thassa's Bounty is a better idea than it would be with Returned Centaur.
Edit: For thoroughness's sake, bottoming off scry isn't technically irrelevant to mill. If they have nine cards left in their library, and they've bottomed five times when they already had enough land, that Returned Centaur is looking pretty good. Basically that's a case of "milled them all the way out," in terms of card quality, it just doesn't result in a decking win.
Interested in Custom Card Creation.
My Cube:Cardinal Custom Cube
A custom version of a third modern masters: MM2019
(filter->rarity to see in set rarity).
Thassa's Bounty
Returned Centaur
That's it! Sure there are other spells that remove cards from graveyards, but those are no-brainers like Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver.
Both of the commons are marginal. Despite saying "Draw 3 cards" you can't fill your deck with Thassa's Bounties. It's just too slow and has no immediate impact for 6 mana.
Returned Centaur goes from a decent card if you have recursion, in which case it's obvious that you mill yourself, to a marginal blocker if you don't have recursion. Both cards can be cut from main decks.
Assuming you are playing these cards, the default seems to be to mill yourself unless your opponent just Scry'd something to the top (and they don't have a lot of recursion that you know about) or for whatever reason you expect that the game is going to come down to library size. That seems easy enough to remember.
One interesting card is Pyxis of Pandemonium. I don't consider it playable, but it would be funny to side it in against a deck full of Scry. It would become a bit of a shell game -- do you Mill them every time they keep something on top? Or do they start keeping bad cards on top, knowing you're going to Mill them? There's no right answer. (Except maybe "Don't play Pyxis," that's probably the right answer.)
Also, in the Mnemonic Wall scenario, it feels to me like you're limiting their use of the card to one instead of two, assuming they were gonna get to it within a turn or three. So while you are increasing their options for targets, you are also making it so they get less activations out of one of their cards, thereby decreasing their overall options, for a net worth of 0. 0 + small benefit of information= mill your opponent.
Obviously this depends on the decks; if they have two March of the Returned and a Mnemonic Wall and you have one instant and no sweepers, mill yourself.
Also, regarding Mill as a win-con, it doesn't take a pro to sideboard vs. mill.
My Decks:
EDH: Sygg, River Cutthroat , Road to Scion
Grimgrin, Corpseborn
Modern: Polytokes
IRL: Progenitus Polymorph , Goblins
Just a friendly reminder that I will drive this car off a bridge
Them knowing some cards in your deck isn't *that* much of an advantage. And if you have multiples of a card you can even bait them (yes, Voyage's End is already in my graveyard).
The problem is that definite information isn't nearly worth as much as the graveyard interaction. And it doesn't justify running otherwise unplayable cards like Pillarfield Ox, otherwise known as Returned Cetaur.
The difference is that what's in the library is unknown, and what's in the graveyard is known. If gravedigger effects returned a creature at random, they would be pretty marginal. However, it's always going to return the *best* target. Similarly, when you draw a card you only have a tiny tiny chance of drawing your bomb. But you have a 100% chance of returning your bomb with the wall.
No, I think you're still missing the point.
1. Revealing information from your deck (vs from their deck) is an incredibly marginal cost/benefit that it basically factors as nothing.
2. Milling a card from your or their deck that can subsequently be used has a real and active effect on the game.
3. Milling as a win condition is fine, but it requires repeatable effects (which don't exist in Theros) and is almost always an inferior strategy to winning through conventional damage.
Really? I would argue otherwise. How big does your deck need to be to defend against repeatable mill effects? Most people significantly lower the quality of their deck when they increase their deck size, so although they are increasing the mill clock, they are also slowing their own deck down and increasing their clock too, so might not be increasing their chances of winning.
Barring library manipulation like tutoring and to a lesser degree scry, remember, milling from the top of the random stack of cards is no different than milling from the bottom of those cards. i.e. milling your opponent when they have mnemonic wall means they have more targets, period.
You may theoretically reduce the number of times they can use a card, but that card isn't "theirs" to use until they draw it.
Carpe- I originally thought this didn't apply here, then realized how stupid that was. Thanks.
Merl- in terms of "potential GY interaction," what I meant was "the potential of GY interaction in their deck," not the potential of the milled cards or the potential of GY cards in their deck to be in their hand. If their deck is likely to have interaction, or certainly does, then it's a different story. Also, I'd like to be clear that I don't think running Returned Centaur for the information he'll give you is a good idea; if you need the Ox, run the Centaur. Re: sideboarding, sorry for being unclear again; I am referring to the Tome Scour deck, not the Walls + Millstone deck (which I consider control decks, not mill decks.)
That's a really good point about Mnemonic Walls, etc., though. I clearly have some seriously flawed logic in this regard; no shame in that, though, this game is crazy.
However, I remain unconvinced that the information is negligible if the decks contain a significant number of instants; playing your opponent's deck is a big part of next-level Magic. Perhaps I am misled.
My Decks:
EDH: Sygg, River Cutthroat , Road to Scion
Grimgrin, Corpseborn
Modern: Polytokes
IRL: Progenitus Polymorph , Goblins
Just a friendly reminder that I will drive this car off a bridge
:nod::nod::nod:
There are way too many perfectly rational and intelligent and experienced players who seem to be incapable of understanding this.
Modern: Kiki ChordWBRG
TokensWB
EDH: Kuon, Ogre AscendantBBB
#FreeContractfromBelow
I say milling should only be considered when it is:
a) repeatable (Millstone, Vedalken Entrancer, Sage's Row Denizen); or
b) huge: (Mind's Funeral, Glimpse the Unthinkable); or
c) preferably both repeatable and huge (Oona, Queen of the Fae, Mirko Vosk, Jace, Memory Adept); and
d) the format supports it.
By d) I mean there have to be other cards in the format that help toward this goal. I never played Alara limited but I'm guessing Mind's Funeral and Nemesis of Reason were not superstars in a format with Cascade, great creatures and great removal. How many common mill cards are there in M13, two? That's why the Mind Sculpt deck doesn't work. Jace is an exception though, as is Oona. Even in the blazingly fast M12 you could craft a reasonable deck around him. Still, you were much more likely to lose the games where you didn't draw him. And Oona... let's say I've only seen someone lose after untapping with Oona once and it involved a dumb amount of luck.
Sure, but this is a non-factor due to it being completely random. They might as well pull cards out from anywhere in your deck (not just the top card), and it wouldn't change the likelihood of what you drew. Of course, we can grumble when it turns out that their Returned Centaur randomly milled both our Whip of Erebos and our Pharika's Mender, along with Gray Merchant and Keepsake Gorgon, but that's another thing entirely
I meant that incidental mill is just as likely to help my opponent than it is to hinder him, which further strenghtens the points made against it. To be fair, the amount of times I got a Time Walk out of being milled overcomes by far the number of times I was hindered or blown out.
I rocked an RTR block draft with 2 x Mirko Vosk, Mind Drinker, a Mind Grind, 3 x Sage's Row Denizen, 2 x Duskmantle Guildmage and an Undercity Informer. I didn't get a Mortus Strider, but I still went 3-0 with it.
Of course, it took 3 rares and 3 uncommons to be remotely playable, and the life loss on the guildmage is actually what won me most games after a Mirko Vosk bash.
RBGLiving EndRBG
EDH
UFblthpU
BRXantchaRB
BGVarolzGB
URWZedruuWRU
Tell that to the guy who milled me 2 games in a row with Ashiok... I suppose I *could* have sideboarded in a ton more cards, but what is the point exactly? Unbelievable.
Not to mention, what anti-mill cards are there in Theros?
Crosis, Wheeler and Dealer!
Kaervek the Merciless
Krenko, Like a BAU55
Ashling
Jor Kadeen
Kreshin
Marton
Alesha, budget grin
Your opponent could use March of the Returned, Mnemonic Wall, Pharika's Mender, etc. to effectively draw some more cards.
You could pump up an opposing Nighthowler or Spellheart Chimera.
You could also make Nemesis of Mortals cheaper to cast or make its monstrosity easier to activate.
The problem with a card like Ashiok, however, is that it gets out of hand incredibly quickly. Unless you have an extremely aggressive deck, you can't really expect to outrace the uptick on Ashiok if you reasonably expect the other player to continue building anything resembling a board presence. Assuming you didn't mulligan, and assuming a turn 3 Ashiok, you are dead to his mill around turn 8 or 9. Considering also that it exiles the cards, and gives them possible free board presence.
In honesty, the graveyard based strategies are rarely amazing enough to really factor in most of the time. Pharika's Mender and Spellheart Chimera require the opponent to be in a very specific color combination to matter, and Spellheart is rather marginal in most limited decks. Mnemonic Wall is a decent card, but more often than not I prefer to cut it for something with more impact at 5 cmc. March of the Returned is also fairly marginal from experience, although not "bad". Just not what I'd like to do most of the time. I've often seen cards like that become dead cards in hand, begging for something else. Rescue and Nemesis are probably the most commonly played, and Nemesis is hit-or-miss. Rescue can be amazing with enters the battlefied abilities, particularly with Gray Merchant. It's also a fine way to get back some important creatures for "cheap" As for Nighthowler, being a rare I don't particularly bother to consider it unless I actually see it. Specific rares come up so rarely that it's honestly not worth your time to consider them as a possibility, particularly in draft.
So really, in most decks milling you or your opponent in THS is effectively "neutral". The only two that I reasonably expect to see are Rescue and Nemesis. I've seen cute things with Mneumonic Wall, but it's really a niche card. I have never seen anything amazing come from that card, and if they play it to get something from the yard they may as well have time-walked themselves. Rescue doesn't really require much in the graveyard at all, leaving Nemesis as the main graveyard interaction card in the non-rare slots. And if you are hedging your bets on one specific card, you're really doing it wrong.
Of course, the only mill cards in THS really is Returned Centaur and Thassa's Bounty(For non-rare, of course). One could argue that enough Centaurs and a bounty or two in a U/B build could make a mill deck work. I doubt it. I've been milled out exactly once in the format from Centaur, and that was due to a clogged board-state. I can also count the number of times where it would have mattered on one hand(I.E. game drew out *way* overmuch where milling for a few would have changed the outcome). Aside from pulling Phenax or Ashiok, mill just isn't supported at all in THS limited (Both of which can mill for a metric ton in short order).
The point is, in most games milling your opponent is a neutral thing. I have never played a draft where Nemesis, Mneumonic Wall, Spellheart, etc were at all priorities to think about in THS. They are non-issues most of the time (And if my opponent is seriously working towards them, I'm probably in a very good spot). Mender is fine, but require a very specific build to work. Mill isn't supported, but frankly neither is the graveyard as a resource in much of a meaningful way.
Other than giving a little bit more credence to graveyard strategies than I think they deserve in THS, the OP is pretty dead-on. There are exactly two mill cards in THS that I would ever feel really happy about playing, and those are Ashiok and Phenax. But both are unique in that they are repeatable, and come with added utility that doesn't get in the way of the mill overmuch (Ashiok is a CA engine if you wish him to be, and Phenax is a great defensive or offensive creature+added utility in board stalls, which can happen-milling for 10-15 a turn while leaving blockers open is a fine way to win in limited).
One thing I will say about mill that is to its advantage: It's one of the least-preventable things you can do to your opponent. There are very few things that can prevent an ability on the stack that is putting cards from a library into the graveyard. This is quite a bit different than things which deal damage (the main method of winning).
EDIT: and I forgot we were talking about sealed/limited, which makes my post besides the point anyway.
Playing Mill in Innistrad seems very dangerous with all the potential free interactions you're giving the opponent....
But I do disagree with the blanket statement that mill is not good win condition for most formats.
1) In Born Sealed, Phenax, God of Devotion is a ridiculously good win condition even though it sucks without the mill part. UB has a number of cheap guys with high toughness (0/5 for 1U, 0/6 for 3, 3/3 for 1B, 2/4 for 3B with mill 4) that play the control role while doubling as Phenax enablers. A lot of people agreed Phenax was the scariest single card at Born prereleases with the potential to end the game in 2 turns. Less good in BTT draft since first picking Phenax is pretty high variance.
2) Jace, Memory Adept is pretty amazing in any core set Limited event. You obviously don't just build a mill deck, but if you have a decent Ux control shell, Jace's mill can end the game in 2-3 turns. Without the mill, this card would probably be significantly worse.
3) I found Dimir mill surprisingly strong as an archetype in triple Ravnica draft, even with Scavenge being a thing (mostly because Scavenge was so slow). Although this was mostly because people highly undervalued Dimir mill, so cards like Mind Grind would wheel as 11th picks and you could count on picking them up without wasting valuable picks. There were also decent Incidental effects like Balustrade Spy. Consuming Aberration was also just highly playable in any UB deck, mill or not. Every time I opened one, I forced UB mill-control won a number of drafts off it with opponents going busy calling me a "n00b" while they were losing.
In Standard though, I laugh every time I try to see someone pull it off. My budget Izzet tempo deck is like 10-0 against random mill decks, inevitably killing them in one hit with a 22/3 Spellheart Chimera with double counter backup.