EDIT: First off, I'm in agreement with the vast majority of your OP. I don't think anyone thinks mill is generally a good strategy to build around in Limited in the vast majority of sets printed so far.
My point was that mill as a mechanic can be a perfectly reasonable win condition. There is nothing inherently wrong with it (aside from risk of helping opponent do GY tricks). WotC has just generally done a terrible job with card design, printing mill cards too weak in power level to be worth playing. That doesn't mean the strategy itself is inherently terrible. The cards just aren't good enough to support it, barring the OP bombs (which is why I had to use them as examples).
Consider poison. Poison used to be one of the worst mechanics in the game for ages. Before Scars block, people may have said "poison is a poor way to win the game" (even in Hulk-Flash, poison was inferior to alternatives that didn't need the combat step). The problem was that the poison creatures printed were too few and grossly underpowered (Marsh Viper). IMO whenever you commit to an alternate win condition, you need
a) a high enough density of playables (or dig spells) to enable the archetype
b) adequate tools to interact with decks playing normally
c) a boost in power level to compensate for playing an alternate strategy
"Poisonous" mostly missed these (you needed 1 specific card and other slivers) and was still a flop. But they got it right with Infect. They a) designed an entire block around Infect/Proliferate, b) increased interactivity with the combat step via Wither and Proliferate, and c) gave the potential of explosiveness with combat pumps. But it wasn't so OP that Infect was always winning. Artifact-based decks were quite viable. Good mechanic and block design.
Mill typically fails on all these counts. Most sets have a low density of playable mill effects (incidental or otherwise). Many are not only card disadvantage but fail to do anything interactive. When they try to give you interactivity, they tend to tack incidental mill on a bad creature. So of course bad card is bad. And I think the benchmark power level of mill effects has just been set too low.
Consider Lava Spike vs Tome Scour. The card Lava Spike takes 3/20 > 1/7 of your life for 1 mana. In a 60-card deck, assuming most games end by the 13th turn or earlier, the card Tome Scour is at best 5/40=1/8th of a kill. If you stacked these decks against each other, the Lava Spike deck is highly favored
That's a fundamental imbalance in power level between burn and mill. When you factor in that burn interacts with traditional strategies (combat damage) and kills Planeswalkers, that skews things even more in Lava Spike's favor. And Lava Spike isn't even playable outside straight burn decks because of the card disadvantage. So how can Tome Scour ever be worth casting? That isn't anything inherently wrong with milling; just that Tome Scour really got screwed on power level.
In Limited, dropping to 40-card decks means you're getting 1/6th-1/4th of a kill out of Tome Scour if you can also survive the aggro decks. So that swings things a bit more in favor of mill. But not enough to compensate for the low density of mill effects and card disadvantage/non-interactivity. Sure, 24 Tome Scour + 16 Island would be able to turn 3 people. But you're not going to see that many mill spells in the average Limited pool (if you did, mill would be OP). If you only play a few, you have to use the rest of your deck to somehow survive aggro with fewer cards, whereas the player running burn at least gets synergy with combat damage. This is a problem of poor card design.
At the same time, WotC is probably afraid to increase raw power level because printing Glimpse the Unthinkable at 1cc could screw up constructed. But there must be some way through card design (maybe better spells with incidental mill) to push the power level of mill in Limited without breaking constructed.
Dimir I think was the last time they did a reasonable job, with cards like Sage Row Denizen, Consuming Aberration, Balustrade Spy, Undercity Informer all being reasonable bodies to play whether or not you were playing mill. If you end up drafting enough of them, you can start considering picking up pure mill chaff like Mind Grind as a late pick. Cards like Pilfered Plans are also good design, tacking Incidental Mill on an otherwise playable effect (3 mana for Divination). But in general, there just aren't enough playables and/or the amount of incidental mill isn't enough to support the strategy.
But there could be. What about a card like
"Blightmill" -- 1UB.
Sorcery
Target opponent discards two cards and puts the top eight cards of his or her library into his or her graveyard.
Good enough to play?
What about a cycle of creatures in U and B that have high power and low toughness and mill players instead of dealing combat damage.
Guy - UB
Creature
[keyword] - whenever this creature would deal damage to a player, instead put that many cards from the top of that player's library into that player's graveyard.
4/1
Creature gets higher power to compensate for needing to mill more cards than you need to deal damage. Unusually high power makes it good in combat too, though it also dies to everything. So opponent can just not block and risk the mill, or trade with a 1/1 dork. Or you can keep it on defense to trade with an attacker. Lots of options. Or maybe the power could be lower and the keyword could be "mill 2 cards per 1 damage" instead.
You bring up Dimir as a good example... and yet it was the literal worst guild in the whole RTR Block. The problem with mill is that no mill has any value until it actually kills a player.
In fact, it makes think of Heroic in a way. The prevailing the logic was 'combat tricks just increase your chances of being blown out.' Then Theros came along and pushed combat tricks to the point of 'OH MY GOD!' by making the spells strong and giving us huge incentive to cast them. If they really want mill to work, it'll need to be in a similar fashion.
You bring up Dimir as a good example... and yet it was the literal worst guild in the whole RTR Block. The problem with mill is that no mill has any value until it actually kills a player.
Worst relative to other guilds (except maybe Izzet), but best relative to other blocks attempting to enable to make synergistic playable mill cards IMO. Not good enough. Just good attempt.
No poison has any value until it kills a player. They made poison playable. That's why I drew the analogy.
It's not unreasonble that they could create a block like that. They could also print a pseudo-Threshold mechanic, only based off the size of your opponent's GY. Synergizes extremely well with mill-per-damage creatures and just gives you more incentive to use incidental mill in general.
Perhaps, but the ultimate problem they will run into is if they print good creatures with Mill abilities, people will play the mill creatures simply because they are solid creatures without any abilities.
I'd also add that "does nothing until you win" applies to a lot of burn as well...yet burn is often a viable strategy. The burn cards also aren't ones that people play "simply because they are solid" but because they're reasonable in conjunction with the burn option. A group of cards would not need to be good enough to play without the mill functionality to be good enough to play with it if there are enough cards to support a mill strategy...Firedancer and Boros Charm are great examples of similar cards for burn.
I'd also add that "does nothing until you win" applies to a lot of burn as well...yet burn is often a viable strategy. The burn cards also aren't ones that people play "simply because they are solid" but because they're reasonable in conjunction with the burn option. A group of cards would not need to be good enough to play without the mill functionality to be good enough to play with it if there are enough cards to support a mill strategy...Firedancer and Boros Charm are great examples of similar cards for burn.
Not sure I follow. I'm talking completely about Limited here. Burn has never been a viable limited strategy that I'm aware of.
My main point was that "tacking mill onto things only works if you'd play the other thing anyway" isn't really valid. In RtR, for example, I've definitely lost to the doorkeeper/defender deck in draft...that deck plays cards that are much lower picks if you're not on the mill plan. Mill is very niche to be sure, but there are formats where you can build around it if you get the right early picks, rather than having it be a one-of win con.
I'm largely in agreement with the OP...usually mill is either based or based around one-card bombs, but there are limited formats in which mill is a reasonable niche strategy that you can draft around.
I wasn't saying they should 'tack mill onto' anything. In my post I talked about how printing cards like Undead Alchemist is the way to go. It's basically Forsaken Drifters in a random blue deck (and a card that will rarely be cast in a decent blue deck). However, the fact that it can turn a Tome Scour into 1-3 zombies that can attack to give you more zombies makes mill more viable. Instead of simply putting cards in the graveyard as a pseudo-attack on the opponent, you do two things at once. You mill them, a possible win-con, and you grow a horde of blockers/attackers, another win-con.
Just tacking 'Mill 7' onto Mind Rot is what they have been doing. Putting sweet effects that trigger when a card is milled onto otherwise vanilla creatures would be much more interesting.
Something like 2BUUncommon Mill Guy
2/2
Whenever a creature card is put into an opponent's graveyard from the top of their library, you may have them lose 2 life. If you do, you gain 2 life.
or
3B Common Mill Guy
1/4
Whenever a nonland card is put into an opponent's graveyard from the top of their library, up to 1 target creature gets -X/-X until end of turn where X is half of the card's converted mana cost rounded down.
Uncommon mill guy above is OP. Him + Tome Scour = Drain 10, probably too good for limited between a common and uncommon. I think you're erring on the side of trying to increase the power level too much on a single card (e.g. Consuming Aberration, Jace) to make mill playable. Then we get into bomb territory where the card either says "I win" or "I do nothing", the problem that has traditionally plagued mill.
The other way to do it is to just create several medium-powered synergistic mechanics that reward you for milling and/or mill when you do things that are otherwise profitable.
1U - Common Guy
Creature
Keyword - if this creature would deal combat damage to a player, instead that player puts twice that many cards from the top of his or her library to his or her graveyard.
1/3
1UB - Uncommon Guy
Creature
Intimidate
Freshhold - If opponent has 10 or more cards in his or her graveyard, this gets +2/+2
2/1
3GG - Fungal Bloom
Sorcery
Put X 1/1 Saproling tokens onto the battlefield under your control where X is the number of creature cards in target opponent's graveyard.
2UB - Rare Guy
Creature
Keyword - if this creature would deal combat damage to a player, instead that player puts twice that many cards from the top of his or her library to his or her graveyard.
Freshhold - If opponent has 10 or more cards in his or her graveyard, this gets +3/+3 and flying.
3/4
U - Tome ReScour
Sorcery
Put the top 4 cards of target player's library into his or her graveyard.
Repeat for each card named Tome ReScour in your graveyard.
2G - Green Guy
Creature
GG: Exile two target cards in a single player's graveyard. If those cards share the same name, put two +1/+1 counters on this creature.
2/3
1BB - Black Guy
Creature
Flying
When this dies, put the top ten cards of your library into your graveyard.
3/3
R - Instant
Target creature gets +X/+0 until end of turn where X is the number of instant cards in target opponent's graveyard.
2B - Shrinkage (common)
Enchantment - Aura
Enchant Creature
When this enters the battlefield, put the top two cards of target player's library into his or her graveyard.
Whenever a card is put into enchanted creature's controller's graveyard, enchanted creature gets -1/-1 until end of turn.
1U - common
Creature - Wizard
Whenever a card is put into an opponent's graveyard from his or her library, scry 1.
2/1
There are tons of ways to design mechanics dependent on the opponent's graveyard and milling.
Uncommon mill guy above is OP. Him + Tome Scour = Drain 10, probably too good for limited between a common and uncommon. I think you're erring on the side of trying to increase the power level too much on a single card (e.g. Consuming Aberration, Jace) to make mill playable. Then we get into bomb territory where the card either says "I win" or "I do nothing", the problem that has traditionally plagued mill.
That's the idea. Take average creatures and put mill specific abilities on them that actually affect the board and/or your opponents life total.
Basically, the mill win-con should be ONE option to win the game, but the advantage gained from milling the opponent should also affect the game state. Otherwise, it's just too high variance.
I am always a fan of milling strategies in Limited. Dimir in Gatecrash was one of the best examples of Mill being good, however the format was too fast for a slow mill deck to work. I like the cards like Grisly Spectacle which is taking a good effect and adding Mill effects to it. The main problem I see with mill strategies is you are split between cards that mill and cards that do other thing. That is why Grisly Spectacle was great for mill, same with Consuming Aberration. Straight mill cards are rarely good like Tome Scour because taking 5 cards from your opponent is nice, it does not do anything to their hand or field. The other problem is there is not that many mill cards in a single set. M14 and Gatecrash had the most that I can recall off the top of my head. Innistrad had self mill, which is a different can of worms.
The problem with tacking mill onto good cards is that other decks will dilute the mill deck. Grisly Spectacle was a higher pick than basically any card for Orzhov as well.
I find it amusing that one very high-profile Limited milling deck (Dampen Thought deck from Kamigawa) literally added milling to other effects (using Splice).
I drafted a deck with 4 Dampen Thought and 5 Lava Spike and 3 EternalWitnessKami and multiple Peer Through Depths/Reach Through Mists in Modern Masters. Carddisadvantage.dec. It was truly awful and durdly, but when it got running, it truly "Evoke"d Lols.
Almost won an M15 draft the other day with mill. Had 4 Mind Sculpt and a Grindclock. It was really funny but I lost the finals in 3 games. Milling is terrible and no one should try it unless they promised they would on their youtube channel or are drinking. I was both of these exceptions.
It's almost like R&D read this thread and decided to make creature-based mill mechanics better for Limited.
Ingest isn't quite mill-Infect and (so far) it's mind-bogglingly slow, but it might still hit that Timmy itch casual players get to remove cards from the opponent's library, it solves the problem of accidentally enabling enemy graveyard interactions, and Processors give you tangible value for bothering to exile cards from their library. Because of Ingest+Processors, this might be the first main set where they didn't bother to print any useless mill spells or incidental mill effects. Processors also conveniently hate on Delve in Standard. Cool. Perhaps they'll print other synergistic mill-exile mechanics in this block?
It would have been interesting if they printed a straight ingest spell like:
Book Eating - U
Target player exiles the top four cards of his or her library.
That might have actually been reasonable for a dedicated processor deck.
What's interesting is that now that once they've established and piloted these mechanics in this set, they're open to print synergistic cards like that in the expansions or other sets. Having Processors be playable enough to be worth enabling opens a ton of design space.
Ingest is a trap - it's complete and utter trinket text unless you have Processors. There is only one card with Ingest in the entire format that has the potential to mill a player out (the UB rare with 3UB: Draw a card and exilemill the opponent one card) and that card will win you the game from card advantage long before it mills.
Even the 1/2 flier with Ingest kills from damage before it mills them out (assuming you have any other damage at all).
The OP's advice is sound. One thing I'd add (and this matters more in Constructed than Limited but is worth remembering) - just as some cards use the graveyard as a resource, a smaller number use the library as a resource. Those library is a resource cards (example: Dark Petition) get weakened by random mill effects.
In general though, unless there is a viable mill deck that's supported in the format (and the last one that I recall drafting was original Ravnica), mill in limited exists solely to suck bad players into making terrible decks.
Ingest+Processor is mill-mechanic that interacts with the game a lot more than prior attempts at mill.
So far the goal is not to win BY milling the opponent out (0 cards left), but it's still a space of the game that revolves around removing cards from the top of opponent's library. Ingesting greater than 0 cards is often favorable, whereas milling greater than 0 cards rarely is. That fact has now opened up design space that makes other things that exile top cards potentially favorable in future sets.
Consider this card:
Room Scour - 1U
Sorcery
Exile the top 4 cards of target player's library
Draw a card
Would this card have been playable before? Absolutely not. Now that processors are a thing, this card has niche value as a support card in a certain archetype. Hitting Wasteland Strangler on curve is no joke. The main drawback of mill was that milling cards doesn't interact with the game or creatures, but now it can in some ways, and that creates room to develop other interactions with future mechanics.
Perhaps the most important implication is that because of Ingest+Processor, WotC printed ZERO regular mill cards in this set. They would usually always printed a few mill cards to throw bones to the casual players that love UB mill. Ingest+Processor is a way WotC can throw those players some mill-like cards without polluting the set for the rest of us. That's a step forward in terms of Limited quality.
The point is, it's a significant design innovation in terms of bridging mill-like abilities (for Timmy) and mechanics that are actually playable (for Spike). With a few more mechanics like this gradually introduced, it may eventually become favorable to try to win by milling an opponent out (because the ability is tacked onto creatures, and because creatures you cast profit if you have been attacking opponent's library).
Dedicated Ingest/Processor is a real deck. Not so real that I am happy playing Mist Intruder but it's a deck.
I actually Ingesting/Milling has a non-zero effect on the psychological state of your opponent. People *hate* when cards they want to draw get milled; much more than they are relieved when cards they DON'T want get milled.
Hate leads to Anger
Anger leads to Misplays
Misplays lead to you winning.
(aside: it's obviously not a big enough effect to make a 1/2 flyer playable)
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My point was that mill as a mechanic can be a perfectly reasonable win condition. There is nothing inherently wrong with it (aside from risk of helping opponent do GY tricks). WotC has just generally done a terrible job with card design, printing mill cards too weak in power level to be worth playing. That doesn't mean the strategy itself is inherently terrible. The cards just aren't good enough to support it, barring the OP bombs (which is why I had to use them as examples).
Consider poison. Poison used to be one of the worst mechanics in the game for ages. Before Scars block, people may have said "poison is a poor way to win the game" (even in Hulk-Flash, poison was inferior to alternatives that didn't need the combat step). The problem was that the poison creatures printed were too few and grossly underpowered (Marsh Viper). IMO whenever you commit to an alternate win condition, you need
a) a high enough density of playables (or dig spells) to enable the archetype
b) adequate tools to interact with decks playing normally
c) a boost in power level to compensate for playing an alternate strategy
"Poisonous" mostly missed these (you needed 1 specific card and other slivers) and was still a flop. But they got it right with Infect. They a) designed an entire block around Infect/Proliferate, b) increased interactivity with the combat step via Wither and Proliferate, and c) gave the potential of explosiveness with combat pumps. But it wasn't so OP that Infect was always winning. Artifact-based decks were quite viable. Good mechanic and block design.
Mill typically fails on all these counts. Most sets have a low density of playable mill effects (incidental or otherwise). Many are not only card disadvantage but fail to do anything interactive. When they try to give you interactivity, they tend to tack incidental mill on a bad creature. So of course bad card is bad. And I think the benchmark power level of mill effects has just been set too low.
Consider Lava Spike vs Tome Scour. The card Lava Spike takes 3/20 > 1/7 of your life for 1 mana. In a 60-card deck, assuming most games end by the 13th turn or earlier, the card Tome Scour is at best 5/40=1/8th of a kill. If you stacked these decks against each other, the Lava Spike deck is highly favored
40 Lava Spike
40 Tome Scour
(Tome Scour deck needs 4 lands+10 Tome Scour to turn 4 you, impossible. Lava Spike deck needs 2-3 lands+7 Lava Spike, fairly consistent)
That's a fundamental imbalance in power level between burn and mill. When you factor in that burn interacts with traditional strategies (combat damage) and kills Planeswalkers, that skews things even more in Lava Spike's favor. And Lava Spike isn't even playable outside straight burn decks because of the card disadvantage. So how can Tome Scour ever be worth casting? That isn't anything inherently wrong with milling; just that Tome Scour really got screwed on power level.
In Limited, dropping to 40-card decks means you're getting 1/6th-1/4th of a kill out of Tome Scour if you can also survive the aggro decks. So that swings things a bit more in favor of mill. But not enough to compensate for the low density of mill effects and card disadvantage/non-interactivity. Sure, 24 Tome Scour + 16 Island would be able to turn 3 people. But you're not going to see that many mill spells in the average Limited pool (if you did, mill would be OP). If you only play a few, you have to use the rest of your deck to somehow survive aggro with fewer cards, whereas the player running burn at least gets synergy with combat damage. This is a problem of poor card design.
At the same time, WotC is probably afraid to increase raw power level because printing Glimpse the Unthinkable at 1cc could screw up constructed. But there must be some way through card design (maybe better spells with incidental mill) to push the power level of mill in Limited without breaking constructed.
Dimir I think was the last time they did a reasonable job, with cards like Sage Row Denizen, Consuming Aberration, Balustrade Spy, Undercity Informer all being reasonable bodies to play whether or not you were playing mill. If you end up drafting enough of them, you can start considering picking up pure mill chaff like Mind Grind as a late pick. Cards like Pilfered Plans are also good design, tacking Incidental Mill on an otherwise playable effect (3 mana for Divination). But in general, there just aren't enough playables and/or the amount of incidental mill isn't enough to support the strategy.
But there could be. What about a card like
"Blightmill" -- 1UB.
Sorcery
Target opponent discards two cards and puts the top eight cards of his or her library into his or her graveyard.
Good enough to play?
What about a cycle of creatures in U and B that have high power and low toughness and mill players instead of dealing combat damage.
Guy - UB
Creature
[keyword] - whenever this creature would deal damage to a player, instead put that many cards from the top of that player's library into that player's graveyard.
4/1
Creature gets higher power to compensate for needing to mill more cards than you need to deal damage. Unusually high power makes it good in combat too, though it also dies to everything. So opponent can just not block and risk the mill, or trade with a 1/1 dork. Or you can keep it on defense to trade with an attacker. Lots of options. Or maybe the power could be lower and the keyword could be "mill 2 cards per 1 damage" instead.
If mill is to viable, more cards with effects like Undead Alchemist or Vulturous Zombie need to exist.
In fact, it makes think of Heroic in a way. The prevailing the logic was 'combat tricks just increase your chances of being blown out.' Then Theros came along and pushed combat tricks to the point of 'OH MY GOD!' by making the spells strong and giving us huge incentive to cast them. If they really want mill to work, it'll need to be in a similar fashion.
RBGLiving EndRBG
EDH
UFblthpU
BRXantchaRB
BGVarolzGB
URWZedruuWRU
Worst relative to other guilds (except maybe Izzet), but best relative to other blocks attempting to enable to make synergistic playable mill cards IMO. Not good enough. Just good attempt.
No poison has any value until it kills a player. They made poison playable. That's why I drew the analogy.
It's not unreasonble that they could create a block like that. They could also print a pseudo-Threshold mechanic, only based off the size of your opponent's GY. Synergizes extremely well with mill-per-damage creatures and just gives you more incentive to use incidental mill in general.
RBGLiving EndRBG
EDH
UFblthpU
BRXantchaRB
BGVarolzGB
URWZedruuWRU
Not sure I follow. I'm talking completely about Limited here. Burn has never been a viable limited strategy that I'm aware of.
RBGLiving EndRBG
EDH
UFblthpU
BRXantchaRB
BGVarolzGB
URWZedruuWRU
I'm largely in agreement with the OP...usually mill is either based or based around one-card bombs, but there are limited formats in which mill is a reasonable niche strategy that you can draft around.
Just tacking 'Mill 7' onto Mind Rot is what they have been doing. Putting sweet effects that trigger when a card is milled onto otherwise vanilla creatures would be much more interesting.
Something like
2BUUncommon Mill Guy
2/2
Whenever a creature card is put into an opponent's graveyard from the top of their library, you may have them lose 2 life. If you do, you gain 2 life.
or
3B Common Mill Guy
1/4
Whenever a nonland card is put into an opponent's graveyard from the top of their library, up to 1 target creature gets -X/-X until end of turn where X is half of the card's converted mana cost rounded down.
RBGLiving EndRBG
EDH
UFblthpU
BRXantchaRB
BGVarolzGB
URWZedruuWRU
The other way to do it is to just create several medium-powered synergistic mechanics that reward you for milling and/or mill when you do things that are otherwise profitable.
1U - Common Guy
Creature
Keyword - if this creature would deal combat damage to a player, instead that player puts twice that many cards from the top of his or her library to his or her graveyard.
1/3
1UB - Uncommon Guy
Creature
Intimidate
Freshhold - If opponent has 10 or more cards in his or her graveyard, this gets +2/+2
2/1
1UB - Pilfered Plans
3GG - Fungal Bloom
Sorcery
Put X 1/1 Saproling tokens onto the battlefield under your control where X is the number of creature cards in target opponent's graveyard.
2UB - Rare Guy
Creature
Keyword - if this creature would deal combat damage to a player, instead that player puts twice that many cards from the top of his or her library to his or her graveyard.
Freshhold - If opponent has 10 or more cards in his or her graveyard, this gets +3/+3 and flying.
3/4
U - Tome ReScour
Sorcery
Put the top 4 cards of target player's library into his or her graveyard.
Repeat for each card named Tome ReScour in your graveyard.
2G - Green Guy
Creature
GG: Exile two target cards in a single player's graveyard. If those cards share the same name, put two +1/+1 counters on this creature.
2/3
1BB - Black Guy
Creature
Flying
When this dies, put the top ten cards of your library into your graveyard.
3/3
R - Instant
Target creature gets +X/+0 until end of turn where X is the number of instant cards in target opponent's graveyard.
2GG Lhurgoyf
2B - Shrinkage (common)
Enchantment - Aura
Enchant Creature
When this enters the battlefield, put the top two cards of target player's library into his or her graveyard.
Whenever a card is put into enchanted creature's controller's graveyard, enchanted creature gets -1/-1 until end of turn.
1U - common
Creature - Wizard
Whenever a card is put into an opponent's graveyard from his or her library, scry 1.
2/1
There are tons of ways to design mechanics dependent on the opponent's graveyard and milling.
Reread the card I made. It said 'creature card.'
RBGLiving EndRBG
EDH
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BRXantchaRB
BGVarolzGB
URWZedruuWRU
Basically, the mill win-con should be ONE option to win the game, but the advantage gained from milling the opponent should also affect the game state. Otherwise, it's just too high variance.
RBGLiving EndRBG
EDH
UFblthpU
BRXantchaRB
BGVarolzGB
URWZedruuWRU
RBGLiving EndRBG
EDH
UFblthpU
BRXantchaRB
BGVarolzGB
URWZedruuWRU
Ingest isn't quite mill-Infect and (so far) it's mind-bogglingly slow, but it might still hit that Timmy itch casual players get to remove cards from the opponent's library, it solves the problem of accidentally enabling enemy graveyard interactions, and Processors give you tangible value for bothering to exile cards from their library. Because of Ingest+Processors, this might be the first main set where they didn't bother to print any useless mill spells or incidental mill effects. Processors also conveniently hate on Delve in Standard. Cool. Perhaps they'll print other synergistic mill-exile mechanics in this block?
Book Eating - U
Target player exiles the top four cards of his or her library.
That might have actually been reasonable for a dedicated processor deck.
What's interesting is that now that once they've established and piloted these mechanics in this set, they're open to print synergistic cards like that in the expansions or other sets. Having Processors be playable enough to be worth enabling opens a ton of design space.
Even the 1/2 flier with Ingest kills from damage before it mills them out (assuming you have any other damage at all).
The OP's advice is sound. One thing I'd add (and this matters more in Constructed than Limited but is worth remembering) - just as some cards use the graveyard as a resource, a smaller number use the library as a resource. Those library is a resource cards (example: Dark Petition) get weakened by random mill effects.
In general though, unless there is a viable mill deck that's supported in the format (and the last one that I recall drafting was original Ravnica), mill in limited exists solely to suck bad players into making terrible decks.
RBGLiving EndRBG
EDH
UFblthpU
BRXantchaRB
BGVarolzGB
URWZedruuWRU
So far the goal is not to win BY milling the opponent out (0 cards left), but it's still a space of the game that revolves around removing cards from the top of opponent's library. Ingesting greater than 0 cards is often favorable, whereas milling greater than 0 cards rarely is. That fact has now opened up design space that makes other things that exile top cards potentially favorable in future sets.
Consider this card:
Room Scour - 1U
Sorcery
Exile the top 4 cards of target player's library
Draw a card
Would this card have been playable before? Absolutely not. Now that processors are a thing, this card has niche value as a support card in a certain archetype. Hitting Wasteland Strangler on curve is no joke. The main drawback of mill was that milling cards doesn't interact with the game or creatures, but now it can in some ways, and that creates room to develop other interactions with future mechanics.
Perhaps the most important implication is that because of Ingest+Processor, WotC printed ZERO regular mill cards in this set. They would usually always printed a few mill cards to throw bones to the casual players that love UB mill. Ingest+Processor is a way WotC can throw those players some mill-like cards without polluting the set for the rest of us. That's a step forward in terms of Limited quality.
The point is, it's a significant design innovation in terms of bridging mill-like abilities (for Timmy) and mechanics that are actually playable (for Spike). With a few more mechanics like this gradually introduced, it may eventually become favorable to try to win by milling an opponent out (because the ability is tacked onto creatures, and because creatures you cast profit if you have been attacking opponent's library).
I actually Ingesting/Milling has a non-zero effect on the psychological state of your opponent. People *hate* when cards they want to draw get milled; much more than they are relieved when cards they DON'T want get milled.
Hate leads to Anger
Anger leads to Misplays
Misplays lead to you winning.
(aside: it's obviously not a big enough effect to make a 1/2 flyer playable)