The deck is pretty much a typical mill deck which is mostly blue (so no black mill spells like: Glimpse, Breaking, Funeral) that aims to maximize the power of Archive Trap (best mill spell ever printed) by having Trapmaker's Snare to find it in response to a search effect and Field of Ruin and Path to Exile to trigger search.
Thing in the Ice is supposed to be a surprise SB card that can either beatdown with damage or just evacuate the opponent's board, block and buy time.
Flipping it shouldn't be too hard in this deck with the 1-mana cantrips and low curve.
I considered Jace's Phantasm or bounce spells like Aetherize/Engulf the Shore/Whelming Wave but Thing seems to combine both effects so I chose it instead
Can a mill deck like this work without the black cards ?
Should I have more cantrips/card selection in the feck to find the main pieces (Trap/Snare or Sanity) over some of the weaker mill spells (Tome/Sculpt or Scour) or maybe some more interaction like removal/fogs or counterspells to survive longer.
I've also been working on a UW Mill deck for the past month or so and I've come up with something pretty similar (hopefully that means we're on the right track). Archive Trap is clearly a very powerful card and certainly worth going down the rabbit hole to explore if it can be viable on a competitive level. While it does certainly get much harder to use against seasoned players, with the right tools behind it, it can still be a powerhouse.
One of those tools that I've found to be absolutely crucial is Jace, Vryn's Prodigy. This guy filled every role I needed: card filtering, win condition, early blocker, but most importantly a Snapcaster effect that can cast Archive Trap for 0 (so important). This is essentially a much more versatile Twincast that doesn't have to sit in your hand dead half the time. Now this is not to say he's not soft to removal, but a Hedron Crab on 1 followed by Jace, Vryn's Prodigy on 2 gives our opponent a very awkward choice: which one to kill? If they remove both it's usually a tempo swing in our favor as our next turn Fraying Sanity comes down and it's often lights out from there. It's said in a lot of these mill discussions that a Hedron Crab unanswered will win you the game and I feel very much the same way about Jace, Vryn's Prodigy. It just opens up so many lines for this deck.
Really, you don't need any more mill power than Archive Trap and Fraying Sanity. Math wise, they do the job just fine in a timely manner. Unfortunately magic is not played in a vacuum and as I was testing I felt like I desperately needed another mill card. Missing Glimpse the Unthinkable certainly hurts, but I've found Mind Sculpt to be an acceptable concession to not confuddling the mana base any more than it already is.
Speaking of mana base, it's probably the second most important support function of the deck. A Field of Ruin is one of the few cards that can force a search. In game 1 this isn't as crucial, but after your opponent gets wise to your shenanigans they probably won't search ever again. That fact also gives us a slight edge in some of the cards that we can play. Path to Exile becomes even more amazing than it already is. Opting out of a free land in fear of a potential Archive Trap is a win/win for us. I personally found running a few Ghost Quarter still felt right. There's been plenty of times when blowing up one of my own lands (especially a Flagstones of Trokair) with a Hedron Crab out has won me the game. With Crucible of Worlds (albeit sometimes win-more) we can also put our opponent into a land prison, forcing them to use search effects if they want to stay in the game.
some neat lines the deck can take: Jace, Telepath Unbound's -3 to Snapcaster any of our mill cards or cantrip cards to help dig you into the cards you need. Mesmeric Orb + Jace, Telepath Unbound The Orb not only mills our opponent, but also dumps our spells into our graveyard allowing us to keep our hand size small for Ensnaring Bridge while giving us access to our spells through Jace's -3. Jace, Vryn's Prodigy + Minamo, School at Water's Edge (for an extra Jace activation to either dig or flip) Opt gets under your own Mesmeric Orb effect on your Upkeep step to grab something you've scryed to the top of your library. Serum Visions + Shelldock Isle provides less guess work when using Shelldock's Hideaway effect. Academy Ruins mostly to get back an Ensnaring Bridge that's been either destroyed or discarded. Trapmaker's Snare + Mindbreak Trap turns the storm/kci match up into a cake walk.
As for the rest of the deck, I think there's still a lot of room for testing and innovation. UW mill has not been nearly as explored as the UB version so there's a lot of cards to pour through and test out. Broken Ambitions for example is proving to be a lot better than I would of given it credit for.
I think in the right meta this deck can definitely be a contender, but I feel like I've reached my limit with building the deck. Smarter brewers than myself are going to have to take it from here.
I think Mission Briefing is definitely a neat new toy worth testing. Mission Briefing + Mesmeric Orb gives you access to your deck without having to hold cards in your hand, something that plays very nicely with Ensnaring Bridge. It also helps flip Jace, Vryn's Prodigy and Search for Azcanta. Also, a Snapcaster effect that can cast Archive Trap for 0 is pretty huge. I'm hesitant to throw this into the Esper list, considering the UU cost, but I think it's a serious consideration for U/W. Without Glimpse the Unthinkable, this deck needs something to give it more punch, maybe this is it?
In the past I haven't been too high on Merchant Scroll, but being able to tutor up Mission Briefing opens up some more avenues for setting up an Archive Trap. I'm tempted to give it another try. How's your experience with it? It's no secret that UW Mill lacks a diversity of strong mill cards, maybe it's not a bad idea to play the list more like a "combo" deck, positioning yourself to make a few key Archive Trap strikes. I will say one thing though, I tried to play without Visions of Beyond as I thought it was slightly overrated, but once I returned to using it I realized how much you gain by running it. In a non-Ensnaring Bridge version I think the amount of value it gives you is pretty invaluable. I'm on the line of calling it a Core card at this point.
Sidenote: Oust has been great. I don't miss Fatal Push in the least, despite Oust's sorcery speed.
Side Sidenote: I've started running a single Tolaria West and it's been pretty clutch in a few instances. A lot of the time transmuting for 3 mana to tutor up a Field of Ruin is not really ideal, but it has saved my butt a few times, especially in game 2 where getting an opponent to search his library is harder than nailing jello to a wall.
I haven't played in awhile, but I've had reasonable success with an all-in trap version. The idea is to setup for a couple turns to find archive traps and/or field of ruin. Then you setup for a big kill turn. The tutors may look slow, but they really aren't. They cost two, like Glimpse the Unthinkable, but the actual milling is just delayed. This is especially important because Fraying Sanity is one of your best cards. And when you tutor for archive traps, you get to spend your mana efficiently, yet still reap the benefit of Fraying sanity.
@Jonas: I like the approach of your list. Focusing on traps is nice. The deck is pretty consistent and wins pretty fast. As you see, my list above is similar to yours. I haven't yet thought about Mission Briefing in my current list. I'm not sure it's much better than maxing out on Trapmaker's Snare and Merchant Scroll, since it requires you to spend the mana on the turn you go off, which can be problemation. There is some utility for getting paths or something, but at three mana with three colors, that can be a big ask.
Since the deck is trying to maximize archive traps, I think Tolaria West is hugely important as extra copies of Field of Ruin. It also makes Detection Tower a very useful sideboard option, and gives you a lot of power against Leyline of Sanctity.
In general, Merchant Scroll is great because it gives you insulation against Leyline of Sanctity, when relevant. I think it's a very important card.
I'm not sure if Sleight of Hand or Serum Visions is better. On one hand, Sleight lets you get 1 of 2 cards to use right away, which can be important for tempo. But Serum visions draws you deeper.
I found Visions of Beyond is a useful card, but multiples can be really annoying. So I'm only running 3. The nice thing about going all-in on trap is that you don't need to resolve that many spells to win the game.
Sleight > Serum Vision because you get locked out on Mesmeric Orb from being able to Scry. Seeing 2 cards and picking the 1 you need/want is better early anyway for hitting land drops without worrying about Orb disrupting things. Same for when you want to dig for that Trap or Mission Briefing when you're in 'free Trap' mode and just want to maximize your chance of getting one in your hand right away.
Similarly, Visions of Beyond is fine in UB Mill where you can add in Glimpse and even the occasional Breaking to power up a graveyard fast. In U/W your mill is much slower until you hit the Trap and then the game is largely over. I can see still running them, but I found I was happier with Mission Briefing to rebuy key spells (at instant speed too!) than I was with Visions.
Which brings me to Mission Briefing. It's amazing. Turn 1 you can use Sleight to help look for pieces you need. Turn 2 you use Scroll or Snare for your missing piece (you want 1 Trap and 1 Mission Briefing or 2 Traps) and then Turn 3 you drop Fraying Sanity. This lets you win on Turn 4 off a lot of scenarios. Field + Trap + Mission Briefing the Trap -or- Field + Merchant Scroll / Trapmakers Snare for a 2nd Trap.
It varies from matchup to matchup. If you're going to be racing the fastest decks, you have to hit at least one or two removal spells to live, regardless of UB or UW builds. In my traditional UB build I have 3-4 Fatal Push, and 2 Collective Brutality. I also run Ensnaring Bridge in UB Mill which does win some matches on its own, but is very dead in many Game 1 matches like Tron, Valakut, Storm, UW/x Control, and KCI. At least Brutality can do some work and Push does remove some things that you might care about in a few of those.
In UW I've found that the Paths and Ousts are about as effective. Sometimes, they are even more effective since Path and Oust hit basically everything and sometimes you can't Revolt your Push and you can't kill something with Brutality. Crypt Incursion is another spell UW does not have access too, and can provide a big buffer to allow for time to mill them out, however, it's kind of a 1-shot thing and playing multiples always feels bad when you draw a couple of them.
Not running Ensnaring Bridge is the biggest factor, but since this deck plays a bit more like an 'all in' combo, you're usually either going to win before you would get 'under' a Bridge to matter or in post-board games, you can just play sweepers (my current board has 2 Settle the Wreckage, 1 Supreme Verdict, 1 Wrath of God) as well as being able to play Timely Reinforcements which helps out in several aggro matches quite a bit.
Yeah, I feel the same way about the removal package: I don't miss Fatal Push in the least. I have been pleasantly pleased with Oust as a replacement. But I do feel like I need something for a little extra survivability. Right now I'm on the same gameplan of bringing in Supreme Verdict and Settle the Wreckage out of the board to help survive a little longer, but Mission Briefing has got me thinking...
I have a build I was working on before the Ravnica spoilers hit, which ran Ethereal Haze instead of Ensnaring Bridge. Now with Mission Briefing, I wonder if this is actually a viable way to bake in some survivability without taking up a lot of slots to do it. Hell, you could even do some interesting stuff with splicing arcane spells like Evermind and Dampen Thought, but I'm not ready to go down that rabbit hole just yet. Either way, I think being able to pitch a fog spell into your graveyard to use later with Mission Briefing at instant speed sounds kinda sexy.
Talking about fogs, why not use Angelsong for the cycling option ?
Regarding tutors I don't think that Merchant Scroll is really necessary as 4x Trapmaker's Snare is enough and what makes those playable is the instant speed.
I also think think that Fraying Sanity while a powerful card is rather clunky and slow often enough that it doesn't justify 4x copies so I prefer to run 2x.
Sleight of Hand is a decent cantrip but I think that Thought Scour works better in the deck and also allows you to leave up mana for Path if you want to.
Going with some Fogs might be an option to supplement the Path/Oust plan. Angelsong not dead since you can cycle it. Might be worth testing as a 2-of
Merchant Scroll gets Mission Briefing as well as Trapmaker's Snare. Instant speed is not as much of a concern usually as you use it a turn or two ahead to set up your Traps/Briefings which work at instant speed. Scroll also fetches some other goodies on the Sideboard you may want to include, like Echoing Truth, Hurkyl's Recall, etc. Snare gets Traps only, and I don't like running the other traps as they are very narrow.
Sanity is the best card in U/W trap since we rely so heavily on Archive Trap. 1 Sanity = 2 Traps lethal (or 1 Trap and 1 Mission Briefing) That sort of power cannot be understated.
Sleight is far better card selection than Thought Scour's blind draw. The only thing Scour has going for it is the incidental mill plan on the opponent, which to me is not enough to make a 'pick from 2 cards the best card' vs 'draw a card blind' worth playing Scour over Sleight
I'm so back and forth on Fraying Sanity. It's a great effect and without Glimpse the Unthinkable it really helps UW maintain its mill power, but having a hand clogged up with too many is definitely not desirable. I think it really depends on how you want to build your UW deck. If it's an all in combo style, looking to set up a turn 4 archive trap win, then I would say 3-4 Fraying Sanity is probably right. If you're going UW tempo with more survivability then I can see a case for dropping down to 2.
What I think is interesting is the implications that Mission Briefing might bring. One of the awkward things with Fraying Sanity is how you sometimes feel obligated to hold onto your Archive Traps until you have a Sanity on board. With Mission Briefing in the mix that pressure is mostly gone. You can cast that turn 0 Archive Trap with the confidence of being able to Mission it back again on turn 4. That's a powerful line that we never had access to before outside of a flipped Jace, Vryn's Prodigy.
Thought Scour vs Sleight of Hand is tough. On one hand Sleight is certainly the superior cantrip pound for pound. On the other hand, we have some new reasons to dump cards into our own graveyard, making Thought Scour an interesting option. I'm not sure if I'm quite ready to bank on Mission Briefing enough to make that determination, but I can see Thought Scour playing pretty nicely with it as our turn 1 play. Another thing to keep in mind too is that later in the match, Thought Scour can also turn into a cantrip that mills our opponent for 4 with an active Fraying Sanity out. Not stellar by any means, but it does have some extra utility over Sleight of Hand in that regard.
Yeah, I feel the same way about the removal package: I don't miss Fatal Push in the least. I have been pleasantly pleased with Oust as a replacement. But I do feel like I need something for a little extra survivability. Right now I'm on the same gameplan of bringing in Supreme Verdict and Settle the Wreckage out of the board to help survive a little longer, but Mission Briefing has got me thinking...
I have a build I was working on before the Ravnica spoilers hit, which ran Ethereal Haze instead of Ensnaring Bridge. Now with Mission Briefing, I wonder if this is actually a viable way to bake in some survivability without taking up a lot of slots to do it. Hell, you could even do some interesting stuff with splicing arcane spells like Evermind and Dampen Thought, but I'm not ready to go down that rabbit hole just yet. Either way, I think being able to pitch a fog spell into your graveyard to use later with Mission Briefing at instant speed sounds kinda sexy.
This actually reminds me of a mesmeric orb deck I built when Mirrodin Block was in standard. In it I used fog effects and often if games went long I imprinted isochron scepter with holy day (even though ensnaring bridge was standard legal at the time, I preferred fog effects because the bridge prevented players from tapping creatures and getting orb triggers).
Seems like the one or two copies of scepter might be worth considering, every instant in the deck besides archive trap is 2 cmc or under. It also will get some of the artifact hate away from the orb since most opponents can’t resist the 2-for-1 (which didn’t happen much, since when I played with it the scepter usually came down turn 4 or later, so I got an activation off at least once)
*Sigh* I miss the days when brain freeze was in standard. Too bad that it’ll never come to modern.
I don't understand the aversion to Fraying Sanity. I always want to see one. It's your best enabler for turn 4 kills. In any scenario where you're down cards, it helps you. It's good against discard spells, counterspells, having to mulligan, needing to get Echoing Truth with Merchant Scroll, etc. Multiples are also not an issue since they stack. 2 fraying sanity + 1 archive trap nets you 52 cards milled. Especially in this deck where you usually wait to end the game with archive trap, fraying sanity is never a dead card.
This deck also needs 4 Tolaria West. When you are going all-in on archive trap, you need to have access to Field of Ruin as frequently as possible. You definitely can lose games when you don't find it. Increase your land count if necessary. It's very important. It also opens up many options like Oboro, Palace in the Clouds, Detection Tower, Ipnu Rivulet (which can be very handy in a grindier matchup), among other things.
I also don't understand the fascination with Mission Briefing, as though it's adding a lot of power to this deck. We already have two mana ways to cast archive trap (see Trapmaker's Snare and Merchant Scroll), so that's not adding anything new. In all my testing I've never needed to tutor for an archive trap and not had any in the deck. Multiples of briefing also incredibly awkward. You can't afford to cast 2 briefings + field of ruin on one turn until way late in the game. And if you're not using briefing on traps, what are you using it for? Getting creature removal or a cantrip for 3 mana? That's pretty bad efficiency.
Sleight of Hand is the best 1-mana cantrip for this deck, I think. Thought scour I tested, but realized it was mostly useless because you mill your opponent for so much at a time the extra cards from Thought scour(s) never mattered. Serum Visions theoretically lets you dig deeper, but with mesmeric orb it has no value. Plus, you often want to cast a cantrip into the card you get from that cantrip, so having some control over what you get now is useful.
On a bit of a budget after dumping into the mana base, but I've always enjoyed mill as a win con and after deciding to "tool box" my decks by creating a single UW manabase and swapping out cards to make different decks I decided to take a crack at it.
I figured that since there's so much graveyard recursion possible, I'd focus on that, as well as removal affects that discourage players from taking advantage of the "tax" white spells tend to create by always threatening with archive trap.
Am I the only one that has a feeling that Winds of Abandon is going to crack this deck wide open?
We no longer have to worry about jamming substandard cards just to make a forced search happen. The probability of a definite turn 4 archive trap just got a lot better.
The fact that it doubles as spot removal or a board wipe late in the game is pure gravy.
This is just a bad version of Path to Exile.
I don't think that it is good enough to be included in the deck (or be played in Modern in general).
If you want to ay more removal then Settle the Wreckage is a far better wrath effect.
Paying 6-mana for the overload isn't realistic (and my version only runs 20x lands anyway).
I currently play Esper, splashing w for path. It’s great. This is a different deck entirely than UB though. Plays different and does different things. Here we are going almost all-in on Archive Trap, forgoing mill spell diversity (Glimpse, Breaking, etc) in return for the ability to “alpha strike” our opponent through a big mill turn (Turn 4 most of the time).
If you’re looking at Winds of Abandon as just a removal spell, you’re missing something very important. It’s a FORCED search. Your opponent HAS to search their library, just like Field of Ruin, which activates your Archive Traps. The overload is not terribly relevant for our deck, but the exiling spot removal certainly is. But you’re not using this as spot removal much of the time, we have Path to Exile for that. This is used as a definite way to activate Archive Trap and so long as they have a creature on board they run the risk of doing so. This can also force a search 1 turn earlier than we previously had access to with Field of Ruin. The real culmination happens at Turn 4, which almost the entirety of our deck synergizes together to cast multiple Archive Traps in a single turn.
We represent threats on 4 fronts: creatures (Hedron Crab), artifacts (Mesmeric Orb), enchantments (Fraying Sanity), and the ever looming Archive Trap. That puts our opponent in a tough spot as we’re not just a one-note deck. We are superior than UB in almost any match up that tries to win with direct damage since we can sideboard in Leyline of Sanctity, which also makes our mirror match against UB mill laughable. Admittedly, we are soft to a opponent’s Surgical Extraction on our own Archive Trap, which worries me some.
The true goal of my brew here is to create a “smarter” mill deck. There’s many top tier decks that you run into that love the fact that you’re milling their graveyard and almost all of them “go off” before you traditionally can win as a UB mill player. Here, we take a different approach, we’re milling their library in a single turn. I understand the hesitation, this is a much different approach to mill than what had been successful for us in the past. I’ll be running this on MTGO and locally to rigorously test it out. I’ll be sure to report back!
I can see the benefit of Winds of Abandon against creature-heavy decks with no Fetchlands which is rather narrow so it is probably a SB card at best to me.
Fraying Sanity doubles up the mill effects and Twincast can either double up Archive Trap or fight counterspells.
Thing in the Ice is supposed to be a surprise SB card that can either beatdown with damage or just evacuate the opponent's board, block and buy time.
Flipping it shouldn't be too hard in this deck with the 1-mana cantrips and low curve.
I considered Jace's Phantasm or bounce spells like Aetherize/Engulf the Shore/Whelming Wave but Thing seems to combine both effects so I chose it instead
Here is the deck:
4x Hedron Crab
Artifact (4)
4x Mesmeric Orb
Enchantment (2)
2x Fraying Sanity
Instant (22)
4x Path to Exile
4x Thought Scour
4x Visions of Beyond
2x Twincast
4x Trapmaker's Snare
4x Archive Trap
4x Tome Scour
4x Mind Sculpt
Land (20)
4x Flooded Strand
4x Polluted Delta
2x Hallowed Fountain
4x Field of Ruin
5x Island
1x Plains
3x Surgical Extraction
1x Ravenous Trap
4x Negate
1x Echoing Truth
2x Fragmentize
4x Thing in the Ice
Should I have more cantrips/card selection in the feck to find the main pieces (Trap/Snare or Sanity) over some of the weaker mill spells (Tome/Sculpt or Scour) or maybe some more interaction like removal/fogs or counterspells to survive longer.
Is Twincast too cute and should just be more copies of Fraying Sanity ?
Snapcaster does seem like a good idea, probably as 2x copies over Mind Sculpt.
Edit:
On second thought Snapcaster doesn't really work with Trap so it probably doesn't fit the deck.
Supreme Verdict and Settle the Wreckage (or Aetherize) are probably the best options though slower prison type cards like Ghostly Prison and Ensnaring Bridge might also work but I'm not sure how good they can be in the current build.
Another option which is more mana-efficient might be to go with fogs (Haze/Song, Charm, Riot) but I'm not convinced it would work better than wraths.
I've also been working on a UW Mill deck for the past month or so and I've come up with something pretty similar (hopefully that means we're on the right track). Archive Trap is clearly a very powerful card and certainly worth going down the rabbit hole to explore if it can be viable on a competitive level. While it does certainly get much harder to use against seasoned players, with the right tools behind it, it can still be a powerhouse.
One of those tools that I've found to be absolutely crucial is Jace, Vryn's Prodigy. This guy filled every role I needed: card filtering, win condition, early blocker, but most importantly a Snapcaster effect that can cast Archive Trap for 0 (so important). This is essentially a much more versatile Twincast that doesn't have to sit in your hand dead half the time. Now this is not to say he's not soft to removal, but a Hedron Crab on 1 followed by Jace, Vryn's Prodigy on 2 gives our opponent a very awkward choice: which one to kill? If they remove both it's usually a tempo swing in our favor as our next turn Fraying Sanity comes down and it's often lights out from there. It's said in a lot of these mill discussions that a Hedron Crab unanswered will win you the game and I feel very much the same way about Jace, Vryn's Prodigy. It just opens up so many lines for this deck.
Really, you don't need any more mill power than Archive Trap and Fraying Sanity. Math wise, they do the job just fine in a timely manner. Unfortunately magic is not played in a vacuum and as I was testing I felt like I desperately needed another mill card. Missing Glimpse the Unthinkable certainly hurts, but I've found Mind Sculpt to be an acceptable concession to not confuddling the mana base any more than it already is.
Speaking of mana base, it's probably the second most important support function of the deck. A Field of Ruin is one of the few cards that can force a search. In game 1 this isn't as crucial, but after your opponent gets wise to your shenanigans they probably won't search ever again. That fact also gives us a slight edge in some of the cards that we can play. Path to Exile becomes even more amazing than it already is. Opting out of a free land in fear of a potential Archive Trap is a win/win for us. I personally found running a few Ghost Quarter still felt right. There's been plenty of times when blowing up one of my own lands (especially a Flagstones of Trokair) with a Hedron Crab out has won me the game. With Crucible of Worlds (albeit sometimes win-more) we can also put our opponent into a land prison, forcing them to use search effects if they want to stay in the game.
some neat lines the deck can take:
Jace, Telepath Unbound's -3 to Snapcaster any of our mill cards or cantrip cards to help dig you into the cards you need.
Mesmeric Orb + Jace, Telepath Unbound The Orb not only mills our opponent, but also dumps our spells into our graveyard allowing us to keep our hand size small for Ensnaring Bridge while giving us access to our spells through Jace's -3.
Jace, Vryn's Prodigy + Minamo, School at Water's Edge (for an extra Jace activation to either dig or flip)
Opt gets under your own Mesmeric Orb effect on your Upkeep step to grab something you've scryed to the top of your library.
Serum Visions + Shelldock Isle provides less guess work when using Shelldock's Hideaway effect.
Academy Ruins mostly to get back an Ensnaring Bridge that's been either destroyed or discarded.
Trapmaker's Snare + Mindbreak Trap turns the storm/kci match up into a cake walk.
As for the rest of the deck, I think there's still a lot of room for testing and innovation. UW mill has not been nearly as explored as the UB version so there's a lot of cards to pour through and test out. Broken Ambitions for example is proving to be a lot better than I would of given it credit for.
I think in the right meta this deck can definitely be a contender, but I feel like I've reached my limit with building the deck. Smarter brewers than myself are going to have to take it from here.
TLDR: UW mill isn't completely terrible.
4 Hedron Crab
3 Jace, Vryn's Prodigy
Instants & Sorceries
4 Archive Trap
3 Mind Sculpt
2 Trapmaker's Snare
4 Path to Exile
3 Serum Visions
1 Opt
3 Surgical Extraction
1 Echoing Truth
Artifacts
4 Mesmeric Orb
3 Ensnaring Bridge
3 Fraying Sanity
Lands
4 Field of Ruin
2 Ghost Quarter
1 Academy Ruin
1 Shelldock Isle
1 Minamo, School at Water's Edge
1 Oboro, Palace in the Clouds
1 Flagstones of Trokair
1 Ipnu Rivulet
4 Flooded Strand
2 Hallowed Fountain
3 Island
1 Plains
3 Leyline of Sanctity
3 Tormod's Crypt
2 Broken Ambitions
1 Stony Silence
1 Mindbreak Trap
1 Torpor Orb
1 Elixir of Immortality
1 Crucible of Worlds
1 Leave No Trace
1 Supreme Verdict
I think I'll jam something like this:
4 Hedron Crab
2 Jace, Vryn's Prodigy
Spells
4 Path to Exile
1 Oust
2 Mission Briefing
2 Surgical Extraction
4 Visions of Beyond
4 Mind Sculpt
4 Archive Trap
4 Mesmeric Orb
2 Ensnaring Bridge
Enchantments
2 Search for Azcanta
2 Fraying Sanity
Lands
4 Field of Ruin
1 Flagstones of Trokair
1 Ipnu Rivulet
1 Oboro, Palace in the Cloud
3 Shelldock Isle
2 Hallowed Fountain
4 Flooded Strand
2 Polluted Delta
2 Arid Mesa
2 Island
1 Plains
Surveil has got me pretty excited for this Archetype
4x Field of Ruin
4x Flooded Strand
1x Ghost Quarter
3x Hallowed Fountain
2x Ipnu Rivulet
4x Island
1x Minamo, School at Water's Edge
1x Oboro, Palace in the Clouds
1x Plains
1x Prairie Stream
4x Archive Trap
4x Mission Briefing
4x Path to Exile
2x Trapmaker's Snare
Sorcery (10)
4x Merchant Scroll
2x Oust
4x Sleight of Hand
4x Hedron Crab
2x Jace, Vryn's Prodigy
Artifact (4)
4x Mesmeric Orb
Enchantment (4)
4x Fraying Sanity
Sidenote: Oust has been great. I don't miss Fatal Push in the least, despite Oust's sorcery speed.
Side Sidenote: I've started running a single Tolaria West and it's been pretty clutch in a few instances. A lot of the time transmuting for 3 mana to tutor up a Field of Ruin is not really ideal, but it has saved my butt a few times, especially in game 2 where getting an opponent to search his library is harder than nailing jello to a wall.
// 5 Artifact
1 Engineered Explosives
4 Mesmeric Orb
// 4 Creature
4 Hedron Crab
// 4 Enchantment
4 Fraying Sanity
// 16 Instant
4 Archive Trap
4 Trapmaker's Snare
3 Visions of Beyond
1 Echoing Truth
4 Path to Exile
// 23 Land
4 Field of Ruin
4 Tolaria West
4 Island
2 Ipnu Rivulet
4 Flooded Strand
1 Hallowed Fountain
1 Plains
2 Misty Rainforest
1 Oboro, Palace in the Clouds
4 Merchant Scroll
4 Sleight of Hand
4 Leyline of Sanctity
2 Stony Silence
2 Porphyry Nodes
1 Ravenous Trap
1 Mindbreak Trap
2 Surgical Extraction
2 Silence
1 Detection Tower
I haven't played in awhile, but I've had reasonable success with an all-in trap version. The idea is to setup for a couple turns to find archive traps and/or field of ruin. Then you setup for a big kill turn. The tutors may look slow, but they really aren't. They cost two, like Glimpse the Unthinkable, but the actual milling is just delayed. This is especially important because Fraying Sanity is one of your best cards. And when you tutor for archive traps, you get to spend your mana efficiently, yet still reap the benefit of Fraying sanity.
@Jonas: I like the approach of your list. Focusing on traps is nice. The deck is pretty consistent and wins pretty fast. As you see, my list above is similar to yours. I haven't yet thought about Mission Briefing in my current list. I'm not sure it's much better than maxing out on Trapmaker's Snare and Merchant Scroll, since it requires you to spend the mana on the turn you go off, which can be problemation. There is some utility for getting paths or something, but at three mana with three colors, that can be a big ask.
Since the deck is trying to maximize archive traps, I think Tolaria West is hugely important as extra copies of Field of Ruin. It also makes Detection Tower a very useful sideboard option, and gives you a lot of power against Leyline of Sanctity.
In general, Merchant Scroll is great because it gives you insulation against Leyline of Sanctity, when relevant. I think it's a very important card.
I'm not sure if Sleight of Hand or Serum Visions is better. On one hand, Sleight lets you get 1 of 2 cards to use right away, which can be important for tempo. But Serum visions draws you deeper.
I found Visions of Beyond is a useful card, but multiples can be really annoying. So I'm only running 3. The nice thing about going all-in on trap is that you don't need to resolve that many spells to win the game.
Sleight > Serum Vision because you get locked out on Mesmeric Orb from being able to Scry. Seeing 2 cards and picking the 1 you need/want is better early anyway for hitting land drops without worrying about Orb disrupting things. Same for when you want to dig for that Trap or Mission Briefing when you're in 'free Trap' mode and just want to maximize your chance of getting one in your hand right away.
Similarly, Visions of Beyond is fine in UB Mill where you can add in Glimpse and even the occasional Breaking to power up a graveyard fast. In U/W your mill is much slower until you hit the Trap and then the game is largely over. I can see still running them, but I found I was happier with Mission Briefing to rebuy key spells (at instant speed too!) than I was with Visions.
Which brings me to Mission Briefing. It's amazing. Turn 1 you can use Sleight to help look for pieces you need. Turn 2 you use Scroll or Snare for your missing piece (you want 1 Trap and 1 Mission Briefing or 2 Traps) and then Turn 3 you drop Fraying Sanity. This lets you win on Turn 4 off a lot of scenarios. Field + Trap + Mission Briefing the Trap -or- Field + Merchant Scroll / Trapmakers Snare for a 2nd Trap.
In UW I've found that the Paths and Ousts are about as effective. Sometimes, they are even more effective since Path and Oust hit basically everything and sometimes you can't Revolt your Push and you can't kill something with Brutality. Crypt Incursion is another spell UW does not have access too, and can provide a big buffer to allow for time to mill them out, however, it's kind of a 1-shot thing and playing multiples always feels bad when you draw a couple of them.
Not running Ensnaring Bridge is the biggest factor, but since this deck plays a bit more like an 'all in' combo, you're usually either going to win before you would get 'under' a Bridge to matter or in post-board games, you can just play sweepers (my current board has 2 Settle the Wreckage, 1 Supreme Verdict, 1 Wrath of God) as well as being able to play Timely Reinforcements which helps out in several aggro matches quite a bit.
I have a build I was working on before the Ravnica spoilers hit, which ran Ethereal Haze instead of Ensnaring Bridge. Now with Mission Briefing, I wonder if this is actually a viable way to bake in some survivability without taking up a lot of slots to do it. Hell, you could even do some interesting stuff with splicing arcane spells like Evermind and Dampen Thought, but I'm not ready to go down that rabbit hole just yet. Either way, I think being able to pitch a fog spell into your graveyard to use later with Mission Briefing at instant speed sounds kinda sexy.
Regarding tutors I don't think that Merchant Scroll is really necessary as 4x Trapmaker's Snare is enough and what makes those playable is the instant speed.
I also think think that Fraying Sanity while a powerful card is rather clunky and slow often enough that it doesn't justify 4x copies so I prefer to run 2x.
Sleight of Hand is a decent cantrip but I think that Thought Scour works better in the deck and also allows you to leave up mana for Path if you want to.
Merchant Scroll gets Mission Briefing as well as Trapmaker's Snare. Instant speed is not as much of a concern usually as you use it a turn or two ahead to set up your Traps/Briefings which work at instant speed. Scroll also fetches some other goodies on the Sideboard you may want to include, like Echoing Truth, Hurkyl's Recall, etc. Snare gets Traps only, and I don't like running the other traps as they are very narrow.
Sanity is the best card in U/W trap since we rely so heavily on Archive Trap. 1 Sanity = 2 Traps lethal (or 1 Trap and 1 Mission Briefing) That sort of power cannot be understated.
Sleight is far better card selection than Thought Scour's blind draw. The only thing Scour has going for it is the incidental mill plan on the opponent, which to me is not enough to make a 'pick from 2 cards the best card' vs 'draw a card blind' worth playing Scour over Sleight
What I think is interesting is the implications that Mission Briefing might bring. One of the awkward things with Fraying Sanity is how you sometimes feel obligated to hold onto your Archive Traps until you have a Sanity on board. With Mission Briefing in the mix that pressure is mostly gone. You can cast that turn 0 Archive Trap with the confidence of being able to Mission it back again on turn 4. That's a powerful line that we never had access to before outside of a flipped Jace, Vryn's Prodigy.
Thought Scour vs Sleight of Hand is tough. On one hand Sleight is certainly the superior cantrip pound for pound. On the other hand, we have some new reasons to dump cards into our own graveyard, making Thought Scour an interesting option. I'm not sure if I'm quite ready to bank on Mission Briefing enough to make that determination, but I can see Thought Scour playing pretty nicely with it as our turn 1 play. Another thing to keep in mind too is that later in the match, Thought Scour can also turn into a cantrip that mills our opponent for 4 with an active Fraying Sanity out. Not stellar by any means, but it does have some extra utility over Sleight of Hand in that regard.
This actually reminds me of a mesmeric orb deck I built when Mirrodin Block was in standard. In it I used fog effects and often if games went long I imprinted isochron scepter with holy day (even though ensnaring bridge was standard legal at the time, I preferred fog effects because the bridge prevented players from tapping creatures and getting orb triggers).
Seems like the one or two copies of scepter might be worth considering, every instant in the deck besides archive trap is 2 cmc or under. It also will get some of the artifact hate away from the orb since most opponents can’t resist the 2-for-1 (which didn’t happen much, since when I played with it the scepter usually came down turn 4 or later, so I got an activation off at least once)
*Sigh* I miss the days when brain freeze was in standard. Too bad that it’ll never come to modern.
This deck also needs 4 Tolaria West. When you are going all-in on archive trap, you need to have access to Field of Ruin as frequently as possible. You definitely can lose games when you don't find it. Increase your land count if necessary. It's very important. It also opens up many options like Oboro, Palace in the Clouds, Detection Tower, Ipnu Rivulet (which can be very handy in a grindier matchup), among other things.
I also don't understand the fascination with Mission Briefing, as though it's adding a lot of power to this deck. We already have two mana ways to cast archive trap (see Trapmaker's Snare and Merchant Scroll), so that's not adding anything new. In all my testing I've never needed to tutor for an archive trap and not had any in the deck. Multiples of briefing also incredibly awkward. You can't afford to cast 2 briefings + field of ruin on one turn until way late in the game. And if you're not using briefing on traps, what are you using it for? Getting creature removal or a cantrip for 3 mana? That's pretty bad efficiency.
Sleight of Hand is the best 1-mana cantrip for this deck, I think. Thought scour I tested, but realized it was mostly useless because you mill your opponent for so much at a time the extra cards from Thought scour(s) never mattered. Serum Visions theoretically lets you dig deeper, but with mesmeric orb it has no value. Plus, you often want to cast a cantrip into the card you get from that cantrip, so having some control over what you get now is useful.
I figured that since there's so much graveyard recursion possible, I'd focus on that, as well as removal affects that discourage players from taking advantage of the "tax" white spells tend to create by always threatening with archive trap.
https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/1416310#paper
We no longer have to worry about jamming substandard cards just to make a forced search happen. The probability of a definite turn 4 archive trap just got a lot better.
The fact that it doubles as spot removal or a board wipe late in the game is pure gravy.
I think this deck now has some serious legs.
Here’s my starting point:
4 Hedron Crab
4 Path to Exile
1 Spell Pierce
3 Surgical Extraction
3 Visions of Beyond
1 Echoing Truth
3 Mission Briefing
1 Narset's Reversal
3 Trapmaker's Snare
4 Winds of Abandon
4 Archive Trap
3 Mesmeric Orb
3 Fraying Sanity
4 Flooded Strand
3 Hallowed Fountain
3 Island
2 Marsh Flats
2 Plains
2 Polluted Delta
3 Shelldock Isle
1 Watery Grave
1 Surgical Extraction
1 Dovin's Veto
1 Hurkyl's Recall
2 Timely Reinforcements
1 Mindbreak Trap
2 Ravenous Trap
1 Supreme Verdict
1 Set Adrift
1 Relic of Progenitus
1 Torpor Orb
3 Leyline of Sanctity
I don't think that it is good enough to be included in the deck (or be played in Modern in general).
If you want to ay more removal then Settle the Wreckage is a far better wrath effect.
Paying 6-mana for the overload isn't realistic (and my version only runs 20x lands anyway).
Btw, I wonder if it is worth it to splash black just for Glimpse the Unthinkable.
If you’re looking at Winds of Abandon as just a removal spell, you’re missing something very important. It’s a FORCED search. Your opponent HAS to search their library, just like Field of Ruin, which activates your Archive Traps. The overload is not terribly relevant for our deck, but the exiling spot removal certainly is. But you’re not using this as spot removal much of the time, we have Path to Exile for that. This is used as a definite way to activate Archive Trap and so long as they have a creature on board they run the risk of doing so. This can also force a search 1 turn earlier than we previously had access to with Field of Ruin. The real culmination happens at Turn 4, which almost the entirety of our deck synergizes together to cast multiple Archive Traps in a single turn.
We represent threats on 4 fronts: creatures (Hedron Crab), artifacts (Mesmeric Orb), enchantments (Fraying Sanity), and the ever looming Archive Trap. That puts our opponent in a tough spot as we’re not just a one-note deck. We are superior than UB in almost any match up that tries to win with direct damage since we can sideboard in Leyline of Sanctity, which also makes our mirror match against UB mill laughable. Admittedly, we are soft to a opponent’s Surgical Extraction on our own Archive Trap, which worries me some.
The true goal of my brew here is to create a “smarter” mill deck. There’s many top tier decks that you run into that love the fact that you’re milling their graveyard and almost all of them “go off” before you traditionally can win as a UB mill player. Here, we take a different approach, we’re milling their library in a single turn. I understand the hesitation, this is a much different approach to mill than what had been successful for us in the past. I’ll be running this on MTGO and locally to rigorously test it out. I’ll be sure to report back!