Stony Silence, Disenchant, Engineered Explosives, Hurkyl's Recall, Timely Reinforcements, Crypt Incursion, Sun Droplet, etc. There are a plethora of cards we have against these two matches. Affinity, Infect and Fish are more troublesome than Burn though. Usually one Crypt Incursion gains so much burn can't keep up.
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1) A five drop to hit a very narrow segment of decks hard doesn't seem too strong. I mean, your best bet is against Jeskai Nahiri and even they run 4 Snapcaster Mages. Talent I have looked at as well, but what instants or sorceries are you trying to hit? The same cost gives you Startled Awake which is a notably bigger slam against their deck.
2) Surgical is a dead draw against SO many decks, most notably the aggro kind that we naturally have difficulty against. I'm a huge proponent of 4 in the SB, but maindeck would require a metagame that warrants it.
3) Turbo mill and combo decks are very different things. Just because the combo wins by milling doesn't make it a "mill deck" sort of thing. Same idea as Painter's Servant and Sphinx's Tutelage. You'll fold to combo decks like Ad Nauseum and Scapeshift that simply do combos better. Additionally, any combo contingent upon keeping permanents on the board is inherently difficult to make consistent. Memory Erosion seems strictly worse than Sphinx's Tutelage unless you're going against Storm or something that hammers out a ton of spells all at once.
4) Aberration as a 5 drop is another tough pill for me to swallow. Especially when it can eat a Path to Exile since they don't have TOO many other Path targets. Phantasm is awesome, no argument there. Nihilith I tinkered with for a while and rarely got him to actually attack. I'd get him to unsuspend, but then he was pretty much always used as a blocker. I'm messing with Thing in the Ice and generally like it more than Nihilith. Ashiok is just a tad too slow and too easily smacked out of existence in my opinion. I WANT him to work, but he doesn't seem to do what we need.
5) Against a creature heavy deck, that isn't a terrible idea.
Please don't take any of my comments as criticism. Just my opinions. And I like that you're bringing new ideas to the table. Would be interested to see the list you are running, as I imagine it's very different from what we normally see here. Keep milling, my friend.
so I have a dilemma. I have 3xensnaring bridges from when I ran the UB variant. Now I got white. Side boarding 3x disenchants, main board 2x lingering souls and 4x path to exile. Now since I've delved further into white I'm considering taking out my bridges for ghostly prisons instead. They atleast stack and I feel getting 2x bridges in hand is a huge waste.
I know a few posters have tried the prisons and I want to know if they are better for the WUB variant than the bridge? I just don't wanna trade off the bridges and regret it.
I don't think the prisons or bridges are necessary atm personally. I prefer to just race and that's worked for me just fine the past few months. Prison might be better paired with your removal if your set on using either.
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If you are using draw spells like Visions of beyond or Thought scour or using mesmeric orb then prison is better to use then bridge. Drawing 3 cards from vision with a bridge in play can be really bad. Plus costing them 2 mana and 3 cards off the top to attack will make them think about if the damage is worth it.
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Modern CEldraziTron, UBMill, GWBogles
Legacy GUInfect, CEldrazi
Standard GRGR Pummeler
Last night i decided to try the duskmantle guildmage/mindcrank combo.
This really works i only had 2x of each card to try but i like the way it can fit into the deck.
My observations are. Dont make it the be all of your deck, dont mully down to see peices or try and fetch for it ect. Its a great combo but making it a pillar of the deck and relying on it is a mistake.
The weakest part of the combo is mindcrank. It is most vulnerable to break the combo.
Duskmantle though protects itself. SO WELL. As long as you have access to 3 mana ppl can't kill it without losing. You want to bolt it ? Sure, in response i activate duskmantles first ability and win.
Whenever i had the combo out i won the game soon after.
Keep in mind, kingmabs, that by the time lightning bolt is on the stack to respond to with duskmantle's ability, the lightning bolt CARD is already in their graveyard. Only bolt's effect is on the stack, meaning you're gonna need either a life loss effect or a mill effect to get the loop going. It's the same reason bolting a 2/3 goyf when there's no instants in the yard doesn't work, by the time bolt's been cast, let alone resolves, the card's in the yard already. Now, having 5 mana up with combo on board with countersquall in hand, THAT'S a good spot to be.
Keep in mind, kingmabs, that by the time lightning bolt is on the stack to respond to with duskmantle's ability, the lightning bolt CARD is already in their graveyard. Only bolt's effect is on the stack, meaning you're gonna need either a life loss effect or a mill effect to get the loop going. It's the same reason bolting a 2/3 goyf when there's no instants in the yard doesn't work, by the time bolt's been cast, let alone resolves, the card's in the yard already. Now, having 5 mana up with combo on board with countersquall in hand, THAT'S a good spot to be.
Thats not true, cast mechanic is different, you can google it. Also read about sba as you misunderstand them
How has Startled Awake performed? I just assumed 4 cmc was too much so I never tested it.
Thus far very well. It's a curve topper for sure, but (at least in the mana base I am running) getting to that fourth land by turn 5 is very easy and having two additional slams for 13 cards really puts an exclamation point on our gas tank. I have yet to need to flip it but I imagine I will hit grindier matches that Baby Junior SOB buys me out of. Would highly recommend trying as a two-of.
I don't think the prisons or bridges are necessary atm personally. I prefer to just race and that's worked for me just fine the past few months. Prison might be better paired with your removal if your set on using either.
I'm gonna politely disagree with you on this one. I think go wide strategies like zoo, delver/pyromancer, spirits and a bunch of others pose a serious threat that we can't consistently out-tempo. As I've advocated a number of time on this thread, I think Ensnaring Bridge is too slow to effectively counter what it's aiming at (stopping the early damage avalanche). While it DOES shut out things entirely later on, by that point we should have already won. Others have already commented on the nonbo it has with Visions of Beyond and the positive synergy that Ghostly Prison has with Mesmeric Orb.
So yeah. I'm a 4-of prison player in the main all day long.
All that said, you are clearly one of the more pragmatic and thoughtful players that posts on this thread along with Irixis (or whatever his name is) so take my thoughts with a grain of salt.
Just spent 20 minutes reading and re reading rules 601.1 - 601.5, and you're absolutely right, Timba, I stand corrected. It was indeed my misunderstanding of state based checks, specifically WHY goyf survives, that led me to that erroneous conclusion. I thank you, genuinely, because I have been misplaying certain steps for years now.
Medium-time lurker, first time poster here. I love Mill, been playing it for awhile now and just trying to tune it for modern!
A couple areas my list differs from those here:
Why no Snapcaster Mage in these lists? I definitely prefer him over Jace's Phantasm, he lets us flash back Visions, or a Glimpse, or a Path if needed. I feel like Phantasm gets us away from our strategy, which is to get them milled down, though I do see it's utility as a blocker at least. Snapcaster just has synergy with Mesmeric orb, it puts my spells in my graveyard. And don't forget about instant speed blocker for a pesky Geist of Saint Traft and stuff like that. He's a 4-of for me.
I run 2 x Damnation in the main board as a sweeper for midrangey decks that has been an all-star for me.
One of the guys in my playgroup uses Jeskai Nahiri with an Emrakul and a bunch of counters in his main board - that Emrakul is annoying. I run 2 Hide // Seek in the main as well as 2 Surgical Extractions (with Extirpate in my SB in case). If I can mill a Nahiri and Extract it, I'm sitting pretty decent.
I haven't seen anyone speak up about Twincast either. Hitting a twincast on a Glimpse (or even Visions) can be a huge swing mid game. And it works well with Archive Trap costing 0 as well. I think both Mind Funeral and Twincast are better than Startled Awake
I'm looking forward to partaking in some good discussions with everyone in here, there's been a LOT of good suggestions made! My deck was previously UB, but I threw the white in there based on this thread (Hide // Seek, path, and Ghostly prison in SB are too good to pass up).
What decks specifically do you think Thing in the Ice is good for when you say "grindier" matchups? I'm asking because Spellskite gives you the same 0/4 body for 2 cmc but is so relevant in many matchups.
Medium-time lurker, first time poster here. I love Mill, been playing it for awhile now and just trying to tune it for modern!
A couple areas my list differs from those here:
Why no Snapcaster Mage in these lists? I definitely prefer him over Jace's Phantasm, he lets us flash back Visions, or a Glimpse, or a Path if needed. I feel like Phantasm gets us away from our strategy, which is to get them milled down, though I do see it's utility as a blocker at least. Snapcaster just has synergy with Mesmeric orb, it puts my spells in my graveyard. And don't forget about instant speed blocker for a pesky Geist of Saint Traft and stuff like that. He's a 4-of for me.
I run 2 x Damnation in the main board as a sweeper for midrangey decks that has been an all-star for me.
One of the guys in my playgroup uses Jeskai Nahiri with an Emrakul and a bunch of counters in his main board - that Emrakul is annoying. I run 2 Hide // Seek in the main as well as 2 Surgical Extractions (with Extirpate in my SB in case). If I can mill a Nahiri and Extract it, I'm sitting pretty decent.
I haven't seen anyone speak up about Twincast either. Hitting a twincast on a Glimpse (or even Visions) can be a huge swing mid game. And it works well with Archive Trap costing 0 as well. I think both Mind Funeral and Twincast are better than Startled Awake
I'm looking forward to partaking in some good discussions with everyone in here, there's been a LOT of good suggestions made! My deck was previously UB, but I threw the white in there based on this thread (Hide // Seek, path, and Ghostly prison in SB are too good to pass up).
Seems more of a stylistic difference. I'm a believer that Twincast and Snapcaster Mage are both too slow. I tried Twincast for a while and found myself top-decking it entirely too often with nothing in hand to double. Cap'n Snaps becomes relevant at 4 mana (sometimes five, depending) which I think is when you should be hitting Startled Awake. If you've got the build to drag things out, I imagine Snap's value goes way up.
Jace's Phantasm is an absolute house. Yes, it can "take us away from our main plan" buuuuuuuut it's a ridiculous blocker, doesn't die to bolt (which is relevant) and if you can t1 phantasm into t2 glimpse you've got a viable beatdown clock and lacking any life total threats leaves your opponent open to be very careless about their life totals. And, if you're sneaky, a lot of round one opponents will be VERY careless with their life totals early on (assuming it doesn't matter a la infect) and a sudden phantasm can put them on the back foot real quick. Just had a game where buddy locked me out of lands with Ghost Quarter and Life From the Loam real early on, but the two phantasms were simply too bashy to answer.
Damnation is one of many, many directions we can go with handling midrange beatdown. I think one of the beautiful things of this deck is all the different nuances we can build in without having to adhere to a "tried and true" netdeck list. If it's working for you then I'm all about it.
Mind Funeral is entirely too finicky. The 3 cmc is nice though. I run two of it and two Startled Awake for the consistency.
You're maining 2 Hide // Seek? I mean, don't get me wrong. Every time I hit a Jeskai Nahiri deck a little part of me dies inside game one, but other than Emmy what are you aiming for? I can't see it being too strong in a lot of our harder match-ups (Burn, affinity, suicide zoo, etc.) I'm a fan of 2x in the SB but I'm curious as to your logic on this one.
Would love to see your list. Sounds like you're bringing an interesting angle.
What decks specifically do you think Thing in the Ice is good for when you say "grindier" matchups? I'm asking because Spellskite gives you the same 0/4 body for 2 cmc but is so relevant in many matchups.
The short answer is I don't know. I find myself bringing it in against burn to absorb Eidolon of the Great Revel and Goblin Guide smacks as an alt wincon. Also against Hatebears and Jund and anything where I side out heavily. Also any time they don't see a Jace's Phantasm first game I'll try to slide the Things in to double down on the beatdown plan. I dunno. Haven't seen him flip once, which is disappointing. Haven't playtested it quite enough to pass decisive judgement yet. The Spellskite suggestion has really got me thinking. Much appreciated on it.
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I play turbo mill which is able to win t4
Bridge, Crypt incursion and removal help to survive
Double Disfigure and Dispel from side rock
G Green Stompy
RG Shamans
UB Mill
UG Infect
WUBRG Slivers!
Stony Silence, Disenchant, Engineered Explosives, Hurkyl's Recall, Timely Reinforcements, Crypt Incursion, Sun Droplet, etc. There are a plethora of cards we have against these two matches. Affinity, Infect and Fish are more troublesome than Burn though. Usually one Crypt Incursion gains so much burn can't keep up.
Signature by Rivenor of Miraculous Recovery Signatures
"In response.. Mana Leak?"
"Every game loss is due to your inability to interact with your opponent"
1) A five drop to hit a very narrow segment of decks hard doesn't seem too strong. I mean, your best bet is against Jeskai Nahiri and even they run 4 Snapcaster Mages. Talent I have looked at as well, but what instants or sorceries are you trying to hit? The same cost gives you Startled Awake which is a notably bigger slam against their deck.
2) Surgical is a dead draw against SO many decks, most notably the aggro kind that we naturally have difficulty against. I'm a huge proponent of 4 in the SB, but maindeck would require a metagame that warrants it.
3) Turbo mill and combo decks are very different things. Just because the combo wins by milling doesn't make it a "mill deck" sort of thing. Same idea as Painter's Servant and Sphinx's Tutelage. You'll fold to combo decks like Ad Nauseum and Scapeshift that simply do combos better. Additionally, any combo contingent upon keeping permanents on the board is inherently difficult to make consistent. Memory Erosion seems strictly worse than Sphinx's Tutelage unless you're going against Storm or something that hammers out a ton of spells all at once.
4) Aberration as a 5 drop is another tough pill for me to swallow. Especially when it can eat a Path to Exile since they don't have TOO many other Path targets. Phantasm is awesome, no argument there. Nihilith I tinkered with for a while and rarely got him to actually attack. I'd get him to unsuspend, but then he was pretty much always used as a blocker. I'm messing with Thing in the Ice and generally like it more than Nihilith. Ashiok is just a tad too slow and too easily smacked out of existence in my opinion. I WANT him to work, but he doesn't seem to do what we need.
5) Against a creature heavy deck, that isn't a terrible idea.
Please don't take any of my comments as criticism. Just my opinions. And I like that you're bringing new ideas to the table. Would be interested to see the list you are running, as I imagine it's very different from what we normally see here. Keep milling, my friend.
I know a few posters have tried the prisons and I want to know if they are better for the WUB variant than the bridge? I just don't wanna trade off the bridges and regret it.
UR Niv-Mizzet, The Firemind
WUR Narset's Coinflip Casino
Modern
UB Mill
Signature by Rivenor of Miraculous Recovery Signatures
"In response.. Mana Leak?"
"Every game loss is due to your inability to interact with your opponent"
CEldraziTron, UBMill, GWBogles
Legacy
GUInfect, CEldrazi
Standard
GRGR Pummeler
UR Niv-Mizzet, The Firemind
WUR Narset's Coinflip Casino
Modern
UB Mill
This really works i only had 2x of each card to try but i like the way it can fit into the deck.
My observations are. Dont make it the be all of your deck, dont mully down to see peices or try and fetch for it ect. Its a great combo but making it a pillar of the deck and relying on it is a mistake.
The weakest part of the combo is mindcrank. It is most vulnerable to break the combo.
Duskmantle though protects itself. SO WELL. As long as you have access to 3 mana ppl can't kill it without losing. You want to bolt it ? Sure, in response i activate duskmantles first ability and win.
Whenever i had the combo out i won the game soon after.
G Green Stompy
RG Shamans
UB Mill
UG Infect
WUBRG Slivers!
I'm gonna politely disagree with you on this one. I think go wide strategies like zoo, delver/pyromancer, spirits and a bunch of others pose a serious threat that we can't consistently out-tempo. As I've advocated a number of time on this thread, I think Ensnaring Bridge is too slow to effectively counter what it's aiming at (stopping the early damage avalanche). While it DOES shut out things entirely later on, by that point we should have already won. Others have already commented on the nonbo it has with Visions of Beyond and the positive synergy that Ghostly Prison has with Mesmeric Orb.
So yeah. I'm a 4-of prison player in the main all day long.
All that said, you are clearly one of the more pragmatic and thoughtful players that posts on this thread along with Irixis (or whatever his name is) so take my thoughts with a grain of salt.
Medium-time lurker, first time poster here. I love Mill, been playing it for awhile now and just trying to tune it for modern!
A couple areas my list differs from those here:
Why no Snapcaster Mage in these lists? I definitely prefer him over Jace's Phantasm, he lets us flash back Visions, or a Glimpse, or a Path if needed. I feel like Phantasm gets us away from our strategy, which is to get them milled down, though I do see it's utility as a blocker at least. Snapcaster just has synergy with Mesmeric orb, it puts my spells in my graveyard. And don't forget about instant speed blocker for a pesky Geist of Saint Traft and stuff like that. He's a 4-of for me.
I run 2 x Damnation in the main board as a sweeper for midrangey decks that has been an all-star for me.
I have Ghostly Prison but haven't tried it out in the deck yet, but I agree that it's preferable to Ensnaring Bridge
One of the guys in my playgroup uses Jeskai Nahiri with an Emrakul and a bunch of counters in his main board - that Emrakul is annoying. I run 2 Hide // Seek in the main as well as 2 Surgical Extractions (with Extirpate in my SB in case). If I can mill a Nahiri and Extract it, I'm sitting pretty decent.
I haven't seen anyone speak up about Twincast either. Hitting a twincast on a Glimpse (or even Visions) can be a huge swing mid game. And it works well with Archive Trap costing 0 as well. I think both Mind Funeral and Twincast are better than Startled Awake
I'm looking forward to partaking in some good discussions with everyone in here, there's been a LOT of good suggestions made! My deck was previously UB, but I threw the white in there based on this thread (Hide // Seek, path, and Ghostly prison in SB are too good to pass up).
4 Darkslick Shores
4 Drowned Catacomb
4 Ghost Quarter
4 Island
4 Misty Rainforest
2 Swamp
4 Archive Trap
4 Extirpate
4 Glimpse the Unthinkable
2 Haunting Echoes
4 Hedron Crab
4 Mind Funeral
4 Mind Sculpt
4 Surgical Extraction
4 Tome Scour
4 Visions of Beyond
Been ages since I've played/built it... why is Misty Rainforest in it without any green splash?
U B Faeries
U B Mill
G W B Bant Eldrazi
CEldraziTron, UBMill, GWBogles
Legacy
GUInfect, CEldrazi
Standard
GRGR Pummeler
Seems more of a stylistic difference. I'm a believer that Twincast and Snapcaster Mage are both too slow. I tried Twincast for a while and found myself top-decking it entirely too often with nothing in hand to double. Cap'n Snaps becomes relevant at 4 mana (sometimes five, depending) which I think is when you should be hitting Startled Awake. If you've got the build to drag things out, I imagine Snap's value goes way up.
Jace's Phantasm is an absolute house. Yes, it can "take us away from our main plan" buuuuuuuut it's a ridiculous blocker, doesn't die to bolt (which is relevant) and if you can t1 phantasm into t2 glimpse you've got a viable beatdown clock and lacking any life total threats leaves your opponent open to be very careless about their life totals. And, if you're sneaky, a lot of round one opponents will be VERY careless with their life totals early on (assuming it doesn't matter a la infect) and a sudden phantasm can put them on the back foot real quick. Just had a game where buddy locked me out of lands with Ghost Quarter and Life From the Loam real early on, but the two phantasms were simply too bashy to answer.
Damnation is one of many, many directions we can go with handling midrange beatdown. I think one of the beautiful things of this deck is all the different nuances we can build in without having to adhere to a "tried and true" netdeck list. If it's working for you then I'm all about it.
Mind Funeral is entirely too finicky. The 3 cmc is nice though. I run two of it and two Startled Awake for the consistency.
You're maining 2 Hide // Seek? I mean, don't get me wrong. Every time I hit a Jeskai Nahiri deck a little part of me dies inside game one, but other than Emmy what are you aiming for? I can't see it being too strong in a lot of our harder match-ups (Burn, affinity, suicide zoo, etc.) I'm a fan of 2x in the SB but I'm curious as to your logic on this one.
Would love to see your list. Sounds like you're bringing an interesting angle.
The short answer is I don't know. I find myself bringing it in against burn to absorb Eidolon of the Great Revel and Goblin Guide smacks as an alt wincon. Also against Hatebears and Jund and anything where I side out heavily. Also any time they don't see a Jace's Phantasm first game I'll try to slide the Things in to double down on the beatdown plan. I dunno. Haven't seen him flip once, which is disappointing. Haven't playtested it quite enough to pass decisive judgement yet. The Spellskite suggestion has really got me thinking. Much appreciated on it.