Tapped out user Peisistratos wrote a very detailed primer on tappedout.net that covers a lot of card decisions, it might be worth looking at. I think the final decklist is somewhat inferior to what's been listed here, but there are some interesting points. http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/competitive-modern-mill-2
He chimes in here every once in awhile to tell us that he's right and we're all wrong without actually having played many games.
He spent a ton of time writing why mill is garbage. All with a pompous edge. I respect his "research," but if you ever want someone to take you seriously then talking down at your reader seems like the wrong way to go.
He ran his mill deck in a computer simulation to determine the fastest goldfish. It's the reason he plays cards like Fatal Push and Darkness because he doesn't count turn 1 if he has Fatal Push in his opening 7 and he thinks Darkness is a 1 mana time walk because that is the logic you need to use when you are goldfishing. Cards like Ensnaring Bridge won't appear in his deck because you can't quantify if the card is going to work when you are just playing against yourself. Every other card in the deck either mills cards or draws cards which can be run in a simulation. He doesn't play any games with the deck but pretends to be an expert.
I want to recommend Merchant Scroll and Echoing Truth maindeck (running Memento main, Crypt Incursion on the side).
I've some more games with this version now and there have been several times when I used Scroll to get an echoing truth and survive/get rid of a planeswalker/witchbane orb/leyline/multiple tokens.
I also used it a couple of times to tutor for "ancestral recall", as well as the obvious traps.
Echoing truth maindeck (with the added "copies" in merchant scrolls) gives me a lot more flexibility and tempo, I am really not missing Crypt Incursion maindeck.
I am also liking the 1 of Ipnu Rivulet, in place of 1 Breaking. 22 Lands have helped getting to that 3rd/4th land more consistenly, and it is a weaker mill spell but one that is uncounterable and instant. It has helped against Academy Ruins once, and I've used it as an extra mill mana sink if there's no other play.
I still really would like to put some Dismembers, probably instead of Bridges, and use Yahenni instead of Damnation, since I don't like taking that whole turn off.
Or maybe Pongify or Rapid Hibridization, since they can be tutored if needed and the resulting creature dies to Expertise anyway?
Anyway, those are very minor things, and they will change depending on your meta.
What would you like to see for the deck in Rivals?
Lately, Hour gave us Fraying Sanity, and Ixalan gave us Field of Ruin, so we can't complain much!
I think Breaking is the most replaceable mill card right now, but I don't think we'll get a better straight mill card.
I'm having a hard time deciding what I want, I guess that's a good sign?
Some mill + opponent draws a card would be pretty cool, but I don't see it happening. I hate giving them that extra untap when they can throw more instant burn at us.
So, what is the aspect of the deck you find needing the most help?
I play 3 copies, I replaced Trapmaker's Snare with it. You only lose the instant speed and surprise factor for the trap, but I don't care about that anymore since I 90% of the times play trap via Field of Ruin or t0/t1. You win in exchange the ability to tutor for Visions or Echoing Truth, which can help a lot (3 extra answers to Leyline/Gideon/Witchbane Orb, for example)
Finished a League yesterday, 4-1 losing match 1 to Elfball (of all decks), and beating Amulet, GB Tron, Eldrazi Tron and Lantern. Favorable matchups, my only games lost were to both in that match 1, a "nut draw" g1 that was faster (insane play with Shaman of the pack for 9 t3), and a g2 loss to a very timely Chord t4 for Reclamation Sage to blow up the Fraying Sanity that was loaded with 2 Traps to kill them, and next turn Ezuri for exact damage.
The best win of all was thanks to Profane Memento. I was at 8, he was completely milled but had a Ballista with 6 counters and 9 mana from Tron available, so I thought I had lost. Luckily I did not concede (I did even give him the "gg" in chat, haha) and then in his upkeep he loaded the ballista twice and shot me with it.
Next game I'm surprised I didn't get the chance to go first, but I kept on playing. It took me until I won the 2nd game and the match was over to realize I had won that first game, because when he sacked the last counter in ballista, Memento won me a life and so I was left at 1 life! I had to see the replay to understand it, haha.
Lantern is a long, beautiful russian roulette match. Love playing against it since we're pretty favored, but they have some silver bullets in Witchbane Orb, Leyline g2 and Academy Ruins that can complicate things. Very interesting matchup.
The Eldrazi tron player was the first opponent who wised up and named Field of Ruin with Pithing Needle (even before I had one in play, so someone must have "teached" him that interaction, haha). Echoing truth main deck was helpul there, so I removed the needle when I had the 2 Trap kill.
Quartz do you have a list by chance that I could take a look at? I'm sure it's probably in the thread, just missing it somehow (could be my work computer lol). Thanks!
Would you say that for those of us that are budget conscious (still building the collection up), would Extirpate being a reasonable alternative to Surgical? This is more for running on MTGO, as my job has me traveling almost constantly these days it's pretty much my option.
If you want to save money, the first thing I would cut are the Ensnaring Bridges. Play some Dismembers, or Darkness, or some more sweepers instead.
Ensnaring Bridge is the card I'm closest to changing from the current 75.
Extirpate is decent, I love Split second. That said, Surgical potentially being "free" IS a big deal, so you can definitely start with Extirpates, but try to upgrade them 1 by 1 whenever possible, since it will make a difference.
I love the deck on MTGO, you can look at the graveyard calmly without being obvious, use the snipping tool to get a photo of their decklist when you do a surgical, know their cards left in library without counting them...
It is a deck that plays nicer online than in person (although you miss the psychological hit on your opponent when he has to put the cards in the graveyard himself, haha)
So I've done some testing with your build, keep getting beat in every single game unless I draw a flawless 7 from the get go. Tested about 25 games and won 4, not sure if bad matchups due to the free queue or not. Regularly would run into issues where traps had to be hard cast, mana issues. etc. I took a look at the Esper list that was posted previously for the SCG player. With some slight modifications, some due to budget, some due to what you did with your deck made more sense in those cases. Obviously I'm running into a lack of Surgical when I really want it, but thus far I'm 4 for 4. Hedron Crab puts in a ton of work in the deck, especially with several fetch lands cracking off. Mind Funeral has also performed rather well for me hitting on average 8 cards (same as breaking) and up to 16 so far. So Here's what I'm running...
Which decks beat you that hard?
I'm kind of surprised, I'm on my 4th (friendly) league in a row going 4-1, and was closer to nailing 5-0 than 3-2 most of the times.
I really like the deck as it is right now, and if you look at RedSunKnight's stream on twitch (he is the player of that Esper list), you can see a lot of the issues the list runs into that are avoided playing UB. Watch the videos and look for moments where you'd rather be UB or where he saved the game by being Esper. Look for awkward mana situations and damage from fetching/shocking, and UB being better is evident to me.
The crabs are a good card, it is really a personal choice, I stand behind creatureless at the moment, I am still seeing a lot of path/push, and have won a match against Burn recently with them having 2 Searing Blazes and Path in hand and me at 4 life. So many dead cards for opponents.
Mind funeral can be great and I loved it when I started playing mill, but as the matches accumulate, you'll find it failing you at key moments by hitting 6 or 7 cards (I've even had the awful 4 lands straight two times). We don't play a lot of lands, so the 3 cost instead of 2 is also a big deal.
Anyway, I'm curious on your results, there's no way I can see myself going 4-21 in any context. If my kids give me a break I'll try to make a couple of videos at least with replays, so I can show the deck in action and discuss correct plays.
I'm very confident that my current decklist is better than the esper version you posted, unless you local meta warrants the extra "control".
I think it was the 4x field of ruin that was causing a lot of issues for me, I would frequently have to mull to 4-5 in order to get on color lands in hand. In general it just felt a good bit slower overall in the games I played, rather than turn 4-5 wins it was wins on turn 7-8. I know a lot of it can be chalked up to the wacky MTGO RNG, and my lack of experience with the deck. I can see the upside to playing UB rather than Esper as I haven't seen much use out of the white cards so far. I'm currently 7 and 1 with the deck in the free to play queues and about to take it into a friendly to see what happens. I will say I'm loving Ravenous Trap in the board against Elixer or any re-animator style deck, it's saved my butt a couple of times.
No, that would be very nice, but Snapcaster only gives the card a flashback cost equal to it's mana cost, you can't pay an alternate cost for it since flashback is already an alternate cost.
The one that would let you cast the trap from the graveyard for free is Jace, telepath unbound (flip of Jace, Vryn's Prodigy). The main issue I found with him when I played it was being able to flip it and use it, it was always hit by removal before that happened, and for sure dead after one use max.
Still, definitely in the pool of relevant cards to try.
arglebargles, are you playing 22 or 21 lands? I think 22 is a lot better, our deck works at a different pace if able to cast 2 things/activate field and cast 1 mill spell. We NEED to get to 3, and like to get to 4, so I think less than 22 is not ideal.
Of course after bragging about my win rates I had to blow it last night... Went 2-3, winning against storm and burn and losing to boggles, jeskai tempo and grixis death shadow (this one I should have won easily, in g3 the deck just stalled with him under 10 cards for 4 turns!)
I haven't played against creature heavy decks in a long time, a lot of control decks and tron lately. Metagame online is weird, you get streaks of similar decks for a while, then nothing, then some others... It's hard to decide on sideboard slots in this situation.
@Quartz it is 21 lands, and after further testing, about 50/50 in games right now, I agree with going up to 22. It hasn't happened often but I have been bitten by being stuck on 2 lands for longer than I would like. Less mulligan issues, and I may run a 3/3 split of Path and Push. Path is fairly reasonable at baiting someone into searching an getting trapped, especially in a mono colored deck.
I've been bitten by not having surgical once so far, playing against a mono red Koth deck. Game two and had turn 1 needle on Koth, he went turn 2 Koth, I throw out Glimpse and see the Shatterstorm in the yard, with Extirpate in hand and he has a third spirit guide to cast it on turn 3. I still haven't quite gotten to the point of spending the cash on them as I ordinarily play burn, although I have opened up a few more control cards lately so may spend some cash.
I also used Quartz's list and was winning about 50-60% (I'm sure I made some mistakes since I didnt play Mill for a while and this list differs from what Im used too)
I have a feeling it is geared to beat creatures too much: it has 4 Fatal Pushes, 4 Profane Memento main AND 2 Crypt Incursion, 2 Damnation, 3 Bridge side
This way when I wanted to board out 8 pieces of maindeck creature hate it was difficult to replace them with relevant stuff. Imo it looks like overkill, I never used all of these anticreature cards.
Also I missed some general purpose sideboard cards like Dispel or Negate.
I'd cut some copies of Damnation/Bridgge and added Dispel/Negate/other. Btw theyare blue instants which is kinda relevant.
My usual complain about Surgical Extraction. While it allowed me to easily win Felidar combo I felt awkward having it in my hand vs Infect and Junk, I cast it and it made zero impact. Great vs some, terrible vs other? Looks like a sideboard card.
Merchant Scroll felt ok, choice of 3 relevant cards is good enough.
Echoing Truth while is generally a weak card looks ok in this tempo deck
Relic of Progenitus might be a better Nihil Spellbomb for this list since you dont depend on your graveyard like in other builds
Modern currently is a lottery if you don't know the meta, so it definitely should be adjusted according to what you expect to face.
The thing about fetching counterspells is that merchant scroll is a sorcery, so it is only good as a failsafe, they will know you have it and play around it as much as possible, which may or may not be enough for us.
Profane Memento and push have been very good maindeck for me, I don't feel tempted to cut either one.
Crypt Incursion and Bridge can win games, but I agree that Crypt Incursion and Damnation attack the same decks that profane memento does, and you can choose one to cut. Crypt Incursion is more powerful I think, but Damnation can save you from a bad start where you haven't milled much. The main issue I have with Incursion is that it coming in game 2 is not nearly as good as game 1, since graveyard hate usually is brought in against us (luckily, since it isn't very effective) and the card is very susceptible to it. Definitely something to consider.
Surgical is one of the things that usually is trimmed or removed g2, but I feel like having them maindeck gives us A LOT of game. It can wreck a lot of decks. If you're facing a redundant deck and you can't hurt it much, just wait until the first black mana you have open at their end of turn and cast it extracting something that is useful for them, for example skullcrack, or lightning bolt, or a merfolk lord, or artifact destruction, or some annyoing counterspell, anything. If you hit one in their hand you're golden, if not, you obtained information on their hand and deck, so it's not even a lost card. I'm rarely annoyed of having it in my hand. And when you face Tron, Storm, Ad Nauseaum, Living End, Lantern, and so many others, you will be sooo happy to have it that it will make up for it.
Merchant scroll for Echoing truth has come up a lot more often than I thought it would, and tutoring for ancestral recall has been nice a couple of times as well. Bouncing multiple Spirit tokens from those milled Lingering Souls feels great, as does fetching it after extracting Grapeshot, haha.
I like Nihil spellbomb better since we can blow it up without leaving open mana. The gradual eating of Relic is no good for us since we drop a lot of cards into the graveyard at once, and being forced to keep mana up to be able to blow it up is a big downside. In more marginal cases, not clearing our own graveyard can keep visions on if we had orb out and milled a bunch, and also enough cards for delving set adrift if necessary. So I think Nihil Spellbomb is better than Relic for sure. I think it's either snares and ravenous traps or scrolls and nihil spellbomb (my choice) for graveyard hate.
I've played mill in the distant past, and I have gotten back into it recently due to Fraying Sanity.
I prefer a creatureless version that is more controlling, especially since all the mill creatures die to Fatal Push... It just feels like a wasted turn much too often for me. I'm playing Inquisition of Kozilek and Thoughtseize instead because it goes so well with the Surgical Extraction. It pretty much always feels stronger than a crab.
I really like the idea of Merchant Scroll in the deck, which I saw in Quartz's creatureless mill, especially if I move the Echoing Truth into the main.
I also think Profane Memento could be very interesting, but it competes with the discard in my deck curve and just sits there until you get the mill going. I'll probably try it out and see, but I'm a little skeptical.
I've also hesitated to switch over to Field of Ruin from Ghost Quarter. I realize GQ gives them a choice about searching, which is okay with me because it frequently turns into a Strip Mine based on fear alone. I've also had some great turn one/turn two plays against Eldrazi where I blow up an Eldrazi Temple, they search, they get trapped and I remove all the Temples from their deck. This is mostly good because of so many Eldrazi Tron players in my local shop. I realize it may not be the best setup against a larger field.
The other main difference I see between my deck and most of what I've seen here is the 23 lands. I've found getting to five lands to cast Archive Trap in response to something can frequently win me the game if I don't miss too many drops. This seems like it has some connection to the Field of Ruin Question though...
Just wanted to contribute a little based on my experience. Thank you.
I think I agree with the sideboard not having enough non creature cards when you play 4x Push 4x Memento main deck. Spell Pierce is my favorite counter from past experience. Bridge has such a big role in the matchups where it shines that I think I'd want to keep those over Damnation but Damnation is wider in use so it's definitely a tough call.
After playing with Echoing Truth more I don't see it as card disadvantage as much as I used to but it is definitely a very skill intensive card.
I haven't had much testing with Sorceror's Spyglass because I'm not playing needle or that card in my SB but when the Spyglass is seeing consistent legacy play an argument can definitely be made that it is the better card or that a split of Spyglass and Needle is correct.
I tried the 21 and 22 land builds and ended up going back to 23. 21 is definitely not correct even if it top 16'd a SCG tournament.
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He spent a ton of time writing why mill is garbage. All with a pompous edge. I respect his "research," but if you ever want someone to take you seriously then talking down at your reader seems like the wrong way to go.
I've some more games with this version now and there have been several times when I used Scroll to get an echoing truth and survive/get rid of a planeswalker/witchbane orb/leyline/multiple tokens.
I also used it a couple of times to tutor for "ancestral recall", as well as the obvious traps.
Echoing truth maindeck (with the added "copies" in merchant scrolls) gives me a lot more flexibility and tempo, I am really not missing Crypt Incursion maindeck.
I am also liking the 1 of Ipnu Rivulet, in place of 1 Breaking. 22 Lands have helped getting to that 3rd/4th land more consistenly, and it is a weaker mill spell but one that is uncounterable and instant. It has helped against Academy Ruins once, and I've used it as an extra mill mana sink if there's no other play.
I still really would like to put some Dismembers, probably instead of Bridges, and use Yahenni instead of Damnation, since I don't like taking that whole turn off.
Or maybe Pongify or Rapid Hibridization, since they can be tutored if needed and the resulting creature dies to Expertise anyway?
Anyway, those are very minor things, and they will change depending on your meta.
What would you like to see for the deck in Rivals?
Lately, Hour gave us Fraying Sanity, and Ixalan gave us Field of Ruin, so we can't complain much!
I think Breaking is the most replaceable mill card right now, but I don't think we'll get a better straight mill card.
I'm having a hard time deciding what I want, I guess that's a good sign?
Some mill + opponent draws a card would be pretty cool, but I don't see it happening. I hate giving them that extra untap when they can throw more instant burn at us.
So, what is the aspect of the deck you find needing the most help?
Legacy - WRG Lands, WR Shortcake, RR Burn, UBRG Delver
Finished a League yesterday, 4-1 losing match 1 to Elfball (of all decks), and beating Amulet, GB Tron, Eldrazi Tron and Lantern. Favorable matchups, my only games lost were to both in that match 1, a "nut draw" g1 that was faster (insane play with Shaman of the pack for 9 t3), and a g2 loss to a very timely Chord t4 for Reclamation Sage to blow up the Fraying Sanity that was loaded with 2 Traps to kill them, and next turn Ezuri for exact damage.
The best win of all was thanks to Profane Memento. I was at 8, he was completely milled but had a Ballista with 6 counters and 9 mana from Tron available, so I thought I had lost. Luckily I did not concede (I did even give him the "gg" in chat, haha) and then in his upkeep he loaded the ballista twice and shot me with it.
Next game I'm surprised I didn't get the chance to go first, but I kept on playing. It took me until I won the 2nd game and the match was over to realize I had won that first game, because when he sacked the last counter in ballista, Memento won me a life and so I was left at 1 life! I had to see the replay to understand it, haha.
Lantern is a long, beautiful russian roulette match. Love playing against it since we're pretty favored, but they have some silver bullets in Witchbane Orb, Leyline g2 and Academy Ruins that can complicate things. Very interesting matchup.
The Eldrazi tron player was the first opponent who wised up and named Field of Ruin with Pithing Needle (even before I had one in play, so someone must have "teached" him that interaction, haha). Echoing truth main deck was helpul there, so I removed the needle when I had the 2 Trap kill.
http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/ub-mill-sanity-trap-ruin/
Ensnaring Bridge is the card I'm closest to changing from the current 75.
Extirpate is decent, I love Split second. That said, Surgical potentially being "free" IS a big deal, so you can definitely start with Extirpates, but try to upgrade them 1 by 1 whenever possible, since it will make a difference.
I love the deck on MTGO, you can look at the graveyard calmly without being obvious, use the snipping tool to get a photo of their decklist when you do a surgical, know their cards left in library without counting them...
It is a deck that plays nicer online than in person (although you miss the psychological hit on your opponent when he has to put the cards in the graveyard himself, haha)
2 Field of Ruin
1 Marsh Flats
2 Shelldock Isle
1 Hallowed Fountain
1 Godless Shrine
2 Watery Grave
4 Polluted Delta
3 Flooded Strand
1 Plains
2 Swamp
2 Island
Creatures
4 Hedron Crab
4 Mesmeric Orb
Spells
2 Fraying Sanity
4 Fatal Push
2 Mind Funeral
1 Crypt Incursion
3 Visions of Beyond
3 Extirpate
2 Trapmaker's Snare
4 Archive Trap
2 Path to Exile
3 Darkness
1 Damnation
4 Glimpse the Unthinkable
3 Fragmentize
2 Blessed Alliance
2 Thoughtseize
1 Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver
1 Crypt Incursion
1 Supreme Verdict
1 Detention Sphere
2 Ravenous Trap
2 Pithing Needle
I'm kind of surprised, I'm on my 4th (friendly) league in a row going 4-1, and was closer to nailing 5-0 than 3-2 most of the times.
I really like the deck as it is right now, and if you look at RedSunKnight's stream on twitch (he is the player of that Esper list), you can see a lot of the issues the list runs into that are avoided playing UB. Watch the videos and look for moments where you'd rather be UB or where he saved the game by being Esper. Look for awkward mana situations and damage from fetching/shocking, and UB being better is evident to me.
The crabs are a good card, it is really a personal choice, I stand behind creatureless at the moment, I am still seeing a lot of path/push, and have won a match against Burn recently with them having 2 Searing Blazes and Path in hand and me at 4 life. So many dead cards for opponents.
Mind funeral can be great and I loved it when I started playing mill, but as the matches accumulate, you'll find it failing you at key moments by hitting 6 or 7 cards (I've even had the awful 4 lands straight two times). We don't play a lot of lands, so the 3 cost instead of 2 is also a big deal.
Anyway, I'm curious on your results, there's no way I can see myself going 4-21 in any context. If my kids give me a break I'll try to make a couple of videos at least with replays, so I can show the deck in action and discuss correct plays.
I'm very confident that my current decklist is better than the esper version you posted, unless you local meta warrants the extra "control".
The one that would let you cast the trap from the graveyard for free is Jace, telepath unbound (flip of Jace, Vryn's Prodigy). The main issue I found with him when I played it was being able to flip it and use it, it was always hit by removal before that happened, and for sure dead after one use max.
Still, definitely in the pool of relevant cards to try.
arglebargles, are you playing 22 or 21 lands? I think 22 is a lot better, our deck works at a different pace if able to cast 2 things/activate field and cast 1 mill spell. We NEED to get to 3, and like to get to 4, so I think less than 22 is not ideal.
Of course after bragging about my win rates I had to blow it last night... Went 2-3, winning against storm and burn and losing to boggles, jeskai tempo and grixis death shadow (this one I should have won easily, in g3 the deck just stalled with him under 10 cards for 4 turns!)
I haven't played against creature heavy decks in a long time, a lot of control decks and tron lately. Metagame online is weird, you get streaks of similar decks for a while, then nothing, then some others... It's hard to decide on sideboard slots in this situation.
I've been bitten by not having surgical once so far, playing against a mono red Koth deck. Game two and had turn 1 needle on Koth, he went turn 2 Koth, I throw out Glimpse and see the Shatterstorm in the yard, with Extirpate in hand and he has a third spirit guide to cast it on turn 3. I still haven't quite gotten to the point of spending the cash on them as I ordinarily play burn, although I have opened up a few more control cards lately so may spend some cash.
I have a feeling it is geared to beat creatures too much: it has 4 Fatal Pushes, 4 Profane Memento main AND 2 Crypt Incursion, 2 Damnation, 3 Bridge side
This way when I wanted to board out 8 pieces of maindeck creature hate it was difficult to replace them with relevant stuff. Imo it looks like overkill, I never used all of these anticreature cards.
Also I missed some general purpose sideboard cards like Dispel or Negate.
I'd cut some copies of Damnation/Bridgge and added Dispel/Negate/other. Btw theyare blue instants which is kinda relevant.
My usual complain about Surgical Extraction. While it allowed me to easily win Felidar combo I felt awkward having it in my hand vs Infect and Junk, I cast it and it made zero impact. Great vs some, terrible vs other? Looks like a sideboard card.
Merchant Scroll felt ok, choice of 3 relevant cards is good enough.
Echoing Truth while is generally a weak card looks ok in this tempo deck
Relic of Progenitus might be a better Nihil Spellbomb for this list since you dont depend on your graveyard like in other builds
G Green Stompy
RG Shamans
UB Mill
UG Infect
WUBRG Slivers!
Modern currently is a lottery if you don't know the meta, so it definitely should be adjusted according to what you expect to face.
The thing about fetching counterspells is that merchant scroll is a sorcery, so it is only good as a failsafe, they will know you have it and play around it as much as possible, which may or may not be enough for us.
Profane Memento and push have been very good maindeck for me, I don't feel tempted to cut either one.
Crypt Incursion and Bridge can win games, but I agree that Crypt Incursion and Damnation attack the same decks that profane memento does, and you can choose one to cut. Crypt Incursion is more powerful I think, but Damnation can save you from a bad start where you haven't milled much. The main issue I have with Incursion is that it coming in game 2 is not nearly as good as game 1, since graveyard hate usually is brought in against us (luckily, since it isn't very effective) and the card is very susceptible to it. Definitely something to consider.
Surgical is one of the things that usually is trimmed or removed g2, but I feel like having them maindeck gives us A LOT of game. It can wreck a lot of decks. If you're facing a redundant deck and you can't hurt it much, just wait until the first black mana you have open at their end of turn and cast it extracting something that is useful for them, for example skullcrack, or lightning bolt, or a merfolk lord, or artifact destruction, or some annyoing counterspell, anything. If you hit one in their hand you're golden, if not, you obtained information on their hand and deck, so it's not even a lost card. I'm rarely annoyed of having it in my hand. And when you face Tron, Storm, Ad Nauseaum, Living End, Lantern, and so many others, you will be sooo happy to have it that it will make up for it.
Merchant scroll for Echoing truth has come up a lot more often than I thought it would, and tutoring for ancestral recall has been nice a couple of times as well. Bouncing multiple Spirit tokens from those milled Lingering Souls feels great, as does fetching it after extracting Grapeshot, haha.
I like Nihil spellbomb better since we can blow it up without leaving open mana. The gradual eating of Relic is no good for us since we drop a lot of cards into the graveyard at once, and being forced to keep mana up to be able to blow it up is a big downside. In more marginal cases, not clearing our own graveyard can keep visions on if we had orb out and milled a bunch, and also enough cards for delving set adrift if necessary. So I think Nihil Spellbomb is better than Relic for sure. I think it's either snares and ravenous traps or scrolls and nihil spellbomb (my choice) for graveyard hate.
I've played mill in the distant past, and I have gotten back into it recently due to Fraying Sanity.
I prefer a creatureless version that is more controlling, especially since all the mill creatures die to Fatal Push... It just feels like a wasted turn much too often for me. I'm playing Inquisition of Kozilek and Thoughtseize instead because it goes so well with the Surgical Extraction. It pretty much always feels stronger than a crab.
I really like the idea of Merchant Scroll in the deck, which I saw in Quartz's creatureless mill, especially if I move the Echoing Truth into the main.
I also think Profane Memento could be very interesting, but it competes with the discard in my deck curve and just sits there until you get the mill going. I'll probably try it out and see, but I'm a little skeptical.
I've also hesitated to switch over to Field of Ruin from Ghost Quarter. I realize GQ gives them a choice about searching, which is okay with me because it frequently turns into a Strip Mine based on fear alone. I've also had some great turn one/turn two plays against Eldrazi where I blow up an Eldrazi Temple, they search, they get trapped and I remove all the Temples from their deck. This is mostly good because of so many Eldrazi Tron players in my local shop. I realize it may not be the best setup against a larger field.
The other main difference I see between my deck and most of what I've seen here is the 23 lands. I've found getting to five lands to cast Archive Trap in response to something can frequently win me the game if I don't miss too many drops. This seems like it has some connection to the Field of Ruin Question though...
Just wanted to contribute a little based on my experience. Thank you.
Deck: millbot
//Lands
4 Drowned Catacomb
4 Ghost Quarter
3 Island
4 Polluted Delta
3 Swamp
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
4 Watery Grave
//Spells
4 Archive Trap
2 Crypt Incursion
1 Damnation
3 Fatal Push
4 Fraying Sanity
4 Glimpse the Unthinkable
2 Inquisition of Kozilek
1 Mana Leak
4 Mesmeric Orb
1 Mind Funeral
2 Negate
4 Surgical Extraction
2 Thoughtseize
3 Visions of Beyond
//Sideboard
1 Damnation
4 Echoing Truth
3 Ensnaring Bridge
1 Fatal Push
3 Leyline of the Void
1 Mind Funeral
2 Thoughtseize
Display deck statistics
After playing with Echoing Truth more I don't see it as card disadvantage as much as I used to but it is definitely a very skill intensive card.
I haven't had much testing with Sorceror's Spyglass because I'm not playing needle or that card in my SB but when the Spyglass is seeing consistent legacy play an argument can definitely be made that it is the better card or that a split of Spyglass and Needle is correct.
I tried the 21 and 22 land builds and ended up going back to 23. 21 is definitely not correct even if it top 16'd a SCG tournament.