the top deck is a weird list. doesn't have the tempo option without thought scour or delver of secrets, doesn't have as much longevity without as many cantrips. this seems like more of a top-deck and hope for the best scenario.
Yea its definitely a weird deck. Has no land destruction at all. I don't understand how he was able to beat Cavern of Souls in Bant Eldrazi at all. It always seems incredibly hard for me to beat. Also, the deck seems super weak to Tron, Primeval Titan and Scapeshift variants. Maybe those decks didn't show up in force, or he got favorable draws and avoided them? I was trying to find the top 8 rankings to see what he faced but it doesn't seem to be posted anywhere...
UPDATE!: Found it here
His finals opp was Bant Eldrazi- and was playing 4 copies of Cavern of Souls. Still have no idea how he beat that...
On the other hand, though, it looks like he was extremely strong against Dredge G1 and beyond, and maybe even was overboarding against it! Is Relic of Progenitus even really necessary when you have 3 SB Anger lol? I like the 2 MD Kalitas a lot- have been testing a bit with it and seems very strong right now, especially when your opp isn't running MD Dismember (which usually seems to be the case).
I also really like that there were no Ancestral Visions either. The card is just clunky and slow most of the time, and I find myself often wishing I had anything else instead. I've been looking to find a reason to leave it, and, well, this at least makes me think it's possible.
I dislike the "random" part from scour, but I cannot see myself playing this deck without the full set of TS right now.
Everything in MTG is random. Drawing 3 cards off of Ancestral Vision is random. Milling 2 with Tasigur is random. You have to be able to let that go, since its almost completely irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. You milling the card you wanted shouldn't matter since there's just as high of a chance that the card you wanted was also twelve cards down in your deck and you'll never draw it at all.
i started running burkhart's list but subbing in 2 mana leak. i have been shaving 1 cryptic / 1 squall / 1 EE in rotation to try them out.
So far ive leaned towards cutting the 1 EE and 1 squall for it, but it might just be that im overloving cryptic right now? i havent gone below 4 cryptic command in a while now.
Mana leak has been awesome, and is often the needed link to survive long enough to resolve ancestral or get a soft cryptic lock.
On the other hand, though, it looks like he was extremely strong against Dredge G1 and beyond, and maybe even was overboarding against it! Is Relic of Progenitus even really necessary when you have 3 SB Anger lol? I like the 2 MD Kalitas a lot- have been testing a bit with it and seems very strong right now, especially when your opp isn't running MD Dismember (which usually seems to be the case).
Dredge is powerful, you need to attack their board and graveyard IMO. Conflagrate is a beast that can burn you or your threats away effectively. And late game Mana Leak isn't going to counter it reliably. I too like Kalitas but tapping out for him can be bad vs PTE decks.
Just looked at Raymond's deck. SB Ceremonious Rejection is great vs Bant Eldrazi. 1 CMC counter vs his entire deck of creatures minus Noble Heirarch. So damn efficient with Snap too. Plus it counters whatever you want vs Affinity.
Commander GUR Maelstrom Wanderer BWU Sydri, Galvanic Genius BGB Meren of Clan Nel Toth WGW Nazahn, Revered Bladesmith RRR Feldon of the Third Path WWW Heliod, God of the Sun
Just looked at Raymond's deck. SB Ceremonious Rejection is great vs Bant Eldrazi. 1 CMC counter vs his entire deck of creatures minus Noble Heirarch. So damn efficient with Snap too. Plus it counters whatever you want vs Affinity.
I agree with you but Cavern of Souls should still hose the f out of Ceremonious Rejection!
Just looked at Raymond's deck. SB Ceremonious Rejection is great vs Bant Eldrazi. 1 CMC counter vs his entire deck of creatures minus Noble Heirarch. So damn efficient with Snap too. Plus it counters whatever you want vs Affinity.
I agree with you but Cavern of Souls should still hose the f out of Ceremonious Rejection!
You're right, I forgot they play 4 of. Maybe he got lucky and his opponent didn't find one? I don't understand how he won either. Damnation?
Commander GUR Maelstrom Wanderer BWU Sydri, Galvanic Genius BGB Meren of Clan Nel Toth WGW Nazahn, Revered Bladesmith RRR Feldon of the Third Path WWW Heliod, God of the Sun
Just looked at Raymond's deck. SB Ceremonious Rejection is great vs Bant Eldrazi. 1 CMC counter vs his entire deck of creatures minus Noble Heirarch. So damn efficient with Snap too. Plus it counters whatever you want vs Affinity.
I agree with you but Cavern of Souls should still hose the f out of Ceremonious Rejection!
You're right, I forgot they play 4 of. Maybe he got lucky and his opponent didn't find one? I don't understand how he won either. Damnation?
Sometimes they don't find the Cavern and your counterspells are suddenly live. It's sort of amazing what you can do to 3 and 4 drops when you can actually cryptic them. Imagine, a fair game of magic!
Mostly though, they just always have Cavern. And you get TKS'd, Smashered, Drownered, until you die. It's great.
Admittedly, Bant Eldrazi is mostly mana sources so it's subject to some amount of variance greater than a typical midrange deck.
I guess I'm just saying I think it's a bit of a lucky win if he was able to beat Cavern without Fulminator Mage or Crumble to Dust. On another note, Gurmag Angler seems pretty nice when you consider it can trade with Reality Smasher.
1) Is Thought Scour really important for the deck? I mean, I know it speeds up Tasigur and could be a plus for Snapcasters, but I just see it as a mediocre cantrip, and the idea of losing hate cards, sideboard cards and lands whenever I need those to the milling part, it just make me concerned about it. Is that a plus, or a must? Because cutting those for 3 more powerful, generic cards (like Electrolyze, Kalitas, countermagic or even Tribute to Hunger tickles me. I used to play two Tasigur in Grixis Twin and I never felt that I needed Scours.
I'd love to discuss about a Scourless deck with someone who doesn't play it and understand if that's needed or not. I mean, Scour-Tasigur is a great play but 2 cards combo like that between other 58 cards to accomplish a good start against a good portion of the meta doesn't sound as a good reason to run an objective mediocre card beside that. Also, Patrick Raymond won with this Grixis scourless list: http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=109600
You have to understand that milling on average does not lower or increase your chances of drawing into any specific card - unless you are going to draw your entire deck. this never happens, so yeah. moreover scour lets you see more of your deck and find targets for snapcaster and kommand, which means you draw into hate more likely. there is a minor downside in that you can mill lands and have no targets for your fetches more often. I wouldn't be content with playing just 4 shocklands if I also played Scours.
I personally cut Scours long time ago. I'm opting for Inquisitions and Remands in their slot, as they fill my early turns. if you only play two tasigurs you can do easily without scours. you lose the potential for t2 tasigur but you also gain tempo through spending less mana on cantripping.
It really comes down to not having too many early game cards. I'm opting for Inquisition because it gives me game against some of the more unfair decks and burn, but also because of Kalitas. When you play Kalitas it becomes very valuable to be able to remove Paths and such removal spells from the opponents' hands so you can play Kalitas safely.
Scour gives you value, but I felt like I was just burning mana when I would want to do something else, even just play my lands tapped.
I feel like I have a totally different idea of what "value" is. People keep saying Thought Scour is "value". No, Thought Scour is a card that gives you flexibility(in more targets for kola/snap), tempo(powering out early delve fatties) and effectively makes your deck thinner(letting you on average draw your action cards earlier). However, value it is not. It is a card that let's you cycle.
This is of course just my opinion of value being some sort of 2-for-1 play or similar.
I don't see why it shouldn't be called value. Flexibility sounds like a weird substitute. You could just say Scour gives you more options. But that in itself is value. If Scour simply replaced itself then it would be no value and just a cantrip. Selfmill that lets you find more targets for snap and kommand and cast tasigurs early is the extra value on top. Card advantage != value.
I feel like I have a totally different idea of what "value" is. People keep saying Thought Scour is "value". No, Thought Scour is a card that gives you flexibility(in more targets for kola/snap), tempo(powering out early delve fatties) and effectively makes your deck thinner(letting you on average draw your action cards earlier). However, value it is not. It is a card that let's you cycle.
This is of course just my opinion of value being some sort of 2-for-1 play or similar.
I think black lotus plus a cycle for one blue is absolutely what I would call value. In a deck looking to delve every game, putting three cards in the GY is essentially 3 mana.
But as you said before, agree to disagree on that.
Actually, milling a Leyline of the Void , or Engineered Explosives can easily cost the game.
To be blunt: this is irrelevant. They could also be at the bottom of your deck, which would also cost you the game. There is no way to control this.
More than that, generally milling an instant, a sorcery or a creature (specially a nonflash one) results in a big tempo loss since we need a Snapcaster or Kommand first, and then spending a turn to get them in play or in hand respectively.
How on earth is that a tempo loss? If you have Snap in hand on turn 2 and cast a Thought Scour milling a Bolt, then untap and Snap->Bolt, there is no loss of tempo here. There's only an increase in flexibility, since you did not have to draw and cast the Bolt in the first place. It just had to hit the yard.
The only good upside of those is that we COULD play a Tasigur very early on, but that could be done with fetch-SV-fetch-bolt as well, resulting in a single turn wasted
To be blunt once again: I feel like you have not played with Scour very much if this is your opinion on it. The true power of this card is much deeper than what you've written, and everyone from Patrick Chapin to Corey Burkhart agree that the card is one of the best cards you can play in Grixis. It enables literally all our synergies at instant speed for a single mana. That's absurd.
For what I think, it's not everything good with that. For example, milling an Anger when we need it means that we have to pay 5 instead of 3 and lose our Snap in the process. Same goes to Damnation.
Sure. But let's say that we're three turns into the game at this point. You have about a 4% chance to mill that Anger and about a 6% chance to see it in the top 3 at all. The chance that you don't see the card you're looking for at all is north of 90%.
I mean, we have to spend a turn in which we have to pay more to flashback a thing or, worse, return it in the hand in the case of Kommand.
This is true of literally every time that you cast Kommand or Snap. The only thing is that you now have more options with that Kommand and Snap and an infinitesimally small chance that you mill the specific card you wanted and that cannot be recurred.
It's also true that we can't know what cards come next in the deck, but I generally don't trust randomness and I've always had bad experiences with milling cards.
This right here is your problem. To quote myself:
Everything in MTG is random. Drawing 3 cards off of Ancestral Vision is random. Milling 2 with Tasigur is random. You have to be able to let that go, since its almost completely irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. You milling the card you wanted shouldn't matter since there's just as high of a chance that the card you wanted was also twelve cards down in your deck and you'll never draw it at all.
Randomness is an inherent part of Magic. You're being ROTTY, as they would say on Limited Resources. You're falling to results oriented thinking: I have milled cards I wanted, therefore milling is bad and I should not play Scour. The numbers say that your chances of milling specific cards you want are very small, while the tangible benefits are very easy to see and measure.
I really do not wish to be condescending here, but I highly suggest that you take the advice of those who have more experience. The vast majority of people who play Grixis Control say that Scour is a good card. The guy who made the deck in the first place thinks its one of the best cards in the deck. You can dislike it all you want, but to call it mediocre and say that it's bad in the deck is simply wrong.
The jace build seems interesting. Not the biggest fan of no liliana, the last hope in this list when it's really good in jace builds. I also think that the darkslick should be a RB fast land.
1) Is Thought Scour really important for the deck? I mean, I know it speeds up Tasigur and could be a plus for Snapcasters, but I just see it as a mediocre cantrip, and the idea of losing hate cards, sideboard cards and lands whenever I need those to the milling part, it just make me concerned about it. Is that a plus, or a must? Because cutting those for 3 more powerful, generic cards (like Electrolyze, Kalitas, countermagic or even Tribute to Hunger tickles me. I used to play two Tasigur in Grixis Twin and I never felt that I needed Scours.
I'd love to discuss about a Scourless deck with someone who doesn't play it and understand if that's needed or not. I mean, Scour-Tasigur is a great play but 2 cards combo like that between other 58 cards to accomplish a good start against a good portion of the meta doesn't sound as a good reason to run an objective mediocre card beside that. Also, Patrick Raymond won with this Grixis scourless list: http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=109600
You have to understand that milling on average does not lower or increase your chances of drawing into any specific card - unless you are going to draw your entire deck. this never happens, so yeah. moreover scour lets you see more of your deck and find targets for snapcaster and kommand, which means you draw into hate more likely. there is a minor downside in that you can mill lands and have no targets for your fetches more often.
Actually, milling a Leyline of the Void , or Engineered Explosives can easily cost the game. More than that, generally milling an instant, a sorcery or a creature (specially a nonflash one) results in a big tempo loss since we need a Snapcaster or Kommand first, and then spending a turn to get them in play or in hand respectively. That's why I'm not sold in that card at all. The only good upside of those is that we COULD play a Tasigur very early on, but that could be done with fetch-SV-fetch-bolt as well, resulting in a single turn wasted, but with a potential cmc1 card to flash back with Snapcasters AND more generic and powerful spells, like Remand as you've said.
ok, since you don't seem to get it, let me prove this using math.
lets say we are to draw 5 cards over the remainder of a game. assume there are 40 cards in the deck, and 1 card we want to hit. lets compare what happens when we mill two cards off the top of our library and when we just naturally draw 5 cards:
probability of hitting the card we want drawing naturally is P=1-((39/40)*(38/39)*(37/38)*(36/37)*(35/36))=1-(35/40)=0,125
if me mill two cards off the top first, the probability of milling our desired card is P=1-((39/40)(38/39))=0,05
there is a 0,05 chance we mill the desired card, after which the chance of finding the card becomes 0. if we don't mill the card now our chances of drawing it are
the total probability of hitting the card in the case we mill two cards off the top is the weighted combination:
P=0,05*0 + 0,95*(1-33/38)=0,125
-----
as you can see, the probability is exactly the same. I could repeat this with more cards we want to find, different draw sizes, etc. but the result would be the same. I hope you learned something from this.
Anger better than a Leyline against Dredge, Control, BGx, Storm and Living End? How in the world?
I've seen matches against Dredge where Grixis just played straight up easily against it, whereas Anger does less.
Plus the fact that having it in turn 1 for free is gamebreaking and often a win against those decks.
I think any of Negate/Countersquall/Remand and/or Mana Leak together with your Snapcasters should be able to take care of Storm, Living End, and Controls' bombs. Anger does much needed work against Elves, Fish, and Lingering Souls variants too so it's versatile. Rakdos Charm lets you hold up for other instant speed options, and we generally want to hold as much mana up during our opps turns as possible so this works into our overall plan.
Nu Dredge runs 4x Nature's Claim sideboard to bust your T0 Leyline- why play into that?
If you don't find the Leyline early, you might be dead or too far behind on tempo to even have an opportunity to play it. It's not like it's going to clear the board when you play it, and playing it the turn after a sweeper means they already found the amoeba again to recur the whole setup.
Also you can't actually run 4x Leyline in Grix Control as you need to use the SB slots elsewhere or you will have lopsided matchups, lose a lot and have no fun.
I'll accept that Engineered does a job that you can't really be replaced by a spell in our colors, but, I don't think possibly milling the 1 or 2 copies you might be playing is a good reason not to play Thought Scour. The math from Teimuu should pretty solidly prove it.
Thought Scour is amazing in this deck, especially in a list like Burkharts. Saying that its anything but amazing makes me think that you dont have much experience with it.
I can count the times I've lost because of milling cards I needed off the top, and I've been playing this deck since Burkharts LA win: once.
I milled two Cryptics that I really needed, and drew into two lands. Did I immediately think oh, Thought Scour is terrible? No. I accepted that this game is often about variance, and I still wouldn't play less than 4 TS.
Thought Scour is amazing in this deck, especially in a list like Burkharts. Saying that its anything but amazing makes me think that you dont have much experience with it.
I can count the times I've lost because of milling cards I needed off the top, and I've been playing this deck since Burkharts LA win: once.
I milled two Cryptics that I really needed, and drew into two lands. Did I immediately think oh, Thought Scour is terrible? No. I accepted that this game is often about variance, and I still wouldn't play less than 4 TS.
I don't like the card (in My build) I have played with it a bunch too
Yea its definitely a weird deck. Has no land destruction at all. I don't understand how he was able to beat Cavern of Souls in Bant Eldrazi at all. It always seems incredibly hard for me to beat. Also, the deck seems super weak to Tron, Primeval Titan and Scapeshift variants. Maybe those decks didn't show up in force, or he got favorable draws and avoided them? I was trying to find the top 8 rankings to see what he faced but it doesn't seem to be posted anywhere...
UPDATE!: Found it here
His finals opp was Bant Eldrazi- and was playing 4 copies of Cavern of Souls. Still have no idea how he beat that...
On the other hand, though, it looks like he was extremely strong against Dredge G1 and beyond, and maybe even was overboarding against it! Is Relic of Progenitus even really necessary when you have 3 SB Anger lol? I like the 2 MD Kalitas a lot- have been testing a bit with it and seems very strong right now, especially when your opp isn't running MD Dismember (which usually seems to be the case).
I also really like that there were no Ancestral Visions either. The card is just clunky and slow most of the time, and I find myself often wishing I had anything else instead. I've been looking to find a reason to leave it, and, well, this at least makes me think it's possible.
EDH: UBRJeleva | GURSurrak
Everything in MTG is random. Drawing 3 cards off of Ancestral Vision is random. Milling 2 with Tasigur is random. You have to be able to let that go, since its almost completely irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. You milling the card you wanted shouldn't matter since there's just as high of a chance that the card you wanted was also twelve cards down in your deck and you'll never draw it at all.
URW Control
WBG Abzan
GRW Burn
EDH
GR Rosheen Meanderer
So far ive leaned towards cutting the 1 EE and 1 squall for it, but it might just be that im overloving cryptic right now? i havent gone below 4 cryptic command in a while now.
Mana leak has been awesome, and is often the needed link to survive long enough to resolve ancestral or get a soft cryptic lock.
Dredge is powerful, you need to attack their board and graveyard IMO. Conflagrate is a beast that can burn you or your threats away effectively. And late game Mana Leak isn't going to counter it reliably. I too like Kalitas but tapping out for him can be bad vs PTE decks.
Just looked at Raymond's deck. SB Ceremonious Rejection is great vs Bant Eldrazi. 1 CMC counter vs his entire deck of creatures minus Noble Heirarch. So damn efficient with Snap too. Plus it counters whatever you want vs Affinity.
GURB Grixis/Jund Shadow
RBG Dredge
xUx U Ballista Tron
Commander
GUR Maelstrom Wanderer
BWU Sydri, Galvanic Genius
BGB Meren of Clan Nel Toth
WGW Nazahn, Revered Bladesmith
RRR Feldon of the Third Path
WWW Heliod, God of the Sun
I agree with you but Cavern of Souls should still hose the f out of Ceremonious Rejection!
EDH: UBRJeleva | GURSurrak
You're right, I forgot they play 4 of. Maybe he got lucky and his opponent didn't find one? I don't understand how he won either. Damnation?
GURB Grixis/Jund Shadow
RBG Dredge
xUx U Ballista Tron
Commander
GUR Maelstrom Wanderer
BWU Sydri, Galvanic Genius
BGB Meren of Clan Nel Toth
WGW Nazahn, Revered Bladesmith
RRR Feldon of the Third Path
WWW Heliod, God of the Sun
Sometimes they don't find the Cavern and your counterspells are suddenly live. It's sort of amazing what you can do to 3 and 4 drops when you can actually cryptic them. Imagine, a fair game of magic!
Mostly though, they just always have Cavern. And you get TKS'd, Smashered, Drownered, until you die. It's great.
Admittedly, Bant Eldrazi is mostly mana sources so it's subject to some amount of variance greater than a typical midrange deck.
EDH: UBRJeleva | GURSurrak
You have to understand that milling on average does not lower or increase your chances of drawing into any specific card - unless you are going to draw your entire deck. this never happens, so yeah. moreover scour lets you see more of your deck and find targets for snapcaster and kommand, which means you draw into hate more likely. there is a minor downside in that you can mill lands and have no targets for your fetches more often. I wouldn't be content with playing just 4 shocklands if I also played Scours.
I personally cut Scours long time ago. I'm opting for Inquisitions and Remands in their slot, as they fill my early turns. if you only play two tasigurs you can do easily without scours. you lose the potential for t2 tasigur but you also gain tempo through spending less mana on cantripping.
It really comes down to not having too many early game cards. I'm opting for Inquisition because it gives me game against some of the more unfair decks and burn, but also because of Kalitas. When you play Kalitas it becomes very valuable to be able to remove Paths and such removal spells from the opponents' hands so you can play Kalitas safely.
Scour gives you value, but I felt like I was just burning mana when I would want to do something else, even just play my lands tapped.
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I don't see why it shouldn't be called value. Flexibility sounds like a weird substitute. You could just say Scour gives you more options. But that in itself is value. If Scour simply replaced itself then it would be no value and just a cantrip. Selfmill that lets you find more targets for snap and kommand and cast tasigurs early is the extra value on top. Card advantage != value.
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UB Faeries (15-6-0)
UWR Control (10-5-1)/Kiki Control/Midrange/Harbinger
UBR Cruel Control (6-4-0)/Grixis Control/Delver/Blue Jund
UWB Control/Mentor
UW Miracles/Control (currently active, 14-2-0)
BW Eldrazi & Taxes
RW Burn (9-1-0)
I do (academic) research on video games and archaeology! You can check out my open access book here: https://www.sidestone.com/books/the-interactive-past
I think black lotus plus a cycle for one blue is absolutely what I would call value. In a deck looking to delve every game, putting three cards in the GY is essentially 3 mana.
But as you said before, agree to disagree on that.
To be blunt: this is irrelevant. They could also be at the bottom of your deck, which would also cost you the game. There is no way to control this.
How on earth is that a tempo loss? If you have Snap in hand on turn 2 and cast a Thought Scour milling a Bolt, then untap and Snap->Bolt, there is no loss of tempo here. There's only an increase in flexibility, since you did not have to draw and cast the Bolt in the first place. It just had to hit the yard.
To be blunt once again: I feel like you have not played with Scour very much if this is your opinion on it. The true power of this card is much deeper than what you've written, and everyone from Patrick Chapin to Corey Burkhart agree that the card is one of the best cards you can play in Grixis. It enables literally all our synergies at instant speed for a single mana. That's absurd.
URW Control
WBG Abzan
GRW Burn
EDH
GR Rosheen Meanderer
Please stop playing Leyline of the Void in this deck- Rakdos Charm/Anger of the Gods is way, way better for the needed task.
EDH: UBRJeleva | GURSurrak
Sure. But let's say that we're three turns into the game at this point. You have about a 4% chance to mill that Anger and about a 6% chance to see it in the top 3 at all. The chance that you don't see the card you're looking for at all is north of 90%.
This is true of literally every time that you cast Kommand or Snap. The only thing is that you now have more options with that Kommand and Snap and an infinitesimally small chance that you mill the specific card you wanted and that cannot be recurred.
This right here is your problem. To quote myself:
Randomness is an inherent part of Magic. You're being ROTTY, as they would say on Limited Resources. You're falling to results oriented thinking: I have milled cards I wanted, therefore milling is bad and I should not play Scour. The numbers say that your chances of milling specific cards you want are very small, while the tangible benefits are very easy to see and measure.
I really do not wish to be condescending here, but I highly suggest that you take the advice of those who have more experience. The vast majority of people who play Grixis Control say that Scour is a good card. The guy who made the deck in the first place thinks its one of the best cards in the deck. You can dislike it all you want, but to call it mediocre and say that it's bad in the deck is simply wrong.
URW Control
WBG Abzan
GRW Burn
EDH
GR Rosheen Meanderer
The jace build seems interesting. Not the biggest fan of no liliana, the last hope in this list when it's really good in jace builds. I also think that the darkslick should be a RB fast land.
Decks I'm playing in Modern right now:
URB Grixis Reveler (http://www.mtgvault.com/supast4r7/decks/modern-grixis-reveler/)
UB Faeries (http://www.mtgvault.com/supast4r7/decks/ub-fae-2/)
UW Azorious Control (http://www.mtgvault.com/supast4r7/decks/modern-ojutai-control-2/)
ok, since you don't seem to get it, let me prove this using math.
lets say we are to draw 5 cards over the remainder of a game. assume there are 40 cards in the deck, and 1 card we want to hit. lets compare what happens when we mill two cards off the top of our library and when we just naturally draw 5 cards:
probability of hitting the card we want drawing naturally is P=1-((39/40)*(38/39)*(37/38)*(36/37)*(35/36))=1-(35/40)=0,125
if me mill two cards off the top first, the probability of milling our desired card is P=1-((39/40)(38/39))=0,05
there is a 0,05 chance we mill the desired card, after which the chance of finding the card becomes 0. if we don't mill the card now our chances of drawing it are
P=1-((37/38)(36/37)(35/36)(34/35)(33/34))=1-(33/38)=1-0,8684210526
the total probability of hitting the card in the case we mill two cards off the top is the weighted combination:
P=0,05*0 + 0,95*(1-33/38)=0,125
-----
as you can see, the probability is exactly the same. I could repeat this with more cards we want to find, different draw sizes, etc. but the result would be the same. I hope you learned something from this.
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I think any of Negate/Countersquall/Remand and/or Mana Leak together with your Snapcasters should be able to take care of Storm, Living End, and Controls' bombs. Anger does much needed work against Elves, Fish, and Lingering Souls variants too so it's versatile. Rakdos Charm lets you hold up for other instant speed options, and we generally want to hold as much mana up during our opps turns as possible so this works into our overall plan.
Nu Dredge runs 4x Nature's Claim sideboard to bust your T0 Leyline- why play into that?
If you don't find the Leyline early, you might be dead or too far behind on tempo to even have an opportunity to play it. It's not like it's going to clear the board when you play it, and playing it the turn after a sweeper means they already found the amoeba again to recur the whole setup.
Also you can't actually run 4x Leyline in Grix Control as you need to use the SB slots elsewhere or you will have lopsided matchups, lose a lot and have no fun.
I'll accept that Engineered does a job that you can't really be replaced by a spell in our colors, but, I don't think possibly milling the 1 or 2 copies you might be playing is a good reason not to play Thought Scour. The math from Teimuu should pretty solidly prove it.
EDH: UBRJeleva | GURSurrak
I can count the times I've lost because of milling cards I needed off the top, and I've been playing this deck since Burkharts LA win: once.
I milled two Cryptics that I really needed, and drew into two lands. Did I immediately think oh, Thought Scour is terrible? No. I accepted that this game is often about variance, and I still wouldn't play less than 4 TS.
BGX Midrange
URX Control
I don't like the card (in My build)
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