I'm starting this thread because I see no reason why, in a 40 card deck environment, mill can't be a pretty strong archetype – when you give it some slots, that is. I figure that if you can mill them for ~24 to ~27 cards before dying, you should normally win.
A common objection to cards like Sands of Delirium, Nemesis of Reason, and even Jace, Memory Adept is that they're too high variance. They either deck the opponent and win the game, or do almost nothing to affect the game state. But if we dedicate a few slots to narrower mill cards, cards like JMA and NoR can feel less lonely. Also some of us Johnnies just like alternate win cons. So let's start the mill discussion...
Even though this can theoretically mill for ~14 cards, or half of the magical number we're looking for, I don't like that it's a sorcery that takes up your whole turn five without even leaving behind a blocker. Also if you've top decked this after already starting the grinding, then it may only mill for seven or eight, which is low efficiency.
Though this little guy is fragile, he's mill's earliest play other than the pretty weak Tome Scour. He's great with fetch lands and Rampant Growth type effects, and can easily mill for 9+ before eating a removal spell. Of course it can also chump in a pinch.
I like it. The 0 to cast version won't be live too often against aggro, but is pretty good against green, black, blue, and anybody with fetches. Also it's an instant and represents about 50% of the total mill we need to "get there" in just one card.
Anyways, I'm interested to hear other people's ideas on cards that would help make the mill archetype viable, and in b4 "mill sucks."
P.S. In game where Mind Funeral is cast on turn three against a 17 land deck, how many cards will it mill on average?
If you dedicate enough cards to the archetype, it'll work. But at the cost of a huge number of cube slots, and almost all the cards are only playable in one deck. Not worth it, IMO.
I wish beyond all dreams that this would work. I love mill. But they are just so bloody linear and awful in anything else, its just not good for a cube
Consider Mesmeric Orb due to its pure power level, and its combination with a variety of blue tempo plays. Remand, Memory Lapse, Aether Adept, etc. give a huge cards-milled advantage to the Orb player.
Sewer Nemesis is one of a very few cards that gets better with a partially milled out opponent, and I'd recommend it on those grounds alone. The fact that it is a very good card in general makes it even more includable.
Also consider adding cards that enable both a mill archetype and a dredge archetype.
I have run milling a a blue subtheme in my cube for a while, and it took a long time to get it right. My objective was to make it hard to put together, but possible, using as few slots as possible, and I think I got it right now.
The archetype typically works either as an aggro-control deck or a control deck. For the aggro-control style, instead of using creatures the puts a repeatable milling card into play and protects it. The control version is a regular control deck that, instead of fatties as finishers, uses high-end milling to win the game. Usually the deck is UB, but I've ran a UR version recently that could mill 26 by copying Archive Trap with Reverberate and Wild Ricochet, and worked well.
The cards I run in my cube (574 cards, unpowered), from best performing to worst performing: Oona, Queen of the Fae - Usable as finisher in other archetypes, so not exclusive to milling. Archive Trap - Milling 13 at instant speed is very strong in limited. It'll often finish your opponent off. Mesmeric Orb - An artifact that sets up an extremely quick clock. If my cube didn't have as much artifact removal as it does, it would possibly rank #1. Hedron Crab - For one mana, a card that will win you the game if not dealt with quickly. Even if the opponent deals with it in 2 turns, it'll have milled 6. The downside is that it's a small creature, the most fragile permanent type. Curse of the Bloody Tome - Enchantments are hard to remove, and milling 2 every turn at no cost is a decent clock. It works like a smaller Mesmeric Orb. Sands of Delirium - A card that does very well in control-milling but not in aggro-control-milling. It's mana intensive, and you'll need mana to keep your opponent from killing you, but when the game has been going on for long, it really shines. Howling Mine - A double-edged sword. It will definitely increase the game's tempo, and you deck had better be prepared for this, but a fast tempo is great for aggro-control. Millstone - It's mana intensive milling (one mana for one card is intensive), and worse than Sands because it doesn't have the potential to finish off the opponent quickly. Nevertheless, a card that contributes to the plan. I'll probably cut this to try something else. Ambassador Laquatus - Close to Sands of Delirium, but more fragile and blue intensive. I'll probably cut this as well to try something else.
What I've tested and dropped: Traumatize - At best, it's milling ~13 cards from your opponent's library, making it a sorcery speed not cheatable Archive Trap. The more the game goes one, the worse it gets. I had it in for a long time, and it always underperformed. Shriekhorn - I tried at the same time I had some proliferate going around, but it's slow, low impact and hard to abuse. Jace's Erasure - It doesn't mill quickly enough. Paying one more mana for Curse of the Bloody Tome is a much better deal. Duskmantle, House of Shadow - Too expensive to activate, too slow to mill. Not even worth the mana consitency IMO. Vedalken Entrancer - Although it doubles as a decent blocker and a mill 2 every turn for 1 mana, creatures are fragile and they need to have a bigger impact than this to be worth protecting with counterspells. Forced Fruition - It sets up up to die more often than wins you the game. Prosperity - Same as Forced Fruition.
I also run a milltheme in my cube. Furthermore I run a selfmilltheme (I really liked this archetype in Innistrad, so I wanted to get this in my cube as well) and a reanimationtheme so that the graveyard matters in several ways. It makes cards like Glimpse the Unthinkable less narrow, so I am pretty satisfied with the milltheme thusfar.
Other cards that work pretty well as a millcard but also have other uses are Mindshrieker and Blue Sun's Zenith for instance.
I also used Jace 3.0, but a lot of people didn't like him (too powerful, not interactive enough).
I was kind of wary if the milltheme would be picked up, but at my last draft someone got to the finals with a pretty good UB control deck with his primary wincondition being milling. Pretty cool.
Until now an UR-mill deck wasn't drafted, but I have cards like Wheel of Fortune, Reforge the Soul, Windfall and Memory Jar in the cube, so I think it's a real possibilty.
What do you guys think about Lazav, Dimir Mastermind btw? He seems like a very flavourful card. I am going to give him at least a try, although I am not sure if he's good enough. Not being able to copy something in your own graveyard makes him probably too narrow even in my cube. Nice card nevertheless.
Dimir Charm could definitely help people who want to play mill. A pseudo-fateseal that also mills two cards isn't a horrible support spell for mill decks.
I've put a mill theme into my cube and I am running Chronic Flooding. The few mill decks that have been built have won as much as any of the other archetypes and Chronic Flooding has made its way into other decks since it basically shuts a land down in a lot of cases.
Cool to see the testimonies of players running mill! I have been waiting to pull the trigger until I can work out a few of the other fringe strategies I am trying out currently (Goblins, Enchantress). When those are done, my goal is to make my cube more graveyard oriented and include cards that would encourage self-mill.
I definitely think mill is a viable strategy, and if you can get around what makes it narrow and extend its reach to other archetypes, I think it'll be great. It's important to note that there are plenty of viable strategies that only work in one deck (artifact.dec, tokens, blink) and those seem to be doing fine. One thing I love about mill is that a good number of the cards are colorless giving some additional flexibility to the strategy.
Have anyone tried to include a mill subtheme in your cube recently? The printing of Ruin Crab makes me want to try it, but my brain says that it's probably a bad idea. I like many of the symmetric mill effects, that may be useful to enable the new escape mechanic, reanimation and other graveyard shenanigans.
What do you think? Could these cards be roleplayers in control decks as an alternative win-con/enabler or will the creatures just function as 0/3's because they die too early?
I think nothing really has changed from the earlier discussion from 7-8 years ago. Sure, a few really good mill cards have been printed, but it doesn't change the fact that most mill cards can only be played in a specific mill deck. If I'm drafting control, I'm to busy pulling good control cards, and a traditional cube usually has plenty of good finishers I can pick up sooner or later - I would never pick Ruin Crab or Hedron crab in a control deck, a 0/3 blocker is just too bad, and the mill effect does pretty much nothing for me until I have a critical mass.
So that leaves us with the same conclusion as before, there are enough cards in existence that you totally could make a cube support a mill deck, but it probably wouldn't be that fun to draft.
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I disagree that it wouldn't be fun to draft. The problem is that most of the mill cards are parasitic (won't work with other strategies).
I have drafted a few times with ZNR on Arena and I have been impressed with what a single Ruin Crab on turn 1 or 2 can do. It blocks the opponent's early attackers and slowly wins the game if they do not kill it. Of course, the power level is different from cube, but it made me think of trying it out. I'm thinking it could actually kill pretty fast in an UG shell with cards like Oracle/Courser/Dryad/Cultivate etc.
A dedicated mill deck is extremely competitive. But it's parasitic because it's filled with cards that only go in that one deck and it takes up a lot of real estate to make it work effectively. Similar to storm, except that it eats up a ton of slots for a single color, and is arguably even more linear.
I've been considering mill as I continue to see incentive to have mill-adjacent cards.
An old combo deck would use Squandered Resources and Cadaverous Bloom to fuel a big Prosperity, which in turn fuels a big Drain Life. I've been trying to get something like that working, and it turns out Prosperity itself could be a good mill finisher. I've also been testing Sphinx's Tutelage, which seems very no-fuss for blue to run and pretty effective with big draw effects. But, clearly these are just a couple cards that could get a win through mill; they're not really mill decks themselves. Lately I've been trying to find good repeatable mill that doesn't require too many cube slots to get a critical mass, while also clearly being an archetype. I think my next round of testing will likely include both Crabs and at least one Ashiok (yes this takes a guild slot but honestly I have never liked the popular dimir choices anyway).
Tactuz hit an angle I didn't even think about - green has lots of ways of getting crab triggers, and I think has other tools that could likewise help a mill plan: regrowth a big mill spell, or mana-doublers or channel pumping up Prosperity or maybe an Increasing Confusion, which was always an absolute beast and might be worth thinking about if you wanna do mill.
Another note maybe worth talking about is that I've also experimented with self-mill. The Gitrog Monster, Dakmor Salvage and any discard outlet (e.g. Wild Mongrel) can mill your whole deck. Might be fun for people who want Laboratory Maniac-style decks in their cube.
Edit: It looks like someone above has had poor results with Prosperity, so maybe a single-target draw would be better for the stuff I'm talking about. There are a few out there: Braingeyser, Blue Sun's Zenith, so on. Although, a big Prosperity while I have a Sphinx's Tutelage out seems hilarious.
I'm thinking of it as a subtheme that works in other archetypes more than a full archetype. I have ordered some cards now and I think I will try to find a cut for them in my next update. It will probably only be the crabs in blue and some colorless options (Mesmeric Orb and maybe some of these: Howling Mine, Altar of Dementia, Grindclock, Sands of Delirium, Pyxis of Pandemonium, Codex Shredder). I already play the 3 mana Ashiok in Dimir.
Not quite what you're describing but I know ryansaxe is running lab-man jace and thassa's oracle for some self-mill combo strategies using black tutors that can mill your whole library. I recently added that to my cube but haven't seen it happen yet. Maybe he can speak to if those are working or not.
I haven't tried the other cards you've mentioned, but Altar of Dementia does have the benefit of being a free sac outlet for Persist combo, so I think that might have some crossover appeal
I love mill in standard/historic. Not a fan for cube. Mill decks do one thing well - mill and that's it. They rarely have synergy with existing cube strategies in the way standard or certain limited formats do (E.g Rogues in standard/ZNR limited right now) and frankly, in a 40 card format I think a truly well crafted cube mill package would probably be too strong. How hard is it to get through 33 cards with the best mill cards in the game? In sum, I find mill in cube to be parasitic, linear, non-synergystic, and if pushed as cube archetypes are probably too effective and non-interactive.
Play 2 specific build around cards that win through mill.
Play 2-4 cards that could make it into your cube but is often lacking slightly over a different card.
If you open 2-3 of this in your draft, the deck could come together.
I'm not too much of a fan of this archetype, but I would encourage non- parasitic methods of building this archetype rather than adding a bunch of random mill spells.
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It was also quite late last night, I completely forgot to add is that mill is not a good archetype given that Eldrazi/ Progenitus shuffle themselves back into the deck. Its also too risky against these decks:
- Agadeem's Awakening/ Living Death
- Reanimator
- Underworld Breach/ Yawgmoth's will storm
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I'm starting this thread because I see no reason why, in a 40 card deck environment, mill can't be a pretty strong archetype – when you give it some slots, that is. I figure that if you can mill them for ~24 to ~27 cards before dying, you should normally win.
A common objection to cards like Sands of Delirium, Nemesis of Reason, and even Jace, Memory Adept is that they're too high variance. They either deck the opponent and win the game, or do almost nothing to affect the game state. But if we dedicate a few slots to narrower mill cards, cards like JMA and NoR can feel less lonely. Also some of us Johnnies just like alternate win cons. So let's start the mill discussion...
Brain Freeze
As a 1U instant, it seems pretty easy to make this mill for 9+, especially if you support Storm or High Tide.
Traumatize
Even though this can theoretically mill for ~14 cards, or half of the magical number we're looking for, I don't like that it's a sorcery that takes up your whole turn five without even leaving behind a blocker. Also if you've top decked this after already starting the grinding, then it may only mill for seven or eight, which is low efficiency.
Hedron Crab
Though this little guy is fragile, he's mill's earliest play other than the pretty weak Tome Scour. He's great with fetch lands and Rampant Growth type effects, and can easily mill for 9+ before eating a removal spell. Of course it can also chump in a pinch.
Archive Trap
I like it. The 0 to cast version won't be live too often against aggro, but is pretty good against green, black, blue, and anybody with fetches. Also it's an instant and represents about 50% of the total mill we need to "get there" in just one card.
Anyways, I'm interested to hear other people's ideas on cards that would help make the mill archetype viable, and in b4 "mill sucks."
P.S. In game where Mind Funeral is cast on turn three against a 17 land deck, how many cards will it mill on average?
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Consider Mesmeric Orb due to its pure power level, and its combination with a variety of blue tempo plays. Remand, Memory Lapse, Aether Adept, etc. give a huge cards-milled advantage to the Orb player.
Sewer Nemesis is one of a very few cards that gets better with a partially milled out opponent, and I'd recommend it on those grounds alone. The fact that it is a very good card in general makes it even more includable.
Also consider adding cards that enable both a mill archetype and a dredge archetype.
The archetype typically works either as an aggro-control deck or a control deck. For the aggro-control style, instead of using creatures the puts a repeatable milling card into play and protects it. The control version is a regular control deck that, instead of fatties as finishers, uses high-end milling to win the game. Usually the deck is UB, but I've ran a UR version recently that could mill 26 by copying Archive Trap with Reverberate and Wild Ricochet, and worked well.
The cards I run in my cube (574 cards, unpowered), from best performing to worst performing:
Oona, Queen of the Fae - Usable as finisher in other archetypes, so not exclusive to milling.
Archive Trap - Milling 13 at instant speed is very strong in limited. It'll often finish your opponent off.
Mesmeric Orb - An artifact that sets up an extremely quick clock. If my cube didn't have as much artifact removal as it does, it would possibly rank #1.
Hedron Crab - For one mana, a card that will win you the game if not dealt with quickly. Even if the opponent deals with it in 2 turns, it'll have milled 6. The downside is that it's a small creature, the most fragile permanent type.
Curse of the Bloody Tome - Enchantments are hard to remove, and milling 2 every turn at no cost is a decent clock. It works like a smaller Mesmeric Orb.
Sands of Delirium - A card that does very well in control-milling but not in aggro-control-milling. It's mana intensive, and you'll need mana to keep your opponent from killing you, but when the game has been going on for long, it really shines.
Howling Mine - A double-edged sword. It will definitely increase the game's tempo, and you deck had better be prepared for this, but a fast tempo is great for aggro-control.
Millstone - It's mana intensive milling (one mana for one card is intensive), and worse than Sands because it doesn't have the potential to finish off the opponent quickly. Nevertheless, a card that contributes to the plan. I'll probably cut this to try something else.
Ambassador Laquatus - Close to Sands of Delirium, but more fragile and blue intensive. I'll probably cut this as well to try something else.
What I've tested and dropped:
Traumatize - At best, it's milling ~13 cards from your opponent's library, making it a sorcery speed not cheatable Archive Trap. The more the game goes one, the worse it gets. I had it in for a long time, and it always underperformed.
Shriekhorn - I tried at the same time I had some proliferate going around, but it's slow, low impact and hard to abuse.
Jace's Erasure - It doesn't mill quickly enough. Paying one more mana for Curse of the Bloody Tome is a much better deal.
Duskmantle, House of Shadow - Too expensive to activate, too slow to mill. Not even worth the mana consitency IMO.
Vedalken Entrancer - Although it doubles as a decent blocker and a mill 2 every turn for 1 mana, creatures are fragile and they need to have a bigger impact than this to be worth protecting with counterspells.
Forced Fruition - It sets up up to die more often than wins you the game.
Prosperity - Same as Forced Fruition.
What I'm yet to test:
Tome Scour
Mind Sculpt
Merfolk Mesmerist
What I'm sure would work well, but I couldn't acquire:
Glimpse the Unthinkable
Sewer Nemesis
Mind Funeral
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Other cards that work pretty well as a millcard but also have other uses are Mindshrieker and Blue Sun's Zenith for instance.
I also used Jace 3.0, but a lot of people didn't like him (too powerful, not interactive enough).
I was kind of wary if the milltheme would be picked up, but at my last draft someone got to the finals with a pretty good UB control deck with his primary wincondition being milling. Pretty cool.
Until now an UR-mill deck wasn't drafted, but I have cards like Wheel of Fortune, Reforge the Soul, Windfall and Memory Jar in the cube, so I think it's a real possibilty.
What do you guys think about Lazav, Dimir Mastermind btw? He seems like a very flavourful card. I am going to give him at least a try, although I am not sure if he's good enough. Not being able to copy something in your own graveyard makes him probably too narrow even in my cube. Nice card nevertheless.
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I definitely think mill is a viable strategy, and if you can get around what makes it narrow and extend its reach to other archetypes, I think it'll be great. It's important to note that there are plenty of viable strategies that only work in one deck (artifact.dec, tokens, blink) and those seem to be doing fine. One thing I love about mill is that a good number of the cards are colorless giving some additional flexibility to the strategy.
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If I were to add anything, it would be cards that does something even if you aren't fully on the mill strategy: Hedron Crab (blocks), Ruin Crab (blocks), Manic Scribe (blocks), Mesmeric Orb (enables graveyard strategies), Cling to Dust and maybe Vantress Gargoyle and Howling Mine.
What do you think? Could these cards be roleplayers in control decks as an alternative win-con/enabler or will the creatures just function as 0/3's because they die too early?
So that leaves us with the same conclusion as before, there are enough cards in existence that you totally could make a cube support a mill deck, but it probably wouldn't be that fun to draft.
I have drafted a few times with ZNR on Arena and I have been impressed with what a single Ruin Crab on turn 1 or 2 can do. It blocks the opponent's early attackers and slowly wins the game if they do not kill it. Of course, the power level is different from cube, but it made me think of trying it out. I'm thinking it could actually kill pretty fast in an UG shell with cards like Oracle/Courser/Dryad/Cultivate etc.
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An old combo deck would use Squandered Resources and Cadaverous Bloom to fuel a big Prosperity, which in turn fuels a big Drain Life. I've been trying to get something like that working, and it turns out Prosperity itself could be a good mill finisher. I've also been testing Sphinx's Tutelage, which seems very no-fuss for blue to run and pretty effective with big draw effects. But, clearly these are just a couple cards that could get a win through mill; they're not really mill decks themselves. Lately I've been trying to find good repeatable mill that doesn't require too many cube slots to get a critical mass, while also clearly being an archetype. I think my next round of testing will likely include both Crabs and at least one Ashiok (yes this takes a guild slot but honestly I have never liked the popular dimir choices anyway).
Tactuz hit an angle I didn't even think about - green has lots of ways of getting crab triggers, and I think has other tools that could likewise help a mill plan: regrowth a big mill spell, or mana-doublers or channel pumping up Prosperity or maybe an Increasing Confusion, which was always an absolute beast and might be worth thinking about if you wanna do mill.
Another note maybe worth talking about is that I've also experimented with self-mill. The Gitrog Monster, Dakmor Salvage and any discard outlet (e.g. Wild Mongrel) can mill your whole deck. Might be fun for people who want Laboratory Maniac-style decks in their cube.
Edit: It looks like someone above has had poor results with Prosperity, so maybe a single-target draw would be better for the stuff I'm talking about. There are a few out there: Braingeyser, Blue Sun's Zenith, so on. Although, a big Prosperity while I have a Sphinx's Tutelage out seems hilarious.
Play 2 specific build around cards that win through mill.
Play 2-4 cards that could make it into your cube but is often lacking slightly over a different card.
If you open 2-3 of this in your draft, the deck could come together.
For Mill build around:
- Jace, Memory Adept
- Sphinx's Tutelage
- Jace's Erasure
Cards that could make it into the cube even if there is no mill:
- Shelldock Isle
- Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver
- Brain Freeze - in this case, your goal is to mill for storm = 2-3 to shorten the clock
- Wheel of Fortune
- Glimpse the Unthinkable - I actually COULD see this as a potential playable given the Past in Flames, Underworld Breach, UB reanimator enabler.
- Jace, Wielder of Mysteries - I have the inverter combo
I'm not too much of a fan of this archetype, but I would encourage non- parasitic methods of building this archetype rather than adding a bunch of random mill spells.
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I think Teferi's Tutelage would be preferable over Jace's Erasure, no?
Absolutely. Even better.
It was also quite late last night, I completely forgot to add is that mill is not a good archetype given that Eldrazi/ Progenitus shuffle themselves back into the deck. Its also too risky against these decks:
- Agadeem's Awakening/ Living Death
- Reanimator
- Underworld Breach/ Yawgmoth's will storm
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2. Improving Green Archetypes
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4. Matchup Analysis
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