MTG Salvation

If you want to support mill decks, this is a no-brainer. Even if you don't support them per se, this is a solid one-card win-con that certainly doesn't require any other mill cards to be good.

Even a single trigger of the 10-card mill is going to put your opponent in a bad spot. Even if they keep monarch the rest of the game, you still mill 2 each turn, plus now they have monarch so they are drawing 2 per turn. I think this is basically a must-remove enchantment if you can play it by turn 3.

I'm okay with mill decks getting hosed by Reanimate, Timetwister, and even Blightsteel Colossus. Less so with the Eldrazi titans. I wish they didn't have that trigger as it makes cards like this a lot less interesting.

I have been hesitant to include any monarch cards because of how strong the monarch mechanic is in two-player games relative to the power level my Cube aims for, but Court of Cunning is really tempting.

I love giving players (especially in blue) ways to win that don't involve attacking. Mill is a niche Cube archetype whose best draws typically involve at least one repeatable mill enchantment and/or planeswalker, so Court of Cunning fits right in. I hope the monarch mechanic will feel a little "fairer" in the mill deck because mill is generally bad at defending itself from attacks due to spending so much time casting enchantments with no effect on the board.

The biggest complaint about mill in Cube is that getting milled out feels bad because mill is not interactive enough, but Court of Cunning actually gives your opponent a goal to slow the mill train down by stealing back the monarch , which can mitigate that feeling of powerlessness. Another interesting layer is that if you cast Court of Cunning and your opponent steals the monarch from you, them drawing extra cards still feeds into your game plan of decreasing their deck size, but in a way that doesn't feel bad for the opponent.

During the draft when you aren't sure what deck you're in yet, Court of Cunning letting you mill any number of players is a real upside over the two-telages because the best mill cards are the cards that work in multiple archetypes by letting you mill yourself for Living Death/reanimator strategies, setting up your own dredge cards and payoffs, or going for the Thassa's Oracle win.

Finally, being able to change your mind each turn about who to mill is nice. The play pattern in a dedicated mill deck that also has Thassa's Oracle, Jace, Wielder of Mysteries, or escape cards might be to start by milling both players, but if you both get close to decking and you've milled over your alt wincon card, you can just switch back to milling only your opponent.

Nice 1 card win condition for blue. I don't support Mill in blue, or any of the cards that would go in a deck like this so it's a pass for me, but it does seem like a well designed card for those that support this type of deck

This card is power. It presents the same clock as Goblin Rabblemaster, while also being a more difficult card type to remove. Also it replaces itself. Casting this turn 2 off a Birds of Paradise or Noble Hierarch is ridiculous. If you've ever been milled out by Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver, consider this mills 3 times faster. Also it replaces itself. Card is unbelievable.

This card is obviously good enough, but we are going to pass on it because it seems rather unfun. We cut Ashiok and Sword of Body and Mind a long time ago, so I dont see this making it in

This is a good card. High risk/high reward, but it can kill at Rabbblemaster speed and draw an extra card every turn while doing it. Of course, if you're under any kind of pressure it can be a card too risky to cast, but in the right windows, it's pretty insane.

This card is great at killing control decks and combo decks that don't apply early pressure against the red zone. This is one of the best cards for the control mirror that I can remember. Against any deck that can't provide consistent early pressure, it'll be a powerhouse, I think.

The fact that this is only 3 mana and draws cards while milling makes it everything for me that I ever wanted the 5cc Jace to be (which I cut for not being good enough).

I aim to test this and see how it does. I expect it to be a powerful, albeit situational, card that will feel broken in some windows and unplayable in others. Not a huge fan of that kind of feeling overall, but I think the powerlevel is high enough to justify a test.

This is insanely powerful, but seems like an unfun game plan. I'm fine with mill, but this isn't the way for me.

Plus no reminder text on monarch always annoys me. My players don't all know every random keyword in the game's history.

seems too good to be fun in most matchups. not for my cube.

Quote from Mergatroid_Jones »

Plus no reminder text on monarch always annoys me. My players don't all know every random keyword in the game's history.

I sympathize with this. That said, in the case of monarch, it's good to have a couple copies of the monarch token handy as reminders, which helps a bit. At least it's SOMETHING as opposed to nothing at all like keywords without reminder text.

Seems busted in cubes like the MTGO vintage cube where agro is < 1/4 of the decks drafted.
Also a great sideboard card in any cube.

Not sure how much I'd want to devote a slot to it in cubes where >= 1/3 of the archetypes are agro/creatures based... but its so powerful as sideboard tech, it's possible it should be.

It's a good card.
I would play it at 540+ and maybe even 450+.
But I don't particularly love mill and blue slots are too precious at 360 so pass for me.

This hasn't really worked for us, curious about other people's experiences - was anybody able to get this working?

Yeah, same. Was a bit surprised as it seemed like the ~3 turn mill clock would be pretty brutal in some matchups, as stated here - but we just haven't seen it happen. I think one player got it to work alright when we were briefly running self-mill combo. Just surprised how quiet it's been in our group.