Mill has been a thing in limited a couple of times now, and I think we've gotten to the point where we can support mill at 360. We have a lot of cards that are actually slightly more efficient than Lava Spike. For example, Lava Spike kills them 15%, but Tome Scour kills them 16.666...%.
The part that makes it seem viable to me is how fast it is. Aggro kills on turn 4 at the fastest for us, and Mill can do the same.
A simple turn 4 kill could be Hedron Crab (32 cards left) --> Mind Sculpt (21 cards left) --> Dream Twist (11 cards left) --> Mind Funeral (-2.4 cards left / Really dead)
Unlike aggro, we have access to multipleSulfuric Vortex style effects.
Seems like it would just dilute a lot of blue's power with something that might not come together, especially in bigger cubes. Also, I've never been a fan of mill in limited as it is a rather non-interactive way to win the game. I might just be a bit jaded from regular cube experiences. I hate Jace, Memory Adept in regular cube : /
The problem with mill is that if you don't get enough cards, you lose. Unlike every other archetype, you can't just turn your mill cards into control cards or something. They just become dead.
I don't think this is ever going to be a thing in our cubes until we get an unanswerable, inevitable mill card.
Well, the idea is that port your entire blue section over to mill and mill support. Playing 14 mill cards and 9 removal spells seems totally fine. We have enough support for two such decks at 360.
I don't think it would very fun, I just wanted to bring it up. I'm building a graveyard based cube right now as a side-project and I actually cut the mill for being either too strong or just losing to a gomazoa or nulltread gargantuan.
more cards that do more than just mill, like thought scour and psychic strike, will be needed before this is a viable archetype. when that happens, you can just run tome scour / dream twist / mind funeral / mind sculpt as "finishers". basically, u/b control that slowly grinds down their library before destroying their last ~12 cards in one turn. if it ever gets to that point i will be happy.
Jace's Phantasm & Wight of Precinct Six - Help block or possibly give you a beatdown path if pure mill doesn't work out. Dimir Charm - Flexible enough to work outside of mill Codex Shredder - Mills a few cards then gives you lategame gas. Cellar Door - Not a great miller, but the chance of giving you blockers might make it worthwhile
I've considered running Millstone as an additional win-con for control decks....also note that I know full well that Millstone hasn't been truly relevant since the mid 90s.
more creatures like mesmerist / entrancer would be good as well, except more like an actual creature (4 mana for a 1/4 isn't a good deal) with the mill as a bonus. a 2/3 for 3 and a 3/4 for 4 with U: mill 2 would sway me more towards playing mill cards i think. kraken hatchling with mill 2 would be cool as well.
You realize that reads like: 3R
Creature - Really Solid Creature
Defender R: Deal 1.333... Damage to target player
3/4
The fact that untapping with it twice basically ends the game is pretty unfair at our rarity. The three mana version would be even worse. Did you mean to add a tap to the cost?
I wish the innistrad milling skaabs could target. Armored Skaab would be filthy.
I guess... suffer the past would be a finisher in the wight/phantasm decks. Also works as a 23rd card in decks that need a playable.Cast for x=6 isnt all bad.
I started writing the below almost article style before I knew this thread existed. So I'm probably repeating a lot of what is already mentioned above.
Was thinking about mill decks, and how viable they are for cube given a few came up in our evaluate everything thread. Reminded me of my brief first foray into cube which was Peasant Ravnica, where I stole a win on the back of psychic drain and belltower sphinx.
Each player starts the game with 33 cards to mill, with a card drawn every turn. If you aren't interacting with your opponent, you probably only have 5 turns before they kill you, so you would need to mill about 28 cards.
I see two different versions of mill; the 'aggro' approach or the control approach.
The aggro approach tries to mill your opponent with little board interaction. So almost like a combo deck that is just trying to 'go off' before the opponent gets his game plan online and kills you. There are probably enough cards available that you could support it in a singleton peasant cube. But I would assume that
a) it would not be fast enough against aggro
b) A control deck that has sufficient counters would counter the most effective mill spells and be able to get its win cons online
c) You would have a critical mass of cards in your cube that support this archetype only, diluting blues power (and some of blacks); this is ok if that is what you want blue to be doing, but it doesn't fit most cube owners design of cross-pollinating cards and archetypes.
The control approach is more like a traditional blue/black control shell to draw out the game with mostly incidental mill effects and a few 'finishers' dedicated to the archetype. How few can we get away with? I reckon you would want Curse of the Bloody Tome, Psychic Drain, Hedron Crab, Mind Funeral, Millstone (for Curse redundancy). Maybe Mind Sculpt. You could probably replace the multi-colour cards, but I think they anchor the archetype well enough.
There re some other cards that function similarly to cards already in some cubes, though they are not always the most efficient version.
Below is my list of cards when I first started looking, most of them are in the original post of this thread.
I've excluded some of the lesser cards, like those that only mill 1 card, or creatures that mill when they deal damage because you aren't going to be the beatdown.
Braine Freeze - Not efficient in and of itself, but with one storm activation it's reasonable. Broken Ambitions - Fits the control gameplan. Cathartic Adept - Pretty slow Chill of Foreboding - Not the most efficient, but works. Chronic Flooding - ok as an opener to either accelerate your game plan or slow the opponent down, but late game it is going to be a dead draw. Codex Shredder - Re-usable but slow. Coerced Confession - Expensive, but could be ok as a curve topper to put more cards in your hand. Countermand - Suits a control version, but expensive. Curse of the Bloody Tome - Probably the best re-usable card. Dampen Thought - Serviceable, though you aren't going to be able to splice it. Doorkeeper - Has a butt that a control version would like. Expensive, but if you are drafting a few other defenders might be worth it. Dreadwaters - Maybe as a curvetopper for an 'aggro' version or as a finisher in control version. Dream Twist - Decent. Drowner Initiate - Great in the early game, but not a great top deck. Drowner of Secrets - On its own it is pretty weak. Synergy with Drowner Initiate but that is about it. Duskmantle, House of Shadow - Too slow. Enigma Eidolon - Too slow. Evanescent Intellect - Too much investment. Extract From Darkness - Doesn't really suit the gameplan. But can give you some board prescence. Fascination - Maybe as a finisher in control version. Flint Golem - Doesn't match the game plan. Ghoulcaller's Bell - Re-usable but slow. Halimar Excavator - Probably just going to be 1 card. Hedron Crab - Great early play. Not an amazing top deck in the late game, but at least it turns every otherwise dead land draw into a mill spell. Jace's Erasure - Most of the time this is just going to be a worse Curse of the Bloody Tome. Minor synergy with things like looters, but hard to sufficiently exploit. Memory Sluice - Probably won't conspire much, but it's cheap. Merfolk Mesmerist - You can probably afford to pay the mana to keep re-using this. Merrow Witsniper - 1 card is not enough. Mind Funeral - It's a minimum 4, but likely to be a lot more. Millstone - Probably too expensive. You can just use Curse of the Bloody Tome for no mana investment. Minor upside that you can use this a turn earlier in top deck mode if you have the mana, getting you a turn ahead. Mind Sculpt - Biggest bang for buck. Mindeye Drake - Maybe as a blocker to slow their game plan, that threatens to push the mill game plan if they try to remove it? Mindscour Dragon - Doesn't fit the game plan. Paranoid Delusions - Doesn't fit the gameplan because you aren't going to be attacking. Pilfered Plans - Advances the game plan while filling the hand. Psychic Drain - Fits the game plan perfectly. Can hold onto until you can get into finishing range, or to keep you in the game. Psychic Strike - Fits the control gameplan. Returned Centaur - Not particularly efficient at that cost, but at least it has a butt that a blocking deck can make use of. Returned Reveler - Helps the game plan, can stand in the way of early aggro creatures. Rotcrown Ghoul - I'd rather have Mindeye Drake. Sage's Row Denizen - Probably not going to trigger often enough to matter. Shriekhorn - 6 cards for 1 mana is efficient. Not going to be your favourite top deck when you are 'racing'. Sibisi Host - Expensive, but does have a butt that can help stabilise. Soratami Mindsweeper - Eh... Too mana intensive. Stern Mentor - Maybe this guy could be alright in a control version to mill end of turn with one of your other defenders. Shame he doesn't have the toughness a mill deck could appreciate. Thassa's Bounty - Too expensive. Thassa's Devourer - Eh... Sidisi Host does more 'damage' to the opponent. Thought Scour - Nice cantrip. Tome Scour - You'd prefer Mind Scuplt, but 5 cards is decent from 1 card. Undercity Informer - If you are playing a control version that is using a lot of blockers, this could be a 'finisher'. Vedalken Entrancer - Probably a bit too slow. Belltower Sphinx - Makes it hard for your opponent to attack into without furthering your game plan. Psychic Spiral - It's pretty expensive, but gets a little better if you are using some of the cards that mill both players.
Other cards the deck could like would be punishing/annoying blockers like Fog Bank, Guard Gomazoa, Hover Barrier, Vertigo Spawn, Wall of Frost, Wall of Tears
Black removal - Every turn you trade cards 1 for 1 the opponent is one turn closer to dead. Propoganda - Slows down the aggro or go wide strategies.
Problem with some of these cards is that you push them too far, and it doesn't just help this archetype, but other control decks to the probable detriment of aggro.
Alternate Win Conditions
The thing about alternate win conditions is that it is one less card working towards your primary win condition. Jace's Phantasm could help you survive an early aggro onlsaught while having the potential to turn into a solid blocker, or an alternate win con if conditions are right. Wight of Precinct Six is the same, but is more likely to see play outside of this archetype.
I assumed Psychic Spiral needed a bit of support before it became 'lethal', but perhaps not as much as I thought. Still, if that is the only card I suspect it is more like your alternate win condition that an archetype you are supporting. For decks like reanimator, ramp or control you are usually looking for at least some redundancy in your finishers. Losing Psychic Spiral to a single discard or counter would suck if you had been warping your play around it.
The grindy mill-as-a-wincon seems fine in the kind of prison decks I've started pushing (Ghostly Prison, Sphere of Protection, Story Circle), as it gives you clear inevitability (and you don't have to win with creatures!). Millstone is probably the best option in a deck like that, but Codex Shredder is appealing too (twice as fun!).
I don't see anything wrong with Psychic Spiral though, being a noninteractive late game win condition is totally fine. Interaction is overrated.
Might start a discussion about interaction in the general thread.
n00b, would you want Millstone over Curse? There are some instances where I can see Millstone having an advantage; primarily being able to be one turn ahead of Curse if you intend to play it after turn 4 or so (depending on land drops), on the basis that you never have to take a turn off to use that mana for something else. And really narrow cases like being able to untap the millstone with something. Oh wait, you mentioned white cards and Millstone is colourless.
Yeah the main advantage is being colourless so you don't need blue to run it. Hell maybe it could even be good in the BG graveyard archetype I've recently pushed (it wouldn't be but a girl can dream).
I wondered what the dream 'aggro mill deck' would look like. Which doesn't mean we should design our cubes to fit it. Just in the interest of exploring this to the ultimate conclusion.
After that you start getting into the more control oriented cards. Already had to make some concessions for some slower cards like Curse and Millstone. So you would need 8-9 other spells, and you would probably be looking for cheap cantrips (Preordain, Serum Visions, Impulse) to make your deck smaller / trigger Brain Freeze plus some removal or counters. There just aren't enough cards to go 100% aggro mill cards in singleton.
There are probably a few variations on Magical Christmas Land that will still get you close to or better than the 28 or so that you need to win on your opponents next draw. Hadron is a killer first turn play for the deck, but its absence doesn't prevent a potential turn 4 win.
So maybe a good version of the deck is better than we think? Biggest issue of course is being able to draft a good mill deck. It's highly unlikely to come together in a 2-man format when you aren't seeing all the cards.
Yep. I suspect black and white could probably do it too.
I wasn't advocating we run out and put this in our cubes. I was exploring a two part question;
Could the best singleton peasant aggro mill deck be competitive with other decks? Maybe (I'd need to see it in action to be convinced).
If it is competitive, could cards be included within generally accepted cube design principles? No.
You could ask those questions of any deck. As you've inferred, the red aggro deck has pedigree as being competitive, plus it fits accepted cube design (cards being playable outside of a specific deck).
The part that makes it seem viable to me is how fast it is. Aggro kills on turn 4 at the fastest for us, and Mill can do the same.
A simple turn 4 kill could be Hedron Crab (32 cards left) --> Mind Sculpt (21 cards left) --> Dream Twist (11 cards left) --> Mind Funeral (-2.4 cards left / Really dead)
Unlike aggro, we have access to multiple Sulfuric Vortex style effects.
Here's a list:
Now, keep in mind, I'm not asking should we run it. I'm asking if it's viable.
I don't think it would be very much fun to run because while being about as fast as the aggro deck it is a lot less interactive.
Opinions?
I don't think this is ever going to be a thing in our cubes until we get an unanswerable, inevitable mill card.
My CubeCobra (draft 20 card packs, 2 packs.)
430, Peasant, Very Unpowered
Why you should take your hybrids out of your gold section
Manamath Article
I don't think it would very fun, I just wanted to bring it up. I'm building a graveyard based cube right now as a side-project and I actually cut the mill for being either too strong or just losing to a gomazoa or nulltread gargantuan.
Jace's Phantasm & Wight of Precinct Six - Help block or possibly give you a beatdown path if pure mill doesn't work out.
Dimir Charm - Flexible enough to work outside of mill
Codex Shredder - Mills a few cards then gives you lategame gas.
Cellar Door - Not a great miller, but the chance of giving you blockers might make it worthwhile
My CubeCobra (draft 20 card packs, 2 packs.)
430, Peasant, Very Unpowered
Why you should take your hybrids out of your gold section
Manamath Article
3R
Creature - Really Solid Creature
Defender
R: Deal 1.333... Damage to target player
3/4
The fact that untapping with it twice basically ends the game is pretty unfair at our rarity. The three mana version would be even worse. Did you mean to add a tap to the cost?
I wish the innistrad milling skaabs could target. Armored Skaab would be filthy.
My CubeCobra (draft 20 card packs, 2 packs.)
430, Peasant, Very Unpowered
Why you should take your hybrids out of your gold section
Manamath Article
Was thinking about mill decks, and how viable they are for cube given a few came up in our evaluate everything thread. Reminded me of my brief first foray into cube which was Peasant Ravnica, where I stole a win on the back of psychic drain and belltower sphinx.
Each player starts the game with 33 cards to mill, with a card drawn every turn. If you aren't interacting with your opponent, you probably only have 5 turns before they kill you, so you would need to mill about 28 cards.
I see two different versions of mill; the 'aggro' approach or the control approach.
The aggro approach tries to mill your opponent with little board interaction. So almost like a combo deck that is just trying to 'go off' before the opponent gets his game plan online and kills you. There are probably enough cards available that you could support it in a singleton peasant cube. But I would assume that
a) it would not be fast enough against aggro
b) A control deck that has sufficient counters would counter the most effective mill spells and be able to get its win cons online
c) You would have a critical mass of cards in your cube that support this archetype only, diluting blues power (and some of blacks); this is ok if that is what you want blue to be doing, but it doesn't fit most cube owners design of cross-pollinating cards and archetypes.
The control approach is more like a traditional blue/black control shell to draw out the game with mostly incidental mill effects and a few 'finishers' dedicated to the archetype. How few can we get away with? I reckon you would want Curse of the Bloody Tome, Psychic Drain, Hedron Crab, Mind Funeral, Millstone (for Curse redundancy). Maybe Mind Sculpt. You could probably replace the multi-colour cards, but I think they anchor the archetype well enough.
There re some other cards that function similarly to cards already in some cubes, though they are not always the most efficient version.
Below is my list of cards when I first started looking, most of them are in the original post of this thread.
I've excluded some of the lesser cards, like those that only mill 1 card, or creatures that mill when they deal damage because you aren't going to be the beatdown.
Broken Ambitions - Fits the control gameplan.
Cathartic Adept - Pretty slow
Chill of Foreboding - Not the most efficient, but works.
Chronic Flooding - ok as an opener to either accelerate your game plan or slow the opponent down, but late game it is going to be a dead draw.
Codex Shredder - Re-usable but slow.
Coerced Confession - Expensive, but could be ok as a curve topper to put more cards in your hand.
Countermand - Suits a control version, but expensive.
Curse of the Bloody Tome - Probably the best re-usable card.
Dampen Thought - Serviceable, though you aren't going to be able to splice it.
Doorkeeper - Has a butt that a control version would like. Expensive, but if you are drafting a few other defenders might be worth it.
Dreadwaters - Maybe as a curvetopper for an 'aggro' version or as a finisher in control version.
Dream Twist - Decent.
Drowner Initiate - Great in the early game, but not a great top deck.
Drowner of Secrets - On its own it is pretty weak. Synergy with Drowner Initiate but that is about it.
Duskmantle, House of Shadow - Too slow.
Enigma Eidolon - Too slow.
Evanescent Intellect - Too much investment.
Extract From Darkness - Doesn't really suit the gameplan. But can give you some board prescence.
Fascination - Maybe as a finisher in control version.
Flint Golem - Doesn't match the game plan.
Ghoulcaller's Bell - Re-usable but slow.
Halimar Excavator - Probably just going to be 1 card.
Hedron Crab - Great early play. Not an amazing top deck in the late game, but at least it turns every otherwise dead land draw into a mill spell.
Jace's Erasure - Most of the time this is just going to be a worse Curse of the Bloody Tome. Minor synergy with things like looters, but hard to sufficiently exploit.
Memory Sluice - Probably won't conspire much, but it's cheap.
Merfolk Mesmerist - You can probably afford to pay the mana to keep re-using this.
Merrow Witsniper - 1 card is not enough.
Mind Funeral - It's a minimum 4, but likely to be a lot more.
Millstone - Probably too expensive. You can just use Curse of the Bloody Tome for no mana investment. Minor upside that you can use this a turn earlier in top deck mode if you have the mana, getting you a turn ahead.
Mind Sculpt - Biggest bang for buck.
Mindeye Drake - Maybe as a blocker to slow their game plan, that threatens to push the mill game plan if they try to remove it?
Mindscour Dragon - Doesn't fit the game plan.
Paranoid Delusions - Doesn't fit the gameplan because you aren't going to be attacking.
Pilfered Plans - Advances the game plan while filling the hand.
Psychic Drain - Fits the game plan perfectly. Can hold onto until you can get into finishing range, or to keep you in the game.
Psychic Strike - Fits the control gameplan.
Returned Centaur - Not particularly efficient at that cost, but at least it has a butt that a blocking deck can make use of.
Returned Reveler - Helps the game plan, can stand in the way of early aggro creatures.
Rotcrown Ghoul - I'd rather have Mindeye Drake.
Sage's Row Denizen - Probably not going to trigger often enough to matter.
Shriekhorn - 6 cards for 1 mana is efficient. Not going to be your favourite top deck when you are 'racing'.
Sibisi Host - Expensive, but does have a butt that can help stabilise.
Soratami Mindsweeper - Eh... Too mana intensive.
Stern Mentor - Maybe this guy could be alright in a control version to mill end of turn with one of your other defenders. Shame he doesn't have the toughness a mill deck could appreciate.
Thassa's Bounty - Too expensive.
Thassa's Devourer - Eh... Sidisi Host does more 'damage' to the opponent.
Thought Scour - Nice cantrip.
Tome Scour - You'd prefer Mind Scuplt, but 5 cards is decent from 1 card.
Undercity Informer - If you are playing a control version that is using a lot of blockers, this could be a 'finisher'.
Vedalken Entrancer - Probably a bit too slow.
Belltower Sphinx - Makes it hard for your opponent to attack into without furthering your game plan.
Psychic Spiral - It's pretty expensive, but gets a little better if you are using some of the cards that mill both players.
Other cards the deck could like would be punishing/annoying blockers like Fog Bank, Guard Gomazoa, Hover Barrier, Vertigo Spawn, Wall of Frost, Wall of Tears
Black removal - Every turn you trade cards 1 for 1 the opponent is one turn closer to dead.
Propoganda - Slows down the aggro or go wide strategies.
Problem with some of these cards is that you push them too far, and it doesn't just help this archetype, but other control decks to the probable detriment of aggro.
Alternate Win Conditions
The thing about alternate win conditions is that it is one less card working towards your primary win condition. Jace's Phantasm could help you survive an early aggro onlsaught while having the potential to turn into a solid blocker, or an alternate win con if conditions are right. Wight of Precinct Six is the same, but is more likely to see play outside of this archetype.
My CubeCobra (draft 20 card packs, 2 packs.)
430, Peasant, Very Unpowered
Why you should take your hybrids out of your gold section
Manamath Article
I don't see anything wrong with Psychic Spiral though, being a noninteractive late game win condition is totally fine. Interaction is overrated.
Draft it on Cubetutor here, and CubeCobra here.
Treasure Cruise did nothing wrong.
n00b, would you want Millstone over Curse? There are some instances where I can see Millstone having an advantage; primarily being able to be one turn ahead of Curse if you intend to play it after turn 4 or so (depending on land drops), on the basis that you never have to take a turn off to use that mana for something else. And really narrow cases like being able to untap the millstone with something. Oh wait, you mentioned white cards and Millstone is colourless.
Draft it on Cubetutor here, and CubeCobra here.
Treasure Cruise did nothing wrong.
1 Mind Sculpt
1 Brain Freeze
1 Tome Scour
1 Dream Twist
1 Mind Funeral
1 Pilfered Plans
1 Shriekhorn
1 Thought Scour
1 Codex Shredder
1 Psychic Spiral
1 Curse of the Bloody Tome
1 Millstone
1 Ghoulcaller's Bell
1 Psychic Drain
After that you start getting into the more control oriented cards. Already had to make some concessions for some slower cards like Curse and Millstone. So you would need 8-9 other spells, and you would probably be looking for cheap cantrips (Preordain, Serum Visions, Impulse) to make your deck smaller / trigger Brain Freeze plus some removal or counters. There just aren't enough cards to go 100% aggro mill cards in singleton.
Magical Christmas Land
Turn 1
Island, Hadron Crab
Turn 2
Island (3 cards), Mind Sculpt (10 cards)
Turn 3
Swamp (13 cards), Mind Funeral (~22 cards)
Turn 4
Island (25 cards), Shriekhorn, activate (27 cards), Tome Scour (32 cards), Brain Freeze (41 cards)
There are probably a few variations on Magical Christmas Land that will still get you close to or better than the 28 or so that you need to win on your opponents next draw. Hadron is a killer first turn play for the deck, but its absence doesn't prevent a potential turn 4 win.
So maybe a good version of the deck is better than we think? Biggest issue of course is being able to draft a good mill deck. It's highly unlikely to come together in a 2-man format when you aren't seeing all the cards.
Turn 1
Any 2-power creature
T2
Any 3-power creature, attack for 2
T3
Any 3-power 2-drop, attack for 5 (7 total), last mana for either another 2-power 1-drop or burn to the face
T4
Goblin Heelcutter, Vaultbreaker, Keldon Champion, Lava Hounds all make lethal.
Only these cards aren't totally unpickable garbage at 9 out of 10 draft tables.
I wasn't advocating we run out and put this in our cubes. I was exploring a two part question;
Could the best singleton peasant aggro mill deck be competitive with other decks? Maybe (I'd need to see it in action to be convinced).
If it is competitive, could cards be included within generally accepted cube design principles? No.
You could ask those questions of any deck. As you've inferred, the red aggro deck has pedigree as being competitive, plus it fits accepted cube design (cards being playable outside of a specific deck).