If you have a resolved aetherling, then why are you even muddying the waters with the mill strategy in the first place?
It is like you're actively going through more effort just to win via mill instead of simply swinging for lethal with the unblockable beatstick that is effectively immune to removal.
The vast majority of the "Suggestions on how to win with Phenax" that I've seen involve board states where you could win without Phenax....just via damage instead of mill. So if you don't even need phenax, then why even bother in the first place?
Because... some match-ups it'll be faster if you don't have to bait out every Azorius Charm and counter-combat instant they have? And by T7 they should be milled mostly to death anyway?
Yes, Aetherling is a great clock, but it's only because no matter what you do to it he's still there. That doesn't mean you can't stall out Aetherling's attacks with things you know only buy you an extra turn.
Just because they generally haven't printed enough to make the strategy a viable one doesn't mean that they *couldn't.* Don't confuse the two. Mill could very well be successful if they printed a few more tools for it. You're walking around talking like mill being viable isn't even a possibility even if they supported it.
Really, the major problem with mill so far is that there is very little good reason to run it most of the time over other strategies. Generally, card-for-card and cost-for-cost, it just takes far more resources to mill out an opponent than to deal the damage.
Consuming Aberration kind of exemplifies this: It has the potential to mill for a lot, but if it mills for a lot it's probably big enough to swing for the win anyway. And there are probably more consistent means of doing that.
Phenax is a bit different, however, as it's cheap and repeatable, as well as mass-enabling. Meaning you can mill for a ton without utilizing much in the way of resources.
Honestly, although Walls seems fun, he seems to fit fine in current Mono-Black builds as a 1-2 of. He plays extremely nicely with everything, and gives Black a means to really screw over U/W and their Sphinx's Revelation engines.
If you have a resolved aetherling, then why are you even muddying the waters with the mill strategy in the first place?
It is like you're actively going through more effort just to win via mill instead of simply swinging for lethal with the unblockable beatstick that is effectively immune to removal.
The vast majority of the Suggestions on how to win with Phenax that I've seen involve board states where you could win without Phenax....just via damage instead of mill. So if you don't even need phenax, then why even bother in the first place?
Redundancy. If you fail to win with your primary win condition, resolving your (likely) 1-of Aetherling gives you a nearly unremovable threat.. And assuming you've actively milled before it hits the table, it will probably kill the opponent faster through milling than it will through damage.
This card is more to a johnny where some people loves to play magic differently. I guessed I am one of them and I couldn't care less if I were to win my opponents with a mill strategy than a damage strategy
Aetherling provides more reach regardless of win con. When you aren't attacking, it makes it so you can actually use him without worrying about removal and Azor Charm. If you attack into removal, you flicker him and you miss out on dealing damage that turn. With this, if you know that you are playing against Esper or something like that, just mill them out rather than dealing with all of that.
You can say the same about nearly every combo deck in history. What Phenax does have going for him is that he is actually quite difficult to get rid of barring discard and detention sphere.
Not to mention that surely there are other win conditions that would overlap including mill spells and/or Jace/Ashiok/Aetherling/etc.
All that being said, your condescension levels are quite impressive. What more do you have to offer?
Insecurity about his manliness as far as I can tell.
U/B mill isn't extremely viable right now but I am by default a fan of the card. Not sure where it would go but my curiosity is peaked.
(wait, dimir mill isn't viable but in your sig i see you play it? Yeah I know, dimir is my hizzouse and the deck is still improving with long thought out tweaks.)
Really, the major problem with mill so far is that there is very little good reason to run it most of the time over other strategies. Generally, card-for-card and cost-for-cost, it just takes far more resources to mill out an opponent than to deal the damage.
That is actually the beauty of a mill strategy that revolves around a board presence. Cards like Mind Funeral *only* mill and do nothing defensively. It is like a slower and less defensive version of burn. In a race mill will likely always lose to anything that can get damage through.
With the Phenax strategy you actually have less reliability in your win condition, but a lot more mitigation defensively. It makes it worse vs. control (where dedicated mill was sometimes an auto-win), but better against aggro (where it was an auto-loss).
Alright everyone, I have gathered a small pool of playable cards for a new tier 1.5 archetype. It'll be perfectly viable at FNM and whatever. I doubt it'll like... top 8 the pro tour or anything lol, but it has some very powerful synergies and will take FNM off-guard. Take this and add to it! Cheers.
Standard defenders:
Axebane Guardian
Doorkeeper
Sylvan Caryatid
Gatecreeper Vine
Hover Barrier
Murmuring Phantasm
Mnemonic Wall
Returned Phalanx
Wall of Frost
Ways to mill:
Mind Grind
Jace, Memory Adept
Phenax, God of Deception
Breaking // Entering
Traumatize
Disruption:
Voyage's End
Thoughtseize
Doom Blade
Golgari Charm
Simic Charm
another edit:
So yeah I also realized that Duskmantle Guildmage makes it so that you only need 20 toughness on the field to kill them. Kind of interesting. This is very fun for everyone's inner Johnny. There's also Notion Thief+Whispering Madness, which is extensive but hilarious.
ANOTHER FRIGGING EDIT:
So the only card in standard that shuffles graveyards into library currently is Elixir of Immortality. However, that card 100% defeats this deck if it resolves, so we need an answer to it in the maindeck. The best ones are Annul and Swan Song; we'll have to see how to relevant artifacts and enchantments are in botg.
Phenax is a bit different, however, as it's cheap and repeatable, as well as mass-enabling. Meaning you can mill for a ton without utilizing much in the way of resources.
This is pretty much what separates Phenax from the other three T5 Mill cards in Standard.
Traumatize, is easily the best mill of the three, but it doesn't provide a secondary usefulness. Just a quick bang and you're done. So the problem is that it has no combo-potential or added value after blowing that up.
Consuming Aberration is strong, gives you a chunky blocker, repeatedly mills. But that repeated mill isn't costless, you need to have cards to play. Which is resources you might want to save.
Jace, Memory Adept is a nice damage lightningrod because nobody likes Blue Planeswalkers that have names that begin with J and rhyme with Mace. Gives you a flat simple effective mill of 10 each time. And if you're in a pinch gives you a card draw. Which is why he's the usual choice for Mill over Consuming.
Phenax is effective mill for price, works a 'weakness' of a non-aggressive deck into a virtue, and doesn't end up wearing you down further to use. He blowsout equal to Jace on arrival (provided you have two decent walls still), and allows for more cumulative mill than Trauma.
Alright everyone, I have gathered a small pool of playable cards for a new tier 1.5 archetype. It'll be perfectly viable at FNM and whatever. I doubt it'll like... top 8 the pro tour or anything lol, but it has some very powerful synergies and will take FNM off-guard. Take this and add to it! Cheers.
Standard defenders:
Axebane Guardian
Doorkeeper
Sylvan Caryatid
Gatecreeper Vine
Hover Barrier
Murmuring Phantasm
Mnemonic Wall
Returned Phalanx
Wall of Frost
Ways to mill:
Mind Grind
Jace, Memory Adept
Phenax, God of Deception
Breaking // Entering
Traumatize
Disruption:
Voyage's End
Thoughtseize
Doom Blade
Golgari Charm
Simic Charm
Green is a neat idea, but ultimately I don't think that is the direction any deck using this will end up being competitive because most of those green cards require early green mana, which is a nonbo with Phenax.
There are a handful of cards that would fit with this that are currently viable. At the 2cmc spot you have Omenspeaker (which is great in this archetype) and Frostburn Weird. Wall of Frost at the 3cmc spot gives double devotion and 7 defense, but might not quite have the utility necessary. The same can be said for Ashiok. At the higher cmc levels both Jace, Memory Adept and Aetherling would fit.
That still isn't strong enough to make a competitive deck, but the spine is there to at least *start* one. It still would need 3-4 pieces to work.
So ive got this defender deck that wins with wall of blood + wall of reverance + sanguine bond.
Phenax fits perfectly as an alternate win condition in the same spot as bond.
This is going to be fun.
Even though is ability has the potential to be very powerful, I actually wish this card would have been tweaked into the 2UB spot. Perhaps if they made it a 3/6 or something. It would have been even more broken in limited, but oh well? It is mythic.
As it stands at 5cmc it is probably a turn too slow to start milling reliably.
Green is a neat idea, but ultimately I don't think that is the direction any deck using this will end up being competitive because most of those green cards require early green mana, which is a nonbo with Phenax.
There are a handful of cards that would fit with this that are currently viable. At the 2cmc spot you have Omenspeaker (which is great in this archetype) and Frostburn Weird. Wall of Frost at the 3cmc spot gives double devotion and 7 defense, but might not quite have the utility necessary. The same can be said for Ashiok. At the higher cmc levels both Jace, Memory Adept and Aetherling would fit.
That still isn't strong enough to make a competitive deck, but the spine is there to at least *start* one. It still would need 3-4 pieces to work.
I'm not sure you're correct about green being weak in this archetype. Turning on Phenax isn't going to be easy, and even then we don't care that much if he does become a creature; he shines when he gets played on a board that already has a bunch of creatures down. So I think it's moot that green won't give him devotion. Green allows us to more consistently play high-CMC spells, so yeah.
On Frostburn Weird and Omenspeaker: I think their viability depends on how strong Doorkeeper can be. I mean sure he doesn't seem like he'd be strong, but if he really can be abused with a ton of defenders, then omenspeaker and frostburn weird become substantially weaker.
Here's a rough sketch (very rough) of what I'm thinking:
Elixir of Immortaility for drawn-out games AND THE EPIC MIRROR MATCH! Plus Codex Shredder in-case we want to re-use our spells. I actually think Codex Shredder would be a very exceptional 1-of in this deck. I also think Phenax is a necessary 4-of, since when you play him with 3/4 defenders already on the field, the game is almost over. Traumatize is obviously very powerful on its own, and Jace can just win the game on his own, so that's nice.
I also have NO IDEA how to optimize this mana-base. Nothing but shocks and ETBT lands is almost certainly not the best way to do it. But whatever, I just threw this together.
I'm not sure you're correct about green being weak in this archetype. Turning on Phenax isn't going to be easy, and even then we don't care that much if he does become a creature; he shines when he gets played on a board that already has a bunch of creatures down. So I think it's moot that green won't give him devotion. Green allows us to more consistently play high-CMC spells, so yeah.
On Frostburn Weird and Omenspeaker: I think their viability depends on how strong Doorkeeper can be. I mean sure he doesn't seem like he'd be strong, but if he really can be abused with a ton of defenders, then omenspeaker and frostburn weird become substantially weaker.
Doorkeeper is redundant with Phenax. Weird and Omenspeaker are both good without other creatures with defender. Having 1 extra toughness is nice on the Doorkeeper, but it doesn't make up for the Scry 2 and 1 power. With weird you not only get the 4 toughness, but you also get flexibility and 2 devotion.
Doorkeeper is redundant with Phenax. Weird and Omenspeaker are both good without other creatures with defender. Having 1 extra toughness is nice on the Doorkeeper, but it doesn't make up for the Scry 2 and 1 power. With weird you not only get the 4 toughness, but you also get flexibility and 2 devotion.
Doorkeeper may end up just being a 0/4 defender with no relevant active ability--I don't know--but going the defender route for axebane guardian at least doesn't really hurt us much. Maybe we don't want to run axebane guardian, but he seems extremely powerful in this archetype.
I also don't think the devotion is going to be very relevant with Phenax. We don't care if *he* becomes a creature, we want a few creatures to be already on the board when he lands, though. This is just my current impression, I don't know if this is right, but it makes sense to me.
Really disappointed that Dimir-colors got milling again. Phenax seems interesting/sort of viable, but I'd really hoped for something more interesting and different.
Doorkeeper may end up just being a 0/4 defender with no relevant active ability--I don't know--but going the defender route for axebane guardian at least doesn't really hurt us much. Maybe we don't want to run axebane guardian, but he seems extremely powerful in this archetype.
I also don't think the devotion is going to be very relevant with Phenax. We don't care if *he* becomes a creature, we want a few creatures to be already on the board when he lands, though. This is just my current impression, I don't know if this is right, but it makes sense to me.
The point with Phenax is that you want creatures that are *already* good even without his assistance. Both of the other cards fit that requirement. Doorkeeper requires other cards to do anything meaningful.
About turning on his devotion, it will certainly be relevant (if you can do it.) 7 extra mill and an indestructible blocker are not things to sneeze at. If you can ever activate him, you are probably no more than 1 or 2 turns away from winning the game. It is not a requirement, but it is certainly something you should at least attempt to do if at all possible.
The point with Phenax is that you want creatures that are *already* good even without his assistance. Both of the other cards fit that requirement. Doorkeeper requires other cards to do anything meaningful.
About turning on his devotion, it will certainly be relevant (if you can do it.) 7 extra mill and an indestructible blocker are not things to sneeze at. If you can ever activate him, you are probably no more than 1 or 2 turns away from winning the game. It is not a requirement, but it is certainly something you should at least attempt to do if at all possible.
I mean yes I do agree on doorkeeper basically; his ability may rarely be relevant. But what about Axebane Guardian? He seems quite powerful.
I'm just trying to find high-toughness creatures that have synergy together. Running Omenspeaker and Frostburn Weird is definitely powerful, considering they are good on their own and have high toughness, but the fact that we will already be running some defenders anyway makes me wonder if we should be pushing more in that direction.
I mean yes I do agree on doorkeeper basically; his ability may rarely be relevant. But what about Axebane Guardian? He seems quite powerful.
I'm just trying to find high-toughness creatures that have synergy together. Running Omenspeaker and Frostburn Weird is definitely powerful, considering they are good on their own and have high toughness, but the fact that we will already be running some defenders anyway makes me wonder if we should be pushing more in that direction.
Axebane is quite good, and I've even played it and Doorkeeper together in a casual deck. The problems are that Axebane will always have a massive target on it and is easily removed. Doorkeeper has the same problem, but it isn't typically removed until you're actually threatening to kill them.
The amount of green mana necessary to play Axebane will limit the blue and black necessary to cast your other spells. And if you don't get axebane to stick you're probably going to manascrew yourself unnecessarily. If axebane (for some reason) were blue or black, it would certainly fit into the deck. But forcing a 3rd color causes more problems than it helps.
Axebane is quite good, and I've even played it and Doorkeeper together in a casual deck. The problems are that Axebane will always have a massive target on it and is easily removed. Doorkeeper has the same problem, but it isn't typically removed until you're actually threatening to kill them.
The amount of green mana necessary to play Axebane will limit the blue and black necessary to cast your other spells. And if you don't get axebane to stick you're probably going to manascrew yourself unnecessarily. If axebane (for some reason) were blue or black, it would certainly fit into the deck. But forcing a 3rd color causes more problems than it helps.
Aye. I'm not sure if Axebane is necessary, but he's a strong consideration. We'll have to see once spoilers are finished and we can get some playtesting done.
There's Axebane Guardian into Mind Grind, and Doorkeeper activations, as I mentioned in my post.
Jace, Memory Adept's still legal too, a deck full of walls oughta keep him alive
Because... some match-ups it'll be faster if you don't have to bait out every Azorius Charm and counter-combat instant they have? And by T7 they should be milled mostly to death anyway?
Yes, Aetherling is a great clock, but it's only because no matter what you do to it he's still there. That doesn't mean you can't stall out Aetherling's attacks with things you know only buy you an extra turn.
Really, the major problem with mill so far is that there is very little good reason to run it most of the time over other strategies. Generally, card-for-card and cost-for-cost, it just takes far more resources to mill out an opponent than to deal the damage.
Consuming Aberration kind of exemplifies this: It has the potential to mill for a lot, but if it mills for a lot it's probably big enough to swing for the win anyway. And there are probably more consistent means of doing that.
Phenax is a bit different, however, as it's cheap and repeatable, as well as mass-enabling. Meaning you can mill for a ton without utilizing much in the way of resources.
Honestly, although Walls seems fun, he seems to fit fine in current Mono-Black builds as a 1-2 of. He plays extremely nicely with everything, and gives Black a means to really screw over U/W and their Sphinx's Revelation engines.
Redundancy. If you fail to win with your primary win condition, resolving your (likely) 1-of Aetherling gives you a nearly unremovable threat.. And assuming you've actively milled before it hits the table, it will probably kill the opponent faster through milling than it will through damage.
Insecurity about his manliness as far as I can tell.
U/B mill isn't extremely viable right now but I am by default a fan of the card. Not sure where it would go but my curiosity is peaked.
(wait, dimir mill isn't viable but in your sig i see you play it? Yeah I know, dimir is my hizzouse and the deck is still improving with long thought out tweaks.)
That is actually the beauty of a mill strategy that revolves around a board presence. Cards like Mind Funeral *only* mill and do nothing defensively. It is like a slower and less defensive version of burn. In a race mill will likely always lose to anything that can get damage through.
With the Phenax strategy you actually have less reliability in your win condition, but a lot more mitigation defensively. It makes it worse vs. control (where dedicated mill was sometimes an auto-win), but better against aggro (where it was an auto-loss).
Standard defenders:
Axebane Guardian
Doorkeeper
Sylvan Caryatid
Gatecreeper Vine
Hover Barrier
Murmuring Phantasm
Mnemonic Wall
Returned Phalanx
Wall of Frost
Ways to mill:
Mind Grind
Jace, Memory Adept
Phenax, God of Deception
Breaking // Entering
Traumatize
Disruption:
Voyage's End
Thoughtseize
Doom Blade
Golgari Charm
Simic Charm
another edit:
So yeah I also realized that Duskmantle Guildmage makes it so that you only need 20 toughness on the field to kill them. Kind of interesting. This is very fun for everyone's inner Johnny. There's also Notion Thief+Whispering Madness, which is extensive but hilarious.
ANOTHER FRIGGING EDIT:
So the only card in standard that shuffles graveyards into library currently is Elixir of Immortality. However, that card 100% defeats this deck if it resolves, so we need an answer to it in the maindeck. The best ones are Annul and Swan Song; we'll have to see how to relevant artifacts and enchantments are in botg.
Standard Budget Decks Link:
http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/standard-type-2/budget-standard/752237-clownstabbers-budget-decks
This is pretty much what separates Phenax from the other three T5 Mill cards in Standard.
Traumatize, is easily the best mill of the three, but it doesn't provide a secondary usefulness. Just a quick bang and you're done. So the problem is that it has no combo-potential or added value after blowing that up.
Consuming Aberration is strong, gives you a chunky blocker, repeatedly mills. But that repeated mill isn't costless, you need to have cards to play. Which is resources you might want to save.
Jace, Memory Adept is a nice damage lightningrod because nobody likes Blue Planeswalkers that have names that begin with J and rhyme with Mace. Gives you a flat simple effective mill of 10 each time. And if you're in a pinch gives you a card draw. Which is why he's the usual choice for Mill over Consuming.
Phenax is effective mill for price, works a 'weakness' of a non-aggressive deck into a virtue, and doesn't end up wearing you down further to use. He blowsout equal to Jace on arrival (provided you have two decent walls still), and allows for more cumulative mill than Trauma.
Green is a neat idea, but ultimately I don't think that is the direction any deck using this will end up being competitive because most of those green cards require early green mana, which is a nonbo with Phenax.
There are a handful of cards that would fit with this that are currently viable. At the 2cmc spot you have Omenspeaker (which is great in this archetype) and Frostburn Weird. Wall of Frost at the 3cmc spot gives double devotion and 7 defense, but might not quite have the utility necessary. The same can be said for Ashiok. At the higher cmc levels both Jace, Memory Adept and Aetherling would fit.
That still isn't strong enough to make a competitive deck, but the spine is there to at least *start* one. It still would need 3-4 pieces to work.
Phenax fits perfectly as an alternate win condition in the same spot as bond.
This is going to be fun.
As it stands at 5cmc it is probably a turn too slow to start milling reliably.
I'm not sure you're correct about green being weak in this archetype. Turning on Phenax isn't going to be easy, and even then we don't care that much if he does become a creature; he shines when he gets played on a board that already has a bunch of creatures down. So I think it's moot that green won't give him devotion. Green allows us to more consistently play high-CMC spells, so yeah.
On Frostburn Weird and Omenspeaker: I think their viability depends on how strong Doorkeeper can be. I mean sure he doesn't seem like he'd be strong, but if he really can be abused with a ton of defenders, then omenspeaker and frostburn weird become substantially weaker.
Here's a rough sketch (very rough) of what I'm thinking:
4 Doorkeeper
4 Murmuring Phantasm
2 Gatecreeper Vine
4 Axebane Guardian
4 Hover Barrier
1 Codex Shredder
2 Jace, Memory Adept
2 Traumatize
1 Mind Grind
4 Phenax, God of Deception
2 Dimir Guildgate
1 Golgari Guildgate
4 Overgrown Tomb
1 Simic Guildgate
4 Temple of Deceit
4 Temple of Mystery
4 Watery Grave
Elixir of Immortaility for drawn-out games AND THE EPIC MIRROR MATCH! Plus Codex Shredder in-case we want to re-use our spells. I actually think Codex Shredder would be a very exceptional 1-of in this deck. I also think Phenax is a necessary 4-of, since when you play him with 3/4 defenders already on the field, the game is almost over. Traumatize is obviously very powerful on its own, and Jace can just win the game on his own, so that's nice.
I also have NO IDEA how to optimize this mana-base. Nothing but shocks and ETBT lands is almost certainly not the best way to do it. But whatever, I just threw this together.
Standard Budget Decks Link:
http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/standard-type-2/budget-standard/752237-clownstabbers-budget-decks
Doorkeeper is redundant with Phenax. Weird and Omenspeaker are both good without other creatures with defender. Having 1 extra toughness is nice on the Doorkeeper, but it doesn't make up for the Scry 2 and 1 power. With weird you not only get the 4 toughness, but you also get flexibility and 2 devotion.
Cumulative milling lol
The only interesting thing about this card is they gave it 4 power making it the only god that survives a Selesnya Charm.
Doorkeeper may end up just being a 0/4 defender with no relevant active ability--I don't know--but going the defender route for axebane guardian at least doesn't really hurt us much. Maybe we don't want to run axebane guardian, but he seems extremely powerful in this archetype.
I also don't think the devotion is going to be very relevant with Phenax. We don't care if *he* becomes a creature, we want a few creatures to be already on the board when he lands, though. This is just my current impression, I don't know if this is right, but it makes sense to me.
Standard Budget Decks Link:
http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/standard-type-2/budget-standard/752237-clownstabbers-budget-decks
The point with Phenax is that you want creatures that are *already* good even without his assistance. Both of the other cards fit that requirement. Doorkeeper requires other cards to do anything meaningful.
About turning on his devotion, it will certainly be relevant (if you can do it.) 7 extra mill and an indestructible blocker are not things to sneeze at. If you can ever activate him, you are probably no more than 1 or 2 turns away from winning the game. It is not a requirement, but it is certainly something you should at least attempt to do if at all possible.
I mean yes I do agree on doorkeeper basically; his ability may rarely be relevant. But what about Axebane Guardian? He seems quite powerful.
I'm just trying to find high-toughness creatures that have synergy together. Running Omenspeaker and Frostburn Weird is definitely powerful, considering they are good on their own and have high toughness, but the fact that we will already be running some defenders anyway makes me wonder if we should be pushing more in that direction.
Standard Budget Decks Link:
http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/standard-type-2/budget-standard/752237-clownstabbers-budget-decks
Axebane is quite good, and I've even played it and Doorkeeper together in a casual deck. The problems are that Axebane will always have a massive target on it and is easily removed. Doorkeeper has the same problem, but it isn't typically removed until you're actually threatening to kill them.
The amount of green mana necessary to play Axebane will limit the blue and black necessary to cast your other spells. And if you don't get axebane to stick you're probably going to manascrew yourself unnecessarily. If axebane (for some reason) were blue or black, it would certainly fit into the deck. But forcing a 3rd color causes more problems than it helps.
Aye. I'm not sure if Axebane is necessary, but he's a strong consideration. We'll have to see once spoilers are finished and we can get some playtesting done.
Standard Budget Decks Link:
http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/standard-type-2/budget-standard/752237-clownstabbers-budget-decks
Mill is the least pleasant deck to play against. Losing all my deck, and it being on an indestructible source is just silly.