MTG Salvation

I would like some suggestions on my mono blue mill deck and how i could improve it without spending a ton of money.

Ok...let's have a closer look at the cards you are running. First, you mentioned that this is a mill deck, let's look at your mill cards:

Dakra Mystic can mill one card...it also has to lose summon sickness for it's ability to be used...it's a weak mill card

Reckless Scholar can mill one card...however, by making your opponent draw a card and discard a card, you allow them to keep the best card in their hand and you help them reach the cards that they might need in their deck...so it's technically an advantage for them. I hope you meant to use this card on yourself...either way, it's pretty bad unless you have a combo of some kind with it.

Warden of Evos Isle your flying creatures are already pretty cheap, no need to reduce their mana cost further, unless this is part of some kind of combo.

Private Research will take forever to make you draw and also requires that the enchanted creature dies

Sphinx's Tutelage, Startled Awake and Jace, Memory Adept are the best mill cards of your deck...you should run 4 Tutelage

Jace's Erasure is a weak mill engine...you should focus your efforts on the Sphinx's Tutelage and other similar cards.

Elixir of Immortality doesnt help you much...you probably dont draw enough to kill yourself and the gain life wont save you.

I havent mentionned plenty of other cards but your creatures are generally weak and won't represent any threat for your opponents and won't offer any significant defense to keep you alive...they should be improved.

Let's see what would improve your deck...without spending too much on cards. I dont know exactly what your budget is so I will list several options.

Your mill deck would benefit quite a bit by adding black. You would have access to a lot of nice cards and some much needed control cards...so you can stop using Unsummon spells and actually deal with the threats.

Here are some cards that you could add:

Black:
Animate Dead (1.50$, grab their best creatures to protect yourself after you send them to the graveyard)
Sepulchral Primordial (1.31$, same logic as animate dead, good in multiplayer games)
Consuming Aberration (2.01$, it mills quite a bit and it will be very strong if you run other cards that can mill)
Baleful Strix (2.34$, great defensive card, added card draw)
Breaking // Entering (0.85$)
Glimpse the Unthinkable (7.02$)
Grisly Spectacle (0.15$)
Mind Funeral (4.11$)
Mind Grind (1.92$)
Phenax, God of Deception (6.26$)
Pilfered Plans (0.15$)
Barter in Blood (0.20$)
Vona's Hunger (0.70$)
Curtains' Call (2.05$, could be good, based on the number of opponents you plan to have)
Memory Plunder (0.70$, use the best instant/sorcery in their graveyard...can also be played in a mono-blue deck)
Hero's Downfall (2.80$)
Puppeteer Clique (0.52$)
Oath of Liliana (0.36$)
Sire of Stagnation (0.87$)
Wight of Precinct Six (0.35$)

Blue:
Reins of Power (0.41$) -like cards (Ray of Command (0.18$), Domineering Will (0.18$)) and Altar of Dementia (3.50$)
Counterspell (0.78$)
Control Magic (0.54$)
Diluvian Primordial (0.46$)
Spelltwine (0.36$, get the best card from your graveyard and their graveyard)
Mystic Remora (1.99$)

Artifact:

Sol Ring (3.50$, see if it is legal in your playgroup)

I hope this gives you some ideas.

Thank you so much for your help!

I made a blue black version

I dont like:

- Dakra Mystic it's taking the slot of a better mill card
- Reckless Scholar it has to survive long enough to lose summoning sickness to be of any use, it's good for your opponent if you use it's ability on him/her and it's ok at best if you use it on yourself...doesnt fit the purpose of your deck and it costs too much for what it does at 3 mana.
- Sol Ring is restricted in every format where it is legal, confirm with your playgroup that you can run 2 of them before any game. I dont know any player who would allow someone to play with 2 Sol Rings in their deck.
- Elixir of Immortality is no help for you...90% of the time, gain life won't save you, it will only delay the innevitable. You are not getting milled, your opponent is, no need to shuffle your deck.
- Venser's Journal this is gain life and a win-more card...you dont draw enough for this to be real good.
- Tamiyo's Journal is a bad Mind's Eye. You have no interactions with clues or with artifacts coming into play or hitting the graveyard. There are better ways to draw cards, especially in blue (Concentrate, Opportunity, Visions of Beyond, Rhystic Study, Mystic Remora, Deep Analysis, Think Twice)
- Taigam's Scheming doesnt make you draw any card, you dont have cards that uses the cards you have in your graveyards (Animate Dead, etc...) or cards benefit from the fact that you just set the cards on top of your deck (Temporal Mastery, etc...)

The rest of the cards can be worked with...some are better then others and you are missing a few big names...Traumatize and Haunting Echoes among others.

I have revised the deck once again for blue black

I think Pilfered Plans is stronger then Vessel of Paramnesia

I wonder if Hedron Crab is worth running...

At the same converted mana cost, Diabolic Vision is better than Taigam's Scheming, imo.

At 19 lands, you are not playing enough of them. Considering the mana cost of your cards, I would run 22 lands.

Your deck is a bit spread around many different cards doing different effects. Some of these cards are better than others and your deck would be stronger if you would identify your best cards and focus on them.

what would you suggest switching out for the lands I would like to keep this deck at 60 if possible and I would like to try to keep it under $200 I already own some of the cards but almost none of the black cards. Thanks for the responses and help!!!

It depends if you want to win by milling your opponents or by bringing your opponents to 0 life.

Here is what I would play, personally:



Cost of cards:

4 Consuming Aberration (4x 2.01$ = 8.04$)
4 Baleful Strix (4x 2.34$ = 9.36$)
1 Sol Ring (1x 3.50$ = 3.50$)
3 Altar of Dementia (3x 3.50$ = 10.50$)
2 Mystic Remora (2x 1.99$ = 3.98$)
4 Animate Dead (4x 1.50$ = 6.00$)
4 Sphinx's Tutelage(4x 1.85$ = 7.40$)
1 Brainstorm (1x 0.94$ = 0.94$)
3 Shadow Rift (3x 3.39$ = 13.56$)
2 Prosperity (2x 0.39$ = 0.39$)
2 Memory Plunder (2x 3.14$ = 6.28$)
4 Reins of Power (4x 0.41$ = 1.64$)
4 Not of This World (4x 1.51$ = 6.04$)

Total cost: 74,63$

I just thought of another road you could take...



Cost of cards:

4 Lorescale Coatl (4x 0.18$ = 0.72$)
2 Coiling Oracle (2x 0.25$ = 0.50$)
4 Sakura-Tribe Elder (4x 0.77$ = 3.08$)
1 Sol Ring (1x 3.50$ = 3.50$)
3 Mystic Remora (3x 1.99$ = 5.97$)
4 Sylvan Library (4x 19.99$ = 79.96$)
4 Jace's Erasure (4x 0.18$ = 0.72$)
4 Sphinx's Tutelage (4x 1.85$ = 7.40$)
4 Ideas Unbound (4x 0.40$ = 1.60$)
4 Trade Secrets (4x 0.43$ = 1.72$)
4 Prosperity (4x 0.39$ = 1.56$)

Total cost: 106.73$

Sylvan Library makes you draw 3 cards per turn...which interact well with half the cards of the deck. You can place the top card of your deck, which interacts well with Coiling Oracle. Prosperity is the very mean finisher.

i m trying to win by milling but having the opportunity to win by reducing to 0 is a secondary win strategy

What do you guys thing about this?



6-8 lands will be fetching something.

Maybe add one or two beefier creatures?
There is also Sword of Body and Mind to make the critters big.

Ophiomancer and Vampire Nighthawk dont help to mill the opponent and do not have a synergy with any other card in the deck. Also, as someone mentioned above, he is better off totally trying to mill or totally trying to kill rather than doing a bit of both. It would be a shame to go UB without playing Consuming Aberration which does both (mill and kill).

Brainstorm is restricted in Vintage..so make sure your playgroup is not playing that format before running 4 of them (hint: if Sol Ring is legal in your format, you are playing vintage)

Sword of Body and Mind is expensive

My group is okay with anything, anyway im still trying to improve this deck and make it mill better but have the option to attack if i need to and keep it as cheap as possible i havent done anything to it recently but as it stands what do you think i should change out for mana and other things?

Dont use walls...they cant attack. You want to win or draw cards, they do none of these.

-2 Wall of Frost
-2 [card]
+3 Consuming Aberration (Aberration allows you to mill multiple opponnents at same time and allows you to kill through damage)
+1 Prosperity (Sick finisher in multiplayer games if you have Sphinx's Tutelage in play. If you cast prosperity for 7 cards...you get a new hand and their library loses 21 cards !)

Wight of Precinct Six is some kind of paradox. It's cheap to cast, so you would want it in the early game...but it's weak in the early game...so you would want it in the end game. You have stronger things to play in the end game...like Consuming Aberration or things that can mill.

-2 Wight of Precinct Six
+2 Baleful Strix (Strix allows for both card drawing and defense, unlike your walls)

Vessel of Paramnesia is ok at best...there are better cards than that out there

-2 Vessel of Paramnesia
+1 Baleful Strix
+1 Island (you need more lands, this brings you at 20 lands, you need at least 22)

Venser's Journal is overated, I said it many times above

-1 Venser's Journal
+1 Island (21 lands)

-1 Taigam's Scheming (doesnt make you draw at all)
+1 Island (22 lands)

-1 Pore over the pages
+1 Prosperity (siiiiick, I tell you)

-3 Compelling Argument (mill 5 on only 1 opponent won't have any significant impact and wont bring you back in the game if you are about to lose it)
+3 Reins of Power

Quote from Kain123 »

Ophiomancer and Vampire Nighthawk dont help to mill the opponent and do not have a synergy with any other card in the deck. Also, as someone mentioned above, he is better off totally trying to mill or totally trying to kill rather than doing a bit of both. It would be a shame to go UB without playing Consuming Aberration which does both (mill and kill).

I'm not convinced.

These deathtouchers have excellent synergy with planeswalkers, and offer very strong defence. They are not there to deal damage, but to lengthen the game and trade with fat creatures.

If you make it a pure non-interactive race between milling 44-50 cards (depending on the amount of draw) and dealing 18-20 damage (depending on the pain/fetch-lands played), the mill deck might lose against creature-based decks.

For one mana you get a 2-power creature. It eats away a tenth of your life every turn.
There is no recurrent one mana milling that 4,5-5 cards/turn. Hedron Crab mills 3-6/turn. (One does not have a landdrop every turn.) That is slower than an attacking creature.

The fastest mill for at two mana is Glimpse The Unthinkable. It does ten cards. That is a fifth what is needed.
But for two mana you also get Flame Rift, also a fifth of the needed damage. Or Keldon Marauders which does eight damage in three turns.

And from then on it get worse. At three one can face Brimaz, King of Oreskos/Gideon of the Trials, Steel Leaf Champion or Ball Lightning.

Ball Lightning takes almost a third of the life that is needed. There is no 3-mana mill card that mills 15 cards.

Best mill at three is Mind Funeral. Will get you 11-12 cards on average. A quarter of what is needed, thus below the speed at which your life total is attacked when you are without defense.

The real question is which cards give you the best chance at milling your opponent before he does 18-20 to you.
Why wouldn't an Ophiomancer or a Vampire Nighthawk fit then?

I'd rather play blockers that contribute to milling...like Baleful Strix, which will mill 2 cards per Sphinx's Tutelage in play while granting good defense.

Other interesting blockers could be Hedron Crab, Manic Scribe, Returned Reveler, any cheap card that makes you draw (Whirlpool Rider, Alchemist's Apprentice, Surveilling Sprite, Dusk Urchins, Floating-Dream Zubera, Jeskai Sage, Palace Familiar, etc).

Whirlpool Rider is actually very good...I didnt notice that card earlier but if you have 5 other cards in hand and a Sphinx's Tutelage in play, you get to mill one opponent for 10 cards, change your hand and get a blocker for 1U. You can also double that amount with a second tutelage in play !