Since you replied while I was completing my post, I separated it in two.
I'm very happy with your adding to the post. I agree that milling disruption is very hard to recover. My main concern is Leyline of Sanctity, which is a real pain.
As you'll see, my deck has a very clear strategy on the way to deal with Eldrazis and other ramp decks that use them.
I m pretty happy that we agree on the cards to be selected, even if I m even harder with entering then you are. I think the card just doesn't make the cut. Indeed, it accesses the "3 manas" you look for in a burn deck, but that's skipping the fact it can't with the board. Basicaly, what we get with glimpse (aka: slightly better then the burn spell would do) is what you want, and entering is just a less good glimpse. Sure, Crab or orb could mill less, but it would be at price of tempo/cards, otherwhise they could mill even more then glimpse.
3. Card selection
So the corner stone is glimpse the unthinkable, but all by itself, teh card is not sufficient. I mean: even in the dream case where you can play one copy turn 2, another on turn 3 and both remaining on turn 4, this will be only 40 cards. That's not enough to mill someone, and it already represent 8 manas and 4 cards. And that's your best scenario.
The trick is to undestand how to deploy ressources to mill and ressources to gain time. That's a lot of ressources necessary, and different one. But you must be conscious you ll need around 6 cards and 12 manas just to mill the opponent deck.
This means you need spells that have a good reach while still costing few manas to achieve both ends: you are playing tempo and you need to make a better use of your ressources then your opponent is.
So Glimpse is in. What are the other mill spells at our disposal?
mesmeric orb is my personal favourite. The amount of cards this spell can mill when played turn 2 is absurd. That's even better then glimpse when unanswered. Maindeck responses to it are few and all at least cost the same amount of mana. Against a control deck it can close the game on its own. I want 4.
archive trap is a very good card, especially game 1 when nobody expect it. It becomes worst game 2 and 3 when people play around it. Neither path to exile or ghost quarter actually "force" an opponent to search the library and they are not stupid - most of the times. But what is hilarious is looking at people making bad plays to play around it when it s out of your deck. But in practice they are right: having 2-3 copy of this spell in hand while 1 mana creatures casted with 1-2 non fetch are coming at you isn't very efficient.
mind funeral is an ok card. It usualy mills from 8 to 16. It's arguably better when you managed to extirpate/surgical some non-basic land cards. As trap, it's even better in a format with sooooooo much fetches. I don t think it's a 4of: it's also too slow when drwn in multiple.
hedron crab is far better then goblin guide. He's a very well designed creature that simply offers both the milling potential and the body presence the deck needed. At this cost, he's insane. If such another efficient and cheap creature should see the light, mill might definitely become a good deck.
Please, PLEASE have a VERY good reason to play this little guy turn 1, especially when the opponent has an untaped mountain.
sanity grinding doesn't work in the version I propose cause there's not enough blue mana. But can be obviously considered if you try a "more blue" road with different disrupt element.
nemesis of reason is a bad card for what we're trying to achieve. Far too slow and easily respondable. That's not a tempo card, that's the "finisher" UB control might use if she had protection of some kind.
tome scour is bad. It offers a good reach in terms of mana, but not in terms of cards.
mind reversal: same reasoning. It's also valid for entering, even if these cards could be 2of. That's the multiplication of them that increses the "how many do I mill per card invested to it" that makes them far weaker then I thought. That's the type of card that make you miss the game for "just a turn". I never thought the difference between glimpse and entering would be so important. On is very good, the other is just "ok", but basicaly, the difference is as big as is the one between shock and lightning bolt.
And the problem is not the difference between both cards, but between a full set of them in the deck. 4 glimpse are 40 cards. 4 entering are 32. The difference is huge.
In my opinion, the cards that mill the more efficiently are the first four I talked about, sanity grinding still being good but specificaly designed. I think the other cards just don't make it in term of power level.
The milling set I went out with is composed of:
- 4 hedron crab
- 4 glimpse
- 4 archive trap main deck (I ll often side 2-3 out)
- 2 Mind funeral
- Wait, man! said the man in the room. You told us we needed to hit 5-6 cards to achieve a milling, and you just play 14 of them? Not even 4 mind funeral? WTF? You should play 20 to hit 5-6 regularly, and it even would be low!
- ok, ok. Let's have a look at the rest of the full deck list:
Well, again I m tired, I ll explain the choices and interactions game one tomorrow, before discussing what's still giving me headash: the sideboard.
I let you discuss at first sight (or even test it ) meanwhile. I m aware some cards seem to be in contrarium with what I explained but I ll come to it in next part. Here, what is really important is the inclusion of Shelldock Island/Snapcaster mage/Thought Scour which all offer more "reach" to the deck.
First of all, please excuse my english. I m not a native and this post will be pretty long, so there will be language mistakes. I hope it ll be understandable for everyone and try to make short sentences. If someone is kind enough to signal me my errors, I ll gladly edit this post (and hopefully learn some english stuff).
I've been playin' mill casualy for a long time on mtgo. By a long time, I mean since first Ravnica came out and I used to get 4 Glimpse the unthinkable. I think I've tried it in every possible way. Lately, I've been bruiding a lot since I lost my old list (RIP) and I was surprised how well the deck was doing in tournament practice. So I tried some games on 2 men queue and I've established an honest record of 16-4 (!!) in my last attempt to improve the deck. TBH, I don't think I ever made this good as I m not a great player and make a lot of mistakes.
The goal of this post is primary to share the bruiding I did, so I will try to explain the process that made me build the list and improve it. I m also gonna share my analysis on the good record I did and the meta against the deck. In the end I don't think it's great, but definitely playable and that's a premiere for a mill deck since a long time (standard lorwyn anyone?).
1. General idea: mill is bad, burn is better
The general assumption, and it's been mine, is that you'd better burn then mill. The comparison is far from stupid, since mill cards spot damages to the opponent's library instead of his/her life total: in a modern game, the burn player has to do 17-20 damages to the face since we got to mill 45-50 cards. Basicaly, that means that milling spells needs to do 2.5 time what a burn spell does to be as efficient.
Let's have a look at 2 iconic cards to make myself clear:
Lightning bolt makes 3 damages for R. An equivalent mill card would deal 3 x 2.5 = 7.5 damages.
Glimpse the Unthinkable mills 10 for UB. An equivalent burn spell should do 10:2.5 = 4 damages.
Some comments on this comparison :
a. When you analyse mill cards with this in mind, you realise lots of them are pretty bad: Tome scour is basicaly lava spike that deals 2 damages. No chance a red player would ever consider that playable.
b. That said, at my knowledge, no red sorcery deals 4 damages to a player's face. I think that would make red players extatic. There are some in legacy and they are realy powerful even in that format and are regularly played.
c. That makes mill's creatures VERY difficult to approach the power level of red's cheap creatures like Gobelin Guide.
But this is a direct comparison. An experienced magic player knows the power-level of a deck is appreciated in a field. Burn decks are cheap and let's face it: they are powerful. If a player is not prepared to face RDW, then he's got a problem, since a LOT of players try to play this deck to avoid the expensive price of a dual/triple color manabase, especially on mtgo. If you want to enter the competitive portion, you HAVE your deck to pass the "burn test", or you are playing a rogue deck and know very well why you're making this bet. If gain life cards like kitchen finks or Siege Rhino are a thing, there's a reason.
And here is why you MAY have a better shot in playing mill then burn: no one is prepared to face you. No one plays cards that refill your library, except for big Eldrazi, which are a false problem since decks that play them are very easy to disrupt for mill, especialy game 1 - I ll get to it later.
So, "no!": mill might be a better choice then burn, even given the fact that they pursue very similar strategy. That said, the comparison is very important since we can use what burn decks that did well can teach us to create similar winning play condition for mill.
2. Strategy consideration and color-choice
First of all, a mill deck must be UB because of a card we already spoke a lot of on this topic: glimpse the unthinkable, which is the best incentive to play mill. That's THE corner stone of a mill deck.
The first idea that would get in everyone's mind would be to fill the deck with traditional UB control cards and revolve the kill-portion of the deck to mill.
This is a VERY bad idea and everything you want to avoid. It doesn't mean you can't use some powerful UB control cards, but if you do it, that must be with your goal in mind and thus should be: "milling before my opponent kills me", not: "take control of the game then kill him/her". If that's the case, then your strategy is bad, since devoting space for a mill kill usually take lot more space then a traditional morphling-like kill.
This is very important, because when you build, you realy need to understand you're not doing a control deck with a bad kill, but a mill deck. Actualy, your strategy is very closer to monored's then UB control's. Would monored play mana leak if he could? I guess not, or this would be an extremely surprending meta-call. Again: that's not to say you can't play leak. That's just to say that mustn't be with the goal of controling the game, but to answer a problem leak can elegantly/efficiently solve. Leak is a powerful card, but there are plenty in modern and the fact it's a control staple doesn't make it a mill staple. Actualy, I've gladly played it a lot and I now think it's a bad idea, but I ll come to it later when discussing card choice.
Another problem a mill player soon realises when testing his deck is the lack of ressources. When you play your mill spell, you have no impact on the board, and the only mill spell that realy matters is the one that mills the last card of the opponent's library. Only this spell will make every precendent spell valuable. If you overload your deck with mill-spells, your opponent will soon occupy the board and rip you appart before you finish him. You can't just ignore what your opponent's doing, because other deck are far better at it and if that's what you want to do, you'd better play them.
All in all, what mill is trying to do is really this: mill the opponent before his/her board kills you. That implies 2 things: playing rapid mill cards and spells that slows your opponent.
That makes mill a "combo-tempo" deck. It must find enough cards to "combo off" (aka: mill 45-50 cards) and also slow down the opponent. Don't make mistake: your spells have no impact on the board, and that means if the game goes long, your opponent will likely win. Your goal is to keep games short. That's typically a RDW player philosophy.
But there's an essential difference with RDW: the nature of burn spells.
Lot of their spells can either be directed to the face, but also on creatures. They also attack with creatures. These aspect give them natural board control. That's typically a problem Burn players encountered with tarmogoyf: How do you deal with a 3/4 turn 2 creature when you are burn? It will do the same amount of damages every turn and he's got very few ways to get rid of it (I already mentioned the "no 4 damages turn 2" red encounters; that's not exactly true, but spells that do 4+ damages to a creture for this mana cost don't reach players, I think).
So while trying to reach the player in a similar way, mill will have a different approach to board control then RDW does and understanding the differences and similarities in their philosophies might be very relevant when building.
OK, folks. I already post this and will continue later on, I m a bit tired and this is taking even more time then expected. List coming soon, in next update, when I ll discuss card choice.
Mass LD takes this ability from players, so they don t have the feeling they can play.
What the point playing a game if you can t do it. See your strategy fail to another is one thing. Losing without having the opportunity to play is another.
I currently play the Deck and here are my thoughts:
Bad MU are aura.deck and Egg. G1 is unwinable against aura, and of they drop Stony Silence post-board, it s almost gg. There is a single disenchant out against it. Silence just gives Eggs the MU. All other MU seem fair or favorable.
Tarmo indeed is a pain of played at 3/4. Don t ne greedy and play it before or it'll be burned.
Thrun s not that big an option, unless it s played in a very aggro deck on top of the curve or he s equiped. Usualy, UWR just outrace him with burn and flyers while chomping.
Resto Angel is also good against us. It blocks flyers, comes timely in, and makes the race in the sky. It s also played as a Mirror Option.
This isn t perfect so far. I ve been tweaking the mana base, and played 2 Resto Angel instead of 1 Mindcensor and 1 Clique to gain an edge in the Mirror.
I also made some change in the side; I m very happy with the leyline, but spellskite might be not as awesome as I thought at first glance.
I definitely missed the second EE in the side and will afford 1. A second mindcensor was nice, too, but I don t know how to bring him back.
Thank for your answer on Elspeth. I listened and ultimately switched for 2 Resto Angel in her spot, and happily 4-0ed a daily event yesterday.
Here are my thoughts so far, after about 25 games with the deck:
Tron – the MU is kinda fair. It all dipends on what threats you're gonna see and if you can race him. On a god draw on his side you can just rely on counterspells. A poor draw on our side is quasi auto-lose.
Aura – very defavorable MU. Might be the worst. G1 is unwinnable if they enchant a creature with daybreak coronet. Post side, you gotta rely on EE, spellskite and disenchant, which is very few; and I saw a deck playing stony silent post-side…
Jund – favorable. We got a lot of caracteristics from burn deck, which are traditionaly good against jund. We usualy can remove the turn1 shaman which makes the game more fair, and lili is dealable if played around correctly. The only problem is Goyf, but not undealable, by far.
Pod – I found it easily disruptable. We kill a lot of creatures, and mindcensor is strong. Seems to be a good MU.
Scapeshift – Seems our clock is faster then his. Also seems favorable.
Eggs – Well, I don t know what you guys do against Silence, but that very card just beats me everytime I play against this deck. An horrible MU.
Infect – Just blast their creature during their own turn, and they'll fastly run out of gas. Don t hesitate to chump with a snapcaster.
UW Control – Grindy game, but it more easy for us to kill from a distance while still countering.
Tokens – Hard G1, G2 and 3 are much better
Splinter Twin – Kiki is ok since we can easily blast it. But the enchant is still a problem. I think a spellskite route is the way to go. Btw the MU seems good.
Affinity – never played against? How's the MU like?
Are my feelings good so far? Am I misunderstanding smthing?
Well, I m thinking about adding more spellskite and the Shroud Leyline in the board. The leyline did very well for me so far, and I think Spellskite is great instead of tranquility, since it s good against aura, but also in other MU. Or Maybe 1 more disenchant?
I played the Deck just to understand it, and found it realy both fun and successfull, so I think I ll drop Tezz and go with it.
The thing is, as I was missing a Clique and a Mindcensor, and just wanted a try, I just throwed 2 Elspeth main and found them amazing. Not only it pro vides extra strenght by giving evasion and power to a Geist, but the first ability is also relevant against Tarmogoyf by providing a blocker or extra tempo. As Tarmo is a problem to the Deck, I was wondering why Elspeth wasn t played so far. Any thought?
2 things I d like to say (sorry, I m not a native speaker):
1) I don t think statistics have been "lied". I just think people enjoying the beta have make more reports then people disliking it. I know a LOT of friends who play casual, just tried it, found it horrible then reinstalled V.3 without sending any report; the main reason is they found it VERY hard to find a casual game actually running. One of them just never understood the sliding thing and remained with "all cards" displaying. So, stats are "biased", but it's nothing Wizard's fault.
2) I stopped the beta in october after trying it for 3 weeks, so maybe some of my complaints have been fixed, but here are why I stopped:
First, the 1-1 Commander Match isn t supported. And that's what I enjoy the most on mtgo.
Then, finding a casualmatch is a REAL pain, and deck building is even worst then it was. The autosave is a real pain. I like tweaking my decks, but all my ideas aren't good and it s very complicated to come back from what you changed.
The worst feature is the chat window management. They pop up taking all the space and managing them is realy painful. And makes you lose lots of time.
Finaly, the game is realy hard to play; after 3 weeks practicing it, each game takes about me twice the Time I needed on V.3. And we all know how time management is important online. I just lost too much to the clock on this client. And Is wear I can say if my opp is using the beta or V.3 just on how many time it takes him to play perform certain actions.
So, i m back to the old client. As long as I can or until they fix these issues, whatever comes first.
Last time Cube was around, I didn t sell the boosters I won, 'cause I expected prices to come back up when the boosters wouldn't be sell by hundreds anymore.
As Cube came back, I looked for some bot to sell my boosters to, but can t find any one who buy them; I found someone buying the onslaught one very low, but no one seems to want Legions/Scourge boosters.
Do you guys know some bot who would buy them for a fair price?
I can see why people from a country as puritan as the US is shocked when they read that post in the abstract, but when in a french cultural context, NO ONE could take it seriously.
NO ONE!
This happened on a french forum, which has the reputation of being rude. People trash-talk there all the time. If you read 2 posts below the one that incriminated him, you ll see that he
Also, for the one saying: "blah blah, never talk about rape". Who said taht? I lost my cat and it huted me a lot. You should not make jokes about cats.
WTF? Where I live, EVERYTHING is a joke subject.
Everything.
That's the culture I live in, I dont see why the puritan american culture should be applied to me.
Since you replied while I was completing my post, I separated it in two.
I'm very happy with your adding to the post. I agree that milling disruption is very hard to recover. My main concern is Leyline of Sanctity, which is a real pain.
As you'll see, my deck has a very clear strategy on the way to deal with Eldrazis and other ramp decks that use them.
I m pretty happy that we agree on the cards to be selected, even if I m even harder with entering then you are. I think the card just doesn't make the cut. Indeed, it accesses the "3 manas" you look for in a burn deck, but that's skipping the fact it can't with the board. Basicaly, what we get with glimpse (aka: slightly better then the burn spell would do) is what you want, and entering is just a less good glimpse. Sure, Crab or orb could mill less, but it would be at price of tempo/cards, otherwhise they could mill even more then glimpse.
3. Card selection
So the corner stone is glimpse the unthinkable, but all by itself, teh card is not sufficient. I mean: even in the dream case where you can play one copy turn 2, another on turn 3 and both remaining on turn 4, this will be only 40 cards. That's not enough to mill someone, and it already represent 8 manas and 4 cards. And that's your best scenario.
The trick is to undestand how to deploy ressources to mill and ressources to gain time. That's a lot of ressources necessary, and different one. But you must be conscious you ll need around 6 cards and 12 manas just to mill the opponent deck.
This means you need spells that have a good reach while still costing few manas to achieve both ends: you are playing tempo and you need to make a better use of your ressources then your opponent is.
So Glimpse is in. What are the other mill spells at our disposal?
mesmeric orb is my personal favourite. The amount of cards this spell can mill when played turn 2 is absurd. That's even better then glimpse when unanswered. Maindeck responses to it are few and all at least cost the same amount of mana. Against a control deck it can close the game on its own. I want 4.
archive trap is a very good card, especially game 1 when nobody expect it. It becomes worst game 2 and 3 when people play around it. Neither path to exile or ghost quarter actually "force" an opponent to search the library and they are not stupid - most of the times. But what is hilarious is looking at people making bad plays to play around it when it s out of your deck. But in practice they are right: having 2-3 copy of this spell in hand while 1 mana creatures casted with 1-2 non fetch are coming at you isn't very efficient.
mind funeral is an ok card. It usualy mills from 8 to 16. It's arguably better when you managed to extirpate/surgical some non-basic land cards. As trap, it's even better in a format with sooooooo much fetches. I don t think it's a 4of: it's also too slow when drwn in multiple.
hedron crab is far better then goblin guide. He's a very well designed creature that simply offers both the milling potential and the body presence the deck needed. At this cost, he's insane. If such another efficient and cheap creature should see the light, mill might definitely become a good deck.
Please, PLEASE have a VERY good reason to play this little guy turn 1, especially when the opponent has an untaped mountain.
sanity grinding doesn't work in the version I propose cause there's not enough blue mana. But can be obviously considered if you try a "more blue" road with different disrupt element.
nemesis of reason is a bad card for what we're trying to achieve. Far too slow and easily respondable. That's not a tempo card, that's the "finisher" UB control might use if she had protection of some kind.
tome scour is bad. It offers a good reach in terms of mana, but not in terms of cards.
mind reversal: same reasoning. It's also valid for entering, even if these cards could be 2of. That's the multiplication of them that increses the "how many do I mill per card invested to it" that makes them far weaker then I thought. That's the type of card that make you miss the game for "just a turn". I never thought the difference between glimpse and entering would be so important. On is very good, the other is just "ok", but basicaly, the difference is as big as is the one between shock and lightning bolt.
And the problem is not the difference between both cards, but between a full set of them in the deck. 4 glimpse are 40 cards. 4 entering are 32. The difference is huge.
In my opinion, the cards that mill the more efficiently are the first four I talked about, sanity grinding still being good but specificaly designed. I think the other cards just don't make it in term of power level.
The milling set I went out with is composed of:
- 4 hedron crab
- 4 glimpse
- 4 archive trap main deck (I ll often side 2-3 out)
- 2 Mind funeral
- Wait, man! said the man in the room. You told us we needed to hit 5-6 cards to achieve a milling, and you just play 14 of them? Not even 4 mind funeral? WTF? You should play 20 to hit 5-6 regularly, and it even would be low!
- ok, ok. Let's have a look at the rest of the full deck list:
3 Inquisition of Kozilek
4 Surgical Extraction
1 Extirpate
1 Muderous Cut
3 Damnation
4 Glimpse the Unthinkable
4 Archive Trap
4 Mesmeric Orb
2 Mind Funeral
2 Thought Scour
2 Vision of Beyhond
4 Snapcaster Mage
4 Darkslick Shores
2 Watery Grave
2 Island
2 Swamp
4 Polluted Delta
3 other black fetch
1 other blue fetch
3 Shelldock Island
Well, again I m tired, I ll explain the choices and interactions game one tomorrow, before discussing what's still giving me headash: the sideboard.
I let you discuss at first sight (or even test it
First of all, please excuse my english. I m not a native and this post will be pretty long, so there will be language mistakes. I hope it ll be understandable for everyone and try to make short sentences. If someone is kind enough to signal me my errors, I ll gladly edit this post (and hopefully learn some english stuff).
I've been playin' mill casualy for a long time on mtgo. By a long time, I mean since first Ravnica came out and I used to get 4 Glimpse the unthinkable. I think I've tried it in every possible way. Lately, I've been bruiding a lot since I lost my old list (RIP) and I was surprised how well the deck was doing in tournament practice. So I tried some games on 2 men queue and I've established an honest record of 16-4 (!!) in my last attempt to improve the deck. TBH, I don't think I ever made this good as I m not a great player and make a lot of mistakes.
The goal of this post is primary to share the bruiding I did, so I will try to explain the process that made me build the list and improve it. I m also gonna share my analysis on the good record I did and the meta against the deck. In the end I don't think it's great, but definitely playable and that's a premiere for a mill deck since a long time (standard lorwyn anyone?).
1. General idea: mill is bad, burn is better
The general assumption, and it's been mine, is that you'd better burn then mill. The comparison is far from stupid, since mill cards spot damages to the opponent's library instead of his/her life total: in a modern game, the burn player has to do 17-20 damages to the face since we got to mill 45-50 cards. Basicaly, that means that milling spells needs to do 2.5 time what a burn spell does to be as efficient.
Let's have a look at 2 iconic cards to make myself clear:
Lightning bolt makes 3 damages for R. An equivalent mill card would deal 3 x 2.5 = 7.5 damages.
Glimpse the Unthinkable mills 10 for UB. An equivalent burn spell should do 10:2.5 = 4 damages.
Some comments on this comparison :
a. When you analyse mill cards with this in mind, you realise lots of them are pretty bad: Tome scour is basicaly lava spike that deals 2 damages. No chance a red player would ever consider that playable.
b. That said, at my knowledge, no red sorcery deals 4 damages to a player's face. I think that would make red players extatic. There are some in legacy and they are realy powerful even in that format and are regularly played.
c. That makes mill's creatures VERY difficult to approach the power level of red's cheap creatures like Gobelin Guide.
But this is a direct comparison. An experienced magic player knows the power-level of a deck is appreciated in a field. Burn decks are cheap and let's face it: they are powerful. If a player is not prepared to face RDW, then he's got a problem, since a LOT of players try to play this deck to avoid the expensive price of a dual/triple color manabase, especially on mtgo. If you want to enter the competitive portion, you HAVE your deck to pass the "burn test", or you are playing a rogue deck and know very well why you're making this bet. If gain life cards like kitchen finks or Siege Rhino are a thing, there's a reason.
And here is why you MAY have a better shot in playing mill then burn: no one is prepared to face you. No one plays cards that refill your library, except for big Eldrazi, which are a false problem since decks that play them are very easy to disrupt for mill, especialy game 1 - I ll get to it later.
So, "no!": mill might be a better choice then burn, even given the fact that they pursue very similar strategy. That said, the comparison is very important since we can use what burn decks that did well can teach us to create similar winning play condition for mill.
2. Strategy consideration and color-choice
First of all, a mill deck must be UB because of a card we already spoke a lot of on this topic: glimpse the unthinkable, which is the best incentive to play mill. That's THE corner stone of a mill deck.
The first idea that would get in everyone's mind would be to fill the deck with traditional UB control cards and revolve the kill-portion of the deck to mill.
This is a VERY bad idea and everything you want to avoid. It doesn't mean you can't use some powerful UB control cards, but if you do it, that must be with your goal in mind and thus should be: "milling before my opponent kills me", not: "take control of the game then kill him/her". If that's the case, then your strategy is bad, since devoting space for a mill kill usually take lot more space then a traditional morphling-like kill.
This is very important, because when you build, you realy need to understand you're not doing a control deck with a bad kill, but a mill deck. Actualy, your strategy is very closer to monored's then UB control's. Would monored play mana leak if he could? I guess not, or this would be an extremely surprending meta-call. Again: that's not to say you can't play leak. That's just to say that mustn't be with the goal of controling the game, but to answer a problem leak can elegantly/efficiently solve. Leak is a powerful card, but there are plenty in modern and the fact it's a control staple doesn't make it a mill staple. Actualy, I've gladly played it a lot and I now think it's a bad idea, but I ll come to it later when discussing card choice.
Another problem a mill player soon realises when testing his deck is the lack of ressources. When you play your mill spell, you have no impact on the board, and the only mill spell that realy matters is the one that mills the last card of the opponent's library. Only this spell will make every precendent spell valuable. If you overload your deck with mill-spells, your opponent will soon occupy the board and rip you appart before you finish him. You can't just ignore what your opponent's doing, because other deck are far better at it and if that's what you want to do, you'd better play them.
All in all, what mill is trying to do is really this: mill the opponent before his/her board kills you. That implies 2 things: playing rapid mill cards and spells that slows your opponent.
That makes mill a "combo-tempo" deck. It must find enough cards to "combo off" (aka: mill 45-50 cards) and also slow down the opponent. Don't make mistake: your spells have no impact on the board, and that means if the game goes long, your opponent will likely win. Your goal is to keep games short. That's typically a RDW player philosophy.
But there's an essential difference with RDW: the nature of burn spells.
Lot of their spells can either be directed to the face, but also on creatures. They also attack with creatures. These aspect give them natural board control. That's typically a problem Burn players encountered with tarmogoyf: How do you deal with a 3/4 turn 2 creature when you are burn? It will do the same amount of damages every turn and he's got very few ways to get rid of it (I already mentioned the "no 4 damages turn 2" red encounters; that's not exactly true, but spells that do 4+ damages to a creture for this mana cost don't reach players, I think).
So while trying to reach the player in a similar way, mill will have a different approach to board control then RDW does and understanding the differences and similarities in their philosophies might be very relevant when building.
OK, folks. I already post this and will continue later on, I m a bit tired and this is taking even more time then expected. List coming soon, in next update, when I ll discuss card choice.
Magic is about to play spells.
Mass LD takes this ability from players, so they don t have the feeling they can play.
What the point playing a game if you can t do it. See your strategy fail to another is one thing. Losing without having the opportunity to play is another.
So players hate mass LD.
Same with masscounterspell decks.
Bad MU are aura.deck and Egg. G1 is unwinable against aura, and of they drop Stony Silence post-board, it s almost gg. There is a single disenchant out against it. Silence just gives Eggs the MU. All other MU seem fair or favorable.
Tarmo indeed is a pain of played at 3/4. Don t ne greedy and play it before or it'll be burned.
Thrun s not that big an option, unless it s played in a very aggro deck on top of the curve or he s equiped. Usualy, UWR just outrace him with burn and flyers while chomping.
Resto Angel is also good against us. It blocks flyers, comes timely in, and makes the race in the sky. It s also played as a Mirror Option.
3 Celestial Colonnade
1 Hallowed Fountain
1 Mystic Gate
2 Island
2 Mountain
2 Plains
1 Sacred Foundry
4 Scalding Tarn
2 Steam Vents
1 Sulfur Falls
2 Tectonic Edge
25 lands
1 Aven Mindcensor
4 Geist of Saint Traft
4 Snapcaster Mage
1 Thundermaw Hellkite
2 Vendilion Clique
2 Restoration Angel
14 creatures
2 Izzet Charm
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Lightning Helix
2 Mana Leak
3 Path to Exile
3 Remand
21 other spells
1 Baneslayer Angel
1 Batterskull
1 Counterflux
1 Disenchant
1 Engineered Explosives
2 Rule of Law
4 Leyline blanches
3 Spellskite
1 Thundermaw Hellkite
This isn t perfect so far. I ve been tweaking the mana base, and played 2 Resto Angel instead of 1 Mindcensor and 1 Clique to gain an edge in the Mirror.
I also made some change in the side; I m very happy with the leyline, but spellskite might be not as awesome as I thought at first glance.
I definitely missed the second EE in the side and will afford 1. A second mindcensor was nice, too, but I don t know how to bring him back.
Here are my thoughts so far, after about 25 games with the deck:
Tron – the MU is kinda fair. It all dipends on what threats you're gonna see and if you can race him. On a god draw on his side you can just rely on counterspells. A poor draw on our side is quasi auto-lose.
Aura – very defavorable MU. Might be the worst. G1 is unwinnable if they enchant a creature with daybreak coronet. Post side, you gotta rely on EE, spellskite and disenchant, which is very few; and I saw a deck playing stony silent post-side…
Jund – favorable. We got a lot of caracteristics from burn deck, which are traditionaly good against jund. We usualy can remove the turn1 shaman which makes the game more fair, and lili is dealable if played around correctly. The only problem is Goyf, but not undealable, by far.
Pod – I found it easily disruptable. We kill a lot of creatures, and mindcensor is strong. Seems to be a good MU.
Scapeshift – Seems our clock is faster then his. Also seems favorable.
Eggs – Well, I don t know what you guys do against Silence, but that very card just beats me everytime I play against this deck. An horrible MU.
Infect – Just blast their creature during their own turn, and they'll fastly run out of gas. Don t hesitate to chump with a snapcaster.
UW Control – Grindy game, but it more easy for us to kill from a distance while still countering.
Tokens – Hard G1, G2 and 3 are much better
Splinter Twin – Kiki is ok since we can easily blast it. But the enchant is still a problem. I think a spellskite route is the way to go. Btw the MU seems good.
Affinity – never played against? How's the MU like?
Are my feelings good so far? Am I misunderstanding smthing?
Well, I m thinking about adding more spellskite and the Shroud Leyline in the board. The leyline did very well for me so far, and I think Spellskite is great instead of tranquility, since it s good against aura, but also in other MU. Or Maybe 1 more disenchant?
I played the Deck just to understand it, and found it realy both fun and successfull, so I think I ll drop Tezz and go with it.
The thing is, as I was missing a Clique and a Mindcensor, and just wanted a try, I just throwed 2 Elspeth main and found them amazing. Not only it pro vides extra strenght by giving evasion and power to a Geist, but the first ability is also relevant against Tarmogoyf by providing a blocker or extra tempo. As Tarmo is a problem to the Deck, I was wondering why Elspeth wasn t played so far. Any thought?
Is it just for beta tester or is it available for everyone?
1) I don t think statistics have been "lied". I just think people enjoying the beta have make more reports then people disliking it. I know a LOT of friends who play casual, just tried it, found it horrible then reinstalled V.3 without sending any report; the main reason is they found it VERY hard to find a casual game actually running. One of them just never understood the sliding thing and remained with "all cards" displaying. So, stats are "biased", but it's nothing Wizard's fault.
2) I stopped the beta in october after trying it for 3 weeks, so maybe some of my complaints have been fixed, but here are why I stopped:
First, the 1-1 Commander Match isn t supported. And that's what I enjoy the most on mtgo.
Then, finding a casualmatch is a REAL pain, and deck building is even worst then it was. The autosave is a real pain. I like tweaking my decks, but all my ideas aren't good and it s very complicated to come back from what you changed.
The worst feature is the chat window management. They pop up taking all the space and managing them is realy painful. And makes you lose lots of time.
Finaly, the game is realy hard to play; after 3 weeks practicing it, each game takes about me twice the Time I needed on V.3. And we all know how time management is important online. I just lost too much to the clock on this client. And Is wear I can say if my opp is using the beta or V.3 just on how many time it takes him to play perform certain actions.
So, i m back to the old client. As long as I can or until they fix these issues, whatever comes first.
The beta client is horrible. No other words.
Last time Cube was around, I didn t sell the boosters I won, 'cause I expected prices to come back up when the boosters wouldn't be sell by hundreds anymore.
As Cube came back, I looked for some bot to sell my boosters to, but can t find any one who buy them; I found someone buying the onslaught one very low, but no one seems to want Legions/Scourge boosters.
Do you guys know some bot who would buy them for a fair price?
Realy?
Didnt they ban Study from pauper 2 months ago?
I can see why people from a country as puritan as the US is shocked when they read that post in the abstract, but when in a french cultural context, NO ONE could take it seriously.
NO ONE!
This happened on a french forum, which has the reputation of being rude. People trash-talk there all the time. If you read 2 posts below the one that incriminated him, you ll see that he
Also, for the one saying: "blah blah, never talk about rape". Who said taht? I lost my cat and it huted me a lot. You should not make jokes about cats.
WTF? Where I live, EVERYTHING is a joke subject.
Everything.
That's the culture I live in, I dont see why the puritan american culture should be applied to me.
This ban is a total non-sense.