So what's Veeky Forums's opinion on mill...

That's a really good explanation, thanks for taking your time and posting well thought reasons

Last time I played against a "mill deck" I was on Tin Fins. Great strategy, thanks for advancing my game plan.

Mill doesn't effect the board or any relevant resource. Its not faster than any other win con, so its really not worth it.

>Christmasland hand
I actually had one of these miracle hands once a while ago.
>T1 eye of ugin, 3 eldrazi mimics
>T2 eldrazi temple, thoughtknot-seer, swing for 12
>T3 swamp, reality smasher, swing for 24
Fastest game I've ever played.

And what about things like Curse of the Bloody Tome, Jace's Erasure or Sphinx's Tutelage as a wincon for slower decks? Good enough?

I also used pic related, ran heavy counter and used the cloud of fairies/high tide infinate combo

Multiple times I have milled an entire deck on turn 4, without milling it prior to turn 4

So it was a combo mill deck, sounds really nice, do you have a list?

Depends on the format, really.
There could be a fun and trashy Modern Deck in there, for example. Something you could play at FNM or similarly semi-competetive.

Thing is: If you are actually going for power, really slow decks usually have better winconditions than Mill.

I can give you the bear bones of it
x4 Embassador Laquatus
x4 Sands of Delirium
x4 Equilibrium
x4 Cloud of Fairies
x4 High Tide

x20 Island

Then the remaining 20 cards can be any form of counter you like, depending on what youre going against

mill is trash unless:

1) it's a 1HKO
2) it's an additional effect on top of something else
3) it's a repeatable/continuous effect that doesn't eat resources to use

To add what this guy said, there is also to consider that deck size vary wildly between formats.
Limited is just 40 cards, constructed 60 and EDH 100.
Aside from the general weakness of mill, it's also something hard to design around.

What mill needs, is the equivalent of cards like pic related.
Also, I still don't understand why mill isn't a keyword, since it's present to certain extent in pretty much any set, and the term is vastly used even among casuals.

They use keywords for stuff that save more room, generally.

More reason to do so.
Instead of writing "Target player puts the top three cards of his or her library into his or her graveyard", you just write "Target player mills 3".

I'm pretty sure mill does have a card like that.

Would mill be better of more cards interacted with it?

That's why he said mill needs it.

>Be a greenhorn back in Zendikar days
>Decide to build standard because I'm dumb
>U/R TRAPS
>NOTHING BUT TRAPS
>Starting hand has three archive traps
>Draw into another on first turn
>Just play a land and pass
>Opponent cracks a fetch
>wait for it
>Grabs whatever
>Drop four archive traps
>Guy concedes the match cause he's laughing so hard
>Get wrecked the next two

God, that deck was stupid. But it was so fun.

Damn, that's some next level luck

That was all I had man. It was the epitome of magical Christmas land and it will never happen again.

>New to MtG
>Look up Archive Trap's effect
Jesus christ. Even if it was a one time thing, hell of a way to go

If you have infinite mana, why bother with milling at all?

They're fine since you only need one of them to mill your opponent out, so all the other cards can be used to slow the game down. The looting engine tacked on Tutelage is also a great bonus.

In modern, mill can be quite effective. But in my experience, too many people get butthurt over it and it's not worth listening to the bitching.

Don't even bother trying it in EDH.

>Don't even bother trying it in EDH.
Why not, some commanders seem pretty good? What about self-mill into zombies and things? I can see decking someone out as a stupid blind-luck strat, but complementary to other setups I think it's pretty fucking stronk.

>Why not, some commanders seem pretty good?

I think it's more than you're needing to hit for 100 cards now, and more often than not EDH decks will have some tool to completely blank you.

Most of the time your deck doesn't do anything. And when it does get the ball rolling everyone else is gonna gangbang you to death.

Fun to do, annoying to play against, rarely effective, but nice for a gimmick deck.

EDH milling is mostly two or three mill cards to get delirium off.

Fair enough, I see what you mean. Do you have any suggestions for neat edh decks that seem low-key early game?

A W/G with a bunch of enctantments and spells focused on throwing as many +1/+1 counters on stuff. May be completely shit but my EDH group is casual enough to make it work.

I used to like building mill decks that killed people. Now I have way more fun making decks that mill myself. This guy is one of my current favorites to use with self mill

Looks like you self-milled it away :^)

well yea so i can use it later

EDH mill is extremely jank, but I have a decent phenax deck. Eater of the dead+slagwurm armor is basically game. Throw in consuming aberration, and a couple tutors, and it can catch people off guard. I play a counterspell, consuming abbo landgrinds everyone, and then next turn it taps for half their library.
Too bad wizards is determined to make U/B all mill, all the time, would like some other strategies revolving around the color combination.

Nephalia drowyard was used in standard as a slow mill effect for hypercontrol finisher that did not take up slots

I love that card. Its hard to remove, usable at instant speed, you can use it on yourself to help out your snapcaster mages and flashback cards, and it doesn't take up a valuable spell slot.

plus we just got another great drownyard land for self mill dekcs

Of course you get nutdraws every once in a while. Everyone has had a match where everything worked out perfectly. When your strategy relies entirely on getting that nutdraw to function at all, however, that's when we tell you that your deck is bad.

That was only ever really relevant in the mirror. however.

Curse does see play in Pauper where it's one of the possible wincons of Teachings.

If I'm gonna mill someone to death I prefer to do it all at once so they can't potentially benefit from it.

Personally I've always run mill as a sub-mechanic of just 'annoyance' decks. Mill just needs additional mechanics to work, typically strong delay.

Of course, there's always dream hands like you say. Layering mill effects have won me games by turn 4-5 before.

Although in EDH I'm basically milling for comedy relief during tension.

I love that card

Tutelage coming with batteries included can be an absolute game changer even if it costs 6 mana to loot

can you just make a 200 card deck and nulify any mill decks?

130 relentless rats.
70 land

There have been a few limited environments where it's a good idea to sideboard in 42-43 card decks to survive an extra turn against mill.

Since we have a few folks who know their mill, I'll ask here:

I'm building a pauper cube that has a strong lands-matter theme (landfall, domain, retrace, etc). Now mill normally sucks ass in a cube environment and I don't want to devote very many cards to it, but I've seen games go long with past versions of this cube. I'm thinking about throwing in one of these as a potential lulzy control finisher. Thoughts?

This. If you're playing mill you best be packing a dank storm brew or Painter's Servant/Grindstone

Sphinx's Tutelage and the new enchantment that mills when you crack clues are very solid. Generally the mill cards that are valuable in limited are the ones that can win by themselves like the cards I mentioned or Nephalia Drowned and Grindclock. Dread Waters could totally work but it seems kinda shitty since it's gonna be a dead draw for more 90% of the game.

The whole example is silly. You only mill using spells in limited (40 card decks).
In any other format, mill is a wincon for prison (etc) that doesn't require dedicating much (if any) of your deck to.

Also, T1 Hedron crab mills 9 for U in that situation.
Speaking of Hedron Crab, it's a land-based 1-drop mill bomb and a decent wall.

>but muh Flash Hulk

I've seen hedron crab used as an alt wincon for scapeshift when valakut gets removed

>What mill needs, is the equivalent of cards like pic related.
It kind of does. Pic related. It's really, really fucking annoying in Magic Duels Origins, since it's normally played as the win condition in a control deck that plays a bunch of counterspells and draw spells, but it's still beatable if you don't run a super slow deck.

Might as well just make a good deck at that point because 130 relentless rats is a little pricey.

just run one of the Eldrazi Titans from RoE and that's all the antimill you'll ever need

If you make a deck based around nullifying another archetype you've already lost.

What you need is a deck that wins, and a few cards that nullify mill. Any of the eldrazi titans in a 60 card deck prevent mill from killing you in 90% of cases.

Or alternatively just play a good deck and thank urza for your free planeswalker points when you get matched against mill.

>not playing commander mill

>free planeswalker points
should I care about those?
I have no fucking idea what they do, i just draft every friday

is it just wanking rights?

It's played in the best pauper deck (UB Teachings)

Are there enough good walls in blue and black to make that work?

Your period-ly points qualify you for some things, but your all time ones don't really matter, I think.

I will just leave this here

mtggoldfish.com/articles/budget-magic-91-35-tix-modern-tutelage-turbo-fog

As someone who has lost to a Phenax EDH deck, yes

>not going off with Arcum several turns before you even cast Phenax
>not using Academy Ruins as a demonic tutor vs mill

Some facts about mill:

A: Mill is an alternate win condition
B: This win condition is the draining of a resource that is larger than Life Total, and with most cards printed for this win condition less effective at dwindling that resource than cards printed for the main win condition of dwindling opponent's life to 0.
C: There are two distinct advantages to mill in this sense, however. One is that your opponent is always furthering your win condition through their draw step, the other is that there are far fewer cards printed to prevent victory through mill than there are lifegain cards.
D: Milling does almost nothing to effect your opponents ability beat you. It does not deny them cards on any predictable basis because the top card of their library can be any card in their deck. If most of a player's deck is cards dedicated to killing you (Such as a deck filled with creatures), you will get nothing, from a statistical standpoint, from milling them outside of furthering the mill condition.
E: However, in an antithesis to D, milling can be a viable weapon against decks that run a low amount of win conditions. In the era of Azorious Control, where lists literally ran "1x Aetherling, 1x Elixir of Immortality" as the only ways to win the game, a mill play could suddenly win the game in the same way you could kill someone with a gun in a dark room. Blind shots are worth slightly more statistically if there are fewer targets. This small option, however, is rarely worth using Mill on its own right, and more of a note for cards that mill in addition to an already usable effect.
F: Which leads us to what is usually the only actual use of mill in serious constructed magic: Its printed on a usable Jace. Seriously, Tutelage aside, most every usable Mill condition is an already powerful card that can also win through milling.

My fav card from recent sets, brings me back to older sets when interesting non creatures had an actual representation

This is what I use to get easy prizes at my LGS
The fun thing is that there are 2 burn players that still don't sb skullcrack, meanwhile I dispel and negate them for days aftee the first game

I have a soft spot for mill, mainly because I played a game where mill was a viable strategy before I jumped over to MTG

That's fucking fantastic

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