Card/Deck Mill in cube: yay or neigh?

[James Stevenson]

A friend of mine has a creatureless cube (a bit of a misnomer, there is only one creature spell, the zookeeper. Sometimes we call it The Empty Zoo), and yesterday we had a four man draft. I always draft mill in his cube, partly because I relish the opportunity to mill people out, and partly because blue has all the bounce spells. Echoing Truth is bonkers, as is Repeal, though I don't know if the latter is still in the list.

Anway, I was destroying people with Sand of Delerium and ultimating Little Jace and I started wondering what you guys thought of mill. In my cube I run Ashiok, Nephalia Drownyard, Jace (though he's never milled people in my cube) and Mirko Vosk. I feel like these are reasonable control finishers that rely on your deck being a good control deck. I also had Millstone, which I thought was fun, but a little slow.

So what do you guys think? Yay or neigh? Should I endhorse mill all the way or is that foalish? Are the finishers stable enough for control decks or do they just saddle the deck with useless cards? Personally I think what I have seems good, but my The Empty Zoo should rein it in a little.

I never got the chance to play with Sands of Delerium in whatever set it's from, but man, that card is not really fair.

 

[Jason Waddell]

This could also be relevant to the discussion: http://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/mcd-primer-mill-you.74/#post-1321

 

[Goldenpineapple]

The more degenerate cube in my area runs mill from hedron crab to increasing confusion and it feels anywhere between hopelessly noninteractive (crab ramp has been dubbed "crabakut") to just a "gotcha" control fireball. It's also randomly useless when a sneak/show opponent has all three eldrazi and you didn't see or take any graveyard hate.

I personally don't like it; it punishes other decks for drawing cards of all things, it feels like "I'll just take all these normally-mediocre cards, you take that skullclamp and sphinx's revelation," and it interacts badly/strangely with too many other cards. The difference as a control finisher is it can literally prevent your opponent from topdecking or drawing into their answer by (luckily) milling it at some point.

 

[Jason Waddell]

I agree with Goldenpineapple. I would also say that in the theoretical sense, I like the way that Gatecrash attempted to make milling more creature-based and interactive. The most powerful cube milling archetypes will be super non-interactive though. Sure, they can work, but I don't think it produces good Magic any more than playing against a pure burn deck does.

 

[James Stevenson]

I'd really like to get some more graveyard interactions going in my cube. If a deck appears that tries to mill itself I think I will have succeeded. The only way to do that right now is drownyard. Maybe I should add Millstone? Maybe Hedron Crab?

 

[Chris Taylor]

Nephalia Drownyard is (I think) the best way to do this. it certainly wont spawn a mill deck, but it'll help with the graveyard interactions.

Also, isn't the correct spelling in this context "Nay", and not the sound horses make?

 

[CML]

a dedicated theme didn't work due to the poison principle, but versatile stuff like Hedron Crab and low-opportunity-cost cards like Jace Beleren and versatile/low-cost like my fave THE DROWNYARD

do not add Jace, Memory Adept to your cubes. not that this wasn't hilarious:

http://blip.tv/scglive/scgla-invi-t4b-ben-wienburg-vs-matt-nass-6482132

 

[James Stevenson]

Chris did you not notice all my fhorsed puns? I was thinking so hard about how to jam as many as I could into that post, and then my charger broke and my laptop ran out of battery. It could have been so much more!

 

[Rob Dennis]

although it's not in now, I'd be ok with either of the U/B mill-3s in Ashiok and Nephalia Drownyard.
The Magic Box guys made a compelling case for Increasing Confusion wasn't "game-ruining bullshit" so I'm at least open to testing it.

I'm a definite no on any of the mill-10+ effects

 

[Lucre]

Are there any good mill spells (Excepting Confusion)?

 

[CML]

HEIGH IS FOR HOARSES

edit: i think you can make a case for Breaking//Entering or Glimpse the Unthinkable. I was actually excited to try Increasing Confusion as it seemed like a nice junction of self-mill and mill-you but then it turned out it was just kinda bad

 

[Jason Waddell]

Make a case in terms of power level or in terms of good design?

 

[CML]

good design my man. are we so poisoned THAT WE MUST ASK NOW?!? mill yourself 10 can be kinda cool!

edit: i am unconvinced by my own argument

 

[Goldenpineapple]

Only one card I have ever played with made me not regret self-milling. I had both deathrite shaman and relic of progenitus to filter so it was kind of insane.

 

[Chris Taylor]

Triple commune with the gods and vengevine?

 

[James Stevenson]

yeah Deadbridge Chant looks sweet, I wanna try that. My aggro decks are sorted out and awesome now, so it's time to get some durdly decks working.

 

[Lucre]

I really have no idea what a deadbridge is.

 

[anotak]

i think its a place or someth deadbridge goliath

on topic i'm not a fan of mill unless it does something else like breaking // entering

 

[Lucre]

UB
Instant
Target player puts the top six cards of his or her library into his or her graveyard
Draw a card

UB
Instant
Draw two cards then discard a card from your hand
/////
UB
Instant
Target player puts the top 8 cards of his or her library into his or her graveyard

ughhh does that help things along?
Would this totes be a fun deck to play?

 

[CML]

yeah i like those designs

 

[Lucre]

What other mechanics do you think mill works well with? What kinds of decks would want to use it?

Do you want it to feel very different from attacking wins or do you want it to feel similar to any control or attrition finisher?

I find a lot of UB decks tend to scrape out a victory from a lot of advantageous little interactions, maintaining tempo advantageous trades or always able to make a little more out of their turn or hand/graveyard. I would guess a mill spell that helped you spend the little 1-2 mana left over in a turn wouldn't be too bad. I kinda like that UB control tends to be way more creature based though so maybe some sort of attacking thing wouldn't be too bad.

 

[Tanner K.]

What about attaching mill onto something a little more interactive?

UB
Instant
Remove target attacking creature from combat. Target player puts the top X cards of his or her library into his or her graveyard, where X is the attacking creature's power.
Draw a card.

UUB
Instant
Counter target spell. Target player puts the top X cards of his or her library into his or her graveyard, where X is the converted mana cost of the spell countered this way.

UB
Sorcery
Return target permanent to its owner's hand. Target player puts the top X cards of his or her library into his or her graveyard, where X is the converted mana cost of the permanent returned in this way.

2UB
Instant
Tap all lands an opponent controls. For each land tapped this way, target player puts a card from the top of his or her library into his or her graveyard.

I just threw these out so I'm sure they'd need a ton of tweaking, especially mana cost. But these attach mill to a tempo effect, which is something that the mill decks want anyway. It also makes the mill deck a little more interactive for an opponent (i.e. do I run my 7-drop into UUB, or play it safe?).

2UB
Enchantment
Whenever a creature attacks, that creature's owner places a card from the top of his or her library into his or her graveyard.

This isn't a tempo effect, but does make the mill effect interact with the opposing player.

 

[Dom Harvey]

aw yes

 

[Ryan]

the only kind of mill I enjoy in cubes is self mill strategies. and this is coming from a guy who loved "draw play land pass turn eot drownyard you"

 

[CML]

Tanner -- i think you're barking up the wrong tree, those cards are all pretty low power-level-wise and only work "OK" together.

mesmeric orb might be worth looking into