Side out against 8 Rack: Archive Trap, Crypt Incursion, Ravenous Trap, Trapmaker's Snare
Removal is okish since everybody plays Mutavaults and there can be creatures after sideboard
Discard is below average since you advance their game plan and even spend mana on it
Pithing Needle on Liliana or Mutavault can be good. or not.
I wont play Surgical Extraction against them. Sometimes it is good but 75% of times it is not. Even if you keep it in 60 after sideboard (because there are no good sideboard cards), dont play it, they need to spend resources to keep your hand empty, if you do it for them, you help them win
Dont play your cards mindlessly, sometimes staying at 3+ cards is better than advancing your gameplan
Generally card advantage is good, card disadvantage is bad
Experienced 8 Rack player here
- jay2rockusa
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Quartz posted a message on [Deck] UBx MillPosted in: Aggro & TempoQuote from KeithsGenome »That's a strong recommendation of the list. I've found Ghost Quarter and Path to be pretty effective at getting the search, it's rare when someone doesn't go for it in my experience. You didn't find that paying 2 mana for the Field plus 2 mana for the Snare was a little steep to activate Archive Trap? I guess if you're landing 2 of them it's decent.
Interesting with Darkness and Ensnaring Bridge both in there - don't you find they overlap a little bit? The bridge also seems like it would non-bo with Remand too, needing to keep them in hand. Have they been effective for you? I'd almost think something else could work better, maybe even Bontu's in the main?
I'm also surprised to see no Fatal Push or any creature control in there. What stops you getting run over with Goyf or Infect outside of Darkness?
I do like the idea of Snare in the list, but why not put some of the silver bullet traps in the sideboard? Ravenous Trap and Mindbreak Trap both seem like they would be worth having as a one-of to tutor for.
I'm definitely intrigued by your list though and am going to proxy up some field of ruins and Trapmaker's Snares to test it out.
The no removal maindeck thing was the craziest, it certainly didn't feel right in my mind, but I tried it and the threat density feels just so much better.
Some thoughts on matchups:
The matchup that get hit the most so far is Abzan company. Not being able to kill the druids is tough if they get the combo. Remand against a CoCo probably buys you a turn, or since Orb can mess their infinite mana combo, remanding a big Ballista can be game. Mill and extract a piece of the combo remains the best out.
Infect should be a bit harder, Darkness/Remand can slow them down a bit. Haven't played against Infect with this list yet (or any other list, for a long while luckily)
Storm stays the same, I can't hit their creatures and delay them, but I have Remand that can be a lot better at the right time and make them fizzle if they were greedy. Of course post sideboard with all the extraction and graveyard hate it's A LOT better.
I thought Bogles would be annoying as well, but actually managed to beat it yesterday. Remand and Darkness are just so good at buying extra turns and then bridge took over for another turn until I finished them with the "combo".
Eldrazi and taxes are tough unless we get a Crypt Incursion to resolve, same as RW Burn. I've both won and lost to them, but the main reason I'm excited about this list is I've never had those games where you're dissapointed at your deck and feel like your gameplan was not good.
Valakut decks remain a walk in the park, as well as Tron decks usually. Lantern is another very positive matchup.
Blood moon decks are no longer such an annoyance being UB, they were a nightmare for my Esper list running only 1 basic of each.
Eldrazi Tron and Death Shadow are pretty even, if I get a trap (or 2) to resolve I can usually win it, if not we depend on Bridge to avoid Reality Smasher beatdowns.
Affinity is a bit harder, early Orb is amazing, and Field of Ruin allows us to have a KO punch in activating our usually dead traps. Then Crypt Incursion can save the day once that graveyard has some stuff in it.
Being creatureless, I have an advantage g1 that the straightforward plan takes advantage of. They have sooo many dead cards in their deck. I've seen a lot of hands when extracting a card that where Push, Push, Terminate, or Path, Verdict and things like that. That's plain card advantage, specially against UW, since black can sometimes pitch those to brutality. No more 2 for 1 whith Kolaghan's command where they hit your Crab and Orb/Bridge and you're wrecked (I still hate that card, haha).
I feel the decklist is a lot more consistent. I'm mulliganing a lot less, and never get the feeling of being out of action. The Darkness-Remand pack has been a total MVP. Darkness is very unexpected, and messes their gameplan a lot. The extra time that buys helps get to that t4 where we can get some payoff, whether it's a big Crypt Incursion, an Ancestral Recall filling up our hand and casting that extra mill, the bridge lockdown, double mill spell with Sanity out, or our new cool win condition (the most frequent one currently! I would say I used Field of Ruin + Trap in a little over 50% of the games):
Tap Field of Ruin and 2 lands to destroy one of his lands, fetch a basic, play 2 traps + a 2 mana mill spell (Glimpse/Breaking/Orb). Assuming we've done any milling before or gotten a Fraying Sanity out t3, it's game over.
Archive traps before Field of Ruin where being very hard for me. I loved them in my opening and using them for a headstart, or as a late topdeck when I could hardcast them, but anytime in the middle they were a liability. They clogged my hand and made Bridge worse, my opponents had long ago stopped falling for Ghost Quarter or Path, I never liked depending on an opponent's punt for them to be good (I've seen our deck around a lot more recently and played against more people who knew it, also I started doing Competitive Leagues, so better players I guess)
Ravenous Traps have not been that great for me, I've liked the Nihil Spellbombs a lot more. With Crabs, leaving an uncracked Fetchland guaranteed you could play the trap for free, but since I don't run them anymore, they're just unreliable, while Spellbomb is cheap, doesn't need any mana up (that's why I don't run Relic) and usually draws me a card.
Anyway, that was quite a lot to read, haha. That I've taken the time to write all that is just proof of how excited I am with my new list! -
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Dosequiguy posted a message on [Deck] UBx MillNot going to brag about your "perfect list" that has never produced any results at any level of play...Posted in: Aggro & Tempo
Go back to your cave troll... -
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GregWhiteside posted a message on [Deck] UBx MillBeen a while, team.Posted in: Aggro & Tempo
So, Fraying Sanity seems to be the topic of discussion. I'll weigh in by saying it is ABSOLUTELY the truth IF you are not in a tempo match. Does very little on it's own, we've all agreed on that. But if it can stick and then get some support (let's say from a Hedron Crab or Mesmeric Orb then it gets deadly super quick. My opinion thus far is that it's a 3-of.
More of my opinions:
1 - You're talking about going Hedron Crabless? What the hell is wrong with you people?!? Fetchlands and crabs do easily 40% of the heavy lifting. Get on the crab train, folks!
2 - I hate Mind Funeral. Hate it. Inconsistent. Seems to want to whiff ONLY when the whole game is on the line. I have moved on to Startled Awake and have found it to be an appropriate curve-topper.
3 - I get the whole targeted discard and then extract angle, but I don't think it's smart. Especially in this meta. Yeah, you blank the occasional deck on the spot. But more often than not you've wasted two cards on taking out one of seven threats that deck is packing. Thoughtseize and Inquisition of Kozilek and Extirpate don't deserve mainboard slots. Surgical Extraction is a maybe.
4 - Where the hell are all the Jace's Phantasms??? Card is a house. In a void, it's a 5/5 flying wall of pain. Everyone else here is talking 3 cmc walls that don't do half of what phantasm does. AND HE BEATS DOWN. How many games have I won to a random stingray ass-whoopin'? A whole bunch.
I'm obviously bringing an older version of the deck to the table, but the fundamentals seem to have been tossed to the wayside in the name of new hotness. I am overjoyed to entertain dissenting opinions. But come on, people. Let's make a deck that can handle the BS that the meta is throwing at us right now. -
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vito653 posted a message on [Deck] UBx MillI've been trying both version just adding in into my esper build and trying out a traumatize build and what I found out is the traumatize build can be thrown off very easy with hate and discard and the deck feels a little unreliable at times were in our normal builds it's a bomb that can end things easily. Yes our turn 3 maybe underwhelming at tims but if you already have a crab and it orb in play you don't skip a beat.Posted in: Aggro & Tempo -
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Quartz posted a message on [Deck] UBx MillPosted in: Aggro & TempoQuote from xsoulwrecked »Quote from Quartz »
I find it really hard to make up my mind on Fraying Sanity... I feel it will work best in a "combo" build with traumatize, otherwise it feels slow. It is definitely a very good mill card, but it will probably need a deck built around it, a more controlish build with early discard/countermagic.
I think that's the key to making it work. Before Fraying Sanity, our ideal first 3 turns would have been Land + Hedron Crab, Fetch Land + Glimpse, Fetch Land + Mind Funeral. Milling 22 + whatever Mind Funeral milled + a potential Archive Trap. With Fraying Sanity in your starting hand though, you'd try to hold your mill spells until you dropped it on turn 3. You'll maybe still play the turn 1 Hedron Crab, but our ideal turn 2 play suddenly becomes twice as effective on turn 4.
So what do we do on turn 2, if we don't play Glimpse yet? More cheap interaction.
Yes, we have Fatal Push, yes, the Esper version has Path to Exile, but since we have access to one of Moderns currently strongest effects, why not include Discard? Some combination of Inquisition of Kozilek and Thoughtseize.
If you play Crypt Incursion main, you can probably afford 2 Thoughtseize, otherwise I'd just include a playset of IOK.
Turn 1 IOK, target opponents removal spell or threat, turn 2 Crab + Land, leave 1 mana open for Push or Path, Turn 3 Fetch Land + Fraying Sanity, Turn 4 Glimpse (or Mind Funeral) + Visions of Beyond to keep us fueled. Milling 35 safe (or in case of Mind Funeral 15+ twice whatever Mind Funeral hit) + a potential Archive Trap.
Another option for turn 2 would be cheap counterspells. I'm not a big fan of the idea, because Spell Snare is too narrow in the time of Death's Shadow while Spell Pierce and Mana Leak are only good on turn 2 but are really bad topdecks later in the game.
All in all, I think Fraying Sanity gives us a quicker kill in most games. We could always kill quickly if we got lucky on Archive Traps, but Fraying Sanity might give us the consistency to close out games by turn 4 or 5 even without hitting multiple Archive Traps.
The deck I have in mind looks something like this:
DeckMagic OnlineOCTGN2ApprenticeBuy These Cards Lands:
4x Polluted Delta
3x Flooded Strand
2x Darkslick Shores
2x Watery Grave
1x Hallowed Fountain
1x Oboro, Palace in the Clouds
3x Ghost Quarter
2x Island
1x Swamp
1x PlainsCreatures:
4x Hedron Crab
Enchantments:
3x Fraying Sanity
Mill Spells:
4x Breaking // Entering
4x Glimpse the Unthinkable
2x Mind Funeral
4x Archive Trap
Spells:
4x Inquisition of Kozilek
4x Fatal Push
4x Path to Exile
4x Visions of Beyond
3x Surgical Extraction
It's late here, so maybe I'm talking nonsense, but please let me know your thoughts on it.
I agree with LordHelmchen that orbs should find a place. 4 Push and 3 Extraction main deck seem too much and are where I would make the cuts for 4 Orbs.
Ideally turn 4 after Fraying should be double mill spell/Orb (effectively cuadruple, wow, it sounds sooo nice) so Breaking is looking better than before. I may end up removing mind funerals for some cantrips to fuel our hand, or even Serum Visions to smooth our play.
A lot of testing ahead, that's for sure!
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LordHelmchen posted a message on [Deck] UBx MillI quite like your list and reasoning, xsoulwrecked.Posted in: Aggro & Tempo
Although I'd want to try to find space for at least 3 Mesmerizing Orbs. On the one Hand, some sort of untargeted Mill is needed to have a slight chance of winning against a Leyline, and Orb is still a good 2-drop that does not hurt having on the board even before Sanity. It's also fun how it messes up their Willingness to alpha strike in the late game -
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rogelio posted a message on Colorless Eldrazi TronPosted in: Big Mana
My friend's been running this deck ever since Vizier got announced. We'ved played a ton of games so I've had a good chunk of experience against the deck.Quote from jay2rockusa »Any thoughts on how to deal with the new counter company decks?
On game 1, utilize spot removal and Ballista pings, and race to assemble Tron ASAP. When killing things with spot removal or TKSing away combo pieces, prioritize Devoted Druids. If you open with a Chalice, Chalice on 1 stops Birds, Hierarchs, Viscera Seers, and Path, so it's a good number to drop on. If you find another one, drop that on 2 to keep them from actually playing their combo pieces. They'll be just slightly irrelevant because of Collected Company, but it's good for when they haven't drawn into it. If your meta is heavy on Counters Company, run an Ulamog mainboard and one in the side. If they go with the infinite life route, Ulamog is your only out that isn't a Karn reset, and a Karn reset is begging to go to time and draw.
Game 2, side in:
- Grafdigger's Cage. Shuts down Collected Company.
- Pithing Needle. Multitool, name whatever is relevant at the moment (Druid, Viscera Seer, even Pridemage if you have to).
- All your spot removal, whether it's Spatial Contortion or Dismember.
- If you have an Ulamog in the side, side it in. All is Dust helps, too.
- Surgical Extractions are pretty good for when you kill a Druid or other essential combo piece.
- One Chalice if you run a playset. Again, the card is only slightly irrelevant because of CoCo so you don't need the card as much, but drawing one is still beneficial in the early and late game, since it keeps them from playing whatever combo pieces or enablers they have.
- All Matter Reshapers. Reshapers are slow and do not help at all against a deck with a turn 3 play. Side them out to increase your chances of drawing into hate.
- Whatever choice of top end flex spot that you have that isn't beneficial to the mid-to-late plan of wrecking face with Eldrazi. If you run Batterskull, Hangarback Walker, Wurmcoil Engine, or other flex spots, those are good cuts. If you run two Karns, consider siding one out; I haven't found success in the two-of with this deck in particular.
- If you run Ugin, it's your call. But this is from my regular practice buddy that plays the deck:
It's tough because the three turn infinite is actually really consistent, it's scary. Good luck!I'd never side out Ugin against any Abzan chord deck. That's the card we fear the most. It's an 8 mana gg. Ahh man, Ugin is a beast. -
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Daeyel posted a message on [Deck] UBx MillReading the comments of the past few days, there are some fundamental misunderstandings of the Mill deck that I want to clear up. Consider this a sort of 'White Paper' for mill. For most of you, this is 'Well, DUH!' But some readers may need a little more insight to the nuances of balance, or may not know at all.Posted in: Aggro & Tempo
First and foremost, Mill is an aggro deck. We are racing against a very inefficient clock. In MTG, most clocks go to 20, but ours goes to 60, and then, often to 75. So why do we race this clock? Often, our opponents are unprepared for the different race, or not as prepared. Mill aims to take advantage of that lack of preparation. Other times, the meta may swing more heavily in favor of mill, becoming combo heavy, which Mill excels against.
Mill really likes to beat combo decks on turn 2, with a Glimpse the Unthinkable, followed by a Surgical Extraction.
Mill is not a control deck. Aggro and control are opposite play styles. Oddly enough, because Mill is not fast enough as an aggro deck, we add elements of control to the deck to gain time. This, however, does not make Mill a control deck. Too many control cards will make it such though, to the detriment of the deck.
In our 60 card main deck, we aim to strike that perfect balance of aggression and control that enables us to win. The crucial balance point is always found on the control end, and never on the aggro end. To make this simple, imagine a long scale, with pure aggro at one end, and pure control at the other. A pure aggro Mill deck will very rarely win, because in a turn 4 format like Modern, we simply do not have enough powerful mill cards to ensure that we can mill them out. Assuming the opponent keeps a 7 card opening hand, and that we are on the draw, we must mill an average of 13 cards per turn, and that would win the game on the 4th turn - after our opponent has had his 4th turn. That is 1 Archive Trap per turn, only to lose. Clearly, we must slow the game down. We do this by adding control to the game.
A pure gas aggro deck will rely on blowout cards to win the game. Cards like Temur Battle Rage, Become Immense, Mutagenic Growth, etc, can accelerate the damage they do. Mill cannot do that. It has a pace to it, limits. We cannot play Mind Sculpt, and then add on more mill with an interrupt, thus mill demands the controlling restraint upon the opponent. (Yes, I know Twincast is a thing.)
The perfect Mill deck slides the bar toward control only as much as is necessary to win. Too far, and we are inefficient. We drag the game out so long the opponent pushes through, or finds a way around us. Too little, and we lose for being too weak against opposing strategies.
The difficulty comes in the form of every deck on the other side of the table requiring a different balance point of us.
Every card in the deck is assigned an aggro or control role. Even lands can have an aggro or control role. For instance, Oboro, Palace in the Clouds, is an aggro card, because it directly feeds an aggro strategy in Hedron Crab. The same applies to fetchlands. On the other end of the scale, a land like Shelldock Isle is considered control, because it is reacting to a set milestone. The same applies to Visions of Beyond. Yes, the result is usually a furtherance of our mill strategy, but it remains a control role. Basic lands have an aggro role up to a certain number - after that number, the assume a negative control role, slowing us down with out any net benefit. We are not assigning a number to this, because the number changes with every game, let alone every opponent. Any time you draw an unneeded land (flooded) you have reached your aggro/control tipping point. This applies to deckbuilding as well as during play.
Obviously, cards like Glimpse the Unthinkable, Mind Funeral, Mesmeric Orb etc are aggro cards. We need not spend much time discussing those. The real question is, what constitutes control? The simple answer is, anything that reacts to the opponent's attempted line of play. By this definition, Archive Trap is a control card, oddly enough. Fatal Push and Path to Exile are control cards. Crypt Incursion. Your entire sideboard.
The crucial element in building your deck is to only include exactly enough control to defeat his plan. Some are a 4 of, like Archive Trap. Others the line is much, much blurrier. For instance, Crypt Incursion? How many copies do we run? In my opinion, Crypt Incursion is the tell all card. An aggro mill will run 2. If mill runs 1, it's going very aggro,and needs to justify only having one. If it runs 3, it is becoming decidedly controlling, and again, needs to justify it.
What about Surgical Extraction/Extirpate? Are they mill or control? They are control cards, affecting the line of play the opponent can take from that point on. Ghost Quarter? Control. Snapcaster Mage? Control.
The number of aggro cards are very few in a mill deck. The more aggressive, or 'all in' the mill, the more targeted the control needs to be. For instance, a mill deck using Mesmeric Orb needs to have more specific control
than a deck without it. It needs to have a different response. In a mill deck with MO, you are hitting the opponent constantly, but most importantly, during his untap phase. This requires instant reactability, even if you are tapped out. For this reason, I'd use Surgical Extraction over Extirpate, because the ability to remove a threat needs that immediate response before he can possibly cast a 2nd copy out of hand before we could wait to untap. If I run Tome Scour, I run a higher amount on Surgical over Extirpate to react faster. If I run Fatal Push or Path to Exile, I can use Extirpate, because I have more safety valves.
I hope that this explanation of Mill as a marriage of aggro and control, and the proper definition of every card as aggro or control aids in finding that perfect balance.
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SamAffandy posted a message on Bant EldraziHas anyone tried using the Training Grounds+Eldrazi Displacer+Drowner of Hope+Thought-Knot Seer combo?Posted in: Midrange
did mill an 8 rack opp to death b4 using tks+displacer but this is one level up. infinite mana to infinite mill. - To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
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I use ravenous trap as it exiles the whole gy where crypt only exile the creatures and extirpate/surgical only gets rid of the reshufflers but the reshuffle trigger still happens and still undoes most of what you have done so far. Think of it as life gain vs burn.
Also if you are not running fraying sanity, using leyline of the void or rest in peace does the trick as well
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I play 2 mindstone, 1 ugin and 1 karn. I have found that kind of split work well if you do not misplay ugin like i did at scg worcester
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In regards to world breaker, I think he is an allstar, triggers and searchable with sanctum and can devastate the board when partnered with karn or ulamog.
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IMO Emrakul is never a dead card but I tried it pre-ban with mixed results. A well built mill will have ways around her game 2 and 3 but that's neither here nor there. If it works well I would love to hear about it......i love the titans
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I have been using Karplusan Forest in my tron and have rarely taken damage for the green or red by filtering the colorless through the Chromatic Sphere or Chromatic Star. No damage and a free card, no bad there. My big issue with gemstone mine is that you lose it after three uses. An urza land gets crumbled away losing that land cause now you are out of counters on it can be really bad.
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Thank you, it is hard to argue with a 6/5 for two with creature removal