I’m personally not a fan of Deprive, especially in a Sanity Grinding deck. The goal in this type of deck is to include high cmc spells with the gameplan of casting them at alternate costs. However you should definitely still build your deck with the plan b of being able to hard cast these spells because in reality a lot of games will reach that point. Deprive sets you back on this gameplan and in my opinion this heavily outweighs making a land drop every turn for a hedron crab that may or may not be on the battlefield.
I agree that Logic Knot is better here, but it’s much much weaker without Mesmeric Orb stocking your yard.
Just from my own experience brewing around Sanity Grinding, I found card filtering to be very important. Being able to scry a few lands away before casting a Sanity Grinding made it hit that much harder. Card filtering will also help set up your miracle spells when they’re not functioning as mere Sanity Grinding ammo.
Mill requires stringent mana efficiency in order to compete competitively or with most of the decks you’ll see at your fnm. Pushing more than 4 colorless lands will cause you to mulligan more and will make playing your mana efficiently that much harder. Mission Briefing is a great card in mill but it puts certain demands on your mana base. However, field of ruin and ghost quarter are a few of the ways to turn on Archice Trap. The answer here is the sweet spot number of how many colorless lands can you cram in without misteps. Some food for thought. Happy brewing!
Solemnity has seemingly endless brewing possibilities, many of which can be powerful, but one of the problems with enchantment based combos is the lack of viable (low cmc) tutors within the modern card pool. This is a hurdle you’ll have to face if you try and build a deck around these cards. Best of luck and happy brewing!
Splitting the combo between creatures and enchantments is one of the primary things holding back the deck's consistency. There's just much better creature tutors available in modern than there are enchantment tutors. Considering we have creatures (Vizier of Remedies & Melira, Sylvok Outcast) that can substitute for Solemnity, I see little reason to not go all-in on creatures similar to how Counters Company does.
So immediately you'll notice that without Solemnity we lose the ability to use the Undying combo, namely Geralf's Messenger. But if you've ever played this deck you know how his mana cost can be painfully restrictive. However, dropping the enchantments gives you a ton of room to build the deck in a way that focuses on consistency and with a combo deck this is important. Not to say you can't still run Phyrexian Unlife in the sideboard or even mainboard if you want, but with Assassin's Trophy now out in the wild I think this "soft lock" got a little less reliable.
The real question is, if you build the deck in this way do you end up just being a worse Counters Company?
I'm so back and forth on Fraying Sanity. It's a great effect and without Glimpse the Unthinkable it really helps UW maintain its mill power, but having a hand clogged up with too many is definitely not desirable. I think it really depends on how you want to build your UW deck. If it's an all in combo style, looking to set up a turn 4 archive trap win, then I would say 3-4 Fraying Sanity is probably right. If you're going UW tempo with more survivability then I can see a case for dropping down to 2.
What I think is interesting is the implications that Mission Briefing might bring. One of the awkward things with Fraying Sanity is how you sometimes feel obligated to hold onto your Archive Traps until you have a Sanity on board. With Mission Briefing in the mix that pressure is mostly gone. You can cast that turn 0 Archive Trap with the confidence of being able to Mission it back again on turn 4. That's a powerful line that we never had access to before outside of a flipped Jace, Vryn's Prodigy.
Thought Scour vs Sleight of Hand is tough. On one hand Sleight is certainly the superior cantrip pound for pound. On the other hand, we have some new reasons to dump cards into our own graveyard, making Thought Scour an interesting option. I'm not sure if I'm quite ready to bank on Mission Briefing enough to make that determination, but I can see Thought Scour playing pretty nicely with it as our turn 1 play. Another thing to keep in mind too is that later in the match, Thought Scour can also turn into a cantrip that mills our opponent for 4 with an active Fraying Sanity out. Not stellar by any means, but it does have some extra utility over Sleight of Hand in that regard.
Im baffled that people still trying to consider UW mill as a competitor.
In case you guys have not seen the title of the subforum(aggro and tempo) or just decided to completely ignore it, here's a couple of remainders:
1.Mill spells DO NOT really do anything until our opponent has no cards in his library(if anything, you are helping most decks).
2.Ergo, for #1, mill spells ARE NOT a good wincon(which is usually what UW mill tries to do), if you want to play UW theres a million better wincons than mill.
3.Responses in mill decks are pretty much a way to slightly delay the opp so we can mill the heck out them, the deck should be based on density of THREATS,not ANSWERS, we are in an enviroment in which you cant have all the answers.... especially if we have to dedicate 8+ slots to our wincons
Guys, i also love mill, but get it into your head, mill in modern is a TEMPO deck, which is more on par with Burn that with control... and should be played as such until we have a good enough milling spell in UW
Peace ut
You're talking like UB Mill is a T1 deck that has no room for innovation. Unless I'm wrong and you're sitting on a dozen top 8 finishes with your top-secret version of UB Mill? You're not. And the reason for that is because mill, in all of its forms, is still lacking the power to be a consistent competitor at a high level of play.
With this being the case, I think innovation in all directions can do nothing but help the archetype. Sure, some ideas will come back void, but you never know how that one rogue idea will push the deck into a direction that makes it more successful. Clearly playing mill like burn has not worked for years. Sure you can grab success here and there and I personally prefer the UBx version if I were to sleeve one up for competition, but this archetype is nowhere near refined enough to have such a close-minded view.
In other news, something that I've been keeping my eye out for are cards that abuse our opponent's graveyard. It's no secret that dumping our opponents cards into their graveyard is not always a beneficial effect, but Surgical Extraction and Crypt Incursion operate inside of this weakness with success. Mnemonic Betrayal is similar in this respect and while it's interesting, I don't think the effect is quite there. Combining it with Fraying Sanity is a thing, but lately I've been seeing a lot of UB decks lowering their Fraying Sanity count or omitting it completely. Moving in the opposite direction to make Mnemonic Betrayal playable seems like taking a step backwards.
Thief of Sanity kinda has my wheels turning. Is it something worth bringing in game 2 against an opponent with a low creature count? It's somewhat comparable to Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver, albeit more fragile and more conditional....which maybe just makes it bad Ashiok...
Any time I deviate from using Hedron Crab I always find myself missing it. It's really hard to justify wanting to do anything else on turn 1 when your crab can potentially mill more cards than our best mill spells, making it one of our most efficient mill tools. I'm sure someone can build a successful list without him, but I'll remain skeptical until I see it. I can see a case for replacing Manic Scribe, but dat ass does have a lot of utility in blocking early creatures and adding to our overall survivability, which is important in the aggro m/u.
Yeah, I feel the same way about the removal package: I don't miss Fatal Push in the least. I have been pleasantly pleased with Oust as a replacement. But I do feel like I need something for a little extra survivability. Right now I'm on the same gameplan of bringing in Supreme Verdict and Settle the Wreckage out of the board to help survive a little longer, but Mission Briefing has got me thinking...
I have a build I was working on before the Ravnica spoilers hit, which ran Ethereal Haze instead of Ensnaring Bridge. Now with Mission Briefing, I wonder if this is actually a viable way to bake in some survivability without taking up a lot of slots to do it. Hell, you could even do some interesting stuff with splicing arcane spells like Evermind and Dampen Thought, but I'm not ready to go down that rabbit hole just yet. Either way, I think being able to pitch a fog spell into your graveyard to use later with Mission Briefing at instant speed sounds kinda sexy.
I return to it every now and again for a nostalgic reunion. I'm a sucker for a Solemnity deck, but this build is unfortunately just too slow and fragile for the current meta. The biggest problem is the curve: You have a lot of your key combo pieces at the 3cmc slot, which is awkward. It also has the problem of drawing into the right pieces when you need them and without Solemnity + Viscera Seer + one of our recurring creatures online, the deck has 0 card filtering. You can run Idyllic Tutor or Beseech the Queen, but at 3cmc that just adds to the awkwardness. A deck like Counters Company operates a similar gameplan only it's a hell of a lot more consistent because their tutor spells can tutor up any of their combo pieces. I would give this deck another serious look if a 2 mana recurring creature with an attached effect was printed, but as it stands now, I don't think the deck quite cuts the mustard.
But sometimes I don't care about all that and just want to play some immortal Kitchen Finks
In the past I haven't been too high on Merchant Scroll, but being able to tutor up Mission Briefing opens up some more avenues for setting up an Archive Trap. I'm tempted to give it another try. How's your experience with it? It's no secret that UW Mill lacks a diversity of strong mill cards, maybe it's not a bad idea to play the list more like a "combo" deck, positioning yourself to make a few key Archive Trap strikes. I will say one thing though, I tried to play without Visions of Beyond as I thought it was slightly overrated, but once I returned to using it I realized how much you gain by running it. In a non-Ensnaring Bridge version I think the amount of value it gives you is pretty invaluable. I'm on the line of calling it a Core card at this point.
Sidenote: Oust has been great. I don't miss Fatal Push in the least, despite Oust's sorcery speed.
Side Sidenote: I've started running a single Tolaria West and it's been pretty clutch in a few instances. A lot of the time transmuting for 3 mana to tutor up a Field of Ruin is not really ideal, but it has saved my butt a few times, especially in game 2 where getting an opponent to search his library is harder than nailing jello to a wall.
With Mission Briefing, I almost think it might work to have a UW control shell now that we can flash back our Archive Traps on the cheap. My only black cards currently across main and board are 4 Glimpse, 3 Push, 2 Brutality, 2 Crypt Incursion, and 2 Damnation (SB). I'm counting Surgical (3x) as colourless here. That's not a huge incentive to go with black when white could provide a lot more.
I'm thinking of:
-2 Brutality
-3 Ensnaring Bridge (Doesn't play nicely with control)
+3 Thought Scour (cantrip plus instant speed mill)
+2 Settle the Wreckage
-8 Creatures (crabs and scribes)
+7 Counterspells (right now thinking 3 Cryptic, 2 Logic Knot, 2 Negate but maybe Spell Snare for tempo?)
+1 Psychic Spiral (reach after mesmeric orbing my graveyard down. Instant speed!)
Straight (mostly) equivalent replacements
-4 Glimpse; +4 Mission Briefing
-2 Crypt Incursion; +2 Profane Memento (maybe Timely Reinforcements?)
-3 Push; +3 Path
-2 Damnation; +2 Supreme Verdict (but in the main instead of SB)
With 4 Field of Ruin and 4 Path, it should be easy enough to get them to search to activate Trap/Briefing. With field of ruin forced search, even when they don't fetch for Path we can still get them. I'm thinking 22 lands should be enough (instead of 25 like regular control uses) because we're not aiming to resolve a 5 mana Planeswalker with protection up to win the game. More just a bunch of 0 or 2 mana spells (Trap, Orb, Briefing) and then just slow them down enough to make the Orbs hurt them, with Traps being a big burn.
Anyway, I'm going to proxy up this UW list and try it tomorrow with my friends. Our meta includes Hardened Scales, Spirits, GB Eldrazi Rock, BW Tokens, UR Wizards, Burn, and UW Miracle Control. Notably no Humans (could be a bad matchup) and no Tron (UW struggles against them, but with Surgicals in my main board it's usually alright).
A few of us Mill hipsters feel the same way about UW mill being worth exploring, especially now with some new tools that the new set has brought us. But let's be honest here, you lose a lot of utility when you leave Black. White has its own interesting options, like Timely Reinforcements (which has been stellar for me) and a strong suite of sideboard cards, but can Mission Briefing be strong enough to ease the loss of Glimpse The Unthinkable, Crypt Incursion, Collective Brutality, Bontu's Last Reckoning, etc? That's a lot to ask. In my opinion, I believe it's a mistake to go all in on one mill spell (Archive Trap) and I've found that the deck needs Hedron Crab and Manic Scribe to diversify your "threats". I'm interested to hear your results of a more "controlling" shell, I haven't had much luck with it, but Mission Briefing may have given this style a little more game. At any rate, we have a thread discussing UW Mill in the Deck Creation section here:
I think Mission Briefing is definitely a neat new toy worth testing. Mission Briefing + Mesmeric Orb gives you access to your deck without having to hold cards in your hand, something that plays very nicely with Ensnaring Bridge. It also helps flip Jace, Vryn's Prodigy and Search for Azcanta. Also, a Snapcaster effect that can cast Archive Trap for 0 is pretty huge. I'm hesitant to throw this into the Esper list, considering the UU cost, but I think it's a serious consideration for U/W. Without Glimpse the Unthinkable, this deck needs something to give it more punch, maybe this is it?
I think it's smart to think about brewing with Teferi, Hero of Dominaria. He's proven to be very powerful in the format. My question would be, what do we hold up with 2 mana that would make his +1 viable for us? He works incredibly well in blue control shells with all the counter magic you keep in hand, but how does that translate over to our enchantments? Seal Away is the first thing that comes to mind and lord knows there's plenty of ways to tap stuff down in blue...
I agree that Logic Knot is better here, but it’s much much weaker without Mesmeric Orb stocking your yard.
Just from my own experience brewing around Sanity Grinding, I found card filtering to be very important. Being able to scry a few lands away before casting a Sanity Grinding made it hit that much harder. Card filtering will also help set up your miracle spells when they’re not functioning as mere Sanity Grinding ammo.
The best Phyrexian Unlife deck is Ad Nauseam.
Solemnity has seemingly endless brewing possibilities, many of which can be powerful, but one of the problems with enchantment based combos is the lack of viable (low cmc) tutors within the modern card pool. This is a hurdle you’ll have to face if you try and build a deck around these cards. Best of luck and happy brewing!
Maybe something like this:
So immediately you'll notice that without Solemnity we lose the ability to use the Undying combo, namely Geralf's Messenger. But if you've ever played this deck you know how his mana cost can be painfully restrictive. However, dropping the enchantments gives you a ton of room to build the deck in a way that focuses on consistency and with a combo deck this is important. Not to say you can't still run Phyrexian Unlife in the sideboard or even mainboard if you want, but with Assassin's Trophy now out in the wild I think this "soft lock" got a little less reliable.
The real question is, if you build the deck in this way do you end up just being a worse Counters Company?
What I think is interesting is the implications that Mission Briefing might bring. One of the awkward things with Fraying Sanity is how you sometimes feel obligated to hold onto your Archive Traps until you have a Sanity on board. With Mission Briefing in the mix that pressure is mostly gone. You can cast that turn 0 Archive Trap with the confidence of being able to Mission it back again on turn 4. That's a powerful line that we never had access to before outside of a flipped Jace, Vryn's Prodigy.
Thought Scour vs Sleight of Hand is tough. On one hand Sleight is certainly the superior cantrip pound for pound. On the other hand, we have some new reasons to dump cards into our own graveyard, making Thought Scour an interesting option. I'm not sure if I'm quite ready to bank on Mission Briefing enough to make that determination, but I can see Thought Scour playing pretty nicely with it as our turn 1 play. Another thing to keep in mind too is that later in the match, Thought Scour can also turn into a cantrip that mills our opponent for 4 with an active Fraying Sanity out. Not stellar by any means, but it does have some extra utility over Sleight of Hand in that regard.
You're talking like UB Mill is a T1 deck that has no room for innovation. Unless I'm wrong and you're sitting on a dozen top 8 finishes with your top-secret version of UB Mill? You're not. And the reason for that is because mill, in all of its forms, is still lacking the power to be a consistent competitor at a high level of play.
With this being the case, I think innovation in all directions can do nothing but help the archetype. Sure, some ideas will come back void, but you never know how that one rogue idea will push the deck into a direction that makes it more successful. Clearly playing mill like burn has not worked for years. Sure you can grab success here and there and I personally prefer the UBx version if I were to sleeve one up for competition, but this archetype is nowhere near refined enough to have such a close-minded view.
In other news, something that I've been keeping my eye out for are cards that abuse our opponent's graveyard. It's no secret that dumping our opponents cards into their graveyard is not always a beneficial effect, but Surgical Extraction and Crypt Incursion operate inside of this weakness with success. Mnemonic Betrayal is similar in this respect and while it's interesting, I don't think the effect is quite there. Combining it with Fraying Sanity is a thing, but lately I've been seeing a lot of UB decks lowering their Fraying Sanity count or omitting it completely. Moving in the opposite direction to make Mnemonic Betrayal playable seems like taking a step backwards.
Thief of Sanity kinda has my wheels turning. Is it something worth bringing in game 2 against an opponent with a low creature count? It's somewhat comparable to Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver, albeit more fragile and more conditional....which maybe just makes it bad Ashiok...
I have a build I was working on before the Ravnica spoilers hit, which ran Ethereal Haze instead of Ensnaring Bridge. Now with Mission Briefing, I wonder if this is actually a viable way to bake in some survivability without taking up a lot of slots to do it. Hell, you could even do some interesting stuff with splicing arcane spells like Evermind and Dampen Thought, but I'm not ready to go down that rabbit hole just yet. Either way, I think being able to pitch a fog spell into your graveyard to use later with Mission Briefing at instant speed sounds kinda sexy.
But sometimes I don't care about all that and just want to play some immortal Kitchen Finks
Sidenote: Oust has been great. I don't miss Fatal Push in the least, despite Oust's sorcery speed.
Side Sidenote: I've started running a single Tolaria West and it's been pretty clutch in a few instances. A lot of the time transmuting for 3 mana to tutor up a Field of Ruin is not really ideal, but it has saved my butt a few times, especially in game 2 where getting an opponent to search his library is harder than nailing jello to a wall.
A few of us Mill hipsters feel the same way about UW mill being worth exploring, especially now with some new tools that the new set has brought us. But let's be honest here, you lose a lot of utility when you leave Black. White has its own interesting options, like Timely Reinforcements (which has been stellar for me) and a strong suite of sideboard cards, but can Mission Briefing be strong enough to ease the loss of Glimpse The Unthinkable, Crypt Incursion, Collective Brutality, Bontu's Last Reckoning, etc? That's a lot to ask. In my opinion, I believe it's a mistake to go all in on one mill spell (Archive Trap) and I've found that the deck needs Hedron Crab and Manic Scribe to diversify your "threats". I'm interested to hear your results of a more "controlling" shell, I haven't had much luck with it, but Mission Briefing may have given this style a little more game. At any rate, we have a thread discussing UW Mill in the Deck Creation section here:
UW Mill
I think I'll jam something like this:
4 Hedron Crab
2 Jace, Vryn's Prodigy
Spells
4 Path to Exile
1 Oust
2 Mission Briefing
2 Surgical Extraction
4 Visions of Beyond
4 Mind Sculpt
4 Archive Trap
4 Mesmeric Orb
2 Ensnaring Bridge
Enchantments
2 Search for Azcanta
2 Fraying Sanity
Lands
4 Field of Ruin
1 Flagstones of Trokair
1 Ipnu Rivulet
1 Oboro, Palace in the Cloud
3 Shelldock Isle
2 Hallowed Fountain
4 Flooded Strand
2 Polluted Delta
2 Arid Mesa
2 Island
1 Plains
Surveil has got me pretty excited for this Archetype