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Do you have crabs?
Let me ask that question another way: does Hedron Crab get your Magic-deckbuilder-sense tingling?
Milling is the most popular alternate win condition in Magic. Other than through loss of life and milling, other win conditions are created purely card-by-card (think Epic Struggle, Helix Pinnacle, and poison/poisonous cards), and no other alternate win condition has been explored more thoroughly throughout Magic’s history. Milling cards have ranged from terribly slow (Millstone) to swingy (Mind Funeral) to fast (Glimpse the Unthinkable) to ridiculous (Grindstone, with the printing of Painter’s Servant). Milling can be straightforward or take the alternate approach of mass card-drawing (think Forced Fruition, one of my favorite cards of all time).
I have had an on-again, off-again fascination with milling decks over the course of my years playing Magic. Whenever a new milling card or set of cards comes out that looks promising, I invariably try to make the most of them. One of the most exciting sets for me in this regard was Ravnica, thanks to the Dimir guild. Unfortunately, milling is a difficult concept to really apply well in both casual and tournament decks.
Casual decks can certainly be designed to be played in duels, which makes milling an easier concept to pull off than in multiplayer. You know that you have to take about 60 cards down to 0, and the opponent’s draws help advance your goal as a side effect of playing. When we extend casual to multiplayer games, however, the concept becomes much more difficult. A number of good milling cards and strategies are aimed at taking out one deck at a time, which is a difficult enough task to accomplish while staying in the game. Once at least one opponent catches on to what your strategy is, which is hard to conceal if you’re making any progress whatsoever, it’s fairly likely that the group will attempt to finish you before you can succeed. Even simply multiplying the number of decks necessary to mill makes this task difficult.
Tournament-caliber milling decks are few and far between. The reasons for this are numerous. Wizards has been making creature quality higher and higher over the past few years, which means that creature decks (and the color green in particular) have reached an all-time high in efficiency. With so many decent to good to crazy creatures available and comparatively small number of cards that mill, along with the strictly numeric difference of 20 life versus 60 cards (or 53, if we’re discounting opening hands), milling decks have to be very good or they will fail to compete.
The most successful milling deck of recent times has been the Turbo-Fog deck of pre-M10 Standard. In a field dominated by Faeries, Kithkin, and most especially tokens of the white, black, and green variety, the deck used a high quantity of fog spells (Holy Day, Angelsong, Pollen Lullaby), quasi-fog effects (the ever-relevant Cryptic Command), and occasional sweeper and simply relied on the opponent decking out first from Howling Mine and Font of Mythos. This deck was extremely frustrating to play against, but its existence in the format actually pleased me a great deal.
Now, looking at the current Standard, a number of Turbo-Fog’s key spells are gone. Pollen Lullaby was a fog and occasionally a Time Walk. Cryptic Command is one of the best blue spells of all time and all four possible modes were relevant to this deck. Even the loss of Holy Day for Fog drops out a white fog spell. Turbo-Fog may or may not be able to adapt and survive to the new Standard environment, although it is important to note that creature decks- especially of the Jund variety- are still thriving and leading the way. The question I’m addressing in this article is not whether Turbo-Fog specifically is still a good deck, but the more general question of what a milling deck might look like.
Milling is principally a blue mechanic. Let’s take a look at the applicable blue milling spells in Standard:
Cathartic Adept
Hedron Crab
Archive Trap
Tome Scour
Traumatize
Memory Erosion
Jace Beleren
Two creatures, eh? Cathartic Adept is probably too slow to work in most milling decks and isn’t worth the slot. While that one card a turn will add up (or more in multiples), its frail body along with less than stellar ability aren’t crying out for addition. Hedron Crab, on the other hand, is much better. Taking away three cards a turn is a good place to start, and multiples of the Crab and/or multiple landfall triggers can let this get out of hand quickly.
Archive Trap is the main workhorse of a deck like this. At five mana, this has to be close to the top of the curve, but 13 cards is a sizable chunk, and instant speed certainly helps. While you won’t always be able to set off the trap for its discounted price, even the possibility of playing it for free is great. Currently, there is one spell in Standard that lets an opponent search his or her library, which can help this out if it’s good. Is it good? It’s Path to Exile. I’d say it’s worthy.
Tome Scour is a better Cathartic Adept. It gives you five Adept activations (assuming that the Adept would have lived that long to begin with) all at once. While it will never get you more than 5, it can hit the opponent hard and fast, which is what the deck probably needs. Is that good enough? Either way, Traumatize is. The ability to knock out half of a deck all at once is great, although again at 5, it’s actually at some tension with earlier milling, since Traumatize is at its best when it mills for more cards. Still, even though it won’t hit for as much, its potential power can’t be denied.
Memory Erosion is tricky to analyze. Pros: it’s a non-creature permanent, it’s a continuous ability, it can add up, and it punishes opponents for doing something they want to do. Cons: two cards at a time probably won’t cripple them, it can be played around, and it is vulnerable to cards like Maelstrom Pulse. I’m not 100% sure that it’s worth it, but I want to keep it in mind, since it does advance the goal.
Jace Beleren has spend the last few years helping the Faerie decks out, but he was clearly designed with milling in mind. The “drawback” of forcing the opponent to draw cards depletes the opponent’s library and can actually finish them off a turn sooner (since a player doesn’t lose from having an empty library in and of itself, a player loses when they would have to draw a card but cannot). He’s weaker now thanks to the Vampire Hexmage, but he will always at least replace himself. If the opponent does not or cannot stop him from going off, then they should be about done for.
So that’s about it for blue. Of course, other blue spells come to mind that could help with the milling spells. Twincast is the obvious choice, as forking either an Archive Trap or a Traumatize will end the game quickly, and even copying a Tome Scour gets you a Glimpse the Unthinkable. Other blue spells can buy you time, Whiplash Trap, kicked Into the Roil, and Kederekt Leviathan get you card advantage and tempo all at once, while Time Warp and Sleep can literally get you another turn. Telemin Performance can out-and-out mill a creatureless control deck.
While it is possible to go straight mono-blue with some artifact support, I think that it’s worth looking at what each (yes, each) of the other colors can bring to a milling deck.
White- White brings the mass creature kill in Day of Judgment and Martial Coup that the deck needs to survive the early rushes (vampires and the like), while Path to Exile, Oblivion Ring, and Journey to Nowhere deal with singular threats. Remember that Path to Exile makes the opponent think about whether you have Archive Trap in hand, possibly removing Path’s drawback entirely. Luminarch Ascension can serve as a secondary win condition if the milling isn’t going anywhere. Going in the Turbo-Fog direction, Angelsong, Safe Passage, and Knight-Captain of Eos are all still in Standard. Wall of Denial is as efficient a defense as you can ask for, and Kiss of the Amesha refills the hand while padding the life total (albeit at a high cost). Overall, the blue-white milling deck is probably a slower option but has protections against losing to creature strategies that blue itself lacks.
Black- These days, black’s mass removal is lacking compared to white’s, but there is a plethora of spot removal to choose from. Disfigure, Doom Blade, and Agony Warp are great at what they do and splash easily. Adding black most notably boosts the milling component of the deck significantly and in a different way than straight blue. Mind Funeral will always mill for four and will sometimes take away much more, and it actually works better when the opponent has been thinning their deck of lands via the new sac-lands. Nemesis of Reason only needs to attack a few times, and represents repeatable mill with only one mana down-payment. Sadistic Sacrament “mills” out the best cards in their deck, and can close the game if kicked and other milling has been accomplished. Soulquake is just awful (and gives your opponent access to all of the creatures you’ve milled), but is the closest thing to an Evacuation available. Finally, while not a milling card per se, Bloodchief Ascension can be absurdly powerful when active when an Archive Trap goes off. The blue-black milling deck has more options than the mono-blue deck, and presents unique ways to deplete the opponent’s deck.
A special note must be made about Haunting Echoes. Haunting Echoes is a strong card all on its own and becomes a monster card when combined with milling. A Traumatize on turn five and Haunting Echoes on turn six can be the end of an opponent’s otherwise healthy deck right there. Do not underestimate the power of this combo, on the other hand, relying on it may get you killed in the meantime. If it can be pulled off, it’s the ultimate in milling.
Red- A blue-red milling deck may seem counterintuitive, but can actually have some potential. Burn, including Lightning Bolt, Burst Lightning, Punishing Fire, and Volcanic Fallout will fry attacking creatures crispy. Burning Inquiry and Chandra Ablaze force card draw in such a way that can force the best cards out of the opponent’s hand, and Runeflare Trap can combo for an alternate win condition. Pyromancer’s Ascension may be the single best thing for a dedicated milling deck- imagine forking a Tome Scour, and while it’s on the stack, forking a Twincast, milling for twenty cards. Now imagine forking Archive Trap, with or without Twincast. Yeouch. A blue-red milling deck has the potential to be explosive but unwieldy, but it certainly sounds fun to play.
Green- Green probably provides the least for milling strategy, but can aid the blue milling cards in various ways. Green’s mana acceleration, notably Rampant Growth, Khalni Heart Expedition, and Harrow, serves two primary functions. First of all, it allows Hedron Crabs to go bonkers and pull their own weight. Secondly, it allows the bigger spells like Traumatize to hit the deck sooner. In the direction of Turbo-Fog, M10 brings back Fog itself and Zendikar provides green with Tanglesap. Blue-green milling might not quite get there on its own, but with all of this fixing, blue-green-x milling is definitely possible.
So there you have it. If you’ve gotten this far expecting me to name the best possible Standard milling deck, I’m sorry to disappoint you. I believe that it’s a good idea to lay out the possible contenders in each of the many ways that this deck can be built and let you take it from there depending on your collection and your own interests. Hopefully you’ve found this helpful and it’s jogged your own interest in whittling away the opponent’s deck. I’ll leave you with my take on a Grixis-color build, it builds on the foundation of blue milling with the power of black and red removal, Pyromancer’s Ascension, and Haunting Echoes.
10:Island
6:Swamp
2:Mountain
3:Crumbling Necropolis
2:Scalding Tarn
4:Hedron Crab
3:Howling Mine
3:Pyromancer’s Ascension
4:Archive Trap
4:Twincast
4:Doom Blade
3:Agony Warp
4:Tome Scour
2:Traumatize
2:Haunting Echoes
4:Mind Funeral
I considered other removal such as Lightning Bolt and Terminate. Lightning Bolt would probably go in the sideboard for black decks or weenie rushes, removing some or all of the Doom Blades. Terminate is a favorite, but it seemed a little unwise to run a card that required both splash colors in this current Standard (where, after all, colors in casting costs matter again). In the end, and of course depending on the metagame, I think that this is one of the more interesting builds available. It also makes for some crazy, memorable plays (Twincast to copy an opponent’s Cruel Ultimatum with a fully charged Ascension, for example).
Thanks for reading!
Brian Baker
nickbaker0@yahoo.com
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