Millstone / Discard deck

First, I'll try to help with your deck.  Questions - What format do you play? Does it matter?  Obviously you're just starting out, where do you play?  Do you have a budget?  How much do you spend on magic?

Mill isn't the best strategy, but it requires a specific kind of build.  Unlike burn spells where you can burn off threats and the spells have more than once use mill spells only attack the opposing players health.  And they start at 53 instead of 20 because you're treating their deck like hit points.  Yes they lose 1 life a turn by drawing etc... but in order to get be able to mill them out you need to deny them the right to kill you. Which is why control is best for the mill strategy.  UWB (Blue white black) is probably optimal for this strategy.

Lands - 15? that's way to low not going to cut it.  You will never cast mindseeker or adept reliably until turn 20 or so. You need a minimum of 24 for a deck like this and possibly more, and if you're going to be 2 color, picking up some more dual lands are the way to go. More guild gates, shocks lands (Hallowed Fountain), there are other lands that are not in standard if you don't care about format. Also utility lands like Nephalia Drownyard are extremely valuable here.

Creatures - you should really be running a minimum number of creatures, you're goal isn't to kill them with damage, and you need room for the control aspect i mentioned. You need answers not threats.  Creatures are threats. A backup win condition might be advisable a big creature like Ætherling

Spells - these are your answers to your opponents threats.  Milling him isn't enough they're still drawing cards every turn and due to the randomized nature of the deck you can't control what they're drawing.  You need removal spells like DuressThoughtseizeDoom Blade Oblivion Ring Detention Sphere, sweepers like Wrath of God and Supreme Verdict and last and maybe most important counter magic like CounterspellDissolveSyncopate.  Obviously these are just examples.  Also in this cateogory are your planeswalkers.  These are also part of your win condition.  Ashiok and jace are good here the liliana variants can also help.

deck examples.

http://www.mtgtop8.com/event?e=6096&d=235254
http://www.starcitygames.com/events/cov … _joe_.html

Now that is said... i would advise against milling.  It's a poor strategy for winning.  While it can be fun and make your opponent frustrated and angry it's not particularly effective.  Lets say you play a 20 turn game and they're on the play and your on the draw  SO they do 19 "damage" to themselves through drawing.  I'll just use tomb scour as an example vs shock.  Lets also say you mill 5% of their deck every 4 turns vs 5% of their life every 4 turns rounded down in both cases.

So you still have 16 life or 29 cards to get through at this point before you win.  If you notice the average effectiveness for "killing" your opponent is 2% in favor of tomb scour, but what if your opponent has 3/2 intimidate on the board and you draw no other cards except mill and tomb scour?  what do you do?   Shock can kill this creature the turn it comes into play, sure you lose some damage to their face, but you save lots of damage that you would have taken if you just stocked mill cards.   Bottom line, milling is bad, it's bad math, it's narrow and doesn't provide you with flexible options.  Any other single card is better than any mill card for the same CMC with very few exceptions.

• Turn    Life    Library    Tome Scour    Shock
        1    20    53    9%    10%
        2    20    52    10%    10%
        3    20    51    10%    10%
        4    19    48    10%    11%
        5    19    47    11%    11%
        6    19    46    11%    11%
        7    19    45    11%    11%
        8    18    42    12%    11%
        9    18    41    12%    11%
        10    18    40    13%    11%
        11    18    39    13%    11%
        12    17    37    14%    12%
       13    17    36    14%    12%
       14    17    35    14%    12%
       15    17    34    15%    12%
       16    16    32    16%    13%
       17    16    31    16%    13%
       18    16    30    17%    13%
      19    16    29    17%    13%
      average          13%    11%

* tried to edit to improve the list, but formatting blah.

Last edited by elpablo (2014-07-09 16:55:37)