Sideboard


Maybeboard


What is the goal of this deck?

Jace and the boys either mill themselves or someone else, depending on whichever goal you prefer to pursue. (As a power move you might even want to go for both.) All that for a really low manacost and without major resistance you'll pull it off at around turn 5.

Okay, but how exactly do I do all that?

To win you have to empty either your own library or those of all the other players. Both are risky options, since it's difficult to mill multiple opponents fast enough and/or survive with an evershrinking library. Jace, Wielder of Mysteries and Laboratory Maniac are your salvation, since they allow you to win, instead of lose, whenever you have an empty draw.

You mainly use 3 tactics to pull this off: (self-)milling cards, drawing cards and returning cards from the grave. To succeed in doing so I also included some extra enablers, copies and ways to protect your boardstate and yourself.

IMPORTANT: If you want to use selfmilling, you have to draw a card to win when your library is empty. This means that you will need an immediate carddraw source with you whenever your library goes empty, otherwise people might remove your wincon-cards before your next turn arises and will make you thus lose ath your next drawstep.

Part 1: Milling and Reducing

The main source of milling is putting Persistent Petitioners on the BF as numerous as you can and then tap them, this is helped by the presence of Thrumming Stone , which excellerates the emptying of your library more and getting more Petitioners on the field. Your signature spell, Dramatic Reversal, is meant to allow you to do it over and over again.

  • Fraying Sanity is another mill-excellerator, cursing yourself with it makes not only your deck, but those of others (spellslingers and graveyard decks especially) a usefull tool in getting to your wincon. You can also mill others and witness their agonising mental decline whenever you drain their card-supply turn by turn.

  • Hedron Crab is cheap and works wonders with the landcards in this deck for obvious reasons. Terramorphic Expanse, Evolving Wilds and Myriad Landscape even allow him to trigger twice.

  • Wand of Vertebrae is also a very low cost miller, but only one card at a time. Just don't underestimate the difference that could make.

  • Don't like your milling source to get countered? Play Ipnu Rivulet, a landcard for when you need mana and a one time milling machine when you're in a pinch.

  • Leveler is by far the most powerful in this category, but only if Laboratory Maniac and/or Jace, Wielder of Mysteries is already in play. If it isn't countered it wins you the game instantly, but it might be your downfall if they're able to get rid of your wincon bro(s).

  • The last for this category is Jace Beleren. He's cheap, but it takes alot of time and effort to let him actually mill. When the time comes and he finally reaches 10 loyalty, he does hits like a truck. In the meantime he's great at keeping others as friends while also lowering the number of cards in each library.

Part 2: Drawing and Cycling

Milling alone will easily leave you without cards to play with and eventually lose the game. To make our deck more accessible (and actually perform the wincon at your own terms) I've included multiple options for drawing cards.

Each planeswalker in this deck helps greatly for this purpose.

  • Jace, Wielder of Mysteries mills and puts one card in your hand per turn and once you get to 8 loyalty he even fills it up completely.

  • Jace Beleren is an amazing carddrawer. He gives you a card every turn and if you feel kind (or someone else's library is empty) you can let others draw a card too. People unaware of the massive advantage he gives you and only focus on the extra cards they get to play with will probably ignore him until it's too late. Others, however, might make use of him to make their own decks excell even more. (In other words, the more competitive the group, the less effective he is.)

  • Kasmina, Enigmatic Mentor is rather a cycle than a straight carddraw, but to make up for it she's an amazing source of protection.

The very b l u e and more straightforward spellcasting resulting in more cards in your hand is also present here, however not in a numerous amount.

  • Treasure Cruise basicly allows you to draw 3 cards for only 1 mana. The selfmilling aspect (which you will do anyways) fills up your graveyard fast enough to not having to care about 7 cards disappearing into exile.

  • Windfall works like a wildcard, and a very useful one (especially when your hand isn't as stacked as your opponents) too. It throws a wrench in any plan people were building up to execute, removes cards from every library and puts everyone on a level playingfield in card advantage.

Last but not least we have a few lands that are in function not unlike the other cards in this category.

  • Mikokoro, Center of the Sea lets everyone draw a card for a small fee on your regard, bringing the same advantages and disadvantages as our Jace Beleren. Unlike that Jace it is more protected since it's a land, but more resource heavy than him.

  • Lonely Sandbar let's you either choose for more access to mana or a one-mana-cycle. It's simple and adaptable to your needs.

  • Reliquary Tower makes sure that whatever cards you draw are also able to be kept when it's more than just a few.

Part 3: Reuse and Resupply

You might think that the returning cards to your library isn't the best idea for a self-milling deck, which is correct if you control your commander and/or a Laboratory Maniac. This, however, isn't guaranteed to always be the case, so this serves as a safety net in combination to access to the otherwise lost cards in your grave from milling.

  • Wand of Vertebrae gives you access to 5 of your favorite fallen friends at any point in the game for as long as he's on the board. You'll only be able to do it once, so choose wisely when to use it.

  • Devious Cover-Up lets you return 4 cards from the grave. It's main use is as a slightly expensive counterspell, which is damn handy, but its additional effect is very useful under the right circumstances and luckily completely optional.

  • Drownyard Temple lets you retrieve itself and place some extra mana on your field for future plays.

  • Haunted Fengraf is a simple manasource, but is able to give one creature a second chance. Unfortunatly we do not choose which one, but almost none of them are useless in most situations.

Part 4: Safetynets and accelarators

As discussed before, a few cards serve multiple puroses and others just don't fit in other categories, let's go over all of them here.

  • Kasmina, Enigmatic Mentor, Devious Cover-Up and Counterspell help you to keep everything you play in its rightful place.

  • Guard Gomazoa is my favorite blue blocker in mtg history (I dare you to change my mind) and while it floats happily over his petitioners-filled pond, you get to enjoy the serenity of draining it dry without worrying too much about attack-based interferance. It is not perfect, since it's only one immovable object and there are other ways around it than a simple head-first attack.

  • Windfall can get rid of possible useful hands others have and is thus a great ally of chaos.

  • Spark Double and Clever Impersonator are meant to allow you doubles of your wincon enablers or protective units. This means that you get to do your favorite actions twice as much.

Part 5: Stumbleblocks and weaknesses

Milling is looked upon as one of the less effective wincons in magic and people aren't entirely wrong in thinking that. It's a strategy that you'll have to devote alot of resources to and, as stated before, milling every opponent isn't easy and milling yourself has its own set of risks.

This deck specificly is heavily reliant on it's commander (or that one other replacement card) and can only win by either having a huge sensitive boardstate or a niche combo. Other players will have a myriad of ways to rid you of key pieces if they know how your deck functions.

If you want to use selfmilling, you have to draw a card to win when your library is empty. This means that you will need an immediate carddraw source with you whenever your library goes empty, otherwise people might remove your wincon-cards before your next turn arises and will make you thus lose ath your next drawstep.

Part 6: Molding and replacing

As you can see I've placed many cards in my sideboard and maybeboard, all seem useful for this deck but either lack versatility or don't have the oomph that others inside the deck offer. There's a bunch of useful counters, millers and enablers that you might prefer over other things this deck contains. (Most probably the two copy boys or Devious Cover-Up.) I use my sideboard to place my favorites of the bunch and the Maybeboard for the rest. So don't forget to check it out.

If you do not like certain cards or tactics mentioned it is ofcourse also possible to just replace those cards with more Persistent Petitioners.

As an alternative you can also just build this deck as nothing but Jace, Wielder of Mysteries, Mana Severance as signature spell and 58 lands for a simple, but (in my opinion) boring, combodeck. (Suggested by u/hvacu on reddit)

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Date added 5 years
Last updated 4 years
Legality

This deck is Oathbreaker legal.

Rarity (main - side)

2 - 2 Mythic Rares

7 - 6 Rares

11 - 5 Uncommons

26 - 6 Commons

Cards 60
Avg. CMC 2.68
Tokens Copy Clone, Wizard 2/2 U
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