Mind Taking! EDH Multiplayer Mill

Commander / EDH* gentica

SCORE: 39 | 68 COMMENTS | 7481 VIEWS | IN 21 FOLDERS


Asher18 says... #1

you could also still use Jace Beleren for drawing... oh and while you're at it, Phyrexian Arena would fit nice, or Underworld Connections

September 4, 2014 6:36 p.m.

Asher18 says... #2

oh, and Clone because copies in EDH

September 4, 2014 6:37 p.m.
September 4, 2014 6:42 p.m.

Lloyd156_BLUE says... #4

Maybe a Twincast if you hit that card with a Traumatize or Denying Wind it's pretty good, demoralizing for your opponent though! haha

I had a 60 card casual self mill deck that worked around drawing loads of cards and having multiple copies of Jace's Erasure . I had cards like Arcanis the Omnipotent , Consecrated Sphinx , Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur and other enchantment cards such as Thought Reflection and Mind Unbound which is amazing because if people don't deal with it quick enough, you're drawing ridiculous amounts of cards a turn! Also Venser's Journal . Dont know if any of those cards might help in your milling but hopefully they will.

Also Psychic Spiral is really good for milling someone late game.

September 5, 2014 10:06 a.m.

Eboksba says... #5

You are forgetting what is probably the most important card here,

Forced Fruition

September 10, 2014 3:30 p.m.

lil_cheez says... #6

September 10, 2014 4:50 p.m.

Eboksba says... #7

Oona seems like a good card, but to be honest, she's a mix up between Bitterblossom that's expensive and a Sands of Delirium , which is done better through other cards, such as Keening Stone

Though I am a huge fan of Oona, she's not really well meant for the EDH scene unless you have good mana pull for blue.

September 11, 2014 12:19 a.m.

Copperfield says... #8

I run sepulchral primordial and diluvian primordial in my lazav mill to steal milled goodies. I think they would work in this awesome mill deck! +1

September 15, 2014 10:31 a.m.

fexxianosch says... #9

with so much "enemy" draw i would recommend Underworld Dreams :-)

September 16, 2014 3:57 a.m.

fexxianosch says... #10

Also Phenax, God of Deception maybe instead of your Undead Alchemist . Mill is much more consistent and it works well Consuming Aberration and Sewer Nemesis with but you have no token generator...
Realmwright and Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth work very well in addition to Crypt Ghast (since its reminder text does not determine its identity) as an additional mana source.
In addition to your statement about " Bear in mind that big mana is pretty easy for this deck to hit." Increasing Confusion could be very nice too...
Anyway... i love mill :-) +1

September 16, 2014 4:26 a.m.

Advocate says... #11

September 16, 2014 6:30 p.m.

enpc says... #12

have you thought about running Strionic Resonator ? Lets your commander grind for 8 instead of 4.

September 18, 2014 2:07 a.m.

ENZU says... #13

I recently attempted multiplayer mill with Oona, Queen of the Fae.

http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/she-is-the-decking-queen/

September 18, 2014 11:17 a.m.

tyforthevenom says... #14

why not have Laboratory Maniac and make it self mill?

September 21, 2014 6:45 p.m.

tyforthevenom says... #15

a creature you could also have is Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur

September 21, 2014 6:48 p.m.

enpc says... #16

@tyforthevenom if you're wanting a win with Laboratory Maniac you're better off using something like a Blue Sun's Zenith combo to draw yourself rather than mill. It means you don't lose access to your resourses and will actually trigger Lab Maniac's win con.

September 21, 2014 7:16 p.m.

tyforthevenom says... #17

Running tutors is what you want but i was suggesting as an alternate way to allow your deck to win

September 21, 2014 7:43 p.m.

Eboksba says... #18

No one should ever use infinite combo in Commander, it violates the greatest rule out there: Have fun. Winning through self-mill is a quick way to have smiles drained from the table and have them shuffling before you even reveal the card (but say the name).They're already shuffling and finding a way to exclude you before you even begin.

So feel free to include an infinite combo if you want to get rid all of the greatest threats on the table: other players. Try it once and viola! Those players with evil decks that are cheap because your deck relies on gimmicks can't touch you now!

September 21, 2014 9:30 p.m.

enpc says... #19

That entirely comes down to your opinion of fun. One could use the exact same argument about a stax deck or a control deck. What's worse than a game just ending is a game that is long and drawn out, especially when one or more players just sit there drawing a card then passing their turn because they can't do anything.

September 21, 2014 9:46 p.m.

tyforthevenom says... #20

Who said anything about infinite combos?

September 21, 2014 10:18 p.m.

Eboksba says... #21

Inifini-manaing yourself to insta self mill to laboratory maniac isn't particularly fun (satisfying, but only for you)

I was actually going to reply yesterday, but then the power went out and other such shenanigans. Some infinite combos are acceptable. Insta win conditions without any board interaction are not.

Infinite mana isn't generally acceptable if you say, have Oona out, or some creature that pumps +1/+0 for 1 mana, or something silly that like. The only real combos that are acceptable are the kinda 1 turn thins like putting Banishing Knack on a Leech Bonder with lots of mana. The effect goes away, it's "handleable", and it's not the end of the world if they happen. Making everything legendary then having Karakas somehow infinitely tap for 1 turn is ok. Scrying, putting Laboratory Maniac on the bottom of your library and casting Tunnel Vision on yourself isn't.

Using infinite comboes aren't fun and it's not really fun watching people defend them either. (I am only talking about EDH, infinite stuff is perfectly fine in other game modes, but it shouldn't ever really be tolerated in a game group in a mode where you're trying to have fun. Still, infinite combos in other game formats leave bile in everyone's mouth.)

If you 1 turn instawin-1 turn infinite turn yourself, people will be shuffling and leaving before you finish your sentence. Also, you may find that after you've left, that excuses will be made to not have you hang round to use that 2000 dollar deck of yours that wins by tutoring 1 combo and other gimmicks. People play EDH because they want to have a nice, long, multiplayer game with excellent plays and generally a good time with game board politics. They didn't come to watch you play by yourself. That's like, watching someone play solitaire when you're holding a DS or a laptop with your favorite games in your hand.

It was a side tracked comment, I just saw something try to suggest to a perfectly fine (and fun! I've playtested it) that it needed an infinite combo in EDH.

I mean,

Sure, if you want no friends. Even infinite combos that don't go to win conditions in 2 turns are generally intolerable (infinite life with other decks that don't have non life-based win conditions and so forth)

Perhaps if you had a deck based around infinite combos, you could go sell it and pay for college with it.I've seen decks with nothing but tutors and infinite mana decks with some random meaningless commander and a Blue Sun's Zenith before at over 6000 dollars. Unless you're doing it competitively, dumping that much money into a game format where people have fun is a waste of time.

Wow, Sorry for ranting, I just needed to put it somewhere. The deck is great, love, love mill myself. I have no suggestions.

September 22, 2014 11:54 a.m.

enpc says... #22

I think this discussion might be better suited in its own thread, that way the conversation here can be on the topic of the deck specifically.

September 22, 2014 6:37 p.m.

gentica says... #23

Wow, wasn't expecting all that!

Interestingly, these were questions I considered while building this deck - how much combo to include.

Where I came down was this: I'm not keen on instant-win combos because they're boring. It's also neither difficult nor original to make a deck that works off of them. Some infinite combos are OK, but only to the extent they're in service to the greater theme of the deck- i.e. milling (multiple) opponents. So both the Gravecrawler and Phyrexian Altar and Selhoff Occultist /Bitter Ordeal combo and Bloodchief Ascension or Dimir Guildmage / Mindcrank stayed. I also kept in the Spell Crumple / Hinder and Tunnel Vision "headshot" because the effects can be independently useful and sometimes you just need to kill off a player.

September 22, 2014 7:34 p.m.

enpc says... #24

My concern with the Gravecrawler / Phyrexian Altar combo is that it needs too many pieces which are dead drops outside of comboing off. It effectively is a 4 card combo with no redundancy on two of the pieces. In some ways I would rather generate some mana from a Cabal Coffers and then spam Mystic Speculation with a Consuming Aberration on the field.

Infinite combos that are a fallback (with no other real synergy in the deck) are tricky - the more you fall back on them the more you'll find yourself redesigning the entire deck. And then you'll wonder if Oona, Queen of the Fae would be a more suitable general. Then Mirko Vosk, Mind Drinker will go in the deck - for a while until he is eventually replaced by more control pieces.

September 22, 2014 7:59 p.m.

Eboksba says... #25

is true. Having combos are nice, but the problem (and primary challenge) between EDH and other formats are the fact that you only get 1 card of each. It is by design a method to extend the game and limit combos. The odds of you getting both Gravecrawler AND Phyrexian Altar are already very small. You have, well, a 1% chance of getting either, never mind both. You also had a 3rd 1%. Multiply those together and you get a bunch of 0's that spell nope if you put them together.

In EDH, people generally need to have the spike gameplay mentality without the doucheyness of them. Every card needs to contribute to the deck and be powerful by itself. I first made the mistake of including tap mechanic merfolk in a deck of mine, only to find out that unlike the other format, modern, I never, ever, ever, ever drew the pieces I needed, with or without all the tutoring in the world. (paper proxies of course for tutors) If you have a 100 cards and each and every one of them is impactful, you dun it right. The above comment is correct, go for theme and style and individual card power than combos, they just don't happen.

My tap mechanic merfolk was literally 50% scry. Still never got what I needed, and when I started to compare to other normal EDH decks, I found it was vastly underperforming.

September 22, 2014 9:33 p.m.

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