Glimpse the Unthinkable if you can afford it

So I'm thinking once BoG cards are released, I'm going to remove Fatespinner and Mind Sculpt for Siren of the Silent Song and Hidden Strings . That way, I can potentially make my opponent mill two and discard two each turn I deal damage with Siren of the Silent Song.

Why the fuck are you running Tome Scour.

Tome Scour is actually a good card. An one-drop mills five? excellent. It is better then Mind Sculpt , which costs an extra colorless but only mills two more. 5 cards is 12% of your opponent's deck, and using all four destroys close to half of it. It's a VERY good card for a low mana cost

Except that it's not. Here is a copypasta of the same discussion I had on another mill deck that you should NOT tl;dr if you actually want to learn something about MTG.

Think about card advantage. You're playing 3 cards to mill 20 when you could play 2 and do the same. By playing more cards at once you're losing out on options you can use.

Card advantage is not an easy thing to get a grasp of, sure took me a long time to get the gist of it and what it means and I still are not fully versed in it. Here's what my friend, who gives out great Modern advice, told me about card advantage (it's a long read but well worth it):

Him:

so let's give an example of card advantage

you cast a spell,

and I counter + draw using Cryptic Command

I've gained +1 card advantage

off you

because we've both expended a card, and I've drawn a new one

clearly I come out on top.

card advantage dictates how much better you can control the game

since you have more options available to you

take mulliganing for example

If I mulligan down to 6, I'm already down 1 card.

if I mulligan to 5

I'm down two.

the further down on cards you are, the harder it is to beat the opponent

since you have no options.

Mill decks and burn decks both have the same problem of 'running out'

Me:

does that hold true even for a mill deck?

Him:

yes

Me:

what sort of options would i be losing out on

Him:

so take glimpse the unthinkable for instance

Me:

k

Him:

you mill ten of their cards

technically you haven't 'hurt' them at all

you've not impacted their field presence

you've not done damage to their hand

you are inherently -1ing off that

in the hopes you can close out the game fast enough

or that you can play visions of beyond later

and draw more.

the option that you're missing out on

by the way

is the ability to cast cards on later turns.

Me:

and by putting myself -1 on cards in hand, how does that affect my overall strategy? why would i not want to play cards as fast as possible?

Him:

because if you're not efficient

Him:

you're not playing cards later

let's say you run tome scour

turn one

you rip five cards from their library

turn two you take out 10 cards

turn three, you take out another five cards, and another ten from a glimpse

that's three lands, four tome scours, and a glimpse

you now have 0-1 cards in your hand

Me:

and now it's their turn to attack

Him:

sure you've milled them 30

but will you really be able to get that last 20 or so cards to mill?

probably not before they've done something crazy

Me:

right because now i need to miracle draw my glimpses

Him:

mm

this is why tome scour's bad

of course you'd like to play your cards early and quickly

but not at the cost of you playing more worthwhile spells later

i.e. let's say you instead have four glimpse the unthinkables

along with a visions of beyond

turn one you do nothing, which seems really bad

but turn two you glimpse them

which in actuality almost catches you up on the mill front

then on turn three you glimpse again, and then draw three

from visions

suddenly you've still got 7 cards in hand

and you've milled them twenty

and you're still capable of milling them more later.

so that's why card advantage is important

the reason why Jund is so good

is because they play cards that inherently 2-for-1 the opponent

they play cards like Liliana

sacrifice your creature

then you have to use a spell to kill Liliana

otherwise she'll threaten a discard, then another sacrifice.

blightning is the same

it doesn't even matter what cards you're getting rid of

you're just killing them through card advantage

Me:

right because on their turns they have less things they can do

Him:

right

you also run Dark Confidant

which, yes, hurts your life points

but you draw cards off of it

there are discard-heavy jund decks

that use dark confidant to draw them inquisition

then you're trading 1-for-1

but you're getting 'free' cards off of dark confidant

Me:

but they still have draw step

Him:

yes

Me:

pretty much 0 for 1

Him:

yeah

so card advantage

is one way of looking at the game

seeing how many cards a player has on the hand/field combined

versus another player

Me:

would you consider it a matter of pacing?

Him:

it's not about pacing your plays

Him:

it's about

building a deck

that paces your plays for you

that's why you don't run tome scour

see?

with his deck, it's impossible -not- to run out of cards

I used to run Tome Scour then I learned the advantages of not needing to use 2 cards to do the job of 1.

iamacasual First off, it is one thing to give constructive criticism to someone that you don't know, but is rather poor manners to say "why the fuck...". Secondly, the whole impact of that long conversation is that I would mill hard early and then be overwhelmed by creatures mid to late game. That would be true if I was running a pure mill deck, but I'm running mill mixed with control which I even plainly state in the description and updates. I get card advantage with Arcane Denial , Psychic Strike and especially Extirpate . Fog Bank and Fatespinner do a great job of fending off attacks/stalling until I mill them out. Archive Trap is great as I almost always get to mill 13 for free since most of your modern and legacy types run decks that let them search for land or other cards. If they don't take the bait on the combo with Ghost Quarter , I just pay the cost late game to finish off their library. 'Why the fuck'' are you an ass that is so focused on one card and did not bother to really look at the deck as a whole? I don't give two shits about your worthless opinion as my deck has played very well for me consistently against even aggro decks. So why don't you get off your high horse and go fuck yourself.

I did look at the deck as a whole, and to be honest it is not as good as you think it is, ESPECIALLY if you're playing Legacy.

You have very little "control". Do you even know what control is? It's counterspells and disruption. You have Psychic Strike and Arcane Denial--hardly the best counterspells out there. Strike is more useful than Denial as it synergizes with your deck strategy as a whole. If you want that draw 1 with Arcane Denial, use Remand . You bounce the spell back to their hand, but that means they just timewalked themselves. That also gives you the advantage of knowing a card in their hand. If they play that spell again next turn, chances are they drew into nothing and have nothing else that they can do with their hand.

No pure mill deck is competitive, I get that. However, if your only wincon IS milling, you don't want to waste space on shit cards like Tome Scour and Mind Sculpt.

My "worthless opinion"? I've been playing and testing mill far longer than you have so you can take everything I say regarding the strategy as fact.

If i was playing legacy mill i'd Painter's Servant + Grindstone

exactly.

And where's the "life gain"?

Not to mention every other deck in legacy has Emrakul, the Aeons Torn in it.

This guy seems to think that Fog Spinner will actually save him. HA.

I'm not saying this deck is bad. Im saying it doesnt belong in legacy, it fits in with all the modern mill decks out there.

It would get destroyed in Modern as well.

If he modded his list some it'd be sick. theres a similar modern mill list out there that can mill someone out on turn 3. Scary stuff.

Archive Trap can mill out turn 1. Most Modern mill decks don't win until Turn 5, and that's if they're lucky. Nearly all 5 of the main T1 archetypes win by T5. This list isn't going to win by T5 any time soon, even WITH a god hand.

Im not saying mill is T1 or anything. It's a solid 1.5 with traps, Mind Funeral , Hedron Crab , and Glimpse the Unthinkable . I play scapeshift in modern and i win turn 4-6 but its T1 by far.

Right. Basically the mill deck I have up (I need to do something about those counterspells, but not sure what).

However, this build is so far from a proper T1.5 mill deck.

iamacasual while you may have been playing mill for longer than he has (and that, like all your boastful claims, is up to no small amount of scrutiny due to the fact that you're behind the safety of a computer screen and thus can make up any kind of bullshit without impunity), that hardly makes anything you say "fact". You can (and probably do) fuck up just as much as the rest of us, if not more so considering you probably can't see your hand of cards when you play because your ego is so big it covers your whole field of view.

Also @Fioch: I applaud your use of Archive Trap . It is by far and wide one of my favorite cards ever, and my favorite mill card specifically.

Uh huh. Look at my modern mill list then look at his, nevermind that his is a Legacy build.

It's hard to give constructive criticism when someone insists that a trash card is actually good.

canterlotguardian, thank you for your comments, I appreciate it! iamacasual, I never insisted that Tome Scour was such a great card. The only thing I insisted is that you are rude and should keep your shitty attitude to yourself. I fully realize that there are better mill cards to have than that one, but it is what I have right now so I'm using it. You could have simply made a suggestion of a better card to swap in instead of Tome Scour , much like pingpongball120 did when he suggested Glimpse the Unthinkable . I noticed that you have only one deck posted on your profile. Maybe it is because all of your other decks are lame as your personality? Maybe it is because you spend too much time trolling others to distract you from the fact you still live at home with your mom? All I know is that it is people like you that take some of the fun away from this amazing game that should be stress free. Instead I have to deal with ignorant comments from some little shit that I have never met before. Thanks for stopping by again, please feel free to take a Tragic Slip anytime!!!