After learning a few lessons from the past 2 weeks, I've decided to rebuild my deck from the ground up. I'll walk you thru my process and describe my complete reasoning every step of the way.
I feel like everything I build starts with a free aesthetic choice. What do I find fun or interesting? Other values such as being competitive, consistency, efficiency, etc. come into play later. I like to believe that I at least get to choose my highest level goal, otherwise why would I spend my time on an activity reaching for a goal that I'm disinterested in?
The victory condition is straight forward from the rules of the game, but how do we get there?
A classic method is to simply wait until the opponent's 54th (on the draw) or 55th (on the play) turn, wherin they will draw the 61st card from their deck and lose. With this strategy, we ensure that we don't run out of cards first either by playing with 61+ cards (weak) or including at least 1 graveyard shuffle effect, such as Elixir of Immortality.
There are a few challenges to this strategy. The most glaring is the prospect of staying alive for 54+ turns. In legacy, even one unanswered Murktide Regent will swiftly kill me. Its daunting to think that I can hold off every deck in the Legacy cosmos indefinitely.
Another challenge is that 54+ turns take a long time to play and it would be hard to play a full 3 games in regular tournament time constraints.
A final challenge is that it doesn't seem very fun for me. I've learned that I enjoy playing proactive decks, rather than reactive decks. I would love to win the game quickly if my opponent is not prepared.
A big advantage for a stall deck is that it can budget all of its deck space on answers and only needs 1 threat. This means that the stall deck's answers will outnumber the opponent's threats and increase the probability that no opposing threat wins the game.
To speed up the 'mill' win condition of the opponent failing to draw a card from an empty library, we can actively move cards from their library elsewhere. For the sake of clarity in this article, I will use the term 'mill' to describe any effect that removes cards from the opponent's library, regardless of where they are sent to. This gives us 4 distinct kinds of mill effects:
Here are some cards that demonstrate each kind of mill:
When building a Mill deck, the first thing that comes to my mind is jamming as many Mill to Graveyard effects as I can into a deck. Maybe we could even do it without any creatures!
When we think of one-time use spell effects, it is easy to draw an analogy between mill spells and burn spells. Here are some of the most mana efficient single use burn spells ever printed
Here are some of the most mana efficient single use mill spells ever printed
Note that there is no gurantee that Archive Trap will trigger. Unlike Lightning Bolt, which has a huge stable of functionally similar cards, Tome Scour is the only card of its kind. We would need 10 Tome Scours and 4 lands to deplete the opponent's library by turn 4. This is impossible, because we would have only drawn 10 cards total! Luckily, Mill has a few 2 and 3 mana spells that are as or nearly as efficient as Tome Scour, including Glimpse the Unthinkable and Fractured Sanity. The point is that Mill players tend to care more about card efficiency even more than mana efficiency. We want to burn thru their library quickly while using as few cards as possible.
Let's imagine that we wanted to win a competitive game by putting a bunch of single use mill spells together in a deck and win the game thru pure aggression like burn.
To my current knowledge, the best we can hope for in this kind of deck is winning on Turn 3 in a fishbowl with no resistance. Here is an example that mills 54 cards by turn 3 and wins on the opponent's next turn:
Even then, I feel like I'm misleading you a bit since Fraying Sanity isn't a single use card. I would have to replace it with a 3 mana card that is guranteed to mill 20 cards.
If we can pull this off, then its great against a creatureless burn deck, since they tend to win on turn 4. However, it is a different story when we go up against a deck with some defense.
The sequence above wins with what is essentially an 8-card combo, uses all available mana, uses 8 of the 9 cards it will have drawn by turn 3 on the play, and requires upwards of 28 lands to consistenty draw 4 mana sources by turn 3 on the play.
Here are pitfalls of this approach:
There are many ways to deck the opponent or yourself thru combo techniques.
Some decks rely on two card combos like Painter's Servant + Grindstone that win the game pretty much on the spot.
These decks tend to run no other mill cards and focus all of their cards and mana on finding the combo pieces and keeping the pieces and themselves alive. I'm not in the mood to make a combo deck and wish to interact with my opponent, but I would be willing to tryout putting Painter's Servant in my deck, since my opponent will likely waste a card or two on killing it due to the threat of me playing grindstone. It would also allow me to play Hydroblast/Blue Elemental Blast as very strong answers / protection spells.
Other decks rely on alternate win conditions such as the effects of Laboratory Maniac or Thassa's Oracle, which allow them to win the game if they fail to draw a card themselves.
Self-Mill is strong, because you are milling a deck that you custom-built for this purpose. You ignore the opponent, you don't give them any graveyard or other advantages, and there are some ridiculously strong cards available for this purpose.
Some decks are built to have all lands or no lands. This allows for them to be self-milled by narrower cards. Here are some examples:
When I was growing up, I played lots of casual Magic. There are plenty of milling combos out there that are fun, but haven't seen as much competitive play as they are less consistent / more mana intensive than a Painter's Servant combo or Thassa's Oracle Combo. But who knows, maybe with enough ingenuity and maybe the right future released card, these will show up in competitive play someday.
Below is an example of a beautiful mill combo that is every bit as lethal as Painter's Servant Combo, but takes more mana and sorceries/enchantments are harder to tutor/reanimate than artifacts.
Here are a few cards that could combo excellantly with the right deck.
I want the experience of going toe to toe with another wizard in a fight to the death. I want to threaten them severely enough that they need to disrupt my game plan or suffer the consequences and answer their threats efficiently. I would love to get into counter wars over key cards and ignore less threatening cards.
My goal is to play cards that can win the game by themselves
To ground this brew into the context of competitive Legacy, here is one example of a Delver deck that I'm inspired by and want to beat. It relies on 3 core creature threats that can win the game on their own.
Relying on such low cost threats, means that Delver can afford to play less lands than other decks and thus sees more threats and answers than many of its peers.
Delver decks protect their threats with counter magic such as Force of Will, Daze, and a variety of sideboard cards. These spells can also reactively disrupt opposing threats.
Delver decks also proactively disrupt their opponent with Lightning Bolt and Wasteland.
Delver decks exchange extra mana for better cards thru cantrips such as Brainstorm, Ponder, and Mishra's Bauble. These spells capitalize on the cheapness of the deck's threat and answer cards and ensure that the Delver player consistently has the threat/answer that they need.
I've read that Delver has nearly a 50% win-rate across the board. It tends to be competitive with the entire field.
Graveyard Hate. That said, I've found in my experience that Delver flounders in the face of Leyline of the Void, which can't be countered if it begins in play and turns off both Dragon's Rage Channeler and Murktide Regent.
Milling. Curiously Enough, Milling itself can disrupt flipping over Delver of Secrets, but it helps DRC and Murktide Regent, so I'd say that Milling to Graveyard helps Delver, rather than hindering it.
Attacking. Delver can only win thru repeated successful attacks. This isn't a problem against creature-less decks or defenses made up of non-flying blockers, but Delver will grind to a halt if it faces strong flying defenders that are as well protected as their own.
Blocking. Delver players can attack and block effectively, but can't do both at the same time. This is pretty good, but in our mill deck we might be able to better if we 'attack' thru effects, rather than declaring attackers.
I could play Delver, but I think it would be more fun, challenging, and rewarding to play with a Mill deck.
More objectively, I think that we can build a deck that is less susceptible to graveyard hate, overcomes more defenses, and has even better defensive capabilities.
Here is a short list of some mana efficient cards that, in the right deck, can win the game on their own using mill effects.
Here is a short list of some cards that make primary threats even better.
Here is a short list of some cards that can finish the game quicker, kind of like how Delver can finish their opponent off with lightning bolt. I don't think they are as strong contenders for my deck, because they typically can't play any defensive role.
Here are some cards that I'm considering that could keep my threats alive.
I might be willing to sacrifice the power of my disruption cards for the sake of running a more proactive deck.
Here are cards that trade resources like mana, life, cards, turns, etc.
What do I wish to experience consistently when playing my deck? What is fun / competitive.
Here is my first draft of my new Mill deck. I threw in every card that I am considering before testing. I've tried to allocate 4 spots in the deck for spells that are useful by themselves and I wouldn't mind having multiples of. Likewise, I only included 1 copy of spells that are dead in multiples or without the presence of another card.
I'm trying to build a non-linear deck that has multiple paths to victory. In this deck, drawing 0 counterbalances will be better than drawing 2, since I will simply go with an alternative plan.
Stop turn 1 kill combo.
Turn 1 Disruptive Spells.
12 Threats
Protective spells.
Other Disruptive Spells.
Exchangers.
Secondary Threats.
Lands.
I want to play a land on each of my first 3 turns. According to my calculations, I'd accomplish this 81.90% of the time if I had 25 lands in my deck. According to xerox theory, each brainstorm / ponder counts as half a land. If I include 8 copies of them in my deck, then I would only need 21 lands.
And there we have an 84 card draft consisting of 67 spells and 21 Lands. Obviously we want to use a 60 card deck, so we'll need to prune the deck by cutting out 28 spell cards.
That said, here is the full draft deck in text form:
Mill Deck.draft1 ================ There are 88 cards in this deck right now. Spells (67 total. Need to cut 28). ------ 4 Force of Will 1 Force of Negation 4 Swan Song 4 Spell Pierce 4 An Offer You Can't Refuse 4 Swords to Plowshares 4 Hedron Crab 4 Ruin Crab 1 The Mindskinner 1 Grindstone 1 Painter's Servant 1 Court of Cunning 4 Mother of Runes 4 Turn Aside 1 Counterbalance 1 Daze 1 Stifle 1 Consign to Memory 1 Surgical Extraction 4 Brainstorm 4 Ponder 4 Elightened Tutor 1 Flow of Ideas 1 Proclamation of Rebirth 1 Fraying Sanity 1 Exploration 1 Crucible of Worlds 4 Mockingbird Lands(21 total. Can be adjusted later.) ----- 4 Islands 2 Tundra 1 Tropical Island 1 Underground Sea 12 Fetch Land 1 Mystic Sanctuary
Force of Negation. The probability of drawing 1 of a set of 4 cards in my opening hand is 39.95%, wherease its 47.46% with 5 cards.
If I need a Force of Will in my opening hand else I lose the game, then I can calculate how a 5th copy would improve my chances. I'm expected to see .4 copies in the first hands, .8 copies in the first 2 hands, and 1.2 copies in the first 3 hands. With Force of Negation as the 5th Force of Will, I'm expected to see .47 copies in the first hand, .9492 copies in the first 2 hands, and 1.42 copies in the first 3 hands.
It looks like in both scenarios, I can't expect to reliably see a Force of Will unless I am prepared to take 3 mulligans. Conversely, the change of drawing 2 force of wills in my opening hand with 4 copies is 6.32%, but it leaps to 9.92% with 5 copies. If I am facing off against a deck that won't kill me before my first land, then I'd rather have a counter spell with neutral card advantage that I can take advantage of in the majority of the game when I will have a land on the table.
If I need to stop my opponent from winning on their turn 2, or I am on the play, then I think I'd rather have An Offer You Can't Refuse. It has a drawback, but stops fast decks dead in the tracks while being card advantage neutral.
Turn 1 Disruptive Spells Spell pierce is great in the early game. If it doesn't stop them, then it will at least slow them down. I like that it covers a wide variety of threats. Swords to Plowshares perfectly covers most of the htreats that Spell Pierce misses. I will cut swan song as I'm not sure we can handle a rogue 2/2 blue Bird attacking us. An Offer You Can't Refuse will be cut down to the 1 copy listed above, as it can save the game, but has a hefty drawback.
ThreatsI like having a full 12 threats in my deck. No changes here right now.
Protective spells. I'd like to draw a mother of runes, but I'd rather draw a creture worth protecting first. Let's decrease her quantity to x3. I'm currenly a fan of 4xTurn Aside.
Disruptive Spells.. No easy changes right now.
Exchangers.. Flow of Ideas and Proclamation of Rebirth might be dead cards in my hand. Ponder could be cut, but card quality seems even more important, since I'm playing a full playset of Enlightened Tutor.
Secondary Threats. Remove Exploration to avoid Green. It isn't a threat on its own and I would usually prefer to draw something else.
Mockingbird is great for defense, since it can block flying creatures. It can also create duplicates, therebye acting kind of like a turn aside. Unlike Turn Aside, this never sits in hand, but it can't protect The Mindskinner and can't be easily rescued from the graveyard via mystic sanctuary, it also can't be pitched to force of will if played and has summoning sickness. Let's bump it down to x3.
Lands. Cut the Underground Sea and Tropical Islands, replace them with regular islands.
Here is draft 2, created from draft 1 and our pruning descisions above.
Mill Deck.draft2 ================ There are 75 cards in this deck right now. Spells (54 total. Need to cut 15). ------ 4 Force of Will 1 An Offer You Can't Refuse 4 Spell Pierce 4 Swords to Plowshares 4 Hedron Crab 4 Ruin Crab 1 The Mindskinner 1 Grindstone 1 Painter's Servant 1 Court of Cunning 3 Mother of Runes 4 Turn Aside 1 Counterbalance 1 Daze 1 Stifle 1 Consign to Memory 1 Surgical Extraction 4 Brainstorm 4 Ponder 4 Elightened Tutor 1 Fraying Sanity 1 Crucible of Worlds 3 Mockingbird Lands(21 total. Can be adjusted later.) ----- 6 Islands 1 Mystic Sanctuary 2 Tundra 12 Fetch Land
Let's do some card counting.
There are 12 threats, 16 counterspells, 41 cards that work well by themselves, and 13 cards that are only relevant if I've drawn other cards in the deck.
In an excel file, I went thru the decklist and marked all of the cards that I would want to have against an opposing fish bowl opponent who doesn't do anything. If I can't win in a wish bowl, I won't be able to beat a disruptive opponent.
Here is a 60 card deck that I might use if I were not defensing myself at all.
Plan Against Fishbowl. ====================== Spells (39 cards.) ------ 4 Hedron Crab 4 Ruin Crab 1 The Mindskinner 1 Grindstone 1 Painter's Servant 4 Court of Cunning # Great when opponent lacks creatures! 1 Stifle 1 Consign to Memory 1 Surgical Extraction 4 Brainstorm 4 Ponder 4 Elightened Tutor 4 Fraying Sanity 1 Crucible of Worlds 4 Mockingbird Lands(21 total. Can be adjusted later.) ----- 6 Islands 1 Mystic Sanctuary 2 Tundra 12 Fetch Land
Here is a 60 card deck that I would use if I were defending against creatures.
Plan Against Creature Offensive =============================== Spells (39 cards.) ------ 4 Swords to Plowshares 4 Hedron Crab 4 Ruin Crab 1 The Mindskinner 1 Grindstone 1 Painter's Servant 3 Mother of Runes 1 Counterbalance 1 Stifle 1 Consign to Memory 1 Surgical Extraction 4 Brainstorm 4 Ponder 4 Elightened Tutor 1 Fraying Sanity 4 Baleful Strix Lands(21 total. Can be adjusted later.) ----- 5 Islands 1 Mystic Sanctuary 2 Tundra 1 Underground Sea 12 Fetch Land
Here is a 60 card deck that I would use if I were defending against non-creature spells. I'm imagining what would be helpful against a show-and-tell deck.
Plan Against Show and Tell ========================== Spells (39 cards.) ------ 4 Force of Will 3 Spell Pierce 3 Swan song 4 Hedron Crab 4 Ruin Crab 1 Grindstone 1 Painter's Servant 1 Court of Cunning 2 Stifle 2 Consign to Memory 1 Surgical Extraction 4 Brainstorm 4 Ponder 4 Elightened Tutor 1 Baleful Strix Lands(21 total. Can be adjusted later.) ----- 5 Islands 1 Mystic Sanctuary 2 Tundra 1 Underground Sea 12 Fetch Land
Looking at the intersection of the three decklists above, I've determined the core of the deck.
Core of my Mill Deck ==================== Spells (33 cards. Needs 6 more.) ------ 1 Baleful Strix 4 Brainstorm 1 Consign to Memory 1 Counterbalance 4 Elightened Tutor 4 Force of Will 1 Fraying Sanity 1 Grindstone 4 Hedron Crab 1 Painter's Servant 4 Ponder 4 Ruin Crab 1 Stifle 1 Surgical Extraction 1 The Mindskinner Lands(21 total. Can be adjusted later.) ----- 5 Islands 1 Mystic Sanctuary 2 Tundra 1 Underground Sea #Only needed to play Baleful Strix. 12 Fetch Lands
Here is the deck that I tested out on motivated opponents at my local game store's Fridy night Legacy night on 10.25.2024. Since our community has a 15 proxy maximum, I've indicated which cards I brought proxies of and a few changes I made to accommodate this constraint.
Main Deck Spells.
Main Deck Lands.
SideBoard.
My deck played much better defense than the deck I used on October 11th. I routinely survived for a substantial amount of turns and my crabs consistently stayed alive
I came within 1 card of decking a stiflenaught deck and nearly beat a red prison deck with a painter's servant combo, but overestimated the danger to playing Painter's Servant first due to misunderstanding how my opponent's Pyrogoyf worked. I thought it could obliterate my Painter's Servant with any creature they played, but it turns out its triggered ability only works with Lhurgoyfs. So, I took a safer approach and played Grindstone first, then failed to draw a 5th land to win the game on the following turn.
One thing that I noticed was that I lost a few games, even though I had crabs on the table. My conclusion is that they are not enough of a threat. Either I need to pivot to another offensive strategy, or I need to make the crabs more threatening. I'm inclined to lean more into the crabs and work on my offense. I think I will embrace green more to improve the amount of land entering my battlefield.
I liked that Turn Aside protected my crabs, but it is also useless if my opponent isn't worried about killing my crab. It also doesn't protect my dual lands from Wasteland
What would it be like if I were ok with my crabs being destroyed and happy about taking away a card or effect from my opponent. I enjoy being proactive as much as possible.
Swords to Plowshare is a great response to a creature as it is more efficient than any 1 mana creature counterspell and can be cast a turn later.
I feel like I made a lot of progress this week, but there is still something missing. Stay tuned to next week's article on November 4th, 2024.
I'll start by testing out a deck like the following to see if supporting more landfalls is helpful.