Tasha's Hideous Laughter

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Legality

Format Legality
1v1 Commander Legal
Alchemy Legal
Archenemy Legal
Arena Legal
Block Constructed Legal
Brawl Legal
Canadian Highlander Legal
Casual Legal
Commander / EDH Legal
Commander: Rule 0 Legal
Custom Legal
Duel Commander Legal
Gladiator Legal
Highlander Legal
Historic Legal
Legacy Legal
Leviathan Legal
Limited Legal
Modern Legal
Oathbreaker Legal
Pioneer Legal
Planechase Legal
Pre-release Legal
Quest Magic Legal
Standard Legal
Tiny Leaders Legal
Vanguard Legal
Vintage Legal

Tasha's Hideous Laughter

Sorcery

Each opponent exiles cards from the top of their library until that player has exiled cards that have a combined total converted mana cost/mana value 20 or more.

UltimateRoxas40 on [Zellix] Kill with Mill (unlikely)

2 months ago

Fun looking deck! I've got a similar Mill deck too.

Something to note though. Tasha's Hideous Laughter exiles those cards, so if you're trying to capitalize on the Mill keyword to work with Zellix, Sanity Flayer, that won't work. Same with Mind Grind, it technically isn't Mill, so Zellix, Sanity Flayer won't trigger.

I'd suggest Court of Cunning. It's a good way to hit multiple opponents at the same time, potentially getting you three to four Horror tokens each upkeep. And it introduces Monarch, which can cause all kinds of shenanigans haha.

Apollo_Paladin on Sea of Attrition [Arena] [Beta]

3 months ago

I don't think Hullbreaker Horror is doing much for you here. He's way too high a mana cost to just have floating around in a 22 mana deck that has no mana ramp or some way to cheat him into play or reduce his cost.

I'd look at more mill-based stuff like Fraying Sanity, Tasha's Hideous Laughter (though, this doesn't work with Fraying Sanity - important note), Drowned Secrets, or things of that nature.

Hope this helps! Add me on Arena if you ever want to deck tech or run some test games (info on my profile).

Balaam__ on Power cut at the source

4 months ago

If I were to chime in and offer any advice, it would be to double down on refining this into 100% pure mill. The archetype is most viable when literally every non-land card contributes toward milling out your opponent in some way.

For instance, a card like Profane Memento might seem good on paper but ultimately doesn’t push you any closer to a win. Then there’s the simple fact that some cards are better than others—Curse of the Bloody Tome is very poor compared to something, like, Tasha's Hideous Laughter.

Take all of the above with a grain of salt, since you did tag this build as Casual. I don’t know how your playgroup functions, maybe the ‘quick decisive win’ isn’t what you’re after for maximum fun. In any case, there are many people on this site more than willing to offer suggestions for improvement (this was a great help to me when I built my own Modern mill deck).

wallisface on Modern Mill

5 months ago

Some thoughts that you can take or leave:

  • Fraying Sanity is a card that can only really be justified as a 1-of at-best. Drawing a second copy will almost always lose you the game as you’ll never get time to play it, and mill games can easily be lost by one useless draw.

  • Running 4x Jace, the Perfected Mind seems excessive. 2-3 feels like the most a deck can justify before its high mana cost impedes deck functionality.

  • I get what you’re aiming for with Scheming Symmetry, but it’s far more gimmick-than-useful. The fact this card puts you down 1 card in-hand means its almost always hurting you more than helping you - it might help with one strong turn, but the card disadvantage will ruin your ability to close-out games. Imo just run the full playset of Field of Ruin and aim for more ”individually strong” cards.

  • imo your mainboard feels lacking in quantity of both interaction (Fatal Push, Surgical Extraction) and mill-spells (Tasha's Hideous Laughter). I think Fraying Sanity, Scheming Symmetry, and Trapmaker's Snare are all taking up a lot of space in your deck, and taking away your ability to compete.

wallisface on Mill deck

5 months ago

Lord_Olga I should add that Tasha's Hideous Laughter is strong enough to be mandatory in top-tier competitive mill decks

wallisface on Mill deck

5 months ago

Lord_Olga

On Fraying Sanity, mill decks typically want to win a game by turn 5 at the latest. It’s often the case that by the time you can profit from the card, the opponent only has less than 20 cards left in their deck anyway (or would have if you didn’t take a turn off casting this enchantment). The card will usually only act as a single mill spell on its own, because the game is over before it can do any more damage. Best case scenario is it mills an extra 10-12 cards, worst case is its drawn at a time you need anything else and does nothing. The reason drawing a second Fraying Sanity is always bad is because its entirely redundant - the first one already gives you more than enough ability to close-out a game that should be almost-over anyway. Drawing the second copy instead of an actual mill effect is likely to give your opponent a free turn to win.

On Tasha's Hideous Laughter, to mill on average only 8 cards your opponents deck has to have an average cmc of 2.5 in their deck, including lands. That’s a very, very high number (that would mean, excluding lands, an average cmc of 4.15 in a deck with 24 lands). Even for decks this slow, the matchup is almost-always a free-win for mill regardless (because the opponent will be too slow to represent lethal). Most decks have an average cmc (including lands) between 0.8 and 1.4, which means you’re milling 14-25 cards.

Lord_Olga on Mill deck

5 months ago

wallisface I can go either way with Jace's Phantasm, in more casual settings I've had it work just fine, as 5/5 cards can really make people pause if they dont have enough removal on hand, and since its not vital to the strategy you can throw it around pretty risk free. Really depends on what kind of setting this will be played in.

The Fraying Sanity I use quite a lot, and I personally love the card. It effectively re-casts every mill spell and ability you've played that turn. Playing 2 of them means that you double the last Fraying Sanity's ability too, so its not a waste at all. Say you played a Glimpse the Unthinkable, then end your turn. The two Fraying Sanity go on the stack. The first one resolves and the opponent mills 10 more cards, which ups the total amount of cards milled this turn to 20. The second resolves and the opponent mills 20 more. That's a 40 card mill with just Glimpse the Unthinkable assuming you cast these 2 Enchantments at some point before.

Tasha's Hideous Laughter, applied against general decks you'll play against with a prerry average cmc distribution, will snag maybe a few 3cmc, a few 2cmc, a few 1cmc, which gets you maybe like 8 - 10 mill on a good cast, and a couple lands too. And its also not great they go into exile cause that doesnt allow graveyard play, which is a big part of mill. There are some specific decks it could work really well against like you memtioned, and for that I would probably sideboard it.

wallisface on Mill deck

5 months ago

Lord_Olga some points

  • no well performing mill deck ever plays stuff like Jace's Phantasm because it’s neither an effective defence nor attack. Importantly its a card spent that doesn’t mill your opponent nor disrupt their board - so its just giving them more time to win.

  • Fraying Sanity is a bit of a trap card in that it reads like it should be good but plays terribly. A deck can play a single copy, but not really any more than this as drawing 2 of these loses you the game (you never reasonably need to cast the second one so its a dead card).

  • Tasha's Hideous Laughter gets waay more than 8 cards. Against Hardened Scales decks for example, it’ll average 36 cards. Against burn it’ll average 21. Even most slower midrange/control decks will be milling at least 10-15.

I agree completely this deck needs to both lower its mana curve, and play just 60 cards.

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