Tome Scour

Sorcery

Target player puts the top five cards of his or her library into his or her graveyard.

Legality

Format	Legality
1v1 Commander	Legal
Archenemy	Legal
Arena	Legal
Block Constructed	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
Pauper	Legal
Pauper Duel Commander	Legal
Pauper EDH	Legal
Pioneer	Legal
Planechase	Legal
Quest Magic	Legal
Tiny Leaders	Legal
Vanguard	Legal
Vintage	Legal

Discussion (45)

wallisface on Mill deck

6 months ago

Some thoughts:

• mill decks never want to run any creatures other than Hedron Crab and Ruin Crab. All these other creatures you’re running do nothing to help you mill, and end up being anti-synergies in your deck (you’re unlikely to win through combat damage, and by having these cards you’re just ruining your chances to win by milling either).

• some of your mill cards are super sub-optimal. For instance Tome Scour is the equivalent of running Shock in a burn deck - both cards too to little to get the job done and just end up leaving you empty-handed while your opponent is still alive. Same goes for Mind Funeral… it does too little for its investment. Better options include Fractured Sanity, Maddening Cacophony, and Tasha's Hideous Laughter.

• You currently have no form of interaction, which means you’re just going to get stomped on… even the fastest mill decks can’t outpace typical aggro/combo decks, and need to buy themselves time. I would expect to see cards like Fatal Push, Extirpate/Surgical Extraction, Drown in the Loch, and Crypt Incursion here.

legendofa on Supernatural-inspired gy creature

7 months ago

What's the intent of the first ability? I don't know Supernatural at all, so it might be a flavor thing I'm missing. It also feeds the token creation ability a bit too well, especially with the second ability.

The second ability should be worded as a replacement effect: "If Strong-Souled Loxodon would deal combat damage, you may have it fight target creature (you don't control?) instead."

The token creation ability is too much. Turn 1, target yourself with Funeral Charm or Cry of Contrition or Putrid Imp or Entomb or Tome Scour or Careful Study or Faithless Looting or Burning Inquiry... A turn 1 13/13 with no card disadvantage and minimal setup, available in multiple colors, would break the game. The last clause helps a little bit, but it's still overpowered--Death's Shadow with zero risk and reduced color requirement.

Overall, this card might be accurate to what Supernatural has, but in M:tG, it's just overpowered.

SniperFrog on Doomsday [Primer]

7 months ago

UB

Draw for turn opens, Tome Scour in hand, one creature in play

Swan Song or other counter

Dregscape Zombie or Fatestitcher, depending on mana

Thassa's Oracle

Narcomoeba

Dread Return

wallisface on Blue Black Mill - Hedron Crabs & Jace

8 months ago

Some thoughts:

• as jdogz32 already mentioned, Brainstorm is not modern legal.

• the only creatures mill ever wants to run are Ruin Crab and Hedron Crab. Stuff like Jace's Phantasm aren’t useful, because you’re not winning by damage, and its just one-less mill effect. Your other creatures are also unuseful, largely due to their excessive mana cost.

• you’re running far too few lands for what you’re trying to do here. Imo you need around 23 lands here.

• you’re running far too many cards as 1-ofs and 2-ofs, which is going to make your deck quite fractured and chaotic. I would suggest trying to ensure that the majority of the cards you run are run as playsets (4-ofs), to help keep your deck focused and consistent.

• i think you need to seriously upgrade your mill package. Stuff like Mind Funeral, Tome Scour and Memory Erosion are all incredibly, incredibly weak, and you’ll find it very hard to mill an opponent out with these options. You want to be aiming for cards like Glimpse the Unthinkable, Tasha's Hideous Laughter, and Fractured Sanity.

wallisface on Blue/black mill

1 year ago

Some thoughts:

• It looks like you're currently trying to do 3 different things here: mill your opponent out, combo-off, and deal them 20 damage. This is just going to weaken your overall gameplan because whichever way to try to win, only half of the cards you draw are going to help with that. I would suggest you reorganize the deck to be entirely-focused on the mill plan, entirely focused on the Duskmantle Guildmage combo, or entirely focused on the beatdown plan.

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If you're wanting to build a Mill Deck:

• There are no creatures at all worth running except for Hedron Crab and Ruin Crab. Nothing else is even remotely worth the effort of running, because nothing else really helps with the goal of milling your opponent.

• Also something to be aware of, is that you need any card that is milling to get at least 8 cards from your opponents deck (try to compare mill spells as burn spell, except you need to do 53 damage instead of 20 - so the same way that burn can never justify running Shock, mill can never justify running Tome Scour). Any less than this, and you just end up empty-handed with your opponent still alive. So I would suggest ditching Mind Grind, Tome Scour, Traumatize, both the planeswalkers, and your artifacts. I would also say to get rid of Fraying Sanity because that card is just bad. Instead look to add things like Fractured Sanity, Maddening Cacophony and Archive Trap.

• You'll want a decent amount of interaction in the form of Surgical Extraction and Fatal Push, as well as Drown in the Loch. Crypt Incursion is also great to keep yourself alive longer

• An example deck of how this looks here

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If you're wanting to build a Combo Deck:

• you'll want to up your copies of Mindcrank to a full playset. You also want ways to fetch both your combo pieces in the way of cards like Dimir Infiltrator and Muddle the Mixture, as well as draw spells like Consider or Serum Visions.

• Duskmantle Guildmage is the only real creature you need to run, though its worth also considering Spellskite as a way to protect your combo pieces, and Vendilion Clique as either a way to fix your own hand, or mess with your opponents.

• Your other cards should mainly be focused on ensuring your opponent can't disrupt what you're doing. Spell Pierce and Counterspell will be great here, as well as proactive cards like Inquisition of Kozilek. Because you only really want to slow your opponent down, stuff like Vapor Snag can be decent too (note this card can also start the combo triggering once you have the pieces in play).

• A budget dechtech example with description, list & video this deck here

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If you're wanting to build a Creature-beatdown Deck:

• You probably don't want to be doing much milling at all, or at least you don't want to be running any cards that only mill. The most practical route to go down is probably using Rogues, with cards like Thieves' Guild Enforcer and Soaring Thought-Thief.

• A budget dechtech example with description, list & video this deck here

Delphen7 on Friday the 13th - A …

1 year ago

legendofa That's what I was thinking. Turn 1 Tome Scour or turn 2 Glimpse the Unthinkable (Or t1 Hedron Crab into fetchland), and this guy can be online t1/t2 very easily.

He fits into dredge very well.

Jopling on Extract the Demon ($30 Dredge Primer)

1 year ago

GrimlockVIII The lack of interaction is actually this deck's biggest weakness. I've really struggled to find any that work as being able to be cast from the graveyard is an absolute necessity.

I always mulligan until I can play Tome Scour or Otherworldly Gaze in my opening hand, so the vast majority of cards go into my graveyard.

Any suggestions for interaction that could work would be greatly appreciated!

wallisface on I have created a deck …

1 year ago

Mill is already a really well-known archetype. The current MtgGoldfish Meta deck is here. My own competitive build is here.

I see Caerwyn has already left you some really good advise on deck suggestions, but I'll list below some general good mill-ethos:

• It's good to treat mill cards as if they are burn cards. In the same way that Shock is unplayable in Burn decks, and card that mills ~7 or less cards is pretty unplayable in mill (I'm looking at Tome Scour specifically as being too weak). The problem is that if your mill cards aren't efficient enough, then you just end up empty-handed, and with your opponent still having a deck (in the same way that if Burn decks only play Shock, they run out of cards before they can kill the opponent).

• It's good to try and assume the game will be over within 5 turns. In that way, cards like Traumatize are pointless - either the game is already over before you get to cast it, or your opponent has soo few cards left in their deck that you're effectively paying 5 mana to mill ~6ish cards. As a rule of thumb, these cards that mill variable quantities of cards for excessive quantities of mana, aren't worth it. I would put Fraying Sanity in the same boat of "just not being useful" - by the time you could cast it you could just be casting a mill spell instead and getting equal-or-better results.

• Mill decks just aren't good at winning races. They generally need some way to disrupt the opponents plans (with stuff like Drown in the Loch, Fatal Push, Surgical Extraction). Just letting your opponent do what they want will almost always end in failure, so ensure your deck has a good-quantity of disruption, to make sure you can secure the win. Cards like Surgical Extraction and/or Extirpate are particularly good, because you can turn-off many decks completely, giving you a LOT more time to enact your plan. And those decks that aren't shut down so easily, will usually suffer to cards like Crypt Incursion, Ensnaring Bridge, or Profane Memento. The general gameplan approach for mill is to let the opponent taste it, then disrupt their tempo so they can't do much-of-anything useful, and then finish them off.