Fractured Sanity

Sorcery

Each opponent mills fourteen cards. (They put the top fourteen cards of their library into their graveyard.)

Cycling {1}{U} ({1}{U}, Discard this card: Draw a card.)

When you cycle this, each opponent mills four cards.

Discussion (40)

wallisface on Mill?

2 days ago

Some thoughts:

• your land count is waaay too low, especially as you have some high mana cards, but also need to enable the crabs. For a mill deck i’d suggest 22-23 minimum (leaning towards more lands if you don’t have fetches).

• Compelling Argument, Dream Twist and Tome Scour don’t even get close to milling enough to be worth it. Mill decks need to be very efficient, as even top-tier builds are likely to run out of hand resources before delivering the final blow, if they’re not careful. A mill card needs to mill at least 8 cards, bare minimum, to be worth it. Anything lower, and its hurting you more than helping you (you just end up empty handed while your opponents deck is still full)

• I’d also ditch Traumatize. By the time you have 5 lands, your opponent should have <15 cards in their deck, if the game isn’t already over by then. 5 mana for at-best 7 cards isn’t worth it.

• Fraying Sanity is a bit if a trap card. Drawing one is usually ok, but drawing two of these in a game, will often cost you the game. The card does nothing by itself, and it’s often better just to be running a solid mill-spell in its place. I would say to not run more than a single copy of this in your deck.

• you need more interaction. Mill decks generally want some way to slow an opponents tempo. Just trying to win-the-race is often a bad idea. Both Fatal Push and Extirpate would work wonders here. Stuff like Crypt Incursion can also buy you massive amounts of time.

• other cheap mill cards I can suggest are Fractured Sanity, Maddening Cacophony, and Ruin Crab

wallisface on Mill and Spill

1 month ago

Some thoughts:

• you should always aim to get a deck down to 60 cards, anything above this leads to worse hands & draws. Playing with 75 cards is going to make your deck very inconsistent.

• modern decks generally struggle to justify running more than 3-4 cards costing 4-mana, and generally run nothing above that. You’ve got 17 cards costing 4-or-more, which is waaaay too much, and will lead you to having very slow/clunky hands. In particular, you have no reasonable chance of casting those 6-8 mana spells.

• Mill decks don’t want to run any creatures other than Hedron Crab and Ruin Crab - everything else just slows them down. The creatures you’re running here don’t appear to be helping your mill strategy at all.

• a lot of your current mill spells are super underwhelming, and are going to lead to you being unable to successfully mill out the opponent. I would suggest considering the likes of Maddening Cacophony, Fractured Sanity, and Glimpse the Unthinkable.

• you currently are severely lacking any real way to disrupt your opponents gameplan. Some killspells, as well as Extirpate, would go a long way towards fixing that.

patmurphy1986 on Sneak Attack - modified precon!

1 month ago

Just going to put some cards here I think you should add if you want to focus on Milling. The deck needs more big mill in order to win/turn on big creatures. Let me know if you want me to suggest cards to remove.

More Mill

Folio of Fancies

Teferi's Tutelage

Maddening Cacophony

Psychic Corrosion

Mind Sculpt

Thieves' Guild Enforcer

Fractured Sanity

Tasha's Hideous Laughter

More Rogues

Changeling Outcast

Krydle of Baldur's Gate

Thieving Skydiver

Morbid Opportunist

Silver-Fur Master

Prosperous Thief

Zareth San, the Trickster

Big Mill/Mill Wincons/other wincons

Keening Stone

Mindcrank

Psychic Spiral

Fleet Swallower

Vorpal Sword

removal/counters/graveyard removal

Bojuka Bog

Tormod's Crypt

Ravenform

Reality Shift

Thought Collapse

Didn't Say Please

Balaam__ on Balaam__

1 month ago

lespaul977 I don’t mind offering advice, but I’m not exactly a tier 1 player myself. So I’d definitely recommend shopping the idea for this deck around and collecting as much perspective as you can on it before you invest any time or money in finalizing it.

This may sound excessive but I’d cut

Djinni Windseer (doesn’t contribute)

Eternal of Harsh Truths (doesn’t contribute)

Homarid Explorer (cmc too high, not enough value)

Laboratory Maniac (useless, you’re milling the opponent and not yourself)

Minister of Inquiries (it’s ok, but with no way to get more energy counters his value fades fast. Blinking him to get more energy counters is not efficient)

Screaming Swarm (cmc way too high, won’t see play often and mill decks rarely have more than a handful of creatures, none of which are used for attacking)

Soulknife Spy (doesn’t contribute)

Essence Flux (Blink is ineffective here)

Trepanation Blade (seems good but rarely is, not to mention you won’t be attacking)

Curiosity (doesn’t contribute, your other draw spells are much better)

Wizard Class (doesn’t contribute)

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So that’s what I’d cut. Dream Twist and Visions of Beyond are great and synergize well, Unsummon is good but Vapor Snag is better; I’d replace that with it if possible. I’d fill the remainder of the slots with Crabs if it’s an option (see below), countermagic (Counterspell, Mana Leak, Spell Pierce etc) and if you are adding {B} (again, see below) there are oodles of instants/sorceries to choose from. If not, try to accommodate as many mono {U} direct mill spells as possible.

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I guess we have to address some of the elephants in the room. If you’re intent on keeping this mono {U}, then you’ll miss out on what the complimentary color {B} brings to the Mill archetype: cards like Breaking / Entering and Glimpse the Unthinkable.

Which brings us to the next obstacle, budget. If you’re looking to keep the price down and/or only build from your current collection, that also complicates things. Cards like Archive Trap and Tasha's Hideous Laughter are Mill staples, but are also costly. There are alternatives, like Fractured Sanity and Maddening Cacophony which are both cheap and mono {U}, so that can help fill the gaps.

Third, you’ll want to run the crabs. Hedron Crab is pricey, but Ruin Crab is doable. Ideally you’d run both, but one is ok. You’ll be capitalizing on every possible opportunity to mill like this; every land played mills, nearly all your spells should mill, etc.

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Hope this helps, and again—I’m no expert. But I’ve built one mill deck (check my page if interested, I think it’s called Trouble at the old mill or something like that) and have another in the works so I’m somewhat familiar with how they play. Ask around, collect info and don’t be afraid to inspect the ones the pros play for some ideas.

wallisface on say bye to your deck

2 months ago

I think you've kindof muddled up your plans here, you've got a deck that's both trying to mill out, while also trying to win through Duskmantle Guildmage/Mindcrank combo. I think you need to focus on one gameplan, instead of trying to do both (and so making a weaker variant of either)

• If you're trying to win through conventional mill, you're a long way from it. All the cards you're currently running are super sub-optimal, and will lead you to not completing your mission. So i'd say, if you wanted to go down this route, you probably need to rebuild your deck from scratch. Cards you should be considering on a budget are Ruin Crab, Fractured Sanity, Maddening Cacophony, Extirpate, Drown in the Loch, Crypt Incursion, Fatal Push. Depending how high your budget is, some mid-range-costing cards to also consider are Glimpse the Unthinkable, Tasha's Hideous Laughter, Hedron Crab and Visions of Beyond. It should be evident from this list, that what you're running at the moment, is comparably waay too slow, and won't get the job done.

• Personally I think the Duskmantle Guildmage/Mindcrank combo variant of the deck might be a better budget-friendly option for you to consider. For that deck, you don't need any mill cards at all, because that's not your goal - you just want to get your combo online asap and then win the game. You'll want full-playsets of both Duskmantle and Mindcrank, and then ways to fetch them both up - so cards like Muddle the Mixture and maybe even Dimir Infiltrator (though normally Muddle is enough). Other than that, the deck is full of countermagic and stall (like Counterspell, Remand, Vapor Snag, Mana Leak), and a few ways to dig for cards (like Serum Visions, Consider, Opt). Vapor Snag is particularly important as it can act as a way to start the combo once you have the pieces online (by losing the opponent 1 life). Seth did a deck-tech on this a long while back (2016), so there's lots to be improved from this list, but this link might give you an indicator of how the more expensive version of the deck functions.

Regulus_Rising on A Modern Mono Mill of Maddening Magnitude

2 months ago

Dude what is happening? Ok it looks like I can't hit "enter" or else it deletes everything below. Ok, maybe finally I can say "thank you for your suggestions, and pointing out Maddening Cacophony and Fractured Sanity. I had not heard of those cards before you pointed them out so it helps a ton. In my original comment I had taken a couple of your other recommendations as well. I wanted to challenge myself to make 5 mono colored decks under $50 that were pretty good for their price, so I'm going to leave it as mono blue, but you are absolutely correct that this deck would be strongest with black cards in the mix as well. Do you have any other cards recommendations? I appreciate your input.

Regulus_Rising on A Modern Mono Mill of Maddening Magnitude

2 months ago

wallisface oof I had typed so much more in my reply comment that wasn't saved, that's annoying

Regulus_Rising on A Modern Mono Mill of Maddening Magnitude

2 months ago

wallisface thanks for your input! I do not main blue at all and this was the first mill deck I've ever made, so I appreciate you bringing all these cards to my attention. There's a lot to cover here, so I guess I'll start at the beginning.

First, I will say that I guess I play far more casually than you do, since I've never heard of shocks necessarily being called "worthless" (though they are certainly weak) and I've never heard of people equating burn cards to mill cards either, but can understand the connection (how much bang your getting for your card compared to how close it gets you to your goal). Lastly, I don't think I've ever, regardless of deck, won a game in 5 turns or less so I think we're playing on completely different levels