Hedron Crab

Creature — Crab

Landfall — Whenever a land enters under your control, target player mills three cards. (To mill a card, put the top card of your library into your graveyard.)

Combos

• Deprive + Hedron Crab
• Evolving Wilds + Hedron Crab

Legality

Format	Legality
1v1 Commander	Legal
Archenemy	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
Legacy	Legal
Leviathan	Legal
Limited	Legal
Modern	Legal
Modern Beyond Horizons	Legal
Oathbreaker	Legal
Planar Constructed	Legal
Planechase	Legal
Quest Magic	Legal
Tiny Leaders	Legal
Vanguard	Legal
Vintage	Legal

Discussion (49)

wallisface on U/B Mill

3 months ago

Mill decks only ever want to be running Hedron Crab and Ruin Crab as creatures. Any other options are just not helpful or conductive towards winning. Specifically:

• both Consuming Aberration and Mirko Vosk, Mind Drinker cost such a high amount of mana that the game should already be over (mill decks should be aiming to win by turn 4). and both barely does any amount of actual milling for their egregious costs.

• Duskmantle Guildmage is only useful as a combo card with Mindcrank. On its own it's basically useless. If you are doing the Mindcrank combo then there's no real reason to run any other mill cards.

• Fog Bank does nothing and gives your opponent more time to overwhelm you or assemble their combo.

Other cards that i'd suggest are bad choices:

• Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver does very little for its cost. milling 3 cards for 3 mana is a very slow rate.

• Fraying Sanity is a massive trap card that a lot of casual mill players fall into. In almost all cases it doesn't speed up the clock for you beating your opponent.

• All of Mind Grind, Increasing Confusion, Mind Funeral, and Pilfered Plans just do faar too little for their mana cost. Memory Sluice is also a really bad return unless you can really reliably trigger it's Conspire ability.

I would suggest looking at cards like Fractured Sanity, Maddening Cacophony, and Tasha's Hideous Laughter *list*. Archive Trap is also a mill-must-have, but may be less-useful if your playgroup isn't using fetchlands. Jace, the Perfected Mind is also serviceable as a planeswalker.

Your deck also really needs some interaction - mill decks are typically too slow to out-race aggro and combo, so you need options to make sure you slow those decks down enough to win the race. Options normally include Drown in the Loch, Fatal Push, and Surgical Extraction

capwner on Compost Pile (Help Wanted)

4 months ago

I think this sort of deck really wants to do 3 things:

1. Get dredgers into the yard quickly so you can start dredging. There are 2 main ways Modern decks have done this, traditional dredge decks which use Faithless Looting vs. Crabvine decks that use Hedron Crab and Stitcher's Supplier to self-mill

2. Multi-draw spells to enable dredge so you start snowballing FAST. Again, Faithless Looting in classic dredge. But black has access to some decent draw spells too like Sign in Blood or Cling to Dust

3. More payoffs that come out of the yard. Usually this comes in the form of Prized Amalgam, Silversmote Ghoul (off of creeping chill), Bloodghast, and Vengevine. Nethergoyf and Souls of the Lost are new contenders but unlike the others you don't get them from the yard for free.

If you do all of these things, you'll have a deck which looks pretty close to a competitively built dredge or crabvine list. Which maybe isn't the "head held high fair game of magic" you're looking for. But maybe you can take partial inspiration from some of these decks while keeping true to your theme!

doc_frank_18 on A mill-ion

4 months ago

Maybe take out Hedron Crab because it only targets one player and put in Quantum Misalignment?

wallisface on Jace, the Fox Cutie Mill

8 months ago

Some thoughts:

• the only creatures ever worth running in a mill deck are Hedron Crab and Ruin Crab. The current selection of creatures you’re running are all extremely slow, durdly, and low-impact - i’d suggest ditching them.

• a bunch of your mill spells are extremely weak and/or resource inefficient. Specifically Mind Grind, Tome Scour and Traumatize shouldn’t really be played. I’d suggest more powerful options such as Fractured Sanity, Tasha's Hideous Laughter, and Archive Trap.

• Similarly, a lot of your other cards are just really suboptimal. I’ll list these and potential replacements below.

• Brainsurge is just worse than Visions of Beyond or Preordain. 3 mana for this kind of effect is just too slow/weak.

• Psychic Strike is just a worse Counterspell or Drown in the Loch. Milling a lowly 2 cards will never be worth spending an extra mana.

• Sleep is just a worse Ensnaring Bridge or Crypt Incursion. Its effect being only one turn makes it too limiting to be useful.

• I know you built the deck around Jace, the Mind Sculptor, but he doesn’t do anything useful for mill. You’d be much-better off running Jace, the Perfected Mind

• Hurkyl's Recall is a sideboard card at-best.

• Part the Waterveil is just too mana expensive to ever actually get cast. There’s zero reason to run this.

• I have no idea why you have Talent of the Telepath, in the deck.

• Mill is supposed to be fast and efficient, so there is no room for Chromatic Lantern, or Manalith in the deck. You need to lower your mana curve drastically, instead of trying to accomodate all these high-mana cards.

If you’re looking for an example competitive mill deck, this one here is a good baseline to build from.

NallexJr on Blue/Black Budget Mill

1 year ago

Balaam__ I totally see where you're coming from with the Jace's Phantasm and Vantress Gargoyle, there is definitely a world where I can use those spots in my deck for better mill cards. I am looking at removing at least one more copy of the gargoyle, as its inability to block if I don't have a large hand size and it's 2 CMC don't make me super excited 90% of the time.

The idea behind it, at least for me, is that they allow me to put pressure on from multiple angles, and because I can get that 5/5 flyer with phantasm on turn 2, it means I can keep my opponents from building any real board state before turn 4 or 5 when their library is basically gone. It also is just a nice threat by itself, when I don't get the combos I need, or when mana is tight. Hedron Crab and Ruin Crab remove a few more cards, but they aren't very useful otherwise, which is why I feel that Jace's Phantasm and Vantress Gargoyle are a better fit for me.

As far as competitiveness goes, I'm mostly just looking to have a fun mill deck that i can throw into rotation whenever I get tired of the same old same old. I'm not too worried about tourney play.

Balaam__ on Blue/Black Budget Mill

1 year ago

Something that was explained to me when I was working on my own mill deck is that to be effective, one has to pretty much fully commit to Mill. It may not seem like much, but investing in creatures whose primary function is to deal damage is using resources in a suboptimal way.

Jace's Phantasm and Vantress Gargoyle themselves appear to benefit from Milling, but don’t contribute to your goal in a meaningful way. These creatures’ sole purpose is to take 20 life and chip away at it, while ignoring the 60 of your opponent’s library. The rest of your deck is designed to reduce the 60 in their library to 0, while ignoring their 20 life points. So you have two unrelated strategies functioning in tandem, neither working at full capacity, when you could have fully committed to one and achieved results faster.

The obvious recommendation would be to run the crabs—Hedron Crab and Ruin Crab—but that would probably interfere with your allotted budget, as well as necessitating that you retool the portion of the deck built to work around the phantasm & gargoyle, neither of which you may be willing to do.

I think what you have here already is fine as long as you aren’t actually trying to win tournaments with it, so if I were you I’d continue to shop this around for feedback and maybe a path forward will present itself. Again, there are plenty of people who use this site that are actual experts, not armchair theorists in tinfoil hats like myself.

wallisface on Dredgevine

1 year ago

Some thoughts:

• the deck really needs the playset of Hedron Crab to help get the engine going - there’s a reason thus archtype is most-often called “crabvine”.

• you need the full playset of Stinkweed Imp.

• Rotting Rats, Grisly Salvage, Life from the Loam and Raven's Crime are all fairly bad here in that they’re relatively slow/clumsy for the deck (and a lot of them don’t proc the Vengevine reanimation triggers). Good replacements for those cards include the full playset of Satyr Wayfinder, as well as Merfolk Secretkeeper, Otherworldly Gaze, and maybe The Ancient One

jacobpmesser on Self Mill Goyf

1 year ago

4 Stitcher's Supplier 4 Hedron Crab 3 Satyr Wayfinder 4 Urborg Lhurgoyf 4 Cruel Somnophage 4 Souls of the Lost 2 Nighthowler 3 Grist, the Hunger Tide 2 Wonder 4 Unearth 3 Brazen Borrower 1 Sidisi, Brood Tyrant 1 Glasspool Mimic  ^Flip 1 Kazandu Mammoth  ^Flip

1 Svogthos, the Restless Tomb

That's a good base. Take what works and replace what you don't like.

Exp. I've been playing iterations of this for years now and eight one drops are important. You need to start filling your gy ASAP. These are the two best. If you don't want to go into blue, there are cards like Gnawing Vermin but for me, m2 isn't enough. The -1/-1 is helpful so there is some leeway based on META. If I dabble in other colors, Shriekhorn is my go-to.

Satyr's spot can be removed but I play a low land count due to the two modal lands (Glasspool/Mammoth). Mire Triton is another favorite because Deathtouch and gainlfie. It's also a META call. I don't like others like Skull Prophet. If I were playing The Mycotyrant I'd consider it because it 'mills over time' (MOT) but once your opp sees what youre on theyd kill it before you get a chance to use it.

So, in this list I'm 12 goyfs. Eight can self-mill (SM) and the other is useful (Souls) in getting Wonder out of your hand. You can also sac Stitcher to it if you're a T1 Stitcher T2 Souls. Every card in this deck is a permanent besides Unearth so if you fetched at all, you could have a T2 6/6-8/8 Souls of the Lost and that aint to shabby.

I have always played at least 1-2 Nighthowler. It makes those Stitchers, Crabs, and Satyrs a threat and more often than not, takes two spells to kill it (when it's bestowed).

I view this deck as a sort of aggro deck and keeping with 99% creature theme, Grist and Brazen Borrower are my interaction. You can bring in whatever you want (obviously) but it's also provides fliers for Nighthowler, Grist has a built in win-con and protects itself. I always play a Boseiju, Who Endures and if I play more, -1 Unearth for Life from the Loam and if I'm really frisky, I'll add a few more legends, play more of the Channel Lands and another Life/Loam. I've got a oops all Channel lands were all the other lands are Modal and I play Amulet of Vigor with Shriekhorn and use Emry, Lurker of the Loch as a self-mill recur piece. It's fun.

Sidisi is a MOT that can help you go wide. Every time you mill, you get a zombie. I use this in near every build when I'm in color. I've tested Blossoming Tortoise but save that for a Mosswort Bridge version I play and if I can't get that going I want to be able to cast the top end. Shigeki, Jukai Visionary, Molderhulk, Aether Vial + Dryad Arbor help get me there. But just playing the new Squirming Emergence is so much easier than playing all those other cards.

You can find a way to bring in draw, life, other interaction, etc.. it's on you. There are times were I play Jace, the Perfected Mind or Visions of Beyond for draw. Spellstutter Sprite and a few spots for other faeries like Likeness Looter (flying faerie goyfs!).

But that's the base. Do what you want.. because you can literally do anything. I've got a junk list focused on recur with Unearth, Renegade Rallier, Necropanther, Athreos, God of Passage... a jund/grixis list that uses Ob Nixilis, the Adversary and Orcish Bowmasters (sac goyf to etb Ob Nix, Token Ob forces opp to draw 7 for -7 life. Bowmasters deals another 6 plus you get a 6/6 orc token (+2 more for paper Ob +1 if they can't discard). That's a 15 point swing, not including attacks. Another Grixis list that plays Kroxa, Flamewake Phoenix, Seasoned Pyromancer and Ox.

My favorite - game 1, I'm a mill deck that sideboard converts into self-mill game 2. It still deals with the gy but game 1 youre spell heavy and game 2 youre creature heavy.

Anyway, have fun.