Jace's Phantasm
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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
Highlander Legal
Legacy Legal
Leviathan Legal
Limited Legal
Modern Legal
Oathbreaker Legal
Pauper Legal
Pauper Duel Commander Legal
Pauper EDH Legal
Planechase Legal
Quest Magic Legal
Tiny Leaders Legal
Vanguard Legal
Vintage Legal

Jace's Phantasm

Creature — Illusion

Flying

Jace's Phantasm gets +4/+4 as long as an opponent has ten or more cards in his or her graveyard.

roadkill2104 on Mono Blue Illusions

5 months ago

Altar of the Brood for powering up Jace's Phantasm is a nice touch.

wallisface on Mill,mill and mill....

5 months ago

It feels like this list should be far more optimised than it is, considering the $$$ investment. Some thoughts:

I have my own competitive mill deck here which may help inspire you.

wallisface on Mill you up

6 months ago

Some thoughts:

  • Your deck only has 59 cards, you need to add a 60th for it to be legal.

  • 20 lands feels a bit low, i'd suggest going up to 22.

  • Jace's Phantasm is a really bad choice for mill, as it doesn't help mill your opponent down, and is super-unlikely to provide any real value in backup gameplans. I'd suggest just running Ruin Crab instead.

  • It's good to evaluate mill cards to burn cards, in trying to calculate their worth. In this comparison, Tome Scour ends up being roughly equal to Shock - which is a terrible card and is a good indicator that you shouldn't run Tome Scour. The problem with Tome Scour is that it just doesn't mill enough cards for the resource investment (being a card). Cards like this end up with you being empty-handed and your opponent still having cards in their deck.

  • I would also suggest ditching the planeswalkers, and Killing Wave. No mill player wants a game to go on long enough to be able to cast Jace, Memory Adept, and there are just much better mill options than running this. Also, Liliana of the Dark Realms just really doesn't do a lot, and probably just gives your opponent a free turn to try and beat you down. Killing Wave is bad in that you just aren't really doing anything to attack the opponents life total (and also, you shouldn't be), so they can just pay some amount of non-consequential life, and then continue on with the game as if nothing ever happened.

  • Your sideboard is really puzzling, in that Bump in the Night just feels really pointless. Your plan should always be to mill out the opponent, attacking their life total doesn't achieve anything.

  • Cards I would suggest adding into the deck include: Fractured Sanity, Maddening Cacophony, Tasha's Hideous Laughter.

For reference, I have my own competitive mill deck here, which has won a good share of tourneys

GigaChadReal on Hard miller

9 months ago

That's true, yet Fraying Sanity I would like to keep all 4 because it can double milled cards and more of them make them mill more. The only reason I have Psychic Corrosion is because of Jace, Memory Adept and if I use it's -7 ability on myself and my opponent with psychic corrosion out then if they have 60 cards left in their deck before the ability is used then I win the game but he's also a lot of mana and there is only 1 of him so I would scrap him and Psychic Corrosion. I will keep both crabs and remove Fleet Swallower because of mana. And Overwhelmed Apprentice because it's not that good. And scrap the Jace's Phantasm idea.

wallisface on Hard miller

9 months ago

Some thoughts:

  • don’t remove the Hedron Crab. Competitively speaking, Hedron Crab and Ruin Crab are the only 2 creatures ever worth playing in a mill deck! Jace's Phantasm is not a helpful card as it doesn’t do any milling, and is just diluting the primary goal of milling your opponent.

  • a game should never go so long that Fleet Swallower can be cast… i would suggest ditching it

  • A good way to evaluate mill spells is to compare them to burn spells. In burn, 3 damage (aka Lightning Bolt) is the bare minimum damage a spell needs to do. Spells like Shock, doing 2 damage, aren’t helpful, as you run out of resources in-hand well-before the game is close to being won. Mill cards, in a similar vein, need to generally mill at least 8 cards to be worthwhile. So stuff like Overwhelmed Apprentice, and Tome Scour just aren’t worth it (Mind Sculpt is borderline).

  • Psychic Corrosion is also not great for similar reasons as above. By the time its cast you’re unlikely to be drawing enough cards in the remainder of the game to make it worthwhile.

  • Fraying Sanity is a trap card, and i wouldn’t suggest playing more than a single copy, if any. By the time its down your opponent should already be heavily milled, so oftentimes the card only equates to milling as much as a single millspell anyway. Drawing a second copy of this card is prettymuch a dead draw and can often cost you the game.

  • both the planewalkers are just too slow, imo.

  • i think you need more interaction. Mill can’t rely on winning races, so you need ways to throw the opponent off-kilter

GigaChadReal on Hard miller

9 months ago

I'm going to replace hedron crab with Jace's Phantasm when I can

RDWDTR on General Mills

1 year ago

Thanks, I'm glad you found my suggestions helpful! 8 crabs would be ideal but I'm guessing it's 6 for budget purposes. I think you'll find the main board Dismember to be useful in almost every matchup, but you can always move it back to the sideboard if you dislike it. This looks solid for the budget, but you'll still have to play test and adjust accordingly for your meta.

BTW, when I was listing all the counterspells in my first post, I meant you could use whichever seemed best to you, not all of them :P It will probably be more useful to have a diverse range of cards in your sideboard, since a SB is essentially 15 cards to help you deal with certain matchups that your usual 60 struggles against. Jamming 6 counters might not be the most optimal choice, I was thinking more along the lines of 2-3 of one particular counter, sorry for my miscommunication lol. In most of your games, I'm assuming your 4 mainboard counters will get the job done, and then you can just bring in a pair of targeted counters like, say, 2 Essence Scatter for creature decks or 2 Mystical Dispute for other blue decks. This is going to depend entirely on your meta though. Three other cards caught my eye when I was looking at blue mill lists:

Merfolk Secretkeeper: If your budget can't allow 8 crabs, this is a good replacement for some number.

Drowned Secrets: Similar to Sphinx's Tutelage, just more milling. Not sure if it's better or worse exactly.

Vantress Gargoyle: Reminds me of Jace's Phantasm, and you can tap it to mill someone if it's unable to attack or block. It's pretty scary once it's able to swing.

A few cards you can consider for your sideboard:

Aether Gust: Great against green and/or red decks

AEtherize: Could really save you against aggro/beatdown decks

Rebuild: Good against artifact based decks (e.g., affinity, hammer, Urza).

That's about all I have for now. I imagine you'll continue to adjust as you get spins in with this. Let us know if it's at all competitive.

RDWDTR on General Mills

1 year ago

  • Ruin Crab loses a lot of its punch without Hedron Crab and fetch lands backing it up. It's still worth the playset but I just thought I'd let you in on this since the other guy didn't. The optimal version of this deck is heavily based around running both crabs with fetches (it also typically runs a second color, either white or black). You could try Evolving Wilds and/or Terramorphic Expanse to mimic this, but you're going to really slow the deck down. The optimal version is also heavily based around an expensive card called Archive Trap. Something like Sphinx's Tutelage could help fill this void.

  • Glacial Grasp, Thought Collapse and Vedalken Entrancer are terrible cards, you don't want them in your deck, trust me. I'd mainboard Dismembers for removal, use plain ol' Counterspells, and play literally any other blue creature respectively.

  • You could play the full 4 of Sanity Grinding.

  • Very spicy Sword of Body and Mind, but I really think this slot could be put to better use, especially given the $ value of the card. You don't have many good creatures to even equip it to. Now, if you had a few Jace's Phantasms, that might be a different story. A 5/5 flyer for 1 mana is already nuts, but now it's a 7/7 that mills for 10 and makes wolves.

  • You need some stronger control elements. I'd play more counterspells in the sideboard... Mana Leak, Negate, and Essence Scatter are all worth experimenting with. You'll get way more mileage out of those cards than something like Thought Scour or Jace Beleren. You could experiment with Unsummon effects too, they pair nicely with counters.

  • You should consider an alternate win condition. I know this is supposed to be a mill deck, but there are going to be matchups where this won't work (at least not in the budget version). You could accept that and not care, or you could make some concessions. To that end, I would propose just playing like an honest control deck and running 1-2 Prognostic Sphinx or Sphinx of the Final Word. It doesn't have to be mainboard.

  • Manic Scribe, Overwhelmed Apprentice and Wall of Lost Thoughts are low quality cards that happen to fit your theme. They're not as bad as the other three I singled out, but these would still be among the first places I made cuts.

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