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.

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
Freeform	Legal
Highlander	Legal
Legacy	Legal
Leviathan	Legal
Limited	Legal
Modern	Legal
Modern Beyond Horizons	Legal
Oathbreaker	Legal
Pauper	Legal
Pauper Duel Commander	Legal
Pauper EDH	Legal
Planar Constructed	Legal
Planechase	Legal
Quest Magic	Legal
Tiny Leaders	Legal
Vanguard	Legal
Vintage	Legal

Discussion (49)

leovolt884_ on Dimir... uh.. Ramp Mill..

8 months ago

Balaam__ The deck would rather have permanent mana sources. There's a fairly low curve in the deck and it is control oriented so extra mana which can be used long term is much more beneficial than short term mana acceleration, as it will usually let you cast an extra spell on many turns. Rituals are much better in decks which aim to combo off as soon as possible, or have very explosive turns which this deck doesn't. Cards in your hand are a resource, and in control you want your cards to provide as much long term value for you as possible to counter the fact that a meaningful percentage of your deck are cards which strictly interact with and slow your opponent. Also triple black mana is just not very useful here. It only really helps cast Balustrade Spy and Grisly Spectacle. There are no 3 drops in the deck which don't also require a blue pip of mana and a 3rd of the 4 drops in the deck require double blue pips. It also doesn't really aid in replicating Stream of Thought. That all being said the best value you can get out of a dark ritual is playing a spy + Priest of the Haunted Edge on an early turn, or squeezing out a piece of removal on the opponents turn which you wouldn't normally have the mana for. However that removal can only target one creature so you're spending 2 cards to destroy 1 of your opponents.

Anyways, there's definitely room for rituals in spy decks and if I'm not mistaken they're used in almost every spy combo deck, they just don't really fit into this one. To be clear, I don't think this deck is very good, I don't particularly like it, and would say its a few steps below the decks which I'm more proud of. I also think a "turbo mill" version of this would be better and more interesting and Dark Ritual would be very valuable there to play early spies to setup Jace's Phantasm or maybe to help pay for something like multiple Persistent Petitioners in one turn.

This whole comment hinges on the fact that the wincon is NOT Lotleth Giant and that you are milling the opponent rather than yourself

I may private this deck but I'd rather leave it out there for people to learn from some of the deckbuilding traps this deck falls for. I'm interested in trying to elevate this deck concept to my more current deckbuilding ideas/standards by turning it into a rakdos deck with multifunctionality. 2 modes of either milling yourself or the opponent, using cards which benefit from both and making better use of the sideboard in best of 3 or friendly games. I really like the idea of a deck which has multiple directions to play it, something highly adaptive to playstyle preference and matchups without just being a pile of goodstuff. Currently I have a midrange infect deck which sort of scratches this itch with both aggro and proliferate wincons. If you're interested in me trying to assemble a pile of optimized rakdos jank let me know

Argie_Bee on Pauper Mill - The Future of Pauper (BUDGET - $15)

1 year ago

I know this is your first deck and it probably has a special place in your heart, but I slotted in a few Jace's Phantasm in as well for my own.

doc_frank_18 on A mill-ion

1 year ago

Maybe take out Jace's Phantasm and put in Irenicus's Vile Duplication?

Caran_Lyg on Mono Blue Dreadmaw $20

1 year ago

Jace's Phantasm is just a 1/1 flyer for 1 blue, that’s it. It’s useless outside of turn one unless you got outlet to mill your opponent. Lord of the Unreal will have a big target, you gotta protect it with Ephemerate or more some other cards so it survives.

NallexJr on Blue/Black Budget Mill

2 years 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

2 years 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.

Lord_Olga on Mill deck

2 years 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

2 years 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.