Mind Funeral

Sorcery

Target opponent reveals cards from the top of his or her library until four land cards are revealed. That player puts all cards revealed this way into his or her graveyard.

Discussion (50)

Braska on Competitive Modern Mill

20 hours ago

Things I've learnt playing mill:

This list is too linear for a competitive deck. This is essentially a recreation of a less efficient burn deck. Mill does not possess the multitude of efficient 1 drop 'burn' spells like Lightning Bolt and Lava Spike to win the game before your opponent. One one hand you're going for the instant mill with Breaking , but on the other you're going for long term with Mesmeric Orb and Shelldock Isle . These are two conflicting game strategies that don't mix. Which is why you've got filler cards like Darkness just to bide you time for more mill.

Instead, try and utilise on what mill can offer you and burn cannot. You are playing black, use this to your advantage. Run Fatal Push , Drown in the Loch and Collective Brutality . Cut the less 'to the face' mill spells like Fraying Sanity , Breaking and Mind Funeral . One incredible tool to utilise is Surgical Extraction . There are so many decks in modern that rely on one or a few cards to win. Hit them where it hurts with surgical and they physically cannot win.

Ensnaring Bridge is too good not to run. It's an auto win against some decks game 1.

Don't underestimate the power of Mission Briefing . It's a better snapcaster for mill. You can play archive trap or surgical for their alternative costs (unlike snapcaster).

Mainboard crypt incursion at least 1. Your weakness is aggro decks. Pull one of these bad boys off and you've bought way more turns than any Darkness will get you.

Darkness straight up is a bad card. Fatal Push will likely buy you more turns of the game than darkness ever will. T1 fatal push a Noble Hierarch . Push a Thought-Knot Seer . Push a combo piece. Push a Goblin Electromancer .

wallisface on Competitive UB mill modern (2019)

2 weeks ago

SentinelElf2711 So the problem with Manic Scribe is that it will just never net you enough value. You play it on T2, but you’re unlikely to have anywhere near enough card types in your own grave by then. You might be able to turn on Delirium on your T3, but more realistically T4 (or even later, the number of cards you’re running that help with Delirium are super-low).

In the world of mill, you want to have won the game by 4, or have secured some way to play a 5th turn... so this guys only helping (best case) to mill 6 cards total in those first 4 turns that matter. I just don’t see him generating enough of a dent in the opponents deck to be worth it personally.

Mind Funeral can be risky, but i’ve found payoff. Against hyper aggressive decks, they generally run very few lands and lots of fetches to thin this further - this often means a big hit where you can make huge gains in chewing through their deck (averaging 13-15+ cards). Against slower decks that run more lands, you obviously catch less, and average closer to 8-9, which isn’t great (though still better than scribe). This doesn’t matter so much anyway as slower games tend to work in our favour regardless, so it’s less of an issue. The only deck where Funeral sucks is against Prime-time nonsense- they run enough lands to make Funeral get low (~8-9) hits, but they’e fast enough to win quickly also.

SentinelElf2711 on Competitive UB mill modern (2019)

2 weeks ago

wallisface The problem with Mind Funeral is the "randomness" of the card, you can mill 20 cards, but what if you mill only 7? With 3 mana is too risky in my opinion. Manic Scribe Provides you a bit of mill and a decent defence agnist aggro early game. Thought Scour is not a bad card, but in the deck we already have Visions of Beyond . Anyways thank you for the advice,maybe I'll give a try to Thought Scour cause it works well with Scheming Symmetry .

rubeerubin on Competitive Modern Mill

2 weeks ago

:shrug: just play tested for about a week with it. Much higher win rate. (5% higher vs. the current meta/top 8 decks in modern). Did make a couple other small changes (but perhaps they are "big changes" since they all play nicely with Mission Briefing :

added: 1x Surgical Extraction , 3x Mission Briefing , switched one island to Steam Vents (to allow the flexibility of casting the other side of Breaking ), took out 3x Breaking , one Shelldock Isle (since Mission Briefing smooths out mana as well). In almost every game where Mission Briefing came up, it was a rock star, possibly the MVP of the deck. Added another Crypt Incursion to sideboard (red deck wins is very heavy in the meta right now).

Believe it or not, the main deck Surgical Extraction was also very important. It helps win game 1 against Whirza (the other major component of the meta right now). It isn't even close. Take away Thopter Foundry and you've bought yourself many more turns. Take away Urza and they have nothing left.

In the middle of testing removing some number of Mind Funeral and/or Fraying Sanity for Trapmaker's Snare , possibly another Surgical Extraction or Murderous Cut (every deck in the current top 8 of the meta runs at least 6 creatures). Reducing the mana curve is also a big bonus.

I think the major thing you're missing in your analysis is that 2/3 games are post-sideboard. Having 7x (or more) copies of your "silver bullet/s" is huge, along with better selection for those silver bullets as well (either putting them directly in the bin if you have a Mesmeric Orb out, or bubbling them up if you don't). Having the ability to double Surgical Extraction is one of the most common plays post-sideboard and it just straight up wins against a pretty large percentage of the meta currently.

wallisface on Competitive UB mill modern (2019)

2 weeks ago

This deck is looking very good, and very close to what is being played in the more serious competitive scenes. I’d say you don’t need to change anything other than Manic Scribe ... almost any mill spell will net you more value, Mind Funeral seems like a better fit, or Thought Scour .

You’re right to avoid Fraying Sanity ... the text looks inviting but it’s a trash card that’ll just make the deck clumsy. Running a single copy is usually viable, but running any more than 1 just ends up creating the risk of drawing more than 1.. and drawing a second copy is the same as missing out on a draw entirely. There’s a reason 90% of competitive mill avoids this card, and those that do use it, just use 1.

Anyway, awesome looking deck! +1!

rubeerubin on Competitive Modern Mill

2 weeks ago

Mission Briefing instead of Breaking seems like an improvement. Remember that you can pay the alternative cost to Archive Trap , which is probably the best mill card in the deck. Having the ability to do it twice on one turn is a back breaker. It's also 4x more Darkness . And obvious flexibility later in the game ( Mind Funeral might close out a late game better, for example).

But it's also another 4x Surgical Extraction after sideboard, which is huge. 2 out of 3 games uses the sideboard, don't forget. And speaking of sideboard, it gives you 4x copies of every single card in your sideboard.

Oh and don't forget the Surveil. If it wasn't good enough already, the ability to bubble up another mill card is huge (or that desperately needed land), or Darkness .

There are also the games where you need to draw 3 with Visions of Beyond and your graveyard is closer to 20 than your opponent's.

Peisistratos on Competitive Modern Mill

1 month ago

AtraxaIsBae That would be nice if it hadn't some unfortunate implications. Let's analyse such build, switching Darkness for Surgical Extraction in order to understand if at least our best case scenario build works out.

If we play Scheming Symmetry , we cannot play Mesmeric Orb . That's a fact. We cannot spend a whole card just to cast an otherwise useless card: at least Field of Ruin gives mana. So acting as Scheming Symmetry enablers we have: Hedron Crab , which however acts as such only from turn 3, because if start with Hedron Crab we usually open up the game with Shelldock Isle , Island or Prismatic Vista for Island , so that we'll get only on turn 2 and Hedron Crab as an enabler only as early as turn 3. Then we get our 2 mana millers, yet they can be coupled with Scheming Symmetry only from turn 3 on. Finally from turn 4 we get Mind Funeral and Field of Ruin , but that's too late. If we adopt surgical extraction, we can probably enable
Scheming Symmetry as early as turn 2 - but it would be as we mulliganed to 5 cards, since we spend 2 whole cards that don't advance our game plan only to put on top a usually replaceable cards. And fogging for 2 mana is not worth it because it's too expensive.

Peisistratos on Competitive Modern Mill

1 month ago

wallisface That's the case only if you sacrifice redundancy for the defence department, which I don't recommend. Secondly, how is it that the second copy is bad? A double Fraying Sanity quadruplicates any spell, which means you can win with your worst card ( Breaking ) coupled up with anything else (even a Mesmeric Orb on turn 2). On the other side, with a double Fraying Sanity you can with with a single Archive Trap or an average Mind Funeral (based on the remaining land cards in your opponent's deck given the late state of the game). Bear in mind that in an average game you need to resolve 5 mill spells in order to win. The first copy of Fraying Sanity allows you to decrease that number to 4 (dramatically increasing your turn-4 wins), while your second copy simply counts amount those remaining 3 mill spells left to be cast. Thanks for allowing me to clarify this point.