Tome Scour
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Legality

Format Legality
1v1 Commander 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
Pioneer Legal
Tiny Leaders Legal
Vintage Legal

Tome Scour

Sorcery

Target player puts the top five cards of his or her library into his or her graveyard.

wallisface on I have created a deck …

1 month ago

Mill is already a really well-known archetype. The current MtgGoldfish Meta deck is here. My own competitive build is here.

I see Caerwyn has already left you some really good advise on deck suggestions, but I'll list below some general good mill-ethos:

  • It's good to treat mill cards as if they are burn cards. In the same way that Shock is unplayable in Burn decks, and card that mills ~7 or less cards is pretty unplayable in mill (I'm looking at Tome Scour specifically as being too weak). The problem is that if your mill cards aren't efficient enough, then you just end up empty-handed, and with your opponent still having a deck (in the same way that if Burn decks only play Shock, they run out of cards before they can kill the opponent).

  • It's good to try and assume the game will be over within 5 turns. In that way, cards like Traumatize are pointless - either the game is already over before you get to cast it, or your opponent has soo few cards left in their deck that you're effectively paying 5 mana to mill ~6ish cards. As a rule of thumb, these cards that mill variable quantities of cards for excessive quantities of mana, aren't worth it. I would put Fraying Sanity in the same boat of "just not being useful" - by the time you could cast it you could just be casting a mill spell instead and getting equal-or-better results.

  • Mill decks just aren't good at winning races. They generally need some way to disrupt the opponents plans (with stuff like Drown in the Loch, Fatal Push, Surgical Extraction). Just letting your opponent do what they want will almost always end in failure, so ensure your deck has a good-quantity of disruption, to make sure you can secure the win. Cards like Surgical Extraction and/or Extirpate are particularly good, because you can turn-off many decks completely, giving you a LOT more time to enact your plan. And those decks that aren't shut down so easily, will usually suffer to cards like Crypt Incursion, Ensnaring Bridge, or Profane Memento. The general gameplan approach for mill is to let the opponent taste it, then disrupt their tempo so they can't do much-of-anything useful, and then finish them off.

wallisface on Blue Mill 3.0

1 month ago

Surgical Extraction is a faaar superior graveyard-attack spell than Tormod's Crypt, because it can also attack the opponents deck, and can take combo pieces away from the opponent entirely.

You have no reason to put your own graveyard back into your deck, so Elixir of Immortality still feels pointless to me.

Trust me that Tome Scour and its ilk are terrible cards for mill. They don’t mill enough cards, so the result is that you end up empty handed with the opponent still having a healthy quantity of cards in their deck. Top-decking is never where a mill player wants to be. There’s just no reason to run such a card when there are sooo many better options.

Having played a lot of mill, this deck currently will only be able to “hold up well” if your meta is super, super casual.

wallisface on Blue Mill 3.0

1 month ago

Some thoughts:

  • for the same reason that Shock is terrible in burn decks, Tome Scour just isn’t viable in mill - it just doesn’t do enough for the card-cost. I would also add Memory Sluice, and Dream Twist, into this “doesn’t do enough” bucket. I’d suggest grabbing some copies of Fractured Sanity instead.

  • Mill decks generally can’t go fast enough to race the quicker decks in modern. This is why its super important to run interaction. Most mill decks include black so that they can run cards like Fatal Push, Drown in the Loch, and Surgical Extraction.

  • Your sideboard currently just reads like a bunch of cards that couldn’t fit in the main. You should be using those 15 slots to protect yourself from bad matchups, and dealing with problem cards.

  • i’m not sure what Elixir of Immortality, Tormod's Crypt, and Memory Erosion are doing in this deck. None of them feel particularly useful.

Jupiter_Ascendancy on Tolarian Mill

1 month ago

I like the deck so far.

Some takeaways I'm getting from a few playtests-

  • I don't think you need Remote Isle here, if anything it should at least be replaced with Lonely Sandbar, which costs less mana to cycle and was originally a common, even if it's now printed at uncommon. However, I would probably just play regular islands.
  • Play more islands as well, I tend to get stuck at 2-3 lands which isn't very much.
  • Run some more single-use mill cards- for example, Tome Scour and Mind Sculpt can hit pretty heavily in just one turn.

This looks like a good start, but I think this might give it the kick it needs to work against more efficient opponents.

wallisface on Mill,mill and mill....

1 month 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

2 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

SniperFrog on Oona

3 months ago

Alright. So there's a couple things I would change, but I don't want you to think it's better or anything, just what I would do. I'll give budget suggestions and non budget suggestions so you have a variety of choices without hurting the wallet.

I think I would go for mono blue so I can get Bruvac the Grandiloquent's effect in my command zone. It seems actually nutty to just be able to get this guy going. That being said, I like a lot of the black spells you have here, namely Mind Grind and Nightscape Familiar, so I would consider something like Phenax, God of Deception or maybe Mirko Vosk, Mind Drinker to stay in dimir. Not really sure the red is helping much at all, though. Only four red cards is a bit of a bad look, though they seem cool in theory. I've never played any of them, so I don't really know how good they actually are.

So there are a few optimizations I would consider as well. Three mana rocks are a bit slow for my tastes and there are a lot of decent options at two mana, I'd recommend Fellwar Stone, Mind Stone and Arcane Signet to name a few cheaper options. There's also Sapphire Medallion, Chrome Mox and Mana Vault, though those are strictly non budget.

More optimizations for interaction seems good here as well. Maybe drop some of your three mana counterspells for some one or two mana spells. Counterspell is a mainstay and at very good price as well. I like Swan Song, An Offer You Can't Refuse and Drown in the Loch in this slot. There are a plethora of non budget options as well, particularly free counters like Force of Will and Force of Negation or other heavy hitters like Mana Drain and Cryptic Command. Plenty of cool things to do with this, however, so you have options.

Your lands look rough. I personally will always go with untapped lands with so many options, but that can get really pricy, really fast. Of course, if you didn't have to worry about a red splash, your landbase gets A LOT better.

If you're having trouble with hitting enough lands, consider lowering the curve a bit or even adding a couple more to try to smooth things out. I generally try to have around forty-two to forty-five mana sources, though my curves are usually around 2-2.5, so you might want a little more than that, maybe. I don't know. That's something you can figure out with playtesting.

Now comes the fun part. As it stands, including the above mentioned cards, I would try to find room for these:

Into the Story for some card draw.

Leyline of the Void or something similar like Planar Void along with Helm of Obedience mills infinitely. Also pretty good to beat the eldrazi triggers if you see these things regularly.

Rhystic Study and its baby brother Mystic Remora are both excellent card draw spells with humongous upside, though they are both getting a little on the expensive side now, with Rhystic pushing forty or fifty bucks.

I like Bitter Ordeal, but I think this is kind of a pet card that I want to make work, so I might be projecting here. lol

Reanimate effects seem VERY strong here. I like the ones that target opponent's graveyards the most, so I would stick with Animate Dead and Dance with the Dead along with the aforementioned reanimate. Didn't think about this at first. Could be really sweet.

Mesmeric Orb is money in these decks. Gives mad inevitability.

Altar of the Brood and Altar of Dementia are both combo pieces, but I feel like they're more build arounds than good on their own.

Folio of Fancies. I've never seen this card before, but I love it. Seems like it would fit nicely.

Tome Scour and Brain Freeze are insane with Underworld Breach but this is another build around that pulls you more into storm than mill, I think. Still maybe worth thinking about.

Sands of Delirium seems sweet.

A few draw X spells could be just what you need. Stroke of Genius, Pull from Tomorrow, Fascination and Prosperity come to mind. Skyscribing also seems sweet, but I'm not sure how good it is.

Some cards I would just outright cut:

Gravepurge, not positive what this is doing for you, beside gumming up your draws. I guess it can get something back but not sure it's relevant. Hard to say without playing the deck.

All three mana rocks. Darksteel Ingot, Dimir Cluestone, Ur-Golem's Eye, Hedron Archive are a few. There are actually a few more than I thought, so maybe cutting all of them isn't the right thing to do unless you are cutting like for like for cheaper rocks.

Grisly Spectacle, I feel like you can get a better removal spell. I see the appeal, but I feel like it will get at most six cards milled maybe. Something like Feed the Swarm is probably just better or Drown in the Loch which hits two birds with one stone.

Countermand. Four mana counterspell seems like a really hard ask. I know it's on theme, but something cheaper is probably just better. See above for suggestions on cheap counters.

I would maybe cut some other, stuff, but I feel like I've already given you a lot to think about. Love the list. I'm excited to see it once you've had a chance to keep tuning it. Follow for sure. :)

wallisface on Hard miller

5 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

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