Tome Scour
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Legality

Format Legality
1v1 Commander Legal
Archenemy Legal
Arena 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
Historic Legal
Legacy Legal
Leviathan Legal
Limited Legal
Modern Legal
Oathbreaker Legal
Pauper Legal
Pauper Duel Commander Legal
Pauper EDH Legal
Pioneer Legal
Planechase Legal
Quest Magic Legal
Tiny Leaders Legal
Vanguard 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 Blue/black mill

1 month ago

Some thoughts:

  • It looks like you're currently trying to do 3 different things here: mill your opponent out, combo-off, and deal them 20 damage. This is just going to weaken your overall gameplan because whichever way to try to win, only half of the cards you draw are going to help with that. I would suggest you reorganize the deck to be entirely-focused on the mill plan, entirely focused on the Duskmantle Guildmage combo, or entirely focused on the beatdown plan.

If you're wanting to build a Mill Deck:

  • There are no creatures at all worth running except for Hedron Crab and Ruin Crab. Nothing else is even remotely worth the effort of running, because nothing else really helps with the goal of milling your opponent.

  • Also something to be aware of, is that you need any card that is milling to get at least 8 cards from your opponents deck (try to compare mill spells as burn spell, except you need to do 53 damage instead of 20 - so the same way that burn can never justify running Shock, mill can never justify running Tome Scour). Any less than this, and you just end up empty-handed with your opponent still alive. So I would suggest ditching Mind Grind, Tome Scour, Traumatize, both the planeswalkers, and your artifacts. I would also say to get rid of Fraying Sanity because that card is just bad. Instead look to add things like Fractured Sanity, Maddening Cacophony and Archive Trap.

  • You'll want a decent amount of interaction in the form of Surgical Extraction and Fatal Push, as well as Drown in the Loch. Crypt Incursion is also great to keep yourself alive longer

  • An example deck of how this looks here

If you're wanting to build a Combo Deck:

  • you'll want to up your copies of Mindcrank to a full playset. You also want ways to fetch both your combo pieces in the way of cards like Dimir Infiltrator and Muddle the Mixture, as well as draw spells like Consider or Serum Visions.

  • Duskmantle Guildmage is the only real creature you need to run, though its worth also considering Spellskite as a way to protect your combo pieces, and Vendilion Clique as either a way to fix your own hand, or mess with your opponents.

  • Your other cards should mainly be focused on ensuring your opponent can't disrupt what you're doing. Spell Pierce and Counterspell will be great here, as well as proactive cards like Inquisition of Kozilek. Because you only really want to slow your opponent down, stuff like Vapor Snag can be decent too (note this card can also start the combo triggering once you have the pieces in play).

  • A budget dechtech example with description, list & video this deck here

If you're wanting to build a Creature-beatdown Deck:

  • You probably don't want to be doing much milling at all, or at least you don't want to be running any cards that only mill. The most practical route to go down is probably using Rogues, with cards like Thieves' Guild Enforcer and Soaring Thought-Thief.

  • A budget dechtech example with description, list & video this deck here

Delphen7 on Friday the 13th - A …

2 months ago

legendofa That's what I was thinking. Turn 1 Tome Scour or turn 2 Glimpse the Unthinkable (Or t1 Hedron Crab into fetchland), and this guy can be online t1/t2 very easily.

He fits into dredge very well.

Jopling on Extract the Demon ($30 Dredge Primer)

3 months ago

GrimlockVIII The lack of interaction is actually this deck's biggest weakness. I've really struggled to find any that work as being able to be cast from the graveyard is an absolute necessity.

I always mulligan until I can play Tome Scour or Otherworldly Gaze in my opening hand, so the vast majority of cards go into my graveyard.

Any suggestions for interaction that could work would be greatly appreciated!

wallisface on I have created a deck …

5 months 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

5 months 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

5 months 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

5 months 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....

6 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.

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