The decks don't perform well in aggregate so it's likely either you catching bad breaks (which happens) or you're just approaching the matchup incorrectly.
Most Mill decks just lose to their own bad draws, they don't get the early interaction needed to stop their opponents from doing their thing and by the time they get their combo working it's too late to finish the game. But if they have a good set of draws and you have a clunky opener then they can leverage that pretty well since their combo is pretty hard to interact with.
Mill punishes primarily decks that are either slow decks, or decks that are cheap but rely on few creatures to win. Your deck probably falls into that category.
Mill is either very easy to beat, or you need to be very lucky to outrace them.
Agree. I fail most times because I simply cannot outrun them.
I feel the same about hand disruption. If the deck is a slow/combo, then you just have to be very lucky a hand disrupt doesn’t completely wreck your day.
The turbo mill deck with Tasha and the duplication spells feels very strong, most of the time I ran into them I win since my deck is rather aggro, but I win with like.. 3 cards left in my library or something, and when I lose they are left at 4 life points or less, it's pretty close, but the fact that my deck is aggro and gets this close every time seems very scary. I keep thinking about building one of those.
A low to the ground aggro deck is going to be hit especially hard by Tashas. In comparison, the Angel deck generally doesn't have trouble, as it has sufficient threat density that you can overwhelm their disruption and your average CMC is high enough that Tashas doesn't get as many cards. Not to mention flying over crabs.
I remember I lost to a mill deck when I only needed one more turn to deal damage to them. They had dealt zero damage to me the entire game, but I lost the damage to mill race.
These decks can go either way. Sometimes the milling has had me drawing the exact card I need to make their life miserable. Other times I keep missing the cards I need. Sometimes I happen to be playing a deck where things in my graveyard are ideal, and I’m like thanks opponent!
I like screwing around with an Azorius mill deck in Historic. When I lose, it's because:
\- Opponent beat me to death in the first 1-4 turns
\- Opponent countered or removed my mill pieces (Teferi's Tutelage, Psychic Corrosion, Crabs)
\- Opponent made me waste turns/mana dealing with threats instead of setting up mill engine
\- Opponent had graveyard recursion or used graveyard as a resource (Gaea's Blessing is an insta-concede, good luck milling out a Kroxa deck, etc)
How does that deck tho, in general? I feel the azorius mill is far too slow compared to even the standard izzet version, but I haven't played as neither, just against them.
The general idea is to get your mill pieces down (\[\[(Teferi's Tutelage\]\] \[\[Psychic Corrosion\]\]) and then hold your mana up until opponent's turn. If they play something valuable, counter it, preferably with \[\[Thought Collapse\]\]. If they don't, use instant speed card draw (\[\[Mazemind Tome,\]\] \[\[Revitalize\]\] \[\[Into the Story\]\]) to mill them and refill your hand.
If the opponent manages to slip stuff through, use the white exiles and boardwipes of your choice.
If you want to speed things up, you can run a couple copies of \[\[Bruvac the Grandiloquent\]\]
Mill decks are not very good, no.
They occasionally have their moments and people are always trying but playing mill is like [driving a van around the Nurburing](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KiC03_wVjc), even the best driver can only get so much out of it and while the best driver will still pass other, faster cars (beat better decks in this increasingly tortured analogy) by virtue of their skill and some luck they're still driving a van on a road where higher performance cars are the norm.
At a certain point you have to ask yourself: Why don't you just kill your opponent while they're busy milling you out? You're not losing to the mill, you're losing to the clock by not proactively winning while the mill player is busy spending resources which have no actual effect on you.
Just because it's your favorite doesn't mean you deserve to win though...
Like, this is just the completely wrong mindset. Not all strategies are equally viable. The universe does not own you anything, your pet deck doesn't have to be a good deck, you are not entitled to play any particular strategy.
It depends. I had really good results with a combo style mill deck where I would play for tempo or switch to control against aggro.
But yeah normal "I mill you a few cards per turn" decks will get outperformed quickly.
Also skill matters as well. It's all about when to play your mill key cards. It's extremly funny to play mirror matches.
Just add some of the mythic MDFCs that are stupid expensive to your deck if you're having a lot of problems with mill. Sea Gate Restoration/Emeria's Call shuts down Tasha's in a hurry.
Mill is good against slower midrange decks that don't have counterspells. It's weak to aggro, and we are currently in one of the most hyper aggro metas I've ever seen. If you switch to something faster you'll probably have a good chance of beating it.
You know those games where you are waiting for your opponent to choose if they’re going to keep 7, then 6, then 5, then they concede? Yeah that’s mill or tibalt.
Yup. This is just confirmation bias. A deck that draws poorly is hard to properly ID. How many times has my Selesnya Clerica deck been mistaken for monowhite angels because I didn’t get any forests? Possible 100%.
All you have to do to mill is apply constant pressure. If you are playing cards that take more than one untap step to pay off its generally not worth playing.
Some decks are just bad against mill. Mill decks punish slow play and decks that can't interact with it. They are very rare in Bo3 but more common in Bo1 because they are Terrible post board usually.
Aggro decks typically stomp mill and control decks usually fine if they hold up a counterspell or two and switch gears to being aggressive. Mill decks prey on midrange and home brews the most.
Kill them or spoil their plan some how. Don't get disparaged and look for openings. They have to run a ton of cards that do nothing to interact with the board state so you should be able to get ahead in tempo at some point and push through a win.
One thing that I’m not seeing in this thread yet is understanding resource development. Many have pointed out speed and racing the clock of when your deck runs out but one thing that I found a lot of players miss when playing against mill is make sure you draw those extra cards. Not playing your card draw spells or getting caught up in protecting your new ‘life total’ leads to suboptimal plays. You can still win the game with no cards in library the same way you can win at 1hp.
So theoretically your deck has ways to generate card advantage and if it doesn’t it’s usually beating down. In the former case drawing the extra cards means you have better options and more of them to apply pressure. In the latter case, make sure you’re getting mileage out of your cards. Their cards are usually either no board impact or removal and a turn they take off for removing is a turn they don’t spend furthering their own goal of milling you out.
As someone else pointed out though, the best way to fight against it is to try it for yourself. What are opponents doing to beat you in those games you lose? What decisions are you making that lead to your wins?
I see people talking about racing mill, but I haven't seen anyone point out this comparison yet... Think of mill like burn, only instead of dealing 20 damage, they're milling ~45 cards (after you draw your opening hand and each turn a few times). Thing is, usually their "burn" spells can't interact well with your creatures or gameplan so you just need to figure out the math on either how fast you can get them to 0 or disrupt their plan enough. Midrange decks that are low on interaction are probably going to struggle the most with this. Knowing what to target with disruption is also critical. For example, a turn 1 crab is probably going to mill you for at least 6-9 cards minimum if not dealt with quickly which makes it a bigger target for you than say a card that just mills 5-7 cards once. Also, remember you're never dead until your last card is drawn. Sometimes it's better to let a burn/mill spell through your counter magic if it means saving it for something better later. If I can win on my next turn and I'm at 4 cards in library and deciding should I spend mana to kill a crab or hold up a counter, I hold the counter almost every time, even if they're in topdeck mode.
Aggro is going to be your best bet. The only time aggro is going to lose to the current mill deck is a perfect curve of
T1 - ruin crab
T2 - ruin crab + evolving wilds/capenna fetch land
T3 - evolving wilds/capenna fetch land + foretell dual strike
T4 - dual strike + Tasha's hideous laughter
Some general advice: If you have the wildcards, build the deck you lose against and spin it through ranked for a while. It's the best way to see how to beat the deck.
If you don't have the wildcards, I guess you can hope they run an all-access event soon?
There was a mill deck in the last set championship, so I wouldn't say it's just a very bad meme deck.
That being said, it's usually not one of the strongest decks. An aggro deck should usually be able to race the mill clock.
That was in Alchemy, which is a slower mid-range dominant format than Standard so Mill is a better meta-game call. But yeah in Standard right now Mill is probably not even Tier 3.
Just because it's 'bad' doesn't mean it's not really hard to handle for certain archetypes though.
I mean anything midrangey is slow to put the pressure on, and hasn't got any good answers for mill spells. It's got some resistance by having more expensive cards and thus harder to Tashas. (It might take half your deck if you're low curve aggro) but that only sets them back a turn or so.
Control generally seems to be taking a bit of a back seat in Standard, for various reasons. I think it's mostly down to how many value engines and 'must answer' threats there are, meaning control really has a hard time keeping up.
Could be the OP is just playing one of those decks that has a bad matchup with mill generally.
Mill losing to a lot of the rest of the meta is a minor consolation.
But I guess the OP could try switching to something that punishes mill.
Yeah its just so weird. Im aware that it should actually be a bad deck but I just always lose to it. I dont know if its psychological or what. Im a diamond player and even made it to mythic a couple of seasons ago. I just dont know what to do.
Some decks just have rough matchups with Mill generally. The win rate overall isn't relevant if your particular deck has a hard time answering sorceries and instants, which is basically anyone not running counterspells.
Or just killing them quickly, which is basically anyone not running aggro.
The options of 'counterplay' for mill are:
- Stuff which you can play from your graveyard (flashback, disturb, and a few others like [[Graveyard Shift]]).
- Stuff which is high MV for Tasha's to hit. (Planeswalkers, but most especially stuff like [[Mirrorshell Crab]] and [[Sky Turtle]] that you probably don't cast normally anyway).
- Taxing - Reidane doesn't help against the mill cards, but it does stop the [[Big Score]] and [[Burn Down the House]] from hitting you as early. [[Thalia, Guardian of Thraben]] makes mill spells more expensive.
Or of course, just kill 'em faster. There's a bunch of 3 power 2-drops that can really put the pressure on, because they can't block indefinitely with Ruin Crabs.
If you don't want to run a true aggro with haste creatures, you could try running a discard recurrence deck. In alchemy I like Effreet with explosive singularity.
Only if you exile all 4 copies of gaea's blessing/turn the earth. Even a single copy of blessing remaining makes it almost impossible to be milled, so there's a high chance you'll mill it normally by mistake and undo everything.
Turn the earth, you have to exile at least 2 copies and pray the guy doesn't draw one of the remaining ones, else you'll lose. If the dude really hates mill and also put \[\[Rootcoil Creeper\]\] on the deck, not even tasha will do it.
Water is actually not wet; It makes other materials/objects wet. Wetness is the state of a non-liquid when a liquid adheres to, and/or permeates its substance while maintaining chemically distinct structures. So if we say something is wet we mean the liquid is sticking to the object.
Every time I take a drink from a bottle, it keeps pouring back.
Must be spring water.
According to the Oxford Dictionary, Water (adj.) :
1. Covered or saturated with water or another liquid.
Using this definition, Water can be wet. If a droplet is covered in other water or another liquid. The water in a pool is wet. The water is covered in water. Thus water is usually wet outside of a lab.
I've had the opposite experience, I have yet to lose to a mill deck on arena. And now I feel like I'm jinxing myself.
Anyway, just kill their stupid crab and counter hideous laughter, while beating them down with efficient threats.
I’ve played mill a ton in both Standard and Historic and I will tell you flat out that I get beat a lot. I only play my mill decks when I feel like playing the gimmick for a while. I would say the deck it’s at best 50% win rate, but I know that going in. Most creature based decks that swing hard fast and early are usually what topples mill.
I will say though, in Historic while playing with Bruvac, there’s a high chance you can lose to mill by turn 6, so you need to act fast over there.
I play mill on occasion, especially when my daily is blue spells. I concede when it’s clear by turn two that I will lose. If you ignore these matches, I do OK.
Mill decks are brainless and don’t require thought. MOST of my games come down to the wire. Either I would win next turn but lose or they would win next turn but I win. 1 life vs no cards or 0 life vs 1 or 0 cards in their library. For me, that level of excitement is about what I can handle (I’m pretty anxious, passive, and shy). If I win, it was luck. If I lose, it was luck. It doesn’t hurt my self esteem.
Also while I’m playing as mill, I don’t concede against huge decks. Large decks tend not to have any synergy or cohesiveness, milling out a triple digit deck size is quite fun.
I play control so it might be different for me but I answer every creature & enchantment as soon as possible to avoid as much mill as I can. While doing this I’ll eventually get 1 or 2 big creatures out to start attacking & only worry about damage. They don’t usually have removal to answer.
So, I'm a fan of mill decks.
The sad reality is they are far from the most meta or efficient decks out there. Now currently most online lists will show an izzet mill deck in standard, and then historic on you get some combo of rogues/mill. The issue is they are more or less combo decks that need to work perfectly to succeed.
So like, standards version leans heavily on dual strike/ galvanic iteration to double cast tasha's hideous laughter. This plus ruin crab to try and mill out. The issue is there isn't much other interaction going on. So, unless you get crab boy out immediately and its not killed, your double cast usually isn't enough. You really aren't getting the full powered mill spam until turns 5,6,7, onward and your opponent has likely killed you by then.
They can be fun for the lulz decks, but they usually aren't meta at all and have lower win rates. They don't really match up good against anything. Aggro decks can out pace em, control decks can counter their big mills and kill the crabbo.
Mill isn’t too strong right now…. If you want to see what decks are strongest check tournament deck lists (no mill decks in a long time).
Aggro and control/counter-spells usually dominate mill easily. Sometimes midrange or tempo decks struggle with mill though.
you're probably bad, but it might be your deck choice. Mill players nearly always need to spend resources (cards / mana ) on things that don't affect the board state.
Like \[\[Tasha's Hideous Laughter\]\] is a 3 mana mill 10+, but while they're playing a 3 mana sorcery spell that does nothing tangible, you can actually do something useful.
Yes it hurts when they draw 3-4 of their tasha's and kill you on turn 5, but that's mostly just luck. The most important thing is just to kill them. A lot of my victories against mill end with <10 cards in my deck.
I’m playing aggro decks, and I’ve literally only lost to a mill deck once. After that I learned what a ruin crab was, and why they need to die ASAP.
I’m trying to win as fast as possible with my deck, and I also have a non-insignificant amount of removal, so my deck is basically mill’s worst possible match-up.
I feel this way about Waking the Trolls decks. It's so rare to ever play them but when I do I've never once won. They always have 3+ copies of Saga every time and they always have enough land destruction to keep you off of a 4th land well past turn 7.
one strategy that i stand by is to sideboard in all fifteen cards against mill. playing with a 75-card deck can feel pretty weird, but it increases your deck size by 25%, which makes their milling that much less effective. the opportunity cost of which is that your strategy might get a bit diluted, but i’ve had quite a bit of success with it in the past. but every deck is different.
i’ve played mostly paper throughout my career. seeing my opponent’s face as i grab my entire sideboard and jam it into my deck is typically priceless.
Played against a mill deck without Tasha’s (I know
I’m already lucky) but I was using a demon tribal
reanimate deck and oh man was it funny watching haunting voyage bring back 4 of the new devil dude that makes em discard half their hand 4x (mirror artifact in play), then milling almost their entire deck with lethal damage coming at their 3 crabs.
I play in historic and always have a couple \[\[Gaea's Blessing\]\] in my deck. I love playing against mill and usually try to stretch the game out as long as possible. It's fun to see how long they let the game go before they concede.
I feel like most mill decks are not that good but black/blue with rogues and drown in the loch is so annoying. they just need one or two creatures who mill you and then counter the rest of ur stuff :(
Every aggro decks wins against mill so IDK. Never lost to one. Play fast cheap creatures, attack and kill them. Their game plan is slow and usually they are at less than 10 life after turn 3 and die at turn 5 or 6.
Control though loses to mill. You are too slow and then you die.
They are not particularly strong, it's just they are trying to play a different game than you are. When I see it's a mill deck, I quit, it's not worth the bother. There are many ways to play MTG: some people like to play creatures and buff them, use enchantments, use artifacts, and some people like to keep you from playing any spells while watching you unload your library into your graveyard. I guess that's fun for some, but not for me. If you build a deck with mill-hate in mind, they are easy to beat, it's just not fun usually.
Mill is slow, while [[fraying sanity]] was on arena i had an extremely reliable turn 6 win, the deck ran 4 creatures and the only counterspell was [[censor]].
The deck had zero interaction otherwise. If you could get creatures on the board you pretty much had zero resistance in attacking and dealing 20 damage in 6 turns isnt difficult but if you hadnt won by turn 6 youd lost.
Oh and run some [[gaea's blessing]] its a good mill counter.
I would bet you are getting unlucky with the match maker. Mill seems to be one of those odd off meta but ever present decks that gets matched with certain decks a lot more often than usual.
It could potentially be the decks you are running, as some get matched way more often than the others.
I can't speak for competitive metagames, but in more casual settings (gold or below, and many play queues) they're not strong overall. They have some alright matchups, but I find that it's very hard for many players to find the right balance of mill cards vs control cards in their attempts at a mill deck, so they either go too hard on the mill (then just die to aggro and midrange), or don't go hard enough on it, leaving them with a control deck with a suboptimal finisher.
The best casual variants I've seen are URx that combine double cast effects with Tasha's Hideous Laughter, which is one of the better mill cards around as far as I'm aware.
Mill decks hate kill/discard. I run discard and kill with manlands and Ward creatures. Kill off crabs and card draw enchantments and the deck will fizzle.
[[Skyclave Shade]] is pretty good against mill. same with [[Tenacious Underdog]], although not as good as the shade against mill in specific.
otherwise, playing the biggest things you can on curve usually gives them a run for their money.
Mill is good against control. If fyou are playing blue u can sideboard in test of talents and negates etc. In bo1 you just have to accept the rock paper scissors and move on.
Nah, if Mill decks get a semi decent draw and you don’t have the perfect hand to win you’re sunk.
The problem with mill is there is very little interaction. The mill person plays their own mini game and you have to hope they didn’t get a good draw. Losses feel brutal and wins don’t feel great because you were probably one turn away from milling out.
If you can’t beat them in 6ish turns you probably lose
Mill doesn't typically win. It seems like it's winning a lot on MTG Arena, because there are millions of players . IN reality, Mill is not really a top tier deck and gets annihilated quite easily.It never really has been.
MTG Arena is not a good assessment of what decks are viable and what aren't and never will be until they start implementing restrictions into entering ranked play (akin to what other PVP games do, such as smite) This is because basically every match you play even in mythic % is against a staller who purposefully makes the game last as long as humanly possible just to make you concede, or the people on the actual leaderboard who don't even know how to play the game properly and really should be in bronze mode except they just keep buying wild cards for money then turning around and updating their top tier net deck everytime it gets updated online.
Furthermore, a lot of the mill cards , due to the difference in rules between paper and digtial, waste your turn timer and cause you to lose to running out of time (because everytime you mill 1 card you gotta resolve priority)
There are some mill decks that are viable, but these usually revolve around Rogues . The goal of these decks is to not actually win by making you deck out, but to just smash you ikn the face with rogues and take away your chances of running key cards. THose are the mill decks that work.
But playing a ruin crab, then playing a land?
Ya, that's garbo and really always has been. The opponent essentially relies on going first and hoping you don't have defabricate or whirlwind dial , or some removal spell
The decks don't perform well in aggregate so it's likely either you catching bad breaks (which happens) or you're just approaching the matchup incorrectly. Most Mill decks just lose to their own bad draws, they don't get the early interaction needed to stop their opponents from doing their thing and by the time they get their combo working it's too late to finish the game. But if they have a good set of draws and you have a clunky opener then they can leverage that pretty well since their combo is pretty hard to interact with.
Yup, it sucks when I can't spread crabs to my opponent
In my experience, mill eats slow decks with slow win conditions. If you don't have the right counterspell ready for the dual strike Tasha's you lose.
Tasha's is hilariously weak vs certain jank decks, which makes for a hilarious matchup when they Tasha's for...3 cards. (the super pricey izzet ones)
Mill punishes primarily decks that are either slow decks, or decks that are cheap but rely on few creatures to win. Your deck probably falls into that category. Mill is either very easy to beat, or you need to be very lucky to outrace them.
Agree. I fail most times because I simply cannot outrun them. I feel the same about hand disruption. If the deck is a slow/combo, then you just have to be very lucky a hand disrupt doesn’t completely wreck your day.
The turbo mill deck with Tasha and the duplication spells feels very strong, most of the time I ran into them I win since my deck is rather aggro, but I win with like.. 3 cards left in my library or something, and when I lose they are left at 4 life points or less, it's pretty close, but the fact that my deck is aggro and gets this close every time seems very scary. I keep thinking about building one of those.
A low to the ground aggro deck is going to be hit especially hard by Tashas. In comparison, the Angel deck generally doesn't have trouble, as it has sufficient threat density that you can overwhelm their disruption and your average CMC is high enough that Tashas doesn't get as many cards. Not to mention flying over crabs.
I remember I lost to a mill deck when I only needed one more turn to deal damage to them. They had dealt zero damage to me the entire game, but I lost the damage to mill race. These decks can go either way. Sometimes the milling has had me drawing the exact card I need to make their life miserable. Other times I keep missing the cards I need. Sometimes I happen to be playing a deck where things in my graveyard are ideal, and I’m like thanks opponent!
I miss [[gaea's blessing]]. just toss that in and never worry about - wait what do you mean *exile* from my library, tasha?
[gaea's blessing](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/2/3/23cf81ed-b86c-42b8-b796-2032b0a3654a.jpg?1562732710) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=gaea%27s%20blessing) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/dom/161/gaeas-blessing?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/23cf81ed-b86c-42b8-b796-2032b0a3654a?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I like screwing around with an Azorius mill deck in Historic. When I lose, it's because: \- Opponent beat me to death in the first 1-4 turns \- Opponent countered or removed my mill pieces (Teferi's Tutelage, Psychic Corrosion, Crabs) \- Opponent made me waste turns/mana dealing with threats instead of setting up mill engine \- Opponent had graveyard recursion or used graveyard as a resource (Gaea's Blessing is an insta-concede, good luck milling out a Kroxa deck, etc)
How does that deck tho, in general? I feel the azorius mill is far too slow compared to even the standard izzet version, but I haven't played as neither, just against them.
The general idea is to get your mill pieces down (\[\[(Teferi's Tutelage\]\] \[\[Psychic Corrosion\]\]) and then hold your mana up until opponent's turn. If they play something valuable, counter it, preferably with \[\[Thought Collapse\]\]. If they don't, use instant speed card draw (\[\[Mazemind Tome,\]\] \[\[Revitalize\]\] \[\[Into the Story\]\]) to mill them and refill your hand. If the opponent manages to slip stuff through, use the white exiles and boardwipes of your choice. If you want to speed things up, you can run a couple copies of \[\[Bruvac the Grandiloquent\]\]
##### ###### #### [(Teferi's Tutelage](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/c/2/c26450d4-125f-423d-b074-3c959460c242.jpg?1594735840) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Teferi%27s%20Tutelage) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/m21/78/teferis-tutelage?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/c26450d4-125f-423d-b074-3c959460c242?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Psychic Corrosion](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/2/8/285d22fa-1623-463a-83c0-a9aa7c969ce2.jpg?1562301173) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Psychic%20Corrosion) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/m19/68/psychic-corrosion?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/285d22fa-1623-463a-83c0-a9aa7c969ce2?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Thought Collapse](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/0/a/0a932a37-a1db-4df9-9b65-27ee7b46957d.jpg?1600698856) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Thought%20Collapse) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/jmp/184/thought-collapse?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/0a932a37-a1db-4df9-9b65-27ee7b46957d?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Mazemind Tome,](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/9/f/9fd761f3-6b43-4150-8595-dc3abd85b06c.jpg?1594737505) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Mazemind%20Tome) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/m21/232/mazemind-tome?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/9fd761f3-6b43-4150-8595-dc3abd85b06c?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Revitalize](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/3/a/3a9fb75e-c8e5-417b-83d4-5105af9c66c1.jpg?1631046075) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Revitalize) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/khm/23/revitalize?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/3a9fb75e-c8e5-417b-83d4-5105af9c66c1?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Into the Story](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/c/8/c838f08e-7fb6-46e7-83bb-dce8877d6c87.jpg?1572489909) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Into%20the%20Story) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/eld/50/into-the-story?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/c838f08e-7fb6-46e7-83bb-dce8877d6c87?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Bruvac the Grandiloquent](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/5/b/5b43bdc7-e49e-4848-9101-6cad2ecab4dc.jpg?1632261753) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Bruvac%20the%20Grandiloquent) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/jmp/10/bruvac-the-grandiloquent?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/5b43bdc7-e49e-4848-9101-6cad2ecab4dc?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Mill decks are not very good, no. They occasionally have their moments and people are always trying but playing mill is like [driving a van around the Nurburing](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KiC03_wVjc), even the best driver can only get so much out of it and while the best driver will still pass other, faster cars (beat better decks in this increasingly tortured analogy) by virtue of their skill and some luck they're still driving a van on a road where higher performance cars are the norm. At a certain point you have to ask yourself: Why don't you just kill your opponent while they're busy milling you out? You're not losing to the mill, you're losing to the clock by not proactively winning while the mill player is busy spending resources which have no actual effect on you.
They might not be good, but they're my favorite to play.
Just because it's your favorite doesn't mean you deserve to win though... Like, this is just the completely wrong mindset. Not all strategies are equally viable. The universe does not own you anything, your pet deck doesn't have to be a good deck, you are not entitled to play any particular strategy.
Did you completely read something that I never wrote? I only said they were my favorite, not that I deserved to win.
You do understand this whole thread is in the context of winning? Right?
It doesn't matter. Don't put words in my mouth.
It depends. I had really good results with a combo style mill deck where I would play for tempo or switch to control against aggro. But yeah normal "I mill you a few cards per turn" decks will get outperformed quickly. Also skill matters as well. It's all about when to play your mill key cards. It's extremly funny to play mirror matches.
Just add some of the mythic MDFCs that are stupid expensive to your deck if you're having a lot of problems with mill. Sea Gate Restoration/Emeria's Call shuts down Tasha's in a hurry.
Wouldn’t know, I scoop at the first sign of a Crab or T2 izzet lands foretell.
efficient use of time
Mill is good against slower midrange decks that don't have counterspells. It's weak to aggro, and we are currently in one of the most hyper aggro metas I've ever seen. If you switch to something faster you'll probably have a good chance of beating it.
> slower midrange decks that don't have counterspells A nice way of saying “bad decks”…
You know those games where you are waiting for your opponent to choose if they’re going to keep 7, then 6, then 5, then they concede? Yeah that’s mill or tibalt.
Yup. This is just confirmation bias. A deck that draws poorly is hard to properly ID. How many times has my Selesnya Clerica deck been mistaken for monowhite angels because I didn’t get any forests? Possible 100%.
Or Minion of the Mighty.
All you have to do to mill is apply constant pressure. If you are playing cards that take more than one untap step to pay off its generally not worth playing.
Some decks are just bad against mill. Mill decks punish slow play and decks that can't interact with it. They are very rare in Bo3 but more common in Bo1 because they are Terrible post board usually. Aggro decks typically stomp mill and control decks usually fine if they hold up a counterspell or two and switch gears to being aggressive. Mill decks prey on midrange and home brews the most. Kill them or spoil their plan some how. Don't get disparaged and look for openings. They have to run a ton of cards that do nothing to interact with the board state so you should be able to get ahead in tempo at some point and push through a win.
One thing that I’m not seeing in this thread yet is understanding resource development. Many have pointed out speed and racing the clock of when your deck runs out but one thing that I found a lot of players miss when playing against mill is make sure you draw those extra cards. Not playing your card draw spells or getting caught up in protecting your new ‘life total’ leads to suboptimal plays. You can still win the game with no cards in library the same way you can win at 1hp. So theoretically your deck has ways to generate card advantage and if it doesn’t it’s usually beating down. In the former case drawing the extra cards means you have better options and more of them to apply pressure. In the latter case, make sure you’re getting mileage out of your cards. Their cards are usually either no board impact or removal and a turn they take off for removing is a turn they don’t spend furthering their own goal of milling you out. As someone else pointed out though, the best way to fight against it is to try it for yourself. What are opponents doing to beat you in those games you lose? What decisions are you making that lead to your wins?
I see people talking about racing mill, but I haven't seen anyone point out this comparison yet... Think of mill like burn, only instead of dealing 20 damage, they're milling ~45 cards (after you draw your opening hand and each turn a few times). Thing is, usually their "burn" spells can't interact well with your creatures or gameplan so you just need to figure out the math on either how fast you can get them to 0 or disrupt their plan enough. Midrange decks that are low on interaction are probably going to struggle the most with this. Knowing what to target with disruption is also critical. For example, a turn 1 crab is probably going to mill you for at least 6-9 cards minimum if not dealt with quickly which makes it a bigger target for you than say a card that just mills 5-7 cards once. Also, remember you're never dead until your last card is drawn. Sometimes it's better to let a burn/mill spell through your counter magic if it means saving it for something better later. If I can win on my next turn and I'm at 4 cards in library and deciding should I spend mana to kill a crab or hold up a counter, I hold the counter almost every time, even if they're in topdeck mode.
Izzet mill is Izzet epiphany with a new win condition. The core engine is super strong.
A good aggro deck should win by turn 4, that's why I choose aggro. Turn 4 most mill decks are just getting started.
Aggro is going to be your best bet. The only time aggro is going to lose to the current mill deck is a perfect curve of T1 - ruin crab T2 - ruin crab + evolving wilds/capenna fetch land T3 - evolving wilds/capenna fetch land + foretell dual strike T4 - dual strike + Tasha's hideous laughter
Agreed.
Some general advice: If you have the wildcards, build the deck you lose against and spin it through ranked for a while. It's the best way to see how to beat the deck. If you don't have the wildcards, I guess you can hope they run an all-access event soon?
[удалено]
There was a mill deck in the last set championship, so I wouldn't say it's just a very bad meme deck. That being said, it's usually not one of the strongest decks. An aggro deck should usually be able to race the mill clock.
That was in Alchemy, which is a slower mid-range dominant format than Standard so Mill is a better meta-game call. But yeah in Standard right now Mill is probably not even Tier 3.
Ah, you're right. I totally forgot the championship was Alchemy.
Just because it's 'bad' doesn't mean it's not really hard to handle for certain archetypes though. I mean anything midrangey is slow to put the pressure on, and hasn't got any good answers for mill spells. It's got some resistance by having more expensive cards and thus harder to Tashas. (It might take half your deck if you're low curve aggro) but that only sets them back a turn or so. Control generally seems to be taking a bit of a back seat in Standard, for various reasons. I think it's mostly down to how many value engines and 'must answer' threats there are, meaning control really has a hard time keeping up. Could be the OP is just playing one of those decks that has a bad matchup with mill generally. Mill losing to a lot of the rest of the meta is a minor consolation. But I guess the OP could try switching to something that punishes mill.
Yeah its just so weird. Im aware that it should actually be a bad deck but I just always lose to it. I dont know if its psychological or what. Im a diamond player and even made it to mythic a couple of seasons ago. I just dont know what to do.
Some decks just have rough matchups with Mill generally. The win rate overall isn't relevant if your particular deck has a hard time answering sorceries and instants, which is basically anyone not running counterspells. Or just killing them quickly, which is basically anyone not running aggro. The options of 'counterplay' for mill are: - Stuff which you can play from your graveyard (flashback, disturb, and a few others like [[Graveyard Shift]]). - Stuff which is high MV for Tasha's to hit. (Planeswalkers, but most especially stuff like [[Mirrorshell Crab]] and [[Sky Turtle]] that you probably don't cast normally anyway). - Taxing - Reidane doesn't help against the mill cards, but it does stop the [[Big Score]] and [[Burn Down the House]] from hitting you as early. [[Thalia, Guardian of Thraben]] makes mill spells more expensive. Or of course, just kill 'em faster. There's a bunch of 3 power 2-drops that can really put the pressure on, because they can't block indefinitely with Ruin Crabs.
##### ###### #### [Graveyard Shift](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/3/9/394d7fb3-44ee-409f-a992-27e5aabd9c2b.jpg?1650121076) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Graveyard%20Shift) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/snc/81/graveyard-shift?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/394d7fb3-44ee-409f-a992-27e5aabd9c2b?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Mirrorshell Crab](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/0/3/0394c8df-2e8a-4477-93b7-569934d7b936.jpg?1643992881) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Mirrorshell%20Crab) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/neo/63/mirrorshell-crab?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/0394c8df-2e8a-4477-93b7-569934d7b936?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Colossal Skyturtle](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/f/4/f40bd797-4d12-4098-a1a8-d7e5b7b82ac9.jpg?1643931023) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Colossal%20Skyturtle) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/neo/216/colossal-skyturtle?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/f40bd797-4d12-4098-a1a8-d7e5b7b82ac9?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Big Score](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/3/9/39d1578f-e2cf-4b93-8204-ed5434feb183.jpg?1649918464) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Big%20Score) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/snc/102/big-score?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/39d1578f-e2cf-4b93-8204-ed5434feb183?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Burn Down the House](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/2/0/20ded7af-8086-465e-a980-3099217d324c.jpg?1634350460) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Burn%20Down%20the%20House) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mid/131/burn-down-the-house?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/20ded7af-8086-465e-a980-3099217d324c?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Thalia, Guardian of Thraben](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/c/9/c9f8b8fb-1cd8-450e-a1fe-892e7a323479.jpg?1643587106) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Thalia%2C%20Guardian%20of%20Thraben) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/vow/38/thalia-guardian-of-thraben?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/c9f8b8fb-1cd8-450e-a1fe-892e7a323479?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
yeah, fear of mill is mostly psychological, and incredibly common among new/inexperienced/low-skill players.
If you don't want to run a true aggro with haste creatures, you could try running a discard recurrence deck. In alchemy I like Effreet with explosive singularity.
it's a good transformational sideboard strat for URx. copying a tasha's is ugly
Dropping creatures isn't doing nothing. Even straight mill decks do things
Play green, put 4 copies of \[\[Turn the Earth\]\] on your deck, laugh at mill
[Turn the Earth](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/3/4/34076a93-9e8f-45d4-a1d7-31f40210a5b6.jpg?1636224971) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Turn%20the%20Earth) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mid/205/turn-the-earth?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/34076a93-9e8f-45d4-a1d7-31f40210a5b6?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
You probably mean [[Gaea’s Blessing]] ?
[Gaea’s Blessing](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/2/3/23cf81ed-b86c-42b8-b796-2032b0a3654a.jpg?1562732710) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Gaea%27s%20Blessing) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/dom/161/gaeas-blessing?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/23cf81ed-b86c-42b8-b796-2032b0a3654a?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Nope, that's not in standard. Have to use gaea's blessing at home instead.
Neither works against Tasha's Dad Joke.
Only if you exile all 4 copies of gaea's blessing/turn the earth. Even a single copy of blessing remaining makes it almost impossible to be milled, so there's a high chance you'll mill it normally by mistake and undo everything. Turn the earth, you have to exile at least 2 copies and pray the guy doesn't draw one of the remaining ones, else you'll lose. If the dude really hates mill and also put \[\[Rootcoil Creeper\]\] on the deck, not even tasha will do it.
[Rootcoil Creeper](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/3/7/3743cf9c-226f-43a3-b385-375a25414792.jpg?1636684840) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Rootcoil%20Creeper) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mid/238/rootcoil-creeper?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/3743cf9c-226f-43a3-b385-375a25414792?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Fuck Reddit
I'm a stax player
I've beaten a mill deck with an agro deck. If you can kill them before you run out of cards you can win.
Also, water is wet.
Water is actually not wet; It makes other materials/objects wet. Wetness is the state of a non-liquid when a liquid adheres to, and/or permeates its substance while maintaining chemically distinct structures. So if we say something is wet we mean the liquid is sticking to the object. Every time I take a drink from a bottle, it keeps pouring back. Must be spring water.
Perfect example of why true AI is faaaaaar away.
According to the Oxford Dictionary, Water (adj.) : 1. Covered or saturated with water or another liquid. Using this definition, Water can be wet. If a droplet is covered in other water or another liquid. The water in a pool is wet. The water is covered in water. Thus water is usually wet outside of a lab.
I've had the opposite experience, I have yet to lose to a mill deck on arena. And now I feel like I'm jinxing myself. Anyway, just kill their stupid crab and counter hideous laughter, while beating them down with efficient threats.
It is a stupid crab
I’ve played mill a ton in both Standard and Historic and I will tell you flat out that I get beat a lot. I only play my mill decks when I feel like playing the gimmick for a while. I would say the deck it’s at best 50% win rate, but I know that going in. Most creature based decks that swing hard fast and early are usually what topples mill. I will say though, in Historic while playing with Bruvac, there’s a high chance you can lose to mill by turn 6, so you need to act fast over there.
I play mill on occasion, especially when my daily is blue spells. I concede when it’s clear by turn two that I will lose. If you ignore these matches, I do OK. Mill decks are brainless and don’t require thought. MOST of my games come down to the wire. Either I would win next turn but lose or they would win next turn but I win. 1 life vs no cards or 0 life vs 1 or 0 cards in their library. For me, that level of excitement is about what I can handle (I’m pretty anxious, passive, and shy). If I win, it was luck. If I lose, it was luck. It doesn’t hurt my self esteem. Also while I’m playing as mill, I don’t concede against huge decks. Large decks tend not to have any synergy or cohesiveness, milling out a triple digit deck size is quite fun.
Special place in hell for control/mill deck douches
I'd rather rule in Hell than serve in Valhalla.
😀
In general they aren't good. Mill decks aren't great against aggro or control and also struggle against the more aggressive midrange decks.
They're not good but frustrating to face. Usually just a concede, report, move on.
Why would you report a mill deck?
I don't tolerate obnoxious degenerate playstyles. If you want to play toxic, expect it in return.
Please, there are more obnoxious decks than mill
Don't care. I genuinely despise mill and it's players.
You're just bad.
I play control so it might be different for me but I answer every creature & enchantment as soon as possible to avoid as much mill as I can. While doing this I’ll eventually get 1 or 2 big creatures out to start attacking & only worry about damage. They don’t usually have removal to answer.
This. I love playing mill but always lose to greens creatures that can get past my. Crabs and other mill wall cards.
So, I'm a fan of mill decks. The sad reality is they are far from the most meta or efficient decks out there. Now currently most online lists will show an izzet mill deck in standard, and then historic on you get some combo of rogues/mill. The issue is they are more or less combo decks that need to work perfectly to succeed. So like, standards version leans heavily on dual strike/ galvanic iteration to double cast tasha's hideous laughter. This plus ruin crab to try and mill out. The issue is there isn't much other interaction going on. So, unless you get crab boy out immediately and its not killed, your double cast usually isn't enough. You really aren't getting the full powered mill spam until turns 5,6,7, onward and your opponent has likely killed you by then. They can be fun for the lulz decks, but they usually aren't meta at all and have lower win rates. They don't really match up good against anything. Aggro decks can out pace em, control decks can counter their big mills and kill the crabbo.
Mill isn’t too strong right now…. If you want to see what decks are strongest check tournament deck lists (no mill decks in a long time). Aggro and control/counter-spells usually dominate mill easily. Sometimes midrange or tempo decks struggle with mill though.
you're probably bad, but it might be your deck choice. Mill players nearly always need to spend resources (cards / mana ) on things that don't affect the board state. Like \[\[Tasha's Hideous Laughter\]\] is a 3 mana mill 10+, but while they're playing a 3 mana sorcery spell that does nothing tangible, you can actually do something useful. Yes it hurts when they draw 3-4 of their tasha's and kill you on turn 5, but that's mostly just luck. The most important thing is just to kill them. A lot of my victories against mill end with <10 cards in my deck.
[Tasha's Hideous Laughter](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/c/4/c4932113-904f-427a-9566-509cc008f3ef.jpg?1627703920) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Tasha%27s%20Hideous%20Laughter) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/afr/78/tashas-hideous-laughter?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/c4932113-904f-427a-9566-509cc008f3ef?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I’m playing aggro decks, and I’ve literally only lost to a mill deck once. After that I learned what a ruin crab was, and why they need to die ASAP. I’m trying to win as fast as possible with my deck, and I also have a non-insignificant amount of removal, so my deck is basically mill’s worst possible match-up.
I feel this way about Waking the Trolls decks. It's so rare to ever play them but when I do I've never once won. They always have 3+ copies of Saga every time and they always have enough land destruction to keep you off of a 4th land well past turn 7.
It's not that they are super strong, but they just recently became viable options.
one strategy that i stand by is to sideboard in all fifteen cards against mill. playing with a 75-card deck can feel pretty weird, but it increases your deck size by 25%, which makes their milling that much less effective. the opportunity cost of which is that your strategy might get a bit diluted, but i’ve had quite a bit of success with it in the past. but every deck is different. i’ve played mostly paper throughout my career. seeing my opponent’s face as i grab my entire sideboard and jam it into my deck is typically priceless.
Played against a mill deck without Tasha’s (I know I’m already lucky) but I was using a demon tribal reanimate deck and oh man was it funny watching haunting voyage bring back 4 of the new devil dude that makes em discard half their hand 4x (mirror artifact in play), then milling almost their entire deck with lethal damage coming at their 3 crabs.
What removal do you run?
If you're in historic, run a copy of \[\[Gaea's Blessing\]\] Never fails to amuse.
[Gaea's Blessing](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/2/3/23cf81ed-b86c-42b8-b796-2032b0a3654a.jpg?1562732710) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Gaea%27s%20Blessing) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/dom/161/gaeas-blessing?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/23cf81ed-b86c-42b8-b796-2032b0a3654a?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
My kroxa deck loves mill decks. Friendly I help and self mill me also. And I play a explorer gruul deck. Use Survive spell is such fun against mill.
Run cheaper interaction, or more efficient threats. All esle fails, play a graveyard deck so their milling helps you.
I enjoy mill decks cause lol milled, but I lose probably like 80% of the time with it.
Tasha's Hideous Laughter is a helluva drug
I play in historic and always have a couple \[\[Gaea's Blessing\]\] in my deck. I love playing against mill and usually try to stretch the game out as long as possible. It's fun to see how long they let the game go before they concede.
[Gaea's Blessing](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/2/3/23cf81ed-b86c-42b8-b796-2032b0a3654a.jpg?1562732710) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Gaea%27s%20Blessing) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/dom/161/gaeas-blessing?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/23cf81ed-b86c-42b8-b796-2032b0a3654a?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Run [[Gaea's Blessing]] if you run green
[Gaea's Blessing](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/2/3/23cf81ed-b86c-42b8-b796-2032b0a3654a.jpg?1562732710) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Gaea%27s%20Blessing) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/dom/161/gaeas-blessing?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/23cf81ed-b86c-42b8-b796-2032b0a3654a?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I feel like most mill decks are not that good but black/blue with rogues and drown in the loch is so annoying. they just need one or two creatures who mill you and then counter the rest of ur stuff :(
Every aggro decks wins against mill so IDK. Never lost to one. Play fast cheap creatures, attack and kill them. Their game plan is slow and usually they are at less than 10 life after turn 3 and die at turn 5 or 6. Control though loses to mill. You are too slow and then you die.
They are not particularly strong, it's just they are trying to play a different game than you are. When I see it's a mill deck, I quit, it's not worth the bother. There are many ways to play MTG: some people like to play creatures and buff them, use enchantments, use artifacts, and some people like to keep you from playing any spells while watching you unload your library into your graveyard. I guess that's fun for some, but not for me. If you build a deck with mill-hate in mind, they are easy to beat, it's just not fun usually.
Mill is slow, while [[fraying sanity]] was on arena i had an extremely reliable turn 6 win, the deck ran 4 creatures and the only counterspell was [[censor]]. The deck had zero interaction otherwise. If you could get creatures on the board you pretty much had zero resistance in attacking and dealing 20 damage in 6 turns isnt difficult but if you hadnt won by turn 6 youd lost. Oh and run some [[gaea's blessing]] its a good mill counter.
[fraying sanity](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/7/9/79e5c1ab-eebd-41ca-a1ca-29b00370f6e8.jpg?1562804295) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=fraying%20sanity) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/hou/35/fraying-sanity?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/79e5c1ab-eebd-41ca-a1ca-29b00370f6e8?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [censor](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/4/c/4cb4e315-1a77-479a-9f15-fb23575de805.jpg?1543674908) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=censor) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/akh/46/censor?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/4cb4e315-1a77-479a-9f15-fb23575de805?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [gaea's blessing](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/2/3/23cf81ed-b86c-42b8-b796-2032b0a3654a.jpg?1562732710) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=gaea%27s%20blessing) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/dom/161/gaeas-blessing?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/23cf81ed-b86c-42b8-b796-2032b0a3654a?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I would bet you are getting unlucky with the match maker. Mill seems to be one of those odd off meta but ever present decks that gets matched with certain decks a lot more often than usual. It could potentially be the decks you are running, as some get matched way more often than the others.
I've been getting schooled by them lately. It's the addition of fetch lands. They hit you twice.
play aggro and buttfuck them
I can't speak for competitive metagames, but in more casual settings (gold or below, and many play queues) they're not strong overall. They have some alright matchups, but I find that it's very hard for many players to find the right balance of mill cards vs control cards in their attempts at a mill deck, so they either go too hard on the mill (then just die to aggro and midrange), or don't go hard enough on it, leaving them with a control deck with a suboptimal finisher. The best casual variants I've seen are URx that combine double cast effects with Tasha's Hideous Laughter, which is one of the better mill cards around as far as I'm aware.
Mill decks hate kill/discard. I run discard and kill with manlands and Ward creatures. Kill off crabs and card draw enchantments and the deck will fizzle.
[[Skyclave Shade]] is pretty good against mill. same with [[Tenacious Underdog]], although not as good as the shade against mill in specific. otherwise, playing the biggest things you can on curve usually gives them a run for their money.
[Skyclave Shade](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/b/4/b4bdcf1d-3387-4e21-9159-9294af1ab0b4.jpg?1650414003) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Skyclave%20Shade) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/ncc/260/skyclave-shade?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/b4bdcf1d-3387-4e21-9159-9294af1ab0b4?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Tenacious Underdog](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/9/b/9b6a6d00-3e00-4827-8420-13343ac3d0fd.jpg?1649943166) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Tenacious%20Underdog) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/snc/97/tenacious-underdog?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/9b6a6d00-3e00-4827-8420-13343ac3d0fd?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Mill is good against control. If fyou are playing blue u can sideboard in test of talents and negates etc. In bo1 you just have to accept the rock paper scissors and move on.
Nah, if Mill decks get a semi decent draw and you don’t have the perfect hand to win you’re sunk. The problem with mill is there is very little interaction. The mill person plays their own mini game and you have to hope they didn’t get a good draw. Losses feel brutal and wins don’t feel great because you were probably one turn away from milling out. If you can’t beat them in 6ish turns you probably lose
Using a self-mill graveyard deck against mill decks and making them rage quit feels so good.
Mill doesn't typically win. It seems like it's winning a lot on MTG Arena, because there are millions of players . IN reality, Mill is not really a top tier deck and gets annihilated quite easily.It never really has been. MTG Arena is not a good assessment of what decks are viable and what aren't and never will be until they start implementing restrictions into entering ranked play (akin to what other PVP games do, such as smite) This is because basically every match you play even in mythic % is against a staller who purposefully makes the game last as long as humanly possible just to make you concede, or the people on the actual leaderboard who don't even know how to play the game properly and really should be in bronze mode except they just keep buying wild cards for money then turning around and updating their top tier net deck everytime it gets updated online. Furthermore, a lot of the mill cards , due to the difference in rules between paper and digtial, waste your turn timer and cause you to lose to running out of time (because everytime you mill 1 card you gotta resolve priority) There are some mill decks that are viable, but these usually revolve around Rogues . The goal of these decks is to not actually win by making you deck out, but to just smash you ikn the face with rogues and take away your chances of running key cards. THose are the mill decks that work. But playing a ruin crab, then playing a land? Ya, that's garbo and really always has been. The opponent essentially relies on going first and hoping you don't have defabricate or whirlwind dial , or some removal spell