You’ll definitely learn a lot either way 🙂 If it works, drop me a line!

I agree that I’d have to play hate cards for sure. But I feel like the modern metagame is built to help mill (my form of hate comes from casting darkness and my board wipes are devastation tides).

I do believe that Mill is inherently bad. Any race to 53 is slower than a race to 20, but I think the myth is mainly predicated on an old philosophy of mill. You said yourself that the key to stopping graveyard decks is to halt enablers, and that shoals best to mitigate turn one plays. This conceptual design could prop mill up. I will obviously playtest more, but I thought maybe it’s a preconceived myth, as the others on your list, that may have been generated mainly by the way people visualized how to play the deck. I can link a list if youd like. But even if it fails, it has taught me a lot about playing tempo, control, and deck building, all articles ice recently read by you that now make further sense

I would think the decks you’re referring to would enjoy tremendous Mill matchups, as your win condition accelerates their gameplan. Milling for 30 isn’t worth much when you’re then eating attacks from 3 free Arclight Phoenixes!

Perhaps something like a set of Ravenous Trap could mitigate this issue, but I still feel like the decks that stuff their graveyard are inherently good against Mill—I remember thoroughly enjoying the matchup when I was casting Hooting Mandrills, and that card’s on the fairer side of things.

Mill also has the issue that if it ever did approach dominance, players could simply tech a single Emrakul, the Aeons Torn in their sideboards to lock you out without really doing anything. You’re then forced to have Surgical on-hand, which makes your gameplan significantly difficult to execute.

1) Mill has never been better placed. So many decks revolve around putting cards in their graveyards that no matter how much milling helps graveyard decks, graveyard decks help mill. Burning inquiry is literally a turn one mill 3 for free for a mill deck, and the mill player doesnt even cast it. Dredge for 6? Even better, especially if fraying sanity is on board (which I dont even like as a multiple copy card in my mill deck).

2) Mission briefing unlocks archive traps true potential. Playing four mission briefings in a mill deck is the equivalent of 8 archive traps, and almost guaranteed multiple traps in at least one turn from turn two on.

3) mill is bad because players play mill incorrectly. As you have pointed out in numerous other articles, modern players favor card advantage over tempo. Mill should be played like a tempo deck rather than a mill deck, with card advantage sacrificed for control over board state while limiting the answers the opposing deck can draw. Except the threat played is either first turn archive trap or turn two glimpse the unthinkable rather than a creature. Then the mill player should protect the board after that by using the best tempo cards allowed to modern: remand, and more importantly, disrupting shoal, which allows the mill player to tap out for mill spells but also maintain board control. Add can trips for consistency, and an occasional board wipe.

I recently put together a mill deck based on these concepts, whoch reading your articles helped me develop. despite only having time to playtest one time, I absolutely dominated the rock deck I played against, which I thought would be my worst matchup due to hand disruption. More testing I hope to prove that my mill idea is a viable deck in modern. Forget old, slow sorcery mill. Welcome to tempo mill.

Your thoughts?

Yep, some folks will always cite outliers 🙂

Pretty accurate in the round, as well. Naturally there’ll be some week-to-week nonsense which invalidates this wider discussion (such as a dredge-filled tournament rendering both control and midrange decks pretty useless) but i’d say the concept holds true in aggregate over time. The micro may change, with individual decks dropping in and out, but the macro in modern is fairly stable.

Thanks for the read!

Glad you liked it! If you’d like to see more Modern myths dispelled, I’d love to hear which ones.