That’s what I get for being on the Eh Team. I can say one word one episode and have it repeated to my face infinite times in the next one, but at least I seem to have made an impact. I got a lot of you considering mill in your upcoming drafts. I wouldn’t like to be your opponents though as mill tends to piss people off. Of course, I certainly can understand them. Milling someone out just doesn’t seem like it’s how the game was meant to be played.

Before I go on, I want to credit my mentor Alexander Hayne for introducing me to the mill strategy. Shortly after Innistrad came out, Face to Face Games held a Draft Until You Drop day. I believe Alex played roughly 5 drafts and decided to go mill in all of them. From what I can remember, he barely dropped a game. When he told me it was the best archetype, I was still skeptical. Even though I consider him the best player that I know, ever since I met him, he has been “that guy”. He was the guy that played Turbo Fog. He was the guy that played [card]Time Sieve[/card] and he was also the guy that played [card]Pyromancer Ascension[/card] with [card]Hedron Crab[/card]s and [card]Archive Trap[/card]s in his sideboard. Yeah, “that guy”.

But like any Magic player looking to improve their game, I was ready to experiment and gave it a shot in one of my first drafts at my local card store. I won and I could definitely feel the power of the archetype. I did feel dirty though. I had one game against Jeff Casselman where I went turn 1 [card]Ghoulcaller’s Bell[/card] followed by two more [card]Ghoulcaller’s Bell[/card]s on turn 2. Dirty.

Why Draft Mill?

One of the big incentives in drafting mill is the fact that some of the key cards you want are not desired at all by the other decks. Unlike M12 draft where you might only really see [card]Jace’s Erasure[/card] being passed around like crazy during the later picks of a pack, there are several key cards that will often be neglected by your fellow drafters. It also helps when LSV gives one of them a rating of 0.5.

Self-Mill or Mill Your Opponent?

This is the first question I get asked when I tell someone that I believe mill to be one of the stronger strategies of the format. When I think about it, it’s probably why a lot of us enjoy this format so much. There’s so many different types of deck. Heck, there’s different types of mill!

In my first draft ever with the set, my friend Rob Anderson made a UG [card]Laboratory Maniac[/card] deck. His only way of winning was to deck himself out completely and [card]Memory’s Journey[/card] his Maniac on top of his deck for the win. Very cool, but he did tell me that his deck is just crumbles against a fast beatdown deck.

William Blondon, fellow Mana Deprived member, drafted a strong mill deck in a draft I was in a week ago. We met in the finals where my GW deck packed with 3 [card]Travel Preparations[/card] was fast enough to get there. He went Mono U Mill, but had creatures such as [card]Delver of Secrets[/card] and [card]Skaab Goliath[/card]. If you are playing mostly mill cards, I can see how Delver can flip fairly often.

However, the version that I advocate is a mostly creature-less UR deck. Alex gave me the idea when he told me one of the mill decks only had 1 creature in it and there are definitely benefits in going this route. I think decks that focus on the Skaab theme tend to be less consistent and by packing your deck filled with Flashback cards, you essentially turn [card]Ghoulcaller’s Bell[/card] into an artifact that potentially says “draw a card”.

What Are the Key Cards of Mill?

Personally, the 3 key cards of the deck are [card]Curse of the Bloody Tome[/card], [card]Ghoulcaller’s Bell[/card] and [card]Dream Twist[/card]. In that order. [card]Curse of the Bloody Tome[/card] is what is going to allow you to kill your opponents fast enough. I definitely always want at least one in play at all times, so I normally hope I can get multiples of this baby in my deck.

[card]Ghoulcaller’s Bell[/card] might be a key mill card that some people are not drafting. Over the last few days, I have received many Tweets heading my way talking about how many Curses and [card]Dream Twist[/card]s their deck has, but there were never any mention of any Bells. In fact, Eh Team podcast engineer Kerrydan said he didn’t even think about taking the Bell while experimenting with mill. Don’t worry, I slapped him.

I did however wonder at some point what to take between a [card]Ghoulcaller’s Bell[/card] and a [card]Dream Twist[/card] as that scenario came up fairly often. My first instinct was to snap-pick the [card]Dream Twist[/card] because I thought the Bell might be a poor top-deck, but then Alex told me how [card]Ghoulcaller’s Bell[/card] can generate advantages. “I mean, you can mill yourself a [card]Dream Twist[/card]”.

Not only that, as I said before, you are essentially drawing cards if you mill Flashback spells and it also powers [card]Harvest Pyre[/card], one of the key removal spells in this archetype.

Should You Force Mill?

After talking about the archetype, a number of people have told me that they have had a lot of success drafting mill. Or at least having a ton of fun trying to draft mill. Tom Cheung, 2010 Quebec Nats Q Champion, decided to try his hand at an 8-4 this week. He actually forced UR mill because of me and told me that he easily won 8 packs. Not too bad.

I would never force it though, especially after my disaster of a draft 2 weeks ago. I had made top 8 of a PTQ and even though I was pretty sure no one was actually cutting me out of mill, I did not end up with enough of the key cards to reasonably mill my opponents consistently. It got me to thinking “how many [card]Curse of Bloody Tome[/card]s are there on average in an 8 man draft?”. Have you guys ever asked yourself that question. I was surprised I never did and Chad Havas was kind enough to provide me his answer via Twitter.

Wait… 2.1 copies? That’s it? If I feel a deck absolutely needs 2 [card]Curse of the Bloody Tome[/card]s to succeed, then this archetype is actually extremely dangerous to force without a backup plan, assuming Mr. Havas’ numbers are correct. During my PTQ top 8 draft, Dan Lanthier pointed out to be that I could have easily salvaged myself a Skaab deck and ultimately I believe my lack of a backup plan led to my top 8 demise.

How Should I Be Drafting Mill?

Early on, just focus on the solid removal that everyone is going to want. You are definitely taking cards like [card]Brimstone Volley[/card] and [card]Claustrophobia[/card] over the mill cards. Drafting this way allows you to move out of mill if you need to.

[card]Sensory Deprivation[/card] should be valued fairly highly. One of the downsides to the card is that it leaves a chump blocker, but because you are a mill deck, that downside is completely irrelevant. It is basically a removal spell for you and sometimes needed to deal with pesky flyers that your big ground blockers cannot due anything about.

[card]Harvest Pyre[/card] is also insane in this deck, but I tend to pass them because I currently see them pretty late. Other decks don’t want too many of this card, but you should certainly welcome them with open arms. I have yet to see if I would like playing 3 copies of this card in a deck.

The staple creature suite includes [card]Armored Skaab[/card] and [card]Fortress Crab[/card]. I don’t tend to play multiple of these because I want to stay with the Flashback theme and besides, additional copies have diminishing returns because your additional Skaabs or Crabs will be blocking worst guys. I have been experimenting with the [card]Deranged Assistant[/card] as he is mana acceleration and he also mills you for potential value.

[card]Burning Vengeance[/card] is a card I hope to wheel in this particular archetype late in the game. Thanks to Tobias Rosman for the tip as he was the one who told me to look out for them in the late stages of a pack when I was preparing myself for the PTQ top 8 draft. I did not get any, but I have tried the card since and with enough Flashback cards, the card is absolutely bonkers.

One of the early mistakes I have made in my early drafts was over-valuing [card]Think Twice[/card] in general. Investing 5 mana to get 2 cards is a lot of mana. The reason it sees play in Constructed is because you can match it with counterspells. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still a card I will absolutely play, but I used to think it was a great card when in fact, it is only solid.

On that same note, I feel like [card]Desperate Ravings[/card] has been nothing more than a worse [card]Think Twice[/card] in my experience. I don’t like having to hold onto a Ravings because I don’t want to lose a particular key card in my hand.

Can I See an Example of a Deck?

This is a draft I did recently:

I think it’s going to be pretty hard for me to get a stronger mill deck than this, but this clearly showcases what I am going for when aiming for UR Mill.

Any Gameplay Tips?

There’s nothing really that comes to mind that is not too obvious. I think everyone should know that you should be using [card]Ghoulcaller’s Bell[/card] generally at the end of your opponent’s turn just in case they can actually made use of the card you just milled off their deck.

Decks that can take advantage of being milled are the scariest one to face.You don’t really want to start arming your opponent’s GW deck with [card]Travel Preparations[/card], but you have to do what you have to do. One funny occurrence happened during my last draft with mill where my opponent definitely surprised me when I milled off [card]Spider Spawning[/card]. He made a ton of Spiders, but good thing for [card]Rolling Temblor[/card].

Have fun milling your opponents and pissing them off,

KYT