Magic the Gathering

I'm a fan of using Mind Sculpt and Tome Scour. Dream Twist is a good flash-back mill card, when you have extra mana laying around to flash it back, but I go with more of the Nephilia Drownyards to do that in my deck. If you don't already have Thought Scour, also add that in.

If you already do have Thought Scour in, I'd use Mind Sculpt, and if not, then go with Tome Scour.

Ah that's an interesting format, too. I've heard of it, but we've never really gotten to play it since that's a six player game, and the most people we have together is usually 4. And when there's six, we're usually cube drafting instead.

That sounds like a fun format to use Commander decks in, as well, it seems flavorful.



I like Dream Twist over Tome Scour, but I may consider Tome Scour more if you're playing Snapcaster Mage. As much as I like Mind Sculpt, it is two mana vs. one mana. Tome Scour and Dream Twist I think mill more for your mana.

EDIT: I forgot about Nephilia Drownyard. Thanks, saka.
In that case, I'd say Tome Scour. Again, more milling for your mana.

Interesting card that Nephilia Drownyard is. Is it good as a 4 of each? Also, I don't have Snapcaster Mage in my deck.

Right now my deck looks like this. It's just a casual deck by the way.

2 Jace, Memory Adept

3 Jace's Phantasm
4 Hedron Crab

4 Haunting Echoes
4 Traumatize
4 Glimpse the Unthinkable
4 Mind Funeral
2 Ponder
2 Visions of Beyond
4 Tome Scour (I was really thinking of Mind Sculpt because it sorta gives card advantage.)
4 Mana Drain
4 Thought Scour

4 Ensnaring Bridge

4 Tainted Isle
4 Drowned Catacombs
4 Underground Sea
4 Polluted Delta
2 Watery Grave
3 Island/1 Swamp or 4 of those Nephalia Drownyard
________________
63 Cards

You're at 63 cards, first of all. So I'd make cuts to get down to 60. Ensnaring Bridge is a nice idea, though I wouldn't use four since additional ones don't do anything.Haunting Echoes is cute, and I'm curious about how it works in this deck, but I'm not sure it's too relevant in this deck. So that's what I'd cut.

I'd only use two or three Drownyard. It's a great place to dump your mana into when there's nothing else, but it's also a colorless land, and each one requires a bunch of mana to use, so having too many means you won't be able to use all of them.
I'd add some more lands, you only have 21, and you have an oversized deck right now, too, making it harder to draw lands.

Finally, Mana Drain is evil. As I mentioned before, it's banned in most formats. As long as your friends don't mind, go ahead and play it, but we follow ban lists in our playgroup since a lot of banned cards really are so powerful it takes away the fun from the game.

EDIT: Tome Scour and Mind Sculpt do the exact same thing, except Mind Sculpt mills more cards. Tome Scour mills more cards per mana, though. I don't think milling causes any sort of card advantage... If anything, it gives your opponent card advantage if they can use their graveyard in any way (such as in Reanimator or Dredge)

EDIT2: Actually, now that I think about it, Haunting Echoes seems quite awesome in this deck. I wouldn't use four because of its expensive mana cost, but I'd certainly use it.
Also, it reminded me that, if your opponents have any of the legendary Eldrazi, you almost can't win. To beat those, you'd need an instant speed way to remove them from the graveyard. Ravenous Trap seems like the best one for this deck.

Actually, my bad. I only have 2 Haunting Echoes and 2 Traumatize. That is going to be funny. In case of Eldrazis, I have exile graveyard cards.
The reason I think Mind Sculpt is an advantage is because I need 2e Tome Scour to get the most out of it. That would be 2 cards less in my hand, but it is just 1 mana.

I'll be honest, I actually hate the card Traumatize. The reason: it loses SO much value SO quickly as the game progresses. It was cool when I first saw it in my friend's mill deck, but when I went to build a mill deck myself, I opted for four Jaces, rather than mixing up Jace and Traumatize. You always get at least 10 cards out of Jace, usually 20 or even 30. Traumatize gets about 26 cards if you cast it turn one (which is near impossible, unless you do all the broken tricks from back in the day), and even less as the game progresses. After a while, it's 5 mana that doesn't do much.

And I see your point about Mind Sculpt, but I'd still run Tome Scour, if nothing else, because of its cheaper mana cost. And besides, if you're using Ensnaring Bridge, you want less cards in hand anyways.

Yeah, that's why I try to cast Traumatize as soon as possible and if I get it in my opening hand, I try to cast Traumatize first before my other mill cards. But I don't think I can still do that now because I need to empty my hand as soon as possible because of Ensnaring Bridge.

I'm actually thinking of just removing Traumatize or replacing it with Archive Trap. The earliest I've activated Traumatize was turn 3 (Mill 24) but that was because of Mana Drain and that has only happened once. Actually, usually when I activate Mana Drain it's useless, next turn I can only cast 1 or 2 mill cards which require 1-3 mana.

Also, 2 Traumatize in my opening hand is really bad while 2 Archive Trap is actually exciting. "Oh, your searching your library? Mill 26 first, and yes it is free."

But Traumatize works wonders in a Battle of Wits deck.

Archive Trap is probably the best mill card. Mill is compareable to monored Burn, and their "free" Burn spell is Fireblast. Archive Trap is even better than that in terms of the amount of "Deck Damage" you're doing. So, yes, definitely Archive Trap. In mine I run four, just 'cus.

Also, I've never seen anyone with a Battle of Wits deck. It's very hard to build... I've been working on one for about a month now trying to refine it properly. That's probably the only exception. In EVERY other case, I'll still hate Traumatize.

EDIT: Oh yeah, super good card for you: Shelldock Isle
Play it, hideaway an Archive Trap, Mind Funeral, or anything that mills for a ton, then when they get down to twenty, use it. Believe me it's insane. Always funny flipping a Mind Funeral off of that when I play it.

EDIT2:
ROFLOMG, the standard lifegain deck that's in Daily MTG is fucking ridiculous! Gets so high, it's absurd.
What was absolutely nuts was when I tested it against my Grixis deck: It got Rhox Faithmender and Trostani out, and Cackling Counterpart targeting Faithmender. Kept populating the token of Faithmender and gained several hundred life at a time. Just crazy.... xD

Standard Lifelink? Interesting, probably why they have Skullcrack in Gatecrash.
I wanna try playing against someone with a deck like that. I don't know why but in standard, people in my place have a very hard time playing or making Trostani survive for 2 turns.

On the other hand, do you think it is a good idea to remove Jace's Phantasm and replace it with Snapcaster?

Actually, I think Skullcrack was meant to deal with specifically Thragtusk, since basically ANY green deck you see runs 4 Thragtusk unless it's budget or very low-curve (even then, will usually use Thragtusk, even in 4s).

It's because if you let Trostani live, the player controlling her gains so much life it becomes extremely hard to beat. Green White decks have plenty of creatures to play, many with high toughness. A Restoration Angel will turn a game around while Trostani is in play (Automatically 4, plus whatever it blinks), even worse if they blink a lifegainer like, say, Thragtusk. That player will gain 4 life from Resto, 8 life from Thragtusk, 3 life from the beast Thragtusk creates. One creature, 15 life. And if Rhox Faithmender is on the table, you might as well jsut scoop unless you can deal 50 or so damage to them in one turn.

As for Phantasm or Snapcaster, that depends on your plan. If you want a better plan B, then I'd stick with Jace's Phantasm, since it is a 5/5 beater. If they're doing something you can't beat with mill, you bash their face four times with that guy and it's over, instead of using it to prevent attacks.

Snapcaster rebuys your mill spells, resulting in faster mill kills, though I'm not sure that's neccessary. He doesn't do a great job protecting you, unless he gets back a counterspell for you (you're still using Mana Drain, which is pretty evil).

I'd probably stick with Phantasm, both because its a fat body to hide behind while you do your business, and it's a big beater when you need it.

Now that you mention it, everyone runs that stupid Thragtusk everytime a deck has green and standard. Whenever I'm using my modified Hayne miracle, I really really despise fighting green because not even Terminus exterminates him completely.
That is why I'm really hoping that there are a lot of viable Mill cards in Gatecrash.

Mill won't even beat Thragtusk since Unburial Rites. They can just reanimate it, though there are probably better targets. Of course, if they aren't playing a Rites deck, you won't need to worry about that possibility.

I was really hyped up on Skullcrack because it dealt with any lifegain, which I was actually quite excited about for Modern. It meant I can make my Burn deck monored, because right now, it splashes black for Bump in the Night.

I haven't seen it yet, it combos with Worldfire, too. and is why the original deck is called "OmniDoor ThragFire". If you cast Worldfire with a Thragtusk on the table, you'll have the only threat, and I'm not sure there's a way to beat that, at least in Standard.

I once used Nevermore against Thragtusk, and it actually did work mostly because I also Nevermored his Oblivion Ring.

By the way, if my creature is O-ringed and I cast Worldfire, do I get my creature back?

Yes. Worldfire exiles all permanents. O-ring is a permanent. What was exiled with it is in the exile zone until O-ring goes away, and O-ring goes away after Worldfire resolves. So, yeah, your nonland permanent under an O-ring will come into play if someone casts a Worldfire.

A haste creature in the O-ring should just win you the game after casting Worldfire. Or you can try to do funny stuff with Jhoira, suspending spells before casting Worldfire and be the only person actually able to do anything after it resolves.

EDIT: ROFL, LSV is my hero now. I was bored so I watched his Cube Draft video on the ChannelFireball website where he drafted reanimator. He lost flipping Emrakul off his Dark Confidant trigger. Made me lol pretty hard.

I don't know why but I just saw this card while looking at the Gatecrash previews.
I think this is a really good card.
http://www.magicspoiler.com/mtg-spoiler/unexpected-results/

The things I can imagine with it

Ah, yes. That's an entertaining one. I'll probably be throwing that into an EDH deck, though I don't have a GU one yet. I'm not sure how exactly I'd use it in a 60 card deck, but I'll think of something.

Wow... this looks overpowered as fuck.

It seems perfectly fine to me, compared to the crap you could do with all sorts of other stuff in Magic. It's completely random, which is the fun of it. It's either an overcosted ramp spell that can be used again, or a Polymorph of sorts with no sacrifice.

I'm loving the new vampire, Duskmantle Seer. It's a Dark Confidant that activates for both players. It's definitely going into my Grixis deck, though now I need to lower my curve so I don't keep hitting high numbers off that trigger. If nothing else, it's a vampire so I can have more vampires to help get my Bloodline Keeper online.

Imagine running a blue-green Eldrazi deck with 4 of those.
Turn 4 Emrakul/Ulamog/Kozilek amirite?

You'll have to be lucky enough to get one of those guys on the top of your deck.

And there's easier ways to cheat out those guys. There's tons of things that don't involve as much chance that let you plop down giants like them. First thing that comes to mind is Show and Tell, which lets you put down one of those guys Turn 3, only requiring that it's in your hand.