I’ve wanted to build UB Traumatising echoes deck since Tom put me onto the idea a few years ago (okay, more than a few years ago now). For those not in the know, the combo is [card]Traumatize[/card] then [card]Haunting Echoes[/card]. Although I never got the deck to tick, I’ve always had that Mill deck idea kicking around. For newer players, the term milling originated from [card]millstone[/card] and refers to any effect which empties their opponents library. With the ultimate aim being victory by running them out of cards [if you run out of cards you lose the game – see rule 104.3c for more info] While a hard mill is possible, I find it hard to hold the line against aggressive decks. Although Blue and Black have ample control and removal options, all it takes is one or two casual 1/1 or 2/2 creatures to slip the net and your position is looking shaky. To this end I though I figured I would build a mill deck with teeth, and it looks like Return to Ravnica block was the right time to give this a try. This naturally breaks the cardinal rule of deck construction, of decide your strategy and make sure every card in the library is supporting that strategy. By adding agro, i am sacrificing milling power, and splitting my focus between two disparate goals {milling them out or beating them out of the game} its probably a bad move, but its just for fun. Anyway here is the decklist as it stands, need a few more cards to make it competitive. [deck title=UB Agro Mill – v0.9] [Spells] *1 Mind Grind *4 Dream Twist *1 Mind Funeral *4 Paranoid Delusions *1 Psychic Spiral *1 Undercity Plague *1 Lifes Finale *1 Liliana Vess *1 Lazav Dimir Mastermind *1 Traumatize *1 Grisly Spectacle *3 Tome Scour *2 Doom Blade *2 Memory Erosion [/Spells] [Lands] *9 swamp *9 island *4 Esper Panorama [/Lands] [Creatures] *4 Jaces Phantasm *4 wight of Precinct six *3 Hedron Crab *2 Balustrade spy *1 Mindshrieker *2 Consuming Aberration [/Creatures] [Artefacts] *1 Trepanation Blade [/Artefacts] [/deck] Ok, its labelled v0.9 for a reason, its missing bits. The 4th [card]Hedron crab[/card] is conspicuous in its absence. Although highly underrated, I figured run the crabs and use fetch lands to double up the mill procs – hence running [card]Esper Panorama[/card]. Although it is using slots for more effective milling cards and is gimping the manabase, I figured it’d be interesting to make the mana work towards the crab mill without having to run [card]Nephalia Drownyard[/card]. [card]Jaces Phantasm[/card], [card]wight of Precinct six[/card] and [card]Paranoid delusions[/card] are all awesome, picked up for *free* drafting these are right at home in this deck. All well undercosted mana wise, and Phantasm and the wight quickly become big threats in this deck. Speaking of busted, Running only 1x [card]Mind Funeral[/card] is dumb, but i could only find one in the shards of alara shoebox. More to come when I can find them, but as milling goes its probably the most mana efficient i have seen. 3 mana [in an easy mix] for what is effectively mill 12 cards [assuming opponents manabase is 1/3rd their deck] is cheap as it gets. Cards I want to remove or are unsure over… [card]Psychic Spiral[/card] [card]Undercity Plague[/card] [card]Lifes Finale[/card] [card]Liliana Vess[/card] [card]Lazav Dimir Mastermind[/card] A lot of these are overcosted and make me worry about tempo. Lazav and Liliana are not really serious win conditions, getting a play off of either is too much to hope for, but they were in the right colours, and were just sitting in the rares wallet. I figure they are going to provide distraction for opponents to waste removal spells on. [card]Lifes Finale[/card] I thoguth would be good in case I am loosing/lost the ground war against a more aggressive deck – boros or goblins or the like. Drop the nuke and then a phantasm ftw. Dont know how realistic this is yet. Still a lot of work to be done, but thats the basic idea. Hopefully after some playtesting and trading i can post the final v1.0 deck list.
UB – Agro Mill Deck
