Classic Millstone Deck?

[CountPopeula]

Your biggest threats are Gaea's Blessing, Splinter, and Psychatog.

Blessing needs to be fished out of the library, with a jester's cap or lobotomy or something.

Splinter can just be countered, you can never ever let it resolve.

Psychatog is blue/black, make sure you have some sort of method to deal with him. Because if you've put 30 cards in his graveyard and he casts upheaval, then casts psychatog.... game over.

Not to say there isn't other stuff to worry about, but those in particular are headaches.

 

[Aus_Snow]

That's some nice cards there, DA. I've used Helm of Possession + Altar of Dementia in a casual black deck, myself. Fun! And hey, an alternate win condition (usually, it just tried to beat the crap out of people and/or devour their souls, but well, you never know.)

Neat (regardless of what card serves the purpose of 'Helm of Possession'), because of course you're constantly removing threats at the same time as milling them. Yeah, obviously. But I agree, it's a nifty system to have going.

 

[WhatGravitas]

Blue is indeed the classic color for such a deck. With its counterspells and control cards, it lets you help lock your opponent while you mill him. Besides Braingeysers & the various counterspells, consider Capsize.

If you're going for Capsize, throw in a Forbid for good measure, as well as some card draw. This way, you could go down the full MUC route with partial Draw-Go style and milling as main win condition.

Oh, you also may like the Rootwater Thief. Eating his library selectively is much more useful than pure winning!

Cheers, LT.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Other cards of note:

Ashnod's Cylix: A Millstone variant which does a second milling if the first 2 cards share a color.

http://magiccards.info/ai/en/158.html

Vexing Arcanix: yet another mill variant- he either gets the card or you mill it and do damage.

http://magiccards.info/8e/en/319.html

Tolarian Academy: a must have for any deck that is heavy in artifacts

http://magiccards.info/us/en/330.html

Mishra's Workshop: ditto, but for different reasons

http://magiccards.info/4e/en/181.html

Grinning Totem: first cousin to Jester's Cap. I often use this one to get lands- especially special lands- from my opponents early on (you can't cast stuff if you don't have the right mana, after all). If I do that (and/or use Fellwar Stones), I can cast one of their power cards the next time I use one.

http://magiccards.info/6e/en/288.html

The Urza Land Trio: lots of power to be gained to run your various mills.

http://magiccards.info/5e/en/449.html
http://magiccards.info/5e/en/448.html
http://magiccards.info/5e/en/447.html

For the record, I have a pure artifact deck in which I use the Helm of Obedience, Helm of Possession, Grinning Totem, and Jester's Cap to great effect, alongside Rocket Launchers, Living Walls, Force Fields, Shield of Ages, Sol Rings, Fellwar Stones, Teeka's Dragons and so forth...

Its nasty...especially when the Urza Trio and/or Academy and/or Workshop show up early... It has 4 paths to victory- creature damage, direct damage, gutting the deck to uselessness and occasionally, using the foe's deck resources against him.

 

[Lanefan]

One very important card nobody's mentioned yet:

Tormod's Crypt.

All the cards you mill go into the graveyard, and there's so many cards these days that use the graveyard as a resource that using Tormod's Crypt to empty your opponent's graveyard now and then is a Good Idea.

That said, milling is and always has been my favourite way to win games...but it's not easy. The designers don't like long games (the whole tournament-on-a-schedule thing) and so milling and other long-game strategies often don't get the strongest options.

Lanefan

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Gahhhh!
I knew I forgot to post something last time!

Yeah- Tormod's Crypt is probably neccessary at least as a sideboard card.

If you're up against someone playing truly old-school, you'd also have to have some kind of way to deal with Library of Leng. Typically, decks with the Library have ways of drawing lots of cards, so you might find they have little deck for you to target with your mill at any one time, and whatever is there is going to be of lesser importance to them.

 

[Aus_Snow]

There was an artifact that removed cards from the graveyard continually, which might be a good alternative. Can't recall its name, unfortunately. The Crypt is neat (and cheap) but of course is a one-off (except when it isn't - I used to have a fondness for artifact or enchantment reuse, FWIW.)

 

[Victim]

Phyrexian furnace could tap to remove a card from the graveyard, and I think you could sac it if you wanted to nuke the whole thing.

 

[Asmo]

Grindstone is nice, and with Painter's Servant it´s just crazy - you could easily deck you opponent on round 2 or 3.

Asmo

 

[Runestar]

Grindstone is nice, and with Painter's Servant it´s just crazy - you could easily deck you opponent on round 2 or 3.

Asmo

Are land affected? Else, you are looking at a 3rd turn win.

1) grindstone
2) servant
3) Grind...