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Paul Hagan's Magic The Gathering Deck Garage

Mono-Blue Mill
11-03-05

Hey all, and welcome back to the Deck Garage. I’ve been bombarded with all sorts of mill decks since Ravnica came out, and in fact, I think I worked on one not too far back. However, for the casual player crowd, I’ve decided to run with the e-mail below…

____

all right first of all you write a great article. This is a very fun deck to play with and has a complex but simple idea behind it. this is for casual. Money really isnt an issue but no 50 dollar cards please.

creatures
4 wall of tears
3 fog bank

non-creature spells
4 isochron scepter
4 brainfreeze
4 boomerang
4 sun droplet
4 counterspell
4 mana leak
2 rewind
3 welding jar
2 pear through the depths
2 brainstorm

20 islands

This deck is built for any situation. So even if it werent casual it wouldnt need a side board. The idea behind this deck is to let my creatures and sun droplets slow down the creature decks and let my conters take care of the other stuff until I can wear down your deck with my isochroned brainfreeze.

-----

OK, we’ve started off great with running four Isochron Scepter and four Brain Freeze -- makes the concept behind the deck nice and simple.

I like the idea of Counterspell and Mana Leak hanging out in the deck, but I’m not sure Rewind is quite right. First, I’m not a huge fan of Rewind -- it really is a bit too expensive to be a serious threat. Second, since I can get away with it, I like Thwart a lot better. It allows the player to get away with a free counterspell (at the cost of a few islands), or it can serve as a hard counter for four mana.

-2 Rewind
+2 Thwart

Here’s something that always gets to me: why Boomerang? I know that there is the rare land that will pop up and become a threat, but I’ve always seen Echoing Truth’s ability to bounce multiple copies of a given card a much better buy for the two mana. That, and I rarely see the soft lock with Isochron and Boomerang *really* go off. The best I tend to see is a long, drawn out game where the player piloting the Isochron Scepter loses focus of what the original intent of the deck was. OK, end rant.

-4 Boomerang
+4 Echoing Truth

I’m not a huge fan of Sun Droplet, but it seems our contributor is. Therefore, I won’t cut it entirely. However, I do want to lower the count on Sun Droplet to two copies, because I really do want a little bit of extra land just to ensure consistent mana draws.

-2 Sun Droplet
+2 Island

Welding Jar is an OK call, but I’m not so convinced three copies are necessary, so we’ll cut one of them to save some space.

-1 Welding Jar

I’d also like to get rid of Fog Bank. I’m not so impressed with the card as a whole. Yes, it works well for minor stall tactics, but if I’m sitting across the table from it, I’ll just keep sending my entire team, letting one of them be blocked and the rest slipping through.

-3 Fog Bank

Finally, I’d like to get rid of Peer Through the Depths. Why? Yes, it is cool that you can dig through your deck to find that one card you are looking for, but I’ve got a better card for that use: Accumulate Knowledge. Not only does it fit on an Isochron Scepter, it gets better and better as the game progresses. You can’t tell me that one AK on a Scepter with two or three in the ‘yard isn’t sick.

-2 Peer Through the Depths
+4 Accumulate Knowledge

One of the last cards I want to add is Meloku, the Clouded Mirror. I have no idea why I’m so biased towards this card, but I really do think that she is a perfect fit for any blue control deck. Yes, I know that the point of this deck is to overturn as many of an opponent’s cards as quickly as possible, but it never hurts to have a back-up plan.

+2 Meloku, the Clouded Mirror

As the final change to the deck, I think I’d like to include four copies of Cephalid Coliseum and four copies of Lonely Sandbar. Both will contribute to cycling (no pun intended) the deck faster, helping get to the appropriate cards.

-8 Island
+4 Cephalid Coliseum
+4 Lonely Sandbar

I think that about wraps up work on this deck. Here’s how it came out…

CREATURE SPELLS (6):
2 Meloku, the Clouded Mirror
4 wall of tears

NON-CREATURE SPELLS (32):
4 Accumulate Knowledge
4 Brain Freeze
2 Brainstorm
4 Counterspell
4 Echoing Truth
4 Isochron Scepter
4 Mana Leak
2 Sun Droplet
2 Thwart
2 Welding Jar

LANDS (22):
4 Cepahlid Coliseum
14 Islands
4 Lonely Sandbar

Hope that helps, and I’ll see all of y’all next week.

-Paul Hagan