wickeddarkman

SUNBLAST'EM:
I agree with "crypt incursion" coupled with fast mill! It's the best defence I've encountered so far...

Ensnaring bridge works in theory only, because you need to empty your hand to get the protection, and that's pretty difficult with any cards costing 3+ in the deck. Most beatdown will get you before you empty the hand.

As for removal, only go for abrupt decay and echoing truth, (and depending on design and meta, have 1-2 darkblast in main, and 2 in sideboard). I prefer to use surgical extraction and extirpate as preventive removal too.

In my experience having counterspells normally lower the amount of mill too far down. There are two exceptions. Broken ambition and (flusterstorm in legacy) both have worked for me, but always in sideboard.

Then there's the everpresent emrakul, which halt's the deck a lot. When mill "happened" to win in modern, all trondecks went through a redesign, and now had 1 emrakul and 1 ulamog, and some even had 1 more eldrazi.
This is probably what stopped mill in modern...

At the hight of tron-decks I played mill, and to fight emrakul I usually had both 4 extirpate and 4 surgical extraction +4 other gravecards to fight it. I soon learned that there was a more sneaky way to deal with tron!
Hit them on their land! ghostquarter them and then extract! That slows down the deck immensely, enough for you to take a slow approach to removing all the various eldrazi...

In legacy, the problem is "worse", as ghostquarter may only hit their ancient tombs, and they get a basic land to make a kill on turn 3 while you scramble to get more land because you spent one. Extracting emrakul is only part of the problem, because the most dominant variant out there is omni-show. Omnishow holds 3 cards keeping you from success.

1: Cunning wish. They usually play 4 of these, and if you can take them out. Omnishow as a design draw all it's cards, but can only really win when they get access to their sideboard with cunning wish (or with 1-2 emrakuls), therefore getting rid of cunning wish is really your top priority. To get rid of these, you need to mill as fast as possible so that you can extirpate them to hell (Remember, surgical extraction can and will get countered)

2: Leyline of sanctity. If you cannot target your opponent, 90% of your mill is gone. Some play 1 in maindeck, so there are two choices, echoing truth, which can be countered, and wipe away which may be too difficult. Neither surgical extraction or extirpate targets the opponent, making them your foremost weapon against omnishow. Also, this is why I rely so heavilly on 4 mesmeric orb in legacy. It bypasses leyline.

3: Finally, there is emrakul. Most designs play 1, but I have seen designs with 2, and if they see mill as a problem they will do the tron-splitup of 1 emrakul and 1 ulamog, so be prepared. Your preferred weapons will again be extirpate (plus the counterable surgical extraction), but some geniouses are throwing in green to make use of deathrite shaman, and I have to say it works.

Now here's the real problem: How do you approach this deck when they start with a leyline of sanctity in play?
You can't mill them with anything but mesmeric orb, which will usually be played too late, and since you can't mill them, you will not be able to take out neither cunning wish or emrakul?

Normally I would recommend echoing truth against leylines, but with all their countercapacities the choice can only be wipe away, and that takes 3 turns to get, meaning you are likelly to be dead!!!

What can save your ass?

The answer is chancellor of the spires. Theres about 41% chance of you getting it in an oppening-hand.
It will mill 7 cards, and open up for you to tear away this nasty deck with some luck (= cunning wish in grave. Odds for this to happen are actually about 41% too)

No problem. And considering your 1 of each type deck, you might want to get your hands on leyline of singularity as well. :)

You can allways give the kids some "magic-homework" If you have the ressources you can provide them with topdecks (Just print out tons of proxies and search the net for all decks in the format) then you can all test with or against your design. "it might be fun" or "do you really want to keep your pocket money" should help convincing them of the idea :)

So sort of an experimental vintage tournament...

It's good to meet happy people, so feel free to add some random comments in my post from time to time.

:)

Well, looking at your other decks it looks like you ARE a t1-er/vintage player.
But I still guess you were at a standard tournament :)

In my area (Denmark) christmas decks are RWG. Redwhite not because of our flag, but because the cocacola-santa is the most symbolically featured one.

You being an oldschool player may be why I've been confused at what sort of tournament you played at, and I'm still wondering from your description :)

What you call type 1 turned into becoming "vintage", while type 1.5 probably turned into "standard"

These days the structure is like this:

Vintage is the oldest format, and it's legal to play 1 of each of the old powercards, like black lotus.

Legacy is the second oldest format, and was made as a more relaxed format where all powercards become banned as soon as they start dominating the game.

Then there's standard. It's legal to play up to the 4-6 newest cardreleases and the newest core-set, and it constantly rotates Demanding you to buy cards all the time.

Then there is modern, where it's legal to play with all cards made from the old mirrodin cycle and forward.

I actually don't know what extended is.

But judging from your cardpool I think you are playing what's called standard.

I'm hunting for decks that are either modern or legacy, and since your deck has switched to only being legal in vintage and legacy, so your deck was within my search, and when you said you were a type one player I thought, well, that's vintage, and everyhting there is turn 0-3 kills. So I lacked faith in your deck winning there :)

I myself is 43, and most of the time look like a tramp, which should also intimidate kids a bit, but they have become fewer in the legacy tournaments because it takes skill and money to be there, and kids of today know that grown ups are unlikely to start beating them up anywhere, so they are mainly fearless of your size, but does fear being beaten in the game, so intimidate them with fancy cards if you want to scare them there :)

I rank as number 300-something in Denmark on the total lifepoint score, and have a lot of weird magic projects that I'm fond of telling about...

Clicking on my name and then clicking on follow, should make me your friend :)

Report!

So what did you face, and what were your problems?

BENWARE:
I've been through a lot of millcards and tested most there is.
I have had countless sideboards and written about most of them and how to use them, stuff like "if you have shriekhorn in main, you could side in echoing truth, and use it to mill by recasting the horns and mill 2-4 extra cards before dying.

Go click my name and read the oldest designs you can find, then work your way up.

I usually try to beat creatures without counters, discard and creatures so you they are your main problem, my work have lots of solutions.

Without secondary removal, liliana will be beaten by creatures, so she is not working well within this design :(

I assume it was legacy/vintage then.
What decks did you encounter (If you know them all)
With the above list it's an unlikely event, but sometimes it does happen.
If you can link to the event, then I'll store your deck on my page and promote it.

It depends on the nature of the deck. Turn 3 mill-kill is doable (non-combo).
I use to say that if you can't win at turn 5 with mill, then it's not a good mill-deck.
brainstorms nifty in legacy, but banned in modern.

Wrong!

Then YOU/they(the millers) win by cardadvantage...

I forgot the usual speech for the orb:
Imagine a game in which you draw and play a land each turn, and tap out with it. Then imagine that you play mesmeric orbs as soon as you can, and that you during this game gets 4 in the oppening hand.

If you tap nothing else but lands you will die at your turn 7 within these frames.
Playing 7 lands in a row, 4 mesmeric orbs and tapping out with all lands each turn is a very unlikely event, but the essence is that you can use the orbs in rather extreme ways before it bites you.
At a certain point you will end up considering if you should be on the attack if the orb is down, and it's often a choice between how fast you can kill with beaters compared to mill. Ultimately just sit back and play lands with hedron crab in hand and let the opponent do the attacking/milling.

Using increasing confusion is not very good, so only use it as a finnisher through mesmeric orb.
In legacy you can use brainstorm to make sure your confusions get milled and that you draw something cheaper to cast...

Rethink is not something anyone today would be playing. Most opponents can play 1-2 while you are stuck with 2u each time, but it's a good example of why not to play x-spells :)

On the odd side there is broken ambitions which may mill a bit...

On the land-side try out crystal veins, but be carefull on how you use them...
(same goes with city of traitors)

PANDA BAIR:
Well I dislike visions of beyond for being a lategame card. You need to mill at least 33 cards to activate it's advantage. So I'm considering something more immediate will be better.

Well, personally I prefer to mill very very fast, but when looking at what the two winning designs got in common it looks like it doesn't need to be speedy, just a certain quantity which is crippling enough to let you win. I would guess that milling 23 cards + will be a max-goal and then they win by cardadvantage...

Here are both:
I copyed them directly from the decklists in mtgtop8.com and if you want to doublecheck they are listed as "other combo"
The most used design is azazel's which looks like some of my own designs except for 12 cards.

http://www.mtgvault.com/wickeddarkman/decks/dafrk3ins-modern-mill/

http://www.mtgvault.com/wickeddarkman/decks/azazel314s-modern-mill-2/

Horrifying revelations let your opponent pick what they discard, which is always a bad idea :( They'd start with stuff like bloodghast, vengevine or iona...

I try serum visions :D but haven't looked into slight of hand.

Yeah, found out myself at the tournament scene. Going with serum visions now.

Your deck looks pretty advanced now, with clasical moderncards and stuff.
How's it holding out now?

I've tested chronic flooding in a mill-deck. And kept track on how much it mills. I'ts the worst card I have ever handled :( Even if your opponent plays 18 lands in their deck it only mills 0.2 cards against someone skilled, ghostquarters might help, but not that much.

Instead, let me suggest this:
You play with island sanctuary, so you need some way to draw cards to get your mill, or you will need alternatives. I always suggest new millers to use mesmeric orb, as it is a very powerfull card. In your case it will mill you too, and you will love it for that , since you can then play with stuff like dreamtwist or increasing confusion which will give you mill-options while you hide behind your enchantment.