Magic The Gathering players?

[Gar'Hal Velasura]

alright, my deck is

x20 mountain

x4 fire servant

x4 lightning bolt

x4 flame rift

x4 lava spike

x4 flame javelin

x3 incinerate

x2 font of ire

x2 breaking point

x2 elixir of immortality (anti-mill)

x2 searing blaze

x3 guttersnipe

x1 stoke the flame

x1 fireball

x1 chandra ablaze

x1 chandra pyromaster

x1 koth of the hammer

[member="Ludolf Vaas"]

Looks decent enough to me barring the lack of creatures (I think I saw 7 in total), but that's your style so it's cool.

And as for milling, the thing for me is that you gotta find just a few dedicated card that do it well without making it your only way to win. Cards like Grindclock, Mesmeric orb, and mindcrank are great ones for it, since in my blue-red deck my main goal is still to take out their life, but with those cards out a mill victory is also possible.

Blue-red can be a bit slow on the creatures, but if done well it can be quite the pain

 

[Ludolf Vaas]

[member="Sciith Markorn"] I would get rid of all the 4cmc+ spells immediately. Burn typically does not want to run spells that cost more than three. You want to be playing multiple burn spells per turn and resolve them in a timely fashion. Get rid of Fire Servant, and the Planeswalkers. You also want your burn spells to be cost-efficient. Which means mana sink cards like Fireball are not efficient enough. You can do more with less mana with other cards.

Look into these cards:

4x Lightning Bolt
4x Chain Lightning
4x Rift Bolt
4x Fireblast
4x Lava Spike
4x Goblin Guide

The above is generally considered to be the core of a good burn deck.

 

[Valiens Nantaris]

I played back when I was in what you'd call Junior High, 4th, 5th Edition.

Lost interest after that. Recently got rid of all my cards.

But I'm still curious and look at the new releases and grumble about power creep.

I did like the design of some sets, others not so much.

 

[Avicus DuSang]

Mill is generally an ineffective strategy.

Think of it this way. Normally your goal is to bring your opponent's life from 20 to 0. Mill makes it so that your opponent's deck becomes like their life total. Now you have to bring them from 60 to 0. This requires your deck to be filled with cards dedicated solely to milling your opponent out, leaving very little room for answers if your opponent gets something to stick on the table. Mill is slow and clunky. What happens if your opponent lands a creature or two in the first few turns of the game? If you can't find an answer, your opponent will probably hit you with lethal damage before you can bin their deck.

That's why you have cards like Traumatize where they mill half their deck.

Consuming Aberation whose power and toughness is equal to all opponent's graveyard totals. And, every time you play a spell, an opponent mills till they get a land.

The Jace whose 0 drop ability is target player mills ten cards.

Mind Grind where all opponents mill till they hit X lands.

Is mill a perfect strategy? No.

It can be counteracted with Elixer of Immortality, Lich Mirror, and everu one of the Eldrazi legends.

To answer the original question. Black and red is a particularly nasty combo when you mix burn spells with creature destruction, and black bleed spells.

Enchantments that slowly drain life if they attack/block or tap lands.

 

[Kenrath]

I had a White deck back in like 98ish that I had some success with but that was about it.

I am sure if I looked hard enough I could find it but I was not much of a MTG player.

 

[Ludolf Vaas]

That's why you have cards like Traumatize where they mill half their deck. Consuming Aberation whose power and toughness is equal to all opponent's graveyard totals. And, every time you play a spell, an opponent mills till they get a land. The Jace whose 0 drop ability is target player mills ten cards. Mind Grind where all opponents mill till they hit X lands.

And both Traumatize and Jace, Memory Adept cost 5 mana. Which means they won't be hitting the table until at least turn 5. During that time your opponent is setting up a board state, or a good burn player will have burned you out by turn 4. Traumatize does absolutely diddly against any threats that hit the table. What good is milling half a person's deck when you die to their creatures next turn?

The Aberration also costs 5 mana - 5 mana which could be spent on milling your opponent. You have to wait a turn before it does anything, and It's completely vulnerable to spot removal, altogether a very unreliable wincon. It's likely your opponent has some spot removal on hand, considering mill decks run very few creatures. Nothing is worse than you tapping out on turn 5 to cast the Aberration, then your opponent simply Doom Blades or Swords to Plowshares it at the end of your turn. Congratulations, you've just tapped out and lost an entire turn without milling any cards.

Its ability to become large is also mostly irrelevant. It's a mill deck - why are you trying to win through combat damage? Pick a strategy and stick with it. Trying to do too many things at once makes the deck lose focus and become less reliable.

Honestly I just don't see mill decks as very viable ever. If you like making opponents throw away their cards, I think a better strategy would be to run a discard deck built around cards like Shrieking Affliction and The Rack.

 

[Avicus DuSang]

[member="Ludolf Vaas"]

That's why I added green and mana ramp to my mill deck to speed it up. On top of the Hedron Crab whose landfall makes an opponent mill. And mix that, or the aberation, with that blue/green shapeshifter that puts out a copy of whatever it's cloning every turn.

Is mill a perfect strategy? No. But, every deck can be beaten. That's the beauty of MtG.

I'm more focused on my black/red/white vampire deck and my mono black graveyard deck. Yeah!!

 

[rain21199]

Wait, so some people can take you out turn 4 with burn cards? The most I could possible mill turn four is 23. Damn.

 

[Ludolf Vaas]

That's why I added green and mana ramp to my mill deck to speed it up.

To me that seems not so good. Adding an entire color just for ramp... into what? Traumatize? Again you're making the deck lose focus. Every ramp spell you put in there is one less mill spell that you need, thereby further diluting your deck. Also weakening your manabase by now having three colors.

If you have to compensate for the deck's inherent weaknesses by shifting focus to another strategy, that's generally not a good sign. Decks that try to be too many things at once are decks that usually fail. If you make a deck that's sort of ramp, sort of mill, it's not going to do any of those things effectively, and mill is an uphill battle to begin with.

I mean if you're going to add green just for ramp then why not simply make a green ramp deck at that point? You're never going to beat a real ramp deck at its own game. While you ramp into Jace and durdle with his mill ability, your opponents will be ramping into Primeval Titan, Sylvan Primordial, and other assorted large green absurdities and just killing you with combat damage.

Wait, so some people can take you out turn 4 with burn cards?

If you use the red cards I listed above, then a turn 4 kill is not only possible but likely.

Good burn decks usually aim to kill around turns 4-5.

 

[Avicus DuSang]

Ramp isn't the only thing I added green for, it's just a bonus.

Green was added because, besides mill, it's an Ally deck. It's not perfect, but I'm fine tuning it to getting it to a level of nasty. The ramp helps with getting Consuming Aberration, Traumatize, et cetera. But, it's mostly used to be able to put out allies out, get their chain reactions going, draw cards, and Mind Grind.

But, you team up Consuming Aberration with mana ramp, and every time you're playing a land, they're milling until they get a land.