Options for Dimir Mill

For this week, I decided to devote all three of my blog posts to the Dimir Mill deck that captured the trophy for MPDC 23.02. On Sunday, I wrote a brief introduction to this archetype. Then, on Wednesday, I wrote about some strategies that can successfully counter what this deck is trying to do. While these strategies go a long way to defeating this archetype, the determined Dimir Mill players is not without options. So today I want to briefly discuss some potential ways that Dimir Mill can emerge victorious:

1. The biggest weakness of the build that won MPDC 23.02 is its inability to successfully mill out an opponent who doesn't cast any spells. What is needed, then, are some cards that overcome this shortcoming. The most obvious answer is Tome Scour, which for a single blue mana mills an opponent for 5 cards. All other things being equal, if you manage to see most of your deck and thus cast all four copies, this should be enough to counter the additional cards in your opponent's library gained through Sideboarding and aggressive mulligans.

2. Of course, the reason Tome Scour wasn't included in the original list is that its essentially an "aggro" mill card, in that it doesn't convey any additional advantages. For that reason, one could argue that a better solution would be creature-based mill. This would not only help solve the original shortcoming, but would also force your opponent to deal with additional creature threats. This, in turn, forces him or her to cast more spells, and this in turn gives you a better chance to cast counterspells and removal. Let's look at three such possibilities.

A. Gatecrash unveiled a special "mill" mechanic where an opponent reveals cards until he or she reveals a land, and then all those cards get put in the Graveyard. Balustrade Spy is perfectly positioned to take full advantage of this ability. While the amount of cards it mills will obviously be somewhat random, in a typical deck it will average between 2 and 3 cards, with a much higher potential. Even better, a 2/3 flyer is a significant threat, which your opponent cannot simply ignore turn after turn.

B. The second option comes from Return to Ravnica in the form of Doorkeeper, a much more typical Blue creature with the ability to mill cards. Paying two a blue mana to mill a single card from your opponent's library is not very good, but in multiples this has the potential to mill quite a few cards over the course of a game. Of course, since this doesn't otherwise threaten your opponent, I would judge it weaker than Balustrade Spy, although it will probably mill more cards over the course of a game.

C. The final option is Returned Centaur. This is similar to Balustrade Spy, but with a guaranteed four cards mill when it comes into play. While it isn't quite as potent a threat as the Balustrade Spy, it consistently mills for almost as many cards as Tome Scour while still presenting a threat that your opponent cannot simply ignore. In my opinion, this is probably the most consistent creature-based milling option, and would be the first option I would want to test further.



3. It should also be mentioned that the Sideboarding trick works almost as well for you as it does for your opponent. Especially in Game 3 if you've already seen your opponent use this strategy, it makes sense to utilize it yourself. While weakening your overall plan, the game is all but guaranteed to go long anyway, and so you should be able to overcome the dilution of your library.

In closing, I confess that I have to test any of this. But if I were going to go down this route, these would be the options I would start with.

So what about you? Any solid options that I missed? Do you have any other tips, either for improving the Dimir Mill deck or defeating it more consistently? As always, I'd love to hear your thoughts. Thanks for reading.

Beating Dimir Mill

Earlier this week, I wrote about the Dimir Mill deck that won MPDC 23.02, piloted by the skilled player Adner. While the deck didn't perform as well in Monday's event, it is still a deck that you should be prepared to face. And, like I mentioned before, Dimir Mill can be a tough matchup, given its ability to easily keep pace with mid-range and control strategies. So today I will look at different strategies designed to help you overcome this archetype.

There are essentially two directions you can take.

First, you can try to power out a quick victory, overwhelming the deck's ability to keep the board under control. This means aggressive starts, dealing damage as quickly as possible, and casting multiple spells in a turn to push through the counterspells in the deck. Since this archetype is so reactive, if you can create more threats than your opponent can keep up with, you can secure a quick victory and essentially render all of the milling effects meaningless. Unfortunately, this requires a pretty aggressive build as well as a good opener, and such a start may not even be possible for many of the popular archetypes. Which is where the second strategy comes into play.

You see, you need to realize that any Mill archetype is playing an entirely different game. Rather than trying to reduce your life from 20 to 0, Dimir Mill is trying to reduce your library from 60 to 0. This means that anything you can do to keep more cards in your library is ultimately going to be good for you.

Furthermore, the strength of this deck is also its greatest weakness. Both Pilfered Plans and Thassa's Bounty take as many cards from your opponent's library as they do from yours. The only way the Dimir Mill deck has to get ahead in total cards remaining is to cast Psychic Strike and Grisly Spectacle. But your opponent can only cast these two spells if you allow them.

So the second strategy is this: refuse to play into Dimir Mill's strengths. Instead, play a different game entirely.

• Take your entire Sideboard, dump it into your Library, and Submit. Viola! You just boosted your "life total" from 60 to 75.
• Aggressively mulligan, even down to a single card, if that's what it takes to keep your library larger than your opponent.
• Don't cast any draw spells. Anytime you do this, you are reducing your "life total" by the number of cards you draw.
• Don't cast any creature spells either, and only cast other spells if you are certain your opponent can't counter it.

If you follow these simple tips, provided your start the match with more cards in your library than your opponent, the only way you can lose the game is from lethal damage from Archaeomancer. Deal with this one card, and you literally can't lose the match.

So, is there anything the Dimir Mill deck can do to counter this second strategy? That's what I'll cover on Friday. See you then.

Dimir Mill

Today I want to write about Dimir Mill, the Standard Pauper archetype that captured the trophy for MPDC 23.02.

But before we get to that, I have two quick points of interest:

1. I discovered today that I somehow neglected to write Thursday's post last week. No idea what happened, but clearly I dropped the ball. To make up for this, I will be publishing content three times this week.

2. From this point forward, I will be submitting new posts on Tuesdays and Fridays, instead of Tuesdays and Thursday. Frankly, my Thursdays have gotten hectic enough that it's no wonder I completely missed the fact until now that I didn't put up a post that day.

So with that out of the way...

I confess when I first got back into Magic, I loved the idea of a Mill deck. Back in a previous (and shortlived) blog, I even wrote a blog post exploring different options available at the time to try to make such an archetype work. Since that time, there have been a few viable Mill strategies that have come and gone, and in the mean time, I came to despise the archetype, much as I do almost any non-conventional win strategy. It isn't that such strategies are inherently weak or unfair or cheap. It's just that in an all-common format like Standard Pauper, dedicated answers simply don't exist for such archetypes.

It shouldn't surprise you then that I was somewhat distressed to see a new Mill deck not only emerge in the new metagame, but capture the trophy of the second event. In case you missed it, here's the decklist:

Dimir Mill*

1st place by Adner in MPDC 23.02

Creatures 4 Archaeomancer 4 cards Other Spells 4 Cancel 4 Devour Flesh 4 Essence Scatter 4 Grisly Spectacle 4 Psychic Strike 3 Pilfered Plans 2 Crypt Incursion 3 Read the Bones 2 Stymied Hopes 3 Thassa's Bounty 33 cards

Lands 10 Swamp 8 Island 4 Dimir Guildgate 1 Unknown Shores 23 cards Sideboard 3 Beckon Apparition 3 Shrivel 3 Duress 1 Crypt Incursion 1 Cremate 1 Stymied Hopes 3 Pharika's Cure 15 cards

* Note that since Gatherling hasn't been updated for Magic 2014 or Theros yet, I had to make a best guess for the number of some of these cards included in the decklist.

Unlike almost every other Standard Pauper Mill deck I've seen, this one doesn't rely upon cards that only mill. In fact, it doesn't have a single dedicated Mill card in the decklist. Instead, this list runs permission spells, draw spells, and removal, and nearly every spell provides incidental milling. Furthermore, since the only creatures in the list are Archaeomancers, it blanks nearly all the removal spells from the opposing deck.

Having now played against this archetype, I can tell you that it's quite powerful. It has answers to just about every contender in the metagame. It can weather early aggression fairly well, can keep up with mid-range strategies, and plays fairly well in the end game. So the question is, how do you beat it? That's what I want to talk about on Wednesday...

Junk Enchantments

So during the week between the rotation of Standard on Magic Online and the start of the new season of Monday Pauper Deck Challenge, I was busy testing several new decks and decided what looked promising in the new metagame. I was testing various Boros and Orzhov builds, and had just about settled on a deck, when Zachary Barash (of Hipsters of the Coast fame), sent me this provocative tweet:

Needless to say I was intrigued. Next time we were both online, I got to face this "new best deck" across the virtual battlefield. I proceeded to get beaten by said deck - and hard. Granted, this is not an unusual experience for me. Still, I was impressed. I immediately set aside the decks I had been working on and began testing with this new one instead.

Although this isn't the version he initially showed me (or even the one I eventually played), I believe that this is probably the strongest version of this deck, now known as Junk Enchantments:

 

The deck's concept is simple and straightforward, yet remarkably powerful. It functions similar to a Hexproof archetype, save that instead of relying on Hexproof creatures, you instead make use of the special qualities of the Bestow mechanic that essentially prevent you from getting two-for-one'd if your opponent destroys the target of the Bestow Aura prior to it resolving. Ethereal Armor is clearly the most powerful card in the deck, followed by Auramancer, Read the Bones, and Hopeful Eidolon.

The strength of the deck is its flexibility. You can go slow and play the value game very well with Auramancer, Read the Bones, and Bestow, or you can explode with a Turn 1 Hopeful Eidolon, Turn 2 double Ethereal Armor. However, conserving your Ethereal Armors is probably the wiser course of action, as they just get better as the game goes on.

Anyway, despite my initial enthusiasm, I have had nothing but trouble with this deck in two weeks of tournament play in Monday Pauper Deck Challenge. I have a record of 2-5 with the deck, and have seen it lose just about every way possible. I suspect that this is, at least in part, a combination of bad play, bad luck, and some less-than-optimal builds, rather than a true reflection on the deck itself. Still, it's been brutal for me.

So what do you think? Is this archetype viable? Or was it just a gimmick whose initial success was more due to its novelty than any real strength? As always, I'd love to hear your thoughts. Thanks for reading!

Klatch Coffee

It's hard to believe that in almost eleven months of blogging, I've only submitted a single post related to what is probably my biggest hobby outside of Standard Pauper. What is that, you ask? If you've been paying attention at all, then this post is a not-so-subtle clue. I'm talking, of course, about coffee...or espresso, to be exact.

At some point, I should share more about my own history with espresso and why I find it to be such an amazing beverage to consume. But today, I instead want to promote what recently became my favorite distributor of espresso - Klatch Coffee.

These guys are SERIOUS about their coffee. Their "roastmaster" and owner travels all around the world, picking only the finest coffees, and roasts them in small batches at their company headquarters. In fact, when you place an order, your coffee isn't even roasted until then, so by the time it's delivered, you get a freshness that is unparalleled. They've won all kinds of awards, including a very prestigious "Best Espresso in the World" at the World Barista Championship in Tokyo. They feature four different espresso roasts year round, and seasonally offer single origin espresso roasts while supplies last.

Of course, none of that matters if the coffee isn't both delicious and affordable. Fortunately Klatch delivers on both counts. While certainly more expensive than buying a bag of Starbucks at your local grocery store, the quality you get is far above anything else I've ever tasted. And compared to other gourmet espresso roasts like Illy, Klatch is noticeably less expensive, particularly in bulk.

So if you're a coffee snob like I am, and you want to try one of the best coffees in the country, you can't go wrong with Klatch Coffee. Try them out; you won't be disappointed.

My Return to Hosting

Yesterday I completed my very own March of the Returned as I resumed hosting Monday Pauper Deck Challenge. Although attendance was still a bit lower than I would like, overall I felt like the event was a big success. It honestly felt quite satisfying to back in my role as host, and I am so grateful to each of you who took the time to thank me for coming back.

While some of my hosting duties are quite familiar, this season I am challenging myself to continue to grow in my skills in terms of consistency, presentation, and the little flourishes. For example, for the first time ever, I created a trophy image for milegyenanevem, the winner of Monday's event, who piloted a very powerful Mono-Black deck. I probably spent about three hours altogether searching online for the right tool, playing with the various elements I could cobble together, and learning the ins and outs of the software. While I certainly have room to grow in my skills as a trophy designer, I felt like my initial design wasn't too shabby:

I ended up using a great free program called Paint.NET, which has many of the features of advance image editors like Photoshop while being much easier to use for a newcomer. While this program doesn't natively support the PSD Photoshop file-type, a quick add-on overcame that limitation with ease. From there, it was a simple task to download the old trophy elements still available over through the Artwork forums on PDCMagic.com. I also uncovered this post by user Polyjak that proved to be quite helpful.

Despite the several hours I had to devote to my first attempt, overall the process seems pretty easy, and in the future I should be able to create these within a much more reasonable time frame each week. 

If you missed your chance to participate this week, let me remind you that Monday Pauper Deck Challenge takes place every Monday at 2pm EST. All you need is a Standard Pauper deck, an account on Magic Online, and several hours to devote to playing one of the best formats Magic has to offer. Hope to see you next Monday!

Changes for MPDC

As I mentioned in my previous post, I will be resuming my position as host of Monday Pauper Deck Challenge, which begins its 23rd season this coming Monday. I am excited about this opportunity to be more involved with the Standard Pauper community once again. As host, my goals are simple:

• Make MPDC the premiere Player Run Event experience for Magic Online.
• Grow participation in MPDC, particularly from new players or those new to Magic Online.
• Increase awareness and exposure to the Standard Pauper format.

To that end, there will be some changes going forward to how Monday Pauper Deck Challenge will operate. I will freely admit that some of these are more experimental in nature, and will not necessarily apply after this season. But in each case, I believe these changes will support these goals.

1. MPDC will return to using DCI Reporter to run the event, rather than the automated Gatherling tool. Not only does DCI Reporter give me as host more control of the event itself, it also creates a much more attractive product for Pairings and Standings that can be used to advertise the event.
2. Speaking of which, each MPDC event will continue to be advertised in the Player Run Events channel of the Wizards forums. But once again, this advertisement will include the results of the event, rather than simply the announcement itself. I believe the quality of these posts goes a long way to attracting new players.
3. MPDC will award the winner of each event a trophy, much as was done in the past. While I have some technical challenges to overcome to make this a reality, I will endeavor to get this done each and every week in a timely fashion. This is another nice way to advertise the event, and one that I would like to see resume.
4. Worlds, the capstone event for each season, will now be open to everyone. It will be the same format as each other week - Swiss with Top 8 cutoff - but will still feature the improved prizes. The Top 8 players from the season, as determined by Season Points, will receive a free bye for Round 1 of this event. This will allow anyone who shows up to play, but still give our regulars an incentive to participate each week.
5. Last but not least, I will be offering better prize support for Top 8. In the interest of full disclosure, my intent is to pay for these additional prizes out of the $5 credit normally awarded to the host of the event, rather than asking for additional prize support from our sponsor. While the details of this are not finalized, the prize payout will now resemble something like this: 

• 1st: $7 gift certificate to MTGOTraders
• 2nd: $4 gift certificate to MTGOTraders
• Top 4: $2 gift certificate to MTGOTraders
• Top 8: $1 credit at MTGOTraders bot
• Door Prize: 4 cards from the MPDC Prize Pool

As always, your feedback is appreciated. Thanks for reading, and I hope to see many of you on Monday for a new season of MPDC!