Every time somebody says they like Unglued, I ask myself once more if I'm the only person in the world who hates the Un- sets.

I liked many of the cards from Unglued and Unhinged. The basic lands were beautiful, too. Wished I could've had enough for my decks.

I worked to collect both halves of the BFM. I also like the "Look at Me! I'm the DCI!" card. My favorite, though, is the infernal spawn mouse guy.

The Infernal Spawn of Evil? He's my favorite whacky art, but in general I don't like the Un- sets. I DO like the Holiday Promotional cards (like the glorious Fruitcake Elemental or Season's Beatings), though!

They rereleased full art lands in Zendikar, Zarquan - you'd love their look if you liked the Unhinged ones, I have a link to a few, hold on:

Forest (click the other links in that list for all of them)
Mountain
Swamp (the one linked is my favorite of them)
Island (my favorite of them)
Plains (my favorite of the Plains art linked!)

Zendikar's creative inspiration was pretty cool, too: exploring everchanging landscapes, with a subtheme of 'pulpy, stereotypical DnD exploration parties' with a touch of Lovecraftian hints for the next set.

Such a serious discussion. I've barely played the game, and was never this serious. All I did was play around with circles of protection, disenchant and counterspells.

In honor of this thread, I've figured out what my new forumtitle shall be. :3

A number of friends of mine play MTG at a competitive level, be it legacy/vintage, standard, extended and all the limited formats. I can't be bothered (nor can I honestly afford that , so I generally play pre-release tournaments, limited, proxy EDH, etc. though I've made a net profit somewhere on the order of 500-700$ over the course of the past 4-5 years on winnings/selling cards.

On the plus side, nowadays I do get 'sponsored' by said friends as long as I give them my winnings~

Honestly, Limited is my favorite format due to the high probability of a lack of netdecking. Drafts and sealed events are where true critical thinking and deckbuilding shows the most.

I agree!

I love pre-release limited if only 'cause you have no idea what kind of interactions are going to happen card-wise (even if you obsessively research the spoilers and such..), but on top of that 2HG with everyone kinda confused is hilarious times.

I play casual, mostly because the odd-and-ends decks that I use are illegal in most tournaments due to some card or another.

Still, I like to think I'm not a jerk about it. I'll play with Tournament winners, and sometimes I'll even win.

Milling is not inefficient

Hedron Crab

Traumatize

Twincast

Archive Trap

Jace Beleren

Howling Mine


My group loves howling mine. Either for milling or for Kederekt Parasite/Hellfire Mongrel/Blightning/Megrim Goodness

Milling is circumstantial.

All those cards are inefficient.

EDIT: That is, for milling at least, four of them see play for unrelated reasons

There have been two mill decks that were floating around in standard play recently, one being twincast sanity grinding, but it could win through control since it had access to Oona, cryptic, plumeveil, etc. The basic premise was to play control and 2 for 1 until you could twincast a sanity grinding, and crack something huge out of a shelldock isle (or another sanity grinding). It didn't mill pretty much at all 'till that grinding, but that can easily hit upwards of 30 cards, and it brought back boomerang on tap lands which was a huge tempo gain. Also twincast is silly and I lurve it <3

More recently hedron crab saw play in a deck that ran search lands like terramorphic expanse, but that was mostly an early game trick until they could get to a mind funeral (which can be maaaasssive..), thought hemmorage to remove any incoming threats, or haunting echoes after the crab or a mind funeral threw stuff in the yard to pretty much seal the game. This one was much faster than the previous grinding deck, and it occasionally used archive trap but it seems like that was generally a finisher.

The main problem with mill decks in any format is once they're starting to be 'effective', they're realllly easy to sideboard against (ie. primal command, even siding in thought hemmorage vs. mill is really hard to play around). Many of the sideboard cards are already staples too, so most decks won't lose slots to deal with it, or can deal with it even without having encountered it.

There was another one before, actually...it was some godawful 16-fog howling mine BS engine. I think it ran one hoofprints of the stag, but later versions probably ditched that because they always do.

Milling in inefficient and insubstantial as a competitive win condition except in Limited.

Jace's -10 will NEVER see real, serious play. He is played for card advantage via -1 over 3 turns.

Traumatize is overcosted and is honestly not worth the slot for a blue deck. If your goal is to cast Traumatize for your path to the gold, you've already lost since the card is drastically inefficient - even for half the library. At a maximum, you'll only be milling 26ish cards. You could do much better things with 1 to 4 card slots. Every turn you don't draw Traumatize after hitting 5 mana makes the card less and less valuable/less and less worth playing.

Howling Mine is played for card advantage.

Archive Trap is a nasty sideboard card used against fetchland-heavy decks that use a minimal amount of actual mana-producing lands. It is not meant to actually mill a deck out.

Twincast is irrelevant to milling - and Twincasting Traumatize isn't as good as you think it may be. IF it sees play, it's for a completely different reason (Twincast is a Johnny and Timmy card that will often be used with hilarious spells, nothing really -efficient-. The most recent semi-competitive/semi-efficient application I've seen it put it use with is Blightning or some such)

Hedron Crab is the only good milling card you listed, and it is honestly best in Limited - not Constructed. The creature itself is inefficient, while Limited fetch lands, Harrow, and other search effects will guarantee you can mill out a small (40 or 60) card deck in Limited where you will see much less of a response/viable answer to the creature itself since you never really swing with it.

I know Milling is cool, but everybody has to grow out of it at some point. It's fun and cool for casual, but.. 99% of mill cards printed are just inefficient.

If the last mill deck you saw in standard had Oona in it, that was a block ago (in terms of Standard rotation). Milling isn't really viable compared to such decks as 4/5-color control, the pre-Zendikar or post-Zendikar Jund, Grixis Control, Tezzerator, Vault'n'Crypt Combo, Boros Bushwhacker, etc. It never was meant to be, it's an incredibly delicate mechanic.

You're forgetting that 'seeing' a deck at a Standard tournament does not necessarily make it good in the global metagame. If a mill deck won at your local T2 tournament over the weekend, all I can say is nobody was running any notable/real decks and they walked away with free packs because of it. Of course, by comparing everything to Tier 1 decks, we reach a frustrating state in terms of the metagame.. but.. that's a discussion way way way beyond the topic of just 'milling'.

Hmm, I think this topic came up during the London meet. I checked and the last pre-release I went to was Morningtide in 2008 and even then I was hardly playing

I never really got into it enough to be building the named decks. I always tried to build my own and never really saw the point in just following a list of cards someone else put together. No, I didn't win that much. Although, I used to win about half my matches in the pre-release flights.

These days I just look out for new Slivers to add to my large collection, which I have been collecting since Tempest in 1997. I believe I have 4+ of each apart from Queen and Overlord.

Yay Slivers!

And, I got second place in our local Urza's Saga booster draft tournament. I actually wanted the box of booster packs more than the first place price, which was a Library of Alexandria. Yeah, I'm "weird" that way.

Slivers were 'reprinted' as a special edition deck that is all foil, including cards that have never been foil before. It's a kind of mediocre deck, but it has great collector value.

I know, I bought it.

Damn you targeted advertising!

EDIT: I'm missing more than I thought slivers