Let’s start with Mind Funeral (Figure 1-1). We (lsun and I) calculated that it had approximately the same average number of milled cards as Sanity Grinding, so I guess it was meant to be its spiritual successor for Constructed play come Winter. Sanity Grinding had an average of 10.4 cards milled, and Mind Funeral clocked in with 10.9 cards against a 22 land deck.
Update: A (terrible) mistake but… how the hell did we get 10.4 cards milled with Sanity Grinding? I ran the calculations again and it should be more like 15! Mind Funeral just doesn’t compare.
The main advantage the card gives is that one is no longer restricted to mono-blue, although I can’t see any gains from playing this card outside of Esper colors.
Figure 1-1: Mind Funeral
The card looks like it has a lot of synergy (lol buzzwords) with Path to Exile, but looking through random samples of tourney decks (via tcgplayer), most decks keep basic lands to a minimum… like 1-4 range. Oh well.
Assuming we keep to black and blue (lol Linkin Park) we can see Faeries are still going strong in ARB constructed play. Combining Memory Sluice, Drowner Initiates, and Faeries ought to have some potential. A crazy idea would be to consider Thoughtseize and Thought Hemorrhage – normally I wouldn’t see them as playable in a mill deck, but then again I never thought Ultimatums were playable either when they first came out – oh wait, only 2 of the 5 ever see the light of day.
Anyways, a quick preliminary run with Faeries and Funeral proved to work. Barely. The faeries provide enough stall for Jace to draw you the mill cards you need, but I can see the deck being easily outpaced since it has no good way to stop your opponent from over-extending and rushing you. Mistbind Cliques can only stall for so long. That, and Gaddock Teeg screws this deck – locking out Broken Ambitions and Cryptic Command.
Update: The current (v.1.1) decklist:
2 Mistbind Clique
3 Scion of Oona
4 Jace Beleren
4 Spellstutter Sprite
4 Twincast
4 Mind Funeral
3 Nameless Inversion
3 Remove Soul
4 Cryptic Command
4 Broken Ambitions
3 Bitterblossom
2 Swamp
2 Island
4 Underground River
4 Sunken Ruins
4 Secluded Glen
2 Faerie Conclave
4 Mutavault
first
have you ever met a instance where the land cards are stuck together???? sounds plausible but i have to see the deck list first
dude, you got a problem with board wipe in this case… remember the history of BW tokens who got boardwiped….
Well, counters are mostly there for chump blocking, although I admit it would have problems with surprise Jund Charms or Volcanics (killing the man-lands)… but that’s where counter spells might help.
The main goal is to stall until you can pull off a combination of Funerals and Twincasts. Usually 4 mills are enough to kill (use Jace’s +2 ability), and there is the chance they’ll let Jace use his -10 ability if they’re trying to rush you down.
Unless they’re running larks, board wipes will make sure they won’t be overextending themselves anyways, so I don’t see it as an big enough problem to ruin the deck. I’d agree it’s not PTQ level (yet!), but casual play it’s quite playable.
P.S. Reveillark is broken)