Wall of Lost Thoughts

Creature — Wall

Defender

When Wall of Lost Thoughts enters the battlefield, target player mills four cards. (They put the top four cards of their library into their graveyard.)

Legality

Format	Legality
1v1 Commander	Legal
Archenemy	Legal
Arena	Legal
Block Constructed	Legal
Canadian Highlander	Legal
Casual	Legal
Commander / EDH	Legal
Commander: Rule 0	Legal
Custom	Legal
Dandan	Legal
Duel Commander	Legal
Gladiator	Legal
Highlander	Legal
Historic	Legal
Judge's Tower	Legal
Legacy	Legal
Leviathan	Legal
Limited	Legal
Modern	Legal
Oathbreaker	Legal
Pioneer	Legal
Planechase	Legal
Quest Magic	Legal
Tiny Leaders	Legal
Vanguard	Legal
Vintage	Legal

Discussion (50)

wallisface on A Modern Mono Mill of Maddening Magnitude

2 years ago

Some thoughts, keeping in mind your budget:

• You claim your “fastest win” was turn 7… that’s waaay too slow, and i’m very surprised you weren’t killed before that turn- even the slowest of decks should be able to close-out a game before then. As a mill deck, you should be aiming to win by turn 5 at the very latest.

• it’s good to compare mill cards to their burn-equvalents, as this can be a good gauge of whether they’re worth running. For example Tome Scour almost directly matches Shock, and we all know Shock is an unplayable card in Burn due to just providing too little for a card. Similarly, Tome Scour isn’t worth it, as it expends a card from your hand for very, very low value - it’s simply not going to get the job done, and it’ll leave you with too few resources.

• on the same vein as above, boh of Overwhelmed Apprentice and Wall of Lost Thoughts aren’t worth running either (equating to around 0.8 and 1.6 “damage”, they make Shock look fantastic by comparison). The only creatures ever worth running in a mill deck are Ruin Crab and Hedron Crab… if Hedron is out of your budget, then just stick with Ruin, but don’t add in this other junk.

• Following on from this, Didn't Say Please and Thought Collapse don’t mill enough to warrant paying 3 mana for. If you want countermagic, run Mana Leak and/or Counterspell you don’t need the extra 3-card-mill, but you will need the option to counter stuff starting turn-2.

• All 4 of the enchantment choices here are super weak, and more likely to lose you the game to help you. Most of them require you play them asap, and then work very hard towards making them profitable - meaning they become effectively dead-draws mid-late game, and not-exactly-great early game. I could see a single copy of Fraying Sanity working, but 2 copies is too risky (the card isn’t great, and drawing the second copy will be effectively the same as not drawing at all, costing you the game).

• Traumatize is never worth it. The game should be ending turn 5. This card just doesn’t get you there. Often its just a 5-mana “mill 5-10” cards, depending on the opponents remaining deck so late into the game.

• You should be running playsets of both Fractured Sanity and Maddening Cacophony. They’re both cheap cards, and tbh your deck isn’t going to work without them.

• I would suggest going up to 22 lands, your current count feels quite low.

• I’d suggest running Field of Ruin, as a way to trigger Ruin Crab more often.

• it feels like you really want to be playing 2-colors. Adding black gives you access to both Fatal Push and Crypt Incursion, which both buy you time. It also lets you play Extirpate, to strip the most important cards from your opponents deck

wallisface on

2 years ago

Some thoughts:

• Merfolk Secretkeeper and Wall of Lost Thoughts aren't worth running. If you compare mill to a burn deck, they're the equivalent of running a worse Shock (doing the equivalent of around 1.6 damage). That's a pretty awful return as far as milling, regardless of mana cost.

• Similarly to the above Balustrade Spy is awful, it's only going to get somewhere between 1-3 cards on average, for 4 mana. In all honesty, there's a good reason why mill decks don't run any creatures outside of Hedron Crab and Ruin Crab - it's because everything else just isn't worth it.

• I get you want fetches for the crabs, and that's probably outside of your budget - but Evolving Wilds is not an alternative. Having lands enter tapped is disastrous, as it will slow down your tempo faaaar too much, and give your opponent too much of a chance to win. If you want ways to trigger crabs multiple times, i'd suggest Field of Ruin.

• You have enough lands, you have absolutely no reason to run Dimir Signet

• Mind Funeral gives terrible returns for its mana value, and will often cause the deck to lose to itself by not getting enough cards milled. Focus on running full playsets of the better mill cards (Fractured Sanity and Maddening Cacophony) instead

• Both Crypt Incursion and Archive Trap should be mainboard, not sideboard.

• Jace Beleren has no place in this deck. 3 mana is slow, and he doesn't do anything for you. You can't reasonably expect him to ever be able to ultimate, so often he's just going to draw a single card then die.

• I would also ditch Drowned Secrets, because its return is just soo low - you have to play 4 blue spells after this card just to mill 8 cards. Many mill-specific cards (i.e. Maddening Cacophony) can just do that on their own. Drowned Secrets is unlikely to give you enough benefit during a game even if its played early, but becomes a terrible late-game draw.

• Your deck currently has no interaction at all, which is going to put you in a really rough spot as most decks will be able to out-race you. Mill needs to throw the opponents plans off-track to get enough time to secure the win. I would have expected to see playsets of both Drown in the Loch and Fatal Push here, as well as a 3-4 copies of Extirpate to remove your opponents best cards from their deck.

• While being at 65 cards might not seem much above 60, its going to lead to you having overall worse hands and draws, in both strength and consistency. You should always be aiming to cut a deck back to 60 cards.

This link here is a good example of a competitive mill deck - I think you should be aiming towards something like this, just accommodating for your particular budget

RDWDTR on General Mills

2 years ago

• Ruin Crab loses a lot of its punch without Hedron Crab and fetch lands backing it up. It's still worth the playset but I just thought I'd let you in on this since the other guy didn't. The optimal version of this deck is heavily based around running both crabs with fetches (it also typically runs a second color, either white or black). You could try Evolving Wilds and/or Terramorphic Expanse to mimic this, but you're going to really slow the deck down. The optimal version is also heavily based around an expensive card called Archive Trap. Something like Sphinx's Tutelage could help fill this void.

• Glacial Grasp, Thought Collapse and Vedalken Entrancer are terrible cards, you don't want them in your deck, trust me. I'd mainboard Dismembers for removal, use plain ol' Counterspells, and play literally any other blue creature respectively.

• You could play the full 4 of Sanity Grinding.

• Very spicy Sword of Body and Mind, but I really think this slot could be put to better use, especially given the $ value of the card. You don't have many good creatures to even equip it to. Now, if you had a few Jace's Phantasms, that might be a different story. A 5/5 flyer for 1 mana is already nuts, but now it's a 7/7 that mills for 10 and makes wolves.

• You need some stronger control elements. I'd play more counterspells in the sideboard... Mana Leak, Negate, and Essence Scatter are all worth experimenting with. You'll get way more mileage out of those cards than something like Thought Scour or Jace Beleren. You could experiment with Unsummon effects too, they pair nicely with counters.

• You should consider an alternate win condition. I know this is supposed to be a mill deck, but there are going to be matchups where this won't work (at least not in the budget version). You could accept that and not care, or you could make some concessions. To that end, I would propose just playing like an honest control deck and running 1-2 Prognostic Sphinx or Sphinx of the Final Word. It doesn't have to be mainboard.

• Manic Scribe, Overwhelmed Apprentice and Wall of Lost Thoughts are low quality cards that happen to fit your theme. They're not as bad as the other three I singled out, but these would still be among the first places I made cuts.

LeechBoy on Horror Mill Deck

2 years ago

Some nice suggestions, thanks you. The crabs really are good ones for this deck. Especially because I can enchant them with Nighthowler, not like Wall of Lost Thoughts.

faiello1972 on High Mill

2 years ago

I'll pick up a couple more Detention Sphere and pull the Inaction Injunction . Also, I replaced the Millstone & Geralf's Mindcrusher with Wall of Lost Thoughts and Wall of Omens .

TheVectornaut on High Mill

3 years ago

Millstone , Inaction Injunction , and Geralf's Mindcrusher are three cards that seem on the weak side here. For the first, maybe something like Sphinx's Tutelage could make the best use of your cantrips for maximum cards milled. It would also make the detain card better, although I think I'd still prefer a more permanent answer like additional Detention Sphere , Darksteel Mutation , or the weaker but thematically consistent Deep Freeze . When it comes to the Mindcrusher, I think he's just too slow to only be milling 5-10 cards while not contributing to the defender gameplan. I'd probably just hard swap him for 3 more Wall of Lost Thoughts , Wall of Omens , or maybe Mnemonic Wall . Also, if you don't mind splashing black, Phenax, God of Deception is a great bomb to supplement Doorkeeper s.

Mechanon on Mill

3 years ago

Wall of Runes , Wall of Lost Thoughts , Sibsig Host , Lazav, Dimir Mastermind and Sublime Epiphany might be some helpful cards.

AdamThePig on Rush Format-Milling Fast!

3 years ago

Any reason not to play Underground Sea?

Also, Merfolk Secretkeeper seems better than Wall of Lost Thoughts to me if you aren't running many/any swamps. Also worth considering Gemstone Mine. Not a huge fan of Darkwater Catacombs instead of just like a fetch land, but I might be wrong.