Let's be optimistic say the opponent has 23 lands left in his library.
Prerequisites: 3 crypt ghast+ 1 evil twin/clone or 4 evil twins/clone in your hand or your graveyard, If evil twins are in your graveyard, you must have a havengul lich. You must have 1 heartless summoning. You must have 1 crypt ghast out already.
Good condition: Hopefully all the enemy's mana is tapped.
Method:
Let's be strict and say all 4 are in your graveyards: Evil twin 1 costs 1UB, you tap 1 swamp and 1 island, it comes in as crypt ghast. Evil twin 2 costs 1UB, you tap 1 swamp and 1 island, it comes in as crypt ghast and you have B mana. Evil twin 3 costs 1UB, you tap 1 island, and a swamp, it comes as crypt ghast and you have BB mana Evil twin 4 costs 1UB, you tap 1 island, it comes as crypt ghast.
You have now 5 crypt ghasts, so each swamp will tap for 6 mana, mind grind to mill their libraries cost 23BU, therefore you need to tap 4 swamps giving 24 mana and 1 island, totally for 12 lands for a 23 whole-library mill knockout in 1 turn. Turn 12 is when you can mind grind the opponent to death. The 5 islands can be artifacts like keyrunes or lantern or lotus, but the 8 swamps must be basic-lands. therefore let's say you have 1 lotus and a dimir keyrune for a 3 turn advantage, that's turn 9.
With a consuming aberration you'll only need to mill them for 18BU. Which is sadly still turn 12, but you can play it turn 11/turn 8 then just kill them with aberration (which should be at least 54/54 right now) so...
You can have evil twins and clones come in as aberration. I have not found the optimal consuming aberration:crypt ghast ratio to find the least lands needed.
Mind Grind can be broken =3.
Edit: I made a mistake, I re-edited and turns out it's turn 12, not 14. With a lotus and keyrune you can get to turn 9. Edit 2: This is standard. I'm not familiar with non-standard cards, so...
Or you could use any infinite/very large mana combo, most of which are easier to pull off than 14 lands in u/b.
lol as the game progresses, the amount of lands you need lessens. Having Aberration on the field will also accelerate. This is a theoretical calculation based on them having the maximum of 24 lands in their library. They'll probably have 15 lands left on turn 8.
Perhaps it's the most efficient way to do things in Standard, but with six regular islands and a Watery Grave (or 7 Islands and a swamp), I can get infinite U/B via Palinchron +High Tide , which is a much less stringent requirement than 4x a specific card, even with Clones helping smooth things out (and that's not counting the Heartless and/or Havengul)
In general, a combo is good if you need one of each of two or three cards because with 4-ofs you'll probably get one and you can run tutors to pull the one of three you didn't naturally draw. If you have interchangeable parts in your combo, it can be more complex because some of your parts are effectivley run at > x4, but not by much. Similarly, you can require 2 of a specific card if you include contingencies to clone one or tutor for the second
I understand if you don't want to believe me, and that's probably because at your core you've got a sound general concept: make a lot of mana, then throw it into a lethal X-spell. That sort of thing does win games. But do yourself a big favor, and proxy up a deck built around this scheme. See how many turns, on average, it takes you to Goldfish (kill an opponent who does literally nothing but draw a card every turn) when you have to suffer through random draws of your own. If the results you get from that are encouraging then I don't know... maybe I'm worng and you'll at least be able to turn your playgroup on its head with this. I kind of hope that's the case. I like being wrong when I tell someone their idea won't work.
"Enjoy your screams, Sarpadia - they will soon be muffled beneath snow and ice." THE COALITION WAR GAME -Phyrexian Praetor Round 1: (4-1-2, 1 kill) Round 2: (16-8-2, 4 kills) Round 3: (18-9-2, 1 kill) Round 4: (22-10-0, 2 kills) Round 5: (56-16-3, 9 kills) Round 6: (8-7-1) [current round]
Perhaps it's the most efficient way to do things in Standard, but with five regular islands and a Watery Grave (or 6 Islands and a swamp), I can get infinite U/B via Palinchron +High Tide , which is a much less stringent requirement than 4x a specific card, even with Clones helping smooth things out (and that's not counting the Heartless and/or Havengul)
In general, a combo is good if you need one of each of two or three cards because with 4-ofs you'll probably get one and you can run tutors to pull the one of three you didn't naturally draw. If you have interchangeable parts in your combo, it can be more complex because some of your parts are effectivley run at > x4, but not by much. Similarly, you can require 2 of a specific card if you include contingencies to clone one or tutor for the second
I understand if you don't want to believe me, and that's probably because at your core you've got a sound general concept: make a lot of mana, then throw it into a lethal X-spell. That sort of thing does win games. But do yourself a big favor, and proxy up a deck built around this scheme. See how many turns, on average, it takes you to Goldfish (kill an opponent who does literally nothing but draw a card every turn) when you have to suffer through random draws of your own. If the results you get from that are encouraging then I don't know... maybe I'm worng and you'll at least be able to turn your playgroup on its head with this. I kind of hope that's the case. I like being wrong when I tell someone their idea won't work.
true, this is a very very hard thing to do, but I just want to show that mind-grind can be broken.
Ideally... if everyone has the same mana droppage) mana you have (lands needed to mill) action
B (24) BU (23) turn 2 heartless summoning BUB (22) turn 3 crypt ghast BBUBBU (21) turn 4 havengul lich, mind sculpt BBBBBBUU (20) turn 5 consuming aberration, evil twin of a crypt ghast, mind sculpt yourself Bx9UUU (18) turn 6 clone of a crypt ghast, evil twin of a crypt ghast, you have 3xB mana this turn and 10xB 1xU potential mana Bx15UUUU (16) turn 7 you can use mind grind this turn.
The eastimate comes from the probability of hitting enough lands that you will also hit enough nonlands to mill the whole library. This works by estimating the number of nonlands per land milled. There were several probability experiments doen back during Alara Block when Mind Funeral was printed, which would be "Grind 4" in Rosewater's formulation.
The number there 1) depended on the deck you were playing against, and 2) the average land distribution to nonland you could expect. In that time, this number could vary between 19-25, or even as much as 27 in some of the controllier decks which provided themselves much means to pull land from the library.
Aggro/burn tends to run fewer, and closer to 1/3 of their decks, but control closer to 1/4. So you can hit at least 3-4 nonlands per land hit, as a median. Your mileage may vary.
At an estimate of 3.5 nonland cards hit per land, you would need a minimum of 18 mana poured into X to get Mind Grind to mill a 60 card library. You can reduce this for the time it will take to get to 20 mana ( + (X=18) = 20) by the average of how much mana you can produce versus the number of cards they draw. 15 mana accounting for their 7 card initial hand, reduced by 1 mana for every three turns thereafter. If, say, you can pour 10 mana into X by turn 8, you will mill over half of their remaining library. We'll assume you're using other cards to mill. A single activation of the Guildmage will kill them at this point, so you can mitigate the mana spent by 4 = 6 ≈ 21 cards milled and a loss of 21 life, and thus do this by turn 8.
"Possibilities abound, too numerous to count."
"Innocent, unbiased observation is a myth." --- P.B. Medawar (1969)
"Ever since man first left his cave and met a stranger with a different language and a new way of looking at things, the human race has had a dream: to kill him, so we don't have to learn his language or his new way of looking at things." --- Zapp Brannigan (Beast With a Billion Backs)
The eastimate comes from the probability of hitting enough lands that you will also hit enough nonlands to mill the whole library. This works by estimating the number of nonlands per land milled. There were several probability experiments doen back during Alara Block when Mind Funeral was printed, which would be "Grind 4" in Rosewater's formulation.
The number there 1) depended on the deck you were playing against, and 2) the average land distribution to nonland you could expect. In that time, this number could vary between 19-25, or even as much as 27 in some of the controllier decks which provided themselves much means to pull land from the library.
Aggro/burn tends to run fewer, and closer to 1/3 of their decks, but control closer to 1/4. So you can hit at least 3-4 nonlands per land hit, as a median. Your mileage may vary.
At an estimate of 3.5 nonland cards hit per land, you would need a minimum of 18 mana poured into X to get Mind Grind to mill a 60 card library. You can reduce this for the time it will take to get to 20 mana ([mc]UB[mc] + (X=18) = 20) by the average of how much mana you can produce versus the number of cards they draw. 15 mana accounting for their 7 card initial hand, reduced by 1 mana for every three turns thereafter. If, say, you can pour 10 mana into X by turn 8, you will mill over half of their remaining library. We'll assume you're using other cards to mill. A single activation of the Guildmage will kill them at this point, so you can mitigate the mana spent by 4 = 6 ≈ 21 cards milled and a loss of 21 life, and thus do this by turn 8.
The eastimate comes from the probability of hitting enough lands that you will also hit enough nonlands to mill the whole library. This works by estimating the number of nonlands per land milled. There were several probability experiments doen back during Alara Block when Mind Funeral was printed, which would be "Grind 4" in Rosewater's formulation.
The number there 1) depended on the deck you were playing against, and 2) the average land distribution to nonland you could expect. In that time, this number could vary between 19-25, or even as much as 27 in some of the controllier decks which provided themselves much means to pull land from the library.
Aggro/burn tends to run fewer, and closer to 1/3 of their decks, but control closer to 1/4. So you can hit at least 3-4 nonlands per land hit, as a median. Your mileage may vary.
At an estimate of 3.5 nonland cards hit per land, you would need a minimum of 18 mana poured into X to get Mind Grind to mill a 60 card library. You can reduce this for the time it will take to get to 20 mana ( + (X=18) = 20) by the average of how much mana you can produce versus the number of cards they draw. 15 mana accounting for their 7 card initial hand, reduced by 1 mana for every three turns thereafter. If, say, you can pour 10 mana into X by turn 8, you will mill over half of their remaining library. We'll assume you're using other cards to mill. A single activation of the Guildmage will kill them at this point, so you can mitigate the mana spent by 4 = 6 ≈ 21 cards milled and a loss of 21 life, and thus do this by turn 8.
lol but killing them with damage isn't funn. =X
Aren't you still killing them with mill? Otherwise, the X=18 still applies.
"Possibilities abound, too numerous to count."
"Innocent, unbiased observation is a myth." --- P.B. Medawar (1969)
"Ever since man first left his cave and met a stranger with a different language and a new way of looking at things, the human race has had a dream: to kill him, so we don't have to learn his language or his new way of looking at things." --- Zapp Brannigan (Beast With a Billion Backs)
The eastimate comes from the probability of hitting enough lands that you will also hit enough nonlands to mill the whole library. This works by estimating the number of nonlands per land milled. There were several probability experiments doen back during Alara Block when Mind Funeral was printed, which would be "Grind 4" in Rosewater's formulation.
The number there 1) depended on the deck you were playing against, and 2) the average land distribution to nonland you could expect. In that time, this number could vary between 19-25, or even as much as 27 in some of the controllier decks which provided themselves much means to pull land from the library.
Aggro/burn tends to run fewer, and closer to 1/3 of their decks, but control closer to 1/4. So you can hit at least 3-4 nonlands per land hit, as a median. Your mileage may vary.
At an estimate of 3.5 nonland cards hit per land, you would need a minimum of 18 mana poured into X to get Mind Grind to mill a 60 card library. You can reduce this for the time it will take to get to 20 mana ( + (X=18) = 20) by the average of how much mana you can produce versus the number of cards they draw. 15 mana accounting for their 7 card initial hand, reduced by 1 mana for every three turns thereafter. If, say, you can pour 10 mana into X by turn 8, you will mill over half of their remaining library. We'll assume you're using other cards to mill. A single activation of the Guildmage will kill them at this point, so you can mitigate the mana spent by 4 = 6 ≈ 21 cards milled and a loss of 21 life, and thus do this by turn 8.
lol but killing them with damage isn't funn. =X
Aren't you still killing them with mill? Otherwise, the X=18 still applies.
I guess. =3 Dimir Guildmage opened up a big opportunity didn't it?
