Pointed Discussion

Oh, c'mon, this is pretty cool! It's not an insane powerhouse, but it gives you something to do when you run outta spells! Definitely better than the 2.5 stars it has now!

Much better than the Dimir guildhall, which does the same thing except for one less mana and it only mills for one.

Half of the time, i'm probably gonna use it's ability on myself.

I'm not going to judge this card until I've seen more of the block. self-milling may be a valid strategy, I'm just not seeing it yet. So this card gets points for options (opposed to "Target opponent puts three...")

For anyone that wants to see the whole cycle:
Gavony Township
Kessig Wolf Run
Moorland Haunt
Nephalia Drownyard
Stensia Bloodhall

My mill decks lands were always bland, this just adds some awesome at the end of turn for any mill deck. I'm confused why it's not more loved?

@Gabriel422 If you're using this in a mill deck, you're doing something horribly wrong. This is to put stuff into YOUR graveyard (see Stitched Drake or Skaab Ruinator for obvious reasons why you'd want this, and for less obvious reasons, see Haunting Misery.

In a Grixis Burning Vengeance deck, this reads "{1UB}, {T}, Draw three cards. Discard all land cards drawn this way."

I don't see why it would be so horribly bad to use this in dedicated milling deck.

1. It's repeatable mill effect
2. It takes just a land slot in your deck
3. It's not really overcosted for it's effect.

Sure, self-milling is a strategy in Innistrad to fill your graveyard, but it's not the reason to use it as a tool of opponent milling. Not every deck you're going to face is using graveyard mechanics... and you know, while playing a milling deck, every card you can mill is good. If it's repeatable effect, better for you. If that effect don't take slot of some other spell, better for you.

Glad it exists but not necessarily excited. That Szadek commander deck I've been planning my want one though.

This card is horrible for a dedicated milling deck - four mana for three cards is a joke. You have to be able to mill A LOT faster than that. At any rate, there's no reason this card should be rated lower than Duskmantle, House of Shadow. Being able to mill three cards a turn is significantly better than being able to mill one card a turn for the decks that want tat type of effect, and is more than worth an extra colourless mana.

For a coastal disaster, I was expecting a lot more Glistening Oil
Oh no I didn't! :D

This is showing its usefulness as a solid alternate win condition for UB decks in constructed. Against slow decks, milling is real, and it is competitive.

In UB control Decks, this is a very reliable win condition, especially in the mirror, and if you have a snapcaster in hand, it is always better to mill yourself, it is almost like drawing cards.

People who are saying this is too small for a mill effect are missing the point. This isn't meant to be something you cast instead of a mill effect, or merely include in a mill deck - much like Think Twice, which is rated so low because people don't understand that it's not meant to be : Draw two cards.

Especially playing control, this card allows you, when you save your mana for any kind of counter or kill spell and your opponent doesn't oblige, to put that excess mana into what could be a potential win condition, or hose down cards like Ponder in a mirror. If you're playing dedicated mill ( is very potent, as you get cards such as Leyline of the Void or Haunting Echoes which are devastating), this advances your win condition using nothing but mana you weren't using anyway.

In short, it does need the right deck but in them it is a solid card.

I like it. I mean it obviously can't just be a Glimpse the Unthinkable tacked onto a land, but this fits the bill. Better than that Dimir land that only milled one, anyway.

This card is amazing when combined with Sheoldred, Whispering one, if you mill your self. Grimgrin is another reason to mill your self...
Or Curse of Oblivion on your opponent, combined with Card removal like Surgical Extraction and Memoricide. OFC you have Effects that if you mill the wrong card just shuffle your Graveyard into your library, and start over again.

@Henrietta: Forgive the following rant, but I kind of DO think Duskmantle, House of Shadow is strictly better to own. :P You might not be a Vorthos, but back in the good old days of Ravnica, MOST (I will not hyperbo-lie and say ALL), Mill decks were run by, casual or pro, dedicated Conspirators of House Dimir (Vorthoses. Because it was just so FUN =D)

Read the text on Glimpse the Unthinkable and Duskmantle, House of Shadow again. No, not the boring old rules text that just says 'win evilly.' I mean the flavor-drenched goodness of ITALICS. Before you say 'oh but Nephalia Drownyard plays stronger!' if you're looking for cards that play stronger, every single effect in the game has a nuts-bonkers O.P. version from waaaay back in the Old Times of Alpha-Urza's Saga block. Given that, power is not the only consideration for a card's goodness as just a quality all-around design.

Sure, Innistrad might be billing itself as the most flavor-driven, story-focused Block Magic has ever had.....except for Ravnica.

Kind of like how, if you consider that Alara Block had the most gold cards of any block ever, it must have the best mana-fixing too, right?.....except for Ravnica.

Zendikar had the best Basic Lands, right? Come on they were full art and modern card frames! OK, this one is more disputable, but personally I will make the claim that Ravnica Foil Basic Lands are at least comparable to Zendikar Full-Art lands, and none of the other Blocks even come close. Certainly Ravnica raised the bar for Basic Land art and should take half the credit for all subsequent Basic Lands looking epic compared to old ones.

New Phyrexia Block tried and failed the Ravnica test of Super Awesomeness, but it was a good effort, and it beat the Weatherlight Saga anyway. Innistrad is threatening to be dangerously close, but so far Ravnica still has the edge. When, not if, they return to Ravnica, the FIRST set in the block will be better than most Blocks' SECOND set, and we all know the 2nd Set is usually where they drop the most eye-catching cards in. (See Jace 2.0, Nicol Bolas Planeswalker, Sword of Feast and Famine, Progenitus, Stoneforge Mystic, Hero of Bladehold, Vengevine, Sorin 2.0 etc etc etc)

Yes, that was a blatant exhultation that is summarized best as 'I just really like Ravnica and will first pick Rakdos, the Defiler over Baneslayer Angel all day long'....but I do think there is a certain amount of justification for my fanaticism. :p

EDH is going to love this. Why? Sensei's Divining Top.

I ran a mono-blue milling deck during a booster draft and I had to splash black to play this. I only had one game where this could activate, but when it did it was more powerful than I imagined. If your playing mill, you should be playing this.

A very underestimated card. The "it's for this!" or "it's for that!" crowd don't seem to understand the concept of a card being versatile. Skaab Ruinator and friends want you to use this card to stock your graveyard. Undead Alchemist wants to you mill your opponent to create more tokens.

I was going to say something about this card, but then I saw a comment where someone didn't close their parenthesis. And I raged.
Here you go.
)

If the UB guild still has a milling theme in RTR, this will compliment it nicely.

Why is this rated so low? This is uncounterable instant speed mill, and considering the direction R&D is going with land destruction, pretty much safe from your opponent.


There are actually decks in which this card is THE win condition.

This card is amazing. It's begging to be used as a control card. It is the sole win condition of my Esper control. You can underestimate it all you want, Gatherer, but then you'll stare down 3 cards a turn with your field locked down or gone. You will despise this card at the end of the day. 5/5.

Any standard control deck running B/U should have at least one of these, because it becomes your win condition in the mirror. Every time I've seen a mirror where just one person had this card, they ended up winning. (Except one where a guy pulled out Psychic Spiral with 4 cards left in his library. That was pretty sweet.)

This card was my wincon, along with Jace, Memory Adept for my first Esper Control deck. I proxied up all the shocks and this beauty, and played with my hardcore bros. this is the greatest utility card to run in a UB mill deck. I played a Draw-go strategy with that deck whenever I didn't have to Supreme Verdict the board, and this milled out all of my opponents with NO EXTEA MILL added 7 out of 10 times. The other two times were from Jace and that 1 time is when I milled myself to death with all the damn draw I had going with Azorius charm, Forbidden Alchemy, and Think twice. After so much trial and error, I'm going to run BUG Control instead of the white for Deathrite Shaman, Pongify, and Abrupt Decay, and simply replacing Supreme Verdict with Damnation (we run modern).

5/5 every UB control deck in modern should run approximately 3-4.

Instead of my usual attempts at wit, I'd like to provide some analysis for this intriguing megacycle of lands from Innistrad, namely how said lands fit into the overall design of the block.

Analysis: are the colors of Zombies in Innistrad. Being undead abominations designed to rise from the grave as it were, this meant a lot of graveyard shenanigans which as it turns out Nephalia Drownyard helps enable. Many of the blue Skaab Zombies have milling effects while others require exiling creature cards from your graveyard as an additional cost to cast them. Nephalia Drownyard particularly assists with the latter category as a cheap means of putting cards in your graveyard.

Further more, the Drownyard also plays well with Flashback, a major mechanic of the block. Cards milled with the Drownyard can still be cast using Flashback, occasionally with boosted effects. Forbidden Alchemy and Reap the Seagraf are particularly fitting choices given their off-color Flashback costs. Dream Twist and Increasing Confusion aid the milling subtheme while Moan of the Unhallowed and Army of the Damned provide additional Zombie tokens.

There was a time when the best deck in Standard (Esper control) played four copies of this. Before AEtherling came out in Dragon's Maze, this was the only win-con that survives all kinds of removal including the uncounterable Supreme Verdict. If you played Esper control with two copies of, say Drogskol Reaver as your only win con, you would always lose the mirror match. The Esper decks back then usually played no win-con except the Drownyard.

It's a land - which is all you want to be running in a control deck anyway. I splashed black in a casual uw control deck just for this card (and Dismember but that hardly counts).