Let's start exploring The Lost Caverns of Ixalan! Mill strategies typically aim to empty the opponent's library to win. However, the larger Standard format may finally have a critical mass of self-mill cards to go the opposite direction! The Ancient One could be the last missing piece of the puzzle.
The deck's primary goal is to put cards from the top of your library into the graveyard to enable powerful synergies. Many cards in the deck purely mill or incidentally help achieve it. The main outlet is , which wields a straightforward yet powerful effect of ditching four cards. It itself benefits from the milling, as the size of the adventurer is equal to the number of creature cards in all graveyards.
is both enabler and payoff, since the flip side becomes a copy of any creature in a graveyard. It can become or, if you're particularly lucky, an opposing milled . also flips over three cards on its minus ability. On top of that, he brings back a creature with mana value 2 or less, which is almost the entire creature base! Moreover, he synergizes with and .
What is the actual prize for milling half the library into the graveyard? Somnophage gets big, and becomes cheap. The Lost Caverns of Ixalan also brought a powerful new addition to the archetype in . This two-mana threat won't be able to attack or block early, but as soon as you hit eight permanents in your graveyard, it's going to dominate the board. I see it working as a of sorts, where you play your game normally and at some point deploy an overstated, undercosted threat that the opponent must answer.
| Sultai Self-Mill, Standard
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