Adding Buried Alive to Self-Mill in Timeless

Updated:
Enhance your MTG Timeless self-mill deck with Buried Alive. Discover powerful combos and strategies to elevate your gameplay.

Why is this Deck?

Self-mill strategies are kind of my jam, and when given an opportunity to abuse triggers that put a ton of power onto the board through the graveyard, you'd better believe I'm going to do it. This deck has been popular in Timeless and Historic for some time now since Prized Amalgam joined the client with Shadows Over Innistrad Remastered, but I decided now was the time to test it out because we Arena players got our hands on Buried Alive in Modern Horizons 3.

Total Cards:

The Star of Our Show

Buried Alive is a card that was first printed in Weatherlight back in 1997 and got its now iconic art by Greg Staples in Odyssey circa 2001. The card allows you to set up graveyard shenanigans incredibly reliably because you can pull any three creature cards from your library directly into your graveyard. I remember casting this card in high school in the early 2000's to set up a reanimate on Spirit of the Night or Akroma, Angel of Wrath. It's always been a powerhouse, so I decided to see how it's aged.

Filling our graveyard is a lot easier now than it was in 2003, so a three-mana setup piece for traditional reanimator like this is awfully slow unless it's rifled out on turn one with a Dark Ritual. Stitcher's Supplier or Faithless Looting are just superior options and often reanimator strategies are slower than simply ramping or using other effects like Show and Tell.

I took inspiration from the Arclight Phoenix deck that some folks have shifted from Izzet to Grixis with Dark Ritual and Buried Alive to ensure a massive Pheonix hit. Creatures that reanimate themselves can work wonders alongside Buried Alive and Prized Amalgam and Narcomoeba joined the team. If you Dark Ritual and Buried Alive on turn one, you can fetch two Prized Amalgams and one Narcomoeba; the Narcomoeba will leave the graveyard immediately and trigger the Prized Amalgams, netting you seven power on turn one.

The Traditional Package

If your starting hand contains both Founding the Third Path and Glimpse the Unthinkable, you are capable of teeing up a twenty-four card self mill sequence that starts on turn two. Given that so many of this deck's cards want to be milled or exist within the graveyard, the rest just takes care of itself.

Founding's first mode lets you free cast Glimpse the Unthinkable and milling yourself for ten cards. Hopefully there will be some triggers in there. Then, on the following turn, you get to mill four cards and have your mana open for other supplemental spells like Stitcher's Supplier or Demonic Tutor. Then, on turn four, you can recast Glimpse the Unthinkable from your graveyard using Founding's third mode. Note that this does require you to spend mana, so make sure to sequence accordingly.

As you're blasting through your deck like this, you'll pull creatures out and simply attack with them at the first opportunities. Note that the Prized Amalgams and Bloodghasts are especially durable as they recur at the drop of a hat, so don't be afraid to trade them with your opponent's blockers. Also, you may want to wait until post combat to hit your land drops as getting Bloodghast triggers can be awfully handy especially before they have haste.

Other New Additions

Other Modern Horizons 3 cards that help the deck tick are Flare of Denial and Cephalid Coliseum. Flare of Denial is huge because our Narcomoebas are expendable once they've helped pull our amalgams out of the yard, and our amalgams themselves can recur in a bunch of different ways, so having a counterspell that costs nothing but a sacrifice is excellent. You know that ideal turn one I outlined above? If you have a Flare of Denial in hand, it's available at the end of that nonsense.

Cephalid Coliseum is just a land with the classic keyword Threshold which, frankly, I wish we saw more often. Threshold says that you get something when your graveyard has at least seven cards in it, which this deck is absolutely going to do. In the coliseum's case, it allows you to turn it in for a draw three/discard three. Now, if Narcomoebas or Creeping Chills get caught up in this, it's disappointing because them being discarded has no effect, but this can help you dump cards like Bloodghast or Wonder that have been stuck in your hand but need to get to the graveyard. If you haven't hid your land drop for turn when you activate it, there's a good chance you'll trigger any Bloodghasts you discard.

Favorable Matchups

For our purposes today, I focused on Best-of-1, so I can't speak to the world post-board, but this deck is extremely strong right now as people are trying to tune in their ideal Scam packages. Depending on the composition of your hand, your opponents hitting you with Thoughtseize or Grief can actually be beneficial. Additionally, Prized Amalgam lines up favorably against Orcish Bowmasters and nearly all the evoke elementals seeing considerable play right now (watch out for Endurance, though, that guy'll get you).

Even Show and Tell isn't terrible as it lets us cheat in Founding the Third Path on their turn to start our engine. Granted, sometimes that deck just draws a million cards and wins on the spot, but one bad draw from them post show can line you up for a kill shot. Additionally, if your opponent is manipulating the top of their deck or has a card like Approach of the Second Sun, you may wish to target the opponent with mill like Glimpse the Unthinkable and chapter two of Founding the Third Path. It can potentially throw them off their gameplan in a big way.

And then, of course, there's the nightmare matchup for our opponents with mill. Turn one Archive Traps are this deck's best friend and we can't wait to vomit out a ton of value because our opponent caught us off guard cracking a fetch land. Milling to exile with Tasha's Hideous Laughter or Ashiok, Dream Render are still problematic, but in best-of-1, you'll probably end the game before that can potentially bite you.

In Conclusion

I honestly had more fun with this deck than I was expecting. The sheer stopping power and the consistency Buried Alive gave it was a joy to behold. I considered adding Victimize as a way to add even more power to the experience, but I ultimately didn't find it necessary. To be honest, though, future builds with that in mind are bound to happen so stay tuned for those!

Thanks so much for reading, and happy brewing!

Rate this article
Graham, also known as HamHocks42 on the internet, is a Twitch streamer who adores Magic: the Gathering in all its forms and tries to find the fun, even in the most competitive and sweaty environments.

Check out more content by HamHocks42

Explore "Speed-Running Free Dragons" with Breaching Dragonstorm in MTG Standard. Discover deck tech, combos, and strategy insights for casual play.
Speed-Running Free Dragons
Cascade and discover are keywords that conjure images of crashing Footfalls or Geological Appraiser dominating tournaments on the backs of combos able to power out threats far ahead of any reasonable curve or go infinite. Free-casting effects like this have been staples of various formats over the years, and can often be seen on banned and restricted lists with examples like Tibalt's Trickery sitting in the prestigious company of Channel and Demonic Tutor as one of only three cards too strong to be unrestricted in Timeless. While Tarkir: Dragonstorm isn't giving us a new card with the keyword cascade or discover on it, we're getting an uncommon that behaves similarly in Breaching Dragonstorm. The titular Dragonstorms are uncommon enchantments that give an effect upon entering and then bounce themselves when a dragon enters under your control. Breaching Dragonstorm is the red installment and its text is almost “When Breaching Dragonstorm enters, Discover 8.” Is This Good?
Explore the power of Mono Blue in MTG Standard! Discover strategies, deck techs, and synergy tips for competitive play in "Mono Blue? In This Economy?"
Popular
Mono Blue? In This Economy?
Blue is a powerhouse in Standard, appearing in plenty of meta lists from Dimir midrange to Azorius Control and Esper Pixie. This Town Ain't Big Enough and Stormchaser's Talent create a value engine that disrupts your opponent while creating an aggressive board state that's difficult to deal with, so it's not surprising it finds its way into a variety of decks. The one thing that's not overly popular at the moment is blue by itself, however. I set out to see if the powerful blue cards in Standard could create a viable deck without dipping into any other color, and after a few hours of tweaking and a lot of feedback from my Twitch chat, I'm pleasantly surprised by the results. The Core Engine
Explore the top cards from Tarkir: Dragonstorm for Magic: The Gathering Standard. Discover new strategies and meta shifts in this competitive spoiler analysis.
Viral
Tarkir: Dragonstorm Cards for Standard So Far
Tarkir: Dragonstorm will be launching on Magic: the Gathering Arena on Tuesday, April 8th, so until we get our hands on the products, jank lovers like myself and, possibly, yourself are stuck speculating on which cards will be good enough to cut it in Standard. So far, with only a few days of preview season under our belts, a few have caught my attention as powerful enough to possibly make the cut. A lot of the current meta, think of as Gruul Mice and Esper Pixie, are very tuned decks and I don't expect these to get many new toys that will be faster or more consistent than their current pieces. That said, I believe (or vainly hope) that a few new archetypes will get the support they need to step up and challenge the current meta in a fun way. Let's look at what those are. Midrange
Explore the unique Aetherspark in Magic: The Gathering's Historic Brawl. Discover its synergy with colorless creatures, ramp strategies, and Eldrazi payoffs.
Brawl Break: The Aetherspark
The Aetherspark is one of the goofiest types lines on any Magic: the Gathering card we've ever seen before. A Legendary Artifact Planeswalker – Equipment is certainly a novel string of words , and because the word “planeswalker” is in there, the card is eligible to be a Brawl commander. So, of course, I built it. How to Even Begin?
Explore the Radiant Lotus Combo in Standard Magic: The Gathering. Discover artifact synergies, mana generation, and strategic plays for Best of 1 matches.
Radiant Lotus Combo in Standard
The best cards in Standard are making it difficult to brew these days, but where there's a will, there's a way. The current meta is dominated by "This Town Ain't Big Enough" and "Up the Beanstalk" piles, but other cards like Simulacrum Synthesizer and The Mightstone and Weakstone are powerhouse value engines in their own right if we can find a shell for them that works. We also have an absolute haymaker in Radiant Lotus that I'm finally willing to brew with and, I've got to say, I'm impressed. The Wincon
Discover our first impressions of Tarkir: Dragonstorm with highlights on new cards - Mox Jasper & Stormscale Scion. Explore the impacts on MTG Standard play
Our First Impressions of Tarkir: Dragonstorm
Last week, Wizards of the Coast gave us a first look at the next Standard release, Tarkir: Dragonstorm, and that gives us an opportunity to analyze, overreact, and wildly speculate on what the future holds, which is an opportunity I rarely pass up. This first look was only nine cards from the Standard set itself, but it includes some eye-catching mechanics, so let's get into it. For this article, I plan to analyze how these cards will impact Standard first and foremost. The Headliner
Explore "Speed-Running Free Dragons" with Breaching Dragonstorm in MTG Standard. Discover deck tech, combos, and strategy insights for casual play.
Speed-Running Free Dragons
Cascade and discover are keywords that conjure images of crashing Footfalls or Geological Appraiser dominating tournaments on the backs of combos able to power out threats far ahead of any reasonable curve or go infinite. Free-casting effects like this have been staples of various formats over the years, and can often be seen on banned and restricted lists with examples like Tibalt's Trickery sitting in the prestigious company of Channel and Demonic Tutor as one of only three cards too strong to be unrestricted in Timeless. While Tarkir: Dragonstorm isn't giving us a new card with the keyword cascade or discover on it, we're getting an uncommon that behaves similarly in Breaching Dragonstorm. The titular Dragonstorms are uncommon enchantments that give an effect upon entering and then bounce themselves when a dragon enters under your control. Breaching Dragonstorm is the red installment and its text is almost “When Breaching Dragonstorm enters, Discover 8.” Is This Good?
logo

By joining our community, you can immerse yourself in MTG Arena gameplay. Watch matches, engage with content, comment, share thoughts, and rate videos for an interactive experience.

Follow Us

LATEST VIDEOS