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Modern Control-Mill deck for watching your opponents twist in agony, as they see their deck melt.Creatures + Ashioks are to slow down opponent and occasionally provide threat and secondary win con by damage. Main objective is to mill as much as possible, while keeping opponent's creatures at bay.Against non-bolt decks, good starter is to play Jace's Phantasm at turn 1, and Glimpse on turn 2, swinging their faces with 5/5 flyer on second turn. Against bolters, better wait until turn 3 to play Phantasm, so it enters game as 5/5.
Sideboarding:vs Tron: +2 x Crypt Incursion, +1 x Ravenous Trap, +2 x Hero's Downfall, -3 x Hedron Crab, -2 x Wightvs Leyline of Sanctity: +1 x Oblivion Stone, +1 x Mortify, +2 x Arcane Sanctum, -1 x Swamp, -1 Island, -1 x Archive Trap, -1 x Breaking
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That's a lot of creatures!Sometimes, when I skim a new mill-deck I often wonder "How the hell did he get the space for that?",and your deck had that effect :DSometimes creatures may cause a battle to be quite longterm, and for that, I can give you the following suggestions.I'm currently trying out burn/mill in a grixis-shell and have some experiences with a couple of cards that might interrest you.1: I've replaced visions of beyond with faithless looting, which works great, but since you don't use visions, this mention is just to give you the idea of what I'm doing with my own stuff.2: I've been playing chancellor of the spire for at least a year and not gotten tired of it. It can replace your mind sculpts, and in your long games it will be a valuable flyer. I use faithless looting to put it into the grave when I tire of it, and from there I can play it with "entering" (from breaking//entering).3: consider having a single shelldock isle, which can be used to play "anything" lategame. How far into top 8 have you gotten with your deck?
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Thank you for your comments and suggestions. The deck is just starting to find it's form, slowly. This first version here I have tested against my own aggro decks and it did have a win ratio of somewhere near 50-50. It feels balanced, but still didn't feel strong enough. So I made another variant, where I replaced all creatures with removal / mass removel spells. And I mean a LOT of them. I tested it today, and otherwise it seemed ok but I still kept being overrun by small aggro decks left and right. So, the adjustment work continues ... For now I have two other variants based on this base structure: 1.) The Mill/Kill deck with just mill- and removal-spells. It works quite well against Zoo, Abzan and Jund, but not so much against aggro. And second 2.) Self-mill with Tome Scours and Gurmag Anglers to get them out on turn 2. Oh, plus Maniacs for secondary win con by selfmilling all the way.That Chancellor seems rather good. Still would rather not draw it between 1-5 lands, but against Jund's Lilli forced discard effects, you can always throw it away and keep better cards in hand.I haven't played this deck in a tournament yet, but I aim to test it out, once I can get it into shape. What I keep thinking about Mill-deck is that you have two main lines to go for: 1.) Mill-spells and Creatures, with some extra utility and maybe mass removal, like this one here. Or 2.) Mill-spells and heavy mass removal / counterspells, where you aim to keep opponent's table empty of creatures as you mill.Oh, and thanks for reminding me about Shelldock Isle, because I have some of those, and I meant to add some, but forgot to add it here! I have to think about splashing red into there, for now I had been thinking about having white for extra removal and possibility to get rid of Player Hexproofs.And btw, I checked your Grixis Burn&Mill, which seemed very nice. Spellskites would really fit into my deck as well, unfortunately I don't have any and I still can't overcome their price. :) Mesmeric Orb and Hedron Crabs actually are a lot better than I had thought - the mills they do are not much, but from small drops comes the ocean. And with the Orb you could add in some Delve-creatures for yourself. Also 2 x Surgical Extractions is a must, they are just so good. And today I learned that against heavy creature decks, Crypt Incursion is THE thing - it gives you tons of life, buying you more time to keep milling.What I would like to think about fitting into the Mill structure, would be a.) Sphinx's Tutelage. It's bit expensive and very slow mill, but for long games could really shine. 2.) Bloodchief ascension. It only I could do 3 x 2 points of damage to opponent, any mill is turned into life leecher! Or you could try Duskmantle Guildmage, but keeping him alive would be a trick. Still a nice threat, if you get to 5 lands, then throw in a Glimpse... ;)
Tutelage mill won in standard within a fog-shell as far as I know. Modern is a different game where you always have to think about what's out there allready. All the heavy decks have ways of removing enchantments, (abrupt decay, disenchant, qasali pridemage, and more) So I think it will take some time for people to break tutelage into a killing card.Traditionally I've played "brute force mill" for a long time, using only the heaviest millingcards out there, but having tested endlessly against the hardest testdecks against mill out there (Affinity, burn, elves, infect, merfolk) I came to the conclusion that I needed something against those, if I was ever to pass them) I still favor a deck with as much mill as possible, and as fast a mill as can be achieved with a splash of removal within it.So far I'm testing against infect. I've dissed pyroclasm and replaced it with sudden shock which devastates infect creatures. I also have 2 black sun's zenith to solve problems longterm, and 3-4 darkness to stall with. Spellskite is good with all these things, and faithless looting ensures that I get any of the above in time. Hedron crab is also usefull whenever glistener elf hits play at turn 1. I usually start out with 3 different tricks.1: Chancellor of the spires and surgical extraction is in my hand and I remove glistener, inkmoth or the agent. If I can't take out a critter I take out "become immense" which is nightmarish in nature against mill.2: I play hedron crab and buy enough time to get sudden shock, spellskite or darkness.3: I play faithless looting and usually dig out sudden shock, spellskite or darkness.These matches actually drag out a lot and the prolonged games let me play my mill-stuff and win. In past designs I win perhaps 1 in ten games, now I win 6 out of 4 games against infect.Sudden shock is the key card to this victory and I usually just don't care about being subtle in my tests, killing the critters of my choice without taking out any boost at the same time (I basically play it as a sorcery) It can be used for seriously disrupting moves when an infectplayer has boost but I play it dumb to finetune the rest of the removal. Sudden shock bypasses the infect players spellskites and you have to kill critters before any attack (to prevent hierarc boost) So far I think all of this can be pulled of with a minimum of splash, and I'm working out someperfect numbers for each type of card mentioned. Once I beat infect I can move to the rest of my aggro testdecks and finetune the setup even more.If you like to experiment I can recommend "fume spitter" and "scar" against infect, and I might throw these in my sb as well.One last funny detail:I've added a single ghostquarter to my deck and it seems like I always manage to draw it when I need it against inkmoth or dryad arbor. It's pretty weird, but games do tend to drag out a lot, so chances of drawing it does increase.
I have Infect deck myself, but haven't seen any in my local group - so considering myself lucky. :) Sudden Shock is very efficient against it. For black, I would try out Dismember (with life cost) for turn 1 and Devour Flesh or similar sac effect for turn 2. By the time they have green mana available, Vines of Vastwood is a possibility. But Fume Spitter and Scar would work, too. Have to think about getting some.I modified the deck setup by splashing in white and Mortifies. It is mainly against Leyline of Sanctities, which I have seen to be played in the local group, and I really wouldn't want to get stuck with those. And when not needed against player hexproofs, they offer decent creature removal as well.The local players I normally play against are favoring aggro and zoo, some affinity and a few goblins. Against those, I had to modify a creature-less mill variant, where most of the deck is holded by cheap creature removal and quite a lot of mass removal. I have the deck listed here: http://www.mtgvault.com/diilari/decks/dimir-murder-mill/. I plan to run both this and the new state of the murder-mill against my normal group. Last time I went with removals, and it worked to the point where I just should have had more and better removals. :) Unfortunately I haven't come up with a mill that could win by turn 3 or 4, unless you get lucky and devastate 2-4 Archive traps on an unexpected opponent on his turn 1 fetch-land. ;D So, going with Control-approach for now and trying to mill whenever the situation allows it. Could really love Charm-type spell where you could choose between creature removal and milling x... hopefully they make such a card some day. :)
Sudden shock sees less play than I think it should. It takes out hierarchs, nettle sentinel, delver, and even hedron crab in mirrors :D. I see it as a good card against most aggro, slowing them down just a bit which usually wins the day with mill. I look forward to my tests against affinity, elves and merfolk with it.Each and every time I've tested against my 4 proxyed aggro-decks damnation allways falls short...When I test I use paperstrips in all my sleeves and note whenever something works. Sometimes I also write down alternatives, and my best alternative to damnation is black sun's zenith, and Within the deck I have currently, it seems I only need 1. It might change when testing against other decks, but in general the fastest aggro usually sets the tone for the rest of my deck, so I'm counting on having 1 zenith in main, and see where it takes me.I also dream of some anti-critter options for mill, and sometimes I even dream up cards on my own, like mill-nite, a 0/1 artifact creature, costing 0, that mills three cards when it enters play. It would be a decent miller, can block and would be fun with echoing truth :D
Black Sun Zenith seems to be something I could use in a lot of variations. Drown in Sorrow is good, but there are times where the -1/-1 counters might be even more effective - for example, 3 mana cost Zenith against goblins, affinity, infect... The biggest threat you remove at turn 2 separately, and Zenith/Drown/Damnation takes out all the rest.It's true that in order to do well in tournaments, you have to plan the deck and sideboard towards the fastest aggro you think you can face. There are decks that can maim you down by turn 4, or even 3 if it's Infect, unless you can slow them down. Luckily most of the creature based aggros don't have that much removal, so you are good to go with either creatures, removal or a bit of both. There isn't much room for utility cards or "fun to play"-cards, except for drawing cards or otherwise disrupting opponent's plans. I guess the usual tournament opponents and their decks define the right cards for the job, where there might be several options for each slot for each turn.I was thinking about a mill deck that could use Mimic Vats and creatures that mill opponent's deck when coming into play, like Returned Centaur or Balustrade Spy. Ofc artifacts might not be so safe these days, but against some decks it would be fun to pop out a defender from the Vat each turn, and mill a bit in the process. ;)
Sideboarding is always an artform, especially with decks that has large weaknesses.Most of the time when I design a deck I usually end up with most of the original deck in the sideboard.I believe that there are plenty of "fun" cards out there to be used in most designs, it just take a lot of tweaking to get them to fit inside a competitive deck. But cards I consider fun are not always fun in the eyes of others! For me fume spitter is a fun card to play because noone else would consider playing it, so I would spend some time on trying to make it fit in the deck. I would find some sadistic glee in playing a spitter on turn one and a spellskite turn 2 against infect, imagining how their insides must be twitching trying to get around that sort of setup. Fun cards take time to find though, and a lot more time to insert propperly into a deck.If you want to use mimic vats, first go through alternative cards, and reach for anything that could produce the same or a related effect (collective company?). Then think of the worst possible matchup, proxy it and start finding ways to protect your concept. Just go for it :D (And let me know if it wins!)