evilaxelord

Interesting idea, here are a few things to consider:

1. Modern mill is not modern mill without archive trap and a few striplands

2. I see you've got a miracle card, as well as a crap ton of cantrips. That's not a good idea

3. You've already got a ton of cards from hollow one, so you may as well include the title card as a big blocker or a secondary win con

Alright, so there's three main problems with this:
1. You dont have enough control over your life total.
Your main goal is to get your life total really low, but then to keep it from going down further. Any time your total goes down, you should know exactly how much it's going down by. This is why dark confidant and spoils of the vault need to be taken out. Spoils of the vault can kill you on turn one if you're unlucky, and once you're down enough, you pretty much can't afford the risk of it. Dark confidant isn't as bad in the regard of being unpredictable, but by playing it, you give yourself a clock, whereas what you want is to slice yourself down on your own terms. You don't want to waste your own control cards on confidant just because you let yourself get too low.
2. You can't get your total down fast enough.
Ideally you should be able to play a shadow on turn 2 or 3, but your life reduction is a bit lacking. In another comment, you said that you thought street wraiths were "a bit much," but if you have enough control over your total, then you should be able to go through a draining spree on your first two turns and then not let it kill you. You should also replace your mountains with blood crypts, because the fetch-shock combo is the most effective way of getting your life down while doing something productive. Two fetch-shocks and a street wraith in the first two turns gets you down to 12, which lets you get out your first shadow or two, and then blow them up and attack with them turn three.
3. You don't have enough threats.
Death's shadow is a very powerful card, clearly, but it's not enough. Although you do have a lot of two-draw cantrips, there's still a very real chance that you could play a game where all of your shadows happen to be shuffled to the bottom half. Once you take out the confidants and the spoils, you can make room for gurmag anglers and faithless lootings. Faithless looting, similarly to thought scour, gets three cards including itself into your graveyard for one mana, so in terms of paying angler's delve cost, it's very similar to a dark ritual, and it also lets you look at more cards. While technically true that it's card disadvantage, looring is definitely worth it in this deck to support another threat, and since you're fetching blood crypts anyway now, you'll be able to pay the cost easily.
In most decks, the more colors you have, the harder it is to function, but because shadow is so comfortable fetch-shocking, using one color is a sort of disadvantage. I think I'd say lean into red a bit more.

thought scour is nice because getting out a threat turn two is really good for this deck, and it allows you to get turn two gurmags more often

looks pretty good. my main questions are why urborg and separately why not thought scour?

I'd consider replacing the cantrips with control cards like oust or pacifism. While cantrips are good for getting to the combo, since they can't scry, you might just be getting repetitive parts of the combo, whereas having cheap control can stabilize the game against an opponent's fast start. Great idea though, I'm very tempted to buy it.

yeah that was the part of it i was least sure about. i might cut it down to two or three, but it is often a win condition, and mulliganing to not have it in hand is often made up for by drawing it early on on really whenever. so im not sure. also, im not sure what cards to replace it with without driving the price up, and id like to keep this deck as budget as possible and still competitive

That’s what that card is called! I knew it was out there I was just having trouble finding it. Thanks!

Dang, looks like a pretty solid deck. I don't have much to add, but I am curious as to why Pia and Kiran Nalaar is in there. Even though I understand its value for producing chump blockers, wouldn't Grim Lavamancer be better in terms of the ability? With all those cheap control spells it seems like there won't be too much need for blockers, and if you're dumping cards into your graveyard anyway, why not recycle them with Lavamancer?

Yeah the idea is to start with this and slowly upgrade it to shadow

Yeah I considered it, but no for two reasons: the first is that at 8 mana/exiled cards, it seems like it's too close to being on curve, whereas gurmag and tasigur are far above it. The second is that I'm making this to turn it into a shadow deck, and tombstalker really wouldn't belong there. Also having more unnecessary creatures is bad for delver of secrets.

yes but both halves of far away are bad value and if I ever have to spend five mana on a card then I really screwed up

I definitely agree with you on the denials, but I’m not as sure about opt. I’ve seen both see play in tournaments, and they both seem pretty useful.

First off, I would have only spen one card. The thought scours let me draw. Second, if I'm gonna get some control that's more than one mana why not make it something better like ultimate price or cast down or even doom blade or go for the throat? If I eventually throw more money into it and get shadows, I'll also get dismembers, but for now I think im gonna go with the ultimate prices.

Well dang. Time to turn it into a WR deck ig

Thought scour is the most important piece! It puts three cards in my graveyard and lets me draw a card for just one mana! If I play that turn one and turn two, then I can get a turn three angler. I understand the need for more removal, but if anything it would replace opt. Despise is ok, but duress is better imo because it gets rid of control that can kill my strategy and it gets rid of tormods and relics and the like. Doom blade is good, but I don't like that it doesn't touch a sixth of all creatures. I might use walk the plank if anything tho

Thanks! The evolving wilds make it feel more like 18 lands but I might still cut them down more, and yeah I was looking at the faerie, but I really think the only excuse for a land to be that slow is for it to throw away a card. I wish polluted delta was cheaper.

ooh good point, somehow I didn't find that when I was looking

yeah I had that in there and I'll probably replace tainted strike with it but I'm trying to make this super budgety. but yeah theres not really much reason not to

Three problems with that card:
1: It doesn't say draw cards. It just says look at cards and put them in your hand.
2: The delve would be useless because mana severance exiles the lands, so they wouldn't be in the graveyard.
3: Even if the delve worked, it would still cost two mana, which would mean it would only work on turn five.

However, I think that Brainstorm *might* work. If you use one of the Tutors once you get down to your three or four card deck to get the brainstorm on top, draw it turn four, and use it with the Maniac T5, it could provide a safer win con.

But if you turn two Severance and then get the Brainstorm first out of the four card deck, then you'd be at a dice roll as to when the Maniac shows up. Beacause if he's on the bottom, then congrats, you just pushed the win to T6. However, if he's next, you just got a T4.

Ok so I kinda just ranted a bunch and I probably repeated myself a bunch but I convinced myself to throw in a Brainstorm. Thanks!

Yeah, that is a pretty fair point. It's a ridiculously jenky combo, and it relies on your opponent having some kind of midrange deck that takes at leats five turns to get out anything significant. It's not very practical, just seemed fun to write up.