wickeddarkman

STREETNINJA:
I've tested it a lot recently, and with the right cardmix it performs better than mind funeral.
I've never seen it go below 6 and I've seen it mill as high as 32 (lethal) but ordinarily it hits 14+

DEDWARDS:
Actually a pretty usefull mill-land, though mostly at the lategame. Since I've had a maximum of two sheldock isle in past decks I think this migh go as high as 3 in my own deck.

Have you heard about "fraying sanity" from the Next edition ?

My major "Thorn in the eye" is thought scour.

but!

If your gamestore knows you will be playing mill a lot, I would drop the archive traps.
Fraying sanity will mill them everytime they play a spell or fetches.
If you also play with archive traps you can be damned sure that everyone in the area learns never to fetch against you, and the pros will have this behaviour inbreed into their playstyle.

Alternatively you can prey on the fear caused by archive trap. Play with a single one, and when you take out your deck make sure it's always at the bottom, and take it out in a way that flashes it to the opponent.
That way they will cripple themselves unnecessary by not fetching for fear of the archive, and your deck won't be affected much by having that single.

Your mana base is simply too low for archive traps if you meet the pro's. I'd say play at least 22 lands if you really want them.

Even if it's in the sideboard, i'd advice you to play only one noxious revival, since most cards will turn it into a dead card if you want to win as many turn 4 games as posible.

Fraying sanity doubles any mill played as well as the mill-effects used at the turn it is played (hedron/minister)
My measurements tell me it's a card you'll want to play 4 of (My own guess was 2, but measurement's are better)

Not a bad idea :D
Ps
you are the copyiest and the suggestioniest :D

Error denied!
I am the namiest and the spelliest!!!
(and the googliest)
http://www.magicspoiler.com/mtg-spoiler/fraying-sanity/

Otherwise it would have been very powerfull.
But!
I've been guided to "fraying sanity" by DEDWARDS, which is potentially more powerfull than bitter ordeal would have been if worded differently. I recommend using only two fraying sanity in the above deck alongside with 3-4 mind funeral.

I've also discovered a flaw in my calculations of "the minister" so 4 might be better than 3.

HALT!
A permanent is only a permanent if it is in play.
While in the deck or in the graveyard it is considered a blank card.

702.68. Gravestorm

702.68a Gravestorm is a triggered ability that functions on the stack. “Gravestorm” means “When you cast this spell, put a copy of it onto the stack for each permanent that was put into a graveyard from the battlefield this turn. If the spell has any targets, you may choose new targets for any of the copies.”

702.68b If a spell has multiple instances of gravestorm, each triggers separately.

Here's the results:
only three ministers, only two dream twists (they steal each others mana when you only have 4 turns to kill) a single noxious revival (having two in the hand is lethal to yourself) and I've ditched the bells.

3 chancellors and a single archive trap still works very well.

It looks very much like a hybrid between both!

I might be mistaken, but didn't you play ponza at a time and later tried to build a "dubious challenge" deck?

Someones built a hybrid (I think we discussed a hybrid build as a possibility) so I wondered if you were having a hand in it?

It's called "Challenge Breach", by John Middlebrook and went 15th, SCG Charlotte.

I've done the initial work on my own deck:
http://www.mtgvault.com/wickeddarkman/decks/clockwork-mill-generation-1/

I got 24 1-costs, 13 2-costs, 4 3-costs 19 lands and 4 blank cards.
I will experiment with the last 4 cards as they can become either archive trap, chancellor of the spires or startled awake.

I will also doubletest ghoulcaller's bell and dream twist as the bell can mill a twist and thus get a bonus out of it.

I will also test noxious revival.

Once a card has been marked as a specific card 5 times more than other cards on the strip the card becomes permanent. Once all of the deck is permanent I start testing against testdecks with new strips, but these strips have the permanent name on them. A number of games will be played against the testdecks (I use between 20-30) and each time a card was useless against the testdeck it gets a minus, otherwise it gets a +. After running against all the testdecks I count the totals on each card. Every card with more than +2 is kept, and any cards with less points revert to blank strips again and I brainstorm what could be put on these new blank strips.

Once you got the practice of using these strips the deck builds itself, and you just feed it with card suggestions and the process accepts it or casts your ideas away. After a while you will start wondering why you ever started to build your own decks, since paperstrips can build them so much better :D

Yes, hedrons and scapeshift had a small era during the heydays of titanshift (before 1 cardban dimminished it a bit)
This era was very shortlived though. Todays meta will be launching more hatecards at this concept a bit more than the meta did back then.

When starting from scratch I always start with 60 blank strips, play a perfect game drawing what I want, then reshuffling and drawing a perfect hand again, noting the cards I choose down. later some cards reapear and I add to the concept until at some part the perfection starts to be only part of it, and during that phase I usually add secondary picks. Later again I will get hands where I disagree with some of the strips after some time, and that's when I split up the strip and let each part get points whenever it was the best pick at the time. After lots of games (usually a weeks time) the deck takes enough shape and has a certaincy over it that makes me start testing it against real decks while adjusting the strips constantly. Once I get past that point and know I've got something it gets advanced :D

I use a lot of logic and a lot of paperstrips which can work as a statistical computer:
http://www.mtgvault.com/wickeddarkman/decks/the-paperstrip-method/
http://www.mtgvault.com/wickeddarkman/decks/simple-use-of-paperstrips/
http://www.mtgvault.com/wickeddarkman/decks/the-paperstrip-method-v2/

Since I'm in the middle of it all with my own version, I can only report how the cards behave in my own deck, which will perhaps be different from your deck.

So far cards fight for a spot on paperstrips in my deck, which gives me a lot of data, some of it a bit distorted.
Since I also let the process decide how many lands I have in the deck, hedron crab's measurement is a bit off. Whenever I get a lot of land hedron explodes, whenever I get to few lands I have some lands in competition with other things, which I might mark towards becomming a land. This means that whenever I get hedron crabs on the hand I think really hard on how much I can mill totally with some cards either being slowmill or a land, so at the beginning of the project hedron crabs will get more points than they should naturally do in a deck with a set amount of lands. Once I have a set amount of lands I can measure the hedron crabs for real.

The best slowmill is without doubt shriekhorn because it mills either 6, 4 or 2. Compared with this, the ministers are very unflexible. I have two ministers measured with mills averaging about 5.4 cards each, and two other's averaging at only 4.5 In the past I have been knocking my head to understand why some cards rate higher while others rate lower, but the obvious answer is that since you can only cast 3 slowmills on an average, and if you draw 2 hedron crabs and two ministers, one of these cards will perform worse than the others. By using paperstrips ccards can be individualised and REALLY measured in performance, so since there is a lot of slowmill in the deck, some cards will automatically be marked as obsolete within the deck.

All of this can be used with logic.

I have been measuring dreamtwist and ghoulcallers bell on the same paperstrips to see which card is the fastest.
While dreamtwist is the best card when drawn at turn 3-4, the bell is better or at least equal at turn 1-2.
Add to this the fact that dreamtwist rarely gets any open mana to be cast a second time, and that if you draw several dreamtwists only one can get the activation mana, and suddenly ghoulcaller's bell becomes the better of these two cards. Also the bell will perform even more if you manage to live past turn 4, increasing it's mill each turn.

I can't tell you how it will all end, so far I measure against goldfishes, and much later I will run it against a lot of testdecks which will probably root out the worst cards. (Playing against live decks was what trimmed my 4 mesmeric orbs down to 1. Most of the time it dies to abrupt decay, but if you play only one, you have a low chance of drawing it turn 1, so it is likely to turn up lategame, and if the opponent is tapped out it may mill more than 7 cards which makes it better than mind sculpt.)

One thing you will experience with this kind of deck is the difference between the "slow 6-millers" And the fast 1-time mill. Since 1-cost 1-time mill doesn't mill higher than 5 you will be wanting to play "slow 6-millers" during the opening of the game.

During turn 1-2 you will gain most from the "slow 6-millers", but these cards will perform worse than 1-time mill during turn 3-4.
During turn 1-2 you will be able to cast 3 slow-millers.
During turn 3 you want to cast either a 2-cost and a 1-cost 1-time mill or just a mind funeral.
During turn 4 you want to cast mind funeral and a 1-cost 1-time mill or two 2-cost mills.

Let's try to break that down:
3 slow-mills.
1 mf or 2cc+1cc.
1mf & 1cc or 2 X 2cc.

During 4 turns you draw exactly 10 cards, which means that since you can possibly play 5 1-cost cards during the game, you will not be able to design a deck with MORE than half of the deck being 1-cost, without actually destroying the decks speed. (you haven't got this many, I checked :D ) Since we may optimally need three slows and two others, that means that you can actually calculate how many ordinary 1cc you will need. ( around 18 slow mills and around 12 ordinary 1-cost mills). (30 cards equal 3+2 3+2 3+2 3+2 3+2 3+2)

Since decks often misbehave this is not exact numbers, but from this, I can tell you that you have about the right number of each type of card, though thoughtscour does mill a bit low.

Since we need 2cc's often (when not drawing mind funeral) we need around 15 2-cost cards which you haven't got.

First of all you have to kill at your own turn 4, which means that if they start, they also have 4 turns to kill you :D
Killing with mill at turn three is possible, but demands that an opponent fetches and faces one or more traps, which is very unlikely.

I am speed-testing my own mill at the moment with a focus on 1 cost cards, and results are generated slowly but gives me a solid view into how it all might fit together.

At one time in all my milling I took a great measure of all the clasic cards in mill, and got some solid numbers out of it.

For example I found out that my deck performed better with only two hedron crabs! Why? Because hedron crabs block each others mill.
Here's an example. you have 3 hedron crabs and 2 lands in your opening hand. You play 1 land and 1 crab. turn 2 you play a secon hedron crab, then a land, which lets two of your hedrons mill for three. However the third hedron can't be played and get to mill at the same time, so it will mill thre cards less than it should. Compare this with a hand with 3 shriekhorns, and you will see that the horns simply produce a lot more mill than 3 hedrons, which shows that hedrons block each other's mill. After a lot more than 200 games I had finally learned the perfect number of hedrons which was 2.

Archive trap went through similare testing, and I assumed that at a tournament the opponent will always play around their fetchlands, meaning that archive trap allways demands 5 mana. A lot of testing later I got the results that if I can stall the opponent for one more turn I would frequently enough get 5 lands so it would pay to play archive trap. The result turned out to be that my deck could only support playing 1 archive trap. (whenever I drew two, the second was just a dead card)

using the same logic, I also got down to 1 mesmeric orb, and 1 shelldock isle.

18 lands is too little.

visions of beyond will never allow you to kill at turn 3.

I can recommend that you try playing with exactly three chancellor of the spires, as it has a good chance of being more usefull than archive trap.

THE VANISHED:
Heh, you love my advice now, but I am quite the troll about mill, and you might end up hating my comment's in the future, when I tell you never to play this or that.
I really love creatureless mill myself, and use evolution and lots of paperstrip to design decks for me, and I'm about to go all in on a new speed-mill deck. I follow modern quite closelly and knows that at the current meta there are no annoying emrakul's that reshuffle decks, so NOW is the time to play mill. I have one design that got 4th place at a tournament despite playing no echoing truth, and still defeated someone who had leyline of sanctity in their mainboard. It was a reckless decission, but there is less than a 40% chance of them winning due to having 4 leylines.
So when I give out advice, I give it with experience as well, so if you go creatureless I'm your man :D
Try out this design
http://www.mtgvault.com/wickeddarkman/decks/small-4thplace-modern-mill/
(Just replace 4 hedron crab with 4 shriekhorn)

DEDWARDS:
I have mindfuneral measured at an average of 14 cards against a 22 land deck, against less land it becomes better and against more land it gets worse. Since most decks remain below 22 it's usually better.

You have to remember 1 thing about mind funeral, and it's that it takes out 4 lands no matter what, so statistically the opponent is unlikely to draw a land as the next card, which is very valuable knowledge when judging how to play the rest of your deck. People playing ghostquarters and surgical extraction can also improve the performance of mind funeral. This is why I usually play noxious revival. Archive trap can just about compete with funeral, and having both cards usually wins the game if they fetch.

Dream twist: It mills 6 if it is given time, 3 in an emergency. Is great with mesmeric orb.
Hedron Crab: It can mill a lot if left alone, however when targeted it only mills either 0 or 3 unless set up carefully
Memory Sluice: It may only mill 4, but it allows you to play it if one colorhalf of your lands have been slaughtered
Minister of Inquiries: It's a 1/2 that blocks. It mills 6. If it dies before, a later minister can mill even more.
Shriekhorn: It mills 6 over time, some may abrupt decay this instead of mesmeric orb. Superior due to colorless.
Surgical Extraction: Potentially mills 3 cards or less. Slows down the opponent.
Tome Scour: Can Mill 5 once drawn.

Opting for speed: Sometimes you've done the initial work, and you need to win with the card that you just drew:
1 turn before you die:
tome scour mills 5 in 1 turn.
memory sluice mills 4 in 1 turn.
dream twist mills 3 in 1 turn.
surgically extraction mills "3" in 1 turn.
shriekhorn mills 2 in 1 turn.

2 turns before you die:
hedron crab mills 6 in 2 turns.
dream twist mills 6 in 2 turns.
shriekhorn mills 4 in 2 turns.
minister of Inquiries mills 3 in 2 turns.

How do you use this knowledge?
You will need to build a deck that gets the opponent down to as few cards in the library as possible, which demands that you play a lot of the cards that mills as much as possible over 3 turns, then you need to draw just enough of the 1 turn before you die cards to actually win that 1 turn earlier than other millers do it. Just how this blend will look depends on the rest of your deck, but the heavy hitters are hedron crab, minister of inquiries and shriekhorn, meaning that they should be 4 of each in a speedmill deck.