Everyone knows that it's hard to take mill seriously in a constructed setting. Today I'm going to make all your friends hate me and take a crack at it.
Permission
Mill decks are typically too slow, dying to quicker decks in a race to deck the other guy. This deck does not race. It forces your opponent to ask permission before doing anything-- and the answer is usually no.
With a suit of nine counterspells, you should be pretty well stocked.Mana Leak is a classic staple; Remand buys you time while digging you into more cards, acting as a mini-timewalk n the early turns; Spell Snare is incredibly efficient in modern; and the one-of Deprive makes a great late-game play.
The removal suite is the main reason for splashing red. Lightning Bolt and Terminate are both efficiently costed and good at their job.
Versatility
What's a control deck without the ability to adapt to any situation? Not a very good control deck, that's what. That's why ten cads are dedicated to giving you more options.
Serum Visions is another modern staple; being able to sort throught your first few draws can be indispensable, and it replacs itself too, all for the cost of one mana. Snapcaster Mage is valuetown, probably the best blue creature ever printed besides
Storm Crow
and maybe the new Jace. He allows you to react at instant-speed, slinging previously-expended counterspells or removal, or else regurgitating a mill spell to edge you closer to victory.
Kolaghan's Command quickly became a staple in Jund and Grixis decks after its printing, and with good reason. It gives you a game 1 edge against affinity and nets value almost every time you cast it, whether you're forcing a control opponent to discard a counterspell, killing an aggro player's creature, or returning a Snapcaster to hand for another go. The only downside is the relatively high cost for a modern instant. (Speaking of instants, it's snapcastable for added value.)
Winning the Game
How do you actually win, you ask? You take your opponent's precious library, turn it upside-down, and call it a graveyard. (By the way, for mill purposes, a deck is only 53 cards, given that your opponent takes a 7 card hand. They also draw a card every turn, and many decks utilize cantrips like Serum Visions/Gitaxian Probe, so it's realistically even less than that.)
Glimpse the Unthinkable is the mill card, putting a stunning ten cards in the yard for two mana. That's basically a fifth of their deck-- the equivalent of 4 life, for Avacyn's sake-- for two mana. If Glimpse the Unthinkable got a functional reprint, that alone would make mill a serious threat to the metagame. Yes, I am a huge fan of this card.
Unfortunately, you can only run four Glimpse and four Snapcasters. That's where Archive Trap comes in. Pretty much every deck in modern uses fetchlands, so it's not hard to catch them shuffling. Ten cards for no mana-- again, no laughing matter. And if they aren't shuffling, we bring in Ghost Quarters to smash up their lands.That's also where Surgical Extraction comes in, whether we need to enable the Trap or fizzle a snapcaster trigger by exiling its target. It also gives us a no-mana peek at their hand and library, and can potentially screw their entire mana base by hitting a crucial fetchland.
However, because this is a mill deck, we have a wonderful opportunity to ruin combo decks by burying one of their pieces, and then extracting it. Against noncombo decks, we still have the chance to rip out a core element of their strategy, be it a counterspell, a wincon, or even a nonbasic land. And because it only costs Phyrexian mana, we can do so for free, leaving open plenty of counterspell mana if they try anything.
Sideboard
The extra Bolt and Terminate are for matchups against fast decks, along with Pyroclasm and Anger of the Gods.
Against big creatures that don't die to Bolt, all three Bolts come up for the Terminate and Dismembers.
Against control decks, pull your Glimpses and Traps in favor of Spell Pierce, Tasigur, the Golden Fang, Batterskull, Relic of Progenitus, Tormod's Crypt, and Lightning Bolt. Mill is a bit risky around opposing Snapcaster Mages, so just shift into a grindy beatdown deck. The Relics can snipe your opponent's yard away one card at a time if deployed early, or counter a Snappy trigger in a pinch later on. Tasigur and Batterskull are both resilient to Bolt and Abrupt Decay, and the Living Weapon has a great disappearing act (or you could equip it to your own Snapcaster or Tasigur). Bolts, snapcasting bolts, and swinging with Snapcasters all add to the new strategy that your opponent may not see coming.
Thank You For Reading
I hope you enjoyed this deck! As I said earlier, mill doesn't have a real presence in competitive modern, so this deck is largely experimental. Now, as always, feedback is appreciated!
