RNA brought yet more good cards for the standard mill deck. Persistent Petitioners gave it the option to be a Rat Colony style deck, where you load up with the creature and have draw/interaction to push you towards the finish.
While I do believe that is a viable game plan, I however do not want to take that route initially. Instead I want to try and increase the mill generated by Psychic Corrosion and Drowned Secrets by using Verity Circle. Verity Circle allows us to add two more Sleep mainboard, and gives us access to three Time of Ice and four Depose / Deploy, all of which trigger one or both of the mill enchantments.
RNA also gave us Wall of Lost Thoughts and Thought Collapse. Thought Collapse can counter any spell with the added upside of mill 3, and thus is a straight upgrade to any of the previous counter spells. Easy add.
Aggro decks are easily the worst match up for mill, and previously the deck had a no way to deal with early threats unless we had Syncopate or Essence Scatter in the opening hand AND were on the play.
Because this deck can be so bad against aggro I am forced to have a strong anti-aggro mainboard, and both the floor and ceiling of Wall of Lost Thoughts vs. aggro is very high. Early game it is an impressive blocker and forces our opponent to make a 2-1 or even 3-1 trade to remove it. Lava Coil is the easiest and cleanest answer, yet even here it forces the opponent to make a decision and will still mill them regardless. Late game it will trigger one or more Drowned Secrets as well as its own mill trigger, and still gives us a great blocker for almost all of the non-flying aggro threats.
Even with only four copies of the Wall, early tests have found that Sleep and Depose / Deploy may be enough to contain creature heavy decks depending on their level of aggro. Sleep and the 2x Tempest Caller in the sideboard are also necessary for containing Carny Boi.
This deck is fairly well set up against control as it is since we can slide in Drowned Secrets and hopefully a Psychic Corrosion under their counters and then hold up Thought Collapse for their planeswalkers/ finishers. If we aren't quick enough game one then we have a lot of sideboard tec we can bring in to ensure our enchantments hit the board and stick.
Sideboard:
For hard aggro there are 2x Tempest Caller and 2x Selective Snare (this is for the meta at my LGS, for general meta I would replace with 2x Essence Scatter),
2x Tempest Djinn for aggro as well as midrange,
2x Deep Freeze for Doom Whisperer, Niv-Mizzet, Parun or other scary threats,
A bunch of counters in 2x Negate and 2x Disdainful Stroke,
2x Amulet of Safekeeping (again this is for the meta at my LGS, for the general meta I would replace with 2x Blink of an Eye), and
1x Nezahal, Primal Tide.
