This is the best mill list possible for a modern format with a meta that has the $1000+ decks. It's not Grixis or Esper or BUG because devoting 4 spell slots for removal is simply too slow, and messes up the mana base too much.
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Mill as it is now will never be good enough to consistently win super competitive tournaments. That being said, it is fun to play and I will keep updating this list as the metagame changes in order to stay as competitive as possible. This list was built around the 7-archetype meta: Twin, Jund, Affinity, America Midrange, Pod, Control, and Tron. It has favorable matchups against Pod and Tron and Junk. Control, Jund, Twin, and Affinity matchups are 50/50.
-------------END DISCLAIMER-------------
The goal of this deck: Mill mill mill. Thanks to the banning of both Twin and Eye of Ugin, this deck has lost two of its unfavorable MUs (Emrakul, the Aeons Torn from Tron used to mean bad news, but now its uncastable in that deck so we can focus more on fast mill rather than disruption), meaning we can cut once-necessary fluff and add more gas.
Dispel has taken the place of Spell Pierce, now since we can focus more on protecting our spells rather than dying to a turn 4 Twin.
Everything else is standard procedure:
Try to get a land drop every turn when Hedron Crab is out.
Use Surgical Extraction on key pieces of an opponent's deck (i.e. an Urza land when you mill it against Tron, or any graveyard reshuffle like the Eldrazi.)
Crypt Incursion just in case you need that extra life against aggro decks.
Manic Scribe is being tested as a reach card. I don't expect to be relying on Delirium that much, so an ETB mill three is still good enough.
Trapmaker's Snare gives you essentially 2 more Archive Traps so when your opponent fetches or searches and you don't have a trap in hand but you have Snare, cast Snare and get a trap.
Thought Scour is a mill 2 draw 1. Many people don't understand the importance of the "draw 1." The mill 2 is an added bonus as it is part of the deck strategy, which makes this the best cantrip this deck can run (aside from Visions, which is essentially Recall.)
Notable exclude(s):
- Mesmeric Orb is a trap. The card is only good if its in our opener, and since we're effectively a Burn deck we don't want cards that are lousy topdecks if the game gets to that stage. It's worth losing the potential of milling 8+ over the course of a game for the one-time investment of
Breaking
to mill a guaranteed 8.
This decklist is my own making, any resemblance to another build is coincidence (and probably plagiarism ;) ).
