Description is NOT current
What's up everyone! So as always remeber to upvote/leave a comment offering some ideas for this deck. Community input is healthy for any deck. Let's get into it:
First off we have the normal package of Hedron Crab; the landfall ability will mill for a lot over the course of the game, and your opponents will typically hold back removal on this little guy.
Visions of Beyond is our card draw- typically an Ancestral Recall by the time we get the milling underway.
War of the Spark brought us Narset, which I think is better than the old mill lists which typically run Search for Azcanta. For one extra mana you get to activate Search's ability, and shut your opponent off from drawing additional cards.
I've done some pretty intensive playtesting and found that some of the go wide aggressive decks like Humans can at times feel like a difficult match up, HOWEVER thanks to Modern Horizons we get the include of Force of Despair. Feel free to tap out and bluff no response to your opponent so they dump their hand and swing, then just force them and sweep their new creatures that entered. Force along side 3 fatal push, and 3 ensnaring bridges really helped this match up. Force is also good in Control match ups against all the Timely Reinforcement tokens they resolve. Force also helps turning on Ensnaring Bridge by dumping your hand. I replaced Collective Brutality with this card.
We have 3 Mesmeric Orbs, it's a way to punish our opponents for playing/attacking with anything, also gets a lot of milling through in our control match ups if we resolve it early and they don't have a lot of removal for it once resolved.
We have a single copy of Crypt Incursion in the main and another in the side for life gain against the creature heavy decks. Sometimes hits for 30-45 life (Awesome).
We have the normal package of 4 Glimpse the Unthinkable-best one shot mill spell, and we've also included 2 copies of Breaking/Entering. Sometimes decks will try and either Surgical our Glimpses, or Meddling Mage them. Breaking helps get around that. Also if you put a Breaking under a Shelldock Isle, you can cast both parts without paying the mana cost.
We have 3 copies of surgical in the main, 1 in the side for decks you just need to tear apart or engines you need to dismantle...looking at you Tron...
We have our 4 Archive Traps of course to punish our opponents for searching. 4 Field of Ruin helps a lot in matches against decks that don't run many fetch lands.
The land package is pretty typical, we run 5 basics which helps play around Blood Moon type effects, and so we have targets for our Field of Ruins. Often times Field of Ruin becomes a Strip Mine against our opponents if we've milled over their couple basics. Plus forcing the shuffle can help disrupt top deck manipulation and turn on our Traps.
Looking at the side board:
This is an everchanging list due to meta requirements (as every SB should be).
I'm only going to cover the cards I haven't already mentioned:
1 copy of Damnation-obviously great for creature heavy decks- recently cut down from 2 to 1 because of all the main deck removal
1 Hurkyl's Recall for Affinity and those pesky Karn/Lattice decks. Fun fact- float your mana with Lattice on the stack, let it resolve, then before mana would empty cast recall and send their ENTIRE BOARD to their hand...lol
Echoing Truth and Set Adrift are for Planeswalkers/Leylines/any cards that your opponents have invested resources into.
The Elderspell is in to deal with Control and Tron decks or any deck running a significant number of troublesome walkers. Can also help pump your Narsets or Ashioks.
Ashiok, Dream Render- great against the graveyard decks, also keeps your opponents from fetching, however does not protect your opponent from the forced search of Field of Ruin, and still lets you get the payoff from your Archive Traps.
Torpor Orb because Hoo-mans.
A spicy recent include- Haunting Echoes. I recently saw a list that 5-0'ed a competitive modern league (sorry I don't remember the name of the owner) and he ran a single copy of this card. I'm going to test it, I feel against decks that don't run counter magic, this card by turn 5 when you get 5 mana can be absolutely devastating, if not game ending. Pretty hyped to try it.
Again everyone, upvote/comment, let me know what you think. I'll continue to update as the meta does it's thing. Add this deck to a folder to follow. I may be running this list at an upcoming team event. Take care!
Old description from 2017:
Wanted to play something different, so I figured why not give mill a try. There's nothing more psychologically defeating than watching your library get pitched to the grave and praying that each turn won't be your last! This spicy brew has done well for me, and I've even ran it at GP Washington DC. Love it so far, and will continue to pilot this brew. Any suggestions please add to the comments, and remember to upvote!
