Don't be misled by the title; this deck is all about countering spells and milling! The goal of this deck is to use countering spells and removal to stay alive in the early game, milling the opponent out by at least 30 cards in the midgame, and then killing the opponent in the end game with either an unblockable Consuming Aberration or Rite of Consumption. This deck can be played in Standard if Counterspell is switched out for similar Standard cards, such as Negate and Essence Scatter. By the way, this deck is still in the testing phase.
Inspired by borto1472's Rock 'n' Mill deck
Early Turns: On the first turn, if I'm lucky, I should have at least 1 Ruin Crab or Thought Scour. Having a Ruin Crab will allow me to begin my milling on Turn 2, and Thought Scour begins my milling right away and cycles through my cards. If I'm not so lucky, I'll have an Unsummon, which could cause my opponent to not be able to play a creature card on Turn 1. If I'm not lucky at all, I'll have some counter cards, which can be useful on later turns.
If I'm really lucky, I can play Lotus Field on my first turn to have a HUGE mana advantage on Turn 2. Lotus Field is also very powerful on Turn 2, due to me being able to tap my first land and then play Lotus Field, allowing me to use the original land before Lotus Field destroys it. However, Lotus Field is not that good on Turn 3 and beyond, due to it destroying 2 lands AND entering the battlefield tapped. If you find that Lotus Field being tapped upon being played is too janky for you, you can switch it out for another land of your choice.
On turn 2, I can play a Fog Bank to prevent a creature's combat damage, or I can simply save my mana to play a counter card. Hopefully at this point, I have milled out at least 4 cards, allowing me to use Drown in the Loch effectively.
Midgame: By turn 3, I should have enough mana to start playing mill cards such as Mind Funeral and Fractured Sanity. If I have to choose between said cards, then I'll go with Fractured Sanity because it's more likely to mill out more cards than Mind Funeral. If my opponent's graveyard has more cards in it than my opponent has life, then I can go ahead and stop playing mill cards and save my mana for counter cards. This is because I need to stay alive for the Endgame...
Endgame: At turn 5, I can now play Consuming Aberration (or even earlier, if I got lucky with Lotus Field). If everything has gone according to plan, I'll either have a Rite of Consumption in my hand, or a Rogue's Passage on the battlefield. At this point, I can simply combine Consuming Aberration with either Rite of Consumption or Rogue's Passage, with some mana leftover for an emergency counter card, to win the game.
Sideboard: Dealing with Dangerous Decks:
Special thanks to borto1472 for coming up with these solutions.
Now, I'm gonna talk about how to deal with dangerous decks. This will include Red Burn, Dangerous Spells, Undead Decks, and Token Spam.
Red Burn and Discard: A lot of people use weenie red decks that try to damage the player as much as possible. A lot of red damage cards are very cheap, meaning that I won't be able to stay alive with just counter cards. Moreover, many red cards are board sweepers, meaning that my fog banks won't protect me that much. Because of this, I have Witchbane Orb in my sideboard.
In: 2x Fabricate, 2x Witchbane Orb
Out: 2x Mind Funeral, 1x Ruin Crab, 1x Swamp
By using Witchbane Orb, I can prevent my opponent from damaging me with Instants, Enchantments, and Sorceries. This will greatly decrease the effectiveness of Red Burn decks, due to a lot of direct damage cards not working anymore. Moreover, Witchbane Orb completely shuts down discard decks due to me having Hexproof. Just make sure to keep a pocket counter, in case your opponent tries to get rid of your Witchbane Orb!
Eldrazi Titans (and other dangerous cards): A lot of people's decks revolve around cheating in powerful cards such as Eldrazi titans. However, there is a simple solution: Use Extirpate to get rid of those cards! By milling out a cheat card such as Urza's Mine or Polymorph, I can play Extirpate to remove all instances of said card from the game. Moreover, Extirpate has split-second, so there's nothing my opponent can do to counter it. So if I play Extirpate on something like Urza's Mine or Mycosynth Lattice, then an opponent with an Eldrazi deck won't be able to play their game! Extirpate isn't limited to shutting down Eldrazi decks. It can also be used on other win conditions, such as exiling Winter Orb or Lantern of Insight.
By the way, if you aren't worried about your opponent using Anti-Mill cards, you can switch up the sideboard to have 3x Surgical Extraction instead of 3x Leyline of the Void.
In: 4x Extirpate
Out: 1x Ruin Crab, 1x Rogue's Passage, 1x Mind Funeral, 1x Go for the Throat
Unfortunately for this deck, some cards have 'If this card is put into the graveyard from anywhere, shuffle your graveyard and this card into your library'. As far as I'm aware, cards like Grafdigger's Cage and Silent Gravestone can't negate this ability. In order to counter these cards, I'll put in Leyline of the Void to the deck. Because Leyline of the Void causes cards to be exiled as soon as they are milled, I have to change my strategy. This is because my Consuming Aberrations won't be powered up anymore, rendering my win condition useless.
First off, even if Leyline of the Void is in my starting hand, I shouldn't play it. In fact, I shouldn't play Leyline of the Void at all until I'm in the midgame. This is because I want to use Extirpate to prevent my opponent from playing Eldrazi Titans, which are the cards I described that cause my opponent to shuffle their graveyard into their library if one is milled. First off, I want to mill my opponent's cheat card, such as Urza's Mine or Polymorph, into the graveyard. I have to be super careful on what I use to do this, because I don't want to accidentally mill an Eldrazi Titan that would force a graveyard reshuffle. Because of this, I'll only have 1 Ruin Crab out, and I'll only play Thought Scour as a mill. As soon as the cheat card is milled out, I'll use Extirpate on it.
Once my opponent's strategy is essentially shut down, I'll then want to play a Leyline of the Void. From there, I can simply use my other mill cards such as Fractured Sanity to mill my opponent out, causing them to lose the game. Keep in mind that this strategy requires a lot more luck than the other ones.
In: 4x Extirpate, 3x Leyline of the Void
Out: 4x Consuming Aberration, 2x Rite of Consumption, 1x Rogue's Passage
Undead Decks: Undead decks are also a big threat to my deck, due to my opponent being able to cast cards out of their graveyard. Thankfully, Grafdigger's Cage shuts this down. Just like Witchbane Orb, make sure that you have a pocket counter spell to protect your cage!
In: 2x Fabricate, 2x Grafdigger's Cage
Out: 2x Mind Funeral, 1x Ruin Crab, 1x Swamp
Token Spam: This strategy is similar to Red Burn, except that it relies more on having lots of creatures and less on damage-inducing spells. The objective of a token deck is to summon dozens of creatures, usually 2/2 tokens, to swarm and kill the opponent. My deck doesn't have many removals, so I'm in big trouble if someone uses token spam on me. Thankfully, there is a solution, which is Silent Arbiter. Silent Arbiter makes it so that only 1 creature may attack per turn. This completely shuts down token decks, as most tokens are usually weak creatures. Just be wary of certain token-spawning cards. Dragonmaster Outcast summons 5/5 dragons with flying, and some tokens even have death touch!
This is all I have for this deck. Please tell me how I can improve!
