"Library.exe has stopped working" | Phenax Primer

Commander / EDH Combo Infinite Combo Mill Multiplayer Primer Tap/Untap UB (Dimir)

K1ngMars

Creature (24)

• 1x Charix, the Raging Isle
• 1x Consuming Aberration
• 1x Dreadhound
• 1x Dreamborn Muse
• 1x Duskmantle Guildmage
• 1x Eater of the Dead
• 1x Fatestitcher
• 1x Guiltfeeder
• 1x Imperious Mindbreaker
• 1x Jace's Archivist
• 1x Kelpie Guide
• 1x King Macar, the Gold-Cursed
• 1x Mortivore
• 1x Nighthowler
• 1x Notion ThiefGC
• 1x Sewer Nemesis
• 1x Silent Arbiter
• 1x Sire of Stagnation
• 1x Syr Konrad, the Grim
• 1x The Haunt of Hightower
• 1x Tree of Perdition
• 1x Undead Alchemist
• 1x Vizier of Tumbling Sands
• 1x Wight of Precinct Six

Enchantment (7)

• 1x Bloodchief Ascension
• 1x Fraying Sanity
• 1x Freed from the Real
• 1x Intruder Alarm
• 1x Memory Erosion
• 1x Pemmin's Aura
• 1x Psychic Corrosion

Land (36)

• 1x Choked Estuary
• 1x Command Tower
• 1x Darkwater Catacombs
• 1x Detection Tower
• 1x Drowned Catacomb
• 1x Evolving Wilds
• 1x Gemstone Caverns
• 9x Island
• 1x Lonely Sandbar
• 1x Mystic Sanctuary
• 1x Reliquary Tower
• 1x River of Tears
• 1x Rogue's Passage
• 1x Shipwreck Marsh
• 1x Sunken Hollow
• 8x Swamp
• 1x Tainted Isle
• 1x Temple of Deceit
• 1x Terramorphic Expanse
• 1x Underground River
• 1x Witch's Cottage

Sorcery (8)

• 1x Cut Your Losses
• 1x Deadly Tempest
• 1x Fractured Sanity
• 1x Maddening Cacophony
• 1x Peer into the Abyss
• 1x Traumatize
• 1x Whispering Madness
• 1x Windfall

Instant (6)

• 1x Cyclonic RiftGC
• 1x Dramatic Reversal
• 1x Drown in the Loch
• 1x Intellectual Offering
• 1x Into the Story
• 1x Visions of Beyond

Commander (1)

Artifact (18)

• 1x Altar of the Brood
• 1x Arcane Signet
• 1x Bonehoard
• 1x Crumbling Sanctuary
• 1x Dimir Signet
• 1x Fellwar Stone
• 1x Folio of Fancies
• 1x Grafdigger's Cage
• 1x Lightning Greaves
• 1x Mesmeric Orb
• 1x Mindcrank
• 1x Profane Memento
• 1x Silent Gravestone
• 1x Sol Ring
• 1x Swiftfoot Boots
• 1x Talisman of Dominance
• 1x Thousand-Year Elixir
• 1x Weathered Runestone

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Critical Bug Reproduction Guide for Library.exe with Phenax - 2022 Update

Hi folks, welcome to the guide to reproduce the infamous library.exe has stopped working splashscreen of death, a rare bug that can more often than not directly terminate a player's current EDH Experience™ live session.

As you will have already guessed by now, this deck is mainly focused on milling all your opponents to death. But why would you do that? And how? Well, let me start...

Introduction

Emotional reasons for playing EDH Dimir without Yuriko, Wilhelt, Satoru or Scarab God at the helm

If you've made it here it means you must like mill, uh? Good for you. I like mill too! It is an often underrated strategy which can be surprisingly effective at closing out games if your opponents do not play close attention to what is happening on your side of the field.

Here stands our commander! Phenax, God of Deception looks upon mortals from the Command Zone, knowing that in the end, your foes will be all left without memory of themselves!

Jokes apart, Phenax is probably the most versatile Mill commander in EDH. First and foremost, he is an indestructible God from the Theros Block, that allows us to play him and just have him sit on the table for basically the rest of the game. Moreover, if we can keep devotion in check, we are sure dangerous paths will never cross our way.

The Colors

We are in Dimir. Everything needed for Memory Erosion is thus easily accessible.

• Blue lets us keep the draw engine going, while somewhat keeping our opponents in check if anything happens to turn upon us. We have access to very versatile interaction pieces, like Drown in the Loch. We can run the backbreaking Cyclonic Rift, alongside Psychic Corrosion and Intruder Alarm. Moreover, most of the mill support cards are blue.
• Black gives us access to creatures that take advantage of FAT graveyards, namely Consuming Aberration and its brothers in duty, other than pieces that leverage interactions with cards being milled, such as Syr Konrad, the Grim and Bloodchief Ascension.

Deck's Weaknesses

• You don't have access to green, so if you like to ramp, or like big mana, you can literally suck my kiss, as the only ramp you'll ever see comes from mana rocks.
• Even though the deck includes many combos, it lacks serious tutors, since they're not allowed in my playgroup (even Lim-Dul's Vault had to be eventually substituted at some point for this reason).Of course, if you have imperial seals or vampiric tutors lying around, feel free to do some swaps.
• Sacrifices must be made: to keep up the milling, sometimes you can be asked to mill too by symmetric effects, and maybe lose combo pieces or useful cards, mostly due to Dreamborn Muse, Mesmeric Orb and possibly Crumbling Sanctuary, the latter however buying you time from combat-reliant opponents.
• Graveyard reshuffling effects are a thing, so be prepared to lose your progress. See The Bane of your Exsistence subsection down below for further information and on how to react to this.
• The deck is not packed with recursion engines, or rather lacks any recursion at all. This is definitely not a Meren deck.
• Having big creatures doesn't necessarily mean you'll swing with them, apart from some fringe cases.
• You have to play somewhat defensively.

Deck's Strenghts

• You can 100 to zero any deck. Point blank. With and without combos.
• You don't focus on the opponent's life total (usually), and thus, even when "attacking" through mill, so you are less likely to suffer heavy damage in return for your gameplan, unless you opponent is very whiny about their pet card hitting the yard.
• Some decks lack graveyard recursion more than others, and thus, by milling them, you are actively removing cards from their pool of options with a policy of no return.
• You get to play some of the most unknown and mysterious cards of the format!
• Your combos are fun, varied and will leave a smile on your opponents faces once they're dead.
• You can win in a unique way, as milling 300+ cards usually isn't easy.

The Deck

General strategy

The general strategy of the deck is to mill all your opponents out of cards from their library, thus keeping them alive until their next draw step. This limbo could be avoided with cards like Deep Analysis or Blue Sun's Zenith to ensure the kill, but I like it much more this way. お前はもう死んでいる.
If you happen to see many graveyard reshuffle effects in your meta, be sure to pack some instant speed target-player or all-players draw effect in order to kill your opponents before the reshuffle trigger resolves from the stack (more on this later).

The deck wins in many ways.
The most straightforward is to mill enough to get a big beater on the field and then swing with it. But this approach gives rise to two problems: we lose the graveyard of the opponent we killed, thus "shrinking" (if not killing) our X/X creatures, and second, we'll turn the table on us. For this very reason, sometimes we'd prefer to keep threats to a minimum and just combo off in 1-2 turns. Sometimes though, the risk is worth the archenemy tag, and can pull out a fast victory, so don't be afraid to try.

The most fun way in which this deck can win is by actually milling out all your hopeless opponents, sometimes even at once. Generally, if the board is locked by keeping a big defensive threat, we can just stay wait for the turn rotation to be over and tap to mill right before the start of our turn, at the end step of our last opponent. It's a strategy of variable speed, depending on the quality of our board state and of graveyards. Nonetheless, this is the best way we have to make sure all our opponents die in the same turn, leaving them with the least chance to react.

We can also win through combos, infinite and not, but since overwhelmingly competitive and reliable combo decks are generally frowned upon in friendly game environments like mine, I've built the deck in order to avoid super cEDH tutors and such. The sheer amount of potential card synergies is dense enough to lessen the need to heavily rely on these search effects. The panel Fantastic Combos and Where to Find Them contains all the information about those synergies and gives a general idea of how the deck can play out to close the game.

Mulligans

Your ideal hand should contain 3-4 lands and some early drops, ideally a Mesmeric Orb, Mindcrank or a Psychic Corrosion or Bloodchief Ascension. Of course one land slot can be replaced by mana rocks or draw spells. Avoid keeping more than one mana-intensive (CMC greater than 5) card in your opening hand: mulligan it away immediately, especially if you're keeping less than seven cards, as the curve is low enough that the chance to draw another mana-intensive card is pretty low.

Early Game

You'll generally start slow, and you could as well suffer some creatureless turn rotations in which you'll take some hits. Don't panic, you'll stand back up from turn 4 onwards. However, early drops are a thing and can help you setup your mid game, such as mana rocks, early graveyard-fillers, like Fraying Sanity and some support cards like Profane Memento.

By the way, politics are a thing in the modern EDH Experience™, you know. Always let your opponents know that attacking an open foe is proof of cowardice on their part. Just saying. Or threaten them enough that they will leave you be either because they believe your bluff or they just want you to stop whining. Sometimes it works.

Mid Game

From turn four onwards, we reach mid game. Here you start to feel a bit more confident, as you could actually already combo off or at least set up for it in advance. Generally, this is the part of the game in which you'll play Phenax, there to stay till the world remains. In these turns you'll find the perfect moment to lock down the board with a Silent Arbiter, or to start threatening opponents with a Tree of Perdition.

Late Game

From turn seven onwards, you reach the critical point. Now, it is either you kill them or they kill you. Phenax should be on the field and huge threats now come to close out the game. You should control at least one big X/X creature to attack/mill with, just remember that sometimes is better to not attack and mill before the start of your turn than get greedy and then die because you don't have your big fat creature available for blocking.
At this point in time, graveyards should already be at least one quarter of the way full, it should be easy from there on to win.

Fantastic Combos and Where to Find Them

These are all the combos that will put a smile on your face for you are now the winner:

• Eater of the Dead + Phenax, God of Deception goes infinite as soon as you can tap the Eater. Lightning Greaves and Thousand-Year Elixir will help you do that as son as you play it. Most powerful and reliable combo of the deck.

• Freed from the Real/Pemmin's Aura that enchants one of the creatures listed right down here, while Phenax, God of Deception is on the field, while having 2-5 blue mana available will mill all your opponents out. These marvelous creatures, which get bigger the more you mill, are, in order of straight raw power:

The Big Bois

1. Consuming Aberration has the chance of being he biggest of all, has itself mini mind funerals built inside it.
2. The Haunt of Hightower is almost on the same powerlevel as the previous, but for different reasons: it flies, and most of all, it gets +1/+1 counters, meaning after you kill somebody with it, it doesn't lose power. Did I mention it also lifelinks you to enormous life totals?
3. Mortivore it only counts creatures, but at least is a 4-drop that can regenerate itself.
4. Bonehoard is a creature straight away, thanks to the Living-Weapon. It can further cause damage when equipped to the previous creatures. It doesn't get killed by creature board wipes.
5. Nighthowler can either enter as a creature or be Bestowed. I'd always suggest the latter when possible, since it can then survive a creature board wipe and then be on the battlefield as a creature.
6. Wight of Precinct Six only counts creatures in our opponents' graveyards, but works surprisingly well and it's scary lategame, considering the fact that it only costs 2 mana, leaving more mana open to do other stuff.
7. Sewer Nemesis is the least powerful of the group, but can still pull out decen performances. It forces you to keep that one opponent on the verge of death long enough to let you kill the others first. As a plus, it lets you look at one of your opponents in the eyes and say "I really dislike you, in particular", much like Saskia the Unyielding lets you do.

• Traumatize/Cut Your Losses + Fraying Sanity/Bruvac the Grandiloquent is expensive mana-wise, but really cool. Not to mention, Haunt of Hightower loves Traumatize/Cut Your Losses.

• Undead Alchemist + Thousand-Year Elixir/Lightning Greaves lets you get untapped zombies on the field that can then be tapped themselves to mill. Usually the combo puts out enough zombies to mill out every opponent. It's a generally wise choice to start milling creature heavy decks first.

• Undead Alchemist + Altar of the Brood + any mill trigger can possibly mill all opponents for as long as we are able to hit at least an average of one creature among the triggers of the Altar: each milled and exiled creature from our opponent's decks means another trigger of the Altar.

• Mindcrank + Duskmantle Guildmage/stacked Bloodchief Ascension + any mill trigger goes infinite.

• Mindcrank + Syr Konrad, the Grim/Dreadhound + any mill trigger could go infinite with some luck, or at least do a lot of damage to every opponent, provided that the starting amount of mill is large enough (10-15 cards should already net you good results).

• Syr Konrad, the Grim/Dreadhound/Duskmantle Guildmage/Bloodchief Ascension + Fractured Sanity/Traumatize/Maddening Cacophony can easily close out a game if played at the right time.

• Psychic Corrosion + Peer into the Abyss targeting ourselves leaves us with a very good grip of cards and our opponents with empty libraries.

• King Macar, the Gold-Cursed + Phenax, God of Deception + Pemmin's Aura/Freed from the Real lets us tap Macar to mill an opponent for 3, exile a creature and repeat. This lets us exile all the targetable creatures on the board and mill 3 cards for each of those creatures. This combo interacts well with Bonehoard equipped on Macar.

• If an opponent has more than 40 (more or less) cards in his graveyard, Guiltfeeder can take them out, if it's unblockable.

• LEGACY COMBO (removed) -> Junktroller/Hinder/Spell Crumple/Gonti, Lord of Luxury/Vessel of Endless Rest + Tunnel Vision, instantly knocks someone out of the game.

The Bane of your Existence

This is the aforementioned list of all (or most of) the cards that can and will destroy your initial gameplan. Also, beware of reanimator decks, as they could always steal a victory.
Why list them? Because knowing your enemies is the first step to overcoming them.

When I built the first iteration of this deck back in 2017, I did not have such problematic cards in my playgroup, so I had not to worry about those cards too much. However, as of late they have been increasingly more present in my meta, with Time Reversal, Worldspine Wurm, some Eldrazi titans from Rise of the Eldrazi (my favourite set), Darksteel Colossus, Elixir of Immortality, Perpetual Timepiece, Piper's Melody. This has not stopped me yet and I do not think it will in the future.
You may not be as lucky as me though and regualrly play against graveyard reshuffle tribal decks or maybe just some well timed rakdos charms and bojuka bogs. What to do? If you know well your meta, I'd suggest swapping in Sadistic Sacrament and Praetor's Grasp. Other more versatile options would be Disallow, Stifle, Trickbind, Voidmage Husher or Nimble Obstructionist to counter the reshuffle-on-being-milled triggered abilities, like the one of Gaea's Blessing. Disallow can also be used to counter one of the shuffle-spells, so I'd say this would be the more versatile soultion. Again, it depends on meta and playgroup.
If you are instead struggling only with cards that reshuffle themselves (but not the whole graveyard) back into the library, well timed instant speed draw spells could be all you need, as you can force your oppenents to draw from an empty library while the self-reshuffle trigger is still on the stack.

Sideboard, Suggestions and More

Sideboard and Maybeboard

In the sideboard I put cards I own, but that were cut from the deck for various reasons. They are good cards, but were underperforming in my meta for one reason or another. Feel free to swap around.

In the maybeboard I put cards I do not own. They could be here for various reasons: too expensive (money wise), not playgroup friendly, or simply just too random to be included, but fun for inspiration.

Feedback and Suggestions

I do know about the Leyline of the Void + Helm of Obedience combo. I don't like it for some reason or another, and as of now, I won't include those cards. In general I'd try to avoid any effect that mass exiles graveyards, preferring to that lock pieces like Grafdigger's Cage, so that we can take advantage of the creatures that have been milled. The only exception to this rule, as of now under testing, is Crumbling Sanctuary, as it can protect our life total and possibly buy us a few turns - or really put the Muldrotha player in an uncomfortable situation.

Any feedback is appreciated, positive or (especially) negative, as they will make this deck (or this description) better. Feel free!

Deck's Mil(l)estones

• Broke 15K views! Thanks guys!
• The highest score EDH Phenax deck on tappedout!
• 3th most viewed EDH Phenax deck on tappedout with "Only Top Decks" filter!
• Achieved #1 position in Commander / EDH Mill on 10/04/2019
• Achieved #1 position in Commander / EDH U/B (Dimir) on 10/04/2019
• Achieved #15 position in Top Decks on 11/11/2018
• Achieved #1 position in Commander / EDH Tap/Untap 2 on 27/10/2022

Updates

Here you can find all the deck Updates:

General note on Updates before 25/07/19

This deck has gone through many changes since it's inception. Mainly, it went from a more pillow fort-spellslinger approach, to a more Creature-Value approach, while still trying to keep up the combo count in order to be able to consistently close out the game. This list doesn't include swaps in/out, but rather only what has been swapped out and why, as I don't remember what they've been substituted with, I hope you can bear with me for this.

Here are some of the cards I decided to cut after testing:

• Body Double: wasn't helping the milling gameplan.
• Fatespinner: originally here as a pillow fort, intended to force my opponents to choose to skip the combat step. They were skipping the draw step since they consistently had another draw engine. It became a dead card quickly.
• Jace's Archivist: meant to be a repeatable piece of card draw, has been temporarily put in the sideboard. It goes in and out depending on meta.
• Kumena's Awakening: originally intended as a piece of consistent card draw, wasn't efficient enough, as I often struggled to get the City's Blessing.
• Mind Funeral: always been a good card, always milled at least 13 cards. Its problems were many, as it targeted only one player, was deck sensitive (more efficient if opponent has low land count and viceversa) and was not repeatable.
• Nightveil Specter: nice source of card advantage, its problem was that it had to be alive in order to use the cards exiled with it. It didn't really happen often.
• Patient Rebuilding: cut for straight out being an inefficient mana investment. At 5 mana, this card competes with casting Phenax or Consuming Aberration , and it's not nearly as useful. Not only that, but I have to wait my next turn for the effect to trigger, it targets only one person (for a negligible amount of cards) and the amount of cards I get to draw could as well be zero. Since it was meant to be one of the deck's drawing engines, I substituted it months ago with Recurring Insight, as it can draw more and more quickly.
• Propaganda: part of the initial pillow fort strategy, never disappointed, but was holding a slot for more mill cards.
• Stitcher Geralf: for some reason or another, he kept attracting too much attention from the opponents, getting often targeted for removal, and sometimes getting me targeted in general at the table.
• Wall of Frost: another pillow fort card, didn't really justify its inclusion as nobody would care if their 10/10 trampling guy had to stay tapped one turn, since they maybe had another one to use next turn. The 7 cards mill ability was irrelevant.

16/09/2019 Update

I cut once more on the pillow fort strategy, allowing some interesting cards in.

• Forced Fruition -> Intruder Alarm. Fruition was helping me with taking out cards from my opponent's libraries, but was also, more often than not, giving them new ways to kill me. Swapped out for an outrageously powerful card, that can allow for many more Phenax's ability activations per turn rotation.
• Riddlekeeper -> Dimir Locket. The keeper wasn't keeping any attacks away from me, so that's a dead slot right there. A temporary mana rock is better than nothing, but I'm already looking forward Folio of Fancies from Throne of Eldraine!
• Etrata, the Silencer -> King Macar, the Gold-Cursed. Functionally they both do the same thing. They are both ready once they are not affected by summoning sickness. Etrata's problem is the shuffle trigger, which prevents her from being a versatile and reusable removal. King Macar should improve on this, while also creating some Gold tokens, aka Theros' Treasure tokens.
• Fog Bank -> Undead Alchemist. A card I've always knew about and finally decided to try out. It already comboes with two of my deck's cards, so check it out in the Fantastic Combos and Where to Find Them section. The bank has been again removed because it's not a good fit for pillow forting if it's the only on the field.
• Guard Gomazoa -> Swiftfoot Boots. Again a cut on the weak pillow fort strategy to get some protection and haste when it's most needed to close out a game.
• Gonti, Lord of Luxury -> Bitter Ordeal. I cut one of the multiple redundant pieces of the Tunnel Vision combo, in order to get a new combo! Check this other one out in the Fantastic Combos and Where to Find Them section!
• Mind Grind -> Fallen Shinobi. A weak lategame card that needs way too much mana to be worth the slot, substituted by a kindof Silent-Blade Oni which could lead to some fun shenanigans.
• Dimir Guildgate -> Darkwater Catacombs. I am SPEED.

17/12/2019 Update

I cut on high CMC cards to make space for more useful pieces. In particular, Bitter Ordeal has been removed due to the fact that my understanding of the ruling was incorrect, thus making its relative combo illegal.

• Bitter Ordeal -> Syr Konrad, the Grim. Took out an "illegal" combo card for another, which is actually working. More details in the Fantastic Combos and Where to Find Them section of the Primer.
• Silent-Blade Oni -> Hostage Taker. Similar reasons to Szadek. It's better to get some removal: steal those Sol Rings!
• Mindleech Mass -> Dauthi Embrace. Suggested in the comments, it's a surprisingly political card, for giving any creature Shadow. The main purpose would be to use it for turning sideways a fatty and killing someone (possibly eaveryone).
• Fallen Shinobi -> Into the Story. More card draw, at instant speed!
• Szadek, Lord of Secrets -> Folio of Fancies. I gave Szadek another chance, but its proibitive cost made it too slow with respect to the boardstate of my opponents around turn 6-7. The folio is interesting and political!
• Sepulchral Primordial -> Visions of Beyond. Once again, card draw for cheap. Twenty cards are easily achieved in the first 6 turns.
• Plague Wind -> Grafdigger's Cage. I opened one in a box and decided to try it out, especially to turn off a Muldrotha, the Gravetide deck, a Kenrith, the Returned King deck and Finale of Devastation in my meta.
• Dimir Locket -> Drown in the Loch. Very strong card from Eldraine, it's versatile and most imporantly instant speed.
• Island -> Mystic Sanctuary. Decided to try it out, let's see how it goes.
• Mortuary Mire -> Witch's Cottage. Same as with the Mystic Sanctuary.

24/08/2022 Update, aka post pandemic update

With the end of the pandemic related restrictions, alongside my MSc degree that kept me busy over the last two years, I finally found the time to buy new cards. During this long break, I kept looking forward to upgrading this decklist, however I did not want to do it without some playtesting and without owning the cards, because this project of mine is not just one of many "netdecks", but rather a continuous struggle to prove the point that mill in EDH can exist.
I am glad to announce the new and long awaited mass update, that focused on cutting down the curve and finding new means of interaction around the mill theme. I could not bring myself to spend 25€ for Bruvac, but if and when WotC will ever decide to reprint this card in a actual print run (since Jumpstart and the List are not reprint sets), I will definitely buy it, as I am sure that the price will drop signficantly.

• Dimir Doppelganger -> Weathered Runestone. The doppelganger's main role was to hate on graveyards to stop reanimator decks from gaining advantage from our milling, however it did that at an unconvenient rate, moreover exiling and thus reducing the size of our X/X creatures. The runestone solves both of these problems, despite dropping the chance for us to "pseudo-revive" one of the creatures in our yard.
• Fleet Swallower -> Maddening Cacophony. Functional upgrade, as the Cacophony is more aggressively costed and moreover it is immediate rather than having to rely on the survival of the big fish to possibly mill half of an opponent's library. Moreover the flexibility of choosing between a moderate effect early in the game or a devastating effect in the late game is just priceless, other than the fact that it affects all opponents at the same time.
• Tunnel Vision -> Peer into the Abyss. Despite being a fun card, more often than not it has been a dead draw. It did go off a few times as intended and I had quite a laugh in the few times in which I cast it picking a card at random. Peer is a good effect to cast both on us and an opponent, so overall a good top end choice.
• Junktroller -> Imperious Mindbreaker. One of the many cards that saw the axe alongside the removal of Tunnel Vision from the deck. The Mindbreaker can be crippling when paired with a big X/X creature as it triggers on attack and affects all opponents.
• Spell Crumple -> Vizier of Tumbling Sands. Another cut due to the removal of Tunnel Vision, following along the insertion of untap effects.
• Hinder -> Fatestitcher. Same as above.
• Vessel of Endless Rest -> Arcane Signet. Same as above, there was no need to keep a 3 CMC mana rock.
• Mirko Vosk, Mind Drinker -> Kelpie Guide. A vampire that always did too little in multiplayer and that struggled to stay up to date with the current meta. The Kelpie is one among the many untap effect I have added in the deck, which can synergize both with lands as pseudo-elves (which dimir lacks), but that can also add that extra push when paired with a big creature to mill with.
• Lazav, Dimir Mastermind -> Intellectual Offering. Lazav always struggled to provide a good advantage, as in a heavy ETB-reliant meta it lacked a way to take advantage of the most impactful creatures we could mill, plus a fairly challenging mana cost which has never helped. Intellectual offering rounds up as both another uptap effect and as a for of card advantage, other than possibly gaining us some political favours.
• Dauthi Embrace -> Dreadhound. The Embrace always felt a bit out of place, more often that not even failing to be just a good political card. The Hound adds to other effect that damage on mill, which is generally a good approach for dodging the presence of shuffle effects.
• Wrexial, the Risen Deep -> Charix, the Raging Isle. Cutting a true battlecruiser like Wrexial saddens me, but to be honest, in most games it just did not pay back for itself even after its ability triggered: yes, I cast an In Garruk's Wake once, but I cannot reason on these rare occasions alone. Charix is a good blocker, a good body for milling and it can protect itself decently, what's more to ask? By the way I know of Unhallowed Phalanx too, but the mana cost plus the fact that it enters tapped made it a no go.
• Lim-Dul's Vault -> Silent Gravestone. The Vault has been cut for the aforementioned ban of tutors from my playgroup and to be honest, it was a pretty darn good one at that. It acted as second copy of Eater of the Dead in most of the occasions, but it was too reliable: you will be missed. The Gravestone adds onto the package of graveyard hate that does not exile, which lets us mill freely without worrying too much about reanimator decks.
• Keening Stone -> Maddening Cacophony. I am going to be honest in saying that I probably have activated the Stone only once during all the games I have played so far, so it was reasonable to substitute with a possibly repeatable draw effect that interacts well with opponents with large grips.
• In Garruk's Wake -> Dramatic Reversal. It seems that this deck does not need to rely that hard on wraths, especially those that cost nine mana to cast.
• Dissipation Field -> Crumbling Sanctuary. I initially put the Field as a combat deterrant, but it turned out that most people would attack me anyways to recycle ETBs. Moreover, when killed by an alpha strike, the triggers that would bounce the attacker's board would get exiled alongside my permanents and spells currently on the stack, so it proved to be of no use at all, apart from preventing me to tap Underground River for mana.
• Dread -> Windfall. Similar reasoning as above. It was useful in being the only auto reshufflable card in our deck, but I never really took advantage of that and it never prevented me from getting alpha striked anyways.
• Thief of Sanity -> Altar of the Brood. A deck that abhors combat damage struggled to cope with combat reliant card advantage, who would have guessed that. I happened to have an Altar lying around and so far it provided decent early game milling to setup the mid game.
• Recurring Insight -> Jace's Archivist. I wanted to move Insight into my Jhoira of the Ghitu deck, so I figured that another hand size reliant wheel effect that can be untapped multiple times a turn coud prove useful, interacting in interesting ways also with Pemmin's Aura and Freed from the Real.
• Jace, Memory Adept -> Fractured Sanity. Jace could act as a source of consistent card draw, or add that slight mill bump to one of our opponents, however not being very good at neither of them. Sanity hits all opponents and possibly sets up a large X/X creature for just 3 mana.
• Hostage Taker -> Cut Your Losses. The Taker made for interesting interactions but ultimately fell prey of one too many Rapid Hybridizations after its ETB trigger, so I figured that another copy of Traumatize that can possibly hit two opponents would be more useful.
• Life's Finale -> Deadly Tempest. Looks like a tutor ban means that I cannot resolve the second effect of Finale. Given that it's six mana, I chose another wrath that at least can resolve completely, which can moreover chip quite heavily at life totals of token heavy decks.

Top Ranked	Achieved #15 position overall 7 years ago Achieved #1 position in Commander / EDH Mill 6 years ago Achieved #1 position in Commander / EDH Tap/Untap 2 years ago Achieved #1 position in Commander / EDH UB (Dimir) 6 years ago
Date added	7 years
Last updated	2 years
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	3 - 0 Mythic Rares 47 - 0 Rares 23 - 0 Uncommons 10 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	3.33
Tokens	Gold, Phyrexian Germ 0/0 B, Zombie 2/2 B
Folders	Commander Decks, Commander, Commander Decks, Commander Decks, Commander, Milling, Cool EDH, mill, Interesting Decks, Mill decks