+1 for an interesting take on PDH mill.

Some suggestions:

1) If you're a fan of Infinite Combos, here's one for you:

• Archaeomancer or Salvager of Secrets or Scrivener + Peregrine Drake + Either of these Blink cards: Ghostly Flicker or Displace
• With both the Wizard and Drake in play, cast Flicker or Displace to blink them.
• Return the blink card using Wizard's ETB trigger. Rinse and repeat to generate infinite mana.
• Next blink the Wizard and your Commander as many times as needed to win the game.

You can exclude the Drake if you're not a fan of infinite combos and just blink the Wizard and your Commander once for every spent.

There's also Mnemonic Wall if you need more recursion.

2) Banishing Knack - Redundancy for Retraction Helix.

3) Darting Merfolk / Dream Stalker - Can return itself to your hand, so essentially, a more expensive Shrieking Drake, just in case you need more options.

4) Temporal Fissure - Pauper's Cyclonic Rift since PDH games usually last longer and it is common for us to have 10 lands/mana sources out. You can easily play and bounce Drake 5 times and cast this for massive bounce shenanigans.

5) I'd advise against playing cards like Thought Scour as a once-off effect to mill 2 cards ain't impactful in EDH. If you're playing it for the card draw, there're plenty of better options in at the pauper level:

Preordain , Serum Visions , Divination , Counsel of the Soratami , Secrets of the Golden City , just to name a few popular ones.

Another janky and extremely unique combo:

• Sage's Row Denizen and any of your recursion creatures (e.g. Archaeomancer ) in play

• Cast Wormfang Drake to exile your recursion engine

• Cast Siren's Ruse , Ghostly Flicker or Displace to blink the Drake and your recursion engine will return to play, returning the blink card to your hand

• Using Ruse will allow you to mill 4 cards per spent.

• Using Flicker or Displace will allow you to mill 6 cards per spent.

This ain't an easy combo to set up as there're many pieces we need to assemble, but if you pull it off, it's really fun and will surprise all your opponents! LOL

@ Cloudius

1) Not a fan of infinite combos!

1a and 3) I originally put in Mnemonic wall/ Dream stalker but because they arent Wizard or Human, I took them out. This is because I put in Path of Ancestry for scrying.

2) Yup, originally had it in and I took it out because I'd thought 1 was enough. On this idea, should I be going for the Wincon 1 combo all the time?

3)Darting merfolk only bounces herself so she has less versatility than the Shrieking Drake or Dream Stalker. The idea I had originally was for my commander to be the main target of bounce/flicker effects.

4)Although bouncing is good, I suppose you mean this combo must be paired with the Peregrine Drake? I guess I could see it as a way to stall the game. At the end of the day, my main wincon is to mill the opponents out.

5)I thought it would be interesting to put in a cantrip that is mill-themed haha. I'd opt for Opt instead because its instant speed and I dont have copies of serum visions/preordain.

I have Secrets of the Golden City already inside. However, instead of the traditional Counsel of the Soratami/ Divination, I used Vision Skeins , Words of Wisdom because they are at instant speed, and helps in the game plan a little. I also used Taigam's Scheming , Contingency Plan , Sift , Strategic Planning , Compulsive Research because they help to run through my deck faster, and also has a discard clause for Delirium trigger.

1) If you're not a fan of infinite combos, can exclude Peregrine Drake but include the blink spells. They can be used offensively for mill or ETB effects or defensively to save you creatures from targeted removals, or even combat tricks (e.g. Blink a tapped creature so you can block with it).

2), it is good to have redundancy to support Wincon #1. I'd advocate having multiple lines of victory just in case one of them got shut down or disrupted.

4) Not necessary to pair with Peregrine Drake, just need ways to up the storm count if you've multiple targets to bounce. You're running 15 cards at 1 CMC and 18 at 2 CMC, so the mana curve is pretty low and can consider this as sort of a 1 time bounce effect.

I'd also recommend Jace's Erasure for the deck. I've learnt not to underestimate incidental mills effects like this as it adds up. This is especially so when you're running 19 card draw spells in the deck alongside ways to recur them. Also this chipping off a player's library, tend to draw less hate from them, compared to big plays/mill effects that takes away a lot of cards at once.

I realised that I just need some good ol blockers instead of needing to use spells to protect myself. Separatist Voidmage and Vedalken Dismisser can also be flickered to deal with threats, yet still block.