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Russian Nesting Doll - Dimir Midrange

Modern Midrange Mill UB (Dimir)

Be-Bad-And-Play-Mill

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Land (17)

Instant (24)

Sorcery (10)

Creature (9)

Sideboard

Instant (6)

Artifact (1)

Creature (2)

Sorcery (2)

Enchantment (2)

Maybeboard

Instant (8)

Creature (2)

Sorcery (2)

Before we begin, remember this deck is both a personal and a meta choice. I will be happy to explain my reasoning to any picks that pique curiosity.

Like a Russian Nesting Doll that gets bigger or smaller as its pieces are taken apart or put together, this deck is centered around the concept of a shell within a shell within a shell. The end result was a deck that fit snugly in the Midrange category with three unique, generally harmonious shells.

The Shells

  • Mill: Straightforward and simple. Deny the opponent key resources before they can even get to them with heavy milling the first few turns. This shell also contains a potential T1/T2 win on particularly unlucky opponents. This also supplies your Prowess triggers.
  • Aggro/Synergy: The "Battle" shell, if you will, supplies creatures designed to both drive damage while reducing the cost of all other Instants and Sorceries in the deck, making the effective max cost of any of your Instants and Sorceries two mana.
  • Control: The support shell of the deck across all aspects of the deck, this shell contains minor spot removal as well as a moderate amount of counterspells and some amount of spell duplication.
Consider this the "center" of your Russian Nesting Doll. The aggro shell holds the deck together, bridging the gap between the Control and Mill shells by supplying bodies to keep you alive as well as cost reductions on the field. Despite Tasigur, the Golden Fang being in the deck, the real key player here is curious homonculus , a card that seems a little too costly at two mana for a 1/1. Sure he gives you some mana for Instants and Sorceries, but it's hardly worth it. The trick is Voracious Reader   , a 3/4 Prowess beater that reduces the cost of all instants and sorceries by one mana. While this doesn't do much to the mill shell in terms of resource cost, the best effect generally being Mind Funeral for two mana, that's because the Mill shell offers him the Prowess triggers to get bigger on unguarded opponents. The real strength sits in the Counter Shell, where both Convolute and Mana Leak drop in cost, down to a minimum of one blue source. If you're running Spell Shrivel , that's an extra set of Convolutes in the deck. This gets big with multiple Voracious Reader   s on the field, allowing you to play a full hand of counter spells for one mana each. If Baral, Chief of Compliance happens to be online, this means you can loot and toss away mill spells or unneccessary creatures to keep the counter game up.
The Mill Shell is perhaps the most simple part of the deck, requiring perhaps the least thinking in terms of the linear path of its strategy. Like Burn, Mill always aims to hit a single, particular resource and remove it as fast as possible. They key cards here are the staples Mind Funeral and Glimpse the Unthinkable. They both can be played on Turns 3 and hit a hefty amount of cards under most circumstances. Thanks to the meta of fetch lands, Mind Funeral has, generally speaking, gone up in terms of raw value, though always retains significantly more strength towards the late game, where there are less lands sitting in the deck. This makes the only choice in the Mill shell a simple one: Do you hit the opponent and try to starve them out of mana? Or do you try and take out the most cards possible in the deck at the time? Depending on which way you lean, you'll want to play either of the two staples.

The third staple in the Mill shell is the bomb of the bunch. Archive Trap is something I would argue is one of the most valuable Mill spells in print, strictly because of its ability to drop on zero, furthered in this deck if one can reduce its cost to two mana, where it ekes out in value over Glimpse the Unthinkable. It also offers the deck's only OTK, which can be earned in one of two ways.

Opening Hand: 4xArchive Trap and preferably 1xGhost QuarterT1: Opponent plays fetch land. Upon resolution, drop the four of Archive Trap. Alternatively, a T1 Ghost Quarter into one of their lands, with a four of trap means death on search. If they don't search, you've reset the board, presuming there were no spells cast. Due to the likelihood of either of these occuring, I would not ever rely on this, instead opting for other Mill routes or Bad Beats.

Although the Aggro Shell may be the synergistic point of the deck, the bridge by which the two points meet, the Control Shell is, without a doubt, the backbone of the deck. Strictly due to the amount of control that can be run in the deck itself, even going so far as to run only six to eight creatures in favor of even more counter spells and removing kill spells entirely for Horribly Awry and Spell Shrivel , the Control Shell of the deck is what gets you past turn four. Generally, the big players here are the eight counter spells Convolute and Mana Leak, both of which can be ideally cast for one mana. Both of these cards force a toll onto the opponent to basically play the game on their own turn, and in some situations, Twincast (which can be subbed for Redirect , depending on preference), can be used as an extra counter spell or even an extra mill card, for two mana (Mind Funeral aside, hitting for up to twenty-six cards for two mana). It can also be used against Burn and Control decks alike, copying things like Lightning Helix to get a little bit of life back and take out creatures that otherwise cause huge problems, like Eidolon of the Great Revel.

In Short

In short, the deck comes apart in three parts that work together in order to apply continuous pressure to an opponent in true Midrange style. Favoring the control side of the Midrange, hyper aggressive decks will generally outrace you no matter what, the only saving grace being an early Voracious Reader   , Baral, Chief of Compliance or similar. If this is post-SB, you can use this to drop a downcosted Yahenni's Expertise and potentially sweep the opponent's field, couple it with a Mill spell to, board permitting, Prowess up a Voracious Reader   into a 2/3 and put a little damage in despite the handicap.

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