Our mission in life:
To sculpt a perfect hand.
The only perfect hand,
Is an empty one
With nothing.
"
One with Nothing
, get it?"
"It's truly the highest honor, isn't it? To have cards in your hand? Pity for you."
~
anonymous Dimir agent
Never thought there could be a competitive deck in standard that runs random, bad discard spells like
Burglar Rat
and
Fell Specter
, did you?
Well, the trick is, once you get the discard rolling, just don't stop! (I wonder
where this reference is from
...)
Enter a
Divest
, three
Duress
es, four
Thought Erasure
s, three
Disinformation Campaign
s, and an
Urgoros, the Empty One
. Now we suddenly have a massive fifteen cards that force the opponent to discard in some way, which I think is the maximum that one can have in a 60-card deck.
The rest of the deck functions just like a normal Dimir control deck.
To beat the faster decks of the format, we have sweepers in
Cry of the Carnarium
and
Ritual of Soot
and good removal spells in
Cast Down
and
Moment of Craving
. Against slower strategies and planeswalkers in general, we have
Vraska's Contempt
as our best removal spell.
Discovery / Dispersal
and
Notion Rain
offer us some card draw and selection, which will support us over the course of a long game. Both spells also have the surveil keyword, increasing the value of
Disinformation Campaign
.
While the random damage from
Fell Specter
is nice, to actually close out the game, we have four primary finishers in our deck: Three copies of
Dream Eater
and one
Urgoros, the Empty One
. While Urgoros simply reinforces the discard theme and draws us a card when the opponent has no cards in hand,
Dream Eater
is a perfect finisher in this deck for reasons not so obvious. First off, in the late game, when the opponent usually has no cards in hand, we can drop
Dream Eater
, bounce something, and then force them to discard it. Secondly, just flashing it in to eat a random attacker can be a huge deal since while our deck has a good amount of removal, it's not very good at setting up a board presence so we need to manage the board carefully. Finally, surveil 4 is great because in the late game we really, really dread flooding out.
Our sideboard is pretty regular, from most perspectives. An additional
Moment of Craving
and an additional
Ritual of Soot
take care of aggro decks while against slower decks,
Disdainful Stroke
,
Negate
,
The Immortal Sun
and
The Eldest Reborn
will get the job done. In control matchups in specific,
Nezahal, Primal Tide
is a very powerful finisher to bring in.
Hostage Taker
does great things in a multitude of matchups, since it can deal with powerful artifacts like
Treasure Map
or
The Immortal Sun
, which is something that Dimir's isn't known for, and it can steal problematic creatures like
Arclight Phoenix
. Speaking of the Phoenix, it's the main reason why we have
Sentinel Totem
s in the sideboard. Against the recursive threat, our discard plan looks terrible since we may actually help them dump it into the graveyard.
Sentinel Totem
is the lowest-opportunity-cost graveyard hate card we have in standard right now, at least for Dimir (there may be some argument about
Deadeye Tracker
, but it costs mana to activate, which can be clunky for our deck). To round things out, we also have a single
Unmoored Ego
, which just acts as another out to potentially problematic cards, such as
Carnage Tyrant
.
Overall, the deck is a pretty fun take on Dimir control if you want a heavy discard theme, although I'm not sure whether it's really the best build out there. Still, for FNM play, this deck is more than enough (It's even budget-friedly). The deck isn't flashy and doesn't really do mind-boggling things, but it's nonetheless very frustrating to play against. You'll often win a near flawless victory with the opponent on an empty battlefield and empty hands while you laugh at them with a full hand of cards and a random flyer repeatedly beating them down - just a word of warning though: The deck might lose you some friends.
Peace out and happy tapping.
"Every hand dreads infiltration. I should know—I've seen all of them."
~
Lazav, Dimir Guildmaster