srrogers1985,

Yes he is really good as a blocker that most burn spells or tragic slip can touch at least that is how I use him. I suppose you could use him to swing but I hate to leave myself open.

Should that have read:
He is really bood as a blocker that most burn spells or tragic slip can torch?  I'm not really sure I understand your reply here.  Are you saying that you like to play him only as a blocker, because he is so vulnerable to burn and removal?

Personally I left him out, because:
1. No evasion (flying, unblockable, hexproof, intimidate, etc).  He would be pretty easy to chump block and then you don't have a big blocker.
2. He can get big, but its dependent on two things, the mill working, and milling a buncha creatures into the opponents graveyard. 

Sure he is cheap to cast, but I found the drawbacks here to much.  Plus he doesn't enable the mill at all.  Perhaps he has a place in the Sideboard against rakdos and boros or any deck with lots of weenies?

Thanks,
Kaffieen

Papi79,
When submitting decks try to use the brackets so we can better answer your questions. 

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I am also trying to build up a semi-competitive mill deck for Friday Night Magic.  Hopefully we can do some testing and find out what works.

My thoughts on your deck list.
Mill is hard to achieve...many say its more difficult to Mill, than get a normal kill.  After all we are trying to reduce 60 down to 0, instead of 20 down to 0.  As such I think that Mill decks in general need to have strict focus.  From first glance at your list, I see that it is kind of all over the place, lots of "one of"s and a few other cards that aren't dedicated to the Mill.  I believe you'll need to decide if you want to Mill for the win, Kill (life total down to 0) for the win, or some combination of the two.  If you take a look at my "Mill/Kill" deck here:
http://deckbox.org/sets/317760
and the discussion page here:
http://deckbox.org/forum/viewtopic.php?id=6873
You will see that while I focus on the Mill, I have a secondary win condition for the kill.  All of the cards in this deck are designed to Mill opponents, Damage opponents (big creatures consuming aberration) or enable my creatures to get through (removal spells/counter spells).

I personally feel that to accomplish the "Mill" the deck needs to almost be a control type deck, with lots of removal/counterspell.  Some cards do double duty here Grisly Spectacle and Psychic Strike are both removal and mill at the same time (great for us)!

Lets take a look at all of the creatures you have listed here:
Jace's Phantasm - Decent card in a Mill deck, it can get powerful off of just a couple of Mill spells/effects

Shadow Alley Denizen - Acts as an enabler, allowing other creatures to get through and do damage (and activate cypher effects).  However for her to really be effective you need lots of black creatures.

Tormented Soul - It has unblockable, this is good, it has a 1 body this is bad.  It will be easy for someone to remove him with any type of direct damage effect.

Basilica Screecher - It has evasion (flying) this is good, however it does not really effect the Mill portion of the deck.

Duskmantle Guildmage - I found it to be a little slow.  If you can activate the first ability, then cast a nice mind grind or other Mill card, he can do a lot of damage.  I found it diffucult to get that combo off when I was also trying to hold mana back for counterspells and/or removal cards. 

Wight of Precinct Six - can be an absolute beatstick if the mill is working.  Perhaps one of those secondary win conditions I was talking about earlier.

Mortus Strider x2 - useful as a blocker that is gonna come back every turn (depending on your mana, remember to keep mana avaliable for counters/removal).    

Sage's Row Denizen x2 - An interesting card, it has a nice 3 body and can block some of the early little guys safely, however like the Shadow Alley Denizen he needs to have a lot of blue creatures for his ability to really work.   

Vampire Nighthawk x3 - Evasion (flying) and Utility (life gain & death touch) this is a good card...however it does not really work the mill angle at all.

Keymaster Rogue - Evasion (unblockable) is good, returning a creature to your hand is probably bad in this case

Stern Mentor - Another interesting card.  I like the ability. The casting cost is a little expensive for a 2/2 that can be easily removed/countered/killed.  Another thing to think about is what creature you would pair him with.  Aren't you going to be swinging with your creatures on the attack (to activate cypher)?  What about blockers?

Consuming Aberration x2 - A great card in my opinion.  Can be a little hit or miss if you draw him in an opening hand as you have yet to fill up the opponent's graveyard.  However given that we are already concentrating on Mill and he has an absolutely awesome secondary ability (Mill), I think the benefits out weigh the possible drawbacks.

Now on to the spells:
Essence Scatter - counter spell, targets a creature only.  Possibly look at Dissipate here instead.

Cancel - counterspell, I like this spell, another, less mana intensive alternative might be syncopate.

Psychic Strike - counterspell and Mill, yes please.  I'll have x4

Aetherize - seeing as how we won't be able to counterspell/remove all of the opponent's creature this might be a really good card..especially against Boros/Rakdos decks with lots of little fast creatures.  Downpour might be an alternative here.  It does not return the creatures to owners hand, but it costs less and still removes them from the attacking equation, at least for a turn.  It also has good synergy with Hands of Binding.

Grisly Spectacle - Unconditional removal with a mill effect, yes please.  I wish it was a little less expensive to cast, but it still deserves a spot in our deck.

Mind Grind - our "king" mill spell.  This can act as a total finisher late game when you have the mana to power it up.  Because it is a mana intensive spell, I wouldn't necessarily run x4, but this should be in our main deck in some capacity.

Mind Sculpt - If Mind Grind is king, then Mind Sculpt is "queen".  2 mana to mill 7 is good value for us.  especially because we can usually leave mana untapped for counterspells

Paranoid Delusions - I really like this spell.  The drawback here is that we need a guy to get through to make full use of the cypher.  Its not really a drawback if we have evasion (flying, unblockable, etc.)

Essence Harvest - A good spell if we have really beefy guys.  Some of our creatures  (Wight of Precinct Six and Consuming Aberration) can get very beefy.  The real question: If we have guys that are that beefy already do we really need to keep this spell in the main deck to do damage?  I could see this being a sideboard card against a deck that is gonna lock down the ground/lock down our creatures.

Midnight Recovery - This can be nice if you run a creature heavy deck, however lets examine the cypher for a moment.  It only triggers if your guy does damage to the opponent.  If you are doing damage to the opponent, chances are they either aren't blocking, can't block, or don't have creatures.  If any of those are true, then you probably aren't losing that many creatures.  I also think this spell is a bit mana heavy/intensive.

Stolen Goods - 4 mana to mill "probably" one card?  Yes you can cast that card with out paying the mana cost..but I would rather have better mill, or more removal/counter. 

Shadow Slice - Similar to Midnight Recovery this can be nice if your guys are getting through...and if you are looking to kill via traditional means, but we wanna mill!  I would personally leave this out in favor of more mill, removal/counterspell.

Dimir Keyrune - A nice target for cypher cards due to the extra evasion during opponent's turn (when it turns back to an artifact the cypher-ed cards stay encoded).

Jace, Architect of Thought - I like Jace a lot, this version can slow down the opponents creatures a little with the +1 ability...however since we are trying to Mill, I would rather have Jace, Memory Adept. +0 to Mill 10 cards!, the +1 ability adds some card advantage (and mills), the -7 can win the game (remember if an opponent can't draw they lose the game).

I won't go into the mana base right now...this post is already way to long....If you stuck around all the way to the end, congratulations, and sorry I get to verbose.

Anyway, hopefully that helps. 
Anyone else please feel free to chime in with your thoughts here as well.  I would love to make Mill actually (somewhat) viable in standard.

Thanks,
Kaffieen

Updated Deck list can be found here:
http://deckbox.org/sets/317760?s=i&o=d



I'm still having trouble trying to work in any creature removal, Voidwalk and/or any other counterspells.  Can you all see anything that you would drop out of the deck?  What would you put in place of any dropped cards?

What about a sideboard.  I honestly have no idea how to start constructing a sideboard for this.

Thanks,
Kaffieen

albonation,
This looks like it would be fun to play, and I have always liked strong theme decks.  If you are looking for more 2 drops, you might consider pairing Bloodthrone Vampire with any of the "take control of creature" spells.

If you are looking for more of the "take control of the creature" spells you could consider Traitorous Instinct, and Act of Treason.

Sorry I can't offer more advice, I'm just getting back into the standard (and Magic in general) after a long hiatus.

Good Luck,
Kaffieen

albonation,
Thanks for the detailed response.  As I am getting back into the game I was previously unfamiliar with Tribute to Hunger, thanks for the hint!.  I am still working on this deck, and will post an updated decklist when I get a chance.

I had a thought for a decent combo/mill.

Balustrade Spy in conjunction with Voidwalk.  When Spy comes in he "mills til land".  Voidwalk essentially flickers a creature until your end step if I am understanding the card correctly.  Anyone think this "trick" is worth it to explore?  The Spy also has the 3 body which I find to be key in Standard...It lets you block lots of those Boros/Rakados/etc creatures that are trying to get the early damage in.

As this is becoming mostly control, how many actual creatures would you all play?  x4 Invisible Stalker, x4 Consuming Aberration, and maybe x2 Balustrade Spy?  The rest of the cards being counters, removal, and Mill?

Thanks everyone for the input.

Kaffieen

Vincentarasin,
Thanks for the reply.  I actually managed to get most of the other cards I needed (or think I need) for this deck from the guys at my FNM hang out.  I'll take a glance at your trade list and see if there is anything of value there that I want....I have a lot of stuff on your trade list (but its usually from the older "original" editions).  I have lots of Revised through Mercadian block, and Ravnica block.  I'm slowly updating my inventory list here on deckbox...but its a long process...

Thanks,
Kaffieen

To help out, we are going to need a little more information. 
Are you looking to go deeper into the Milling (taking cards out of the library and into the graveyard) theme?
Are you looking to use cipher spells?

Dimir can be played a couple of different ways.  Milling an opponents entire library into the graveyard for the win can be fun, but is difficult to pull off.

Dimir also has lots of creatures with evasion abilities (flying, intimidate, unblockable, etc).  Perhaps you want to build a more standard deck that utilizes these type of creatures, along with removal cards, and counter magic.

The Dimir pre-constructed deck is decent, but seems to be going a couple of different ways.  Personally I think its better to focus on one aspect and try to make that the best it can be.

Good luck,
Kaffieen

Thanks for the reply.  I agree on the stalkers, unfortunately I need to get a couple more. I have only managed to pull one.  Hopefully the guys at FNM will be interested in some of my older cards. big_smile
Cheers,
Kaffieen

9

(1 replies, posted in Decks and Deckbuilding)

Couple of questions for you.
1. What format are you playing?  From the looks of this I think its modern, but you seem to have a lot of newer (standard) cards in there.

2. What win condition are you going for?  The kill or the mill?  cards like Wight of Precinct Six can be brutal, however they don't help your mill at all.   

Personally I would suggest taking out some of the creature cards, adding some more control and removal then going in for the mill...cuz we all know milling is lots of fun:D

Think about adding some counter spells Essence Scatter Cancel and or syncopate.  Also what about some Milling removal Grisly Spectacle

just some quick thoughts....
Good luck,
Kaffieen

My first post here!  I recently got back into Magic after a long hiatus (I missed everything from Mirrodin til Return to Ravnica, with the exception of the first Ravnica block).  I recently started going to a local FNM and its been fun, however I find myself consistently finishing last or 2nd to last. tongue  While I am having fun I wouldn't mind some pointers and ideas.

Currently I am building up a Dimir control/mill deck.  I like to think that it tries to control the board with counterspells and creature removal, while using the Deathcult Rogue (with ciphered Paranoid Delusions) coupled with Mind Sculpt to mill through opponents decks.  Hopefully Consuming aberration can beat down for the win, or help mill for the victory.  Ideally I would prefer to be milling opponents for the win, instead of killing them in the conventional way.

It should be noted that my collection included lots of old cards (I guess its called legacy now?), but I'm still building up the newer stuff (standard).  I don't mind trading away older cards to get new cards, but don't have endless amounts of cash to go buying lots of singles.

below is the decklist I have created out of what I currently have available to me (that fits in Standard).
http://deckbox.org/sets/317760

Any help is appreciated.  Comment on my deck and direct me to your post and I'll try to leave constructive comments as well.

Thanks,
Kaffieen