Papi79,
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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
While I am having fun I wouldn't mind some pointers and ideas.