Topic: [Modern][Opinion] First U/B Mill deck in 8 years!

Hey everyone!

I haven't played in a very long time and due to some awesome friends of my fiancee's I am totally getting back into MTG.

This is the deck that I want to play, I've included some details as to how I want to win, and what I want to play and would really appreciate any advice you could offer.
I am having trouble deciding how I can defend/overcome offensive aggro decks (In particular my fiancees R/G Aggro, lol).

Anyway here is my deck as it currently stands:
http://deckbox.org/sets/439642

Format: Modern
Play Level: Casual to start, I have a group of friends to play with, but I want to go to local weekly tournaments and FNM's eventually.

Winning Conditions:
1) Duskmantle Guildmage + Mindcrank = Infinite Combo
2) Manual Mill with Jace, Memory Adept, Traumatize, Mind Funeral etc...
3) Heavy hitting with Jace's Phantasm + early 10 card mill (Mind Funeral/Grind) <Want to get some "Glimpse the Unthinkable" OR
4) Consuming Aberration + Traumatize

Re: [Modern][Opinion] First U/B Mill deck in 8 years!

Welcome back to the game! I have been working on a blue/black mill deck, and to be honest to make it competitive in Standard format is difficult, much more so in Modern!

A few quick notes:

You might want to narrow down your win conditions a little. I started with the same kind of thing, three win conditions I was hoping for and it made the deck too "unfocused". The original deck I made is here (made for standard format): http://deckbox.org/sets/440082

The win conditions I had were manual mill (tome scour, traumatize, mind sculpt, Jace)
Jace's phantasm, Wight of precinct six, and Consuming Aberration. for some creature presence (a 5/5 flyer and a pumped Wight aren't bad after a couple mills, and the abberations can be downright nasty!)
And I went for a new one with consuming aberration + dying wish + devour flesh for some heavy direct damage and life-gain all in one. Attacking an opponent for 13, then sacrificing my own creature to do another 13 damage and giving myself 26 life was a lot of fun! And abberations can get bigger than that pretty easy!

Honestly, that deck played horribly. Though I did make my friends really mad, and it did have some fun moments! lol. Nothing more frustrating than getting milled repeatedly! I did manage to win a some, but it was just when I was playing against pre-builts or poorly constructed decks my friends had made. When I played against any decent standard or modern deck there wasn't enough focus to pull anything off. I wonder if you will run into the same issue with yours, especially against anything moderately fast/aggro. If I can offer any advice:

If you can, add some more non-basic lands. Watery graves would help out with mana and they're not nearly as expensive as they once were.

I think you have too many traumatize in your deck, at least by one. Traumatize is a great card in the right circumstance, but if you had two in your opening hand it would be a bummer! Even if you pulled all three and managed to play them all in a game, you wouldn't be playing one until turn five, so lets say you mill for just over 20 cards, leaving 20ish in their deck. The next one would only be good for just over 10 cards, and the last would do about 5. So the first one you played is milling 20 cards for five mana, not bad. The next is five for 10 cards, which is not nearly as good of an investment. And the last would be a waste. Maybe exchange a traumatize for another Jace. With the way the new Legendary creature/planeswalker rules work, it's not nearly as much of a waste to have three. If you have one Jace on the board already and draw another, you could use the 0 ability to mill for 10, cast another Jace out of your hand to replace the one on the field and do his 0 ability again for another 10 cards, making it as good as your second traumatize would have been, only you still have a planeswalker on the board!

I had thought scours in my deck, and found they didn't work all that well for what I hoped. It was nice to have a little card draw, and the two mill is a bonus, but neither is enough to generally make the difference or impact I hoped for.

Notion Thief might be a good one to add if you want to add a little incidental card draw, as it gives you a little board presence as well.

Overall, it will probably be fun sometimes to throw that deck around, but when you want to get more serious you'll have to narrow what "win conditions" you want and really focus the deck on that. If you're going to go straight mill, you'll need more creature removal/counter spells to keep you in the game while you drain your opponent.
You can go with more creatures that receive bonuses from your opponents graveyard and keep a little of your mill if that's the direction you want. Or whatever suits you best, just find what you really want to do and build around that.
You'll find at FNM (at least in our local metagame, and it seems that way in the other shops I've visited) the people who are winning with standard decks are building around one combo/win condition and then adding answers to what other people will try and do to stop that.

Overcoming aggro decks is going to be harder smile I have a Gruul aggro deck that absolutely destroys my mill deck. If you are going to tailor the deck to beat something like that (the first deck I made from scratch was to beat my wife's green aggro lol) you're going to want creature removal/control, maybe something as simple as unsummon cards and downpours/frost breath to keep creatures tapped or with summoning sickness. You can add some defender cards (wall of air, fog bank) to keep creatures from getting through to you while you mill away. Lots of options when you're building against one particular play style/deck smile

Hopefully some of this helps!

Re: [Modern][Opinion] First U/B Mill deck in 8 years!

Mill decks are hard to pull off no matter what format your in. Like what was said before you want a more control shell with a few mill options.

http://deckbox.org/sets/442309

Just a quick deck based on what you orginally had. It lowers you down to two real win cons (jace and mage +  crank) mind furneral is just really good in modern when your playing against decks that run 8 fetch lands to thin their decks out of land for you.

The rest of the deck is about staying alive, between the counters / unsummons / spot removal it should keep you alive longer. Fog bank is an excelent card when dealing with aggro or any creatures really.

the phantasam is nice but theres proboly better cards out there. Having a 5/5 is nice but its not always what you need when your trying to mill out your opponent instead of droping him 20.

Serum visions and remand both help with card draw and deck manipulation to make sure you can get what you want when you want.

For your mana base having a few duels is good to make sure you can cast whatever you have in your hand. If after playing you notice that your games are going longer and your sitting on mana with nothing to do with it look into adding nephalia drownyard

Hope this helps!
Scott-

Re: [Modern][Opinion] First U/B Mill deck in 8 years!

Wow thanks guys, I don't think I could have asked for a more detailed analysis! :-D

I went out and picked up a couple of Notion Thief's (thieves) and I agree with you Black Night, I may be trying to do too much at once.  I am definitely going to rethink how I want to win. I also got some Spell Snare's to counter with as I understand this is one of the best and most played cards in modern (according to the local shop experts). Watery Grave is currently going for around $15-$20 CDN in my local stores. I'm going to try and trade for them instead and nobody seems have have any Mana Leak's available... lol

I like the way my deck is going and I've heard before that Mill in any format is hard to pay off... probably why I want to try and make it work so badly... I love the "underdog" type decks.

Thanks again for your feedback I will seriously make some adjustments based on your suggestions.