This is an aggressive control mill deck. The primary goal of it is to mill your opponent's library, while also hitting him hard. The name of the deck is both figurative and literal. It is figurative since the library is often referred to as the opponents mind, so we are playing with it as we do the traditional milling. However, we also want to be unpredictable in how we can counter decks and really "mess" with their minds by playing an aggressive control flavor that has a lot of options, but keeps limiting the opponent's options.
The ideal first turn would be a Ponder or Dream Twist (possibly paired with a Surgical Extraction). However, the second turn is probably more important to our strategy than the first, so if this can't happen, don't sweat it.
Second turn we want to play either Invisible Stalker (preferred) or a Mindshrieker. If we don't start with one of these guys and at least 2 land in our hand, we had better mulligan.
Third turn we are looking to attack and either put a Sword of Body and Mind or
Trepanation Blade
on the field or use Mindshrieker's 2 mana aggro-mill ability.
From there we work on a beat-down mill strategy. We use the blades to beat and mill the opponent, opening up two win conditions. The Invisible Stalker is unblockable, so he works best with the Sword of Body and Mind for an automatic 10 card mill and a 2/2 green Wolf token. The
Trepanation Blade
is a guaranteed mill whether attacking or blocking and can help deprive the opponent of land early on. Mindcrank turns beats into additional milling and creating a shorter clock for the opponent. Nephalia Drownyard is another source of milling and exposing cards to our Surgical Extractions.
Once we can get a Undead Alchemist on the field, whenever we mill a creature, we get a 2/2 black Zombie token that mills instead of damage on the attack and is a great chump blocker on the defense. The critical part here is to protect the undead alchemist as it will be a target of removal - which is where our control aspect comes into play.
Our control comes in a variety of methods and helps give the mind games flavor to the opponent. First we have traditional Mana Leaks - normal, expected control from a blue deck. Second, Mindshrieker's ability doesn't have to only be offensive - it can be defensive to protect against burn or attacking creatures. Leaving 2 mana open, they are not sure if we have a Mana Leak or plan to use the Mindshrieker's ability. And if we do pump the Mindshrieker, it is a bit of a lottery that they will have to take as to how much the Mindshrieker will be pumped and if they should attack (or defend). If you don't need to use either, just use the ability for an extra 1 card mill at the end of there turn to use up the mana. In third, but definitely not the least, comes the powerful Surgical Extraction. If we can mill early, whether by Dream Twist or an early hit, we might be able to remove a big threat such as removal or countermagic from the game. Even in late game brought on by Dream Twist's flashback, Nephalia Drownyard, or general milling), we can remove threats permanently. I can't emphasize how important this card and using it wisely is to our strategy. By game 2, you should know the biggest threats and remove them as soon as you can. Our fourth control/counter ability comes in the form of the Cackling Counterpart. While this card may be used in the normal copy usage, it comes at instant speed and could replicate a creature which is about to die from removal - such as the Undead Alchemist - and really mess with the opponent's strategy. At 3 mana it may be a lot of mana to leave untapped, but in the right situation, it could be very useful. Our last control feature is the Mind Control card in which we take control of a large creature they have and make it our own. :)
In our "in progress" sideboard, we have a number of cards, maybe of which are extra copies of the ones we run, in case we want to shift our emphasis. One of the things is the ability to add removal via Doom Blade or Dismember when playing other creature-based aggro decks. Also, Noxious Revival may be useful for throwing large CMC cost cards on top of a library to mega-pump a Mindshrieker. The last one I want to point out is the
Runechanter's Pike
. I really wanted this in the deck with the 16 instant/sorcery spells I am running and the first strike it gives (especially when paired with a
Trepanation Blade
), but it just didn't do as good a job as the other blades as it was too hit or miss and would lose power if I used a card's flashback.
So, in the end, we have two win conditions that work surprisingly well together - aggressive beating and traditional deck milling.
