Competitive build of a Tiny Leader Dimir deck focused on milling asap the opponent!
Sygg Dimir milling is NOT an easy deck to pilot, but once you master it, it can be very difficult to beat sustainably, and terribly frustrating for the opponent. And most importantly, it will undoubtedly teach you to better playing MTG.
If you are new to Tiny Leader, you might want to build first a standard deck with many creatures and some synergies first, but I definitely encourage you to try the Tiny Leaders format, as it is incredibly fun, very creative, non-rotating, and much faster than EDH. You will be using those one-off rares that linger in your cases and binders, and above all, have great fun building decks for this atypical format.
This deck was born as a convolution between brainstorming with a friend after our first Tiny Leader casual tourney (looking at blue mill spells in his trade binder) and an article in QuietSpeculation just a couple of days later (!)... As per MTG Goldfish Tiny Leader metagame, Dimir milling decks are apparently widely played...
Playing the deck
You only have to mill 42 cards as the General is out and opponent starts with 7 cards in hand (maybe people will be willing to mulligan to 6 or 5 against this deck, LOL)...
There are a lot of milling spells from across all MTG archaelogy. Instant AND sorcey speed, lands (!) and creatures. Some library manipulation spells and many small synergies.
You need to know the deck thoroughly well to decide what initial hands can be kept... You have reasonable chances though to draw sweepers and removal thanks to black (I've seen monoblue versions of this deck with Kira, the Great Glass-Spinner which pack a lot of countermagic and more creatures and almost no removal).
Some card interactions and plays:
Hedron Crab works wonders with fetchlands and auto-bouncing
Undiscovered Paradise
, and it can be lethal if dropped via Lotus Petal in turn 1 followed by a fetchland used for a 4-5 milling spell... (that's 11 milled cards out of 42, on the play before the opponent even draws her first card...)
Visions of Beyond is literally Ancestral Recall once you have milled 20 cards, and in the worst case it helps Storm. I always count the cards the opponent has in the graveyard and library (she starts with 42 left in the library) as it is important for several cards: You need 10 cards in a graveyard for Jace's Phantasm to land as a 5/5 flyer for U (it is a fast clock or helps stalling while you keep milling); you need 20 left in a library for Shelldock Isle and 20 in a graveyard for Visions of Beyond.
There is imho a critical mass of one-off milling spells so as to use one per turn at least, with allstars Glimpse the Unthinkable and Mind Funeral. Remember there is a Storm milling spell, so you might want to save some one mana spells to trigger storm at least twice and mill 9 cards with it...
Propaganda and Riddlekeeper stall the game despite looking like a nombo, while Rhystic Study guarantees sustained card advantage if unanswered.
Sphinx's Tutelage
shines in this format and deck, as there are quite some ways of drawing cards aside of the standard once per turn card. Monocolored decks are doomed if you land the Tutelage and manage to draw more than one card per turn (remember the old trick of auto-countering your 1-mana spell with Arcane Denial to draw THREE cards in the next upkeep for 3 mana...)... There is of course Brainstorm and Visions of Beyond which grant each 3 triggers to the tutelage, and the typical U-costed cantrips,
Serum Visions
, Ponder, Preordain... Also try sometime Prosperity, Braingeyser, Stroke of Genius and even subpar
Fascination
.
Lands are especially harsh against controllish decks, as they have very few ways of answering a Shelldock Isle holding any 4+ milling spell (I once won by shelldock isling a Crypt Incursion), or Nephalia Drownyard sustainably milling 3 cards...
Sideboard:
Tailored against my LGS meta (basically white weenie soldiers, Alesha Rakdos vampires, Omnath stompy, and Kira milling); choose 10 among the following:
-
Virtue's Ruin
against all kinds of whitish aggro, monowhite, boros, selesnya, orzhov...
-Hurkyl's Recall and
Energy Flux
against artifacts [a skilled friend is porting Robots-Affinity to Tiny Leader]...
-
Hibernation
against stompies
-Tainted Remedy, Virulent Plague against lifegaining and tokens
-Propaganda against swarmers
-suffocate,
Hydroblast
,
Blue Elemental Blast
against red
-
Feldon's Cane
and/or Laboratory Maniac or maybe Elixir of Immortality for the mirror
-Arcane Lighthouse against Geist of Saint Traft, Kira, the Great Glass-Spinner, Predator Ooze,
Witchstalker
, Lumbering Falls, you name it... This one might be mainboarded, but I really don't know what to take out...
Maybeboard / wishlist:
More fetchlands, Jace, Vryn's Prodigy
, and Snapcaster Mage are obvious add-ons, but I can't afford them.
Some more countermagic maybe... horriby awry, Redirect, Turn Aside, Dispel, Counterspell, Arcane Denial, Mana Leak
Some "obvious" choices are apparently missing, but most of them were tested and dismissed: Grindclock, Mesmeric Orb,...
Keep in mind the standard milling efficiency should be 4+ cards milled per one mana (
Vision Charm
,
Memory Sluice
, Tome Scour, Glimpse the Unthinkable)... Non-linear effects are better when available, like drawing x cards via Prosperity with
sphinx tutelage
in play to trigger an endless milling process against monocolor decks... Mind Funeral is also great against decks playing a zillion fetchlands...
Thing in the Ice
from upcoming Shadows over Innistrad looks promising...
