This is by far my favorite deck to play in this new standard. So when breaking down the deck every single card has a purpose. While you can certainly switch cards out for any you feel are better, this is the vest version I've created so far. If you haven't picked up on it yet the whole goal of the deck is to mill yourself and take advantage of cards that want to be milled. In this deck we have 12 main cards we want to mill. They are
Narcomoeba
and
Creeping Chill
and
Arclight Phoenix
.
Creeping Chill
- This is the card we get the most value out of milling. The draining of the opponent for free is insane, and the best part is it is uncounterable damage. Since it's a triggered ability we get around pesky counterspells as well as boosting our life total and hurting theirs. While the card can be cast later in the game in case you draw it, it isn't as powerful and seems like a waste of 4 mana spent on just a
Sovereign's Bite
.
Narcomoeba
- Enjoy free creatures? Enjoy free flying creatures? Then
Narcomoeba
is the card for you! When first looking at this card a 1/1 flier is not considered very powerful, but because of its second ability it is. Being able to get a quick 1/1 flier out for free helps to apply pressure and to chump block when necessary. Fliers are always a pain to deal with, and most of the time your opponent can't justify using removal like
Lightning Strike
on a 1/1 until their life total is low enough for our Phoenix(s) to finish them off.
Arclight Phoenix
- This card is known for being busted in modern, creating a whole new deck just built around it. Guess what? It is busted in standard too. While in modern there are a lot more can-trips to pair with
Arclight Phoenix
standard is limited to very few, even less with the fact that we won't be drawing them but milling them. This is why we play the cards
Maximize Altitude
Maximize Velocity
and
Radical Idea
. These cards have a cheap jump-start cost and therefore are easy to chain in a turn to bring back our Arclights.
Radical Idea
is busted for this because it replaces the card we used to jump-start it allowing us to chain two of them and then jump-start velocity or altitude for an easy three spells. You can sort of look at it as a combo deck by trying to mill all of the phoenix and then chain jump-starts and swing for 12 in one turn not even mentioning the potential
Creeping Chill
or
Narcomoeba
cards you'll most likely hit while milling.
Maximize Velocity
can also be paired with
Narcomoeba
to get an extra 2 attack in, in case it was milled the same turn we were chaining for Arclights. With Arclight being able to come back from the graveyard we are ok even casting it and attacking for a quick 3 damage or hoping they'll use a kill spell on it, and we can just bring it back later.
Now that we know what cards we are hoping to mill, how exactly how do we mill them? We have 16 cards in the deck that can mill. Most of them are creatures but we also have a plansewalker, all amazing and vital to the deck's strategy.
Ashiok, Dream Render
- This card is busted in this deck. Being able to mill yourself for a guaranteed four cards every turn just helps the consistency of milling those 12 cards we want to mill. It also acts as a way to disrupt your opponent if you realize milling yourself has become a liability, milling them and then exiling their graveyard hurts more decks than most realize.
Stitcher's Supplier
- This is one of our best millers. For one mana we get to mill a guaranteed 3 cards and then if they kill it another 3. Don't worry about having it killed, it's easy to constantly attack and eventually they'll get fed up enough and kill it. It also makes for a nice chump blocker.
Glowspore Shaman
- This is one of the best fixers in the deck, really it's the only one but eh...
Glowspore Shaman
is especially good because it mills us for 3 cards but then it give us the option to put any land from our graveyard back on top of our library. This ability really helps us with getting all four colors but also to hit our land drops. That being said the deck only plays about 20 lands and you really only need 5-6 lands to make it work. Don't be worried about holding lands to fuel jump-start cards.
Wall of Lost Thoughts
- This card was a golden find for me. It first is able to mill us for 4 cards but also it acts as an amazing blocker against aggro decks. With 4 health it gets around most of the creatures mono red plays and most of the time they waste an attack and a spell to kill it, freeing the skies for Arclights and Narcomoebas. In case you aren't already sold on this card, in the late game it will often be one of the only creatures you have on the field. Our creatures are weak most only having 1 health, they die easily and we need a creature to target with our jump-start cards
Maximize Velocity
and
Maximize Altitude
. It sucks to only have their creature to target with these spells, there's no point in giving their blocker flying to get back Arclight if they can then just block it.
Now the other spells are just jump-start cards and I've talked a lot about the strategy and goals of them. The only one I haven't talked about is
Risk Factor
. This card acts as a direct damage spell and fuel in the late game. It also has jump-start so it also is good in the graveyard but this is the only one we want to first have in hand. We get much more value out of it by casting it twice.
Lands. This manabase looks wack, I know. Though it is actually super consistent with getting all of the needed colors. We have a basic in there just in case they play
Assassin's Trophy
. I thought about playing more basics and
Evolving Wilds
to help thin the deck but it first slowed it down too much in the early game and actually screwed my mana colors more. So... not doing that.
Sideboard is another entirely. I thought about waiting to post this deck until I had a good sideboard that could help with the tough match ups in standard, but that was taking too long and not matter what I built it changed the next time I played it. Though the cards that show up regularly in my brief sideboards have been
Assassin's Trophy
Mission Briefing
and in some variants I play the new
Jace, Wielder of Mysteries
as an alternate win condition. Let me know what ideas or cards you have for the deck, though I can't promise I'll change the main deck I definitely need help with the Sideboard and figuring out which cards to put in there. Thanks!
