Just heads up you’re at 64 cards maindeck at the moment. I think Doom Whisperer is just too good to not run, but I see where you’re coming from. Looks pretty solid, +1

Thanks Jimmy_Chinchila! It has been added now, I was able to trade for one and bought two after FNM. And I know I'm at 64 cards, the extra four are the Creeping Chills that are meant to be surveil-milled.

GingerSquatch93 After running into a few decks running Sinister Sabotage, I'm inclined to agree with you now. That thing did work.

my personal findings were that you really dont need more than 1 copy of Blood Operative. The art on the card is probably my favorite in the entire set, but there really isnt a viable way to bring more than one of them back from the graveyard in a single turn. control can counter or kill them, so you end up just losing 6 life, and aggro kills him just as fast, and against aggro you really cant afford to give up 6 life. Its not a bad card, i just havent found a use for more than one copy in a deck yet. even if you have 2 of them in the graveyard you will only ever use 1.

Yeah ShiningSpear, it's turned into a workhorse, even in decks I didn't expect it to see play in but now that I've seen it, its a very popular card. I've seen Izzet Thousand-Year Storm/Ral play it, I saw an Esper Terefi Control play it as quasi-top-deck manipulation, it's extremely well used. I am gonna try and replace the versions of it and Thought Erasure I have in here with the FNM Promo versions just because they look cool.

Honestly xhuggels, I haven't even had the chance to use it at all as most of my games are over before I even see it, so I haven't had a chance to see how that runs.

And yes, I meant Esper Teferi Control, not my misspelling.

would dream eater fit in here at all? or not necessary.. i only have 1 blood operative and am trying to see if i need to replace the second with anything.

or, like the comment above, if i should just leave it out and run 63

i started with a 3 of in my deck, but dropped 2 copies. it dies to pretty much everything, which is fine if it gains you life or takes a creature with it.

The problem is 1 of 2 things will happen.

1. Best case scenario you play it, attack or block, gain 3 life, kill a creature, spend the life you gained to bring it back, and do it again. This outcome is great!

or 2. (the more likely event) You surveil it into your graveyard, which is a very sensible thing to do, you pay 3 life to bring it back, it gets Shock in the face as soon as it lands on the field, you pay 3 more life(6 total now) to bring it back again, and it gets killed in a similar fashion. Now true, your opponent did just use a Shock or Lightning Strike against your creature instead of you, but if you wanna bring it back you are going to have to play 3 life, which is what their spell would have done to you anyway.

At least against aggro it becomes somewhat of a dead card unless you play it at the opportune moment, when their hand is empty and they are topdecking, and even then you need a little luck for it to actually stick to the field to gain you a few life. But like i said in those situations at least according to me its not ever worth bringing back 2 copies. its nice to have the 1-of option though. Against control however, it can be quite annoying to deal with as you cant exactly ignore the 6 life-point swing each turn.

noncents it could, but to me it seems more like a more mana-expensive Unexplained Disappearance that surveils more. Now, tie that into a deck that's got Enhanced Surveillance in it with things that have effects similar to Creeping Chill in that you can mill-exile them, sure. Maybe throw in some Drowned Secrets to mill out your opponent and you might get somewhere that way. The only creature that I've got in here that's an ETB Surveil is Lazav, and he's more likely a fall-back plan because if I've lost a Doom Whisperer something has gone wrong. That being said, shapeshifting him into a Doom Whisperer has a benefit, it makes a Doom Whisperer that is immune to Cast Down.

xhuggels, absolutely, its more of a "I need some spare life here" kind of card. More often than not, its because I lean on the black mana view of life being an expendable resource if I need it to be, especially with the Surveil-Creeping Chill combo I have in here.

well for what its worth i love this deck, gonna play it at the standard showdown tomorrow. the only thing im missing is the lands... only 3 watery graves and no (!) catacombs

Many thanks noncents! I'm about to head out the door myself to play it as well!

Playtesting really well, like the addition of DoomWhisp

Yeah, it's great with Doom Whisperer. Even if I end up losing the Whisperer, Lazav becoming it works out well. I am finding that Blood Operative is not working as well as I'd hoped, not a lot of people are scared of a 3/1 with Lifelink. What may go back into the deck are the Nightveil Predators, because people are legitimately scared of a 3/3 hexproof flyer with deathtouch. Also considering, though not as seriously, House Guildmage for the mana-for-surveil, though if Phyrexian mana is any indication of the value of life versus mana, it's more expensive than Doom Whisperer.

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Blood Operative is good in very specific matchups. it plays well against control, as they would likely need more than one card to deal with it. it also kills their jump start card advantage, so that helps. it can also help reduce the power of golgari by reducing the number of creature cards in their graveyard, but its not a creature that can effectively fight other creatures, or just survive on the board for a while. but yeah i am also on the verge of placing my 1 copy in the sideboard.

i went 1-4 with this deck yesterday. i might have won one matchup and i got mana screwed but i'm sure i played horribly as well - still learning the finer points of magic...

round 1 loss against a fast boros deck, should have pushed it to a game 3 but idiotically i lost the 2nd game forgetting truefire captain's ability...

2nd round lost to dimir control only running doom whisperer and dream eater as creatures.

3rd round 0-2 bye (yuck)

4th round selesnya tokens absolutely destroyed me.

i'm gonna keep trying with it though, small sample size and i was brand new to the deck.

the problem is some of the spells in this brew cannot be used to its full potencial. Unexplained Disappearance for example is very limited in its use as opposed to what it should be. normally you can use it to protect one of your creatures, but you lose so much trying to save a beefy Dimir Spybug or Thoughtbound Phantasm, and it takes so long to build them into something strong that its just not worth it. Creeping Chill has to be in the deck or else Notion Rain and Doom Whisperer will just kill you. if you dont draw Creeping Chill its very risky to cast or use the those spells against red decks since they do a good enough job taking your lifepoints without you helping them. Dimir surveil can be very ying and yang, opposites trying to balance one another out. its a difficult deck to pilot, as no decision is an easy one.

xhuggels

the guy who rocked me with selesnya tokens mentioned something like that to me: "Dimir always seems to be an uphill battle"

At least the midrangy one is, which is what everyone is pkaying. Surveil is strong, it gives you the right option, but it costs you mana to get there. As long as your opponent has options too they can get ahead. I think that Disinformation Campaign solves those problems. It forces other decks into topdeck mode, and then forces them to play their cards or discard them the next turn. Im not a big fan of paying life for anything in the current aggro infested meta. Especially not in the current standard pool. There are way too many cards that deal direct damage. My personal opinion is that Doom Whisperer and Notion Rain are overrated to some extent. They are amazing cards that are unfortunately in the wrong standard pool. Aggro rules right now, and so decks need to build around the fact that aggro is incredibly strong and really popular right now. 20 lifepoints arent what it used to be.

xhuggels noncents There was a previous version of this deck that existed with four Vicious Rumors, though I forget exactly what I replaced it with. The plan at that time was to draw either that or Thoughtbound Phantasm and the relevant land source and always have a turn-one play. I am now, however, toying around in my head with a "mono-blue" surveil-mill-control featuring Dream Eater as the "big guy in the room" and Enhanced Surveillance with Drowned Secrets. Mono-blue is in quotes, primarily because I am also considering keeping a set of Creeping Chill in the deck, without mana, or minimal black sources (shock or checklands). Use the Enhanced Surveillances to dig through my deck faster, looking for counters and the Creeping Chills, and then use Devious Cover-Up to start chucking things into back into the deck.

I like the idea that mill could work, but would Creeping Chill really find value in a deck with less creatures, in a deck that does no real damage other than this? Thats just a curious question i have since i havent playtested that card yet, but it looks incredibly interesting. I guess if you can consisantly surveil it its basically just free life right? But it would be in the place of another card. Is free 3 life worth the spot? If it went to the graveyard after it gets surveiled id be on the train boss, shuffling it back into the library to surveil again, but it getting exiled is very undesirable.

I like the deck...but I think I like the description even better. I laughed openly a few times. Thank you and kudos on the deck. +1

xhuggels the idea for the "mill-surveil-control" version would be to get out four Enhanced Surveillance ASAP so you can churn out as many Creeping Chill as you can at the same time, like when Dream Eater enters play. Keep chucking the Creeping Chills to the bottom of each surveil trigger so you never draw them, draw and get Dream Eater's Surveil 4, which then, with four "surveil an additional two" triggers from Enhanced Surveillance, I'm smacking an opponent for 12 life, which if I've been chipping away with an ever-growing and counter-protected Spybug, can be fatal. Add to that the fact that I've been milling up to 8 cards off their library with each blue spell because of Drowned Secrets. By the time Dream Eater comes out, that effectively ends the game right there if it's not over sooner. I'll be putting up a "Volume Two" as the "mill-surveil-control" version of this sometime in the next two weeks as well.

Thanks Oldschool930! I like to write descriptions for the decks I really get into and this is one of them, glad you enjoyed it!

nice deck but i think 22 lands its to low creeping chill looks great but sometimes its a bad draw i prefer main Enhanced Surveillances

So youre just playing Drowned Secrets for mill? That might be a little slow, but at the same time, the reason mill struggles is because to make mill fast enough to finish games, you gotta lighten the control aspect of it, which tend to go south quite often. Im interested in seeing your build though!