Question.

I've heard of people casting both sides of Boom/Bust with Goblin Dark-Dwellers ability... Could both sides of Breaking / Entering be played with Shelldock Isle's ability?

Solid write up. +1

NM, turns out I'm an idiot. Breaking / Entering has Fuse.

Thanks frostdiggity! :)

Check this out! :)

Thanks frusciante7, but the list you linked is awfully bad. Please check my detailed and argumented 'deck description' before posting again.

Lol I love the 'awfully bad' argument. This deck took some modern staples ez pz at a real tournament and looks 80% like your list.

I have no interest in the mill strategy : I find it lame as f. Therefore I won't read your 10 pages about it :)

I was just putting up some more info for you to sharpen your PoV

Sorry for being blunt.

I'm certain it takes already kind of an effort to read my whole '10 pages about it': if you add contents without making sure they aren't redundant, you make difficult other peoples' reading. I'm sure this was not your intention, but this is that exact case: for all the cards I don't play of your linked list, I provided thorough motivation -- so your content is redundant.

Again, don't post if you haven't read.

im a helpfull person... but no way in hell im going to read all that text in hope of giving a single good advice... and especially not with an attitude like that... why the fuck are you even here in the first place? click private or stop complaining that people write here...

fuck it who cares what a moron who run 4x mind funeral, 3x Crypt Incursion and 4x Darkness think about others... he obvious cant think a rational thought anyway...

MadCheddah, I'm sorry you felt the need to be so aggressive and rude.

I don't think I should answer your post, as it seems to me more like an emotional outburst than anything else. I will be happy to do so were you to provide a proper comment.

I invite everyone willing to post here to be more polite in the future.

Ahah Peisistratos you're a sad fk. No wonder why no one seems to care about your deck, the only comments here are basically you hatin on the community willing to provide further help. You're the one being agressive and you are too oblivious to even see it.

I invite you to stop telling people what to do in the future. It makes you look even more like an a-hole (and trust me you don't need that).

frusciante7 please stop with this kind of posts.

Two things lol, one, holy shit thats such a long description, and i feel that a lot of it is pointless, that a lot of people will be tured away and mot read any of it. Keep it short and sweet. It can be a little long but this is way overkill. Two, what is your plan against cards like Leyline of Sanctity?

delusiions, thanks for posting.

The description is long because because it is meant to be complete and thorough, not appealing. You are free not to read it if you think you don't need to. :)

The plan against Leyline of Sanctity is to mill it after targeting it with Set Adrift, powered mainly by Shriekhorn and Hedron Crab. The article provides better explanation if you're interested.

Ensnaring Bridge works great in mill

doozy, Ensnaring Bridge does not help the Infect, Burn or Emrakul, the Aeons Torn-based deck matchup, which are the most hard ones. Against creatures this build runs well enough, while offering the maximum flexibility against other strategies. Also, I think Ensnaring Bridge being inferior to my defence cards due to the motivations you can find at the entry with the same same in my guide (here are the main concerns if you want to skip the details: works poorly with other cards, requires playing subotimal cards and adopting suboptimal lines of play to be effective, costs too much and comes too late to take you ahead in tempo when thwarted, not being a catch-all answer to creatures in a meaningful way can be easy exploited by opponents, too fragile i.e. exposed to common and played-regardless removal spells).

How long did it take you to write this description? :) +1 from me

MTG1814 thanks. It certainly took a while. :)

Fair enough. What about Jace's Phantasm and Manic Scribe? Phantasm is an awesome blocker than can also end the game quickly. Manic Scribe can act as 3-4 more Hedron Crabs. I've had success with both of these cards.

doozy he has mentioned both in the desc/ primer. However if you wish to know both are just trades for the opponent's removal so straight mill spells are significantly better. despite this, Hedron Crab is used because it requires an answer or you win on T4 most of the time

doozy I appreciate your comments; I only hope you could consider in future reading the releavant sections of my article before asking. I have a part where I discuss popular cards choices that I discarded; there are entries for Ensnaring Bridge, Jace's Phantasm and Manic Scribe among others.

For a quick hint, creatures without further support are not useful to hinder effectively aggro decks; also when they are needed (against attacking creatures) they are removed too easily by ubiquitous removals after opponents have deployed their dangerous threats (no tempo loss on their part). They are detrimental in the control/midrange matchup (they get to keep removals even post side since they don't have much better to add), against which normally the plan is to take advantage of Mill's normally-difficult-to-disrupt gameplan (i.e. it wins by means of spells; sideboard slot are better used to improved other match-ups). Both the creatures require playing suboptimal cards and adopting suboptimal lines of play to be effective -- notably Manic Scribe which needs delirium, but Jace's Phantasm too could demand you to play a turn 2 Breaking / Entering instead of Mesmeric Orb (if they get to be included a the list that could support Jace's Phantasm) if you don't have a Glimpse the Unthinkable.

thanks Sinist3r. I totally agree with your point.

You've put heaps of thought into this and it shows, thanks, you've definitely helped me make some choices in my own mill deck which Im already seeing reflected in my W/L ratio.

Only thing I can say is consider Surgical Extraction on the mainboard just for the non-basic land removal. I found my opponent drops a nonbasic or fetch land turn one almost every game. So I started paying extractions for 2 life early as turn 0. Sometimes they'd have 4-7 fetch lands exiled from their deck and hand, severely impending their mana reliability, spices up the Mind Funerals too.

I am really pleased with the result, Jewishman :D

I talked about the (alleged) usefulness of Surgical Extraction targeting lands discussing the package "Ghost Quarter/Path to Exile + Archive Trap (+ Surgical Extraction + Snapcaster Mage + Mind Funeral)" (I added a little specification there thanks to you :D ). There is an entry on my guide going by that name, if you're interested. If you are not going to read it: I think it is not worth it against the vast majority of decks, but the real argument is that you cannot play something different from mill spell and fog-effects main deck (again, I added a section about this named "On adopting fog-effects" prompted by your observation). Anyway, about main-decking Surgical Extraction for different purposes than exiling lands: as a mill spell is grossly ineffectual, while it possibly gain turns only against a very negligible number of decks which are not realistically played (and instant-wins against an even lower amount).

Ok, so first of all, Mr(s). 'stratos, I wanna thank you for uploading this deck list (and massive great wall of China text to go along with it), and I heavily based my own mill deck on yours. The main exception is that I run 3 Jace's Phantasm instead of Crypt Incursions, just because I find the Jaces to be more helpful most of the time, not to mention avoiding anti-synergy with Visions of Beyond, and being highly useless dead draws after the first one has been played. Like, sometimes I'll even win games by battle simply by poking with the 5 flying damage a couple of times against certain decks that have a hard time defending against fliers of that magnitude that early.

...Ahh, but anyway, that's not the important part. I have a couple of points here that I would really appreciate your discussion on:

1.) Riddlekeeper. Frickin' Riddlekeeper, man! You spent all this time writing a frickin' PhD thesis over here on every single aspect of mill decks, and not even one mention of Riddlekeeper?! Like, not even one tiny line mentioning why you think it's bad? :P I mean, I used to run this thing in 3 or 4 in the deck, and man I gotta tell ya, that thing puts in some serious work against creature decks that attack a lot, sometimes being the MVP that almost-singlehandedly wins for you. Like, I mean, I get that you're more interested in flat-out racing glass cannon style instead of defending, but again, I'm thoroughly shocked there wasn't so much as a single mention of it in your analysis. Please, correct this grievous oversight soon!!

2.) Again, I enjoyed the ample amount of material you went through with explaining your card choices, but I'd have liked to see more of a ... "guide", if you will, over how to play against certain matchups. Especially the ones you consider "hard". What is your advice for playstyle/siding/general strategy vs. them? Especially burn. I went to a modern tourney last night with this deck, and I faced nothing but burn all 4 rounds. Fucking burn. I've never felt so much frustration against a trading card game before in my life. ...I'll leave it up to you to guess just how well that went. ;) But seriously, what do you do against them? Just side in your one Spellskite and pray you draw it early? Because I'm at a loss for what to even do against that cancerous matchup.

3.) Honestly, what is the Shelldock Isle even for? It's like a slower island because it comes in tapped, and its ability to cast a card seems extremely useless, since it takes 2 mana to do anyway, which the vast majority of cards in this deck are even equal to or less CMC-wise to start with. So it seems like all it really does for you is scry 4 and deck thin. By one card. Is that really worth delaying your mana supply by one blue the turn you play it? I mean, hell, the best use I can even think of with this card is comboing it with Breaking / Entering to cast Entering. ...and you don't even run that card either! So really, what is the point? Why not just run islands over it instead? Because I gotta say, I've been running it for a few days now, and I remain thoroughly unimpressed by its performance. :| If it really is that good, then I just don't feel like you explained it enough.

4.) Speaking of lands... How come you don't like Dimir Aqueduct? It's another dual-color land for the deck that combos well with the Hedron Crabs. And how come you prefer the searching painlands to something like, say, Evolving Wilds? Is it just because you feel like coming in tapped makes these lands too slow? Surely that doesn't stop you from running Shelldock Isle! And I would imagine the life costs associated with bringing the non-basic lands in untapped can only be detrimental in the burn matchup. (Seriously, what even works against those bastards!?!) Because, the way I see it, you either pay the life for your lands and lose to burn even faster, OR you bring them in tapped, and lose against burn anyway because now your mana supply is too slow.

Hrm.... but, I suppose, now that I think about it, that would just be an argument in favor of the painlands, because at least they give you the option, right? So against any matchup that isn't burn, it'll be more helpful than auto-tapped lands. Still, like with the Riddlekeeper situation, I feel like you should have at least mentioned Dimir Aqueduct in your write-up! Or had a section for (non?)viable lands for this deck in general. Come on man, you're really dropping the ball here! ;)

Thanks CesiumHippo.

I guess your point (1) is ironic, since Riddlekeeper is not Modern legal. :D

2) I intend not to provision such a guide because: 1-I plan to update this guide only when new interesting cards for this strategy are printed; the main reason for this choice is the following point. 2-The list I supplied is the best one (for this strategy) which can have game with anything; yet this doesn't mean it is the best list for a particular field (for instance, one where only Merfolk is played), and also it doesn't mean that the particular plans contrived (and implicitly included in the strategy) in order to build the 'best Glimpse the Unthinkable Modern deck which can have game with anything' are indeed sufficient to beat opposing strategies!! To put things cleary, Mill is at a great disadvantage againt pretty much every deck currently played in modern: Bant Eldrazi, Affinity, Burn, Jund/Abzan, Zoo, Jeskai Nahiri, Infect.. while also been constantly beaten by its everlasting nemeses such as Thalia, Guardian of Thraben and other hatebears, Emrakul, the Aeons Torn, Leyline of Sanctity from Hexproof and Ad Nauseam.. the 'good' match-ups being only decks slower than turn 4-5 without disruption and possibly with many deck-searchers: I think perhaps only Valakut and Tron currently meet these conditions (and both of them could play Emrakul, the Aeons Torn, perhaps with a bad list but still mostly unbeatable to us).

As a side note, Spellskite is not very good against Burn; I bring it in myself against them, still it is a very bad place to be. However, I recenlty tried Immortal Coil with great success against Infect, and I would bring it against Burn too; not tested yet. Anyway, if you want to discuss specific match-ups in the current meta, I am open to entering the debate.

3) Shelldock Isle is the real deal: is a land with your best spell attached. Sure, it is worse than another land under the land respect (since it enters tapped), and worse than another spell under the spell respect (since it needs to meet certain conditions to be cast). Still, every part of the effect of the card is useful, and getting to have both along the course of the same game is huge - which is something not even Snapcaster Mage can grant. For better contestualization, you can compare this with my thoughts about Snapcaster Mage: Snapcaster Mage can do wonderful things for this deck, possibly being a mill spell or a defence card (you get only one of them though); yet Snapcaster Mage overprices your choice in a way that is unaffordable for this deck: at least 3 mana for fogging (not really gaining an extra turn because of mana inefficency) or 5 mana for milling. With Shelldock Isle not only you get both its effects: they are very affordable too!

4) I deem (and not only I, as you can see by turnaments results) entering-the-battlefield-tapped lands that at least do not threaten to get away away with the game later to be not Modern-played. There are of course specific case in which this does not hold, that is where a deck needs something very specific - i.e. it is awfully color-hungry, or it has game-spaces where it can 'spend 1 mana' like Ad Nauseam with Temple of Deceit.. Dimir Aqueduct is basically a tapped land that can get you a loss when destroyed in any way: it's not worth it, not even adding up the 'synergy' (a very feeble one too) with Hedron Crab. I also think the lands appearing in my mana-base - aside from Shelldock Isle - to be pretty much consensual in the community - so much that I don't plan on discussing other lands.

Final note: the point of my primer is: NOT play Mill in Modern!!! And if you have played it up to now, may my primer get you to live with the fact that it is an awful choice (if your goal is to win) and finally put any stubborn miller's (such as I was) soul to rest.

Hope you found my answer accurate. I'll soon add these parts to the primer. Thanks for raising those matters.