So I took the time and read through all of your thorough notes until I got to the last part about "DO NOT play Mill in Modern!!!" Now, this deck had me really excited and had me building up a shopping list until that. So I'll just ask you your opinion again I guess.. Do you honestly feel that this deck (or decks similar to it) are modern viable or competitive? I know tha a deck can't be good against everything, but do you think in most situations this thing could mill out most libraries before you lose the game?

I'm also looking into other options to use with this deck to keep your health high like Profane Memento just so you can ensure that you have a little life buffer. Perhaps I missed it, but what can this deck do to buffer some damage while you mill?

I love the theme btw and the writeup was top notch, great work!

MrSilk thanks for your support!

Profane Memento is a fog in the best case scenario and useless otherwise (you can read about it in my 'Fogs' section): you'd better play Fatal Push over it, because like Profane Memento it is a fog in the best case scenario and useless otherwise - yet it is your best defence card in some niche situations and matchups. Other lifegain and defence pieces are worth less than what we already play in terms of tempo gained, so unfortunately there aren't better ways to buffer the damage.

Mill nowadays cannot even dream about the competitive scene. Aggro is either too fast (making fogs quite useless) or packs disruption (like Merfolks: aggro + hindrance has always been lethal for combo decks, and Mill isn't an exception); I'm including in the latter hatebear strategies too, which includes Eldratron even if it is at the edge of that category and Mill's matchup against it is overall quite even (which is more an exception than a trend). Grindy decks too, in a way, combine efficient disruption (discards, counterspells..) with efficient enough creatures that they practically put up a pressure of the kind aggro decks do: we cannot really beat them. Against combo decks it is a race, especially because many of them are resilient to Surgical Extraction: since many combo decks don't search in their decks if not for winning right away and fogs are useless, Mill almost cannot win before turn 5, so that the question becomes: can our opponent win before turn 5? The answear is always yes (apart from Lantern, which is a favourable matchup), so we do not get an edge even in this part of the metagame. Control decks like Azorious are what we beat easily now, though they are a super small part of the field and for a good reason (i.e. they are mostly meant as a counter to smaller grindy decks). You can read more about my thoughts on Mill's viability in the section 'On competitiveness'.

Sidenote: are those good arguments for giving up on fogs completely? No. I think they are still our best tool to punish grindy/aggro keeping bad hands or with small disruption overall. We would not be able to make up for their loss as to our win percentage if we chose to address other situations or parts of the metagame instead.

have considered Snapcaster Mage

Having Flash, and replaying instant and sorcery

kohlstech I have considered that you didn't considered Snapcaster Mage's specific entry in my primer..

After HoD was released, I brewed my own modern UB Mill based around Fraying Sanity, and I would like to share with you what I have learned. Some things may be obvious, some things may be new, and some things you may have already known. I have read through your post, but I may be saying something you already touched on without remembering it (there was alot to read!). I will split them up into facts and opinions for simplicity's sake.

Facts:

Leyline of the Void blanks Fraying Sanity and Visions of the Beyond

This is something I did not anticipate when I first added a couple copies of Leyline into my 75 and started play testing. Because the cards never actually enter the GY and simply go straight to exile, your milling is not compounded with Fraying Sanity's end step trigger. This does not necessarily make Leyline a bad card, or a bad card in the 75 deck. However, you should keep Leyline in the sideboard, and when you decide to bring it IN, you need to board Fraying Sanity OUT. Also, there are never 20 cards in a GY to make Visions anything more than a cycle card, unless your opponent happens to be milling you as well (or you spent precious turns/mana/cards to mill yourself). My solution for the unfavorable interaction with Visions I detail a little further down.

Your opponent does NOT have to search for a basic land after Ghost Quarter resolves

If your opponent can read cards, they will know that searching their deck opens them up to an Archive Trap. You will more than likely be able to get a free Ghost Quarter into Archive Trap combo the very first time you set it off. But after that, your opponent will opt out of searching his deck, turning your Archive Trap into a 5CMC 13 mill. Not the best bang for your buck at that point. My advice is to sideboard out Archive Trap after game one. Ghost Quarter is now essentially a Wasteland, as your opponent will opt out to search for a basic thinking you have Archive Trap in hand. I personally run another 3 mill cards in my SB to swap in for Archive Trap after game one, assuming I don't have other SB options in mind for the match up. Now of course, I am not forgetting about fetch lands and tutors that your opponent may have in their deck; there are many options for turning Archive Trap on. Just keep in mind when you go to sideboard, if you are relying on Ghost Quarter to set up Archive Trap, you should board Trap out.

Opinions:

Visions of Beyond is a trap card

By this I mean, it is a trap for the mill player. The earlier iterations of my deck of course contained a full play set of this magnificent (or so it seemed) card. The problem is, Visions makes you greedy. You don't want to cycle it for one card, no! You want 3 cards for one blue, oh yeah baby! And so you hold onto it; it sits in your hand until you fire off at least two mill cards (Fraying Sanity included). Now that sounds good as a mid to late game refueling, top decking it after your opponent already has 20 cards in the GY and Visions is online. But what Mill is lacking to really put it into a competitive position, is explosiveness. We want to mill them to 0 at the end of turn 4. That is the perfect and best play out of our deck, and there is a lot of competition for action on turns 1 thru 3, and possibly not enough cards in the GY to bring Visions online. My solution was to trade Visions of Beyond out completely for Serum Visions. The scry 2 is amazing. Because the card doesn't change or have a bonus attached to playing it later, you don't fall into the trap, you don't get greedy. Fire it off on turn one to setup your next 1-2 turns. It doesn't sit in your hand, it doesn't conflict with a turn 4 win (in fact it helps you prepare for one), and it costs the same as Visions of Beyond (one blue).

Shelldock Isle is a trap card

Again, a trap for the mill player. In theory, it sounds fantastic. You exile a card (best case scenario, Glimpse or Breaking/Entering or Mind Funeral or Archive Trap) that costs more than one blue mana, making it inherently cheaper, and use it to close out the game. However, you can only use this ability if your opponent has 20 or fewer cards in their library. So it is essentially a "win more" card with serious draw backs. You remove the top three cards of your library and only pick one. Two are sent to the bottom never to be heard from again (the odds are better with fetch lands of course) and one is exiled and can't be used till later. The idea that the exiled card only costs one blue mana is also technically untrue, as you have to tap Shelldock Isle in addition to the one blue mana. So this exiled card actually costs one colorless (the Isle) and one blue, making Glimpse a tie and Mind Funeral only one black cheaper. Archive Trap and the Entering half of B/E are the best possible cards to have exiled under Shelldock but the odds are very low that they will consistently be one of the three cards available to choose from. Hoping for a perfect Shelldock into B/E or Archive Trap combo is chasing the win instead of playing for the win. There is no guarantee that Entering will have an amazing target to choose from, and Archive Trap can be played for free via other more reliable methods. I personally think the draw backs do not out weigh the advantages, that there are better lands to choose from, and since it comes into play tapped, it is too slow for the turn 4 win we are aiming for. Having a land that doubles as a mill spell is great for this deck, but I think Ipnu Rivulet fills that role better. It costs 1 more mana to play, only mills 4 cards, and requires you to sacrifice it, but in terms of a "win more" scenario, it can push you over the finish line without inhibiting your early game, which I feel is more important.

Hedron Crab is not a turn 1 play

I think that the idea of playing Hedron Crab on turn 1 as an assumed "perfect turn one play" is incorrect. In my opinion, it's perfect place is on turn 2, and this is why: you gain nothing by playing it on turn one over playing it on turn 2. There is no advantage, no bonus, no reason to play it one turn early. It is impossible to get a turn one trigger off it's landfall ability (which is practically a guarantee on turn two), in general you don't want to chump block with it until you've gotten some value out of it, and not having it available to block 1 damage (if you are on the draw) is not a game breaking concern. What you should be doing on turn one is playing cantrips. Thought Scour, Serum Visions, and even Fatal Push (if you were on the draw or think your opponent will have a creature to play next turn) are far and away better turn one plays than Hedron Crab. Hedron Crab belongs on turn two, played before you drop your second land, guaranteeing a trigger. Playing Crab on turn 1 opens it up to creature removal before you even get one landfall trigger off it.

Finally I want to say, I quite enjoyed your write up. I learned a few things, confirmed a few things, and even disagreed with a few things, haha! Darkness is brilliant; I completely forgot that card even existed. As you said in one of the comment chains, it's essentially a 1 mana Time Walk, which is fantastic for what this deck (and mine) is trying to do: win asap. Often times, I find myself losing a game thinking "man, if I only had one more turn." I will be testing Darkness later today as a matter of fact. I am also testing Haunting Echoes as a possible substitute for Leyline of the Void (allowing you to keep Fraying Sanity relevant). I'll follow up on that later.

However, I do disagree with your conclusion that mill will never be a "Tier 1" deck. Modern has changed so much so often over the years, I believe any deck has a chance to be the best deck in the meta at that time. Mill simply hasn't found it's footing yet. New cards will always shake things up. Even if they aren't cards we can use in UB Mill, often times they simply push out cards that are/were problems for us.

People always said Death and Taxes had no place competitively in Modern, and Brian Coval proved everyone wrong. The same possibility exists for mill. We just have to find the right combination of cards.

Shivalry Thanks a lot for your thorough post! I'll reply right away.

• I missed the nonbo between Leyline of the Void and Fraying Sanity. Good point!
• I think Visions of Beyond is still great even when bringing in Leyline of the Void: if you don't start with the enchantment or they destroy it early, you get a powerful card; if Leyline of the Void sticks, you get to cycle it easily.
• Totally agree about Ghost Quarter.
• I agree with all you have said about Visions of Beyond: it does not fit as an aggro card. However, when the game is not about aggroing out it is great; and even against aggro it digs towards your fogs (spot removals are worthless in this case), which you can easily play on turn 4 even after Visions of Beyond.
• I cannot disagree more about Shelldock Isle: it is fantastic. It is not a win more: it is card advantage and an important piece of the mill department, even if every spell you cast through it costs . It is the perfect card for the fog plan, allowing you to fog on turn 4 and cast two mill spells on turn 5 for the win (it comes up quite a lot!!!). Ipnu Rivulet on the other hand costs the same fof getting its effects but, while not entering tapped, even when you activate it milling only 4 cards is irrelevant (Mill bites out the opponent's library using spells milling around 10, for a total of 50: there's no need to spend resources to round up the count if you can avoid it). There are certainly builds that don't want Shelldock Isle, but I don't think they are good enough.
• I partially disagree about Hedron Crab too. It is not a good turn 1 play, BUT (1) you said yourself that you too are concerned with mana constraints (I agree), and would not even play Visions of Beyond as a cantrip in bad scenarios (I do not agree); (2) spot removals like Fatal Push are really useless in Mill, so again they cannot cover the 1-mana slot; (3) there aren't other 1-mana Mill spells you want (or, worse, need) to play, and on the opposite the 2-mana slots are choked: so you really need to open up with Hedron Crab a lot of times (you will certainly save it for later against midrange, for example).
• Ahah I actually didn't consider aggressive bannings as a way for us to be competitive for once! Nice catch!

Now that Darkness is back on my radar, I am likely going to drop Fatal Push. Currently, I had been cycling Dimir Aqueduct by playing it and picking it back up to trigger Hedron Crab and activate the Revolt on Fatal Push. It was quite satisfying. But with Darkness, I won't care about spot removal, since I can just Fog my opponent and mill him out. So I agree with Fatal Push.

I may give Shelldock Isle another go, but I played with it ALOT when I first brewed up my deck, and I hated everything about it. I felt like I was pitching 2 cards, often ones I wanted, and I hate that it comes into play tapped. If it was able to be tapped for mana immediately, I would be more inclined to put up with it. I feel much more like I'm driving the match with Ipnu Rivulet than on the back foot with Shelldock, especially on the draw. But perhaps, I will give it another shot.

Same with Visions of Beyond, I feel far to slow. I get greedy and it sits in my hand too late, until I panic on turn 3/4 because I don't have any action, and I cycle it digging for some, never benefiting from the full draw 3 effect. I played it as much as I played with Shelldock. Swapping it for Serum Visions has felt sooooo good. I love the scry. I can't say it enough. I love planning out my next 2 turns. I never feel bad about my timing when I play Serum Visions. I feel in control and on the offensive. Maybe I will try mixing them, two of each, but that might dilute the effectiveness. In any case, Serum Visions is currently my best turn 1 play, far and above Hedron Crab, and I don't lose anything for it. I don't miss a landfall trigger, and I keep him off the field and away from Fatal Push for at turn. Also, if I bring Shelldock back in, I can go land into Serum Visions turn one, then Hedron into Shelldock for the landfall trigger. Since it comes into play tapped, you don't lose anything.

However it plays out, I need to do much more testing. I am excited to play out Darkness though.

If you are playing Dimir Aqueduct just to play again a land, you may want to up your land count. Oboro, Palace in the Clouds does the same thing and comes into play untapped; Shelldock Isle comes into play tapped but it's totally on another power level. We exploit the fact that Mill has very plays on turn 1, and later you could find a hole in your game progression so that you could play it on turn 3/4 (of course, exploiting such cases requires you to play an adeguate number of lands, around 24).

About Visions of Beyond, it is not about getting greedy but about carefully planning your game. At times you may want to cycle it early. It's about to find the balance between making land drops, making full use of your mana every turn, winning the earliest we can, and have a late game out against disruption OR if we end up the fuel before Shelldock Isle is ready.

On the contrary, Serum Visions is bad, since you really can get something from your scry only on turn 1 because of the sheer amount of fetches we have to play and because of Mesmeric Orb; turn 1 is also the only turn in which you can afford to have a play that doesn't do anything (mill spells are quite mana expensive). I prefer to play my Shelldock Isle when I have 1 mana to spare; this also open up more room to actual cards for a better ratio between the cards you really need.

I personally use relic and incursion as my means of by hate, while popping relic feels bad sometimes its can get you out of a sticky situation against titans and it just hoses dredge and discard decks. Crypt incursion is just amazing against super creature heavy decks and has saved me more times than I like to admit.

Fraying Sanity has been a godsend in grindy matchups. Jamming one turn 3 against a slow tron hand will just lead to half their deck being gone on the next turn. Hiding one under shelldock is also a way to tilt your opponent.

Blueberrypop you may want to employ Nihil Spellbomb over Relic of Progenitus. The only case in which the latter seems better is against Tarmogoyf; but against Tarmogoyf you want to side in Set Adrift, so that Nihil Spellbomb is ultimately better (if you still want a card against their other graveyard cards). Yet I don't think it is better than what you would side out, so I would not bring them in anyway.

Its more the repeatable graveyard threats, jund vengevine being the most recent deck I faced that caused yard problems.

I guess you should add 4 Ipnu Rivulet :)

Otherwise I think will is not as bad as you tell it to be

froop I explained why Ipnu Rivulet does not belong to this list in its very entry.

And Mill is bad in any case - this metagame being not an exception. It certainly avoids most of your opponents' interactions, still it has got too many free losses and very unfavorable matchups.

Oh, I missed this, sorry

Why are you running such a strange suite of fetch lands?

Devinmlake As I wrote in the notes about my list, bluffing a third color is unrealistic since you would bluff Path to Exile which not only is bad in Mill but also made obsolete by Field of Ruin (actually forcing them to search, and a land to boot). On the other hand, Lantern has some games where it names your fetchlands out of Pithing Needle: we can make their second one useless this way.

Damnation would be good if the opponent is going wide. Might be good in the sideboard if not in the main.

Kyln against a capable opponent who deploys only the needed resources, Damnation at best can grant a land drop, not even acting as a fog (i.e. a time walk, in our deck) since you cannot play your extra spells (the ones you couldn't simply play in place of your defence spell) neither in the same turn (as we could with Darkness) nor in the following one (as with Crypt Incursion). And at worst, Damnation is completely useless because, apart from the kinds of disruption that could thwart your fogs too, it is weak to haste or flash(ed) creature or manlands. See the proper entries for more details.

I agree with you that the mill deck with the style you are suggesting is not really good, because you are packing your deck with all these spells that do basically nothing to the board state or interact with what your opponent is doing.

So yeah, that deck might offer the fastest goldfish mill win available, but it just loses to anything disruptive or too aggressive.

A control mill deck using only a few repeatable mill sources (e.g. Mesmeric Orb) might be better (still not really top tier of course).

gosslot Thanks. Your points are right. You only missed that any build more controllish than this fails (even including Ensnaring Bridge) more than this list. This result is actually the hidden suject of my whole primer.

In my opinion, you are missing a few things. I have a pretty good (50/50) matchup against affinity. Decent against burn in the board.

My curve is 1.89. Great call on the trap maker's snare had not seen this card not sure of its slot. Field of Ruin over Ghost quarter seems good for filtering your own deck I just don't know about paying two against relevant lands like infect land in affinity. Two too many fetch lands in my opinion. I would stick to Polluted Delta and Flooded Strand.

Darkness in the sideboard. Didn't know about darkness. I think that is smart actually against elves or Tron. Maybe merfolk. Harder to get off against merfolk because of counter-magic.

Add two Search for Azcanta. Amazing!!

Maybe no Mesmeric Orb and instead use manic scribe as it is a blocker plus sort of easy to hit delirium. Manic Scribe works pretty well with fraying sanity. Instant, sorcery, land, maybe creature.

I also added a few board wipes like Bontu's last reckoning in the board relevant for elves and merfolk.

moe@vet99 I'm afraid that you didn't read my notes carefully enough, because you don't seem to be answering my primer at all.

Affinity is not so a bad matchup despite being a tier. Darkness is the best card against them, followed by a bunch of Crypt Incursion or Fatal Push (you probably don't want to go that specific adopting Hurkyl's Recall). Still, we suffer from being a slow deck needing answers as an inevitable engine of the maindeck: if they draw their answer, we simply lose.

I'm curious about how you could get a playable matchup against Burn even sideboarding the full 15 cards.

Having a sleeker curve is meaningless if you cannot win. My claim is that my list is the most consistent you can get in winning at turn 4 (that happens around 50% of the times unopposed).

I've explained the reasoning behind every card, including Trapmaker's Snare and Field of Ruin - whose use surely is not to take out opposing lands, especially against Affinity.

The colors are already strained: it is not possible to play fewer fetches. I would play more if I could.

Darkness is the best we can do mainboard, as opposed to any other defensive or mill spell.

Search for Azcanta is completely useless, both as a card filter/draw and as ramp. I would plat Serum Visions before it if I needed a cantrip.

Manic Scribe is an horrendous card. See my notes for a detailed analysis.

Board sweepers are bad in Mill. Again, refer to my notes.

Be sure to actually be responding to my guide before posting. Thanks.

https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/789141#paper

This deck got 2nd place in SCG Modern IQ in Glassboro.

Interesting approach with the 3 Fatal Push and Jaces Phantasm.

Caleb5490 I wouldn't count that as interesting: unfortunately, this isn't the right meta for such removal suite (actually, it will hardly be..).

By the way, I am persuased you would share my same advice if you read my notes.

Much respect for all the thought you've put into this deck. It's fun to play for sure. I'm interested to see what kind of mill deck you could put together for other formats, especially legacy.