I love alternative win cons and mill is my favourite of them all!
This deck is a Legacy legal version developed from my Modern equivalent, gaining Brainstorm over Thought Scour and Stifle over Trickbind.
Mill = Hard Mode
It has been said many times before that a mill deck is essentially a much less efficient burn deck. Instead of aiming at 20 life you're aiming at, say, 50 cards by the time you've got a few turns in. The efficiency standard for burn I apply is 3 damage per mana, so the equivalent minimum for a mill card is 5 cards per mana.
Once you know the available cards for this archetype, you'll see that there are extremely few options once you apply this standard, which is one of the reasons mill decks to date have always been considered more casual than competitive. That said, using this standard is really helpful in filtering down the potential cards we want to consider using.
Strategy & Card Selection
The deck has been built to keep to a tight, low mana curve working on the combination of the milling cards and card draw, whilst trying to work with the 1 mana to 5 cards milled ratio:
1 drops (12)
4x Hedron Crab - This little guy is awesome. Dropping on turn 1 can easily net you 9+ cards milled.
4x Brinstorm - Good enough to be played in a huge majority of blue legacy decks on it's own merits, this card is even better when we've got Sphinx's Tutelage on the board. Vastly superior to Thought Scour which fills this slot in the Modern version of this deck.
4x Visions of Beyond - Effectively an Ancestral Vision most of the time. Extremely good on it's own and just amazing with Sphinx's Tutulage. Shame Treasure Cruise and Dig Through Time are banned...
2 drops (9)
4x Manic Scribe - A second blocker with a ETB mill and delirium triggered mill, which is pretty easy to get thanks to one of my favourite cards ever...
4x Mesmeric Orb - The preferred two-drop after a first turn Hedron Crab, this little ball is the milling gift that keeps on giving. One of the highest efficiency milling cards available IMO. Worth noting that it also mills us and can potentially do so faster than our opponent, particularly if they have a way to shuffle their graveyard back into their library (pesky Emrakul...). Potentially worth sideboarding out for longer games.
1x Trapmakers Snare - A 5th copy of Archive Trap, because Archive Trap is that good.
3 drops (12)
4x Fraying Sanity - The latest addition to the deck and so good. Double all your mill effects, plus mills 1 for each card our opponents put in the graveyard themselves. Multiple copies trigger off each other, which is nuts.
4x Sphinx's Tutelage - Mills for 2 for every card we draw, plus more if we're lucky. Good with the additional cards we're drawing from Thought Scour, Visions of Beyond, and goes crazy when used with...
4x Jace's Archivist - We can burn though our cards pretty quickly (and deliberately) so refulling is really handy to keep the momentum up, obviously combos with Sphinx's Tutelage above. At the same time it forces our opponent to draw cards, further depleting their deck and can be used post-Emrakul, the Aeons Torn (or similar) shuffle effect to try and force our opponent to draw on an empty library (although this is extremely rare). Unfortunately the Archivists are slow to come on-line due to summoning sickness and are a prime target for removal, so these are high on the list to get sideboarded out after the first game.
0 or 5 drops (4)
4x Archive Trap - Frequently cast for 0 thanks to searching decks being so common, or with a little help from Ghost Quarter, one of these takes a quarter of our opponents library out in one hit. Not a problem casting is 'properly' if you have nothing better to do with your mana late game. Oh, and coupled with Fraying Sanity this goes to 26 cards. Yeah.
Lands (23)
3x Ghost Quarter - Primarily for triggering Archive Traps. 1 per game is enough and we only want a maximum of 5 colourless mana producing lands. I prefer to keep the mana available rather than destroy an opponents land if an Archive Trap is not available.
2x Scavenger Grounds - A little maindeck graveyard hate and one of the newer additions having previously run 4 Ghost Quarters. As this clears our graveyard as well it has some anti-synergy with Visions of Beyond, but is worth it against dredge/reanimator/etc.
1x Oboro, Palace in the Clouds - Recurring land drop to trigger Hedron Crabs.
17x Islands - Takes the land count to 23. I typically start with 24 lands in all my 60 card decks as a principle, but with the tight mana curve and card draw I think we can go with 23 here. These also give us the recommended blue mana for the amount of blue spells in the deck (taken from the George Baxter Analysis on Magic Workstation).
Sideboarding
After game 1 I assume that if my opponent has any mill hate it will be boarded in, so I now side out the playsets of Thought Scour and Jace's Archivist to bring in Stifle and Disallow.
Against dredge or reanimator decks Tormod's Crypt and Relic of Progenitus go in instead of the above for obvious reasons.
0-drops
4x Tormod's Crypt - For 'graveyard management', targets just your opponents graveyard and doesn't require any mana investment. Suggest siding out Thought Scour.
1-drops
3x Relic of Progenitus - See Tormod's Crypt. Not quite as good as it hoses your graveyard too, see Scavenger Ruins. Suggest siding out 3x Jace's Archivist.
4x Stifle - To counter Emrakul-like triggers and Elixir of Imortality abilities. Suggest siding out Brainstorm.
3-drops
4x Disallow - A second Stifle effect with a straight counter thrown in to protect your immanent win/death. Side out Jace's Archivists.
Sideboard Options
1-drop
4x Jace's Phastasm - Offers a chunky blocker or a (rather desperate) beat down win if needed, but have not really got that much use out of it. Also I'd now prefer to keep the slots free for additional interaction against mill-hate.
4x Scabling Claws - Limited effect compared to the graveyard hate in the sideboard already.
4x Sentinel Totem - Currently unreleased. Looks like it has potential.
?x Elixir of Immortality - I've very easy to mill yourself first in a longer game! This could give us some life and refills our library. Needs play testing but it might be better to board Mesmeric Orb?
3-drop
3x Laboratory Maniac - Considered this as another alt win con, but really this just seems vulnerable to counters or removal.
Alternative Main Deck Choices
There aren't a great deal of milling cards that meet the minimum 1:5 ration we're aiming for, and even less if we're trying to keep the mana curve tight to keep the speed up.
1-drops
4x Tome Scour - Bang on the 1:5 ratio, but I think Thought Scour is better due to the card draw and synergy with with Sphinx's Tutelage.
2-drops
4x Brain Freeze - Struggles to hit the 1:5 ration, needing 4 copies including the original to be worthwhile. Really better suited to High Tide or Solidarity.
3-drops
4x Windfall - A single use sorcery speed Jace's Archivist, so not vulnerable to removal and is useful immediately. Worth testing some more but as it's not reusable and sits in the 3cc sideboarding slot for Disallow, Windfall currently loses out to the Archivists atm.
4-drops
4x Startled Awake - At 4cc this sits outside of the target mana curve, plus doesn't hit the 1:5 minimum ra5io.
5-drops
1-3x Psychic Spiral - At 5cc this would need to hit a mill count of 25 cards to be worth a slot in the deck. This is certainly achievable in longer games thanks to Mesmeric Orb, which are also the games where you need it. Given the chance that it just gets milled itself I think I'd want to run more copies to ensure I drew it. Not sure on this one, needs some more thought and play testing.
Summary
If you've got this far thanks for reading! I'd welcome any thoughts, suggestions or questions.
