Here I am Xelerat!

I'll try to add a section to the deck's description as soon as I'll have time (I hope tomorrow, maybe). It's a good idea, since it helps understanding what cards to not suggest and gives a good idea of the deck's growth.

As a fellow Phenax player, I have a couple of suguestions.

Undead Alchemist - combo and value piece

Altar of the Brood - very efficient and "combos" with Undead Alchemist

Intruder Alarm - REALLY good with tap abilities, and phenax gives all your creatures a tap ability. Also combos well with Undead Alchemist .

I noticed you dont want to run the alchemist in a comment above, but I would still recommend the other two. Have fun and happy brewing!

Oh thanks wozislightning! Nice to know somebody else out there plays this bad boy.

Anyways, I knew about those cards, but regardless, thanks! I guess you missed on the last section of the deck's description, but that's fine... I should probably put it in a more visible place :P

About Altar of the Brood , I've always liked it's symmetrical nature, but I've always seen it as a card only useful as a win enabler together with some sort of infinite loop (like Sharuum + Phyrexian Metamorph / Sculpting Steel . Do you think it's worth adding it standalone? Or maybe even trying to find some infinite loop of such sort to support it?

On the deck, I'll probably do some actual upgrades in the next weeks, I'll see if I can snag a spot for Intruder Alarm . Who knows, maybe also for the Fullmetal Alchemist :D

I will also try to add an Updates tab of I can.

Xelerat, I've found some time to add the Updates tab, tell me if there's any way I can improve upon it!

After the soilers for Commander 2019, I hope to be able to do a new update to the decklist, mainly for adding Bitter Ordeal and hopefully Intruder Alarm . Who knows, maybe even new stuff from the new set!

I absolutely love this Deck. I am an happy owner now to. Won a lot of Games! Especially against more than 3 enemies. I would look for more protection due to the fact that the enemies become a lots of focused on the mill-player destroying there comps. Dimir is so much fun to play.

Oh wow, what a honour, Xelerat! Nice to know that there are more Phenax guys around.

Protection is definitely lacking, I will try to look into that, but there are many directions possible:

• Adding more counterspells, even though I wouldn't, personally, as I already got another deck with many of those.

• Adding some recursion in order to be able to retrieve important pieces from the yard. If this is consistent, I could even consider milling myself a bit here and there to find what I need. Just not too much, as I already have a Meren deck. On the note of milling myself, LabJace seems interesting.

• Adding direct big creature protection, like Swiftfoot Boots , Mask of Avacyn or similar. Maybe the new Gift of Doom .

The last hypothesis seems the better choice, I'll try to check and see if I get any better results this way.

I'll join the team on this as well and report back keep up the good work. Testing in house then at some LGS

Thanks THCue! Let me know how your testing goes, it's always good feedback. Just remember to give me some info on your meta too, and I could try to suggest some small modifications to better suit your pod.

Okay tested it some. Few 4Pods and some 1v1. It does Pretty well and on a 1v1 it does even better. Here are some things I've added.

REMOVED

Fallen Shinobi

Silent-Blade Oni

I felt these are too clunky and cost alot. They are based with attacking I wanna MILL.

Bitter Ordeal Hard to find and am on the fence about it.

Reliquary Tower Almost never have a full hand and colorless..Added better land

ADDED:

Added better dual lands not in-front of my deck currently and removed the cheaper common/uncommon lands etc.

Propaganda We need more protection anti-token

No Mercy And another..

Thran Dynamo More mana is needed high cmc

Hope this help a little Once I get in-front of my deck I'll add more info this is just my thoughts.

Well that's nice THCue! I feel like your swaps make sense, since attacking is not what I want to do anyways, I'm going to think about those too.

Propaganda was previously in the deck, but I've swapped it out sometime ago.

No Mercy is a functional upgrade: once I'll have enough money for it I'll buy one! Until then, Dread will do fine.

Anyways, keep up the good work and let me know!

Extended Update. I hope this helps And I love hearing what you think, if you hate the card let me know we are all here to brew and make it great right.

Lands Removed

Barren Moor Tapped....

Lonely Sandbar Tapped...

Reliquary Tower Not really Needed..

Temple of Deceit Tapped but... not sold on it.. Might put it in again who knows only land on the list that I simi-like

Terramorphic Expanse Bleh I hate comes in Tapped...

Evolving Wilds Bleh I hate comes in Tapped...

ADDED LANDS

Drowned Catacomb

Watery Grave

Field of Ruin Land Removal Just in case!

Exotic Orchard Poor mans Commander

Prismatic Vista Why not and it's fast!

MORE ADDED

Crawlspace More Protection Our guys are going to be tapped alot we don't DMG we MILL

Mask of Avacyn More Protection

Mind Grind To good to toss away

Ritual of Soot Ours are mostly high costing

Ok, let's go THCue!

As far as lands go, I completely agree with you. One of my (very) long term plans is to replace all slow lands with more efficient duals. I guess it'll happen over time, otherwise I'll just put in some basics instead. My main concern is that "good" duals like Watery Grave , Morphic Pool etc. are very pricy and I don't think they'll go down any time soon.

• I have a Crawlspace in my binder, I might as well try it myself. I wanted to stray from pillowforting, but it's a bit of a necessity in deck's like these after all.
• Mask of Avacyn is good protection, but doesn't grant haste. Actually, only Swiftfoot Boots and Lightning Greaves do such double function and I'm happy with them, as of now.
• Mind Grind is very powerful, but needs a lot of mana to be useful, something I'm sometimes struggling to get to. I have it in the binder, I might try it again sometime.
• Ritual of Soot is a good selective wrath, but I feel like it might not impact the board enough to be really useful, at least in my meta.
• Regarding the fact of having tapped creatures, I must tell you that it's not a problem actually. When a creature is not affected by summoning sickness anymore, you can tap it for Phenax's ability. This doesn't mean that you have to do it right away. I usually keep the creature/s untapped for the whole rotation and tap them to mill only in response at my last opponent's end step (right before the start of my next turn). This means they stay untapped for the whole rotation!

Have you considered or been recommended Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth yet? I know Wrexial isn't your commander but it guarantees that Wrex is unblockable on anyone and can get whatever spell in any graveyard.

Thanks for the comment, squadcarxmar!

Yeah, I indeed already knew about this synergy with Wrexial . It's a good utility combo, but it's also a quite expensive card to get (for how it impacts my game overall). Furthermore, including it would mean being kindof "forced" to also include Cabal Coffers for all the mana, and that's another card I definitely won't buy in the short term again due to its price.

However, some day or another, I'll get them both!

To add to that... It's also attacking and casting a spell that might do something vs Tapping with a huge creature to Do a huge mill. IMO I would rather mill then have to attack to see if I can cast a spell? Your thoughts.

Well, THCue, it depends.

Most of the time, you'd want to go for the mill kill, but there can be some situations in which it's more advantageous to cast a In Garruk's Wake / Insurrection / Fact or Fiction / Disrupt Decorum from someone else's yard than to mill for 8. It's good to note also how most of the X/X creatures I run count creatures in your opponent's graveyards, so Wrexial wouldn't affect that either.

Wrexial is very versatile, as it potentially gives you access to many more options, since you may as well mill on purpose one of your opponents beforehand to later steal a particular spell from their graveyard.

Ran into a huge issue Wheel of Sun and Moon Stopped this deck in it's tracks. I think we will need a card to destroy cards like this?

Well THCue, I have a friend running a Rhys the Redeemed deck, and the Wheel it's there too. My plan is usually to focus on milling him first with all my resources to mill the Wheel too: at that point, I'm fine, since he doesn't have recursion for enchantments.

However, if he manages to cast it early, the deck lacks specific interaction for enchantments, so you could be screwed. Note how you still can attack him for damage with X/X creatures or kill him with Duskmantle Guildmage / Bloodchief Ascension and some big mill.

It definitely is a card that gets in our way toward victory, but there are workarounds. Remember that you also have cards like Bitter Ordeal to remove specific threats from the library (like Eldrazi titans). Again, in my deck's description there's a section explaining how to counter a specific meta with cards that go against the mill strategy.

Yeah Bitter would work.. Also the Duskmantle Guildmage Won't work because no cards hit the graveyard instead they flip to the bottom sadly.

Yeah THCue is right. Wheel of Sun and Moon is a replacement effect. Nothing is hitting the graveyard.

Removal can include things like Bitter Ordeal (already mentioned), Sadistic Sacrament , Nightmare Incursion , Jester's Cap , Praetor's Grasp , Cranial Extraction , and counterspells in general would handle the card. Nevinyrral's Disk can get Wheel back into their library and off the field. There are other exile cards from library effects but those are pretty good ones I listed in my opinion. Cranial might be a better bet in case it's in their hand.

Black and blue can't do a whole lot against enchantments and artifacts once they're out besides maybe bouncing them to hand with blue?

I'm trying to think of some things that might work. like Steal Enchantment maybe but then again we will have cards like Leyline of the Void So we really are going to need 1 or even 2 cards that will stop this also I forgot the name but there are also creatures that do the same effect but they are creatures mainly worried about the enchantments here.

Ouch, that's what I get for answering late in the night, THCue. The Wheel is a replacement effect, so one of my alternative win con suggestions is indeed incorrect. Anyways, as for other possible solutions to get rid of enchantments that don't involve counterspells or selective removal from the library/hand/graveyard, I definitely wouldn't recommend Steal Enchantment : albeit the low CMC, this card is too limited in its usage. Moreover, stealing the Wheel of Sun and Moon from one of your opponent's control, won't change the enchanted player, so actually, it's effect will still apply.

As squadcarxmar pointed out, Dimir doesn't have a lot of specific interaction for enchantments. Since bouncing to hand doesn't seem a very viable option in this case, as two mana enchantment can be easily re-cast on the next turn, I'd probably try to interact with the addition of more counterspells, and only as a second choice with specific exile effects, as a counterspell will more useful in most of the situations with respect to a Cranial Extraction .

Okay I ordered couple more cards got the Cranial Extraction and I was missing the Bitter Ordeal and Cyclonic Rift two major key players in the dilemma. Another player being Junktroller and Lim-Dul's Vault He will allow me to keep casting these cards.

I'll have a rematch with the player and play him a few more times and report back.

Don't think this has been mentioned yet, but Bitter Ordeal doesn't work the way you want it to with mill. It only copies itself for each permanent that went there from the battlefield this turn, since cards aren't permanents unless they're on the battlefield.

https://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/magic-fundamentals/magic-rulings/magic-rulings-archives/266953-about-bitter-ordeal-gravestorm-and-milling

Awesome deck though!

Very True still a good removal card but not at it's full potential in this deck but 3cmc