Hey gang!
Today I bring you the deck I will be running in the GP here in Australia. Drum-roll please as I try my best to become a filthy blue/black mage.
The concept of the deck idea was to not only learn how the different interactions my deck would have with other modern staples, but also to what extent these staples could effect me. Being new to modern I decided to not go burn/storm on principle and try something else.
------DECK BREAKDOWN------
Land:
*Polluted Delta - fetches colour source needed/thins deck/ combos with Hedron Crab
*Watery Grave - fetch into this shock land early if you need mana fixing.
*Drowned Catacomb - effective and cheap mana fixing lands. 9/10 times you will be able to play it untapped.
*Ghost Quarter - disrupts any mana fixing your opponents try at the downside of thinning their deck (which we don't mind happening). Can be used in combo with Hedron Crab.
Draw/Dig Cards:
*Gitaxian Probe - In our mana colour so we can choose to pay mana or use life as a resource (best bet to shock yourself and keep mana open). Draw a card AND see the opponents hand for 1 phyrexian blue mana? YES PLEASE.
*Thought Scour - 1 blue mana to mill the opponent for 2 and you draw a card. At instant speed. Hell Yes.
*Remand - use this to counter, not draw. The draw is bonus.
Mill Cards:
*Glimpse the Unthinkable - very effective. Dimir mana cost to mill 10 is exactly the kind of gross and disgusting value we want as a filthy Dimir mill-mage.
*Mind Funeral - One of the best milling cards out there. 3 CMC to potentially win then and there. Yes it is a bit of a gamble as they may just drop 4 lands in a row, but you gotta risk it for the biscuit. Get even more cancerous with Twincast.
*Thought Scour - Already mentioned above. This card is played more for the draw, the mill is icing ontop. If your opponent scry's and keeps the card ontop. Bam Thoguht Scour.
Counter Spells:
*Mana Leak - the main contender for counters in this deck. 2 CMC to counter any spell unless they pay 3. Either way you get around big problems with this deck ESPECIALLY in a format which overall is rather fast.
*Remand - 2 CMC to counter the spell and put it in their hand. This can lead to them having to discard (potentially show something you didn't know they had), can lead them to slow down as they re-cast the spell, or make sure they play safer as you are just saying no to anything. The draw from this spell is a sweet bonus.
*Quash - this is your most expensive counter spell, and also our most restricted counter spell, but is so dirty I could not resist playing it. The reason it is played is so you hit an instant or sorcery that leads into one of their win conditions. If it resolves you rip that win-con right out of the game (Asta-Lavista Grapeshot).
Creatures: (yes we run some)
*Hedron Crab - Drop this adorable little critter (and hopefully all his pals) and start dropping lands
*Jace's Phantasm - Too much value to not put in. Cheap 1/1 flyer that gets bigger once you mill 10 cards.
*Wight of Precinct Six - Something most people surprisingly don't see coming. Great secondary win condition, as well as a CMC effective body to have on the board for a mill deck.
Other Spells:
*Thoughtseize - hand hate and eliminate possibly an early game threat. Combos really well with Surgical Extraction.
*Surgical Extraction - 1 Phyrexian black mana to take out all copies of a non-basic land from someone's deck, hand and grave as long as it is in the grave. So much value. You can do all kinds of nasty moves with this card. A definite must against any deck.
*Gitaxian Probe - Read above in Draw/Dig cards.
*Twincast - Now this card is definitely your first option of sideboard, but can be quite beneficial most of the time. Cast mind funeral, it resolves, cast twincast in response to copy mind funeral and target them again, ouch.
------WINNING CONDITIONS------
Okay so being a mill deck you can guess what the first win-con is, mill out the opponents deck. Although this is the main win-con, I have found that you may feel like you can rush this effect and have a quick game. NO, DO NOT DO THIS! If you rush out mill effects over anything else in this deck you will feel like you are doing the right thing, but you are just helping the opponent most of the time. Weird I know but think of it like this. Most of the time your opponent will draw initially cards that they know they can go off with. You milling their deck as soon as possible tends to help them find answers.
Play the long game, you have counter spells for a reason!
------SIDEBOARD------
Sideboard is pretty self explanatory so I won't say much about it except that your big candidates to swap out of will most likely be Twincast and Wight of Precinct Six.
