Phenax, Control Mill

Commander / EDH Control Counterspell Mill Multiplayer Tap/Untap UB (Dimir)

jajkannarr

Land (33)

• 1x Arcane Lighthouse
• 1x Buried Ruin
• 1x Command Tower
• 1x Darkslick Shores
• 1x Drowned Catacomb
• 1x Fetid Pools
• 1x Flooded Strand
• 1x Homeward Path
• 1x Ice Tunnel
• 8x Island
• 1x Misty Rainforest
• 1x Morphic Pool
• 1x Reliquary Tower
• 1x River of Tears
• 1x Sunken Hollow
• 1x Sunken Ruins
• 7x Swamp
• 1x Tainted Isle
• 1x Underground Sea
• 1x Watery Grave

Sorcery (12)

• 1x Damnation
• 1x Demonic Tutor
• 1x Drawn from Dreams
• 1x Feed the Swarm
• 1x Fractured Sanity
• 1x Grim Tutor
• 1x Maddening Cacophony
• 1x Sadistic Sacrament
• 1x Strategic Planning
• 1x Tasha's Hideous Laughter
• 1x Walk the Plank
• 1x Windfall

Instant (18)

• 1x Arcane Denial
• 1x Archive Trap
• 1x Brainstorm
• 1x Chain of Vapor
• 1x Counterspell
• 1x Cyclonic Rift
• 1x Dark Ritual
• 1x Disallow
• 1x Dramatic Reversal
• 1x Force of Negation
• 1x Force of Will
• 1x Hero's Downfall
• 1x Lim-Dul's Vault
• 1x Mana Drain
• 1x Negate
• 1x Pact of Negation
• 1x Swan Song
• 1x Whirlwind Denial

Artifact (12)

• 1x Arcane Signet
• 1x Charcoal Diamond
• 1x Dimir Signet
• 1x Lightning Greaves
• 1x Mind Stone
• 1x Mirage Mirror
• 1x Sky Diamond
• 1x Sol Ring
• 1x Thaumatic Compass  ^Flip
• 1x Thousand-Year Elixir
• 1x Thran Dynamo
• 1x Worn Powerstone

Planeswalker (1)

• 1x Jace, the Mind Sculptor

Commander (1)

Creature (15)

• 1x Charix, the Raging Isle
• 1x Consecrated Sphinx
• 1x Consuming Aberration
• 1x Eater of the Dead
• 1x Fog Bank
• 1x Guard Gomazoa
• 1x Hullbreaker Horror
• 1x Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur
• 1x Notion Thief
• 1x Opposition Agent
• 1x Sewer Nemesis
• 1x Sire of Stagnation
• 1x The Haunt of Hightower
• 1x Tree of Perdition
• 1x Undead Alchemist

Enchantment (8)

• 1x Freed from the Real
• 1x Leyline of Anticipation
• 1x Mystic Remora
• 1x Pemmin's Aura
• 1x Propaganda
• 1x Psychic Corrosion
• 1x Rhystic Study
• 1x Search for Azcanta  ^Flip

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This is my version of Phenax, God of Deception. The deck aims to slow the game down as a control deck and wins through primarily mill or potentially combat in rare cases. Back when I first learned magic playing casual tabletop 60 card decks, I learned to play the game like most with classic creature based aggro decks. My third deck I ever built was something new to me and to this day is one of my favorite win conditions in Magic. This was a mill deck that was very fun for me to play and as I joined the EDH community had a large part in constructing this deck.

History of the Deck

As stated as above this deck statrted as a casual 60 card mill deck. This deck was filled of cards like Mind Sculpt and Jace, Memory Adept and had a basic mill strategy for a casual format. Back at this time my playgroup enjoyed the idea of mill, so I quickly became a fan of the deck and the alternate win condition.

The next iteration was my first build of mill with Phenax as a commander deck. This deck was pretty bad to put it lightly. With little knowledge of deckbuilding especially for a hundred card singleton format I of course ran out of card ideas very fast. The deck focused on spell mill cards and used walls as ways to mill with Phenax. This was also the first time the deck used counterspells in attempts to stop counterspells from my playgroup. This slowly evolved away from using spells to mill my opponents and focused more on control pieces and larger creatures to mill my opponents faster.

The next update came with the growing power creep and a long loosing streak for the deck. The update threw out a good bunch of creatures and added almost any infinite combo I could add that won through mill. I did get a few victories with this update but it was very inconsistent. I added a lot of tutors so I could tutor for combo pieces, but each game seemed to be just me sitting around waiting for combo pieces and was not as fun as I hoped it would be.

This brings us to the current standing of the deck. Focusing only on slower mill and gaining value over time and controlling the board. This is only a midpower level compared to a few of my other decks, but it is one of my favorite decks to play for a real grindy kind of game. This deck also uses a bunch of my pets crads that I learned to love from past mill decks like consuming abberation and Jace, the Mind Sculptor.

The future of this deck will most likely be very similar to it current standing, but I hope to gain a few more counterspells and board wipes to built up a larger control arsenal. As more sets are printed this deck ideally looks for other creatures that get larger from mill or have large toughness in the colors.

How the Deck Plays

They deck plays as most blue control decks do. They sit back and make their plays when it is most important and attempt to gain value with your own creatures while sitting back and controlling my opponents plays. The early game consists of mostly artifact ramp, drawing or setting up draw engines, and playing valuable creatures in attempt to play into the late game.

The win condition of this deck is primarily through mill. The deck focuses on using the ability on Phenax, God of Deception, alongside creatures to mill out your opponents. This ability allows creatures you control to tap and mill a player equal to the creatures toughness. Cards like Charix, the Raging Isle and Tree of Perdition allow you to mill your opponents for a significant portion of their libraries each turn or more with cards like Freed from the Reel. This ability can also improve some other larger creatures like The Haunt of Hightower and Consuming Aberration. These creatures each get bigger the more cards that are milled and can quickly get out of hand.

Some of the important pieces of the deck outside of the counterspells/removal, large creatures, and crad draw/ ramp include ways to abuse the tap ability and ways to shut off opponents big plays. Some of these cards include Freed from the Real / Thousand-Year Elixir, and Opposition Agent / Notion Thief. These cards allowing untapping of my creatures which help allow for very large sprees of milling or the cards like Notion Thief help stop opponents from making large plays of their on own to help slow them down.

This is my favorite way to play magic. I love the slow grindy games of Magic where you use every resource to try and out value and outlast your opponents. Now a days mill may be one of the most annoying archetype for some people, but I am grateful that my playgroup not only doesn't hate it, but some even enjoy playing against the deck.

Weaknesses

This deck of course has weaknesses as most decks do. Some of the major weaknesses are heavy aggro deck, combo decks, and graveyard decks. While this deck also has a great power to counteract these strategies it is not always enough.

Aggro can be a weakness for the deck because it aims to go slow and doesn't supply many creatures for blocking. But the deck also has some good effectiveness against aggro with most of its creatures being large enough to block most creatures like Tree of Perdition, using Propaganda, and the best blockers of all Fog Bank and Guard Gomazoa.

Combo decks can be a problem because this deck runs a similar number of counterspells as combo decks and those decks tend to win much faster than this deck can get setup. This deck however does have the ability to attempt to counteract combo decks. Through the various control pieces and ability to mill combo pieces away it is possible to disrupt those decks. I also run Sadistic Sacrament as a way to attempt to counteract obvious combo decks.

The last weakness is against graveyard decks. These decks aim to mill themselves and our game plan only helps them out and speeds up their game plans. The only thing that we have against them is a good portion of their deck focuses on milling themselves so in a sense they are also helping our game plan.

Bling Bling

This deck has officially reached 50% of the way to being foiled out. There are a few cards of course that do not have foils like Underground Sea that also contribute to the foiled out portion of the deck. I am slowing working towards foiling it out but it is currently my second priority of foiling out for decks. I update the bling almost as soon as I get the cards, so check back and see how the progress has come!

In summary, this deck is a classic Dimir control deck that seeks to win through milling my opponents out. This is a very fun and intense deck to play with a lot of piloting challenges and decisions. Playing this deck has taught me a lot about the game and how important proper sequencing is. I hope you all enjoy the list and get the chance to mill out your opponents!

Date added	6 years
Last updated	2 years
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	16 - 0 Mythic Rares 34 - 0 Rares 23 - 0 Uncommons 11 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	3.06
Tokens	Bird 2/2 U, Zombie 2/2 B
Folders	Mid Power