you may find Dreadbore being occasionally more useful than Terminate . Not sure though. You mention Chandra in the description but she isnt present!

Oh yeah, oops. There...fixed.

Unfortunately, sometimes in the quest to make my decks more competitive in a vacuum I cut cards I love to play the odds. In this case my 66 card evil deck (hence "short a 6") got trimmed to sixty and I cut card:Liliana's Caress and the lovely Chandra Ablaze . My IRL version of this deck is 600 miles away, and still contains her. It currently plays as a RB discard deck but it always feels so one dimensional. This version is way meaner too, and I own most of the cards. I might still leave it at 66, but I'd want another snapcaster.

As far as Dreadbore goes, I try to pick their hand apart and then but their library hopefully before their walkers hit the table. Between Surgical Extraction , Slaughter Games , Into the Roil and my discard outlets not many walkers stick around long. I'm also partial to instant speed, thanks for the suggestion though.

I am wondering though, what do you think of my creature selection?

Interesting deck. lots of interaction with the opponent. plan on playtesting against it just for the slaughtergames+extraction neutering.

I find it guts the opponent and then we both sit there and wait until my endgame shows up. I'm considering Cruel Ultimatum and Chandra, the Firebrand rather than Liliana Vess and a couple of my fatties

might want to playtest that ultimatum.

In my experience discard effects are at their best in the mirror, because your opponent in a control deck will continue drawing cards and discard will still be relevant rather than the top-deck mode draw one, play it regardless of what it is, pass.

at some point discard hits a diminishing returns kind of thing. I've been trying to find a sweet spot for the amount of them for a while, beens that I'm fond of Hymn to Tourach and such.

You might think about using Niv-Mizzet, Dracogenius as a win con.or even a lone Grave Titan or Inferno Titan or Frost Titan . all are pretty powerful as loners, or win cons. (just realized you already have the grave variant. lol)

But if you're looking for a replacement on fatties, Wurmcoil Engine is always stupid powerful.

If anything Cruel Ultimatum should see some playtesting. I may be wrong about the discard thing, because it does more than that. xD

The Dracogenius is a really good win-con, putting cards in my hand and pinging while having evasion. It sort of plays the role that Geth is playin right now for me...I'll have to consider that.

As far as Cruel Ultimatum goes, it's hard to come back from that sort of swing. Ok, the "discard three cards" may not be relevant, especially if I'm winning. The "return a creature from your graveyard to your hand" might not have any targets, but even "just" a snapcaster is damn good value. You're right, it deserves some testing.

I have an Inferno Titan , I kind of want to see how Geth works out though.

he's worth a try. A friend of mine used geth in a casual grixis control deck basically to steal my things after he killed them. xD it was fun, but I think he won more games after he removed him in placement of Niv-Mizzet.

I could see that, drawing my own cards would probably have more value than stealing theirs. Especially since my plan is to exile most of their cards from their gy.

Yeah very true. Geth doesn't synergize well with surgical.

Should I have a Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker in this deck?

Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker as a one-of would be great in this deck. I'd swap out a Chandra Ablaze for one. Alteratively, if you find the deck runs out of steam, maybe Staff of Nin would be a better choice.

@ pookypuppy6 What do you think of it now? I really like Staff of Nin , I'm just worried about how competitive it would be. I guess once I start knocking the opponents teeth out the Staff would just help me put it away.

Maybe try Pithing Needle to lock down fetchlands and really ruin the opponent's day?

That's a good idea, I'll pick up four for my sideboard so that once I know what I'm up against I can board them in and really slow my opponents down.

There's always Extirpate , which is a much harder to deal with version of Surgical Extraction and can give extra redundancy for removing things. It is particularly convenient if the person uses a fetch land, resulting in removing the remainder of their fetch lands. Same goes for any other nonbasics you manage to mill out.

I believe that Thoughtseize or inquisitions would work better than the probes. During playtesting the planeswalkers and ultimatum were always dead draws, I'd suggest cutting them for cheaper wincons.

to fix your out of gas issue I'd suggest trying out a man land (or 4) in Lavaclaw Reaches or Creeping Tar Pit .

Nephalia Drownyard can also help with consistency in getting things into the graveyard, even if it is for your own Snapcaster Mage to use

@ Demarge I have thought that the walkers (bolas especially) were a little slow. The original build had titans in it instead. I just know Bolas wins games, what would you use instead? Also, I played the crap out of Zendikar block so I have both manlands laying around. I think 4 may be two many but I wouldn't be opposed to a 2-1 split. What do you think? Lastly, what about more hand disruption in addition to the probes? My first cuts would be most if not all the Ablazes in favor of probably some Inquisitions unless I can scare up some Thoughtseize s.

@ Morokai Extirpate is definitely good, but I like free spells. I'll keep an eye out for some, but for now I have the Extactions. The drownyards are a good idea, I'm considering Hedron Crab and maybe a one or two of Mind Funeral to help throw stuff in the graveyard faster and with some drownyard and maybe a Memory Adept mill could almost be a back-up win con.

I have some Consecrated Sphinx es laying around, what do you guys think of that?

not sure about the sphynx, though it can definitely punch a win through when the opponent already has little to work with.Mind Funeral is one of my favorite mill cards, in the modern masters drafts I managed to get three in one deck. I wish I had thought to grab the arcane mill spells, would have won every match that way.just casting two can get rid of nearly half of someones lands, and also makes those lands an excellent target for Surgical Extraction

you can also take a look at Keening Stone , though it is a bit mana intensive for competitive use.

also, just discovered Counterbore

some number of man lands would help (possibly all tar pits). Another idea would be to try out Delver of Secrets  ^Flip and some Serum Visions . it is possible you want to be running only a few 4 drops on your top end, Duskmantle Seer might also be worth doing some testing with, they lose some life, you draw some cards, they always have something to force a discard.

@ Morokai Counterbore seems awesome, but it's a tad expensive for what I want for this deck. It also doesn't have great synergy with Duskmantle Seer simply because of the high cost. I think I'm going to test the seer for awhile and see how it does. It's no Bob but it's a beater to finish the game off a little faster. I use Keening Stone in my Wrexial, the Risen Deep EDH deck. It's fun. Lol.

Should I push mill more in this deck?

@ Demarge the only thing that worries me about Duskmantle Seer is putting cards in your opponents hand. But it pairs up favorably against say....Tron...yeah you can have a "free" Emrakul...why not? As far as Delver goes, I may warm up to the idea over time but it's not really the direction I want to go with this build. I was hoping for a form of Cruel Control...like I say Pulling Teeth grixis style.

Umm...what about like Nemesis of Reason , Consuming Aberration and/or Mirko Vosk, Mind Drinker ? Too slow? Painful to pull with Duskmantle since I'm paying so much life early between fetches shocks and phyrexian mana