Creatures- Add

Jace's Phantasm absolutely belongs in any standard mill deck. A cheap, early game creature with evasion makes him good as an alternate cipher-monkey, and the fact that he gets larger in the mid-game after a bit of milling makes it one of the most cost-efficient creatures you could have in a mill deck. I feel like typically you would want 4x, but for now let's just do 3x. 10 open slots.

1x more Shriekgeist helps to round out the curve, and again is a good cheap creature with evasion, which makes him good for ciphering onto. 9 open slots.

Sorceries- Add

If you need a draw engine (something that has recurrence), and you are making a cipher deck, then Last Thoughts . Almost identical to Curiosity , yet it counts as a cipher spell, which in turn triggers Consuming Aberration . And since it is a bit pricey mana-wise for a draw card, 2x should suffice. 7 open slots.

Mind Sculpt . You have absolutely no excuse not to run this card. You are playing mill, you need a cheap mill powerhouse. Also, take a look at this:

Turn1: Island - Jace's Phantasm

Turn2: Swamp - Mind Sculpt , swing for 1 damage.

Turn3: Drowned Catacomb - Paranoid Delusions hits 10 cards in graveyard, cipher onto Jace's Phantasm , swing for 5 damage, and mill 3 more.

Mind Sculpt will make your mill deck a MILL DECK. You NEED this at no less than 3x, though I recommend 4x. This leaves you with 3 open slots.

Instants- Add

Going back to your very first comment, Rayenous is correct to recommend Forbidden Alchemy . It lets you dig into your deck a bit to help find that one card you really need at any given situation, and with flashback means you get two spells for the price of one card. It's like having twice as many copies. And the positive thing about it having such a high flashback cost- you most likely won't be able to recast it till after you have a Consuming Aberration on the field. This is a helpful extra spell just lying around, waiting to trigger an Aberration. And since you aren't casting it until later, it will help you cycle past those late game dead-draws, and find that one card you need to finish the match. :) I highly recommend it for your deck build as a 3x.

And this finishes out all of your open slots. Let's take a look at how these changes will affect the deck: jokercrow's U-mill-iating Edited By Xindlepete

I hope you found any of these recommendations helpful, and if you aren't worn out from reading my walls of text, then I have some recommendations for your sideboard as well. :) And if you need help with any other mill decks, or just any decks in the future, don't be a stranger, just hit me up on my account wall! :D

If you wanted to give your Consuming Aberration some defense against removal I recommend Lightning Greaves . It would suck to build him up only to have him destroyed. But really you will want to test the effectiveness because sometimes it could distract from your focus. Maybe it's a sideboard card

@Cyrrus: Unfortunatly, Lightning Greaves isn't standard anymore, so I won't use it.

@Xindlepete: I can see that you know your style and your cards and there is a lot for me to learn from you. I also think my deck has a very different way of milling then your decks and style. I want to push that style to it's limit, with your help, while keeping it true to it's originality. For this reason and because I am not as familiar with those cards as you might be, I will take all the time needed to test everything and see what is as good in real games as it seems in theory.

I will then come back to you with the results of my tests. Thank you very much for your suggestions and your time and let's talk about those results in a few days if you want.

Don't worry about the length of your texts, the more you give me the happier I am. For the sideboard, I don't feel ready. Let's finish the mainboard first, then, we could take care of that sideboard.

Thanks again

Haha yeh I may not have payed attention to that soz

@Cyrrus: Good job bro! Way to pay attention! :P You're just causing all sorts of trouble aren't you? We ought call you "Rabblerouser" when you hit top 100! :D

@jokercrow: No problem man. :) Normally I won't take quite so long to explain my choices and preferences between cards, but since you mentioned being new, and have quite a few inconsistencies in the "mill" aspect of your mill deck, I figured telling you why certain cards will always work for the archetype would be a good "Intro into mill" lesson. Mill 101, if you will! XD

Thanks for taking the time to read it, as well as taking the recommendations to heart. :) So long as you found any of that information helpful to you, then it was time well spent. Welcome into the fold, brother Millwright ! :D

Your Deck is eerily similar to mine so that's definitive +1 from me

Thank you WovenNebula

I'll check your deck too.

@Xindlepete

I would like to thank you again for your time and help, and since I value your opinion, I am taking the time to write down how my tests goes so you could give me more specific tips that fits that strange mill/cipher deck.

First of all, I wanted to compare our two version. I wanted to find what cards was doing better from each version and what cards were missing. I think mill deck are usually hard countered by aggro decks. For that reason, I have used my 28 Hours Later (1st at FNM) deck for some tests. So here are the results:

jokercrow's U-mill-iating Edited By Xindlepete vs 28 Hours Later (1st at FNM)

1/8

U-mill-iating - Cipher version vs 28 Hours Later (1st at FNM)

3/8

jokercrow's U-mill-iating Edited By Xindlepete vs U-mill-iating - Cipher version

3/8

So I think, from what I have seen that:

Forbidden Alchemy : Cost to much, for my deck, for what it does and I never been able to use it's flashback cost. Well, maybe I forgot to use the flashback once or twice, but I don't think it would have change the winner.

Last Thoughts : It's great when I can cast it, but I almost always would have prefer a defensive card on the 4th turn and don't want to spend 4 mana just for drawing. Especially when my golgari deck is having 7 or more total power on the table ready to attack my almost empty board next turn. The card gives good card advantage, but it also make me loss a turn, witch often result in a game loss.

The deck seems to be doing better when I am using less costly drawing cards like Thought Scour and Curiosity . So on the 3rd and 4th turns, I can cast defensive cards instead.

Mind Sculpt : If I need more mill cards, Mind Sculpt is definitely an interesting card, but do I need to ? I'm not sure. I think for sure that Paranoid Delusions is better in this deck for it often mill for more by itself and because it can trigger Consuming Aberration , Talrand, Sky Summoner and Undead Alchemist , the very same turn they come onto the battlefield.

Jace's Phantasm : I must say I have pass this incredible card for the wrong reason. I thought since it could not help me milling, I don't need it, but I was wrong. For only 1 mana, it is one of the best cipher-monkey card. It makes the deck faster, and it does a fantastic good job as a blocker. I have added 3 of them and the deck is just doing better.

I must say that I don't care playing 1 copy of cards like Talrand, Sky Summoner even if it doesn't help me mill the opponent. Because it has an awesome synergy with cipher, it can give me many creatures on the 4th turn, but mostly because it gives me a very good defenses. On the other hand, I definitely don't want to draw more than 1 of them, so 1 copy seems like the sweet spot for it. I could play cards like Grisly Spectacle instead, or any other kill spell. But this deck is no control deck. It cannot try to be it because it will need much more control spells. I think the more pressure I can put on the opponent, with this deck, the better it does. That is also why I added Jace's Phantasm , and that's why I'm using cards like Mindshrieker , Undead Alchemist , Stolen Identity , Temporal Mastery and of course, Consuming Aberration .

I think the number of each cards in a deck depends on many reason and for example, much more cards are on 4 copies on my 28 Hours Later (1st at FNM).

I could say that this deck has become some kind of mid-range mill/cipher deck. From what I have seen. If I try to go faster, I can't compete with aggro, if I try to go control, I can't compete with Naya and Azorius. But with mid-range it seems like doing as good as possible.

I am still juggling with Mindshrieker . It helped me a lot against mid-range decks and it stress some of my opponents, but I wonder if I should for example switch it for another Jace's Phantasm .

Anyway, that's about it. This is what I understand from my tests. I hope I did not write to much text ether. I might very well been wrong on some points so please let me know what you think of all of this and thanks again. : )

what about Wight of Precinct Six ? That card would go great here because of the milling aspect.

@b18cvtec

I prefere Shriekgeist for it's a better cipher-monkey with it's flying ability. Evation is one of the most important element of this deck.

Plus, Wight of Precinct Six doesn't get bigger when Consuming Aberration is on the table.

@jokercrow: Why doesn't the Wight of Precinct Six get bigger? He still gets +1/+1 for each creature card in the opponent's graveyard, regardless of what else is on the field. It's just that the Consuming Aberration will be larger, since it doesn't discriminate what cards are in the graveyard.

lol my mistake, I meant Undead Alchemist

This build is actually very similar to the first iteration of my mill deck - cipher spells to trigger Consuming Aberration for the win. I ended up going with plain spell-based mill because I couldn't get the numbers right, so hopefully we can help you with that.

I'm too lazy to read all of the comments above, so I will make my suggestions based off of the current build. I apologize for any repetition of suggestions, or if I mention something that you've already rejected. I hope at least some of what I say helps.

At a glance. this deck looks like it's trying to do way too much; I think you should keep it to cipher-based mill to trigger Consuming Aberration and remove cards that don't directly contribute to that.

Undead Alchemist doesn't seem to fit here - he works best with Undercity Informer in a mill deck, so I think those two slots can be allocated to a more efficient card.

I'm against running less than three of a single card in a deck, unless it is a win con. on its own, so I think you should also drop Sturmgeist and Mindshrieker for more Jace's Phantasm s and maybe an additional Talrand, Sky Summoner .

I think that would also allow for another copy of Dimir Charm .

Let me know what you think of those suggestions, and I hope they help!

@ducttapedeckbox

"This build is actually very similar to the first iteration of my mill deck..."

Great minds think alike... ; P

"...I think you should keep it to cipher-based mill to trigger Consuming Aberration and remove cards that don't directly contribute to that."

I think you are right, but until I can do the final blow, I'm using most of the other cards to make the opponent kill my baits, feels a pressure and I'm trying to survive just long enough. Maybe I could choose better cards to do so.

"Undead Alchemist doesn't seem to fit here."

You are definitely not the first saying that but what confuses me, is the fact that every time I put him out, I start loosing like crazy in my tests, especially against aggro. Maybe I should find something better, but I don't feel I could use a card like Grisly Spectacle in this deck. It would take care of only one creature while the undead could build a wall, make pressure on the opponent and/or be used as a bait for the kill spells before casting the more important aberration. (Please don't leave me with that. Tell me what you think of my explanation. I'm I wrong or did you not see a good side of him in my deck ?)

"I think you should also drop Sturmgeist and Mindshrieker for more Jace's Phantasm "

I guess you meant Shriekgeist instead of Sturmgeist ? Maybe you are right, but if I reduce the number of Shriekgeist for more Jace's Phantasm , I will mill less and the phantasm will stay small longer. But in the other and, the phantasm gets me started one turn earlier witch is awesome. So I will make some test to try and play 4 phantasm.

"maybe an additional Talrand, Sky Summoner"

I'm alway wondering if I should... He is not helping with the milling at all, but with cipher, he is a beast and he kept me in many games. So over all, I think you might be very right.

"I think that would also allow for another copy of Dimir Charm "

You probably are right again ! If some of the suggestion you made earlier about cards to remove works in my tests, I will definitely add one, else I will search again like crazy to find it another free spot.

Thank you a lot ! : D

I will make some tests like I always do with suggestions I get and I hope you will help me understand some of those suggestions I might not understand well.

The deck appears to lean on stalker a bit heavily most of the playtesting games were of a single stalker plowing to victory. This strategy punishes sac effect light midrange decks but I don't know if it's fast enough to fight aggro or sturdy enough to fight control. I would suggest adding in some hard removal spells.

I would -2 shriekghiest for +1 jace's phantasm and +1 talrand, and consider more spot removal... seems solid though, +1.

Thank you Demarge and thank you Gym_Gym, I will think about your suggestions.

Ahhhh the Aberration. Ya gotta love that hateful horror. A combo to consider for the deck (though not exactly needed it is fun and annoying) is Mortus Strider and Undercity Informer . Every time you sac the strider for the informer to mill them the strider returns to your hand to be used for aberration ammo all over again. But all in all it's a pretty nice deck! +1 from me

If you could, could you check my Total Maniac!!!!!! deck and give me your thoughts?

That's a pretty cool combo. I probably won't play it, but it's definitely fun to know. Thanks for sharing. : )

Not a prob :) I'll work on a few more Dimir combos later.

Cool !

I am testing your deck right now, I will give you my comments in a minute.

ok so i've done testing with all the different types of mill there is, with the exception of Talrand, Sky Summoner and Shriekgeist . Here are thier weaknesses.

Consuming Aberration when you play him, you "might" keep him out more than 1 turn once ever 11 or 12 games. Thats when he is actually drawn and gotten out.

Undead Alchemist no evasion, sucks as a blocker, not even that great as an attacker.

Curiosity as soon as you put it on something that creature will be the first thing targetted for removal.

Temporal Mastery good as a miracle, and can sometimes be a game saver/changer, but highly circumstancial.

The rest are pretty good, but you don't have many copies of them and its not going to be very consistant. Now, that being said, you should have a look at my mill deck. It has been played and tested and wins consistently. Also, when you have an idea for a deck, you should download magic workstation. Its a free program that allows you to play magic for free. Any cards you want.

your thoughts are now forefit

Breaking and mindsculpt? Tome Scour is now going to be standard again :)