Welcome to the Undercity

Commander / EDH* Casual Mill Multiplayer Primer Theme/Gimmick UB (Dimir)

nagonjin

Land (36)

• 1x Academy Ruins
• 1x Bojuka Bog
• 1x Choked Estuary
• 1x City of Brass
• 1x Command Tower
• 1x Dimir Aqueduct
• 1x Dimir Guildgate
• 1x Drowned Catacomb
• 1x Ghost Quarter
• 8x Island
• 1x Morphic Pool
• 1x Polluted Delta
• 1x Reflecting Pool
• 1x Rogue's Passage
• 1x Sunken Ruins
• 8x Swamp
• 1x Tainted Isle
• 1x Temple of Deceit
• 1x Terramorphic Expanse
• 1x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
• 1x Vesuva
• 1x Watery Grave

Draw (9)

• 1x Jace's Archivist
• 1x Mystic Remora
• 1x Notion Thief
• 1x Sire of Stagnation
• 1x Syphon Mind
• 1x Thief of Sanity
• 1x Visions of Beyond
• 1x Whispering Madness
• 1x Windfall

Reanimator (5)

• 1x Animate Dead
• 1x Dimir Doppelganger
• 1x Extract from Darkness
• 1x Rise of the Dark Realms
• 1x Sepulchral Primordial

Control (14)

• 1x Black Sun's Zenith
• 1x Counterspell
• 1x Crawlspace
• 1x Cyclonic Rift
• 1x Dimir Charm
• 1x Drown in the Loch
• 1x Feed the Swarm
• 1x Hero's Downfall
• 1x Imprisoned in the Moon
• 1x Mana Drain
• 1x Muddle the Mixture
• 1x Propaganda
• 1x Sudden Spoiling
• 1x Toxic Deluge

Steal (11)

• 1x Bribery
• 1x Clever Impersonator
• 1x Dimir Doppelganger
• 1x Extract from Darkness
• 1x Gilded Drake
• 1x Lord of the Void
• 1x Opposition Agent
• 1x Phyrexian Metamorph
• 1x Reins of Power
• 1x Rite of Replication
• 1x Thada Adel, Acquisitor

Ramp (6)

• 1x Arcane Signet
• 1x Chromatic Lantern
• 1x Commander's Sphere
• 1x Dimir Signet
• 1x Skyclave Relic
• 1x Sol Ring

Utility (3)

• 1x Darkness
• 1x Duskmantle Guildmage
• 1x Mindcrank

Commander (1)

Mill (12)

• 1x Altar of Dementia
• 1x Bruvac the Grandiloquent
• 1x Consuming Aberration
• 1x Court of Cunning
• 1x Lord of the Void
• 1x Mesmeric Orb
• 1x Mind Grind
• 1x Nemesis of Reason
• 1x Phenax, God of Deception
• 1x Ruin Crab
• 1x Shadow Kin
• 1x Tasha's Hideous Laughter *list*

Beater (6)

• 1x Consuming Aberration
• 1x Guiltfeeder
• 1x Lord of the Void
• 1x Nemesis of Reason
• 1x Sepulchral Primordial
• 1x Sire of Stagnation

Evasion (5)

• 1x Key to the City
• 1x Krydle of Baldur's Gate
• 1x Lightning Greaves
• 1x Thassa, God of the Sea
• 1x Whispersilk Cloak

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"All warfare is based on deception." -Sun Tzu, The Art of War

"In a space where there is no room,
in a structure that was never built,
meets the guild that doesn't exist."
Flavor Text, Duskmantle, House of Shadow

Welcome Initiate!

So, you want to gain entry to Ravnica's most reclusive guild and rise through the ranks as a master of sedition? In these times of unrest, you must defend your Undercity home with devastating traps, illusions, and assassins. Keep your opponents guessing what tricks you still have up your sleeves, because only the most cunning and ruthless will be able to lie, steal, and scheme their way to victory. Seem trustworthy, weak. They will ignore you.

How to Play This Deck - By Section

Deck Philosophy

This is NOT your typical mill deck: This deck is based on roleplaying as a Dimir agent and encourages a very interactive and diverse playstyle that evolves to match any opponent. You are only as weak as your strongest enemy. Mechanically, it plays several mill, copy, and steal cards. Milling is not the primary objective or win condition in this deck - It is a means to an end.

The aim of the deck is to scheme and plot, constantly setting up game-ending machinations like must-answer unblockables, token swarms, or infinite combos. All this while slowly whittling away your opponents libraries and sanity. If any of this sounds like fun, I recommend this deck. But it's not very competitive.

As for design, this deck was also designed to play in pods of 3-4 players, hence the noticeable lack of single-target mill spells. My meta is not all that aggressive, and is good about self-policing power, so I don't get blown out playing this slower deck.

**As an important note about the flavor, while I included as many of the playable Dimir-watermarked cards as I could, in some cases I had to choose cards which fit the flavor mechanically, rather than visually. For example, Thassa is very evasive, powerful, and sees the future, even though she is a God from Theros (hardly belonging in an ecumenopolis). In these cases, I still feel like they belong because the mechanics fit the theme of the deck of 'steal, disrupt, kill'. Almost all cards either fit because of the Dimir setting, the name (e.g. "Propaganda", "Darkness", "Bribery"...), or their ability.

Turn by Turn

In the early game, we try to get out the mana to cast Lazav as soon as possible, this is almost always turn 4.

Turns 0-3: We usually mulligan to get at least 3 lands. In turns 1-3, we want to play some early mill engines like Ruin Crab or Altar of the Brood, some control cards like Propaganda/Crawlspace, or ramp, a la Sol Ring.

Turn 4: Play Lazav. If this is impossible, play ramp/ control.

Turns 5-10: We are basically trying to defend ourselves from attacks while getting our attackers like Guiltfeeder and Lord of the Void through to mill, deal big damage, or steal cards for ourselves. Always hold mana for one of your removal spells, and try to barter to stay alive. We make a lot of deals "I'll kill that dude if you protect me" etc. Quid pro quo.

Turns 11+: If the game lasts this long and we are still alive, we will be looking to finish soon. We should have drawn or stolen a finisher by now, e.g. Rite of Replication, Consuming Aberration, Mind Grind, Guiltfeeder, Rise of the Dark Realms, Reins of Power. We should try and use that to take out at least one player. Hopefully the last one besides us. If we've negotiated well until now, and flown under the radar, this should be the case.

Role of Mill

Milling allows you to disrupt strategies, gain information about opponents' decks, and provides you with more resources. The Dimir aim to turn the madness and greed of their enemies into a tangible benefit. Opponents who run nasty creatures will soon find that allegiances are easily swayed. Everyone's graves and stolen thoughts are just an extension of our own hands.

I call this strategy "Mill-For-Value". While Mill is suboptimal as a win condition, it excels as a catalyst for reanimating and exposing or interfering with other decks' strategies. Just as the Dimir scheme to sabotage the Guildpact, you will corrupt everyone's strategies and spy on the contents of their deck. Information is an oft underestimated resource, and this deck aims to show how valuable it can be. Plenty of cards in this deck bring agents of all colors, powers, and abilities back from the grave, often for an efficient cost.

Role of Removal

In one word - "Politics". Always remember to play your spells carefully and monopolize information. Let your other players use up their removal and squander their defenses. Only use your removal if your life is at stake, or if you will strike that turn. Otherwise, if you need to make a hit, be political and treat it like a favor or contract; the other players will owe you for prolonging their lives.

Removal in this deck comes in a variety of 'flavors', like stealing (Reins of Power), Exiling (Imprisoned in the Moon), Counters(Black Sun's Zenith), or Murder (Hero's Downfall). This ensures the versatility of dealing with hard to remove generals.

Role of Clones

Clones represent another subtheme in this deck. Clones are how Dimir gets access to all of the information they need to function, and how they get close enough to strike their enemies at their most vulnerable. Use clones to steal huge creatures, or agents with abilities outside your colors (e.g flavor text on Chromatic Lantern).

This is the section of the deck that has suffered the most over time, as often find it easier to cut a more unreliable clone when I need more draw spells or removal. The big downside to clone-centric strategies is that you have to be sure to include stuff worth cloning in your own deck, because when playing versus token or tribal or spellslinger strategies you aren't guaranteed access to anything worth the mana to clone something unless it's already on your side of the board. By then, you might as well already have a creature that does that same thing in the first place.

Role of Graveyard Hate

Sometimes, other decks can abuse the graveyard much more effectively than you can. For this reason, there's a little bit of necessary graveyard hate and exile removal (Dimir Doppelganger, Bojuka Bog, Lord of the Void, etc.). Eldrazi are basically a hard counter to the milling aspect of the deck if we allow them to hit the graveyard. However, I often find the best answer to Ulamog is to hit it with a Bribery or to let Lazav copy him and beat face until the owner surrenders.

Shenanigans

It is EDH, after all. Fun shenanigans include:

-Duskmantle Guildmage-Mindcrank combo
-Turning Lazav into a Hexproof Eldrazi
-Rite of Replication on 80/80 Consuming Aberrations
-Cloning each players general simultaneously (Gotta catch 'em all!)
-Rise of the Dark Realms, while slow, is always fun to resolve lategame.
-Leading Windfall into Notion Thief
-Copying a creature that's Imprisoned in the Moon with Vesuva or Thespian's Stage
-Killing yourself with Lord of the Void after forgetting the opponent runs Phage the Untouchable

If Lazav becomes boring Phenax makes a ready substitute and the majority of the cards needed to make the deck are already included here. Phenax may require some more inclusions, like Eater of the Dead or Intruder Alarm. My alternate deck list for the Phenax version is Faithless Prayers.

Future Direction: Read Before Suggesting

I am working on slowly foiling the deck out whenever possible, but I don't list the foils here to reduce the cost of the deck for viewers.

Do NOT Suggest:

Please don't suggest Mind Funeral, Glimpse the Unthinkable, Tunnel Vision, Bloodchief Ascension or Helm/Leyline combos. I've already made my opinion known before. Glimpse hits one player only and is hella expensive. Tunnel vision is a really cheap way to win against a single person (IMO) and will just build resentment in multiplayer, not to mention being a bit hard to set up. BCA is hard to turn on and gets me a lot of unwanted attention. This deck is about sweeping in unexpectedly. Ashiok is near worthless in multiplayer EDH.

All strategic advice and +1s are very much appreciated! Please comment below if you know of any cards which may be either more effective or more flavorful for the Dimir roleplay theme, but budget, flavor and fun are the primary concerns!

This is my all-time favorite EDH deck, and it is the one that I have by far spent the most time tweaking and laboring over decisions. There are lots of cards I wish I could include, but 100 is fewer than most realize.

Click Here to Join the Dimir (+1)!

Card choices and exclusions explained in this primer I wrote.

Cards With Dimir Flavor (With Watermark/ Mentioned in Text): 14

Top Ranked	Achieved #5 position overall 9 years ago Achieved #3 position in Commander / EDH Primer 3 years ago
Date added	10 years
Last updated	2 years
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	11 - 0 Mythic Rares 43 - 0 Rares 18 - 0 Uncommons 12 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	3.12
Tokens	Copy Clone, The Monarch
Folders	EDH Milled, EDH, EDH Options, Watch, Others' Decks, Commander Decks I Want, Commander deck, I'm Gonna Build This, edh, Gotta Build