Dimir Mill

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Happy Wednesday MTG peeps,

Way back when we started playing Magic: the Gathering, we just played a bunch of derpy cards in builds with no real strategy at our kitchen table - and had fun.  When we finally left the comfort of our domicile and went to our first Friday Night Magic event (in 10th Edition / Lorwyn), we saw a great many new cool cards and prompty had our butt handed to us in short order.  One build of particular note which was particularily annoying was a mill strategy using Millstone (Tenth Edition rare) coupled with several other cards designed to drain your library into your graveyard and lose you the game.  As a result of this in our formative MTG years, we were traumatized by any mill deck.  We can now proudly say we're over this and now have a standard-casual mill deck of our own.
 

Well that said, our interest peaked after Gatecrash was released.  When we was the abilities on Duskmantle Guildmage, specifically the ability to ping your opponent for one life with each card hitting the 'yard.  This Guildmage, along with the M13 Jace's zero ability to mill ten cards at a time had us salivating.  Unfortunately, when we attempted to put it into practice, we ran into trouble having that go off.  We finally decided to drop that altogether but were still quite decided to have a list shake out of all the new options available.  Here's what we have so far . . .

4x Thought Scour
4x Dream Twist
4x Jace's Phantasm
3x Think Twice
2x Essence Scatter
4x Mind Sculpt
3x Wight of Precinct Six
3x Augur of Bolas
2x Mind Grind
3x Talrand, Sky Summoner
2x Jace, Memory Adept
2x Consuming Aberration

15x Island
4x Drowned Catacomb
4x Swamp
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One Drops
Thought Scour - Mills two, draws a card
Dream Twist - Mills three, with flashback available
Jace's Phantasm - rapidly becomes a 5/5 flyer with their 'yard filling up.

Two Drop
Mind Sculpt - Mills seven, now we're cooking
Think Twice - Essential card draw with flashback
Essence Scatter - Cheap creature counterspell (for our local meta, easily switched out for other counter magic).
Wight of Precinct Six - Only three of these, they can grow into monsters but you don't want to drop 'em too early.
Augur of Bolas - Great early blocker that will likely get you another mill card with it's eotb effect.
Four Drop
Tallarand, Sky Summoner - Sad to see no-one likes / plays this card.  He's not that bad, and with a deck with a lot of instants / sorceries, we think we can generate a load of 2/2 drake tokens.

Five Drop
Jace, Memory Adept - We think we want to use the '0' ability every time to mill ten cards each turn.
Consuming Aberration - This Dimir monster not only is a fatty with all the cards in your opponent's graveyard, but will also mill too.

X-Cost
Mind Grind - late game mana sink and tip-top milling machine.  Love that it mills up to and including a land card, which in our opinion may pay dividends.

We would have liked to have Snapcaster Mage in the list but we don't own any - sad Panda is sad.  Perhaps we'll break down and collect a pair from MTG Mint Card before they rotate out of standard.
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Dimir Cipher

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Happy Friday MTG peeps,

As it is Friday, we suggest you get out to your local gaming store tonight for Friday Night Magic.  We'll be off to OMG! Games tonight in Barrie, Ontario where snow is laying deep - which means we may even have to get our snow shoes on for this trek.

Anywhoos - enough of our transportation woes, check out the sweet new Gatecrash preview / 'Holiday present' from today.  If you cannot immediately find today's special Gatecrash spoiler on the page, click on the present appearing on today's article banner to open.  Let's have a looky-loo . . . .

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Whispering Madness, 2ub
Sorcery, Rare
Each player discards his or her hand, then draws cards equal to the greatest number of cards a player discarded this way.
Cipher (Then you may exile this spell card encoded on a creature you control. Whenever that creature deals combat damage to a player, its controller may cast a copy of this card without paying its mana cost.)
Illustrated by Clint Cearley
#207/249

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Almost like an improved variation of Haunt on potential repeating Urza Saga's Windfall or like an aweome version of Darksteel's Spellbinder.  Hold up though - did you see the art ? Don't get us wrong - we aboslutely love Clint Cearley (think Intangible Virtue or Destroy the Evidence) but this card art in our opinion is just awful (a creepy / evil Jon Finkel looking mage) - We don't put the blame for nasty art on Clint but rather the WotC art request (lead concept artist Rick Whitters or other MTG minion).

 






Anywhoos - let's have a closer look at the new House Dimir keyword 'Cipher' which reads (after resolution of that spell), 'then you may exile this spell card encoded on a creature you control. Whenever that creature deals combat damage to a player, its controller may cast a copy of this card without paying its mana cost'.We suggest you snap up all blue hexproof and unblockalbe now such as Geist of Saint Traft or Invisible Stalker now before there is none left - and - before MTG Realm readers go off the cliff screaming that this is the coolest most redonkulous and broken mechanic there is, we just want to remind everyone that altough very good, it still needs a resolved creature spell, the resolved Cipher spell and having that creautre land damage.

We are almost certain there will be cards supporting House Dimir such as unblockables, tap downs, etc. as well as some other cool and crazy Cipher spells which will make us drool.  Without seeing further cards, we are calling this the new cool tech from Gatecrash and can't wait to see what new constructed possibilities are out there.  For now however, we are dreaming up a modern format build with this and Dream Salvage making all those opponent discards a card draw for us, maybe even with an Alchemist's Refuge thrown in for combat / Cipher shenanigans.
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