Arena Standard - Dimir Mill Tempo

43
12
16
22
0
22
Aggro
Control
  • Deck contains 16 invalid cards for this format: Opt (XLN), Drown in the Loch (ELD), Thieves' Guild Enforcer (M21), Temple of Deceit (THB), Anticognition (ZNR), Into the Story (ELD), Soaring Thought-Thief (ZNR), Fabled Passage (ELD), Didn't Say Please (ELD), Maddening Cacophony (ZNR), Castle Vantress (ELD), Brazen Borrower (ELD), Ruin Crab (ZNR), Castle Locthwain (ELD), Clearwater Pathway (ZNR), Jwari Disruption (ZNR)
Main 60 cards (18 distinct)
Instant, Sorcery, Enchantment, Artifact (22)
$0.25€0.110.03
$1.01€0.910.04
$0.15€0.060.03
$0.30€0.230.03
$0.29€0.190.03
$6.75€3.440.02
$0.400.03
Creature (16)
$0.44€0.480.06
$0.23€0.160.03
$5.998.93
$1.77€0.890.04
Land (22)
$0.45€0.230.02
$6.70€4.290.26
$1.48€1.000.02
$3.90€3.426.56
$6.061.22

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Description

This is not your Mom's Dimir Rogue's deck. Isn't this just worse Dimir Rogues? Heck no, we're trying to accomplish some pretty different goals despite having some crossover in the cards we play.

Mill & Tempo

Unlike Rogues, this deck is completely committed to Mill as its win condition (although it is still realistic to win by going face in this deck, we do not consider face-going ability in evaluating how a card fits into the aggro portion of our tempo deck).

This means that we do not play certain cards like Zulaport Duelistimage which do not represent a persistent threat to our opponent's mill clock (and which only persistently effect their life total). The creatures we do play, such as Ruin Crabimage or Soaring Thought-Thiefimage, will persistently mill our opponent as long as they stay on the board. Thieves' Guild Enforcerimage is a kind of exception because she does not persistently mill our opponent unless we ETB more Rogues (of which there are only 12 in the deck), however she is such a good tempo play, acting as removal for 1 mana and a blocker that can prevent attacks from our opponent - so we play her anyway. Brazen Borrowerimage also gets a pass because Petty Theft is so useful as a tempo play and it gives us more rogues to utilize with Thieves' Guild Enforcerimage and Soaring Thought-Thiefimage.

Unlike in Rogues, we play more tempo-focused cards like Optimage in order to fix our opening hands. Much more so than rogues, we care about the interruption of our opponent's strategy: Rogues is a more aggro leaning deck so it's more important that we control out our opponent's moves. 4x Anticognitionimage should raise some eyebrows as it is (correctly) evaluated as a bad counterspell: it's too narrow, hitting only planeswalkers and creatures, with an added stipulation that our opponent can pay to ignore if we haven't yet milled them 8 cards. However as a tempo play it is very good, trading a card for a card and setting us up for our next turn, and even more so than Rogues, we can ensure that our opponent has milled 8. In this current, creature-heavy meta I have not personally experienced much frustration with this card's limitation of hitting only creautres and planeswalkers.

One of the ways we ensure 8 cards in the yard is with Maddening Cacophonyimage. Because we have fully committed to mill down being our form of aggro, Maddening Cacophony becomes a pretty efficient "burn" type spell that also turns on the abilities of many of our cards so that we can play them by turn 3. When evaluating the efficiency of Cacophony's "burn", we can think about the percentage of our opponent's "life total" (or library) it affects. Assuming our opponent is not playing a Yorion, Sky Nomadimage deck, they will have 53 cards left in their library on turn 1. Let's take this as a comparison to their total life total. 8 / 53 = .1503, so we have milled them 15% of their life total. With normal damage-based burn, 15% of 20 is 3 damage. So this card is equivalent to Lightning Strikeimage when going face. So the fact that it basically does "3 damage" while also turning on many of our other effects makes this card very valuable in a mill-focused tempo deck. Sometimes we may even want to kick the card. This is a much less efficient play, but can become a very decent top deck in the later game to help us close it out when we don't care as much about our mana efficiency. When up against a Yorion deck, a kicked Maddening Cacophony becomes crucial to putting those on the backfoot.

The most important card in the deck is Ruin Crabimage.

image

Ruin Crab is absolutely broken. It's a very good card in Rogues, but it's even better in a totally mill-committed Tempo deck. One of the biggest problems for Tempo is overdrawing lands, and many Tempo decks must run few lands (which can then lead to underdrawing lands). With Ruin Crab, however, top-decking a land is fine because it provides advancement toward your win condition. 3 mill off of 1 land is a pretty amazing rate, too, especially for a 1 mana spell that can act as a relevant blocker (again, converting the mill to "damage", this is the equivalent of giving each of our lands the abiltity to ping our opponent for 1 damage when lands enter the battlefield - this is pretty dang efficient for a 1 mana creature that acts as a relevant blocker).

Card Draw and Counterspells

Didn't Say Pleaseimage is a counter that I could easily see being substituted with Neutralizeimage. One of the problems in Tempo is ensuring that your opening hand has both enough threats and enough cards to effect your opponent's strategy (counterspells, destruction, bounce, etc). Neutralize can solve the specific problem of having too many counterpsells in your opening hand by allowing you to cycle it. However, in that case you would realistically want to cycle it turn 2 or 3 in order to find a threat, so that means you're not using one of your many counterpsells on those important turns. You may not find the space to cycle Neutralize until turns 4 or 5 or later. I think Neutralize is still a decent option, but I play Didn't Say Pleaseimage instead because it hurts our opponent by advancing our strategy. Because we are totally committed to Mill, Didn't Say Please acts as a sort of Ionizeimage which both says no to our opponent and shortens their clock.

Lofty Denialimage doesn't fit well in the deck because we don't have enough fliers (only 8). Right now the meta is creature-heavy enough that Anticognitionimage is fine in the main-board, but I could see Lofty Denial or even Negateimage fitting in the main board instead in a BO1 meta that wasn't so creature-heavy.

image

Unlike many classic, very good tempo decks, this deck does not have a card draw engine such as Curious Obsessionimage. We could play Sea-Dasher Octopusimage in order to turn one of our fliers into a card draw engine, but this has many downsides. Compared to Into the Storyimage, it will slowly draw us cards. It must stick around and be able to deal damage to our opponent for four turns in order to break even with Into the Story. It also makes our opponent's spot removal better. Unlike in many Tempo decks, we don't need to spend a lot of resources protecting our creatures. We care about board wipes, but we don't care very much about spot removal because there is no key creature threat that must be protected, such as Tempest Djinnimage in old Mono-Blue Tempo, or Brineborn Cutthroatimage in various Tempo decks pre-rotation. This allows us to save our counterspells for denying their own threats, card advantage, and wipes. We also don't play any cards like Dive Downimage to help protect creatures. If we run Sea-Dasher Octopusimage we would need to be more careful about protecting our creatures, which we don't want to have to do. 9 times out of 10, Into the Story is going to be better for us than a card like Sea-Dasher Octopus. And although relying on a four mana card as our only real card draw other than Optimage might raise some eyebrows in a normal tempo deck, our deck runs many more lands than would normally be expected in Tempo (24 lands), so a four mana play is not as hard for us to accomplish, thanks in large part to Ruin Crabimage making lands a much more useful top deck.

In short, with Into the Story our Tempo deck does not need a card draw engine, and it's not worth it to us to convert a creature into an engine because we don't want to be compelled to protect our creatures (when we're otherwise totally fine with them getting spot-removed).

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1 comments

MenacingMTG
Nice deck. I hate pure mill but appreciate variants which include mill.
MrQirn
Last Updated: 17 Jan 2021
Created: 14 Jan 2021
578 345 1

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