Cheesing out the Competition With Jace Self-Mill

Brawl Wednesday is over and what fun that was! If only there were some queue up to play Brawl on Arena every day of the week... anyways, since we are now stuck playing with ourselves for another week, here's a deck that's perfect at doing just that! Yeah, you guessed it, it's a Jace self-mill deck!

We are playing solitaire again, my friends! This time our commander will count as our straight-up win condition, which helps with the consistency of the deck in some ways. So get ready to get rid of all those pesky cards in your library as we power our way towards one of the cheesiest ways to win in Standard!

Milling it out:

It's time to mill, baby! Due to the nature of its ability in this deck, Drowned Secrets is basically our Bazaar of Baghdad. Mulligan for this aggressively and you will have a fun game. In order to further our milling and give us a good blocker early on, Merfolk Secretkeeper is a nod to the current state of Limited in arena, and counts as both a mill spell and two blue spells for Drowned Secrets. We have Bond of Insight for further mill and spell recursion, and Mission Briefing for its ability to let us double dip into our spells.

Draw, draw, draw:

What's the best thing to do in Magic? Well if you're a filthy blue player like me, then drawing cards is the answer! Anticipate and Shimmer of Possibilty have impressed me quite a bit recently in Brawl, as it really helps us search for the cards we might need in a pinch. We have a Jace's Triumph because duh, and drawing 3 for 3 always sounds great. For the rest, Chemister's Insight is a good amount of card advantage and Drawn from Dreams, Precognitive Perception, and Commence the Endgame are all powerful card-drawing spells. Finally there's the finale, which could be used to extend the game or to just draw an immense amount of cards.

Friends in times of need:

Unfortunately for us we actually need to put things on the board every now and then. So we brought all the best blue friends! Mu Yanling, Sky Dancer provides excellent board delay and has a fantastic if a bit ambitious emblem for us. Emry, Lurker of the Loch is doing what she does best and getting us closer to our game plan. Kasmina, Enigmatic Mentor provides more card draw and protection for us, and Spark Double lets us get a little extra our of any of our 'threats'. God-Eternal Kefnet is fantastic with our more expensive card drawm and Dream Eater gives us access to medium-sized board swings whille milling us. Cavalier of Gales is just a very solid card in this deck, as a recurring threat and a way to search for answers.

Protecting the Gameplan:

So what's the best thing to do in Magic again? If you're a filthy blue player, then you know this is where it's at: counterspells! We have almost the full package here: Disdainful Stroke, Tale's End, Negate, Hypnotic Sprite, Mystic Dispute, Sinister Sabotage, and Devious Cover-Up. For extra trickiness we also run one Lazotep Plating to protect from big targeted removal and Narset's Reversal for some insane blowouts if our opponent gets overzealous. Eyes Everywhere is a card I've been starting to warm up to more and more, as it provides good value with the scry, as well as threatening activation and stealing important permanents.

The Mana:

Ah, the mana. For this one we are going with less lands, but more ramp. We run 4 mana rocks in Arcane Signet, Midnight Clock, Mana Geode, and Spinning Wheel. Any amount of acceleration can be really helpful. For our lands of note we have Blast Zone in case we can't counter something, Castle Vantress for the scry value, and Mystic Sanctuary to continually reuse our spells.

What was I doing again?