And not a creature in sight!

I agree it's a beast, but soooo, dang expensive! If I hit traumatize and then the haunting echos, it's a wrap usually. The people I play with locally play full play sets or at least 3 of each card, so it is devastating, for them anyway. Thanks for the feedback!

maybe cloudposts and vesuva's to ramp and make it easier?

Can we be pals now?

You can become peoples friends just by clicking on their name and then clicking on the follow-button.

They had an argument earlier that has since been removed. He isn't trying to "friend" him, he is just asking if the have a truce.

hah were good :)

keening stone combo is way too slow for modern

if you play the keening stone combo you might as well just play turbo fog

THAT IS SICK! And I'm sure it will piss some people off! Thanks!

no problem, I've always been fond of that combo =P

painter/stone combo is so wrong in so many ways. and yet so much fun. :) of course pretty much anything with painter's servant is ugly and fun. :)

I'll agree there, I really wish i owned some painters servants =p

no objections from me

you may want to consider more creature removal in your deck or sideboard for the really fast aggro decks or things like eldrazi, these cards may help, Dissipate; Sever The Bloodline; Praetor's Grasp; Sadistic Sacrament; and leyline of the void would be good too like matt said.

Try Recoil, it is old but good.

Thank you professor WDM! I have a lot to consider now. I appreciate the feedback and every kernel of advice you send my way!

Im scared of the orb!

Thanks for the suggestions. Some have been added, some not, but all appreciated! I'm scared of the orb and the bell. Also, I like the traumatize and echoes together. I've won with the two being played back to back in late game. It can be really devastating. I know it's a little expensive, but it does the trick, as I'm no pro and neither are the locals I play with! Thank you soooo, very much for the input and time you spend helping out. It is much appreciated!

Hey, I just recently posted a mill deck. And I normally don't post on other's decks asking for advice but I don't do mill very well and was wondering if I could get some help? I would be happy to give advice on pretty much anything else if anyone needs it. Although I have to agree that ghoulcaller's bell is way better than codex shredder. Particularly with increasing confusion and dream twist. Also some input on an elecutor stall deck would be appreciated as well. Thanks in advance. :)

I just like the dual ability of the shredder to bring a card back. Just my preference.

Makes sense. :)

So as far as the counter-war goes, is it still a bad idea to throw in psychic strike into a mill deck? Because I run it just to make sure I'm able to get my creatures (not really even sorceries etc.) out safely and be able to use their abilities. The mill deck I run as well is supposed to be standard legal as well so that's why I won't have a lot of cards like the ones BenWare has in here but that's the main reason I run them.

BY the way, nice job on the deck, look really vicious and I hope it serves you well!

Thanks for the tips and the nice comments!

Rats, I was gonna suggest Glimpse the Unthinkable. But yeah, two mana BU which you're already running and it mills ten cards!

Also someone suggested leyline of the void, but I think they neglected to add Helm of obedience, it's only vintage legacy legal but with leyline of the void is another insta all deck mill.

I added the glimpse, but it has now become a deck I can't play. I don't own it, and don't see myself paying for it anytime soon......Damn school supplies, uniforms, and class fees!

Such is the cruel mistress we call magic. I hear ya.

One note... You can't use isochron scepter with glimpse the unthinkable since it is a sorcery, and the scepter can only do instants.

Mind funeral and mind grind are fun, with echos !

Doesn't really stick with my theme of not running creatures if I add a bunch of creatures.

Well, deathrite shaman helps your mana, AND removes pesky stuff like emrakul or past in flames.

How does Deathrite Shaman remove Emrakul, the Aeons Torn?

Third ability, use it in response to Emrakul's triggered ability. He didn't mean it will remove it from play, it'll just stop it from shuffling your opponents graveyard back into his library. But like I just suggested 2 minutes ago. He should use tormod's crypt to do that. The deck is called "and not a creature in sight"... I think he might might be trying to stay away from creatures a bit.

Hey, I'm suggesting what will make the deck better. If you want to make a sub-par deck that can't win anything, all power to you. But if you want to win games, Increasing Confusion, Codex Shredder, Traumatize, Dream Twist, Psychic Spiral, Tome Scour, and Jace, Memory Adept are all bad cards or worse than their alternatives. And there is absolutely no reason to run an unsynergistic combo in the sideboard that has nothing to do with anything, there is no reason to run Dark Ritual, your manabase kind of sucks due to the lack of Darkslick Shores, Underground River, and Watery Grave, and your curve is way too high for 20 lands. You have almost no way of stopping threats other than 7 bounce spells and can't apply any pressure to the board. Your sideboard doesn't help the deck, and there is no reason why you would side anything in or out. And what do you have against creatures!?!

I think rather than post my deck next time, I should just ask you to make one for me. I'll tell you an idea I have and base group of cards I'd like to expand on, and you can use everything BUT that ideas and cards I start with in it! I mean, if I make every change you suggested, it's not even a deck I made, or based on the theme I started with, is it? I'm not trying to make a world champ deck out of this damn thing. LOL I just thought it was a neat idea for a casual deck, being it was made with "NO CREATURES" and a bunch of my scrap cards! And, I have nothing against creatures, as you'll see in my other decks. I was just exploring an idea. What do you have against ideas other than your own?

Sorry, maybe I'm having a bad day again, or just taking your criticisms a little too, hard.

He is what i hate about parts of the Magic: the Gathering community. Especially on Mtgvault.

It's probably me! I seem to have an attitude this past week. I am sure I just read his post wrong.......I mean no one would go in and tell someone to pull every single card they put in a deck, and replace it with ALL their choices instead, would they?

I was just giving suggestions. I do not expect you to follow all or even most of them. If I had to narrow it down, my 4 problems with the deck are the manabase, high curve, inability to interact with your opponents, and the sideboard.

For the first two, the problem is that you are only running 20 lands and only 8 duals. If nearly a third of the nonland cards in your deck cost 5 mana, the you will need more than 20 lands. Also, Underground River, Watery Grave, and Darkslick Shores are all amazing lands and are way better than Dimir Aqueduct.

The biggest problem that I see in this deck is that it can't interact with your opponents. You have no creatures to use as blockers and your only removal is temporary bounce. You have no countermagic and no discard. Since it will almost always take you at least 5 turns to mill your opponent to death, you need some way to stop your opponent from killing you in the meantime. Your deck can't do that and will lose almost all the time to midrange and aggro, and most of the time to combo.

Finally, your sideboard has nothing to do with your deck. I once read that the sideboard shouldn't be a dumping ground for cards that you wanted to put in your deck but couldn't fit. It needs to have cards that you side in for your problematic matchups (examples for this deck would aggro, midrange, and most forms of combo (especially graveyard based combos such as dredge) so that you have a chance of winning. Your sideboard has the Grindstone and Painter's Servant combo, which is a fine combo, but when would you ever side it in (also, Painter's Servant is a creature...)? Dark Ritual is an amazing card, but when would you ever side it in? What matchups would be made better if you had Dark Ritual maindeck? Jace, Memory Adept is a good mill card, but it is slow, and when would you ever need to side it in? Your deck already has a lot of mill cards, and I don't think that you will ever find a situation where you are thinking "Man, I wished I had some more 5 mana mill cards in this deck." And Elixir of Immortality is in there, why? The only thing that it stops is other mill decks, which are rare and certainly don't need 3 sideboard slots to stop them.

Your right

That doesn't work, the trigger is still on the stack. Leyline of the Void however does work.

You'll have to excuse me, but i'm failing to see what you're saying here. If you use Tormod's Crypt in response to, say, Emrakul's graveyard trigger, it will exile the graveyard. Emrakul can't shuffle the graveyard into your library if there is no graveyard to shuffle

I appreciate every tip you give WDM! I'll take a look when I can break away from helping my kiddos with homework! These honors classes are harder on me than they are my kiddos! LOL

You can allways give the kids some "magic-homework" If you have the ressources you can provide them with topdecks (Just print out tons of proxies and search the net for all decks in the format) then you can all test with or against your design. "it might be fun" or "do you really want to keep your pocket money" should help convincing them of the idea :)

SUNBLAST'EM:
I agree with "crypt incursion" coupled with fast mill! It's the best defence I've encountered so far...

Ensnaring bridge works in theory only, because you need to empty your hand to get the protection, and that's pretty difficult with any cards costing 3+ in the deck. Most beatdown will get you before you empty the hand.

As for removal, only go for abrupt decay and echoing truth, (and depending on design and meta, have 1-2 darkblast in main, and 2 in sideboard). I prefer to use surgical extraction and extirpate as preventive removal too.

In my experience having counterspells normally lower the amount of mill too far down. There are two exceptions. Broken ambition and (flusterstorm in legacy) both have worked for me, but always in sideboard.

Then there's the everpresent emrakul, which halt's the deck a lot. When mill "happened" to win in modern, all trondecks went through a redesign, and now had 1 emrakul and 1 ulamog, and some even had 1 more eldrazi.
This is probably what stopped mill in modern...

At the hight of tron-decks I played mill, and to fight emrakul I usually had both 4 extirpate and 4 surgical extraction +4 other gravecards to fight it. I soon learned that there was a more sneaky way to deal with tron!
Hit them on their land! ghostquarter them and then extract! That slows down the deck immensely, enough for you to take a slow approach to removing all the various eldrazi...

In legacy, the problem is "worse", as ghostquarter may only hit their ancient tombs, and they get a basic land to make a kill on turn 3 while you scramble to get more land because you spent one. Extracting emrakul is only part of the problem, because the most dominant variant out there is omni-show. Omnishow holds 3 cards keeping you from success.

1: Cunning wish. They usually play 4 of these, and if you can take them out. Omnishow as a design draw all it's cards, but can only really win when they get access to their sideboard with cunning wish (or with 1-2 emrakuls), therefore getting rid of cunning wish is really your top priority. To get rid of these, you need to mill as fast as possible so that you can extirpate them to hell (Remember, surgical extraction can and will get countered)

2: Leyline of sanctity. If you cannot target your opponent, 90% of your mill is gone. Some play 1 in maindeck, so there are two choices, echoing truth, which can be countered, and wipe away which may be too difficult. Neither surgical extraction or extirpate targets the opponent, making them your foremost weapon against omnishow. Also, this is why I rely so heavilly on 4 mesmeric orb in legacy. It bypasses leyline.

3: Finally, there is emrakul. Most designs play 1, but I have seen designs with 2, and if they see mill as a problem they will do the tron-splitup of 1 emrakul and 1 ulamog, so be prepared. Your preferred weapons will again be extirpate (plus the counterable surgical extraction), but some geniouses are throwing in green to make use of deathrite shaman, and I have to say it works.

Now here's the real problem: How do you approach this deck when they start with a leyline of sanctity in play?
You can't mill them with anything but mesmeric orb, which will usually be played too late, and since you can't mill them, you will not be able to take out neither cunning wish or emrakul?

Normally I would recommend echoing truth against leylines, but with all their countercapacities the choice can only be wipe away, and that takes 3 turns to get, meaning you are likelly to be dead!!!

What can save your ass?

The answer is chancellor of the spires. Theres about 41% chance of you getting it in an oppening-hand.
It will mill 7 cards, and open up for you to tear away this nasty deck with some luck (= cunning wish in grave. Odds for this to happen are actually about 41% too)

What about counters early game ? and maybe sideboard graveyard removal

Omnishow has counters too, and the deck has been spawned in a meta, where counters are frequently meet.
If you want to counter omnishow, you will need about the same amount of counters as the deck itself.
That can only lead to a cut in the mill-section. Cutting the mill-section means that it will take you longer to mill, which means that lots of other startegies will open up to your opponents.

A slightly better choice would be discard, since discard lets you plan ahead based on what you and your opponent have in your hands. Discard will also get cunning wish into the grave, where you can remove it. In the countersetup, they only play the wish when they are out of counters, ponders and brainstorms.