When you look at a mill deck in this light the evaluation of cards becomes far simpler. You are only concerned with mill per mana and mill per card. Same equations for burn analysis substituting damage for mill. What you find is that mill spells are far more efficient all round than burn spells at killing 40 card decks. You are aiming to kill consistently on turn four which will mean you should always have killed by turn five in a goldfish and can on occasion do it turn three. This means you are looking to ideally have 10 mana to spend on mill cards with 6 or 7 (play or draw) non-land cards to do the milling with. Generally you expecting to need to mill for around 30 to take the game. This is optimal conditions, you might not be able to spend all your mana, you might draw slightly too few or too many lands. One which means you need higher mill per mana efficiency and the other meaning you might need higher mill per card efficiency. Even lands that come into play tapped will hurt your optimal plays. Having a range of cheaper mill cards and higher powered ones allows you to play out cards according to the ratios you find your lands and spells are arriving in so that you are able mill for 30 by turn 4 in a variety of ways, some using slightly more mana and less cards and others vice versa.
In 40 card decks (where you assume life totals equal 30) mill is more efficient than burn. Tome Scour compares favourably to Lightning Bolt as 5/30 is greater than 3/20. This is the general trend and so really the question becomes; Why ever play burn or RDW when you can play aggro mill instead? There are plenty of good answers to this. Red is more consistent for one, just being in one colour makes a pretty huge difference to consistency which is all important in this kind of pure deck. Another valuable aspect is that burn has far more utility than mill, burn can kill off creatures and planeswalkers which can be significant in some of the more interactive and fast paced matchups. Mill also has some natural counters such as the original Eldrazi cards and is very easy to counter with cards like Gaea's Blessing should you be doing it in a more constructed style of format.
What I have discovered from researching this archetype is that the main issue for the deck is a lack of redundancy in the cheap mill cards. Even if you use some of the really weak stuff you struggle to make a 40 card deck of just mill cards. Burn is near infinitely redundant by comparison! As I lack experience with this kind of deck this is all conjecture but I am really struggling to work out how bad it is in this kind of deck to substitute weak mill cards for other things. Every non-card draw, non-mill card in your list (which all ready includes all the lands) contributes to 0.025 decrease in your mill to card ratio. Likewise, every mana symbol in just the non-mill cards reduces the mill per mana ratio in the deck too.
I am used to mill decks wanting to delay things as it works in their favour however much of the strength of this kind of deck is being so quick that loads of things that might be trouble simply won't have the time to get online. Delay cards work well with some of the ongoing mill effects but most of the good mill cards are one shot. I will propose a list at the end which uses some utility non-mill cards. It feels uncomfortably few for a mill deck yet in the context of a burn deck it would seem like a stupid amount of utility to run. With so many good options in Dimir for utility spells and so few slots to use on them I am sure that is the aspect of the deck I will get most wrong. Before attempting a list I feel the need to examine each potential card so as to get a feel for what is good and what is weak.
Returning to our maths bit, we are aiming to win on turn 4 by milling for around 30. To do this we will have 10/11 cards, of which we hope exactly 4 are lands. We will have 10 or less mana. Our deck will have roughly 6 spells to win with. On average therefor our spells needs to cost one and two thirds mana and needs to have at least 5 mill per card and 3 mill per mana. You could also say this as needing 3 mill per card and no more than one mana per card. The latter is more useful for looking at the deck as a whole inclusive of lands while the former helps to more clearly identify the efficiency of various cards.
Tome ScourMill per Card: 5
Mill per Mana: 5
One of the simple cards by which to compare the others. In terms of immediate mill per mana it is one of the very best performers however it is fairly low total mill. A deck of just Tome Scour would be very potent in mana screws but would struggle in a flood. It is a 100% include in the list as it ticks all three boxes we are looking for on the stats. Optimally however you would run some cards with higher mill per card, perhaps at the cost of mill per mana or just total mana so as to balance things better.
Mind Sculpt
Mill per Card: 7
Mill per Mana: 3.5
This only ticks two of the 3 boxes needed for our aim. As it is 2 mana it is over our average desired one and two thirds cost. This is pretty negligible, for every one drop you run, just on the maths, you can run two two drops. Overall this is still 100% in the list being all round very efficient.
Thought Scour
Mill per Card: 2 (infinite)
Mill per Mana: 2
Cards that draw cards are hard to evaluate on their own in terms of mill per card but as a function of the whole deck they are much easier. As it is card draw it effectively doesn't cost you a card to play it so it greatly improves the deck's overall mill per card average. As it also is cheap and does some mill itself it keeps the mill per mana and average CMC fairly reasonable. Not a card you would want your whole deck to consist of as you could never win before turn five however it is a 100% include in this kind of list. It draws you closer to your more powerful mill cards and makes you that much more consistent.
Glimpse the Unthinkable
Mill per Card: 10
Mill per Mana: 5
A very potent card indeed and widely regarded as the best no frills mill card in the game. This is because it is so off the charts on both mill per mana and total mill despite not being that pricey. Again, this is not a card you would really want a deck full of as you would be wasting mana turns one and 3. You would pretty consistently win with it on turn four but there is no reason not to improve the deck with at least some one drop cards if you could play any number of any cards.
Hedron CrabMill per Card: 0-18 (going with 6)
Mill per Mana: so 6ish
One of the best cards in the deck but far more variable than most so harder to precisely quantify. The later the game goes the weaker the card gets. It is usually 3 mill per turn, sac lands make it 6 but no lands or playing it as a one drop make it 0. Aiming to win on turn 4 means you get 3 land drops with it at best if you make it turn one or two and then don't miss any land drops or get it killed. Having cards with high variance in the deck increase the value of card quality effects. While Hedron Crab can out perform the next best mill card by about four times at one end of the spectrum and do flat nothing at the other what really matters is what it usually does. In my experience this is a lot of good work, six was a conservative estimate for the amount of mill the card provides on average. 100% include.
Shriekhorn
Mill per Card: 5
Mill per Mana: 5
This is the fair and tame version of the Hedron Crab. It offers good stats when it is made early but gets weaker as it is played later on. I think in cube there are too few options to forgo cards like this that potentially tick all the boxes. Mildly increases the value of card quality as with any other card that is best on curve.
Memory SluiceMill per Card: 4 (8)
Mill per Mana: 4 (8)
This ticks two of the three boxes and is very close on the mill per card. Given that it is a one drop you can cast with any colour of mana in the deck I think the card is far too convenient to not play. There is also the chance you get to conspire it which propels it to Hedron Crab levels of efficiency. This will be rare to do but is valuable enough that it does put a little bit of extra value on playing creatures. With one drops being the most important kind of card for mana efficieny I don't think you can forgo any that are even close on the stats so this is a 100% include.
Vision Charm
Mill per Card: 4
Mill per Mana: 4
Much like Memory Sluice but trading potential power for some odd utility and instant speed. The latter is fairly irrelevant in this deck and the utility comes in a very odd form but who knows, I am sure it has plenty of application beyond resetting your Shreikhorn... Given how close this is to the mill per card requirements while ticking the other boxes I can't see this not getting included in any sensible cube aggro mill list. I prefer the idea of Sluice but in practice there is likely little to choose between them. They represent the last of the strong one drops on this list.
Mesmeric OrbMill per Card: 4+
Mill per Mana: 2+
The actual best mill card however with such a short time to perform there is a good chance Glimpse and the like are better in this list. It represents inevitability in a serious way. With the deck being so fast you can expect the lower end of performance from this card but it is still well worth it even then. It is most effective against the decks that threaten to kill you quickest themselves and goes a long way to making them play sub optimally. A card that is cheap, has high ongoing mill potential as well as some mild disruption is a big win. It is the Sulfuric Vortex of the mill deck.
Archive Trap
Mill per Card: 13
Mill per Mana: infinite
Not only your biggest one shot mill card but also your cheapest. This is the Fireblast of the mill deck. Most decks have shuffle effects, some quite a lot but the average is probably only a couple. This slight unpredictability does keep this silly card in check but it remains one of the very best regardless. Don't leave home without it whatever the mill deck you are playing. It is the one card that really improves the deck stats in terms of mill per card, mill per mana and total CMC which in turn lets you play some other exciting things more freely.
Breaking // EnteringMill per Card: 8
Mill per Mana: 4
Staple solid mill that greatly improves your redundancy and reliability. Yes, Glimpse is 20% better but usually 2 cards isn't the difference. Play it, be grateful to have the option to play it.
Manic ScribeMill per Card: 3 - 9 (guessing about 4 on average)
Mill per Mana: 2ish
While this is likely better than Hedron Crab in the control lists it is a lot less exciting here. The extra mana cost hurts the value of the card a lot and the odds on you having delirium within the early stages of the game are slight. It encourages play of looting cards and things like Baleful Strix and Vessel of Paramnesia just to increase those low odds. Being a 0/3 is not that much more exciting than a 0/2 in such a quick aggressive list. The best reason to play it is that it improves Mind Sluice! It might be that you are forced into running this due to lack of enough quality mill however it is one of the least efficient all round cards on offer.
Extract
Mill per Card: 1
Mill per Mana: 1
The least efficient mill card on offer however it does solve a lot of problems like Emrakul and it is cheap. Being exile and targetted it has double potency against combo and synergy decks which it disrupts against rather than just being a protective measure. I would always want to play some exile mechanics in a mill deck, especially in the kinds of cube format where mill is an option. It is like running a Dismember or a Volcanic Fallout in your burn list, somewhat of a concession to the problems you will likely face. The thing with mill decks is that when they win your opponent will see every card they have. This makes problem cards like Gaea's Blessing almost a certainty, at least burn decks can just try and dodge the problem cards rather than having to solve them. One really nice thing about Extract is that you can use it to trigger your Archive Trap.
Ray of ErasureMill per Card: 1 (infinite)
Mill per Mana: 1
This is probably too slow and weak to run but it is playable filler being both a one drop and a cantrip card. It is both half the Mill of thought Scour and has a delay on the draw yet it still seems more playable than expensive mill cards or low power ones with a card cost. I think this is just weak enough that a card like Serum Visions will have more of an improving effect on the decks performance.
Dream Twist
Mill per Card: 3 / 6
Mill per Mana: 3 /2
This is one of the more interesting cards on offer and is probably one of the better filler cards. The average of the stats has it under par on most accounts however it is really good for covering you when screwed and when flooded. Just cast once and it does some mill while improving your decks average CMC and cast twice it provides enough mill per card to hit our targets. It is cheap enough when you are screwed to be of use and it packs just enough punch with the flashback to be significant when you are flooded. Highly remeniscant of other flashback cards in their respective homes, Firebolt for RDW, Think Twice for control. Not wildly efficient cards but very convenient.
Mind Funeral
Mill per Card: 12ish
Mill per Mana: 4ish
This is not the kind of deck you can run many three drops in at all and of those on offer this would be my first choice. It can wiff and hit as low as 4 but this is very rare. The average is no less than 12 and every now and again you one shot people with it. The average land count in cubes is 16 however by the time you play a Mind Funeral you expect the ratio of lands in the top half of the deck to be lower than it was at the start of the game. Loads of cards filter lands out from the deck and most scry effects either draw lands or put them to the bottom. All told, Mind Funeral does a lot of work and is a card to fear. Potentially one of your biggest hitters and doing so in the right sort of way.
Dimir Charm
Mill per Card: 2
Mill per Mana: 1
Really poor on the stats however this card is impressive utility. Used as mill you also get to reliably negate their draw for a turn. When not used as mill you have access to countermagic and creature removal, all be it situational incarnations of both. Overall I think there are more powerful utility cards to be played than this but the dual purpose of the card is highly alluring.
Codex Shredder and Ghoulcallers Bell
Mill per Card: 4
Mill per Mana: 4
I have offered pretty optimal stats for these cards, the reality will be lower when things are going well. When things are going badly it might well be more than 4 but odds on that won't matter a jot. All told I think these are too slow and low powered to merit inclusion even as cheap filler. Bell has some synergy with flashback, delirium, Brainstorm and the like but mostly you want mill out of your cards and these are super limp in that area.
Jace's Erasure
Mill per Card: 2
Mill per Mana: 1
This seems awful in this list as you don't plan on having the game go long enough to trigger this much. Even if you make it turn two and draw an extra card each turn it is still underperforming on all stats that we care about. You can greatly improve the potency of the card with a really high count of draw spells like Treasure Cruise and Visions of Beyond combined with lots of cantrip effects however for a card so weak to begin with it isn't worth pushing it. By all means play some draw but don't get caught up thinking that makes this card what you want.
Chancellor of the SpiresMill per Card: 7
Mill per Mana: infinite
The card itself is unplayable, you would only consider this in the deck for the opening hand trigger. A free mill for seven is great however at the cost of having a dead card when you don't get it in your opener you have to be chock full of card filter or utterly desperate to run this. The fact that this is 20% chance at best to be in your opener really the mill per card should be quoted at closer to 1 or 2. Cute but not worth, probably even with loads of card quality.
Wheel of FortuneMill per Card: 7
Mill per Mana: 2.33
On the stats this is pretty weak but that somewhat ignores the fact you draw seven with it! I have won more games in magic milling people with Wheel of Fortune than any other mill card and not once has that been the intended use of the Wheel. You could actually play Wheel in this deck as an OK mill card and a great card draw card. With it being red and red having no other good mill I wouldn't advise it. Consistency is really important for the quick decks and a 3rd colour is not conducive to that end. Wheel would make Jace's Erasure more interesting and also improves the cheaper mill cards value.
Predict (and Foreshadow)
Mill per Card: 1 (infinite)
Mill per Mana: 0.5
Another bad Thought Scour that is actually much weaker filler simply because it costs two mana. There are not any obvious synergies where you can guarantee a double draw trigger to be found in this list and so I don't think this merits any sort of inclusion. If I did I would likely categorize it in the card draw section rather than the mill section.
Vessel of ParamnesiaMill per Card: 3 (infinite)
Mill per Mana: 1
Generally this is just weak. The mill per mana is just way too far off to merit this card on top of really being a 3 drop. Give me Pilfered Plans over this every time. The best thing this offers is being an enchantment for delirium but as we have discussed you don't go playing bad cards to improve other bad cards.
Pilfered Plans
Mill per Card: 2 (infinite)
Mill per Mana: 0.666
Not really so much of a mill card as a refuel card. In the list with a lower mill per card and a higher mill per mana this is a good balancing tool. Overall it is a little low powered for my liking but it isn't the worst.
Sanity GrindingMill per Card: 0 - 10ish
Mill per Mana: about 1.5
There are few heavy blue cost cards you want to play in this kind of deck, most of the cards are a single blue. There is a high top end potential for this card if you force it a bit but I don't think you can make it work well enough for cube yet. This compares very poorly to Mind Funeral on average and is a little awkward to cast as well. Not worth playing basically ever.
Altar of the Brood
Mill per Card: 4ish
Mill per Mana: 4ish
This probably works out about as good as Codex Shredder and the Bell. You can power it up a little with a higher creature count and indeed other cards like the Shredder. Of the bunch it is the card I would play first, not only does it have better scaling with synergy but it can output more burst mill than the others. Far from good but on the more playable side of things.
Ashiok Nightmare WeaverMill per Card: 6
Mill per Mana: 2
I have assumed you are making this on turn three rather than turn four and the stats are still pretty poor for it. There are two things going for Ashiok to compensate for how weak it is on the stats alone. The first is that it exiles which can do a lot of the work Extract does for you. The second is that it is a threat on its own and will often be the focus of attacks and plays rather than yourself. I instinctively would avoid playing such an expensive and slow card in such a deck but it would still be my 2nd or 3rd choice three drop if that were the thing.
Brain Freeze
Mill per Card: 6ish
Mill per Mana: 3ish
It is hard to generate much storm yourself and encourages the play of weaker or off theme cards like Gitxian Probe. You can pretty reliably get one storm trigger from your opponent but this does make it an awkward card compared to Mild Sculpt. The slight chance for it to over perform (as in do better than the stats I quoted for it) is not a reason to play it however a two mana mill for six card might still be good enough to make the cut.
Startled AwakeMill per card: 13
Mill per Mana: 3.25
A very big hitter but clunky. In our aim to win turn 4 this can only be cast turn 4 and only if you hit all your lands. The odds on having all four of the lands you need in time make this pretty weak in the RDW style of deck. The best comparison is to Thundermaw Hellkite except that Thundermaw is pretty exceptional, I am never too unhappy to have to run it in my deck whatever it might be! Thundermaw is pricey for RDW but it does a lot of work. As RDW style lists often have to aim some burn at creatures and things it is very useful to have big sources of damage and so Thundermaw is pretty tasty. A more direct translation of Startled Awake to RDW would be if there was a 2RR sorcery that did 8 damage to an opponent. Startled Awake has pretty good stats overall and so might well make the cut in order to fill out the ranks. The more filler the deck ends up playing/needing the better the inclusion of Startled Awake becomes. In an ideal world the deck would be all Glimpse, Hedron Crab and the one mana Scour cards however in practice we have no where near that level of redundancy. You could argue that the card has bonus utility in an ongoing game but given I am complaining about 4 mana for this deck I really don't see the other face of this card being of much use.
Chronic Flooding
Mill per Card: 6ish
Mill per Mana: 3ish
I am not a huge fan of this card as it gives way too much choice to your opponent. Best case scenario you make it turn two and they have to use their lands non stop giving you perhaps 9 mill. The problem is that your opponent can often just take the Sink Hole and you haven't done what you needed to do.
So, those are our mill options, using just the best on offer we have this;
Thought Scour 2
Hedron Crab 8
Shriekhorn 6
Tome Scour 2
Vision Charm 4
Ray of Erasure 1
Dream Twist 4.5
Extract 1
Memory Sluice 4
Breaking // Entering 8
Glimpse the Unthinkable 10
Mesmeric Orb 10
Mind Sculpt 7
Brain Freeze 6
Mind Funeral 12
Archive Trap 13
About 16 decent to good cards meaning we have 8 or 9 to fill with utility or weaker mill to take us to 40. Lets look at roughly what the average stats are for our good mill cards so as to gain direction for the rest. With 16 cards we want about 12 lands to get that ratio about right. The total mill of these 16 cards is about 100 for the combined estimated mill per card. The average CMC is 22/16 which is nicely under the 5/3 target. This puts the mill per spell at nearly 8 and the mill per mana at over 4 all told putting us well above our required stats. To account for card draw effects you need to consider the lands meaning mill per card in deck rather than mill per spell. This needs to be 3 or more to get the job done, much like mill per mana. 100/28 is the mill per card in this deck however 100/26 would be a more appropriate figure as the Ray of Erasure and the Thought Scour cycle. This takes the figure from just over 3 to nearly 4.
If we were to stop there with our mill and draw effects in the list we would end up with a mill per card of nearer 2.5 (100/38) which isn't enough to get the job done. What this tells us is that our remaining 8 or 9 cards have to either do some good mill or draw some more cards. If you just pad this out with non-mill, non-draw effects you cannot expect to reliably kill turn four or quicker. These are the next 9 most playable mill cards out there for this deck.
Predict 1
Foreshadow 1
Dimir Charm 2
Altar of the Brood 5
Starled Awake 13
Ashiok, 6
Pilfered Plans 2
Vessel of Paramnesia 3
Delirium Mage 4
37 mill in 9
22 mana in 9
5 extra draw
Taking us to 137/35 mill per card and keeping us just over 3 mill per mana. The average CMC goes slightly over the target. Acceptably so for a deck with such little redundancy but I think we can do better, a lot of these final possibilities are really weak and bring the deck down a lot.
There is a fairly extensive list of interesting and powerful support cards that work well with mill. Some card quality, some card draw, some disruption, some stall or protection effects, some removal and even some ramp! Some of these cards fall into more than one group however I think it is more useful to just consider them all as non-mill cards and just group them into high pick high power cards and jank you can easily get if you actually want it. Although you don't want loads of non-mill cards I think a smattering of the best not only improves the overall potency of the deck but also improves the goldfish clock.
The Good and Contested Stuff
Baleful Strix
Snapcaster Mage
Arcane Denial
Daze
Brainstorm
Deathrite Shaman
Jace, Vryn's Prodigy
Cryptic Command
Toxic Deluge
Treasure Cruise
Spell Pierce (and other one mana counter)Inquisition of Kozilek (one mana targetted discard)
Shelldock Isle
The Stuff you should be able to grab more easily
Preordain (and other one mana card quality)
Seal of Removal (other bounce)
Disfigure (and other spot removal)
Darkness
Draka Mystic
Visions of Beyond
Augur of Bolas
Jace Beleren
Thing in the Ice
Kami of the Crescent Moon
Returned Reveler
I will go over these cards in a little detail so we can work out what the most sensible filler cards are for the deck. The symmetrical draw stuff sounds perfect in theory and has been used in the past by turbo mill decks to decent effect. The problem with it is that it is generally fairly low mill and also low card draw compared to alternatives. Jace Beleren is looking like a combination of all the worst bits of Pilfered Plans combined with Vision Skeins! While you don't overly care about your opponent drawing you would still much rather it was mill instead! Kami of the Crescent Moon is likely the best as it is fairly cheap and does some defensive work. Best case scenario it mills for 3 and draws you 2, not that much better than a Predict or indeed the weakarse Vision Skeins and at quite a lot more risk generally. Draka Mystic is less risk than the Kami but is quite a drain on your resources. I like the card quality aspect of it and how you retain all the control. It is a bit of a Grim Lavamancer in the deck except that it will shine against the control decks rather than those with <3 toughness dorks!
Returned Reveler is limp and unreliable mill, you play it to aid your cause while slowing down an opponents. When it is good it is fine and when it is bad it does nothing making it not worth it. Substantially weaker than a Manic Scribe with no delirium ever. Augur of Bolas and Baleful Strix are defensive dorks that cost you no cards. Ideally for me I would tend to have these in the sideboard as they will help a lot against tempo creature decks than can conceivably outpace you but afford little to no value in the control games. Broadly the inclusion of such cards simply reduces you mill per mana across the deck. Augur of Bolas comes with card quality making it less of a cost to play it however Strix is a much better body and contributes better to delirium is that is something you are keen on!Thing in the Ice is a defensive dork with some bounce utility instead of cantrip. The bounce is nice but it is balanced on also giving a 7/8 which this list cares not for. As such Thing in the Ice has too little synergy with the deck to be worth it.
Seal of Removal is probably my favourite creature kill spell going for this deck. It is cheap, hits everything and gets round everything except for hexproof. With your plan to win so quickly you really don't need to have stuff off the board for long to get your win. Seal contributes to delirium and may have some utility with your own stuff. I think I would generally play bounce over black spot removal in this deck, say Boomerang over Go for the Throat if I was going to play a two drop. There are a couple of white guys this list struggles to beat, True Believer style cards and the Jotun Grunt. Beyond that however the deck only cares about removal if it thinks it is getting beaten in a race by them which seems fairly unlikely. Playing a removal spell is like playing Path to Exile in your burn deck. Sometime right but generally a concession to problems than the optimal way to go.
Cryptic is one of the best control mill cards going being a Time Walk most of the time or being able to deal with a problem permanent. In an aggro mill deck however it seems just too expensive to be that exciting or impactful. I would certainly use my earlier picks to grab more useful power cards. Likewise, Damnation and even Toxic Deluge seem a little on the slow side to make a difference. By the time you can sweep the board you have enough mana to win and so you are better off stalling with spot removal and cheap utility dorks if you need to. Darkness is the solution to Cryptic Command and Damnation being to expensive to be playable. If you need a tool to stem a tide of damage from busted starts you can't race than Darkness is by far the most efficient stall tool going. It is sufficiently cheap that you can easily cast other mill spells along side it. One of the issues aggro mill decks have is that some of the best mill cards scale well with more turns. Mesmeric Orb, Hedron Crab etc all do a lot more work the more time they are in play. Although you aim to win as quickly as possible you can win a whole lot more efficiently a turn slower if you like by using Darkness. In matchups where the only relevant things they can do to you are attack you then despite the appearance of counter synergy Darkness is one of your most unfair and powerful tools.Treasure Cruise is good, we know this. It is best in cheap decks full of spells more so than permanents which is exactly what this is. While I don't see this getting fired off for one mana before turn four in this deck it is still probably good enough to run most of the time. Despite this I would be disinclined to waste any early picks on it as you have more important things to take and you have arguably better card draw options available to you in Visions of Beyond. While Visions probably takes nearly as long as Treasure Cruise to become an Ancestral Recall there is a lot more utility in being able to cycle a one mana card in a deck like this than having some god awful Compulsion level of card sat in your hand clogging you up.
Shelldock Isle might seem nutty good here but in reality it is costing you mana to get your free spell. With the average CMC being so low Shelldock is rarely saving you mana and often costing you it. Paying one or two mana to get a free spell cast is still decent enough and perfectly playable, just not as good as it seems. There is the issue of some counter synergy too. Card draw is good when your mill per card is low which is the case when you have cheaper stuff. The cheaper the stuff you have the lower the value Shelldock offers. Nephalia Drownyard seems like a no go for this list too. Colourless land will hurt some and paying 4 mana to mill for three isn't winning games for you!
Snapcaster Mage is another great card that is actually pretty unexciting in this deck. A 2/1 body does little for you so really you are just paying two more mana to cast your best spell again. Quite close to Demonic Tutor in effect, a card you don't play in a redundant deck. One mana discard and countermagic (including Daze) seem fine but perhaps a little situational. Generally they will have less of an effect than Darkness or Seal of Removal yet dilute your deck just as much. Most of your problem cards are not solved with discard or counters as it is. If your coming up short for some reason the these cards seem like acceptable filler, they might help you to not lose but they won't do anything to help you win. With mill being so much more powerful than burn but not being able to hit dorks it does seem reasonable to play some purely defensive cards despite being brutally quick. The thing is that there are only two types of deck that are quicker than you, nutty aggro decks like affinity and combo decks. A lot of combo decks are simply ruined by mill or even just extract!
While I don't object to the idea of padding out a little with cheap discard and counter magic I find cheap card quality to be more palatable. Card quality substitutes fairly well for the weaker mill effects. Adding a mana to some of the better mill effects in the deck doesn't stop them being better than those I am reluctant to put in. Every one mana card quality spell only adds a tiny bit of mill per mana to your decks average and in return it will make your draws that much smoother and better. There is diminishing returns on the card quality effects. Too much and you are not finding good mill card or lands but more card quality things which is not good. Three card quality effects seems pretty reasonable, a little more wouldn't hurt and less is fine too if you have better things to run. Brainstorm is obviously the best by quite some margin but equally it is that much more contested. You already want sac lands for your Hedron Crab so Brainstorm is going to perform well. You are looking to smooth things out and be cheap so Preordain and Serum Visions are better than the dig orientated Ponder and all the one mana stuff is generally better than the two mana stuff. I'd run Slight of Hand or even Careful Study (or Vampiric I guess by that logic) over any of the two mana spells such as Impulse.Lastly we have the three top pick cards that seem like they are really worthwhile for the deck and are much more valuable to pick up than Brainstorm (although after that you are probably most interested in the lands!). Jace, Vryn's Prodigy seems all round a great fit for the deck. If he lives he should provide a couple of loots and then a flashback. Looting is one of the best forms of card quality, it sorts out delirium and far more importantly any of those cards that are only good if you have them early. While I dismissed Snapcaster for just being a more expensive mill card the Jace is far better in this area as you don't pay the cost that turn meaning you can easily recur your most expensive and powerful mill effect if you want. Jace even has some defensive utility if that is what you need. The card offers a bit too much all round to be passed up on if you get the chance on it. Not essential but easily the most powerful filler card you could hope for.
Arcane Denial is another huge card here. It is pretty much a Thoughtscour that hard counters a spell for just one more mana. Sure, it is a may effect and it is them drawing rather than milling but really, you going to complain about a 2 mana Dismiss? This is by far the best disruption tool going. It works towards your end goal while also drawing you deeper into your deck. The best comparison I can think of for it in RDW is Searing Blaze, essentially a removal spell but one that also applies pressure. It is a bit more like a Searing Blaze that does a little less damage to the dome and instead draws you a card but you get the picture. Arcane Denial is also good disruption being fairly cheap for what it does and having very little restriction on what it can stop.The final card that seems really potent in this list is Deathrite Shaman. We have pretty much exhausted all the playable one and two drop mill cards meaning we have to resort to pricier things to finish the list which in turn hurts the average CMC of the deck. By adding in ramp you negate this cost somewhat. In essence you can reduce the average CMC of your deck by a small amount (I estimate it to be about 0.0375 per card) by having it in your list. As you are mill focused you can be assured that Deathrite taps for mana even when you have no sac lands. Additionally Deathrite has some defensive attributes in the lifegain and 1/2 body department and can even disrupt with graveyard removal. He is one of your best cards against old Eldrazi... Including Deathrite in the list makes playing cards like Mind Funeral and Startled Awake a lot less painful on your target average CMC.
While on this topic it should be noted that while the direct effect of card quality spells will be to increase the cost of your mill effects the reality is that it will likely reduce it. Card quality not only helps you to find the right balance of spells and lands while curving it also helps you find the most suitable or optimal spell. Say your turn one card quality spell finds that Hedron Crab as the third card down you have effectively gained 6 mill out of your card. Perhaps you just get to cast Glimpse instead of Mind Sculpt. It is hard to estimate what numerical effect this will have but suffice it to say that card quality really does seem like the go to for filler in decks like this.
Right, after much analysis and consideration it is time to put an actual list together!
25 Spells
Thought Scour
Hedron Crab
Shriekhorn
Tome Scour
Vision Charm
Altar of the Brood
Dream Twist
Memory Sluice
Extract
Darkness
Visions of Beyond
Brainstorm
Deathrite Shaman
Seal of Removal
Manic Scribe
Breaking // Entering
Glimpse the Unthinkable
Mesmeric Orb
Mind Sculpt
Brain Freeze
Arcane Denial
Jace, Vryn's Prodigy
Mind Funeral
Startled Awake
Archive Trap
15 Lands
Tropical Island
Undreground Sea
Underground River
Watery Grave
Polluted Delta
Misty Rainforest
Verdant Catacombs
Chocked Estuary
Sunken Ruins
Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
Darkslick Shores
Drowned Catacombs
3x Islands (a Shelldock would be fine here but it does make the Drowned Catacombs weaker and it is already the weak link. Another fetch with green wouldn't be a bad thing either).
The last cuts were Ray of Erasure, Dimir Charm and Predict for not doing enough. I'd rather more card quality than the Ray and two drops have to be quite a bit better than the one drops to merit inclusion. The last additions were Altar of the Brood and the Manic Scribe and they only made it because of how they compliment each other. Manic Scribe is the best defensive body in the list which is how it is really earning its keep, as a mill card alone it is the worst in the deck by a decent chunk. Delirium is a bit of a pipe dream here even with a loot effect. Manic Scribe also helps both Mind Sluice and the previously mentioned Altar of the Brood slightly further mitigating his weakness here.
This list has an average CMC of 38/40 (assuming an average of 2 mana spent on Dream Twist and never hard casting Archive Trap). This is just under target max which was always going to be the toughest to achieve of the things. Having Deathrite alleviates this a little that is not shown here in the numbers but it is still very close to the bar.
It has 125ish total mill which is again just above the target, more so however when you take into account the card draw in the deck. With 125 mill in a 40 card deck you have 3.125
mill per card and slightly more mill per mana in this list with the <1 average CMC. With 4 cantrip style card draw effects (not including the loots) you can more reasonably consider the deck to be 36 cards which takes the mill per card to nearly 3.5 which is a healthy amount above par.
For a burn deck to be able to hit the stats needed to consistently pull of a turn four win you can't get near this level of juice. Even the deck with only Lightning Bolt needs to go down to 13 lands to achieve a high enough burn per card to get the job done. On paper this list looks brutally good. It has turn three wins and very consistently gets turn four wins. With all the built in card quality and utility compared to burn style decks it has lots more consistency and resiliance all round too.In terms of a side board I would look to include cheap things with general purpose rather than specific hosers like Gloom, Chill or Engineered Plagues. Mostly it would be things that I would swap in for Seal of Removal, Darkness and Extract just to hedge against different styles of deck. There would also be some room dedicated to graveyard removal so as deal with the likely sideboard hate coming in against me. A cover all is always nice as well, some kind of cheap removal or bounce generally do the trick there. If I were scared of aggression I would look to include some of the cheap cantrip chumps I discussed earlier as maindeck considerations.
Duress
Inquisition of Koliek,
Spell Pierce
Daze
Ravenous Trap
Relic of Progenitus
Tormod's Crypt
Chain of Vapour
Boomerang
Disfigure
Baleful Strix
Augur of Bolas
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