Dimir Mill has been a deck in Modern for a very long time.

From the original gangster Glimpse the Unthinkable to newer additions like Drown in the Loch, Dimir mill has always been lurking in the shadows as a dark horse outlier, at times swooping in to take in a 5-0 in a MTGO league or a random Top 8. However, it has never made it far past that "fringe" category.

Well, what if we switched it up?

Time Stamps:

01:32 - Match 1

11:16 - Match 2

25:45 - Match 3

Izzet Mill | Modern | teslashock1, 5-0 MTGO League

• Creatures (12)
• 4 Hedron Crab
• 4 Jace's Phantasm
• 4 Ruin Crab

• Instants (18)
• 1 Ravenous Trap
• 2 Spell Pierce
• 3 Trapmaker's Snare
• 4 Archive Trap
• 4 Lightning Bolt
• 4 Visions of Beyond

• Sorceries (8)
• 4 Cleansing Wildfire
• 4 Fractured Sanity

• Lands (22)
• 1 Island
• 2 Mountain
• 4 Snow-Covered Island
• 1 Oboro, Palace in the Clouds
• 1 Shelldock Isle
• 2 Steam Vents
• 3 Prismatic Vista
• 4 Field of Ruin
• 4 Scalding Tarn

• Sideboard (15)
• 4 Madcap Experiment
• 2 Platinum Emperion
• 1 Ravenous Trap
• 4 Surgical Extraction
• 4 Tasha's Hideous Laughter

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Swapping Black for Red may seem like a crazy choice, but that's exactly what Magic Online player teslashock1 did while on route to a league 5-0.

In a lot of ways the actual color swap isn't that important. Lightning Bolt is reasonably close to Fatal Push in power level, helping to clean up early creatures so you can get your game on, and Cleansing Wildfire is a fine card, but mostly being played as enabler. An enabler for what?

This deck goes hard on Archive Trap, not only playing the full playset, but also playing three copies of Trapmaker's Snare to go find them, as well as the aforementioned Cleansing Wildfire and Field of Ruin to make sure they go off. Throw in a Ravenous Trap for a little toolbox action and you've got an interesting and more focused Mill build that really punishes decks that use fetchlands, while still having game otherwise.

Beyond that you've got a lot of the standard Mill fare, but the other thing Red gives you is a very interesting sideboard juke in Madcap Experiment into Platinum Emperion. This can give you a lot of extra game in matchups like Burn or Prowess or other decks that can't answer the big guy.

If you're a mill fan looking for something even more off the beaten path, this is not a bad place to be!