MTG Salvation

As far as I have been able to determine, "Phenax Mill" is a secondary win condition at best. The pieces of the puzzle to make him consistently competitive are just not there. I feel mill is viable in standard, but it doesn't use him. I don't necessarily mean viable in a big sponsored event, but at FNM mill is viable for sure. Current standard does have some significant pieces of tech that are comparable to modern mill. We have breaking//entering, Jace the mill 10 master. Ashiok plays the roll of the landfall crab. We have crypt incursion to gain a bunch of life off their graveyard. We even have a counterspell that mills and Grisly Spectacle mills. Create a mill deck that keeps creatures off the board and you have a decent mill deck. The standard mill I have painted for you done right can switch gears into a "reanimation" deck using the opponents creatures via //Entering, and Ashiok.

In short, my feeling is Phenax Ney, Standard mill yay! Personally I hope one more good piece of tech becomes available to mill when Journey into Nyx drops. I can't wait for spoilers. Who knows, maybe enough for a Phenax mill deck will exist in the next set too. My biggest problem with Phenax is if he doesn't enter play, a mill deck that uses him is helpless to win. A deck needs to have more than just one way to win a game. Relying exclusively on one card to give all your other cards the ability to win you the game means if your opponent can counter your phenax, you are up a very smelly river.

I haaaaate Phenax. I was really hoping for really controlling, smart card with him. Something to make UB control a viable deck. Instead he forces you into creature-based mill, which is neither fun nor interesting.

I dunno if it would have fit into a variant of a control-shell but I really wanted him as a cloner. Actually the idea would best fit a tempo kind of deck.

"Whenever a creature enters the battlefield under your control, you may have another target creature become a copy of it until end of turn."

Gives your early drops another chance to shine by dropping a larger threat and basically have the early drop become a hasted copy of that creature. Or if you have small-drops at hand you can use them to weaken enemy creatures.
The idea was to play on Phenax' nature for deception and torment. I really hope we'll get one of these in the future as it seems like an interesting design that may play well on Blue's bounce-opportunities and Flash and Black's -X/-X and at times heavily mana-efficient creatures with drawbacks - which potentially can be avoided.

well phenax got his 2 drop wall that does things in jou. The scrying starfish seems decent enough.

Still. It's a wall with limited impact. The scrying makes it fantastic compared to Murmuring Phantasm but it is still a lackluster strategy.