Deck is

Creatures
4 Hedron Crab

Artifacts
4 Howling Mines

Instants and Sorceries
2 Trap maker snares
4 Twin cast
4 Archive Trap
4 Divination
2 Ponder
2 Rite of Replication
4 Tome Scour
2 Traumatize
4 Treasure Hunt

Enchantments
2 Memory erosions

Land
16 Islands
4 Bant Panorama
4 Esper Panaorama

Sideboard
3 Clone
4 Kraken Hatchling
4 Sleep
4 Wall of Frost

Some Notes:

The rite of replication hasn’t come in handy to often. Twincast is best used with either Traumatize, Archive trap or Tome scour.

Against RDW’s, Jund and Vamps the Sideboard gets used a lot. For anything else not really. Still tweaking it to try and make it even better. So far so good though, at least it seems viable.

Also, the deck is trying to do way too many things. Spreading Seas, if you want to make the engine work, has to be a multicolored cascade deck whose sole purpose is making your opponent’s lands Islands and then swinging for the win with big flyers. As far as Gather Specimens goes, it is never good enough to reliably be good, and for six mana, it’s mostly a waste. To be honest with you, the only viable blue aggro is Esper Aggro, and that’s not even strictly Blue.

I feel that there is no point in hindering yourself by restricting play to one color, and choosing cards that are not optimal. At least I assume that you have whatever cards you want at your disposal by the eight fetch-lands in the mill deck, but some of those cards, just aren’t good enough.

However, to put a velvet glove on, I appreciate the experimentation that you chose to undertake.

I can confidently say that in your milling deck, Into the Roil will serve you better than Call to Heel, since it has the same mana cost, can bounce more kinds of permanents, and doesn’t net the opponent a card, occasionally stealing a card for you when it is kicked. Another worthy replacement for Call to Heel (since, for heaven’s sake, you don’t have any creatures and can’t get the benefit of card draw from it anyways) would be the old favorite, Unsummon which is strictly better when you have no creatures, which you don’t.

I agree with most of your other card choices in that deck, with the possible exception of Flashfreeze, as it is becoming increasingly less relevant as Blue takes a hold in the Standard metagame. I would replace those with the more expensive Cancel, and the Walls with Sphinx of Lost Truths, as you don’t have to start preventing damage until later, the Sphinx has a wide rear end to absorb damage, enough power to kill many other creatures, and the ability to, if played later gain card advantage, and if played earlier act as an excellent Looter. Sphinx of Jwar Isle, if testing proves six drops to be safe, it, mixed with the other Sphinx can provide a very worthy defense indeed. The wall, while romantic in its conception, does usually not work as fluidly as asked often, and besides, it takes up your Jace mana when you play it on turn three, and if played on turn five, it would be better to have a higher quality creature, yes?

I would also recommend a full set of Jaces, not running 62 cards, and cutting the Traumatizes, as they vary enough in power level to be worse than Archive Trap most of the time, and don’t have a powerful alternate way to cast them, as the Trap does.

All in all, I believe that multicolored mill decks are superior, as they offer more card choice, better ways of dealing with unwanted damage, and therefore higher win percentages, but if you’re looking for a mono-blue Standard milling deck, I would recommend for you, this updated version of the one above.

Artifacts and Planeswalkers:
4 Jace Beleren
4 Howling Mine
4 Font of Mythos

Creatures:
4 Hedron Crab 2 Sphinx of Lost Truths
2 Sphinx of Jwar Isle

Enchantments:
4 Memory Erosion

Instants and Sorceries:
4 Archive Trap 4 Cancel
4 Into the Roil

I believe that this list, with whatever sideboard you choose, and that depends on the metagame that you are facing, is a better option than yours.

Please don’t take offense to my comments. I just have strong opinions as far as what the best cards are to play in a deck are.

@Lauren – interesting, thought provoking and got a laugh? Excellent!

@Saint Mahone – welcome back to the game :) Blue is not doing so great right now, but you can certainly still play blue cards and have fun doing it.

@Benjamin – Glad you got some ideas for your deck Ben! I found in my testing that the Crabs are fairly vulnerable as a lot of people are playing Lightning Bolt and Disfigure these days – the Mine serves the dual purposes of helping empty the opponent’s library and drawing me more mill cards, I really like it in this deck. In a more landfall focused deck like yours the Mines are probably unnecessary – Rite of Replication sounds like a lot of fun, I’ll have to try and find a deck for it!

Thanks for that.

It’s making me think more about the blue cards in Standard right now.