Dimir Control (Standard)

The deck at its core, tries to be a creature-based deck with a little control element. You are curving out your zombie army and removing blockers out of the way with cards like Murder, and finishing your opponent off with Liliana herself once they have exhausted their resources killing your army.

While this is a thematically nice concept, unfortunately this is not what the blue and black color combination does particularly well. For reference, below is the House Dimir deck you get from the tutorial as part of the New Player Experience (NPE) which better highlights the strength of blue and black.

We want to go for a more controlling strategy that trades resources with your opponent efficiently, either by making them discard cards, removing their creatures or countering their spells to end the game with a powerful finisher, like Liliana herself. You also get some nice cards for free in the mono blue and black tutorial decks, so we can extract cards from those decks as well, which will go a long way to construct a formidable deck.

House Dimir – New Player Experience Deck
Azure Skies – New Player Experience Deck
Out For Blood – New Player Experience Deck

Thankfully, a lot of the blue and black control cards in the current Standard sets are relatively cheap to craft, being commons and uncommons. On the downside, Dimir has yet to prove itself to be one of the top tier decks, though it has been a fringe archetype in some cases to target the metagame. So if you want your end product to be a competitive deck, then you would have to branch out to a third color – namely adding white to become an Esper Control deck.
Upgrading the Deck

Here’s the first suggested reconstruction for the deck, using only additional common and uncommon Wildcards. Rares and mythic rares are all obtained from the starter decks. Consider this the “budget” version that you can make without too much investment.
All in all, it is great that we are already given some nice finishers and creatures to round out the deck, and all we have to do is tailor the deck with some removal spells and counterspells to support them. We will go over the most important card choices here when crafting your uncommon cards:

Thought Erasure: This card holds the deck together. For just two mana, you can take out your opponent’s most important card from their hand and disrupt their game plan. The secondary surveil effect is also a nice effect to have.
Narset, Parter of Veils: Just a decent planeswalker that can get you up to two cards. You also cannot discount its passive ability.
Tyrant’s Scorn: A cheap removal spell that is broad enough to have a target a lot of the time.
Cry of the Carnarium: Particularly good against the Cauldron Familiar / Witch’s Oven decks, but it can also clear out cards like Edgewall Innkeeper, Paradise Druid and Risen Reef.
Sinister Sabotage: A necessary evil to stand a chance against the more powerful decks.
Chemister’s Insight: Card draw spells are important for control decks, especially at instant speed.
Drown in the Loch: Another catch all card that is more suitable for the late game, so you generally don’t want too many of these.

Ready to upgrade the deck even further with rares and mythic rares so it can be more competitive? Check out these sample decks below that have been used in a competitive setting:

Dimir Control by PK_MTG – Twitch Rivals: This deck achieved a 4-2 record in the Twitch Rivals event in November, and would be the closest to what we have here. Murderous Rider would probably be your best option next, as it is also used in a variety of decks and would give this deck one of the best removal spells in Standard.
Esper Control by Alexander Hayne (Hayne) – Mythic Championship VII: If you want to look at adding a third color and more power, then white is probably the best option as it gives you access to a more variety of spells and planeswalkers.

Building a Sideboard

There are a wealth of budget friendly sideboard options suitable for the deck if you wish to delve into best-of-three.

Duress: The best sideboard card against control decks.
Epic Downfall: This card has a lot of relevant targets – Midnight Reaper, Lovestruck Beast, Gadwick, the Wizened, Questing Beast and more.
Noxious Grasp: Similar to above, it has several good targets but can even target planeswalkers like Nissa, Who Shakes the World.
Negate: A broad counterspell good against non-aggro decks.
Mystical Dispute: This card is especially good against Teferi, Time Raveler that can be your worst enemy.