MTG Salvation

Let's get the obvious out of the way: mill isn't a very effective strategy for EDH. Outside of infinite combos (Mindcrank + an active Bloodchief Ascension/Duskmantle Guildmage, Oona, Queen of the Fae + infinite mana), there are a number of issues facing the strategy. Unmillable Eldrazi, graveyard strategies, huge libraries to burn through, and irrational player irritability at the strategy all combine to make mill an uphill struggle.

That said, I've been watching the recent SCG Commander VS Series and boy is it fun to watch people get salty over such a terrible game plan. Unlike a lot of chaos or grouphug decks, mill actually tries to win, if inefficiently, so while it's a tad griefy to some I think it's fine. And that's all that matters, right?

So, what are the best mill cards/strategies? One shot cards like Glimpse the Unthinkable and Mind Funeral seem like hot garbage, whereas repeatable, grindy effects like a non-infinite Mindcrank, Sphinx's Tutelage, Altar of the Brood, Consuming Aberration, or Keening Stone seem effective over the long game, which means that a UBx control shell would be most effective. It's tempting to splash green for Villainous Wealth and ramp to fuel expensive effects

What about commanders? It seems obvious to jam Szadek, Lord of Secrets, Mirko Vosk, Mind Drinker, or Phenax, God of Deception and load up on a few synergistic cards and call it a day, but I'm wondering if Dralnu, Lich Lord isn't the secret optimal choice (besides Oona, Queen of the Fae, who is more of a combo commander). Besides recurring the few good one shot effects (mostly Mind Grind), he gives you recurrent card draw, counterspells, and other good stuff that lets you live long enough to see your grindy permanent mill cards do more work. He also has the advantage of not advertising that you're a mill deck, which is helpful when playing against randoms online or at shops.

Any advice or opinions from people playing mill?

I also liked mill as a side-strategy. Not all colors can recur so easily. I would helm it with Lazav, Wrex, or Circu personally (Dralnu is going to draw hate).

Geth and Geralf have fun.

My Lazav deck sometimes wins through mill, but can just as easily win through voltron damage or by stealing enemy wincons. I greatly enjoy being able to pressure opponents along multiple angles of attack: if they let Lazav live they'll die to commander damage, but if they keep dedicating their resources to killing him they slowly lose their libraries.

Lazav also solves the eldrazi problem. If you can't mill Ulamog, simply become a hexproof Ulamog...

My Circu deck actually wins through mill. Granted, it is more through Mill-Exile... I use cards like Sadistic sadistic sacrament and the like to dismantle an opponents deck from the inside out while using Circu as a sort of lantern control. Really Grindy but murders combo

Quote from Hungerstriker »

My Lazav deck sometimes wins through mill, but can just as easily win through voltron damage or by stealing enemy wincons. I greatly enjoy being able to pressure opponents along multiple angles of attack: if they let Lazav live they'll die to commander damage, but if they keep dedicating their resources to killing him they slowly lose their libraries.

Lazav also solves the eldrazi problem. If you can't mill Ulamog, simply become a hexproof Ulamog...

Interesting analysis. I was kinda hoping to keep the deck entirely mill focused but having a back up plan isn't a bad idea at all, especially if it happens to synergize with my primary strategy. While Lazav has a tendency to signal mill it's slightly less obvious than one of the mill-dedicated generals like Phenax.

Wheels also synergize with both Lazav and milling, so they'll find a place here. I guess the dream is to turn Lazav into a double striker and ciphering Whispering Madness on him.

I use Oona, Queen of the Fae as my UB mill commander. I use mass-bounce with Windfall effects to speed up the process. Your evaluation of Glimpse the Unthinkable and Mind Funeral is spot on; they are great cards that just don't do enough in multiplayer.

As for a commander, you really can't go wrong with any of them. I run Phenax, God of Deception and Circu, Dimir Lobotomist in the maindeck of my Oona build, but I can totally see running Szadek, Lord of Secrets or Mirko Vosk, Mind Drinker. All of these are great cards. I'm not so sold on Dralnu, Lich Lord given his drawback; I guess it would be meta-dependent as to whether he is at risk of being damaged by something like Blasphemous Act or something else scoop-worthy.

Nyears ago i played oona in a kitchen table deck when i first learned what mill was (had just gotten back into mtg after 7 years)
Anyway when i started playing edh i did slivers and then moved onto arcum, however in between those two there was a period where i played an oona mill deck. I had the cards since i played mill decks in standard. You will actually be surpised how much damage mill can do, sadly, only to one person.

Running black however does open you up to leyline of the void and helm of obedience (sorry cant use card tags, on mobile) which is a simple 1 mana exile deck combo with both pieces. You should look at exile rather than just feeding graveyards.

Quote from Forgotten One »

I use mass-bounce with Windfall effects to speed up the process.

Now that's a spicy meatball I had forgotten about. EOT Cyclonic Rift into a wheel is a combo I've seen wreck people many times before.

As for a commander, you really can't go wrong with any of them. I run Phenax, God of Deception and Circu, Dimir Lobotomist in the maindeck of my Oona build, but I can totally see running Szadek, Lord of Secrets or Mirko Vosk, Mind Drinker. All of these are great cards.

I think Oona is probably the best, but I'm trying to avoid her because I think she would draw too much heat given her reputation. Also, I'm a hipster and I think her art is terrible, so there. I would run Skeleton Ship if there wasn't already one in my meta, but maybe I shouldn't be so cocky since I'm running a gimpy archetype. As mentioned earlier Lazav synergizes with mill without going all in, so I'm still leaning towards him (and his art is nice), but Mirko Vosk is tempting if I go exclusively mill. Wrexial is also interesting, but good lord that mana cost.

I'm not so sold on Dralnu, Lich Lord given his drawback; I guess it would be meta-dependent as to whether he is at risk of being damaged by something like Blasphemous Act or something else scoop-worthy.

The way I see it, if I get BActed out of the game, at least it's memorable and hilarious.

My mill deck started off as Wrexial, the Risen Deep, and used way too many one-off mill effects to be effective. I caught on that smaller, repeated mill effects were much more effective when I rebuilt the deck with Lazav, Dimir Mastermind at the helm. It worked much better, Lazav is a very good option, probably only second to Phenax, God of Deception.

I splashed green into my mill deck to make it Sultai when Sidisi, Brood Tyrant was released, it allows for some of the big ticket items like Lord of Extinction, Meren of Clan Nel Toth and Deathrite Shaman. It had a zombie sub-theme to make use of Undead Alchemist etc. I found that Sidisi made too little an impact, and often I played the deck without actually playing her. She just didn't have an immediate effect.

I've now replaced Sidisi with The Mimeoplasm, substituting in some of the usual Mimi suspects. It works quite well, decklist is here: http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/mimeo-mill-4/

A mid to late game Mind Grind with a Bloodchief Ascension active is pretty much an instant win. As cheesy as it is, it has won me several games lately.

Jevala, Nephalhim's Scourge can also be build for mill, which can also deal with decks that millproof using eldrazi titans.

Other than that, I've known people to just toss in Keening Stone not as a primary mill condition, but rather as a late-game, "deal with this in two turns or you lose" kind of card.

I guess it really depends on how late your games go. If you run two-hour marathon games then sure they're going to go late enough that just about any mill strategy can wear a deck down. If you generally know who's going to win by turn ten however a more focused strategy is needed.

My UB zombie runs a mill sub theme, I prefer Grind effects over normal mill. Mind Funeral is weak in multiplayer, but Mind Grind, Consuming Aberration, and Trepanation Blade can be amazing.

As far as the eldrazi titans go, they do hit the graveyard long enough to be targeted with exile, and if your milling you should be exiling the yard ala Leyline of the Void or similar cards.

I play Phenax, God of Deception. Phenax usually goes infinite with Eater of the Dead. The deck wins a lot of games, usually by using a repeatable untap effect like Pemmin's Aura with something that gets larger with each use, like Nighthowler, Bonehoard, Sewer Nemesis or Consuming Aberration.

A mill deck can work by trying to control, stall the game... or it can win by "aggro mill", which is what Phenax tends to do.

Intruder Alarm is an all-star in the deck.

Quote from Forgotten One »

I'm not so sold on Dralnu, Lich Lord given his drawback; I guess it would be meta-dependent as to whether he is at risk of being damaged by something like Blasphemous Act or something else scoop-worthy.

Quote from GloriousGoose »

The way I see it, if I get BActed out of the game, at least it's memorable and hilarious.

I've played a lot of Dralnu as both mill and control and I've only been hit by burn 2-3 times. Each time was either multiple burn spells, getting hit after stopping one or more, or a kicked Molten Disaster without a mana ability sac outlet down. As long as you include a couple sac outlets and are smart when you play him, the downside is virtually nonexistent. He rarely actually needs to be in play for his deck to function, so you can afford to be selective about when you play him.

He's a decent mill commander, but I found myself drifting away from mill because control is generally better. Even when I had built him explicitly as mill, the deck eventually changed to the point where the only mill cards left were Mind Grind and Consuming Aberration. Those + a couple Windfalls still milled people out a fair amount, but it was more of a control deck with an occasional mill wincon than a mill deck. Whoever you end up going with, make sure you have plenty of ways to use the yard and excessive amounts of GY hate. Forced draw effects can be very helpful too, especially if you run into something with a replacement effect (e.g. Blightsteel Colossus).

While not designed with mill in mind, you can tune jeleva, nephalia's scourge to be a fantastic multi-player exile-mill general, and you don't even have to include "mill" themed cards. Just build the deck to keep ramping her out and then sacrificing her (hopefully for mana so you can re-cast her like with phyrexian tower/phyrexian altar/ashnods altar).

Assuming there are no helm of awakening/sphere of resistance effects out, casting Jeleva the first time will exile-mill everyone by 4. If she has been killed and re-cast six times, each player will have permanently lost 54x cards. Casting a 4-drop commander 6 times shouldn't be too hard if your entire deck is built around doing just that. How about casting her 8x times? That would be 88x cards exiled off each deck permanently. By the time you are able to cast Jeleva that many times the game should have progressed enough for each player to have drawn at least 5 cards. If she resolves on the 8'th cast, every deck should be exiled. Some greedy draw-happy opponents may already have been after her 7'th resolution. Then you just need to pass your turn and let everyone deck themselves


Oh, and I guess you could actually attack with her too, if you wanted some value off of whatever you are exiling. But if your entire deck is desinged around spam-casting Jeleva, then anything exiled under her is just gravy.

The only card that reliably mills people out for me without being a combo is Sphinx's Tutelage. Most everything else that mills either does so in one shot as a combo (Phenax + Eater of the Dead, or ends up killing by some other means, like damage or life loss (Duskmantle Guildmage tacking life loss to mill, Consuming Aberration just getting stupid big and slaughtering people, Lazav copying something deadly and swinging in, Bloodchief Ascension). Wheel effects and mass draw spells can work at decking your opponent, but that isn't actually mill.

CSB: I actually survived Grindclock Ascension combo once. My life total was high enough that the combo milled me out before it could kill me with life loss, and I had a Volrath's Stronghold in play. I stuck a critter on top of my library during my upkeep so I wouldn't die to decking, and won the next turn.

I run Phenax in my Child of Alara deck, mostly because it's an indestructible creature. But I can also do things like tap a monstrous Colossus of Akros that was targeted by Xenagod (after attacking w/vigilance thanks to Heliod, of course! ), and I can use Crop Rotation to drop Bojuka Bog into play at instant speed if I hit an eldrazi.

I run a fairly successful Wrexial, the Risen Deep. Certainly one of my pet decks.

The deck is a combination of mill and the occasional grave recursion/steal to keep it going; something I've noticed that people are less annoyed by mill if it's not targeted - if everyone mills, it tends to get more accepting reactions than "Traumatize you." Milling everyone, including myself tends to also be more mana-efficient.

I run a fair amount of grave-based stealery, not really as a win condition but to help the relatively defenseless deck stay in game(and help me get rid of enchantments/artifacts by stealing someone else's Return to Dust), while I slowly build enough copies of Doubling Cube or Gilded Lotus or Thran Dynamo to fire off a lethal Increasing Confusion/Mind Grind/Fascination/Suffer the Past.

Commander-wise, I like Wrexial for both flavor, and he can usually sneak his way to someone's graveyard to get me what I most likely want - removal. He also doesn't mind dying to get a Wrath off from somewhere, as the deck is loaded enough with rocks (and not really dependant on Wrexial either).

In between I have a lot of repeated/incremental mill stuff that amusingly often are deemed 'not worth killing' until they've already done their share of library-shaving: Dreamborn Muse, Mirko Vosk, Mind Drinker, Sphinx's Tutelage, Manic Scribe, Startled Awake, Memory Erosion, Hedron Crab (pet card!), Mesmeric Orb, Nemesis of Reason...´

And as said, a hefty dose of grave hate is pretty necessary so no one else joins the party of grave-abuse. My turf!

Quote from Onering »

The only card that reliably mills people out for me without being a combo is Sphinx's Tutelage.

Tutelage makes me wonder how viable Arjun, the Shifting Flame is as a mill-commander. Relative to how viable mill is in general, of course. You also get the less effective Jace's Erasure.
You also have ways to make your hand massive for Windfall or loop Psychic Spiral.

Another interesting avenue is to use mill creatures to make your graveyard huge, and then mass reanimate them to mill opponents instead.

I am a bit surprised that nobody mentioned Altar of Dementia yet, spin up some kind of big token generation or get something you can sac and get back multiple times.
I have mill components in my Sidisi, Brood Tyrant zombie deck, but milling others is not the main focus and more for own zombie production and grave building. Milling others is more of an alternative wincon currently.

It points towards that a zombie theme can be a good idea, Undead Alchemist helps exiling cards and generate tokens, Embalmer's tools can tap those zombies and mill more, Lich Lord of Unx can help with more mill.
Some upsides with green in this case would be cards like Parallel Lives for more tokens and Seedborn Muse for untapping everything during others turns. But as it seems that UB commanders is best for main focus mill maybe just a Paradox Engine can work.

If you're looking for mill to be your primary win-con, you want Oona or Phenax. Other commanders won't mill quickly enough, consistently enough. That being said, there are plenty of commanders who have mill as a win-con while also using incorporating other elements, like mill-toolbox, voltron, and clone. Generally these have all been touched on here in this thread.

As for single-use mill staples, the less the better. Realistically, if it can't mill a single player for at least 15 cards (15 spread out doesn't count) reliably for a good price, it's not worth it.

Quote from Wallabe »

If you're looking for mill to be your primary win-con, you want Oona or Phenax. Other commanders won't mill quickly enough, consistently enough.

I would say Szadek, Lord of Secrets could join that list. Assuming no graveyard shuffling occurs, he's a 3-5 turn clock for mill (on the first opponent, 1-2 turns on subsequent opponents), which is comparable to people who attempt to win with Commander damage. He certainly a faster mill than a non-infinite Oona.

I think Anafenza, the Foremost is an underrated mill general. You lose access to blue, which means you lose a lot of the standard good milling cards, but you still have a lot of options in black and artifacts. Her second ability deals with Eldrazi, as well as most of the usual drawbacks of milling your opponents. White and green give you some very good options for keeping you alive while you mill your opponent. Plus, you can run a reanimate strategy as a side business to your symmetrical mill.

Quote from Lithl »

Quote from Wallabe »

If you're looking for mill to be your primary win-con, you want Oona or Phenax. Other commanders won't mill quickly enough, consistently enough.

I would say Szadek, Lord of Secrets could join that list. Assuming no graveyard shuffling occurs, he's a 3-5 turn clock for mill (on the first opponent, 1-2 turns on subsequent opponents), which is comparable to people who attempt to win with Commander damage. He certainly a faster mill than a non-infinite Oona.

I actually tried to make a voltron(ish) Szadek deck a few years ago, and was considering re-approaching the idea just last month. The idea would be to pile on as many counters as-fast-as-possible, from equipment, auras (pemmin's aura/eldrazi conscription/eel umbra/auramancer's guise), and some spontaneous pump effects (howl from beyond/hatred+lifelink somehow).

The idea is there, and it seems super sweet, but his mana-cost and lack of evasion (past flying), makes things seem a bit more difficult to manage.

My Daretti deck (now converted to Breya for flexibility) makes great use of Altar of the Brood. And can take out multiple people with Altar and Grinding Station. Especially if I can manage to get Daretti's emblem, which I have proven happens more often than one might think.