When I first got into Magic it was right around the time of the Zendikar block and I remember a buddy of mine sitting a couple of our friends down with me dumping out some cards out of a box and helping us make our first deck. The first card that caught my eye was Halimar Excavator the ally that has rally to mill people. Thus my first deck popped up that was centered around playing the excavator, copying it, and dumping allies to destroy peoples decks. Mill has a special place in my heart.
I know mill is definitely a strange and difficult strategy to win with, but I definitely "milled" 500+ cards in one turn once... Abusing wheel effects and mill when people draw.
I think there needs to be a follow up episode regarding secondary/multiple strategies in decks and how to allot deck space for it, especially as mentioned at the end of this episode. Adding additional strategies tend to dilute the focus of decks right? Then it seems you start to get the problems that durdle-y decks have. I would wager the process the mill player goes through will be to incorporate this secondary/backup strategy, tweak the deck to start to suit this strategy more to the point where the mill becomes the secondary strategy, then will gradually morph the mill part into an enabler for what was previously the secondary strategy, ending up eliminating the mill portions altogether.
I'm still midway through that shift with my Mirko Vosk deck. I kind of gave up on fully milling people outside of combos and instead heavily focus on stealing things out of opponents' graveyards with combat damage triggers. I kept some combos and just enough mill to have choices to pick from, but it is much closer to a wrexial/thief of sanity deck now than a true mill deck.
The single target thing, combined with the shuffle titans, is why I really enjoyed playing Oona when Paradox Engine was legal; it was kind of like playing a storm deck in that you played a whole bunch of cantrips in order to keep activating Doubling Cube (and a copy of it thanks to Copy Artifact), so you got enough mana to rip someone's library straight into exile (because, yes, Oona puts things into exile), and that would hopefully give you enough fairies to take out everyone else when you untap. Since they banned Paradox Engine and unbanned Painter's Servant, it's lost the explosiveness and becomes more mindless in terms of who you mill. And that's why I'm building a Phenax deck once I get hold of Mr Grandiloquent. (Also, Fleet Swallower is Traumatize on a stick).
The actual EDH mill commander is not just about milling mindlessly. The way to go is control/mill, which is more easy that using useless amount of 7-11 mana cost creatures. Slowly milling everyone, trying to draw as many cards as possible and get answers for what they still have in play. That's why Leyline of the void is mandatory, graveyard is ALWAYS a resourse at EDH. And if you play Phenax, don't use thoose gigantic vainilla creatures that have no static effect, get something in play that actually has an effect. Idk, jin gitaxias for example. (even if it's a 10 drop). And don't underestimate the power of wheels. Those cards are awesome at milling too. Get combos like Whispering Madness and Notion Thief online. You need to lock your oponents BEFORE you mill them. Like I said, it's all about control (and politics if you are playing Tasigur). You will have to build your deck to control spell heavy or creature heavy decks, depending on your local meta. Milling is fun and I have to say it's my favorite strategy, but it's just not a good one. Lots of fun, but if you are playing against turn 3-4 commanders you will get rekt, that's it :(
This. I've been playing a phenax mill deck the past two weeks and i've slowly removed the vanilla walls (except fliers, because Ur-Dragon is a thing in our meta). It's a control deck with reanimator effects and a mill wincon, not a "mill everyone fast" deck.
The thing to remember about Oona, is that because she exiles cards you'll dodge all the graveyard shuffle effects, but she doesn't work with Bruvac. Also, they unbanned Painter's Servant... I still don't know why, but I'll run it anyway.
@@andrewamann2821 I like that! Thanks for the suggestion! Works especially well since I'm already running Sage's Row Denizen to get the two extra cards when Oona makes tokens. Thank you
Great stuff! Personally, what I always go back to for the mill/damage comparison are the 1 mana spells: Lightning Bolt(3dmg) vs Tome Scour(5cards). We don't run 1 of effects like lightning bolt in commander because they aren't efficient enough so your mill has to be not just equal, but better than the equivalent damage. You need to be able to reliably get more than 5 cards per mana you put into a card. For example a mind grind x=8 nets you ~72cards for 10 mana, or ~7 cards per mana spent and a total of 43 equivalent damage; which is why it's actually a good card. Meanwhile, I think teferi's tutelage is really bad most of the time because it will take 6 turns to passively mill the 15 cards it needs to hit to be worth the 3 mana. With a wheel it's solid, but without one it is too huge a waste of time for me to ever include.
As someone who is trying to build Phenax this is super helpful for me. I went into this wanting to know more and I left this video with a lot of information that was important to know. Thanks guys.
I'm currently playing a ~20 petitioners deck with some additional advisors in Bant with Chulane at the helm. The card draw he provides is a very welcome help in churning through your deck to get the petitioner engine going. I've picked bant because green has some excellent untap effects that let you untap all your petitioners on everyone 's turn (Seedborn Muse, murkfiend liege). Once you get enough untap effects in play / in hand it becomes more and more viable to actually mill someone out!
Mill always reminded me of those levels in the old platformer, Mario-esque games where the stage keeps moving , killing you somehow if it ever catches up but ultimately just making you play a little tighter. What would the Mario equivalent of self mill be then...!?
I think this would make a great redux episode. Mill in 2022 is in a much better place than it was two years ago. Would love to hear what your thoughts are now that mill is getting some much needed R&D attention.
Another tangent question (and possible topic for a show): Given the social disruptions caused by COVID-19, sometimes we don't get to play against three other people at the same table. How do you adjust a deck's composition from 4 to 3 to 2 players when key cards affect the entire table at the same time? "Each opponent" sacrifices, loses health, discards, etc.
IMO, depends on which mechanic you're talking about. Loses health is much more likely a group-slug-ish theme rather than burn, so having more opponents doesn't really change strategy that much, and "each opponent" is strongly preferable to "target opponent" even in 3 player games IMO. Targeted discard in multiplayer doesn't often seem great, because going proactively 1-for-1 with a single opponent is usually putting both players behind, so I would say the strategy doesn't change much from 3 players to 4 players, while going down to only 2 players mean single target discard is fine. Target opponent sacrifices is a bit better, because targeted removal can be used against the most major threat, and whoever played it already paid some amount of resource. Cards like Smothering Tithe are much much better with more players, and I would describe it as scaling linearly with number of opponents. I think Mill falls under this category, because the goal is to mill number of players * about 80 cards, so "each opponent" effects are at least twice as good as "target opponent" effects. And of course, for 2 players, it's generally the same, it doesn't seem like WotC balances with consideration for that distinction much; if anything, WotC more likely chooses "each opponent" and "target opponent" with consideration for players having Hexproof. Also, of course, infinite combos don't care which version is used, because they're infinite anyway.
Phenax is one of my favorite commanders. My play group gets pretty salty when I win by milling someone out, but they are fine with being pinged to death. Funny how the mind works.
I just wish consuming aberrations was legendary and/or have a legend that changes the text of cards that says "target player mills" to "each opponent mills" but the latter might be too powerful
The few times I've played against a Mill player I've noticed that when they have the single player targeting spells they will focus on just 1 player until they are dead. Now while this is the best strategy it will make that player very salty. Also sometimes the player that they choose seems to be at random. At least do a threat assessment and pick the player most likely to combo first, or least likely to favor their graveyard. In the end I would actually prefer they play a combo that takes everyone out. It's on par with someone Cratorhoof-ing, or Lab Man-ing us, so why not. Let's shuffle up and play again!
54m0h7 I’ve seen this too. Most mill is targeted so they usually pick someone and stick to them until they die. Often “kingmakering” someone else. My favorite way to do mill is self mill/lab man. If the easiest way to mill is pick someone and mill them until they have no cards left, then the most efficient way is to mill out yourself.
The thing is you wont know who's gonna combo off till half way through the game and at that point mill cant really adjust to a different player effectively
you know, this conversation comes up a lot for mill, and i understand that a meta is very much to be considered when brewing, but i personally feel that what is considered Mill is not a deck archetype, but mode of win. you can easily combo in to an infinite mill, you can aggro mill, heck, even control or aristocrat mill. this is the first issue, the second i perceive is the effect of mill. while life can be a resource, a deck has to be built to utilize it as such, but for almost all cases, the deck itself is the primary resource pool, so whittling down life totals does nothing more than get them closer to a loss, but milling removes components and resources from any deck. yes, eldrazi titans and such do throw a spanner in the works, but just as those cards exist to counter mills or discards, you need to have counters for anti-mill. exiling, stealing, locking down, all are viable options. alt-win cons should also be considered. going against a deck with eldrazi? good thing you packed your lab-man. keep a mechanized production around to put extra pressure on when every turn another copy of grindstone enters your battlefield (maybe use Saheeli to quicken the process). my best mill deck isnt even in blue or black! its a mono green elf deck that utilizes altar of the brood/dementia and hair-strung koto, generating 15 elf tokens, with a marwyn and those three cards out is a 60+ card mill. but at the end, if i am facing off against someone with anti-mill, i still have 15 elf tokens, and a marwyn that is at base a 16/16 so i can still win by turning creatures sideways. TLDR: i feel that mill is a viable build, but people view it as a build archetype and do not build an effective deck that protects itself against the obvious shortcomings.
Watching this video now after Wise Mothman and Rad counters from the Fallout set has been revealed. Will be interesting to see how that will affect Mill strategies moving forward
Surely one of the biggest advantages of Mill, is that your opponents can't block it, and don't have a lot of ways to stop it. Also a shoutout for the planeswalker Ashiok, Dream Render which mills 4, then exiles each opponent's graveyard. And the static ability of preventing library searching is a bonus too.
When my friends and I played regularly, I was the dimir girl/mill player of the group a lot of the time. We didn’t play commander at the time, but we would play four or five player free-for-alls most of the time. In my experience, milling only works in casual multiplayer via combos. These can be infinite combos (it was hard to pull off, but I loved combining mind crank, undead alchemist, and trepenation blade to kill a player in one turn), but in my experience, the simpler strategy is to put cards in your deck that can in some way translate milling into regular damage/life loss. Consuming aberration is probably the most obvious, but a more recent example is Dread Hound, a demon dog that causes opponents to lose life any time a creature card enters the graveyard. If you combo this with Traumatize (or worse, the New Cappena version that has the casualty rule) you can actually one shot more creature heavy decks, and this is more effective in Commander, where the standard deck-size is higher. Overall, I feel like the only way to make mill viable is to either rely on combos, or combine it with other strategies, usually some type of control. You also need to have ways to actually take advantage of graveyards, and ideally a way to prevent opponents using their graveyard as a resource. My mill decks won way more games through Jace’s Phantom (which I would consider a must-have for any blue mill deck) swinging for lethal than I have actually milling someone out; mill just isn’t a reliable wincon by itself, not unless you are willing to stuff your deck full of powerful and expensive tutors so you can reliably pull off some sort of combo every game, and even the you will still have a rough time of it.
My favorite mill commander is Anowan the ruin thief. He pumps up rogues and whatever they do mills the opponents based of how powerful the Rogues are. Equipment that gives power and toughness based off of cards in the graveyard. You never really mill out anyone, but you can decide to mill out one enemy and drop something like consuming aberration on the board, and swing at another player.
I was apparently a monster because I enchanted Fraying Sanity on myself and one person saw me tap mana and screamed no as I Fractured Identity on Fraying Sanity.
I know Im late with this but one card many people miss for mill is folio of fancies. Hits multiple people but it draws everyone cards. But it punishes large hand sizes
Tbh, I think Grixis could make mill such a fuckin good archetype, but here’s the caveat- If you combine it with wheeling. Think about it, if you’re discarding you’re hand and having everyone draw 7 with a wheel, you’ve just milled the table for 21 for 3 mana. Arjun can also mill hella hard with a tutelage or psychic corrosion
I have a player in my group who enjoys mill from time to time. Because of him, I have decided to put many cards in my deck that give me, the player, hexproof. :)
In standard I play a mill deck, winning 65% of games with its. Though one third of those winning aren't mill, mainly cause their running more 60 in the deck but that's where cards like Ashiok, Nightmare Muse really shine.
I dunno, I feel like if a mill deck is setup well, it can pivot. I love my mill deck and have a couple two-card combos that can take a single person out instantly. I also have ways to bring those cards back into my hand. Then add it something like Rise of the Dark Realms and you can instantly pivot to unstoppable damage. That card alone is basically a winning condition, provided you can survive until then of course. I normally am going up against 4 - 5 other guys and they know my deck. Which means I peacock quickly, which is something I haven't figured out how to deal with yet.
I've been playing Grolnok the Omnivore with a mill strategy but focused on self-mill for a nice big exiled second hand. My opponents getting milled with group mill is just a bonus. So it is a strategy that you can make work depending on how you build it.
I feel like mill is in the same place that mono-red burn was at one point, and you could even argue that mill is blue’s version of burn. It’s good 1v1, but with more than one opponent it just really drops in power. We just need more ways to scale up to a multiplayer game and make it faster. Bruvac, Cut Your Losses, and Maddening Cacophony were good steps in that direction, but we need more mill payoffs IMO.
I just brewed up a lazav dimir mastermind deck thats more about graveyards matter than win by mill. I dont think winning by mill is consistently viable, but win by playing everyones best stuff seems more consistent
I have an Arjun deck that can win by milling, or by pinging, or by Lab Man-ing, or by Locust-ing. Drawing cards is how it wins. Not uncommon for me to see my entire deck twice in a game. Very fun (for me)!
Because of the defensive control aspect of mill I like to run stuff like fog bank or crawlspace in order to survive long enough to set up my win conditions.
Sure I have to do more work, but every card you draw helps me and mill effects have very rare counters (which I play counters to, of course). Milling is that it is all but "unblockable." When I play Phenax I move my game plan forward with EVERY creature EVERY turn after he drops and you can't stop it.
I had a game last night with mill deck using artifacts...it took only four turns for him cast and infinite blue mana floating then self mill himself and filter his library while draining his life total until he finds the combo that mills all 3 of us infinitely and he wins the game.
The really hard thing about mill is not all the obstacles I hear listed... no the real obstacle is if you can make things work for you then you will often get the chance to kill people with regular damage etc and that temptation is hard to resist.
Mill is jank, with tons of weird combinations which work once in a blue moon. But if the jank works, oooh it's pretty. Milling a creature deck with GrimGrin and Undead alchemist, and then milling 2 others with a giant Grimgrin is perhaps the most fun one
The funniest game that I ever played mill is when I successfully milled out two opponents, but the third still had a few cards left in their library. I was at two life, and they had no creatures or other damage on the board. Well, this player had the “gawd I hate mill” attitude. However, because I was sitting next to them and they didn’t keep their hand covered, I could see their hand. I told them, “You can kill me, by the way.” They were like, “What?” They had Oko in their hand. 😂 After I told them, they turned a mana rock into an elk and attacked me for 3.
WoTC needs to make a mill card that targets all players and then has a flashback cost that doubles the amount of cards if it was cast from the graveyard
I once played against a Phenax player with my Ur-Dragon. I won the game by resolving Primeval's Glorious Rebirth with a Scourge of Valkas and Dragon Tempest in play.
Veilstone amulet doesn't actually grant hexproof, it is functionally very similar, but if you use an ability to swap control with an opponent, hexproof would protect that creature from your own spells, with veilstone you could trade and still target it. also, the things that remove hexproof won't get cards protected by veilstone. Overall, it's not a huge gripe, and it is a little bit of a nitpick, but it can be an important clarification. Feel free to comment disparagingly on how I'm a rules lawyer jerk
I agree with all the negatives listed as challenges to overcome for milling. The issue raises another question or a refinement of the original: Rather than focus on thoroughly milling out an opponent (100 cards), consider what percentage of a deck (25 cards? 40? 65?) needs to be removed to cripple that player's own position?
The problem with that line of thought is that you have no control over which cards remain in that player's library. The bottom 10 cards might win them the game just a easily as the top 10. Much like life, the only card you mill that really matters is the last one.
I like playing phanex, the deseaver god. I use a win combo with basalt monolith, isecrone Scepter, and dramatic Reversal. Tap your creatures and mill their decks, tap basalt monolith, and tap the Scepter to activate dramatic Reversal. Infinite mill
I play a temur riku of two reflection clone/control/mill deck. I had 8 ruincrabs in a match last time. But i have other win options as well then just mill.
I think I have 4 decks that can mill (all unique ways of doing so) and 3 more that could add it easily with 1-2 cards (still, without repeating), and I might do so. There are so many ways to mill - it's so easy. All you have to do is stay away from white, blue, black, and red.
The problem with running combo in mill is that then the rest of your mill doesn't even matter. You might as well just run the combo if that's how you win anyway. I think the control route is going to be a better option at casual tables.
I feel like folks that play things like Propaganda in mill decks dont understand the virtues of things like Tainted Aether...or Ensnaring Bridge..or Portcullis..
I like playing mill because it is such a great challenge. My EDH mill deck is lead by Lady Sun because of how unlikely the idea of winning with mill actually is.
@@21Kikoshi She is just defense/tempo in the command zone which helps create time to mill my opponents. Its also helps to have an unassuming commander when playing mill since it can be pretty easy to die to aggro decks.
My win the game kill combo undead alchemists, grim corpseborn(it a legendary creature that you sac to untap) and the god of deception. You tap corpseborn if you hit any creatures you exile them and create a zombie sac zombie get +1+1 on corpseborn and untap tap again. It also deals with the shuffle dudes
I got triggerd at the first part, it got a little better at the part you add nesesary parts to make the strategie work. Mill is one of the strongest strategies, esp with graveyard hate. After seeing the points you say how to make mill work i have some things i would add: 1. play at least 4 grave hates. Leyline of the Void is esp good cause no deathtrigger and no cards see the graveyard => means also no reshuffle! 2. Wheel with mill synergies pretty well and create more chaos! 3. Spell doublers help out to mill faster or wheel more times. So more combos and more value! 4. use yourself also recurces! you will win the battle the long term on recurce spells/cards cause you exile theyr stuff! 5. mill is valuegameplay, but one of the value-strategies that also goes endless if you dont take care! Thats why its ok to run combos, esp if you have tutors! I would tell every wheel deck with black on it could also mill and be as effective. Outside of that cascade decks with black also work and Golos cause he is at all a good vallue commander. Just one second remind: What would happen if you can cast a tutor and double/ tripple it? the answer ist you get your endless combo or you also protect your combo. Mill isnt weak, you just play it weak! xD
Regarding Phyrexian Crusader in Snapdax decks: I think you still kinda need to play it just to get the redundancy you need for infect to work. It can't be mutated onto by many things, but just being a creature with infect and "evasion" is enough for it to make the cut. It incidentally dodges all the red damage-based board wipes as well, so that's a random little bonus. You can still equip it with Swords and stuff, so that's good enough for me.
Don't underrate the landmill effects. 3 times ~36 Lands with -3 times 3 for starter hand and concluding ramp you rather have to mill around 90 cards ;)
Everyone apparently: "Mill is one of the most hated things in commander." Me, who made a Circu mill deck (Which later evolved to a UB WHY CAN'T I HOLD ALL THESE COMMANDERS Mill where I periodically swap commanders currently being helmed by Ramirez DePietro) specifically because of how bad mill was and because it was funny: "Pardün?"
Every time I´ve played against mill, I am the one getting hit by it - and I hate it. It is usually when I play a deck where I don´t play grave yard recurssion.
Mill works just fine without btuvac already. And if the are hurdles in the way to win by milling the whole table, even better, exciting and challenging. Anyhow all those hurdles can be addressed and is lazy to say that mill is bad if you dont want to address them. Every strategy has weak points that need to be adressed, some are just more commonly acknowledged. My view about the bruvac release is: Internet: mill is suboptimal why do people play it, i am smart craterhoof player. Reality: that sucker dimir player milled the whole table again, i hate it.
My usual preferred mill strategies are based more around sabotage, rather than being a win condition. I enjoy top deck manipulation, like baiting someone by trying to destroy someone's Sensei's Divining Top, only for them to react by putting it on top of their library to draw a card, then I hit them with Dimir Machinations. Haldan-Pako partner brews can possibly steal other player's mill strategies, then start copying stuff if you kept Kalamax and the other spell copying shenanigans in your edited precon. Tutoring stuff to the top isn't safe anymore when Pako starts attacking. I don't really care for infinite combos, but I do feel okay with huge combos, like Mr. Grandiloquent and Traumatize. I generally ponder mill combos to be something of sneaky shenanigans, like Scrib Nibblers and Walking Atlas being good buddies, sharing a 1,000 Year Elixir with each other. I like the idea of weird mill, where people expect the infinite combos, but you're just pillow-forting like a boss and punishing them for abusing their own graveyard. You can have silly fun with the aforementioned strategies, and the addition of milling them and/or yourself out is just a couple of your win conditions. Wrexial is probably likely to be my main go-to for mill strategies, because there's so many good options and opportunities to steal your opponent's win conditions for yourself, with mill taking down the player with the win cons you didn't care to steal. As always, I would rather challenge myself to avoid infinite combos, because they just take too little work, while simultaneously being too vulnerable to removal and taking too long to happen. I would rather use those card slots to control the board and/or keep opponents from messing up my plans. Alternatively though, I don't mind stealing infinite combos from my opponents. Currently, Nekusar is actually my best mill deck, with players losing something much closer to their real life wits, instead of complete deprivation of their in-game wits. The group-slug brew draws aggro from other combo players, and causes the the control players to rethink their strategies.
It dominates most of the time. I used to run a dimir mill deck but currently run a simic mill/control deck with Aesi as my commander. Ramp fast, mill hard. :)
What's Bruvac's favorite beer brand?
Miller
cuz he's chill?
Ugh, as a Wisconsinite I'm ashamed I missed that :(
not to mention the fact that if you're concentrating on milling your opponents out, you'll probably leave them with "high life" totals
When I first got into Magic it was right around the time of the Zendikar block and I remember a buddy of mine sitting a couple of our friends down with me dumping out some cards out of a box and helping us make our first deck. The first card that caught my eye was Halimar Excavator the ally that has rally to mill people. Thus my first deck popped up that was centered around playing the excavator, copying it, and dumping allies to destroy peoples decks. Mill has a special place in my heart.
Friendly reminder that half the time Bruvac+Traumatize will leave your opponents with one card in deck.
*maddening cacophony has entered the chat
@@checkthenutz at last week´s FNM I won for the first time with the Bruvac+Cacophony combo. It was glorious.
I know mill is definitely a strange and difficult strategy to win with, but I definitely "milled" 500+ cards in one turn once... Abusing wheel effects and mill when people draw.
I think there needs to be a follow up episode regarding secondary/multiple strategies in decks and how to allot deck space for it, especially as mentioned at the end of this episode. Adding additional strategies tend to dilute the focus of decks right? Then it seems you start to get the problems that durdle-y decks have. I would wager the process the mill player goes through will be to incorporate this secondary/backup strategy, tweak the deck to start to suit this strategy more to the point where the mill becomes the secondary strategy, then will gradually morph the mill part into an enabler for what was previously the secondary strategy, ending up eliminating the mill portions altogether.
I'm still midway through that shift with my Mirko Vosk deck. I kind of gave up on fully milling people outside of combos and instead heavily focus on stealing things out of opponents' graveyards with combat damage triggers. I kept some combos and just enough mill to have choices to pick from, but it is much closer to a wrexial/thief of sanity deck now than a true mill deck.
The single target thing, combined with the shuffle titans, is why I really enjoyed playing Oona when Paradox Engine was legal; it was kind of like playing a storm deck in that you played a whole bunch of cantrips in order to keep activating Doubling Cube (and a copy of it thanks to Copy Artifact), so you got enough mana to rip someone's library straight into exile (because, yes, Oona puts things into exile), and that would hopefully give you enough fairies to take out everyone else when you untap. Since they banned Paradox Engine and unbanned Painter's Servant, it's lost the explosiveness and becomes more mindless in terms of who you mill.
And that's why I'm building a Phenax deck once I get hold of Mr Grandiloquent. (Also, Fleet Swallower is Traumatize on a stick).
Reading this you might also like Bruvac + petitioners + intruder alarm ;)
I'm coming here from watching a Casually Competitive MTG game where Bruvac did some real work.
Lol same
nice! I love casually competitive, im glad they're gaining traction :)
Try to play it agsinst Kess and Gitrog :D
Just plat gravehate like any Miller should
The actual EDH mill commander is not just about milling mindlessly. The way to go is control/mill, which is more easy that using useless amount of 7-11 mana cost creatures. Slowly milling everyone, trying to draw as many cards as possible and get answers for what they still have in play. That's why Leyline of the void is mandatory, graveyard is ALWAYS a resourse at EDH. And if you play Phenax, don't use thoose gigantic vainilla creatures that have no static effect, get something in play that actually has an effect. Idk, jin gitaxias for example. (even if it's a 10 drop).
And don't underestimate the power of wheels. Those cards are awesome at milling too.
Get combos like Whispering Madness and Notion Thief online. You need to lock your oponents BEFORE you mill them. Like I said, it's all about control (and politics if you are playing Tasigur). You will have to build your deck to control spell heavy or creature heavy decks, depending on your local meta.
Milling is fun and I have to say it's my favorite strategy, but it's just not a good one. Lots of fun, but if you are playing against turn 3-4 commanders you will get rekt, that's it :(
This. I've been playing a phenax mill deck the past two weeks and i've slowly removed the vanilla walls (except fliers, because Ur-Dragon is a thing in our meta). It's a control deck with reanimator effects and a mill wincon, not a "mill everyone fast" deck.
This episode being uploaded the week I'm retooling my oona is very blessed
The thing to remember about Oona, is that because she exiles cards you'll dodge all the graveyard shuffle effects, but she doesn't work with Bruvac. Also, they unbanned Painter's Servant... I still don't know why, but I'll run it anyway.
@@andrewamann2821 I like that! Thanks for the suggestion! Works especially well since I'm already running Sage's Row Denizen to get the two extra cards when Oona makes tokens. Thank you
Seems like a possible way to scale mill would be a commander that gives you a massive payoff for milling the first opponent out.
Great stuff! Personally, what I always go back to for the mill/damage comparison are the 1 mana spells: Lightning Bolt(3dmg) vs Tome Scour(5cards). We don't run 1 of effects like lightning bolt in commander because they aren't efficient enough so your mill has to be not just equal, but better than the equivalent damage. You need to be able to reliably get more than 5 cards per mana you put into a card. For example a mind grind x=8 nets you ~72cards for 10 mana, or ~7 cards per mana spent and a total of 43 equivalent damage; which is why it's actually a good card. Meanwhile, I think teferi's tutelage is really bad most of the time because it will take 6 turns to passively mill the 15 cards it needs to hit to be worth the 3 mana. With a wheel it's solid, but without one it is too huge a waste of time for me to ever include.
As someone who is trying to build Phenax this is super helpful for me. I went into this wanting to know more and I left this video with a lot of information that was important to know. Thanks guys.
The most important stats question is 'how many Persistent Petitioners is enough/too many'?
Petitioners are very hard to play. I‘m trying it with 31 at the moment
@@corranhuss Which commander? I'm considering Damia, thoughts?
I'm currently playing a ~20 petitioners deck with some additional advisors in Bant with Chulane at the helm. The card draw he provides is a very welcome help in churning through your deck to get the petitioner engine going. I've picked bant because green has some excellent untap effects that let you untap all your petitioners on everyone 's turn (Seedborn Muse, murkfiend liege). Once you get enough untap effects in play / in hand it becomes more and more viable to actually mill someone out!
Mill always reminded me of those levels in the old platformer, Mario-esque games where the stage keeps moving , killing you somehow if it ever catches up but ultimately just making you play a little tighter. What would the Mario equivalent of self mill be then...!?
About the same, just playing as Luigi?
Sprinting towards the lava rising it all to try and get the secret star before it's out of reach do to the rising tide?
I think this would make a great redux episode. Mill in 2022 is in a much better place than it was two years ago. Would love to hear what your thoughts are now that mill is getting some much needed R&D attention.
Another tangent question (and possible topic for a show): Given the social disruptions caused by COVID-19, sometimes we don't get to play against three other people at the same table. How do you adjust a deck's composition from 4 to 3 to 2 players when key cards affect the entire table at the same time? "Each opponent" sacrifices, loses health, discards, etc.
IMO, depends on which mechanic you're talking about. Loses health is much more likely a group-slug-ish theme rather than burn, so having more opponents doesn't really change strategy that much, and "each opponent" is strongly preferable to "target opponent" even in 3 player games IMO. Targeted discard in multiplayer doesn't often seem great, because going proactively 1-for-1 with a single opponent is usually putting both players behind, so I would say the strategy doesn't change much from 3 players to 4 players, while going down to only 2 players mean single target discard is fine. Target opponent sacrifices is a bit better, because targeted removal can be used against the most major threat, and whoever played it already paid some amount of resource.
Cards like Smothering Tithe are much much better with more players, and I would describe it as scaling linearly with number of opponents. I think Mill falls under this category, because the goal is to mill number of players * about 80 cards, so "each opponent" effects are at least twice as good as "target opponent" effects.
And of course, for 2 players, it's generally the same, it doesn't seem like WotC balances with consideration for that distinction much; if anything, WotC more likely chooses "each opponent" and "target opponent" with consideration for players having Hexproof.
Also, of course, infinite combos don't care which version is used, because they're infinite anyway.
I'm right there with Matt about the feel bads when you lose a card to mill. Even if it's a basic land I'm usually devastated.
Video of the year... Milling needs to be made more competitive? Milling Cedh deck would be amazing
Most cedh games end with mill lol
No please, we were three players that got milled 28 cards each turn 4. He won that game, quite decisively.
Phenax is one of my favorite commanders. My play group gets pretty salty when I win by milling someone out, but they are fine with being pinged to death. Funny how the mind works.
I just wish consuming aberrations was legendary and/or have a legend that changes the text of cards that says "target player mills" to "each opponent mills" but the latter might be too powerful
07:30
thank you for this graph
Hey my challenge the stats got picked.
Bruvac’s Favorite Musical is Thoroughly Modern *Millie*
The few times I've played against a Mill player I've noticed that when they have the single player targeting spells they will focus on just 1 player until they are dead. Now while this is the best strategy it will make that player very salty. Also sometimes the player that they choose seems to be at random. At least do a threat assessment and pick the player most likely to combo first, or least likely to favor their graveyard. In the end I would actually prefer they play a combo that takes everyone out. It's on par with someone Cratorhoof-ing, or Lab Man-ing us, so why not. Let's shuffle up and play again!
54m0h7 I’ve seen this too. Most mill is targeted so they usually pick someone and stick to them until they die. Often “kingmakering” someone else. My favorite way to do mill is self mill/lab man. If the easiest way to mill is pick someone and mill them until they have no cards left, then the most efficient way is to mill out yourself.
The thing is you wont know who's gonna combo off till half way through the game and at that point mill cant really adjust to a different player effectively
you know, this conversation comes up a lot for mill, and i understand that a meta is very much to be considered when brewing, but i personally feel that what is considered Mill is not a deck archetype, but mode of win. you can easily combo in to an infinite mill, you can aggro mill, heck, even control or aristocrat mill. this is the first issue, the second i perceive is the effect of mill. while life can be a resource, a deck has to be built to utilize it as such, but for almost all cases, the deck itself is the primary resource pool, so whittling down life totals does nothing more than get them closer to a loss, but milling removes components and resources from any deck. yes, eldrazi titans and such do throw a spanner in the works, but just as those cards exist to counter mills or discards, you need to have counters for anti-mill. exiling, stealing, locking down, all are viable options. alt-win cons should also be considered. going against a deck with eldrazi? good thing you packed your lab-man. keep a mechanized production around to put extra pressure on when every turn another copy of grindstone enters your battlefield (maybe use Saheeli to quicken the process). my best mill deck isnt even in blue or black! its a mono green elf deck that utilizes altar of the brood/dementia and hair-strung koto, generating 15 elf tokens, with a marwyn and those three cards out is a 60+ card mill. but at the end, if i am facing off against someone with anti-mill, i still have 15 elf tokens, and a marwyn that is at base a 16/16 so i can still win by turning creatures sideways.
TLDR: i feel that mill is a viable build, but people view it as a build archetype and do not build an effective deck that protects itself against the obvious shortcomings.
Good take.
Watching this video now after Wise Mothman and Rad counters from the Fallout set has been revealed. Will be interesting to see how that will affect Mill strategies moving forward
"General Mills" is such an excellent Mill Deck name
Surely one of the biggest advantages of Mill, is that your opponents can't block it, and don't have a lot of ways to stop it. Also a shoutout for the planeswalker Ashiok, Dream Render which mills 4, then exiles each opponent's graveyard. And the static ability of preventing library searching is a bonus too.
When my friends and I played regularly, I was the dimir girl/mill player of the group a lot of the time. We didn’t play commander at the time, but we would play four or five player free-for-alls most of the time. In my experience, milling only works in casual multiplayer via combos. These can be infinite combos (it was hard to pull off, but I loved combining mind crank, undead alchemist, and trepenation blade to kill a player in one turn), but in my experience, the simpler strategy is to put cards in your deck that can in some way translate milling into regular damage/life loss. Consuming aberration is probably the most obvious, but a more recent example is Dread Hound, a demon dog that causes opponents to lose life any time a creature card enters the graveyard. If you combo this with Traumatize (or worse, the New Cappena version that has the casualty rule) you can actually one shot more creature heavy decks, and this is more effective in Commander, where the standard deck-size is higher. Overall, I feel like the only way to make mill viable is to either rely on combos, or combine it with other strategies, usually some type of control. You also need to have ways to actually take advantage of graveyards, and ideally a way to prevent opponents using their graveyard as a resource. My mill decks won way more games through Jace’s Phantom (which I would consider a must-have for any blue mill deck) swinging for lethal than I have actually milling someone out; mill just isn’t a reliable wincon by itself, not unless you are willing to stuff your deck full of powerful and expensive tutors so you can reliably pull off some sort of combo every game, and even the you will still have a rough time of it.
My favorite mill commander is Anowan the ruin thief. He pumps up rogues and whatever they do mills the opponents based of how powerful the Rogues are. Equipment that gives power and toughness based off of cards in the graveyard. You never really mill out anyone, but you can decide to mill out one enemy and drop something like consuming aberration on the board, and swing at another player.
I think its kinda funny you guys upload this the same night i finished my persistent petitioners deck :P
Auto includes, tree of perdition, jesters cap
I play a Mill themed Mimioplasm deck. It's real fun. You get to clone the best creatures in each graveyard.
I was apparently a monster because I enchanted Fraying Sanity on myself and one person saw me tap mana and screamed no as I Fractured Identity on Fraying Sanity.
I mean, that's a great way to get three fractured sanities enchanting you
I know Im late with this but one card many people miss for mill is folio of fancies. Hits multiple people but it draws everyone cards. But it punishes large hand sizes
Tbh, I think Grixis could make mill such a fuckin good archetype, but here’s the caveat- If you combine it with wheeling.
Think about it, if you’re discarding you’re hand and having everyone draw 7 with a wheel, you’ve just milled the table for 21 for 3 mana.
Arjun can also mill hella hard with a tutelage or psychic corrosion
I have a player in my group who enjoys mill from time to time. Because of him, I have decided to put many cards in my deck that give me, the player, hexproof. :)
Well for people like you are there's Folio of Fancies, to get the combo going (Duskmantle + Mindcrank)
In standard I play a mill deck, winning 65% of games with its. Though one third of those winning aren't mill, mainly cause their running more 60 in the deck but that's where cards like Ashiok, Nightmare Muse really shine.
I dunno, I feel like if a mill deck is setup well, it can pivot. I love my mill deck and have a couple two-card combos that can take a single person out instantly. I also have ways to bring those cards back into my hand. Then add it something like Rise of the Dark Realms and you can instantly pivot to unstoppable damage. That card alone is basically a winning condition, provided you can survive until then of course. I normally am going up against 4 - 5 other guys and they know my deck. Which means I peacock quickly, which is something I haven't figured out how to deal with yet.
So i posted this after a few beers and before the video hit 32 minutes... woops!
I've been playing Grolnok the Omnivore with a mill strategy but focused on self-mill for a nice big exiled second hand. My opponents getting milled with group mill is just a bonus. So it is a strategy that you can make work depending on how you build it.
I feel like mill is in the same place that mono-red burn was at one point, and you could even argue that mill is blue’s version of burn. It’s good 1v1, but with more than one opponent it just really drops in power. We just need more ways to scale up to a multiplayer game and make it faster. Bruvac, Cut Your Losses, and Maddening Cacophony were good steps in that direction, but we need more mill payoffs IMO.
I just brewed up a lazav dimir mastermind deck thats more about graveyards matter than win by mill. I dont think winning by mill is consistently viable, but win by playing everyones best stuff seems more consistent
I have an Arjun deck that can win by milling, or by pinging, or by Lab Man-ing, or by Locust-ing. Drawing cards is how it wins. Not uncommon for me to see my entire deck twice in a game. Very fun (for me)!
For challenge the stats, wasn't vailstone amulet already featured in a past episode?
I loved how you mentioned kess cause my mill/wheel deck does have kess and the helm.
Yes, encourage us Necromancers!
Fun video. Thanks.
Because of the defensive control aspect of mill I like to run stuff like fog bank or crawlspace in order to survive long enough to set up my win conditions.
Sure I have to do more work, but every card you draw helps me and mill effects have very rare counters (which I play counters to, of course).
Milling is that it is all but "unblockable." When I play Phenax I move my game plan forward with EVERY creature EVERY turn after he drops and you can't stop it.
I had a game last night with mill deck using artifacts...it took only four turns for him cast and infinite blue mana floating then self mill himself and filter his library while draining his life total until he finds the combo that mills all 3 of us infinitely and he wins the game.
Came for the Magic, stayed for the dad jokes.
Patreon of the Nezumi & Mindcrank also combo. Another fun trick in my Phenax deck is Tree of Perdition 😈. Surprised Fleet Swallower wasn’t mentioned.
The really hard thing about mill is not all the obstacles I hear listed... no the real obstacle is if you can make things work for you then you will often get the chance to kill people with regular damage etc and that temptation is hard to resist.
I used to mill back in the day but people in my playgroup just started running feldon’s cane
Sad!
Mill is jank, with tons of weird combinations which work once in a blue moon.
But if the jank works, oooh it's pretty.
Milling a creature deck with GrimGrin and Undead alchemist, and then milling 2 others with a giant Grimgrin is perhaps the most fun one
I feel a strong urge to put more cards in my Jund dragon deck that I can cast from the graveyard.
i love this commander
I rock a Commander Mill Deck.
The funniest game that I ever played mill is when I successfully milled out two opponents, but the third still had a few cards left in their library. I was at two life, and they had no creatures or other damage on the board. Well, this player had the “gawd I hate mill” attitude.
However, because I was sitting next to them and they didn’t keep their hand covered, I could see their hand. I told them, “You can kill me, by the way.” They were like, “What?” They had Oko in their hand. 😂 After I told them, they turned a mana rock into an elk and attacked me for 3.
WoTC needs to make a mill card that targets all players and then has a flashback cost that doubles the amount of cards if it was cast from the graveyard
Agreed! We need more each opponent mill cards for commander... Please Mark please...
It isn't all players but "Increasing Confusion" is exactly that for one target player.
I once played against a Phenax player with my Ur-Dragon. I won the game by resolving Primeval's Glorious Rebirth with a Scourge of Valkas and Dragon Tempest in play.
An other nice combo is Undead Alchemist with Altar of the brood. It can’t activate itself, but won me a fair few games
Veilstone amulet doesn't actually grant hexproof, it is functionally very similar, but if you use an ability to swap control with an opponent, hexproof would protect that creature from your own spells, with veilstone you could trade and still target it. also, the things that remove hexproof won't get cards protected by veilstone. Overall, it's not a huge gripe, and it is a little bit of a nitpick, but it can be an important clarification. Feel free to comment disparagingly on how I'm a rules lawyer jerk
I agree with all the negatives listed as challenges to overcome for milling. The issue raises another question or a refinement of the original: Rather than focus on thoroughly milling out an opponent (100 cards), consider what percentage of a deck (25 cards? 40? 65?) needs to be removed to cripple that player's own position?
The problem with that line of thought is that you have no control over which cards remain in that player's library. The bottom 10 cards might win them the game just a easily as the top 10. Much like life, the only card you mill that really matters is the last one.
Odds and percentages.
This is some ESPN around the horn style show... I like it.
I like playing phanex, the deseaver god. I use a win combo with basalt monolith, isecrone Scepter, and dramatic Reversal. Tap your creatures and mill their decks, tap basalt monolith, and tap the Scepter to activate dramatic Reversal. Infinite mill
I play a temur riku of two reflection clone/control/mill deck. I had 8 ruincrabs in a match last time. But i have other win options as well then just mill.
thanks guys!
I think I have 4 decks that can mill (all unique ways of doing so) and 3 more that could add it easily with 1-2 cards (still, without repeating), and I might do so.
There are so many ways to mill - it's so easy. All you have to do is stay away from white, blue, black, and red.
Awesome ep!
The problem with running combo in mill is that then the rest of your mill doesn't even matter. You might as well just run the combo if that's how you win anyway.
I think the control route is going to be a better option at casual tables.
Fog in green is called darkness... your welcome 🤣
I feel like folks that play things like Propaganda in mill decks dont understand the virtues of things like Tainted Aether...or Ensnaring Bridge..or Portcullis..
I like playing mill because it is such a great challenge. My EDH mill deck is lead by Lady Sun because of how unlikely the idea of winning with mill actually is.
Interesting commander wonder how you use it. Love mill too.
@@21Kikoshi She is just defense/tempo in the command zone which helps create time to mill my opponents. Its also helps to have an unassuming commander when playing mill since it can be pretty easy to die to aggro decks.
My win the game kill combo undead alchemists, grim corpseborn(it a legendary creature that you sac to untap) and the god of deception. You tap corpseborn if you hit any creatures you exile them and create a zombie sac zombie get +1+1 on corpseborn and untap tap again. It also deals with the shuffle dudes
How the mighty have fallen. Muldrotha, currently all the way down to 11th in the top commanders.
I got triggerd at the first part, it got a little better at the part you add nesesary parts to make the strategie work. Mill is one of the strongest strategies, esp with graveyard hate.
After seeing the points you say how to make mill work i have some things i would add:
1. play at least 4 grave hates. Leyline of the Void is esp good cause no deathtrigger and no cards see the graveyard => means also no reshuffle!
2. Wheel with mill synergies pretty well and create more chaos!
3. Spell doublers help out to mill faster or wheel more times. So more combos and more value!
4. use yourself also recurces! you will win the battle the long term on recurce spells/cards cause you exile theyr stuff!
5. mill is valuegameplay, but one of the value-strategies that also goes endless if you dont take care! Thats why its ok to run combos, esp if you have tutors!
I would tell every wheel deck with black on it could also mill and be as effective. Outside of that cascade decks with black also work and Golos cause he is at all a good vallue commander.
Just one second remind: What would happen if you can cast a tutor and double/ tripple it? the answer ist you get your endless combo or you also protect your combo.
Mill isnt weak, you just play it weak! xD
Wasn't Veilstone Amulet already challenged in another episode?
I use wheel of sun and moon to shut down mill or graveyard strategies.
And what about self-mill? :)
Just play self-mill, add some card draw in blue and black obvi, and you just have to focus on one person... yourself. Dig to win con, boop, win
Regarding Phyrexian Crusader in Snapdax decks: I think you still kinda need to play it just to get the redundancy you need for infect to work. It can't be mutated onto by many things, but just being a creature with infect and "evasion" is enough for it to make the cut. It incidentally dodges all the red damage-based board wipes as well, so that's a random little bonus. You can still equip it with Swords and stuff, so that's good enough for me.
I think i havd the most interesting and unique deck I have not tried yet but it is esper mill
i miss my standard Sphinx's Tutelage deck. alas that's all mill's ever gonna be good.
Hair-Strung Koto + Seedborn Muse
Mindcrank + Throne of the God-Pharaoh + Leyline of the Void / Anafenza the Foremost Tokens
Don't underrate the landmill effects. 3 times ~36 Lands with -3 times 3 for starter hand and concluding ramp you rather have to mill around 90 cards ;)
Salt Mill > Pepper Mill
Can you Tormods Crypt the Eldrazzi shufflets?
Horror mill is pretty viable now
Everyone apparently: "Mill is one of the most hated things in commander."
Me, who made a Circu mill deck (Which later evolved to a UB WHY CAN'T I HOLD ALL THESE COMMANDERS Mill where I periodically swap commanders currently being helmed by Ramirez DePietro) specifically because of how bad mill was and because it was funny: "Pardün?"
great video.
mill is just fun
Every time I´ve played against mill, I am the one getting hit by it - and I hate it. It is usually when I play a deck where I don´t play grave yard recurssion.
Mill works just fine without btuvac already. And if the are hurdles in the way to win by milling the whole table, even better, exciting and challenging. Anyhow all those hurdles can be addressed and is lazy to say that mill is bad if you dont want to address them. Every strategy has weak points that need to be adressed, some are just more commonly acknowledged. My view about the bruvac release is:
Internet: mill is suboptimal why do people play it, i am smart craterhoof player.
Reality: that sucker dimir player milled the whole table again, i hate it.
Me seeing mill getting a powerlift
*Buys all the Gaeas blessings*
Arjun would like to:
Cheat the system
Yes, Arjun is my favorite mill commander. I was a little disappointed they didn't mention him.
I'm here for the puns.
My usual preferred mill strategies are based more around sabotage, rather than being a win condition.
I enjoy top deck manipulation, like baiting someone by trying to destroy someone's Sensei's Divining Top, only for them to react by putting it on top of their library to draw a card, then I hit them with Dimir Machinations.
Haldan-Pako partner brews can possibly steal other player's mill strategies, then start copying stuff if you kept Kalamax and the other spell copying shenanigans in your edited precon. Tutoring stuff to the top isn't safe anymore when Pako starts attacking.
I don't really care for infinite combos, but I do feel okay with huge combos, like Mr. Grandiloquent and Traumatize. I generally ponder mill combos to be something of sneaky shenanigans, like Scrib Nibblers and Walking Atlas being good buddies, sharing a 1,000 Year Elixir with each other.
I like the idea of weird mill, where people expect the infinite combos, but you're just pillow-forting like a boss and punishing them for abusing their own graveyard. You can have silly fun with the aforementioned strategies, and the addition of milling them and/or yourself out is just a couple of your win conditions.
Wrexial is probably likely to be my main go-to for mill strategies, because there's so many good options and opportunities to steal your opponent's win conditions for yourself, with mill taking down the player with the win cons you didn't care to steal. As always, I would rather challenge myself to avoid infinite combos, because they just take too little work, while simultaneously being too vulnerable to removal and taking too long to happen. I would rather use those card slots to control the board and/or keep opponents from messing up my plans. Alternatively though, I don't mind stealing infinite combos from my opponents.
Currently, Nekusar is actually my best mill deck, with players losing something much closer to their real life wits, instead of complete deprivation of their in-game wits. The group-slug brew draws aggro from other combo players, and causes the the control players to rethink their strategies.
How would mill do in 1v1 commander
It dominates most of the time. I used to run a dimir mill deck but currently run a simic mill/control deck with Aesi as my commander. Ramp fast, mill hard. :)
Mindbreaker Sphinx
+ run more graveyard hate