Mindcrank

Artifact

Whenever an opponent loses life, that player mills that many cards. (Damage dealt by sources without infect causes loss of life.)

Combos

• Duskmantle Guildmage + Mindcrank
• Bloodchief Ascension + Mindcrank

Legality

Format	Legality
1v1 Commander	Legal
Alchemy	Legal
Archenemy	Legal
Arena	Legal
Block Constructed	Legal
Canadian Highlander	Legal
Casual	Legal
Commander / EDH	Legal
Commander: Rule 0	Legal
Custom	Legal
Duel Commander	Legal
Gladiator	Legal
Highlander	Legal
Historic	Legal
Historic Brawl	Legal
Legacy	Legal
Leviathan	Legal
Limited	Legal
Modern	Legal
Modern Beyond Horizons	Legal
Oathbreaker	Legal
Planar Constructed	Legal
Planechase	Legal
Quest Magic	Legal
Tiny Leaders	Legal
Vanguard	Legal
Vintage	Legal

Discussion (48)

wallisface on U/B Mill

1 week ago

Mill decks only ever want to be running Hedron Crab and Ruin Crab as creatures. Any other options are just not helpful or conductive towards winning. Specifically:

• both Consuming Aberration and Mirko Vosk, Mind Drinker cost such a high amount of mana that the game should already be over (mill decks should be aiming to win by turn 4). and both barely does any amount of actual milling for their egregious costs.

• Duskmantle Guildmage is only useful as a combo card with Mindcrank. On its own it's basically useless. If you are doing the Mindcrank combo then there's no real reason to run any other mill cards.

• Fog Bank does nothing and gives your opponent more time to overwhelm you or assemble their combo.

Other cards that i'd suggest are bad choices:

• Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver does very little for its cost. milling 3 cards for 3 mana is a very slow rate.

• Fraying Sanity is a massive trap card that a lot of casual mill players fall into. In almost all cases it doesn't speed up the clock for you beating your opponent.

• All of Mind Grind, Increasing Confusion, Mind Funeral, and Pilfered Plans just do faar too little for their mana cost. Memory Sluice is also a really bad return unless you can really reliably trigger it's Conspire ability.

I would suggest looking at cards like Fractured Sanity, Maddening Cacophony, and Tasha's Hideous Laughter *list*. Archive Trap is also a mill-must-have, but may be less-useful if your playgroup isn't using fetchlands. Jace, the Perfected Mind is also serviceable as a planeswalker.

Your deck also really needs some interaction - mill decks are typically too slow to out-race aggro and combo, so you need options to make sure you slow those decks down enough to win the race. Options normally include Drown in the Loch, Fatal Push, and Surgical Extraction

dnthymamai on Everybody Hates Winter

2 months ago

Nice deck with a straightforward goal!
May I add, in case someone may not have noticed, if you want your Commander's second ability to work, you could put some more fetchlands in the deck. (with Mindcrank here some may think Winter counts card types from all graveyards) There are some cheap ones, the casual ones: the Panorama Cycle from Shards of Alara that also give you 1 colorless mana and the upgraded Evolving Wilds and Terramorphic Expanses: Escape Tunnel, Riveteers Overlook, Maestros Theater, Cabaretti Courtyard. Also, Fabled Passage got reprinted in Bloomburrow.

But it seems you already know this, because even with adding some more fetchlands, you cannot rely on having Delirium with only 3 sorceries , 2 instants and 2 enchantments that can reliably go to your graveyard.

But this is a nice damage from afar theme! Your opponents will be dealt A LOT of damage by drawing those extra cards!

sdtech58 on sdtech58

3 months ago

Demonic Tutor Grim Tutor Vampiric Tutor Mystical Tutor Entomb

Those would be the tutors I recommend.

If you want to stick with the mill theme, i'd recommend going to edhrec.com and putting in Gisa & Geralf as your CMDR and then you can choose the style of deck (Mill, Zombie, etc.) They will give you many more recommendations for the best cards to add. A few that I run with a different mill themed deck are:

Mesmeric Orb Mindcrank Maddening Cacophony

I personally think The Scarab God is a better Commander for a Mill themed deck because his activated ability can pull a creature from anyone's graveyard. So you can mill the crap out of yourself (and others) then pull their best creatures out of their graveyards

legendofa on Seeking Advice for Lazav., Dimrir …

9 months ago

Welcome to the club, Danutercisd!

For being a first deck, I'm impressed to see the Mana Crypt, Cyclonic Rift, Fierce Guardianship, The Meathook Massacre, Underground Sea... I'm going to guess that budget isn't a major constraint here.

One of my pet cards for this sort of thing is Geth, Lord of the Vault. It offers milling, reanimation theft for creatures and artifacts, and a pretty big evasive body.

If you like instant-win combos, both Bloodchief Ascension and Duskmantle Guildmage set up full-deck milling and lots of damage with the Mindcrank in the deck.

Another suggestion is to diversify your copy/theft effects. There's a lot of ways to copy opponents' creatures, but you can take them directly with Control Magic, Beguiler of Wills, and similar effects, steal and copy spells with Talent of the Telepath or Twincast, or yank something from their deck with Praetor's Grasp. You opponents are probably going to be doing things beside throwing creatures around, and being able to react to different threats and take advantage of different opportunities is always good.

DemonDragonJ on Savage Destruction

10 months ago

I have replaced Mindcrank with Thought Vessel, because this deck does not care about plundering my opponents' graveyards, and it is always nice to have both an additional source of mana and a way to increase my hand size. Unfortunately, I no longer have an infinite combo with Bloodchief Ascension, but that combo did not fit with the theme of this deck, either, so I have replaced that enchantment with Dockside Chef, which is a quite awesome card, in my mind.

legendofa on Anowon ***Need feedback please!***

10 months ago

Welcome to the club, DadCommander!

I'm neither a mill expert nor a Commander expert, but let's see what kind of advice I can offer. I think Traumatize is the most useful sideboard card here. It's a huge chunk of milling, and commbined with Bruvac the Grandiloquent it can take a player out of the game on the spot. For a suggestion that's not in the sideboard, either Duskmantle Guildmage or Bloodchief Ascension can mill all opponents out and win the game with Mindcrank.

But right now, you're three cards over the maximum. The deck also has a pretty heavy mana curve, so I recommend putting in a few more lands. My first thoughts for cuts are Scourge of Fleets (reliant on islands, lots of cards with similar effects, high mana cost), Spinal Embrace (good combat trick, but clashes with all the bounce and destroy effects, high mana cost), Latchkey Faerie (doesn't do enough for its cost, in my opinion), In Garruk's Wake (very high mana cost, and has several redundancies), and Marsh Flitter (four mana for a 1/1 flier is very expensive, you can pump it four times max, and the two Goblins in the deck are more useful for their abilities than as sacrifice fodder). That's five cut cards, bringing you down to 98. Add two lands, one of them can be the sideboard Tainted Isle, and this will be smoother and more reliable.

There are a few different themes here. There's mill, Rogues, bounce, and reanimator theft. Most of your higher-cost cards look like they're there to take opponents' graveyard cards, which is good support for mill, but you can probably trim down the number you have here. Geth, Lord of the Vault will also help combine the mill and reanimator--I would replace Fated Return with Geth.

JimboSliceJr on Infinite Wheels of Death

10 months ago

Profet93

Sure thing! Bloodchief Ascension & Mindcrank create an infinite mill and damage cycle.

Mikaeus, the Unhallowed & Triskelion create an infinite damage cycle where you remove counters from him to do 1 damage to a player & the rest to kill himself. Then he is returned to the battlefield and you repeat. This also works with Mikaeus, the Unhallowed & Walking Ballista, but he needs a third card like Zulaport Cutthroat or Blood Artist to create the infinite cycle of damage/life gain. If you can’t get one of those two cards, Grave Pact or Dictate of Erebos will create infinite sacrifice cycles. Then you could also create infinite Eldrazi tokens/treasures with either Pitiless Plunderer or Pawn of Ulamog.

Next is the Ashnods alter & Pitiless Plunderer combos with either Bloodsoaked Champion or Reassembling Skeleton that can infinitely sacrifice to create infinite colorless mana for cards like Exsanguinate.

Finally if you have Sensei's Divining Top, Bolas's Citadel, & Sheoldred, the Apocalypse you can draw a card with Sensei’s, gain 2 life, then pay 1 life to cast Sensei’s, and repeat until you can find a combo while gaining life with each draw.

Hope this helps!

NV_1980 on Milling opponents get wins (I Hope)

1 year ago

Hi fellow Phenax player! I would recommend adding some more high-toughness creatures to use as milling engines when combined with Phenax. Charix, the Raging Isle is very good in this regard. Also, because you mill, lots of creatures will end up in graveyards. This in turn could fuel the toughness of creatures like Mortivore, Nighthowler and Wight of Precinct Six (which allows for even more milling). A card that's also worth considering would be Bloodchief Ascension, which can go infinite with Mindcrank.