Is mill in commander "ok" ?
Commander Deck Help forum
Posted on Dec. 4, 2018, 7:08 p.m. by EDedan
This is a new deck i've tinkered with and i kinda like it but i wanna know what everybody thinks about mill in commander?
Is it okay?
I've always thought that if you mill someone's cards then it's pretty dirty but there is graveyard deck which wants to be milled for value so my values has been somewhat turned on it's head when it comes to this question
"Is mill considered a fine archetype in commander?"
In my playgroup there is one person who despises mill, but that's only because of how common it used to be among our group of friends. So that is understandable. As for my personal opinion, I actually like to see mill at the table. It's so rare that I get to see it played. I assume people look at mill and see that it's hard to mill out multiple people. Therefore, it gets overlooked. But as somewhat of a jankyard dog, I really do root for the underdog strategies.
More importantly, I believe that you should play whatever you think is fun. My views on this are gonna be a little bit harsher than most cause of how my playgroup is. Personally I don't think that it should fall to you to make sure that everyone else is having fun. In this game, there is no strategy that cannot be answered. If they want to complain about how unfair or unfun your deck is without making any attempt to answer your strategy, that's on them. Play what you love, cause everyone else is gonna do the same.
December 4, 2018 7:57 p.m.
griffstick says... #4
I like mill as a back up plan within the deck. And I think the combos that work with Altar of the Brood that mill infinity are totally edh playable combos. But to just make a 100% mill deck it's not gonna win many games. It's not very good. I have a tuvasa, the sunlet deck that I just won because of my alt win condition with was mill. That just happened in a 2 hr and 45 min game. It was so much fun. So I like mill in edh but not a mill deck but as a side strategy. to the deck or like a strategy. that compliments your deck like a reanimate strategy.
Check out my tuvasa deck here where I go in depth about the strategies of the deck including the mill strategy.
December 4, 2018 8:04 p.m. Edited.
Mill is a perfectly legitimate strategy, just like infect, stax, MLD (when actually done properly), infinite combo, etc.
It's not the most effective strategy (as mentioned by others) but there's nothing that makes it not ok. Obviously you need to take into account your playgroup, however I think that playgroups banning a particular archetype stunts player development.
December 4, 2018 10:07 p.m.
FormerBalloon says... #6
Nicol Bolas, the Ravager Flip is a cool mill commander, it doesn't add to the mill outright but let's you nab some of the best stuff they have to protect yourself and there will be plenty of choices if you are milling,he removes threats to steal,gives mad draw and I guess if you can manage to ult him, yes mill
December 4, 2018 10:31 p.m.
I used to run a mill deck in EDH, Oona was my commander. Based off my experience with this deck, I generally don't recommend playing mill, for the following reasons (many of which have been pointed out, but I'll include them for simplicity's sake)
1) at least in my experience, people did not enjoy being milled. I don't think it's "not okay" because the rules allow it and its not like milling someone is going to lock them out of the game or make it unfun, or anything else. But it painted a target on my head, every time I sat down. And playing 3v1 is generally not what I set out to do.
2) your opponents don't help you. To win by milling, you have to get 3 99 card libraries out of the game. And unless your meta is weird enough to have another mill deck (in which case I doubt you'd be asking this) you won't have anyone else helping you. Your opponents have to do 40 damage to someone to eliminate them, divided by 3 (the number of players who also want to do 40 damage to that same player) means they can theoretically take someone out averaging about 13 damage per game. You have to do almost 9x that much, which puts you at a massive disadvantage.
3) The eldrazi titans. Yes, there are ways around them. But they are few and are between, and the titans can easily go into every deck. If your mill deck starts annoying your meta, it's only a matter of time until they work one of them into each and every one of their decks, and turning one of these over at the wrong time undoes everything you've done.
4) there are 2 kinds of opponents in edh, those who want their cards milled and those who do not. You yourself pointed out that there are gy decks who want to be milled, and they will always get more value out of you milling them than you will (barring something like leyline of the void, of course) making milling them dangerous at best. And even if the entire table is people who don't want to be milled... well, see point 1.
All of that being said, edh is a casual, for fun format. Play what you want. If the rules committee didnt want mill in edh, they could ban all mill cards or make a rule that if you draw a card from an empty library, shuffle your gy back in and then draw. Or other such ways of working around mill. If your worried about how your playgroup will react, then ask them.
December 4, 2018 11:40 p.m.
goblinguiderevealpls says... #8
Phenax, God of Deception is the best commander for mill as far as i know, a lot of people will run stuff like Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre to negate mill but you can easily just run black exile like Leyline of the Void, Bojuka Bog, Crypt Incursion, Bitter Ordeal and all the artifact ones like Nihil Spellbomb and Tormod's Crypt
if people do run counter mill hou can always run Laboratory Maniac and mill yourself out
December 4, 2018 11:48 p.m.
DrukenReaps says... #9
I've played mill. Some people get annoyed by it others realize that it doesn't matter that much until you get them down to only a few cards in library. It seems to me that most people start to worry a bit when they have 10-20 cards left.
You basically have to combo off or be getting something out of the milling that you do. You can't just mill people and hope it works. Selective milling can work, some cards let you search an opponents library and remove X cards from the game.
The best mill deck I ever played was The Mimeoplasm. I milled everyone a lot with cards like Consuming Aberration and then I would play mimeo and remove the two biggest threats in my opponents graveyards while giving myself an absolute monster to deal with.
All of your best mill decks are going to have pay offs like that. Milling just feeds them and while it can win the game your real way to win is something like Bloodchief Ascension.
December 5, 2018 3:40 a.m.
I think DrukenReaps is touching on a good point here and something I would like to expand on - One of the reasons that people take offense to mill is that you have to be aggressive out of the gate.
When you're all playing big stompy decks, you can spend time chipping down each other's life totals with not a lot of effort and can share the love a bit. It's very common for players to attack in a circle, to make sure they're being fair. And on top of this, everybody is helping to reduce everybody's life totals.
When it comes to mill, for it to be effective you have to hit one player and hit them hard and fast before moving onto the next. Sure, there are some global effects like Mind Grind, however the majority of mill's effectiveness comes from quickly destroying a player's library. The reason for this is that the amount of resources spent milling a player is much higher than simply turning sideways and more than that, there are many cards designed to take advantage of your graveyard, from Eternal Witness to Elixir of Immortality, the latter completely negating the entire mill strategy.
Becuase of this, to make mill work you have to play a lot more aggressively and as such can be seen as targetting players. Yes, you're trying to achieve your win condition (just like every other player at the table) however a person on the receiving end of this can take offence, because you're not playing like the rest of the players.
I think that's why a lot of people don't like mill, they feel that it breaks the status quo of the table.
December 5, 2018 5:19 a.m.
I find it funny to play against, depends on the commander. The only "unique" mill commander, imo, is Oona, Queen of the Fae, since she tends to be either Faerie Tribal or a UB combo/control shell, and facing that deck could potentially be boring.
From what your deck looks like, I'd imagine it leads to some very fun games. :) Alas, it depends on your playgroup and what they prefer.
December 5, 2018 5:38 p.m.
Mill is an interesting beast and to me it is a perfectly valid wait to go and a bit of a challenge. I have seen Phenax/Oona builds as well as draw crazy builds with Kami of the Crescent moon and the less fun Nekusar. It has enough counters, still allows play and requires people to think of ways out of the situation which I like.
the only time I groan is when people go for infinite mill, especially to combo out one person (like Hinder+Tunnel Vision for example). But I dislike most infinite combos so that is no surprise.
December 5, 2018 6:01 p.m.
For my mill deck i use mill as a means to an end. Such as i mill equally for a few cards each. Nothing to draw agro. Or even ghoulcallers bell. Where everybody discards. Then drop things like avatar of woe. Early game. Mortivore things that work off opponents graveyard. I have a wheel deck based around that infact.
December 5, 2018 11:45 p.m.
Mill is good fun... Even better when you get 2 mill decks in the same game! It usually makes for an unofficial team formation of sorts. I prefer a commander that utilizes mill more than enables mill. Old school Lazav still manages to stay relevant in the games I play although my meta increasingly doesn't utilize creatures.
Caerwyn says... #2
I have never seen anyone really get upset about a mill deck for two reasons:
Mill doesn’t really harm an opponent. Yes, you are attacking one of their resources, but the library is the worst resource in game - until you’ve done something with those cards, such as draw them, put them in the battlefield, or into the graveyard, they’re not doing anything to further your victory.
Mill is a rather weak archetype. After all, you have to do 92 “damage” to each opponent to win. Their card draw helps you some, but it’s not like combat damage, where your opponents are also contributing to one another’s damage.
That said, mill can be pretty fun to play. It’s a lot like burn, but in colours I personally prefer.
December 4, 2018 7:33 p.m.