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Commander Nexus
  1. Commander Nexus
  2. Archetypes
  3. Graveyard/Self-Mill
Graveyard/Self-Mill artwork

Graveyard/Self-Mill

Graveyard decks fill their own on purpose, then play cards from it as if it were a second hand. Moving cards from the top of your own deck straight into the graveyard is called .

  • KindArchetype
  • Cards983

An archetype is a whole game plan: the way a deck tries to win.

Find these cards in the app Commanders with this archetype

How it plays

You put cards from the top of your own deck into your on purpose (), then treat the graveyard as a second hand: creatures that come back on their own, spells you can from there, and cards that grow with the number of cards in it.

How it wins

With creatures that are huge because your is full, or that return every time they die. Some lists win by a spell from the graveyard many times over.

What beats it

. One card that removes every from the game sets you back to zero, and a creature that is exiled instead of destroyed never comes back.

If this is your first deck

A second deck. It helps to have played a game or two first, so you know what the normally does before you start using it as a hand.

Commanders to Start With

The most played commanders where Graveyard/Self-Mill is one of their two main plans, in order from EDHREC, a site that counts the Commander decks players post online.

Example Cards

GraveyardThe discard pile. Cards that are destroyed, discarded or used up go here. In Commander plenty of cards bring them back, which is why graveyards are a resource rather than a bin.Open the full glossarySelf-mill (short for Mill)Putting cards from the top of a player's library straight into their graveyard. You can mill an opponent to run their library out, or mill yourself to stock your graveyard for cards that use it.Glimpse the UnthinkableOpen the full glossaryCastTo cast a spell is to put it on the stack and pay its cost, usually from your hand. Playing a land is not casting, and a copy of a spell is not cast either.Open the full glossaryCasting (short for Cast)To cast a spell is to put it on the stack and pay its cost, usually from your hand. Playing a land is not casting, and a copy of a spell is not cast either.Open the full glossaryExileRemoves a card from the game entirely rather than putting it in the graveyard. Exiled cards are much harder to get back, which is why exile is the strongest answer to recursion.Open the full glossary