Mill
decks win by emptying opponents' , the decks they draw from: a player who has to draw from an empty library loses the game. Milling means putting cards from the top of a library straight into the .
- KindArchetype
- Cards294
An archetype is a whole game plan: the way a deck tries to win.
How it plays
You put cards from the top of opponents' decks (each one is called a ) straight into their , a few at a time or dozens at once. Many of your cards also reward you for what lands in those graveyards, or for how many cards are there.
How it wins
A player who has to draw from an empty loses the game. A deck has about 99 cards to get through, so it takes work, and most decks win by also stealing or copying the best cards they milled.
What beats it
Cards that shuffle a back into a undo a whole game of work. Decks that want their graveyard full, like , are happy to be milled.
If this is your first deck
A second deck. Counting cards across three opponents is a lot, and the deck has few ways to stop someone just attacking you.
Commanders to Start With
The most played commanders where Mill is one of their two main plans, in order from EDHREC, a site that counts the Commander decks players post online.
Example Cards
Open the full glossaryLibraryYour deck once the game has started: the face-down pile you draw from. A card that says "search your library" lets you look through it for a card.Open the full glossaryGraveyardThe 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 glossaryCommanderThe legendary card that leads your deck, and the name of the format itself. Your commander starts the game in the command zone instead of in your deck, and you can cast it from there. If it leaves the battlefield you can send it back and cast it again, paying 2 more mana each extra time. It is usually a legendary creature; a few other cards say they can be your commander.
Open the full glossaryReanimatorReanimator decks put big creatures into their own graveyard early, then bring them back onto the battlefield without paying their cost. It gets a huge creature into play far sooner than you could afford to cast it.Open the full glossary