(Raul, Trouble Shooter | Art by Irina Nordsol)

You Get a Mill, and You Get a Mill!

Welcome to Too-Specific Top 10, where if there isn’t a category to rank our pet card at the top of, we’ll just make one up! (Did you know that Ghoulcaller's Bell is the only one-mana artifact that can mill each player?)

Wake up babe, new mill commander just dropped!

Now let's load up all the best mill cards and see what we can do!

Top 10 Dimir Mill Cards

1. Takenuma, Abandoned Mire
2. [REDACTED] (On actual list)
3. Altar of Dementia
4. Emry, Lurker of the Loch
5. Jace, Wielder of Mysteries
6. Mindcrank
7. Brain Freeze
8. Ashiok, Dream Render
9. Stitcher's Supplier
10. Altar of the Brood

Well that is... Not exactly what I was looking for. Don't get me wrong, I love Takenuma, Abandoned Mire as much as the next guy, but I was kind of hoping to find some cards for Raul that would mill my opponents in addition to myself. Add in an artifact card that isn't going to meet our theme, a bad Laboratory Maniac that makes me ask the question of why we're milling opponents at all, and stuff like Altar of the Brood that doesn't actually let me "draw" cards into my graveyard, and the only conclusion I can come to is that we need to get... more specific.

Top 10 Dimir Cards That Mill Each Player

Now that's what I'm talking about! Who would do something silly like only mill yourself or your opponents when there's a whole table of people that need to put their noses to the Grindstone?

Criteria: Cards within the Dimir color identity that have each player mill cards, either simultaneously or as a universal triggered effect. As is tradition, all results are ordered by EDHREC score.

Pretty straightforward this week. Everyone plays, everyone mills. Let's get to it.

10. King Narfi's Betrayal

(11,791 Inclusions, 1% of 924,008 Decks)

And first card in, we've already hit our backup commander, only with a twist: It allows us to cast cards from others graveyards as well. Pretty great backup plan, if you ask me.

9. Shadow Kin

(12,272 Inclusions, 1% of 1,776,722 Decks)

Shadow Kin, on the other hand, gives us a bit more direction. While going universal mill is all well and good, there are two problems with it. Number one, there shockingly just aren't enough cards that do it. In similar fashion to discard, most cards say "target player" or "target opponent", rather than "each player". There are a fair amount of "each opponent" cards that have been printed recently, but they don't help us self-mill to use things with our commander. Number two? If we mill the entire table at the same rate, we're liable to find ourselves in the awkward situation of milling ourselves out while everyone else still has cards because they're packing Eldrazi or Timetwister effects.

With that in mind, a natural strategy with decks trying to self-mill comes to mind: Reanimator.

There are great mill options that come attached to large bodies, and they're naturally going to end up in our graveyard (along with what I'm sure will be some juicy targets from everyone else's). What's not to like?

8. Winds of Rebuke

(13,406 Inclusions, 1% of 1,776,722 Decks)

My critics will be well aware that I tend toward theme over staples, so when I see a card that lets a deck eat its vegetables while also fitting the theme, you can be darn sure it'll make the cut. If anything, however, Winds of Rebuke should be seeing even more play than it currently does, with the amount of decks out there that utilize the graveyard in various fashions. Put simply, if your graveyard is your second hand, then you should be filling it, and this "draws" you two cards while dealing with a threat. 'Nuff said.

7. One Ring to Rule Them All

(19,695 Inclusions, 2% of 888,682 Decks)

Four mana to mill everyone, wipe the board, and then pressure everyone's life totals is a pretty great package. While I'm not crazy about delayed board wipes that will let everyone plan around them, the upside here seems more than worth it, for most decks. Unfortunately, if we do go the Reanimator route, this board wipe probably does exactly what we don't want to do: Take our huge creatures we worked hard to get out early, and puts them in the graveyard. That risk is just not worth it, even for what will probably be a decent mill and some more than decent damage.

6. Dread Summons

(20,246 Inclusions, 1% of 1,858,357 Decks)

While it's doubtful that we'll be drowning in mana in most games, there are a few reanimator targets that could make it happen in Nirkana Revenant and the aforementioned Lord of the Forsaken. Even if we don't get to those ludicrous heights that are going to have us milling out the table in one go, however, pulling the trigger on Dread Summons for four is still likely to put some cards in our graveyard to recur later, keep the Millstone going, and net us a reasonable amount of Zombies for our trouble. In short, this is exactly the kind of flexible mid- and late-game card we need.

5. Gyruda, Doom of Depths

(Helms 1,513 Decks, Rank #647; Companions 900 Decks; 19,126 Inclusions, 2% of 924,008 Decks)

Well, that pretty much seals the Reanimator deal! Gyruda will mill the whole table, then let you pick the best even creature from among those cards into play. Honestly, if our commander wasn't odd, we'd be considering this one as a Companion we always had access to.

4. Extract from Darkness

(28,855 Inclusions, 3% of 924,008 Decks)

I'm not gonna lie, the mill is a little light here. And while the option to get a creature from every graveyard is nice, well, let's just take a look at the other options we're going to have as far as our Reanimator package goes.

Top 10 Reanimate Cards And Strategies For Mill

1. Reanimate
2. Victimize
3. Animate Dead
4. Living Death
5. Sheoldred, Whispering One
6. Dread Return
7. Agadeem's Awakening
8. Patriarch's Bidding
9. Necromancy
10. Rise of the Dark Realms

If we're going to be spending five mana, we want to be getting a big effect that is going to get game-winning threats onto the table. When Reanimate, Victimize, Animate Dead, Necromancy, Persist, Dance of the Dead, and Stitch Together are all right there as the cheap options, and then at the top you have Rise of the Dark Realms, the reanimatable Sheoldred, Whispering One, and the extremely Raul-synergistic Adventure option of Virtue of Persistence, Extract from Darkness just isn't doing enough.

In fact, I don't really like this card being on this list at all. All of the above and more are available to any Reanimator deck, and most of them really aren't very expensive. I understand why people went and found this card, but there are honestly just way too many better options.

3. Breach the Multiverse

(43,602 Inclusions, 4% of 1,207,701 Decks)

Numerically speaking, ten is a lot, seven is also quite a bit, and four is a medium amount. That about sums up my feelings on Breach the Multiverse: It would be a great reanimator spell at four mana, an okay mill spell at four mana, so combining the two at seven mana is passable. Seeing 40 cards, you're likely to find a haymaker or two that'll help you end the game, but I just know there's going to be tons of times I'm going to see this early and just be very underwhelmed, even if I end up casting it later.

2. Mesmeric Orb

(45,954 Inclusions, 1% of 3,619,105 Decks)

No underwhelming here, however. Mesmeric Orb is going to be great mill for the whole table, no matter when you see it. Early game, it's just going to define the entire game or pull removal. Late game, you're going to plop it down into everyone's 20 permanents, and it's yet again going to be an immediate issue. In short, there's just no downside to this, one of the best mill cards ever printed.

1. Syr Konrad, the Grim

(Helms 4,208 Decks, Rank #242; 162,697 Inclusions, 9% of 1,858,357 Decks)

Syr Konrad needs no introduction. If you've ever played with or against him, you're well aware that he just ends games.

With that said, when he does so, it's rarely with mill now, is it? If we were doing this thing right, we wouldn't be recurring Fleet Swallower, we'd be plopping Vilis, Broker of Blood and Rune-Scarred Demon into play. What I'm trying to say is, if our goal is to kill at least part of the time with mill, then we're probably better off without Konrad, much as the deck would definitely be better with him in it.

Honorable Mentions

While I was surprised to find that there weren't actually that many options that milled each player, I still felt like our list ended a little too soon, with some great options left just out of the top ten:

The original mill threat, Dreamborn Muse has fallen out of favor since the early days of EDH, and I for one think the pendulum has swung a bit too far. As much as it's a "do nothing" card, it's also such a non-threat that it's unlikely to be targeted. This means you're likely to see a few rounds of everyone milling a few cards before it dies in a more incidental fashion. If you're looking for a cheaper, more immediate threat, however, then another I think should climb the ranks a little is the new battle, Invasion of Amonkhet. Milling three on entering the battlefield, then having everyone else discard while you draw, you don't really honestly care if this thing never flips. If it does, though, Lazotep Convert provides you with a pseudo-reanimation spell that will allow you to grab the table's best utility creature out of the graveyard. Not bad!

Lastly, and more on the cusp, Fascination is a Group Hug staple that can technically also mill. While space is getting tight in our deck that has already split focus between mill and reanimator, there's still no question that Fascination can be a game-ending spell if you've got the resources, and is therefore worth consideration.

Speaking of the deck getting a bit full up, let's take a look at the final list, shall we?

Overall, the deck is a bit hard to narrow down, power-wise. It's not uncommon to plop multiple huge threats down by turn three, which makes it feel a bit high-powered, but there are also a lot of runs where you won't see any real reanimation or serious ramp until turns six or seven, despite all the "card draw" your commander provides. One thing that I would highly suggest if you're thinking of brewing Raul, however, is the adventure spells you'll notice throughout the list. With Raul's mill clause only allowing you to play cards that have been milled this turn, you'll have a lot of great resources get stuck in the graveyard in the early game, and Adventure is a great way to grab those and let them sit safely in exile until you have the resources to cast them.

Outside of that, the deck is a blast to play! It really nails the mill portion of things, which feels powerful even when you're not getting the things you need, and your hand is always filled with options since you're so busy with the graveyard, which feels great.

Nuts and Bolts

There always seems to be a bit of interest in how these lists are made (this seems like a good time to stress once again that they are based on EDHREC score, NOT my personal opinion…), and people are often surprised that I’m not using any special data or .json from EDHREC, but rather just muddling my way through with some Scryfall knowledge! For your enjoyment/research, here is this week’s Scryfall search.

What Do You Think?

We've talked about the hate mill gets here on Too-Specific Top 10 before, but I can't help but feel that the irrational fear has gotten better as of late. So, with that in mind, let's run an old survey back and see how the results differ!

And finally, what is your favorite card that mills everyone? Are you planning on brewing Raul? Are you doing it as mill, self-mill, reanimator, or all of the above?

Let us know in the comments, and we'll see you at the table I could swear is getting shorter...

Read more:

Rally the Ancestors - Build an Azorius Mill Deck

Technically Playable - Phenax, God of Deception

DougY

Doug has been an avid Magic player since Fallen Empires, when his older brother traded him some epic blue Homarids for all of his Islands. As for Commander, he's been playing since 2010, when he started off by making a two-player oriented G/R Land Destruction deck. Nailed it. In his spare time when he's not playing Magic, writing about Magic or doing his day job, he runs a YouTube channel or two, keeps up a College Football Computer Poll, and is attempting to gif every scene of the Star Wars prequels.