Is mill 75%? I’ve seen the question debated a bit, but I’ve never really weighed in. What’s interesting is that I see people of all sorts of opinions ranging from, “It’s too good and noninteractive to be 75%,” to, “It’s too weak to be good enough to beat good decks like a 75% deck needs to,” to, “It’s pretty obvious that Rheagar and Lyanna are Jon Snow’s parents,” and it’s hard to know what to make of all of it. Is mill in Commander too cheap to be fair? Is it too targeted at one person to be an effective way to win the game without triggering a dogpile on yourself? Was there a reason not to make two seasons of the TV show for each book given the rate he’s writing? I think we can answer some of these questions.

U/B mill seems obvious, and I don’t want this deck to be obvious. I want this deck to be fun, and therefore, I want to run Villainous Wealth because if I don’t get to run Villainous Wealth, I’m going to take my cards and go home. This limits the commanders I can use to an extent, and as much as I want to jam Phenax and go ham building Walls and tapping them, I’m more concerned with building a deck that does more than just mill combo. Phenax and Oona, Queen of the Fae lend themselves to just focusing on one pile of cards and eliminating it with combos like Eater of the Dead with Phenax, and as much as those decks are probably better in a strict sense than what I want to build, I think we will have more flexibility, will embody the 75% philosophy better, and . . . Did I mention we get to run Villainous Wealth? Because we get to run Villainous Wealth.

Let’s put The Mimeoplasm in our commander slot before we overthink things and build a generic Phenax deck. The Mimeoplasm lets us have a nonzero number of reasons to mill ourselves under certain circumstances and lets us access green because—and I can’t stress this enough—Villainous Wealth has green in its casting cost. Though I think you will find our reasons for running green extend beyond just this one card.

What is our list going to look like?

Millmeoplasm by Jason Alt

• Commander (0)

• Creatures (28)
• 1 Arbor Elf
• 1 Birds of Paradise
• 1 Consuming Aberration
• 1 Deadeye Navigator
• 1 Dreamborn Muse
• 1 Duskmantle Guildmage
• 1 Eater of the Dead
• 1 Eternal Witness
• 1 Fathom Feeder
• 1 Genesis
• 1 Golgari Grave-Troll
• 1 Greenwarden of Murasa
• 1 Jace's Archivist
• 1 Laboratory Maniac
• 1 Lord of Extinction
• 1 Lord of the Void
• 1 Nemesis of Reason
• 1 Nezumi Graverobber
• 1 Palinchron
• 1 Prophet of Kruphix
• 1 Sakura-Tribe Elder
• 1 Vulturous Zombie
• 1 Wight of Precinct Six
• 1 Phyrexian Metamorph
• 1 Solemn Simulacrum
• 1 Oona, Queen of the Fae
• 1 Phenax, God of Deception
• 1 Sheoldred, Whispering One

• Planeswalkers (2)
• 1 Jace, Memory Adept
• 1 Liliana Vess

• Spells (31)
• 1 Hinder
• 1 Psychic Strike
• 1 Putrefy
• 1 Spell Crumple
• 1 Boundless Realms
• 1 Cultivate
• 1 Farseek
• 1 Kodama's Reach
• 1 Life's Finale
• 1 Mind Funeral
• 1 Mind Grind
• 1 Rise of the Dark Realms
• 1 Traumatize
• 1 Tunnel Vision
• 1 Villainous Wealth
• 1 Whispering Madness
• 1 Dance of the Dead
• 1 Deadbridge Chant
• 1 Necromancy
• 1 Phyrexian Arena
• 1 Rhystic Study
• 1 Altar of Dementia
• 1 Chromatic Lantern
• 1 Crystal Ball
• 1 Font of Mythos
• 1 Howling Mine
• 1 Keening Stone
• 1 Mesmeric Orb
• 1 Mindcrank
• 1 Sol Ring
• 1 Sword of Body and Mind

• Lands (38)
• 6 Island
• 8 Forest
• 8 Swamp
• 1 Alchemist's Refuge
• 1 Dimir Aqueduct
• 1 Dimir Guildgate
• 1 Drowned Catacomb
• 1 Golgari Guildgate
• 1 Golgari Rot Farm
• 1 Halimar Depths
• 1 Hinterland Harbor
• 1 Llanowar Wastes
• 1 Nephalia Drownyard
• 1 Reliquary Tower
• 1 Simic Growth Chamber
• 1 Simic Guildgate
• 1 Underground River
• 1 Woodland Cemetery
• 1 Yavimaya Coast

Buy This Deck

I’m usually pretty good at judging my creations, but this is a little tougher for me to gauge. I’d like some help in the comments. How did I do with this one? Too good? Too bad? Too scatterbrained?

Deadeye Navigator is pretty decent when paired with quite a few cards in the deck, and when paired with Palinchron, you can generate infinite mana. Since we don’t have too many mana sinks that aren’t Mind Grind or Oona, I feel okay generating a lot of mana that may or may not go to waste. Sands of Delirium is better than Keening Stone in a situation like this, but I prefer to scale off how much damage we have done rather than how much mana we can conjure. I don’t know if this combo is too good or completely superfluous. I really want to sleeve this up and test it. Oh, you can cast a big Villainous Wealth with all that mana. Which opponent? Choose wisely.

I think this issue of “choosing wisely” is the crux of what makes mill so tough to play in Commander. It’s not that you’re milling almost twice as many cards, but rather that opponents may see Phenax, Prophet of Kruphix, and Lord of Extinction in play and decide they need to murder your face. Mind Funeral and Villainous Wealth are like Burn at the Stake—it’s cute to kill someone that way, but you still have the rest of the group to contend with. Do you offer to take out the strongest player in exchange for leniency from the rest of the group? Do you let everyone else take each other out and then one-shot the victor? I’m not here to tell you how to politics. I am suggesting you will really need to politics. Get ready to roll a ton of diplomacy checks. Good thing you dumped your points in charisma rather than strength.

Is Tunnel Vision not 75% in a deck with Hinder and Spell Crumple? Sans tutors, I think these odd combos are probably fine. You can certainly opt out of one or all of these combos, but you also have to realize that killing one person very easily won’t win you the war and may paint a target on your back. I think it’s important to play this deck in a group rather than one-on-one so that the group enforces a little more forethought than saying, “I’m going to mill the bejesus out of that guy,” which, while fun, isn’t going to necessarily mean much if that guy dies first but you’re second. We’re playing to win, not to make someone else not win.

You can also mill yourself, although there wasn’t enough design space to really take advantage of The Mimeoplasm. Maybe jam some stuff for that strategy if you don’t like the combos I am running. The Mimeoplasm will have to rely on your opponents’ ’yards, which you’re cool with. Just once, I want to live the dream and go off with Phenax and Eater of the Dead, but that’s not going to happen often, so try to keep those cards on the board long enough to avoid summoning sickness and a horde of angry opponents.

What do we think? Did I go too far? Is the deck trash and incapable of beating even other 75% decks? Is the threat of the rest of the table enough to make us hesitate to mill someone into oblivion right away? Leave it in the comments, and let me know. Next week, I’ll be back with something new, and we’re not too far off from Commander (2015 Edition) spoilers. You know that, when those start to trickle in, we’ll start to brew. Until then, mill some people out. It’s even more fun than you remember.