My dad is a mill enthusiast. I'm not totally sure why. It's possible he just likes doing things in unusual ways. (He's always kind of marched to the beat of his own drummer.) But he loves attempting to mill people out.

This has led to a lifelong casual obsession with figuring out how to make Mill as a strategy work in Commander. It's hard, right? Most mill spells target. And 85 cards per player is a lot more than 40 life per player. There have been attempts, but none that has ever really worked all that well. Until Duskmourn. Say hello to The Mindskinner.

With The Mindskinner out, any damage we do to anyone makes all our opponents mill that many cards. Plus it's a 10/1 unblockable Creature, so assuming it doesn't get killed, we should be able to mill at least 10 cards per turn for each opponent. That's about eight hits until everyone is dead, assuming they each draw a couple of extra cards. Let's break it down.

Our Commander has an unusual mana cost, and there's no easy way to ramp into it, so we're not going to try. Instead, we're going to aim to cast The Mindskinner on turn three and use turn two some other way. We do this with a solid ton of Basic Islands - 31, to be precise. Three more of our remaining nine also tap for . The rest provide useful abilities, like card draw or selection. In several play-tests I was always able to cast The Mindskinner on turn three.

We have a few mana rocks as well, all of which also tap for . Combine that with Sword of the Animist, Sapphire Medallion, and Solemn Simulacrum, and we should be sitting on plenty of mana to do what we need to do. We also want to be able to recast The Mindskinner, as it's likely it'll die a time or two, so the extra mana should be useful. (There's also something terrifying about a mage sitting there with a handful of cards and a bunch of untapped mana, right?)

The primary way we have to draw cards is with spells like Quick Study and its ilk. We have a number of these, most of them cost four mana, and they work great. Whenever you have one and have mana to cast it right before our turn, we should probably be using it - we want to keep cards coming into our Hand the whole game. Additionally, we have Mind Unbound, which I maintain is chronically underplayed in this format. I'm also trying Defiler of Dreams here; we don't have a ton of permanents, but it should do a few things. Jace, Memory Adept draws us one every turn, and Patient Rebuilding should do a nice job of getting us a card or two every turn.

The goal here is an early The Mindskinner, then attacking with it until our opponents run out of cards. That's pretty simple, but we have a few ways to support this plan.

The first is to give The Mindskinner Haste and/or some kind of protection. See Lightning Greaves, Swiftfoot Boots, and Lavaspur Boots. The second is to provide some sort of boost to The Mindskinner's power. For this, we have Blackblade Reforged and Fireshrieker. The third is to make more The Mindskinners with something like Quantum Misalignment or Irenicus's Vile Duplication. I think my favorite of these is Auton Soldier, which makes a non-Legendary copy of The Mindskinner that has Myriad.

The Gatherer ruling on The Mindskinner means that even with multiple The Mindskinners, the damage replacement effect only triggers once. That means if you have two The Mindskinners and each of them hits for 20 damage, each opponent will mill only 20 cards.

In order to deal with threats, we're running a suite of Counterspells. We want to pick and choose carefully, and keep in mind people really don't like having their spells countered, so you're likely to draw some attention. We also have a few Pacifism-style effects to lock down nasty Creatures, and a copy of Aetherspouts to get us out of trouble if someone attacks us with a bunch of Zombies or something. Grafdigger's Cage will affect us a little, but it prevents a deck which wants a huge Graveyard from getting too far ahead.

We have a few other ways to make people do some milling. Ruin Crab is great at any point in the game, since we draw so many cards we'll rarely miss our Land drop. Fractured Sanity forces a massive mill for not that much mana. Tasha's Hideous Laughter also should take a good whack out of people's Libraries. Bruvac the Grandiloquent will be amazing if it's only out for one Combat step. And Zellix, Sanity Flayer keeps us in blockers as people turn their attention to us in order to not be milled out. Memory Erosion should make people think twice about casting more spells, and Psychic Corrosion makes people hurt every turn.

The Mindskinner | Commander | Mark Wischkaemper

• Commander (1)
• 1 The Mindskinner

• Creatures (7)
• 1 Auton Soldier
• 1 Bruvac the Grandiloquent
• 1 Defiler of Dreams
• 1 Mnemonic Wall
• 1 Ruin Crab
• 1 Solemn Simulacrum
• 1 Zellix, Sanity Flayer

• Planeswalkers (1)
• 1 Jace, Memory Adept

• Instants (27)
• 1 Aetherspouts
• 1 An Offer You Can't Refuse
• 1 Archmage's Charm
• 1 Behold the Multiverse
• 1 Contact Other Plane
• 1 Counterspell
• 1 Cryptic Command
• 1 Didn't Say Please
• 1 Drown in Dreams
• 1 Flow of Knowledge
• 1 Get Out
• 1 Glimmerburst
• 1 Into the Story
• 1 Long River's Pull
• 1 Negate
• 1 Pongify
• 1 Pulse of the Grid
• 1 Quick Study
• 1 Rapid Hybridization
• 1 Reality Shift
• 1 Soul Read
• 1 Spell Rupture
• 1 Spellgyre
• 1 Strix Serenade
• 1 Thought Collapse
• 1 Three Steps Ahead
• 1 Visions of Beyond

• Sorceries (5)
• 1 Fractured Sanity
• 1 Irenicus's Vile Duplication
• 1 Maddening Cacophony
• 1 Quantum Misalignment
• 1 Tasha's Hideous Laughter

• Enchantments (7)
• 1 Imprisoned in the Moon
• 1 Memory Erosion
• 1 Mind Unbound
• 1 Patient Rebuilding
• 1 Propaganda
• 1 Psychic Corrosion
• 1 Unable to Scream

• Artifacts (12)
• 1 Arcane Signet
• 1 Blackblade Reforged
• 1 Coldsteel Heart
• 1 Fireshrieker
• 1 Grafdigger's Cage
• 1 Lavaspur Boots
• 1 Lightning Greaves
• 1 Sapphire Medallion
• 1 Sky Diamond
• 1 Star Compass
• 1 Swiftfoot Boots
• 1 Sword of the Animist

• Lands (40)
• 31 Island
• 1 Bonders' Enclave
• 1 Castle Vantress
• 1 Myriad Landscape
• 1 Mystic Sanctuary
• 1 Mystifying Maze
• 1 Reliquary Tower
• 1 Rivendell
• 1 Scavenger Grounds
• 1 War Room

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Combining "each opponent" with a 10% deck-size reduction each turn makes this a viable Commander mill strategy. In play-testing, I was reliably milling 80 cards by turn nine, with my first attack on turn four. Combine a single other way of adding more mill - a copy, a power boots, or just one of the spells which mills some cards - and you're off to the races.

It's possible The Mindskinner wants some more protection; things like Champion's Helm, Darksteel Plate, and Commander's Plate could be strong here. If you find your Commander is getting killed a lot, consider some more of that sort of thing.

One final recommendation for this one: consider carefully whether or not you really want to build this deck. Just because you like milling people doesn't mean your group will enjoy being milled. Or it's possible it's one you only get to play rarely without making everyone upset. For whatever reason, people prefer to have their Creatures killed then their Creature countered, and the same is true for losing - people prefer to be killed by combat than killed with milling. Granted, this is a strange combination, so perhaps it won't bother people as much, but still. Consider it before you build it. And if you do, have a great time with it! It's a hilarious way to win the game.

Thanks for reading.