I already play a mill deck with The Mimeoplasm. Group mill and then kill them with their own creatures. Or make Mimeoplasm a 100+/100+ and sacrifice to Alter of Dementia.
This is maybe another shadowborne apostle situation, a common card that needs maybe 30 of them and then when the set is done printing it's going to be like $5 a card, right now persistent petitioners are like $2
I can't say if mill is good in Commander, but I will say that when my friend Liz (who loves making mill decks in all formats) saw the Jumpstart spoilers, she made happy velociraptor noises.
Black is almost demanded since eldrazi titans are a thing and you need to either instant speed exile grave, remove graves completely or search opponents deck to exile
That's why I use Lazav, the Multifarious for my self mill, black allows you to take advantage of putting things into graveyards, whether its exile, reanimation, black is a go in mill
@@captainhalfbeard3038 that works, actually now that i think of it there are quite a few colorless options for exiling instant speed but black is still much more efficient and offer a lot of options for even trickier situations. Some times you are against 2 players with shuffle effects
Yes. Mill was my second deck ever and is still a deck I run to this day. All I’ve been doing is upgrading with these awesome cards and this just pushed it over the top.
Funny enough cloning Bruvac would double the doubling effect, so stuff like Spark Double and Helm would be great with him. I think you can also just double the Bruvac effect?
Yup, anything that doubles a triggered effect, like Strionic Resonator, would double it again. But I think Helm of the Host would be the best, getting an extra doubling every time you move to combat. Unfortunately, there's not a lot of ways to get extra combats in blue.
@@MrDigidestiny You can't Strionic Resonator Bruvac, it isn't a triggered ability it is a replacement effect. If a triggered ability is what is causing the opponent to mill you can copy that one though.
@@rennac3152 the last time I won with that deck, I used Archetype of Imagination to evade an Angel deck, swung with Wrexial, the Risen Deep, cast Congregate out of her graveyard off his trigger, gained 200+ life (which saved my ass, as I was at less than 10), then cast Mirko Vosk. Next turn, swung Vosk, she had less than three land left, win.
@@BladedCreed boros does do a lot of things, however it doesnt ramp or draw as well as some others. However, there have been some commanders recently that help and it also seems to be getting more attention.
I have to disagree. But it is a combo Win. Aurelia the Warleader + adarkar valkyrie + altar of dementia Attack with Aurelia, creating a combate phase. Activate Adarkar's ability targeting Aurelia Sac Aurelia to the Altar, milling someone a little Adarkar's trigger will bring Aurelia back, right in time for another combat phase, but now Aurelia is a New object and will be attacking for the First time Repeat and you milled in Boros! XD Watched this combo on CommanderReplay Channel, another Boros player Can also work with any sac engine like Goblin Bombardment ☀️🔥👊
My first blue deck was a mill deck and always believed it was viable. It brought me so much pleasure seeing so many of my cards I’ve put in my commander deck in this list.
Even against Eldrazi, what does your opponents game state look like? They rarely have the Mana needed to cast them and won't have other cards in their deck, so they have to find a way to win with what is in their hand and have a short clock to do it in.
Or even more hilariously (this only works with a lot of mana) use Geth, Lord of the Vault to reanimate them in response to their trigger. It's the kind of thing that will only happen once in a lifetime but will be a legendary moment when it does.
Gotta love that Phenax deck! Back then, the channel was way smaller (so was the price of Bauble too 😅), and Mitch actually accepted one of my suggestions! Now he has patreons and such that talk directly to him. But hey, it got where it is because it's a good channel! It deserves all of itl
Here's a fun mill combo that works in commander, Tunnel Vision and a Junktroller or Hinder. Junktroller or Hinder puts a card on the bottom of a library, an opponent's in this case. Tunnel Vision has you name a card and they have to mill till they find the named card, you just name the one you just put on the bottom and in commander they will mill everything since it's the only card with that name by rule. They now have a one card deck.
I'm glad you mentioned the Eldrazi. I have specifically included an Ulamog in my Ghave combo deck to prevent losing to mill. That was the one strategy that I was encountering that hurt me a lot in that deck.
A friend in my play group loves mill and life gain. They decided to build around Oloro, and my god if you don’t stop them by turn 6, you’re absolutely toast. I don’t remember the exact combo they use (will update tomorrow with that), but essentially, when they gain life, they draw a card, and when they draw a card, they gain one life. This loops infinitely, and when paired with Sphinx’s Tutelage, Psychic Corrosion, and Alhammaret’s Archive, there’s nothing we can really do to stop it. It’s absolutely terrifying and beautiful.
I'm building a mono-blue edh deck that has some mill, and the way I use it is not to make mill my only win con. I use it so I can make my opponents graveyard a resource or have other mill payoffs. Yet to test the deck, but I feel that makes it less annoying and more interactive.
I’ve always loved having mill as a sub theme in my decks. Slap down and Oona, great way to burn mana, traumatize with grave watcher and watch them pick through half their deck for cards to save
I have a phenax mill deck that uses persistent petitioners and my main go to for dealing with the Titans is dimir doppelgänger. it can copy any creature in the graveyard and exile it as a result. The shuffle affect still happens, but the eldrazi get exiled and the effect can’t happen again, Plus now you have your own titan on the field.
Not sure if this was mentioned or not yet Mitch, but it requires a little bit of setup, but infinite draw into infinite mill or damage. I run the combo is an exodia setup. Master Transmuter+Freed from the Reel+Guilded Lotus. If you manage that with treasure trove in play, you’ create infinite mana, into infinite draw and then you can use psychosis crawler and elixir of immortality to deal infinite damage...or essentially infinite draw into milking depending on enchantments in play
Surprised you didn't mention Persistent Petitioners. It was the first thing I thought of when I saw Bruvac. He's an 'advisor' , so synergy there, and with him in play you can tap 4 advisors (petitioners) to mill someone for 24 (a 1/4 of their libarary).
This is awesome! Curse of the Bloody Tome, Thought Scout, Thought Collapse, Mind Sculpt! I have a mill deck already. This helps, but I think mill has always been fine. In my play group it's never been over or under powered.
There are some spells that exile a chosen card from a library to get around the eldrazi's shuffle effect. 3 examples I can think of from the top of my head are Unmoored Ego, Appetite for Brains, and cranial extraction. Granted those are mainly black spells but if you have phenax as your mill commander that won't be an issue.
Soooo, how does Sphinx Tutelage really work out here? There’s two things going on with the enchantment: 1) “Mill” 2 and 2) if BOTH those cards are nonland and share a color, repeat the Mill 2. So, our commander in question certainly doubles the “Mill” effect, but how does it affect the “if BOTH cards are etc.” Would all 4 cards need to be nonland cards that share the same color? Would you split the effect in half, and just account for 2 cards at a time?
I don't know if that's how it officially is done, but when I used Sphinx's Tutelage in my 60 card deck, any doubling effects would go on the stack. So my opponent would mill 2, then if there are no lands mill 2 again. Let's say they now milled a land. Then the "double" mill would come to trigger and they would mill 2 again. But again, idk how it would is officially regulated, that's just how our group played.
One thing Dimir has in its favor to deal with Shuffle titans is Yixlid Jailer which turns off abilities in graveyards. Also has the added bonus of letting you reanimate shuffle titans!
I use Muldrotha in combination with Traumatize to dump half the remainder of a library into a graveyard, and if mana is still available, Keening Stone to dump the remainder of the deck into the graveyard. Gonna have to get Bruvac now to accelerate this to a one cast play. Laboratory Maniac on the field and targeting myself to try and end things abruptly. Consuming Aberration + Undead Alchemist + The Scarab God is also fun in combination with other zombies you can recur from the graveyard to keep the pressure up. 💜
Keep in mind Bruvac is in blue and you can stifle the Shuffle-titans effects. And other cards that do the same thing. Definitely worth considering at this point.
@@rickers2011 since you got no response I am willing to share my own Phenax deck I am quite satisfied with. My playgroup is not that competitive though. deckstats.net/decks/1531/1715270-gotta-mill-em-all/en
I made a Mirko Vosk, mill, kill and counter spells deck that I run Bruvac in and it wrecks for the minimal amount of time it's on the battlefield because it mills so hard lol. To take care of the Eldrazi I run Jester's Cap, Sadistic Sacrament, Denying Wind, Nightmare Incursion and Bitter Ordeal (my favorite because of obvious reasons in a mill deck). These cards allow you to search opponents decks and exile cards directly from their deck before they become a problem.
It’s a step in the right direction, but what we really need is more things that spreads mill out amongst opponents, or a UB commander that takes single target effects, and spreads them to each opponent. Because if you are attacking all fronts at once, it’s more efficient. The issue is, like you said, is that you job becomes a hundred times harder when you have to worry about hitting more than one person. Doubling of effects is fine, and was definitely a much needed effect...but UB Mill really needs is either a way to make those single targeted Mill effects apply to everyone, or needs to have more of a flood of cards that affect everyone. And considering how much more cost efficient in design it would be, I’m more so leaning towards the option of a Legend that spreads single target effects.
Two words: Eldrazi Titans. Running just one in the deck is insurance against everything except an infinite-mill, and even then it's possible to still have a discard effect for the titan, or cast and counter, or cast and sac outlet, to just loop it and stop a mill victory. Plus you have to be careful of enemy blue decks running things like Thassa's Oracle, Lab man, Jace Wielder of Mysteries... Black players who have Necropotence... Anyone running Possessed Portal or Omen Machine or any other cards that stop draws... There's just too many ways to stop a mill victory, and in higher tiers of cedh, self-mill with Doomsday and other effects is quite common. Oona Queen of the Fae is better for mill since she exiles, but you still have a lot of problems.
@@ryangainey94 i suppose i'm not use to my playgroup having the budget for those. but also, those still hose the new mono blue approach in the video, even more so because you don't have access to instant speed graveyard hate. If anything that makes mono blue less powerful than a BU version
Yep. My phenex/steal creatures deck is kind of hated. Of course, I built it because someone else built a mill oathbreaker, and wanted to annoy him back...
Mill as a win condition is still kind of iffy, but in a deck with The Scarab God in the driver’s seat would allow you to mill and then use what they’ve milled to value your way to victory. And have probably 20-30 (or more) of that blue advisor creature from Ravnica: Allegiance that lets you have any number of it in your deck
For a little bit now I've been considering a Wrexial deck less more focused on graverobbing my opponents and using mill as a means to get there. I feel like Bruvac's biggest issue is his lack of black to add more flexibility and answers to cards like Ulamog and Kozilek. Either way if I DO build Wrexial he'll be in there. Though I already have two Dimir commanders already...
I never thought mill wasn't good in commander. XD One of my strongest decks (Muldrotha) runs mill as a main theme and it's a ton of fun! My answer to the shuffledrazis is Nexus of Fate. People tend to get cocky thinking that I'm trying to mill them out and then I mill myself into infinite turns.
To build onto the shuffle titans point; if you are running mill you NEED to be running some form of graveyard hate. You can't really win by milling when you are just putting yard decks in the lead. When you mill a titan and the shuffle ability goes onto the stack, there is your chance to exile it with your graveyard hate. Yes they will still get the shuffle but it means that you can then start working towards you wincon
This is sweet in dimir packages especially because black has a couple cards to toss in the deck to exile a creature from someone’s library, or in mono-blue bribery would work in a non budget deck. it’s probably just my meta but it feels like at least half the decks I play run a shuffle titan.
There is something very entertaining about milling an opponents good card and hearing them groan about it. Especially if you also mill their graveyard recursion
For me bruvac is finding a comfy home in the 99 of my phenax deck. Mill in commander benefits a lot from various black spells. The most recent best inclusion is erebos's intervention for that instant speed graveyard exile. Being able to remove specific cards from graveyards is essential for mill in commander to stop graveyard decks and titans. Also the 100 cards of commander is small with group mill and cards like bonehoard/consuming abberation.
Buy the mill staples while cheap, dogs too. Mill deck is still not there in edh form but close. Once we get more staples, these staples will shoot up in price. Dogs are too early to be a solid edh creature type, but by the obvious staples soon.
There's one way to prevent the eldrazi titans from reshuffling the opponent's deck, if I recall correctly, that is a triggered ability, so pack cards like stifle (that counter triggered abilities), should you suspect an opponent has an eldrazi in the deck, just save it for that moment.
Is nobody going to say it? Consecrated sphinx with sphinx's tutelage. Every opponents turn, you draw at least 2 from the sphinx, which triggers the tutelage twice. With the doubling from your commander, that would get silly fast
I have a Baral mill/counterspell deck, and I have nearly every single mill card you talked about in that deck on top of other staples. I rarely use it, not because it's bad but rather because I find it to be way too oppressive in most games I use it in. In most cases it would take the entire table ganging up on me to beat me. I've actually reserved it for use exclusively when we have a "table tyrant" that is getting too cocky or pompous for our collective comfort, and they need to be shut down. Bruvac will likely not be replacing Baral in my deck, but he will be added in the 99 for sure. Most players, in my experience, don't prepare anti-mill because of how niche it is, and I hope that doesnt change with this new addition. I have an Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger and a Jace, the Mind Sculptor for insurance against that, but even still it's an added pain on my end.
Also. When it comes to an effect like Mirko Vosk, I think you would calculate the end result and see how many cards Mirko wound up milling, whether it's 4 cards or 30 cards, then Bruvac doubles whatever number you get. But I could be wrong. That just seems to me like how that would work because that definitely feels like a mill effect.
Just double checking. Does the mill still double when RIP or Leyline of the Void are out? I'm trying to think of the different substitution effects at the same time
Yeah I immediately knew that "Grind" effects will not interact with Bruvac. So a new piece for Phenax to trigger sooner the Archenemy Mode! I'm already hearing the groans of disappointment when they start drooping their combo pieces and OP spells~
It's actually possible to survive a Traumatize + Bruvac, because Traumatize says 'rounded down'. This means that if you have an odd number of cards in your library, 1 card will remain. For example, if you have 73 cards you will mill 36 cards two times, which is 72. Anyway... you better pray to win with that last card.
I actually play a wrexial mill edh deck and a phenax mill edh deck: I can't say I win consistently but I surely have a lot of fun. I'm gonna build a Bruvec petitioners deck, cant wait!
@@peterosborne8315 yeah mate :) I find it a challenging way to win at least for edh. I also had a mill deck for standard... building the modern one for a while. Have fun playing friend (y)
Mitch, Altar of the brood man... it is the single most viable mill card in all of commander. hair-strung koto is close second in my opinion, just because those two cards can make any color a certifiable mill deck. i run the both of them in a mono green tribal elves where i can generate 15 elf tokens per turn easily. with brood and koto, that is 15 mill to each opponent and 15 more divided as you choose. but if you run Bruvac, it would take no time at all to eat through those decks.
I remember when my family first started getting into MTG. My brother made a mill deck. I fucking hated that thing. Of course at this point I had no idea how to make good decks.
A list of cards for Bruvac, Manic Scribe, Persistent petitioners, Psychic spiral, Startled awake, Keening stone, Visions of beyond, Jace's phantasm, Sand's of delirium, Visions of beyond, Sphinx mindbreaker, Sphinx ambassador.
I'm late to the party but Sphinx Mindbreaker has a crazy ETB for Bruvac. Each opponent mills 10 cards, 20 with Bruvac.... add any number of flicker effects and it just gets insane.
One of my pet decks is a Simic Tishana "advisor ball" mill deck using Persistant Petitioner and untappers like murkfiend liege and seedborn muse. Quite decent win rate.
I think if the deck is built correctly it will take some people out by surprise but it’s still going to be hard to take out the whole table. Another card that seems good is Hedron Crab. 6 cards milled just for playing a land at the low cost of 1 mana.
I was called out by friends when Bruvac was revealed. My regular deck is a fun Lazav, mill copy steal deck, I am looking forward to him and my friends hating me for it. My combo is Bruvac, Fleet Swallower and Kicked Rite of Replication, take out everyone in one or two turns.
I think the reason why he only doubles up on opponents so that affects like Mesmeric Orb that affect everyone don’t hurt us as much so we get to kinda break the symmetry
I think it depends on what exactly gets errata'd to say "mill". Like, the actual mechanic Mill is followed by a number. Glimpse the Unthinkable will say "Mill 10." But Traumatize doesn't come with a number. I could see it being rewritten as "Mill X, where X is half the cards in their library." But if it ISN'T errata'd that way, I don't think it'll work with Bruvac like we'd hope.
I feel like damia is a good mill commander because of things like sphinxes tutelage and obviously omniscience. The green is good for not dying in the early game and ramping. The black is good at controlling the board so you dont die in the late game. Blue is for mill
Question: With all these triggers, such as the ones with Sphinx's Tutelage and Teferi's Tutelage, is it theoretically possible to go infinite in this type of deck? Let's say you have Sphinx's Tutelage on the field, and something else that could double it's milling trigger. With this new commander here too, could it possibly hit enough to go infinite, outside of something like a Maelstom Wanderer deck with 96 lands?
You need to run graveyard hate in mill decks anyway. Use stuff like Soul Guide Lantern, Tormod's Crypt and Relic of Progenitus to pop those shuffle titans while the trigger is on the stack.
My mill deck is mono blue baral commander with the option for self mill but mainly focused on deterring attacking me with cards like evacuate and illusionist Gambit and counter spells then combo milling the last one or two people left.
I play mill in commander but my deck isn't very good. But because of how miserable it was for my opponents the one time that my deck functioned, they always target me now even though my deck is pretty weak. Also Bruvac is super good in Phenax! In addition to his ability, he's also an early blocker with high toughness, so you could tap him to mill 8 when Phenax is out.
I've been running a mono blue mill deck for a while (commander is Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur), although the end goal is being a nuisance rather than winning, all the same to me. The new cards coming will definitely help.
Yes you can. In blue you could also use a stifle /stifle effect. And if I'm not mistaken you could also use a Sundial if it's your turn to shut off the "put in a gy from anywhere" trigger.
This card is a huge help to the Mill edh decks but Phenax is still going to be leading It in my deck, his effect is a hard to ride engine that also has access to black and it's tutors to find Brubac and turn him into a creature that mills 8 cards a turn by itself for 3 mana in addition to double every Phenax activation , black also gives Answers to the eldrazi titans like Kalitas and leyline of the void to ensure that our mill dont go away.
Where i play alot of the players play the eldrazi in their deck just to counter mill or have blight steel then with the new undead alchemists it was a shot but cause the stack it still negated by the drazi but if you got the land that let u sac it to exile target graveyard then u can counter the drazi's
I think having a Blue/Black mill commander will be important in growing the mechanic as a viable Commander strategy for the graveyard manipulation that only Black can offer
I always assumed mill was always good in commander. But seeing this new mono-blue commander that can help with mill, I want to build a new mill deck, but I don't want him as the commander. Maybe I'll go bold and use Taigam, Ojutai Master instead. Let's go! Let's build a White-Blue mill deck!
No, but it won't stop me loving mill as a hilarious strategy.
No better feeling then milling someone's item they tutored to the top of their deck.
I already play a mill deck with The Mimeoplasm. Group mill and then kill them with their own creatures. Or make Mimeoplasm a 100+/100+ and sacrifice to Alter of Dementia.
@@ricksadler4594 Oof
Persistent Petitioners will forever be my most fun, jankiest deck
@@ricksadler4594 lucky...all of my friends run many things that shuffle the grave into the deck when they hit
It feels like Bruvac was explicitly made for a Persistent Petitioners deck.
Ditto. I'm surprised he didn't open with this, let alone not mentioning it at all.
Cheapest commander deck to build... I'm building it. I'll have 2 mono blue mill decks but it's fine
vishal bachan ?
@@VeznansDeadbeatDad thought PP was cheaper but it's not
This is maybe another shadowborne apostle situation, a common card that needs maybe 30 of them and then when the set is done printing it's going to be like $5 a card, right now persistent petitioners are like $2
I can't say if mill is good in Commander, but I will say that when my friend Liz (who loves making mill decks in all formats) saw the Jumpstart spoilers, she made happy velociraptor noises.
Bruvac should have a 1BU and he would have been the perfect mill commander giving him access to the much needed black sources
Black is almost demanded since eldrazi titans are a thing and you need to either instant speed exile grave, remove graves completely or search opponents deck to exile
I agree, I feel like that's the one aspect that'd keep me from running him as my commander
That's why I use Lazav, the Multifarious for my self mill, black allows you to take advantage of putting things into graveyards, whether its exile, reanimation, black is a go in mill
Tormonds crypt? As long as it's out, activating it can be in response to an eldrazi hitting the grave.
@@captainhalfbeard3038 that works, actually now that i think of it there are quite a few colorless options for exiling instant speed but black is still much more efficient and offer a lot of options for even trickier situations. Some times you are against 2 players with shuffle effects
Yes. Mill was my second deck ever and is still a deck I run to this day. All I’ve been doing is upgrading with these awesome cards and this just pushed it over the top.
The best part if you run persistent petitioner you can use this as a petitioner as its ability says an advisor
I feel Bruvac needed to be in dimir to be amazing. A lot of mil cards also have black.
Funny enough cloning Bruvac would double the doubling effect, so stuff like Spark Double and Helm would be great with him. I think you can also just double the Bruvac effect?
that is correct, just like having multiple Angrath's Marauders gets insane, multiple Bruvacs also gets stupid real quick
Yup, anything that doubles a triggered effect, like Strionic Resonator, would double it again. But I think Helm of the Host would be the best, getting an extra doubling every time you move to combat. Unfortunately, there's not a lot of ways to get extra combats in blue.
@@MrDigidestiny You can't Strionic Resonator Bruvac, it isn't a triggered ability it is a replacement effect. If a triggered ability is what is causing the opponent to mill you can copy that one though.
Yup just psychic spiralled 11 cards with a spark doubled bruvac in response to removal. Felt pretty good milling 44 cards out of nowhere
Bruvac: is mono blue.
Me: *cries in Dimir.
Same dude... same...
:(
He could go well in my Dimir Mill deck, which works GREAT when I don't get focused by the other 3 players....
Dimir will always be my guild, I’d rather go down with my Consuming aberration on the field then mono blue someone
@@rennac3152 the last time I won with that deck, I used Archetype of Imagination to evade an Angel deck, swung with Wrexial, the Risen Deep, cast Congregate out of her graveyard off his trigger, gained 200+ life (which saved my ass, as I was at less than 10), then cast Mirko Vosk. Next turn, swung Vosk, she had less than three land left, win.
I absolutely love Bruvac's flavor. He literally talks so much you begin to lose brain cells.
Boros doesn't mill.
For the Legion!
Boros doesn’t do anything
@@BladedCreed boros does do a lot of things, however it doesnt ramp or draw as well as some others. However, there have been some commanders recently that help and it also seems to be getting more attention.
boros man Not the man we asked for, but he is the man we need
I have to disagree. But it is a combo Win.
Aurelia the Warleader + adarkar valkyrie + altar of dementia
Attack with Aurelia, creating a combate phase.
Activate Adarkar's ability targeting Aurelia
Sac Aurelia to the Altar, milling someone a little
Adarkar's trigger will bring Aurelia back, right in time for another combat phase, but now Aurelia is a New object and will be attacking for the First time
Repeat and you milled in Boros! XD
Watched this combo on CommanderReplay Channel, another Boros player
Can also work with any sac engine like Goblin Bombardment
☀️🔥👊
My first blue deck was a mill deck and always believed it was viable. It brought me so much pleasure seeing so many of my cards I’ve put in my commander deck in this list.
For Ulamog/Kozilek, you need artifact cards that exile opponent’s graveyard. You can activate it in response to the Eldrazis’ triggered effects.
Even against Eldrazi, what does your opponents game state look like? They rarely have the Mana needed to cast them and won't have other cards in their deck, so they have to find a way to win with what is in their hand and have a short clock to do it in.
Memoricide works well, or sacred sacrament to get them out of their library.
Or even more hilariously (this only works with a lot of mana) use Geth, Lord of the Vault to reanimate them in response to their trigger. It's the kind of thing that will only happen once in a lifetime but will be a legendary moment when it does.
Gotta love that Phenax deck!
Back then, the channel was way smaller (so was the price of Bauble too 😅), and Mitch actually accepted one of my suggestions!
Now he has patreons and such that talk directly to him.
But hey, it got where it is because it's a good channel! It deserves all of itl
Phenax: "Am I a joke to you?!?"
I love the quick explanation of Grandliquent. It was funny and still taught something. Neat little addition.
Here's a fun mill combo that works in commander, Tunnel Vision and a Junktroller or Hinder. Junktroller or Hinder puts a card on the bottom of a library, an opponent's in this case. Tunnel Vision has you name a card and they have to mill till they find the named card, you just name the one you just put on the bottom and in commander they will mill everything since it's the only card with that name by rule. They now have a one card deck.
*slow clap*
I'm glad you mentioned the Eldrazi. I have specifically included an Ulamog in my Ghave combo deck to prevent losing to mill. That was the one strategy that I was encountering that hurt me a lot in that deck.
A friend in my play group loves mill and life gain. They decided to build around Oloro, and my god if you don’t stop them by turn 6, you’re absolutely toast. I don’t remember the exact combo they use (will update tomorrow with that), but essentially, when they gain life, they draw a card, and when they draw a card, they gain one life. This loops infinitely, and when paired with Sphinx’s Tutelage, Psychic Corrosion, and Alhammaret’s Archive, there’s nothing we can really do to stop it. It’s absolutely terrifying and beautiful.
key part when making a deck around this commander, check to see if the cards have been eratated to say mill
The errata have happened to cards with mill.
I'm building a mono-blue edh deck that has some mill, and the way I use it is not to make mill my only win con. I use it so I can make my opponents graveyard a resource or have other mill payoffs. Yet to test the deck, but I feel that makes it less annoying and more interactive.
Love the jacket, even the quiet support is appreciated :)
I’ve always loved having mill as a sub theme in my decks. Slap down and Oona, great way to burn mana, traumatize with grave watcher and watch them pick through half their deck for cards to save
If I was making Mill, I'd probably run this in the 99 of a Phenax deck honestly
To get around shuffle effects just run a couple stifle cards
I have a phenax mill deck that uses persistent petitioners and my main go to for dealing with the Titans is dimir doppelgänger. it can copy any creature in the graveyard and exile it as a result. The shuffle affect still happens, but the eldrazi get exiled and the effect can’t happen again, Plus now you have your own titan on the field.
Not sure if this was mentioned or not yet Mitch, but it requires a little bit of setup, but infinite draw into infinite mill or damage. I run the combo is an exodia setup. Master Transmuter+Freed from the Reel+Guilded Lotus. If you manage that with treasure trove in play, you’ create infinite mana, into infinite draw and then you can use psychosis crawler and elixir of immortality to deal infinite damage...or essentially infinite draw into milking depending on enchantments in play
Surprised you didn't mention Persistent Petitioners. It was the first thing I thought of when I saw Bruvac.
He's an 'advisor' , so synergy there, and with him in play you can tap 4 advisors (petitioners) to mill someone for 24 (a 1/4 of their libarary).
This is awesome! Curse of the Bloody Tome, Thought Scout, Thought Collapse, Mind Sculpt! I have a mill deck already. This helps, but I think mill has always been fine. In my play group it's never been over or under powered.
There are some spells that exile a chosen card from a library to get around the eldrazi's shuffle effect. 3 examples I can think of from the top of my head are Unmoored Ego, Appetite for Brains, and cranial extraction. Granted those are mainly black spells but if you have phenax as your mill commander that won't be an issue.
Soooo, how does Sphinx Tutelage really work out here? There’s two things going on with the enchantment:
1) “Mill” 2
and
2) if BOTH those cards are nonland and share a color, repeat the Mill 2.
So, our commander in question certainly doubles the “Mill” effect, but how does it affect the “if BOTH cards are etc.” Would all 4 cards need to be nonland cards that share the same color? Would you split the effect in half, and just account for 2 cards at a time?
I don't know if that's how it officially is done, but when I used Sphinx's Tutelage in my 60 card deck, any doubling effects would go on the stack.
So my opponent would mill 2, then if there are no lands mill 2 again. Let's say they now milled a land. Then the "double" mill would come to trigger and they would mill 2 again.
But again, idk how it would is officially regulated, that's just how our group played.
Oracle text of tutelage was changed and now it says *if two of those cards are the same color, repeat the process*
One thing Dimir has in its favor to deal with Shuffle titans is Yixlid Jailer which turns off abilities in graveyards. Also has the added bonus of letting you reanimate shuffle titans!
You can always run cards like stiffle/tale's end etc for those pesky titans
I use Muldrotha in combination with Traumatize to dump half the remainder of a library into a graveyard, and if mana is still available, Keening Stone to dump the remainder of the deck into the graveyard. Gonna have to get Bruvac now to accelerate this to a one cast play. Laboratory Maniac on the field and targeting myself to try and end things abruptly. Consuming Aberration + Undead Alchemist + The Scarab God is also fun in combination with other zombies you can recur from the graveyard to keep the pressure up. 💜
Thanks mitch! I just realized that I haven't read the new cards yet, just checked out the reprints.
Bruvac, Undead Alchemist, and Altar of the Brood in a multiplayer game for good times
Keep in mind Bruvac is in blue and you can stifle the Shuffle-titans effects. And other cards that do the same thing.
Definitely worth considering at this point.
Mitch: "is mill finally good in commander?"
Me, who frequently plays a Phenax mill deck in EDH and wins frequently: "yes"
Could you post your deck list? I'm trying to fix my phenax deck. Thanks!
If you can post your deck list, it would be awesome!
Same here, mill is my favorite, and always was good in commander 😈
@@rickers2011 since you got no response I am willing to share my own Phenax deck I am quite satisfied with. My playgroup is not that competitive though.
deckstats.net/decks/1531/1715270-gotta-mill-em-all/en
@@HelgePodolski thats a solid deck! Thanks!!
I made a Mirko Vosk, mill, kill and counter spells deck that I run Bruvac in and it wrecks for the minimal amount of time it's on the battlefield because it mills so hard lol. To take care of the Eldrazi I run Jester's Cap, Sadistic Sacrament, Denying Wind, Nightmare Incursion and Bitter Ordeal (my favorite because of obvious reasons in a mill deck). These cards allow you to search opponents decks and exile cards directly from their deck before they become a problem.
Zur with Persistent Petitioners. Play Zur, swing, grab intruder alarm. Works amazingly well
It’s a step in the right direction, but what we really need is more things that spreads mill out amongst opponents, or a UB commander that takes single target effects, and spreads them to each opponent. Because if you are attacking all fronts at once, it’s more efficient. The issue is, like you said, is that you job becomes a hundred times harder when you have to worry about hitting more than one person.
Doubling of effects is fine, and was definitely a much needed effect...but UB Mill really needs is either a way to make those single targeted Mill effects apply to everyone, or needs to have more of a flood of cards that affect everyone. And considering how much more cost efficient in design it would be, I’m more so leaning towards the option of a Legend that spreads single target effects.
"is mill finally viable in commander" obviously you've never played against a phenax deck
Two words: Eldrazi Titans.
Running just one in the deck is insurance against everything except an infinite-mill, and even then it's possible to still have a discard effect for the titan, or cast and counter, or cast and sac outlet, to just loop it and stop a mill victory.
Plus you have to be careful of enemy blue decks running things like Thassa's Oracle, Lab man, Jace Wielder of Mysteries... Black players who have Necropotence... Anyone running Possessed Portal or Omen Machine or any other cards that stop draws...
There's just too many ways to stop a mill victory, and in higher tiers of cedh, self-mill with Doomsday and other effects is quite common.
Oona Queen of the Fae is better for mill since she exiles, but you still have a lot of problems.
@@ryangainey94 i suppose i'm not use to my playgroup having the budget for those. but also, those still hose the new mono blue approach in the video, even more so because you don't have access to instant speed graveyard hate. If anything that makes mono blue less powerful than a BU version
@@ryangainey94 leyline of the void
Yea phenax with walls and high toughness creatures is really good. Some really good black/blue cards out there for mill
Yep. My phenex/steal creatures deck is kind of hated. Of course, I built it because someone else built a mill oathbreaker, and wanted to annoy him back...
Imagine pairing patient rebuilding, psychic corrosion, and Bruvac together. Your opponents could possibly mill for so much each turn
Dimir: {Insert Thanos impossible meme here}
Mill as a win condition is still kind of iffy, but in a deck with The Scarab God in the driver’s seat would allow you to mill and then use what they’ve milled to value your way to victory. And have probably 20-30 (or more) of that blue advisor creature from Ravnica: Allegiance that lets you have any number of it in your deck
For a little bit now I've been considering a Wrexial deck less more focused on graverobbing my opponents and using mill as a means to get there. I feel like Bruvac's biggest issue is his lack of black to add more flexibility and answers to cards like Ulamog and Kozilek. Either way if I DO build Wrexial he'll be in there. Though I already have two Dimir commanders already...
I belive the reason why it say opponent is just not make lab deck more powerful but that's my guess
I never thought mill wasn't good in commander. XD One of my strongest decks (Muldrotha) runs mill as a main theme and it's a ton of fun! My answer to the shuffledrazis is Nexus of Fate. People tend to get cocky thinking that I'm trying to mill them out and then I mill myself into infinite turns.
To build onto the shuffle titans point; if you are running mill you NEED to be running some form of graveyard hate. You can't really win by milling when you are just putting yard decks in the lead. When you mill a titan and the shuffle ability goes onto the stack, there is your chance to exile it with your graveyard hate. Yes they will still get the shuffle but it means that you can then start working towards you wincon
This is sweet in dimir packages especially because black has a couple cards to toss in the deck to exile a creature from someone’s library, or in mono-blue bribery would work in a non budget deck. it’s probably just my meta but it feels like at least half the decks I play run a shuffle titan.
Sphinx's tutelage is actually really nuts, as long as any two of the four share a color, it repeats.
There is something very entertaining about milling an opponents good card and hearing them groan about it. Especially if you also mill their graveyard recursion
For me bruvac is finding a comfy home in the 99 of my phenax deck. Mill in commander benefits a lot from various black spells. The most recent best inclusion is erebos's intervention for that instant speed graveyard exile. Being able to remove specific cards from graveyards is essential for mill in commander to stop graveyard decks and titans. Also the 100 cards of commander is small with group mill and cards like bonehoard/consuming abberation.
Ben playing mill as my second commander deck and ain't stopping now
Buy the mill staples while cheap, dogs too. Mill deck is still not there in edh form but close. Once we get more staples, these staples will shoot up in price.
Dogs are too early to be a solid edh creature type, but by the obvious staples soon.
Ricky A. Hounds are now dogs, so there’s more dogs than you might think
Mill staples are already overpriced and Bruvac will mostly likely be inaccessible.
And dogs are horrible.
Don't do this.
@@maryjones104 don't comment
@Ricky A. Don't mislead people into wasting their money on this, it's just cruel :/
There's one way to prevent the eldrazi titans from reshuffling the opponent's deck, if I recall correctly, that is a triggered ability, so pack cards like stifle (that counter triggered abilities), should you suspect an opponent has an eldrazi in the deck, just save it for that moment.
Is nobody going to say it? Consecrated sphinx with sphinx's tutelage. Every opponents turn, you draw at least 2 from the sphinx, which triggers the tutelage twice. With the doubling from your commander, that would get silly fast
That's disgusting... Thank you 😂
I have a Baral mill/counterspell deck, and I have nearly every single mill card you talked about in that deck on top of other staples. I rarely use it, not because it's bad but rather because I find it to be way too oppressive in most games I use it in. In most cases it would take the entire table ganging up on me to beat me. I've actually reserved it for use exclusively when we have a "table tyrant" that is getting too cocky or pompous for our collective comfort, and they need to be shut down.
Bruvac will likely not be replacing Baral in my deck, but he will be added in the 99 for sure. Most players, in my experience, don't prepare anti-mill because of how niche it is, and I hope that doesnt change with this new addition. I have an Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger and a Jace, the Mind Sculptor for insurance against that, but even still it's an added pain on my end.
Also. When it comes to an effect like Mirko Vosk, I think you would calculate the end result and see how many cards Mirko wound up milling, whether it's 4 cards or 30 cards, then Bruvac doubles whatever number you get. But I could be wrong. That just seems to me like how that would work because that definitely feels like a mill effect.
Ryan Gainey that’s how I hope it works, but I can’t find a ruling on it yet
after dismantling my Phenax deck I just discovered Charix, the Raging Isle
Mill was my first EDH deck and will always have one. Current one is Damia with petitioners
Bruvac is also an Advisor which plays well in the 99 of a Grand Arbiter Augustin IV Persistent Petitioners mill strategy
Just double checking. Does the mill still double when RIP or Leyline of the Void are out?
I'm trying to think of the different substitution effects at the same time
Bruvac is goin straight into my partners Tatyova mill deck. U/G mill is super underrated!
Altar of the Brood + Smothering Tithe is a really cool synergy because now if your opponent doesn’t pay, they get milled and ramp you
An excellent work around for those pesky Eldrazi is Eater of the Dead
Yeah
I immediately knew that "Grind" effects will not interact with Bruvac.
So a new piece for Phenax to trigger sooner the Archenemy Mode!
I'm already hearing the groans of disappointment when they start drooping their combo pieces and OP spells~
It's actually possible to survive a Traumatize + Bruvac, because Traumatize says 'rounded down'. This means that if you have an odd number of cards in your library, 1 card will remain. For example, if you have 73 cards you will mill 36 cards two times, which is 72. Anyway... you better pray to win with that last card.
Hi can't you stifle the eldrazi shuffle trigger?
This definitely put mill over the top for me! Can’t wait to build around Bruvac!
First thing I noticed, the rainbow planeswalker emblem.
I actually play a wrexial mill edh deck and a phenax mill edh deck: I can't say I win consistently but I surely have a lot of fun.
I'm gonna build a Bruvec petitioners deck, cant wait!
Damn your pretty invested in mill...
@@peterosborne8315 yeah mate :) I find it a challenging way to win at least for edh.
I also had a mill deck for standard... building the modern one for a while.
Have fun playing friend (y)
I’ve been running mill deck for years. Not easy to mill out multiple people but can be done. Bruvac is gonna make it a little easier now
You forgot to mention Gaea's Blessing
as a budget alternative to the shuffle titans
Mitch, Altar of the brood man... it is the single most viable mill card in all of commander. hair-strung koto is close second in my opinion, just because those two cards can make any color a certifiable mill deck. i run the both of them in a mono green tribal elves where i can generate 15 elf tokens per turn easily. with brood and koto, that is 15 mill to each opponent and 15 more divided as you choose. but if you run Bruvac, it would take no time at all to eat through those decks.
I remember when my family first started getting into MTG. My brother made a mill deck. I fucking hated that thing. Of course at this point I had no idea how to make good decks.
A list of cards for Bruvac,
Manic Scribe, Persistent petitioners, Psychic spiral, Startled awake, Keening stone, Visions of beyond, Jace's phantasm, Sand's of delirium, Visions of beyond, Sphinx mindbreaker, Sphinx ambassador.
I'm late to the party but Sphinx Mindbreaker has a crazy ETB for Bruvac. Each opponent mills 10 cards, 20 with Bruvac.... add any number of flicker effects and it just gets insane.
One of my pet decks is a Simic Tishana "advisor ball" mill deck using Persistant Petitioner and untappers like murkfiend liege and seedborn muse. Quite decent win rate.
I think if the deck is built correctly it will take some people out by surprise but it’s still going to be hard to take out the whole table. Another card that seems good is Hedron Crab. 6 cards milled just for playing a land at the low cost of 1 mana.
I was called out by friends when Bruvac was revealed. My regular deck is a fun Lazav, mill copy steal deck, I am looking forward to him and my friends hating me for it. My combo is Bruvac, Fleet Swallower and Kicked Rite of Replication, take out everyone in one or two turns.
I think the reason why he only doubles up on opponents so that affects like Mesmeric Orb that affect everyone don’t hurt us as much so we get to kinda break the symmetry
Jace, Memory Adept would also be a great combo with Bruvac. His 0 ability mills 10 off a player's library, making it 20 with Bruvac.
One of my favourite mill decks has to be the uber-janky mono BLACK mill deck, with Geth as the commander. Tons of fun, you should do a Geth deck!
I think it depends on what exactly gets errata'd to say "mill". Like, the actual mechanic Mill is followed by a number. Glimpse the Unthinkable will say "Mill 10." But Traumatize doesn't come with a number. I could see it being rewritten as "Mill X, where X is half the cards in their library." But if it ISN'T errata'd that way, I don't think it'll work with Bruvac like we'd hope.
I kept watching and see you sort of addressed this. My bad. *Sheepish grin* Thanks for the content!
have a phenax in our playgroup and that deck is gnarly. Most of our decks are around 7/8. It gets plenty of wins.
I feel like damia is a good mill commander because of things like sphinxes tutelage and obviously omniscience. The green is good for not dying in the early game and ramping. The black is good at controlling the board so you dont die in the late game. Blue is for mill
Question: With all these triggers, such as the ones with Sphinx's Tutelage and Teferi's Tutelage, is it theoretically possible to go infinite in this type of deck? Let's say you have Sphinx's Tutelage on the field, and something else that could double it's milling trigger. With this new commander here too, could it possibly hit enough to go infinite, outside of something like a Maelstom Wanderer deck with 96 lands?
You need to run graveyard hate in mill decks anyway. Use stuff like Soul Guide Lantern, Tormod's Crypt and Relic of Progenitus to pop those shuffle titans while the trigger is on the stack.
My mill deck is mono blue baral commander with the option for self mill but mainly focused on deterring attacking me with cards like evacuate and illusionist Gambit and counter spells then combo milling the last one or two people left.
I play mill in commander but my deck isn't very good. But because of how miserable it was for my opponents the one time that my deck functioned, they always target me now even though my deck is pretty weak.
Also Bruvac is super good in Phenax! In addition to his ability, he's also an early blocker with high toughness, so you could tap him to mill 8 when Phenax is out.
I've been running a mono blue mill deck for a while (commander is Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur), although the end goal is being a nuisance rather than winning, all the same to me. The new cards coming will definitely help.
Question rules wise. Couldnt you respond to the eldrazi trigger with a tormods crypt or a sentinel totem. Exile the graveyard including the eldrazi?
Yes you can. In blue you could also use a stifle /stifle effect. And if I'm not mistaken you could also use a Sundial if it's your turn to shut off the "put in a gy from anywhere" trigger.
Lithoform engine is also really good in this deck (I know the card wasn’t released when the vid came out)
This card is a huge help to the Mill edh decks but Phenax is still going to be leading It in my deck, his effect is a hard to ride engine that also has access to black and it's tutors to find Brubac and turn him into a creature that mills 8 cards a turn by itself for 3 mana in addition to double every Phenax activation , black also gives Answers to the eldrazi titans like Kalitas and leyline of the void to ensure that our mill dont go away.
Where i play alot of the players play the eldrazi in their deck just to counter mill or have blight steel then with the new undead alchemists it was a shot but cause the stack it still negated by the drazi but if you got the land that let u sac it to exile target graveyard then u can counter the drazi's
I think having a Blue/Black mill commander will be important in growing the mechanic as a viable Commander strategy for the graveyard manipulation that only Black can offer
I always assumed mill was always good in commander. But seeing this new mono-blue commander that can help with mill, I want to build a new mill deck, but I don't want him as the commander. Maybe I'll go bold and use Taigam, Ojutai Master instead. Let's go! Let's build a White-Blue mill deck!
Wouldn’t most mill cards not apply when you have bruvac since they don’t have the keyword mill?
i pulled a bruvac from a jumpstart pack a couple days ago and i was hype
My favorite mill combo is always going to be going infinite, and then using keening stone.