Pointed Discussion

The founder of an archetype. Obviously it's not the powerhouse it once was, but it's still perfectly playable and if anything, less annoying in the wake of things like Grindstone and Glimpse the Unthinkable. It generally raises a smile when activated.

the origanal mill, this card almost made it worth making decks over 60 cards.................almost

My brother hates this card when I pop his library with it and use Unbender Tine to untap it. That's four cards a turn!

4.5/5

good card, i like.

bring back to standard so I can run it along side grindclock

It can be milled off the deck with Millstone. It sucks.

@Duskdale_Wurm - It was doing that long before Alara...Ice Manipulator, Twiddle, Burst of Energy, Elder Druid, Emerald Charm; you get the idea.

cool and funny flavor text =)

One of the most misunderstood mechanics, for noobs. The thing is, by itself, mill doesn't really do anything. Yeah, those are two cards you'll never see, but you'll see everything below those two cards quicker.

For comparison: Suppose this card instead said "put two cards from the top of target player's library onto the bottom of that player's library". Then, it'd be obvious that it does nothing by itself, but really, the bottom of a library is just as gone as the graveyard is.

There are only a few situations where mill is relevant:
1: If you actually manage to mill away someone's entire library. But it takes an awful lot of mill to accomplish that; this card by itself won't get you anywhere close.
2: It fills up graveyards, to fuel reanimation and dredge and the like. If your opponent is playing one of those styles, you don't want to help him out.
3: Your opponent sees which cards he's missing out on, and can plan accordingly. Well, you can, too, but since your opponent probably knows his deck better than you do, he can make better use of the information.
4: If you can see what's on the top of your opponent's deck, and choose whether or not to mill him. Or choose to mill him before or after he draws.

@sonorhC - It seems you need a lesson in mill, as you would state: "for noobs":

Win by turn 3: Grindstone + Painter's Servant = entire library gone to graveyard due to infinite-loop mill. Game over unless you have a Platinum Angel in play.

Win by turn 5: Drowner of Secrets + Stonybrook Schoolmaster + Intruder Alarm = infi-loop mill, entire library is gone, plus an army of 1/1 merfolk equal to the size of the library that was milled.

Mill is far more "relevant" than the four points you made. By no means am I saying mill is foolproof, but it can be a very relevant way to win.

Furthermore, your "For comparison" section is a very poor comparison. A card put on the bottom of the library is not even close to "just as gone" as a card put into the graveyard. A card put on the bottom of the library can be readily available after a single shuffle. A mill deck including Leyline of the Void & Bojuka Bog would foil any recovery of cards from the graveyard.

As for Millstone (this card), your right that it isn't incredibly effective, but for a 2 cost its not bad either. Plus, this card gave mill its renowned name.

Flavour text: Millstone slowly, endlessly grinding, driving wizards to madness. Art: Millstone pinwheeling down a hill like school just finished for the Summer. Whee!

@infamado Maybe the wizard just couldn't take it and bolted it down a hill.

outdated unless you rearrange the top of the opponents library and you have nothing else to mill with precision in your arsenal.

When is WotC going to finally make the keyword "mill"? Or they could at least give it a different keyword like they did with troll shroud/hexproof (although I bet more people would be unhappy with a different name). Even people that have never played this game are pushing for this!

With all the new mill stuff (Traumatize, Glimpse the Unthinkable, Mind Sculpt, etc.) I would only run this for the nostalgia. :)

@SonorhC I take your point (I know how bad it feels to mill your friend only to have them pull the bomb that was six turns away before mill) but remember that damage does not do anything until you lose the last point of life as well.

Still holds a place in mill deck, and always will. 5/5 for making Jace a possibility.

@sonorhC
Have you actually played this game before? If you think graveyard/bottom of library = gone forever, I wonder.

And who actually says "noobs"?

I hope Jace gets run over by one of these... SEE HOW YOU LIKE IT!!!

@jilting_joker I feel like you misunderstand sonorhC. I don't think he's stating that mill is not a viable strategy. I think he's pointing out how realistically milling 40-50 cards=dealing 20 points of damage, whereas some "noobs" will feel that even a little bit of mill, such as one or two cards a turn, is somehow impacting their opponent's options while dealing damage to their life total does not. Also, imo putting a card on the bottom of a player's library is way better than putting it in their graveyard. While yes, you can use a few specific cards to prevent them from getting the cards back from the graveyard, that's an extra card in your hand/deck that isn't always helping you and that is usually giving you hand disadvantage anyway when it is, which isn't that good. A single shuffle might put a card that is on the bottom of a player's library back on top, but not that often, and many players run more cards that interact with the graveyard than they run cards that can shuffle their deck.

Thran turbine works well with this.

Milling your opponent does have a few other advantages. It reduces their options when they use cards that search their library; and a number of high-caliber decks (especially control decks early in Magic's history) only have one or two cards capable of actually winning (plus, usually, a few ways to get those back; but it's not unthinkable that you'll mill every potential way they have to reach victory away )

If the cards were on the bottom of their library, they could set up their lock and then wait until they draw them; but if there's no victory condition left in their deck at all (and they've been milled even a little bit, so they'll run out of cards first), they're often screwed.

Finally, there are some decks that use your opponent's library as a resource, not just yours. This was, again, particularly true in the early days of magic, where most of the graveyard-resource cards were things like Animate Dead, which worked on your opponent's graveyard as easily as yours (and where other graveyard strategies were uncommon or nonexistent).

Of course, you could always mill yourself instead, which was a valid strategy for many early reanimate decks. (Better options exist now, but that's true about this card in general. It was still very useful in its day.)

Finally, finally coming back as an uncommon. This might just be a thing in M14 limited — not to the extent of Sands of Delirium, but it can fit into nearly any deck.