"Mindmilling 2: Creatures that Mill and Smash face"

Mindmilling 2: Creatures that Mill and Smash face

by:

Virgilio F. De leon jr. 

     Milling strategies normally incorporate control over the opponents battlefield , hand and library by including mass removal , spot removal , counters and discarders. However there are players who would want to finish with creatures for the win. Some people cannot shake off their Aggro nature even if it is supposed to be a control strategy.So enter the monsters that love to mill and smash face.

Modern and EDH Milling Monsters:

     One of the most effective creatures that ever came out to Mill is the blue/black Monstrosity called Nemesis of Reason. Whenever this 3/7 Leviathan Horror attacks it instantly erases cards from an opponents library as hinted by its flavor text. It is something so horrible that the mere sight of it causes brain disruption. 10 cards per turn and you can even have multiple copies of this in play in Modern. Just 2 Nemesis of Reason in Play can end the game in 3 turns in modern because that would be a total of 60 cards dumped to the graveyard and in EDH with a single copy attacking , it is goodbye to one of your multiple opponents in a couple of turns especially if this is cloned or targeted by a Rites of Replication with kicker. The possibility is crazy and something that is worth pulling off. Imagine 6 Nemesis of Reason Attacking in the late game. Imagine the sound of cards falling in the opponents graveyard. Fantastic. 

     Another creature in this category is the former master of the Dimir Guild Szadek , Lord of Secrets .For a dead vampire he packs quite a wallop...whenever it deals combat damage you may put that many +1/+1 counters on him and the opponent that it was supposed to damage Mills cards equal to the number of those counters. These counters increase exponentially with each attack add to that the fact that He also has flying to evade ground based creatures and you are looking at milling 5 cards , 10 cards , 15 cards , 30 cards  , 55 cards and then 115 cards...in 6 turns an entire EDH deck will disappear and so will the chance of victory for your foes. Although he is a mana heavy creature black has no problem in easily cheating him into play early and expect him to be present in most blue/black EDH decks that feature Mill as a win condition. In EDH he will tend to kill more with Commander damage than mill but heck that math of just him milling away at one opponent is exciting to consider. I may have to play this out soon.

Standard Mill  / Smashing Face Creatures:

    One of the earliest cards that were previewed in the current expansion of Gate Crash was Consuming Aberration. I believe that with its potential win condition with its built in mill effect a lot of people have decided to play Dimir in Standard or constructed. 

    Consuming Aberration is basically a mini Mind Funeral on a stick. At One Black , One Blue and three colorless mana it is an effective creature in the mid game. Preferably in a mill / discard deck that has a lot of the opponents hands and library falling into the graveyard even before this monstrosity is cast.With the Dimir Guild back in the consciousness of magic users there is now a lot of support for this card and the strategies surrounding it.

    Consuming Aberration's power and toughness are equal to all the cards in each players graveyards. It seems like it was made for EDH because this is where this ability would stand out but having 3 of these in a standard deck is pretty effective too. Once it enters the battlefield and you play a spell , it essentially gets

bigger because an opponent would reveal a  card from the top of his or her library until they reveal a land card. Then all those cards are put in the

graveyard , pumping Consuming Aberration even more. Imagine if you have 2 or when you are able to live the dream 3 of them in play while you cast a single spell. 3 mini mind funerals trigger and 3 creatures get bigger than before. So if you get impatient with just milling in a mill deck , you could always have this big body ready to reduce your opponents life total to zero.

     Wight of Precint 6 doesn't mill but it gets a mention here because it is a creature that also takes advantage of all those cards in your opponents graveyards and 1 colorless mana and 1 black it is way easier to cast. It can be your early growing monster or be along side Consuming Aberration in the late to mid game to smash face. I have always found that it is great to have one Monster in play but two is always better.

     Another standard Aggressive piece is the Mindshrieker , the spirit bird that only costs 1 colorless mana and one blue to play ,  has the ability (for 2 colorless mana) to have a player mill his or her top card and gets +X/+X where is X is that cards converted mana cost. This spirit can both mill you or your opponent so it can work in several strategies. For example in a reanimator deck you could mill a big creature from your deck and reanimate it later on from your graveyard. For your opponents , it would be great if you could somehow peek at their top cards or have the top of their library revealed so you could maximize the effect of Mind Shrieker.

     The synergies between these 3 cards is really obvious and can be the foundation for a very strong Standard blue/ black Mill deck. If ever you want to play with something that is not exactly the metagame then here is one of your bets. This kind of Rogue deck appeals to me because no one really prepares for it in Standard. I am assuming of course now that there are more Dimir pieces available a lot will now return to the blue/ black fold once again. Well with these creatures there is nothing to do but to keep on milling and to keep on Smashing face.