In the beginning, you "millstoned" another player, but with time "millstone" became "mill" as "mill" is actually a word, and a verb at that, so it sounded better. Now, what does a millstone— either of a pair of stone wheels used to grind or crush things—have to do with putting cards from your library into your graveyard?
The answer, I believe, is this. The library represents the mental capacity of the planeswaker. The hand is what they are currently focusing on mentally. If a spell is in your library, it is something you know and eventually you'll be able to recall it a.
Milling is a mental attack where you are going after knowledge inside the planeswalker's head. Discard spells, by the way, are spells that attack the player's current thoughts. The word millstone can also mean a mental or emotional burden. The Antiquities designers Skaff Elias, Jim Lin, Dave Petty and Chris Page—and yes, back then much of the naming was done by the design teams were being clever with wordplay.
The name was both a real thing and a description of an emotional upheaval. The slang makes sense as long as you understand where the word comes from.
Millstone , unfortunately, was not reprinted in Magic , so now the card that defined the slang is no longer in print or even available in the Standard environment. Welcome to the world of slang. CC'ed anyone lately? Now that I've defined milling, let's dive into the next important topic: where did it come from?
The history of milling actually starts before Millstone was printed. Even in the beta testing of Magic , there were decks that won by running the opponent out of cards. He would deck you by playing Swords to Plowshares to remove all your creatures from the game, thus shrinking your library so that he would eventually deck you.
Yes, the original playtesters did truly playtest the game. This brings up the first question about milling.
Why did Richard Garfield make you lose the game when you ran out of cards in your library known in Magic slang as "decking"? Any guesses? As with any good design, the reason is quite simple. It was the easiest answer to the question "What happens if I run out of cards? The decking rule helped keep the long games from running any longer. Once an alternate way to win existed, players were soon attracted to it as a means of winning because well, that's what gamers do. In the early days, decking was a win condition for decks that prevented anything from happening.
It was a way to win without having to devote a card to actually winning the game. All this changed though when Millstone came out in Antiquities. Instead of milling being a passive win condition, it became an active one.
All of a sudden, a deck could aggressively mill the opponent. The Antiquities designers were nice enough to also give deck builders a tool to make sure that they weren't decked, a little artifact called Feldon's Cane.
Millstone would have a huge impact on one other Magic player. This person had started in Alpha. Antiquities instantly became his favorite Magic set upon release, and Millstone became one of his favorite cards. I bring this player up because his love of milling would lead to the creation of a huge amount of milling cards, including a few sets with strong milling subthemes.
That player was, of course, me. Where does my love of milling come from? Without a doubt, it stems from my love of alternative win conditions. There's just something about winning in a different way than normal that revs my Johnny sensibilities. As I explained in a previous column, for a while I was responsible for the vast majority of alternative win card in the game we finally hired some other designers who also thought alternative wins were cool. This is a separate issue from my true alt-win love: poison.
If only you knew about the various attempts over the years I've made to get poison into a set. When the day comes, I will have an awesome poison article about all the times I tried and failed to get poison back into Magic. My point is that I love alternate ways to win in Magic , so milling, from the day I first saw Millstone , was always close to my heart. It's interesting when you look back how certain abilities we use all the time now were almost nonexistent back in the day.
For example, let's look at all the milling cards in Magic before I showed up at Wizards—that is, from Alpha through Homelands. Note that I am only including cards that milled for the sake of milling, not cards that happen to put a card or two into the graveyard while accomplishing some other task. The cards are:. In the first two years of Magic , there were four cards that you could loosely call milling cards.
Maddening Cacophony Illustration by Magali Villeneuve. Magic is a game that pushes you to get creative in ways to kill your opponents. The single most effective way is to get their life total to zero, but there are other non-conventional ways to win the game.
Sure, cards like Felidar Sovereign and Revel in Riches are alternative win conditions that give you other ways to win, but they need to be built around to succeed. Its primary wincon depletes their library instead. You thought milling was impossible post-rotation because rogues is out?
Prepare for a big surprise. Milling is the act of making your opponent move their cards from their library into exile or the graveyard. If a player would draw a card when their library is empty, they lose the game. This was prevalent in the previous Standard meta in the rogues decks. Which is, of course, milling your opponent. The most important of them by far is Ruin Crab. This little guy can start working from turn 2 and it stops early aggro starts from some decks.
One is bad news but having two in play represents a speedy clock for your opponents. It can also be a cantrip or a chump blocker plus a cantrip when needed. Finally you have Soaring Thought-Thief. This rogue enables more milling potential since your opponent will have to mill two cards whenever a rogue attacks, and the effect stacks the more you have.
Maddening Cacophony is the first one on the list. The upside on this one is that it exiles those cards instead of sending them to the graveyard. This is somewhat relevant most of the time but especially against decks that run spells with flashback. This website saves cookies to your browser in order to improve your online experience and show you personalized content. Read our Privacy Policy and Cookie Policy to get more information and learn how to set up your preferences.
What Actually is mill in the trading game itself Likes 2. Comments 0. Like 2. Related wiki Everything You need to know about Merfolk. Related wiki Everything you need to know about battlebond. Related wiki Everything You need to know about humans in magic.
Into MTG? Mill If instructed to do so, they mill as many as possible. If that ability asks for any information about the milled card, such as a characteristic or mana value, it gets multiple answers. If these answers are used to determine the value of a variable, the sum of the answers is used. This is a state-based action. Wizards of the Coast. Keyword Abilities. Keyword Actions. Backbone Conjure Perpetually Seek Unstoppable. Ante Divvy Rhystic. Bury Landhome Substance.
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