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The Mindskinner is a legendary creature introduced inMagic: The Gathering’sDuskmourn set. This commander is a unique take on mill, opting to use combat damage to make your opponent send their cards from their library directly to the graveyard.
Despite being a mono-blue Commander deck, since all of the best mill cards are mono-blue, you aren’t missing out on too much so your power isn’t weakened by the color restriction. It also helps to make sure you’re never struggling for the right kind of mana, and since the mana curve is fairly low, losing out a ramp isn’t a big deal either.
The Mindskinner Commander Decklist
The decklist containsone planeswalker, 20 creatures, ten sorceries, 15 instants, 12 artifacts, seven enchantments,and34 lands. Nearly every card acts as a way to help you mill your opponents as quickly as possible, with most card types seeing use.
Harbinger of the Seas
Helm of the Host
x29 Island
War Room
What Are The Key Cards?
These are the key cards you’ll need to know and use.
The Mindskinner
Thecommander of the deck,The Mindskinneris the heart and soul of the deck and what makes mill a viable strategy. Since your opponents start with 99 cards in their library, The Mindskinnermilling a tenth of an opponent’s libraryis very strong.
The Mindskinnercannot be blocked, guaranteeing you can attack for at least ten damage. It has no protection, so it can be prone to removal, but there are likely more threatening creatures your opponent will have to deal with.
There are a lot of cards that create token copies of creatures and make those copies nonlegendary. These cards are best used on The Mindskinner, giving you even more ways to mill.
Auton Solider
While there are alot of ways to create copiesof The Mindskinner,Auton Soldieris far and away the best way to. Since it enters as acopy with myriad,this lets you attack all your opponents with a copy of The Mindskinner.
Auton Solider can enter as a copy ofany creature on the battlefield, not just your own. So if your opponent has a powerful creature, it may be better to have Auton Soldier enter as a copy of that as opposed to The Mindskinner.
Auton Solider enters as a copy of a creature that is nonlegendary, so thetokens created with myriad will be nonlegendary as well. The tokens are exiled at the end step,but you can still create a copy of the myriad token to get a permanent copy of it.
Bruvac, the Grandiloquent
Bruvac, the Grandiloquentis a staple of any mill deck, causing all of your mill effects to be doubled. With how big libraries are in Commander, you are going to need the extra help, and Bruvac helps get your opponents to zero cards much quicker.
There are a lot of ways to fully mill your opponents with Bruvac, the Grandiloquent on the battlefield. If you play any card thatforces half of an opponent’s library to be milled with Bruvac on the battlefield,this will cause theentire library to be milled.
Forced Fruition
Milling’s win conditionis making sure your opponentshave no cards in their libraryand lose the game when they can’t draw a card on their turn. A way to help make that quick is by forcing a ton of card draw onto your opponent, somethingForced Fruitiondoes very easily, turning any spell cast into a forced seven card draws.
Forced Fruition not only gets a ton of cards out from your opponents' libraries, but it alsoforces a lot of cardstogo to wastewhen your opponentshave to discard their handstothe hand size limit. The one downside is they can potentially draw answers to anything you try to do, but with how draining Forced Fruition is to a library, the pros outweigh the cons.
How To Play The Mindskinner Commander Deck
The Mindskinner is a deck that will be wanting tomill your opponents' librariesasquickly as possible, cutting offtheirkey cardsbyforcing them into the graveyard. There are a ton of ways to mill your opponent in the deck, butThe Mindskinneris going to be your most consistent way to do so.
SinceThe Mindskinner is such an important part of the deck, you want to create a ton of copies of it to utilize its effect more. This is best done by cards that enter as a copy of it, but won’t be sacrificed to the legend rule (you can’t have more than one legendary creature with the same name on the battlefield.
The best cards to give you extra copies of The Mindskinner areAuton Soldier, Spark Double, Sakashima of a Thousand Faces,andQuantum Misalignment. The more copies of The Mindskinner you have, the better.
Oneflaw of the deck is that you are rather defenseless. None of the creatures will make for great blockers, and most are used offensively instead. As such, utilizing stax (permanents that hinder your opponents) pieces likeCrawlspace, Propaganda,andSilent Arbiterare all great at making it harder for your opponents to attack you.
Outside of The Mindskinner, there are a lot of permanent that help mill your opponents even more without needing to connect for damage.Court of Cunninghas the potential to make everyone mill ten cards,Mesmeric Orbforces mill whenever permanents are untapped, andFraying Sanitydoubles all milling for cards being put into a graveyard.
While plenty of permanents help mill, it’s the noncreature spell suite that can mill the most at once.Cut Your Lossesforces a player to mill half their library, and with casualty, you can copy that spell to make two opponents mill that much. A kickedMaddening Cacohponydoes the same, andTasha’s Hideous Laughterhas the potential for a ton of mill as well.
Themain win condition of the deck is by milling your opponents. You want to get rid of all the cards in your opponents' libraries as fast as possible. Thanks to how many mill cards are available, the hurdle of milling about 90 cards isn’t too extreme.
You can get to your best mill and copy cards quicker by playing cards likeVisions of BeyondandInto the Storyto draw a ton of cards at low costs since your opponents will have a lot of cards in their graveyard.
The Mindskinner Commander deck is backed up by asuite of counterspells. This helps you to keep your key permanents protected, and making sure no potentially game-ending spell is resolved by having counter magic available.
