Millstone - MTG Card of the Day #6

Welcome to MTG Card of the Day, where I show off one rad-as-heck Magic: the Gathering card, explain what I think makes it so cool, and share some interesting facts. You don’t need to know anything about Magic! Just have an appreciation for cool fantasy art, nerd history, and potentially broken game mechanics.

“It defined an entire victory condition - ‘milling.’

Not too powerful, but it was epic for its time, if for no other reason than it got folks thinking about other ways to win the game.” - Radagast

Millstone more-or-less single-handedly invented a win condition in Magic, and created a deck archetype (and a word!) that extends to basically every card game now in existence. Mill decks and milling are viable win conditions and game concepts in Hearthstone, Legends of Runeterra, Yu-Gi-Oh, and plenty more.

“Mill decks” are designed to win the game by running your opponent out of cards, which either loses them the game immediately, or loses them the game indirectly, since they no longer have any cards to play against you - depending on what card game you’re playing. To “mill” an opponent is to cause them to discard cards from their deck. 

The term “mill deck” and “milling” as a verb both owe their existence to Millstone, first printed way back in 1994 in Antiquities, Magic’s second expansion. 

Ironically, Millstone isn’t powerful enough or versatile enough to be a viable inclusion in very many high-level MTG mill decks today. And regardless, although in certain play environments and with specific card combos milling can be viable, it is usually more effective to just run down your opponent’s life total to win the old fashioned way.

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