Hello awesome folks! Happiest of days to you and yours! Today I am going to find a more unusual background for the mill Horror from the Dimir colored Commander deck that was just released with Battle for Baldur's Gate. This is my twelfth build around a key dork from this set. This will likely be my last deck around a B4BG Commander.

Simic Mill isn't really a genre for the archetype so I wanted to make one and see what we can see. Zellix is a 3-drop 2/3 that can tap to mill a player of three cards and then make one 1/1 Horror token when any player mills any cards. Choose a background! I am choosing Cloakwood Hermit which is also a 3-drop background. At your end step if a dork you control went to the graveyard from anywhere, make two tapped 1/1s tokens of the Squirrel variety. That means one activation of the mill on you that mills a dork will make three tokens, one Horror and two Squirrels. The Hermit will also work with discarding creatures with things like channel or cycling, so we'll be adding in some of those to get that double trigger. Note that Zellix will make just one dork per creature milled, even if you mill two in that three that targeted yourself. However, if an effect would mill multiple players you should get one Horror per player milled. This pair will make mill into a win-con of token making in addition to its normal alternate win-cons. Note that you need to control Zellix for the Hermit to trigger. I'd lead with Zellix on turn three and then the Hermit the next turn once you can tap it. In order to maximize our mills hitting dorks, I'll run a big number of dorks that do things.

Ready? Let's get started!

Milling Cards

Many of my mill cards and spells are obvious, but let's look at these five! The first is an old school artifact that you can spend three mana to make everyone, including you, mill two cards, which is good for hitting Zellix multiple times and your own background without targeting yourself. The Court is a 3-drop enchantment that will make you the monarch, so it replaces itself. In your upkeep, mill everyone for two cards for free, unless you are the Monarch and then everyone gets milled for ten cards!

We need creatures in our brew to trigger my self-mill, enter this duo. The rare is a 7-drop 6/6 Fish that, when it swings, will mill target player of half of their library. Note that you can target someone other than who your attacked, and I tossed in Rogue's Passage, so it won't die in combat from blocking since it has no evasion. The uncommon is a 1-drop 0/3 Crab that can landfall a land for three milled cards for each foe as well as blocking early drops. Nice pair!

This artifact is a 2-drop that forces people to keep their cards in their hands, so everyone likes it, and you can XX tap it at instant speed to make everyone draw cards. Then you can tap it for three and then mill everyone else cards equal to their hand size, which could easily be quite a bunch. Ever seen players who sit on massive hands behind Reliquary Tower effects? This will punish them if they hold onto their hand with a faster mill clock.

Discarding Dorks

Let's turn to some self-discarding dorks. The Mono-Green one is a 5-drop 5/5 that can tap and Blaze a flyer. Nice, on curve, and can really punch your way to destroying problems. Then you can channel it for and deal X damage to all flyers at instant speed. Nice! I have a handful of accidental flyers like Mulldrifter and the discarding ones you'll see later, but not that many, and most of your good stuff is in the ground. The Simic one is a 7-drop 6/5 flyer with ward 2, and two channels, the first can Regrowth for one more mana and the second can Unsummon for one more mana. That's really flexible. Either option works very strongly here. It's our only form of bounce.

The Human is a 3-drop 1/3 that can tap to untap another permanent like your Zellix, and then get another mill of three, as well as untapping a Sol Ring, land, or other cool thing. You can also cycle it for two mana and untap another permanent so that's pretty cool. The Dinosaur is a combat based game winner as a nine mana 11/11 with trample. It can cycle for two mana to place a trample counter on a creature like Fleet Swallower that was just blocked by a Fog Bank. Like it lots here!

Synergies and Win Cons

Check out Bruvac! This three-mana 1/4 can double your mills of your opponent's stuff. I adore it with Zellix's tap ablity doubling it on your foes, and it does not double mill on you. Note that any mill that your opponents would do is doubled, even if it comes from another source. Nice, right?

Note that we are often milling ourselves often as much as our foes, although I do have some opponent only mills like the Folio and Fractured Sanity. I wanted another set of win-cons outside of the normal milling. Enter this pair and their BFF Thassa's Oracle. Each are Mono-Blue that, when you draw a naked deck, you will win the game. Jace can +1 to force a player to mill a card and then draw one on a harder 4-drop with a solid 4 loyalty. The creature is a 3-drop 2/2 Wizard that was the first one published.

We have these two rares. The former is a 4-drop 4/4 with flying that will scry one whenever you cycle or discard a card, and then has cycling for a single Blue mana. That scry is nice over time and I added a few cycling lands to my mana base to get free scries from, and it works on channel stuff as well. The latter is a 5-drop 1/1 with echo that makes four 1/1 Squirrels that are given +1/+1 by the Hermit since he gives that tribe +1/+1 to all stuff. Note that this is a solid five bodies and 9 power and toughness across five mana although you have to upkeep it, and this will pump your tokens you make with your background, since they are Squirrels as well. I also tossed in Deep Forest Hermit that also makes a bunch of Squirrels and pumps them.

Going Wide Fun Times

Check out this enchantment! As your Horrors and Squirrels arrive to the battlefield you can make double. With this one and both of your Commanders out, one trigger of each will make 2 Horrors and 4 Squirrels. Nasty stuff. And then I also tossed in Doubling Season for obvious reasons.

Answers

We are running a handful of actual counter instants like Cryptic Command and Counterspell and then a few dorks that counter as well. The Mystic duo are both 4-drops with flash and 2 toughness and counter a spell on arrival to the battlefield. The second is a bit harder to cast but has a bigger power to make up for it. Nice combo.

These two can discard for counters. The cycling one is a 3-drop 3/1 with flash and flying and can play flash tricks with its flying and higher power you can trade with flyers that thought it was safe to attack over your ground troopers. You can cycle it for three mana and counter any ability as long as you don't control it, like fetchlands getting cracked or the triggered activation of a Sun Titan or Archon of Cruelty when one swings at you. The channel one will channel for three mana and act as a Mana Leak for three mana or counter any spell or ability, so it's one mana more, and you can just cast this as a seven mana 5/7 Crab with ward 3 a bit behind the curve, but a nice free option.

In my initial decklist we were running Negate. I forgot about this until I realized that Adventures might play well here, and I pulled it for this later, since it can Adventure and Negate for another mana and counts as a dork for my deck in case it gets milled. It's also playable as a 5/6 flying with scry 2 when it swings or blocks on seven mana, just one more than you would expect. Nice right?

I usually like to have a few brakes on recursion, and we have a few minor recursive Regrowth style effects here and there but nothing major. And then the uncommon artifact is a 2-drop that will stop non-lands from arriving to the battlefield from libraries and graveyards and I don't have anything this would care about. Then no one can cast things from their graveyards and I don't have any flashback or other cards that would do that, just the Regrowths mentioned. The common 1-drop will tap to force a foe to exile a card from their graveyard and can be sacrificed to hit all graveyards and draw a card, feel free to do so to prevent overuse. In a mill deck where we are giving cards to our foes in their graveyard we are giving them ammo, so having answers there matters.

Card Flow

Many of my card draw spells are accidental like Cryptic Command and Mulldrifter, but I do have two major mass card draw things this and Collective Unconscious. This is a five-mana sorcery that draws you cards equal to your creature count and then you can gain 4 life for each 4 powered dork you control (unlikely). I do like this with your token making Commander pair.

Ramp and Lands

I have some cycling and channeling ramp in here. The Tusker cycles for three mana and grabs you a basic land as well as the card you cycle for, and I love it way much. You can also drop it as a 7-drop 6/5 in case your mana is set. Shout out to Shefet Monitor, a more expensive cycling trigger on a 6/5 dork that can also grab a Desert. The Tanuki channels for three mana and ramps the land onto the battlefield tapped. Otherwise, it's a swingable on curve 6/5 for six mana with trample. Love this trio a lot here and these are the cards that appeared to my mind when I first explored this combo when I looked at the spoiler.

Check out these two 1/1 two-mana Druids! The first will tap for and then put the top land on your library into your hand and the other cards into your graveyard and then trigger your background Commander. The other Druid will arrive and mill four of yours and then collect those triggers and then when this 1/1 inevitably dies (chump block?) you can return a land to your hand from your graveyard, nice milling and land flow.

Check out these two fun cards! I am running 60 non-lands and then some modal cards like the Florahedron. I don't normally toss it into my decks, but here you can drop the Vale as a land and pull all land for a dork that can tap for mana and ramp as well as counting as a dork if it got milled. The Arbor also counts as a land and as creature for the self-milling purposes. Love this pair a lot here!

Check out these two Deserts. The first is a colorless tapper that is a pain land for Blue. You can tap it, sacrifice a Desert, and then force a player to mill 4 cards for triggering and winning. The other Desert can tap with two and sacrifice a Desert and exile all graveyards from the game. These are fetchable with Shefet Monitor and I added in the two cycling Deserts for additional bodies to sacrifice and keep them.

Let's look at my decklist!

Simic Mill with Zellix | Commander | Abe Sargent

• Commander (1)
• 1 Zellix, Sanity Flayer

• Background (1)
• 1 Cloakwood Hermit

• Creatures (29)
• 1 Arashi, the Sky Asunder
• 1 Bruvac the Grandiloquent
• 1 Colossal Skyturtle
• 1 Curator of Mysteries
• 1 Deep Forest Hermit
• 1 Deranged Hermit
• 1 Draining Whelk
• 1 Elvish Aberration
• 1 Eternal Witness
• 1 Farhaven Elf
• 1 Frilled Mystic
• 1 Glasspool Mimic // Glasspool Shore
• 1 Greater Tanuki
• 1 Hermit Druid
• 1 Krosan Tusker
• 1 Laboratory Maniac
• 1 Mirrorshell Crab
• 1 Mulldrifter
• 1 Mystic Snake
• 1 Nimble Obstructionist
• 1 Ruin Crab
• 1 Sapphire Dragon
• 1 Satyr Wayfinder
• 1 Shefet Monitor
• 1 Tangled Florahedron // Tangled Vale
• 1 Thassa's Oracle
• 1 Timeless Witness
• 1 Titanoth Rex
• 1 Vizier of Tumbling Sands

• Planeswalkers (1)
• 1 Jace, Wielder of Mysteries

• Instants (8)
• 1 An Offer You Can't Refuse
• 1 Brainstorm
• 1 Counterspell
• 1 Cryptic Command
• 1 Fact or Fiction
• 1 Growth Spiral
• 1 Heroic Intervention
• 1 Jwari Disruption // Jwari Ruins

• Sorceries (9)
• 1 Bala Ged Recovery // Bala Ged Sanctuary
• 1 Collective Unconscious
• 1 Explore
• 1 Farseek
• 1 Fractured Sanity
• 1 Maddening Cacophony
• 1 Rampant Growth
• 1 Shamanic Revelation
• 1 Tasha's Hideous Laughter

• Enchantments (5)
• 1 Court of Cunning
• 1 Doubling Season
• 1 Parallel Lives
• 1 Psychic Corrosion
• 1 Sphinx's Tutelage

• Artifacts (9)
• 1 Arcane Signet
• 1 Chromatic Lantern
• 1 Folio of Fancies
• 1 Lightning Greaves
• 1 Relic of Progenitus
• 1 Sol Ring
• 1 Swiftfoot Boots
• 1 Weathered Runestone
• 1 Whetstone

• Lands (37)
• 7 Island
• 8 Forest
• 1 Alchemist's Refuge
• 1 Boseiju, Who Endures
• 1 Breeding Pool
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Desert of the Indomitable
• 1 Desert of the Mindful
• 1 Dreamroot Cascade
• 1 Dryad Arbor
• 1 Hinterland Harbor
• 1 Ipnu Rivulet
• 1 Lonely Sandbar
• 1 Mystic Sanctuary
• 1 Rejuvenating Springs
• 1 Remote Isle
• 1 Rogue's Passage
• 1 Scavenger Grounds
• 1 Slippery Karst
• 1 Temple of Mystery
• 1 Tranquil Thicket
• 1 Vineglimmer Snarl
• 1 War Room
• 1 Yavimaya Coast

Buy This Deck Export text format

And there we go! Anything in there that I am missing or that I forgot? Did you like my attempt at a Simic flavored mill brew? I hope so! Let me know in the comments below!