Magic allows a player many paths to victory, and one of them is to mill your opponent out. Naturally, with an alternate win condition like this, there's ways to maximize its effectiveness. The downside is that while regular damage only needs to hit for 40, mill needs to hit for 99 to win the game. And that's not taking into account the decks that thrive on having their graveyards filled.

Luckily, there are some amazing cards out there that should be in the 99 of your mill deck. Here are the ones that stand out the most, to me.

The Highest Synergy Mill Cards in Magic

First off, it's Maddening Cacophony. It doesn't target, getting around opponents that have hexproof, and if you have four extra mana, it'll mill each opponent for half their library, rounded up. This is a useful tool for any mill deck's toolbox. Fractured Sanity is another good option, even though it only mills fourteen cards since, in a pinch, it can be cycled away to draw cards.

Another great card that should be an auto-include in a mill deck is Ruin Crab. Its smaller brother, Hedron Crab is still good, but requires you to target one opponent at a time. Ruin Crab mills each opponent without having to directly target them.

Since you're already milling, why not add a side of damage to go along with it? Syr Konrad, the Grim will hit each opponent for each creature card milled into their graveyard, turning your regular 99-card mill into a two-pronged attack.

Incremental mill, especially if your opponents are hitting each other, is extremely useful. Cards like Mindcrank especially can turn opponent-on-opponent violence into something that plays into your gameplan easily. Each damage they take mills them for one.

Reanimation is also a good plan for mill decks, and cards like Virtue of Persistence or The Soul Stone should find their way into mill decks, if only to disrupt reanimation targets or use powerful milled pieces for your own gain.

These cards add synergy, but they're far from the only staples you need to have a deck run smoothly.

Creatures With Repeatable Mill

We already covered the crabs, which are probably the all-stars for repeatable mill, but they're not the only ones. Consuming Aberration comes in at the top of the list because it's usually huge, regardless of what turn you play it on. Since it counts cards in graveyards regardless of type, it's not uncommon to see this be a massive body on the board. Lesser powerful versions of this effect like Nighthowler and Wight of Precinct Six are also good, but since they only count creatures, they are usually much smaller than the Aberration.

Zelix, Sanity Flayer is very good value for a mill deck, since he creates 1/1s every time a player mills a creature card. The longer he stays out the better your board state will be and the more chump blockers you can throw in front of attacks to soak up damage that would otherwise kill you before you can mill your opponents out.

While it's an expensive addition, it's worth the cost in any mill deck to throw in a copy of Bruvac, the Grandiloquent. The fact that you double up your mill immediately turns things like a kicked Maddening Cacophony or a single swing with a Terisian Mindbreaker or a Fleet Swallower into a kill, milling your opponent's library out immediately.

If you want to turn your damage into mill, The Mindskinner and Nemesis of Reason both do a great job at that. Duskmantle Guildmage also works to turn mill into damage, once you can activate its ability. It's not a tap ability either, meaning it can be activated as soon as the creature's played or in response to removal.

Instant and Sorcery Milling Solutions

There are a lot of instant and sorceries you can put into a mill deck. Drown in the Loch is one of the best utility spells because it can act as both a removal piece and a counterspell, although it is significantly better the more cards you mill.

One underrated card that should be in more mill decks is Scheming Symmetry. Not only does it tutor exactly what you need, but you also get to give an opponent a card too, that you can mill before they get a chance to draw it. It's a Vampiric Tutor without the life loss for a mill player.

Board wipes like Singularity Rupture can mill opponents for a significant amount. Space-Time Anomaly can do the same, although that one is based on your life total, so getting it out early (before you start taking a lot of damage) is best.

Glimpse the Unthinkable was a better card in the past, but it can still put in some good work, even though it's a one-off mill for ten. A much better card (which gets even more powerful as the game goes along) is Mind Grind. Milling each opponent for X lands can be devastating if graveyards are already filled and players have a lot of their own lands on the field. Sometimes, it can even mill opponents out from the game completely.

Artifacts That Power Up The Mill Plan

Aside from Mindcrank, other artifacts can give you amazing incremental mill and staying power. Mesmeric Orb is wonderful, since players will be tapping lands and creatures when they attack. It's not uncommon to see some players mill as much as eight or ten cards a turn, just from untapping. The downside is that it also mills you, so you'll have to be careful how you use it.

Riverchurn Monument (one of Aetherdrift's better offerings) is a good alternative to a "mill half your library effect" and can easily pull wins out of games that seem hopeless. Just target the opponent that has half their library milled already. Keening Stone does the same, although it's significantly more expensive to play.

Mill Enchantments To Annoy The Table

Some of mill's greatest hits come from the enchantment pile. Sphinx's Tutelage, for example, could mill a lot of cards from a mono-color deck, just for drawing a single card. Teferi's Tutelage is a less powerful effect, since it's not repeatable on a single draw, but it is still pretty good. Psychic Corrosion is one of the best of these draw-to-mill effects, since it also doesn't target and triggers on each draw.

Memory Erosion is one of the most annoying yet satisfying enchantment additions you can make to a mill deck. Not only does it only hit your opponents, but milling two every time they cast a spell can quickly add up. On a combo turn, you might even see ten or twenty cards milled because of their spell count.

Ghostly Prison and Propaganda get mentions here because they're essentially the enchantment versions of putting creatures up as blockers. While they might not help the mill plan specifically, they are instrumental in ensuring you stay alive to execute it.

Final Notes

If you decide to take mill for a spin, you're going to be playing Magic on hard mode. It's not a strategy for the faint of heart, and because it requires so much resource investment, it's usually not a good plan to split the difference with another mechanic. Got additions to this list of staples that I might have left out?