Deck Rating: 7 out of 10
Deck Strategy: Mill, Stompy
The God Mill a.k.a. my second EDH deck (and the first where I sorta knew what I was doing). After taking stock of my legendaries, Phenax, God of Deception jumped out at me as an excellent build-around commander. It's a mill deck, yes; it also contains relatively few cards directly aimed at milling your opponent. Everything hinges upon Phenax being in play; good thing he's indestructible, huh?
This deck's game plan has two steps:
- Build a Board. The deck contains many low CMC creatures with high toughness. An excellent shield wall until you get your commander out.
- Deploy the God. When you get your commander out, all your creatures become milling machines. Even if you have insufficient devotion to black and blue for Phenax to join in the milling, you'll find this deck clearing out even 99-card EDH libraries with frightening speed.
Mill decks tend to draw attention (and thus fire) by default; one popping off tends to get auto-upgraded to Archenemy. This deck is no different. Having creatures on the board is integral to the functioning of the deck - this means you save your Counterspell for boardwipes and your Reality Shift for big attacking threats. The deck has quite some Removal, Bounce and Carddraw to keep the mill train a-chugging.
In a pinch, this deck can win by swinging out, if the mill is going too slow. Creatures like Westgate Regent and Consuming Aberration as well as Bonehoard (Germ or no Germ) can get huge real fast. Add in evasion like Cloak of Mists or Infiltrator's Magemark, and they will reliably connect with your opponents' faces.
Experienced players will note the decklist has a number of underpowered cards on it - that is to say, cards which have a numerically superior alternative readily available. However, this was a deliberate choice to slow the deck down somewhat, making it more of an even matchup in my pod. With higher-efficiency card choices, this deck would likely score higher still on the power scale.
Key Combos
Good lord, is Consuming Aberration ever a scary card in combination with Phenax, God of Deception. CA looks at all opponents' graveyards, meaning in EDH it'll have double or even triple digit power and toughness before you know it. Triple digit numbers don't mean much to a chump blocker, true - but you can't chump mill. Just be mindful that any opponent you mill out will have to scoop when they can't draw anymore, meaning their graveyard goes with them, causing the Aberration to shrink back down. Now if I can just find my Freed from the Real, this would be truly bananas...
Pet Cards
To me, Commander is a format where fun is first, and competition second. As such, almost every deck I make will have some cards that are probably not the best choice for inclusion. They're there to stay, though, for no other reason that I like their art/flavor/design.
- Bribery
- Aura Graft
- Quicksilver Dragon
- Fatespinner
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