Mill
Keyword actions
Put cards from the top of a library straight into its owner's graveyard.
How it works
To mill N cards is to put the top N cards of that library into its owner's graveyard. That's the entire keyword — it renamed a phrase that used to be spelled out longhand on every card.
In Commander, milling *yourself* is usually the point: a stocked graveyard is fuel for reanimation and recursion, which makes self-mill an enabler rather than an attack. Milling three opponents out means grinding through ninety-nine cards each, so it is rarely a win condition on its own at a four-player table.
Common confusions
“Mill and discard are the same thing, right?”
No, and the cards care. Discard comes out of a hand; mill comes off the top of a library. Effects that punish or reward discarding don't see milling, and vice versa.
“A creature card got milled — did it die?”
No. "Dies" means it went from the battlefield to a graveyard. A creature card milled out of a library was never on the battlefield, so nothing that triggers on death or destruction triggers.
“My library is empty — have I lost?”
Not yet. You lose when you would DRAW from an empty library, not the moment it empties. An empty library with no draw left to take is survivable.
Popular cards that mill
Ranked by how often Commander decks actually play them.
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