The Mindskinner Deck Tech

The Mindskinner by Abz J Harding

What's too Painful to Remember We Simply Choose to Forget

Welcome to Duskmourn, Magic's House of Horrors and an ode to all that goes bump in the night. The house feasts on fears, so I thought it fitting to start with one of my greatest fears...memory loss. I keep a small yellow notepad with me because I've had issues with short-term memory loss since high school.

My grandfather on my dad's side suffered from dementia late in life, and I could only watch helplessly as his memories, relationships, and personality slipped away. It was terrifying to see the strong, kind, intelligent person I loved wither away into a shell of his former self. Mill in Magic is represented in the form of memory loss, including the staple Altar of Dementia. What better way to face my fears than to build its nightmarish incarnation, The Mindskinner?

Core Synergy

The Mindskinner is a big, powerful beatstick, but one that comes with a major twist. 10 power of unblockability would seem to be an excellent source of repeatable damage, but its second ability prevents it and all sources I control from dealing damage. Why would we be willing to do this? Well, instead of dealing damage, we mill each opponent for that many cards. It's a bit like Kediss, Emberclaw Familiar: what we sacrifice in damage, we make up for in the ability to hit all opponents!

So, how do we capitalize on the ability to spread the damage? Well, by providing different sources, as well as by making our sources bigger. Essentially, we play like a stompy deck, except one that uses the Hydra Omnivore ability of The Mindskinner to force all of our opponents to deal with their memories slipping away, all the while watching their ways of interacting with our ever-increasing board washed away, like a rain on a watercolor painting.

Vantress Gargoyle is a particularly nasty beefcake, as the high stats and slow milling work with our commander milling, making it easy to turn it into a powerful tool of aggression. With our commander milling at least 10 cards a turn, everything else we get is gravy, and these massive chunks are plenty tantalizing.

Win Conditions

Since we care about dealing large chunks of damage, equipment cards are a great way to amplify things. In particular, Sword of the Animist and Blackblade Reforged make a potent combination, as the Sword finds lands and the Blackblade cares about the amount. Our swings get bigger and bigger as our opponents' libraries get smaller and smaller.

Given that our commander mills (a controversial strategy), has a ton of power (which is threatening), and is a bit awkward at pivoting to a different game plan without its commander, we need ways to protect it. We are packing sources of Shroud, Hexproof, and Ward, as well as sources of Haste, so we can make The Mindskinner tough to remove and able to get right back to it when it returns.

One of the cuter interactions in the deck, if a deck built around literal nightmare fuel can HAVE cute interactions, is giving The Mindskinner Mjolnir, Storm Hammer. Yes, it's somehow worthy. Yes, a Storm Hammer for the God of Lightning not dealing 3 damage to any target feels like a flavor fail. But dealing damage to each opponent equal to the amount of tapped creatures they control is HUGE in this deck.

First, Mjolnir is a damage source we control, so Mindskinner triggers. Second, it hits each opponent and Mindskinner mills each opponent, so each opponent mills the total damage, not just what would have been dealt to them!

Masterwork of Ingenuity is a hilarious Magic card. Pretty much any non-legendary equipment is beautiful to copy, and it's not limited to our own equipment! With cards like Lightning Greaves being ubiquitous, it's easy to find a good target, even if we haven't drawn one.

Removal

Voltron decks, even those that don't fully commit to the bit, need to be ready to protect their threats. Mill decks need to be able to deal with the hate coming their way. As a result, we run a bit more removal than the average deck. After all, we want to make opposing us an absolute nightmare.

Stubborn Denial is an excellent counterspell representing the Temur-like aspect of this deck. All of our creatures are Ferocious, so it takes minimal work to make this a 1-mana Negate. Since Negate is strong enough to run anyways, having a cheaper version is quite helpful!

Resculpt is one of several blue removal spells that replace an opposing threat with a creature token. While some decks card about the body the spell leaves behind, having an unblockable commander means that we can laugh it off...unless it comes at us. If it does, we can just bounce it and all other attackers with Aetherize!

March of Swirling Mist is one of a few flexible removal spells that can be used for either removal or protection. Phasing was an interesting ability to bring back, but the most recent incarnation of the ability works well with a commander that looks to be altered by permanents that phase out along with it.

When a permanent phases out, any Auras, Equipment, or Fortifications attached to that permanent phase out at the same time. This alternate way of phasing out is known as phasing out "indirectly."

Card Draw

If we're going to try to oscillate between offense and defense, we need to have the card advantage to support both plans. The more removal spells we use up, the fewer resources we have for other opponents' threats. The more aggressive we get, the harder it is to come back after an impactful board wipe or bit of removal.

Into the Story is a powerful draw spell, and should often get the cost reduction from our commander filling up graveyards. Even if we haven't been able to swing in, opponents tend to fill up their own graveyards, unknowingly helping us out.

The general plan is to present high-power threats and use them to quickly mill opponents and keep them off balance. If that fails, we have removal to torment opposing game plans and equipment to push through relevant amounts of damage. If games go long, we have the ability to draw chunks of cards in order to gain the resources needed to oscillate between presenting and removing threats.