A pimped out 8/8 seems like a lot for only 6 mana, even if it is triple black.

You, uh, know it has dementia, right?

That's still like a 4/8 with wither. It might be better with P/T 8/6 or 8/4 or something.

I like this version a lot better.

Mm. Yes. In some ways it's stronger than before, but it seems less intimidating.

Really? I saw it as mostly a nerf. Sure, you can pump it with whatever sparse white boosts are in the set, but now it gets hit by Logic Prison and Visions Dispelled.

Oh, hm, I didn't factor in the prot-white. I was talking about the change from 8/8 to 8/5-plus-regenerate.

I thought being milled was a good thing? That's what people told me when I put self-mill-20 on a card.

It's like the story where two men are in a feud, and one of them find a genie, who tells him that he can have three wishes for anything he wants, but the wishes are cursed, and the guy's enemy will get the same thing but twice as much. And he wishes ingeniously but not very mercifully to: fall in love with an intelligent, perfect, but very jealous woman; to win the lottery as often as possible without being arrested for fraud; and to donate a kidney.

The trouble with a mill-lots card is if you're playing it you can choose to only put two or three in your deck and never play more than one or two of them. Then you have a big graveyard and don't get decked. But if your opponenet is playing them against you, they may instead choose to play more than two, and then you lose.

That said, I normally think a creature should mill two or three times its power in order to present a credible threat without being overpowered compared to other creatures, else milling creatures are often just less effective. (Althought I don't know if that's necessary here, I've not read much of the rest of the set.)

Alex: The regenerate ability has always been there, actually. The changes I made to this card were "-0/-3, remove protection from white" which is why I was a little confused. (Yeah, it started quite over-powered, and I just never remembered to tone it down because it just looked kind of awesome as a splashy dementia mythic.)

Vitenka: Not when the "milling" doesn't put the cards into your graveyard.

Jack V (and Vitenka too, really): Mill is an exclusively aggressive strategy in this block. You'll never get anything out of milling yourself, because all your cards will be exiled and you'll just be that much closer to decking. We've also just made it so that Nightmares have better combat stats to avoid messy (and, frankly, rather pointless) double- or triple-milling rules text. If that makes them harder to kill in combat, fine, Nightmares are supposed to be terrifying to deal with. If that makes people use them as walls... well, then you're playing walls.

Well, I was more fearing "Hey! It's a great big huge splashy mythic! Wow! ... uh, but I can only use it in a mill deck. Oh. Guess I'd better pick some common instead, then."

Mind you - at 8, it might just get away with it. I don't have to hit you very often for that to be fatal. Infect was splashable for the same reason - people had to take even small infect seriously, because it didn't take very much to be fatal. (And that it was wither against creatures was just lovely)

But then, a simple giant growth became terrifying with infect; but with this mechanic really isn't. Which is a shame.

Dunno. It's probably fine as it is. Especially in set where you've got a lot of it.

PMega: Sorry for jumping in without really knowing the rest of the set. Yes, exiling the cards is a reasonable choice to make milling all-downside for the opponent. I don't think exiling the cards necessary for balance, unless (a) it mills you as a "drawback" or (b) there are a lot of graveyard-recursion effects in the set, but it's probably a good decision anyway.

"We've also just made it so that Nightmares have better combat stats to avoid messy (and, frankly, rather pointless) double- or triple-milling rules text"

That makes sense. The trouble to me is, a non-milling mythic rare for 6 CMC would probably be a 6/6 and kill in 3.2 swings. In order for a nightmare mythic (of which I DO like the flavour) to do the same, it probably needs to be 12/12 and mill 40 cards (or really, really aggressive milling effects outside combat to back it up). The question is, can milling creatures have double power without being overpowered in creature combat? Well, probably, if they're costed right, provided there aren't any fling effects in the set.

But as I say, that's based on what I've heard in passing about other milling mechanics -- I brought it up because it seemed relevant and I was commenting on the rection to Overlord of Despair, but you've been designing the set so you know whether than me whether despair is working, don't listen to me :)

Is this Mythic because you ran out of room at Rare?

Skithyrx was mythic in part because it did some things black didn't really do (like haste). Also it was comparatively much much better than this.