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This thread is for discussion of this week's Making Magic, which goes live Monday morning (after the holiday break) on magicthegathering.com.

So milling is not unfun enough to remove, because some players like it, but countermagic is, even though some players like it. Got it.

But why? What's the difference between the card getting milled and it just being the bottom card of the deck? Logically, very little.

Not that little. You now can play around not drawing it!

...which doesn't actually defeat your point. Keep on keepin' on, mill. I got no qualms about you existing. Your brothers Stone Rain and Counterspell would be cool too, or at least their little kids, but I'll take what I can get.

...Altar of Dementia was just me pushing back. How about a milling deck that required you to play creatures? What would that look like?

Really?  Did you seriously expect anyone to bother with a creature-based milling deck when you also printed Grindstone in the very same set?

Also, come to think of it, why didn't Grindstone get mentioned in this article even once?

I will never understand the warped mentality it would take for someone to actually want to try games of Magic this way at the kitchen table, let alone in a tournament.

If Glimpse is the second most popular Ravnica card, what's the first? I guess I could just Google it.

Jan 10, 2010 -- 9:18PM, The_American_Nightmare wrote:

I will never understand the warped mentality it would take for someone to actually want to try games of Magic this way at the kitchen table, let alone in a tournament.

More for me, then. Glimpse the Unthinkable plus Izzet Guildmage with Ink-Eyes, Servant of Oni as backup...good times. (Yeah, the deck was garbage by tournament standards. Fun, though.)

Jan 10, 2010 -- 9:40PM, CityofAs wrote:

If Glimpse is the second most popular Ravnica card, what's the first? I guess I could just Google it.

I'm guessing Lightning Helix.

It's always bugged me the way Black and Blue got milling divided up. Between the two of them, I'd think blue would be the one more concerned with skillful manipulation and black would be the one concerned with brute force "drive them insane until they lose their whole personality." I mean, look at the name "Traumatize." That sounds way more black than blue. Which type of mage would you imagine torturing someone until they lose half their soul?

Jan 10, 2010 -- 9:18PM, The_American_Nightmare wrote:

I will never understand the warped mentality it would take for someone to actually want to try games of Magic this way at the kitchen table, let alone in a tournament.

Wouldn't milling your friends be worse than milling a stranger? And, turn-three Painter's Servant Grindstone isn't all that different from Channel-Fireball or anything else. If someone killed me turn five with the Hedron Crab deck they drafted, I would crack up. I've been trying to do that since Day One.

Overall good article, but a few points of critiscism:

I wouldn't call Jace Beleren a "milling card" any more than I would call Elspeth a "make my stuff indestructible" card. Planeswalkers are defined infinitely more by their non-ultimate abilities than by their ultimates, so I would instead call Jace a card drawing utility card, more akin to Divination or Mulldrifter than Traumatize or Tome Scour, which only work within a dedicated mill strategy. /nitpick

About the Arc-Slogger section - Another key difference between a card getting milled and a card on the bottom of a library is the issue of revealing information to the opponent; if my sweet dragon gets milled I'm not sad just because I won't draw it, I'm also sad because my opponent will know to play around it in subsequent games.

For example, sideboarding into Tombstalkers and Goyfs in extended Dredge is a tough thing to conceal going into game three, even if you never draw them game two. Siding creatures into something like Scapeshift is an easier secret to keep (provided you don't draw/play them, of course).

Speaking of Dredge, Maro didn't talk much about self-milling as a viable strategy, a la Cephalid Breakfast, Dredge/Ichorid, etc. He mentions Hedron Crab's milling power, but doesn't touch on the fact that it's often directed at its controller... One thing I would be interested in is how the dredge mechanic itself was designed. Was it originally meant as a drawback or an advantage? How did R&D settle on 6 for Grave-Troll, 3 for Loam, etc?

Jan 10, 2010 -- 9:18PM, ArmadilloKing wrote:

...Altar of Dementia was just me pushing back. How about a milling deck that required you to play creatures? What would that look like?

Really?  Did you seriously expect anyone to bother with a creature-based milling deck when you also printed Grindstone in the very same set?

Also, come to think of it, why didn't Grindstone get mentioned in this article even once?

Hey Altar of Dementia was awesome. 

Not _good_, mind.  But a whole lot of fun to tool around with, precisely because it pushed you in different directions. 

I hadn't realized that MaRo was responsible for creating it.  Gives me warm fuzzies that he likes one of the same quirky aspects of the game that I do, and that he got to go from liking it as a fan, to making more of it as a designer. 

~ Patch

Milling is by default a very uninteractive mechanic. It's like playing against a creatureless red burn deck, except that your deck is your life total.

I don't mind mill, but it should be pushed strongly toward highly interactive mill. Altar of Dementia is a perfect example (and should be put in a core set), as are Reef Pirates (though it needs to mill lots more cards.) Hedron Crab and the merfolk aren't interesting or interactive enough.

Please make mill more interactive.

I like the idea of a creature that gets bigger or badder when you pay a mana and mill cost, i.e. Arc-Slogger.  I think the real weakness of Arc-Slogger was its color.  If it were black, it would be great with dredge effects.

Jan 10, 2010 -- 9:07PM, Hacimen wrote:

So milling is not unfun enough to remove, because some players like it, but countermagic is, even though some players like it. Got it.

From another thread:

Jan 10, 2010 -- 11:36PM, Qmark wrote:

The major difference between Counters and Mill is that Counterspells are actually good.

Countering a spell disables an immediate threat.  Milling tries to disable future threats, but does nothing for the present state of the game and is just as likely to catch a threat as it is to catch the cards that used to be directly on top of that threat.  All Mill really has going for it is that it's occasionally quite useful to mill oneself, with some very rare times when it's possible to mill in quantities of "all of them".

Jan 10, 2010 -- 11:42PM, Qmark wrote:

Jan 10, 2010 -- 9:07PM, Hacimen wrote:

So milling is not unfun enough to remove, because some players like it, but countermagic is, even though some players like it. Got it.

From another thread:

Jan 10, 2010 -- 11:36PM, Qmark wrote:

The major difference between Counters and Mill is that Counterspells are actually good.

Countering a spell disables an immediate threat.  Milling tries to disable future threats, but does nothing for the present state of the game and is just as likely to catch a threat as it is to catch the cards that used to be directly on top of that threat.  All Mill really has going for it is that it's occasionally quite useful to mill oneself, with some very rare times when it's possible to mill in quantities of "all of them".

Which is partly why Discard is not as good as Counterspelling, it never effects board position, just future possibility.  Yes, it may screw up your current plan, but it also gives you a chance to change said plan.  Counterspells simply say, "no, thanks for wasting the resources."

Opponent turn 1

Fetchland go

me

island go

eot

Fetch, Find

me


ARCHIVE TRAP!!! X4

Win.


13 x 4 + 7 +1 =60

4 Archive traps, seven card hand, one card that was seached for.

What's the difference between the card getting milled and it just being the bottom card of the deck? Logically, very little. Psychologically, a lot. The card sitting in your deck is potentially your next draw. Sure, you might never draw it, but you don't know that. The lack of knowledge about where it is gives a player hope. A similar phenomenon can be seen with lottery tickets. A man buys a lottery ticket for a fifty million dollar payout. The ticket is exciting until the moment he learns that it's not a winner. Until the drawing, the ticket is potentially fifty million dollars. That's exciting even if the math says the chance of getting that money is infinitesimally small.

Quite aside from Seeker_after_Chaos and NeverendingDream's excellent points, let's say the probability of drawing one's dragon is one in forty (or however many cards you have left in your deck, forty for this example). Also worth mentioning is that thanks to the draw step, that probability is getting at least one better every turn, and more with some form of card drawing.

Something some people don't realise about probabilities (although I'd like to think MaRo does) is that changes have more relative impact at lower probabilities than at higher ones. 40:33 isn't that different from 40:34, but 40:1 is statistically a massive difference from 40:2. In Magic terms, with forty cards in your deck, if one of those is a dragon, you have a one in forty chance of drawing it. If two of them are dragons, it increases your chances to one in twenty. Adding a third dragon (again, incrementally, just one card) increases it to a little over one in thirteen - a smaller jump than the previous one.

The biggest change in probability? The change from n:1 to n:0.

If your dragon gets milled, the probability just changed from 40:1 to 40:0. You do not have the option of drawing that dragon. That's not just a big psychological effect. It's a huge statistical effect. If you were relying on that dragon to punch through a stalemate, you have now crossed the statistical threshold of it being a reasonable possibility. One could argue that 40:1, then 39:1 the next turn, then 38:1 and so forth, is not necessarily a reasonable possibility either, but either way it's a hell of a lot more reasonable than 40:0.


------------------


Anyway, interesting article. Although it didn't go as in-depth as I personally prefer, I know that not every article should. That said the relationship between milling and countering would be nice to see explored, as milling has been pushed in recent years where countering, card drawing and bouncing have been scaled back, so that milling is now arguably one of blue's premier mechanics. I only say this because of the fascinating discussion in the feedback topic from Tom LaPille's article on friday. Blue seems to be in something of a transitory state right now, and although obviously one would not expect anyone in R&D to outline where blue's identity is headed, I'm still curious as to what the market research identifies as player responses to milling and countering beyond the usual and very vague "some players like X more than Y".

Jan 10, 2010 -- 9:18PM, ArmadilloKing wrote:

...Altar of Dementia was just me pushing back. How about a milling deck that required you to play creatures? What would that look like?

Really?  Did you seriously expect anyone to bother with a creature-based milling deck when you also printed Grindstone in the very same set?

Altar of Dementia is MUCH more popular around the casual table, I've seen it in many different johnny decks that can make endless creatures, or endless recurring creatures, as a finisher in colors where something like Goblin Bombardment isn't available

Jan 10, 2010 -- 9:51PM, Raemon wrote:

It's always bugged me the way Black and Blue got milling divided up. Between the two of them, I'd think blue would be the one more concerned with skillful manipulation and black would be the one concerned with brute force "drive them insane until they lose their whole personality." I mean, look at the name "Traumatize." That sounds way more black than blue. Which type of mage would you imagine torturing someone until they lose half their soul?

Traumatize just isn't a good name for blue and would fit better on a black-style milling card ("there, I just put all 6 of your dragons in your graveyard" Now that's a trauma).

I think the black-style milling is very close to discard (see cards like Psychotic Episode) and that's why it's in black. Also, 9 out of 10 mechanics sounds better in blue because blue is the color of wizards and magic in a game about wizards and magic =p

Was anyone else annoyed at not getting to read the original memory erosion?

I'd have loved to hear what the original 'three hoops' were. As is, it seems a teaser for something that may never come and that makes me sad.

I was sad that Nemesis of Reason didn't get a shout-out.  With his crazy art, splashy effect, and big butt, he's one of my favorite mill cards in the game right now (and has worked well alongside Szadek in my kitchen-table Mill deck).

It's going to be hard to beat Painter's Servant + Grindstone for milling, obviously, but having the big, crazy Nemesis out there is just fun.

Jan 11, 2010 -- 5:59AM, C.A.Pryde wrote:

I was sad that Nemesis of Reason didn't get a shout-out.  With his crazy art, splashy effect, and big butt, he's one of my favorite mill cards in the game right now (and has worked well alongside Szadek in my kitchen-table Mill deck).

It's going to be hard to beat Painter's Servant + Grindstone for milling, obviously, but having the big, crazy Nemesis out there is just fun.

Helm of Obedience + Leyline of the Void is not too bad either. ;-)

January, 2010

First, players get frustrated oposing countermagic; now milling?

So, the solution is to develop/print less counters and less millings?

What is the next? Discard? Destroy lands?

Frustrated players need pshychological help, not this kind of action.

=/

JV

Jan 10, 2010 -- 11:42PM, Qmark wrote:

Jan 10, 2010 -- 9:07PM, Hacimen wrote:

So milling is not unfun enough to remove, because some players like it, but countermagic is, even though some players like it. Got it.

From another thread:

Jan 10, 2010 -- 11:36PM, Qmark wrote:

The major difference between Counters and Mill is that Counterspells are actually good.

Countering a spell disables an immediate threat.  Milling tries to disable future threats, but does nothing for the present state of the game and is just as likely to catch a threat as it is to catch the cards that used to be directly on top of that threat.  All Mill really has going for it is that it's occasionally quite useful to mill oneself, with some very rare times when it's possible to mill in quantities of "all of them".

As an experienced player I fully understand how the game works. But the same people that don't like their creature countered (as opposed to killed immediately) are the same people that aren't going to like their favorite card in the graveyard before they could even play it. That was my point.

Casual milling is such a downer because kitchen tables decks are often made out of what you have on hand, including many singletons instead of full playsets.  Thus, if your ONE dragon gets milled away, its kind of dissappointing.

Tournament guys know that a properly constructed deck is mostly homogenous, thus milling away 20 cards does nothing to the actual makeup of the deck.   There is statistically the same probablility of drawing a particular card before the mill as after. 

Thus, for milling to get more powerful, it would have to alienate the casual crowd and become more "un-fun" by definition.  I don't see this as happening, thus I don't see milling ever becoming a tournament staple.

Jan 11, 2010 -- 7:52AM, Hacimen wrote:

But the same people that don't like their creature countered (as opposed to killed immediately) are the same people that aren't going to like their favorite card in the graveyard before they could even play it. That was my point.

And my point is that R&D also fully knows Mill doesn't really matter much.
Or rather, they fully know that a kid who gets his single copy of that dragon Milled off is eventually going to get the idea to get another copy of that dragon.

Jan 11, 2010 -- 7:58AM, mellojoe wrote:

Thus, for milling to get more powerful, it would have to alienate the casual crowd and become more "un-fun" by definition.  I don't see this as happening, thus I don't see milling ever becoming a tournament staple.

I think I'm misunderstanding what you're saying.  I'm pretty sure Milling is a tournament staple already.  Didn't Jacerator make it fairly far in Worlds? 


I'm sure I'm missing something, so feel free to correct me.

I'm really interested to see a Worldwake card MaRo mentioned. The one that combos well with Hedron Crab. And if we could see that card in it's original (unchanged) design that would be awesome!

Jan 10, 2010 -- 9:18PM, The_American_Nightmare wrote:

I will never understand the warped mentality it would take for someone to actually want to try games of Magic this way at the kitchen table, let alone in a tournament.

It generates some great advantage. If Vedalken Entrancer sticks you're milling 2 cards a turn.

Jan 11, 2010 -- 8:21AM, Qmark wrote:

Jan 11, 2010 -- 7:52AM, Hacimen wrote:

But the same people that don't like their creature countered (as opposed to killed immediately) are the same people that aren't going to like their favorite card in the graveyard before they could even play it. That was my point.

And my point is that R&D also fully knows Mill doesn't really matter much.
Or rather, they fully know that a kid who gets his single copy of that dragon Milled off is eventually going to get the idea to get another copy of that dragon.

Mill is for a current game state worthless.

If you're facing a big hunk of beef and all you have is Duress that card won't change the game state much either.

Mill is made to get rid of possible threats. And for those that like card avantage mill can do that in spades. 

Jan 11, 2010 -- 8:21AM, Qmark wrote:

Jan 11, 2010 -- 7:52AM, Hacimen wrote:

But the same people that don't like their creature countered (as opposed to killed immediately) are the same people that aren't going to like their favorite card in the graveyard before they could even play it. That was my point.

And my point is that R&D also fully knows Mill doesn't really matter much.
Or rather, they fully know that a kid who gets his single copy of that dragon Milled off is eventually going to get the idea to get another copy of that dragon.

There's also the chance that the Dragon was on the bottom of the deck and he would never have drawn it, if his opponent hadn't been kind enough to remove the thirty cards sitting on top of it.

Jan 10, 2010 -- 9:51PM, Raemon wrote:

It's always bugged me the way Black and Blue got milling divided up. Between the two of them, I'd think blue would be the one more concerned with skillful manipulation and black would be the one concerned with brute force "drive them insane until they lose their whole personality." I mean, look at the name "Traumatize." That sounds way more black than blue. Which type of mage would you imagine torturing someone until they lose half their soul?

I agree with this. I think its a historical accident that blue got indiscriminate milling and black got surgical milling. Blue has far more skill and precision to need to deal with things that way. By contrast Black has a singular disregard for collateral damage.

I'm a bit surprised that Jester's Cap effects weren't mentioned. Oh well.

That sort of ability strikes me as very "blue" and should move a bit from artifacts.

I know cards of its type aren't milling cards, per se, but I'm surprised that the bit about milling in Alpha made no mention of decking via Brainstorm (or a bunch of Ancestral Recalls or whatever).

Jan 11, 2010 -- 10:21AM, Morrowner wrote:

I'm a bit surprised that Jester's Cap effects weren't mentioned. Oh well.

That sort of ability strikes me as very "blue" and should move a bit from artifacts.

actually its kind of been moved into black with Sadistic Sacrament.

Jan 11, 2010 -- 9:49AM, wormer105 wrote:

And for those that like card avantage mill can do that in spades. 

Actually milling is card disadvantage.  It costs you cards but doesn't destroy anything of theirs, make them discard, prevent them from drawing, etc.  Milling off the top of a shuffled deck is just like burning your opponent to the face:  you haven't accomplished anything until you finish them.

I hope Maro actually writes the article about poison counters. 

My favorite milling story: Ben Bleiweiss's Orcish Spy / Millstone deck beating a red burn deck.  www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/Article.a...

Jan 10, 2010 -- 11:36PM, Tychumsempir wrote:

I like the idea of a creature that gets bigger or badder when you pay a mana and mill cost, i.e. Arc-Slogger.  I think the real weakness of Arc-Slogger was its color.  If it were black, it would be great with dredge effects.

And if it put the cards in your graveyard, rather than removing them from the game. 

I'm pretty happy to find out that MaRo is actually a big milling proponent - that's a good sign for more milling cards getting printed.

Champions of Kamigawa was, for me at least, the best Limited format for the mill deck.  Splicing Dampen Thought onto Dampen Thought is so much fun!

Jan 11, 2010 -- 10:15AM, Highwayman wrote:

Jan 10, 2010 -- 9:51PM, Raemon wrote:

It's always bugged me the way Black and Blue got milling divided up. Between the two of them, I'd think blue would be the one more concerned with skillful manipulation and black would be the one concerned with brute force "drive them insane until they lose their whole personality." I mean, look at the name "Traumatize." That sounds way more black than blue. Which type of mage would you imagine torturing someone until they lose half their soul?

I agree with this. I think its a historical accident that blue got indiscriminate milling and black got surgical milling. Blue has far more skill and precision to need to deal with things that way. By contrast Black has a singular disregard for collateral damage.

While I agree from a tool standpoint black has mass discard as well. So if black got mass milling AND mass discard black would be a pain to play again.

Wiping someones memory is a blue trick. Milling is how that sort of thing accomplished. 

I absolutely agree with Hacimen. The last two articles have been symptomatic of WOTC inconsistent, self indulgent approach to card design at the moment. Blue is neutered because "some people don't like to play counters" while milling is celebrated despite being the most despised strategy available.

But the chief designer likes it...

Makes politicians seems like altruists.

Jan 11, 2010 -- 10:49AM, zubr wrote:

Jan 11, 2010 -- 9:49AM, wormer105 wrote:

And for those that like card avantage mill can do that in spades. 

Actually milling is card disadvantage.  It costs you cards but doesn't destroy anything of theirs, make them discard, prevent them from drawing, etc.  Milling off the top of a shuffled deck is just like burning your opponent to the face:  you haven't accomplished anything until you finish them.

I hope Maro actually writes the article about poison counters. 

I play Glimpe the Unthinkable.

Barring recursion that's 10 cards lost for them and 1 lost for me.

You hit someone with burn and while they lose life you lose resources. Whereas cards like Glimpse and the like expend your resources in exhange for taking a lot of resources from them.

While mill isn't something I'd make as a focus without some other way to last through what they actually draw it yields advantage over time.

Jan 11, 2010 -- 4:55AM, Bezman wrote:

Was anyone else annoyed at not getting to read the original memory erosion?

I'd have loved to hear what the original 'three hoops' were. As is, it seems a teaser for something that may never come and that makes me sad.

I was. Perhaps they are going to use the loops in other cards in the near future?

Jan 11, 2010 -- 12:08PM, wormer105 wrote:

I play Glimpe the Unthinkable.

Barring recursion that's 10 cards lost for them and 1 lost for me.

No. Milling does not constitute card advantage. If milling the opponent was considered "card advantage", then playing a 200 cards deck would sure as hell constitute a full load of "card advantage". Cards in the library do not constitute resources anymore than life points do. That's one of the common fallacies about milling.

Card advantage comes from drawing more than your opponent (ie getting more spells to cast) and trading an amount of your cards for more of theirs (there is also virtual CA that comes from making opponent's draws irrelevant). The cards that count for CA are those in your hand and in play, not those in your library.

You hit someone with burn and while they lose life you lose resources. Whereas cards like Glimpse and the like expend your resources in exhange for taking a lot of resources from them.

But you don't really take any resources away from someone by milling them. A way to look at this is to imagine you mill them from the bottom of their deck, not the top. Unless you mill them for a long time (or with powerful spells), you won't remove any card they would have drawn over the course of the game anyway. For every good spell you mill away, there is a land that you will me away that will give them access to their best spell and cost you the game.

Milling is exactly the same as flinging burn to the face or playing poison : unless you are sure you can finish the job, it's not even worth starting.

Jan 11, 2010 -- 12:08PM, wormer105 wrote:

Barring recursion that's 10 cards lost for them and 1 lost for me.

No it isn't.
Cards in the library don't do anything.

Interesting bit of math about milling:

Let's take a very simple case; the principle applies to more complex cases, but it's easier to see in the simple case.  You have a 40 card deck, which contains one Shivan Dragon, which you want to draw.  Are your chances of drawing the dragon reduced if your opponent first mills a card from your library? 

Let's run the numbers:

Chance of drawing a Shivan Dragon, with no milling: 

  1/40   (number of Dragons divided by number of cards in your deck)

Chance of drawing a Shivan, if your opponent mills a card first:

  39/40 * 1/39 = 1/40   (Chance that the card milled was not a Shivan Dragon multliplied by the chance that the card you draw next is a Shivan Dragon)

Slightly more complex case:  say your opponent mills 39 of your 40 cards.  What are the chances that the last card in the deck will be a Shivan Dragon?

39/40 * 38/39 * 37/38 * ... * 2/3 * 1/2 * 1/1 = 1/40  (all the denominators except the first cancel out)

The probabilities are exactly the same, in every instance (caveat:  the probability drops suddenly to zero if you mill their entire deck out.) 

To restate:  Milling your opponent does _absolutely nothing_ to affect the probability that they will draw a card, even if they have a deck full of singletons.   You are just as likely to bring someone closer to drawing the card they want as you are to get rid of the card they want when you mill them. 

~ Patch

Now, I kow this case is narrow but... I see people saying cards in the library "don't matter" but I can easilly point out a card where they do.  Invincible Hymn.  Your life total becomes the amount of cards in your library.  Then there is, of course, Battle of Wits.

Yes, and there are also a few corner-cases where being on fire is a good thing.

The thing about milling that with things like Glimpse the Unthinkable and Nemesis of Reason you can mill 10 cards at a time (1/6th deck), well you may not kill their trump card but as others have said they will have less options after losing those cards.

 It would be specifically more powerful vs combo players, but regardless it may throw their lands away. Regardless you are still cutting options from their deck whatever cards you mill.

How is it that Arc-Slogger's remove-from-game milling counts as milling, while Ashnod's Cylix (my personal favorite millstone) seemingly does not?

Also, if Vexing Arcanix counts, then Petra Sphinx surely does.

Along with Petra Sphinx, I would include Chains of Mephistopheles in the "from Alpha through Homelands; mill for the sake of milling" club.

Glaring oversights from the person in nominal charge of Magic's direction, and disappointing after being promised an article containing "everything you every possibly wanted to know" [sic] about milling.

Milling is... Dull. At least, it was for me to play against it back in Ravnica against Glimpse/Circu decks. Hooray, they removed some cards. Then I smash their face in.

Milling doesn't usually generate card advantage - except with flashback, unearth, Ichorid, incarnations, etc.  It's a common mistake.

But it's also a common mistake to assume that it doesn't affect anything until it wins.  It does affect two things:  Your opponent's state of mind, potentially, as you dispose of shiny objects, and more revelantly, his search abilities.  I've played in a few limited games where I killed a mill method not because I was afraid of actually losing by empty library, but because I had three or four methods of finding that one island in my deck for the two blue cards I splashed.  It's not all that often, but many decks have combos or splashed colors that can be searched up, provided they're in the library.  If you've got eight ways to find it but only one or two copies, milling can become more threatening.

Jan 10, 2010 -- 9:07PM, Hacimen wrote:

So milling is not unfun enough to remove, because some players like it, but countermagic is, even though some players like it. Got it.

it's not a strategy you're talking about, it's the power level of a strategy. wizards hasn't removed countermagic, they've just printed counterspells whose power level is lower. in fact, its current power level is akin to the power level of milling cards. when milling becomes more powerful than a counter heavy control deck, come back and complain.

Jan 10, 2010 -- 11:42PM, Qmark wrote:

Jan 10, 2010 -- 9:07PM, Hacimen wrote:

So milling is not unfun enough to remove, because some players like it, but countermagic is, even though some players like it. Got it.

From another thread:

Jan 10, 2010 -- 11:36PM, Qmark wrote:

The major difference between Counters and Mill is that Counterspells are actually good.

Countering a spell disables an immediate threat.  Milling tries to disable future threats, but does nothing for the present state of the game and is just as likely to catch a threat as it is to catch the cards that used to be directly on top of that threat.  All Mill really has going for it is that it's occasionally quite useful to mill oneself, with some very rare times when it's possible to mill in quantities of "all of them".

it is the nature of the ability to be inherently less powerful than counters, but that doesn't necessarily mean milling cards are inherently less powerful than counterspell cards. it's the way they've printed the cards that determines that. they could print the following card and it would be more powerful than countermagic right now:

uu
instant
exile the top 30 cards of target player's library. each player draws a card.

they've deliberately kept milling within the "dedicate yourself to this and you might get a victory out of it with some luck" territory, whereas counterspells have historically been in the "dedicate yourself to this and you win and your opponent does nothing all game" region. milling has almost always been casual, and when it has broken into competitive magic there's been other strategies using it (often there are counters, for example) and it hasn't really been dominant. i think they are trying to do a similar thing with counterspells (they may currently be overcompensating a bit).

Jan 10, 2010 -- 9:51PM, NeverendingDream wrote:

Overall good article, but a few points of critiscism:

I wouldn't call Jace Beleren a "milling card" any more than I would call Elspeth a "make my stuff indestructible" card. Planeswalkers are defined infinitely more by their non-ultimate abilities than by their ultimates, so I would instead call Jace a card drawing utility card, more akin to Divination or Mulldrifter than Traumatize or Tome Scour, which only work within a dedicated mill strategy. /nitpick

except his non-ultimate abilities both work to mill. in stuff like turbofog, jace acts as another howling mine, whose only real competitive use is as a milling card. certainly people use him as utility draw also, but he's been prominent enough in the decks that seek to mill to victory that i think he can be considered a "milling card." a more versatile milling card than usual, certainly (but those are the best kind...nemesis of reason, anyone?).

Jan 11, 2010 -- 9:49AM, wormer105 wrote:

Mill is made to get rid of possible threats.

no, mill is "made" to either win through decking or to reanimate/regrowth from the yard. milling gives the opponent their threat as much as removes it (example: you mill 20 cards. all are lands or useless spells. card 21 is their game winning fatty. you lose.) black's targeted discard and mill are made to get rid of possible threats.

And for those that like card avantage mill can do that in spades. 

i'm not sure you understand the concept of card advantage.

except that the chances of them milling useless cards you don't need are just as high as the chances of them milling those cards you want to search up.

Jan 11, 2010 -- 5:14PM, quitequieter wrote:

Jan 10, 2010 -- 9:07PM, Hacimen wrote:

So milling is not unfun enough to remove, because some players like it, but countermagic is, even though some players like it. Got it.

it's not a strategy you're talking about, it's the power level of a strategy. wizards hasn't removed countermagic, they've just printed counterspells whose power level is lower. in fact, its current power level is akin to the power level of milling cards. when milling becomes more powerful than a counter heavy control deck, come back and complain.

First, a counter-heavy deck needs to exist. Making bad counters is basically the same as making none.

Jan 11, 2010 -- 5:52PM, Hacimen wrote:

First, a counter-heavy deck needs to exist. Making bad counters is basically the same as making none.

then making weak milling (which is basically the only milling they've ever made) is the same as making none. i think you're missing the point i was making. when milling gets to be as powerful as counterspell strategies have been, then your point about weakening unfun strategies and milling will be valid. you seemed to be saying that wizards was following a different set of rules for milling than they were for counters. but i simply don't think that's the case: from the start they have kept milling weak enough so that it doesn't cause the same kind of problems that counters apparently do. so if anything, they used to have a different set of rules for counters (in their favor) and now they are being more fair. admittedly it was easier with milling because by its nature it is less powerful.

i feel like it's important for me to say how i feel personally, because i suspect it might come up in people's responses, so i will. i like counterspells. i think it's a fun strategy to play and to play against. i can understand how it might get boring to play against over and over. but then...i feel the same about any strategy. i would be content to play against ld or milling or alternate win or combos or whatever. i know i am in the minority.

I see what you are saying but my point is very simply that unfun=unfun (as it was earlier). Now it is true that if countermagic is less popular than milling among the players Tom's article insist matter more than most of us in the forums, it's simply because there is more of it. Yes, over the years there were more control decks than milling decks. But three days ago we got "STFU blue players" with regards to countermagic and decent card draw, and today we get "some people don't like milling" as an aside during the opening segment of Milling Week. If everything is really equal, do we get a Counterspell week?

The other problem is that from a gameplay perspective, blue having answers per its supposed identity is arguably more important than an ability that most of the time only has an outside chance of becoming a win condition. It could well be that this is what they have in mind for blue (making it better at milling than it is now), and that they are using this week to get an idea of what the community thinks of the idea.

Jan 11, 2010 -- 10:49AM, zubr wrote:

Jan 11, 2010 -- 9:49AM, wormer105 wrote:

And for those that like card avantage mill can do that in spades. 

Actually milling is card disadvantage.  It costs you cards but doesn't destroy anything of theirs, make them discard, prevent them from drawing, etc.  Milling off the top of a shuffled deck is just like burning your opponent to the face:  you haven't accomplished anything until you finish them.

I hope Maro actually writes the article about poison counters. 

Milling off the top (and burn to the face) actually can change the game, in that it changes how your opponent plays. They play differently at 10 life then 20, and they play differently with 20 cards left than 40. That is, they might hold back their card draw and search a bit. Just a thought.

Jan 10, 2010 -- 9:51PM, NeverendingDream wrote:

Speaking of Dredge, Maro didn't talk much about self-milling as a viable strategy, a la Cephalid Breakfast, Dredge/Ichorid, etc. He mentions Hedron Crab's milling power, but doesn't touch on the fact that it's often directed at its controller... One thing I would be interested in is how the dredge mechanic itself was designed. Was it originally meant as a drawback or an advantage? How did R&D settle on 6 for Grave-Troll, 3 for Loam, etc?

Check out this article for info about Dredge.

Jan 11, 2010 -- 3:24PM, fastpond wrote:

The thing about milling that with things like Glimpse the Unthinkable and Nemesis of Reason you can mill 10 cards at a time (1/6th deck), well you may not kill their trump card but as others have said they will have less options after losing those cards.

 It would be specifically more powerful vs combo players, but regardless it may throw their lands away. Regardless you are still cutting options from their deck whatever cards you mill.

No, it won't. Not in the long run. You have no control over whether the card you mill is relevant or irrelevant, so in the long run, you are just as likely to be helping them as hurting them.

In some games, you will mill their relevant cards, and milling will have helped. In other games, you will mill their irrelevant cards and milling will have hurt. Overall, the numbers will balance out, and you will have tended to help them just as often as you have tended to hurt them.

The math on this is concrete and indisputable.

Jan 11, 2010 -- 6:32PM, Hacimen wrote:

I see what you are saying but my point is very simply that unfun=unfun (as it was earlier).

and my point is that unfun depends on power level and how they print the cards. aggro isn't inherently unfun for everyone, but if they were routinely printing cards like this:


split second
haste
5/2

then aggro would be pretty unfun.

the reason milling isn't as unfun as a powerful counterspell strategy is that milling is weaker than a powerful counterspell strategy.

Now it is true that if countermagic is less popular than milling among the players Tom's article insist matter more than most of us in the forums, it's simply because there is more of it. Yes, over the years there were more control decks than milling decks.

quantity isn't my point. quality is. i'm sure there have been a lot of milling decks. but they weren't competitive. many more of the counterspell decks were. and they were competitive in a way that was potentially less fun for many players because at least you can play your spells and try to win before you get milled, vs having every spell countered (and potentially being decked in the end anyway).

Jan 11, 2010 -- 6:43PM, zammm wrote:

The math on this is concrete and indisputable.

the wording of this really amused me. somehow i feel like some of the "milling = card advantage" people aren't going to be convinced anyway.

January 2010

Jan 11, 2010 -- 6:32PM, Hacimen wrote:

... and that they are using this week to get an idea of what the community thinks of the idea.

Sounds reasonable. In fact, when "New Phyrexia" sees the daylight, blue should take a decent role - lotsa artifacts...and artifacts have some "afinity" for blue cards (sorry, could not resist).

What are they trying to tell us now? Anticipating their excuses? Decent counters/draws in trade of what?

This "milling week" might be a clue...

JV

Jan 11, 2010 -- 6:58PM, quitequieter wrote:

somehow i feel like some of the "milling = card advantage" people aren't going to be convinced anyway.

QFT. I try to steer clear of any conversations involving milling for this reason. It is amusing to watch people speak in terms they don't understand, though.

The one card I can think of that mills indiscriminately that I play competitively is Grimoire Thief, which I run in my UW Legacy Merfolk deck. This is mainly because of the countering, but it's nice tech against combo (for both milling and countering) which is pretty common in my local Legacy tournaments. Every other time, its a Bear, which could be alot worse. Obviously cards like Extirpate are also maindecked competitively, but it is milling, and seems like card advantage to me.

Jan 11, 2010 -- 7:18PM, CityofAs wrote:

The one card I can think of that mills indiscriminately that I play competitively is Grimoire Thief, which I run in my UW Legacy Merfolk deck. This is mainly because of the countering, but it's nice tech against combo (for both milling and countering) which is pretty common in my local Legacy tournaments. Every other time, its a Bear, which could be alot worse. Obviously cards like Extirpate are also maindecked competitively, but it is milling, and seems like card advantage to me.

this article calls stuff like extirpate milling, but it isn't the same thing as non-targeted mill. extirpate is card advantage when it hits the hand (depending on the result) but even when it's not card advantage it's better than something like tome scour because it sidesteps the "half the time you mill useless cards" problem with regular blue milling. if the player is intelligent and informed about playing extirpate, it won't mill useless cards. it will hit exactly what the opponent wants to draw. and extirpate can be similar to card advantage against a graveyard heavy strategy that treats cards in the yard like cards in the hand.

Okay, the sparknotes version before I avoid this conversation entirely, mainly because most of the people who don't get it either REALLY don't get it, or are trolls, and I get annoyed either way.

Why is card draw card advantage? Because you take cards from the unusable library and put them into the usable, board-affecting hand. Why is milling not card advantage?Because it takes something from an unusable zone (the library) and puts it into another unusuable zone (the graveyard), and you have zero control over what goes where. In fact, the graveyard is often a more accessible location than the library, which is why the decks that are running traumatize in standard target themselves with it.

Targeted milling (which really isn't milling in the traditional sense) can theoretically provide virtual (read that again. virtual) card advantage over a long game by increasing the chances that your oppoent will draw a dead spell or land, but the effect needs to be very large (like, kicked sadistic sacrament large) before you can expect to get any sort of payoff from the virtual card advantage in real life. This is because they need to not only draw dead cards, but draw dead cards specifically because of the extirpate effect, and they need to do this more than once before it becomes advantage. If they only draw one dead card because of the extirpate, it's a net zero. I can show you the math on this, if you really need to see it.

There are three reasons to maindeck traditional mill in competitive environments. 1) You're milling yourself to utilize graveyard mechanics 2) You're trying to mill your opponent to no cards (and have a real way of doing this without losing horribly) 3) It's a side effect of a real spell. (okay, and 4) You're playing against a deck that cannot win without searching the library for a bunch of 1-of's. Really, though, this is so small that it's almost not worth mentioning. You're more likely to be helping out an opposing dredge deck than have this come into play)

Extirpate effects' primary competitive purpose are to remove specific dangerous cards from otherwise good matchups where you can afford to be spending a spell slot on making sure that your opponent never draws blowout card X. Again, in large quantities and given enough time to work it can theoretically provide virtual card advantage, but in real life that never happens.

P.S. Just to make the concept of virtual card advantage more clear: In a limited game, if I sadistic sacrament out all of my opponent's spells (leaving him with nothing but land), I've created virtual card advantage, because now every card he draws will be a dead land card (assuming he doesn't have landfall or spell-lands). The card advantage comes from the fact that he's not drawing his real spells.

However, in a traditional (topdeck) milling situation, I'm just as likely to mill all his useless spare lands off the top as I am to mill all his spells. His next spell is no more or less likely to be useful than it was before the mill.

Okay, so that was less of a sparknotes version than I thought it would be. Still, that's all I'm going to say, unless you have questions. I don't like debating mathematical fact, because their is no debate to have. See also: xkcd.com/54/ Replace the word science with math, if you have to.

Edit: Forgot that extirpate hits the hand. Replace all instances of the word "Extirpate" with "unkicked sadistic sacrament", and it'll still be good, though.

I think the most popular card from Ravnica block was Doubling Season .

Milling a la Ray of Erasure is weak sauce, until it gets to Glimpse the Unthinkable or Traumatize Proportions. 

However, one alternative proposed by MaRo -- putting milling on a creature, a la Reef Pirates -- always strikes this cat as trying to turn it into a second Poison mechanic.  Yes, it creates a second means of winning the game, but you should already win the game by the primary win condition of knocking your opponent to zero life.

That was the problem with Balshan Beguiler , any many other blue cards from the Masques and Odyssey era: the effect was negligible, and the creature was, too.

Jan 11, 2010 -- 1:01PM, Qmark wrote:

Jan 11, 2010 -- 12:08PM, wormer105 wrote:

Barring recursion that's 10 cards lost for them and 1 lost for me.

No it isn't.
Cards in the library don't do anything.

Nor do cards in hand until they're used.

1 card in their deck that gets milled means that barring recursion they no longer have access to that card.

Now while the advantage is indirect and that mill is generally useless with just a single app it yields advantage over time.

"No, it won't. Not in the long run. You have no control over whether the card you mill is relevant or irrelevant, so in the long run, you are just as likely to be helping them as hurting them."

True but my deck when it gets rolling can remove four cards a turn with a jump of 10 cards once Nemisis of Reason is out.

When you have that kind of repeatable milling going on the chances of you hitting something vital increases.

Add to that a way to deal with what thay actually play and you have a way to win over time.

Because the more cards that are in their graveyard that more hoops they'll need to jump through to regain those cards. This means that the cards they're using need to accomplish more to offset the pressure.

For me there are two sorts of advantage. Direct and indirect.

Indirect is like milling, and burn directed at players. It does nothing to affect a game state directly.

But indirectly it puts pressure on players.

Directly are cards like burn directed at creatures, and straight removal.

There there is a gray situational advantage. Counters and discard belong here because they are good for keeping a game stable.  

Jan 11, 2010 -- 6:38PM, CityofAs wrote:

Jan 11, 2010 -- 10:49AM, zubr wrote:

Jan 11, 2010 -- 9:49AM, wormer105 wrote:

And for those that like card avantage mill can do that in spades. 

Actually milling is card disadvantage.  It costs you cards but doesn't destroy anything of theirs, make them discard, prevent them from drawing, etc.  Milling off the top of a shuffled deck is just like burning your opponent to the face:  you haven't accomplished anything until you finish them.

I hope Maro actually writes the article about poison counters. 

Milling off the top (and burn to the face) actually can change the game, in that it changes how your opponent plays. They play differently at 10 life then 20, and they play differently with 20 cards left than 40. That is, they might hold back their card draw and search a bit. Just a thought.

This is what I'm thinking of. Pressure = and advantage.

Jan 11, 2010 -- 9:31PM, wormer105 wrote:

This is what I'm thinking of. Pressure = and advantage.

To a small degree, yes, but it's pretty hard to put any kind of pressure onto someone with mill.  For one thing, milling isn't likely to keep someone from using drawing/searching, since when you mill them, they know what cards are left into their deck, and thus whether or not it's worthwhile to use certain effects.  Secondly, unlike damage, the pressure from milling doesn't discourage someone from attacking you (damage forces a playere to keep their creatures untapped for blocking).  This of course, not even taking into account how easy mill is to sideboard against, and how many decks actually benefit from getting milled. 

That's true but as it gets used they hit that do-or-die stage were they need to do something.

And while milling can help them to know what's in their deck that is pointless when their deck can't stop it.

Milling is not a common strategy around here. You'll see a Glimpse around but most rely on burn.

I have 15 ways to mill. Of those 5 are repeatable effects. 3 are activated by damage. 6 are spells.
1 will go huge everytime it's set off and 4 have the potential to go huge based on how they're used. 1 is a land. 5 mill on a small scale but can do it repeatedly. 8 have high toughness and can handle most beatings.

I have around 8 or 9 counterspells and 3 ways to tutor the cheapest of them. As well as 1 way to reload my deck with the spells I already used. 1 way to recure creatures and 2 bombs.

This deck can put a lot of pressure on someone because of the fact that it throws a lot of stuff at them to prevent their comeback.

    

Oh yeah. Milling also creates card advantage by nullifying your opponent's Vampirics, Harbingers, Tops, and other cards that affect the top card of their library. Which, admittedly, won't happen too much.

That would yeild a more direct advantage.

Jan 11, 2010 -- 9:31PM, wormer105 wrote:

This is what I'm thinking of. Pressure = and advantage.

If we are to have a relevant discussion, then trying to redefine terms used for over 10 years (Card Advantage) in order to describe your deck as doing something it doesn't is perhaps not the best way to proceed.

I mean, you could say that burning someone down to one life and leaving them there would cut them from their Sign in Blood and fetchlands and as such provide virtual card advantage too, but that's really a corner case.

Yeah, a lot of mill available puts pressure on your opponent. But then again, so does Forest->Hierarch->Mountain->Thoctar or BBE cascading into Blightning.

Jan 11, 2010 -- 11:14PM, CorwinB wrote:

Jan 11, 2010 -- 9:31PM, wormer105 wrote:

This is what I'm thinking of. Pressure = and advantage.

If we are to have a relevant discussion, then trying to redefine terms used for over 10 years (Card Advantage) in order to describe your deck as doing something it doesn't is perhaps not the best way to proceed.

I mean, you could say that burning someone down to one life and leaving them there would cut them from their Sign in Blood and fetchlands and as such provide virtual card advantage too, but that's really a corner case.

Yeah, a lot of mill available puts pressure on your opponent. But then again, so does Forest->Hierarch->Mountain->Thoctar or BBE cascading into Blightning.

I'm not changing how you define things but saying how I define it. Direct advantage and indirect advantage is a simple concept.

Mill grants indirect advantage.

Burn when used in the right places can grant at the very least direct advantage as it directly effects the board.

Counterspells are generally neutral in advantage as you just 1 for 1ed them and kept the game state stationary.

Every player evaluates cards differently.  

I agree that mill is next to useless if you can't do anything with it.

But in a deck where milling is a win condition wouldn't every milled card be a step in that direction?

Beyond that milling any opponent down to 10 cards while it didn't finish the job puts you in a decent place to win anyway right?

Jan 12, 2010 -- 12:02AM, wormer105 wrote:

I'm not changing how you define things but saying how I define it. Direct advantage and indirect advantage is a simple concept.

Mill grants indirect advantage.

What you defined are the already existing concepts of real card advantage and virtual card advantage. 

Burn when used in the right places can grant at the very least direct advantage as it directly effects the board.

Counterspells are generally neutral in advantage as you just 1 for 1ed them and kept the game state stationary.

Every player evaluates cards differently.  

No, the methods for evaluating cards are pretty much universal, since everything you've described falls within the spectrum of Tempo, parity, and card advantage concepts, which are long established facets of card evaluation.  

Jan 11, 2010 -- 9:18PM, wormer105 wrote:

Nor do cards in hand until they're used.

Let's rephrase, then. Cards in your library can't do anything--they cannot be used because you do not have access to them. Cards in your hand can be used, because you do.

Jan 11, 2010 -- 9:18PM, wormer105 wrote:

1 card in their deck that gets milled means that barring recursion they no longer have access to that card.

They didn't have access to it in the library, either.

A strong milling strategy will indeed put pressure on your opponent, but putting your opponent on a clock is not the same thing as generating card advantage, not even virtual card advantage. The feeling that indiscriminate milling consistently hurts your opponent in some tangible way is nothing more than an illusion, brought about by cognitive bias. You see what you milled, and make a decision about whether or not the milling 'worked' based on that. But that's not right. The important thing when determining whether or not the milling 'worked' isn't the cards you milled. It's the cards your opponent actually drew, and you didn't see those. So how are you supposed to know whether it worked or not?

The next few games you play a deck casually that has milling cards in it, ask your opponents if they'll participate in an experiment with you. Ask them to keep milled cards face-down, not even looking at them themselves, not even at the end of the game, but instead to reveal the cards they draw, after you start milling. And remember that your opponent would not have drawn those cards if you hadn't milled him right to them--you are directly responsible for him drawing those cards.

After playing a bunch of games like this, you'll probably be feeling a little less friendly towards the idea of milling-as-gaining-advantage, even though nothing about how those games played out was any different than when you were milling normally.

Jan 11, 2010 -- 9:28PM, wormer105 wrote:

Indirect is like milling, and burn directed at players. It does nothing to affect a game state directly.

But indirectly it puts pressure on players.

Directly are cards like burn directed at creatures, and straight removal.

There there is a gray situational advantage. Counters and discard belong here because they are good for keeping a game stable.

That's not a form of card advantage, though. That's pressure; that's time; that's a clock. Which is something completely different from card advantage.

StarCity has an extract of Patrick Chapin's book that deals with Card Advantage, with an explicit section on why milling doesn't represent CA :
www.starcitygames.com/magic/misc/17541_N...

What about Millstone?  Does this destroy two cards a turn?

No, Millstone does not. Cards you have not yet drawn are not the type of resource we talk about when we talk about card economy. The cards in your library are a fixed resource at the beginning of the game — and if you don't act, they will never replenish themselves. The cards in your library are discussed more in the section The Philosophy of Fire.

Actually, to many people's surprise, Millstoning your opponent can be a double-edged sword. You do gain the knowledge of some of the cards they play, you take away options from when they are Tutoring cards, and if they run out of cards, they lose… but there are a lot of cards in Magic that benefit people from the graveyard.

Whether we are talking Dredge, Tarmogoyf, Flashback, Unearth, reanimation, Delve, Incarnations like Wonder, or Threshold, there are countless ways for people to take advantage of the cards in their graveyard.

Jan 11, 2010 -- 9:13PM, Flopfoot wrote:

I think the most popular card from Ravnica block was Doubling Season .

Incidentally I was in a Ravnica draft once where my first opponent milled my Doubling Season with Glimpse in both games. Granted, I still won, but I found it mildly amusing.

Okay folks lesson learned.

Mill does not mean card advantage.

But one thing I disagree on.

"And remember that your opponent would not have drawn those cards if you hadn't milled him right to them--you are directly responsible for him drawing those cards."

We can't stop an opponent from drawingn (I can't anyway). When you mill there is no guarantee you'll get the meanest in the deck.

No disagreement here.

But on that same note there's no guarantee you'll NOT get them neither.

And in a mill deck every card taken from his deck brings your deck closer to winning.

Mill like any other part of this game has a downside. There is a bit of gambling involved.

Thanks for the info.  

Jan 12, 2010 -- 12:10AM, wormer105 wrote:

But in a deck where milling is a win condition wouldn't every milled card be a step in that direction?

Yes, it is. But that's because it's progress towards a goal, not because the individual steps accomplish anything in and of themselves other than being said progress.

When the goal is to deck the opponent, milling applies pressure--the number of cards left in his library becomes a measurement of time. (Three turns until I mill him out, two turns until I mill him out...) But it doesn't matter what exact cards were milled--that's completely irrelevant. All that matters is the time measurement.

Jan 12, 2010 -- 12:10AM, wormer105 wrote:

Beyond that milling any opponent down to 10 cards while it didn't finish the job puts you in a decent place to win anyway right?

No, it does not. Not in the long run, over the course of multiple games. In some games, you will happen to mill all of his business cards and he won't be able to do much. Fine. But in other games, you will not have milled the business cards, and the ten cards left in his library will allow him to kill you before he runs out.

And here's the important thing. In the long run, over the course of multiple games, the chances of him winning within those ten cards is exactly the same as the chances of him winning the game with the ten cards that he would have drawn if you hadn't milled anything at all.

Jan 12, 2010 -- 12:32AM, zammm wrote:

Jan 12, 2010 -- 12:10AM, wormer105 wrote:

But in a deck where milling is a win condition wouldn't every milled card be a step in that direction?

Yes, it is. But that's because it's progress towards a goal, not because the individual steps accomplish anything in and of themselves other than being said progress.

When the goal is to deck the opponent, milling applies pressure--the number of cards left in his library becomes a measurement of time. (Three turns until I mill him out, two turns until I mill him out...) But it doesn't matter what exact cards were milled--that's completely irrelevant. All that matters is the time measurement.

Jan 12, 2010 -- 12:10AM, wormer105 wrote:

Beyond that milling any opponent down to 10 cards while it didn't finish the job puts you in a decent place to win anyway right?

No, it does not. Not in the long run, over the course of multiple games. In some games, you will happen to mill all of his business cards and he won't be able to do much. Fine. But in other games, you will not have milled the business cards, and the ten cards left in his library will allow him to kill you before he runs out.

And here's the important thing. In the long run, over the course of multiple games, the chances of him winning within those ten cards is exactly the same as the chances of him winning the game with the ten cards that he would have drawn if you hadn't milled anything at all.

Well to me a milling deck needs lots of defense. Isn't it realistic to believe that the defenses on your board can defend you if his earlier efforts didn't manage it? I'm not talking half-hearted attempts but a serious counterattack that you survived.

Jan 12, 2010 -- 12:10AM, wormer105 wrote:

Beyond that milling any opponent down to 10 cards while it didn't finish the job puts you in a decent place to win anyway right?

That's just like bringing an opponent down to 2 life or to 9 poison counters. Not an one-sided rout, certainly, since you came close to implementing your game plan, but still a loss if you can't finish the job. The last mill deck I tried (using Hedron Crab powered by fetches and the Path to Exile/Archive Trap combo) often ends one turn short of winning against fast decks.

Finishing 2nd place at a tournament is good, finishing second place in a single game is not.

One thing you need to remember is that apart from tutoring, you see a very small part of your deck in each given game. Since many (if not most) Magic games are over by turn 10 (currently in Standard both RDW and Boros can kill you by turn 4-5), you will generally get to see your initial 7 or 6 cards hand, plus 9 or 10 cards depending on you drawing or playing first. Cascade, tutoring and whatever pathetic draw is available in Standard can give you a couple extra cards, but that's about it. You generally don't see more than 1/3 of your deck in a given game, with a good portion of that being your starting hand.

My personal choices for defenses are Wall of Denial/Deceit, Belltower Sphinx, and Guile all backed up by as large supply of counterspells. 

Jan 12, 2010 -- 12:48AM, CorwinB wrote:

Jan 12, 2010 -- 12:10AM, wormer105 wrote:

Beyond that milling any opponent down to 10 cards while it didn't finish the job puts you in a decent place to win anyway right?

That's just like bringing an opponent down to 2 life or to 9 poison counters. Not an one-sided rout, certainly, since you came close to implementing your game plan, but still a loss if you can't finish the job. The last mill deck I tried (using Hedron Crab powered by fetches and the Path to Exile/Archive Trap combo) often ends one turn short of winning against fast decks.

Finishing 2nd place at a tournament is good, finishing second place in a single game is not.

Bringing them down to 2 life and going no further is not what I meant. Life barring some sort of payment for a card or damage will not decrease. Poison counters will not increase without damage (I not familiar with poison).

But you deck decreases in size every turn. Yes you get those in hand but if they couldn't beat you before with their best efforts why is it a stretch to believe that they can do it in 10 cards time?

Jan 12, 2010 -- 12:52AM, wormer105 wrote:

But you deck decreases in size every turn. Yes you get those in hand but if they couldn't beat you before with their best efforts why is it a stretch to believe that they can do it in 10 cards time?

Because unless you have some additional milling going on, 10 cards left in deck equals 10 more turns to play, which is a long, long time in the current environment.

Jan 12, 2010 -- 2:57AM, CorwinB wrote:

Jan 12, 2010 -- 12:52AM, wormer105 wrote:

But you deck decreases in size every turn. Yes you get those in hand but if they couldn't beat you before with their best efforts why is it a stretch to believe that they can do it in 10 cards time?

Because unless you have some additional milling going on, 10 cards left in deck equals 10 more turns to play, which is a long, long time in the current environment.

Well chances are I would but yeah. This current setup rolls like lightening.

 

Okay I've be looking over the SCGs site and mill would be defined as a time advantage in a deck made to mill out the opponent right?

And at the later stages it applies pressure by making them ask themselves if they can blow through the defenses and get rid of the millers with only X cards in their deck. 

what point are you trying to make, wormer?

Jan 12, 2010 -- 3:29PM, quitequieter wrote:

what point are you trying to make, wormer?

I'm not I'm trying to work out theirs.

Jan 12, 2010 -- 4:19PM, wormer105 wrote:

Jan 12, 2010 -- 3:29PM, quitequieter wrote:

what point are you trying to make, wormer?

I'm not I'm trying to work out theirs.

Milling = Direct Damage = Poision Counters, in that they all give up card advantage in order to bring you a step closer to winning.

Now mill definitely has the edge here in that the last steps can be done on auto-pilot, having to draw a card, but that doesn't change these important similarities.

The same pressure applies against a burn deck. If I'm at 6 life, I also have to ask myself If I can blow through their defenses and win before my opponent draws enough extra cards to deal 6 damage

Jan 11, 2010 -- 12:03PM, longshot356 wrote:

I absolutely agree with Hacimen. The last two articles have been symptomatic of WOTC inconsistent, self indulgent approach to card design at the moment. Blue is neutered because "some people don't like to play counters" while milling is celebrated despite being the most despised strategy available.

But the chief designer likes it...

Makes politicians seems like altruists.

No, they are not designing for themselves, and they are not designing for us. They are designing for the masses. And sadly, many of us don't fall in that masses part.

in a 60 card deck, 1 damage = 3 cards milled. so when you think about it that way, glimpse the unthinkable is 3.33 damage to target player for at sorcery speed. doesn't seem very good, now, does it?

hedron crab, on the other hand, is a 0/2 for (fairly decent blocker) that reads "landfall: deal 1 damage to target player" or "landfall: potentially load up your graveyard with some goodies." which sounds much better, because it's repeatable, versatile, and doesn't seem as card disadvantagey as a one shot milling-only spell. it's the versatile milling stuff that i like the most.

MaRo doesn't stress this, but nondiscriminate milling is secondarily black, right?  Otherwise Glimpse the Unthinkable, Memory Sluice, etc. would make no sense as blue/black rather than mono-blue cards.

Jan 13, 2010 -- 8:36AM, quitequieter wrote:

in a 60 card deck, 1 damage = 3 cards milled. so when you think about it that way, glimpse the unthinkable is 3.33 damage to target player for at sorcery speed. doesn't seem very good, now, does it?

hedron crab, on the other hand, is a 0/2 for (fairly decent blocker) that reads "landfall: deal 1 damage to target player" or "landfall: potentially load up your graveyard with some goodies." which sounds much better, because it's repeatable, versatile, and doesn't seem as card disadvantagey as a one shot milling-only spell. it's the versatile milling stuff that i like the most.

I agree with that but don't forget that a player also draws cards. So when the game starts it's already 53 cards (if the opponent didn't mulligan). By the time you reach the mana for casting glimpse it can very well be already 50 cards in their deck. The thing with mill is that while it can be calculated as damage, you can't forget that your opponent is taking more or less 0,4 damage every draw step. it doesn't seem to good, but mill plays like control so as time passes by it makes a difference.

Anyway I totally agree that repeatable and versatile mill is a lot better, but sometimes a Cathartic Adept isn't as good as a simple Memory Sluice .

Jan 13, 2010 -- 8:36AM, quitequieter wrote:

in a 60 card deck, 1 damage = 3 cards milled. so when you think about it that way, glimpse the unthinkable is 3.33 damage to target player for at sorcery speed. doesn't seem very good, now, does it?

hedron crab, on the other hand, is a 0/2 for (fairly decent blocker) that reads "landfall: deal 1 damage to target player" or "landfall: potentially load up your graveyard with some goodies." which sounds much better, because it's repeatable, versatile, and doesn't seem as card disadvantagey as a one shot milling-only spell. it's the versatile milling stuff that i like the most.

Me too. I may be somewhat new at this (don't have any topflight players here) but even I know that 1-shot mill is a lousy bet.


Every mill card in my deck comes along with something else. Lifegain, a sizable body, a counterspell.

I would like a Hedron Crab or 2 to add in.

Jan 13, 2010 -- 9:11AM, OmegaM wrote:

MaRo doesn't stress this, but nondiscriminate milling is secondarily black, right?  Otherwise Glimpse the Unthinkable, Memory Sluice, etc. would make no sense as blue/black rather than mono-blue cards.

for a while i have been assuming that because some shifted cards in futuresight became legit cards in later sets (gossamer phantasm --> illusionary servant,  mana tithe --> lapse of certainty, etc), unusual hybrid cards represented legit shifts in color pie as well (waves of aggression --> combat doubling in white as well as red, memory sluice --> indescriminate milling in black, etc). sort of easing into the shift rather than doing it abruptly. but it will take time to see if this is correct. it's also possible that they were just a bit loose with hybrid.

regarding the white extra combat phase, i was a bit confused by people's remarks (including maro's) on finest hour. to me, the extra combat was paid for with the white, and the other colors were from its exalted bantiness. but maybe waves of aggression wasn't a precedent, just a really weird card. and same for memory sluice. i'd like to see some straight black milling, but based on this article it's only when black is paired with blue that this happens.

The idea of milling is cool, and it has been balanced in constructed, but I think it's getting out of control in multiplayer (mostly 2 Headed Giant).

There are so many cards that mill 10 or more cards off the top of the library (Traumatize, Archive Trap, Haunting Echoes cast after a mill spell, Twincast), plus some permanents that can repeatedly mill such as Hedron Crab. 

I have 3 problems with this:

First of all, alternate win conditions aren't so cool if you don't have to jump through hoops to achieve it. It's easy to build a deck just by playing more and more copies of the same effect. With the current state, it's like making a deck out of lots of cheap, efficient Lava Axes and playing them every turn without interacting.

Secondly, in formats like 2 Headed Giant, you have 40 life. Wrath of Gods from either player will still wipe the entire board, so fast assaults are risky. Games are expected to be slower. It is a glorious format where people can bring out their Timmy mythic rares, while still being more tempo conscious than in Elder Dragon Highlander. But with mill, the opponent's deck has the same 60 or so cards as in a 1-on-1 game. The mill player usually only needs to take out one of the opposing players in order to make it virtually unwinnable for the opponent. People must face a very short, un-interactive clock, and it warps the environment.

Thirdly, currently there are no good answers for mill in standard (other than winning first, which is very difficult to do in 2HG for reasons above). 1-2 copies of Quest for Ancient Secrets is likely to get milled itself before you draw it, and multiple copies would dilute your deck. You can't put it in the sideboard since very few multiplayer games use the sideboard.

Milling sucks in 2hg and I hope they print some decent way to combat it. Reprinting Gaea's Blessing or creating another equal card would be nice. Quest for Ancient Secrets should have been an anti-mill Trap card, not a Quest card! 

Jan 15, 2010 -- 12:45AM, Chah wrote:

alternate win conditions aren't so cool if you don't have to jump through hoops to achieve it. It's easy to build a deck just by playing more and more copies of the same effect. With the current state, it's like making a deck out of lots of cheap, efficient Lava Axes and playing them every turn without interacting.

since milling isn't actually consistently good or competitive (when it is, it's arguably that the strategy around it, like control or fog, is what's good and competitive), i would say putting a lot of cards that don't affect board position and may have absolutely no positive effect for you is enough hoops. and also i don't think everyone agrees with you about the mandatory hoops, anyway.

and i feel compelled to point out that the lava axe strategy has existed for a while. many red decks play that way. you just play hasty cheap beaters and burn to the face to win as fast as possible. it's arguably more interactive than "turn 1, lava axe. turn 2, lava axe, turn 3..." but not by much and the end result is the same. if lava axe costed 1, 2, and 3, people would play it happily and enjoy themselves doing it.

currently there are no good answers for mill in standard (other than winning first, which is very difficult to do in 2HG for reasons above). 1-2 copies of Quest for Ancient Secrets is likely to get milled itself before you draw it, and multiple copies would dilute your deck. You can't put it in the sideboard since very few multiplayer games use the sideboard.

it sounds like the problem is the lack of sideboards, which is unfortunately a part of the 2hg format (from what i've read). what you need is something like loaming shaman, which is a decent beater even if you're not using his antimill ability, and has the added benefit of shutting down dredge type strategies. i can see how the lack of a card like that could pose a problem in a one game format.