Magic: The Gathering

[Chaoschrist]

Beware of Mill decks. They are lame.

Why so? I can protect my beasties. I can protect myself. But unless you have counter spells (and thus some kind of blue presence) there are pitifully few ways to protect your library. It also makes for a very dull game in my opinion. A bit like 'playing' a table top game by preventing your opponent deploying their army.

Isn't this pretty much with a lot of decktactics. People will dislike it and complain about how they can't deal with a lot that easily.

Mill would be one, but there's also Land destruction, which is something a lot of people complain about. And what about Combo decks? And let's not forget the current influx of infect/poison

I'm not adressing this to anyone specific (even if this is a reply to a post), but looking at the Magic community I'm part of (mostly Magic Online), some people will complain about anything that's not geared towards playing a few creatures and turning them sideways and sludging it out with other creatures and eventually doing 20 to your opponent. And even people complain about this, because people think that this is degenerating the game itself.

As for mill decks; I can think of a few solutions that are not blue. Chances are if you pack those, they'll pick up their deck and move on to the next player since they can hardly beat it. Here's a list;

- Emrakul, the aeons torn (or any of those big Eldrazi, just as tech versus mill decks) - Colorless
- Elixer of Immortality - Colorless
- Wheel of sun and moon - green/white
- Leyline of Sanctity (and other things that give you as a player shroud/hexproof) - white
- Gaea's Blessing - green

And let's not forget anything that reanimates creatures from your graveyard (mostly black). Versus mill decks it's pretty much toolboxing what you need.

Is it ridiculous to put card X in your deck to face such a deck? I doubt it... at some point you'll run into people that use other means to win. And as long as WotC prints them, I guess they consider those tactics valid enough. Against some types of decks you just have a bad match-up, even if it's just casual play.

[Tzeentch's Dark Agent]

I used a mono blue Jace Mill deck once. It was amazing.

[Mr Mystery]

To be fair, it's been years since I last played, and only ever against friends.

Difference is, anyone can tackle a direct damage deck, or a token deck as well as any other. But when I was a regular player, there was no way to protect your library, and horrendous combos to attack it. Hence I feel it makes for a very dull game. To my mind, it's akin to taking part in a boxing match where your opponent and your opponent alone is allowed to punch and kick below the belt.

[Tzeentch's Dark Agent]

There is now. Elixir of Immortality, gain 5 life, shuffle your graveyard into your deck.

*puts finger up at Jace*

[Mr Mystery]

Meh. Doesn't help with 5 years of 'oh. You've attacked my library. What a tactical genius'

One of the reasons I stopped playing. Just got repetitive being taken out by the same tactic the makers of the game couldn't be arsed to address, despite making more cards which worked in that way.

[Tzeentch's Dark Agent]

There isn't really a proper mill deck in standard anymore. So I suppose that's one thing.
I mean, Jace is still a douche, but you can just kill him and ruin your enemy's plan.

[Chronowraith]

There isn't really a proper mill deck in standard anymore. So I suppose that's one thing.
I mean, Jace is still a douche, but you can just kill him and ruin your enemy's plan.

What TDA said... there are cards that defend against deck destruction like the elixir or the ancient Feldon's Cane. Most people have one of these in their sideboard at least.

Also, zombie or graveyard decks are the counter to mill decks as the process of milling actually helps them get critters into their graveyard. This is the primary reason you don't see many mill decks since the Innistrad block saw several graveyard deck types surface (that were extremely powerful). Gravecrawler anyone?

[Wildeybeast]

1) The ideal Deck Size is 60 cards. The reason for this being that you have a better % chance to draw the card you need on a given turn. 100 card decks offer a lot of choice and flexibility but rarely provide that necessary card at the right time.

2) If you run out of cards to draw, you lose. There are entire decks built to make the opponent remove cards from their library and put them straight into the graveyard (usually referred to as Mill decks).

As for the comment about lands, common consensus is typically that 1/4 - 1/3 of a standard format deck should be land. Some decks need a little more, some decks can get away with less. For the unrestricted decks that use cards as far back as the Alpha/Beta sets they use far less lands because, over time, WotC has released a number of 0 casting cost artifacts that give mana such as Moxes and Black Lotus. For everyday decks you'll see at most tournaments or friendly play... 1/4 - 1/3.

Thanks for the advice, it's kinda what I figured, but glad to hear someone confirm it.

Beware of Mill decks. They are lame.

Why so? I can protect my beasties. I can protect myself. But unless you have counter spells (and thus some kind of blue presence) there are pitifully few ways to protect your library. It also makes for a very dull game in my opinion. A bit like 'playing' a table top game by preventing your opponent deploying their army.

I've come across these in the Xbox version of the game (done by the AI interestingly enough). It was well bent. On there it was blue focused decks that did this. Are other colours capable of doing it?

[Wildeybeast]

Another question: how do the 'character' cards like Jace and Lillana work? What's the deal with those numbers on the black shield things?

[Tzeentch's Dark Agent]

No. The main areas for each colour are:
Blue - Control
Red - Burn
Green - Aggro
Black - Graveyard
White - Life