I meant Cabal Therapy, a rock staple from years past.
I'm not sure anyone doesn't think of Eternal Witness or Profane Command as card advantage. However thinking of Maelstorm Pulse as CA is flawed. Think of it as a 1 for 1 with the occasional upside of being more. Not sure how that makes them harder to play.
But seriously play the Gifts-Thopter deck or Depths-Thopter before making the statement that the rock deck is the hardest to play. The current Tezzeret deck is one of the hardest to play decks I've ever seen. You'll make a play and not even notice a mistake until two turns later.
I'm sorry but saying the rock is the hardest deck to play makes no sense. Picking what creatures to kill and what card to Witness back is no brain science. I'm not saying it is an easy deck to play perfectly but far from the hardest.
Milling hate, IMHO, has much less to do with the interactivity level and much more to do with, as the author states, players being emotionally attached to their decks. The same psychological thing at work in Tom LaPille's article "Singing the Blues" (http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/ld/72), in which he points out that, even to highly-logical pro-level players, having creature countered with Essence Scatter just feels worse than having it hit with a Doom Blade a moment later. People don't like the feeling that they are being prevented from resolving their spells, thus the hate for countermagic, discard, and land destruction.
Logically, getting milled for seven is simply rerandomizing your draw, but for many casual players, getting milled for seven has the psychological impact of getting mind twisted for seven, or having seven spells countered. The large number of people that continue to play singleton mill cards with no other function in Limited speaks to the way the milling is misunderstood. "It must be a good inclusion because it sucks so hard to have cards milled."
I would also put forth that players don't like having their pants pulled down, so to speak. Archive Trap for 13 on turn two frequently reveals the entire game plan of the deck being milled, and it almost feels like an invasion of privacy, the stealing of secrets. In single-game matches, this information doesn't even do much for the mill player ("Yup, still going to try and mill them out.").
One anonymous poster cries, "I hate mill so much!!!!! you never win..." This, of course, is ridiculous. Mill players are dedicating so many resources to attacking libraries that they are quite vulnerable to creatures. I have a mill deck that wins maybe 35% of the time, and a quarter of those "wins" are to concessions at the first sign of a mill effect. (Granted, it could be that I've created a terrible mill deck, but I definitely win most of my games against mill decks with random creature decks in the casual room.)
I wouldn't say the interactivity level has nothing to do with hating mill strategies, but in my experience, it's primarily the same psychological effect at work with countermagic and discard. "My beautiful, beautiful spells, sent to the graveyard without ever having a chance to do their thing!"
Well despite numerous syntax errors and misspellings your English is really just fine. Articulate and verbose.
My problem with your argument is that it discludes people like myself who are not newbs nor pros and who may have a limited budget or access to cards and who may not want to face tourney quality decks every game. I am not saying that mill is tier 1 (it usually isn't, with the exception of combo mill, like turbo fog and stroking moma). I am saying that it often rises above the casual level and is competitive in tourneys despite not winning at the top tiers.
This is the annoyance: It can be superfast, unstoppable and noninteractive. It isn't always and I've beaten mill decks with my very jank rogue decks in a variety of formats. I've also run mill or combo mill so I am not arguing against playing it. I am just saying reserve it for more serious gaming.
That really is the crux of the issue. I am (for one) all for whatever you bring, but PLEASE don't bore me to death. (Or ignore my hellos.) If I face 13 out 15 mill decks and half of them win by turn 4 I'm going to start declining matches where I know my deck has no chance. Simple common sense.
Some people go further than that and block those who annoy them with said decks but I feel that is overkill. Usually a simple word to the wise suffices. "Please don't join my not-at-all-ready-for-primetime game with your mill deck, thank you kindly."
That hasn't happened in a few years. The last time I did it was when someone insisted on playing vs my deck with 4x gaea's blessings. And every time he lost he insisted I was lucky. So I asked him to not play me anymore and he agreed.
PT Jank just uses slow unconventional card advantage, like people think of card advantage like draw spells sadly. People don't see Witness as card advantage, same with pulse or Profane command. It's the hardest deck to pilot because it's got so many flexible options and plays. Like you said, when to putrefy, or other things to do. I think you meant skull clamp instead of cranial extraction btw.
That's definitely true about the aggressive starts. I've been suffering that recently whenever I lead with T1 vampire lacerator. You either just get a concession, or a "ugh, vamps".
He's actually the only vampire in my deck (it's r/b, trying to set up bloodchief ascenscion).
I find myself agreeing with you. The diversity of the possible decks is one of this game's great draws for me. If I get tired of playing one deck, I make or play another. The "what is casual?" debate seems to have gone on endlessly since I started MTGO back in beta testing. There was a time when I tried to break into the standard constructed scene, and have some 2+ year old standard tier 1 decks saved. I also have all kinds of funky stuff I've come up with over the years. I have taken my fair share of ideas from Magic Deck Vortex and tweaked them. I have hundreds of decks. I'd say nothing I have right now would be consistently competitive vs. today's standard decks, so playing almost anything I have in the tournament practice room (if I can actually find someone playing classic there) means getting the patootie beaten out of me. And sometimes I get a hankering to run an old ichorid dredge deck, urzatron, angelfire, etc just for nostalgia's sake. It seems that no matter what I play - be it aggro, counters, mill, hand disruption, tribal, bounce, burn, etc ad nauseum, there will be someone who gets angry and disconnects, or is rude, or blames me for netdecking (without noticing that I am running a 1394-card 5-color deck and just happened to play one card that's used in the current standard environment, sigh).
I also will play whatever comes my way without complaint - whether it's current T2, jank, any of the hated archtypes. If I know the deck I'm playing against has me by the you-know-whats, I will usually at some point when it's clear they've got the game, congratulate them on a nice deck/nice job, concede, and move on. It takes only a second to leave with a polite or encouraging comment and harms me none at all. If I really didn't want to play against certain decks, it's a simple matter to put something about that in the game description (exaggeration to make a point: "please play land-only decks so I can have a chance to win!", or something of the sort).
I've just given up trying to please everyone, to a degree. I play what I want, know I'll get some flak occasionally, and try to stay polite. Like the author I'm 40 years old. I'm pretty limited to casual even though I have an extensive collection. I work 70+ hours a week as a collegiate athletic coach, have a newborn and a six-year old, and just want to play as a stress-release with a minimum of fanfare or trouble.
From my particular faith perspective I tend to view all of us as "falling short of the mark" and therefore tend to be more accepting of/patient with peoples' failings (in this case, their ability to deal politely with 'setbacks' or things that irritate them). I guess working with college students and playing dad/listener/decision-maker to so many on a daily basis, I have to be pretty accepting sometimes and know that what people write while playing magic may not necessarily be an accurate representation of who they are as a person. Many people who play MTGO, I would guess, don't come from the same life/career background as I, so I can't expect everyone on MTGO to take my perspective. I would just encourage people to be clear in their description what they are looking for, and not get too worked up when somebody drops a deck on them that they realize they don't like, but didn't put in their description.
That said, I also encourage people to read the descriptions before they click. Many people don't, and that can be irritating when one specifically says, "No _________" in the description and the first card someone drops is that. And it happens five games in a row, so you've just wasted 15 minutes - not because YOU did something wrong, but because somebody else didn't do their part. The only time I specify stuff is when I have a 1000+ card deck, make it 10 card hand/40 life just because my deck is huge and random and fun, and somebody doesn't read my description. Game starts, I put 40 life on, and then see the person puts 20 or 1 or whatever so I just concede. Or, they quit once they see that I've set the game up differently. And it happens 5 times in a row.
I also don't buy into the "anti-deck archtype" sentiment. To me, what is the difference between a creature spell that gets countered, or a token that gets bounced into oblivion, or a creature card that someone is forced to discard, or a creature that gets swords-to-plowshared, or a bunch of shrouded creatures that get wrathed? They all get denied before they can actually do anything (unless they have comes into play effects, but hopefully you get my point). Yet people go ballistic over the discard/counter, yet it's ok if someone lightning helixes their mana birds or what have you. I think the author is dead-on about an emotional attachment to deck resources that is perhaps not completely logical if you look at the big picture. I also don't buy 100% into some of the comments about mill or whatever being "non-interactive". It's interactive, just in a different way.
As I finish, the last statement: as I said earlier, I know some people will always disagree with me and oh well. Hopefully I made my points, don't know how relevant they will be to a large percentage of the readers here.
Cheers, have a great day. Maybe I'll see some of you in the casual room.
Some kind of intermediate room would be the dream (call it "tuned" or something, to show that it means decks which aren't just casual nonsense, but aren't proven tournament staples), but i feel it'd still get abused like the current system, and you'd end up playing jund in every room still.
thank you for the reply, that is clearer in my mind now. As i said, i dont know enough the EXT meta, so these logical explanations help me to learn it.
"Perhaps PT Jank decks are the hardest to pilot, as their card advantage is unconventional."
What? Have you played Thopter-Gifts? Have you seen Depths-Thopter? Those are hard decks to play not knowing when to Putrefy.
Also the RDW matchup isn't that bad for Fae. They can't beat an active Jitte, you can counter a lot of their spells and they run out of gas, or you can board something like Sun Droplet.
@ L0urs
Why in the world does Rock want Bloodghast? It doesn't block. Rock's game plan is the grind the game out not attack with a 2/1. If Cranial Extraction was still legal there might be some value but not now. Use Life from the Loam and Worm Harvest if you want a recursive threat. As far as your comments on EE I don't follow you. They key cards to EE are: one-drops from zoo, zombies from dredge, tarmogoyf, and thpoter foundry. Don't see where 3cmc comes in. You can also easily run a third color if you want to explode for three. Better yet if you want a card like that run Damnation as Pulse and Putrefy can take care of non-creatures.
Quote / "Arguing that mill isn't a tiered deck isn't the same thing as saying it is fair for casual play. Since this is all subjective you need to understand the pov of those who decry the deck archetype. From their pov they don't necessarily even OWN bloodghasts and other tourney worthy cards. They are merely using whatever hodgepodge they can pull together. They might have some good cards, some bad cards and some "omg why are you playing this crap?" cards. This is the nature of casual play."
Thank you for your answer Paul. I will try to enlarge the debate.
My pov is very different. I know this debate is unsolved until now, i dont argue to solve it and i dont argue my arguments to be true or false. I will just explain my pov and why i am defending Mill in that room also.
The casual room is not only the beginner room, and this room doesnt require to build deck only with cards without any value, or without any current use. This is a free place to test some mecanics of the game, unexplored or underexplored. Yes, if the results of your matches are over 75% of victory, then you should go in the TP room because it is possible that your build became competitive. I strongly believe that some of the best Tier 1 decks are born in the casual area. If i take the example of classic, Necrospike is born in this room. It became the best archetype this format knew last year. If you are running Bazaar of Baghdad does not involve that your deck is uncasual. I could say the same thing with FoW ...
In that view, there should also not be forbidden mechanic in causual room : something like "Mill forbidden, discard forbidden, burn forbidden" in the casual room has no sense to me. If it was the case, then there will be a huge pool of cards only usable in TP room, where it is simply impossible to have fun with because of the Tier 1 deck you will find there (especialy true in Classic currently). "Established Tier 1 decks forbidden in the casual room" should be much fairer imo : I am strongly against to see an EXT zoo build in it as i saw recently in example...
My feeling is that :
1) there should be an intermediate room (or a beginner room) to avoid sentences like "to play Planeswalker/mill here is gay" (your opponent lost the connection) as i saw huge amount of times in casual.
2) many players just dont know to loose. You learn much more in the defeat than in the victory. That is as true for you than for your opponent.
3) there is no unfair mechanic in mtg but there are sometimes unfair interactions. Mill is a mechanic, not a specific broken interaction
For all these reasons, i strongly support every kind of deck in casual until they are not pure established competitive decks.
PS : sorry for my pour english skills, i hope it remains understandable
I love the amount of whining that goes on in cas/cas. Its not the fact that you were playing mill persay but more the fact you didnt let your opponent win. I mean there are people in there that concede to certain lands on turn 1. Ive had it happen where I play swamp go and they concede. Then I see two seconds later they have another game up. Most of my decks are all combo decks but they take up to about turn 6-7 to win or at least two turns to go off. Yet I still get complaints. So no matter what you play expect whiners. There just a bunch of crybabies that couldnt win against a pre-con anyways. Trust me I built Sparkler one time and played it in casual, and got concessions right and left for playing a netdeck. For those unaware of what Sparkler is http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/multiplayer/11481_The_Kitchen_Table_1...
"This deck is pretty spectacular in my opinion, and no one should be expecting it."
Yeah I'm sure with a pro tour winner winning a PTQ with this deck and another Pro Tour winner writing about it no one will have heard of it. A donk in round one might be surprised but good players won't be. And a lot of those good players will be playing faeries.
Welcome back to Magic. It's nice to see another old fart around. It is too bad you ran into such boorish behavior, (not that I'm surprised).
One element of this phenomenon in the casual room is perhaps the transition younger players make from Yu-Gi-Oh and Pokeman, which are almost completely critter based, to to the more wide open strategies of magic? Combined with the unfortunate lack of social skills displayed by the young geek population (not to overly generalize), you get a perfect storm of rudeness and frustration?
Just spitballin here.
Great article. I personnally have always loved mill precisely because it is the ultimate "casual" deck strategy. It tends to be slow and it's by no means an autowin or anything close (painters servant/grindstone may be an exception, but I think of that as more combo than mill). It doesn't really stop your opponent from playing their game and I think it gets things exciting because it turns each game into a race of sorts.
I think the biggest abuse of mill players comes from people who do play some top quality decks in the casual room who suddenly can't believe they are losing to such a "pathetic" strategy.
Lours your points are well documented by previous mill proponents. (btw thanks for the tip on quest which Id forgotten because its just a bad card.)
Arguing that mill isn't a tiered deck isn't the same thing as saying it is fair for casual play. Since this is all subjective you need to understand the pov of those who decry the deck archetype. From their pov they don't necessarily even OWN bloodghasts and other tourney worthy cards. They are merely using whatever hodgepodge they can pull together. They might have some good cards, some bad cards and some "omg why are you playing this crap?" cards. This is the nature of casual play.
Yes on occasion the room fills with burn.dec and that is exceedingly annoying...have to break out the answers to that deck just to teach them not to bring it. Same thing with mill. Occasionally everyone and their brother builds mill.dec in some form and in go the Gaea's Blessings and Wheels or super aggro.dec in response.
There is no stable meta for the Casual play room OTHER than knowing that you bring an unfair deck, expect: Cursing, Whining, Concessions, hangups, and blocking. This is the nature of the room.
Just an fyi, it's "Griefers" (as in one who causes grief) and not "Grievers" (which would people who are perpetually sad?)
I enjoy myself a spot of Mill. Always have, always will. If someone comes to the table with a mill deck, I play and move on. I don't understand all the pent up hostility that people unleash on people because of MTG. Do I want to win? Yes. Do I cry like a baby when I lose? No. I get frustrated, sure, but I don't take it out on my opp. Life is too short to be doing that crap. That's why I never understood the shenanigans that happen in the casual room (I've found they also happen in limited when you happen to win with a 40 card pile). I can't tell you the amount of times I've been called "noob" or "gay" because I won with sub-optimal cards.
Whatever. Enjoy yourself. Let the haters hate. Brush the dirt off your shoulder and move on.
Mill decks are as old as Millstone is ... that means long time ago. It was ever one of my favorite tactic, and i also played it a lot in STD.
This tactic is a part of the game, and a lot of cards helped to keep it active during mtg history : Helm of obedience, grindstone, even Oona recently (and so many other). But a focused deck was pretty hard to build because of the lack of key efficient cards until Zendikar. I am VERY HAPPY this shell still exists, it is a good & interesting alternative to common deck build, plus it is often technical to build well.
Playing it in TP only ? Why ? in casual room, i often ran people playing burn, which is at least as uninteractive as mill (and maybe more), and pretty less interesting than mill decks are for many reasons.
Please, go on to play it everywhere you want, MTG isnt a game restricted to turning creature sideways, it is much more than a simple race of creature spell.
Is it a tournament deck ? So why this deck didnt win often tournament ? Come on ... This deck is often slow, often hard to lead to success.
@ Paul : there are still solution to mill. Quest of ancient Secrets is an awesome answer to any mill deck.
And by the way, a good mill deck has to survive to many strong agression (aggro), and has to avoid countermagic ... it is not easy. The best defense is the attack against it, it just needs to be faster than it is. If you add the many recursion card released recently which are heavy played (bloodghast on the top), then this deck cant be considered as unfair. Really. Cant understand people arguing the opposite.
You get the same reaction as someone playing cascade or any of the other 'unfair' strategies. I think a lot of what has been said above is legitimate. People come to casual expecting 'fair' or 'fun' games (cf LE's comments.) Mill does not have a lot of answers. There is no Gaea's Blessing in standard, and even wheel of sun and moon, moved on to extended without a replacement. And so mill seems unfair.
I often comment (with an eyebrow raised) to those playing Mill in the older formats that they risk the emnity of their fellow players bringing such a strategy to the casual table particularly if it is well tuned. Well tuned mill can be top tier and people know it and as a result hate it.
Often the decks aren't all that well tuned and it IS possible to win but I can totally identify with the person who concedes in rage, despair or just plain 'knowledge' that they can't win. It sometimes feels like when I bring a fun deck to casual all the sharks in the neighborhood smell the blood and circle in for their share of the kill. Yet when I bring an unfun deck I get all the abuse you would expect and said sharks are nowhere to be found. Casual is a diverse environment and full of many different types of players.
One other thing. While the game itself has no knowledge of feelings or intent and just is, the activity which brings the game about is social. The casual room is not the place to try out your latest tourney winning strategy. Doing so will generally get predictable results. Not only is it like shooting fish in a barrel, but completely pointless in many cases. I don't consider most mill decks to fall into this category but some do. I used to run Gaea's Blessing in all my decks for that reason, knowing that those tiered mill decks would appear and just win without it. If they ran extirpate main deck well at least they deformed their strategy in order to deal with mine.
Welcome back to the game. I took a rather long vacation from the game myself. Also welcome to puremtgo.
Play pauper, nobody minds what deck you bring, but milling is not really viable in pauper ;-)
Another thing to bear in mind is that in the casual room there are a lots of players who's aim is to never lose games. They wish to ambush opponents. Typically, millers, counterspellers and land destroyers will start single games, not matches, making the most of the surprise factor, and preventing the opponent from sideboarding answers. As you say, milling is fragile and most good players will be favoured against it after sideboarding a faster clock. I'd venture to guess that most of these idiots are not in their forties like you and I and lack maturity.
Anyway, you don't have to listen to their opinions, and you should continue to play anything you want.
I don't think you are missing anything on the milling part. I find people can be very obnoxious in general and milling is just one of the excuses they have for not blaming themselves for not winning.
I recently had a similar experience with someone becoming quite agressive when I cast an Iona, Shield of Emermia naming white against his mono-white tokens deck (this was in the tourney practice room btw). Also I heard several experiences of people who had a very aggressive start with a casual deck in the casuals room but then got accused of playing a tournament level deck just because that start was efficient. Also with the abuse and conceding that goes with it.
I think it doesn't matter what strategy you chose, be it discard, countering or just plain old beating people to death with big creatures. Some people are just douchebags and sore loser and will treat you like this whenever they lose.
I have a question, but not about your deck, it is about The Rock.
This shell is one my favorite : i liked it too much in classic, but right now, it is out of the meta for many reasons. So i was really interested to play it again, and i would probably try it in EXT (waiting for a possible return when Legacy will open its doors).
But i have a question about it as i am not used to EXT meta : why no bloodghast ? In my experience, this little zombie is pretty interesting, especially when you run mass destruction spell a la damnation... Any reason not to play it ? EE is also nice in place of pernicious, but i guess CMC=2 max is not enough to remove the main threat of the format ...
I meant Cabal Therapy, a rock staple from years past.
I'm not sure anyone doesn't think of Eternal Witness or Profane Command as card advantage. However thinking of Maelstorm Pulse as CA is flawed. Think of it as a 1 for 1 with the occasional upside of being more. Not sure how that makes them harder to play.
But seriously play the Gifts-Thopter deck or Depths-Thopter before making the statement that the rock deck is the hardest to play. The current Tezzeret deck is one of the hardest to play decks I've ever seen. You'll make a play and not even notice a mistake until two turns later.
I'm sorry but saying the rock is the hardest deck to play makes no sense. Picking what creatures to kill and what card to Witness back is no brain science. I'm not saying it is an easy deck to play perfectly but far from the hardest.
Milling hate, IMHO, has much less to do with the interactivity level and much more to do with, as the author states, players being emotionally attached to their decks. The same psychological thing at work in Tom LaPille's article "Singing the Blues" (http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/ld/72), in which he points out that, even to highly-logical pro-level players, having creature countered with Essence Scatter just feels worse than having it hit with a Doom Blade a moment later. People don't like the feeling that they are being prevented from resolving their spells, thus the hate for countermagic, discard, and land destruction.
Logically, getting milled for seven is simply rerandomizing your draw, but for many casual players, getting milled for seven has the psychological impact of getting mind twisted for seven, or having seven spells countered. The large number of people that continue to play singleton mill cards with no other function in Limited speaks to the way the milling is misunderstood. "It must be a good inclusion because it sucks so hard to have cards milled."
I would also put forth that players don't like having their pants pulled down, so to speak. Archive Trap for 13 on turn two frequently reveals the entire game plan of the deck being milled, and it almost feels like an invasion of privacy, the stealing of secrets. In single-game matches, this information doesn't even do much for the mill player ("Yup, still going to try and mill them out.").
One anonymous poster cries, "I hate mill so much!!!!! you never win..." This, of course, is ridiculous. Mill players are dedicating so many resources to attacking libraries that they are quite vulnerable to creatures. I have a mill deck that wins maybe 35% of the time, and a quarter of those "wins" are to concessions at the first sign of a mill effect. (Granted, it could be that I've created a terrible mill deck, but I definitely win most of my games against mill decks with random creature decks in the casual room.)
I wouldn't say the interactivity level has nothing to do with hating mill strategies, but in my experience, it's primarily the same psychological effect at work with countermagic and discard. "My beautiful, beautiful spells, sent to the graveyard without ever having a chance to do their thing!"
Well despite numerous syntax errors and misspellings your English is really just fine. Articulate and verbose.
My problem with your argument is that it discludes people like myself who are not newbs nor pros and who may have a limited budget or access to cards and who may not want to face tourney quality decks every game. I am not saying that mill is tier 1 (it usually isn't, with the exception of combo mill, like turbo fog and stroking moma). I am saying that it often rises above the casual level and is competitive in tourneys despite not winning at the top tiers.
This is the annoyance: It can be superfast, unstoppable and noninteractive. It isn't always and I've beaten mill decks with my very jank rogue decks in a variety of formats. I've also run mill or combo mill so I am not arguing against playing it. I am just saying reserve it for more serious gaming.
That really is the crux of the issue. I am (for one) all for whatever you bring, but PLEASE don't bore me to death. (Or ignore my hellos.) If I face 13 out 15 mill decks and half of them win by turn 4 I'm going to start declining matches where I know my deck has no chance. Simple common sense.
Some people go further than that and block those who annoy them with said decks but I feel that is overkill. Usually a simple word to the wise suffices. "Please don't join my not-at-all-ready-for-primetime game with your mill deck, thank you kindly."
That hasn't happened in a few years. The last time I did it was when someone insisted on playing vs my deck with 4x gaea's blessings. And every time he lost he insisted I was lucky. So I asked him to not play me anymore and he agreed.
PT Jank just uses slow unconventional card advantage, like people think of card advantage like draw spells sadly. People don't see Witness as card advantage, same with pulse or Profane command. It's the hardest deck to pilot because it's got so many flexible options and plays. Like you said, when to putrefy, or other things to do. I think you meant skull clamp instead of cranial extraction btw.
That's definitely true about the aggressive starts. I've been suffering that recently whenever I lead with T1 vampire lacerator. You either just get a concession, or a "ugh, vamps".
He's actually the only vampire in my deck (it's r/b, trying to set up bloodchief ascenscion).
I find myself agreeing with you. The diversity of the possible decks is one of this game's great draws for me. If I get tired of playing one deck, I make or play another. The "what is casual?" debate seems to have gone on endlessly since I started MTGO back in beta testing. There was a time when I tried to break into the standard constructed scene, and have some 2+ year old standard tier 1 decks saved. I also have all kinds of funky stuff I've come up with over the years. I have taken my fair share of ideas from Magic Deck Vortex and tweaked them. I have hundreds of decks. I'd say nothing I have right now would be consistently competitive vs. today's standard decks, so playing almost anything I have in the tournament practice room (if I can actually find someone playing classic there) means getting the patootie beaten out of me. And sometimes I get a hankering to run an old ichorid dredge deck, urzatron, angelfire, etc just for nostalgia's sake. It seems that no matter what I play - be it aggro, counters, mill, hand disruption, tribal, bounce, burn, etc ad nauseum, there will be someone who gets angry and disconnects, or is rude, or blames me for netdecking (without noticing that I am running a 1394-card 5-color deck and just happened to play one card that's used in the current standard environment, sigh).
I also will play whatever comes my way without complaint - whether it's current T2, jank, any of the hated archtypes. If I know the deck I'm playing against has me by the you-know-whats, I will usually at some point when it's clear they've got the game, congratulate them on a nice deck/nice job, concede, and move on. It takes only a second to leave with a polite or encouraging comment and harms me none at all. If I really didn't want to play against certain decks, it's a simple matter to put something about that in the game description (exaggeration to make a point: "please play land-only decks so I can have a chance to win!", or something of the sort).
I've just given up trying to please everyone, to a degree. I play what I want, know I'll get some flak occasionally, and try to stay polite. Like the author I'm 40 years old. I'm pretty limited to casual even though I have an extensive collection. I work 70+ hours a week as a collegiate athletic coach, have a newborn and a six-year old, and just want to play as a stress-release with a minimum of fanfare or trouble.
From my particular faith perspective I tend to view all of us as "falling short of the mark" and therefore tend to be more accepting of/patient with peoples' failings (in this case, their ability to deal politely with 'setbacks' or things that irritate them). I guess working with college students and playing dad/listener/decision-maker to so many on a daily basis, I have to be pretty accepting sometimes and know that what people write while playing magic may not necessarily be an accurate representation of who they are as a person. Many people who play MTGO, I would guess, don't come from the same life/career background as I, so I can't expect everyone on MTGO to take my perspective. I would just encourage people to be clear in their description what they are looking for, and not get too worked up when somebody drops a deck on them that they realize they don't like, but didn't put in their description.
That said, I also encourage people to read the descriptions before they click. Many people don't, and that can be irritating when one specifically says, "No _________" in the description and the first card someone drops is that. And it happens five games in a row, so you've just wasted 15 minutes - not because YOU did something wrong, but because somebody else didn't do their part. The only time I specify stuff is when I have a 1000+ card deck, make it 10 card hand/40 life just because my deck is huge and random and fun, and somebody doesn't read my description. Game starts, I put 40 life on, and then see the person puts 20 or 1 or whatever so I just concede. Or, they quit once they see that I've set the game up differently. And it happens 5 times in a row.
I also don't buy into the "anti-deck archtype" sentiment. To me, what is the difference between a creature spell that gets countered, or a token that gets bounced into oblivion, or a creature card that someone is forced to discard, or a creature that gets swords-to-plowshared, or a bunch of shrouded creatures that get wrathed? They all get denied before they can actually do anything (unless they have comes into play effects, but hopefully you get my point). Yet people go ballistic over the discard/counter, yet it's ok if someone lightning helixes their mana birds or what have you. I think the author is dead-on about an emotional attachment to deck resources that is perhaps not completely logical if you look at the big picture. I also don't buy 100% into some of the comments about mill or whatever being "non-interactive". It's interactive, just in a different way.
As I finish, the last statement: as I said earlier, I know some people will always disagree with me and oh well. Hopefully I made my points, don't know how relevant they will be to a large percentage of the readers here.
Cheers, have a great day. Maybe I'll see some of you in the casual room.
Exothermic
Some kind of intermediate room would be the dream (call it "tuned" or something, to show that it means decks which aren't just casual nonsense, but aren't proven tournament staples), but i feel it'd still get abused like the current system, and you'd end up playing jund in every room still.
i found this when googling my name :)
i wish i could tell you guys earlier, but I'm hugo de Jong :)
thank you for the reply, that is clearer in my mind now. As i said, i dont know enough the EXT meta, so these logical explanations help me to learn it.
"Perhaps PT Jank decks are the hardest to pilot, as their card advantage is unconventional."
What? Have you played Thopter-Gifts? Have you seen Depths-Thopter? Those are hard decks to play not knowing when to Putrefy.
Also the RDW matchup isn't that bad for Fae. They can't beat an active Jitte, you can counter a lot of their spells and they run out of gas, or you can board something like Sun Droplet.
@ L0urs
Why in the world does Rock want Bloodghast? It doesn't block. Rock's game plan is the grind the game out not attack with a 2/1. If Cranial Extraction was still legal there might be some value but not now. Use Life from the Loam and Worm Harvest if you want a recursive threat. As far as your comments on EE I don't follow you. They key cards to EE are: one-drops from zoo, zombies from dredge, tarmogoyf, and thpoter foundry. Don't see where 3cmc comes in. You can also easily run a third color if you want to explode for three. Better yet if you want a card like that run Damnation as Pulse and Putrefy can take care of non-creatures.
Quote / "Arguing that mill isn't a tiered deck isn't the same thing as saying it is fair for casual play. Since this is all subjective you need to understand the pov of those who decry the deck archetype. From their pov they don't necessarily even OWN bloodghasts and other tourney worthy cards. They are merely using whatever hodgepodge they can pull together. They might have some good cards, some bad cards and some "omg why are you playing this crap?" cards. This is the nature of casual play."
Thank you for your answer Paul. I will try to enlarge the debate.
My pov is very different. I know this debate is unsolved until now, i dont argue to solve it and i dont argue my arguments to be true or false. I will just explain my pov and why i am defending Mill in that room also.
The casual room is not only the beginner room, and this room doesnt require to build deck only with cards without any value, or without any current use. This is a free place to test some mecanics of the game, unexplored or underexplored. Yes, if the results of your matches are over 75% of victory, then you should go in the TP room because it is possible that your build became competitive. I strongly believe that some of the best Tier 1 decks are born in the casual area. If i take the example of classic, Necrospike is born in this room. It became the best archetype this format knew last year. If you are running Bazaar of Baghdad does not involve that your deck is uncasual. I could say the same thing with FoW ...
In that view, there should also not be forbidden mechanic in causual room : something like "Mill forbidden, discard forbidden, burn forbidden" in the casual room has no sense to me. If it was the case, then there will be a huge pool of cards only usable in TP room, where it is simply impossible to have fun with because of the Tier 1 deck you will find there (especialy true in Classic currently). "Established Tier 1 decks forbidden in the casual room" should be much fairer imo : I am strongly against to see an EXT zoo build in it as i saw recently in example...
My feeling is that :
1) there should be an intermediate room (or a beginner room) to avoid sentences like "to play Planeswalker/mill here is gay" (your opponent lost the connection) as i saw huge amount of times in casual.
2) many players just dont know to loose. You learn much more in the defeat than in the victory. That is as true for you than for your opponent.
3) there is no unfair mechanic in mtg but there are sometimes unfair interactions. Mill is a mechanic, not a specific broken interaction
For all these reasons, i strongly support every kind of deck in casual until they are not pure established competitive decks.
PS : sorry for my pour english skills, i hope it remains understandable
I love the amount of whining that goes on in cas/cas. Its not the fact that you were playing mill persay but more the fact you didnt let your opponent win. I mean there are people in there that concede to certain lands on turn 1. Ive had it happen where I play swamp go and they concede. Then I see two seconds later they have another game up. Most of my decks are all combo decks but they take up to about turn 6-7 to win or at least two turns to go off. Yet I still get complaints. So no matter what you play expect whiners. There just a bunch of crybabies that couldnt win against a pre-con anyways. Trust me I built Sparkler one time and played it in casual, and got concessions right and left for playing a netdeck. For those unaware of what Sparkler is http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/multiplayer/11481_The_Kitchen_Table_1...
"This deck is pretty spectacular in my opinion, and no one should be expecting it."
Yeah I'm sure with a pro tour winner winning a PTQ with this deck and another Pro Tour winner writing about it no one will have heard of it. A donk in round one might be surprised but good players won't be. And a lot of those good players will be playing faeries.
Welcome back to Magic. It's nice to see another old fart around. It is too bad you ran into such boorish behavior, (not that I'm surprised).
One element of this phenomenon in the casual room is perhaps the transition younger players make from Yu-Gi-Oh and Pokeman, which are almost completely critter based, to to the more wide open strategies of magic? Combined with the unfortunate lack of social skills displayed by the young geek population (not to overly generalize), you get a perfect storm of rudeness and frustration?
Just spitballin here.
Great article. I personnally have always loved mill precisely because it is the ultimate "casual" deck strategy. It tends to be slow and it's by no means an autowin or anything close (painters servant/grindstone may be an exception, but I think of that as more combo than mill). It doesn't really stop your opponent from playing their game and I think it gets things exciting because it turns each game into a race of sorts.
I think the biggest abuse of mill players comes from people who do play some top quality decks in the casual room who suddenly can't believe they are losing to such a "pathetic" strategy.
To misquote a friend "to win with a sub-par deck, that takes a good pilot."
Lours your points are well documented by previous mill proponents. (btw thanks for the tip on quest which Id forgotten because its just a bad card.)
Arguing that mill isn't a tiered deck isn't the same thing as saying it is fair for casual play. Since this is all subjective you need to understand the pov of those who decry the deck archetype. From their pov they don't necessarily even OWN bloodghasts and other tourney worthy cards. They are merely using whatever hodgepodge they can pull together. They might have some good cards, some bad cards and some "omg why are you playing this crap?" cards. This is the nature of casual play.
Yes on occasion the room fills with burn.dec and that is exceedingly annoying...have to break out the answers to that deck just to teach them not to bring it. Same thing with mill. Occasionally everyone and their brother builds mill.dec in some form and in go the Gaea's Blessings and Wheels or super aggro.dec in response.
There is no stable meta for the Casual play room OTHER than knowing that you bring an unfair deck, expect: Cursing, Whining, Concessions, hangups, and blocking. This is the nature of the room.
Just an fyi, it's "Griefers" (as in one who causes grief) and not "Grievers" (which would people who are perpetually sad?)
I enjoy myself a spot of Mill. Always have, always will. If someone comes to the table with a mill deck, I play and move on. I don't understand all the pent up hostility that people unleash on people because of MTG. Do I want to win? Yes. Do I cry like a baby when I lose? No. I get frustrated, sure, but I don't take it out on my opp. Life is too short to be doing that crap. That's why I never understood the shenanigans that happen in the casual room (I've found they also happen in limited when you happen to win with a 40 card pile). I can't tell you the amount of times I've been called "noob" or "gay" because I won with sub-optimal cards.
Whatever. Enjoy yourself. Let the haters hate. Brush the dirt off your shoulder and move on.
my bad, thank you for the correct LE ;)
/quote
"Is it a tournament deck ? So why this deck didnt win often tournament ? Come on ... This deck is often slow, often hard to lead to success."
Lours, just for the information: Turbo Fog is a Tier-1 deck that wins tournaments every now and then, and it's a deck to be taken seriously.
Just for the info. I agree with most of the things you said but just not that particular part.
LE
Mill decks are as old as Millstone is ... that means long time ago. It was ever one of my favorite tactic, and i also played it a lot in STD.
This tactic is a part of the game, and a lot of cards helped to keep it active during mtg history : Helm of obedience, grindstone, even Oona recently (and so many other). But a focused deck was pretty hard to build because of the lack of key efficient cards until Zendikar. I am VERY HAPPY this shell still exists, it is a good & interesting alternative to common deck build, plus it is often technical to build well.
Playing it in TP only ? Why ? in casual room, i often ran people playing burn, which is at least as uninteractive as mill (and maybe more), and pretty less interesting than mill decks are for many reasons.
Please, go on to play it everywhere you want, MTG isnt a game restricted to turning creature sideways, it is much more than a simple race of creature spell.
Is it a tournament deck ? So why this deck didnt win often tournament ? Come on ... This deck is often slow, often hard to lead to success.
@ Paul : there are still solution to mill. Quest of ancient Secrets is an awesome answer to any mill deck.
And by the way, a good mill deck has to survive to many strong agression (aggro), and has to avoid countermagic ... it is not easy. The best defense is the attack against it, it just needs to be faster than it is. If you add the many recursion card released recently which are heavy played (bloodghast on the top), then this deck cant be considered as unfair. Really. Cant understand people arguing the opposite.
Good article!
You get the same reaction as someone playing cascade or any of the other 'unfair' strategies. I think a lot of what has been said above is legitimate. People come to casual expecting 'fair' or 'fun' games (cf LE's comments.) Mill does not have a lot of answers. There is no Gaea's Blessing in standard, and even wheel of sun and moon, moved on to extended without a replacement. And so mill seems unfair.
I often comment (with an eyebrow raised) to those playing Mill in the older formats that they risk the emnity of their fellow players bringing such a strategy to the casual table particularly if it is well tuned. Well tuned mill can be top tier and people know it and as a result hate it.
Often the decks aren't all that well tuned and it IS possible to win but I can totally identify with the person who concedes in rage, despair or just plain 'knowledge' that they can't win. It sometimes feels like when I bring a fun deck to casual all the sharks in the neighborhood smell the blood and circle in for their share of the kill. Yet when I bring an unfun deck I get all the abuse you would expect and said sharks are nowhere to be found. Casual is a diverse environment and full of many different types of players.
One other thing. While the game itself has no knowledge of feelings or intent and just is, the activity which brings the game about is social. The casual room is not the place to try out your latest tourney winning strategy. Doing so will generally get predictable results. Not only is it like shooting fish in a barrel, but completely pointless in many cases. I don't consider most mill decks to fall into this category but some do. I used to run Gaea's Blessing in all my decks for that reason, knowing that those tiered mill decks would appear and just win without it. If they ran extirpate main deck well at least they deformed their strategy in order to deal with mine.
Welcome back to the game. I took a rather long vacation from the game myself. Also welcome to puremtgo.
Play pauper, nobody minds what deck you bring, but milling is not really viable in pauper ;-)
Another thing to bear in mind is that in the casual room there are a lots of players who's aim is to never lose games. They wish to ambush opponents. Typically, millers, counterspellers and land destroyers will start single games, not matches, making the most of the surprise factor, and preventing the opponent from sideboarding answers. As you say, milling is fragile and most good players will be favoured against it after sideboarding a faster clock. I'd venture to guess that most of these idiots are not in their forties like you and I and lack maturity.
Anyway, you don't have to listen to their opinions, and you should continue to play anything you want.
I don't think you are missing anything on the milling part. I find people can be very obnoxious in general and milling is just one of the excuses they have for not blaming themselves for not winning.
I recently had a similar experience with someone becoming quite agressive when I cast an Iona, Shield of Emermia naming white against his mono-white tokens deck (this was in the tourney practice room btw). Also I heard several experiences of people who had a very aggressive start with a casual deck in the casuals room but then got accused of playing a tournament level deck just because that start was efficient. Also with the abuse and conceding that goes with it.
I think it doesn't matter what strategy you chose, be it discard, countering or just plain old beating people to death with big creatures. Some people are just douchebags and sore loser and will treat you like this whenever they lose.
Just my to $0,02 :-)
... is ever pretty interesting.
I have a question, but not about your deck, it is about The Rock.
This shell is one my favorite : i liked it too much in classic, but right now, it is out of the meta for many reasons. So i was really interested to play it again, and i would probably try it in EXT (waiting for a possible return when Legacy will open its doors).
But i have a question about it as i am not used to EXT meta : why no bloodghast ? In my experience, this little zombie is pretty interesting, especially when you run mass destruction spell a la damnation... Any reason not to play it ? EE is also nice in place of pernicious, but i guess CMC=2 max is not enough to remove the main threat of the format ...