So I have been playing with the best of what I've pulled - Vader/Raider. With 2 force lightening, 2 vibroknuckles and a force speed, that deck isn't slowing down!! However, now I have a bunch of cards and would try to make a mill deck but I'm overwhelmed. I really don't know where to begin. Do I go light side (Padme, maz, ackbar,?) or dark side (krennic, plutt, dooku, ?). I don't even know if the names listed work, but they are in my collection. Any help from someone with actual experience playing mill would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance!

eJyn, Ackbar

I tried my first mill deck last night! Not sure it's good, but it seems fun. I ran Unkar/Jabba/RoyalGuard and it's actually pretty fun! The guard let me stick Lure of Power and some blue dice control events in there, and Con Artist with Cunning is just brutal! Really fun. Not sure which cards you own, so it might be hard for me to offer you specific advice, but I have to say villains do a way better job than heroes at mill. Padme is really good at it, but she's really all the heroes have for mill... you could probably make it work, since Con Artist and Cunning are neutral, but it might be tricky.

Anyway, best of luck! Mill is kind of weird. Still not sure what I think of it!

If you have the characters you could try eJabba/Krennic.

Yellow Villain is good for milling: Blackmail, Vibroknucklers, Con Artist, Cunning are the go-to upgrades. Loose Ends is the obvious mill card, which you can play four times with Cheat (to mill a massive 16 cards). Jabba's natural Discard is good, too.

Red Villain is there for control. Take control events like Suppression to keep the damage down. Personal Escort on Krennic plus Undying Loyalty to keep damage off Jabba and Krennic alive.

In a mill deck ALWAYS take Datapads, and get them out ASAP. Datapad special is gold for turning useless Damage faces to tasty Discard faces, and it's a move your opponent won't see coming. 1 Damage on the Knucklers is a lot less scary than 2+1 Discard, so hopefully your opponent will ignore it until after claim.

Oh, another note: don't choose the obvious battlefield. In my opinion, you won't be claiming often enough to really use Command Center, Jedi Temple or War Torn Streets. Instead, choose something that won't hurt you, but which you can claim in a pinch to get out of trouble, like Emperor's Throne Room, Otoh Gunga, or Scarif Beach. If you do go the Command Center route, pack some Outposts for the pseudo-claim.

Are we forgetting Imperial Inspection, or is that just too obvious?

All mill decks have some flaws; first off, they need to be able to hit both the hand and the deck, as you've got to clear both of them out to actually win Mill. Second, you need to survive long enough to actually Mill, which means you need either a very defensive deck, or you need to be able to kill characters to slow down the opponent. Third, time and resources spent Milling is time and resources not spending stopping the opponent from killing you, so you're going to have to make some tough choices here and there.

One of the most common ways for Mill to lose will be to get rid of the opponents deck/hand (or at least to threaten them), but die before they can actually win - that is, I often find Mill decks feel like they are one turn too slow. So when building, you've got to look at how fast you are milling vs how fast you are losing.

For characters, there's plenty of potential options:

Padme - The obvious hero mill character, who actually isn't very good at milling. Her special is just not very effective or efficient. That doesn't mean she's useless in mill - just that you should look at her as a Yellow character (so Second Chance) that has a dice with three very good sides, and then two sides that can be useful.

Jyn - A new possibility for heroes, mill with more of a discard focus. Not sure whether it's effective, but people will be trying it. Popular opinion seems to be Ackbar is the man for this, giving you access to Red and having a bit of a discard access himself.

Blue Hero characters - While none of these are particularly mill focused, it's probably worth running Blue just for Patience.

Snap - I think mill generally wants more characters for more total health; Snap is cheap and his ability will slow down your opponent while letting you run a battlefield that is beneficial for you (otherwise, mill is usually slow and probably wants to run something that is less useful for the opponent, rather than good for you).

Anything cheap with Guardian - Again, mill needs to be defensive, and will probably have 'priority target' characters. Anything that helps you keep the heat off them is useful, and these guys can totally serve as extra hit points for your other characters.

Anything cheap in general - Mill tends to benefit from more bodies, and access to lots of colours. Running even generic characters to fill out thirty points can be good if it gets you access to more stuff you want.

Jabba the Hutt - The obvious villain mill guy, he more wants to use his discard side to reduce the opponents options, rather than mill from the deck. He also makes anything Yellow way, way more consistent. However, you do need to run other things to actually hit the deck; otherwise you're likely putting your opponent on a 6-7 turn clock, and most decks will kill you before then.

Darth Vader - Vader's auto discard is actually pretty useful with a dedicated discard deck. Realistically, this is mainly as a partner to eJabba.

Personally, I've built but haven't yet played eJabba/Nightsister/Guavian Enforcer. Jabba as the main man, Nightsister for access to Blue and Guavian Enforcer as a guy with decent health that can take Yellow Character only upgrades. Also between him and the Nightsister should be able to reliably play Loose Ends.

10 hours ago, Ajones47 said:

Oh, another note: don't choose the obvious battlefield. In my opinion, you won't be claiming often enough to really use Command Center, Jedi Temple or War Torn Streets.

I agree mostly, but don't overlook the Ascension Gun/Lothal combo. If you win the rolloff, pick your opponents (within reason) BF, and if your opponent wins they will rarely ever choose Lothal. Adds a free 2 off the deck side to your die.

I'm going to go with Jabba, Unkar, and night sister. It gives you huge health and access to large Mill possibilities. I think that this combo will rise to the top myself.

The thing about Mill decks is they are all about control. They are not about milling so much. You want to control everything your opponent is doing. This means disrupting their reasons, removing the cards from their hands, and what dice they do throw out there, you want those controlled too. Oh, and do enough damage to kill a character to again, control their dice pool. You simply out last them until their deck runs out (which means you want a card left over each round). If you focus too much on the deck removal you will get agroed to death.

I REALLY hope that mill decks or any other type of non-interactive deck do not become a real force in this game.

25 minutes ago, Joelist said:

I REALLY hope that mill decks or any other type of non-interactive deck do not become a real force in this game.

Mill decks rely on survivability, which means they're forced to interact with their opponent's dice. That's actually the complete opposite of 'non-interactive.' Breadth of deck archetype viability is also a sign of positive game health, so what's the hangup?

There tends to be two kind of mill decks in games - actual mill decks, and hard control stall or combo decks that use mill as a win condition. Currently mill in Destiny is the first one and generally interactive. There's no real difference between 'resolve two damage' vs 'resolve discard two cards' or 'play damage event from hand' vs 'play mill event from hand'. They may target different things, but they are still interacting with the opponent.

I'd agree that I never want to see any kind of NPE mill deck, but I'd feel the same way about any other NPE deck, like pre errata Hyperloop was going to be with Planetary Uprising. In that case, whether it's mill or not is irrelevant.

10 hours ago, WonderWAAAGH said:

Mill decks rely on survivability, which means they're forced to interact with their opponent's dice. That's actually the complete opposite of 'non-interactive.' Breadth of deck archetype viability is also a sign of positive game health, so what's the hangup?

I just get leery the second archetypes emerge that reduce or remove player interaction even potentially. A MAJOR attraction of Destiny has been the constant player interaction - in other words it is fun .

54 minutes ago, Joelist said:

I just get leery the second archetypes emerge that reduce or remove player interaction even potentially. A MAJOR attraction of Destiny has been the constant player interaction - in other words it is fun .

1) It's not a second archetype. Re-read the rules, you'll see that there are two equally viable ways to win the game.

2) Destiny is actually far more limited with respect to interaction than other games, given that there are no instant speed effects. It's not Hearthstone non-interactive, but I certainly wouldn't call interactivity one of Destiny's strong suits.

Netrunner has a few deck types that are truly non-interactive. Destiny is a game where non-interactivity won't be happening. However all the additional action BS will reduce the interactivity of the game. Rey has the potential to become completely broken. I imagine supports will be introduced later that allow for more interaction.

6 hours ago, WonderWAAAGH said:

1) It's not a second archetype. Re-read the rules, you'll see that there are two equally viable ways to win the game.

2) Destiny is actually far more limited with respect to interaction than other games, given that there are no instant speed effects. It's not Hearthstone non-interactive, but I certainly wouldn't call interactivity one of Destiny's strong suits.

Actually Destiny is quite interactive. You do a thing then I do a thing. Generally those things involve dealing damage to each other. Where mills can be non-interactive is when the mill is essentially automatic (it cannot be stopped) and of course where you can win by decking your opponent. So far Destiny seems to be avoiding the "pure mill" issue but some of the action stacking and dice control SoR has introduced raises the prospect of true non-interactive milling.

Being able to manipulate the basic objects in a given game does not equate to interactivity; of course you can mess with dice, inflict damage, whatever. All games aside from solitaire do that to a certain degree. In Destiny, the mechanism we have for processing effects is the queue, but once something goes in there's ultimately no way to deliberately interact with it. You cannot stop a die from resolving, nor cards from being milled, damage being dealt, events being played, etc. Triggers are essentially static effects that you lay the groundwork for in advance, and when they happen they happen, but there is no ability to react to an opponent's play at instant speed. That's what we mean by interactivity.

If you picture a round as being one long queue then there is all kinds of interactivity going on. Opponent rolls in, you see dice, react to dice, they then get to reroll/resolve dice, you get to roll in, your opponent gets to interact with dice. There is a lot back and forth. If you want to play magic, you should go play that game.

I play a lot of different games for a lot of different reasons; being an adult with a fully functional brain is my prerogative.

@WonderWAAAGH Yeah..... that fully functional part, we all know that isn't true.

Back to The Laughing Monk's question:

Any character with a "Discard". (I think all of your characters in play should have it.)

Astromech and other droids, Meditate, anything with shields (Diplomatic Immunity) or "Focus".

Appropriate Battlefields (War-Torn Streets, Jedi Temple) and New Orders.

Spy Net, Natural Talent, Field Medic, Mind Probe, Interrogation Droid, Lure of Power, etc.

My team: Padme, Snap, Rey

My other team: Krennic, Nightsister, FO Trooper

These are limited by my meager resources. Stay focused on the mission! Stay alive, kill their deck. Forget trying to slug it out with 'em...

The opinions experssed above are solely my own. I could be wrong........