Oh yay, more raid cards. I wish they would just drop these as a theme for greyjoy. The only time it has been sort of good is when whirlpool was legal, and then it was still iffy. I think this theme sucks and is a waste of ink.

As long as they continue to not print cards that mill AND benefit from milling (i.e. Whirlpool), it will continue to be a weak theme; mainly due to lack of consistency and too much necessary resource commitment. Otherwise, milling in CCG was awesome. If done right, it was a great support theme. I truly miss it.

I like it and hope they continue to support it, my only Greyjoy deck is a discard deck. My friends on the other hand hate it.

does it actually win any games?

Staton said:

Does raiding win games by itself? No. Does my raid deck that also uses saves and unopposed to get the power it needs to win win? Yes. And with the addition of some of the upcoming cards (like the new Euron) it will get better. Raiding is a different sort of card denial, and is very irritating to play against, no matter what some people say, because there is little discard pile recursion in the game. But until there are more cards that trigger off of raiding (and I have heard rumors that this could be the case) raiding by itself is not the game winner. Just like kneeling is not a game winner. But it can make it easier to get to the goal.

JerusalemJones said:

I'm pretty sure straight up kneel is a game winner, lol. However, I understand what you are saying. It's my opinion that mill decks don't provide enough efficiency to be competitive and probably won't until more all-in-one cards are printed. All-in-one meaning a card that mills and benefits from mill. Will we see these cards in the Brotherhood expansion? So far we haven't, but maybe we will. Hopefully we'll also get more Raiders with printed 3 STR or higher. With the exception of Euron, they are all weenies, and I hate running weenies. It also bugs me how Raiding Fleet doesn't have the Raider trait. I guess the Raider theme wasn't thought of yet when it was printed.

For those of us unfamiliar with the term (or possibly just me)

could someone explain what "Milling" is (other than grinding wheat into flour)

cheers

Mighty Jim said:

It's another name for discarding cards from an opponents deck. The term originates from Magic TG I believe where one of the first discard cards was called millstone of something like that. Someone who played Magic could perhaps correct me if I'm wrong. The problem on AGOT is that milling itself is not a win condition like it is on some other games where you lose if you have no cards left in your deck. In AGOT it's just a way of slowly crippling your opponent but you need something additional to win.

FATMOUSE said:

That reminds me of a deck a friend of mine built that was a martell characterlite discard deck. It only had three Veiled Messengers as characters and used Palace Gardens and pretty much every influence card that was suitable inclusing Dorans Palanquin and Deathbeds etc, It could remove someones deck by round three or four most of the time. After that it was just a slow grind to win dominance with the Veiled Messenger.