From what i have gathered, there are three ways to build a mill deck.

1) Majority of the cards in the deck should support milling to drain out opponents deck as quickly as possible (Aggro).
2) Set up a lock or a situation where games is dramatically slowed down, then mill opponent with only few mill effects (Control).
3) Some type of combo to instantly empty opponents deck.

Are all of these types currently playable in this game, or is one strategy dominant? I have build few different types of mill decks recently. One was mono-Yog that focused 100% on quick mill, but it turned out to be unreliable unless it got a divinely good start. I also tried a Hastur/Yog deck that tried to lock the opponent down and slow the game enough for few mill cards to drain opponents deck, but it also suffered from unreliability as it kind of tried to do two things at once. There were also other attempts but they were much less serious and very unsuccesful. Am i missing something here? How should i correctly play and build a mill deck to avoid the unreliability issue, or is it an inherent problem of the deck type i just have to deal with?

So, discussion!

(Sorry i don't have decklists here, never wrote them down and can't remember the exact lists, but they were all pretty basic and nothing too special.... Except for an insane attempt that used Cthulhu faction to spam Nodens with Aziz to clear the board repeatedly. It was crazy! (crazy bad that is....))

Hi!

Good topic. I was recently thinking of mill decks, too. So far I haven't tried one, but I know I love control decks. Even if you build a dedicated control deck you will find it hard to defend against certain types of rush decks. So if you want to succesfsully mill you need ways to block a rush deck. Since milling seems best with Yog the first question is: mono-yog or add a faction?

I think Cthulhu is an awesome addition. With Dreamlands Fanatic, Intruder from Beyond, The Terror of The Tides and Stalking Hounds you have very strong surprise options. Deep One Assault, Sacrificial Offering and A Single Glimps is good character removal. A Single Path + Ravager from the Deep is awesome control. Add Many Angled Thing to the deck and Diseased Sewer Rats as your restricted card. I would consider to add Reclaimed Servant to the deck.

Also I found Dampen Light to be useful when it comes to slowing down your enemy.

This would is my current idea on a mill deck, but as I said before I haven't played it yet.

Hellfury posted a pretty good milling deck over at CardGameDB:

www.cardgamedb.com/forums/index.php

It's a Mono-Yog deck that doesn't try to do anything but stall and mill.

Over at the Cenacle (a French site) there's recently been a discussion going on about a Combo-Milling deck using Syndicate/Yog, relying on 'An Offer you can not Refuse' and 'The Large Man' that seems to work pretty well: cenacle-hd.bb-fr.com/t2309-meule-en-boucle-en-deux-cartes

Myself, I've been shying away from milling decks after the Khopesh arrived. Imho, a decent rush deck supported by the Khopesh and a bit of support desctruction will usually beat a milling deck.

Mephisto:
Yeah, Cthulhu really seems like a good choice here, but then again that faction seems to dominate the meta at the moment anyway so no surprises there.... Serpents are also pretty good for early stall, so controllish Cthulhu/Yog mill could be viable.

Jhaelen:
That Offer/Large Man combo seems really interesting, weird i didn't notice it before. Too bad i cant speak french as the discussion would propably be very interesting over at Cenacle. Gotta try to make some sort of test deck with that theme to see how it works....

The problem I have will Mill decks in general, is that it is too easy to remove the necessary cards. They are fun to play though thats for sure.

EDIT: Wow, just looked at the Syndicate/Yog combo. It's a first turn win if you draw the proper hand:

• The Large Man
• Twilight Gate
• An Offer You Can't Refuse

If you draw those three cards, you could win on your first turn by resourcing The Large Man on one domain, another Syndicate card on the second domain, and anything else on the third. If you then on your first turn resource any other Yog card on the Syndicate domain, you play twilight gate to bring Large Man into play, and then exhaust The Large Man to return Twlight Gate to your hand. You can then play An Offer You Can't Refuse in a loop to force your opponent to draw their entire deck.

Sure, you need the perfect draw, but it's possible. Thoughts?

Not at all impossible to pull off considering that we have only 50 card decks, we draw 8 in the beginning and 1 or 2 on subsequent turns. And that combo is also easy to put in your deck without it stealing the complete focus when it comes to deckbuilding. Basically, you just stall with Syndicate and mill with Yog, and if you happen to pull off the combo, all the better!

You can use Patsy + Unspeakable Resurrection to remove success counters and stall on time until you draw zhe Combo.

That's true, and many of the skill reduction/exhaustion effects can buy you a turn more to look for the combo. And as Yog is pretty good at digging through the deck and fetching cards, getting the combo in hand should not be too hard.....

jhaelen said:

I think it is imperative to have some board control while milling. If you have played M:tG, then, historically, the most successful black mill decks utilize control. Mill is just too slow to pull off in general without that support. The same strategy crosses over amazingly well to CoC.

That said, I have to agree with Jhaelen. The Khopesh has summarily executed my deck build. Cthulhu destruction/rush is just too powerful in general to go toe-to-toe against with mill strategy. Rush typically will beat mill anyways without the destruction.

What mill needs is one or two decent to good cards that are keystones to the deck type. A powerful analog in M:tG was Traumatize (milled half remaining deck) or Haunting Echoes (removes discard pile from game and then searches draw pile for card removed from game and removes them from the game as well). This are very powerful examples and would not integrate well into CoC simple because of the lack of instant responses that CoC has to threats, but such cards give a decent idea of what mill needs to be competitive and not just a casual fun idea on the off chance your opponent is having difficulty drawing decent cards.

Right now, Mill doesnt have many keystone cards. Curse of the Stone is about the best mill card around right now, but is dependant on the board state containing multiple characters and cards to set that state up which is a very slow game setup.

So in short look for better control that is cheap/quick and effective. That means teaming up with Cthulhu to make a 2 faction Destruction/Control Mill deck. And even then, rush will still likely kick your teeth out.

I am sure Damon is working on improving it as he is for other shortcoming in potential deck strategies for weaker factions, as he seems to like the idea of Mill on the rare occasions when I get the chance to talk to him.