Saturday, September 26, 2009

Milling

There are three types of cards you want to mill for.

A: Cards that Activate in the Graveyard, or otherwise give some kind of benefit when they are in the graveyard.
B: Cards that need to be in the graveyard to activate other cards effects.
C: Cards that need to be in the graveyard to fulfill the activation requirements of other cards.

Examples of A include Necro Gardna, or Vayu. Subtypes include Mezuki and Sirocco the Dawn, because they arent exactly useless when you have them in your hand.
Type A you usually want to focus on sending to the graveyard from your deck or otherwise. Most of the better ones being Dark really help thanks to Armageddon Knight and Dark Grepher

Examples of B include Pot of Avarice, Monster Reborn, Illusion of Light, or Call of the Haunted. These cards tend to be better the more filled your graveyard are with monsters.

Examples of C are Judgement Dragoon, Rainbow Dragon, The Dark Creator, Dark Armed Dragon, cards that count the number of monsters in your graveyard in order to be activated or summoned. Another card that falls in this category is Magical Explosion, with counting Spell cards, as opposed to monster cards.

Now, with the release of Charge of the Light Brigade a week ago, it seems that the "Oh lets just jam in Charge, Rykos, and some Recharge to mill" has become the main way of sending cards to the graveyard. Not to mention it mills without losing advantage.

However, in decks that have cards they want to mill and dont want to mill, this becomes a problem.

For example, the decks which are said to be the best for milling, Vaayu Turbo and Undead Synchro, have strong cards that are probally a very bad idea to mill off. For example, Burial from a Different Dimension. If you activate charge, and mill off a Sirroco and Vaayu, but the third card is burial from a different dimension, you will end up losing advantage.

Especially for decks which have strong key components for the win, such as AKB or Cat Synchro, milling off a Cold Wave, Pot of Avarice, or Heavy Storm will really make or break the match.

So, before you randomly splash some Charge of the Light Brigade if you have some cards to mill, think about:
1: How many cards do you NOT want to send to the graveyard?
2: If that card were to go to the graveyard, how would you follow up and get it back?

11 comments:

  1. So people in Japan think the Charge engine is splashable?

    lol.

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  2. I don't see how Vayu Turbo loses advantage when milling Burial. Instead of -2'ing yourself with Excavation, you can also just continue without trying to retrieve that card. Perhaps you'll draw another copy.

    It is true that you're missing on a card that can potentially summon 3 beatsticks, but that doesn't mean you 'lost' advantage. Your advantage is still neutral.

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  3. I've seen a lot of people on Pojo try to splash Charge into X-Sabers. So far, I've heard it is inconsistent. But, at least it has the coolest name for a deck ever: Lightsabers. Hurray for Star Wars. :D

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  4. Calculate like this: When you mill a Vayu/Sirocco it is a +0.5, and a Mezuki a +1

    When you mill a BfaDD it is a -1.5 or a potentially -2.5

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  5. What Petqwe says. I tend not to respond to questons because it lets other people think too.

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  6. Missing out on drawing a BfaDD =/= discarding BfaDD from your hand. >_>

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  7. Eh My bad. I meant to say "Potential Advantage", which is as good as real advantage.
    Mezuki in Graveyard = Potential Advantage. Mezuki activating efffect and it going through = real advantage.
    See the difference?

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  8. I do, but milling BfaDD is still something completely different.

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  9. I dont think so. BfaDD is almost +1.5/2 Potential Advntage. Milling it means -1.5/2 advantage in hte long run. Possibly 2.5/3 if you chain to removal

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  10. If your BfaDD gets milled, it simply means that you COULD have drawn it. The chance that you would have actually drawn it after milling would be equal. It's like saying that BfaDD on the bottom of your deck from the beginning of a duel is a -2 advantage.

    But if you really tend to keep using this logic, at least don't forget that you're drawing another card instead, which is +1 in adition. So that would make it a -0.5.

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