Rethinking Mill

wereotter

I've noticed, especially with the introduction of the M19 cards, that mill cards in Puzzle Quest all seem to be treated differently. Some raise the cost of your opponent's cards, like Shinx's Tutelage while others actually just put the card into the graveyard like Winds of Rebuke. However both of these effects feel somewhat lackluster.

The problem with the first is that while you're making it harder to cast the card, you're not actually preventing it, and a good cascade will get the card out anyway.

The problem with the second is that with infinite libraries, the number of cards you send to the graveyard is irrelevant as you'll never win.

Here's a potential solution, though I'd be interested to see if anyone else has had any other ideas, or even thinks this alternate idea should be in the game (hint, given the Dimir guild's tendency to mill out opponents, it should be considered well in advance!)

Let's use this classic spell as an example.

My suggestion would be something along the lines of "Destroy the top 4 cards of your opponents library. Your opponent loses life equal to the number of cards in their graveyard" The exact numbers might need to be worked with, but this does translate putting increasing number of cards into the graveyard into a mechanic the game can actually register as an eventual win, and given the inflated life totals, counting total cards in graveyards, increasing the amount of life lost to a mill spell makes sense as every mill gets you closer to a win.

Mburn7

That would be pretty cool, but it would be inordinately powerful against green or black graveyard shenanigans decks, even though mill should technically be helping them.  It also wouldn't totally solve the problem, since self-mill would still have to work the same way its been by just putting cards in the graveyard.

Maybe add a "If 4 copies of every card in their deck is in the graveyard deal 50 damage" or something to it to represent you milling out?

wereotter

Mburn7 said:

That would be pretty cool, but it would be inordinately powerful against green or black graveyard shenanigans decks, even though mill should technically be helping them.  It also wouldn't totally solve the problem, since self-mill would still have to work the same way its been by just putting cards in the graveyard.

Maybe add a "If 4 copies of every card in their deck is in the graveyard deal 50 damage" or something to it to represent you milling out?

Maybe, though while playing mill decks myself, I tend to target the graveyard decks since I know it will take less effort to kill them off than the player who's just drawing one card per turn and nothing else. It's a risk, I know, since I'm also fueling their gameplay, but in my mind, it just means I have to be faster than they are

Added damage for 40+ cards in graveyard wouldn't be back, though maybe overkill if you're already hitting them for damage all the way along? Not that it would be a bad thing.

Additionally another idea is to create some mill cards that act as supports giving +X/+X to your first creature where X is the number of cards in your opponent's graveyard, something in the vein of this card:

Brigby

(Disclaimer: This is not an official announcement. I simply enjoy coming up with ideas on occasion, and this is one of my personal ones I'd like to share)

Since decks are essentially endless in Magic: Puzzle Quest battles, the way I envision the mill strategy to work would be something along the lines of either a persistent effect, or an effect that triggers depending on the cards that are milled. (or both!)

Here is a fake card description, as an example of this behavior:

• Your opponent puts the top 3 cards of their deck into their graveyard. If any of those cards cost 8 or less, increase the mana costs of their copies by 1. If any of those cards cost more than 8, deal 2 damage to the opponent for each of those discarded cards.

I'm sure those numbers would need to be tweaked, since I'm certainly no designer, but that's just one of my ideas!

Grixis197

That Mind Sculpt is crazy 2 mana for 7 milling cards I had 4of those in my mill deck then bring them back from the graveyard to cast again, mill is fun mean at the same time.

Tilwin90

I actually had a thought these days about this whole "library reshuffling" thing that might annoy some Johnnies around here. Hear me out...

The reason why cards like Whir of Invention, HUF, Deploy and others are so hated is because they can potentially go infinite on card search and putting stuff into hand/board indefinitely. The library brings no constraints in their direction, by getting a new "40 cards instance" whenever a valid card cannot be found.

So what if a situation where no valid cards are found would not lead to a library shuffle? The effect brings as many valid cards from the current library it can. Once the library is out of valid targets, bad luck.
"Running out of cards" should still lead to a new library being generated though, since I find card draw effects are hosed enough as it is (being limited to 6 cards in hand).

In those cases, putting creatures, or enchantments, or spells from the library into the graveyard or exile could get potentially annoying, though of course nowhere near as powerful as they are in paper magic.

khurram

Tilwin90 said:

I actually had a thought these days about this whole "library reshuffling" thing that might annoy some Johnnies around here. Hear me out...

The reason why cards like Whir of Invention, HUF, Deploy and others are so hated is because they can potentially go infinite on card search and putting stuff into hand/board indefinitely. The library brings no constraints in their direction, by getting a new "40 cards instance" whenever a valid card cannot be found.

So what if a situation where no valid cards are found would not lead to a library shuffle? The effect brings as many valid cards from the current library it can. Once the library is out of valid targets, bad luck.
"Running out of cards" should still lead to a new library being generated though, since I find card draw effects are hosed enough as it is (being limited to 6 cards in hand).

In those cases, putting creatures, or enchantments, or spells from the library into the graveyard or exile could get potentially annoying, though of course nowhere near as powerful as they are in paper magic.

I don't know what "Johnnies" are but you are right. This will annoy the hell out of players because this used to happen with some cards (still happens with woodland bellower if it's not the only creature in the deck).

So no thanks. This a terrible idea. 

wereotter

khurram said:

I don't know what "Johnnies" are but you are right. This will annoy the hell out of players because this used to happen with some cards (still happens with woodland bellower if it's not the only creature in the deck).

So no thanks. This a terrible idea. 

Johnny is one of the three player archetypes Wizards has named its players. Johnnies like to combo or chain cards together.

The other two are Timmy who likes big, over the top creatures and spells, and Spike who's super competitive and has to win by any means nessicary.

gogol666

Beware of giving blue direct damage. This is the only thing that blue still lacks. Think of a monoblue looper that has builtin direct damage...
Permanent cost increase seems much more appropriate, but I don't see where the good balance can be found.

wereotter

gogol666 said:

Beware of giving blue direct damage. This is the only thing that blue still lacks. Think of a monoblue looper that has builtin direct damage...
Permanent cost increase seems much more appropriate, but I don't see where the good balance can be found.

This is a fair concern. Which could also do something like destroy the top cards of your opponents library, then if there are 30 or more cards in your opponent’s graveyard, deal 200 damage to your opponent. That way the damage doesn’t happen until a likely full mill. 

Also you could remove some of blue’s free mana if you did this to balance things. 

gogol666

I'm not convinced mill is a wincon I would like to see without a revolution off the game mechanics. The more I look at mill in the current game state the more it looks like giving ob's ultimate on a stick to players and everybody knows how punishing is ob's ultimate. Think of it in a kiora shell and you will stays understanding my concern.
All that said, we already have quite a few punishing strategies. So no big deal if you add a new one. Just make sure you add a way to counter it: for instance, a support that enables the wincon.
Another thing, what if you deck yourself? A lot of decks would already do that if it weren't for the infinite card generation

wereotter

If you read my suggestion, I'm not proposing eliminating the infinite library (despite my personal opinion that they should) but that there should be some effect created by cards that are in the game and translated from cards that do mill out your opponents for a win. In the paper game mill is absolutely a win con. If you destroy your opponent's library, they lose the game.

The cards that exist in this game that are translated from cards that work to that win condition either still destroy cards from your opponent's library with no real impact since their library is infinite, or just tax the cards in their hand. But feel off to me, which is why I suggest doing something different with those cards to make it an actual win condition.

FeralSkald

A bit out of the box here, but a thought. 

Since we have indestructible support options in game now, perhaps create a few, and very few options for players. One a decent costed blue support that works in a sense like imminent doom. 1 shield indestructible that gains a shield each time the opponent discards and does damage equal to the number of shields. At 10 shields the support loses indestructible and at 15 detonates causing both players to discard their entire hand. The support owner upon detonating the support would draw 5 cards that all gain 3 mana.

Probably too powerful, but a thought.

DumasAG

What about making an emblem, like city's blessing, when a mill card is played. And then when a card is milled, it increases the cost of each copy of that card for the rest of the game by one. That doesn't effect you playing your stuff, and things dying in combat, and it's a slow creep, but over time with enough mill, every card you draw is going to be costing 5-10 mana more to cast.