Emhyr mill is the worst thing to happen to Gwent in ages.

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Emhyr mill is the worst thing to happen to Gwent in ages.

Look, I don't even want to get into whether this deck is "OP" because that's not even the issue. The problem is that it is just a really awful archetype to have in the game. It's such a rock-paper-scissors deck. Its effectiveness is entirely just a matter of what kind of deck you're playing against it. Obviously that's true to a degree of most decks, but with Emhyr mill, it's just ridiculous. If you're running even a decent amount of deck thinning you're just out of luck. Actual gameplay doesn't matter in the slightest. There's almost literally *no* effective counter-play to it. Locks are pointless. You can try to destroy Avallach before they bounce him but they're just going to Renew. Or, if you hit him after he is silver, they're just going to use Assire. And they've got so much draw power now that they'll probably draw him back. You can *maybe* use Artefact Compression but that's literally one single card and by that point they've probably already played him 3 times. Realistically, all you can really do is just *hope* that they tremendously draw poorly. Either that, or just don't run a deck with any thinning. But that's such a big part of so many fun decks.

Part of the problem also is that this deck takes *forever* to play against. You're looking at 25+ sets of turns instead of the usual 13-15. It's awful. I mean look, I'm not one of these super competitive players. I even don't mind losing so long as I get a good match out of it. But that's the problem. Every time I run into one of these I come away feeling like I just wasted 40 minutes of my life. By all rights I know I'm going to lose and it just becomes a matter of *arduously* going through the motions for a very long time. I don't say this lightly (I've been a steady player since the closed beta) but if this doesn't get hotfixed, I may just sit this patch out. Forcing your opponent to run out of cards just shouldn't be a win condition. By all means make more/better cards like Alba Spearmen and make those into the deck's win condition. But either make Avallach doomed and stubborn or make him and other draw cards only activate if your opponent has cards to draw.
 
Play Foltest 40 card deck. Then laugh as they try to mill your entire deck.

Btw foltest 40 card swarm deck has a pretty high winrate since most decks right now doesn't have anything that could disrupt your board since almost all of my matches right now are against Armor / Mulligan / Mill which none of them run weather / removal.

And btw mill deck lacks proper strength value to bring up to the board so if you somehow could get 30 points lead you could just pass and they would need to use 3 or 4 card just to catch up to you. And if they let you win you could just easily 2 0 them. And they never ever run weather clear so save up your weather and slam your weather in round 3 and they could only watch as their card drawing effect backfires at them.
 
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Every time I saw NG with the typical cards found in a mill deck, I would immediately kill Avallach, before they can demote him to silver. It's amusing seeing opponents give up so fast when their pivotal card is taken away.

It's a bad deck idea because it relies so much on one card.
 
There are no words for how much I hate Mill Nilfgaard. I put Nenneke in my deck just because of it. Nenneke+decoy+shani = up to 9 redraws. Won the last two matches against mill nilfgaard thanks Nenneke, but it so annoying to play more than half an hour against it. The very last match was the worst of all: He played two Avallachs because of summoning circle and totally played him 7 times I think.
 
There's several counters to the deck. One is Summoning circle for Assire and you just put a decoy (if you run it) back into your deck to decoy Assire again - or if you have decoy in hand, use it on Assire and put it back into your deck. That's two cards with broad usages so it shouldn't really be hard to "tech" them into your deck and with them milling you you're bound to get them sooner or later. Try to keep one high value bronze unit in your deck for Magne division, like lacerate. Destroying Avallac'h before they can put him back into their hand is another one. And most importantly, resist the urge to thin. If you draw roach/aelirenn, keep them in your hand and just play them from your hand. Playing more than a 25 card deck is also a viable strat. Or how about that artifact compression card for the silver Avallac'h.
 
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4RM3D

Ex-moderator
I was wondering when this thread would appear. Many days later than I had initially guessed. Anyhow...

Playing a mill deck myself I've got mixed feelings about this. I like the deck because of the special win condition, other than just buff everything or kill everything. But even I have to admit that the mill archetype can get out of hand, if left unchecked. I do like alternative win conditions and because of the nature of Gwent (compared to other CCG), there is less choice in that regard. For now, the mill archetype isn't the issue that should be addressed first.
 
Well I do manage to counter mill NG with few cards like ESKEL, JADE FIGURE, CORAL, MANTICORE VENOM, LETHO. Jade figure/coral, letho can banish demoted avallach or Albrich. If you do not run those cards, you can use eskel/venom to kill avallach even if he was returned from the graveyard.
 
esra01;n9461011 said:
Play Foltest 40 card deck. Then laugh as they try to mill your entire deck.

This is a pretty tedious response. As I said, the issue isn't that Emhyr mill is OP or unbeatable overall. It's just pretty unbeatable when you're playing a number of decks. Sure, obviously I could just play the one specific deck type that counters it, but I don't *want* to play that one specific deck. I want to play a variety of other decks.

4RM3D;n9463261 said:
I like the deck because of the special win condition, other than just buff everything or kill everything. But even I have to admit that the mill archetype can get out of hand, if left unchecked. I do like alternative win conditions and because of the nature of Gwent (compared to other CCG), there is less choice in that regard.

I'm also not opposed to alternative win conditions but I just think mill is far too contrary to the basic way the game is played. There are too many cards that rely on pulling other cards from your deck and deck thinning is such a fundamentally smart strategy and plays a huge part of making many decks work consistently. Throwing in an archetype that makes all that actively contribute to your opponent's win condition is just a bad idea. It's like having a archetype where you win if your opponent plays a total of more than 100 strength in a round. For far too many cards/decks there's just no real way to even try and play around that.

4RM3D;n9463261 said:
For now, the mill archetype isn't the issue that should be addressed first.

I don't know. Maybe it comes down to different priorities. I mean, I'll agree that mill isn't the single most pressing issue from a strict competitive balance perspective. But look, most players are also playing the game because they actually enjoy playing. That's where I am just *so* fed up with mill. I can deal with the fact that I'm gonna lose the majority of matches right now against mulligan because it's just so high tempo compered to other decks. I can't deal with any more matchups against mill. They're just so long, boring, uninteractive and all around pointless. When I lose to mulligan I still have fun but when I lose to mill I want to stop playing. That, to me at least, makes mill the single biggest problem in the game.

 
There are plenty of ways to effectively counter mill to try and win the MU.

Even those thinning tools you have in your deck, you don't really need to play them. If you're going up against an emhyr build, don't play them. It'll lower the effectiveness of your deck, but it'll lower the effectiveness of theirs much more, and odds are that you'll win if they can't deck you out. By that reasoning, as you try to make their life harder, you need to play around your usual game plan, instead of just going all out.

Then there's getting rid of avallach. The deck simply dies if you manage to deprive it of avallach. Between scorching him, compressing him or just outright damaging him by 8, there are, especially now, a lot of ways to get rid of him.

For them to renew, they need to have renew in hand besides avallach, and consider the fact that they'll be giving you access to more of your cards as well, when they do play their renewed avallach, so more chances for you to have another answer to him.

Then you can also play a few extra cards, which is something that will definitely become a thing as soon as mill actually becomes prevalent enough.

As has also been mentioned, playing assire (or summoning circle to copy theirs, or caretaker to steal it), nenneke or ciri:dash will directly hurt if not destroy their game plan.

Basically, unless you're playing an ultra-thin build, you should have ways to actively try and counter the mill gameplan. If you opt for playing a build that doesn't have answers at all, or that thins itself to a point in which they don't really need to mill you all that much to win, well then just resign to the fact that you have a very bad MU. Hey, mill itself has a couple very bad MU's as well, just as most other builds do, so that's not one-sided at all.
 
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ikillchicken;n9464661 said:
This is a pretty tedious response. As I said, the issue isn't that Emhyr mill is OP or unbeatable overall. It's just pretty unbeatable when you're playing a number of decks. Sure, obviously I could just play the one specific deck type that counters it, but I don't *want* to play that one specific deck. I want to play a variety of other decks.

Smart play counters mill, not a "one specific deck type". It requires a shift in how you play and if you stick with the same plays you make against mill as you do against other decks you're not going to have a good time. Even discard Skellige can counter mill with some smart plays and they thin a whole lot. The magne division are coming out sooner or later and you need to refrain from thinning until they've been played. Assuming you've not managed to kill off Avallac'h, he'll draw you eight cards + three cards from draws + one from Albrich. That's a total of 12 cards from the available 15 you have in deck. Mill is NOT able to completely mill you if you don't thin at all. So if you don't thin you'll still have three whole cards in your deck. Assuming you run summoning circle + decoy, that's the amount of cards you may thin for before round 3.

Also, passing against mill is important. Magne divisions, Avallac'h and Albrich can NOT draw any more cards if you pass. Keep that in mind.
 
Its a really nasty strategy i dont see wheres the fun in it.Its like in yugioh where you make your opponent discard/draw cards until he has zero and then he losses.Correct me if im wrong but Gwent its about armies fighting its other no?Then whats the point in forcing your opponent to draw everything,and suddenly he stands r3 with 5 dead cards?
 
xDivinity;n9466181 said:
... Then whats the point in forcing your opponent to draw everything,and suddenly he stands r3 with 5 dead cards?

Strategy?

Exhaust your opponent's resources?

It's war out there!
 
partci;n9466321 said:
Strategy?

Exhaust your opponent's resources?

It's war out there!

Filthy Nilfgaardians will do anything to conquer the north heh.
Anyway My point is that at least in yugioh,a card game with over 10k cards,there are at least 200 cards to help you counter this strategy.While in gwent those cards are super limited,some of them are locked in specific factions too.
 
burek18;n9464991 said:
Mill is NOT able to completely mill you if you don't thin at all.

That is not true if their Avallac'h combo all went good. I've done much calculations on how much cards I can mill with the deck. I'll just list them here I guess:

- Avallac'h, then Renew Avallac'h, usual Avallac'h combo that replays him 3x, then Albrich and Sweers. This can actually mill 26 cards deck that doesn't thin itself at all. That routine mills by 11-13 cards (the variable number comes from Sweers). Which if Sweers didn't mill anything, would leave you with 1 card remaining if you play a 25-cards deck.
- Same as above, but without Renew or Summoning Circle, would mill by 9-11 cards.
- If Avallac'h got killed twice: Albrich, then combo for replaying him 3x, and Sweers. This would mill for 8-10 cards. Without thinning your 25-cards deck, you'd have 2-4 cards remaining.
- That 11-13 mill is NOT the max, since Assire can shuffle back Albrich or even Avallac'h. I've not counted any Summoning Circles as well.

This deck can still be countered though, even just by not thinning your own deck. I can mostly Renew Avallac'h first before going to combo him, and killing Avallac'h twice is not the end of the deck since you can still replay Albrich. This deck doesn't run weathers, but it does run weather clears, and there's Merigold's Hailstorm in the list which is highly effective for long rounds. Also tbh, against a deck that usually thins itself much, and therefore runs much weak cards individually, I think this deck can out-value them depending on how things turned out. Atm I'm on around 15-1 with millfgaard, I'm still rank 15 though so don't mind that winrate. But the interesting fact that I've figured is that out of 4 variants of millfgaard that I've tried, only 1 can achieve that kind of winrate, as it still can win unfavored match ups as well (but I bet some is due to my opponent's missplays, low rank stuffs).

Anyway, how you can win with Millfgaard, and how you can win against it depends on what list the mill is running, then it depends on how you play against them or with them. As with all decks, there are people that just get into the deck, so winning against them would be easier. In the other way though, there are those that don't know what the hell is happening in front of them. But mill's win condition nowadays lies in Magne Divisions, so basically you just need to have a bronze card in your deck so that they will still give you cards.

Regarding the thread itself, I both agree and disagree with it. It's mixed up really. Millfgaard is one of the most complex decks in the game, both how to play it, and how to counter it, which gives players the unique experience of playing it, and facing it. But the idea of having a deck that pretty much has the upper-hand against most efficient-decks is somehow bad, right? I mean, most efficient decks would run some sort of deck thinning, and I've figured that even if you just thin 3 cards, it would still be pretty millable. I've said that even non-thinning deck is still millable, so...

But oddly, CDPR just gave mill an even better win-condition than Tibor/Vilgefortz, which is Magne Divisions. And honestly, my mill deck is better with just Ava, Cahir, Stefan, and Renew line-up. Its win condition shifts to 3 bronze cards which is pretty crazy imo.

Also, I almost forgot to mention. Mill decks that run Assire and Decoy can never deck out so long that they can keep using Decoy on their Assire (as long that Assire is on board. Killing her would make their deck unrenewable anymore). Something to put in mind if they over-mill themselves, or in mill mirror. When they shuffle back Decoy, they might want to use it on Assire, so this one is quite predictable.
 
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I've mentioned it before in a different thread: I'd like to see a doomed tag on Avallach. The ability to replay this card over and over again is just not healthy for the game.

Or add a timer to cards who draw one or two cards on both sides.

Or make A. a 7 strength unit so he's at least in A. Thunder range for all factions.

Another problem seems to be that not all factions can put back cards in their deck, which would be a bit of a counter.

The basic concept behind mill decks seems interesting to me but IMO there need to be better ways to work against it.

 
I have a small suggestion on the matter:

If a card that forces your oponnent to draw is played and the oponnent doesn't have more cards to draw from, generate a copy of a 5 strength Last Minute Soldier in his hand instead. This way, mill decks won't get the card advantage, but they still might be good for the strength of the cards drawn for those playing them.
 
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