I’m back from getting married and while I have done a little constructed work recently the current format will (hopefully) go the way of the dinosaur. My advice is to play what you are comfortable with until the next set but if you really want more coverage of the current standard format please let me know in the comments and I’ll oblige. For today I’m going to cover some points on drafting mill. I know, I know but its the strategy I’ve had the most success with and the old adage “write what you know ” is really forcing my hand. I hate to be that guy but its very good. People’s damage output is very bad in limited and the need to reroll for consistent damage plays right into the hands of a mill player. Since Legacies is the set most people draft I’ll focus on Legacy cards but the principles I’ll be writing about will be universally applicable.

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1. Mill, discard and defensive battlefields are high picks. You want to avoid using battlefields that do damage or allow your opponent to save cards.

Since your single goal is to mill your opponent you want to have a field that is proactive to your plan. In about 50 percent of the game you will have the field you want and those games will be easier. Imperial Palace is definitely la Creme de la creme of Battlefields and easily a first pick if you open it. If you happen to get passed one in the first few picks that should make you giddy because that means no one is primarily going mill. Power Generator Trench is a sneaky mill card. You want to claim early to blank a die which will either prevent damage or make your opponent use a reroll which discards a card from their hand, its win win! You want to avoid using a battlefield like Citadel Landing Zone which will let them reroll for free without having to use a card. If you have to use a stock Rivals battlefield the easy pick is Dry Fields since you’ll generally be using most of your resources every turn. Later on I’ll talk about how expensive events are much better in mill and should be evaluated accordingly.

1. Cheap mill, Discard and Defensive Characters are high picks.

This is general startegy advice that is doubly important in mill: these characters that cost less than 10 are very good because they allow you to be very flexible.

Nute is pretty good but he screams I’ll be trying to mill you. His weak Hp will make him a primary target in a mill deck when they know that’s your primary win con. He does allow you play three colors off the bat but people might pass him because they don’t care. I do think he’s pretty good and would generally take him first because even in a mostly aggressive deck you can backdoor mill people. In a related note, try not to play Dry Fields and Nute in the same deck as that will weaken his ability.

Jedha Partisans is surprisingly one of the best cards in the format in general because he does both damage and mill. If you compare Jedha Partisans to Nute its not very close. Partisans can be a solid aggressive character that happens to mill and because he can effectively be paired with other aggressive characters its a real question of who you go after. When playing against Nute it will become pretty clear if you should be going for him or an offensive character by the upgrades and battlefield they play.

Jar Jar is fine since he can set you up for 3 colors and plots because he’s so cheap. His ability is both good and bad but generally positive. He’s not great for aggressive decks since he only has one damage but he’s solid in mill because he has a discard and his ability can force an opponent to reroll.

Mother Talzin is generally awesome giving you both information and sometimes blanking opponents dice. You can use it on your dice but because of the info I like to use it on my opponent most of the time unless I have a draw where my deck is odd hot. She’s a great character to open in general because it can set you up in both directions.

The same can be said for Temple Guard and Rose. Temple Guard shines along with Anakin in an aggressive deck but is serviceable in Mill because 3 of his sides are solid hits and he can protect another more important character like Nute, Partisan or whatever; his guardian can also stop modifiers and if all your characters are roughly the same in value he can at least spread the damage making your characters live longer in general. Rose is certainly the weakest of all of these because her die isn’t much on an upgrade to Lobots die when it comes to winning the roll but she does have three relevant sides and automatically gets you into three colors with Anakin and Ketsu which has value. This brings me to my next point.

3. Try to avoid playing Lobot as much as possible.

If you drafted one of the great battlefields you’ll want to win the roll as often as possible and lobot just doesn’t do that for you. The low cost red characters are high priority in order to stay away from the bot. With other people playing Lobot that will put you ahead in the roll most of the times. This is a small point but one to consider while drafting. If you end up with a sweet three color deck with Lobot or you wiffed on a great battlefield you should probably just play him since having a larger deck of good cards is very important for mill mirrors and for generally having options while you are playing.

4. You evaluate cards very differently in mill decks.

Upgrades and events hold very different values in mill decks. Sometimes its right to take a primarily offensive upgrade over a defenive card but a lot of the time I’ll pass a card like Canto Bight Pistol for a random piece of mitigation like Superior Position- it all depends on how deep I’m into mill.

I personally think you should be first picking Force Meditation most of the time. It’s a card that even in an aggressive deck is great on turn 1 since it threatens to kill your opponent single handedly. The non mill sides are all reasonable too. In an aggressive deck your opponent will go after the character with the Force Meditation at which point you can later overwrite into redeploy or a Weapon if you happen to be playing Ketsu(try to play the meditation on a non Ketsu character). Later on its still great in a mill deck but loses most of its value in an aggressive deck.

All of these expensive supports are generally off plan for most aggressive decks but your happy playing them since they extend the game which is something you want to do. It might feel bad to pass great offensive die cards but you will get used to it. It’s not unusual for my mill draft deck to have something like two Defends, two Dives and a two Alters.

Some of these cards are cards that interact with decks and hands that are generally not the best in other strategies but they turn your resource sides into discard sides.

5. Keep them honest and resolve high damage sides.

I’ve played against mill players who reroll their two damage sides early on and I slightly disagree with that. The high damage sides will force your opponent to race for damage. They might still think you can mill them but if you are pacing damage along with them that will force them to have to remove your damage and put pressure on them to reroll to keep up. If you go full yolo on mill your opponent can ignore your damage and thus can save cards on rerolls and mitigation. If you don’t have enough gas to mill them out you will have to play a fair game which will result in removals and discards.

This all contextual though. If you have one of the sick nasty battlefields it will make sense to go a little harder on mill. The biggest point is that you’ll need to probably play offensive cards anyway and its important to get some value from them. In many of the games I end up killing one of their characters and finishing them off with mill. This balance is really skill intensive and requires some practice to know when its right to switch from one front to another but its worth figuring out since this is such a powerful strategy.

Thanks for reading. I hope this was helpful. What do you think of the strategy in limited? Let us know what you think! Take care and as always…

May The Rolls Be With You…

@NJCuenca

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