86 replies to this topic

[MagnusArcanis]

Hey all! Gencon was a blast and its good to be back. Below is the deck I used to claim my 5th consecutive gencon win and 2nd consectuvie Nationals win! All board the Y- Train:

Y-Train
Deck Built with CardGameDB.com CoC Deckbuilder
Character
Yithian Scout (TKatG) x3
Keeper of the Great Library (TKatG) x3
Professor Nathaniel Peaslee (TKatG) x2
Lost Oracle (TKatG) x3
Faceless Abductor (TOotST) x3
Grasping Chthonian (IotF) x1
Ancient Guardian (Core) x1
Master of the Myths (IT) x3
Marcus Jamburg (WoP) x1
Support
Lost City of Pnakotus (TKatG) x3
Displaced (TKatG) x1
Dark Passenger (TKatG) x2
Frozen Time (TKatG) x3
The Festival (TkatG) x3
Book of Iod (ER) x1
Ice Shaft (NN) x2
Event
Studying the Void (TKatG) x3
Pushed into the Beyond (TbtA) x3
Interstellar Migration (TkatG) x3
Thunder in the East (KD) x2
Burrowing Beneath (Core) x2
Shocking Transformation (Core) x2

How it's played

The goal of the deck is simple enough. Get Yithians into the discard pile as quicly as possible while not only defending yourself but create openings in your opponet's defenses.

So, how is this accomplished you ask?

The crux of the deck is winning the Arcane Struggle and chaining together triggers from Lost Oracle and Studying the Void. Master of the Myths, Keeper of the Great Library, and Marcus Jamburg are you go to guys for this of course. To explain a bit further, in response to winning an Arcane Struggle, you can trigger the effects of Lost Oracle and Studying the Void per copy that ends up in your discard pile. Even if you find new copies because you were discarding more cards.

I.E. I win by 3 books at a story thanks to Master of the Myths with a Study in the discard pile. Revealing 3, one of which is a Lost Oracle, I discard all, and then now I can trigger Lost Oracles effect to discard to more cards from my deck, which hopefully hits another Lost Oracle or Studying the Void. Rinse and repeat and after an story phase or two the discard pile can fill rather quickly.

Other ways of filling one's discard pile that work in conjuction with the above triggers are The Festival and using Interstellar Migration itself to discard cards off the top of your deck.

As for the other cards in the deck, they're self explanatory. Festival plays tricks with Dark Passenger and helps get resrouced yithian cards into your discard pile while finding copies of Interstellar Migration, plus it accelerates if copies end up in the discard pile. Facless Abuductor, Pushed into the Beyond, Thunder in the East, Burrowing Beneath, Grasphing Cthonian, and Ice Shaft team up with Frozen Time to clear the path and remove any speed bumps in the way. Currently I theoryize that due to the amount of anti-hate this deck brings and how easily it finds it a player would need to maintain 4 'stops' (snow graves, flux stabilizer, etc..) while commiting to stories. It's just that unreal.

The Story Behind the Deck

Sunday after the FAQ was released Mike Mazur and I went went to Rhett Jenkins' place to see if we could come up with something that could cut through the guanlet. Armed with proxy'd decks and collections we played for hours while trying to come up any sort of an edge. It wasn't until late that evening that I began to stare at Studying the Void and began to think, "Man, this card is just so cool. Theres has just to be a way to make this worth it." Sure enough, Master of the Myths came to find first. Initially, I was just thinking that I could pull needed cards when I wanted them, but putting the pieces together I jammed it with nothing but yithians, removal cards, and a few support cards. Suprisingly, the deck worked! I was keeping all the decks we had from narrowingly defeating me.

I was in shock as to how well it handled everything. Still, I didn't believe it. I didn't want to take a 'mill' deck to gencon as I often found them unreliable and/or too easy to stop. However, with it doing so well with an unrefined list warrented investigation. This was when I re-discovered how good Lost Oracle is. With a second(third if you count Festival+Migration) way to fill the discard pile via arcane struggles... I blew my own mind. Now, I was discarding success tokens, rigging my draws with the answers I would need, filtering/accelerating with Festival, and doing it all in the span of 1-4 turns (average win was/is turn 3).

Whew, but I still needed to be sure. The following weeks were nothing but playtesting this deck to see if it could pull through in the most dire of situations. Shockingly, it exceeded every expectation as handled multiple problems from multiple angles with ease and grace. Personally, I'm not used to playing graceful decks. It just flowed together seemlessly.

Thanks!
I would like to use this space to thank Mike and Rhett for helping me peice this beast together and graciously playtesting with me almost nightly in a the few weeks we had leading up to the tournament. Performing the nigh-impossible wouldn't of been possible without your help.

Clarification

Wanted to quicly mention too. This deck, does not break any rules nor take advantage of any loophole. There was one at one point an where it could exploit a loophole that could allow cards like Studying the Void to be triggered an infinate number of times. But in the interest of the keeping the game as fair and fun for all as possible, I personally sought out FFG staff to put a close on said loophole. Appriopiate action was taken on site at the tournament.

That being said, this deck does explore some underused areas of the rulebook compared to your average deck.

In conclusion
That should be about it. As I gain time I'll whip up a full tournament report in it's own thread. Uhh... I don't expect this deck to last past the next FAQ. The Monday after we "figured it out" I attempted to appeal to Damon and Brad to ammend the FAQ to deal with an earlier iteration of the deck. Sadly a bit too late unfortunately, but after this deck proving out.. I wouldn't be suprised to see the banhammer.

That being said, I encourage all participants to share their decks and hope to see everyone at worlds! Now I shall open the doors for any questions or comments.

Thanks,
- Tom Capor

[Karrius]

Sunday after the FAQ was released Mike Mazur and I went went to Rhett Jenkins' place to see if we could come up with something that could cut through the guanlet. Armed with proxy'd decks and collections we played for hours while trying to come up any sort of an edge. It wasn't until late that evening that I began to stare at Studying the Void and began to think, "Man, this card is just so cool. Theres has just to be a way to make this worth it." Sure enough, Master of the Myths came to find first. Initially, I was just thinking that I could pull needed cards when I wanted them, but putting the pieces together I jammed it with nothing but yithians, removal cards, and a few support cards. Suprisingly, the deck worked! I was keeping all the decks we had from narrowingly defeating me.

If I remember correctly, we were mostly discussing worrying about other people playing it against you, and not so much on its own, as we considered the more typical decks. It was only after the first game or two when we realized how quickly it spiraled out of control, and we hadn't even tried to make it efficient yet or put Lost Oracle in did we see what was going on.

When playtesting the deck, we kept geetting a really consistent feeling - you'd play a round and think "Oh, man, had I just been a little better I could have won that, it was close, it was close!" And then you'd play again and get that same feeling... and again, and again, and again. When Rhett made a Miskatonic rush hate deck with obscure cards specifically to counter it, and I took the Y-train (and note that I am most certainly the weakest player of our group), I was able to beat him every time, even though it seemed like I would be at a disadvantage.

Did you end up getting to use Shocking Transformation and Jamburg at all? I find it interesting that you chose to put them in last minute! Were there any decks that gave you problems? Any problem cards that we didn't playtest against? What ended up knocking Rhett out, and was he running his ST version?

[Midian]

Great post, interesting to see you pull off a deck that I think most have tried but given up on as too inconsistent (I know I have), so how does the deck handle a true rush deck?

[MagnusArcanis]

If I remember correctly, we were mostly discussing worrying about other people playing it against you, and not so much on its own, as we considered the more typical decks. It was only after the first game or two when we realized how quickly it spiraled out of control, and we hadn't even tried to make it efficient yet or put Lost Oracle in did we see what was going on.

When playtesting the deck, we kept geetting a really consistent feeling - you'd play a round and think "Oh, man, had I just been a little better I could have won that, it was close, it was close!" And then you'd play again and get that same feeling... and again, and again, and again. When Rhett made a Miskatonic rush hate deck with obscure cards specifically to counter it, and I took the Y-train (and note that I am most certainly the weakest player of our group), I was able to beat him every time, even though it seemed like I would be at a disadvantage.

Did you end up getting to use Shocking Transformation and Jamburg at all? I find it interesting that you chose to put them in last minute! Were there any decks that gave you problems? Any problem cards that we didn't playtest against? What ended up knocking Rhett out, and was he running his ST version?

I've encouraged Rhett to make his own thread for such a discussion.

As for Jamburg, Shocking, and the Ice shafts... they were a last minute, morning of the tournament addition. Replacing Speak with the Dead, 2x Snow Graves (only in there for the mirror), 1x Book of Iod and 1x Ancient Guardian. Ultimately, I wasn't happy with Snow Graves being in the deck. I wanted to fight against the mirror as I was near certain that Rhett and I weren't going to be the only one running Interstellar Migration. So, rummaging through my collection the cards that surfaced were Ice Shaft (for killing Master of the Myths), and Ia Ia Shuddle Me'll. Both, seemed like a wait to fight in the mirror while not being dead cards against everything else.

WIth Ice Shafts in (for the moment) I immediately thought of Jamburg as they often go hand in hand. Then it hit me. Why the heck didn't I try this sooner? It synergized so well with the deck it was practically a no brainer.

Shocking was a real trick too. By reducing the Ancient Guardian count by 1 I had room for a Shock, which could pretend to be an extra copy of AG, Jamburg, Master, etc... With only 1, it felt off, so I cut a Book aslo (a helpful, but non-critical card), giving me an extra pretend copies. This also worked beautifully with problem of having answers for off turn snow graves. I was having a problem with deciding to go with 3x Thunder or 3x Burrow and 2x of the other. So instead, I slipped in a Grasping as a shock target and solved all problems I was having with the deck.

In tournament play, I proved to be right. Jamburg as an bonified all-star! I saw him or had the option to search for him for almost every game and tricks with Dark Passenger, Frozen Time, and Ice Shaft that were being dumped into my discard pile was amazing. His 2 arcane icons didn't hurt either.

As for anything unforseen. Lucas Tetlow (SoK) became more of a threat now that I was leaning on my support cards more. Which was seen in my 5th round match against Traivs' misk/hastur rush.

Great post, interesting to see you pull off a deck that I think most have tried but given up on as too inconsistent (I know I have), so how does the deck handle a true rush deck?

True rush comes the closest to winning. But as even Travis found out, the deck handles rush really well. Chump blocking with my characters is a solution against most rush strategies (since I'm awefully low on terror and combat), but the real champ in the match up is Lost Oracle. Usually finding at least 1 or 2 and triggering them on both player's turn can really buy me a lot of time.

Plus the deck is chuck full of removal and stall cards cards and will often draw at least 1 a turn. Making it very difficult for any deck to race ahead or attempt to stop the Y-Train from showing up on time.

[kamacausey]

3 master of the myths
3 black dog
3 ghoulish predator
2 ya tae veo (would have been twilight cannibal but I refused to purchase 2 more of the pack with him in it)
1 twilight cannibal
3 clover club torch singer
3 tattoo artist
3 peter clover
3 mr david pan
3 marcus jamburg
2 grasping cthonian
2 displaced cthonian
2 y'golonac
2 gregory gry

3 dimensional rift
3 ice shaft
3 the festival

3 burrowing beneath
3 shocking transformation

[kamacausey]

_{That was the list I played to a 9th place finish. I just as easily could have placed in the top 4 but I punted my last round. That's not taking anything away from my opponent in round 5 though cause he was a good player. He just capitalized on my mistakes like any good player would have. It is a control deck that uses jamburg to keep recycling dimensional rift or ice shaft. It is VERY consistent too. It uses festival to search up the rift and shocking transformation to search up jamburg.}

[dwarvenpony]

Congrats on the win Tom.

We've been playing versions of the Yithian mill deck around here since the day The Key and the Gate was released. The deck had a big impact on our Regional and distorted our metagame so much that players refused to play against it. We were very surprised when many players simply dismissed it as a "lottery deck" and that it was "unplayable." FAQ 3.1 didn't do enough to neuter it (namely The Festival) and we all predicted it would win Gen Con. Now that Yithian mill has finally earned some respect, hopefully FAQ 3.2 will fix things and make for a balanced and interesting Worlds!

[Runix]

Congratulations on your win!

In conclusion
That should be about it. As I gain time I'll whip up a full tournament report in it's own thread. Uhh... I don't expect this deck to last past the next FAQ. The Monday after we "figured it out" I attempted to appeal to Damon and Brad to ammend the FAQ to deal with an earlier iteration of the deck. Sadly a bit too late unfortunately, but after this deck proving out.. I wouldn't be suprised to see the banhammer.

With all due respect, I don't think a FAQ amendment is going to fix the problem.

The real problem here is quite serious and not easily fixable: the discard pile is the safest place in the game. While there were very few cards of any use in the discard pile, that wasn't a problem. Now that there are a host of cards that can retrieve others from the discard pile (mostly Shub) or simply take actions directly out of the discard pile (mostly Yog), it's a serious problem.

Quite simply, there is nothing resembling counter-play for a discard pile based strategy right now. The designers really should have seen this coming when they were putting The Key and the Gate together, but, well, they didn't. There may be some solutions in Venice, but I doubt it. Snow Graves is pretty much it (Atlantis for MU), but a minimum of support removal is enough to take care of either. As you yourself noted, with so much support removal available, it's still eminently possible to protect a discard pile based strategy.

Unfortunately, I think the solution to the problem will be a dramatic expansion of the restricted/banned list - and if previous years are any indication, it's the winner's deck that will be the starting point for bans and restrictions. I'm not sure Lost Oracle will survive to see another tournament, which is too bad, it's a fun card. Likewise with Interstellar Migration.

[Midian]

Banning interstellar migration does a fine job of shutting down the whole deck if nothing else works. Would be sad if the Oracle had to go as well since she does a good job of making slower, more reasonable milling decks possible, though probably not as good as this seems to be (unless Tom gets his hand on that deck as well I guess).

So, explain to me, who obviously missed the power of this deck, will there be a way to create an anti-deck with cancels or copy-effects (for migration, meaning self-mill kills itself when it tries to go off) or is it just as ridiculous as Magah/Endless and nothing really scratches it bad enough for it to care?

I like seeing Mill as an effective deck, but usually cards will be seeded to take care of things in future packs. I can't see anything specific as Runix said. Satchel of the Void doesn't really do anything and nothing actually goes into your discard pile to remove powerful cards (and you could still snow graves yourself and use cards that stay in the discard pile until you are ready to go off, or is this a misinterpretation by me?). Terror in Venice was at sale during Gencon, so did it have anything like that?

I still see Shub dominance as a bigger problem (Yog and Misk being popular with the new boxes is fine), having not only a near-monopoly on support hate but discard control (snow graves), ramp and search for discard plays (all in festival + transformation). Terror in Venice might mean Day cards get to see some play, so the Ghouls won't be as ridiculous as before, but I still think it is kinda sad to see Shub being so overpopulated with synergistic cards. Where is the love for Syndicate I say!

[orso]

a while ago the mill strategy doesn't seemed to be a competative strategy for a lot of players...

Congrats Tom for winning with a mill deck!

(I'm playing a Yithian mill deck by myself and it is a lot of fun! )

But why should there something be banned??
For sure Interstellar migration is the key card! But it isn't the one and only card that makes a mill deck successful! It needs a combo of some cards for this.
Banning int.mig. would kill the mill strategy for sure. I hope it will not happen! It would be a shame!!
Midian is right with the guess that a mill deck can kill itself by discarding!
So this is one possible solution for playing against a milling deck.
Others are: Power drain (very very simple!!) Interstallar migration has an action.
Why not playing 3 snow graves on a discard pile? It's easy to include them into a rush deck with card draw effects. Getting rid off 3 snow graves would be a huge problem for every milling deck for sure!!
It will cost a lot of time and attention.
Coming back to the combo...
The most efficient characters are the cheap yithians as well as the oracle.
You can take control of some or drive them insane and sing theSong of Suffering (WoP) (Hastur is a good choice again) to keep them away from discard pile
To keep a discard deck, based on Yithians, efficiant you can't include too much other cards... so the options are limited or you loose some efficiency.

There are some efficient strategies for sure for playing against a milling deck! And definitely more I mentioned...

Milling isn't unbeatable!!!
To me Hastur and it's control effects are a perfect element for a conta milling deck.

For sure the next expansions will bring some interresting cards... perhaps rush will become the more attractive strategy again or control will rock?!...
We will see...

[Midian]

That's what I was hoping for, and from my own experience with similar decks I never felt mill was overpowered. However, since Tom is quite a bit better than me at building decks I believe he is right when he say he found no answer to the deck, and that is what concerns me.

[badash56]

The real card in this deck that makes the magic happen in my opinion is Studying the Void (TKatG). Tom used this like a champ to filter his deck and basically pull every answer he needed. If you win multiple arcane struggles or have a few in the discard pile, you can just dig and dig for that Burrowing Beneath or Frozen time. The card advantage was massive.

[Wilbur]

Nice list of answers, Orso. Based upon your posts in the milling thread from a few weeks ago, Tom & I were pretty sure you had the mechanics of the deck deck figured out (which are quite different and far more reliable than the original 'Yithian Mill' with Historian and Keeper, as I'm sure you've also discovered). Tom kept saying "He's sniffing really close!".

Ironically, it's Tom's new conspiracy from Terror in Venice that will introduce the way around the discard effect triggers that have Runix worried (and he should be! The safety of the discard pile was a primary attraction of this type of design), or at least gives the designers an out if they want it. His card introduces 'remove from game' effects, and I could easily imagine a version of e.g. Atlantis that moves cards not to the bottom of the deck but outside the game (that could even be an erratum, now that 'out of game' is established). That is, they can nerf THIS deck before worlds, then add sufficiently to the card pool in the next two boxes to allay the valid but more structural concerns of Runix and (I assume) many others by the time next year's national tournaments roll back around.

[Wilbur]

Also, for those who couldn't make it to Gencon, there were three versions of this Yog milling shell at the event: Toms's, mine (Yog/Silver Twilight), and a Yog/Hastur version that did not run Oracle.

Had I had time to playtest, I would have switched to Miskatonic as my support faction, but I decided at the hotel on Saturday morning to stick to the deck I knew how to pilot. In any event, the Yog component can be ported into many different versions. Bear in mind that when the Festival receives its inevitable restriction, the Shub version will take a big, though not necessarily fatal, hit.

[arkhaminmate]

Would be curious to see the results if someone could be bothered playtesting against this deck:

http://www.cardgamed...-the-gathering/

No big expectations, just curious, and kinda wishing I was at Gencon to find out.....

And congratulations to Tom by the way.

[Runix]

I still see Shub dominance as a bigger problem (Yog and Misk being popular with the new boxes is fine), having not only a near-monopoly on support hate but discard control (snow graves), ramp and search for discard plays (all in festival + transformation). Terror in Venice might mean Day cards get to see some play, so the Ghouls won't be as ridiculous as before, but I still think it is kinda sad to see Shub being so overpopulated with synergistic cards. Where is the love for Syndicate I say!

I agree, and I was not at all surprised to see Shub in the winning deck. Shub has all the answers right now to the core metagame strategies, as you noted - resource acceleration, support control, discard control.

The question of possible solutions to the deck is a good one - but a lot of them point to Shub. The best example is The Stone on the Peak (DD) - a favorite I like to stick in my Shub decks just because it's so good in dealing with discard pile strategies. But then you have to worry about dealing with support destruction, of course.

Another possibility would simply be a deck that had even more Arcane ability, which would neatly shut down both Lost Oracle (TKatG) and Studying the Void (TKatG). Key cards would be things like Eltdown Shards (WoP) and Library of Alexandria (WaB) - but then, again, you'd need answers to the support destruction.

Miskatonic also has a reasonable option in Atlantis (SoK) . . . but then, well, support destruction.

Ironically, I think restricting Marcus Jamburg (WoP) may have done more to help this deck than hurt it. Since so many of the possible answers are based around support cards, it really hurts to not be able to retrieve the support cards in question after they get hit by one of the many support removal effects.

Finally, the best answer to this may simply be a mirror mill deck. I had orginally considered a Things in the Ground (SoA)/Marcus Jamburg deck, until Jamburg got restricted, but I suspect it would have been at least somewhat viable against the Yith mill. The Oracles would be useless in game but insane, and Studying would have been difficult to trigger with Things putting Glaaki (AoA), Umr at-Tawil (SoK), Guardian Elder Thing (Core) (a personal favorite), etc. into play. But with Jamburg restricted, keeping Things in play is that much harder. But still, a Things in the Ground/Blackmoor Estate (Core)/Stone on the Peak deck may beat this one out, it mills nearly as fast but can recover quickly from getting milled.

[Wilbur]

The very last thing you want to do to the US champ deck is mill it if you're not going for the win. A true mirror is one thing (lots of math involved), but a 'conventional' mill without yithians and migration is... not going to work. Those AOs get pushed for zero when they're insane, to give just one example of an out. Although Umr certainly requires an immediate response, given his arcane.

Also, remember that the primary threats to the Y-Train are support based, so neither Blackmoor Estate nor Stone on the Peak are likely to avoid destruction for long.

[Runix]

Postscript: Syndicate has a couple of good options to deal with this - the best would be Gregory Gry (JtUK), who conveniently is not a support card and hence not so easily removed. An unusual option would be Trophy Room (MoE) for sucking up all the Yithians, although good luck protecting that against the support removal.

Overall, though, it's fairly clear that this is a very difficult strategy to counter - even when prepared in advance. I would hate to see Lost Oracle and Interstellar Migration get banned, or even restricted, when the real fix would be ensuring that the discard pile isn't a safe house.

[Wilbur]

...the real fix would be ensuring that the discard pile isn't a safe house.

Agreed.

[Wilbur]

I like Interstellar Migration, too. A wonderful trick to play on a Cthylla+Yithian Scout combo, which is definitely around (Descendant of Eibon, er, Jim Black was playing it, for one).