Rise of the Kraken - Mill

Howdy everybody, and welcome back to Rise of the Kraken. Today we're going to be talking about the mill deck in some of it's strange incarnations. If you don't know what a mill deck means, you get will get an free bonus history lesson.
These decks extremely fun to play, but you will not see much of in competitive play. This seems to be a mechanic that FFG is continuing with, so I expect it will receive more support in future packs.

Extra bonus history lesson

When I refer to "milling" what I mean is discarding the top cards of a players deck. This is an homage to one of my favorite cards from the Magical game that shall not be named, Millstone. It discarded the top two cards of your deck. The whole point of the deck was to make an impenetrable defense while you discarded their deck ("milled them"). This was worthwhile due to a sneaky super secret rule that if you had your deck completely discarded, you lost.

Deck Philosophy

My more astute readers will have noticed a clear problem with this strategy being extended to Game of Thrones, namely that win condition does not exist... The first issue facing a deck that centers around milling the opponent's deck is,"why?"

In general, there are two reasons to do this, and when designing your deck, you should figure out which of these two schools of thought you are subscribing to.

• There are good things that happen when their deck gets discarded: Greyjoys have several responses that trigger off of things being milled or that become more powerful based on what an opponent has in the discard pile. These will keep you competitive in the challenge phase. (Supplemental Milling)
• If you can discard their entire deck, you unfortunately don't win (moral victories don't count), but you cut off their draw and should be at a distinct advantage over the long haul. You are trying to completely stagnate the game until they have no deck and then clean up the mess (Attrition Milling)

I will try to give an only subtly biased look at both strategies and say that there is value in experimenting with both.

Key Cards
There are some cards that will be in every deck in this family such as Motley Crewman (IG) and the bossman himself, Euron Crow's Eye (TGM). The decks will look dramatically different both on how they are planning on milling the opponent and what they're trying to get out of it.

Supplemental Milling

In general, this will focus on milling in the challenge phase and reaping the benefits to help you stay competitive on the board. Effects such as Drowned Fanatic (WotN) don't help you win challenges, as even if they stand/buff your people or give you a character, those are all til end of phase. Many of the challenge phase mill effects come from Raider characters, and the synergy with warships can make you quite potent offensively.

The "how" will be addressed, but first, here is a list of the benefits:

Good Things That Can Happen:
Useful if you Mill Any Time

• Alannys Greyjoy (ODG) and Asha Greyjoy (WLL) go from mediocre characters to bosses. These two lovelies should pretty much be online all the time with very little effort even in other archetypes.
• Baelor Blacktyde (TIoR) - Cuts them off from events. Great against Murder or Martel, where events will either be one timers or disabled if you can mill them before they play them.
• Balon Greyjoy (AToT) - Technically good things can happen, but shadows are rare in the current game. I mostly bring him up to shamelessly plug one of the most awesome shagga decks I've seen recently.
• Euron's Mongrel (ASoSilence) - A very cool ability on a very terrible character. Still worth a look as a way to get rid of cards in play.
• Fishmonger's Square (TftRK) - This can give you card draw. This is a wonderful effect though somewhat unreliable.
• Ten Towers (AE) - Hilarious. 90% useless, stupid expensive, turns off if you have neutral cost reducers. Still hilarious, but really just that.
• Corpse Lake (TBC) - This gets its own paragraph.
• Nagga's Hill (ODG) - After you've milled them for a while, you can get some pretty beefy characters from this.

Useful If You Mill During The Challenge Phase

• Kraken Tattoo (CoS) - Can make your characters enormous in a big hurry. This can let you get challenges through some pretty heavy defenses.
• Support of Saltcliffe (GotC) - This is fantastic. With enough ways to mill cards, you can stand people repeatedly. Put this on Euron Crow's Eye (TGM) for an infinite defender.
• River Raid (ASoSilence) - Another very fun surprise card. Turning their good characters against them is always amusing.

This deck makes extensive use of the two attachments (alarms should be going off), and upon milling something useful from the deck, will call it in as reinforcements (and claim soak). The power claim from the lake is of value as well.

The primary means of milling your opponents deck are dependent upon winning challenges, and they come from cards such as:

• Bloodthirsty Crew (OSaS) - good keywords, and a built in mill
• Raiding the Reach (TGM) - Let's you choose what you discard, which is great for activating your toys and filtering what they will will draw.
• Training Vessel (TIoR) - Cheap strength boost for raiders that activates a mill
• The Knight (TftH) - Built in mill and can stand himself

You'll see that many of these rely on unopposed challenges, and thus warship support is invaluable. This ends up playing somewhat similarly to the unopposed deck, but sometimes you get to drop a The Viper's Bannermen (PotS) and hit its proud owner in the face with it. It is a somewhat random process what you discard off the top, so this ends up being different every game you play.
The issue with this deck is that including the mill support takes out a lot of the fun things from the unopposed deck, and you can very quickly be denied board control by well tuned decks. Many of the characters are a poor strength/cost value, and the dreaded ally trait is on far too many of your central characters.


Attrition Milling
This is a strategy that will feel nothing like playing a regular Greyjoy deck. You should be discarding their deck through means that have nothing to do with you winning a challenge, much less an unopposed challenge. Your goal is a complete stalemate. This deck does not aim to win challenges on offense until the opponents deck is gone. Luckily, 90% of Greyjoy abilities only activate when you're attacking, so this even more challenging... Oppose everything you can, and it's often better to not have any power on your house for them to steal. Completely stagnate the game while you get rid of their deck.

Some of the key concepts of this deck are:

• Winter is good, hurting their martialling is good. If you can make it winter you can slow them down, and things like Frostfang Peaks (TWH) get more efficient.
• A different fleet. The boats that don't require attacking and Naval Escort (ASitD) can make an formidable defense in a hurry. River Blockade (RoR) and Captured Cog (AHM) also fit very well into the theme. Denying dominance and making sure Drowned Fanatic (WotN) activates are both very helpful.
• Permission. You should overdose on cancels and saves. The goal really is to stall everything, and cancels are something Greyjoys excel at. Including Narrow Escape (KotStorm) will make it costly to clear the board up with valar or counter a stark murder spree.
• You still have to win. If you can deck them, having valar and Rule by Decree will help you clean up the leftovers.

Most decks rely on some means of board control (StarkMurder, Burn, Martell) or hand control to shut off the pipeline to the board. This is hitting the reservoir. The key difference is that the damage you do, there is (almost) no way to repair. Ideally, you can bounce back from your hand getting wrecked by having solid draw, and recover from board destruction by having a decent hand/economy. Once your deck is gone, it's just gone. You're playing the long game here.

The glaring flaw with this plan is that you are a squid pretending to be a turtle. Greyjoys are not intended to play defense for long stretches (at all). Aggressive decks (Murder, Baratheon) can win/kill you before you can gum up the works. This strategy often benefits from looking outside the islands or going to some less stable combos to speed up the process.

Corpse Lake
I'll be blunt, I don't think Corpse Lake (TBC) is really central to a mill deck. It's a very handy supplement that lets you grab power faster, but it is not a card I have ever had any success building a deck completely around. If you look as corpse lake as a key power grab mechanism (something you're counting on for more than ~5 power), you have to:

• Protect it in a meta filled with location hate. You can also House of Dreams for it, but this has its own problems
• You have to feed it. You will need to be milling pretty hard to get the 3 power reliably each round. This frequently requires more than just your challenge phase effects. As a sad aside, lots of mill effects don't even feed corpse lake. It has to be a triggered effect, and thus things like Theon Greyjoy (WLL) and Drowned Disciple (KotS) don't trigger the lake (passives) and Iron Fleet Raiders (MotA) also won't feed you power (mill is a cost here).
• You have to not get stomped. Here's the tough part... If you're feeding it outside the challenge phase, your ability to keep board control (or at least board relevance) is diluted. Many of your effects come through characters, and if they are all dead they can't feed your lake.

From my experience, running HoD for a location that provides no board advantage sets you back pretty substantially, especially against early onslaught decks. It's like playing a KotHH deck without the extra goodies. Relying on drawing or hunting up a location, and then planning to keep it in play is risky at best. I think it is best as an accelerator of a supplemental milling deck, though if you can keep it up and keep your attrition style wall up, you can win the game without ever attacking (infinite moral victory).

A Quick Note About Melee

Similar to the unopposed deck, the supplemental milling deck can grab power very quickly by preying on the weak.

Some cards improve with more people, as they effect everyone. Euron Crow's Eye (TGM) becomes incredible in melee as a deterrent for anyone attacking you.

Melee and attrition are not two concepts that go together. While you set up your awesome wall, someone will have won on the second turn attacking someone else... If you're going to try to deck all of your opponents, you need some sort of improbable crazy combo to come together... As a side note, you very well may still lose the game...

In Conclusion
Milling is great fun, and if you're truly a heartless pirate, cleaning up the remains of an opponent with no deck, no board, and only 4 cards is about as blissful as it comes. Because your deck is based on randomly pulling things from your opponents deck, it's a huge gamble/more exciting. You won't be top tier, but it's very fun and can still compete. I've tried a huge number of extremely off-the-wall mill decks, so leave any questions/complaints/objections in the comments or PM me.

Thanks for reading, and next time JCWamma will be going through House of Dreams, and what it can mean for Greyjoy.