I’ve played probably hundreds of card games. It’s kind of my addiction. The fact that Hearthstone doesn’t have a true mill option not only makes it a little more linear than it’s thousands of competition but probably scared a lot of experienced tcg and ccg players away. Deck adjustments and side decks based on who you are facing has always been a thing and I feel gimping the game of an option for an entire popular play style is kind of a reason for some players who enjoy that style not to play.
For someone such as me, who is not familiar with other card games, can you explain what a “true mill option” is?
I believe he means a card/deck which destroys the cards of other people’s decks. A few have existed in the past, most recently Tickatus, but it never fails to get the playerbase up in arms. People play the game to play with their deck, and they hate seeing it all burn before they can even touch it.
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I personally disliked Tickatus. It was just too much, a strong body AND 5 (five!!) cards burned, AND with Y’Shaarj you know it’ll happen again. It was not even a very strong deck, but it just felt bad.
I do not mind milling in general, just not on this scale. I never felt as emotional about e.g. Gnomeferatu, or Altar of Fire. Nor about the traditional mill decks that try to make the opponent mill cards by overdrawing (especially the classic Mill Rogue with Coldlight Oracle and supporting cards). Those all feel like fair matchups where you have a fair chance.
So to the OP, I do believe milling is a strategy in Hearthstone, just not a very popular one. The only card that really took it to the next level, Tickatus, is still in play but does not actually see much play because people don’t like to play it (or because they are unhappy with the win rate).
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It’s not popular because it’s not milling. Once you run out of cards to draw it should be a loss.
Blizzard decided to not implement such a harsh mill rule. But with mill damage (1 point of damage for the first failed draw attempt; 2 for the second; 3 for the third; and so on) running out of cards does actually put a player on a very fast-running timer.
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Mtg can get away with autoloss on an empty deck. Hearthstone has a deck half the size and you can reliably get to the bottom of it yourself. Trying to port one rule to the other game would be a bad idea.
It’s not just mtg that uses that rule though. It’s pretty common across the table. I’d say 80% of tcg/ccg even.
There’s mill rogue decks atleast in wild
That’s a really good point