Mill / Deck Out - Failed Cards & Mechanics 

So it's not a failed mechanic, its a banned one

Interesting how self-mill became viable in both Yugioh and Magic, mostly for the same reason (although Magic has a few cards that make you win upon decking out instead of losing, which is by far the easiest alternate win condition in all of Magic).

I miss ghostrick mill. It was a cool twist taking a single card from an entire archetype and making an entirely different win con over it. Even if it wasn't good

Do one on Fusion. Fusion was technically a failed mechanic at the beginning of the game.

I like deck out because of that one duel between Yugi and Strings. It left a really big impact on me. Plus, it's funny.

The fundamental problem of Mill/Deck Out Strategies is the same problem faced with 'Burn' Strategies and other 'Alt Win' strategies. They can't be too powerful to be able to resolve fully on your turn or else you get FTK stuff, where your opponent doesn't even get a turn, before you win. HOWEVER due to the way the game currently is you are almost never getting to Turn 4, meaning that most of these strategies are useless for games. Power Creep has just gotten out of hand the last few years and sadly it doesn't look like its gonna slow down anytime soon. We need more alternative formats.

I like the brief dive into retro OCG metas. Doesn't get a lot of attention elsewhere, and it's cool to learn about!

Milling / stall was my fav pre-XYZ. Needle Worm + Morphing Jar were great.

For MtG players, Lightsworn is the equivalent of Dredge

I'm surprised necroface hasn't been mentioned in this video

I used to play a deck like this... Waayy back in the day, in the early Yugioh meta. Never knew it was called "milling" though. I just used to call it my "annoying deck", because it was extremely annoying. Even for me to play, lol. It wasn't anything more than a meme deck for me at the time (I almost always played a beatdown deck), but I do remember pulling off some wins with it on some of the better, older players at the league. The look of frustration on their face when an 11 year old decked them was always satisfying.

Even if decking out an opponent isn't truly the best path to victory, it's still freaking impressive how much the strategy has grown since the beginning. Nowadays, if you wanted to make someone deck out, you probably can do now in record time with the loads of cards specifically designed to burn through their resources. Whenever I run into someone that gets me with that strategy, I have to applaud that effort. You may not be the #1 strategy, but it's fun seeing that empty spot where their deck used to be when you pull it off.

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="208">3:28</a>, cardcar d is shown on screen, but that card didnt come out until 2012

Lightsworn was the first deck that I became competitive with as a kid.

Just like with the flip monsters I wouldn't say they failed. More like aged poorly. In today's meta a lot of cards are better off in the graveyard or banished. Cards that allow cards back into the deck are also a lot more common now. Hell, there's a whole archetype for that kind of play (Madolche).

Love this series. Have you thought about making a parallel series about successful mechanics? You could talk about how new summoning methods succeeded in changing the pace of the metagame, or successful archetypes ect.

I remember i got milled out on turn one by a mayakashi deck on master duel and i was just so happy to see them combo off. Mill has a special place in my heart since it was how i was introduced to mtg and caused my renewed interest in tcgs

For Mill to be a viable plan A today would take tons of Banish Face-Down, and even then ya might get screwed over... And Kashtira still added zone deny on top of that.

Using my Six Samurai deck to OTK a guy using Maxx C in the early days of Master Duel is still one of my favorites things ever.

One of my funniest Duel Links matches was a against a Destiny Hero Clock Tower player. I banished their one-of boss monster early in the game and all they had left were stall options. And I had a Spellbook/Prophecy engine capable of enough recycling that my deck never thinned out past 11 cards. I was never in a match with a dedicated deck-out strategy, though.

Being someone who has played with and against mill decks, I can mention a couple interesting cards. Delg the Dark Monarch: The drawbacks, being a level 6, requiring cards in the opponents graveyard, and at max mills 2. Upside, easy to special summon, effect can activate on special summon, removes cards from the graveyard, 2400 atk. Leafplace Plaice: Downside, no early game advantage, doesn't mill or banish. Upside, can be a late game beater as back up due to the atk and def increasing as the opponent's graveyard fills, and special summons itself from either the hand or graveyard. Unfortunately, the last one is once per turn and requires having a smaller graveyard than the opponent. Tsuchigumo, the poisonous mayakashi: Downsides, once per turn effect, zombie reliant, low atk for a level 5 synchro. I honestly would've wrote this off, but I did once lose to this card, so it does have potential in a vampire deck. Pilgrim Reaper: Downside, XYZ requiring 2 level 6, variable atk & def, once per turn effect, reliant on dark monsters. Upside, mills 5 cards and can become more powerful if you mill dark monsters. More of a gimmick, but can help late game with certain fiends and zombies. Best if few cards are in the Extra deck.

Reminder that Jaden/Judai milled a mill player with his neospacian deck

You also forgot the necroface another huge miller

They called me crazy playing x3 chainsaw insect and x3 destiny hero defender to counter lightsworn

I'd really like to see "Failed Cards & Mechanics - Legendary Dragons/Knights" because they were the basis of multiple boosters over the years (Dragons of Legend, which is now Battles of Legend) and even a box set (Legendary Dragon Decks, alongside the Dimension Dragons and Cyber Dragons)...but saw zero competitive play because Konami stopped giving them anything remotely resembling useful support.

Neat analysis video! Thanks for uploading!

i would not say this was a failed mechanic, it was more of a mechanics severely hit by power creep/

I will say, I enjoyed my run with Tears at full-power in Master Duel - the deck would end up with all sorts of combos and endboard; to this day however, I still run my Shaddoll-Tears deck and it has been a project ever since. Once again, crackin' video Duellogs - can't wait to see another, more niche failed mechanic!

I learned today that OCG means Original Card Game, and not Online Card Game. I had to look it up when you were talking about the OCG in 1999, i thought "wait the online version wasn't out in 1999"

I use to run empty jar with decent success. After it was hit, I pivoted to rock stun, which was a lot of fun too.

So basically with the way the game is now, a practical mill deck is too unstable to ever be a staple in itself? Because you’d either be able to win the game without your opponent being able to counter play much (more of an early problem), OR you’d inadvertently pour cards from their deck into places where they’d want them (like exodia pieces into their hand, good GY related cards in the GY, etc…) and thus make it prone to backfiring spectacularly?

I played TONS of stally mill decks on duelingnetwork in 2013. It was super fun but i prob had a 20% winrate

Ah yes, Runick Mine wincon

Love needle worm. I just wished there was more deck out cards

I remember back in 03-05, that the mill deck i was using was absolutely amazing. Granted, that was before Fiber Jar was banned. I would mill cards, then Soul Release them and eventually get rid of all monster cards that hit the graveyard. Then I'd just Fiber Jar and go for straight damage, or D. D. Dynamite for massive damage. Once the ban list got updated to put fiber jar on it, the deck just never worked right again. I still have a variation of that deck, with updated cards, but sadly it just can't compete in today's meta.

I do have an almost pure runic deck, but its primary strategy isn't trying to deck out the opponent, it's more or less trying to banish a bunch of cards at and then blow them up with D.D Dynamite. Also a couple of magic cylinder if they try to attack directly backed up with the trap card magic cylinders.

As a MtG 2013 duels of the planeswalker player I really enjoyed the blue mill deck

I love mill decks. I am however, a massive troll when playing games, so that's probably why.

I remember having a morphing jar 2/ vampire Lord deck. The Vampire duo would always call monster so when morphing jar 2 effect would activate it would hit a good chunk of their deck.

The Inferno Tempest OTK is definitely inconsistent, but that's only because there isn't really a practical way to search out Tempest itself. There are enough Kaijus and 0 atk monsters that the rest of it is pretty easy. And if you do draw all the pieces, it is actually pretty likely to work. I'm pretty sure no handtraps stop it, it runs plenty of backrow removal, it has Kaijus to get rid of monsters you have that could stop it, and any players who haven't seen the deck before would probably let the attack go through, even if they could stop it. Of course, the chances of it working twice in a Bo3 format are incredibly low.

Can’t wait for the dream archetype coming out (the girl from the Dream Mirror story), where they cycle face down banished cards

I’ve just built a deck around Gate Guardians Combined. A video on that card and support would be nice.

technically a self mill strategy, there was an old OTK deck i played on Tag Force 5 that primarily worked by using a lot of draw power spell cards to fill up your grave until you have enough ammo for 3 traps to play. then you'd play in succession (but not chain) Wall of Revealing Light (pay 7000 LP), Life Equalizer (both players reset to 3000 LP), then Blasting the Ruins (have 30+ cards in graveyard, deal 3000 damage to opponent). but it could brick if your draws don't give you cards to keep playing off of, which would be enough to lose with when the opponent has their turn

I remember when Lightsworns were on the rise in my area I would have a lot of wins from decking my opponent out with Ghostrick Skeleton. I miss those days, simpler times. Ghostrick Stall may not ever be a competitive deck but it will forever be my favorite.

I have eternal dualist soul on the gba. I have a deck destruction deck that i combine with dark thorn, which deals 500 damage when your opponent discards a card from their hand. So if you had 3 of those with a morphing jar, you'd deal up to 9k damage

The contrast between mill and self-mill with burn and self-burn is really interesting. Take Dinomorphia; while against most decks it doesn't have to worry too much about the fact it burns a lot of its life points thanks to 'the only life point that matters is the last' being mostly true, they tremble at going up against Swordsoul or Branded, because a little bit of burn can legitimately end them. Logically speaking that should be true about mill strategies; Tear should be terrified of Runick, because Tear's self-mill just brings Runick closer to its win condition. But while that's true of Lightsworn more for general power level reasons (when it comes down to it Runick wins that grind game), it just doesn't work as well anywhere else. And I think part of that is both speed--a mill deck is pretty much always a slow plan--but also that any proper self-mill deck usually has a way to recycle, while self-burn never really bothers to invest in life point restoration.

I have a Prediction Princess mill deck. This video will not stop me from playing it on locals!

Can you consider a video about Vennominaga? - how this vennom archetype can be improved.

Some Kashtira decks have also been adding Lightforce Sword(s), to banish immediately on the opponent's turn, thus triggering Shangri-Ira, Diablosis, and handripping the opponent in the process.

I played a shiranui/necroface deck out style deck in master duel, its so fun. Even threw in some runick spells in there towards the end

I remember back in the day where everybody used the hamachi platform, (I forget the exact name). I used a mill-deck as like my first mill deck. This was during the synchro erra and I remember even Synchros were new to me. I went up against a lightsword deck and found it odd that he also milled his own cards, strangely enough I win very easily and quickly. My friend told me how it was incredibly odd that I won against a lightsword deck using a mill deck. 🤷🏽 who would have thought.

Honestly, I quit playing Yugioh myself because the game became all about monsters and their effects. What's the point of magic or trap cards if your monsters do almost if not all the effects you need? And then the only thing that happens after, is that they attack. Burn, deck out and other alternative win conditions gave life to the game through versatility. The fact that Mystic mine caused so much trouble as ONE card is proof enough of my point, and the fact it made people salty just shows how closed minded the game became. It reminds me of how I use to be able to find buckets of just Legos... now all I see are structured theme packs of Legos. Creativity is dead.

The ways I can see it being fixed are either by banishing the cards from the deck instead of sending them or making the opponent draw them or to make a single card that can mill the entirety of the opponent’s deck so the GY effects don't matter too much.

Mill will forever be my favorite way to win the game. when Runick came out, it became my #1 deck for good reason, even though in recent years more cards than ever benefit from banishing. in a game that can run as fast as yugioh, focusing on a mill strategy is painful to do, because of how fast a game can get out of control if you don't stop your opponents methods and you quickly eat an OTK. you can only do so much when the core of what your attacking leaves you open to be taken out the normal way.

At the risk of making a take of an extreme temperature: (Normal) Tribute Summoning is a Failed Mechanic. Despite it being one of the Central Mechanics there have historically been very few monsters worth Tribute Summoning for. It was rarely worth using up both your one normal summon AND a Monster(s) on field, for a somewhat better monster, which you might not even get out if you walked into one of the plethora of "when your opponent summons something, kill it instead" Traps; even if the summon went through you could still lose all that investment to basically any Monster Destruction effect. Must better to just play another 1-4 Star Monster. It's to the point that "Monarch" (an Archetype that rewards you for Tribute Summoning the cards) is often used for cards outside the Archetype (and lack any effect that requires Normal/Tribute Summoning) that you intend to occasionally Summon via Tribute. Like, imagine if Pokémon had a term for "Non-Basic actually worth Evolving up to"... actually IIRC, at various times there were so many good Basics that they had to release "Evolved" Pokemon that were still Basics (I can't remember which ones it started with, Pokémon-EX? Pokémon-ex? Pokémon ex? (yes those all three are/used to be different things), Pokémon ☆? some other?) because otherwise the only reason anyone would run a Stage 2 would be if it had a game warping Poké-Power/Body/Ability... but that's getting into a different TCG.

In YGO all decks play the same strategy at the end... Sneez to get a special summon to cheat out ur Boss Monsters from Main or Extra deck destroy the opponent boars and/or set up negations so Ur opponent doesn't get to play... This is even more homogenized by the fact that most archetypes have GY synergies, which also takes away Mill as a strategy from the game as a result

I see quite a few Mayakashi-Bone Tower-decks in Master Duel. Another FTK that I see a lot is Mystic Wok combined with XYZ-monsters.

In the old days, since most ways of recovering something from the graveyard were heavily limited, mill seemed to be viable. The only way I could see mill working nowadays thanks to the crap ton of graveyard effects, is with the banish facedown option, or a lingering effect where cards that were milled can't activate effects the turn they were milled.

Imo best deck outs are when your opponent & you both play decks, that want as many cards as possible in either the grave or banished & your opponent decks out 'cuz they miscounted the amount of cards you got. I had this happen several times when playing Cardfight Vanguard with a guy who played the same clan as I - I once decked out 'cuz I thought it was like in ygo where you still have your turn once you draw your last card (I was in a place where I could win in that one turn), but you actually lose the moment last card is drawn & it happened at least twice that he decked out because he screwed up the count/he didn't believe me when I told him he had another draw trigger card (if you draw it during battle phase, you get to draw another card) in his deck of 3 cards... And he insisted on attacking with a card that makes you draw 2 when attacking...

Since this one is more based around a strategy, I guess Nurse Burn decks could be a good candidate for a failed mechanic video? Because I mean, decks that just burn normally like Trickstars have been more popular than Nurse Burn decks despite their OTK potential

The jars were the ones that made a big impact but Needle Worm was also good. Nowadays, milling is a great strat because the graveyard is pretty much someone's second deck.

Great video

The nostalgia - I forgot about cards like shallow grave...

Morphing Jar, Cyber Jar, those cards were soooo annoying back in these days. I remember playing Yugioh Power of Chaos and against those cards. Dude it was so frustrating.

And there I am. The reason I played a Removal Deck back in the day.

Wouldn’t call burn damage an alternate win con; however the message was clear 👍

I can’t believe we went this whole video without even mentioning my boi Necroface.

Ghostrick Skeleton can be really funny in casual spaces

Miyakashi Mill will always be one of my favorite decks.

I play a mayakashi zombie mill deck rn actually performs pretty well. I can usually ftk someone about 50% of the time. Even without winning via mill I find it really easy to pivot into just a normal mayakashi beat down since they're so hard to remove from the field.

Self-Burn is faulty Mechanic I actually enjoy

if the next mill card, would not allow milled cards to activate its effect, I think it would work again

I used Maxx c on a zombie deck turn 2 yesterday and they special summoned until I decked out, passed the turn and ggs lol

empty jar was viable during late gx and early 5ds, after morphing jar banned the deck is basically dead

Nowadays your opponent does enough milling of their own vomiting 20 cards into the graveyard and 8 extra deck cards just to pull off a combo.

in duel links u can do mill deck with : glow moss, power of the guardians and cards that make your openets draw.

Mr Logs, could we possibly recieve a top 10 rarest cards by pull rates/appearances in product (with or without rarities) ?

Whether it's Yugioh or Vanguard, I tend to really like decks that have self-milling as part of their playstyle. That's why I unironically loved playing both Lightsworn and Tearlaments.

I've always loved alt win decks. Was a empty jar player back when I played locals. Made another variant using A/D changer. Started playing Master Duel and wanted to play Runick until I got to Plat 3 and get demolished game after game by them. Now I hate Runick lol. -A salty Traptrix player

Considering exchange of the spirit got banned i don't think mill should count as a failed mechanic

Before i quit last time, i had a mill deck using chainsaw, defender and the jars and while it wasnt that consistent (i was still missing a 3rd needle worm) it gave me one of my fondest memories, my opponent's six samurai missed my needle worm, i flipped for his last five and ended my turn, then he threw his cards. We had a crowd too. Since starting playing master duel, ive gone back to old deck types cause i hate synchro/xyz/link and ive rebuilt my mill with new stuff like present card, trickster reincarnation and the big one: soul levy. Ive had it10s deck themselves with that card cause they wernt paying attention. I have enough card effects non repeating to mill 45 cards. Still tweeking but mill is not a dead mechanic

In the OCG before they revised the rules and like around the time the game was being brought to the west, you couldn’t deck out to lose. That was actually a later rule change. Just like hand size if I’m not mistaken.

Cyber Jar was my favorite card.

4 me if they do a new architype focus on milling your opponent deck in 1 turn with the combo of effect of the Monster and spell would be a nice antimeta.

I first knew of Lightsworn because of "Duel Links", and I hated it. I always considered their discarding as a self-cripple. The only archetypes I know to take advantage of milling are the Thunder Dragon and Shiranui.

Could you do a top 10 best card that change opponent's card effect? Like for exemple in Fairy tail - Sleeper

Personally I would like to see a video containing gravity bind, messenger of peace, and level limit area b and the like in it

Subterror continua sendo forte na mecânica flip, é o mais forte nesse estilo

I have a Time Thief deck, their main gimmick is Re-doer's ability to take the top card of the opponent's deck during each players' standby and add it to their xyz material. Which means they can't do anything with those cards while they're being held hostage. You can have three out on the field at once to rapidly drain your opponent. The deck has enough ways to spin the opponent's stuff and recover the re-doers that it can be hard to respond to at times. I've used this deck to mill people out before, although my main win strategy for the deck is Infintracks Fortress Megaclops.

Man i ran one way back in the day that used banisher of light and soul release so they had no graveyard

I made a mill Deck where you just wait till the opponent decks out. 59 stall cards and 1 final countdown. It kind of worked. Sided golden ladybug.

All they need to do is un-errata exchange of the spirit and it's viable again...

im kinda surprised you didnt bring up trickstar reincarnation mill

I still mill in DL occasionally. It's fun when it works.

Ah yes! Needle Worm, Morphing Jar & Warm Worm. I was so sick of the Synchro Meta, so i just build a deck that destroyed there deck and had a ton of fun haha I remember players insulting me for being so lame because i don't allow them to OTK me with all that Synchro BS they had xD

Top 10 Cards Whose Intended Functionality Is Antithetical To Modern Yu-Gi-Oh!. Top 10 "Game-Warping" Cards That Don't Go Far Enough Anymore. Top 10 "Break Slammers", cards that prevent or punish over-extension itself. Chain Energy, Summon Breaker/Limit, similar such. Top 10 cards that are Worth Waiting for. (I. E., Slow Cards Only, with Longer Worthwhile Waits at least earning some points toward higher rankings) Top 10 Cards that require your Opponent to do something to matter. Top 10 Cards That Earn Their Oppressive Restrictions. Top 10 "Rubber Band" Cards, cards that get better the more you're losing/worse the more you're winning. Top 10 "Gift Exchange" Targets.

I love iron chain snake. I wish it was playable.

Do one on counter attack or any form of inflicting damage when opp attacks. This can be reflect battle damage like mikanko or amazoness swords woman, reflect effect damage like yubel or magic cylinder, or even surprise ATK/DEF gain like rise to full height or honest. I think that type of play is interesting but its not given enough support to see consistent competitive play. It also seems like its distasteful to duelists especially reflect damage like light law medium or embodiments.

Then there’s Yugi’s combo to obtain Slifer the Sky Dragon from Strings.

Terrible for tourney play. Casually playing though, this deck is super fun.