It's no news to anyone at this point that with the release of LoE the Mill archetype will receive 2 huge additions: Brann Bronzebeard and Reno Jackson. As mostly Mill players know, the two classes with consistent decklists are Druid and Rogue. Unfortunately Reno Jackson isn't as good in Rogue as it is in Druid versions.
Having said that, the Rogue version has much more aggressive mill strategy making it slightly easier/straight forward to play than Druid and here comes the thing: Mill Druid is among the hardest decks to play in Hearthstone, even then there's little compilation of info to make a proper guide.
I was thinking about making a thread where people discuss card choices, game plan, match ups, tech choices, meta choices - without the needing of a single guy to create the whole content like we see in the guides people post alongside their decklists. Videos are welcomed as well.
To start some discussion I'll post a list I'm playing recently, but I anticipate that I'm no pro-player let alone a good Mill player. I just love the archetype and want to gather some good stuff for people to get better playing it as well.
Why run Justicar in a mill deck? Surely Deathlord would be more advantageous given you can just Naturalize whatever comes out of it which thins their deck even more. Not really sure what Justicar is bringing to the table tbh.
Sure, let's start some card-choices discussion!
First concerning Justicar itself. For a grinding play style like Mill's the bonus from Justicar has really good value: we get some welcomed extra survivability with the 2 armor while also rising our capacity to board control by just HPing into small or previously damaged minions.
Within Mill strategy there are many turns where we end up just with HP and pass, Justicar makes this kind of plays considerably better as well. Currently among the most successful control decks both Warrior and Priest are running her, the closest thing to a Control Druid is our dear Mill.
Now, about Deathlord: I really like this card and run it in my Rogue Mill, but I don't know if we can outright compare it with Justicar. Justicar isn't used in Rogue Mill due to a rather weaker HP, while Deathlord is used cause on top of being a wall for Aggro decks it also helps slightly in Mill Rogue's game plan which is much more aggressive than Druid's.
In Mill Druid's case we need to use our mill cards much more carefully, wasting a Naturalize earlier in the game is most of times a bad deal: you'll miss the extra draw when opponent finally reaches fatigue and you isn't guaranteed to burn as many opponent cards as Rogue does so you are simply exchanging a threat for potentially 2 new ones in his hand.
I can see Mana Wraith being tested, although it possibly doesn't make the cut.
The other two are too inconsistent: they can work against Control but then Control has the answers specially due to the lack of other threats in Mill lists so they won't stay for long on board. Against aggro you can't make this kind of minions work anyway since they'll always keep a low number of cards in hand.
As an attempted Miller for some seasons and card releases, Mill works better for Rogue, Fatigue works better for Druid. They are similar play styles although not the same. Justicar Trueheart is great in Druid, god awful in Rogue.
Milling is easier in Rogue with cards like Vanish, Shadowstep and Sap. This, coupled with the Coldlight Oracle, means that your opponent is more likely to overdraw. Obviously Gang Up.
Druid is better at destroying the opponents minions rather than returning them to the hand. You have to rely on Panda Power to get the Coldlight Oracles back to your hand which means you have less chances to mill but more chance to outlast your opponent into the late, late, late, LATE game.
From my experience (I normally spend a day or 2 each month playing one or the other) we are still a few cards away from having a viable option for milling properly. Coldlight Oracles only get you so far and that is what both of these decks rely heavily on. Were there another neutral card where both players draw several cards or have cards put into their hands, it would be easier as you would have more options to make your opponent overdraw.
Druid is definitely the easier of the 2 to play but Rogue is definitely the most rewarding.
As an attempted Miller for some seasons and card releases, Mill works better for Rogue, Fatigue works better for Druid. They are similar play styles although not the same. Justicar Trueheart is great in Druid, god awful in Rogue.
Milling is easier in Rogue with cards like Vanish, Shadowstep and Sap. This, coupled with the Coldlight Oracle, means that your opponent is more likely to overdraw. Obviously Gang Up.
Druid is better at destroying the opponents minions rather than returning them to the hand. You have to rely on Panda Power to get the Coldlight Oracles back to your hand which means you have less chances to mill but more chance to outlast your opponent into the late, late, late, LATE game.
From my experience (I normally spend a day or 2 each month playing one or the other) we are still a few cards away from having a viable option for milling properly. Coldlight Oracles only get you so far and that is what both of these decks rely heavily on. Were there another neutral card where both players draw several cards or have cards put into their hands, it would be easier as you would have more options to make your opponent overdraw.
Druid is definitely the easier of the 2 to play but Rogue is definitely the most rewarding.
I always thought that as long as you win by fatiguing your opponent before he kills you (or before you fatigue yourself) it could be called Mill. Although literally Mill decks should burn opponents cards and as you said Rogue is the class for this approach.
Now, I play Mill Druid since the hype from Natural Remedies' list and only tried a bit of Rogue Mill this season and did much better with the Rogue version. I thought that since Druid's relies more in survivability and drag much more the game it was more difficult to play.
Looking at your decklist, including things like Doomsayer and swapping out a Force of Nature for a Starfire are good tweaks that can greatly improve matchups for the deck.
Reno Jackson is a bit of a mixed bag, as trying to optimize the deck to make him work at any point in time means losing out on a lot of the cards needed to allow you to control the board. So that leaves you with an option that may work sometimes, but can leave you screwed with a dead Reno Jackson when you really need that heal.
The problem, however, comes from the deck not being top tier, and ridiculously easy to screw yourself by attempting to get greedy and burn stuff off, as the druid mill must be reactive, whereas the rogue mill can be proactive/aggressive.
It feels like Doomsayer doesn't belong to Mill Druid. How to use it effectively? I have experience using it solely in Freeze lists, but even then I have a hard time figuring the best timing for a Doomsayer with no Frost Nova/Blizzard to combo with.
Also, I really prefer FoN over Starfire, since it has 1 more damage and can be divided between 3 targets. The draw from Starfire can be quite the drawback for this archetype, am I wrong?
Honestly, I'm not a fan of spell heavy mill druid. It has 3 major drawbacks. The first is that it's hard to trade with all the sticky minions in the meta. The second is Druid has very weak board clear. Most of the spells are single target only, and the AoE is very rare and weak. It's hard to be more efficient when you are giving your opponent cards and trying to trade 1 for 1 with spells. The third is that it's hard to regain board control once you lose it. You giving your opponent cards just exacerbates these three problems.
That said, I do believe mill druid should be more of a thing if anything because Naturalize has amazing potential for this. However, I think that it's often more efficient to use creatures that are beefy for the cost and trade versus wrath/swipe/etc. I say that since you generally wind up trading 1 for 1 or worse with spells anyway. Beefy minions, in my opinion, do a bit better on this. This also further supports using cards like Dancing Swords and King Mukla. That just leave the problem of overall board clear, which generally leads to some hail mary Poison Seeds combo. In my experience, that alone is often not good enough.
It feels like Doomsayer doesn't belong to Mill Druid. How to use it effectively? I have experience using it solely in Freeze lists, but even then I have a hard time figuring the best timing for a Doomsayer with no Frost Nova/Blizzard to combo with.
I've actually been theorycrafting with this card quite a lot lately. It's best in freeze mage or rogue (Conceal or other stealth). But I think it can still be good in other decks. The card will either get destroyed, silenced/hexed, or ignored. If ignored, it usually means your opponent can't do anything to stop it on that turn. This means you clear their board and it often prevents the opponent from playing anything for a turn. That's a big tempo gain. If destroyed, that's usually 7 damage that didn't get put on your face. Unless it was removed by something like deadly shot or execute, in which case you just absorbed what could be prime removal on your better minions. Even if silenced/hexed, it's still a silence they can't use on something else.
I've also discovered that it's actually a decent situational tempo card. For example, playing this right before a Handlock's 4th turn is hilarious. When played against aggro (turn 2-3) early, it often stops the opponent from either adding to their board or going for your face for a turn.
I have tried to fit it into Druid decks before because of Druid's weakness of board clear. If you can get it to work, it should be a decent include. The problem is getting it to work consistently. If anyone has any good ideas on this, I would love to hear them.
I've ran 2xDoomsayer for a long time, and it does exactly what you describe.
Alot of the AE potential for the deck comes from using Wild Pyromancer with the various single target spells to make another Swipe. I mean, if you combo Wild Pyromancer + Explosive Sheep + Swipe you've essentially got a really bad Flamestrike that just did 7 damage to a single target or 4 damage all enemies. That's the power of the spell based druid fatigues, is you essentially have a pile of Legos to build a solution from.
The trick to using Poison Seeds by itself is to calculate opponents damage, and determine if the damage reduction by changing everything to a 2/2 is worth using the card - which makes it kind of a proactive heal of sorts.
As far as the minion based ones go, Dancing Swords is the only real minion I like in a fatigue deck as it's the only one that can't screw you over, unlike both Goblin Sapper and Clockwork Giant are basically winmore cards against control, but useless against aggro because you have to do the suicidal thing against aggro and give them cards, which makes both bad against aggro. Deathlord is great, until it backfires and accelerates your loss, as it was doing this often enough for me that I had to drop the card. This is largely mitigated in Rogue because of cards like Sap, Vanish, Sabotage, and Assassinate. King Mukla is a mixed bag, as it can be problematic with druid because druids don't have bounce, so a target that normally wouldn't eat hard removal tends to draw them, which can make coping with the late game harder.
And while I haven't seen Lorewalker Cho mentioned... No, just no. Your spells are worth more used against you than any advantage you would have using the opponents spells against them.
how can they kill me using fatigue if they cannot survive my entire deck?
Take a closer look at my variant posted above. You don't get to play your entire deck; the moment Nozdormu hits the board (turn 8 or 9 usually) you've lost, because you never get to play another card. The act of milling your opponent whilst Nozdormu is on the board means that your opponent does not get to take a turn.
I've ran 2xDoomsayer for a long time, and it does exactly what you describe.
Could you elaborate a bit on the consistency you get and what you play with it or around it? I'm still trying to figure the best way to go about it in Druid.
Alot of the AE potential for the deck comes from using Wild Pyromancer with the various single target spells to make another Swipe. I mean, if you combo Wild Pyromancer + Explosive Sheep + Swipe you've essentially got a really bad Flamestrike that just did 7 damage to a single target or 4 damage all enemies. That's the power of the spell based druid fatigues, is you essentially have a pile of Legos to build a solution from.
That's terrible trade value the vast majority of the time. The problem with giving your opponent cards is you have to make high value trades so they don't overwhelm you. I realize options are somewhat limited, but 3 cards for 9 mana just to get a Flamestrike that also does 3 damage to your own board is not good. I hate Wild Pyromancer in mill Druid. It's squishy so it rarely lasts. It's often not worth the combos. IMO, swipe is a waste against anything not Paladin in a deck like this.
Explosive Sheep is intriguing, though. It might go well with Poison Seeds. But I don't think you need Wild Pyromancer for it. When it comes to damage, I've actually been playing with Abomination. It's an ok taunt that really helps with board clear. It's weak to silence, but it's ok. Unstable Ghoull is worth considering as well.
As far as the minion based ones go, Dancing Swords is the only real minion I like in a fatigue deck as it's the only one that can't screw you over, unlike both Goblin Sapper and Clockwork Giant are basically winmore cards against control, but useless against aggro because you have to do the suicidal thing against aggro and give them cards, which makes both bad against aggro. Deathlord is great, until it backfires and accelerates your loss, as it was doing this often enough for me that I had to drop the card. This is largely mitigated in Rogue because of cards like Sap, Vanish, Sabotage, and Assassinate. King Mukla is a mixed bag, as it can be problematic with druid because druids don't have bounce, so a target that normally wouldn't eat hard removal tends to draw them, which can make coping with the late game harder.
I run Dancing Swords and King Mukla. It's simply the best way to fill your opponent's hand outside of Coldlight Oracle and Naturalize. I like to take cards like Mukla and Dancing Swords, which are great value, and add in other minions that are great value. Suddenly, the deck becomes really good at trades. The key with King Mukla is to either play him early or have silences/removal when you play him. What I do, though, is I run several silences. I also run Ancient Watcher because it's great value and it really helps with tempo or trades. I'm considering adding Eerie Statue as well. I'm still experimenting with mill druid. Before LoE, my impressions were there wasn't enough mill to make this good enough. But I wonder now.
Goblin Sapper is not terrible against aggro, as the 2/4 can still often trade 2-3 times. It can be good tempo. I'm still trying to see if it's worth it. It may not be overall.
And while I haven't seen Lorewalker Cho mentioned... No, just no. Your spells are worth more used against you than any advantage you would have using the opponents spells against them.
It's actually a really interesting card if you combine it with King Mukla. There are games when you can keep your opponent off the board and fill their hand with bananas. And every time they use one, Lorewalker Cho gives it back. There have been games won just based on filling the opponent's hand with bananas. And if cho is alive then they can't do anything. It's actually a really funny mill technique. I'm not sure it's reliable in any way, though.
I imagine the main problem with Cho is that most mill Druid decks currently run a lot of spells, which is a mistake in my opinion. If you had a more minion heavy deck (with King Mukla of course) then it might prove better. I actually want to experiment with that at some point.
Honestly, I'm not a fan of spell heavy mill druid. It has 3 major drawbacks. The first is that it's hard to trade with all the sticky minions in the meta. The second is Druid has very weak board clear. Most of the spells are single target only, and the AoE is very rare and weak. It's hard to be more efficient when you are giving your opponent cards and trying to trade 1 for 1 with spells. The third is that it's hard to regain board control once you lose it. You giving your opponent cards just exacerbates these three problems.
That said, I do believe mill druid should be more of a thing if anything because Naturalize has amazing potential for this. However, I think that it's often more efficient to use creatures that are beefy for the cost and trade versus wrath/swipe/etc. I say that since you generally wind up trading 1 for 1 or worse with spells anyway. Beefy minions, in my opinion, do a bit better on this. This also further supports using cards like Dancing Swords and King Mukla. That just leave the problem of overall board clear, which generally leads to some hail mary Poison Seeds combo. In my experience, that alone is often not good enough.
It feels like Doomsayer doesn't belong to Mill Druid. How to use it effectively? I have experience using it solely in Freeze lists, but even then I have a hard time figuring the best timing for a Doomsayer with no Frost Nova/Blizzard to combo with.
I've actually been theorycrafting with this card quite a lot lately. It's best in freeze mage or rogue (Conceal or other stealth). But I think it can still be good in other decks. The card will either get destroyed, silenced/hexed, or ignored. If ignored, it usually means your opponent can't do anything to stop it on that turn. This means you clear their board and it often prevents the opponent from playing anything for a turn. That's a big tempo gain. If destroyed, that's usually 7 damage that didn't get put on your face. Unless it was removed by something like deadly shot or execute, in which case you just absorbed what could be prime removal on your better minions. Even if silenced/hexed, it's still a silence they can't use on something else.
I've also discovered that it's actually a decent situational tempo card. For example, playing this right before a Handlock's 4th turn is hilarious. When played against aggro (turn 2-3) early, it often stops the opponent from either adding to their board or going for your face for a turn.
I have tried to fit it into Druid decks before because of Druid's weakness of board clear. If you can get it to work, it should be a decent include. The problem is getting it to work consistently. If anyone has any good ideas on this, I would love to hear them.
What kind of beefy minions are you referring to?! I mean, if you dislike Deathlord (which I have mixed feelings about running in Druid versions as well) which other options you have?! I don't think Mukla works well since we aren't into burning cards as much as Rogue Mill, and the pros usually have an issue with Dancing Swords because our opponents can trigger it's Deathrattle when it convey them.
If I remember it correctly Hotform plays a Druid Mill with both Deathlord and Sludge Belcher alongside the Pyromancer package (which consist in a bunch of mediocre AoE spells such as Swipe, Starfall and so on), it seems fine and goes aligned with your idea that spell heavy Druid isn't the best idea.
I guess it's true indeed. The idea of not having many minions which makes most of our opponents removal useless only makes sense for lists which has more aggressive Mill - otherwise it makes very little difference and trying to trade stuff with our subpar spells has been a really hard task in the current meta.
Having said that, I cut off a Ooze and a BGH for the sake of 2x Doomsayer. Besides huge Oil combos weapons aren't an issue for our lists, and as much of a tempo swing that a well place BGH may be, at turn 7+ we are more likely to have other answers to Boom and others. Handlock MU may get a little worse, but that's fine.
Now, concerning Doomsayer I guess that you answered yourself: it's all about good timing. Against aggro it may be a great turn 2~3 play, against an empty board in mid to late Control game it basically creates a Time Walk effect, and so on.
About the Handlock match up: how to deal against (relatively speaking) fast Mountain Giant/Twilight Drakes openings? A good Lock player would totally play around our mass removal by pressuring with a single Giant or Drake, while our answers seems poor besides trying to burn those minions before the actually play/draw it, which is unlikely anyway since they will usually keep it in their opening hand.
I can see Mana Wraith being tested, although it possibly doesn't make the cut.
The other two are too inconsistent: they can work against Control but then Control has the answers specially due to the lack of other threats in Mill lists so they won't stay for long on board. Against aggro you can't make this kind of minions work anyway since they'll always keep a low number of cards in hand.
The best part about current meta is that a mill deck is a rare sight and players might just give up when they see one ;)
A very different approach of this list, huh?! Liked it! However, I'm quite of a purist type, so I guess I'd cut those 2xSavage Roar for something more control'ish. The Volcanic Lumber's seems a bit gimmick, but alongside Poison Seeds + Starfall combo it's almost assured to be a huge taunt in an empty board on turn 9 (or earlier with Innervate's help).
The single issue is that besides Thaurissan there aren't many others targets for hard removal and the Lumberer won't stay too long on board, maybe add some other threats?
You have quite the heavy-minion list man! How it goes for you?
Saraad seems an interesting choice, its a must answer minion and if unchecked you are assured to get some value out of it since we spend many turns Hero Power'ing. Also it helps to refill our hands without milling ourselves, you get relevant spells on average?
The most annoying part in here is that it dosen't matter whatkind of mill deck you make, its hard to rise with one in the ranked anyway, exept when your already in the legendary where you can test those fun decks as everyone does it there..
I use mill decks only when grinding gold as you never get bored.
Actually Mill shines wherever Control is predominant, mostly from rank 5 and above. Unexperienced Aggro players may be easy pray as well, but as soon as a good aggro/midrange player realizes it's a Mill deck things get pretty difficult. Combo is particularly harder for Druid Rogue cause we can't mill as aggressively as Rogue, so the chances of burning key pieces are lower and usually they just assemble whatever they need to finish us.
What kind of beefy minions are you referring to?! I mean, if you dislike Deathlord (which I have mixed feelings about running in Druid versions as well) which other options you have?! I don't think Mukla works well since we aren't into burning cards as much as Rogue Mill, and the pros usually have an issue with Dancing Swords because our opponents can trigger it's Deathrattle when it convey them.
If I remember it correctly Hotform plays a Druid Mill with both Deathlord and Sludge Belcher alongside the Pyromancer package (which consist in a bunch of mediocre AoE spells such as Swipe, Starfall and so on), it seems fine and goes aligned with your idea that spell heavy Druid isn't the best idea.
I don't like Wild Pyromancer because it's spell dependent and the returns in Druid aren't that great. I don't like spell heavy Druid mainly for match ups such as fatuigue/mill. I don't like Deathlord because it's not uncommon for it to lose me game. IMO, anything that helps give the opponent board is bad because that's this deck's biggest weakness.
Hearthstone lacks many ways to give your opponent card draw. I find that even 1 card from Dancing Swords helps. It also helps put them in front of the fatigue race once you start milling both decks with Coldlight Oracle. And as I said before, the key is to run a safe King Mukla is to run plenty of silences with him. The other good thing about silences is that it can work as poor man's removal when dealing with a number of problem effect or buffed creatures on the other side. And they synergize with Ancient Watcher, which works really well.
Here's the list of an old theorycraft deck I had before GvG came out.
This isn't the best version as it was only my first. And several expansions and adventures have come out since. Again, this was before GvG. The main beef comes from Watcher, Mukla, and Dancing Swords. Now, this would be insufficient and poorly constructed. But I want to show you the silences I had with the deck. They did wonders.
Lately, I've tried a version with Zombie Chow and Goblin Sapper. Those cards have good high end value. I have had some success with both. I don't know if either is optimal, though. Zombie Chow was mainly for board control, but it might be better to replace it.
To be honest, I still haven't actually figured out the best combination of high value minions. But so far I like King Mukla, Dancing Swords, and Ancient Watcher as a base. I'm thinking Eerie Statue might be good for trades as well. And you can never go wrong with Sludge Belcher. Essentially, LoE changes a lot.
I guess it's true indeed. The idea of not having many minions which makes most of our opponents removal useless only makes sense for lists which has more aggressive Mill - otherwise it makes very little difference and trying to trade stuff with our subpar spells has been a really hard task in the current meta.
Having said that, I cut off a Ooze and a BGH for the sake of 2x Doomsayer. Besides huge Oil combos weapons aren't an issue for our lists, and as much of a tempo swing that a well place BGH may be, at turn 7+ we are more likely to have other answers to Boom and others. Handlock MU may get a little worse, but that's fine.
The problem with not having minions to make removal useless is that a lot of forms of removal deal flat damage. This means they can afford to go for your face with it instead. Without minions on your board, you also can't trade effectively. And eventually, you will have to summon minions. But they have all their removal saved for when you do, so good luck getting a board. Especially, with how hard it is for Druid to clear it.
About the Handlock match up: how to deal against (relatively speaking) fast Mountain Giant/Twilight Drakes openings? A good Lock player would totally play around our mass removal by pressuring with a single Giant or Drake, while our answers seems poor besides trying to burn those minions before the actually play/draw it, which is unlikely anyway since they will usually keep it in their opening hand.
If you can force them to not play their turn 4 creatures on turn 4, you can then go straight for mill the next turn and they will not be able to do much about it. Against Twilight Drake, I generally don't have an issue because I always run multiple silences. Keep their health too high for Molten Giants until a good opportunity arises and watch the Mountain Giants.
The real problem with Handlock is their board clear, which you have minimal answers for.
It feels like Doomsayer doesn't belong to Mill Druid. How to use it effectively? I have experience using it solely in Freeze lists, but even then I have a hard time figuring the best timing for a Doomsayer with no Frost Nova/Blizzard to combo with.
Now, concerning Doomsayer I guess that you answered yourself: it's all about good timing. Against aggro it may be a great turn 2~3 play, against an empty board in mid to late Control game it basically creates a Time Walk effect, and so on.
I guess that was about as good as I would get. The thing is, I still find Doomsayer somewhat inconsistent in Druid. So I'm not sure if I'm better off running one or two. Although, two at once means you are more likely to get one early and they would be harder to counter in tandem later on.
And having a card to synergize with it like Soul of the Forest might not be a bad thing for board trade... I'm going to try it. I was hoping for someone else to come up with this answer but I think it's a decent idea. Now that I think of it, that card is a decent answer to enemy board clear.
You have quite the heavy-minion list man! How it goes for you?
Saraad seems an interesting choice, its a must answer minion and if unchecked you are assured to get some value out of it since we spend many turns Hero Power'ing. Also it helps to refill our hands without milling ourselves, you get relevant spells on average?
Its working really well at the moment Im rank 8 its 10-0 so will see how it keeps doing. Reno hasn't failed me once but I'm think of cutting a vendor and adding a healbot to get alittle better synergy with reno. As far as sarad almost every card I get from him is useful, I think the chances of you getting something real useful is like 75%
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Hey guys, what's up?!
It's no news to anyone at this point that with the release of LoE the Mill archetype will receive 2 huge additions: Brann Bronzebeard and Reno Jackson. As mostly Mill players know, the two classes with consistent decklists are Druid and Rogue. Unfortunately Reno Jackson isn't as good in Rogue as it is in Druid versions.
Having said that, the Rogue version has much more aggressive mill strategy making it slightly easier/straight forward to play than Druid and here comes the thing: Mill Druid is among the hardest decks to play in Hearthstone, even then there's little compilation of info to make a proper guide.
I was thinking about making a thread where people discuss card choices, game plan, match ups, tech choices, meta choices - without the needing of a single guy to create the whole content like we see in the guides people post alongside their decklists. Videos are welcomed as well.
To start some discussion I'll post a list I'm playing recently, but I anticipate that I'm no pro-player let alone a good Mill player. I just love the archetype and want to gather some good stuff for people to get better playing it as well.
First concerning Justicar itself. For a grinding play style like Mill's the bonus from Justicar has really good value: we get some welcomed extra survivability with the 2 armor while also rising our capacity to board control by just HPing into small or previously damaged minions.
Within Mill strategy there are many turns where we end up just with HP and pass, Justicar makes this kind of plays considerably better as well. Currently among the most successful control decks both Warrior and Priest are running her, the closest thing to a Control Druid is our dear Mill.
Now, about Deathlord: I really like this card and run it in my Rogue Mill, but I don't know if we can outright compare it with Justicar. Justicar isn't used in Rogue Mill due to a rather weaker HP, while Deathlord is used cause on top of being a wall for Aggro decks it also helps slightly in Mill Rogue's game plan which is much more aggressive than Druid's.
As an attempted Miller for some seasons and card releases, Mill works better for Rogue, Fatigue works better for Druid. They are similar play styles although not the same. Justicar Trueheart is great in Druid, god awful in Rogue.
Milling is easier in Rogue with cards like Vanish, Shadowstep and Sap. This, coupled with the Coldlight Oracle, means that your opponent is more likely to overdraw. Obviously Gang Up.
Druid is better at destroying the opponents minions rather than returning them to the hand. You have to rely on Panda Power to get the Coldlight Oracles back to your hand which means you have less chances to mill but more chance to outlast your opponent into the late, late, late, LATE game.
From my experience (I normally spend a day or 2 each month playing one or the other) we are still a few cards away from having a viable option for milling properly. Coldlight Oracles only get you so far and that is what both of these decks rely heavily on. Were there another neutral card where both players draw several cards or have cards put into their hands, it would be easier as you would have more options to make your opponent overdraw.
Druid is definitely the easier of the 2 to play but Rogue is definitely the most rewarding.
Now, I play Mill Druid since the hype from Natural Remedies' list and only tried a bit of Rogue Mill this season and did much better with the Rogue version. I thought that since Druid's relies more in survivability and drag much more the game it was more difficult to play.
If you're gonna look at Mill decks, start with ChaosFollowing's deck, and work from there, which is:
Looking at your decklist, including things like Doomsayer and swapping out a Force of Nature for a Starfire are good tweaks that can greatly improve matchups for the deck.
Reno Jackson is a bit of a mixed bag, as trying to optimize the deck to make him work at any point in time means losing out on a lot of the cards needed to allow you to control the board. So that leaves you with an option that may work sometimes, but can leave you screwed with a dead Reno Jackson when you really need that heal.
The problem, however, comes from the deck not being top tier, and ridiculously easy to screw yourself by attempting to get greedy and burn stuff off, as the druid mill must be reactive, whereas the rogue mill can be proactive/aggressive.
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It feels like Doomsayer doesn't belong to Mill Druid. How to use it effectively? I have experience using it solely in Freeze lists, but even then I have a hard time figuring the best timing for a Doomsayer with no Frost Nova/Blizzard to combo with.
Also, I really prefer FoN over Starfire, since it has 1 more damage and can be divided between 3 targets. The draw from Starfire can be quite the drawback for this archetype, am I wrong?
Honestly, I'm not a fan of spell heavy mill druid. It has 3 major drawbacks. The first is that it's hard to trade with all the sticky minions in the meta. The second is Druid has very weak board clear. Most of the spells are single target only, and the AoE is very rare and weak. It's hard to be more efficient when you are giving your opponent cards and trying to trade 1 for 1 with spells. The third is that it's hard to regain board control once you lose it. You giving your opponent cards just exacerbates these three problems.
That said, I do believe mill druid should be more of a thing if anything because Naturalize has amazing potential for this. However, I think that it's often more efficient to use creatures that are beefy for the cost and trade versus wrath/swipe/etc. I say that since you generally wind up trading 1 for 1 or worse with spells anyway. Beefy minions, in my opinion, do a bit better on this. This also further supports using cards like Dancing Swords and King Mukla. That just leave the problem of overall board clear, which generally leads to some hail mary Poison Seeds combo. In my experience, that alone is often not good enough.
I've ran 2xDoomsayer for a long time, and it does exactly what you describe.
Alot of the AE potential for the deck comes from using Wild Pyromancer with the various single target spells to make another Swipe. I mean, if you combo Wild Pyromancer + Explosive Sheep + Swipe you've essentially got a really bad Flamestrike that just did 7 damage to a single target or 4 damage all enemies. That's the power of the spell based druid fatigues, is you essentially have a pile of Legos to build a solution from.
The trick to using Poison Seeds by itself is to calculate opponents damage, and determine if the damage reduction by changing everything to a 2/2 is worth using the card - which makes it kind of a proactive heal of sorts.
As far as the minion based ones go, Dancing Swords is the only real minion I like in a fatigue deck as it's the only one that can't screw you over, unlike both Goblin Sapper and Clockwork Giant are basically winmore cards against control, but useless against aggro because you have to do the suicidal thing against aggro and give them cards, which makes both bad against aggro. Deathlord is great, until it backfires and accelerates your loss, as it was doing this often enough for me that I had to drop the card. This is largely mitigated in Rogue because of cards like Sap, Vanish, Sabotage, and Assassinate. King Mukla is a mixed bag, as it can be problematic with druid because druids don't have bounce, so a target that normally wouldn't eat hard removal tends to draw them, which can make coping with the late game harder.
And while I haven't seen Lorewalker Cho mentioned... No, just no. Your spells are worth more used against you than any advantage you would have using the opponents spells against them.
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I'm testing a reno mill druid :P With little amount of 2-of cards :O
Mill! Mill!
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I started a thread without noticing this one here is my mill druid I'm currently 5-0 with it, I'm at rank 8.
If I remember it correctly Hotform plays a Druid Mill with both Deathlord and Sludge Belcher alongside the Pyromancer package (which consist in a bunch of mediocre AoE spells such as Swipe, Starfall and so on), it seems fine and goes aligned with your idea that spell heavy Druid isn't the best idea.
I guess it's true indeed. The idea of not having many minions which makes most of our opponents removal useless only makes sense for lists which has more aggressive Mill - otherwise it makes very little difference and trying to trade stuff with our subpar spells has been a really hard task in the current meta.
Having said that, I cut off a Ooze and a BGH for the sake of 2x Doomsayer. Besides huge Oil combos weapons aren't an issue for our lists, and as much of a tempo swing that a well place BGH may be, at turn 7+ we are more likely to have other answers to Boom and others. Handlock MU may get a little worse, but that's fine.
Now, concerning Doomsayer I guess that you answered yourself: it's all about good timing. Against aggro it may be a great turn 2~3 play, against an empty board in mid to late Control game it basically creates a Time Walk effect, and so on.
About the Handlock match up: how to deal against (relatively speaking) fast Mountain Giant/Twilight Drakes openings? A good Lock player would totally play around our mass removal by pressuring with a single Giant or Drake, while our answers seems poor besides trying to burn those minions before the actually play/draw it, which is unlikely anyway since they will usually keep it in their opening hand.
The single issue is that besides Thaurissan there aren't many others targets for hard removal and the Lumberer won't stay too long on board, maybe add some other threats?
Saraad seems an interesting choice, its a must answer minion and if unchecked you are assured to get some value out of it since we spend many turns Hero Power'ing. Also it helps to refill our hands without milling ourselves, you get relevant spells on average?