Is this viable primary win condition? A new state based effect says you win if your library is empty. This lets pacifist decks to race against damage based decks -- including creature combat.

Milling opponent's library is not viable in Magic. So let's turn it around and make it so you win when your own library is empty.

This calls for radical design direction that affects entire classes of cards. Card draw, targeted milling, self milling.

Have you never seen Laboratory Maniac?

Yeah, I think Laboratory Maniac is the main win con of many Azami, Lady of Scrolls edh decks.

This is for the main game, not just single card. Metadesign is meant for sweeping changes to the game.

A new state based effect says you win if your library is empty. This lets pacifist decks to race against damage based decks -- including creature combat.

The game will then have to support two main win cons. Pacifist strategies and deck archetypes will need to get equal and fair attenton as offensive strategies.

Card draw is already desirable - this makes it even more so.

It makes "play or draw" a more interesting choice. Though it also makes being first in multiplayer even better. Ground-stalls are promoted.

I think decks would also need to be smaller. Drawing 60 cards, let alone 100, takes ages. Especially in organised play environments, this would lead to more cancelled matches due to timeout rather than actually winning this way.

But mainly - playing against a stall deck is really boring. People tend to fold if an opponent gets a statis lockdown already.

The good things it would do - a stasis deck no longer needs a win condition. A game that ground-stalls out now has a clear winner, with a primary win condition rather than "Oh, I guess it's you".

It makes walls (literal and otherwise) more desirable; and makes deliberately locking up the board a viable tactic rather than just annoying.

Self mill being viable means graveyard stuff is much more important. Kinda the opposite of how sets usually get to that conclusion. Beware flashback and dredge-like effects. Although dredge is now amusingly more expensive.

Yeah; I figure you could do a game like this. But you'll get some number of games where both players aim for a stall, which would make creature combat kinda ritualistic and - well, kinda pointless.

Oh! And it wouldn't be fun to watch. At all.

If this is just meant to be a new, constant, alternate win condition, why choose to alienate and push way the fans who enjoy milling their opponent?

It's too late into the game to change sometimes that has historically been a loss into a win. Perhaps you could design a new name that incorporates this strategy.

Aye.

­Leveler, Doomsday, Mirror of Fate, Paradigm Shift, Inverter of Truth and such would have to all be banned.

As a card game, this is rightfully a victory that relies on cards, not some arbitrary external value like life total or counters. that is, the means and ends are self inclusive. you don't need to bring tools to track who's winning or try to keep numbers in your memory that change so often.

I always wanted to reduce deck size anyway. something like minimum 48 card decks and maximum 3 of any non basic land.

Current control matchups are boring because their strategy and win con are diametrically opposed. control wants to draw a bunch of cards, but that doesn't help them win directly. instead they have to wait until the board is clear so they can drop a fatty safely, who then wins via combat damage.

with the new rule, control players now have a goal that aligns with their MO. players have to be aware of how many cards opponents are drawing. they can try to outdraw, or put cards back to opponent's deck to slow them down.

on that note, more effects that return stuff to library, to combat this victory condition. instead of discard to grave, put card on bottom of library. instead of exiling cards in grave, return them to bottom of library.

some self mill effects might change to put cards on the bottom of the deck. to keep library size same. depending on the effects desired and color pie. self mill to grave might be okay at one or two cards. anything bigger cycles to bottom of library.

so called winning by milling in Magic is only interesting because it's a novelty, rarely done. fans of milling like it just because It's different from the norm. is that really something worth keeping? Wizards barely gives it any support.

so flip it around and make library-based victory proactive. this coincides with Civilization set themes. major factor of Civ games is research and tech. you strive to outtech opponents. at the end when you've researched all the techs, you get satisfaction. this new win con provides similar goal, excitement, and interaction.

There are plenty of card games that use the cards in the library as a life total - life loss equals milling, life gain equals returning cards to the library etc.

So for those games there also is already no "arbitrary external value like life total or counters", so clearly winning by emptying your library is not a prerequisite to turn away from "arbitrary external value like life total or counters".

As I understand it your new win condition wouldn't replace life totals and poison counters, but just turn milling from a loss condition to a win condition, right?

So a lot of what you say seems to be arguing right past the proposal, or better: perpendicular to it.

For what it's worth during the recent Pro Tour multiple players with a stable life total conceded to the threat of being milled rather to the threat of counters or lethal loss of life.

This shift in rules would have a clear influence on graveyard strategies. Progressing to your goal also would fuel e. g. delirium and flashback. Dredge would be wonderful.

There is one big positive to this change (if we assume it also comes with this win condition being supported more than mill as you suggest - though I don't think that's a given): A win condition has the advantage over a loss condition when you consider player elimination (in multiplayer) an issue. Players are not left by the sideline watching if the game immediately ends as soon as one player reached their goal.

I'm curious as to how card draw provides "excitement and interaction". At the moment effects that just durdle around preventing damage and drawing cards feel rather non-interactive. If you have ideas for ways to make it more interactive, those could definitely be interesting.

I just don't find this idea suited to introduction into a game that's so established. And, to build off of what Alex said, creating a (baked-in) win condition rather than a loss condition inherently decreases player interaction.

infinitely more exciting and interactive than "Target player puts the top two cards of his or her library into his or her graveyard."

• doesn't advance your game plan
• doesn't interact with the board
• no affect or pressure to the opponent, nor advantage to the caster
• almost no one plays those cards
• R&D hates that win condition and don't know how to fit it better into the rest of the color pie and set themes

Self-mill as a win condition is literally the opposite of interactive. It discourages interaction completely. It makes interacting with the board unnecessary, and does nothing to your opponent.

What makes you say that R&D hates mill? Did I miss that article somewhere?

Well, they rarely make it viable. There was that one mythic god; I guess.

To be fair, I heard Phenax, God of Deception was unplayable, as someone I know tried very hard to make a mill deck based around him work in standard and failed miserably. Sphinx's Tutelage on the other hand was used in a deck that was at least somewhat popular and capable of winning during a point when it was in standard.

Huh; Phenax was "mill for 14" which is a pretty short clock to put them on. And fairly hard to get rid of too. I guess it was pricey though, and, well, if you have lots of power of creatures why not win that way?

So my original opinion on this idea when this thread was first created was that it was something mildly interesting to think about, but probably with too little merit to be seriously considered. After reading amuseum's comments though, I've come to the conclusion that this is an absolutely terrible idea.

It does a few things (just from his comments):

-Kills off mill; removing an entire element of the game, which, as far as I know, was never a balance issue and is moderately popular in casual play

-Apparently focusing more design space on making the game stall out more, seeing as this is supposed to be a main win condition alongside damage

-Allows control to not have finishers, meaning control mirrors are now who can count to 60 (or 48) faster, with some cards making that count go faster or slower -> By extension, combo decks now have less interesting victory conditions as well.

-Encourages card designs that send things into the library instead of the graveyard, decreasing interactivity as the only way you can interact with cards in your deck is to draw them

• kill off mill:

Moot. You're losing one victory type and gaining another, so there is no loss. Second there will still be cards that mill, but now they actually matter.

• stall

Moot. Stalling is already present in Magic. It's enabled by control deck archetype, regardless of victory type. As proposed, new victory removes need for stalling between two control decks.

• finishers

Moot. Finishers and combos are anything provided by designers. There is nothing in new victory type that dictates what can or can't be finishers or combos.

State the percentage of combo decks that must rely on milling to win. At best, most combos splash a single mill card as back up. Wow interesting and crucial, mill is.

• less grave interaction

Moot.

1. There is no less graveyard interaction; there is more library interaction.
2. So what? Why is graveyard that special?
3. In fact more likely your graveyard will be fuller than a typical Magic game, because where else could your cards go when you try to empty your library?

"You're losing one victory type and gaining another, so there is no loss."

Missing the point. It was pretty clear from the start that this conversation was about replacing what occurs when a player draws from an empty library, so parity of victory conditions was already implied. Also, I don't think anyone actually cares about the exact count of the win conditions in the game outside of the context of how the game plays out strategically. Even exchanging equally, there still is a loss, just one that comes with a gain. Magic is a game played by a people with a wide diversity of preferences and playstyles, and any changes of this nature come with an inherent negative baggage. Creating a change that adds strategic depth doesn't remove the negative baggage, it justifies it. Granted, this is implied for any such change, but the reason I mention it at all was because you tried to totally hand-wave it away (spinning as a net positive on its own, no less.)

"As proposed, new victory removes need for stalling between two control decks."

You need to explain this better, because it doesn't seem like a single other person in this thread understood what you were going for here. As I see it, it doesn't remove the need for stalling, it removes a need for explicit finishers because stalling out is the finisher.

Third block:

Control - Sure. Either explicit finishers are still needed in control, or they're not, in which case we get back to the point above. Combo - This point wasn't about milling at all, it was about drawing out. I'll cede this point since it is in fact not relevant to most combo decks currently in existence.

Fourth block:

1&2: With the exception of constant searching or revealing of libraries, you can only really interact with the library as unknown cards, which is the difference from the graveyard. Well, there are interesting ways around this I can think of that might be worth exploring, with some information known by only one player. I think some proof-of-concept designs would have helped the initial discussion here.

3: Fair enough.

Interesting there really are CCGs where emptying your own deck counts as winning.

"Epic" TCG actually came out two years before I had this idea. The counterplay to preventing opponent by winning this way is to "banish" opponents' cards back to the bottom of their deck. Also returning cards (usually from your discard pile) to your deck for some benefit, but would also slow you down if you want to win this way.

I think the existing rule (you lose if you draw a card from a empty library) is good. (However, your suggestion can be a interesting variant, but I think the existing rule is generally better than the variant.)

(I have once won a game of Magic: the Gathering by forcing opponent to draw (not mill) a lot of cards. If I remember correctly, I think it was using Swans of Bryn Argoll. There are other cases where such a thing can also be possible (with other cards, too), but I do not play this game very often.)