Thursday, January 12, 2012

RCotD #62

Random Card of the Day #62:

Grindstone - 1
Artifact
{3}, {T}: Put the top two cards of target player's library into that player's graveyard. If both cards share a color, repeat this process.

Initial thoughts:

One of the oldest milling cards. If this had been printed before Millstone, "milling" would have probably been called "grinding". This one in particular is more well known than Millstone because of it's "repeat this process" clause. Because lands are colorless, you are bound to stop every so often even if it was a monocolored deck.

However, this card can not be gone unsaid without Painter's Servant. If those two are on the field, as long as you can activate Grindstone you will win, or should. Technically your opponent still has an untap and upkeep step to cast instants, which may be relevant especially against some of the older decks. Infinite mana Blue Sun's Zenith could be cast during your upkeep or even a rebounded Staggershock for 2 + Lighning Bolt if you are low enough on life.

That said, this card alone, without any other combinations of cards is really, really bad. Someone crunched number on this and on average you are milling about 2.7 cards per 3 mana. Including their draw, that's 3.7 cards. This means you will win in about 15 turns assuming no mulligans, and could go down depending if they thin out their deck with something like Ponder, Rampant Growth, Fetch lands, etc.

15 turns to kill someone is a pretty long time. I mean you could make a deck that just stops your opponent from playing and mill them out, but if your making a lockdown deck, there are more effective ways to beat your opponent... unless you like to see them helplessly drawing cards through your lockdown.

Anyways this cards is just absolutely amazing because of Painter's Servant. One of the two-card-instant-win combos you don't want to show a new Magic player, but veterans can definitely appreciate seeing the card again. 5/5

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