The Importance of Free Filters/Mill (Advanced Deck Building)

Often with deck building, the general idea is to focus on building towards your game ender, usually your level 3 combo which will unleash devastating damage upon your opponent to try and close out the game. The secondary focus will be on how to gain the appropriate resource to play throughout the game while preparing for the late game. This, however, can sometimes cause the player to forgo some other essential cards to the deck in favour of the important engine pieces and powerful cards.

Cards like the above, though potentially not thought of as the most powerful with any board changing ability or strong base power, are quintessential to the deck building process. You can think of mill cards and filters as the structures that act as the supporting beams of the deck.

Weiss Schwarz is a game where the deck state can often be just as important or even more important than the state of the field. Your main source of advantage, and more importantly, damage mitigation, is primarily from the deck itself, meaning proper deck management is a core skill to keep in mind in both deck building and skillful play.

The most important role of free filters/mill is to ensure that you get the pieces needed for your deck to function and ensuring you’ll be able to cancel damage. Although paid card effects are nice as they normally grab the specific piece you want in your situation, stock is often an expensive and scarce resource that you reserve for your other plays. Free filters carry the downside of often being gimmicky to perform their effect and having some random element included to balance out their free abilities. Mill, on the other hand, is equally as important as it ensures that your deck will constantly be stocked with cancels to protect you from hitting the end-game too early.

Free filters/mill come in a variety of different card options. That being said, it is possible for both abilities to come from the same card; although, this may not always be the best situation since you may not want to always mill your deck. Some of these cards may come with other beneficial side effects or more power to act as a secondary beater as well.

The key importance here when deciding which filters to run are to both figure out which options suit your deck’s idea the best and whether or not the filter runs smoothly in your deck. Some of the best options for filtering in a set may come from colours that may be difficult to slot in with your deck. As such, you may have to force some other cards in the deck that you do not want just to fulfill the colour restrictions. Secondly, certain filters or mill cards may not be the best for your deck. Some decks rely on searching the deck for resources rather than grabbing advantage from the waiting room. As such, milling the deck could be detrimental to your combo or deck idea. As such, you want to be selective of your options, making sure that these cards suit your playstyle and deck’s needs. Even ratios for these cards are based on your preference.

Please feel free to look into the profile tags to learn about certain filter types and other common card effects.