Millhouse Manastorm is a card that has suckered in a lot of players. Four attack and four health for two mana? Sign me up, you may say. But Millhouse’s drawback, giving your opponent free spells next turn, means he very rarely sees play.
In the third week of the ESL Master Builder series, Case “Koyuki” Kiyonaga sought to change that.
The Master Builder series is a slightly less serious affair to fill the weeks until the ESL Legendary Series $20k LAN, and each week features a specific, unusual deckbuilding rule. Last week, the rule was that all cards had to be unique, with no doubles allowed. This left a lot of space in most decks for unconventional choices.
After using Millhouse to great effect in his first game against Method’s Max Simpson, the card seemed to be performing relatively well—even when he dropped it against Andrew “TidesofTime” Biessener’s Mage.
The final series against Biessener wasn’t going well as it entered the third game. Already 2-0 down and faced with a Mage mirror match, Kiyonaga seemed to have the upper hand when he made a decision he would immediately regret:
With his opponent at just six life, but lacking any threats on the board, Kiyonaga takes the rather ill advised decision to drop his Millhouse Manastorm against his fellow Mage. Can free spells really ever be safely given to the most spell heavy class in the game?
Sadly for Kiyonaga, Biessener is packing the exact combination he needs for a highlight we’ve all seen a dozen times on Reddit at the amateur level. As soon as the Archmage Antonidas hit the board, Kiyonaga knew what was coming. Sadly, before the infinite fireballs could rain down he pressed the concede button, denying Biessener a chance to show off his BM skills.
One day Millhouse will find his place in the meta. Today is not that day.
Image via Blizzard (remix by Jason Reed)
Published: Feb 9, 2015 02:42 pm