Pointed Discussion

This is sick in a recursion EDH deck. Here are forty cards now effectively in your hand. Pretty nasty.

@ Gwoemul, that's something a lot of people surprisingly seem to miss when they first read this, that the real value of Traumatize is in doing it to oneself rather than the opponent (although doing it to the opponent remains a lot of fun!). It's a beautiful card to build giant graveyard-toolbox decks around.

Who's the guy being traumatized? Is he the same unfortunate soul being zapped in the art for Afflict?

have four of those in a deck, and what else could you want?

I admire this card very much, and I found that with Demonic Tutor I only need to run two Traumatizes in my deck.

If you have 1 Prince Of Thralls out, you win the game. No questions asked.

@Rafiqofthemany: Prince of Thralls triggers off of permanents hitting the graveyard, not milling.

@stygimoloch.

I beg to differ, this card can DESTROY a person's library, take out half their cards before they have the chance to draw them. This and keening stone is an INSTANT WIN on turn 7 w/o any acceleration. Besides, in a mill deck, taking half their deck can significantly speed up the game and screw an opponent. It's also one of the best cards to have in your hand in multiplayer. You can make people back off without a second thought with just a flash of this from your hand (which I'm not sure is exactly legal, but in casual play who gives a damn?) because nobody wants to be in a game with half their library, even if they can kill you.

Voidednote:

I beg to differ with your begging to differing. It's a fun card for beginners to use on other peoples' decks, but any self-respecting mill deck should win by turn 6 at the latest. Run acceleration as well; there's no reason not to. And multiplayer shouldn't come into play here, flashing cards or not; a Traumatize only hinders a rather narrow set of decks. Try it against Dredge, Recursion, Reanimation, Yawgmoth's Will, Patriarch's Bidding, or those who run Threshold, and you could very easily lose before your next turn. And all of those can be found out there.

Besides, Stygimoloch wasn't downplaying hitting an opponent with this. Not at all, if you would have read his/her comment. They were simply offering that Traumatize is better than for what it initially seems to be used for.

Milling hardly does anything until it removes your last card. The opponent still has a random card off the top of his deck to draw; he still has cards in his hand to beat you with; he still has his threats on the table to win with. You've just exchanged one unknown quantity (his topdeck) with another one; nothing else has happened unless you've gotten extremely lucky, or his deck is extremely inconsistent. In fact, you've probably blown your fifth turn doing nothing -- your Traumatize is gone, and you haven't effected the battlefield in any way.

Unless you have some sort of instant-win mill combo, mill decks are much like bad and inefficient burn decks. They attack a certain value (the deck, rather than the life total), and interact very little with the opponent directly. But Mill decks don't have as effective spells for the job as the Lightning Bolt / Chain Lightning -type spells. You can also turn burn spells on creatures, which cannot be said of mill cards.

Traumatize was best used back in Zendikar-block Standard, where players used it on themselves to fuel Crypt of Agadeem.

@Rafiqofthemany
Actually, I believe you are wrong there. A permanent card is only a permanent when it's on the battlefield or changing zones to/from it. So he wouldn't trigger for mill any more than he would for discard. His ability is only meant for 'destroy' effects. See Nature's Spiral's text, see how it says "card"?

@scumbling1
By your own argument, burn/aggro/magic as a whole, is just as inefficient. What is a life total but an arbitrary number that does nothing to effect the game until a player hits 0? The same with poison counters.

If you are referring to the pressure a low life total adds to your opponent, than a good mill deck should be doing the same. A good player playing against a decent mill deck will feel the same cold sweat when their library hits 10 or less cards as they would against a burn deck with 5 or less life.

Yes, I know there are cards that change based on life total. There are also cards that change effect based on library size and cards that get better with more cards in the graveyard. There are even some that get better AND help mill them further.

So yes, the milling win condition isn't as supported as the life win condition but that doesn't make it completely unreliable. If that was true, why is poison so dominating when it only had between one-third to one-half of a block to support it in standard?

@WaaMatt It's some guy named Dreads, according to the flavor text for the original Odyssey printing. He's probably a cabal member; cabal members have weird names like that (e.g. Braids, Cabal Minion). It looks like the same guy from Afflict, which depicts the Cabal Patriarch being displeased one of his minions.