So this is Limited and people will inevitably try to win with mill cards. I'm not advocating whether or not they should, but for those of you who choose to run the card Grindclock in your 40-card deck as an alternate win condition, there should be no questions about how high to tick it and when to just start activating it for mill every turn. I just crunched some numbers to evaluate both how slow a clock it is and the optimal number of charge counters to put on it at different stages in the game.
It's possible you resolve other mill spells (usually a bad idea to run) or that your opponent casts draw spells, speeding up your clock. My calculations just assume drawing 1 card per turn with no other mill, the way Limited usually is. Based on that, when you resolve Grindclock, you should already know how high to tick it based on the number of cards in the opponent's library when Grindclock resolves. Since other mill or draw effects may happen, in the case of a tie I give the advantage to ticking it to a lower number (since that way you start milling sooner and might win a turn earlier with the extra mill/draw effects). If you know you have other mill effects in hand or on the board, just subtract that from their current library size to get an effective library size (e.g. if they have 30 cards left when you resolve Grindclock but you also have Mind Sculpt in hand, they effectively only have 23 cards left... although you probably shouldn't have Mind Sculpt in your deck in the first place).
WARNING: Ticking it over 4 is always a mistake.
With 40-card decks, unless the opponent can recycle cards in library (or mulled to 5 on the play and you are dropping this on turn 2), there is no advantage conferred by wasting turns ticking up to 5 or more counters. Assuming one card drawn per turn, Grindclock ticked up to 4 will deck opponent 9 turns from now if he/she has 33 cards in library right now (most opponents start with less). Grindclock ticked to 5 will mill a 34-card library in 9 turns. Ticked to 6 will mill a 33-card library in 9 turns. Ticked even higher will be worse in 9 turns. Most people will have 33 or fewer cards when you resolve Grindclock so you should never need 5 or more counters. Extra mill or draw effects decrease effective library size, not increase, so they don't make more charge counters any more favorable. Tuck effects increase library size, but only by 1 and are pretty rare so they shouldn't change the clock enough to matter.
Based on the number of effective cards in library as Grindclock resolves:
Stop at 1 if opponent has exactly 2 cards in library.
Stop at 2 if opponent has <= 10 cards in library.
Stop at 3 if opponent has 11-18 cards in library
Stop at 4 if opponent has 19-33 cards in library
If you do that, Grindclock has a clock of
1 turn if 2 or fewer cards in library
2 turns if 3-4 cards in library
3 turns if 5-7 cards in library
4 turns if 8-10 cards in library
5 turns if 11-14 cards in library
6 turns if 15-18 cards in library
7 turns if 19-23 cards in library
8 turns if 24-28 cards in library
9 turns if 29+ cards in library (i.e. you drop this on turn 2 or in the early game).
That can be a long time to kill someone, even if dropped on turn 2, and especially as a topdeck in the late game when you would rather draw a creature or an answer. Something to keep in mind.
Grindclock should be better in this format than in Scars, as the fact that every deck likely had mulitple pieces of artifact removal made it tough to actually grind someone out.
And it should be fine in the right decks and matchups in limited. Someone playing something like Grixis control is unlikely to actually beat a turn 2 Grindlock.
Thanks for putting this up. It'll be nice to be able to refer people to this thread.
I think this does a good job of illustrating the unplayability of Grindclock. Best-case scenario, which more or less requires drawing Grindclock in your opening hand, it kills on turn 11, which is abysmally slow. Even control archetypes generally kill around turn 10 (though obviously winning control decks sometimes go significantly longer).
So we've got a slow uninteractive win condition, something that only very reactive control decks would want, that's so slow that it only works against other extremely slow, reactive control decks. And even in such a control mirror, it's only any good if it's in your opening hand, and is an abysmal late game topdeck.
This is one of those abilities that, if it were tacked onto a playable creature (some sort of early blocker for control decks, in this case), would result in a strong card for certain archetypes. As a whole card, though, it just doesn't do anything.
It's possible you resolve other mill spells (usually a bad idea to run) or that your opponent casts draw spells, speeding up your clock. My calculations just assume drawing 1 card per turn with no other mill, the way Limited usually is. Based on that, when you resolve Grindclock, you should already know how high to tick it based on the number of cards in the opponent's library when Grindclock resolves. Since other mill or draw effects may happen, in the case of a tie I give the advantage to ticking it to a lower number (since that way you start milling sooner and might win a turn earlier with the extra mill/draw effects). If you know you have other mill effects in hand or on the board, just subtract that from their current library size to get an effective library size (e.g. if they have 30 cards left when you resolve Grindclock but you also have Mind Sculpt in hand, they effectively only have 23 cards left... although you probably shouldn't have Mind Sculpt in your deck in the first place).
WARNING: Ticking it over 4 is always a mistake.
With 40-card decks, unless the opponent can recycle cards in library (or mulled to 5 on the play and you are dropping this on turn 2), there is no advantage conferred by wasting turns ticking up to 5 or more counters. Assuming one card drawn per turn, Grindclock ticked up to 4 will deck opponent 9 turns from now if he/she has 33 cards in library right now (most opponents start with less). Grindclock ticked to 5 will mill a 34-card library in 9 turns. Ticked to 6 will mill a 33-card library in 9 turns. Ticked even higher will be worse in 9 turns. Most people will have 33 or fewer cards when you resolve Grindclock so you should never need 5 or more counters. Extra mill or draw effects decrease effective library size, not increase, so they don't make more charge counters any more favorable. Tuck effects increase library size, but only by 1 and are pretty rare so they shouldn't change the clock enough to matter.
Based on the number of effective cards in library as Grindclock resolves:
Stop at 1 if opponent has exactly 2 cards in library.
Stop at 2 if opponent has <= 10 cards in library.
Stop at 3 if opponent has 11-18 cards in library
Stop at 4 if opponent has 19-33 cards in library
If you do that, Grindclock has a clock of
1 turn if 2 or fewer cards in library
2 turns if 3-4 cards in library
3 turns if 5-7 cards in library
4 turns if 8-10 cards in library
5 turns if 11-14 cards in library
6 turns if 15-18 cards in library
7 turns if 19-23 cards in library
8 turns if 24-28 cards in library
9 turns if 29+ cards in library (i.e. you drop this on turn 2 or in the early game).
That can be a long time to kill someone, even if dropped on turn 2, and especially as a topdeck in the late game when you would rather draw a creature or an answer. Something to keep in mind.
And it should be fine in the right decks and matchups in limited. Someone playing something like Grixis control is unlikely to actually beat a turn 2 Grindlock.
I think this does a good job of illustrating the unplayability of Grindclock. Best-case scenario, which more or less requires drawing Grindclock in your opening hand, it kills on turn 11, which is abysmally slow. Even control archetypes generally kill around turn 10 (though obviously winning control decks sometimes go significantly longer).
So we've got a slow uninteractive win condition, something that only very reactive control decks would want, that's so slow that it only works against other extremely slow, reactive control decks. And even in such a control mirror, it's only any good if it's in your opening hand, and is an abysmal late game topdeck.
This is one of those abilities that, if it were tacked onto a playable creature (some sort of early blocker for control decks, in this case), would result in a strong card for certain archetypes. As a whole card, though, it just doesn't do anything.
Scars also had proliferate effects to play with.