An unrepentantly artificial and complex system, Milkwood is designed to maximize the accuracy of the contracts reached at pairs or at team scoring, using closely defined systemic bids, often based on asking bids and defined artificial responses. As it is a fully integrated system, it is difficult to abandon or modify any of the systemic opening bids without impacting on the values needed for other bids in the system or on its ability to describe all holdings precisely. This, the original version of this integrated, complex and artificial system of bidding was designed to comply with the provisions of the English Bridge Union