As a long time EDH player i've often struggled when it comes to nailing down a particular win condition (from here on win con) for each of the decks I build. And i'm not talking about over all deck strategy, i'm talking about how do you actually win.
Many decks have themes: they want to steal cards, they want to disrupt people's abilities to cast spells, they want to control the board. But those strategies don't win you the game until you deal 21 general damage, bring their life total to 0, poison counters to 10, or find some sort of lock (either physical or mental) that players concede out of frustration or in ability to play the game (or run one of the many "i win" cards).
In some cases its easy: generally voltron decks are self explanatory. Or for that matter any deck that depends on general damage to win you the game, it's pretty easy to build and play around a concise strategy. But with decks that build around card or ability synergy (+1/+1 counters, tokens, control, stax, tax, etc) i find myself trying to find out how i'm going to actually close the win. I find myself looking down at my deck and saying "well... i guess i'll just swing with creatures..." The old Beatdown archetype could come in here as the particular win con but is that really the most viable answer in EDH? For example, my Roon of the Hidden Realm deck abuses ETB effects. I find that the options are either infinite mana using some sort of DEN / Great Whale / Palinchron combo, or general control + beat down. I find myself leaning towards "well... i'll just blink a bunch of stuff and try and hold the board down and then swing with my various creatures when i can and win by doing direct damage." This seems like a slow and ineffective method.
I personally am generally not a fan of combo lock strategies, i find them boring. But so be it, that's a personal choice. What insight does the MTGS community have about finding your win con for each of your decks? Should I embrace infinite mana / combo lock in Roon? What do you do when a win con is not so obvious and you are working on a more unique synergy. Do you rely on politics to win via last man standing?
This thread is not really about my Roon deck but about finding your win cons. Please discuss!
EDH:
Currently Piloting:
Dama, Sage of Stone | Karador, Ghost Chieftan | Sigarda, Host of Herons | Elbrus, the Binding Blade / Withengar Unbound | Grand Arbiter Augustin IV | Genju of the Realm | Ruric Thar, the Unbowed
I build for redundancy without using a whole lot of tutors. I suppose I always play alittle more control-ish even in my aggro builds tho, plenty of removal and ways to stop the opposing sides until I combo out (biovisionary for the win!) or everyone is whittled down by everyone else and I can overwhelm someone with superior board presence.
So I guess, I don't really hunt down my win cons so much as stall until opportunity strikes or I draw into them naturally.
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URGRiku, Sorcerer SupremeGRU Who needs permanents anyways? WUBRGDeckbuilder's ToolboxGRBUW Warning:Contents include 34 decks and growing
I for one absolutely START deckbuilding with the question, what are my win conditions? What win conditions do I want to have? Putting deck strategy before win condition is the cart before the horse.
Every time I sit down and draft a deck more thematically like, I want to murder creatures, or I want to deny resources, or I want to pursue this or that tactical line... I end up discarding it. Ends (win con) justifying the means (deck strategy) much? Absolutely! That's how I think about it.
A strategy (cough stax in edh cough) that is just about making its strategy happen with no real thought to how it wins is just dumb to me. For me, the win con is what the deck is about. Every deck I have drafted that is about some particular means of interaction just ends up looking pointless or unfocused.
I also RARELY build a combo deck and I don't go for the rage scoop since I don't really view it as a win per se (unless there are prizes, in which case rage scoops wouldn't really occur). This isn't just a combo thing. It's just a goal oriented (not to say results oriented) style of deckbuilding.
Wouldn't you know it, I'm also building a Roon deck that is having trouble finding a few win conditions. It's not a blink deck, but it's still one that doesn't necessarily make use of the combat step like any aggro deck would.
Since my combat steps probably weren't anything special, I looked at combo first. I happened to be running a card that was potentially part of a 3 card combo that said destroy all lands you don't control as many times as you want to activate it. I hadn't seen the combo used before although I'm sure it has been, and it used a couple of quirky cards. Then I thought what it would be like to play against it on MTGO (which is where I mainly play) and realized it would be a pain to resolve since I have to target each land I want to destroy and even a minute feels like a long time when your lands are getting blown up. After that, what would I do? Swing with Roon while destroying each land that came into play one at a time? That sounds dumb.
Since the deck has a control-ish leaning, I figured I might try putting in a few things that could end the game by themselves if left unchecked for too long in a controlled board like Eldrazi Conscription. I'm honestly not too thrilled about this though. I don't really want to win by milling, poison, or making people scoop either. I'm basically just looking for something interesting that doesn't elicit sighs and groans from everyone when I play it. Like the OP said, there always is the option of just developing a superior board presence and swinging with a few 6/6's, but something more defined would be nice. I'll probably run across a few things I like eventually, but I'm in the same boat at the moment.
Wouldn't you know it, I'm also building a Roon deck that is having trouble finding a few win conditions. It's not a blink deck, but it's still one that doesn't necessarily make use of the combat step like any aggro deck would.
Since my combat steps probably weren't anything special, I looked at combo first. I happened to be running a card that was potentially part of a 3 card combo that said destroy all lands you don't control as many times as you want to activate it. I hadn't seen the combo used before although I'm sure it has been, and it used a couple of quirky cards. Then I thought what it would be like to play against it on MTGO (which is where I mainly play) and realized it would be a pain to resolve since I have to target each land I want to destroy and even a minute feels like a long time when your lands are getting blown up. After that, what would I do? Swing with Roon while destroying each land that came into play one at a time? That sounds dumb.
Since the deck has a control-ish leaning, I figured I might try putting in a few things that could end the game by themselves if left unchecked for too long in a controlled board like Eldrazi Conscription. I'm honestly not too thrilled about this though. I don't really want to win by milling, poison, or making people scoop either. I'm basically just looking for something interesting that doesn't elicit sighs and groans from everyone when I play it. Like the OP said, there always is the option of just developing a superior board presence and swinging with a few 6/6's, but something more defined would be nice. I'll probably run across a few things I like eventually, but I'm in the same boat at the moment.
I'm not sure if this is really what you are looking for, since it's not exactly a win condition, but here is something I have always WANTED to put into a Bant deck.. I just haven't gotten around to it.
In all, this setup means your opponents will have an incredibly hard time killing you or breaking up your board presence. The big angels should be able to close out the game combined with whatever else the deck does.
This might elicit a groan or two, since it is really strong, but it's awesome flavor. A bunch of epic angels hovering over your board and protecting you and everything on it is just cool, and very Bant to me. An infi damage Comet Storm can't get to you. That's awesome.
Anyway, to find my win condition I usually start the deck with a win condition in mind (in Xiahou Dun it's Mike/Trike, Hua Tuo has infinite squirrels tokens, Arcum has infinite myr tokens, and Garza Zol has multiple infinite combos usually winning with Laboratory Maniac) and then ensure that the rest of the deck is built to help enable that win condition. In the event that I build up most of the deck and then add the win condition (as with the aforementioned Roon deck) I look for wins that have synergy with the deck's theme - my Roon build is built around a Stasis lock, so big creatures with vigilance fit perfectly.
I hope that helps!
Playing against these sounds like more fun than a barrel of monkeys
I've actually been pondering this with an Oloro build I am working on. Usually with decks I try to start with a wincon, or at least with the main cards I want to have in the deck I am creating. A lot of times it can be relatively straight-forward, but sometimes it is complex. With Oloro it is becoming a game of attrition, but I am struggling with finding an actual wincon. Still, it can be an absolutely fun little project, hammering down exactly how the deck wins. I find when you do that, the deck can at times really build itself.
I've actually been pondering this with an Oloro build I am working on. Usually with decks I try to start with a wincon, or at least with the main cards I want to have in the deck I am creating. A lot of times it can be relatively straight-forward, but sometimes it is complex. With Oloro it is becoming a game of attrition, but I am struggling with finding an actual wincon. Still, it can be an absolutely fun little project, hammering down exactly how the deck wins. I find when you do that, the deck can at times really build itself.
With Oloro I understand your pain, you are hurting for a win con in the versions of it I've seen.
My go to commander (and I've been thinking about writing a primer for it) is just Esper Control with Sen Triplets, but they're interchangeable with Oloro in a lot of ways. The deck doesn't rely on the Trips in any way right now; it has zero commitment to their ability and they're just getting cast as a "bad Teferi" most of the time. Oloro could help somewhat, and he enables cards like Necropotence and Ashes to Ashes which are great cards but the Trips have had some problems running.
I favor Blightsteel Colossus as # 1 and Kozilek as # 2 in my deck since they do a bang-up job of winning the game, Blightsteel much more so than Kozilek though
RE: my comment about monkeys - I thought it was a funny thing to say although id have to look at the lists to give my true opinion of whether they are "fun" which as you noted is not the topic
On a related note, I was wondering how many win conditions are usually put in a deck. Whether it's large creatures or various combo pieces, how many card slots should be kept for those in pillowfort/control strategies? (obviously beatdown decks run a lot more threats)
I've actually been pondering this with an Oloro build I am working on. Usually with decks I try to start with a wincon, or at least with the main cards I want to have in the deck I am creating. A lot of times it can be relatively straight-forward, but sometimes it is complex. With Oloro it is becoming a game of attrition, but I am struggling with finding an actual wincon.
When I think about building Oloro, I think the most obvious wincon is to whittle everyone down slowly, either to death or to the point you can take most or all of your opponents down at once. In other words, a bleeder deck. Oloro's draw + ping everyone ability, combined with some extort cards, combined with small unblockable creatures that give you card draw (like Shadowmage Infiltrator and the blue Horsemanship guy in one of the precons) or other useful effects, until you get to where a big Exsanguinate or a large enough hit with something like Pestilence can take down all of your opponents. Toss in things like Erebus (opponents can't gain life + card draw), ample control elements and some lifegain things that do something useful (Pristine Talisman, for example), and you've got a bleeder deck.
The nice thing about that strategy is, you play a variety of individual cards that, in any of a number of combinations, gives you the win. This makes your wincon easier to draw into, and less vulnerable to being shut down. It's a lot more robust, and a hell of a lot more interesting, than tutoring into some two-card combo auto-win.
On a related note, I was wondering how many win conditions are usually put in a deck. Whether it's large creatures or various combo pieces, how many card slots should be kept for those in pillowfort/control strategies? (obviously beatdown decks run a lot more threats)
It completely depends on the deck. The beatdown plan of Tempoing out the opponent with creature beats requires a lot of cards that aren't "win conditions" but win the game in sufficient quantity at key times. Tempoing the opponent out is probably the hardest win condition to pin down in the abstract.
In my heavy control deck I run two. I don't like pillow fort; it's not flexible enough. I favor the approach to control you've probably seen for Esper in other formats. I could just run one win con but I have 99 cards and I think it's more suitable for control to have a backup in case something happens to the first one. You have to establish control to use the finishers and you won't always have protection for your win con. Hence the very powerful, quick clocks that don't need help and are very difficult to get rid of or interact with.
In several of my other decks I've included as many as seven different independent win cons just because I think it makes the deck more fun to play. Having games play out differently enhances my enjoyment of playing it many times. But I don't always do this an in my competitive control deck I want two or three slots devoted to winning and the rest of the slots, control.
Playing a bleeder style Pillowfort deck, I have no idea what to tell you. I wouldn't want to play that style because I think a control deck has to win once it establishes control. Don't give your opponents time to claw back into the game. Etablishing control might take awhile but once it's established I don't want my opponents drawing into something that changes that.
Luckily Roon has some loops like Karmic Guide / Reveillark + Acidic Slime or some other nice 2/2. You can also run Sylvan Primordial + Deadeye Navigator to end a game typically.
As for how to find your win conditions. Most decks I build with a theme, Rubinia was my blink deck before Roon came out. I looked at what was in there and asked if any of those cards could form a win condition / combo with perhaps another card or two. Then test it out, sometimes a single card added to help get to a win condition can help enable other avenues of attack.
Luckily Roon has some loops like Karmic Guide / Reveillark + Acidic Slime or some other nice 2/2. You can also run Sylvan Primordial + Deadeye Navigator to end a game typically.
As for how to find your win conditions. Most decks I build with a theme, Rubinia was my blink deck before Roon came out. I looked at what was in there and asked if any of those cards could form a win condition / combo with perhaps another card or two. Then test it out, sometimes a single card added to help get to a win condition can help enable other avenues of attack.
Lark Guide loops are clearly the beaten path and for good reason. All I'd add if you do care for those (I think everyone needs at least one deck that runs 'em) is, pick the right deck for it cuz otherwise you could be adding something that the deck didn't really want just because it's the obvious.
First thing you need to decide is if you are going to win in one turn or if you are going to grind out a win. If you are trying to grind out a win, then you aren't necessarily "looking for a win con." Your deck should just have lots of different threats that need to be dealt with otherwise you run away with the game. This is what my Marath deck does. You have the option to grind out wins, but then you have cards that are obvious "win cons" like "I cast genesis wave" or "I cast craterhoof with a board full of 1/1s" (using my marath as an example). I'd suggest using this sort of model. Have a deck that can grind out wins with threats, but then have cards some big battlecruiser cards to finish out the game with. Usually the most fun and interactive strategy for all players I find.
Dedicated win con's once are well known are more easily disrupted. I prefer a dynamic deck where it can win via multiple routes to attain the same goal. Sometimes a deck with no defined win condition simply wins through advantages over opponents. Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord is my most recent deck built and for better or worse it does not have specific cards that make it win, rather it has a overarching strategy to bring victory. It has a plan and that plan is not easily disrupted if it does not rely upon single cards to perform, but rather the entire deck, thus the threat density and synergy is very high and as a result even with disruption the deck can perform it's plan. You could think of it as the same way as the internet was devised, where we have redundancy to prevent single point of failure so that if one path to victory fails there are still multiple paths that operate the same way that will also being victory.
TL: DR Plan for victory, include redundancy via threat density. I think that this philosophy results in robust decks which preform well against most threats.
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Many decks have themes: they want to steal cards, they want to disrupt people's abilities to cast spells, they want to control the board. But those strategies don't win you the game until you deal 21 general damage, bring their life total to 0, poison counters to 10, or find some sort of lock (either physical or mental) that players concede out of frustration or in ability to play the game (or run one of the many "i win" cards).
In some cases its easy: generally voltron decks are self explanatory. Or for that matter any deck that depends on general damage to win you the game, it's pretty easy to build and play around a concise strategy. But with decks that build around card or ability synergy (+1/+1 counters, tokens, control, stax, tax, etc) i find myself trying to find out how i'm going to actually close the win. I find myself looking down at my deck and saying "well... i guess i'll just swing with creatures..." The old Beatdown archetype could come in here as the particular win con but is that really the most viable answer in EDH? For example, my Roon of the Hidden Realm deck abuses ETB effects. I find that the options are either infinite mana using some sort of DEN / Great Whale / Palinchron combo, or general control + beat down. I find myself leaning towards "well... i'll just blink a bunch of stuff and try and hold the board down and then swing with my various creatures when i can and win by doing direct damage." This seems like a slow and ineffective method.
I personally am generally not a fan of combo lock strategies, i find them boring. But so be it, that's a personal choice. What insight does the MTGS community have about finding your win con for each of your decks? Should I embrace infinite mana / combo lock in Roon? What do you do when a win con is not so obvious and you are working on a more unique synergy. Do you rely on politics to win via last man standing?
This thread is not really about my Roon deck but about finding your win cons. Please discuss!
EDH:
Currently Piloting:
Dama, Sage of Stone | Karador, Ghost Chieftan | Sigarda, Host of Herons | Elbrus, the Binding Blade / Withengar Unbound | Grand Arbiter Augustin IV | Genju of the Realm | Ruric Thar, the Unbowed
So I guess, I don't really hunt down my win cons so much as stall until opportunity strikes or I draw into them naturally.
URGRiku, Sorcerer SupremeGRU
Who needs permanents anyways?
WUBRGDeckbuilder's ToolboxGRBUW
Warning:Contents include 34 decks and growing
Every time I sit down and draft a deck more thematically like, I want to murder creatures, or I want to deny resources, or I want to pursue this or that tactical line... I end up discarding it. Ends (win con) justifying the means (deck strategy) much? Absolutely! That's how I think about it.
A strategy (cough stax in edh cough) that is just about making its strategy happen with no real thought to how it wins is just dumb to me. For me, the win con is what the deck is about. Every deck I have drafted that is about some particular means of interaction just ends up looking pointless or unfocused.
I also RARELY build a combo deck and I don't go for the rage scoop since I don't really view it as a win per se (unless there are prizes, in which case rage scoops wouldn't really occur). This isn't just a combo thing. It's just a goal oriented (not to say results oriented) style of deckbuilding.
I don't always try to avoid my draw phase, but when I do, I choose Chronatog.
Since my combat steps probably weren't anything special, I looked at combo first. I happened to be running a card that was potentially part of a 3 card combo that said destroy all lands you don't control as many times as you want to activate it. I hadn't seen the combo used before although I'm sure it has been, and it used a couple of quirky cards. Then I thought what it would be like to play against it on MTGO (which is where I mainly play) and realized it would be a pain to resolve since I have to target each land I want to destroy and even a minute feels like a long time when your lands are getting blown up. After that, what would I do? Swing with Roon while destroying each land that came into play one at a time? That sounds dumb.
Since the deck has a control-ish leaning, I figured I might try putting in a few things that could end the game by themselves if left unchecked for too long in a controlled board like Eldrazi Conscription. I'm honestly not too thrilled about this though. I don't really want to win by milling, poison, or making people scoop either. I'm basically just looking for something interesting that doesn't elicit sighs and groans from everyone when I play it. Like the OP said, there always is the option of just developing a superior board presence and swinging with a few 6/6's, but something more defined would be nice. I'll probably run across a few things I like eventually, but I'm in the same boat at the moment.
[Primer] WBR Tariel: You'll Thank Me For This WBR [Primer]
GGG Dosan of the Green Rainbow GGG
RWU Zedruu: I Ain't Even Mad RWU
I'm not sure if this is really what you are looking for, since it's not exactly a win condition, but here is something I have always WANTED to put into a Bant deck.. I just haven't gotten around to it.
What about the trifecta of Avacyn, Angel of Hope, Empyrial Archangel and Sigarda, Host of Herons? Get all three of them out on the board perhaps via a Congregation at Dawn and what are your opponents going to do about it? Resolve Terminus? Run Ghostway. Roon probably likes Ghostway anyway. Cyclonic Rift? Whatever; recast your stuff. I guess you can add Melira, Privileged Position and Sterling Grove if you want a really, really unbreakable board.
In all, this setup means your opponents will have an incredibly hard time killing you or breaking up your board presence. The big angels should be able to close out the game combined with whatever else the deck does.
This might elicit a groan or two, since it is really strong, but it's awesome flavor. A bunch of epic angels hovering over your board and protecting you and everything on it is just cool, and very Bant to me. An infi damage Comet Storm can't get to you. That's awesome.
Playing against these sounds like more fun than a barrel of monkeys
With Oloro I understand your pain, you are hurting for a win con in the versions of it I've seen.
My go to commander (and I've been thinking about writing a primer for it) is just Esper Control with Sen Triplets, but they're interchangeable with Oloro in a lot of ways. The deck doesn't rely on the Trips in any way right now; it has zero commitment to their ability and they're just getting cast as a "bad Teferi" most of the time. Oloro could help somewhat, and he enables cards like Necropotence and Ashes to Ashes which are great cards but the Trips have had some problems running.
I favor Blightsteel Colossus as # 1 and Kozilek as # 2 in my deck since they do a bang-up job of winning the game, Blightsteel much more so than Kozilek though
RE: my comment about monkeys - I thought it was a funny thing to say although id have to look at the lists to give my true opinion of whether they are "fun" which as you noted is not the topic
When I think about building Oloro, I think the most obvious wincon is to whittle everyone down slowly, either to death or to the point you can take most or all of your opponents down at once. In other words, a bleeder deck. Oloro's draw + ping everyone ability, combined with some extort cards, combined with small unblockable creatures that give you card draw (like Shadowmage Infiltrator and the blue Horsemanship guy in one of the precons) or other useful effects, until you get to where a big Exsanguinate or a large enough hit with something like Pestilence can take down all of your opponents. Toss in things like Erebus (opponents can't gain life + card draw), ample control elements and some lifegain things that do something useful (Pristine Talisman, for example), and you've got a bleeder deck.
The nice thing about that strategy is, you play a variety of individual cards that, in any of a number of combinations, gives you the win. This makes your wincon easier to draw into, and less vulnerable to being shut down. It's a lot more robust, and a hell of a lot more interesting, than tutoring into some two-card combo auto-win.
It completely depends on the deck. The beatdown plan of Tempoing out the opponent with creature beats requires a lot of cards that aren't "win conditions" but win the game in sufficient quantity at key times. Tempoing the opponent out is probably the hardest win condition to pin down in the abstract.
In my heavy control deck I run two. I don't like pillow fort; it's not flexible enough. I favor the approach to control you've probably seen for Esper in other formats. I could just run one win con but I have 99 cards and I think it's more suitable for control to have a backup in case something happens to the first one. You have to establish control to use the finishers and you won't always have protection for your win con. Hence the very powerful, quick clocks that don't need help and are very difficult to get rid of or interact with.
In several of my other decks I've included as many as seven different independent win cons just because I think it makes the deck more fun to play. Having games play out differently enhances my enjoyment of playing it many times. But I don't always do this an in my competitive control deck I want two or three slots devoted to winning and the rest of the slots, control.
Playing a bleeder style Pillowfort deck, I have no idea what to tell you. I wouldn't want to play that style because I think a control deck has to win once it establishes control. Don't give your opponents time to claw back into the game. Etablishing control might take awhile but once it's established I don't want my opponents drawing into something that changes that.
As for how to find your win conditions. Most decks I build with a theme, Rubinia was my blink deck before Roon came out. I looked at what was in there and asked if any of those cards could form a win condition / combo with perhaps another card or two. Then test it out, sometimes a single card added to help get to a win condition can help enable other avenues of attack.
EDH Decks:
B Toshiro Umezawa B
W Mikaeus, the Lunarch W
G Azusa, Lost but Seeking G
UB Grimgrin, Corpse-Born BU
BGU The Mimeoplasm UGB
GUW Rubinia Soulsinger WUG
GRB Sek'Kuar, Deathkeeper BRG
Lark Guide loops are clearly the beaten path and for good reason. All I'd add if you do care for those (I think everyone needs at least one deck that runs 'em) is, pick the right deck for it cuz otherwise you could be adding something that the deck didn't really want just because it's the obvious.
Current
RGWMarath, Will of the WildRGW
GWUPheldagriff Group HugGWU
RGRRuric Thar, the UnbowedGRG
UXBOona ControlUXB
Retired
RGWMayael, the AnimaRGW
XGXGlissa Sunseeker ComboXGX
TL: DR Plan for victory, include redundancy via threat density. I think that this philosophy results in robust decks which preform well against most threats.