Our Favorite Win Conditions | Commander Clash Podcast #50 

I love the other hosts during Seth's Warp World Discussion. Tomer: Nooooooo Crim: Yesssssss Richard: barely listening just thinking about birds.

The best win-con is arbitrarily being declared the winner because the LGS is closing and you have the most life.

These podcasts are quickly turning into: "What card can I bring that will tilt the other members the most?"

I wrote a huge post on reddit a while back about how Divine Intervention essentially says 'you win the game' and a bunch of spikes raged that 'no, you draw because it says you draw.' From a philosophical standpoint though, you don't. A draw is when all the players are in a forced stalemate, or they all agree to walk away. If one player unilaterally has the ability to declare the game a draw without the other players consent, that defeats the idea of what a draw even is. The play patterns are identical to other timed wincons like Approach of the Second Sun. You play it, the game is put on a clock until a thing happens, and you protect yourself while the rest of the table does everything in their power to stop the thing from happening - and when the thing happens, the game ends on your terms. Nobody is about to let Divine Intervention resolve because 'its a draw.' They're gonna throw everything they can at stopping it and winning the game themselves... and if Divine Intervention walks like a wincon and talks like a wincon... IMO its a wincon. Now there's a bit of a grey area if that means other forced draws like a polyraptor combo count as a wincon. I don't quite feel it does since it dosn't have the same level of mechanical intention as Divine Intervention, but you could argue it is, and if you walk away from the game feeling like you won, it functionally would be. Divine Intervention just stands out to me as a strange case, since it claims to force the game to be a draw while simultaneously defying what it means to draw in the first place.

35:11 that sounds like an amazing commander clash episode. everyone gets secretively or maybe even openly given another player who you need to make the winner, the irony being that that person doesn't want to win because he wants someone else to win.

Divine intervention makes me want to see a magic card with text that reads something along the lines of "if the game would end in a draw you win instead." And have the flavor of a peace negotiation.

Best feeling inkshield ive ever had was late game somebody was milling the table and an opponent cast a rise of the dark realms and they swung out with everything at me and ink shielded for like 70! Then killed the table next turn. Felt so good

That Daredevil joke/reference was peak comedy.

Richard has to be my favorite contributor to the commander community, I hope to play a game with him one day, such an awesome dude, so chill, I really enjoy his play style. The rest of y'all are at the top of my list too, I got love for all of yas, keep doing the thing we appreciate you guys

My favorite wincon: Generating 50+ mana every turn with my Zacama while having no card draw

My favorite win-con is “Bands with other legends” (Adventurers’ Guildhouse)

Best RU-vid content available! Command Zone moved aside about a year ago so somebody was definitely gonna fill the void. I'm glad it's these guys!

You reminded me of the most bizarre inkshield moment recently. Someone inkshields to a 10 damage attack, which was going to be followed up by a 8 damage 2nd combat phase, I convinced the person to go ahead and attack the 2nd time. They go to board wipe, and I respond with rakdos charm killing the inkshield player with exact damage to the face.

Imagine using Fractured Identity on your own Divine Intervention. Now all of your opponents have a copy that will each draw the game unless they can destroy each one in just two turns. 😂

34:16 - I love this take by Seth, because it encourages a whole different mindset in commander that isn't just straight hyper focused on winning. Some people have an objective to do in the game and if they do that, they win in their mind. It isn't about eliminating the other players. I believe it's Olivia Goebert-Hicks that has a deck where she just wants to deck herself. Not even with a lab maniac win con out. Just lose the game as fast as possible. When she does that, she "wins". I think this mindset needs to be encouraged more. So yes, I think if you have a deck built around divine intervention and you pull it off, even though the card says it's a draw, you did your thing and you win. The draw only matters in tournaments.

Great episode! Tomer, love the nine lives interaction at the end of the pod. Favorite win in a while was a Kwain deck. Sower of Temptation to steal an opponent's Nykthos Paragon, next turn cast Sakishima's Will to have all my creatures become copies of it then tap Kwain (Commander), gained one life and had my creatures become enormous. Built my own Craterhoof by accident. Opponent had 100+ life and killed the whole table.

Luxior paired with the commander that makes creatures come back as enchantments when they die is gonna be my favorite super friends deck now.

I recently was playing my Nicol Bolas themed deck, and actually won with an elderspell+Nicol Bolas Dragon God ult combo, felt amazing. Probably my favourite wincon just for style points.

Door to nothingness w/ the ability copied x2 is my favorite wincon

Divine Intervention as a way to play around Platinum Angel is hilarious.

Miss me with Divine Intervention, I’m blowing that up the first chance I get.

Thank you for the great videos guys!!

Seth is 100% right on divine Intervention. If you pull it off it's a functional win. Because this was the plan from the beginning. And you even played to "win". You had a goal and worked towards it unlike some group-hug builds that have no gameplan of their own beside powering up everybody else.

Seth…I absolutely love your win Con’s I very much want you to pull off the Divine Intervention beat down and the Deck of Many Wins. Good luck. Making a Divine Intervention deck where you play god trying to ensure no players die so you can tie seems so fun.

In the vain of Tomer's janky fractured identity wincon, I recently put Phage into my new Kamiz because unblockable, but I also put fractured identity in the deck because I just want to live the dream of casting fractured identity on my own Phage and killing everyone.

*Listing all the mentions* #1 (Seth): Warp World #2 (Richard): Coat of Arms #3 (Tomer): Thrilling Encore #4 (Crim): Teferi, Hero of Dominaria/All Planeswalkers? #5 (Seth): Divine Intervention? #6 (Richard): Capsize? #7 (Tomer): Inkshield #8 (Crim): Ashiok, Dream Render+Doomsday+Hivemind? #9 (Seth): The Deck of Many Things #10 (Richard):Blackblade Reforged #11 (Tomer): Nine Lives+Fractured Identity+Patrician's Scorn? #12 (Crim): Repay in Kind? Wanted to list them all to see which ones I agreed with it being a WinCon. The ones with a "?" aren't WinCons in my opinion. (Combos are a different thing, again, imo) Feel free to disagree and comment.

Deck of Many Things combo win: Dockside + Deadeye Navigator + Clan Crafter That creates infinite mana and artifacts. You can draw your deck and play Omen Machine, Tormod’s Crypt, Isochron Scepter + Dramatic Reversal and a sac outlet. Building a Wyll/Clan Crafter deck now and this is the win con.

My favorite win is to stifle the Thoracle trigger.

The "Codfather" *is* the name of a fish and chips shop near me in Brisbane, Australia!

I like Inkshield too Tomer. I have it in my Chromium, the Mutable flash deck and it's just the perfect place for it.

To go with the Inkshield submission, one of my favorite wincons is gideons sacrifice in combination with some Stuffy Doll effect. Since you only have to hold up 1 mana, this is a REAL gotcha moment.

Love Thrilling Encore. Run it in my Teysa aristocrats deck, I remember a game where I had a grave pact, sacced all my creatures, and then cast this to get everything back

I've drawn the game a few times with divine intervention in my Vish kal alt wincon and upkeep tribal deck and it usually makes the people that were going to lose the game really happy. Highly recommend at least proxying a few for your white decks that also have ramp colours in there like black red and green.

When I first started watching the podcast I saw Trout Mask Replica behind Seth, now I see the Holy Modal Rounders. You have great taste, Seth :)

Would definitely buy a Cod Father shirt. Would also buy one of those Goldfish plush on Richard's couch. Lol

Inkshield is good with Treasures, because you can use them only once any way.

Love it guys great episode!!

My favorite wincon is Possessed Portal. It might look like a stax card but the game pretty much ends as soon as it resolves. It eats through boards and hands like it's nothing and if you opponents didn't have removal they are never going draw it either. You can play portal in all kinds of decks. Token decks, reanimator decks, aristocrat decks etc. You can do whacky stuff like play tibalt and have impulse draw fuel you or cast a big blue sun zenith and hope your hand is bigger than their boardstate.

For the deck of many things deck, running Eruth would be fun. You can run a bunch of looting affects to be hellebent while actually have cards at your disposal. Add in 20 artifacts and untap abilities and it could work.

Scrambleverse is a legit Wincon. Made a deck that makes an infinite number of Mana Crypts and then casts Scrambleverse.

I just built a Wyll and Clan Crafter deck that has the Deck of Many Things as the sole win con! You utilize tormods crypt and omen machine to keep you at 0 cards so you can just keep rolling! You definitely need a dockside infinite treasure combo to draw your deck with clan crafter, then an untap loop to untap Deck of Many Things as many times as you need to play it out

Group hug Pheldagrif or however his name is spelled, and your "win" condition is to keep all of the players alive, and end the game with Divine Intervention. Your back-up play is to brutally murder whoever first kills another player, because they ruined the peace, and then concede. It's a role-play strategy.

Storm herd- ten mana for 1/1 pegasi equal to your life total. Takes until you're at a quarter life to go below vanilla p/t for it's cmc. It was in my first commander deck, the abzan 2011 precon and I've loved it ever since. Been a while since I've cast it, but it will always have a place in my heart.

[Edit (i shouldn't comment before seeing the whole thing)]: An even sweeter version of the Nine-lifes combo (though not possible in Zedruu) is Phage, the Untouchable + Fractured Identity. :D With the Ashiok, Doomsday, Hive Mind Combo: Remember to always use Ashiok's ability first. He prevents opponents from searching their library, not the graveyard, so your opponents can still assemble something out of there. And adding to the Capsize discussion: Unless Capsize is involved in creating the infinite Mana (e.g. with Dockside), i see the infinite Mana combo as the finisher, not Capsize... What you actually spend your Mana on doesn't really matter, as long as you can spend it.

Eldrasi monument is my version of coat of arms. Helping your creatures to fly and get +1/+1 is nice and hey if you fail to kill they are indestructable too. Ofc acroma memorial can also be a good contestor.

Deck of Many Things combos with Mind Over Matter- untap your mana rock and the Deck with every 10-19!

I think I'm a huge Johnny player. Maybe Johnny with a bit of spike. I personally look at commander and how interesting it is, and how many unique cards I will get to play in them, how to abuse its ability and generate as much value as possible. I often than struggle to realize how to actually win. So usually my decks end up having some combo or one card oneshot in them. Prime example of this has to be my Osgir which is a deck that basically mimics Simic. Tons of ramp, tons of draw. Then I realized I have noway to win, so I just jammed into Mystic forge into Obelisk + walking balista combo. It is not the most satisfying way to win, but the rest of the deck is so sweet and I enjoy it a lot.

My buddy made the dice rolling commander deck with Wyll. The other day he rolled a nat 20 and killed everyone by attacking for lethal and creating extra combat steps. I'm still adjusting to the dice rolling random aspect of these cards because its hard to prepare for it. It can fail but it can also go 0 to 60 in seconds

It may only work on a full board but I think my favourite combo win con is lilianas caress/ fell spectre, warped devotion and upheaval/ devastation tide. There's just some added touch of mtg brutality in that combo that just tickles me. Watching a person returning their own permanents to their hand, discarding them, and then killing themselves with said cards is beautifully harsh.

I've resolved a few inkshields and it's definitely a fun wincon. Like Crim said, you hold up the mana when you have some threats deployed and it's such a powerful effect if you do get attacked. If the mana gets wasted then oh well because you've still got these threats deployed. You can usually see when some kind of attack is coming and it's surprisingly easy to get a lot of inklings since you'll choose to not do any blocking. Swings for 10+ are common in the later stages of the game and at that time a board of 20+ power fliers will easily kill people. As Tomer said, you untap and kill people before they even had time to respond! Even an attack of 5 damage on you is 10 power of fliers, which is huge. It's a very powerful card I'd recommend for any orzhov deck. Only times it's not as good are in meta's where people aren't winning with combat damage. Otherwise, it's one of the strongest things to repeatedly hold up in the later stages of the game because unless they have a board clear to play right after, you'll be killing them. I'm glad it's orzhov, so it's not played everywhere. Otherwise it might get old quite quickly because it causes very sudden swings. I can imagine some people getting bitter about that.

Last game in our pod the Monoblack player killed me with Syr Konrad triggers after a board wipe, finished another player with the damage from Sign in Blood, and killed the Elves player with a well timed Deadly Tempest... One of the funniest games we had in a while!

My favorite win condition is casting a Finale of Glory for 12 mana. It’s incredibly hard to pull off, but if you do it and the board doesn’t get wiped before your next turn, you can usually win the game.

Seth: Fractured Identity your Divine Intervention, it's glorious.

Repay in Kind with with Lich's Mastery is my favorite :)

Warp World is a dope wincon. I have it in my Vazi Capitalism deck. It allows me to make oodles of treasures and turn them into all sorts of nasty monsters.

I’ve won with blackblade multiple times in my dakkon voltron deck and its always awesome :) I’m still waiting to Barren Glory in my nevinyrral deck :)

31:40 Perrie the Pulverizer is a great Intervention Counter commander

My favorite win con that I've pulled off in a commander game has been Dragonstorm. I managed to win outright with it 2 ways, once I played Mana Geyser and copied it with Reiterate for infinite mana, then cast it with the mana (in a mono red deck so pulling off the 3 card combo for 11 mana was a huge feels good) and the other time was I had it under a Spinerock Knoll and someone else stormed off and was about to kill the table, and as soon as someone took the 7 damage I used the Knoll to flash Dragonstorm and my dragon ETBs won me the game.

leveler is a fun wincon if you can dump your library to the graveyard then have an effect to shuffle it back into the library, but then you also need to exchange control of it all around the board and blink it on everyone.

I have a The Deck of Many Things deck with Eruth, Tormented Prophet! I use artifact tutors to find The Deck of Many things and I use Eruth to make sure my hand never has cards in it, but I still have tons of card draw. Since I'm in Izzet, I use all the dice rolling advantage cards to increase my chances. I have played the deck a fair bit, but I haven't rolled a nat 20 yet. I have rolled a nat 19 and drew a counterspell to stop a Grixis deck from ending the game with Thassa oracle once. The funny thing is that I've only won with beating people down with creatures like Delina, Farideh, and Laelia.

I'm currently experimenting with cards like sakashima's will/mirrorweave. Make a bunch off a single creature and surprise your opponents with janky wins. Pretty cool so far.

Ok Seth, Divine visitation counts as a win? What if the Bills went to the superbowl and instead of playing the game they decided to call it a tie... would you consider that a win for the Bills?

I have successfully pulled off Divine Intervention twice, the first time it was on turn 3: T1: Sol Ring T2: Academy Rector T3: Diabolic Intent (sacrificing Rector) for Vampire Hexmage. 😂

Divine Intervention + Opalescence + Grafted Exoskeleton

I like Academy Rector + end of last opponent's turn Kaervek's Spite with Barren Glory in the library is my favorite. Or if you're desperate cast Barren Glory and respond with Kaervek's Spite.

This list feels like your Commander Bucket List pt. 2

so I have a breena deck, playing a game I had a demonic consultation in hand, its down to a 1v1. Enemy had like 75 damage on board, goes to swing, In response to damage I consultation into inkshield. It was so insane to see it happen. Absolutely blew it out of the water. The big issue with inkshield is the fact that it is 5 mana, and it requires people to win with big stompy, so it basically stops being effective at around power level 7/8 unless you can create a massive tempo game such as with breena.

Divine Intervention. The "I'm tired of this and want to move onto the next game" card. I respected this back in the day.

About Thrilling Encore: in Grixis colors, I love it with Invert-Invent: end of turn Invent, get Blasphemous Act and Thrilling Encore, and then untap and cast them immediately.

Inkshield is a HOUSE! It has won me a few games on its own. Highly recommend it in any combat-matters meta.

I'm sorta biased to ink shield. My first ever game of commander I had the silverquill precon and blocked lethal damage (15) then went on to win. Just a small moment but it was the turn that got me hooked on magic.

i came for advice but stayed for the memes lol

I don't know why I am so surprised that Crim proposes vices. Casual magic isn't just about "winning at all costs" OR "trying not to win at all costs". Winning can be on the list of preferences, but not at the top. Anywhere in the spectrum.

Foul-Tongue Shriek is a good wincon in go wide decks. It just kills one player but thats at that point the only thing you need.

I always try to build decks with control win cons that if you seen my decks you wouldn't know what the wincon is... things like looping cards to lock the game out. Or looping reality shift and exileing there deck. It takes allot of set up but once the table figures out what you are doing they normally scoop. But I try to win with cards you normally wouldn't counter or exile... like turning a single lightning bolt into a grapeshot...

As someone who has won games with inkshield, it feels so good!

Repay in Kind plus a Wound Reflection effect would be sweet!

If you like Inkshield Tomer, you should check out Reflect Damage. It's just a straight up "Are you sure? I think you're going to regret that..." I think my favorite wincon is Reins of Power. You just sit back and wait for the opportune time, then you borrow someone's army, or even combo, and just win. It can also be used as a fog in a pinch.

So we still need a codfather shirt, Richard, sitting in a chair behind a desk, with the fish in his arms instead of the cat, brushing his cheek aka Brando

Just for the record, you would need 14 dice increasing effects to have even a 50% chance of getting a 20. As far as I'm aware, the only ways to roll an extra die are barbarian class, pixie guide, and Wyll blade of frontiers. Wyll is legendary, so let's ignore getting multiple copies of him. There are lots of cards which can make many copies of creatures, but relatively few which make copies of enchantments, so you would really need to make 14 copies of your pixie guide. Empty your hand, hit the 50/50, then do it again the next two turns. Pretty sure I'd rather just Delina twin them out.

I have won with Inkshield 3x in my Brena Deck... Did it once at Richmond against Dino's :)

There is a fish store in my city called Codfathers!

There is a fish and chips shop in Edinburgh Uk called The Codfather. I do not believe they have the copyright.

Dude divine intervention plus sanctuary warden seems cool

I've kind of been digging the Bow of Nylea + Fynn the Fangbearer interaction

I'd say one of my favorite win conditions is going infinite with Vadrok, a few mutate creatures, Frantic Search, *Shaman's Trance, and my opponent's Jeska's Will.*

another good fractured Identity combo for the win is to play Leveler, Fractured Identity on the leveler, and then pass and let everyone lose to the draw. Phage works in its place as well.

34:15 I agree with Seth, to the point where I'm making a Power Rangers theme deck (for when they inevitable make the secret layer) and since its basically just random references, I'm making a bingo card and I'll consider it a victory if I pull off a bingo in a game!

My favourite win on in my Mogis god of slaughter deck is bloodchief ascension plus fraying omipotence. Bloodchiefs always looks like an innocuous 1 mana enchantment but it’s lethal

I love Inkshield so much. I play it in my Alela Enchantress deck

When I was younger we ran a paper magic prismatic game with 9 players. The player to my before me cast hive mind. I then cast warp world. 3 hours later we finally had an empty stack and 3 players died. Love warp world so much after that day

I feel ya, Crim, with Repay in Kind in K'rrik.

My favorite cards for win cons is ixodron, and reigns of power. Ixodron literally flips the entire bord. It gets around absolutely everything and so does reigns of power.

blackblade reforged is fo sho a green staple for me along with blanchwood armor. my green decks always runs rishkar's, return of the wildspeaker, soul's majesty and momentous fall so i'm constantly turning azusa and tireless provisioner into 20/20+ dorkzillas then drawing a third of my deck.

Peer into the Abyss, Wound Reflection/Warlock Class L3, and Zevlor

Planeswalkers integrated Richard Garfield’s main mechanic from Netrunner.

Colossification on my commander (with seedborn muse) seems to win games alot lol

Phyrexian Unlife with Repay in Kind would be pretty good. You could actually Ad Naus into it now that I think about it.

Arachnogenesis does only work when it is attacking the player that cast Arachnogenesis. But i do agree that Inkshield for 5 is quite a lot.

I just want to say that I have been straight blown out by Ink Shield. Plus it has the upside that once you've been got by this it is so bad that if you see someone in white black with 5 up, you will play around it.