Wizards of the Coast has revealed a new Secret Lair deck for Magic: The Gathering. 20 Ways to Win is an upcoming precon which is clearly themed around alternate win conditions: cards that let you win the game by completing some kind of special objective, from casting a particular spell twice to collecting a bunch of treasure.
The first teasers for this new MTG Commander precon deck appeared on the Secret Lair website on November 18. They showed off one of the more famous alternate wincon cards, Approach of the Second Sun, with adorable Tanuki themed art depicting a critter tucking into a second helping of eggs, sunny side up.
That theme is carried across to the other cards we’ve seen so far, with furry little critters appearing on the deck’s Sol Ring and its MTG commander: Go-Shintai of Life’s Origin. I’m not sure if I’m missing a reference here, but it’s certainly a vibe – looks very Animal Crossing.
Go-Shintai is an interesting choice for the Commander, but upon reflection, I think it’s one that makes sense. Since alternate win conditions are spread across all five MTG colors, the deck needs to be five-color too. And many wincon cards are enchantments, so an enchantments subtheme seems very sensible.
Enchantment decks can also get very scary, with tons of card draw and value generation, and this might help with the inevitable clunkiness that comes from jamming a bunch of disparate ‘You win the game’ cards into a single deck.
Presumably, then, there’ll be a fair few shrine cards, though we wouldn’t say it’s 100% guaranteed. Go-Shintai of Life’s Wisdom is valuable to the deck for its ability to bring enchantments back from the graveyard to the battlefield, and it might that Wizards chose
I’d love to be a fly on the wall during the design process for this deck, as it must have been quite the challenge to fulfill this brief and create a functional (if meme-y) deck that players are going to want to use. I wonder what wincon cards are included.
Maze’s End, I think, is a no-brainer. It’s going to be a squeeze for Wizards to fit 17 wincons into the deck (three come standard: commander damage, mill, and regular old life loss), and Wizards is not going to miss the opportunity to include one among the deck’s lands. All those tapped Gates are going to hurt the mana base, but we really need the space, especially if there’s going to be a functional shrine theme as well.
Other possible wincons include Simic Ascendancy, perhaps fuelled by Go-Shintai of Boundless Vigor, and Revel in Riches. I’d expect poison counters to feature somewhere (perhaps Skrelv’s Hive), oh and Felidar Sovereign, probably the easiest alt wincon in the Commander format.
It’s also possible Wizards will get creative in its interpretation of ‘ways to win’. Does playing a combo like Exquisitive Blood + Sanguine Bond count as a wincon? How about playing a splashy ‘I win’ card like Craterhoof Behemoth? How about chaining extra turns together until everyone concedes?
While no date for the Secret Lair launch has been revealed, given precedent we would expect more cards to be revealed in the coming days, and the deck to launch within a couple of weeks – perhaps early December?
Previous Secret Lair precon decks, like last year’s adorable puppies and kittens deck, and the angels deck with the stupid name, have sold out swiftly and currently fetch extravagant prices on the secondary market.
No doubt, it’ll be the same situation here, but it’s noticeable that fans are starting to wake up to the drawbacks of the current Secret Lair business model. After the Marvel Secret Lair sold out within hours, the calls for Wizards to return to the print to demand strategy abandoned at the start of the year are getting louder, and most of the comments on this deck’s Twitter teaser are negative.
Source: Wargamer
