Magic: The Gathering has slowly been drip-feeding spoilers for the 20 Ways to Win Commander deck, and the gradual pace of these reveals is providing even more time for the disappointment to sink in. It almost annoys me that this pile of cards will probably sell out on day one.
In case you’ve not already spotted this very unusual upcoming precon, the premise is to combine a bunch of alternate wincons into one janky pile. The deck has Go-Shintai of Life’s Origin as its MTG commander, though it’s increasingly looking like that’s just for the enchantment recursion and not a shrine subtheme.
Past MTG Secret Lair decks have been sold by Wizards of the Coast for $150, but have later gone for a boatload on the secondary market, so they’re now prime targets for scalpers. That, plus the cute tanooki themed art (I’m still waiting for someone to explain the link, is it that raccoons like garbage?), will almost certainly lead to the deck selling out shortly after it’s released.
While the full decklist has not yet been revealed, what we have seen of 20 Ways to Win makes me fairly certain that it is going to stink. Unsurprisingly enough, most of these wincons require quite a bit of set up, and it’s going to be a tall order to include enough cards to make any one of them properly viable.
Liliana’s Contract will need Maskwood Nexus at a minimum, for instance, while Felidar Sovereign demands lifegain, Biovisionary needs clone cards like Helm of the Host, Halo Fountain needs tokens or your opponents to never play a board wipe, and Hellkite Tyrant requires artifacts.
With all these wincons bumping up against one another, the shrine theme some folks were excited about seems unlikely. It’s going to be challenging enough just fitting in all the ramp, removal, card draw, and board wipes that will be needed to make a halfway functioning deck.
Okay, it’s a joke/jank list, and you might say I’m approaching it too seriously. But if you’re going to pay well above the value of your average precon for a deck, do you really want something that’s going to flounder around every game?
The strategy here seems to be just to build up a critical mass of alternate win conditions and just hope that one of them sneaks through to suddenly win the game. Obviously, it’s subjective, but to me that doesn’t seem fun either to play or to play against. The deck is a funny meme, but one you’ll be forcing your pod to endure for an hour or more each time you break it out.
I will admit, the art is very cute. The adorable raccoon dogs are certainly the deck’s biggest plus point, and a major reason it may sell like hotcakes despite its shortcomings. But the way it’s being revealed one or two cards at a time only highlights the fact that half of the new wincons do not have new art. And that leaves the whole deck feeling incomplete.
True, the other SL decks like Raining Cats and Dogs only had a handful of new arts too, but marketing your deck around 20 win cons and only producing new art for a few of them makes a premium product feels cheap. Wizards would only need to produce 16 max, since it’s counting Twenty-toed Toad as two win cons in one, and then you have damage, Commander damage, and decking.
When this concept was first revealed, I admit it appealed strongly to the achievement hunting collector in me. It would be great to print out a checklist to record how many ways you have managed to win with this deck. However, fun as that sounds, I’m concerned it may wear thin when almost every box on that checklist remains starkly unchecked.
Devising an alternate win condition deck is a fun deckbuilding challenge. But if you buy this, you’re letting Wizards do the fun part, leaving you just the chore of actually playing with the damn thing.
Maybe it will be better than I’m predicting. We haven’t actually seen the whole decklist yet, so I guess it’s a little premature for me to judge so harshly. If it’s not, though, here’s hoping the scalpers who rush to buy are left holding the bag, struggling to resell a deck no one needs.
For more Magic: The Gathering content, check out the Commander precon decks we think are worth your money. And don’t miss our MTG release schedule guide to see what’s coming out next year.
Source: Wargamer
