Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1074: Alternative-Win Conditions

Episode Date: September 29, 2023

There are many ways to win a game of Magic without reducing an opponent's life total to 0. In this podcast, I talk all about alternative-win conditions. ...

Transcript
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Starting point is 00:00:00 I'm not pulling out of my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work at Home Edition. Okay, so today's topic is alternative win conditions, what we also refer to as alt-win conditions. So, when Richard Garfield made the game of Magic, he built in a win condition. The win condition is each player has 20 life, and when it gets to zero life you lose and so that is how your opponent beats you, they're getting you to zero life but there are other ways in Magic
Starting point is 00:00:33 to win and one of the fun things about alt win conditions is they really let you sort of think differently build different kind of decks and just play in a way that is not the way you normally play. Okay, so the first
Starting point is 00:00:49 alt win condition actually was built into the very fabric of the game. So when Richard was making magic, there's a problem. What if we get to a game state where neither player can defeat the other player? Let's say the board, you know, gets all gummed up, I don't have any evasive
Starting point is 00:01:04 creatures. Okay, well what's going to make the game end? Like, the game needs to end at some point. So Richard came up with the idea of, okay, well, you have cards in your deck. What if, if you just can't draw a card, you lose the game? And like I said, that was originally made much more as a means just to ensure that the game ends. But early magic, somebody says, okay, I'm going to play a control strategy. I'm going to keep my opponent from doing anything. How do I win? Oh, wait a minute. I don't need, as long as I make sure that I have more cards than my opponent, which can happen from just starting with more cards, or maybe I have one or two effects that shuffle cards in,
Starting point is 00:01:40 and that I'll beat my opponent because I'll get them to a state where they can't draw a card. And then there started to be card drawing cards that you could use on your opponent, like if they were low enough and I target my opponent with them, sometimes I could kill them with the draw spell because they couldn't draw enough cards. Once that became a thing, in Antiquities, which was the second ever expansion, the East Coast playtesters that designed that set made a card called Millstone. And so Millstone was the first card
Starting point is 00:02:10 that actively put cards from a player's library into their graveyard. So by the way, Millstone is where the term mill comes from, which may not make sense in a vacuum. And so anyway, the idea was that this was, you know, I could be more aggressive. I could defeat you because instead of vacuum. But, and so anyway, the idea was that this was, you know, I could be more aggressive. I could defeat you because instead of trying
Starting point is 00:02:29 to take your life down to zero, I could go after your library rather than your life total. And it became a very fun sort of alternate strategy. It was popular with mill decks, not mill decks, it is milling. It was popular with control decks
Starting point is 00:02:44 because a lot of times if you stall the game, it just could be a means to win without having to actually have creatures yourself. That a single millstone could win the game for you. Milling became popular enough
Starting point is 00:02:56 that we started putting, most sets nowadays have milling. Milling's primary blue, secondary black. The other colors can mill themselves in certain circumstances, although more green, green than red than white.
Starting point is 00:03:09 White does it the least. And we started just sort of incorporating one of the things we do all the time, not every set, but we'll often do an uncommon blue card that has repeatable milling. The idea being if you get this early, maybe you can build around it. So we've definitely had mill strategies
Starting point is 00:03:26 be something that's a draftable thing. But anyway, milling has gone on to be sort of something that shows up not in every set, but in a lot of sets. And it is definitely something that occasionally matters if you have long games where, you know, it gets to the point where somebody can't draw.
Starting point is 00:03:46 Okay, next up, the next all-win condition happened in the third expansion, Legends. In it were two cards that could give the opponent poison counters. So the idea of a poison counter is that if my opponent ever gets ten poison counters, they lose the game. So the idea was, it just was stressing in a different sort of way, the idea that I'm not trying to necessarily deal damage to you, I'm not necessarily trying to run out of cards, I'm just trying to get you this counter. Now, we tend to tie poison to creatures,
Starting point is 00:04:22 meaning the most common way that you will get poison to somebody is through attacking with creatures. We do have a few ways to give small amounts of poison to the opponent that aren't creatures, and we do have some mechanics like proliferate, that once they have a poison counter, can give them more poison counters. So there
Starting point is 00:04:39 definitely are different ways to play a poison strategy. There's a very aggro way, where you're attacking with a lot of small creatures. Or there's a very controlly way where I'm trying to control the situation. I give you a little bit of poison and then I fan the poison to defeat you.
Starting point is 00:04:56 Milling first started, like I said, in Legends. It actually went away I think the last one we made was sometime during Mirage Block. In fact, Tempest was going to have a poison theme and it didn't because we removed poison from the game at the time. And then I went on a lifelong quest to get poison back into the game.
Starting point is 00:05:19 So, by the way, both milling and poison, I've done separate podcasts solely on them. So if you want to learn more about milling and how we make milling cards or more about the fate of poison and how I finally got poison back in the game, I podcast all about that. Poison, anyway, returned. There were two cards in Future Sight that teased the return. And then in Scars of Mirrodin, we brought it back in a big way. We tied it to the Phyrexians. In Future Sight, we created a mechanic called Poisonous. And then when we actually, in Scars of Mirrodin,
Starting point is 00:05:51 ended up not using Poisonous and ended up using Infect. The difference is Poisonous, when you hit somebody, no matter how much damage you do with the creature, the Poisonous is how much poison they get. Infect was tied to the creature. So if I have Infect, let's say I'm a 2-2 with Infect, if I hit you, normally you get two poison counters.
Starting point is 00:06:07 But if I Giant Growth and make it a 5-5, then you get five poison counters. Infect, there are some strategies in larger formats with sort of aggro poison decks. Those tend to use Infect
Starting point is 00:06:17 because Infect plus, you know, Giant Growth type effects can win the game very quickly. And then in Phyrexia All Be Won, poison came back again because, once again, it's very much tied to the Phyrexians. I do think we'll do more poison in the future. It won't always be tied to the Phyrexians, but
Starting point is 00:06:33 what we learned is it's the kind of mechanic that we don't want to do too often, but if we sort of space it apart and every seven years or so do a poison, people seem very excited by it. Okay, the one other thing before I get into sort of the card-by-card stuff is this alt win condition is tied to a format. It's a win condition that the format enables. So in Commander, when they were building Commander, they were trying to figure out how exactly – what happens if one player just gains a lot of life?
Starting point is 00:07:03 How does the game end? And so they came up with something called commander damage. So commander damage says if your commander, and specifically only your commander, deals 21 or more damage to your opponent, then they lose. They lose what's called commander damage. It's a good example. One of the things you'll notice, by the way, both milling and Commander Damage Fall in this is, they sort of came about, not because something needed in a vacuum, but like oh, well we need answers to things
Starting point is 00:07:30 and this is kind of the fallback answer. Okay, now early in Magic, there weren't, so the very first alt win condition card was actually in Unglued. It was the Cheese Stands Alone. Four white, white enchantment.
Starting point is 00:07:48 If you control no cards in play other than the Cheese Stands Alone and have no cards in your hand, you win the game. It's very interesting to note by the way that a lot of these early alt win cards were my doing because I liked alt win conditions. There's a lot of
Starting point is 00:08:03 this early stuff is me pushing them because I thought they were wind conditions, so there's a lot of the a lot of this early stuff is me pushing them because I thought they were cool. Chiefs End Alone will return later in Black Border called Bearing Glory. I think they're very, very close to being the same card. There's some slight things, but they're basically the same card. Then, in
Starting point is 00:08:19 Invasion, we made Coalition Victory. Sorcery, three white, blue, black, red, green. You win the game if you control a land of each basic land type and a creature of each color. Okay, so let's talk about sort of individual card designs as I'm giving you some here. So both the Chief Stands Alone and Coalition Victory
Starting point is 00:08:36 are examples of board state alt wins. And what that means is I'm going to tell you something you have to do on the board. If you do that on the board, then you can win the game. Now, in Odyssey, I made a cycle, a five-card cycle
Starting point is 00:08:53 that was an alt win cycle. So there's one of each color. So Epic Struggle is another example of this. Two green, green enchantment. At the beginning of your upkeep, if you control 20 or more creatures, you win the game. So the idea of a upkeep, if you control 20 or more creatures, you win the game. So, the idea of a board state alt win
Starting point is 00:09:08 card is, I'm just challenging you to do something. And what makes a good alt win card in general is that it has to be something that's not easy to do. If it's something that you can just easily do, it just becomes this... It's not fun, right?
Starting point is 00:09:23 The reason the alt win cards are fun, and why they tend... It's not fun, right? The reason the all-win cards are fun and why they tend to be Johnny-Jenny cards is it challenges you, the player, to figure out how do you do that? How do you win with Cheese Stands Alone? How do you win with Coalition Victory? And there's a lot of clever things like Coalition Victory. It doesn't say you have to have ten different creatures. It just
Starting point is 00:09:40 says you have to have a creature of all the different colors. Oh, so if I play a creature of multiple colors, that means I have to make less cards. And a lot of the fun, especially of some of the board ones is, can I come up with a weird board state where you really have to think about how you have
Starting point is 00:09:56 to build it? Epic Struggle is sort of like, I just want a lot of creatures. Well, I'm in green. Green makes creatures. How do I make that happen? And the fun state there, I think, how do I make that happen? And the fun state there, I think, of the board state ones is just trying to be creative and thinking about what you can do that
Starting point is 00:10:11 has to be, you know, something that the player has to think about. The other thing to keep in mind is, you'll notice with the Epic Struggle, it says at the beginning of your upkeep. All five of the cards say at the beginning of your upkeep. Something we learned from She Stands Alone and Coalition
Starting point is 00:10:27 Victory. In fact, it's funny. Baron Glory does this where She Stands Alone does not. She Stands Alone, if it's true, you win right away, where Baron Glory says it waits. So let me explain why we do this.
Starting point is 00:10:43 Why a lot of cards that are all win set at the beginning of Depth of Keep, or why they're triggered. Because we want to give the opponent an opportunity to do something about it. Some cards happen early enough to do something with them. We'll talk about those in a second. But the board state ones, usually I get to the board state, and I don't want
Starting point is 00:11:00 to play my enchantment or whatever card's going to win the game for me too early, because I don't want you to get rid of it. So I sort of wait till the board state is true and then I play it. But to make sure there's some back and forth, normally we give the opponent sort of a turn to deal with it so they have an opportunity to do something about it. Okay, the next category is the counter category. So I will use my red card from the cycle, Chance Encounter, two red, red enchantment.
Starting point is 00:11:26 Whenever you win a coin flip, put a luck counter on Chance Encounter. At the beginning of your upkeep, if Chance Encounter has 10 or more luck counters, you win the game. Okay, so the idea of the counters is maybe I want to see if you can do something, but I want to track it over time. So for example, Chance Encounter says, hey, I want you to build a coin flipping deck, and I want you to win some number of times. Well, how do I do that? Oh, well, I track it with counters. And so the idea of counters is that you want to sort of make some condition, and then you can use over time of tracking it. Another good example of this is, let's see, Helix Pinnacle. Green enchantment, Shroud.
Starting point is 00:12:07 X, put X tower counters on Helix Pinnacle. At the beginning of your upkeep, if there are 100 or more tower counters on Helix Pinnacle, you win the game. And then there's an equivalent one called As Luck Would Have It from Unstable. Green enchantment, Hexproof. Whenever you roll a die, put a number of luck counters on as luck would have it, equal to the result then if there are 100 or more luck counters on as luck would have it, you win the game so as luck would have it and helix pinnacle
Starting point is 00:12:32 are both saying, I'm challenging you to do something helix pinnacle says, I need you to spend 100 mana as luck would have it says, I need you to roll 100 of die results and so obviously both of those beget a certain kind of deck, helix pinnacle wants you to have a deck that produces lots and And so obviously, both of those beget a certain kind of deck. Helix Pinnacle wants you
Starting point is 00:12:46 to have a deck that just produces lots and lots of mana. Huge amounts of mana. As Luck would have it, it wants you to make a dice deck. And Chance Encounter wants you to flip coins. It wants you to have
Starting point is 00:12:56 coin flipping cards. So I think a lot of what the counter ones are doing is they're trying to encourage a style of play and then giving you something that reinforces that. Now, some things like caring about having 20 creatures,
Starting point is 00:13:11 like Epic Struggle, you can do in a board state way. And part of the fun of a board state is now you have to do it, you have to maintain that board state. Well, I can play creatures, but you can destroy the creatures. So I have to get to a game state where I have 20 left. Whereas the counter ones, you don't undo I mean, barring cards that remove counters you don't really undo that, you know
Starting point is 00:13:29 every time I roll a die, I'm getting counters to put on it. And that's why you'll notice that as luck would have it, it has Hexproof and Helix Pinnacle has Shroud because it was earlier. Because we didn't want you spending all this time and energy and being so close to winning and then just you know, naturalizing it or disenchanting it.
Starting point is 00:13:47 Okay, the next thing is what I will call the zone state. So let's talk about Mortal Kombat. Two black black enchantment. At the beginning of your upkeep, if 20 or more creature cards are in your graveyard, you win the game. So this is kind of like the board state, except it's looking at something outside of the battlefield.
Starting point is 00:14:05 It could be looking in your hand. It could be looking in your hand. It could be looking at your library. It could be looking at your graveyard. And the idea essentially is that some of them, I mean, all of them affect how you build your deck, but also some of the fun ones affect how you play. So for example, Mortal Kombat, you're trying to get cards in your graveyard.
Starting point is 00:14:30 So, not only do you make a deck such that you can do this, but also it encourages you to be aggressive with your creatures. If your creatures die, that gets you closer to winning. You want to cast a lot of spells. So, it definitely... One of the fun things about building an alt-win card is you want to not just make a fun deck building experience,
Starting point is 00:14:46 but have fun challenging things to happen while you're playing. Okay, another one from my cycle of onslaught cards, which falls in this category as well, is Battle of Wits. Enchantment. At the beginning of your upkeep, if you have 200 or more cards in your library, you win the game. So Battle of Wits is interesting. Mortal Kombat clearly influences how you play. Battle of the Wits is more of just putting a stake in the ground and says, okay, you want to win with Battle of the Wits,
Starting point is 00:15:14 you need to have 200 cards in your library, which means you need about, usually Battle of the Wits deck have like 250 cards, because you need to make sure when you get there, that you in fact still have 200 cards. Battle of the Wits is interestingly, of the five from Onslaught, Because you need to make sure when you get there that you, in fact, still have 200 cards. Battle of the Witches, interestingly, of the five from Onslaught, is the one that had the most tournament play. And so, I mean, it was a fringe tournament card, but it definitely saw play in tournaments, and it did well in some bigger tournaments.
Starting point is 00:15:49 But the interesting thing, like, the thing that Battle of the Witches does and does really well is part of what you're trying to do when you design an alt win card is you're challenging the player. You're sort of like, I dare you. I dare you to do this. The Battle of Wits is I dare you to play a 250-card deck. I dare you. And the people embrace that. And Battle of Wits was particularly fun because when you show up, like, I don't have to tell you I'm playing a Battle of Wits deck. When I sit down with a 200-plus card deck, you're like, oh, he's playing Battle of the Wits was particularly fun because when you show up, I don't have to tell you I'm playing a Battle of the Wits deck. When I sit down with a 200-plus card deck, you're like, oh, he's playing Battle of the Wits.
Starting point is 00:16:11 And so that is really fun. And I think the alt win cards that do the best job are things that just encourage fun behavior. Another thing that we can care about is we can care about the battlefield. We can care about zones. We can care about sort we can care about the battlefield, we can care about zones, we can care about sort of states. So, test of endurance, two white, white, enchantment. At the beginning of your upkeep, if you have 50 or more life, you win the game. So, life is, ironically, life is how you
Starting point is 00:16:35 determine whether you win or lose most games. If you get down to zero, you lose. But this card says, well, instead of going down, you go up. Well, what if you go high enough and you just, you win for being high enough? And so that is a lot of fun. Okay. Another
Starting point is 00:16:52 thing that we can do is so we can't really talk about you win without also talking about you lose. So we definitely, so let me bring up the card Door to Nothingness. So Door to Nothingness costs five, and it is an artifact. Door to Nothingness enters the battlefield tapped.
Starting point is 00:17:16 White, white, blue, blue, black, black, red, red, green, green. So 10 mana total, two of each color. Tap. Sacrifice Door to Nothingness. Target player loses the game. in total, two of each color, tap, sacrifice door to nothingness, target player loses the game. So this is, so one of the things about win the game is we also had to design lose the game. So we were talking about alt win conditions, like if I make my opponent lose the game, especially in a two-person game, then I win. Interestingly, Door to Nothingness,
Starting point is 00:17:45 the original Door to Nothingness, actually said, destroy target creature or player. We thought that was super funny. And the idea was, well, most of the time you win the game, but every once in a while, you know, for style points and multiplayer play, maybe you'll kill a creature.
Starting point is 00:17:59 It'd be fun. But we were stopped by the rules manager. The rules manager said, you cannot destroy a player. That is not how the game works. You have to make them lose the game. So I would later go make
Starting point is 00:18:15 Baron Von Count in Unstable, which you do a countdown as you play cards, and then when it gets to one, it destroys target player. Unsets can do things like destroy target player, the rules don't exactly let you have. Anyway,
Starting point is 00:18:31 so Door to Nothingness is a good example of sometimes, that's more blatant. We don't do a lot of just straight up lose the game. There are a whole bunch of lose the games where we're trying to make you do something and lose the game is kind of the control
Starting point is 00:18:49 to make sure you do the thing we're telling you. Like you need to do thing X. If you don't, you'll lose the game. So some of the way that people will win the game, an alternate way to win the game, is to play a card that is a lose the game card and then you give it to your opponent. So for example,
Starting point is 00:19:06 Demonic Pack, two black black enchantment. At the beginning of your upkeep, choose one that has been chosen. Demonic Pack deals four damage to a creature and player, and you gain four life. Target opponent discards two cards. Draw two cards. You lose the game. So, for example, one of the ways that Demonic Pack can be
Starting point is 00:19:21 an all-to-win card is I do the first three things, and then I give it to my opponent. You know, I donate it. There's a bunch of ways to give it to your opponent. Give it to your opponent, and then they suffer the lose-the-game thing. So, lose-the-game can definitely interconnect with that. So, another fun way, let's talk about little tweaks here and there. For example, let's talk Phage. So Phage was a character from – what was Phage from? She was from the Onslaught story.
Starting point is 00:20:04 And so what Phage did is when Phage hits somebody – here, let me read the actual card. Where's Phage? Okay, so Phage is... Where's Phage? Okay, I'm just going to have to look for Phage directly. Okay, one thing. When not in my car, I can just look up cards. Phage the Untouchable. Three black, black, black.
Starting point is 00:20:23 So seven mana total, four which is black. She's a legendary creature, avatar minion, 4-4. So the idea was she was a person that had a death touch. And so the flavor we thought was really cool, this was my card, was, well, if she touches you, she kills any creature she touches, she kills any player she touches, she kills. But once again, what makes a good
Starting point is 00:21:00 alt win card is, well, you have to get through. And yeah, any creature that blocks her, she'll destroy, but you still have to get through and get to the player. There have also been some fun alt win decks where one of the rules of Phage is, because we didn't want you reanimating her,
Starting point is 00:21:16 we put in this thing that you lose the game if somehow she enters the battlefield and you didn't cast her. There's some weird decks you can make where you give Phage to other people in a way that will make them lose the game. Okay. Let's see. So let me look at some other fun alt win cards.
Starting point is 00:21:37 Oh, now I know about ABCs. One blue blue enchantment. At the beginning of your upkeep, if you control permanence with names that include all 26 letters of the English alphabet, you win the game. Yeah, one of the things that's fun, the unsets tend to do alt-win. I think every unset has had one alt-win in it. And the reason – it's funny. The reason I did that originally, the reason that the She-Stand-Loyal was unglued was we were a bit hesitant in the early days to make alt-win cards. was we were a bit hesitant in the early days to make all win cards,
Starting point is 00:22:04 but I think I made enough of them and sort of the players sort of embraced them that I got the rest of R&D on board. The fun thing that I like a lot, and like now I know my ABCs to me is the perfect example of a fun alt win card, which is here's a challenge. You have to get the following on the battlefield.
Starting point is 00:22:23 All 26 letters of the alphabet. Okay, well, what letters are easy to get? What letters are have to get the following on the battlefield. All 26 letters of the alphabet. Okay. Well, what letters are easy to get? What letters are hard to get? What cards out there have a lot of neat interactions? One of the fun things about this is there are a couple two and three card combinations where you can win the game if you get those two
Starting point is 00:22:40 or three cards out. But the dynamic is I have to go build my deck, and I have to think of ways in which I can crisscross and do things, and I think that's the fun of alt-win cards. Sort of the thing that I always enjoyed about them is
Starting point is 00:22:55 I enjoy the challenge that they make. I enjoy how they really push boundaries and make you have to rethink things. And so that is... I don't know. I get a big kick out of them. And a lot of times what we do when we make new ones – like here's a pretty popular one. Laboratory Maniac.
Starting point is 00:23:16 Two in the blue, two, two, creature, human, wizard. If you draw a card where the library has no cards in it, you win the game instead. So this is saying, you know that whole milling thing we were talking about? Let's turn that on its head. What if, if you manage to mill yourself completely, you win the game instead of losing the game? It takes something that means something, and you
Starting point is 00:23:35 flip it on its head. Or like Near Death Experience, two white, white, white enchantment. At the beginning of your upkeep, if you have exactly one life, you win the game. So the fun thing there is like, okay, I have to be at a point, but exactly at a certain point. And being at one is very close to losing. So it is a tricky thing to do. Or like Biovisionary, one green blue, two three, creature, human wizard.
Starting point is 00:24:00 At the beginning of the end step, if you control four or more creatures named Biovisionary, you win the game. At the beginning of the end step, if you control four or more creatures named Biovisionary, you win the game. And obviously in a – not Commander, but in a normal sort of modern or something, you can play four copies of this. But the way to really win with it isn't just to get four copies – the four printed copies. It's can I copy it? Can I do things which I'm getting more out because I'm using extra means to get them out? Anyway, they're just a lot of fun. The thing that's neat about them is – so the other thing, a little history of him. In the early days, so the first one ever was Chief Sands Alone.
Starting point is 00:24:41 That's in Unglued. So Unglued is like 98. Coalition Victory is two years later in 2000 in Invasion. And then we did the first cycle in the Battle of the Witch, Chats and Counter, Mortal Kombat, Test of Endurance, Epic Struggle. That was an Odyssey. So Odyssey is the set after Invasion. And then the next card that's even – yeah, it's not even an alt win, naturally. It's like Platinum Angel, Platinum Angel, 7 mana, Artifact Creature Angel, Flying.
Starting point is 00:25:08 You can't lose the game and your opponent can't win the game. So that's not exactly an alt win. It's playing and can't lose sort of space. But I think the next time you win the game is Darksteel, yeah, Darksteel Reactor, which showed up in Darksteel. Four Artifact, Darksteel Reactor is indestructible. At the beginning of your upkeep, you may put a charge counter to Darksteel. Four artifact, Darksteel Reactor is indestructible. At the beginning of your upkeep, you may put a charge counter to Darksteel Reactor. When Darksteel Reactor has 20 or more charge counters on it,
Starting point is 00:25:31 you win the game. So the idea here is A, in 20 turns I'll win the game, but more likely, if I can manipulate things to get it up, I will win there. Then, Bear in Glory, we finally took um the cheese stands alone and we converted it over to a card we changed it to be a trigger at the beginning of upkeep but other than that it's basically cheese stands alone
Starting point is 00:25:52 but what's happened since then is we I think and normally what happens with magic is early on there's some hesitancy about something uh somebody in this case me will push a little bit get more out there. And once the players start seeing it and playing with it,
Starting point is 00:26:08 it starts sort of picking up steam and that it became apparent that there's, I mean, not everybody likes all wind cards. It's definitely a flavored taste. But, you know, something like Battle of Wits that really took the tournaments by storm and, like, when someone brought a Battle of Wits deck, you would talk about the Battle
Starting point is 00:26:24 of Wits deck. It was something that would raise conversation. And so over time, I think what has happened is especially as we embrace the more casual side of things, there's been an explosion of alt win cards. You know, there's a lot more. Like I said, it
Starting point is 00:26:40 took five years for the first one and then maybe we'd make one or two more as it went by. And then essentially we started making more. We normally don't make more than one in a set. And not every set has an alt win card. But it's definitely something where we've had a lot of fun with it. And I think that the biggest thing for us has been to try to figure out where the challenge is.
Starting point is 00:27:06 Because when you're making an alt win card, you want to make something that players can do, that is possible. But you want to do in such a way that there's a real challenge to doing it. And I think we found a lot of sweet spots of fun things to play around with. It is neat to look at all the different ways there are to win. And so I think that's been a lot of fun. It is something we will continue to do. It is definitely something that's become sort of ingrained as part of Magic. And I...
Starting point is 00:27:39 It is funny. Like, one of the things about working on this game for so long is I can think back, like the early days when like when I put the alt win cards in Odyssey block it was definitely people talking about it like oh wow is this something we're going to do and every set three sets in a row
Starting point is 00:27:56 the way it worked is Battle of the Wits and Chance of Counter were in Odyssey Mortal Kombat which was the block set was in Torment because it was a block set and then Tests of Endurance and Epic Struggle which was the block set, was in Torment because it was a block set. And then Tests of Endurance and Epic Struggle, which was the white-green set, were in Judgment. And that at the time was a pretty radical idea. The fact that I would do, first of all,
Starting point is 00:28:13 more than one alt win card and do five of them in a row in a set was pretty crazy. But now, you know, it's just something that's... It's something we see all the time. So anyway, that's why I thought it would be fun to talk about it today. Alt-Win cards have a soft spot in my heart. And it's neat to see all the ways they've expanded and continue to be made.
Starting point is 00:28:36 So for example, let's see. What is this? Tales of Middle-Earth Courageous Resolved. So here's the latest of the Alt-Win cards. Instant. Up to one target creature you control gains protection from each of your opponents. Until end of turn, draw a card. And then Faithful Hour
Starting point is 00:28:50 if you have five or less life, you can't lose this turn. You can't lose the game this turn. Oh, this is not actually an alt win card. It is a can't lose card. So, a little back to form of the approach of the second sign. So, this is Infinity. So, I guess the most recent one was actually in Infinity. Four and a white enchantment. With enchantment entered the battlefield,
Starting point is 00:29:06 you gain seven life. You become a card until you leave your library, or that library is shuffled. Put yourself seventh from the top, balancing the cards on top of your head. When you draw yourself, you win the game. When one or more cards fall off your head, exile them and all cards in your head, then sacrifice the enchantment. This is an uncard,
Starting point is 00:29:21 so obviously it's a little on the sillier side, except for the acorn card. I love the idea of when you draw yourself, you win the game that's what got me to print this card, by the way George, a fan, made this card I read that line, and I was like okay, we are definitely putting this in a set well, in this specific set, because it was an acorn card anyway guys, I hope you enjoyed
Starting point is 00:29:39 my jaunt through alt win conditions, there's a lot of fun stuff here, we will keep making more but I hope you guys enjoy them and they are something that still, to this day jaunt through alt win conditions. There's a lot of fun stuff here. We will keep making more. But I hope you guys enjoy them. And they are something that still, to this day, brings a smile to my heart. Anyway, guys, I can see my desk.
Starting point is 00:29:54 So we all know what that means. That means instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. So I will see you all next time. And I hope some of you have some fun with some alt win conditions. Bye-bye.

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