Pattern Recognition #9 - Winning and Losing

Features Opinion Pattern Recognition

berryjon

24 November 2016

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Hello everyone! This is Pattern Recognition, TappedOut's weekly article where I, berryjon, talk about something in the game that catches my attention, be it something that you, my audience have suggested, or something that I find while going through my collection or other sources of Magic Talk.

Before I get into the meat of the article, I want to ask you all a question. How many ways do you think there are to win and/or lose the game that are written into the rules? I don't mean things like Door to Nothingness, which simply tells a player that they have lost the game, or the Poison mechanic, which occurs only on the cards. I'll give you a couple moments.

(Insert Jeopardy Music here)

(Checks watch)

Alright class! Pencil's down, Legacy Weapons up!

I'm willing to bet that most of you got the loss conditions right, but stumbled on how to win. You see, there are exactly TWO ways to lose the game, and only ONE way to win the game that do not involve card text. And the win condition? It's the logical negation of the lose conditions.

Let's pull out an extract from the Comprehensive Rules, shall we?

104. ENDING THE GAME
104.2. There are several ways to win the game.
104.2A A player still in the game wins the game if all of that player’s opponents have left the game. This happens immediately and overrides all effects that would prevent that player from winning the game.
(snip rules about Multiplayer Formats)
104.3. There are several ways to lose the game.
104.3B If a player’s life total is 0 or less, he or she loses the game the next time a player would receive priority. (This is a state-based action. See rule 704.)
104.3C If a player is required to draw more cards than are left in his or her library, he or she draws the remaining cards, and then loses the game the next time a player would receive priority. (This is a state-based action. See rule 704.)

Now, I freely admit to cherry picking from the rules here. I apologize. I wanted to get down to the core rules, rather than get bogged down with the more advanced stuff. The skipped stuff includes how to deal with things like Draws, Team based games, 'Range of Influence' for larger multiplayer games, etc....

But the point that I'm trying to get at here is that there are nominally two ways to lose - run out of life, or run out of cards - and there is one way to win - to be the last player who wasn't lost. Every other method of victory or defeat are written on the cards. I mean, can you imagine if every creature had the reminder text of (If this creature deals damage to a player, and that damage is sufficient to reduce their life total to 0 or less, that player loses the game)? That would be pointless! And insulting! Even the freaking Portal sets didn't do that!

So, now that I've established this, let's look at one of the Golden Rules of Magic:

Whenever the rules and a card come into conflict, then the card takes precedence.

That is, even though there are so few ways to win or lose the game in the rules, when a card specifies that a player has won or lost the game, that over rides the general rules of the game.

Today's article, therefore, comes from a card that I ran across while researching for Issue 5. Specifically, when I was talking about how Red used to invoke random chance as a means of interacting with a game, I saw Chance Encounter, and remembered that it was part of a full cycle of alternate win conditions that came from the Odyssey Block.

So I did some research, and tried to figure out where this sort of thing started, and where the cycle I was thinking of was in relation to everything else. What I found was surprising, even for me.

Before I get to that point, let me talk about Alternate Win Conditions in general. At the simplest, an alternate WinCon is a means by which a player can win the game without the work involved in achieving making sure that every other player loses. One of my reviewers, Boza, is of the position that there are two types of WinCons. Implicit and Explicit. An implicit win condition is more passive. You can achieve an implicit simply by being something. An Explicit WinCon is more active. You win by doing something.

And because of this, Alternate Win Conditions are something of a technical aberration. One that Wizards opened up the bottle on, and cannot put back in. They win without winning, or cause loss without losing. It's a delicate balance, having these in the game. Players can like them, or hate them, but as long as Wizards doesn't go all-in on them, they can occasionally print a new one and not overturn the game.

So, what is the first WinCon? Well, it's actually not one! From Prophecy, we were given Celestial Convergence. And this card didn't set out a win condition that was different, but rather set a time limit on the game. A time limit that played to White's strength of having more life than anyone else. I mean, it's not like White has a source of Trample, right? Or had Circles of Protection?

Why is there an Angry Mob at my door?

Eh, never mind. Anyway, the next card printed was an explicit win condition. Coalition Victory came about as the culmination of the Invasion block, and ended the story of Dominaria - until Time Spiral came around to 'fix' the Planeswalkers. This card was something I pulled back in Apocalypse's pre-release, and I've never actually managed to win with it. Sad, I know.

But Coalition Victory was explicit. You had (a) creature(s) of each colour, and one of each basic land type (not basic land, but land type, meaning the Shock lands count!), and you won the game!

And with these two in the game, but no exactly breaking it, or warping the format, Wizards decided to try for a full cycle of them. And that's where my cycle came into being. At long last, I present to you: Test of Endurance, Battle of Wits, Mortal Combat, Chance Encounter and Epic Struggle, all from the Odyssey block.

These five enchantments represented Wizards first real foray into alternate win conditions, and they based them around the strengths of each colour White was devoted to Life gain, Blue wanted cards in the library, Black wanted dead creatures, Red gambled on victory and Green wanted many creatures in play.

Except things didn't work out that well. The block was not designed with these win conditions in mind, leading to some hilarious balance issues across the cycle. Going around the colour pie, Test of Endurance starts us off with life gain for the win! Well, all you need in an extra 30 life, but who is quibbling? Except, this was a block in which lifegain was ... lacking. I did a quick Gatherer search, and the results were less than impressive. I suppose that makes some amount of sense as if it was too easy to gain life, then this would be an easier means of winning.

I'm going to skip ahead here and point out that of this cycle, this is the one that has the most recent version reprinted with Felidar Sovereign. This is another win condition, but one that self-enables, and is actually easier to get rid of as it's a creature. Not to say the Enchantments are easier or harder to remove, but there are more options for creatures than for enchantments in general.

(Not that it helped me any during my BfZ pre release. I tried Allies with Lantern Scout and the Sovereign, but didn't win any games on that condition.)

Moving on to Blue, we get what I think is the most well known - or at least infamous of this cycle. Battle of Wits. This card was reprinted in both 9th Edition, and M13, making it the most printed alternate win condition. On the surface, it's a simple card. Have 200 cards in your deck, and you win! Of course, have you actually tried to shuffle a 200+ card deck? There are rules about that, you know.

I mean, it's not like everyone knows how to play Canasta, and has experience in shuffling that many cards, right?

Battle of Wits really drives home the idea that the Blue Player likes to be prepared for anything, and by that, they really do mean everything. Just remember that the flavor text on Battle of Wits (ODY] is a warning, and you should be alright.

Our next colour is Black, who brings to us Mortal Combat. This part of the cycle ...

Fine

Test your might.

You happy now!?!?

Now, back to the card! Mortal Combat is all about creatures dying, something that Black is very good at doing. Except that it doesn't count creatures in all graveyards, but only in yours. This ties into Blacks real aspect - sacrifice. They will do anything for victory, and if that means dropping all their creatures into the graveyard and stand on their bodies to proclaim victory?

So be it. It's not called "Suicide Black" for nothing, you know. But there in lay part of the problem. You need twenty creatures to get into the graveyard. That's a third of your typical deck. And even Black has problems going from library to battlefield to graveyard. But all is not lost! There are actually quite a few cards that work with the Sacrifice effect, from Braids, Cabal Minion to Sadistic Hypnotist.

Or you could lose them the old fashioned way - have them die in combat. I mean, it's not like the card is called that or anything, right?

Red's contribution is the card that started this entire article - Chance Encounter. Much like all the others, it is simple enough to understand, but pulling it off is another matter entirely. All you have to do is flip enough coins to win ten times, and you win! I mean, sure, on average you'll need to flip a coin twenty times, but it shouldn't be that hard, right?

Wrong.

In the entirely of the Odyssey block, there are exactly three cards that get you to flip coins. Crazed Firecat, Impulsive Maneuvers, and Planar Chaos. And the second ability on Planar Chaos doesn't count toward your Chance Encounter because you can't win it.

This card, more so than any of the others, absolutely needs to get out of its block to really shine. My favourite combination for the Kitchen table is to run Karplusan Minotaur and Krark's Thumb. Flip all the coins, and watch everyone panic as I slowly make my way upward to the magical ten Luck counters needed!

Finally, we come to Green. Which is Epic Struggle. Of all the WinCons in this particular style, this one is the easiest to evoke. Getting twenty creatures into play seems like it should be a cinch. It's Green for Urza's sake! This is the colour that puts creatures into play without even trying! You blink, and there's another Elf on the table. Turn your head for a moment, and there's a half-dozen Treefolk staring you down from across the battlefield.

But we're still talking creatures here. They don't come from nothing. And in a 60 card deck, we run into the same problem that Black does - that's a third of your deck! So, let's go to the first solution as well, a bigger deck. I mean, more creatures can't be a problem could it? Well, no. Not really. Although if you have that many creatures in play, what's stopping you from simply going out and, say, Overruning the opposition?

Another solution to the creature problem is another one that Green is the pinnacle of. Token Creatures! It should be easy enough to put Beasts, Wurms, or even Squirrels!

Actually, let's not talk about Squirrels. They're really scary. Give me a minute to recover from the horror of Squirrel Decks please....

(...)

Thank you. I'm feeling better now.

So, these five. They were a good attempt, but flawed in the execution. Only one of them managed to make enough of an impact to be carried forward, even if it was a purely Timmy/Johnny card. Wizards learned their lesson. No more cycles. But the idea of random alternate win conditions showing up? Totally acceptable. So that's what they did.

Azor's Elocutors, Biovisionary, Darksteel Reactor, Helix Pinnacle, Maze's End, The Cheese Stands Alone... these are all individual cards that made for that glimmer of hope that you can win even when victory is out of reach.

Oh, and because I missed the obligatory Time Spiral Reference last week, and people called me out on in, let me correct that for you. You see The Cheese Stands Alone? Well, it's an Un-set card, which means it's pretty much illegal in everything except casual play. But this card, alone among all of them, made it into the full game with Barren Glory, a functional reprint, and a very Black method of assuring victory.

But there is the flip side of the coin. What about losing? Can you force your opponents to lose the game?

Well, yes, but unlike the WinCons, these are far rarer. The ability to simply remove an opponent from the game is purely Spike, and when you look at cards like Door to Nothingness, victory achieved with them ... is it really victory at all? Or just a show of power? Triskaidekaphobia is a far better means to force a loss, not only because it's more interactive, more visible, but it can also backfire on the owning player!

Speaking of backfiring, Demonic Pact gives you three turns in exchange for losing on the fourth. But you can get around that by making it into a little Harmless Offering. But no, what I wanted to point out is the anti-win cycle, a cycle of cards to which 'You Lose' is an identifiable risk.

I'm not talking about some Last Chance for victory. No, I'm talking about the Pact Cycle from Future Sight. Hey, Time Spiral! I missed you! I want to show off Intervention Pact, Pact of Negation, Pact of the Titan, Slaughter Pact and Summoner's Pact. These cards let you speak from the future, to do something now and pay for it later.

Funny thing though. Wizards didn't invent the concept. Decipher did, with their Star Trek CCG. The Devidian Door let you play a card out of turn, and you had to Exile one from your hand next turn or lose the game. Same intentions. Play now, pay later.

I mentioned this cycle because they were brought to my attention in review. Boza pointed out the deck archetype that utilized Hive Mind, then either Cascading or playing Summoner's Pact to cause each opponent to lose in turn on their turn unless they could pay for it. I haven't done that myself, but I've seen it done.

I am wrong, by the way. There are Win Conditions, but there are no cards that create a Conditional loss. There is no permanent that says "If an opponent meets these requirements, they lose the game". That's a certain degree of aggressiveness in card design that I don't think Wizards would be willing to print. I've said it before and I'll say it again, they're moving away from 'punishment' style interactions and more 'reward' class. And forcing a loss is pretty much the textbook of a punishment.
EDIT: As pointed out by Aranfan on another board, Triskaidekaphobia is a loss condition, but one that is symmetrical, rather than only affecting opponents.

Alternate victory conditions are, at the best of times, a risky prospect. Going against the fundamental framework of the game can lead to disastrous results, and worse - stop making the game fun to play. When well designed, they can supplement the game's inherent winning and losing aspects, widening the style of play and can do so without disrupting the larger formats.

The Odyssey Win Conditions were more the latter and not the former, thankfully. And the best part about them, I think, is that the real secret to success with them is to recognize that despite being mono-coloured cards, the best decks to utilize them are multi-coloured! Test of Endurance really synergies well with Green's own lifegain, Battle of Wits gains from having some of Black's graveyard recursion and tutoring. Black works well with Red to help kill creatures. Red ... gets left out. No one else likes flipping coins. And Green cooperates with Blue to control the board long enough to get all their creatures into play!

Well, that's it for this time. Join me next week when I tackle another request that started out as a general comment, but I decided to take a deeper look at. After all, when is a Casting Cost not a casting cost?