A friend, new to Magic, saw me play my Battle of Wits deck and asked me if there were any other alternative win condition cards out there. Obviously there are, and I mentioned a few. When Barren Glory came up, I told him it was among the hardest win cons that I could think of, but then, as life would have it, it got my mind pretty active, and it came up with a rough draft of something that I think might actually be pretty good, albeit with a very long game ahead.
While there may be better things to consider, since this is casual, kitchen-table kind of stuff, I'm not too worried about it. However, if you have a suggestion that fits this idea, I welcome hearing it.
The Deck
Barren Glory only has two caveats to provide a win, but they're both incredibly difficult to achieve simultaneously. This card needs to hit the board as early as possible, and survive removal once it's out. Since I'm not really factoring in any major enchantment hate in my group of friends, I figure this will be safe. Plus, given the ridiculousness of the card, I'm not certain many will take it seriously.
I wanted Tutors in the deck, but not a massive amount of them. I settled on Diabolic Tutor because the cost is not unreasonable as the only downside to the card. It helps me search for any piece of the puzzle I'm missing, and does the job just fine.
Kill cards were necessary because of the fact that I'm not in the position to block anything with zero creatures in the deck. Day of Judgment will help me deal with swaths of creatures all at once, and Go for the Throat and Doom Blade are super-cheap removal pieces to get rid of early-game threats, or fatties individually later on.
I also wanted Fog effects in the deck for the times when I feel overwhelmed, can't sweep the board, but need to stay alive. Holy Day and Dawn Charm fit that mold excellently.
Now, the two major components of this strategy are Insidious Dreams and Armageddon.
Once I've gotten to six mana on the board--enough to play Barren Glory--I should likely have a few cards in hand that aren't doing me any good. Maybe second copies of some of the spells, maybe kill cards that can't target my opponent's creatures (eg., Doom Blade against a mono-black Zombie deck), whatever the case may be. Insidious Dreams would allow me to discard whatever pieces of overflow I have in hand, and search out whatever I need, which will probably be one of two things: either land cards, or Armageddon and land cards, if Armageddon isn't yet in hand.
By doing this, I ensure that if I don't have Armageddon available to help trigger Barren Glory, I'll have it on the next turn, and then buffer lands following that to ensure I don't end up drawing something like a Go for the Throat with no available target for it, meaning I would have a card in hand and Barren Glory couldn't trigger on upkeep.
As I said, it's a super-long, grindy game, but so far the idea seems to have merit to it. I'm going to try it out at our next Magic night at home and see if it works.
