If you’ve been reading this column for a while, you’re no doubt aware that I like to win the game, specifically by using cards that say “You win the game.” If there were a 75% hall of fame, Hellkite Tyrant would be a first ballot shoo-in. You win the game with it, you scale to the power level of their deck with it by stealing their artifacts, and a third thing. You can imagine how much this made me smile.

Super-listener @Jacii just won with THE wincon in her version of Riku Holmes. @Charles_Mor https://t.co/TkEGRad9fp pic.twitter.com/JsC5prqrdr

— Commanderin' (@commanderinmtg) June 19, 2016

As silly as it is to try and get there with clue tokens, it’s also a legitimate way to win, and if the deck supports it, things can get out of hand very fast. Riku of Two Reflections copying a Second Harvest, for example, is hilarious. Also, let’s avoid using the word “harvest” for the rest of the article. I was wine tasting yesterday and was handed a Late Harvest Riesling that I thought was going to be a regular, drinkable Riesling and my stomach clenched like a fist. Stop making raisin wine, you monsters, and stop foisting it on unsuspecting people. If we’re going to foist things on unsuspecting people, it should be a win out of nowhere with 20 clue tokens and my favorite Dargon.

It’s pretty 75% to win the game through these goofy means. I have made it my goal to win the game with every card that says “You win the game” on it. So far I have wins with Azor's Elocutors, Coalition Victory (not all of these are EDH, or recent, even.), Felidar Sovereign, Helix Pinnacle, Mayael's Aria, Maze's End, Mortal Combat and Test of Endurance. That leaves about half of them. If you’re wondering why I’ve never won a game with Darksteel Reactor, the answer is I don’t have one, which is pretty much the poorest thing anyone who has ever tried to give another person advice has ever said. If it makes you feel any better, I wrote most of this paragraph, felt shame, ordered a copy online and finished the paragraph. Let’s try and knock a few more off of the list. In fact, let’s build a deck where I can accomplish several of these goals all in the same deck.

The obvious choice was Riku. That would let me play a bunch of the cards I’ve never tried to win with before such as Chance Encounter. However, I don’t want to just straight copy @jacii. I’d never hear the end of it from her. I like what she did and I’m going to let her bask in her win by not trying to cop her style, but which commander to pick? How about a commander who doubles things and lets me play several of these “win the game” cards in the same deck? The answer was right in front of me in the form of a commander I’ve already got a deck built around: Vorel of the Hull Clade.

I love this idea because I can look at my decks now and say “I don’t want to play that Vorel deck, let’s play the good Vorel deck” and that kind of gag will be funny to me, maybe even more than one time. Having two different decks built with the same commander also lets me keep one 75% and do whatever I want with the other one which I am also in favor of. Best of all, the decks will do two entirely different things. While one deck is designed to double the counters on creatures like Primordial Hydra, the other will be designed to double the counters on Darksteel Reactor. What could be better?

Being in Simic gives me access to Biovisionary, Darksteel Reactor, Epic Struggle, Hedron Alignment, Helix Pinnacle, Laboratory Maniac and Maze's End. It’s not a long list, but I want to try and jam as many of them as I can into a deck and have the deck not be terrible. I think I can jam Biovisionary, Darksteel Reactor, Epic Struggle and Helix Pinnacle in the same deck and not struggle because I’m trying to take the deck in too many directions. Do I wish I’d decided to play Riku so it would be easier to win with Biovisionary and I have access to Hellkite Tyrant and Chance Encounter? Maybe, but I think having 4 cards that say “Win the game” in the same deck is enough, and I have to get a little creative to figure out how Vorel can help me accomplish all of these goals.

Right off the bat, I think Vorel was made to be played in concert with Helix Pinnacle. Vorel can double the counters on Everflowing Chalice, Astral Cornucopia, Gyre Sage, Gemstone Array, Pentad Prism, etc. If we get to double our doubling, those counters add up fast. Vorel with Illusionist's Bracers doubling counters onGyre Sage with Doubling Season out can make your Astral Cornucopia massive and make 100 counters on Helix Pinnacle seem like a piece of cake. It would be easier to double the counters on Pinnacle but since we can’t do that with Vorel, we’ll have to get to 100 mana (or 50) the “hard” way. Having this much mana can’t hurt us in our other endeavors so I’m glad to run these cards, especially if we can get a Kruphix, God of Horizons out to help us store the mana if we don’t get Pinnacle right away.

Vorel can’t do a ton with Biovisionary, but we’re in U/G which gives us access to a ton of clones, including Altered Ego which can be fun with Vorel. Clones are 75% to begin with since they are a copy of our opponents’ best creatures if we want them to be. Doubling Season can help us out if we run cards like Fated Infatuation, Followed Footsteps, Cackling Counterpart and Spitting Image. Vorel doesn’t do a ton for us, here, but our colors do and that’s good enough reason to run Biovisionary and try to get my first win with it.

Vorel just straight up looks at Darksteel Reactor and says “How many counters you got on there, bro?” and Darksteel Reactor’s all like “Not 20” and then Vorel’s all like “I gotchu, fam” and then you win the game if you do that enough times. No reason not to run the Reactor I just bought.

If we’re making a ton of creature tokens and doubling them and doing all sorts of other doubly nonsense, even when it’s outside the scope of what Vorel can help us do, we can sometimes get to 20 creatures. I’ve never won with Epic Struggle before, but it sounds awesome. I’m not going to win as many games with this card since it’s probably harder to get 20 fragile, killable creatures into play and leave them there than it will be to put 20 counters on an indestructible artifact, but my Mama didn’t raise no quitters. Besides, Chasm Skulker and Hooded Hydra are Vorel cards already and they seem to pair nicely with Epic Struggle. Why not include this card in the deck when we’re going to be making a lot of tokens and doubling them with Parallel Lives and Doubling Season and Second Harvest (there goes my stomach again.)?

Will this deck hang together or will it be a messy hodgepodge of weird cards? Only one way to find out! Let’s draft it up!

Win Cons ? EDH | Jason Alt

• Commander (0)

• Creatures (25)
• 1 Acidic Slime
• 1 Altered Ego
• 1 Biovisionary
• 1 Champion of Lambholt
• 1 Chasm Skulker
• 1 Clever Impersonator
• 1 Clone
• 1 Cryptoplasm
• 1 Fathom Mage
• 1 Forgotten Ancient
• 1 Gyre Sage
• 1 Hangarback Walker
• 1 Hooded Hydra
• 1 Kalonian Hydra
• 1 Karametra's Acolyte
• 1 Kruphix, god of Horizons
• 1 Murkfiend Liege
• 1 Phyrexian Metamorph
• 1 Primordial Hydra
• 1 Progenitor Mimic
• 1 Renegade Krasis
• 1 Sage of Hours
• 1 Solemn Simulacrum
• 1 Wurmcoil Engine
• 1 Zameck Guildmage

• Spells (36)
• 1 Bioshift
• 1 Cackling Counterpart
• 1 Fated Infatuation
• 1 Fuel for the Cause
• 1 Give // Take
• 1 Plasm Capture
• 1 Second Harvest
• 1 Cultivate
• 1 Kodama's Reach
• 1 Spitting Image
• 1 Urban Evolution
• 1 Cyclonic Rift
• 1 Doubling Season
• 1 Epic Struggle
• 1 Followed Footsteps
• 1 Hardened Scales
• 1 Helix Pinnacle
• 1 Inexorable Tide
• 1 Primal Vigor
• 1 Astral Cornucopia
• 1 Coalition Relic
• 1 Commander's Sphere
• 1 Contagion Clasp
• 1 Contagion Engine
• 1 Darksteel Reactor
• 1 Everflowing Chalice
• 1 Gemstone Array
• 1 Gilded Lotus
• 1 Illusionist's Bracers
• 1 Lightning Greaves
• 1 Magistrate's Scepter
• 1 Mirrorworks
• 1 Simic Signet
• 1 Sol Ring
• 1 Swiftfoot Boots
• 1 Throne of Geth

• Lands (38)
• 14 Forest
• 14 Island
• 1 Breeding Pool
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Darksteel Citadel
• 1 Hinterland Harbor
• 1 Minamo, School at Water's Edge
• 1 Oran-Rief, the Vastwood
• 1 Reflecting Pool
• 1 Reliquary Tower
• 1 Vivid Creek
• 1 Vivid Grove

Buy This Deck

This looks pretty decent, actually. There aren’t any cards you would never play in your average Vorel deck, first of all, so that’s cool. We have a lot of overlap between how we accomplish different goals, so no matter which “I win” condition we draw, we’re going to be working toward it the whole game. We could win with Epic Struggle because we made a bunch of copies of token creatures and kept doubling them, or we could pursue that same strategy of using token clone spells and making 4 Biovisionary. We could get a ton of counters on Darksteel Reactor with Vorel or use his same ability to make a big Gyre Sage that could give us the 100 mana we need with Helix Pinnacle or swing for lethal. Spells like Bioshift ensure we are never wasting our time putting a bunch of counters on something because we can always dump them on something else later. Doubling Season works with all four of our win conditions and that’s the kind of synergy we like. Don’t forget, this is a Vorel deck and it has the capacity to just attack for lethal with big creatures.

All in all, I’m happy with how this turned out. I think we have a good chance of making one of these “I win” conditions stick and I think we’ll have fun regardless. Cloning their creatures is a 75% thing to do, pursuing weird, alternate win conditions is a 75% thing to do, and having two separate and distinct decks with the same commander is a Jason Alt thing to do, which isn’t the same as a 75% thing to do, but it’s pretty close. I hope you enjoyed this wacky deck and I hope you keep sending me your ideas and questions. One of these days I’ll have enough easy ones for a mailbag article. We writers live for those, believe me. That’s all for now. Until next week!