There are clues on the cards. As Commander players and deck-builders, it's important to know what we're looking for as we assess new cards from new sets. Sure, we scan the basics - Mana Value, Creature type and Power/Toughness, color identity, to see if it checks any boxes of things we're looking for. It could be that four-mana 1/4 Horse is just the thing you need for your Horse Kindred deck!

But there are certain words and phrases we should notice, and when we do, investigate further. "Destroy target creature". "Exile target nonland permanent". "Draw two cards". "Destroy all", well, anything, really. "Return target card/Creature card/Instant and/or Sorcery card from your Graveyard to your hand". Mana rocks should get noticed, anything with a Kindred bent (especially when it's flexible, like Patchwork Banner from Bloomburrow), and Lands which tap for more than one color.

But there's one phrase which has been in my head recently, enough so I decided to spend the next four articles working with it. "You win the game."

All the cards which say that phrase have a series of hoops we have to jump through to pull it off, but once we do, bang, that's it. Game over, we win. And to start off, I'd like to use one which my editor has been trying to do for a long time but could never find the right shell.

Liliana's Contract is actually a decent card-draw spell; I'd run that in a deck looking to draw more cards in chunks like that. We don't have to sacrifice anything, and the life loss is on par with things like Sign in Blood and Read the Bones, which we happily play. We're going to ignore that entirely and instead attempt to win out of nowhere by cheating Liliana's Contract into play. But first, let's get a sense of the basic structure of the deck.

For our Commander, we're going with Vito, Fanatic of Aclazotz. Vito does two things for us. First, he puts us in , which we'll need. Second, he's a Demon, so he counts toward our four-Demon total.

We'll go through Lands and stuff shortly, but let's start with how we win this thing. The idea is we play out four Demons as early as possible, one of which is likely Vito. We have 15 in the deck, plus a few other tricksy ways of getting one (I'm looking at you, Tomb of Urami), so we should do okay. We also have a few card draw spells and a number of tutors, so even if we get one with a weird requirement like Scourge of the Skyclaves or Embodiment of Agonies, we can probably figure it out. Jerren, Corrupted Bishop // Ormendahl, the Corrupter is quite a bit harder, but who knows? We might get lucky!

Then we play out Academy Rector, preferably with Flash at the end of our opponent's turn right before ours, sacrifice it, drop Liliana's Contract into play, move to Untap, then start our Upkeep and win before anyone even knows what happened. Here's the deck.

Vito, Fanatic of Aclazotz | Commander | Mark Wischkaemper

• Commander (1)
• 1 Vito, Fanatic of Aclazotz

• Creatures (21)
• 1 Academy Rector
• 1 Ammit Eternal
• 1 Baleful Ammit
• 1 Blade of the Oni
• 1 Conductor of Cacophony
• 1 Crypt Ghast
• 1 Dream Devourer
• 1 Ecstatic Awakener
• 1 Embodiment of Agonies
• 1 Grim Servant
• 1 Herald of Torment
• 1 Jerren, Corrupted Bishop // Ormendahl, the Corrupter
• 1 Lost Auramancers
• 1 Master of the Feast
• 1 Scourge of the Skyclaves
• 1 Soulcage Fiend
• 1 Taborax, Hope's Demise
• 1 Thraxodemon
• 1 Treacherous Pit-Dweller
• 1 Varragoth, Bloodsky Sire
• 1 Weathered Wayfarer

• Instants (14)
• 1 Anguished Unmaking
• 1 Breathe Your Last
• 1 Cast Down
• 1 Cut Down
• 1 Despark
• 1 Dire Tactics
• 1 Go for the Throat
• 1 Hero's Downfall
• 1 Mortify
• 1 Path to Exile
• 1 Swords to Plowshares
• 1 Vampiric Tutor
• 1 Vanishing Verse
• 1 Vendetta

• Sorceries (12)
• 1 Beseech the Mirror
• 1 Demonic Tutor
• 1 Diabolic Tutor
• 1 Enduring Ideal
• 1 Gruesome Realization
• 1 Insatiable Avarice
• 1 Lively Dirge
• 1 Mastermind's Acquisition
• 1 Night's Whisper
• 1 Profane Tutor
• 1 Read the Bones
• 1 Sign in Blood

• Enchantments (4)
• 1 Case of the Stashed Skeleton
• 1 Liliana's Contract
• 1 Soul Snare
• 1 The Creation of Avacyn

• Artifacts (8)
• 1 Arcane Signet
• 1 Charcoal Diamond
• 1 Expedition Map
• 1 Fellwar Stone
• 1 Marble Diamond
• 1 Orzhov Signet
• 1 Sol Ring
• 1 Talisman of Hierarchy

• Lands (40)
• 3 Plains
• 4 Swamp
• 1 Bojuka Bog
• 1 Cabal Coffers
• 1 Caves of Koilos
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Concealed Courtyard
• 1 Emergence Zone
• 1 Escape Tunnel
• 1 Evolving Wilds
• 1 Fetid Heath
• 1 Godless Shrine
• 1 High Market
• 1 Hostile Hostel
• 1 Isolated Chapel
• 1 Lazotep Quarry
• 1 Miren, the Moaning Well
• 1 Path of Ancestry
• 1 Phyrexian Tower
• 1 Restless Fortress
• 1 Scoured Barrens
• 1 Shadowy Backstreet
• 1 Shambling Vent
• 1 Shineshadow Snarl
• 1 Silent Clearing
• 1 Tainted Field
• 1 Temple of Silence
• 1 Terramorphic Expanse
• 1 Tomb of Urami
• 1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
• 1 Urza's Cave
• 1 Vault of Champions
• 1 Volatile Fault
• 1 Westvale Abbey
• 1 Winding Canyons

Buy This Deck Export text

Normally I like to go through My Deck Tickled a Sliver (Mana, Draw, Threats, Answers, Synergy), but with a deck like this, where the whole idea is to assemble a specific set of cards to achieve a particular goal, I find it better to break it down into what the deck needs to do and how it's going to do that.

In order to win, the deck must:

• Have four differently-named Demons on the Battlefield
• Have Liliana's Contract on the Battlefield
• Pass through an Upkeep

This means we need to:

• Find the four Demons
• Find Liliana's Contract
• Get them all on the Battlefield
• Survive until we can do all that

Let's start with the Demons. We have, as previously mentioned, about 15 plus our Commander and a few other random ways of getting them (I don't expect Westvale Abbey to get there, but you never know!). The hope is we're going to draw into a few of them, and then we only need to search for one. We can search more if we need to, though!

Additionally, we've gone with cheap Demons. There are plenty of six- and eight-mana Demons out there, but we don't have time for all that. Nope, Herald of Torment at three mana is where we want to be. There are a few even cheaper, and almost all of them come with a cost, but we don't care - we just need the Demon.

In order to find Liliana's Contract, our best method is Academy Rector. She's perfect - we cast her, sacrifice her, and it drops the Contract onto the table for us. That's ideal. However, sometimes things don't work how we want, and if they don't, we have Lost Auramancers as (slow) backup. We might be able to time the Vanishing Counters to work out, but it won't happen at end of turn, which means we (and our stuff) will have to survive an entire turn cycle. I don't know about you, but if I were playing against someone with four Demons and Liliana's Contract on the Battlefield, I'd probably try pretty hard to destroy something before we got to their Upkeep, so let's assume others will as well. This is last-ditch. Enduring Ideal is our final way, which really only works if we can cast it at Instant speed, but what a way to win! Of course, we also might have just drawn the Contract, in which case we can simply cast it, again, preferably with Flash.

To find Academy Rector and any wayward Demons we might need, we have a slate of Tutors, including Demonic Tutor, Vampiric Tutor, Mastermind's Acquisition, and Grim Servant. Almost always, the first one of these we see needs to get us Academy Rector, but later ones can get us needed Demons or other pieces we might need. A couple of particularly fun ones are The Creation of Avacyn and Case of the Stashed Skeleton.

We're going to cast our Demons out normally and try to play like a Demon Kindred deck. Point out how much the Demons are hurting you and they're so small so you can't make a proper attack, that kind of thing. Make people believe you're outclassed and outgunned and are hoping for a lucky draw, all while quietly assembling your combo.

To cheat out Academy Rector (or Enduring Ideal, I suppose), we will use either Emergence Zone (the only way to use the Ideal) or Winding Canyons. We wait until the end of turn for the opponent right before us, activate this Land, cast Academy Rector, and we're off to the races.

High Market is probably our best sacrifice outlet, because it's so ubiquitous people won't notice. Phyrexian Tower works well, too, but I can see that being a target. Miren, the Moaning Well and Hostile Hostel // Creeping Inn both work but cost something, so figure that in as you're doing your math. Lazotep Quarry works great. However, before we can pull all this off, we need at least one of these Lands, or one of the Demons which lets us sacrifice something (like Thraxodemon or Ecstatic Awakener, which is probably the best one) on the Battlefield.

We can search for the Lands in a number of ways, too. We can always just normal tutor for them, should we happen into the tutors. But Weathered Wayfarer and Expedition Map both are great at finding one. Should you luck into an early Weathered Wayfarer, you might use that to get Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth and Cabal Coffers, too.

Mana in a deck like this is always good, so we have our normal 40 Lands, plus Crypt Ghast for doubling and a few mana rocks. We won't always spend it all, but in play-testing I found it nice to have plenty of mana, especially if I needed to use Miren to sacrifice Academy Rector. It can get pricey!

And of course, we need to stay alive. is one of the best combinations for dealing with threats, with Anguished Unmaking, Mortify, Breathe Your Last, and Path to Exile all making appearances. We even have Soul Snare, which is great fun! In order to survive we just need to be alive, not alive at 40 Life, so let damage happen and don't worry too much, but if someone else is trying to assemble a combo or will knock you down too far for comfort, use that removal to stay alive.

If you're having trouble getting enough Demons, one could consider using some Changelings to keep the cost down. Three Tree Mascot and Mirror Entity are both cheap and would function as extra Demons and perhaps would not alarm opponents.

We might want to consider finding space for Rebuff the Wicked, just to protect the board state when we're going for it, but I don't know. Part of me feels like even if someone has a kill spell and can stop us, if we've managed to pull off the line of play it's a victory. I leave that to you. If you do win, a sheepish "oh gosh, look at that" might be better than dancing on the table if you want to play with your opponents ever again.

I hope you enjoyed this look at a very particular kind of deck-building. I particularly hope it because we're going to be on this theme for a little bit!

On a personal note, by the time this article is published, I will have been writing at CoolStuffInc for over 10 years (my anniversary was August 29). It's been great fun, and I'm very grateful they've let me write for this long. Here's to 10 more, if they'll have me!

Thanks for reading.