Winning Magic without taking anyone to 0 life
Most games of Magic end the same way: someone's life total hits zero. But the rules also print a handful of cards that end the game in other ways: they make you win outright, make an opponent lose, or make it impossible for you to lose. If you want to build a deck around that idea, this guide groups the best-known cards into three families and shows how to find more of them in the MTG Picker deck builder.
1. Alternate win conditions: "you win the game"
These cards give you the win as soon as a condition is met, whatever the life totals say. They fall into a few shapes:
Run out of cards on purpose
- Laboratory Maniac and Jace, Wielder of Mysteries: if you would draw from an empty library, you win instead of losing.
- Thassa's Oracle: when it enters, you win if your devotion to blue is at least the number of cards left in your library. It is the classic finisher for decks that empty their own library.
Reach a big number
- Felidar Sovereign: win at the start of your upkeep with 40 or more life, which is realistic in Commander.
- Test of Endurance: the same idea at 50 life.
- Epic Struggle: control twenty or more creatures at your upkeep.
- Mortal Combat: twenty or more creature cards in your graveyard at your end step.
- Hellkite Tyrant and Revel in Riches: twenty artifacts or ten Treasures at your upkeep.
Meet a strange requirement
- Coalition Victory: control a land of each basic land type and a creature of each color.
- Barren Glory: control nothing but itself, with no cards in hand.
- Approach of the Second Sun: cast it from your hand twice, a few turns apart.
Most of these ask you to survive long enough to trigger them, so removal for enchantments and artifacts is the usual way to stop them.
2. Making an opponent lose
A second family attacks the opponent directly without using life points.
- Door to Nothingness: pay all five colors, tap and sacrifice it, and the target player loses the game.
- Phage the Untouchable: any player it deals combat damage to loses the game. Be careful, though: if you didn't cast it from your hand, you lose the game when it enters.
Two other routes are worth knowing even though they use different wording: poison counters (ten poison counters and a player loses) and decking, where cards like Traumatize make an opponent draw from an empty library. In both cases the opponent loses with their life total untouched.
3. "Can't lose the game"
The last family doesn't win anything. It just stops you from losing, which buys the time a slower plan needs.
- Platinum Angel: you can't lose and your opponents can't win while it's on the battlefield. It's a creature, so it dies to removal, and then so do you.
- Angel's Grace: a split-second instant that keeps you in the game for one turn.
- Gideon of the Trials: its emblem protects you as long as you control a Gideon planeswalker.
Watch the wording. Abyssal Persecutor also says "can't lose" but works the other way: it stops you from winning and your opponents from losing, so you need a way to get rid of it.
Find these cards in the MTG Picker deck builder
You don't have to remember card names. In the deck builder, the card search now has three strategy buttons: Alternate win, Opponent loses and Can't lose. Click one and the search lists cards with that kind of text, filtered to your format and, in Commander, to your commander's colors. You can also type a word next to a button to narrow it down, for example "angel" with "Can't lose".
Always read the card text before adding a card: the buttons search the wording on the card, so some results mention the phrase without being a good fit for your plan.