We Play Commander But Everyone Has 1.000.000 Life!

Deck Strategies

• 

  Bilbo, Birthday Celebrant

  Generate an overwhelming number of creatures from the library to trigger massive life drain effects and then use creatures like Sarah's Avatar and Golgari Lich Lord to drain opponents' life, aiming to win via life total manipulation despite the high starting life.

• 

  Fynn, the Fangbearer

  Use death touch creatures to deal combat damage and distribute poison counters, aiming to win by poisoning opponents to 10 counters, which causes them to lose regardless of life total.

• 

  Bruvac the Grandiloquent

  Mill opponents at twice the normal rate with Persistent Petitioners and other milling cards, forcing opponents to lose by drawing from empty libraries despite their million life.

• 

  Marina Vendrell

  Leverage cards that allow winning the game directly or manipulate life totals and tokens, providing multiple backup plans to circumvent the high life totals and secure victory through alternate win conditions.

Gameplay Insights

• 1

  Players abandoned traditional damage strategies due to the million life starting point and instead focused on alternative win conditions such as poison counters, milling, and direct 'win the game' cards.

• 2

  Proliferate was used strategically to increase poison counters on all opponents simultaneously, accelerating the poison win condition despite massive life totals.

• 3

  The use of Persistent Petitioners in multiples allowed for exponential milling, which combined with Bruvac's ability to double mill amounts, created a powerful synergy to quickly deplete opponents' libraries.

• 4

  Life gain and loss interactions were carefully managed to stay slightly ahead of opponents' life totals, enabling creatures like Sarah's Avatar to scale and support life drain combos.

• 5

  Players formed temporary alliances by sharing graveyard resources to maximize Deathrite Shaman's utility and synergize graveyard interactions, highlighting the importance of collaboration even in competitive settings.

• 6

  The Tree of Perdition was used as a defensive tool by exchanging toughness with an opponent's life total, effectively creating an immense blocker that could stall aggressive attacks.

Notable Cards

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  Tajuru Blightblade

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  Soul Warden

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  Deathrite Shaman

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  Arcane Signet

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  Bloom Tender

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  Tree of Perdition

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  Infectious Bite

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  Spell Pierce

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  Spell Snare

• 

  Exotic Orchard

Summary

In this unique Commander game variant where all players begin with one million life, traditional damage-based strategies are ineffective, leading to creative alternate win conditions. The players quickly reveal their specialized decks focused on alternate victory paths such as poison counters, milling, and setting opponents' life totals to specific values. The game starts with players ramping and establishing their respective strategies: one player aims to amass lethal poison counters using death touch creatures paired with a commander that applies poison, another focuses on milling opponents’ decks twice as fast to force a loss by empty library, while others utilize life manipulation and token swarms to try and win via cards that declare 'win the game' or by reducing life totals drastically despite the enormous life pools. Key turning points include the deployment of multiple Persistent Petitioners to enable massive milling, the use of proliferate effects to increase poison counters rapidly, and synergistic plays like untapping lands to fuel multiple life-drain and damage triggers. The players also interact with each other’s graveyards and board states, creating alliances and tactical plays to facilitate their combos. The game unfolds as a complex battle of alternate win-condition decks, each leveraging their commander’s unique abilities and supporting cards to overcome the absurd life totals. The gameplay highlights the challenge of winning when damage is no longer the primary path and showcases the creativity of combo-focused strategies in Commander.