Winning Without Doomsday

Preamble

One advantage that DDFT has over other Doomsday variants is that it can reliably win without casting the namesake card, and can even do it quickly. This can be a big deal, since it means you have options. You don't fold to a single Surgical Extraction on the right card. You can win through a card like Ashiok, Dream Render, or go off all at once in the face of a Narset, Parter of Veils. You can pick the best combo engine for the situation and dodge the potential chokepoint that is the card Doomsday.

There are 3 main categories of non-Doosmday wins and we will explore each of them. Winning without Doomsday is arguably less complicated than winning with Doomsday, although it's often easier to assmeble a hand that wins with Doomsday. If you've played other storm, most of this should be familiar to you, since 99% of lines to win without Doomsday involve a spell with the Storm keyword.

Empty the Warrens

Empty the Warrens as an alternative win condition is the most straightforward way of winning without Doomsday. You can easily make 10 or more goblins, and do so as early as the first turn. Typically you'll want to do this early in the game before your opponent establishes a board presence, but it can still be effective later on depending on the matchup. Consider the following hand:

Ideally, you can play out your mana artifacts, cast Veil, and then the Dark Ritual. Cast Burning Wish holding priority, and crack the LED for . Along with the leftover from the Ritual, you have enough to cast Empty the Warrens to make 14 Goblins. Killing like this is extremely simple, but do not underestimate its effectiveness. In fact, if your hand looked like this on turn 1, you should at least consider skipping the Veil and jamming Empty the Warrens immediately, even if you don't know what your opponent is playing. Early in the game, most decks will simply not be able to handle that many goblins. Other combo decks may be able to race goblins, and decks with Stoneforge Mystic may be able to use Batterskull to stabilize if you don't get a lot of goblins down quickly enough, but other decks will struggle. While you're typically looking to make more than 10 goblins, as few as 8 can be sufficient against some decks. You should also note that Wish for Empty can play through a Chalice of the Void on 1 relatively easily, with a couple Petals or LEDs.

You can consider playing multiple copies of Empty in your sideboard, for the purpose of bringing a few copies in. Naturally drawing and casting Empty the Warrens, rather than Wishing for it, is a great tool against blue decks. Force of Will and Daze lose effectiveness against a storm spell cast from hand, since even if they can counter 1 or 2 copies, you can still have 5 more. Empties are also reasonable in multiples against blue decks. You can make a small goblin horde, perhaps as few as 6, with relatively low resource input. Your opponent then needs to spend resources to deal with the tokens, while you get in a bit of damage and build up to another Empty. In this way, you can grind out slow control decks, perhaps finishing them off with a small Tendrils or Grapeshot if they deal with the second goblin army.

Alternative Storm Engines

The most common alternative engine in DDFT is Echo of Eons, since it has substantial applications in piles on top of playing a role as a storm engine in its own right. The basic idea of using Echo as an engine could not be more straightforward. Make a bunch of mana, crack an LED, flashback Echo, and hope you draw more mana and a Burning Wish. With this in mind, we should focus more on the caveats of this technique.

When going off with Echo of Eons, mana is going to be your biggest constraint. This deck does not play as many free mana sources as a deck like TES, so you typically want as much mana floating as possible after casting Echo. While you can theoretically win with no mana floating, it is simply unlikely. Ideally, you'll have access to at least , so you can cast rituals, you have red for Burning Wish, and blue in case you need to cantrip to find more mana or Burning Wish. Keep in mind that you are likely to draw a land, so if you have a land drop you can use this to generate mana after Echo.

Consider the following situation, where your opening 7 looks like this:

This is likely a keep and you should strongly consider spinning the wheel on that Echo right away. A fresh hand with 5 mana available is very strong, and that hand isn't likely to get better soon. Crack the LEDs for . Don't crack the Scalding Tarn, since you will want to know what's in your new hand before you decide what land to fetch.

An important thing to keep in mind, one which has been alluded to but mostly glossed over so far, is that Echo draws your opponent a new hand, and recycles all their countermagic that you already fought through. They won't always draw relevant cards, but you should anticipate them having something. Sometimes there isn't anything you can do about it, and you just need to spin the wheel. Sometimes you can resolve a Veil of Summer before Echo and you won't need to worry much at all. If you draw discard/Veil in your new 7, cast it first whenever possible. You can sometimes use extra mana-prodcing spells to bait countermagic if you sequence them in such a way as to tempt your opponent.

Another common alternative Storm engine is Peer into the Abyss. Again, usage is pretty straightforward. Make a bunch of mana, wish for Peer, and cast it. Whiffing will be rare from this point, and you can choose to win any number of ways depending on what you draw. Peer does require a substantial upfront mana investment, but for the price it has a much higher rate of success than Echo of Eons.

The only other reasonable candidate for an alternative Storm engine is Past in Flames. This is a much less common sideboard choice these days, since it is clumsier than Peer or Echo, but it's worth a mention. We won't go too in depth here, since there are plenty of ANT guides out there that address its use. Instead we will again focus on the caveats of using Past in Flames in this deck.

The first and most important is that Burning Wish exiles itself upon resolution. This means you can't flash back the same Wish that you used to get PiF. To have a deterministic line, you will need a second Burning Wish in your graveyard or hand. It is also rarely helpful to flashback a Doomsday, since it exiles your graveyard after you choose your 5 cards. This means that you may be goin for more non-deterministic lines with PiF, flashing back cantrips to try to find another Wish. Draw-4 spells like Infernal Contract can be powerful value engines with Past in Flames, letting you see several more extra cards than cantrips alone could. Using Past in Flames is also mana hungry, and is uniquely hungry for , since you need it for 2 Wishes and PiF itself. Keep this in mind when considering a PiF line.

A few quick notes on other alternative storm engine options that DON'T see play in this deck:

1. Ad Nauseam - a powerful card, but it's an instant. We have no reliable way to search for it, and if you're playing multiple Echoes and few 0-mana artifacts, your Ad Nauseams will be very bad.
2. Time Spiral/Diminishing Returns - Both of these have seen play in storm Wishboards at various points in time, but they have since been eclipsed by Echo of Eons
3. Ill-Gotten Gains - A classic storm engine, but wildly outclassed by current offerings. It has been a long time since this card has been under serious consideration.

Natural Storm

Natural storm, simply casting 9-10 spells in one turn without the use of an engine, is not as difficult as it may seem. If you draw for turn and have 8 cards in hand, all spells, plus a Tendrils of Agony that you Wish for, you can already hit your opponent for 18, which in many cases is enough on it's own.

It's clear that to achieve something like this will require a lot of mana. Lucky for you, your best spells for building storm also produce mana. Rituals, LEDs and Petals are a requirement for getting enough mana and storm to kill au naturale. Discard spells and other protection are of course helpful on your way to 10 storm. Another important class of cards is your draw spells. When aiming for natural storm, cantrips can count for 2 spells since they often find you somthing else to cast. A Draw-4 is practically an engine in its own right, and can let you see a ton of cards to draw more mana or a Burning Wish if you don't have one yet. Brainstorm is extremely strong in these situations, where it lets you swap a Burning Wish in hand for potential spells on top of your deck. A second cantrip can then draw the Wish again. In this manner Brainstorm can add to both your storm and mana counts.

Natural storm can be particularly powerful against blue decks, since they may add to your storm count by helpfully countering spells that don't matter. The way you sequence your spells like rituals plays an important role in convincing your opponent to add to the storm count. For example, if you cast a ritual off your last floating mana, an opponent may daze it rather than let it resolve and invalidate the Daze. Then - suprise! - you make your land drop for the turn, play a lotus petal, and another ritual; you had plenty of mana and didn't need that first ritual. These kinds of plays can be a bit of a gamble, since you can't rely on your opponent to fall for such a play. But if you are fortunate enough to have 2 Burning Wishes in hand and the mana to cast them, you can force their hand. Typically a spell like Wish or a Draw-4 is a must-counter, and can be used to bait out countermagic and clear the way for your real finisher.

One last thing to address: there will be times when you determine that you simply have to take a risk and go for a natural storm kill without a Wish in hand. Perhaps your hand looks like this:

Maybe you have a couple lands on board. If your opponent is threatening lethal damage, you need to go all in. Cast all your mana spells, then finally Ponder holding priority and crack the LEDs for . If you find a Burning Wish, you'll be able to cast Tendrils with storm count 9, which might be enough. If you find more cantrips you can cast them to dig deeper and Storm harder. The point is that you simply aren't winning unless you go all in, but DDFT affords you the possibility to win with a hand like that. Though this is a simplistic example, knowing when to take the risk is a skill you must learn. To go a little deeper on this idea, imagine that Ponder was an Infernal Contract, and your life total was not yet in danger, but would be if you cast the Contract. Do you go for it? There are a lot of other factors at play here, like what interaction your opponent could have, but in general you'll be better off going for it. Waiting and giving your opponent a chance to draw something new and useful is rarely worthwhile in a spot like this.

The Beatdown Plan

Wait, a fourth section? A beatdown plan? What are you talking about? It's hard to call this a viable strategy to win the game, but if you play the deck long enough it may come up. There are likely to be 1-3 creatures in your maindeck: Thassa's Oracle and Street Wraith(s). These creatures can attack, and very rarely they can outright win the game. Slightly more commonly, they can do 2-6 damage and put your opponent in range of a small Tendrils.

People have tried various creature plans from the sideboard, including but not limited to Young Pyromancer, Monastery Mentor and Dark Confidant. In this case winning with creature beatdown can become a more viable plan (although Confidant is typically seen as a card advantage engine first and a beater second). However, this type of plan tends to be weaker than one might think, and most player tend to eschew it. You may find it to your liking, or suited to your expected metagame, but in general, don't consider creature beatdown a real plan to win the game.

Conclusion

1. DDFT is very capable of winning without casting Doomsday. This is nice because it removes a potential chokepoint from the deck.
2. There are 3 main way to do this, via Empty the Warrens, via an alternative engine like Echo of Eons, or via "natural" storm.
3. Don't fixate on Doomsday just because it is the namesake card. Having the option to kill another way can open a lot of doors in terms of your gameplan and how you play, starting from the earliest turns.
4. While you may win by attacking with a Thassa's Oracle in 1 out of 1000 games, don't consider this to be a viable win condition. It's Plan Z.