I was on the MtGO BETA test on the weekend trying out the Jund mana ramp deck that is floating around at the moment. I came up against an Esper infinite life deck, using the artifact recursion of Sharuum the Hegemon plus a Soul Warden to gain infite life, plus some card or other to prevent yourself getting decked, and eventually milling your opponent.

Now the fairest thing for a Jund ramp deck to do at this point is concede. However, life isn't fair is it? And I've been taught to play to win.

Winning in this situation is about assessing your available resources against your opponents, figuring out a strategy, and going with that strategy. You have to have a strategy, no matter how bad or unlikely it is, if you want to win.

So, what resources are immediately available in a game of Magic? Here's a little graphic (missing some things - mainly The Stack - which I guess is a pretty important thing, but complicated):



So what could I beat him on. Life total? Not a chance. Cards in hand? He was forcing me to discard on his turn every turn, so not likely. Permanents? Nope. Creatures? Artifacts? Tokens? Nope, nope and nope.

Only one thing was on my side: time.

It was a MtGO timed game, 30mins allowed time per player. In this situation a draw online is impossible. And the thing about MtGO is, any infinitie combo take a long time to pull off. You want to race to 100 life with a single soul warden, you've gotta invest a good ten minutes to do so. All I have to do is press F6 and wait.

So I had strategy: Do everything I could to force my opponent to combo as often as possible and use up his remaining time, while protecting my life total.

Strategy in hand, that's exactly how I played. I'd send in a colossus each turn to nag at the life total and force my opponent to combo out every turn, eating away at his time. Meanwhile my cloudthresher and broodmate dragon kept Sharuum from attacking. Eventually, with my opponent a minute away from running out the clock, he conceded.

Playing for the clock feels like being a douche. But I guess it's no more douchey than playing an infinite life combo with no kill condition.