Maria is one half of the podcast Magic the Amateuring. When she's not working on the podcast, she's probably in an improv show, speaking Welsh, or thinking about popcorn. Rakdos is the true nature of her heart.

Just like a good game of Magic, every good fairy tale has a few essential elements: a beginning, an end, and lots of action in the middle. In a game, we start things off with: "Good luck, have fun!" And in a fairy tale, we begin with: "Once Upon a Time." Hopefully in each, we're also granted a "Happily Ever After," as we either close the storybook or shake our opponent's hand.

The other great thing that Magic and a good fairy tale share is that getting to that coveted "Happily Ever After" doesn't always mean taking the same path.

Rapunzel has to let her long hair down, Jack has some pretty impressive climbing to do, and Cinderella has to put up with a family that is actually just the worst. In our road to the end of the game in Magic, we can get our opponent from 20 life to 0, mill the last card in their library, assemble an infinite combo, or meet an alternate win condition. All of these paths will get us to the same "Happily Ever After"—but, if we're being honest, one path is just way cooler than the others.

Yes, I'm talking about alternate win conditions.

Everyone, meet a brand-new way to get to your "Happily Ever After."

I know, right?!

I'm going to skip talking about the power level of this card in Limited, because you've really got to set up a house pretty permanently in Magical Christmas Land for this to ever do anything remotely resembling winning the game.

In Throne of Eldraine Standard, however, we actually have a lot more tools at our disposal to make this card do its thing. Sure, this card will probably never lead to a competitive tier 1 deck, but it will guaranteed be a tier-fun deck, and if you ask me, so much the better.

With Food tokens supplying us with an accessible form of life gain, plenty of lifelink floating around, and a decent number of artifact creatures, we're well on our way.

Plus, we also have a pretty clear deck-building path to winning with this card—and it involves just one color of mana.

"How can this card possibly win in a monocolored deck?!" you ask, shocked to your core.

"Just look at these beauties!" I exclaim.

That's right. We're making a mono-white alternate-win-condition deck. And you thought you'd never have the weirdest deck at the table! Arcanist's Owl is especially helpful here because it's not only cute, it also fetches up an enchantment to help feed your win con.

If seeing this card has set your brewing heart aflame, you also might be concocting ways to make it work in Commander. Of course, you could go the mono-white way once again—or you could build a five-color special. My personal favorite way to go about this would be to use General Tazri and an Allies shell. Besides the obvious Ally synergies, at its heart, this deck would be less about teamwork and more about celebrating the glorious weirdness of alternate win cons. Let's take a peek at a few of my favorites!

Getting someone to 0 life is soooo last year.

I've got a skeleton of a deck built around this concept, but as more Throne of Eldraine cards get previewed and you all put your collective brains on it, please flesh it out and let me know what you build!

No matter how you end up getting to your own Happily Ever After, I hope the journey is as rewarding as the destination. Please send me a tweet @MissMariapants if you find anything awesome with this card. And remember, if you find yourself stuck inside a fairy tale—probably don't eat that apple.