Win-more is a subset of narrowness. Cards that are narrow are good in smaller subsets of the situations that exist in Magic than cards that are less narrow. A creature is broad, because it can interact with creatures and there’s almost always an opponent for it to attack. A spell that destroys enchantments is narrow: It requires your opponent to play an enchantment, and is useless in every other situation. Win-more cards are the ones that are limited to being useful when some gamestate prevails, usually involving you have a lot of something occurring. Cards that trigger when 5 creatures attack, cards that cost 9 mana, etc.
Here are a few examples from a cycle of cards in Zendikar that came to mind when I started thinking about this topic:
Quest for the Gravelord is a straight up good card. It’s easy to cast, and requires only 3 creatures to go to a graveyard before it puts a sizeable threat onto the battlefield. It’s somewhat situational, but in any average game of magic, creatures will regularly be dying on side of the table or the other. It has to be in play before creatures die, but can be played after you play creatures, on the same turn as you play a removal spell, or late in the game before your attack step.
Quest for the Nihil Stone on the other hand, is a pretty good example of win-more. Players discarding cards is not very common: usually you have to make them. This means that in order for this Quest to work, you need to have drawn it before you play whatever spell is making your opponent discard. As in: you already need to have been somewhat lucky for this card to be good AT ALL. Assuming you draw it early, putting two counters on this quest won’t be hard for any deck dedicated to it, but making sure an opponent has no cards in hand is a lot harder: This will usually take 2-3 spells on your part. This is part one of the win-more narrowness: Cards that are good when you have several cards that support them. In a dedicated deck, this is usually not a problem, though it’s still a big deal in Limited. The second part of the narrowness: If your opponent has no cards in hand, they are doing nothing. This means that unless you are also doing nothing, you are winning the game. Quest for the Nihil Stone is only good when your opponent is already in a position of failure. And they draw a card every turn. So even if you get them into the position of vulnerability, the mechanics of the game can help them escape.
The key to understanding win-more is that you’re not comparing cards in a vacuum: You’re comparing them to all the other cards they could’ve been. In the time a Quest for the Nihil stone takes to become active and deal 5 damage, a Vampire Lacerator could’ve already dealt 6, 8, or even 10 damage. If your opponent has no cards in their hand and is half dead to any creature you might’ve played, you would be winning anyway. Nihil Stone only makes you win in a situation that’s already great for you, and in which almost any card that has a positive effect would also be good.
Cards can be win-more in some decks and good in other decks and just plain bad in other decks. This doesn’t mean win-more is a bad concept, simply that it depends on context. There are times when Quest for the Nihil Stone is good, there are times when it’s the best card for a situation, but those times are way outnumbered by the times where it doesn’t really do any more than a random creature would’ve done, and that’s not counting the times it does LESS. Don’t get me started on Strictly Better and Mindslaver.
This narrow/broad thig sounds familiar. I haven’t played Magic but a comparative game (a long time ago) and there was a time where I calculated for each card its effectiveness: Basically the chance to deploy it multiplied by its damage and then use the set maximizing the overall total. This means that a very powerfull card that requires lots of other cards and/or preconditions is less valuable than say two average cards. This caluclation of course only works if the effects of the cards are (basically) additive. In that game it was mostly the case.
Win-more is a subset of narrowness. Cards that are narrow are good in smaller subsets of the situations that exist in Magic than cards that are less narrow. A creature is broad, because it can interact with creatures and there’s almost always an opponent for it to attack. A spell that destroys enchantments is narrow: It requires your opponent to play an enchantment, and is useless in every other situation. Win-more cards are the ones that are limited to being useful when some gamestate prevails, usually involving you have a lot of something occurring. Cards that trigger when 5 creatures attack, cards that cost 9 mana, etc.
Here are a few examples from a cycle of cards in Zendikar that came to mind when I started thinking about this topic:
Quest for the Gravelord is a straight up good card. It’s easy to cast, and requires only 3 creatures to go to a graveyard before it puts a sizeable threat onto the battlefield. It’s somewhat situational, but in any average game of magic, creatures will regularly be dying on side of the table or the other. It has to be in play before creatures die, but can be played after you play creatures, on the same turn as you play a removal spell, or late in the game before your attack step.
Quest for the Nihil Stone on the other hand, is a pretty good example of win-more. Players discarding cards is not very common: usually you have to make them. This means that in order for this Quest to work, you need to have drawn it before you play whatever spell is making your opponent discard. As in: you already need to have been somewhat lucky for this card to be good AT ALL. Assuming you draw it early, putting two counters on this quest won’t be hard for any deck dedicated to it, but making sure an opponent has no cards in hand is a lot harder: This will usually take 2-3 spells on your part. This is part one of the win-more narrowness: Cards that are good when you have several cards that support them. In a dedicated deck, this is usually not a problem, though it’s still a big deal in Limited. The second part of the narrowness: If your opponent has no cards in hand, they are doing nothing. This means that unless you are also doing nothing, you are winning the game. Quest for the Nihil Stone is only good when your opponent is already in a position of failure. And they draw a card every turn. So even if you get them into the position of vulnerability, the mechanics of the game can help them escape.
The key to understanding win-more is that you’re not comparing cards in a vacuum: You’re comparing them to all the other cards they could’ve been. In the time a Quest for the Nihil stone takes to become active and deal 5 damage, a Vampire Lacerator could’ve already dealt 6, 8, or even 10 damage. If your opponent has no cards in their hand and is half dead to any creature you might’ve played, you would be winning anyway. Nihil Stone only makes you win in a situation that’s already great for you, and in which almost any card that has a positive effect would also be good.
Cards can be win-more in some decks and good in other decks and just plain bad in other decks. This doesn’t mean win-more is a bad concept, simply that it depends on context. There are times when Quest for the Nihil Stone is good, there are times when it’s the best card for a situation, but those times are way outnumbered by the times where it doesn’t really do any more than a random creature would’ve done, and that’s not counting the times it does LESS. Don’t get me started on Strictly Better and Mindslaver.
This narrow/broad thig sounds familiar. I haven’t played Magic but a comparative game (a long time ago) and there was a time where I calculated for each card its effectiveness: Basically the chance to deploy it multiplied by its damage and then use the set maximizing the overall total. This means that a very powerfull card that requires lots of other cards and/or preconditions is less valuable than say two average cards. This caluclation of course only works if the effects of the cards are (basically) additive. In that game it was mostly the case.