Blink

Take advantage of assorted enter-the-battlefield effects, leave effects, and even the occasional way of protecting your creatures, steadily accruing repeatable and efficient value until you have a guaranteed win.

Energy

Collect your energy counters and spend them as needed to find (or even create) weak spots in your opponent's defenses. The long game is your friend, energy is resilient enough to take victory in bits and pieces.

Artifact Aggro

Playing lots of little artifact creatures with intent of attacking with as many as you can, incredibly aggressive and not afraid to overspend a little, with a handful of expensive wincons that'll seal the deal permanently.

Fliers

Can't stop what you can't block, and creating a constant flow of evasive creatures that might even set your opponent back without attacking means you'll quickly outpace them. Play defensive and aggressive in the right mix to win.

Affinity

Lots of little artifacts are neat and all, but it doesn't compare to playing expensive six drops for alternative costs or cheating out unstoppable threats. Turn each little victory into a big game-winning onslaught.

Sacrifice Midrange

Artifact tokens, creature tokens, both are your friends, accruing expendable lackies that can be easily given up for greater and better value as the game continues. You don't need an army, you just need one way to win.

Treasures

An efficient way of ramping into some expensive spells, Treasure tokens can also be sacrificed for costs, and can overall be used to help play spell after spell after spell until you can win with mana to spare.

Discard

Play on a razor's edge, getting rid of the cards in your hand to maximize the value of the few things you do play, eeking out advantage in the unlikeliest of places. The only card that matters is the winning one.

Burn

Sometimes, the solution isn't combat: sometimes, the solution is burning away creatures and players with instants, sorceries, and abilities, letting you hold back and prevent yourself from taking lethal damage as needed.

Aura Enchantments

Aggressive creatures with viable statlines on their own augmented even further with Auras to create powerhouses that will win without a certified answer. Frail at times, but versatile and easy to pivot with.

Sacrifice Aggro

Creatures are resources, and one big enough creature can win you any game. So the rest of the game are just disposables to make your board all the more safe for all the longer, long enough to win at the least.

Activations

Activated abilities, two-for-one value that you can ramp into without risk and often either at instant speed, especially when low on other resources like cards. Eek value in from all sides to secure the win.

Tapped Creatures

While tapped creatures typically can't block, they'll be able to provide you additional value instead. Leave math for blockers and hopefully kill your opponent with a synergistic boardstate before their mess of one wins.

Coven

Creatures of different sizes will put your opponent in a tougher-than-it-should-be decision of what to block, all while you profit off your board's differences. Plenty of payoffs for high and low powers exist here.

+1/+1 Counters

Even the most innocent of creatures can become a powerhouse and a threat when exposed to enough +1/+1 counters, allowing you to create a wide boardstate of unstoppable hazards with no clear way through the defense.

Tokens

Tokens may not have special abilities of their own, typically, but you can create them en masse and generate from chip value and chip damage until your opponent's chances of keeping up slowly fall away.

Poison

Damage isn't the only way to win, and poison is permanent. Sneak in poison damage with a mild-but-expected Phyrexian subtheme to boot, and tick the clock ever closer to midnight while you strategically attack and block.

Reanimator

Just because it's dead doesn't mean it's gone, and with all manners of reanimation spells, big creatures and small creatures alike can be resurrected (or even cheated out) to leave your opponents unable to answer everything.

Wizards

Blue-red needs creatures, obviously, and Wizards lend themselves well to a defensive and slightly-protective archetype that can swing when safe, generating value without running out with all too much ease.

Storm

If every instant and sorcery spell you cast has some special trigger or effect, how many of those do you need to win the game? The answer is only a couple turns, storming off in the way that blue-red's known to.

Paradox

As long as Magic's been around, so has casting things from where you shouldn't. As long as recently, creating value off an already-valuable means is there to create a disproportionate amount of advantage in any case.

Self-mill Delirium

Dumping things into your graveyard indiscriminately to then generate maximum amounts of value, complete with caring about creatures, card types, and more, means you want to have a bigger graveyard than library.

Deathtouch

Every block will cost them a creature, and so will every attack. Slowly force your opponents to search for your weak spots, and if you're careful about hiding them, you'll beat them down before they can find any.

Elves

A creature type known for going off the rails, given the advantage of removal and ramp. Play generously, establishing as much of a boardstate as you possibly can, until you've filled the board with your army.

Equipment

Auras and counters are frail, but Equipment are forever, flexible and able to pivot easily, and any wide manner of creatures are able to be worthy targets for a Sword or Hammer. All it takes is the right champion.

Go Wide

Math is for blockers, swinging with a powerful and heavy board state of powerful threats and anthems will leave your opponent desperately blocking just to survive without a chance to figure out how to actually win.

Warriors

The best of two colour meeting to go-wide, aggressive and unrelenting at a steady pace all game. Once you start going, you're hard to stop, and you can get going at just about any time you want. In the Coward matchup.

Expensive Spells

Just because cards are expensive doesn't mean they have to be lategame, and that definitely doesn't mean you can't get even more value from immense value. It's what Simic is known for after all, isn't it?

Colorless

Colorless cards are surprisingly effective, and surprisingly plentiful, so create a defense of tokens known for ramping, morphs and manifests, and more in a surprisingly flexible and fluid playstyle.

Landfall

If every land of yours generate value, lands stop being dead draws, right? That's the logic, a steady boardstate turning each of your lands into a free sorcery filled with decent effects instead of Yet Another Land.

even more cards

And, of course, some build arounds. Maybe you'll build something never before seen, too.