Magik is the kind of hero that makes matches feel decided in seconds. One clean engage, one mistimed peel from the enemy, and suddenly the backline is gone. In Marvel Rivals, she thrives in chaos, blending assassin burst with bruiser-level staying power to bully objectives and force uneven fights.
She isn’t a pure dive DPS or a frontline tank, and that’s where many players misread her value. Magik wins games by collapsing fights from unexpected angles, deleting a priority target, then surviving long enough to reset pressure and do it again. If you play her like a one-and-done assassin, you’ll fall off fast.
Assassin-Bruiser by Design
Magik’s kit is built to punish poor positioning while rewarding controlled aggression. Her burst windows are real, but so is her sustain, especially when abilities are chained correctly and not panic-dumped. You’re meant to stay in the fight longer than enemies expect, trading cooldowns and forcing them to overcommit resources just to deal with you.
This hybrid identity means your job changes mid-fight. You open as an assassin, targeting squishy DPS or supports, but once cooldowns are burned, you shift into a bruiser role. Holding space, body-blocking escapes, and threatening re-engages is often more valuable than chasing another kill.
Primary Win Conditions
Magik’s biggest win condition is removing a key enemy before the fight stabilizes. That usually means isolating a support or high-DPS hero who lacks mobility or defensive cooldowns. If they’re forced to burn escapes early, you’ve already won the trade, even if the kill comes a few seconds later.
Her secondary win condition is pressure control. By existing in flank routes and fog-of-war angles, Magik forces enemies to play scared. That hesitation creates openings for your team to secure objectives, win neutral fights, or force ultimates defensively.
Positioning and Fight Timing
Good Magik players don’t frontline unless the fight is already tilted. You want to enter after the first wave of abilities is spent, when shields are down and aggro is split. Flank high ground, abuse corners, and always have an exit plan before committing.
Overcommitting is the most common mistake. If you dive before your team is ready or without tracking enemy crowd control, you’ll get locked down and erased. Patience turns Magik from a feed machine into a carry.
Strengths, Weaknesses, and Common Pitfalls
Magik excels against immobile backliners and teams that rely on linear sightlines. She struggles into heavy peel, layered CC, and comps that can kite endlessly. Knowing when to disengage is just as important as knowing when to go in.
The biggest pitfall is tunnel vision. Chasing kills instead of controlling space wastes her bruiser potential and throws fights. The best Magik players know that surviving with cooldown advantage is often the real victory condition.
Complete Ability Breakdown: Darkchild Toolkit, Portals, and Cooldown Synergies
Understanding Magik at a high level starts with internalizing how her abilities chain together. Individually, her kit looks straightforward, but the real power comes from sequencing cooldowns to force bad decisions, then punishing them hard. Every button you press should either secure space, threaten lethal, or set up your next escape.
Soul Sword and Core Damage Loop
Magik’s Soul Sword is the backbone of her DPS and sustain. Each hit rewards you for staying in close, which is why half-commits are so dangerous on this hero. If you’re not close enough to reliably land swings, you’re playing Magik at a disadvantage.
In real fights, your goal isn’t just raw damage but tempo control. Short trades where you land a few sword hits, force defensive cooldowns, then disengage will consistently win you fights without risking death. Greedy players who overextend for one more swing usually get punished by CC.
Stepping Discs: Portals as Engagement and Escape
Magik’s portals are what elevate her from a basic brawler into a true assassin-bruiser hybrid. They’re not just mobility tools; they’re positioning cheats that let you ignore traditional sightlines and frontline pressure. Good portal placement creates threat before you even show on screen.
The biggest mistake players make is using portals only to engage. At high levels, portals are primarily an exit tool. If you engage without a portal cooldown available, you’re betting your life on winning the fight instantly, which is rarely correct against coordinated teams.
Darkchylde Form: Power Spike, Not a Panic Button
Darkchylde is Magik’s defining cooldown and her strongest fight-swinging tool. It massively boosts her survivability and damage, turning her from a flanker into a frontline menace. This is the moment where you stop playing hit-and-run and start occupying space aggressively.
The key is timing. Activating Darkchylde too early makes enemies kite and disengage, wasting its value. The best use comes after enemy CC and burst tools are spent, forcing them to fight you at your strongest with no answers left.
Cooldown Sequencing and Fight Flow
Elite Magik play is all about cooldown layering. You want to enter with mobility, trade sword damage, force reactions, then either portal out or transition into Darkchylde if the fight tips in your favor. Think of her kit as a series of pressure waves, not a single all-in.
If you blow everything at once, you’re predictable and easy to counter. If you stagger abilities, you stay threatening for the entire fight. This is why Magik excels in extended skirmishes where cooldown advantages snowball.
Ability Synergies and Team Interaction
Magik thrives when teammates can capitalize on the chaos she creates. Tanks who force enemies to turn their backs or supports who can top you off mid-fight dramatically increase her uptime. Even small heals can be the difference between resetting with portals or dying mid-swing.
On the flip side, be aware of anti-synergies. If your team lacks follow-up or peel, you’ll need to play more conservatively, leaning harder on portals and disengages. Magik isn’t a solo carry hero by default, but in the right comp, her ability kit lets her dictate the pace of every engagement.
Optimal Combat Flow: Engage, Burst, Disengage, and Re-Engage Patterns
Magik is at her best when she controls the rhythm of a fight. You’re not looking for a single heroic all-in, but a repeatable loop that drains enemy cooldowns, HP, and positioning over time. Mastering this flow is what separates Magik players who trade kills from those who quietly win entire teamfights.
Engage: Threaten First, Commit Second
Your initial engage should almost never be a hard commit. Use your mobility to enter from an off-angle, tag a priority target with sword pressure, and force defensive responses. This is about testing reactions, not securing an instant kill.
Good Magik players watch for panic cooldowns like dashes, shields, or peel abilities. The moment those come out, your engage has already succeeded. If you’ve forced resources without taking heavy damage, you’re winning the exchange.
Burst Window: Punish Cooldowns, Not Health Bars
Your real burst comes after enemies misstep or burn tools, not before. Once a target has limited escape options, chain your abilities tightly and stay on them with basic attacks to maximize DPS. This is where clean aim and hitbox awareness matter more than flashy movement.
If Darkchylde is available, this is the moment it transitions from threat to execution. Activating it mid-fight locks enemies into a losing trade they can’t disengage from. If it’s not available, don’t force the kill—pressure and reset instead.
Disengage: Portals Are Your Lifeline
Disengaging cleanly is what allows Magik to stay oppressive all game. The second enemy focus shifts fully onto you, that’s your cue to leave, not to gamble on one more swing. Portals should already be placed with an escape in mind before the fight even starts.
A successful disengage isn’t retreating across the map. It’s breaking line of sight, denying damage, and staying close enough to re-enter once cooldowns tick back up. If you’re dying with portal available, your timing is off.
Re-Engage: Snowball the Cooldown Advantage
The re-engage is where Magik truly shines. Enemies who just burned cooldowns to push you out are now vulnerable, often out of position or low on resources. This is your green light to re-enter aggressively and finish what you started.
At high levels, most Magik kills come on second or third entries, not the first. Each loop tightens the noose, shrinking enemy options until they’re forced into bad fights. When played correctly, you’re not chasing kills—you’re herding enemies into them.
Positioning Mastery: Flank Routes, Portal Angles, and Vertical Threat Control
Everything discussed so far only works if your positioning supports repeat engages and safe exits. Magik doesn’t win fights by standing with her tank or mirroring enemy DPS sightlines. She wins by existing where enemies don’t want to look, forcing constant camera swings and broken formations.
Positioning is what turns your cooldown management into map control. If you’re always entering from expected angles, even perfect execution won’t save you from focus fire.
Flank Routes: Attack Where Crosshairs Aren’t
Your default position should almost never be main lane. Magik thrives on side paths, off-angles, and routes that let you touch the backline without walking through tanks or choke spam. If the enemy DPS can pre-aim your entry, you’ve already failed the setup.
Before every fight, identify at least two flank options: one aggressive path for entry and one safer route for disengage. This prevents you from getting body-blocked or zoned out when pressure spikes. High-level Magik players are already rotating before the fight breaks out, not reacting once it starts.
Flanking isn’t about isolation—it’s about timing. Enter as your team applies pressure so enemies are forced to choose between turning on you or dealing with the frontline. That hesitation window is where your damage sticks.
Portal Angles: Think in Lines, Not Locations
Portals shouldn’t be placed randomly or purely defensively. Every portal you drop should create a clean angle that either cuts line of sight or repositions you into immediate threat range. A good portal doesn’t just move you—it forces enemies to lose visual tracking.
The strongest portal placements are diagonal, not straight back. Angled exits let you reappear on unexpected elevations or behind natural cover, making it harder for hitscan heroes to punish you during recovery frames. If enemies can track your exit point easily, your portal placement is too obvious.
Pre-place portals before committing whenever possible. This turns every engage into a calculated risk instead of a coin flip. The goal is to always know where you’re going before the enemy decides where to aim.
Vertical Threat Control: Own the Z-Axis
Verticality is one of Magik’s biggest hidden advantages. High ground lets you threaten backlines while avoiding tank peel and ground-based CC. Even when you don’t fully commit, simply existing above or below eye level forces enemies to split attention.
Use vertical positions to reset fights. Dropping down to disengage or portal upward to re-engage breaks target lock and messes with enemy aim discipline. Many players lose tracking during vertical transitions, and that’s where free damage sneaks in.
Controlling the Z-axis also lets you scout safely. Peek from above to read cooldown usage before committing. If you see defensive tools burned, you’re already in the perfect position to punish.
Common Positioning Mistakes That Kill Momentum
The most common mistake is overcommitting to deep flanks with no exit plan. A flank that secures pressure but costs your life is a net loss, especially at higher ranks where deaths are punished instantly. If your portal can’t save you, your route was wrong.
Another trap is hovering too far from the fight. Magik isn’t a sniper—if you’re not close enough to threaten a re-engage within seconds, you’re wasting pressure windows. Position close, but unseen.
Lastly, don’t anchor yourself to one angle for too long. Predictability is death. Rotate, re-angle, and constantly change where the threat comes from. The more you move, the more the enemy hesitates—and hesitation is Magik’s strongest ally.
Team Synergies and Compositions: Best Allies and How Magik Enables Them
Once your positioning and portal discipline are locked in, Magik’s real value shows up in how she warps team fights around her. She’s not a solo carry assassin in a vacuum—she’s an enabler that turns good compositions into oppressive ones. The key is pairing her with heroes who capitalize on chaos, forced rotations, and split attention.
Magik thrives in comps that want to fight fast, collapse hard, and disengage cleanly. If your team prefers slow poke or static hold angles, you’re swimming upstream. Build around momentum, not patience.
Dive Tanks: Creating the Opening Magik Exploits
Aggressive tanks like Hulk or Thor are ideal front-line partners. Their job isn’t to peel for Magik—it’s to demand attention at the exact moment she’s threatening the backline. When a tank commits with cooldowns, enemy supports and DPS instinctively dump CC and burst to survive.
That’s your window. As soon as defensive tools are burned on the tank, Magik portals in to finish the job. Even if you don’t secure a kill, forcing a healer reposition or ult early swings the fight heavily in your favor.
Magik also benefits from tanks that can re-engage quickly. A tank that resets pressure lets you portal out, reset cooldowns, and immediately threaten a second dive while enemies are still stabilizing.
High-Burst DPS: Turning Pressure Into Picks
Burst-oriented DPS like Punisher, Star-Lord, or Iron Man synergize extremely well with Magik’s hit-and-run playstyle. Your role is to destabilize positioning, not necessarily to solo kill every target. Once enemies scatter or turn to track you, your DPS gets free damage windows.
This is especially lethal against backline comps. A support dodging Magik’s approach isn’t healing, and a DPS watching portals isn’t aiming at your carry. That half-second of hesitation is all burst heroes need to delete someone.
Coordinate timing, not targets. You don’t need to hit the same enemy—just force reactions at the same moment. Overlapping pressure breaks teams faster than perfect focus fire.
Control and Utility Supports: Amplifying Magik’s Threat
Supports with displacement, slows, or defensive resets elevate Magik from annoying to unstoppable. Heroes like Doctor Strange or Mantis can stabilize you after an aggressive engage, letting you stay in the fight longer than enemies expect.
Utility support also patches Magik’s biggest weakness: getting caught during recovery frames. Shields, speed boosts, or emergency heals buy just enough time to portal out cleanly. At higher ranks, that margin is the difference between snowballing and feeding.
Good supports don’t chase you—they anchor the fight so you can leave and re-enter safely. If your support is still alive and holding space, Magik always has a second life.
Split-Push and Map Control Comps
Magik excels in compositions that value map pressure over raw team-fight damage. Pair her with heroes who can safely hold objectives or lanes while you threaten flanks. Groot or Loki-style control heroes force enemies to respect multiple angles at once.
This comp style stretches enemy awareness thin. If they rotate to deal with Magik, they lose space elsewhere. If they ignore you, someone dies. Either outcome favors your team.
Your portals become macro tools here, not just escape buttons. Use them to rotate between pressure points quickly, keeping the enemy guessing where the next threat will appear.
Compositions That Actively Hurt Magik
Slow, immobile comps with no follow-up are a trap. If your team can’t capitalize on the space you create, your pressure turns into empty movement. Magik without follow-up is just noise.
Overly defensive bunker comps also limit your impact. When your team refuses to step forward, every engage becomes a solo mission with no safety net. Magik needs teammates willing to move when enemies panic.
If your allies won’t push when you pull aggro, adjust your play or swap heroes. Magik is powerful, but only when the team is ready to exploit the fear she creates.
Strengths, Weaknesses, and Matchup Knowledge Against Common Meta Heroes
Understanding where Magik thrives and where she collapses is what separates flashy clips from consistent wins. Her kit is extreme by design, offering overwhelming pressure when piloted correctly and brutal punishment when misused. This section is about sharpening that edge instead of dulling it through bad reads.
Magik’s Core Strengths: Tempo, Threat, and Space Control
Magik’s biggest strength is tempo control. She decides when fights start, where they happen, and how long enemies are allowed to breathe. Few heroes can force cooldowns as efficiently while still having a reliable exit.
Her mobility isn’t just about movement; it’s about threat projection. Even when you’re not committing, enemies play differently because they know you can appear behind them instantly. That passive pressure creates mistakes your team can exploit without you ever swinging a sword.
She also excels at isolating targets. Squishy DPS and supports caught without peel are dead before help arrives. Magik punishes poor positioning harder than almost any hero in the roster.
Key Weaknesses That Get Magik Players Killed
Magik’s survivability is fake if mismanaged. Once your portals and mobility tools are down, you are one of the easiest heroes to collapse on. Skilled opponents track your cooldowns and will wait you out instead of panicking.
Crowd control is her nightmare. Stuns, roots, and forced displacements interrupt your flow and strip away your I-frame safety windows. One mistimed engage into layered CC usually ends with a long respawn timer.
She also struggles in prolonged front-to-back brawls. If you’re forced to hit tanks or poke shields, your value drops sharply. Magik needs chaos, not structured slugfests.
Favorable Matchups: Who Magik Preys On
Backline DPS like Iron Man or Punisher are prime targets. They rely on positioning and sustained fire, both of which crumble when Magik appears from an off-angle. Force their defensive cooldowns once, then re-engage before they reset.
Supports with limited mobility, including Mantis-style healers, are also vulnerable. Even if you don’t secure the kill, forcing defensive ultimates or panic movement opens the fight for your team. Trading your cooldowns for their safety tools is almost always worth it.
Spider-Man players who overextend are another opportunity. If he commits first and misses a reset, Magik can punish him hard during recovery frames. Patience wins this matchup more than raw mechanics.
Skill Matchups That Test Game Sense
Doctor Strange is a knowledge check on both sides. His shields and control can deny your burst, but only if he reacts correctly. Bait his defensive tools first, then commit once his peel is gone.
Storm is dangerous if ignored. Her vertical control and zoning punish predictable engages. Use portals creatively to approach from blind spots instead of trying to brute-force through her space control.
Thor and Captain America sit in the middle ground. You won’t kill them quickly, but you can farm pressure by forcing them to turn and peel. Your job here is disruption, not damage.
Hard Counters and When to Rethink Your Approach
Heavy CC tanks like Hulk or Groot are risky to challenge directly. Their ability to lock you down removes your greatest advantage. Against them, play wider, hit their backline, and never engage without an exit planned.
Scarlet Witch-style burst casters punish sloppy entries. If you portal in predictably, you will get deleted before you can react. Vary your timing and never engage on full cooldowns.
If the enemy comp stacks peel and vision, adjust your role. Shift from assassin to pressure tool, forcing rotations instead of kills. Magik doesn’t need to top damage charts to win games, but she does need to stay alive long enough to keep the enemy scared.
Advanced Tips and High-Rank Tech: Animation Cancels, Portal Mind Games, and Ult Timing
At higher ranks, Magik stops being about raw aggression and starts becoming a tempo controller. You’re no longer just hunting squishies; you’re manipulating cooldowns, sightlines, and enemy expectations. This is where small mechanical optimizations and decision-making separate good Magik players from match-winning ones.
Animation Cancels That Increase Real DPS
Magik’s damage ceiling jumps once you stop letting her animations fully play out. Her basic attack chain can be canceled early into abilities, letting you front-load damage before enemies react. The most reliable pattern is basic attack into ability activation, cutting the recovery frames and keeping pressure constant.
Portal placement also cancels recovery if done immediately after an attack connects. This lets you reposition without giving opponents a clear punish window. Against alert players, these saved frames are often the difference between escaping at 10 HP or getting stunned and deleted.
Avoid over-canceling when fishing for resets. Clean execution matters, but missed inputs or panic cancels can lock you into awkward spacing. High-rank Magik is about consistency, not speedrunning combos.
Portal Mind Games and Spatial Pressure
Portals are more than mobility; they’re psychological weapons. Dropping a portal without immediately committing forces enemies to track multiple threat angles. Even if you never take it, the backline will hesitate, shift positions, or burn defensive cooldowns preemptively.
Advanced Magik players stagger portal usage. Enter a fight from one angle, disengage, then reappear seconds later from a different line. This breaks enemy tracking and disrupts coordinated peel, especially from supports trying to hold safe spacing.
Never portal directly into vision unless you’re trading on purpose. Use corners, verticality, or objective geometry to mask your entry. A portal that isn’t seen is infinitely more dangerous than one that’s fast.
Ult Timing: Threat First, Activation Second
Magik’s ultimate wins fights before it’s even cast. The threat of it forces enemies to spread, hold cooldowns, or back away from objectives. Use this to your advantage by hovering near fights and delaying activation until defensive tools are gone.
The best ult timings come after a failed enemy engage. When tanks commit forward or supports step up to stabilize, that’s your window. Ulting into retreating enemies is far more effective than forcing it into a ready formation.
Don’t ult just to secure one kill unless it flips the objective. At high ranks, ultimate economy decides games. If your ult draws multiple defensives or zones enemies off payload or point, it has already done its job.
Cooldown Layering and Exit Discipline
Every aggressive play needs a planned exit. Before you go in, identify which cooldown gets you out and which one you’re willing to trade. Burning everything for a single target without an escape is the fastest way to throw momentum.
Stagger your abilities instead of dumping them all at once. This keeps pressure high while maintaining flexibility if the fight shifts. Good Magik players are hard to pin down because they always have one tool left.
If you miss your initial burst, disengage immediately. Lingering turns you from a threat into free ult charge. Reset, re-angle, and come back when the enemy relaxes.
Common High-Rank Mistakes to Avoid
The biggest mistake is overcommitting after forcing cooldowns. Once you’ve drawn a defensive response, back off and re-engage before it comes back online. Greed loses more fights than mechanical errors.
Another trap is predictable portal usage. If you always engage the same way, smart teams will pre-aim stuns and burst. Vary your tempo, delay entries, and occasionally do nothing to keep opponents guessing.
Finally, don’t chase damage stats. Magik’s value is disruption, fear, and control of space. If the enemy team is constantly looking over their shoulder, you’re playing her correctly.
Common Mistakes Holding Magik Players Back and How to Fix Them
Even after mastering cooldown discipline and ult timing, many Magik players hit a ceiling because of small but consistent decision-making errors. These mistakes don’t always show up on the scoreboard, but they absolutely show up in lost fights and stalled objectives. Fixing them is what separates flashy Magik players from reliable win conditions.
Engaging Without Reading Enemy Cooldowns
One of the most common Magik failures is diving before key enemy defensives are forced. Jumping a support with cleanse, mobility, or invulnerability still online almost never works at higher ranks. You’re not testing mechanics at that point, you’re gambling.
The fix is patience and information gathering. Poke, fake pressure, or threaten angles until you see escapes or stuns used elsewhere. Once those tools are gone, your engage becomes lethal instead of desperate.
Using Portal as a Crutch Instead of a Threat
Many players treat Magik’s portal like a mandatory engage button, which makes their timing obvious. Good teams will pre-aim, pre-fire, or simply back up when they know a portal entry is coming. The ability loses value when it becomes predictable.
Start using portal as a positioning and threat tool instead of a commitment. Walk into fights more often, hold portal for mid-fight repositions, or use it purely as an exit. The less often you portal in, the scarier it becomes when you finally do.
Overstaying After a Successful Pick
Getting a kill doesn’t mean the fight is over, and this is where many Magik players throw their advantage. Staying in enemy backlines after a pick usually leads to getting collapsed on once respawn timers and rotations catch up. Momentum flips fast when you overstay.
After securing a kill, immediately reassess the fight state. If no new cooldowns are available, disengage and reset angles. Living after a pick is often more valuable than forcing a second one.
Ignoring Sightlines and Crossfire
Magik thrives in chaos, but she melts when caught in clean crossfires. Many players tunnel on their target and forget about enemy DPS sightlines, eating free damage while committing to a combo. That’s not a mechanical issue, it’s positioning negligence.
Fix this by approaching fights from broken angles and vertical cover. Always ask where enemy damage dealers are before committing. If you can’t isolate your target from their team’s line of sight, wait or reposition.
Forcing Value Instead of Letting Pressure Work
A subtle but deadly mistake is feeling obligated to make something happen every time you’re near a fight. Magik doesn’t need constant kills to be effective. Her presence alone forces spacing errors, delayed pushes, and wasted cooldowns.
Sometimes the correct play is hovering, feinting, or doing nothing at all. Let enemies panic, split, or misposition because they’re afraid of you. When they finally slip, that’s when you strike.
Practice Drills and Mindset for Consistent Impact in Competitive Matches
At a certain level, Magik stops being about flashy mechanics and starts being about discipline. Consistent impact comes from training your decision-making under pressure, not just landing clean combos in ideal scenarios. These drills and mindset shifts are designed to make your Magik reliable, not just explosive.
Cooldown Awareness Drills: Playing Without Panic
Load into scrims or unranked and play several matches where your only goal is tracking cooldowns, yours and the enemy’s. Verbally call out when portal, dash, or defensive tools are down, even if you’re solo. This forces you to internalize timing instead of reacting emotionally.
A strong Magik never panics because she knows what options still exist. If you don’t know what cooldowns are available, you’re gambling, not engaging. Mastery starts when every move is intentional.
Engage Delay Training: Learning When Not to Go In
This drill is simple but uncomfortable. In live matches, intentionally delay your engage by three to five seconds after spotting a potential pick. Use that time to watch enemy movement, cooldown usage, and spacing errors.
You’ll quickly notice how often enemies expose themselves when they think you’re hesitating or rotating away. This trains patience and reinforces that Magik’s threat is strongest when it’s restrained. You’re not late to the fight, you’re letting it ripen.
Escape-First Mentality: Practicing Clean Disengages
Many Magik players practice kills but never practice leaving. Go into matches with the mindset that every engage must include a planned exit, even if things go perfectly. Portal and dash should always have a purpose beyond damage.
A useful drill is ending every fight by disengaging at half health, regardless of momentum. This builds muscle memory for clean resets and keeps you alive longer in real competitive chaos. Survival is pressure, and pressure wins games.
Review Deaths, Not Highlights
If you’re reviewing gameplay, skip the montage moments. Focus only on deaths and failed engages. Ask one question every time: what information did I ignore?
Most Magik deaths aren’t mechanical misplays. They’re missed sightlines, forgotten cooldowns, or overstaying after value. Fixing those turns inconsistent players into dependable ones.
The Competitive Magik Mindset: Controlled Aggression
The final mindset shift is understanding that Magik is not a constant DPS hero. She is a timing-based disruptor who thrives on windows, not uptime. Your value comes from choosing the right moments, not maximizing actions per minute.
Play calm, stay observant, and trust that pressure creates mistakes even when you aren’t swinging. When you combine mechanical confidence with patience, Magik stops feeling risky and starts feeling inevitable.
If there’s one takeaway, it’s this: great Magik players don’t force plays, they harvest them. Respect your cooldowns, respect the map, and let the enemy make the first mistake. That’s how you turn Magik into a consistent win condition in competitive play.