We're clearly in two different psychographics, then. I'm a Spike/Melvin through and through, so my core motivation is to win while appreciating the level of detail and intricacies of the gameplay mechanics offered in MtG. cEDH is a fantastic environment for that.
It's got far, far, far more variance than Legacy or Modern does-- yeah, we use tutors, but you'd be surprised at how inconsistently you get what you need and it forces you to come up with a different plan on how to survive before someone else goes off. We still get our interesting stories, too-- except... you could say ours are more like epic sports moments than long narratives. We're hyper-interactive and it all really happens on the stack.
You're also selling it short-- "win with Thassa's Oracle" is an end, just like "swing 10 72/72 hydras for the win" is an end-- the means is much more interesting. And that's not the only win condition, even though it's one of the most popular-- though admittedly, games are rarely won on the combat step and game-winning combos are typically the go-to. cEDH is a haven for people who love combos and the concept of having a 100-card singleton deck with a commander. You get to play so many more combinations that aren't legacy viable. And contrary to popular belief, cEDH decks don't HAVE to be expensive-- there's plenty of primers out there with budget suggestions-- not all of us have Timetwister and the ABUR duals and a bunch of Reserve List staples. Those definitely improve a deck but it's the concept of low-curve high-impact cards that are at the heart of cEDH-- trimming the fat and finding the cream of the crop. Some people even find nifty pet cards that, in most cases, aren't ideal but work splendidly in their meta.
Think of it this way. A typical EDH game can create a rich story akin to an RPG quest leading up to a big battle to see who has the biggest dudes in the end. In cEDH, think of it more like a contest of "who can build a doomsday device* the fastest while everyone's out to sabotage each other's construction"?
*may or may not actually use the card Doomsday
And there's a whole bunch of different archetypes in the subformat as well. If you're interested I can explain more. But believe me when I say that it's not as cut and dry and simple and boring as you think.
You'd still probably not enjoy it as much since it's not your playstyle, but it scratches all the right itches for me. I'm a disaffected modern player who got sick of the rock-paper-scissors feel of a format that became very toxic and not-fun to play, especially when all your decks want to do is push out the same 4-ofs over and over and over. There's a lot less... artistic freedom in building 60-card constructed decks than you get in EDH. So EDH also allows more for personal expression a lot more. You don't actually HAVE to play the top of the top commanders. In fact I'm in the planning phase of a commander that I rarely see and that's a big reason why I want to use it, because I'd probably be the only one in my meta playing it. (It's Alela, Artful Provacateur. She's far from what a typical cEDH commander wants, but there's a few... cruel ways to use her. >:D Stax. It's a stax deck.)
And again, I have other EDH decks that are far more casual.
Queen Marchesa: A pillow fort deck-- the slow paced "if you mess up my plans I'm gonna throw a fit" battlecruiser EDH is something I don't enjoy at all, so that's what I whip out against those to spice things up. You wanna win? Come at me! I'll win by turning your creatures against you.
Karlov-- mostly just a bunch of cheap lifegain cards that make Karlov big and beefy with a hatebears subtheme.
Zada, Hedron Grinder-- a bit more aggressive; focuses on exploiting Zada's ability to pump up other creatures and draw a TON of cards. It's probably too aggressive for a very casual table, but it gets blown out way too easily against high-powered decks or cEDH decks.
My other cEDH decks:
Chain Veil Teferi-- focuses on stopping other people from going off with counterspells and stax pieces while using enormous artifact ramp to push out Teferi and The Chain Veil to generate unbounded planeswalker triggers and mana and draw my deck to finish people off with Stroke of Genius/Blue Sun's Zenith or unbounded Ugin, the Spirit Dragon triggers to just bolt everyone to death.
Anje Falkenrath-- the definition of glass cannon. Anje comes out early and I can draw out a huge portion of my deck rummaging out Madness pieces with the core goal of discarding a Worldgorger Dragon and reanimating it with one of three Animate Dead effects to generate unbounded mana and ETBs-- or to be able to cycle through my whole deck with Anje on the battlefield as she has haste and gets reset every WGD cycle-- and then basically burning everyone to death with Fiery Temper, then discarding Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre to reshuffle my graveyard, draw those two cards again, burn again, reshuffle, etc. Can also use the unlimited mana to win with Avacyn's Judgment. I don't use this deck much because it crumples to any kind of graveyard hate and the alternate wincon is Dualcaster Mage + Twinflame or Heat Shimmer which is so much slower.
Before I tuned my Tymna/Kraum deck to be the "Opus Thief" build, I actually ran a different build. The core combo is super spicy-- there was only 2 creatures in the deck: Spellseeker and Swans of Bryn Argoll. What you do is get the commanders on the board (or use a card that generates some tokens) and cast Divergent Transformations to sacrifice two creatures and cycle through the deck to put Spellseeker and Swans on the battlefield. Spellseeker tutors up Chain of Plasma. I cast Chain of Plasma to deal 3 damage to Swans-- which is prevented and I draw 3 cards. I discard one to copy Chain of Plasma, and loop this to draw out my deck and throw down a win condition.
Ultimately I feel the combos in cEDH are super interesting and fun to play and honestly the more interesting bit than just the win condition itself. The wincon just ends the game-- the fun lies in building your perpetual motion device or death ray or doomsday machine and making it work and surviving the fight to sabotage each other. It allows us to skip the power level conversation and allows us to play the cards we actually want to play without anyone getting fussy about it. It's very liberating to be able to build what I want without anyone saying "that's not fair"-- because here, everything is fair.
