Hence my qualifier 'conventional approaches'. I wish those working on alternative approaches the best of luck, and some of the experiments look like a lot of fun (they get to blow things up - I've seen videos where plastering was raining from the ceiling of the control room ;)).
I'd say that the "conventional" approach for triggering fusion is physical. We've been triggering fusion in nuclear weapons for many years and the physicalities of it are very well understood. What general fusion is doing is essentially a non-destructive nuclear secondary.
Triggering fusion with magnets, without moving parts, is imho the unconventional way of getting to fusion. It is only conventional in comparison to fusion research. The practical users of fusion (the armed forces) don't use magnets.
