List of Compact Combos [Archive] - Page 2

cherub_daemon

10-21-2011, 01:52 AM

I just noticed this one:

(Blood Moon or Magus of the Moon) / Dark Depths / sac or damage mechanic

2.5 / 4 / 0

I'm scoring the cost of the sacrifice/damage mechanic at 1, even though there are some ways to make it zero (Pyrokinesis and Fireblast stick out). The Blood cards prevent CiP abilities of non-basics from going off, so DD comes in with no counters. Remove the Blood card, sac DD, 20/20. I understand that this may not make the cut because it is just a single large creature, albeit slightly evasive (Flying).

Another variant would be to run Crop Rotation "instead of" the sacrifice/damage mechanic, essentially baiting people to get rid of your (generally highly disruptive) Blood card. Game 1 only.

I feel like this combo is not just worse than Vampire Hexmage/Depths because of the disruptive nature of the Blood cards to many Legacy manabases. What makes it a tough combo to play with is the fact that if you use them as early disruptors, you need to be able to get to the Depths in red, or you need to run a lot of basics/mana fix. On the other hand, if you DON'T play Blood as early disruption, this version of the combo is just worse than Hexmage/Depths.

My thoughts on the deck for this run either toward Burn or Dragon Stompy. Burn turns it into effectively a 2-card combo, because of the surfeit of ways it has to get rid of Magus of the Moon. Also, Burn with disruption is a reasonable backup plan.

Dragon Stompy already runs up to 8 (but usually 6, I think) Blood effects, making the combo quite compact with respect to its current list. Also, Chalice at one (a Dragon Stompy standby) protects you from Swords, Stifle and CoV, all of which can ruin your day.

I'm not sure what a dedicated list would look like; probably add green for Living Wish, Crop Rotation and enchantment destruction that would let you run Blood Moon more easily.

Richard Cheese

10-21-2011, 09:56 AM

I don't think that works. Depths doesn't say "when ~ ETB, put 10 counters on it", it's "Dark Depths enters the battlefield with ten ice counters on it.". I'm pretty sure Moon effects won't stop lands from ETB tapped, and I think the counters on Depths are the same kind of replacement effect. I could be wrong though.

cherub_daemon

10-21-2011, 10:43 AM

I think you're right. I was going off of this ruling on Blood Moon that was posted over on eM:
http://essentialmagic.com/Cards/RulingsAndFAQ.asp?ID=1784

"It immediately changes a non-basic land entering play into a Mountain, and it does so before abilities that trigger on the original entering play trigger."

However, the first post by Yare the below thread over in mtgsalvation says the following (he's quoting the SCG judge) regarding a similar interaction with Celestial Dawn:

(http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=109951)

"Q: I was thinking about making a deck which is all about Dark Depths and Celestial Dawn. The idea is to have a Celestial Dawn in play, and then play a Dark Depths. My thought is that the Dark Depths would come into play as a Plains, with no ice counters on it (as it is a Plains}. All I have to do is get rid of my Celestial Dawn, and I'll get a Marit Lage token. Does this work?

A: That does not work as you described. Dark Depths has a static ability that creates a replacement effect that is applied to Dark Depths as it comes into play. This replacement effect is applied as Dark Depths enters play before the effect from Celestial Dawn is applied to it. So it will come into play with these ice counters, even though it comes into play as a Plains."

So, my bad here. I didn't check rulings on Dark Depths originally, just Blood Moon.

mctlegacy

11-27-2012, 04:04 AM

Inkmoth Nexus + Hatred. Works in legacy (perhaps monoblack) and EDH.

Malchar

11-27-2012, 03:24 PM

Since I like figuring these things out, inkmoth nexus + hatred would clock in at 2 cards, 0 chaff, and 7 "mana" when you count the foregone opportunity of tapping the nexus. Also, it appears to be vulnerable to almost every possible hate card category: land removal, creature removal, artifact removal, counterspells, pithing needle, meddling mage, and gaddock teeg to name a few. I wonder if a two-card combo exists which is also vulnerable to enchantment removal and graveyard hate. It would be kind of interesting to come up with one that was vulnerable to everything.

I'll also add that hatred, even on its own, is very dirty in EDH.

rufus

01-08-2013, 09:40 AM

How about Mogg Alarm+Mass Polymorph -> Kiki-Jiki/Pestermite or something similar. 6 mana, 2 cards (plus 2 mountains) 2 chaff cards in the deck.

MaximumC

02-13-2013, 04:13 PM

I'm kind of surprised no one has mentioned Volcano Hellion yet. If they did, I missed it and I am sorry.

As a 6/5 for 4 that also functions as removal, this card is already decent. However, it has received tons of love in recent sets.

Volcano Hellion + Boros Reckoner / Mogg Fanatic / Spitemare / Stuffy Doll = Deal an arbitrarily large amount of damage to you and your opponent. If you have more life, you win. Otherwise, draw.

Volcano Hellion + Nearhearth Pilgrim / Anything that can grant Lifelink to Hellion before his etb ability resolves = You win in a big, sloppy, lifelinky explosion.

Malchar

02-15-2013, 03:11 PM

In your first example, you can't actually have a draw. When the hellion ability resolves and deals damage to you and to a reckoner, the reckoner triggers, but if you have zero life at this time, you lose before the reckoner ability is placed on the stack.

Also note that in your second example, you can gain an arbitrarily large amount of life using just the pilgrim and hellion together, but you need a reckoner effect in order to kill the opponent outright.

Also, if they remove the target of the hellion's ability, the entire ability is countered, so you won't take any damage.

-Spooky-

02-26-2013, 10:06 AM

Ziveeman

02-26-2013, 10:33 AM

Maybe I just don't know the game well enough, but how does the hellion combo with Mogg Fanatic? I'm not seeing any sort of interaction.

Probably means Mogg Maniac.

rufus

02-26-2013, 10:43 AM

Maybe I just don't know the game well enough, but how does the hellion combo with Mogg Fanatic? I'm not seeing any sort of interaction.

He probably meant Mogg Maniac.

I'd think something like Swans of Bryn Argoll would work better with Volcano Hellion which has a bit of a high-cc issue, but only takes 2 cards.

Koby

03-27-2013, 11:16 PM

What is the most mana efficient two card combo?

jamis

03-28-2013, 12:15 AM

I'd have to say entomb + reanimate. As far as the ones that win on the spot, I'm not really sure. I think the majority of the ones that see play are 4 mana. I guess, show+tell is 3 mana. I can't think of anything that matches or beats entomb + reanimates 2 mana cost.

LinkXwing

03-28-2013, 12:23 AM

What is the most mana efficient two card combo?

Brainstorm + Fetchland.

pavlaugh

03-28-2013, 06:40 PM

Vampire Hexmage (BB) + Dark Depths (0) is pretty mana efficient but easily disruptable -- more or less than entomb/reanimate, I'm not sure...

Also doesn't win on the spot the way Helm (4) + RIP (2) does.

Malchar

03-28-2013, 07:35 PM

What is the most mana efficient two card combo?

Since the thread is getting pretty large, I figured I'd go through and make a list for easy reference. For now, I have only included 2-card combos, and I didn't bother writing down anything that costs 6 mana or more.

I'll present the combos using the standard notation: mana/cards/chaff. I've broken up the mana requirements if they can be paid in separate installments over multiple turns. I've also listed all the cards in the combo followed by the chaff in parentheses. Some of them don't kill outright, but since the list is pretty compact, I figured I might as well include them. In general, I haven't included strictly worse versions of the same combo. Let me know if there are any errors or other things that I should add.

2:1+1/2/0 phyrexian dreadnought + stifle.
2:1+1/2/0 about face + tireless tribe.

3:1+2/2/? entomb + shallow grave, (something).
3:1+2/2/7 cephalid illusionist + shuko, (3x narcomoeba, dread return, necrotic ooze, phyrexian devourer, triskelion).
3/2/? show and tell + something.
3*/2/0 dark depths + vampire hexmage, *dark depths takes up a land drop but cannot be tapped for mana.

4:3+1/2/1 skill borrower + worldly tutor, (kiki-jiki, mirror breaker).
4:3+1/2/3 buried alive + reanimate, (necrotic ooze, phyrexian devourer, triskelion).
4/2/1 natural order + green creature, (progenitus).
4/2/1 erratic explosion + worldly tutor, (draco).
4/2/4 aluren + imperial recruiter, (imperial recruiter, dream stalker, cavern harpy, ghitu slinger).

5:2+3/2/0 fire covenant + mogg maniac.
5:2+3/2/0 aphetto alchemist + wake thrasher.
5:2+3/2/7 basalt monolith + mesmeric orb, (3x narcomoeba, dread return, necrotic ooze, phyrexian devourer, triskelion).
5:3+2/2/5 doomsday + lotus petal, (conjurer's bauble, grapeshot, lion's eye diamond, predict, second sunrise).
5:4+1/2/0 helm of obedience + leyline of the void.
5/2/? sneak attack or through the breach + something.

DragoFireheart

03-28-2013, 07:41 PM

Are we allowed to post janky combos?

Pyromancer's Swath + Flame Jab = Every land is a Lightning Bolt.

MaximumC

05-31-2013, 04:31 PM

The new Legend Rule has given rise to some new combos:

Yosei + Followed Footsteps // Progenitor Mimic = Opponent gets no untap steps and you get to tap five things down each turn.
Dark Depths + Thespian Stage = Marit Lage.

Additionally, Scapeshift now acts as a tutor for both parts of the Marit Lage combo. You Scapeshift three lands into Ancient Tomb, Dark Depths, and Thespian Stage, which allows you to go Marit Lage right away.

(edit) Here's some more I haven't seen in this thread yet:

Zhur Taa Druid gives you a couple of instant-kill combos as long as you can finagle it that you're tapping him for blue:

Zhur-Taa Druid + Freed From the Real // Pemmin's Aura + Paradise Mantle // Multani's Harmony // Utopia Vow // (that snake druid that filters G into U) = Infinite ping.

And along the same lines:

Bloom Tender + Freed From the Real // Pemmin's Aura = Infinite green mana.

Also, have we mentioned the Illusionist's Bracers combos yet?

Aphetto Alchemists // Seeker of Skybreak + Illusionist's Bracers = Infinite untaps, either for creatures or for creatures and artifacts.

rufus

05-31-2013, 05:44 PM

Megadeus

05-31-2013, 05:54 PM

I dont think that works does it?

Koby

05-31-2013, 06:06 PM

You'd still have to wait for the untap... Here's some another combo using the new rules:

Sharuum the Hegemonx2+Disciple of the Vault

I believe this one worked under the old rules too. It also works with either Sculpting Steel and Phyrexian Metamorph too, increasing the possible setups.

Cast/reanimate Sharuum, trigger on 2nd Sharuum. Second Sharuum enters, state-based actions put duplicate legend into graveyard, then stack trigger, returning same Sharuum back onto the battlefield.

PirateKing

05-31-2013, 06:09 PM

Double Sharuum the Hegemon worked before as well. Before it went:

Sharuum A out.
Sharuum B enters the battlefield. Trigger.
Legend rule kills both before trigger can resolve.
Trigger resolves, brings back A. Trigger.
Trigger resolves, brings back B.
Repeat.

Now with the new rule only one dies, but again, before the trigger can resolve. So:

Sharuum A out.
Sharuum B enters the battlefield. Trigger.
Legend rule kills one of your choice before trigger can resolve.
Trigger resolves, brings the dead one back. Trigger.
Repeat.

Megadeus

05-31-2013, 06:10 PM

Oh so State Based Actions happend before the target of the ability?

rufus

05-31-2013, 06:11 PM

I dont think that works does it?

Ah, right, it can't target a card that's not in the graveyard yet. :rolleyes:

Koby

05-31-2013, 06:15 PM

Double Sharuum the Hegemon worked before as well. Before it went:

Sharuum A out.
Sharuum B enters the battlefield. Trigger.
Legend rule kills both before anything else happens.
Put trigger on the stack.
Trigger resolves, brings back A. Trigger.
Trigger resolves, brings back B.
Repeat.

Now with the new rule only one dies, but again, before the trigger can resolve. So:

Sharuum A out.
Sharuum B enters the battlefield. Trigger.
Legend rule kills one of your choice before anything else happens.
Put trigger on the stack.
Trigger resolves, brings the dead one back. Trigger.
Repeat.

Fixed for rules clarification. State based actions happen before anyone gains priority to put triggers on the stack.

PirateKing

05-31-2013, 06:32 PM

Koby

Thanks

Crysthorn

05-31-2013, 08:25 PM

Here's some another combo using the new rules:

Sharuum the Hegemonx2+Disciple of the Vault
It's a very popular EDH combo. Under current rules you need three cards: Sharuum the Hegemon + Phyrexian Metamorph // Sculpting Steel + Disciple of the Vault // Blood Artist. Under new rules you can replace the second part with any clone (i.e. Phantasmal Image).

Malchar

06-02-2013, 04:06 AM

Scapeshift looks pretty promising now. As MaximumC pointed out, it is now a one-card combo. It costs 4 mana, which is rather slow, but you can cast it with ancient tomb or other fast mana on turn 3 or even sooner. Since you don't need to worry about assembling multiple pieces, you can afford to play a little defense in the early game to make up for the slower speed.

You can also play it as a two-card combo with amulet of vigor, which lets you go off a turn sooner.

In fact, if you have amulet of vigor and scapeshift 5 lands, you can get this pile:
1. Dark Depths
2. Thespian's Stage
3. Boros Garrison
4. Slayers' Stronghold
5. (any 2 mana land)

You can just tap the boros garrison for mana in response to it's bounce ability and then have it bounce itself. Unfortunately, this combo doesn't really save you any time, but it does let you go off all at once if you happen to get to 5 lands.

If you have extra lands, you can also scapeshift for extra thespian's stages to use the ability in response to an opposing wasteland or other land removal spell. Of course, this only makes sense if you're using amulet of vigor, otherwise they could just destroy your stuff while you're tapped. You can also grab some dryad arbors or manlands to play around edicts.

MaximumC

07-10-2013, 05:55 PM

M14 has brought with it a few new combos:

1) Life and Limb + Sporemound = Infinite loop.

Sporemound makes a Saproling when a Forest enters the battlefield, and Life and Limb makes all Saprolings enter the battlefield as Forests. If no one can stop the loop, this draws the game. You can turn that into a win in a variety of ways, such as:

Removing one of the enchantments for profit, with something beneficial like Perilous Research, or something generally useful like Echoing Truth. This leaves you with an arbitrarily large number of Saprolings.

Acting on the stack using abilities like Altar of Dementia, Blasting Station, or Goblin Bombardment to win during the combo.

Giving the Saprolings Haste with Concordant Crossroads or something, and using the infinite mana they now produce to win at instant speed with something like Stroke of Genius or Rocket Launcher or something.

2) Strionic Resonator + Sands of Time // Mist of Stagnation = Infinite tap / untaps, partial lockdown

This one is super cute. With either Sands or Mist in play, during your upkeep, put the triggered ability on the stack. Activate Resonator to copy the ability, and let the copy resolve. The copy will (usually) untap your Resonator, lands you used to activate it, and more permanents besides, allowing you to continue an arbitrarily large amount of times. Wins with any ping effect, any instant speed sink for infinite mana, etc.

If you double up Sands on your opponent's turn, they will tap/untap once, then have to do it again. If they can tap untapped permanents at instant speed (such as lands) they can use this to untap all of those permanents. But other permanents, such as big dumb creatures (Goyf?) will remain either tapped or untapped depending on how they started that turn. Since you can choose not to double up the Sands to get them tapped in the first place, this is a pretty effective lockdown on any card that can't tap at instant speed.

Don't double Mist on your opponent's turn, however, since it looks like the ability does not target but instead allows the active player to choose the effect on resolution. The upshot of that is that you just give them twice the untaps.

ahg113

07-11-2013, 01:37 PM

Now with tags

1) Life and Limb + Sporemound Perilous Research, or Echoing Truth

Altar of Dementia, Blasting Station, or Goblin Bombardment

Concordant Crossroads or Stroke of Genius or Rocket Launcher

2) Strionic Resonator + Sands of Time // Mist of Stagnation

MaximumC

10-04-2013, 01:41 PM

rufus

10-07-2013, 05:51 PM

Has anyone found anything good combos in Theros? I'm something of a loss. There are some synergies that Legacy doesn't care about, like Baconator + Ratchet Bomb, but the mechanics they use in the set seem custom-made to screw over any attempt at combos.

I guess the Heroic dude who draws cards, and the one who casts Diabolic Edict both work pretty well with cheap Rebound and Flashback spells. But, other than that....?

Medomai the Ageless can work as a combo element in something like full english breakfast, but there are typically superior choices. Gift of Immortality has potential in principle, but seems quite limited in practice, and there are a couple of other extreme fringe plausible combo elements.

cherub_daemon

10-27-2013, 02:46 PM

Has anyone found anything good combos in Theros? I'm something of a loss. There are some synergies that Legacy doesn't care about, like Baconator + Ratchet Bomb, but the mechanics they use in the set seem custom-made to screw over any attempt at combos.

I guess the Heroic dude who draws cards, and the one who casts Diabolic Edict both work pretty well with cheap Rebound and Flashback spells. But, other than that....?

Edict-with-a-body (Agent of the Fates) can go nuts with Toshiro Umezawa. But that's a lot of mana to not win the game, even if it is mono-black. On the other hand, they're not super-terrible alone, and both want similar supporting cards. I guess it would be called a synergy rather than a combo. BG Infect, maybe?

danbuster35

12-10-2013, 05:04 PM

Devoted Druid turn 1
Melira, Sylvok Outcast turn 2
then Helix Pinnacle for win on upkeep of turn 3
or attack with Bramblesnap on turn 4

apple713

12-10-2013, 05:15 PM

Devoted Druid
Melira, Sylvok Outcast
Helix Pinnacle .

this doesn't work

putting a counter on devoted druid is part of the cost. Since they can't have counters placed on them you cannot pay the cost and cannot activate the ability.

danbuster35

12-10-2013, 05:22 PM

this doesn't work

putting a counter on devoted druid is part of the cost. Since they can't have counters placed on them you cannot pay the cost and cannot activate the ability.

With Melira, Sylvok Outcast in play you should still be able to untap Devoted Druid for infinite mana, right? This should work the same way as persist ability would work with Melira in play

apple713

12-10-2013, 05:47 PM

With Melira, Sylvok Outcast in play you should still be able to untap Devoted Druid for infinite mana, right? This should work the same way as persist ability would work with Melira in play

no, persist adds a counter as part of resolution of a triggered ability.

adding a counter to druid is paying a cost. You cannot pay the cost because you cannot add a counter.

danbuster35

12-10-2013, 05:49 PM

Thanks for the clarification.

no, persist adds a counter as part of resolution of a triggered ability.

adding a counter to druid is paying a cost. You cannot pay the cost because you cannot add a counter.

FTW

01-03-2014, 10:34 AM

Since the thread is getting pretty large, I figured I'd go through and make a list for easy reference. For now, I have only included 2-card combos, and I didn't bother writing down anything that costs 6 mana or more.

I'll present the combos using the standard notation: mana/cards/chaff. Let me know if there are any errors or other things that I should add.

Nice list! Thanks for compiling. I found a few things to edit...

The original for this one was buggy. While there are plenty of wins for Cephalid Breakfast, one that involves an arbitrary amount of Ooze self-milling to get +1/+1 counters doesn't really work... Fixed:
3:1+2/2/7 cephalid illusionist + shuko, (3x narcomoeba, dread return, The Mimeoplasm, Lord of Extinction, Murderous Redcap).

Same problem with this... lack of library left means lack of +1/+1 counters for Ooze combo. Sharuum + Blasting Station + Emrakul was the old kill, but that is now "time wasting". Mimeoplasm or other 3-card combos (Kiki-Jiki + Pestermite + Karmic Guide / Angel of Glory's Rise + Laboratory Maniac + Azami, Lady of Scrolls) also work here.
5:2+3/2/7 basalt monolith + mesmeric orb, (3x narcomoeba, dread return, necrotic ooze, phyrexian devourer, triskelion).

You don't need to fetch the 2nd recruiter here. Recruiter for Dreamstalker, returning recruiter. Recruiter for Cavern Harpy, returning Dream Stalker. Stalker again returning Recruiter. Recruiter for Slinger. Mo Harpy Mo Madness etc etc.
-1 to chaff.
4/2/4 aluren + imperial recruiter, (imperial recruiter, dream stalker, cavern harpy, ghitu slinger).

While strictly "compact", this Doomsday pile with Conjurer's Bauble and Second Sunrise is probably the least efficient pile to build. I don't want to go into how the "Doomsday deck" effectively makes Doomsday itself a 1-card combo since most of the pieces used in the pile are useful 4-ofs and not chaff, because I get that you are just listing things that require 2 specific cards cast and under 6 mana total invested, and that does legitimately exclude most of the common Doomsday piles. However, the Sunrise-Bauble one is full of chaff. There are still much less chaffy winning pass-the-turn piles for 2 cards and 5 mana (BBB+1U):
5:3+2/2/2 doomsday + Brainstorm, (Sensei's Divining Top, Lion's Eye Diamond, lion's eye diamond, Ill-Gotten Gains, Burning Wish).
That pile works with actually any of those non-Doomsday cards in place of Brainstorm (even IGG or Wish) and the other 5 in the pile, so IMO super flexible and non-chaffy compared to sunrise-bauble.

The Lab Man version can also make a 5-mana 2-card pass-the-turn pile win:
5:3+2/2/3 doomsday + Gitaxian Probe, (Gitaxian Probe, Mental Note, Laboratory Maniac, Squire, Unearth).
I'd argue it is strictly superior to all other pass-the-turn piles, not only because it beats even 4 Leyline of Sanctity + Gaddock Teeg + infinite life, but because Squire!!!!!!

Other compact combos:
2:1+1/2/1 Entomb + Reanimate, (???). (not an immediate win like with Shallow Grave, but often grabbing Iona or Griselbees or Blazing Archon is good enough)
4:2+2/2/0 Devoted Druid + Quillspike --> infinitely large creature with 0 chaff ... technically 2+3, but Druid's first tap effectively reduces the cost of Quillspike by 1.
4:3+1/2/5 Entomb+Necromancy, (Protean Hulk, Body Double, Reveillark, Carrion Feeder, Mogg Fanatic)

jamis

01-16-2014, 04:47 PM

Has anyone figured out a three card combo with Arbiter of the Ideal? Maybe something with Umbral Mantle?

Edit: 4 card combo: Arbiter of the Ideal + Umbral Mantle + Paradise Mantle + Power Artifact

Edit 2: That won't work, actually. Umbral Mantle gives the untap ability to the equipped creature, and Arbiter of the Ideal isn't an artifact. Training Grounds might be okay. Still not ideal because Arbiter of the Ideal only wants artifacts, creatures and lands in the deck.

FTW

01-18-2014, 12:24 AM

With any infinite mana combo it's easy. You can get infinite mana off several 2-card combos. Once you have infinite mana, you can use:
Aura of Dominion

OR

Aggravated Assault OR Freed From the Real OR Crab Umbra + anything that can repeatedly tap your creature (e.g. a cost like Opposition or Paradise Mantle)

Including the infinite mana, those are all 4 or 5 card combos.

Those are boring. Without infinite mana, here's a silly 5-card one:
Life and Limb + Xenograft + Jinx + Earthcraft LOLOLOLOLOLOL.

Another silly one:
Freed from the Real + Mycosynth Lattice + Grand Architect

The most compact one I can think of is 3 cards (including Sphinx):
Paradise Mantle + Pemmin's Aura/Freed from the Real

But the Jinx one is so much cooler.

Malchar

01-19-2014, 01:39 PM

The Lab Man version can also make a 5-mana 2-card pass-the-turn pile win:
5:3+2/2/3 doomsday + Gitaxian Probe, (Gitaxian Probe, Mental Note, Laboratory Maniac, Squire, Unearth).
I'd argue it is strictly superior to all other pass-the-turn piles, not only because it beats even 4 Leyline of Sanctity + Gaddock Teeg + infinite life, but because Squire!!!!!!

If you use Squire then they can Misdirection your Unearth onto it. Personally, I think that a nice Doomsday Specter would be the most swag card to mill.

MaximumC

01-24-2014, 10:35 PM

EDIT: Updated for more combo goodness!

New set, new combo.

Karametra's Favor + Puresight Merrow

When Favor ETB attached to Merrow, respond by digging for whatever you need by tapping and untapping Merrow. Then let the ETB triggered ability resolve, drawing a card. Congrats, you demonic tutored and now have total control over your topdeck. A safe bet might be to tutor a Thoughtseize to protect your combo. Other saucy targets include:

Get a Polymorph and have Emrakul left in your deck.
Get a Judge of Currents.
Get Erratic Explosion and have a fattie in the deck.
Get Mana Reflection for infinite mana.
Get Think Twice or Deep Analysis with a Laboratory Maniac left in your deck ftw
Get a Lim Duls Vault and to craft a topdeck with brainstorm and combo cards within dig distance.

And more I'm sure I have not considered!

Perplexing Sphinx + Strionic Resonator

You can copy the Sphinx' triggered ability with Resonator. This means the "exchange" effect will happen twice, and you will choose new targets for the spell that set off the Sphinx trigger each time. Assuming nothing else happens, you will end up controlling your Sphinx again and the enemy will control their spell, but you will have chosen its targets. Essentially, it means you get: "2, T: Sphinx becomes summoning sick. Change the targets of target spell."

Sunbond + Spike Feeder

This combo gives you infinite life and an infinitely large Spike Feeder. This works the same way as Spike Feeder's prior combo with Archangel of Thune, but is now one mana cheaper. It is also potentially faster, since the infinitely large dude can swing immediately upon dropping your second combo piece, with no other support. Using Archangel, your Feeder never gets bigger because each life gain only drops 1 counter instead of 2. The Angel gets huge, but she's sick initially. On the flip side, Archangel has flying so it's a better creature to be arbitrarily large.

Pain Seer + Aura of Domination

The only real advantage Pain Seer has over Bob is 1 point of toughness and the possibility that you can use the ability more than once in a turn. With these two cards working together, you can pay :1: to reveal your top card, lose life, and put it in your hand. Is 4 mana and two cards too much for on-demand Ad Naseum? We'll see...

Arbiter of the Ideal can work with the same idea as with Pain Seer, except now you're winning the game instead of drawing cards. Oh, and you're spending 8 mana to do it. A possibility in Tron, maybe...? Servant of Tryd works pretty well too, as drain life for 1 untap is pretty brutal in a ramp deck.

Aurelia, the Warleader + Felhide Spiritbinder

Attack with Aurelia and get a second combat step. Pay :1R: to Spiritbinder to copy Aurelia. Legend Rule away the original, keeping the copy, which then attacks. It is the first time the copy attacked this turn, so you get another attack step. Repeat. The upshot is you get :1R: : You get another attack step.

And here's some from Theros:

Karametra's Acolyte + Umbral Mantle

Acolyte joins the ranks of creatures who can tap for 3 or more mana. Once you can tap for 3, Mantle makes you an arbitrarily large Acoltye. If you can tap Acolyte for more than 3 mana, now you also are generating infinite green mana. You can use this to re-quip mantle to any creatures you have with tap abilities to make them all arbitrarily large.

Previously we had Elvish Archdruid, Bloom Tender, Wirewood Channeler, Priest of Titana[cards] and some others I'm sure I am neglecting. The only ones that are modern legal are the Tender and the Archduid. Like them, Acolyte requires you to hop through hoops in order to ramp it up, but unlike Tender, the hoop is very reasonable. There's enough overlap between Archdruid and Acolyte to make me think that an Elf deck focused on abusing Staff of Domination and Mantle might be a funny thing in Modern.

[cards]Elite Arcanist+Triton Tactics+Zhur-taa Druid

Cast Triton Tactics targeting Arcanist and Druid. With it still on the stack, use Druid for mana (pinging opponent) to activate Arcanist and copy the Tactics. Let the copy resolve and you're right back where you started. Repeat 20 times and a winnar is you.

MaximumC

02-11-2014, 01:58 PM

Here's another combo that had missed my attention earlier. I take no credit, DubDub over at TheManaDrain pointed it out to me:

Guttersnipe + Curiosity or Keen Sense or Ophidan's Eye

A Guttersnipe enchanted with one of these auras will cause every spell you cast to cantrip. Pretty sweet!

Zombie

02-11-2014, 02:11 PM

True-Name Nemesis.

PirateKing

02-11-2014, 03:00 PM

True-Name Nemesis.

Combos well with 3x Islands

MaximumC

02-11-2014, 03:32 PM

True-Name Nemesis.

C'mon man, this is a cool thread. Let's not poop it up with complaints about a card. I mean, TNN's got it's own thread on the front page of this subforum, for cryin out loud.

Zombie

02-11-2014, 03:57 PM

C'mon man, this is a cool thread. Let's not poop it up with complaints about a card. I mean, TNN's got it's own thread on the front page of this subforum, for cryin out loud.

It's not a complaint. It's a joke. A morbid one, but it's intended more as a joke nonetheless. The actual complaining is in the other threads and is far more wordy and nuanced :P

FTW

02-12-2014, 09:53 AM

It's not a complaint. It's a joke. A morbid one, but it's intended more as a joke nonetheless. The actual complaining is in the other threads and is far more wordy and nuanced :P

In the vein of hijacking this thread for jokes, here's a comPACT combo:

Hive Mind + Pact of the Titan

(nameless one)

02-12-2014, 10:16 AM

Here's a good one:

Stoneforge Mystic + Jitte + Humility!

Resolve SFM on turn two, Drop Jitte on turn three, resolve Humility on turn four then bam!

MaximumC

02-13-2014, 11:10 AM

Here's a good one:

Stoneforge Mystic + Jitte + Humility!

Resolve SFM on turn two, Drop Jitte on turn three, resolve Humility on turn four then bam!

Though I suspect you are trying to continue the thread-pooping, there is actually a fun rules interaction involving Humility that is not obvious and is a strong enough synergy to possibly be considered a combo. When you are trying to figure out a creature's power and toughness, you apply effects trying to change it in the following order (GOOD OL LAYER RULES):

613.3a Layer 7a: Effects from characteristic-defining abilities that define power and/or toughness
are applied. See rule 604.3.

613.3b Layer 7b: Effects that set power and/or toughness to a specific number or value are applied.

613.3c Layer 7c: Effects that modify power and/or toughness (but don’t set power and/or toughness
to a specific number or value) are applied.

613.3d Layer 7d: Power and/or toughness changes from counters are applied. See rule 121,
“Counters.”

613.3e Layer 7e: Effects that switch a creature’s power and toughness are applied. Such effects take
the value of power and apply it to the creature’s toughness, and take the value of toughness and
apply it to the creature’s power.
Example: A 1/3 creature is

This means that Humility will apply first, making everything a 1/1. After that, you would apply any effects giving the creature a +x/+y bonus, and apply counters.

The practical upshot of this is that if you are using Humility, all of your 1/1 dorks get the benefit of counters and anthem effects. So you could call this a combo:

Humility+Crusade

This makes all your dudes 2/2s and all your enemy's dudes 1/1. Good way to win with a token strategy, perhaps.

Poron

02-13-2014, 11:19 AM

I don't see what's Jitte so strong about if Humility is already in play. Isn't Batterskull 50 times stronger then?

Dreg

02-13-2014, 11:28 AM

With Jitte you can machinegun every creature that hits the table.

MaximumC

02-18-2014, 11:43 AM

A few more oldies but goodies:

Soul Echo + Gilder Bairn
Essentially doubles your life each turn. Fragile, but funny. A better idea is:

Delaying Shield + Temporal Adept (or similar bounce / flicker effect)
You want to bounce your Delay Damage at the end of each of your opponent's turns. Doing so will erase the tokens on it, and prevent you from ever taking any damage except during the window between when you bounce it and when you re-cast it next turn. I do not know if there is a way to flicker enchantments on command at instant speed.

Reality Acid + Venser, the Sojourner (or similar bounce / flicker effect)
This turns Reality Acid into a Vindicate on steroids. Pretty kick'n rad for a flicker deck. Works with bounce, too, but you don't want to pay 3 for your Vindicate each turn, do ya?

EDIT:

On the topic of Soul Echo...

Soul Echo + Ad Naseum

Here, Soul Echo acts as a poor man's Angel's Grace. It prevents you from dying while you draw out your whole library.

MaximumC

02-25-2014, 11:11 AM

Continuing my personal crusade to make this thread the end-all-be-all of combo compendiums, here are some fun combos mentioned over in the recently necro'd thread about cards with hidden potential. Welcome back to the light of day, d00ds:

Digeridoo + Artifical Evolution + Something big and bad
Change the text of Doo to whatever you like. Eldrazi or Demon might be a good choice.

Pithing Needle + Aether Storm
Name Storm with the Needle and now your opponent cannot pay 4 life to destroy it. Locks your opponent out of casting creatures.

PirateKing

02-25-2014, 11:36 AM

Pithing Needle + Aether Storm
Name Storm with the Needle and now your opponent cannot pay 4 life to destroy it. Locks your opponent out of casting creatures.

Note that you have to play the Needle first, otherwise the opponent can just pay 4 life in response to the Needle.

Megadeus

02-25-2014, 12:21 PM

Humility + Night of Soul's Betrayal

Hooray 4 mana Enchantments!

TsumiBand

02-25-2014, 12:23 PM

Pithing Needle + Aether Storm
Name Storm with the Needle and now your opponent cannot pay 4 life to destroy it. Locks your opponent out of casting creatures.

Nice.

I always thought a deck that could legitimately rock Pithing Needle/Phyrexian Revoker alongside cards like Suppression Field to cripple their fetchable manabase, with dumb stuff that have 'activated drawbacks' like Knight of the Holy Nimbus or something would be hi-larious.

MaximumC

02-25-2014, 12:40 PM

Nice.

I always thought a deck that could legitimately rock Pithing Needle/Phyrexian Revoker alongside cards like Suppression Field to cripple their fetchable manabase, with dumb stuff that have 'activated drawbacks' like Knight of the Holy Nimbus or something would be hi-larious.

Funny, yes, but it suffers from the same flaw as playing with Karoo lands and Amulet of Vigor -- you should not make your deck out of bad cards that become not bad if and only if you assemble your combo!

DragoFireheart

02-25-2014, 12:57 PM

Humility + Night of Soul's Betrayal

Hooray 4 mana Enchantments!

Makes creatures go away forever. Back it up with disruption and you can win with something stupid like Aladdin's Ring. The combo is even immune to Abrupt Decay!

Note that Night of Souls' Betrayal plays nice with Rest in Peace. Makes Goyfs and Geese go away forever.

Megadeus

02-25-2014, 12:59 PM

Makes creatures go away forever. Back it up with disruption and you can win with something stupid like Aladdin's Ring. The combo is even immune to Abrupt Decay!

I think my win condition would be like RIP/Helm lol. Etutor would fucking dominate in this deck

DragoFireheart

02-25-2014, 01:08 PM

I think my win condition would be like RIP/Helm lol. Etutor would fucking dominate in this deck

Enlightened Tutor

Helm of Obedience
Rest in Peace
Night of Souls' Betrayal
Humility
Energy Field
Moat
Sensei's Divining Top
Counterbalance

Jace, The Mind Sculptor
Liliana of the Veil
Terminus
Swords to Plowshares
Brainstorm
Force of Will
Thoughtseize

I call it "Bitch Ur World" Control.

Megadeus

02-25-2014, 01:26 PM

Broke the format.

ahg113

02-25-2014, 01:38 PM

Broke the format.

But it dies to Telemin Performance. I don't think it's that good.

Lili +1 & Energy Field is a non-bo. Let it rain (although I prefer snow).

TsumiBand

02-25-2014, 01:41 PM

Funny, yes, but it suffers from the same flaw as playing with Karoo lands and Amulet of Vigor -- you should not make your deck out of bad cards that become not bad if and only if you assemble your combo!

Are you suggesting that Aether Storm is more playable than Suppression Field? :D
I know SF and KotHN are not amaze balls.

sent from phone, don't be a dick

DragoFireheart

02-25-2014, 01:48 PM

Lili +1 & Energy Field is a non-bo. Let it rain (although I prefer snow).

You don't have to use her ability if you by some strange reason end up in this situation. Wait for that RiP.

ahg113

02-25-2014, 01:51 PM

You don't have to use her ability if you by some strange reason end up in this situation. Wait for that RiP.

You ducked the Telemin Performance scenario, because you know I have you dead to rights. Exactly.

Edit: I might've mentioned it before but...

Goblin Trenches + Oath of Lieges/Land Tax - as long as your opponent has played at least 2 lands (so maybe discount Belcher, Manaless Dredge and Oops all Spells) you can always search for land to put into play, thinning your deck, getting shuffles, and making dorks.

I have no idea how this is supposed to win a game over the long haul, but damned if I haven't tried.

DragoFireheart

02-25-2014, 02:02 PM

You ducked the Telemin Performance scenario, because you know I have you dead to rights. Exactly.

There's no way I could argue the power of Telemin Performance. Resistance is futile.

Megadeus

02-25-2014, 03:50 PM

But it dies to Telemin Performance. I don't think it's that good.

Lili +1 & Energy Field is a non-bo. Let it rain (although I prefer snow).

With counterbalance trigger on the stack, cast e tutor fetching up curse of deaths hold. Duh.

FTW

03-12-2014, 02:28 PM

With counterbalance trigger on the stack, cast e tutor fetching up curse of deaths hold. Duh.

Research for Phage the Untouchable.

MaximumC

03-21-2014, 12:17 AM

Tyrio

03-21-2014, 02:20 AM

I got some more awesomesauce for this thread.

So you got either Viscid Lemures or the significantly cuter Hyalopterous Lemure in play. Hopefully you also have an unblockable creature sitting around, too. Activate the ability a million times. Now cast Ichor Explosion or Call for Blood and sack a Lemure to give the rest of your creatures -(-1,000,000) / - (-1,000,000) until end of turn. Swing with that unblockable dude for the win!

P.S. I'm not sure this works, but math says it should. Also, I have no idea what Disciple of Bolas does when faced with a -1,000,000/1 creature.

P.P.S. Yes, yes, things are easier with Hopping Automoton and Magical Hacker, but that requires going into the Un-sets.

107.1b Most of the time, the Magic game uses only positive numbers and zero. You can't choose a negative number, deal negative damage, gain negative life, and so on. However, it's possible for a game value, such as a creature's power, to be less than zero. If a calculation or comparison needs to use a negative value, it does so. If a calculation that would determine the result of an effect yields a negative number, zero is used instead, unless that effect sets a player's life total to a specific value, doubles a player's life total, sets a creature's power or toughness to a specific value, or otherwise modifies a creature's power or toughness.

FTW

03-21-2014, 01:30 PM

If a calculation that would determine the result of an effect yields a negative number, zero is used instead, unless ... sets a creature's power or toughness to a specific value, or otherwise modifies a creature's power or toughness.

If P/T modifications allow for negative values and the "negative --> zero" only happens when determining the result of an effect, not intermediate calculations, doesn't that mean the combo would work, because creatures can have negative power and the result is a positive number? I thought it wouldn't (it would count as 0), but a literal interpretation of that rule seems to suggest otherwise.

Technics

03-21-2014, 03:11 PM

I would THINK that the result is the value of X, in which case you calculate X, find it is negative, adjust it to 0, then THEN apply the -x/-x. You don't get to take the X as a negative value, and then apply the -X/-X first, and consider that effect as your result.

TsumiBand

03-21-2014, 07:55 PM

Technics

03-22-2014, 01:22 AM

If one Google searches for "tabak 'negative power' mtg" one finds a handful of rulings which confirm that for the proposes of calculating the actual power of creatures when negative numbers apply, they work as you would expect; Feral Animist or Chameleon Colossus would, if burdened with negative power, have twice that much negative power when their effects resolve.
The 'negative as zero' rule only occurs when the power is actively 'doing work' instead of being passively referenced. So, while a creature with -40 power does not deal negative damage, it would work exceptionally well with Call for Blood.

sent from phone, don't be a dick

http://blogs.magicjudges.org/rulestips/2012/10/wild-beastmaster-can-kill-your-other-creatures-if-it-has-negative-power-when-its-ability-resolves/

Looks like this does work. Asking some judges for an official ruling just to be sure, but that seems like it's pretty official.

MaximumC

03-22-2014, 02:52 PM

I find it really interesting that Magic only allows negative numbers to be "applied" to the game state in four situations:

1. Setting a life total
2. Doubles a life total
3. Sets power / toughness
4. Modifies power / toughness

I get how you can't destroy a negative number of permanents or draw a negative number of cards. But what does the game mean when it says you are "doubling" a life total using a negative value...? Doesn't doubling imply we're working with positive 2 here?

EDIT: I think this also means that hitting a -1,000,000 / 2 creature with Disciple of Bolas results in you drawing 0 cards and losing a million life. GG

FTW

03-22-2014, 03:22 PM

I get how you can't destroy a negative number of permanents or draw a negative number of cards. But what does the game mean when it says you are "doubling" a life total using a negative value...? Doesn't doubling imply we're working with positive 2 here?

Suppose you have Platinum Angel out and your life total is -10. If an effect resolves that doubles your life total, then your life would become -10*2=-20. That's still using positive 2 but can yield a negative number, resulting in life loss instead of life gain. Pretty corner case.

TsumiBand

03-22-2014, 03:49 PM

Yeah it is weird. I guess it's like a pointer, kind of?? This is why I don't write C code, because pointers kind of challenge my understanding of everything (not really, I just have no idea when to use them and when not to, apart from passing-by-reference, but that's … me off on a tilt)

Basically it seems like the game tries to make sure you can only do things which can actually be done with negative numbers. So, yeah, if you're destroying -2 permanents, that's not analogous to any other kind of game action - the opposite of destroying a permanent is not "returning a permanent" from the graveyard or exile or anything else. I cannot assign -2 damage to something; there's prevention, and there's counter distribution, and there's a bunch of effects which remove damage or bolster damage or what-have-you, but there is not a way to realistically deal truly negative damage. And really, the opposite of drawing cards is not discarding; you cannot actually perform an action which is the functional equivalent of drawing negative cards.

A situation where something would lose or gain power, toughness, or life however -- these are all easily translated into "doable" things. I can gain -2 life because I can represent 20 + (-2).

I wonder how this jives with triggered abilities. If I gain negative life, does my Ajani's Pridemate trigger? Or does the game turn this event into "player lost X life" for the purposes of triggers, etc? The rules do not seem to specify, or I have simply not seen an answer. If "player gains -1 life' is a gain-life trigger, I wonder if there is something weirdly exploitable there. Hmm.

EDIT -- according to my local Judge/friend 'negative life gain' will not trigger Ajani's Pridemate because the game sees a net loss of life and that is what matters. Makes sense.

FTW

03-23-2014, 01:24 PM

EDIT -- according to my local Judge/friend 'negative life gain' will not trigger Ajani's Pridemate because the game sees a net loss of life and that is what matters. Makes sense.

Yeah those triggers look at the net result, not the wording of the effect. So if you double your (positive) life total, Pridemate sees that as a life gain even though the card doesn't explicitly say "gain _ life".

Sadly this doesn't apply to +1/+1 counters, since -1/-1 counters are a different object. I've always wanted to make a Kalonian Hydra double the number of -1/-1 counters on it or somehow remove its own +1/+1 counters.

MaximumC

03-24-2014, 12:48 PM

Suppose you have Platinum Angel out and your life total is -10. If an effect resolves that doubles your life total, then your life would become -10*2=-20. That's still using positive 2 but can yield a negative number, resulting in life loss instead of life gain. Pretty corner case.

Hm. The way I read the rule, any multiplier other than 2 falls outside this exception, and so the result is translated into positive terms.

So, for example, if I have a Platinum Angel out at -10 life, and I resolve an effect which TRIPLES my life total, then 107 would leave me with POSITIVE 30 life. I think. Of course, this assumes they don't simply modify the rules once they print a card that triples life totals. This isn't totally wacky; they've dabbled in multiplication before. See: that legendary wurm with devour X from Planechase.

If they ever printed something that did multiply your life and didn't change the rules, then Ad Naseum + Angel's Grace + Martyrs of Korlis may get a new buddy.

TsumiBand

03-24-2014, 12:51 PM

The only other one i can think of is Burn at the Stake which is 'three times the number of creatures' so it can't produce a negative. Interesting that 'doubling' has a distinction from 'multiplying'.

sent from phone, don't be a dick

rufus

03-29-2014, 01:05 AM

...Suppose you have Platinum Angel out and your life total is -10. If an effect resolves that doubles your life total, then your life would become -10*2=-20. That's still using positive 2 but can yield a negative number, resulting in life loss instead of life gain. Pretty corner case.

Angel's Grace+Ad Nauseam -> Death's Shadow+Fling is almost a sensible way to win.

... Interesting that 'doubling' has a distinction from 'multiplying'.

There's no multiplying in magic.

FTW

03-29-2014, 02:20 AM

There's no multiplying in magic.

Tell that to Rhys the Redeemed EDH.

MaximumC

03-29-2014, 02:44 AM

Angel's Grace+Ad Nauseam -> Death's Shadow+Fling is almost a sensible way to win.

There's no multiplying in magic.

There's no rule against it, they've just never printed "multiply" as a word on a card. Plenty of cards actually require you to do multiplication (the Devour general from the last Planechase, for example.

TsumiBand

03-29-2014, 08:19 AM

There's no multiplying in magic.

There are at least two cards which call for a 3x multiplier.

Burn at the Stake
Martyr of Sands

Martyr of Sands actually has seen play, if not in Legacy -- Modern Soul Sisters did (maybe does) use this card to further its plan.

There are other cards that use the phrase "two times" instead of "double" which I don't know if their verbiage renders them "multiplication" instead of "doubling", but w/e. Cards like Debt to the Deathless.

Other cards implicitly multiply; for example any Devour creature with a number greater than 1 does say "twice that many/three times that many/X times that many", notably Thunder-Thrash Elder and Thromok the Insatiable. Creatures with Amplify have a similar effect but I don't think they are strictly multiplying; they say "put X +1/+1 counters on -this- for each -type- card you reveal".

sent from phone, don't be a dick

Barook

04-02-2014, 04:48 PM

I wonder if Sakura-Tribe Scout would be any good with Quirion Ranger. It seems to be able to generate silly amounts of mana, especially with Lotus Cobra involved. Probably not Legacy-playable, though.

Edit: Might be pretty silly in Modern with Scryb Ranger, though.

Koby

04-02-2014, 05:23 PM

Come'on, let's use some real Skyshroud Ranger here. Same thing, but Elf!

Barook

04-02-2014, 05:54 PM

Come'on, let's use some real Skyshroud Ranger here. Same thing, but Elf!
Skyshroud Ranger has the sorcery speed limitation while Sakura-Tribe Scout doesn't. Most notably relevant when you want to repeat the combo on your opponent's turn.

Koby

04-02-2014, 06:00 PM

Skyshroud Ranger has the sorcery speed limitation while Sakura-Tribe Scout doesn't. Most notably relevant when you want to repeat the combo on your opponent's turn.

Oh man that sucks totally missed that part.

Barook

04-05-2014, 04:28 PM

Oh man that sucks totally missed that part.
I'm not sure whether or not it's worth it. If you aren't looking for the specific creature type, Scout is strictly better.

I'm currently working on a GW Hatebear build for Modern since I found a list that resembles Maverick a bit more than the traditional hatebear lists. The Loam lock is fun, but when you're limited to a single land drop per round and you're stuck with subpar Strip Mine knock-offs, it's going to take a while to get the lock going. Hence throwing in the combo to speed things up a bit once you get Loam. Let's see how it goes.

bakofried

04-05-2014, 11:46 PM

Please let us know if something works. I can only find modern and standard around here.

Poron

04-06-2014, 09:22 AM

Horn of Greed makes a combo of it

Barook

04-11-2014, 05:50 PM

Please let us know if something works. I can only find modern and standard around here.
Was rather meh.

I'm toying with Time of Need now. I'm testing Thalia, Teeg, Brimaz, Hokori, Kataki, Mangara and Sigarda as legends right now. Anything else I should consider? Polukranos seems a tad bid expensive for what it does.

And just for funsies, Steelshaper's Gift + SoFaI + SoLaS + Batterskull because - why not?

MaximumC

05-01-2014, 06:04 PM

We have a new set, and so we have some new combos!

Thethmos High Priest + Darkblast

Start with Priest in play and Darkblast in hand. Target priest with Darkblast and reanimate a small creature (Bob?) from the yard. Then dredge for the turn, probably putting another dork in your graveyard, and cast Darkblast again to return a second creature. In this way you’ll churn out a pair of 2cc dudes each turn for BB.

You can get more silly depending on what those dorks are. Elvish Visionary and similar cards give you more dredges, provided you have pumped your Priest somehow to withstand the darkblasts.

Riptide Chimera + Mystic Remora

Or anything with cumulative upkeep, really. Chimera shines in a way that his artifact-bouncing jellyfish cousin never did because cumulative upkeep exists. He gets around it in a big way! Remora becomes U to maintain for the rest of the game. Dystopia crushes decks that rely on green or white permanents. Elephant Grass destroys black decks, and Energy Storm helps against Burn, although during the window when you bounce it they can still hit you with instant-speed spells.

Also props to Act of Authority, which exiles an artifact or enchantment for 1WW each turn!

Sage of Hours + Varolz, the Scar-Striped + Fauna Shaman or Survival of the Fittest + Phyrexian Drednought

This one isn’t as bad as it seems at first blush. You really just need Shaman or Survival and two creatures in your hand to assemble the rest. Surivial pitches two somethings to get Dreadnought and Varolz in your hand. You pitch Dreadnought to get Sage, then cast Varolz and Sage. Scavenge the Dreadnought onto your Sage and remove the counters for two extra turns. During those two turns, you just have to survival up another Nought in the yard to keep going - probably not too hard to do with two free turns. With a full playset of Noghts, we’re talking 8 extra turns, many of them with a 13/13 beater.

Goyf can do a fairly decent Nought impression here, too, but you’re only going to get one free turn off of scavenging him.

Thassa’s Ire + anything that can tap for 5 or more mana.

There’s not many cards that fit the bill here; a fully loaded Bloom Tender[/card] is one of them. Two market festivals on an animated land will do it, too. There are simply easier ways to get infinite mana than this, but as another untap effect that does not require tapping, Ire should always be in consideration for those kind of combos.

[cards]Master of the Feast + Notion Thief

Kinda self explanatory. Turns Master’s disadvantage into an advantage. If only Master did not suck so hard on its own...

Kruphix’ Insight + Animate Dead or Dance of the Dead or Necromancy + fattie

Insight sets you up in a big way for an animate dead effect. It lets you bin the fattie and then draw into an animate spell, meaning you are getting a fattie from the top 6 cards of your library into play for 5 mana total.

Disciple of Deceit + Fatestitcher

I’m not quite sure how to break this yet, but it sure as heck seems doable. It’s a tutor effect that interacts strongly with untap effects, which are already broken as heck anyway.

So, let’s assume you manage to get Disciple active, a fatestitcher in hand, and at least one other way to untap a creature floating around. Pitch the Fatestitcher to get another stitcher. Pay U to get Stitcher onto the battlefield. Go to attack step, tapping Disciple, and use first Stitcher to untap Disciple, pitching fatestitcher to get Armed // Dangerous. Pay U to Unearth fatestitcher no. 2 and untap disciple a second time to pitch Armed to go get Illusionist’s Bracers. Cast and equip bracers on a Fatestitcher, and get him untapped somehow. Now you have infinite triggers of Disciple and infinite mana. One imagines you could find a way to win from here.

Alternatively you have:

Disciple of Deceit + Aura of Dominion

Which allows you to just get all the things. By using a few strategically placed split cards, it should be trivial to assemble cheap combos this way like Vault+Key, Painter+Stone, Helm+RiP, etc.

rufus

05-07-2014, 01:03 AM

....

Disciple of Deceit + Aura of Dominion

Which allows you to just get all the things. By using a few strategically placed split cards, it should be trivial to assemble cheap combos this way like Vault+Key, Painter+Stone, Helm+RiP, etc.

In a deck with lots of fast mana, Pain Seer + Aura of Dominion is a sort of second-rate Ad Nauseam, so you can assemble that, and then storm out. (I doubt it's particularly viable though.)

ajfirecracker

06-07-2014, 12:27 AM

I think this is the current most efficient Doomsday combo:

[TOP]
Ideas Unbound
Lion's Eye Diamond
Street Wraith
Call to the Netherworld
Laboratory Maniac
[BOTTOM]

Draw Ideas Unbound, cast it, Play LED, Cycle Street Wraith, in response crack LED for UUU, Street Wraith returns to hand, use your LED mana to cast Maniac, cycle Street Wraith again for the win.

In total, this requires Doomsday + any draw effect from hand (such as a Gitaxian Probe, another cantrip, or passing the turn) and UU (as well as 4+ life post-Doomsday).

This is more strenuous on the life total than other Doomsday combos but it is also the most efficient in terms of extra draws and mana needed.

Total cards required from hand: 1 (Doomsday)
Total mana required: 5 (UUBBB for Doomsday + Ideas Unbound)
Total "dead" cards required in deck: 3 - LED, Call to the Netherworld, and Laboratory Maniac (I believe Street Wraith and Ideas Unbound are justifiable in general, and LED might also be justifiable in general in order to help cast Doomsday)

I believe this is the only Doomsday pile that requires only a single draw (to access Ideas Unbound) and only two mana (to cast Ideas Unbound).

MaximumC

07-18-2014, 02:24 PM

This thread has been criminally under-updated. C'mon people, keep it going! I'll contribute with the combos from our new sets, Conspiracy and M15.

Brago, King Eternal + Aurelia, the Warleader

Attack with both. Aurelia triggers, untapping Brago and giving you an extra combat step. If Brago gets in for damage, then blink Aurelia. She returns as a new creature and has no memory that she attacked previously. Rinse and repeat for infinite attack steps. Of course, if you're getting in with two expensive fliers, did you really need infinite combat steps anyway? Eh.

Grenzo, Dungeon Warden + Amass the Components, Ancient Stirrings, Anurid Scavenger, anything with Scry or Cascade.

I dont know if this is really a combo exactly, but Genzo plays very nicely with effects that put things on the bottom of your library. Using Ancient Stirrings to stack a whole bunch of dorks on the bottom lets you live the dream of spamming them all out with 2 colorless per dork.

Marchesa, the Black Rose + Triskeleon

So Trike is a 1/1 with 3 counters on it. Remove 2 counters to have Trike shoot itself dead. It will return to the battlefield. Repeat for infinite ETB triggers. Unlike Trike's combo with Mike, this doesn't win the game immediately, sadly.

Marchesa, the Black Rose + Undying

Again, pretty obvious, but Marchesa allows any creature with undying (either naturally or in conjunction with Mike) to come back to the battlefield as much as you like.

And then we have M15:

Boonweaver Giant + Eldrazi Conscription

Boonweaver is just a slightly larger version of another card from Ravnica that has the effect of letting you go fetch a singleton Conscription from your deck. He's probably worse at this than his predecessor, because you'd rather have a 6 drop 12/12 than a 7 drop 14/14, but he's an option to enable this combo in EDH I guess.

Hushwing Gryff + Phyrexian Drednought or any of the Hunted creatures.

Again, not a big surprise, but Gryff combos with cards with negative ETB triggers just like Topor Orb.

Spirt Bonds + Shrieking Drake

This is kind of a lame combo, but hey... you can keep recasting Drake, bouncing it to itself, to make as many 1/1 Sprit tokens as you like for UW a pop.

Jalira, Master Polymorphist + tokens + Blightsteel Colossus

Jalira does not hit herself - it only hits non-legendary creatures - so she does a perfect impression of Polymorph in decks that want to use this kind of combo.

Jorubai Murk Lurker + Volcano Hellion

So it turns out that there are actually very few ways to give a creature lifelink at instant speed. Alabaster Mage,, Azorius Charm, Cruel Feeding, etc. Doing so with Volcano Hellion allows you to gain infinite life. You put the ETB on the stack with X = 1,000,000 or whatever, targeting some creature or other (probably the Hellion itself so you can fizzle the ability if they respond somehow). Then you keep priority and give Hellion lifelink before it resolves. Viola - you simultaneously lose X life and gain 2X life. Nice. Murk Lurker is in the totally wrong colors for this trick, but if you want to run this combo in Grixis - NOW YOU CAN.

Necromancer's Stockpile + Gravecrawler

Grats on the two zombies for 1BB.

Ob Nixilis, Unshackled + Maulen of the Mornsong

Grats on your million mana win condition.

Aggressive Mining + Venser, the Sojourner

Grants on your million mana draw engine.

Kurkesh, Onakke Ancient + Time Vault

Does Rings of Brighthearth do a thing? Then Kurkesh can do that thing, too. If you give up one turn to untap Vault, for example, Kurkesh ensures you take all the turns thereafter. Unlike Rings, however, he doesn't go infinite with Monolith because he costs red. Oh well. EDH?

Carnivorous Moss-Beast + infinite mana

This is another outlet for infinite mana. Here, infinite mana equals infinite Moss-Beast. These kind of win-the-game mana sinks are usually worth noting for EDH purposes if nothing else.

Hornet Nest + Earthquake or similar cards.

Nest is actually the second iteration of this kind of card. They previously did it with Sabre Ants, but the card was more expensive and the resulting creatures were less powerful. They both share one fatal flaw; the resulting creatures only have one toughness, meaning they croak to repeatable effects like Pyrohemia or Pesilence. That's a shame, because those are the only realistic ways this ability is going to see play. Well, that or Shivan Meteor, lol.

Yisan, the Wanderer Bard + Fierce Empath + Elvish Piper

Aight, so starting on turn five or six you can drop fatties. Pretty bad.

Yisan, the Wanderer Bard + Viscera Seer + Melira, Sylvok Outcast + Kitchen Finks

Three turns after casting Yisan and having your opponent ignore it, you win. Congrats.

Thats all that I noticed that was worth mentioning.

apple713

12-02-2014, 03:01 AM

delaying shield + riptide chimera

MaximumC

12-04-2014, 02:29 PM

delaying shield + riptide chimera

Thats fine and all, but Solitary Confinement is probably just better than Delaying Shield.

P.S. Someone needs to update this thread with new combos from the new printings!

(nameless one)

12-04-2014, 09:53 PM

MaximumC

12-05-2014, 02:18 PM

I wanted to build an all common/uncommon Simic EDH deck that revolves around card combos. So far, I have Defender Ramp (creatures that produce multiple mana and a means to untap them and Ghostly Flicker based)

Any ideas for this would be great!

I would go with either Edric or Mormir Vig and make yourself Legacy Elves, basically. Most of the components of that deck are common or uncommon anyway, so getting to a point where untap effects like Pemmin's Aura or Umbral Mantle go infinite should not be too challenging.

TsumiBand

12-05-2014, 02:43 PM

Richard Cheese

12-05-2014, 03:43 PM

@Grenzo - I know this is a bad bad card, but in my search for "stack the bottom of your library" tech I came across Stomping Slabs. I don't even care if Slabs never deals 7; it throws the top 7 to the bottom in any order, and so Grenzo can go to work. For that matter, Erratic Explosion would do similar, but it could just whiff and actually deal damage on the first card or three. :/

@Ob-Nix Unshackled - So, no love for Fertilid? :(

One thing I know would just be *awful* but I'd love to do in a casual deck - Glittering Lion/Lynx/Knight of the Holy Nimbus/any lousy dude with "An opponent may pay :x: to dick you over" + Suppression Field. The idea being that Suppression Field is only good for you, and only bad for them because they probably thought they could play equipment or fetchlands or something. Heh.

Wouldn't Dig Through Time just be better with Grenzo? Explosion is going to get you at most one creature on bottom, and Slabs does completely nothing on it's own. Granted it's a third color, but it's the color Blue, so who cares how many other colors there are amirite!??!

You could also do tricky things with Bloodbraid Elf and high-costed guys, but that "less than or equal to" clause probably ruins it unless you're getting something cute like Gigantomancer.

MaximumC

12-05-2014, 03:54 PM

Granted it's a third color, but it's the color Blue, so who cares how many other colors there are amirite!??!

You're not wrong, anyway. There's a remarkably short list of cards that are useful on their own and are also good with Grenzo. Here's all the cards putting stuff on your bottom:

http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Search/Default.aspx?text=+[%22on%20the%20bottom%20of%20your%20library%22]

Unless you're going for broke with, like, Aethermage's Touch into Grislebrand or some nonsense, most of these cards suffer from being crap on their own. I think the only possibilities for legitimate Grenzo food are:

1. Ancient Stirrings (for the three color Grenzo affinity that is tearing up the tourney scene)
2. Augury Owl (works with Grenzo as well as setting Grenzo up. CHAIN DAT GRENZO)
3. Bow of Nylea (fine card with no home that has a great Soldevi Digger effect for Grenzy)
4. Commune with Nature (get dat Grenzo and then set him up. TECH)
5. Condescend (Assuming you didnt tap out when you Grenzo'd, you get to stop removal AND set him up)
6. Cream of the Crop (Make Grenzo big, ensure Grenzo has food, all for the cost of paying 1G on a do-nothing!)
7. Dig through Time (best, no question)
8. Dream Cache (Looking at 3 cards for 3 mana isn't terrible. Now that I read this card again, it looks like Brainstorm + Fetch for 2 more mana and one less card. Why is this not played...?)

And then I lost interest and stopped reading cards on page 3 or so. Whatever, these cards all combo with Grenzo.

TsumiBand

12-06-2014, 07:31 AM

Right right, Dig Through Time. I guess my original search was because EDH, so :/ That DTT ain't so hot in mono-Rakdos, nawmean?

rufus

12-06-2014, 11:12 AM

Right right, Dig Through Time. I guess my original search was because EDH, so :/ That DTT ain't so hot in mono-Rakdos, nawmean?
There's also hideaway stuff. Popping Deranged Hermit out with grenzo is likely to work Mosswort Bridge,Spinerock Knoll or Windbrisk Heights.

TsumiBand

12-06-2014, 12:24 PM

It's bad, but being a Goblin Rogue, Grenzo would trigger Thieves' Fortune. Hmmm, cheat a creature into play for :2::u:, sounds familiar... I've heard this one before...

In line with other bad tribal synergy, Cloak and Dagger makes Grenzo bigger and gives it shroud. In case you were really looking for a way to keep Grenzo safe instead of like, doing good things, I guess.

MaximumC

12-07-2014, 02:03 PM

Er, yeah, I'm not sure you're going to be casting Grenzo for X = 13 so you can cheat out Emrakul.

MaximumC

03-18-2015, 02:44 PM

Really, gentlemen? No updates since Khans? We need to get on the game here and keep making this the end-all be-all source for combos in Magic. Starting with Fate Reforged, lets update up in dis.

Fate Reforged Combo Review
---------------------------------

This is the set of OPTIONS. So many modular cards. So many powerful cards with uses that can serve as cogs in a combo machine but be useful on their own when you're not comboing. Once of my favorite sets in a long time! There are LOTS of combos here.

Citadel Siege + Royal Assassin

Lol, I keed.

Jeskai Barricade + Fiend Hunter

Fiend Hunter was the last of the Oblivion Ring dudes to be printed in a way that you could abuse. You could always bounce Hunter in response to his ETB ability to exile something for good, but usually that requires dipping into Blue. White usually doesn't have good instant-speed bounce. Well, Barricade certainly fits the bill here. If you're looking to enable this abuse in your mono-white deck, then, well, here ya go!

Lightform, et al. + Phyrexian Dreadnought/Hunted Horror, etc

Manifesting a dude with a very cheap casting cost and a horrible ETB ability is very good. Of all of the mainfest cards, probably Cloudform, Reality Shift, and Master of the Unseen are the best. The former because it gives your creature evasion and Hexproof (SRSLY), the middle because it can be used offensively, and the latter because you can do it repeatedly. Speaking of...

Mastery of the Unseen + Repeal / Vedalken Mastermind

If you manifest something you want in your hand, like a spell, Remand lets you do that and draw a card for U and Mastermind gets it in your hand for U. Both of these, and similar effects, essentially make your Mastery into a Jademeadye Tome, if you need that, and a 2/2 generator when you do not.

Soulfire Grand Master + Time Walk, et al

Any card that gives you an extra turn goes infinite with Soulfire Grand Master if you swing the extra 4 mana each turn, although none is as cheap as the original. Savor the Moment and Stitch in Time come close, but Stitch can whiff hilariously and Savor requires you to generate 7 mana without an untap step; not impossible, but pretty darn close to it.

Marang River Prowler + Intruder Alarm + Birds of Paradise, Noble Hierarch, Bloom Tender, etc

As long as you've got the ability to make 2U from your mana dorks, you can recur Prowler infinitely. His return condition is kind of like Gravecrawler, since most mana dorks that will let you keep getting mana also happen to be green. You need to mix in some kind of ETB or LTB trigger effect to do anything with this, or you can generate infinite mana if you have more than 2U in mana generating dorks.

Shu Yun, the Silent Tempest + Brute Force, Reckless Charge

This crosses the line from synergy into combo due to how overwhelmingly powerful the effect is, I think. A single Brute Force or Charge, plus RR, will give a creature +6 to its attack. Do this on Shu himself and he deals 12 damage in a single hit; enough to end the game if you've been doing other nonsense in some kind of aggro deck. Somehow doing this in a Noble Fish deck on a Cold-Eyed Selkie seems amazing and like it will never happen.

Orc Sureshot + Shrieking Drake and cards like it.

Sureshot lets you machine gun your opponent's creatures as long as you have a self-bouncer. Absent cost-reducing shenanigans like Animar, Drake is your best go-to card to abuse with this.

Soulflater + Drogskol Reaver

Soulflayer by itself is pretty humdrum, but if you can manage to give it Double Strike, evasion, and protection, we're talking a legitimate powerhouse finisher. The best you can do at the moment is probably Drogskul Reaver, who at least gets you 8 damage in the air. Add Hexproof and he's the kind of card that finishes Legacy games.

Tasigur, the Golden Fang + Infinite Mana

So this card is pretty well understood, but basically if you get an infinite mana combo going with Tasigur you can mill your entire deck and then put all your non-land cards in your hand. From there, you can cast whatever and keep recurring it for a win. This makes Tasigur a kill condition in Bomberman, Worldgorger Dragon, and anything else that can generate infinite mana as a win condition. Far better than a Spellbomb in this regard.

Alesha, Who Smiles at Death + Master of Cruelties

Well documented elsewhere, so let's record it here for completeness' sake. Attack with Alesha against an empty board and recur your Master. He is put into play attacking, overcoming his initial limitation, and then will trigger when no blockers are declared, reducing your opponent's life to 1. Alesha then finishes the job.

Humble Defector + Homeward Path

Obvious combo is obvious.

Humble Defector + Untap effects

Activate defector and then, WITHOUT LETTING ITS ABILITY RESOLVE, untap him. Congratulations, you now get to activate him again. Rinse and repeat as often as you can before finally letting it resolve. You'll draw two cards each time the ability resolves, but once he's been handed to your opponent the rest of the change control effects will be ignored.

Outpost Seige + Infinite ETB/LTB effects

Seige is a fantastic way to win with combos that spam creatures in and out of the battlefield, like Sharuum+Scuplting Steel or whatever. If you're not combing out, then you're just drawin cards. Sounds good!

Shaman of the Great Hunt + Infinite Mana

Like Tasigur, this guy draws your deck if you've got infinite mana. Five color Elves in EDH is a home for this, for example. As a 4/2 with haste, he gives you a decent card to toy with even when you're not comboing.

Temur Sabertooth + Fiend Hunter, etc

Another instant-speed bounce effect in a color that does not usually get them, opening the door to more trigger abuse shenanigans. And Temur is even in Animar's colors, too! Whoo hoo!

Up later: Dragons of Tarkir!

TsumiBand

03-18-2015, 04:41 PM

@ Shu Yun

Do spells like Invigorate, Blazing Shoal, or other free-ish pump spells matter a darn?

Barook

03-18-2015, 06:57 PM

Mastery of the Unseen + Remand / Vedalken Mastermind

If you manifest something you want in your hand, like a spell, Remand lets you do that and draw a card for U and Mastermind gets it in your hand for U. Both of these, and similar effects, essentially make your Mastery into a Jademeadye Tome, if you need that, and a 2/2 generator when you do not.
I guess you're talking about Repeal since Remand obviously doesn't work here.

MaximumC

03-19-2015, 11:08 AM

@ Shu Yun

Do spells like Invigorate, Blazing Shoal, or other free-ish pump spells matter a darn?

Yeah, actually, Shoal on a sufficiently high casting cost pitch card is game over with Shun like it is with any other double striker or infector. To hit for lethal with Shun you only need to pitch a card with a CC of 6. (3 base + 1 prowess + 6 shoal = 10 x 2 = 20).

I guess you're talking about Repeal since Remand obviously doesn't work here.

Yup. Fixed.

MaximumC

03-19-2015, 03:09 PM

Dragons of Tarkir
----------------------

This set is considerably less complex than Fate Reforged, which means far less combo potential. Even fun cards like Mirror Mockery are designed in such a way there are not powerful combos -- at least that I'm seeing -- other than just "goes well with ETB effects." Not as much variety here as in Fate Reforged, thats for sure.

Anafenza, Kin-Tree Spirit + Pod combos

With the right setup, Anafenza is a replacement for Melira in pod-style decks. As long as the persist dork has the lowest power when it ETB, and chances are it will, then Ana will cancel the counters for it. Hurrah!

Anafenza, Kin-Tree Spirit, Ambuscade Shaman + Shrieking Drake

Drake lets you dump +1/+1 counters on your dudes for U, which isn't terrible. If you want some kind of WU aggro EDH deck, I guess. Ambuscale gives you something else to do in your Shrieking Drake / Orc Sureshot deck.

Zephyr Scribe +Paradise Mantle, etc

Now we're talking. Untapping when you cast a spell is a potentially abuseable ability, and I believe we've only seen it on three previous cards, both of which were more restrictive:Blistercoil Weird, Gelectrode (untapped on instants and sorceries only) and Cinder Pyromancer (untapped on red spells only). There are others, like Mirran Spy, but they're vastly more restrictive and all suck except for Nettle Sentinel. We've only seen an untapper that lets you loot once before, and it was FAAAR more restrictive: Inspired Sprite.

Scribe strikes me as one of the better cards to enable untap shenanigans. For those not in the loop, the idea is that once you get the ability: "T: Add mana" on Scribe or the other cards I mentioned, all of your cheap cantrips let you dig into your deck repeatedly. Cast Serum Visions using U from the Scribe, it untaps Scribe and you're ready to cast something else if you draw it. Where Scribe really shines head over tails over the other bozos in this category is that: (a) it triggers off of NONCREATURE spells, meaning duplicate Paradise Mantles will keep triggering the untap ability; and (b) it has its OWN dig ability in exactly that situation. I could easily see a deck doing some serious digging here.

And it works in Standard, too, shockingly. There's a green Aura from one of the Theros blocks that acts like a Paradise Mantle of sorts, and even draws you a card when it gets into the battlefield. Standard is vastly deficient in cheap blue dig spells, but Dragons actually changed that by giving us Baby's First Impulse. Could this be a thing? It's a combo, anyway!

Corpseweft + One With Nothing

Aw ya it's everyone's favorite soccer ghosts. The concept here is that Corpseweft only needs 10 creatures in your yard to make a 20/20, so sacrificing your hand to FIFA (or filling your yard in a less hilarious way) leads to a constant stream of death for only 1B. This is a stretch, but this is a good card.

Risen Executioner + Rooftop Storm

Executioner joins Gravecrawler as a way to go infinities with Rooftop Storm and a sac outlet. At the moment, I don't know what you'd do with that in a reasonable Modern list (if you are casting 5U cards and not winning on the spot in Legacy, ya'll are doing it wrong) but, hey, you can pair it with anything that exploits ETB or LTB triggers for a four-card combo bonanza! Oh, who am I kidding. Enduring Renewal hasn't been a thing since 1994.

Impact Tremors + ETB combos

Shrieking Drake to the rescue again! Also works great with Krenko or other way of spamming creatures. This effect is HARDLY unique, but this is the cheapest it's been to ping as an ETB trigger.

Collected Company +Congregation at Dawn

This lets you assemble whatever janky 3-card cheap creature combo you want next turn. Typically that's gonna be a Pod-style kill.

Enduring Scalelord + another one

If you have two of these on the battlefield, putting any +1/1 counters on anything starts an infinite loop that you can use to make both dragons as beefy as you like. For those times when a 3 card combo involving two 6 casting cost creatures is what you're after.

Savage Ventmaw + Hellkite Charger

Continuing the combos between absurdly overcosted creatures, here's a funny you'll see in Dragon EDH decks. Ventmaw makes most of the mana Charger needs to allow another attack step. It's not infinite exactly, but if you connected once it won't take much more for your dragons to finish the game in very short order at 2 mana per attack step.

Swift Warkite + Fiend Hunter + sac outlet

When he ETB, exile Warkite. If he ever dies, Warkite can bring him back exiling Warkite again, Rinse and repeat as much as you like during the same turn for sac outlet goodness.

rufus

03-19-2015, 04:04 PM

Anafenza, Kin-Tree Spirit + Pod combos

Nice, I didn't think of that.

Zephyr Scribe +Paradise Mantle, etc

Now we're talking. Untapping when you cast a spell is a potentially abuseable ability, and I believe we've only seen it on three previous cards, both of which were more restrictive:Blistercoil Weird, Gelectrode (untapped on instants and sorceries only) and Cinder Pyromancer (untapped on red spells only). There are others, like Mirran Spy, but they're vastly more restrictive and all suck except for Nettle Sentinel. We've only seen an untapper that lets you loot once before, and it was FAAAR more restrictive: Inspired Sprite.
...
And it works in Standard, too, shockingly. There's a green Aura from one of the Theros blocks that acts like a Paradise Mantle of sorts, and even draws you a card when it gets into the battlefield. Standard is vastly deficient in cheap blue dig spells, but Dragons actually changed that by giving us Baby's First Impulse. Could this be a thing? It's a combo, anyway!

There are a couple of other creatures that fit in like Puresight Merrow and Dwarven Patrol. Multani's Harmony might also be a better enabler than Karametra's Favor, cantrip notwithstanding.

Risen Executioner + Rooftop Storm

Executioner joins Gravecrawler as a way to go infinities with Rooftop Storm and a sac outlet. ...

Sidisi, Unded Vizier is probably a better way to go with rooftop storm since he's his own sac outlet. In legacy you can chain through zombies (Sibsig Muckdraggers,Gravedigger,Gravespawn Sovereign,Havengul Lich) to put together a winning combo.

MaximumC

03-19-2015, 04:42 PM

There are a couple of other creatures that fit in like Puresight Merrow and Dwarven Patrol. Multani's Harmony might also be a better enabler than Karametra's Favor, cantrip notwithstanding.

Ive tried so hard, and got so far, but in the end, it doesn't even matter... to get Merrow to work. Casting Karametra's Favor on Merrow is an instant Demonic Tutor + a way to topdeck whatever you want.

Cast Favor on Merrow.
Favor resolves, ETB ability on the stack.
Tap Merrow for U, use that to untap Merrow and check your topdeck, repeat until you see what you want.
Let ETB resolve, draw the card.

You'd THINK that there would be a way to abuse this amazing combination into a winning strategy, but nope. Best I got was, if you put Mana Reflection on top, you now get infinite mana too and presumably you can find a way to win from there. But that costs you another 6 manas. There are precious few ways to win from here instantly and, without that, it's too much work. But oh jeebus I want this to work so hard.

Barook

03-19-2015, 04:57 PM

Alesha, Who Smiles at Death + Master of Cruelties

Well documented elsewhere, so let's record it here for completeness' sake. Attack with Alesha against an empty board and recur your Master. He is put into play attacking, overcoming his initial limitation, and then will trigger when no blockers are declared, reducing your opponent's life to 1. Alesha then finishes the job.
It's worth noting that this combo can be set up with Entomb, which can be run for further utility. I totally forgot that I wanted to brew with that.

Alesha swings, trigger goes on the stack, Entomb in response, fetch Master, let the trigger resolve, bring back Master. Even if Alesha dies, they still have to deal with a swinging Master, which otherwise puts them on a rather uncomfortable 1 life without blocks in a deck that most likely features burn and DRS drains.

MaximumC

03-19-2015, 05:10 PM

Holy smokes, did we not even do Khans of Tarkir? Sheesh! I guess I'll continue the Lords' Work tomorrow and keep this thread up to date on that set, too.

EDIT:

Going back to Dragons a bit:

Vulturous Aven + Genesis Chamber

Chamber works well with all of the Exploit cards, but it really shines here because 4 mana for 2 cards and a 2/3 flier is actually a bit of a bargain. And, as is critical with janky combos like this, all parts are modern legal! This is an efficient draw engine, if not really spectacular on its own. If you pair it with a blink effect like Venser, Shaper Savant... now it's legit scary.

rufus

03-19-2015, 07:32 PM

...
You'd THINK that there would be a way to abuse this amazing combination into a winning strategy, but nope. Best I got was, if you put Mana Reflection on top, you now get infinite mana too and presumably you can find a way to win from there. But that costs you another 6 manas. There are precious few ways to win from here instantly and, without that, it's too much work. But oh jeebus I want this to work so hard.

There are some other cards with potential though they might be a little janky or mana intensive: Future Sight/Magus of the Future, Laboratory Maniac, Counterbalance,Skill Borrower,Shelldock Isle, and Mesmeric Orb.

MaximumC

03-21-2015, 02:49 PM

There are some other cards with potential though they might be a little janky or mana intensive: Future Sight/Magus of the Future, Laboratory Maniac, Counterbalance,Skill Borrower,Shelldock Isle, and Mesmeric Orb.

The problem is that none of these win immediately. Skill Borrower was the one I looked at most closely last time I tinkered with this. The idea was to mill to a Skill Borrower, and then you could mill to a Kiki-Jiki to go infinite. But, in addition to assembling Puresight+Favor, you now also had to (1) generate 2U and (2) give Borrower haste or pass the turn. So we're talking about a 2-card, 4 mana combo that also requires more help to win. That might be acceptable if the pieces were strong enough (see Pod decks). Is a 2/2 with a card selection ability reminiscent of the Inspired mechanic good? Eh... it's not terrible if you want a grizzly bear... but Favor is meh.

Where I came down was, if it is gonna work, there has to be a way to transform Puresight+Favor into an instant win.

rufus

03-23-2015, 12:08 PM

...Where I came down was, if it is gonna work, there has to be a way to transform Puresight+Favor into an instant win.

There are piles that can win 'same turn', but they require multiple cards which makes exiling off the top a major liability.

MaximumC

03-23-2015, 03:06 PM

KHANS OF TARKIR -
----------------------
Bringing us finally up to date, let's rattle off the combos in Khans. This set was just as juicy as Fate Reforged! Fate was awesome for Johnnys because of all of the modular cards with options, and this set was good because it involved all sorts of wacky combinations being mixed together on wedge-colored cards. Combo bonanza and an awesome set.

Dig Through Time + Grenzo, Dungeon Warden

This was mentioned earlier in this thread, but it should have been included in a Khans tally of combos. You cast Dig with Grenzo out or you find Grenzo off of dig -- not a tall order in a 60 card deck -- and you get to stack the bottom of your library to line up with his ability. For more fun, stick multiple Priest of Gix / Priest of Urabrask / Cloud of Faeries on the bottom so you can machine gun out a small army off of Grenzo's ability. Good times.

Singing Bell Strike + Priest of Titania or cards like it, + conditions that let the second card tap for 7 mana

Bell Strike grants an untap ability, and this is always good for comboing with cards that might generate more mana than needed for the untap and thereby generate infinite mana. Is this as good as Freed from the Real, Pemmin's Aura, Staff of Domination, Umbral Mantle, Aura of Dominion, etc? Nope! But it does have the advantage that you can use it offensively as a removal spell until you actually want to use it to combo out with.

Bloodsoaked Champion + sacrifice effects

Once you've attacked a single time during your turn, you can now reanimate and sac Champion as much as you like. There is no way to sac him for 1B outright, so you can't do an infinite two-card combo. You could get to some silly situations involving Pyrexian Altar, Ashnod's Altar, and Carnival of Souls in EDH, maybe. Essentially he can be a 2/1 that later turns into a Reassembling Skeleton for sac purposes. He doesn't return for free, so cards like Skullclamp would rather play with Bloodghast, but this one isnt bad.

Grim Haruspex + sacrifice combos

Anytime you would use Fecundity to do something stupid, this card does it better. It isn't symmetrical and its a 3/2.

Retribution of the Ancients + Undying

While not infinite, you can keep getting your undying creatures back for a one-time investment of B each time. This also double as removal. If you use this with a 1/1 undyer, like Young Wolf, you can essentially create a sac loop whereby you keep recasting the wolf for B mana. A good way to abuse ETB effects in Modern... like, for instance, the Haruspex above.

Goblinslide/Azban Asendency + Blood Funnel

Cast a non-creature spell for a discount. Put your two triggered abilities on the stack with Goblinslide on top. Pay for the Goblin token, sac it to satisfy Funnel. This is perhaps a lot of work to make your spells cost 1 less, but since both cards merit discussion on their own as interesting and powerful effects, who knows? Asendency works the same way, but since it requires no cost you get the cards for 2 less. Score!

Hardened Scales + Marath, Will of the Wild

With both in play, you can pay X mana to put X +1/+1 counters on Marath or anything else. Since they eratted Marath, it's not infinite -- too bad -- but it's still very powerful. For additional fun you can toss creatures like Molten Hydra into the mix to do fun things with your plethora of counters.

Jeskai Ascendency + Fatesticher, Faerie Conclave or mana dorks.

Well-documented in actual Modern and Standard decks. As long as you're casting cheap cantrips anyway, Ascendancy lets you untap your mana producing dorks and keep funding more cantrips until you have a massive beater to swing with.

Jeskai Ascendency + Retraction Helix, Banishing Knack + 0 cc artifact + a dude

Lots of moving pieces, but the idea is that you can tap to return the free thing, recast to trigger Ascendency, and repeat to get an infinity large creature.

Altar of the Brood + ETB combos

Altar becomes a very cheap and easy to splash win condition with any infinite ETB combos.

Whew. That wraps it up for Khan's block. Did I miss anything?

(Now, an aside. While not really a combo, anyone else noticed that Black got some REALLY undercosted beaters in this set without much of a drawback? There's a Juggernaut for 2B in Dragons that curves perfectly into Bellow Saddlebrute (a 4/5 for 3B) in this set. And no one plays either of them! It's like we're at a point where Juzam Djinn could only be printed if it cantripped!)

rufus

03-23-2015, 05:28 PM

Whew. That wraps it up for Khan's block. Did I miss anything?
...

Empty the Pits + Delve for 20

raid, metalcraft, Howl of the Horde +Molten Psyche. (It's a pity that the raid isn't retroactive for triple Berserk or Become immense.)

Shu Yun+Become Immense is cute.

Also, not khans, but Commander 2014 has Dualcaster combos.

phonics

03-25-2015, 02:04 PM

Battlefield Thaumaturge and Descent of the Dragons is kind of a combo.

MaximumC

03-30-2015, 11:48 AM

Battlefield Thaumaturge and Descent of the Dragons is kind of a combo.

There's a blurry line between combo and synergy, but a two card combination which might allow you to make 4+ 4/4s if you have an army of 1/1s out already... I dunno, seems more like a synergy than a real combo. I mean, Thaumaturge combos like this with lots of cards. Take Turn to Swine, for example.

Cire

03-30-2015, 05:50 PM

Sidisi, Undead Vizier is probably a better way to go with rooftop storm since he's his own sac outlet. In legacy you can chain through zombies (Sibsig Muckdraggers,Gravedigger,Gravespawn Sovereign,Havengul Lich) to put together a winning combo.

What is the minimum number of chaff you need to win with Sidisi + Rooftop?

Best I have is this hilarious and awful combo

4 Rooftop
4 Sidisi
1 Ghoulraiser
2 Lava Zombie
1 Brainstorm/Gut Shot

12 cards and 8 mana to pull off :rolleyes:

rufus

03-30-2015, 06:38 PM

What is the minimum number of chaff you need to win with Sidisi + Rooftop?

I'm not sure what the best line of play is.

At 7 mana you can hit: Rooftop Storm + Sidisi, Unded Vizier (self exploit) -> Havengul Lich allows for recycling Sidisi as a :1: cost Demonic Tutor, which can chain into a storm win.

You can also 'bootstrap' from 6 mana using extra Sidisis a pile of Sibsig Muckdraggerss, Gravediggers and Gravespawn Sovereign:

With 6 mana cast Rooftop Storm
Cast Sidisi, have him exploit himself. Search for Sibsig Muckdraggers. Return Sidisi to your hand. (Repeat 4x)
Cast Sidisi, have him exploit himself. Search for Gravespawn Sovereign. Activate Sovereign to return Sidisi to play. Exploit one of the muckdraggers. Search for another Sidisi
Cast the new Sidisi. Kill the other Sidisi with the legend rule. Exploit one of the Muckdraggers. Search for Sidisi
Cast the new Sidisi, Kill the other Sidisi with the legend rule. Exploit the last Muckdragger. Search for Gravedigger, chain the Muckdraggers back into play, and a sidisi into your hand
Activate sovereign for a Sidisi effect to pull Havengul Lich.
Cast the Sidisi from your hand to pull Lion's Eye Diamond.

Edit:
How does your combo work?

Cire

03-31-2015, 10:37 AM

Edit:
How does your combo work?

Rooftop
Sidisi --> Self exploit --> Ghoulraiser
Ghoulraiser --> return --> Sidisi
Sidisi --> self exploit --> Lava Zombie #1
Lava Zombie --> return Ghoulraiser
Ghoulraiser --> return --> Sidisi
Sidisi --> self exploit --> Lava Zombie #2
Lava Zombie chain for a while
Lava Zombie --> return Ghoulraiser
Ghoulraiser --> return --> Sidisi
Sidisi --> self exploit --> Storm card
Win?

Still requires 8 mana . . .

MaximumC

03-31-2015, 11:58 AM

Rooftop
Sidisi --> Self exploit --> Ghoulraiser
Ghoulraiser --> return --> Sidisi
Sidisi --> self exploit --> Lava Zombie #1
Lava Zombie --> return Ghoulraiser
Ghoulraiser --> return --> Sidisi
Sidisi --> self exploit --> Lava Zombie #2
Lava Zombie chain for a while
Lava Zombie --> return Ghoulraiser
Ghoulraiser --> return --> Sidisi
Sidisi --> self exploit --> Storm card
Win?

Still requires 8 mana . . .

Do you really need a storm card? You're in a position to chain Lava Zombies off each other freely as much as you want, so you get yourself infinite ETB triggers. Go get yourself an Altar of the Brood for a win at 1 mana. I can't find a free way to win from here... there are no Zombies that grant haste or do something when other Zombies enter the battlefield, except for Noxious Ghoul, but that only lets you wipe the enemy's creatures. You could end with Corpse Connoisseur, but what'ya gonna do; grab a Vengevine for 4 damage? Bleh.

Hm.

I like this combo, though. Rooftop Storm + Sidisi sends you off to the races, and all you really need in your deck otherwise is a Gravedigger-type Zombie and two Lava Zombies. Maybe Altar of the Brood is the best you can do; it'd be really good if there was a way to win from here for free, though.

EDIT: Sedraxis Alchemist can stand in for Lava Zombie, making this combo modern-legal. Since multiple Sidisis can find the Rooftop Storm to begin with, could this possibly be a thing? Can you reach a 5U in Modern within a reasonable time frame?

rufus

03-31-2015, 12:10 PM

MaximumC

03-31-2015, 12:14 PM

Thanks. I missed the Brain Freeze/Grapeshot joke.

You only need one Lava Zombie (or Sedraxis Alchemist) since it can return itself, and could use the Havengul Lich->LED thing to shave off a mana point.

Lich doesn't shave off a mana point if you're going for an Altar kill anyway; it's one colorless either way.

Also, LED makes it non-Modern legal. Fine and all, but I'm wondering if this combo actually has legs. Winning instantly for 5U might actually be good.

sjmcc13

03-31-2015, 01:06 PM

Lich doesn't shave off a mana point if you're going for an Altar kill anyway; it's one colorless either way.

Also, LED makes it non-Modern legal. Fine and all, but I'm wondering if this combo actually has legs. Winning instantly for 5U might actually be good.

If you have Storm, Sidisi and either a 2nd Sidisi, one of the recursion zombies (Ghoulraiser , Gravedigger, etc), or a Mikeaus, the Unhallowed in hand I think you could go off then and there.
does this look right, Assuming a recursion zombie in hand,
Storm
Sidisi > Self Exploit > Mikeaus
Mikeaus
RZ, get back Sidisi
Sidisi > SE twice thanks to Mikeaus giving him Undying. Get Sidsi + Nantuko Husk
Sidisi > SE twice for Gravecrawler + a Recursion zombie
Rz > sidisi
Sidisi > SE twice Sidisi + SSG
Sidisi > SE twice Grapeshot + SSG
Husk
Gravecrawler
loop through casting gravecaller and sacrificing it to husk.
Grapeshot for the win.

Cire

03-31-2015, 02:02 PM

MaximumC

03-31-2015, 02:06 PM

Hmm . . . obviously this combo is crap in legacy - but if we can get to a winning combination with just Sidisi and rooftop then it might have a change in modern. . . unfortunately, my combo version requires 8 mana, and the others require another card in the hand.

Hm, oh yeah, you can't keep going with your bounce zombies after you Sidisi for Altar because getting Sidisi back breaks your chain. Hm....

You can add Gravecrawlers to the mix as an early aggro option so you have more stuff in the yard to recur and sacrifice, but Im not sure if that is helpfui.

rufus

03-31-2015, 02:36 PM

Hmm . . . obviously this combo is crap in legacy - but if we can get to a winning combination with just Sidisi and rooftop then it might have a change in modern. . . unfortunately, my combo version requires 8 mana, and the others require another card in the hand.

You could chain Sibsig Muckdraggers and Gravedigger out creatures and then drop Mass Hysteria or Grey Merchant of Asphodel.

Cire

03-31-2015, 03:01 PM

You could chain Sibsig Muckdraggers and Gravedigger out creatures and then drop Mass Hysteria or Grey Merchant of Asphodel.

totally forgot about him . . . so here is the minimum for a 2 card combo that costs 5U

Rooftop
Sidisi > Self Exploit > Ghoulraiser > Get Sidisi back (Devotion 2)
Sidisi > Self Exploit > Ghoulraiser > Get Sidisi back (Devotion 4)
Sidisi > Self Exploit > Ghoulraiser > Get Sidisi back (Devotion 6)
Sidisi > Self Exploit > Ghoulraiser > Get Sidisi back (Devotion 8)
Sidisi > Self Exploit > Gravedigger > Get Sidisi back (Devotion 9)
Sidisi > Self Exploit > Gravedigger > Get Sidisi back (Devotion 10)
Sidisi > Self Exploit > Gravedigger > Get Sidisi back (Devotion 11)
Sidisi > Self Exploit > Gravedigger > Get Sidisi back (Devotion 12)
Sidisi > Self Exploit > Sibsig Muckdraggers > Get Sidisi back (Devotion 13)
Sidisi > Self Exploit > Sibsig Muckdraggers > Get Sidisi back (Devotion 14)
Sidisi > Self Exploit > Sibsig Muckdraggers > Get Sidisi back (Devotion 15)
Sidisi > Self Exploit > Sibsig Muckdraggers > Get Sidisi back (Devotion 16)
Sidisi > Self Exploit > Sibsig Muckdraggers > Get Gray Merchant of Asphodel (Burn for 18)

If that doesn't kill on the spot, you do have 28 power on the board.

Thats

4 Gravedigger
4 Ghoulraiser
4 Sibsig Muckdraggers
4 Sidisi
2 Gray Merchant of Asphodel

4 Rooftop

22 cards.. . . .

What's the best way to get sidisi and rooftop into play in Modern?

rufus

03-31-2015, 03:06 PM

...

What's the best way to get sidisi and rooftop into play in Modern?

Perhaps this could go to another thread. That said, it's more efficient to exploit a Muckdragger when you fetch merchant since Sidisi has :b::b: in the casting cost.

Cire

03-31-2015, 03:16 PM

Perhaps this could go to another thread. That said, it's more efficient to exploit a Muckdragger when you fetch merchant since Sidisi has :b::b: in the casting cost.

I'll start a modern thread. . . and good point!

MaximumC

03-31-2015, 03:30 PM

I'll start a modern thread. . . and good point!

It's a good combo discussion, anyway. I don't like that last combo chain ending with Grey Merchant, though, because it requires you to be playing with 12 terrible, terrible creatures in your deck! The earlier chain getting you to bouncy zombies is a much smaller package. You can get away with only a single copy in your deck.

Barook

04-01-2015, 07:52 AM

Containment Priest + Mistmeadow Witch

Certainly not the best thing ever, but a repeatable way to exile creatures.

TsumiBand

04-01-2015, 09:24 AM

Commune with Lava + any card that restricts card drawing. For example, um... Maralen of the Mornsong would let you tutor for Commune and cast it right after getting the 'lock', potentially letting you just blow the opponent out before their tutor off of Maralen gives them the W (or maybe you affect that somehow as well, I dunno)

For that matter, Maralen + Stranglehold I guess. lol.

rufus

04-21-2015, 09:46 AM

moseby

05-20-2015, 09:00 PM

My favorite is Academy Rector + Diabolic intent, or now + Sidisi, Undead Vizier.
While technically it is not a guaranteed kill it does wipe out 6 permanents, and deal damage.

Kill Rector get Omni, cast Emrakul

YamiJoey

05-21-2015, 04:11 AM

I always wondered how you actually binned your Rector. That seems like a pretty good method.

Bobmans

05-21-2015, 04:32 AM

I always wondered how you actually binned your Rector. That seems like a pretty good method.
The best way to Rector into Omni + Emrakul is indeed Diabolic Intent. But those shells often also run Cabal Therapy, Phyrexian Tower and sometimes also Innocent Blood.

MaximumC

05-26-2015, 12:02 AM

The best way to Rector into Omni + Emrakul is indeed Diabolic Intent. But those shells often also run Cabal Therapy, Phyrexian Tower and sometimes also Innocent Blood.

As described elsewhere in this thread, Rector + Diabolic Intent or Altar of Bone = win in several ways. My favorite is to get Omni with Rector and tutor up a Sparkcaster with the tutor. That leads you to infinite ping without needing an attack and it runs off of a creature who is actually castable in a Naya deck.

MaximumC

06-22-2015, 02:55 PM

Magic Origins is getting spoiled now, so let's continue to identify combos with this new set. Overall, the set seems to have more than usual terrible cards at common and uncommon. Terrible might be the wrong word: simple is more like it. Simple, clean, boring designs at various rarities but particularly at low rarity. That means few combos. I hope to see this changing as the spoiler continues!

Separatist Voidmage + Animar, Soul of Elements[/cards]

Because what we really need is more Man'o'War. Sheesh. Now we have a 3 mana version (aforesaid jellyfish) a 4 mana version, and a 5 mana version. Why?

Anyway, like the rest, this pumps Animar for U once it gets going by bouncing itself.

[card]Sphinx' Tutelage[/cards] + Brainstorm, Sylvan Library
Bonus: + Jeskai Ascendency

Here we go! A triggered ability that goes off from what we want to do anyway and is a potential win condition. Good stuff.

So close to a combo with Painter's Servant, but I suppose WotC decided that would be rude for Modern. Oh well. As it is the milling ability is going to hit 2 - 4 cards in an average deck, you figure. If you have a Library going, that's 6 - 12 cards per turn; Brainstorm hits for 6 - 12 all by itself. These figures are approaching dangerous territory.

Note more generally that Tutelage allows you to translate tons of card draw into a win condition. That's not insignificant, and very few cards do this. Let's say you're going off with Ascendency, for example. With this in play, if you can trigger Ascendency 15 times, you've probably won the game. That's tricky, and you could easily object by saying "if I drew 15 cards I better already be winning," but it's worth keeping this card in mind.

Is it enough to just run this and cantrips to get there? Probably not in a world with Eldrazi, but who knows!

There is more potential here to be mined.

[card]Chandra, Fire of Kaladesh[/cards] + Lava Dart, Curlean Wisps, etc.

Chandra is a Cinder Pyromancer so she does what Cinder Pyromancer do. However! Once you go off with her, she gives you nice bonus at the end. So while you lose the machine gun down the road, on the first turn you do it Chandra gets you another 2 damage right away.

[card]Blazing Hellhound + [card]Gravecralwer[/cards] and friends.

Cheap, repeatable ways to turn creatures into damage are also ripe for combo abuse. This isn't as good as Goblin Bombardment, but it's on a body so perhaps it's better than the dumber new version of that that costs R. Not terrible, certainly has its place in EDH decks that want lots of copies of this kind of effect.

rufus

06-22-2015, 10:03 PM

...
So close to a combo with Painter's Servant, but I suppose WotC decided that would be rude for Modern. Oh well. As it is the milling ability is going to hit 2 - 4 cards in an average deck, you figure. If you have a Library going, that's 6 - 12 cards per turn; Brainstorm hits for 6 - 12 all by itself. These figures are approaching dangerous territory.
...

Maybe Compost + Painter's Servant/Glamerdyne and then Sphinx's Tutelage as a finisher?

MaximumC

06-24-2015, 01:46 PM

Maybe Compost + Painter's Servant/Glamerdyne and then Sphinx's Tutelage as a finisher?

I don't follow you.

Anyway, new spoiled cards show that the rares and mythics in this set are way higher in power level than the commons, and some are quite amazing. We even got some interesting commons. More combos!

Faerie Miscreant + Clone effects, particularly Kikki-Jikki and Splintertwin type effects

Cranking out copies of Miscreant means you're drawing cards for each copy. Once you have two, you can start blinking them as well, and that's nice.

Days Undoing + Leyline of Anticipation or Notion Thief

Negate that downside!

Dark Petition + Yawgmoth's Will, Tendrils of Agony, Necropotence

There are many very powerful cards that storm decks in Legacy and Vintage go get with tutors. While Petition costs 5, its enhanced effect is trivial to reach in those formats, so it can typically cast or mostly cast what you get. In Vintage, Demonic+Yawgwill costs 5 already. In Legacy, this lets you tutor up Tendrils without needing to be hellbent and cast it for 1 more colorless mana invested. (Infernal+Tendrils already costs 6). As the coup de grace of storm decks, this can be very powerful.

Tainted Remedy + Kavu Predator and all the cards that worked with False Cure.

Now we can run eight copies of False Cure in Legacy? We can run it in Modern? Holy hell Grove of the Burnwillows is about to reach a new level of stupid!

Starfield of Nyx + Opalescence.dec

Now we can run eight copies of Opalescence? Is it finally time for Serra's Sanctum to do something?

Bounding Krasis + Splintertwin.dec

Oh boy, another in-color option for people who thought that Pestermite and Exarch were too fragile. So much for -1/-1 effects stopping Twin entirely.

Blessed Spirits + Auratog, Thaumatog + Rancor and similar enchantments from Urza's Saga block.

Spirits grows each time you re-cast the enchantment, so with a sac outlet the cheap returning enchantments give you a +1/+1 engine. Beat your opponent to death with dead children! ... wow, that sounds pretty bad.

[card]Kothophed, Soul Horder[/cards] + Goblin Welder

Draw a card each time you Weld. Not terrible!

Demonic Pact + Stuff

Okay, this card has lots of ways to combo with it. You can avoid the "you lose" condition with:
1. Stifle
2. Enchantment removal
3. Bounce
4. Blink

Or win the game using a Donate effect.

I think the coolest idea here is to combine Demonic Pact with Venser, the Sojourner in a Modern UWB deck. That's some serious, serious gas.

square_two

07-06-2015, 09:59 AM

Tainted Remedy + Kavu Predator and all the cards that worked with False Cure.

Now we can run eight copies of False Cure in Legacy? We can run it in Modern? Holy hell Grove of the Burnwillows is about to reach a new level of stupid!

Keep in mind that Tainted Remedy won't trigger the counters on Kavu Predator, since the lifegain is replaced. Beauty of False Cure is that there is still lifegain happening. Still - it would work well in the deck regardless, with all the "burn" spells available.

rufus

07-06-2015, 11:30 AM

I don't follow you.

If you have Compost, Painter's Servant (for black), and Sphinx's Tutelage, then you should be able to draw your deck, while your opponent's gets dumped into his or her graveyard. The problem is that it's a 3-card setup. But even Compost+Painter's Servant is pretty nice.

Faerie Miscreant + Clone effects, particularly Kikki-Jikki and Splintertwin type effects

For at most one card per clone, this is really weak.

Days Undoing + Leyline of Anticipation or Notion Thief

Negate that downside!

I like Final Fortune -> Day's Undoing a lot better. Still not a game ending combo though.

Blessed Spirits + Auratog, Thaumatog + Rancor and similar enchantments from Urza's Saga block.

Enchantress is better.

Kothophed, Soul Horder + Goblin Welder

Draw a card each time you Weld. Not terrible!

Kothoped triggers on permanents owned by another player, so that usually won't work.

Some other possibilities:

Probably too weak to do anything:
Disciple of the Ring +Millikin + ?
or
Disciple of the Ring +Paradise Mantle + Disciple of Deceit/Pain Seer

Ghirapur Aether Grid as a finisher in a Elsewhere Flask/Tsabo's Web... cantrip artifact deck.

And I'm intrigued by:
Alhammarret's Arhive + free cantrips / 1 cc multidraw spells

Cire

07-08-2015, 10:12 AM

Thopter Engineer + Shape Anew = Hasted Blightsteel Colossus. 7 mana, over two turns. . . deck constraint is not to run any other artifacts.

MaximumC

07-08-2015, 11:54 AM

Thopter Engineer + Shape Anew = Hasted Blightsteel Colossus. 7 mana, over two turns. . . deck constraint is not to run any other artifacts.

Do you know what is not crazy? Shape Anew. We just got a TON of new effects that churn out artifacts but are not themselves artifacts. At some point, we may have critical mass to play some kind of crazy BSC combo deck in Modern. Hmmmm

Cire

07-08-2015, 12:02 PM

Do you know what is not crazy? Shape Anew. We just got a TON of new effects that churn out artifacts but are not themselves artifacts. At some point, we may have critical mass to play some kind of crazy BSC combo deck in Modern. Hmmmm

You can play it now honestly - the real issue is whether such a deck is better than twin.

In modern you can do

1st - Land + Manadork
2nd - Land + Thopter Engineer/Blade splicer/Ghirapur Gearcrafter/Goblin Kaboomist/Tuktuk the Explorer
3rd - Land --> Shape Anew (win if Engineer in play or wait to attack turn 4)

Tylert

09-10-2015, 11:05 AM

whienot

09-10-2015, 12:54 PM

someone mentionned the following thing in a thread: Riptide chimera + second chance.
If you stack the triggers in the right order, second chance might be in your hand when you have to sacrifice it, but you still take the extra turn...

Does that work? It's not really a compact combo, because you need to be at 5 life so it works.

6/15/2010: On resolution of the trigger you have to sacrifice this card if you have 5 life or less. If you can't (because it is not on the battlefield, for example), then you still take an extra turn after this one.

MaximumC

11-09-2015, 06:48 PM

Oh dear, we've gone for awhile without updating this thread, haven't we? If I have time tonight, I'll go through the combos and combo pieces from Battle for Zendikar and Commander 2015 and post em.

Cire

11-09-2015, 07:22 PM

Mizzix's + Entomb (for Enter the Infinite) - - > draw deck - - > SSG/Mox/Petal - - > Faithless Looting, discard Conflagrate - - > SSG/Mox/Petal x2 - - > Flashback Conflagrate, Win.

Total cost 3RB

rufus

11-10-2015, 12:06 AM

Mizzix's + Entomb (for Enter the Infinite) - - > draw deck - - > SSG/Mox/Petal - - > Faithless Looting, discard Conflagrate - - > SSG/Mox/Petal x2 - - > Flashback Conflagrate, Win.

There's also Mogg Alarm + Synthetic Destiny -> Tooth & Nail piles.

Gollus

11-11-2015, 05:48 PM

rufus

11-11-2015, 06:28 PM

Knight of the Reliquary + Retreat to Coralhelm go through your Landbase (Forests, Plains).

Win with a big Knight or via a lot of landfall triggers with another landfall card. Whats the best wincondition?

Kessig Wolf Run to give the knight evasion was in the deck that went deep at SCG. There are threads about this combo elsewhere. Look for "brave sir robin"

MaximumC

11-13-2015, 12:16 PM

Kessig Wolf Run to give the knight evasion was in the deck that went deep at SCG. There are threads about this combo elsewhere. Look for "brave sir robin"

I've always loved Wolf Run for this reason; it's practically a no-cost way to translate infinite mana into a win condition. It's like having Howl From Beyond on tap at all times. Radical.

Anyway, I've been hard up for time so I haven't updated the list comprehensively. I'm glad you guys are adding the big combos. Another one is this:

Gigantoplasm + Karmic Guide OR Revilark

This gives you infinite ETB / LTB triggers. With Guide or Revilark in play, have Gigantoplasm enter the battlefield as a copy of either. The ETB trigger will go on the stack. Before letting it resolve, activate Gigantoplasm's ability to make it 0/0 and kill it. You can then target the Plasm with it's own trigger and recycle it. Rinse and repeat.

death

12-14-2015, 06:18 PM

Mizzix's + Entomb (for Enter the Infinite) - - > draw deck - - > SSG/Mox/Petal - - > Faithless Looting, discard Conflagrate - - > SSG/Mox/Petal x2 - - > Flashback Conflagrate, Win.

You shouldn't Faithless Looting here because you'd kill yourself. But you may cast Conflagrate for 0 instead, then use its flashback.

MaximumC

01-10-2016, 10:42 AM

Time to do some catch-up on the combos in our new sets!

Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth + Eye of Ugin
This essentially gives you 2BB to cast Eldrazi creatures on turn 2. And, it's why Bx Eldrazi is suddenly hot stuff in Modern.

Deceiver of Form + Biovisionary + Four dorks

I know this combo isn't huge, but there are very few other cards that do this. Deceiver is interesting because it's another way mass-clone your creatures. We've had this before in Mirrorweave, Infinite Reflection, and Polymorphous Rush, but Deceiver is different because it does not require your clone target to be on the battlefield at all. If Deceiver itself was cheap, this might be a cool way to cheat fatties or monsters into play. As it is, Deceiver costs 7, so you're already practically casting Grislebrand anyway. I suspect you care about this combo if you're looking for more EDH pieces for some kind of mass clone deck; otherwise Mirrorweave does the job better.

Eldrazi Mimic +
Flash or Phyrexian Dreadnought or Evoke cards

Renegade Doppelganger is back (kinda), and he's easier to cast than ever. Trouble is, Renegade gets to be a total copy of the incoming creature, so you get to abuse stuff like Grislebrand. Mimic just gets the guys power and toughness, so the best you can do is make him fatter if you flash some kind of fat into play. Even flashing in Emrakul and makining Mimic 15/15 wont end the game, though.

Matter Reshaper + Champion of Stray Souls or Hell's Caretaker or Recurring Nightmare

Matter Reshaper plays nicely with cards that let you flip him and out of the graveyard, since he keeps fueling more permanents to sacrifice as he goes. This is probably EDH-only, since none of the yard-flopping cards are cheap enough for competitive play.

Matter Reshaper +Feldon of the Third Path
If Reshaper is already in the yard, Feldon becomes a card-draw engine. This has the advantage of being able to flip a Feldon into play off of the Reshaper to begin with, too. Seems really fun for Cube.

Eldrazi Displacer + Brood Monitor or Emrakul's Hatcher or Rasputin Dreamweaver or Workhorse

Displacer goes infinite with the Eldrazi Mamas that give birth to three tokens when they arrive; but you need something else to do with the ETB and LTB triggers you get. Priest of Gix / Urabrask don't work here, since they don't generate colorless. Rasputin and Workhorse go infinite with it, but this is probably an EDH-only combo since the other piece costs 6 mana on its own. Also, note that Rasputin is the rare, interesting Legends Legend that is still sub-fifty dollars. I doubt that continues in light of a new combo for him in EDH....

Stone Haven Outfitter + Grafted Wargear

Not as busted as Skullclamp, possibly, but this does let you sac dudes to draw cards for free. Thats pretty awesome. Note that Outfitter is a total fail with the aforementioned Skullclamp, because the +1/+1 effect will stop x/1s from dying to clamp.

Thought Harvester + Infinite ETB triggers

Thought Harvester is a great mill finisher for any combo that produces infinite ETB triggers for colorless spells. This works if you're looping Purse off of Jeskai Ascendancy combo, cycling Sensei's Top off of reducing effects like Helm of Awakening or Cloud Key, using your Displacer + Eldrazi mamas... whatever. Unlike many other milling finishers, Harvester EXILES the cards instead of putting the in the yard, so it trumps Gaea's Blessing and Emrakul very nicely.

Sky Scourer + Infinite ETB triggers

A worse version of Harvester, but it does get infinity big if you have triggers.

Hedron Alignment + Doomsday

Its pretty easy to make a winning pile with Doomsday. Doomsday exiles one of the Hedrons and stacks the other three in your library. Add some card draw and you can quickly arrange them where you need em. I don't see that this Combo is better than Labman... but there you go.

Essence Depleter + infinite mana combos

Depleter wins the game if you have infinite colorless mana. We have many win conditions like this, but it's always nice to have a new replacement for [cards]Rocket Launcher that isn't terrible on its own. In fact, it's probably one of the better win conditions, since it's loss of life and not damage.

Flayer Drone + Infinite ETB triggers
If you're making infinity Eldrazi tokens, this wins the game. It does so through loss of life rather than damage, so maybe it's better than the thorny Eldrazi from the last set. Then again, it can't hit creatures, so... eh.

Havoc Sower[cards] or [cards]Kozilek's Shrieker+ infinite mana combos

Sower and Shrieker are worse than Depleter at just winning the game, but they do get infinity large with infinity mana, so, they're another possible win condition for infinite mana combos.

Goblin Dark-Dwellers + Show and Tell

If you're casting Show and Tell, there are definitely better things you could be doing than getting a 4/4 out of the deal. But, if you want a Goblin really badly, you'll get to cast the Show and Tell a second time for free. And, who knows? Maybe this is tech to stop Oblivion Ring from wrecking your poop.

Kazuul's Toll Collector + Blade of Selves, Hero's Blade, Ogre's Cleaver

Collector lets you cheat on equip costs, and anything that cheats a cost is worth a look. On it's own, it abuses equipment that are cheap to cast but expensive to equip. If you combine him with Stoneforge Mystic or something else that lets you cheat stuff out, you can really get abusive.

Oath of Chandra or other Oaths + Riptide Chimera

The Oaths give you spell-type effects on a permanent that can be bounced and re-used.

Aya, Eternal Pilgrim + Life.dec

Aya gives you another Starlit Sanctum-type effect to use with your Kor combo. And, she shares several types with the cards you would run in that deck anyway and gives you a powerful removal effect after you combo, which is cool.

Weapons Trainer + [cards]Silver-Inlaid Dagger

Putting the Dagger on Weapons Trainer results in a 7/2; that's not too shabby. He slots into an equipment-themed RW deck really well. Pity it doesn't have double-strike like many of the others...

Crumbling Vestige + Amulet of Vigor

With Amulet, you get 2 mana off of this land the turn it drops. It doesn't' give you the bounce effect of the Karoo lands, but it also doesn't suck on its own like they do, so there's that.

Crumbling Vestige + Root Maze

Vestige gets around the limitation of Root Maze, if you're looking to do... something with that.

Wandering Fumerole + Ceaseless Searblades

Since the ability costs nothing to activate, you can make an infinity large Searblade. Also has worked with Lavaclaw Reaches for some time now.

rufus

01-10-2016, 12:51 PM

Time to do some catch-up on the combos in our new sets!

Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth + Eye of Ugin
This essentially gives you 2BB to cast Eldrazi creatures on turn 2. And, it's why Bx Eldrazi is suddenly hot stuff in Modern.

Is this thread supposed to be about game winning combos or about synergies?

Eldrazi Mimic +
Flash or Phyrexian Dreadnought or Evoke cards

Mimic only copies colorless critters, so none of the evoke cards work.

Stone Haven Outfitter + Grafted Wargear

Not as busted as Skullclamp, possibly, but this does let you sac dudes to draw cards for free. Thats pretty awesome. Note that Outfitter is a total fail with the aforementioned Skullclamp, because the +1/+1 effect will stop x/1s from dying to clamp.

As was mentioned in the thread, this probably doesn't work because the creature becomes unequipped before dying.

Thought Harvester + Infinite ETB triggers

Thought Harvester is a great mill finisher for any combo that produces infinite ETB triggers for colorless spells. This works if you're looping Purse off of Jeskai Ascendancy combo, cycling Sensei's Top off of reducing effects like Helm of Awakening or Cloud Key, using your Displacer + Eldrazi mamas... whatever. Unlike many other milling finishers, Harvester EXILES the cards instead of putting the in the yard, so it trumps Gaea's Blessing and Emrakul very nicely.

Sky Scourer + Infinite ETB triggers

A worse version of Harvester, but it does get infinity big if you have triggers.

These are cast triggers not ETB.

Kazuul's Toll Collector + Blade of Selves, Hero's Blade, Ogre's Cleaver

Collector lets you cheat on equip costs, and anything that cheats a cost is worth a look. On it's own, it abuses equipment that are cheap to cast but expensive to equip. If you combine him with Stoneforge Mystic or something else that lets you cheat stuff out, you can really get abusive.

No mention of Sunforger?

MaximumC

01-11-2016, 11:03 AM

Is this thread supposed to be about game winning combos or about synergies?

There's not really a black and white line between the two. To me, "combo" means a combination of cards, usually non-obvious, that allows them to generate an effect vastly under-priced or otherwise out of proportion to what is expected in Magic. The best ones generate an arbitrarily large effect or win the game on the spot, but at heart all of them really are just "synergies." Besides, more is better. It's my personal quest to make this thread a repository of all worthwhile combos in the game, so.

Mimic only copies colorless critters, so none of the evoke cards work.

Ah, didn't notice that. Yeah, then Mimic's applications seem pretty limited, even if it does have better body than Renegade Doppleganger.

As was mentioned in the thread, this probably doesn't work because the creature becomes unequipped before dying.

Does it? Hm, yeah, it looks like you'd need a way to re-equip the Wargear at instant speed with the trigger on the stack, like Leonin Shikari in order to make that work.

These are cast triggers not ETB.

Right you are. The cards still function as win conditions, but only if you're doing something like a Top loop.

No mention of Sunforger?

Good idea. Giving you: "{RW}: Cast any Red or White Instant in your Deck" seems very powerful indeed. In fact, a little bit of googling shows me that, if you've got Seething Songs and Manamorphose in your deck, you get very powerful effects, and if you toss in Idyllic Tutor and Wheel of Sun and Moon, you can potentially go infinite.
1. Equip Sunforger for free.
2. Pay {RW} to fetch and cast Seething Song. (RRRRR in pool)
3. Pay {RW} to fetch and cast Manamorphose and generate WW (RRRRWW in pool, 1 card drawn)
4. Pay {RW} to fetch and cast Manamorphose and generate WW (RRRWWW in pool, 2 cards drawn)
5. Pay {RW} to fetch and cast Manamorphose and generate WW (RRWWWW in pool, 2 cards drawn)
3. Pay {RW} to fetch and cast Idyllic Tutor, getting Wheel of Sun and Moon. (RWWW in pool)
4. Pay {WW} to cast Wheel. (RW in pool)
5. Pay {RW} to cast Manamorphose infinity number of times to draw your deck. Presumably you can find a way to win from here.

So, that means this Ogre here is a more reliable way to combo out like this than Puresteel Paladin. Keen.

Fatal

01-11-2016, 01:16 PM

So basically you need:

Ogre (2R) + sunforger (3) and RWW mana in pool to go infinity.

Sunforger can be easy find by:
- Stoneforge Mystic
- Relic Seeker
- Steelshaper's Gift

Ogre is much harder to tutor since he has 3 power Recruiter doesn't fetch him, but with proper build as Steel Paladin can be good replacement.

Add stompy Disruption package like Chalice, Blood Moon (Trinisphere is excluded since it stops combo) and deck is completed.

rufus

01-15-2016, 08:32 AM

...

Good idea. Giving you: "{RW}: Cast any Red or White Instant in your Deck" seems very powerful indeed. In fact, a little bit of googling shows me that, if you've got Seething Songs and Manamorphose in your deck, you get very powerful effects, and if you toss in Idyllic Tutor and Wheel of Sun and Moon, you can potentially go infinite.
...
3. Pay {RW} to fetch and cast Idyllic Tutor, getting Wheel of Sun and Moon. (RWWW in pool)
...

Without the cmc 4 barrier, you could run Firemind's Foresight, and it would be much easier to go off.

Idyllic Tutor is a sorcery so that line doesn't work. (You could go for a line with Final Fortune to get a delayed card draw, and then Enlightened Tutor.)

Barook

01-31-2016, 07:33 AM

Eldrazi Displacer + Chittering Rats

Has the potential to hardlock your opponent from ever drawing a new card again unless they have removal or other ways to draw more cards.

MaximumC

02-01-2016, 03:32 PM

Eldrazi Displacer + Chittering Rats

Has the potential to hardlock your opponent from ever drawing a new card again unless they have removal or other ways to draw more cards.

Good catch; Displacer lets you blink in ETB abilities during your opponent's draw step. That ability is rare enough that it's worth looking at again. Here's a list of the creatures with ETB abilities that work similarly (I omitted the cards that cost 4cc or more):

Corrupt Court Official, Hag Hedge-Mage, Liliana's Specter, Ravenous Rats, Rotting Rats, Sanity Gnawers

This works with Vendilion Clique, too, but if the goal is to lock the enemy out, you can't accomplish that with Clique.

rufus

02-01-2016, 04:25 PM

Good catch; Displacer lets you blink in ETB abilities during your opponent's draw step. That ability is rare enough that it's worth looking at again. Here's a list of the creatures with ETB abilities that work similarly (I omitted the cards that cost 4cc or more):....

Mesmeric Fiend and Tidehollow Sculler work too, though you have to do clever trigger stacking. Mardu Skullhunter and Sibsig Icebreakers are standard legal. Thieving Sprite works well with Clique.

Cire

02-01-2016, 04:28 PM

TsumiBand

02-01-2016, 05:20 PM

How does it work with evoke creatures? Can you evoke Nevermaker onto the battlefield - flicker him with displacer before he dies and hard-lock your opponent by keep on putting permanents onto of his of her library

You can stack the triggers so that this works like you think it does. Evoke puts a sacrifice trigger on the stack when the creature enters the battlefield (in addition to any ETB triggers it would have anyway).

jrsthethird

02-02-2016, 08:44 AM

Good catch; Displacer lets you blink in ETB abilities during your opponent's draw step. That ability is rare enough that it's worth looking at again. Here's a list of the creatures with ETB abilities that work similarly (I omitted the cards that cost 4cc or more):

Corrupt Court Official
Hag Hedge-Mage
Liliana's Specter
Ravenous Rats
Rotting Rats
Sanity Gnawers

This works with Vendilion Clique, too, but if the goal is to lock the enemy out, you can't accomplish that with Clique.

FTFY.

Rotting Rats seems especially fun, with the Unearth interaction being similar to the evoke one discussed above.

Barook

02-02-2016, 11:09 AM

FTFY.

Rotting Rats seems especially fun, with the Unearth interaction being similar to the evoke one discussed above.
Wait, does the flicker exile overwrite the Unearth exile effect? :really:

Morte

02-02-2016, 11:13 AM

EDIT: YES, [link (http://mtgsalvation.gamepedia.com/Unearth)]

If a creature returned to play with unearth would leave the battlefield for any reason, it's exiled instead — unless the spell or ability that's causing the creature to leave the battlefield is actually trying to exile it. In that case, it succeeds at exiling it. If it later returns the creature card to the battlefield (as Oblivion Ring (http://www.magiccards.info/query?q=%21Oblivion+Ring) or Flickerwisp (http://www.magiccards.info/query?q=%21Flickerwisp) might, for example), the creature card will return as a new object with no relation to its previous existence. The unearth effect will no longer apply to it.

Malchar

02-02-2016, 01:59 PM

There's no reason to evoke Nevermaker. It costs the same as casting it normally.

Looks like Chittering Rats is the only card I see that locks out the opponent. With Rotting Rats and other discard effects they're seeing a new card each turn. If they draw an instant removal spell, they can cast it. Too bad that the Chittering Rats combo will cost WBBC, which is like 3 colors. You do get to attack with both creatures though, so it's a quick kill if the board is clear. Could be strong in a deadguy ale shell using stuff like confidant, mother of runes, stoneforge.

TsumiBand

02-02-2016, 02:37 PM

Wait, does the flicker exile overwrite the Unearth exile effect? :really:

The trick is the fact that Unearth's Oracle text basically reads like Whip of Erebos, which says "If [this creature] would leave the battlefield, exile it instead of putting it anywhere else. " Because of that one phrase, since you're not actually putting it 'anywhere else', you're free to choose which effect is actually removing the creature (Unearth's replacement effect as stated, or the exiling ability/spell). If you choose the latter, then whatever that card says to do with the creature is what you would do because now it's in a new zone and has no memory of its previous existence.

MaximumC

02-03-2016, 12:27 PM

Wait, does the flicker exile overwrite the Unearth exile effect? :really:

Yeah, and I'm actually tinkering with an amazingly terrible casual deck based on this interaction.

4 Eldrazi Displacer
4 Cloudshift

4 Aethermage's Touch
4 Surprise Deployment

4 Workhorse
2 Grim Poppet
2 Sphinx of Uthuun

+ Mana rocks, countermagic, and dig
+ Win condition (Whetwheel, Ambasaador Laquatus, Braingeyeser, idk)

rufus

02-03-2016, 02:49 PM

...
4 Eldrazi Displacer
...
4 Workhorse
..

I'm not sure that works the way you want it to since you only break even. Rasputin Dreamweaver would be better, though it doesn't work with surprise deployment.

MaximumC

02-03-2016, 06:47 PM

I'm not sure that works the way you want it to since you only break even. Rasputin Dreamweaver would be better, though it doesn't work with surprise deployment.

Ah, but Rasputin doesn't work with Surprise Deployment. Workhorse blinks infinitely without a buff, and gives you infinite mana if you have Spear of Heliod or whatever in play.

jrsthethird

02-04-2016, 01:54 PM

There's no reason to evoke Nevermaker. It costs the same as casting it normally.

Nevermaker's effect is an LTB trigger, not an ETB trigger. In a vacuum, if you need the trigger now, you evoke him. In this context though, you're right.

MaximumC

03-30-2016, 01:09 PM

Another set, another combo rundown!

Shadows over Innistrad

Generally speaking, this is a GREAT set for combos because it has so many "cogs;" cards that have the kind of effect that you can plug into an infinite sequence. There's a ton of cards that don't require you to tap them to get the effect, which means you're welcome to go infinite more easily than if you had to add Alchemist+Bracers to the mix. Let's get into it...

Bygone Bishop + Krark-Clan Ironworks + Myr Retrieverx2 = Infinite ETB / LTB

The Bishop, like so many other cards in this set, poops out artifacts at an alarming rate. It does so using a triggered ability only, and this can be abused. This is useful in a variety of ways, but one more obvious one is to use the Ironworks to sacrifice the tokens for mana and use that mana to cast more creatures that recur themselves. It's an infinite combo in mono-white, which is not something you see a ton of.

Drogskol Calvarly + Infinite Mana

This guy creates tokens without having to tap. That makes him a potential cog in any combo that makes infinite mana. If you can find a way to make each creature tap for 4 or more mana (Earthcraft + 3 Wild Growths?) then you can go infinite with just this guy alone.

Eerie interlude + Archaeomancer/Eternal Witness/etc

This is just like Ghostway or Ghostly Flicker. Eerie buys itself back as long as you have a creature like Archaeomancer or Memonic Wall or something like that. It's hard to go infinite with this, since you need creatures that ETB and provide mana. They exist, but none of them give you white. Still, being able to blink your team every turn for 2W, or multiple times each turn seems incredibly busted. Being able to do this on the end step before you start your turn makes this potentially far more powerful than previous iterations, however.

Essence Flux + Surprise Deployment, unearth, etc.

Flux is the second 1 mana, instant-speed blink spell we have, Cloudshift being the other one. This lets you blink creatures to avoid enters-the-battlefield triggers applied by something other than the creature itself entering the battlefield, like Surprise Deployment, the Unearth affect. So, you get to keep your cheated creature.

Maniac Scribe + infinite blink effects

Another win condition with any infinite blink combo, such as the aforementioned Eerie Interlude.

Call the Bloodline + Beck//Call

This turns Beck into XGU: Dig X and put X 1/1 lifelinkers out there and fill up your yard. Gets more powerful in Legacy / EDH with Glimpse of Nature, of course.

[cards]Sanitarium Skeleton + Survival of the Fittest

Skeleton is like an inverse Squee. Squee comes back for free, but he costs a lot to actually get out onto the battlefield in a pinch. Skeleton comes out as a chump blocker on turn 1, and later on fuels your discard engine. An interesting variation.

Cryptolith Rite + Concordant Crossroads (or similar) + Glimpse of Nature (or similar)

If you give your creatures haste, tapping for one mana of any color does a pretty good impression of the ol' Elf combo.

Cryptolith Rite + Blistercoil Weird

Cryptolith joins Karametra's Favor and Paradise Mantle as decent ways to turn on Weird's ability to dig through your library on cantrips non-stop. It doesn't die if the Weird dies, like Mantle, but it also dodges artifact removal,l like Favor, making it the best of both worlds.

This also works with the ol' Puresight Merrow, a card I still need to try and figure out how to abuse. I swear to God it's there, somewhere, someday.

[cards]Prized Amalgam + Victimize

If you sacrifice your Amalgam to cards like Victimize or Hell's Caretaker or whatever, then you win because the Amalgam will come right back along with the creature from the yard.

The Gitrog Monster + Dakmor Salvage + discard outlet

Hoo boy, the Evil Toad is by far the king of combos in this set. With a dredging land and a discard outlet, the Toad lets you immediately dredge your entire deck, allowing you to win with Zombie tokens, graveyard-based combo kills, or whatever. And, if oyu don't want to that, you can always dredge for a little while and then convert the rest of froggy's triggers into massive card draw. Have a Gaea's Blessing or Emrakul in your deck? Well, then, you can go absolutely infinite by dredging until the cows come home and drawing as many cards as you like and win that way.

For example, let's say we have Salvage, Toad, and Wild Mongrel in play. We pitch Salvage to Mongrel, replace the draw with dredge, and dump some cards in the yard. If these are lands, we put the Toad Triggers on the stack and save them. We then pitch Salvage again, generating more Toad Triggers. If we hit Blessing or Emrakul, we reshuffle the graveyard and start fresh, meaning that we can keep going an arbitrarily large number of times and generate an arbitrarily large number of Toad Triggers.*

Then, we start resolving Toad Triggers at some point. If we draw our kill condition (Conflagration? Rite of Consumption on your now-huge Mongrel?) then, great. The rest of the Toad triggers we can deal with by pitching the Blessing or Emrakul each time we draw it until, eventually, we have no more Toad triggers left, all the lands in our deck in our hand, and a full library again. Then, cast your sorcery-speed kill, we don't care.

* = There is a technical wrinkle here. Since we do not know exactly how many Toad triggers we will get off of each dredge - could be 0, 1, or 2 - we cannot actually know in advance that we can reach a specific number of triggers. That is, we can certainly offer to shortcut this process until we reach "100 or more" triggers, but we cannot shortcut it to "100" triggers because, for example, 49 dredges hitting 2 lands and then a single dredge hitting 1 land plus one hitting 2 lands is possible and does avoids ever reaching 100 exactly. TECHNICALLY, if you cannot define the resulting board state EXACTLY, you cannot offer a shortcut to reach it. Even worse, slow-play tournament rules will prevent you from carrying out your combo so that the tournament doesn't implode. So... execute with care or check with your tournament organizer before running this deck!

Brain in a Jar + Fuse cards

Brain lets you cast BOTH HALVES of a fuse card if you have the right number of counters for either half. So, Beck//Call becomes: 1: Put 4 1/1 birds out and draw 4 cards. SEEMS LEGIT.

IN PROGRESS:

Harness the Storm + Rituals? Regrowths?

With Harness out, ritual effects get absolutely nutty. 2 Dark Rituals in the hand become 7 black mana. 2 Rite of Flames become 6 red mana. That's pretty nifty by itself.

I've been trying hard to figure out a way to infinite with Regrowth effects using Harness, but it's actually harder than it seems. Two Regrowths can't keep swapping each other because if you target the first Regrowth with the second, and then CAST the first Regrowth's target from the yard, the first one ends up fizzling due to a lack of a target. So, you end up with two Regrowths in the yard and the fun ends. Three Regrowths ends up in a similar problem, where you can't target one Regrowth with another to complete the loop because they're all on the stack at the same time due to Harness instead of being in the yard.

I feel like there should be a combo here, somewhere, but it is eluding me.

rufus

03-30-2016, 03:03 PM

Harness the Storm + Rituals? Regrowths?

With Harness out, ritual effects get absolutely nutty. 2 Dark Rituals in the hand become 7 black mana. 2 Rite of Flames become 6 red mana. That's pretty nifty by itself.

I've been trying hard to figure out a way to infinite with Regrowth effects using Harness, but it's actually harder than it seems. Two Regrowths can't keep swapping each other because if you target the first Regrowth with the second, and then CAST the first Regrowth's target from the yard, the first one ends up fizzling due to a lack of a target. So, you end up with two Regrowths in the yard and the fun ends. Three Regrowths ends up in a similar problem, where you can't target one Regrowth with another to complete the loop because they're all on the stack at the same time due to Harness instead of being in the yard.

I feel like there should be a combo here, somewhere, but it is eluding me.

Increasing Vengeance and Pulse of the Grid have synergy with Harness the storm.

Suppose you have 2x Regrowth in the graveyard, and 1x Regrowth in hand. Then you can regrow one of the regrowths and cast the other one to get a business spell. That will leave you with 1x Regrowth + Business spell in hand. (You only get 1x spell from the graveyard anyway.) It's still a 4 card combo which is pretty bad.

MaximumC

03-31-2016, 11:31 AM

Another synergy/combo with Eeire Interlude in particular: it's a new, very powerful toy for a Machinegun-style deck. You know, one featuring Gelectrode, Cinder Pyromancer, Chandra, Fire of Kaladesh. In that kind of deck, Eerie Interlude functions as both an untap effect (due to bounce), a double untap effect for some creatures (due to being a spell) and a counterspell (due to breaking targeting.) Seems better than crap like Cerulean Wisps, anyway.

rufus

03-31-2016, 11:53 AM

Another synergy/combo with Eeire Interlude in particular: it's a new, very powerful toy for a Machinegun-style deck. ...

It's way better for a rifter-style deck that uses enter the battlefield triggers. If it weren't intrinsically once per turn it would be fun with Cloud of Faeries and Snapcaster Mage.

There is some fun interaction with Cryptolith Rite and self-untappers like nettle sentinel though. You could build a bad elf deck that way.

MaximumC

04-02-2016, 03:47 PM

Upon further reflection, Gitrog Horror doesn't work. Because reasons.

The Gitrog Combo

So if you have a Dakmor Salvage, Toadman, and a free discard outlet, you now can go infinite. Pitch Salvage, put Toad trigger on stack. Resolve trigger dredging salvage, and maybe get more triggers from lands that get milled. Rinse and repeat. Each time you mill a land, you can just leave the Toad trigger on the stack while you keep doing your discard thing, until you have an number of Toad triggers on the stack greater than any arbitrary number.

I say "arbitrary" because you can easily go infinite without milling your whole deck. Just run Emrakul or Gaea's Blessing. Then, when you hit those, you will reshuffle and you can keep going.

In this way you can put your whole deck in the yard or in your hand as you see fit. Need a particular card? Well, start resolving Toad triggers to just draw cards at some point. Once you have what you need, burn the rest of the triggers on cycling through the deck with Dakmor and reshuffling with Emrakul, holding lands in your hand (remember, you drew your deck) and pitch the non-lands, ensuring that eventually the triggers will burn themselves out without creating more.

So, you can end up with all of your lands and any other cards you want in your hand, any cards you want in your graveyard, and a Wild Mongrel whose power and toughness are larger than any arbitrary number. Lots of ways to win from there.

The Rules Problem

There's a bit of a hiccup here that has to do with tournament rules. Notice how I said "larger than any arbitrary number" repeatedly above instead of "any arbitrary number?" That's because, each time you dredge, you will add either 0, 1, or 2 Toad triggers to the stack. And you can't know how many, because it's random. So, while you can exceed any stated number by simply dredging more, you cannot guarantee that you can end up with, say, exactly 50 Toad triggers on the stack. You might be at 49, then blow past it to 51 by hitting 2 triggers.

To make matters worse, you can't tell your opponent what is going to pass through your hand and graveyard on the way to finishing the combo in advance; you can't know where your reshuffle effect will be. You can't even guarantee a given card will hit your yard before the shuffle effect on any iteration through your library!

TECHNICALLY this is a big problem because of how the shortcut and slow play rules work. In Magic, if you end up being able to perform a loop, typically you will want to shortcut that loop to some conclusion. Many loops cannot be actually performed over and over within the time allowed for a tournament. For example, you want to keep using Petermite/Kikki Jikki until you have a Google number of copies. You can propose that shortcut, and then your opponent is free to say they want to stop the shortcut at the point when you reach 20 creatures so they can do something. With a determinate loop, that's fine, you all know exactly what the board will be.

So, the shorcut section of the comprehensive rules allows this.

But indeterminate loops thwart this strategy. As a specific example, consider the Four Horseman deck (what it does isn't important; you just need to know it can mill itself infinitely but plays Emrakul and it wants to keep going until it mills very specific cards BEFORE hitting Emrakul). Perhaps your opponent can see the top card of their library at all times and wants to stop the loop once the Eldrazi is on top so they can cast Quicken and Kaboom! for the win. Well, when you propose a shortcut of shuffling them until the Eldrazi is on the bottom... and they want to stop the shortcut when the Eldrazi is on the top... how do you know which one of these outcomes will actually occur first? Answer: You do not.

Or, in the Gitrog example, perhaps they want to stop your loop when you mill a particular sorcery because they want to cast Expirate on it. You can't even guarantee that particular card will ever be in your yard ahead of a reshuffle effect, or if so, what the rest of the stack or yard will look like at the time!

So, an indeterminate loop renders shortcuts impossible as a general matter. If you can't say exactly where you want to go and exactly how you'll get there, the comprehensive rules TECHNICALLY do not have a shortcut that applies.

Okay, so can you just "do it" then?

Not if the IPG applies. You cannot then just try to "do it" repeatedly until you randomly hit your win condition, because allowing people to do this for some indeterminate loops might mean that the floor judges could never go home and would starve to death on bad hotel lobby food before the game ended. So, the IPG lets them warn you for "slow play" if you are not advancing the "game state," which is an ENTIRELY SUBJECTIVE analysis by design.

Now, I've actually been told by at least one judge, who shall remain nameless but appears on Podcasts On The Internet, that (1) judge forums agree that Gitrog is not playable for these reasons; (2) there is no ambiguity in what is "advancing the game state," and that (3) any questions about this or any other indeterminate loop are verboten because it would degrade into whining amongst the masses. Take that for waht you will.

Who Cares?

All of this means that, absent a gentleman's agreement to scoop if the combo is assembled, a given tournament judge might or might not let a Gitrog combo player actually start executing the combo at all, at least past the first time that the graveyard gets reshuffled. You'd have to play around with a given judge on what you need to do to keep changing the game state sufficiently to keep going.

That means Gitrog, for all of its value, probably is an unreliable instant-combo-win. Which sucks, because that's one of the reasons I really llke him.

HdH_Cthulhu

04-02-2016, 06:09 PM

Its a bit different then the 4 horseman.
You probably play some wincon, lets say Emrakrul (and a lotus petal).

First you "just do it" you draw a bunch of cards and mill even more till your library is empty. You dont care for decking yourself since your discard outlet lets you reshuffle with emrakrul! So you can/should do it really fast lets say 30 secs. And you actually advancing the game state (drawing cards!).

Well at some point you gonna reshuffle but your library will get smaller and smaller while your hand gets bigger and bigger! Next loop will be about 15 seconds and you still draw cards -> advancing the game state!
Eventually you end up with only lotus petal lands and emrakrul -> do that 15 times hard cast spah gethy GG.

Imo the difference to 4 horseman that its A) way faster and B) hey im drawing cards im doing something! You create value instead of waiting for some specific cards.
If loam shenanigans are legal this should be ok too!

So I did not put much thought in this post but maybe you can mill/draw even faster if you continue with the combo in response to the emrakrul shuffle trigger...

TsumiBand

04-02-2016, 08:51 PM

I thought the problem with 4H was that it relied on the player guaranteeing a highly specific game state that may never occur.

Frog + Dakmor Salvage + Wild Mongrel seems like a legit action to take in the same vein as, like, trying to go off with High Tide without guaranteeing that you're going to draw all the pieces. I mean you can't shortcut High Tide combo, at all; even if you play garbage like Palinchron you only guarantee "infinite" mana, not a game win -- you have to try to draw your Wish into Brain Freeze (or whatever wincon you select).

I totally get why 4H is bullshitty (it relies on a very specific thing to happen), but Dredge + Frog + Mongrel seems like it's totally in bounds of decks that may try to go off.

jrsthethird

04-03-2016, 10:01 PM

There's a bit of a hiccup here that has to do with tournament rules. Notice how I said "larger than any arbitrary number" repeatedly above instead of "any arbitrary number?" That's because, each time you dredge, you will add either 0, 1, or 2 Toad triggers to the stack. And you can't know how many, because it's random. So, while you can exceed any stated number by simply dredging more, you cannot guarantee that you can end up with, say, exactly 50 Toad triggers on the stack. You might be at 49, then blow past it to 51 by hitting 2 triggers.

Gitrog reads "Whenever one or more land cards are put into your graveyard from anywhere, draw a card." So even if you dredge 2 lands, you only get one trigger. So each dredge has a binary value. Combined with the discard you are either drawing one or two cards per iteration.

Don't "go infinite"! No one is forcing you to stack triggers and do accounting. Just draw the damn cards, and when your library gets low, pitch Emrakul to reshuffle. You can cycle lands any lands you draw with Frog + enabler.

The High Tide comparsion is more apt for sure.

Dice_Box

04-03-2016, 10:19 PM

That combo looks janky and fun. I think this is my Christmas deck this year. Anyone else interested is making it a thing? I will start a thread if so.

rufus

04-04-2016, 09:34 AM

I thought the problem with 4H was that it relied on the player guaranteeing a highly specific game state that may never occur. ...

... I totally get why 4H is bullshitty (it relies on a very specific thing to happen) ...

AFAICT The issue is more that judges can't easily tell the difference between "line of play that's spinning it's wheels and unlikely to stop in a reasonable amount of time" and "line of play that's spinning its wheels and likely to stop in a reasonable amount of time." (Under normal conditions, 4H shouldn't actually take that long to play out.)

So a combo line that doesn't reshuffle like Gitrog Monster -> Dread Return (Laboratory Maniac) is going to be less resilient, but shouldn't cause any issues with the judges. Gitrog Monster is already a jank/fun play, so, you can just sacrifice a little more win percentage to play it.

MaximumC

04-04-2016, 11:15 AM

TsumiBand

04-04-2016, 12:17 PM

Those who are quibbling with the slow play problem on Gitrog: Yes, I agree it's not as slow as Four Horsemen, but the rules don't say anything about the range of uncertainty (and hence the speed) of the combo. There is simply no rule allowing you to shortcut indeterminate loops, and the slow play rules apply (if the judge wants them to) if you end up in something like the same board state while "doing it."

To make the point clear again: You will be rules lawyered if you try to go infinite with Gitrog. And the point at which you will lose the rules-lawyering is when you reshuffle your graveyard. This may not be a good thing, but it is what is going to happen. Direct your comments about why it's not fair to the rules committee, or better yet, get on the judges forum and push them on coming up with some more specific standards about what is and is not "advancing the board state." They hate that, but it's long overdue.

In the meantime, rufus has it right - to avoid the problem, you can use Gitrog to do things that do not involve churning your library and graveyard multiple times. Play a win-from-the-graveyard combo, for example, so you only have to mill yourself out once.

So IIUC, you're talking about a really specific kind of "going-off" with Gitrog, anything that would just involve the Gaea's Blessing effect. (this gives me pause since I recall old decks that took infinite turns using Gaea's Blessing and Time Stretch but that's probably totally different as it isn't really a matter of shortcuts when you're taking infinite turns)

So if I want to just try to create a situation where my discard outlet, Gitrog Monster, and Dakmor Salvage are in-hand and I wish to "try to go off" I may do so as long as I don't threaten to reshuffle the graveyard into my library, correct? So as long as there's no Emrakul in my deck (or any of its spiritual cousins, from Gaea's Blessing to whatever else terribad card has the same effect) I may attempt to grow an arbitrarily large Wild Mongrel, and if I fizzle I just fizzle like a man and pee the carpet?

MaximumC

04-04-2016, 12:42 PM

So if I want to just try to create a situation where my discard outlet, Gitrog Monster, and Dakmor Salvage are in-hand and I wish to "try to go off" I may do so as long as I don't threaten to reshuffle the graveyard into my library, correct? So as long as there's no Emrakul in my deck (or any of its spiritual cousins, from Gaea's Blessing to whatever else terribad card has the same effect) I may attempt to grow an arbitrarily large Wild Mongrel, and if I fizzle I just fizzle like a man and pee the carpet?

I THINK that's right, yes, because as long as you're just filling your yard and not shuffling it away, you are not returning back to the same "game state" again and so you are probably fine. It's not a "loop" yet.

The problem is, if you don't allow for reshuffling, Gitrog can easily kill you. If you mill your deck, you will end up with a billion (well, 15 or so) Gitrog triggers on the stack when you're done. Each time you self-mill and hit a land, you get more triggers. This is very bad. Eventually, you have to stop churning and resolve those triggers, unless your kill is all at instant-speed.

If you have more Gitrog Triggers than cards in your library... well, you can't dredge if you don't have cards to dredge with, so you figure out what is going to happen with the extra draw effects.

This means Gitrog is a fine way to draw lots of cards, but the combo has serious problems turning into a reliable instant-win.

TsumiBand

04-04-2016, 12:54 PM

I THINK that's right, yes, because as long as you're just filling your yard and not shuffling it away, you are not returning back to the same "game state" again and so you are probably fine. It's not a "loop" yet.

The problem is, if you don't allow for reshuffling, Gitrog can easily kill you. If you mill your deck, you will end up with a billion (well, 15 or so) Gitrog triggers on the stack when you're done. Each time you self-mill and hit a land, you get more triggers. This is very bad. Eventually, you have to stop churning and resolve those triggers, unless your kill is all at instant-speed. \

Seems like this is the High Tide situation again, where you just play it out and don't mill yourself, right? It should be something like:

- Discard to Mongrel
- Gitrog triggers, you draw
- Replace that draw with Dredge 2, return Dakmor to your hand
- If 1 or 2 land cards hit your library, you get ONE additional trigger (Gitrog says "Whenever one or more land cards are put into your graveyard..." and I'm pretty sure Dredge 2 is seen as a simultaneous event, if that's wrong then I'm wrong) and if you have nothing to Dredge, you draw a card.
- If 0 land cards hit the bin, you have Dakmor Salvage back in your hand.

Assuming I am not missing something, you now have a +1/+1'ed Mongrel, a Dakmor Salvage in hand, and POTENTIALLY one additional card. You shouldn't have to actually stack anything intelligently. You should have a fair amount of control over when you Dredge and which card draw gets Dredged.

It's true that you would probably Dredge the shit out of your deck and so you'd probably want a win besides Mongrel. I have half a mind to look at Psychatog XD it would make assembling a big creature far easier since you get extra value from the cards in the bin, plus it'd put Blue in the deck, which means counters and card draw, joy of joys!

MaximumC

04-04-2016, 01:33 PM

You can totally use Gitrog for value that way, but arbitrarily large creatures with no protection and no evasion seem like a bad way to win a game. Ditto the idea of your three-card combo just drawing lots of cards instead of winning the game on the spot.

- If 1 or 2 land cards hit your library, you get ONE additional trigger (Gitrog says "Whenever one or more land cards are put into your graveyard..." and I'm pretty sure Dredge 2 is seen as a simultaneous event, if that's wrong then I'm wrong) and if you have nothing to Dredge, you draw a card.

I was excited for a minute, because with that one tweak we CAN tell our opponent we want to repeat the loop to reach any arbitrary number - it will only add 1 Gitrog trigger to the stack at a time - but then I realized that it's still a problem because you can't explain the intervening board states until you get there, since the yard fills up randomly.

Oh well.

TsumiBand

04-04-2016, 01:54 PM

Oh well I mean, yeah, of course it's bad, just :)

Mostly just trying to get a sense of what's actually considered a non-changing game state, since it didn't really seem like a 1-to-1 with 4H

rufus

04-04-2016, 02:11 PM

...
Mostly just trying to get a sense of what's actually considered a non-changing game state, since it didn't really seem like a 1-to-1 with 4H

It's not about "changing" but "advancing the game state". I don't think you'll get a clear answer.

Exact game states don't matter, it's whether the game is being meaningfully advanced. It's not something you can exactly define, it's a "I know it when I see it" sort of thing.

http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?24651-SCG-LA-Four-Horseman-in-17th-How&p=673348&viewfull=1#post673348

MaximumC

04-04-2016, 02:35 PM

It's not about "changing" but "advancing the game state". I don't think you'll get a clear answer.

http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?24651-SCG-LA-Four-Horseman-in-17th-How&p=673348&viewfull=1#post673348

To make matters worse, judges are conditioned to get really snarky when you start to ask them about this issue by so many people who DO NOT understand the loop rules whining about why their pet combo shouldn't work. It's hard to get a conversation started.

For example, I e-mailed a particularly well-known judge about the Gitrog issue and asked for more guidance on what was advancing the game state versus not, and got told: "We already decided on the judge forums that the Gitrog combo has the problems you indicate and we're not going to talk about it because everyone just whines," or similar words to the same effect.

I imagine judges are afraid of agreeing on a clear definition because then people will try to "game" it like the guy in the link was doing. Similarly, they appear terrified of admitting it's a discretionary standard because, for many of the Complaining Public, "discretion" gets conflated with "arbitrary."

EDIT: I mean, they're not totally wrong. Instead of intelligent conversation, you get inflammatory things like this:

Someone found a cool interaction with a bunch of otherwise unplayable cards that results in a win. Everyone knows the intent and the outcome, but the governing body sees fit to not let it happen. That's all.

The refund or not part was from a business perspective

EDIT2: And, to add on top of that, people tend to confuse a violation of the "Slow Play / Stalling" rule with someone who is actually trying to waste time. You can violate the rule despite having no ill intention to slow the game down AT ALL. It's just a rule, it means exactly what it says it means. If someone was delaying the game intentionally, I believe that's actually cheating and treated accordingly.

TsumiBand

04-04-2016, 04:06 PM

It sounds like it's just a quagmire, tbh. There's a big grey area intentionally left so, with the intent of making sure that combos which might not be deterministically interrupted just can't exist -- but it's ultimately a smell test. I can't quantify what the difference is between these decks -- except that one seems to rely on an actual, achievable game-state (4H needs to have three specific cards in the graveyard, which means it played its combo out AND didn't hit an Emrakul before it could actually construct the Magic Yard) whereas a potential Gitrog combo just relies on an event (Emrakul hitting the trash). There's no magic game-state to achieve in order to just continually dump your cards into the graveyard (or hand, as it happens) and again it just seems like it's akin to digging through your deck until you bring everything together, just like High Tide.

It feels to me that the delimiter should be that "magic" state occurring, where you have to actually name cards being in a unique zone at the end of this kind of potentially infinite sequence. If you have to say, "My (zone) has (cards) in it, AND (event) never occurred before that actually happened", or something similar to that, then you are just dicking around and asking to get Slow Played. If, instead, you can demonstrate the loop without saying "I do this until cards are in unique zones so that I can actually win", then you should just be able to pump your Mongrel to 3!!!3/3!!!3 because Mongrel doesn't care what it eats and it isn't waiting for you to get cards X, Y, and Z in the garbage before going off.

It's about as easy to define what I think doesn't constitute "non game advancing actions" as it seems to be to actually describe them; it's all "know it when I see it" type stuff. I just look at the potential with Gitrog and I don't see it as an absolute. Like, just including Gaea's Blessing in a Gitrog Monster combo deck shouldn't be grounds for flagging the play, I think the actual issue of a win based directly on determinism is the problem, right? O_o

MaximumC

04-04-2016, 05:14 PM

Like, just including Gaea's Blessing in a Gitrog Monster combo deck shouldn't be grounds for flagging the play, I think the actual issue of a win based directly on determinism is the problem, right? O_o

No, the problem is exactly what I said earlier: no more, no less.

1. The shortcut rules only work if you can describe the exact board state during the combo. Anything less than 100% correct description will not do.
and
2. The slow play rules allow a judge to stop you from doing something if you are found not to be advancing the game state.

And that's it. There is no underlying policy rationale in the rules, no discrimination against indeterminate combos, and no statistical tests. Maybe there should be, but there is not. Address your complaints to the the DCI (for the IPG) or WOTC (for the comp rules).

HdH_Cthulhu

04-05-2016, 09:18 AM

Gitrog reads "Whenever one or more land cards are put into your graveyard from anywhere, draw a card." So even if you dredge 2 lands, you only get one trigger. So each dredge has a binary value. Combined with the discard you are either drawing one or two cards per iteration.

Yup just tested the combo, it takes about 4 reshuffles and 2 minutes to get your library into your hand. Just dredge the whole time and IF you dredge a land draw a card (dont even look at it^^) and continue to dredge.

Also I read about the gamestate "definition", well yup its for judges to stop stupid loops. BUT if a judge comes to your table and he wants you to advance something, just tell him to STFU im nearly done you $§%%!!

Well dont do that! But usually a player calls a judge for slowplay, then a judge comes to your table and watches both players play their game... Your library should be in your hand before the judge knows whats going on!

If the judge doesn't explicitly hate you or Gitrog you should be fine....

Dice_Box

04-05-2016, 09:20 AM

Well, each loop causes you to have more and more cards in your hand. The state changes as you go on as your Library decreases in size.

HdH_Cthulhu

04-05-2016, 09:25 AM

Well, each loop causes you to have more and more cards in your hand. The state changes as you go on as your Library decreases in size.

I think the point of MaximumC is that (while common sense) its not clearly defined so you might get in troubles...

MaximumC

04-05-2016, 11:06 AM

Yup just tested the combo, it takes about 4 reshuffles and 2 minutes to get your library into your hand. Just dredge the whole time and IF you dredge a land draw a card (dont even look at it^^) and continue to dredge.

Also I read about the gamestate "definition", well yup its for judges to stop stupid loops. BUT if a judge comes to your table and he wants you to advance something, just tell him to STFU im nearly done you $§%%!!

Well dont do that! But usually a player calls a judge for slowplay, then a judge comes to your table and watches both players play their game... Your library should be in your hand before the judge knows whats going on!

If the judge doesn't explicitly hate you or Gitrog you should be fine....

You might be fine, but you might not be. And if you got a Slow Play warning, you would not be able to appeal it successfully. "Slow play" does not mean "delaying the game" or even "taking a long time." It means taking actions that do not advance the board state, and historically starting with a randomized library and returning to a randomized library is not seen as advancing the board state.

Remember, I've been told the judges' forum has already discussed and already decided on this issue.

Well, each loop causes you to have more and more cards in your hand. The state changes as you go on as your Library decreases in size.

Correct, and I've heard of judges who made arguments like these to excuse The Four Horseman as long as they were, say, putting more and more narcomebias into play. I do think it's a grey area. But, the general consensus among the judging community appears to be that these kind of incidental changes are not enough to "advance the game state."

Remember, too, I've asked some judges to speak publicly about this issue and give us some black and white understanding of "advancing the board state." I was told to go away, basically.

I think the point of MaximumC is that (while common sense) its not clearly defined so you might get in troubles...

Right, that's the problem.

To put the issue in sharper relief, consider another indeterminate event chain (not even a loop) - the Frenetic Efreet / Chance Encounter combo. Holding priority, you can put as many Efreet activations on the stack as you want to. Then, you let them resolve, and you need to flip a coin for each activation. You need to flip enough coins that you make sure you have 10 wins on the flip so that Chance Encounter allows you to win during your next upkeep. So, you'd want to choose an arbitrarily high number. Trouble is, you then have to tell how many flips you are winning so you know exactly how many counters Chance Encounter is getting.

I proposed this to a judge once, explaining my concept would be to have a cube of D6 and roll them, 10 at a time, 5 times, constituting 50 activation in order to resolve such a stack in a reasonable amount of time. I was told that this, too, could provoke a slow play penalty because putting more and more Efreet activations on the stack is not advancing the game state -- even though it's clear I'm going for a win. I imagine other judges would feel differently.

Simply put, the IPG plays very, very, poorly with indeterminate loops or effects like these, and you need to bear that in mind when you think about these kind of decks.

jrsthethird

04-05-2016, 12:04 PM

Ultimately it's up to the Head Judge of whatever event you play in. Weekly at your LGS? It's probably fine. SCG Open? Better have a backup plan.

While I don't think this is nearly as big of a nondeterministic rules headache as Four Horsemen is, if you're framing it as an infinite loop, chances are, the judge will draw the comparison to 4H and say no. This is likely why you're getting the cold shoulder already; as you're proposing a loop that looks like it plays out in a very similar way. I don't think these judges are giving you a fair shake, but I think it's because to them, it looks like you're trying to break the game. Maybe you are, but there are ways to NOT do that as well.

The combo actually reminds me a lot more like another Dakmor Salvage combo: Seismic Swans. With Swans, you have enough lands in your deck to deal 20 damage as you combo off so you don't need to run Emrakul to reshuffle (and if you did draw it, it's useless). You also advance the game state by damaging your opponent, so even a quick Emrakul flip obviously won't get you called for Slow Play.

It all lies in your discard outlet. If you use Wild Mongrel/Psychatog, then increasing its power/toughness post-blockers is certainly advancing the game state. Not something you'll be going infinite with, but it'll draw you a bunch of cards. You mill Emrakul, and you get more fuel in your deck for your beater (and in the case with Tog, you can exile nonlands you don't need anymore from your graveyard for more consistency). The Skirge Familiar route to Emrakul is fuzzier space though, because you have to somehow get Emrakul in hand, and running through your deck to find it while reshuffling is a nondeterministic process. If you run Worldly Tutor, Fierce Empath, or Eye of Ugin (+ Loam!), you can find an Emrakul a lot easier and potentially avoid the penalty altogether.

I think its safe to try a Gro build with Mongrel/Tog, possibly including a combo kill as a secondary win, and see where it goes. Starting right off in combo territory will get you in hot water eventually, but I'm optimistic that it can work if done right.

HammerAndSickled

04-05-2016, 01:36 PM

Just play Seismic Assault as your discard outlet and you win instantly, I'm not sure what the big deal is.

Dice_Box

04-05-2016, 01:40 PM

Just play Seismic Assault as your discard outlet and you win instantly, I'm not sure what the big deal is.

But then you have a half decent deck. Defeats the point of playing a shit as fuck 5 drop really.

Illissius

06-02-2016, 03:09 PM

A few pages back there was discussion of Sakura-Tribe Scout plus Quirion Ranger being a combo. Did people totally forget about the "Use this ability only once each turn" clause, or am I missing something?

An actual janky combo is:

Sakura-Tribe Scout + Retreat to Coralhelm + Simic Growth Chamber

Add a second Retreat for infinite scrying, a Lotus Cobra or Amulet of Vigor or a second Retreat and a mana critter for infinite mana, or whatever.

maharis

07-08-2016, 01:28 PM

Thalia, Heretic Cathar
Crackdown

MaximumC

07-08-2016, 11:13 PM

Hooray, its' Eldritch Moon time!

Blessed Alliance + Birds of Paradise + A Dork with Dual Casting

So you cast your Blessed Alliance kicked to gain 4 life and untap 2 critters. Tap your Birds for R, then tap your dork to copy Blessed Alliance. Copy resolves, untapping both creatures and gaining you one life. Rinse and repeat for ALL THE LIFES. Special bonus - Alliance is a serviceable piece of removal all on its own. Good times!

You can mix'n'match the creatures, too. The important thing is that one critter taps for the mana needed to let the other one copy the ability. So you might use something that taps for 2U or RU (I don't know, figure it out!) and Izzet Guildmage / Meletis Charlatan,

Blessed Alliance + Mirror Sheet + TWO dorks who tap for 1 U/R U/R combined!

Hey look it's the same combo with more pieces and more bad pieces.

Tree of Perdition + Turn//Burn (or similar)

Simple stuff: make the tree's toughness 1 or 2 and then burn out your opponent. This works with any toughness-setting effect. I like Turn//Burn particularly because you can use the other half of the card to burn out your opponent (not with the same card, with a second one).

Bloodbriar[/card] + Ghave, Guru of Spores

Ghave is not exactly hard up for friends; his first one, Kabal Ghoul, was born in the 1990s. And his cheapest friend is a beetle who costs only B. But, hey, EDH needs all the redundancy it can get!

Eldritch Evolution + Vine Dryad or Skyshroud Cutter

Play a 4-drop for free and then turn it into any 6 drop in your deck. You know what is a 6-drop? Dragonlords, Sire of Insanity, and all sorts of nutty cards. Yes, Allosaurus works this way too, but it requires you to pitch 2 green cards from your hand, which is really terrible.

Spell Queller + Eldrazi with "process"

Exile a spell, then eat that spell. I don't know if it was mentioned in this thread yet, but Uba Mask similarly gives your Eldrazi the chance to eat your opponent's brains.

[cards]Eternal Scourge + Food Chain

The Misthollow Griffin combo just got easier to cast! Infinite Mana for all. I don't know if a 3/3 for 3 is better than a Phantom Monster you can cast after you pitch it to Force of Will. Still, this card is very interesting and might lead to a Food Chain combo deck that does not rely on blue at all.

Geier Reach Sanitarium + Notion Thief

"2: You draw two cards. Your opponent discards a card."

This is a good effect.

rufus

07-09-2016, 12:33 AM

Other silly possibilities to go infinite with Blessed Aliance is with Izzet Guildmage or Echo Mage.

Cryptbreaker plus Intruder Alarm and Rooftop Storm can go pretty crazy.

Liliana's Elite could work as a kill condition in fluctuator or some similar fill the graveyard combo deck.

Tree of Perdition made me think of Tree of Redemption:

Tree of Redemption + Wall of Blood+Phyrexian Collossus+Thermo-Alchemist + 9 life is a necrotic ooze pile.

Which reminds me:

Millikin + Pili-Pala + hasty Necrotic Ooze mills the library for some kind of ooze finish.

Harmless offering is a drop-in replacement for Donate so it works with Thought Lash,Embargo, Demonic Pact or whatever.

Splendid Reclamation + Valakut + mountains

rufus

07-09-2016, 06:25 PM

Thalia, Heretic Cathar
Crackdown

Also:

Meekstone
Embargo
Back to Basics

MaximumC

08-22-2016, 03:19 PM

New set! Good set! Red set! Blue set!

Conspiracy: Get The Throne or whatever is upon us, and it is glorious. So now, without further ado:

ETERNAL MASTERS 2 - COMBOS

Palace Jailer + blink

Really, all of the Monarch cards are quite nice with a blink or bounce effect, but this one is especially nice because it Oblivion Ring's the opponent's dorks each time it ETB. Unlike Fiend Hunter and the like, you keep those critters exiled as long as you want -- provided no one hits you with another creature -- and you can keep doing it. This is probably more of a strong synergy than a combo, but when you consider that removing creatures makes it harder for you to get hit and stop being the monarch in the first place, this guy is really strong. With a blink outlet he almost becomes an engine onto himself.

Recruiter of the Guard + Aluren

Recruiter is a more-different version of Imperial Recruiter, and has the same application with a few tweaks. Here's one possible line to infinite life, for example:

1. Resolve a four-mana green enchantment in Legacy. (Aluren)
2. Drop Recruiter for free; get a Man'o'War
3. Drop Man'o'War for free, bounce Recruiter.
4. Drop Recruiter for free, get Cavern Harpy.
5. Drop Cavern Harpy for free, bounce Man/o'War
6. Drop Man'o'War for free, bounce Recruiter.
7. Drop Recruiter for free, get Spike Feeder.
8. Drop Feeder for free,

Now repeat the following:
1. Pull 2 counters off Feeder to gain 2 life.
2. Pay 1 life to return Cavern Harpy to your hand.
3. Replay Harpy for free, bounce Man'o'War
4. Replay Man'o'War for free, bounce Feeder.
5. Replay Feeder for free.

Each time around the loop you gain 1 life.

Selvala, Heart of the Wilds + Umbral Mantle

Just like Veridian Joiner, Selvala goes infinite with Umbral Mantle. Put the mantle on Selvala. Then:

1. Pay G and tap Selvala for GG.
2. Pay 1GG to untap Selvala using Mantle and give her +3/+0.
3. Pay G to tap Selvana for GGGGG.
... and so on.

This also works with other untap artifacts like Staff of Domination and several others.

Of course, you need something to do with all the mana you get, so...

Splitting SLime + Infinite mana

Yet another win condition for EDH decks who want to make infinite mana. Infinite mana = infinite 6/6s.

Kaya, Ghost Assassin + Containment Priest

Kaya gives you a free blink each turn on top of her other abilities. This is fine for recyling ETB abilities and the like, but it's especially nasty with Containment Priest because the Priest will prevent the target from ever returning.

Kaya, Ghost Assassin + Surprise Deployment

Any card that puts creatures into play temporarily, like Surprise Deployment or Shallow Grave or Goryo's Vengence or whatever, combos hard with Kaya. Her blink costs no mana and results in a creature who does not leave at end of turn. Works with tons of cards too numerous to mention!

Leovold, Emmisary of Trest + Wheel of Fortune

Not much to see here, but Leo does what Spirit of the Labyrith does for cheaper and Notion Thief does for better with an additional protective ability.

Spy Kit + Mask of the Mimic

I won't list off EVERY card that combos with Spy Kit; basically use gather to look up "card named" and you'll find most of them pretty readily. Mask is my favorite, though.

Have two creatures, one equipped with Spy Kit. Cast Mask targeting the one with the Kit, sacrificing the other. You can now get any non-legendary monster out of your deck for free. Blightsteel Collosus, Sphinx of the Steel Wind, Inkwell Leviathan, Worldspine Wurm... whatever.

rufus

08-29-2016, 05:47 PM

MaximumC

08-30-2016, 03:04 PM

Here's another silly one:

creature (1cc or more), Eldrich Evolution, and Fork (or similar) -> Fetch a Dualcaster Mage and Phantasmal Images (using the copy trigger) and finish with Hellraiser Goblin and Heartlash Cinder.

Interesting. Let me see if I can break that down...

(1) Cast Eldrich Evolution with X >= 3
(2) Cast Fork targeting Evolution (both on stack)
(3) Resolve Fork copy. Retrieve a Dualcaster Mage.
(4) Dualcaster ETB, copy Eldrich Evolution.
(5) Repeat this process to dig out all the Dualcasters and Clone effects in your deck.
(6) Wind up with 4 Dual Casters and 4+ Clones of Dualcasters in play.
(7) Resolve the last copy effect to get Hellraiser Goblin.
(8) Resolve the original Evolution to get Heartlash Cinder.

...even so, this only involves attacking with 9 2/2s and a non-evasive 20/20 that can be chumped. Im sure we can do better than that. After all, our deck is apparently already full of 2 and 3 drops, and the combo requires 5 mana to go off (6 if we start with a Dualcaster). So, how about this instead:

(1) Cast Eldrich Evolution with X >= 4
(2) Cast Fork targeting Evolution (both on stack)
(3) Resolve Fork copy. Retrieve a Dualcaster Mage.
(4) Dualcaster ETB, copy Eldrich Evolution.
(5) Repeat this process to dig out all the Dualcasters and Clone effects in your deck.
(6) Wind up with 4 Dual Casters and 4+ Clones of Dualcasters in play.
(7) Resolve the last copy effect to get Flamekin Zealot.
(8) Resolve the original Evolution to get Ordic, Master Tactician

This way, we're attacking with 9 3/3s, a 4/5, and a 3/3, all unblockable. Seems like that is better.

EDIT: Indeed, this seems pretty not-terrible at all to me. The combo package is fat, sure, but we could make that work. Let's see.

Mana Dorks (8)
4 Sylvan Caryatid
4 Bloom Tender

Creatures (10)
4 Dualcaster Mage
4 Phantasmal Image
1 Flame-Kin Zealot
1 Odric, Master Tactician

Combo Spells (8)
4 Eldritch Evolution
2 Fork
2 Twinflame

Other Stuff: (11)
4 Lightning Bolt
2 Gut Shot
1 Noxious Revival
3 Red Elemental Blast

Manas (22)

rufus

08-31-2016, 12:52 AM

I'm pretty sure it's a bad deck.

I'd think Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary or Devoted Druid would be better than Bloom Tender.

At X=4 you can chain through Dack's Duplicate so that the clones are hasty. (With Restoration Angel and 2xDack's Duplicate you can even make bodies with infinite dethrone.)

Edit 3: With EE X=4 it is possible to go infinite... though it's silly.

Cast Eldrich Evolution (X>=4), Cast Fork (Copying EE)
Fetch Dualcaster Mage, (Copy EE with the trigger)
Fetch Gigantoplasm (Copy Dualcaster, Copy EE)
Fetch Phantasmal Image (Copy Gigantoplasm copying Dualcaster Copy EE) ->
Activate Phantasmal image with X=0 to kill it.
Fetch Driver of the Dead (Reanimate Phantasmal Image, copy Gigantoplasm(Dualcaster) Copy EE),
Activate Phantasmal Image, X=0 to kill it.
Fetch Gigantoplasm #2 (Copy Driver of The Dead, Reanimate PI, Copy Gigantoplasm copying Dualcaseter, Copy EE) ->
Fetch Purphoros, God of the Forge
Fetch Phantasmal Image [trigger 2 damage to the opponent from Purphoros] (Copy Gigantoplasm (copying Driver of the Dead), reanimate the other Phantasmal Image.)
With the reanimation trigger on the stack activate the Phantasmal Image with X = 0 to kill it.

It's probably better to use Dack's Duplicate to produce a bunch of hasty Restoration Angels copies.

BooleanLobster

09-24-2016, 11:00 PM

rufus

09-25-2016, 12:52 AM

1/6/5
Cast Woodland Bellower.
Fetch Phantasmal Image, copying Woodland Bellower....

You need Painter's Servant (green) to work that. Bellower only fetches non-legendary green creatures.

BooleanLobster

09-25-2016, 11:48 AM

You need Painter's Servant (green) to work that. Bellower only fetches non-legendary green creatures.
Dammit, I read the card like 6 times and still didn't see that.

MaximumC

09-26-2016, 11:15 AM

2/8/5
Cast Painter's Servant, naming Green
Cast Woodland Bellower.
Fetch Phantasmal Image, copying Woodland Bellower.
Fetch Phantasmal Image, copying Woodland Bellower.
Fetch Phantasmal Image, copying Woodland Bellower.
Fetch Phantasmal Image, copying Woodland Bellower.
Fetch Hellraiser Goblin. Swing for 32.

A better (mono-green) use of Bellower is part of a chain to win off of Food Chain with Llanowar Empath.

Cast Empath, fetch Bellower.
Sac empath and pay 2, cast Bellower and fetch Empath.
Sac Bellower for 7G
Cast Empath, fetch bellower.
Cast Bellower, get Empath. (G left in pool)
Sac two bellowers and empath for a total of 19G mana in pool.
Cast empath (16 mana left) fetch Emrakul, winnar.

09-26-2016, 11:52 AM

A better (mono-green) use of Bellower is part of a chain to win off of Food Chain with Llanowar Empath.

Cast Empath, fetch Bellower.
Sac empath and pay 2, cast Bellower and fetch Empath.
Sac Bellower for 7G
Cast Empath, fetch bellower.
Cast Bellower, get Empath. (G left in pool)
Sac two bellowers and empath for a total of 19G mana in pool.
Cast empath (16 mana left) fetch Emrakul, winnar.

You mean Fierce Empath not Llanowar Empath.

MaximumC

09-27-2016, 10:57 AM

You mean Fierce Empath not Llanowar Empath.

Correct-o-mondo.

rufus

09-30-2016, 01:31 AM

MaximumC

09-30-2016, 01:59 PM

I missed it earlier, but Baloth Null facilitates rooftop storm combo significantly...

Rooftop Storm + Sidisi, Undead Vizier self exploit fetch Sidisi, Undead Vizier self exploit fetch Baloth Null (Return 2x Sidisi to hand) fetch a zombie sac outlet (e.g. Nantuko Husk) and a second recursion zombie (like Baloth Null #2) and you have a tutor loop. Gray Merchant of Asphodel is an easy way to close out the combo.

Okay, how about this.

Play Rooftop Storm.
Cast Sidi for free, get Sidi.
Cast Sidi for free, get Baloth Null.
Cast Null for free, get Sidi x2 back.
Cast Sidi for free, get Baloth Null.
Cast Sidi for free, get Carrion Feeder.
Cast Null for free, get Sidis back.
Cast Sidi for free, get Geralf's Messanger.

Then you loop:
Case Messanger for free, ping 2.
Sac Messenger and 1x Null to Feeder.
Cast Null for free, get Messenger and Null back in hand.

And other than the pair of Nulls, this does not require you to play with garbage cards.

ZOMBO COMBO

Creatures (19)
4x Deathrite Shaman
4x Gravecrawler
4x Carrion Feeder
4x Sidisi, Undead Vizer
2x Baloth Null
1x Geralf's Messenger

Combo (6)
2x Rooftop Storm
3x Academy Rector
1x Omniscience

Other Crap (12)
3x Abrupt Decay
2x Innocent Blood
3x Thoughtseize
2x Cabal Therapy
2x Malestrom Pulse

Lands (23)

So this list lets you combo off by either:
(1) Rooftop Storm in play + Sidi in hand
(2) Rector in play + Sidi in hand (you sac Rector to get Omni/Rooftop and another Sidi)

And it still presents a half-way credible aggro threat.

rufus

09-30-2016, 02:27 PM

...
Then you loop:
Case Messanger for free, ping 2.
Sac Messenger and 1x Null to Feeder.
Cast Null for free, get Messenger and Null back in hand.

And other than the pair of Nulls, this does not require you to play with garbage cards.
....

Yeah, I was thinking in terms of modern. There are lots of possible win cons -- Diregraf Captain works too, and it probably makes sense to include a Sedraxis Alchemist so you can remove any pesky permanents.

Really my entire point was that Baloth makes the combo package much leaner.

MaximumC

09-30-2016, 03:15 PM

Yeah, I was thinking in terms of modern. There are lots of possible win cons -- Diregraf Captain works too, and it probably makes sense to include a Sedraxis Alchemist so you can remove any pesky permanents.

Really my entire point was that Baloth makes the combo package much leaner.

It totally does. Anything that reduces the useless parts of the combo package is a great improvement.

Now, about that pesky 6-drop enchantment that has to get resolved....

rufus

10-31-2016, 08:56 AM

Commander 2016 is fully spoiled...

Divergent Transformation can work in combos as a replacement for Mass Polymorph.

It's not legacy, but Frenzied Fugue + Time Vault. Maybe there's some pay off with Stasis or something similar.

MaximumC

01-13-2017, 12:00 PM

Another set, another update. But, holy cow, what an update it is! Aether Revolt brings combo back into Standard in a big way. It's a Johnny set to end all Johnny sets. It's like Urza's block reborn under modern sensibilities. Tickles me to tears, and I hope that the Johnny-in-Standard experiment goes over well and we get more blocks like this. This set contains tons of cards that let you cast things for free (traditionally broken) tutor things from your library onto the battlefield (usually busted) and triggered abilities without mana costs (often abusable).

Anyway, off the races!

Saheeli Rai + Felidar Guardian

We'll get the big obvious one out of the way first. With both of these in play, you can use Saheeli's -2 ability to clone the Felidar. The clone then blinks Saheeli, refreshing her loyalty and allowing her to use the ability again. Rinse and repeat for an arbitrarily large number of 1/4 cats that have haste.

Note that this also works substituting Kiki-Jiki for Saheeli, if you're into that.

Kari Zev's Expertise + Breaking and Entering

This actually works with all of the Expertise cards and all of the Fuse cards. Exactly like with Brain in a Jar, you get to cast both halves of a Fuse card for free. When an effect wants the casting cost of a Fuse card, it gets two answers, one for each side. If either side satisfies a condition allowing you to cast it for free, you get to cast the entire card for free, including the Fuse cost.

Crackdown Construct + Wandering Fumerole

These combos give you an arbitrarily large Construct. Crackdown Construct has a triggered ability with no cost, which is always a good sign. It combos with any creature or artifact that you can activate an arbitrary number of times. In Standard, you can go infinite by making Wandering Fumerole into a creature. That's cute, but in eternal formats there is a MASSIVE list of cards that go infinite:

Shuko
Nomads en-Kor
Shaman en-Kor
Demonspine Whip
Lavaclaw Reaches
Chimeric Staff
Chimeric Idol
Sentinel
Mirror Entity
Frenetic Efreet
Frenetic Sliver
Illusionary Mask
Basalt Monolith
Crypt Rats
Mist Dragon

And some cards that work sometimes...

Kazul's Toll Collector
Lightning Greeves

And there's probably more where that comes from! The really cute thing here is that Crackdown Construct forms a double combo with eight cards in several ways. So, for example, Crackdown combos with Lavaclaw Reaches and Wandering Fumerole, which in turn also combo with Ceaseless Searblades. Crackdown combos with Basalt Monolith or Puresight Merrow holding a Paradise Mantle, which in turn also combo with Wakethrasher.

Metallic Mimic + Animation Module

Oh look, another standard-legal combo! With Mimic naming Servo, you get to pay 1 mana to make a 2/2 Servo as much as you like... with one caveat. You have to actually have a way to start the process by putting a +1/+1 counter on something. Once you accomplish that, you can pay a {3} startup cost to use the Module's own ability each turn.

Saffi, Eriskdotter + Renegade Rallier

This is an infinite sac engine. With both in play, sac Saffi targeting Rallier. Sac Rallier to whatever other effect you have, and then it will return, returning Saffi along with it. Rinse and repeat.

You can also sub in [card]Angelic Renewal[/cards] for Saffi.

Hope of Ghirapur + Auriok Salvagers

With both of these online, for the low, low cost of 2W per turn, your opponent will only have a window between your untap step and your combat damage step to cast non-creature spells. Punish those fools who replaced Disenchant with Fragmentize!

Greenbelt Ravager[cards] + [cards]Servant of the Conduit + Paradox Engine

This gives you infinite storm, as long as you start from less than 2 Energy. Cast Ravager, bounce and get the Energy. Spend the Energy on Servant to make {G}. Re-cast Ravager, which untaps Servant using Paradox Engine to get us back where we started.

Finish with your Storm kill of choice, or draw your deck with Glimpse or Beck//Call.

Paraharmonicon + Crumbling Vestige + 2 Felidar Sovereign

This gives you infinite enters the battlefield triggers for lands and creatures, and infinite mana of any color. With Vestige, Feildar, and Harmonica in play, cast another Felidar. Or another creature that blinks creatures like, I dunno, that deer from Scars of Mirrodin. The important thing is that you blink the Felidar, who then comes in with double ETB blink triggers for the Vestige and the deer/second Felidar. You net {1} plus one mana of any color and can keep this up as long as you like.

Walking Ballista + Infinite Mana

Ballista is (I think) the best win condition for infinite colorless mana combos that I have ever seen. It's practically a colorless fireball, like Rocket Launcher, but it also does not suck by itself. It translates infinite mana into damage whether it's in your hand OR on the board at the time you go off. The only thing it does not do particularly well is win from the graveyard, since reanimation techniques bring it back as a 0/0. Well, you can't have everything.

I'm sure that I am only scratching the surface here, and I will return once I have more time to add to the list!