Black Magic

This week I'm going to look at combos.

One of the reasons many people love to Commander is to pull off combos that they would otherwise not be able to.

"Hold on," I hear you say, "what do you mean by combo?"

A combo is a combination of cards in magic that work together to result in a powerful effect.

For example: Blood Tribute and Wound Reflection

Okay so that's 10 mana but it is a 2 card kill. Sure there's a couple of provisos not least of which is having an untapped vampire to hand but the two cards still work so well with each other they would be said to be a combo.

However, for the purposes of this blog post I'm going to look at cards that combine together to produce an effect that will go infinite.  That is the process activated by the combination of cards will not stop until the player decides to end the process, your opponents are all dead or, worst case scenario, everyone dies. Specifically I want to look at:

Mono Black Infinite Combos

How about we start with the simplest and probably most commonly referred to mono black infinite combo:

You need to be able to hit your opponent(s) for a point of damage but once you do this two cards won't stop until all everyone facing across you at the table is dead.

 Just to help, if you're not so great at working these things out:

I attack my opponent and do him a point of damage.  Exquisite Blood says; Whenever an opponent looses life, you gain that much life. 

So it triggers and I gain a point of life.  Sanguine Bond says; Whenever you gain life, target opponent looses that much life.

As I gained a point of life Sanguine Bond will trigger and my opponent will loose a point of life. At this point Exquisite Blood triggers.  The loop will then continue until your opponent is dead at which point the combo will be broken.

There are a couple of cards that no Commander deck pilot worth his sort would be without if he was playing any kind of Mono Black deck.

So, without further delay, allow me to introduce the starts of the Mono Black Infinite Combo world:

Many of the infinite combos you'll play in mono black deck will make use of certain very powerful artifcats and that's perfectly acceptable.

The reason these two cards are such starts is that they both allow graveyard recursion.

Let's look at Nim Deathmatle in action first:

So what's happening here?

You play Grave Titan and two 2/2 Zombie creature tokens also enter the battlefield.

Sacrifice the Grace Titan and one of the 2/2 Zombie creature tokens to Ashnod's Altar to produce 4 colourless mana.

You spend the mana to return Grave Titan to the battle field with Nim Deathmantle at which point he is joined by two more 2/2 Zombie tokens.

Every time you repeat the process you gain a 2/2 Zombie creature token, the process can be carried out until you have a an army of zombies.  Just watch out for those pesky board wipes!

In this example when the priest enters the battlefield you gain UUU. Sacrifice the priest with altar to gain two colourless mana.

Spend 2 colourless and 2U and use Nim Deathmantle to bring back the priest. Repeat and you'll end up with as much black mana as you could ever need.

Finding a way to spend that man is the tricky bit.

One idea might be Blasting Station.

If you've generated infinite mana you can then spend that brining the Priest back to life every time you sacrifice him with Blasting Station. Each time you do this Blasting Station is doing 1 point of damage to one of your opponents.

Given you can repeat this as many times as necessary everyone should agree it was a Good Game, scoop their cards up, shuffle the decks and start a new game.

You can use Phyrexian Altar in the same combo.

The difficulty here is that although the combination produces an infinite loop there's no net gain on your side of the battle field. You need a card that cares about death or cards entering the battlefield.

They both do exactly the same job and that is they win you the game.

Lets have a look at another Nim Deathmantle combo. If you utilise Puppeteer Clique you can steal on of your opponents creatures from their graveyard and sac them both to Ashnod's Altar so that you can bring Puppeteer Clique back from the dead to repeat the combo either with the same creature from your opponents graveyard you utilised the first turn or a different creature entirely.

You'll note that Puppeteer clique has Persist so if you didn't return it back to the battlefield with Nim Deathmantle it would return all by itself.

When it returns to the battlefield it does so with a -1/-1 counter on it which stops Persist from working.  The opposite of Persist is Undying and so you get similar results using Geralf's Messenger.

This has the added advantage the the Messenger will kill your opponents.

You may have realised that Persist and Undying work in opposite to each other and if you can give a creature both you can infinite return that creature from the graveyard by alternating the triggers. This is where Mikaeus, the Unhallowed comes into play.  He gives the Puppeteer Undying which is like Persist only it uses +1/+1 counters. This means you can alternate the effects when the Puppeteer enters the graveyard. All you need then is a sacrifice outlet.

In both these cases you end up with infinite mana to spend, just make sure you can spend it wisely.

Ashnod's Altar and Phyrexian Altar are not the only Altars in Magic the Gathering and killing someone is not the only way to win a game of magic.  This combo used the Altar of Dementia to 'mill'  (this phrase means to take the top card of your opponents library and put it in his graveyard, it comes from an early artifact called Millstone) your opponents enter library leaving them with no cards to draw at the start of their next turn.

This one should be pretty obvious by now. you remove all the counters from Triskellion damaging your opponents.  Mikaeus gives him Persist so he'll return to the battle field with a +1/+1 counter that can be removed for another point of damage and the process then loops.

This is a nice two card infinite mana combo. Persist acting to add +1/+1 counters to Workhorse which can then be removed for colourless mana. The Workhorse dies this in turn triggers Persist and the whole loop starts over.

Here we are using a different type of sacrifice outlet; Fallen Ideal. The idea is to play Fallen Ideal on Mikaeus, or you could target another creature so long as it's not the Lingering Tormentor. Sacrifice the Tormentor to Fallen Ideal alternating between Persist and Undying. Then attack with a huge Flying Legendary Zombie Cleric. This can be that bit more special if Mikaeus is your Commander.

Another star performer of the world of the Infinite Mono Black Combo is Magus of the Coffers.

You need six swamps in play for this to work, You pay two colourless tap Magus of the Coffers for six black mana spend three of this to untap it using the Sword, which must be equipped on the Magus. The spend two of your black mana currently in your mana-pool to tap the Magus for another six black mana for a net gain of black mana.  Repeat and you soon have all the mana you could ever wish to spend.

This works the same as the above combo just using Umbral Mantle in place of the Sword.  Because each time you use the Mantle it gives the Magus +2/+2 it can also make the Magus a very very large creature indeed. This could, on its own, defeat one of your opponents.

This is a great combo because Pili-pala and Magus of the Coffers need to be in the graveyard. Necrotic ooze the gets both creatures' abilities and with four or more swamps in play again you get infinite mana.

Here Palladium Myr has been used instead of Magus of the Coffers. It lets the Ooze tap for the 2 mana you need to untap to produce one mana from Pili-pala's ability.

This is a great combo but a little tricky to follow if you've not come across it before.

The Nether Traitor is sacrificed to the Altar adding one black mana to your mana pool.
Because the Traitor goes to the graveyard Paul of Ulamg's ability triggers and it produces a 0/1 Eldrazi Spawn creature token.
This can be sacrificed for one colourless mana doing so meets the condition of Nether Traitor and spending the black mana in your mana pool means you can bring it back to the battlefield from the graveyard.
The net result of this is one colourless mana in your mana pool. Repeat and you get as much colourless mana as you want.

This is the same sort of combo as above but the Pawn has been replaced by the Genesis Chamber. In this case because you are sacrificing both the Nether Traitor and the Myr to the Altar you end up with infinite black mana.

The Phyrexian Altar, as you may have realised, is another great combo piece and there is one more combo in which it is also used.

Simple,effective, deadly. This has to be my favourite of all the combos in this post. Sacrifice Gravecrawler to the Altar to add one black mana to your mana-pool. Vengeful Dead deals one damage to each of your opponents.

Spend that black mana to cast Gravecrawler and then sacrifice him again. Repeat until everyone but you is dead.

Once you get 3 counters on Bloodchief Ascension if your opponent should loose any amount of life for any reason they mill their deck, due to Mindrank's ability and loose the game.

While I am not convinced this counts as an infinite combo this is a great example of where the Oracle comes into play. The Oracle text as held on The Gatherer is important in this combo.

For Helm of Obedience the Oracle text reads: "Target opponent puts cards from the top of his or her library into his or her graveyard until a creature card or X cards are put into that graveyard this way, whichever comes first."

However, Leyline of the Void states that, "If a card would be put into an opponent's graveyard from anywhere, exile it instead."

Because the cards are being exiled and not going to the Graveyard the 'stop' condition in the Helm's text is never met and so you only stop putting cards from the top off your opponent's library into exile when you run out of cards.  When they next try to draw a card they loose.

With both Triskelion and Phyrexian Devourer in the graveyard you have a way to put enough +1/+1 counters onto Necrotic Oozer that you can use them, with Triskellion's ability, to kill your opponents. Don't forget to remove them as soon as they are placed onto the Ooze or you'll run foul of the Devourer's other ability. Again this is not truly an infinite combo but it should give you enough ammunition to kill all of your opponents and win the game.

This is one of those combos that doesn't actually do much except give you infinite enter the battlefield and goes to the graveyard triggers.

Substitute the Skeleton with Gravecrawler and then providing you have another Zombie in play you get infinite black mana. Of course if that Zombie happens to be Vengeful Dead then you're killing all your opponents at the same time. But that gets into the realms of four card combos and I've deliberately tried to keep the number of cards required for the combo to three or less.

There maybe more Mono Black Infinite Combos that I have missed but these are all that I know of. If you know of any more let me know and I'll add them to this post properly.

Before I go here's a hand list of all of the combos I've discussed above:

Exsanguinate + Sanguine Bond

Mikaeus, the Unhallowed + Triskelion
Mikaeus, the Unhallowed + Puppeteer Clique + Altar of Dementia
Mikaeus, the Unhallowed + Puppeteer Clique + Blood Artist
Mikaeus, the Unhallowed + Puppeteer Clique + Falkenrath Noble
Mikaeus, the Unhallowed Workhorse + Blood Artist
Mikaeus, the Unhallowed Workhorse + Falkenrath Noble
Mikaeus, the Unhallowed Lingering Tormentor + Fallen Ideal

Gravecrawler + Vengeful Dead + Phyrexian Altar
Bloodchief Ascension + Mindcrank
Leyline of the Void + Helm of Obedience
Necrotic Ooze + Triskelion + Phyrexian Devourer
Basal Sliver + Hivestone + Reassembling Skeleton

Magus of the Coffers + Sword of the Paruns
Magus of the Coffers + Umbral Matle
Magus of the Coffers + Pili-Pala + Necrotic Ooze

Paladium Myr + Pili-Pala + Necrotic Ooze

Grave Titan + Ashnod's Altar + Nim's Deathmantle
Priest of Gix + Ashnod's Altar + Nim's Deathmantle
Puppeteer Clique + Ashnod's Altar + Nim's Deathmantle
Priest of Gix + Phyrexian Altar + Nim's Deathmantle

Nether Traitor Genesis Chamber + Phyrexian Altar
Nether Traitor Pawn of Ulamog + Phyrexian Altar

Until next week remember the graveyard is your friend.

Phil