It's Easy Being Green

One of the earliest posts I wrote on this blog was all about Black Magic Infinite combos.

I figured as the new year rolls in I should revisit this idea but change up the colour.

So this weeks post is all about mono coloured infinite combos. And the colour of choice is, drum roll please.......Green (in case you hadn't already guessed)

Green as a colour in MTG (Magic The Gathering) does a couple of things really well, possibly better than any other colour. That is produce mana and multiply creature tokens and +1/+1 counters.

Before I proceed a quick word about this blog post. I'm not going to be discussing cards that have strong synergy with each other. In this post the combination of cards must produce an infinite combo.

With that in mind this is possibly the most famous Infinite Combo in Green and one of the most famous in any colour combination, more so I guess because it's a two card combo.

You enchant a Forest with Squirrel Nest and then tap each Squirrel you produce to untap the forest using Earthcraft. Using this you can produce as many Squirrels as your heart desires.

It doesn't take a genius to get the idea that Earthcraft is the centre piece of more than one infinite combo. Especially as it involves untapping a land.

First, though, what you need is a way of turning the land into a creature.

Enter Animate Land. It's an Instant, which is its biggest downside, that turns one of our lands into a 3/3 creature. But this is only going to let us repeatedly tap and untap the 3/3 Forest that we have created. (There's more about turning lands into creatures later on in the post..)

What need is a way to take advantage of that. However, you have to keep in mind that we are not tapping the land for mana and a lot of cards state "whenever you tap a land for mana". Having said that there is a way that this will work for us.

Darksteel Garrison lets you pump a creature, preferably one with some kind of evasion like Trample so that you can do as much damage as you want to an opponent.

This is great combo for pumping the creature Equipped with Umbral Mantle. Dawn's Reflection lets you tap the Forest for 3. You can then use that to untap the creature giving it +2/+2 until the end of turn. You can then tap the creature to untap the land and repeat. This is pushing the limits of how I like combos to work as it requires a total of 5 cards, including an enchanted land and an equipped creature.

If you do manage to pull off the above combo and have a card like Mana Reflection in play then you're going to get infinite mana as well.

Earlier on I showed you Earthcraft side-by-side with Doubling Season. If you add in Squirrel Nest you'll end up with as many untapped Squirrels as you have tapped.

  
If you have Concordant Crossroads, which literally states that 'All creatures have Haste', then you can attack with those creatures too.

I thought this was a nice way to introduce Doubling Season as it's also a great centre piece for many infinite combos.

Hopefully this is fairly easy to follow but here's how it works:

1. Tap a land for 1 and use that to turn a +1/+1 counter into a Pentavite. 
2. Doubling Season triggers and creates a second Pentavite.
3. Sacrifice a Pentavite to Ashnod's Altar to generate 2 mana
4. Use 1 mana to turn the second Pentavite back into a +1/+1 counter. 
5. Doubling Season triggers and creates a second +1/+1 counter.
6. Repeat

You now have 1 mana and an extra +1/+1 counter on Pentavus. You can do this to generate infinite mana and infinite +1/+1 counters on Pentavus. Keep in mind that you can use some of the mana and +1/+1 counters you've generated to turn the counters into two Pentavites for each counter. So you'll end up with infinite Pentavites as well.

Primal Vigor will work as a stand in for Doubling Season. However, be warned it works for everyone not just you.

There is another creature you can use to achieve similar ends but you'll need to replace Doubling Season as well.

Both Ivy Lane Denizen and Death's Presence serve to add +1/+1 counters back onto Spike Breeder without using any mana to do so. Presence does so when you sacrifice a Spike to the Altar to generate mana and Denizen when you put a Spike into play.

This only generates infinite goes to the graveyard/enters the battlefield effects.

Add in a card like Hardened Scales and you'd end up with an infinitely large Spike Breeder.

As I was researching my notes I realised I'd completely overlooked Ant Queen. So I'll slot it in next as it's also a great combo.

It also gives me a chance to introduce Parallel Lives. While it doesn't do anything with +1/+1 counters Parallel Lives does double creature tokens. This means we can tap the two ants we produce to untap two Forests to generate two more Ants. You can then repeat this as much as you like.

Of course this will work with both Doubling Season and Primal Vigor as well.

Of course sometimes you need something to do with those infinite tokens, or even just the creatures dying.  Cards like these help you to do just that.

Even better than that Skullclamp and Fecundity are part of there own combos. You need either of them along with Ashnod's Altar and this card; Words of Wilding.

Either way you play it this combo will give you infinite mana. Speaking of which here's another infinite mana combo for you.

As I said at the beginning of this blog Green is very good at generating mana. This combo, however, utilises artifacts to generate infinite mana, The key card here though is Mana Reflection and it also other cards it combos nicely with:

Mana Reflection doubles Grim Monolith's three mana to six. You can then use four of this to untap the Monolith giving you two mana in the bank. Repeat as much as you like. This also works with Basalt Monolith.

Going back a step, often Green is married with one or more artifacts to produce an infinite effect.

Here are three more such combos:

The Myr Turbine combo is a nice way to generate lots and lots of myr tokens. 

If you've read my article on Mono Black combos you'll know that Nim Deathmantle played a big role in a fair number of those combos so, for me, it's nice to see it make an appearance in this post in a mono Green combo. Although that combo is more an enabler that gives infinite enter the battlefield/graveyard effects.

The third combo doesn't do a lot except repeatedly tap and untap the Argothian Elder (which has been turned into an artifact by Liquimetal Coating) and two lands.

But what if one of those lands was Temple of the False God or we used Mana Reflection or some other way to make the lands produce more mana? Then we would get infinite mana.

Speaking of Nim Deathmantle, if you pair it up with Mitotic Slime and Ashnod's Altar you get another infinite creature/infinite mana combo.

The Argothian Elder and Maze of Ith combo, providing you have a Forest handy, will give you infinite mana but only during the combat phase. So the question here is; what to do with all of that mana?

Unlike Red or Black green doesn't have a plethora of pumpable creatures. But it does have a few interesting solutions to this quandary.

Helix Pinnacle can let you win the game but you'll have a nervous time waiting until your next upkeep to see if it might get destroyed. 

Nemata, Grove Guardian will give you an infinite number of Saprolings with the potential also be very large. 

Killer Bees I chose because it has Flying and any kind of evasion is never a bad thing.

Here's another combo for you: Seeker of Skybreak and Illusionist Bracers. These can be used together to repeatedly tap another creature. But the question is what to use it on?

Both the Llanowar Behemoth and Bramblesnap can pump themselves or another creature. Bramblesnap even has Trample. Dryad Arbor is just an easy way to generate lots of mana.

It should be noted at this point that Green has any number of ways of making a land a creature.  

Useful to note given the way some of the combos above work.

Aluren and Cloudstone Curio allow you to repeatedly cast and bounce a pair of creatures that have a CMC of less than 3.  The trick is to make sure the creatures in question have enter the battlefield (ETB) triggers.

How about making your creatures infinitely large, drawing as many cards as you wish or generating infinite mana and sacrifice effects?

While I'm not the greatest fan of the Eldrazi they also have a place to play in this article.

Any of the three token doublers discussed in this article will work with Spawnsire of Ulamog. The idea is to create four Eldrazi Spawn creatures sac them to create 4 mana to create 4 more.

What you get out of it is infinite goes to the graveyard triggers. Personally I think this is expensive for what it is. However, on the plus side it is only a 2 card combo which is always advantageous.

I mentioned Umbral Mantal earlier and there's at least four more cards it can combo with in Green to great effect.

Priest of Titania and Elvish Archdruid require you to have additional elves in play, two more will help you make a giant creature. While three or more is also infinite mana.

Viridian Joiner needs two mana spare to start with so that you can tap it for G and use the three mana to untap it and pump it. Once pumped it will tap and untap getting larger and larger and generate infinite mana as well.

Elvish Aberration just gets bigger and bigger with every tap/untap cycle.

I'm still not finished yet...

Devoted Druid is an Elf that can untap itself and Presence of Gond lets him tap to create Elf tokens. Coat of Arms stops the Druid from dying due to the -1/-1 counters and it also pumps all the Elf tokens you're creating.

You could also use Ivy Lane Denizen here instead of Coat of Arms. If you do not know this already; +1/+1 counters and -1/-1 counters neutralize each other.

I've been thinking about Woodfall Primus since I started writing this article. The issue is that it isn't strictly an infinite combo.

Woodfall Primus states: When Woodfall Primus enters the battlefield, destroy target noncreature permanent."

Because there is no 'may' every time you put the Primus into play you MUST destroy a noncreature permanent. At some point you would start destroying your own.

However you can choose to end the combo whenever you like and given that it's very powerful I felt I would still like to mention it.

You could use any sacrifice outlet you like Ashnod's Altar is just one of the best. Ivy Lane Denizen's ability cancels the -1/-1 counter placed on the Woodfall Primus by the Persist ability. So you can repeatedly sacrifice the Primus and bring it back to the battlefield.

So with that last not-quite infinite combo I think I've covered most of them in the game. However, I've probably missed a few I'm not perfect.

So until next week I hope this has got you thinking.

Phil