Card Spotlight...

Eldrazi Displacer

A few weeks ago I took a look at the new set Oath of the Gatewatch and I pointed out that I immediately though Eldrazi Displacer was abusable to the point of being broken.

So here I am to show just what you can do with him.

But, before I start note that he is classed as being white for the purposes of your commander's colour identity.

My original combo was to use Cloud of Faeiries, Temple of the False God and another land.

This gives you infinite ETB (Enter the battlefield) effects but not much else.

These three all will all give you infinite mana, The only thing to note is that you must have a land that can be untapped that produces colourless mana.

As you'll be playing Blue and White, Mystic Gate seems like the perfect example.

They key with Eldrazi Displacer is that we keep generating at least 3 mana per 'flicker' with 1 out of that mana being colourless.

So what else gives us colourless mana? Eldrazi Scion and Eldrazi Spawn creature tokens both do.

So here you sacrifice the three scions to generate the mana to 'flicker' Brood Monitor or Emrakul's Hatcher and repeat. This gives you infinite graveyard triggers as well as infinite enter the battlefield triggers.

As far as I can see these are the only Eldrazi that produce the magic 3 token creatures needed to make this work.

There are however a large number of creatures that have similar ETB (Enter The Battlefield) effects we just need a way to make those token creatures work for us.

These three cards are some of the most commonly used cards for generating mana in infinite combos.

With Earthcraft and Phyrexian Altar we still need at least 3 creatures to tap or sacrifice to generate our 3 mana.

So what creatures give us 3 creature tokens when they enter the battlefield?

Quite a selection to choose from. Some, like Evangel of Heliod, require you have devotion in sufficient numbers to produce the troops. If you have excess or you are using Earthcraft you will find your self with infinite creatures. Deranged Hermit also gives you four Squirrels to enable you to make an army of Squirrels.

Of course if you're using Ashnod's Altar then you only need 2 creature tokens to generate 4 mana. Giving you a straight up route to infinite mana.

Of course if you use any of the Eldrazi above with Earthcraft that will give up to you 5 mana and create an infinite mana loop. You could also just tap the 3 creatures and untap 3 lands and end up with infinite tokens as well.

In fact if you're using Earthcraft then you only need an Eldrazi like Next Invader that gives you a single Eldrazi Spawn as you can tap both of the creatures to untap 2 lands. Tap the 2 lands and sacrifice the Spawn to create the 3 mana needed to cycle the loop.

There's another way to use Earthcraft to create this loop as well.

All these can be tapped when they land on the battlefield in order to untap a target basic land with Earthcraft. This also reminds me there's a point I've forgotten to mention: Wastes

Earthcraft wants to untap a Basic land. You need colourless mana for Eldrazi Displacer's ability, Wastes is precisely what you're looking for.

Back on point both the Priests will then generate infinite mana. With Burning-Tree Emissary you just get the triggers.

How about something a little off colour pie...Mana Echoes. 

Let's use an example. You're playing Boros Soldier Tribal like this. You play Eldrazi Displacer and Mana Echoes.  You then either pick on a soldier in play, and you'll have loads, so long as it's not a token or cast a soldier and you can go infinite.

Then all you do is cast Martial Coup. I might be making that sound easy but white has quite a few X cost Soldier spells it can use and the rest of the combo isn't that hard to put into play. Especially as white can tutor for Enchantments.

I'm not a fan of four card combos but I did discover one I'm going to share with you. I was looking to see if there was a way of untaping an artifact when a creature came into play.

What I found was this:

Clock of Omens needs two artifacts to tap, what do we know produces two artifacts? Precursor Golem.

So if Precursor Golem gives us the artifacts to tap we need an artifact to untap that can generate 3 colourless mana.

Take your pick. Both Grim Monolith and Basalt Monolith will give you the mana you need to activate the displacer and start the combo.

So there you have it, I'm pretty sure there's something in every colour and even colourless so long as you're playing White.

Until next week remember Commander is a game of fun as much as anything else.

Phil