Strixhaven: Eight New Commander Combos
Strixhaven is here! What new combos does the set enable in the Commander format? That's our topic for today, where we'll look at eight new combos that the set has dumped into the format. Which of the combos have the potential to show up in your decks? What other combos does the set provide? Let us know in the comments!
#8: Tend the Pests
Get three mana. Cast Phyrexian Dreadnought. With its "sacrifice" trigger on the stack, sacrifice it to Tend the Pests to make twelve 1/1 tokens! While this combo probably isn't powerful enough to slot into every deck, if you're playing a commander like Varolz, the Scar-Striped or Kresh the Bloodbraided that already likes having Phyrexian Dreadnought in the 99 for other reasons, it seems like an easy way to add a bit more power to your deck!
#7: Echoing Equation
Looking to win with Biovisionary without the possibility of punting away the win with Sakashima the Impostor? Echoing Equation offers the perfect pathway! Get three other creatures and a Biovisionary on the battlefield. Turn all of your other creatures into copies of Biovisionary with Echoing Equation, and win on your end step. While you could do the same thing with Mirrorweave, Augmenter Pugilist / Echoing Equation is a much better option, mostly because it's in the same colors as Biovisionary, making it much easier to slot into various Simic decks, while Mirrorweave is mostly limited to Bant and four- or five-color decks.
#6: Accomplished Alchemist
Looking for a fairly easy infinite-mana combo that can slot into a bunch of different decks? How about Accomplished Alchemist and Staff of Domination? While we do need a way to gain at least five life, this shouldn't be all that difficult—there are a lot of cheap ways to gain life in Magic. Assuming we can gain five or more life, we can tap Accomplished Alchemist for five (or more) mana, use three mana to untap Accomplished Alchemist with Staff of Domination, use one more mana to untap Staff of Domination with itself, and repeat the process, gaining an extra mana each time we go through the loop, giving us infinite mana of any combination of colors!
#5: Body of Research
Play Simic Ascendancy. Play Body of Research to make a Fractal that gets 70 or 80 +1/+1 counters. Get 70 or 80 counters on Simic Ascendancy. Win the game on your upkeep with Simic Ascendancy! The only downside of the combo is that you'll need to wait a turn (until your next upkeep) to win, which gives your opponents a turn to deal with Simic Ascendancy. But since we're in blue, it should be easy enough to either protect the combo with counterspells or just take an extra turn to get to our next upkeep faster and close out the game!
#4: Quintorius
The upside of comboing off with Quintorius, Field Historian is that we get one combo piece in our command zone if we play Quintorius as our Commander. The downside is that we need four additional combo pieces in order to really go infinite with Quintorius, Field Historian's ability to make a 3/2 Spirit token whenever a card leaves our graveyard. First, we need Squee, the Immortal, which we can cast from our graveyard. Then, we need both Birgi, God of Storytelling and Runaway Steam-Kin to make red mana as we cast Squee. Finally, we need Ashnod's Altar, to sacrifice Squee to make two colorless mana and get it back in our graveyard. If we can get this all set up, our reward is that we can cast Squee, the Immortal from our graveyard an infinite number of times, making infinite 3/2 Spirit tokens while also making infinite colorless mana, since every time we go through the loop of sacrificing and recasting Squee, the Immortal, we'll have one extra colorless mana from Ashnod's Altar.
#3: Storm-Kiln Artist
Looking to make infinite mana in your spellslinger deck? Storm-Kiln Artist, with the help of Haze of Rage, has you covered. The idea of the combo is that we cast three cheap instants or sorceries with Storm-Kiln Artist on the battlefield. Then, we can cast Haze of Rage without buyback to make four Treasure tokens with Storm-Kiln Artist. Since buyback means Haze of Rage will end up back in our hand, we can immediately cast it again, this time making five Treasures (since the first Haze of Rage ups our storm count), and again (now making six Treasures), and again (this time for seven Treasures). Basically, once we get to the point where Haze of Rage is making at least five Treasures with Storm-Kiln Artist, we have infinite mana of any combination of colors, thanks to the Treasure tokens Storm-Kiln Artist makes, and—if we eventually decide to kill our opponents—infinitely big creatures from Haze of Rage's pumping ability as well!
#2: Dina
On one hand, the combo of Dina, Soul Steeper and [Exquisite Blood]] is powerful. You can play one piece as your commander, and once both pieces are on the battlefield, if you can either damage an opponent or gain a life, you will start a loop where Dina and Exquisite Blood keep triggering each other until your all of your opponents die. On the other hand, this combo isn't really all that new because you can do the same thing with Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose or Sanguine Bond (although the fact that Dina is Golgari rather than Mono-Black is a pretty big upside, considering how strong green is in Commander).
#1: Professor Onyx
Play Professor Onyx (or any magecraft card really), target yourself with Chain of Smog, keep choosing to copy Chain of Smog, trigger Professor Onyx's magecraft ability an infinite number of times, and drain the table out of the game! The main drawback of the combo is that Chain of Smog will empty your hand, which means the combo will fizzle if your opponent can wait until you are empty-handed and then kill Professor Onyx or counter the Chain of Smog, and the rest of the table will probably kill you as punishment for trying to combo-kill them. But if you can dodge counters and removal, you'll kill the entire table with just two cards!
Conclusion
Anyway, that's all for today! Which combo is your favorite? Are there any other sweet Commander combos from Strixhaven? Let us know in the comments! As always, leave your thoughts, ideas, opinions, and suggestions, and you can reach me on Twitter @SaffronOlive or at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com.
