Against the Odds: Aurelia Infinite Combats Like It's 2013 (Standard)
Hello everyone, and welcome to another edition of Against the Odds! I have fond memories of Aurelia, the Warleader from when it was first printed into Standard, way back in 2013's Gatecrash. Back then, the six-drop was played fairly, coming down to deal a ton of hasty damage, and even more if you have a big board thanks to the extra combat Aurelia, the Warleader offers when it attacks for the first time each turn. While I'm not sure Aurelia, the Warleader is strong enough to play fairly, that's fine. Our goal today isn't to play Aurelia fairly but to use it to take infinite combat steps in Standard! How can we go infinite with Aurelia, the Warleader in Standard despite its "first attack only" restriction? What are the odds of the plan working? Let's get to the video and find out!
Against the Odds: Aurelia Infinite Combats
The Deck
Today, we're built around Aurelia, the Warleader, a six-drop Angel with flying, vigilance, and haste that gives us an extra combat the first time it attacks each turn. As I mentioned in the intro, the goal today isn't to play Aurelia fairly by simply casting it and smashing in for some damage; it's to use the Angel as an infinite combat combo piece in conjunction with some draft chaff . . .
So, how do we take infinite combats despite Aurelia, the Warleader only triggering the first time it attacks each turn? The answer here is The Neutrinos, a four-drop that is so bad I actively try to avoid playing it in my draft decks. For four mana, The Neutrinos offers a 2/4 flier that gets +1/+0 whenever another creature enters, and when it attacks, it blinks a creature and returns it to play tapped and attacking. I think the idea of The Neutrinos is that it can give a creature pseudo-haste. You play a creature, attack with the The Neutrinos, and blink the summoning-sick creature you just played, and it returns tapped and attacking. But this ability does some wild things with Aurelia, the Warleader.
To get infinite combats, all we need is The Neutrinos and Aurelia on the battlefield, and to attack with both of them. We'll get two triggers when we attack: one from Aurelia, the Warleader to untap our creatures and give us an extra combat, and another from The Neutrinos to blink a creature and have it return tapped and attacking. If we stack these triggers so The Neutrinos' resolves first and Aurelia's trigger resolves second, The Neutrinos will blink our Aurelia, the Warleader, and then we'll resolve Aurelia, the Warleader's trigger to untap everything and get an extra combat.
Now, I hear you thinking, "Sure, that's cool, but what about Aurelia, the Warleader's 'first attack only' restriction? Doesn't that keep you from going infinite?" Actually, no. By Magic's rules, if a creature leaves the battlefield and returns (for example, due to The Neutrinos' blink ability), it counts as a new version of itself. So when we go to our extra combat, we can attack with Aurelia, the Warleader and still get another extra combat phase! During that combat, we do the same thing, with The Neutrinos blinking Aurelia and Aurelia untapping everything and giving an extra combat. And we can do this as many times as we want, which is normally three or four times, until our opponent dies to flying damage!
There's one big challenge for our infinite-combat plan: it costs a lot of mana. The Neutrinos costs four, and Aurelia, the Warleader costs six, which means we need at least 10 total mana to combo off. Thankfully, we have a couple of plans to overcome this. The first is the boring and obvious one of Badgermole Cub and mana dorks, including Great Divide Guide, which looks pretty weird in a deck without any other Allies. But along with ramping, letting all of our lands tap for any color is actually super helpful because Aurelia, the Warleader has a very Boros-heavy mana cost. Toss in Gene Pollinator and Llanowar Elves, and it's possible we can be hard-casting our combo pieces as early as Turn 3 or 4!
The spicier plan for getting both combo pieces into play on the cheap is Tannuk, Steadfast Second, which gives our other creatures haste and also lets us warp red creatures (including The Neutrinos and Aurelia) into play for just three mana! The downside of warping is we'll have to exile the creature at the end of turn. But this downside doesn't really exist if we use this ability to execute our combo because we'll never reach the end of our turn! We can play Tannuk, then warp in The Neutrinos and Aurelia, the Warleader for six total mana, and win the game on the spot!
Rounding out the deck is a bit of removal in Seam Rip and Get Lost, as well as Formidable Speaker to help us tutor up our game-winning combo pieces.
Wrap-Up
Record-wise, we went 12-8 with the deck, giving us a 60% win rate across 20 matches, which is way better than I expected. The combo itself was a surprisingly effective way to close out games. Most of our wins came from the combo, and I can only remember one time when we had the combo set up and couldn't use it to win the game (the game where our opponent had a 4/4 flier, which kept us from attacking with Aurelia, the Warleader or The Neutrinos).
Part of the combo's power is that it looks super janky. When we play The Neutrinos, our opponent just laughs and mostly ignores it because it's considered to be a very underpowered card. And I'm not sure anyone even remembers that Aurelia, the Warleader is legal in Standard thanks to a Foundations reprinting! This makes it pretty easy to catch opponents by surprise, and once we start comboing, it's typically too late for our opponent to do much about it.
On the other hand, the deck does have two issues. One is just consistency. Even with Formidable Speaker, we just don't find both combo pieces in some games. And as a Naya deck, we don't have a ton of card draw and filtering to dig through our deck. The second is that control is super hard. The combo becomes very hard to set up if our opponent just wraths and kills everything we play. While Aurelia, the Warleader is pretty strong against control since it can hit for six in the air with haste even by itself, I found that hardcore control decks are by far the matchup we want to play against the least with the deck.
All in all, Aurelia Infinite Combats had way more success than I expected, and Aurelia, the Warleader actually felt pretty solid. While it might cost too much mana for most decks, the six-drop still deals a ton of damage if you can actually get it on the battlefield (even in 2026), and the infinite combo makes it even more hilarious and explosive!
Conclusion
Anyway, that's all for today. As always, leave your thoughts, ideas, opinions, and suggestions in the comments, and you can reach me on Twitter @SaffronOlive or at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com.
