In Magic: The Gathering, there are few experiences more thrilling than pulling off an awesome MTG combo. There’s nothing better than combining two cards to produce an absurdly powerful reaction which ends the game in short order. Below we’ve included the best two card combos and infinite combos in Magic.
If you love absurdly powerful infinite combos that deal unlimited damage, create infinite creatures, or gain you infinite life, you probably like winning games. In which case, you might also enjoy reading about the best MTG cards and the best MTG Arena decks.
Exquisite Blood and Sanguine Bond
There’s a beautiful symmetry and simplicity to this MTG combo, which uses two similarly costed black enchantments with opposite effects. Exquisite Blood means you gain life whenever an opponent loses it. Sanguine Bond says the reverse: whenever you gain life, an opponent loses the same amount.
If you can get both enchantments out on the battlefield at the same time, your match is pretty much won. You just need some way to gain life or make an opponent lose life, and it’s game over. The one enchantment triggers the effect of the other, letting you dish out infinite life drain.
You can technically get this done cheaper with Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose in place of Sanguine Bond. We’re keeping the traditional combo on this list though for nostalgia’s sake
Mycosynth Lattice and Collector Ouphe
This is one of the more unpleasant sorts of combos to face, one that doesn’t end the game swiftly but instead locks you out of using your cards. Mycosynth Lattice turns everything into an artifact, and crucially, that includes all your opponents lands.
You could then use some sort of artifact board wipe to remove all those lands, but that would hurt you as well. Far better (and more painful) to play Collector Ouphe or the MTG Planeswalker Karn and shut down your opponent’s artifact abilities. That includes tapping for mana. Your opponents might be able to win… if they don’t need to be able to play any more cards. Far more likely that they’ll angrily scoop.
Heliod Sun-Crowned and Walking Ballista
Walking Ballista was already an extremely powerful card, but its power level went off the charts when Heliod Sun-Crowned was printed. This God card can give a creature lifelink, and lets you put a +1/+1 counter on a creature whenever you gain life. Walking Ballista, meanwhile, lets you turn +1/+1 counters into damage. The result is that if you can land both on the field you can fire the ballista ad nauseam, stacking counters on it and taking them off to inflict infinite damage and gain infinite life.
This MTG combo is what got Walking Ballista banned in Pioneer, but you can still pull it off in MTG Modern games or in Commander!
Niv-Mizzet Parun and Curiosity
This combo is just one of the many reasons why Niv-Mizzet, Parun is an MTG commander that needs to be removed the moment he comes down. If you stick Curiosity on Niv-Mizzet then all you need to do is draw a card (which is something Niv is pretty damn good at) and then you go off, in a flurry of draws and pings.
This combo is the perfect storm of infinite damage and infinite card draw. The only problem with it is that because you’re capped at one damage per draw, you’re quite likely to deck yourself before you kill everyone at the table (in a four player Commander game, that is.) You’re not locked in however; you can simply target a creature at any time to end the cascade. Another solution is popping Laboratory Maniac in your deck.
Earthcraft and Squirrel Nest
The Earthcraft/Squirrel Nest combo is one of the weaker MTG infinite combos on this list, but it’s also one of the most fun. Simply play Earthcraft when you have a land enchanted with Squirrel Nest. Then tap your squirrels to keep untapping the land with the nest on it and you can have infinite squirrels. They are all tapped 1/1s however, so there is a window of opportunity for your opponents to respond. Overall this is a fun, but fair combo that’s well worth trying out.
Voltaic Key and Time Vault
‘Fun and fair’ is not how we’d describe this unpleasant interaction, however. Time Vault is a really weird card, and it harkens back to a time when an extra turn wasn’t the massive deal it is today. It gives you one more turn, but don’t worry everyone, you have to skip your turn in order to untap it.
Oh, unless you have a Voltaic Key or one of another dozen cards that can untap things. Then you can just play MTG Solitaire until your opponent gets bored and wanders off. Fortunately, this is one of those combos curtailed by the MTG banlist, where Time Vault features heavily. The only place you can play this is Vintage, and you’re restricted to one copy only.
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