The Best Combos In Tarkir: Dragonstorm

Summary

• Dragonback Assault + Encroaching Dragonstorm combo nets you lands and Dragons.
• Kheru Goldkeeper generates infinite Treasure tokens with graveyard manipulation.
• The Sibsig Ceremony + Myr Retriever loop results in infinite Zombies.

There are a ton of fascinating cards in Magic: The Gathering’s Tarkir: Dragonstorm set and the best part of them is that a good number of those cards combo off with other Magic cards. While not every combo is the most realistic, and some take a fair amount of setup to get going, there are a few that are a bit better than others.

Spread across multiple formats and all colors, there’s bound to be something you can use in your decks, some infinite loop you can win the game with. If you’re looking for something new in your next Magic deck, we’ve got you covered.

8

Dragonback Assault = Repeatable Dragons

Standard

A very simple two-card synergy between Dragonback Assault and Encroaching Dragonstorm nets you tons of lands and a whole army of Dragons to look forward to. The six-mana Dragonback Assault has a landfall trigger that makes a 4/4 red Dragon token for every land you play.

Combine that with Encroaching Dragonstorm, which has an enter-the-battlefield trigger that lets you search your deck for your two basic lands, and you get two 4/4 Dragons. At the same time, the Dragonstorm’s second ability triggers, bouncing it back into your hand when you have a Dragon come into play. On your next turn, you get to go digging for lands and two more Dragons. Enchantments are relatively hard to deal with for the average deck.

7

Kheru Goldkeeper = Infinite Treasure

Standard/Commander/Modern/Pioneer

Turns out, Kheru Goldkeeper is one of the stronger cards in Tarkir: Dragonstorm. Anytime you have a card leave your graveyard, the Goldkeeper makes a Treasure token.

You then need to include something that can easily take cards out of the graveyard and then a payoff. Depending on your format, you can go in a few different directions.

• Standard: Sarinth Steelseeker + Pactdoll Terror
• Commander: Tortured Existence + Disciple of the Vault

6

The Sibsig Ceremony = Infinite Zombies

Modern

We’ll see The Sibsig Ceremony again later since it is an absolutely absurd card, but this time we only need one card to go off. Well, two copies of one card but still. You need The Sibsig Ceremony out in play, reducing the cost of your creature spells by two generic mana. Then you need two copies of Myr Retriever, a rather forgettable card that lets you bring back another artifact card from your graveyard to your hand.

Since The Sibsig Ceremony destroys your creatures that enter, giving you a 2/2 Zombie in exchange, once you get a second Myr Retriever you can just loop them until you have enough Zombies in play to sweep the board. If you have some way to give them all haste or have some other sort of pay off from all the death or enter the battlefield triggers, the game is yours.

5

Warden Of The Grove = Infinite Damage

Modern/Commander

This combo takes the shell of an already established loop and gives you another avenue to go down. For this to work you need Murderous Redcap and some sort of sacrifice outlet like Ashnod’s Altar to throw the Redcap into.

Thanks to the persist ability on your Redcap, it will return to the battlefield so long as there are no -1/-1 counters on it. With Warden of the Grove out, nontoken creatures will endure X times equal to the number of counters on the Warden, canceling out the -1/-1 counter on the Redcap when it reenters.

Once the Murderous Redcap comes into play, it will deal damage equal to its power to any target, dealing at least two damage every time, letting you dish out an endless stream of damage once you have all the pieces out.

4

Perennation = Can’t Lose Secnario

Standard/Commander

Maybe less of a combo and more of a strategy, but no less effective when it comes to winning a game, the combination of Prennation and Herald of Eternal Dawn can stall out a game in your favor and put your opponents in an inevitable loss situation.

Perennation is a six-man sorcery that lets you bring back a creature from your graveyard back to the battlefield with a hexproof and an indestructible counter, making it practically untouchable. If you use it to bring back a card like Herald of Eternal Dawn, which makes it so you can’t lose the game and your opponents can’t win the game, you have set yourself up to win.

There’s very little your opponents can do to stop this scenario once it’s in place, short of a mass exile spell like Sunfall or Farewell.

3

Teval, The Balanced Scale = Infinite Death Triggers

Commander

The main commander of the Sultai Arisen preconstructed deck, Teval, the Balanced Scale is an enabler for an infinite loop that does a lot for you in a game of commander. The main ability we’re looking at is that when a card leaves your graveyard, you get to make a 2/2 Zombie Druid token.

To get this going, you need a sacrifice outlet that produces colored mana, like Phyrexian Altar, and some sort of enabler, like Gravecrawler. You will need at least one other Zombie in play to be able to cast Gravecrawler from the graveyard, but once you get going, you can keep sacrificing your spare Zombie token to keep looping death triggers for whatever outlet you need. There are a few alternatives to this combo so if you want something different the options are out there.

2

Adaptive Training Post = Infinite Magecraft Triggers

Commander

A super easy combo to set up, you can utilize Adaptive Training Post to loop copies of Twincast to give yourself infinite magecraft triggers that work with multiple different cards, specifically Professor Onyx but there are a few options out there.

You do need a fair amount of mana open to you and a little bit of setup to get going. Once you have Adaptive Training Post out with at least two counters on it you can go ahead and cast a spell to put that third counter on the Post. Let’s go ahead and use Opt for example.

Holding priority, you remove the three counters from the Training Post to copy your next instant or sorcery spell and then go ahead and cast Twincast targeting the Opt and the copy of Twincast copying the original Twincast.

You now have successfully set up a loop of Twincasts copying Twincasts, giving you all the magecraft triggers you’ll need to drain your opponents off of Professor Onyx.

Pioneer

It didn’t take long for players to figure out how to break The Sibsig Ceremony and perhaps the most reliable way is with a neat card from an already fringe deck. What you need to get going is a Relic of Legends, which can let you tap an untapped legendary creature to add one mana of any color, and Acererak the Archlich, a three-mana Zombie Wizard with an enter the battlefield trigger to venture into the dungeon.

You can probably see where this is going already. The Sibsig Ceremony reduces the cost of your creature spells by two generic mana, bringing Acererak down to just one black mana. You play Acererak, venture into the dungeon and put Acererak’s bounce trigger on the stack, use Relic of Legends to tap Acererak for one black mana, and repeat.

You might have to swap up your dungeons a bit depending on the situation, but you have an infinite loop of tracks to follow until you win.