Combo decks are some of the most exciting strategies you can play in Magic’s Commander format. While they’re often derided for creating anticlimactic endings to games, it’s hard to deny the strategic enjoyment that comes with assembling the pieces and pulling off a juicy infinite.
Unfortunately, due to their sheer power, many of the best combo enablers in MTG fall far outside the budget range. Thankfully, thanks to the insane number of cards in MTG, there is a surprisingly wide selection of budget combo enablers. Available for $2 or less, these cards are more than capable of closing out games in an instant with the right support.
White | Glorious Protector
Glorious Protector may be a $0.40 card right now, but don’t let that fool you: it’s a fiendish infinite blink engine all the same. Since it can blink any number of non-Angel creatures on entry, it creates easy infinite loops with any other blink creature and a second blink source.
Exile Felidar Guardian with Protector, for instance, then you can blink Protector with something like Cloudshift to start the loop. When both creatures re-enter, you can stack the triggers so that Protector blinks Guardian, then Guardian blinks Protector in turn. This combo is also possible with other blink creatures in Guardian’s place, like Abdel Adrian, Gorion’s Ward, or Lumbering Battlement. With any non-Angel creature that pings or mills in the mix, these combos can end the game on the spot.
There are more out-there lines available with Glorious Protector, too, like nabbing infinite dies/blinks with Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker and Ashnod’s Altar, or letting Protector blink itself by naming a non-Angel type with Conspiracy. While there are other multi-blink options out there, Protector’s Flash is a huge advantage over them. This lets you combo off in response to an opponent’s play on their turn, or even win over the top of another player going for a combo.
Blue | Shrieking Drake
First printed way back in 1996’s Visions, Shrieking Drake is a true-blue combo classic. Turns out there are an awful lot of uses for a creature this cheap, with a self-bounce effect this flexible. With Intruder Alarm and a mana dork that taps for blue, like Birds of Paradise, you can cast tap Birds to cast Drake, untap Birds with Alarm, then bounce Drake with its own ability to create a loop. This will untap all your other creatures each time, too, allowing for easy mill wins with creatures like Cathartic Adept.
Shrieking Drake also opens up a huge number of infinite mana combos. Paired with Peregrine Drake and Panharmonicon, for instance, you can bounce and recast both creatures infinitely for six mana a time, untapping 10 mana worth of lands each time. Similar combos are also possible with Cloud of Faeries, or with Chakram Retriever and a mana dork.
Notably, Shrieking Drake can be used to power several two-card infinite combos as well. With Aluren, for example, you get infinite enters and leaves triggers. Pairing Drake with Earthcraft achieves the same result, since you can tap it to untap a basic each time it enters, before bouncing it back to your hand again. Available for just $0.24 due to its Modern Horizons 3 reprint, Shrieking Drake is a fantastic combo enabler for the MTG Commander player on a budget.
Black | Thran Vigil
Thran Vigil is a fairly recent addition to Magic, which might explain why it’s so overlooked in current Commander. For two mana, this is an incredible combo piece with any given Persist creature. When such a creature dies, and returns with its -1/-1 counter, Vigil can cancel it out by giving it a +1/+1 counter. With a free sacrifice outlet like Ashnod’s Altar, you can loop this infinitely. Use Murderous Redcap as your Persist creature of choice, and this line can actually win on the spot.
There are funkier combos available with Thran Vigil, too, including several that can mill your entire deck. Pair the card with a Dredge creature and Benthic Biomancer, for example, and you can discard and recur the Dredger to Biomancer’s looting ability. Vigil will then let you place a counter on Biomancer since the Dredger left your ‘yard, which will let you repeat the process, setting up a Thassa’s Oracle win. You can also loop a creature in and out of your hand with Vigil, Evolution Witness, and Skirge Familiar. This will net you infinite black mana, as well as an infinitely large Witness.
Outside of its combo lines, Thran Vigil is less exciting, but it can still put a serious shift in. This is especially true in decks like Slimefoot and Squee or Muldrotha, the Gravetide, where cards are leaving your graveyard all the time naturally. With near-mint copies available for just $0.29 right now, it’s hard to go wrong with this one.
Red | Worldgorger Dragon
Worldgorger Dragon is an oldie in the MTG combo world, but it’s still very much a goodie. The idea here is to get Worldgorger Dragon into your graveyard, then use Animate Dead to reanimate it. When Dragon enters, it’ll exile all your other permanents, Animate Dead included, which will then force you to sacrifice the Dragon. Animate Dead will then re-enter, and you can rinse and repeat.
If you have a creature that deals damage on entry, like Orcish Bowmasters, in play when you pull this combo off, you’ll win on the spot as it pings your opponents infinite times. Since it blinks all of your permanents, you can also use artifacts like Legion Extruder and even lands like Piranha Marsh instead. If you have another creature in your graveyard to reanimate to break the loop, you can also just tap all of your lands infinite times for infinite mana.
With Dance of the Dead and Necromancy offering redundancy for Animate Dead, and graveyard tutor effects like Entomb and Buried Alive letting you set it up, this is a surprisingly reliable combo. It’s very risky, since opponents can remove Worldgorger with its enters trigger on the stack to permanently exile your whole board, but it’s also capable of very early wins. Considering these combos used to be cEDH-viable you’d expect Worldgorger Dragon to command a hefty price tag. You can snag near-mint copies of this beast for just $1.14 right now, however, which is a steal by any metric.
Green | Argothian Elder
While it looks unassuming on the surface, Argothian Elder is actually teeming with MTG combo possibilities. For the most part, these combos will net you infinite mana. Use Maze of Ith to untap an attacking Elder, for example, and you can then tap Elder to untap Maze and another land. Tap that land for mana, then tap Maze to untap Elder, and you can repeat the loop infinitely. You’ll need an instant-speed outlet, like Helix Pinnacle, to actually spend this mana, but it’s still a simple and effective combo.
If you’re willing to run more combo pieces, Argothian Elder opens up plenty of other lines, too. Enchant it with Freed from the Real or Pemmin’s Aura, for instance, and you can easily make infinite mana with just one blue-producing land. Wirewood Lodge does something similar, and you can even run Ashaya, Soul of the Wild to let Elder untap itself each time, going infinite with any other land.
Even if you’re not going infinite, Argothian Elder is a nice addition to plenty of green decks. It’s essentially two mana worth of ramp when played normally, which is solid. You can also use it to untap utility lands, like Mistrise Village, to get multiple uses out of them per turn. With near-mint copies of this card available for just $0.33 right now, it’s a budget MTG combo enabler by any definition.
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