Final Fantasy MTG has been tournament legal for roughly two weeks already, and players are still finding ways to experiment with the new cards. Powerhouses like Vivi Ornitier are helping give rise to interesting combo brews with incredible potential.
Perhaps one of the most underrated combo pieces from the set, however, is Aerith Gainsborough. Aerith Gainsborough looks like just a buffed Ajani’s Pridemate, but thanks to one key difference, it actually lends itself to an infinite three-card combo that’s starting to make some headway in Modern and beyond.
There’s plenty of room to explore different homes for the card, but to start, we need to take a closer look at how the combo itself works.
Aerith Gainsborough Combo
The infinite combo involving Aerith Gainsborough is centered around the legend and two artifacts: Agatha’s Soul Cauldron and Walking Ballista. Your goal is to get both Aerith Gainsborough and Agatha’s Soul Cauldron in play, and put Walking Ballista into your graveyard.
Once Walking Ballista is in your graveyard, you’re free to exile it with Cauldron and put the +1/+1 counter on Aerith. Aerith now has Walking Ballista’s abilities, so you can remove the +1/+1 counter from it to deal one damage to your opponent.
Because the Final Fantasy MTG legend has Lifelink, pinging your opponent will also cause you to gain life in the process. This will in turn trigger Aerith, netting it another +1/+1 counter. As such, it’s trivial to repeat this process over and over, dealing infinite damage to the opponent.
This is far from the first combo to appear in Modern abusing Walking Ballista. However, it is one of the easier combos to assemble. You don’t have to worry about investing mana into Walking Ballista at all, and milling it with cards like Malevolent Rumble does the trick just fine. The key is setting up a window where you can jam Aerith unhindered.
Maximizing Aerith in Modern
Fortunately, there are some strong ways you can build around Aerith Gainsborough to maximize its text box. Take the Bant combo shell shown above, which just put up a solid performance in a Magic Online Modern Challenge. From a combo standpoint, there are multiple features here that make it easier to execute everything.
First up, we have the presence of Ranger-Captain of Eos. Ranger-Captain of Eos can grab Walking Ballista when it enters, which already helps set up your combo.
From there, once you get Walking Ballista in your graveyard, you can sacrifice the Human Soldier to stop your opponent from casting any noncreature spells during your turn. This ensures that when you follow up with Aerith, you won’t get blown out by a removal spell.
Even having Idyllic Grange as a fetchable land helps protect your combo. Let’s say you already have Cauldron in play with Walking Ballista exiled. Then, you cast Aerith and tap Cauldron, exiling a different creature, attempting to put a +1/+1 counter on Aerith.
If your opponent goes to kill it in response, you can use a Fetchland to tutor up Idyllic Grange, put a +1/+1 counter on Aerith, and win with the removal spell on the stack. The combo is more resilient than you think.
Plus, thanks to Guide of Souls, Aerith is a threatening card even if you don’t draw Cauldron. It grows every time you gain life from Guide or Ocelot Pride. If your opponent kills it, you can move those +1/+1 counters to Ranger-Captain when it dies. In this sense, winning a fair game is not out of the question.
Another player has had success piloting a white-heavy version of the deck that eschews Brightglass Gearhulk in favor of Delivery Moogle, which can search for Walking Ballista or Cauldron. There’s a lot of room for exploration with the Aerith combo.
Aerith in Legacy
In fact, Aerith has shown up in Legacy, albeit in small numbers. The decklist shown above utilized Aerith as an alternate win condition alongside Auriok Salvagers and Lion’s Eye Diamond. The combination of those two cards lets you generate infinite mana. If you have Walking Ballista in your graveyard, you can then use Salvagers to buy back the Construct and win that way.
With Walking Ballista already a primary inclusion, adding Aerith isn’t too far-fetched. Karn, the Great Creator can grab Walking Ballista or Cauldron from the sideboard to enable the combo once you find Aerith. Meanwhile, Boromir, Gondor’s Hope digs six cards deep for Salvagers, Aerith, Walking Ballista, Cauldron, Lion’s Eye Diamond, or any other impactful artifact, such as Chalice of the Void.
Regardless of whether this is a top-tier strategy or not, it showcases that Aerith is more powerful than many players (including us) gave it credit for during spoiler season. Could we see a breakout performance for the combo in the near future? Only time will tell.
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