At long last, Secrets of Strixhaven has been revealed in its entirety. Between five incredible Commander precons and insane callbacks to iconic spells, this set looks like an all-timer. With so many powerful cards in Secrets of Strixhaven, however, finding the absolute best cards for your Commander decks might be difficult. Fortunately, there’s a wide variety of different two-card infinite combos available that can power up all kinds of Commander themes.
Molten-Core Maestro and Buyback Spells
For the most part, thanks to what is essentially a picky Prowess trigger, Molten-Core Maestro isn’t worth the extra effort. If you can trigger its Opus ability with some expensive spells, however, then this Goblin turns into a mana generator. This, in turn, makes going infinite with Buyback spells surprisingly trivial, not to mention deadly.
So long as Molten-Core Maestro’s power is five, you’ll get full refunds on the Buyback spells you cast. Since these go back to your hand, you can just keep casting them with the extra mana that Molten-Core Maestro generates. This will infinitely grow your Goblin, offering you infinite red mana over time, alongside infinite damage when using Searing Touch and Fanning the Flames. Reiterate also works here, but because you need to copy other spells and have more power, it’s a bit weaker than the others.
Emeritus of Abundance and Extra Turn Spells
Part of the Prepare-oriented Mythic cycle, Emeritus of Abundance offers players repetitive Regrowths so long as you have eight lands when it attacks. This isn’t a difficult requirement to fulfill in longer games of Commander, especially in ramp-focused green decks. Thanks to this, pulling off this Emeritus of Abundance combo is surprisingly easy.
After using your Time Warp or Temporal Manipulation, just attack with Emeritus of Abundance and Regrowth the card back to your hand. Since you need eight lands to re-prepare your Emeritus, you’ll always have enough mana to pull this off naturally. Just make sure the extra turn spell you use doesn’t exile itself on cast, otherwise Regrowth will not be able to recur it.
Pox Plague and Bloodletter of Aclazotz
Offering yet another two-card combo for mono-black Standard decks, Bloodletter of Aclazotz and Pox Plague will end the game on the spot. Thanks to Bloodletter of Aclazotz’s replacement effect, instead of losing half of their life to Pox Plague, your opponents will all explode at the same time. Affecting all opponents equally is a notable upgrade here over something like Unstoppable Slasher for multiplayer formats like Commander.
If you want to add some redundancy to this combo, Archfiend of Despair can be used in place of Bloodletter of Aclazotz, but there is a catch. Since Archfiend doesn’t directly double life loss, your opponents will need to have an even life total to die from this combo. Otherwise, thanks to Pox Plague rounding down, Archfiend’s endstep trigger will leave them at two life.
Yavimaya Bloomsage and X Spells
Channel is, undeniably, one of the most broken spells in Magic’s history, and players finally have a way to cast it legally in Commander. Sadly, as strong as Channel is, thanks to its nightmarish Prepare cost, Yavimaya Bloomsage is probably a trap. Still, if you’re determined to use this creature, Yavimaya Bloomsage does set up a bunch of two-card death combos.
Provided you have more life than your opponents, Exsanguinate, Torment of Hailfire, and a bunch of other X spells are all capable of ending the game on the spot. Between your life total and your open mana, this is usually easy to achieve. Exsanguinate does some extra work here, as, even if you only cast it for about 20, you’ll be gaining 60 life, setting up an even bigger X spell. Frankly, ending the game with a Prepared Yavimaya Bloomsage should be rather trivial, which could make going through the trouble to Prepare it worthwhile.
Two-Card Combo Recap
Surprisingly, thanks to the power of Secrets of Strixhaven, there’s actually a ton of different infinite combos to go around this time. Displacer Kitten, for example, has seen a price spike recently, thanks in part to creating infinite mana with the new Blazing Firesinger. Since Prepared instants and sorceries will trigger Displacer Kitten’s flicker ability, you can flicker Blazing Firesinger from its own Seething Song, Preparing it once again. Thanks to this, other cards that Prepare on entry, like Emeritus of Ideation, also have some insane synergies here.
If new Flicker combos weren’t enough, +1/+1 counter decks are getting some infinite combos, too. Pensive Professor, in particular, can draw your whole deck with Wizard Class or Lyla, Holographic Assistant. Since these cards can add a +1/+1 counter on draw to any creature, they create a feedback loop with Pensive Professor Even some Secrets of Strixhaven Face Commanders, like Rootha, Mastering the Moment and Dina, Essence Brewer have two-card death combos to try. Between all the different death combos that the set offers, chances are that one of these combos will be an upgrade for one of your many Commander decks.
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