In the world of Magic the Gathering, there are tons of different combos players can pull off. Whether you’re into gaining infinite life or Milling your opponent out in one go, there are options that fit everyone’s playstyles.
With such a vast card pool, there’s always a chance you’ll run into an old combo card at your local Commander event that you weren’t familiar with. Today, we wanted to highlight a sweet 26-year-old enchantment that can flourish both as a combo enabler and as a value engine that players may have forgotten about. If you’re looking for a cheap build-around to surprise your friends with during Commander night, look no further.
MTG Trade Routes
At first glance, Trade Routes may look like nothing special. While the enchantment is efficient, most decks aren’t actively looking to bounce their own lands. Similarly, the second ability isn’t always easy to use unless you’ve reached the late game and are actively looking to turn excess lands into fresh cards.
That being said, there are a multitude of ways to take full advantage of Trade Routes’ duo of abilities. Right off the bat, any effect that lets you play lands out of your graveyard, such as Crucible of Worlds, makes the second ability much more intriguing. This way, you get to pull ahead on cards without falling behind on mana.
If you’re playing a deck with lots of Landfall synergies, being able to bounce and replay your lands at will is also a huge luxury to have. As long as you have some Exploration-style effects in play, you’ll have no issue triggering all three of Omnath, Locus of Creation‘s abilities every single turn cycle.
Some specific Lands-theme Commanders even provide extra value when you discard lands. With Slogurk, the Overslime at the helm and Trade Routes in play, your opponents constantly have to worry about the threat of Slogurk growing on command. If you pair Slogurk with a blink effect such as Conjurer’s Closet, you can use Trade Routes to discard extra lands and then keep rebuying them when Slogurk leaves play.
Even discarding Islands with Mary Read and Anne Bonny on the battlefield can be powerful. If you chain enough Islands together off of your draws, you’ll end up with a boatload of Treasure tokens. Trade Routes offers a ton of exciting lines of play, especially if you decide to open the door for combos.
Enabling Combos with Trade Routes
Besides its wealth of generic synergies, there are a handful of combos that will instantly pull you super far ahead. One of the simplest to execute that will often win you the game involves Trade Routes, Mystic Sanctuary, and any spell that lets you take an extra turn. Assuming you have enough Islands in play to let Mystic Sanctuary enter untapped, you’ll be able to take infinite turns by executing the following steps:
- Cast your extra turn spell
- Play Mystic Sanctuary, putting the extra turn spell on top of your deck
- Tap Mystic Sanctuary for mana, then bounce it back to your hand with Trade Routes
- Take an extra turn, redrawing the extra turn spell, then repeat these steps over and over
If infinite turns aren’t your jam, there are numerous ways to generate infinite Landfall triggers instead. All you need, in conjunction with Trade Routes, is Retreat to Coralhelm, and any card that taps to put a land into play, such as Sakura-Tribe Scout. Once you activate Trade Routes to bounce a land to your hand, you can then put that land into play with Scout. This triggers Retreat, letting you untap Scout so you can repeat the process over and over.
If you want to dig even deeper, there’s a gnarly combo that lets you draw your entire deck, though it requires a bit more work. The combo is centered around Trade Routes, Bone Miser, Surly Badgersaur, and Groundskeeper. As long as you have a basic land in play alongside these cards, you can draw your deck by pulling off these steps:
- Pay one mana to return a basic land to your hand with Trade Routes
- Pay one mana to discard it to Trade Routes, drawing a card and triggering Surly Badgersaur and Bone Miser
- Add two black mana to your mana pool and create a Treasure token
- Sacrifice the Treasure for green mana, and use that mana and one of the floating black mana to return the basic land from your graveyard to your hand with Groundskeeper
- Use the final floating black mana discard the basic land to Trade Routes, and repeat the final three steps as many times as you wish
More than Meets the Eye
Once you add together all of the different avenues you can take to maximize Trade Routes, it’s easy to see why the enchantment has more potential than some players may give it credit for. It’s cheap enough that if you draw it later in a game of Commander, you may be able to play it and take advantage of its abilities immediately.
Beyond its mana efficiency, the card is also pretty cheap from a financial perspective. Player can pick up near mint, Eighth Edition copies on TCGplayer for under $3, which is a bargain. If you’re looking for upgrades to your Lands Commander deck, consider picking up a copy of Trade Routes and see just how exciting the card can be when put into action.
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