At long last, Tarkir: Dragonstorm is now officially available around the world. Technically, the set has been on store shelves since prereleases started last week, but cards should nevertheless be more available starting today. For anyone looking to pick up powerful new staples or any of the new commander precons, this is great news.
While precons are all well and good, Tarkir: Dragonstorm has plenty more to be excited about. As usual, many of the set’s new cards enable exciting combos that can do real work in the Commander format. Interestingly, a fair few of these combos use rather unexpected cards, so they’re well worth knowing so you can use them and prepare accordingly.
As a quick final note, you can find all of these combos on Commander Spellbook, but not every combo always works as advertised, so we’ve made sure to iron out the glitches.
Sarkhan, Dragon Ascendant
Weirdly enough, Sarkhan, Dragon Ascendant has some combo potential when paired with the infamous MTG card Deadeye Navigator. As long as you can Behold a Dragon, all you need to do is make your Treasure, crack for two mana. That will unlock infinite ETB and LTBs, and can easily scale to infinite mana.
The easiest way to do this is with Goldspan Dragon. Not only will Goldspan Dragon satisfy Sarkhan’s Behold trigger, but it makes your Treasures crack for two mana. Deadeye Navigator can then flicker Sarkhan with no restrictions. Pair this with anything that deals damage on ETB or LTB for tokens or creatures and you win the game. In a similar vein, Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy doubles the amount of mana your Treasure creates, allowing the same loop.
The other way to go to enable this loop is to create multiple Treasure tokens instead of making your Treasure crack for two mana. Xorn is the easiest way to do this without straining your mana base. Using this card, you’ll create one extra Treasure, which can then be used to pay for Deadeye Navigator’s ability.
Alternatively, any token doubler also unlocks this loop. Anointed Procession, Elspeth, Storm Slayer, and Doubling Season all do the trick. If you have any of the two cards mentioned in combination with Sarkhan, you’ll unlock infinite mana.
This could be a surprisingly sneaky combo to fit into a Dragon Commander deck.
Rainveil Rejuvenator
Rainveil Rejuvenator doesn’t exactly enable any new combos, but there is a very powerful two-card infinite with this card that wins the game on the spot. Because Rainveil Rejuvenator can tap for a ridiculous amount of mana, this card can go infinite with Staff of Domination.
You need to tap Rainveil Rejuvenator for five mana in order to this, so this isn’t a viable combo outside of decks that cannot reliably get Rejuvenator up to five power. If you can, you can use Staff of Domination to repetitively untap Rejuvenator and the Staff itself, unlocking infinite mana.
Since Staff of Domination also does a bunch of other stuff, you essentially win the game on the spot. You can gain infinite life, draw infinite cards, and tap all creatures in play. This, combined with infinite green mana, should be more than enough to win the game. If you’re looking for a specific win condition, consider Finale of Devastation.
Rainveil Rejuvenator enables a few different infinite combos thanks to its ability to tap for obscene amounts of mana. Pili-Pala and Marvin, Murderous Mimic, for example, can create a similar untap loop. As long as Marvin can use Rejuvenator’s ability to tap for two mana, you can use Pili-Pala’s ability from Marvin to untap it for mana of any color. Voila! Infinite mana.
Will of the Temur
There are a lot of cards that win the game on the spot if they get copied. Will of the Temur accomplishes this not-so-difficult feat. There are cheaper ways to go about doing this, but Will of the Temur functions quite well outside of a combo setting, giving the card a bit more flexibility.
One card you can make a copy of is Mirror-Mad Phantasm. Sacrificing the token copy of the Phantasm to its ability will immediately mill your entire library. Since the token copy cannot go back in your deck, you’ll never find Mirror-Mad Phantasm. All you need is a Thassa’s Oracle to win the game. On a smaller note, you can also do this Mirror-Mad Phantasm combo with Deceptive Hellkite, which is much more efficient mana-wise.
Will of the Temur can also make a copy of Naru Meha, Wizard Adept. Notably, for this combo, you need to respond to Will of the Temur with Naru Meha while initially having Will of the Temur target something else. This will copy Will of the Temur. That target can copy Naru Meha which will trigger the creature again, and make another copy of Will of the Temur.
If you have your Commander in play (which could be Naru Meha), this allows you to draw infinite cards. It also can create infinite ETB, LTB, Magecraft and death triggers. Will of the Temur can force opponents to draw cards, so this combo is capable of decking out the table. That said, opponents can respond to each copy of Will of the Temur and remove Naru Meha to blank the spell, so you’ll need to battle through a lot of interaction if you don’t have a plan B.
Colossal Grave-Reaver
Colossal Grave-Reaver is an insane top-end threat. It’s tough to make an eight-mana investment worth it, but Colossal Grave-Reaver doesn’t disappoint. While infinite combos can irritate some Commander players, few should get upset if you win with this behemoth in play since it’ll probably win the game shortly anyway.
Colossal Grave-Reaver, Altar of Dementia, and Golgari Thug create an infinite loop. Thug puts itself back on top of your deck when it dies, which means that when sacrificed with Altar of Dementia, it will end up back in the graveyard. Colossal Grave-Reaver puts the Thug back in play with its ability. Similar to the Sarkhan combos, this wins the game when you have anything that cares about creatures entering and dying.
The convenient part about this combo is that all of these cards fit well in a graveyard-themed deck on their own. Altar of Dementia and Golgari Thug both excel in filling your graveyard at max speed. Colossal Grave-Reaver is also a natural top-end threat for a deck that self-mills and uses Entomb effects.
This combo can be recreated with any effect that puts a creature on top of the deck and mills it, which means that Golgari Thug’s role can be replaced with cards similar to Mortuary.
Lots More to Find
We tried to focus on combos that use only 2-3 cards, but there are a lot more to choose from. Tarkir: Dragonstorm Commander is a combo player’s paradise for those who are willing to go far enough. You can find more Commander combos here.