Because Commander allows the use of almost every card from Magic’s back catalog, there are countless interesting interactions to be found between said cards. Of course, many of the most powerful combos are well known and the cards to pull them off can be expensive. That’s natural, as they get bought up for use in competitive decks.
That doesn’t mean there aren’t a whole bunch of cheap, little combos that players can put into their decks at any level, regardless of budget. Let’s start off today by looking at 5 nice, little mono-blue combos that you can pick up for less than £1 before postage.
1. Brine Elemental and Vesuvan Shapeshifter
Fancy locking down your opponents on the cheap? These two cards have your back, yo! In order to carry this out, you need to start your turn with both of these cards on the board, and you’ll need a couple of mana available, one of which should be blue.
During your upkeep, you will turn Vesuvan Shapeshifter face down, which you can do for free, as described on his card. Now, in your main phase, you can pay your two mana to turn it face up. As it turns face up, you’re going to have it become a copy of Brine Elemental, which will also trigger Brine Elemental’s ability to stop opponents from taking their next untap step.
Going forward, this can be repeated ad infinitum.
2. Cut Your Losses and Fraying Sanity
This is probably my favourite of the combos we’re looking at today. Cut Your Losses is one of the few sorcery cards in my Grolnok deck. I’m tempted to add fraying sanity…
I should add that this would also work, and be slightly cheaper, mana-wise, with Traumatize. I just like that Cut Your Losses gives you a chance to hit more than one player. Traumatize is also a more expensive card and would not fit the theme of doing combos for less than £1! As it is, this one does already fluctuate slightly over and/or under.
This is pretty obvious, really. You’re going to use Cut Your Losses to mill half of a player’s deck, and then before the end of your turn, attach Fraying Sanity to them to mill the rest. Make sure to do it in that order, though. You really don’t want to waste Fraying Sanity by casting it first, and then trying to cast Cut Your Losses, only to have the spell countered.
Traxos, Scourge of Kroog and Retraction Helix
This is pretty situational, and if you want to go infinite, you’re going to also need a 0 mana artifact. For the sake of our example, let’s use Mox Amber and Sol Ring. Mox Amber will work better, but Sol Ring will be significantly cheaper.
So, we need to have Traxos on the board with no summoning sickness. Retraction Helix and our mana artifact of choice need to be in hand. Spending a single blue mana, we cast Retraction helix on Traxos, getting him all ready for some recursion.
Now, with that done, we can play out Mox Amber. As a historic card, that will untap Traxos. Let’s tap our Mox Amber for a mana, before tapping Traxos to return our tapped Mox Amber to our hand. Let’s do this ad infinitum for infinite mana this phase. Let’s just hope we have something good to spend it on…
This would work with Sol Ring. Sol Ring would cost a mana to cast each time, but every time you tap it, you generate two mana, so you come out on top. It is colourless mana, though, which is more limited in its uses. Mox Amber would give you more useful, flexible mana.
Unctus, Grand Metatect and Tolarian Kraken
Let’s loot! Let’s loot, infinitely.
To achieve this infinite looting, both cards must be on the board. Ideally, you would also have a blue creature that can be tapped for mana. Really, you can use Unctus’ ability to turn any mana-producing creature into a blue creature, so there are options.
After you have your blue mana-producing creature, whether naturally or by Unctus-enhancement, we can get to work.
Let’s start by tapping your mana-producing blue creature to get a mana. This triggers Unctus and allows you to draw and then discard a card. Use this mana to pay for Tolarian Kraken’s ability and untap your mana-producing blue creature. At this point, you may tap him again for another mana and start another cycle. Do this as many times as you want, looting until you get something useful.
Just don’t mill yourself out… unless that’s one of your wincons.
Unctus, Grand Metatect and Tolarian Kraken
This is another infinite looting combo that features Unctus, Grand Metatect. This one also features Tidewater Minion, which is a card I need to grab.
You need both on the board, and Tidewater Minion cannot be suffering from summoning sickness. We need to tap him! When we do tap him, we are targeting himself with his second ability. This taps him and resolves the looting effect on Unctus. We then resolve the untap ability on Tidewater Minion.
This restores him to readiness and we can go again. We can then go again. We can then go again. We can then go again. We can then go again. We can then go again. We can then go again. We can then go again. We can then go again. We can then go again. We can then go again. We can then go again. We can then go again. We can then go again. We can then go again. We can then go again. We can then go again. We can then go again. We can then go again. We can then go again. We can then go again. We can then go again. We can then go again. We can then go again.
We can go on for a while, really.
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