Estrid, the Masked | Illustration by Johannes Voss
Some players might consider playing combos cheating the spirit of EDH or whatever, but how about this: Just playing Bant (), the shard that combines broken Simic cards () with white removal, is basically already cheating.
So let's make Bant cards better! These combos are the perfect way to close out an EDH game after you’ve gotten bored of spending twice as much mana than the rest of the table with all those extra cards you drew.
What Are Bant Combos in MTG?
Chulane, Teller of Tales | Illustration by Victor Adame Minguez
Bant combos are combinations of two or more cards that mechanically synergize, often to create some infinite loop, with a Bant color identity—that is, green, white, and blue (). They might use mono-colored or colorless cards, but all these combos touch those three colors in one way or another.
The best combos are efficient, with the fewest pieces possible. Combos that use generically strong cards with utility outside their combo potential like Faeburrow Elder or cards that fit into multiple combo lines like Peregrine Drake or Emiel the Blessed are better due to flexibility. I’m ranking these for Commander; as such, combos that use a potential commander get bonus points for ease of assembly since you always have access to one of the combo pieces in your opening hand.
#16. Reaving the Horizon
Cards: Drogskol Reaver + Horizon Chimera
Prerequisites: You can draw a card or gain a life.
Results: Draw your deck.
Variations: Anything that gains life when you draw a card works instead of Horizon Chimera; Shabraz, the Skyshark fits in Bant colors.
Be aware that you need something to interrupt this combo, otherwise you’ll draw your deck and lose to an empty library, but that’s as simple as throwing a Swords to Plowshares at one of these. Picking up your deck ought to win you the game on the spot—if it can’t, you have a problem or two.
#15. Enchanted Verse
Cards: Enchanted Evening + Calming Verse
Prerequisites: You control Enchanted Evening and have the mana to cast Calming Verse.
Results: Your friends hate you.
Variations: You can use Cleansing Meditation for the asymmetric wrath as long as you have threshold; you could also lean fully into the villain role with Back to Nature.
Every color combination needs its combo that prevents the table from playing the game; for Bant, it’s this one. It’s rather niche, but Enchanted Evening has plenty of interesting applications, like making your land drops trigger eerie and constellation or turning Nature's Claim into the greatest removal spell ever printed.
#14. Retreat of the East Tree
Cards: Kodama of the East Tree + Simic Growth Chamber + Felidar Retreat
Prerequisites: You control the Kodama and Felidar Retreat and can play Simic Growth Chamber as your land for turn.
Results: Infinite landfall triggers, infinite Cat Beast tokens, infinite +1/+1 counters to all creatures you control.
Variations: You can use any bounce land instead of Simic Growth Chamber, and any landfall payoff can replace Felidar Retreat.
Pretty much any color combination that includes Simic () uses landfall triggers, so this combo has lots of potential. These are all generically good cards that happen to win the game when combined; it’s a textbook example of an unobtrusive combo.
#13. Axebane Alert
Cards: Axebane Guardian + High Alert
Prerequisites: You control both permanents plus at least five creatures with defender, and Axebane Guardian doesn’t have summoning sickness.
Results: Infinite mana, infinite creature untaps.
Variations: You can use Faeburrow Elder instead of Axebane Guardian if you control permanents of all five colors or if you can otherwise make the Elder tap for more than 5 mana, including .
This is a rather tricksy combo that primarily appears in Arcades, the Strategist decks—I wonder how many Arcades decks just have these defenders staples without realizing they make an infinite combo? Once you have your infinite mana and infinite untaps, closing out the game becomes a snap with Doorkeeper and other defender-based wincons.
#12. Rosie Cotton, Investigator Extraordinaire
Cards: Lonis, Genetics Expert + Rosie Cotton of South Lane
Prerequisites: You control Lonis and can cast Rosie Cotton.
Results: Infinite Clue tokens, infinite +1/+1 counters on Lonis.
Variations: Rosie Cotton goes infinite with cards like Basking Broodscale and Scurry Oak, though that creates infinite creature tokens instead of infinite Clues. Yotian Dissident goes infinite with Lonis.
This combo really benefits from a few extra pieces, like Urza, Lord High Artificer to convert the Clues into infinite mana. That makes it a little less reliable, though I appreciate the flexibility of Rosie Cotton and Lonis, both of which go infinite with a bunch of other pieces.
#11. Rafiq, Master Conscriptor
Cards: Rafiq of the Many + Eldrazi Conscription
Prerequisites: Your commander doesn’t have summoning sickness, can’t be blocked, and is enchanted by Eldrazi Conscription—notably, Rafiq does not need to be your commander; you just need to control it.
Results: Eliminate one opponent.
Variations: Colossification, Belt of Giant Strength, and Colossus Hammer can all work instead of Eldrazi Conscription—the trick lies in giving your commander +10/+10 so double strike deals lethal commander damage.
I’ve looked at many combos that require a commander as an essential element, but this is the first one that results in commander damage!
The trick to making this work is to find ways to cheat these expensive auras or reduce the high equip cost of Colossus Hammer. The latter’s easy thanks to cards like Puresteel Paladin or Ardenn, Intrepid Archaeologist. For the enchantments, you can rely on aura reanimation like Unfinished Business and One Last Job to finish things.
#10. Chulane, Who Shrieks at Cobras
Cards: Chulane, Teller of Tales + Shrieking Drake + Lotus Cobra + Simic Growth Chamber
Prerequisites: You control Chulane and Lotus Cobra, can cast Shrieking Drake, and have Simic Growth Chamber in hand.
Results: Draw your deck, generate landfall triggers equal to the number of cards in your deck, tons of enters/leaves the battlefield triggers.
Variations: You can use any bounce land instead of Simic Growth Chamber. If you control both Lotus Cobra and Tireless Provisioner (which, incidentally, can replace Lotus Cobra), you can use Whitemane Lion instead of Shrieking Drake.
In all honesty, Shrieking Drake and Chulane, Teller of Tales meets my definition of a combo, given how many cards they draw… but why not throw in another generically good card or two to make it infinite, and seal the game?
#9. Intruder Hippos
Cards: Phelddagrif + Intruder Alarm
Prerequisites: You control creatures that tap for at least .
Results: Infinite mana, infinite untaps of creatures you control, infinite tokens for your opponents, infinite enters triggers for any opponents.
Variations: You can use Questing Phelddagrif instead of the OG, if you don’t mind losing style points.
Phelddagrif might be a meme, but it only takes one enchantment to crack it wide open and make a lethal threat. Giving your opponents infinite creatures to enable the combo’s pretty funny—it sounds like a great reason to break out Suture Priest.
#8. Masks and Veils Are the Same, Right?
Cards: Estrid, the Masked + The Chain Veil
Prerequisites: Estrid has at least two loyalty counters and you have enchanted permanents that tap for at least 5 mana.
Results: Infinite mana, infinite untaps of enchanted permanents you control.
Variations: None.
Having enchanted permanents that tap for a bunch of mana can be tricky, but it’s doable. Aura ramp is your friend here—cards like Utopia Sprawl and Wild Growth are huge helps since they enchant permanents while producing mana themselves.
#7. Devoted Pact-Spinner
Cards: Falco Spara, Pactweaver + Devoted Druid + Sensei's Divining Top
Prerequisites: You control all three permanents and Devoted Druid doesn’t have summoning sickness.
Results: Draw your deck, amass a massive storm count.
Variations: You can use Etherium Sculptor (or any artifact cost reducer) plus something like Yotian Dissident, Daring Archaeologist, or The Thirteenth Doctor that gets a counter when you cast the Top.
Devoted Druid? Sensei's Divining Top? This is just combo city! These two cards see play in so many different combos that you can construct an intricate shell around them. Falco Spara, Pactweaver gives the deck an appealing commander that makes use of Mirage tutors to get your card right away.
#6. Emiel the Intruder
Cards: Emiel the Blessed + Intruder Alarm
Prerequisites: Creatures you control can tap for at least 4 mana, and you have an additional creature to target.
Results: Infinite mana, infinite flickers, infinite enters/leaves the battlefield triggers, infinite untaps.
Variations: None.
Oh look, we broke Intruder Alarm and Emiel the Blessed. This becomes a real easy win with the right flicker target; for example, Venser, Shaper Savant to bounce all permanents you don’t control, or Aether Channeler to draw your deck along the way.
#5. Cradle of the Blessed Tactician
Cards: Derevi, Empyrial Tactician + Emiel the Blessed + Gaea's Cradle
Prerequisites: You control at least four creatures and have the mana to activate Emiel once.
Results: Infinite green mana, infinite enters/leaves the battlefield triggers, infinite untap triggers of permanents you control.
Variations: You can use any land that taps for more than 4 mana; if you find a land that taps for 3, like Lotus Field, you get infinite leaves/enters the battlefield triggers only. You can swap the land for mana rocks that tap for the requisite mana, like Mana Vault and Grim Monolith.
This combo rests on Derevi, Empyrial Tactician being the commander, plus Emiel the Blessed enabling a handful of combos. If only Gaea's Cradle was as accessible as those two… but this combo and its many variations are still strong.
Another huge advantage to this combo is the natural synergy between Derevi and lands that tap for multiple mana; you’d play those together anyway, so adding a single card for infinite potential is quite unobtrusive.
#4. Faeburrow Alarms
Cards: Shrieking Drake + Intruder Alarm + Faeburrow Elder
Prerequisites: Faeburrow Elder doesn’t have summoning sickness, you control Intruder Alarm, and you have Shrieking Drake in hand.
Results: Infinite storm, infinite green and white mana, infinite untaps, infinite enters/leaves the battlefield triggers.
Variations: You can use Whitemane Lion instead of Shrieking Drake, which generates infinite blue and green mana. Multiple mana dorks that tap for 1 mana can replace Faeburrow Elder (for example, Birds of Paradise + Avacyn's Pilgrim). You can also use Bloom Tender.
This might be the simplest application of Intruder Alarm. And I love Shrieking Drake; it’s an exceedingly strange card that does nothing in a vacuum but enables incredible play patterns. Having yet another Intruder Alarm combo in your back pocket gives you lots of material to win the game with.
#3. An Alarming Tale
Cards: Chulane, Teller of Tales + Intruder Alarm
Prerequisites: You have creatures that tap for at least 4 mana and a creature that costs 0 mana like Memnite.
Results: Draw your deck, generate a storm count equal to your deck, accrue many enters/leaves the battlefield triggers, an unreasonable amount of mana (all of this is capped by the number of cards you can draw).
Variations: Your final creature doesn’t need to cost 0; any creature technically works, but that mana value increases the amount of mana your creatures need to tap for. Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy makes this way easier.
Chulane, Teller of Tales would be a ludicrously powerful commander without the activated ability; getting a free Growth Spiral whenever you cast a creature overwhelms most decks. But the activated ability makes it a crazy combo enabler (though the draw-ramp does some stuff as well). Adding Intruder Alarm to the deck gives you the foundation of a fantastic combo deck.
#2. Freed from the Faeburrow
Cards: Faeburrow Elder + Freed from the Real
Prerequisites: Faeburrow Elder doesn’t have summoning sickness and is enchanted with Freed from the Real.
Results: Infinite non-blue mana.
Variations: You can use Bloom Tender instead of Faeburrow Elder or Pemmin's Aura instead of Freed from the Real.
I can’t imagine a Bant deck that doesn’t want a Faeburrow Elder, so this combo comes with a relatively low ceiling. White has plenty of enchantment tutors, making this arguably easier to assemble than its Simic cousin using Bloom Tender.
Freed from the Real is rather weak as it does little besides comboing off, but the right commander—perhaps Roon of the Hidden Realm, or something else with a strong tap ability—gets some extra value from it.
#1. Blessed Drake
Cards: Peregrine Drake + Emiel the Blessed
Prerequisites: You control both creatures, you have at least four lands, and you have the mana to activate Emiel.
Results: Infinite enters/leaves the battlefield triggers, infinite mana, infinite flickering.
Variations: You can replace Emiel the Blessed with any creature that flickers Peregrine Drake for less than 5 mana; Deadeye Navigator’s the classic, though Lilysplash Mentor and Eldrazi Displacer work as well. You can replace Peregrine Drake with Great Whale or Palinchron.
This combo’s great if you have other Peregrine Drake combos, or other Emiel the Blessed combos; you can never have too many alternate paths to victory. Having two combo engines that happen to combo themselves sounds like a serious win for consistency.
Wrap Up
Derevi, Empyrial Tactician | Illustration by Michael Komarck
If your Bant deck needed some extra help, I hope you found it, or at least an idea or two among these combos. Whether you want to generate infinite mana or draw your deck, you can do it with the help of these cards! Also, can we take a moment to appreciate just how heinously broken Chulane is?
Which of these combos is your favorite? Do you have a novel combo I missed? Let me know in the comments below or on the Draftsim Discord!
Stay safe, and thanks for reading!
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