The 15 Best Draw the Game Cards in Magic Ranked

Last updated on October 3, 2024

Life and Limb | Illustration by Jim Nelson

So, what even is that third number in your event record for? Tracking your losses and wins makes sense, but when do you ever actually draw a game of Magic? What cards can even cause you to end an MTG game with no winners or losers?

Whether the game ends by simultaneous damage to all players or some convoluted mandatory loop that the game can’t resolve, there are actually quite a few ways to end up with a draw in Magic: The Gathering.

I’m tired of winning. I’m tired of losing. I need a new challenge in my Commander games. From now on, I’m hunting for the draw. Let’s find out how we can leave Commander night karma-neutral.

What Are Draw the Game Cards in MTG?

Triskaidekaphobia | Illustration by Willian Murai

“Draw the game” cards result in a game of Magic ending with no decisive winner. There are only two cards that specifically end a Magic game in a draw: Celestial Convergence and Divine Intervention. That said, we don’t need to wait for the cards to instruct us to end the game in a draw. There are tons of wonky two-card combos that create a mandatory infinite loop – interactions that trigger each other infinitely and don’t involve any ”may” text.

If no one can stop one of these infinite loops, the game ends in a draw! Or crashes your MTGO/MTGA client; same thing.

Dealing enough damage to kill everybody at the same time also ends the game in a draw, as we'll see right away!

#15. Fault Line/Earthquake/Prosperity/Etc.

One of the more basic ways to end the game in a draw is through simultaneous damage (or simultaneous mill-out). Fault Line and Earthquake are both classic red burn spells that you can dump your 100,000,000 mana into to deal that much damage to everyone all at once. So long as you don’t leave any room for a player to survive, you’ll all lose the game at the same time after the spell resolves.

The same is true for anything that would force players to draw from an empty library. Cast Prosperity for X=10,000 and we’ll all draw our decks and lose at the same time. Well, except for me and my 10,020-card Battle of Wits deck. Don’t ask me how I shuffle it.

#14. Triskaidekaphobia

I’ll be honest with you, I don’t know how you’re going to get everyone at the table to exactly 13 life all at the same time, but if you ever do, you can choose either of Triskaidekaphobia’s effects to instantly draw the game. Whether each player wins or loses simultaneously is irrelevant – since they all happen at the same time, the game is a draw.

This could be the crown jewel to a life-manipulation deck (note: not lifegain), where we use Wall of Blood, Reverse the Sands, and Soul Exchange to get everyone’s life total just right. Alternatively, run some Platinum Angel or Lich effects and trade your negative life total for an opponent’s. This actually wins you the game, but it's so frustrating and stupid it should feel like a draw.

#13. Polyraptor + Marauding Raptor

You can’t choose to not deal damage to the new creature entering the battlefield with Marauding Raptor, which means that a single Polyraptor hitting the field next to it will create an infinite number of Polyraptor copies unless someone can remove the Marauding Raptor at instant speed. If everyone’s already tapped out, guess what? Game’s over! Let’s shuffle up and go to game two.

#12. Day of the Dragons + Opalescence

With Opalescence on the battlefield, you can cast Day of the Dragons, which will then exile itself along with all creatures (and enchantments) you control. This causes the Day of the Dragons to leave the battlefield since it’s a creature, which then sacrifices all dragons you control and returns the exiled cards (notably Opalescence and Day of the Dragons) back to the battlefield. When they enter, Day of the Dragons triggers, exiling everything again, and so on and so forth.

This is another combo that will loop infinitely until someone does something to interact with it. With an Impact Tremors effect on the field, you’ll technically win the game since you can feasibly deal enough direct damage to your opponents to win, but without an outlet like that, the game just ends in a draw.

#11. Rain of Gore + Transcendence

This one is so funny. Transcendence is confusing, and not as good as it looks on paper most of the time.

With Rain of Gore on the field at the same time, any amount of life lost by you will cause an infinite mandatory loop, ending the game in a draw immediately. Once you lose 1 life, Transcendence will trigger, but Rain of Gore will instead make you lose 2 life. This then triggers Transcendence again, and the game ends in a draw as these two cards compete to determine what your actual life total is.

#10. Endrek Sahr, Master Breeder + Assault Suit

Those “when…” triggers can be kind of tricky! Everyone knows Endrek Sahr, Master Breeder as one of the best ways to acquire a ton of sacrificial Thrull fodder. However, if we can equip them with an Assault Suit, it’ll become impossible to sacrifice the Master Breeder.

You may think: “Wow! So I can get more than seven Thrull tokens from Endrek now?” But you’d be wrong! Once you hit seven Thrulls, Endrek’s ability will trigger, they’ll be impossible to sacrifice, and the ability will trigger again and again until either Endrek or your Thrulls leave. With no way to interact with this at instant speed, the game ends in a draw.

#9. Clever Impersonator + Garruk Relentless

What happens if Clever Impersonator copies a planeswalker? It does, in fact, get the number of loyalty counters that its target enters with, but what if we activate its second ability to reduce it to 1 or 2 loyalty counters when the target creature strikes back? The Clever Impersonator will attempt to transform, and fail to since it has no back side. Since this is a triggered effect, it continues to trigger over and over, forcing the game to end in a draw.

#8. Ajani’s Chosen + Enchanted Evening

This is the Sporemound + Life and Limb of enchantments. Ajani's Chosen creates a cat creature token whenever an enchantment enters the battlefield. Enchanted Evening makes everything an enchantment in addition to its other card types. Cast either of these while the other is on the field, and drown in an endless sea of 2/2 Cat tokens.

#7. Luminous Broodmoth + Solemnity

Solemnity’s counter-prevention effect shuts down a lot of different combos and effects, the funniest of which involve the ability counters from Ikoria. With Luminous Broodmoth and any 0-thoughness hydra-type creature, we can infinitely loop that creature into and out of the graveyard. Without another triggered effect to deal damage on ETB or LTB, the game will end in a draw. Here’s how it works:

With Luminous Broodmoth and Solemnity on the field, cast something like, say, Primordial Hydra where X equals 0. The hydra enters the battlefield and dies immediately to state-based actions by virtue of having no toughness.

Since the hydra didn’t have flying, the Broodmoth returns it from the graveyard to the battlefield and attempts to put a flying counter on it, but can’t because of Solemnity. The hydra dies again to state-based actions, and the whole process starts over. There’s no hope for ending this loop, so the game ends in a draw without an Impact Tremors or Blood Artist on the field.

#6. Worldgorger Dragon + Animate Dead

Worldgorger Dragon has been causing problems literally since it was released in Judgment. This combo is only mandatory if you have no other legal targets for Animate Dead in graveyards besides the Worldgorger Dragon. Here’s how it works:

Cast Animate Dead targeting your Dragon in your graveyard. The Dragon enters, exiling all other permanents you control, including Animate Dead. When your enchantment leaves the battlefield, Worldgorger is sacrificed, causing you to return all the exiled cards to the battlefield, including Animate Dead. Animate Dead must target a creature in your ‘yard at that point, so it returns the Dragon, exiling all permanents and starting the whole process over again.

Normally, you’d use this loop to bring your lands into play untapped and float their mana in response until you have enough to Fireball the board to death, but without another creature to reanimate or a way to disrupt the combo, this loop ends the game in a draw.

#5. Pariah + Stuffy Doll

Also compatible with Pariah's Shield if you’re not running white, Pariah + Stuffy Doll is a classic mandatory loop used to end games in a draw or just prove to your opponents how easy it is to break this game. Picking yourself as Stuffy Doll’s chosen player and enchanting it with Pariah means that any damage dealt to it or your results in an infinite damage redirection loop that’s impossible to stop.

What I like most about this combo is you can set it up and just leave it on the board like you’re holding your finger over the big red nuclear launch button – “Don’t test me! I’ll blow this whole place up and take you all with me!”

#4. Divine Intervention

1994’s Legends released the first of only two cards that explicitly end the game in a draw. Divine Intervention is an 8-mana white enchantment that uses unique intervention counters. It enters with two, and you remove one during each of your upkeeps. Then, if there are no intervention counters on it, the game ends in a draw!

There are more than a few ways to remove the counters instantly from Divine Intervention. Vampire Hexmage is probably the simplest, or we could turn it into a creature with Opalescence and use Suncleanser to remove its counters. Or, just make it untouchable with Sterling Grove and wait.

For 8 mana, this is a rather expensive way to end the game in a draw, but you do get style points for running a single-printing Legends Reserved List card.

#3. Celestial Convergence

Celestial Convergence works similarly to Divine Intervention, in that it enters with a number of unique counters on it, and they’re ticked down one-by-one during your upkeep. Unfortunately, Celestial Convergence can still win you the game! After its last counter is removed, the player with the highest life total wins, so you’ll have to guarantee your life totals are all equal if you want the game to end in a draw.

Just like Divine Intervention, we can remove all omen counters from this enchantment in one fell swoop with a Vampire Hexmage.

#2. Lich’s Mirror + Poison Counters

Hmm… I don’t think they took poison counters into consideration when they were designing Lich's Mirror. I guess Scars of Mirrodin was probably still in development at the time. Here’s how this weird interaction works: Harmless Offering your Lich's Mirror to an opponent, and then give them 10 poison counters through your favorite means. They lose the game for having 10 poison counters, but wait, when Lich's Mirror triggers and resets their life total, they still have 10 poison counters!

Why doesn’t the Mirror get shuffled away? Well, if your opponent controls but does not own your copy of Lich's Mirror, it won’t be shuffled away when they “lose” because of the poison counters. It stays on their battlefield, and when state-based actions are checked, it tries again to save them from losing the game to the poison counters, resulting in an involuntary loop that ends the game in a draw!

#1. Life and Limb + Sporemound

This one is my absolute favorite, just for the imagery it elicits. Life and Limb makes all of your forests and saprolings into 1/1 saprolings and forests in addition to their other types. Sporemound has a landfall effect to create a 1/1 saproling whenever you play a land. With both of these permanents on the field, all you need to do is play a land or make a saproling, and you’ll kick off an infinite chain of saproling-forests entering, triggering Sporemound, and creating another saproling-forest.

Sometimes, the mechanics of Magic can get in the way of the flavor. That is not the case here. Imagine, if you will, a pod of powerful planeswalkers face off on some unnamed plane, each the result of hundreds of years of accumulated arcane power and knowledge. The green planeswalker casts but two spells, and suddenly the entire plane is drowned in saproling bodies as every spare bit of oxygen is sucked up by an insurmountable wall of creature tokens.

I explain this to my pod every time I pull off this combo, but they don’t seem to enjoy it as much as I do.

Draw the Game Payoffs

Uhh… I… uhh….

I’m not really sure what the payoffs could be for forcing games to end in a draw. I guess if you’re trying to ensure that your opponent’s Ruff, Underdog Champ doesn’t get any bigger in game two, these are effective plays to make. If you’re very concerned about your win-lose-draw ratio, you can force draws to improve your overall record by just a bit. As far as actual cards that’ll benefit from you forcing draws left and right, I guess you could consider some Amazon gift cards as an apology for being such a punisher to your playgroup every week.

Wrap Up

Pariah | Illustration by Magnus Jansson

This list is by no means exhaustive – we haven’t even touched on milling yourself out and using Praetor's Counsel and Windfall together. Or playing 10 copies of Ichor Rats at the same time. The rankings here are also not locked in stone – I just think Life and Limb and Sporemound are neat!

What are your favorite mandatory loop combos? Do you think it’s morally upstanding to force draws? Or should you just concede once you prove you can execute the combo? Let me know what you think down in the comments, or over on Draftsim's Twitter/X.

Thanks for reading! Remember: No game should last forever. They all have to end somehow.