(Chulane, Teller of Tales | Art by Victor Adame Minguez)

Care for a Bit of Bant-er?

Welcome back to Wombo Combo, the article series where we examine the best EDH combo cards in each color identity, using data from EDHREC and Commander Spellbook along the way. This edition, we will look at the combination of green, white and blue - also known as Bant.

Bant can be the helm for a variety of different deck themes such as creature heavy decks, enchantress decks, card draw decks and landfall decks. You can also run a Yeti-helmed snow deck using Isu the Abominable for a real arctic punch. Bant cards can have a wide variety of archetypes, from Humans to Dragons to Phelddagrifs. Let's head into the Bant-lefield and see what hard-hitting wonders await!

 

#10: Jedit Ojanen, Mercenary

Number of Combos: 10

Deck Inclusions: 795 as commander (#1,108); 882 as card (0.173%)

Jedit Ojanen, Mercenary is a bit of a niche value piece for legendary matters decks. Jedit allows you to pay to create a 2/2 Cat Warrior creature token whenever a legendary creature enters the battlefield. For a combo, you need three things to utilize this ability. The first is a one-mana legendary creature, such as Isamaru, Hound of Konda or Yoshimaru, Ever Faithful. The second is Cloudstone Curio to bounce the legendary creature back to your hand when the Cat Warrior enters the battlefield. The third is Earthcraft, which allows you to tap the Cat Warrior and legendary creature to recoup your mana and restart the combo. Another combo uses Leyline of Singularity to make the tokens legendary, and thus trigger Jedit repeatedly and get mana from either Earthcraft or Phyrexian Altar.

 

#9: Roon of the Hidden Realm

Number of Combos: 10

Deck Inclusions: 3,319 as commander (#390); 2,371 as card (0.467%)

Roon of the Hidden Realm fits into the group of once-per-turn blinkers, alongside the ranks of Soulherder and similar cards. While not generally as useful for combos as at-will blinkers like Emiel the Blessed, Roon of the Hidden Realm works perfectly fine for infinite turn combos, where you generally only need one blink per turn to further the combo. The simplest way to achieve this is to blink an Eternal Witness style card to return your favorite extra turn spell to your hand, allowing you to recast it during your next turn. You can also blink Wormfang Manta to get an extra turn from its second ability, and prevent the first ability from triggering using a Torpor Orb or similar effect. You can also use Roon of the Hidden Realm to remove a problematic creature, at least temporarily.

 

#8: Beck // Call

Number of Combos: 12

Deck Inclusions: 2,037 decks (0.401%)

Beck // Call has the Fuse ability, allowing you to cast one or both halves of the card depending on your needs and available mana at the time. Such cards, in a similar function to double-faced cards, allow you more flexibility in your deck without needing to devote two slots to two separate cards. Beck is the primary side we will focus on for combos, as it combos perfectly with The Locust God or Nadir Kraken. You can also pair Beck with cards like Scuttletide, which allow you to discard a card and pay mana to make creature tokens. In this case, Beck will replenish the card you discard to allow you to continue.

 

#7: Brenard, Ginger Sculptor

Number of Combos: 13

Deck Inclusions: 6,719 as commander (#132); 788 as card (0.253%)

If you ever wanted your commander to be the Muffin Man from Shrek, then Brenard, Ginger Sculptor is the commander for you. Brenard gives your creatures a second lease on life by creating token copies of them that are 1/1 Food Golem artifact creatures. In order to do this, Brenard exiles the creature from your graveyard. While this is meant to be a drawback by design, ironically exiling the creature allows us to enable several combos. Using a card you can cast from exile, such as Eternal Scourge, you can exile it to get a token, and then cast it from exile anyways to continue the combo. You can also use a commander like Derevi, Empyrial Tactician to return it to the command zone, get a second untap trigger thanks to the token, and then return it to the battlefield using its ability to forego commander tax.

 

#6: Lagrella, the Magpie

Number of Combos: 20

Deck Inclusions: 1,568 as commander (#756); 3,646 as card (0.747%)

Lagrella, the Magpie fits into the banish cycle of cards, which exile a card until it leaves the battlefield. Lagrella is similar to various other banish cards, like Abdel Adrian, Gorion's Ward and Glorious Protector. Other cards that fit into a similar vein include cards like Felidar Guardian, which just so happen to infinitely combo with Lagrella if you have another source to blink a creature (like Ephemerate). You can also recur Lagrella using Sun Titan or Karmic Guide once they are returned to the battlefield after Lagrella exiles them. Lagrella is also a great commander because you can include several redundancy cards to ensure you always have access to the same combo.

 

#5: Storvald, Frost Giant Jarl

Number of Combos: 21

Deck Inclusions: 1,132 as commander (#938); 3,451 as card (0.679%)

Storvald, Frost Giant Jarl may seem like an odd card to make 21 combos out of and admittedly, it is. However, there are a couple cards that help make this possible. One is the equally weird Near-Death Experience, which is used largely as a meme outside of life payment cards like Wall of Blood. The second involves using Storvald to cause either Tree of Redemption or Evra, Halcyon Witness to have base power and toughness 1/1. To do this, you flash in Storvald on the end step prior to your turn, give Evra or Tree of Redemption 1/1, and then set your life total to 1. Then, during your upkeep, Near-Death Experience triggers to give you the win. Just hope your opponents don't have a Lightning Bolt handy.

 

#4: Amareth, the Lustrous

Number of Combos: 25

Deck Inclusions: 1,461 as commander (#794); 5,942 as card (1.169%)

A Dragon that is neither red nor black seems strange, but Amareth, the Lustrous is a strong commander choice to allow yourself card advantage. Amareth also combos easily with another popular card advantage piece - Sensei's Divining Top. With Amareth's ability, you can get Sensei's Divining Top back into your hand after you put it onto the top of your library to repeatedly cast it and draw cards. You can do this until you run out of mana, or infinitely with cost reducers like Etherium Sculptor. Amareth also works well with cards that can top deck themselves or others, like Mortuary. If you're unlucky and cannot find your combo pieces, Amareth can help by giving you potentially decisive card advantage, especially if you engineer your deck to make the most out of its ability.

 

#3: Falco Spara, Pactweaver

Number of Combos: 51

Deck Inclusions: 4,750 as commander (#254); 5,626 as card (1.107%)

Falco Spara, Pactweaver also has a strong affinity for Sensei's Divining Top, like Amareth. Falco Spara does have one additional hurdle to cover - and that's the counter being removed to cast Sensei's Divining Top, as well as the mana to do so. The easiest way to accomplish this is using a persist creature (like Kitchen Finks) or an undying creature (like Young Wolf), and sacrifice them repeatedly to a sacrifice outlet that can cover the mana. Once they are returned with a counter, that counter can then be removed to cast Sensei's Divining Top, and allows you to sacrifice the creature again to get another counter. You can also use Luminous Broodmoth instead, and then sacrifice a creature without flying in the same manner.

 

#2: Derevi, Empyrial Tactician

Number of Combos: 51

Deck Inclusions: 6,548 as commander (#142); 17,185 as card (3.382%)

Derevi, Empyrial Tactician is a card that was designed to be a commander, simply because it has an ability that allows you to ignore commander tax, and to put him onto the battlefield at instant speed. While its ability may seem a bit mundane at first, similar to cards like Corridor Monitor, it is surprisingly easy to combo Derevi using both abilities and a large mana dork. Bloom Tender covers three of the four necessary mana, and Chromatic Orrery covers all of it by itself. All you need to combo Derevi is a large mana dork and a sacrifice outlet that, combined together, can pay to activate Derevi's ability. Who needs commander tax anyway? If Derevi is not your commander, you can still perform a similar combo using a blinker and a large mana dork, or bounce it to your hand with cards like Cloudstone Curio.

 

#1: Chulane, Teller of Tales

Number of Combos: 52

Deck Inclusions: 7,219 as commander (#119); 24,983 as card (4.916%)

Since its original printing in Throne of Eldraine, Chulane, Teller of Tales has been a controversial card, with some believing that it should have never been printed in the first place. A card that lets you draw a card and play a land when you cast a creature spell provides enormous amounts of value and ramp, and the secondary ability to bounce creatures also helps facilitate combos in this fashion. From combos with Intruder Alarm, to self-bouncing creatures like Shrieking Drake, to land bouncers like Mana Breach, there are a multitude of ways to utilize Chulane to win the game. Chulane provides such strong value to any deck focusing on creatures that it should be automatically considered based on this value alone, even outside of infinite combos. While not everyone may like seeing Chulane, you can certainly easily reap the rewards of his presence.

 

Honorable Mentions

Did none of the above combo cards fit your flavor? Let's look at a couple more combo contenders:

1. Galadriel, Light of Valinor: This is a strong card but a bit clunky to work into a combo. Involving blinkers and non-legendary clones (like Spark Double) can help you use the mana ability to achieve this.

2. Gorion, Wise Mentor: Using Gorion to combo is certainly an adventure (pun intended), and pairs perfectly with Virtue of Knowledge.

3. Treva's Attendant: This card is a bit strange, but works well with token generators like Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker.

Thank you very much for reading this edition of Wombo Combo, and don't forget to check out Commander Spellbook for more EDH combos and visit the Commander Spellbook Discord to vote on the next edition of Wombo Combo. Until next time, happy comboing!

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