Wombo Combo - Best Colorless Combos in EDH (Part 1)
(Agatha's Soul Couldron| Art by Jason A. Engle)
Into the Void
Welcome back to Wombo Combo, the episodic article series where we explore the best EDH combo cards in each color identity using data from Commander Spellbook and EDHREC. This edition will be the first part of our look into the only color identity that every EDH deck can use - Colorless!
Colorless cards are usable in every EDH deck regardless of color identity, making them a consistent choice for many deckbuilders. Such staples include Sol Ring or Arcane Signet, to name a few. Colorless is also the resident home of Eldrazi and artifacts, both of which are very popular deck archetypes. Many colorless cards also have generic mana costs, which eliminates the need for mana fixing and makes them easier to play in a game. Because colorless cards are very common in EDH combos, this series will consist of two parts that will together look at the top 20 colorless combo cards. Let's take a look at what cards make the countdown from #20 to #11!
#20: Dross Scorpion
Dross Scorpion is a key card found in many artifact and artifact creature based combos, allowing you to untap an artifact when an artifact creature you control dies. Such an effect can be used for Cauldron of Souls to continually give creatures persist. It can also be used for mana rocks that can pay for Nim Deathmantle to recur the creature. Dross Scorpion also allows Throne of Geth to function like a normal sacrifice outlet, allowing you to sacrifice an artifact to proliferate. This is perfect for furthering combos with Venser, Corpse Puppet or Animation Module.
#19: Voltaic Construct
Voltaic Construct is another key combo piece for artifact creatures, allowing you to pay to untap an artifact creature. This is obviously help with creatures tapping for more than two mana, like Metalworker or an animated Basalt Monolith. You can also use artifact creatures tapping for two mana, like Palladium Myr, if you include an ability cost reducer like Heartstone or copy the ability with Illusionist's Bracers. Voltaic Construct can also get you additional abilities from popular commanders like Codie, Vociferous Codex regardless of whether you create a combo or not.
#18: Cryptic Trilobite
Cryptic Trilobite is a simple yet powerful card allowing you to remove +1/+1 counters from it to add that can only be spent to activate abilities. This works fantastic with either proliferators or +1/+1 counter placers like Ghave, Guru of Spores or Marath, Will of the Wild to recoup mana needed for the next ability activation. Removing +1/+1 counters also makes it a candidate for a Mikaeus, the Unhallowed undying combo, and giving you an additional result in the process. You can also Cryptic Trilobite for zero mana, killing it instantly and recurring it with Enduring Renewal. Overall, Cryptic Trilobite is a versatile and strong combo card with many options that can fit into the style of your deck seamlessly.
#17: Paradise Mantle
Paradise Mantle gives any creature the ability to be a mana dork. While this may seem a bit trivial at first, there are plenty of ways that even a mana dork adding one mana can create an infinite combo. The key is to use a cheap untapper, like Freed from the Real. This makes a mana-neutral combo, and you can add your favorite payoff to create an infinite combo with useful results. Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy gives you infinite mana and infinite uses of its ability. You can also give Paradise Mantle to a creature that cares about it being tapped, such as Fallowsage or Emmara, Soul of the Accord for powerful and simple combos.
#16: Amulet of Vigor
Amulet of Vigor is a key combo piece involving permanents that enter tapped. This is mainly used for one of three things. The first being lands, such as Guildless Commons and other bouncelands, or lands that are put onto the battlefield tapped by Patron of the Moon or other effects. The second use is for tapped artifacts, useful for Clock of Omens combos or to immediately tap Treasures for mana. The third use is for tapped creature tokens, allowing you to use the tap abilities of the creature tokens immediately. This works great for copies of creatures like Aphetto Alchemist. Amulet of Vigor provides a large amount of value for decks that put permanents into play tapped, and can easily pay for itself.
#15: Myr Battlesphere
Deck Inclusions: 103,397 decks
Myr Battlesphere explodes onto the battlefield with one 4/4 creature and four 1/1 creatures simultaneously. Creating a lot of creature tokens makes it a perfect candidate for Nim Deathmantle combos with a mana sacrifice outlet. It also conveniently makes five artifacts total, which is perfect for a Time Sieve activation, and recursion using Emry, Lurker of the Loch or a similar card. Myr Battlesphere also gives you half the resources needed for a Mechanized Production win, so making a copy or blinking it can win you the game if no one responds in time.
#14: Umbral Mantle
Umbral Mantle gives a creature the rare untap ability, costing three mana and untapping the creature to give it +2/+2 until end of turn. Similar to Voltaic Construct, Umbral Mantle is mainly used for mana dorks that make four or more mana, like Fanatic of Rhonas. Umbral Mantle is better for this than Sword of the Paruns by also making the creature infinitely large, thus adding another result. You can also use Umbral Mantle to untap massive token generators, such as Krenko, Mob Boss, and sacrifice the tokens to a mana sacrifice outlet to fund the untap each time.
#13: Agatha's Soul Cauldron
Agatha's Soul Cauldron may be a newer card, but it has immense combo potential, allowing you to transfer activated abilities between different creatures. For example, giving Francisco, Fowl Marauder the ability of Walking Ballista creates an easy infinite damage combo. Agatha's Soul Cauldron also allows you to give Midnight Guard an ability to tap and create a creature token, such as that of Godsire. Untap abilities are also very helpful, such as giving Horseshoe Crab's ability to a mana dork. Agatha's Soul Cauldron also allows you to spend any mana to activate abilities, meaning you can use mono-green mana dorks with Horseshoe Crab and it'll work perfectly.
#12: Isochron Scepter
Deck Inclusions: 119,671 decks
Isochron Scepter is a notorious card for easy EDH and cEDH combos. It is also half of the most popular EDH combo with Dramatic Reversal, which is in over 78,000 decks! Isochron Scepter combos easily with any instant that can untap cards that can cover the needed for the next activation, and cards that can untap Isochron Scepter. Cards like Vizier of Tumbling Sands can easily untap Isochron Scepter, and you can untap it and all your mana-producing creatures with a card such as To Arms!. Isochron Scepter also makes for many infinite turns combos, by imprinting Narset's Reversal to easily recur and cast infinite turn spells each turn.
#11: Academy Manufactor
Deck Inclusions: 187,024 decks
The final card we will cover in Part 1 of the colorless saga is none other than Academy Manufactor, a staple card in many token and artifact based decks. Whenever you make a Clue, Food or Treasure, Academy Manufactor gives you one of each instead. This triples the number of tokens you create, and opens up a litany of use cases for infinite combos. From easy untaps with Clock of Omens, to easier Time Sieve infinite turns, to an easy Nuka-Cola Vending Machine combo, Academy Manufactor is a bit of a Swiss army knife for artifact and token based combos. I would highly recommend it as an include for any commander caring about artifacts, Clues, Foods, and/or Treasures as both a strong value piece and infinite combo piece.
Part Two Coming Soon
This concludes the first part of Wombo Combo - Best Colorless Combos in EDH! Be sure to watch for the next edition, where we will examine the Top 10 colorless combo cards to round off the list. Don't forget as well to check out Commander Spellbook for more EDH combos, and to join the Commander Spellbook Discord for EDH discussion, updates about the site, and to submit your own EDH combos! Until next time, happy comboing!
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Ethan Coover
Ethan has been an avid EDH player since 2014 with the release of Core Set 2015. In 2021, he joined the Commander Spellbook project as an editor, and later a head-editor and moderator, and has assisted in the curation, updating and/or uploading of over 10,000 unique EDH combos. In his spare time, Ethan loves coming up with new jank EDH lines, playing video games, and going for long walks.
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