In Magic: The Gathering, there's very little you can do without mana. Casting spells and activating abilities are key to the game, and they're not happening if you can't pay for them.

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So it's understandable that infinite mana is incredibly powerful, especially in Commander. Being able to play whatever you want without worrying about the cost, or plumbing all that mana into an obscenely massive X-cost spell, can devastate the board. It won't win the game on its own, but infinite mana will almost definitely put you far ahead of the rest of the table.

For this list, we're skipping over combos that are too similar to each other in favour of having combos that can work in more colour identities, or use fewer cards.

Updated May 11, 2022 by Joe Parlock: Commander is a massive format, and new combos are being found all the time. There's always room for more infinite mana, and so the list has been updated with two more popular ways to get all the mana you need.

7 Emiel the Blessed, and Peregrine Drake

Emiel Drake Combo

Peregrine Drake is one of the game's most popular flicker targets, thanks to its enter-the-battlefield trigger of untapping five of your lands. Combine that with Emiel the Blessed, a legendary creature who can pay three mana to flicker something, and the combo is already in place.

All you need to do is have both Emiel and Peregrine Drake out on the battlefield. Pay three generic mana to activate Emiel's ability, target the Drake, and flicker it. When Peregrine Drake enters the battlefield, its ability will trigger and will untap five of your lands. Tap all five lands to produce at least five mana, use three of it to activate Emiel on the Peregrine Drake again, and the combo is ready to go. Just flicker Peregrine Drake as many times as you need, tapping five lands every time, and you'll have a profit of at least two mana per loop.

The downside to this combo is that, as Emiel is a Selesnya (green/white) commander, you can't use Peregrine Drake in an Emiel deck. In a Bant (green/white/blue) deck with a different commander, though, they fit together nicely.

6 Karmic Guide, Reveillark, and Phyrexian Altar

mono-white

Infinite mana is about as un-white as you can imagine, and yet it does have a pretty great combo available to it.

To get started, you need Phyrexian Altar on the battlefield, Reveillark in your hand, and Karmic Guide in your graveyard (which is easy enough to do with its Evoke ability). Pay the four generic and one white to cast and resolve Reveillark, and then immediately sacrifice it to Phyrexian Altar to produce one mana of any colour.

When Reveillark's death trigger activates, target Karmic Guide and return it to the battlefield. When Karmic Guide enters, its ability will go off, and you can target Reveillark in your graveyard and return it to the battlefield.

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Now with both Karmic Guide and Reveillark on the battlefield, sacrifice Karmic Guide to Phyrexian Altar to produce another coloured mana, and then sacrifice Reveillark. Reveillark's death trigger will activate again, you can repeat the whole loop as many times as you want: use Reveillark to bring Karmic Guide back, use Karmic Guide to bring Reveillark back, sacrifice them both to Phyrexian Altar.

Not only is this an infinite coloured mana combo, but it's also an infinite enters-the-battlefield combo. If you have another creature with power two or less with an enter ability you want looping, Reveillark's ability allows it to return up to two creatures. For example, you could pull all your basic Plains out of your deck with an Ambitious Farmhand, or make infinite 1/1 white Spirit tokens with Emissary of the Sleepless.

5 Rings of Brighthearth, and Basalt Monolith

Colourless-1

Though colourless mana isn't quite as useful as coloured, a two-card infinite combo that can slot into any deck is well worth it.

With Rings of Breathearth and Basalt Monolith on the battlefield, tap Basalt Monolith to make three colourless mana. Then, pay to activate its other ability and untap it. With that ability trigger on the stack, use Rings of Brighthearth and pay two generic to copy it, and resolve everything but that second untap ability.

Before that copied untap resolves (and whiffs, because Basalt Monolith is already untapped right now), tap Basalt Monolith to make three more colourless mana. Then resolve that copied untap. You now have three colourless mana floating, and can do it again: tap Basalt Monolith to make three more colourless mana, pay three to untap it, copy the ability using two colourless and Rings of Brighthearth, untap Basalt Monolith once, tap it to make three more colourless, and then untap it with the copied ability.

It requires a little bit of stack finesse, but each loop will net you one colourless mana, and the last time you do it will get you three instead. You can feed all this mana into generic mana costs, X-spell costs, or, with Chromatic Orrery out, use it to cast whatever you like.

4 Dockside Extortionist, and Cloudstone Curio

DocksideCurio

Dockside Extortionist is one of the hottest cards in Commander right now, thanks to its ability to make a massive amount of treasure tokens for just two mana.

In your hand, you need Dockside Extortionist and another creature, as cheap as you can get. On the battlefield, you need Cloustone Curio. Your opponents also need a number of artifacts or enchantments: at least three more than the mana cost of your second creature.

First, play Dockside Extortionist and make all those Treasure tokens, and then use some of those treasures to cast your second creature. When this second creature hits the battlefield, Cloudstone Curio will trigger and allow you to return another permanent that shares a permanent type with it to your hand – in this case, creature.

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Return Dockside Extortionist to your hand, and then use two of the Treasure tokens you made to re-cast it and make a boatload of Treasures. This will then trigger Cloudstone Curio again, letting you return the second creature to your hand and re-cast it. This creates the loop that lets you play and re-play Dockside Extortionist as many times as you want.

As long as your opponents have at least three more artifacts or enchantments than the mana cost of your second creature, each loop will give you a profit of at least one Treasure token. Not only are infinite Treasures infinite mana, but they're also infinite artifacts for stuff like affinity, improvise, or animation spells like Rise and Shine. They're also infinite sacrifice triggers for commanders like Juri, Master of the Revue.

3 Argothian Elder, and Ashaya, Soul of the Wild

Mono-green-1

Any infinite combo that uses a potential commander is great, and Ashaya, Soul of the Wild is a fantastic commander. It turns all of your noncreature tokens into land creatures, letting them tap for mana.

For this combo, you need Ashaya, Argothian Elder, and at least one other land on the battlefield. Tap a land for mana, and then tap Argothian Elder for its ability to untap two lands.

Because of Ashaya, Argothian Elder itself counts as a land, letting you untap it and the land you tapped for mana before. Now you can do it again, floating an infinite amount of mana from the lands you control.

This is great, both because it's a two-card combo using your commander, and because it's so rare in its colour identity. You would think green, the colour of lands and ramping, would have more infinite mana available to it. Turns out, it doesn't like the unnatural feeling of building an endless mana source, making it actually one of the least common colours to have a combo like this.

2 Tidewater Minion, and Illusionist's Bracers

Tidewater Bracers Combo

Illusionist's Bracers is an incredibly powerful artifact that copies the activated abilities of the creature it's equipped to. By putting it on to Tidewater Minion, who taps to untap a target permanent, we can untap any mana sources we like as many times as we need.

First, have Tidewater Minion, Illusionist's Bracers, and mana sources that produce the colours you want out on the battlefield. The Tidewater Minion and any mana dorks you want to target can't have summoning sickness. Pay three generic mana to equip the Tidewater Minion with the Illusionist's Bracers, and then tap the TIdewater Minion for its activated ability, targeting the Tidewater Minion itself.

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Illusionist's Bracers will trigger, copying that untap ability, and you can use the copy to untap a tapped mana source instead. When everything resolves, both Tidewater Minion and the mana source will untap, and you'll be free to tap the source to produce your mana and do it all again with TIdewater Minion.

While this isn't the cheapest mono-blue combo in the world, it being limited to one blue and one colourless card does make it incredibly flexible.

1 Dramatic Reversal, and Isochron Scepter

Isorev

This combo is so famous that it has its own name in the Magic community: "Isorev". Incredibly simple and straight-forward, it tends to be one of the first combos anyone getting into Magic learns about.

To Isorev, you need at least enough non-land mana sources on the battlefield to produce three mana of any colour, and Isochron Scepter and Dramatic Reversal in your hand. Cast Isochron Scepter, and when it enters the battlefield, exile Dramatic Reversal to imprint it.

Now all you have to do is flat all of your mana, pay two and tap Isochron Scepter to cast a copy of Dramatic Reversal, which untaps all your permanents… including Isochron Scepter and those mana sources you just tapped. Lands, artifacts, mana dorks, it doesn't matter; as long as you can make at least three mana per loop, you'll have infinite mana in any colour you can normally produce.

It's so easy to pull off and is in mono-blue, hugely opening up which decks it fits into. The downside is that most people know a combo is afoot the second Isochron Scepter is played. Expect people to do anything they can to break the combo purely because of how ubiquitous it is.

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