Magic: The Gathering's Mishra, Eminent One leads to an infinite turn combo in Commander

It doesn’t take long for Magic: The Gathering players to find a horrifying, potentially overpowered combo. Especially if it is a way to take infinite turns and grind a game to a complete halt. This is thanks to Mishra, Eminent One, who was only revealed about 24 hours ago.

In a Commander deck with artifacts, he can easily take over the game, abuse the legendary rule, and take as many turns as he likes, as long as he has access to simply putting one more artifact into play. How does this work, anyway?

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Mishra, Eminent One is a part of a shockingly easy infinite combo in Magic: The Gathering

This particular combo is easy to set up, considering any deck that stars Mishra, Eminent One is going to be filled with artifacts in Magic: The Gathering. Depending on how much mana ramping you have access to, this could begin triggering around turn 5 or so. It’s also worth noting that this is likely only going to happen in Commander.

So, what’s going on in this combo? Mishra, Eminent One is a legendary we recently discussed that leans heavily into the power of artifact creatures. When combat rolls around, he can take a noncreature artifact, and make a copy of it named “Mishra’s Warform”. This token is a 4/4, has haste, and is an artifact creature.

Prid3 on Reddit revealed this rather unorthodox Magic: The Gathering combo. Now, it is a “conditional” infinite, not a true infinite. It relies on you being able to make, create, summon, or clone at least one artifact that turn.

You need Mishra, Eminent One, Gonti’s Aether Heart, and any other way to create artifacts. Saheeli, Karn, Daretti, Emry, whatever source you have. There are so many ways to create free artifact creatures in the game.

The two biggest steps of the combo (Image via Wizards of the Coast)

When combat comes around, target Gonti’s Aether Heart. Since this copy is “Mishra’s Warform”, it’s not going to worry about the legendary rule. Gonti’s Aether Heart generates 2 energy whenever it or another artifact comes into play. Doing this on the turn the Heart comes into play will generate 4 energy.

After combat, on the second main phase, just create another artifact of any flavor or variety. This will give you 8 energy. This artifact can pay 8 energy to take an extra turn. This requires you to exile the card, so exile the copy. Now you get an extra turn and keep doing this as long as you can keep summoning artifacts.

There are so many ways to make sure this happens in Magic: The Gathering, as well. You can use the aforementioned cards, or something like Portal of Sanctuary, which is a blue artifact. You can tap it and 1 colorless mana to bounce a creature back to your hand. Do this with your lowest-cost artifact creature, and put it back into play to trigger another turn.

It took nearly no time for Magic: The Gathering players to find ways to completely break this card for Commander, and it’s not going to be the last combo found. It is fascinating to take a card that had nearly no worth and make it into an engine of destruction and terror.

Gonti’s Aether Heart isn’t a sought-after card, but now it just might be. Thank goodness for Gerrard's Hourglass Pendant, which can stop this in its tracks.