12 combos
| Pieces | Colors | What it does | How to stop it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Deadeye Navigator + Peregrine Drake | UG | Infinite mana. Soulbond the Drake, blink it repeatedly, untapping five lands for a four mana blink each time. | Kill either creature in response to the blink, or counter the pairing trigger. |
| Exquisite Blood + Sanguine Bond | B | Infinite drain. Any lifegain or life loss starts a loop that ends the game. | Remove either enchantment before the loop starts. Once it starts there is no window. |
| Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker + Zealous Conscripts | R | Infinite hasty tokens. The copy untaps Kiki-Jiki, which copies again. | Instant speed removal on Kiki-Jiki with the trigger on the stack, or a graveyard hate piece is irrelevant here. |
| Thassa, Deep-Dwelling + Peregrine Drake | U | Infinite mana, once per turn cycle rather than truly unbounded, but enough to win. | Remove Thassa, which is indestructible while devotion is high, so exile or bounce it. |
| Dockside Extortionist + Temur Sabertooth | RG | Infinite Treasure tokens if opponents control enough artifacts and enchantments. | Play fewer artifacts and enchantments, or remove the Sabertooth. The floor scales with the table. |
| Mikaeus, the Unhallowed + Walking Ballista | B | Infinite damage. Ballista returns with undying, remove the counter to ping, repeat. | Graveyard hate stops the return, or exile Mikaeus. |
| Time Warp effect + Any way to recur it | U | Infinite turns. The most common form recurs the extra turn spell each turn. | Counter the spell, or exile the graveyard. Once the loop is stable it is very hard to break. |
| Winter Orb + Any untapper you control | U | A soft lock. Opponents untap one permanent per turn while you untap freely. | Artifact removal, or simply playing more lands than you need. |
| Smothering Tithe + Any group draw effect | W | Large Treasure production. Not infinite, but it converts a symmetrical draw into a one sided ramp spell. | Remove the enchantment, or simply pay the two each time, which most players underestimate the cost of. |
| Parallel Lives + Any token generator | G | Doubled tokens. Two doublers make four, three make eight, since the effects multiply. | Enchantment removal, or a board wipe once the tokens land. |
| Grave Pact + A free sacrifice outlet | B | A repeatable edict lock. Each creature you sacrifice forces every opponent to sacrifice. | Enchantment removal, or creatures that make tokens to absorb the edicts. |
| Ad Nauseam + A very low average mana value | B | Draw most of your deck. In a deck built with cheap cards this reliably finds a win condition. | Counter the spell. After it resolves you are usually too late. |
No combos match that search.
How to use it
Type a card name, a color, or an effect such as “infinite mana” into the search box, or filter by what the combo produces. Every row lists the pieces, what it does, and how to stop it.
The answer column is the part worth reading even when you are not building a combo deck. Knowing that a particular pairing is beaten by exiling one specific half, and useless to attack after both resolve, is what turns a combo from an unbeatable surprise into a card you hold interaction for.
The anatomy of a combo
Searching for known pairs is the slow way to find combos. Combos have a structure, and once you see the structure you find them in your own deck without a list.
Almost every combo is built from three parts:
An engine. Something that can happen more than once. A creature that untaps, a permanent that returns from the graveyard, an effect that copies itself, a cost reducer that makes something free.
An outlet. Something that converts a repetition into a resource or an effect. A sacrifice outlet, a way to tap for mana, a damage trigger.
A payoff. Something that turns unlimited repetitions into a win. Infinite mana does not win on its own, it needs a card to spend it on. Infinite tokens need haste or a drain effect.
The consequence: a deck with two engines and no outlet has no combos, and adding one cheap outlet can create several at once. That is why combo decks look redundant when you read them, and why adding a single card can unlock a deck that felt close to working.
Deterministic versus probabilistic loops
A distinction that matters for both rules and etiquette.
A deterministic loop produces the same result every iteration with no choices and no random elements. You can announce the number of iterations and the result, and the game skips ahead. Two creatures that untap each other for mana are deterministic.
A probabilistic loop involves a random or unknown element, such as a loop that depends on what you reveal from the top of your library. You must actually perform each iteration, because the outcome differs.
The rules consequence, from rule 104.4b: a loop that genuinely cannot be stopped and that no player can break results in a draw, not a win. So a combo that produces infinite mana with no way to spend it does not win the game, it ends it in a draw if nobody can interact.
This is why a combo needs a payoff that terminates. Infinite mana plus nothing is a draw. Infinite mana plus a way to deal damage is a win.
Stopping a combo
The practical guidance, since it applies to every entry in the table.
Interact before it assembles. Most two card combos have no window once both pieces are on the battlefield and untapped. The removal spell you were saving for the perfect moment is dead the instant the second piece resolves.
Know which half is replaceable. Combo decks run tutors and redundancy. Killing the half they have four ways to find buys a turn. Killing the half they have one way to find may win the game.
Prefer exile over destruction against anything with recursion, which is most black combo decks.
Use taxes rather than answers if you are in white. A tax that is already on the battlefield cannot be played around by waiting for you to tap out, which is exactly how combo decks play around counterspells.
Watch the mana, not the board. A combo player holding up six mana and doing nothing is usually one turn from going off. The board tells you nothing because most combos do not need one.
Why this list is short
An exhaustive combo database is easy to generate and hard to trust. Automated pair-finding produces enormous lists full of interactions that technically work and never come up, alongside entries where the loop does not actually close.
Every combo listed here is one that sees real play, can be stated precisely, and has a checked answer. That makes the tool small and makes what it says reliable, which for a reference tool is the correct trade.
The comprehensive version arrives with the card database, and it will keep the answer column, because a combo list that tells you what a deck does without telling you how to beat it is only half a tool.