In this experiment, we go wild, turn on the generator, and endure.

Over the past few years, Wizards of the Coast has really lessened, in my opinion, the number of cards with exciting combo potential. With Magic 2015, however, they let loose just a little bit. And that effect has bled all the way down to commons in the form of Generator Servant.

Not only can it play a lot like a Dark Ritual that grants haste, but if we toss in a way to pay to generate , we can use the Servant’s mana to cast another Servant. And with Enduring Renewal, that follow-up Servant can be the initial one, creating a meaningless loop of the same Generator Servant. Fortunately, there are plenty of ways to trigger on creatures entering the battlefield, dying, or being cast.

I built today’s deck around Generator Servant with Enduring Renewal and Skyshroud Elf, but there are a lot of combo configurations with the deck’s contents, so I’ll cover several of them individually.

The Storm Loop, Part 1

With these three cards, we can cast Generator Servant over and over again. On turn four:

• Cast Enduring Renewal with Skyshroud Elf and Generator Servant already on the battlefield.
• Sacrifice Generator Servant for 2.
• Pay using Skyshroud Elf to generate .
• Cast Generator Servant, which gains haste from its own ability because of the 1 left over.
• Repeat Steps 2–4 any number of times.
• Interrupt Step 4 by casting Storm Entity—instead of Generator Servant—for a lot, and attack.

Alternatively, cast Grapeshot instead of Storm Entity. It’s a more consistent play, but you lose some flavor points for deviating from the Elemental theme.

The Storm Loop, Part 2

This combo, with Wild Cantor instead of Generator Servant, has existed for a few years, and it creates the same effect. The only difference is that we’re making 1 mana instead of 2, so if we start sacrificing on the turn we tap out for Enduring Renewal, we’ll only have 1 mana to work with instead of or (with Skyshroud Elf). The upside is that we don’t need the Skyshroud Elf as a third piece, but we’ll have to wait another turn to have the mana for our storm spell.

Deal All the Damage

In lieu of a Storm Entity or a Grapeshot, a Cinder Pyromancer can do the job all on its own. While it’s a bit less friendly to Magic Online players, the Pyromancer with either of the above loops will let us deal all the damage we want to any number of opponents. With Wild Cantor, we can go infinite on turn four after casting Enduring Renewal, and the or from the Cantor will be irrelevant, so we don’t have to worry about having to cast anything afterward. Oh, and Cinder Pyromancer fits with the Elemental theme!

To that end, it seems reasonable to include several copies of Flamekin Harbinger to find Generator Servant, Cinder Pyromancer, or Storm Entity, depending on which we need at the time.

Make All the Mana

With Tangleroot, every time we cast Generator Servant or Wild Cantor, we also make . With Wild Cantor, we can use that to recast the Cantor, thus leaving the Cantor’s own mana of any color for us to keep, save up, and use on whatever we want. To loop with Generator Servant, we’ll need Skyshroud Elf anyway, so we can keep the or transform it into or , depending on our needs.

Making and spending infinite mana is fun, but the final version of this deck doesn’t have much to spend it on, so I’ve kept the number of copies of Tangleroot down to one—but feel free to explore more mana-expenditure options and play with the ’Root a bit more.

Draw All the Cards

An issue with a deck like this one is finding all the pieces—especially in the awkward circumstances when we can loop infinitely but to no end. Having a chump-blocker every turn is nice, but Fecundity provides us with another option for a resource to generate with all our hard work (and card synergy).

In this way, we can draw our whole deck—or as much of it as we like. However, Enduring Renewal has an interesting clause that forces us to reveal our draws and pitch any creatures we find. That means we’ll need to have all our requisite creatures before we begin, but I want to make sure that drawing our whole deck would result in a win—not result in having all our win conditions uselessly in our graveyard.

Having one copy of Magic 2015’s new Return to the Ranks will let us pull out almost whatever we need from our graveyard. If we have Tangleroot, we can pull out almost our entire library’s worth of creatures. To go along with that, we have a Legion Loyalist to give our copies of Storm Entity trample and to grant them a bit of usually-useless evasion.

Generator Storm ? Casual | Andrew Wilson

• Creatures (26)
• 1 Legion Loyalist
• 2 Elvish Harbinger
• 3 Storm Entity
• 4 Cinder Pyromancer
• 4 Flamekin Harbinger
• 4 Generator Servant
• 4 Skyshroud Elf
• 4 Wild Cantor

• Spells (11)
• 1 Grapeshot
• 1 Return to the Ranks
• 4 Enduring Renewal
• 4 Fecundity
• 1 Tangleroot

• Lands (23)
• 6 Forest
• 6 Mountain
• 3 Rootbound Crag
• 4 Rugged Prairie
• 4 Wooded Bastion

Buy This Deck

When I started working on the deck, I wanted to make it Modern, but Skyshroud Elf is just so powerful for this plan. Manaforge Cinder can do a poor impression, but having to somehow sacrifice and recast the Cinder every couple iterations makes things much trickier. That said, perhaps there’s an Elemental tribal deck somewhere in there.

Speaking of tribal decks and going infinite with Generator Servant, who would have thought Minotaurs? With Generator Servant, Enduring Renewal, Conspiracy (for Minotaurs), and Ragemonger, we can make infinite mana. Generator Servant will be a Minotaur because of Conspiracy, and it will therefore cost because of Ragemonger. That means no mana-color transmogrification is necessary, thus deprecating Skyshroud Elf and Manaforge Cinder. That means Generator Minotaur will be able to cast itself (with help from Enduring Renewal) for 1, netting us per iteration. Oh, and that floating comes with the rider that creatures (a.k.a. Minotaurs) cast with that mana will have haste.

That makes for a three-colored deck based on a four-card combo requiring a 4-mana enchantment and a 5-mana enchantment, but as Enduring Renewal and Conspiracy shared space on Time Spiral’s Timeshifted sheet, the concept is Modern-legal, and if I’m correct about Khans of Tarkir’s theme, we might be seeing some more support for W/B/R as a color combination.

Well, if you never grow tired of sacrificing creatures, or if you’d just forgotten about Enduring Renewal for too long, give this deck a try.

Andrew Wilson

@Silent7Seven

fissionessence at hotmail dot com