In this experiment, we create an endless loop of aligned hedrons.

Battle for Zendikar includes Aligned Hedron Network, a story-based hybrid of Oblivion Ring and Wrath of God that only hits creatures of mana cost 5 or greater. What got my Johnny sense tingling about it is that it can hit multiple creatures and that it resets the board when it leaves.

What if its leaving is what caused it to come back? And what if its coming back is what caused it to leave?

Leaves the Battlefield

The problem, then, is that if we want to repeat the process, we’ll need to have made 4 mana somewhere in there in order to pay for the Aligned Hedron Network’s cost.

Brood Monitor — This will be exiled along with whatever else with the Network hits, and it will therefore return when the Network leaves. And every time that happens, we’ll make three Eldrazi Scions. Those represent 3 of the 4 mana we’ll need, meaning we can iterate with just a 1-mana investment each time. That’s certainly not infinite, but it’s not bad, depending on what else we can gain from looping. And then with two Brood Monitors, we can loop indefinitely and gain infinite mana and 1/1s.

Workhorse — This is an alternative or supplement to Brood Monitor. Instead of making 1/1s, it just has +1/+1 counters it can expend for mana, and with an upfront four counters, this works very similarly to the Monitor—with the downside that it can’t leave 1/1s behind between loops.

I ended up cutting a lot of copies of the above cards due to deck size and so many of the cards costing so much. The Workhorse left in the deck should probably just be a third Brood Monitor, and it’s possible there should be the fourth Monitor and maybe a Workhorse or two on top of that. But the deck ended up so full of combo pieces that I wasn’t sure what was best to cut.

Enters the Battlefield

The next bit is a bit trickier. So we’ve established that the Aligned Hedron Network leaving the battlefield can, depending on what it exiled in the first place, set us up to recast the Network. So the question is how we can loop it so that the Network’s entering the battlefield will cause it to leave the battlefield again.

At first, I looked for a creature that cost 5 or more and destroyed an artifact when it left the battlefield. That way, the Aligned Hedron Network could exile that creature, triggering the ability to destroy the Network, setting up the rest of the sequence. But if there’s a creature like that out there, I couldn’t find it. Instead, I found these:

Changeling Titan — The champion-a-creature creatures give us options. When one of these creatures enters the battlefield, it sets up a kind of Oblivion Ring effect for one of our own other creatures. The Titan costs 5, making it susceptible to the Network, which is perfect for us. This turns any enters-the-battlefield trigger, essentially, into a leaves-the-battlefield trigger.

Reclamation Sage — This is a lower-cost, efficient creature that fits into our plans, and it even lets us choose not to destroy something—unlike Indrik Stomphowler—for when we want our Aligned Hedron Network to stick around because of the opposing creatures it’s locked away.

With these two creatures around, we can have the Changeling Titan champion Reclamation Sage and have the Titan, a Greenwarden of Murasa, and a couple Brood Monitors on the battlefield. Then, we cast Aligned Hedron Network, exiling those four creatures. The Titan’s leaving returns the Sage, letting us destroy the Network. That brings back the Titan, the Greenwarden, and the Brood Monitors. The Monitors make 6-mana’s worth of Scions, the Titan champions the Sage for future use, and the Greenwarden returns the Network to our hand. We cast the Network with 4 of the Scion mana, and repeat.

Backup

So those are a lot of expensive pieces we need to have lying around. Fortunately, they’re all reasonably solid bodies that can hold the fort until we can assemble the combo or win the game naturally. Incidentally, they all fit into a mono-green Commander deck if you’re into that kind of thing. You don’t even need two Brood Monitors—as I mentioned, a Workhorse can stand in. And Reclamation Sage is relatively interchangeable.

Here are a few more cards to help make the deck work.

Awakening Zone — This is a low drop to help hold the ground and build up to expensive spells. It doesn’t directly synergize with the plan, but it does cover a couple of our bases and fit the Eldrazi theme.

Fierce Empath — This only costs 3 and can chump-block after letting us search up a Greenwarden of Murasa, Brood Monitor, Workhorse, or Woodland Bellower, which, incidentally, can search for it as well.

Kozilek's Predator — This gives us a couple Eldrazi tokens. Those could help us loop except that, with its 4 cost, the Predator won’t actually be hit by the Network. With an extra Changeling Titan, though, that could be rectified, giving the deck another way to assemble the infinite version of the combo.

Skyshroud Claim — Just to help us cast our 6-drops, I thought some kind of solid accelerant would be nice. The Eldrazi tokens are cute, but they’re one-shots, so I like having more lands solidly on the battlefield. If you end up flooded too frequently, though, the Claim may be redundant.

Thragtusk — This actually gives us something to iterate for. When we can go infinite, we can make infinite mana, which we don’t have much to do with. We also make infinite Eldrazi tokens, which are nice and may let us actually win the game on our next turn. But Thragtusk gives us infinite life to hold us over for the next turn, it gives us infinite 3/3s, which are three times the collective infinite size of the Eldrazi Scions, and it actually rewards us for looping a noninfinite number of times—having just a few 3/3s and 15 to 30 life doesn’t seem too bad.

Woodland Bellower — This is a big guy who can let us search up the Reclamation Sage we need or a Fierce Empath to find another 6-drop. It may be extraneous, and this might be a reasonable slot for more Brood Monitors, but I like them.

Infinite Alignment ? Casual | Andrew Wilson

• Creatures (27)
• 2 Brood Monitor
• 2 Greenwarden of Murasa
• 2 Woodland Bellower
• 4 Changeling Titan
• 4 Fierce Empath
• 4 Kozilek's Predator
• 4 Reclamation Sage
• 4 Thragtusk
• 1 Workhorse

• Spells (10)
• 3 Skyshroud Claim
• 3 Awakening Zone
• 4 Aligned Hedron Network

• Lands (23)
• 23 Forest

Buy This Deck

There are plenty more options of effects you could run in this deck, but green enters-the-battlefield abilities tend not to help end games—we have to wait at least a turn cycle for our tokens to attack. If you want to add red for something like Goretusk Firebeast Bogardan Hellkite, feel free to take a stab at that.

But if you love locking away Eldrazi, if you love reclaiming them, or if you just wanted another infinite option in mono-green, give this deck a try.

Andrew Wilson

@Silent7Seven

fissionessence at hotmail dot com