Brewer's Minute: Felidar Fun
Hey, everyone. It's time for another Brewer's Minute. This week, I spent quite a while thinking about what we should talk about for our Brewer's Minute, and I kept coming back to one card: Felidar Guardian. Before you groan and run out of the room thinking, "not another video about Saheeli Rai and Felidar Guardian," I should tell you that we aren't talking about Saheeli Rai at all. One of the exciting things about Felidar Guardian is there's an almost limitless number of infinite combos the card enables, and while Saheeli Rai may (or may not) be the most competitive of the bunch, the others are way more fun, and these combos are what we are going to talk about today.
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Discussion
So, what makes Felidar Guardian so exciting? Well, if we can get two copies on the battlefield at the same time, they can blink each other an infinite number of times, which means that we can also trigger any "whenever a creature enters / leaves the battlefield" an infinite number of times, and if we throw in an extra card, we can easily go infinite with mana as well!
Probably the easiest comparison for Felidar Guardian is Restoration Angel, but if you read Restoration Angel carefully, you'll see that it has one strange line of text: "non-Angel creature." Why would Wizards put this line on the card? They wanted to make sure that it was next to impossible to combo off with Restoration Angel by blinking additional copies. This is why I was shocked to see that Wizards made the blink effect on Felidar Guardian unconditional—only a couple years ago, they were willing to put the awkward "non-Angel" text on a card to prevent the combo, and now only a few years later, they are (apparently) perfectly fine with players going infinite with a four-drop. Because of this, a better comparison might be Wispweaver Angel, which can blink other copies of itself to make infinite enters / leaves the battlefield triggers. The problem with Wispweaver Angel is that it's so expensive—six mana is so much more than four mana when it comes to building a competitive (or semi-competitive) deck.
Most importantly, having Wispweaver Angel in Standard and Restoration Angel in Modern gives us a lot of redundancy with our hypothetical infinite blink combo deck. For instance, while two Felidar Guardians go infinite and two Wispweaver Angels go infinite, one Felidar Guardian and one Wispweaver Angel go infinite as well, so in Standard, we have eight different replaceable combo pieces, and in Modern, the number rises to 12 with the addition of Restoration Angel (although it's worth noting that two Restoration Angels don't go infinite because they can't blink each other). So, just how do we go about abusing infinite enters / leaves the battlefield triggers?
In Standard
Decoction Module and Aetherstorm Roc generate infinite energy. After we have infinite energy, it should be pretty easy to find a way to close out the game with something like Whirler Virtuoso making infinite Thopters or activating Aetherworks Marvel every turn.
Pious Evangel makes infinite life, and while having infinite life doesn't technically win the game all by itself, in Standard (minus a random Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger), it will be pretty hard for an opponent to kill us once we set our life total to 1,000,000.
Sanctifier of Souls gains infinite power and toughness, which means we only need to get in one attack and we should be able to kill our opponent with combat damage.
I saved this one for last because it requires an additional card, but if we can get a Panharmonicon on the battlefield along with the Felidar Guardian loop, things get really crazy. Every time a Felidar Guardian enters the battlefield, we get two blink triggers, so we can use one to target the other Felidar Guardian and one to target a land (tapping the land in between to float a mana). Then, when the next Felidar Guardian enters the battlefield, we repeat the process. In the end, we have infinite mana, which allows us to win the game in any number of ways!
In Modern
First off, we can use any of the Standard combos in Modern as well, but we also have a ton of other more competitive options available. Plus, remember that in Modern we have Restoration Angel instead of (or maybe along with) Wispweaver Angel to help enable our infinite blink combo.
Purphoros, God of the Forge and Outpost Siege give us access to infinite damage if we are willing to go Boros, along with some other more inferior options like Impact Tremors.
Meanwhile, like Pious Evangel in Standard, there are a bunch of different (and even more competitive ways) to gain infinite life in Modern with the one-mana Soul Warden and Soul's Attendant (along with a bunch of other cards). On the other hand, if we are playing Commander, we can go with Trostani, Selesnya's Voice for the infinite life combo with our general. Plus, there are tons of options to tutor up Felidar Guardian, Restoration Angel, and Wispweaver Angel like Worldly Tutor and Primal Command.
Genesis Chamber makes an infinite number of 1/1 Myr tokens, which is especially sweet with the help of Restoration Angel, since we can flash in the Angel at instant speed (probably during our opponent's end step), blink the Felidar Guardian (starting the loop), make 100,000 Myr tokens, and then immediately untap and kill our opponent with our horde of creatures!
Finally, cards like Anafenza, Kin-Tree Spirit and Juniper Order Ranger can help us grow one of our creatures to an infinitely big size, and unlike in Standard (where the effect of Sanctifier of Souls only lasts until the end of turn), since Anafenza, Kin-Tree Spirit and Juniper Order Ranger grow the creatures with +1/+1 counters, they stay big forever!
Conclusion
Anyway, that's all for today. I'm sure there are tons of other sweet things we can do with Felidar Guardian as well, so if you have some ideas for synergies or deck lists, let me know in the comments! As always, leave your thoughts, ideas, opinions, and suggestions, and you can reach me on Twitter @SaffronOlive or at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com.
