As you might have guessed by now, we’re doing a special Combo Week this week! I got saddled with (in my opinion) the most hilarious combo in Standard right now: Heartless Lich. But how does it work?

First, you need to control Heartless Summoning and a Havengul Lich. You also need a Priest of Urabrask (either in the graveyard or in your hand).

1. If your Priest is dead, pay 1 mana to activate the Lich, targeting your dead Priest (if the priest is in your hand, start at step 2).
2. Pay R to cast the Priest (since Heartless Summoning makes it cost 2 less).
3. Priest enters the battlefield as a 1/0, triggers, and dies. Its trigger gives you three red mana.
4. Repeat steps 1-3.

Each iteration of this loop nets you a single red mana. So, you perform this loop an arbitrarily large number of times; we’ll say sixty-seven thousand. Now, you have 67,000 red mana. How does all that mana help you? The two most common ways to use it are:

1. Cast Devil’s Play from your hand for 66,999 damage or from your graveyard for 66,697 damage. Or my favorite variant, ask him his birthday and deal that much damage. For example, I’d deal 8271990 to myself (of course, I’d have to repeat steps 1-3 another 8.2 million or so times)! Be sure to wish your opponent a Happy Birthday after killing them this way]. But that’s boring, birthday notwithstanding.
2. Announce that you are casting Perilous Myr, for 0 mana thanks to your Heartless Summoning. It will enter the battlefield as a 0/0, die, and trigger to deal 2 damage to something. Now, use one of your red mana to activate Lich, and re-cast your Myr for 0 mana again. Boom! You have a never-ending supply of colorless shocks. Now, just use that supply to blast your opponent to death, 2 damage at a time.

Today’s Rules Tip written by
Trevor Nuñez, Level 1 judge from Roswell, NM