Locations
Whether you love them or hate them, infinite combos are a key piece of Magic: The Gathering's identity. With tens of thousands of cards, some are bound to create unstoppable looping effects, and Sanguine Bond combos are some of the game's most simple and powerful, even if they don't come with as much fanfare as others.
Sanguine Bond is a staple of lifegain decks, and on its surface, it seems pretty harmless. This five-mana Enchantment makes it so that whenever you gain life, one of your opponents also loses that much life.
On its own, the card gives decks a way to turn their lifegain into damage, and it's a balanced win condition when played fairly. When played unfairly, however, Sanguine Bond is notorious, able to win games on the spot when combined with one or two other cards.
Today, I'm going to break down some of those combos and rank them by how powerful they are.
The Best Sanguine Bond Infinite Combos
Sanguine Bond turns life gain into damage, which means any effect that gains a huge chunk of life can spiral into a win on the spot. These are the most explosive ways to do exactly that.
- Judith, Carnage Connoisseur
- Serra Avatar
- Profane Transfusion
- Beacon of Immortality
- Blood Tribute
- Exquisite Blood
Let's look at how each of these combos plays out against your opponents.
6. Judith, Carnage Connoisseur
The first combo on this list requires three pieces: Sanguine Bond, a way to give Instant and Sorcery spells Lifelink, and a big burn spell. For this example, let's use Judith, Carnage Connoisseur, an incredibly popular Commander that gives your Instants and Sorcery spells Deathtouch and, more importantly, Lifelink.
With Judith and Sanguine Bond out, you just need to deal a bunch of damage, and there are endless ways to do this. You could cast a Blasphemous Act with a wide board, pay an amount of life equal to your life total minus one with Fire Covenant, or name the highest number you can think of with Wheel of Misfortune.
When these spells deal damage, you'll gain that much life and can point the Sanguine Bond trigger at an opponent to kill them.
These combos also work with a few cards in Red and White:
- Firesong and Sunspeaker
- Heartflame Duelist
- Radiant Scrollwielder
These cards are all Red and White, though, so they do force you to build a deck that's three or more colors. These combos can be quite powerful, but they require multiple specific pieces and only take out one opponent at a time, so they sit in last place.
5. Serra Avatar
Our next combo also requires three pieces, but there are more options for each piece. In addition to Sanguine Bond, you'll need a really big Creature and a way to gain life using its power or toughness.
For this example, let's use Serra Avatar, a beloved finisher for casual decks. It is a seven-mana Creature with power and toughness equal to your life total, and if it would be put into a graveyard, regardless of how it got there, it shuffles itself back into your library.
It's a fun card when played fairly, but it's the easiest card for this combo because we don't need to put in any work to make it big enough; we just need to have more life than one of our opponents.
Once Serra Avatar is on the board, there are many ways we use it to gain enough life to kill an opponent in one shot with Sanguine Bond. The easiest and most common way is with Swords to Plowshares. If you target your own Serra Avatar with it, you'll exile it and gain life equal to its power. From there, direct the effect from Sanguine Bond at an opponent with less life than you to knock them out instantly.
This combo also works with cards that gain life equal to Serra Avatar's power or toughness when it enters, like Verdant Sun's Avatar or Angelic Chorus.
You can also swap Swords to Plowshares with Disciple of Griselbrand or Diamond Valley, both of which allow you to sacrifice Serra Avatar to gain life equal to its toughness.
Finally, the combo also works if you swap Serra Avatar for Minion of the Wastes (assuming you pay all your life minus one when you cast it), Soul of Eternity, or any Creature equipped with Aettir and Priwen.
What makes this combo powerful is the amount of redundancy each piece has. Sanguine Bond has several variations, there are four suitable Creatures, and there are at least five ways to use those Creatures to gain a bunch of life.
The downside is that other than Minion of the Wastes + Sanguine Bond + Disciple of Griselbrand or Diamond Valley, the rest of these combos require a second or third color, limiting the number of Commander decks that can run them.
4. Profane Transfusion
Profane Transfusion's role in this is simple: switch your life with another player's.
The way that swapping life totals works in Magic is very simple: when two players swap life totals, the difference is calculated, then the player with more life loses life equal to the difference and the player with less life gains life equal to the difference.
Thus, if you swap life totals with an opponent who has at least twice your life total, when you gain life up to their original total, you can target them with Sanguine Bond to kill them. There are a few ways to swap life totals with an opponent, like Axis of Mortality, Soul Conduit, and Mirror Universe.
Profane Transfusion and Mister Negative are the two best ways to get this done.
Profane Transfusion is a nine-mana Sorcery that swaps the life totals of two players and creates a token with power and toughness equal to the difference, while Mister Negative is a seven-mana Creature that swaps life totals and draws cards equal to the difference if you lost life that way. Both combos can win games or put you far ahead while killing an opponent, but they have some downsides.
For one, most cards that let you swap life totals are incredibly expensive, with the two previously mentioned best versions of the effect costing seven and nine mana. They also require you to have low life, which can save you from the brink of death but can also be tricky if the main goal of your deck is to gain life.
These combos work best in a deck that's aiming to pay a bunch of life, like K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth. All in, these combos are better than the previous ones because they only require two pieces: Sanguine Bond and one of these spells.
3. Beacon of Immortality
If you want a way to double your life total without needing a third card to combo with Serra Avatar, look no further than Beacon of Immortality.
This six-mana Instant allows you to double a player's life total, then shuffles itself back into your deck. With Sanguine Bond out, all you need is the mana to cast Beacon of Immortality and more life than an opponent. If you meet both of those pre-requisites one of your opponents will die on the spot.
You can also pull off this combo at Instant-speed, allowing you to wait for the perfect moment to go for the kill. If you're patient, your opponents will tap out or run out of interaction eventually, and you can take advantage of that. Funnily enough, this combo almost wasn't legal for a time, as Beacon of Immortality was banned in the early days of the Commander format and only got unbanned a few months before Sanguine Bond's release.
This also works with the Revenge side of Revival // Revenge. Even though Revenge has the downside of being a Sorcery, you get the added upside of halving another player's life total in the process.
While not quite as powerful, you can substitute Beacon of Immortality with Enduring Angel if you're willing to jump through a few hoops. Enduring Angel is a five-mana Creature with Flying and Double-Strike that gives you Hexproof. Then, if you would lose the game for having zero or less life, you instead set your life total to three and transform it into Angelic Enforcer.
The Enforcer still gives you Hexproof, but now its power and toughness are equal to your life total and, whenever it attacks, you double your life total. Transforming the Angel and gaining enough life to kill an opponent when you attack takes significantly more setup than Beacon of Immortality, but eventually it will have the same effect and can kill your other opponents if you keep attacking.
If you want the stronger version of this combo, just enchant a Creature with Celestial Mantle and attack with it.
2. Blood Tribute
Like how doubling your own life total can kill an opponent on the spot with Sanguine Bond out, there are a few cards that can kill your opponents by halving their life totals. Blood Tribute, for example, is a six-mana Sorcery that causes an opponent to lose half their life, rounded up.
However, if you pay the Kicker cost by tapping a Vampire you control, you gain life equal to the life lost this way. If you target the same opponent both times, you'll drain their entire life total in one go while gaining you a big chunk of life in the process. The combo requires two cards and an untapped Vampire, with has the added benefit of both cards sharing a color.
You can also substitute Blood Tribute for Shadow of the Nightbringer, a Creature from Warhammer 40K with the same effect but, instead of tapping a Vampire, requires that you spend the eight mana to cast it to get the life drain effect. If your deck doesn't have many Vampires, this card is a suitable substitute if you're willing to spend a little extra mana.
1. Exquisite Blood
When most players think of Sanguine Bond, Exquisite Blood probably comes up right away. For years, these cards have been considered a beginner's first combo, and despite the simplicity of the combo it is still one of the most popular combos in EDH.
Exquisite Blood is a five-mana Enchantment that, whenever an opponent loses life, lets you gain that much life. With both it and Sanguine Bond on the battlefield under your control, any instance of life loss among your opponents sets off an infinite loop of triggers, where each instance of lifegain causes an opponent to lose life and each instance of you gaining life causes an opponent to lose life.
This Sanguine Bond combo is the strongest for many reasons. For one, it requires the least amount of mana and only has two pieces. The only requirements necessary are these two cards, ten mana, and a way to make an opponent lose life in any way. These requirements are trivial in your average game of Commander.
Second, the combo only requires you to play Black cards, meaning this combo can be played in any deck that has Black in its color identity. This greatly increases the number of decks that can utilize it. The combo is also very resilient, as both pieces of the combo are Enchantments and are thus less likely to get removed than a Creature.
Finally, this combo has been given many redundant pieces over the last few years. Thanks to Foundations, you can replace the Exquisite Blood with Bloodthirsty Conqueror, which means you can still combo off if Exquisite Blood is dealt with.
Conclusion
And that does it for this ranking of Magic's Sanguine Bond combos. Effects like this show up on multiple cards. Sanguine Bond is such an iconic card that subsequent releases have iterated on it with cards like Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose, Enduring Tenacity, and Defiant Bloodlord.
You can swap out Sanguine Bond for any of these three cards in these combos if you'd like, and they will still work just fine.
If you want to build a deck to house these combos, check out the Best Choices for Lifegain Commanders or some Commander Staples for Lifegain Decks to get you started.
