Strong seasonal winds blowing from the Atlantic typically push water away from Panama's Pacific coast, allowing deeper, colder waters to rise up. This upwelling cools reefs and feeds phytoplankton blooms, both of which support the rich marine life found there. But in early 2025, the upwelling didn't occur. (Image credit: R. Heuvel; research credit: A. O'Dea et al.; via Eos)
This could be the town you’re from,
marked only by what it’s near.
The gas station man speaks of weather
and the high school football team
just as you knew he would—
kind to strangers, happy to live here.
Tell yourself it doesn’t matter now,
you’re only driving through.
Past the sagging, empty porches
locked up tight to travellers’ stares,
toward the great dark of the fields,
your headlights startle a flock of
old love letters—still undelivered,
enroute for years.
MTG PSA: Substitutions - “Additional Combat Phase” or “Stop me if you’ve heard this one”
Having an additional combat phase can be quite a game changer. If your opponents know it’s coming, chump-blocking suddenly becomes a lot less easy to do, especially if your creatures have any attack triggers. If they chump-block on your first attack, they won’t be able to on your second. And if they don’t on your first, will they be able to deal with your creatures on your second? Even having a single creature with good enough evasion makes most opponents find a way to deal with it, and giving yourself more combats means they have less time and chances to find an answer.
Aggravated Assault is back for Rivals of Ixalan, and Neheb, The Eternal is still in Standard. So if you can get a few damage through on your first combat, your second combat phase might just pay for each successive combat until you’ve won.
Curse of Shallow Graves is a great example of one of those attack triggers I mentioned, so that each successive combat you’re getting a little further ahead of your opponents while whittling them down. This also works especially well with Breath of Fury, as Curse of Shallow Graves makes the Zombie after you attack, and so it’s available to attach the Breath of Fury to after dealing combat damage.
Aurelia the Warleader is a pretty popular Boros Commander. Because she has Haste and an attack trigger, if you’re able to bounce her each combat, she can attack on the following combat to get yet another combat. One important thing to note for this is that she goes directly from one combat to the next, with no main phase breaks. Legion’s Initiative, Cloudshift, or Brago King Eternal let you repeat her effect, but Brago isn’t spent after one use.
Combat Celebrant is in many ways similar to Aurelia. It may not have Haste, but it does check to see if it’s already been exerted. So if you are able to get it back on the field and give it Haste so it can attack after having exerted it (Hint hint: Legion’s Initiative), you can get another combat phase from it. Or, one advantage it has over Aurelia, it isn’t legendary, so feel free to use a few at the same time and exert each for more combat phases.
Godo, Bandit Warlord, is fairly similar to the two previous, but also has an Enters the Battlefield ability that is pretty useful (especially in a Tron archetype deck). Same as Combat Celebrant, it doesn’t have Haste, different from either of the previous, it only untaps Samurai, which it is not.
Hellkite Charger requires mana to be paid after declaring attackers, which makes it a bit tough to work around. There are some creatures that help you do this, such as Savage Ventmaw, which makes six of the required seven mana, and also helps out Neheb, the Eternal by allowing the mana he creates on your second main phase (or third main phase, etc) to go toward the Charger’s ability. Sadly, the Charger’s ability does put combat phase directly after combat phase, so Neheb won’t be making mana in between, but if you do enough damage on the first combat phase, with the Ventmaw or Upwelling (or similar), Neheb’s mana will stick around for you to deplete each combat phase after. But yes, that will require the use of a different card to get the second combat phase. I recommend Fury of the Horde, Relentless Assault, Savage Beating, Waves of Aggression, or World at War. Seize the Day also technically works, but only untaps one creature.
[Tiny side note: I sometimes name the multiple-card images I save for these posts, and the above is “How do you stop a Hellkite from Charging”. In case your day needed a dad-joke.]
The Instants/Sorceries are especially good to play after combat as your opponent may have sacrificed things to chump blocks that they thought they could replace before your next combat. World at War does broadcast that you will get (at least) two combats on your next turn, and Waves of Aggression lets your opponents know you can recast it by also discarding a land card.
Lightning Runner isn’t cheap, but gives you 1/4 of what you need for an extra combat each time it attacks. Since it isn’t legendary, this means that if you get four out, you have infinite combat phases as long as they all can keep attacking. Dolmen Gate is useful for this, but isn’t your only option.
Scourge of the Throne can potentially give you enough combats on its own to win you the game, but it all depends on life totals. Having a few ways to pay life, or take just one or two away from someone, can be very helpful if you need to solidify life totals before declaring attacks. And each time it does attack whoever has the highest life total, it gets a little bigger.
If this came out on the very first turn of a Commander game, for instance, you could attack player A, B, or C and get the benefits. But after one round of combats, A is at 34, B at 33, and C at 32, while you are still at 40 life. But if you can trade life totals with C, then attack them, they would be at 31, and you could bring A to 24 and B to 22. So yes, being able to manipulate life totals on the fly is beneficial if you want to get the most of of this card.
Finest Hour is perhaps one of the least breakable extra combat cards, but that is because it was built to already be broken. It checks to see if it’s the first combat of the turn (meaning it won’t ever trigger during subsequent combats, but if you can copy the triggered ability during the first combat, such as with Strionic Resonator, both copies will create additional combat steps). It’s important to note that Finest Hour doesn’t untap any creatures, but it instead does give them +1/+1 for attacking alone. If you have a way to untap it before the next combat, you can use it again and get the boost again, or you can attack with a different creature that could also get the Exalted pump. Or maybe the creature that attacked first did so to clear the way for you to attack with all the rest of your creatures. Feel free to leave a comment about how you used Finest Hour, or how you want to. Except as a snack. #don’teatthecards!
