There’s a funny little card inMagic: The Gathering: Final Fantasy that has some rather absurd implications that Commander players have been going wild for. This little guy is the Jumbo Cactuar, a green creature that gets +9,999 power when it attacks, catapulting it to being the biggest creature Magic has ever seen.
Now that you have a creature that can naturally have 10,000 power, a cute reference to its attack from the Final Fantasy games, what do you do with it? We have five neat combos you can bust out in your Commander decks that put the big Plant to good use.
Send That Damage Right To The Face
Attacking with Jumbo Cactuar makes him a 10,000/7, but for all that might, it can be blocked by a measly 1/1 token, and nothing will happen to all that damage. That’s where Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord,the green and black all-star commander, comes into play. All you have to do is have Jumbo Cactuar out and able to attack, Jarad out, and three mana open during the attack step. Once Jumbo Cactuar’s 10,000 Needles ability triggers and resolves, you’re able to pay the three mana to sacrifice the Cactuar to Jarad to make each opponent lose 10,000 life.
You can do it at instant speed so you can trigger it in response to a removal spell. The nice thing about Jarad is that sacrificing the Cactuar is part of the cost, so there’s not much your opponents can do at that point other than counter the ability. With so few ways to do that in Magic, it is a fairly reliable strategy.
4Mage Slayer + Jumbo Cactuar
Make Sure It Hits
Less of a silly combo and more of an assurance, Mage Slayer is a powerful but often overlooked piece of equipment by many Magic players. This unassuming equipment triggers when the equipped creature attacks, dealing damage to the defending player equal to the equipped creature’s attack.
You need to be careful with your triggers on this one, as you want to verify that the Cactuar’s 10,000 Needles resolves before the Mage Slayer’s does, otherwise, you’re just dealing one measly point of damage. With the Mage Slayer, you don’t need to worry about getting damage through because once that trigger is on the stack, someone is getting taken out.
3Altar Of Dementia + Jumbo Cactuar
Who Needs A Deck?
Let’s say you’ve been able to swing out with the Jumbo Cactuar, maybe you even managed to take out a player with that staggering 10,000 damage. What do you do now? You still have two other opponents to worry about.
Well, with Altar of Dementia out, you can take out another player by eliminating their library altogether, giving them a very narrow window to do anything by the time their next draw step comes around. Altar of Dementia does this by letting you sacrifice a creature to have any player mill cards equal to that creature’s power.Milling 10,000 cardswill definitely eliminate any player, and if you’re lucky, you might be able to knock out two players on the same turn.
2Ghalta And Mavren + Jumbo Cactuar
Two Cactuars Are Better Than One
Having one Jumbo Cactuar is great, but what if you had two? Or three? Or as many as you can keep around as you attack turn after turn? That’s what you get when you run Jumbo Cactuar alongside this Dinosaur and Vampire combo Commander.
You see, when you attack with Ghalta and Mavren out, you get two options to choose from as an attack trigger. You either:
Stack your triggers correctly, and you’ll have yourself another 10,000 power creature, but this time, it has trample.
1Swords To Plowshares + Aetherflux Reservoir + Jumbo Cactuar
All That Life Has To Go Somewhere
Alright, now for a truly weird combo, one that can keep you alive and nuke all your opponents into oblivion. The steps for this combo are pretty straightforward. You have to have the Jumbo Cactuar out and attacking to get this going, letting the 10,000 Needles trigger resolved and boosting the Cactuar up to a 10,000/7. Once it’s that high, and preferably after you’ve obliterated one of your opponent’s mandatory blockers, you send your Jumbo Cactuar to exile with Swords to Plowshares.
While exiling your own creature is generally frowned upon, you’ll be gaining yourself 10,000 life, which is a huge amount in any game. Once you’re above that 10k threshold, you can drop an Aetherflux Reservoir.This artifact lets you pay 50 lifeto deal 50 damage to any one creature or player. It is pretty unlikely that another player has gained quite as much life as you, and if you’re above 10,000 life, you can activate Aetherflux Reservoir at least 200 times, which is more than enough to deal with anything on your way to victory.
