Iconic MTG Star Trek Villain Unlocks Infinite Mana and Card Draw With 27-Year-Old Combo Engine

Today’s MTG star Trek Debut was an absolute banger, packing in a ton of fantastic main set cards, some spicy reprints, and a batch of great new Commander cards as well. Perhaps the most exciting card of the day came not from here, however, but from the WeeklyMTG aftershow. During this stream, we got our first glimpse of Khan, Vengeful Heart: a new MTG legend that goes incredibly hard with one of the game’s most beloved combo enchantments.

Khan, Vengeful Heart MTG

Any MTG player familiar with Food Chain will have started ringing alarm bells as soon as they saw Khan, Vengeful Heart. This card’s ‘cast from exile’ ability is notoriously broken with the enchantment, as we’ve seen before with creatures like Squee, the Immortal and Misthollow Griffin.

Essentially, with Food Chain out, you can exile Khan, making five black mana, then cast it again from exile, netting one black overall. You can then repeat this infinite times to make infinite mana of all colors, but you can only spend that mana on creatures. From here, you can sink your infinite mana into a Walking Ballista to win the game on the spot, or simply wear your opponents down with infinite triggers from something like Impact TremorsImpact TremorsWhenever a creature you control enters, this enchantment deals 1 damage to each opponent. or Altar of the Brood.

What sets Khan apart from the other ‘cast from exile’ creatures in Magic, however, is that it’s not just a vanilla creature. Khan also has Costly Plunder attached, which gives it much more utility than its peers. This also lets you draw your whole deck during the Food Chain loop, provided you’re playing Commander.

Once you’ve generated infinite mana with Khan and Chain, you can cast and sacrifice your Commander for two cards, then recast it from the command zone to repeat the process. This will let you dig for any of the above combo pieces, or empty your deck for a win with Doctor Doom, Unrivaled or Thassa’s OracleThassa’s OracleWhen this creature enters, look at the top X cards of your library, where X is your devotion to blue. Put up to one of them on top of your library and the rest on the bottom of your library in a random order. If X is greater than or equal to the number of cards in your library, you win the game. (Each {U} in the mana costs of permanents you control counts toward your devotion to blue.).

Thanks to this interaction, Khan is now the best Food Chain combo piece in Commander by far, as it cuts down on the number of pieces needed to win on the spot. With the advent of Pia, Aether AsceticPia, Aether AsceticWhen Pia enters, you may discard a card. If you do, search your library for an enchantment card, reveal it, put it into your hand, then shuffle. making Food Chain decks much more consistent, we could see a serious comeback for the archetype soon, perhaps even way up in cEDH.

Notably, Khan is also a major improvement for Food Chain decks in Legacy. These decks typically play four colors (everything but red) already, so adding Khan won’t tax the mana base. Khan’s sacrifice/draw loop can also be used here to an extent, though it’s unlikely to net you a guaranteed win without a Commander present. Since Khan is a legendary creature, it can also come down through countermagic thanks to Delighted HalflingDelighted Halfling{T}: Add {C}.
{T}: Add one mana of any color. Spend this mana only to cast a legendary spell, and that spell can't be countered., which is already a staple in the deck. Because of all these benefits, I expect Legacy Food Chain to cut both Misthollow Griffin and Eternal Scourge for this new banger.

A Villain for All Seasons

While its interactions with Food Chain are the most exciting part of Khan, Vengeful Heart, it still has plenty to offer elsewhere. It’s easy to miss, but this is one of only two creatures that can turn a creature into a guaranteed two cards on entry, the other being the underwhelming Unscrupulous Contractor. This makes it a fantastic addition to any kind of Aristocrats deck in Commander, like Teysa Karlov or Meren of Clan Nel-Toth.

On top of that, Khan can sacrifice artifacts too, which gives it a ton of value in Treasure-focused decks, like Smaug, Wicked Worm. While spells like Deadly Dispute have offered the same utility for a while, Khan being a creature makes it much more abusable. You can reanimate Khan with something like Ruthless Technomancer to get more draw, for example, or blink it with Conjurer’s Closet to do the same.

It’s also worth bearing in mind that Khan’s ‘cast from exile’ clause has a lot of applications beyond just Food Chain. You can pitch it to something like Force of Despair, or use it as fuel for a creature like Abhorrent OculusAbhorrent OculusAs an additional cost to cast this spell, exile six cards from your graveyard.
Flying
At the beginning of each opponent's upkeep, manifest dread. (Look at the top two cards of your library. Put one onto the battlefield face down as a 2/2 creature and the other into your graveyard. Turn it face up any time for its mana cost if it's a creature card.), then just re-cast Khan later. Though these lines were possible with all the previous ‘cast from exile’ creatures too, the fact that they were just vanilla bodies made doing so far from worth it. Khan’s utility flips this dynamic on its head, however, opening the door for some interesting Commander plays.

We’ve mostly talked about Khan as a Commander prospect so far, but it could genuinely see play in current Standard as well. Right now, Jund Sacrifice is a real contender in the metagame, and Khan fits in there like a glove. Extra sacrifice draw is more than welcome alongside Obsessive Pursuit and Greedy Freebooter, as the success of The Sackville-BagginsesThe Sackville-BagginsesWhen The Sackville-Bagginses enter, you may sacrifice another creature or artifact. If you do, draw a card and create a Treasure token.
Whenever you sacrifice a token, target opponent loses 1 life. has proved. Khan’s 5/3 stats are hardly embarrassing, either, which makes it a very solid play at most stages of the game. The card could also become a roleplayer in Modern Kethis Combo decks as a weird sideboard tech piece against graveyard hate like Rest in PeaceRest in PeaceWhen this enchantment enters, exile all graveyards.
If a card or token would be put into a graveyard from anywhere, exile it instead..

Overall, Khan, Vengeful Heart is one of the spiciest new MTG legends we’ve seen in some time. Not only is it an absurd combo enabler in older formats, but it’s also just a solid fair card that should slot into a ton of different decks, in both Commander and constructed. If the rest of Star Trek spoiler season is packed with cards as good as this one, then we’re in for a real treat come November.

Stick with us here at dev.mtgrocks.com: the best site for Magic: The Gathering coverage. Be sure to check out our deckbuilder for your next big brew, and our brand new MTG Rocks Podcast!