Umbral Collar Zealot + Restless Apparition + Hardened Academic

Umbral Collar Zealot

Restless Apparition

Hardened Academic

How it works

1. Activate Umbral Collar Zealot by sacrificing Restless Apparition.
2. When Restless Apparition dies, its persist ability triggers, returning it from your graveyard to the battlefield with a -1/-1 counter on it.
3. Hardened Academic triggers, putting a +1/+1 counter on Restless Apparition.
4. Resolve the Umbral Collar Zealot ability.
5. Repeat.

By feeding Restless Apparition into Umbral Collar Zealot's sacrifice ability, you trigger the spirit's persist mechanic to bring it right back to the battlefield bearing a -1/-1 counter. This is where Hardened Academic pulls double duty: whenever Restless Apparition leaves the graveyard, the academic's passive trigger places a +1/+1 counter on it, which immediately neutralizes the -1/-1 counter through state-based actions. Because the creature is now clean of counters, you can endlessly loop the sacrifice, surveil, and resurrection cycle to generate infinite entry, exit, death, and sacrifice triggers alongside boundless surveil manipulation.