Eirdu, Carrier of Dawn // Isilu, Carrier of Twilight + Altar of Dementia + Walking Archive

Eirdu, Carrier of Dawn // Isilu, Carrier of Twilight

Altar of Dementia

Walking Archive

How it works

1. Activate Altar of Dementia by sacrificing Walking Archive.
2. When Walking Archive dies, its persist ability triggers, returning it from your graveyard to the battlefield without a -1/-1 counter on it due to its replacement effect.
3. Resolve the Altar of Dementia ability.
4. Repeat.

This engine turns a deceptively simple loop into a devastating infinite mill machine, fueled by the graceful back-and-forth of Eirdu, Carrier of Dawn and its night-dwelling counterpart, Isilu, Carrier of Twilight. While Eirdu lets you cast your creatures using convoke, its transformed face—Isilu—grants your other nontoken creatures persist, which is the vital engine piece that allows Walking Archive to continuously cheat death by returning with a -1/-1 counter. Because Walking Archive enters the battlefield with a +1/+1 counter and lacks any -1/-1 counters to begin with, the persist trigger successfully returns it. You then feed this cycle directly into Altar of Dementia, sacrificing Walking Archive to mill your opponents out in one fell swoop through an endless cascade of death triggers.