Woe Strider + Kitchen Finks + Thran Vigil

Woe Strider

Kitchen Finks

Thran Vigil

How it works

1. Activate Woe Strider by sacrificing Kitchen Finks.
2. When Kitchen Finks dies, its persist ability triggers, returning it from your graveyard to the battlefield with a -1/-1 counter on it.
3. Thran Vigil and Kitchen Finks trigger.
4. Resolve the Thran Vigil trigger, putting a +1/+1 counter on Kitchen Finks.
5. Resolve the Kitchen Finks trigger, causing you to gain 2 life
6. Resolve the Woe Strider ability
7. Repeat.

This clever loop turns Woe Strider into a sacrificial engine that continuously consumes Kitchen Finks, generating a torrent of life and death triggers. Every time Kitchen Finks hits the graveyard, its persist ability naturally brings it back with a -1/-1 counter, but the elegant inclusion of Thran Vigil neatly counters this drawback by placing a +1/+1 counter on it whenever it leaves the graveyard. Because +1/+1 and -1/-1 counters annihilate each other as a state-based action, Kitchen Finks is effectively cleansed of its penalty and ready to be sacrificed all over again.