Recently, I’ve been playing against quite a few Saskia, the Unyielding decks, and I was quite intrigued about her third ability. It reads “Whenever a creature you control deals combat damage to a player, it deals that much damage to the chosen player.”

And that got me thinking:

How far can we drag this out?

Saskia’s ability is more or less a damage doubling ability, which there are quite a few of in Magic. My question is: How much damage can one creature deal over the course of a singular combat step?

The rules are:

It must take place in a singular combat step (so cards like Aggravated Aggression do not count)

Only the creature may deal damage. So, instants or sorceries do not count either.

Must be Commander legal (let’s be honest, no one’s going to be able to pull this off anywhere else.)

First off is to find all cards that read (or effectively read) “double damage to players.” They are the following: Anthem of Rakdos, Bitter Feud, Curse of Bloodletting, Desperate Gambit, Dictate of the Twin Gods, Furnace of Rath, Goldnight Castigator, Gratuitous Violence, Impulsive Maneuvers, Inquistor’s Flail, Overblaze, Quest for the Pure Flame. (and also Gisela, Blade of Goldnight)

Now, there’s some things that also must be done before this all can go off. I’ll list them in approximate order-

Goldnight Castigator must be given to the victim. This is easy enough to do with a Harmless Offering.

You must have Saskia, the Unyeilding out on the field and targeting the victim. This will double everything again.

You must win the coin flips for Desperate Gambit and Impulsive Maneuvers.

You must sacrifice Quest for the Pure Flame.

You must empty your hand, as per the requirement for the damage doubling on Anthem of Rakdos.

We have to give Gisela (since, for simplicity, we are swinging in with her) Double Strike. I like the card Uncaged Fury, so we’ll use that. It gives a nice little +1/+1 as well.

Assuming all of these are done, here’s how the damage looks.

Gisela attacks with the Inquistor’s Flail attached, and you cast Uncaged Fury,  Desperate Gambit, Overblaze, and sacrifice Quest for the pure flame. At this point, your hand is empty. (Also, this takes 5RRRR to do.) Gisela, without any doubling, is a 8/6 Flying, Double Strike. You’ve got to win both coin flips, and then the fun begins, assuming Gisela hits.

First Strike:

Gisela’s doubling activates. 16

Anthem of Rakdos: 32

Bitter Feud: 64

Curse of Bloodletting: 128

Desperate Gambit: 256

Dictate of the Twin Gods: 512

Furnace of Rath: 1,024

Goldnight Castigator (Damn you!): 2,048

Gratuitous Violence: 4,096

Impulsive Maneuvers: 8,192

Inquistor’s Flail: 16,384

Overblaze: 32,768

Quest for the Pure Flame: 65,536

Now, Saskia sees this 65,536 damage being dealt, right? She goes through her own doubling process to deal with it. But, quite a few are not included. Namely, Desperate Gambit , Gratuitous Violence, Impulsive Maneuvers, Inquistor’s Flail, and Overblaze.

Gisela: 131,072

Anthem: 262,144

Feud: 524,288

Curse:  1,048,576

Dictate: 2,097,152

Furnace: 4,194,304

Castigator: 8,388,608

Quest: 16,777,216

That’s pretty crazy, right? But the best part is, that’s just first strike damage. So, everything happens again. Once again, Desperate Gambit and Impulsive Maneuvers do not double.

So, that means it’s a bit different. A disgusting formula ((8*2^11)*(2^8+1)) is used here, but trust me when I say it comes out to 4,194,304. Now, adding that to the total we have before, the final damage is revealed.

21,053,440 Damage.

The whole formula is (8*2^11)*(2^8+1)*(2^2+1)

Some fun facts:

That is enough to kill exactly 526,336 commander players simultaneously.

That kills about 7,017,813 3/3 creatures too

You’d need to activate Ajani, Mentor of Heroes’ ult 210,535 times to survive this.