The Bald, The Bearded, And The Teferi

Commander / EDH Budget Competitive Infinite Combo Mono-Blue Multiplayer Stax

Surreality

CardAdvantage (16)

• 1x Brainstorm
• 1x Dig Through Time
• 1x Fact or Fiction
• 1x Impulse
• 1x Manifold Insights
• 1x Memory Jar
• 1x Mystic Remora
• 1x Ponder
• 1x Preordain
• 1x Pull from Tomorrow
• 1x Rhystic Study
• 1x Sensei's Divining Top
• 1x Sleight of Hand
• 1x Thirst for Knowledge
• 1x Time Spiral
• 1x Windfall

Tutors (11)

• 1x Fabricate
• 1x Intuition
• 1x Merchant Scroll
• 1x Muddle the Mixture
• 1x Mystical Tutor
• 1x Reshape
• 1x Spellseeker
• 1x Tezzeret the Seeker
• 1x Transmute Artifact
• 1x Trinket Mage
• 1x Whir of Invention

Enablers (3)

• 1x Power Artifact
• 1x Rings of Brighthearth
• 1x The Chain Veil

ManaAcceleration (16)

• 1x Basalt Monolith
• 1x Chrome Mox
• 1x Copy Artifact
• 1x Fellwar Stone
• 1x Gilded Lotus
• 1x Grim Monolith
• 1x High Tide
• 1x Mana Crypt
• 1x Mana Vault
• 1x Mind Stone
• 1x Mox Diamond
• 1x Mox Opal
• 1x Prismatic Lens
• 1x Sol Ring
• 1x Thran Dynamo
• 1x Voltaic Key

Lands (31)

• 1x Academy Ruins
• 1x Ancient Tomb
• 1x Buried Ruin
• 1x Flooded Strand
• 1x Inventors' Fair
• 23x Island
• 1x Misty Rainforest
• 1x Polluted Delta
• 1x Scalding Tarn

HatePieces (4)

• 1x Back to Basics
• 1x Cursed Totem
• 1x Grafdigger's Cage
• 1x Stasis

Commander (1)

Interaction (15)

• 1x Chain of Vapor
• 1x Counterspell
• 1x Cyclonic Rift
• 1x Delay
• 1x Dispel
• 1x Flusterstorm
• 1x Force of Will
• 1x Into the Roil
• 1x Mana Drain
• 1x Mental Misstep
• 1x Negate
• 1x Pact of Negation
• 1x Spell Pierce
• 1x Swan Song
• 1x Vedalken Shackles

WinConditions (2)

• 1x Blue Sun's Zenith
• 1x Ugin, the Spirit Dragon

Recursion (1)

• 1x Snapcaster Mage

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Chain Veil Teferi (Budget) - A Primer

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"Before we acquire great power we must acquire wisdom to use it well."

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Disclaimer Show

This primer is a work in progress which is always undergoing updating and development as well as the addition of new sections. If you have any suggestions for the deck or for the primer, then please feel free to comment them below and I will try to get to them as soon as possible. Additionally, non-productive comments or comments relating to a previous version of the deck may be deleted or archived without warning. With that out of the way, welcome to Teferi's World of Wonderful Wizardry.

A Bit About Me Show

Hi! I'm a competitive EDH player who goes by the name "Surreality" on Tappedout, "???" on Discord and "3xQuestionMark" on Reddit.

I first got into EDH a few years back with my first deck ever being a Mizzix of the Izmagnus deck. Eventually, given my competitive nature, I got fed up of losing games due to Mizzix being repeatedly killed or countered and me being unable to recover. Mizzix was a natural point for me to transition into Jeleva Storm which became my first ever tier 1 cEDH deck. After playing Jeleva Storm for a year, Protean Hulk was unbanned and I switched to Breakfast Hulk. However, Hermit Druid decks tend to be exceptionally linear and I quickly grew bored of it. From there, I began playing Chain Veil Teferi. This deck has absolutely captured all of my focus, as it requires an extensive amount of decision making: both in deck-building and in deck-piloting.

If you have the patience and perseverance to still be reading, congratulations! You should be well rewarded whether you are an inexperienced or veteran Teferi player or simply someone trying to learn new ways to combat this powerful deck. Without further ado, let's jump in and break down just what makes this deck so disgustingly strong.

Introduction Show

Deck Introduction

Chain Veil Teferi is a very unique deck in the cEDH meta. This deck's main strength is being able to seamlessly combine 2 completely different gameplans: fast combo and stax. This deck includes a one card combo with Teferi, making it able to consistently win games on turns 3 to 4 while still being able to play a long stax game as it has access to arguably the strongest parity breaker in the format in the command zone. This list, although being slightly restricted by budget, can easily compete in highly competitive metas, often being one of the most powerful decks at the table.

Since his release in 2014, Teferi, Temporal Archmage quickly become an absolute mainstay in the cEDH meta. Teferi gives us access to the absolute best colour in EDH: blue. His -1 ability allows us to easily gain infinite mana and infinite draw and infinite planeswalker activations while only requiring access to a relatively small amount of mana rocks and The Chain Veil. At the same time, His -1 ability is absurdly strong when playing the stax game. It can even allow us to keep a Stasis on board permanently, locking down the untap step for the rest of the game.

Strengths and Weaknesses

Strengths: Can race other fast combo decks with consistent turn 3 to 4 wins, can play hard stax if needed, can thrive in the long game unlike all other fast combo decks, can easily switch between fast combo and a stax gameplan depending on the board state, includes a lot of interaction, very consistent, very slot efficient.

Weaknesses: Sphere effects (Sphere of Resistance, Thalia, Guardian of Thraben), Artifact hate (Null Rod, Stony Silence), Gaddock Teeg.

Primer Show

General Strategy

The Objective of the Deck

This deck’s goal is relatively simple if no one interacts with us.

The first step is to mill our entire library into our graveyard. There are 2 ways for us to do this. The first way is to simply cast a Hermit Druid, activate him, and since we run no basic lands, he will bin our entire deck. The second way for us to do this is to cast Flash with a Protean Hulk in hand. We put Protean Hulk into the battlefield with Flash and refuse to pay the additional cost, sending him straight to the graveyard. We then use his ability to search our library for up to 6 CMC worth of creatures. We will take Nomad’s En-Kor, Cephalid Illusionists, Grand Abolisher and Hapless Researcher. The first 2 will be used to mill our entire deck by repeatedly targeting Cephalid Illusionists with Nomad’s En-Kor’s ability, Grand Abolisher will shut off most interaction with us (aside from cards like Faerie Macabre), and Hapless Researcher will be used later in the combo.

The next step happens as we bin our deck with either of these combos. When we mill our deck, Narcomoeba will automatically be summoned onto the battlefield. If you are using Hermit Druid, you must also pay to Unearth Fatestitcher which will untap the mana source used.

Now that we have binned our entire deck, we cast Dread Return with flashback sacrificing 3 creatures. If you have used Hermit Druid, you will want to sac Druid, Narcomoeba and Fatestitcher. If you have used Hulk, you will want to sac Nomad's En-Kor, Cephalid Illusionists and Narcomoeba. If you have used Hulk, you can simply Dread Return back your Lab Maniac and sacrifice your Hapless Researcher to draw a card with an empty library and win the game. If you have used Hermit Druid, you will usually Dread Return back your Muldrotha, the Gravetide and then start a loop to generate an infinite amount of mana that we will go into detail about later.

Objective Change Based on Matchup?

Many decks can change gameplans entirely based on their matchup. This deck does not. No matter the matchup, we always have the same Win Conditions. However, depending on the matchup, your hand, how your opponent is playing, you might decide to play more conservatively or just to go all in faster. How you play is very dependant on your situation, and I am therefore unable to go into detail about it. This is only possible to learn by playinng a lot a lot a lot of games.

Mulligans

Mulligans for this deck are very simple. The first card we are looking for is a tutor. This is because Hermit Druid is a 1 card combo and hence if we can find it, we just win. This is one of the reasons the goldfish is so low. Almost every game we will be able to turn 1 tutor for Druid, turn 2 play Druid, and win on turn 3.

Again, mulligans are heavily matchup dependent, and this is also heavily based on your experience.

Contingency Plan

Our contingency plan? This is an easy one: we don't really have one!!! If you are looking for ways to win without the gameplan listed above, please follow through to the Combos and Synergies section of the primer to see what to do. It is often easier, however, to simply recur our main win conditions with Memory's Journey, Noxious Revival or Riftsweeper.

Combos and Synergies

This deck has a couple of key combos that are used to achieve a victory that we will go through here. Many of these involve generating infinite mana first, so we will demonstrate how to do that first.

Lion's Eye Diamond + Muldrotha, the Gravetide

1-Either cast Muldrotha from your hand or use Dread Return or Necromancy to reanimate it from your graveyard.

2-Either cast LED from your hand or from your graveyard using Muldrotha's ability.

3-Crack the LED to add to your mana pool.

4-Cast Phantasmal Image from your graveyard using Muldrotha's ability. Because of the legendary permanent rule, we are forced to sacrifice one of our 2 Muldrotha copies. We select to sac the original copy, keeping the Phantasmal Image.

5-Using the new Muldrotha's ability, recast LED from our graveyard and sacrifice it for .

6-Cast Necromancy from our graveyard using the from LED and use it to reanimate our original Muldrotha, sacrificing the Phantasmal Image copy to the legendary rule.

7-Repeat steps 2 to 6 generating each time until we have infinite blue mana. We can then repeat this loop to filter this blue mana into infinite mana of all other colours.

Note: You may wish to cast a Grand Abolisher or Silence before attempting this loop as it is very vulnerable to interaction.

Card Choices

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How to Build this Deck

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Event Report

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Change Log

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Feedback

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Thank you for reading! If you enjoyed this primer, please show your support by hitting that Upvote button. Every +1 helps to get this deck more visible on the site and hypes up cEDH just a little bit more as it remains a relatively undiscovered format.

Date added	6 years
Last updated	5 years
Exclude colors	WBRG
Key combos	Lion's Eye Diamond + Muldrotha, the Gravetide
Legality	This deck is not Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	10 - 0 Mythic Rares 35 - 0 Rares 19 - 0 Uncommons 13 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	2.35
Tokens	Bird 2/2 U, Emblem Teferi, Temporal Archmage
Folders	cEDH