I posted in a different thread, but how does the deck fare against Animar? I consider Animar to be Tier 1, but I suppose it could be Tier 1.5 depending on who else is at the table.

Animar tends to get screwed over really hard by Torpor Orb. If you adjust your mulligan choices to aggressively look for either Torpor Orb itself or an artifact tutor to get it out t3 at the latest, you should usually be in the clear. Furthermore, Animar has kinda fallen out of favour lately in the competitive Metas I play in, so I haven't been paying much attention to the deck. It also relies on its Commander a lot, so you can slow the Animar player down by a lot if you bounce or counter it. Or, well, steal it with Vedalken Shackles if that's what you're into.

I own a very tuned list of Arcum Dagsson with a extremely similar list and strategy. Essentially I try and create a engine or disk lock the table asap with stax soft locks and interaction to stop my opponents. The decks main weakness is that I rely heavily on the tinker effect of Arcum to win. My question is, should I , or do I need to switch to Teferi to stay competitive? Or is Arcum still viable as a cEDH deck?

Neunviertel I do play Vedalken Shackles in my deck for the reason that the best way to hinder some decks in my meta is to steal their general (Azami, Animar, Zur come to mind).

Have you considered Counterbalance in the list? I'm curious as to what your thoughts are on it since you already run Top. I've had good success with it and in competitive metas, the random card at the top of the deck, if you haven't had a chance to manipulate it through Top, Brainstorm, or Ponder, is usually in a CMC range to counter something relevant. The record I have of countered spells with Counterbalance is 5 so far, and it consistently averages 2-3 spells per game. It adds another element of disruption and will always counter a CMC 1 spell with Top on the field, which is extremely relevant in a competitive meta. I also run Jace, the Mind Sculptor as an additional win con that interacts favorably with Counterbalance and for the long game advantage.

To Mataogetrekt: You've come to the right place - Arcum is my #2 deck right after Teferi! This more staxy Arcum build is what people in my community used to play before Paradox Engine got spoiled. Nowadays, Arcum is more of a fast combo build that uses Arcum to tutor up Paradox Engine and Citanul Flute, and then uses Citanul Flute to get Scrap Trawler and Myr Retriever, which you can loop with a sac outlet (i.e. Arcum himself) to untap your Mana rocks thanks to Paradox Engine. After you're basically made infinite Mana with that, you tap Citanul Flute to search for Walking Ballista, which you can cast to shoot everyone in the face for tons of damage. Here's the link to the version that most people are playing right now: http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/03-02-17-paradox-arcum/

If you're looking for a highly competitive build that has Stax as its Main plan, I'd recommend looking into either Keranos (http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/keranos-blood-moon/) or Grand Arbiter Augustin IV (http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/my-cockatrice-list-for-gaaiv/). Stax is in a tough spot nowadays if you don't heavily commit to the plan, and neither new Arcum nor Teferi is a deck that really commits to Stax. If you're playing your staxy Arcum in a moderately competitive paper Meta, then it's probably fine to leave him that way though. Teferi is the better Mono Blue Stax commander, but the deck only gets weaker by committing to Stax, in my opinion.

To benjameenbear7: Yeah, I've enjoyed Shackles a lot for the short time I had it in my deck, and I still recommend it for appropriate Metas. Such a good card.

I've thought about Counterbalance, and I think I would play it in Teferi along with JTMS if I heavily committed to building a strictly Stax Teferi. However, as I've outlined in both the Primer and the comment above, I don't think that going full Stax (or full Combo) is the right way to build Teferi, since its main strength lies in being able to both play a strong short game and a strong long game.

NeunviertelFair enough. I think that keeping the pieces to counteract your very reactive meta is probably more important (ie: Delay, Spell Pierce, Mental Misstep, etc.) than a grindier approach. I find that Counterbalance has been very effective in my meta and my playstyle naturally favors a more control-oriented role, so the strategy works for me.

If I had to pick a card in your list that you could test Counterbalance in place of, I would choose either Delay or Spell Pierce since Counterbalance performs the same role as these two cards, albeit in a less controlled manner.

How has Power Artifact performed for you? I have one that is sitting in my binder currently and I've frequently had mental debates about adding it in. It adds another infinite combo, of course, but it seems fragile in my opinion.

Yeah, if a more controlling build fits you better as a player, by all means: go for it. After all, even when playing competitively, you should play something you enjoy.

Power Artifact has been great for me - it's one of those few cards that gives Teferi his potential to win out of nowhere. Basalt and Grim Monolith are cards that most people never really attack, and if you have Power Artifact, you can just suddenly have infinite Mana out of nowhere. If you're not on Stroke of Genius/Timetwister, etc. as your Plan B, it might not be as good, but I've found infinite Mana off Rings/Power Artifact + Basalt Monolith to be the best Plan B for this deck, partially because it doesn't really play any cards that are useless outside of the Combo. Fragility doesn't matter too much in this case, because you're usually looking to win the game the turn you play Power Artifact.

Thanks for the info mate. I'm also looking for a Edh deck that's very competetive, but is extremley under played. Like with a general that's not known as a real " Tier 1 " commander. Would you have any suggestions? Thanks.

Hm - if you're fine with decks that I've brewed up, I could recommend the Paradox Adun build - it's probably the closest thing to a typical Jund deck that exists in cEDH and has been putting up decent results. Adun is definitely a commander that won't be on anyone's radar in a competitive setting. Outside of that, I've seen a pretty cool Ephara build by IustitiaRex here on TappedOut that's been winning a lot. Those are probably the best two under-the-radar builds I can recommend right now.

Thanks again, you are one of the best deck builders on the Internet as far as I'm concerned , I'll definetly check out you other lists.

Oh wow, thanks a lot! I hope you're gonna have a good time with them.

I have a last question. Is it worth it for me to modify my Arcum deck and go with teferi? Currently I would only have to buy a few cards excluding time twister and tabernacle because they're out of my budget. Would teferi still be good with a Windfall substitute or a similar card vs a timetwister? The only reason I'm asking if I should switch is due to the fact that I own a altered Arcum lol.

Here's my current Arcum list for reference.

http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/arcums-dilema/

I'd say it depends on your playgroup. If you're all playing highly competitive decks, switching to Teferi will make a lot of sense because he's still the strongest Mono Blue general. If not everyone in your playgroup is on top-grade competitive decks, staying on your Arcum build might be healthier in the long run. If that's the case, you can always wait to make the switch until everyone has powered up appropriately.

When it comes to Budget alternatives, they're definitely there. You can replace Timetwister with Time Reversal, but that also means you're gonna have to replace Stroke of Genius with Blue Sun's Zenith because the Stroke of Genius kill won't work. Furthermore, if you don't run Tabernacle and Workshop, I'd recommend replacing those two with Islands and getting rid of Expedition Map.

Thanks for the info. I'll probably keep my Arcum lost and make the switch to teferi when appropriate. As for my play group, 13 or so people play commander weekly on Saturday nights and 3 of them run competetive decks, one guy runs yisan , teferi, and oloro stax and switches between the three. However, he isn't very "skilled" with his lists as he tends to copy decks online without much play testing or strategy, which I'm fine with. The other 2 people play zur stax , Triton Hero dude storm, and a interesting colorless kozilek stax deck. Most of the other people play tier 2 to tier 3 lists i'd say. That being said, I'll definitely keep your list in mind and I'm planning on investing on a heavily played workshop which I'll purchase when I do eventually go over to Teferi. I may add a small personal spin to it , but honestly I would find myself very hard pressed to improve this list much haha. This list seems to be extremley tuned.

You have Lotus Petal both in your decklist and in a "notable exclusions" list when you claim it's not worth it at all :D that's kinda misleading.

Good find. This Primer was authored by two people (neosloth/superstepa and myself), and Lotus Petal is one of the cards we did not agree on. The Single Card Discussion part was mostly written by neo, while I focused on the more abstract parts of the Primer. For me personally, Lotus Petal is still good in the deck because I lean more towards the fast combo aspect of Teferi, and Lotus Petal (along with the greedier package I used to run before my most recent update) gave me the ability to win earlier more frequently while only sacrificing a tiny bit of redundancy. Furthermore, after reading through the primer, you should take a close look at all three sample lists, and use the knowledge you've gained to analyse and evaluate the nuances of each individual list.

Hello Neunviertel,

A question for you. Have been playing Teferi in my competitive league with a lot of success, but there is a card I am not happy with. It is overburden.Green is rampant in our meta, and More often than not, if I am not casting it on turn 1, the only thing it does is allowing them to use Gaia's craddle twice in the same turn...What is you opinion on it ?

Hey, that's a good obversation. While Overburden is very good at messing with decks like Karador, it struggles hard against Gaea's Cradle, which is definitely something to keep in mind when adjusting this deck to your local meta. If a lot of the creature-based decks you play against tend to get Cradle early quite consistently, you could consider swapping it out for a different piece of creature hate.

NeunviertelAny game reports?

Also, I've recently considered running Pithing Needle instead of Grafdigger's Cage, since I'm really the only player with a Reanimator-based strategy. It's a narrow response, but I think it neuters specific commanders very well ie: Yisan, Azami, Food-Chain variants. Thoughts?

Not necessarily game reports, but if you head over to the , you can find me playing Teferi in a couple of games.

Pithing Needle is a decent card, but Grafdigger's Cage doesn't just hose Reanimator Decks. It also works wonders against Storm, Doomsday, Yisan, Karador, and Birthing Pod type Decks in general. If none of the people in your Meta are playing these types of decks, then sure - feel free to cut Grafdigger's Cage.

Since for some reason, links don't seem to work for me on TappedOut, here's the link in plain text form: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCo41YdkXVTp4dTXvhduaeYw

beauty deck, but i want to say 2 things:

1) tezzeret the seeker + seat of synod + stasis is the perfect combination for the stax strategy

2) Add Tolaria West. it's a good way to search the tabernacle at pendrell vale

If you look at the Update log for this deck, Tolaria West was indeed part of it at some point. My stance on it is that paying 1UU at Sorcery speed is just straight-up not worth it with this deck being quite bottlenecked in regards to coloured Mana.

I don't know if it's just me, but wouldn't you agree that Tinker is the better Reshape, unless you're looking for zero cost artifacts?