Chain Veil Teferi

Commander / EDH Combo Competitive Mono-Blue

phiphi

Instant (29)

• 1x Blue Sun's Zenith
• 1x Brainstorm
• 1x Chain of Vapor
• 1x Counterspell
• 1x Cyclonic Rift
• 1x Delay
• 1x Dig Through Time
• 1x Dispel
• 1x Fact or Fiction
• 1x Flusterstorm
• 1x Force of Will
• 1x Frantic Search
• 1x High Tide
• 1x Impulse
• 1x Into the Roil
• 1x Intuition
• 1x Mana Drain
• 1x Mental Misstep
• 1x Muddle the Mixture
• 1x Mystical Tutor
• 1x Negate
• 1x Pact of Negation
• 1x Pongify
• 1x Pull from Tomorrow
• 1x Pulse of the Grid
• 1x Spell Pierce
• 1x Swan Song
• 1x Thirst for Knowledge
• 1x Whir of Invention

Artifact (18)

• 1x Basalt Monolith
• 1x Chrome Mox
• 1x Cursed Totem
• 1x Fellwar Stone
• 1x Gilded Lotus
• 1x Grafdigger's Cage
• 1x Grim Monolith
• 1x Mana Crypt
• 1x Mana Vault
• 1x Mind Stone
• 1x Mox Diamond
• 1x Mox Opal
• 1x Rings of Brighthearth
• 1x Sensei's Divining Top
• 1x Sol Ring
• 1x The Chain Veil
• 1x Thran Dynamo
• 1x Voltaic Key

Enchantment (7)

• 1x Back to Basics
• 1x Copy Artifact
• 1x Mystic Remora
• 1x Power Artifact
• 1x Rhystic Study
• 1x Stasis
• 1x Verity Circle

Creature (3)

• 1x Gilded Drake
• 1x Spellseeker
• 1x Trinket Mage

Commander (1)

Sorcery (10)

• 1x Fabricate
• 1x Gitaxian Probe
• 1x Merchant Scroll
• 1x Ponder
• 1x Preordain
• 1x Reshape
• 1x Sleight of Hand
• 1x Time Spiral
• 1x Transmute Artifact
• 1x Windfall

Land (31)

• 1x Academy Ruins
• 1x Ancient Tomb
• 1x Buried Ruin
• 1x Flooded Strand
• 1x Inventors' Fair
• 26x Island

Planeswalker (1)

• 1x Tezzeret the Seeker

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Introduction

Hello everyone, I’ve decided to make a comprehensive guide to playing Teferi. I’m still a smol-brain former bogles player learning how to counter spells, so this primer will likely evolve over time. In general terms, we are trying to get Teferi, Temporal Archmage and The Chain Veil out, which is an infinite mana + infinite “draw” combo. More on details later!

Personal Introduction: I’m a degenerate weeaboo, and I've loved to tune and tinker with contraptions since I was little (more so than I am now), optimizing for efficiency as much as I can. Magic is no exception. I started playing Magic right before Return to Ravnica was released, and the artwork in the Innistrad block instantly drew me to the game. My first deck was a casual ramp deck looking to power out a Boundless Realms into big green creatures, like Worldspine Wurm . Later, I looked into modern, MtG’s premier non-rotating format, and decided to give it a go. Bogles took 2nd at worlds, piloted by Reid Duke, in 2013, and I loved the concept of the deck. I quickly built the deck and participated at weekly modern tournaments.

My friend, who I had introduced to the game, suddenly started oozing about commander. It was a singleton format with one card sort of in your hand? Multiplayer? Almost every card was legal? I fell in love with the format. I brewed a Zurgo Helmsmasher and a Gaddock Teeg deck to play at my local game store. Since then, I haven’t stopped playing EDH and barely play anything else. Now, my favorite decks are mono-colored because I love the flavor you get from using cards in one slice of the color pie, and they’re inexpensive to buy into. I found Teferi after opening a Chain Veil in a random pack and wondering how it could be abused in degenerate infinite combos. Here we are now.

The Combo, In Depth

The main plan is to have Teferi, Temporal Archmage , The Chain Veil and a tap-for-3 rock ( Gilded Lotus ) in play. This nets us infinite mana and puts our entire library into our hand. You should obviously be aware of how much mana you need to pull the combo off. With 5 mana from 3 permanents, you need to have 8 mana before casting Teferi or The Chain Veil. START WITH 8 MANA IN POOL,(x) = mana floating, [y] = loyalty

a. Cast Teferi - (2) [5]

b. Untap 4 permanents - (8) [4]

c. Cast Chain Veil - (4) [4]

d. Activate Chain Veil - (0) [4]

e. Untap 3 permanents and Chain Veil, tap permanents for mana - (5) [3]

f. Repeat steps {d, e, d, e, d} - - - - - (3) [1]

g. Untap 4 permanents - (9) [0]

h. Recast Teferi - (1)

At this point, you will get to activate Teferi 5 times because you activated the Chain Veil 4 times. The Chain Veil, unlike what it says, really just modifies the game: You may activate 1+X loyalty abilities of planeswalkers you control this turn, where X is the number of times you’ve activated the Chain Veil. Due to this, we can sequence +1, -1, +1, -1 to draw two cards and make 12 mana. Then, we use our final -1 to untap The Chain Veil and our 3 permanents from before and repeat the previous process. Because we can produce an additional 12 mana per Teferi and he only costs an additional 2 per recast, we get infinite mana. How we draw our whole deck is by activating his +1 ability as many times as there are cards in our deck. Because Teferi, Temporal Archmage ’s +1 doesn’t actually draw cards, it can circumvent Notion Thief , Leovold, Emissary of Trest , and a game loss from activating his +1 while having no cards in library.

With 6 mana from 3 permanents, you can follow the same steps, but you only need to start with 7 mana before casting Teferi or The Chain Veil. With 7 or more mana from 3 permanents, you only need enough mana to cast Teferi (6) to be able to go infinite.

Here is u/SirOzzsome's proof that it is possible to go infinite with 4 mana from 3 permanents: https://www.reddit.com/r/CompetitiveEDH/comments/8buagu/proof_that_the_teferi_chain_veil_combo_works_with/

Win Conditions

Why is it relevant how the game is won? Well, building a deck designed to win, even on a budget, should always strive to be as efficient as possible. In my opinion, having a wincon for the sole purpose of winning the game is not enough. The card must provide some other value to our gameplan, and we need to have backup wincons in case our wincon is removed from play. Here are some of my opinions on the various possible win conditions:

1. Laboratory Maniac: Laboratory Maniac used to be my primary win condition, but one Sudden Shock later I was simply not the same person. Lab-man is a dead card in every situation, except when we have drawn our whole deck and have infinite mana.

2. Capsize: Capsize -locking is not bad, but often the card is dead in our hands. There exist far better bounce spells, and, like Laboratory Maniac, it is only good when we have already combo'd off. It also doesn't actually win us the game

3. Planeswalkers: Jace, the Mind Sculptor and Ugin, the Spirit Dragon are definitely powerful enough to be playable in longer, grindier games, but not all games are long. They are mostly useless in the early game and, like the previously mentioned wincons, dead draws. I would say that Ugin is far better than Jace and, therefore, worth considering. Teferi into Ugin's -5 puts us in a great position.

4. "X" Spells: Stroke of Genius and Blue Sun's Zenith are the two I would consider playing in this type of deck. I would consider these optimal wincons. While they have their flaws, I think their reliability gives them an edge over the rest. They only require infinite mana, not necessarily a Chain Veil combo to go off, and they are cards with a purpose outside of being wincons. The three X spells I play, Pull from Tomorrow , Stroke of Genius , and Blue Sun's Zenith allow us to refill our hands and can be cast at instant-speed.

In the end, I would probably use Ugin, the Spirit Dragon and Blue Sun's Zenith in a budgetless scenario as primary wincons.

Top Ranked	Achieved #48 position overall 5 years ago
Date added	5 years
Last updated	5 years
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	8 - 0 Mythic Rares 32 - 0 Rares 18 - 0 Uncommons 16 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	2.20
Tokens	Ape 3/3 G, Bird 2/2 U, Emblem Teferi, Temporal Archmage
Folders	Commander