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Teshar's Shiny Things | Primer

Commander / EDH Artifact Combo Mono-White Primer

Bloopsy


Maybeboard



With EDHrec drawing data from less than 100 decks online, Teshar is a seriously under-discussed and talked about commander. This mono white bird cleric looks quite innocuous at first glance, but with a little understanding of Bomberman and KCI in other formats, it can be quite the combo monster.

This is my first ever attempt at a primer and I hope it inspires more people to play my favourite Bird Cleric. A lot of this is still unmapped, but it's incredibly fun to play and try to figure out.

I hope you enjoy this primer. If you have any suggestions on how I can improve it, please let me know and I'll try and incorporate what I can!

  • You like combo decks
  • You like durdling around for a while before going off in an explosive way
  • You like being able to combo out of nowhere
  • You understand the downfalls of monowhite
  • You like to surprise people out of nowhere with mono-white storm
  • You don't like combo decks
  • You don't like convoluted combo decks
  • You don't like having to solitaire your wincons
  • You don't like the serious limitations of mono-white
  • You don't like really playing a bunch of really weak creatures individually
  • You don't like being considered a threat any and all games following the first

Altars

The Altars are the best cards for setting up many of the deck's combos.


Retriever Effects

For combos involving Myr Retriever, any of the cards below can be used instead of Myr Retriever.


Win Cons

These cards will be your win conditions for most games, with or without Teshar on the field.

  • Perilous Myr - This deck's Pyrite Spellbomb. Involved in most KCI based combos.

  • Walking Ballista - We have a lot of ways of producing infinite mana, so this'll be infinitely large and ping someone to death.

  • Altar of the Brood - With multiple permanents entering the battlefield when we're comboing off, this will mill everyone not packing an Eldrazi Titan effect.

  • Altar of Dementia once we get loops going, we can mill our opponents who don't have Eldrazi Titans in their decks


Card Draw

  • Mentor of the Meek - With our combos that net us additional mana, this will let us draw through our entire deck.

  • Bygone Bishop - With our combos that net us mana and have us casting multiple CMC 3 or less creatures, this will allow us to draw multiple cards when we want. Repeating loops with the Bishop and KCI in play also allows us to draw our entire deck.

  • Militia Bugler - Less card draw, more card filtering. Using some of our loops with Teshar to keep bringing this back lets us get all power 2 or less creatures from our deck into our hand.

Perilous Myr + Myr Retriever + Ashnod's Altar OR Perilous Myr + Myr Retriever + Phyrexian Altar

  1. Sacrifice Perilous Myr to the altar. Float mana if using Ashnod's OR Float if using Phyrexian.
  2. Sacrifice Myr Retriever to the Altar, returning Perilous Myr to hand. Float +
  3. With the floating mana, cast Perilous Myr, Teshar's Ability Triggers, returning Myr Retriever to the field.
  4. Repeat

This loop will inflict infinite damage and generate infinite colourless mana if utilising Ashnod's Altar.


Perilous Myr + Trusty Packbeast + Ashnod's Altar and mana to start the combo.

  1. Sacrifice Perilous Myr to the altar and float 2 colourless mana.
  2. Cast Trusty Packbeast, and return Perilous Myr to Hand with the ETB ability.
  3. Sacrifice Trusty Packbeast to the altar.
  4. Cast Perilous Myr, triggering Teshar, bringing back Trusty Packbeast to the battlefield.
  5. Repeat

This loop will inflict infinite damage.


Perilous Myr + Trusty Packbeast + Phyrexian Altar and mana

  1. Sacrifice Perilous Myr to the altar to make one floating mana.
  2. Cast Trusty Packbeast, and return Perilous Myr to Hand with the ETB ability. Float two mana.
  3. Sacrifice Trusty Packbeast to the altar, to make one floating
  4. Use both floating mana to cast Perilous Myr, triggering Teshar, bringing back Trusty Packbeast to the battlefield.
  5. Repeat

This loop will inflict infinite damage.


The following two combos will deal infinite damage and net one additional colourless mana each loop.

Ashnod's Altar can be substituted with Krark-Clan Ironworks, but not Phyrexian Altar.

Ashnod's Altar + Scrap Trawler + Myr Retriever + Cathodion + Perilous Myr

  1. Have all of the above on the field.
  2. Sacrifice Perilous Myr to Ashnod's Altar to deal 2 damage to an opponent. Float .
  3. Sacrifice Cathodion to Ashnod's Altar and float . With Scrap Trawler's trigger on the stack, return Perilous Myr to Hand.
  4. Sacrifice Myr Retriever to Ashnod's Altar, hold priority, sacrifice Scrap Trawler. Float
  5. With Scrap Trawler's trigger return Myr Retriever to hand. With Myr Retriever's trigger return Scrap Trawler to hand.
  6. Cast Perilous Myr, Cathodion, Myr Retriever and Scrap Trawler. Float
  7. Repeat.

Ashnod's Altar + Scrap Trawler + Myr Retriever + Myr Moonvessel + Perilous Myr

  1. Have all of the above on the field.
  2. Sacrifice Myr Moonvessel to Ashnod's Altar. Float
  3. Sacrifice Perilous Myr to Ashnod's Altar to deal 2 damage to an opponent. With Scrap Trawler's Trigger on the stack, return Myr Moonvessel to hand. Float:5
  4. Sacrifice Myr Retriever to Ashnod's Altar, hold priority, sacrifice Scrap Trawler. Float
  5. With Scrap Trawler's trigger return Myr Retriever to hand. With Myr Retriever's trigger return Scrap Trawler to hand.
  6. Cast Perilous Myr, Cathodion, Myr Retriever and Scrap Trawler. Float
  7. Repeat.
While not as complicated as the other combos explained above, the following are generally useful to remember while playing the game.

  • Metalworker + Staff of Domination will produce infinite mana if you have at least 3 artifacts in hand.

  • Auriok Salvagers + Lion's Eye Diamond can outright win the game on the spot. With Teshar on the field, this will return all creatures that are CMC 3 or less to the field. With the Altar of the Brood, you can mill your opponents out. With Walking Ballista you can ping all of your opponents to death. With Aetherflux Reservoir you can generate an infinite storm count.

  • Thalia, Heretic Cathar is a Historic spell and will trigger Teshar while she's on the field.

We're a very low CMC engine deck running a very low land count. We need at least two lands, a mana rock of some variety, and some card draw. Back up pieces of interaction help us not be a sitting duck. If we don't have cards in hand, our shields are completely down and we're very vulnerable to our opponents just swinging into our pitiful creatures.

Our opening seven should hopefully look like this:

OR

While these are examples of your best hands, you can keep a suboptimal hand if you manage to start with a Stax piece and an egg or two, but these I'd only recommend if you feel particularly ballsy. Look hard at hands that contain any of the following:

In the early game, you may want to try and play somewhat conservatively and only go for the combos if you think you can get there. Setting up your engine organically and trying to get your opponents to not focus on you is the most important part of the game here. Once you play against a group, they will realise that this deck isn't as cute as they first thought and will always keep an eye out for you. Slowing the game down will mean you can do this in relative safety.

Graveyard hate is your number one problem. We only have a few ways to interact with our opponents' permanents and no way of interacting with their spell-based hate.

Artifacts and enchantments

  • Disenchant

  • Fragmentize

Enchantments Only

  • Kami of Ancient Law

Creatures

  • Swords to Plowshares

  • Path to Exile

  • Dispatch

Catch-All

  • Engineered Explosives

  • Ugin, the Ineffable

  • Blast Zone

  • Generous Gift

  • Tragic Arrogance

You may be wondering why certain cards are in this deck and not others, and this section will hope to explain some of them.

Inclusions

  • Ensnaring Bridge - Will stall the board against creature based decks. While we can get an impressively large hand, more often than not we'll be holding onto nothing but one of our few instants.

Ommissions

  • Aetherflux Reservoir - Many of the combos involve us casting multiple spells, this will let us nuke everyone at the table and gain us infinite life, but usually the loops will win us before we have to fire off the reservoir.

Cards Worth Testing

  • Legion's Landing   - A one drop historic spell which can net us some value in the late game.

Full List Coming Soon


Suggestions

Updates Add

Two new cards are added to the maybe board with Relic Vial and Sejiri Shelter.

The vial acts as another potential wincon with Teshar out, only requiring us to loop two creatures in order to win with Teshar on board. Sejiri Shelter is a flexible way to support Teshar by providing them with protection, but also a potential land in the early game. Both cards have their merits, but this list is rather tuned. In less lean versions of the deck, I can see them having their place and doing rather well.

No additions besides pimping of fetches to the new expeditions.

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27% Casual

73% Competitive

Top Ranked
Date added 5 years
Last updated 3 years
Legality

This deck is Commander / EDH legal.

Rarity (main - side)

20 - 0 Mythic Rares

25 - 0 Rares

23 - 0 Uncommons

17 - 0 Commons

Cards 100
Avg. CMC 1.97
Tokens Clue, Monk 1/1 W, Spirit 2/2 C, Thopter 1/1 C, Treasure
Folders Commander, Other people's awesome decks, Inspiration, Cool decks, Foil EDH, commander, White, Inspiration, Mono-White EDH, Research Decks
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