Does Teferi, Temporal Archmage as Commander + Chain Veil go infinite?
Asked by CogMonocle 10 years ago
So I was already aware that my Teferi, Temporal Archmage deck went infinite if I had both The Chain Veil and Contagion Engine out with 2 permanents that tapped for 8+ mana when combined. Now I'm wondering if it might be even easier than that.
Based on the gatherer page for the veil, if I were to play teferi with a chain veil out, then use his +1, then repeatedly activate chain veil and teferi's -1 until he dies (with three permanents that tap for at least 6 mana, occaisionally untapping islands for blue mana) then re-cast him from the comand zone with the mana I just generated, I can then already activate him SIX times before I even activate the chain veil again! Since planeswalkers played after the chain veil receive the bonus, and the re-cast teferi is a new object.
This would make me kind of sad, actually. It makes what I thought was a convoluted combo fairly easy, actually...
CogMonocle says... #2
Every time you cast teferi the number of activations you get increases by 5, however, which more than offsets the increased cost. The second time you cast him, you alternate between using the +1 and -1 to use up the 6 activations you already have, then alternate between his -1 and the chain veil until he dies again. Then the next time you start with 11 activations. It would work out such that you get an extra 4-6 mana each time.
April 20, 2015 1:25 p.m.
CogMonocle says... #3
My numbers are actually little off because I thought he started at 4 loyalty (I'm so used to using his minus and putting the die on 4) so he's actually better at going infinite than I've said.
April 20, 2015 2:18 p.m.
Unless I'm missing something, you're forgetting that to untap your permanents, you need to use his -1 ability, using up one of the activations generated by Chain Veil. Since you need to use his -1 to untap the Chain Veil itself, you can never "stockpile" activations past the one activation you get for each turn or each activation of the Chain Veil.
So, assuming you use the -1 to untap the Veil each and every time, your three other activations need to untap permanents that can tap for at least 6 mana each time - 4 of these pay for the Veil, the other 2 stack so that you end up with 10 mana (two of them blue) at the end of your five activations, and are able to cast Teferi + 2 additional mana every time. You could go pseudo-infinite with this as far as I'm thinking, and would have 2 mana floating for each time you complete a cycle (or more if you produce more than 6 mana with those three permanents).
April 20, 2015 4:08 p.m.
CogMonocle says... #5
The reason I believe this works the way I wrote is that chain veil works for each planeswalker, including ones that enter after you activate it, and when you re-cast teferi he becomes a new object.
April 20, 2015 4:39 p.m.
CogMonocle says... #6
This is mostly based off of Gatherer rulings on The Chain Veil
April 20, 2015 4:39 p.m.
Rhadamanthus says... #7
Never mind, I didn't take into account the unintuitive way that all the Chain Veil activations will be cumulative with subsequent re-casts of Teferi. You're right, but good luck getting your opponents to believe you.
April 20, 2015 10:38 p.m.
This is a fantastic interaction and it works exactly the way you describe.
For getting people to believe you, print out the gatherer page and highlight the second and fifth rulings.
Thanks for finding something MORE broken than Prossh + Food Chain, as you not only get infinite mana to dump into spells, you also get infinite loyalty activations of any other Planeswalkers you control. I like it.
Jace, Memory Adept/Jace Beleren = infinite draw and mill.
Jace, Architect of Thought = your opp's attacking creatures get -X/-0 until your next turn, infinite draw, and you can exile and play every non-land card in your opponent's library.
Jace, the Mind Sculptor = infinite draw, bounce all targetable creatures, exile your opp's hand and library.
Karn Liberated = exile your opponents hand and all targetable permanents, restart the game? I guess?
Tamiyo, the Moon Sage = tap all targetable permanents for the the next infinite untap steps, infinite draw, cast all your spells infinitely.
Tezzeret the Seeker = generate more mana per cycle and tutor every artifact you have onto the battlefield.
Ugin, the Spirit Dragon = infinite damage, life, draw, and permanents onto the battlefield.
April 21, 2015 4:28 a.m.
Also you don't need to activate his +1 to start off with. So long as you have three permanents that tap for at least six mana you should be able to just untap the sources you used to cast Teferi and go from there. Five free activations should be enough to get the ball rolling when you recast him. This will let you combo off the turn you cast Teferi.
Also instead of alternating between his + and - on the recast, just dump all of your chain veil stacks into his +1, and then chain veil until he dies again. The more stacks you get of The Chain Veil in between recasts, the less likely you'll get into a situation where you don't have enough mana to recast Teferi. (e.g. +1, -1, +1, -1, +1 into 6 X -1 yields eight new chain veil effects, where 5 X +1 into 10 X -1 yields ten.)
And if you had a little extra mana to smooth out the first couple of cycles, this should still be able to work if your three permanents only generate 5 mana.
April 21, 2015 5 a.m.
Wow this is hilarious. You should probably mark the question as answered, but thanks for not until I got to read it! :P
April 21, 2015 8:57 a.m.
CogMonocle says... Accepted answer #11
Alright, it seems we've come to a conclusion, but since I don't think any one post has enough information to count as a real answer, i'll sum it up here:
-Assuming you have three permanents which tap for at least 6 mana (5 if you have some extra mana from other sources) you can generate enough mana with teferi and chain veil to cast teferi the second time
-Because of the way chain veil works with recasts of teferi, each time you cast teferi, he will be able to activate his loyalty abilities a number of times equal to the total times you have activated the chain veil this turn, ignoring how many times he was activated the previous times he was cast
-Once you have all the required pieces you can use teferi's +1 repeatedly (thanks sonnet666) until you run out of activations, then alternate the chain veil with his -1 until he dies. This results in producing unlimited mana and allowing you to draw your entire deck.
I think that about sums it up. Thanks everyone!
April 21, 2015 9:28 a.m.
That does sum it up, but you should still never select your own response as an answer. Just pick randomly or something if you can't decide who should get it.
April 21, 2015 10:21 a.m.
i like the Teferi, Temporal Archmage, The Chain Veil and Contagion Engine, but consider adding Voltaic Construct and Metalworker for infinite mana, as long as you got 2 or more artifacts in hand.
May 5, 2015 2:02 p.m.
This Q&A is like two weeks old. That's deader than dead.
And as stated above the combo already generates infinite mana with just Teferi, the Veil, and three permanents that tap for 5 or more mana.
May 5, 2015 3:47 p.m.
WoogieBoogie says... #15
It may have been mentioned before but adding Tezzeret the Seeker to the mix would make it generate even more mana by freeing up Teferi, Temporal Archmage to only untap lands instead of having to use one for the The Chain Veil. Also he could get the veil out in the first place if needed.
Rhadamanthus says... #1
Because Teferi's cost will increase by 2 each time you cast him from the command zone, these cards alone can't go truly "infinite" without some help, but they can certainly go big.
April 20, 2015 1:04 p.m.