With user ajcaboik retiring from the MTG Salvation forums, I’ve requested that I manage his Teferi thread having played with Teferi extensively myself. The Mods graciously acquiesced to my request and transferred ownership of this thread to myself. I’d like to start this Primer by first thanking ajacobik for his extensive research and playtesting as well as the extensive write-up that he’s done.

It wins consistently and in the same way EVERY single time. It’s fast, it’s resilient, and it has a ton of control and card advantage available to it while playing with some of the most broken (and expensive) mana rocks in the game.

This deck is not for the faint of heart nor is it for the newly initiated Commander player or the casual Commander player who likes battle-cruiser style games and strategies.

It is a soul-crushing, massively consistent, Commander tyrant that will enable you to win and shut down your opponents time and time again.

This is a decklist that every Commander player should be aware of because of how effective it is. It is usually played for money or other prized events at LGS’s and side events at Grand Prix or SCG tournaments. Whether you are interested in building/proxying this decklist for yourself or simply want to scope out the competition, the goal of this thread is to be an informative resource for all Teferi pilots (and their opponents) who want to learn strategy, discuss card choices, share game reports, and discuss opposing competitive Commander decks.

As Teferi learned while trapped in the Tolarian time-bubble, a lot can happen in a short time. In the months that I’ve played this deck personally, and with ajacobik’s experience as well, close to 200 games of this deck have been played in paper and nearly 350 online games have been played. If you trust nothing else in this write-up, trust that this Commander has been played EXTENSIVELY, and in that time many, many cards have been tested and discarded. If you find that you disagree with my opinions or see flaws in the commentary, let’s talk in the thread or comments and discuss why you think and feel the way you do!

The first thing you should do, before you even begin shuffling your deck, is to look around the table and begin thinking about the kinds of decks you are up against. Try to determine your role in the game before you begin looking at your opening hand and be honest with yourself about the kind of hand you need to thrive in the current environment. If your opponents are playing fragile combo commanders, try to look for a hand that disrupts those decks that will give you time to build up your own resources. Don't keep greedy hands against stax commanders, but feel free to keep them against decks without blue or lacking in early disruption. Also, pay attention to turn order: if the Zur Doomsday deck is going to play first, it's probably a bad idea to mulligan a mediocre hand with a Force of Will; if you're going before that kind of deck, it's probably safe to mulligan and find a faster opening grip. Fast mana is the name of the game in this format no matter what kind of deck you're piloting, and Teferi plays it all. 

Generally speaking, a good opening hand will have the following: 2-3 lands, 2-3 mana rocks, 1-2 draw spells, 1-2 pieces of interaction, and 1 tutor effect. While there is a TON of subtlety that goes into which kind of opening hands you keep (which is dependent on what role you decide might be most effective based on who you're playing against), there are some hands that are not ideal. In no particular order, you don't want to see in your opening hand any of the following:

1. Too many lands. You need to be able to interact from T2 onwards, and having a 5-6 land hand eliminates any potential for that to occur. We need to be able to execute our own game plan quickly and efficiently, and having any more than 4 lands makes that particular opening hand suspect for a mulligan.
2. 0-1 Lands. There are very, very few situations in which a 0-1 land hand is keepable. The only situation where that could be plausible as a keep is if you have ALL of the best fast mana in your deck in your hand as well. Otherwise, mulligan away.
3. Heavy interaction/counterspell hand. Card Advantage is the name of the game for competitive Commander games. Keeping a hand with too much interaction leaves us vulnerable to running out of gas, so try and keep that balance of ramp, card draw, and mana rocks so that you can interact at all stages of the game and still develop your own board state.
4. Heavy Ramp with no payoff. Alright, you now have 12 mana to play with on T2... with nothing to do except relay on Teferi himself. This is a recipe for getting Teferi and/or your mana rocks blown up and putting you out of commission. Again, we want to see a balance in our opening hand so that we can effectively develop our board state and keep up interaction for our opponents.

The first few turns should be spent either setting up a soft lock with Teferi and a stax piece or actively tutoring for combo pieces. Don't sit on counterspells unless you're sure your opponents are going to go for the win. One of the main mistakes I see blue players make is wasting their disruption on early game ramp spells or value cards when counterspells should be reserved only for cards that will either end the game, or prevent you from winning. Cards like Ad Nauseam, Necropotence, Rhystic Study, Food Chain, or Armageddon are fine to counter, but don't sweat the small nonsense like Oracle of Mul-Daya or random planeswalkers. Control the game via your stax pieces, not your counterspells. 

There are a number of ways to set up a soft lock: making your opponents' creatures useless with Cursed Totem and Torpor Orb, breaking parity on Winter Orb, Capsize/Stasis, or simply playing Back to Basics can set your opponents back several turns while you are free to continue developing your board. Remember that you rarely want your stax pieces on the table for more than a few turns; Teferi only has so many loyalty counters and he can only break parity for so long before he's back in the Command Zone. Don't drag the game to a complete halt, just suppress your opponents' resources long enough for you to find The Chain Veil or set up a Capsize-based win (by which I mean using High Tide/Candelabra/Capsize to generate infinite mana, Capsize/recast Teferi and +1 until you've drawn your deck). Remember that High Tide gets better the longer the game goes. Every land drop you make is another 2 mana on your Tide turn.

Depending on your opening hand, you can skip the stax bit entirely and just combo off faster than the table can handle. Opening hands that include a lot of fast mana and a wheel effect are often the key to this, as a wheel after playing a few Moxen or other broken (usually Mark Tedin) mana rocks will usually put you so far ahead in both mana and cards that your opponents can't catch back up. Rhystic Study is my favorite card to see in my opening hand for this reason, and there are quite a few ways to play it on turn one provided it's not countered.

No matter which avenue you take during the early game, your ultimate goal is to assemble a combo with The Chain Veil. This combo will have to be explained several times to unfamiliar opponents and has a number of tricks involved depending on the gamestate. At its simplest, here is what the combo requires:

• Teferi, Temporal Archmage, preferably fresh from the Command Zone
• The Chain Veil
• A permanent that taps for more than one mana
• Any two other mana-producing permanents

Assuming you've already activated Teferi once this turn in order to set yourself up with such a boardstate and in order to provide mana for counter-backup, you initiate the combo by:

1. Paying 4 into The Chain Veil (abbreviated as TCV moving forward).
2. Then, you activate Teferi’s -1 ability, targeting TCV, your Sol permanent, and two Islands.
3. Rinse and repeat for as many loyalty counters Teferi has, keeping track of how many times you've activated TCV (I recommend keeping a d8 or d10 on TCV for both your reference and to help explain the combo to other players).
4. On Teferi's last activation, you don't target TCV; rather, you target four mana producing permanents, generating as much mana as possible; assuming you only have one Sol permanent and the rest are Islands, you can make 5 mana on the last activation.
5. Now, either use floating mana or produce 3 more mana from other sources so you've got the 6UU required to re-cast Teferi. The following is EXTREMELY CRUCIAL to understand and be able to explain. Now that he's a new game object, The Chain Veil doesn't track how many times you've used Teferi this turn; instead, you get to activate him once for his natural activation, then once more for each time you've Chain Veiled this turn. Most pilots begin to -1 him and loop him for mana again here, but I find that to be a waste of good resources. For opponents who don't believe you in this rules modification, here's the link to the official MTG rulings. The second ruling is the one that we'll be utilizing as part of our combo.
6. Use all but one of your activations to +1 Teferi and draw a few cards to ensure you've got suitable protection for Teferi or to find more mana-positive permanents to make the combo easier, then on your last free activation, begin the -1 chain and start untapping The Chain Veil again and hopefully netting mana. Repeat the process (steps of 1-4) of -1ing Teferi to death and recast him again for 8UU, using the same chain as before but this time with significantly more free activations.

Don't get hasty just because you've started your combo and assume you've won. All it takes is a well placed counterspell from an opponent at the 8UUor 10UU casting to not only cut you off from your combo this turn, but to cut you off from casting Teferi again in the future; this is why I emphasize using up as many of your free activations for +1s as possible. 

If you can protect Teferi until this point, you're probably safe. You can proceed to generate "infinite" mana and functionally draw your entire library with Teferi's +1 ability (feel free to -10 him along the way, you never know when you'll need to respond to something your opponents will do when you're trying to finish the game). 

My preferred win condition with infinite mana and infinite Teferi activations is to cast Blue Sun's Zenith (abbreviated as USZ) where X=1000 targeting the most dangerous opponent, shuffle it back into your library (it's now the only card in your deck), "draw" it with Teferi, and repeat for each opponent. This kill is the most compact method of winning with TCV and gives your opponents the fewest chances to respond or interact. You can protect this win with literally every single counterspell in your deck, given that you've got infinite blue and all of them in hand. 

Should USZ be exiled or countered via something like Counterflux, you have a few options; if it's in the 'yard, you can Timetwister it back into your library and redraw it with Teferi to try again, or you can cast Ugin and begin bolting the table to death (remember, you have infinite activations from TCV). 

I run Urza's Factory so I have a combat win condition (and because I'm a sucker for Mark Tedin), by which I mean you can play it, use Teferi to untap it a hundred times and make an army of Assembly-Workers, and wait a turn to crush the table via damage. This route is suboptimal, and I wouldn't waste the deck slot at a competitive event, but hell, it's Tedin Tribal. What are you gonna do? 

At this point you can also Capsize lock the table as well should that suit you.