MTG Salvation

Why play Teferi?

First of all: Teferi is about control.
The main difference between other mono blue commanders (Vendilion, Talrand, Azami, Venser...) and Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir is that Teferi alone almost shut down those deck enterly. With the presence of Teferi at the table, the capaciades of those decks are diminished greatly. The last ability Teferi not only ensures that you will be almost completely protected during your turn, but it also prevents rain spells from your opponents on their turns. So, keep in mind, Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir is about control.

Second: Flash, for anyone.
With the second ability Teferi, you will never need to use mana on your turn to play some winning condition. Any creature can enter at the end of your opponents turn, and they even will be able to answer that. This, in a sense, gives a pseudo haste to all your creatures.

Third:Combo-Able.
Although this deck is not designed to win through a combo, many of the deck with Teferi as a commander are; mainly based on the interaction of Teferi with cards like Knowledge Pool and Omen Machine. These interactions will be explained later.

So... What is Teferi? A creature that embodies the blue color at his best. He is control and surprise.


Why Not Teferi: Although Teferi offers versatility when creating a deck around it, also offers some obvious limitations, most of the realted to playing mono blue:

• Most of the time we will be playing defensively.
• We will not play a lot of creatures
• And most importantly, probably we are not going to be the most beloved ones in the table.

How it all began:

After winning my first EDH tournament deck with a Vendilion Clique deck, I realized that even though this thedeck worked very well on 1 vs 1, on multiplayer games his power was greatly diminished.

Then I started looking for options, until I found Sharuum the Hegemon; the color combination immediately enthrals me, and decided to put together a stax deck around it. This deck, much more capable in multiplayer games, soon ceased to be attractive to me, as my gaming group got tired of effects like winter orb/static orb and cards like armageddon and smokestack.

So I decided a needed a new change; and looking for a new general who offered me both control and versatility I met with Talrand, Sky Summoner. Talrand proposed to me the opportunity to play aggro, without relinquishing control. This deck was explosive and fierce ... Maybe too much. Although allowed me to use many cards that had perhaps never used in any other deck (EDH or otherwise), the way to win was too direct for my taste.

I was back in the beginning. Maybe with more questions than answers. Sharuum had complicated interactions and powerful cards, but left out half the fun of the format; the political game. Talrand meanwhile using less powerful spells, however their strategy, although fun, was very simple.

Then I found a card, that although was present in all my decks (even back in the Vendilion deck), I had never considered as a general. Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir.

The first group of cards, which I have called "Deck Manipulation". It is composed of tutors and drawing cards.
The tutors are: Mystical Tutor, Long-Term Plans and Intuition. Probably the only card that needs to be explained in this group is Long-Term Plans, many who seems slow, but a card that allow me search for any card in the deck well worth it. Maybe the other explanation needed here is about the lack of other tutors as Mercant Scroll and/or Fabricate; the reason they are not here is simple, avoid playing in our turn whenever we can.
The drawing are: Ancestral Vision, Ponder, Preordain, Brainstorm, Impulse, Telling Time, Flash of Insight, Blue Sun's Zenith, Stroke of Genius and Fact or Fiction. Just 3 cards from this gruop are sorceries, and all cost 1 mana or less, and most of the cards (except for Blue Sun's Zenith, Stroke of Genius and maybe Fact or Fiction) are spells that are more for dig on the deck that for actually gets a card avantage. Will have another way of get that.

The Denial: This is the biggest group in the deck, with 20 cards on it. From very specific counters like Annul, to hard counters as the always famous Counterspell, wich some versatile as Swan Song and Cryptic Command this group has everything. The key here is use every counter in the exact moment, to maximize his impact on the game. Protecting Teferi and stop the greatest threat is the intention of this group.

Control: In this category falls every spell that can deals directly with permanents on the battlefield. Obviously here it could include many other spells, however the idea of this group is to deal with what has passed the barrier of denial spells of the deck. Two spells: Cyclonic Rift and Sunder are not included here becuase their game changing effects are used more aggressively than reactionary.

Other Spells: Those are spells wich cannot be include direclty on other category or conversely can be include in more than one category. Also this include spells as Jace, The Mind Sculptor and Bribery, wich can be counted as winning conditions by itself. Note that this group contains the most of the sorceries spells in the deck.

Creatures: They are seven creatures in the deck (besides Teferi); 2 of them are utilities: Snapcaster Mage and Phyrexian Metamorph; two of them are beaters: Wurmcoil Engine and Frost Titan; and the other three (Sower of Temptation, Duplicant and Consecrated Sphinx) falls in between. The idea is that every creature in the deck have a considerable impact on the table by itself, enhanced for the Flash granted by Teferi.

As with the Deck Manipulation group, the Artifacts: is group is also divided in two categories: mana generators/ramp (Mana Crypt, Sol Ring, and Sapphire Medallion); and utilities: Pithing Needle, Relic of Progenitus, Sensei's Divining Top, Vedalken Shackles, Sword of Fire and Ice, Sword of Light and Shadow, Knowledge Pool). Most of the artifacts of the deck are stapples for EDH, and maybe only the swords need a further explanation. The Swords are the only equipment not just for the bonus on the attack and the effects, but also for the evasion they give via the color protection. Aslo Knowledge Pool is present as alternative winning condition via combo/hard lock with Teferi. On additional note, no much mana rocks are needed because we are not playing a combo deck that needs a lot of acceleration.

Lands: 24 basic and 11 non basic for a rather small mana base, but with a deck of a cmc media of: 2.4 is more than enough. As with the artifacts, most of the non-basic lands are stapples in the format, and just two are personal preferences, Minamo, School at Water's Edge and Opal Palace. Those can be traded by other non-basic lands or even a couple of islands.