Legendary Planeswalker — Teferi
+1: Choose up to one target artifact, up to one target creature, and up to one target land. Untap the chosen permanents you control. Tap the chosen permanents you don’t control. You gain 2 life.
−2: Look at the top three cards of your library. Put one of them into your hand and the rest on the bottom of your library in any order.
−7: You get an emblem with “Untap all permanents you control during each opponent’s untap step” and “You draw a card during each opponent’s draw step.”
Loyalty: 4
Teferi, Who Slows the Sunset is our sixth Teferi planeswalker since his reintroduction in 2018’s Dominaria. A prominent character in Magic’s early years and having some game warping cards in the modern era, Teferi Who Slows the Sunset has quite the lineage to live up to.
First Effect: +1 Loyalty
Teferi, Who Slows the Sunset’s first effect increases his Loyalty by 1 and allows his controller to manipulate the state of up to 3 cards on the board; one creature, one artifact and one land. For each one, should they be in your control, they become untapped, or if they are in your opponents, they become untapped. Then finally you gain 2 life.
Teferi has multiple applications. You can tap down opponent’s cards so that they cannot be used, be it either cards with tap costs, creatures that could block your effects or lands that could pay for instants or abilities. This can even force your opponent into misplaying as to not lose their abilities or opportunities.
On the flip side, you can untap Lands for more mana to play additional cards, untap permanents with a tap cost to use them an additional time or untap creatures for pseudo vigilance.
Second Effect: -2 Loyalty
Teferi’s second effect costs him 2 Loyalty but helps the player greatly. You look at the top three cards of your library, choose one to place into your hand, then the rest are sent to the bottom of your library. This is the exact effect of the Sorcery, “Anticipate”, a card that costs U1.
Being able to select one of three cards instead of a straight draw greatly increases the chances you’ll get something you can use at that point of the game, but more than that, it shifts potentially unneeded cards to the bottom of the library, increasing your chances for drawing a better card next turn.
Third Effect: -7 Loyalty
Teferi, Who Slows the Sunset starts with 4 Loyalty and with that will take three additional turns to be able to use this “ultimate” ability, but it is worth it.
For 7 Loyalty, you get an emblem that allows you to essentially copy your opponent’s turn phases. You draw during their draw step and untap all of your permanents during their untap step.
If you manage to pull this off, you are likely winning the game. You essentially get to play on both players’ turns, an incredibly powerful ability only held back by the restriction to Instants and cards with Flash on your opponent’s turn. However, even that can be accounted for should you make Teferi your main strategy.
SUPPORT:
While Standard Legal as of writing, “Teferi, Who Slows the Sunset” is better suited for the casual Commander format where his effects can be better used. His Emblem allows his player to untap and draw for each other player, giving his controller as many turns as there are players in the game. However, his first effect is better abused in the Commander format.
With 6 devotion to any one colour, Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx and The Chain Veil, you can activate Teferi’s first effect infinitely for infinite life and activations of Planeswalker effects, or with 7 devotion to any one colour, you can gain infinite mana too.
If either of those cards are too expensive, both being around the $40USD mark, Lithorform Engine at under $3USD with some type of mass mana producing creature can produce similar results.
CARD RATING:
Teferi, Who Slows the Sunset is far from the best version of Teferi. This is no Teferi, Time Raveler or Hero of Dominaria. It is arguably too ‘fair’ and not as obnoxious as Teferi normally is, needing other cards to combo with and the result being fairly gimmicky. This even goes as far as this card being given the moniker of “Tefairy”.
Saying that, for Casual Commander with your mates, you can produce a nifty infinite loop and show off your combo skills. It’s still a card that can produce some fun times.
Card rating: 2.0 out of 5.0 stars
