Slow CVT [EDH]

Oversoul

The Tentacled One
This is my next deck for the West Coast Commander League. As detailed in the thread for my previous deck in this league (The End of Eternity), there's a new rotating weekly point for specifically casting the new Niv-Mizzet as one's commander, and I won't be going for that point.

So I've decided to go with the infamous Chain Veil Teferi archetype. My list has a lot of overlap with cEDH Chain Veil Teferi lists, but mine has some slight modifications intended to account for the slower environment...

Commander:
1x Teferi, Temporal Archmage

1x Academy Ruins
1x All Is Dust
1x Ancient Tomb
1x Arcane Denial
1x Back to Basics
1x Basalt Monolith
1x Blink of an Eye
1x Brainstorm
1x Buried Ruin
1x Chain of Vapor
1x Copy Artifact
1x Counterspell
1x Cryptic Command
1x Cyclonic Rift
1x Dig Through Time
1x Expedition Map
1x Fabricate
1x Fact or Fiction
1x Flooded Strand
1x Flusterstorm
1x Force of Will
1x Frantic Search
1x Gilded Drake
1x Gilded Lotus
1x Grafdigger's Cage
1x Grim Monolith
1x High Tide
1x Intuition
1x Inventors' Fair
14x Island
1x Jace, the Mind Sculptor
1x Mana Crypt
1x Mana Drain
1x Mana Short
1x Mana Vault
1x Mana Web
1x Memory Jar
1x Misty Rainforest
1x Mox Diamond
1x Mox Opal
1x Mystic Remora
1x Mystical Tutor
1x Narset's Reversal
1x Narset, Parter of Veils
1x Pact of Negation
1x Polluted Delta
1x Ponder
1x Power Artifact
1x Pull from Tomorrow
1x Reliquary Tower
1x Reshape
1x Rhystic Study
1x Rings of Brighthearth
1x Scalding Tarn
1x Sensei's Divining Top
1x Snapcaster Mage
9x Snow-Covered Island
1x Sol Ring
1x Spellseeker
1x Stasis
1x Strip Mine
1x Stroke of Genius
1x Swan Song
1x Tezzeret the Seeker
1x The Chain Veil
1x The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale
1x Thought Vessel
1x Thran Dynamo
1x Time Spiral
1x Timetwister
1x Transmute Artifact
1x Trinket Mage
1x Voltaic Key
1x Wash Out
1x Wasteland
1x Whir of Invention
1x Windfall
1x Winter Orb

Frustratingly, I need to pick up a copy of Narset's Reversal (unless I open one in a booster pack this week) and also The Chain Veil (thought I owned a copy but can't find it, and it's expensive) and Rings of Brighthearth (super-expensive but also so useful I'm essentially guaranteed to get mileage out of it in future decks). But I've assembled the rest of this list. I might make a substitution to accommodate the point awarded for casting a god (it'd be God-Eternal Kefnet, but I hesitate to cut a more useful card for that).
 

Oversoul

The Tentacled One
It occurs to me that most people here will probably be unfamiliar with the basic premise of Chain Veil Teferi, and it's pretty bizarre, so I should explain.

Looking at at list like this, it's obvious that there's a lot of powerful blue control cards and acceleration, but it might not be obvious that this is an infinite combo deck. In competitive EDH, it's generally considered the strongest monoblue option because the kill condition is so compact and exploits cards that are already good anyway, so the level of awkard chaff is brought down to a minimum. Here's how...

The Chain Veil is a strange card and its ruled functionality is not even close to apparent from its text box. As a card that lets you activate loyalty abilities of your planeswalkers, WotC had to figure out what the timing would be and how the ability would function within the game, so when the card was new, they clarified the ability with rulings that make it much more powerful than most of us would assume from reading the card's Oracle text...

For each planeswalker you control, you may activate one of its loyalty abilities once this turn as though none of its loyalty abilities have been activated this turn.
Reading that, I'd interpret it to mean that The Chain Veil effectively resets your planeswalkers on the battlefield so that if you've already activated them, you can activate them again. The wording of "for each planeswalker you control" would seem to imply that the card is doing something to those planeswalkers individually. So I'd have thought that if I had two planeswalkers and I'd already activated a loyalty ability on one of them, then I used The Chain Veil, I'd now be able to activate each planeswalker once. I wouldn't get two activations out of the one that I didn't already activate, because The Chain Veil's ability is applied and wouldn't "see" that the planeswalker hadn't been used and save it up. I certainly wouldn't have thought that I'd be able to cast a new planeswalker and then activate it twice. The Chain Veil would seem to interact with each planeswalker, and the one that didn't exist yet wouldn't get retroactive benefit from the fact that an artifact's ability was used earlier in the turn. But because of how awkward planeswalkers are in the rules, that's not how the card really works. Instead, counterintuitively, The Chain Veil does nothing to "each planeswalker." Instead it does something to you. It lets you activate your planeswalker loyalty abilities an extra time. And if you are able to untap it and use it again in the same turn, you could activate planeswalker loyalty abilities a third time. Weird, right?

For the first ability, it doesn’t matter whether the planeswalker is still on the battlefield as your end step begins. If you activated one of its loyalty abilities that turn, The Chain Veil’s triggered ability won’t trigger. (2014-07-18)

Because the last ability modifies the rules of the game, it affects not only planeswalkers you control when it resolves, but also planeswalkers that come under your control later in the turn. (2014-07-18)

After the last ability resolves, you’ll essentially be able to activate a loyalty ability of each planeswalker you control a total of twice during your turn. The timing rules for when you can activate loyalty abilities apply each time; it must be your main phase and the stack must be empty. (2014-07-18)

The second loyalty ability you activate doesn’t have to be the same as the first ability. For example, you could activate a planeswalker’s first ability twice, or you could activate a planeswalker’s first ability, then activate its second ability. (2014-07-18)

Each additional time The Chain Veil’s last ability resolves will allow you to activate a loyalty ability of each planeswalker you control an additional time. For example, if you activate The Chain Veil’s last ability, untap it, then activate it again, you can activate a loyalty ability of a planeswalker you control three times that turn. (2014-07-18)
Teferi, Temporal Archmage has a loyalty ability that can be used to untap your stuff. This has an obvious, albeit expensive and somewhat bland, synergy with The Chain Veil. You can use Teferi's -1 to untap The Chain Veil and, if you have the mana, you can keep doing this until Teferi dies. Not particularly useful by itself, but if you are also fortunate enough to cast another planeswalker, even if it's later in the turn, that planeswalker can immediately be activated an extra time for each time The Chain Veil was used in the turn. It would never be practical in most formats, but it is an option. Relevant to Commander variants, Teferi, Temporal Archmage has another important line of text...

Teferi, Temporal Archmage can be your commander.
And this means that, if you have the mana, you could use Teferi to untap The Chain Veil repeatedly until Teferi dies, then recast Teferi from your command zone and have the card enter as a new object, which would benefit from all previous uses of The Chain Veil in the turn. And as long as you had enough mana, you could keep getting more and more activations. By using some of those activations on Teferi's +1, it's possible to keep adding cards to your hand from your library ("drawing" your deck even though no actual card-drawing would be taking place). As long as you have enough mana to keep going...

...so really all we'd need would be a way to get mana production into the loop.

Did I mention that Teferi's -1 untaps up to four permanents? Because it does. So, for instance, I've got these cards...



-I tap my mana-producers and then use them on The Chain Veil. I still have U floating. I can activate each planeswalker twice this turn.
-I activate Teferi to untap all four of the other cards. Teferi ticks down to 4 loyalty.
-I tap my mana-producers and use The Chain Veil again. I am floating UU and can now activate each planeswalker three times this turn, and I've only activated Teferi once so far.
-I activate Teferi to untap all four of the other cards. Teferi ticks down to 3 loyalty.
-Activate other cards again. I have UUU floating and can activate each planeswalker four times this turn.
-Activate Teferi again to untap the other four cards. Down to 2 loyalty.
-Repeat tapping stuff. UUUU floating and can activate each planeswalker five times.
-Tick Teferi down again. 1 loyalty remaining.
-Repeat tapping stuff. UUUUU floating and can activate each planeswalker six times.
-Tick Teferi down to 0 loyalty, send Teferi back to the command zone.
-Tap mana-producers this time and leave The Chain Veil alone. Floating 3UUUUUUU.
-Recast Teferi from command zone. After paying the commander tax, this leaves UU floating.
-This Teferi is a new object and its planeswalker loyalty abilities can be activated six times this turn.
-I can now +1 Teferi five times and tick it up to 10 loyalty, then repeat the previous loop even more times.
-Repeating this loop, I get my whole library into my hand but can keep using Teferi's +1 to do nothing, so I can get infinite mana and infinite planeswalker abilities, in addition to putting my library into my hand.
-Win.

Because this is something of a big mana deck, most competitive lists seem to run Ugin, the Spirit Dragon as the primary kill condition (its +2 and -X are good at fighting through permanent-based hate if the card is used before the combo is set up). But the more traditional kill condition, which I'll be using, is to ultimate Jace, the Mind Sculptor twice in the same turn.
 

Oversoul

The Tentacled One
Well, this could have gone better and could also have gone worse? I'm OK with it.

First game, I probably had the means to go off on my fourth turn and could easily have gone off on my fifth turn, but I needed to wait until my seventh turn to avoid being penalized. So on my sixth turn, I tapped out for All Is Dust, deeming that to be the safest way to protect my seventh turn win. The Grenzo player had Mana Echoes and went all-in trying to combo off in response. He got lucky and succeeded, killing me and our two other opponents. So he was penalized for killing them, but not for killing me (I was already on my sixth turn). So we invoked Hasty Exterminatus and continued playing. Then of course my combo went off on my seventh turn. As far as we could tell, this was the first instance of Double Hasty Exterminatus.

Second game was uneventful with my deck doing exactly what it was meant to do. I went off seventh turn and collected my points.

Third game I was hit twice by Zurgo Helmsmasher and had some options, but went for Winter Orb to slow down the Niv-Mizzet Reborn player, because it seemed like a good bet at the time. On my sixth turn I was ready to combo off and had countermagic backup, but he countered Teferi with Dovin's Veto, the only card in his entire deck that could possibly have stopped me. I had no recourse and died to commander damage from Zurgo Helmsmasher.

Not the best track record for three games, but I did collect decent points in the first two games and came out of it OK. Didn't expect a player to eat the "Too Soon" penalty in response to my All Is Dust (he also got incredibly lucky with Grenzo's ability at that stage) and didn't expect Dovin's Veto.
 
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