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Against the Odds: Infinite Teferi Combo (Standard)


Hello, everyone. Welcome to episode 306 of Against the Odds. Innistrad: Midnight Hunt is here! Last week, we had our first Innistrad: Midnight Hunt Against the Odds poll, and Teferi, Who Slows the Sunset infinite combo came out on top! As such, we're heading to our new Standard format today to see if we can go infinite by untapping Lithoform Engine with Teferi's +1! The combo does take three pieces (Teferi, Who Slows the Sunset, Lithoform Engine, and a mana dork, hopefully Accomplished Alchemist), which is asking a lot. But if we can pull it off, the end result will be infinite life at a minimum, and hopefully infinite mana as well, which we can then use to win by drawing our entire deck with Triskaidekaphile until we find Wish to snag Crackle with Power from our sideboard! What are the odds of not just winning with Teferi, Who Slows the Sunset but also going infinite with Teferi, Who Slows the Sunset? Let's get to the video and find out in today's Against the Odds; then, we'll talk more about the deck!

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Against the Odds: Infinite Teferi Combo

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The Deck

Infinite Teferi Combo, as its name suggests, is a combo deck. If we can assemble our combo, the end result will be pretty spectacular: infinite mana, possibly infinite card draw and tokens, and maybe even an infinitely big Crackle with Power to close out the game! When Teferi, Who Slows the Sunset won the poll, the combo was already known, so most of the brewing of the deck involved figuring out the best ways to set up the combo and to close out the game after we manage to combo off.

The Combo

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Teferi, Who Slows the Sunset looks like one of the fairer versions of Teferi we've had in a while. But maybe that isn't actually the case since there is a way to use the planeswalker to go infinite. The main goal of our deck is to get Teferi on the battlefield alongside Lithoform Engine and a mana dork and to have at least two extra mana available to pay for the trigger-copying mode of Lithoform Engine. We can +1 Teferi, Who Slows the Sunset, targeting Lithoform Engine, a land, and the mana dork, and, with the trigger on the stack, copy it with Lithoform Engine. We let the copied Teferi trigger resolve, untapping Lithoform Engine, the land, and mana dork, and can immediately use the mana from the land and mana dork to activate Lithoform Engine again to copy the original Teferi +1 trigger that is still on the stack.

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Assuming the mana dork we have on the battlefield is Tangled Florahedron or Katilda, Dawnhart Prime, the combo gains us infinite life. We make exactly enough mana to keep copying Teferi, Who Slows the Sunset's +1 trigger, gaining two life each time. On paper, this would virtually win us the game since we'd be able to set our life total to a billion after demonstrating the loop, although since we're playing on Arena, the combo will mostly just gain us a bunch of life since the clock on our turn likely will run out sooner or later.

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The combo becomes even more exciting if our mana dork is Accomplished Alchemist, which makes mana equal to the amount of life we gained during the turn. As we go through the combo, gaining two life each time a copy of Teferi, Who Slows the Sunset's +1 resolves, Accomplished Alchemist makes an ever-increasing amount of mana, which essentially gives us infinite mana of any combination of colors. Once we get to this point, we have a number of ways we can win the game with infinite mana. (One is Katilda, Dawnhart Prime making all of our creatures infinitely big with +1/+1 counters since, after we make a ton of mana, we can start using the combo to untap Katilda, while activating its+1/+1 counter ability in between).

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Outside of Katilda, Dawnhart Prime, we have a couple of other creatures that work as mana sinks for infinite mana. Kianne, Dean of Substance can make infinite Fractal tokens, allowing us to win with combat, while Triskaidekaphile lets us draw our entire deck. Somehow, after playing Triskaidekaphile last week for Against the Odds, we're playing it again this week, which is pretty weird. But it is worth mentioning that it's very unlikely that we will actually win with Triskaidekaphile's upkeep trigger. In Infinite Teferi Combo, it's just a mana sink to let us draw infinite cards.

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Our fastest plan for closing out the game is Wishing something from our sideboard, either by drawing Wish naturally or finding it as we draw our deck with Triskaidekaphile. Once we make infinite mana, we can use Wish to snag Crackle with Power from our sideboard and throw a huge amount of damage at our opponent's face (and everything else) to close out the game. We can also grab Alrund's Epiphany, not so much because we need an extra turn to win the game—the combo should be able to win immediately—but because we can use it as a way to reset the clock on Arena if we are about to run out of time. If we're on the clock for some reason before we can make enough mana for a lethal Crackle with Power, we can grab Alrund's Epiphany, start a new turn with a fresh clock, combo again, and hopefully make enough mana for the Crackle with Power kill.

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As far as cards in the main deck that aren't combo pieces, we have Memory Deluge as a way to find our combo along with Doomskar and Skyclave Apparition to keep ourselves alive long enough to combo off. 

The Matchups

By far the hardest matchup for Infinite Teferi Combo is counter-heavy control decks. To go infinite, we need three different pieces on the battlefield, and we're not especially likely to be able to win without going infinite since most of our deck is combo pieces that don't do all of that much outside of the combo. Control decks like Izzet and Dimir can let us play a combo piece or two but use counters and removal to keep us from ever getting all three pieces on the battlefield at once, making it really tough to combo. On the other hand, we have a decent shot of pulling off the combo against random midrange and even aggro decks. In these matchups, our removal is pretty effective at keeping us alive. And if we can stay alive long enough, then we'll go infinite sooner or later and pick up the win.

The Odds

All in all, we finished 2-3 with Infinite Teferi Combo, giving us a 40% win percentage. While this isn't a super competitive record, the good news is that we did pull off the combo multiple times throughout our matches, and both of our match wins were the result of the combo! While it isn't especially easy to get the combo set up, the payoff is pretty awesome if we do. We had multiple games where we managed to hit our opponent for 70-ish damage with Crackle with Power and could have dealt millions if not for the risk of running out of time on Arena. Is Infinite Teferi Combo a real threat to break Standard? No, but it is easier to pull off than I expected, and the results are pretty hilarious when it happens!

Vote for Next Week's Deck

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Conclusion

Anyway, that's all for today. Don't forget to vote for next week's deck! As always, leave your thoughts, ideas, opinions, and suggestions in the comments, and you can reach me on Twitter @SaffronOlive or at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com.



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