Teferi, Time Raveler #2 – Top 12 MTG Cards of 2019

David
Fanany
Player
since
1995

This card was #3 on my Top 12 list.

Over on Instagram, I have a post style that I bring back now and then, a reference to how it feels to get a dominant planeswalker off the field. It used to star Jace; nowadays, he’s been replaced by Teferi. The Time Raveler is actually the second version of Teferi to become a Standard powerhouse, as Dominaria‘s version was just as ubiquitous. This one may actually be the more powerful of the two. Preventing your opponent from taking advantage of their flexible cards is a good ability and severely limits their ability to interact with you, and that’s before his +1 gives you a range of strategic options that usually do not exist at all. I’ll repeat just for emphasis: that’s a +1 ability that takes him out of the range of many common damage spells. 

He’s very well designed in the sense of every one of his abilities feeling like you’re manipulating time, but I always have to question why the color that’s best at instants also got a card that shuts down instants. Shouldn’t the distribution of that kind of thing be analogous to hosing enemy colors, or something?

Tomorrow is our top card of 2019, and much like in the Royal Rumble match, you already know who it is if you’ve been paying attention throughout the year!

Constructed: 4/5
Casual: 4/5
Limited: 3/5
Multiplayer: 3/5
EDH/Commander: 3/5

This card was 3rd on my Top 12 list.

Limiting opponents to sorcery-speed on their spells is, it turns out, a really powerful ability, particularly on a fairly inexpensive planeswalker. Teferi, Time Raveler has definitely proven to be a multi-format all-star since his release; not only does he provide a one-sided lockdown effect, he can also give your sorcery spells flash and bounce a troublesome permanent in one card (even drawing you a card in the process). His static ability presents the ability to really get weird with spells that force strange stack interactions, like Eye of the Storm and Knowledge Pool, potentially locking your opponents out of ever casting anything for the rest of the game; those are mostly Commander curios, but never underestimate what constraining your opponent can do, particularly since Teferi impedes countermagic rather nicely on his own. Like I said back when we originally reviewed him, he’ll have a hard time winning you a game all on his own, but he’ll certainly help you with getting there!

Constructed: 4.5
Casual: 3.75
Limited: 3.5
Multiplayer: 4
Commander: 4.5

Phat
Pack
Magic
YouTube

Hello Everyone and welcome back to Pojo’s Card of the Day!

Today we’re looking at the top 12 cards of 2019 and we’re one away from the #1 card of the year! But let’s look at the runner up, Teferi, Time Raveler.

This guy has caused major upsets as to the static abilities on planeswalkers being ‘too good’ and the outcry means we probably aren’t going to get them back for a LONG time and they’re probably going to be neutered to heck and back in comparison to the War of the Spark goodness we’re seeing today.

So why was Teferi, Time Raveler, causing such a major outcry?

Let’s start off with his mana cost, 1WU, 3 cmc is the hallmark of some of the best planeswalkers to ever hit the game because of their ability to come down early and with small incremental effects that don’t necessarily take over the game at first glance.

Teferi’s static ability basically reads ‘I’m playing Magic, you’re playing Hearthstone.’ The amount of cards this turns off is so huge that I’m surprised if soon he doesn’t see the ban-list chopping block in Pioneer. Teferi simply landing turns off all countermagic, a throwback to the original Teferi that was printed in Time Spiral. But that’s not all. Countermagic, Combat Tricks, EoT Kill Spells, all of that gets blasted away until they manage to deal with Teferi. And his starting Loyalty isn’t nothing to sneeze at either!

So his +1 means that all your sorcery spells can be cast as though they had flash, and this is one of the hallmark reasons why UW Control is doing so well in Pioneer. Back in the day they had to use Quicken to instant speed Supreme Verdict! Now a lovely little planeswalker can threaten a verdict all day, every day.

Finally his -3, his ‘ultimate’ of sorts, bounces an artifact, creature, or enchantment, to its owners hand. And you draw a card. This allows you to play the tempo game as well as drawing a card, if they’re mid-range this means you probably get another turn with Teferi before their redeployed threat can kill it, and by then you’ll have access to more removal than they know what to deal with! …Or a Supreme Verdict on Turn 4!

So this is all well and good for more ‘fair’ formats, what about the Unfair formats like Modern and Legacy and Vintage?

He’s doing well in Modern, enough so that his price tag is sticking around the 20$ mark, but not too well that he’s dethroning Oko for the top Planeswalker spot.

In Legacy and Vintage, he’s been cast aside because of the sheer power that Oko has proven itself to be.

Now this guy is going to be pretty good for Commander, mainly because he acts like Narset and turns on the Fun Police, don’t expect him to stick around for too long, people like their instants and Teferi can’t bounce all the things from a Multiplayer table!

In Cube? This guy is amazing, he’s definitely a reason to start hedging your bets into going Azorius, or even first pickable if he’s not competing for P9 in the pack!

Constructed 4.9/5 – He’ll be rated higher when Oko gets banned in the other formats.

Commander 2/5 – A Fun Police card, don’t deploy unless you’re ready to combo off.

Limited 4/5 – Unfortunately in a booster draft with WotS you’re not going to have a ton of sorceries to make good on his +1, but a bounce + draw for 1WU is worth playing no matter what!

Cube 5/5 – He’s an all-star here that turns on the degeneracy for you, and off for your opponents!

Phat Pack Magic is a channel dedicated to Magic: the Gathering and creating awesome coverage of local events for formats like Cube, rare pack drafts, and now FNM Pioneer videos! Check it out at YouTube.com/PhatPackMagic