On Friday, a preview panel at MagicCon: Chicago revealed a boatload of information about Tarkir: Dragonstorm. From main set spoilers to Commander Precon descriptions, we now have a glimpse of what the set is bringing to the table.
One of the most intriguing cards revealed during the preview panel was actually a Dragon legend from one of the Precons. Teval, the Balanced Scale looks like a great EDH card, especially when you factor in the card’s combo potential.
Teval and Phyrexian Altar
For the sake of these intriguing combos, we’re going to be focusing mostly on Teval’s final ability. Any time a card leaves your graveyard, you get a 2/2 Zombie Druid token for your troubles. While this ability caps you at one Zombie Druid token even if a bunch of cards leave your graveyard at once, you can still flood the board with tokens if you’re able to keep making cards leave one by one.
There are a handful of ways to generate infinite tokens, infinite mana, or infinite life drain with Teval and Phyrexian Altar in play. The easiest way to generate infinite tokens is by simply adding Gravecrawler to the mix.
Start by sacrificing Gravecrawler to Phyrexian Altar, netting one black mana. Because Teval is conveniently a Zombie, you can use that mana to recast Gravecrawler right away from your graveyard. By doing so, you’ll create a Zombie Druid token as well. Repeating this process over and over will net you infinite 2/2s.
In the case where you can’t find Gravecrawler, Liliana, Untouched by Death can fill a similar role. By using Liliana’s -3 ability, any one-mana Zombie now goes infinite in the same manner alongside Phyrexian Altar. Now, let’s kick things up a notch and say that one-mana Zombie is Shambling Ghast. Now, you also get to create infinite Treasure tokens alongside your Zombie Druid army.
Finally, Phyrexian Altar pairs perfectly with Tortured Existence. As long as you have a creature in your hand and a creature in your graveyard, you can activate Tortured Existence to essentially swap those creatures. This will trigger Teval. From there, sacrifice the Zombie Druid token to Phyrexian Altar to net one black mana. Use this mana to activate Tortured Existence, swapping those same creatures again.
By itself, this loop doesn’t accomplish much, since you have to sacrifice your Zombie Druid tokens to keep it going. However, all it takes is a Blood Artist effect to end the game on the spot. Teval is the ultimate combo card, and we’re just getting started.
Teval Makes Existing Combos Better
Besides Phyrexian Altar, Teval happens to pair extremely nicely with Insidious Roots. Even as just a value engine, Insidious Roots is sure to net you a ton of mana alongside Teval. On top of that, though, Teval’s presence makes it easy to generate infinite mana when executing some prominent Insidious Roots combos.
Take the Insiduous Roots+Tortured Existence+Tyvar, Jubilant Brawler combo, for example. Typically, the combo works as follows:
- Discard a creature card via Tortured Existence to return a creature from your graveyard to your hand.
- Insidious Roots triggers, netting you a Plant token
- Tap that Plant token for black mana right away thanks to Tyvar. Use this mana to activate Tortured Existence once more
- Repeat this process over and over
The end result is a bunch of infinitely large Plants. The problem is that your Plant squad will be tapped. Luckily, this is where Teval comes to save the day.
With Teval and Insidious Roots out, each time you activate Tortured Existence, you’ll get a Plant and Zombie Druid token. Both tokens can tap for mana right away with Tyvar in play, so you’ll now have access to infinite mana. If you were to replace Tyvar with a Haste enabler like Concordant Crossroads, you could instead attack with infinite tokens and win the game right away.
Another example of a combo that becomes quite intriguing with Teval is the Aphetto Alchemist+Mesmeric Orb combo. Typically, this combo is used to help you mill your whole deck. You just repeatedly tap Aphetto Alchemist to untap itself and mill a card with Mesmeric Orb each time.
Sure, you can now end the game with Thassa’s Oracle, but it’s more fun to win with Teval and an Eldrazi Titan that shuffles your graveyard back into your deck, such as Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre.
All you have to do is execute the combo like you normally would. Once you mill over the Eldrazi Titan, your graveyard will shuffle back into your library, and you’ll get a Zombie Druid from Teval. Eventually, you’ll end up with infinite Zombie Druid tokens in play.
Fun With Druids
What’s quite unique about Teval when compared to similar combo enablers, including Tormod, the Desecrator, is that the tokens you generate via your infinite combos are both untapped and Druids in addition to Zombies. This makes for some fun and amusing synergies.
At the top of that list, we have Gilt-Leaf Archdruid. Gilt-Leaf Archdruid is a messed-up card alongside Teval. Getting to seven Zombie Druid tokens isn’t too hard normally. Of course, Gilt-Leaf Archdruid also ensures that if you can create infinite tokens, you can steal all opposing lands as well.
Seton, Krosan Protector is also a Druid worth mentioning. All your tokens now produce mana, and they don’t need Haste to do so. Infinite tokens now translates to infinite mana with Seton out, which is pretty awesome.
As you can tell, Teval opens the door for tons of different combos and synergies. We look forward to seeing what other ways players look towards maximizing Teval once Tarkir: Dragonstorm releases in April.