Following the release of the Tarkir: Dragonstorm Commander Precons, Teval, the Balanced Scale emerged as the most popular of the legends according to EDHREC. The card’s printing caused a multitude of synergistic pieces, such as Gilt-Leaf Archdruid, to spike in price.
As cool as Teval is, though, one thing we did not have on our bingo cards was the potent legend making a splash in any competitive Commander format. Yet, a deck with Teval at the helm managed to make top four of a Magic Online Duel Commander Trial.
For those unfamiliar, Duel Commander takes the similar Singleton rules of traditional EDH but is designed for one-versus-one play. Players also start at 20 life. Teval’s showing is quite remarkable in a world dominated by Aragorn, King of Gondor and Phlage, Titan of Fire’s Fury. Let’s dive in and discuss what the deck has going for it.
Maximizing Teval
Teval is a neat legend with a couple potent abilities. First, if you get to attack with Teval, you’re able to fuel your graveyard and ramp. Returning a land to play then fuels the final ability, which gives you tokens whenever one or more cards leave your graveyard.
While the attack trigger is nice, most of Teval’s value comes from being able to spew tokens at will. With this in mind, a big portion of the deck is focused on low cost ways to make cards leave your graveyard.
Creatures like Scavenging Ooze and Keen-Eyed Curator, for example, function as repeatable ways to trigger Teval. Sometimes, it’s in your best interest to play Teval with mana available so that you can immediately get value even if your opponent has a removal spell at the ready.
This is a big part of the reason why you’ll also find plenty of ways to remove cards from your graveyard for free. From Agatha’s Soul Cauldron to Psychic Frog, you have no shortage of these effects.
Of course, to complement these types of cards, you need ways to get cards into your graveyard in the first place. Fetchlands certainly help the cause, but some heavy hitters like Overlord of the Balemurk and Malevolent Rumble give you constant food for your Scavenging Ooze and company.
Lastly, we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention the important role mana dorks play in this deck. There are a bunch of one-mana dorks, including Molt Tender and Deathrite Shaman which double as Teval enablers once you have the legend in play. Given that this deck is a bit light on interaction, you need these accelerants to keep up with aggressive draws from your opponent.
Value Meets Combo
While this deck is fully capable of winning games by simply flooding the board with tokens, the presence of Nadu, Winged Wisdom as a combo piece definitely helps you close games. If you can pair Nadu with either Lightning Greaves (which synergizes with Teval by letting you get an attack in right away) or Shuko, you can start targeting each of your creatures over and over and churning through your library.
Nadu may be banned as a Commander in the format, but that doesn’t mean you can’t exploit it outside of the Command Zone. Demonic Tutor and Green Sun’s Zenith make it trivial to find Nadu. Between your suite of efficient creatures and tokens from Teval, you should have no shortage of creatures to target once Nadu is in play.
There aren’t any copies of Thassa’s Oracle or other instant win buttons once you get your Nadu engine rolling. Nonetheless, the massive resource and mana advantage is typically enough to emerge victorious. Even just finding Psychic Frog, suiting it up with Lightning Greaves, and discarding a bunch of your excess cards to enable a huge attack can end games after going off with Nadu.
Strengths and Weaknesses
Overall, this deck is very well set up to win grindy games. Teval is extremely dangerous if left unchecked. Thanks to the slew of mana accelerants, casting Teval multiple times in a game isn’t difficult. Generating lots of Zombie Druids makes it easier to fight over The Monarch and The Initiative, which are both heavily utilized mechanics in the format.
There are also some matchups where your pieces of graveyard interaction that work well alongside Teval shut down your opponent’s gameplan. Most notably, Phlage is one of the most popular Commander options in Duel Commander, and you can often keep your opponent from Escaping it.
Super aggressive draws from Kellan, Planar Trailblazer decks can be a bit concerning. Your lack of Counterspells will sometimes come back to bite you, too, when facing down combos from Lier, Disciple of the Drowned or Hidetsugu and Kairi.
Ultimately, it’s unlikely Teval pushes into the top echelon of strategies anytime soon. Regardless, it’s nice to see new legends getting their time to shine.