How Does Teferi’s Protection Work?
Debuting in Commander 2017, Teferi’s Protection is one of the best ways to protect your life total and your board state during a game of Commander. The popularity of this spell hasn’t stopped people from misunderstanding how it works, likely stemming from a combination of poor explanations online and its unique combination of effects. In this article, we’ll go over what it does and how it works in detail. Let’s do this!
Until your next turn, your life total can’t change and you have protection from everything.
Teferi’s Protection is neither the first card to make it so a player’s life total can’t change nor the first card that grants a player protection. Cards such as Platinum Empyrion and Runed Halo have been around for a long time now and these printings also include great reminder text that explains the basics of how these things work. We’ll go over them in more detail because there’s only so much space for text on a Magic card.
When your life total can’t change, it’s fixed at whatever number it was when this effect began. You can’t gain life, you can’t lose life, and you can’t pay any amount of life other than 0. This also means that effects that set your life total to a different value or exchange your life total with something do not work, because it’s impossible for the exchange to be made. This usually doesn’t mean that you don’t take damage, but…
When you have protection from everything, you can’t be targeted by anything, all damage that would be dealt to you is prevented, and Auras can’t enchant you. This also prevents you from doing these things to yourself, so bear that in mind in case it turns out to be relevant. That said, having protection from everything doesn’t mean that you’re totally invincible or that absolutely nothing can happen to you.
After all, you do not phase out, even if your favorite content creator says you do.
You’re still in the game, which means that some spells and abilities will still work on you. You’ll still discard your hand and draw cards if someone casts Windfall and the triggered ability and first activated ability of Soul-Guide Lantern can still work on your graveyard. Your hand, library, and graveyard haven’t gone anywhere and nothing stops effects like these that aren’t targeting you directly from making you do these things.
You might still be asked to make choices as part of the resolution of spells and abilities, as long as they don’t target you. This is one of the things that I see people get confused about most. You can also still be attacked by creatures, and abilities such as myriad will still see you and make a token attacking you. This usually won’t deal any damage to you, which means that you’re probably safe. Except for when you’re not. More on that soon.
Remember when I said that you aren’t totally invincible? Thassa’s Oracle can still let another player win the game while you have protection from everything. Similarly, the ultimate ability of Nicol Bolas, Dragon-God can also cause you to lose the game, especially if you’ve phased out your commander and other things that would normally stop the ability from working on you. Don’t worry. We’ll get to phasing out.
It’s also worth noting that you can still take damage when that damage can’t be prevented, even though your life total can’t change. This mostly matters for commander damage and things like infect and toxic, because these can still take you out. Other triggered abilities that care about damage will also happen, which usually isn’t a big deal unless we’re talking about something like Phage, the Untouchable!
Okay, I could keep talking about all sorts of different cards here but I think you can pretty much figure anything else out based on the examples that were already given.
All permanents you control phase out.
Phasing is one of the weirder abilities in Magic. A permanent with phasing will essentially disappear at the beginning of your untap step and then reappear at the beginning of your next untap step, confusingly without ever changing zones or actually leaving the battlefield. Cards such as Slip Out the Back can also phase permanents out, usually as a one-time thing as part of the resolution of a spell or ability.
Since phased out permanents return at the start of your untap step and then untap—a step during which no player gets priority—there is no opportunity on your turn where opponents can act before they phase back in. This can be potent when combined with cards such as Grand Abolisher. Unfortunately, this also means that your permanents can be stuck in limbo if an effect causes you to skip your untap step.
Permanents that phase in or out do not change game zones, which means that the ability of a card such as Grasp of Fate will not trigger again when it phases back in. It also won’t return the exiled nonland permanents to the battlefield while it’s phased out. Similarly, tokens will not leave the battlefield, which means that you can safely phase them out as well. This is one of the weirdest things about phasing things out.
While effects that do something until a permanent leaves the battlefield will continue to work while the permanent is phased out, cards such as Kitesail Larcenist will not keep working because they’re not considered to be on the battlefield while they’re phased out, even though they haven’t actually left. The same is also true for replacement effects such as the one on Dauthi Voidwalker. Plan accordingly.
When your permanents are phased out, they are treated as though they aren’t on the battlefield. One of the main applications for this is making sure that nothing happens to your board state. Cards such as Cyclonic Rift or Damn won’t do anything to your permanents while they’re phased out, which means that you can cast Teferi’s Protection to survive almost any board wipe unscathed.
Yes, that includes your own board wipes! You can cast an all-modes Farewell after your permanents phase out if you want to, although it will also exile your graveyard since those cards do not phase out. Balancing Act would be particularly diabolical, as it will not see any permanents under your control when it resolves, although you may still have to discard if you’re not the player with the fewest cards in hand.
Yes, you can still cast spells after you phase out your permanents, as long as you can pay the costs required to do so. This usually means floating mana before you phase out lands and mana rocks and casting spells afterwards.
Players also can’t gain control of permanents that are phased out using a spell such as Expropriate, which means that you can safely choose money without worrying about losing your best permanent. That said, temporary control effects such as Mob Rule that expire at the end of turn will still expire if the object is phased out. In other words, you can’t use cards like this to permanently steal something!
You can’t sacrifice or exile creatures that are phased out, which means that cards that create tokens that get sacrificed or exiled later have an interesting interaction with Teferi’s Protection. You can use it to keep the copies that you made with Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker or tokens created by myriad. It’s important to remember that the token copies will also have myriad, so this can be pretty significant for your next combat phase.
Phasing out your Platinum Angel means that its ability will no longer protect you, which is something that I have seen cause a player to lose the game. Similarly, if your commander is phased out, Fierce Guardianship’s alternate cost can’t be paid because the game does not currently consider you to control a commander. This is the same reason why you can lose to Nicol Bolas, Dragon God if you phase out your commander.
Equipment or Auras on an equipped or enchanted permanent that phases out will phase out with it, which can be beneficial if you’re playing these cards and attaching them to your stuff. Unfortunately, this also applies to objects controlled by your opponents! An opponent’s Planar Disruption will remain attached to your permanent even when it phases out and it will still be there when it phases back in.
I could give more examples of cards that will not work on permanents that are phased out, I think that I’ve provided a solid base for understanding how it works.
Exile Teferi’s Protection.
This last part is very simple. Teferi’s Protection exiles itself during its resolution, which means that you can’t resolve it and then recur it from your graveyard again later. It also means that it never actually goes to your graveyard when it resolves, so cards that care about things entering or leaving your graveyard won’t see it. I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve seen someone put it in the graveyard by mistake!
I hope that this article has helped you to better understand how Teferi’s Protection works. I’ll be doing more articles about cards that are consistently misplayed in the future, so I hope that you’ll find those useful as well. I wanted to leave you with a couple of other cards that are similar to Teferi’s Protection and also make use of some of the same basic principles in how they function during a Commander game.
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