Tam Is a 51-Cent, Five-Color Commander. Its Average Deck Hides Four Infinite Combos, and Two Teferis Run All of Them

Commander · by Nora Kessler · October 01, 2026

Tam, the Possibility costs three mana and 51 cents, and one line of rules text makes it a five-color commander. The average deck EDHREC's builders are copying hides four infinite combos, and Tam isn't in any of them. Two Teferis run all four. Cut them and the engine finds zero, and Tam doesn't lose a single planeswalker type, because it counts types and the list plays four Teferis.

Tam Is a 51-Cent, Five-Color Commander. Its Average Deck Hides Four Infinite Combos, and Two Teferis Run All of Them

Somebody across the table picks up your commander, reads the mana cost and says "Simic?" Then they read the second line. Tam, the Possibility costs , and its only activated ability costs . That second cost is the reason it's a five-color commander. The Commander rules count every mana symbol in a card's rules text toward its color identity, not just the ones in the corner (Comprehensive Rules 903.4). So you get a 51-cent rare from Reality Fracture that comes down on turn three and lets you play any card in Magic.

Players noticed. On EDHREC, Tam was the third most-built commander of the past week with 2,088 new lists, behind only Jace, Multiverse Architect and Y'shtola. Its page counts 3,047 decks since the first one was saved on September 17. (EDHREC's figures are external, pulled October 1, and they move by the hour.) The paper release is October 2, so most of those decks haven't been sleeved yet. Now's the moment to look at what's in them.

We ran EDHREC's average Tam deck, as it stood on the afternoon of October 1, through DeckCortex's combo engine. It found four complete combo lines. Tam isn't in any of them. Two Teferis are in all of them. Take out Teferi, Temporal Archmage and Teferi, Master of Time and the engine finds zero. The deck doesn't lose a single planeswalker type doing it, because Tam doesn't count planeswalkers. It counts planeswalker types, and the list plays four Teferis.

What Tam actually counts

Two lines of text. Planeswalker spells you cast cost less. And , : proliferate X times, where X is the number of planeswalker types among planeswalkers you control.

Proliferate means you choose any number of permanents and players that have counters and give each one another counter of each kind it already has. Tam does that X times in a row, and per the release notes, nobody can respond between one proliferate and the next. X is locked in once, as the ability resolves. With a Chandra, a Teferi and an Oko on your side, X is three, and every walker you pick goes up by three. You don't have to pick the same permanents each time, and you never have to pick an opponent's.

The word that matters is types. A planeswalker type is the name after the dash: Chandra, Teferi, Jace. Two Chandras on the battlefield are one type. The crowd's list runs 22 planeswalkers but only 14 types, because four Teferis, three Chandras, three Jaces (The Theorist, Jace Beleren is a Jace) and two Elspeths share names. That doesn't make the duplicates bad cards. It means that when Tam is the plan, a new name on the battlefield is worth more than a better copy of a name you already have.

Two wrinkles the table will ask about:

And Tam is a creature with in its cost. It can't activate the turn it arrives unless something gives it haste.

Five colors for three mana, and what the fifth color costs

The discount is the easy half. Every planeswalker in the list costs one less, so a three-mana Teferi, Time Raveler comes down for two the turn after Tam. The hard half is that Tam's ability wants all five colors in one turn, every turn you want to use it. The crowd builds for that: ten shocklands, seven fetchlands, Ketria Triome, Spara's Headquarters, City of Brass, Reflecting Pool, Exotic Orchard and Command Tower among 35 lands, plus Chromatic Lantern, Birds of Paradise, Bloom Tender, Faeburrow Elder and Wrenn and Realmbreaker, which lets every land you control tap for any color.

That's where the money goes. At the cheapest paper printing of each card, the crowd's list comes to $701.85. The seven fetchlands are $166.06 of it, almost a quarter. The commander is 51 cents. If you're building on a budget, skip the fetches first. Tam doesn't care how your lands found their way onto the battlefield, and Lantern plus Wrenn fix more than a fetch does.

The engine the crowd built around it

The list is stacked with ways to add counters and ways to multiply them:

Four types and a Doubling Season is +8 loyalty on every walker you pick, from one activation. That's an ultimate every turn, and it's what you sit down to do with this deck. Nothing in that paragraph is a combo. The combos are somewhere else.

Four combos, and Tam is in none of them

The list we tested is EDHREC's average Tam deck as it stood on the afternoon of October 1. You can open the current version on EDHREC's average-deck page. It updates daily, so today's version may differ from ours by a few cards.

DeckCortex's engine finds four complete lines in the crowd's list. Two of them take infinite turns.

Lines 1 and 2: Teferi, Master of Time + Ichormoon Gauntlet + Oath of Teferi (or The Chain Veil). Teferi, Master of Time is one of the few planeswalkers that can activate on any player's turn, any time you could cast an instant. His −10 reads "Take two extra turns after this one." Ichormoon gives him and every other walker you control "[0]: Proliferate". Oath of Teferi lets each of your planeswalkers activate twice each turn.

  1. On your turn, every other walker uses "[0]: Proliferate" twice, and each proliferate adds a loyalty counter to Teferi.
  2. Teferi uses his own activations, on your turn or anyone else's, to proliferate or to fire.
  3. Once he's at ten, −10: two extra turns.
  4. Across those two extra turns, step 1 puts the ten back. Repeat until your opponents stop wanting to play.

Commander Spellbook's version starts with two other planeswalkers out and Teferi at seven loyalty. In a superfriends deck, two other walkers on the battlefield isn't a setup, it's Tuesday. The Chain Veil version is the same loop with a turn for the Veil instead of the Oath. Spellbook tags both lines "Ruthless", its Bracket 4+ tier.

Lines 3 and 4: Teferi, Temporal Archmage + The Chain Veil (+ Carth the Lion). This is the famous one, and it needs a footnote. The Chain Veil's , lets every planeswalker you control activate one more time this turn. Teferi's −1 untaps up to four target permanents. Untap the Veil and three lands that make , pay the Veil again, and every walker you control gets another activation. Each loop costs Teferi one loyalty and nets you no mana.

Commander Spellbook's catalogue turns that into an infinite by letting Teferi die and recasting him from the command zone. In a Tam deck, Teferi is in your 99. So the two-card version is a huge turn, not an infinite: a handful of extra activations for every walker you control, until Teferi runs out of loyalty. Our engine counts it as a complete line anyway, because it matches cards, and the command-zone requirement lives in the catalogue's prerequisites. Add Carth the Lion, also in the list, and the footnote goes away. Carth makes every loyalty ability you activate cost an extra [+1], so Teferi's −1 costs nothing. With three permanents that make , each loop nets one mana, Teferi never runs out, and every walker you control can activate as often as you like. That's line 4, and it's the real one.

The two-Teferi switch

Every line above runs through Teferi, Master of Time or Teferi, Temporal Archmage. We re-ran the engine on variants of the list:

Cut the Teferis. Tam won't notice, because Teferi, Hero of Dominaria and Teferi, Time Raveler are still in the deck and still carry the Teferi type. Then spend the two open slots on names the list doesn't have yet:

Both are already in about a quarter of the EDHREC Tam decks (736 and 744 of 3,047). The swap costs $7.91 at the cheapest printings, the list goes from 14 planeswalker types to 16, and we re-ran it to check that the new cards don't bring a combo of their own. They don't: zero complete lines.

The bracket, and the one planeswalker Spellbook won't let go

Our replication of DeckCortex's bracket-fit model puts the crowd's list at Bracket 3 as a floor. The cap that binds isn't the combos (the model allows complete lines in Bracket 3). It's the two Game Changers: Narset, Parter of Veils and Teferi's Protection. At $35.99, Teferi's Protection is the third most expensive card in the list. It's also the card keeping it out of Bracket 2.

The two-Teferi switch doesn't change that floor, since the Game Changers are still there. Cut Narset and Teferi's Protection too, and the floor drops to 2. One warning: that list sits exactly at the model's Bracket 2 limit of three tutors (Loyal Tutor, Entrust the Spark and Kasmina's −8, which searches your library). One more tutor and you're back to 3. Combo counts and floors are signals, not the final bracket, and we've written about why.

Commander Spellbook's bracket estimator reads it differently. It calls the crowd's list "Ruthless", its Bracket 4+ tier. After the Teferi switch, it's still Ruthless. Cut the Game Changers as well and it's still Ruthless, for one reason: it flags this card as mass land denial.

Her −9 reads: "Each opponent chooses a permanent they control of each permanent type and sacrifices the rest." The permanent types are artifact, creature, enchantment, land and planeswalker. Each opponent keeps one land.

In most decks, a −9 on a six-loyalty walker is three turns away and everybody sees it coming. In a Tam deck it can be the same turn. Liliana enters with six. If Tam has been on the battlefield since your turn began, is untapped, and two other planeswalker types are already on your side, one Tam activation counts three types, Liliana included, and puts her at nine. She hasn't activated yet that turn, so she can use her −9 right away. It takes ten mana (her six minus Tam's discount, plus ), so it's a late-game play, but Tam takes away the warning turns. With Doubling Season out, she enters with twelve and doesn't need Tam at all.

DeckCortex's model doesn't flag her (and its Bracket 2 limit would allow one mass-land-denial card anyway), so it still says 2. Take her out and Spellbook's estimate drops out of Ruthless. You don't have to cut her. You do have to say her name before the game, because "Bracket 2, I promise" and a same-turn −9 don't belong at the same table.

Rules you'll get asked about at the table

What beats it

Creatures. A fast deck that sends everything at your planeswalkers forces you to spend loyalty on blockers instead of proliferating, and Tam is a 2/4 that can't protect anybody. Artifact and enchantment removal on Ichormoon Gauntlet, Oath of Teferi or Doubling Season takes the multipliers away. A creature wrath doesn't touch your walkers, but an opposing Ugin, the Spirit Dragon exiles every colored permanent with mana value X or less. And Tam is your multiplier, not your win: it's a 2/4 with no protection, and without it the deck is a pile of planeswalkers growing one counter at a time. Removal in response to the activation doesn't stop it (the ability is already on the stack), but removing one of your walkers does shrink X. The list already has the answers to most of that (Swords to Plowshares, Path to Exile, Counterspell, Teferi's Protection if you keep it), plus Onakke Oathkeeper, which makes attacking your planeswalkers cost per creature.

The decision

| You want | Change | Cost (cheapest printings) | Complete lines | DeckCortex floor | Spellbook estimate | Planeswalker types | |---|---|---|---|---|---|---| | The crowd's list | Nothing | $701.85 | 4 | 3 | Ruthless | 14 | | The same Tam, no combos | − Teferi, Temporal Archmage, − Teferi, Master of Time, + Kasmina, Enigma Sage, + Vronos, Masked Inquisitor | $701.31 | 0 | 3 | Ruthless | 16 | | A Bracket 2 table | Also − Narset, − Teferi's Protection (two basics in) | $664.45 | 0 | 2 | Ruthless | 15 | | A list Spellbook doesn't call Ruthless | Also − Liliana, Dreadhorde General (a basic in) | $656.37 | 0 | 2 | Below Ruthless | 14 |

If you're bringing Tam to a table that combos, the crowd's list is a real deck. Just know that its kill isn't Tam, it's Teferi taking every turn from here on. If you bought a 51-cent commander to ultimate planeswalkers, make the two-Teferi swap and stop there. It costs nothing and gains you two types. Go further only if your table says 2, and if you keep Liliana, tell them about her. Then rebuild your version in DeckCortex before your next game and run the scan. The engine lists every complete line in your 100, and the bracket fit tells you which card to pull before anyone has to ask.

Data notes: The crowd's list is EDHREC's average Tam, the Possibility deck as served on the afternoon of October 1, 2026; average lists change during the day. EDHREC ranks, deck counts and inclusion counts are external figures retrieved October 1, 2026. Card prices are Scryfall paper-aggregate asks retrieved October 1, 2026, using the cheapest paper printing of each card (Commodore Guff has only a foil price and is counted at $17.49); Reality Fracture cards are brand new and their prices move daily. Combo lines come from DeckCortex's spellbook engine on the exact lists described, with removed cards replaced by basic lands or by the named replacements. Our reading of the Teferi, Temporal Archmage line and the Liliana timing come from the Oracle text and Commander Spellbook's published prerequisites, not from engine output. The bracket floor is our deterministic replication of DeckCortex's bracket-fit model: a lower bound, not a final 1–5 bracket. The Spellbook estimate comes from Commander Spellbook's public bracket estimator on October 1, 2026; it is Spellbook's reading, not Wizards'. Rules references are to the Comprehensive Rules effective September 25, 2026, and the Reality Fracture release notes. Reality Fracture cards are legal from October 2, 2026; no play data exists yet.

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