Tam, the Possibility Bracket 3 Commander Deck Guide

Tam, the Possibility | Illustration by Martina Fačková

A set’s most popular commanders tend to be powerful enough to be exciting or generic enough to encourage brewing. For Reality Fracture, the second spot goes to Tam, the Possibility. Five colors, cost reduction, and proliferate add up to a superfriends support card that blows the others out of the water.

Let’s put it together!

The Deck

Tam, Observant Sequencer | Illustration by Jodie Muir

One of the downsides of superfriends—whether you’re playing with or against it—is how slow and durdly they are. The win conditions are typically planeswalker ultimates you need three turns to reach, and board wipes are the premium form of protection. But this deck takes a different route. It plays a more assertive game, biasing towards planeswalkers that create tokens to make a large board state. Instead of board wipes, the protection messes with opposing combats. Your opponents keep their creatures, and often still attack, but they’ll have trouble ganging up on your planeswalkers.

This is solidly a Bracket 3 deck. It builds extremely powerful board states, often quickly since it has ramp in the command zone, and it even has an infinite combo chilling in the 99.

The Commander: Tam, the Possibility

Tam, the Possibility keeps things vanilla. You get cost reduction to play good ‘walkers faster and a proliferate ability that scales with your board, and costs for color identity purposes.

Tam makes the game flow easier. You get an early blocker that protects your planeswalkers from utility creatures, the cost reduction makes your curve-outs more explosive, and the activated ability can shave a turn or two off a planeswalker’s ultimate or let you use a minus ability on subsequent turns. We see this structure often these days: New commanders offer very general support so the commander doesn’t overshadow the cards it supports.

Planeswalkers

Oko, Thief of Crowns doesn’t dominate in Commander like in 1v1, but making creatures lose their abilities without killing them is one of the most efficient answers to opposing commanders.

Teyo, Geometric Tactician could fall under the protection category thanks to its -2, which lets you dictate the direction of combat.

Archangel Elspeth is another token engine, though throwing counters onto Tam enables sneaky combat wins once Tam proliferates a few times.

Garruk Wildspeaker has aged the best of the Lorwyn Five, and its ramp plus overrun effect are extremely welcome here. The newer Garruk, Curse Breaker also makes an appearance as one of the few sources of big tokens. There are actually more Garruks than any other planeswalker since Garruk, Cursed Huntsman snuck in to make wolves.

Teferi, Master of Time and Teferi, Hero of Dominaria provide card draw and have some of the scarier ultimates.

Neither Nissa, Ascended Animist nor Jace, Reality Sculptor are at their best in a 5-color deck because they care about a land type, but their other abilities more than make up for the deficiency. Nissa makes the largest tokens and (this) Jace has a wonderful protection ability on the -3.

I’ve always considered Vraska, Betrayal's Sting one of the more planeswalker-oriented planeswalkers since it proliferates so easily. Its ultimate is extremely potent with Tam since the commander kills your opponents once they have 9 poison.

This isn’t the best Comet, Stellar Pup deck since it’s light on low-cost permanents (though it very importantly recurs fetch lands) but the dog planeswalker is too cute to bench.

Chandra, Awakened Inferno excels at winning long, grindy games. It also adds lots of pressure to back up the tokens. Chandra, Legacy of Fire adds similar pressure while coming with mana generation. The big bursts of mana enable lines where you play a big planeswalker and activate Tam in the same turn to get an ultimate.

The Eternal Wanderer has one of the few proper board wipes in the deck attached to it, and it represents the deck’s grindy potential. If you keep Tam around and proliferate enough to use the -4 every other turn or even every turn, your opponents will fall.

The Theorist, Jace Beleren scales beautifully in Commander. You get card draw and interaction, and it even makes tokens for the theme of the deck! Tam makes the ultimate super achievable and benefits from it since you can proliferate those +1/+1 counters later.

Elspeth, Storm Slayer is almost the best planeswalker in the deck. A token doubler and token engine and finisher is a list of abilities so stacked that putting them on one card seems irresponsible.

But the title of the deck’s best planeswalker must go to the scourge of Reality Fracture Draft, the killer of a thousand Limited trophies: Ajani Unrelenting. It forces all your planeswalkers to be token producers and has a one-sided board wipe, plus it pumps their power.

Planeswalker Support

This section has some overlap with the following since some of the protection pieces reference planeswalkers directly; these are the support cards that advance your game plan rather than mess with your opponents.

Oath of Teferi has few targets worth flickering since you don’t get to reuse a planeswalker ability right away, but letting you activate your planeswalkers twice is pretty sweet.

Way of the Mind Sculptor empowers Jace and draws two cards, then keeps drawing cards through the rest of the game. Though you often want to uptick your planeswalkers, several were included for their downticks (Teyo and Jace come to mind).

Jaya's Phoenix adds power to the board and lets your planeswalkers thrive. Remember that this copies a loyalty ability; it doesn’t let you activate a planeswalker twice or add extra loyalty counters.

The proliferation package goes further than Tam. Thrummingbird and Grateful Apparition provide chip damage that becomes structural once you get counters on them. It’s also nice to have flying chump blockers in a pinch. Evolution Sage and Atraxa, Praetors' Voice also provide consistent proliferation, but they don’t require combat.

Carth the Lion stands atop the other planeswalker payoffs. It adds more loyalty, it digs for another planeswalker, and it makes ultimates easier to reach. Carth is the ultimate superfriends payoff, even if it’s only two colors.

Protection

These cards primarily protect your planeswalkers, though some of them help keep your life total high.

Tomik, Wielder of Law is more of a deterrent than a strict protection piece, but it stacks well with the other protection spells and makes your opponents think twice about going for your planeswalkers as the game winds on and life totals dwindle.

Tomik, Orzhov Lawmage is a far more convincing protection piece, making it so your opponents can only send one creature at each planeswalker. Some damage still creeps through, but this makes it hard to kill your planeswalkers outright.

But Sanctum Lurker makes killing planeswalkers with damage impossible since they survive on 0 loyalty. The burn ability is also extremely useful once you have a large board; as nice as drawing cards is, sometimes you just need five planeswalkers throwing damage across the board.

Norn's Annex, Archangel of Tithes, and Archon of Absolution make it harder for your opponents to attack you or your planeswalkers en masse unless they want to sacrifice their turn. Onakke Oathkeeper is the cheapest version of this effect and has a recursion ability, but it doesn’t protect you.

Mutational Advantage and Ripples of Potential are unique protection spells that keep your planeswalkers safe from all manner of threats, from wide boards to targeted removal spells to the few sweepers that catch planeswalkers, like Final Act.

Pramikon, Sky Rampart keeps Teyo, Geometric Tactician’s combat redirection going permanently. Defending your planeswalkers from one player is vastly easier than three, especially when you get to pick which player you’re defending against.

Crawlspace is probably the best protection spell here because it affects you and your planeswalkers, and it’s so wide-reaching. Effectively pressuring one planeswalker often requires multiple attackers, and your opponent might not even manage that with this in play, let alone pressuring multiples.

The Mana Base

The intense mana requirements keep anything flashy from happening in the mana base. There’s a bunch of 1-mana accelerants to help play Tam, Arcane Signet and Fellwar Stone as color fixers, and a pile of fetches, shocks, triomes, and other lands to fix mana. Five colors’ worth of fixing sadly leaves no room for utility lands.

The Strategy

While superfriends boards are tricky to track because they become cluttered and you have so many permanents to activate, the gameplay is often very straightforward: You play planeswalkers and activate them, upticking as often as possible. That applies to this deck, especially because so many planeswalkers make tokens on their uptick.

Sequencing your planeswalkers is a major decision that you should often make based on your opponents’ boards. Developing planeswalkers requires careful evaluation of opposing board states since your opponents can attack them. Be mindful of who can attack where, and play the planeswalkers that are most likely to survive. Wait to play fragile or must-kill planeswalkers until you have a protection piece or another planeswalker to make blockers/distract your opponents.

Combos and Interactions

The first interaction I’d like to cover regards planeswalker types, which Tam’s activated ability cares about. Most planeswalkers have one planeswalker type but, like anything in Magic, there are exceptions. In this build, those exceptions are The Eternal Wanderer, which has no planeswalker type (like all Wanderer cards) and The Royal Scions, which has two planeswalker types.

I also want to mention the best planeswalkers to proliferate, and why. The easy answer is any planeswalker that’s about to ultimate, but some of these have utility beyond that, namely The Eternal Wanderer, Teyo, Geometric Tactician, and Jace, Reality Sculptor.

These are all great for the same reason: They’re incredibly controlling. As long as Tam can add three loyalty counters (two, for Teyo), you can use their controlling downticks each turn. Wanderer is easily the strongest since it actively clears the board, but the others are great, too. While that doesn’t sound like a win, consider that putting three counters on these planeswalkers means you have at least two others doing good work to pull you ahead of the stalled board state you’re creating. When you have absolute control of the board and a Teferi, Hero of Dominaria about to ultimate, the game’s pretty much done.

There’s also an infinite turns combo that uses Tam and Teferi, Master of Time. If you control Teferi with at least 6 loyalty counters and Tam, plus four additional planeswalker types, you can take infinite turns:

• Proliferate with Tam where X=5, giving Teferi 11 total loyalty.
• Remove 10 loyalty to stack two extra turns.
• On each turn, activate Tam to proliferate five times, bringing Teferi up to 6 then 11 loyalty; well, 12 since you can activate Teferi’s loot on the first turn.
• Activate Teferi again on the second turn.

This combo is pretty hard to pull off since you need both specific permanents and four other planeswalkers (maybe three, since The Royal Scions counts as two), but it will win the game if you get lucky… though it won’t take too many extra turns since the other planeswalkers presumably ultimate with 5 loyalty counters a turn.

Rule 0 Violations

The Teferi combo might not go down well in Bracket 3 because of the “no chaining turns” thing. In my opinion, infinite turns isn’t meaningfully different than any other infinite combo—unless your opponent can stop it, saying “I have infinite turns” is equally as game-ending as “I have infinite damage”, and players should scope accordingly. But Magic players love splitting hairs. If your play group bans infinite turns, replace Teferi with a different planeswalker.

Budget Options

I normally just say “make your mana base work” here, but it’s worth spending more time to discuss what a 5-color mana base requires to be budget. My biggest piece of advice would be leaning into green-based land ramp rather than creatures, and look for budget duals. Spells like Farseek and Three Visits grab cards like Molten Tributary and Murmuring Bosk, respectively. You can also do decent stuff with gates and cards like Circuitous Route, and the common duals from Reality Fracture all enter untapped when you control a planeswalker.

Another way to make the mana base better and cheaper is to streamline your threats so you’re close to a 2-color deck. This deck already skews Bant (), but you could tighten that further with swaps like Chandra, Awakened Inferno for Elspeth Tirel and Saheeli, Sublime Artificer for Nissa, Voice of Zendikar. Lowering the deck’s color requirements also reduces the strain of the mana base. There’s a world where you build this as a nearly blue-green-white deck and rely on cards like Command Tower and Plaza of Heroes to activate Tam.

Atraxa, Praetors' Voice can be swapped with Flux Channeler as a cheap proliferate engine.

The Theorist, Jace Beleren is an incredible planeswalker, mostly for the card advantage. You can try Mentor of the Meek instead to profit off the token generation.

Craterhoof Behemoth and Moonshaker Cavalry are among the easiest cards to substitute in the game because there are so many overrun effects out there.

Delighted Halfling, Bloom Tender, and Noble Hierarch are the most expensive dorks. Switch them for things like Llanowar Elves or Wild Growth. Faeburrow Elder is also a consideration to swap in for Bloom Tender.

Chandra, Flamecaller is a good swap for Chandra, Awakened Inferno or any of the other expensive, high-cost planeswalkers.

Elspeth, Storm Slayer doesn’t have a clean swap as both token producer and token maker. Another Elspeth like Elspeth Tirel can work, as could a different token doubler like Parallel Lives.

Other Builds

You can’t do anything with Tam that’s not planeswalkers, but you could take the planeswalker deck in a different direction.

The first option is hard control. Ditch the creatures and lean into board wipes like Farewell and Sunfall and other anti-creature tech like Smoke and Meekstone. Swap the token planeswalkers for planeswalkers like Jace, the Mind Sculptor and Professor Dellian Fel that win the game without entering combat.

Alternatively, you could focus on planeswalker combos. Teferi, Temporal Archmage and The Chain Veil goes infinite easily, there’s a spicy line with Vivien on the Hunt that assembles Kiki-Felidar, and I’m sure Intruder Alarm and Tam, the Possibility wins somehow.

Commanding Conclusion

Teferi, Master of Time | Illustration by Yongjae Choi

I didn’t expect Tam, the Possibility to be quite as popular as it is, but it has all elements of a good commander. This deck tries to give planeswalkers a more assertive spin with strong token synergies, but there are plenty of other ways to take it.

How would you build Tam? What’s your favorite Reality Fracture commander, or planeswalker? Let me know in the comments below or on the Draftsim Discord! For more Draftsim, check out our YouTube channel and newsletter, both called The Daily Upkeep!

Stay safe, and thanks for reading!