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Teferi's Protection card art
Live Play Data

Teferi's Protection

{2} {W} · Instant · Double Masters 2022 (2X2)
16%
Live Inclusion
Buy on TCGplayer
Times Brought
1043
Decks Running
572
Median Cast Turn
8.0
Drawn → Played
57%
Format
Multiplayer 1v1

16% of tracked Commander decks run Teferi's Protection, and when drawn it reaches the stack 57% of the time, with a median first-cast turn of 8.0.

Teferi's Protection sits in 16% of the 3662 decks tracked on Playgroup Live, appearing across 572 distinct lists. That figure reflects white's broadest safety-valve spell: three mana to phase out your board, lock your life total, and gain protection from everything until your next turn.

The card is a reactive instant, so the cast-turn distribution tells an important story. The median first cast lands on turn 8.0, well past the early-game ramp window. Players hold it as a response piece: the median time a drawn copy sat in hand before being cast was 4 turns, and only 13% of casts happened on the same turn the card was drawn. That patience is by design. You don't cast Teferi's Protection; you deploy it when the board demands it.

In multiplayer Commander, decks running Teferi's Protection show a 32% win rate in games where it resolved, compared to 26% when it stayed in the library the entire game. That's a directional +5.5 percentage-point lift across a healthy sample of 128 cast observations and 747 library observations. The data is consistent with the card's reputation as a game-extending, often game-deciding panic button.

At a glance
  • 16% of tracked Commander decks include Teferi's Protection
  • T8.0 median first-cast turn, reflecting its role as a reactive instant held for the right moment
  • 57% of drawn copies reached the stack before the game ended
  • 13% same-turn cast rate, players almost always hold it rather than slamming it immediately
  • +5.5pp win-rate lift when cast versus when it stayed in the library all game
  • 389 unique players have brought Teferi's Protection to a tracked game, a well-spread dataset

First-cast turn

n=128
0%
T1
0%
T2
1%
T3
2%
T4
7%
T5
65%
T6-9
25%
T10+
Median 8.0 P25 6 · P75 10 · max 15
On curve 1% (1 / 128 cast on T3) Cast same turn as drawn 13%

The "good card" funnel

1046 brought · 389 players
Brought to game
1046
Ever drawn
225
Reached battlefield
128
Still on board at game end
11
57%

Of 1046 copies brought to games, 225 were drawn, 128 of those resolved on the stack, and from there the card exiles itself, so its impact lives in the turns that follow rather than in a persistent battlefield presence.

≥ -2.2pp

Players who cast this card win 32% of the time (n=128) , vs 26% when it never left the library (n=747).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 26% (n=94) — about the same as leaving it in the library. Those players survived long enough to draw it, so the gap above is about the card resolving, not just about surviving.

Observed gap +5.5pp; 95% confidence interval -2.2pp to +13.2pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

Final zone distribution

254 instances
5.1%
Library
4.3%
Battlefield
36.6%
Graveyard
19.3%
Exile

Most copies end the game in the graveyard or hand rather than exile, because only cast copies hit the exile zone stipulated by the card's own text. The library bucket is small, meaning a meaningful share of brought copies were actually interacted with or drawn.

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

The top commanders span five-color goodstuff, mono-white angels, and aggro-midrange Mardu and Naya builds, a spread that confirms Teferi's Protection is a white-staple role-player rather than a narrow archetype pick.

Frequently Asked

How often is Teferi's Protection drawn in a Commander game?
Across 853 tracked games where a deck included Teferi's Protection, it was drawn 22% of the time. That's typical for a 3-mana singleton in a 100-card deck. Of those 225 drawn instances, 57% were eventually cast before the game concluded.
What turn does Teferi's Protection usually get cast?
The median first-cast turn is 8.0, with the interquartile range running from turn 6 to turn 9. This is a mid-to-late game deployment pattern that matches how the card is used: held in hand as a reactive shield against board wipes, combat, or win attempts, then cast when the threat materializes. Only 13% of casts happened on the same turn the card was drawn.
Does casting Teferi's Protection actually improve your win rate?
In 128 participations where Teferi's Protection resolved, decks won at a rate of 32%. In 747 participations where it never left the library, the win rate was 26%. The +5.5 percentage-point gap is a directional signal across a solid sample. Both buckets are well-populated, so the lift is one of the more credible signals in the dataset, though Playgroup Live's overall game count remains modest.
Is Teferi's Protection banned anywhere?
Teferi's Protection is legal in Commander, Legacy, Vintage, Historic, Timeless, Oathbreaker, and several other formats. It is not legal in Modern, Pioneer, Standard, Pauper, or Pauper Commander. It is also not legal in PreDH, which restricts cards printed after 1994. It has never been banned in Commander by the Rules Committee, though it is frequently cited in ban-list discussions due to its near-universally board-saving effect at a very low mana cost.
Which commanders most commonly run Teferi's Protection?
The Ur-Dragon leads the top-commander list with 21 decks, followed by Giada, Font of Hope at 15 and Baylen, the Haymaker and Kaalia of the Vast each at 11. The spread across five-color, Mardu, Naya, and mono-white commanders confirms that Teferi's Protection is format-role card rather than a tribal or archetype-specific include. Any deck in white that expects to need a full-board panic button puts it in consideration.