Superfriends decks are a great excuse to put some of Magic's biggest personalities on the battlefield together. There is something incredibly fun about having several planeswalkers working toward different ultimates while your opponents try to decide which one needs to go first. Reality Fracture gives that strategy a new commander in Tam, the Possibility, and she can move those loyalty counters along in a hurry.
For my version of this deck, I wanted to combine a variety of planeswalkers with cards that make every loyalty activation matter. Proliferate helps build toward the big abilities, extra activations let us get more done each turn, and the Way enchantments give our planeswalkers an entire menu of additional options.
This is a five-color deck with a lot of moving pieces. Getting the mana right and keeping our planeswalkers alive are just as important as deciding which ultimate we want to reach first.
Commander Overview
Tam, the Possibility is a three-mana 2/4 Gorgon Wizard that makes your planeswalker spells cost one generic mana less to cast. Her activated ability costs one mana of each color and requires tapping her, then lets you proliferate a number of times equal to the number of planeswalker types among planeswalkers you control.
That last detail shapes the whole deck. Ajani, Chandra, and Liliana give you three different types. Three different Jace planeswalkers still give you only the Jace type. We want useful planeswalkers from across the roster because each additional type makes Tam's activation stronger.
Her casting cost only needs green and blue, but the five colored symbols in her ability give her a five-color Commander identity. That opens up a huge selection of planeswalkers and support cards, while also giving us a good reason to take our mana fixing seriously.
Tam is a creature, so the tap ability normally has to wait until she has been under your control since the beginning of your turn. Her discount, however, starts helping immediately. Even before we can activate her, she makes it easier to start assembling the board.
Main Deck Strategy
This deck builds a team of planeswalkers, grows their loyalty, and uses extra activations to get more value each turn. Protect your board while working toward powerful ultimates and a game-winning army of tokens.
Build A Team Of Planeswalkers
The early turns should focus on lands, fixing, and getting a useful first planeswalker into play. Arcane Signet, Farseek, and Chromatic Lantern help support the different colored costs throughout the deck. Tam then makes the generic portion of those planeswalker costs a little easier to manage.
Choose the first member of your team based on the board. A planeswalker that creates blockers can be much more valuable than one with an exciting ultimate when several creatures are already looking your way. Elspeth, Sun's Champion is a great example of a card that can help establish a defensive board while still threatening a powerful finish later.
As the game develops, try to add different planeswalker types without sacrificing card quality. Two Ajanis can absolutely be useful together, but adding a different type may make Tam's next activation stronger. You are balancing each planeswalker's immediate contribution against what it adds to the rest of the team.
Grow Loyalty And Get Extra Activations
Loyalty is the resource that ties everything together. Tam can increase it across your board, while Brokers Ascendancy, Flux Channeler, Deepglow Skate, and Karn's Bastion give you other ways to keep the counters coming.
The goal is to turn that loyalty into useful abilities. Sometimes that means reaching an ultimate ahead of schedule. Other times it means repeatedly using a minus ability for cards, removal, or creature tokens without losing the planeswalker that provides it.
Oath of Teferi and The Chain Veil make those turns even stronger by allowing additional loyalty activations. Remember that putting more counters on a planeswalker does not itself let you activate it again. You need an effect that changes the activation limit, and normal loyalty timing still applies unless another card changes it.
Use The Ways To Expand Your Options
The “Way of” enchantments are a major part of this build. Their empower Jace abilities either create a token Jace and give it loyalty or add loyalty to an existing Jace token. Several also give every planeswalker you control an additional loyalty ability, while others reward the actions those planeswalkers are already taking.
That gives a token Jace much more to do than its printed surveil and draw abilities. Way of the Wildspeaker can let it make a Beast, for example, while Way of the Pyromancer provides an ability that adds red mana and builds loyalty. The same choices are available to your other planeswalkers when those enchantments are in play.
These are additional choices within each planeswalker's activation allowance. Having several Ways does not mean a planeswalker can use all of those abilities in one turn without help from cards such as Oath of Teferi.
There is also an important limit to empower Jace: if you already control a Jace token, you add the counters to an existing one instead of choosing to create another. Casting several Ways will often build up one flexible token planeswalker rather than produce a new Jace with each enchantment.
Best cards for a Tam, the Possibility commander deck
The best cards in this deck fall into three categories: loyalty growth, extra activations and loyalty payoffs, and protection for your planeswalkers. Together, those cards help establish your team, keep it working, and turn a board full of abilities into a winning position.
Best Cards For Loyalty Growth
Deepglow Skate: Doubles the number of each kind of counter on any number of target permanents. With several planeswalkers already in play, one creature can move multiple ultimates within reach and leave you with plenty of loyalty to spend on other abilities.
Tekuthal, Inquiry Dominus: Replaces each instance of proliferating with proliferating twice. That makes Tam's activated ability much more threatening, especially when you have assembled several different planeswalker types.
Brokers Ascendancy: Puts a loyalty counter on each planeswalker you control at the beginning of your end step, along with a +1/+1 counter on each creature you control. It steadily improves both your planeswalkers and the creatures helping defend them.
Flux Channeler: Lets you proliferate whenever you cast a noncreature spell. Planeswalker spells, the Oaths, and the Way enchantments all fit that requirement, so developing your board can also strengthen the permanents you already have.
Carth the Lion: Adjusts your loyalty activation costs in your favor, turning a +1 into a +2 or a −3 into a −2. Carth also digs for a planeswalker when he enters and whenever one of your planeswalkers dies, giving the deck help with both loyalty and rebuilding.
Way of the Mentor: Adds a loyalty counter to each planeswalker you control whenever you gain life. Combined with the life gain from Way of the Paradox, it can turn each loyalty activation into another counter across your team.
Best Cards For Extra Activations And Payoffs
Oath of Teferi: Lets you activate each of your planeswalkers twice each turn rather than once. That can mean two token-making abilities, two rounds of card advantage, or a plus ability followed by an ultimate once the loyalty is there.
The Chain Veil: Gives each of your planeswalkers an additional loyalty activation for the turn when you pay four mana and tap it. It becomes much stronger as your board grows because the same activation can provide another ability from several different planeswalkers.
Commodore Guff: Helps another planeswalker gain loyalty at your end step and can create a Wizard that produces red mana for planeswalker spells. His −3 also draws cards and damages every opponent based on your planeswalker count, giving this deck a payoff that directly threatens life totals.
Way of the Paradox: Gains you a life whenever you activate a loyalty ability and allows an additional land play that turn for each resolved trigger. It rewards the turns when you activate several planeswalkers, and its interaction with Way of the Mentor makes that life gain especially valuable.
Way of the Wildspeaker: Gives all your planeswalkers a −4 ability that creates a 4/4 Beast with trample. It turns stored loyalty into blockers when you need protection and into a growing attacking force when it is time to close the game.
Best Cards For Protecting Your Planeswalkers
Tomik, Orzhov Lawmage: Limits each of your planeswalkers to being attacked by one creature each combat. Opponents can still split their attacks among different planeswalkers, but it becomes much harder to overwhelm one important target with an entire army.
Onakke Oathkeeper: Makes opponents pay one mana for each creature they want to send at your planeswalkers. It also offers a graveyard ability that can return a planeswalker to the battlefield, giving it a useful role after it has finished blocking.
Ripples of Potential: Proliferates, then lets you phase out any number of your permanents that received counters that way. It can protect several planeswalkers from a board wipe while preserving their loyalty, although a permanent needs an existing counter to receive another through proliferate.
Elspeth, Sun's Champion: Creates three Soldier tokens with her +1, providing several blockers from one activation. Her ability to destroy creatures with power four or greater also gives the deck an answer to larger attackers while usually leaving those Soldiers alive.
Budget options for a Tam, the Possibility commander deck
Five-color Superfriends can become expensive quickly, but you do not need to begin with the most collectible version of every planeswalker. I would prioritize a working mana base, useful defensive abilities, and support cards that improve several planeswalkers at once.
The Way enchantments are a good place to build around because they provide empower Jace alongside abilities or triggers that support the broader strategy. They also let a modest planeswalker do more than its printed text suggests. You can choose planeswalkers with useful immediate abilities and let the support package help them scale.
Arcane Signet and Farseek already contribute to the mana plan. Evolving Wilds and Terramorphic Expanse help find the basic colors you are missing, although their tapped lands can slow your early turns. A budget mana base should still be built around casting your spells on time, especially the green and blue needed for Tam.
Oath of Nissa is useful fixing for planeswalker spells, but remember its limit: it does not fix the mana for Tam's activated ability. You need access to actual white, blue, black, red, and green mana to pay that cost.
If you need to trim the price of the list, preserve the balance between threats and support. Replacing a premium planeswalker with one that creates blockers or draws cards is often easier on the deck than cutting the fixing and protection that keep the whole strategy functioning. Check current prices before choosing individual swaps.
Higher Power/Budget options for a Tam, the Possibility commander deck
These are the optional upgrades for this build. Each would replace a card in the main deck, keeping the deck at 100 cards including Tam.
Atraxa, Praetors' Voice: Adds proliferate at the beginning of your end step while bringing flying, vigilance, deathtouch, and lifelink to the battlefield. She is a strong defensive creature, and her lifelink also works nicely with Way of the Mentor. She supports Tam without needing to become the commander herself.
Ichormoon Gauntlet: Gives every planeswalker you control a zero-cost proliferate ability and a -12 ability that takes an extra turn. It also adds another counter of a chosen kind to a target permanent whenever you cast a noncreature spell. This is a major upgrade for turning a large planeswalker board into repeated loyalty growth and potentially extra turns, though the granted abilities still use each planeswalker's normal activation allowance.
The Theorist, Jace Beleren: Draws you a card at the beginning of each opponent's draw step, helping keep your hand supplied through the table's turns. His loyalty abilities can make a blocker, bounce opposing creatures or artifacts, or turn a creature board into a major threat with +1/+1 counters. He adds another strong Jace option, although he does not add a new type if you already control a Jace.
Mistakes to avoid when building a Tam, the Possibility commander deck
The biggest trap is filling every available slot with another expensive planeswalker. You need cards that get them onto the battlefield, keep them alive, and make their abilities more effective. A handful of impressive five- and six-mana spells will struggle if you cannot fix your colors or survive the early attacks.
I would also be careful about choosing planeswalkers entirely for their ultimates. Ask what each one does the turn it enters and how well it works when you are behind. Token production, removal, and card advantage help establish the position that makes an ultimate possible.
Several planeswalkers sharing a type can be worthwhile, but do not count them as extra proliferations for Tam. Similarly, empower Jace is excellent support for a token Jace, but it does not add loyalty to a nontoken Jace planeswalker.
Finally, be cautious with effects that remove your own planeswalkers after you have invested several turns into them. Some resets are worth the cost, but the deck generally wants to preserve its loyalty and support permanents. Your removal should help your team keep operating whenever possible.
How This Deck Wins
This deck wins by building a board of planeswalkers that produces more resources and threats than opponents can keep answering. Their combined abilities provide cards, removal, mana, and creature tokens. Tam then helps you keep spending loyalty while moving toward the abilities that can take over a game.
Creature combat is a real part of the plan. Elspeth and Way of the Wildspeaker can build an army, while Ajani Resolute's emblem improves your creatures and Ajani Unrelenting can give them an immediate offensive boost. Those tokens start as protection and can become the force that finishes an opponent.
Commodore Guff offers another route by damaging every opponent while refilling your hand. With enough planeswalkers and extra activations, that ability can put a lot of pressure on the entire table.
Vraska, Betrayal's Sting provides a more specific finish. Her -9 can bring a target player's poison total up to nine; it does not eliminate that player by itself. A later proliferate can add the tenth poison counter, making her particularly dangerous alongside Tam when you can sequence the abilities correctly.
You do not need to wait for every planeswalker to reach an ultimate. Once you have a line that can end the game, use it. Superfriends decks can make a degenerate amount of decisions, and keeping your turns focused makes the strategy more enjoyable for everyone at the table.
Decklist
This is my main list, with the optional higher-budget cards listed separately in the sideboard.
Example decklist available here: Tam & The Super Friends
Final Thoughts
Tam, the Possibility gives Superfriends a commander that helps both cast the team and build its loyalty. What I like about this version is how the Way enchantments connect the different pieces, giving your planeswalkers useful new abilities while making each activation matter to the rest of the board.
Get your colors established, build a team that can defend itself, and use your loyalty with a clear goal in mind. Once Tam starts proliferating across several different planeswalker types, those distant ultimates can become a lot closer than your opponents expected. For more deck-building ideas from this set, check out my guide to the best Reality Fracture commanders.
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