MagicTheGathering.fyi

The Chain Veil

Legendary Artifact

At the beginning of your end step, if you didn't activate a loyalty ability of a planeswalker this turn, you lose 2 life.
{4}, {T}: For each planeswalker you control, you may activate one of its loyalty abilities once this turn as though none of its loyalty abilities have been activated this turn.

CMC
4
Mana cost
{4}
Color identity
C
Rarity
mythic
Set
Magic 2015
Price
$4.31
EDHREC rank
#2842
Buy on TCGplayer
The Chain Veil card art
The Chain Veil lets each planeswalker you control activate an additional loyalty ability each turn — that single line warps entire game plans around it. The cost is real (4 mana to cast, 2 life and 4 mana each upkeep), but Teferi, Temporal Archmage's minus ability generates enough mana to make The Chain Veil's upkeep free, and Commodore Guff turns the extra activations into a loyalty-stacking engine that ends games.

Best Commanders

Commanders with the highest synergy

01
Commodore Guff

Commodore Guff

86.7% of decks · synergy 0.84

Commodore Guff appears in 87% of Chain Veil decks for good reason — his passive adds a loyalty counter to each other planeswalker you control at the start of your turn, so the extra activations from The Chain Veil compound on a board that's already growing itself.

02
Carth the Lion

Carth the Lion

74.6% of decks · synergy 0.74

Carth the Lion searches up The Chain Veil directly and makes every planeswalker enter with an extra loyalty counter, meaning the additional activations come online faster and hit harder from the moment the Veil lands.

03

Chandra, Fire of Kaladesh

47.8% of decks · synergy 0.47

Chandra, Fire of Kaladesh flips into a planeswalker that untaps lands, and The Chain Veil lets her activate twice per turn — enough to fire her damage ability and still plus for loyalty, threatening an ultimate in very few turns.

04

Liliana, Heretical Healer

44.8% of decks · synergy 0.44

Liliana, Heretical Healer flips into a planeswalker with a powerful minus that reanimates creatures, and The Chain Veil lets her threaten that ability repeatedly before opponents can answer her.

05

Nicol Bolas, the Ravager

38.7% of decks · synergy 0.38

Nicol Bolas, the Ravager flips into a planeswalker with a game-ending ultimate, and The Chain Veil accelerates the loyalty climb so the table has fewer turns to find an answer.

Format Analysis

Where it lives, where it can’t

FormatVerdict
commander legal
legacy legal
modern legal
pioneer legal
standard not legal
vintage legal
pauper not legal
oathbreaker legal

The Chain Veil is legal in Commander, Legacy, Modern, Pioneer, Vintage, and Oathbreaker, but Commander and Oathbreaker are the only formats where it's ever relevant. In 60-card formats the four-mana artifact with a taxing upkeep cost and no immediate board impact is too slow — planeswalker strategies in Modern and Pioneer don't need a slow value multiplier, they need planeswalkers that stabilize on their own. In Commander, The Chain Veil is a different card entirely: the singleton format's longer games and planeswalker-centric commanders make the upkeep tax trivial against the compounding advantage of double activations every turn.

Key Combos

Combo lines featuring this card

Price Context

Current price

$4.31 cheap tier

At $4.31, The Chain Veil is cheap for a card that anchors combo wins in dozens of planeswalker commanders. It sees enough Commander demand across Superfriends, Teferi, and Guff builds that the price floor is unlikely to collapse.

Explore

Sources

Mentioned

← All cards

Updated . Data from Scryfall, EDHREC, and Commander Spellbook.