Yeah, you're probably right about him, he seldomly presents a new deck in which he actually spent a lot of time testing for optimal card choices, and optimal shells. He helps bringing to light some cool stuf though, like knowledge pool lockdown for instance, I love that stuff.
About the primer, I don't have plenty of free time right now, and my internet access is limited, but I've a copy on .txt format in my pc I work on every now and then. Will update ASAP, probably between tomorrow and monday.
Oh, and I'll regret what I said about repel the abominable as I didn't realize it prevents all sorts of damage as long as it's not a human, not only combat damage.
Definitely worths a try.
Sorry about that (and the double post).
Oh, and I'll regret what I said about repel the abominable as I didn't realize it prevents all sorts of damage as long as it's not a human, not only combat damage.
Definitely worths a try.
Sorry about that (and the double post).
That's the reason I've come back to Turbo Fog after playing U/B Mill for a bit. There's a ton of Scapeshift/Affinity in my local meta and this can just shut it down. It's got to be worth at least testing.
The issue with TF is not a lack of great, high quality fog/damage prevention effects, nor a lack of symmetrical draw effects, nor even the ability to get flexible value of cards like Snappy. It lacks quality selection- as does the format. Fiddling with the mix of fogs is great, but does not solve the issues of the deck- burn(fiddling with fogs is ok, but Skullcrack is a pain and a game losing one often, requiring counterspells to deal with it), tron (where buying time sucks with the milling twenty issue and we then have to win game 2 and 3), BG-X decks that eat the card draw engines and just sneak enough through, and certain combo decks.
What we really need are a couple of flexible cards or a couple of new pillow-fort type cards that can aid our game plan in someway. That said we get a good infect and aggro match, and that Bribery is good enough for Tron etc from the board.
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None of your examples above are solved with pillow fort cards. Burn, doesn't care about pillow fort cards. Tron, also doesn't care bc karn and o-stone wreck your pillow fort cards, and b/g/x doesn't care bc almost all your pillow fort cards lose to pulse, decay, and discard. Most combo decks don't care either. So I fail to see where yourever going with that. Pillow fort does the same thing we do. Stop aggro which yourself alrdy know we have no issue with. I think, tbh, jund isn't unbeatable. We just need a good win-con and back up win con that doesn't involve as much durtleing. Bribery is rly only good against tron if we KNOW they have emmy. Otherwise, 5 mana take a wurmcoil isn't back breaking against tron.
Burn loses most of its matches to Pillow Fort, so Burn does care about them. Pillow Fort beats burn as much as it beats aggro. Leylines hurt them, Runed Halo is especially strong against Eidolon but is decent anyway. Suppression Field hits their 11 fetches and slows them to crawl, Ghostly slows them too etc. There are plenty of other examples without resorting to board cards like Sanctimony. How much that helps here is debatable, but the idea that burn does not care about PF is not correct. Runed Halo seems especially relevant to Turbo Fog as casting fogs triggers Eidolon, and Runded Halo set to Eidolon stops that until a Skullcrack comes along negating damage prevention.
Tron certainly does not care about Pillow Fort cards for the exact reasons you mention, I agree totally. It is a source of permanent discussion on the Enduring Ideal and Pillow-Fort threads.
Grindy BGx can use all those cards to kill the Pillow Fort unless they are protected, which is the point of Pillow Fort decks but hard to do without using specific cards that we can't justify using, so that is a moot point. Incidentally I rather like Karma against BG-x decks from the board as a non durdly win con- it does 4-5 a turn, and so wins in about 3 turns if they have damaged themselves and not cast Finks. I also agree that BG-x is not unbeatable in T Fog-it seems close but perhaps in BG-x's favour, depending on the lists.
I don't think you realise how one sided Pillow Fort matches are against most combo decks are- in Pillow Fort's favour. Ad Nauseam, Grishoalbrand and Scapeshift are almost byes, and decks with combo plans like Co-Co Melira can't pull the combo part off. Again, how much that helps Turbo Fog is debatable. I would be happy to discuss any aspect of combo vs Pillow-Fort on the PF primer or by PM- I know those matches intimately. I have had a fair few t 1-4 concessions game 1 when playing PF. When you consider that most PF builds run effectively sideboard cards like Rest in Peace and Leylines as well as generic repeated activation inhibitors like S field and flexible cards it is of little surprise the matches are so one sided.
A Tron deck (and by that I mean RG tron) that does not run either Ulamog or Emmy is not going to win, and does not appear to exist on the sites I use for decklists. If they are all in hand then that is different- and unlucky. But RG tron seem to run 2 Ulamogs pretty consistently. I don't think 5 mana to nick a Wurmcoil is bad- thier only answer is Karn- or two O stones.
Mono-U tron and Gifts tron are different again, but when I refer to Tron that is what I mean.....
EDIT
Interestingly Turbo Fog has a marvelous match vs Elves, which is not that case with Pillow-Fort, which is a lot more about beating unfair combo decks and midrange aggro like Merfolk than it is about beating out and out fast aggro decks like Elves......
EDIT 2
Just checked MTG top 8 comparison feature- 100% of RG tron decks on the first page had 2 Ulamog.
Oh right. Then we are talking cross purposes. When I refer to Pilow Fort it is precisely those type of cards I am referring to. I certainly don't think we need attack taxes or whatever.
I take it you mean Leyline should be main deck in T Fog? If so I agree, how many is the next question?
I have the Pillow-Fort primer, the decklists run Leyline and Halo main board- the archetype cannot really exist without them, especially as they power the Nykthos engine and frankly there are few other cards to replicate the effect.
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I always played 4x leyline of sanctity in every single turbo fog build I had to date. A no-brainer IMO. It basically stops almost everything our fogs don't.
I don't have runed halo anymore on my sideboard as Aura of Silence also stops Eidolon of the great revel.
I'm willing to include some more copies of repel the abominable mainboard for non-creature damage.
Pillow fort proved to be more versatile than turbo fog, but it doesn't stop beaters as consistently as turbo fog does in my book.
I know it's been a while but isochron into remand is pretty gross. Run three tamiyo moon sages. One Elspeth Suns champion as it puts creatures in play to block with until she ults. Then if you get Tammy's ult off you have two rewinds to counter everything that is a threat. Two lightning bolts to turn all your red mana into 3 damage and helix's to gain life. Then run ensaring bridge as you're going to be drawing a ton. I find this version of the deck works quite well. Azoriois charm to make them draw their tarm Everytime it attacks. Just play defensively until you can pop off tamiyo. And as a fall back plan play passive until you isochron a remand and a fog and negate all damage and counter anything that tries to stop you until you play emrakul
The new eldritch moon white two drop fog solves the problem of non creature heavy decks being stopped since it stops all non human sources that includes valakut. Ugin. Red spells. Etc.
Isochron Scepter into anything is gross, think of silence, dawn charm, lightning bolt, lightning helix, etc, etc, etc. The issue is it's really fragile mainly, and everyone packs artifact hate because of affinity among others.
The issue with the cards you mention, is that (sorry if I'm being purist of whatever) then you'd be playing jeskai control and not turbo fog. Which number of fogs are you including there? which number of draw engines?
Also, ensnaring bridge is really, really bad with a lot of card draw, if you're playing bridge, then you want your hand to be empty.
Repel the abominable certainly gives us some flexibility, I'd include at least 1/2 copies mainboard, but still it isn't enough against burn, nor 4 copies are. You want to actively gain life against them with kor firewalker/sanctimony, etc, tax them monastery siege, and/or shut their threats with leyline of sanctity/runed halo. Also, some of those cards should be an answer to Eidolon of the great revel. I used to play nevermore on that, but not before their removal (naming ancient grudge and such), but I wanted to improve my tron matchup as well so I went with aura of silence instead.
It's still really fun to nevermore some opponent's sb tech beforehand (most lists just plainly netdeck what they see on mtggoldfish/mtgtop8 or web of choice), or nevermoread nauseam, or scapeshift, or... well... nevermore anything.
Ahhh, I want that card again in my build... haha.
Problem is once that single card you wanted to nevermore is cast, there isn't much to do, making it perhaps too narrow at times.
Also, can someone remind me why we haven't tried nahiri, the harbinger + emrakul, the aeons torn here?
She has good synergy with our deck, drawing us a card, can eventually get rid of problematic permanents, and
we can protect her the way we do with Jace Beleren, so it shouldn't be that hard to pull off her ultimate, I mean, it isn't really unusual to pull off jace's ultimate...
My internet connection sucks as I moved out to a new place, kinda countryside house, I can barely post this stuff here so I'm not able to playtest anything these days.
So if someone dares to build a RUW version on xmage, OCTGN, cockatrice or just plain ol' school proxies for testing that, I could share my runeflare trap list as reference, or I could even try to make up a Nahiri list as well, it shouldn't be that hard, just taking away the 4x runeflare traps for 4x nahiri, the harbinger, and replacing kozilek, butcher of truth (shuffler of choice) for Emrakul, the aeons torn.
I think mostly bc a lot of decks run that combo and ppl are sbing stuff for it to take emmy or take nahiri and emmy is one of the cards we have a hard time with so for them to bribery it from us isnt good
If you replace enough cards the deck ends up a superfriends and 8 fogs. Superfriends is a good deck anyway, there comes a point when I don't want to fog to protect a bunch of pws, that is not much different from removal and countering to protect them. I don't mind running a bot of removal, walkers or counters, or cards like snappy for value fogs or counters etc. I do not want to go into the Isochron route or too heavy on pws.
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Tyler: No one runs bribery as sb tech. If you check mtg Goldfish for instance, you'll see there's only an esper control list from july running it, so I wouldn't worry about that one.
But I agree with you on that Nahiri is currently an over-hyped staple, and that lots of decks sideboard against it, using stuff like grafdigger's cage, discard, counterspells, removal like celestial purge, etc.
Anyway, every single ability of hers comes in handy on our deck, and that's just too tempting to overlook it.
dr mark.
I think changing 4 cards on the deck isn't precisely going away from turbo fog. My list would still run something close to 12 draw engines and 15 fogs.
Maybe it's not the "natural" or "traditional" win condition for the deck (natural milling I guess?), but its core, its engine it's still the same, and that's exactly what would allow us to run and protect nahiri, the harbinger.
I mean, "turbo fog" by itself deosn't say anything about winning, it's just a shell which is really efficient at surviving combat damage. Milling is the natural way it wins due to the amount of cards it draws, and because you can eventually win that way without playing a proper win condition.
And it can probably work against one-sided aggro stuff like bogles, or infect for instance, but stuff which is a little more interactive, or even non-combat combos can put us in serious problems. That's when we have to rethink turbo fog. I didn't want to wind up playing UW/UWR control. I didn't want to play superfriends, nor pillow fort, etc. So if I don't want to change what I'm good at, which is drawing cards and preventing damage, what should I change? If I go too deep on counterspells, suddenly I'm playing UW control, if I pack some number of ghostly prisons/runed halos I'm pillow fort now, if I pack removal and burn I've turned into jund (If you ever see me playing jund, just kill me please, haha).
So what I'm trying to change, is what I think is our weakest side, which is actually closing a game/match. That'd certainly give us an actual clock, and probably even some inevitability which is precisely what this deck lacks against interactive stuff.
I'm not saying stuff like sphinx's tutelage is bad at all, indeed, is probably one of the most synergistically powerful win conditions we could have wished for.
Maybe I'm just tired of mill and I want to go for sth different.
Go with slaver lock then. Its essentially a 1 card combo as most if not all decks dont have a way to deal with a land and mindslaver usually wont have a maindeck answer for it at which point we can sb stuff to protect it or switch to a secondary wincon in board pr in the main deck. I was 2 win cons in the main normally and a third (if i have room) in the sb
Yeah, mindslaver+academy ruins it's a possibility, but probably not as good as Nahiri, the harbinger as they won't be doing anything but eventually winning the game. No synergies at all, plus 4x academy ruins would probably hurt my manabase badly. Nahiri is flexible enough to be a draw engine (filter actually), removal, or bringing an Emrakul, the aeons torn into play, which already has a spot on my build (kozilek right now actually, but it's pretty much the same).
I've just downloaded forge for android on my phone, so I'll see if I can go somewhere and just try, as I'm currently lacking an internet conection.
It had some serious bugs/issues with another deck I tested (suppression field taxed my shocklands for some reason) and the game itself seems kinda unstable at times. But I'm gonna give it a try anyway, at least against AI.
I was not specifically referring to your build, it is just a general idea to be wary of that an obvious solution to some issues is to superfriends the deck in Wur. As time elapses there will likely be more Walkers and no new interesting enchantments or fogs.
PS on burn- apart from Sanctimony and Phyrexian Unlife type cards, could a Martyr Proc style engine work- recurring Kami of False hope and Martyrs, restocking with howling mines with some more regular fogs? Anyone tried it outside of a dedicated proc shell?
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Because i like the older versions, this is what i've come up with, let me know what you think:
(DECK)
I've been thinking of cutting the green in the deck, but it just seems wrong to cut the card that gave the deck its name haha
I'd say to go ahead and cut the green. Temple Bell can fill in for Rites of Flourishing since you don't really need the mana. Ethereal Haze is better than Fog (or Holy Day), and Dawn Charm is better than Druid's Deliverance in your list.
I think you might need something to deal with burn. Leyline of Sanctity is standard, but there are budget options, e.g., Ivory Mask. You should have room; 20 "Fogs" (when you include Supreme Verdict) is probably overkill.
I went with w/b a long time ago and it was my most successful version. My wincon was silence and megrim/lilianas caress. As for w/b, you would want probably a white creature bc black doesnt rly have a good one. Or artifact. Maybe one of the original eldrazi.
I'm working on a WB version of this deck at the moment and am struggling to find a win condition. Does anyone have any suggestions?
I'm thinking that a big, evasive and self-protecting creature is possibly the way forward, but I've yet to really find anything which seems a good fit for the deck.
Not really. BWs most protecting cheap dude with evasion is Stillmoon Cavalier, and he fails the bolt test. Once you are in midrange territory its value time with Front loaded Titans and the like. I would consider an Eldrazi, but to me your question indicates why the discussion ends up returning to sodding Planeswalkers. Cards like Palace Siege are overpriced and would be fine if they were cheaper (just sit there and fog whilst draining them), but Wizards insist on Planeswalkers, Planeswalkers, Planeswalkers and Combat, Combat, Combat for their anaemic Standard and so no new Modern viable win cons get printed without resorting to very clunky combos. So if the Modern viable win con or combo does not already exist don't expect it soon, unless its yet another Planeswalker.
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About the primer, I don't have plenty of free time right now, and my internet access is limited, but I've a copy on .txt format in my pc I work on every now and then. Will update ASAP, probably between tomorrow and monday.
Cheers.
SST.
Definitely worths a try.
Sorry about that (and the double post).
That's the reason I've come back to Turbo Fog after playing U/B Mill for a bit. There's a ton of Scapeshift/Affinity in my local meta and this can just shut it down. It's got to be worth at least testing.
What we really need are a couple of flexible cards or a couple of new pillow-fort type cards that can aid our game plan in someway. That said we get a good infect and aggro match, and that Bribery is good enough for Tron etc from the board.
Tron certainly does not care about Pillow Fort cards for the exact reasons you mention, I agree totally. It is a source of permanent discussion on the Enduring Ideal and Pillow-Fort threads.
Grindy BGx can use all those cards to kill the Pillow Fort unless they are protected, which is the point of Pillow Fort decks but hard to do without using specific cards that we can't justify using, so that is a moot point. Incidentally I rather like Karma against BG-x decks from the board as a non durdly win con- it does 4-5 a turn, and so wins in about 3 turns if they have damaged themselves and not cast Finks. I also agree that BG-x is not unbeatable in T Fog-it seems close but perhaps in BG-x's favour, depending on the lists.
I don't think you realise how one sided Pillow Fort matches are against most combo decks are- in Pillow Fort's favour. Ad Nauseam, Grishoalbrand and Scapeshift are almost byes, and decks with combo plans like Co-Co Melira can't pull the combo part off. Again, how much that helps Turbo Fog is debatable. I would be happy to discuss any aspect of combo vs Pillow-Fort on the PF primer or by PM- I know those matches intimately. I have had a fair few t 1-4 concessions game 1 when playing PF. When you consider that most PF builds run effectively sideboard cards like Rest in Peace and Leylines as well as generic repeated activation inhibitors like S field and flexible cards it is of little surprise the matches are so one sided.
A Tron deck (and by that I mean RG tron) that does not run either Ulamog or Emmy is not going to win, and does not appear to exist on the sites I use for decklists. If they are all in hand then that is different- and unlucky. But RG tron seem to run 2 Ulamogs pretty consistently. I don't think 5 mana to nick a Wurmcoil is bad- thier only answer is Karn- or two O stones.
Mono-U tron and Gifts tron are different again, but when I refer to Tron that is what I mean.....
EDIT
Interestingly Turbo Fog has a marvelous match vs Elves, which is not that case with Pillow-Fort, which is a lot more about beating unfair combo decks and midrange aggro like Merfolk than it is about beating out and out fast aggro decks like Elves......
EDIT 2
Just checked MTG top 8 comparison feature- 100% of RG tron decks on the first page had 2 Ulamog.
I take it you mean Leyline should be main deck in T Fog? If so I agree, how many is the next question?
I have the Pillow-Fort primer, the decklists run Leyline and Halo main board- the archetype cannot really exist without them, especially as they power the Nykthos engine and frankly there are few other cards to replicate the effect.
I don't have runed halo anymore on my sideboard as Aura of Silence also stops Eidolon of the great revel.
I'm willing to include some more copies of repel the abominable mainboard for non-creature damage.
Pillow fort proved to be more versatile than turbo fog, but it doesn't stop beaters as consistently as turbo fog does in my book.
Just my two cents.
Cheers.
SST.
The issue with the cards you mention, is that (sorry if I'm being purist of whatever) then you'd be playing jeskai control and not turbo fog. Which number of fogs are you including there? which number of draw engines?
Also, ensnaring bridge is really, really bad with a lot of card draw, if you're playing bridge, then you want your hand to be empty.
Repel the abominable certainly gives us some flexibility, I'd include at least 1/2 copies mainboard, but still it isn't enough against burn, nor 4 copies are. You want to actively gain life against them with kor firewalker/sanctimony, etc, tax them monastery siege, and/or shut their threats with leyline of sanctity/runed halo. Also, some of those cards should be an answer to Eidolon of the great revel. I used to play nevermore on that, but not before their removal (naming ancient grudge and such), but I wanted to improve my tron matchup as well so I went with aura of silence instead.
It's still really fun to nevermore some opponent's sb tech beforehand (most lists just plainly netdeck what they see on mtggoldfish/mtgtop8 or web of choice), or nevermore ad nauseam, or scapeshift, or... well... nevermore anything.
Ahhh, I want that card again in my build... haha.
Problem is once that single card you wanted to nevermore is cast, there isn't much to do, making it perhaps too narrow at times.
Also, can someone remind me why we haven't tried nahiri, the harbinger + emrakul, the aeons torn here?
She has good synergy with our deck, drawing us a card, can eventually get rid of problematic permanents, and
we can protect her the way we do with Jace Beleren, so it shouldn't be that hard to pull off her ultimate, I mean, it isn't really unusual to pull off jace's ultimate...
My internet connection sucks as I moved out to a new place, kinda countryside house, I can barely post this stuff here so I'm not able to playtest anything these days.
So if someone dares to build a RUW version on xmage, OCTGN, cockatrice or just plain ol' school proxies for testing that, I could share my runeflare trap list as reference, or I could even try to make up a Nahiri list as well, it shouldn't be that hard, just taking away the 4x runeflare traps for 4x nahiri, the harbinger, and replacing kozilek, butcher of truth (shuffler of choice) for Emrakul, the aeons torn.
Cheers.
SST.
But I agree with you on that Nahiri is currently an over-hyped staple, and that lots of decks sideboard against it, using stuff like grafdigger's cage, discard, counterspells, removal like celestial purge, etc.
Anyway, every single ability of hers comes in handy on our deck, and that's just too tempting to overlook it.
dr mark.
I think changing 4 cards on the deck isn't precisely going away from turbo fog. My list would still run something close to 12 draw engines and 15 fogs.
Maybe it's not the "natural" or "traditional" win condition for the deck (natural milling I guess?), but its core, its engine it's still the same, and that's exactly what would allow us to run and protect nahiri, the harbinger.
I mean, "turbo fog" by itself deosn't say anything about winning, it's just a shell which is really efficient at surviving combat damage. Milling is the natural way it wins due to the amount of cards it draws, and because you can eventually win that way without playing a proper win condition.
And it can probably work against one-sided aggro stuff like bogles, or infect for instance, but stuff which is a little more interactive, or even non-combat combos can put us in serious problems. That's when we have to rethink turbo fog. I didn't want to wind up playing UW/UWR control. I didn't want to play superfriends, nor pillow fort, etc. So if I don't want to change what I'm good at, which is drawing cards and preventing damage, what should I change? If I go too deep on counterspells, suddenly I'm playing UW control, if I pack some number of ghostly prisons/runed halos I'm pillow fort now, if I pack removal and burn I've turned into jund (If you ever see me playing jund, just kill me please, haha).
So what I'm trying to change, is what I think is our weakest side, which is actually closing a game/match. That'd certainly give us an actual clock, and probably even some inevitability which is precisely what this deck lacks against interactive stuff.
I'm not saying stuff like sphinx's tutelage is bad at all, indeed, is probably one of the most synergistically powerful win conditions we could have wished for.
Maybe I'm just tired of mill and I want to go for sth different.
Cheers.
SST.
I've just downloaded forge for android on my phone, so I'll see if I can go somewhere and just try, as I'm currently lacking an internet conection.
It had some serious bugs/issues with another deck I tested (suppression field taxed my shocklands for some reason) and the game itself seems kinda unstable at times. But I'm gonna give it a try anyway, at least against AI.
Cheers.
SST.
PS on burn- apart from Sanctimony and Phyrexian Unlife type cards, could a Martyr Proc style engine work- recurring Kami of False hope and Martyrs, restocking with howling mines with some more regular fogs? Anyone tried it outside of a dedicated proc shell?
I'd say to go ahead and cut the green. Temple Bell can fill in for Rites of Flourishing since you don't really need the mana. Ethereal Haze is better than Fog (or Holy Day), and Dawn Charm is better than Druid's Deliverance in your list.
I think you might need something to deal with burn. Leyline of Sanctity is standard, but there are budget options, e.g., Ivory Mask. You should have room; 20 "Fogs" (when you include Supreme Verdict) is probably overkill.
Not really. BWs most protecting cheap dude with evasion is Stillmoon Cavalier, and he fails the bolt test. Once you are in midrange territory its value time with Front loaded Titans and the like. I would consider an Eldrazi, but to me your question indicates why the discussion ends up returning to sodding Planeswalkers. Cards like Palace Siege are overpriced and would be fine if they were cheaper (just sit there and fog whilst draining them), but Wizards insist on Planeswalkers, Planeswalkers, Planeswalkers and Combat, Combat, Combat for their anaemic Standard and so no new Modern viable win cons get printed without resorting to very clunky combos. So if the Modern viable win con or combo does not already exist don't expect it soon, unless its yet another Planeswalker.