With the banning of Emrakul taking away a huge threat to turbofog it's time to shine is back. This deck trounces most aggro creature decks and has game against midrange/control which has few maindeck ways to meaningully interact with our win conditions/deck. I played this deck quite a bit in the last season. It is powerful and able to churn through the deck and eventually win the game on the back of a horde of zombies, an angel, or burn from our fevereds and Dynavolt Tower. The sideboard is mainly to sure up weaknesses to planeswalkers or other combo decks that don't rely on creatures. Dynavolt Tower is fantasatic against planeswalkers that need to be killed. Some like Liliana can actually just be ignored. If they decide too ultimate her you can still win. They unwittingly make your fumigates insane. Thing in the Ice comes in hopefully as removal comes out against decks with creatures or where you just need to get a kill quickly like combo. This decks other saving grace is it can just fog through the Saheeli Rai combo and makes them need to work hard to get multiple counters up and mana to combo.
I'm looking for opinions on the deck and potential cards to run. I wanted to incorporate a Bring to Light package, however I don't really see many instants, sorceries, and creatures other than fumigate that I'd ever search up except for maybe a one of Cataclysmic Gearhulk, but I just don't think it's worth it yet.
I took a hiatus from magic for several years, but back in the day I played a turbo fog significantly. Even the version that I played a few years ago was inferior to the original turbo fog. This is missing the one thing you need to play and that's draw. Insane draw. Constant never ending draw. Here is the core of what i used to play.
Here your fogs cost more and do less and you have half as much draw. Even your wraths cost more. Since you aren't trying to deck them this is really more a damage avoidance, control. The problem you must have encountered is that your totally reactionary. As you know any time you miss a fog or have it countered that is lethal generally. With 22 lands and expensive fogs what do you do if they counter one. You need a consistent backup.
Im not trying to be as negative as I sound but I played with this as soon as I came back to the game and decided the replacements for the cards I use to play were all inferior in terms of efficacy and cost.
I currently play a dynavolt deck. That is nuts against lots of decks because of its combination of sweepers, removal, draw and counters. One Dynavolt Tower is frankly underwhelming. It takes three spells to get a free Lightning bolt but in tandem its basically a free spell with 80% of your spells. with 3 out there it is generally a hard lock on new creatures coming on the board. What about a deck that looked like this.
I agree that having one additional draw engine would be ideal, however I have found that Anticipate and Glimmer allow you to churn through your deck to hit your fevered visions just fine. A lot of decks just get wrecked by a big fumigate anyway which is nice. Give my list a shot. I think you'll find it holds it's own. I chose to run a split of Descend Upon the Sinful, Dynavolt Tower, and Rise from the Tides to diversify my wincons.
Actually, a neat draw engine for this deck might be Clue tokens. And a neat win condition would be Mechanized Production. Trail of Evidence is a good way to continually produce Clues as you cast Fogs, and you can sacrifice Clue tokens as necessary to keep yourself alive until you get to cast your big Clue producers (Confirm Suspicions/Second Harvest)
I like trail of evidence, but the rest of the clue synergy may make the deck inconsistent. 4 / 5 mana to make clues can only safely be cast with a fog at that point. Against counters you need to hold up two fogs
Looking at the format Turbofog looks playable to me between the fog cards and Fumigates it should have Game against most of the field. Being Green White possible Blue gives you a range of card choices to choose from.
This may be a good deck for Pacification Array. Playing Arrays makes the opponent commit more to the board, and that leads to making the wraths more devastating. The trouble with this deck is that it doesn't seem to be doing anything. Yes, it's fogging, so it's preventing the opponent from winning for a little while. But in the meantime, the deck isn't accumulating an advantage that will lead to winning.
I'm afraid I have to disagree. Perhaps my experience differs but this is such a sub-optimal form of Turbo-fog.
This deck woefully lacks draw. Its not a deck that ends up drawing 5 - 8 cards a turn like turbo-fog should. The deck should get going faster and faster and you are accumulating answers by the very means that you are defeating your opponent...The run away draw engine.
Im not sure what god draw hands you've experienced but this deck losses almost always to rw humans. Sure you nuke them but they can fully reload in a turn. You can't consistently have fogs for 6 straight turns. I can say I never can count on that and the statistics don't support it. Clearly copy cat sucks because even when you do fog they just rinse and repeat till you miss a fog. Aetherflux reservoir anyone. You have 4 spells in your whole deck that let you survive this. Those same 4 are dead against rw humans. Don't get me started on decks that also have counters.
I really want this to work as I have more experience piloting this then any other deck but it just won't for me. Perhaps your facing different types of opponents. But it goes through my testing gauntlet and has near auto losses to too many actively played decks.
What do you disagree about? Welcome to standard... you're limited on card choices and you have to make do with what you have.
Fevered Visions and Glimmer of Genius have been enough draw for me so far. Anticipate helps you get there as well. Evolving Wilds and Attune with Aether do a small amount of thinning which helps a bit
Sure we don't have a runaway draw engine. You don't need it either. Torrential Gearhulk lets you draw or fog as needed and get some damage in sometimes.
You just need to live long enough to get a kill with Fevered Visions, Dynavolt Tower, Descend Upon the Sinful, or Rise from the Tides.
You seem to be glossing over the fact that the deck plays 4 Fumigate and 2 Descend Upon the Sinful in the main. Against RW Humans you just have to fire off one or two fogs. Slam a Fumigate then they are usually screwed. Can you give me a link or reference to these statistics you are mentioning?
I'll admit Aetherflux Reservoir decks are a rough matchup. I will also point out they make a small portion of the meta and didn't show up at all at the pro tour. Speaking of the Pro Tour. All that was present was aggro decks, which Turbo Fog preys upon. Counterspells are an issue, but once again I'm going to reference the pro tour where the top 8 had zero blue decks. Also that's why I have a sideboard to bring in my own counterspells and shift out a few fogs for more versatile spells and threats.
Did you run my list through your testing gauntlet? I'd be curious to know what lists you ran against and the win loss of post and pre board games if that is what you did.
What improvements would you make to the list if you were to consider playing it? I'm well aware it's not as powerful on the draw side as old turbofogs, but Torrential Gearhulk and Fumigate help balance that out along with the meta being skewed towards aggressive strategies.
Dude I come in peace, I'm not the enemy. Your making a mistake in thinking that I am challenging your deck or the deck concept. I don't have a dog in this fight. If anything I wish I did. Perhaps my confusion and resistance comes from the terminology, turbo fog. This is not a turbo deck. It has some draw but it is certainly not Turbo .
The whole point of Turbo fog was that the thing that kept you alive (drawing tons of cards) was also the thing that won you the game. Obviously that's synergistic.
In this case you have to devote your deck to staying alive and then put something in it to win you the game. I also don't think you can argue the fact that every single element of this deck is less effective and more expensive then those that were available in Turbo fog at any other point that said deck was viable. Every fog is more expensive and less effective, the draw is non renewing and does not mill the opponent, and the wipes cost more.
You asked what I had I tested this against. Generally since I do all of my playing online I keep track of magic league top 8 decklist and utilize those. That is clearly more minute to minute and not necessarily reflective of the overall metagame . Having said that let's talked about the things this turbo fog is worst against. One of them is vehicles and Planeswalkers. The wraths miss them and they represent threats that can't be addressed at instant speed and remain a threat the very turn after you wipe the board. If you look at the most recent top 8 decklists, mardu vehicle makes up the majority of them.
This doesn't mean one shouldn't play the deck or you shouldn't play the deck it means I couldn't get the deck to perform in a manner in which it could consistently win games. I don't mean consistently win tournaments, I mean win close to half the games it runs against. I am by no means great at Magic, either the playing or deck-building ( I'll concede you're likely better than me at both). But I do not lack the experience to running a fog deck. It does not change the fact that this deck does not run like a turbo fog deck. And as I would tweak and twist it to get it to work the thing that I would take out would be fogs and the thing I was putting in was control and in the end it's just a control deck with a lot of creature removal.
When I spoke of statistic I meant the statistical probability of drawing cards within the first 15-20 cards. The chances by turn 10 you have 8 mana (you are going to wipe the baord and have a fog and mana in hand for the next turns response), 5 fogs and at least one wrath and a win condition. I hate to say it but it feels like you goldfish some of your answers. I don't know how you can propose that the tower answers any threat when there's only one of them and it will take three fogs before you can do 3 damage. How do you answer a planeswalker with a tower that way. How can you afford the mana and tempo to drop a Tower till late game. At best you're just holding it in check, but that means the tower is not winning you the game or removing any of the other threats. I really don't know what the plan would be if two Planeswalkers come out. Obviously when a deck that is prominent in the most recent round of the pro tour can consistently hit you for 5 the turn after you wrath that is not necessarily and good deck to be playing against.
Ultimately maybe the deck works great for you, maybe the deck works great for everybody else . It didn't for me as much as I wanted it to. As much as I tried to convince myself it would. But at some point you run out of excuses for why you would have won if you'd only drawn one more of these or one of those and you start recognizing that I don't draw one more of these or one of those often enough to be competitive.
I'm not trying to win the majority of my games I just want to get somewhere around 50/50 and there are other non netdeck decks that just performed closer to that. Having said that I'd much rather work with you to develop this deck, but dude I read the tea leaves and they were not good.
that's the problem with forums is it can be hard to interpret someone's mood / emotion. So sorry if I did so.
While Mardu vehicles do have the ability to crack back after a fumigate, usually you gain a nice chunk of life from the fumigate.
There are a few Planeswalkers that can be safely ignored as well. Liliana, both Nissa's, and Gideon to some extent as he is a creature so fogging is good. Gideon can be obnoxious without fogs.
Dynavolt Tower is fantastic against planeswalkers and spell quellers. With attune with aether and glimmer we usually already have energy and then we just get more from doing what we are anyway.
In regards to the name of the deck. I suppose I could just call it fog as we only have one turbo card in fevered visions, but I went with the standard name for fog decks which is turbo fog.
This deck is pretty good at forcing your opponent to choose between dumping there hand and playing into fumigate or choose to take damage from fevered visions. It sucks if you don't get a fevered going in the first 6 or so turns, but it's not that hard with anticipate and glimmer to get there. Against aggro you don't even need to get there sometimes as just casting fumigate and then starting to jam torrential gearhulks is enough to win.
I'm by no means an expert at magic, this deck can be competitive though and I've won my fair share of tournaments with it during kaladesh. Right now I like the deck even more because most decks don't have much reach and need creatures to get there.
Did you run my list when you tried it? I'm curious what you lost too and how it went. I only own the paper form because mtgo is too frustrating for me.
I have actually come back to this deck after giving up on it. For the last 2 months I have been working on BW control, Mardu Walkers and Seasons past control. So I would test in order, has to beat Mardu Vehicle consistently, Has to be 50/50 against Gb and close against cats. None could do that for me. But after tweaking this seems to clearly the best one against all three.
The key to mardu vehicle was negating their resilience to sweepers. So I put in a full 4 Authority of the Consuls the reason this became a good deck as this also happens to be kryptonite to copy cat. I also went with 3 of each Dynavolt Tower and Consulate Surveillance these are remarkable synergistic and allow you to save a fog post wrath. Also works great against Chandra and Aetherflux resevoir. Towers help against walkers but primarily they let me kill Saheli mid combo and keep Balista in check.
Side board I have found Hanweir Garrison to wreck control if they do not answer early. It works because everyone sides out all of their removal game 2.
Temur tower is the biggest problem match up so I need to work on tuning for that. My lack of talent/experience means it takes me a long time to figure out what needs to eb changed to make the match up better. Also, obviously, Lost Legacy leads to a scoop unless you have a visions already on the board.
Counts : 60 main / 15 sideboard
4x Aether Hub
2x Canopy Vista
2x Cinder Glade
4x Evolving Wilds
3x Forest
2x Island
1x Mountain
2x Plains
2x Prairie Stream
Instant (19)
4x Anticipate
4x Commencement of Festivities
4x Encircling Fissure
4x Glimmer of Genius
3x Repel the Abominable
4x Attune with Aether
2x Descend upon the Sinful
4x Fumigate
1x Rise from the Tides
Enchantment (4)
4x Fevered Visions
Artifact (1)
1x Dynavolt Tower
Creature (3)
3x Torrential Gearhulk
4 Thing in the Ice
4 Negate
1 Dynavolt Tower
2 Overwhelming Denial
3 Summary Dismissal
1 Descend upon the Sinful
With the banning of Emrakul taking away a huge threat to turbofog it's time to shine is back. This deck trounces most aggro creature decks and has game against midrange/control which has few maindeck ways to meaningully interact with our win conditions/deck. I played this deck quite a bit in the last season. It is powerful and able to churn through the deck and eventually win the game on the back of a horde of zombies, an angel, or burn from our fevereds and Dynavolt Tower. The sideboard is mainly to sure up weaknesses to planeswalkers or other combo decks that don't rely on creatures. Dynavolt Tower is fantasatic against planeswalkers that need to be killed. Some like Liliana can actually just be ignored. If they decide too ultimate her you can still win. They unwittingly make your fumigates insane. Thing in the Ice comes in hopefully as removal comes out against decks with creatures or where you just need to get a kill quickly like combo. This decks other saving grace is it can just fog through the Saheeli Rai combo and makes them need to work hard to get multiple counters up and mana to combo.
I'm looking for opinions on the deck and potential cards to run. I wanted to incorporate a Bring to Light package, however I don't really see many instants, sorceries, and creatures other than fumigate that I'd ever search up except for maybe a one of Cataclysmic Gearhulk, but I just don't think it's worth it yet.
Cards I've Considered / Tried:
Martyr Proc Thread
Esper Relicblade Thread
Standard:
Mardu Superfriends
Turbofog
4 Temple Bell
4 Fog
4 Safe Passage
Here your fogs cost more and do less and you have half as much draw. Even your wraths cost more. Since you aren't trying to deck them this is really more a damage avoidance, control. The problem you must have encountered is that your totally reactionary. As you know any time you miss a fog or have it countered that is lethal generally. With 22 lands and expensive fogs what do you do if they counter one. You need a consistent backup.
Im not trying to be as negative as I sound but I played with this as soon as I came back to the game and decided the replacements for the cards I use to play were all inferior in terms of efficacy and cost.
I currently play a dynavolt deck. That is nuts against lots of decks because of its combination of sweepers, removal, draw and counters. One Dynavolt Tower is frankly underwhelming. It takes three spells to get a free Lightning bolt but in tandem its basically a free spell with 80% of your spells. with 3 out there it is generally a hard lock on new creatures coming on the board. What about a deck that looked like this.
Instant
3x Anticipate
4x Commencement of Festivities
4x Encircling Fissure
4x Glimmer of Genius
3x Harnessed lightning
2x Radiant Flames
4x Fumigate
Enchantment
4x Fevered Visions
4x Dynavolt Tower
Creature
3x Torrential Gearhulk
I think 30% of the decks I play against are Human centric/heavy. Makes me want to board Repel the Abominable
I might try it out to see.
Martyr Proc Thread
Esper Relicblade Thread
Standard:
Mardu Superfriends
Turbofog
4c "Mechanized" Fog
3 Encircling Fissure
4 Repel the Abominable
3 Fumigate
4 Fevered Visions
4 Trail of Evidence
2 Second Harvest
3 Mechanized Production
4 Confirm Suspicions
3 Torrential Gearhulk
4 Evolving Wilds
3 Cinder Glade
3 Fortified Village
1 Port Town
3 Prairie Stream
2 Forest
2 Plains
3 Island
1 Mountain
Martyr Proc Thread
Esper Relicblade Thread
Standard:
Mardu Superfriends
Turbofog
Martyr Proc Thread
Esper Relicblade Thread
Standard:
Mardu Superfriends
Turbofog
Martyr Proc Thread
Esper Relicblade Thread
Standard:
Mardu Superfriends
Turbofog
Martyr Proc Thread
Esper Relicblade Thread
Standard:
Mardu Superfriends
Turbofog
This deck woefully lacks draw. Its not a deck that ends up drawing 5 - 8 cards a turn like turbo-fog should. The deck should get going faster and faster and you are accumulating answers by the very means that you are defeating your opponent...The run away draw engine.
Im not sure what god draw hands you've experienced but this deck losses almost always to rw humans. Sure you nuke them but they can fully reload in a turn. You can't consistently have fogs for 6 straight turns. I can say I never can count on that and the statistics don't support it. Clearly copy cat sucks because even when you do fog they just rinse and repeat till you miss a fog. Aetherflux reservoir anyone. You have 4 spells in your whole deck that let you survive this. Those same 4 are dead against rw humans. Don't get me started on decks that also have counters.
I really want this to work as I have more experience piloting this then any other deck but it just won't for me. Perhaps your facing different types of opponents. But it goes through my testing gauntlet and has near auto losses to too many actively played decks.
What do you disagree about? Welcome to standard... you're limited on card choices and you have to make do with what you have.
Fevered Visions and Glimmer of Genius have been enough draw for me so far. Anticipate helps you get there as well. Evolving Wilds and Attune with Aether do a small amount of thinning which helps a bit
Sure we don't have a runaway draw engine. You don't need it either. Torrential Gearhulk lets you draw or fog as needed and get some damage in sometimes.
You just need to live long enough to get a kill with Fevered Visions, Dynavolt Tower, Descend Upon the Sinful, or Rise from the Tides.
You seem to be glossing over the fact that the deck plays 4 Fumigate and 2 Descend Upon the Sinful in the main. Against RW Humans you just have to fire off one or two fogs. Slam a Fumigate then they are usually screwed. Can you give me a link or reference to these statistics you are mentioning?
I'll admit Aetherflux Reservoir decks are a rough matchup. I will also point out they make a small portion of the meta and didn't show up at all at the pro tour. Speaking of the Pro Tour. All that was present was aggro decks, which Turbo Fog preys upon. Counterspells are an issue, but once again I'm going to reference the pro tour where the top 8 had zero blue decks. Also that's why I have a sideboard to bring in my own counterspells and shift out a few fogs for more versatile spells and threats.
Did you run my list through your testing gauntlet? I'd be curious to know what lists you ran against and the win loss of post and pre board games if that is what you did.
What improvements would you make to the list if you were to consider playing it? I'm well aware it's not as powerful on the draw side as old turbofogs, but Torrential Gearhulk and Fumigate help balance that out along with the meta being skewed towards aggressive strategies.
Martyr Proc Thread
Esper Relicblade Thread
Standard:
Mardu Superfriends
Turbofog
The whole point of Turbo fog was that the thing that kept you alive (drawing tons of cards) was also the thing that won you the game. Obviously that's synergistic.
In this case you have to devote your deck to staying alive and then put something in it to win you the game. I also don't think you can argue the fact that every single element of this deck is less effective and more expensive then those that were available in Turbo fog at any other point that said deck was viable. Every fog is more expensive and less effective, the draw is non renewing and does not mill the opponent, and the wipes cost more.
You asked what I had I tested this against. Generally since I do all of my playing online I keep track of magic league top 8 decklist and utilize those. That is clearly more minute to minute and not necessarily reflective of the overall metagame . Having said that let's talked about the things this turbo fog is worst against. One of them is vehicles and Planeswalkers. The wraths miss them and they represent threats that can't be addressed at instant speed and remain a threat the very turn after you wipe the board. If you look at the most recent top 8 decklists, mardu vehicle makes up the majority of them.
This doesn't mean one shouldn't play the deck or you shouldn't play the deck it means I couldn't get the deck to perform in a manner in which it could consistently win games. I don't mean consistently win tournaments, I mean win close to half the games it runs against. I am by no means great at Magic, either the playing or deck-building ( I'll concede you're likely better than me at both). But I do not lack the experience to running a fog deck. It does not change the fact that this deck does not run like a turbo fog deck. And as I would tweak and twist it to get it to work the thing that I would take out would be fogs and the thing I was putting in was control and in the end it's just a control deck with a lot of creature removal.
When I spoke of statistic I meant the statistical probability of drawing cards within the first 15-20 cards. The chances by turn 10 you have 8 mana (you are going to wipe the baord and have a fog and mana in hand for the next turns response), 5 fogs and at least one wrath and a win condition. I hate to say it but it feels like you goldfish some of your answers. I don't know how you can propose that the tower answers any threat when there's only one of them and it will take three fogs before you can do 3 damage. How do you answer a planeswalker with a tower that way. How can you afford the mana and tempo to drop a Tower till late game. At best you're just holding it in check, but that means the tower is not winning you the game or removing any of the other threats. I really don't know what the plan would be if two Planeswalkers come out. Obviously when a deck that is prominent in the most recent round of the pro tour can consistently hit you for 5 the turn after you wrath that is not necessarily and good deck to be playing against.
Ultimately maybe the deck works great for you, maybe the deck works great for everybody else . It didn't for me as much as I wanted it to. As much as I tried to convince myself it would. But at some point you run out of excuses for why you would have won if you'd only drawn one more of these or one of those and you start recognizing that I don't draw one more of these or one of those often enough to be competitive.
I'm not trying to win the majority of my games I just want to get somewhere around 50/50 and there are other non netdeck decks that just performed closer to that. Having said that I'd much rather work with you to develop this deck, but dude I read the tea leaves and they were not good.
While Mardu vehicles do have the ability to crack back after a fumigate, usually you gain a nice chunk of life from the fumigate.
There are a few Planeswalkers that can be safely ignored as well. Liliana, both Nissa's, and Gideon to some extent as he is a creature so fogging is good. Gideon can be obnoxious without fogs.
Dynavolt Tower is fantastic against planeswalkers and spell quellers. With attune with aether and glimmer we usually already have energy and then we just get more from doing what we are anyway.
In regards to the name of the deck. I suppose I could just call it fog as we only have one turbo card in fevered visions, but I went with the standard name for fog decks which is turbo fog.
This deck is pretty good at forcing your opponent to choose between dumping there hand and playing into fumigate or choose to take damage from fevered visions. It sucks if you don't get a fevered going in the first 6 or so turns, but it's not that hard with anticipate and glimmer to get there. Against aggro you don't even need to get there sometimes as just casting fumigate and then starting to jam torrential gearhulks is enough to win.
I'm by no means an expert at magic, this deck can be competitive though and I've won my fair share of tournaments with it during kaladesh. Right now I like the deck even more because most decks don't have much reach and need creatures to get there.
Did you run my list when you tried it? I'm curious what you lost too and how it went. I only own the paper form because mtgo is too frustrating for me.
Martyr Proc Thread
Esper Relicblade Thread
Standard:
Mardu Superfriends
Turbofog
The key to mardu vehicle was negating their resilience to sweepers. So I put in a full 4 Authority of the Consuls the reason this became a good deck as this also happens to be kryptonite to copy cat. I also went with 3 of each Dynavolt Tower and Consulate Surveillance these are remarkable synergistic and allow you to save a fog post wrath. Also works great against Chandra and Aetherflux resevoir. Towers help against walkers but primarily they let me kill Saheli mid combo and keep Balista in check.
Side board I have found Hanweir Garrison to wreck control if they do not answer early. It works because everyone sides out all of their removal game 2.
Temur tower is the biggest problem match up so I need to work on tuning for that. My lack of talent/experience means it takes me a long time to figure out what needs to eb changed to make the match up better. Also, obviously, Lost Legacy leads to a scoop unless you have a visions already on the board.
// 3 Artifact
3 Dynavolt Tower
// 11 Enchantment
4 Authority of the Consuls
3 Consulate Surveillance
4 Fevered Visions
// 18 Instant
4 Commencement of Festivities
4 Repel the Abominable
4 Encircling Fissure
3 Glimmer of Genius
3 Anticipate
// 23 Land
4 Aether Hub
2 Botanical Sanctum
2 Canopy Vista
2 Forest
2 Island
2 Lumbering Falls
3 Plains
1 Geier Reach Sanitarium
1 Mountain
2 Spirebluff Canal
2 Inspiring Vantage
3 Attune with Aether
3 Fumigate
// 4 Creature
2 Hanweir Garrison
2 Sphinx of the Final Word
3 Metallurgic Summonings
3 Quarantine Field
// 5 Instant
2 Dispel
3 Disallow