MTG Salvation

So I'm making my first foray into pauper by taking my favorite infinite combo and augmenting it with the bones of my old Turbo Fog deck. The whole idea is to stall until the combo fires, and then we win next turn! The combo involves Presence of Gond enchanting a Midnight Guard. Tap, creature, untap, tap creature, untap, etc. As for now, I've jammed a bunch of fog effects to shield me while we hunt our win.

Let's check out the list:



So, it is utter jank. This I know.

Sadly, I have only goldfished this so far. I don't really have any pauper decks to play it against, and I'm very new to the format. The basic idea is to use our core 20 fogs (all instants minus the 3x Riot Control) to stall until the combo goes off. Heliod's Pilgrim can help us find the aura, while Commune with the Gods can search either pieces from the top. The sideboard is bare bones, subbing in the appropriate CoP and taking out Riot Control.

Usually I can hit the combo by turn 6 or 7. I know little about Pauper meta, so I'm not sure how impressive this is. If there is more effective stalling measures in Pauper, I would love to hear. I'm still very vulnerable against removal and direct damage. Any ideas?

Honestly, you're mixing two different parts from different decks. You have the Fog from Turbo Fog and the Combo from Gond decks. It looks like this build has the weaknesses of both and the strength of neither, which is not a good place to be.

If you like the Gond combo then go with a Soul Sisters shell. This is actually great for stalling the game especially against aggro and direct damage as you are actively keeping yourself out of lethal range. The deck is also fairly consistent and has a lot of ways to find combo pieces with Heliod's Pilgrim, Kruphix's Insight, Vessel of Nascency, Commune (which you have) and even Auramancer to bring back lost auras. This also opens you up to getting control auras and enchantments as well. Take a look at some lists and see how you like them. You can even keep Dawn Charm as it can protect Midnight Guard.

You could even keep Kami of the False Hope and add Spore Frog since they can be found with most of your dig spells. Making the switch can also clean up your sideboard so you can have less COP spells since you can find them easier.

Ha! I just pulled my presence of gond pauper deck out last night and was messing around with it. I saw your post's title under the recent topics category and thought this must be pauper. I went a slightly different route than you however. I play a much more combo deck, essentially old Melira pod. I crammed the deck full of combo pieces that can work in multiple combos. With the amount of control that runs around the format I feel it is way to fragile to have 8 combo cards. Lapse of certainty is a great protection and stall card. The other combo with presence of gond would be devoted druid and ivy lane denizen. Druid also acts as ramp when you want it.

I saw a really good list of Gond Combo that ran Benevolent Bodyguard. I don't think anybody should be building their deck without those.

With all of these sacrifice creatures with utility and all of the creatures in this deck being 3 mana or less along with Commune dumping thins in the graveyard I'm starting to think going with a Unearth/Grim Harvest/Pulse of Murasa plan might make this deck very resilient.

If we splash black and add some Ash Barrens then we can probably get the plan going. Here's what I'm thinking:

You know... if we're going to go down the Abzan route, why not just play Tortured Existence? The Abzan version of the deck is currently quite popular. I'll try to find a list and post it here, then we can see if playing the Gond combo would be good there.

EDIT: Found one


I've actually played Bjornarprytz with pretty much this exact list and lost to it. You can find the video in my matchups section of the Turbo Fog Primer. I wonder if we can make space for the Gond Combo in a deck like this.

We probably want all 4 copies of Presence of Gond, but could probably cut down on the Midnight Guards.

Hey everyone! I've seen a lot of great ideas being posted. I've finally streamlined and assembled a first draft of my list! I took Darkninja's advice and went in DEEP on Soul Sisters. We have 12x sisters to gain us life, and 8x 1-drops that can be sac'd to fog combat damange.

BEHOLD!



A few other changes include ditching Heliod's Pilgrim for Drift of Phantasms since it can tutor both sides of our combo. I also tossed all my non-creature fogs in favor of dig spells. Finally, I smoothed out the lands so that the base isn't quite as clunky. The sideboard is still a bit of a mess, but at least it's way more relevant! I moved my best fogs and damage prevention to the board, mostly to counteract burn and heavy removal.

All this talk about Abzan Reanimator has me curious for sure. Not only can it get extra uses from my Phantasms and my 8x "Fogs-on-legs", but it can also help salvage a Midnight Guard should I encounter disruption. It would also be nice to have black in my mana base so that I can jam more removal in my sideboard.

Tortured Existence looks exquisite. I'm going to tinker around with it. My only hang up about this deck is that almost all my lands ETB tapped. I'm worried this will put me a turn behind, but then again I'm not sure what better mana-fixing options exist in pauper. What kind of lands will enable a 3-color wedge like Abzan? We can't even run Sandsteppe Citadel!

I like the idea of using Tortured Existence as well. The reason I had so many slots dedicated to recursion in my original concept was that I knew I'd lose some of them to the graveyard with Commune and Vessel (although Grim Harvest is great with Recover). That's also why I had Reclaim. If we switch to Tortured Existence then it fits better with the Enchantment grabbing cards and frees up seven spots for some more utility creatures and enchantments (leaning more towards creatures so we have more fodder for TortEx).

Thinking about it a bit, I remembered a good creature+aura lock with Palace Guard and Ghostly Possession. Once you get this online it can stall the game against aggro and midrange decks. Would this be a better way to go than the TortEx/Sac Fog effects? Either way could be good IMO. I guess it just depends on preference.

That actually seems really good! I'm kinda wondering now why this combo hasn't been used more, particularly in Gond Combo decks. It even gives it flying to block faeries.

EDIT: if flying is not a concern, protection enchantments might also be good, like Prismatic Ward or Pentarch Ward.

In the same vein, but not as good, Watcher in the Web will get the job done.

The only thing to be concerned with with this combo is Trample damage.

Yeah, I'm not sure why I haven't seen it either. I used to run a similar combo in High School with Ironfist Crusher and Sandskin in a Soldier deck I had. A few years ago I would run the Guard Possession combo (which is far superior to the old version) and make my friends mad at the kitchen table.

This deck is practically building itself.

Wow! I really like the look of that list! Cho-Manno's Blessing is an awesome card since it's a Tutorable spot removal counter.

I'd still like to see Commune with the Gods somewhere in that list as it's a great way to dig for Midnight Guard. Maybe cut a couple of Temporal Isolations and one of something else to fit in 3 copies?

The Dawn Charms can definitely go. Commune seems much better. We can go -2 Dawn Charm, -1 Temporal Isolation, +3 Commune with the Gods.


After a few test games, I noticed that this deck has too many 3-drops. It makes the game pretty awkward.

You guys took this list in a whole new direction, and I'm liking it. I love the Sac Fogs, but they only work in Soul Sisters. So now I'm yanking the entire 20-card Sisters core out and restructuring. I love the list Upkeep just posted, and that Palace Guard + Ghostly Possession/Cho-Manno's Blessing combo is nuts! I need to ask why we're running Temporal Isolation, though. It does nothing for our blocking game. Is this to force through damage?

Also, I would hate to lose my blue draw/filter cards (Brainstorm, et al.), but it looks like this deck is going to do well with tutoring and digging. I really want to hype up Drift of Phantasms, since it can transmute for both pieces of the lockdown combo and both pieces of the game-winning combo. Plus he's got a but built to block.

I'm going to try to whip up a new list soon and test it out.

I agree, I do like how this thread turned out. It felt like we did a GMaD! Lol! Upkeep's list looks like a great upgrade to a lower tier archetype and I definitely want to try it out!

Temporal Isolation is to take out an opponent's creature. It's tutorable with Heliod's Pilgrim and acts as instant speed removal with the Flash. It's a pretty good inclusion, but since all the creatures in the list are Human then I would probably use Weight of Conscience instead. Plus, after you activate the exile ability you can return it with Auramancer. Either option is pretty good for the deck, so it's a matter of preference.

EDIT: Drift of Phantasms is pretty good, but having double blue in the Transmute cost is pretty steep for a splash color. I'd try and keep it two colors to keep things smoother.

I looked at a few alternate options for 3-mana cards to help the curve a bit and unglog that slot. I found 2 replacement options for Auramancer. There's Tragic Poet and Custodi Squire. Tragic poet will lower our curve, but I'd rather have an ETB trigger for that effect since you have to wait a turn to activate it's ability. However, Custodi Squire looks promising. It can bring back enchantments as well as creatures to really secure our combo pieces. It can also chain itself if you get both copies to provide you with a resilient, evasive alternate wincon.

Here's my take on the list. It's pretty much Upkeep's list, but with the Squire and Weight of Conscience. I also went -1 Pilgrim for +1 Commune. This will hopefully ease up on the 3 mana slot a bit more and help us find those creatures we want.

This list looks great! I agree with your changes. Wight of Conscience seems better.

The only problem I keep having is that it dosen't have enough early-game interaction. The curve still feels a little bit too high.

With such a high curve, I don't see a reason not to run Selesnya Sanctuary instead of the Guildgate. It helps us get to three mana with only two lands, which should increase the amount of keepable two-landers.

Selesnya Sanctuary sounds like a good upgrade!

Yeah, the curve is high, but I can't think of anything else to do to help that unless we switch to the Soul Sisters plan. Unless we get a cheaper replacement for the creature combo pieces this might be the best we can do with this build. I still believe it's pretty strong! I've done a small amount of testing and I had the combo online T4 and won T5 with out any interaction with my opponent. Of course this is just a few games worth of testing. I'm going to try and do some more testing throughout the next couple of days.

So, I've been slowly getting into MTGO and I've been getting cards for this deck. I really want to try it out. I have all the main deck cards (except I have to use Auramancer over Custodi Squire because Squire isn't in MTGO), but I don't want to start playing until I have a decent sideboard.

Here's what I have so far:



I wanted to use cards that I could find with Commune or Heliod's Pilgrim, although there aren't a lot of Sideboard Auras to choose from so it's just enchantments and creatures. Seal of Cleansing is good because it can be brought back with Auramancer.

I have two available slots and I'm not sure what to use? Add one more of each CoP? Use another CoP color? Quiet Disrepair (which are Auras so Pilgrim can fetch them)? Another utility creature?

Prismatic Strands is pretty much a standard thing to play. It also works well with Commune, since you get it into your graveyard.

Ray of Revelation is excellent enchantment hate. same deal as prismatic, since it also has flashback. Tranquility has also made somewhat of a comeback in sideboards.

What's your account name?

I'll probably go with Strands. It'll protect the tokens from an Electrickery or keep my combo creatures alive! I thought about Tranquility or Patrician's Scorn but I don't want to play those if I already have some of my enchantments in play.

My account name is Darkninja107.

Well, Amonkhet blessed this deck! Benefaction of Rhonas is one mana more than Commune, but it can potentially get us a Creature AND/OR an Enchantment! One card can grab two combo pieces. Sometimes it will play as an expensive Commune if we only reveal one of the card types. The only issue is this card further clogs up the 3 cmc slot.

I got excited and thought about this too when I saw the card. I actually think Commune will be better just because of the mana cost. Doesn't mean this card isn't good, though!

Yeah, I honestly might try a 4-2 split with Commune and Benefaction or maybe a 3-2. I want to play commune on turn 2, but on turn 3 or 4 Benefaction would be preferable if I don't have any of the combo pieces in hand.

Another card you might think about is Standard Bearer. I use that and Benevolent Bodyguard both to protect my combo for my peasant GW Gond deck. Standard Bearer also helps really well if you run into any Bogle, Infect, or any deck that wants to pump their own creatures.

Also, I'm surprised to see only 3 Heliod's Pilgrim. I feel like that's a 4-of because you *have* to have Gond to win.