MTG Salvation

Nothing too fancy, just a fog deck like pretty much every Angus deck out there.
So what do I like specifically about my build? It can win games and not draw them out forever and ever and ever.

Commander isn't like other formats where a controlling deck is fine picking an opponent to death with a single Mishra's Factory or whatever, so out of respect for the other three players in the game, I decided to beef up Angus with some proactive threats. Which threats? Unblockable/hard to block ones such as Thassa, Sun Quan, and Deep-Sea Kraken. To make things even faster, Crescendo of War and Infinite Hourglass magnifies the power of my fogs and my unblockable attackers and keeps the game from grinding to a sleepy crawl. (They also let my opponents kill each other faster too.)

I don't have a ton more to say about the deck, but I'm happy to answer any questions y'all might have about it.

My only concern is that with so many fogs and focus on fogs it feels like you don't dissuade people from coming your way in the first place. I guess the question I have is if you were to take some of the fogs and use some naturally defensive options like Propaganda, Fog Bank, and or other such defenses would they keep you from needing to fog all the time? I find that fogs tend to have a heavy diminishing return when seen in duplicate where as more proactive defenses can often work together a bit better.

Random question, do you participate in Jeff Hoogland's stream chat? I feel like I have seen him responding to you before.

Quote from ISBPathfinder »

My only concern is that with so many fogs and focus on fogs it feels like you don't dissuade people from coming your way in the first place. I guess the question I have is if you were to take some of the fogs and use some naturally defensive options like Propaganda, Fog Bank, and or other such defenses would they keep you from needing to fog all the time? I find that fogs tend to have a heavy diminishing return when seen in duplicate where as more proactive defenses can often work together a bit better.

The number of fogs I have in the deck means that I usually see 2-3 of them over the course of a normal game, which is the ideal amount. Holding up mana with cards in hand or Angus available is my deterrent. I'm not really interested in keeping people from attacking with those other resources as they're not really needed. Playing Propaganda and the like paints a target on your head moreso than possibly holding fogs. Ideally, I want to do as little as possible at sorcery speed and the fogs let me do that.

Quote from ISBPathfinder »

Random question, do you participate in Jeff Hoogland's stream chat? I feel like I have seen him responding to you before.

Yes, though I haven't been watching as much lately since I don't enjoy his Standard content as much as the Modern/Legacy.

Why do you run Eiganjo Castle? I'm also guessing Ash Barrens is for the land cycling? Also,why only one creature with horsmanship? Do you not have Riding the Dilu Horse or Riding Red Hare?

Quote from Hermes_ »

Why do you run Eiganjo Castle? I'm also guessing Ash Barrens is for the land cycling? Also,why only one creature with horsmanship? Do you not have Riding the Dilu Horse or Riding Red Hare?

Eiganjo Castle is to protect Angus and because there's little downside to running it.
Yes, Ash Barrens is for the land cycling just like it is in every deck.
Sun Quan gives ALL my creatures Horsemanship, making them basically unblockable. He's in the deck as a way to close things out, not to get in chip damage a bit at a time, so more Horsemanship cards wouldn't be useful.

Boring and obvious feedback, but I'd run the 6 additional fetches over some of your lesser fixing lands. And while eiganjo castle doesn't have much downside in theory, I've run it in quite a few decklists and practically never activated it, especially when your commander is very unlikely to end up in combat. I'd be more concerned about protection from nonbasic hate, personally (which additional fetches can also protect against).

I'm curious how fractured identity has been. At an uneducated glance it looks...bad. It's definitely a unique effect, but wouldn't a theft effect do roughly the same thing but with less chance to hideously backfire?

I'm curious about Primordial Mist. Does it enhance your gameplan at all, or is it just nifty?

Quote from JqlGirl »

Quote from Hermes_ »

Why do you run Eiganjo Castle? I'm also guessing Ash Barrens is for the land cycling? Also,why only one creature with horsmanship? Do you not have Riding the Dilu Horse or Riding Red Hare?

Eiganjo Castle is to protect Angus and because there's little downside to running it.
Yes, Ash Barrens is for the land cycling just like it is in every deck.
Sun Quan gives ALL my creatures Horsemanship, making them basically unblockable. He's in the deck as a way to close things out, not to get in chip damage a bit at a time, so more Horsemanship cards wouldn't be useful.

I wasn't aware of ash barrens existence,so hence the question about it. I run a few of the other horsemanship legends along with Sun,so I can totally understand your use then.

Quote from DirkGently »

I'd run the 6 additional fetches over some of your lesser fixing lands.
I'm curious how fractured identity has been.

I don't run off-color fetches, so that's not an option for me.
Fractured Identity hasn't been drawn since I put it in the deck, so I have no idea how it plays. It just seems like a fun political card to try out in the deck.

Quote from RxPhantom »

I'm curious about Primordial Mist. Does it enhance your gameplan at all, or is it just nifty?

Similarly, I haven't yet drawn Primordial Mist, but the idea of that one is that fogs any manifested fogs are cheap enough to use in a similar vein to Spore Frog or Kami of False Hope.

Quote from Hermes_ »

I wasn't aware of ash barrens existence,so hence the question about it. I run a few of the other horsemanship legends along with Sun,so I can totally understand your use then.

Apologies on that front, then. I didn't mean to come off as flippant. And yeah, Sun has won me a couple of games. He's just gas.

Quote from JqlGirl »

Quote from Hermes_ »

I wasn't aware of ash barrens existence,so hence the question about it. I run a few of the other horsemanship legends along with Sun,so I can totally understand your use then.

Apologies on that front, then. I didn't mean to come off as flippant. And yeah, Sun has won me a couple of games. He's just gas.

It's all good, my card knowledge isn't great so I tend to ask basic questions that everyone else knows lol (also why I tend not to comment about on deck list lol)

Spike Weaver is on theme.
Genesis I think would be cool with Kami of False Hope and Spore Frog as a continuous stream of fogs.

I like that Primordial Mist as a source of card advantage. I wonder if Whisperwood Elemental would also be a fun element (pun) to add to the deck?

I do think it would be nice to have a couple of card filtering effects, so that in games where combat is not that important you can trade them for something else.
Examples are;
Jace, Vryn's Prodigy (if you got the cash), Cephalid Broker, Merfolk Looter, Champion of Wits, Compulsion, Senate Guildmage, Zephyr Scribe.
Dreamscape Artist can ramp you lands, and you can simply discard the fog effects, especially early on in the game where they probably not relevant.
Catalog, Chart a Course, Chemister's Insight.

Out of these I like Dreamscape Artist, Jace, Vryn's Prodigy, Compulsion, Chemister's Insight the most, although they are all playable.

Kor Haven is on theme as well.

This looks like a really frustrating deck to play against. Which looks like more or less what you're going for, so well done!

I've never played Bant, but I've done a wee bit of fogging here and there, so there's a few suggestions I can offer:

• Spike Weaver is great fog tech - better where you can increase the number of counters on it, but might be worth a look.
• Had Glacial Chasm occurred to you? It's an impenetrable fortress of solitude. A little risky, but I can't even count the number of games it's saved my ass in my Nissa build, and often even lead to wins out of nowhere too. For that matter, Kor Haven is fun too, and can be used to curry political favour.
• Stormtide Leviathan is a nice combination of combat lock and combat evasion - I guess it's meta dependent, but it could put in some work here.
• Mirrorweave or Rite of Replication could be fun ways to swing in for the win - copy Deep-Sea Kraken and swing for the win, Archon of Valor's Reach to lock the game up, or Monastery Mentor to make the grossest swarm the world has ever seen.

Also, kudos for playing Perplexing Chimera, 100% one of the funnest cards printed in a long time. I love it and wish I had a place for it in one of my current builds.

Quote from toctheyounger77 »

This looks like a really frustrating deck to play against. Which looks like more or less what you're going for, so well done!


[*]Had Glacial Chasm occurred to you? It's an impenetrable fortress of solitude. A little risky, but I can't even count the number of games it's saved my ass in my Nissa build, and often even lead to wins out of nowhere too.[/list]

combo with solemnity and no more worries about the upkeep trigger lol
List tags are malformed.

combo with solemnity and no more worries about the upkeep trigger lol
List tags are malformed.

Absolutely possible. With Nissa I just take the hit until I'm ready to swing, then let it die. Or if I have Ramunap Excavator in play I just let it die and play it again, saccing Drownyard Temple or whatever I need least, Evolving Wilds or something inconsequential.

Quote from toctheyounger77 »

combo with solemnity and no more worries about the upkeep trigger lol
List tags are malformed.

Absolutely possible.

I ran both of them before I fully understood the interaction

Ha! Yeah, it's definitely something I'd like to exploit in my Varina list. I already run Solemnity, Tombstone Stairwell and Mystic Remora, I want to add Glacial Chasm, it's just not the sort of thing you see at every LGS.