So much has happened right here on these forums. The website has changed so much over the years, constantly adapting to the interests of its users, old and new. It helped shape and reinforce what it means to play and love Magic for thousands of people.
I've been here just two months short of seven years. Salvation has really shaped who I am as a player. I started in the Legacy forums talking about Stax, Burn and Reanimator, but thanks to the open nature of these forums and its users I slowly transformed into a Pauper and Commander player. If I look back at my first posts, I'm a completely different person.
Thank you.
Here's to the end of something great and the beginning of something new and interesting, created by the backbone of MtgSalvation.
I'm not sold on Accumulated Knowledge being better. Think Twice costs 5 mana, is only one card, and nets you 2. AK costs 2 mana, and nets you one card. 2 X AK nets you 3 cards, and 2 X TT would net you 4. if you ever manage to play 3 X AK in one game, it would net you 6 cards, while 3 X TT would give you... 6 cards. I think Think Twice is better, regardless of the more expensive cost (which can be paid anytime, and separately). Accumulated knowledge is definitely a good card though, still viable!
On other news, here's what I've been working on:
2 Avacyn's Pilgrim
2 Llanowar Dead
4 Elves of Deep Shadow
4 Fertile Ground
Fogs (8)
4 Kami of False Hope
4 Spore Frog
4 Dauthi Marauders
Recursion (10)
4 Grim Harvest
4 Undertaker
2 Disturbed Burial
Other Creatures (6)
2 Qasali Pridemage
4 Stinkweed Imp
4 Selesnya Guildgate
2 Golgari Guildgate
8 Swamp
4 Forest
2 Plains
Tortured Existence just plain sucked to recur Fogs, so I looked around for a while and I found Grim Harvest, Undertaker and Disturbed Burial. These cards allow you to play and sac a Fog, recur it and reuse the same recur over again. It costs 6 mana to do it with Grim Harvest or Disturbed Burial, and 2 mana + a card with Undertaker. I use ramp to get to 6 mana asap. Qasali Pridemage is used as infinite enchantment/ artifact removal, being able to just bring it back. Stinkweed Imp is infinite blocking/removal, and his dredge is an excellent way to dig for Grim Harvest.
The mana base is really tricky. I think it's not quite optimized, but the Selesnya Guildgate helps a ton. Avacyn's Pilgrim helps a great deal too.
The deck is cool because it has a lot of staying power because of all the recursion.
Yeah white has quite a few fog effects. In fact, if you include all the combat-skipping cards,Moment of Silence, Empty City Ruse and False Peace, white has more than green. The big advantage Green has is Moment's Peace, which is really the best Fog around. The deck doesn't really need more than 15 Fog cards anyways, so I thought it would be just best to stick to 2 colours and use blue for card draw.
I'll be looking into that idea, I really want something fresh!
I don't quite understand the synergy with Fading creatures. Where do they fit in?
Bequethal needs creatures to die to be good, Skullclamp is uncommon :(, and elvish visionary isn't a very good source of draw!
I'm also considering replacing my Sentinels of Glen Elendra with Delver of Secrets for a more aggressive play.
Merfolk looter is in there because he costs 2 mana and does what he does best. I might add an extra Reckless Scholar/ Cephalid Looter in the place of a Cephalid Scout, which have been pretty lackluster. I'll probably replace the second with a graveyard shuffling effect for me, like Feldon's Cane (is there another?).
Believe it or not, it's actually faster to kill through Viridian Bow damage than through mill with Scholar (in most cases). The reason I use both is that Scholar/Cephalid has multiple purposes, and the bow deals with problematic creatures. I'm definitely keeping the bow!
Brainstorm and Ponder are super useful. Again, once I can set up my fogs for a few turns, I can start milling/damaging my opponent with bow/ looter + Freed from Real, like a machine gun. They quickly catch up all the card drawing and damage. I think ponder and brainstorm are super important. If I'd replace them with anything, it would be Annex and Spy Network.
Turbo-Fog is a control deck that relies on cards like Fog to slow down the opponent while milling them to death with draw spells and mill cards.
In the Pauper format, we obviously don't have access to continuous sources of card draw like Howling Mine to find all of our Fogs and mill the opponent. The deck instead relies on blue draw spells like Vision Skeins and Words of Worship to draw into fogs (at instant speed) and mill the opponent slowly. Jace's Erasure makes sure to mill the opponent to death, and is the primary win condition.
The deck presented here is UG, however many popular builds are UWG. Using three colours is a debatable subject, and both decks are solid.
4 Fog
2 Undergrowth
2 Respite
4 Moment's Peace
2 Spore Cloud
Draw (16)
4 Ponder
4 Words of Wisdom
4 Vision Skeins
2 Compulsive Research
2 Oona's Grace
2 Arcane Denial
2 Muddle the Mixture
Mill (6)
4 Jace's Erasure
2 Tome Scour
Lands (20)
9 Forest
11 Island
2 Arcane Denial
2 Muddle the Mixture
4 Counterspell
4 Nourish
3 Quiet Disrepair
Turbo-Fog is excellent against any creature based strategies, as well as Infect. Its bad matchups are Burn and Combo (may it rest in peace). Pivotal matchups are 8post, delver and to a lesser extent monoblack control.
Below is the original post, where a different build was introduced. You will find within this thread 3 completely different decks, all built around the same theme : Merfolk Looter-Fog, Grim Harvest-Fog, and finally Mill Turbo-Fog. The first two builds were discussed and eventually rejected, evolving into the Turbo-Fog that it is now.
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Hello! I've been testing this idea since yesterday, and so far it's working out pretty well, I think I may have something here:
4 Merfolk Looter
2 Cephalid looter
2 Cephalid Scout
Fog Effects (14)
4 Fog
4 Undergrowth
4 Moment's Peace
2 Lull
4 Ponder
4 Brainstorm
2 Reclaim
Artifacts/ Enchantments (6)
4 Freed from the Real
2 Viridian Longbow
12 Island
10 Forest
Didn't think this was possible in Pauper, since we don't have access to Rites of Flourishing or Howling Minesque cards. I thought long and hard about it and thought I'd try using looting effects to just cycle stuff from my hand and get more Fogs. I added Freed from the Real to put it over the top and Viridian Longbow as an optional kill condition (the main one being Cephalid Looter). The advantage this has over normal Turbo-Fog is that it doesn't give CA to the opponent. A combo sideboard might be necessary. Any thoughts or improvements you would care to mention?
If there are any better common draw engines out there, please let me know. I've looked around a bit but havn't found anything really all that useful (Mystic Remora just doesn't work).
The sweet spot in my meta (Pauper, Legacy or casual) is 2. the second turn defines the rest of the game.
4 Counterspell
3 Prohibit
3 Faerie Trickery
4 Exclude
Draw (6)
3 Think Twice
3 Oona's Grace
4 Spire Golem
4 Sentinels of Glen Elendra
3 Fathom Seer
Bounce/ Removal (5)
3 Curse of Chains
2 Into the Roil
Lands (24)
21 Island
3 Quicksand
4 Vapor Snag
4 Hydroblast
2 Annul
2 Waterfront Bouncer
3 Relic of Progenitus
The deck is really solid, it doesn't really have a terrible matchup because countering spells is such a general strategy. Infect is probably the worst, but it's still winnable.
Take my advice: Don't ever run conditional counters like Mana Leak, Daze or Force Spike. It might seem nice in the early game, but they're dead draws in the late game (which is where this deck inevitably goes every game). Hard counters are the way to go in a deck with a slow clock.
Also, I don't recommend running small creatures like Cloud of Faeries. Sure it's free, but the point is to have stronger creatures to outclass your opponent and win the race. Fathom Seer, Spire Golem andSentinels of Glen Elendra make excellent blockers against small creatures that came out 1st or second turn.
If you had a few more Blue sources, Gilder Bairn would be pretty cool. Complicated to use, but strong.
Also, I was wondering, Finn, what you were testing against to have such poor results that made you drop the project?
Also, I think Goblin Welder does the job of the recursion very well already. Maybe a miser Academy could be handy though.
You know you can place your counters on any artifact, right? It doesn't need to use the counters in any way. You could place a Charge Counter on Darksteel Citadel for safekeeping. Although it would just be more useful on a card that could use them!
I like the Umezawa's Jitte idea. I really dislike Sun Droplet. The real disadvantage of it is that you only gain 1 life per turn, which is terrible, no matter how many counter you put on it. I would simply remove them, since that would put you at 60 cards rather than 63. That would improve your consistency. I'll definitely playtest this myself so I have a better insight on how well this works!
I can tell you from personal experience that this is a bad idea. NEVER, EVER play a lord turn 1. It will eat all the removal in the world immediately. I used to use Dark Ritual in my casual Zombie deck, and it was very rare that I got to play 3 1/1s turn one, and I was running 14 1-drops. Every time I played a lord, I regretted it.
WOAA, no cons in comparison to Bad Moon I think is a pretty biased statement. I've had plenty of situations where I was happy to have a bad moon instead of a lord : it costs 1 less mana, and it doesn't die easily like a lord does. The strength of Merfolk was in it's 12 2-mana lords, and Bad Moon is as close as it gets. Merfolk have stronger lords, but weaker support creatures. a 3/2 Gravecrawler on turn 2 is pretty backbreaking, not unlike Wild Nacatl or Delver of Secrets.
In light of all of this, you're still probably right, the deck might be better with a set of Cemetery Reaper or Lord of the Undead Instead.