Last week, I covered my initial foray with TurboFog leading up to Regionals. After extensively playing the deck since then, analyzing the effect of Grand Prix: Barcelona, and repeatedly reading and hearing misconception after misconception about the deck, I feel like the deck deserves a more in depth review. The strategy is fundamentally different from almost every other Magic deck in existence, and a lot of people continue to evaluate this deck in comparison to traditional strategies, and attempt to attack the deck with cards which are used to fight control decks.
In reality, what TurboFog really tries to do is play a different game than everybody else. It circumvents creatures and concepts of card advantage to change the goal of the game to one you opponent is not equipped to deal with. It trades its cards — Fog effects — for time. But, as a result, TurboFog asks you to play it differently than you would play a normal combo or control deck in each matchup, and that’s where people seem to get hung up at.
Before I delve into the individual cards you can play with, the first and most important belief I want to clear up is that this deck is going to earn you a million draws. Yes, that’s true — if you aren’t taking the proper precautions. The deck is slow and takes time to grind out its wins, and yes it is more prone to draws, but you can do a lot to try and avoid receiving them. I’ve been timing myself and completing matches within forty minutes online (giving an extra ten minutes for shuffling, sideboarding, etc,) so there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be able to complete the majority of your matches if you make sure you use your time wisely. There are three tactics you need to be applying with TurboFog to help speed up your games:
The first tactic to help avoid draws is simple: play fast. The deck is surprisingly simple, and a lot of turns follow the sequence of untap, draw a bunch of cards, land, maybe Howling Mine effect, pass turn and discard, Fog, maybe counter a spell, repeat. The actions you take on your turn should usually not exceed about thirty seconds, yet I see people sifting through their cards every turn figuring out what to play and what to discard. Try and figure out what you are going to do, even with the unknown factor of the draw step, on your opponent’s turn. By playing briskly, you can save a lot of time.
The second tactic is to make sure your opponent is playing fast and that he knows the repercussions early on. The correct time to ask your opponent to speed his play up is not when you’re in the early stages of game 3 and realize you only have five minutes on the clock. As soon as you even begin to notice your opponent taking more time that he should, let your opponent know he should speed up his play so you can finish the match. If it persists, call a judge and have them watch for slow play. Every match where I have went to time, I know I could have prevented the situation by just asking the opponent to expedite his play.
The third tactic is to use as many shortcuts as possible to save time. Make sure you are still clear and within the rules, but try and use shortcuts where you can. Every thirty seconds saved during a match can make a big difference. The most common shortcut I’ve began to take is with my Fogs. There is an inevitable point in the game when your opponent has built up an army of creatures and/or you have a Jace in play, and your opponent spends his swell time figuring out who he is attacking with in case you have Pollen Lullaby, and/or which creatures are attacking Jace. The technically correct play is to let your opponent go through the motions so you can derive information about future attacks. However, each time your opponent does this it takes time off the clock. The correct play in the context of time constraints is to just Fog them before they declare attackers. Remember, every second counts!
With that out of the way, let’s clarify your basic gameplan, then use that to take a look through the cards in the deck. So, what is your plan? What offbeat strategy, exactly, are you trying to twist the game into being about?
The key to it all is Jace. You want to stabilize early on with Fogs, either before or after laying some Mines, then +2, +2, +2, +2, ultimate. This is how you will win the majority of your games; you don’t actually have to Fog every turn of the game. (Incidentally, this is also the reason why you can get through matches within time constraints: Jacing them out takes significantly less time.) Playing any less that four Jace is utterly incorrect. (Although you can sideboard one out against Red if you need to.)
Your way of staying alive is creature damage prevention, and any class of non creature which deals damage to you is dangerous. To make matters worse, almost every non-token based deck has a form of spell they can use to disrupt your game plan. This is where Runed Halo comes in. Against Red, it prevents you from being burned out. Against decks with alleged “trumps” like Banefire, it shuts them off entirely. It prevents you from being Mistbind Cliqued, Cruel Ultimatumed, Volcanic Fallouted, or even Anathemancered out if you draw too many Mystic Gates. Against many decks, especially ones where Jace is more difficult to get online, you have to draw at least one Runed Halo to make sure you’re safe, and often you have to draw two. The original Japanese list has two, and then Bill Stark and I upped it to four. At Barcelona Olivier Ruel had three, and I think that’s where it should stay. While granted, they are great both against Swans and Faeries, and boarding another is a solid possibility, you really don’t want to have your hand clogged with them early on when you want to be Fogging against a lot of decks.
Speaking of Fog effects, they are not as abundant as they may seem. Yes, the deck plays twelve actual Fogs and four Cryptic Commands. However, when you have to Fog every turn starting on turn 3 or 4, those Fog effects start going down drastically. When you have to blow Cryptic Commands to counter threatening spells, your Fog defense can get really tight. Therefore, in each matchup you can afford to take a certain amount of damage before you start Fogging. For example, against Five-Color you want to be higher than ten to not lose to double Cruel Ultimatum. Also, as a result of being so tight on Fogs, you really can’t afford to drop to any fewer than the sixteen currently in the deck.
Finally, one last misconception with TurboFog is that you will have tons of mana available and can play whatever expensive spells you want. In reality, the deck is often mana tight and uses all of its mana for the first several turns of the game. It’s a lot harder than it seems to set up something like, say, a Counterbore, because achieving five mana plus Fog and/or backup counter mana can be difficult. Make sure to keep your plays mana efficient; play the right-costed Fogs while you can. On turn 4, it might be better to Cryptic Command tapping their creatures than to Pollen Lullaby, so that next turn you have mana up for Pollen Lullaby and Negate.
This is the decklist of TurboFog I would play this weekend, taking into account the multiple events I have played with the deck, Ruels build, and the metagame shifts.
Spells (36)
- 4 Howling Mine
- 4 Holy Day
- 1 Story Circle
- 1 Pithing Needle
- 4 Cryptic Command
- 4 Pollen Lullaby
- 4 Negate
- 3 Runed Halo
- 4 Angelsong
- 3 Font of Mythos
- 4 Fieldmist Borderpost
Sideboard
The maindeck is mostly the same as the one I posted last week. Although Olivier eschewed the Story Circle plan, I still feel like the one Story Circle is very important to have maindeck, and the additional one coming in from the board can lead to blowouts against Red. With more Celestial Purges, you can buy more time than before. With fewer Story Circles I am less worried about Pithing Needle on Story Circle, so swapping Aura to Celestial Purge is a change I am fine making. I added the one maindeck Pithing Needle because you will always find it going long if you have to, and it backs up Runed Halo in regard to Seismic Assault. I cut a Font of Mythos despite my initial concern over doing so, because you never really want to see two in your opening hand, and by turn 4 you ideally have one of your seven Mine effects online.
The Meddling Mages and Archmages are the big change here. Meddling Mage is fine against Swans and other decks that will sideboard out removal and have key cards to shut off, but more importantly, I found that a better mirror plan, instead of trying to beat them at the same game you’re trying to play, is to juke into a strategy with creatures. This way you have a chance of winning if you lost the first game. Even if they kept their Fogs in, Meddling Mage can just name Cryptic Command and then their Fogs, then attack each turn. Glen Elendra Archmage helps to supplement the beatdown. If you’re on the play in the mirror, they cannot counter a turn 4 Archmage. With Sanity Grinding mostly erased from the format post-Regionals, Wheel of Sun and Moon is less of an important weapon to have. In addition to beating down, Archmage is good against decks full of spells where your Fogs don’t interact with their plan as much.
This is how I would sideboard with that list against the following matchups:
B/W Tokens:
+2 Path to Exile
-1 Story Circle
-1 Pithing Needle
G/W Tokens:
+2 Path to Exile
+2 Pithing Needle
-3 Runed Halo
-1 Story Circle
Red-based Beatdown:
+3 Celestial Purge
+1 Story Circle
-1 Pithing Needle
-3 Font of Mythos
Faeries:
+3 Meddling Mage
+2 Path to Exile
-1 Pithing Needle
-1 Story Circle
-1 Font of Mythos
-2 Angelsong
Five-Color Control:
+3 Glen Elendra Archmage
+3 Meddling Mage
-1 Pithing Needle
-1 Story Circle
-4 Holy Day
Cascade Swans:
-2 Font of Mythos
-1 Story Circle
-4 Holy Day
-2 Angelsong
+3 Meddling Mage
+3 Pithing Needle
+3 Glen Elendra Archmage
(You don’t bring Celestial Purge in against them because their deck is designed to get to a Seismic Assault via cascade. I would rather spend one card to deal with all of their Seismic Assaults than deal with each one individually via Celestial Purge.)
I have played this deck a lot, and would love to field any questions. There are a lot of different sideboard and even some different maindeck options, and I would be happy to go over some of them. Feel free to ask anything in the forums or, if you don’t have an account and don’t want to register, send me an e-mail at gavintriesagain at gmail dot com and I will get back to you as soon as possible.
To all of you who are in GP Seattle/Tacoma this weekend, I will be attending. It’s my hometown, so feel free to say hi and/or ask any questions you may have. To those grinding out PTQ games with TurboFog, hopefully this article helped you out. See you in the forums!
Gavin Verhey
Team Unknown Stars
Rabon on Magic Online, Lesurgo everywhere else.