I’m under the impression that Turbo Fog is one of the best decks in Standard, though I’m also positive no one has found the best build for it yet. Regardless of whether or not you think the deck is good, it does fight the format on a level that is different from any other deck around. While the plan of milling out your opponent isn’t anything new, as Esper Control has been using Nephalia Drownyard for quite a while now, using Fog effects to ultimately negate a large portion of the field is pretty unique.
Fog may have a few weaknesses and doesn’t exactly win the game without some help, but the theory behind how the deck functions is sound. We have the resources at our disposal to keep the engine running—Sphinx’s Revelation singlehandedly gives this deck life. With additional resource development such as Urban Evolution and various planeswalkers, this style of Bant control could ultimately become the best deck in the format.
Of course, that would be if everyone else didn’t think it was a complete joke.
Everyone I’ve talked to (and I just mean most people, not actually everyone) instantly dismisses the deck. It has too many flaws. It has too many holes. It needs to function properly at all times, can never stumble, and even then you sometimes just lose. I hear the same arguments over and over, but few of them have any merit.
Every deck that stumbles in this format will lose.
That’s just how the cards are designed these days. If you miss a land drop in the early turns of the game, do you realize how incredible difficult it is to come back from that? When was the last time you were able to win on a mulligan to five cards? It just doesn’t happen without a lot of luck regardless of how you’ve built your deck or how inherently powerful your cards are.
Sometimes you open on the perfect five cards featuring Blasphemous Act, Boros Reckoner, Blood Artist, and a few lands. Then you draw a few lands, your opponent takes some damage from their Stomping Ground, floods the board with creatures, and you just kill them on the spot. While The Aristocrats deck has this capability, it isn’t going to happen often.
And just imagine if you’re playing a deck that can’t kill your opponent from +13 life. Think about having to grind out small advantages against someone playing Champion of the Parish into multiple Burning-Tree Shamans. Think about playing a few creatures in the early turns of the game only to have them swept away by a Supreme Verdict or, even worse, an Angel of Serenity. This is the reality we live in today. You can’t ever stumble or you’re going to lose. It is far too easy to capitalize on the misfortune of the opponent due to a multitude of reasons, but the fact of the matter is that we all have access to a plethora of powerful game-ending cards that are incredibly difficult to beat when you’re short on resources.
Turbo Fog is no different. If you stumble, even for a turn, it can be disastrous. If the game goes too long without you drawing a Sphinx’s Revelation, sometimes the aggressive decks will just beat you. It happens. However, the majority of the decks in Standard can’t actually function when you have a reasonable draw.
And do you know how frustrating that is for the opponent?
While I don’t necessarily find enjoyment in the discomfort of others, there is something a little special about casting Fog when your opponent is attacking you for lethal. Imagine being at five life and having them alpha strike you for the third turn in a row only to wind up on the wrong side of Clinging Mists. It isn’t pretty, but sometimes we just have to work with what we’ve got.
Fog and its constituents may be well suited for fending off the many hordes of creatures our opponents will throw at us, but they aren’t enough. We don’t have Howling Mine at our disposal, and the alternatives are just a bit too taxing on time and resources. Staff of Nin and Otherworld Atlas are too slow to be good enough, and allowing the red decks to draw a significant amount of burn wouldn’t be very healthy in the long run.
No, instead we have to find a new path to gain our resources, but luckily we have the best possible option for doing so that’s been printed in ages.
While it is nothing new for blue-white decks to play this card, in this deck Sphinx’s Revelation is acting on all fronts. At times, it acts as a Fog itself, gaining you some crucial life points in a race you would otherwise be losing. In the past, draw spells have rarely been able to provide this much of a buffer and instead were completely one-sided in the resource department. The raw power in cards like Mind Spring was evident in their day, but Sphinx’s Revelation takes it one step further.
You may not always have the time to cast Sphinx’s Revelation before you’re run over by a swarm of Hellriders, but building your resources with Farseek and buying time with Supreme Verdict is exactly what it takes to make Sphinx’s Revelation great! Other Bant decks play a ton of midrange creatures to take advantage of interacting with creature-based strategies. Restoration Angel and Thragtusk are nothing new, but both can be easily overwhelmed by a single Angel of Serenity or Craterhoof Behemoth.
Fog ignores the greatest weapons in the format’s most popular deck.
Giving yourself ways to play around the heavy hitters is one thing, but completely nullifying every synergy and haymaker the opponent can throw at you for a single green mana can’t be overlooked. While it is true that Fog is inherently card disadvantage, we don’t currently live in a world where a two-for-one is everything. Your goal is to outdo your opponent on a grand level, and Fog can do that in spades.
I decided to play some matches with Turbo Fog in a Daily Event a few days ago. While I still don’t think the list is perfect, it definitely felt much stronger than any other deck I’ve played since Ponder was legal. The fault in the deck lies in my inability to make it better, not in the engine itself.
If you remember, I played a lot with the Illusions deck a while ago. This deck was the predecessor to U/W Delver, but I remember playing with Phantasmal Bear for months before others working on the deck pushed it towards what it ultimately became. I feel very strongly that Fog is in that same boat, where all it needs is a better mind than mine to make it great.
Creatures (2)
Planeswalkers (5)
Lands (27)
Spells (26)
- 1 Dissipate
- 4 Fog
- 4 Farseek
- 2 Clinging Mists
- 2 Terminus
- 2 Azorius Charm
- 4 Supreme Verdict
- 4 Sphinx's Revelation
- 3 Urban Evolution
Sideboard
There are some card choices I am still waffling between, but I have found a number of interactions that I love. This is one of the reasons why card selection tends to fluctuate wildly. The fact that I can’t decide whether or not to play Think Twice is a testament to how wild this build is compared to the best possible build.
When I first started to play Illusions, the deck lacked a lot of cards. The first iteration relied on Lord of the Unreal and curved into Phantasmal Dragon, and it just took time to discover exactly what made the deck good. I wasn’t playing Vapor Snag. I wasn’t even playing Ponder! Snapcaster Mage was mediocre in the deck because I failed to build around him. To really hammer the point home, I wasn’t even playing Delver of Secrets!
For reference, here is the “original” Illusions list:
Creatures (20)
Lands (23)
Spells (17)
Sideboard
To see what it became…
I just can’t fathom what Turbo Fog could look like. Travis Woo had a pretty surreal take on the deck that he played to a reasonable finish in Atlanta a few weeks ago.
Creatures (3)
Lands (27)
Spells (30)
I have yet to experiment with his version since I’m still convinced Travis is a crazy person, but maybe that means I’m not open enough to exploration. I don’t know if I could bring myself to play a singular win condition in a world where Slaughter Games exists, but here it is. Travis didn’t cling to alternate versions of Fog and instead opted to Tutor up combo pieces and additional Fogs with Increasing Ambition.
I think planeswalkers are one of the best arguments for playing Turbo Fog. Both Tamiyo and Jace are great as virtual win conditions and are incredibly easy to protect with Fog. Using Tamiyo to draw three to five cards with her -2 ability is abusive against decks without ways to deal you direct damage since you are virtually forcing their hand into auto-attacking every turn. If you have the Fog, they’re just dead. If they don’t attack and you don’t have Fog, then they’re just giving up.
On the other hand, Jace is an actual win condition that doubles as a card advantage source when you need it. If your hand is sufficiently supplied with Fog, Sphinx’s Revelation, and Snapcaster Mage, there is no need to draw more cards. Just milling them out will suffice. However, alongside a few Fog effects, Jace can easily draw you into the rest of the pieces you’re missing in the puzzle.
Round 1
Round 2
Round 3
Round 4
The Good News
As of this moment, there doesn’t seem to be too many particularly sweet additions to this archetype from Dragon’s Maze. There are a few options we could consider since there will definitely be some problems (which I’ll get to in a moment).
This is a fantastic answer to Falkenrath Aristocrat, which can be problematic when your draw features Supreme Verdict instead of Terminus. It also acts as another way to combat the Boros Reckoner draws that try to kill you with Blasphemous Act. I don’t know if this card will be good enough to maindeck, but it could have some sideboard potential.
While this card is a bit strange to see on the list, the prospect of a card that get better and better as the game goes longer excites me. When you’re drawing an extra card each turn and have some ability to control what kinds of cards are put into the graveyard, Deadbridge Chant seems absurd. It feels very planeswalker-esque and can act as a Howling Mine in certain matchups. Playing this card would mean playing more sources of black mana, but I don’t think that would be too difficult. While it is just as expensive as Staff of Nin, the ability to manipulate cards you can potentially get back makes it more of a consideration.
I don’t know if Turbo Fog in its current form will want Deadbridge Chant, but Fog is definitely up on the list of cards that make Deadbridge Chant better. Lacking creatures to put into play is relevant, though that could easily be “fixed” by playing more things like Augur of Bolas.
Another planeswalker? Don’t mind if I do! It isn’t that hard to get Ral Zarek to ultimate status, but his ability to deal with creatures the turn he comes into play is just bonkers. Add to this the fact that he can actually accelerate you into bigger Sphinx’s Revelations and I’m sold. Again, you would have to rework the mana base, but he is definitely something I’d be willing to try. Fog makes planeswalkers that much better, and I can only imagine how good he could be in a deck where all you’re trying to do is buy enough time to seal the deal.
This one feels out of place in Turbo Fog. But is it really? When your opponent will be boarding out the entirety of their removal against your deck, don’t you just want a creature that can absolutely hose them? It effectively shuts off all counterspells and is pretty reasonable in a position where you rarely want to do things on your own turn. If you have a transformational sideboard for control matchups, access to Voice of Resurgence along with some other threats seems pretty reasonable. While Voice of Resurgence does tend to go a bit better in aggressive decks, I think you could make an argument for an alternate game plan.
I don’t know if Mana Flare is any good in Standard, but I can only assume it would be great in a deck that uses almost all of its mana every single turn. Additionally, there are a lot of other decks running around that actually can’t make good use out of all their mana. Add to this a significant body, as well as having cards like Fog to invalidate a lot of the cool things they could do with the extra mana, and I think you may actually have a good idea!
The Bad News
Honestly, I don’t have many words. I don’t feel like this is a card that needs to exist. Decks that can play it already have plenty of damage-based cards to interact with the opponent. If this guy attacks you and you don’t have an Azorius Charm, it is likely that he will singlehandedly knock all of your lights out. He is just something you don’t want to have to face, along with this other guy…
Again, I just don’t have words. I don’t see how we could ever beat one of these when it resolves because the trigger to discard your hand happens at the end of each end step. This means Sphinx’s Revelation doesn’t do anything. This means Supreme Verdict won’t do anything unless you peel it off the top. No, we’re going to have to find some ways to interact with Sire of Insanity at instant speed.
The go-to answer is Dissipate, but what if they’re playing Cavern of Souls? Removal would be nice, but we just don’t have that many answers. The best thing I could come up with is Selesnya Charm since it can help fend off Obzedat, Ghost Council as well.
The truth is that if both of these cards become widely played, I don’t think Turbo Fog can coexist.
The Season Finale
With Dragon’s Maze on the horizon, the current Standard season is going to change significantly. I am absolutely in love with Turbo Fog, but I can think of nothing worse than facing a Jund deck with access to Rakdos’s Return, Sire of Insanity, and Slaughter Games. Witchbane Orb can only do so much and doesn’t actually do anything against Sire of Insanity. I am looking forward to playing with plenty of Naya Blitz in the coming weeks should Sire of Insanity be all the rage.
The only way to effectively ensure that he doesn’t beat you is if you’ve already emptied your hand onto the table! Consequently, this means running your team head on into Bonfire of the Damned, but what is the alternative?
I’m under the impression that G/B/W and Jund will be the frontrunners at the beginning of the new Standard, as both of them are consistent, impressively powerful, and difficult to beat on a fair level. With PTQs in full swing, keep an eye out for some upcoming Versus videos featuring new cards!
Thanks for watching.
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