Scars of Mirrodin is
fast
approaching. As is always the case with Magic, change is the constant.
Change is a constant because of the rapid-fire creation of new sets — and so, with rotation policies, formats themselves are always on the go. And change is also a constant because of the ebb and flow of metagames, which make a deck powerful (or weak) based on the valence of the metagame in any particular moment.
There are a lot of things about Magic that I like. Everyone finds themselves drawn to particular elements of the game (which is fortunate, because
Magic can reward so many different things — just ask Wafo-Tapa and Petr Brozek, or Conley Woods and PV, both of whom are pairs of people who work
very
differently from each other). For me, I tend to find myself most strongly drawn to changing the nature of the game that is being planned.
One of the reasons that I like red decks, for example, is that I appreciate the way the game changes when life is a resource that your opponent is managing, but their management handles it less directly and fundamentally. Dodging the game that’s being played has given me more wins than I can count.
So it was, I found myself falling in love with Turbo-Fog, and long before it was even called Turbo-Fog. In order to understand where I’m going, I think I need to talk about where things have been; the past, as they say, is prologue…
History
A long time ago, before
Dan Bock made waves with his all-land “deck” stunt in the first Pro Tour Tokyo
, Dan would occasionally even play in Magic events with a goal of
winning
them. Bock built a deck for the US Open (the then-name for the US Nationals Last-Chance Qualifier, more usually called “The Meatgrinders” because they would be single-elimination, two-hundred-person events) that would be the first of its kind: Turbo-Fog. (Though he called it Premature Green, in the naming convention of the time, inspired by Patrick Chapin Premature Blue.) Here’s his list and how he described the deck:
This deck is called Premature Green. It is based on a somewhat marginal old-school concept called “Premature”, a group that is basically mono-colored decks with Howling Mines, and Medallions.
When I ran it in the meatgrinders it went 4-1, destroying Tradewind, Big Blue, Oath, and something else silly. It lost to White Weenie because I am incapable of drawing the right cards.
The deck:
21 Forests (woo hoo!)
4 Mulch
4 Gaea’s Blessing
4 Howling Mine
4 Wall of Roots
4 Wall of Blossoms
4 Constant Mists
2 Sylvan Library (a.k.a. Sullivan Library)
2 Jester’s Cap
3 Natural Spring
1 Respite
3 Emerald Medallion
1 Summer Bloom (the deck’s finisher)
2 Spike Feeder
1 Spike Weaver
Sideboard:
2 Creeping Mold
2 Uktabi Orangutan
3 Tranquil Domain
1 Hurricane
2 Jester’s Cap
2 Phyrexian Furnace
2 Katabatic Winds
1 Cursed Totem
One of the deck’s nick-names is Green-Turbo-Stasis, because it sort of plays like that.
At the time, he listed his deck’s good matchups (with * noting the most popular decks):
SRB and Sligh and red blitz *
Suicide black *
White Weenie *
Jamie Super Secret Green tech deck
Godzilla
Stompy
Green Spike decks
And the bad matchups:
Tradewind
ProsBloom
As a deck goes, this deck
totally
dodges what it’s like to play Magic in the moment. This was a time of creatures, primarily, with ProsBloom a notable exception. Matt Linde would win US Nationals that year with White Weenie in a squeaker of a match over ProsBloom in the hands of perennial villain Mike Long. Essentially a lock deck, Turbo-Fog dodged the control/aggro war of the moment in favor of just making
that
conflict not matter.
I would have played Bock’s deck — but I had unveiled Counter-Oath that same weekend, and so I’d dodged the metagame via a different path, nullifying the idea of creatures in quite a different way.
With only four Howling Mines to work with, Bock used Mulch, Sylvan Library, Gaea’s Blessing, and Wall of Blossoms to try to shrink the deck down so that card draw that the deck needed was abundant, particularly as Gaea’s Blessing started getting to the work of molding the deck’s form. The deck had
some very large flaws — and even outside of the paradigmatic flaws of the deck, it had some minor implementation flaws. That said, the deck was a
huge
departure from the concept of what one had to do to win a game of Magic.
Dan’s deck played out, in terms of interactions, a lot like Stasis — but rather than making the opponent unable to play anything, it made it so that the opponent’s plays simply
amounted
to nothing.
After the release of Phyrexian Arena, deck tinkerer (and eventual Pro Tour Champion) Mike Hron would work with Andrew Box Klein over a deck they termed
“Turbo-Smog,” roughly around the era
of Grand Prix Milwaukee
(with a stellar top eight, won by Eric “dinosaur” Taylor). Basically drawing on the same ideas, Hron used active life gain, like Bock, to shut down the problem that burn presented (not to mention the issue of Arena). Their deck was also deeply flawed (Phyrexian Arena and Howling Mine function as at least a semi-“nombo” together), but developed the concept a little further.
This archetype would pop up very rarely, now-and-again, in the many years since. Much more prevalent, in various moments, would be more active locking mechanisms, typically with Stasis or Winter Orb. These other styles of deck were more successful for one big reason: they could more practically lock out games, rather than give a whisper of a lock. One of the first
actual
Turbo-Fog decks would spring up in Japan, with an influential Regionals win.
Spells (40)
This would inspire the Ruels and Bucher to update the deck for Grand Prix Barcelona with this deck:
Spells (58)
The essential nature of both of these decks is the same: while they
may
kill with Tezzeret the Seeker, they plan on primarily winning via decking… usually with Jace Beleren’s ultimate ability, or occasionally from the simple effect of Howling Mine and Font of Mythos, each of which can collectively contribute to an incremental decking of the opponent (since they are affected first). An overwhelming number of Fogs cut your opponents off from an entire path of victory.
Certain very powerful decks, like Reveillark, simply could not fight this fight, because by the time they could martial any real path to victory, Howling Mines would be set up, with a large amount of countermagic available to prevent the
very
few cards that matter. While a Reveillark deck might not normally care if you suppress their creatures, there was simply
so
much nullification from Turbo-Fog that even if it was temporary, Reveillark couldn’t begin to fight it.
Cryptic Command was a critical part of making this worth, as a card that could simultaneously defend Font of Mythos and could function as a Fog. The ability to defend your engines of the deck was critical in the way that the deck could
fight
Jund. Once Cryptic Command died, the choices surrounding the deck still fit the same fight: you
must
defend Font, but
can
you?
At this moment, Flashfreeze started showing up in the main of some of these decks. Too late, I discovered Declaration of Naught (borrowing from classic deck designer and Junior Pro Tour Champion Aaron Souders) as a solution to this problem — but by then, the format rotated. The rotation decimated the deck, leaving it without Cryptic Command, Holy Day, Pollen Lullaby, Batwing Brume, and Runed Halo (and Wrath of God transmogrified into the less effective Day of Judgment).
Building a “New” Deck
It’s rare that there are new decks. This isn’t one of those moments. This was the more common thing, where despite the fundamental changes I’d come to, it was an adaptation.
In this time, I spent a
lot
of time on Turbo Fog decks — perhaps inspired by Souders, perhaps fueled by the near-miss I felt like I’d had with the archetype, but looking for that feeling of the
dodge
that the deck could give. The results, I must say, were marginal. Jund was the big boogeyman here,
constantly
demolishing my poor Turbo Fog deck, even with the Time Warps that M10 brought with them to help the deck out.
Somewhere during this time, I started talking with Chicago burn maestro Ronnie Serio, who’d also been working on the deck, seeing something he liked in what I’d been playing on Magic Online. I’d all but abandoned the deck when Rise of the Eldrazi came out, and he dragged me back to it, kicking and screaming. Ronnie was interested in the deck’s ability to taken infinite turns.
The deck still had Fogs at this point (in the form of Angelsong). With M11, Temple Bell wasn’t the only thing that came forth as a gift to Turbo Fog. Perhaps more importantly, Mana Leak and Condemn stepped into the possible realm of card choices that could influence the deck.
Of course, with only six cards, something has to give.
With all of these things in mind, I eventually ended up with a deck that I felt like I couldn’t call “Turbo Fog” any more, even if that was where the deck got its roots. I just know that I kept winning. A lot. Working through all of the facets of the deck, endlessly, here is where Ronnie and I got to with our “Unbeatable Turbo ‘Fog’┢” (which I started taking to calling “NotreDame.dec” at one point, as well).
Creatures (1)
Planeswalkers (3)
Lands (22)
Spells (34)
This is a pretty radical departure for where Turbo Fog was historically situated. In the past, the idea was that you would plan on essentially wearing the opponent down, then outlast them. With Fonts and Howlers and other such things, your goal wasn’t so much attrition, but rather
enduring
. If you could
endure
you would win — and a sufficient number of Howlers (or a Jace’s ultimate, or an Archive Trap) would mean that you wouldn’t necessarily have to endure for very long. Sixty cards minus seven would mean a turn 53 kill… but add in a bunch of effects, and the kill could pretty readily be reduced. Simply putting down Howling Mine on turn 2 and a Font on turn 4 would mean, on the play, decking your opponent on turn 16, even if you didn’t do anything other than survive.
This deck doesn’t attempt to merely endure, though. It attempts to
kill
. One of the things that a lot of people have done, playing against me, is assume that death wasn’t just around the corner… and then they died.
How the deck kills, most usually, is with
Scryb Sprite Recursion
. Another Dan Bock contribution to old-school Magic theory, Scryb Sprite Recursion was the idea that your deck would kill with any old thing; at that point it wouldn’t matter what it was, the game would be so fundamentally over that it didn’t matter what it was that you were killing them with; it could be as banal as a Scryb Sprite swinging once a turn for twenty turns — a Sprite brought back, somehow, every time it was dealt with.
The more articulated idea on this vein was inevitability, Zvi Mowshowitz masterstroke contribution to the game. On the horizon of a timeline of the game, if the deck gets to that point, if it has inevitability, it will win. In essence, then, this deck has something like Turbo Fog’s classic desire to endure, except it only needs to endure until it achieves the end game, when things just end for the opponent. The “cleaning things up” is just the details.
What is it that the deck does to achieve this goal? It casts Time Warp, or two Time Warps, or Time Warp/Twincast, or Silence (into a dead or nullified board), and does this repeatedly — until, during that extra turn, it achieves a kill. The existence of Emrakul in the deck not only provides an extra Time Warp, but it also provides a constant, free Feldon’s Cane for the long game. With any reasonable amount of Howling effects, a Time Warp/Twincast is usually game — not because you’ll be able to Time Warp forever (though in super late games, you can), but because you’ll be able to Time Warp until they are dead.
At the point where you’re killing your opponent, the methods themselves vary. In order of likelihood, it tends to go like this, though:
#1 — Tezzeret beatdown
#2 — Martial Coup soldier beatdown
#3 — Emrakul being cast
#4 — Celestial Colonnade beatdown
#5 — Jace, the Mind Sculptor, at ultimate
Of course, plenty of times the opponent merely concedes.
As it is, then, the deck basically breaks down into a few elements:
- Forcing the non-interactive: Howlers and Warps and Silences, oh my!
-
Dealing with the interactive: Condemns and Mana Leaks and Coup, for example.
-
Mana: lands and artifact mana.
What’s really interesting about how the deck works, though, is the way that so many part of the deck operate for multiple functions. Martial Coup is interactive as an answer, but it’s also available as a simple finisher. Emrakul is ostensibly a finisher, but it’s foremost a part of the engine of the deck. Twincast is a part of the engine of the deck, but it can also function as an interactive component by doubling a Condemn, or acting like a counterspell. Jace, the Mind Sculptor is another Howling Mine or an answer — either to a Jace, or to a creature in play that just needs to go away for a moment.
The deck evolved to this particular sixty cards through a very, very rigorous process. Normally, I hate card-by-card breakdowns, but I actually feel like it is instructive here.
4 Howling Mine
Simply the core of the deck. There is no better play, in most situations, than dropping a Howling Mine on turn 2. (An opponent playing Pyromancer Ascension is a good counterexample.)
2 Tezzeret the Seeker
I skip to Tezz because I think the card is fundamental to how the deck works. Through Tezz, card numbers get to be manipulated because of the tutor function or the “copy” function of untapping. At the same time, Tezz is constrained by cost; five mana is a
lot
. There are times when I side out one Tezz, but in no matchup do I ever side out both. Tezzeret performs this amazing function of managing the numbers in the deck so that I can fit in what feels like far more cards, but doesn’t force me to play them. And it kills someone
real fast
.
1 Font of Mythos
With the printing of Temple Bell, my reliance on Font of Mythos was often reduced to bare bones, either a Tutor target or as an analog to the other Howling Mine effects. You absolutely wanted the Font as a target, but casting it blind into the opponent is still one of the scariest acts you can do, just because of the risk of them blowing it up on their own turn. Untapping with it, though, is a glorious feeling. Temple Bell, particularly with Tezzeret able to turn every Bell into a Font, was a huge shift in how the deck could be built.
3 Temple Bell
Temple Bell started out as a four-of, but I was eventually faced with two conflicts: I’d discovered a need for other cards that was pushing me into sixty-one cards, and Temple Bell sometimes ain’t so great (like when you’re
almost
winning, but not quite).
The reason for this is Time Warp. Time Warp is great when you’re running on Howlers and Fonts… But when you’re running on Bells, it feels a lot less incredible. The reason is simple: you’re not actually gaining card advantage on Bells unless they’re discarding, and you
can
get card advantage from those other cards. Ronnie was a lot less excited about this change, but it just seemed better to me than any of the alternatives.
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
Emrakul is a key part of this deck’s functionality for a huge number of reasons. As a reusable Feldon’s Cane, Emrakul makes the deck’s component parts endless, so that if there’s any portion of the deck that’s problematic for your opponent, you
never
run out of it — even if you only have one copy in the deck.
This means that not only aren’t you going to get decked (barring your opponent really working for it), but that cards that don’t otherwise make sense as one-ofs in the deck can be fit into the deck because you expect to be able to get their help
eventually
and get some benefit from it. Thus, even if you use up a resource, it will be back later. The fact that it’s incredible when you get to fifteen mana is just gravy (and, man, can this deck get there).
1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
This card had been in the deck in the past, before Temple Bell, in combination with a pair of Jace Beleren. Bells nudged Beleren out of the deck completely, and initially, I turned JMS into JB, but eventually something emerged: as a one-of, Jace, the Mind Sculptor is just
better
. Not only does it function as another Howling Mine, and as another answer to a creature, but it also functions as a Jace-
killer
. This functionality is huge.
4 Time Warp
Resolving even a single Time Warp when you’re Howling is awesome. Time Warp is sometimes only a expensive semi-Rampant Growth — but in this case, that isn’t a bad thing. Particularly as you’re slowly ramping up your mana, casting a Time Warp can be an opportunity to use it as a test spell against someone. If it resolves, you can cast some other spell and be less invested in whether it resolves or not because the untap phase will be coming soon, and you’ll be prepared to unleash something new. This card is at the heart of what the deck
is
.
4 Silence
The “weaker” Time Warp, Silence is also just fundamentally awesome in the current Standard metagame. Some decks just don’t function outside of their main phase — and if you shut them out of this phase, they have nothing to do on that turn. As such, even though Silence is a card that has just been tossed away, with Howling effects all over the place, Silence doesn’t care that it was tossed away, because cards themselves are so valueless; what’s valuable is
mana
, and you are making their non-instant cards completely dead.
Even if it’s countered, just tapping them down for that mana on their own upkeep can be huge. As a test spell against control decks, this one puts you over the top.
There was a time that there were only 3 copies of this card in the deck, but again and again, I just found that I wanted the card against nearly every matchup. At this point, the only mainstream deck I board it out against is red.
3 Twincast
This card’s primary function is to copy Time Warp, a totally devastating effect when you pull it off (which is usually). At the same time, though, this card is incredibly versatile, acting as a counterspell in some matchups, a creature kill spell, or whatever happens to come up. Condemn is also a common target, letting you wipe up the board with attackers while giving them a resource you mostly don’t care about.
4 Mana Leak
On top of Twincast (and Silence), this card gives you the oomph to fight through control. On top of Condemn, this card gives you a versatile early game that lets you hold down the table until you either “go off” or Coup.
4 Condemn
This card just knocked Day of Judgment and Path to Exile
right
out of the deck, as well as knocking out Angelsong. Why Fog when you could simply get rid of a problematic creature? While this did mean you’d lose the versatility of a card that could get rid of itself in the face of non-creature matchups, there are so few of those that it often doesn’t matter. And in the ones that do exist, you often have overwhelming good matchups (like the U/W matchup). This card is the number one reason why this deck is actually good now.
4 Everflowing Chalice/1 Fieldmist Borderpost/1 Obelisk of Esper
There was a moment where I’d had three Everflowing Chalices. Simply put, when you’re drawing a million cards, having a million mana is helpful. Casting seven-mana effects (Martial Coup for five-plus tokens, Time Warp/Twincast, or Tezzeret/Mana Leak, for example), ramping up your mana is critical. Doubling up on actions is incredibly important.
And sometimes you want to have access to more colored mana in your ramping as well. Fieldmist Borderpost actually lets you do that, while simultaneously masquerading as a land. Obelisk slowly worked its way into the deck when I found that I needed to tutor for mana
and
have access to the color
immediately
. In conjunction with Tezzeret, these six artifact mana sources also allow you to achieve truly ludicrous amounts of mana quite quickly.
The Land
Here, the mix was incredibly delicate. You wanted to have enough basic lands to make Glacial Fortress (and Fieldmist Borderpost) a good card, as well as supply resistance to Tectonic Edge. At the same time, there is some room to play. Kabira Crossroads was a card that had initial started out as a four-of (with some Refuges to help out)… but eventually, Ronnie convinced me that Celestial Colonnade actually saved
more
life than did Crossroads and Refuge. At the same time, Crossroads
was
proving itself.
I’d already determined that I needed, at a minimum, two Tectonic Edges. With only five land slots left, the 3/2 split for the remainder was based on economies of scale: I didn’t feel like I could afford less than two Kabira Crossroads, and I couldn’t afford less than three Colonnades. Thankfully, it all fit together.
Sideboarding
There are a lot of moves that this deck tends to make, based on what its opponent is playing. Here are the shifts out that I usually make:
Jund
-1 Twincast
-1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
-1 Tezzeret the Seeker
-4 Mana Leak
-1 Everflowing Chalice
+3 Baneslayer Angel
+1 Leyline of Sanctity
+3 Celestial Purge
+1 Negate
The goal of this switch is to just overpower the opponent with answers, Condemn and Purge their threats, while letting Howlers and Baneslayers be
your
threats.
Mana Leak, while valuable, can also be completely dead. Two Twincasts help you fight their Duresses (by removing the card that they want to cast), and one Negate is your late-game sandbag for the spells you might really care about.
U/W Control
-4 Condemn
-1 Mana Leak
+3 Negate
+1 All is Dust
+1 Scepter of Dominance
Mana Leak can quickly go dead, but still has a lot of use in keeping your opponent honest, while Condemn is basically dead. All is Dust is an incredible late-game card, capable of destroying Oblivion Rings and Jaces alike, and often completely shifting the game around.
Scepter of Dominance makes its appearance as the primary Tezz tutor target; if this hits the table, you almost certainly are going to win.
Pyromancer Ascension
-3 Howling Mine
-4 Condemn
-1 Martial Coup
-1 Temple Bell
+1 Leyline of Sanctity
+3 Negate
+3 Celestial Purge
+2 Mindbreak Trap
+1 Scepter of Dominance
Here, you want to have access to Howling Mine as a Tutor target, but you aren’t going to become a Howling Mine deck until you’re prepared to go there — hence the removal of so many Howler effects. Instead, you’re upping your answers, and again bringing in the Scepter of Dominance — which is particularly potent, here, with a single Howling Mine (where you’re able to craft a personal Howler).
Vengevine Variants
-1 Twincast
-1 Tezzeret the Seeker
-4 Mana Leak
+1 All is Dust
+1 Scepter of Dominance
+3 Baneslayer Angel
+1 Day of Judgment
Here, you simply can’t count on Mana Leak to do what it takes. Your plan is simply to have more general answers to their problems, and make
your
Baneslayer a problem for them.
You’d think this deck would be a huge problem, but Silence and Condemn are
amazing
weapons against this deck, particularly if they are a Fauna Shaman build (which tends to give you a fair amount of time to deal with their cards, rather than going for your throat right away).
Red
-1 Twincast
-4 Silence
-3 Howling Mine
-2 Temple Bell
+1 Leyline of Sanctity
+1 Scepter of Dominance
+3 Baneslayer Angel
+3 Celestial Purge
+2 Negate
Here, your goal is basically to just grind them out while staying alive. A Baneslayer Angel
tends
to hit the table while you tear them to pieces, and you still have the back-up ability to pretend to be a “Turbo” deck, if you think that is called for.
R/G Ramp
-4 Condemn
-4 Mana Leak
+2 Negate
+2 Mindbreak Trap
+1 All is Dust
+1 Leyline of Sanctity
+1 Scepter of Dominance
+1 Day of Judgment
Here, you reduce your countermagic to things that will either remove a card from the game (and dodge Summoning Trap) or cards that will counter Summoning Trap or their anti-Howler effects. All is Dust, Day of Judgment, and Scepter of Dominance exist to answer any problems that manage to make it to the table, and Leyline of Sanctity locks out the possibility of Valakut taking you down.
Ultimately, that was the deck that knocked me out of the finals of the US Nationals Last-Chance Qualifier in Minneapolis just recently. I’d defeated a
ton
of these decks that Friday (and defeated a ton more throughout the weekend) — but
this
build ran Bogardan Hellkite, and ever so barely managed to get me, using flash to incredible effect against me.
I’ve been making a tidy profit on the deck online for a long while now. I definitely don’t want to play against Ascension or Polymorph, but even these matchups are still a real control war, where you’re given a lot of room to maneuver and leverage your skill.
There is still a little bit of time left to take advantage of what this deck can offer, particularly if you play on Magic Online. I know that once everything rotates a few weeks from now (though thankfully, it’ll take longer online), I’m going to be sad that I won’t be able to play this deck any longer. I think it’s a totally fun deck, at least for the pilot…
Until next time,
Adrian Sullivan