HenWen, thanks for testing and you comments, much appreciated!

My philosophy behind the deck was: stall, get creatures and enchantments into graveyard to easily assemble the combo, get back/cast seance and warstorm surge, seance the bombs for win. That's why I'm playing so many stall cards (Elvish Visionary, Wall of Omens and Satyr Wayfinder). Satyr Wayfinder allows me mana fixing + fills the graveyard + chumps, that's why I don't play Cultivate. Spider Spawning + Craterhoof Behemoth were added as an additional WinCon. Of course a big Spider Spawning with Warstorm Surge may also be lethal.

Also with Seance I want my creatures to have an ETB effect.

When playing this deck I'm much happier when the bombs are in the graveyard, then in my hand, that's why I also added the Hedron Crabs.

So if I understand correctly, your first step to optimizing the ceck would be to cut Hedron Crab, Wall of Omens and add 3 more powerful cards in the 3-4 CMC range + 4x Cultivate?

Let me rephrase.

The deck is strong once you get to the 5+ mana range but it takes too long to get there. This is due to the spells and the number of taplands. Cultivate significantly speeds this deck up. My cuts are 1x cloudshift and 3x wall of omens, although I could also see cutting a hedron crab. Crab into seance is very strong but it isn't a consistent combo.

I did mention that, as an alternative, you could add more 3-4 mana stall cards, but I am sticking with the ramp version now.

Adding 4 cultivates allows you to cut down on the number of taplands the deck requires (I swapped 2 taplands for 2 basics). Ramping ahead and getting a basic that comes into play untapped is huge for this deck. In terms of board presence the curve really starts at 5 mana, you don't want to have to wait until turn 6 because of taplands.

Fun deck and I think it is viable on steam.

Check out digital chocobo's 5-color deck:
http://www.reddit.com/r/MagicDotP/comments/36jya2/i_made_5color_deck_with_very_few_creatures/

I've had a pretty solid win rate with it; the only drawback is that Maelstrom Archangel is the only multi-colored creature (hence why I'm exploring this thread for some decks that make more use of multi-colors, for fun).

20 lands. This should not work.

I will test it, although I think roil elemental needs to be axed.

Still working on making the Fog plan as good as possible, and this is where it has lead me thus far.

Pretty close to your version HenWen. Satyr was definitely a good choice as much as I was reluctant to switch over to them. Ensuring land drops and filtering into your GY to always have a Fog or PC when you need it are both extremely important to the deck, and the Satyrs do so very well.

Following that route, I also included Soothsayer (since I have shifted to including black). The card functions very similarly to Thassa's Bounty in the original list. Bounty lets you dig deeper and provides more raw CA. Soothsayer on the other hand gives you some more precision in your filtering, is cheaper, and comes with a decent body (which works well with Safe Passage and the Green mode on Obelisk).

I also tossed in 2 copies of Treasured Find which has been working very well in practice thus far. They provide another way to grab back Fog/PC in a pinch (and do so much cheaper than Archaeomancer/Warden, which can make a difference for having Fog/PC mana up afterwords). They also add in with Warden to increase the number of cards the deck runs that can recur Obelisk. They also Exile themselves, so in the situations where we end up reshuffling with Elixir late game we have a slightly higher chance of drawing into the cards that we need when we need them.

Losing Inspiration hasn't really hurt me at all. The filtering provided by Satyr/Soothsayer along with the cantrip effects (Think Twice/Wall) is surprisingly effective in both keeping you on Fog effects when you need them, and filtering into PC as quickly as possible (which is why I made the swap to Satyr/Soothsayer in the first place, to speed up hitting PC).

Angel similarly isn't missed. The deck seems to function pretty well for the slight amount of lifegain it has. The improved consistency with hitting Fog/PC has seemingly made the lifegain less important. The deck also isn't afraid to spend the first couple of turns playing and cracking an Elixir with nothing in the yard, just for the lifegain (which IMO is the ideal time to crack them here outside of saving yourself from being milled/burned out, since we want a full GY for our recursion effects).

The single copy of Suffer has been working decently but I am not entirely sure about it. It provides a lot of utility in dealing with GY decks, as lifegain, and as an out to Kozilek, but I feel like Banefire would function as a much more consistent Win-con


Mana may be a tiny bit off, since I don't have the game open at the moment, but at most it is just off by a few Tri-lands being swapped around.

The deck runs a good deal of Tri-lands, but that often isn't a problem, since the deck is trying to do the exact opposite of curving out. Or in other words, only playing cards and/or committing permanents to the board when we absolutely HAVE to, preferring to sit on cards until we can get the most possible value out of them.

Been doing pretty well with it online so far, although I think I have made a few enemies in the process!

Eon I think you have solved turbo(ish) fog in this format. I have only done a little testing, but it is performing very well. I consider Obelisk to be the main win condition, it is pretty easy to get 2 on the board and once you do you can pretty much lock down the board. Obelisk + fog is just so good. This deck just gets so much usage out of obelisk by creating a permanent stall state.

I had one game vs a talkative french player who went turn 3 cultivate, turn 4 green paragon, turn 5 terra stomper, turn 6 pellaka wurm and turn 7 craterhoof. He typed GG in chat. One fog and one planar cleansing later and the tables were turned... ok maybe three or four planar cleansings later.

I think the worst matchup is U or U/W evasion decks that have light counterspell support. I lost one game where I could have stalled the game for at least 5 more turns due to having my archaeomancer nullified... but if I had played differently and used my treasured finds first in order to stock up on fogs in advance, the game might have played out differently. I don't think stuffing the deck with counterspells is worth it.

I am not 100% sure about the mana, I have ended up using the soothsayer to fetch land surprisingly often, which shows you how good the satyr is. So far I haven't had a game where I stumbled on mana.

The various bodies in this deck are quite relevant. Sometimes you chump, allowing you to delay fog. Sometimes you safe passage, allowing your crappy creatures to gang block a fatty. But most of all once you hit cleansing to reset the board and land an obelisk, a 3/3 or a 2/5 is terrifying with obelisk support. One thing I think would really help this deck is some sort of a flying creature that provides utility. Unfortunately there are incredibly few options to work with here.

I have been having similarly good results. I think the real upgrade here was going with Satyr/Soothsayer, I hesitated on Satyrs, but after testing them they just performed too good NOT to run. This got me back to running Bounty, which was certainly good here, but was a bit unwieldy in terms of cost and didn't do much to help keep us alive itself outside of potentially filtering into a Fog/PC. Soothsayer fills the same role but does so for cheaper and the body certainly is VERY significant.



I agree completely, counterspells in general have the capacity to really wreck us, especially in decks aggressive enough to put us on a quick clock. The only real outs to Nullify/Negate is to have enough Fog/PC effects in hand (and enough mana up) to cast a second Fog/PC the same turn, or having a counterspell of your own up.

Having the counterspell support ourselves requires running enough counterspells to make having one when you need it consistent, but that means diluting the deck down, and taking out pieces of the deck that are required to make it function to jam them in.

At most I think this deck only has maybe 1-2 slots to really play around with that aren't integral to making the deck function (Suffer and potentially 1 copy of Treasured Find)

After trying to make it work, I don't think it is worth the effort, better to just accept the bad matchup and occasionally take a loss.



The mana could maybe use some work, I haven't really had any mana issues so far myself, but I HAVE in fact used Soothsayer to fetch up land a few times already, so it may be something to look into. The Soothsayer issue could just be an issue with how the deck functions as a whole. Ideally you want to hit Obelisk or PC off of it. If you don't hit/take either of these, you are likely hitting/taking a Fog or recursion to grab a Fog. If you already have a decent amount of Fog effects in hand when this occurs there often isn't really any reason NOT to grab a land instead, since the Fog isn't needed right away, and is often just as good in your GY as it is in your hand. Whereas every land you play not only increases how much you can do each turn, but also counts as a permanent in regards to Elixir, thinning your library in those long games where we cycle our GY with Elixir.

The mana base seems to be a real pain because the deck really needs each color about equally.

You need early for Wall, Safe Passage, and Warden, and generally ASAP to use PC.

You need early for Fog, Satyr, Treasured Find, and Soothsayer.

You need ( or ) relatively early for Think Twice, Archaeomancer, Warden, and Soothsayer.

You need relatively early for Soothsayer and Treasured Find.

The least important color is probably but we still need it to cast Warden, and since the difference between having a Fog or not can often come down to being able to cast Warden, this still can be pretty important.



Yeah, they may not seem like much, but this deck can create a lot of openings where you have a clear board to slam in (after a PC reset, or after an opponent attacks all in and you Fog and have a Fog in hand for the following turn so don't need blockers and can freely attack in with everything). Even Satyrs provide a decent clock with Obelisk support. I have watched a few people who weren't paying attention attack right into Wall of Omens when I had Obelisk untapped as well.

As for your suggestion about a flying creature. I considered maybe trying to run a single copy of Rune-Scarred Demon. It would give us another way to fetch Obelisk/PC or even continue the Fog game in a pinch (grabbing a Fog effect or recursion effect). With all the filtering the card would likely pop up pretty often even as a 1-of still as well.

I have a few concerns about this idea though, mainly that the deck only runs 2 cards that can snatch it up from the yard (Treasured Find) so the consistency will suffer even with all the filtering. It would also mean being a bit more concerned with hitting which can be annoying. The cost could potentially be prohibitive in regards to keeping Fog mana up on the turn you cast it as well(although I guess this is less of an issue if it is the followup after a PC reset).

..........and I just realized how stupid good Soul of Ravnica is here.

Now I am really tempted to find a place for this somewhere here.

Would give us a big meaty evasive threat that can block flyers, and the draw effect seems like it would be STUPID good here. Having Warden+Soothsayer on the table at the same time isn't uncommon at all, and repeatedly drawing 5 cards is pretty clutch. Even without that uber setup the deck runs enough creatures of each different color to where I would think it would average out to about 3-4 cards per activation. We don't even have to resolve the thing for it to be potentially good since we can easily mill into it and Exile it from the yard.

Now the question becomes what the hell do I cut to make room for it >.<

Do you need two Elixirs? Do you need Suffer the Past? Do you need eight graveyard fetch effects?

I would ask those questions and start cutting based on the answers.

I do think 7-8 graveyard fetch cards is the right number, along with 8 fog effects and 7 self mill effects. There are a few other cards that can be tweaked. This high level of consistency is why I think this deck is nearly finished.

The Elixirs are nice because, unlike Kozilek, they won't randomly reshuffle your yard. I often make plans based on what is in my GY. Whether 2 elixirs are necessary kinda depends on how reliable the deck is at winning.

I wouldn't mind a little bit of mana fixing / ramp. Because of all the self mill / G.Y. fetch a few copies of cards could go a long way.

Soul of Ravinica is a card that I have not seen much of. It is a powerful ability that has a hard time finding a home in a deck. He could work very well here, but I am not convinced that this deck needs a higher curve just yet.

Honestly everything is pretty tight in terms of numbers.

As Henwen said, 8 Fog effects, 7-8 Recursion effects, and 7 Self-Mill enablers seems to pretty much be the sweet spot in terms of consistency with the deck. The deck could maybe lose 1 recursion effect (likely the 3rd Archaeomancer, dropping the total count to 2 and the total recursion count to 7) but I still feel like 8 is right where we want to be. There may be some room to mess around with the Cantrip effects, but I feel each of them is worthwhile here. Both ways to cycle through cards to hit Land/Fog/PC/Obelisk, and also in conjunction with other cards (Wall works pretty well with the mode on Obelisk for example, and Think Twice meshes well with the Self-Mill plan). I feel having stuff to do on those first few turns where you don't need to be casting Fog to survive is helpful, so we aren't wasting mana in the early turns waiting with a hand full of Fogs we won't need to start casting until usually T4-5 at the very earliest.

As for the second Elixir, I am honestly not sure if the second one is really needed or not, but I feel like it is worth it. The deck plays the long game and has plenty of mill to make decking ourselves a legitimate concern, so having some consistency with Elixir is certainly beneficial. The deck could maybe drop down to a single copy of Elixir, but this brings about the potential to mill your only copy of Elixir, and thus your only way to save yourself from getting milled out.

With 3x Warden and 2x Treasured Find running only a single copy of Elixir could potentially work. Since we can use Warden/TF to grab back the single copy of Elixir if we absolutely have to. The question really is how likely are we to have Warden/TF in such a situation. I personally think that it is better to err on the side of caution and run 2 copies of Elixir, but dropping down to a single copy at least seems plausible. The incidental life gain from Elixir can be helpful against decks with a lot of burn as well, which is also something to consider. I don't think Elixir is bad to have around just for something to potentially do in the early game anyways.


Suffer is likely the card I would want to cut. The card can be pretty clunky as a win-con at times (like when you have 14 mana on the table but your opponent only has like 9 cards in their GY), which is why I had been debating Banefire in it's place before I considered trying to work in Soul of Ravnica.

Suffer is probably the least necessary card in the deck in terms of making the overall plan work. If there are any misgivings about replacing it is that it has a lot of utility in providing answers to multiple different angles of attack (giving us an out to Kozi, lifegain to give us an out to burn, some general GY hate, and a win-con all in 1 card).

I think we agree on possible cuts - 1 elixir, suffer, and 1 treasured find, but what are the replacements?

I think in terms of synergy, sorceries and instants are good here. Obviously we have a lot of recursion. But big creatures will attract significant removal. Every creature in the deck ATM is a disposable EtB dude, so if you cast something like Soul of Ravinica it will have a big target on its face.

Kozilek can win some games, but opponents will have something like reprisal / angelic edict in hand all game very frequently.

What I am testing right now is -1 elixir, -1 suffer, +1 switcheroo and +1 bounty of thassa. I think other cards might win out over switcheroo and bounty if this were a normal deck, but the ability to recur these cards is pretty awesome.

Switcheroo can buy you a lot of time before you have to start using fog effects, and post board wipe it is great as a tool in case your opponent held back a big play. It isn't perfectly reliable but the potential upside makes up for it. It did backfire on me one game where I stole a siege wurm, my opponent hit his siege wurm with a banisher priest and then got the wurm back after a board reset.

Eon I remember you described bounty as draw + milling your opponent, I think it is better to mill yourself most of the time. Draw 3 + mill 3 lets you "see" a total of 6 cards which is 50% better than the Satyr or Soothsayer. I think this card has good value in this list because you can repeatedly dig deeper in order to find key spells. Soothsayer is still probably better overall because a 2/5 body is quite relevant, but I think bounty wins one slot as a way you can repeatedly dig through 10% of your library.

Have done a little bit of testing with -1 Suffer, +1 Soul of Ravnica and have been pretty happy so far. When it sticks, it closes out games pretty quickly, but I think the real advantage is that it doesnt need to stick to still provide us with some good value.

Note that the ability on Soul of Ravnica doesn't require it to tap to activate, and while it may seem silly, this deck is actually quite capable of fielding the 13 mana required to cast it and activate the ability on the same turn in response to removal. In which case the opponent is down a removal spell, you draw an extra 1-5 cards, and Soul is waiting in the GY to be used again the following turn to draw more cards.

Even if you can't activate it on the turn you play it, due to its GY ability, worst case scenario is you trade 1 for 1 and it goes to the yard where it waits to be Exiled to draw you 1-5 cards.

The GY ability gives it some serviceability with the Self-Mill plan as well unlike a lot of other potential options. We are only running 2 recursion spells that can target creatures, so pulling creatures we mill back from the GY is in no way consistent. The GY ability on Soul allows us to still squeeze some value out of it in those situations where it ends up getting dumped by Satyr/Soothsayer.

As for other cards that may be worth it, as I had mentioned before, Banefire would likely be very good here as well. It does the job much faster and more consistently than Suffer does. After having run Suffer for awhile, nothing is worse than having like 18 mana on the table, but only being able to Suffer for like 9 because that is all the cards the opponent has in their GY. Banefire on the other hand makes people go kaboom no matter what. It could also function as 1:1 removal against certain annoying threats like Guttersnipe, and not hesitate to do so because we have a metric ton of recursion for it. The counterspell/damage prevention clause could potentially be significant in the Control matchup as well.

I am also sort of tempted to try and muck around with Palisade Giant now that I have the core of the deck all worked out. Seems like it could do some silly things with Safe Passage and the mode on Obelisk as well. I have a feeling it could be fun, although I realize that this is probably more "herp derp" than an actual improvement on the deck. Would probably function better as a SB card to combat Burn heavy decks.



I don't think Kozilek is worth it. For the reason you mentioned along with the fact the deck can really get screwed by a random GY reshuffle. Hitting Kozi with a Satyr and reshuffling the Fog/PC you needed to recur is an absolute nightmare, and can potentially lose you games you would have otherwise been able to come back from.



Switcheroo is an interesting concept. I feel like it has a lot of potential here. Let me know how that works out for you.

As for Bounty, yeah, that was back when I made up the original list, which was back when it was mucking around trying to mill people out, and I was using the mill on Bounty on the opponent just to speed up the process. Using it on ourselves definitely seems to be the way to go if you intend to run it. In my testing the 2/5 body of Soothsayer has been more useful than being able to see 2 more cards with Bounty.

Digging 6 cards down is certainly very good here though, especially being a Sorcery able to be recurred multiple times. I could certainly see how running a singleton could be worthwhile.

I've been running -1 Savage lands +1 Angelic edict

I have found this deck runs better with 23 lands. i have added in 1 angelic edict in place of it so there is an answer to darksteel colossus because eventually fogs and safe passages run out if you are having to use them every single turn. I have played 15 matches with this deck and won 9. 2 losses were because of too much mana, 1 was because of darksteel colossus which i have been seeing a lot more lately and the others were because of counter. Izzet decks full of counterspells are the worst matchup from what ive seen so far.

I think suffer is very important in this format where GY decks are abundant. Also having it and 2 mana untapped gets rid of a time warp combo right away.

My testing is still pretty limited at this point, but I feel if anything the deck could stand to go up to 25 lands.

If you look strictly at the mana costs printed on the cards, then 23 lands + 4 satyr wayfinders, 3 think twice and 2 walls of omens would be sufficient. But this deck is much more mana intensive than it looks. The cheapest you can recur a fog effect is 5 mana for Archaeomancer + fog, and if you want to spend mana on anything else, like drawing cards, you need even more mana. Warden + safe passage is 8 mana. Casting obelisk is another bottleneck, it is 6 mana to cast and if you only have safe passage that requires a total of 9 mana.

I have had a few games where I started with a 5 land hand and things went smoothly.

Can you describe what you mean by "too much mana?" If I lose a game quickly I generally have 5+ spells in hand and die because fog won't cut it. If a game lasts longer and I lose it is because I was unable to find planar cleansing - I can usually draw/mill the first 40 cards in my library before this happens.

I am still very happy with switcheroo.

Thassa's bounty just costs too damn much. I am testing anger of gods for the matchup vs aggro. I can see the exile hurting this deck in a long game... but aggro decks usually run out of steam quickly and fold once you resolve obelisk.

The mana is iffy so I went -1 black mana source and +1 red mana source. Basically 14 white sources has proven very reliable for turn 6 cleansing. My goal isn't to cast anger on turn 3. I think with all the draw power in this deck and satyr wayfinder that 10 red sources should be doable. One plus about anger is that it can combo with planar cleansing to exile Kozilek. Another nice feature about anger is that it leaves Obelisk intact. You can pump up a creature with obelisk to survive anger or use obelisk to debuff an enemy creature.

This^^

At heart this is a Control deck, and it functions very much as such. The deck preferably wants to be making land drops every turn up until you get to the point where you have at least 10-12 land on the table. Now of course mana flood can still happen, but overall this deck wants as much mana on the table as possible.

As Henwen pointed out, we almost always want to have mana open for Fog/Safe Passage, this means tacking an extra 1-3 cmc onto most of our spells. I addition to this, the deck revolves very much around its ability to quickly draw into and cast Planar Cleansing over and over again. Doing so often means using recursion, which often means spending almost 2x the mana you would normally spend to do what you need to do. Say you have PC in the yard and absolutely HAVE cast it his turn, this usually means spending 10-11 mana in a single turn (Archaeomancer/Warden + PC), and this scenario is not at all uncommon.

The same is true of many of the win-cons in the deck. Obelisk generally isn't something you want to be tapping out to play unless it is directly after a PC reset. Which means on average Obelisk is going to be a 7-9cmc play, because you don't want to be casting that 6cmc card until you have an extra 1-3 mana floating around to cover your bum with Fog/Safe Passage, and this doesn't even include the potential of activating Obelisk on the turn it comes into play. If you want to actually USE Obelisk the turn you play it AND have Fog protection then we are bumping up the cost by another 2. Which means playing Obelisk, activating it, and still having Fog backup on the same turn is likely going to cost you 9-11 mana.

The deck really does live and die off of being able to cast Fog effects and PC. Tapping out and not leaving mana open for a Fog effect can often be enough to just flat out lose games for you, so having an abundance of mana (and paying a good deal of attention to what colors you tap when you cast things) is more important here than it seems by just looking over the deck. PC is similarly important, and having the mana to cast PC (which is 6cmc and can often mean having to spend more mana to recur it before you cast it) again is often the difference between winning and losing. Not having the mana to go Warden, recur PC, Cast PC can be a death sentence in certain situations, and doing so costs

The same is true of when you really need to cast PC but don't have one in hand and need to filter into it. Being able to filter into PC via cantrips or Soothsayer and still have the mana available to cast the PC can be VERY important.

Not gonna lie, I haven't tested at all using Anger, mostly because I have been afraid of gimping myself.

Both Archaeomancer and Warden get eaten by Anger, and once they are gone, they are gone. We can't use Treasured Find to get them back or crack Elixir to reshuffle them. With how much this deck relies on being able to use them multiple times to recur Fog/PC I am not sure if this is a good idea.

Having more sweeper effects is certainly something that would help the deck, I am just afraid the Exile effect is going to make the recursion plan pretty costly. I am not sure how I would feel about using Warden/Archaeomancer to recur Anger multiple times, because I know each time I am eating away at my recursion base.

The deck gets there often by using the mode on Obelisk on these smaller creatures as well. Nuking them with PC isn't so bad because eventually they are going to come back, either from Treasured Find or an Elixir reshuffle. We don't have that assurance with Anger.

Let me know how it goes for you. I considered Anger briefly because more sweepers is always good against the faster decks, but I opted against it because I was just too worried about it causing issues in the late game.

Anger is still in testing for me, but I like it so far.

We have very few deck slots available after the mill/recursion/fog engine, but the combined effect of mill and recursion makes "silver bullet" answers more valuable.

If I could run a 3rd copy of planar cleansing I would. But we can't. The fogs help delay but this deck ultimately lives and dies by board wipes. I started with Thassa's Bounty in this slot because I wanted another way to draw into planar cleansing, but I think it is just better to have a 3rd board wipe in the deck.

I am on the 1 Elixir plan because I don't need to use elixir to reshuffle 80-90% of the time. Similarly, I think removing a few key cards from your deck via exile won't matter in 80-90% of games. Once you have both anger and PC in your yard, you can generally just spam PC all you want. You don't have to use anger. But it does have its niche - exile and keeping Obelisk on the board.

Ultimately anger falls short in a comparison to PC, but even with all the mill in the deck not drawing/milling into PC is one of my top reasons for losing. Usually when I am milling for cards what I want to see most is PC, a single copy of anger improves your chances of getting a board wipe by 50%, and as a one of, the maluses are not overwhelming.

You make a fair point about being able to sweep while still keeping Obelisk on the table.

I agree with you completely that we don't have a lot of room to work with though.

At most we have like 2-3 cards that can be swapped around to suit preference/meta.

I have been having exceedingly good luck thus far with Soul of Ravnica. Having an evasion threat around has been very helpful for closing out games on top of the fact I actually don't mind milling it because it seems to average out to about 3-4 cards. Which isn't terrible for a milled card that doesn't require you to expend cards from your hand. I have had a few games where I made people really upset by casting Safe Passage the turn they try and stack burn to get rid of it also, which is a good feeling.

I plan on messing around with Palisade Giant sometime today just for the hell of it. Seems like it will be fun if nothing else. Actually there are a lot of funky cards that could be messed around with here that normally aren't otherwise too great but could work here. Phytotitan is a terrible card, but the idea of casting it and then casting PC like 5 times in a row just seems like it would be funny. XD

After further testing I agree with the need for 24 lands. Although I still think angelic Edict is needed. it has worked out very well for me when there is one worrisome card on the field and i dont want to use PC just yet.

Switcheroo sounds interesting and would be an answer to darksteel as well so im contemplating using that instead of angelic edict which cant hit stormbreath.