Eon I am interested in how your testing goes. Phytotitan would perform reasonably well here.

So I have started a log of my games. The results are not pretty - 5 wins 5 losses, one of those losses was arguably due to a play mistake.

Why I lost:
1 play mistake as mentioned previously. My opponent went from having a non-threatening board that I could block to lethal damage in one turn thanks to ogre taskmaster + young pyromancer + burn spells. I tapped out at 17 life to drop obelisk - I didn't have fog so I would have had to wait till 9 mana to cast safe passage + obelisk. I had plenty of stall fuel in my hand but I wanted to start using obelisk right away.

2 games I lost simply due to not being able to find planar cleansing. In one game was able to stall for a very, very long time but eventually ran dry. In another game I was taking damage from an mono U evasive beats deck, not sure if he had counterspells.

The other two games are a bit more complicated. Both were ramp decks with a hefty dose of red direct damage. Both had card advantage creatures (graveborn muse and charmbreaker devils) that were able to draw significant cards before I could respond. Both did a significant amount of damage to my face. If I had planar cleansing early I think I could have won one of these games, because my opponent had a poorly constructed deck and made collossal misplays. The second game I had a good hand and I still lost, my opponent was an excellent player who did not overextend and his deck was filled with card advantage engines. I lost the second game at 10 mana, if I had stalled to 11 mana I would have lasted longer but I was basically in banefire range which I assume he probably had.

What do I take from this?
-Anger is not helpful in 3 of the games I lost. It is extremely useful in the worst matchup (Mono U aggro) but it doesn't have enough value across the field as a whole
-I only had switcheroo in one of the games I lost (the misplay). I didn't have it in the 2 games I lost against ramp decks, it would have helped tremendously. Switcheroo would have won me 3/5 of the games I lost
-Burn is an issue. I had obelisk online in one of the two games I lost but wasn't able to activate white mode because I was forced to fog turn after turn. In the other game I was forced to cleanse so frequently that obelisk wouldn't have done anything. Unfortunately our lifegain options are extremely limited - Resolute Archangel would have arguably been helpful in only two games I lost, and all the other lifegain options just don't provide nearly enough life.

I am going to test switcheroo #2. I think that in terms of instants/sorceries it offers the most board impact next to cleansing. Note that this is based on the steam meta - I only faced one tokenish deck, and it had enough non-token support creatures that switcheroo would have been nice.

Alright I did -1 suffer -1 elixer and + 2 switcheroos for 3 matches and won all 3. Just speaking on those 3 matches, I found that although switcheroo seems to work great, the second one doesnt seem necessary. Also I didn't really notice much difference with only 1 elixir except for the fact that I didn't have one sitting in my hand most of the game.

Im going to follow suit and try out Soul of Ravnica in place of the second switcheroo.

I'm also thinking about a Rune Scarred Demon to increase the consistency of getting PC which tends to be the deciding factor of many games. I realize that it doesn't do anything if its in the GY without TF but it would still increase the likely hood of having a PC when needed.

I did a few more games too, the first switcheroo is very useful but the marginal benefit of the 2nd copy isn't high.

Still not sure what to use for the last card. Soul is one I may actually be happier to mill than hardcast.

So I got around to testing Palisade Giant because I was bored and why not. Went -1 Soul -1 Elixir, +2 Palisade Giant. As I suspected it hasn't really helped the deck a whole lot. At best it represents a Fog that can trade with creatures but also gets blanked by removal. On a positive note, it did seem to significantly improve the matchup against burn heavy decks. Against most of the burn centric decks it seems once you resolve a Palisade Giant there isn't really much of anything they can do to get rid of it. Very few burn spells by themselves can do 7 damage, so getting rid of it often requires them to expend multiple burn spells on it at which point we can Safe Passage. These decks also tend to run more weenies than big threats, so getting that 7 damage through via creatures isn't always easy for them either (especially with Fog/Safe Passage). I don't think it is worth it to take up a slot in the deck, that said, if we could SB, it would likely be one of my first SB choices because of how effective it was at answering that specific matchup.

After finally having dropped the second Elixir, I have to say that I have been doing alright with just the 1. I do mill myself fast enough where I have to reshuffle relatively often in games, but so far every time I have had to do so I was able to either draw into the single Elixir, or pluck it from the yard with Warden/TF before it became an issue. Elixir as a 1-of seems to be working just fine.

RSD is something I have been considering from the very beginning but have been concerned both due to the cost (7 cmc with could cause issues) and the likelihood that we mill it with nothing to bring it back.

If I were to include RSD, I would probably try and jam both copies in there to increase the chances we end up drawing into one. Chances are pretty high if we are just running 1 copy that we are going to end up milling it pretty often, where it doesn't do us a whole lot of good since TF is our only recursion that can hit creatures.

Also on that note, if I were going to include RSD, I would likely tweak the recursion numbers a bit to reflect having RSD around. Going -1 Archaeomancer, +1 Treasured Find to increase how often we have TF around to be able to pull back a milled RSD.

I feel like the above change would further increase the decks capability to hit PC early, the only potential issue I see is that running 2x RSD and another copy of TF is going to push the deck even heavier into and since the deck is already spread so deep into so many other colors, this could potentially cause some inconsistency issues with mana.

I am very much enjoying this deck so far. It may not have a lot of room for variation, but the few cards we can swap around have so many potential options to be filled by because of how well the deck can stall. This is honestly the first deck so far is this game that I have considered trying to mess around with Monomania. Being able to stall into a PC followed by a Monomania seems like it could be pretty brutal, and recursion could allow us to cast it multiple times if needed.

A couple copies of Pestermite could be interesting as well. Tapping down big threats to essentially Fog for a turn, blocking flying threats with Safe Passage, untapping to Fog, untapping Obelisk. Again, probably not worth it, but fun none-the-less.

I also considered monomania because I have had so many games where I PCed but had the opponent have 6-7 cards in hand.

I don't think a pestermite would allow you to cast a fog more efficiently because if there is 3 untapped mana for it, you would most likely have a green source available, but being able to untap obelisk would be interesting.

In regards to Pestermite I was talking more along the lines of being able to commit a creature to the board without fear of leaving yourself without the needed for Fog, since even if you only have 3 mana left you can tap out for a Pestermite and still untap to still have your

Probably not worth it, but still a fun idea. As I said, the deck is at the point where we have some room to mess around with a few cards here and there.

Due to the nature of the deck (being able to stall forever) I have sort of been using the deck as a vessel to mess around with some of the cards I haven't played with much because they are otherwise meh (like the previously mentioned Palisade Giant and Phytotitan), so certainly don't take all of these little quips as gospel.

I personally feel the +2 RSD, +1 Treasured Find, -1 Archaeomancer may actually be the way to go in terms of PC consistency, which is what the deck really lives and dies off of.

Just trying to have some fun in the short amount of time this game has left until Origins is released and 2015 dies off completely.

Yeah, Roil Elemental can probably be tossed. But even at 20 lands, mana usually hasn't been an issue for me due to the armillary spheres, cultivates and ingots.

Venom I played that deck and I can safely say it is pretty inconsistent. Sure, half the time you will get the perfect hand of ramp, removal and fatty. The problem is if your starting hand is not dynamite it is hard to survive. Mana is a real issue - the deck has 30 mana-related cards, but only 20 lands, so getting a hand with 2 lands + cultivate or ingot is pretty common, and with only 20 lands you can very easily end up getting stuck on 20 lands. There is no cheap card draw to help you draw into lands either. On the other extreme you have 30 mana-related cards so it is easy to get flooded.

Eon I urge you to try 1x Switcheroo. That card is pretty much nailed down for me for sure. Monomania and mind rot are certainly cards I considered. Situations like you mentioned of opponents holding cards in hand certainly do happen, but I think switcheroo is a reasonable card for this situation. Your opponent can only reasonably slow roll their threats if they are playing decent size creatures, and switcheroo not only eliminates their decent size creature but gives it to you. It is a powerful effect and usually after the first cleansing I prefer to just recur switcheroo multiple times.

We are trying to slot silver bullet cards in here, I think the best way to do this is to log your games so you can go back and see why you lost / what cards would have made a difference.

Planar cleansing is the gold standard card that you really want, I am not sure RSD is correct here. Normally if you tutor into RSD for removal / fatty you get to keep the 6/6 body. If you are just keeping the 6/6 body for a turn you just paid an awful lot for cleansing. If you have to use treasured find to grab RSD then you are paying 15(!) mana for PC. It may be necessary but I have been scratching my head trying to find an alternative.

My gut instinct is that quality single target removal may be the answer. We have access to all 5 colors so we get to use our pick of the good stuff - I think ground assault is the most reliable. I won't have the time for any testing for a while...

Eon did you reach any conclusions re: Soul of Ravinica? He should get milled about half the time and has huge value when he is milled.

Soul of Ravnica actually worked out pretty well. As I said before, it is an evasion threat with a big enough body to close out games relatively quickly. Flying is useful even when it isn't attacking since it gives us a creature that can block flying threats, allowing us to pull Safe Passage shenanigans on flying creatures as well. We can actually stall out long enough to be able to activate Souls ability on the turn we play it (11 mana total). So playing it and having it immediately removed isn't terrible, since we can often activate it in response and still draw a few cards off of it. Even if it gets removed without us getting to activate it at all, it still ends up in the GY, where we can still use it later to draw some more cards with its GY Exile ability. Should we mill it, we still gain a good deal of value off of it because of its GY Exile ability.

The ability on Soul itself can potentially be really good here. Warden+Soothsayer is 5 cards per activation. Warden+Saytr is 4 cards. Soothsayer+Wall is 4 cards, which are the ideal setups for activating Soul. We can still often draw at least 2-3 cards off of Wall/Satyr/Archaeomancer/Soul itself.

The only issue with Soul is that there are going to be times when you can activate it but really don't want to. Milling into Soul the turn after you clear the board with PC for example can be annoying. This doesn't happen very often, but when it does it feels pretty terrible.

I tested out Monomania a little bit and was honestly not impressed. This could have to do with the limited testing, but it just didn't seem to do much good in most of the games I played with it. It seems strange, because before I included Monomania, I would often end up in situations where I would PC and the opponent would have like 4+ cards in their hand still. Once I included Monomania though I didn't once run into that situation, and Monomania ended up sitting in my hand while the opponent had 0-1 cards left in hand. I even lost a few games because I drew into Monomania when I really needed to draw into something that could potentially help me stall for longer.

I feel it would deserve a spot in the SB if we had the option to do that. I still feel like in the matchups where it is good, it is REALLY good, but outside those matchups it really doesn't do much to help us. I could definitely see it being beneficial as a SB card against control decks, where our Fog effect really don't do a ton for us and control decks are free to keep their hand full at all times.

I also tested out the RSD plan, playing 2x RSD and swapping the 3rd Archaeomancer out for the 3rd Treasured Find.

Not at all going to lie, RSD has been pretty clunky at times. That said, it has proven to be very useful for just grabbing up whatever. Having RSD stick is nice, but even when it eats removal it often serves its purpose. The most obvious use is of course to fetch PC, even further increasing the consistency of our sweeping ability. Beyond this though, I have used it to fetch up a Fog effect to continue to stall when I had PC already in hand and was trying to draw out as much as possible before I PC. It also works nice as a means of fetching Obelisk in the games in where we achieve a soft lock on the opponent (usually via Fogging until they empty their hand and then sweeping, leaving them relying on top-decks).

To be honest I am not entirely sure that the chunkiness from RSD is worth it, but it does give the deck a bit more flexibility in grabbing what it needs when it needs it.

As for Switcheroo I will have to give it a try. Not a card I have ever really been a big fan of, but I can certainly see how it could be really good here.

This deck has four win main win conditions; Baneslayer, Inferno Titan, Griselbrand and Kozilek. But sometimes you will just burn your opponent out with uncounterable burn.

You draw and burn away threats until you get Counterlash and one of your bombs in hand. It happens much more frequently than I originally expected, I guess because of the constant draw. So wait for your opponent to cast a creature spell (they will without fear because they haven't seen any counterspells so far, even if they've dumped some of your library into your graveyard) then counter it. Suddenly on your upkeep your opponent is tapped out, you have a Kozileck without summoning sickness and can just smash ****. Even if they manage to bounce it or hit you with reprisal you just drew four cards and then dumped your graveyard back into your library. Except now it's very thin thanks to the constant draws hitting land drops and exiling your Think Twice's. Maybe you had another bomb in hand, you counterlashed in a Griselbrand. You get to gain 7 life and draw a ton. Or if you had Titan/Baneslayer those are decent too. But the fun is slamming a turn 5 Kozilek thanks to Electromancer's cost reduction.

Some combos to be aware of, you can counterlash and play a Warden of the Eye, and just pick up the counterlash again. You can also cast an Electromancer, counterlash it, and slam Kozilek/Griselbrand. That rarely ever becomes relevant, really only when your opponent doesn't use creatures in their deck. Also your Electromancer's make your Banefire's hit for +1 and they make Think Twice extra cheap. As far as prioritizing your lands, you need to lean Jeskai, then Grixis. Forest doesn't matter until you're ready to start cycling Resounding Thunder.

Um there is no green in this deck...

Does the cycling on Resounding Thunder not count?

Henwen,

did You and Eonblueapocalypse find the holly grail with Turbo Fog or did that movement die of in this thread? I am definitely interested in playing interesting decks...

BR
J.

Uses premium cards


This is my masterpiece. Best way to make use of Maelstrom Archangel and Warp World in my opionion. Immediatly won every match of Garruk Campaign with this. Also loads of fun. Enjoy!

uses premium cards, this one might be even better, more against early creatures