Magic: the Gathering – Turbo Fog for Standard

Hey guys, I hope you had a fun weekend and did well in your respective weekly tournaments. As for me, I didn’t perform well at the tournament. I hate to go into detail of it so just don’t mind. Anyways, I’m sharing to you a decklist made and suggested by my card pool partner Oliver. It’s a standard version take of one of the earliest strategies and alternate win condition of Magic. The clue card is Millstone. Get the idea? Presenting (insert drum roll here) Turbo Fog!

Turbo Fog
By Oliver Mastilero
Lands
4 Arcane Sanctum
2 Plains
3 Island
4 Reflecting Pool
4 Reliquary Tower
4 Adarkar Wastes
4 Mystic Gate

Planeswalker
3 Jace Beleren

Spells
4 Path to Exile
4 Broken Ambitions
4 Wrath of God
4 Pollen Lullaby
4 Holy Day
4 Cryptic Command
4 Howling Mine
4 Font of Mythos

Sideboard
3 Story Circle
3 Kiss of the Amesha
3 Runed Halo
2 Reminisce
3 Pithing Needle

The main strategy is basically “win by milling your opponent’s deck”. Let’s go into details of the card components.

The Mill
Broken Ambitions – a counter spell plus it can mill 4 cards if you win the clash.

Howling Mine & Font of Mythos – the deck’s core components and win condition.
Jace Beleren – the Blue planeswalker provides you card advantage and a huge mill if you can play his ultimate.

The Control
Path to Exile – the best spot removal in the current Standard and helps decking by making the opponent search for a land.

Pollen Lullaby and Holy day – the “fog” cards dealing with damage of creature beatdown.

Wrath of God – best mass removal for White. Best used when the opponent overextends.

Cryptic Command – the counter spell that can act also as a time walk by tapping your opponent’s creatures.

The Land
Reliquary Tower – this land lets you abuse the power of Howling Mines and Font of Mythos by having no maximum hand size.

As for Oliver’s sideboard choices, I’m guessing the story circles are for single color decks like Red Deck Wins and Kithkins; the Runed Halo are for specific burn cards like Banefire and Flame Javelin; Kiss of the Amesha for lifegain and card draws; Pithing Needle for planeswalker or activation shenanigans, and Reminisce I think is for control matchups.

My card suggestion for the list:

Memory Erosion – This enchantment will surely punish the opponent for playing multiple spells as a benefit from the mine or Font of Mythos.

Kitchen Finks – As early blockers and for life gain. Also, he persists to Wrath.

I haven’t tried the deck yet but Oliver tested it and it’s really fun and can compete with the top decks in the current Standard. Here are a few notes he suggested when playing the deck:
1. Focus on what’s on the board (in play) and the spells the opponent is casting.
2. Optimize your counters by using it only on the right spell; also the same with the mass and spot removals.
3. If the opponent also has a Reliquary Tower, a helpful trick to do is bounce it with Cryptic Command at his End of Turn step and he moves to the Cleanup step discarding a pail of cards on his hand.

To sum it up, alternate win conditions isn’t dead yet in Standard. Let this deck prove it to you. Oh, and please leave me a comment if you have ideas in mind for its improvement. See ya next post. 🙂