The Magic Chest 17: Fog

Don't underestimate the power of the humble Fog. Sure, it'll usually just get you one turn of respite before you die, but sometimes a single turn is all it takes.

One of the first games of Magic I ever played I lost because of a Fog. We'd been in a creature stalemate for about 30 turns with about 20 small creatures on each side. Nothing had flying and we didn't have any real creature destruction. Hey, we were beginners. I finally drew my Wrath of God, saved up a few creatures in my hand and cleared the board. Then I started casting the extra creatures and prepared to swarm in for the kill. There were no cards left in my graveyard, but my opponent was at only a few life and I had plenty of creatures to attack with. You guessed it, she Fogged and I lost by decking.

Something like that won't happen every day, but it's possible to make an interesting trick deck with Fog and its clones. I'll leave out creatures with Fog effects, because creatures are vulnerable, but mostly because it's too easy to turn those into infinite Fogs. Dragon Blood and Spike Weaver will do, as will Howling Mine and Dawnstrider and even Corpse Dance and Spore Frog.

How would a deck do if it had only lands and Fog clones? Pretty awful at first sight, but if you keep in mind that Constant Mists allows you to effectively turn all your lands into Fogs as well, it's starting to look better against decks that don't have the right disruption to stop the constant fogging. Make sure the deck has over 60 cards, so your opponent will run out of cards first and you even have a chance of winning against decks that don't run anything like Gaea's Blessing, Soldevi Digger or Wayward Soul to keep from decking themselves.

Strange? Of course, that's why it's a trick deck. Wait until your opponent pulls out a mindless beatdown deck (the kind people tend to switch to once they've downed too many beers to play a complicated deck) before playing this. The fun is seeing how long it takes until they start counting your library and realize they can't win.

Warning: don't play this deck more than once a year and preferably on April 1st. It's a trick deck, after all.

There isn't much use in discussing individual cards, so I'll skip that bit. Make sure to mulligan until you get a Constant Mists. Cards like Hall of Mists and Glacial Chasm could be used to stall for several turns, but it isn't necessary. Have faith in your Fogs and only use them on attacks that would kill you.

Trust the Fog
4x Fog
4x Constant Mists
4x Respite
4x Lull
4x Tangle
4x Snag
4x Spore Cloud

37x Forest

Have fun!