Mono-Green Turbo Fog! | PDH Deck Tech | Pauper Commander
Fog | Illustrated by John Avon
Hello, everyone! Welcome to another installment of BathroomBrews! In this week's article, we're going to take a look at one of my favorite pauper commanders and strategies of 2023, Tendril of the Mycotyrant turbo fog. After getting crushed by this creature a few times in Limited, I knew I had to build a PDH deck around this Fungus Wizard. For more great PDH content, check out my Mono-Red Alien deck tech here! And if you want more amazing PDH content, check out our PDH section to easily find all the best articles.
What is Turbo Fog?
For the uninitiated, turbo fog is an archetype that revolves around using Fog effects to stall the game and draw a bunch of cards. In this case, instead of drawing cards, we want to get as many lands into play as possible and turn them into 7/7s with our commander's ability. I've found turbo-fog works better in PDH thanks to the format focus on combat over combos, generally. This might not be the case for competitive PDH; however, we are focusing on PDH here.
Creatures
Creature Ramp
As I said before, our goal is to get as many lands into play as fast as possible, so we're forgoing a lot of the usual mana dorks, like Llanowar Elves, Elvish Mystic, and Fyndhorn Elves. Instead, I focused on creatures that can put lands into play, such as Arboreal Grazer, Sakura-Tribe Elder, and Druid of the Emerald Grove. In total, there are 13 creatures that either take lands from our library or hand and put them onto the battlefield.
Keyword Enablers
While playtesting this deck, I realized it was hard to get hits in with vanilla 7/7s creatures. Without any form of evasion, these land creatures can be chump-blocked forever by 1/1s. Thankfully, there are many ways to give creatures trample, especially those with +1/+1 counters on them. Duskshell Crawler, Pridemalkin, Tuskguard Captain, and Crowned Ceratok all give our creatures with +1/+1 counters on them trample. I also included Longshot Squad to give them reach and Nylea's Forerunner to give our entire board trample.
The Others
And the last section of creatures is a hodgepodge of fogs, card draw, removal, and two stompy boys. For our fogs, we have the famous Spore Frog and its big brother, Haze Frog. For card draw, we have Elvish Visionary, Llanowar Visionary, Skyscanner, and Owlbear as cantripping creatures. There's only one removal creature with Masked Vandal. I should probably add Reclamation Sage, but I haven't yet encountered many problematic enchantments or artifacts, but I'm sure this will change as my playgroup evolves. As for the two stompy boys, we have Territorial Scythecat and Ulamog's Crusher.
Sorceries
It shouldn't be a surprise that most of the sorceries I included are for ramping. There are the staples, Rampant Growth, Cultivate, and Kodama's Reach. If you wanted to use snow basics, you could add Into the North. I also added some less-played ramp spells with Grow from the Ashes, Edge of Autumn, and Broken Bond, which doubles as removal. And finally, two green cantrips, Elven Farsight and Explore.
Instants
Ramping
While most of the instants are dedicated to the fog part of turbo fog, I still made room for some ramp here too. The newest ramp spell in the deck, Fertilid's Favor, can turn a 7/7 into a 10/10, which is 1/3rd of someone's health. I've also included, Harrow, which I'm always surprised is common, and Natural Connection, which I'm not surprised is common.
Fogs
Excluding the creature fogs, there are a total of ten fogs in the deck. The original list had quite a few more, and I'll go over the ones I cut in the next section, but I didn't want to just slam every fog into a deck and call it a day. That's boring, and anyone could do that. Instead, I wanted to go with what I consider to be the best mono-green fogs in the format. The best of the bunch, unsurprisingly, is the original Fog.
There are two-mana fogs, with Commencement of Festivities, Defend the Hearth, and Root Snare. These read exactly like the original but cost two instead of one. The other two-mana fogs, Haze of Pollen, Lull, Moment's Peace, and Respite all have upsides. The only fogs that cost more than two mana are Pause for Reflection, which has convoke, so it'll be free most of the time, and Blunt the Assault, which costs four and gains you a bunch of life.
The Rest of the Deck
The rest of the deck is artifact ramp, such as Wayfarer's Bauble and Arcane Signet. I think there is a good argument for cutting Arcane Signet for a basic Forest, but I included it out of habit. If you cut it, I wouldn't blame you. Enchantment ramp consists of Utopia Sprawl, Wild Growth, Khalni Heart Expedition, and Omen of the Hunt.
The best artifact in the deck is Whispersilk Cloak, which I often forget is common! This makes one of our land creatures unblockable and gives it shroud. And Snake Umbra is creature protection and card draw.
