Welcome back! This has been an awesome week for deckbuilders, and I can't wait to take a look at some of the brews that have come to light. From Turbofog in Standard to Cruel Ultimatum in Modern, these are some decks I'm excited to see in action. Let's take a look at the sweetest decks this week!

We'll start in Standard with the 2nd place list from the March 30th MTGO PTQ. A number of authors had suggested that Fog might be the answer to the Junk Reanimator decks that had been running amok in Standard, but BReal2 took that to a new extreme that turned out to be very successful. Here's his list:

[Cardlist Title=Turbo Fog - Standard | BReal2, 2nd Place MTGO PTQ]

• Lands (24)
• 1 Alchemist's Refuge
• 3 Breeding Pool
• 2 Forest
• 2 Glacial Fortress
• 4 Hallowed Fountain
• 4 Hinterland Harbor
• 2 Island
• 2 Sunpetal Grove
• 4 Temple Garden

• Creatures (5)
• 3 Augur of Bolas
• 2 Snapcaster Mage

• Spells (31)
• 2 Azorius Charm
• 4 Clinging Mists
• 1 Dissipate
• 4 Farseek
• 4 Fog
• 2 Gideon, Champion of Justice
• 2 Jace, Architect of Thought
• 1 Jace, Memory Adept
• 3 Sphinx's Revelation
• 4 Supreme Verdict
• 2 Tamiyo, the Moon Sage
• 2 Urban Evolution

• Sideboard (15)
• 1 Centaur Healer
• 1 Curse of Echoes
• 2 Detention Sphere
• 1 Dispel
• 2 Dissipate
• 2 Negate
• 1 Psychic Spiral
• 2 Thragtusk
• 3 Witchbane Orb

Buy This Deck

This deck is awesome. It doesn't actually do very much, but that's sort of the point, isn't it? The deck is reasonably well-positioned among the midrangey creature decks, including Junk reanimator, and has a number of awesome interactions to boot.

Let's start with Tamiyo, the Moon Sage and Fog effects. Each of Tamiyo's abilities are powerful options for this deck. Her +1 lets you hold off on Fog and forces your opponent to over-commit into your Supreme Verdicts. Once they've over-committed, your Fogs let you use her -2 as a Tidingss effect that leaves you with a Planeswalker on the board. If you manage to get to 8 counters, her ultimate lets you infinitely Fog as you mill your opponent out.

Jace, Architect of Thought and Gideon, Champion of Justice have similar powerful interactions with Fog which this deck takes full advantage of. This deck puts a lot of decks into very awkward positions, where they have to decide if they're going to play around Fogs or Supreme Verdicts, while your planeswalkers pressure them and let you pull further and further ahead.

Rest In Peace is a powerful hate card that is seeing play in every format, from Standard to Legacy to Commander. Whether you're hating on Unburial Rites and Dread Return, or powering up your Helm of Obedience and Energy Field, Rest in Peace does it all. That said, I've never seen in in a shell like this:

[Cardlist Title=Enchantress - Legacy | freggle, 3-1 Legacy Daily Event]

• Lands (19)
• 10 Forest
• 1 Karakas
• 1 Savannah
• 3 Serra's Sanctum
• 4 Windswept Heath

• Creatures (4)
• 4 Argothian Enchantress

• Spells (37)
• 4 Abundant Growth
• 1 Elephant Grass
• 4 Enchantress's Presence
• 3 Green Sun's Zenith
• 3 Helm of Obedience
• 4 Mirri's Guile
• 4 Rest in Peace
• 1 Seal of Primordium
• 1 Sigil of the Empty Throne
• 4 Solitary Confinement
• 4 Utopia Sprawl
• 4 Wild Growth

• Sideboard (15)
• 2 Elephant Grass
• 1 Enlightened Tutor
• 4 Leyline of Sanctity
• 4 Oblivion Ring
• 1 Pithing Needle
• 3 Tormod's Crypt

Buy This Deck

Enchantress isn't a new deck in Legacy. Whether it's Blue-Green with Words of Wind or Green-White with Solitary Confinement, Enchantress has been around for years. However, the addition of the Helm of Obedience/Rest in Peace combo gives Enchantress something that it's never had: a way to close out games quickly.

Before, there was a very real possibility that you'd race to set up your Solitary Confinement or Elephant Grass lock, but you'd time out before you could actually win your game. Cards like Sacred Mesa, Sigil of the Empty Throne, and Words of War tried to mitigate this issue, but it was still something that came up.

The combo kill lets you just nut draw people, either by jamming your Confinement lock early and stalling until you hit the combo, or just killing them on turn three with the natural combo.

Let's take a look at our first Modern deck of the week. This one is a sweet Modern deck from a MTGO Grinder _Batuhina. While everyone else is picking up their Deathrite Shamans and Cryptic Commands, _Batuhina is jamming pulling ahead on cards with Squadron Hawk and locking down the late game with Cavern of Souls and Sun Titan. Let’s take a look at his mono-white midrange deck:

[Cardlist Title=ProclaMartyr - Modern | _Batuhina, 3-1 Modern Daily Event]

• Lands (24)
• 4 Cavern of Souls
• 4 Ghost Quarter
• 4 Marsh Flats
• 1 Mistveil Plains
• 10 Plains
• 1 Tectonic Edge

• Creatures (24)
• 1 Kami of False Hope
• 4 Kitchen Finks
• 4 Martyr of Sands
• 4 Ranger of Eos
• 4 Serra Ascendant
• 4 Squadron Hawk
• 3 Sun Titan

• Spells (12)
• 3 Mind Stone
• 3 Path to Exile
• 2 Proclamation of Rebirth
• 1 Sword of Light and Shadow
• 3 Wrath of God

• Sideboard (15)
• 3 Aven Mindcensor
• 2 Damping Matrix
• 2 Oblivion Ring
• 2 Relic of Progenitus
• 3 Stony Silence
• 3 Surgical Extraction

Buy This Deck

This deck has a lot of very powerful angles that it can play against the format. You have Proclamation of Rebirth plus Martyr of Sands backed by Wrath of God to put games out of reach of the aggressive decks. You have Mistveil Plains plus Squadron hawk to give you an endless stream of creatures. If that doesn’t work, Sun Titan will come down and make sure you have the better late game.

I think it’s especially important to look at how strong Sun Titan is in this deck. Rebuying Martyr of Sands is certainly cute, but let’s get bigger than that. How about Tectonic Edge against Celestial Colonnade? Or Mistveil Plains to restart your Squadron Hawk engine?

The key here is that _Batuhina has cut some of the more aggressive cards typically seen in Soul Sisters style decks. There are no Ajani's Pridemate or Soul Warden here. When you add those cards to your deck, you basically concede your matches against control decks unless you hit multiple Serra Ascendants early on. Instead, _Batuhina opted for a stronger control game to make sure that you can actually win games instead of just not-dying.

Cruel Ultimatum is one of the most demoralizing cards to be printed in the last few years. There are very few holes that this card can’t dig you out of, and DrNutzlos’s deck is built to maximize the leverage you can generate with

[Cardlist Title=5 Color Control - Modern | , 4-0 Modern Daily Event]

Buy This Deck