Thanks so much for the +1, Vessiliana!

hmm, I'm not sure I see what you see, Cloudy2024. I can't know how familiar you are with the Turbo Fog archetype, but typically, it relies not just on packing a ton of Fog spells, but also a lot of draw card (usually group draw), which are an essential component to keeping your hand full of Fog spells. It's just not enough to have lots of Fogs in a deck. A deck must also have a way of getting all those fogs into our hand. There's simply no avoiding the need for land, so even if a deck had 40x Fog and 20x Land, there's a 33% chance every draw step yields a land. Which means that it's likely an opponent is going to get to hit us eventually. Unless we can draw more cards each turn. So in my mind, adding more Fog spells at the expense of draw card will actually make the deck work less well.

I did consider dropping Ghostly Prison or cutting it back to fewer copies, but that doesn't yield a lot of slots and more importantly, the advantage Ghostly Prison gives the deck is a static defense that allows us to have a chance of tapping more mana on our own turns without being completely defenseless. I'm not 100% sold on that strategy, namely because I really don't like dropping 3 mana on it, but I know it works, so the real question is how much weight can it pull in this brew.

When it comes to other non-fog spells, the most slots are devoted to Ashling, Flame Dancer and Leyline Tyrant, which are basically 33% of the combo. Without those creatures, the cumulative mana we get from Braid of Fire evaporates before we can use it to cast Banefire at Sorcery speed. Since neither red nor white really have anything I'm aware of for creature tutoring, there's no way I can see cutting them.

I really don't like Idyllic Tutor as it's not only quite narrow in a deck that requires more than just an Enchantment to win, but it also costs 3 to cast. At least with Ghostly Prison we can a static defense. With Idyllic Tutor, we get a single use out of that 3 mana while also exposing the card we need, which, in many cases, won't get cast until the next turn. If I could grab anything and not reveal it (like Mastermind's Acquisition, I could see the possible value of adding more tutors. But it's just too inefficient to add more tutors that are so specific. I'd have to devote space in the deck for Sorcery, Enchantment, and Creature tutors. Which bring us back to the value of simple card advantage spells. I need all the spells in the deck. United Battlefront gets us slightly closer than Idyllic Tutor, but still misses on creatures (and my essential creatures are too big anyway). So my verdict is still out on that spell, but I'd likely not choose to run a full set if I thought there was even room for it at all.

I suppose I could try to run more creatures like Kami of False Hope and go the Tocasia's Welcome route, but that seems... I dunno... convoluted.

So to sum up - in my mind, "focus[ing] more on the strategy of the deck is probably the opposite of what you suggested - not more fog and white control spells but less. I could drop the Fog spells altogether and resort to creature based defenses. Not the worst idea, but I think it would come at a higher mana cost, which slows down Banefire.

The only other thing I'd add to all this is that the biggest issue Turbo Fog faces is decks that aren't creature driven. Things like Burn, Mill, Life-drain, etc go right through Fog. That's the primary reason I included Riot Control - because it doesn't just stop combat damage - it stops ALL damage. I mainboarded it because it also has the potential to result in a big lifegain, which is a good stall tactic against lifedrain (keep in mind this is intended to be a multiplayer brew, so it could very easily be facing threats from both creatures and lifedrain in the same game). And that's the other major issue with going in even harder with the Fog strategy (which is itself a secondary, defensive strategy). Granted, the sideboard can help a bit to shore up Turbo-Fog weaknesses.

Bottom line - While I really don't expect this brew to be top tier in any sense, I do like exploring with brews and try to make them the best I can. It's probably clear that I think about strategy, uh, let's just say, "enough." I want to be clear about this though - I'm not saying "I'm right and you're wrong" or that I don't appreciate your advice. It's quite the contrary - I write all this because I'm [overly] interested in these things and want to have conversations about all of it. I understand if you're not interested in that. I just don't want you to feel like I have any intent of antagonizing you, etc. It's just so easy to give/get the wrong impression over the internet.

I love how convoluted this is. Nice work!

lololol - Balaam - I could hardly believe it myself! I did a literal double take when I saw it. Then I had to look up this decklist to make sure I was remembering the MV cost of Sizzle correctly.

Thanks, as always, for the +1!

I really like your creature base here - It seems like it's well focused on getting you cantrips to progress your deck toward your wincon and utilities.

That said, I think the supporting spells are a little all over the place and sometimes not the best option for the purpose they serve. For example, you might swap Blood Fountain for Raise the Past. They're basically the same MV (4), except with the former you get a Blood Token (not that great, IMO, and a mana sink in a deck with already too few lands) vs getting all your 1 drops not back to your hand, but to the battlefield. Similarly, I don't see any purpose to Niveous Wisps at all. Can-trips aren't card advantage, so the only real function it serves is to make a creature white, which has no bearing I can see on any other spells. Night's Whisper would be better, I think, though you've already got Dawn of a New Age AND quite a few Investigate triggers, so I don't think you really even need anymore card draw spells.

I think you'd be better served with some classic removal spells at instant speed than the Artifacts and Enchantments you're running. Path to Exile, Fatal Push, Dismember, etc. Even the two instants in your Sideboard seem more like Mainboard spells, while some of the Mainboard spells seem like Sideboard spells.

Since it seems like the goal of the deck is to play weenie creatures until you slam down a Rottenmouth Viper, I think the deck would benefit from another 4x creatures 1-2MV creatures. To that end, I think your protection spell that currently in your sideboard really deserves being in the mainboard - given that your plan is to sac most your board to play one big creature, your opponents are going to wait until you do that and then try to remove your one creature. So having something ready to protect it seems essential to the success of the deck.

As far as possible creatures to add - I think your best options are "when...dies" creatures like Deathgreeter, Doomed Traveler, and Fear of Lost Teeth - The ones like Doomed Traveler seem especially good as they replenish your board state as you sac. There's a bunch of them, too - here's a link to a search I did :)

Finally, I suggest adding at least 2 more lands.

I'd love to get more of your input, Cloudy2024 - my thinking with Hyena Umbra was that Esper Sentinel is going to draw me more cards if opponents have to pay 2 (or more) instead of 1. Since there are so few creatures in the deck, instead of going with something like Ethereal Armor, I thought it made sense to double down on the functionality of the Aura and go for some static protection (Totem Armor). I have a lot of reservations about this strategy, namely that it's a bit convoluted. Ideally, I like to include 2-4 card advantage spells in most of my decks. That said, red doesn't offer much in the way of card advantage, and I don't like what it does offer as too often it requires a high amount of available mana to utilize otherwise cards end up in exile or the graveyard. Similarly, white offers very little as well. As much as I love Tocasia's Welcome, that's obviously not the answer here. And that leaves me with Esper Sentinel, which is nice, but a major target for removal and a pretty low tax that opponents can easily pay. You can see I've already included 1xIdyllic Tutor, but I consider that much too narrow and it's really acting more as a placeholder for United Battlefront, which itself still doesn't fully meet what I'm looking for. And I suppose I have the final option of adding a 3rd color for a card advantage spell, but I'm very unlikely to do that as I'm a firm believer in limiting a deck's colors to as few as possible for consistency, efficiency, and cost reasons. So ya, I'd love to hear your thoughts on all that - is there a better card advantage spell? Does it really make sense to forego both pump and protection for an instant that only offers temporary effects, keeping in mind this deck is intended on being able to go up against 2 or more other decks in multiplayer matches? Is there another strategy I'm not considering? Much apprecaited!

Thanks so much for the +1 and thoughtful suggestion, Cloudy2024. What would you cut to make room for Orim's Chant?

I feel ya. With my brew, after playtesting it a bit, I think I need something better than Light Up the Stage to get Fanatic of Mogis into my hand more consistently. too many times it took more than 10 turns for a copy to show up, and that's just not consistent enough for a deck that's rather aimless without it. I'm about to start looking for other red Shaman/Wizard spells that might be good enough to be worth casting on their own, but also get really good with Harmonic Prodigy. I guess we'll see if I find anything.

I agree, the attraction of Fanatic of Mogis is that it's 1 less to cast than Gary. I think the downside is that red doesn't have as many value town/good stuff creatures with RR mana symbols to ramp up the Devotion as black does with stuff like Gifted Aetherborn. I considered Eidolon of the Great Revel, but it generates so much hate, I thought it better to omit it for my brew geared toward casual multiplayer. Perhaps in 1v1 it would be worth it. It certainly fits with your creature base MVs, but your Instants would make it really painful.

Most sincere thanks for the +1, PhyrexianPraetor!

Since you already have a full set of Ashling, Braid of Fire seems like a possible addition here. While I think you're running an awful lot of Instant spells for a Devotion deck, you would be able to cast those spells with mana from Braid of Fire during your upkeep if you didn't already have Ashling in play.

I decided Fanatic of Mogis looked like a fun card to brew around, so I put together my own Red Devotion brew. I also decided that splashing white for both blink spells (I went with Ephemerate) as well as recursion spells (I went with Late to Dinner) seemed worth it. Since you've already opted to include fetch lands, it seems like it would be easy enough to swap 4 of those for Arid Mesa and add a couple Sacred Foundrys.

You can check out what I've put together if you feel so inclined. I'm not completely satisfied with it, but I think it's got potential to be decent. Devoted Fans

Thanks so much for the +1, Crow_Umbra!!

Much thanks for the +1, Crow_Umbra!!

Cloudy2024

Thanks so much for the +1 and suggestions, Cloudy2024! When I initially brewed this up, I also brewed a B/W version that centered on Revel in Riches as a wincon, so your suggestions are most relevant to that brew. I'd be very hesitant to add a 4th color to this already relatively inconsistent deck. Also, since this deck really struggles to fend off opponents long enough to get rolling, I've found spells that hurt opponents usually incur more of their ire and therefore result in even lower odds of this deck working out. I did try the spells suggested at the top of the comments (Ebony Owl Netsuke & Fevered Visions) - they were really hard to fit into the deck and, like I said, just made opponents want to kill me even faster, lol.

Wow, hands down the biggest honor of a folder add ever! Thanks so much, porkrichard!

Big thanks for the +1, ichigo989!

Thanks a bunch for the +1 and folder add, Capt_J!

Sometimes I just don't remember things correctly. I think I was confusing Joiner Adept with Dryad of the Ilysian Grove

For sure! I def don't think you need to devote a lot of time to an old brew, but ya, if you can make some quick tweaks and it's better - heck ya!

I just did a quick search - maybe replace Figure of Destiny with Naya Hushblade!