Can We Build Creatureless Mr. Foxglove? | $100 Budget Mr. Foxglove Deck Tech
Aetherflux Reservoir | Illustrated by Cliff Childs
Mr. Foxglove | Illustrated by Anna Podedworna
Tamiyo, Field Researcher | Illustrated by Justin Gerard
Is Mr. Foxglove a more interesting Chulane, Teller of Tales? Both of these commanders provide some form of card advantage, but Mr. Foxglove needs to attack in order to get this advantage while Chulane wants you to cast creatures in order to draw cards and put lands into play. Both are incredibly powerful five-mana commanders, but I want to build Mr. Foxglove a little differently. I think that last line of text that cheats creatures into play is boring. There are plenty of commanders that let us cheat big creatures into play, like Akul the Unrepentant, Ilharg, the Raze-Boar, and Shadowfax, Lord of Horses. What if we built a creatureless Mr. Foxglove deck that revolves around combat tricks, allowing you to dump your hand, refill it with his attack trigger, and do it all over again the next turn?
Cheating on Combat
Mr. Foxglove needs to attack in order to get his trigger, which can put him at risk. However, he doesn't need to connect, so we can take him out of combat with cards like Reconnaissance, Maze of Ith, and the back of Thaumatic Compass. There is also Labyrinth of Skophos, but it's basically a five-mana Maze, so I'd maybe pass on this one. Another interesting card is Penance. This is great if you can shuffle your library, especially with Mr. Foxglove's ability on the stack, to put your hand on top of your library, shuffle it away, and draw a fresh grip.
Staying Safe
Next, we want to keep our cute Fox safe, but it doesn't have a ward, hexproof, or protection built into the card. There are some great artifact options, like Swiftfoot Boots, Lavaspur Boots, and Winged Boots. I suggest avoiding Whispersilk Cloak and Lightning Greaves since they prevent you from targeting Mr. Fox, but cheap protection spells, such as Tamiyo's Safekeeping, Tyvar's Stand, and Gods Willing, are great coming in at one mana. Countermagic is also great to stop pesky exile board wipes. Nice Farewell, here's a Negate, Counterspell, or Arcane Denial to stop that nonsense.
Bulking Up
What kind of combat trick deck would we be without combat tricks? Vines of Vastwood, Simic Charm, Giant Growth, Selesnya Charm, Mutagenic Growth, and Show of Confidence are all cheap options that give a massive buff to Mr. Foxglove. Show of Confidence is especially great since it has pseudo storm.
Storming Off
Speaking of Storm, since we're trying to cast our entire hand each turn, storm could be a great inclusion in your Mr. Foxglove deck. Radstorm, Mind's Desire, and Chatterstorm are always fun to cast. I'd probably avoid Brain Freeze unless you add a combo to generate infinite mana and infinite storm. Personally, I'd want to add Astral Steel to give our commander a super buff. Or you could be really mean and add Temporal Fissure to bounce your opponents' lands. You might want to add Metallurgic Summonings or Shark Typhoon, but because of the lower mana value of the spells, I'm not sure how powerful they are.
A Little Off The Top
Because we want to keep our hand empty to get as much value as possible, I want to add ways to play cards from the top of our library, so cards like Case of the Locked Hothouse, Future Sight, and Fortune Teller's Talent let you either cast spells, play lands, or both from the top of your library.
Another subset of cards I think we should run are land-untappers. While we can't run Seedborn Muse, we can run Wilderness Reclamation, Shadow of the Second Sun, and Bear Umbra as repeatable ways to untap lands. Bear Umbra also doubles as protection for our commander.
Planeswalkers
The other cards I haven't touched on yet would be planeswalkers. If you want to go for flavor, you could add all of the new Bloomburrow-flavored planeswalkers: Teferi, Time Raveler, Nissa, Who Shakes the World, Narset, Parter of Veils, Karn, the Great Creator, Jace, the Mind Sculptor, Tamiyo, Field Researcher, and Elspeth, Sun's Champion.
#Winning
How do we win with the deck? There are a few ways we can go. First would be card draw payoffs, like Sphinx's Tutelage, Ominous Seas, and Psychic Corrosion. I think these cards are probably the weakest and require the most setup since you'll want a way to shuffle your graveyard back into your library. Second is Aetherflux Reservoir because we're casting so many spells and gaining life from lifelink, this should make it easy to burn out the table. The third option is just using Approach of the Second Sun. It's a little boring, but it gets the job done and sometimes that's all you need.
Or you could add various two-card combos and payoffs to win. There's Isochron Scepter and Dramatic Reversal to get infinite mana and infinite storm, letting you win with Brain Freeze, or Rings of Brighthearth and Basalt Monolith for infinite colorless mana. Then winning with Hurricane or some other big X spell.
The "Others"
Before we wrap up the article I wanted to showcase some other cards I wasn't sure where to put. Those being Dream Halls, Rammas Echor, Ancient Shield, and River Song's Diary. Dream Halls is a weird one that lets you cheat on your spells while emptying your hand. It is symmetrical, so your opponents get to cheat on spells too, which can be a problem if they empty their hands. Rammas Echor, Ancient Shield makes 0/3 walls that can block pretty well, and on your turn gives defenders you control exalted. And finally, River Song's Diary can be filled quickly in this deck, giving you great value throughout the game.
The Creatures...If You Want
Finally, if you wanted to add creatures, LadyFoxglove over on Twitter, who had the name Foxglove first, built an incredible deck from my original Bloomburrow deck idea article. She included Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite, Jin-Gitaxias, Progress Tyrant, Storvald, Frost Giant Jarl, and Vorinclex, Voice of Hunger. All great options if you want to cheat some fatties into play. Some other creatures to consider are Hullbreaker Horror, Nezahal, Primal Tide, and Koma, Cosmos Serpent.
