Mr. Foxglove "Flashback?!?! That's Madness!" - Plot Twist #16

Mr. Foxglove by Anna Podedworna

Welcome back to Plot Twist, the series where we build a Commander deck that looks like it'll tell one kind of story only to throw out a twist for our opponents mid-game. If you're joining us for the first time, welcome! I'd encourage you to check out the previous articles in the series to get a sense of the types of stories we're looking to tell.

Last time on Plot Twist, we took Zinnia, Valley's Voice from Bloomburrow in a rather twisty direction by building a "legends matter" deck that sought to create 1/1 token copies of one-power legendary creatures and skirt the legend rule. This week, we're brewing around Mr. Foxglove from the Bloomburrow Commander precon, Peace Offering.

So far on Plot Twist, we've brewed mostly two-color decks, and this is the first time we've ever brewed a Bant deck, so we're forging some new territory here. I was drawn to Mr. Foxglove because he encourages us to attack, then rewards us differently depending on if we have more or less cards in hand than our opponents, so there are a variety of ways to build a deck around him!

How Does Mr. Foxglove Work?

Mr. Foxglove has lifelink and:

Whenever Mr. Foxglove attacks, draw cards equal to the number of cards in defending player's hand minus the number of cards in your hand. If you didn't draw cards this way, you may put a creature card from your hand into play.

So Mr. Foxglove can either draw us cards if we have less cards in hand than the player we're attacking, or he can act like a one-sided Show and Tell/Tooth and Nail effect for us if we happen to have more cards in hand than the opponent we're attacking. We can choose which benefit we get in most instances by attacking a player with more or less cards than us or by manipulating the number of cards in our hand, both of which are relatively easy to do in a game of Commander.

In looking at Mr. Foxglove's EDHREC page, while I'm fully aware that some of the data will be skewed by the precon effect, we can see that many of the 600+ Mr. Foxglove decklists at time of writing are using him to cheat big creatures, like Ghalta, Stampede Tyrant, Avacyn, Angel of Hope, Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur, and Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite, into play, with each of them showing up in more than 35% of Mr. Foxglove decklists so far. Brewers are also loading up on lots of Voltron cards, like Lightning Greaves, Finest Hour, and Whispersilk Cloak, to help protect Mr. Foxglove so they can get multiple attack triggers as well.

But this is Plot Twist, so while our opponents might be expecting us to cheat big creatures into play with Mr. Foxglove when we shuffle up to play for the first time, we're going to be doing the exact opposite: we're going to be looking to get our hand empty quickly so that we can draw lots of cards with Mr. Foxglove when he attacks.

Doing the Twist

That's right, in this week's deck, we're leaning heavily on Spellshapers, madness, flashback, and other effects that allow us to quickly empty our hand into the graveyard! While we could certainly take Mr. Foxglove in a Group Hug direction to make sure our opponents have a hand full of cards at all times, it's infinitely more interesting if we're racing to get our hand empty as quickly as possible before refilling our hand with a single attack from Mr. Foxglove. We'll use weird, old cards, like Avenger en-Dal, Devout Witness, and Silverglade Pathfinder, as "bad" versions of Swords to Plowshares, Disenchant, and Rampant Growth, respectively, to turn whatever extra cards we happen to have into our hand into repeatable versions of better effects. Meanwhile, we'll discard cards like Deep Analysis, Arrogant Wurm, and Circular Logic to get value from the cards we're discarding as well.

We're also running a suite of cards, like Currency Converter (an all star in my Karador Cycling-Reanimator Deck), Spirit Cairn, and Drake Haven, to get extra value from discarding cards while Psychosis Crawler, Tomorrow, Azami's Familiar, and Teferi's Ageless Insight ensure that we draw plenty of cards and get rewarded for doing so.

Protecting Precious Mr. Foxglove

The talented precious Mr. Foxglove is going to be key to our strategy as a steady source of card draw, so protecting him and giving him haste so he can attack immediately are high on our list of priorities in building this week's deck. Cloak of the Bat and Fleetfeather Sandals are two functionally identical cards that give our commander haste so he can attack immediately and flying so that it's harder to block him. While these are perhaps a little expensive to cast and equip in the same turn, they're accomplishing two really important things for our deck with one card. We're also running Voltron staples, like Lightning Greaves and Swiftfoot Boots, to give our commander haste and protect him from spot removal spells. Steel of the Godhead and Born to Drive give us a way to win with commander damage if we need it and to make blocking Mr. Foxglove really hard for our opponents. Last, but not least, I want to call out Key to the City as a way to make our commander unblockable and discard unwanted cards from our hand, just what this deck wants to do, and Strength of Isolation which made the deck because how can we NOT play a mono-white madness card? Is it a very good card? No, but it is a very memorable card when you cast it for its madness cost!

Discarding Cards for Fun and Profit

If we want to draw with our now fully protected Mr. Foxglove, we'll need to make sure we have fewer in hand than our opponents. Enter the Spellshapers! This weird creature type spans all five colors and is united by having activated abilities that require us to discard a card in order to get an effect that mirrors an iconic magic card. Avenger en-Dal is Swords to Plowshares at home, Devout Witness is a repeatable Disenchant, Silverglade Pathfinder does a great Rampant Growth impression, Stronghold Machinist is Negate on a creature, and Dawnstrider is a bad Fog, just to name a few of the Spellshapers we're running. Dreamscape Artist is probably my favorite of the Spellshapers because it's like Harrow but in mono-blue because it's a color-shifted effect from Time Spiral block. Mageta the Lion allows us to have a repeatable, if expensive, Wrath of God effect if we need it, and Overtaker is a fascinating Threaten effect that will occasionally give this deck a way to turn the tables on another player. Jolrael, Empress of Beasts creates an interesting mini-game if you're able to untap with her because her ability can target ANY player, so we can use it as a win condition sometimes or, if an opponent goes to destroy all creatures, you can make sure they lose their lands in the process. While we don't normally advocate for mass land destruction in Commander, it certainly creates tense, interesting games when we untap with Jolrael.

Beyond the Spellshapers, we have a few other discard outlets that shore up some of the deck's weaknesses. Kozilek, the Great Distortion lets us selectively discard cards to counter spells and it refills our hand when we cast it, and while Argentum Masticore is limiting because we have to discard a card at the beginning of our upkeep, it does give us a way to address problematic non-land permanents. Mind Over Matter is a really fascinating card that lets you draw your whole deck with The One Ring, but we're not running that combo because we normally try to stay away from infinite combos on Plot Twist (except for that one time we definitely didn't with Nick Valentine, Private Eye), so instead we'll use it to get double activations out of our Spellshapers or remove an opposing blocker. Solitary Confinement will be an all-star in our deck if we can find a reliable way to attack with Mr. Foxglove every turn to refill our hand, and it could help buy us an extra turn or two when we need it. I also want to highlight Turbulent Dreams and Vengeful Dreams as two cards that can potentially flip a game on its head when we cast them. These cards seem poised to act as janky versions of Cyclonic Rift and Settle the Wreckage for the low, low price of discarding most of our hand, and regardless of whether they resolve and help us win the game or get countered and we've lost everything in our hand, we're definitely going to remember the game where we went for broke by casting Turbulent Dreams or Vengeful Dreams.

Madness and Flashback, Oh My!

If we're being honest with ourselves, some of the older madness cards we're running, like Arrogant Wurm, Basking Rootwalla, Just the Wind, and Strength of Isolation, probably don't have what it takes to hang in a game of Commander in 2024, but they are hilarious when we cast them and will absolutely make for memorable games if we're able to steal a win with one of them. Plus, the madness ability allows us to ignore timing restrictions, so we can do some tricky things on our opponents' turns.

Flashback has definitely gotten some better cards over the years, and we're happy to run lots of them since we can easily discard them early on and then recast them later on for their flashback cost. Divine Reckoning will allow us to save Mr. Foxglove and usually be in a position where we can attack one opponent after we cast it, perfect for a deck that's going to play lots of creatures and rely on its commander. Mass Diminish will come in very handy when we're ready to close out a game or make one player look particularly juicy for our opponents to attack into, completely turning the game on its head in the process. Increasing Savagery is a great way for us to get lethal commander damage through, though we'll need to be careful when we cast it because it'll put a big target on Mr. Foxglove when we do. Vengeful Regrowth is a great way to ramp ourselves with all the lands we discarded and leave some 4/2s behind to block or attack as needed. Lastly, Creeping Renaissance is poised to be a mass card draw spell when we need it. We're running almost 30 creatures in the deck, so that's probably the card type we'll pick most often, but we could certainly find ourselves needing to get back artifacts or enchantments depending on what we've discarded over the course of a game.

Winning the Game By Discarding Our Cards

Let's be honest, this deck might struggle to close the game out on occasion. I blame the fact that there are no cards with the Hellbent ability in our color combination (okay, not really, maybe it has something to do with the janky twist on this week's deck). We have enough Equipment and Auras that we should be able to knock out a player with commander damage on occasion in combination with something like Increasing Savagery or Born to Drive, but we're not going to be a Voltron deck reliably enough to not have a couple of backup win conditions. We should be able to get in some reliable chip damage with the tokens we make off of Drake Haven, Icatian Crier, and Spirit Cairn, and those tokens might be able to get in a lethal attack if we can combine them with Stampede Driver. Psychosis Crawler might be the next most valuable creature in our deck after Mr. Foxglove because it'll be able to reliably hit our opponents for a few damage every turn when we draw cards. Mass Diminish will be really a powerful way for us to shrink all of an opponent's blockers or as a political tool to make another player look like a more appetizing target to attack. I also think that Old One Eye will prove to be the sort of recursive threat that we'll rely on to grind out wins whenever we happen to draw it.

A Few Additional Twists for Good Measure

I came across so many fun, weird, old cards while building this week's decklist! Llanowar Mentor turns any card in your hand into a Llanowar Elves token. Who says making token copies of real cards is just a thing for Modern Horizons 3. We've covered Phial of Galadriel before in our "Sorin of House Markov is Aetherflux Reservoir at Home" brew, and it might be even better in this week's deck because we're reliably able to get down to zero cards in hand. Dream Trawler should work really well with how many cards Mr. Foxglove will draw and also allows us to repeatedly discard cards to save it from removal spells. Containment Construct is relatively new, but it'll allow us to discard lands and play them for turn, or it'll give basically any card in our deck flashback for the turn, squeezing a little extra value out of everything we do. Welcome to the Fold almost didn't make it to the final draft of the deck, but madness allows you to ignore timing restrictions, so we can use this card to steal an opponent's best creature at instant speed, and that was really hard to pass up!

Here's the full decklist for you to peruse:

Roll the Credits

I hope you enjoyed reading the latest edition of Plot Twist featuring Mr. Foxglove. Next time you sit down for a game of Commander, see what sort of plot twists you can add to take the game's narrative in a new direction.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on today's deck and what cards could find a home in it in the comments below or on Archidekt. The Maybeboards of my decklists are always filled with cards I thought could work but didn't make the final decklist.

You you can check out my other articles here or see what decks I'm currently playing here. I recently took apart two decks (my Isshin, Two Heavens as One Deck and my Killian, Ink Duelist Reanimator Deck) because they no longer sparked joy, and I built a Karador, Ghost Chieftan Cycling-Reanimator Deck that has been a complete blast to play. I'm constantly toying with new ideas like this Colorless Combo deck and would love to hear your thoughts on them there.

Stay tuned to see what other twists and turns are headed your way in the next edition of Plot Twist.