[Deck] 5D Stax

[Plainswalker]

I halted at first to post this because of the W/Mud and the Stacker thread going on, but I believe this is different enough to be worth discussion as well. U/R Stax was originally started as a foil to the powerful GAT. I started playing Stax at the pinnicale of GAT's power to the last tournament before it was legal. You can see the original thread here in the Extreme Vintage Forum: http://www.themanadrain.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=11877

With some work from the best and brightest, this deck became powerful, if not popular because of the lack of shops and popularity of control (at least here in New England). I believe it was more popular in Germany.

Anyways with the death of Long and the rise of Slaver builds I put my favorite deck away to what I thought was it's death bed. Two very important events brought me back to it though. The first was the number of tools brought about by this last block. I promised myself that I would take a second look after I saw all the powerful artifacts. I'll cover those in the build later so I don't do it twice. The second and most important was the fact that Stax was built to be a metagamed deck and well the metagame changes. Now though, I see 5D GAT on the horizon and artifact hate dropping with the exception of Null Rod of course. This may be prime time for Stax to make a rise again. Broken down into sections for discussion, here is my current build.

Stax 2004/Crucible-Stax or still my favorite "Ductape".

Mana Base

(Without a doubt) 19
4 Mishra Workshop
4 Volcanic Island
7 SolMoxLotus
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mana Vault
1 Tolarian Academy
1 Strip Mine

These are without a doubt automatic inclusions for me, if there is any debate here, it would be in Tolarian, but I feel it is to powerful in this.

(Up for debate) 8 - Total 27
4 Polluted Delta
4 Wasteland

The fetches to get those Volcanics out and the Wasteland to keep my opponent down. The three things I'm having trouble with now are 1.) Lots and lots of testing on 27 or 28, I have always gone with 27, but I want feeback. 2.) I really really want a basic Island to keep the manabase stable and to make Blood Moon in the sideboard more powerful by keeping me at my full potential. 3.) Can it get better? would something like 29 be to far fetched or could it be cut to 26 since I have Crucible? Keep that in mind as I get to the rest of the deck.

Lock Pieces - 17

4 Tangle Wire
4 Trinisphere
4 Smokestack
3 Chalice of the Void
2 Crucible of World

This is the crowning glory, this is the deck with it's most powerful parts to date. I find that Tangle Wire and Smokestack are still the two most powerful for me because they aren't totally dead mid-game as 3 Sphere and Chalice can be and deserve to keep the 4 Slots. Some may disagree with 4 Tangle Wire as some have with me, I am loathe to do it though so I will need good reasoning. 3 Sphere needs to be in a 4 Slot so it shows up as much as possible as early as possible. I miss Sphere of Resistence sort of, but I'm getting over it. Chalice I'm really confused about. Testing wise, 3 has been fine, but in my head it seems like a 4 of inclusion. Should I not trust my intuition on this one? Finally 2 Crucible. Very powerful let me tell you, I actually enjoy making my Workshops invulnerable more then anything. Disregarding that, this is actually more of a finsher and so I left it to the 2 Slot. Moving on

Draw - 9

4 Thirst for Knowledge
1 Wheel of Fortune
1 Windfall
1 Tinker I consider this a draw 7 as well as a tutor
1 Memory Jar
1 Ancestral Recall

Meditate is powerful, Thirst for knowledge is more reliable and can be used to do more tricks. In the end I almost always wanted the Thirst over Meditate. I miss the crazy times where I would meditate into something amazing for the win, but Thirst seems to be pulling it's weight better and works well with Crucible as well as the obvious Welders. I'm not including Timetwister as of now because I never liked it's interaction with Welders, but it may go back in for Windfall, thoughts on that? I've been messing around with a mix of Thirst and Meditate and haven't been to succesful since I want Meditate when I have Thirst or vice-versa.

Kill/Control - 7

4 Goblin Welder
1 Karn Silver Golem
1 Mindslaver
1 Pentavus

Welders are automatic, no reason for less then 4. Karn is still the kill that I enjoy the most. The animate ability is invaluable. Slaver...well it's powerful it's got that, and Smokestack + Slaver is amazing of course. It's is also another soft lock. Pentavus is two fold, to improve the aggro matchup and to get a hard lock with Slaver. These three have all been amazing, but are they the best? I really don't know. The whole goal of this discussion is to get debate like this going. I get stuck in ruts easily with few testing partners and get more comfortable with things then I should while testing.

Watch out Combo GAT, I'm gunning for you.  

[Wollblad]

27 mana is too low. I posed a thread a while back where my Stax version is discussed. Look here: http://www.themanadrain.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=17475. That deck used 30 mana sources to be able to utilize Transmute Artifact as a second Tinker which in my oppinion worked very well. I have now adjusted the deck to the following mana base:
4 Workshop
2 Ancient Tomb
4 Volcanic Island
2 Shevan Reef
1 Tolarian Academy
7 SoLoMoxen
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mana Vault
2 Gilded Lotus
1 Strip Mine
4 Wasteland
29 in all and that is based on very much play testing and many tornaments. I have on the free spot included a Crucible of Worlds. I consider my selfe in need of only one since I have Transmute Artifact. I have found no need for fetch lands since you can be slowed down by Stifle and if you find no Crucible, Wastelands can hurt you very much. Since I have Gilded Lotus, I do not need any basic lands, but if you do not like Gilded Lotus, and really want fetch lands you can take them and a Shevan Reef out and put 2 fetches and a basic Island there, but do not use less than 29 mana sources. The space compared to your list comes from no Windfall or Wheel which is explained in an answere in the link above.

For your creatures Pentavus sucks! He do not in any way contribute to a stronger lock. You already have permanents to welder down. I'm still trying to figure out whether Memnarch or Sundering Titian is the better one, but sure they are both superior to Pentavus. For your part, you must definatly have a Triskelion there. There are so much Welders out there, that without a Trisk, you will just loose to both kind of Slaver decks. When your opponent gets a Welder out, your only chance is to find a Trisk very fast and that was my first reason to include Transmute Artifact. I like Transmute artifact very much and would not play without it. It though up to a personal play stile, but to play without a Trisk is just insane!

[goober]

I think Sundering Titan is a better choice over Memnarch due to his game ending effect.  Whenever he comes in he will take out a huge portion of your opponent's lands, everyone runs duals.  That combined with your Trinispheres, Tangle Wires, and Smokestacks makes him unable to do anything for the rest of the game, while he is beat upon by a 7/10.  Nearly every time a Titan resolves or is Tinkered in you should win.  Memnarch is great, but he requires a large investment to do very much, when you could have just won the game.  Unless you have a Tolarian you won't be able to produce enough blue to break him.

[Clown of Tresserhorn]

Stax needs 29 mana sources and gilded lotus blows in stax. It works in Slaver because you can afford the tempo loss by gaining it back in one fell swoop (Slaver). Stax needs to get trinisphere or a lock turn one and a follow-up turn two. Playing gilded lotus early is a tempo loss and gives the opponent time to break out of the lock. I still think that the manabases of old were much better than the ones now.

As for a kill condition, who needs one? seriously, tog is the only matchup where you need to win quickly and there you have the slaver. If you were to add anything, I would say triskelion. He doubles up as welder kill and can take out armies of swarms. Karn is still good, but I definitely opted to not run him. It's a personal choice.

As far as crucible goes, I still don't know if it's any good. It really dilutes this deck. basically, it becomes a semi combo deck with wastes/crucible. I really don't know how much better this is than wire/stack but I'll have to test it. cutting the crucible gives you valuable space you can use to run draw7's or such.

Anyways, good luck on the deck.

-Bob

[Purple Hat]

I really think this deck is going to make a come back this summer because of the way it handles Agro-Control, which appears to be on the rise with GAT and Fish both becoming far more popular.  

I ran this stax build last weekend in hadley

MANA
4 shop
4 delta
4 volc. island
1 badlands
7 solomoxen
1 academy
1 vault
1 crypt
1 Grim monolith
4 waste
1 strip
1 lotus petal

that's 30 mana and I think it was one too many.  but I didn't have any problems with my mana base so I might just leave it as it is.  but if I cut the black I'll cut the petal to go down to 29 sources.  I also didn't have a problem with strip effects.  the only time anyone used one on me was when Fish wasted my stripmine.  overall I was able to drop my lock parts fast enough that my opponents couldn't afford to waste a land drop on things that didn't up their perminant count.


LOCK(16)

4 trinisphere
4 tanglewire
4 smokestack
4 goblin welder

DRAW(12)
4 meditate
1 ancestral recall
1 Timetwister
1 windfall
1 Wheel of Fortune
1 Memory Jar
1 tinker
1 time walk
1 demonic tutor

KILL (2)
1 Triskelion
1 Karn

SIDEBOARD (15)
2 Forcefield
3 Chalice of the Void
3 REB
2 Rack and Ruin
2 Tormond's Crypt
2 Triskelion
1 Mind Twist

I think the changes I would make at this point would be -1 lotus petal, -1 demonic tutor, -1 badlands, -1 time walk,  +1 sundering titan, +1 Island/Reef, +1 mindslaver.  that leaves me with 1 open slot.  not sure what to put there right now though.  I'll have to try some stuff, but I'll probably end up putting the time walk back in just because it's so good early even if it is dead in the late game in a lot of cases.

I really didn't seem to need the extra tutor with all the draw I was running.  I sided out the petal in most matchups anyway.

I like meditate better then I like Thirst for this deck because I almost always want to go

T1:shop, acceleration, lock part
T2:land, lock part

In this case I've already used up 5 of the 8-9 cards I've seen.  if I don't have a draw 7 I want to get as many cards as I can at this point.  meditate gives me +3 cards in hand and forces them to sit there eating a smokestack or under wire with a trinisphere in play for another turn.  I'm not using my draw to set up my lock.  I'm using my muligans to get my lock parts.  I find that by mulliganing more aggressively I can find my lock components for my opening hand and once I have them I'd rather be playing meditate than Thirst.  Thirst is just setting yourself up for the situation where either you kept a bad hand or your opponent stopped you from locking them out.  In either of those situations you probably just loose anyway.  Even if you're in a draw cards and pray situation meditate gives you 4 cards and thirst only gives you two.  That can be a HUGE difference in a lot of matchups.

I drew both my matches against Hulk on Saturday so most of my work has been in that direction.  I'm hoping the Titan and the Slaver will help me with that either by destroying lands/hand/yard, or by giving me a faster win.

anyway that's what I've got right now

Hale

PS: posting at work is TECH.  it looks like you're working but instead your just wasting time.[/b]

[Bobduh]

1. Don't try to mash Stax and Slaver together- dropping a couple cards from another deck is the epitemy of "win more". This deck is based on locking the board, so concentrate on that and add in finishers that you can thirst and weld into play and just kill them outright (like the Titan).

2. Has Crucible helped you in testing? Drawing a second crucible is a dead draw, drawing a second wasteland under crucible is a dead draw, and if you put in Titans, the entire plan is unnecessary anyway.[/i]

[Wollblad]

and if you put in Titans, the entire plan is unnecessary anyway.[/i]

You are wrong on this one since the Titan can only take out basic and dual lands. For example against Landstill (assuming U/r version) there are about 12 lands that Titan cannot reach. In my experience Titan and Crucible complemet each other. It happens that the Titan takes one or two of your lands which you can replay with Crucible. If your opponent manage to handle the Titan, Crucible + Wasteland will asure that he never gets back into the game. And of course Crucible is rather good with Smokestack.

[Plainswalker]

I'm going to answer everyone questions in a sec, but let me just say two things. First off I realize that they're are many other viable shop decks out thier, this is a metagamed deck, if the meta doesn't turn out the way I think it will then I will scrap this no problem, so don't worry about I'm not obsessed with the deck. The other thing is I'm a pretty bad writer so I didn't make this clear, although I enjoy getting the help with the decklist of course, I more want to talk about Stax as an archtype and how/if it will make a dent this summer. Continue of course with the deck tweaking though. Alright moving on

@Wollblad: I agree totally with Clown, Stax does not need Gilded Lotus, nor does it need Transmute artifact (if it was actually another tinker, then yes). Also, 30 mana sources seem like way to much to me, but I useally run with close to not enough mana, so I'll try uping the count. My most recent version has 28 which I'll post at the end. Also Sundering Titan is a powerful choice which I'll discuss in a sec

Clown: The kill condition was my greatest concern actually, I know how some people were just running Welders for the win for a while there. Think of them not so much as win conditions as toolbox cards. Trike is gonna either fit in, or get in the sideboard though.

Purple Hat: Pretty much summed it up for me, I never liked black in here for the splash as I did in things like control slaver for example. I'll be testing meditate and thirst back and forth for a while to come. It's not just a set up card though. Your thinking:

Turn 1: Smokestack
Turn 2: Tangle Wire
Turn 3: Meditate at upkeep

What will probably happen is

Turn 1: Smokestack - Forced/Dazed
Turn 2: Tangle Wire
Turn 3 Meditate - Much less powerful, if they have any instants, they can take advantage of the next few turns. Obviously there are many different situations, but I just like thirst for those times everything isn't going so well.

Bobduh: I am one that also dislikes smashing decks together, but look at those cards the same way as Karn, they are toolbox cards. They do something no other card in the deck can save me from. A lot of decks have "O Shit" cards. Tog has Deed, 4CC has Balance. Pentavus is amazing vs aggro and creates a hard lock with Slaver. They work well alone and together, so I don't see how it's taking other decks pieces, they are just to powerful artifacts. Titan is another guy I'd like in here, possibly in the side vs control and take out Pentavus?

Crucible is amazing and it is not just another lock piece. These lock decks always suffer from the fact that it's not easy to keep a hard lock without many many pieces on the table. This does two things to those end besides others. It finalizes the lock. Not a win more mind you, but a finsher. It also is a hard lock with 3 Sphere, meaning turn 1 3 sphere turn two Smokestack or Crucible is more possible. Besides that the saving shops from the grave and getting back things like Tolarion on say a Memory Jar turn is a great bonus. Helps keep you going under Smokestack as well. I see the benifits outweighing the negatives much more anyways.

New List:

Ductape 04'

4 Mishra Workshop
4 Volcanic Island
4 Polluted Delta
3 Wasteland
7 SolMoxLotus
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mana Vault
1 Tolarian Academy
1 Strip Mine
2 Ancient Tomb

4 Tangle Wire
4 Trinisphere
4 Smokestack
3 Chalice of the Void
2 Crucible of World

3 Thirst for Knowledge
1 Wheel of Fortune
1 Meditate
1 Tinker
1 Memory Jar
1 Ancestral Recall

4 Goblin Welder
1 Karn Silver Golem
1 Mindslaver
1 Pentavus

Changes I made were -1 Wasteland -1 Thirst for Knowledge -1 Windfall +2 Ancient Tomb +1 Meditate

The tombs should help accelerate out my lock pieces more and the increase in mana will help smooth out the times mana is sparse and needed. I'm testing the Meditate to see if it's both more powerful then Windfall in most situations and to see if I like it better then Thirst as well when it comes up, you could call this the test slot for now. Mystical Tutor is one other thing I'm looking at for Tinker #2 since I can get anything in my deck except Goblin Welder and land with it if I grab tinker. A little slow, but I always liked it back in the day.

I realize I started this with saying I wanted to talk about the archtype but didn't get around to it. Have to go to work and I wanted to get this out. Next time I'll focus more on it.

Last thing, I found a link in the Vintage forums for more information:

http://www.themanadrain.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=15736

[DavidHernandez]

I was running 28 mana sources, but i think it can be cut to 27. This is only true if you don't run Wastelands though.  I never ran them because getting on-color mana was more important to me (I ran black for YawgWill and DTutor, and once for Mind Twist as well).

I suggest running a couple of Sundering Titans, dropping to 27 mana, and dropping the Wastelands for consistency. You will make up for the land destruction loss by gaining Titans.

At the suggestion of the Los Angeles players I've been testing Thirst over Meditate, and in one case I've tested both in the same deck. I think that Thirst is better if you are going to run Titans though you could mix them a little (but favor the Thirsts).

Gilded Lotus isn't working out for me in Stax.  I'd say leave it out.  Also, drop Lotus Petal if you're running it.  Others on the site will disagree with this, but this is what worked best for me.

dave.

[BreathWeapon]

Nothing can replace Waste/Strip in Stax, Dragon will bend you over with Bazaar. 1 Slaver is almost always necessary, because it takes away Tog's ability to "Just Win" through your lock. Pentavus and Titan are just solid cards in the MD or SB, because they can just OWN entire decks when they resolve. Karn and Trisk are my old stand bys, and I still love them. Memnarch is a pretty surprising suggestion, because I have no idea how you could ever afford to support him in Stax. Duplicant and Angel are also useful Tool Box guys, if not just for their Timmy Value. I really like a MD Angel, because it gives you free games vs Fish and other random crap (Tho' I always board it out afterwards)

[WildWillieWonderboy]

Should Stax play Crucible? Everything you add to the deck that doesn't directly help the lock makes it less consistent and you already survive the lock with Welder, so the Crucible's only purpose involves having one of the strips around and honestly those work fine by themselves.

The number of win conditions in some of these builds worries me because you only need one card in this department: Karn. In fact, I have seen builds piloted successfully with naught but the welder beatz for the win. I am also quite fond of the black splash for Demonic Tutor and Mind Twist in the main with the possibility of Chains of Meph in the SB to help the unfavorable tog matchup.

I also like Meditate alot more than TFK because the extra depth into your library and the increase in hand size is just so key considering the objective is to flood the board with your perms and find specific cards.

These changes also allow for more tried-and-true lock parts:

-2 Crucible, - Pentavus, - Mindslaver, -4 polluted delta, -1 volc

+ Demonic, + Mind Twist, +2 Sphere of Disruption, +3 bloodstained mire + Badlands + Glimmervoid

The addition of Demonic and the Spheres significantly increases the consistency of the deck and Mind Twist helps to protect your crucial turn. The other changes are obviously because of the black splash. Also, it is possible:

- Karn, +Wasteland

As I understand it, Slaver tries to do the most broken things possible in one or two key turns to win and MUD often has to play a whole game. Stax is somewhere in the middle of these two because the presence of eight of the power nine will accelerate things, but the idea is still lock-centered. Ideally, you will drop alot of lockparts and artifact mana on turn one and you won't really have to worry about the rest of the game or you will get some lock parts in play and wind up in a nominal position, from which you will draw alot of cards and complete the lock, then you'll win sometime in the near future or your opponent will concede. No one "just wins" when everything costs at least four and they have to tap and sac stuff and they can't play most of their spells because of chalice.

[The Hamburgler]

OK. I have played a LOT of workshop based decks, including stacks and Welder Mud. The posts responding to Plainswalkers insight are a disgrace. Transmute Artifact!? The deck may run 29 mana sources, but the odds of getting two blue mana sources are pittiful. Apporximately 7.5 percent chance (I'm not the most amazing mathametician, so I will wait for Dr. Sylvan to prove me wrong  :lol: ). Stacker/ Stax is an excellent choice, as GAT is becoming much, much more popular come Fifth Dawn (more T8 sightings and more hype) and everyone should know Stax is the nemisis, and almost auto-loss for GAT. Sundering Titan is not an auto-win at all, it has clearly and distinctly been designed as a card that fluxes mana and, in the process is a fat threat. It should be in the deck, nonetheless. I like Thirst for Knowledge much more than Meditate, as it is never really "bad" in a situation where Meditate is equal in badness. Plus, bluffing for playing Workshop Slaver is a very underlooked option, especailly in the poker aspect of magic. Just my two cents.
- The Hamburgler

[Wollblad]

Transmute Artifact!? The deck may run 29 mana sources, but the odds of getting two blue mana sources are pittiful. Apporximately 7.5 percent chance (I'm not the most amazing mathametician, so I will wait for Dr. Sylvan to prove me wrong  :lol: ).

You cannot make such an calculation without further constraints. If that figure is the chans of getting on your opening hand it is irrelevant. Transmut is, like Sundering Titan and Karn, useful after a few turns but more or less dead the first few turns. A relevant number would be how likely you are to have whenever you have Transmute Artifact. The answere would depend much on your mana base, but even without Gilded Lotus the answere would come to something like 60 %. (There are too many outcomes to compute without a computer program which I don't have available for the moment). With GildedLotus it is closer to 90 %. But you do not want more than one, becasue then you will end up with a dead Transmute a bit too often.

Regarding my construction with Gilded Lotus it is based on this decks inability to hande Control Slaver decks. With a more classical build, control Slaver wins 80 % of all games (plus minus 10 % depending on the exact configurations of the deck). My build has more like 55 % losses (plus minus 5 %) and more or less all differens is thanks to Transmute Artifact acting as a second Tinker. These figures are based on about 100 games. Since everyone seems to be in agreement that Gilded Lotus do not belong here, I'm trying to find another mana base to support Transmute Artifact, but the prioreties are in order:
1) Wastelands - you cannot rely on dumping an expensive lock component turn 1. Often your plan is wasting some lands and dropping Cahlice for 0, just stalling until a Workshop or a Ancient Tomb shows up. Cutting Wastlands your number of mulligan hands will increase dramatically.
2) A stable mana base - your mana base must be stable enough not to be ruined by two early wastelands from your opponent. This has become very important since the inclusion of Trinisphere. Say that you play Workshop and Trinisphere turn one with two more lands on hand. Your Workshop gets wasted and the only mana you draw from there on are moxen. Then you have very efficiently locked your selfe. Also, if you have only 4 Volcanic and your opponent aims for them, you will very likely be mana screwed in terms of colored mana. Thats the reason not to use fetch lands. Another reason is that you must have colored mana safe from your own Sundering Titan.
3) Transmute Artifact - se above
The first point is clear. The second point says "play at least one Ancient Tomb, but make it two if you can" and absolutly no Lotus Petal. 1+2 say "don't you dare to go under 29 mana sources". The trouble is to fit in point three, but it will end up looking something like:
4 Workshop
2 Ancient Tomb
4 Volcanic
4 Shevan Reef
1 Tolarian
4 Waste
1 Strip
7 SoLoMoxen
1 Mana Vault
1 Mana Crypt
A possible alternation is - 1 Tomb + 1 Grim Monolith. And another is -2 Shevan Reef + 1 Island + 1 fetch, but more than one fetch I don't think the mana base can handle and that's not dependent on wether you run Transmute Artifact or not.

[Plainswalker]

I like that manabase much much more Wollblad. I would still probably try to cut it back to 28, but it looks solid. As I said I get stuck in a rut sometimes and I'm still working a lot with my old notes on old metagames. I know some stuff that I planned for what I think is up and coming, but Wasteland is more popular again and Stifle is present, so these are the kinds of things I need brought to my attention sometimes. I'll be testing this out some more this weekend when 5D is actually legal.

Here in New England I think shop decks might be able to make a rise again, Control Slaver is falling out of favor for 4CC, Hulk and Gro as far as control goes, and although good decks, are not as hard as Control Slaver for decks like these. I'm glad to see so many shop decks out there now, as long as people plan on playing the right one, be it Shop Slaver, BFD, Stax, whatever. I think they will have a good chance at doing well because of the power of Mishra's Workshop and artifacts in T1. It is also still not totally realized as a card I believe.

[Bobduh]

--Wollblad: Good point- didn't think of the manlands and such, or workshops/bazaars for that matter. Maybe the plan has more merit than I give it. I think more is murdered by Titan than Crucible still, but the presence of Stifle makes an ability to recur your wastelands without consequence extremely useful. So the Crucible goes in with my blessings.