[Deck] Budget Stax

I'll understand if this is moved to the Newbie forum.

I've been dabbling in a budget build of Stax lately, as I have seen various suggestions that this is possible to construct. My metagame is scrubby, almost no Power, mostly aggro.

Here's the decklist, discussion follows.

//Mana
4 Ancient Tomb
4 Flooded Strand
4 Volcanic Island
2 Island
1 Mountain
1 Tolarian Academy
1 Sol Ring
1 Lotus Petal
1 Mana Vault
1 Grim Monolith
1 Mox Diamond
1 Chrome Mox
1 Mana Crypt

//Lock
4 Sphere of Resistance
4 Tangle Wire
4 Smokestack
3 Chalice of the Void
1 Trinisphere
4 Goblin Welder

//Draw-Search
4 Thirst for Knowledge
4 Brainstorm
2 Meditate
1 Tinker
1 Windfall
1 Wheel of Fortune
1 Memory Jar

//Kill
1 Karn, Silver Golem
1 Triskelion
1 Duplicant

This build has done reasonably well in my testing.

The mana base works well enough, I rarely get color-screwed (mostly thanks to the simplicity of a U/R build), and the unpowered acceleration as effective as can be asked. The Ancient Tombs are a self-explanatory substitute for Workshop (though obviously they aren't the same). I retain the basic Islands to keep a blue-producing land count at 11, as well as for some degree of protection against Wastelands and B2B, the latter being a justification for the mountain as well. Though I have seen builds that include some of the recent artifact-lands, that leaves me very vulnerable and frankly I don't think whatever degree of synergy they offer is worth it.

As for the lock, I lowered the Chalice count to 3 mostly because I am not totally convinced of it's disruptive power, though I am not closed to raising it back to 4. One of my hesitations is that dropping a Chalice for 2 (which is basically what I would use it for) prevents me from playing Sphere - though hopefully I'd have sphere down before I play Chalice, and I can weld it out if need be.

I feel Thirst For Knowlege is my most synergetic and playable unrestricted drawer, and thus I run a full set to fill for my inability to include Timetwister and Ancestral Recall. It's 3CC can be aggravating, though, especially with a sphere on the board.

Brainstorm is a choice I've taken a lot of flack about. Stephen Menendian's and Matthieu Durand's older Stax primer advises against it's inclusion, as have many other sources I've looked at and people I've talked to. I suppose that it may be a no-no in a fully-powered Stax deck, but I think it deserves a place here. I keep mostly because of the low casting cost. It smooths over my mana curve and leaves me the ability to accelerate my game first turn, if need be. If used properly, it can drastically speed my lockdown.

As much as I like Meditate, it's really too situational to run 4. It's virtually a dead card unless you have Smokestack in play, so I'd rather have a Thirst for K. in its stead. Even so, when the time is right, it's powerful.

The Draw-7s I include are the ones I can afford - they need no explaning.

I suppose I'm one short on the general kill-card count of four, but I've had no trouble with that. Karn is the archetypical kill choice in Stax, Duplicant sees a lot of use too, and is most effective, and Triskelion is a powerful weapon against aggro.

I've thought about my lack of active disruption and/or responses. In a heavy-aggro metagame, I sometimes feel vulnerable with no answers...of course, in aggro the need to run counters or discard is reduced because they have no single deadly threat, rather a fairly homogenous selection of attackers. I suppose that active response or disruption isn't really what Stax is all about, but even so, I'd like to hear some explanation of a choice regarding this issue.

Many thanks.