mono U stasis viable or not, ideas?

[BigMac]

4 mishra's workshop
4 polluted delta
10 Islands
2 forsaken city
1 Mox Saphire
1 Black Lotus
1 Sol ring
3 Sky diamond

2 Mana drain 
4 Force of will 

4 stasis
3 orb of dreams 
3 tanglewire
2 time vault 

1 Ancestral recall
1 time walk 
4 brainstorm
1 gush 
2 intuition 
1 Tinker 
2 Transmute artifact 
2 chain of vapor 
2 deep analisis

The general idea of the deck offcourse is to get a lock on the table which pretty much decks your opponent. I could use some ideas to fuel my main deck and my sideboard though. It is 60 cards now and very crowded. But i think it could do with some improvement.

As for the cardchoices.

MWS gives you fast lockcomponent mana. Next to that, it will keep your blue mana open for your blue spells when you have MWS on the table to cast lock components.
Orb of dreams is annoying to most people when cast early on.
Tanglewire is just plain annoying when played early on. Together with timevault you can pretty much keep your opponent locked a turn longer while you can take 2 turns after that setting you up nicely at times.
Time vault is part of the final lock as stasis with timevault and orb of dreams is pretty much game as long as your opponent is tapped out at the point of playing.
forsaken city can be part of the lock but it doesnt have to be. It helps you get by when you need some time to build your hand.
Pretty much all other cards are in the deck to draw cards or find lock components.
Deep analisis is in there as you can throw them away to forsaken city and still draw cards.

The biggest issue i have with this deck is getting the stasis. In that the discussion comes brainstorm over impulse or not. Brainstorm with the shuffle effects pretty much gives you 3 new cards. While impulse makes you go through your deck more quickly. Specially as you can find a lot of artifact cards with the tinker and transmutes stasis is the hardest to find.

Chain of vapor can send your stasis back to your hand or send anything from your opponent back to his hand. Skydiamond is good blue mana and works well under orb of dreams. Its an extra chance to get early blue mana while you can tinker or transmute it away for a combopiece.

The lock can be stasis/time vault/orb of dreams
The lock can be stasis/forsaken city/orb of dreams

To set up the lock tanglewire can play a great part.

Even stasis/tanglewire/time vault has won me games.

This deck stalls stalls and then wins. It is hard to play well as you cannot play some combopieces to soon as they will be destroyed. On the other hand this is type 1, speed is of the essence. So try and get the lock asap.

It is a nice deck but as said hard to play well. It can get nice results as some cards are good against many decks. The nicest thing i found out was that you actually can get some lockcomponents out fast while still protecting them with your own coounters. Losing a counterwar on your opponents turn is not bad as he will probably tap out, giving you the chance to put down the lock.

Any ideas anybody?

[jazzykat]

To get stasis you can add some black for tutoring.
Demonic
Vampiric
*Lim Dul's Vault*

or white for enlightened tutor, balance, stp?

[Malhavoc]

I am a fan of stasis (just look here on TMD, I've posted several posts about stasis decks). However I don't like this list very much.. it has some new and interesting things, but also many drawbacks.

First of all, the idea of MWS in a stasis deck can help cast lock components, yes, but does not help mantaining stasis, and without MWS, orb of dreams and tangle wire are quite slow (rootmaze is much much better, but it needs you to splash green). At least run 4 drains to get more mana; however are you sure about running both drains and MWS? Not even slaver do this, but choose between one or the other. BTW, have you thought about eon hub to avoid paying stasis? Of course tangle wires would not fit in such a versio of the deck.

The lock can be stasis/forsaken city/orb of dreams

Not exactly. This is a lock for both you and your opponent. Who will finish cards first? Depends on the amount of draw spells/fetchlands used this far. However that's one of the reason Stasis decks are probably the only decks gaining something from playing with 61-62 cards. For example, this is a possible (but I admit, lucky) winning play with my stasis deck: first turn mox, tropical, root maze. Opponent plays tapped lands and moxs. Then I play forsaken and stasis (with daze or force backup?), and win since I have more cards than my opponents.

Just for reference, this is the list I was playing some time ago, but it needs some tweaking I've never had time to do, particularly in the mana base (cutting white is probably a good choice):

// Lands
    4  Gemstone Mine
    4  Forsaken City
    4  Tropical Island
    4  Underground Sea

// Spells
    1  Gush
    3  Chain of Vapor
    1  Vampiric Tutor
    1  Crop Rotation
    1  Ancestral Recall
    4  Arcane Denial  --yes, they ARE quite nice in this deck. Otherwise you can run drains, but you don't get so much from them anyway.
    4  Root Maze
    4  Daze
    1  Enlightened Tutor
    4  Force of Will
    1  Time Walk
    1  Demonic Tutor
    1  Echoing Truth
    4  Howling Mine
    1  Black Vise
    1  Mox Jet
    1  Mox Emerald
    4  Stasis
    1  Mox Ruby
    1  Mox Pearl
    1  Mox Sapphire
    1  Black Lotus
    1  Time Vault
    1  Sol Ring
    2  Lim-Dul's Vault --impulse is probably better, since it is playable turn 1 from a land and a mox.


Just a not about howling mine: if you have root maze in play, you will be the first gaining cards from them. And mines are needed in a stasis deck for two reasons:

1) you can have a soft lock with stasis + mine, hoping to draw other lands to mantain stasis, until you draw root maze

2) under a stasis + forsaken lock, it's the only way to gain cards. Which is vital if you have just a couple of cards in hand and you need to pack counters to avoid your opponent to destroy stasis with their mana available when they have packed enough counterspells on their own.

[BigMac]

As i actually tested this deck in a tournament it turned out it worked quite well. Timing however was critical as you mostly get one chance or its over. The beauty of the MWS is that you can disrupt very fast combodecks with tanglewire and orb of dreams. The benefit of tanglewire is you dont have to worry about untapped permanents on your opponents side.

I have thought of adding eon hub but it was just plain to slow. The mana drain on 2 is enough as i more over burned my drain mana, which is bad.

The whole point of my build is stalling your opponent long enough to get a lethal lock on the board. Most other decks have more fetch effects and more draw anyways but cannot use many of those as i stall the game. This in effect means i never worry about having less cards in my deck. Next to that the time vault helps with that, every time i use that one i dont draw a card. And to be honest, you only use the extra turn once, to set up the win lock.

[BigMac]

Just to clarify on the question. I am not planning on adding an extra colour as that would really hurt my allready shaky manabase. So i want to keep it mon U with MWS acceleration.

My main question is:
Should i play brainstorm over impulse or not and why.

If you would happen to see other weak cards that have better counterparts or cards that would sufficiantly make it more stable i am open to suggestions.

[warble]

Stasis doesn't just want to lock, it has to given you have no fat/beatdown.  On that note I would try:
-3 Sky Diamond
-2 Drain (you're not going to get this when it's useful over, say, Trinisphere, and on that note)
+1 Trinisphere
+4 Mox

I would also consider
+2 Forsaken City
-2 Intuition
Just for the sake of speeding the lock component, you want to see a forsaken city BEFORE orb of dreams drops, although it's a great way to work around landing dreams/stasis early, and in multiples you can work around Trinisphere/Sphere of Resistance.

Other then that, this deck looks quite good.  Absence of Trinisphere in a workshop deck means losing a key locking component, and although trinisphere would function to lock you out of the game as well running a card like Darksteel Colossus would completely refute the argument that you deck yourself.  On that note:
What do you do against a deck running DsC?  Terrible to have to scoop to the entirety of Europe EVERY game simply because you have no answer to Mr Fatty.  I'd consider a maindeck Tormod's Crypt or Phyrexian Furnace simply because scooping for no good reason is terrible.  Furnace is probably stronger as it drops through your lock so:
-1 Gush
-1 Transmute Artifact
+1 Phyrexian Furnace
+1 DsC
Gush is really not doing anything in the deck that I can see, aside from providing a weak card draw engine in a deck that has no real way to protect the draw engine, and Transmute Artifact's cost for a MWS deck is probably just going to annoy you and lose some games.  You'd rather see another lock component here (Trinisphere) and an alternate win condition (Tinker+DsC).

I hope this helps, great concept and I'd love to see this tuned a bit futher.

Edit:
I would actually keep Gush, it looks like it has good synergy with Forsaken City, so instead of -1 Gush try
-2 Transmute Artifact
However, this is coming from a long-time proponent of splashed black (even my red burn splashes black) so you'll probably like this better considering I would already drop Intuition:
-2 Deep Analysis

[BigMac]

I think cutting intuition would be bad as it is the only sure way to get a stasis fast.

Forsaken city as a land is bad and runnign 4 would definately be bad, especially as it is not the only sure lock, you have time vault.

Cutting transmute artifact would be bad as it is another way of looking for lock components.

As for the gifts.dec matchup, there are several ways to stop this from happening. First you have chain of vapor. Second, with a stasis out, let them time walk and try and untap. Basically, when somebody takes over control against a prison deck, whatever deck it is you lose. So you need to establish control against such a deck.

The inclusion of Trinisphere is a good one. Although it also hampers you a bit, but trully worth a look at.

Gush is just plain good in this deck, especially when under forsaken city stasis this spell can really help you get more cards in hand.

The sky diamonds are in there because of the blue mana you need. Stripping the manabase will not work as you need blue mana, if only to sustain the first stasis for a while when building up your hand to put down the final lock. Putting back the moxes will not help either as they generate fast mana but no really usefull coloured mana.

The furnace could be a good inclusion. I will have to look at that one.
Including my own DSC could also be a nice one and i will have a look at that as well. It has a nice side effect indeed leaving you with an ever returning DSC when through your deck.

The deep analisis can go as well as 1 MWS. For those 3 slots i am still debating.

Still leaves the question about the brainstorm/impulse debate. Which is better and why.

[Malhavoc]

I've already told you some problems I've found in this deck, however, without changing it all, I could suggest this:

-4 fetchlands (*REALLY* bad with Orb of Dreams! Slow you down 2 turns instad of just one, they are needed to mantain stasis in a reliable way. You cannot just activate time vault if your opponent has open mana and you don't have counters, since they end up destroying stasis; you NEED to keep playing and drawing at least one counter)
-1 timevault (one should be enough, you need it only to "finish" your opponent, and if they counter/discard it from your hand, you can win if you have more cards in your deck, which I suggest definitely)
-4 brainstorm (Without shuffle effects they are not so good)

+4 other lands (you choose, but put AT LEAST another forsaken city)
+2 drains (you are full of ways to use the mana: artifacts, intuition, deep analysis)
+1 intuition (useful to get things, another reason to run 4 drains)
+4 Impulse (instead of brainstorm)

62 cards. Stasis+orb+forsaken is with a bigger deck a win condition on its own, without need of a time vault your opponent can counter (and with forsaken to mantain, you won't have more than 1 active force probably)

I'm not too sure about the sky diamonds.. ok, they give mana to mantain stasis, but now you lack first turn drops (apart from drawing a MWS). Having some mox you would be able to cast impulse first tun instead.

[BigMac]

I can agree with you assesment on most points and i will integrate them in the deck.

The only thing i dont see is only 1 time vault as the synergy of the timevault with the tanglewire is undiniable early game. You can pretty much get another turn without really losing out to much as you opponent will be tapping stuff anyways. If you can go play land and orb and then take your second turn, untap and play stasis with some free mana, perhaps a counter backup for something special and give turn to opponent never getting an untapped new thing into play.
Therefore i think 2 is minimal as if you draw your second you just transmute it into some other lockpiece.

I will try and fit it in somewhere. Together with a DSC which would pretty much give another wincondition and a card that can prevent me from decking myself when in a forsaken city stasis lock.

[Malhavoc]

I can agree with you assesment on most points and i will integrate them in the deck.

The only thing i dont see is only 1 time vault as the synergy of the timevault with the tanglewire is undiniable early game. You can pretty much get another turn without really losing out to much as you opponent will be tapping stuff anyways.

It is not really like a time vault, since your opponent gets his draw and his land drop. However since I've not testing the deck, it could be an option. However I feel like timevault is just a dead card most of the times (although with transmute artifact it's nice fodder). It's just the best way to win when you've hard locked your opponent, and you still have less cards in your deck than him.

I will try and fit it in somewhere. Together with a DSC which would pretty much give another wincondition and a card that can prevent me from decking myself when in a forsaken city stasis lock.

Note that withotu brainstorms or some sort of discard effect, if you draw DSC, it will probably stick in your hand forever (or maybe it will just be removed by forsaken), anyway, you won't be able to tinker it.

[warble]

With regards to DsC, Forsaken City removes cards from the game so it's actually no good with your lock scenario.  I thought you had a discard outlet, Forsaken City removes from the game so 0 synergy with Darksteel Colossus means it shouldn't be in the deck.
That fact alone saddens me, because opposing DsC is really a house against Stasis/decking.
I'd probably go up to 4 time vaults because DsC doesn't work; synergy with lock components is key.  Why did you initially decide to go below 4 of Stasis/Time Vault/Forsaken City?  It seems like with tangle wire/smokestack/orb of dreams they become must-counters so you'll need either duress or multiples to actually force one through (and you don't run duress so multiples is all you have available)
Please explain the initial tuning (Even future sight combo runs 3 of each and that's with insaaaaaane draw power and intuition)

[Malhavoc]

Yes! I think smokestack really belongs to this deck! This would give you another win: orb+smokestack+time vault, which does not depend on stasis. On the other hand, having something like smokestack to reset the fields could sometime be a lot useful.

[Freelancer]

One of the biggest problems I always had with a stasis deck is that when you lose game 1 you have essentially lost the match if you don't have a fast way to win and the opponent refuses to scoop (which he should). How do you deal with that problem? (assuming game 1 already took quite some time and that this deck takes at least 30 minutes to finish a game when the opponent refuses to scoop)

[Snorri]

Based on the last appearance in serious constructed play of a tier 1 stasis deck (see below), you might consider doing away with the hard lock and building stasis around a counter wall. I am aware it may very well not work and the metagame is crucial, but then again you drop a lot of rather inefficient cards, i.e. orb of dream (in multiples is a big no-no) when there are no stasis around. One of the things I really appreciate is the sideboard of such a deck, you just chuck out the stasis for energy flux (stax and friends), propaganda (fish and kird apes, cf. the amazing report), Back to Basics (3CC), etc. I have been playing with a deck like that and, it does seem to work like a Forbiddian deck which can freeze the game for a while and then bounce its stasis, drop Morphling and ride him to victory.
Two problems: you have only one gush, so you are dependent on your opponent (bad) and second, you hate the guy who sees it coming, plays draw go and then attacks you with duresses followed by Yawgmoth's Will. Shit happens.
But if you want to play Mishra's workshop, I definitely think Eon Hub woud do it.

For reference (sadly enough I can't see it working in type 1 now that Gush is restricted and provided an opponent who knows his business):
4 Impulse
4 Gush

4 Stasis
2 Claws of Gix
2 Boomerang

4 Powder Keg
4 Couterspell
4 Force of Will
4 Thwart
2 Daze
1 Spell book

2 Morphling

23 Island

Bonus, you used to get a killer sideboard, oh well...

[BigMac]

Ok, so DSC is not an option but still i have no fear that i go through my deck first. Hasnt happened yet. And besides, i could still use DSC to just throw away as card number 8 in my discardfase. But i will have to look hard at that one.

About losing game 1, That is a problem, but most people are so dumbfounded that they lose game 1.

The reason i play only 2 and 3 of the combopieces is that you dont want multiple in your opening hand. If you get multiple you can still transmute or tinker them away for other lockpieces. time vault as well as forsaken city are final lock pieces, so i got 4 final lockpieces, which works fine. And both time vault and forsaken city are not good enough not warrant more in your deck.

One last remark concerning the lock with the timevault, there simply is no way i am gonna draw another card when that lock is in play as i never get a new turn. the lock is stasis/orb of dreams/time vault. At the end of my opponents turn i activate time vault and untap it. I can actually do this when it is untapped. So make sure your opponent is tapped out at the time you lock himm down or make sure you have a counter for that. As i said earlier, timing with this deck is crucial, to soon and you die, to late and well, you die. There is almost no margin for mistakes.

When i have some more time on my hands iwill put the new revised deck together with comments and i want to thank you all for helping and thinking with me.

[Freelancer]

About losing game 1, That is a problem, but most people are so dumbfounded that they lose game 1.

So of I understand this correctly you rely on your opponents to make mistakes? That doesn't sound like the best strategy.

Another point of concern is that any TPS (or other combo decks) player with U untapped can chain of vapor the stasis eot than go of during there turn. How do you prevent this from happening? Do you trie to lock them out completely (Ie. tangle wire) because that seems to add even more pieces to the puzzle. (making it less consistent)

[BigMac]

I am not relying people to make mistakes, i rely on people to walk straight into my trap as they don't expect this sort of deck at all.

But the base strategy of the deck is to get an early annoying piece out (say tanglewire or orb of dreams), then try and establish some kind of draw go situation, so basically stalling. The most important thing about this deck is you actually have to time this really well. First you need to know what your opponent is playing and what his possibilities are to actually get rid of the stasis. Then find your window of opportunity as there are not many of those but i promise they will come. As you have a nice counter part in your deck you actually can try and win a counterwar over a spell on your opponents turn leaving him almost or all tapped out giving you a window of opportunity.

TPS i played against and lost because of a play error. The beauty of TPS is that you most of the time get some time. With tanglewire out you will tap the few Mana they have, while with orb out you will stop their explosive manahands. Next to that you have trinisphere to fall back on. With many lock pieces out it will be hard to get through it all in the end. And for some reason i am thinking of putting arcane lab into my sideboard with some critterland.

In the end it is trying to outplay your opponent to the point of them being tapped out and you playing you final lockpiece.

[Freelancer]

As I said 'if I understand this correctly', thx for explaining.

Instead of brainstorm or impulse maybe serum visions is a good idea. It digs 3/4 cards deep doesn't need a shuffler and can be played first turn with ease. The sorcery speed is annoying, but it should be casted before mana drain so I don't think it is that much of a problem.

Consider daze (malhavoc's build has it as well) it does a couple of beautiful things for you:
1) If your opponent tries to play something you can return a land (a plus with stasis in play) and counter the opponents spell
2) You have plenty of mana denial and sometimes this means daze becomes force of will 5 and 6.
3) It protects you from whatever your opponents try to do when a stasis is in play.


I can see how this deck can trap opponents in false security and than proceed to drop a stasis and lock them down. I am actually testing a similar strategy with birdsh*t, basically I noticed that players tend to tap out often to deal with my threads so I figured why not run a couple of winter orbs to capitalize on that. It is working out great so far, so I can see what you mean with timing it right.


I still don't think you should be relying on winning game 1 this much. Isn't there a way to generate mana under a stasis for a fast win condition like tinker-colossus?


Edit: I must admit I only noticed this discussion after you posted about it in the vintage forum. Basically I read stasis and went tried that been there and moved on, I had no clue it was going in this direction though.

[Malhavoc]

I've worked a bit on this idea myself these days, and even if I'm not ready to post a decklist now (still need to cut some cards and tweak some things), I want to share the idea already: my idea was about taking this deck more towards a classic MUD, but with stasis, drains, and FoW. Something containing these cards:

Stasis
Drain
FoW
Some blue broken cards (ancestral, time walk, tinker, maybe a couple of transmute artifacts)

Smokestack
Tangle Wire
Orb of Dreams
Time Vault
Chalice of the Void

And in the mana base: Workshops and 2-3 forsaken cities.

This way we have many win conditions:

Stasis+Forskaken+Orb
Stasis+Time Vault+Orb
Time Vault+Smokestack+(Orb, but not always necessary) (against unpoilered decks which cannot count on moxs)
Time Vault+Smokestack+Chalice for zero+(Orb, but not always necessary) (against anyone, since with chalice for zero they are just like unspoilered decks).
In the two above examples, much depends on the opponent's capability to get out of the lock with just one mana from the land drop. Orb is necessary in those situations, but apart from Elvish Spirit Guide, abolish and chain of vapor (which is maindecked almost in TPS only), Orb should not be so necessary. Anyway, even if they can get out, they would probably be without permanents, which is nice.

In all above situations, a Tangle Wire, even with just one or two counters left, can help a lot too.

With smokestacks and tangle wire we also make the time vault a quite good card, which let us keep a smokestack at two for many turns, devastating our opponent and giving use bonus turns later (too bad a single vault cannot "release" more bonus turns even if we have skipped multiple turns.. in that case having multiple Vaults it's useful).

Note that in such a deck Chalice for 1 is a strong play too, since we do not have any spell with cc1 except Ancestral and sol ring.

We could also add some cards like impulse, but I thought of another interesting possibility. In such a deck we cannot hope for a very good draw engine, so I thought about splashing black. Why black? To add more disruption with deck which already hampers the opponent's game. These disruption would come through 3 or 4 chains of mephistopheles, which are easy drops turn one with just a mox. The mana base should be able to support a second color, just don't try to put wastelands in. If this splash reveals to be a good idea, there are two other cards which could earn to be considered: demonic tutor and Mind's eye. Why Mind's Eye? Because it's the only valid draw engine under Chains. Few notice that (Chains are already an headache on their own), but Chains let you draw not only the first card you draw in YOUR draw phase, but the first card you draw in ANY draw phase. This mean that with Mind's Eye, we just need to pay 1 mana to draw a card during our opponent's draw phase. Plus, with Mind's Eye, if we decide to activate Time Vault multiple times, we do not get card disadvantage if we have some mana open.

To get around the problem of the need for a fast kill, we could also maindeck 1 karn, which with all these artifacts should provide us a beatdown kill condition. With Tinker, Demonic and Transmute Artifacts, it should not be so hard to get it. (Even sundergin Titan could be good, but I think Karn is better).

These are just idea, I need to test more, but wanted to put them here to let you test too.

[BigMac]

With all the changes due to this discussion i come up with the following deck

1 ancestral recall
3 force of will
12 island
3 tangle wire
4 stasis
3 chain of vapour
1 tinker
1 black lotus
2 transmute artefact
3 mana drain
4 mishra’s workshop
2 time vault
3 orb of dreams
1 mox sapphire
4 Impulse
1 time walk
2 forsaken city
2 sky diamond
1 sol ring
2 intuition
1 gush
1 tolarian academy
2 Phyrexian Furnace
2 smokestack

Side board
3 stifle
1 tangle wire
3 arcane laboratory
1 trinisphere
1 hurkyl’s recall
3 Chalice of the Void
1 Darksteel Colosus
1 Karn
1 candelabra of tawnos

I am still unsure about some sideboard cards. For example i am still debating with myself if DSC shouldnt be in the main deck. The same goes for Karn but i have no idea whatto cut. Asthe deckallready is cramped full.

Then there is the candelabra. Nice card that could work well but for a sideboard card i think it is very shaky. The resti am pretty sure about as they have solid uses against a lot of decks.

I still need to test this build but i am confident that it will work nicely with the extra winconditions and the better synergy between the cards in the deck.

The deck now is 61 cards but i think it is mainly because i would have to cut a manasource otherwise and i dont want to do that.

So anobody anycomments/ideas??

[Malhavoc]

About the sideboard: I think a really good card is propaganda, against aggro decks. It slows them down (attack OR cast more critters), and makes them need more mana, which is denied by tangles and orb. You are also missing tormod cyrpt! That is very useful against many decks. Blue elemental blasts could also be very good to protect you against REBs and Rack&Ruin. With all that transmute artifacts you could also play a mono Forcefield (Yes! That!) against an oath deck.