What does Uba Stax do with tempo it gets from Tangle Wire?
I'm going to skip about a page of reading, since my dinner time is fairly restricted and I have to get to the gym beforehand. Pardon me if I repeat anything that's already been said.
I think, from JD's assertions, that I've been trying to make Ubastax play the way Morrison Stax plays. Part of this goes back to my days playing Kronstax extensively in a Gifts-heavy metagame, where a resolved Tinker, with it's pants around it's ankles, for Sundering Ben (when did this card get re-named after me?) was usually enough, and part of it is my natural playstyle. Further evidence of this is my attempt to somehow fit Karn into the deck despite the presence of Null Rod. The question is, can this work? It's been asserted that UbaStax doesn't do anything with the time it buys. So JD puts forward the question above: What can the deck do with time?
To be honest, I think one of the biggest things that contributed to this question was the removal of the fourth Bazaar. I'll get to why in a second, but for now I'll say that using Bazaar optimally in this deck is undoubtedly the thing I have the most trouble with. I still screw up Bazaar when I goldfish, for God's sake. It's too easy to just go into auto-dig mode, but often you end up in that whole "upkeep, mill two, next turn choose one of four, repeat" stage. Maybe it's my natural aggression, but laying off the gas pedal and just SITTING THERE, even when it's right, is one of the hardest things for me to do.
JD's feeling that the tutor chain and tinker gives Chang Stax something that Uba Stax doesn't have, I think, is misplaced. UbaStax should, by all rights, see what it wants to see 85% of the time with the time it generates, simply because of the sheer number of cards Bazaar can show you. This doesn't, of course, address what it is Uba Stax wants to see. I'll get to that in a second. But, in my opinion, there is not nearly the size of gap JD senses between the tutors and bazaar at finding what you need to find, and part of this gap was the use of only three bazaars, which in all probability caused him to see them at later stages in his "downtime," that time when both players are topdecking, and he perceives the gifts player as topdecking more effective cards. The other part of this misperception is that the 15% of the time when you DON'T see what you need and have Bazaar going is infinitely more than the 0% of the time you see a tutor and it doesn't find you what you need. It's hard to compare anything to 0% without it appearing inflated.
So what is it that Ubastax wants to see? Tinker has just the slightest tendency to end the game when it resolves. Ubastax only possible replacement for such "I win right now" power is Karn, and only then without the presence of Null Rod and with the presence of a great deal of lock parts. This solves just the "what do I do now" situations, and Karn's ability to go to town in other situations is the only thing that saves him from being a "win-more" card in what seems to be, if I'm not misinterpreting JD's view, a "win-more" deck, at least in the sense that the deck tends to go for overkill. What about in other situations? As I said earlier, Kronstax ability to run a naked tinker and just win, combined with the tutor chain, handed it wins it had no other conceivable right to. Is this effect replacable in Ubastax, other than the narrow situation above?
To be frank, no. Ubastax does not, and will not, get wins it has no other right to. It does, however, have a card that puts the opponent away under a little pressure, which is what JD wants Tinker to do the vast majority of the time. The card that Ubastax is searching for is Smokestack. It's been noted that Smokestack is the unique lock part in the plethora available to Stax decks, because it deals with what has already happened as well as (not instead of) what could happen in the future. This is why the fourth Bazaar is so crucial. Smokestack is the card, and the ONLY card, that brings this all together. It is the card that exploits those "what do I do now" situations, and the one the prevents control or combo from just "whacking off for infy turns," as Moxlotus put it. What makes the fourth Bazaar so critical, and what makes Smokestack different from a bomb like Tinker, is that Smokestack only accomplishes what Tinker does during the first part of the downtime. Look at JD's three topdecks where he compares what Gifts and Stax do with their downtime. Now move Smokestack to the front of that list. All of a sudden, the other two topdecks become irrelevant, and Ubastax wins that game. With one more Bazaar, you're going to be three cards deeper an awful lot sooner, and that Smokestack will come down more often when it has to. If we're playing Morrison Stax, and the third topdeck is Tinker, things are fine and dandy, and we win that game to.
The precurser to JD's question which I put at the beginning of this post was that Morrison Stax finds Tinker. Asking, directly afterwards, what Ubastax does in that time, is misleading, because what Ubastax does in that time is fundamentally different from trying to find Tinker, and likening the two is bound to lead to poor comparisons. Both cards put the game away, but Ubastax is put at the disadvantage of needing to do it sooner rather than later.
Way back in the dark days after the restriction of Trinisphere, before any major tournaments, the online metagame was a bit of a mess. JD may remember, if he stretches back long enough, a handful of games against a monstrosity of a UW Fish deck running Glowrider, which was a complete house against the Jank CS and Jank Combo that was rampant at the time. The theory went like this: Fish has bad cards. Other decks have good cards. Fish should, therefore, seek to prevent the other decks from resolving their good cards, so that it can win with bad cards. By playing bad cards which push back the resolution of the good cards, Fish can deal enough damage to win. Glowrider, Null Rod, Meddling Mage, True Beleiver, Spiketail Hatchling, and soforth, kept pushing back the resolution of backbreaking spells like Tinker, Tendrils, or Thirst For Knowledge (with a Welder). Just keep that window shut long enough to deal twenty damage.
What I was doing, was trying to play Stax with dorks. Ubastax overloads on lockparts in order to stretch out the downtime as long as possible, in the same way that that Fish deck overloaded on little bits of mana disruption in order to stretch out the opponent's downtime as long as possible. However, instead of keeping that window shut for just long enough to deal 20, it uses Tangle Wire, Sphere of Resistence, Null Rod, wasteland, et all to try to make room for Smokestack AND some number of turns afterwards for Smokestack to do it's thing. It's a matter of keeping the window shut AFTER the bomb hits, and one of the problems you will sense when playing this deck is that, if you don't explode enough with it, you will have turns when you can either keep the window shut, or you can play Smokestack, but you won't be able to squeeze in both, and will run out of ways to keep it shut before you find the mana for both. This, incidentally, is why I think Tangle Wire is so good in this deck. It shuts the window for multiple turns but only requires one turn of mana, which allows you to squeeze in both in situations when no other lock part would.
Anyway, I expect this to be rambling, circular, and full of all sorts of holes, but the gym is calling my name. Hopefully, finding out about the holes will help me understand the deck, and magic in general, a little bit better.
