Revisiting Stax

[cssamerican]

2. enchantment prison
assuming theres any viable list, this is an entirely new archetype that could go many different directions. for example

bazaar
squee
solitary confinement
big broken enchantments
replenish
+
UW manabase
blue draw
counterspells
or...

Sounds a lot like Leviat to me.

[roberts91rom]

Which is why he feels that it is not a prison deck. Please refer to my list for a more Stax feel to the deck. Current list is on page 2 last post.

[vroman]

the reason I didnt include lock enchantments is bc the only efficient ones are chains and supresion field, both of which have terrible dissynergy w bazaar.

[roberts91rom]

Yeah, I've kind of given up on enchanment stax, lol.

[Disburden]

VRoman,

  How much time did you put into testing Supression Field in 5c Stax? I have tested it and played it for about two months when Field was released. I Didn't like the problems it caused with my Wasteland- Strip mine lock. I trust you as a great player and a creative player, so I was wondering how much work you put into the theory that Suppression field is better than say In the Eye of Chaos.

[Pitlord]

I realize that the question regarding suppresion field wasn't directed at me, but I have tested with it some, and agree that it doesn't usually seem very good. It costs too much for stax in general, which is using wastes, strips, welders, and bazaars, as a rule, and there usually isn't a whole ton of extra mana laying around.

In my opinion, chains is actually a decent lock piece for 5c stax, the non-uba build, because you use bazaar as you only source of draw. Usually shutting off 2 of your singletons isn't a big deal as long as it shuts off a decent amount of other decks, which chains does a decent job of doing.

[Sean Ryan]

I have been experimenting with neo "CronStax" and I have a few questions:

1)  What kind of side boarding strategies are being considered?

Game 1 the deck can have a tough time with anything resembling aggro: Fish, Oath, Ichorid.  For this reason alone Tinker seems like it should be there to find Trike/Karn.  It seems like this list needs more than just StP in the SB, perhaps Pyroclasm or Old MAn.

The lack of Welders seem to hurt most against other more traditional Stax lists, especially game 1 when Trike/Balance are your only outs.  How to you answer this games 2 & 3?  What are your thoughts on the correct ratio of Welder hate?  Darkblast, Needle, Ground Seal?

2) This list was created as a responce to a Slaver/Gifts dominated metagame, but I see combo as being nearly as prominent now.  With that being consisdered, why not run Chains of Mephistophilies again.  The casting cost is much easier than Choke or ITEC, and it shines against both combo & Slaver...not as much against Giftz.

3) The Tinker problem.  This is how I lose most of my games against control.  This is one of the decks major weaknesses, as you won;t always be able to premptivley stop the Tinker.  Perhaps Duplicant is needed.  Duplicant over StP would also let cast CotV at 1 against Drain decks without worrying about losing your answer to DSC.

Anyway, just some thoughts.

Sean 

[Disburden]

The best thing about this deck is the sideboard options you have to play with. There are many options to consider for each matchup and depending on your metagame you should be considering maindeck slots to fit the deck too.

vs fish I play with these cards:
2 Old man
2 Pyroclasm
2 propaganda

This really seemed to help me out in second and third games vs. aggro. Once you strip their lands and attack their moxen with Gorilla Shaman paying for Propaganda can be a pain in the neck and buys you some time to lock down.

Vs Stax (Chang Stax and Uba Stax) where you may get hurt in a Welder situation you can try Hanna's Custody. This works well Maindecked if you feel you're gonna to play Stax all day with Welders. Pryroclasm also hurts Welders, which is a good point of how the sideboard really has good solutions to a varity of matches. Ground Seal is also good, I just don't use it in my Meta because I see more Fish type aggro than anything else.

In my opinion, I think that Choke and ITEOC work best in the Control match. Chains is awesome, but I'd rather run it in the side just incase I need the extra help. Choke is a much more powerful effect when you consider how badly it screws the opponent. They can work around Chains a lot easier, especially with bounce and untappable Islands. As you said Chains isn't that good against Gifts, which is probably the most played deck in the format by now.

I do run Tinker though, in my area vs heavy creature builds I just need it more than Null Rod. A lot of decks I play against already have Null Rod main (fish, R/g, etc) already, so having one to tutor for just sucks. This is why I don't run Choke in the mainboard right now. I would much rather run two Seal of Cleansing to smash null rod and Root Mazes. If I played with Gifts and Slaver all day it'd be different. Like Steve said in the beginning of the thread, the deck needs to be build for your area. So if you find that aggro is a problem just run Tinker. 

[vroman]

How much time did you put into testing Supression Field in 5c Stax? I have tested it and played it for about two months when Field was released. I Didn't like the problems it caused with my Wasteland- Strip mine lock. I trust you as a great player and a creative player, so I was wondering how much work you put into the theory that Suppression field is better than say In the Eye of Chaos.

supression field got tested thoroughly, from the moment the card was announced. SF effect is too hit or miss, to justify the guaranteed drawback of retarding the deck's own mana denial, and dropping welder.

mephistopheles actually does not interact w bazaar as badly as SF. if darkblast or any other dredge card is in the list, then w chains in play, if bazaar is only activated during opponent's draw step, then the first draw is unaffected, and the 2nd draw is dredged to dodge the chains replacement effect. Thus the normal bazaar -1 card disadvantage is all you suffer, no extra chains discards. I have played chains + dblast + bazaar in the same deck before. its workable.
however w s-field, paying 2 for bazaar activations is really bothersome, since being mana-free draw engine is among its best features. the extra 2 is especially hard for 5C stax which has many potential uses competing for its non-workshop mana sources, during any given turn. I would not play SF and bazaar in the same deck.

the only reason Id play SF over chaos eye is simply that 3cc non-artifacts arent reliable turn 1 plays. every lock in stax should be playable turn 1 w land+mox, whether that land is workshop or rainbow.

[Pitlord]

I agree that Suppression field and bazaar should probably not be in the same deck. Field will eat your mana for using bazaar, making what you uncstable anyways a decent amount of the time. Chains is also terrible synergy, but it hurts you a lot less. With field and bazaar, it costs 4 to activate welder and bazaar in the same turn. Hope you are drawingt into something good...

With chains, discarding first hurts a lot, and so does milling. However, the ultimate goal is to get a crucible+welder going with bazaar, and with chains cards still hit your yard for free. Weldeing them in is still free, and stripping lands is still free. You have mana left, just in case you still have a hand of something you want to actually cast.

In 5c stax with a singleton bazaar and ancestral for draw however, chains is an absolute house. It is nowhere near symetrical, and beats control *edit*. In the head. With a blunt object. Not drawing cards is a big deal for almost any other deck besides stax, and I feel that chains is definitly a solid lock piece.

[Moxlotus]

I must be missing something, but how does Chains beat Storm combo?  It doesn't stop tutors, fast mana, or Will.  I would LOVE if Stax played Chains turn 1 instead of anything that actually stops me from comboing out.

[Pitlord]

It doesn't stop everything storm can do, but it does make draw7s suck. Actually, draw7s suck anyways for the most part, so that does seem like kind of a moot point. It shuts off brainstorm, thats about it. My bad. One of my friends still plays draw7 and kobolds for fun, and I kinda forget that those suck...lol. I'll fix that actually...

I still think that overall, chains is better than SF. Field really doesn't do much agaisnt combo either, slowing down fetchlands, and that's it. Basically against storm combo you have to rely on spheres and chalice anyways.

[Evenpence]

After reading the entire thread, I've gathered the following opinions from the TMD's community about a few things:

1)  Welder is not necessary.
2)  Enchantment locks are good because they aren't hit by mass bounce.
3)  Enchantment locks are bad because their mana requirement (a land and two moxes) is too great for a first turn play.

I would agree with all of these to some extent.  For me, enchantment locks just aren't worth it, outside of Chains.  Not only is it too great a mana-requirement, but as some have echoed Travis's statement on ITEOC, they just don't do enough. 

I personally think Tangle Wire is amazing against Dran-based decks, and find it pretty peculiar that you don't seem to think so, Steve.  It's a time-stretch when going second, especially if you cast it with double mox-land.  Drain-based decks don't even scare me outside of Drain. 

I also find it peculiar how you rate Welder so low on your list.  Perhaps this is from you playing a more 5c-based list, but if I resolve Welder against a Gifts-based deck, most of the time (if not all the time) I win that game because my artifacts suddenly gain some measure of uncounterablity, as well as having massive synergy with Uba/Bazaar.  He also comes down early to avoid Drain, even though if a Welder getting drained isn't hardly as bad as a 4+ artifact.

While it's very traditional and perfectly acceptable to set out on a path that causes Stax to become a "Boa Constrictor," as you're so fond of saying, taking an immediately aggressive stance is usually a gamble that works out.  Yespuhyren and I have been developing Stax variants for some time that care about the here-and-now rather than the long-term game, ushering in artifact locks like Tangle Wire instead of Sphere of Resistance, and Jester's Cap instead of Null Rod.

The metagame has adapted to run multiple mass-bounce maindeck, which makes a boa-constrictor plan with artifacts increasingly hard to do.  Old School Ubastax used to win alot because it could plop down Null Rod and buddies to save the day against the strategy of that time.  Now, however, decks have evolved with more basics to combat Wasteland, in addition to all the other things that we've seen.

Your solution for this problem seems to be relying upon enchantments more, which maindecked mass-artifact bounce (or destruction like Kowal's rack and ruin) have little to none to deal with.  With this plan, you've also thrown out Welder as he has decreasing value in your new Stax variant.

Yespuhyren, myself (and even Ray Robillard's) solution to this problem has not been to load the maindeck up with cards that seek to achieve the same "Boa Constrictor" goal, but instead to reorient the goals of winning sooner, via cards like Jester's Cap and Karn with heavy disruption thrown in.  However, we've remained with Smokestack, as it is mindboggling good if resolved on first turn (like everything else in the deck save a few cards should be), while people like Ray have not.  Ray has been seeking a short-term solution for a while now, and he's always had the right idea about the way the metagame has been shifting with regards to Stax.  He and I got to talk for a little bit last Richmond, and his analysis of the metagame, IMO, was very insightful.

Stax is beginning to die out because people refuse to evolve not only the cards in Stax, but it's goal and purpose entirely.  I've run a Workshop Aggro board a few times now, to which people have been extremely surprised.  Juggernaut actually is not bad at all.  He's cheap, and he puts pressure on people to win quickly while you're slamming down disruption like Tangle Wire and Chalice of the Void.  He flat out won me a few games Day 2 of Richmond.  I kept coming up to LaPlante to tell him how amazing Juggernauts were (beyond all my expectations of them) against Drain decks.  He is almost always never countered, as well, because the Drain decks feel that they can win before Juggernaut deals them lethal damage.

Also, Dicemanx, while I might disagree with you about sideboarding, I feel your analysis of Stax is spot-on.

IMO, Stax needs to change it's philosophy on how to win, not simply cards to get around what the metagame is playing (which is what I believe your deck is trying to do, Smennen).  I am also completely with everyone who has said that 2x Enchantment locks are simply too mana-intensive to be able to cast consistently on the first turn.  Artifacts like Tangle Wire can be cast with mox-mox-land or Workshop, while Enchantment locks have to be cast with the much more improbable set of mana.  Also, I feel they're just straight up worse than most artifact locks.  I've played with your deck over MWS about 100 times, Smennen, and I just simply don't know how you can say that ITEOC is better than Tangle Wire.  Almost every single time I've had it in my hand, I've always wished it were Wire.  Although, I can definitely see where you're coming from, and respect your line of thinking, I really do.

[Smmenen]

I don't know whether to laugh or cry that you had to play my stax list 100 times online. 

I started the thread to get people to think more clearly about Stax options and how to metagame.  The actual list I came up with was just an example of this approach. 

As for Wire, Wire is amazing - but I think it has to be played with Welder. 

Maindeck chaclies basically make no room for wire. 

[Evenpence]

Okay.  I had thought you were pitching the basic structure or framework of what you think a Stax deck should look like.  I didn't have to play your list either - I wanted to. 

[Kieranwolf]

Here's a question I can't help but ask:

Should Stax worry considerably about providing answers in its maindeck to a Darksteel Colossus hitting the board?

I've certainly seen Tinker being resolved under a variety of difficult situations. I've also seen DSC cast from the hand on second or third turn.

I saw the discussion about Tangle Wire earlier and I realize that it isn't an auto-include without Welder, but are there other answers to Tinker or DSC that could be included maindeck without sacrificing other vital lock pieces?

I cede that Stax might not need to worry much Tinker being cast because of its core strategy alone. Also, with Gifts representing only half of the targeted matchup here, DSC becomes a bit less of a worry.

I'm mainly thinking that with Tinker -> DSC being so often a game-ending play, and the fact that agaisnt Stax, Gifts needn't worry about counterspells, Gifts would try to find and cast Tinker as soon as possible (assuming that Stax isn't already on the other side of the board with enough counters to wipe DSC out).

That strategy always worries me, but then again I don't play Stax. Does it worry any Stax players out there enough to warrant answers additional to, say, the ones in the list that Smennen started the thread with?

[pyr0ma5ta]

I've been playing Ubastax the last couple of months, and I've always found that Tinker is the 1 card that will ALWAYS beat you.  If it resolves, you will not win.  As a result, the matchup pretty much comes down to stopping Draw/Tutors for Tinker, or Tinker itself.  Now, 5c Stax has a few more reactive outs after DSC resolves (STP, Balance), but it's game 99% of the time if you're playing Ubastax.  I haven't played 5c stax at all, but I just wanted to make the point that the Ubastax-Gifts matchup comes down to Tinker.dec against not-Tinker.dec.

[Sean Ryan]

Kieranwolf,

Turbo Colossus is one of Stax biggest weaknesses, especially on the draw.  IMHO, relying on a few singletons is often not enough; ie, StP, Duplicant, Balance.  The threat of a early DSC makes Welder/Wire much more appealing.   

Someone on the boards recently made a commen that in a fragmenting metagame Stax has a difficult time b/c. it cannot answer all of the strategies out there.  The more defined the metagame the easier it is for Stax to be constructed to beat it. 

With Control packing basics and bounce Tangle Wire gains streanth  b/c. it helps fight EOT Rebuild and turns off Drain while you find a bomb.  At least this is the case with 5cStax which is much more tempo oriented than Ubastax.

The Meandeck builds without Welder were designed to beat Slaver and combo but they are weaker in a  "fragmented metagme" and arguably, cannot compete with the power of Welder/Bazaar.

Just my thoughts on the subject.

Sean

P.S.
Pyromastatic is right on here...although "ALWAYS" with "usually" as Welder should be considered.

[meadbert]

I've been playing Ubastax the last couple of months, and I've always found that Tinker is the 1 card that will ALWAYS beat you.  If it resolves, you will not win.  As a result, the matchup pretty much comes down to stopping Draw/Tutors for Tinker, or Tinker itself.  Now, 5c Stax has a few more reactive outs after DSC resolves (STP, Balance), but it's game 99% of the time if you're playing Ubastax.  I haven't played 5c stax at all, but I just wanted to make the point that the Ubastax-Gifts matchup comes down to Tinker.dec against not-Tinker.dec.

But Welder can just weld out whatever they Tinker in?

The great thing about Tinker is it guarentees that there is an artifact in the graveyard.

I would say first turn Tinker wins the game 70-80% of the time on the play and maybe half the time on the draw.

[Kieranwolf]

Ok, so the game against Gifts pretty much comes down to dealing with Tinker -> DSC. The other win conditions (Tendrils and Severance Belcher I'm assuming) seem like much less of a threat due to the amount of spells that need to be cast and the extra time needed.

I suppose the goal here would be to make Stax's matchups against CS and Gifts equally good. If so, then Tinker -> DSC is about half of what Stax needs to worry about.

For answers to DSC we have STP, Welder, Balance, and Duplicant.

For Tinker prevention we have the spheres, ItEoC, Null Rod and Tangle Wire, though none are necessarily guaranteed to stop Gifts from doing what it's supposed to do (going broken/casting a bounce spell EOT and topdecking Lotus).

Welder, Tangle Wire, and Balance seem like the least narrow of those to me, with STP and Duplicant only able to answer creatures.


Also, there's Jester's Cap and to a lesser extent Extract, which get rid of DSC from the library.

Any other cards that would help in the Gifts matchup?

I'm starting to think that once Stax's mainboard is equally effective against Gifts and CS, it may still be necessary to reserve sideboard space against both, since there may be cards that are really good agaisnt one and only okay against the other.

[Clown of Tresserhorn]

Ok, so the game against Gifts pretty much comes down to dealing with Tinker -> DSC. The other win conditions (Tendrils and Severance Belcher I'm assuming) seem like much less of a threat due to the amount of spells that need to be cast and the extra time needed.

 No. I win vs. Stax with Tendrils much more frequently than with DSC. The win isn't tinker, it's will. Specifically, with Meandeck Gifts, rushing the game with an early tinker isn't the right call. You have upwards of 6 basics, 5 fetches, 3 bounce spells (which are back-breaking vs. stax), and 4 ways of getting them. The plan is usually to set up a solid manabase, counter something big and win with will and a huge GY, meaning generating storm is retarded easy.

Your missing the point that all Gifts needs to do is cast a rebuild at the right moment to win the game.

[Kieranwolf]

No. I win vs. Stax with Tendrils much more frequently than with DSC. The win isn't tinker, it's will. Specifically, with Meandeck Gifts, rushing the game with an early tinker isn't the right call. You have upwards of 6 basics, 5 fetches, 3 bounce spells (which are back-breaking vs. stax), and 4 ways of getting them. The plan is usually to set up a solid manabase, counter something big and win with will and a huge GY, meaning generating storm is retarded easy.

An early Tinker still seems like an easier and faster play. If you have FoW backup it's almost certainly game.

It's true that Stax doesn't seem to have much to combat Will that Rebuild EOT doesn't get rid of (except ItEoC).

Perhaps Stax needs Graveyard hate, too?

[sean1i0]

An early Tinker still seems like an easier and faster play. If you have FoW backup it's almost certainly game.

Sure, Tinker with Force of Will back up may seem faster, that's also assuming that you were lucky enough to get such a hand or a hand that could morph into that, but the fact is that Stax has something like 6 spells that turn Tinker -> Colossus off.  If you focus on gaining card advantage and draining juicy targets, then when you want to win with Will it will really just be that easy.

As to whether or not Stax should have graveyard hate, the most I would put in, if I would put in anything, would be a singleton Tormod's Crypt, much as Shay Slaver has; it can be tutored for if necessary and it's weldable.