On Two-Mana Lock Components

I am posting this topic to meet the requirements of the promotion exam:

After vehemently supporting the inclusion of 4 Chalice of the Void and 4 Null Rod in 5-Color Stax, I took some time to look at several well-performing decks of the past. The one thing central to each of these decks was the ability to take a soft-lock created by wires and smokestacks and turn that lock into a game-ending, perpetual hard-lock through the use of Trinisphere. Unfortunately for the Stax faithful, Trinisphere is no longer a consistent early play. With this in mind, we must look at the possible sunstitutes for Trinisphere 2-4 in an attempt to move from soft-lock to hard.

Several cards are immediate candidates for the hard-lock disruption slots. My first consideration had always been Sphere of Resistence as a result of years of assuming that the card was an unquestionable auto-include. Let’s leave Sphere for last and explore the less familiar.

Chalice of the Void creates a hard-lock in a similar way to sphere. Why? Because when the opponent is unable to add more than 1 mana to their mana pool, and Chalice is set at 1: the player is unable to play spells. However, keeping the opponent at a single mana is not easy. Also, the opponent may play few spells with a converted mana cost of one. This situation is problematic in game 1 when going first (a friendly scenario for Stax naturally) because the possible early disruption may be wasted on a Chalice that will hinder less than 10% of the cards in an opponent’s deck. Although Chaice can be less effective depending on the density of casting costs in the opponent’s deck, the card has functionality beyond creating a hard-lock. This functionality is probably more familiar to most players: If you are scared of a particular spell (maybe budget vs. power), you simply cast Chalice to lock a particular spell out of the game.

Another option is to add a Null Rod to the Chalice in order to stop all artifact mana and take away the option of playing lower low-costing spells from the opponent nearly simultaneously. This strategy is particularly effective in the current metagame where one either plays Null Rod or Time Vault. However, Null Rod does not create a hard-lock. I do not suggest that Null Rod is not viable (utter foolishness). I assert the difference between Sphere and Rod in the 2 casting cost slot is one of functionality. Rod stops specific win conditions and is more effective against decks running full compliments of power than Fish variants.

The final point of contention between the Chalice/Rod players and the Sphere players is the fact that Chalice/Rod are not adequate protection from the game-ending bounce spell. The fact that an opponent who is barely staying in the game can cast a Rebuild and win the game keeps gives the Stax player nightmares. In the past, Vroman’s Uba Stax ran copies of Uba Mask for several reasons, but the most pertinent reason to this topic is the block of incremental hand gains by a blue opponent. This function of Mask keeps an opposing player from sculpting a hand to win the game just before the hard-lock comes down.

Sphere has been described as redundant in function to Wasteland or Strip Mine. This statement nearly always has a negative connotation. But is the concept of achieving the same functionality as Strip Mine without losing a land drop negative at all? I say no. If Stax players were allowed to run Strip Mine 2-4, we would all be running them. This destruction of land would increase the value of every card that stops artifact mana. I assert that running 4 copies of Sphere of Resistance in addition to Trinisphere makes Chalice of the Void and Null Rod immensely powerful.

Null Rod has been described by many as too detrimental to the relatively weak 5-color manabase to be played. I have come to believe this is true by a great many games of drawing artifacts that should have been tapping to play my spells…and not being able to use them. I do not believe that Null Rod is more detrimental to the opponent in these situations. My reasoning is that the ability of Stax to assemetrically abuse lock components is the result of being able to play all of the cards that inhibit mana creation while knowing that the cards on the top of the deck will continue to support your own production and Smokestack consumption. Taking away the depth of available options from the top of the deck is extremely damaging to Stax. The current R or B/R versions of Stax can afford to draw into trash because those decks have draw engines or the ability to recycle cards from the graveyard and sculpt a hand with Bazaar of Baghdad. 5-color Stax does not have this luxury. Our gameplan is fundamentally different.

The gameplan of 5-color Stax has been and will always be to INCREMENTALLY take options away from the opponent until none remain. Taking away 1 land at a time, or adding 1 mana to the cost of every spell the opponent plays fits exactly into this gameplan. Trinisphere’s restriction can be attributed to achieving the hard-lock immediately.

The result of this theoretical line of thought is that 5-Color Stax has a better chance of victory while running Sphere of Resistance than Chalice of the Void/Null Rod as lock components. However, the deck will probably benefit from the addition of Chalice to Sphere of Resistance as low mana incremental lock pieces. This concept is not new, as several early Stax players utilized this strategy when Mirrodin Block came out.