[deck] Adjusting Stax for a Welder heavy meta game

[Wollblad]

This post is a result of much play testing and playing in two large tornaments. After playing Workshop Slavery for a while, I grew tiered of getting mana trouble and changed back to Stax. I soon stumbled across a problem. After a larger tournament in Gothenburg (yes it's me on fourth place), where there were two Control Slaver decks in top 8, many players choosed to play that deck instead of Hulk or Keeper. Now, Stax is more or less hindered to get any play of it's own when the opponent have a Welder in play, and the ordinary Stax build have only one Triskelion and one Tinker to solve that problem. Of course you can add more Triskelions, but they are crap against some decks, for example Hulk Smash, so I wanted another solution. After some research, I found a old version of Tinker, Transmute Artifact:
Sorcery, UU: As an additional cost to play ~this~, sacrifice an artifact. ; Search your library for an artifact card. If that card's converted mana cost is less than or equal to the sacrificed artifact's converted mana cost, put it into play. If it's greater, you may pay the cost difference. If you do, put it into play. If you don't, put it into its owner's graveyard. Then shuffle your library.
OK, clearly inferior to Tinker, but it would prove useful anyhow. The problem was that Stax doesn't have very large quanteties of ordinary non-Workshop mana and if they do, it is often not doulbe blue. But from playing Workshop Slavery, I had made a pleasent acquaintance with Gilded Lotus. It provides you with all the mana you will ever need, and it is coloured. Also, I had found that one of the most broken cards in Workshop Slavery is Memnarch, which fits perfectly into Stax game plan and in some rare situation, is jet another way to deal with Welders. A relevant question is why Transmute should be better than Mystical Tutor which just fetch you Tinker, but the answere is simple. A spell like Tinker needs to be a suprice, otherwise it only gets countered. Also if you draw your Tinker, you will not have much left to fetch with your Mystical, so it will be a dead card.

From an ordinary Stax build, I had to cut something to be able to fit in these cards, and I choosed Sphere of Resistance and Wheel of Fortune. Sphere, because Gilded Lotus is expensive as it is, and Wheel of Fortune, because it is sort of Random and can be very dangerous and that Transmute is a way to find Memory Jar which is just superior to Wheel in this deck. Here is the list I used:
4 Workshops
4 Volcanic Island
2 Shevan Reef
1 Island
1 Polluted Delta
1 Ancient Tomb
1 Tolarian Academy
4 Wasteland
1 Strip Mine
7 SoLoMoxen
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mana Vault
2 Gilded Lotus

4 Goblin Welder

4 Thirst for Knowledge
1 Tinker
1 Ancestral
1 Transmute Artifact

4 Smokestack
4 Tangle Wire
4 Trinisphere
2 Chalice of the Void
1 Karn
1 Triskelion
1 Memnarch
1 Memory Jar
1 Mindslaver

Sideboard:
2 BEB
2 Tormod's Cypt
2 Winter Orb
2 Sphere of Resistance
2 Pyrite Spellbomb
1 Triskelion
2 Rack and Ruin
2 Viashino Heretic

As you can see I have opted my sideboard for using Transmute Artifact, Winter Orb instead of Blood Moon and Pyrite Spellbomb instead of Fire/Ice. After play testing, which went very well, I brought the deck to the swedish championship in type 1 (it was also a trial at the same occesion, so two tornaments in total). In the trial, with 72 competitors, I went 5-1-1 meeting Ravenger/Affinity, Hulk Smash, Void, Dragon¸ Land Still, Hulk Smash and Stax, loosing against land still :shock: and drawing against Stax. Then I lost the quarter final to the same Dragon that I beten before. Memnarch was all wild, specially against Hulk Smash vere he ruled the games. I used the same deck the following day when there were 105 competitors. Playing against Keeper, Stax, Fish, Control Slavery, Dragon, Mask/Angry Hermite and Landstill. This time I lost against Stax and Landstill (again :shock: ). I had 5-1 before the last round, but since many people had buyes from trials (I didn't), you needed 6-1 to make it to the top 8.

In several games, I won because of Transmute Artifact fetch Mindslaver, Memory Jar, Karn or Memnarch. What I did learn from the losses was that I need one more Ancinet Tomb. So I removed the Island and the fetch land, which were included since the time when I played Blood Moon, and added an Ancient Tomb and a Shevan Reef. Memnarch really shined in many games, but he is slow, so for the moment I'm testing Sundering Titan instead. He make something directly when he hits the table and that is often better since it speeds up the lock or kill with a few turns.

Please comment or ask questions if there is anything you want to get clarified.

[rozetta]

I just noticed that the wording on Transmute Artifact is quite interesting:

Transmute Artifact:
Sorcery, UU
As an additional cost to play ~this~, sacrifice an artifact. ; Search your library for an artifact card. If that card's converted mana cost is less than or equal to the sacrificed artifact's converted mana cost, put it into play. If it's greater, you may pay the cost difference. If you do, put it into play. If you don't, put it into its owner's graveyard. Then shuffle your library.

Interesting way to tutor for a card while you have an active welder in play for just UU.

I can see Transmute Artifact being good in this sort of deck, since you already have a lot of 3 or 4 mana artifacts, so searching for something bigger doesn't require a large mana difference to be paid. With these thoughts in mind, would you ever consider running more than 1?

[Wollblad]

@rozetta
The oscessions when I wanted to put the artifact into the graveyard without paying the mana cost were sparse. During the two tornaments mentioned above it actually only happened once when I fetched Mindslaver from a Mox, didn't pay six mana, so the Mindslaver ended up in my gravyard. Using a Welder to get it into play and activating it was game becasue my opponent had Necropotence in play. It also happens that you want to do the same thing with a Triskelion to get rid of opposing Welders.

In the beginning of my testing, I had two Transmute Artifact in the deck, but in contradiction to Tinker it is not a card you want to draw early on. Transmute is good from round 3 and forth. It is a card that wins you the game if it appears at the right time, which is midgame and lategame, but can be hard to do anything really constructive with in the first few rounds, and you definatly do not want two in your hand. When I cut down to one, I was almost always very happy to see it. When I had two, I drew them a little too often.

[Toad]

If your Transmute Artifact are mostly here to get Triskelion in order to kill Goblin Welders, why don't you just run 2 maindeck Fire/Ice?

I also note that you cut a lot of draw from Stax. Sure, Wheel of Fortune and Timetwister are skill testing cards in the deck, but they are also really broken. I don't see a reason not to use them.

I tested Gilded Lotus back in October in Stax, and I was really disappointed. Slavery needs to cast a single spell to win the game, and can do it on turn 3 or 4, which means he can afford to pay for a Gilded Lotus on the first few turns of the game. In testings, I found that Stax simply can't afford that. Stax needs to pile the lock components, and the tremendous tempo loss you got from the Gilded Lotus ( manas wasted the turn it comes into play) was too much for Stax.

[Wollblad]

@Toad
The same thing goes for Fire/Ice as for Triskelion, against some decks it is more or less dead. You can cycle it, but you already have so much mana in the deck that you dont want cards that you might have to cycle since it increases your chanses of getting mana flood.

When you play draw sevens you refill your opponents hand. The critical moment arrives at his or her upkeep. There is a sever risk that you have given your opponent cards to deal with all or some your lock components.  Worst of all is if he/she gets an Cunning Wish and wishes for Artifact Mutation. It is luck, not skill that determines if you get away with a draw seven or not. I rather let my opponent spend his/her own mana finding answeres to my threats.

Back in October when you tested Gilded Lotus, you didn't have Trinisphere. If you try to lock down your opponent using Sphere of resistance and Chalice, I agree that Gilded Lotus doesn't Work, but with Trinisphere it does since Gilded can be played afterwards. In the build you see that I include a Mindslaver, and with two 'Tinker'-effects and Gilded Lotus, I can sometimes choose to take that route too.

[Toad]

I also tested Gilded Lotus with Trinisphere, but not much since Slavery has strategic superiority over Stax and is much more consistant and versatile. And the Lotus was almost always disappointing. I've only played Stax in one tourney since Darksteel is out, in February.

http://www.morphling.de/top8decks.php?id=107

I split with TNT for the win. The level of the tourney was rather low, with most of the good players being absent. The Cunning Wish was here for testing purposes and It sucked all day long, ended up being sideboarded out every time. I was running a maindeck Mindslaver too (I was expecting Tog decks and Mindslaver is key to beat Tog with Stax) and never had much problems to use it without Gilded Lotuses.

[MarkPharaoh]

The same thing goes for Fire/Ice as for Triskelion, against some decks it is more or less dead.

It kills things, burns players, draw you a card, pitches to FoW.

[Wollblad]

It kills things, burns players, draw you a card, pitches to FoW.

Kill things, yes. Burns players and pithes to FoW is totally irrelevant here. The last thing to remember is that this deck has very much mana. If you just use Fire/Ice to cycle them, you will get a deck that effectivly has 30 mana and 28 spells increasing your chanses for mana flood. Thus I can only deduce from your message that you don't have a clue to what we discuss here.

[DavidHernandez]

I suppose you could board a couple of Goblin Sharpshooters if Welders are a problem, though my first choice would be Fire/Ice.  Sharpshooters would also work well for you if you see Goblin Decks.

dave.

[Wollblad]

While testing it became very clear to me, that if I, as you suggest, modified the deck to deal with Welders, it became weaker in matchups such as ToG and Keeper. The inclusion of Transmute Artifact gives the whole deck more flexibility to the cost of some lock components. The result is, as I hoped, that the matchup against Welder decks now is winnable before sideboard and even more so after sidebord since I can use Pyrite spellbomb. It is all an effect of Transmute beeing a second Tinker. Only one can seem incufficient, but it makes a whole lot of difference. A side effect is that the matchup against Dragon also became easier since you can Transute for Tromod's Crypt. That effect, I could never have gotten adding Fire/Ice or something like that.