The Future of Stax

[Machinus]

I am by no means an authority on Stax, but recently there have been two very important events for the success and development of this deck. These are Kevin's victory at Syracuse with one trinisphere in the sideboard, and that card's restriction the following Tuesday. These two occurrences represent a key change in the construction of stax. On one hand, it can't be built with 4x trinisphere anymore, but on the other hand, perhaps it doesn't need to be. I expected a lot of discussion about this, but no thread was forthcoming, and I had a couple of ideas that I wanted to discuss.

The underlying premise of this discussion is that the deck will only be running one trinisphere, and therefore the construction and strategy of the deck are going to have to change somewhat. With this in mind I can begin discussion.

The first question I have is about Chains of Mephistopholes. Is this card viable enough to warrant a permanent inclusion in stax, or was its power greatest at a tournament with many draw heavy decks (almost all the top8 decks had close to 8 draw slots, with half having significantly more than that)? Can this replace the ~four slots given to blue draw spells? Since the effect stacks, the second copy isn't totally useless - is four copies better than three?

The second question I have is in regards to goblin welder. Is this card necessary for stax to be successful? It is already apparent that TfK is not necessary, and many builds don't use it at all. TfK accounts for a lot of synergy with the goblin, and with its absence, its inclusion is even more debatable. It has a lot of syngery with the rest of the deck and is good counter bait, but cutting it would get rid of a whole color, and open up even more space in the maindeck for necessary additions in the new metagame. Another possible reason to cut welder is the likelihood in the increase of hate. With trinistax gone, the decks that it was good against (slaver, combo, others) will likely perform better. In addition, there was a great deal of discussion at the end of february in places like SCG and TMD about the broken power level of welder. These two factors will probably result in better preparation for welder (hate).

A common skeleton will prove useful in this discussion. Suppose we are automatically including blue, but no other colors at the moment. This leaves us to consider mystical and something like fof in blue, balance and seal in white (as well as StP), will, demonic, vamp, consultation, and chains in black, and welder and wheel in red.

8/9 Undetermined Mana Producers (7/8 lands)

4x Workshop
4x Wasteland
1x Academy
1x Strip
5x Mox
1x Lotus
1x Crypt
1x Sol
1x Vault

11/12 Undetermined Spells

4x Smokestack
4x Tangle Wire
3x Crucible
1x Trinisphere
4x Sphere of Resistance
1x Ancestral
1x Walk
1x Tinker
1x Trike
1x Karn

This leaves 20 slots. The deck isn't as wide open as it seems, since the lands need to be either city/gemstone or duals, and upon choosing a color many of the spell slots will be filled. Whether or not the walk belongs in there is up for discussion. I strongly feel that balance belongs in this deck, which suggests seals also. This might make enlightened worthy of a spot somewhere in the deck. I would like to hear others thoughts on this subject, and the development of this deck. Stax is still strong, but it needs development.

[EDIT: I had this written up much longer, but when I submitted it said "no thread mode specified" or some other something, so if I have missed something, it's because I forgot to write it down again.]

[Razvan]

One thing I have noticed, and it's not much, that the removal of Trinisphere from the environment makes it necessary to re-include Tangle Wires in the fold.

I removed Tangle Wire a long time ago, when Crucible came into play (a much stronger lock card), but now that Trini's gone, I fear that we need to go back to the old days of Stax. It's in no way bad, I just think it's the worst of the lock components.

So yes, I agree with your setup. I just think it's unfortunate.

Also, I think that maindeck White could be a good idea, since Seals and Swords might be more necessary than Welders at this point.

Oh, and 4 Cities and 4 Gemstones. I think those are pretty set too.

[Matt]

Maindeck white could also bring Enlightened Tutor (eh) and Argivian Find, which could find some use getting back dead Wires or things you sacced to Smokestack (or were just plain countered). It also lets you run Hannah's Custody to trumps Rack and Ruin-style sideboard cards as well as opposing Welders.

[Machinus]

I knew I forgot something. In my original post I mentioned enlightened tutor, since with chains and possibly seals maindeck, it could be a strong early play.

Hannah's also works really well in a white splash. If we go white, we take balance, seals, and custody for sure. What then would the other colors be? Just u/w/b? I thought about a u/w stax build, but I like chains a lot, and it seems like the extra tutoring is really needed in such a draw-light deck. With u/w/b I am not sure we need 8 multilands. Something like 2 city, 3 fetch, 2 tundra, 2 underground would work too, if we want 9 additional lands.

[Godot]

I should preface this by saying that nearly all my experience with Stax comes from the other side of the table.  I have not actually played with the deck all that much.

First, 2 people have mentioned white, but neither mentioned Balance.  Balance is an absolute house in this deck, and I think its an automatic inclusion.[EDIT: Nevermind that first sentence.  I musta completely spaced on reading the part about Balance in the main post.]

Secondly, I really dont like Tangle Wire.  It rarely bothers me as an opposing player as the huge majority of my spells are instant speed anyway and thus they do not deny your opponent resources as effectively as othe available options.

The day after SCG Syracuse my teammate and I played probably around 30* or so games with Cron's Stax build, and I was, to say the least, very impressed.  His build, without Wires and Welders, put up a more consistent attack on my resources than any other stax build I've played against.  The combination of the Chains of Mephistopheles, Gorilla Shamans and tutors allows the deck to attack your resources from every angle and more effectively deny you the ability to recover.  This is something that Tangle Wire does not do.  The deck also has a different feel than most other contemporary stax builds.  Instead of trying to generate an immediate overwhelming advantage it slows you down enough to really milk the long term gains out of Crucible and Smokestack.

One point that is pretty obvious but I still think bears mentioning is how much stronger Gorilla Shaman becomes now that Sphere of Resistance(there really needs to be an abbreviated form of this) is the staple mana curve altering lock piece again.


* Not the biggest sample of games, but more than enough to see how it functions.

[Wollblad]

I agree that the two colored version will not be good enough, but five colors are needed. The Welderless version of Stax though has one large problem in that it under-uses it's Workshops, much of the same problem that makes Workshop Slaver inconsistent. It's however nothing that cannot be mended by cutting some colored cards and including 3 Tangle Wires. Why 3, why not zero or 4? The reason is that with Trinisphere gone, the biggest change will be against control which will be much harder and Tangle Wire is big against control. It becomes specially important if you exclude Welders, since you need some means of avoiding Mana Drain. Four copies are however a bit too much unless you are up against Oath or FCG. Hence 3 is a good number.

EDIT (I'll pick up where I left off)
I'm curious why people see 4 Sphere of Resistance as an obvious replacement for 3 Trinisphere. Before Trinisphere and Crucible, there were no question that you should use 4 Sphere of Resistance and 4 Chalice of the Void to get as much early lock components as possible. But Chalice cannot be compared to Crucible, rather to Tangle Wire as mentioned above, so on early lock component, the long time development is then 1 Trinisphere replacing 4 Chalice of the Void? I think that Stax will need three, or at least two Chalice to have enough early game components to play.