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vroman
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« on: November 28, 2005, 03:44:33 pm » |
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my current list [2-13-06]:
4 mishra workshop
4 bazaar baghdad
4 wasteland
4 barbarian ring
3 mountain
1 tolarian academy
1 stripmine
1 sol ring
1 black lotus
1 mana crypt
1 mana vault
5 power mox
4 goblin welder
4 crucible world
4 chalice void
4 sphere resistance
3 smokestack
3 uba mask
3 null rod
2 gorilla shaman
1 duplicant
1 maze ith [or maybe dup#2, still testing maze main]
1 trinisphere
side
4 fiery temper
3 maze ith
3 viashino heretic
3 tormod crypt
2 duplicant
I play ubastax because I objectively think its the best deck in the format. workshop is the most broken unrestricted mana acceleration available. workshop decks have the most consistently explosive openings, however this is only truly relevent if the mana advantage is used for disruption, not powering out juggernauts. stax rules because it dedicates all its energy on overpowering enemys ability to do anything. while there is the classic rock, paper, scissors analogy between control, aggro and combo, each with their strengths and weaknesses in certain matchups, modern prison decks interfere equally w all the other classes' strategies. Stax is the metagame trump card. the uba version is superior among stax builds primarily because of bazaar.
bazaar synergy w welder duplicates the power of thirst for knowledge, except for free, turn after turn. the synergy w uba mask is just ridiculous. it really is hard to lose w ubazaar advantage online. the synergy w crucible is nearly as broken as uba mask, ensuring land drops every turn, and searching out key utility lands like strip and b-ring, or maze after boarding. having crucible + bazaar means you can win the game wo playing another spell, anihilating enemy mana and ignoring drains idling in their hands. these are obvious, but the real power of bazaar is evident wo any of its compliments.
one thing to keep in mind is that theres nothing in the deck that costs more than 6, and 4 mana is enough to play all the important locks. once I have 4-6 mana on the board, every other mana drawn is expendable. furthermore chalices and spheres start cluttering the board early (esp in the stax mirror) resulting in many dead draws. being able to cycle all these extraneous cards for free to find solid plays, is absolutely worth the strict numeric loss in card advantage from using bazaar. playing stax, until you have a hard lock, you absolutely need to play something every turn. if my current hand cant make any plays, I hit bazaar, even if my hand is full of good cards. I dont care about losing 1 card in order to hopefully find something to play. if Im stuck on 2 mana for example, I dont care if I have to throw away hardcore locks in order to find my next mana, and vice versa. discarding workshops or lotus is fine if you need to dig for something to actually cast. unlike most decks, to borrow an accounting term, your hand is a flow, not an asset. if you have say 4 cards in hand, then w your draw per turn, plus a bazaar hit, you will stay at 4 cards until you find what you need. those 4 cards will change rapidly but the number stays constant, thus it doesnt matter if you have to discard something good like a smokestack while your searching for a specific card thats currently more pertinent, because you will find another smokestack soon enough, when your ready to use it. bazaar is good even w very few cards in hand. w zero cards in hand, you can mill yourself during upkeep to feed welder or crucible, and then draw for turn. the next turn you draw step up to 2 cards, then can activate bazaar to keep the best of 4. if the card you keep is castable, then your back down to zero and repeat the cycle of Turn A: mill, draw; Turn B: draw, bazaar, cast a bomb. if you get stuck w something you dont want, then you can keep bazaaring once you hit 2 cards every turn until you find the answer you need.
in this way even w basicaly an empty hand, you can still see 3 cards a turn, and actually cast 1 out of 6, while feeding the yard w the other 5. motoring through the library, dumping chaff like extra moxen, chaliced out cards, and redundant locks, to find exactly what most launches your board position ahead, is what makes this deck miles better than other stax decks and even outraces blue decks w dedicated draw spell engines. unless Im facing a lightning combo deck, I am tempted to keep almost any hand w bazaar, because I know seeing 3 cards a turn will find whatever I need to balance threats and mana, and keep a steady stream of plays every turn.
bazaar is better than library. bazaar is incredibly easy to abuse, and is gold by itself wo any abusing combo piece in play.
crucible is also an underapreciated card. of course strip lock is amazingly unfair, but theres a lot more to this card advantage engine. protecting your mana base is a major plus, and supporting somestack is a key strategy of the deck. lands w special abilities are deceptively powerful. uncounterable, basicaly free, I try to pack as many utility lands as possible in the deck. if theres a card and a land w the same function, Id rather play the land version. which is why b-ring is better than lava dart, maze of ith is better than ensnaring bridge, and bazaar is better than draw spells. I will never go back to less than 4 crucibles. my favorite play besides double chalice, is turn 1 waste (or strip!) + 2 artifact mana + crucible. so I can double waste the next turn if I was on the draw. if there were more fish/goblins in my meta Id probably board Tabernacle or Desert as well.
smokestack is a classic prison card that has been the subject of much discussion, to which I will just add one thought. Smoky can race enemy crucible (esp if its in slaver or fish), even wo a crucible of your own. if you look at your hand and estimate you can play 2 permanents a turn (land + anything) for the next 3 turns or so, you will win the race. even w crucible its almost impossible for a nonshop deck to race smoky @ 2. if you can keep your board afloat to smoky @ 3, they are doomed. the only thing to watch out for in this race is that they will be reaping card advantage from crucible, while you have to feed the soot out of your hand. this means when you finaly clear their board, they will still have plenty of cards in hand, while you will surely be out of gas. if you cant keep some advantage on board like a workshop or chalice, then you will probably lose when they rebuild faster. this is one instance where bazaar is not helpful (unless of course uba is on board), other than sitting there to be sacked. when fighting an uphill smoky battle, you absolutely need cards in hand, even if they are unexciting moxes and lands.
in ubastax, if I am fortunate enough to have ubazaar and smokestack in play, it is correct to always bazaar during upkeep, before deciding what to sack to smoky, and whether to increment soot. this way I can see 2 of the 3+ cards Im going to work w that turn before deciding what permanents to lose. if you have all this AND crucible, (and dont need to make any other land drop this turn) you can sack the bazaar to smoky, then replay it to draw a 4th and 5th card that turn. the same trick can be accomplished sans smokestack, less efficiently, by using wasteland against my own bazaar and replaying it that way.
as for the namesake uba mask, theres not much new to say. if you resolve it, your long term card advantage projection spikes, whenever they randomly draw counters and draw spells and such. uba emphasizes mana denial, by making them lose costly spells that theyd ordinarily be able to keep until they rebuild their land count. if you have welder, its even worse for them, and possibly game over w multiples of either. the welder draw step lock is very effective and easily accomplished w welder and bazaar. with 1 welder and 2 ubas, or 2 welders and 1 uba (or more of each), its possible to either weld uba for uba, or double weld a single uba, during enemy drawstep and prevent them from ever seeing any permanents, counters, or draw spells (unless they have tons of mana). this leaves them only w instant speed creature or artifact kill as the only out, everything else is dead draws. if theyre caught early, or when mana denial is running its course, uba-weld is frequently a hard lock, and at worst is phenomenal card advantage while they wait helplessly for castable removal.
uba eliminates all drawback from bazaar. if you understand the basic strategies theres not much skill involved except deciding whether to cast it over a different lock. be aware that uba can backfire against welder decks, so unless you have chalice @ 1 or b-ring w threshold ready to go, it can be a risky play. though if your clever you can go ahead w uba, even against an onboard active welder, so long as you are extra careful to keep artifacts out of your graveyard. this can pay off wonderfully, since they will not be drawing any new counters and it will be dificult for them to force cards into your yard. plus once uba is out bazaar will remove instead of discarding, playing bazaar around welder can be a more dificult problem than playing uba around welder. one trick Ive found is to discard a duplicant and no other artifacts. then when theyre getting murdered by uba or smoky or something, they have to choose between losing their welder to duplicant or continue suffering the lock. its win win for me.
uba is an excellent complement to smoky, because w ubazaar, you will draw enough lands that you wont even need crucible recycling to maintain your permanent count. the mass-consumerism aproach to stax rather than careful conservation.
chalice of the void is an essential stax component these days. chalice @ 0 is just gravy on the play, giving you an extra lock for free on top of whatever else your opening mana can throw down; or just buying you time until you build mana for heavy hitters, or time to dig w bazaar. chalice @ 1 is very solid, as so many restricted cards are broken for being undercosted at 1. its also vital to cut off welder and shaman, a tag team you absolutely do not want to face. against slaver, if I have the opportunity to play turn 1 chalice @ 1, I will do so, even if I have a welder of my own stuck in hand. if they force chalice (which they absolutely will if possible) then I have a clearer path to resolve welder next turn, or if chalice resolves, its just more bazaar fodder.
leading w both chalice @ 0 + 1 is probably my favorite opening, even over trinisphere. in vintage, theres not much that can come back from that. setting chalice at higher than 1 is much more match up dependent. against slaver, Im not that impressed w chalice @ 2 even though it stops drains. If I already have chalice @ 1 (or they already have welder) and its too late in the game for chalice @ 0 to matter, then I will go ahead and try for chalice @ 3 if I have the mana for it, in the hopes of stopping tinker, thirst, rackruin and yawgie.
chalice is extremely versatile, in addition to its disruption, the ability to play it for free comes in very handy when trying to feed a greedy smokestack or boosting academy or dropping a weld target, etc.
null rod is I think besides bazaar the thing Im most proud of helping make mainstream in stax. nrod is a gut shot to a host of decks. turn 1, it acts as a super chalice against mana accel. it retards yawg will and shuts off win conditions everywhere. its the fastest, cheapest board spectrum mana denial in the format. I have no problem playing turn 1, land + mox + nrod, w other moxes in hand. shutting off enemy mana is worth creating dead cards, even at seemingly unfavorable ratios. again, bazaar is perfect here to let you cycle deactivated moxes, while enemy is stuck drawing them for no reason. against combo, Id cast null rod even if it killed all my onboard mana, and they had no moxes in play, just to stop their potential mana.
wheel of fortune requires some explanation as to why I insist on keeping it. wheel+uba is clearly the most broken play in the deck, and setting it up is often worth baiting threats in contrary order. in the absence of uba, wheel is still plenty worth it. in a pinch its a discard spell. for example, if enemy dtutors and passes the turn, I will wheel if possible just to dump their yawgie, tinker, etc. particularly, wheeling against gifts early-mid gamish is a great play. gifts players are often pretty easy to read when they start setting up their game winning hand, and erasing their progress w 7 random cards is clutch. although its never happened to me when it mattered, its important to watch out for hurkyls and such in response to wheel. backing up wheel w REB is a priority if Ive got a solid artifact array in play.
when using wheel to just refill my hand, timing is very important. I avoid casting wheel if I already made my land drop that turn, to ensure I get as much mana boost as possible; to throw as many of my 7 in the way of their 7, before they get a chance to use anything. wheel is almost always worth casting even, if enemy gets a major boost in hand count. I can always count on drawing some chalices or nrod to retard their following big turn. its like starting a new game, where your guaranteed to go first and potentially start out w a bunch of shit in play. sounds worth it to me. wheel is even better w bazaar in play, to see an 8th and 9th card and dump excess land. wheel is definitely broken, esp in this deck, and with careful play is very, very unbalanced. Id never want to drop wheel from the list, though if Im in a match up that boards out uba, and I need another slot, I board out wheel as well.
part 2 11-29
the vintage restricted list is a treasure trove of game stealing bombs. a general guideline of deck design is any time you can logically add a restricted card to your list, its probably worth it. however, ubastax only plays 2 non-mana restricted cards: tsphere and wheel. by going mono red, the deck misses out on the bulk of literally the best nonmana cards in the game. there are three reasons for this unconventional decision to eschew ancestral, tinker and yawg will, etc. 1) too many vital artifact locks and not enough flex slots. 2) mana base cant handle it. 3) bazaar is simply better in this deck than colored brokeness.
1. looking at the list, I see very little besides solemn, I could concievably cut to make room for the slew of powerhouse cards that become accesible w a 5c mana base.
chalice = absolutely necessary (laplante and chang to the contrary)
crucible = absolutely necessary (although Id hate to, possibly cut 1)
smokestack = absolutely necessary
uba mask = absolutely necessary (again, distasteful, but 1 might be cuttable)
welder = absolutely necessary
shaman = absolutely necessary (sometimes I wish I had 3)
duplicant = absolutely necessary (aggro/oath would be very rough match wo them)
null rod = has increasingly bad synergy, when mox color becomes highly relevent, but is such good mana denial, if I had to choose between 5c and nrod, I choose to do nothing.
so thats 3 slots at most I would comfortably give up to colored spells. w only 3 new cards its hardly worth adding 4 colors.
2. the mana base of mono R ubastax is super-tight. although the mountains have dwindled to merely 3, basic lands are definitely tech. jdizzle took grimlong in a good direction by replacing rainbow lands w some basic islands and swamps. even a handful of secure mana sources makes a difference.
more importantly than resiliance to nonbasic hate is the ratio of color sources. currently there are 9 red sources, and 7 red spells. with 9:7 ratio its rare to get color screwed. introducing nrod to the equation, cuts it to even 7:7, still very managable. the number of additional colored spells that could be added is high, theres over a dozen potential colored bombs, but zero room for extra colored lands. [ancestral, tinker, time walk, yawg will, fastbond, cropper, dtutor, vtutor, balance] + 2nd tier stuff like [darkblast, windfall, i-seal, regrowth, d-consultation] even if only half these make the cut then I have 13 colored sources (and 5 of them single color moxes) and 16 colored spells. 13:16 is significantly riskier, and with null rod, or simply drawing wrong color moxes, drops the ratio to 8:16, virtually guaranteeing repeated color screw.
3. barbarian ring is simply worth playing, due to the great crucible + bazaar search engine. running the playset of brings eliminates any possibility of having a realistic rainbow mana base. bring becomes active easily in this deck w bazaar or smoky, meaning it can hit targets as early as turn 2. having a sizable chunk of the manabase pull double duty as removal and/or win condition, ekes out bonus synergy and makes the deck more robust. gunning welders is the main concern, since maintaing welder advantage is crucial to winning, esp game 1 against slaver. a back up strategy against aggro is also well worth it.
however, since basic lands are no longer a central priority, and there is yet a bare minimum of tradable slots, perhaps I should just consider the venerable blue trio of tinker, ancestral and time walk? despite the popular trend to ignore time walk, it absolutely should be played in any stax w U mana. fear of bad synergy w soot counters is very minor compared to the incredible tempo advantage of an extra turn of tapping workshops, bazaars, and welders. not to mention if you just cast smoky, time walk hands them a soot immediately instead of waiting until their following turn. in terms of permanent race you get a major jump. however I dont think URubastax, w volcanics, is worth the complication, though I did start out playing that early this year. if anyone does want to try URuba, please dont use my april SCG list as any kind of plan, its really frigging bad. I seriously just got good at magic of any kind, in the last 8 months or so, and sideboarding was obviously one of my later lessons. anyway, URuba is subpar solution because tinker costs 3 nonshop mana and loss of 1 permanent, and theres nothing particularly super broken to tinker for, that cant be drawn into soon enough w bazaar. anything youd tinker for in this deck would itself be easier to find and cast than the tinker. shockingly, this is one shop deck where tinker would actually be quite inefficient. second on the suposed mvp list is ancestral, which turns 1 card into 3, once. bazaar can do that all day. time walk is actually the blue card Id most be interested in, but its not worth adding a second color just for walk alone.
the one off color card that has exceptionally broken synergy which Ive long pondered splashing for, is fastbond. for the same 1 mana thatd buy me 3 cards w ancestral, will probably draw me infinite cards w fastbond, or run over opp w turbo waste, or flat out kill them w bring machine gun to the face. once Ive got green available in the deck, theres no reason not to also include the best land search in the game, crop rotation, which is superb here w so many widely functional lands. Im beginning to test -3 mtn, -1 solemn, -1 [uba/dup/crucible/TBD], and +3 taiga, +1 fastbond, +1 cropper. colby here on tmd has already reported very exciting results dropping fbonds, and I hope to confirm. this opens sideboard options like Artifact mutation, drop of honey, choke, tranquil grove (expensive, but recurring enchant kill). other possible synergistic maindeck cards from the green card pool include, life from the loam, xantid, sylvan library, regrowth, rancor (recurring soot fodder), carpet of flowers, survival of the fittest and root maze. clearly, most of these are strictly worse than any locks they might replace, and for the same reasons mentioned above against 5c, I am in no hurry to add many off color cards to the deck. I list them just as brainstorming. my discussion of RG ubastax will have to wait until Ive actually done some testing. suffice it to say, any increased colorfulness will be minor at most, and this article assumes mono R is being played.
how to beat ubastax?
one card in particular Ive learned to fear, due to an increased occurence of facing the mirror, is heretic. the viashino badass is a brick wall against most stax, and uba esp. uba can draw enough threats to play through even multiple rack and ruins, but active heretic brings my game to complete halt. if I know enemy is boarding in heretics, I have no choice but to bring in all 4 duplicants, even if they have little or no other imprint targets. w the 1/3 body, heretic cannot easily be killed by bring or any other common damage spells. in 2nd or 3rd game shop mirror, w both players running some number of heretics, the battle to find and keep heretic becomes more important than the fight over welders. if enemy has heretic and red mana, I will most likely lose a large portion, if not all, of my locks and cant do anything until heretic is removed.
enemy welder of course is a thorn in anyones side, and moreso ubastax, which can literaly hand enemy a lock if not careful. as mentioned before, maintaining welder advantage is key, and if down on welder count, keeping my yard artifact free, or ubas completely out of sight, is an arduous necessity. being stuck holding ubas against welder can be a pain, esp if they run discard like mind twist or duress. w darkblast appearing now in slaver and 5c stax, it might be dificult to maintain welder superiority, which could be a long term problem for metagame viability of ubastax. for now, my experience has been to be even more careful in slow rolling welders than normal if they have black mana. wait until black source is tapped, and then follow up welder immediately w chalice @ 1.
we had a small tournament this past weekend, where I faced grim long twice. I lost one game to a perfect topdeck, other than that, grimlong is not very different than any other combo, and gets constricted out easily by ubastax. I am very confident facing this deck. duress is its only disruption.
surprisingly, the only pure combo deck that ever gives me trouble is rector trix, seriously. unless I get both chalice @ 1 to stop ritual and some way to stop moxen, they nearly always land the rector and then I cant touch their board wo accidently giving them bargain and losing. fortunately that deck is completely terrible and will never survive swiss to upset me in top8.
even w 5 mountains, back to basics frequently shut me down cold in the past, and dropping to 3 basics of course exacerbates the vulnerability. fortunately B2B has all but disapeared from the national meta. if any deck could revive this sideboard bomb, it would probably be Gifts, and I do consider this possibility when facing a potentially rogue gifts deck. this is a great instance where the seeming uncounterability of solemn is clutch, ensuring a repeatable red source for REBs against their hoser.
sacred ground is a niche anti-stax card, which surprisingly enough, in the dozens of tournaments Ive placed highly in, has never once entered play in any of my matches. all I can say is theoreticaly its a potent hoser. it makes smoky basicaly unusable, unless you have crucible and they have few total permanents, and you are ballsy enough to push the soot higher than their total number of lands, to start making them lose anything. if sacred ground is their only non-land permanent, this may not cost you too badly, but if they have a fair number of expendable nonlands, or keep making land drops, its a lost cause. crucible is greatly reduced in effectiveness w striplands reduced to mere colorless mana producers. however crucible still functions in its other capacities, recouping bazaar discards, and recurring bring. ideally, knowing I am up against sacred ground, I will try for chalice @ 2, which mortally wounds UW fish anyway (the most likely to board Sground). failing that preemptive play, you are still fully capable of locking via ubawelding. Ive seen 4C gifts decks running Sground and many 5C decks also trying it.
Cards that do NOT beat ubastax
-Damping matrix. against ubastax, this is just an overcosted pithing needle pre-naming welder and shaman. not that exciting.
-Duress is not very effective against ubastax. for one, ubastax likes to empty its hand fast and play off uba synergies, frequently then having simply no hand to disrupt. overall duress sucks. I often am holding 5-6 card hands w no targets, plus chalice @ 1 is a priority play for me any way, leaving duress dead. sometimes their duress ends up just being my discard outlet, when theyre forced to choose a threat when Im holding welder.
compare it to other common disruption, like force of will, which makes me spend mana and lose tempo. for duress, enemy does all the work and just hit me for a mulligan, and half the time miss, or help me.
-Energy flux/war wage. another declining hoser, primarily still played out of fish's board. knowing this is in their deck, means I will play a little more conservatively and be less inclined to keep mox heavy hands. once they have 3 mana, I assume they will lay flux every turn. fortunately fish is an easy match up overall, and being able to afford even one lock can strangle them long enough to either kill flux indirectly through smoky, or w a direct hit from REB; or just play enough lands to play through it. if I have the choice among a board full of locks what to keep under flux, I generally prefer uba, since they will lose atleast half their draws, giving me plenty of time to rebuild. if I have a large number of nonartifact permanents Id prioritize keeping smoky and trying to eliminate the flux. fish players get paranoid about losing mana and commonly drop flux over a land too soon. if I have chalice @ 2 and their board has no win condition, I will just keep that, to leave them w endless dead draws. crucible might be worth keeping if I have relevent stripland recursion against the majority of their mana. its doubtful Id keep null rod if there was anything stronger on my side. of course if I have welder, flux is almost completely irelevent, due to weld tricks around upkeep triggers. if kataki is the source of the problem, he will probably kill enough moxes that bring will solve things w threshold.
-Rack and ruin. never fun to see, but definitely survivable. the earlier this hits is actually the worse. the longer they wait, the more damage my locks have done and the easier it is to rebuild. welder turns RnR into an overpriced shatter, and can re-establish locks within a turn. if I have more than 2 unique locks out, they will be forced to leave me something. any one lock: smoky, uba, crucible; can maintain the edge to inevitably win. unless its combo (which more commonly plays mass bounce over removal) chalices and null rod wont be enough to ride to victory, but will continue slowing enemy development hopefully long enough to dig into replacement tier locks.
-Chains of mephistopheles. there is a misconception among some 5cStaxers that chains is good against ubastax. I personally would board chains out against ubastax. chains will turn off my 4 bazaars, true, until I get uba mask, which overrides chains completely. enemy crucible+waste is much more effective anti-bazaar strategy, since it will dominate my mana as well. pithing needle would also be strictly better in this match up.
-Ground seal. Ive won many, many games having never seen welder. Id rather see gseal than darkblast anyway, since I have the opporunity to remove it w smoky and revive my welders, while beating for 1/turn in the meantime. if you do play this card, please do remember your optional draw. g-seal was designed as a crap rare and was given a cantrip to make it more playable back in its type 2 days. its good enough in modern vintage that players dont expect to get an arbitrary bonus from it, and Ive had more opps forget the draw than remember.
-Pithing needle. superior to ground seal, but not too scary, as ubastax has so many broken activated cards that losing one among the crowd wont cripple the deck. also because its an artifact, needle is much easier to remove than g-seal, via welder or shaman, whatever they havnt named. at worst, smoky is immune to it and can and will kill anything.
The Sideboard
reasoning for inclusion of my choices
Heretic - stops workshop cold. workshop is the only match where dedicated artifact destruction is necesary and this guy is far and away the most efficient at killing a lot of artifacts over the course of a potentialy long game. he's also slightly useful in the non-blue belcher match, since theres nothing else to board in.
Pyroblast - these won out over defense grids, in order to stop main phase win spells like tinker/gifts, in addition to counter spells. also vital in removing hosers like flux/b2b.
Maze ith - in a deck that excels in abusing lands via bazaar+crucible, maze is the best answer to creature based wins. oath, tinker-colossus, juggies and random aggro all are bogged down severely.
Tormod crypt - despite conflict w null rod, Tcrypt is very underpriced, simple answer to yawg will decks. Its superior to phyrexian furnace here bc if I need to cast null rod, I have to activate my graveyard hate now or never. when forced to be used prematurely, tormod does more damage than furnace. tormod has no costs involved at all, which is always prefered, so Im more likely to keep hands w only workshop for mana. lastly, p-furnace's card drawing is potentialy wasted if I were forced to use the sack function during enemy turn, w uba in play.
Duplicant - more hate on oath and aggro, plus a necesity for winning heretic battles.
sideboard cuts:
lava dart is very efficient, esp w bazaar, though now overshadowed by darkblast. going down to 3 mtns was simply too few to make Ldart reliable, and brings are better long run card advantage any way.
price of glory/stoneshaker shaman. for awhile I was interested in finding some efficient permanent that would hose mana drain especially. in the end I discovered that A) REB is good enough on its own, and far more versatile and B) Ive come to disagree w the cronstax philosophy of mixing non-artifact locks into stax.
Cron and Smennen's stated intention was to reduce dependency on workshop, however it doesnt make sense, since a 3 cost enchantment is extremely dependent on moxen, and makes workshop irelevent, whereas a 3/4 cost artifact can be cast either w small lands and moxes, or workshop. the enchantments just shift the manabase weakness from shops to moxes. it halves the power of workshop, wo improving the efficieny of the moxes. its a bad strategy in terms of mana management. however, the enchantments might be worth it regardless, if their effect is substantialy more powerful than the artifacts they replace or if the metagame is resplendent w artifact hate. consider that chains, chaos and choke hurt very bad, and ray of revelation is significantly less played than rack and ruin, and its understandable why that deck wins. my thinking though is that mana is more important, and thus in workshop, stick only to artifacts and small red things.
Orb of Dreams. I dropped this from the side long ago, though Ive seen it pop up in stax lists here and there recently, so will explain why its inferior. Dreamball, like tangle wire, is tempo advantage only, not card, or board advantage. tempo gains are good for decks w fast clocks like most famously, Extended Red Deck Wins. stax is not that deck, especially since the tempo is not as lopsided as it seems. if enemy island comes into play tapped, they are denied 1 mana that turn. if my workshop comes into play tapped, I am denied 3 mana that turn. when my deck is 98% permanents, playing a lock that hurts ppl more, the more permanents they play, is strictly bad for me. if Im playing a deck that loves land recursion, and expect to play a land every turn, while enemy only plays lands as normal, then dream ball is not furthering the cause.
dream ball ruins fetchlands for sure; buys time against oath; and makes dragon unwinnable, but those uses are far too narrow to consider playing it.
Things that might have been. Ive tried a lot of different cards in the list that have come and gone. here is the logic behind some of them:
lightning bolt is definitely something Ive considered, as it very cheaply takes out major problems like heretic and downs big game like juggernaut as well. theres almost no hardcastable creature in vintage that doesnt die to l-bolt. however, instants w no inherant card advantage are at odds w the synergy package of the rest of the deck. heretic is awful to face, but not so widely played that I need specific removal besides duplicant.
I did test Gate to rekai thoroughly. the synergy is sweet, but its not a red source, and ultimately not worth cutting any current mana or threat. gate to rekai would rule in Mudstax. monobrown is a rogue option I briefly experimented adding ubazaar too, but I couldnt bear to lose welder, and metalworker has awful synergy w uba. cutting m-worker accel neuters the explosiveness of Mud. not viable. if for some reason vintage becomes stax-dot-format then I can see maindecking gate to rekai in colored stax builds too. this is a mirror match I actualy tested, and theres a lot of interesting maneuvers with mutual crucible/rekai lock and abusing its legendary status to make soot counters hurt the most, or getting in extra spirit token beats.
Sphere of resistance is a great card. playing 5cstax, resistor is my favorite opening (besides strictly better 3sphere of course). resistor prevents turn 1 welder and moxes from accomplishing anything; temporarily acting as both chalice @ 0 + 1. since resistors are cumulative, if they are to be played at all, 4 is correct. I disagree w you that the utility slots are expendable, and thus the only other thing to potentialy drop for resistors is null rod. across the whole meta, nrod is more disruptive than resistor, and resistor has the potential to be a pain in the ass on my side of the board, since I have so many 4 drops that get bumped up to 5. this is very relevent since workshop + mox is fairly easy to come by, but 5 mana is almost always a turn 2 play at best. nrod effectively increases cost for me as well, by knocking out some mana, but I can cycle dead cards w bazaar or sac dead moxen to smoky, making the loss more managable. this said, I do like the classic 2sphere, and would endorse an ubastax list that ran -3 nrod, -1 [solemn?], +4 resistor, if nrod was less relevent in that player's meta.
Gamble is terrible. its card disadvantge guaranteed wo the huge benefits of bazar activation. also this deck is designed to operate w very few cards in hand, so you have to assume you will lose what you search for. thus you are asking me to play a red entomb. this is worthless wo welder or crucible, and I dont want to play a card that absolutely depends on some high priority counter-bait being on board.
General Play Strategies
a) game tactics
Protect your resources where opp has least access to them. if opp has counterspells, then your cards are most vulnerable on the stack, so you need to either keep them in hand until opp's counter is weaker, or cheat them on the table w things like welder. if opp has removal spells, then stuff is safer in your hand until needed (or graveyard w welder). if opp uses hand disruption, then filling the board w abandon is right.
Play agresively w threats that need time to develop. smokestack is a great example. even if you arent holding the support cards necesary to really abuse smoky, its usually right to put it out and start using it, to make sure its hurting your opp while you wait to draw the other pieces of the lock. smoky wont even start to hurt them until the turn after next, meaning they have 3 turns (end of your current, end of theirs, end of your 2nd) to kill it before losing their first permanent. thats a long time in vintage and its a testament to the power of stax decks that smoky so often wins games, despite the long lead time. however in order to actually win those games, you have to compress the smokestack time schedule as quickly as possible.
vintage plays fewer turns per game than any other format. thus what you need now is usually more important than what you need later in the game, bc frequently there is no later. when choosing between a soft lock now or a hard lock in a few turns, absolutely the lesser, immediate threat is better than giving them any unimpeded amount of time. if you are making decisions on discarding or sacking or losing cards in general, concentrate on what you need to live through the next turn and get back in the game pronto. things that arent imediately useful need to get cut first, even if theyre bombs in the long run. they can be replaced later if you live that long, which can only happen if you concentrate on your next turn. this is another reason bazaar shines, to trade cards that are only useful later, to get what you need now, and find the cards you need later again, when the time is right.
b) mulliganing
I have found this deck to be very consistent in its draws, and very forgiving of greedy hands. I muligan approximately 15% of my hands, or 1 in 6. That being said, if a hand is bad, absolutely do not be afraid to muligan, especially when on the play. If you are on the play and are holding 7 or 6 cards and can not play a turn 1 lock piece or welder, the hand must be muliganed. Once you have mulled to 5, if you still can't play something turn 1, its correct to keep the hand if it has any mana. Don't be afraid to mull to 4 though if your 5 card hand is truly terrible. Ive mulled to 4 cards five times in serious tournaments. I won 4 of those 5 games. A turn 1 lock will usually buy you enough time to recoup the card disadvantage of muliganing. The deck plays 26 mana sources, and 4 bazaars, which is half the deck. That means if you get a mana-less 4 card hand, you have a 66% chance of hitting some kind of mana or free draw in the top 3 cards after shuffling. Although this is not a contingency I have explicitly tested, in theory I recommend muliganning a mana-less 4 cards.
Judging your opponent's hand is very important when making a muligan decision, especially when on the draw. If you've scouted your opponent before, and know he is prone to advertise the quality of his hands, then look for signs, especially against decks that can do things turn 1. If you are sitting on a shaky hand against combo, and your opponent looks excited, ditch it for a sure turn 1 lock. If your opponent grumbles, especially after one or more mulligan, you can afford to be greedy, and keep a hand that might not have a lock on the board until turn 2. Also against control, the less time they think about it and the more confident they look, increases the liklihood they are holding force of will, or have an early drain or tinker. If thats the case you really want depth of threats. The ability to play something turn after turn to get through the counter wall and provide opportunities for counter baiting.
Knowing this, its important you don't give the opponent the same chance to read you. A technique I've learned is to draw my hand and spend exactly one second looking at each card, no matter how good or bad my hand is. After 7 seconds, I make my decision. And of course make no expression or body language in this time. Even if Ive drawn fewer cards I still try to count out 7 seconds for each hand. If you are on the play, your opponent's decision and demeanor can effect your plan, but still formulate the overall plan in the first 7 seconds, so you are ready for your opponent's input. Once you keep your hand, its important opponent has no idea the quality of your hand.
c) play style
Map out the course of your turn and do things in the exact correct order to minimize the amount of information your opponent gains at each stage, and limit his choices.
For example lets say I am playing my ubastax deck and have this hand:
workshop, mtn, welder, chalice, null rod, blank, blank
(the blanks are things I cant play until atleast turn 2). asuming Im on the play, I want to get chalice @ 0 out there as the cheapest way to kill his aceleration. n-rod is slightly redundant here unless opp is holding sol ring, or is playing stuff like aether vial, etc. therefore I probably want to get the welder in there too and hold the n-rod till it's needed. however to keep opp guessing here is the exact sequence of my play:
1. chalice @ 0 - if opp is holding some moxen he needs to run his early game plan, then he may want to counter this, however bc I havnt made my land drop yet, he doesnt know if bigger threats are coming, and its unlikely he'd be willing or able to go down 4 cards turn 1 forcing two things. however chalice @ 0 may be crippling if he kept a hand completely dependent on moxen, and he counters, regardless of what could come after.
2. If chalice @ 0 resolves, then I proceed w mtn > welder
3. if chalice is countered, that sends the signal that he is holding moxes and I want to make sure he is unable to use them. so I play shop > null rod and take a burn.
this is a fairly simple example, but the point is dont play mana until you need it. especially land drops should be the last thing you do in terms of adding to your mana base in the course of a turn. by waiting for his reaction to the spell I could play w existing mana (in this case zero), I could decide which land to play and get the right follow up threat on the board.
the less opp sees at a time the more he fears what you might still have left to do, and will hesitate using his resources against the current threat. the other point to be made in this example is bc I had 2 redundant ways to kill moxes, its right to bait one of them first, and then choose between a unique threat (welder) or the second mox killer (n-rod) if the first one gets shot down. if I led w welder and it was countered, I'm stuck holding 2 cards that do the same thing. this is slightly skewed example bc welder is rarely baited, as it is essentialy the ultimate solution to countering artifacts. however the point would be true if I had any 3 threats, 2 of which were essentially the same: lead w one of the duplicates, and then if its countered, decide which of the remaining is next important.
Know your plays and the order they go and dont give away free information by, say, incorectly tapping mana and taking it back while you think about what you're casting. especialy if you're doing multiple things in a turn, the less you signal the better.
if there's something special going on in a phase that doesnt regularly happen, ie end step or upkeep, dont call atention to it by verbaly passing priority or something if you dont ordinarily do that. play exactly the same in every scenario. for example if opp has welder and has a potentialy good play during your upkeep, dont directly ask if he has any upkeep effects, if you usually just say "untap, upkeep, draw" in the same breath.
once you understand how not to do this, it can sometimes be effective to bluff in this manner by futzing w your mana, or even floating it in ways that suggest you have more or less threats than you really do. for example, tapping a mtn and taking it back before playing an artifact lock might make your opp think you decided to slowroll welder, and then not counter the artifact bc he fears a nonexistant welder in your hand. if your playing at high REL where you cant take back mana taps, it might be worth just floating the red, to really press the welder bluff, and then take a burn when your thing resolves. however, if you really have a welder you want to resolve, then of course its better to bluff that you have nothing scary in your hand. spending time looking at your hand and organizing it, setting certain cards face down in front of you, and concentrating on others, etc, can make it look like your holding a lot of dead cards, and put your opp at ease w countering the 1st threat you play. remember, like in poker, bluffing is rarely the right play and should be used sparingly.
also w the phase passing thing mentioned above, if your trying to outplay opp welder for example, and you want them to tap out or overuse it on nonessential tasks, making a big show of passing priority, and giving them lots of opportunities to respond can lead them to think that you see a good play for them and they might go for the bait. theyre implicitly assuming you know more about what hurts you than they do.
Slow-Rolling is everything. dont play things until you need them. If Im holding mtn and wasteland and need a colorless mana, I will always play the mtn. the hope being the opp will think he is safe in playing a nonbasic land later and I can kill it, whereas putting the waste out there will make him try to only make basic land drops, and the waste serves no purpose.
if Im holding a valuable land like academy w no immediate use for it, I will hold it until I draw a threat that requires the mana, even if Im not drawing any other lands. by putting down the big land, its a juicy target to wasteland, one of the most prevalent cards in the format, and then you wont have the mana when you rip a win condition. acordingly, if Im holding both strip and waste, I will play the waste to convince him to drop a basic, at the cost of the reduced utility basics offer. then I kill the basic anyway, and his next land drop might have to be non-basic, letting me nail both.
Holding back welders happens to be the right play a lot. w darkblast in the format now, the extinct threat of fire/ice has returned, meaning multiple welders in play can be a liability. if enemy is packing decent removal, I wont play welder until I can abuse it somehow, or can follow it up immediately w an apropiately numbered chalice.
as a corollary to slow rolling, an important lesson is: Doing nothing can be the right play. if you have a dominant threat on the table, let it ride. until you really need to add another piece to your board (which admitedly is often), it is a mistake to throw cards out there, when things like mana drain and rack and ruin are running around.
d) Match Strategy
Know when you're beat. Lets say you won game 1 which took a long time, and then something bad happens in game 2, and theres only 15 min left in the round. SCOOP! Go to game 3, going first with a huge advantage with enough time to finish the game. Don't linger in game 2 with a losing position waiting for opponent to kill you. For example, unless I see a genuine opening, I will usualy auto-scoop to mindslaver activated or Yawg Will put on the stack. if opp is doing something that is very hard to recover from, dont bother. Enjoy going first in the next game and have plenty of time to make sure it counts.
In order to correctly make decisions like in the above situation, make sure you know how much time is in the round continuously. Don't be dependent on asking the judge, as you may want to check frequently. If there is a large timer displayed somewhere in the venue, get to your match early and sit on the side that faces it. If this is denied to you, make sure you have a watch and you note exactly when the round started.
After your match, always scout, especially in smaller tournaments (<20) because you're fairly likely to face the people you watch. If you finish early, once you know what people are playing, the best thing to do is watch players handle their opening hands to see what kind of cards they keep and how much information they give away when deciding mulligans. many players, even good ones, reveal a lot.
I dont know how much more of this Im going to write, but theres probably still many important things I can think of.
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