[Single Card Discussion] Tangle Wire

[PacmanXSA]

I think the problem with Port is that you may have a hand clogged with land.  I'm normally dropping 3-4 cards on the first turn, but if I continue to have 3-4 lands in my hand, I may have an issue with a soft/hard lock.  You'll have strip effects, bazaars, shops, basics AND ports?  While port would definitely be a house in the mid game, I certainly don't wanna see one early. 

Another fact about Sphere that I would like to point out that it is a non-trinisphere hard lock once stax/cow start ripping throught their mana base.  With wire in some cases, they can have no perms on the table and still pull something stupid off.  Sphere prohibits this.  Just a mention.

Pac

[yespuhyren]

Again, though, Resistor makes us more susceptible as well, because we play cards with a higher average converted mana cost than any other deck.  That said, without us having a Workshop (and if it gets wasted) we are in serious trouble with a resistor on the board.

Remember, 5c Stax plays a lot fewer cards with a high Casting cost than UbaStax does.

[Pitlord]

I have read the topic, wuote a bit, and actually just got a little off topic. Sorry.

I know that this thread was addressing primarily Ubastax, but I felt I wanted to throw in a few points based on 5x stax play. I haven't played ubastax a whole lot, but still felt I could contribute.

First off, where did I say that I wasn't running 4 smokestack? Of course they are an auto-include. My point was that welding stack in and out so you don't have to sac anything while they do is generally better than welding wire. This was to illistrate the point that while welder and wire are great together, there are other, typically more useful combinations and weldables with everyones favorite 1/1. I also agree that welding chalice sucks, and I didn't point out that because I thought it was obvious. My apologies.

I was simply trying to bring in an outside viewpoint on tnagle wire, from a 5c perspective, instead of making this purely a thread about ubastax. In 5c stax, spheres are very strong, because they slow your opponent down long enough for you to get tinker and keep them slowed down without any help. Wire, in 5c stax, does not keep them down for very long in 5c, at least not without a welder.

Also, I have talked to Roland, somewhat frequently, about chalice vs. wire in 5c. He no longer dismisses it, especially after watching it wreck lots of my opponents in Milwaukee when he was there. We have talked and debated the merits of both on AIM quite a bit, and he has considered testing with chalice over wire.

I apologize again for apparently going off topic. I think that you may have missed some points of my arguements, probably because I wasn't clear on a few things. Perhaps clearing up a few things will help. 1. I was talking about 5c stax, ttrying to bring a perspective in other than for uba. 2. I may have come across with some poor wording in my previous post, because of the time I was posting. 3. I was really assuming that sphere is a given, not chalice, because of the 5c perspective.

Also, these are the three lock compnents that seem the most interchangable. Sphere, chalice, and wire, seem to be the most tweaked slots in personal stax lists. Goals, such as getting tempo or a harder lock, and overall game plan and other lock pieces can determine overall choices. Personally, I just feel that chalice and sphere are the best duo, because they create the most permanent lock together, a lock that doesn't get worse each turn as dramatically.


As for in ubastax, I feel that wire and sphere are depndent on your play style. Many old school uba players still try to get lots of hard locks down fast. I think that if you are to go in the direction of playing tons of locks, sphere is a bit better. It stops your opponent from breaking out of a hard lock thanks to a 7 card hand of busted.

Tangle wire, on the other hand, generates tempo. Wire by itself is not a hard lock component. Wire gets you tempo, letting you try to find another lock piece, probably one of your harder locks. You can't lock your opponent as completely as with sphere, beacuse they can still just stay permanent light and then drop tons of broken mana and do something.

Metagame is also important in the sphere/wire argument. Sphere is obviously better against combo, oath and drain matchups are probably endlessly debatable, and the aggro mathc obviously is helped most by wire.

[Brapp]

First off, where did I say that I wasn't running 4 smokestack? Of course they are an auto-include. My point was that welding stack in and out so you don't have to sac anything while they do is generally better than welding wire.

You mean if you've got two welders or two Smokestacks right?

[yespuhyren]

2 welders and one smoky work just fine

Add counter to smokestack, they sac, end of turn weld it into artifact X and weld X back into smokestack to repeat.

Although this is a good strategy, I will often rather have them Tap 4 useful cards every turn to my 2 AT MOST, though usually less with Chalices, smokeys, etc.  Then again, I play both in the same deck, so the results are great