Stax - Worst matchup's

[mr cheese]

The most recent tournament I had in my area was full of Stax. Since, Stax is fairly new to my area, and I am not really prepared for it, which archtypes and cards are best against the deck?

I'm thinking any deck that has discard. Would I be correct?

[Anusien]

I'd rather play a deck full of permanents like Goblins.  Stax is at its best stopping spells and at its worst stopping creatures.  Plus sideboard you get Artifact Mutation which is hard for them to deal with.

[meadbert]

It used to be that Duress/Hymn to Tourach based decks had some trouble with Stax.  The reason was that between Crucible of Worlds and Goblin Welder, Stax had a lot of ways to recur cards from the graveyard.  Now that Thoughtseize exists, at least you can Thoughtseize Welder.

Manaless Ichorid generally beats Stax.  Although Stax can be metaed to beat Manaless Ichorid, most stax players do not do that.

Goblins is great against Stax.

R/G Beatz is good against Stax although I am not convinced the deck is that good in general.

Control Slaver used to tear Stax up.  The main reason was that Slaver can use its own Welder to both mess with Stax's locks and dodge mana denial.
If you do run Control Slaver, run atleast 1 Gorilla Shaman and a Strip Mine in the main and run a few Viashino Heretics post board.  Pithing Needle can also be useful.

Oath of Druids used to be great against Stax.  Stax's mana denial strategy runs into trouble against a deck that only needs to resolve a 2 mana spell to win.  Also the fact that artifacts have few ways to remove enchantments helps.

[Everrid1234]

Fast aggro with lots of permanents. Food Chain Gobbos for example or anything with Aether Vial and Goblin Lackey. Viashino Heretic, Trygon Predators, Goblin Welder and Wastelands are also nice.
Clever Fish players playing Null Rod, Chalice, Kataki, Dark Confidant, Disenchant (and similar) and Energy Flux.

[madmanmike25]

which archtypes and cards are best against the deck?

As a Stax player, some of the more commonly maindecked cards I don't like to see include the following(in no particular order):

Force of Will(I don't always get a Welder)
Duress(see above)
Thoughtseize
Island(or basic lands in general)
Mana Drain
Rebuild
Merchant Scroll-->Rebuild
Aether Vial
Goblin Lackey
Juggernaut
Kataki

SB cards like Energy Flux and Art Mutation wreck Stax as well.  Though I hate to admit, Leyline of the Void is also usefull vs. Stax.  But keep that on the down-low, we don't want that information to spread.

Pre-restriction, Gifts Ungiven was a pain in the arse to play against.  But Merchant Scrolls still allow blue based decks to run a singleton Rebuild.

Oath is only bad if they get it out soon enough.  A turn 4 Oath isn't too scary to me.  Sometimes I'm able to amp up my Smokestack counters just with Orchard Tokens.

As for Goblins, I wouldn't go the Food Chain route.  A R/G Goblin deck with 4 Lackeys, 4 Aether Vials, AND 4 Tin Streets would work though.

Shop Aggro is also a pain since they typically run welders as well.

I tested quite a bit vs. that R/G list that won first place, and as a Stax player I wasn't all that impressed.  I can't even say that the matchup was better than 50/50(for them) from my experience.  Chalice @ 1 wins the game if they don't see Tin Street Hooligan soon.  Not to mention that Vial'ing in a TSG does nothing.

Null Rod vs Stax?...not so much imo because some Stax decks still run the Rod.  Mox Monkey in a deck with Welders is SOLID vs. Stax.  In fact, Mox Monkeys are what I miss the most when playing against the mirror or another Shop deck.  Once you kill that first Mox, you can flip and eat all their artifacts.

Honestly if your meta is predominant with Stax, a mostly blue deck with FoW, Drains, Merchant Scrolls, and Back to Basics is an option.  Especially with Energy Flux in your SB.  Stax can't really deal with enchantments.

Mike

[islanderboi10]

The list that madmanmike wrote up is pretty accurate.  As a stax player, I do hate to see these cards. And, like said above, if you go "Lackey, go" against me, I start sweating bullets because I already must find an answer. 

Discard could be ok, but if I resolved a welder, all the discard could be for nothing.

[emidln]

The only deck I'm truely afraid of seeing is Goblins. Winning the Goblins matchup with Stax involves your opponent punting severely, you having the nuts, and several planets aligning. This is because the deck, while it is filled with permanents, invariably sideboards Shattering Spree, which Stax has no good answer for in the matchup. In most matchups, Welder can provide some semblance of protection, but the likelihood of a Welder surviving to activate against Goblins is too insignificant to calculate. Combine this with a lot of permanents and a fast clock, and little can be done even with multiple Ensnaring Bridges, Triskelions, or Razorcore.

Tyrant Oath has proved to be a pretty bad matchup historically for the mono red shops that I play. Dragon isn't particularly pretty if you're not prepared for the matchup. Cards like Energy Flux, Shattering Spree, and Serenity are good when paired with a clock or in multiples. Trygon Predator and Dark Confidant provide card advantage that is hard to deal with. Hope that helps.

[mr cheese]

Thanks for all the suggestions thus far. Goblins looks viable, but I want to have an answer against most combo decks.

Most of the combo decks in my meta are Graveyard-based, so I am thinking Gob-Lines might be better than just pure aggro.

Are other spells such as Thoughtseize or Duress something to consider, or should I stick to Leylines and Vials?

[meadbert]

Incidently, Leyline of the Void is pretty good against a lot of Stax decks.  Welder and Crucible become close to useless and Bazaar becomes much worse.

[The_spooky_kid]

Goblins hands down is literally stax's worst matchup.  No matter how you contruct your build of stax, It will always have difficulties beating goblins.  Ichorid is a difficult game one, but leylines + sphere of resistance make winning this match pretty easy. Some builds of stax run platinum angel to fuel its defenses vs this deck.  Surprisingly I also believe a well constructed gat deck with a few basics and a proper SB would be a pretty tough match as well.

[captreynolds]

Control Slaver is by far the best deck against Stax. 

You can deal with the artifacts with your Welders, and keep their hand empty by using Duress, Thoughtseize, Hymn to Tourach can also work.

You can also run Empty the Warrens in Slaver as well.  I run it as a one of in the sideboard, as well as Storm Entity.

Mana Drain is exceptional against Stax, because they have high cost spells. (I generally get about 3-5 mana off a drain against Stax)

Mindslaver for the win, to wreck up their baord and corntol their upkeeps. 

Rack and Ruin blows up two artifacts for one card.  Rebuild and Hurkyll's Recall also work well here.  Also Engineered Explosives works too.

You can run a Crucible of Worlds as well as a Strip Mine for good measure against any deck.

In total it's too much for stax to deal with, as they don't generally run counters, and as a Slaver player you are a blue based artifact control deck. 

Slaver is also good against every other deck in the format right now.  Even GAT is not much of an issue, running Threads of Disloyalty in the Sideboard.

Super Long is a little problem, but I've been 50/50 against it.

Just some suggestions.  It would be nice to see other people play Slaver in Vintage again.

 -- Capt. Reynolds

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[forests failed you]

I would agree with captreynolds that Control Slaver is certainly on of Workshop's most problematic match ups; however I would assert that it is for reasons that are slightly different than the one's pointed out already.  Yes, clearly Mana Drain, Goblin Welder, and sideboard access to cards like Rack and Ruin, Hurkyl's Recall, and Shattering Spree are all cards that are going to give Workshop based decks problems--but, the problem actually goes much deeper than just the specific hate cards.  The real problem is that unlike other blue based decks Control Slaver doesn't have to win all at once:  Slaver doesn't use the "Storm" mechanic nor does the its endgame revolve largely around Yawgmoth's Will+lots of spells+lots of mana in order to win.  Slaver, is able to win very small and does not really need a large amount of mana in order to execute its gameplan; rather, it can simply draw cards, make land drops, and wait until it can find what it needs to win the game.  Goblin Welder obviously helps with this part of the equation, since he can pick off key artifacts from an opponent's board in order to buy time.  Most importantly Welder's ability requires no investment of Mana which allows the board to be controlled, while the Slaver mage uses his resources to draw cards and cast counterspells.

Slaver also plays with the whole lot of fast artifact mana (all the moxes, crypt, ring, lotus, & vault) which allows it to have enough resources to function a higher percentage of the time.  I would also argue that Slaver plays more land than GAT or Tendrils which means that it is less likely to run out of land drops in the mid game (turns 3, 4, or 5).  The reason that Slaver has the best match up against Workshops is that Slaver is set up to fight and win a long game--whereas, the other blue decks are only prepared to control the game for a few turns and then go off.  Since, a workshop decks game plan is to quickly make it impossible to go off quickly it should have a stronger game against these decks than control slaver.