The Rebuild Effect, Mono Red Shop Aggro, and the Critical Turn

[iamfishman]

THE REBUILD THEOREY

As you know, I played Workshops for a little while, and feel confidant commenting on how it plays.  Than for a while I played combo.  Having been on both sides of that matchup, I observed something interesting…the Rebuild effect.

The matchup almost always goes like this.  Shop player plays mana denial/spheres.  Combo player does nothing for first five turns.

Then…one of two things happens.

The shop player dispatches its petty foe.

OR

The Shop player runs out of steam and can’t kill the combo player for a few turns.  In that time, the combo player finds Rebuild or Hurkyl’s and casts it endstep.  GG Shop player.

This can be true to some extent for the matchup against Blue Based Control.  In that match, though, its less likely that they have Rebuild or Hurkyl’s main deck.  For them, Rack and Ruin can take the place of Hurkyl’s or Rebuild except if the shop player is HEAVY disruption.
 
As a sidenote, I always rant about aggro decks claiming that I will never play one.  Juggernaut, Goyf, etc are terrible in my mind because they only attack.  There are even some creatures who do marginal things but their main purpose is to beat down like Jotun Grunt.  For this reason I always felt like Mono Red Shop Aggro was shit.  How could it compare to Staxless which has more avenues of play as well as more powerful spells and a better draw engine.

Sitting around after day 1 of Traviscon, I played 5 games with Tex against Scott playing Mono Red Shop Aggro(from here called MRSA).  MRSA crushed Tez 5 games in a row.  It wasn’t even close.  I even tried a sideboarded matchup where I sided in a pair of Hurkyll’s.  You know what happened those 2 games.  I lost both one mana shy of Hurkyll’s.

I played MRSA the next day and smashed face!

The thing that I learned was that Juggernaut was DOING SOMETHING.  It was essentially lowering the number of draws that my opponent had to find mana to pull out(hehehe).  It actually was card denial in a sense.

Yes, by themselves creatures that just attack are useless, because your opponent just wins through them.  But coupled with disruption, they get just the window of opportunity they need to pull through.

Staxless lacked a large number of threats (2 trisk + 1 sundering titan) and so it gave too much time for the opponent to just Hurkyll’s.

That begs a number of questions.

What can a Staxless build do to either a.) increase its clock without taking good card slots away for threats(consider that both titan and Trisk are threats and do other things.) or b.) counter the Rebuild effect(can it run counterspells, Duress effects, or some global effect card like an enchantment that reads “permanents can’t be bounced”) to fight the rebuild effect.

(The question I hate to ask)…Is Smokestack the key to keeping them from digging out to reach the Rebuild effect?

Will MRSA be better than Staxless or Stax as long as the Rebuild effect is present?

What other broad thoughts can we take from considering the Rebuild effect?

Does the Rebuild effect parallel what I like to call the “Force of Will effect” which says that any deck without counters will always be subpar since there is always some card that can be cast(usually a sorcery or instant) that rapes it.  In other words, will Enchantress every be a tear 1 legacy deck when it can’t ever do anything against cards like pernicious deed or Devastating Dreams?

Thoughts?

[The Atog Lord]

Ray, this is an excellent meditation. I agree with you that many Stax (Stackless or not) games involve Stax playing some disruption, and then hoping to win before the opponent can crawl out from underneath. If the opponent manages to do anything between Stax playing its threats and Stax winning, Stax loses; otherwise Stax wins. You have, I think, hit the nail on the head about Juggernaut; he shortens the window wherein a player may maneuver out of the grip of Stax.

Juggernaut and Smokestack are not that different from one another. Both cost four mana, and neither does much of anything right away, blocking excluded. Both serve to bury an opponent who is being smothered by a pile of inexpensive lock pieces. Neither one of them is actually very good on its own in most cases.

In the case of both of these cards, you've identified that they narrow the gap that the opponent has to recover from Stax's disruption. One may look at these cards and declare them win more cards; after all, they're only good if you've managed to disrupt the opponent already. However, they're not win more cards, but rather cards that leverage disruption and allow it to be translated into victory. Most of the lock components in Stax are able to buy a turn or two, without being sufficient to lock the opponent out of the game for good. A clock, however, can transform an opponent who has lost a few turns into an opponent who has lost the game. In that sense, they are an integral and necessary component of the lock plan which Stax is playing. Put another way, Stax excels at dragging out the game; these cards give Stax something to do with those extra turns for which it has labored so intently.

In this light, it becomes apparent why most Stax decks run Smokestack, Juggernaut, or some other finisher. The salient question then becomes which of these cards to run, in what number, and in which configuration. That question is not easily answered, and I believe that the proper answer depends on the metagame as much as anything else. If one compares Juggernaut and Smokestack, one finds several key differences, despite their similar roles as discussed above. Smokestack has more direct and obvious synergy with the other mana denial components; it can in theory be used to lock an opponent out of a game as quickly as a single turn, whereas Juggernaut requires four turns to accomplish his mission. Smokestack can be used to remove permanents which would halt Juggernaut's effectiveness, such as Platinum Angel or Ensnaring Bridge. Synergy with Goblin Welder enables Smokestack to be even less symmetric than intended, and Smokestack can even be used to remove one's own Mana Crypt.

On the other hand, Juggernaut has some advantages as well. Smokestack is only going to be effective when the rest of the lock plan is working at least reasonably well. Against some decks, like Fish, Juggernaut is sufficient to win on his own. While a resolved Tezzeret can singlehandedly answer a Smokestack, a Juggernaut can dispatch the Planeswalker. Another argument in favor of Juggernaut is that he both has better synergy with other copies of himself, and also is available as more than a four-of if needed. Multiple Smoke Stacks are seldom amazing together; unless things have gone quite long, Stax doesn't want to be losing more than one or two permanents per turn for too long, and a single Smoke Stack can ramp. On the other hand, the more Juggernauts in play, the quicker the game ends. Further, there isn't really a card that can be used as Smokestack 5-8; Braids tries hard but she really isn't in the same league. Juggernaut, on the other hand, has playable imitations from Su-Chi to Myr Enforcer, each better and worse in different ways. One can build a deck which gets a Juggernautesque creature fairly consistently.

Given that, metagame may be the factor which determines the optimal clock in Stax/Workshop decks. This will, of course, also vary with the intent of the deck, and which 56 other cards are selected. In either case, Ray, thank you for the excellent theory.

[andrewpate]

Ray's theory actually sounds a lot like Everything is a Time Walk, the classic practice of measuring the game in fundamental units of tempo, rather than cards.  If you play a Trinisphere on turn 1, it is basically "two Time Walks" under the old Scott Keller theory.  Having a faster clock is basically stealing time from the opponent.  As Rich points out, Smokestack fills a similar role to Juggernaut.  I think that Keller has a good explanation for that.  Essentially, each permanent sacrificed to Smokestack is one turn's draw and one turn's play or land drop.  Like a clock on the opponent's life total, this compresses the time window of the game, even though the Smokestack does effect both players.  And of course, as Rich also points out, there's the synergy with Goblin Welder (and, I might add, Crucible of Worlds) which potentially causes the gap to expand.

I have always found Stax to be a difficult archetype to quantify in theoretical terms.  Ray, I think your attention to this key gameplay scenario has really opened up a great line of inquiry into thinking about which cards to include in a build.  Excellent topic.

[zeus-online]

While i think it's pretty obvious that you are correct in identifying the problem with stax....I'd like to spend a few seconds of everyone's time with potential solutions:

Smokestack - Well obviously.

Creatures - Again obvious

Ubamask - Both a lock compenent aswell as a way to make sure that they never come back, often you won't even need a welder for them to be screwed. Keep in mind that unless they have the bounce spell in hand they are likely going to have to cast it at a bad time (Their own turn)...They could ofcourse topdeck a tutor, but aside from that.

Chalice of the void - This is a bit tricky, but since most combo decks only run 1 or 2 bounce spells before board, you can get "lucky" and hit the mana cost of their bounce spell...Not ideal since it requires a little too much luck.

Null Brooch - Very limited but it CAN stop the bounce spell, and against combo, it should be a pain to play against.

SB Red blasts - Again obvious. Or you could maindeck a few....

I'm wondering why shop players don't play tarmogoyf though? Thorn is just as effective against combo as sphere, so tarmogoyf could still be easy to play, even with a sphere effect in play....Alot of stax-ish decks play with some number of bazaars, which could be used to grow the goyf. I'd imagine that it might improve the aggro-control match-up...Aswell as giving a decent finisher (ala juggernaut)

There's also the possibility of In the eye of chaos or nether void (Nether void has been enabled by Urborg and Vexing shusher...Also, you can weld under it! )
They'd require a single target bounce spell, aswell as a mass-bouncer (since you're likely to have a few other annoying artifacts lying around).

That's more or less all the solutions i can think of.

/Zeus

[Purple Hat]

a resolved Tezzeret can singlehandedly answer a Smokestack

er...how does that work?  What are you fetching with Tezz?

[Mith]

Though I have yet to make it work, I strongly believe that a blue-based "stax" deck is possible. Esperzoa and Master of Etherium are both pretty decent clocks, and Esperzoa's ability is a rather useful bonus. Add in Force of Will once you're running enough blue, perhaps Drains instead of Shops, and we might end up with a "Stax" deck that doesn't fear mass artifact-bounce spells. If it can stay in a mono-blue form, this might even be a chance to resurrect Back to Basics.

In any case, I still haven't quite made the deck work as smoothly as I'd like...

[wiley]

So you're basically saying turn Stax into Control Slaver?  Just because you want to run blue in a Stax deck does not mean it is to have counters.  The best reason to run blue is to add more card draw/filtering with the addition of cephalid coliseum and cards like ancestral, timetwister and windfall as well as tinker.

The biggest weakness for Stax is not that you are susceptible to a cheap, instant speed mass bounce spell that destroys your board position, but that you are left without the proper threat/answer at the right time too often compared to other decks.

Every deck needs a finisher, even Weissman decks of old required something to cinch the game.  Stax can run a variety of things from Smokestack to Uba Mask to Juggernaut.  The question to ask yourself is "which of these strikes the best balance between being a) objectively powerful in relation to my list and b) useful on its own?"  Juggs, in most builds, does not strike this balance very well outside of warped metas.  Uba Mask requires design constraints, as can Smokestack and any other finisher that you can think of.

In the context of stackless Stax a better finisher might be Karn (provided you don't run null rod or have a way to get rid of it) who also serves as a way to stem off early small aggro, deny mana to combo players and to make more use of any permanents that don't require tapping to perform their normal functions.  If you do run null rod then maybe it would be a good idea to look into smokestack and see whether or not the reasons you originally moved away from the card still hold true.

[LotusHead]

THE REBUILD THEOREY

As you know, I played Workshops for a little while, and feel confidant commenting on how it plays.  Than for a while I played combo.  Having been on both sides of that matchup, I observed something interesting…the Rebuild effect.

The matchup almost always goes like this.  Shop player plays mana denial/spheres.  Combo player does nothing for first five turns.

Then…one of two things happens.

The shop player dispatches its petty foe.

OR

The Shop player runs out of steam and can’t kill the combo player for a few turns.  In that time, the combo player finds Rebuild or Hurkyl’s and casts it endstep.  GG Shop player.

You have layed out my fears exactly.

As the resident shop player in my meta, the EOT Rebuild or Hurkyls is my worse fear.

Knowing that, my SB is often built keeping Rebuild and other blue bounce spells in mind.

If I go mono-brown, I take whatever my opponent dishes out.

But in my usual 5c builds, metagaming against TPS, Tez and other blue based decks is my main game plan.

The best players play those decks, which makes playing shops even scarier.

I can hope to trounce over inferior decks/bad players during swiss, but few people make top 8 accidentally.

There I pray to god I win the die roll, hope my opponent mulligans, and lay down the smackdown turn 0 (leylines) or turn 1 (chalice, other lockpeices).

Game 2 and 3 I agonize over what their game plan is (TPS/Tez is pretty clear, although I hear rumores about Oath SB) and hope to get lucky as hell or resolve some Jester's Cap action.

Chain of Vapour I can deal with (either I lose now, or I don't), and Hurkyls is bearable (it doesn't increase storm THAT much), but Rebuild is the bane of my existance.



Rebuild and co. are part of the reason why 4REB are always in my sb.  I just wish I could be a perfect predictor of how often Null Rod shows up to supplement that.

[wiley]

So what can be done to fight rebuild?  Other than REB what are your viable strategies to preventing/countering/recovering from this strategy?

From what I have seen it has been chalice @ proper number, mana retardation with Tangle Wire, Smokestack, Crucible/waste/strip, Sundering Titan, Sphere/3sphere/Thorn, Null Rod, Karn/Gorilla Shaman (and maybe In the Eye of Chaos) and finally pre-emptive removal with Jester's Cap (and maybe to an extent Uba Mask).

Of those options to prevent the strongest play against you, which has the greatest effect?  A chalice @ 3 doesn't cut off much, @ 2 it might even hurt you more than the opponent but you will most likely have other things backing it up.  With mana retardation you are expanding at a much slower pace, with the exception of Karn/Shaman, allowing your opponent to build up lands in hand/on board and eventually cast the spell anyway (effectively not putting forth enough steam).  Pre-emptive removal might be good, but there are already many arguments for and against the uses of both pieces of headgear.

If all the options are just so-so like it seems, then what can be done to make them function in a better way?  I, obviously, think that the answer is to add more land based draw 'spells' into the deck.  This means that you can more reliably find and create a chalice @ 2-3, function better under mana retardation effects (your draw spells aren't affected by sphere effects now, and crucible has natural synergy in the same vein of Intuition/AK) and the removal options become more viable (one of the larger arguments about cap is that you don't always have the non-shop mana to activate it, what if that were no longer as much of a problem?).

The next question would probably be, "If this is so good then why has no one done it before?"  The answer is pretty simple: Welder.  This little red dude is an integral part of the deck for making sure that you have game against counters and artifact destruction.  The loss of welder from a deck outweighs much of the potential benefits of adding cephalid coliseum to the deck because of this.  Has this fact changed?  My testing of late says no, but it has been greatly diminished and has a good chance to change with a shift in the metagame, or even with the printing of a few new cards that could easily come with the next set.  Why?  Because of Master Transmuter.  This blue chick does many of the same tricks that her red brother from another mother does, indeed doing all but one better, which is graveyard recursion.

Other people have had this same idea, and there is even a slaver shell that uses both of these excellent craftsmen.  I'm willing to bet that there is a better way to abuse these skilled workers by employing them as jailors.  The problem is to create a proper mana base that still allows for the ability to defend against The Rebuild Effect.  This is an interesting conundrum since Stax decks of all breed run a glut of mana as is, some decks being more than half mana if you count utility lands like wasteland and strip mine.

If we can agree that this has merit as a viable strategy then what is ok to cut?  This brings us back to my opening question, what are our viable strategies, but now augments it with "What are our viable strategies, and which ones carry the most weight per card?"  This is a question that has been hard for me to answer, however I believe that the best bets are the first (chalice) and third (pre-emptive removal) categories being the best of the three strategies.

With these questions rattling around in your head try to think of a way that would meet all of these requirements, or at least the ones you believe to have merit, and see if you can brainstorm something that others may not have thought of or expressed yet and share your thoughts.  I am certainly interested in hearing them, and I am sure that others are as well.  I already have a list that does some of what I want and will post it when I get home from work tonight as a way to further the discussion.


My lists:

My current UbaStax List:
// Lands
    4 Mishra's Workshop
    4 Bazaar of Baghdad
    4 Wasteland
    3 Barbarian Ring
    1 Tolarian Academy
    1 Strip Mine
    4 Taiga

// Creatures
    2 Gorilla Shaman
    4 Goblin Welder
    2 Sundering Titan

// Spells
    4 Crucible of Worlds
    4 Chalice of the Void
    4 Sphere of Resistance
    3 Smokestack
    2 Uba Mask
    1 Mox Sapphire
    1 Trinisphere
    4 Null Rod
    1 Sol Ring
    1 Mox Ruby
    1 Black Lotus
    1 Mana Crypt
    1 Mana Vault
    1 Mox Emerald
    1 Mox Jet
    1 Mox Pearl

// Sideboard
SB: 4 Tormod's Crypt
SB: 4 Ensnaring Bridge
SB: 2 Triskelion
SB: 2  Duplicant
SB: 3  Ancient Grudge

My test list to turn it blue:
// Lands
    4 Mishra's Workshop
    4 Bazaar of Baghdad
    4 Wasteland
    1 Tolarian Academy
    1 Strip Mine
    3 Cephalid Coliseum
    4 Barbarian Ring
    4 Volcanic Island

// Creatures
    2 Master Transmuter
    4 Goblin Welder
    2 Karn, Silver Golem

// Spells
    3 Crucible of Worlds
    4 Chalice of the Void
    4 Sphere of Resistance
    3 Smokestack
    1 Mox Sapphire
    1 Trinisphere
    1 Sol Ring
    1 Mox Ruby
    1 Black Lotus
    1 Mana Crypt
    1 Mana Vault
    1 Mox Emerald
    1 Mox Jet
    1 Mox Pearl
    1 Ancestral Recall
    1 Time Walk
    1 Tinker

Uba Stax is good at fighting The Rebuild Effect because if they accidentally draw into it under uba before they are in a position to make use of it then they are screwed, and if you get them under uba lock then they are screwed anyway.

The biggest problem with the RB uba stax is that it isn't always easy to get threshold.  Master transmuter does create the uba lock and a one sided smokestack pretty handily by herself though.  Hopefully this example plus Vroman's recent return to the forums can get peoples juices flowing on how to improve the current state of Stax in general.

[Anusien]

Smokestack is interesting in that it may shut down the infinite turn plan.  I think In the Eye of Chaos may be an excellent solution since it prevents them from laying back on basic Islands casting draw spells.

[wiley]

Other interesting things to note for combating infinite turns:

Tangle wire can have an effect for a very short amount of time, keeping them from their combo, but other than that does very little.
Smokestack does just as you said.
Ensnaring bridge will stop dsc as well as the animated moxen, so if you have managed to force them into blowing their bounce/artifact kill (which is possible for all but soly's build from what I have seen) then it is also an effective counter.
Possessed Portal will make it so they have to answer it prior to going off.


Not all of these are good options, but sometimes all you need is time.

[Grand Inquisitor]

note for combating infinite turns

Are you talking about decks that abuse this mechanism or actually deaing with the vault recursion plan when it happens?

If the latter, then your suggestions are questionable.

Tangle wire

If they have the mana to assemble the combo, Wire does nothing, unless they only play six permanents and one win condition in their deck.

Smokestack

I've never had an issue maintaining permanents for smokestack/finding removal while taking infinite turns.  If it's ramped to 2, then you may be on to something, but I wouldn't say this is a particularly likely event, since it's often most tactical to keep the smokestack at 1 while you're trying to gain board position and this leaves them the opportunity to surprise you with vault/key.  Stack is especially useless if they're comboing with Tez, since they can fetch voltaic key and then go get artifact accelerants to feed smokestack until they find removal.

Ensnaring bridge

Does nothing unless they have no way to remove it in their entire deck.

Possessed Portal

Now this is cooking with gas.  This card makes me almost want to like the transmuter decks out there packing it.


I think the best options for the vault/key combo are null rod and ancient grudge.

As for the topic, the rebuild effect, this is much more difficult.  Reb is certainly efficient, but it doesn't play well with the overall strategy of shop decks maximizing their mana to lay down threats.  This sounds like cold comfort, but I think the real trick is to design the deck correctly with the right lock pieces.  I see so many lists that have what I think are extraneous lock components.  A fourth crucible that isn't needed, too many sphere effects, etc.  Getting the right mix of mana denial is the most effective avenue for preventing a well timed rebuild in my experience.

[wiley]

All were soft answers as opposed to grudge and null rod.  The wire was the only one put up there to stall the opponent from getting to the combo.

With smokestack, you are often taking the extreme attrition war route, simply trying to find null rod.  This means a smokestack on 2 isn't that rare, especially if you see a key or vault or tez.  With bridge, I explained that it would only be good if you have already forced them to use up their ways to remove it through attrition wars.  Weak yes, but the card itself has other applications before the combo ever hits.  Portal is my favorite, and even got me looking back into cerebral assassin until I found it was too slow for a tez deck that went balls to the wall combo.

Portal was something I wanted to try for a while with 4 welder 4 transmuter.dec for a while.  The base cost when you don't have one of those online is pretty prohibitive though.

The problem with cutting a crucible is that you want to see one in your top 8 cards so you can attempt a waste lock as soon as possible.  Waste lock, especially when backed by null rod (another card that should be a 4 of) or a sphere effect, is your best mana denial element.  Not to mention it protects your mana base, which can be crucial in the mirror and in the fish match ups.

[nataz]

I like the suggestion of In the Eye of Chaos. I've wanted to make a blue based stax deck for a while, and that is one of the reasons why (Master T being another). Another option for a 5-c list could be hand disruption effects. A singleton mindtwist, or perhaps a suite of duress/thoughtseize? I like both of those over duress from a theory standpoint since they are proactive in dealing with threats, as opposed to trying to fight on the stack. 

Perhaps choke combined with tangle wire? Enchantments in general are obv. good against rebuild.

[Grand Inquisitor]

hand disruption effects

As broken as Mishra's Workshop is, non-blue/restricted cards simply aren't as good at mana creation and resource conversion.  This seems irrelevant, but it's actually what prison is facing the whole way.  You need things that work together, not in parallel.  Hand disruption in combination with mana denial spreads your efforts too thin, IMO.

[Tha Gunslinga]

or perhaps a suite of duress/thoughtseize?

I'd stay away from anything that costs 1 aside from Welder and the ridiculous bombs like Recall, on the basis that Chalice at 1 is one of your strongest plays.