[report] 5c stax first place @ Mol

[punki]

short report:


first the list for this tournament:

5mox
lotus
manacrypt, vault, sol ring
4 shop
4 waste
1 stripmine
1 tolarian
4 city brass
3 gemstone mine
1 mox opal

1 bazaar of baghdad

4 welder
1 sylvok replica
1 sundering titan
2 wurmcoil engine
1 triskellion

1 Balance
2 ancient grudge
demonic
1 crop rotation
vampiric
ancestral
tinker
4 tangle wire
4 smokestack
Trini
3 sphere resistance
3 crucible

SB
3 sylvok replica
4 REB
2 Pithing needle
1 ancient grudge
2 T crypt
3 relic progenitus

Round one against MUD 1-2
I win the first one on double welder, tangle wire and smokestack
The second game he goes nuts with a dragon and some golems. The tird game I lose to a topdecked ensanring bridge that keeps my wurmcoil at bay. Also the relics he boarded in prevented me of executing my wastelock plan and my welder tricks. I eventually lose when he gets metalworker and staf of domination online.

Round 2 against 5C UBAstax 2-0
I win game one because I'm just better at playing with ubamask than he is. He didn't know that if I weld out his Ubamask in his drawstep, he doesn't get to cast anything anymore  I eventualy win on wurmcoil and a lot of tokens. Game 2 he gets double welder against my wurmcoil. I tutor a welder of my own and togeher with wurmcoil and all the tokens he gets me, his welderscan't do anything.

Round 3 against monored burn 2-0
He gets me down to 8 life, wurmcoil gets me back to a healthy lifetotal and tangles, spheres and smokestack take over the game. Game 2 I get a first turn striplock and a wurmcoil.

Round 4 against red green beats 2-0
I win both games in 10 minutes. wastelock and tanglewires prevent him from doing anything relevant.

Round 5 ID

Top 8
round one against MUD with prototype portal 2-0
game one i clean up his permanents and drop a sphere, game 2 welder, tangle smokestack and crucible prevent him gettng into th game. ANcient grudges make sure I stay on top.

Rround 2 again against the monored burn deck. Again he doesn't do anytging against an early wurmcoil engin. G2 he gets to cast a critter, I play trini, tangle and a smokestack and crucible so he scoops them up

Finals against 3 color gush storm with confidants. We decide to split and play for first place.
Game 1 an early necro gives him the game, g2 some spheres prevent him from winning and game 3 he mulls to 4 cards, tries an energy flys, I redblast it and a few turns later he scoops the up.

[Odd mutation]

Proficiat!

[Eye_of_the_Beholder]

Proficiat , very nice result !

[forcethewill]

Are main ancient grudges necessary? A d the replica doesn't seem very optimal.

[punki]

I play in a heavy stax meta. Besides that the grudges take care of null rods, have destroyed time vaults where I would have been dead in the water wihout them. Even random aggro decks if they do not run null rod, run some kind of equipment. So the card is never dead. Especialy against mud I need to get rid of chalice@1 and first turn metalworkers also spell doom for 5c stax.

The maindeck replica is somewhat strange and not extremely usefull, but in a stax meta and a lot of players packing energy fluxes I want 4 between maindeck and sideboard, I only had room for 3 in the SB so I put one maindeck. I have never regretted running the replica because he's a great blocker against random aggro and fish, is great removal against mud: not affected by golem or thorn, castable off a shop and gives me an answer if they have chalice @1 and @2
At the moment oath is not a very big deal, but some combo decks still want an oath SB plan against shops and it also gets rid of all sorts of other enchantments like serenity and energy flux like I mentioned before. And against Ichorid it sacrifices to remove bridges and all sorts of pesky leylines (especially leyline of sanctity because I want relics and crypts in SB against ichorid.)

Oh and the little critter also takes out sphinx of the steel wind

[Odd mutation]

Monored burn x 2 ??
RG Beats ??

Not the most challenging tournament or am I mistaken?

[bb-g]

Monored burn x 2 ??
RG Beats ??

Not the most challenging tournament or am I mistaken?

Think wat you like, but I lost to that **** of a deck

[TheShop]

I love these reports...keep it up, my meta looked a lot like this while it existed.  My only thoughts are these:

When I played 5c in my similar environment I dropped some real cards and MD'd 4 razormane masticores (it was 2005...).  They were great and my aggroy build ate the scrubs up...until one day random stranger shows up with a combo deck and we meet at the top table.  Razormane not good vs combo.  Watch yourself with the wurmcoils and such...you can randomly lose to good people because you built for the Swiss.

[bb-g]

Watch yourself with the wurmcoils and such...you can randomly lose to good people because you built for the Swiss.

Actually those Wurmcoils are very good agains't combo due to it's lifelink ability. Each attack means 3 extra storm required..

[Delha]

Actually those Wurmcoils are very good agains't combo due to it's lifelink ability. Each attack means 3 extra storm required..

How quickly do you resolve a Wurmcoil on average?

[punki]

Actually the meta (about 20 players) was a lot of full powered stax and MUD decks, a few combo, fish and ichorid. The monored burn and RG beats decks were metagamed against all the shop decks that show up in Mol. And they did do very well. Without the wurmcoil I would have been toast.

I understand the reasoning behind the razormane, I used to run it myself, but it always gets destroyed before it does anything (no chalices to protect it from removal in my deck). The main reason I like wurmcoil because they almost can not get rid of it and the life you gain gives you time to clear their board with smokestacks and drop one of the few spheres in this deck.

I can usually drop or tinker up a wurmcoil within the first three turns. What I did a lot that day was vamp for the wurmcoil, bazaar it into the graveyard and weld it in. And like BB said, it's very relevant against combo. I prefer the wurmcoil in most cases even more than sundering titan. Titan doesn't do anything if they do not crack their fetch and they usually only need 1 land together with some sandbagged moxes to go off against this deck.  Because I do not run a lot of spheres and no chalices, combo is not a very good matchup. Usually I run 3-4 mindbreak trap together with the red blasts to fight them. But before the tournament I noticed a lot of stax and very few combo so I switched the traps for 2 needles and an ancient grudge.

I have been playing stax for years now and I finally found a deck that plays completely different from all the other builds I've used (MUD, Ws combo UBA stax, monored aggro shops, ...) Because usually stax wants to start the game and be proactive in dropping spheres and such to lock the opponent. Problem is that against an unknown opponent the lockpieces can start to work against you (As in shop sphere go, they waste the shop and as I have seen numerous times your deck starts to laugh at you by not giving you any of the other 20+ manasources in your deck. It not only happens to me, I tend to finfish my rounds very quickly with this deck and see a lot of stax and mud players strugling with that problem)
Also 'The Rule' with stax is: no first turn play => mulligan. This deck does not have that.

In the last three tournaments I allmost always lost the die roll, started a lot of games without a first turn play that impacted the game and still won with ease. I even won games where I started with a lot of mana without playing  any other spells (like shop, mox, mox, your turn) I can play this build reactive in stead of proactive. I even lose most games where I start with a sphere t1 and a sphere t2.

Lastly I love how this deck plays against the mirror. Last tournaments I never gfot to play the mirror, but this tournament I finally got to test it and I loved it. They keep drawing dead cards and have to sideboard suboptimal cards just to get rid of the dead cards in their deck, while I can get out the few spheres for even more artifact removal. But a fast metalworker can spell sudden doom and relic is an anoying sideboard card.

[Odd mutation]

I love Wurmcoil engine! I ordered my set together with my set of Hellkites. I realized that the lifelink actually could be very important in several matchups and it's not easy to kill. They're also amazing with Smokestack and Welder!

Robrecht

[TheShop]

A few notes of interest-
1) I was not advocating razormane.
2) this list is like 3 cards different than Changs championship list
3) wurmcoil does not stop the opponent from taking infinite turns and dies to the tinker target of choice: sphinx

That said- in your meta, things change completely and running more vanilla aggro sounds like a good idea...but really you are just running different creatures and nearly equal # of them than several prior 5 color lists.

[punki]

Personally I think the real star for 5cc stax is sylvok replica. It takes care of so many things I used to have trouble with (and also sphinx).

I don't know Changs list, I'll try to find it (but a link is certainly appreciated)

For the moment I'm just trying to figure out if I'm on a lucky streak or if I somehow stumbled on a decent deck despite the fact that it looks really bad on paper.
I'm usually not that much of a forum reader or poster. The only threads I really used to follow was the jester's about Ubastax because I loved that deck. I never really payed much attention to mud of 5c lists

I'm also wondering if anyone sees potential in the liquimetal coating because paired with ancient grudge, shaman, welder and the sylvok replica it gives you the opportunity to destroy any pemanent. And the cards that go with it are almost never dead draws and fit very well in a stax shell. It also makes mox opal more playable.
But the coating doesn't do much in the combo matchup or in the mirror (although all the maindeck artifact removal is great in mirro matches so I would accept the 4 dead cards)

[serracollector]

I like the synergy of balance and Wurmcoil as well.  Nicely done.  And remember Sylvok, Trike (with welder in play) and balance can all take out sphinx.  Wurmcoil is easy castable, and hard to kill, and any color.

[Bomberman!]

In the last three tournaments I allmost always lost the die roll, started a lot of games without a first turn play that impacted the game and still won with ease. I even won games where I started with a lot of mana without playing  any other spells (like shop, mox, mox, your turn) I can play this build reactive in stead of proactive. I even lose most games where I start with a sphere t1 and a sphere t2.

First let me say...  I stumbled on 5c stax 4 years ago and one a really important tournament... from that day on i fell in love with the deck making numerous top 8...love your approach with the deck, i would maybe cut the main ancient's for 2 shaman.. just my take
 Anyway.. can't agree with you more! i think 5c stax is the only stax deck that even if it goes second or does not drop a huge threat on turn one.. can still win a game.

[beder]

Personally I think the real star for 5cc stax is sylvok replica. It takes care of so many things I used to have trouble with (and also sphinx).
I'm also wondering if anyone sees potential in the liquimetal coating because paired with ancient grudge, shaman, welder and the sylvok replica it gives you the opportunity to destroy any pemanent. And the cards that go with it are almost never dead draws and fit very well in a stax shell. It also makes mox opal more playable.
But the coating doesn't do much in the combo matchup or in the mirror (although all the maindeck artifact removal is great in mirro matches so I would accept the 4 dead cards)

I recently tried to put liquidmetal coating in a Red Shop build, in place of wasteland/strip+crucible. The package was the following :
- 0 chalice,
- 0 null rod,
- 0 waste,
- 0 crucible,
- 1 strip
- 4 shaman
- 4 Karn
- 4 liquidmetal

I felt like using this package in order to destroy opponent land (and at the same time destroy moxes) was an interesting approach. It replaced efficently the "wasteland and other mana denial component" tactic, delivering the same effect, but allowing you yo use your land drop for real lands which helps you to deploy your game plan.

I didn't try ancient grudge here, but I guess it could also viable choice replacing some karns or some shaman.

For your information, here is the build which I tested (not a 5C shop build)

// Liquid Red Shop
    1 Tolarian Academy
    2 Ancient Tomb
    4 Mishra's Workshop
    4 Great Furnace
    4 Mountain

// Creatures
    4 Gorilla Shaman
    4 Goblin Welder
    4 Magus of the Moon
    4 Karn, Silver Golem

// Spells
    3 Mox Opal
    1 Black Lotus
    1 Mox Ruby
    1 Mox Emerald
    1 Mox Jet
    1 Mox Pearl
    1 Mox Sapphire
    1 Mana Vault
    1 Mana Crypt
    1 Sol Ring

    4 Liquimetal Coating

    1 Trinisphere
    4 Sphere of Resistance

    4 Tangle Wire
    4 Smokestack