I'm gonna have to agree with Janky here, I have no idea how you're casting bargain or necro, and Confidant and Bazaar (although maybe not a 4 of) seems like the best options atm. There have got to be some other, underutalized draw spells for stax to use, however, and I would like to see if some can't be dredged up.
Having played stax, you want to lock down your opponant turn 1/2, then perpetuate that lock through a consistant stream of cards. An erratic burst doesn't neccessarilly seem that great.
Furthermore, stax can have serrious problems even casting things like iteoc. Your own lock cards makes your spells cost more, things that aren't artifacts aren't easy to land. Karn is an artifact, thats easy to drop. A 6 mana card that I can't use shop on, that is only powerful if played within the first few turns seems... unrealistic. Maybe its not, I'll test it, haven't ever really considered it, but you don't run things like ritual that make necro and bargain so easy for combo to drop.
umm bargain and necro in stax????!??!?!?!????? Im not even going to go there I dont think.
of note....Tanglewire isnt in and of itself a "lock" and can often (usually unless in tandem with another "lock") be played through/around
however, I do find a lot of value in wire in a fish heavy meta for sure.
One thing players always overlook with a deck like stax is that the deck already has built in "draw" Every time you drop a lock piece early you are getting virtual time walks which act as a sort of psuedo draw engine. This is why a lot of Stax decks in the past (pre vroman uba stax era) worked more on optimizing top decking ability rather than focusing on sheer card drawing power. Perhaps this isnt as viable any longer....however.....I believe this should be re-examined if you are to actually work on Stax coming back, I dont at all knock vroman for coming up with a working uba mask list...but I do feel that when he did a lot of the proper focus of "normal" stax lists was lost...this problem was further complicated when that jesters cap nonsense came out and even more with poorly thought out arguments about smokestack being bad.
So the long and the short of it is this...Go back, from the start (id say starting with kevin crons list just before trinisphere got restricted) and try to identify what made various decks work and why. THEN take those principles and work them into a deck shaped for the current meta with perhaps some newer cards. The focus has been lost by most people and it needs to be regained before any real work can be done on the deck.
Clearly mono white stax should be looked at as well so we can utilize angels as a quick win vs fish in that matchup as well.
this problem was further complicated when that jesters cap nonsense came out and even more with poorly thought out arguments about smokestack being bad.
When people started running Jester's Cap and questioned Smokestack that was innovation, and it made Stax better not worse. Perhaps we should look into the past some for ideas, but you can't discount modern Stax builds on a whim.
As for innovating stax now some things to consider are, Armgeddon, Nether Void, Mycosynth Lattic+Null Rod and of course Fish based Stax.
Clearly mono white stax should be looked at as well so we can utilize angels as a quick win vs fish in that matchup as well.
The proper name is "Serra Stax", and that is already an established and dominating archtype, as made apparent by my sig.
The format is much faster than it once was, when stax initially was established. It isn't even unusual for a match to only last 6 or 7 turns, really.
To that end, Stax namesake card has become a misguided rage with suspend. Granted, it can lock an opponant out, but it is slow and cumbersome in a meta that is getting faster and faster and more and more effecient.
Looking to the past for ideas, Winter Orb seems interesting to me. Winter Orb + Tabernacle does a number on both fish and completely shuts off etw. Running Monkey or Karn in conjunction allows it to be a one-sided effect.
Stax, as an archtype, seeks to use its robust mana to deny every aspect that accelerates "fast" decks to the format defining speed they have reached.
"Good" decks thrive on the following:
Fast mana, from moxen, rituals, etc, where output exceedes imput on a mana bases.
Robust and plentiful search meathods to get out those format-defning, but restricted cards.
Powerful and varied tool boxes, with strong card drawing and engines within.
To this end, things like cap are quite powerful at denying the search that is so employed by many "good" decks, and I believe that Mindcensor may do that better, while adding a little of that lacking element of speed.
Mindcensor serves double duty by denying the stax-preventative measures of "good" decks through the robust reliance on fetches within the mana base.
The fact that Mindcensor shuts off the following is undeniable:
Fetches, all Tutors, Intuition, Gifts, Tinker, etc.
To this end, it provides a variety of powerful roles at instant speed, allowing it to be used even as a counterspell.
Another spell I would like to try is Bitter Ordeal. Again, 3 non-artifact mana is rough, however it is an ideal card in a stax base. A single wasteland with this is a storm of 3, which instantly beats a majority of decks in the format.
Aside from that, cost increasers are more powerful than ever. Decks are running less and less "solid" mana sources again, which means that through a combination of denying these (wastes, tangle wires, censor, w/e we can think of) and a plethora of cost increasers, many "good" decks will be out of the game. I believe that 4 Sphere, 1 3sphere, and at least one iteoc are musts atm.
Perhaps winter orb should be tried again, considering it is incredibly strong with tangle wire, etc, at shutting down mana bases.
From there, it is simply a matter of the perpetuation of the above locks, with are significantly more temporary than stax has historically been.
Although Latice seems a bit slow for my tastes, it warrents some exploration. Armageddon and Nether Void, esspecially the prior, seem quite strong actually. Tangle Wire and Orb force opponants to play more and more land, in an attempt to overwhelm those lock elements. Wait until he is about to break free and drop an armageddon, and the game is likely over.
Also Serra Angel, because Serra Stax is the greatest deck of all time.
When people started running Jester's Cap and questioned Smokestack that was innovation, and it made Stax better not worse
I disagree with you pretty much completely...maybe I shouldnt say "worse" though, maybe I should say these things make the deck much less focused.
Jesters Cap was a good meta call but completely loses the focus of what Stax is supposed to be doing..this is a fact, Cap is now almost totally useless and while the innovation was fine for a handful of tournaments it got a lot of people away from the point of Stax.
Removing Smokestack was also not really an inovation as people had been running that "staxless stax" build for some time under various other names such as 7/10 split and Gilded Claw already and the argument simply made for discussion and innovation on a completely different deck and not stax at all. The focus completely changes at that point and ceases to be Stax in any real form other than having a few slow down pieces and workshops. Beyond that much earlier people like Eric Miller and some others at the first few SCG p9 tourneys had been running a 5c"stax" list that had -4 smokies and +4 Juggernaughts...so the idea is hardly new, but was put away after a bit in favor of more "regular" stax in much the same way stax lists always do.
Is the format much harder for Stax? Maybe it is..but this seems to happen to stax (almost in the way dragon is so off and on good) People started to get away from more traditional stax lists when Uba Stax came out...people stopped worked on tinkering with their 5cStax and CronStax lists and tried working on Uba Mask like stuff....Youll notice at that time with the exception of Vroman Stax was doing terribly...until Roland Chang played a much more traditional version of 5cStax and won worlds with it, his list was much more true to the original trinistax lists (obv minus 3 trinis) but it got back the focus of Stax...Stax continued to do fine from this point until the Jesters Cap deck (which was a good meta call...) and then shortly thereafter the staxless stax thing...since then nearly all focus on what Stax was meant to do has been lost to various "neat" options.
I am not saying the deck you will come up with wont be different than older versions...I am simply saying that IMO, for you guys to be successful with making something work, you really need to start from earlier builds before the "neat" stuff and identify why stax actually works and how it works. Start simple then add your meta friendly bombs like Cap (which probably is a bad option now)
I am not saying we should run old school cron stax from 2.5 years ago...anything but. I am simply saying you all should really step back and work from the beggining with several things in mind.
If you dont want to do that, and you want to immediatly start with no Smokestack and you want to run cards like jesters cap that arent a lock in any way then you might as well stop posting in the Stax forum and start something new up about workshop aggro or a new workshop control deck that ISNT stax. As glix points out you now have a bunch of temporary (soft) "locks" now as apposed to anything signifigant that might stick around.
Is the format much harder for Stax? Maybe it is..but this seems to happen to stax (almost in the way dragon is so off and on good) People started to get away from more traditional stax lists when Uba Stax came out...people stopped worked on tinkering with their 5cStax and CronStax lists and tried working on Uba Mask like stuff....Youll notice at that time with the exception of Vroman Stax was doing terribly...until Roland Chang played a much more traditional version of 5cStax and won worlds with it, his list was much more true to the original trinistax lists (obv minus 3 trinis) but it got back the focus of Stax...Stax continued to do fine from this point until the Jesters Cap deck (which was a good meta call...) and then shortly thereafter the staxless stax thing...since then nearly all focus on what Stax was meant to do has been lost to various "neat" options.
People stopped playing 5c Stax because it simply wasn't performing. A teamate of mine who plays Stax exclusively, played 5c Stax for several months and the deck was just terrible in a modern meta. You keep talking about this untangible concept of "focus". What exactly makes current stax builds less focused then old builds and is being more focused even better? If we just get stuck with past notions of Stax then we will be unable to innovate it.
You are not understanding what I am saying..blinding yourself to your perception of me saying older is better, which I am not saying.
Stax has gone through this at least 2 or 3 times in the past. The deck stops working for one reason or another. What I state as fact is that each time this happens the build that brings Stax back is much more akin to older versions of stax (with some updated changes..like chang running bazaar or whatever other small change you want to toss in there)
What I see all to often is people cramming in all the changes without really analyzing why.
Saying we need to move forward with stax by taking out stax and adding soft locks that may or may not be good along with card draw that may or may not be good is not a good way to build decks or innovate. If you cannot properly identify what made those changes good in the first place then you cannot move forward. Why you do not see this is beyond me.
The problem comes when somebody does well with a more obscure version of the deck and everybody flocks to that idea....Jesters Cap was a great meta choice at the time and was able to be succesful for a brief time. Now Cap is probably sub par by a good degree, yet people build new ideas for stax from the jesters cap lists and not from where the jesters cap list drew its ideas from.
My main point is that if you want to run a deck that doesnt have smokestack in it, and that is largely built around aggro based tempo and soft locks, then what we are talking about is NOT stax and doesnt belong in this thread.
I am also NOT saying that you need to run 5cStax..it DID stop performing for a reason. But you still need to start from the basic stax list if you want to figure out why and what the proper (and not just popular) changes need to be.
What makes a lot of Stax builds less focused (and one of the primary reasons smokestack is seen as so bad) is that people have moved almost completely away from establishing a hard lock with the deck. Cards like Dark Confidant and Null Rod and Jesters Cap do not help establish the same sort of hard lock that cards like Chalice of the Void, Sphere of Resistance and In the Eye of Chaos do. If you really want to push the envelope you can read up on Kevin Cron's theories on the deck and think about goblin welder and tanglewire being terrible ways to establish locks that perpetuate the usage of Smokestack. The focus gets lost when you start having a deck that wants to draw cards and play one artifact that gets you some cards out of the opponents library and establish soft locks. Stax isnt really good at doing all of that. Perhaps you can get away with one of the above, this is why Jesters Cap builds were successful for a little bit, and why Uba Mask with its card advantage engine can get away with some soft locks. The problem comes when people try to do all of this stuff. Stax just isnt able to support it. This is what I mean by losing focus. Stax was initially focused on spitting out a few hard lock pieces and shutting the game down, and this was really its entire goal.
Is focused even better? I am not 100% sure, but certainly there has been a general lack of focus in the last year or so regarding the deck IMO. The only way to know for sure is if you actually step back and try to focus it rather than just assuming its bad for whatever reason you are assuming its bad. Beyond that there are few decks in other archytypes that arent focused on their goal (whatever that goal might be) Why should stax be any different in coming up with a focus.
The last point (which honestly isnt meant to be rude) is that perhaps your friend was either A: not really that skilled at the deck (time playing doesnt mean hes playing optimally) and B: maybe his build was just poor or improperly metagamed...metagaming is amazingly important with stax. And on that note what is your meta? When a meta is broadly arranged with a good amount of several distinct deck types (like say a format with 1/3 fish, 1/3 gifts 1/4 bomberman 1/4 something else) Stax will have a hard time. This is somethat that is faily well established, so maybe the timing is just not great for the deck. If you can goto a tournament and be fairly sure that around half the field is one thing, and much of the other half is another (say an environment with like CS, Gifts and tendrils combo making up a large majority of the field) then stax can be built with those decks in mind and mainly only has to worry about a bad matchup maybe the first round. So to really understand why your friend was failing so badly you need to give us a better idea of what decks are floating around your meta and whatever other info you might have. But maybe people stopped playing stax because they werent performing. Dont get pissy at me about that statement, but its happened with stax before. (I mean, nobody really but kevin cron and a small small handful played stax for a bit, and until Chang had won worlds nobody had been playing stax that much either except Uba Stax lists and even then really only vroman and a few others would put up any results)
So you can be all aggro with me about not wanting to look back at what we know worked, but thats your call..I am just offering advice on how to approach this issue (and maybe you are missing the point that I DO think that changes need to be made, I just feel that to understand those choices we need to step back a bit to a build that consistantly performed rather than current lists whos performance is spotty at best)
Anyways, im gonna bow out of the conversation before it gets ugly over nothing.
As someone who almost exclusively pilots The Jester, care to explain why Jester's Cap is suboptimal or a bad meta call right now? I'm genuinely interested. From my point of view, Cap activation still ends the game vs Gifts Control, Ritual Gifts, Drain Tendrils, and Long. It still heavily cripples Stax, while still significantly damaging Fish, Bomberman, and Control Slaver.
Cap on its own is not really very good against fish and ichorid. "significantly damaging" is a relative term in that relitavly speaking a lot of cards can been seen to hurt fish in one way or another, but primarily I dont think fish really cares much if you cap em. Same can be said of Bomberman of course, you might disrupt their combo, but they will be playing the aggro role against you anyways.
From my point of view, Cap activation still ends the game vs Gifts Control, Ritual Gifts, Drain Tendrils, and Long. It still heavily cripples Stax, while still significantly damaging Fish, Bomberman, and Control Slaver.
Then why isnt The Jester a major factor anywhere?
Beyond that Cap activation doesnt always end the game against the decks you listed especially with some of the updated lists (when compared to the original release of the Cap decks) And the fact that they can counter your artifact and can combo you out before you even get a chance if you play for an early cap. I am not really saying a cap based deck cannot work but just cramming Jesters Cap in a Stax frame is not the best way of going about things IMO. (although I havnt seen much in the way of good results with it for some time...dont get me wrong emidln, but if you can guide me to your deck doing well anywhere on any sort of consistant basis recently ((or even since the short period after evenpence did well with the deck)) please let me know, I will apologize if you show me the error of my ways)
The point I was trying to make (maybe im just bad at typing out what im trying to say, because these things seem obvious to me) is that Jesters Cap does nothing to perpetuate the point of Stax. I am speaking more in terms of the individual card itself (maybe if you guys have improoved the deck to better abuse and power out cap we would be talking..but this again would be not stax)
You guys are failing to get my point in that nothing you are talking about is Stax...If you want to talk about better "The Jester" decks or newer "staxless stax aka workshop aggro aka gilded claw" lists then by all means do so, but these decks arent really stax.
God..I get drawn in even after I say im not going to talk about it any longer, heh.
Fish is still called fish because the decks still do exactly the same thing they initially set out to do right? Even though they do not have merfolk they still are tempo based aggro control decks just with better creatures now adays then the old school picks.
Workshop aggro or the jester in my mind, set out on a completely different goal than what is generally thought of as "Stax" this sets the decks apart and should be completely seperate discussions. IF and only if you want to actually bring STAX back then you need to get away from these major changes in focus (by all means work on those other things if that is what you like to do and you feel that they work) But please dont confuse these seperate builds.
Whenever people want to actually start working on a Stax list in the stax thread, please let me know ill be interested in it, but if you guys want to keep going over shop aggro or get hurt over me "dissing" their pet deck then there is no reason to even continue this thread on the forums. I do agree that maybe Stax just doesnt work any longer...maybe we need to get on the topic of those other decks, but this is not the place, if Stax is dead let the Stax thread go the same way.
Jesters Cap was a good meta call but completely loses the focus of what Stax is supposed to be doing..this is a fact, Cap is now almost totally useless and while the innovation was fine for a handful of tournaments it got a lot of people away from the point of Stax.
This paragraph doesn't make sense to me. Cap is now almost totally useless? It should be just the opposite - we have increased incidence of decks (Long variants and Gifts variants) that can be beaten by this single card. And the "losing focus" comment is trumped by the simple idea that you're playing a card that is designed to win the game against the arguably strongest archetypes; that Cap isn't a lock piece is irrelevant if it is winning you the game outright. On a final note, Stax can be characterized by "resource denial". Jester's Cap certainly contributes to that, even when it isn't winning the game outright. Therefore, I would view any Cap builds as Stax builds and these are fair game for discussion in this thread.
Since the upcoming Waterbury is going to be full of Gro (or at least gush/brainstorm decks) do you guys agree with me that Chains is probably a smart card to main? Well, that and ITEOC counters gush all day long. If you drop a Turn 1 Chains, then Turn 2 ITEOC, Gro is screwed, Bomberman is going to be hurtin', and if Hulk Flash doesn't go off early enough, they might as well scoop.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"He says he's always loved the work of Beethoven, and often thinks of him as a true O.G" 50 Cent's thoughts on Classical Music Check out the H/W List playa: http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=80563 Member of the Syndicate
Syndicate Members:5
My AIM is Satriani744 (shocker, right?;))
It's a great way to get in touch with me for trades, or just chattin'. Just don't stalk me please.
You must also keep Ichorid in mind.
Along with the other decks in the format.
I agree that those are good cards, hell run them main if you think it is worth it.
But I would run at least 1 platinum angel main. And maybe even a tormod's crypt.
Combo and control decks like UrPhid and Landstill abosutely wreck this deck. Flash beats it, if it goes off.
Pure Control does have a good stax matchup, but remember, since the restriction of gifts, control has gone done significantly in popularity. Certain Combo decks cannot handle 4x Wasteland, 1x Strip Mine, 1x Trinisphere, 1x Sphere of Resistence, IE Grim Long (Pitch Long can maybe overcome it if they have extra cards to pitch to force). Flash beats a lot of decks by just "going off". Not many decks can handle flash + FoW+ Pact of Negation.
But the decks worst matchup is obviously fish. Stax has an incredibly difficult time dealing with critters. That is why people used Empty the Warrens, and why Bird***** with null rod and chalice main spells game over for stax. Especially UBW fish. That deck gives stax fits. 5 strip mines, Force, Duress, disruptive creatures, and Seal of Cleansing coming out of the side. Nice. Deck.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"He says he's always loved the work of Beethoven, and often thinks of him as a true O.G" 50 Cent's thoughts on Classical Music Check out the H/W List playa: http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=80563 Member of the Syndicate
Syndicate Members:5
My AIM is Satriani744 (shocker, right?;))
It's a great way to get in touch with me for trades, or just chattin'. Just don't stalk me please.
Pure Control does have a good stax matchup, but remember, since the restriction of gifts, control has gone done significantly in popularity. Certain Combo decks cannot handle 4x Wasteland, 1x Strip Mine, 1x Trinisphere, 1x Sphere of Resistence, IE Grim Long (Pitch Long can maybe overcome it if they have extra cards to pitch to force). Flash beats a lot of decks by just "going off". Not many decks can handle flash + FoW+ Pact of Negation.
But the decks worst matchup is obviously fish. Stax has an incredibly difficult time dealing with critters. That is why people used Empty the Warrens, and why Bird***** with null rod and chalice main spells game over for stax. Especially UBW fish. That deck gives stax fits. 5 strip mines, Force, Duress, disruptive creatures, and Seal of Cleansing coming out of the side. Nice. Deck.
Ok so I have decided to pick up stax again and play it.
You are right, stax has some problems dealing with critters. BUT in my playing, I have never really had any problems with fish.
Crucible is key in the match. Your tutors generally fetch Mishra's Factory or B-ring.
fish is a hard match up, but they can NOT deal with few things from Stax.
1) The lock. IF you can drop a fast enough lock, they wont come back. They cant play more permanents than you, and they cant counter everything you play.
2) Their own mana base pretty much owns them.
3) Big dudes. You drop Trike on them or Titan, and they really don't have much outs(yea Swords to PLowshare, but fish doesnt run them that much.)
4) Resolve Crucible. It should be GG. You recure Factory for infinite blocks, you B-Ring all their dudes, you wreck their manas, its really hard for Fish to come back. Resolving Crucible creates one of the biggest advantage over them that you have.
They do bring in hate against you.
But I have played through double energy flux+Kataki.
So you can DEFINETLY play through their hate. PM me if you wanna know how i did it =P
You are right, stax has some problems dealing with critters. BUT in my playing, I have never really had any problems with fish.
What about Crumbling Sanctuary as a possible response to really fast critters? It's got serious synergy with welder, and gives you 60-70 life instead of 20.
I don't see the synergy in crumbling sanctuary, and for that kind of effect ensnaring bridge seems superior.
As for the archetype, fish shouldn't be a problem, and traditionally, fish isn't supposed to have a good stax matchup so I don't see why you are worried about that.
What I would be worried about is stuff like oath and flash, both of which are gaining in popularity and both of which wreck you on principle, in an average game.
The source of the dilemma comes from the variants of stax which are more aggressively oriented taking precedent. I fail to see the appeal of returning to a lock based strategy. A dead opponant is better than a contained one. Furthermore, by running efficient beats and combo wins you fairly directly negate the problem of being outclassed by savannah lions.
Fish shouldn't really be a problem, not compared to the aforementioned decks, or a slew of other decks. Stuff like bomberman is going to wreck you with an incredibly stable mana based coupled with the holy grail of anti-stax, drain. Oath is typically going to beat you simply because it just needs to drop an oath and you're going to have difficulty dealing with it. Flash is even worse, since they don't even need to wait for an orchard and their win just immediately ends the game. And don't even get started on Ichorid. Now, any one of these decks independently would not be too much of a hassle to deal with, the tools are their. The problem is that all of these decks exist, and you have to deal with a slew of hate directed, not exactly at you, but at aggro stax variants. All of this the needs to be considered in the lense that aggro stax variants typically deal with these problems more effectively.
The real question, therefore, is why run a slower less capable version of a deck? The problem stax has always had, traditionally, was lack of a clock. That, in recent years, has been solved, so why strip it away?
Stax does lack a clock, but I feel like the version of stax that I am playing is still pretty good.
A friend of mine split in the finals of a small tournament with the deck.
The deck pretty much is like this:
The maindeck beats up on some blue-based control pretty well. Game 2, you just bring in the hate.
Also, you have the option of boarding in Anti-aggro. With access to 3 duplicants and a darkblast between main and sideboards, it can beat aggro.
Shop aggro, you have Grudges to back you up.
And the deck beats up on combo as well.
The hard matchups are still Oath, Flash(to some degree), some aggro decks, and Any deck with basics.
Oath- If you drop spheres or In the eyes you can pull out the win. But if they get an Oath going, your screwed. Post board, you have rays, J-caps, and REBs to deal with Tyrants and such.
Flash- Drop spheres and hope. After board, the game becomes Leyline + Chalice + Sphere and you basically win. Not saying you do all the time, it is still a tough match. But in my testing, I start with leyline and then drop sphere, it can be GG soon.
Aggro- Pre-board, find Dupe + Welder, or Trike + Welder and hope. Post board, you have access to 3 dupes.
ShopAggro- You have ancient grudges along with Dupes. I usually like to aim my grudges at spheres or equipments. I try to let my Dupes copy Juggernaughts and such. Your Darkblasts deal with their welders pretty nicely, and have amazing synergy with your welder.
For instance, here is an example that happend to me.
He had Juggernaught, and had just casted welder. He also had the juggernaught equipped(SoFI). I had welder and darkblast along with Bazaar.
We went to combat and he attacked with Juggs. I blasted his welder(when he declared attackers...) activated Bazaar, dredged back blast, put dupe in the yard, welded in dupe and copied his Juggernaught.
I won that game.
Coalation Relic/Ingot- I use Ingot, but I believe Relic could be better, as you can add counters and remove as many as you need. It works well when casting your own instances through In the Eye of Chaos and Spheres.
I believe this is a strong staxx list to play.
Maybe not the best, but it is strong.
Furthermore, stax can have serrious problems even casting things like iteoc. Your own lock cards makes your spells cost more, things that aren't artifacts aren't easy to land. Karn is an artifact, thats easy to drop. A 6 mana card that I can't use shop on, that is only powerful if played within the first few turns seems... unrealistic. Maybe its not, I'll test it, haven't ever really considered it, but you don't run things like ritual that make necro and bargain so easy for combo to drop.
of note....Tanglewire isnt in and of itself a "lock" and can often (usually unless in tandem with another "lock") be played through/around
however, I do find a lot of value in wire in a fish heavy meta for sure.
One thing players always overlook with a deck like stax is that the deck already has built in "draw" Every time you drop a lock piece early you are getting virtual time walks which act as a sort of psuedo draw engine. This is why a lot of Stax decks in the past (pre vroman uba stax era) worked more on optimizing top decking ability rather than focusing on sheer card drawing power. Perhaps this isnt as viable any longer....however.....I believe this should be re-examined if you are to actually work on Stax coming back, I dont at all knock vroman for coming up with a working uba mask list...but I do feel that when he did a lot of the proper focus of "normal" stax lists was lost...this problem was further complicated when that jesters cap nonsense came out and even more with poorly thought out arguments about smokestack being bad.
So the long and the short of it is this...Go back, from the start (id say starting with kevin crons list just before trinisphere got restricted) and try to identify what made various decks work and why. THEN take those principles and work them into a deck shaped for the current meta with perhaps some newer cards. The focus has been lost by most people and it needs to be regained before any real work can be done on the deck.
Clearly mono white stax should be looked at as well so we can utilize angels as a quick win vs fish in that matchup as well.
When people started running Jester's Cap and questioned Smokestack that was innovation, and it made Stax better not worse. Perhaps we should look into the past some for ideas, but you can't discount modern Stax builds on a whim.
As for innovating stax now some things to consider are, Armgeddon, Nether Void, Mycosynth Lattic+Null Rod and of course Fish based Stax.
The proper name is "Serra Stax", and that is already an established and dominating archtype, as made apparent by my sig.
The format is much faster than it once was, when stax initially was established. It isn't even unusual for a match to only last 6 or 7 turns, really.
To that end, Stax namesake card has become a misguided rage with suspend. Granted, it can lock an opponant out, but it is slow and cumbersome in a meta that is getting faster and faster and more and more effecient.
Looking to the past for ideas, Winter Orb seems interesting to me. Winter Orb + Tabernacle does a number on both fish and completely shuts off etw. Running Monkey or Karn in conjunction allows it to be a one-sided effect.
Stax, as an archtype, seeks to use its robust mana to deny every aspect that accelerates "fast" decks to the format defining speed they have reached.
"Good" decks thrive on the following:
Fast mana, from moxen, rituals, etc, where output exceedes imput on a mana bases.
Robust and plentiful search meathods to get out those format-defning, but restricted cards.
Powerful and varied tool boxes, with strong card drawing and engines within.
To this end, things like cap are quite powerful at denying the search that is so employed by many "good" decks, and I believe that Mindcensor may do that better, while adding a little of that lacking element of speed.
Mindcensor serves double duty by denying the stax-preventative measures of "good" decks through the robust reliance on fetches within the mana base.
The fact that Mindcensor shuts off the following is undeniable:
Fetches, all Tutors, Intuition, Gifts, Tinker, etc.
To this end, it provides a variety of powerful roles at instant speed, allowing it to be used even as a counterspell.
Another spell I would like to try is Bitter Ordeal. Again, 3 non-artifact mana is rough, however it is an ideal card in a stax base. A single wasteland with this is a storm of 3, which instantly beats a majority of decks in the format.
Aside from that, cost increasers are more powerful than ever. Decks are running less and less "solid" mana sources again, which means that through a combination of denying these (wastes, tangle wires, censor, w/e we can think of) and a plethora of cost increasers, many "good" decks will be out of the game. I believe that 4 Sphere, 1 3sphere, and at least one iteoc are musts atm.
Perhaps winter orb should be tried again, considering it is incredibly strong with tangle wire, etc, at shutting down mana bases.
From there, it is simply a matter of the perpetuation of the above locks, with are significantly more temporary than stax has historically been.
Although Latice seems a bit slow for my tastes, it warrents some exploration. Armageddon and Nether Void, esspecially the prior, seem quite strong actually. Tangle Wire and Orb force opponants to play more and more land, in an attempt to overwhelm those lock elements. Wait until he is about to break free and drop an armageddon, and the game is likely over.
Also Serra Angel, because Serra Stax is the greatest deck of all time.
I disagree with you pretty much completely...maybe I shouldnt say "worse" though, maybe I should say these things make the deck much less focused.
Jesters Cap was a good meta call but completely loses the focus of what Stax is supposed to be doing..this is a fact, Cap is now almost totally useless and while the innovation was fine for a handful of tournaments it got a lot of people away from the point of Stax.
Removing Smokestack was also not really an inovation as people had been running that "staxless stax" build for some time under various other names such as 7/10 split and Gilded Claw already and the argument simply made for discussion and innovation on a completely different deck and not stax at all. The focus completely changes at that point and ceases to be Stax in any real form other than having a few slow down pieces and workshops. Beyond that much earlier people like Eric Miller and some others at the first few SCG p9 tourneys had been running a 5c"stax" list that had -4 smokies and +4 Juggernaughts...so the idea is hardly new, but was put away after a bit in favor of more "regular" stax in much the same way stax lists always do.
Is the format much harder for Stax? Maybe it is..but this seems to happen to stax (almost in the way dragon is so off and on good) People started to get away from more traditional stax lists when Uba Stax came out...people stopped worked on tinkering with their 5cStax and CronStax lists and tried working on Uba Mask like stuff....Youll notice at that time with the exception of Vroman Stax was doing terribly...until Roland Chang played a much more traditional version of 5cStax and won worlds with it, his list was much more true to the original trinistax lists (obv minus 3 trinis) but it got back the focus of Stax...Stax continued to do fine from this point until the Jesters Cap deck (which was a good meta call...) and then shortly thereafter the staxless stax thing...since then nearly all focus on what Stax was meant to do has been lost to various "neat" options.
I am not saying the deck you will come up with wont be different than older versions...I am simply saying that IMO, for you guys to be successful with making something work, you really need to start from earlier builds before the "neat" stuff and identify why stax actually works and how it works. Start simple then add your meta friendly bombs like Cap (which probably is a bad option now)
I am not saying we should run old school cron stax from 2.5 years ago...anything but. I am simply saying you all should really step back and work from the beggining with several things in mind.
If you dont want to do that, and you want to immediatly start with no Smokestack and you want to run cards like jesters cap that arent a lock in any way then you might as well stop posting in the Stax forum and start something new up about workshop aggro or a new workshop control deck that ISNT stax. As glix points out you now have a bunch of temporary (soft) "locks" now as apposed to anything signifigant that might stick around.
People stopped playing 5c Stax because it simply wasn't performing. A teamate of mine who plays Stax exclusively, played 5c Stax for several months and the deck was just terrible in a modern meta. You keep talking about this untangible concept of "focus". What exactly makes current stax builds less focused then old builds and is being more focused even better? If we just get stuck with past notions of Stax then we will be unable to innovate it.
Stax has gone through this at least 2 or 3 times in the past. The deck stops working for one reason or another. What I state as fact is that each time this happens the build that brings Stax back is much more akin to older versions of stax (with some updated changes..like chang running bazaar or whatever other small change you want to toss in there)
What I see all to often is people cramming in all the changes without really analyzing why.
Saying we need to move forward with stax by taking out stax and adding soft locks that may or may not be good along with card draw that may or may not be good is not a good way to build decks or innovate. If you cannot properly identify what made those changes good in the first place then you cannot move forward. Why you do not see this is beyond me.
The problem comes when somebody does well with a more obscure version of the deck and everybody flocks to that idea....Jesters Cap was a great meta choice at the time and was able to be succesful for a brief time. Now Cap is probably sub par by a good degree, yet people build new ideas for stax from the jesters cap lists and not from where the jesters cap list drew its ideas from.
My main point is that if you want to run a deck that doesnt have smokestack in it, and that is largely built around aggro based tempo and soft locks, then what we are talking about is NOT stax and doesnt belong in this thread.
I am also NOT saying that you need to run 5cStax..it DID stop performing for a reason. But you still need to start from the basic stax list if you want to figure out why and what the proper (and not just popular) changes need to be.
What makes a lot of Stax builds less focused (and one of the primary reasons smokestack is seen as so bad) is that people have moved almost completely away from establishing a hard lock with the deck. Cards like Dark Confidant and Null Rod and Jesters Cap do not help establish the same sort of hard lock that cards like Chalice of the Void, Sphere of Resistance and In the Eye of Chaos do. If you really want to push the envelope you can read up on Kevin Cron's theories on the deck and think about goblin welder and tanglewire being terrible ways to establish locks that perpetuate the usage of Smokestack. The focus gets lost when you start having a deck that wants to draw cards and play one artifact that gets you some cards out of the opponents library and establish soft locks. Stax isnt really good at doing all of that. Perhaps you can get away with one of the above, this is why Jesters Cap builds were successful for a little bit, and why Uba Mask with its card advantage engine can get away with some soft locks. The problem comes when people try to do all of this stuff. Stax just isnt able to support it. This is what I mean by losing focus. Stax was initially focused on spitting out a few hard lock pieces and shutting the game down, and this was really its entire goal.
Is focused even better? I am not 100% sure, but certainly there has been a general lack of focus in the last year or so regarding the deck IMO. The only way to know for sure is if you actually step back and try to focus it rather than just assuming its bad for whatever reason you are assuming its bad. Beyond that there are few decks in other archytypes that arent focused on their goal (whatever that goal might be) Why should stax be any different in coming up with a focus.
The last point (which honestly isnt meant to be rude) is that perhaps your friend was either A: not really that skilled at the deck (time playing doesnt mean hes playing optimally) and B: maybe his build was just poor or improperly metagamed...metagaming is amazingly important with stax. And on that note what is your meta? When a meta is broadly arranged with a good amount of several distinct deck types (like say a format with 1/3 fish, 1/3 gifts 1/4 bomberman 1/4 something else) Stax will have a hard time. This is somethat that is faily well established, so maybe the timing is just not great for the deck. If you can goto a tournament and be fairly sure that around half the field is one thing, and much of the other half is another (say an environment with like CS, Gifts and tendrils combo making up a large majority of the field) then stax can be built with those decks in mind and mainly only has to worry about a bad matchup maybe the first round. So to really understand why your friend was failing so badly you need to give us a better idea of what decks are floating around your meta and whatever other info you might have. But maybe people stopped playing stax because they werent performing. Dont get pissy at me about that statement, but its happened with stax before. (I mean, nobody really but kevin cron and a small small handful played stax for a bit, and until Chang had won worlds nobody had been playing stax that much either except Uba Stax lists and even then really only vroman and a few others would put up any results)
So you can be all aggro with me about not wanting to look back at what we know worked, but thats your call..I am just offering advice on how to approach this issue (and maybe you are missing the point that I DO think that changes need to be made, I just feel that to understand those choices we need to step back a bit to a build that consistantly performed rather than current lists whos performance is spotty at best)
Anyways, im gonna bow out of the conversation before it gets ugly over nothing.
Then why isnt The Jester a major factor anywhere?
Beyond that Cap activation doesnt always end the game against the decks you listed especially with some of the updated lists (when compared to the original release of the Cap decks) And the fact that they can counter your artifact and can combo you out before you even get a chance if you play for an early cap. I am not really saying a cap based deck cannot work but just cramming Jesters Cap in a Stax frame is not the best way of going about things IMO. (although I havnt seen much in the way of good results with it for some time...dont get me wrong emidln, but if you can guide me to your deck doing well anywhere on any sort of consistant basis recently ((or even since the short period after evenpence did well with the deck)) please let me know, I will apologize if you show me the error of my ways)
The point I was trying to make (maybe im just bad at typing out what im trying to say, because these things seem obvious to me) is that Jesters Cap does nothing to perpetuate the point of Stax. I am speaking more in terms of the individual card itself (maybe if you guys have improoved the deck to better abuse and power out cap we would be talking..but this again would be not stax)
You guys are failing to get my point in that nothing you are talking about is Stax...If you want to talk about better "The Jester" decks or newer "staxless stax aka workshop aggro aka gilded claw" lists then by all means do so, but these decks arent really stax.
God..I get drawn in even after I say im not going to talk about it any longer, heh.
Fish is still called fish because the decks still do exactly the same thing they initially set out to do right? Even though they do not have merfolk they still are tempo based aggro control decks just with better creatures now adays then the old school picks.
Workshop aggro or the jester in my mind, set out on a completely different goal than what is generally thought of as "Stax" this sets the decks apart and should be completely seperate discussions. IF and only if you want to actually bring STAX back then you need to get away from these major changes in focus (by all means work on those other things if that is what you like to do and you feel that they work) But please dont confuse these seperate builds.
Whenever people want to actually start working on a Stax list in the stax thread, please let me know ill be interested in it, but if you guys want to keep going over shop aggro or get hurt over me "dissing" their pet deck then there is no reason to even continue this thread on the forums. I do agree that maybe Stax just doesnt work any longer...maybe we need to get on the topic of those other decks, but this is not the place, if Stax is dead let the Stax thread go the same way.
This paragraph doesn't make sense to me. Cap is now almost totally useless? It should be just the opposite - we have increased incidence of decks (Long variants and Gifts variants) that can be beaten by this single card. And the "losing focus" comment is trumped by the simple idea that you're playing a card that is designed to win the game against the arguably strongest archetypes; that Cap isn't a lock piece is irrelevant if it is winning you the game outright. On a final note, Stax can be characterized by "resource denial". Jester's Cap certainly contributes to that, even when it isn't winning the game outright. Therefore, I would view any Cap builds as Stax builds and these are fair game for discussion in this thread.
I think its nuts...
4x Smokey's
9x SolLotMoxenCryptVault
3x Sphere of Resistance
3x Tangle Wire
3x Crucible of Worlds
1x Tormod's crypt
1x Trinisphere
1x Memory Jar
Artifact Dudes:
1x Sundering Titan
1x Karn, Mox Golem
1x Triskelion
Goblins and Gorillas:
4x Goblin Welder
1x Mox Monkey
Things that Break:
1x Tinker
1x Vampiric Tutor
1x Demonic Tutor
1x Imp Seal
1x In The Eye of Chaos
1x Balance
1x Ancestral Recall
1x Crop Rotation
4x City of Brass
3x Gemstone Mine
4x Wasteland
1x Strip Mine
1x Barbarian Ring
1x Bazaar of Baghdad
1x Academy
4x Mishra's Workshop
3x Chalice of the Void
2x Duplicant
2x Ray of Revelation
2x Ancient Grudge
2x Choke
2x Engineered Explosives
1x Platinum Angel/Tormod's Crypt
1x Jester's Cap
We have a lot of Ichorid in our meta now, so the Platinume Angel is NUTZ!!
lol.
Comments or concerns??
Check out the H/W List playa:
http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=80563
Member of the Syndicate
Syndicate Members:5
My AIM is Satriani744 (shocker, right?;))
It's a great way to get in touch with me for trades, or just chattin'. Just don't stalk me please.
Along with the other decks in the format.
I agree that those are good cards, hell run them main if you think it is worth it.
But I would run at least 1 platinum angel main. And maybe even a tormod's crypt.
Combo and control decks like UrPhid and Landstill abosutely wreck this deck. Flash beats it, if it goes off.
But good luck at Waterbury!!
But the decks worst matchup is obviously fish. Stax has an incredibly difficult time dealing with critters. That is why people used Empty the Warrens, and why Bird***** with null rod and chalice main spells game over for stax. Especially UBW fish. That deck gives stax fits. 5 strip mines, Force, Duress, disruptive creatures, and Seal of Cleansing coming out of the side. Nice. Deck.
Check out the H/W List playa:
http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=80563
Member of the Syndicate
Syndicate Members:5
My AIM is Satriani744 (shocker, right?;))
It's a great way to get in touch with me for trades, or just chattin'. Just don't stalk me please.
Ok so I have decided to pick up stax again and play it.
You are right, stax has some problems dealing with critters. BUT in my playing, I have never really had any problems with fish.
Crucible is key in the match. Your tutors generally fetch Mishra's Factory or B-ring.
fish is a hard match up, but they can NOT deal with few things from Stax.
1) The lock. IF you can drop a fast enough lock, they wont come back. They cant play more permanents than you, and they cant counter everything you play.
2) Their own mana base pretty much owns them.
3) Big dudes. You drop Trike on them or Titan, and they really don't have much outs(yea Swords to PLowshare, but fish doesnt run them that much.)
4) Resolve Crucible. It should be GG. You recure Factory for infinite blocks, you B-Ring all their dudes, you wreck their manas, its really hard for Fish to come back. Resolving Crucible creates one of the biggest advantage over them that you have.
They do bring in hate against you.
But I have played through double energy flux+Kataki.
So you can DEFINETLY play through their hate. PM me if you wanna know how i did it =P
PM or post your stax list.
I am going to play stax again.
~magicplaya10
What about Crumbling Sanctuary as a possible response to really fast critters? It's got serious synergy with welder, and gives you 60-70 life instead of 20.
As for the archetype, fish shouldn't be a problem, and traditionally, fish isn't supposed to have a good stax matchup so I don't see why you are worried about that.
What I would be worried about is stuff like oath and flash, both of which are gaining in popularity and both of which wreck you on principle, in an average game.
The source of the dilemma comes from the variants of stax which are more aggressively oriented taking precedent. I fail to see the appeal of returning to a lock based strategy. A dead opponant is better than a contained one. Furthermore, by running efficient beats and combo wins you fairly directly negate the problem of being outclassed by savannah lions.
Fish shouldn't really be a problem, not compared to the aforementioned decks, or a slew of other decks. Stuff like bomberman is going to wreck you with an incredibly stable mana based coupled with the holy grail of anti-stax, drain. Oath is typically going to beat you simply because it just needs to drop an oath and you're going to have difficulty dealing with it. Flash is even worse, since they don't even need to wait for an orchard and their win just immediately ends the game. And don't even get started on Ichorid. Now, any one of these decks independently would not be too much of a hassle to deal with, the tools are their. The problem is that all of these decks exist, and you have to deal with a slew of hate directed, not exactly at you, but at aggro stax variants. All of this the needs to be considered in the lense that aggro stax variants typically deal with these problems more effectively.
The real question, therefore, is why run a slower less capable version of a deck? The problem stax has always had, traditionally, was lack of a clock. That, in recent years, has been solved, so why strip it away?
A friend of mine split in the finals of a small tournament with the deck.
Here is the List:
4 City of Brass
3 Gemstone Mine
4 Wasteland
1 Tolarian Academy
1 Bazaar of Baghdad
1 Barbarian Ring
1 Strip Mine
5 Moxen
1 Black Lotus
1 Sol Ring
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mana Vault
2 In the Eye of Chaos
3 Crucible of Worlds
4 Sphere of Resistance
1 Trinisphere
4 Chalice of the Void
3 Smokestack
1 Mox Monkey
1 Triskelion
1 Duplicant
1 Sundering Titan
1 Tinker
1 Crop Rotation
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Coalation Relic/Darksteel Ingot
1 Balance
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Memory Jar
4 Leyline of the Void
2 Ancient Grudge
2 Ray of Revelation
3 Red Elemental Blast
2 Duplicant
1 Jester's Cap
1 Darkblast
The deck pretty much is like this:
The maindeck beats up on some blue-based control pretty well. Game 2, you just bring in the hate.
Also, you have the option of boarding in Anti-aggro. With access to 3 duplicants and a darkblast between main and sideboards, it can beat aggro.
Shop aggro, you have Grudges to back you up.
And the deck beats up on combo as well.
The hard matchups are still Oath, Flash(to some degree), some aggro decks, and Any deck with basics.
Oath- If you drop spheres or In the eyes you can pull out the win. But if they get an Oath going, your screwed. Post board, you have rays, J-caps, and REBs to deal with Tyrants and such.
Flash- Drop spheres and hope. After board, the game becomes Leyline + Chalice + Sphere and you basically win. Not saying you do all the time, it is still a tough match. But in my testing, I start with leyline and then drop sphere, it can be GG soon.
Aggro- Pre-board, find Dupe + Welder, or Trike + Welder and hope. Post board, you have access to 3 dupes.
ShopAggro- You have ancient grudges along with Dupes. I usually like to aim my grudges at spheres or equipments. I try to let my Dupes copy Juggernaughts and such. Your Darkblasts deal with their welders pretty nicely, and have amazing synergy with your welder.
For instance, here is an example that happend to me.
He had Juggernaught, and had just casted welder. He also had the juggernaught equipped(SoFI). I had welder and darkblast along with Bazaar.
We went to combat and he attacked with Juggs. I blasted his welder(when he declared attackers...) activated Bazaar, dredged back blast, put dupe in the yard, welded in dupe and copied his Juggernaught.
I won that game.
Coalation Relic/Ingot- I use Ingot, but I believe Relic could be better, as you can add counters and remove as many as you need. It works well when casting your own instances through In the Eye of Chaos and Spheres.
I believe this is a strong staxx list to play.
Maybe not the best, but it is strong.