MTG Salvation

Good morning, friends, Romans, strangers, strange friends, and other various cosmic entities of the forum.

Today I was scrolling through the pinned threads and found something odd: Phil's Stax Primer was not among the primers in the Official Threads and Resources. Anyone who's ever read that primer or the ensuing thread (here: https://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/commander-edh/204260-the-stax-primer ) knows that this is a trove of information and discussion, easily among the best (albeit highly controversial) content ever produced on this subforum. It is dated, yes, but the fact remains that it provides a tangible grasp on the underlying theories and strategies surrounding the STAX playstyle. In the same vein as Blackjack68's commander guide is still relevant, so is Phil's contribution.

I do not think it would represent an endorsement of the playstyle, simply an acknowledgment that it exists and that we, the community of MTGS, have great insight to offer on the topic. Many more people use this site as a resource than have active accounts; I myself lurked for years before signing up. Without a proper place amongst its brethren, the uninitiated or uninformed may have no way to know of the Unholy Bible of Magic.

I propose a simple and swift rectification of this error: simply add the link below "Playing Commander to Win", give Phil his due credit for years of twisted inspiration toward a love of this infinitely multifaceted format, and we all move on with our lives.

Thank you for your time and attention. It is always an honor.

I do think there should be a tag for official resources and guides in the forum.

At the moment there is a list you can find in the "Official Threads and Commander Resources" -> "Deckbuilding Resources".

I will say that most of these are over a year old as far as being updated, so this is a bit of a problem, but they still provide valuable information.

I think that admins should have a new tag [Resource] which they can add to official threads like this.

It might even be that these official [Resource] get their own sub forum. After all the purposes of forums is to make it as easy for people to find information as possible.
However they will need a concurrent manager of the threads in my opinion, as they are starting to become quite out-of-date.

I think that is a fundamental problem with any of these Primers and resources.. take for example the Combo thread. They are all such huge undertakings that you can't really keep it up to date - just posting a primer is a lot of work!

We had talked about adding the Stax primer to the list but it never seemed to be maintained at the time. And now with Phil gone it is a thread that should be redone rather than patched with a bandaid.

Phil's stax thread was a truly great thread, the one that got me to embrace stax (as one among my 60+ decks) as one of the possible ways to play EDH. My Nath stax deck continues to this day, only rarely receiving updates because few cards are printed these days which fit easily into a BG stax shell, and even fewer are good enough to supplant something already there.

Quote from cryogen »

We had talked about adding the Stax primer to the list but it never seemed to be maintained at the time. And now with Phil gone it is a thread that should be redone rather than patched with a bandaid.

Quote from JWK »

Phil's stax thread was a truly great thread, the one that got me to embrace stax (as one among my 60+ decks) as one of the possible ways to play EDH. My Nath stax deck continues to this day, only rarely receiving updates because few cards are printed these days which fit easily into a BG stax shell, and even fewer are good enough to supplant something already there.

Emphasis mine. See, I don't think the age of the thread really matters: Plenty of our resources are not on the cutting edge, and the thread analyzes the underlying ideas of the strategy brilliantly. The thread doesn't need to a set-by-set update of every stax piece printed, just a means to guide players into the mindset fundamentals necessary to playing resource attrition in EDH.

But hey, you want something new? Alright then. That's something to do.

I'm not saying it wasn't used, I'm saying it wasn't maintained by the author. Similar to Blackjack's guide, which is great so long as you dont mind a guide that is five years old and doesn't address new cards. When I was on staff and part of the decision making at the time that was one of our main concerns with not calling it an official primer. Maybe the current mods feel differently.

This is a little off-topic, but I actually have friends who specifically stay away from threads that have the [Primer] tags as they think they are all out of date, so it's a waste of their time clicking on any thread with the tag line.

This isn't exactly correct, but it is true that 90% of the multiplayer primers are dead threads, so any new ones being tagged are put in with the reputation of the old ones as being defunct on arrival.

It might pay to have a better grasp on untagging primers that are no longer cared for, so that mtgsalvation can get away from having a reputation of out-of-date primers.

Quote from darrenhabib »

It might pay to have a better grasp on untagging primers that are no longer cared for, so that mtgsalvation can get away from having a reputation of out-of-date primers.

The Primer Committee does to audits into the threads on how well they are being maintained (and threads are typically removed during each pass). If you feel that there's a deck list that's particularly egregious, you can always message any of the committee members to actually take a look outside of those passes, however.