MTG Salvation

Link to deck @ TappedOut.net

Posting from my description.

Heart-Attack Stax. But what's in a name?

This deck combines two great tastes that taste great together: A fast, hard hitting mana denial strategy and the ability to explosively launch a massive board-lock and winning combo from the graveyard.

The deck grinds the game to a halt early using a typical stax card like Winter Orb or Back to Basics. Kismet brings their permanents into play already tapped while Stasis forces all players to skip their untap steps. Humility shuts down creature-based decks almost entirely, and leaves them tapping 5 or 6 very hard-earned mana to cast a vanilla 1/1 that comes in tapped.

In addition to the mana restrictions, the deck contains a few pillowfort elements to keep it in the long-game. Energy Field is very inexpensive mana-wise and makes you all but invincible. Both Hanna and Starfield of Nyx can keep it in play for most of any game. Humility reduces your opponent's creatures to 1/1s, or Peacekeeper means they can't even swing at you - or sometimes more importantly, at your planeswalkers.

This is all backed up by a small suite of counterspells and efficient board wipes to keep the aggro and combo players off your back early. The remainder of the deck are scry-and-draw effects, tutors, combo enablers, and Worldpurge as a massive, boardwide "Oh *****!" button to save you from a late-game blowout.

Stax Tech: Sac your lock pieces like Stasis or Winter Orb on your opponent's end step with one of the sac engines like Claws of Gix or Despotic Scepter. Untap everything you own, play your spells, then recur the lock piece with Hanna and replay it. Play the Peacekeeper alongside your planeswalkers and go for those emblems. Double up on pain with Back to Basics and Static Orb, and remember - play some kind of lock piece as early as possible. A turn 2 Winter Orb is almost never NOT the right play. Your goal is to stall the table until you can combo.

Combos:

The combos and synergies in this deck are beyond counting. Only the first one named was actually put there intentionally - the rest were all discovered by accident during playtesting.

The meat and potatoes combo: Aphetto Alchemist + Illusionist's Bracers. When the Alchemist is tapped, it puts two untaps on the stack - one for any other creature or artifact, and the other to untap himself. This gives infinite untaps, and with any mana rock infinite mana, with Hanna, infinite recursion, and with Weatherlight or Planar Portal and a Mana Rock, infinite tutoring. This then enables infinite Mindslavers, infinite Capsize, infinite mill, infinite draw. Infinite ALL the things!

Basic Combo 2: Rings of Brighthearth + Basalt Monolith. A classic infinite colorless combo with a twist. The Rings are also used to copy any other artifact effect powered by the mana. This means infinite draw with Sensei's Top, extra tutors, double recursions. Combined with cards like Codex Shredder, the possibilities are endless here as well.

Basic Combo 3: [Any combination of artifacts that can tap and/or sac to Krark-Clan Ironworks for a total of 8 colorless and one white mana, and with at least one of any type of mana left over] + Codex Shredder + Faith's Reward.

Explanation: Tap your rocks to float mana and sac everything to the Ironworks. Cast Faith's Reward with (3W) of the floating mana. Everything returns to play untapped. Use (5) and sac Codex Shredder to recur Faith's Reward. Float everything, sac everything, cast Faith's Reward again. Repeat to float infinite mana in addition to infinite activations of any artifacts you have in play - because everything returns to play untapped from Faith's Reward. With a Ring of Three Wishes, tutor your entire deck. Ditto for Weatherlight or Planar Portal. Sac the Mind Stone or Cluestone to draw your deck. Blow the entire table up with Meteorite. It just never stops.

Basic Combo 4: Master Transmuter + Illusionist's Bracers + Gilded Lotus + Unbender Tine.

Explanation: Float three blue mana off the lotus. Pay one blue to tap the transmuter, putting her ability and a copy of it on the stack. Tap the tine to untap the transmuter. With the first transmuter ability, return the lotus to your hand and replay it. With the second, return the tine to your hand and replay it. Repeat this process to float infinite mana of any color. As a bonus, use this mana and the transmuter + tine to get infinite activations of any other artifact you have in play.

Special Combo 1 (The Spanish Inquisition): Magosi, the Waterveil + Unbender Tine + Rings of Brighthearth.

Explanation: With Magosi untapped and you having not played a land for turn, activate Magosi and put an Eon counter on it to skip your next turn. Tap the tine to untap Magosi. Tap Magosi again and return it to your hand to take an extra turn after this one, and then copy that ability with the rings. Finally, replay Magosi as your land for turn. With this you will skip your next turn, but take two turns in a row, cancelling out the turn you skip and netting you one free extra turn. Thus, you take infinite turns by repeating this each time.

Launch any or all of these combos either piecemeal by drawing or tutoring them, or (ideally) via Tunnel Vision to Open the Vaults. Tunnel Vision causes you to mill until Open the Vaults is atop your library. Draw and cast it next turn to put every artifact and enchantment you milled into play.

Traumatize is a great toolbox card. It will utterly wreck that degenerate Narset player. Or use it on yourself and use Hanna to recur whatever specific pieces you need from the graveyard. It basically reads: "For the rest of the game, tutor almost any card in the top half of your library for (1WB)." Best used with Leyline of Sanctity in play to give you some protection from graveyard exile effects. Also great if you topdeck into that Open the Vaults.

Hi DSDX!

I read your comment in the stax primer thread and you were so passionate about your Hanna deck that you got me interested.

I have always been that kind of guy who likes to play "fun" commander games which means to me that it is fun for me to play my deck but also fun for my opponents to play against it. Unfortunately during the last weeks I have played against so many "unfun" decks at my local game store that I decided to build a deck just for those occasions. And that was when I read about your Hanna deck and started to build my own one based off of your version.
I gathered almost all cards I need and next friday will be the first time I will actually play it.
Now I have some questions:

My main concern is that the strongest combo in the deck is the one: Aphetto Alchemist + Illusionist's Bracers.
While being really powerful we have no way to tutor for the Aphetto Alchemist. I know there are Skyship Weatherlight, Ring of Three Wishes and Planar Portal but at least in my meta I have to have the mana to immediatelly use the tutor effect because otherwise the artifact will get removed before I have a chance to use it on my next turn. This means that I have to have 8, 10 or 12 mana available to tutor for Aphetto Alchemist which is quite a lot.
Do you have problems assembling the combo Aphetto Alchemist + Illusionist's Bracers?

Another combo thing: I think the combo Master Transmuter + Illusionist's Bracers + Gilded Lotus + Unbender Tine does not work because the Illusionist's Bracers copy only the effect of the ability and not the costs. That means that you can return only one artifact to your hand and not two as would be required.
Is that right or am I missing something here?

Next thing: tutors. Sometimes I read threads on this forum of people asking how they can make a deck less competitive and a frequent answer is to take tutors out. Thinking the other way around more tutors means finding combo pieces more reliable and thus makes the deck more competitive. A great and inexpensive tutor for this deck is Muddle the Mixture. It tutors a lot of stax and combo pieces and can be a potential Counterspell.
Idyllic Tutor and Transmute Artifact are more great tutors but unfortunately they are very expensive money-wise.

Question: what do you do against early combat damage? I see that you have Energy Field, Peacekeeper and Humility but I imaging playing this deck a few times at my local game store. After a while all opponents will probably turn against me from turn one if they see Hanna as the commander which might be too overwhelming.
Have you never had situations when you wished for more options against combat damage? What do you think about Propaganda and Ghostly Prison (which are also tutorable - Peacekeeper here has the same problem as Aphetto Alchemist)? With the mana-denial in the deck these might keep you alive much longer.
Or do you always manage to establish the Kismet/Stasis lock early enough? In case you did not know: Frozen Æther is the time-shifted version of Kismet which I included in my deck because it is vital to our strategy (Kismet might get exiled after all).

I think I will run Kor Haven over Prahv, Spires of Order because it is much cheaper to activate. Do you often need Prahv, Spires of Order for preventing non-creature damage? Maybe I should run both...

So that is all for now. Thanks for the great inspiration and I am really looking forward to play the deck on friday!