Introduction to Landstax
Landstax is the monster under the earth, whose iron pipes will rise to the skies and choke out the sun while all perish. This isn't a deck for the sane nor is it for the impatient. Combining the stax and lands archetype we are a prison deck that aims to attack an opponent's resources from multiple fronts at the same time leading to hilariously fun interactions (for you! kek) while making sure your opponent is under constant pressure to generate resources in an arms race like no other.
History
This list has had a really fugly run, to put it lightly. It all started out around late 2013 when I started playing magic with a deck that was handed to me and a willingness to learn and brew. Eventually I got tired of running aggro and simpler decks and began fiddling around with archetypes, trying things out like storm, permission control decks, and eventually getting a hard-on for artifacts. This led to forays into eggs and eventually while looking for artifacts I saw a certain card. Trinisphere, and this card inspired the hell out of me. Looking up decklists that used it I eventually found the stax archetype, to which I've happily married myself to but look at my mutant children my god.
When I began toying with the idea I went with a stompier route going for Magus of the Tabernacle and Knight of the Reliquary over much else. My first list was splash green simply for Knight but as it evolved this list became less and less desirable as it couldn't handle all that much that it needed to.
From their I looked to a solution I found in standard at that time.
I thought my lack of success was due to a lack of draw power and removal as well as losing too much life early on and my solution at the time came from Sorin, lord of Innistrad and Vindicate as well as Sylvan Library, adding a black splash this list allowed me to handle a lot more but as a mostly colorless deck with 4 tombs and 4 factories mana soon became a horrible problem and I realized that just splashing another color wasn't good enough.
I decided I needed more raw power and gave up the ability to search lands for a bigger and faster beater, liliana, and an evasive win con for the long term with assemble the legion. This version ran city of brass making my mana problems slightly less horrible but the life issue was once again a concern now that freakin everything hurt me. So my next solution was to just embrace that.
The dark horse of my experiments featuring no trinispheres, death's shadow, thalia, sphere of resistance... A lot of gooby stuff happening here that in all honesty is kind of ugly. This mutant child saw nearly no success whatsoever especially with the power of Abrupt Decay running rampant.
Their where more variations but they all kind of sucked and had the same theme, if you want to see a slump look at these.
I had a horrible fixation with sinkhole without realizing that a double colored mana cost in this archetype is horribly hard to pull off, these lists took a lazy route and just jammed whatever I felt was strong at the time with no coherence at all. This was truly a dark time for landstax.
End of Days
Horrible results and much frustration finally made me almost drop this list altogether until I finally cut black. Leading to this.
Despite this name it bears no resemblance to death and taxes. By this point I decided to just say "screw it" to any other win con but mishras factory and surprisingly this list did have some decent results.
I fell apart as a magic player soon afterwords and this was my list before that.
By this point I fully adopted the name landstax and started throwing in tabernacles and horizon canopies as well as life from the loam becoming the major draw engine. But at this point I just kind of gave up. I couldn't find a list that truly was fun and had good results and I canned it. Until recently.
Revival!
I came back to this list a year later and decided that it needed to be delved into again. And thus I came up with this
This is the same list you will see below, at this point I fully embraced the marriage of lands and stax archetypes mainboarding maze of ith, thespian's stage, dark depths, and ports which allow me to maintain some semblance of control without any artifacts as well as lands "I win button". This combined with the realization my past failures where from lack of card selection leading me to finally splash blue for tezzeret which could find me whatever I needed at the time. The list itself now features a toolbox upon a toolbox with a sideboard that digs incredibly deep for tech. At the moment this is my favorite and I believe the strongest thus far as well as the most interactive iteration, taking this fusion archetype even a step further.
This primer died a long time ago, soon after I made this I actually quit magic all together (at least in paper form) finding that trying to play in paper form was all too ridiculous and my wallet hurt too much. Recently however I have been mucking about with this list again and decided to try my hand at changing it again.
If you want to experience an incredibly different type of control deck, load this up on cockatrice and try it out. I think the list is now more interactive and stronger than it ever was with more avenues of play. Really something to experience.
Card Choices
Windswept Heath, Savannah, and Tundra; Literally just for colored mana. Thats it. We dont want to run tropicals because our base color is white and we ALWAYS need white because when we draw an armageddon we always want to play it. We always want white because of not only this but thopter foundry as well. Since our blue source is pretty much going to be a mox we need to account for the other color of mana.
Plains; Ghost quarter and veteran explorer exist.
The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale; creature decks be damned. Plus armageddon into tabernacle either from the yard via crucible or from your hand is one of the meanest and most game winning things you can ever do.
Tolaria West; it hits 36 cards main board and 37 cards sideboard that it can tutor out, only counterable by stifle or trickbind, and is a land we can get back with loam as well as an emergency blue source. Why I didnt run this before I have no clue.
Ancient Tomb and City of Traitors; sol lands in a deck thats mostly things that are 3 or more mana? Yes. City of traitors in case you need a sol land but cant afford the damage.
Dark Depths and Thespians Stage; a 20/20 flying indestructible creature just so happens to be good in legacy if it costs 2 mana.
Wasteland and Rishadan Port; resource denial until we can drop a wincon or a tempo piece is incredibly relevant. Also port can "shut off" basics.
Horizon Canopy; drawing cards is good, activating dredge for life from the loam at instant speed is good. We ***** lands from every zone making this land essentially our cantrip.
Mishra's Factory; a 3/3 blocker for 1 mana that likes to eat swiftspears and goblins. Win con if need be.
Maze of Ith; Makes batterskull irrelevant early on and can keep a bomb that stuck after a geddon from killing you indefinitly.
Karakas; Literally mainboard hate for reanimator and show and tell. And to a lesser extent hatebears thalia and gaddock teeg.
Calciform Pools; for powering out geddons and tezzes.
Wurmcoil Engine; in all honesty our aggro matchup is horrible. This guy either gives us 6 life or becomes a wall and wincon so we can slow them down enough to get a lock going or get thopter/sword so we can just flood the board with cheap flyers.
Garruk Relentless; wincon and removal all in one at a perfect spot on our curve we can poop out turn 2. Fantastic card but not that fantastic because hes dead in many matchups and his only time to shine is really against stoneblade and delver. Even then he could be better, moved entirely to the sideboard. In matchups hes good in he shines but the matchups hes good in are few and far between. Mostly if goblins becomes a big thing then by god man run 4 but otherwise keep one handy just in case.
Tezzeret the Seeker; a planeswalker we can cast with literally only one land and any other mana source (calciform pools) that toolboxes out our prison pieces and win conditions. This card is fantastic. Too bad we are really blue light but since we run nothing but conditional lock pieces and tempo cards its ok if he doesnt come up and fantastic when he does. He also untaps our moxes and lanterns and is a wincon himself. Went up to 3 so we can reliably toolbox out cards.
Life from the Loam and Crucible of Worlds; we like lands and wastelock is a thing.
Academy Ruins; We like artifacts and people can blow them up. Even if they blow this up we can get it back since its a land.
Chromatic Lantern; Makes our tombs tap for mana without having to kill ourselves, makes our color problem non existant, is a source of mana itself.
Mox Diamond; makes a t1 trinisphere possible. Makes a t1 chalice for 1 much more likely. Survives armageddon.
Engineered Explosives; Repeatable boardwipes, thank you to FlaviusBelisaurius for pointing out to me just how freakin useful this is, even if it does hit our stuff by the time we want to use this its often our only out anyways. Also fantastic against any tokens, elves, or goblin tokens via storm.
Ravages of War and Armageddon; we love lands, except we hate when our opponent has lands. Use these to blow them up. I opted for only 2 of this effect since although its nice they clump up your hand at inopportune times. I opted for a 1-1 split to dodge things like nevermore and surgical extraction.
Flagstones of Trokair; fetches our mana sources and survives armageddon. Combos with zuran orb.
Venser, Shaper Savant; we want as many free wins as possible against combo decks since in all honesty thats what this list is good at. This allows us a grindy lock engine with karakas that the enemy can't answer under a tsphere lock with wastes as well as another free win against show and tell, this also now finally allows landstax to "counter" a spell and with the horrid rule changes with delve we kinda need it.
Thopter Foundry and Sword of the Meek; 2/3 flyers for 1 that restore life happen to be good. Also can flood the board with dudes as a win con and a fantastic tempo piece against any aggro or midrange. Can actually make you survive TES if you gain enough life.
Bottled Cloister and Ensnaring Bridge; unless your name is noble heirarch or ornithopter it turns into a moat but better. We can tutor this out too. Cloister also helps us dig.
Tangle Wire; lets our wastelands kill fetches if they decide to just tap them to tangle wires effects, we drop so many permanents it doesnt hurt us as well as this is a slightly worse time walk against aggro and tempo decks. We can also softlock with this and academy ruins.
Smokestack; our answer to enchantments and walkers we cant beat to death. Also a lock piece we can keep going infinity. Dodges abrupt decay. Allows for a t1 sphere, t2 stack and t3 crucible for a GG against literally every deck (except for a t1 force of will of course.)
Phyrexian Revoker; suppression field hurts too much.
Primeval Titan; casting a 6 cost beater that can win the game is surprisingly easy in this list. Also fetches our stage/depths.
Council's Judgement and Supreme Verdict; we dont like things that can beat us to death, especially if they are named True Name Nemesis. Council's Judgement also in general solves a ton of problems.
Zuran Orb; makes our armageddons and ravages of war also read "and you gain 2 life for each land you control that was destroyed this way." Can stop a trample dude combined with mishra's factory.
Record
TBA
Matchups
Show and Tell; if they run three emrakuls its hard. If they dont its a free win. Counterspells are bad against you and dig is horrible against you. Omniscience is bad against tsphere and their wincons are terrible against ensnaring bridge. Even post board unless they pack mucho artifact hate they cant do much, barring of course a t2 show and tell which if we drop a bridge or karakas from it they still lose.
In our Favor
Storm; even if they pack hate the biggest things against them are the prison pieces we have the most of. Crucible and waste for their very few lands they run, trinisphere to decimate their speed, chalice to get rid of their hand destruction and digging power, even post board we are incredibly favorable, even after they board in abrupt decays and duresses. Even after they board in ancient grudges. Even after they board in anything they have this horrid uphil battle.
In our Favor
Reanimator; this matchup has mainboard hate. You can win through a long grind with thopter/sword. You can invalidate their bigbad with karakas or maze of ith. You can keep them from winning ever with stax pieces and wastelock/armageddon, a chalice on 1 actually wins against some builds whose only reanimation spell is the 1 drop one. Post board you get supreme verdict and crop rotation making this matchup even better.
In our Favor
Painter's Servant; holy crap this matchup is surprisingly horrible. Despite so many colorless cards in our library we get annihilated by our lack of activated ability hate and the fact we are hilariously weak to blood moon. This matchup is horrid game 1 and only gets worse and worse as they replace their blue hate with just general hate, making our dark depths very pretty mountains and our colored sources silly as they die to a engineered explosives at 0. Even after we board in revokers they usually run some form of removal post board once they realize we run walkers making it even worse. It makes sense in a way since were really greedy with colored mana and depend on lands to actually do things rather than them just being nice to drop things.
Not in our Favor
Four Horseman (judges be damned); we can chalice for 3 incredibly easily game one shutting off their combo entirely. Their only threats are the mesmeric orbs which can kill us eventually. Game 2 onward they really can annihilate you with mesmeric orb and they can also change into a show and tell deck on the spot making it so you HAVE to tap everything in order to stay alive. Multiple mesmeric orbs hurt a ton, beyond belief. The games afterwords are 50/50 while I would say we are favorable game one.
About even
Oops, All Spells! (Azami lady of scrolls version); It either wins t1 or it loses. For the most part game 2 it has no hate that's relevant to us and either win t1 or lose again.
In our Favor
Burn; this matchup is hit and miss. For one eidolon of the revels is dead and most of their deck is hated out by chalice and sphere. Zuran orb also makes this match fantastic. On the other hand their board makes it so that they can just punch us in the mouth better and if we fail to drop anything that can give us life or they drop a chalice on 0 we are in trouble. Mostly matches against this deck should go, game 1 you win. Game 2 they win. Game 3 its 50/50.
About even
Merfolk; this matchup is horrid. They can vial in creatures getting around sphere and chalice. They run basics like they are going out of style making wasteland bad. They have huge creatures and great countermagic and unless we rip a geddon into a tabernacle nothing will stop this matchup. Post board it only gets worse and even though we have boardwipes, and in that an uncounterable one it still is a chore to get it out at all. Literally hate this matchup.
Not in our Favor
Affinity; game 1 if your on the play you have a huge chance to win, if your on the draw YOU WILL LOSE. Game 2 and onward becomes much more managable with a full 4 chalices and a whole lot of board wipes they cant counter. You can also chalice for 2 shutting off a whole ton of everything. The cards you want to ditch are smokestack and wire as well as maybe one of your geddon effects. Garruk is outshined by verdict and the likes. Wurmcoil + revoker + bridge = gg in any situation.
About even
Grixis Tempo; this matchup is horrible because of TNN. If he doesnt hit and they don't play dack fayden we can win handedly. If they do then we are screwed. Post board we can keep dack from being a problem and we can accelerate our cause with carpet of flowers and keep things busy while their TNN sits their like a lump. On the other hand they have wonderful hand disruption and counterspells. Once again 50/50 but completely unwinable if they run dack. Literally that guy shuts us down with such style its maddening.
About even
Death and Taxes; unlike many decks we can pay their taxes but unless we get tabernacle, ensnaring bridge, or thopter/sword we cant actually stop their beats. It becomes a lot more managable post board where we jam tons of thopter/swords and supreme verdict. You can actually play through a grip of disenchants but you have to play really well and make sure you can keep them from messing up your tezzeret or get lucky with a good hand. Because of this and the inconsistency of our deck this matchup is mostly not in our favor since most times (around 60% of the time) we just get beat to death. Did I mention we are weak to wasteland?
Not in our Favor
Threshold; we can straight up not care about daze or spell pierce. We can generate more mana than is ever nessecary, and we can protect an "I win" button of stage/depths with chalice of the void. They dont have enough hard countermagic to deal with us until we get to games 2 and 3 in which their prospects go way up and our only real answer becomes supreme verdict. Its in our favor game 1 and 50/50 games 2 and 3.
About even
American Stoneblade; This matchup is wonky to say the least. As of now the list above is slightly bad but the newer version I am testing with mainboard Tolaria West and Engineered Explosives the matchup is still slightly bad, but winnable. If your early plays invalidate their early plays game 1 you can win, and if you drop thopter/sword fast enough its an easy win. Game 2 they can board out all their dead cards and bring in tons of hate... But often times against our sideboard plan of uncounterable board wipes and jamming thopter/sword we just kinda outvalue this deck. By a lot, especially since maze of ith keeps early batterskulls from doing anything this matchup just becomes worse for them post board. Their biggest shot is to win game 1 then pray we slip up game 2 and 3 because our board is just loaded with crap to demolish this list. The reason out of all the matchups this aggro list is our best aggro matchup is because EVERYTHING WE RUN IN MAINBOARD AND SIDEBOARD IS RELEVANT AGAINST THEIR GAMEPLAN. Literally 100% of our list is good against their list. I've never seen a deck have to work so hard to pull out wins in my life. Their best gameplan is early aggression and we kind of crap all over early aggression (we are bad against explosive agression, see affinity) but just straight up early value plays? We got that covered.
In our Favor
Punishing Jund; this matchup is bad for us only because of abrupt decay but without it they can't really do much. Wastelock really kills them because they run so many nonbasics. We can shut down deathrite shaman and lilianna or even keep them from casting anything worthwhile in general. We can outvalue them with garruk and keep them from actually winning with ensnaring bridge and will of the council or thopter/sword to take care of liliana. Their liliana is actually counterproductive as well because we really dont want a hand. On the other hand they can demolish the hell out of our starting plays and make the game unwinnable. Its 50/50
About even
Lands; Game 1 they have no answer to ensnaring bridge and thopter/sword. Game 2 they either go fast and drop grip on us to demolish us or we wastelock/geddoncrucible or many other horrible things. This deck is weak to wasteland, as are we but we happen to have more than just lands at our disposal.
In our Favor
Miracles; Game 1 they have no answer to ensnaring bridge unless they counter it, but with all our resource denial the chances of it being countered is pretty low. Game 2 it becomes even worse for them since we have answers to pretty much anything they could put down to stop us. Jace can't win because we can just recycle artifacts to never run out of libraries, entreat the angels cant win through ensnaring bridge or geddon/tabernacle, venser and clique beats cant win through thopter spam. This matchup is pretty much dismantled by our list.
In our Favor
Dredge; if you can get early enough plays you will outvalue them and outflood them with cheap tokens. If they are incredibly fast then they can kill you super early out of nowhere. Both our board and their board tend to be non-interactive with one another out best card in maybe being prime time so we can just midrange them out. This match is straight up 50/50 for the first two turns but will eventually come into our favor late game no matter what since we can prevent them from attacking and flood the board simultaneously. That and if they board in iona we just karakas. They board in rider we board in humility, etc.
About even
Artificer's Intuition; this deck can grind us out if your unlucky or the pilot is fantastic. Otherwise it slows down so hard with trinisphere (note it doesnt stop them completely they can be grindy as hell) enough for us to find a wincon. Smokestack does WORK in this matchup.
In our Favor
Angry Birds; Shoutouts to MadcatSowega for making the angry birds deck, I for one am a fan of it. I can say plenty of this matchup and it's actual history though. Before when landstax was only white with a green splash this deck actually had problems facing angry birds, which was able to dodge our wastelock and swing us dead through tabernacle! Too early an armageddon and you shot yourself in the foot, they could feed smokestack while swinging us dead, and they generate card advantage like no tomarrow. However this is no longer the case now that we run even cheaper fliers than them, an "I win" button of stage/depths we can recure, a way to get bridge to stay on 0 while generating card advantage, tutors, wurmcoil engine, supreme verdict. This list has changed and of all the aggro matchups out their this one is hilariously managable, the only problem being fast starts, of which we can just eventually ignore with wipes and value.
In our Favor
Trinisphere, This simple ball of hate allows us to do horribly unfair and oppresive things with near ease. And due to our other artifacts we can power this baby out turn 1. Goodbye efficiency and hello oppression!
Mox Diamond, With 25 lands more often than not a mox diamond is live, with a land, a diamond, and a sol land we have 3 mana turn 1! This allows us by itself to have many combinations of fast mana and fixing available to us as well as it acts as a discard outlet to riftstone portal so we don't have to kill ourselves with Ancient Tomb or painlands.
Smokestack, This artifact is one of the best things we can drop and with our acceleration we can drop it quick and dirty. This thing can keep boards stalled forever or make it so your opponent just can't win, or do anything at all. Bonus is this also gets around true name nemesis.
Crucible of Worlds, Some decks we can beat with a t1 sphere and a t2 crucible, how you ask? If we have a wasteland and they dont have three basic lands then they can't play spells anymore, ever. Allows all of our sac effect lands to be even better. Need chumps for days? Mishra's factory. Need a way to draw a card every turn or save a life from the loam? Horizon Canopy. Want to make City of Traitors even better? Yes you do. Dredged all your artifacts to the yard? Buried ruin for days.
Chalice of the Void, Sometimes reads (2), target RUG delver player loses the game. Sometimes reads (2), turn off all of your opponents card selection, targeted discard, elves (ok not all of them but a lot of them), and rituals. And with so many ways to get 2 mana turn 1 we can make games go from a 50/50 shot to a climb up mount Everest. If we need to it's not unknown to drop them for 0 (cheerios loses the game) or for 2, maybe even 3.
Tangle Wire, and odd mainboard inclusion that I have had great success with. With buried ruin and crucible of worlds you can often times soft lock an opponent with too few resources with two of them, as well as time walk an opponent with no more lands in hand. The synergy with our resource disruption is astounding.
Ensnaring Bridge, main deck hate for show and tell, also keeps tin-fins in check if they can't storm off immediately since that griselbrand can't attack. Also keeps elves from using craterhoof, stops progenitus, and if we empty our hand we can stop everything in it's tracks. The bonus is we can put this into play via an opponents show and tell.
Nonartifact Spells
Oblivion Ring, A catch-all to problem permanents that we can sack to smokestack later when we don't need to worry about a TNN or a lilliana or a jace anymore. With a smokestack if they have no more permanents the planeswalker is going away with the next upkeep. It also has low color requirements and can be played turn 1 to get rid of an aether vial from death and taxes. This is the swiss army enchantment this deck desperatly needs.
Armageddon, A staple of white stax makes it's way over here. Low color requirements and with 6 mainboard ways to recur lands this is almost one sided board wipes for days. An armageddon into a tabernacle also means they can't beat us down with what they had left for it either. One of our few ways to deal with basic lands.
Life from the Loam, A color light way to not only fill our yard if we need to find a specific land but also just a general way to recur lands. Synergizes with all of our sac effect lands and with a manabonds you can do some work dredging every turn then just discarding it at the end step to start the process all over again.
Lands
Flagstones of Trokair, Can feed a smokestack for up to 3 turns without us even skipping a beat. Provides white mana for our rings and geddons and most of all, while it can be wastelanded who would wasteland this? Might as well be plains 2-4.
Plains, for when we dont want to outright lose to blood moon. We can more often than not cast anything we want with any color of mana but white is absolutely essential for armageddon and oblivion ring.
Savannah, Color fixing that can be fetched after an armageddon. Thats all its good for but dang if it isnt useful.
Karakas, This in the main as well as ensnaring bridge makes show and tell and reanimator's jobs suck miserably. We can also return problem creatures like Kira or Ezuri to their owners hands to make life even more difficult. Also nice against thalia. Along with all this it also provides white.
Horizon Canopy, Mana fixing, draw power, and also protects life from the loam when we need it.
Riftstone Portal, Can be discarded to a mox diamond as well as allowing our sol lands post armageddon to tap for color. Niche but when it works it makes all the difference. The Tabernacle a Pendrel Vale is horribly unfair when it can also tap for white or green. Also some insurance against blood moon.
The Tabernacle at Pendrel Vale, makes creature matchups a ton easier, playing this after an armageddon also wipes everything but artifacts and enchantments. Dropping one of these after an empty the warrens is also a fun thing to do.
Wasteland, our bread and butter land. Most of our things are colorless so we can use it for mana more often than not, making it not dead against basic lands. Recurring this is horribly unfair and very fun to do, keeping resources to a minimum almost better than rishadan port can do.
Rishadan Port, for us this turns off utility lands, basics, keeps them off mana when we dont have a wasteland or want to keep them under a sphere. This guy is amazing when hes not just tapping for a smokestack or some other artifact.
Mishra's Factory, an answer to walkers when we have no oring in hand, a chump blocker for when we don't have a bridge, and a win condition after we make sure the opponent has nothing on the table.
Buried Ruin, dredged an artifact? no problem! Abrupt decay ruining your day? not anymore. This little utility land can be used for mana more often than not and keeps us from dying to removal.
City of Traitors and Ancient Tomb, allows us to power out our expensive spells fast and efficiently. One of the reasons we can do a turn 1 trinisphere or chalice of the void.
Sideboard
Choke, Hates merfolk and is great against BUG which in my experiance is an abysmal matchup. Amazing synergy with our taxing effects.
Cursed Totem, Hates elves hard, can stop a goblin welder from wrecking our day and can keep deathrite shaman and scavenging ooze from wrecking our yard.
Phyrexian Revoker, Another answer to walkers and problem permanents, can keep a mystic, jitte, shaman, whatever you need in check while dodging our chalice of the void.
Wurmcoil Engine, When you play a deck where you can shut off swords to plowshares in an instant and where most people board out removal anyways wurmcoil engine makes fair decks have to work even harder to kill us. And even if it dies? We get two more tokens! We can also recur this via buried ruin.
Wrath of God, our one big nuke button, great against elves, death and taxes, and can even kill TNN.
Manabond, allows us to put lands into play without having to sac a city of traitors and can turn on a bridge easily. Allows us to discard a loam from our hand if we have no green source so we can dig for a portal or any other land we need. The only reason this isn't mainboard is because of chalice of the void. If something in the future makes us not want to run tangle wires or some other permanent this could bump up to main very soon, even if it doesnt dodge a chalice.
Maze of Ith, Stops lone attackers like batterskull from being able to solo us if we cant find a bridge or a factory.
Ghost Quarter, Wasteland #5 against some decks. Also allows us to get our plains if we absolutely need it.
Mykatdied's List
Lands
Horizon canopy - Allows us to continue drawing extra cards when we are up on lands. With exploration we can do this in multiples a turn. Something stax never really had and needs
Stirring Wildwood - Gives us a great option to stop a delver
Creatures
Knight of the Reliquary - Since we're running with a lands option, this allows us to play more utility lands between the main and the board, she also closes out a game right quick.
Spells
Exploration - Playing multiple lands a turn will naturally have it's benefit. Having this and crucible means smokestack can go up to 2 counters quickly and easily. We also will be able to drop it sooner. As explained before being able to play a canopy and draw twice a turn can help. We also recover from Armageddon much quicker.
Life from the loam - Having a piece of land recusion that can't be decayed, pulsed, worn, etc. can be a great option.
Sideboard
Thalia as additional combo hate.
Bridge as additional creature control, we can sacrifice to stax when we are ready to kill them.
Chasm - Another way to survive hoards and with exploration we can play this every turn and another land so that we never lose anything from it.
DD, Stage, Rotation - Gives the deck a little more of a combo feel and quick if we need it.
Strategy
The general strategy is simple, to attack your opponents ability to use their resources efficiently. Do this by keeping an early play (usually trinisphere or a chalice) and then back it up with your lands as the game goes long. If they have 3-4 lands out it might be time to pull the trigger on armageddon. Their is one hand though that is I believe a near instant win on the play if we dont get force of willed or chancellor of the annexed turn 1.
If you get a trinisphere, a sol land, a mox diamond, 2 of any other lands you will be able to play tsphere turn 1.
Then next turn if you already have a smokestack in your hand or you draw into one play your next land and a smokestack.
Next turn sacrifice 0 to smokestack, then put a counter on it. If you have a crucible of worlds in hand and then drop that they will never hit their third land drop and you can keep on 2-3 lands and a mox the rest of the game.
Other fun things include dropping a ton of lands to manabonds with a loam in hand, loaming into more goodies and then using buried ruin to get back all your lock peices with your now obscene amount of resources.
History
I started this deck in 2013, about three months after I started playing magic. It started out as a mono white list that then started splashing black and green for liliana and abrupt decay, after that project didnt work out the way I wanted to I started taking out color until I was left with a G/W shell using sylvan library and life from the loam. I then took out the maguses, put in the tabernacles, and decided that since my mainboard artifacts where so tight for what I wanted to run my best place to make changes was the lands.
I ran this list sans the manabonds in this last koopa IQ and thats where I realized fully the direction I wanted to go with this deck. The sideboard manabonds and two lands are different from the list I ran, as is the portal, but now that those are in I feel this list has a new way to attack it's matches and probably became more flexible with it's inclusion.
This actually just feels like lands to me, more specifically eternal garden. I think I would prefer to see creeping tar pit as a win condition. I also decided a while ago that Armageddon is bad since most decks are playing off of 2-3 lands.
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Creeping tar pit would be ideal for this list, like if they have a blocker we just cant get rid of because we cant find a geddon/wrath/tabernacle. I just dont know how blue and black can be shoved in easily. Mox diamond takes care of one color but I only expect to have 1 out at a time.
I personally love armageddon just for the armageddon into tabernacle play, but what would you suggest in it's place?
Also I've never played eternal garden, might suit it up on cockatrice and give it a try to see the similarities.
Honestly you may be better off posting in the lands thread. One of the big reasons for blue is tolaria west since it gives you a tutor that is recurable. Black is great for entomb engines as seen in haas jund list as well as some cards with retrace.
Eternal garden was the precursor to 43 lands. I seem to recall it playing a nether spirit as well
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Creeping Tar Pit is not a terrible finisher, but the problem is it's only a finisher whereas something like Mishra's Factory can be used as a 3/3 blocker for only 1 mana. Armageddon tends to be very good as well. If you get the Wasteland Engine online it allows you to clean up any basics they fetched. It's particularly powerful to go Armageddon-> play Tabernacle.
For the list itself it seems there are a couple ways to go. Either Lands with more mainboard stax elements (Chalice/Trinisphere) or a stax deck that gives up some of the more niche elements (humility, moat) to include more powerful land recursion.
Personally I like building the W/g stax list myself. If we go that route I think 4 maindeck Life from the Loam and 4 maindeck Exploration are necessary. Chalice on 1 may sometimes cut us off from Exploration, but it is just too powerful an effect to ignore. Being able to Wasteland twice a turn or Wasteland and build mana or just rebuild after an Armageddon is crucial.
I would drop Flagstones down to 1 or 2 copies and slot in a few more Horizon Canopies.
This actually just feels like lands to me, more specifically eternal garden...
...Eternal garden was the precursor to 43 lands. I seem to recall it playing a nether spirit as well
Though I don't personally recall anything earlier than the old 43 lands build, this looks very different than anything since. The Sol lands are unheard of in Lands decks, and the prison artifacts are only sided in - this build main-decks eighteen! Exploration is the VIP in Lands.dec, but not preset here.
To me this looks more like Geddon-Stax with a twist of Lands rather than the other way around.
This was originally posted in the stax thread. There was some brief discussion but it was decided that because this didn't fall into the white stax archetype, yet it plays differently than lands that it should have it's own thread.
Hello there! I'm struck by this deck concept. This is probably going to get very long, so please bear with me.
First: I nominate the name Lands Tax (rather than landstax). I think it reads better and is kinda fun.
Second: This deck is three colors: White, Green, Blue. I'd like to take a minute and discuss the value of each color.
In traditional Stax, white is the main color usually since it provides 'geddon, ETutor, Oblivion Ring, and Elspeth.
In traditional Lands, Green and Blue are the major colors: primarily for Loam, Crop Rotation, Exploration, Intution, and Tolaria West.
In a combination of both, deciding whether to stay 3 color, or cut to 2 is an important question. In particular, you've already cut down to 2 copies of Armageddon (by the by, as valuable as dodging Extirpate on the second 'geddon is less valuable than the $400 price tag). You're also not playing ETutor, Elspeth or O-Ring. In Stax, Armageddon is supposed to be cast as often as possible to complete the lock. As a two of, 'geddon doesn't do that in your list. It also introduces a third color. I strongly believe it should either be a 4-of or none.
Similarly, the lack of E-Tutor for silver bullets really reduces the effectiveness of your one ofs. It also hammers the value of the multiple two-card combos. In particular: Bridge, Smokestack (which has a two card combo with Sundial of the Infinite by the way), Tangle Wire, Zuran Orb, Foundry/Sword, become very random without that search ability. While Tezz provides that top-end search for those artifacts, he's not good at anything else. His +1 is entirely irrelevant with the artifacts we have. His ultimate wins the game on the spot, but if we're resolving Tezz and he lives, we're probably already winning anyway. He doesn't protect himself at all, either.
Third: Cards of no value
Bottled Cloister: Great against hand disruption if you can get it out early enough. Chalice/Trinisphere already *do* that.
It's also dead literally everywhere else. I'd cut it.
Chromatic Lantern: Colorfixing and ramp. I get that it makes all your colorless lands into colored ones. I don't think that's a strong enough play on Turn 1/2 to justify it at all. It's a poor top deck, poor early, and if we're cutting a color, totally irrelevant, especially considering Mox Diamond is a thing.
Gods' Eye: This is bad. Maybe you could justify it in a multiple 'geddon list, but here it's just nothing of relevance.
Garruk: What? I get your reasoning for his inclusion. In general, he's unjustifiable in Legacy.
Fourth: Next Steps:
I propose a transition away from GUW and into BUG.
Pros, Urborg. Tezzeret Agent of Bolas.
Cons, not much.
So on that front, we'd be looking something more like this:
Let me know what you think about this. It's really a much more like Lands Smashed with Tezzerator smashed with Stax. There are a couple solid additional options:
Smokestack + Sundial of the Infinite - still very powerful, also playable in this deck.
Ensnaring Bridge vs The Abyss - Bridge answers more things faster, but it's also less fun with Tezz. The Abyss also hits literally nothing of ours, so yay.
I could see shoehorning 1-2 Creeping Tarpit in as well. Potentially instead of an Underground Sea.
There's a world where I sleeve this up actually, I'm very intrigued. If you'd like I can do an even more in-depth explanation of individual card choices. Kudos to you for this awesome brew.
Very glad you like the list! And as for long messages I love long messages
You make some incredibly good points about the list and in all honesty I can see some merit in every point you made especially your comments about garruk and bottled cloister. Garruk was shoved in to deal with our stoneblade matchup, being that we have no real way to answer an early stoneforge mystic except for garruk, if you know anything better I would love to hear about it! As for bottled cloister its not actually for discard at all but merely a way to turn on bridge while giving us card advantage at the same time, meaning if we need to dig for a tabernacle or something to win the game with we can keep the opponent fenced in with bridge while generating card advantage. Our only instant speed interaction already being played out like maze of ith and the like. I for one think it's fantastic only because other sources of artifact card draw just aren't that good. The tomes being especially bad.
Besides all that though, the list you posted looks hilariously fun! The abyss itself being a mini-smokestack that dodges things like ancient grudge and krosan grip is all too enticing! As well as your take with intuition is a line of thought that seemingly went right over my head! I think however, that their may be room for multiple interpretations of this list since if you do cut white you miss on supreme verdict and council's judgement as well as karakas which are hilariously good cards, being able to mainboard answer show and tell, reanimator, and to a lesser extent death and taxes (thalia and mangara). Maybe your interpretation is better maybe not but I definitely am going to play around with your list because all in all I like the thought of throwing TNN into the abyss
I would appreciate an in depth card explanation whenever you have the time. And thank you for the complement.
(edit) Oh I didnt notice you also ran karakas, so just as a colorless source I guess. That card is dumb good in this kind of list
Hello hello Mugenkira. I'm glad you appreciated my overly long post. I hope you're prepared for another one! I have a little bit more time this morning, so I'm going to ramble about some of these card choices and this deck in general. I'm a physicist, so I have a bit of a hankering for math, so bear with me if it gets technical.
Conceptually, this is concept behind this deck:
Land early artifact disruption to slow/stop our opponent's game plan. Follow up with over-the-top Planeswalker/Artifact combo. Ideally, the opponent has scooped to an overwhelming board state by turn 4. The deck also offers an incredible long game, mostly around Life from the Loam.
First off, the lands package:
Since this is a Stax variant, there needs to be some number of Sol Lands in the list. Ideally, we'd want a sol land in our opening hand to ramp out whatever our initial disruption is. Playing a full 4 copies of both Ancient Tomb and City of Traitors gives us a 65% chance of having a copy on the draw, and a 70% chance on the play. For the most part, we want the first Sol Land, we're okay with the second and don't want the third, unlike regular Stax. As such, I believe some number less than 8 is ideal. Particularly since we have pretty tight colored mana requirements. Not having a Sol Land is okay for our deck, as we have alternate lines of play that don't involve fast disruption.
Therefore, I personally have settled on 6 total Sol Lands. I could, however, see similar lists running the full 8 for most turn-1 consistency, and I can also see running less, particularly in a meta where the Stax portion of the deck is less stellar. Now, what is the correct split between Tomb and City. Considering our lands recursion options, Crucible and Loam, City is considerably less problematic for us than in classic Stax. Additionally, Tomb makes the aggro matchup much harder for us. We do, however, want to resolve multiple 3-4 drops in a row. Therefore, I would confidently say that Tomb should be played as a 4-of, with City making up the remainder of your Sol Land slots. I could be swayed either way based on meta, notably the presence/absence of graveyard hate to make City much worse as well as the number of fast aggro decks.
Again, since this is Stax, we want a land destruction package. Classic Stax uses this package to keep opponents locked under trinisphere and chalice. For Stax, the LD of choice is the Wasteland/Crucible lock. On top of that, some versions run Armageddon. Lands is also a mana denial deck. Lands utilizes Wasteland/Loam and Rishadan Port to slow their opponent's development. Considering our colors, and ability to go over the top, I believe we can shave some of our LD consistency, since it is not a necessary part of our lock system. We do want to have game against problematic utility lands our opponents might play, as well. Therefore, I think 3-4 pieces of land destruction are ideal. I would weight that heavily towards Wastelands, with the option of a singleton Ghost Quarter if necessary. Recursion effects are already an integreal part of the deck and will be addressed later.
Utility lands! These lands, accessible through Loam dredges, draw steps, or tutor effects are what give this deck some nice marginal benefits against certain decks. What lands to run/what number of them should be tailored for the meta, although there are some that should probably be standard in every list.
Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth: Color fixes all of our lands. Considering the sparcity of colored sources in this deck, I would consider this a must play. Potentially more copies depending on the number/type of our colored sources.
Dark Depths/Thespians Stage: This deck isn't a Depths deck, therefore 0-1 copies are reasonable. In particular, the Intuition package of Loam/Depths/Stage is ridiculously powerful and might be worthy of inclusion depending on local meta and pilot preference.
The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale: A tutorable answer to swarm decks. In particular, this land is used by Lands to slow the development of fast aggro/tribal strategies. The inclusion of Tabernacle in this deck entirely depends on wether or not we end up having a problem with aggro. 0-1 depending on meta/pilot preference.
Cycling Lands: These work best with the Loam engine. It's possible they're unecessary, but 0-2 based on pilot preference is possible.
Karakas: Tutorable answer to problematic legendary creatures. If the reanimator/sneak+show matchup turns out to be average or poor, Karakas could play an important role there. I don't think they'll be as abysmal as regular Land's is, since our lock pieces are fantastic against them. Initial impressions make me say 0-1 depending on meta/pilot preference.
Academy Ruins: A must include, in my mind. Being able to recur artifacts milled by loam or intuition is very valuable. Additionally, Ruins gives some protection from counterspells.
Maze of Ith: If, somehow, the creature matchup turns out to be horrific, moving some number of Mazes in (like Lands), will help there. Ideally, we're going over the top anyway, so Maze doesn't do much.
Tolaria West: An on-color tutor. While the tutor cost is high, it finds all of our included utility lands, as well as other 0-drops of note. 0-2 depending on build.
Bojuka Bog: A nice answer to opposing graveyard strategies. It's also on color which is a bonus. Even though we're not playing crop rotation for the instant speed awesomeness, having this utility on a land can be very powerful. 0-1 main as necessary for your meta.
Manlands: We are not a traditional Stax deck that wins with its manlands. Therefore, any included manlands serve as a backup plan. Considering our colors 0-2 Creeping Tar Pit could make the cut.
Basics: Considering how tight the mana base is for this deck, I would but basics firmly in the utility category. The utility being that they dodge Bloodmoon. Of our three colors, green is the most necessary for this function, as it casts anti enchantment sideboard cards and loam to recur our other lands in case of an opposing wasteland lock.
Mana Sources! This deck has some tight mana requirements. In particular, Thopter Foundry and Tezzeret can be hard to cast. Additionally, we want to always be able to cast Loam if we have it, as loam helps smooth our mana problems.
Mox Diamond: the perfect source of colored mana for us. It pitches one of our unnecessary lands which can be recurred. It also ramps us and provides even more ways to cast our lock pieces earlier.
Artifact Lands: these deserve some testing, considering their usefulness with Tezzeret. I'm unsure if they contribute much to the gameplan, but certainly Darksteel Citadel+Tezz is really good.
Duals/Fetches: The two core colors of this deck are Green and Blue, with black serving as the finisher color. Therefore, I find Tropical Island to be the most valuable dual land, followed by Underground Sea. Fetch land choices should limited to G/X fetches, as being able to find the singleton forest is very important. Therefore, I would run something on the order of 7-10 duals/fetches.
If I have missed addressing some aspect of the lands package, or there are additional options you'd like me to comment upon, please let me know.
Now, let us discuss the core of this deck: the artifacts package. Since we are a Stax deck, these pieces are the most important part of our disruption suite.
Chalice of the Void: Obviously not much needs to be said here. We can easily shut off many cards from our opponent with a single resolved Chalice on 1. Additionally, Chalice for zero doesn't hurt us too much. While Chalice on 2 is a reasonable option against some decks, we should probably avoid it considering our reliance on Life from the Loam.
Trinisphere: Potentially even better than Chalice, sphere is plays several incredibly important roles: 1) it slows our opponents down and 2) protects us from counter magic. For the most part, blue decks have an incredibly hard time fighting through 3Sphere. Additionally, the combination of Chalice and 3Sphere makes our combo matchup fairly solid, in direct comparison to Land's combo matchup which is stone terrible. While we have no turn 0 interaction, we can use sideboard slots to cover that gap.
Mox Diamond: as mentioned above, this is fast colored mana. A perfect artifact for our strategy.
Crucible of Worlds: This is a holdover from Stax. It does a wonderful job recurring our lands and plays nicely with the Loam's dredges. Considering the fact that we play Loam, it's entirely reasonable that Crucible is an unnecessary part of this deck. This requires more playtesting. I would ideally never play 4, probably more like 1-2.
Thopter Foundry/Sword of the Meek: cheap and effective mana sink for the mid and late game. This particular artifact combo really shines in the long game. It helps stabilize versus fast decks and provides a ton of inevitability, particularly when paired with Academy Ruins.
Ensnaring Bridge: a great artifact against creature strategies, particularly since we're looking to empty our hand very early. Bridge is great in several matchups, particularly Sneak and Show. Bridge might be the best anti-creature card this deck can play. Further testing will confirm or deny this assertion.
Engineered Explosives: Tutorable with Tolaria West, EE gives us a nice colorless sweeper. Considering we're already a 3-color deck that plays Mox Diamonds, EE can be very powerful. Problematically, we are looking to establish a board presence in the 0, 2, 3 and 4 cmc slot. As such, EE is not always one-sided. 1-of as a tutor target or 2/3 of as the main source of removal is appropriate.
There is playable artifact ramp, however our Sol Lands and Mox Diamonds are already powerful ramp in and of themselves. We are looking to reach 4 mana, and additional ramp pieces don't contribute to that. Additionally, there are plenty of additional artifacts that have specific purpose. These I will outline in the sideboard options section. Some of them could find maindeck use if desired.
Sorceries and Instants:
Life from the Loam: The going-long strategy piece. While its utility is somewhat less in this deck than in dedicated Loam decks, it still packs a huge punch. Being able to 'draw' three cards a turn is incredibly powerful. In particular, it plays very well with the Thopter Sword combo, as Sword in the graveyard is nearly as good as Sword in play. Coupled with Academy Ruins, Loam provides a recursion tool for nearly every part of our deck. Additionally, Loam helps support the Land Destruction plan very well.
Intution: this card might is literally perfect for us. Finding recurrable silver bullets, win conditions or just Intuitiong for value is very strong. The instant speed is very relevant, as it gives us even more play lines than a traditional Stax deck. In particular, Intuition is a very very powerful enabler for every aspect of this deck. It also serves as the hinge for players to leverage their skill. In a linear deck like this, providing ways for superior players to outplay is very very important. The toolbox aspect of this card coupled with many of the pieces of our deck cannot be overlooked.
Some Intuition 3-Card combos are as follows:
Loam/Depths/Stage - essentially, win the game in two turns.
Academy Ruins/Loam/EE - infinte sweepers
3xTezz - playing Tezz copies 5-8 is very good.
I don't think I need to go on at length about Intuition, it's clear what it does in this deck.
Toxic Deluge: if this deck ends up needing a sweeper, this is the best choice. Coming in at 3cmc, it really helps solidly stabilize the board. It doesn't have any particular combo with our deck, so likely this will be an anti-creature sideboard option if necessary. Damnation fills a very similar role at 4cmc if necessary.
Thirst for Knowledge: the best card draw this deck can ask for since we're avoiding cmc 1 like the plague, and we play a bunch of artifacts. Ideally, Thirst isn't necessary as we have so many value engines without needing additional card draw.
Please let me know if there are additional spells that might have good synergy in this deck. Remember, CMC1 is actually a bad thing in this deck.
Creatures:
We aren't really a creature deck, but there are many potential options if desired. A heavy creature version of this deck moves much closer to Tezzerator Control than Lands Tax.
Baleful Strix: on color, great blocker, great with Tezz, cantrips, everything we'd like if we played a creature. It remains to be seen if this deck needs intermediate plays like this or if it can move straight from lock pieces to finishers without anything in between.
Trinket Mage: finds any of our CMC0 artifacts. Not really as powerful in this deck as it could be. With the prohibition on CMC1s, trinket mage gets much worse.
Spellskite: Blocker, colorless, redirect to save Tezz, all good things. Most likely a sideboard card, but Spellskite can potentially find a main slot in the right meta.
Wurmcoil Engine: a powerful topend finisher. Great with Academy Ruins. With chalice on 1 to stop Swords, Wurmcoil can get out of hand very very quickly. Potentially worthwhile as a 1-of tutor target and creature based finisher.
Phyrexian Revoker: a 2cmc pithing needle. It can't name utility lands, but it does answer troublesome permanents that EE can't remove, key amongst them is Jace TMS and other planeswalkers.
Planeswalkers:
'Walkers are the best win condition for this deck. We can power them out very very early with protection. As such, they stick around and generate incredible value for us. The exact combination of walkers is up to the pilot but remember to tune the remainder of the deck to each one.
Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver: usually can't come down turn one, considering the mana cost but Ashiok does some very nice things. She gets big very quickly, she is excellent in creature matchups, stealing their stuff is very good. She's also decent in non-creature matchups as her +2 puts pressure on them to remove her or deck. Obviously this is somewhat of a pipedream, but Ashiok in combination with Academy Ruins means we can win even the grindiest of matchups.
Jace TMS: God Mode card of the Gods. He's very good. I don't deny that. Problematically, most of his abilities are somewhat underpowered in this deck. Fatesealing an opponent is good, but if we've successfully locked them out, it doesn't matter anyway. Brainstorming, as always, is very good, but without a consistent way to shuffle, it's lackluster at best in this shell. Bouncing creatures is fine, but we've probably removed them or locked them out anyway. His ultimate is obviously game winning and is the primary reason to run him. \
Liliana of the Veil: Much like Ashiok, Lili is hard to cast turn 1. Post turn 1, she's lackluster. Discarding cards hurts us more than it hurts our opponent. Hopefully most of their cards are dead anyway. Her -2 is certainly a solid way to answer any threat and is the main reason to play her.
Kiora, the Crashing Wave: A potentially solid choice for this deck. On color, and very synergistic with loam. Her +1 answers nearly every potential threat we could face, her -1 ramps us and generates huge card advantage. Her ultimate wins the game in short order. Figuring out wether she's *actually* good, particularly versus other options will be a challenge.
Tesseret, Agent of Bolas: Here we go. This gentleman is probably the best possible walker for us. All his abilities are super relevant in this shell. +1 should always draw a card, his -1 protects himself and generates a very fast clock. While his ultimate doesn't necessarily win the game in this shell, it does close it out pretty fast. The key thing I like about this Tezz is that it can turn our redunant lock pieces into win conditions. One of the problems with Stax is poor top decking and Tezz negates a lot of that.
Enchantments:
While enchantments are less synergistic with our artifact plan, they can fulfill some important roles in this deck.
The Abyss: a continuous way to remove their creatures as all of ours are artifacts. I've been testing this and haven't been particularly impressed.
Nether Void: a great top-end lock piece. It completes the lock with trinisphere nicely as the effects make any spell cost a minimum of 6.
Pernicious Deed: Another sweeper in our colors. It plays even less nicely with our strategy, yet could be valuable in the right version of this deck.
Chains of Mephistopheles: A powerful hoser in our colors. This seems best in an even more cagey type of Stax deck, yet it could be valuable as a sideboard option. It's worth noting that Tezz isn't card draw, and replacing a draw with dredge negates chains for us.
Bitterblossom: On color and powerful in its own right, blossom could be used in an equipment heavy version of this deck.
Propganda: This would play a very similar role to Ghostly Prison in a monowhite stax deck, slowing down creatures and allowing us time to stabilize.
And finally we arrive at sideboarding. My thoughts about this are fairly limited, as sideboards should be molded to meet a meta. I will go over some solid options and talk about where they work the best.
Torpor Orb: If for some reason creature ETB effects is a problem in your meta (or in the future) this hoses that problem. In particular, Reclamation Sage and Stoneforge Mystic are hosed by Orb.
Null Rod: While Rod doesn't interact perfectly with our deck, it is a very very good piece of hate in the right matchups.
Cursed Scroll: Considering we dump our hand very quickly, this could be a reasonable sideboard card against creature matchups. In particular, Death and Taxes has a very hard time with this card as it's a colorless source of damage.
Cursed Totem: How to handle those nasty creature synergy decks. In particular, hammering the crap out of Qasali Pridemage is really good.
Zuran Orb: Tutorable out to Price of Progress. I believe the burn matchup is already stellar as it is, but it's worth noting here.
City of Solitude: if, for whatever reason, you need more protection on your turn than Trinisphere this does the job very well. Probably not a fantastic choice, but potentially playable.
Engineered Plague: Stomp all over those tribal decks. Do it. You won't.
Krosan Grip: probably the best artifact/enchantment removal for our deck. The higher cost isn't an issue, and split second makes it very very strong.
Perish: Get'em. Just get'em. A narrow card, but good at what it does.
Mindbreak Trap: The answer to turn 1 combo. Usually there's no way for them to play around it at all.
Graveyard Hate: We have to be very careful with our choices here as we ourselves are a graveyard synergy deck.
Tormod's Crypt: Tutorable graveyard hate, 'nuf said
Leyline of the Void: Turn 0 hate, also easily castable by this deck, probably the best choice.
And there you have it, my card by card analysis of BUG Lands Tax. Considering how my playtests have gone and the thought I've put into these analyses I would suggest something along the lines of this base list:
27 Lands might be a little bit high, and I could see cutting down on that number. In particular, if the Depths/Stage combo doesn't pull its weight I would cut those. In the end, however, I think this is a fun mashup of several different archetypes. It attempts to solve the weaknesses of each projenitor deck with the strengths of another. It's possible that it's trying to do too much, but I think it's fairly stable the way it is right now. Please feel free to chime in with any corrections, additions or thoughtful comments.
I have a problem: this whole thing is 3500 words. Jeez.
Holy crap when you said detailed... Well I guess I should have known!
Their are a fewc omments I could make on that list and card choices, one is the very high amount of duals and fetches in combination. The list I have been running uses only one fetch and three duals since we want to pack so many lands that do something. Maybe that approach is better maybe its worse, I need to load this list up and try it out to get a feel for it.
Second no smokestack? I can understand using engineered explosives as a sort of catch all but it is very mana intensive and isnt as one sided as smokestack in the matchups its good in, then again I was never a fan of EE since I hated that it blew up our lock pieces to begin with.
Kiora also seems like she could be a fantastic finisher but otherwise she doenst hit our biggest aggro threat, true name nemesis, although it would be nice in the stoneblade matchup regardless since batterskull does present a clock.
My only other concern is the lack of ability to turn on ensnaring bridge when you need it. I cant think of anything that would be too too good in a list like this except for maybe something like... Null Brooch? Knowledge Vault? I am stumped how you could turn on bridge when you need to in this list.
Otherwise this list takes a very different approach, and seems like of all the lists I've seen or worked on this one could kill the quickest with the threat of tezzerets card advantage and ultimate especially combined with thopter foundry you could potentially close out games incredibly easily compare to how grindy my original list is.
Also last question, would you like this list to be added to the primer as another deck option for this archetype?
after playing your list a bit my god it feels fantastic!
Of all the cards you put in engineered explosives and tezzeret did some of the most work I have ever seen in a list like this. Now I know why you have it in their holy crap.
I played mostly against stoneblade and omnishow tonight and it ripped them apart, the only cards that underperformed where intuition (which was either countered or just never became relevant) kiora (who was never relevant except to eat one attack from a TNN) and urborg (which made me almost lose game 2 to omnishow who boarded in thoughtseize and ripped my bridge) but otherwise the list does a ton of work.
Of all the games I lost the ones I lost I couldnt find some way of keeping the opponent from attacking me, one of them was an engineered explosives that was force of willed and the other was omnishow cunning wishing in a way to remove my bridge with an emrakul on the board (I didnt find karakas in time). The one thing I will say is that not having armageddon isnt as horrible as I thought but at the same time the games I lost would have been won with an armageddon. Not having a boardwipe outside of EE also made me lose against omnishow that boarded in young pyromancers and boarded out emrakul (odd I know but it worked). Im thinking for the Bug version a damnation or two would be fantastic in the board or maybe toxic deluge, black suns zenith, etc would be nice to have somewhere (losing to two young pyromancers after blowing up 15 elementals feels bad). But otherwise I won most of my games with your list.
Also have you thought of a Helm of Obediance in the board for when you want leyline of the void? I put one in my board and it won a game for me, not on my own leyline but on an opponents rest in peace
EE is surprisingly good, as you've discovered. I think, considering your experiences, that a sideboard with more creature removal will be good. I put my vote in for several Toxic Deluges, the colored mana requirement is much easier for us to deal with. The other option is Propaganda. It depends on your local meta. And yes, I do like Helm for the those odd win condition opportunities.
In regards to the multiple fetches/duals, I was mostly spitballing. Unlike mono-colored Stax lists, we're looking to cast multiple colored cards and multicolored cards. As such, we need to up the amount of colored sources. I can certainly see a list with more and different utility lands, but your chances of turn 2 Tezz goes down.
Decided to try out Venser, Shaper Savant in the list and it is overperforming like mad. More free wins as well as we have a grindy lock engine and another answer to things like vials before we can chalice and the like. Also makes delve critters horrid against us in aggro matchups like tasigur. We now also have an instant speed answer to spells for once which this deck has severely lacked.
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Introduction to Landstax
Landstax is the monster under the earth, whose iron pipes will rise to the skies and choke out the sun while all perish. This isn't a deck for the sane nor is it for the impatient. Combining the stax and lands archetype we are a prison deck that aims to attack an opponent's resources from multiple fronts at the same time leading to hilariously fun interactions (for you! kek) while making sure your opponent is under constant pressure to generate resources in an arms race like no other.
History
This list has had a really fugly run, to put it lightly. It all started out around late 2013 when I started playing magic with a deck that was handed to me and a willingness to learn and brew. Eventually I got tired of running aggro and simpler decks and began fiddling around with archetypes, trying things out like storm, permission control decks, and eventually getting a hard-on for artifacts. This led to forays into eggs and eventually while looking for artifacts I saw a certain card. Trinisphere, and this card inspired the hell out of me. Looking up decklists that used it I eventually found the stax archetype, to which I've happily married myself to but look at my mutant children my god.
Early Days
http://www.mtgvault.com/mugenkira/decks/stax-legacy/
When I began toying with the idea I went with a stompier route going for Magus of the Tabernacle and Knight of the Reliquary over much else. My first list was splash green simply for Knight but as it evolved this list became less and less desirable as it couldn't handle all that much that it needed to.
From their I looked to a solution I found in standard at that time.
http://www.mtgvault.com/mugenkira/decks/junk-stax/
I thought my lack of success was due to a lack of draw power and removal as well as losing too much life early on and my solution at the time came from Sorin, lord of Innistrad and Vindicate as well as Sylvan Library, adding a black splash this list allowed me to handle a lot more but as a mostly colorless deck with 4 tombs and 4 factories mana soon became a horrible problem and I realized that just splashing another color wasn't good enough.
http://www.mtgvault.com/mugenkira/decks/junk-stax-v2/
I decided I needed more raw power and gave up the ability to search lands for a bigger and faster beater, liliana, and an evasive win con for the long term with assemble the legion. This version ran city of brass making my mana problems slightly less horrible but the life issue was once again a concern now that freakin everything hurt me. So my next solution was to just embrace that.
http://www.mtgvault.com/mugenkira/decks/suicide-and-stax/
The dark horse of my experiments featuring no trinispheres, death's shadow, thalia, sphere of resistance... A lot of gooby stuff happening here that in all honesty is kind of ugly. This mutant child saw nearly no success whatsoever especially with the power of Abrupt Decay running rampant.
Their where more variations but they all kind of sucked and had the same theme, if you want to see a slump look at these.
http://www.mtgvault.com/mugenkira/decks/stax-v3-electric-boogaloo/
http://www.mtgvault.com/mugenkira/decks/return-of-the-stax/
http://www.mtgvault.com/mugenkira/decks/smallstax/
http://www.mtgvault.com/mugenkira/decks/cabal-stax-help/
I had a horrible fixation with sinkhole without realizing that a double colored mana cost in this archetype is horribly hard to pull off, these lists took a lazy route and just jammed whatever I felt was strong at the time with no coherence at all. This was truly a dark time for landstax.
End of Days
Horrible results and much frustration finally made me almost drop this list altogether until I finally cut black. Leading to this.
http://www.mtgvault.com/mugenkira/decks/two-inevitabilities/
Despite this name it bears no resemblance to death and taxes. By this point I decided to just say "screw it" to any other win con but mishras factory and surprisingly this list did have some decent results.
I fell apart as a magic player soon afterwords and this was my list before that.
http://www.mtgvault.com/mugenkira/decks/landstax/
By this point I fully adopted the name landstax and started throwing in tabernacles and horizon canopies as well as life from the loam becoming the major draw engine. But at this point I just kind of gave up. I couldn't find a list that truly was fun and had good results and I canned it. Until recently.
Revival!
I came back to this list a year later and decided that it needed to be delved into again. And thus I came up with this
http://www.mtgvault.com/mugenkira/decks/bant-landstax-legacy/
This is the same list you will see below, at this point I fully embraced the marriage of lands and stax archetypes mainboarding maze of ith, thespian's stage, dark depths, and ports which allow me to maintain some semblance of control without any artifacts as well as lands "I win button". This combined with the realization my past failures where from lack of card selection leading me to finally splash blue for tezzeret which could find me whatever I needed at the time. The list itself now features a toolbox upon a toolbox with a sideboard that digs incredibly deep for tech. At the moment this is my favorite and I believe the strongest thus far as well as the most interactive iteration, taking this fusion archetype even a step further.
This primer died a long time ago, soon after I made this I actually quit magic all together (at least in paper form) finding that trying to play in paper form was all too ridiculous and my wallet hurt too much. Recently however I have been mucking about with this list again and decided to try my hand at changing it again.
Here is my landstax list as of right now.
3 Crucible of Worlds
4 Mox Diamond
1 Smokestack
4 Trinisphere
1 Armageddon
3 Life from the Loam
3 Ancient Tomb
2 Plains
1 Savannah
1 The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale
4 Wasteland
1 Rishadan Port
1 Mishra's Factory
1 Karakas
2 Horizon Canopy
1 Ensnaring Bridge
1 Maze of Ith
1 Thespian's Stage
1 Dark Depths
2 Tundra
1 Windswept Heath
1 Flagstones of Trokair
1 Academy Ruins
1 Tangle Wire
1 Venser, Shaper Savant
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Bottled Cloister
3 Tezzeret the Seeker
2 Chromatic Lantern
1 Thopter Foundry
1 Sword of the Meek
1 Calciform Pools
1 City of Traitors
1 Ravages of War
1 Tolaria West
1 Wurmcoil Engine
1 Chalice of the Void
2 Council's Judgment
1 Humility
1 Choke
1 Primeval Titan
1 Phyrexian Revoker
1 Zuran Orb
2 Thopter Foundry
2 Sword of the Meek
1 Garruk Relentless
If you want to experience an incredibly different type of control deck, load this up on cockatrice and try it out. I think the list is now more interactive and stronger than it ever was with more avenues of play. Really something to experience.
Card Choices
Windswept Heath, Savannah, and Tundra; Literally just for colored mana. Thats it. We dont want to run tropicals because our base color is white and we ALWAYS need white because when we draw an armageddon we always want to play it. We always want white because of not only this but thopter foundry as well. Since our blue source is pretty much going to be a mox we need to account for the other color of mana.
Plains; Ghost quarter and veteran explorer exist.
The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale; creature decks be damned. Plus armageddon into tabernacle either from the yard via crucible or from your hand is one of the meanest and most game winning things you can ever do.
Tolaria West; it hits 36 cards main board and 37 cards sideboard that it can tutor out, only counterable by stifle or trickbind, and is a land we can get back with loam as well as an emergency blue source. Why I didnt run this before I have no clue.
Ancient Tomb and City of Traitors; sol lands in a deck thats mostly things that are 3 or more mana? Yes. City of traitors in case you need a sol land but cant afford the damage.
Dark Depths and Thespians Stage; a 20/20 flying indestructible creature just so happens to be good in legacy if it costs 2 mana.
Wasteland and Rishadan Port; resource denial until we can drop a wincon or a tempo piece is incredibly relevant. Also port can "shut off" basics.
Horizon Canopy; drawing cards is good, activating dredge for life from the loam at instant speed is good. We ***** lands from every zone making this land essentially our cantrip.
Mishra's Factory; a 3/3 blocker for 1 mana that likes to eat swiftspears and goblins. Win con if need be.
Maze of Ith; Makes batterskull irrelevant early on and can keep a bomb that stuck after a geddon from killing you indefinitly.
Karakas; Literally mainboard hate for reanimator and show and tell. And to a lesser extent hatebears thalia and gaddock teeg.
Calciform Pools; for powering out geddons and tezzes.
Wurmcoil Engine; in all honesty our aggro matchup is horrible. This guy either gives us 6 life or becomes a wall and wincon so we can slow them down enough to get a lock going or get thopter/sword so we can just flood the board with cheap flyers.
Garruk Relentless; wincon and removal all in one at a perfect spot on our curve we can poop out turn 2. Fantastic card but not that fantastic because hes dead in many matchups and his only time to shine is really against stoneblade and delver. Even then he could be better, moved entirely to the sideboard. In matchups hes good in he shines but the matchups hes good in are few and far between. Mostly if goblins becomes a big thing then by god man run 4 but otherwise keep one handy just in case.
Tezzeret the Seeker; a planeswalker we can cast with literally only one land and any other mana source (calciform pools) that toolboxes out our prison pieces and win conditions. This card is fantastic. Too bad we are really blue light but since we run nothing but conditional lock pieces and tempo cards its ok if he doesnt come up and fantastic when he does. He also untaps our moxes and lanterns and is a wincon himself. Went up to 3 so we can reliably toolbox out cards.
Life from the Loam and Crucible of Worlds; we like lands and wastelock is a thing.
Academy Ruins; We like artifacts and people can blow them up. Even if they blow this up we can get it back since its a land.
Chromatic Lantern; Makes our tombs tap for mana without having to kill ourselves, makes our color problem non existant, is a source of mana itself.
Mox Diamond; makes a t1 trinisphere possible. Makes a t1 chalice for 1 much more likely. Survives armageddon.
Engineered Explosives; Repeatable boardwipes, thank you to FlaviusBelisaurius for pointing out to me just how freakin useful this is, even if it does hit our stuff by the time we want to use this its often our only out anyways. Also fantastic against any tokens, elves, or goblin tokens via storm.
Ravages of War and Armageddon; we love lands, except we hate when our opponent has lands. Use these to blow them up. I opted for only 2 of this effect since although its nice they clump up your hand at inopportune times. I opted for a 1-1 split to dodge things like nevermore and surgical extraction.
Flagstones of Trokair; fetches our mana sources and survives armageddon. Combos with zuran orb.
Venser, Shaper Savant; we want as many free wins as possible against combo decks since in all honesty thats what this list is good at. This allows us a grindy lock engine with karakas that the enemy can't answer under a tsphere lock with wastes as well as another free win against show and tell, this also now finally allows landstax to "counter" a spell and with the horrid rule changes with delve we kinda need it.
Thopter Foundry and Sword of the Meek; 2/3 flyers for 1 that restore life happen to be good. Also can flood the board with dudes as a win con and a fantastic tempo piece against any aggro or midrange. Can actually make you survive TES if you gain enough life.
Bottled Cloister and Ensnaring Bridge; unless your name is noble heirarch or ornithopter it turns into a moat but better. We can tutor this out too. Cloister also helps us dig.
Tangle Wire; lets our wastelands kill fetches if they decide to just tap them to tangle wires effects, we drop so many permanents it doesnt hurt us as well as this is a slightly worse time walk against aggro and tempo decks. We can also softlock with this and academy ruins.
Smokestack; our answer to enchantments and walkers we cant beat to death. Also a lock piece we can keep going infinity. Dodges abrupt decay. Allows for a t1 sphere, t2 stack and t3 crucible for a GG against literally every deck (except for a t1 force of will of course.)
Phyrexian Revoker; suppression field hurts too much.
Primeval Titan; casting a 6 cost beater that can win the game is surprisingly easy in this list. Also fetches our stage/depths.
Council's Judgement and Supreme Verdict; we dont like things that can beat us to death, especially if they are named True Name Nemesis. Council's Judgement also in general solves a ton of problems.
Zuran Orb; makes our armageddons and ravages of war also read "and you gain 2 life for each land you control that was destroyed this way." Can stop a trample dude combined with mishra's factory.
Record
TBA
Matchups
Show and Tell; if they run three emrakuls its hard. If they dont its a free win. Counterspells are bad against you and dig is horrible against you. Omniscience is bad against tsphere and their wincons are terrible against ensnaring bridge. Even post board unless they pack mucho artifact hate they cant do much, barring of course a t2 show and tell which if we drop a bridge or karakas from it they still lose.
In our Favor
Storm; even if they pack hate the biggest things against them are the prison pieces we have the most of. Crucible and waste for their very few lands they run, trinisphere to decimate their speed, chalice to get rid of their hand destruction and digging power, even post board we are incredibly favorable, even after they board in abrupt decays and duresses. Even after they board in ancient grudges. Even after they board in anything they have this horrid uphil battle.
In our Favor
Reanimator; this matchup has mainboard hate. You can win through a long grind with thopter/sword. You can invalidate their bigbad with karakas or maze of ith. You can keep them from winning ever with stax pieces and wastelock/armageddon, a chalice on 1 actually wins against some builds whose only reanimation spell is the 1 drop one. Post board you get supreme verdict and crop rotation making this matchup even better.
In our Favor
Painter's Servant; holy crap this matchup is surprisingly horrible. Despite so many colorless cards in our library we get annihilated by our lack of activated ability hate and the fact we are hilariously weak to blood moon. This matchup is horrid game 1 and only gets worse and worse as they replace their blue hate with just general hate, making our dark depths very pretty mountains and our colored sources silly as they die to a engineered explosives at 0. Even after we board in revokers they usually run some form of removal post board once they realize we run walkers making it even worse. It makes sense in a way since were really greedy with colored mana and depend on lands to actually do things rather than them just being nice to drop things.
Not in our Favor
Four Horseman (judges be damned); we can chalice for 3 incredibly easily game one shutting off their combo entirely. Their only threats are the mesmeric orbs which can kill us eventually. Game 2 onward they really can annihilate you with mesmeric orb and they can also change into a show and tell deck on the spot making it so you HAVE to tap everything in order to stay alive. Multiple mesmeric orbs hurt a ton, beyond belief. The games afterwords are 50/50 while I would say we are favorable game one.
About even
Oops, All Spells! (Azami lady of scrolls version); It either wins t1 or it loses. For the most part game 2 it has no hate that's relevant to us and either win t1 or lose again.
In our Favor
Burn; this matchup is hit and miss. For one eidolon of the revels is dead and most of their deck is hated out by chalice and sphere. Zuran orb also makes this match fantastic. On the other hand their board makes it so that they can just punch us in the mouth better and if we fail to drop anything that can give us life or they drop a chalice on 0 we are in trouble. Mostly matches against this deck should go, game 1 you win. Game 2 they win. Game 3 its 50/50.
About even
Merfolk; this matchup is horrid. They can vial in creatures getting around sphere and chalice. They run basics like they are going out of style making wasteland bad. They have huge creatures and great countermagic and unless we rip a geddon into a tabernacle nothing will stop this matchup. Post board it only gets worse and even though we have boardwipes, and in that an uncounterable one it still is a chore to get it out at all. Literally hate this matchup.
Not in our Favor
Affinity; game 1 if your on the play you have a huge chance to win, if your on the draw YOU WILL LOSE. Game 2 and onward becomes much more managable with a full 4 chalices and a whole lot of board wipes they cant counter. You can also chalice for 2 shutting off a whole ton of everything. The cards you want to ditch are smokestack and wire as well as maybe one of your geddon effects. Garruk is outshined by verdict and the likes. Wurmcoil + revoker + bridge = gg in any situation.
About even
Grixis Tempo; this matchup is horrible because of TNN. If he doesnt hit and they don't play dack fayden we can win handedly. If they do then we are screwed. Post board we can keep dack from being a problem and we can accelerate our cause with carpet of flowers and keep things busy while their TNN sits their like a lump. On the other hand they have wonderful hand disruption and counterspells. Once again 50/50 but completely unwinable if they run dack. Literally that guy shuts us down with such style its maddening.
About even
Death and Taxes; unlike many decks we can pay their taxes but unless we get tabernacle, ensnaring bridge, or thopter/sword we cant actually stop their beats. It becomes a lot more managable post board where we jam tons of thopter/swords and supreme verdict. You can actually play through a grip of disenchants but you have to play really well and make sure you can keep them from messing up your tezzeret or get lucky with a good hand. Because of this and the inconsistency of our deck this matchup is mostly not in our favor since most times (around 60% of the time) we just get beat to death. Did I mention we are weak to wasteland?
Not in our Favor
Threshold; we can straight up not care about daze or spell pierce. We can generate more mana than is ever nessecary, and we can protect an "I win" button of stage/depths with chalice of the void. They dont have enough hard countermagic to deal with us until we get to games 2 and 3 in which their prospects go way up and our only real answer becomes supreme verdict. Its in our favor game 1 and 50/50 games 2 and 3.
About even
American Stoneblade; This matchup is wonky to say the least. As of now the list above is slightly bad but the newer version I am testing with mainboard Tolaria West and Engineered Explosives the matchup is still slightly bad, but winnable. If your early plays invalidate their early plays game 1 you can win, and if you drop thopter/sword fast enough its an easy win. Game 2 they can board out all their dead cards and bring in tons of hate... But often times against our sideboard plan of uncounterable board wipes and jamming thopter/sword we just kinda outvalue this deck. By a lot, especially since maze of ith keeps early batterskulls from doing anything this matchup just becomes worse for them post board. Their biggest shot is to win game 1 then pray we slip up game 2 and 3 because our board is just loaded with crap to demolish this list. The reason out of all the matchups this aggro list is our best aggro matchup is because EVERYTHING WE RUN IN MAINBOARD AND SIDEBOARD IS RELEVANT AGAINST THEIR GAMEPLAN. Literally 100% of our list is good against their list. I've never seen a deck have to work so hard to pull out wins in my life. Their best gameplan is early aggression and we kind of crap all over early aggression (we are bad against explosive agression, see affinity) but just straight up early value plays? We got that covered.
In our Favor
Punishing Jund; this matchup is bad for us only because of abrupt decay but without it they can't really do much. Wastelock really kills them because they run so many nonbasics. We can shut down deathrite shaman and lilianna or even keep them from casting anything worthwhile in general. We can outvalue them with garruk and keep them from actually winning with ensnaring bridge and will of the council or thopter/sword to take care of liliana. Their liliana is actually counterproductive as well because we really dont want a hand. On the other hand they can demolish the hell out of our starting plays and make the game unwinnable. Its 50/50
About even
Lands; Game 1 they have no answer to ensnaring bridge and thopter/sword. Game 2 they either go fast and drop grip on us to demolish us or we wastelock/geddoncrucible or many other horrible things. This deck is weak to wasteland, as are we but we happen to have more than just lands at our disposal.
In our Favor
Miracles; Game 1 they have no answer to ensnaring bridge unless they counter it, but with all our resource denial the chances of it being countered is pretty low. Game 2 it becomes even worse for them since we have answers to pretty much anything they could put down to stop us. Jace can't win because we can just recycle artifacts to never run out of libraries, entreat the angels cant win through ensnaring bridge or geddon/tabernacle, venser and clique beats cant win through thopter spam. This matchup is pretty much dismantled by our list.
In our Favor
Dredge; if you can get early enough plays you will outvalue them and outflood them with cheap tokens. If they are incredibly fast then they can kill you super early out of nowhere. Both our board and their board tend to be non-interactive with one another out best card in maybe being prime time so we can just midrange them out. This match is straight up 50/50 for the first two turns but will eventually come into our favor late game no matter what since we can prevent them from attacking and flood the board simultaneously. That and if they board in iona we just karakas. They board in rider we board in humility, etc.
About even
Artificer's Intuition; this deck can grind us out if your unlucky or the pilot is fantastic. Otherwise it slows down so hard with trinisphere (note it doesnt stop them completely they can be grindy as hell) enough for us to find a wincon. Smokestack does WORK in this matchup.
In our Favor
Angry Birds; Shoutouts to MadcatSowega for making the angry birds deck, I for one am a fan of it. I can say plenty of this matchup and it's actual history though. Before when landstax was only white with a green splash this deck actually had problems facing angry birds, which was able to dodge our wastelock and swing us dead through tabernacle! Too early an armageddon and you shot yourself in the foot, they could feed smokestack while swinging us dead, and they generate card advantage like no tomarrow. However this is no longer the case now that we run even cheaper fliers than them, an "I win" button of stage/depths we can recure, a way to get bridge to stay on 0 while generating card advantage, tutors, wurmcoil engine, supreme verdict. This list has changed and of all the aggro matchups out their this one is hilariously managable, the only problem being fast starts, of which we can just eventually ignore with wipes and value.
In our Favor
Old Primer
Decklist
This is my current list.
3 Crucible of Worlds
4 Mox Diamond
4 Smokestack
3 Tangle Wire
4 Trinisphere
4 Armageddon
3 Life from the Loam
4 Ancient Tomb
3 Flagstones of Trokair
1 Plains
2 Savannah
2 The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale
4 Wasteland
3 Oblivion Ring
1 Rishadan Port
1 Buried Ruin
1 Mishra's Factory
1 Karakas
1 Horizon Canopy
3 City of Traitors
3 Ensnaring Bridge
1 Riftstone Portal
2 Cursed Totem
2 Phyrexian Revoker
2 Wurmcoil Engine
2 Wrath of God
2 Manabond
1 Maze of Ith
1 Ghost Quarter
mykatdied's list
4 Ancient Tomb
2 Flagstones of Trokair
1 Forest
1 Ghost Quarter
2 Horizon Canopy
1 Karakas
1 Maze of Ith
4 Plains
2 Rishadan Port
2 Savannah
1 Stirring Wildwood
1 The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale
4 Wasteland
4 Knight of the Reliquary
Spells
3 Armageddon
4 Chalice of the Void
2 Crucible of Worlds
4 Exploration
4 Ghostly Prison
1 Life from the Loam
4 Mox Diamond
4 Smokestack
4 Trinisphere
Sideboard
3 Crop Rotation
2 Dark Depths
2 Ensnaring Bridge
1 Glacial Chasm
3 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
3 Thespian's Stage
Card Choices
Mugenkira's List
Artifacts
Mox Diamond, With 25 lands more often than not a mox diamond is live, with a land, a diamond, and a sol land we have 3 mana turn 1! This allows us by itself to have many combinations of fast mana and fixing available to us as well as it acts as a discard outlet to riftstone portal so we don't have to kill ourselves with Ancient Tomb or painlands.
Smokestack, This artifact is one of the best things we can drop and with our acceleration we can drop it quick and dirty. This thing can keep boards stalled forever or make it so your opponent just can't win, or do anything at all. Bonus is this also gets around true name nemesis.
Crucible of Worlds, Some decks we can beat with a t1 sphere and a t2 crucible, how you ask? If we have a wasteland and they dont have three basic lands then they can't play spells anymore, ever. Allows all of our sac effect lands to be even better. Need chumps for days? Mishra's factory. Need a way to draw a card every turn or save a life from the loam? Horizon Canopy. Want to make City of Traitors even better? Yes you do. Dredged all your artifacts to the yard? Buried ruin for days.
Chalice of the Void, Sometimes reads (2), target RUG delver player loses the game. Sometimes reads (2), turn off all of your opponents card selection, targeted discard, elves (ok not all of them but a lot of them), and rituals. And with so many ways to get 2 mana turn 1 we can make games go from a 50/50 shot to a climb up mount Everest. If we need to it's not unknown to drop them for 0 (cheerios loses the game) or for 2, maybe even 3.
Tangle Wire, and odd mainboard inclusion that I have had great success with. With buried ruin and crucible of worlds you can often times soft lock an opponent with too few resources with two of them, as well as time walk an opponent with no more lands in hand. The synergy with our resource disruption is astounding.
Ensnaring Bridge, main deck hate for show and tell, also keeps tin-fins in check if they can't storm off immediately since that griselbrand can't attack. Also keeps elves from using craterhoof, stops progenitus, and if we empty our hand we can stop everything in it's tracks. The bonus is we can put this into play via an opponents show and tell.
Nonartifact Spells
Armageddon, A staple of white stax makes it's way over here. Low color requirements and with 6 mainboard ways to recur lands this is almost one sided board wipes for days. An armageddon into a tabernacle also means they can't beat us down with what they had left for it either. One of our few ways to deal with basic lands.
Life from the Loam, A color light way to not only fill our yard if we need to find a specific land but also just a general way to recur lands. Synergizes with all of our sac effect lands and with a manabonds you can do some work dredging every turn then just discarding it at the end step to start the process all over again.
Lands
Plains, for when we dont want to outright lose to blood moon. We can more often than not cast anything we want with any color of mana but white is absolutely essential for armageddon and oblivion ring.
Savannah, Color fixing that can be fetched after an armageddon. Thats all its good for but dang if it isnt useful.
Karakas, This in the main as well as ensnaring bridge makes show and tell and reanimator's jobs suck miserably. We can also return problem creatures like Kira or Ezuri to their owners hands to make life even more difficult. Also nice against thalia. Along with all this it also provides white.
Horizon Canopy, Mana fixing, draw power, and also protects life from the loam when we need it.
Riftstone Portal, Can be discarded to a mox diamond as well as allowing our sol lands post armageddon to tap for color. Niche but when it works it makes all the difference. The Tabernacle a Pendrel Vale is horribly unfair when it can also tap for white or green. Also some insurance against blood moon.
The Tabernacle at Pendrel Vale, makes creature matchups a ton easier, playing this after an armageddon also wipes everything but artifacts and enchantments. Dropping one of these after an empty the warrens is also a fun thing to do.
Wasteland, our bread and butter land. Most of our things are colorless so we can use it for mana more often than not, making it not dead against basic lands. Recurring this is horribly unfair and very fun to do, keeping resources to a minimum almost better than rishadan port can do.
Rishadan Port, for us this turns off utility lands, basics, keeps them off mana when we dont have a wasteland or want to keep them under a sphere. This guy is amazing when hes not just tapping for a smokestack or some other artifact.
Mishra's Factory, an answer to walkers when we have no oring in hand, a chump blocker for when we don't have a bridge, and a win condition after we make sure the opponent has nothing on the table.
Buried Ruin, dredged an artifact? no problem! Abrupt decay ruining your day? not anymore. This little utility land can be used for mana more often than not and keeps us from dying to removal.
City of Traitors and Ancient Tomb, allows us to power out our expensive spells fast and efficiently. One of the reasons we can do a turn 1 trinisphere or chalice of the void.
Sideboard
Cursed Totem, Hates elves hard, can stop a goblin welder from wrecking our day and can keep deathrite shaman and scavenging ooze from wrecking our yard.
Phyrexian Revoker, Another answer to walkers and problem permanents, can keep a mystic, jitte, shaman, whatever you need in check while dodging our chalice of the void.
Wurmcoil Engine, When you play a deck where you can shut off swords to plowshares in an instant and where most people board out removal anyways wurmcoil engine makes fair decks have to work even harder to kill us. And even if it dies? We get two more tokens! We can also recur this via buried ruin.
Wrath of God, our one big nuke button, great against elves, death and taxes, and can even kill TNN.
Manabond, allows us to put lands into play without having to sac a city of traitors and can turn on a bridge easily. Allows us to discard a loam from our hand if we have no green source so we can dig for a portal or any other land we need. The only reason this isn't mainboard is because of chalice of the void. If something in the future makes us not want to run tangle wires or some other permanent this could bump up to main very soon, even if it doesnt dodge a chalice.
Maze of Ith, Stops lone attackers like batterskull from being able to solo us if we cant find a bridge or a factory.
Ghost Quarter, Wasteland #5 against some decks. Also allows us to get our plains if we absolutely need it.
Mykatdied's List
Lands
Horizon canopy - Allows us to continue drawing extra cards when we are up on lands. With exploration we can do this in multiples a turn. Something stax never really had and needs
Stirring Wildwood - Gives us a great option to stop a delver
Creatures
Knight of the Reliquary - Since we're running with a lands option, this allows us to play more utility lands between the main and the board, she also closes out a game right quick.
Spells
Exploration - Playing multiple lands a turn will naturally have it's benefit. Having this and crucible means smokestack can go up to 2 counters quickly and easily. We also will be able to drop it sooner. As explained before being able to play a canopy and draw twice a turn can help. We also recover from Armageddon much quicker.
Life from the loam - Having a piece of land recusion that can't be decayed, pulsed, worn, etc. can be a great option.
Sideboard
Thalia as additional combo hate.
Bridge as additional creature control, we can sacrifice to stax when we are ready to kill them.
Chasm - Another way to survive hoards and with exploration we can play this every turn and another land so that we never lose anything from it.
DD, Stage, Rotation - Gives the deck a little more of a combo feel and quick if we need it.
Strategy
The general strategy is simple, to attack your opponents ability to use their resources efficiently. Do this by keeping an early play (usually trinisphere or a chalice) and then back it up with your lands as the game goes long. If they have 3-4 lands out it might be time to pull the trigger on armageddon. Their is one hand though that is I believe a near instant win on the play if we dont get force of willed or chancellor of the annexed turn 1.
If you get a trinisphere, a sol land, a mox diamond, 2 of any other lands you will be able to play tsphere turn 1.
Then next turn if you already have a smokestack in your hand or you draw into one play your next land and a smokestack.
Next turn sacrifice 0 to smokestack, then put a counter on it. If you have a crucible of worlds in hand and then drop that they will never hit their third land drop and you can keep on 2-3 lands and a mox the rest of the game.
Other fun things include dropping a ton of lands to manabonds with a loam in hand, loaming into more goodies and then using buried ruin to get back all your lock peices with your now obscene amount of resources.
History
I started this deck in 2013, about three months after I started playing magic. It started out as a mono white list that then started splashing black and green for liliana and abrupt decay, after that project didnt work out the way I wanted to I started taking out color until I was left with a G/W shell using sylvan library and life from the loam. I then took out the maguses, put in the tabernacles, and decided that since my mainboard artifacts where so tight for what I wanted to run my best place to make changes was the lands.
I ran this list sans the manabonds in this last koopa IQ and thats where I realized fully the direction I wanted to go with this deck. The sideboard manabonds and two lands are different from the list I ran, as is the portal, but now that those are in I feel this list has a new way to attack it's matches and probably became more flexible with it's inclusion.
-----The Legacy Flowchart-----
Tiny Leaders Overlord
I personally love armageddon just for the armageddon into tabernacle play, but what would you suggest in it's place?
Also I've never played eternal garden, might suit it up on cockatrice and give it a try to see the similarities.
Eternal garden was the precursor to 43 lands. I seem to recall it playing a nether spirit as well
-----The Legacy Flowchart-----
Tiny Leaders Overlord
For the list itself it seems there are a couple ways to go. Either Lands with more mainboard stax elements (Chalice/Trinisphere) or a stax deck that gives up some of the more niche elements (humility, moat) to include more powerful land recursion.
Personally I like building the W/g stax list myself. If we go that route I think 4 maindeck Life from the Loam and 4 maindeck Exploration are necessary. Chalice on 1 may sometimes cut us off from Exploration, but it is just too powerful an effect to ignore. Being able to Wasteland twice a turn or Wasteland and build mana or just rebuild after an Armageddon is crucial.
I would drop Flagstones down to 1 or 2 copies and slot in a few more Horizon Canopies.
Though I don't personally recall anything earlier than the old 43 lands build, this looks very different than anything since. The Sol lands are unheard of in Lands decks, and the prison artifacts are only sided in - this build main-decks eighteen! Exploration is the VIP in Lands.dec, but not preset here.
To me this looks more like Geddon-Stax with a twist of Lands rather than the other way around.
Or the Stax thread (probably both). Link this thread if you do.
https://fieldmarshalshandbook.wordpress.com/
RUGLegacy Lands.dec
RUGBLegacy Lands.dec
RGLegacy Lands.dec
WUBRG EDH Lands.dec
UBR EDH Artificer Prodigy
B EDH Relentless Rats
First: I nominate the name Lands Tax (rather than landstax). I think it reads better and is kinda fun.
Second: This deck is three colors: White, Green, Blue. I'd like to take a minute and discuss the value of each color.
In traditional Stax, white is the main color usually since it provides 'geddon, ETutor, Oblivion Ring, and Elspeth.
In traditional Lands, Green and Blue are the major colors: primarily for Loam, Crop Rotation, Exploration, Intution, and Tolaria West.
In a combination of both, deciding whether to stay 3 color, or cut to 2 is an important question. In particular, you've already cut down to 2 copies of Armageddon (by the by, as valuable as dodging Extirpate on the second 'geddon is less valuable than the $400 price tag). You're also not playing ETutor, Elspeth or O-Ring. In Stax, Armageddon is supposed to be cast as often as possible to complete the lock. As a two of, 'geddon doesn't do that in your list. It also introduces a third color. I strongly believe it should either be a 4-of or none.
Similarly, the lack of E-Tutor for silver bullets really reduces the effectiveness of your one ofs. It also hammers the value of the multiple two-card combos. In particular: Bridge, Smokestack (which has a two card combo with Sundial of the Infinite by the way), Tangle Wire, Zuran Orb, Foundry/Sword, become very random without that search ability. While Tezz provides that top-end search for those artifacts, he's not good at anything else. His +1 is entirely irrelevant with the artifacts we have. His ultimate wins the game on the spot, but if we're resolving Tezz and he lives, we're probably already winning anyway. He doesn't protect himself at all, either.
Third: Cards of no value
Bottled Cloister: Great against hand disruption if you can get it out early enough. Chalice/Trinisphere already *do* that.
It's also dead literally everywhere else. I'd cut it.
Chromatic Lantern: Colorfixing and ramp. I get that it makes all your colorless lands into colored ones. I don't think that's a strong enough play on Turn 1/2 to justify it at all. It's a poor top deck, poor early, and if we're cutting a color, totally irrelevant, especially considering Mox Diamond is a thing.
Gods' Eye: This is bad. Maybe you could justify it in a multiple 'geddon list, but here it's just nothing of relevance.
Garruk: What? I get your reasoning for his inclusion. In general, he's unjustifiable in Legacy.
Fourth: Next Steps:
I propose a transition away from GUW and into BUG.
Pros, Urborg. Tezzeret Agent of Bolas.
Cons, not much.
So on that front, we'd be looking something more like this:
4x Ancient Tomb
2x City of Traitors
3x Wasteland
2x Tolaria West
3x Underground Sea
4x Tropical Island
2x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
1x Karakas
1x Dark Depths
1x Thespian's Stage
1x The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale
1x Forest
1x Tranquil Thicket
1x Academy Ruins
4x Chalice of the Void
4x Trinisphere
3x Crucible of Worlds
4x Mox Diamond
2x Sword of the Meek
3x Thopter Foundry
Sorcery(4)
4x Life from the Loam
Instants(2)
3x Intuition
4x Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas
Enchantments(3)
2x The Abyss
Let me know what you think about this. It's really a much more like Lands Smashed with Tezzerator smashed with Stax. There are a couple solid additional options:
Smokestack + Sundial of the Infinite - still very powerful, also playable in this deck.
Ensnaring Bridge vs The Abyss - Bridge answers more things faster, but it's also less fun with Tezz. The Abyss also hits literally nothing of ours, so yay.
I could see shoehorning 1-2 Creeping Tarpit in as well. Potentially instead of an Underground Sea.
There's a world where I sleeve this up actually, I'm very intrigued. If you'd like I can do an even more in-depth explanation of individual card choices. Kudos to you for this awesome brew.
You make some incredibly good points about the list and in all honesty I can see some merit in every point you made especially your comments about garruk and bottled cloister. Garruk was shoved in to deal with our stoneblade matchup, being that we have no real way to answer an early stoneforge mystic except for garruk, if you know anything better I would love to hear about it! As for bottled cloister its not actually for discard at all but merely a way to turn on bridge while giving us card advantage at the same time, meaning if we need to dig for a tabernacle or something to win the game with we can keep the opponent fenced in with bridge while generating card advantage. Our only instant speed interaction already being played out like maze of ith and the like. I for one think it's fantastic only because other sources of artifact card draw just aren't that good. The tomes being especially bad.
Besides all that though, the list you posted looks hilariously fun! The abyss itself being a mini-smokestack that dodges things like ancient grudge and krosan grip is all too enticing! As well as your take with intuition is a line of thought that seemingly went right over my head! I think however, that their may be room for multiple interpretations of this list since if you do cut white you miss on supreme verdict and council's judgement as well as karakas which are hilariously good cards, being able to mainboard answer show and tell, reanimator, and to a lesser extent death and taxes (thalia and mangara). Maybe your interpretation is better maybe not but I definitely am going to play around with your list because all in all I like the thought of throwing TNN into the abyss
I would appreciate an in depth card explanation whenever you have the time. And thank you for the complement.
(edit) Oh I didnt notice you also ran karakas, so just as a colorless source I guess. That card is dumb good in this kind of list
Conceptually, this is concept behind this deck:
Land early artifact disruption to slow/stop our opponent's game plan. Follow up with over-the-top Planeswalker/Artifact combo. Ideally, the opponent has scooped to an overwhelming board state by turn 4. The deck also offers an incredible long game, mostly around Life from the Loam.
First off, the lands package:
Since this is a Stax variant, there needs to be some number of Sol Lands in the list. Ideally, we'd want a sol land in our opening hand to ramp out whatever our initial disruption is. Playing a full 4 copies of both Ancient Tomb and City of Traitors gives us a 65% chance of having a copy on the draw, and a 70% chance on the play. For the most part, we want the first Sol Land, we're okay with the second and don't want the third, unlike regular Stax. As such, I believe some number less than 8 is ideal. Particularly since we have pretty tight colored mana requirements. Not having a Sol Land is okay for our deck, as we have alternate lines of play that don't involve fast disruption.
Therefore, I personally have settled on 6 total Sol Lands. I could, however, see similar lists running the full 8 for most turn-1 consistency, and I can also see running less, particularly in a meta where the Stax portion of the deck is less stellar. Now, what is the correct split between Tomb and City. Considering our lands recursion options, Crucible and Loam, City is considerably less problematic for us than in classic Stax. Additionally, Tomb makes the aggro matchup much harder for us. We do, however, want to resolve multiple 3-4 drops in a row. Therefore, I would confidently say that Tomb should be played as a 4-of, with City making up the remainder of your Sol Land slots. I could be swayed either way based on meta, notably the presence/absence of graveyard hate to make City much worse as well as the number of fast aggro decks.
Again, since this is Stax, we want a land destruction package. Classic Stax uses this package to keep opponents locked under trinisphere and chalice. For Stax, the LD of choice is the Wasteland/Crucible lock. On top of that, some versions run Armageddon. Lands is also a mana denial deck. Lands utilizes Wasteland/Loam and Rishadan Port to slow their opponent's development. Considering our colors, and ability to go over the top, I believe we can shave some of our LD consistency, since it is not a necessary part of our lock system. We do want to have game against problematic utility lands our opponents might play, as well. Therefore, I think 3-4 pieces of land destruction are ideal. I would weight that heavily towards Wastelands, with the option of a singleton Ghost Quarter if necessary. Recursion effects are already an integreal part of the deck and will be addressed later.
Utility lands! These lands, accessible through Loam dredges, draw steps, or tutor effects are what give this deck some nice marginal benefits against certain decks. What lands to run/what number of them should be tailored for the meta, although there are some that should probably be standard in every list.
Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth: Color fixes all of our lands. Considering the sparcity of colored sources in this deck, I would consider this a must play. Potentially more copies depending on the number/type of our colored sources.
Dark Depths/Thespians Stage: This deck isn't a Depths deck, therefore 0-1 copies are reasonable. In particular, the Intuition package of Loam/Depths/Stage is ridiculously powerful and might be worthy of inclusion depending on local meta and pilot preference.
The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale: A tutorable answer to swarm decks. In particular, this land is used by Lands to slow the development of fast aggro/tribal strategies. The inclusion of Tabernacle in this deck entirely depends on wether or not we end up having a problem with aggro. 0-1 depending on meta/pilot preference.
Cycling Lands: These work best with the Loam engine. It's possible they're unecessary, but 0-2 based on pilot preference is possible.
Karakas: Tutorable answer to problematic legendary creatures. If the reanimator/sneak+show matchup turns out to be average or poor, Karakas could play an important role there. I don't think they'll be as abysmal as regular Land's is, since our lock pieces are fantastic against them. Initial impressions make me say 0-1 depending on meta/pilot preference.
Academy Ruins: A must include, in my mind. Being able to recur artifacts milled by loam or intuition is very valuable. Additionally, Ruins gives some protection from counterspells.
Maze of Ith: If, somehow, the creature matchup turns out to be horrific, moving some number of Mazes in (like Lands), will help there. Ideally, we're going over the top anyway, so Maze doesn't do much.
Tolaria West: An on-color tutor. While the tutor cost is high, it finds all of our included utility lands, as well as other 0-drops of note. 0-2 depending on build.
Bojuka Bog: A nice answer to opposing graveyard strategies. It's also on color which is a bonus. Even though we're not playing crop rotation for the instant speed awesomeness, having this utility on a land can be very powerful. 0-1 main as necessary for your meta.
Manlands: We are not a traditional Stax deck that wins with its manlands. Therefore, any included manlands serve as a backup plan. Considering our colors 0-2 Creeping Tar Pit could make the cut.
Basics: Considering how tight the mana base is for this deck, I would but basics firmly in the utility category. The utility being that they dodge Bloodmoon. Of our three colors, green is the most necessary for this function, as it casts anti enchantment sideboard cards and loam to recur our other lands in case of an opposing wasteland lock.
Mana Sources! This deck has some tight mana requirements. In particular, Thopter Foundry and Tezzeret can be hard to cast. Additionally, we want to always be able to cast Loam if we have it, as loam helps smooth our mana problems.
Mox Diamond: the perfect source of colored mana for us. It pitches one of our unnecessary lands which can be recurred. It also ramps us and provides even more ways to cast our lock pieces earlier.
Artifact Lands: these deserve some testing, considering their usefulness with Tezzeret. I'm unsure if they contribute much to the gameplan, but certainly Darksteel Citadel+Tezz is really good.
Duals/Fetches: The two core colors of this deck are Green and Blue, with black serving as the finisher color. Therefore, I find Tropical Island to be the most valuable dual land, followed by Underground Sea. Fetch land choices should limited to G/X fetches, as being able to find the singleton forest is very important. Therefore, I would run something on the order of 7-10 duals/fetches.
If I have missed addressing some aspect of the lands package, or there are additional options you'd like me to comment upon, please let me know.
Now, let us discuss the core of this deck: the artifacts package. Since we are a Stax deck, these pieces are the most important part of our disruption suite.
Chalice of the Void: Obviously not much needs to be said here. We can easily shut off many cards from our opponent with a single resolved Chalice on 1. Additionally, Chalice for zero doesn't hurt us too much. While Chalice on 2 is a reasonable option against some decks, we should probably avoid it considering our reliance on Life from the Loam.
Trinisphere: Potentially even better than Chalice, sphere is plays several incredibly important roles: 1) it slows our opponents down and 2) protects us from counter magic. For the most part, blue decks have an incredibly hard time fighting through 3Sphere. Additionally, the combination of Chalice and 3Sphere makes our combo matchup fairly solid, in direct comparison to Land's combo matchup which is stone terrible. While we have no turn 0 interaction, we can use sideboard slots to cover that gap.
Mox Diamond: as mentioned above, this is fast colored mana. A perfect artifact for our strategy.
Crucible of Worlds: This is a holdover from Stax. It does a wonderful job recurring our lands and plays nicely with the Loam's dredges. Considering the fact that we play Loam, it's entirely reasonable that Crucible is an unnecessary part of this deck. This requires more playtesting. I would ideally never play 4, probably more like 1-2.
Thopter Foundry/Sword of the Meek: cheap and effective mana sink for the mid and late game. This particular artifact combo really shines in the long game. It helps stabilize versus fast decks and provides a ton of inevitability, particularly when paired with Academy Ruins.
Ensnaring Bridge: a great artifact against creature strategies, particularly since we're looking to empty our hand very early. Bridge is great in several matchups, particularly Sneak and Show. Bridge might be the best anti-creature card this deck can play. Further testing will confirm or deny this assertion.
Engineered Explosives: Tutorable with Tolaria West, EE gives us a nice colorless sweeper. Considering we're already a 3-color deck that plays Mox Diamonds, EE can be very powerful. Problematically, we are looking to establish a board presence in the 0, 2, 3 and 4 cmc slot. As such, EE is not always one-sided. 1-of as a tutor target or 2/3 of as the main source of removal is appropriate.
There is playable artifact ramp, however our Sol Lands and Mox Diamonds are already powerful ramp in and of themselves. We are looking to reach 4 mana, and additional ramp pieces don't contribute to that. Additionally, there are plenty of additional artifacts that have specific purpose. These I will outline in the sideboard options section. Some of them could find maindeck use if desired.
Sorceries and Instants:
Life from the Loam: The going-long strategy piece. While its utility is somewhat less in this deck than in dedicated Loam decks, it still packs a huge punch. Being able to 'draw' three cards a turn is incredibly powerful. In particular, it plays very well with the Thopter Sword combo, as Sword in the graveyard is nearly as good as Sword in play. Coupled with Academy Ruins, Loam provides a recursion tool for nearly every part of our deck. Additionally, Loam helps support the Land Destruction plan very well.
Intution: this card might is literally perfect for us. Finding recurrable silver bullets, win conditions or just Intuitiong for value is very strong. The instant speed is very relevant, as it gives us even more play lines than a traditional Stax deck. In particular, Intuition is a very very powerful enabler for every aspect of this deck. It also serves as the hinge for players to leverage their skill. In a linear deck like this, providing ways for superior players to outplay is very very important. The toolbox aspect of this card coupled with many of the pieces of our deck cannot be overlooked.
Some Intuition 3-Card combos are as follows:
Loam/Depths/Stage - essentially, win the game in two turns.
Academy Ruins/Loam/EE - infinte sweepers
3xTezz - playing Tezz copies 5-8 is very good.
I don't think I need to go on at length about Intuition, it's clear what it does in this deck.
Toxic Deluge: if this deck ends up needing a sweeper, this is the best choice. Coming in at 3cmc, it really helps solidly stabilize the board. It doesn't have any particular combo with our deck, so likely this will be an anti-creature sideboard option if necessary. Damnation fills a very similar role at 4cmc if necessary.
Thirst for Knowledge: the best card draw this deck can ask for since we're avoiding cmc 1 like the plague, and we play a bunch of artifacts. Ideally, Thirst isn't necessary as we have so many value engines without needing additional card draw.
Please let me know if there are additional spells that might have good synergy in this deck. Remember, CMC1 is actually a bad thing in this deck.
Creatures:
We aren't really a creature deck, but there are many potential options if desired. A heavy creature version of this deck moves much closer to Tezzerator Control than Lands Tax.
Baleful Strix: on color, great blocker, great with Tezz, cantrips, everything we'd like if we played a creature. It remains to be seen if this deck needs intermediate plays like this or if it can move straight from lock pieces to finishers without anything in between.
Trinket Mage: finds any of our CMC0 artifacts. Not really as powerful in this deck as it could be. With the prohibition on CMC1s, trinket mage gets much worse.
Spellskite: Blocker, colorless, redirect to save Tezz, all good things. Most likely a sideboard card, but Spellskite can potentially find a main slot in the right meta.
Wurmcoil Engine: a powerful topend finisher. Great with Academy Ruins. With chalice on 1 to stop Swords, Wurmcoil can get out of hand very very quickly. Potentially worthwhile as a 1-of tutor target and creature based finisher.
Phyrexian Revoker: a 2cmc pithing needle. It can't name utility lands, but it does answer troublesome permanents that EE can't remove, key amongst them is Jace TMS and other planeswalkers.
Planeswalkers:
'Walkers are the best win condition for this deck. We can power them out very very early with protection. As such, they stick around and generate incredible value for us. The exact combination of walkers is up to the pilot but remember to tune the remainder of the deck to each one.
Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver: usually can't come down turn one, considering the mana cost but Ashiok does some very nice things. She gets big very quickly, she is excellent in creature matchups, stealing their stuff is very good. She's also decent in non-creature matchups as her +2 puts pressure on them to remove her or deck. Obviously this is somewhat of a pipedream, but Ashiok in combination with Academy Ruins means we can win even the grindiest of matchups.
Jace TMS: God Mode card of the Gods. He's very good. I don't deny that. Problematically, most of his abilities are somewhat underpowered in this deck. Fatesealing an opponent is good, but if we've successfully locked them out, it doesn't matter anyway. Brainstorming, as always, is very good, but without a consistent way to shuffle, it's lackluster at best in this shell. Bouncing creatures is fine, but we've probably removed them or locked them out anyway. His ultimate is obviously game winning and is the primary reason to run him. \
Liliana of the Veil: Much like Ashiok, Lili is hard to cast turn 1. Post turn 1, she's lackluster. Discarding cards hurts us more than it hurts our opponent. Hopefully most of their cards are dead anyway. Her -2 is certainly a solid way to answer any threat and is the main reason to play her.
Kiora, the Crashing Wave: A potentially solid choice for this deck. On color, and very synergistic with loam. Her +1 answers nearly every potential threat we could face, her -1 ramps us and generates huge card advantage. Her ultimate wins the game in short order. Figuring out wether she's *actually* good, particularly versus other options will be a challenge.
Tesseret, Agent of Bolas: Here we go. This gentleman is probably the best possible walker for us. All his abilities are super relevant in this shell. +1 should always draw a card, his -1 protects himself and generates a very fast clock. While his ultimate doesn't necessarily win the game in this shell, it does close it out pretty fast. The key thing I like about this Tezz is that it can turn our redunant lock pieces into win conditions. One of the problems with Stax is poor top decking and Tezz negates a lot of that.
Enchantments:
While enchantments are less synergistic with our artifact plan, they can fulfill some important roles in this deck.
The Abyss: a continuous way to remove their creatures as all of ours are artifacts. I've been testing this and haven't been particularly impressed.
Nether Void: a great top-end lock piece. It completes the lock with trinisphere nicely as the effects make any spell cost a minimum of 6.
Pernicious Deed: Another sweeper in our colors. It plays even less nicely with our strategy, yet could be valuable in the right version of this deck.
Chains of Mephistopheles: A powerful hoser in our colors. This seems best in an even more cagey type of Stax deck, yet it could be valuable as a sideboard option. It's worth noting that Tezz isn't card draw, and replacing a draw with dredge negates chains for us.
Bitterblossom: On color and powerful in its own right, blossom could be used in an equipment heavy version of this deck.
Propganda: This would play a very similar role to Ghostly Prison in a monowhite stax deck, slowing down creatures and allowing us time to stabilize.
And finally we arrive at sideboarding. My thoughts about this are fairly limited, as sideboards should be molded to meet a meta. I will go over some solid options and talk about where they work the best.
Torpor Orb: If for some reason creature ETB effects is a problem in your meta (or in the future) this hoses that problem. In particular, Reclamation Sage and Stoneforge Mystic are hosed by Orb.
Null Rod: While Rod doesn't interact perfectly with our deck, it is a very very good piece of hate in the right matchups.
Cursed Scroll: Considering we dump our hand very quickly, this could be a reasonable sideboard card against creature matchups. In particular, Death and Taxes has a very hard time with this card as it's a colorless source of damage.
Cursed Totem: How to handle those nasty creature synergy decks. In particular, hammering the crap out of Qasali Pridemage is really good.
Zuran Orb: Tutorable out to Price of Progress. I believe the burn matchup is already stellar as it is, but it's worth noting here.
City of Solitude: if, for whatever reason, you need more protection on your turn than Trinisphere this does the job very well. Probably not a fantastic choice, but potentially playable.
Engineered Plague: Stomp all over those tribal decks. Do it. You won't.
Krosan Grip: probably the best artifact/enchantment removal for our deck. The higher cost isn't an issue, and split second makes it very very strong.
Perish: Get'em. Just get'em. A narrow card, but good at what it does.
Mindbreak Trap: The answer to turn 1 combo. Usually there's no way for them to play around it at all.
Graveyard Hate: We have to be very careful with our choices here as we ourselves are a graveyard synergy deck.
Tormod's Crypt: Tutorable graveyard hate, 'nuf said
Leyline of the Void: Turn 0 hate, also easily castable by this deck, probably the best choice.
And there you have it, my card by card analysis of BUG Lands Tax. Considering how my playtests have gone and the thought I've put into these analyses I would suggest something along the lines of this base list:
4x Ancient Tomb
2x City of Traitors
3x Wasteland
1x Underground Sea
1x Bayou
2x Tropical Island
4x Misty Rainforest
1x Tolaria West
1x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
1x Karakas
1x Dark Depths
1x Thespian's Stage
1x Forest
1x Bojuka Bog
1x Academy Ruins
1x The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale
4x Chalice of the Void
4x Trinisphere
2x Crucible of Worlds
4x Mox Diamond
2x Sword of the Meek
3x Thopter Foundry
2x Ensnaring Bridge
1x Engineered Explosives
Sorcery(4)
4x Life from the Loam
3x Intuition
Planeswalkers(4)
4x Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas
1x Kiora, The Crashing Wave
27 Lands might be a little bit high, and I could see cutting down on that number. In particular, if the Depths/Stage combo doesn't pull its weight I would cut those. In the end, however, I think this is a fun mashup of several different archetypes. It attempts to solve the weaknesses of each projenitor deck with the strengths of another. It's possible that it's trying to do too much, but I think it's fairly stable the way it is right now. Please feel free to chime in with any corrections, additions or thoughtful comments.
I have a problem: this whole thing is 3500 words. Jeez.
Their are a fewc omments I could make on that list and card choices, one is the very high amount of duals and fetches in combination. The list I have been running uses only one fetch and three duals since we want to pack so many lands that do something. Maybe that approach is better maybe its worse, I need to load this list up and try it out to get a feel for it.
Second no smokestack? I can understand using engineered explosives as a sort of catch all but it is very mana intensive and isnt as one sided as smokestack in the matchups its good in, then again I was never a fan of EE since I hated that it blew up our lock pieces to begin with.
Kiora also seems like she could be a fantastic finisher but otherwise she doenst hit our biggest aggro threat, true name nemesis, although it would be nice in the stoneblade matchup regardless since batterskull does present a clock.
My only other concern is the lack of ability to turn on ensnaring bridge when you need it. I cant think of anything that would be too too good in a list like this except for maybe something like... Null Brooch? Knowledge Vault? I am stumped how you could turn on bridge when you need to in this list.
Otherwise this list takes a very different approach, and seems like of all the lists I've seen or worked on this one could kill the quickest with the threat of tezzerets card advantage and ultimate especially combined with thopter foundry you could potentially close out games incredibly easily compare to how grindy my original list is.
Also last question, would you like this list to be added to the primer as another deck option for this archetype?
Of all the cards you put in engineered explosives and tezzeret did some of the most work I have ever seen in a list like this. Now I know why you have it in their holy crap.
I played mostly against stoneblade and omnishow tonight and it ripped them apart, the only cards that underperformed where intuition (which was either countered or just never became relevant) kiora (who was never relevant except to eat one attack from a TNN) and urborg (which made me almost lose game 2 to omnishow who boarded in thoughtseize and ripped my bridge) but otherwise the list does a ton of work.
Of all the games I lost the ones I lost I couldnt find some way of keeping the opponent from attacking me, one of them was an engineered explosives that was force of willed and the other was omnishow cunning wishing in a way to remove my bridge with an emrakul on the board (I didnt find karakas in time). The one thing I will say is that not having armageddon isnt as horrible as I thought but at the same time the games I lost would have been won with an armageddon. Not having a boardwipe outside of EE also made me lose against omnishow that boarded in young pyromancers and boarded out emrakul (odd I know but it worked). Im thinking for the Bug version a damnation or two would be fantastic in the board or maybe toxic deluge, black suns zenith, etc would be nice to have somewhere (losing to two young pyromancers after blowing up 15 elementals feels bad). But otherwise I won most of my games with your list.
Also have you thought of a Helm of Obediance in the board for when you want leyline of the void? I put one in my board and it won a game for me, not on my own leyline but on an opponents rest in peace
In regards to the multiple fetches/duals, I was mostly spitballing. Unlike mono-colored Stax lists, we're looking to cast multiple colored cards and multicolored cards. As such, we need to up the amount of colored sources. I can certainly see a list with more and different utility lands, but your chances of turn 2 Tezz goes down.