Your efforts at mana denial are more feeble than other decklists I've seen in this forum, but I'm not sure if that's a bad thing or not. What I will say is that you can only have one Ajani at a time, and that the scepters require a mana investment each turn to make them worthwhile. This means that playing other spells becomes alot more difficult. With 26 lands (which i feel is about right) this might not be an issue because you don't need to play cards as soon, but it gives your opponents more turns to rebuild or draw outs. You'd need to test it and see if this actually a significant enough point to make a difference, but I feel like against many decks it will.
Also, I don't like Luminarch in the deck. Queller, Kazuul, and Golem all have decent bodies and I don't think its smart to gamble two slots on a win condition that only works when the game's already in your control anyways. I agree w/ only 2 ruinblaster main. I think 2 main 2 sb is the right approach personally.
Good ideas and good builds. I agree w/ the green mana dork points. You need to accel fast to keep the edge. Thus, I think Naya colors work best. If you must splash the blue, spreadings seas is a good card. So what if there is still a land, it will disrupt most mana bases since the majority neeeds multi colors and keep card advantage. If blue is in, Treasue Hunt is a must too imo.
Also, a turn 3 kicked Goblin Ruin Blaster is most often devastating, gives a blocker and a creat for Queller. Also, in Naya, Realm Razer works with this strategy. Queller followed by Realm Razer is a lock if they dont have an 1mana answer, so go ahed and "trick" them into burning out your mana dorks.
I see more of a Naya control w/ Day of Judgement to reset when yo dont have that excellent draw or control. An early thoctar can hold the board or draws removal and you can DoJ or Earthquke to reset. An early Queller or Razer w/ man dorks give you serious advantage.
I will work on a build and post when complete. I think its is a mix of Stax/LD/Control styles that will fit this deck in Naya colors. If you use hierarch, blue is easiy splashable as well, but I will most likely stick to Naya. Plus, w/ the razer, you can buy time if nothing else and he has synergy w/ Emeria Angel, L. Ascension and many other landfall cards.
Great decks and posts all- and thats just my .02$ on Naya colors. Good luck at FNM!!
The thing about this, though, is that we want to start damaging the opponent's tempo as early as possible, and Lodestone Golem, Scepter of Dominance, and Vengeant all require 4 mana before they start doing this.
I think it's a bit unfair to fit Lodestone Golem into the same category as Ajani and Scepter of Dominance for two reasons:
1. It has no coloured mana requirement
2. It takes immediate effect
Whereas Ajani would require a permanent to be tapped already, and Scepter of Dominance would require a manadork *and* three white mana to take effect, a resolved Lodestone requires no further investment. It gives you 5 power's worth of immediate pressure, it stunts your opponent's mana development, it comes with built-in protection (played right, your opponent won't be able to afford his 2CMC bolts and 3 CMC terminates), and arguably most important, it alleviates some of your deck's immediate dependence on World Queller. Assuming you don't get the God-draw every game, curving out into BoP, Wave, Golem, Queller seems perfectly acceptable to me.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
We are the middle children of history. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War is a spiritual war... our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off.
I think it's a bit unfair to fit Lodestone Golem into the same category as Ajani and Scepter of Dominance for two reasons:
1. It has no coloured mana requirement
2. It takes immediate effect
Whereas Ajani would require a permanent to be tapped already, and Scepter of Dominance would require a manadork *and* three white mana to take effect, a resolved Lodestone requires no further investment. It gives you 5 power's worth of immediate pressure, it stunts your opponent's mana development, it comes with built-in protection (played right, your opponent won't be able to afford his 2CMC bolts and 3 CMC terminates), and arguably most important, it alleviates some of your deck's immediate dependence on World Queller. Assuming you don't get the God-draw every game, curving out into BoP, Wave, Golem, Queller seems perfectly acceptable to me.
play a 6-drop world queller the turn after a 4 drop golem seems difficult
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
All of us get lost in the darkness dreamers learn to steer by the stars
-Geddy Lee
We are the middle children of history. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War is a spiritual war... our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off.
Pfft haha! Good point. I guess it still legitimately follows a T4 Queller, but yeah, that drops his stock a bit.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
We are the middle children of history. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War is a spiritual war... our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off.
I've been running Queller Stax for a little while.
And the deck posts a quite decent record. 1st place at 2 out of 3 fnm's I played it at and 3rd at the other one.
Plus a top8 finish at a miscelaneous tournament at my LGS.
16-3 in sanctioned matches since it's inception (give or take).
That's how I've been running it for a little while now.
(Although it doesn't really follow the legacy definition of stax.... For this deck you can aim to knock them off curve for 2-3 turns(longer if you're lucky), which is usualy long enough for your fat to get the job done.)
There's enough acceleration to power out the land disruption exceptionaly early, and there's a kind of 'strength in numbers' - it takes a very heavy removal suite to really suppress your acceleration.
The deck tests very well against Blue and/or White based control. Aggro is challenging, but gets much easier post-board.
You have to mulligan agressively with this deck though.
From WWK, (haven't had chance to really consider all the goodies so I'm not 100%) we add...
Possibly raging ravine and/or stirring wildwood not sure on quantity, 2 at most probably. lodestone golem Possibly, but it does mess with our stuff... and 4cmc is important since in this deck it might as well be 5cmc. tectonic edge could work nicely, probably only a 1-of though.
Anything else I really haven't had time to consider yet.
I'm surprised your list is all four-ofs. I'm also surprised you use Burst Lightning instead of Lightning Bolt. With World Queller hurting both players' lands, you can probably only kick it if you have Lotus Cobra out.
What's the Naya Charm for? Which mode do you typically use? Also, is Ajani for removal or for tapping down their land?
When you mulligan aggressively, are you looking for a Birds or Cobra? Anything else you need? Do you mind giving a few pointers?
Finally, you mention that you knock them off curve, "which is usually long enough to get the job done." So I guess this is more aggro/midrange? Which turn do you have to win by before you start losing your advantage?
I kinda misspoke. It's the t1 Birds or Hierarch that enables t2 Resounding Wave ... Cobra just pays for itself and sets up a monstrous turn 3 (Queller or Slime with U untapped for Spell Pierce). It allows for extremely fast and heavy pressure on the opponent, forcing them to deal with my threats in extremely cheap ways or just fold altogether. If I untap with a Cobra on the board, the opponent is likely to lose something valuable so early that I'll be ahead of them for the next couple turns at least, which is all this deck needs to cement its advantage.
However, if we really double down on the early game and make sure that we stay a step ahead starting on turn 2, we can stay that step ahead the whole game. So many decks right now have the tools to turn a game's tempo around with only 3 mana that this deck is probably going to win half its games by making even that impossible. The green-acceleration strategy is riskier because it can get slowed down by removal, but if they're spending their early turns on that, chances are good that by turn 4 or so you've kept the pressure high enough that they're still on the defensive. This deck needs to hit hard and early in order to win, I think, because every land on the opponent's table really counts, and a more reckless and unfaltering assault on the opponent's resources is probably more likely to win in this format that a slow and measured grinding down.
Basically this deck needs to be more offensive than a traditional Stax deck, because all its symmetrical effects are just liabilities if the opponent manages to put it on the defensive.
I totally agree with your aggressive approach, however, I don't see why you'd put Lotus Cobra in this deck. LC needs accelerated mana drops to be efficient (Harrow, Khalni Heart Exp. etc.).
Lotus Cobra in this deck requires you have a land in your hand to produce extra mana for you. Simply going with 4 BoP's and 4 Noble Hierarchs is more efficient for your purposes, ensuring that you always have the extra mana production. T1:dork, T2:dork instead of Cobra still leaves you with 2 free mana. T3: land drop into 5 mana, didn't have to be a fetchland.
All the prerequisites are still there, it still does all you need it to do by T3, plus you increased the likelihood of a T2 Resounding.
I'd dump Lotus Cobra and go with 8 mana dorks instead.
EDIT: Forgot about the extra mana you want for Spell Pierce. This means you're lowering the chance of tempo damage T2, to protect Queller on those rare occasions when you get: three mana drops, one dork, one Lotus Cobra, one Spell Pierce and one World Queller. Lotus Cobra hardly seems worth that small advantage when you draw into a god hand compared to the huge increase in the potential to hit a T2 Resounding.
is absolutely BRUTAL, especially on the play. At that point they need to have either Lightning Bolt or Path to Exile or else their game is basically over. If they kill the first Golem, that means a removal spell is out of their hand, and you're free to cast a T4 Queller or Acidic Slime.
Taking Knight of the Reliquary out for Lodestone Golem severely damages Lotus Cobra's staying power, so I opted to add mana dorks 5 and 6, bumped up to 4 Spell Pierce, and screwed with the mana base just enough to add a singleton Realm Razer, because a Queller/Razer lock just sounds too awesome to resist.
I'm still convinced that Rite of Replication is a worthy card in this strategy. It functions as an extra of any of your Stax-enabler creatures (Slime, Golem, Queller), often cheaper than the original, and it can randomly turn into a Baneslayer or some other monstrous threat on the other side of the table (if your opponent manages to land one). In long games, it'll just win if you kick it (imagine having 6 Lodestone Golems, or putting 5 extra Acidic Slimes into play). Garruk's still in because he makes tokens for World Queller, makes it easier to maintain unfair mana advantage, and randomly wins with overrun alpha strikes (giving 4- and 5-power guys +3/+3 and trample is pretty good, I hear).
My new list is slower and less explosive than the Lotus Cobra-enabled list ... it can't remove lands on turns 2 AND 3, but it can do either one, and it's much more proactive about actually lowering the opponent's life total with Golem beats. I think it also might do a better job in games where the opponent puts up early resistance to all the land denial or ramps themselves out of Stax-lock range.
(Quick note: I wrote this post before seeing Pentallion's post. In agreement with the advice in it.)
Since this list is WAY cheaper to build (I don't have any Knights or Cobras right now) I'll probably try it first, but Lotus Cobra definitely deserves at least some heavy testing. Taking it out just because I replaced the Knights with Golems might've been premature. Don't count it out.
Haven't thought too much about Treasure Hunt or Explore ... they seem good on paper but I feel like these lists are pretty tight right now. I'm going to need some pretty powerful justification to take anything out for them.
I've never played nor played against a stax deck so while I definitely see the beautiful synergy of screw that can come about please take my questions seriously even if they're off point.
I think world queller is great but the turn you play it gives them a free turn. More then likely you are tapped out and havn't done enough to truely shut them down yet.
I think two turns of bouncing lands followed by a lodestone golem would be plenty of an advantage as long as you kept the rest of the deck's curve low enough. Both resounding wave and aether tradewinds would work. Then your next few turns could be continuing bouncing lands, destroying lands, and controlling anything they do play. I think win by golem beat down would be a lot of fun.
I would much rather go the WUR version. Playing things like Wall Of Denial or Calcite Snapper with possible counters and card draw. Also an artifact version (mostly artifacts) would be awesome if possible. Man lands a possibility with this deck?
Your efforts at mana denial are more feeble than other decklists I've seen in this forum, but I'm not sure if that's a bad thing or not. What I will say is that you can only have one Ajani at a time, and that the scepters require a mana investment each turn to make them worthwhile. This means that playing other spells becomes alot more difficult. With 26 lands (which i feel is about right) this might not be an issue because you don't need to play cards as soon, but it gives your opponents more turns to rebuild or draw outs. You'd need to test it and see if this actually a significant enough point to make a difference, but I feel like against many decks it will.
Also, I don't like Luminarch in the deck. Queller, Kazuul, and Golem all have decent bodies and I don't think its smart to gamble two slots on a win condition that only works when the game's already in your control anyways. I agree w/ only 2 ruinblaster main. I think 2 main 2 sb is the right approach personally.
Also, a turn 3 kicked Goblin Ruin Blaster is most often devastating, gives a blocker and a creat for Queller. Also, in Naya, Realm Razer works with this strategy. Queller followed by Realm Razer is a lock if they dont have an 1mana answer, so go ahed and "trick" them into burning out your mana dorks.
I see more of a Naya control w/ Day of Judgement to reset when yo dont have that excellent draw or control. An early thoctar can hold the board or draws removal and you can DoJ or Earthquke to reset. An early Queller or Razer w/ man dorks give you serious advantage.
I will work on a build and post when complete. I think its is a mix of Stax/LD/Control styles that will fit this deck in Naya colors. If you use hierarch, blue is easiy splashable as well, but I will most likely stick to Naya. Plus, w/ the razer, you can buy time if nothing else and he has synergy w/ Emeria Angel, L. Ascension and many other landfall cards.
Great decks and posts all- and thats just my .02$ on Naya colors. Good luck at FNM!!
I think it's a bit unfair to fit Lodestone Golem into the same category as Ajani and Scepter of Dominance for two reasons:
1. It has no coloured mana requirement
2. It takes immediate effect
Whereas Ajani would require a permanent to be tapped already, and Scepter of Dominance would require a manadork *and* three white mana to take effect, a resolved Lodestone requires no further investment. It gives you 5 power's worth of immediate pressure, it stunts your opponent's mana development, it comes with built-in protection (played right, your opponent won't be able to afford his 2CMC bolts and 3 CMC terminates), and arguably most important, it alleviates some of your deck's immediate dependence on World Queller. Assuming you don't get the God-draw every game, curving out into BoP, Wave, Golem, Queller seems perfectly acceptable to me.
play a 6-drop world queller the turn after a 4 drop golem seems difficult
-Geddy Lee
I don't have a sweet sig pic yet
trade thread
http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=207913
(O.o)
And also isn't an artifact. So it'll cost 6, not 5.
I'm surprised your list is all four-ofs. I'm also surprised you use Burst Lightning instead of Lightning Bolt. With World Queller hurting both players' lands, you can probably only kick it if you have Lotus Cobra out.
What's the Naya Charm for? Which mode do you typically use? Also, is Ajani for removal or for tapping down their land?
When you mulligan aggressively, are you looking for a Birds or Cobra? Anything else you need? Do you mind giving a few pointers?
Finally, you mention that you knock them off curve, "which is usually long enough to get the job done." So I guess this is more aggro/midrange? Which turn do you have to win by before you start losing your advantage?
I totally agree with your aggressive approach, however, I don't see why you'd put Lotus Cobra in this deck. LC needs accelerated mana drops to be efficient (Harrow, Khalni Heart Exp. etc.).
Lotus Cobra in this deck requires you have a land in your hand to produce extra mana for you. Simply going with 4 BoP's and 4 Noble Hierarchs is more efficient for your purposes, ensuring that you always have the extra mana production. T1:dork, T2:dork instead of Cobra still leaves you with 2 free mana. T3: land drop into 5 mana, didn't have to be a fetchland.
All the prerequisites are still there, it still does all you need it to do by T3, plus you increased the likelihood of a T2 Resounding.
I'd dump Lotus Cobra and go with 8 mana dorks instead.
EDIT: Forgot about the extra mana you want for Spell Pierce. This means you're lowering the chance of tempo damage T2, to protect Queller on those rare occasions when you get: three mana drops, one dork, one Lotus Cobra, one Spell Pierce and one World Queller. Lotus Cobra hardly seems worth that small advantage when you draw into a god hand compared to the huge increase in the potential to hit a T2 Resounding.
T1 Birds
T2 Resounding Wave
T3 Lodestone Golem
T4 Lodestone Golem
is absolutely BRUTAL, especially on the play. At that point they need to have either Lightning Bolt or Path to Exile or else their game is basically over. If they kill the first Golem, that means a removal spell is out of their hand, and you're free to cast a T4 Queller or Acidic Slime.
With this in mind, I'm revising my list ...
4 Acidic Slime
2 Noble Hierarch
4 Birds of Paradise
4 Lodestone Golem
1 Realm Razer
4 Resounding Wave
4 Spell Pierce
2 Rite of Replication
2 Garruk Wildspeaker
4 Misty Rainforest
3 Arid Mesa
1 Scalding Tarn
4 Seaside Citadel
3 Island
6 Forest
3 Plains
1 Mountain
I'm still convinced that Rite of Replication is a worthy card in this strategy. It functions as an extra of any of your Stax-enabler creatures (Slime, Golem, Queller), often cheaper than the original, and it can randomly turn into a Baneslayer or some other monstrous threat on the other side of the table (if your opponent manages to land one). In long games, it'll just win if you kick it (imagine having 6 Lodestone Golems, or putting 5 extra Acidic Slimes into play). Garruk's still in because he makes tokens for World Queller, makes it easier to maintain unfair mana advantage, and randomly wins with overrun alpha strikes (giving 4- and 5-power guys +3/+3 and trample is pretty good, I hear).
My new list is slower and less explosive than the Lotus Cobra-enabled list ... it can't remove lands on turns 2 AND 3, but it can do either one, and it's much more proactive about actually lowering the opponent's life total with Golem beats. I think it also might do a better job in games where the opponent puts up early resistance to all the land denial or ramps themselves out of Stax-lock range.
(Quick note: I wrote this post before seeing Pentallion's post. In agreement with the advice in it.)
Since this list is WAY cheaper to build (I don't have any Knights or Cobras right now) I'll probably try it first, but Lotus Cobra definitely deserves at least some heavy testing. Taking it out just because I replaced the Knights with Golems might've been premature. Don't count it out.
Haven't thought too much about Treasure Hunt or Explore ... they seem good on paper but I feel like these lists are pretty tight right now. I'm going to need some pretty powerful justification to take anything out for them.
Thanks to Gabgabdevo for the awesome sig image!
I'm always looking for foil Madcap Skills and Ghitu Fire-Eater, [trade thread link forthcoming]
I think world queller is great but the turn you play it gives them a free turn. More then likely you are tapped out and havn't done enough to truely shut them down yet.
I think two turns of bouncing lands followed by a lodestone golem would be plenty of an advantage as long as you kept the rest of the deck's curve low enough. Both resounding wave and aether tradewinds would work. Then your next few turns could be continuing bouncing lands, destroying lands, and controlling anything they do play. I think win by golem beat down would be a lot of fun.
It's a version I was play testing.
4 Fortress Glacial
4 Sunpetal Grove
4 Plains
4 Island
4 Forest
4 Noble Hierarch
4 Acidic Slime
4 World Queller
3 Knight of the Reliquary
1 AEther Tradewinds
2 Scepter of Dominance
4 Treasure Hunt
4 Explore
3 Oblivion Ring