i am also wondering why i see very few stax decklists with sundial of the infinite to end the turn after putting a counter on smokestack. is this because this card is 'win-more'?
What are people using against Tron? I've found with the recent bannings Tron has become something like 70% of my meta, which is really annoying. It's bad enough to the point where I'm putting Sowing Salt maindeck, but am wondering if there are any cards like that are useful specifically for Tron.
Pretentious isn't a derogatory term in the context that I used it in I was just being cheeky.
With clique, it depends if you have a specific plan for them. To the unfamiliar, they do not seem like a terribly difficult clique to use properly, but they are actually quite difficult to use properly in matches where your thinking cap needs to be on. If you don't have a clear idea of what you are putting cliques in your sb for, then ypu may want to just consider other cards in their place.
I hear you just needed to make an exception for a blank 'yup' to your statement.
I mean clique is a pseudo Thoughtseize and an evasive clock wraped in one card. I'm not a fan of dropping $120+ on them so I'm thinking of replacements mainly.
I've found Vendilion Clique to be amazing against Tron, which is extremely common in my meta. You can clear out threats and you can establish a clock against Tron, which is extremely important.
Logic Knot seems weak. There are very few nonland cards you don't mind losing. Snapcaster is nearly as integral to having answers as Teachings is. Mana Leak is a solid 2 mana counterspell that's twice as easy to cast and will end up handling most spells that they unleash. As a one of, you're not going to have to worry about it being dead (unlike those of us who main board 3 and then get paired with Tron game 1).
I really like Logic Knot as a singleton. I'll usually have no problem having enough lands in my graveyard to make it work. It's just great having a hard counter for 2 mana that I'll pretty much always be able to make work.
I'm confused. If Jace dies, this deck has zero wincons. Other than that, it looks interesting. Much more of a control deck though, and runs a ton of countermagic. Not much removal, and can't kill anything with 4+ toughness. Seems ok in the control mirror, can't imagine it beats faster decks though, when most of your deck is dig and counterspells I don't see it winning often.
EDIT: I guess Meloku is also a wincon, still, 2 easily killed wincons seems weak.
What about Lightning Bolt, Snapcaster Mage, Threads of Disloyalty, and Vedalken Shackles?
Yeah but sometimes I don't have the bolt and when I finally get something he goes for the card that gives protection against a colour. But I guess I have to mulligan into a hand that has the bolt.
Yeah you're right. But It's actually cheaper to activate than the colonnade. Bob gets Electrolyzed and BBE isn't the worst creature to block. I don't see myslef tapping 5 mana to activate colonnade and block BBE.
Another problem got me : Lots of deck are now playing the blood moon main deck. And if it hits it is game over. Apart from maindecking a Celestial Purge I don't see how I can get the Moon out. Esper charm is way to coloured to even think about casting it under Moon.
I've found Infect to be a pretty easy matchup. Lightning Bolt, Path to Exile, and Dismember can all be cast T1. If it's common in your meta, increase the number of these cards you run and add Geth's Verdict to your SB.
I prefer Colonnade much more than Creeping Tar Pit, for reasons that others have stated. I don't really care about evasion (by the time I'm swinging with it, I've stabilized the board), it has a shorter clock, and it can block most of the creatures that I'd be worrying about when I'm down to 2 or 3 life on turn 9 or turn 10 when I've almost stabilized the board.
For Blood Moon, I've had issues with it as well. If I think they have it, I hold onto an Esper Charm (as Undone said, float the mana and then cast it), or one of the many counters this deck has. I also have Tempest of Light in the SB which can be used to deal with Blood Moon (since most builds have a Plains).
Things I've notice about this deck. Electolize is even better than I thought. This deck has a solid game vs jund (Not great but solid) The most dangerous card in their deck is bob but you have more than a million outs to him. DRS can be a problem but if they don't play him turn 1 your entire deck is business. This matchup gets progressively better the more electrolizes you draw and the fewer goyfs they draw.
I really want to cut 1 izzet charm (Possibly both?) They're flexable and strong but I if they aren't countering something they're often bad.
Agree with this. Electrolyze has been great in this deck for me, it's just pure CA.
I've completely cut out Izzet Charm, it was really underwhelming for me. Right now Logic Knot (which I like a lot in this deck) and Spell Snare have taken its place.
It struggles with board control against aggro decks (although I try to address that in the SB) and many decks can win even with just 1 or 2 lands. Also T1 mana dorks are hard to deal with.
But really the biggest problem doesn't even have to do with matchups. It's that for this deck to work, from T2 and on, you basically need to play a land each turn and at least one bounce spell per turn, while also getting Howling Mine or Jace Beleren out early.
You basically need to have your opening work out like this:
T1: Land
T2: Howling Mine (or Boomerang/Eye to Nowhere)
T3: Bounce Spell (or Jace Beleren/Howling Mine if Howling Mine wasn't played last turn)
T4: Two Bounce Spells or Cryptic Command or Venser
T5: Two Bounces or Deny Reality
If you can do that, you'll almost always win, but if you miss a spell or a land drop, you'll often times end up with a board position you can't recover from.
In short the deck is a little too greedy and lacks the consistency to win tournaments.
The point of the deck is to use Howling Mine and Jace Beleren as a draw engine to cast bounce spells to go after your opponents lands. Both of those cards act as virtual card advantage because you're opponent will just be drawing dead cards since they won't have enough lands to cast any of them.
It does a pretty good job limiting your opponent to no more than 3 lands, and once it stabilizes it can create a lock with Grand Arbiter Augustin IV preventing your opponents from ever being able to cast any spells (since they'll never have more than 1 land on the field). Since over 1/3 of your cards are bounce spells (and many of them can bounce multiple cards or cantrip) once you have a Howling Mine it's usually easy to cast at least one bounce spell per turn.
My meta has a lot of combo so I don't see how I could possibly ever cut Chalice.
I thought about Elocutors as a win condition, but Humility makes it terrible.
Apart from 2 Elspeth and 3 inkmoth nexus, I also play 1 Baneslayer angel MD and 2 trading post.
I think Trading Post works really well; it acts as a wincon, it feeds smokestack, it makes blockers, it draws cards, it gains life, it regrows artifacts.... It does everything you want without nasty anti-synergy
I'd play Batterskull over Baneslayer Angel. It has great synergy with Humility, and since it is an artifact it works well with things like Trading Post.
I remember the weakest part of the deck being consistency. No real draw or filtering meant you just lost to variance too often for my taste. Any thoughts on this? Scroll Rack? Bottled Cloister?Staff of Nin??
For those last two slots I need something to bring in vs goblins I was thinking Chaos Moon since its pretty easy to control the amount on board let me know what you guys think of that.
That seems pretty janky. I'd just run Sphere of Law or Moat to deal with Goblins.
So, I've been tinkering somewhat with this deck for the past few days (mind you, mostly goldfishing. Only played a few actual games). At one point I was running the ANTCheeri0s version that rstevens has posted. It felt slightly better than my previous attempts at a generic Cheeri0s list, but it still felt like a wrong fit.
Well, yesterday I had a little 'eureka' moment... Street Wraith. Effectively running 8x Gitaxian Probe really seems to make a big difference. It means we can ease up on some of our upkeep-like cards such as mana cards. This is the list I'm running now:
As you can see I'm running no 'tutor' cards. The 2x Serum Powder are cards I'd potentially try out as Personal Tutors. The slots used to belong to 2x Gamble but I really do not like that card. I don't presently own any PTs so going with the Serum Powder for the time being. They seem okay, but those two slots are the most problematic.
All in all, though, running with the 8x probe-effects that the inclusion of the Street Wraiths offers really takes a lot of pressure off in terms of finding your glimpses.
I'd love to hear what people think about the Street Wraiths? It seemed like a no brainer to me as soon as I thought about it. Our life total rarely matters and it makes us able to cut out a couple of non-business cards.
I won't be able to test it at a tournament until next week.
The issue with having too many cards like Street Wraith is that you keep a lot of mystery hands. For a deck that needs certain cards in its hand, it makes it very difficult when your starting hand has 1 Gitaxian Probe and 2 Street Wraith's and you have to decide whether to mulligan with information on only 4 cards.
I'm not saying it's bad or shouldn't be included (haven't tested it), but that is my fear.
I like Serum Powder, but if you run it I think you need to have at least 2 win conditions. A lot of hands I'd want to mulligan are ones with a win condition in hand (as it will be a dead card for most of the combo) so I don't want to be stuck in a situation where I can't exile my only win card.
However even with Serum Powder, I would still keep Personal Tutor. Assuming you aren't running Gamble, you can just go Tropical Island/Savannah as your two lands and you can play pretty much every card without any issues. There's no reason to have Taiga, because by the time you're playing Grapeshot, you would've drawn out your entire deck anyways and could just play a Lotus Petal or a Wild Cantor to get red.
I'm not sure what kind of sample size that statement was meant to reflect... I've been playing that list tonight with some friends and I've not managed anywhere close to that. Estimating I'd say it's closer to 60-70% of going off on turn 1, but going off with this deck doesn't guarantee winning... I seem to fizzle at least 1/3 of the time where I'm even able to go off on turn 1.
I just simply cannot, for the life of me recognize your optimistic account of how this deck performs on turn 1.
Tonight, for instance, I played against a friend who was playing Belcher... the difference on consistent, turn-1 kills were more than significant. Belcher is by far the superior of the two decks at turn 1 kills (this is based on maybe 15 games, so obviously not an amazing sample size, but still enough to get an idea).
Now this deck is still a lot of fun imo, and is probably better than Belcher at recovering from a mediocre start.
I'm going to try the Ad Nauseam version of Cheri0s that rstevens mentions.
Kobolds are epic
I've tested both and the Ad Nauseum build was really subpar in my testing.
The issue is there are too many cards that can be dead.
When you play Glimpse of Nature and you have 3 0 CMC cards, you are only guaranteed to see 3 non creatures. So drawing a "Culling the Weak" or "Dark Ritual" when you are on the verge of fizzling destroys the consistency of this deck. Culling of the Weak/Dark Ritual both require 2-3 freely available mana (with one being black) and Ad Nauseam in hand, which is quite a lot to ask of this deck.
On the other hand, Scapegoat and Summoner's Pact can both keep a combo going on their own which prevents awkward fizzles where you have "Culling the Weak", "Ad Nauseam" and "Bayou" in hand and are still one mana short from doing anything.
Dodging blue can be all the difference in the world. My friend took 1st at a local event by simply not playing against blue all day. Elf combo, Dredge, and a couple aggro decks. No contest at all.
I'm currently toying with this build. I like the simplicity and streamlining, but I do miss some of my favorite toys like Cabal Therapy.
4 Summoner's Pact has been fantastic. I'm tempted to either cut or max it in all my builds instead of being cute with a miser copy. So far in goldfishing, this list turn 1's almost 85% of the time. It's just unreal.
I still like Personal Tutor better. Usually when I'm in a position where I need to cast a tutor, forcing me to discard any card in my hand will likely lead to a fizzle (whether it is the Glimpse I just tutored, a mana souce, or a 0 cmc can trip). At that point I'd rather just wait another turn, keep all my cards in hand, and let my Tropical Island untap so that I have more to work with.
But does Humility require Moat to be truly better? I don't own Moat, and it's not in my budget at the moment. So my build would be Humility with Elspeth, Batterskull, and the staples of the Stax build. Something like this:
Both together are awesome, but turning a field of Qasali Pridemage's, Tarmogoyf's, and Knight of the Reliquary's into 1/1s with no abilities (while you have a 5/5 batterskull with lifelink and vigilance and a 1/1 token generator) is still very very good.
Trading Post looks really interesting; will spend the next couple of days testing it out!
I would never play Sundial of the Infinite. It is only good with Smokestack on the field. Crucible of Worlds and Elspeth, Knight-Errant have equally as good synergy with Smokestack and are good even when Smokestack isn't on the field.
I've found Vendilion Clique to be amazing against Tron, which is extremely common in my meta. You can clear out threats and you can establish a clock against Tron, which is extremely important.
I really like Logic Knot as a singleton. I'll usually have no problem having enough lands in my graveyard to make it work. It's just great having a hard counter for 2 mana that I'll pretty much always be able to make work.
What about Lightning Bolt, Snapcaster Mage, Threads of Disloyalty, and Vedalken Shackles?
I've found Infect to be a pretty easy matchup. Lightning Bolt, Path to Exile, and Dismember can all be cast T1. If it's common in your meta, increase the number of these cards you run and add Geth's Verdict to your SB.
I prefer Colonnade much more than Creeping Tar Pit, for reasons that others have stated. I don't really care about evasion (by the time I'm swinging with it, I've stabilized the board), it has a shorter clock, and it can block most of the creatures that I'd be worrying about when I'm down to 2 or 3 life on turn 9 or turn 10 when I've almost stabilized the board.
For Blood Moon, I've had issues with it as well. If I think they have it, I hold onto an Esper Charm (as Undone said, float the mana and then cast it), or one of the many counters this deck has. I also have Tempest of Light in the SB which can be used to deal with Blood Moon (since most builds have a Plains).
Agree with this. Electrolyze has been great in this deck for me, it's just pure CA.
I've completely cut out Izzet Charm, it was really underwhelming for me. Right now Logic Knot (which I like a lot in this deck) and Spell Snare have taken its place.
In Legacy you have Mox Diamond/Chrome Mox/City of Traitors/Ancient Tomb and in Vintage you have Mishra's Workshop to rush it out.
It struggles with board control against aggro decks (although I try to address that in the SB) and many decks can win even with just 1 or 2 lands. Also T1 mana dorks are hard to deal with.
But really the biggest problem doesn't even have to do with matchups. It's that for this deck to work, from T2 and on, you basically need to play a land each turn and at least one bounce spell per turn, while also getting Howling Mine or Jace Beleren out early.
You basically need to have your opening work out like this:
T1: Land
T2: Howling Mine (or Boomerang/Eye to Nowhere)
T3: Bounce Spell (or Jace Beleren/Howling Mine if Howling Mine wasn't played last turn)
T4: Two Bounce Spells or Cryptic Command or Venser
T5: Two Bounces or Deny Reality
If you can do that, you'll almost always win, but if you miss a spell or a land drop, you'll often times end up with a board position you can't recover from.
In short the deck is a little too greedy and lacks the consistency to win tournaments.
4 Boomerang
4 Cryptic Command
4 Eye of Nowhere
4 Resounding Wave
3 Deny Reality
Creatures
2 Grand Arbiter Augustin IV
2 Venser, Shaper Savant
2 Magus of the Tabernacle
4 Ghostly Prison
4 Howling Mine
2 Jace Beleren
Land
8 Island
4 Drowned Catacomb
4 Glacial Fortress
3 Mystic Gate
3 Seachrome Coast
2 Sunken Ruins
1 Creeping Tar Pit
The point of the deck is to use Howling Mine and Jace Beleren as a draw engine to cast bounce spells to go after your opponents lands. Both of those cards act as virtual card advantage because you're opponent will just be drawing dead cards since they won't have enough lands to cast any of them.
It does a pretty good job limiting your opponent to no more than 3 lands, and once it stabilizes it can create a lock with Grand Arbiter Augustin IV preventing your opponents from ever being able to cast any spells (since they'll never have more than 1 land on the field). Since over 1/3 of your cards are bounce spells (and many of them can bounce multiple cards or cantrip) once you have a Howling Mine it's usually easy to cast at least one bounce spell per turn.
I'd play Batterskull over Baneslayer Angel. It has great synergy with Humility, and since it is an artifact it works well with things like Trading Post.
I'm currently playing Land Tax, Scroll Rack, and Enlightened Tutor in my build. The only thing you really need to give up to make this work is Chalice of the Void.
Land Tax + Scroll Rack are nuts together, and they are both good by themselves, and Enlightened Tutor gives Stax a lot of consistency.
That seems pretty janky. I'd just run Sphere of Law or Moat to deal with Goblins.
The issue with having too many cards like Street Wraith is that you keep a lot of mystery hands. For a deck that needs certain cards in its hand, it makes it very difficult when your starting hand has 1 Gitaxian Probe and 2 Street Wraith's and you have to decide whether to mulligan with information on only 4 cards.
I'm not saying it's bad or shouldn't be included (haven't tested it), but that is my fear.
I like Serum Powder, but if you run it I think you need to have at least 2 win conditions. A lot of hands I'd want to mulligan are ones with a win condition in hand (as it will be a dead card for most of the combo) so I don't want to be stuck in a situation where I can't exile my only win card.
However even with Serum Powder, I would still keep Personal Tutor. Assuming you aren't running Gamble, you can just go Tropical Island/Savannah as your two lands and you can play pretty much every card without any issues. There's no reason to have Taiga, because by the time you're playing Grapeshot, you would've drawn out your entire deck anyways and could just play a Lotus Petal or a Wild Cantor to get red.
I've tested both and the Ad Nauseum build was really subpar in my testing.
The issue is there are too many cards that can be dead.
When you play Glimpse of Nature and you have 3 0 CMC cards, you are only guaranteed to see 3 non creatures. So drawing a "Culling the Weak" or "Dark Ritual" when you are on the verge of fizzling destroys the consistency of this deck. Culling of the Weak/Dark Ritual both require 2-3 freely available mana (with one being black) and Ad Nauseam in hand, which is quite a lot to ask of this deck.
On the other hand, Scapegoat and Summoner's Pact can both keep a combo going on their own which prevents awkward fizzles where you have "Culling the Weak", "Ad Nauseam" and "Bayou" in hand and are still one mana short from doing anything.
I still like Personal Tutor better. Usually when I'm in a position where I need to cast a tutor, forcing me to discard any card in my hand will likely lead to a fizzle (whether it is the Glimpse I just tutored, a mana souce, or a 0 cmc can trip). At that point I'd rather just wait another turn, keep all my cards in hand, and let my Tropical Island untap so that I have more to work with.
Humility is still better even without Moat.
Both together are awesome, but turning a field of Qasali Pridemage's, Tarmogoyf's, and Knight of the Reliquary's into 1/1s with no abilities (while you have a 5/5 batterskull with lifelink and vigilance and a 1/1 token generator) is still very very good.
Trading Post looks really interesting; will spend the next couple of days testing it out!