I've got a bant enchantment deck that hasn't lost a game in my multiplayer environment so far. A big part of winning a large multiplayer free-for-all is making sure that no one wants to attack you. Since you're in white and blue, this is easy : just make it hard for people to attack you.
And my new favorite for enchantment decks that you already figured out: Sphere of Safety
These discourage anyone from taking shots at you, and as long as you don't make yourself a threat they won't go to the extra work, meanwhile they don't stop anyone from attacking each other, which is exactly what you want. Get them fighting among themselves and ignoring you until it's too late.
Take advantage of their in-fighting with Righteous Cause : gain life whenever anyone attacks anyone else.
Meanwhile, while you're making it harder for them to attack you, make it harder for them to deal with your stuff : Privileged Position, Sterling grove. Double up these, particularly the positions, and everything on your side will have hexproof, meaning your opponents will continue to use their removal spells against each other, generating more in-fighting as they get revenge on one another.
While you're protecting your permanents, protect yourself as well : Leyline of Sanctity or Ivory Mask to prevent those nasty burn players from just killing you outright.
Since you're playing some creatures that are synergistic with the deck, Worship will prevent them from killing you, especially if you've got the hexproof lock set up, and Near Death Experience is a hilarious way to win if someone has been beating on you with worship in play.
If you're looking for card drawing that's fast and consistent : Enchantress's Presence, Rhystic Study, and Attunement. Especially in 5+ player games the study can refill your hand every turn.
Sigil of the empty throne is a great end-game win condition. If you want to do this a bit faster, Luminarch Ascension is an absolute beast in group games if you've already got the propaganda-type or worship-type defenses online, or you play it on turn two before anyone is capable of swinging at you every turn. Usually by the time you've gone once around a big table or twice around a small table you can start pumping out more angels than anyone can deal with.
This deck is all about politics. You'll be vulnerable in the first few turns, but you won't look like a threat either. If you with with the deck too much, people will start ganging up on you in the beginning before you can put one of the locks together. Your goal is to make them feel bad about it. "But guys, I'm manascrewed and all I have is righteous cause, propaganda, and priveledged position. I'm not hurting anyone, right? Why not go after him? he's the real threat right now with 'insert big creature here' " Then while they're distracted, you drop the sphere of safety, the other position, and the ascension and it's all over for them again.
A note - depending on the decks your group plays, there may be some things they can do to stop you. My group likes creatures. Big, nasty creatures. They don't know how to deal with non-creature permanents. Between them there are two Nevin's Disks, two Akroma's Vengences, and 2 disenchants that I have to be afraid of. If your playgroup has major amounts of mass enchantment removal maindecked, get yourself a set of Replenish. You can use attunement to throw tons of lock pieces away while you build an initial board state, but if it gets wiped you can bring the entire mess back in and kill before the next board wipe.
One thing that hasn't been addressed here is the balance of land to non-land cards. The naya deck is running 26 lands. I understand that it's a landfall deck, but the highest casting cost in the whole deck is three. This means that a lot of time, the naya player is going to be stuck drawing extra lands that only affect the landfall triggers late in the game when they'd be better off drawing more business cards to keep up after a sweeper.
Cut at least 3 lands from naya, if you increase the cmc. otherwise you can cut up to 5 and still get to cmc 3 cards just fine. If you're worried about needing late-game land to trigger landfall, get Life from the Loam, it'll get you all the reusability you need. If you want to really speed things up from there, mix in some cycling lands in place of some of your others for a card draw engine.
Since I assume you're keeping this to a fairly low budget, I'd be looking for some larger and more resilient threats for the naya deck, replacing at least 3 lands. Thrun is a perfect solution, especially since all the board sweepers in the control deck allow regeneration, so any large regenerator would be a good start.
Planeswalkers add a significant power level to most decks in a casual format. If you're going to play Gideon in the control deck, I'd match it with planeswalkers in the naya deck. Either of the two elspeths, or the last two garruks, or probably any of the ajanis would work great, though I think the best for this might be the first elspeth or Garruk, Primal Hunter, as they both produce token creatures consistently, and it's that resiliance that will turn the tide against the control deck.
So the other day I played against a reanimator deck for the first time ever. It seemed like a challenging matchup for stax.
game 1 - a turn 0 chalice at one pretty much won that game
game 2 - i put in the two tormod's crypts i run sideboard, saw one of them and got some decent stuff out of his graveyard. I had a crucible, smokestack, trinisphere and 2 ghostly prisons in play and then this hit the game
he sacked it 2 smokestack twice and reanimated before i scooped
can't remember game three but i lost
I guess what i'm looking for is anything to improve the reanimator matchup. i was pretty unimpressed with my 2 tormod's crypts. I think in the future i take out all the smokestacks and put in karmic justices.
i play a pretty traditional geddon stacks. so yeah, how do we beat reanimator
I've never worried significantly about reanimator because of my build. I run O-rings maindecked and sometimes Ensnaring Bridge sideboard, They run very few lands so Ghostly Prison is great in multiples, and trinisphere gives them a hard time.
But you know what really stops reanimator? Humility
It's amazing in almost every match, but reanimator has zero outs to it if you resolve it. Your dream plan is turn one mox, tomb, trinisphere or chalice (drawing their counter), second turn plains, humility. They should scoop at that point.
Also, since competitive reanimator assumes you're bringing in graveyard hate game two, they usually board in 3-4 show and tells. This is an even better way to cheat humility into play
Remember that Welder only swaps artifacts. You have to have one in play that you can sacrifice in order to get one back from the graveyard into play. So, since you only have two different artifacts in your deck (sunforger and jitte), the only time you'd activate welder would be in the case that you had one in play but would rather have the other one instead. Welder works much better in a deck focused around artifacts, playing artifact lands or accelerants, and other ways to throw huge things into the graveyard and then swap. Trading a artifact land or mox opal for something like a Sundering Titan or Wurmcoil Engine is an awesome use of welder. Swapping one equipment for another isn't enough of a use to justify running welder :-p
So, it's the night before the release. I've been scouring over local store listings, calling around to see where these are available. I drive a lot, so I don't mind a long trip. Within an hour drive of me, there are 9 stores that are actively selling major Magic products and could get these. This should give you an idea of the complete variation on store policies, even in a limited area:
Store #1 is not getting any at all.
Store #2 is getting some, but they're not sure how many even as of tonight. They're taking preorders at $50, and may have one or two available for sale. They're limiting them to no more than 2 per customer.
Store #3 has more people interested than they'll be getting, said they're getting 6-8, they still haven't gotten them. They'll guarantee me one because I asked first a month ago, but they still don't know how much they're selling them for. "Considerably less than the market price online, which is at $125"
Store #4 has already sold out with pre-orders.
Store #5 claims to be getting 20, no preorders, but they won't decide a price until tomorrow.
Store #6 will have several in stock for sale, selling at $125 each.
Store #7 Hasn't decided yet whether they'll be selling any, or opening them all and just selling the singles.
Store #8 Hasn't recieved their shipment yet, but should either late tonight or tomorrow afternoon. They're selling them at MSRP (34.99) and have agreed to hold one for me since I asked a month ago, but lots of people are asking for them and they won't last long.
Store #9 Said they sold out via pre-orders a couple weeks ago.
I can see now that this isn't a regional problem, some of these places are even in the same towns as one another, and they're all over the place on their policies, pricing, availability, etc.
My plan is to hit store 5 when they open and get one if the price is good, call stores 7 and 8 to determine whether/when they'll have them available and head to those, then try to negotiate a reasonable price with store #3 for the one they're holding for me, then try to pick up any extras for $50 at store #2, all between the early afternoon tomorrow and saturday night. My goal is to end up with a playset for <$200, but we'll see how likely that is tomorrow.
Since you already have 4 Stoneforge Mystics, you can cut down on the number of each equipment significantly. Never play more than 2 Jittes. Even in an equipment-based deck, 4 is way too many, and you should fill out the remaining slots with equipment that deal with other problems. Generally, though not always, this means the mirroden swords, especially Sword of Fire and Ice, Sword of Feast and Famine, and Sword of Light and Shadow.
Since you don't have any way to put artifacts into your graveyard without having an over-full hand, and the only artifacts you're playing at all are equipment, why are you playing Goblin Welder? I love the card, but I don't think it belongs here, since you don't have good ways to abuse it. I would cut it in favor of either Figure of Destiny, or Mother of Runes
Now I need to cut some of these cards. Any suggestion? Thank you
I would strongly suggest checking out the Eva Green thread. This deck looks much more like that than it does traditional rock or contemporary rock/junk. For specific suggestions, I'd cut the death's shadows, reanimates, bloodghasts, and edicts to start, and unless you consistently have Top out I wouldn't attempt running Tombstalker and Confidant together. I'd probably cut the stalkers and up the nighthawk count. I'd consider Gatekeeper of Malakir, though Lilliana fills the same slot. I'd probably also play a 9th fetch, and I'd be considering Sylvan Library over top because you won't have the mana to top often.
If you want to tweak this towards Rock, cut the rituals, stalkers, all the things I mentioned before, plus the nighthawks, and shift the deck much more towards midrange board control than aggressive disruption and beatdown. Rock tends also to be much more green heavy. Once again, a strongly black-heavy balance with a focus on disruption and fast aggressive creatures suggests that you're playing Eva Green, which plays very differently than Rock.
@OP I'm glad you took the living plane from your deck. As neat as the idea was to turn all their lands and guys into 1/1s and then wipe the board, the sorrow's path idea wouldn't work anymore. Living plane would turn Sorrow's path into a creature, then Humility would make all the creatures into 1/1s with no abilities.
Personally I think this is a much more fun/absurd idea for a deck, maybe in EDH or casual, Living plane, Humility, and Curse of death's hold. Then you just beat your opponent to death with your 1/1 lands. Add crucible of worlds for recursion, Night of Soul's Betrayal for more ways to shrink their stuff, Mirari's Wake, Glorious anthem etc to boost yours. Other animation ideas are Urborg/Kormus Bell. If all goes well, everyone else's creatures should be permanent 0/0s and you should be beating face with lands.
i use batter skull and elspth2.0 for win conditions so i could always cut a factory or 2.
I only play one Ghost Quarter, as it's really just wasteland #5 most of the time, but it has the occasion to create that perfect lock under crucible. I run 2 Elspeth 1.0 and 2 Batterskulls as my win condition, and compared to your land list I've got -1 or 2 Factory, + 1 Savannah (or plans depending on if choke is in my board), +1 ghost quarter, I think.
Simple question: what does Helix do in that context that Smokestack doesn't do better? Destroying the few land they try to drop (since they were sandbagging in anticipation of Geddon) is better than simply tapping down that land.
Agreed. If you can successfully resolve crucible and then geddon, you've almost already won just by that. If you have a prison out you've locked their creatures, or a tabernacle effect will wipe their board. If you've got trinisphere or chalice out they're going to be behind for several turns at least while you gain massive advantage from crucible.
If you want to hard lock them, use smokestack, the odds of them getting out of it after a crucible, stack, geddon resolution are slim, and if you've got a flagstones you can net lands out of it and rebuild.
If I'm going to add one card to make the lock even a little better, it's Ghost Quarter. Waste-locking them after crucible/geddon can completely shut down some decks, but for the 1-2 color decks running a lot of basics, GQ and crucible can eat through their supply very quickly.
I'm not entirely sold on the Battleshpere. perhaps because i've never really gotten it out, but I've never really had a need to tutor for it, and I don't think it makes as much of an impact on the board as some other stuff.
Is there anything you could think of switching it for? I did consider Mindslaver or Staff of Domination, but i'm not 100% certain.
Also, is there anything in the list that looks obviously inferior/bad?
Thanks in advance.
I would never run the deck without a Staff of Domination as a 1-of. The ability to go infinite with metalworker as early as turn 2 is one I'm not willing to let go of. More often, it's a late-game forgemaster target that wins the game almost immediately. I don't think you need a full set of voltaic Key, and I'd play the staff in place of one of them.
I noticed some list run sensei's divining top. Anyone who runs them ever considered chaos warp? another way to bring in a fatty right? i know chaos warp doesnt fit the game plan, but its also a cheap removal for anything..
How are you bringing a fatty in? There's a chaos warp in the sideboard for the decklist that won the SCG, and that's the one I proxied out and played with. I never brought in chaos warp, looked at it as a solution to problem cards like Humility or Energy Flux.
There's a shuffle effect involved in the resolution of chaos warp. Since the shuffle and reveal happen sequentially as part of the same spell, I don't believe there's any chance to stack the top of the library in response. Otherwise, it'd be pretty nuts with brainstorm. Unless, of course, your library only has a handful of cards left in it. If mill yourself until there's nothing but an Emrakul in your library, then chaos warp a token creature, you're guaranteed to get the eldrazi into play, but that seems a rather unlikely scenario.
Played this deck in a small 12-man last night. Loved the broken plays, but the mana seems really inconsistent. Maybe I need more practice, but there were several times when I needed 1-2 more mana to do something broken, like could get to 4 but needed 6, or could get myself to 6 but needed 7 etc.
In the end, I went 2-1, losing to mono-blue faeries. Their counters were too strong game one, and after siding in the trinispheres I thought I was going for a turn 4 kill, but walked into a sideboarded rebuild that put me so far behind that I couldn't catch back up.
As for the specific card discussions going on:
Lotus petal worked fine, but I might have preferred something more constant. I'm not sure whether I want it over diamond or not. It got me to a turn-1 metalworker, which promptly died to removal. I often felt land-light, and might not have had the land to pitch to diamond, so petal may be the better choice, more testing will decide this.
Blightsteel won me the first game of the night, and got StPd in another game for 11 life. It eats blockers, blanks a lot of removal, and kills in one shot. I definitely like it as a 1-of, especially as long as we have lightning greaves in the deck.
Gamble never proved useful, and I sided it out at almost every occasion. I can see the usefulness especially if we have an active welder, but sticking an active welder should usually mean the game is nearly over anyway.
Blood moon main decked was fantastic as a game-1 surprise, but it was useless against the mono-color deck, and certainly contributed to my one loss, as it was taking up space that could have been used by something more critical. Since I don't see mono-blue being a big part of the meta though, I think it's a pretty safe inclusion. I think it'll be critical in most matchups, but will be completely useless in others. The burn matchup comes to mind in that regards. In discussion of why we're playing it, it completely shuts down a lot of decks, and it means we won't lose more life to Ancient tomb or have to sacrifice City of Traitors, both of which were really useful.
I've had a lot of fun playing this deck at small events. No one sees it coming, and it draws so much attention with wacky board states (you played Armageddon against a field full of goblins?) that Iv'e gotten handshakes after games from the spectators watching the absurdity.
I feel like this deck is an expert at making people play fair. It hoses the absolutely broken combo decks and slows down the brokenly-fast aggro decks, it's weak against midrange where everyone is playing good fair cards though.
I had horrible luck months ago taking my first version of this to a very large, professional-level tournament, but I've done really well in smaller local events. What that tells me is that this isn't going to be good against the top end of the spectrum, but has fantastic odds against the majority of the field when things like budget and card availability are factored in. So, if you're looking to have a good time with friends, meet new people at a new gaming store, or want to surprise a small-medium tournament with something they're not expecting, this is a fantastic deck for it. If combo (or burn) is infesting the meta, this is the deck for it. If you're deciding what to take to the next GP though, this probably isn't the best choice, unless you're going for surprise factor.
Also, while the core of the deck might have remained the same for awhile, I think we've gotten good new cards in the last couple of years. Timely Reinforcements has been fantastic, and all of our win conditions ( Batterskull, Baneslayer, Wurmcoil, Elspeth) have all come out relatively recently. For the most part, each block only contributes a handful of really playable cards to legacy as a format in general, I'm not surprised that of that handful, there aren't always good ones for stax, as it's hard to beat what we've already got, and our list is so packed that it's hard to cut important pieces for new tech.
Goblin Guide and Lightning Bolt stack in the sense that they both have the potential to deal damage to the opponent. These two stack in the sense that they both have the potential to disrupt the opponent by making them pay mana. Field and Prison do NOT both require a payment for each attacker attack, since declaring an attacker is not an activated ability.
As an addendum, they DO stack with THEMSELVES, meaning that 2 Prisons will cause your opponents to pay 4 for each attacker, and 2 fields will cause them to pay 4 for each activated ability. This is one of the best parts of the cards, and the reason we play them in sets. Together they can effectively stall out someone who's short on resources.
Ghostly Prison
Propaganda
Norn's Annex
And my new favorite for enchantment decks that you already figured out: Sphere of Safety
These discourage anyone from taking shots at you, and as long as you don't make yourself a threat they won't go to the extra work, meanwhile they don't stop anyone from attacking each other, which is exactly what you want. Get them fighting among themselves and ignoring you until it's too late.
Take advantage of their in-fighting with Righteous Cause : gain life whenever anyone attacks anyone else.
Meanwhile, while you're making it harder for them to attack you, make it harder for them to deal with your stuff : Privileged Position, Sterling grove. Double up these, particularly the positions, and everything on your side will have hexproof, meaning your opponents will continue to use their removal spells against each other, generating more in-fighting as they get revenge on one another.
While you're protecting your permanents, protect yourself as well : Leyline of Sanctity or Ivory Mask to prevent those nasty burn players from just killing you outright.
Since you're playing some creatures that are synergistic with the deck, Worship will prevent them from killing you, especially if you've got the hexproof lock set up, and Near Death Experience is a hilarious way to win if someone has been beating on you with worship in play.
If you're looking for card drawing that's fast and consistent : Enchantress's Presence, Rhystic Study, and Attunement. Especially in 5+ player games the study can refill your hand every turn.
Sigil of the empty throne is a great end-game win condition. If you want to do this a bit faster, Luminarch Ascension is an absolute beast in group games if you've already got the propaganda-type or worship-type defenses online, or you play it on turn two before anyone is capable of swinging at you every turn. Usually by the time you've gone once around a big table or twice around a small table you can start pumping out more angels than anyone can deal with.
This deck is all about politics. You'll be vulnerable in the first few turns, but you won't look like a threat either. If you with with the deck too much, people will start ganging up on you in the beginning before you can put one of the locks together. Your goal is to make them feel bad about it. "But guys, I'm manascrewed and all I have is righteous cause, propaganda, and priveledged position. I'm not hurting anyone, right? Why not go after him? he's the real threat right now with 'insert big creature here' " Then while they're distracted, you drop the sphere of safety, the other position, and the ascension and it's all over for them again.
A note - depending on the decks your group plays, there may be some things they can do to stop you. My group likes creatures. Big, nasty creatures. They don't know how to deal with non-creature permanents. Between them there are two Nevin's Disks, two Akroma's Vengences, and 2 disenchants that I have to be afraid of. If your playgroup has major amounts of mass enchantment removal maindecked, get yourself a set of Replenish. You can use attunement to throw tons of lock pieces away while you build an initial board state, but if it gets wiped you can bring the entire mess back in and kill before the next board wipe.
Cut at least 3 lands from naya, if you increase the cmc. otherwise you can cut up to 5 and still get to cmc 3 cards just fine. If you're worried about needing late-game land to trigger landfall, get Life from the Loam, it'll get you all the reusability you need. If you want to really speed things up from there, mix in some cycling lands in place of some of your others for a card draw engine.
Since I assume you're keeping this to a fairly low budget, I'd be looking for some larger and more resilient threats for the naya deck, replacing at least 3 lands. Thrun is a perfect solution, especially since all the board sweepers in the control deck allow regeneration, so any large regenerator would be a good start.
Planeswalkers add a significant power level to most decks in a casual format. If you're going to play Gideon in the control deck, I'd match it with planeswalkers in the naya deck. Either of the two elspeths, or the last two garruks, or probably any of the ajanis would work great, though I think the best for this might be the first elspeth or Garruk, Primal Hunter, as they both produce token creatures consistently, and it's that resiliance that will turn the tide against the control deck.
I've never worried significantly about reanimator because of my build. I run O-rings maindecked and sometimes Ensnaring Bridge sideboard, They run very few lands so Ghostly Prison is great in multiples, and trinisphere gives them a hard time.
But you know what really stops reanimator?
Humility
It's amazing in almost every match, but reanimator has zero outs to it if you resolve it. Your dream plan is turn one mox, tomb, trinisphere or chalice (drawing their counter), second turn plains, humility. They should scoop at that point.
Also, since competitive reanimator assumes you're bringing in graveyard hate game two, they usually board in 3-4 show and tells. This is an even better way to cheat humility into play
Store #1 is not getting any at all.
Store #2 is getting some, but they're not sure how many even as of tonight. They're taking preorders at $50, and may have one or two available for sale. They're limiting them to no more than 2 per customer.
Store #3 has more people interested than they'll be getting, said they're getting 6-8, they still haven't gotten them. They'll guarantee me one because I asked first a month ago, but they still don't know how much they're selling them for. "Considerably less than the market price online, which is at $125"
Store #4 has already sold out with pre-orders.
Store #5 claims to be getting 20, no preorders, but they won't decide a price until tomorrow.
Store #6 will have several in stock for sale, selling at $125 each.
Store #7 Hasn't decided yet whether they'll be selling any, or opening them all and just selling the singles.
Store #8 Hasn't recieved their shipment yet, but should either late tonight or tomorrow afternoon. They're selling them at MSRP (34.99) and have agreed to hold one for me since I asked a month ago, but lots of people are asking for them and they won't last long.
Store #9 Said they sold out via pre-orders a couple weeks ago.
I can see now that this isn't a regional problem, some of these places are even in the same towns as one another, and they're all over the place on their policies, pricing, availability, etc.
My plan is to hit store 5 when they open and get one if the price is good, call stores 7 and 8 to determine whether/when they'll have them available and head to those, then try to negotiate a reasonable price with store #3 for the one they're holding for me, then try to pick up any extras for $50 at store #2, all between the early afternoon tomorrow and saturday night. My goal is to end up with a playset for <$200, but we'll see how likely that is tomorrow.
Since you don't have any way to put artifacts into your graveyard without having an over-full hand, and the only artifacts you're playing at all are equipment, why are you playing Goblin Welder? I love the card, but I don't think it belongs here, since you don't have good ways to abuse it. I would cut it in favor of either Figure of Destiny, or Mother of Runes
I would strongly suggest checking out the Eva Green thread. This deck looks much more like that than it does traditional rock or contemporary rock/junk. For specific suggestions, I'd cut the death's shadows, reanimates, bloodghasts, and edicts to start, and unless you consistently have Top out I wouldn't attempt running Tombstalker and Confidant together. I'd probably cut the stalkers and up the nighthawk count. I'd consider Gatekeeper of Malakir, though Lilliana fills the same slot. I'd probably also play a 9th fetch, and I'd be considering Sylvan Library over top because you won't have the mana to top often.
If you want to tweak this towards Rock, cut the rituals, stalkers, all the things I mentioned before, plus the nighthawks, and shift the deck much more towards midrange board control than aggressive disruption and beatdown. Rock tends also to be much more green heavy. Once again, a strongly black-heavy balance with a focus on disruption and fast aggressive creatures suggests that you're playing Eva Green, which plays very differently than Rock.
Personally I think this is a much more fun/absurd idea for a deck, maybe in EDH or casual, Living plane, Humility, and Curse of death's hold. Then you just beat your opponent to death with your 1/1 lands. Add crucible of worlds for recursion, Night of Soul's Betrayal for more ways to shrink their stuff, Mirari's Wake, Glorious anthem etc to boost yours. Other animation ideas are Urborg/Kormus Bell. If all goes well, everyone else's creatures should be permanent 0/0s and you should be beating face with lands.
I only play one Ghost Quarter, as it's really just wasteland #5 most of the time, but it has the occasion to create that perfect lock under crucible. I run 2 Elspeth 1.0 and 2 Batterskulls as my win condition, and compared to your land list I've got -1 or 2 Factory, + 1 Savannah (or plans depending on if choke is in my board), +1 ghost quarter, I think.
Agreed. If you can successfully resolve crucible and then geddon, you've almost already won just by that. If you have a prison out you've locked their creatures, or a tabernacle effect will wipe their board. If you've got trinisphere or chalice out they're going to be behind for several turns at least while you gain massive advantage from crucible.
If you want to hard lock them, use smokestack, the odds of them getting out of it after a crucible, stack, geddon resolution are slim, and if you've got a flagstones you can net lands out of it and rebuild.
If I'm going to add one card to make the lock even a little better, it's Ghost Quarter. Waste-locking them after crucible/geddon can completely shut down some decks, but for the 1-2 color decks running a lot of basics, GQ and crucible can eat through their supply very quickly.
I would never run the deck without a Staff of Domination as a 1-of. The ability to go infinite with metalworker as early as turn 2 is one I'm not willing to let go of. More often, it's a late-game forgemaster target that wins the game almost immediately. I don't think you need a full set of voltaic Key, and I'd play the staff in place of one of them.
How are you bringing a fatty in? There's a chaos warp in the sideboard for the decklist that won the SCG, and that's the one I proxied out and played with. I never brought in chaos warp, looked at it as a solution to problem cards like Humility or Energy Flux.
There's a shuffle effect involved in the resolution of chaos warp. Since the shuffle and reveal happen sequentially as part of the same spell, I don't believe there's any chance to stack the top of the library in response. Otherwise, it'd be pretty nuts with brainstorm. Unless, of course, your library only has a handful of cards left in it. If mill yourself until there's nothing but an Emrakul in your library, then chaos warp a token creature, you're guaranteed to get the eldrazi into play, but that seems a rather unlikely scenario.
In the end, I went 2-1, losing to mono-blue faeries. Their counters were too strong game one, and after siding in the trinispheres I thought I was going for a turn 4 kill, but walked into a sideboarded rebuild that put me so far behind that I couldn't catch back up.
As for the specific card discussions going on:
Lotus petal worked fine, but I might have preferred something more constant. I'm not sure whether I want it over diamond or not. It got me to a turn-1 metalworker, which promptly died to removal. I often felt land-light, and might not have had the land to pitch to diamond, so petal may be the better choice, more testing will decide this.
Blightsteel won me the first game of the night, and got StPd in another game for 11 life. It eats blockers, blanks a lot of removal, and kills in one shot. I definitely like it as a 1-of, especially as long as we have lightning greaves in the deck.
Gamble never proved useful, and I sided it out at almost every occasion. I can see the usefulness especially if we have an active welder, but sticking an active welder should usually mean the game is nearly over anyway.
Blood moon main decked was fantastic as a game-1 surprise, but it was useless against the mono-color deck, and certainly contributed to my one loss, as it was taking up space that could have been used by something more critical. Since I don't see mono-blue being a big part of the meta though, I think it's a pretty safe inclusion. I think it'll be critical in most matchups, but will be completely useless in others. The burn matchup comes to mind in that regards. In discussion of why we're playing it, it completely shuts down a lot of decks, and it means we won't lose more life to Ancient tomb or have to sacrifice City of Traitors, both of which were really useful.
I feel like this deck is an expert at making people play fair. It hoses the absolutely broken combo decks and slows down the brokenly-fast aggro decks, it's weak against midrange where everyone is playing good fair cards though.
I had horrible luck months ago taking my first version of this to a very large, professional-level tournament, but I've done really well in smaller local events. What that tells me is that this isn't going to be good against the top end of the spectrum, but has fantastic odds against the majority of the field when things like budget and card availability are factored in. So, if you're looking to have a good time with friends, meet new people at a new gaming store, or want to surprise a small-medium tournament with something they're not expecting, this is a fantastic deck for it. If combo (or burn) is infesting the meta, this is the deck for it. If you're deciding what to take to the next GP though, this probably isn't the best choice, unless you're going for surprise factor.
Also, while the core of the deck might have remained the same for awhile, I think we've gotten good new cards in the last couple of years. Timely Reinforcements has been fantastic, and all of our win conditions ( Batterskull, Baneslayer, Wurmcoil, Elspeth) have all come out relatively recently. For the most part, each block only contributes a handful of really playable cards to legacy as a format in general, I'm not surprised that of that handful, there aren't always good ones for stax, as it's hard to beat what we've already got, and our list is so packed that it's hard to cut important pieces for new tech.
As an addendum, they DO stack with THEMSELVES, meaning that 2 Prisons will cause your opponents to pay 4 for each attacker, and 2 fields will cause them to pay 4 for each activated ability. This is one of the best parts of the cards, and the reason we play them in sets. Together they can effectively stall out someone who's short on resources.