[Deck] UWstax

[acchia85]

what do you think about this solution??
i substitute a tangle wire whit rising water...

4 [City of Traitors]
4 [Ancient Tomb]
3 [Wasteland]
3 [Tundra]
3 [Mishra's Factory]
3 [Flagstones of Trokair]
2 [Plain]
2 [Island]
1 [Academy Ruins]
4 [Mox Diamond]
4 [Chalice of the Void]
4 [Crucible of Worlds]
3 [Propaganda]
3 [Magus of Tabernacle]
3 [Smokestack]
3 [Rising Water]
3 [Oblivius Ring]
3 [Trinisphere]
3 [Armageddon]
2 [Karn, Silver Golem]

[Sun_Ra]

The only reason to stretch the manabase for a second color splash is Academy Ruins. Winter Orbs are strictly better than Rising Water, Propagandas can be Ghostly Prisons.

If you're dead set on playing Academy Ruins, I'd rather run just a couple Tundras and no basic Islands since it can be played off Mox Diamond, even under a Moon effect. Even then, screwing up your manabase for a singleton seems pretty suboptimal.

You need to fit the 4th Smokestack in somehow. How does Karn work out in testing as a finisher?

[acchia85]

yeah orb is better the rising water!!

i think that karn is better then angel, because allows me to attack right away with my artifacts...

[Bourgeoise]

If you're dead set on playing Academy Ruins, I'd rather run just a couple Tundras and no basic Islands since it can be played off Mox Diamond, even under a Moon effect. Even then, screwing up your manabase for a singleton seems pretty suboptimal.

Yeah Mox Diamond gives blue under a blood moon effect, but that is a moot point since your Academy Ruins is now a nonbasic Mountain.

I agree with above splashing blue just for Academy Ruins is not worth running the extra nonbasics etc. you might be better off exploring the mono-u stax thread for ideas if you are set on running Academy Ruins. Maybe splash white in the mono-u version for armageddon to give it the lock power it needs.

[Vetinari]

If you are running blue, Intuition and Cephalid Coliseum are good.

[Aggro_zombies]

If you are running blue, Intuition and Cephalid Coliseum are good.
Intuition definitely, Coliseum not so much. Draw three, discard three doesn't really help you if you're trying to find something and your hand is empty, or nearly so.

Personally, I'd use either white or blue Stax, but not white and blue. White has Armageddon and tax effects, while blue has dig and a heinously good finisher (from my testing, anyway) in Oona. Having played both Stax decks before, which one you end up playing is really dependent on your metagame.

Besides, bending over backwards to support Academy Ruins isn't a good idea. White Stax gets along just fine without a Ruins, and adding Ruins in the abscence of Intuition or Thirst for Knowledge is rather pointless. Also, white Stax should really run Suppression Field, which makes Ruins that much worse.

[Vetinari]

Intuition definitely, Coliseum not so much. Draw three, discard three doesn't really help you if you're trying to find something and your hand is empty, or nearly so.
Granted, it doesn't work very well with an empty hand (although even then it's decent if you have Ruins) but in every other case it is great especially since most stax have so little library manipulation.

[acchia85]

i preferer maze of ith at coliseum... i think that intu and meditate are better drawing card in this case...

[Mordel]

If you want the skinny on suppression field, check out the last few pages of the white stax thread. It has good applications, but is sometimes underwhelming.

Oona in stax?!! Shwaaaa...? Angel is considered a luxury slot by many stax supporters, so maybe I am missing why a six mana 5/5 with a shitty milling ability (that can pay a smoker's upkeep...is that what you are getting at?) and requires three blue mana to cast (two coloured mana is commonly viewed as prohibitive enough) is good. I must be missing something here. I am not asking this in a sardonic way; explain to me why Oona is good in stax.


I don't understand what the above deck is solving really to be honest. Rising waters, as previously mentioned is completely inferior to winter orb and is unneeded in 'geddon stax and the symmetry hurts your deck more than anything. There is no Tezzeret, which I don't really have an opinion on anyway, but still is not there. Academy ruins isn't that amazing in stax as far as I know. I also can't see a sideboard, so I am left at the inevitable question of: "Why the fuck are you splashing blue?"

Sorry for seeming abrasive, but I am not seeing a sideboard and am not being given any reasoning for a splash other than:


what do you think about this solution??
i substitute a tangle wire whit rising water...

What are you trying to solve and why are there almost entirely three slots in a deck with no manipulation?


My mind is recoiling in sheer terror. Please explain the what question caused you to make such a solution? Do you feel that 'geddon stax is too good and needs to be more fair for opponents or something?

Are propagandas warranting the splash so you have some anti-anarchy tech?

[Dark_Cynic87]

It's my opinion that so far as I've seen on this or any other site, the blue splash has always helped a stax list. Running 3x of each piece and 3x Intuition basically means you are playing 6x copies of everything, 7 if you run 4x. And if you are running Academy Ruins, which you should be since you play blue and about 1/3 of your list is artifacts, then you are running an infinite (for all intents and purposes) number of them. I advocated the blue splash as far back as early last year. No one ever listened to me except for Emidln, and we started playing a UGr build of Sun Tower (a stax list), which was without a doubt one of the, if not THE, stax lists to play even now(yep, even over 'Geddon Stax; the duals and Rolling Earthquakes are what I assume kept people from really playing it...). I would still be playing it if I weren't so happy as a storm combo player.

You don't NEED the 4th Smokestack. What you don't need are the Islands. You can't fetch them, and there's virtually no draw here. You randomly see them, which means they won't help you under a moon effect, nor when someone gets their waste-lock on.

Drop Rising Waters for Intuition, and Islands for Plains.

Next, Karn Sucks. You already have a late-game win-con; Factories. Karn is a late game win-con ONLY, he has no versatility at all. He's costly, he's slow, and he requires other artifacts in play. With Angel, however, you can go: Tomb//City, Mox Diamond, Face-down angel, go. Turn two: Tap Tomb//City, play w-producing land, tap said land, tap Diamond for W and morph angel swinging for 4 on turn TWO. This can win you the game by turn 6. That's hawt.

Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale >>>>>>>> Maze of Ith. The tempo they lose here is astronomically better than paying 1 to stop a single attacker.

Pce,

--DC

[Aggro_zombies]

Oona in stax?!! Shwaaaa...? Angel is considered a luxury slot by many stax supporters, so maybe I am missing why a six mana 5/5 with a shitty milling ability (that can pay a smoker's upkeep...is that what you are getting at?) and requires three blue mana to cast (two coloured mana is commonly viewed as prohibitive enough) is good. I must be missing something here. I am not asking this in a sardonic way; explain to me why Oona is good in stax.
Look at the date the post was made - at that point, nobody knew of Tezzeret's existence. Oona was one of the strongest finishers available to a mono-blue Stax list, followed probably by Morphling. By the time you win with Factories, your opponent will be in the Geriatrics Ward, so I wanted something faster because going to time isn't cool, especially if you lose game one. I opted to use Oona in the list I was testing because I had easy access to triple blue in a relevant time frame, and yes, the mill ability allows you to take Smokestack past one without much risk on your part. My list also ran Jace as a card drawing engine and could use milling as an alternate win condition (although that would be awful considering Oona and the crew could swing for 5+ a turn, in the air). A body that's constantly a 5/5 is not to be underestimated.

That said, Tezzeret is vastly superior to Oona as a win condition in mono-blue Stax, and if I was looking for redundancy, I'd use Sharding Sphinx (also better than Oona since it's an artifact and works well with Factories).