[Deck] Tezzeret Stax [Archive]

Maveric78f

09-03-2008, 07:43 AM

I'm not sure...you say Stax, but the Stax shell is lacking in your list:

4 Chalice of the Void (grantes you have these...)
4 Crucible of Worlds (you only have 2 of these)
3-4 Trinisphere
3-4 Smokestack (it's not really Stax without this one, is it?)

Tezzeret might be the card that enables Tangle Wire in Stax. Fun. The fact that you're playing blue makes Academy Ruins very hot. You might want an alternative kill next to Tezzeret's third ability; perhaps a factory (dump the Darksteel Citadels). Stuff like Pendrell Mist comes to mind too.

Only bad stax decks play 4 crucible. Crucible is either 2 or 3. If you play Tezzeret, you might want only 1 of them.

However Trinisphere, smokestack and Tangle Wire are bombs.

Stax does not need any draw spells except Stax drawers which are drawers that you play once your hand is empty.

Tezzeret definitely calls for a prototype of a blue (probably not mono) highly artifact based Stax (no propaganda or pendrel mist for instance).

The shell would be (45/48 cards) :
4*Tezzeret
4*Chalice
3/4*Trinisphere
4*Tangle Wire
2/4*Stax
4*Mox Diamond
4*Ancient Tomb
4*City of Traitors
4*Seat of The Synod
1*Academy Ruins
3*Wasteland
8*Island

Toolbox depending on the meta (3/15):
1/4*Ensnaring Bridge
1/4*Powder Keg
0/1*Tormod's Crypt
0/1*Pithing Needle
0/4*Bottle Bloister
1/3*Crucible of Worlds

Bigface

09-03-2008, 07:55 AM

First prototype with Pendrell Mists.

// Lands
4 [MR] Seat of the Synod
2 [AQ] Mishra's Factory (2)
6 [OD] Island (2)
4 [EX] City of Traitors
4 [TE] Ancient Tomb
3 [TE] Wasteland

// Spells
2 [US] Smokestack
3 [DS] Trinisphere
4 [TE] Propaganda
4 [MR] Talisman of Progress
4 [SH] Mox Diamond
3 [NE] Tangle Wire
3 [10E] Crucible of Worlds
4 [MR] Chalice of the Void
3 [WL] Pendrell Mists
4 [MR] Thirst for Knowledge
3 [ALA] Tezzeret the Seeker

Me thinks Trinisphere >>> any other denial spell in Stax. It's so delightfully asimmetrical.
As for the name... three suggestions:

1) TeezStax. (Tezz => Teez => TeezStax.)

2) MiStax. (Mists + Stax = MiStax. MistStax is no good to me.)

3) Badass Stax. (How Tezzeret's picture IS.)

Skeggi

09-03-2008, 08:04 AM

Only bad stax decks play 4 crucible. Crucible is either 2 or 3.

DeckCheck (http://www.deckcheck.net/list.php?type=Stax&format=Legacy) disagrees. 54 Stax decks, 9 not playing Crucible as a 4-of, where 7 play it as a 3-of, 1 plays it as a 2-of and 1 doesn't play it at all.

2) MiStax. (Mists + Stax = MiStax. MistStax is no good to me.)

Sounds cool :cool: (sounds like 'My Stax' in my head...)

Your list looks nice by the way; I'd include Academy Ruins though. I like Maveric78f's idea of more arties for utility, Ensnaring Bridge + Bottled Cloister is pretty good, might even add Null Brooch; Academy Ruins gets back what you need anyway.

Raider Bob

09-03-2008, 08:11 AM

acchia85

09-03-2008, 12:10 PM

what do you think about this list??

Lands
4 Seat of the Synod
4 Mishra's Factory
4 Island
4 City of Traitors
4 Ancient Tomb
4 Wasteland
1 Academy Ruins

Spells
3 Smokestack
4 Trinisphere
3 Propaganda
4 Mox Diamond
3 Tangle Wire
3 Crucible of Worlds
4 Chalice of the Void
3 Pendrell Mists
3 Thirst for Knowledge
2 Tezzeret the Seeker
3 Meditate

Finn

09-03-2008, 01:23 PM

I was looking at this and the best way to abuse the +1 ability would be with fast mana, Basalt Monolith...Something else I am sure should be here. Also making all Artifacts 5/5' is sweet but the remove x counters get an artifact for x and put it into play screams Pyrexian Dreadnaught/Tormonds Crypt/EExplosives/Pithing Needle, Attacking with a Dreadnaught then untapping him for defense seems like it would some good.If I am remembering the way sunburst is worded, Engineered Explosives would not work very well with this since x=0 every time. But it seems like a crime not to have Dreadnoughts and Stifles in here. Of course, that doesn't go over very well with Chalice or Trini or whatever. So doesn't that mean it is a different deck? Maybe something closer to Affinity?

acchia85

09-04-2008, 02:31 PM

Dreadnoughts is die
http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=1084129

whit ruins for a recursion i think is very hard play Dreadnoughts

Aggro_zombies

09-04-2008, 04:46 PM

The lack of Intuition in these lists makes me sad. Running Intuition allows you to cut down on the numbers of some cards that aren't part of the denial package but are nevertheless important - like, for example, Crucible, which is dead in multiples.

First Intuition Stack:
Ruins
Crucible
Crucible/Ruins

That gives you the ability to recur any artifact or land you want. It also allows you to run a toolbox of artifacts and/or lands without really caring what the opponent chooses with Intuition...a three card tutor for roughly :2::u: is pretty strong. Also, running 3 Tezzeret (and three or more of all your other important non-land, non-artifact cards) allows you to reliably get them with Intuition.

Sharding Sphinx is also good as a backup win. The evasive and token abilities, combined with the nice interactions with Ruins, make it very attractive as a way to win if Tezzeret can't stick for some reason.

xsockmonkeyx

09-04-2008, 06:29 PM

4 Basalt Monolith

Anusien

09-04-2008, 06:45 PM

Happy Gilmore

09-04-2008, 06:51 PM

Very very interesting. Tezzeret might get very good, and luckily it doesn't seem all that good in any other format but Legacy. Unfortunately your looking at a mono colored deck that is going to have major problems dealing with Moon Effects. It does provide for a fantastic win condition, however, I don't know how good blue would be for a stax deck. To be honest it seems somewhat of a card to work into something a little more agressive.

Aggro_zombies

09-04-2008, 07:55 PM

Why are people still playing shitty draw spells that let Threshold attack you for 6 or 12 in the meantime, like Meditate, or Thirst for Knowledge? In a good prison build, every card has to contribute to locking your opponent out or else you can let them back in the game.
This is true to a certain extent. Overloading the deck with draw is counterproductive, but having draw there also ensures some level of consistency. The biggest problem in white Stax is the lack of draw, which means you mostly have to work with what's in your hand or the top few cards of your library in order to establish the lock, and if it's not there you're toast. I prefer Intuition to actual draw because Intuition is guaranteed to find you lock components.

If you're playing Tezzeret, I'm almost certain you don't care to run any other creatures, since they don't stop your opponent from doing things and they unblank their removal. Going Masticore, untapping and discarding a card only to have them Swords your Masticore seems like the worst.
I'm not going to contest your point about Tezzeret, but I will point out that your example is flawed. You don't generally drop your win condition if it would be vulnerable (the exception being if you're going to die). It's usually best to just sit on it until you're ready to win (ie, you have the lock), play it, and go from there.

Arkham

09-04-2008, 08:25 PM

Aggro_zombies

09-04-2008, 08:41 PM

After seeing Chrono Stax and Tezzeret, I'm intrigued by both and might build a mono blue version of it in the future.

As for draw, Sensei's Divining Top might have some merit here. It acts like a cantrip, it can be used as a creature that is very hard to destroy, and doesn't fall into the many of the same pit falls draw spells would.

The common trend I've been seeing with Stax, however, is how unstable it's mana base is. Build it however you may, but for some reason, there is a very large gap in how much control you have over the deck in both putting it into practice and even expecting it to do what it's supposed to do. But perhaps that might just be with stax that are largely color dependent, who knows. Is there some way to alter the base to make it more substantial and stable? Because I think that might be the biggest hurdle the deck has to go through.
Top is terrible here, because Chalice at one shuts down its ability to draw and the lack of shuffle effects makes the card arranging poor.

You're not making sense about the mana base, but if you're worried about Moon effects, those aren't a tremendous problem. The reason Stax runs so many "Tap: Add :2:" lands is because the deck's curve essentially starts at three and goes up from there. (A quick aside - the curve is like this to work better with Trinisphere and allow for Chalices at one and two, which completely shuts down 90% of the decks in the format.) Running more colored lands just slows the deck down. Besides, the color requirements in most Stax builds are very light and you're often perfectly content to only see one or two colored lands in a game.

Arkham

09-04-2008, 08:44 PM

rufus

09-04-2008, 10:02 PM

Cribbing from Faerie Stompy:

Mana Production:
4x Ancient Tomb
4x City of Traitors
8x Island
2x Academy Ruins
2x Wasteland
4x Chrome Mox

Stax Cards:
4x Trinisphere
4x Chalice of the Void
4x Smokestack

Because we can:
4x Force of Will

Namesake:
4x Tezzeret

Enablers:
4x Intuition
3x Bassalt Monolith

Tools
2x Crucible of Worlds
1x Ensnaring Bridge
1x Null Rod
1x Damping Matrix

Backup Plan
1x Painter's Servant
1x Grindstone
2x Cunning Wish

...

There's a bit of a shortage of blue sources for the UU in Tezz's casting cost though...

Jak

09-04-2008, 10:32 PM

14 Blue including Force AND you run Trinisphere. I also think Basalt should only be run in something where you can actually use the 6 colorless mana.

Aggro_zombies

09-04-2008, 10:42 PM

I see, I was more concerned about with the clumping of land and how it is very hard to recover from it. Maybe I'm mistaken here? I'm not entirely sure what about my explanation was hard to understand, but I apologize for the confusion.
Land clumps are bad no matter what deck you play - trust me, I played Threshold for ages with 17 lands and got mana flooded regularly (stupid bad luck ;-;). Stax has less library manipulation than other decks but also cares less about mana flood once it has its lock. Essentially, when you've gotten an active Smokestack, a Trinisphere, a Propaganda, and whatever else in play, you don't care what your opponent does. In fact, your opponent probably can't do anything because you probably ran them out of permanents. At that point, your only worry is winning before you go to time. Land clumps are irrelevant then.

Also, people, stop running Basalt Monolith. That card is fucking terrible even with Tezzeret. Tezzeret is in this deck not so much for the untap ability - which is nice with things like Tangle Wire but not essential - but for his game-ending "lol i can has big artefakt mens" and, to a lesser extent, his tutoring ability (good with a toolbox approach, although most of the time you're going to be giving him -3 at the least). Basalt Monolith is cute but quite unnecessary.

f|i[p]

09-05-2008, 12:33 AM

I've been playing monowhite stax for a long time, and more or less I know most of its problems from being inconsistent, to being able to stabilize with aroun5 or so life against aggro unless you get a quick lock( inconsistent) and is quite slow at times.

If I were to make the list mono blue stax list, I still think tezz wouldnt work.The thing with tezzeret is that it doesn't answer those problems, untapping 2 artifacts would only get you to untapo mox d unless a deck was dedicated for tezz himself with more artifacts for mana or more artifacts with activated abilities.. Teez wouldnt be able to block as well, and with magus of tabernacle out of the list, im sure Tezz would be a good target for attacking creatures, propaganda can't help tezz as well. The second ability is ok. What attracts me to tezz himself actually is the 3rd ability, if you have some artifacts lying around that hasn't been hit by deed, This would speed up the decks win condition quite a bit.

Although I like tezz alot, I think vintage can abuse him better than legacy can. He is quite slow. By himself he is not really a threat,and would need artifacts to win. Unless a deck was dedicated for him and more artifact goodies come out of this set , I don't think he would make much impact on legacy. for now....

Serbitar

09-05-2008, 04:59 AM

If you are running Tezz only (or primarly) for a faster kill than traditional W-Staxx builds, why not run Karn in those (as, with Armageddon, Magus, Prison etc., they seem to have a more focused gameplan than these)?

I'm not saying blue staxx (or Tezz) is bad, but one probably should rather abuse his other features.

Zinch

09-05-2008, 05:07 AM

Another option i'm shuffling is adding trinket mage and a little toolbox (chalice at 4x, voltaic key, and one pithing needle for example)
Then with basalt monolith and trinket mage to voltaic key you can do very explosive starts... and then adding temporal aperture as a CA engine

Lands (24)
6 Island
4 Seat of Synod
4 Ancient Tomb
4 City of Traitors
2 Academy Ruins
1 Wasteland
3 Mishra's Factory

Planeswalker (3)
3 Tezzeret

Creatures (3)
3 Trinket Mage

Spells (30)
3 Temporal Aperture
4 Chalice of the Void
4 Trinisphere
4 Ensnaring Bridge
2 Crucible of Worlds
1 Voltaic Key
4 Mox Diamond
4 Talisman of Progress
4 Basalt Monolith

What do you think??

Skeggi

09-05-2008, 05:09 AM

If you are running Tezz only (or primarly) for a faster kill than traditional W-Staxx builds, why not run Karn?
Karn's activation costs mana.
A Mox dies when it becomes a creature Karn-Style; Tezzeret makes it 5/5. Quite a difference.
Karn makes pretty weak creatures: most will be 3/3 instead of 5/5.
Karn himself dies to disenchant effects. However he is recurrable with Academy Ruins.
Tezzeret has more functionality than Karn: built-in tutor is very interesting, opens up your toolbox. The untap effect is beyond Garruk's.

What do you think??

I'm not sure about Temporal Aperture, the activation cost is pretty high. I'd replace with perhaps Engineered Explosives. -2 Talisman of Progress, +2 Talisman of Dominance. Combined with the Moxes you have enough different colored mana to set your EE any way you'd like.

The 1-of Voltaic Key seems out of place. Sure you can Trinket or Tezzeret for it, but it may be useless with Chalice@1. Perhaps keep the untapping up to Tezzeret.

Ensnaring Bridge but no Bottled Cloister? Seems like a waste: remember, you need 5 cards in your hand to attack, so you're not holding anything back if you don't use Bottled Cloister. Perhaps switch that Voltaic Key for a Bottled Cloister and switch 1 Ensnaring Bridge for a Cloister.

Must say that without Temporal Apertute Basalt Monolith also seems out of place. Courier's Capsule could be good...though I'm not sure...

I think I might try it this way:

3 Engineered Explosives
4 Chalice of the Void
3 Trinisphere
3 Ensnaring Bridge
3 Crucible of Worlds
4 Mox Diamond
2 Talisman of Progress
2 Talisman of Dominance
3 Smokestack
3 Bottled Cloister

Hmm, too bad, Null Brooch might have fitted in nicely too, but I have no clue what to cut for them. Plus they're very mana demanding.

In the land-section you might want to cut 1 City of Traitors for a Wasteland.

Nightmare

09-05-2008, 12:31 PM

Blocking is prevented by both Propaganda and Ensnaring Bridge.
HUH?????

Propaganda doesn't effect blockers at all.
Ensnaring Bridge is one of the WORST choices I've ever seen for a deck that attempts to swing with 5/5s.

Anusien

09-05-2008, 01:20 PM

In a Blue Stax problem, there are going to be two related problems you'll run into:
A) The guy can attack through your Propaganda and kill Tezzeret.
B) There's very little to stop the opponent from playing a few Tarmogoyfs and just attacking all at once. This problem is exacerbated if they can grip your Propaganda or you don't resolve one.

Fred Bear

09-05-2008, 02:43 PM

Tezzert is a very interesting card. I think the card should be used simply as a finisher, untapping two artifacts the turn it comes into play (mostly irrelevant) and then winning the game the following turn via 5/5 beats.

Intuition definitely deserves to be in this deck. I remember testing a version of Stax utilizing Gifts awhile ago and it actually ran really well. Since we run Tez as a finisher, Intuition will work better.

If you're gonna include Intuition, you need Academy Ruins and Crucible as an engine.

Blue opens up Propaganda, which is a solid anti-aggro card. In combination with everything else, it should do its job often enough.

With Propaganda, Mishra's Factory is a poor win condition (opponent's creatures can chump block). I considered Blinkmoth Nexus, since it can be come an artifact for Tez, but it was just really slow. Instead, I decided to just run a 1-of Conclave which can be tutored for and recurred as an evasive alternate win condition. This opened up room for me to max out on Wastelands in the manabase (relevant with Propaganda/Trinisphere/Crucible).

Talisman of Progress are basically BoP's and accelerate the decks mana supply while accelerating the artifact count for Tez. These are pretty awesome, especially since they can be untapped with Tez (so you at least untap something useful with his first ability) and they increase the blue count for the UU of Tez.

(U) Tez-Stax

Lands (25)
5 Island
4 Seat of Synod
4 Ancient Tomb
4 City of Traitors
2 Academy Ruins
4 Wasteland
1 Maze of Ith
1 Faerie Conclave

Creatures (4)
3 Tezzeret
1 Painter's Servant

Spells (31)
1 Grindstone
4 Intuition
4 Propaganda
4 Chalice of the Void
4 Trinisphere
4 Smokestack
2 Crucible of Worlds
4 Mox Diamond
4 Talisman of Progress

Sideboard (15)
1 Maze of Ith
3 Repeal
3 Thoughtbind
4 Force of Will
1 Morphling
1 Tormod's Crypt
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Pithing Needle

The sideboard is just thrown together right now. I have no clue what would actually be good in the sideboard, as I haven't actually playtested with the deck yet. The way it's built right now, the deck can bring in a heavier splash of blue control if Tez is a vulnerable win condition. The sideboard also has a small toolbox to further abuse Intuition.

I'll test this on MWS once I'm able to upload the card (Tez).

EDIT: I totally forgot about Painter's Servant and Grindstone. I'll figure a way to fit those into my 75 later.

EDIT 2: Fixed up the maindeck some. Decided to cut Tangle Wire for the Painter's Servant combo.

1st Intuition Piles
1)Ruins/Crucible/x (where x= another Crucible or Ruins)
2)Tez x3
*2nd Intuition Piles can include Ruins/Crucible, Grindstone/Painter, Wasteland/Blinkmoth, Tez, or other various artfiacts/lands*

Tezeret Strategy
1)Untap two artifacts on the turn he comes into play (mostly irrelevant) and then swing with a horde of 5/5's ftw on the following turn (Tog-esque).
2)Grab Grindstone/Painter on the turn he comes down and the following turn and then combo out.

Ruins/Crucible Strategy
1)Recur most of the deck to ensure resilient threats (Factories, Grindstone/Painter) and sufficient control measures (Smokestack, Chalice, etc).

This gives the deck both an engine in Ruins/Crucible, as well as (fast) combo finishes for a Stax deck.

I wonder what turn this deck can goldfish. Let's see...

Turn 1 Tombs, Mox, Intuition -> Tezzeret x3
Turn 2 Traitors, Tezzeret grabbing Grindstone.
Turn 3, tutor for Painter, play a land, combo off.

Obviously very vulnerable but still very fast for a Stax deck. Turn 3 goldfish? To me that's impressive. Toss in some Stax interaction, it may be a turn 5-6 goldfish. But that's still really fast for Stax. Some inconsistent starts with the manabase might happen... but that's something that I don't see (most) Stax decks getting around.

I really can't wait to test this deck. I think it's going to be very sick.

I know I'm a little late to the Tez game, but I've been trying to collect my thoughts on this card for the last couple of days.

Hanni, You make a lot of good points, but... several questions jump out.

#1 - Nitpicking - Tomb + Mox + Traitors will not allow you to play a UU3 spell turn 2. It is still possible to churn out Tez on turn 2, just not like that. Sorry.

#2 - Why Stax? You make the most applicable comment right off the bat - the best use in Stax is as a finisher utilizing the third ability. But why stick it in Stax? Stax is (traditionally) about board control and winning a long game. Why put a turn 3 combo finish into a Stax deck? Just brainstorming... but wouldn't a KCI-style combo be more interesting here - (a) gives plenty of artifacts, (b) can pump out Tez quickly (still turn 2, I think), and (c) can easily fit alternate combo finishes (Myr whatever, and Painter/Grindstone).

#2a - Why Stax? If you want Tez to find Painter/Grindstone, again why put it in Stax? Your goldfish is a great example, but the Turn 2 Tez fetch Painter or Grindstone loses to (or is significantly slowed down by)... Bolt (or less), Vindicate, Tamogoyf (possibly Mongoose), etc. etc. Since your Stax shell has NO hope of protecting him when dropped turn 2! And you are going 'all-in' with an unprotected 2-turn combo?!?!? Again, if I am looking for 'fast', why am I looking at putting it into Stax?

Your list becomes a mix of 'cool' things to do that have no effect on the outcome of the game or cause you to play 'combo' with Stax back-up (which makes no sense).

Tez is a very interesting card, but not for Stax (I'm afraid). He would be a good option for Stax if you want to play 1 or 2 as a finisher, but Blue Stax is still pretty 'blah' compared to other versions. And as a finisher in Stax, he's just one more option to throw into the mix - no better or worse than anything else (just maybe faster). Yes, Intuition is interesting in Stax, but for the most part, Blue Stax is 'blah'. (And I'm still sad that nobody ever suggests a Blue Stax deck with In the Eye of Chaos which is probably the best Blue card for a Stax deck).

In my opinion, Tez probably isn't legacy playable unless... You can use its abilities to give yourself a Time Walk and take 2+ uninteruppted turns to either set up a major alpha attack or Painter/Grindstone your opponent out WITHOUT THEIR INTERACTION. There are ways to do it without Time Vault (I think this is obviously the card that got Vault banned), I just have not found any 'good' ones (i.e. You can create up to 10+ mana with untap effects which should get you to Slaver - attack the following turn for the win).

Just my 2 cents (worth 1.4 cents in today's market)...

-FB...

Aggro_zombies

09-05-2008, 04:44 PM

I forgot to mention this earlier, but since people seem to be bringing it up a lot - Grindstone and Painter do not belong in this deck. Your own Chalices completely kill one or the other of those cards, making the combo useless. Saying that you'll play one piece before you play a Chalice then begs the question: why not simply play the other piece and win instead of playing a Chalice?

Also, this deck has no way to reliably find either of the combo pieces without Intuition. Running Trinket Mage so it can fetch a singleton copy of an artifact you probably can't play anyway because you dropped Chalice at one seems poor.

rufus

09-05-2008, 04:48 PM

...
In my opinion, Tez probably isn't legacy playable unless... You can use its abilities to give yourself a Time Walk and take 2+ uninteruppted turns to either set up a major alpha attack or Painter/Grindstone your opponent out WITHOUT THEIR INTERACTION. There are ways to do it without Time Vault (I think this is obviously the card that got Vault banned), I just have not found any 'good' ones (i.e. You can create up to 10+ mana with untap effects which should get you to Slaver - attack the following turn for the win)...

There's also Rings of Brighthearth which can copy the tutor ability so you can pull the combo all at once, but the starting loyalty means that it would take at least three turns to do that, which is, of course, way too slow. (At that point, overrunning with epochracites would be comparable in speed.)

Anusien

09-05-2008, 05:23 PM

Goyf can attack Tezzeret through Propaganda.

If I really have to, I'll go with the antisynergistic Smokestack to handle Goyfs. It'll slow the goldfish down alot but if it's a necessary evil, whatever. I need to playtest the deck before I can determine the best anti-aggro option in addition to Propaganda.
If Smokestack is un-synergistic in your Stax deck, get a new deck. It is called Stax because of the card Smokestack. If you're not running that card, you're not playing Stax.

Fred Bear

09-05-2008, 06:37 PM

Hanni,

There is no synergy between Stax and Tezzeret, though. That's my point. Yes, you could use him as a win condition, but you could use Factory or any number of more synergistic win conditions to win in Stax because you win when you control the board/game - that's simply how Stax works. Just because you're not comfortable playing out a long game isn't a good reason to slam a card in a deck with a different goal. That's like saying, 'man, Tarmogoyf would rock in a deck with Smokestack since all my opponent's shit will be in the yard anyways. I should throw in some Trops and 'Goyf!'

How do you not see the 'cool things' piling up? You have Intuition, Intuition piles, Tezzeret, Painter/Grindstone... These are all great ways to win with Tez, I'm not disagreeing with you. I just think there's a MUCH better deck to do it in.

To explain it a different way, in my view - Tezzeret is very conflicted with himself. If you play him, I think you really either want to build your deck to use/abuse (a) ability 1 and make ability 3 possible OR (b) you want to use/abuse ability 2 to search out uncounterable combo pieces. The first situation says you want to play a pile of (probably mana) artifacts, Tez, Time Walk, and rock your opponent with a wall of 5/5s before they can respond. The second situation says you want to survive to 5 mana, drop Tez, search out component 1 or 2, either Win or Time Walk, search out component 2, Win. Neither or which looks intuitively like Stax to me. The first scenario makes me think of Karn (I understand 5/5s are different that 3/3s for 1, but really you're not making 5/5s until you know you'll win and you don't make 3/3s for 1 if you think you're Crucible will meet a Swords or a 'Goyf in the red zone - so they are basically the same) which is 'meh'. The second scenario makes me wonder why I'm not reading the Imperial Painter thread.

As I said before, for Tezzeret to become really 'interesting', you need to get him to start producing the Time Walks, so you can 'abuse' his abilities. I haven't figured out how to do that yet without building a deck-'o-crap around him. But, really, until he can do that, I'd rather just try and protect my combo (like Imperial Painter does) or play cards with actual synergy with Stax (like White/Armageddon Stax).

Again, just my perspective,
-FB...

MTG Guru

09-05-2008, 08:47 PM

@Hanni - I looked at your list and it looks good. But doesn't Chalice totally negate the reason to play Grindstone? I assume you have a way to play around it but I didn't see one.

MTG Guru

09-05-2008, 09:36 PM

Did your Smokestacks even do anything? What's the point of putting the combo in a Stax shell if you don't utilize your key cards? I'm not knocking the deck at all, it looks good on paper, it just bewilders me to think, that all you do is 'combo of'. Results are results so I guess I can't argue with that, but I'm only curious as to how well your lock peices performed. Counter-bait?

Fred Bear

09-05-2008, 09:49 PM

I didn't say Stax needed Time Walks. I said Tezzeret needs Time Walks to make the abilities relevant. [And, no, Chalice, Trinisphere, etc. don't provide the equivalent of Time Walks (unless your opponent has never played the match-up) until you have a full lock in place i.e. Wastelock, Smokestack, etc. which makes winning trivial anyhow]

Good luck with your testing.

-FB...

Illissius

09-06-2008, 12:58 PM

Because I'm not sure Anusien's point has gotten through even at the second attempt:

If they attack Tezzeret, they don't have to pay :2: for Propaganda. They only have to pay if they attack you.

Creatures can't attack you unless their controller pays 2 for each creature he or she controls that's attacking you.

Aggro_zombies

09-06-2008, 02:30 PM

I'm not a rules guru so maybe I'm wrong, but I don't understand why it would work that way. When it says they can't attack you, wouldn't that mean they cannot initiate an attack with their creature unless they pay 2? I mean, if that's not the case, wouldn't they be able to attack without paying 2 and only have to pay 2 if the creature goes unblocked? i.e if you block their creature, they can attack you without paying 2?

However, if that's really the way it works with Propaganda and Planeswalkers, that's pretty shitty.
It is. You =/= Your Planeswalker. That's why, when someone declares attackers against an opponent with a planeswalker in play, that person has to declare which creatures are attacking whom. The only guaranteed way to protect your planeswalker from getting attacked is to either have blockers, drop him after you've locked the opponent, or run Moat.

rufus

09-06-2008, 08:05 PM

If you like Meekstone, you might consider Embargo, Juntu Stakes, or even Stasis.

Masque

09-06-2008, 08:42 PM

If you like Meekstone, you might consider Embargo, Juntu Stakes, or even Stasis.
I think he likes the Meekstone for being an artifact, and costing one, so he can still fetch his win. I like this deck. I like it a lot. Not to mention, there is still a lot of Alara to come out. We might get something else to work with here. Given any thought to The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale?

Roman Candle

09-06-2008, 10:01 PM

Tabernacle seems mediocre without any other taxing effects or Geddons. If you played Pendrell Mists, then I'd say maybe, but you don't even maindeck Propagandas anymore.

Hanni, are the Seats really worth running as a four-of? I understand their synergy with the rest of the deck, but it seems like your opening yourself up to Deeds even more than other Stax builds. Maybe cut it to a two-of? I dunno.

Masque

09-06-2008, 10:07 PM

Pretty much what Masque said is why I don't run those. Enchantments aren't fetchable with Tez. I don't need any other 4-of cards in the deck. Therefore, anything not tutorable by Tez isn't going in the deck.

Juntu is mediocre. It's great vs EtW tokens and that's about it. It's only semi good vs Goblins and it's horrible against everything else. At 2cc, it's just not worth it. It doesn't even do anything to Goyf, which is the most played creature. I'm not impressed.

Tabernacle on the other hand sounds really good. I could drop X Maze of Ith for X Tabernacle but I'm not sure which one I'd rather have. Maybe a 3/1 split? I'm not sure. What does everyone else think?

Oh, and this deck is broken. After playing with the deck on MWS for over 6 hours today, I have a feeling Tezzeret is gonna eat the banhammer once this deck catches on. It's almost as bad as Flash and I'm not even joking. I just beat ITF on turn 3 in game 2.

Turn 1
I led with Ancient Tomb and Mox Diamond pitching Maze of Ith. Tapped the Tomb to cast Talisman, tapped Talisman and Mox to cast Chalice @ 1 and he didn't have FoW. He showed me his hand after the match and he had Brainstorm, 2 Extirpates, and Top.
Turn 2
I play Wasteland and cast Tezzeret and he still doesn't have FoW. I grab Grindstone and pass the turn. He doesn't have EE or Krosan Grip on his turn 3 and passes it back to me.
Turn 3
I grab Painter and combo off.

I've had multiple turn 4 wins already but that was my first turn 3 win. Turn 3 win with Stax, are you fucking serious? That's Tinker-like broken. I wonder how long it takes before this deck blows up all over the world. The day Shards of Alara is released, maybe?
Awesome victory report. And if you wanted to slot in Tabernacle, I dunno if I'd go with it over a Maze of Ith seeing from what you posted before about it being ridiculous defense. I really can't see what to cut... Maybe the Conclave? It been helping you out?

XSivPSI

09-06-2008, 10:17 PM

Pretty much what Masque said is why I don't run those. Enchantments aren't fetchable with Tez. I don't need any other 4-of cards in the deck. Therefore, anything not tutorable by Tez isn't going in the deck.

Juntu is mediocre. It's great vs EtW tokens and that's about it. It's only semi good vs Goblins and it's horrible against everything else. At 2cc, it's just not worth it. It doesn't even do anything to Goyf, which is the most played creature. I'm not impressed.

Tabernacle on the other hand sounds really good. I could drop X Maze of Ith for X Tabernacle but I'm not sure which one I'd rather have. Maybe a 3/1 split? I'm not sure. What does everyone else think?

Oh, and this deck is broken. After playing with the deck on MWS for over 6 hours today, I have a feeling Tezzeret is gonna eat the banhammer once this deck catches on. It's almost as bad as Flash and I'm not even joking. I just beat ITF on turn 3 in game 2.

Turn 1
I led with Ancient Tomb and Mox Diamond pitching Maze of Ith. Tapped the Tomb to cast Talisman, tapped Talisman and Mox to cast Chalice @ 1 and he didn't have FoW. He showed me his hand after the match and he had Brainstorm, 2 Extirpates, and Top.
Turn 2
I play Wasteland and cast Tezzeret and he still doesn't have FoW. I grab Grindstone and pass the turn. He doesn't have EE or Krosan Grip on his turn 3 and passes it back to me.
Turn 3
I grab Painter and combo off.

I've had multiple turn 4 wins already but that was my first turn 3 win. Turn 3 win with Stax, are you fucking serious? That's Tinker-like broken. I wonder how long it takes before this deck blows up all over the world. The day Shards of Alara is released, maybe?

I've only lost one 2/3 gameset in the 10 or so hours I've played the deck on MWS and it was from Dragon Stompy and the reason I lost both games was from my deck manascrewing me both times. The match may be bad, I haven't had enough testing to determine whether or not that's the case, but the 2 games I did lose to it were due to my deck shitting on me.

Other than that, it's undefeated in a 2/3 gameset out of alot of games. I haven't kept count, but it's probably around 20 games so far.

So I'm 20-1-1 with the deck. While some of the decks I played were crap, alot of the decks I played were actually Tier 1 and 2.

i had grip but didn't have 3 land. :-[

How much did you like extirpate :-p

Masque

09-06-2008, 10:48 PM

Extirpate is a bad card for me to see, just like any other deck with few win conditions. Extirpate on Tez is almost GG. Second Extirpate on Grindstone/Painter or Crucible/Ruins (when I don't have either one already in play) is just rough. That's why I'm considering Morphling over Conclave... even though it's not recurable like Conclave, it can actually win the game in a few turns rather than 10 (or less).

Hmm... maybe a 1-of Masticore would be eveb better? It's recurable with Ruins and it's a pretty badass beater. If I have Ruins, I can Intuition for it. Hell, I can even tutor for it with Tez if I cannot combo off. Given enough mana, it can even pick off a Tarmogoyf. He's extremely strong against small aggro decks too.

I think I'm gonna try that, actually.

-4 Seat of Synod
-1 Faerie Conclave
+4 Island
+1 Masticore

I hope 17 blue sources is still enough for Tez. The deck can Intuition for 3 Islands if it needs to, too (I've done this several times). I'm considering cutting 1 City of Traitors... while it's extremely strong at creating explosive starts, it loses alot of strength since the deck only runs 1 Crucible and oftentimes tutors for Tez instead of City. I'll keep it as is for now but if I find myself wanting 1 more blue source, I'll drop a City.

Masticore eh? Interesting. Yeah, with Ruins you don't really lose a whole lot. If Masticore doesn't work out, I have always loved Morphling, being a swiss-army-knife of amazing. A great closer that can do so much. However, Meloku, the Clouded Mirror? It would be able to smash face with the mana available.

MTG Guru

09-06-2008, 10:53 PM

@Hanni - Masticore actually does sound better than Morphling to me. It comes down a turn quicker, doesn't require double blue and excels at creature removal which is necessary in this format. I don't have a doubt in my mind that this deck isn't performing well. I think your list is the most optimal in this entire thread and I'd encourage you to start a new one, if the moderators allow it.

Masque

09-06-2008, 11:11 PM

Poron

09-07-2008, 07:18 AM

ehm guys this Planeswalker has written on his forehead "PLEASE USE ME WITH TIME VAULT".

you play the planeswalker, pay2 and get the time vault, next turn use the first ability to untap and voilà! infinite turn combo with just 1 card

istant kill combo with 5UU and Tezzeret

Poron

09-07-2008, 07:39 AM

this says it is legal 4x in Legacy and Vintage

http://magiccards.info/al/en/274.html

and anyway you can't use more the 1 ability per turn with Tezzeret so if you hardcast it and you use the "second" ability to get the Vault you can't use his "first" ability to untap it in the same turn.

Poron

09-07-2008, 08:12 AM

Poron

09-07-2008, 10:57 AM

no wait 1 thing is to combo out when you play tezzeret and you win immediatly, 1 thing is to use tezzeret ability twice, to reduce it to 1 and then to use the other ability to win.

for example,
you play Tezzeret (and your out or almost out of resources).
you use its second ability to get the painter's servant or the grindstone
Pass
Bolt, Vindicate, Chain Lightning, Echoing Truth, etc. etc. on Tezzeret.

1 thing is to combo out in the same turn you play a card, and that's HUGE, all other is to wait 1 turn.
You can't use twice Tezzeret ability in 1 turn

goldenj

09-07-2008, 12:53 PM

This thread really seems to have diverged - TezzStax and TezzPainter. Maybe start a new thread?

TezzPainter seems very powerful - and better if you run the counter suite to foil their force of will, which seems like one of the only ways to lose. Maybe Stifle on Tezz's fetch ability. Maybe a counter-top engine to go with tezz and grindstone/painter?

Roman Candle

09-07-2008, 12:57 PM

anyway I don't understand why Wizard is making cards that are a must of.

Tarmogoys is almost a must, this Tezzeret and his combos will be surely a must...
The deck plays blue: draw and counters; the deck plays fast and colorless mana --> stax engine the deck wins instantly with a 2 cards combo or better it can win with 2 different 2 cards combo...

this makes unplayable any other deck, bah...

OMGWTFBBQ WIZARDS POWER CREEP FUCK MARO WAHH WAHH WAHH.

I think you're overrating this slightly... as in, alot. The deck can't play counters because it needs the deck slots for permanents, and takes two turns to combo out. I think its definitely a viable idea, but its not the be-all end-all of the format. And it's definitely not a must-have. I can guarantee that most decks aren't going to play it. Thresh is not going to play it. Goblin are not going to play it. Storm Combo is definitely not going to play it (although that would be pretty cool, I'm not gonna lie.) Seriously, you act like its gonna be Flash all over again.

Masque

09-07-2008, 05:37 PM

Nihil Credo

09-07-2008, 05:40 PM

You do know that, even when Tezzeret resolves, the combo can still be stopped fairly easily by:

1) Attacking Tezzeret with at least 2 power worth of creatures
2) Instant speed creature destruction
3) Sorcery or instant speed artifact destruction
4) Shock
5) Some more stuff (Pithing Needle, Vindicate, 1 SB Blessing, etc.)

I threw the deck around on MWS a bit and while it looks playable, it doesn't seem broken to me at all.

PunkRocker1134

09-07-2008, 06:18 PM

Only 1 deck should be playing it, and that's Tezzeret Stax. Maybe not my exact list, but some type of Stax Shell. I've been working hard to optimize my list as best as possible.

Tezzeret doesn't splash into a large amount of decks like Tarmogoyf does. By no means does this not mean that he is not more powerful.

Turn 1 Chalice@1/Trinisphere
Turn 2 Trinisphere/Chalice@2
Turn 3 Tezzeret
Turn 4 Win

Does that not seem dumb for a combo deck to do? If Chalice/Trinisphere doesn't eat countermagic themselves (which they almost always do), they can prevent it so that Tezzeret can resolve. Once Tezzeret resolves, the game is basically over.

Maybe I'm slightly blowing this out of proportion when I say things like old Extended Tinker, Hulk Flash, and banhammer... but seriously, what Tezzeret does is more broken than the banned tutors, and that includes Tinker, since Tezzeret grabs a 2 card combo on his lonesome and wins next turn and that's something Tinker cannot do. 3UU to put 2 artifacts into play (without sac'ing anything) > 2U to put 1 artifact in play, regardless of mana costs. Tezzeret is an Enlightened Tutor for U that puts the artifact directly into hand. U to grab Grindstone, 1 to play it, U to grab Painter, 2 to play it = 3UU, same cc as Tezzeret (and you still have 1 counter left on Tez).

However Tezzeret must be used over two turns, and the CMC of the artifact matters, unlike Tinker. In fact, Tinker is much more powerful then Tezzeret could ever be. Tinker also can be played turn one and grab any artifact, I think that's what makes it much dumber than Tezzeret. Tezzeret needs two turns to do its business, which means it needs to last those two turns. In a format with lots of guys turning sideways you also need to protect Tezzert from being killed by said guys turning sideways.

Also your saying you need to land Trinisphere, or Two Chalice of the voids to make a turn 4 win. Assuming this is a stax deck, which means it probably doesn't run FOW, or can't cast it reliably, you do need to protect said Trinisphere or Chalice. Besides that point, you need a card 1 of 8 cards in a 60 card deck in your opening 8 cards(assuming you went first and you want to land one of them by turn two) which doesn't seem to be very good odds(I don't exactly know how to calculate said odds) You already state that they can be counterbait, which would let you resolve Tezzert but then you can't protect it and, if they have more than 1 or 2 counters it's probably not going to resolve. Plus in your first nine cards you need a Tezzert, because in a Stax shell your drawing suite probably isn't the best.

Which brings me to my next issue with your comparison. Flash and Tinker could both run more extensive control suite. Tinker and Flash both could run FOW, which you can't in a stax build, plus Duress, Thoughtseize, Daze, ect, ect. While your disruption is more proactive your main Threat, Tezzert is open to threats on the board, and in your example you completely exclude any threats your opponent could lay. Granted, with if your on the play with your example only a Stompy deck could lay a threat, but if your on the draw any one drop creature could seriously disrupt your example.

Really it seems like any other Stax win condition to me. Play disruption, play win condition, more disruption, win. While your doing it faster another piece of disruption then a win would probably work just as well. So really Tezzeret is just a better Stax win condition and not a broken one, because your example is such a rarity.

edit: Something else I just noticed, in your example you also need a mox plus something to pitch to it, plus 1 land that taps for 2. Which isn't as much of a big deal as the mox plus a blue card, so in your first nine cards, to win on turn 4, you need:

2 lands that produce U(or more Mox Diamonds and extra lands), Mox Diamond, Something to pitch to said mox, Ancient Tomb/City of Traitors, Tezzeret and 3sphere/ 2 Chalice of the Void. I would think its pretty hard to get that specific set of cards within your first nine cards, I don't know your list but there might be some decent draw to help this out as well, but your example doesn't mention this.

rufus

09-07-2008, 08:42 PM

With this discussion, I wonder if Transmute Artifact or Reshape could work as a supplement to Tezzeret in a deck like this. (Those are probably better for digging out Lotus Blooms in a more overrun oriented plan.)

Anusien

09-07-2008, 09:09 PM

Daze seems particularly rough for your build Hanni, as does turn 2 Tarmogoyf. You don't have nearly enough ways around these sorts of issues. Plus 1 Crucible is almost certainly wrong; I'd rather have 4 Crucible + 1 Smokestack than the other way around.

Traditionally, the Stax builds have always just trounced Threshold and rolled over to any reasonable Goblins opener. You've made the Goblins matchup worse, and I feel like Threshold gains far more from adding Tarmogoyf than you do by adding Tezzeret; I'm skeptical about that matchup.

Also, in what situation would you ever want Painter/Grindstone than just Tezzeret, untap and 40 you?

Edit: I've been working with this and I hesitate to call it broken. It's almost certainly worse than Flame Vault or Flash was.

Illissius

09-08-2008, 06:05 AM

2) How does instant speed creature destruction effect the deck? I'm don't know much of the Planeswalker rulings (obviously why I misunderstood with Propaganda earlier). Tezzeret dies to StP?

No, but Painter's Servant does, which is what I believe he meant.

Roman Candle

09-08-2008, 06:45 AM

How is that relevant? Tezzeret grabs Grindstone the turn it comes into play and grabs Painter's Servant the following turn. Unless the opponent has split second removal (like Krosan Grip), the deck taps 3 mana and wins the game. StP doesn't change the fact that Grindstone's ability is on the stack, regardless if they cast it before or after you activate Grindstone.

Yes, but if they cast StP in resp to the Grindstone activation, then Painter will be gone and the Grindstone will only mill the top two.

Van Phanel

09-08-2008, 06:45 AM

If they remove Painter before Grindstone's ability resolves, Painter's ability won't be in effect anymore and Grindstone will mill something like four cards.

4eak

09-08-2008, 07:04 AM

Painter's Combo is actually fairly easy to disrupt. Running redundant combo pieces and perhaps other forms of protection are actually quite necessary in a metagame that is prepped for this combo.

Voltaic Key->Grind again in response could be cool (not cheap mana-wise, but quite tutorable).

peace,
4eak

Anusien

09-08-2008, 10:38 AM

The Masticore is almost certainly the weakest card in that deck. And you also seriously underestimate how difficult 6 mana is to get in this deck.

Honestly, I don't think you have enough cards here to get any value out of Smokestack or Trinisphere. I think you'd have a lot more luck in your approach with Moat in a Landstill shell. I think you seriously underestimate how hard it is for Threshold to just play a turn 2 Tarmogoyf and smack you five times with it while you're struggling to play around Daze. You have so very few ways to deal with attacking creatures (a quick ramp of Smokestack is it) you're going to be in trouble. Plus, I think only 12 pieces of acceleration and 4 turn one plays is going to be problematic. How often can you not affect the board until turn 3? It seems like you want to hide behind Trinisphere until you can play Tezzeret and use it a few times. This might be a valid strategy, but the obvious counter is "Pay 2G, play a Tarmogoyf." Without a ton more support than you have (and I'd know, I've been working on Stax myself), you don't actually beat that opening.
The problem with Moat is that it cuts you off from animating your guys and throwing 40 points of artifact damage at your opponent. So if you just want to combo off with Tezzeret, I think you'll get more benefit from running Force and Counterspell than Trinisphere and Chalice of the Void.

Plus, can't Threshold just attack the Tezzeret? It seems like you're never going to get Tezzeret up to enough counters to use it twice. I forsee a lot of Tezzeret, activate for 2, and then get attacked by a hasty Warchief and not be able to win the game. Or you know, how a Prowled Earwig Squad beats your entire deck, as you certainly don't have enough artifacts.

Plus, isn't running both comboes going a bit overboard?

4eak

09-08-2008, 12:34 PM

if you just want to combo off with Tezzeret, I think you'll get more benefit from running Force and Counterspell than Trinisphere and Chalice of the Void.

Amen.

Stax really doesn't seem like the best shell for Mr. T. A counter oriented deck is the only way Tezzeret is going to see any action. Having the means to protect him and maximize his abilities must be accomplished within a permission deck. A mana-ramp might be necessary, and although stax has the mana acceleration, Tezzeret is still a win-more card inside Stax.

Certain cards used in stax, however, might still be valuable as tutor targets in a deck that uses Tezzeret. Trinisphere is a prime example. And, yes, the Painter Combo, despite the ways in which one might disrupt it, is still a very good 2-slot [I-win] button in a lot of circumstances. It is as close to Tinker-Colossus as we might have in Legacy.

As a sidenote (which perhaps ought to be posted elsewhere), and as Johnny as it might sound, I think that an Obliterate deck might make some of the best use of Mr. T. Tez accelerates the deck, lives through Obliterate, and if protected (such as there are no permanents in play), it can win the game very quickly. The deck would sweep the board over and over, ramp your mana up, use permission, perhaps drop Tez to fetch the last pieces of your mana accel (Lotus Bloom?), and clear the board with Obliterate. The only things left standing would be Tez, your Enchantments, DSCitadels, and a few turns to do whatever...tutoring or swinging with 5/5's. So far, I've been quite pleased with my Obliterate/Tezz deck.

peace,
4eak

MTG Guru

09-08-2008, 02:36 PM

Anusien

09-08-2008, 02:48 PM

Isn't running Tezzeret with Force of Will and Counterspell counterintuitive? Shouldn't this deck be abusing artifacts instead of worrying about a high enough blue count to support FOW? I have to disagree with you on that one, Anusien.
If you run Trinisphere, it is. My point is that based on testing, you don't have enough lock components in this build to stop a turn 1 Aether Vial, turn 1 Lackey, or turn 2 Counterbalance. Smokestack is the slowest card in the world, and without Propaganda they can just sacrifice lands to Smokestack and beat down. The deck really wants Propaganda to be Moat, but that moves it away from a Stax-type shell. My theory is that if you want to run non-permanents in the deck, you really want to go the opposite direction and not try and interact well with Smokestack, since the card itself kinda sucks.

MTG Guru

09-08-2008, 02:55 PM

People that run Smokestack play Tangle Wire, to make it not suck. Tangle Wire is cheap, effective and gives you enough time to setup a Smokestack.

@Hanni - I'd encourage you to consider turning this into a more controlish build utitlizing Propaganda, Winter Orb and Pendrell Mists. That should give you the edge versus aggro which Anusien was apparently speculating about.

rufus

09-08-2008, 03:09 PM

Isn't running Tezzeret with Force of Will and Counterspell counterintuitive? Shouldn't this deck be abusing artifacts instead of worrying about a high enough blue count to support FOW? I have to disagree with you on that one, Anusien.

I don't know how far this can go, but it seems like there might potential with something involving:

4x Tezzeret
4x Force of Will
4x Reshape
4x Transmute Artifact
4x Thoughtcast
and
3x Lotus Bloom
2x Painter's Servant
2x Grindstone

Either backed up by Chalice/3Sphere or with Frogmites and such.

godryk

09-08-2008, 03:52 PM

Does anybody know how interacts Tezzeret with Lotus Bloom?

Brehn

09-08-2008, 03:57 PM

Lotus Bloom has cc0, so you can search it and put it into play after removing 0 loyalty counters.

(so you're paying 3UU for a Black Lotus)

Zinch

09-08-2008, 04:41 PM

You are not paying 3UU for a Black Lotus exactly... you are paying 3UU for a black lotus this turn and whatever you want the next 2-3...

Anusien

09-08-2008, 05:27 PM

If you can pay 5, why do you need 3 or even 6 more?

Valarne

09-08-2008, 05:46 PM

Lotus Bloom has cc0, so you can search it and put it into play after removing 0 loyalty counters.

(so you're paying 3UU for a Black Lotus)

Are you sure? As far as I have read, it seems, that the bloom has no casting cost, and must be suspended.

Zinch

09-08-2008, 05:51 PM

Not exactly, it has no casting cost so you can't play it, but you can put it play by other means, for example, grinding station.

Anusien

09-08-2008, 06:15 PM

Are you sure? As far as I have read, it seems, that the bloom has no casting cost, and must be suspended.
Bloom has no casting cost, but it has a converted mana cost of 0. See this thread (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?t=11021) for more details.

Anusien

09-09-2008, 12:42 AM

ZING! Actually Hanni, I have been working on Blue Stax pretty much nonstop since Tezzeret was spoiled. In fact, I'd been doing considerable work on the deck far before Tezzeret was ever announced in similar builds (pre-Tarmogoyf). And please remember that I do have some amount of idea what I'm talking about; I tested and did endless amounts of work with Flame Vault Stax long ago. I do appreciate the baseless accusations though.

On kill mechanisms: I've been all around. I've tried Masticore, Razormane Masticore, Karn, Silver Golem, and I've done the combo win thing. There have also been shittier win conditions before. Karn was the best I found; everything else just ate a removal spell pretty much right away. At least Karn could get in about 10 damage on the way out. Basically I found out that the win condition HAD to be a non-creature, otherwise it was far too fragile. Plus Karn has a tendency to bite it to Goblins hordes, especially when they find Sharpshooter. Sharpshooters makes them able to trade a Ringleader's worth of cards for your entire board. Tezzeret was a huge jump forward on both aspects, so it baffles me that you'd want to step backwards. You want to tap out Tezzeret only to get a Masticore when you're tapped out? Masticore will never kill a Goyf, and will kill a few Goblins before getting Weirding or Swordsed or whatever.

If the deck was always on the play, or always has Leyline, or always drew the right cards, Threshold would be no problem. I've gone entire games without seeing one of a 4 of Propaganda, so I'm relatively certain that depending on turn 0 Leyline is a mistake. And the fact remains that simply playing artifacts on turns 2-4 is no longer enough to beat Threshold. The old plan in Stax versus Threshold was to get out a Trinisphere or a few Spheres of either Resistance or Thorns of Amethyst such that they can't make their creatures bigger than a 1/1, and you have all the time in the world to either win or set up Propaganda lock. Since then they've almost universally adopted Sensei's Divining Top which lets you them still find countermagic under Trinisphere, and they have universally adopted Tarmogoyf. Let's say you don't find Leyline of the Void. On turn 3, Tarmogoyf could easily be a 4/5 or a 5/6. That's a big problem. Now you're in a position where they tap 2 for Propaganda and take a third of your life total away. They can easily afford to do that. That's why Tarmogoyf is different.

Wastelock + Smokestack = a three turn combo, and good luck. Plus even if you do; they lose two lands a turn while finding more with Top. Without Propaganda, absolutely nothing stops them from crashing through for 20 while you play around with their manabase. That's the reason why every Stax build that's had success has run a Propaganda variant, because all the mana denial in the world doesn't do shit to four points of power by turn 4. Like yes, the combo is awesome if you can pull it off, but Smokestack is slow as shit (4 mana) and requires Crucible besides.

Like yes, if you naturally have Leyline of the Void every game, Tezzeret will always win when it resolves. But then again if I could just pick two cards to see every game by turn 3 in a deck where I had to have one on turn 0 and the other where I only have 4 expensive tutors, I could do some much nastier stuff. In fact, I'd be playing Painter's Servant and Grindstone

I disagree. While a blue-based countermagic deck may be a good shell for Tezzeret, in no way does that make Tezzeret a bad card in Stax. So I really don't get why people keep coming into the Tezzeret Stax thread and saying that the Stax shell is bad and so and so shell is better. Go create a new thread for that archtype, then.
It's because your Stax shell sucks. Honestly, and I've done probably more work on Stax than anyone else, Smokestack is kinda poor. And I think your testing has been very distorted considering I think every build from you, and all the most recent ones, have more Smokestacks than Crucible of Worlds. I want to see Crucible of Worlds every game; I don't necessarily always want to see Smokestack. No lies.

Also, in order to have a turn 4 kill that you keep touting, here are the two ways it can happen. Let's look at how unrealistic this is:
A) Turn 0 Leyline of Obedience
Turn 4 Tezzeret including two pieces of acceleration
B) Turn 3 Tezzeret with two pieces of acceleration
Tezzeret stays alive for a turn
Not only are these necessarily harder to put together than Flame Vault ever was, but it's also much more fragile (by virtue of costing more, or being attackable, or having the Painter/Grindstone combo being vulnerable to creature removal).

Why does the deck need Propaganda or Moat? Flying creatures are still going to attack Tezzeret and attempting to play UU and WW seems stressful.
So instead you play UU and BB? You need Propaganda to not die. No lies.

since every single version runs Earwig Squad in their 75, Goblins sure does wreck me, especially when it costs them 5BBB or 2B + Vial@5 against my Wastelock + Smokestack.
Earwig Squad only costs 2B when you hit with any Goblin. I think you need to re-read Prowl.

The opponent can attack Tezzeret through the Propaganda and Pendrell effects without paying any mana.
Pendrell Mists/The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale still affect creatures even when they attack Tezzeret. They're upkeep costs, not costs on attacking.
P.S., You look very silly proclaiming the gospel when you didn't even realize that Time Vault was being unerrata'ed and also banned.

This post brought you by the letter Q (http://www.xkcd.com/386/)

Edit: There's a ton more to say here, but going line by line through Hanni's post is sort of exhausting, especially how repetitive it is. Shorter posts cause better discussion.

And Hanni: if you don't want people to post feedback on your deck, don't post the deck. Posting and then yelling away all comers defeats the purpose of open discussion of decks.

Anusien

09-09-2008, 12:58 AM

Or maybe I've been working on the deck for a while, think you're on the wrong track but have some interesting ideas, and want to help steer the deck in the right direction? If you're not going to go to the effort of looking at anything I said in my post, don't respond at all. I seriously think though that you need more anti-aggro elements; Propaganda is a fine start, so is Pendrell Mists and Tabernacle. I think Goblins is just going to bowl you over because your outs to turn 1 Lackey, turn 2 anything or even just a decent Warchief draw are pretty much hoping to ramp Smokestack against a deck with 60 permanents or hoping to get lucky with Leyline/Tezzeret.

I continue to keep mopping up Tier 1 DTB's and Tier 2 decks on MWS against everything you keep saying I should have problems with.
I thought long ago everyone agreed that MWS is basically just goldfishing. You have to be able to beat everything on MWS before you bother to actually test a deck. You shouldn't be more proud of winning out on MWS than you are of being able to tie your shoes in the morning; it just means that you didn't lose all your basic skills overnight.

4eak

09-09-2008, 01:34 AM

I disagree. While a blue-based countermagic deck may be a good shell for Tezzeret, in no way does that make Tezzeret a bad card in Stax. So I really don't get why people keep coming into the Tezzeret Stax thread and saying that the Stax shell is bad and so and so shell is better. Go create a new thread for that archtype, then.

"Go create another thread" is a poor reply to those who question whether Stax is really an effective shell for Tez. I'm not saying other threads shouldn't be created, but I definitely think that the criticism mounted against Tez-Stax is well-founded.

I don't understand why people overlook that Chalice, Trinisphere, Smokestack, and Wastelock are strong protection for Tezzeret. You dominate the stack, i.e played spells via Chalice and Trinisphere. You dominate the board, i.e already played spells via Smokestack, Wastelock, and Engineered Explosives in builds that run them. Then you drop Tezzeret and win the game before they can recover.

Perhaps I'm not being clear enough. I'm not saying that Tezz doesn't do very "cool things" in Stax, nor am I saying that you don't have any form of protection for Tezz (although, I don't think you have *enough* protection until you were already winning the game). Here is what I am saying: when you win games with your deck, it isn't because you are playing Tezz, instead you win because you are playing a stax shell (albeit, a partially watered-down version). This discussion reminds me of the first stax deck ever made (originally called "Ducktape"). Here's the list:

1 Tolarian Academy
2 Island
3 Shivan Reef
4 Volcanic Island
4 Mishra's Workshop
1 Mana Crypt
1 Lotus Petal
1 Black Lotus
1 Sol Ring
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Diamond
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Emerald
1 Candelabra of Tawnos
1 Mana Vault
1 Trade Secrets
1 Tinker
1 Memory Jar
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Careful Study
1 Frantic Search
1 Windfall
1 Wheel of Fortune
1 Timetwister
1 Metalworker
1 Oath of Scholars
1 Tsabo's Web
1 Brainstorm
1 Black Vise
1 Gorilla Shaman
1 Time Vault
2 Urza's Bauble
2 Sphere of Resistance
3 Goblin Welder
4 Meditate
4 Tangle Wire
4 Smokestack

This deck tried to win by using Time Vault/Meditate to skip turns so an opponent would eat Smokestack and Black Vise triggers for the rest of the game. The community realized that using Time vault to skip turns is a poor way to finish the game.

Tezz in your deck is a lot like Time Vault in the above decklist. The reason Stax was winning is not because it had Time Vault (or Tezz), but rather because of the strength of the other disruption pieces. Yeah, your Stax deck will certainly win games, and Tezz, like Time Vault, may even be in play and do some neat things, but the brunt of the work is done on the back of other cards (like Trinisphere).

Essentially, in my testing, I haven't found Tezz-Stax to be an actual improvement over other versions of Stax. That doesn't mean it is impossible for Tezz to improve a stax deck, but so far, I haven't played a version of Tezz-stax that would suggest it is comparatively viable to other Stax lists. The deck needs a lot more than tweaking.

Have any of you tested the deck yet? I just thought the deck would be decent when I first started playtesting and after about 4 days of playtesting, I keep finding it stronger and stronger, to the point where I think Tezzeret is broken.

Of course I've been testing Tez. I've tried several shells. And, frankly, you've demonstrated a limited knowledge of how some of the cards operate in the deck; Painter's Combo and Propaganda come to mind. Why should I think your testing in the past days, which appears to be based on only a partial understanding of the cards, is more authoritative than my testing? I certainly don't have 40 hours like you, but I have a solid 5 with a good understanding of the cards in the deck. Perhaps you are testing against better partners and a better gauntlet than I have.

If it will make you happy: I'll try to refrain from suggesting other shells, however, my criticism of Tezz-stax still belongs in this thread.

Directly on topic:

In what cases are you winning the game because of Tezz and not despite Tezz? Everytime I have had enough "protection" to actually use Tezz, I felt like I was already winning the game.

peace,
4eak

Zinch

09-09-2008, 06:02 AM

In what cases are you winning the game because of Tezz and not despite Tezz? Everytime I have had enough "protection" to actually use Tezz, I felt like I was already winning the game.

peace,
4eak

I agree with you in that statement. At first I thought that tezzeret will be perfect for a stax deck, but now I believe that a more counter based deck would be a better deck for him.

Toad

09-09-2008, 08:20 AM

That's the reason why every Stax build that's had success has run a Propaganda variant
I've been playing my UW and UWg Stax builds for a *very* long while (GP Lille prep, 2005) and I have never ever ran Propaganda or Ghostly Prison. If you want to stop a Tarmogoyf or Empty the Warrens tokens from attacking, Engineered Explosives is good, while also being able to clear the board of stuff like Aether Vial or Goblin Lackey. Propaganda does cool stuff against pure swarm decks, but good luck doing anything relevant with it against Tarmogoyf or even worse, Phyrexian Dreadnought.

Honestly, and I've done probably more work on Stax than anyone else, Smokestack is kinda poor. And I think your testing has been very distorted considering I think every build from you, and all the most recent ones, have more Smokestacks than Crucible of Worlds. I want to see Crucible of Worlds every game; I don't necessarily always want to see Smokestack. No lies.
I've never run more than 2 Crucible of Worlds MD in Legacy Stax, very often only 1, and always 4 Smokestacks. Crucible of Worlds does nothing relevant in lots of matchups (Aggro, Aggro-Control, Combo) and is a dead card in multiples. It is certainly not a card I want to see in my opening hand, including against Control. On the other hand, if I could drop a Turn 1 or Turn 2 Smokestack in all my games, I would do it with no doubt. I always want to see Smokestack in my opening hand when I am not playing against Combo. In some very specific metagames I would even consider 0 Crucible of Worlds in the MD.

And I can safely say I've done more work on Stax than you did.
Including in Legacy, as Stax is one of my pet decks in this formats since the new Legacy was created (ie. Mishra's Workshop ban).

Smokestack is slow as shit (4 mana) and requires Crucible besides.
This is a general misconception about Stax that I was never able to understand. Smokestack absolutely does not require Crucible besides. Stax plays 60 permanents and can maintain a Smokestack @ 1 forever. A deck like Threshold runs 30 permanents at most and can maintain a Smokestack 50% of the time. With this single comparison, it is obvious that Stax will always win the long term attrition war against every deck even without Crucible of Worlds. Regardless, Stax was created in 2002. Crucible was printed in 2004. This is a clear indication that Stax does not require Crucible to operate properly. Crucible is slower than Stax. When facing Tarmogoyfs and such, you want to wipe the board ASAP by ramping Smokestack to 2 or 3. Not cast Wasteland.

Anyways ...

Tezzeret is great in Stax. I had been trying to make Blue Stax variants work perfectly for about 3 years, and Tezzeret was the missing part of the puzzle. I'm currently testing with 3 Tezzeret and I do not regret this choice so far. A lot of matchups are pure attrition wars between Stax and the opponent. You will start by playing spells, and these spells will be countered. After baiting all these counters, you will drop Tezzeret and fetch your bomb. Against Control, you can get Crucible of Worlds, Smokestack or Winter Orb from the board. Against Threshold you grab your Ensnaring Bridge and their Tarmogoyfs and Nimble Mongoose suddently become pointless. Against Combo you can either grab a solution to Empty the Warrens (Engineered Explosives) or a Trinisphere.

Sure, Ensnaring Bridge will prevent you from using the -5 power. Seriously, who cares? Threshold is the Aggro deck in this matchup, Threshold wants to push from damage. If you say Ensnaring Bridge is bad here, you just simply does not understand Stax role against Aggro-Control. Ensnaring Bridge will prevent them from attacking. Meanwhile you start +1ing your Tezzeret while drawing cards until you find your Smokestack and wipe the Ensnaring Bridge for the alpha strike. It is as simple as this. Not being able to win is not a concern for Stax.

Tezzeret is good because it is a win condition (-5 power) that doubles with a lock component (-X power) and a game plan enabler (+1 power to generate mana). Tezzeret is very different than Time Vault, which was a true misconception of how Stax operates. David Wee had good ideas about the prison concept when he designed Ducktape, but he didnt really understand why the deck was good as show his inclusions of Time Vault and Black Vise on top of his bunch of janky 1-offs.

4eak

09-09-2008, 10:17 AM

Crucible of Worlds does nothing relevant in lots of matchups (Aggro, Aggro-Control, Combo) and is a dead card in multiples. It is certainly not a card I want to see in my opening hand, including against Control. On the other hand, if I could drop a Turn 1 or Turn 2 Smokestack in all my games, I would do it with no doubt.

While I agree that CoW on its own doesn't seem like a good card, especially when compared to Smokestack, I find the card quite necessary in modern variants of Stax (at least 2 as you said). The card is hardly dead against aggro-control, but it isn't the card I want to see most.

This is a general misconception about Stax that I was never able to understand. Smokestack absolutely does not require Crucible besides. Stax plays 60 permanents and can maintain a Smokestack @ 1 forever. A deck like Threshold runs 30 permanents at most and can maintain a Smokestack 50% of the time. With this single comparison, it is obvious that Stax will always win the long term attrition war against every deck even without Crucible of Worlds.

Yeah, Smokestack is extremely good, and hardly slow when you start ramping it up. However,SS@1 really might just be too slow in a lot of cases. Even though you have much better permanent ratios than other decks, it doesn't always mean you can afford to play SS@1 attrition wars. CoW makes Smokestack@2 or more a much more viable option; basically, it makes Smokestack better and faster. I definitely found that a deck that runs Smokestack should run CoW--you need to be able to sustain aggressive smokestacks and maintain mana and card advantage when you don't have a smokestack.

Tezzeret is great in Stax. I had been trying to make Blue Stax variants work perfectly for about 3 years, and Tezzeret was the missing part of the puzzle. I'm currently testing with 3 Tezzeret and I do not regret this choice so far.

Cool. Tezz is a beautiful card, and I'd love to see it played. Post your latest list; I'd like to give it a test through our gauntlet. So far, I've not played a list in which Tezz wasn't a win-more card or a poor win condition.

peace,
4eak

Anusien

09-09-2008, 10:19 AM

I've been playing my UW and UWg Stax builds for a *very* long while (GP Lille prep, 2005) and I have never ever ran Propaganda or Ghostly Prison. If you want to stop a Tarmogoyf or Empty the Warrens tokens from attacking, Engineered Explosives is good, while also being able to clear the board of stuff like Aether Vial or Goblin Lackey. Propaganda does cool stuff against pure swarm decks, but good luck doing anything relevant with it against Tarmogoyf or even worse, Phyrexian Dreadnought.
As you mention later, Winter Orb is quite good at helping you do this, as is Pendrell Mists/Tabernacle. I've always found and felt like including pinpoint solutions in this manner is a good way to lose to Goblins. Plus, I don't always want to have the second color of mana for EE @ 2. Every prison deck I've seen used a Propaganda effect. Principly, I had it in FVSS, Machinus had it in Angel Stompy, but I know other designers have liked the card even outside of other prison cards, like PeterO in his prison builds.

I've never run more than 2 Crucible of Worlds MD in Legacy Stax, very often only 1, and always 4 Smokestacks. Crucible of Worlds does nothing relevant in lots of matchups (Aggro, Aggro-Control, Combo) and is a dead card in multiples. It is certainly not a card I want to see in my opening hand, including against Control. On the other hand, if I could drop a Turn 1 or Turn 2 Smokestack in all my games, I would do it with no doubt. I always want to see Smokestack in my opening hand when I am not playing against Combo. In some very specific metagames I would even consider 0 Crucible of Worlds in the MD.
You probably always want Smokestack in your opener because of how slow it is. You pretty much can't cast it until turn 3 (sometimes turn 2), and then it doesn't take away a permanent until the turn after. Smokestack was certainly underwhelming as hell against Goblins in my testing, because they just sacrifice their lands and beat down.
On the contrary, Crucible of Worlds is one of my favorite cards. I can recur fetchlands when I have nothing else to do. It also makes my 2 mana lands like City of Traitors more stable, and it recurs Wasteland. It's interesting you say how it doesn't do anything relevant for you against aggro, because that's one of the matchups where I want it the most. I've found that the Goblins player takes a particular delight in manascrewing me; I'll open up with 2 mana land, Chalice at one, and they'll answer back with Wasteland on my land and screw me out of the ability to play any spells for a while. This is even worse if Goblins was on the play. A lot of Stax draws can't keep up with Wasteland without Crucible. And when I've thrown away a land to Mox Diamond and a land to City of Traitors, I often find I need Crucible to keep up with Smokestack.

This is a general misconception about Stax that I was never able to understand. Smokestack absolutely does not require Crucible besides. Stax plays 60 permanents and can maintain a Smokestack @ 1 forever. A deck like Threshold runs 30 permanents at most and can maintain a Smokestack 50% of the time. With this single comparison, it is obvious that Stax will always win the long term attrition war against every deck even without Crucible of Worlds. Regardless, Stax was created in 2002. Crucible was printed in 2004. This is a clear indication that Stax does not require Crucible to operate properly. Crucible is slower than Stax. When facing Tarmogoyfs and such, you want to wipe the board ASAP by ramping Smokestack to 2 or 3. Not cast Wasteland.
Yes, you can keep up with a Smokestack without Crucible just by playing every card you draw, and it works most of the time. You do start to run into problems when you draw Mox Diamonds. I've actually seen some issues though where you tried to keep up with Smokestack and Threshold Dazes some spell you cast for redundancy and all of a sudden you can't maintain it anymore. That said, the more attractive use of Crucible is to ramp Smokestack to 2 and only have to pay half of it. Seriously, I would run more Crucibles if I had the choice.

That said, I think you're absolutely right about Ensnaring Bridge. I was trying to figure out the best way to protect Tezzeret, and I think that's it. It feels like a clunky plan (Tezzeret->Ensnaring Bridge->Smokestack), but even if they break through, as long as you continue to play permanents even a Krosan Grip won't save the opponent. Plus, if worse comes to worse you just go to the "deck you" plan post-Krosan Grip (which seems to come together as often as Tezzeret, untap, beats).

Toad

09-09-2008, 10:39 AM

4eak - It is still under testing with a good amount of blank cards for pure testing purposes. I will try to post it when I have more time, but I am very busy with other stuff and do not really have time to test lately. Regardless, I do not use Tezzeret as a combo enabler and run no Painter's Servant / Grindstone / Helm of Obediance [...]. The arguments posted before (including yours) already cover this. I mainly use Tezzeret as a 3UU reusable Tinker, with a very limited amount of 1-offs. For now, 1 Crucible of Worlds, 1 Ensnaring Bridge and 1 Bottled Cloister. The rest of the deck is a straight 4-offs based build. I do not even run Seat of the Synod or Darksteel Citadel. My current list has a White splash for 4 Magus of the Tabernacle, but that choice is still pending to the future Shards of Alara cards. The artifact Dark Banishing is tempting for example, but suffers from poor Chalice of the Void synergy. To make it short, I am building a Stax deck with Tezzeret, not a Tezzeret deck with Stax components.

Anusien - I am not really going to comment your arguments about Goblins here. Tarmogoyf - and Aggro-Control - and Goblins are pretty much excluding themselves right now, with Tarmogoyf pushing Goblins outside of the top tables. In metagames where Goblins is king, Tarmogoyf and thus Aggro-Control are usually inexistant : why would you play Stax when you can play Combo there? Stax is a great deck for metagames where Combo, Aggro-Control and Control are dominant, and I would only play Stax in these metagames. Thus, no Propaganda or Ghostly Prison, and Engineered Explosives instead. If Goblins was a true concern, I would simply not play Stax, and Goblins is not one of my concern when designing Stax.

The Ensnaring Bridge plan is not really clunky. It is simply efficient ;)

acchia85

09-09-2008, 10:57 AM

one possible list??

Anusien

09-09-2008, 11:23 AM

Even the metagames with strong aggro-control decks don't have 0 copies of Goblins, and I think it's a mistake to not at least be prepared for the deck. If you're just aiming at Threshold and combo, there are decks that fulfill that role better (like Pernicious Deed heavy decks with their own Goyfs). If you get a tuned maindeck, you should have game against Goblins as well. Otherwise I think you're compromising the strengths of the archetype to include pinpoint removal. Also, the cards that make you good against Goblins also give you copious amounts of game against Ichorid.

rufus

09-09-2008, 12:36 PM

I think the concept here is closer to combining a chalice control package with an artifact oriented combo finish rather than a full-on prison approach.

Toad

09-09-2008, 03:58 PM

I think it's a mistake to not at least be prepared for the deck.
Of course you need to be prepared for Goblins. I'm running Mishra's Factories, Magus of the Tabernacle and Engineered Explosives mainboard already, and the sideboard will have a lot of cards devoted to this matchup. Nevertheless, with the metagame mostly oriented towards Aggro-Control and Control, Propaganda effects are pretty poor mainboard. A single Tarmogoyf or Phyrexian Dreadnought do not really care about these. The good thing here is that Blue opens a good amount of very strong sideboard cards against these decks. I did not check everything yet but I'm considering Propaganda (the obvious call), Threads of Disloyalty, Phyrexian Ironfoot ... We'lll see what the Blue shard gets from Alara.

MTG Guru

09-09-2008, 09:08 PM

Why not run Propaganda, Winter Orb and Tangle Wire? Pendell Mists seems good as well. I've seen prison decks like this with moderate success and it gets even more dangerous when you add Tezzeret and the Painter combo.

Happy Gilmore

09-09-2008, 09:11 PM

Mad Zur had a great idea when I mentioned Tezz to him, his first instinct told him this:

WILD FIRE

I like it, a lot.

Illissius

09-09-2008, 09:23 PM

:r::r: and :u::u: in a Stax deck?

Happy Gilmore

09-09-2008, 09:38 PM

:r::r: and :u::u: in a Stax deck?

that was my first thought as well, but I think its both doable and worth it. And besides, it woudn't be stax any more. After all, Tezz can search for mana sources, and there are plenty of duals to chose from. And don't forget about Coalition Relic.

When I said earlier that I think it should go in a more agressive concept direction, thats what I meant. I've even been throwing around Mono blue concepts that plays 4x titan and such. All the Pieces havn't come together yet, but I'm getting there. Tezz was a big boost.

rufus

09-09-2008, 10:04 PM

that was my first thought as well, but I think its both doable and worth it. And besides, it woudn't be stax any more. After all, Tezz can search for mana sources, and there are plenty of duals to chose from. And don't forget about Coalition Relic.

It's pretty easy to Transmute Artifact or Reshape into a Lotus Bloom as acceleration, and access to colored mana with Tezzie.

Jaynel

09-09-2008, 10:09 PM

A manabase with Cascade Bluffs and some duals, perhaps?

Happy Gilmore

09-10-2008, 12:28 AM

It's pretty easy to Transmute Artifact or Reshape into a Lotus Bloom as acceleration, and access to colored mana with Tezzie.
That brings up a good question....does Tezz put a lotus bloom directly into play? That would make for a very interesting deck indeed.

Anusien

09-10-2008, 02:53 AM

That brings up a good question....does Tezz put a lotus bloom directly into play? That would make for a very interesting deck indeed.

Bloom has no casting cost, but it has a converted mana cost of 0. See this thread (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?t=11021) for more details.

Wildfire is interesting; I think I've considered it before but not too deeply. Obviously it's terrible against Tarmogoyfs, but it could do some damage against the Goblin hordes. A potentially could SB plan, except where it leaves them a Vial :(

4eak

09-10-2008, 04:03 AM

Wildfire is interesting; I think I've considered it before but not too deeply. Obviously it's terrible against Tarmogoyfs, but it could do some damage against the Goblin hordes. A potentially could SB plan, except where it leaves them a Vial :(

This is why I prefer Obliterate...plus, it can't be countered. A lot of board sweepers completely miss Planeswalkers, and I've yet to see that thoroughly abused (and perhaps that is because we haven't had too many PWs worth using).

peace,
4eak

Zinch

09-10-2008, 04:04 AM

If wild fire doesn't kill tarmogoyfs, you can try devastation.
I've thought also in this posibility, but against ThreshThreshThreshThreshThresh, I think will be hard to resolve one of this spells (unless you play a lot of this spells, that will stall in your hand waiting to be played... a bad idea)

Toad

09-10-2008, 04:55 AM

If you are going to play a spell that kills creatures without hitting Tarmogoyf, you might as well simply play Firespout. Blowing lands is not that good if you are not able to deal with Aether Vial or Tarmogoyf at the same time. And at 4RR, the card is so slow that it will barely matter against Aggro in a Stax shell. You would need to run a big amount of Talismans and other weak cards tempo wise, and in the end the Stax concept will not work anymore. Stax cannot afford to waste tempo by playing mana artifacts. The Covetous concept seems more appropriate here, Trinispheres, Chalices of the Void backed up with Wildfire, no Smokestack, no Tangle Wire. A splash would likely be needed in order to deal with Tarmogoyf using Engineered Explosives, and Blue is definitly not appealing here. OTOH, the new Ajani fits rather well in the Covetous concept. Or Tarmogoyf ...

Illissius

09-10-2008, 05:42 AM

Maybe you could rework the existing Wildfire deck to make it cast Tez (and maybe Devastation instead of Wildfire). Coalition Relic in place of Powerstone, Gilded Lotus, some Bluffs among the lands... though replacing Gruul Signet with Izzet doesn't help as much -- is there any :2: mana rock which can make :u::u:?

Zinch

09-10-2008, 05:51 AM

-- is there any :2: mana rock which can make :u::u:?

I don't think so...
But, as someone has mentioned, maybe the hybrid land is an option

MTG Guru

09-10-2008, 03:25 PM

Illissius

09-10-2008, 04:02 PM

I know, which is why I asked about :2:. Though I guess you can cut the Signets for Eyes and slow the deck down a bit.

rufus

09-10-2008, 04:55 PM

That brings up a good question....does Tezz put a lotus bloom directly into play? That would make for a very interesting deck indeed.

It's got a CMC of 0, so he can. Of course, paying UU3 to pull out a Lotus Bloom is rarely going to be a good move.

Hanni

09-10-2008, 10:41 PM

I don't really feel like going into to much depth with this decklist, but for anyone that's actually wondering, this is what my list looks like now:

// Lands
4 [ON] Polluted Delta
4 [R] Underground Sea
4 [APL] Island (2)
4 [TE] Ancient Tomb
4 [EX] City of Traitors
1 [TSP] Academy Ruins
1 [TE] Wasteland
1 [DK] Maze of Ith
4 [JGC] Mishra's Factory

// Creatures
4 [LRW] Tezzeret the Seeker
1 [SHM] Painter's Servant

// Spells
1 [TE] Grindstone
4 [TE] Intuition
3 [10E] Crucible of Worlds
4 [MR] Chalice of the Void
4 [DS] Trinisphere
4 [US] Smokestack
1 [B] Meekstone
3 [FD] Engineered Explosives
4 [SH] Mox Diamond

// Sideboard
SB: 3 [DK] Maze of Ith
SB: 1 [FD] Engineered Explosives
SB: 4 [UD] Masticore
SB: 4 [GP] Leyline of the Void
SB: 1 [AL] Helm of Obedience
SB: 1 [NE] Tangle Wire
SB: 1 [FNM] Tormod's Crypt

Went through a bunch more changes and I probably still won't stay with this list. However, the deck is alot more Intuition friendly than older builds and contains some very good anti-aggro, despite the criticisms. Ruins + EE recursion is pretty good, I hear. The deck consistently hits 2 colors of mana, with Mox Diamond providing more colors. Mox Diamond can be grabbed via Tezzeret, too.

There are 27 lands for Mox Diamond. I hate having worthless Mox Diamonds. 27 lands and EE make Mox Diamond a better card. It's pitchable more often and providing alternate color sources is useful for EE.

I kept the Leyline/Obedience combo in the sideboard because there is absolutely no reason to not have it in the decks 75.

I like Mishra's Factory better than Wasteland, despite losing consistency in assembling Wastelock. The deck has Intuition to grab Wasteland, so it's not as big of a deal. Factory is a very solid alternate win condition that can be used to slow down or trade with attackers, especially Nimble Mongoose.

Masticores in the sideboard are strong against swarm decks like Goblins, Elves, etc. Having essentially 8 postboard via Tezzeret makes Masticore a bomb against Goblins, even in the face of Warren Weirding. It's only a matter of time before Masticore blows up all their Goblins and goes on a turn 4-5 clock to win the game.

Tezzeret is still a bomb that is usually 3UU: Win. Sometimes it won't be supported enough to win, but the ability to grab a card like Crucible if you need one is still huge.

4/4/3/1 Tez/Intuition/Crucible/Ruins is a very powerful draw/tutor engine if you ask me. The rest of the deck does what Stax does best, except the ability to recur artifacts or just win is very powerful. The combination of the decks power and consistency is highly desirable (to me).

Oh, and for the record to naysayers; the deck is really fucking good. Maybe in its current incarnation it's not optimal, but the deck feels broken to me. If you think Tezzeret Stax is not good, viable, or whatever, and haven't contributed anything at all... why are you here (this isn't being said to any particular poster but to the masses as a whole)?

EDIT: This deck is going to get more nuts before the set is released...

Executioner's Capsule
B
Artifact
1B, T, Sacrifice Executioner's Capsule: Destory target nonblack creature.

Master of Etherium
2U
Artifact Creature - Vedalken Wizard
Master of Etherium's power and toughness are each equal to the number of artifacts you control.
Other artifact creatures you control get +1/+1.
*/*

Both of these cards are nuts. Wow.

Dark_Cynic87

09-12-2008, 04:12 AM

The capsule is a moot point as Chalice @ 1 is a much better play.

The */* fellow is win-more. you will have 4+ artifacts with them having nothing on their board when you do the Tezzeret ability ftw. Unneccessary pumping which in turn is wasted slots--not something you want to see in a stax list.

I hear Propaganda is a god against Goblins...Way better than Masticore (wtf anyway?)

I agree that Tezzeret is teh shit. I am so pissed that I traded virtually all of my stax stuff off @ GenCon that I could Ro-Shambo myself until I vomit.

I'll get it back, but it's a pain in my ass. I'm going with a UBg list. I played 3-c Sun Tower Evo for so damn long that anything less than 3-c Stax seems sub-optimal. Green goes in EVERY build of stax, and Intuition is too much of a house for me not to run it, so every build I play is UG, the third was a splash for red, which is weak as hell now (I used R-Quakes in the board and B. Ring maindeck-it came in more handy for EE than anything else, and was absolutely unnecceary for 99% if my games).

My build will look something like this:

Spells--35
3x Stax
4x 3sphere
4x CotV
3x CoW
1x LftL
4x M. Diamond
3x Propaganda
1x E. Bridge (you can intuition for it and LftL and Ruins; good vs. 'Nought and Goyf)
4x LotV
3x Intuition
3x Tezzeret
1x Helm of Obedience (you can intuition for it and LftL and Ruins; gets you the combo win)
1x EE (you can intuition for it and LftL and Ruins; answer to whatever; you can get Sunburst 4 and even 5 in this list)

Land--25
4x Tomb
4x City
3x Factory
3x Wasteland
3x Polluted Delta
4x USea
2x Trop
1x Ruins
1x Island

I'm not certain on the SB, probably/most likely this:

SB--15
4x Needle
3x K. Grip
3x Rushing River
2x EE
3x Defense Grid

I don't worry about wierd spells such as Moon effects. It still allows you to get out your stax stuff, which in turn allows for it's eventual removal via sacrificing. With this in mind, basics are of little importance. Wasteland isn't exactly a huge problem, as if you get a smokestack online, they are more worried about their permanents instead of yours. When I played red, I just laughed and R-Quaked them into oblivion. This isn't quite as easy, but it's still just as easy. IGG is almost too hard to resist with Leyline, but resist I will.

Pce,

--DC

Hanni

09-14-2008, 03:53 AM

Maybe there is something to the green splash. I still think the ability to hardcast Leyline is necessary. Leyline/Obedience beats anything you'd want green for. Green is good for Loam though, which may be worth the splash.

Intuition is much stronger with Loam. Intuition for Loam, Ruins, EE is gg so often. 1 Intutition is better than multiples. I might splash green for 1 Loam. It's a bit out there to go 3c... but since Leyline isn't a big deal, I think it's reasonable.

G2 going for Ruins/EE lock or Leyline/Obedience win sounds like a very strong plan against a huge chunk of what you might see.

Kove

09-14-2008, 04:42 AM

With all this focus on artifacts, would Seat of the Synod have a place in this deck? It can be fetched by Tezzeret, untapped to provide more mana by Tezzeret, beat (with Tezzeret) and be recurred with Academy Ruins if needed.
Sucks to lose lands to Pernicious Deed though. >_<

Hanni

09-14-2008, 05:00 AM

Well, I deleted my older post, but Seats have been dismissed. The deck no longer needs a high artifact count; all it wants is enough Stax to go ftw. Synod opens open the manabase to bad things. The deck might be able to go 3c, but that is the extent and it needs to stop with lands + Mox Diamond.

Toad

09-14-2008, 06:15 AM

Hanni

09-14-2008, 07:16 AM

Intuition for Life from the Loam, Academy Ruins and Engineered Explosives is very bad overall. This setup is worthless early game because it is too mana intensive, and pointless in the late game because if you can spare that mana you have won regardless. I tested the setup when Academy Ruins got printed (Ug Stax shell) and it was never relevant. Since Life from the Loam is pretty much the only good Green card for Stax, the Green splash is a bad idea.

Actually, even Academy Ruins is pretty weak. It is too slow.

I don't understand the point of Painter's Servant and Grindstone here. If you can spare 2 turns doing nothing except getting a Painter's Servant out and keeping Tezzeret alive until your following turn, then it is fairly obvious that you have won the game already. The combo is just a win more thing for Stax.

I haven't done any sort of sufficient testing with a green splash. My Gifts Stax variant I playtested had green in it; doubt it's worth it but it still needs tested.

However, you say Grindstone/Painter is bad.

How else would you win?

Ramp Tezzeret +1 and swing with 5/5's? Most of the time, I mean like 95% of the time, you either don't have 4 artifacts to swing or you don't have enough to swing through blockers/removal. Grabbing Grindstone/Painter only costs 3 counters and wins the game outright. It's the best win condition this deck has straight through Tezzeret, aside from Leyline/Obedience.

Tezzeret can grab Meekstone and then Grindstone/Painter. Grindstone/Painter can also be an eventual win condition through Academy Ruins. Whatever the case, Tezzeret grabbing Grindstone/Painter wins alot of games it shouldn't. When it can't grab that, it grabs other really strong cards.

On a sidenote, I think Ruins/EE is huge. An early EE followed by Ruins recur is almost an autowin vs Threshold-style decks. Even without Meekstone, EE can completely shut down some decks. It's better than Wrath of God, IMO, when you get Academy Ruins on the table. It doesn't touch some things, like Tombstalker, but the deck still has Maze of Ith for that.

---

I still don't understand the lack of content on this thread, when this deck is easily Tier 1 status. A few more significant t3ch's and a small following to play the deck and this deck is on its way to DtB forum. I won't be able to attend many tournaments for results, but I will definitely assist with deck construction to get it to that goal. If Fish and Deadguy Rock can Top 8 80+ tournaments overseas, this deck can Top 8 tournaments everywhere.

Toad

09-14-2008, 09:42 AM

Grabbing Grindstone/Painter only costs 3 counters and wins the game outright.
Tezzeret needs to stay in play for an entiere turn before you can combo off. If Tezzeret takes 2 or more damage during this turn, then your combo does nothing and you are left with 2 pointless cards in your board/deck. Aside from this, Grindstone is ugly without Painter, and vice versa.

It's the best win condition this deck has straight through Tezzeret, aside from Leyline/Obedience.
I disagree. Tezzeret *is* the best win condition because it is also a lock component and never a dead draw. After this you have Mishra's Factory, which doubles as a mana source, and Magus of the Tabernacle, which doubles as another lock component and a solid blocker. The deck has enough win conditions already, and its current ones are very versatile. No need to run cards that are only good at killing the opponent such as Painter's Servant, Grindstone or Helm of Obediance. Win conditions are the worst cards in control decks, so the less, the better.

An early EE followed by Ruins recur is almost an autowin vs Threshold-style decks.
You do not need EE followed by Ruins to beat Threshold. A single EE is often enough to buy enough time to get a better lock on the board. Threshold is one of the easy matchups of the deck, so basing deck construction on that is not a good idea. OTOH, against the difficult matchups, EE recursion is either too slow, or pointless (Goblins, Ichorid). Or they have Wastelands (Aggro Loam). Furthermore, why do you run Meekstone when Ensnaring Bridge does a better job?

georgjorge

09-14-2008, 04:53 PM

It seems to me that the Helm-Leyline combo maindeck is a waste of space, as Leylines aren't very relevant in many matchups. Four Leyline and a Helm side seems to be the right thing to do (whether you run Painter-Grindstone main or not).

Dark_Cynic87

09-15-2008, 01:13 AM

Leyline/Helm is probably a metacall, but I have to say that MD leyline is good against Aggro Loam and Ichorid, and as a much less relevant point, 43lands.dec. I think in a meta where you see this kind of stuff go ahead and play it. If not, I think they are the best graveyard hate for this deck, so SB them. You don't have to include helm, it is just another win-con, which I find to be helpful in stax. That's why angelstax didn't appeal to me and SunTower did/does.

Intuition into LftL, artifact and Ruins: It's good especially done at the end of their turn. Then, you can Dredge on your draw, cast it, grab the land, play it, and put artifact on top of your library.

Tezzeret could in theory make Tangle Wire relevant later in the game--like mid-game. I'm trying to understand where/why it's first ability is useable, even in the least. If you don't have untappable artifacts, you can't really build them up. That's why I like Helm. You can grab it for 4 counters off of Tezzeret. Kills him, but it's worth it.

With Leyline in play @ the beginning, you can go Tomb, mox, 3sphere, go. Turn 2 play land, whatever (Chalice, etc.), go. Turn 3, land (one of the lands you played turn 2 or turn 3 needs to produce blue), Tezzeret (remember, it's turn 3, and if you went first, there's no worries about counterspells). If one of your two lands from turn 2 or 3 were another 2-mana land, you can tutor for AND activate Helm for a PROTECTED turn 3 kill. FROM A STAX LIST. Otherwise, play it, pass your turn, and next turn grab and activate it turn 4. Yay! Chalice @ 1 to get around a Stifle. Play Tangle Wire or something. There's so much you can do with this guy it's not even funny.

I'll post more on this topic later, but it will be in reference to Intuition and LftL. I think there's a bit more to it than this...

Intuition for Life from the Loam, Academy Ruins and Engineered Explosives is very bad overall.

Btw, it's (read: Intuition + Ruins) used for way more than this. It's for finding lock pieces. That way you don't have to waste counters off of Tezzeret or wait until you get to 5 mana to play him.

Pce,

--DC

Toad

09-15-2008, 08:06 AM

Intuition into LftL, artifact and Ruins: It's good especially done at the end of their turn. Then, you can Dredge on your draw, cast it, grab the land, play it, and put artifact on top of your library.
This costs 8 (!!) mana to simply put an artifact on the top of your deck. You need another turn to draw the tutored card. If you can afford wasting a full turn and 8 mana to get a card, then you should be in a winning position already, and this setup does not matter. Stax wants to get answers and lock components out as soon as possible, not once it has 8 mana to spare. If you are facing a Tarmogoyf, a Phyrexian Dreadnought or Empty the Warrens tokens, 2 turns can equal 10 to 24+ damage ...

Stax has the edge in mid game against pretty much everything, so you should focus on cards that help you getting into mid game, not on cards that are crap until you are actually there. Intuition was decent in Vintage Stax because you have acceleration to cast it, Mishra's Workshop to cast the artifact, and often Goblin Welder as another enabler. In Legacy it is simply too slow. Same for Life from the Loam.

Intuition and Life from the Loam is nice on paper. You just never have the time to use the combo until it is highly irrelevant.

Dark_Cynic87

09-15-2008, 09:46 AM

Turn 1: Tomb, Diamond, Intuition grabbing 3sphere, 3sphere, 3sphere = turn 2 3sphere.

OR

Turn 1: Tomb, Diamond, Intuition grabbing Chalice, Chalice, Chalice = turn 2 Chalice.

OR

Turn 1: Tomb, Diamond, Intuition grabbing Propaganda, Propaganda, Propaganda = turn 2 Propaganda.

These all seem like highly relevant plays against many decks. I see no reason why a pile like Ruins, LftL, *artifact* isn't acceptable. Dredging from LftL can also be a quasi-draw effect with Ruins. EE is good against Pithing Needle, which IS relevant mid to late game as it can really screw with your win-cons. It can name all 3 in my deck. This presents a problem. One that's unsolvable to a point (that point being a stax-lock), and I don't like waiting that long. I like MD silver bullets at cards that can really screw me.

Besides, if that's the only thing you can think of in my list that you don't like, I encourage you to try it out taking out the LftL (I believe that Ruins is good in any stax list that runs blue, as it's a relevant card to Smokestack as it is a stand-in CoW), if you find it too techy for your style.

Also, a minor point to your whole 8 mana in one turn thingy. I'm pretty sure it's only 7. Intuition for 2U, LftL 1G, Ruins 1U. That's 4UUG. 7. Hmm. Also, minor point here, turn 3 you can go EoT on their turn Intuition for the 3 cards, then your turn dredge the LftL, play it, drop Ruins, pay 1U to return an artifact to the top of your library. That's not too difficult to do. Also, minor point, you can do this turn 2...Turn 2 Tomb, Diamond, any color-producing land, Intuition for 3 cards, etc.

You aren't giving the combo it's due credit, nor are you giving the deck it's credit to it's speedy capabilities.

Leylines are there for the combo only. They have a very decent side-use, and it will come in handy from time to time. However, if it's not your cup of tea, feel free to drop the 5 cards from the maindeck. I must say, however, that Leyline comes in handy against lots of decks including, but not limited to Aggro Loam, Landstill, Ichorid, and a host of other not-as-popular decks. Maindeck GY hate is awesome against some decks, not-so-great against other decks, but the point is that it's there if you need it and if you don't you still have a use for it. You can even have other sideboard hate, such as Crypts. This way, you can have 7 to 8 available graveyard hate cards. Alternatively, you don't HAVE to designate sideboard slots to GY hate because of the maindeck Leylines.

How does Seat of the Synod "open" this deck to land destruction? I'm sorry, but with the what, 19 non-basics that can be destroyed by wasteland, and a staggering 23 that get smacked around by Moon effects and B2B. I'm not seeing how...an artifact land...hinders it any further. I don't know why it would be necessary, but if you feel it's necessary I don't see why not.

Pce,

--DC

EDIT::: 8 mana for the combo would be with Trinisphere in play. That would drive the cost of LftL up 1 to 2G. There's 8, but otherwise it's 7.

Toad

09-15-2008, 10:36 AM

These all seem like highly relevant plays against many decks.
None of these involved grabbing Life from the Loam. You are also always getting the lucky hands of Mox Diamond + double land + a land to pitch + Intuition. What if you can only cast Intuition on Turn 2 to play your spell on Turn 3? What if your double land gets Wasted?

Also, a minor point to your whole 8 mana in one turn thingy. I'm pretty sure it's only 7. Intuition for 2U, LftL 1G, Ruins 1U. That's 4UUG. 7.
Academy Ruins costs a virtual 3 to activate. You need to tap Academy to pay for its own ability.
Hence, the setup costs 8 mana.

EE is good against Pithing Needle, which IS relevant mid to late game as it can really screw with your win-cons. It can name all 3 in my deck.
1. You do not need EE recursion to wipe out Needle, a single one is enough.
2. They need 3 Needles to lock all your win conditions, and that still would not hit the real win conditions of the deck, Trinisphere or Smokestack. I would love if my opponents boarded in Needles to name Factory or Tezzeret. Pointless plays.

You aren't giving the combo it's due credit, nor are you giving the deck it's credit to it's speedy capabilities.
I'm not talking about theory here, I've tested the Intuition + Life from the Loam setup intensively about 2 years ago when Time Spiral got released. The setup is too slow. So I ended up cutting Life from the Loam. Then after some more testing I realized I was never using Academy Ruins until the play was almost always irrelevant, so I cut it too (thought I understand if people want to keep it). I kept Intuitions after this, and ended up removing them when Tezzeret got printed.

Maveric78f

09-15-2008, 11:49 AM

My opinions on the deck:

Why would you play factories in such a deck? You absolutely need U or coloured mana in general (tezzeret is UU, and you probably want to splash another colour).

I personally don't think that monoU would be optimal because it misses the ability to get rid of swarms (propaganda is bad because it does nothing in itself.

Why would you splash for green? For LftL? You don't want to play cycling lands, stax does not need a powerful card advantage, stax misses speed and mana. Life is very bad in this deck.

According to me the best splash is the W one for Magus of the Tabernacle and maybe some other stuff in SB (armageddon and oblivon ring).

Why would you want to play a combo finish that is nothing but a winmore strategy in a prison deck? Start by playing the bridge/cloister combo, which are both good cards in themselves and that provide a hard lock. The kills of the deck are definitely smokestack, Tezzeret, and to a minor extent Magus.

How can you play Tezzeret without Tangle Wire? It looks insane to me...

Tezzeret would be 4-of in a perfect world, my only concern is the UU cost which may make it too often a dead card in hand.

Dark_Cynic87

09-15-2008, 11:54 AM

Ummm...Intuition into Tezzeret, Tezzeret, Tezzeret?

You and I are going to have to simply disagree on the matter.

I've found Intuition to be awesome in stax. My experience is based on at least a couple years of stax being the ONLY deck I played, albeit several different versions (Blax, SunTower, SunTower Evo, AngelStax, 'GeddonStax, UG Stax, UB Stax, Mono-Blue Stax, and etc.).

I will say that Double-land Mox is accepted as a completely logical argument for 3sphere, a major argument for playing this deck in the first place, I see no reason as to why it's not a logical argument to intuition. a turn 3 Trinisphere is still a huge tempo-gain for us.

Also, I'm not talking about a RECURRING EE, I'm talking about the ability to TUTOR for a singleton answer. Can't do that very well without finding a way to get it out of the 'yard. Hence the Ruins and LftL. It's also a set-up to getting any other artifact as well. A perk, as they tend to be targets...

Pce,

--DC

Anusien

09-15-2008, 12:03 PM

How often is Enlightened Tutor going to do exactly the same thing as Intuition. How often will Enlightened Tutor be a full turn faster? Intuition for three Tezzerets is going to suck because if you lose that Tezzeret to a counter or a Lightning Bolt, don't you almost always lose there?

But I'm a strong believe that the deck should run zero non-permanents. Yeah, I did used to run Burning Wish in Stax, but the only time I liked it was when it fetched Boiling Seas or won with the active Time Vault.

rufus

09-15-2008, 12:58 PM

Happy Gilmore

09-15-2008, 01:39 PM

here is that wildfire list I was working on, my first ditch effort:

4 Chalice
4 Tezz
3 Wild Fire
4 Burning Wish
3 Decree of Anihilation

1 Trinisphere
4 Blood Moon
4 Propaganda

3 Thran Dynamo
1 Lotus Bloom
4 Relic
4 Signet
4 Delta
3 Volcanic Island
4 City
4 Ancient Tomb
2 Great Furnace
4 Island

Anusien

09-15-2008, 02:38 PM

Enlightened Tutor is card disadvantage while Intuition is card neutral.
In this deck, I'm kind of okay with that. Like, just because a card is card disadvantage doesn't make it bad if it's the right tool for the job. You're willing to sacrifice card advantage for speed, hence the use of things like Mox Diamond.

Dark_Cynic87

09-16-2008, 01:55 PM

I think the argument is that Chalice @ 1 is a very common play and is also 90% of the time the best play you can make. This makes things like StP and E. Tutor a non-playable card, and thus unuseable in any list playing Chalice. Chalice @ 1 makes Intuition still a viable turn-2 play, whereas a turn 1 chalice makes a turn 2 E. Tutor impossible.

E. Tutor is also not as flexible as Intuition. Intuition can go Tezz, Tezz, Tezz, whereas Tutor can't even grab one.

While Tezzeret+Tangle Wire looks tempting, Tangle Wire isn't as good as other plays in the beginning, and that's without Tezzeret. Tangle Wire is a quasi-3sphere, but it hurts you more than 3sphere. It is good with Tezz in that you only ever have to leave one permanent tapped, and that's the first turn after playing it, but it's effect will be minor by the time you get out Tezz with it. You could run it as a silver bullet to fetch with Tezz and recur it continuously with Ruins, but that's probably not a great play considering what else you could do.

The mindset that the list should run 0 non-permanents is the very concept that AngelStax played on. I feel that it's a very n00b approach to the archetype. It makes it easy to keep ahead with an active stax, but at the same time, a more experienced player should be capable of doing so in spite of not drawing a permanent each turn.

Six tutors (Tezz and Intuition) WITH a recursion engine (Ruins) AND a built-in win-condition (Tezz) WITH a pseudo-draw engine (Loam-Dredge paired with Ruins) is a VERY strong idea.

Pce,

--DC

Dark_Cynic87

09-16-2008, 11:08 PM

Spells--36
3x Stax
4x 3sphere
4x CotV
3x CoW
1x LftL
4x M. Diamond
3x Propaganda
1x E. Bridge (you can intuition for it and LftL and Ruins; good vs. 'Nought and Goyf)
1x Tangle Wire (Turns out after a turn 1 3sphere, it can extend 3sphere's usefulness; it's actually quite useful even mid and late game, but it really shines turn 3.)
4x LotV
3x Intuition
3x Tezzeret
1x Helm of Obedience (you can intuition for it and LftL and Ruins; gets you the combo win)
1x EE (you can intuition for it and LftL and Ruins; answer to whatever; you can get Sunburst 4 and even 5 in this list)

Land--24
4x Tomb
4x City
3x Factory
3x Wasteland
3x Polluted Delta
3x USea
2x Trop
1x Ruins
1x Island

SB--15
4x Needle
3x K. Grip
3x Arcane Lab
2x EE
1x Tormod's Crypt
1x Propaganda
1x Capsize

This is what I will be running the day Tezzeret becomes legal. I will have my list done. I don't know if I can get 3x Tezzeret out of a case, but if not, I'm sure I'll have more than enough to trade for the other 2 (surely I can get at least one...). If it's somehow just insanely hard to trade for, I guess I'll buy them. This deck pwns. Honestly, I can't begin to explain how insanely rediculous this gets. I've won so quickly with Tezzeret it's like I'm not playing a stax list...It's wierd. Sweet, but wierd.

I think I'll start it's own thread so you guys can keep talking about your mono-blue build or whatever you are shooting for.

Pce,

--DC

Rush

09-17-2008, 02:08 PM

3-4 Smokestack (it's not really Stax without this one, is it?)
I didn't see anyone else correct you, so I will. Actually, the name Stax doesn't come from Smokestack. It came from the original name $T4KS, which was short for The Four Thousand Dollar Solution. And, yes, they did invert the T and $. On a side note, I'll have to agree Smokestack doesn't belong in the deck. If you're going to build a Tezzeret deck, I would suggest a deck like Happy Gilmore posted. Here is my current list and so far it's been ROCKING the format (to the point that people leave mid game in pure anger):
// Deck file for Magic Workstation (http://www.magicworkstation.com)

// Lands
2 [RAV] Island (2)
2 [MR] Great Furnace
4 [TE] Ancient Tomb
4 [ON] Polluted Delta
4 [B] Volcanic Island
4 [EX] City of Traitors

// Spells
1 [TSP] Lotus Bloom
4 [MR] Chalice of the Void
4 [JU] Burning Wish
4 [GP] Izzet Signet
3 [MR] Thirst for Knowledge
3 [DS] Trinisphere
4 [NE] Tangle Wire
4 [FUT] Coalition Relic
3 [UD] Thran Dynamo
4 [AL] Force of Will
3 [P3] Burning of Xinye
3 [P2] Wildfire

// Sideboard
SB: 1 [P3] Burning of Xinye
SB: 4 [FNM] Tormod's Crypt
SB: 1 [GP] Shattering Spree
SB: 1 [MR] Trash for Treasure
SB: 1 [PT] Boiling Seas
SB: 1 [US] Smokestack
SB: 4 [PT] Devastation
SB: 1 [SC] Decree of Annihilation
SB: 1 [7E] Pyroclasm

Hanni

09-17-2008, 09:12 PM

// Lands
2 [RAV] Island (2)
2 [MR] Great Furnace
4 [TE] Ancient Tomb
4 [ON] Polluted Delta
4 [b] Volcanic Island
4 [EX] City of Traitors

// Spells
1 [TSP] Lotus Bloom
4 [MR] Chalice of the Void
4 [JU] Burning Wish
4 [GP] Izzet Signet
3 [MR] Thirst for Knowledge
3 [DS] Trinisphere
4 [NE] Tangle Wire
4 [FUT] Coalition Relic
3 [UD] Thran Dynamo
4 [AL] Force of Will
3 [P3] Burning of Xinye
3 [P2] Wildfire

// Sideboard
SB: 1 [P3] Burning of Xinye
SB: 4 [FNM] Tormod's Crypt
SB: 1 [GP] Shattering Spree
SB: 1 [MR] Trash for Treasure
SB: 1 [PT] Boiling Seas
SB: 1 [US] Smokestack
SB: 4 [PT] Devastation
SB: 1 [SC] Decree of Annihilation
SB: 1 [7E] Pyroclasm

Your posting this in the Tezzeret Stax thread, why? I see 0 Tezzeret's in that decklist.

Wildfire seems really bad against opposing 4/5 Tarmogoyf's, and 4RR to blow up 4 lands doesn't seem as powerful as Armageddon, which only requires 1 colored mana.

I think Covetous Dragon is an interesting card from red, though.

kicks_422

09-17-2008, 09:32 PM

I didn't see anyone else correct you, so I will. Actually, the name Stax doesn't come from Smokestack. It came from the original name $T4KS, which was short for The Four Thousand Dollar Solution. And, yes, they did invert the T and $. On a side note, I'll have to agree Smokestack doesn't belong in the deck. If you're going to build a Tezzeret deck, I would suggest a deck like Happy Gilmore posted. Here is my current list and so far it's been ROCKING the format (to the point that people leave mid game in pure anger):
// Deck file for Magic Workstation (http://www.magicworkstation.com)

// Lands
2 [RAV] Island (2)
2 [MR] Great Furnace
4 [TE] Ancient Tomb
4 [ON] Polluted Delta
4 [B] Volcanic Island
4 [EX] City of Traitors

// Spells
1 [TSP] Lotus Bloom
4 [MR] Chalice of the Void
4 [JU] Burning Wish
4 [GP] Izzet Signet
3 [MR] Thirst for Knowledge
3 [DS] Trinisphere
4 [NE] Tangle Wire
4 [FUT] Coalition Relic
3 [UD] Thran Dynamo
4 [AL] Force of Will
3 [P3] Burning of Xinye
3 [P2] Wildfire

// Sideboard
SB: 1 [P3] Burning of Xinye
SB: 4 [FNM] Tormod's Crypt
SB: 1 [GP] Shattering Spree
SB: 1 [MR] Trash for Treasure
SB: 1 [PT] Boiling Seas
SB: 1 [US] Smokestack
SB: 4 [PT] Devastation
SB: 1 [SC] Decree of Annihilation
SB: 1 [7E] Pyroclasm

Why run Force of Will when you only have 7 blue cards in the deck?

Jaynel

09-17-2008, 09:38 PM

He really needs to edit his post, but Force of Will is standing in for Tezzeret, as they both cost 3UU.

kicks_422

09-17-2008, 09:45 PM

Oh.

In that case, I like the deck. Hanni, being able to Wildfire on Turn 4 is much better than Armageddon, especially when you have lots of artifact mana left behind to rebuild.

Rush

09-18-2008, 03:53 PM

Yes, yes, Force=Tezzeret. I kept forgetting to post that...

MTG Guru

09-18-2008, 05:11 PM

Yes, yes, Force=Tezzeret. I kept forgetting to post that...

You keep forgetting that Force of Will is a playable card. Most people use unplayable cards as proxies for obvious reasons.

Mastikor

10-04-2008, 01:16 PM

what about this:

4 tezzeret THE SICKER
4 stax
4 tangle wire
4 trinisphere
4 chalice
4 propaganda
4 pendrell mists
3 crucible
4 thirst/standstill?

4 mox
4 tomb
4 city
4 waste
4 seat
4 faerie conclave/island
1 ruins

sb:needle, keg, chill, sphere of resistance, gilded drake

blacklotus3636

10-04-2008, 11:34 PM

When I first saw tezzeret I thought it was busted but after thinking through the fact that you can only use 1 ability per turn its actually quite tame. I think its still ok as a win condition in a control esque shell but not much more. It has some interesting possibilities though

Hanni

10-05-2008, 11:44 PM

Actually DC, I think Loam is a pretty good idea. Intuition works much better with Loam, and a 3/1 split to diversify engine cards is also good.

Life from the Loam enables some strong Intuition piles, including Academy Ruins and Engineered Explosives. Getting the recursion engine online for Painter/Grindstone is pretty strong as well.

The deck doesn't really need to be able to hardcast Leyline to play Leyline, since the deck often mulligans into it against the decks it comes in against. Hitting BB reliably is horrible on the manabase, and 3c is going to be bad for the manabase. I still think Leyline/Helm is the correct graveyard hate choice.

Here's what I'm playing now:

U/g Tezzeret Stax

// Lands
4 [ON] Polluted Delta
4 [A] Tropical Island
4 [APL] Island (2)
4 [TE] Ancient Tomb
4 [EX] City of Traitors
1 [TSP] Academy Ruins
1 [TE] Wasteland
1 [DK] Maze of Ith
4 [JGC] Mishra's Factory

// Creatures
4 [LRW] Tezzeret the Seeker
1 [SHM] Painter's Servant

// Spells
1 [TE] Grindstone
4 [TE] Intuition
1 [RAV] Life from the Loam
3 [10E] Crucible of Worlds
4 [MR] Chalice of the Void
4 [DS] Trinisphere
4 [US] Smokestack
3 [FD] Engineered Explosives
4 [SH] Mox Diamond

// Sideboard
SB: 3 [DK] Maze of Ith
SB: 1 [FD] Engineered Explosives
SB: 1 [NE] Tangle Wire
SB: 1 [AL] Helm of Obedience
SB: 1 [FNM] Tormod's Crypt
SB: 4 [GP] Leyline of the Void
SB: 4 [UD] Masticore

I've been devoting most of my playtime to ANT, but I'm going to try and playtest this again. I'm considering dropping 1 Tropical Island for 1 Underground Sea and 1 Engineered Explosives for 1 Executioner's Capsule. Capsule pretty much answers everything else that EE didn't, and against Stompy decks, EE @ 3 is pretty strong.

Poron

10-06-2008, 05:35 AM

sorry but why no Mana Vortex?

imho is as good as Smokestack when you have a Propaganda

Dark_Cynic87

10-06-2008, 06:50 AM

3-color would sound difficult to those who have never played it, but I encourage you to give Heat Seeker a go. Green isn't any more neccessary than black in the build. I've got 3x Deltas, and 5 duals (3x Sea, 2x Trop), along with the commonality of 4x Moxen and a basic Island. That's 13 sources. More than enough, especially when 10 give access to black, 9 to green, and 12 to blue.

I don't think capsule >>>>>>>> EE. Seriously, a recurring EE is amazing, whereas a recurring capsule doesn't have near the applications that EE does.

I think Painter combo isn't as good here. Leyline actually has a purpose without the combo, but neither grindstone nor Painter have a purpose on their own. Helm can occasionally grab you a goyf or Tombstalker or something once in a while (heaven forbid you hit a D. Confidant, lol) in a pinch. If nothing else you can slowly try to mill them, hitting creatures when you have to with an active Smokestack, slowly milling them to death. Use the creatures as blockers or whatever you want.

Thanks for the positive feedback, Hanni.

Pce,

--DC

Windux

10-06-2008, 07:03 AM

I like the Wildfire list.
But why do you don't try to fit 4 Mox Diamonds in it?
This would make a Turn 1 Signet, Chalice1 or even 3mana first turn possible which seems hugh in this deck.

_erbs_

10-16-2008, 02:55 AM

under certain builds i think force of will could be removed in the list

Mastikor

10-27-2008, 11:11 AM

Ok here is another version of mono-U Tezzeret stax:
3 Smokestack
4 Chalice
4 Trinisphere
4 Crucible
4 Mana vortex
4 Propaganda
4 Pendrell mists
3 Tezzeret
4 Mox diamond

4 City of traitors
4 Ancient tomb
4 Seat of syond
4 Wasteland
3 Mishras factory
1 Academy ruins
6 island

It is quite similar to white stax (prison and tabernacle effects, Vortex for Armageddon), so I think it could work as well. It runs less win-cons so it is a bit slower, but I think Tezzeret is sicker then Angel. Academy ruins rock also.

Anusien

10-27-2008, 12:12 PM

Winter Orb is insanely good. You absolutely want 4; otherwise you only have 4 turn 1 plays (Chalice of the Void).

You need at least one Ensnaring Bridge; otherwise Tezzeret comes into play and immediately dies to creatures.

Why not Crystal Vein? I've found they are often times invaluable in being extra acceleration. For that matter, 26 lands is a bunch!

3 Smokestack is a lot for a card that slow. I really really love having the extra Ghostly Prisons there.

Apex

11-01-2008, 09:21 PM

So this deck is making huge waves in PT Berlin (extended), being the only deck that's undefeated after 16 rounds. It faced and crushed a bunch of faeries deck, elves deck, zoo deck, etc to make it into the top 8 as first seed.

Here is the link to the extended decklist: http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/eventcoverage/ptber08/t8decks
(http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/eventcoverage/ptber08/t8decks)

Can a legacy version of this deck be competitive somewhat? I think so, I mean, The Tezzerator (the name of the deck, I kid you not) employs a bunch of cards that see regular play in legacy, so minus a few chaffs and add a few tweaks here and there, and I think this could do well, considering it's suppose to have a ridiculously good percentage against aggro-control decks.

Here is a list I drafted in like 5 minutes. In true legacy fashion, I threw 4x Force of Will and 4x Brainstorm in there, and it seems decent in a few goldfish. Though I think additional work needs to be done to it, considering the amount of time I've played around Chalice for 1 (however, Chalice for 2 is crazy good for this deck, considering it has ZERO cards that costs 2). I've been loving the Ensnaring Bridge particularly, it's just so strong.

// Lands
3 [ON] Polluted Delta
1 [B] Volcanic Island
1 [MR] Great Furnace
4 [MR] Seat of the Synod
2 [TSP] Academy Ruins
4 [TE] Ancient Tomb
3 [UNH] Island
3 [ON] Flooded Strand
1 [B] Tropical Island

// Creatures
4 [FD] Trinket Mage
3 [ALA] Tezzeret the Seeker

// Spells
4 [MR] Chrome Mox
3 [FD] Engineered Explosives
2 [MR] Chalice of the Void
2 [CHK] Sensei's Divining Top
1 [SOK] Pithing Needle
1 [MR] AEther Spellbomb
1 [MR] Pyrite Spellbomb
3 [DIS] Spell Snare
3 [SC] Stifle
4 [MR] Thirst for Knowledge
1 [SH] Ensnaring Bridge
2 [FD] Vedalken Shackles
4 [AL] Force of Will

Also, before anyone say this, Chalice @ 1 is a very legitimate play apparently, since that's how Oberg got through 23% of the zoo decks in Berlin + like 7% combo elves. I think tight play is required, but the apparent anti-synergy with Chalice @ 1 is actually not SO bad. I guess the 1 drops are for the time when you can't get Chalice online for 1, and they do a decent job.

wildmonger

11-02-2008, 01:53 AM

pantos

11-08-2008, 10:01 AM

My attempt of a monoblue Tez-Stax, after some online testing:
(Air Elemental = Tezzeret)

// Lands
4 [TE] Ancient Tomb
4 [EX] City of Traitors
4 [AQ] Mishra's Factory (3)
4 [TE] Wasteland
1 [LG] The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale
8 [RAV] Island (2)
1 [TSP] Academy Ruins

// Creatures
3 [10E] Air Elemental

// Spells
4 [MR] Chalice of the Void
4 [10E] Crucible of Worlds
4 [DS] Trinisphere
4 [SH] Mox Diamond
4 [4E] Winter Orb
1 [US] Smokestack
2 [NE] Tangle Wire
4 [TE] Propaganda
2 [VI] Dream Tides
1 [R] Meekstone
1 [10E] Pithing Needle

Tezzeret's first ability is only of little use, it untaps two animated Mishras under Winter Orb at most. The second ability rocks, the third one is a good finisher. I wish the first ability would untap lands...
There are no artifact lands in the list, it just hurts too much if they get destroyed by deed, etc. Plus, I don't like shaky manabases.
I'm not so happy with Tangle Wire though, of course it's great with Winter Orb, but on its own, it is not strong enough (in my opinion, but didn't find anything that fits better into the deck)

Luca_Girolami

12-01-2008, 08:06 AM

I'm currently running a White Stax deck, but when I figure out how Tezzeret can be such a powersource, I started thinking about to rebuild it in blue.

This is my take:

Spells (35)
3 Tezzeret the Seeker
4 Chalice of the Void
4 Crucible of Worlds
2 Dream Tides
4 Mox Diamond
4 Propaganda
3 Reshape
3 Smokestack
4 Tangle Wire
4 Trinisphere

Lands (25)
1 Academy Ruins
4 Ancient Tomb
4 City of Traitors
4 Island
4 Darksteel Citadel
4 Seat of the Synod
4 Wasteland

Sideboard (15)
3 Defense Grid
3 Pithing Needle
3 Relic of Progenitus
2 Tormod's Crypt
4 ?

Comments?

Patrick

12-01-2008, 10:03 AM

I'm just throwing an idea out there. This probably isn't good enough for tournament play, but it seems fun.

Paradox Haze
2u
Enchant Player
At the beginning of enchanted player's first upkeep each turn, that player gets an additional upkeep step after this step.

This seems to have really good synergy with things like Smokestack, Tabernacle effects, Tangle Wire or whatever. Best of all, when you have this and Smokestack down, if they ever turn the 2nd upkeep into something they want you can pitch Paradox Haze into Smokestack.

Like I said, not competitive, but fun.

jazzykat

12-01-2008, 11:59 AM

Played this list to a 4-0 record today in nyc. Been playing this for the last 2 weeks.Enjoying it alot.I will post my matchups later when i have a full chance to look over my notes.

4 Smokestack
4 trinisphere
4 mox diamond
4 goblin welder
4 though cast
3 intuition
3 tangle wire
3 chalice of void
3 crucible of worlds
2 engineered explosives
2 sphere of resistance
1 Tezzeret
1 pithing needle

4 ancient tomb
4 city of traitors
2 Polluted delta
2 bloodstained mire
4 volcanic island
1 island
1 mountain
1 wasteland
1 academy ruins
1 factory

SB
3 blood moon
3 red elemental blast
3 echoing truth
3 tornod’s crypt
3 shattering spree

I would greatly appreciate your notes. Here are my initial questions:

1. Thirst for Knowledge is where? I see that you have intuition but...?
2. Thoughtcast is fascinating here, what is the average turn that you are able to cast it?
3. CotV=1 + Welder + Needle= How do you mitigate this level of incompatability?
4. Is 3sphere the backbreaker here? It seems that most of the format get's destroyed by CotV=1 but 3sphere does bring a whole other level of pain.

5. Anti-creature measures = Tangle Wire? Why no propagandas?

jazzykat

12-02-2008, 01:46 PM

The deck posted by wildmonger has potential. If I'm not mistaken his MD was only 59 so I added an extra island. I found that Thoughtcast was almost never cast, so I changed to Thirst for Knowledge and the deck started to really rip.

I really like having welder with the opponent but the dead cards when chalice at 1 down isn't as much of an issue as I thought it would be. However, I am not convinced that it is acceptable yet.

yawg07

12-02-2008, 01:52 PM

I havent read through the whole thread yet, but a friend of mine build W/u Stax.
And because of Tezzeret's power, he included one Painter and one Grindstone.

It won him a lot of games a lot quicker.
Sure, you include all the lockdown, that stuff helps keep Tezz around/in play.
But you might as well just win the turn after you play him.

klaus

12-02-2008, 07:47 PM

Just in case anyone cares. Here's my version (based on Anusien's SCG list):

UW-Tezz-Stax

2 Academy Ruins
4 Ancient Tomb
4 City of Traitors
3 Flagstones
5 Island
1 Seat of the Synod
2 Tundra
4 Wasteland
4 Mox Diamond

WIN:
3 Tezzeret the Seeker
1 Smokestack

LOCK:
4 Chalice of the Void
4 Crucible of Worlds
1 Dream Tides
1 Ensnaring Bridge
3 Ghostly Prison
3 Propaganda-------3-3 split due to REBs
4 Mana Vortex
4 Trinisphere
3 Winter Orb

SB:
3 Defense Grid
3 Ethersworn Canonist
3 Oblivion Ring
3 Pithing Needle
3 Chill

Mordel

12-04-2008, 04:18 AM

You may find yourself hating the Vortexes...I know I did quite a bit in a relatively small amount of test matches.

My experience with them was them functionally being similar to smokestack, except causing me to sacrifice my ability to force an opponent to to lose everything on their board in exchange for a faster, but more risky lock piece.

This arrived at this conclusion after a small number of matches against stuff like dreadstill and ubg stuff with goyfs(in general), but it left a bad taste in my mouth all the same.

f|i[p]

12-04-2008, 07:10 AM

@wild mongers list

I like the way your list focuses on the early lock. Its very focused. Welders though are very vulnerable. But it does help the lock a lot.

@ klaus

How do you protect tezz in you list? I don't get it... No matter how many prisons and propaganda pieces you put in there, it wont protect tezz. Only one smokestack? If you can win via tezz since Im quite sure he will get tons of attacks, how else would you win?

raggster

01-08-2009, 06:03 PM

I'm currently testing this list:

3 Seat of Synod
1 Academy Ruins
10 Island
4 Wasteland
4 Ancient Tomb
3 City of Traitors
//25 lands

4 Mox Diamond
//4 non-land mana

4 Mana Vortex
4 Smokestack
4 Crucible of Worlds
4 Chalice of the Void
4 Trinisphere
//24 control pieces

2 Ensnaring Bridge
1 Bottled Cloister
//3 defense

1 Tormod's Crypt
1 Pithing Needle
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Helm of Obedience
1 Jester's Cap
//5 toolkit

4 Tezzeret the Seeker
//4 Wincons

I'm using a toolkit (which technically includes Ensnaring Bridge and Bottled Cloister) instead of a usual defense suite because our local metal is so ridiculously volatile. The toolkit needs lots of work, though, as I'm fairly certain that Helm and Jester's Cap are sub-par except in the most specific of instances. I'm considering:

- Oblivion Stone
- Vedalken Shackles
- Winter Orb

Anything else worth looking into?

Sideboard is still pending, as I need to wade through a few week's worth of tournament reports. Is it worth it, though, to keep the Helm main and then include 4x Leyline of the Void on the side? Any success/bombo stories here?

DukeDemonKn1ght

01-08-2009, 06:25 PM

I like Tezzeret Stax, but I really don't get why no one seems to play Trinket Mage in this deck. It takes a little bit of pressure off of Tezzeret to have to search up anything and everything so you can concentrate on getting his ultimate off for the win, and it searches for Chalice, Explosives, Tormod's Crypt, etc etc. Plus, if you get the rare three-mana first turn (mox+2 mana land), you can play Trinket Mage on your first turn...

Sure, it's not a first-turn Chalice, but Trinket Mage is basically a virtual Chalice numbers 5-8 in this deck, along with a 2/2 chump blocker thrown in. Why does he get no love?

wildmonger

01-08-2009, 08:46 PM

With the closing of neutral ground i lost my play area.So magic hasent been on top of my list lately. Sunday though there was a local tourney with about 20 people. I played of course tezzet which right now is my favorite deck.I went 4-1. Here goes the list

4 Smokestack
4 trinisphere
4 mox diamond
4 goblin welder
3 thirst for knowledge
3 intuition
3 tangle wire
3 chalice of void
3 crucible of worlds
3 sphere of resistance
2 engineered explosives
2 pithing needle
1 Tezzeret

4 ancient tomb
4 city of traitors
2 Polluted delta
2 bloodstained mire
4 volcanic island
1 island
1 mountain
1 wasteland
1 academy ruins
1 factory

SB
3 blood moon
3 red elemental blast
3 echoing truth
3 tornod’s crypt
3 shattering spree

I toyed around with propaganda but i just felt it wasnt right for me not saying it cant be played but i found it to be lack luster when i drew it and wanted intuition or thirst.

I would have notes if i didnt spill soda on my pad. My loss came against team america i think i drew 22 land in 2 games not much to be said i got stomped. Beat thresh,Burn,rock,and a deck full of cards not 60 cards either id say about 140.

Overall the deck is extremly fun dont know if i would run it in a big tourney but i plan to drive to one of the tournaments posted here 1 day. If anyone in nyc 5 boroughs wants to test let me know.

raggster

01-09-2009, 05:48 PM

I like Tezzeret Stax, but I really don't get why no one seems to play Trinket Mage in this deck.

As far as tutors go, Intuition feels like the better tutor for the same cost, IMHO, as it can tutor lock pieces that Trinket Mage can't (Trinisphere, Smokestack, Crucible) and it can fetch non-artifacts like Tezzeret.

DukeDemonKn1ght

02-01-2009, 01:47 AM

As far as tutors go, Intuition feels like the better tutor for the same cost, IMHO, as it can tutor lock pieces that Trinket Mage can't (Trinisphere, Smokestack, Crucible) and it can fetch non-artifacts like Tezzeret.

Intuition is pretty cool, I have to admit.

I was wondering if anyone sees potential in Esperzoa, the new card coming out in Conflux, along with Master of Etherium, to give this deck a creature base to protect Tezzeret, and more teeth in general... Here's a mock-up I threw together:

Deep Blue Stax

3 Tangle Wire
3 Trinisphere
4 Smokestack
4 Crucible of Worlds
4 Chalice of ye Olde Voide

2 Mana Vortex
4 Thirst for Knowledge (or Intuition)

3 Esperzoa
3 Master of Etherium
4 Tezzeret the Seeker

4 Wasteland
4 Seat of the Synod
1 Academy Ruins
4 Ancient Tomb
3 City of Traitors
6 Island
4 Mox Diamond

*Trinisphere in the main-deck might need to be cut in order to fit in more lands. I think Blinkmoth Nexus has potential with Crucible, but we need to use as many blue sources as possible, so I don't think it's worth it. Seat of the Synod may prove to be too destructible, but it pumps up MoE and gives Esperzoa a zero-cost bounce spell other than Chalice or Mox... I'm interested to know what people think of the artifact lands.

*As far as the creatures, if we wanted to run more, I think Myr Enforcer, Trinket Mage, and Somber Hoverguard would all make decent options. Trinket Mage would be the first that I would try.

*Also, Force of Will might prove to be necessary, I'd strongly consider taking out 3Sphere to run FoW.

...So, I notice this thread has been dead recently, but what do people think of the list? I think the main thing that Esperzoa enables in particular, is to really fuck people over with Tangle Wire. And I've noticed that a fair amount of Stax players lament that there's no decent way to run Tangle Wire in Legacy, so I figured this may just be it...!!

3duece

02-03-2009, 11:29 PM

The new sweet card from conflux looks like Master Transmuter to me. I'm working on a Staxless Stax list I call 10 Sphere Blue. Looks something like this pile here:
8 Island
4 Seat of the Synod
4 Ancient Tomb
4 City of Traitors
2 Academy Ruins
3 Chrome Mox
4 Etherium Sculptor

4 Thirst for Knowledge
4 Propoganda
2 Tezzeret, the Seeker
1 Master of Etherium
2 Master Transmuter
4 Chalice of the Void
4 Tangle Wire
4 Sphere of Resistance
4 Thorn of Amythest
2 Trinisphere

This deck is pissing me off because it can almost play force of will but it's just a tad short on blue. The star in here is etherium sculptor, if one sticks it's kinda like playing 8 mishra's workshops. This is basically the fastest staxish deck I've ever played in legacy. Here's a breakdown of my card choices:
Academy Ruins: Very strong in a deck with 32 artifacts, gets back tangle wire and cards pitched to thirst.
Seat of the Synod: recurrable by ruins, pitches to thirst, pumps master of etherium, gets big under tez.
Ancient Tomb, City of Traitors: standard stax fare.
Chrome Mox: I run enough blue to support three, since I don't run wasteland there's no crucible so mox diamond would be weak.
Thirst for Knowledge: Best draw engine for this deck.
Tangle Wire: Very strong in the current meta with the rise of land and threat light decks, many decks run 8-12 threats and only 17 or 18 land making tangle wire mvp.
10 Spheres: These are the heart of the deck. It's funny watching someone cast a five mana brainstorm.
Etherium Sculptor: This card is balls to the wall. It has great synergy with spheres and, like I said above, makes ancient tomb and city of traitors mishra's workshop.
Tez: Actually more of a support card than the center of the deck, he allows you to grab more lock pieces if you need them, free land and kill either through his ultimate or fetching master of etherium.
Master of Etherium: this guy is my primary quick win, he's fethable through tez, recurrable through academy and bouncable through transmuter, and he gets as big as countryside crusher.
Master Transmuter: I love this card. Since returning the artifact is the cost and putting one into play is the effect, you can return a tangle wire and put it back into play fully charged. It protects all your artifacts including itself and is just generally awesome.

f|i[p]

02-04-2009, 12:40 AM

I am not sure if you even thought of this, but Master transmuter, etherium sculptor and master of etherium can't be imprinted on your chrome mox.THis means you only 10 cards that you can imprint.

If you actually look at the blue/white stax that made top 1 recently, It played Sower of temptations, tfk and glen elendra/chills on the sideboard. Might give you some ideas.

scrow213

02-05-2009, 01:43 PM

Only bad stax decks play 4 crucible.

I LOL'd. "Only bad players play 4 copies of a major component to the hard lock in a prison deck." Anyway, Stax is reliant on an early heavy disruption, so I think you must run:

4x Trinisphere (crippling to most decks)
4x Chalice of the Void (Chalice @1 first turn is brutal as well)

Either of those two plays on first turn buy a lot of time. If you are going a Stax route, Trinisphere is a minor inconvenience at best, with 8 lands that tap for 2 mana, a high land count, moxen, etc.

Apart from this, Propaganda, Thirst for Knowledge, Academy Ruins, Intuition are all good ideas. I currently play Armegeddon Stax, and it runs Ghostly Prisons, so Propaganda makes sense. I saw Winter Orb mentioned, which may or may not work. Perhaps March of the Machines as a backup?

The biggest problem I forsee is that there doesn't seem to be enough mana taxing. Without Magus of the Tabernacle and Armageddon, your opponent will eventually build up enough mana to get past Trinispheres, Chalices, etc.

jazzykat

02-05-2009, 03:34 PM

[QUOTE=3duece;316238]The new sweet card from conflux looks like Master Transmuter to me. I'm working on a Staxless Stax list I call 10 Sphere Blue. Looks something like this pile here:
8 Island
4 Seat of the Synod
4 Ancient Tomb
4 City of Traitors
2 Academy Ruins
3 Chrome Mox
4 Etherium Sculptor

4 Thirst for Knowledge
4 Propoganda
2 Tezzeret, the Seeker
1 Master of Etherium
2 Master Transmuter
4 Chalice of the Void
4 Tangle Wire
4 Sphere of Resistance
4 Thorn of Amythest
2 Trinisphere
QUOTE]

Cool deck.

I think that you should play 3 or 4 3sphere.

I think that you should consider affinity creatures/spells (Thoughtcast?) as your artifact count is bonkers and it doesn't seem like you are completely taking advantage of that.

As mentioned before, Chrome mox doesn't work the way you want it to.

I don't think that your disruption is complete enough to shut down any deck but combo and land light aggro control. I think that you probably get squished by Rock, Landstill, Aggroloam...

Since you are playing blue consider pendrell mists paired with propaganda and Smokestack should keep creature decks back.

Considering the amount of basics you run, you can also consider splashing red for MD bloodmoons which should come down on turn 2 normally and then will protect you from your own CoT.

Remember SoR and ToA are relatively symetrical especially since you play CoT and don't have Crucibles and wastes.

raggster

02-08-2009, 05:20 PM

Just a few thoughts after loads of testing:

Propaganda and Pendrell Mists are generally ineffective without Armageddon. Mana Vortex is a poor substitute, as it is slow, useless in late game, and will not lock out an opponent when it hits play in the same way that Armageddon would with Magus of the Tabernacle and Ghostly Prison in play. I haven't tested Parallax Tide yet, but this might work slightly better depending on the board state.

I also tested Winter Orb but still found that it won't keep a single large beat down long enough to stall into a more favorable game state for you. The combination of Tangle Wire and Winter Orb *does* present possibilities though, but I can't find anything to cut for the Wires, as it is usually an either-or thing between Tangle Wire and Propaganda/Pendrell Mists.

I've been thinking about the Transmuter and think she could make a good addition, but it would not be advisable to have only her as the creature content of the deck, as she would then become the target of every single removal spell in your opponent's deck. This means you pretty much have to run a threat that is lots more threatening than her.

I was thinking of something along the lines of this (http://magiccards.info/ds/en/146.html).

Any thoughts?

Anusien

02-12-2009, 02:07 PM

I think you're severely underestimating Winter Orb. It's one of the best cards in the deck.

raggster

02-17-2009, 08:33 AM

I think I was too. :) Done some more testing, Winter Orb combines surprisingly well with Tangle Wire, and Master Transmuter makes it almost a hard lock with Trinisphere or a Chalice for 1 in play. It makes for an interesting Plan B in case Smokestack doesn't come online fast enough.

Will test a bit more, but right now the only problems I'm seeing are quick swarm-type decks like Affinity and Goblins, popular archetypes in my meta.

Quick rules question: If the Tangle Wire tap trigger is on the stack and it gets bounced before the tap trigger resolves, does the ability "remember" the last known number of fade counters on Tangle Wire and then tap down accordingly, or does it "see" no fade counters (since the Tangle Wire is no longer in play) and simply not tap anything?

elof

02-17-2009, 08:35 AM

Tangle Wires fade counters is locked in with the trigger. Even if you bounce it, you'll still have to tap... (a very common thing in vintage)

raggster

02-17-2009, 09:24 AM

Tangle Wires fade counters is locked in with the trigger. Even if you bounce it, you'll still have to tap... (a very common thing in vintage)

Cool, thanks for the info! :)

elof

02-17-2009, 10:09 AM

Cool, thanks for the info! :)

NP. Same is true for Smokestack. I'm not sure how the wording should be for it to "check twice" but I know that Oath of Druids and Bridge from Below checks twice.

DireLemming

02-17-2009, 10:24 AM

NP. Same is true for Smokestack. I'm not sure how the wording should be for it to "check twice" but I know that Oath of Druids and Bridge from Below checks twice.
There needs to be an "intervening if":

404.3. A triggered ability may read "When/Whenever/At . . . , if [condition], [effect]." The ability checks for the stated condition to be true when the trigger event occurs. If it is, the ability triggers. On resolution, the ability rechecks the condition. If the condition isn't true at either of those times, the ability does nothing. This rule is referred to as the "intervening 'if' clause" rule. Note that the word "if" has only its normal English meaning anywhere else in the text of a card; this rule only applies to an "if" that immediately follows a trigger condition.

http://mtgsalvation.com/461-cranial-insertion-all-about-triggered-abilities.html

mercc

04-30-2009, 06:53 AM

How about a bump for this thread?

I'm thinking about taking the 2 strongest stax-colors and mixing 'em up.

Blue has Thirst for knowledge and trinket mage and tezzeret.

Red has Blood Moon effects.

White has armageddon.

Black has... hmm, bitterblossom?

Green has... garruk? :S

Mastikor

04-30-2009, 07:02 AM

I think mixing blue and white could be good. Lots of creature disturption (Propaganda+Prison, Magus+Mists)... Maybe even the new Wall of Denial and MM?

DireLemming

04-30-2009, 11:16 AM

mercc

05-02-2009, 04:05 AM

I have to admit i haven't tried it, but my guess is that green just doesn't make the stax-cut.

I think red has the most powerful effect in blood moon, but everything else in red basically sucks if you don't play vintage with welders. (yes, i have played dragon stompy)

Blue has the "search your library"-effects which i love with trinket, tezzeret, intuition and just good carddraw with thirst.

Bitterblossom seems good with smokestack, but bitterblossom has to be good without smokestack aswell which i'm doubtful to.

White has armageddon which can wreak havoc!

If you combine what angel-stax lack with the power of blue, then you might have something :)

gamegeek2

05-02-2009, 10:51 PM

6 Island
4 Seat of the Synod
4 City of Traitors
4 Ancient Tomb
4 Wasteland
2 Academy Ruins

3 Master of Etherium
3 Trinket Mage
3 Tezzeret the Seeker

4 Trinisphere
4 Chalice of the Void
4 Propaganda
4 Thirst for Knowledge
4 Mox Diamond
4 Crucible of Worlds
3 Smokestack

Straightforward stax. Master of Etherium provides good beats and a way to beat up Goyfs. Academy Ruins is truly an amazing card in this deck - you'll eventually force everything through with it in there.

Dark_Cynic87

05-03-2009, 06:18 PM

You probably want Green; see Sun Tower (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?t=5006&highlight=sun+tower) in it's final incarnation. Some discussions on Eternal Garden (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3668&highlight=sun+tower) may also be relevant.

Let it be known that mordel and I are currently working on a new Sun Tower list that will be more flexible given the fluctuation of the current and future metagame. Things have changed since the last build (one I worked on heavily with Emidln. The Intuition -->LftL, Ruins, [instert artifact here] was initially my idea for stax. While it still works, the red part of the old Sun Tower list is outdated and useless in most matchups anymore. When we get something worked up, we will be posting it here in the N&D forum.

Tezzeret Stax is fine and whatnot, but I think you guys are forgetting a few of the better cards from the colors you don't use much with stax. Let me assist:

GREEN: Sylvan Library, a house of a card in stax. Also, Words of Wilding. In tandem with Library, you can make 3 bears with one out, 5 with 2, 7 with 3 and 9 with 4. I've ramped my smokestack up to 5 before and actually gained permanents. This allows you to win quicker as they lose permanents more rapidly and you have nigh-infinite creatures ready to swing as soon as the game-state swings to your favor. Don't say Goyf, it's not good in Stax.

RED: Red does have blood moon effects, but more importantly, it has Rolling Earthquake. While it's quite expensive, it can be used as a burn spell against your opponent, takes out goblins, and any/all flyers you run into as well. Then to top it off, there is Aether Flash, which Emidln used also to combat goblins. You can drop it as early as turn 2. Then there is Boil, and also the sorcery-speed Boiling Seas, which if you choose, can be a Burning Wish, another card that has certain (albeit limited) uses within stax. Also, Words of War acts as both creature removal and a win-con. Also, while it's not red, Barbarian Ring is also removal/win-con that pretty much is required that you run red.

BLACK: Black has a plethora of stax-worthy cards, most of which are much better than Bitterblossom. Nether Void, Chains of Mephistopheles, Seal of Doom, Ill-Gotten Gains, Leyline of the Void along with Helm of Obedience for a combo win (and goes well with IGG), and those are just off the top of my head.

BLUE: Intuition is one of the best cards I've used in Stax. I have yet to build a stax list without it since I started using it. It creates such a consistancy that I can't really do without it. Paired with Sylvan Library, you are never without an answer. Blue has a ton of stuff, and is one of my favorite stax colors, and goes quite well in tandem with Tezzeret. For starters, it gets you Tezzeret. I had a UBg build of Tezzeret Stax and had the win by turn 4. Not the lock, the win. Used the combo with LotV and Helm. Turn 0 Leyline, Turn one Diamond pitching Factory, Tomb into Trinisphere, turn two Island, Intuition for 3x Tezzeret, turn 3 City of Traitors, Tezzeret into Helm, pay one for the mill, say go, win. Beautiful.

WHITE: Angelstax speaks for itself; all versions of it prove that white is still highly competitive in Legacy. Words of Worship is also nuts, and can combo with Test of Endurance for a win-condition.

Those are my takes on the colors and what cards are useful.

Pce,

--DC

mercc

05-04-2009, 02:32 PM

I see the obvious synergy between sylvan library and uba mask/words of wilding. But that kind of deck hasn't had a decent showing in the last year?

Dark_Cynic87

05-04-2009, 02:51 PM

Uba Mask is not good. It used to be decent, but anymore it's a permanent to sacrifice to smokestack at best and a dead card at worst. It's only playable with Welder IMO and as we know, that's not a viable card in legacy stax thanks in large part to Chalice @ 1 being the best turn one play other than a trinisphere.

Who cares if it hasn't had a showing? If anything it's because Angelstax is a more played, easier to afford list (no duals). What's it have that's extremely expensive? Moat? That's dutch stax and only good in certain metagames. Sun Tower is a great list and would definitely make top8 at most tournaments if the pilot knew the list and how to play. It's a bit more difficult because while you have the ability to search for lock pieces via Intuition along with the library manipulation of fetches plus Sylvan Library, it's difficult to look ahead and see what you are going to be needing soon enough to tutor for it and get it back into your hand via your Academy Ruins. It takes forethought, and it is difficult because there is a lot you don't know, their hand, there next draw or two, etc.

Throw a list together sun tower style and see the advantages of Library and Intuition. I promise you won't be disappointed with the results. My favorite play is a turn one 3sphere, turn 2 Library. Card advantage + Virtual Card advantage = much better chance at winning.

There's even synergy between Lorescale Coatl and Library. I'm pretty sure it's not for a stax list, but there's something valuable there IMO.

Pce,

--DC

Mastikor

05-04-2009, 04:32 PM

Ok since this is a TezzStax thread I suggest we stick to it. Here's what I was thinking about lately:

3 Tezz

4 Ganda
4 Mists
4 TfK

4 Chalice
3 Crucible
3 Smokestack
2 Winter Orb
1 Needle
4 Mox

4 Tomb
4 City
4 Waste
4 Seat
6 Island
2 Ruins

To compare with W Stax (which I believe is the most competitive): -Armageddon, -O ring, +advantage, +better wincon, +Ruins. Other lock pieces are similar.
It shall be tested. What do you think?

Dark_Cynic87

05-06-2009, 11:13 AM

TfK is one of those cards where it looks like it will be good, but in reality it's sub-par. Intuition is better. Try it.

Pce,

--DC

deadlock

06-04-2009, 06:33 PM

Maybe some people still fool around with this idea.
Here is a rough version of a build that is a Tezzeret Stax / Painter hybrid. Perhaps this gives some ideas to people:

// Lands
4 [EX] City of Traitors
4 [TE] Ancient Tomb
9 [10E] Island (3)
3 [TSP] Academy Ruins
4 [MR] Seat of the Synod

// Creatures
4 [SHM] Painter's Servant
3 [ALA] Tezzeret the Seeker
3 [LRW] Jace Beleren

// Spells
3 [SH] Ensnaring Bridge
4 [TE] Grindstone
4 [SH] Mox Diamond
4 [MR] Chalice of the Void
3 [DS] Trinisphere
4 [TE] Intuition
3 [NE] Tangle Wire
1 [FD] Crucible of Worlds

As you can see, this makes heavy use of Plainswalkers and uses Bridge + Tangle Wire to protect them. The Seats could possibly replaced by better lands like more blue / Mishras / Wastes.
Currently i looks like Needle is a huge problem and i can only think of Keg / Disk from the board to combat it.
Theres also the possibilty to go a more controllish route with more Crucibles / Smokestack and cut down Painter/Stone to one each.

Mastikor

06-05-2009, 04:35 AM

Hmm...Servant/Stone is a good wincon maybe, but why 4-of each? Since you're running Intuition also, it seems that Tezzeret is pretty useless. If your lock is based on Bridge, you should look at Bottoled Cloister too. Also, 3 Ruins is too much. And Jace looks bad.

mercc

06-14-2009, 10:51 AM

With 4 servants and 4 stones and 8 lands that give 2-colorless mana you can have the nuts of turn 2 win.

Ruins + Intuition is good.

The next question is which shell should you use for the combo.

RoddyVR

06-23-2009, 02:39 PM

I know it may be one of those "cool things" that people are so afraid of, but when i think of a deck that includes:
Tezzeret
Smokestack
Tanglewire
Chalice of the void

i just cant help but realy want to put Clockspinning into the deck.

4 City of Traitors
4 Ancient Tomb
4 Wasteland
2 Academy Ruins
4 Seat of Synod
8 Island

4 Mox Diamond
4 Crucible of Worlds
4 Smokestack
4 Tanglewire
4 Trinisphere
4 Chalice of the Void
3 Powder Keg

4 Clockspinning
3 Tezzeret the Seeker

Clockspinning clashes with Chalice at 1, but the uses it has with almost every other piece of the deck (including chalices not at 1) more then makes up for it i think.
Getting Tezzy up in counters faster
Making tanglewire a non expiring softlock while you try to draw into other lock pieces, as your land base grows above 2 blue and 6 colorless, you can actualy get a tanglewire up as high as you want.
Ramping up smokestack higher then you normaly would to kill off their permanants faster, then being able to take it down to 1 once that's all you need for the lock.
I'm not sure Powder Keg is the right choice (chalice at 2, and trinisphere) but if you have it, then clockspining can be used to surprise opponents who thought they still had a turn before you could blow it to kill off their stuff or who thought you'd already "passed" the number of counters they realy fear.

I think my version is seriously lacking some sort of draw/tutoring, but i dont know what to cut to fit anything like that in. Also being in blue, i keep wanting to stick force of will or some other counters in there, but again, no space. I like ancestral vision with clockspinning, but that interaction is probably too far into the "cool things" zone cause one is unlikely to buyback the clockspin used to accelerate ancestral, which then means your card advantage from visions is diminished in order to speed it up.

Mastikor

06-23-2009, 04:19 PM

The main problem of this deck is how to protect your Tezzeret (and yourself) against creatures like Goyf. White Stax can handle them (and still it has problems), but this deck just seems too vulnerable. I like Tangle Wire, but I really want to add some Propaganda, Pendrell Mists and targets for your Tezzeret (Ensnaring Bridge, Winter Orb...). I really hope this deck will see play though...

Yawgmoth

06-23-2009, 04:31 PM

I think a one of Meekstone should be put into consideration.

With Tezzeret it can be searched out to protect yourself against Thresh and a number of creatures.

Dark_Cynic87

06-23-2009, 05:33 PM

Why not use Paradox Haze with Tangle Wire?

Also, Leyline of the Void + Helm of Obedience is a good win-con with alternate uses. It's UB (My build was UBg, but I thought about going UBr), but Leyline can often be played for free, plus it's maindeck GY hate that's good against Loam (a more difficult matchup, at least in my opinion, and I played only stax varients for over a year), Ichorid, and many other 'Yard based lists. You can run helm as a 1-of and be fine, although I ran intuition and therefore chose to run 3x. I have won on turn 4 protected via Trinisphere (they had less than 3 lands) by dropping LotV turn 0, and using Tezzeret to find Helm for a win. This combo also doesn't make you use Tezzeret to find and play the combo and doesn't screw around with your Chalice plays.

Just an idea.

Pce,

--DC

Valtrix

06-24-2009, 03:27 PM

So, I have no experience with this deck, but randomly threw together a list and was playing it yesterday. I was wondering about a few cards that seem like they could be powerful here:

1) Ensnaring bridge
-> Seems like a good way to protect Tezzeret, since we want to get rid of our hand quickly anyway. Sure, your guys can't swing with Tezzeret's ultimate ability, but you can just wait and sacrifice bridge to smokestack when you need to win. (Since you'll probably need to charge tezzeret anyway) I feel like these type of decks need to mulligan even more than usual, and this, in a way, rewards that.

1b) Bottled cloister
-> I was playing with three bridges, so I threw in a 1x cloister, since I thought the draw might be nice. It seemed pretty useful all the times I had it, and was (of course) amazing with bridge. I kind of like the idea of having two card-artifact "combos" to lock down the opponent, so that tezzeret can go fetch whatever is needed.

2)Gifts ungiven/intution
-> These both seem pretty broken in the deck. I'm not sure which would be better. Everything we play should be pretty ridiculous, so this just lets you make a pile of all ridiculous cards.

3)Land win cons (Nexus, factory, heck maybe even faerie conclave)
-> We play crucible already, why not have a way to win with our lands, or additional ways to protect Tezzeret? We want to have a lot of lands for mox diamond to work already, and we only need so much blue, and this may let us run a few more lands to make more consistent plays, while still having something to do with them. They might (probably are) too slow, however.

raggster

06-29-2009, 06:34 AM

My decklist:

4 Tezzeret the Seeker
4 Chalice of the Void
4 Trinisphere
3 Crucible of Worlds
3 Smokestack
3 Tangle Wire
3 Winter Orb
3 Ensnaring Bridge
3 Master Transmuter
3 Intuition
4 Mox Diamond
2 Talisman of Progress
4 City of Traitors
4 Ancient Tomb
4 Wasteland
1 Academy Ruins
8 Island

Might be off by a card or two.

My approach with this is to slow down the game as much as possible. Early plays are always Chalice or Trinisphere, followed by a Tangle Wire. Winter Orb helps keep the Tangle Wire relevant throughout all its Fade counters and hopefully set up a second Wire after the first one bites it. Wasteland is, well, Wasteland. Crucible is a given.

Both Smokestack and Tangle Wire can be reset using Master Transmuter, which should be protected enough by Chalices and Trinispheres/Winter Orbs. There have been times when I could set my Smokestack to 4, only to bounce it at the end of my opponent's turn to set it back to 0. Master also helps keep the board locked down with Tangle Wire long enough to find a Smokestack or Tezzeret, either by topdecking or by fetch using Intuition.

This list is largely untested, save for goldfish games against some local decklists and a number of games against a BW aggrocontrol list my friend plays, so feedback is most welcome.

Dark_Cynic87

06-29-2009, 07:25 PM

Splash green for a LftL. Otherwise your Intuition piles will be less than useful, only able to tutor for 3 artifacts that are the same unless you already have an active Crucible.

Pce,

--DC

_erbs_

06-30-2009, 12:03 PM

Dark_Cynic87

07-02-2009, 09:55 PM

Nope.

It goes Untap, Upkeep, Upkeep, Draw. Not Untap, Upkeep, Draw, Upkeep, Draw.

_erbs_

07-03-2009, 03:20 AM

Nope.

It goes Untap, Upkeep, Upkeep, Draw. Not Untap, Upkeep, Draw, Upkeep, Draw.

Thanks

DukeDemonKn1ght

07-03-2009, 03:44 AM

Ok... So this list doesn't actually run Tezzeret. But it seems like a pretty solid shell to mess around with, and no offense, but it seems like some folks are getting a little caught up with "cool things" and whatnot.

So here's this Blue-White Stax list I found on DeckCheck:

creature [2]
2 Sower of Temptation

instant [4]
4 Thirst for Knowledge

sorcery [2]
2 Armageddon

enchantment [4]
4 Propaganda

artifact [23]
4 Chalice of the Void
4 Crucible of Worlds
4 Mox Diamond
3 Powder Keg
4 Smokestack
4 Trinisphere

land [25]
1 Academy Ruins
4 Ancient Tomb
3 City of Traitors
3 Flooded Strand
3 Island
2 Maze of Ith
3 Mishra's Factory
2 Tundra
4 Wasteland

60 cards

Sideboard:
3 Glen Elendra Archmage
3 Magus of the Tabernacle
3 Windborn Muse
2 Chill
2 Pithing Needle
2 Tormod's Crypt

15 cards

...Or am I just pulling this thread further away from its central topic with that?

Michael Keller

07-03-2009, 04:14 AM

It's an interesting concept; Tezz Stax without Tezz.

You could elaborate a little more on how that has been working for you. I'd be interested in knowing.

_erbs_

07-03-2009, 04:38 AM

has anyone tried running a blue stax and how does it fair in the current meta

Dark_Cynic87

07-03-2009, 10:43 AM

creature [2]
2 Sower of Temptation

instant [4]
4 Thirst for Knowledge--Bad. Looks good, it's crap. Try Intuition as a 3-of and find something better for the 4th slot.

sorcery [2]
2 Armageddon--How is this even useful in here? If they are here for the Magii in the sb, don't. Use these slots for a more synergistic idea. Either that or use the last TfK slot for a third one. Running a non-artifact card as a two of in a list with almost no CA is stupid. They never show up when you need them. The idea of stax is redundancy = consistancy. No redundancy, way less consistancy.

enchantment [4]
4 Propaganda--Ghostly Prison if you run both W and U since U cards get pwned by REB/Pyroblast, which is a concern for you in the current meta with Painter, Goblins and Storm (not that storm cares unless they EtW) doing well.

artifact [23]
4 Chalice of the Void
4 Crucible of Worlds
4 Mox Diamond
3 Powder Keg--WTF? EE >>>>>>>>>>>> Powder Keg.
4 Smokestack
4 Trinisphere

land [25]
1 Academy Ruins
4 Ancient Tomb
3 City of Traitors
3 Flooded Strand
3 Island

2 Maze of Ith--Bad. I've tried. If you are worried about fliers, put in Blinkmoth Nexus, otherwise drop these and use O-Ring. You would then still have 23 lands (I'd drop a keg//EE to up the count of land up to 24 with another Factory) Then you would have Spot Removal also, which is a better answer to everything than this is to anything.

3 Mishra's Factory
2 Tundra
4 Wasteland

60 cards

Sideboard:
3 Glen Elendra Archmage
3 Magus of the Tabernacle
3 Windborn Muse
2 Chill
2 Pithing Needle
2 Tormod's Crypt

15 cards--Drop the Muses for sure, the Glen Elendra Archmages are "Danger of Cool Things". More needles, another Crypt IMO.

I think that would help it a lot.

Pce,

--DC

raggster

09-21-2009, 05:54 PM

The unbanning of Metalworker has me excited about this deck again. I've often run into problems of locking myself out of my own mana under a Tangle Wire-Winter Orb setup, and Metalworker might just be my answer.

_erbs_

09-23-2009, 05:43 AM

Hello,
Yeah i had a similiar problem in locking myself aswell while running the old blue stax. Here is my proposed list for the legacy stax deck.

Blue stax could provide some good SB options that could help your matchups especially against stax hate. I add complicate in the SB aswell for that purpose aswell.

The win condition is not that hard aswell since you could win via one turn swing in tezzeret as compared to other legacy stax deck. If tezz gets removed you have factory or metalworker for your beatdown options.

I didn't include master transmuter in the list yet since i don't want to shake the old skeleton i had since its been doing well expect for the mana problems. I aslo added sphere of resistance for a higher chance of a early lockdown as before i couldn't since im affected by it before now with metalworker maybe it could work well.

I know master transumter could provide lots of interaction and advantages to the deck. I will definitely test her aswell.

The winter orbs are there for geddon effect and as a taxing effect for end of turn decks or decks that has tons of cantrips and to maximize my creature defense via propaganda since i don't have a tabernacle effect.

Lock [28]
4 Chalice of the Void
2 Sphere of Resistance
2 Winter Orb
4 Trinisphere
4 Tangle Wire
4 Propaganda
2 Bottled Cloister
3 Smokestack
3 Crusible of Worlds

Utilities [5]
3 Metalworker
2 Tezzeret the Seeker

Mana [27]
4 Ancient tomb
3 City of Traitors
4 Seat of Synod
5 Island
3 Mishra's Factory
3 Wasteland
1 Accademy Ruins
4 Mox Diamond

SB:
2 Relic of Progenitus
1 Tormod's Crypt
4 Complicate
3 Jester's Cap
1 Winter Orb
1 Sphere of Resistance
3 Sower of Temptation / Control Magic

jazzykat

09-23-2009, 06:38 AM

Pendrell Mists which I believe was mentioned earlier in the thread is a different take on Tabernacle and is a whole lot harder to get rid of than a land.

deadlock

09-23-2009, 07:32 AM

@_erbs_
While i think your list is a good starting point, it doesnt play out the advantages of playing a blue based Tezz/Metalworker Staxlike deck. The biggest question is, why play this and not Armageddon Stax?
So we have:
- Greater consistency, while being a major drawback of Armageddon Stax - a blue based deck gives you more options to increase consistency. Besides Tezzeret, which acts as a great Tinker like tutor, i propose some kind of draw / search spell to be included as well. Possible choices are:
Intuiton
Thirst for Knowledge
Fabricate
Fact or Fiction
Gifts Ungiven
Stroke of Genius

Of these i would start with Fact or Fiction, because it costs 4 mana, which would be a drawback normally, but keep in mind that we also run metalworker and want to abuse him. There other reasons, but i dont want to discuss these and the other possibilites for now (personally i would love to see Gifts working).

Second point is Tezzeret / Metalworker, which allows a combo finish. If we solely look at Tezz Painter/Grindstone would be the preferred combo kill, but with Metalworker in the mix i would opt for Staff of Domination.

While looking at the advantages we have to keep in mind the disadvantages.
The first thing that comes to my mind is, how to protect ourselves against creature beatdown. Each choice should be made in way that it protects Tezzeret as well. Some choices:
- Ensnaring Bridge
- Tangle Wire
- Propaganda (imo the worst, it cant be tutored up, doesnt protect Tezz and becomes better with a stronger mana denial approach).
So i would go for the first two, playtesting may reveal that Propaganda main is necessary.

To recap - a rough sketch / skeleton of the deck:

3 Tezzeret
4 Fact of Fiction

4 Chalice
3-4 Trinisphere

1-X Ensnaring Bridge
1-X Tangle Wire

4 Metalworker
1-3 Crucible
1-3 Staff of Domination

4 Mox
at least 24 land with
at least 7 two mana lands
1-2 Academy Ruins
0-4 Seat of the Synod (Can be untapped with Tezz and counts for Metalworker activation)

Feedback appreciated.

_erbs_

09-23-2009, 12:02 PM

@deadlock
The difference of geddon stax as compared to blue stax is that its SB options. It has countermagic or creature stealing ability. I didn't add the draw factor since for me i don't feel the need to put in 4 or more copies of a draw card. Fact or Fiction or other draw cards are nice indeed. But i prefer bottled cloister over them.

Bottled Cloister is a permanent drawer and a mana for metalworker. I don't feel the need of having 4 or more copies of draw mechanics in a stax deck since im going for consistency. If ever the cloister gets blown up its okay more or less the cards in your hand are the cards on your board aswell.

Ensnaring Bridge is really nice espcially paired with bottled cloister and can be tutored by tezz. But i chose propaganda as of now over it bec propaganda is strong paired with winter orb.

In this build i don't really mainly on tezzeret. He's more of a utility and a finisher. My goal to estabilish board position then bring him down to finish the game. So protecting him isn't so hard aswell. We have cotv, trini & now sphere or resistance.

Staff of Domination is really nice but what would you cut for it ? for me its just a utility as compared to a locking part.

I lessen the land count by 1 since i've placed in 3 metalworkers and we don't have a geddon effect to wipe away all our mana as compared to geddon stax thats why when im using it i don't go below 24 lands aswell. Im guessing the mana boost that would be given by the metalworkers are enough to power our artifacts. I will test my list aswel so i could know if 3 or 4 is the right number for metalworkers. I only made it 3 for now cause the deck is so tied up in space and removing a card would hurt its consistency.

@jazzykat
Pendrell mists are really nice as compared to tabernacle or propaganda but 4 mana is still 4 mana. Under Spehre of resistance you might find it hard to cast them.

The thing is we need a card that could provide us time to setup espcially against aggro since the most common way of winning in the game, thats why ensnaring bridge or propagada are the top 2 choices for me. Maybe if i don't run sphere of resistance just maybe pendrell mists could come to mind, but sphere of resistance is just too good now that metalworker is available.

raggster

09-23-2009, 11:08 PM

@erbs: I largely use Master Transmuter to reset Smokestack and Tangle Wire counters, as well as to play artifacts for "free" under Winter Orb+Tangle Wire. You should really give it a try, it's been a hoot to use.

I noticed though that you only use two each of Winter Orb and Sphere of Resistance and a third copy of each in your SB, is it really advisable to keep the count that low in the main?

@deadlock: Tangle Wire isn't as effective without Winter Orb; at best it is a delaying tactic that affects both of you almost equally. Winter Orb is what makes the Tangle Wire effect imbalanced in your favor since you run Metalworker.

Right now I'm testing a list that looks like:

4x Chalice of the Void
4x Trinisphere
3x Ensnaring Bridge
3x Tangle Wire
3x Smokestack
3x Crucible of Worlds
3x Winter Orb

3x Tezzeret the Seeker

3x Metalworker
3x Master Transmuter
2x Sundering Titan or Filigree Angel**

4x Mox Diamond
4x Ancient Tomb
4x City of Traitors
2x Academy Ruins
3x Wasteland
4x Seat of Synod
5x Island

**The life gain you get from a resolved Filigree Angel is ridiculous. The most I've ever gained off a single Angel drop is 42 (14 artifacts in play). I'm still undecided on which one to play main, but I may just go with Titan, as the lifegain factor isn't as potent as the land destruction potential of Titan paired with Smokestacks.

I'm curious on running Sphere of Resistance but can't see what to cut.

My SB isn't finished, but my working list is:

4x Chill - Burn decks abound in my meta
3x Tormod's Crypt
3x Powder Keg - mostly as a weaker substitute for Engineered Explosives, but since I run mono-colored an early resolved Keg can be quite flexible
3x Pithing Needle - because I really hate opposing Wastelands and SDTs. It also randomly hates Knight of the Reliquiary, which has been making rounds in our meta.
2x Duplicant - Originally this was Control Magic, but I found that Duplicant is just as effective in dealing with opposing creatures. It also works very well in conjunction with Master Transmuter.

_erbs_

09-23-2009, 11:41 PM

@raggster
You have a very interesting list and i want to hear your thoughts on some questions floating around my mind in your build.

1. Your only running only 3 Ensnaring Bridge is that enough to control the aggro matchup ?
2. I've tried running metalworkers same number as you [3] and once it hits the board after 1-2 turns you'll find yourself with no hand because you've casted them out.
3. Master Transmuter really looks awesome but isn't it she's more useful when you have draw engine like bottled cloister to power both her and ensnaring bridge..
4. Is sundering titan / filigree angel that good ? im guessing he/she is , if paired with transmuter yes, would triskellion be a better option ?.

Would running 4 Ensnaring Bridge and 3 Bottled Cloister boost the help the aggro matchup, im just guessing your having a hardtime against aggro ?

The sphere of resistance is really nice as it provides early lock just like trinisphere especially when you have metalworker in play or can reslove it after casting the sphere. Right now my main concern is how's your aggro matchup lets say against merfs i picked merfs since merfs doesn't die on ctov 1 or 2 as it can still survive under trinisphere.

raggster

09-24-2009, 03:34 PM

I've been mostly testing against aggressive control-aggro decks, as I haven't seen pure aggro decks in our meta. If I see Goblins in the horizon, I'll definitely reconfigure appropriately. :)

On your questions:

1. Your only running only 3 Ensnaring Bridge is that enough to control the aggro matchup ?

Tangle Wires form the other half of the aggro control package of this deck. I'll admit that 3 Bridges feels a bit lacking, as I always want to play one early, but then Tezzeret can also fetch it the moment he comes down.

2. I've tried running metalworkers same number as you [3] and once it hits the board after 1-2 turns you'll find yourself with no hand because you've casted them out.

That works in my favor always, as Bridge is my primary defensive plan. Also, since I'm looking to lock the board down with either Tangle Wire+Winter Orb or continuous Smokestack use, I've never been unhappy having multiple Workers in play.

3. Master Transmuter really looks awesome but isn't it she's more useful when you have draw engine like bottled cloister to power both her and ensnaring bridge..

Bottled Cloister + Ensnaring Bridge + Master Tranmuter = awesome times. That said, I did test Bottled Cloister before and got a lukewarm feeling towards it. It was awesome when set up properly, but on its own it felt like a more expensive Howling Mine. I guess it bears testing in a different build.

4. Is sundering titan / filigree angel that good ? im guessing he/she is , if paired with transmuter yes, would triskellion be a better option ?.

Thing about Triskelion is that 3 damage for 6 mana isn't that exciting, even if you can recycle it with Transmuter. Sundering Titan has a much more relevant ability (additional permanent removal to pair with Smokestack) and is a bigger beatstick, while Filigree Angel gives this deck a much needed life buffer so it can maintain its game plan throughout the midgame (and has evasion to boot).

BTW, the idea of Filigree Angel came up when I was testing against Burn, as it is a horrible matchup for this deck pre-board. Even post-board, a well-timed REB on Chill or multiple Shattering Sprees still keeps the matchup difficult.

I'll be the first to admit that FAngel is very janky, but then Blue in generalhas very few tempo card options in the lifegain department.

raggster

09-24-2009, 03:36 PM

Oh, and I haven't tested against Merfolk, but I'll let you know what the testing shows. It's somewhere down the list in my gauntlet. ;)

mossivo1986

09-24-2009, 03:41 PM

Have 0 of you considered the combo route with Mana Severance Belcher and grindstone/painter?

_erbs_

09-25-2009, 12:15 AM

@mossivo1986
For me combo finish isn't that advisable as a finisher and i want each cards of the deck to help towards locking down your opponent.

@raggster
I don't know where you play or what your meta is in your place, maybe i'm wrong but for me it feels like 40% of decks in legacy are aggro decks, thats why for me establishing a solid game plan against them is a must.

With my current list the problems i am encountering are:
1. Locking is good against aggro-control type decks but if you can't find your win condition sooner or later your opponent can't rest the game (resolving a pernicious deed) and recovering from it is abit hard.

2. Still has a very very poor match-up against aggro decks. decks that run a 1-2-3 curve isn't hinder that much by your lock parts.

3. The burn matchup is almost 50/50 if you get ahead in bringing down your lock parts it will really give you enough time to find your win condition to finish them off, but if don't burn will just walk over you since you hurt yourself in using ancient tomb.

4. The sphere of resistance is somewhat miss or hit, but what i really like about them is that it increases your early turn lock its like a mini trinisphere. even no mox d in your oppening hand with just a turbo land you can drop it 1st turn and giving your opponents a hard time already.

The miss part is that with no metalworker in play sometimes you'll find yourself locked by it and when your opponents gets to resolve a single creature with no defense of some sort that creature would go all the way.

I don't know if i have terrible luck against aggro but analyzing it on paper 4 propaganda's, 4 tanglewires and 3 winter orb should be enough to stop any onslaught, then again a single propaganda won't stop a 4/5 tarmogoyf in smashing your face. Maybe i'll try the ensnaring bridge route... but the deck is so much crowded and im having a hardtime cutting parts from it.

Im still unhappy of my aggro matchup hahaha

Snief

09-25-2009, 04:32 PM

After some testing today vs. Merfolk and Bant Survival this is the list I ended up with:

// Lands
2 [TSP] Academy Ruins
4 [MR] Island
4 [MR] Seat of the Synod
4 [TE] Wasteland
4 [EX] City of Traitors
4 [TE] Ancient Tomb

// Creatures
4 [UD] Metalworker
1 [US] Karn, Silver Golem
3 [ALA] Master of Etherium

// Spells
2 [FD] Staff of Domination
3 Fact or Fiction
3 [ALA] Tezzeret the Seeker
3 [NE] Tangle Wire
3 [FD] Crucible of Worlds
4 [SH] Mox Diamond
3 [SH] Ensnaring Bridge
4 [DS] Trinisphere
4 [MR] Chalice of the Void
1 [DS] Sword of Fire and Ice

Cardchoices:

- Ensnaring Bridge + Tangle Wire: absolutely must plays. Bridge is a bomb when you have an active Metalworker and your hand is empty; also its better than Propaganda, because you can tutor it with Tezzeret. Tangle Wire is for the first few turns to stabilize.
- Master of Etherium: maybe not strong at first sight, BUT: in every game he is a 5-8 power beast, pumps your metalworkers and with Karn ridiculous.
- Karn: alternate win option; blocker
- Chalice, Trinisphere, Wasteland: disruption
- Tezzeret: the man! I´m thinking to play him as a 4-of. He tutors everything in your deck and he´s the main win option. Today I won a game vs merfolk when topdecking Tezzeret with no other cards in hand and tutoring a Ensnaring Bridge at 2 life :D He is [I]that good!
- Staff of Domination: alternate win option; I originally had only 1 but wanted to draw it more often.
- Fact or Fiction: sickest Card draw, possible round 2! Only need 1 U mana which is also nice.
- SOFI: Card draw and (that´s important) removal. This deck has an extra problem with flying creatures such as Vendilion Clique and, worse, Trygon Predator.

Not included:
- Smokestack: often win more. I am not sure if cutting all of them is right, but it´s possible. Maybe in the SB?
- Bottled Cloister: isn´t sure enough for me

So...suggestions?

majikal

09-25-2009, 04:35 PM

What about Uba Mask? It will really help with Ensnaring Bridge, as well as keeping your opponent from hoarding any countermagic/relevant cards in hand.

GGoober

09-25-2009, 06:32 PM

I think Metalworker is going to make this work.

I've been tinkering a list with Master Transmuter and now that you mentioned Ubamask, it's worth considering her again with 2 Sundering Titan MD and 4 Metalworkers, 2 Karn, 2 Staff.dec.

You can potentially do the Vintage-Welder/Mask lock with Master Transmuter cycling Ubamask on your opponent's drawphase. Ensnaring Bridge seems tech with Ubamask, but Ubamask by itself is not too impressive. It is a card denial and in other words a form of card advantage for this deck by denying card advantage to the opponents.

ClearSkies

09-25-2009, 07:40 PM

Uba Mask kind of shuts down counter spells that they don't want to play during their turn through.

Metal worker + Uba Mask is kind of bad through. At least, it sounds like it is bad.

gobblor

09-25-2009, 07:42 PM

I was just looking at the relic orb prison deck and I thought Maybe would a 1 of icy manipulator or relic barrier to search out be good with winterorb in this deck? It helps lockk them down and allows you to untap also.

_erbs_

09-25-2009, 08:24 PM

@Snief
Your list looks interesting, but it feels like its a variant of sea stompy, how was your matchup against merfs ?

Another thing is how do you remove the ensnaring bridge for you to make an attack? using tezz's last ability or karn doesn't make the artifact loss its ability.

Ensnaring bridge as compared to propaganda...
both of them handle aggro problems the bridge could be tutored in via tez and paired with several cards could make a strong defense against aggro. Propa is abit similar preventing horde from attacking you but it doesn't stop a singleton creature to smash your face. Thats where the bridge has an edge. Eventhough you hand isn't empty the only creatures that would attack you would range from 2-3 attack power.

I've thought about master of etherium being a awesome finisher in this deck just like in a aFOWnity deck, i guess 3 isn't that bad, but i think karn is not needed anymore.

Staff of Domination is really nice but if you have no metalworker in play its not so useful and doesn't help in creating a lock.

I've notice also that you removed the mox d's in your list, with that you also lessen the chances of casting a early turn trinisphere.

With regards to fact or fiction yes its really a good card but i prefer a permanent drawer and helps feed metalworker.

@UBA MASK
uba mask is really a nice card of for a lock / stax deck but the problem is how to you fin space for it, what do you remove to fit it in ?

@MASTER TRANSMUTER
Is like similar to metalworker. It could bring down any artifact no matter how high the cost for the price of another artifact. In order for it to run nicely im guessing you have to run lost of artifacts atleast.

EnemyWithin

09-27-2009, 12:23 AM

Lands: 24
8 Island
4 City of Traitors
4 Ancient Tomb
3 Wasteland
3 Seat of the Synod
2 Academy Ruins

Other Mana Sources: 4
4 Mox Diamond

Creatures: 5
3 Solemn Simulacrum
2 Karn, Silver Golem

Planeswalkers: 3
3 Tezzeret the Seeker

Other Spells: 27
4 Ensnaring Bridge
4 Tangle Wire
4 Smokestack
4 Chalice of the Void
4 Trinisphere
3 Crucible of Worlds
3 Intuition
2 Engineered Explosives

Sideboard:
4 Tormod's Crypt
4 Sphere of Resistance
4 Uba Mask
3 Powder Keg

This is based off an old Intuition Stax list I had a while ago, modified to fit in Tezzeret. Intuition is fantastic, by the way, I would run it over FoF in a heartbeat. FoF may let you draw more, but Intuition actually lets you search out your lock pieces and/or finishers. It also costs 1 less, too. Solemn Simulacrum gives you mana accel and card advantage, and can be recurred through Ruins. It can also be a finisher if necessary, although the Tezzeret/Karn tag team is much better at that. It can be searched out by Tezz, but make sure you've spent a turn adding a loyalty counter first. The rest of the deck is a pretty standard build. I don't use Metalworker because it doesn't really fit into this build, I generally get enough mana pretty quickly, and nothing in my deck is over 5. It's a good card, just not that necessary in my build. I'm also try to find a replacement for Engineered Explosives (other than Powder Keg, since I want to be able to set Chalice @2 if necessary), since only being able to set Explosives at 0 or 1 isn't great. I also may change Tangle Wire to Propaganda, since I'm not running Metalworker to compensate for having to tap my lands.

@Snief: I like your build with Metalworkers, but I have a few problems with Master of Etherium and Sword of Fire and Ice. Your deck looks pretty much lockdown control as Stax usually is, and that means that if you're attacking with creatures then you should have everything locked down and under control. Master of Etherium is big, but he lacks evasion and his pump ability doesn't really do much for your meager ensemble of creatures. If you're swarming with artifact creatures animated by Karn or Tezz, then you should win that turn and +1/+1 to everything isn't going to make much of a difference, or at least not enough of a reason to justify running Masters. There are better fatties out there. If you need to take down flyers, run Powder Keg or something that kills them, not a roundabout way like SoFaI. Hell, that doesn't even kill Trygon Predator, one of the concerns you cited.
I think Masters and Sword can come out for something else, unless you want to go more aggro/control with Factories (or Blinkmoth Nexus, flying is nice with SoFaI), more artifact creatures, etc. Oh, and if you're looking for a finisher to play with Master Transmuter, consider Inkwell Leviathan, that card's a beast.

lorddotm

09-27-2009, 02:43 AM

Snief

09-27-2009, 07:33 PM

@Snief: I like your build with Metalworkers, but I have a few problems with Master of Etherium and Sword of Fire and Ice. Your deck looks pretty much lockdown control as Stax usually is, and that means that if you're attacking with creatures then you should have everything locked down and under control. Master of Etherium is big, but he lacks evasion and his pump ability doesn't really do much for your meager ensemble of creatures. If you're swarming with artifact creatures animated by Karn or Tezz, then you should win that turn and +1/+1 to everything isn't going to make much of a difference, or at least not enough of a reason to justify running Masters. There are better fatties out there. If you need to take down flyers, run Powder Keg or something that kills them, not a roundabout way like SoFaI. Hell, that doesn't even kill Trygon Predator, one of the concerns you cited.
I think Masters and Sword can come out for something else, unless you want to go more aggro/control with Factories (or Blinkmoth Nexus, flying is nice with SoFaI), more artifact creatures, etc. Oh, and if you're looking for a finisher to play with Master Transmuter, consider Inkwell Leviathan, that card's a beast.

I think you´re right with master of etherium. But as I said, it´s the first list I´m testing right now. So not everything is set in stone. I like Inkwell Leviathan but I think he is too expensive to cast. You could only play him with Master Transmuter in your deck. On the other hand one could change -3 Master -1 SOFAI +2 Karn +2 random removal/lockdown cards in my posted decklist. Blinkmoth Nexus may also be worth a spot.

The merfolk matchup was pretty even. I always discarded the islands for the moxen, so goodbye evasion. But they can always win via swarm action or wakethrasher + sovereign. Or sick draws with multiple FoW. Ensnaring Bridge was always GG against them, as were Karn or Tezzeret, too.

raggster

09-29-2009, 01:13 PM

_erbs_

09-29-2009, 10:48 PM

@erbs, I used to play a lot at Mike Ongkeko's shop, lately though I've been inactive due to a lack of operational decks. I'm hoping to get this up and running in time for the Year-End tourney. =)

If Tezzeret is your main wincon, then I suggest running at least three of him. Mishra's Factories won't be as effective offensively under a Winter Orb.

Straight aggro has always been my problem too, but I found that Tangle Wire/Winter Orb really helps even out those odds. On average, it will slow the game down enough for me to a) find Tezzeret and lock up the board, b) find Ensnaring Bridge and lock out the board, c) set up Crucible/Trinisphere/Smokestack and lock up the board, or d) a combination of two or all of these.

You WILL encounter close games though. On average, my close games meant me hovering at 1-2 life while the deck did its thing and eventually won out in the endgame. This is one of the times when the removal of mana burn actually becomes relevant, as it prevents you from randomly dying from having too much mana from a Worker and no mana sinks. (This is also one of the times when I am really tempted to run Filigree Angel, but for now I'm running Sundering Titans because I find them to be more relevant and easier to drop off of Metalworker mana. I may side Angels instead against aggro instead of Duplicant.)

Burn is a matchup I fear, second only to Goblins. I usually just pray I wind up on the play game 1 and open with either turn-1 Chalice for 1 or Trinisphere. Anything other than that is usually an auto-lose or a nervously close game. =/

Oic..., i play there aswell but only during tourny's, i want to run this deck in the year end aswell. But i still can't find the right mix.

Tezzeret is not my main win condition now as it was before. As for the mishra's factories besides being not as effective under orb, i feel its sub optimal i might try removing them to add dual lands for SB or other options that the color would add.

Yeah tangle wire + orb could really buy you time but sometimes with no metalworker in play winter orb would hurt you more. A problem i see in ensaring bridge is this when your opponent has already resolved a threat you have no way of dealing with it a 2/2 threat would go all the way not even the bridge would stop it assuming you can't drop all your hand. Thats why i use propaganda but even with propa my creature control is still lacking.

Goblins are really a pain to deal with in tezz stax as compared to geddonstax im not saying that geddonstaxx has a very good MU agaisnt it but it could deal withe them better pre board.

Well yeah the angel or life gain is really a plus, during my geddonstax days i had the game lock already but my life was down to 1 or 2 and a single threat or spell or tapping mana had given me the game but failed to do so bec of my life. Thats why i was 50/50 in removing the angel or not.

As for karn, i don't feel the need for it, the sundering titan is very interesting indeed, since your running the transmuter and metalworkers.

I still haven't tested the bridge / titan / transmuter combo as i choose a different route. Do you have a updated list in dealing with straight aggro decks like merfs or just pray on you don't get paired into one.... hahaha

Oh power sink is not bad in this deck... espeically under winter orb..

Hanni

09-30-2009, 10:09 PM

I posted this in the Karn Tetris thread, but I guess it's more relevant here:

Combo Stax

// Lands
6 [7E] Island (3)
4 [MR] Seat of the Synod
4 [TE] Ancient Tomb
4 [EX] City of Traitors
4 [TE] Wasteland
4 [JGC] Mishra's Factory

// Creatures
4 [UD] Metalworker
1 [UD] Masticore

// Spells
4 [ALA] Tezzeret the Seeker
4 [10E] Crucible of Worlds
4 [MR] Chalice of the Void
4 [DS] Trinisphere
4 [US] Smokestack
4 [FD] Staff of Domination
1 [SH] Ensnaring Bridge
4 [SH] Mox Diamond

// Sideboard
SB: 4 [8E] Defense Grid
SB: 4 [EX] Sphere of Resistance
SB: 1 [US] Phyrexian Processor
SB: 1 [FNM] Tormod's Crypt
SB: 1 [AL] Helm of Obedience
SB: 4 [GP] Leyline of the Void

The deck is designed as combo/prison, and takes advantage of Tezzeret as an amazing combo enabler. Worker + Staff is the obvious combo, drawing you your whole deck, gaining infinite life, and growing infi large Factories ftw. Tezzeret finds the missing piece of the puzzle, being combo pieces 5-8, yet is flexible if you need it to be, grabbing any lock pieces you may need, or being a 1-card combo on its own.

jazzykat

10-01-2009, 02:13 PM

I have been having some success with this list. HOWEVER, the board isn't right. I also think there is too many powder kegs. I am open to suggestions but don't underestimate the ruins, intuiton engine.

Deck file for Magic Workstation (http://www.magicworkstation.com)

// Lands
3 [10E] Island (3)
1 [AQ] Mishra's Factory (4)
1 [ON] Flooded Strand
1 [ON] Bloodstained Mire
1 [TE] Wasteland
4 [EX] City of Traitors
2 [ON] Polluted Delta
4 [TE] Ancient Tomb
4 [B] Volcanic Island
1 [TSP] Academy Ruins
3 [DK] Maze of Ith

// Creatures
4 [UD] Metalworker

// Spells
1 [ALA] Tezzeret the Seeker
4 [US] Smokestack
3 [10E] Crucible of Worlds
4 [MR] Chalice of the Void
4 [SH] Mox Diamond
4 [DS] Trinisphere
4 [MR] Thirst for Knowledge
4 [REW] Powder Keg
1 [FD] Staff of Domination
2 [TE] Intuition

// Sideboard
SB: 3 [TSB] Tormod's Crypt
SB: 3 [CH] Blood Moon
SB: 3 [DS] Echoing Truth
SB: 3 [U] Red Elemental Blast
SB: 3 [GP] Shattering Spree

_erbs_

10-01-2009, 11:30 PM

@jazzykat
in your list im guessing you have a hard time looking for you win condition and at times your opponent could break your lock.

i haven't tried running 4 TFK, as for your aggro matchups how is it ? aren't you having a hard time if your opponents creature curve ranges from 1-2-3-4 not from a single curve like 2..

@Hanni
running 4 staff and 1 bridge, im guessing you have a hardtime against pure aggro decks.

______________________________________________________________

I know some builds would work in a specific meta but for me if the deck would be a sucessful one in any meta it must do the following in this specific order.
1. control creatures
2. control spells
3. control lands / permanents
4. win the game at a reasonable time frame

• Tweaking the deck to a extreme control version to combat your opponents movements would make the deck slow in winning thus at times would also cost you the game because sooner or later your opponent could find a way to get out of your lock.

Cards like pernicious deed, engergy flux, rebuild, etc. would resset the game and give your opponent the advantage.

• Making it ala Dragonstompy is risky and not the way to go. Better you play Sea Stompy than fit the concept into a stax shell.

• Combo stax is very interesting indeed especially since the staff could be abused by metalworker but if you tweak the deck to run as a combo your control elements would suffer.

• Running any list or finding the right balance and mix as long as you have sold answers to the above priorities for me is KEY in making a solid legacy stax deck.

jazzykat

10-02-2009, 12:52 AM

raggster

10-02-2009, 01:22 PM

Yeah tangle wire + orb could really buy you time but sometimes with no metalworker in play winter orb would hurt you more. A problem i see in ensaring bridge is this when your opponent has already resolved a threat you have no way of dealing with it a 2/2 threat would go all the way not even the bridge would stop it assuming you can't drop all your hand. Thats why i use propaganda but even with propa my creature control is still lacking.

My best weapon against low-power beats is: patience. :wink: Unless I'm staring down a horde of 2/2 Zombie tokens or a Goblins army, I'm hardly worried about 2/2s going all the way, even with Winter Orb already set up. We have quality land drops and an almost all-artifact (i.e. colorless) permanent base. Every turn I should be dropping at least two permanents, and that rate should increase astronomically when either Metalworker or Tezzeret sees the battlefield.

BTW, since you're running a Propaganda-based creature defense, it might interest you to know that they've reversed the power-level errata on Parallax Tide, so they now work exactly as how the cards are phrased. I think it might open up some deck design space for you. :cool:

SMR0079

10-02-2009, 08:36 PM

"TfK is good EXCEPT for when you need an actual lock piece or win condition. Strangely, sometimes you need it to be something to affect the board instead of a sick CA spell."

That exception is the rule. You never want draw spells in place of lock peices and combo. You simply can't afford to waste the tempo.

I've given up on Tangle Wire. It doesn't do enough in this deck. Without Welder or an agrro plan it doesn't slow your opponent long enough.

Ensnaring Bridge stops the creature onslaught better than Wire or Propoganda.

Don't try to be cute with this deck, just effecient like the list Hanni offered.

Hanni

10-02-2009, 10:38 PM

TfK is a non-artifact, non-permanent spell, and while it does draw, somewhat takes away from the deck. If it weren't for Metalworker, it wouldn't be as bad, but Metalworker deserves to be in a deck trying to cast a 3UU planeswalker.

The decklist I posted isn't optimal, but the majority of the shell is in the right direction for the deck. The only reason to run Tezzeret in Stax is because it is a combo enabler, and there is no better combo for Stax right now than Metalworker + Staff of Domination.

raggster

10-04-2009, 10:23 AM

@SMR0079 We're going to have to agree to disagree on Tangle Wire. My experience has shown me that it can easily shut out an opponent during his turns 3~5, just on its own, and with other enablers in the deck like Smokestack, Trinisphere and Winter Orb, Tangle Wire's effect on the board just multiplies in your favor. It *does* have the potential to bomb out, but then what card doesn't when you draw it at an inopportune time?

@Hanni One of the apprehensions I have about running that much Staff is that it's too mana-intensive without Metalworkers. Why not maintain the control shell, and include the Staff as a one or two-of to drop or fetch with Tezzeret when the conditions are just right for a combo finish?

Hanni

10-04-2009, 12:22 PM

@Hanni One of the apprehensions I have about running that much Staff is that it's too mana-intensive without Metalworkers. Why not maintain the control shell, and include the Staff as a one or two-of to drop or fetch with Tezzeret when the conditions are just right for a combo finish?

The decklist I posted isn't optimal, but the majority of the shell is in the right direction for the deck.

_erbs_

10-05-2009, 11:42 PM

Hello,
After several testing i've come up with this list and so far its doing okay, but im still not confident enough that its the most efficient blue stax build. I still need to test it more and go against different decks.

As for the master transmuter and sundering titan combo, i've tried running it aswell and found that it works wonders paired with armageddon. I didn't further tested it since i want to go mono for now.

As for the staff of domination route, yes its really terrific but its very dependent on metalworker with no metalworker in play its only use is to gain life if maybe the life gain was 2 but 1 is almost no effect.

@Raggster
The Angel is nutts if the engine gets going..., espcially when tezz is out. I want to really try the Uw build with geddon but i fear that its mana is very fragile, then again almost all stax deck has a fragile mana base. But what i realized in playing the transmuter stax its approach is very different as compared to the traditional legacy stax build. Its somewhat of a old vintage stax long time ago. It really has potential but for now i'll just leave it and see my new list go.

The changes i made where the addition of Esperzoa, for me his great in this shell as he could easily trap 4 permanents from your opponent via tanglewire and when winter orb is down its really a good lock plus a win condition in one.

The current board is built for the general meta.
Powersink - paired with winter orb its a lock and countermagic in one.
Jester's Cap - im might change it to sower or vendillion clique but for now i used it to remove cards link shattering spree, etc.
Pithing Needle - is here to stop vial or rock decks.
Tezz - additional tutor
Ensnaring bridge - for additional aggro control

Blue Stax ver 1.1

Control [25]
4 Chalice of the Void
4 Trinisphere
4 Propaganda
4 Tanglewire
2 Bottled Cloister
3 Crusible of Worlds
2 Smokestack
2 Winter Orb

Mana [27]
4 Ancient Tomb
3 City of Traitors
3 Wasteland
1 Ghost Quarter
1 Accademy Ruins
4 Seat of Synod
7 Island

Utilities / Win Con [8]
3 Metal Worker
2 Tezzeret the Seeker
3 Esperzoa

SB [15]
2 Relic of Progenitus
1 Tormod's Crypt
2 Ensnaring Bridge
1 Tezzeret the Seeker
1 Smokestack
2 Pithing Needle
4 Powersink
2 Jester's Cap

Hanni

10-06-2009, 12:48 AM

As for the staff of domination route, yes its really terrific but its very dependent on metalworker with no metalworker in play its only use is to gain life if maybe the life gain was 2 but 1 is almost no effect.

If you feel that way, it only needs to be ran as a 1-of, since Tezzeret can tutor for it. If you play a turn 1 Metalworker and accelerate into a turn 2 Tezzeret, a turn 3 win via Worker/Staff would allow the deck to win some games it might otherwise lose. Of course this would be vulnerable to creature removal and countermagic, but this deck beats those decks with the rest of its lock package.

From the list I posted before, it would probably be wise to trim the Staff's down to 1 and up the Ensnaring Bridges to 4. Bridge is pretty damn good against aggro when you have the increased ability to empty your hand so fast.

Tezzeret Stax

// Lands
6 [7E] Island (3)
4 [MR] Seat of the Synod
4 [TE] Ancient Tomb
4 [EX] City of Traitors
4 [TE] Wasteland
4 [JGC] Mishra's Factory

// Creatures
1 [UD] Masticore
4 [UD] Metalworker

// Spells
1 [FD] Staff of Domination
4 [ALA] Tezzeret the Seeker
4 [MR] Chalice of the Void
4 [DS] Trinisphere
4 [US] Smokestack
4 [SH] Ensnaring Bridge
4 [10E] Crucible of Worlds
4 [SH] Mox Diamond

// Sideboard
SB: 4 [8E] Defense Grid
SB: 4 [EX] Sphere of Resistance
SB: 1 [US] Phyrexian Processor
SB: 1 [M10] Pithing Needle
SB: 1 [AL] Helm of Obedience
SB: 4 [GP] Leyline of the Void

I think I'm gonna try that when I get time and see how it fairs.

Considering that the metagame is seemingly aggro centric, that seems like a great answer. Mishra's Factory is great on defense against anything that can slip through the Bridge, and Bridge with an empty hand completely shuts down aggro. That strengthens Tezzeret a great deal, and allows Tezzeret the time to assemble the combo.

The ability to still race certain decks with the combo is still there, and randomly drawing the 1-of Staff without Metalworker doesn't seem that bad, since it can still draw you a card or tap a guy down.

Masticore seems like a damn fine alternate win condition to tutor for with Tezzeret, against smaller aggro, when it can't reliably shut the smaller aggro down with Bridge (and/or no Factory's in play). Masticore is a hellacious beating against Goblins, for example.

So the deck actually has several means to victory:

Worker/Staff Combo
Masticore
Factory Beats
Tezzeret's Ultimate

Seems like enough diverse amount of ways to win to transition into whatever it needs to do given the gamestate. The deck now has enough aggro protection to survive, and Tezzeret's ability to tutor for any artifact that it needs in the entire deck adds a great deal of consistency to any of those gameplans. The most difficult thing is achieving 3UU consistently, but there's really no good way to fix that without somehow screwing up the rest of the deck (it would take significant changes in the manabase and the way the deck functions to make that possible).

Overall, I'm pretty pleased with the concept at hand.

Snief

10-06-2009, 01:52 PM

I really like your list Hanni. I think I will give it a try in our next test session.

On the other hand I tinkered with some splashes, red and green to be accurate, inspired from Extendeds Tezzerator. One could play Enigineered Explosives main and Firespout/Ancient Grudge in SB. The mana base could be sth like:

// Lands
2 [7E] Island
4 [MR] Seat of the Synod
4 [TE] Ancient Tomb
4 [EX] City of Traitors
4 [TE] Wasteland
4 [JGC] Mishra's Factory
2 Scalding Tarn
1 Volcanic Island
1 Tropical Island

..together with 4 Mox Diamonds. Is it worth exploring?

_erbs_

10-06-2009, 09:27 PM

Snief

10-07-2009, 04:15 AM

Green is for the second modus of Firespout and the flashback cost of Ancient Grudge.

Snief

10-08-2009, 04:37 PM

_erbs_

10-09-2009, 12:01 AM

So..this saturday I´m gonna test this deck in a small tournament near my place with ~20 people. I am really excited! I hope everything will turn out well and I can write a little report afterwards. Wish me luck!

goodluck !! dont forget to post your deck list, wanna post it so we could do some discussions ?

Snief

10-09-2009, 03:59 AM

I´ll sure do after the tourney ;)

raggster

10-11-2009, 11:22 AM

@erbs - UW likes fetch and a land count of 26-27. I'd say run Tundras, the deck can't be any more susceptible to Wasteland than it already is.

That, and Staff of Domination + Metalworker has all but made Filigree Angel obsolete. It is crazy how the deck now has "oops I win" capability due to this combo.

The first time I pulled it off, my friend didn't see the infinite mana trick, so i went through the motions of "float 6, untap Metalworker with 3, untap Staff with 1, 2 mana left over." He still didn't see it, so I had to say "Repeating this until I float a million mana."

Then he got it. And promptly scooped. :cool:

I'm also liking how Master Transmuter helps cut down the number of turns needed to get 3 artifacts into your hand to start the combo off without Tezzeret. Just one more trick it has up its sleeve. :smile:

I've reconfigured the deck to run 1 Staff and an additional Bridge in place of the two Sundering Titans:

Maindeck:

4 Chalice of the Void
4 Trinisphere
4 Ensnaring Bridge
3 Tangle Wire
3 Winter Orb
3 Crucible of Worlds
3 Smokestack
1 Staff of Domination
//25 artifacts

3 Tezzeret the Seeker
//3 Planeswalker

3 Master Transmuter
3 Metalworker
//6 artifact creatures

4 Mox Diamond
//4 non-land mana

2 Academy Ruins
4 Seat of Synod
5 Island
4 City of Traitors
4 Ancient Tomb
3 Wasteland
//22 lands

Sideboard

4 Chill
3 Powder Keg
3 Tormod's Crypt
3 Pithing Needle
2 Sundering Titan

SB's still floating, but as I'm expecting more Burn and Goblins in our meta, Chill will stay put. May change it up for Spheres if Gobs/Burn decks don't show.

Still trying to source the Metalworkers and two Diamonds, but this should be operational soon.

_erbs_

10-14-2009, 12:05 AM

@raggster
How's yr testing going so far ? How's the 4 bridge doing ? Aren't you having a hard time with 22 lands and running 4 city of traitors ? Too much city of traitors on your opening hand or early is really bad.

We have different list but im guessing that esperzoa and master transmuter almost have the same role for our build.

I've also removed the winter orbs in my deck in my updated list see above i changed the 2 winter orbs for 2 triskelion, they are doing okay but there are some matchups that is so hard.

The problem i see with our setup still guessing (transmuter and esperzoa role) If we don't have a chalice out or some way of protecting it like trinisphere our combo lock would stall. Both of them can be easily killed by lightning bolt same goes for metalworker.

I still can't find the right mix there are times i wish i had geddon to close the lock, another problem atleast in my build is that the longer the game gets the weaker my lock gets since my opponent just plays lands without the fear of a geddon thus making tanglewire and trinisphere uselss.

Yes we have somekstack to eat permanents but its too slow for me. Smokestack is strong if you could drop it early on or you have an edge on the permanents on the board.

Staff is really a nice surprise maybe i'll try 1 and see who it goes.

raggster

10-14-2009, 06:06 PM

@raggster
How's yr testing going so far ? How's the 4 bridge doing ? Aren't you having a hard time with 22 lands and running 4 city of traitors ?

Funny you should mention that. I haven't updated my list above, but I put Bridge back to 3 for an additional Island, so now I'm at 23 lands. Haven't been able to test a whole lot, but it feels better in that I'm not missing as many initial land drops as I used to.

I haven't really had problems with multiple Cities in my opening hand. It depends on what else is in my hand at the time, and if it looks unmanageable, then I mull.

I did, at one point, try Esperzoa in the deck. My main concern is that it didn't do what I wanted it to do, namely reset Smokestack and Tangle Wire to make them generally lopsided effects - which Transmuter does. Transmuter also serves to protect artifacts from spot removal at faster-than-instant speed <remember, bouncing the artifact is part of the cost to play Transmuter's ability, not part of the effect>. Finally, the combination of Seat of Synod/any cheap artifact and Transmuter effectively lets you play stuff virtually for free, and at instant speed. In many ways, Transmuter fills in the role of Goblin Welder in other Stax variants that run/splash red.

Honestly though, I don't mind Transmuter eating an StP/Bolt if I have no Chalice online. That's one less removal spell aimed at the Metalworker, and if my opponent just happens to *not* have removal online by the time I untap, Transmuter will be rather hard to kill from that point onwards.

Not to sell Transmuter to the rest of the thread or anything, just explaining the card choice. :wink:

_erbs_

10-15-2009, 01:49 AM

Funny you should mention that. I haven't updated my list above, but I put Bridge back to 3 for an additional Island, so now I'm at 23 lands. Haven't been able to test a whole lot, but it feels better in that I'm not missing as many initial land drops as I used to.

I haven't really had problems with multiple Cities in my opening hand. It depends on what else is in my hand at the time, and if it looks unmanageable, then I mull.

I did, at one point, try Esperzoa in the deck. My main concern is that it didn't do what I wanted it to do, namely reset Smokestack and Tangle Wire to make them generally lopsided effects - which Transmuter does. Transmuter also serves to protect artifacts from spot removal at faster-than-instant speed <remember, bouncing the artifact is part of the cost to play Transmuter's ability, not part of the effect>. Finally, the combination of Seat of Synod/any cheap artifact and Transmuter effectively lets you play stuff virtually for free, and at instant speed. In many ways, Transmuter fills in the role of Goblin Welder in other Stax variants that run/splash red.

Honestly though, I don't mind Transmuter eating an StP/Bolt if I have no Chalice online. That's one less removal spell aimed at the Metalworker, and if my opponent just happens to *not* have removal online by the time I untap, Transmuter will be rather hard to kill from that point onwards.

Not to sell Transmuter to the rest of the thread or anything, just explaining the card choice. :wink:

Hello,
Esperzoa resets the Smokestack and Tanglewires, might i also add his great paired with triskelion, the big difference is that transmuter can do it anytime as compared to esperzoa only during your upkeep.

This are just based from my epxrience in playing the deck when esperzoa and tanglewire are both in play you eat away 4 of your opponents permaments and 3 of yours. Sometimes thats enough to swing for the win and not a bad clock aswell.

Even before i really wanted to try out the transmuter but the 4cc is what i don't like thats why i picked esperzoa to do the tricks above.

I know adding the transmuter would provide more options and protection aswell but as of now i really don't know what to cut. Hahaha im still struggling with aggro matchups especially decks thats isn't affected by cotv 1or could play around trini bec of the land drop option not fearing that i have a geddon effect.

I've also removed winter orb in my list bec of the esperzoa engine since there are times that you can't get metalworker online bec your opponents kills it or counters it before you could use him.

How's the 3 smokestack doing for you by the way ? i reduced its number to 2 bec there are times thats its useless nor i can't use it to my advantage bec of the esperzoa engine or no crusible online.

Im really curious how could you handle aggro decks with just tanglewires, & ensnaring bridge with no cloister, no propaganda to compliment your winter orb aswell.

Do you think geddon could somehow find its way in ? I know that we wan't the mana base to be much solid as compared to white stax which has a very fraglie mana base. But if you think about it if the benefit of playing with a fragile mana base would give you more options and better lock options i think its worth the risk.

Another problem i see in our current setup (metalworker, transmuter or esperzoa) is that they could be easily killed by grim lavamancer a 1st turn lavamancer by your opponent really hurts this deck alot which kinda ticks me off hahaha... Its like where playing a winnie deck that folds to spitters.

raggster

10-15-2009, 06:22 PM

@erbs: I wrote a lengthy response to your post but then realized that I hadn't looked over your latest list yet.

Having already done so, here are my thoughts:

1. Esperzoa *does* bounce things, but it does so inefficiently (you need to recast whatever you bounced, making you utterly dependent on Metalworker to be active *and* protected), and at a speed and timing that you cannot control (only during your turn, and only as an upkeep trigger). Goblin Welder and Master Transmuter are much better at that job, and the only reason I don't run Welder is that I didn't want to splash red - although the printing of Scalding Tarn may yet make that feasible.

2. In line with #1, Winter Orb has great synergy with your Tangle Wire and Propaganda, your primary aggro defense, but it does not mesh with Esperzoa. Esperzoa is, at best, a slow and fragile wincon, whereas Propaganda and Tangle Wire are your primary means to survival. Between trying to kill your opponent rather slowly and staying alive, I think you should focus on staying alive, as Stax has better inevitability than other decks.

To summarize #1 and #2: cut Esperzoa for something more useful. Since your deck looks like it wants to maximize the mana denial strategy, I recommend Pendrell Mists.

3. If you are used to playing Armageddon Stax and are having trouble adjusting to this, then I can safely say, don't play this deck. Armageddon Stax works in a much different way, and trying to get this deck to work in a similar fashion is just a mistake, plain and simple. This deck doesn't win on explosive shifts in momentum the way Armageddon Stax does. It succeeds by incremental gains in both virtual card advantage (Chalice, Trinisphere, Tangle Wire, Propaganda or Ensnaring Bridge) real card advantage (Smokestack, Crucible of Worlds, Wasteland, 2-mana lands, Pendrell Mists), and then wins off of a Tezzeret ultimate, the Metalworker+Staff combo, and in Hanni's case Mishra's Factories and Masticore beats.

4. Don't be afraid to play Smokestack without an active Crucible. I have done this multiple times, even setting Smokeatack to 2, only to topdeck and play a Crucible at just the right time. Even if that doesn't happen, you should have an easier time getting back on track with faster mana and less colored mana requirements to cast your artifacts.

5. Many things can kill utility weenies. This doesn't prevent Black players from playing Bob, this doesn't prevent Goblins players from playing Piledriver. If it's not safe to put a Metalworker down, then hold out until you can clear the board, or neutralize it in games 2 & 3 with Pithing Needle.

Just my $.02.

mossivo1986

10-19-2009, 03:51 PM

This is what I've been toying around with. Let me know what you all think of the idea. It hasn't been thoroughly tested yet. \\// Lands
4 [TE] Ancient Tomb
1 [TSP] Academy Ruins
13 [ZEN] Island (4)
4 [EX] City of Traitors

// Creatures
3 [ALA] Tezzeret the Seeker
3 [UD] Metalworker
3 [SHM] Painter's Servant

// Spells
4 [AL] Force of Will
4 [DS] Trinisphere
4 [MR] Chalice of the Void
4 [MR] Chrome Mox
1 [FD] Staff of Domination
1 [MR] Goblin Charbelcher
3 [TE] Mana Severance
1 [TE] Grindstone
3 [FNM] Fact or Fiction
4 [MR] Thirst for Knowledge

Mordel

10-19-2009, 05:13 PM

Just an idea and I appologize because I was lazy and didn't read every page, but static orb?

Effective in choking off basically any permanent-based mana source and stops creatures to an extent. It also invites more play errors on an opponent's part than winter orb.

Obviously against decks with no creatures of very few, it would be inferior in most cases. I would say that it is far more deadly than w.orb if there is a tangle wire in play along with a 'zoa. Perhaps it's worth a sideboard slot as a bullet to fetch with Tezz or something?

_erbs_

10-20-2009, 02:13 AM

GGoober

10-20-2009, 04:52 PM

I've been trying my best to make Blue Stax viable but the troubles I was running into is: lack of Armageddon. I saw a list on deckcheck: Welder Transmuter and took the deck and worked on it. Transmuter was amazing, but her 4cc is a pain most of the time. I'm still keen in playing with Transmuter, and the unbanning of Metalworker has made me take an interest into this again.

I think if any deck runs Transmuter, Winter Orb/Static Orb + Tangle Wire is an auto-include. I cannot stress how many games this combination locks your opponents out under a 3Sphere. The playstyle of Blue Stax isn't about blowing lands, but rather to tax the mana-base. After which, Sundering Titan comes in to chew on lands. I'll post my list soon, but the rough numbers include the following cards:

4 Fabricate

4 Chalice of the Void
2 Trinisphere
1 Ensnaring Bridge
4 Tangle Wire
2 Winter Orb
3 Crucible of Worlds
2 Smokestack
1 Staff of Domination

3 Tezzeret the Seeker
2 Master Transmuter
4 Metalworker
1 Sundering Titan

4 Mox Diamond
2 Academy Ruins
4 Seat of Synod
5 Island
4 City of Traitors
4 Ancient Tomb
3 Wasteland

mossivo1986

10-20-2009, 06:11 PM

@mossivo1986
your list is build towards combo as compared to control. Running trinisphere with force of will is not a good. i haven't tried the combo approach since i don't like playing one and for me would encounter more problems as compared to a control version.

@Mordel
Static orb yes is really a nice card indeed and much stronger that winter orb. i haven't tried it since i dropped winter orb in my build right now.

While I know what your saying I also feel like force of will is the best card in the format and choosing to not run it (as your not always going to have trinisphere) is a far worse choice then choosing to just play smart. Also keep in mind that while force is slowed down substancially so is the opponent and their probobly not going to be casting more then one spell either. Which in turn proves to be in your best interest ie time walking you into a piece of your combo. Its the same idea with faerie stompy and equipment.

raggster

10-23-2009, 08:37 PM

@Mordel: The danger in using Static Orb with Tangle Wire is that if you run out of permanents to tap, you may wind up tapping your own Static Orb, which is not good. I'd explore an entirely different build to use with that interaction.

@mossivo1986: Two things: first, you don't have enough redundant blue spells to feed FoW. I would recommend using the enchantment-heavy version of this deck using Pendrell Mists and Propaganda to lock down the creature front, as this dramatically ups your blue spell count while keeping you resilient to aggro. FoW should be kept in reserve for things that shut down your strategy (e.g. Null Rod) or disrupt your combo (e.g. Stifle).

Second, I feel that your deck is trying to do too many things. I'd recommend losing the Belcher/Severance combo in favor of the Painter/Grindstone combo, as Painter Grindstone can be fetched by Tezzeret. Metalworker/Staff can be your backup wincon.

raggster

11-13-2009, 01:25 PM

Quick update on the list I'm testing:

Maindeck:

4 Chalice of the Void
3 Trinisphere
3 Tangle Wire
3 Ensnaring Bridge
3 Winter Orb
3 Crucible of Worlds
1 Smokestack
1 Staff of Domination
//21 artifacts

4 Tezzeret the Seeker
//4 Planeswalker

3 Master Transmuter
3 Metalworker
//6 artifact creatures

3 Mox Diamond
2 Lotus Petal
//5 non-land mana

2 Academy Ruins
2 Mishra's Factory
3 Seat of Synod
6 Island
4 City of Traitors
4 Ancient Tomb
3 Wasteland
//24 lands

Sideboard

4 Chill
3 Powder Keg
1 Tormod's Crypt
1 Relic of the Progenitus
1 Ravenous Trap
3 Pithing Needle
1 Sundering Titan
1 Trinisphere

Notable changes:

1. I decided to slash the Mox Diamond count to 3 because I found that I was drawing into too many of them, and having an unplayable card in a deck that relies on Ensnaring Bridge for critter defense isn't a very good deal. I added two Lotus Petals to keep up the possibilities of a 3-mana turn 1 play.

2. Moving a Trinisphere to the side was a difficult choice, but I really needed to cut a few cards to bump my land count up. The fourth Ensnaring Bridge was the other cut. I plan to side that in against decks that get screwed over royally by an early Trinisphere.

3. I decided to vary my Ichorid answers to make sure I won't get blown out by a single Pithing Needle, so out go the other two Tormod's and in goes Relic and Ravenous Trap.

4. Mishra's Factories are in, as found that I needed more wincons to protect myself from a resolved Extirpate on Tezzeret.

I'm still testing the 3-2-24 Mox-Petal-land ratio, as there are times when I get mana-flooded. May still adjust the land count to 23 and maindeck a second Smokestack.

FieryBalrog

11-30-2009, 06:27 PM

I've been testing several variations of this deck. Things I've concluded from testing:

1) Ensnaring Bridge is necessary for you to survive.

Tangle Wire is not enough, and there is really no way for you to stop a few or hell, a swarm of threats hitting the board. The deck is completely dead in the water to really any creatures without some sort of defense.

The alternatives are bad. Ghostly Prison only works in Armageddon Stax because of Magus of the T and, well, Armageddon. Propaganda in this deck can almost always be paid. There isn't enough mana denial to support it. Pendrell Mists is just a bad Magus of the T which can't block Goyf and again works poorly without Armageddon.

The downside to Ensnaring Bridge is that it makes attacking with your own guys harder. Luckily, Tezzeret's ultimate has a set value- 5- and you can easily prepare for it given that by the time you're ready to win you should have the game somewhat locked up anyway. And once you activate it you can win right away.

Ensnaring Bridge isn't really great vs. Goblins or Zoo, but I've already basically written those off as dead matchups. Propaganda doesn't do enough in either to be worth using, and Propaganda sucks a lot more vs decks that rely on key big beaters (Goyf, basically, and Tombstalker). Unsurprisingly, dealing with aggro is a giant pain in the ass for a mono blue prison deck.

2) Bottled Cloister is good.

Once Ensnaring Bridge became a fixed slot, this seemed more and more attractive. First of all, it only affects them for Ensnaring Bridge, meaning you can keep as many cards in hand as you like and attack through the Bridge easily. And, of couse, it draws you a card each turn, making it always worth playing. It stops discard (although this is a bit marginal given the first two turns are when discard is the worst and the most prevalent).

The drawback of course is that if it gets killed you lose your hand. This is slightly leavened by the fact that in Stax you should be playing out the important stuff in your hand anyway and most of what you hold back is lands you can't play and redundant stuff you don't have the mana to play.

3) Trinisphere is mediocre.

Without Armageddon and Magus and Ghostly Prison, Trinisphere becomes a lot worse. It rarely has much of an impact unless you cast it turn 1, which is not often (something like 15-20% of the time). Trinisphere is only really worth running with Winter Orb combined with Tangle Wire. Thanks to Metalworker, you aren't really affected by any of these.

4) Metalworker is nuts, but everyone always kills him.

This guy dies more than Kenny. The fact that you run hardly any other relevant creatures gets him killed easily, and of course he dies to everything, even Fire/Ice. And its not like they're really gonna need that removal for much else. There's not really any good solution to this problem. Chalice @ 1 provides a decent amount of protection.

5) Tangle Wire isn't great.

Primarily because this deck wins slow as hell. You need a decent amount of permanents on board to use Tezzeret's ultimate, and you need Tezzeret too. Tangle Wire is only good in 1 of 2 situations. You have Goblin Welder, or, you are a tempo deck that can actually take advantage of the tempo generated by the Wire. This deck isn't really either of those. All Tangle Wire does in this deck is buy 2 turns.