African Stax

[Antonius]

Here's a deck that I've been developing for a while and plan to play at an upcoming local tourney. It borrows a lot from Eternal Garden but plays differently enough to warrant a separate thread--

(35) Land
4 Rishadan Port
4 Wasteland
4 Maze of Ith
1 The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale
1 Glacial Chasm
1 Academy Ruins
4 Mishra's Factory
1 City of Traitors
2 Crystal Vein
5 Fetches that get Forest
1 Forest
4 Tropical Island
2 Savannah
1 Tundra

(13) Artifact
4 Mox Diamond
3 Trinisphere
2 Engineered Explosives
2 Crucible of Worlds
1 Smokestack
1 Zuran Orb

(12) Other
4 Exploration
4 Intuition
3 Crop Rotation
1 Life From the Loam

Most of the card choices seem rather intuitive, but the inclusion of Trinisphere and mana denial is what makes it radically different from 5c Eternal Garden. The whole mana denial plan causes the deck to play more like a stax deck. There are a lot of two card combos that produce soft-locks and some 3-card combos that just shut the opponent out of the game.
It's somewhat stronger against graveyard hate if only because it doesn't need the yard to lock the opponent out of the game with an early sphere and multiple ports/wastes.

I have few lingering considerations-- Zuran Orb vs Nomad Stadium for life gain, if i should run Cephalid Coliseum as a long-run win-con, if Ghost Quarter is worth running-- about the maindeck. Otherwise, it's proven solid in a variety of matchups

What I'm trying to finish building is a sideboard. So far, the only cards I've settled on are...

3 COP: Red - hoses burn, one of the deck's biggest weaknesses and makes goblins a lot easier.

1 Trinisphere - further redundancy for the combo match

4 Ray of Revelation - every red deck is going to side in Blood Moons, and this is the suitable answer. Is also at least moderately effective vs Counterbalance

That leaves seven spots. I'm thinking about committing 4 to Ethersworn Canonist so I have more ammo for the combo matchup.
The other 3... I don't know.
Sphere of Resistance punishes a lot of decks, but the fact that it doesn't stack with Trinisphere kind of turns me off.
Chalice punishes me as much as, if not more, than other decks. Exploration and Crop Rotation are both clutch @1 and life from the loam is used at least once every game.
More Zuran Orbs would be cool, but I don't know of any matchup where they'd be clutch, outside of Ichorid, where Orb + Factory removes Bridges...and if I needed more hate on Ichorid, Propaganda or just more EE's would be better.
Karmic Justice? City of Solitude? Choke? More manlands, maybe? IDK.

Any insights or recommendations would be appreciated.

[Antonius]

I placed nineteenth at the star city games legacy tournament yesterday playing this deck. the list I ran. (http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=30756)

Props to Caleb for spotting me three chalices on short notice. Slops to losing to burn. Chalice for 1, 2 and 3 can't win if he draws 6 mountains and all four fireblasts. O_o
Drawing with deadguy when I was three turns away from winning off a single factory also sucked.

[Ozymandias]

Now that I think about it...you have a basic forest. You have lands that get said forest. Wouldn't Krosan Grip be an all-round better answer than Ray? It can also catch a Crypt or Relic unawares, allowing you to do something like, say, EOT Intuition and then, after Intuition resolves, Kgrip the crypt. It also deals with opposing crucibles and stuff. Just a thought.

P.S. you can cast it under your own chalices

[BreathWeapon]

Instead of Trinisphere/Chalice of the Void, have you tried Sphere of Resistance/Thorn of Amethyst for disruption? Also, if you need another win-con, Intuition -> Gigapede is solid.

[xsockmonkeyx]

Hi Tony,

This is John from the Knightware tourneys. You split the first round of the last tourney with my tempo thresh.

I like the addition of Chalices and Tombs. Chalice at 1 seems backbreaking in addition to the the other denial elements.

Did you run into any more grave hate problems at the SCG? It seems like a singleton Ancient Grudge would be useful for fighting Relic/Crypt.

Are the 2 Engineered Explosives enough? Would you ever want to just Intuition up 3 EE EOT to solve problem permanents as opposed to Loam/Ruins/EE, or EE/EE/Ruins? At the very least this could circumvent the graveyard if you need to blow up Relic/Crypt.

[Antonius]

@Ozymandias - I've thought about grip and you're right, it would be better. I have just preferred ray so far because I can dredge it and play it from the GY...though the more I refine the deck, the more it moves away from the loam-dredge engine and the less relevant the flashback becomes.

@BreathWeapon - I used to run Thorns in the side as anti-combo tech, before I started running chalices. I think chalice/3sphere is way better. As for gigapede, If I had the open spot, i would rather run another manland...Treetop, maybe.

@xsockmonkeyx:

Sup John. I was surprised that you couldn't make it yesterday. Where were you?

Anyways chalice has been working out perfectly. It comboes so well with port and crushes so many decks.

As for graveyard hate, it hasn't really been a problem. Most of the games where graveyard hate came in I was able to keep going for the trinisphere-stax lock without recursion. Even with a leyline or something, the deck can just count on drawing more lands and permanents off the top than the opponent and eventually run them into the ground.
That's what I did against B/W Deadguy who had a turn 0 leyline. However, the leyline did exile some of my factories which ultimately prevented me from winning. We drew after turns.
The one game where I did get really jacked by grave hate (withered wretch) I had already lost to really strong LD and discard.

Other than that, though, the most popular and effective grave hate in the format gets owned by Chalice. Chalice also stops pithing needle, which is another really strong hate card against me.

As for EE, I only ran it in my list that day because I didn't have a 3rd smokestack and third crucible.

This is the next version I plan on testing:

(34) Land--

1 Forest
4 Misty Rainforest
2 Tropical Island
2 Savannah

4 Maze of Ith
3 Mishra's Factory

4 Wasteland
4 Rishadan Port
1 Ghost Quarter

4 City of Traitors
3 Ancient Tomb

1 Tabernacle
1 Academy Ruins

(19) Artifact -

4 Mox Diamond

4 Chalice of the Void
4 Trinisphere
4 Smokestack
3 Crucible of Worlds

(7) Other --

4 Exploration
2 Intuition
1 Life from the Loam


--Sideboard--
1 Zuran Orb
1 Glacial Chasm
3 CoP: Red
3 Armageddon
4 Ray of Revelation/Krosan Grip
3 Engineered Explosives

Much more straightforward build, can actually draw smokestack ftw so intuition is only left to tutor for tabernacle, recursion engine or bombs out of the sideboard.

[94teen]

Have you considered Nomad Stadium as another Zuran Orb effect? It's another land, which can't hurt, and gains twice as much life. It's more mana intensive, but was more effective in my experience with eternal garden.

Similarly, Cephalid Coliseum as a draw engine was really good in Garden variety decks.

Another thing I found with eternal garden was that Rings of Brighthearth was insane. It lets you effectively have additional copies of all your lands in a single card. Maybe a singleton couldn't hurt?

[Kangaxx]

Why did you name this deck African Stax, just out of curiosity?

[keys]

Nice finish Tony :D Wish I could have been there.

[Antonius]

Why did you name this deck African Stax, just out of curiosity?

The deck runs lots of land and many of these lands are analogous to features of the African continent. IE: Wastelands >> Sahara Desert; Rishadan Port >> the Somali Coast, The Tabernacle >> The Church of our Lady Mary of Zion...etc. There are hundreds, if not thousands of Ruins, Ghost Quarters, Cities of Traitors and Ancient Tombs in Africa; furthermore, Misty Rainforests, Savannahs and Tropical Islands are naturally occurring terrain there.

I was going to name it Rhodesian or Zimbabwean Stax, after the general Fucked-uppedness of that country...But African just sounded better.

@94Teen: I personally don't like Nomad Stadium because it's dead without thresh and thus makes the deck more susceptible to GY hate. Orb isn't as effective if you can't recur the lands you sac, but at least you can count on drawing more lands off the top. You can't really count on drawing more Stadiums.

As for Coliseum...I've been thinking about running it, mainly because it's a win-con that doesn't use the Combat Phase. It's in my colors and more flexible, thus better than Barbarian Ring. As an added bonus, winning by decking is always cooler than winning by burn.

And the best effect I could get out of Rings is forking a port, a Ghost Quarter or a Wasteland. And exploration (with Crucible) achieves the later two effects just fine.
If I were to run Coliseum as an alternative win con, then rings might we necessary just to speed the process up...but it seems like a Win-More card. Just like how some of my earlier versions of this deck ran Garruk.

[94teen]

Understandable for both stadium and ZOrb.

The problem with using Cephalid Coliseum as a win condition in Garden was that it gave your opponent a chance to draw outs. The plus side was it's a sick draw engine for land based deck. Even if you've got all the explorations in play and funnel everything you've got into milling them, it's going to take 2 to 4 turns, probably three or so on average to mill them out. It might be okay game 1, but game 2/3 you're just letting them draw into 'yard hate.

What I liked about Coliseum was that it let you fit a combo win into the deck if you wanted to speed up the win. When I tried it I was playing Rings + Time Vault. I was already running 2 copies of rings, so having a copy of time vault to dredge up seemed pretty good. You could have a more relevant package now with zendikar out. Time Vault land + Deserted Temple + Rings of Brighthearth for infinite turns. Definitely getting into "danger of cool things," but for minimal deck slots it gives you a way to finish games in a timely manner, which is always difficult for stax variants. Seems like a few slots could be opened up considering most of the pieces are okay on their own.

Another random idea. There was a Relic Orb deck awhile back that ran Static/Winter Orb + Blinkmoth Well. Might that have a place here considering you can tutor up the well fairly easily? Even if you can't, you play so many more lands with Crucible/Exploration tricks that it shouldn't hinder you nearly as much as the other player.


EDIT: Riftstone Portal seems okay. Lets you cut down on green/white sources, lets your Mazes and Glacial Chasms generate mana. Horizon Canopy as a draw engine in addition to/in lieu of Cephalid Coliseum?

[Antonius]

They can draw all the answers they want; If they're under a Port/Stax/3sphere choke, they'll never be able to cast it. either way, the Coliseum win is way to slow to be practical and Orb/Well is also slow and completely unnecessary. Right now I'm looking into ways to win games faster, perhaps via something like a Garruk or Elspeth.

[phamtastic]

hey tony, it's eric....your ex-roommate.

i like the elspeth and garruk idea. maybe take out a smoke stack and an ancient tomb to fit either 2 elspeth or 2 garruck. i don't think you have room to put both of them in.

I think 3 smokestack is alright. it is a bad topdeck in tight situations.

[Antonius]

4 stax is good. I want to draw it fairly early and drawing multiples isn't exactly helpful, but it's not completely bad, either. At worst, I can play the extra stack as a permanent to sack next turn instead of having to sac land.

I think I mentioned this to you yesterday, but I'm thinking about running Reap and Sow in place of intuition and then dropping Loam and Academy ruins (and thus, blue from the deck overall) for Either Garruk or Elspeth. Elspeth is better, provides an overall faster clock and has overall synergy with the Stax lock, but I actually have Garruks and Elspeths are going for $25 =(