U/G Stasis deck

[staxx]

U/G Stasis deck
hi this deck is that I'm trying, with good results in MWS but something seems missing, if you have you help me decis me what you think and if you have future competitive or not.


Lands

4-forsaken city
7-islands
4.tropical island
2-forests
4-thawing glaciers


Spells

3-tangle wire
4-stasis
3-chain of vapor
4-brainstorm
4-force of will
3-daze
4-amulet of vigor
2-jace mind sculptor
2-garruk wildspeaker
4-root maze
3-mirri`s guile
3-standstill


Sideboard

3-propaganda
3-krosan grip
2-hurkils recall
2-relic of progenitus
2-tormods crypt
2-stifle
1-wipe away





the deck is to control the opponent with standstill and the amount of disruption that has to be getting the parts of the combo, stasis-forsaken, roots maze-amulet of force-stasis, stasis-garruk .... there are plenty of combo and kill mission for planeswalkers is combining well with the stasis that I would like to give me advice to change any letter or get something else to help me , greetings

[Poron]

Quirion Ranger / Scryb Ranger + Noble Hierarch / Bird of Paradise just too good here not to abuse of it

[flrn]

Quirion Ranger / Scryb Ranger + Noble Hierarch / Bird of Paradise just too good here not to abuse of it

The main problem with them is that they die from every single removal there is. I tested similiar Stasis Builds, like three months ago.


U/G Stasis deck
hi this deck is that I'm trying, with good results in MWS but something seems missing, if you have you help me decis me what you think and if you have future competitive or not.


Lands

4-forsaken city
7-islands
4.tropical island
2-forests
4-thawing glaciers


Spells

3-tangle wire
4-stasis
3-chain of vapor
4-brainstorm
4-force of will
3-daze
4-amulet of vigor
2-jace mind sculptor
2-garruk wildspeaker
4-root maze
3-mirri`s guile
3-standstill


Sideboard

3-propaganda
3-krosan grip
2-hurkils recall
2-relic of progenitus
2-tormods crypt
2-stifle
1-wipe away

the deck is to control the opponent with standstill and the amount of disruption that has to be getting the parts of the combo, stasis-forsaken, roots maze-amulet of force-stasis, stasis-garruk .... there are plenty of combo and kill mission for planeswalkers is combining well with the stasis that I would like to give me advice to change any letter or get something else to help me , greetings

First of all i dont quite get the Standstills. You dont have any manlands at all. You wont put pressure on your opponent early on and if the opponent has pressure on the board, which happens quite often against aggro, you are very likely to break your own Standstill.

My last build looked like this. I decided to dump it, because most of the time i had to wait till turn 4 to get to the lock and some of the aggro decks out there are able to win the game by then. But nevertheless here's the list.

4 Brainstorm
4 Daze
4 Force of Will
4 Ponder
4 Stasis
3 Root Maze
2 Threads of Disloyalty
3 Powder Keg
3 Tangle Wire
3 Jace Beleren
3 Garruk Wildspeaker
1 Flooded Strand
2 Forest
3 Forsaken City
4 Island
4 Misty Rainforest
1 Polluted Delta
4 Rishadan Port
2 Scalding Tarn
2 Tropical Island

Amulet of Vigor could be a nice addition, but i dont know if i really want to play it. When i have an engine going with a Planeswalker i dont need it all. The main problem with the planeswalker is, that you have to protect them early on one turn, before you get into the lock and that is mostly a problem against aggro decks. My solution for this problem was to play Elephant Grass in the board. It's better than Propaganda due to it's manacost.

The new Jace could be interesting, but i think the old one does the job as good as the new one. The main thing about Jace is to draw cards and you really dont care about your opponent drawing cards if you have a Root Maze and a Stasis on the table. The Brainstorm ability of the new one doesnt get him out of burn range. The +2 ability of the old one does. I tested the deck with additional win options, but the planeswalkers are simply better, since they are also the engine of your deck. Best play of the deck is turn 4 Garruk, untap 2, Stasis, with a Forsaken City in play.

I also tested some acceleration, but in the end they all werent good enough. Cards i tested for this matter, where Birds of Paradise, Exploration and Wall of Roots. In the end Wall of Roots where the best among them, but since you dont play any other creatures, the opponent will get rid of them fast in the second game and you really dont wanna waste your counters on protecting the wall.

[Grollub]

I don't think Garruk Wildspeaker will help very much, the double green manacost means you'll have to get basic forests or open youself up to being decimated by wastelands against aggro decks. Amulet of Vigor looks very interesting, with multiple down Thawing Glacier becomes absolutely disgusting and Root Maze actually starts to provide extra mana too.

Rishadan Port + Garruk Wildspeaker is nice and dandy, but much better suited for an aggresive Winter Orb approach in my opinion.

[p1mpjuice]

I'm a big fan of lockdown decks, and I've tested many of them on MWS (cards are expensive =/ ). My favorite is my Mono-U stasis deck, which I've actually built. I've found it runs the most consistently.

I'll flesh out my argument a bit, and I'm still looking for ways to improve my own deck (maybe I'll post a decklist when I'm not feeling so lazy).

You need to first determine what the goal of your stasis deck is. Is it complete lockdown, or is it to stall while you win through other means? From the nature of stasis, I decided that it would make sense for it to be a complete lockdown deck. The symmetry of skipping untaps hurts an alternate win too much, so it makes sense to let stasis BE the win condition; however, your views may differ, but judging by your use of root maze, I doubt it.

We've establish we want a lockdown deck, so we need to figure out the combo pieces we need. Stasis is trivial, and there are 3 other cards that create a 2-card full lockdown (that I can think of off the top of my head): kismet, frozen aether, and root maze. Kismet should probably be ignored because frozen aether is merely a planeshifted version of it and it conveniently shifts into our main color. You lose enlightened tutors, but those are terrible card disadvantage anyway (read: there are better tutors).

The choice is between root maze and frozen aether. Granted, root maze lets you pull off epic turn 2? def turn 3 locks, but staying mono-U opens up a lot more. You can use entangles , thwarts (although I don't), gigadrowses (amazing as hell), and more. I went for a build that maximizes the abuse of "free" alternate casting cost spells, specifically, the ones that return islands to your hand (too bad gush is banned in legacy). Not to mention, your manabase is much more consistent and avoids wastelands and stifles (since you can just run basics). You also don't have to worry about any removal really (wasteland for city and grip for stasis, but again, that's where gigadrowse comes into play). I based my decklist off older turbo-stasis decks, so I also run 4 howling mines, which have allowed me to stall for really long times with a stasis + city on the board and nothing good in hand, so I would defend the mines, although, it's your choice.

As a sidenote: I don't think stasis will ever see too much tournament level play just because it takes forever. I run black vise and feldon's cane as a win in casual, but for a serious tournament, you'll have to run something terrible like ebony owl netsuke.

[Vacrix]

I don't think Garruk Wildspeaker will help very much, the double green manacost means you'll have to get basic forests or open youself up to being decimated by wastelands against aggro decks. Amulet of Vigor looks very interesting, with multiple down Thawing Glacier becomes absolutely disgusting and Root Maze actually starts to provide extra mana too.

You avoid wasteland by playing with Scryb Rangers and Quirion Rangers, bouncing your lands in response to wasteland or sinkhole. Also, when you run all those creatures, Garruk Wildspeaker becomes absolutely disgusting, turning your 3 dudes making your mana into 12 damage from overrun. Its a great win condition for Stasis interacting with Stasis itself. Why wouldn't it 'help very much'? Garruk could be the card that makes this deck competitive, if it ever gets there.


I also tested some acceleration, but in the end they all werent good enough. Cards i tested for this matter, where Birds of Paradise, Exploration and Wall of Roots. In the end Wall of Roots where the best among them, but since you dont play any other creatures, the opponent will get rid of them fast in the second game and you really dont wanna waste your counters on protecting the wall.

Really? I didn't like BoP much. I prefered Hierarch for the exalted. I played a bunch of exalted creatures, making Scryb Rangers my win con often times, beating for 3 flying, and then untapping to swing again the following turn.

I preferred a more aggressive version of stasis, less protection and more consistency when dropping the lock.
I did a lot of testing a while back. This was the best list:

Stasis
Land:
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Flooded Strand
4 Tropical Island
3 Savannah
4 Forsaken City
19

Creatures:
4 Quirion Rangers
3 Scryb Rangers
4 Noble Hierarch
3 Birds of Paradise
2 Court Hussar
16

Lock:
4 Stasis
4 Enlightened Tutor
3 Garruk Wildspeaker
1 Luminarch Ascension
12

Tricks:
4 Stifle
1 Phyrexian Dreadnought
1 Umezawa's Jitte
6

Draw:
1 Sensei's Diving Top
4 Brainstorm
2 Ponder
7

SB:
4 Counterbalance
4 Trinisphere
2 Wheel of Sun and Moon
2 Tormod's Crypt
1 Scryb Rangers
1 Sensei's Diving Top
1 Moat

The creature base can give you really weird hands, but it supports Stasis really well unless you run into fire//ice or mass removal. So think of it as a swarm aggro deck that wins via a lock. Its odd to say the least but you can play out the stasis lock on turn 2, and its not uncommon.

Win Con's:
- Court Hussar. Seems slow but vigilance is great under stasis and exalted makes it swing for 2 usually, AND it digs 3 cards deep.
- Garruk. You play lots of small dudes that interact well with each other and then use garruk with stasis and eventually just overrun.
- Umezawa's Jitte. You play a lot of guys that can pick up jitte after they get blocked. Once you get counters on it, it can go all the way.
- Phyrexian Dreadnought. The random 'oops I win' has been worth the card slot because you can fetch nought with Etutor.
- Luminarch Ascension: Tutorable via E-tutor. Stasis usually gives you 4 turns to get it online. In all my testing, I have yet to lose once it is online.

Lock:
Stasis + Forsaken City
Stasis + Hierarch/BoP + Quirion/Scryb Ranger
Stasis + Garruk

SB:
Trinisphere is actually really, really good with Garruk and the like. Its great against a lot of decks and I've considered running it in the MD.
CB is for when you run into burn.dec and storm combo.
Wheel of Sun and Moon and Crypt are just generic Grave hate.
Tormod's Crypt. see above.
Moat: Pretty great when you bust it out turn 3 (NOT uncommon) against aggro. I've considered running more but they are pretty expensive.
SDT is to get a lock with CB. It may not be necessary.
Scryb Rangers is AMAZING against merfolk.

Strengths:
You can often get the lock out by turn 3 which is often fast enough to win after the lock is down. Even against aggro control, you just attempt to drop stasis in the early turns if/when your opponent taps out. I rarely have problems winning once I get a lock going. Getting to the lock is really the key. This deck can do it very quickly, arguably the fastest.

Weaknesses:
4 protection spells in the form of stifle. Often Stifle is a great way to slow down the opponent ie. stifling a fetchland against control can be key in dropping stasis, especially if the opponent is trying to shuffle away bad shit with his fetchland. Stifle is also a bomb against combo, and stops pridemage from blowing up stasis which is particularly significant since so many decks run it nowadays.

White gives the deck a lot of options via enlightened tutor. I think that the fetchlands and lots of card filtering might allow the deck to support black for thoughtseize/duress. That would enable the deck to protect Stasis from coming down against something like thresh.



By the way, you can always necro the Stasis thread discussions for ideas:
http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?8615-%5BDeck%5D-Stasis

[Poron]

1 Stasis 1 Garruk 1 Root Maze, you win.

just concentrate on landing these 3 cards.

I'd rather stay classic:

3 Amulet of Vigor
4 Root Maze

3 Garruk
2 Jace

4 Stasis

4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder

4 Daze
4 FoW

3 Crop Rotation

3 Tangle Wire

4 Misty Rainforest
4 Tropical Island
2 Forsaken City
1 The Tabernacle at the Pendrell's Vale
4 Island
4 Forest
3 Rishadan Port

[Vacrix]

I tested root maze a bit. Its GREAT against decks that play fetchlands. Wow seriously they have to wait so long to get going. If you then play a solid creature base then you win just because you can play stuff so much faster then they can, and then resolve stasis. HOWEVER, its a terrible top deck. Horrid. Multiples are even worse and if they opponent plays vial its even worse, and most aggro does. So its really only good against control. I dropped it from my build a while back. I like crop rotation but I can't say that you can land it fast enough without acceleration. You will lose to aggro. turn 4 garruk is not going to cut it man. Legacy is too fast a format. A consistent turn 3 is the only way that stasis will become competitive.

EDIT:
I dislike the control shell in general. It didn't work that well for me. It will beat aggro control and lose to anything with a clock.

[p1mpjuice]

You avoid wasteland by playing with Scryb Rangers and Quirion Rangers, bouncing your lands in response to wasteland or sinkhole. Also, when you run all those creatures, Garruk Wildspeaker becomes absolutely disgusting, turning your 3 dudes making your mana into 12 damage from overrun. Its a great win condition for Stasis interacting with Stasis itself. Why wouldn't it 'help very much'? Garruk could be the card that makes this deck competitive, if it ever gets there.



Really? I didn't like BoP much. I prefered Hierarch for the exalted. I played a bunch of exalted creatures, making Scryb Rangers my win con often times, beating for 3 flying, and then untapping to swing again the following turn.

I preferred a more aggressive version of stasis, less protection and more consistency when dropping the lock.
I did a lot of testing a while back. This was the best list:

Stasis
Land:
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Flooded Strand
4 Tropical Island
3 Savannah
4 Forsaken City
19

Creatures:
4 Quirion Rangers
3 Scryb Rangers
4 Noble Hierarch
3 Birds of Paradise
2 Court Hussar
16

Lock:
4 Stasis
4 Enlightened Tutor
3 Garruk Wildspeaker
1 Luminarch Ascension
12

Tricks:
4 Stifle
1 Phyrexian Dreadnought
1 Umezawa's Jitte
6

Draw:
1 Sensei's Diving Top
4 Brainstorm
2 Ponder
7

SB:
4 Counterbalance
4 Trinisphere
2 Wheel of Sun and Moon
2 Tormod's Crypt
1 Scryb Rangers
1 Sensei's Diving Top
1 Moat

The creature base can give you really weird hands, but it supports Stasis really well unless you run into fire//ice or mass removal. So think of it as a swarm aggro deck that wins via a lock. Its odd to say the least but you can play out the stasis lock on turn 2, and its not uncommon.

Win Con's:
- Court Hussar. Seems slow but vigilance is great under stasis and exalted makes it swing for 2 usually, AND it digs 3 cards deep.
- Garruk. You play lots of small dudes that interact well with each other and then use garruk with stasis and eventually just overrun.
- Umezawa's Jitte. You play a lot of guys that can pick up jitte after they get blocked. Once you get counters on it, it can go all the way.
- Phyrexian Dreadnought. The random 'oops I win' has been worth the card slot because you can fetch nought with Etutor.
- Luminarch Ascension: Tutorable via E-tutor. Stasis usually gives you 4 turns to get it online. In all my testing, I have yet to lose once it is online.

Lock:
Stasis + Forsaken City
Stasis + Hierarch/BoP + Quirion/Scryb Ranger
Stasis + Garruk

SB:
Trinisphere is actually really, really good with Garruk and the like. Its great against a lot of decks and I've considered running it in the MD.
CB is for when you run into burn.dec and storm combo.
Wheel of Sun and Moon and Crypt are just generic Grave hate.
Tormod's Crypt. see above.
Moat: Pretty great when you bust it out turn 3 (NOT uncommon) against aggro. I've considered running more but they are pretty expensive.
SDT is to get a lock with CB. It may not be necessary.
Scryb Rangers is AMAZING against merfolk.

Strengths:
You can often get the lock out by turn 3 which is often fast enough to win after the lock is down. Even against aggro control, you just attempt to drop stasis in the early turns if/when your opponent taps out. I rarely have problems winning once I get a lock going. Getting to the lock is really the key. This deck can do it very quickly, arguably the fastest.

Weaknesses:
4 protection spells in the form of stifle. Often Stifle is a great way to slow down the opponent ie. stifling a fetchland against control can be key in dropping stasis, especially if the opponent is trying to shuffle away bad shit with his fetchland. Stifle is also a bomb against combo, and stops pridemage from blowing up stasis which is particularly significant since so many decks run it nowadays.

White gives the deck a lot of options via enlightened tutor. I think that the fetchlands and lots of card filtering might allow the deck to support black for thoughtseize/duress. That would enable the deck to protect Stasis from coming down against something like thresh.



By the way, you can always necro the Stasis thread discussions for ideas:
http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?8615-%5BDeck%5D-Stasis

I think you misuse the term lock. Stasis isn't a lock, stasis + rootmaze or stasis + frozen aether is a lock. I also like the part where you forgot to mention your weakness of running 0 basic land and thus folding to a single blood moon/magus of the moon, which can also be played out turn 1 against you. Obviously, BoP and NH are not answers to blood moon (they're played red after all).

[Vacrix]

I think you misuse the term lock. Stasis isn't a lock, stasis + rootmaze or stasis + frozen aether is a lock. I also like the part where you forgot to mention your weakness of running 0 basic land and thus folding to a single blood moon/magus of the moon, which can also be played out turn 1 against you. Obviously, BoP and NH are not answers to blood moon (they're played red after all).

I tried running basics. As long as every land is a forest you aren't vulnerable to wasteland or sinkhole if you play intelligently with your rangers. I ran into some Dragon Stompy in my testing. Yea the game gets really hard if they play magus or blood moon but its is certainly not always GG. You can go for Stifle/Nought provided you have some mana dudes in play, and you can go for Jitte. Blood moon decks like Dragon Stompy and Imperial Painter are not good matchups for this build, certainly. I've seen plenty of competent decks that lose to blood moon, but they are still good against everything else, namely tempo thresh that has to support 3 colors and wasteland; its hard to support 3 colors if you keep running into basics and wastelands.

As for the term lock, I'm stretching the term, but against most decks, its very much a lock. Rarely have I run into problems once Stasis comes down. Keeping it in play hasn't been difficult because I like to play out the lock once my opponent taps out. Rarely does the other player draw 3 lands after Stasis comes down and then play Grip. Its rare. Either way, it gives me time to get Ascension online and then I don't need Stasis. Same goes for Nought or a Jitte with a decent number of counters.

[xsockmonkeyx]

Try using Ensnare. It taps down creatures and bounces two lands for future Stasis payments for 0 mana. When it does both its pretty devastating, but even without creatures to lock down it's still good at juggling Stasis upkeep.

[shaneswa]

Im sorry but as a legacy deck this one actually made me shed tears. Stasis is far too slow to do anything against the legacy meta game. Not to piss in any ones Wheaties but just saying.

[Vacrix]

Im sorry but as a legacy deck this one actually made me shed tears. Stasis is far too slow to do anything against the legacy meta game. Not to piss in any ones Wheaties but just saying.

Try playing with Stasis before you pass judgement on it. IF you can get it out early, Stasis is good in legacy. The build I play occasionally on MWS comes out fast usually turn 2, 3 or 4, but it has problems against control because it runs 0 protection. Stasis in a control shell isn't THAT bad either. Either your build is beating aggro consistently like mine, or it is beating control and combo. Its a tradeoff and brainstorming about it might yield some good results that improve Stasis's overall standing against the meta. I heard the same shit said of Dream Halls.dec being to slow and vulnerable to wasteland and shit, and its now an Established Deck.

[Grollub]

You avoid wasteland by playing with Scryb Rangers and Quirion Rangers, bouncing your lands in response to wasteland or sinkhole. Also, when you run all those creatures, Garruk Wildspeaker becomes absolutely disgusting, turning your 3 dudes making your mana into 12 damage from overrun. Its a great win condition for Stasis interacting with Stasis itself. Why wouldn't it 'help very much'? Garruk could be the card that makes this deck competitive, if it ever gets there.
If you're avoiding wastelands with Rangers, you can support Stasis without Garruk, which would make the planewalker overkill and unneeded - this of course is speaking from a strictly theoretic viewpoint. The idea of taking the deck in a more aggro approach is interesting; Tempo+Stasis could prove pretty interesting as lowering mana sources to an absolute minimum is the current trend in legacy (in lieu of the cantrip hording).

I could totally see a U/G variant with the untappers, Goyfs, Root Mazes, Living Wish ('Nought and City in board) as a possible route to follow.

[flrn]

As i already mentioned before, i tried some builds with stasis. This time I'm gonna present you a build, which i actually played in a 60-player tournament. So here's the list.

2 Cold-Eyed Selkie
4 Cursecatcher
2 Merfolk Sovereign
4 Merrow Reejerey
4 Stonybrook Banneret
2 Tidal Warrior
4 Daze
2 Ensnare
4 Force of Will
2 Tidal Bore
4 Merrow Commerce
4 Stasis
3 Jace Beleren
3 Forsaken City
14 Island
2 Teferi's Isle

//60 cards

Sideboard:

3 Blue Elemental Blast
1 Ensnare
1 Hydroblast
4 Relic of Progenitus
4 Spell Pierce
2 Thwart

//15 cards

It was actually quite fun playing the deck. An opponent called a judge once to ask how Phasing works. So here's a short report. Round one I lost pretty badly against Merfolk. I don't think that's a favorable matchup anyway for this build, so i was ok with losing it, since i had no chance in both of the matches. Round two i won 2-0 against Counterslivers. Nothing much he could do about it. The time his critters tried to smash me, a Stasis won me the game. Round three i had to face Landstill. Control seems like a good matchup. In both games, it kinda went like this: He tries to get control over the board, i drop Stasis (with a Commerce on the table), he concedes.

So here comes the fourth round. The round, where i fucked myself due to a really bad mistake i made. I played against UGW Countertop. In the first game i drop merfolk after merfolk and simply beat him down. In the second game he got turn 1 Top, turn 2 Balance and i cant do shit about it. In the third game, i have Stasis, along with Commerce on the table and beat him down. I have a Reejerey in play, a merfolk in my hand and i'm able to do critical damage, i simply have to tap away one of his blockers. So instead of tapping his Rhox War Monk, i tap his Goyf. He survives on 3 life, recovers and beats me down. I was so angry about that mistake, that i heavily misplayed my last two matches, but i made some adjustments to the deck after the tourney.

You always want to have Lord of Atlantis, since 60% of the meta plays Islands. So you really should include some. I dropped Jace/Forsaken City to play additional copies of Ensnare and Tidal Bore and i included an additional Cold-Eyed Selkie (that card can be so fuckin awesome). I also tested builds with Fetchlands and Brainstorm, to have some sort of library manipulation, but I'm not sure about that yet.

Anyway, if someone wants to try that build and has some results, feel free to tell me about it.

[obituary 95]

i tried this deck and i can tell you know that qusali pridemage is the bane of its existance

[Vacrix]

i tried this deck and i can tell you know that qusali pridemage is the bane of its existance

Another reason to play stifle.

[Zalren]

Does Stonybrook Banneret reduce the casting cost of Merrow Commerce?

[Poron]

yes

[Darkenslight]

The win conditions for Stasis are very short; you can either play lots of creatures, or play things that hurt you having lotsa of cards in hand, or mill.

I think the best suggestions are the Jace Brothers; Beleren mills through your opponent drawing, whilst Mind Sculptor makes their deck go pop, whilst playing Board control.

Merfolk seem funny, too.