U Stax

[Q-Ball]

Thoughts?
There was a card that could make a player take double upkeeps, but I can't remember.


4 Propaganda
4 Smokestack
4 Trinisphere
4 Crucible of Worlds
3 Tangle Wire
4 Mox Diamond
4 Chalice of the Void
4 Lodestone Golem
4 Pendrell Mists
3 Vedalken Shackles
4 Solemn Simulacrum
3 Thirst for Knowledge


10 Island
4 Ancient Tomb
3 City of Traitors
4 Mishra's Factory
3 Wasteland
1 Academy Ruins

[UrDraco]

The card you are are looking for is Paradox Haze.

[kicks_422]

You could also try Parallax Tide. I remembered I tested something like this a few years back, and that card was awesome with all the taxing/sac/tapping effects.

[Nelis]

I like that deck. Questions:

Is Shackles effective enough, is it not a bit slow and do you have enough islands?
Would Sower of Temptation not be better? She's a beater by herself and can also removed with Chrome Mox.

It is a bit dissynergistic with Lodestone Golemn so maybe not a good idea after all.

Off topic: Parallax Tide is very nice with landfall. I'm thinking Ob Nixilis combo.

[Q-Ball]

The Haze, exactly.
Might drop 2 factories for more islands.
Solemn let's you fetch them up, and recurring him is a great way to get things done.
The Shackles give you major advantage, especially with Smokestack to keep it at 2 while they have creatures.

Win condition is factories, lodestone beats, and of course using they're own gear against them.

[Vacrix]

Armageddon stax gets Pendril Mists + a 2/6 body. Ghostly prison = propaganda. Armageddon > Thirst of Knowledge.
Why play U-Stax over W-stax? Shackles? Is it that good?

[Nelis]

I've tried this deck a bit and I think shackles is too slow against very fast creature decks like Zoo.
Also this deck has 70! cards, that's too much.

I've trimmed it down to this for now:

// 22
10 island
4 Ancient tomb
4 City Of Traitors
3 Wasteland
1 Academy Ruins

//21
4 Chrome Mox
4 Chalice of the Void
2 Crucible of Worlds
3 Tanglewire
4 Trinisphere
4 Smokestack

//8
4 Lodestone Golem
4 Solem Simulacrum

//9
4 Thirst for Knowledge
4 Propaganda
1 Pendrell Mists

Thoughts:
I think with this list there's too little blue cards to put under Chrome Mox.
Don't know yet if Crucible is worth playing

@Qball:
Which cards could be cut in your opinion to get to 60 cards?



Solemn let's you fetch them up, and recurring him is a great way to get things done.


Would you not want to put in another Academy ruins then?

Maybe something to think about,Reigns of Power works nicely with Pedrell Mists:
Stack Pedrell Mists
Play Reigns of Power
Don't pay the upkeep for 'your' creatures.

@ Vacrix, because it's something different for a change.

[Q-Ball]

Dur, my miscount :laugh: Night shifts are killing me.

I like your list but somethings I see as required that are less then 3 of's even.
Crucible + Wasteland = Wastelock = Win against quite alot of the meta
Add in a Smokestack and it just gets better; But 3 of is enough.
Tangle wire + Smokestack = Unfair trigger stacking
But late game if they develop resources it's not so great.

I'm thinking maybe less thirst for knowledge, most stax builds get away with minimum or no card engine :eyebrow:
And yes 2 ruins might be a good step.

Okay;
So.
For the most, we need to be able to beat combo. No doubt. +4 Trini
And we need good general disruption +4 Chalice of the Void
And we want to be able to recur lands +3 Crucible
We want wastelands +3 Waste
And Solemn is really damn good. +3
We want first turn 3-mana hands +4 Mox + 4 Ancient Tomb + 3 City of Traitors
And we definitly need lots of creature control to slice up aggro strategies +3 Propaganda +3 Pendrell Mists
We need some win condition +3 Lodestone Golem, Shackles
And we want to hit our land drops so 23-24 lands including the 2 utilities
This is stax, so +3 Smokestack

That gives us five more spots.
We want something unsymmetrical, and maybe a draw effect wouldn't be bad here.
But it might not be a horrid idea to have another kind of lock piece.

I think the last spots should be Paradox Haze and Tangle Wire. As almost everything in the deck; Pendrell, Smokestack, and such can be combo'd against it. 3/2 split works for me.

30//
2 Vedalken Shackles
3 Lodestone Golem
3 Propaganda
3 Pendrell Mists
4 Trinisphere
3 Crucible of Worlds
4 Chalice of the Void
3 Smokestack
3 Paradox Haze
2 Tanglewire

7//
3 Solemn Simulacrum
4 Mox Diamond

23//
11 Island
3 Wasteland
4 Ancient Tomb
3 City of Traitors
2 Academy Ruins


How's that look?

[nodahero]

How is tangle wire and smokestack unfair? You sac the permanent you tapped? That doesn't seem very busted... Or am I missing something.
t

[UrDraco]

I played around with U stacks for a while and this list seems a little unfocused. I definitly agree that mox diamond is the correct mox to be playing but you may want to up the land count in order to accomodate it. Wasteland is at least a 4 of, maybe 1-2 ghost quarter depending on your meta. Another wonderful (and now wonderfully expensive) land to include is The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale.

Are you sure about Lodestone Golem and Trinisphere? The two effects are independant of one another. Why not replace 3sphere with Sphere of Resistance or Thorn of Amythist?

You are also forgetting one of the main reasons to even run blue in stacks, Transmute artifact. With that you could cut the vedalken shackles to 1, smokestack to 1-2 and include some other silver bullet artifacts. Perhaps a Mindslaver or Sundering Titan. Also, transmute artifact with Solemn is a psuedo draw engine. Keep in mind that with Mindslaver+Academy Ruins you can finish the game very fast, which is something staxx tends to suck at.

Now would also be the time to buy transmute artifact as I smell a price jump coming up. Its old, its over powered and its underplayed. Someone just needs to top8 with it and its a 25 dollar card. That or they will fix the errata and it will be banned in legacy.

[Tychoides]

Armageddon stax gets Pendril Mists + a 2/6 body. Ghostly prison = propaganda. Armageddon > Thirst of Knowledge.
Why play U-Stax over W-stax? Shackles? Is it that good?

I think this is the real issue. The Magus is doubly helpful as a win condition, blocker and anti-creature card. I do like Thirst of Knowledge since I hate going into topdeck mode with Armageddon Stax, though losing Armageddon stinks.

If you don't have the Magus, perhaps going with Lodestone Golem would make sense for something that can beat down and help lock out?

How about splashing white for Armageddon? Using Flagstones of Trokair could net you Tundras, too.

[EnemyWithin]

Y'know, Blue has two excellent planeswalkers that fit right into a blue stax deck, Tezzeret and Jace, the Mind Sculptor. They are a little heavy in blue, but with 15 blue sources (counting Moxen), that is usually enough. And 24 lands plus 4 Moxen is more than enough to reach 5 mana for Tezzeret. Here's my mono blue Planeswalker Stax build:

Lands: 24
8 Islands
4 Ancient Tomb
4 City of Traitors
3 Seat of the Synod (can be fetched with Tezz w/o removing loyalty counters, and can be untapped with Tezz)
3 Wasteland
2 Dread Statuary

Other Mana Sources: 4
4 Mox Diamond

Artifacts: 23
4 Chalice of the Void
4 Trinisphere
4 Crucible of Worlds
4 Ensnaring Bridge
4 Smokestack
3 Bottled Cloister

Enchantments: 4
4 Propaganda

Planeswalkers: 5
3 Tezzeret the Seeker
2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor

You may note the glaring omission of Academy Ruins. I am aware of it, and testing to see whether it is necessary in this build, where my win cons are Planeswalkers and manlands, and I have 4 of each lock piece. The reason I took it out was to make room for the new manland, because I don't want Planeswalkers to be my only win con, since they are vulnerable and cannot be recurred. I may switch to 1 Academy Ruins and 1 Manland if necessary.

Now, on Planeswalkers: Tezzeret is amazing in this deck, and Jace seems to be doing well too. Tezzeret is ridiculous. Can't find that Ensnaring Bridge? Use Tezzeret. Can't find that Crucible? Use Tezzeret. The only time I'm sad to see one is when I already have one on the board. And Jace's 1st ability is actually very useful in this deck, you can look at each card the opponent's about to draw and either let them draw it if it's useless or put it on the bottom if it's a deed, grip, vindicate, qasali pridemage, engineered explosives, etc. His other abilities aren't too shabby either (being able to deal with creatures beyond Smokestack is nice), but you'll want to build up to his ultimate if you can, because if you get that off then it is pretty much game over. Planeswalkers may be not 100% reliable as win cons, but they can still gain you massive card advantage, card quality, and can conceivably be win cons if they aren't dealt with. Just make sure to use Jace's first ability immediately after he hits play, to get him out of burn range. You have priority when he comes into play, so I believe you can add the loyalty counters before your opponent can bolt him. I also have 8 lock pieces that deal with attackers, so chances are the Planeswalkers will be safe once they hit the board, aside from generic permanent removal (such as Vindicate) and burn. I've also got 3 Tangle Wire in the side against aggro.

[flrn]

How is tangle wire and smokestack unfair? You sac the permanent you tapped? That doesn't seem very busted... Or am I missing something.

You get to decide the order of the effects, so you for you, you tap first and then sacrifice something. For your opponent, he starts with sacrificing and then has to tap.

[from Cairo]

You get to decide the order of the effects, so you for you, you tap first and then sacrifice something. For your opponent, he starts with sacrificing and then has to tap.

And you can stack Smokestack's "At the beginning of your upkeep..." effects; putting the soot counter effect on the stack, then the permanent sacrificing effect on the stack, so on resolution, you're saccing 0 or 1 permanent, then increasing the soot counters to 1-2 (your opponent suffers first). Same thing with Fading and tapping effects of Wire; put the tap effect on the stack then put the Fading on the stack, initiate resolution, remove Fade counter, tap less permanents.

So the opponent's turn after a resolved Tangle Wire: they tap 4, you tap 2 + the Wire; they tap 3, you tap 1 + the Wire, etc. Over the coarse of 4 Turns, your opponent has tapped 10 permanents, and the Tangle Wire player has tapped 3 non-Tangle Wire permanents.

So while the effects are symetrical, being the permanent's controller allows one control of how the triggers are placed on the stack.

[dahcmai]

If you don't like losing Armageddon being in Blue you can always try Land Equilibrium and go for the denial route instead. Not like Stax has a problem with Artifact mana or running on 1 or 2 land. You could lock them out easily enough and that card has been begging to be broken since the Legends days.

[Tychoides]

I saw this suggested elsewhere, but Mana Vortex might not be a bad addition when paired with Crucible of Worlds in particular.

I also thought I heard someone running a mono-U Stax build at SCG Richmond last weekend, anyone else hear/read about that? I'd be curious as to what they ran.

[bruizar]

This list is popular in vintage: http://www.morphling.de/printview.php?c=1190&d=2

Cards like Elsewhere Flask and Eye of Ramos can help you get double blue. Also, I do not understand Pendrell Mists. Why not just run Tabernacle instead? Why sink 4 mana into something that you can get for free. Elsewhere Flask can also save your City of Traitors from a land trigger. It also makes Tabernacle produce blue mana until end of turn.

I would test a mix between Web of Inertia, Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale and Propaganda to diversify threats. ITEOC and FoW are the main reasons to run blue stax. Master of Etherium provides a real clock, but I don't think it will come through very often.

Solemn Simulacrum is a good card. It is countersynergistic land equilibrium, but synergistic with daze. Daze also has synergy with Land Equilibrium. Therefore, I wouldn't run Solemn and Land Equilibirum in the same deck.

Mana Vortex is good as well. If you run tezzeret, you should run a singleton toolbox of cards such as E.E. Chalice Needle, Relic of Progenitus and Ensnaring Bridge. Don't play multiple bridges.Relic of Progenitus can hardlock your opponent out of attack phases with Web of Inertia.

I think you should make the list UW, so you can abuse land equilibrium with armageddon and cards like ghost quarter. (Ghost Quarter becomes Strip Mine under a Land Equilibrium).

Splashing white gives you thopter foundry, which can make tangle wire and smokestack even more unfair, as well as providing a way to gain life and a win condition. I would also run Trinket Mage.

[rufus]

If you increase the number of smokestack counters to 2, then you can abuse the recycle clause on Genju of the Falls by feeding both it, and the island, to the smokestack. Wind Zendikon doesn't require the land to be an island, and is more efficient as a beater, but won't recycle itself.

Epochrasite seems like another good way to break symmetry on the smokestack, though it does really want to be played in combination with Transmute Artifact.

[Isei]

Epochrasite would be good, but trinisphere is better. The Genju idea is cute, but if you have an active Smokestack, then you're probably winning anyway.

[MULocke]

It's worth noting that Wind Zendikon has a few tricks, like putting it on a wasteland for double wasting action or putting it on another land like City of Traitors to get it back after making another land drop. If this is good utility or just too cute is yet to be seen, but it has potential. Plus it's basically a 2/2 with haste and flying otherwise.

[bruizar]

It's worth noting that Wind Zendikon has a few tricks, like putting it on a wasteland for double wasting action or putting it on another land like City of Traitors to get it back after making another land drop. If this is good utility or just too cute is yet to be seen, but it has potential. Plus it's basically a 2/2 with haste and flying otherwise.

2/2 haste with flying for 2 mana isn't that spectacular in a deck that doesn't play the aggro game

[Oiolosse]

mana vortex with CoW is amazing. I can attest to that...raze, pillage, fire/ice, lightning bolt, countertop, U/R ftw!!