Mono-Blue Prison Stax with Aggro?

[InResponseForceOfWill]

So I'm unhappy with my current MU Stax deck and I'm bored with Armageddon Stax, so I wanted to play around with it and make something new, exciting and challenging to my opponents. Here's my current, untested, hypothetical build. I want to lock my opponent down and beat their face with big creatures. Please help me refine it.


4x Chalice of the Void
4x Tangle Wire
4x Lodestone Golem
3x Metalworker
3x Master of Etherium
3x Esperzoa
3x Intuition
3x Trinisphere
3x Crucible of Worlds
3x Silent Arbiter
3x Smokestack

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


*Updated List below: Post #8


I run a basic Stax shell:

4x Chalice
3x Trinisphere
3x Smokestack
3x Crucible

No justifications needed here.


I run some prison/lock/denial cards:

4x Wasteland
4x Lodestone Golem
4x Tangle Wire
3x Silent Arbiter

Lodestone Golem: Big beater for decent cost. Screws your opponent and not you. Everything in the deck is an artifact spell except for Intuition.

Tangle Wire: Great lock piece. Should work wonders with Esperzoa if I understand it correctly.

Silent Arbiter: Originally this spot was held by Propaganda, but since Lodestone Golem and Propaganda don’t get along, I decided to try this guy. He sits at a fat 5 toughness and gets even beefier with MoE in play.


I run some acceleration:

4x Mox Diamond
4x City of Traitors
3x Ancient Tomb
3x Metalworker

Metalworker: Killer accelerant when dropped early. All cards in your hand besides Intuition and (most) land will give you lots of mana. I toyed with the idea of including 2 or 3 Staff of Domination, but didn’t see room. If I were to drop anything, I think I’d drop MoE first.


Other cards:

Intuition: I chose intuition over Thirst for Knowledge or Thoughtcast because a lot of the key cards in the deck are dead as duplicates, ie: 3sphere, Crucible and Silent Arbiter. With Intuition, you can grab, say: 2x Crucible, 1x Academy Ruins. This guarantees that you can recur any artifact or land from your graveyard. Well worth 2U if you ask me. Only draw back is that this is the only non-artifact card in the deck so it doesn’t get along too well with Lodestone Golem.

Academy Ruins: pretty self-explanatory. I run 2 because it works best with Intuition.

Esperzoa: if I understand it correctly, you can return a Tangle Wire to your hand before you tap x permanents. Sweet combo.

Master of Etherium: I can’t really justify this guy besides the fact that he’s big and cheap and pumps the board (puts Lodestone Golem and Esperzoa out of Bolt range). He might be a win more card, or he might be valid. I’ll need to test and see.


Cards that I feel have synergy and just missed the cut:

Jace TMS - I'd run 2 or 3, if I had 2 or 3...
Sphere of Resistance
Masticore
Steel Hellkite
Tolaria West
Thirst for Knowledge
Mishra’s Factory
Wurmcoil Engine
All is Dust
Cranial Plating
Etched Champion
Karn, Silver Golem
Maze of Ith
Tezzeret, the Seeker
Pendrell Mists
Ghost Quarter
Grim Monolith
Thoughtcast
Ensnaring Bridge/Bottled Cloister

[Grollub]

Esperzoa and Tangle Wire don't work the way you think (I guess), since both their abilities triggers at the same time. So while you can stack the bounce before tapping, the Wire trigger still exist and you need to tap the permanents.

[InResponseForceOfWill]

Esperzoa and Tangle Wire don't work the way you think (I guess), since both their abilities triggers at the same time. So while you can stack the bounce before tapping, the Wire trigger still exist and you need to tap the permanents.

Aww lame. I thought it had to do with time stamps or something. Can anyone else verify this?

[GGoober]

It's nothing to do with Time stamping. When you move to upkeep step, it triggers unless you can stifle it. Both triggers will be put on the stack, and you can resolve them in order. Tangle Wire will always check to see how many counters it had during triggering, so you cannot avoid it.

Anyway, I've done testing with decks similar to this idea, and I can tell you that Metalworker does nothing for the deck. The reason being that with a Stompy manabase, you are already emptying your hand by turn 3. a Turn 1 Metalworker empties it on turn 2 which is great, but at that point, you should be playing turn 1 lockpieces to protect your MW, which is going online turn 2, emptying your hand on turn 3. What I'm saying is that if you're going to play Metalworker, it's best to play it in a shell which could use him or abuse him (Staff of domination, huge spells, big bombs etc).

The problem with playing Metalworker when most of your spells are 0-3cmc are:
You can already achieve as good a lock without Metalworker since most of your spells are castable with Sol-lands and Mox Diamonds.
In such a case, MW simply becomes a card that is not adding much to the deck, or it becomes a bad topdeck when drawn (and in a Stax deck, you really need to minimize bad cards draw unless you have some sort of card advantage engine/filter).

Otherwise, I like the entire list (except metalworkers).

[InResponseForceOfWill]

It's nothing to do with Time stamping. When you move to upkeep step, it triggers unless you can stifle it. Both triggers will be put on the stack, and you can resolve them in order. Tangle Wire will always check to see how many counters it had during triggering, so you cannot avoid it.

Anyway, I've done testing with decks similar to this idea, and I can tell you that Metalworker does nothing for the deck. The reason being that with a Stompy manabase, you are already emptying your hand by turn 3. a Turn 1 Metalworker empties it on turn 2 which is great, but at that point, you should be playing turn 1 lockpieces to protect your MW, which is going online turn 2, emptying your hand on turn 3. What I'm saying is that if you're going to play Metalworker, it's best to play it in a shell which could use him or abuse him (Staff of domination, huge spells, big bombs etc).

The problem with playing Metalworker when most of your spells are 0-3cmc are:
You can already achieve as good a lock without Metalworker since most of your spells are castable with Sol-lands and Mox Diamonds.
In such a case, MW simply becomes a card that is not adding much to the deck, or it becomes a bad topdeck when drawn (and in a Stax deck, you really need to minimize bad cards draw unless you have some sort of card advantage engine/filter).

Otherwise, I like the entire list (except metalworkers).

On the drive home from work today, I thought about how it'd be an awesome idea to drop the 3x Master of Etherium for 3x Staff of Domination, or 2x Staff of Domination and 1x more Intuition. Then I can get the Metalworker Staff combo easily. Have metalworker in hand, fetch out 3 staffs and force opponent to give me one, or visaversa, have a staff, fetch the 3 workers and get him that way. Just an idea. Seems superior to running the MoEs. Thoughts?

[Mystical_Jackass]

Some ideas for Blue Stax:

Propaganda
Land Equilibrium
Mana Vortex
Pendrell Mists
The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale
Inkmoth Nexus
Ghost Quarter
Force of Will

This is just an idea, and your playgroup would absolutely hate you, but if you remove the fragile creature base and throw in more lockdown with FoW backup you could completely lock them out with artifacts & enchantments. Getting something like Mana Vortex followed by a Land Equilibrium ensures opponent will be stuck with like zero land... ghost quarter, then watch to see if they search their library for a land just to sacrafice it anyway. I think creature removal is too much of a liability, I wouldn't be against zero creatures all together... you could probably completely lock them out of playing spells with Spheres/3sphere/Chalice and hide behind Propaganda and Pendrell/Maze effects, all you'd really need is something like Tezzeret or Inkmoth mixed in for a finisher, I'm thinking of this more like a Land deck. It probably doesn't even need a designated creature beater, just incorporate with lands. That's my 2cents

[Kolhell]

Metalwalker made a number of good points.

Otherwise:
4x Crucible is always better than 3x Crucible.
Silent Arbiter is a bad card.
I love Tangle Wire, and I run it in my Stax decks, but the more I play it the more I feel there must be better cards than it.
Dream Tides is a lot of fun.
Tezzeret the Seeker looks like he would be a good addition to your deck.
I've always found 4x Mox Diamond to be 1 too many.
Esperzoa won't play very nicely with Smokestack. For that matter neither does Intuition, as Stax typically relies on having a superior number of permanents.
Seat of the Synod seems rather like you're opening yourself up to unnecessary hate.

[InResponseForceOfWill]

Silent Arbiter is a bad card.

Can you elaborate why? I included him to do the job that Propganda would, for colorless instead of requiring blue, on a body, and isn't affected by Lodestone Golem.



Tezzeret the Seeker looks like he would be a good addition to your deck.

The only reason I don't run him is because of the 4x Lodestone Golems. He's not worth 6cc+ if you ask me. Plus I'd need to alter my mana base to have more blue. In that case I'd go back to running Seats.


Here is my edited list:

36 spells

4x Chalice of the Void
4x Crucible of Worlds
4x Tangle Wire
4x Lodestone Golem
4x Intuition
3x Metalworker
3x Trinisphere
3x Silent Arbiter
3x Smokestack
2x All is Dust
2x Staff of Domination

24 mana sources

4x Mox Diamond
4x City of Traitors
4x Wasteland
4x Ghost Quarter/Mishra's Factory
3x Ancient Tomb
3x Island
2x Academy Ruins


Dropped 3x Esperzoa for 2x Staff of Domination, 1x Intuition. I really like how Intuition works in this deck. Like I mentioned above: With Intuition, you can grab, say: 2x Crucible, 1x Academy Ruins. This guarantees that you can recur any artifact or land from your graveyard. Or if you're trying to combo with Metalworker, grab 2x Staff of Domination and 1x Academy Ruins. Crucible and Academy Ruins are what make Intuition work. Heck, you can even grab all 3 Trinispheres to get one and junk the others since they're dead in multiples which helps your top deck.

Dropped 3x MoE for either 2x All is Dust, 1x Crucible or mabye 2x Masticore, 1x Crucible or even 2x Wurmcoil Engine, 1x Crucible. Thoughts???

Now that I don't run MoEs, I dropped 4x Seat of Synood for 4x Ghost Quarter. The Ghost Quarters can also act as a crappy fetch if I need an Island in a pinch. If I end up dropping Silent Arbiter if I get convinced it's bad, then I might run 4x Mishra's Factory Instead. Not sure.


I think this list is an improvement from the original post. Let's discuss Silent Arbiter, All is Dust, Masticore, and/or Wurmcoil Engine.