Possible blue stax strategies? (or, why I've been between Legacy decks for years now)

[Begle1]

I've been tinkering with a blue Chalice-stax-stompy thing recently... Like Red stompy, only with Force of Will and Jace instead of Blood Moon and 4-drop creatures. And probably with black to turn it into a Tezzerator-thing.

So I'm going to have the Sol Lands and some sort of Moxen, a set of 2-3 cost cards that slow down the opponent, and then some 3-5 cost cards that win.

I'm trying to decide on what cards and synergies I want to build around. I wonder if anybody out there has any insights or ideas on what the best direction to go would be? Or perhaps you can just enjoy this illustration of my jaw-dropping frustrating inability to settle on what deck I want to play in Legacy. :rolleyes:


Prospective lock pieces:
Tangle Wire against most anything (I'm currently infatuated with this card.)
Chalice of the Void against most anything not running Sol lands
Propaganda, Ensnaring Bridge versus aggro
Arcane Laboratory, Trinisphere versus combo
Crucible of Worlds (plus Mox Diamond and maybe Foil?), Wasteland?
Chill or Gloom plus Alter Reality or Painter's Servant?
War Tax (like Propaganda, only protects planeswalkers?)
Smokestack (too slow?)


Now let me talk about why I love Tangle Wire in a blue deck. If I have a blue source and sol land on turn 1, I can cast a :2::u: instant on turn 2 before I need to tap my lands down. What comes to mind is Intuition and Meditate. Casting Meditate on turn 2 while Tangle Wire has 3 counters, or later in the game when a Smokestack is active, is killer. And it seems like Intuition would have even more potential, if I could figure out really good piles to make. For instance, if I put one Alter Reality in the deck, then maybe it'd be worth running Intuition and some Chills, Glooms or Painter's Servants mainboarded? (And if Painter's Servant is in there, perhaps put Grindstone in there as well?)


Prospective Finishers/ Beaters:
Esperzoa
Lodestone Golem?
Jace, the Mind Sculptor
Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas
Painter's Servant + Grindstone?
Reanimation strategy?
Show and Tell strategy?

Esperzoa seems like the premier "stompy" creature I could use. It synergizes very well with Tangle Wire and Ensnaring Bridge; return either at the beginning of your upkeep, don't be effected by them, replay them after combat. Turn 1 or 2 Tangle Wire followed by turn 3 Esperzoa seems lethal.

Jace and Tezzeret, one or both, are one-card engines. Both give card advantage and can end the game on their own.

Then there's all these Intuition-pile finishes I'm considering.
If I'm running Painter's Servants to be cute with Chill or Gloom, then one Grindstone could be included along with a Crucible of Worlds and Academy Ruins.
If I'm running Intuition, I could just include one Unburial Rites and a couple fatties like Steel Hellkite and Wurmcoil Engine.
And while I'm running these Sol Lands and stuff, perhaps I want to include Show and Tells and some really big beaters like Blightsteel Colossus, Sphinx of the Steel Wind and Inkwell Leviathan? And, what the hell, Master Transmuter works really well along with all of those cards...


Or the other thought, is to not get cute, and just focus on a more fundamental blue control strategy. If I open up with a Mox Diamond and Sol land, I can just pass and hold a Complicate or Aether Tradewinds in my hand. Control them if I need to, but if they don't do something threatening, then I cast Intuition instead.

And perhaps I can have a nice transformative sideboard with Torpor Orb, Stifle, Interdict, Eater of Days and Phyrexian Dreadnaught.

Here's the pile I'm currently gold-fishing...
http://playtest.tappedout.net/jace-stompy/

[frogger42]

Here's a thread that's more or less your deck:

http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?20053-Planeswalker-Stax

I personally like 4x of The Abyss, because then Tezz's -1 ability is unbelievable and seals the deal. Ensnaring Bridge is a lot easier to answer than hemorrhaging a creature every turn. It also super-combos with Jace, too. But check it out; there's also another thread in the Dev board for UB Tezzeret, but I can't seem to find it. That one uses Thopter-Sword combo to finish, and Transmute Artifact to fish it out. I don't think it's as good, because it doesn't want to max out Sol Lands. Good luck!
-Frogger

[Anusien]

It's been really, incredibly hard for traditional resource-denial style Stax builds to beat a turn 2 Tarmogoyf. It got too big too fast. Once they did that, they didn't need to cast spells anymore so all your lock pieces were uesless, and they could just play lands and pay for Propaganda effects. I can't imagine trying to deal with a turn 1 Delver or worse, a turn 1 Deathrite Shaman.

Not to mention how terribly you lose on the draw.

[kingtk3]

Tezzeretor is now an established deck: I advise you to go there too, since you may find some useful idea (I like dimir charm a lot, it's never been dead till now).
But whatever you'll do, cut the complicate: they are just too terrible...

[Infinitium]

I remember trying to get this to work back when I started playing legacy in Time Spiral block. Good Times. Paradox Haze is one of those cards that might be worth building around (since it doubles the effectiveness of your stack/tangle wire/tabernacle effects). Slow Motion goes pretty well with resource denial as well. Intuition is probably your best bet for instants, but paying an extra 2U to tutor something is a luxury the deck can ill afford. It's good for finding singleton Tabernacle/Maze of Ith once you have your Crucible in place but that's about it.

For win conditions, I'd stick with Jace (4-of) and Mishra's Factory; maybe Thassa as a 2-of once Theros goes live. Don't bother with creatures.

[Megadeus]

I played a list that Nedleeds gave me that was like:

4 Mox Diamond
4 Chalice of the Void
8 Sol Lands
4 Trinisphere
3 Tezzeret
3 Impulse
2 Ensnaring Bridge
2 Trading Post
4 Baleful Strix
4 Tangle Wire
1 Smokestack


Basically kind of like the UB Tez decks that people drooled over for all of 2 weeks but without a reliance on Signets and Planeswalkers. More of a staxxy build

Edit: I think he played Intuition over Impulse in his list. Hooray Vampiric Tutor

Edit 2: fwiw this is probably my second favorite deck I've ever built and i face the same conundrum as you. In a year and a half I've played 7 or 8 different strategies abd just can't seem to settle on one