RUG Turboland Stasis

[FatPow]

I've been playing GUW Stasis for a while with Horn of Greed, Exploration, and Quirion/Scryb Rangers. It's 3-1'd a few dailies and top 8'd a paper event of 34 players. The white has always been somewhat questionable. Equipoise is sometimes very strong, but often dead, and Enlightened Tutor is not always good. I tried swapping out the white for red, and in the first daily I played, I 3-1'd. This is the main deck:


4 Tropical Island
2 Taiga
4 Forest
4 Windswept Heath
4 Misty Rainforest

2 Dryad Arbor
4 Birds of Paradise
2 Sylvan Caryatid
4 Quirion Ranger
4 Scryb Ranger

4 Horn of Greed
4 Exploration
4 Stasis
3 Garruk Wildspeaker
3 Ral Zarek
4 Green Sun's Zenith
4 Brainstorm


The main win condition is Garruk Wildspeaker's ultimate, and it's not hard to build up to six or seven creatures when the first few draw you tons of cards off of Horn of Greed. Ral Zarek is the red addition, and he was strong in the matches I played in the daily. I've seen lists with only blue and red, with Ral Zarek, but I think that's very weak as the only way to pay for Stasis. You're looking at a turn 5 Stasis... way too slow. Here we can drop it turn 2 if necessary, and Ral is just one out of 3 different ways we can pay for Stasis, but he's our main disruption element instead of Equipoise.

Let's see if we can improve this deck and come up with a good sideboard.

[FTW]

For everyone's benefit, Equipoise

I like the engine. Have you ever seen any benefit to Daze as protection? Seems very strong with Stasis and for protection in general. FoW obviously, but your blue count is low and it just gets in the way of your engine.

Do you ever find yourself wanting more cantrips like Ponder for consistency? Or do you find Stasis often enough already?

What about a copies of Forsaken City, which I always thought to be the most powerful land with Stasis. You have a draw engine to power through the card-eating of City. Seems good. Undiscovered Paradise is also not bad. They're not forests though so I guess you'd want only 0 to few copies at most. Paradise seems good with Exploration.

Stasis on its own is not a lock. Do you find that problematic? Are opponents able to just lay lands down and stabilize before you can beat them? Do you ever board in stuff like Daze or Root Maze or other lock-type things to deal with that? Root Maze sucks with your deck, obv, since you lose the land synergies. But do you have other ways (other than Ral) of locking down enemy mana?

[Poron]

I love Stasis decks but in a meta filled with Abrupt Decay and 2U Emrakul/Griselbrand (which isn't affected by Stasis at all) we will never have tha chance to see it neither as tier 3

[civet five]

Undiscovered Paradise doesn't play nicely with Stasis, as you never get the Untap step to bounce it into your hand.

[mistercakes]

I love Stasis decks but in a meta filled with Abrupt Decay and 2U Emrakul/Griselbrand (which isn't affected by Stasis at all) we will never have tha chance to see it neither as tier 3

you could always have root maze to deal with those guys or opposition since you have all the creatures.

[RokiLothbard]

Undiscovered Paradise doesn't play nicely with Stasis, as you never get the Untap step to bounce it into your hand.

Holy crud. I've cheated so many times in my life with that (not that many recently). And I never knew I was cheating, and I've never had an opponent call me on it either. Thx for pointing this out. I don't think I've actually RTFC in 10 years and in my head the return to hand totally happened at end of turn.

[nedleeds]

They had a guy on camera at a Bazaar of Moxen doing it like he had found the ultimate combo. I think I'd want more blue cards and access to Mis-D. As far as tapping Emrakul it's pretty easy with Ensnare. Ensnare is also fantastic vs. a Craterhoof and friends.

Also there's a blue howling mine with flash.

[FatPow]

Also there's a blue howling mine with flash.

Howling Mine with flash? Try out Horn of Greed. You drop at least 1 land the turn you play it, sometimes 2 or 3. The symmetry is broken completely by Exploration with Rangers. If you're really comboing off, with 2 Horn of Greeds and 2 Explorations, you draw 7 cards a turn... I've had 3 Horn of Greeds out before, and you easily draw into your 4 Explorations... that's 15 cards; you have to watch out not to draw your whole deck.

[SpoCk0nd0pe]

Looking at your list I think you will have a lot of trouble with disruption. There are very few key cards that your opponent needs to take away to disrupt your entire deck plan and you have no defense against it. Jund is a very good MU to test resilience.

I found a 12 counterspell suite to be very necessary to reliably play stasis as well as the ability to drop stasis early and still have a functioning deck.

My current list is Ugw. It's fairly difficult to play and needs a lot of experience (like most control decks) but I think it can hit tier 2 with some more testing and tweaks. I will post it anyway just in case anyone is interested in testing it.


4 Tropical Island
3 Tundra
4 Forsaken City
9 Blue Fetchlands

4 Quirion Ranger
1 Scryb Ranger
4 Noble Hierarch
3 Derevi, Empyrial Tactician

4 Stasis
4 Daze
3 Stifle
2 Thwart
4 Enlightened Tutor
2 Misdirection
4 Force of Will
4 Brainstorm

Sideboard (unfinished)
1 Misdirection
2 Rest in Peace
1 Phyrexian Dreadnought
1 Ethersworn Canonist
2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
2 Divert
1 Pithing Needle
1 Detention Sphere
1 Sterling Grove


There is still one meta dependent slot MD that could be protection (e.g. another Misdirection, Divert, Spellpierce, Flusterstorm, Stifle, Sterling Grove) or acceleration (e.g. BoP, Deathrite Shaman).

[FatPow]

Looking at your list I think you will have a lot of trouble with disruption. There are very few key cards that your opponent needs to take away to disrupt your entire deck plan and you have no defense against it. Jund is a very good MU to test resilience.

There is still one meta dependent slot MD that could be protection (e.g. another Misdirection, Divert, Spellpierce, Flusterstorm, Stifle, Sterling Grove) or acceleration (e.g. BoP, Deathrite Shaman).

You should try this deck before assuming that, personally I love to see Jund across the table. They're a little slow, Dark Confidant and Tarmogoyf are really not good against us, Bloodbraid Elf is terrible, the only thing that really hurts us is if we have a bad draw and they get a turn 2 Liliana. Also, the only thing in their main deck that can kill Stasis cannot be countered... you answer this by completely burrying them in card advantage and finding more Stasis than they have Abrupt Decay, or getting lucky and having Ral lock them out. With the Horn of Greed engine, decks cannot afford to trade 1 for 1, or especially to Force of Will the Stasis as there will be more coming. You can easily draw 7 cards a turn with this deck. Thoughtseize is pretty useless except on turn 1 when it's not backbreaking. Hymn to Tourach actually hurts more on turn 2, but that means they'll be slow out of the gate and you'll have time to assemble something.


I found a 12 counterspell suite to be very necessary to reliably play stasis as well as the ability to drop stasis early and still have a functioning deck.

My current list is Ugw. It's fairly difficult to play and needs a lot of experience (like most control decks) but I think it can hit tier 2 with some more testing and tweaks. I will post it anyway just in case anyone is interested in testing it.

Looking at your list, why 3 Stifle? That's for RUG Delver. I see the Dreadnought, but that's a big commitment away from Stasis. Why 3 Derevi when she's a Legend? How often does Derevi actually get to tap down more than 1 thing at a time, when you don't have exploration so you can only untap one creature per turn, even with a Forsaken City helping you out? 4 Enlightened Tutor is a little heavy when literally the only target is Stasis, why not try Muddle the Mixture instead, and replace one of your counterspells and 4 E tutor with that. E-tutor is often terrible in my experience, even with a card advantage engine and a way to immediately draw the card main phase. The only way it shines is if you have a package of 1-of silver bullets like Equipoise which solves a lot of problems in specific scenarios. I see there's some stuff in the sideboard but you can adjust that with no e-tutor. Why 3 Tundra instead of 3 Savannah? You can't use the rangers ability on a Tundra, so with Stasis down you get one use out of that Tundra. I guess it's for Thwart but there can only be a couple of those. Is Forsaken City really okay? To me I would think you would have an okay way to sustain Stasis, but you would stagnate with no way to grow or win the game for many turns until innevitably they draw a Wasteland. Also 4 of them makes them terrible in your opening hand. Misdirection is great against Abrupt Decay, but with no draw engine and only 2 in there, will you reliably have the answer? With no GSZ will you reliably have the right pair of creatures, and with only a few of them, will they not just die to the next lightning bolt or abrupt decay? Countering a lightning bolt is a very heavy investment to protecting your creatures, when a deck such as mine just floods the board with 10 of them. My deck is weak to Golgari Charm, but that's rare and you can keep them off 2 mana, your deck as it is seems weak to 1-for-1's which are more common. Also, to me if you have white, Equipoise is the main reason that card is strong. Also, here's a big question, what's your answer to Batterskull? It's so common. I just bounce Dryad Arbors until I can tap it down, but it takes a while to tap it down no matter what method you're using. On the whole, how much can you actually disrupt them by tapping down their stuff when you can barely sustain Stasis and grow? Because if you aren't tapping down everything they have, a few damage a turn isn't going to cut it before they find a way out. Against a deck like RUG Delver, what would you do? I simply drop a bunch of Scryb Rangers for their delvers, bounce dryad arbors for their tarmogoyfs and nimble mongeese, and start drawing more than 3 cards a turn, then I start dropping stasis until one sticks. It seems like you would start taking hits from their creatures, lose a couple of your own to lightning bolts, and finally when you're ready, you'd have a big counter war which you may win to drop a stasis, but then there'd be another lightning bolt for your noble hierarch, then you're sitting on forsaken city until 2 turns later they drop a wasteland.

If you want to argue that counterspells will be better against decks like Show and Tell, or Ad Nauseum Tendrils, I'd believe this for sure. But against Jund? I would go with the more consistent, faster, more explosive, and more card advantage centric deck. The main thing they have is Abrupt Decay, which can't be countered anyway, and the way to fight that is to have 2 or even 3 Stasis out at a time, which is easy with my deck. I tried a list with counterspells, such as the one below. It was slower, less consistent, offered more ways out to the opponent before closing out a game, and couldn't drop Stasis as frequently. Actually I side into this deck against combo, but after a lot of experience with it, even with just 8 cards closer to a deck like the main deck you're advocating, I can say that it's worse against fair decks. Committing more with Daze and no exploration just makes this hurt more against fair decks.


2 Taiga
4 Tropical Island
5 Forest
4 Windswept Heath
4 Misty Rainforest

1 Dryad Arbor
4 Birds of Paradise
2 Sylvan Caryatid
4 Quirion Ranger
4 Scryb Ranger

4 Force of Will
4 Muddle the Mixture
4 Ral Zarek
4 Brainstorm
2 Garruk Wildspeaker
4 Green Sun's Zenith
4 Stasis

[SpoCk0nd0pe]

Thank you for taking your time to write such a detailed reply. That wall of text is kind of huge though, forgive me if I won't search it for quotes multiple times.

You are right, I didn't test your list. I just took a look and didn't think it would actually work, I had good reasons though.
When looking at tier decks they usually pack around 10-12 disruption spells with a wide area of application, plus some card quality. There are 8 cards in your deck that need to be denied to almost completely shut you out of the game. I just cannot see this working reliably, but I would be happy to be proven false. Another thing I really found to be problematic is the need to play several other cards before the stasis. But positive MU vs Jund seems pretty good.

Over the years of testing Stasis I threw out more and more combo cards in favor of control cards, so my list has a very different approach. I'm opting to reliably drop Stasis turn 3, turn 2 in an emergency while only keeping a skeleton of all the options to sustain Stasis, reducing it to the cheapest and easiest options. All the cards in the deck are designed to be playable at minimal mana cost to be usable in tight situations under a softlock. My gameplan is essentially to drop stasis early and just counter everything they throw at me. It doesn't matter if I have no card advantage as my opponent's abilities are limited due to his tight mana.
You are right though that there are some situations making me loose, but my deck would be tier 1 if I found a way to combat them more efficiently ;)

Some of my card choices you pointed out:
- Stifle: This card is there to deny mana under a soft lock or to combat Stoneforge Mystics, Wastelands, Quasali Pridemages, Vials, random comes into play effects or other annoying stuff. I found it generally fairly useful.
- Enlightened Tutor: Is there to up the chances in finding Stasis. It jumps from 40% in 10 cards to about 80% in 10 cards. If you want to drop Stasis turn 3 reliably, this is necessary.
- Forsaken City: Essentially trades cards for mana. Allows for turn 2 Stasis on it's own (should be followed up by Quirion Ranger though, or you will run out of cards). The fact that it stays tapped doesn't really matter much most of the time as I will have only a few untap phases before dropping the stasis anyway.
- Derevi: Is essentially a hidden strings with legs. Win condition and hardlock in one card.
- Tundra over Savannah: Being able to produce U is absolutely critical in my list. I tried Savannah before, it cost me some games.

Cards like Muddle the Mixture or Equipoise are simply too expensive to work in my list. As a rule of thumb under Stasis either 1 mana = 1 card or 1 mana = 1 turn.

[nudon]

Spock, I agree with FatPow that it appears you have a lot of cards that are dependent on resolving a Stasis. Combo cards such as Derevi and Forsaken City seem out of place in your control deck. Between e-tutor, FoW, misD, and forsaken city, that's a lot of card disadvantage. His list looks a lot more cohesive at the very least. Also, the exclusion of gsz is glaring as it fits right into what the deck wants to do and provides nice s/b options. I would probably play something along the lines of:

//Creatures
4 Noble Hierarch
4 Quirion Ranger
4 Coiling Oracle
1 Silhana Ledgewalker
1 Wirewood Symbiote
4 True-Name Nemesis

//Spells
4 Green Sun's Zenith
3 Hidden Strings
4 Brainstorm
4 Daze
4 Force of Will
4 Stasis

//Lands
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Windswept Heath
2 Verdant Catacombs
1 Island
2 Forest
2 Dryad Arbor
4 Tropical Island

GSZ targets:
Silhana Ledgewalker provides you with mini-TNN 5-9 for hidden strings (mini-SoFaF in disguise).
Wirewood Symbiote / Coiling Oracle recursion punishes your opponents for holding decay in hand.

Speaking of which, you guys might be wondering about the Coiling Oracle. He gives you a solid 2-drop that possibly ramps into a strong turn 3 play (not to mention gross with BS). At worst, he still pitches to FoW. I cut white since I didn't think it was necessary and would much rather have a more stable mana base. On that note, I didn't include wastelands as well.

[SpoCk0nd0pe]

Interesting! 3 different lists and 3 different approaches.

I agree that I play a lot of Stasis dependent cards. But I also found that I really need the stasis to beat many other deck's plans. Simply put without Stasis in play most good legacy decks usually got a contingent of about 15-20 cards in their deck that blatently outperforms a contingent of the same size I saw in all the Stasis lists I looked at over the years. What I did to get to my list was taking those tight situations where stuff gets destroyed/countered or where I get overpowered by creatures and thought about the cards my deck gave me to handle it. That's the philosophy behind my list. Maybe it looks uncohesive but it has the highest resilience for the plan to get a Stasis on the table and keep it there of all the Stasis lists I tried.

If I do not know my opponents deck I let them play if winning the dice btw. That offsets the card disadvantage and turn 3 Stasis is usually fast enough.

In my eyes Derevi isn't more of a Stasis card then Hidden Strings tbh, it is a weaker Hidden Strings with a flying body. I tested GSZ but it didn't work in my list. It was too slow at the start delaying the Stasis drop and the extra mana requirement really hurt in tight situations under Stasis.

One card that comes to mind when seeing your list is Shardless Agent. It produces tempo and cardadvantage at the same time, just an idea, maybe it helps your list.

[Bed Decks Palyer]

I reall love nudon's list, although I think that a Stasis deck should use at least one Scryb Ranger. I'm also surprised with zero Garruk and Thwart. But I guess the list works withut them, esp. as there' no way how to find Garruk.

[SpoCk0nd0pe]

Thwart probably isn't in the list because Quirion Ranger Stasis upkeep slows your land drops significantly. That's not a bad thing, it just doesn't work well with Thwart.
Garruk is generally a very slow card. It only works if you have a significant portion of your deck geared towards freeing mana. And even then it's use is doubtful as he cannot do what other cards can't for less CC.

[nudon]

If I do not know my opponents deck I let them play if winning the dice btw. That offsets the card disadvantage and turn 3 Stasis is usually fast enough.

In my eyes Derevi isn't more of a Stasis card then Hidden Strings tbh, it is a weaker Hidden Strings with a flying body. I tested GSZ but it didn't work in my list. It was too slow at the start delaying the Stasis drop and the extra mana requirement really hurt in tight situations under Stasis.

One card that comes to mind when seeing your list is Shardless Agent. It produces tempo and cardadvantage at the same time, just an idea, maybe it helps your list.

Unless you're playing manaless dredge, you should never be allowing your opponent to play first... What you're forgetting is that you have forsaken city and thwart in addition to derevi (total of 9 cards dependent on resolving a 4-of). This is exacerbated by the fact that you're trying to go down the control route instead of the combo route. Moreover, hidden strings is really a double lotus petal every turn with TNN / silhana ledgewalker (9-of). It's also vastly better than derevi in the combo matchup because it's one less mana and can lock your opponent out as early as turn 2.

GSZ->quirion ranger costs 2 mana just like scryb ranger. In any list, I'd max out 4 gsz before the first scryb and consider it the strongest card in the deck aside from BS. Your only acceleration is noble hierarch. GSZ solves that problem for you for FREE. This is not even including sb cards like scavenging ooze. Just because it fits in the colors, it doesn't mean Shardless Agent is good. I'd much rather run edric. Here are the list of reasons why Shardless is bad:

1. Cannot cast gsz/daze off a cascade.
2. Possibly cannot cast stasis off a cascade.
3. Cannot cascade off a gsz.


I reall love nudon's list, although I think that a Stasis deck should use at least one Scryb Ranger. I'm also surprised with zero Garruk and Thwart. But I guess the list works withut them, esp. as there' no way how to find Garruk.

Some number of scryb ranger is probably correct (since the protection from blue and flying is really nice). A list with Thwart should probably have exploration alongside it. Otherwise, I think it's too slow. I think Garruk might be a good alternative to the hidden strings/TNN/silhana package. Other than the win-con, most of the deck seems pretty stable. I might test Garruk alongside birds of paradise + scryb ranger to really push the limits of the deck. The deck should be more explosive while being less vulnerable to golgari charm effects. Garruk also helps stasis directly without needing another card.

[FatPow]

Some number of scryb ranger is probably correct (since the protection from blue and flying is really nice). A list with Thwart should probably have exploration alongside it. Otherwise, I think it's too slow. I think Garruk might be a good alternative to the hidden strings/TNN/silhana package. Other than the win-con, most of the deck seems pretty stable. I might test Garruk alongside birds of paradise + scryb ranger to really push the limits of the deck. The deck should be more explosive while being less vulnerable to golgari charm effects. Garruk also helps stasis directly without needing another card.

Ral Zarek is really the Hidden Strings replacement, Garruk is relevant too though. This sounds like the original list I posted. Although Golgari Charm is pretty much it's main weakness in sideboard games against bug and jund. This is why I've been siding into 4 Muddle the Mixtures replacing some Horn of Greed and Exploration in sideboard games. I also tried Wilt-Leaf Liege but sometimes it's too slow. The sideboard has 4 Muddle the Mixtures and 4 Force of Wills for the combo matchup, but against Golgari Charm you've got to bring some MtM in and hurt the draw engine slightly. The Garruk win-con along with the Horn of Greed engine is really strong, but when you take out some Horn of Greeds and Explorations, it takes a little longer to get the 5 to 8 creatures you need to overrun. Still probably the fastest way to win though, it's definitely more than 3 damage a turn if you're playing a couple of guys per turn.

True-Name doesn't do anything for Stasis without a Hidden Strings, and Hidden Strings does nothing without Stasis... With my original list, every creature works for Stasis and doubles as a win-con when Garruk uses his -4 (except 2 Sylvan Caryatid who can't attack). The whole deck is a Stasis toolbox that doubles as a win condition when the time comes. I've had games where I only drew one Stasis, dropped it and it got Abrupt Decayed right away, but I still won 2 turns later just by having 6 creatures in play, -4 on Garruk, and two hits from Ral Zarek. Everything has a second purpose if Stasis doesn't work out, but everything is also streamlined very well to work with plan A which is of course multiple Stasis against Abrupt Decay. I don't know if Hidden Strings can generate enough untapping to also be able to tap down an opponent with a couple of Stasis in play, whereas Ral, Garruk, and rangers with exploration easily can.

[SpoCk0nd0pe]

Unless you're playing manaless dredge, you should never be allowing your opponent to play first... What you're forgetting is that you have forsaken city and thwart in addition to derevi (total of 9 cards dependent on resolving a 4-of). This is exacerbated by the fact that you're trying to go down the control route instead of the combo route.
I do not really get your point here. In many matchups the additional card helps me resolve the Stasis, not the other way round. This works for me because the Stasis setup in my list almost exclusively consists of cards that require 0 or 1 mana to work. I'm also not trying to say drawing is always better, against some matchups it is certainly worse. It just works for me in the majority of matchups.

GSZ didn't work for me because it slowed me down by almost one turn, I would have had to play to mitigate that. GSZ isn't too great if it virtually means card disadvantage. Another point is that GSZ doesn't help in tight spots under Stasis. I often find myself with a Stasis+Ranger or City on board, situations where I need to resolve a mana dork or a ranger to stabilize. The extra mana GSZ requires means I need another card in the system to free up that mana. There have been countless games where I simply didn't have that extra card.

On Hidden Strings: I do not argue that having a Hidden Strings online is better then having Derevi. The problem here is again in the system of cards required to do utilize it. You need a certain kind of body to make Hidden Strings work reliably or a single drop by the opponent (play land->some creature capable of blocking) can shut it down. In my list there are no suitable bodies, I would have to cut something else to fit it in. Derevi isn't perfect because a flipped delver can handle it but it still works better on fewer cards for me.

On Thwart and Exploration: I found Exploration had no real benefit over a dork. The dork can produce mana under Stasis+Ranger as well (only slightly slower but still fast enough) and provides acceleration without carddisadvantage (3 lands+exploration=3 mana, 4 cards, 2 lands+dork=3 mana, 3 cards). Thwart still works without Exploration under Stasis+Ranger, simply drop additional lands instead of bouncing them (doesn't make any difference in my list). Thwart is great under Stasis+Forsaken City anyway.

Shardless was just an idea off the top of my head, but I see that it wouldn't work.

[SpoCk0nd0pe]

I just had another look through potential stasis cards and found some interesting ideas. Those are absolutely untested but maybe someone finds card combinations to break them:

Soldevi Sage essentially lets you draw 3 cards under Stasis. Needs a Quirion Ranger though and may be win more under the conditions he works. But 3 cards!

Limited Resources could be a nice SB card to hardlock control decks in drawn out games. Tutorable with E.Tutor

Ovinomancer essentially free, recurring creature removal under Stasis. Nice! But requires basic islands to work, probably only good for mono U stasis (which usually is casual).

Lotus Vale can mean a 3 mana land under Stasis. Very vulnerable to wasteland though and you need good cards to utilize the mana (can think of any momentarily).

[badbadbad]

If casting Planeswalkers are not optimal for the Stasis economy, how about using Dragonmaster Outcast as a win condition? Seems like you can stall long enough with Stasis or mass drop the 6 lands to activate him right away.