Mono Uish Turbo Stasis

[nwsw]

Hi,

I'm fairly new to the Source, but I've been an active Legacy player at Card Kingdom's Monday night Legacy for about 3-4 months now. I finally wanted to share a deck, as I brew weekly and try to bring some "old school love" to the format. I generally go 0-4 or 1-3, but I'm honestly not looking to win 4-0 and prefer to add a creative edge. I'd much rather hear "I don't know exactly how to sideboard against your deck" or "I have no clue what you are playing" and my favorite is "You must be playing XXX" in complete error.

I'm looking to see some opinions as my main goal at the moment is to make a semi-competitive yet fun U prison deck. I've dropped the money for the Wills, but I'm super hesitant to drop any money on fetch/duals, so I'm sort of stuck with a mono color format at the moment and I suck at burn. In the meantime, I play some pretty sweet Alpha/Beta Islands. :)

Here's the deck:

Spells

2 Enlightened Tutor
4 Daze
4 Lim-Dul's Vault
4 Stasis
1 Arcane Laboratory
1 Back to Basics
1 Propaganda
1 Kismet
2 Thwart
4 Force of Will


Walkers

2 Jace Beleren
1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor


Artifacts

3 Lotus Petal
3 Black Vise
1 Feldon's Cane
4 Howling Mine
1 Neviryrral's Disk


Lands

3 Forsaken City
15 Island
4 Undiscovered Paradise


SB:

2 Pyroblast
2 Surgical Extraction
3 Swords to Plowshares
1 Chill
1 Cursed Totem
1 Rest in Peace
2 Council's Judgement
1 Propaganda
2 Misdirection


Tips:

The general idea of this deck is to drop an Stasis early with a Howling Mine or Jace Beleren to back it up, with a Forsaken City or enough consistent land drops to keep the Stasis active. Eventually, the wincon is to drop a Black Vise while the Stasis lock is in effect, or to use Jace Beleren or big Jace to finish the game. The Dazes, FoW, and Thwart help to keep the game in check, while the SB Misdirection prevent desctruction of the artifacts/enchantments due to Abrupt Decay.

You will also notice that the deck uses the Enlightened Tutors to add a "toolbox" effect to the main and the SB to allow additional pressure via Back to Basics (as Undiscovered Paradise and Forsaken City could care less about it) and various enchantment/artifacts.

Would love to hear some feedback. I've play tested a few varieties of this so far and my biggest issues are Wasteland (against Forsaken City) and a swarm of creatures via Death and Taxes or Elves.

Thanks!

[Munchyman]

I had up an deck idea on Reddit mtglegacy couple weeks ago talking about same thing.

Here is the original list I threw up. I tried to brew it utilitizing As Foretold.




2 Jace, the Mind Sculpture
4 Stasis
4 As Foretold
1 Land Tax
1 Kismet
1 Frozen Aether
4 Howling Mine
1 Crucible of the Worlds
1 Feldon's Cane
1 Zuran Orb
4 Ancestral Vision
4 Restore Balance
3 Boomerang
2 Recall
4 Daze
4 Force of Will
3 Ancient Tomb
2 City of Traitors
3 Tundra
3 Islands
1 Plains
4 Flooded Strand
3 Polluted Delta



Here is a link for my inspiration.

http://mtg.gamepedia.com/Turbo_Stasis

Link to the Reddit Conversation.

https://www.reddit.com/r/MTGLegacy/comments/6n864d/turbo_stasis/?st=J5HR81AN&sh=ea68ac66

In the conversation. I'm gonna have to agree with the opinions about losing Howling Mines. Jace is such a better win con.

Also I'm a big fan of Black Vise. I've been dreaming about using it with Stasis since Type 1.5 and now it's unbanned.
As soon as I can through another spare 50$ onto mtgo I'll probably start playing around with it.

Look forward to how Tubro Stasis could make a comeback after 20years.

[Munchyman]

It's dirty, but here is a newer draft of the deck.


3 Jace, the Mind Sculpture
4 Stasis
4 As Foretold
4 Black Vise
1 Land Tax
1 Kismet
1 Frozen Aether
1 Enlightened Tutor
1 Zuran Orb
4 Ancestral Vision
4 Restore Balance
4 Boomerang
2 Recall
4 Daze
4 Force of Will
3 Ancient Tomb
2 City of Traitors
3 Tundra
3 Islands
1 Plains
4 Flooded Strand
3 Polluted Delta

Because I dropped Howling Mines felt it was safe to drop Felton's Cane aswell.
I'm pretty sure it was fairly cmon do get ourselves locked under Stasis and race for top decks. So chances of milling ourselves could happen. I thing maybe adding a Emrakul, Serra Sanctum and Replenish package could also work.

[Fox]

Your deck has a lot of cards that don't really do anything by themselves, and a lot of copies of such cards. You need to be playing Brainstorm and probably another 4 card advantage/selection slots. If we can assume for the moment that the cantrip package is solved, what exactly are you trying to do with Stasis - this is a color question:
-black for tutors + some sort of degeneracy?
-white to play fewer copies of E. Tutor targets?
-red for Ral Zarek to cut do-nothings like Kismet/Frozen Aether?
-green for the easiest untap rulebreaks (Quirion bounce Trop, replay Trop, infinitely sustain Stasis) or some undercosting with Root Maze?

In theory there are few things less fair than UG warping the rules to create a gamestate of "I can untap, you can't," but there are some key missing pieces at competitive mana costs. The primary deficit there is Kiora, Master of the Depths not at 3 mana with a + ability that sustains Stasis and a built in wincon (this card is really, really close). In terms of competitive mana costs built around Stasis, you're looking at Trops, Quirion Ranger, and DRS machine gun (which puts you on an expensive mana base of Seas and Trops). The UR approach is pretty terrible (you kinda have to have Stasis somehow down before Ral Zarek), but you do get to play Bolt....but then why not just play Blood Moon instead of any Stasis cards. The UW build, while generally boring, has by far the fewest losses to redundant topdecks thanks to E Tutor. In terms of a dedicated UW Stasis build, you're missing out on a very key interaction that happens b/c the untap step is skipped: things don't phase back in. That's incredibly important due to Equipoise - this card will never stop scouring the format for a 1-2 mana card that skips untap steps; Stasis is close, but it's got that little problem with needing to be sustained & built around.

There's a lot of ways to view what a Stasis deck is, but I'd say it's most correct to think of it as existing at a strange intersection of Elves and Dreadnought. The whole City/Stasis/Kismet -> kill you with Black Vise plan is a 93/94 plan with a ton of dead draws and remarkably worse mana accelerants and card draw. Looking at your deck you're doubling down the Old School plan by reverse engineering Ancestral Recall and Balance using As Foretold, and the inconsistency from that approach (4 Stasis, 4 Vise, 4 As Foretold) has to be absolutely crippling. I mean I get that you can keep Stasis alive two turns longer casting it for free (if you're somehow still alive having resolved AF and Restore Balance) and even bouncing it for free at opponent's EoT with free Boomerang, but why is the Stasis package an efficient use of As Foretold (aka legacy Splinter Twin 2.0/why aren't they casting SnT)? Seems like the old school approach is probably looking to invest the 12 As Foretold slots as specialized creatures + Tamiyo, Field Researcher, which under Stasis reads: +1 feeds the City, -2 locks down the board, -7 Ancestral and Omniscience. I'll have to think on it, but will submit some rough draft ideas in different color combos prioritizing making the deck better within a budget mindset.

[kombatkiwi]

I made a thread on As Foretold stasis in early June:
http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?31729-UW(R)-As-Foretold-Stasis

In Summary:
I think that playing this kind of stasis deck with 0 Ral Zarek is almost certainly wrong (the other kind of stasis deck is the Quirion Ranger version but that's completely different).
In Munchyman's 'newer draft of the deck' there are 0 ways to tap down the opponents cards (barring Kismet/Aether) and 0 ways to untap your own cards, which makes stasis much worse. Losing 1 mana to the Stasis every turn your only way to progress the board is to eventually Boomerang your own Stasis which means you can never effectively cast stasis without As Foretold in play. Meanwhile your opponent can keep making land drops and there is nothing you can do to stop them. Ral Zarek does everything you want, it untaps your lands, taps your opponents lands, and is a win condition.

I don't think you will ever Boomerang your opponent's untapped land so this card is better off as Echoing Truth or Chain of Vapor. Also once you have more ways to untap your own lands you don't need to play so many bounce spells in the first place.

Recall is just an incredibly bad magic card, it has no synergy with As Foretold, so it's either Recollect where you have to discard a card or Restock discarding 2 cards, both shit.

Black Vise is also junk, why play a card that only helps you to win the game when you have it already locked up, when there are so many cards that do this while also advancing your gameplan (ie. Ral Zarek, but Fevered Visions is also something that I want to try)

Why play a 1/1 Aether/Kismet split? Kismet is probably slightly harder to cast but can't be Pyroblasted, but just pick one.

The main goal of the deck is to set up X + Y lock piece, so the deck becomes much better with Brainstorm, which you can fit x4 copies of after cutting all of the bad cards.

I don't think Equipoise is useful or needed because when things are already prevented from untapping there isn't usually much reason to exile them on top of that.

I do think that As Foretold is good in a stasis shell for reasons that I explained in the original thread:

- Stasis is good with As Foretold because:
a) As Foretold lets you play Stasis for free (without tapping any lands), letting you keep Stasis alive longer
b) You can maintain Stasis just by dropping 1 land every turn while still using As Foretold to deploy threats
- Daze/Thwart are good with Stasis because if your islands aren't untapping anyway then returning them to your hand is like drawing extra cards (nothing new here)
- Daze/Thwart are good with As Foretold because you can still develop your ability to play spells even though you are returning your lands to your hand
- As Foretold is good with Ancestral/Balance because you can play them for free
- Ancestral is good with Stasis because Stasis slows down the game giving you time to remove the suspend counters
- Balance is good with the overall strategy because you have no creatures so it will always be at least Wrath of God and your main threats are Planeswalkers and Enchantments which aren't affected by it. Generally you are happy to use Stasis as creature removal (e.g. it just turns True-Name into lightning bolt) but sometimes it is difficult to set up quickly and sometimes there are creatures with abilities that you still want to kill (e.g. Leovold).
- Balance is good with Daze/Thwart because reducing your land count allows balance to act as an LD spell
- You don't care about destroying/discarding your own lands with Balance because you can get mana from As Foretold

I do think the deck has some potential but I stopped working on it because I think the optimal version probably has at least 1 Tabernacle and I'm not in a position to purchase one. (Most likely the deck would not be good enough to justify buying it either).

[nwsw]

Thanks for the feedback so far, though I'm actually trying to stay away from an As Foretold build. (and the suspend cards in general)

Any suggestions on how to deal with Chalice for 1 or 2? It seems to be the bane of my existence so far, and waiting for Council's Judgement if I can't counter it is not always in my favor.

[Fox]

@msw the best ways to deal with Chalice are to invalidate it without deviating from your deck's main plan. Generally the best way is to attack the number of charge counters on Chalice (which means playing at the 1,3, and >3 cmc points), but you need the 2cmc slot and potentially the 0 cmc slot if playing with As Foretold. The next best thing for you is Equipoise and knocking out all Chalices in your upkeep, every upkeep. This is currently a build order problem where you have to get off artifacts to actually let Equipoise see that Chalice. Stopping to actually kill a single Chalice with a single card is probably a game losing proposition, b/c your deck is trying to do something with multiple cards; you should be much more interested in an instant like Rite of Undoing at their EoT as it can hit a problem permanent and reset a Stasis if you are in the market for such an effect.

Any Stasis deck with White should be quite heavy on a 3-4 E. Tutor plan and quite light on the actual number of Stasis lock cards, probably staying at 1 or 2 copies only. This is a trend seen in the two RiP Control decks which top 8'd the LPS Invitational where there is nearly parody between number of E. Tutors and their combo pieces - these are quite good U/W skeletons for decks trying to subvert the rules of the game within a competitive framework. Now RiP/Helm is a much easier way to win a game, but Stasis changes the rules of card evaluation.

The cards that seem solved are:
-Brainstorm x4
-FoW x4
-Daze x4
-Lands between 19-21 slots

So we're working with ~28 free slots:
-E. Tutor x3
-Stasis x2
-Equipoise x1
-Planeswalker x3

Say this aggressive streamlining of the Stasis package is where you want to be, you've got 19 slots to work with. I don't know if you want to be on 4x Daze and 2x Thwart (10 total slots of countermagic), but be aware of effects like Tidal Bore and Ensnare which can fix the board state [within the context of a Stasis]. This is also a stopping point in deck construction where it's important to know if we're going to specialize towards phasing [Dreadnought] & mana denial, or powerful U/W control cards, As Foretold (I think this is a different deck entirely), or perhaps adding green and doing some interesting things with Quirion/Tamiyo. In any of these directions I think 5 slots could safely be split between Thwart/Ensnare/Tidal Bore and Rite of Undoing, such that we're only dealing with 14 slots, which is an easier task.

Any way forward should be eschewing cards like Kismet/Frozen Aether, Black Vise, Howling Mine, Boomerang, and Undiscovered Paradise (this card can't return to hand with active Stasis). I don't like Propaganda, but maybe it's the best replacement for Tabernacle if you want such an effect - it [Propaganda] seems like a questionable card in a DRS format. Your deck has no problems generating revolt, maybe you're in the market for one of those cards. Thing in the Ice doesn't seem entirely opposed to what you're trying to do, but this also feels like a Dreadnought approach which means a pretty heavy investment in understanding the finer points of mechanics. Cards like Rapid Hybridization, Pongify, Beast Within, and Swan Song all get exceedingly high marks as removal spells within the context of Equipoise. For all the specialized things you can do, it could also just be Monastery Mentor...maybe even Serra Avengers.

I think the deck is probably more competitive (definitely more expensive) in BUG colors due to DRS/Quirion machine gunning, using LDV to get a tapped out opponent with a surprise Stasis +/- Root Maze. This approach also means you never have to use Forsaken City. Dreadnought also works in this context: Stasis your lands, make the Dreadnought, reset the Trop with Quirion, dead in 2 hits. It's really important though to understand just how critical it is to have a Kiora printed at 3 mana before this will be a deck worth brewing up.

Currently it's probably easier to make a better prison deck playing the phasing game (Teferi's Realm + Sands of Time, with or without Equipoise), than Stasis. Easier still would be to cast Parallax Tide nuke their lands and Stifle the single trigger to return their lands to play as Tide dies.

[kombatkiwi]

If you
a) Can't splash (As pointed out Undiscovered Paradise doesn't work with Stasis and you can't really play colored cards off of only Forsaken City and Lotus Petal, assuming lotus petal is even good in the first place)
b) Don't want to play As Foretold
c) Don't want to play Ancestral Visions

Then I think your original list isn't that bad, but with these restrictions I think I would try the following:

4 Stasis
4 Daze
4 Force of Will

1 Misdirection
1 Thwart
2 Chain of Vapor
1 Frozen Aether / Orb of Dreams
1 Ensnare / Propaganda

3 Jace the Mind Sculptor
1 Tamiyo the Moon Sage
2 Tezzeret the Seeker

1 Black Vise
1 Vedalken Shackles
4 Howling Mine / Dictate of Kruphix (not sure how many of these you want or how you are supposed to split them for curve reasons)
1 Icy Manipulator (This might not be necessary)
1 Claws of Gix

4 Preordain

2 Forsaken City
2 Seat of the Synod
19 Island
1 Reliquary Tower

If you want more ways to deal with Chalice of the Void then you can play Powder Keg. The elves matchup will always be hard because they have Quirion Ranger to get out of the lock. I am using Tezzeret as a ghetto Ral Zarek because without Ral your only other way to maintain Stasis is Forsaken City, which makes you very vulnerable to wasteland, as was mentioned.


Any Stasis deck with White should be quite heavy on a 3-4 E. Tutor plan and quite light on the actual number of Stasis lock cards, probably staying at 1 or 2 copies only. This is a trend seen in the two RiP Control decks which top 8'd the LPS Invitational where there is nearly parody between number of E. Tutors and their combo pieces - these are quite good U/W skeletons for decks trying to subvert the rules of the game within a competitive framework. Now RiP/Helm is a much easier way to win a game, but Stasis changes the rules of card evaluation.

(Note: 'Parity', not 'Parody'. You made an identical flub in another thread so I assume it's not a typo)

Those decks had a wide variety of different cards to search with 3 Enlightened Tutor:
1 Seat of the Synod
1 Keranos
1 EE
1 D Sphere
2 Energy Field
2 RIP
1 Helm
a) The deck has more than one Card A+ Card B game-winning combos that can be assembled with Enlightened Tutor
b) There are removal options and a strong midrange/wincon option that can be found with the tutor if a combo is not available

Here we have
X Stasis
1 Equipoise (Supposedly)

The plan for this deck is 'control game with Stasis, win with X', whereas the plan for the URW decks was 'Control game with Counterspell, Supreme Verdict, Swords to Plowshares, win game with Rip/Helm'. If you want to play a more standard control deck that assembles a combo win with E-Tutor then Stasis + Equipoise should not be the combo you are aiming for because the Equipoise/Stasis combo doesn't even necessarily win the game. The idea is that you play 4x Stasis because Stasis is a powerful disruption spell that is worth building around, not some sneaky silver bullet that auto wins in a 2 card combo. If you are only going to play 1-2 Stasis in a normal control deck then why on earth would you play Daze/Thwart, why would you bother playing Chain of Vapor / Rite of Undoing, etc etc. If you think the URW deck is better then play that deck, there's no reason to play some weird hybrid of Stasis + That.


Thing in the Ice doesn't seem entirely opposed to what you're trying to do, but this also feels like a Dreadnought approach which means a pretty heavy investment in understanding the finer points of mechanics.
What does this even mean?
Dreadnought/Thing suck in this deck because they don't untap under a Stasis and there aren't any other targets for Push/Swords.


Cards like Rapid Hybridization, Pongify, Beast Within, and Swan Song all get exceedingly high marks as removal spells within the context of Equipoise.
So rather than just exile your opponent's creature with Equipoise you want to destroy the creature with another card and then exile the leftover token with Equipoise? If you have W mana for Equipoise and you want a removal spell can't you just use Swords to Plowshares?


For all the specialized things you can do, it could also just be Monastery Mentor...maybe even Serra Avengers.
Trying to get prowess triggers under a Stasis to make a 1/1 token that can attack once under a Stasis seems a bit shit.
Serra Avenger is okay but it's pretty hard for a no-duals list to make WW work and again the deck has no other targets for removal.


Dreadnought also works in this context: Stasis your lands, make the Dreadnought, reset the Trop with Quirion, dead in 2 hits. It's really important though to understand just how critical it is to have a Kiora printed at 3 mana before this will be a deck worth brewing up.
I don't understand this fixation with Phyrexian Dreadnought. The only thing it has in common with Stasis is that it's a card that was decent in the past and is pretty bad in year 2017. It doesn't have any synergy with the deck and Stifle isn't a card a Stasis list is particularly interested in using either. The Quirion Stasis deck has had some success in the past (search 'Greed Stasis' in the established deck forum) but that deck certainly doesn't want Dreadnought OR DRS and there's no point discussing it for this person because it doesn't work at all without Tropical Island.
https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/257448#paper


Currently it's probably easier to make a better prison deck playing the phasing game (Teferi's Realm + Sands of Time, with or without Equipoise), than Stasis. Easier still would be to cast Parallax Tide nuke their lands and Stifle the single trigger to return their lands to play as Tide dies.

The problem with Teferi's Realm + Sands is that they are both pretty junk on their own and cost 3 + 4 mana, why not just play Rip/Helm instead? If you are going to combine Stifle/Parallax Tide then how are you dealing with everything your opponent casts before that point? If you just want to play some threats first and then play 4 mana to destroy lands then Armageddon exists and doesn't need to be partnered with Stifle.

[nwsw]

I ended up playing the decklist in the original post last night at Card Kingdom's Legacy night and went 0-4. Here's a quick recap.

Round 1: UG Infect (0-2)
Lost the first game in 3 turns, couldn't keep both board threats from attacking and getting pumped. Also got land screwed by drawing 2 Lim Dul's Vaults and no black mana. Should have mulled in retrospect.
Lost the 2nd game in about 5 turns, sideboarded in the StPs but couldn't draw them. Was able to counter a single board threat, but couldn't keep them held off.

Round 2: Topless Miracles (0-2)
I basically got out-permissioned this game. It really made me want to throw in additional permission. Monastery Mentor came out in the first game and I couldn't counter it. I was able to get the Stasis lock down, but he was able to keep producing enough tokens to eventually beat me under Stasis lock. Game 2, I sideboarded in StPs and was able to create a Stasis lock and almost pull out a win with a Vise, but he was able to StP 2 of his Mentor tokens to gain enough life to beat my clock. I could have really used some better board wipe such as Terminus, Supreme Verdict, or even a Ratchet Bomb in this matchup. Wash Out was suggested to play well with the Vise, but I'm not completely sold on wiping a single color from the board in today's Legacy environment. Another suggestion was to try Seal of Cleansing to hold off Pithing Needle, which wrecked havoc on my Jace.

Round 3: Death and Taxes (0-2)
This deck is way too slow to compete against D&T. I was essentially playing catch up the entire game. Even when I was able to remove threats and establish a lock, I would get out gunned. The Disk is way too slow against this deck and came out 1 turn too late to have any effect. Supreme Verdict looks like a good SB play against this deck, especially with a creatureless build. As always, Thalia caused me a headache and a half.

Round 4: Dragon Stompy (0-2)
This was a fun matchup, but I was out prisoned by a better prison deck. Howling Mine fed his hand and he was able to drop enough Fiery Confluences and creatures to kill me fairly quickly. Game 2 I was met with 2 separate Boils which wrecked my chances of coming back. Chalice and Trinisphere caused me major problems, especially Trinisphere.

What I learned from tonight:

I didn't see a single Abrupt Decay all night. Either I got lucky or it's just not popular at the moment. Either way, I need to stop worrying about it rather than fear it.
Howling Mine just plain sucks in Legacy. Feeding an opponent's hand usually provides them with enough Brainstorms/Ponders/Counters or creatures to outmaneuver any response I may have.
Kismet and Arcane Laboratory are not useful in this deck.
Lim Dul is not the right choice, especially with the UB cost. I will most likely switch to Ponder or Brainstorm.
Undiscovered Paradise ended up screwing me more than anything. It killed my tempo and generally made me bounce a land just to play a StP or Lim Dul's Vault.
I need some more Disenchant or something similar in the main deck. I'm thinking about upping the Tutors to 4, removing a Stasis and adding in 1-2 Seal of Cleansing.


I'll probably give this another go next week with some serious modifications. Thanks for the feedback so far!

[Fox]

Conventional card evaluation doesn't really apply. Unlike RiP/Helm, Stasis has game-warping implications. Whereas about all you can do with RiP/Helm besides comboing is invalidating the wording of Energy Field; there's nothing all that exploitable going on there, and that's why they run EE and Verdict and StP - all cards that are as good as they are conventional. Decks like Stasis are about additive layers of synergy built on rule-breaks, and to be good enough in legacy they need a lot of inter-connectivity with as little inter-dependence as possible - and it's that second part that really gets you in trouble. The main reason an Old School approach to Stasis will continually lose is that it's columnar, they need to have Stasis out, City to sustain it, and only then will Black Vise ever win a game (this is an oversimplification, but it accurately illustrates the problem with building up rather than building sideways).

It is a mistake to think Stasis is a unique deck, Stasis exists between Dreadnoughts (on the one side bound inextricably to the untap step) and Elves (on the other side completely capable of functioning without it). There's an honorable mention here for Dredge/game actions also being able to function without any untap steps. If you don't understand the pillars of the untap step and cross-reference their tactics, the best you can really hope for is a vastly underperforming UW deck that should have been playing RiP/Helm...that should itself probably be playing Portent Miracles (more stats needed, but Portent Miracles is probably more reliably competitive versus the field).

The key lesson in cross-referencing is that skipping untap steps by itself isn't really a wincon, and trying to double down on no untap step isn't a recipe for success. Let's take a stock Elves deck, we warp the manabase to have 2-3 Trops cut a NO and Scooze for 2x Leovold maindeck and we're still pretty much that same tier 1.5 deck in game 1. Game 2 you side in 2x Stasis and you're still the exact same deck, only you can operate without untap steps with infinite ease (but your opponent probably can't). Is it a better strategy than whatever led people to people down the rabbit hole to Opposition Elves - yes. Does it fix your worst matchup (untap rulebreaks, i.e. Elves) - yes. It's powerful, but is it good - not really, but that's mostly b/c Stasis is unprotected and has to be drawn (mainly color pie issues). Stasis is always going to be at its best when it's a thing you can do, not something you have to do and that's where I'm a big advocate of reducing the emphasis on total copies of Stasis as you lose space to explore more effects which interact favorably among themselves and are also intentionally selected for their positive interactions with Stasis.

As far as the other points in your post @kombatkiwi:

-Dreadnought/TITI are very interested in any form of face-down casting, note how E-Tutor conveniently puts Dreadnought on top of the library (this is highly specialized layering of interaction in the framework of a deck that can threaten Stasis. Don't worry about it unless you're a Dreadnought specialist, this is about interchangeability of combo pieces). In a redundant but more conventional sense, TITI is an 0/4 blocker; the deck runs free spells, and eventually you'll wrath their board back to hand. Untapping these guys isn't always the point as it isn't always necessary (and they can coexist with Quirion Ranger); the direction of deckbuilding I'm taking doesn't have to win with Stasis, these are other angles of attack which can operate within the confines of Stasis.

-On the topic of Equipoise you're not understanding phasing, particularly as it pertains to skipping untap steps. Phasing is a mechanical engine for Dreadnought, and any effect that skips untap steps is always going to be considered seriously because it makes phasing an offensive mechanic by itself. Phasing does not exile things (but tokens do exile themselves when phased out), so when we're talking about destroying permanents and replacing them with tokens, there is a very deliberate reason for this. This isn't normal legacy, Equipoise without untap steps is basically an onboard, one-sided Balance that triggers on each upkeep hitting lands, creatures, and artifacts - this is markedly different than casting StP, and Equipoise doesn't target anything but a player. Now Equipoise doesn't always have god mode turned on (with untap steps it is effective on your turn only), and this is where modal removal (particularly the undercosted type which leaves behind tokens) is especially good as it oscillates between being offensive and defensive. That's somewhat tangential though, you'd run Equipoise primarily to knock out every piece of non-enchantment/non-PW hate any deck can conceivably deploy on every one of your turns - now the fact that it deals with infinite TNNs, for example, when combined with no untap steps is just gravy.

-As with TITI, Monastery Mentor combos with free spells albeit in a different way. Think about Ensnare - with Stasis out it's an instant speed, better than free wrath. Take Stasis out of the equation, now Ensnare reads "Fog if you need it. All your prowess creatures effectively gained trample on your next turn (all blockers tapped)." Mentor is an effortlessly efficient wincon for any deck with access to white mana, it should always be looked at.

-The rest of your points are harder to address b/c a lot of it stems from not understanding how untap step shenanigans work by themselves, and what happens when they interact with skipping untap steps. The point is building alongside Stasis, not on top of it. Realm/Sands and Parallax/Stifle are more there to illustrate that there are harder to disrupt, less slot-intensive ways to pull off the type of one-sided mana tampering an all-in Stasis deck attempts, particularly when that's really the only way Stasis is being utilized.

-You have to understand Elves and Dreadnought to understand Stasis; it doesn't mean all aspects have to be incorporated. You just can't read DRS and Quirion and then say they don't play nicely with Stasis while providing one hell of a plan B. I can understand missing the point of Daze being made better by Stifle, and Stifle never being a dead card if you run Dreadnoughts; that comes from only seeing Daze from the point of Stasis being in play.

Parody vs Parity, haha yep betrayed by spell check :tongue:

[kombatkiwi]

It is a mistake to think Stasis is a unique deck, Stasis exists between Dreadnoughts (on the one side bound inextricably to the untap step) and Elves (on the other side completely capable of functioning without it).
Again why this fixation on Dreadnought? 99% of decks in legacy need the untap step to untap their permanents, why is Dreadnought such a special example?


The key lesson in cross-referencing is that skipping untap steps by itself isn't really a wincon, and trying to double down on no untap step isn't a recipe for success. Let's take a stock Elves deck, we warp the manabase to have 2-3 Trops cut a NO and Scooze for 2x Leovold maindeck and we're still pretty much that same tier 1.5 deck in game 1. Game 2 you side in 2x Stasis and you're still the exact same deck, only you can operate without untap steps with infinite ease (but your opponent probably can't). Is it a better strategy than whatever led people to people down the rabbit hole to Opposition Elves - yes. Does it fix your worst matchup (untap rulebreaks, i.e. Elves) - yes. It's powerful, but is it good - not really, but that's mostly b/c Stasis is unprotected and has to be drawn (mainly color pie issues).
So you're saying that adding only 1-2 copies of Stasis in a deck focused around doing other things is a bad idea? I totally agree...


Stasis is always going to be at its best when it's a thing you can do, not something you have to do and that's where I'm a big advocate of reducing the emphasis on total copies of Stasis as you lose space to explore more effects which interact favorably among themselves and are also intentionally selected for their positive interactions with Stasis.
... But now you're saying that having only 1-2 copies of Stasis in a deck built around doing other things is a good idea? :thinking:
A thing that you _can_ do will always be better than a thing that you _have_ to do, unless you have weird opinions about personal autonomy or don't understand how the English language works. Whether you have a playable deck by including a minimal number of Stasis in an Enlightened Tutor toolbox is another thing, however.


-Dreadnought/TITI are very interested in any form of face-down casting, note how E-Tutor conveniently puts Dreadnought on top of the library (this is highly specialized layering of interaction in the framework of a deck that can threaten Stasis. Don't worry about it unless you're a Dreadnought specialist, this is about interchangeability of combo pieces). In a redundant but more conventional sense, TITI is an 0/4 blocker; the deck runs free spells, and eventually you'll wrath their board back to hand. Untapping these guys isn't always the point as it isn't always necessary (and they can coexist with Quirion Ranger); the direction of deckbuilding I'm taking doesn't have to win with Stasis, these are other angles of attack which can operate within the confines of Stasis.
Are you really suggesting that you want to play a deck that has Stasis in it and also tries to win by manifesting Phyrexian Dreadnought? Why not play a deck that has Stasis in it but also tries to win with Show and Tell + Emrakul? Neither of these things have anything to do with Stasis but at least SNT/Emrakul is actually a playable combo. A brief reminder: trying to win by attacking with non-vigilance creatures is literally the opposite of something that can 'operate within the confines of Stasis'.


-On the topic of Equipoise you're not understanding phasing, particularly as it pertains to skipping untap steps. Phasing is a mechanical engine for Dreadnought
Yes, if you use Reality Ripple in response to the Dreadnought trigger you can choose to sacrifice nothing and keep your Dreadnought for next turn, but please tell me how you are planning to use Equipoise to cheat Dreadnought into play.


and any effect that skips untap steps is always going to be considered seriously because it makes phasing an offensive mechanic by itself. Phasing does not exile things (but tokens do exile themselves when phased out), so when we're talking about destroying permanents and replacing them with tokens, there is a very deliberate reason for this. This isn't normal legacy, Equipoise without untap steps is basically an onboard, one-sided Balance that triggers on each upkeep hitting lands, creatures, and artifacts - this is markedly different than casting StP, and Equipoise doesn't target anything but a player.
- If you have Equipoise (without Stasis) and you Pongify your opponent's creature then you can use Equipoise to permanently remove the token. End result: opponent's creature permanently removed.
- If you Swords to Plowshares on your opponent's creature then the opponents creature is exiled. End result: opponent's creature permanently removed.
- If you have no Equipoise and you Pongify your opponents Delver of Secrets then they laugh at you


Now Equipoise doesn't always have god mode turned on (with untap steps it is effective on your turn only)
I.e. Without Stasis it doesn't do anything, despite your intentions to "explore more effects which interact favorably among themselves"


and this is where modal removal (particularly the undercosted type which leaves behind tokens) is especially good as it oscillates between being offensive and defensive.
"1 mana: Remove a creature" might be undercosted for standard, but that isn't the format we are talking about.
Offensive? Are you going to Pongify your own Mentor tokens? I hope you aren't planning on using Pongify on your Phyrexian Dreadnoughts. Again, a reminder: trying to win by attacking with non-vigilance creatures is literally the opposite of something that can 'operate within the confines of Stasis'.


That's somewhat tangential though, you'd run Equipoise primarily to knock out every piece of non-enchantment/non-PW hate any deck can conceivably deploy on every one of your turns - now the fact that it deals with infinite TNNs, for example, when combined with no untap steps is just gravy.
"No untap steps" already deals with TNN by itself, you don't need Equipoise.
If you want to play a card that is an actual hard lock with Stasis and mostly a do-nothing otherwise then why not Frozen Aether? Equipoise doesn't stop you getting killed by things like Marit Lage (and neither does Pongify, while we're on the topic).

The one saving grace for Equipoise is that on its own as long as you control no artifacts at the beginning of your turn you can phase out your opponent's Chalice of the Voids.


-As with TITI, Monastery Mentor combos with free spells albeit in a different way. Think about Ensnare - with Stasis out it's an instant speed, better than free wrath. Take Stasis out of the equation, now Ensnare reads "Fog if you need it. All your prowess creatures effectively gained trample on your next turn (all blockers tapped)." Mentor is an effortlessly efficient wincon for any deck with access to white mana, it should always be looked at.
Can you explain why there's a popular and successful mono-white creature deck in legacy that has no interest in playing Monastery Mentor then? Could it be possible that Mentor needs a complement of many cheap noncreature spells to be good and that the Death and Taxes strategy would not be very good alongside a complement of many cheap noncreature spells? Could it be possible that trying to play a strategy where permanents don't untap is similarly incompatible with using Monastery Mentor as a win condition?


-The rest of your points are harder to address b/c a lot of it stems from not understanding how untap step shenanigans work by themselves, and what happens when they interact with skipping untap steps. The point is building alongside Stasis, not on top of it. Realm/Sands and Parallax/Stifle are more there to illustrate that there are harder to disrupt, less slot-intensive ways to pull off the type of one-sided mana tampering an all-in Stasis deck attempts, particularly when that's really the only way Stasis is being utilized.
Do you notice how Realm/Sands and Parallax/Stifle are all A+B combos. If you want to play an A+B combo as a finisher in a control deck deck then again, play Rip/Helm. The idea of a Stasis deck is that you build your deck in a way that it breaks the symmetry of Stasis; ergo you are happy to draw Stasis most of the time and therefore want to play a high number of copies. Of course in a RIP/Helm/EField deck you will very often be sad if you draw one of these pieces without the other so play a minimum number of copies of all of them and a high number of tutors. But unlike RIP/Helm/EField, Stasis can significantly disrupt the opponent by itself. If you build your deck in a way that it doesn't affect you then of course you will usually want to draw it because it will often be fine for you and bad for the opponent. The idea that Realm/Sands is better because it's 'less slot-intensive' is completely missing the point


-You have to understand Elves and Dreadnought to understand Stasis; it doesn't mean all aspects have to be incorporated. You just can't read DRS and Quirion and then say they don't play nicely with Stasis while providing one hell of a plan B. I can understand missing the point of Daze being made better by Stifle, and Stifle never being a dead card if you run Dreadnoughts; that comes from only seeing Daze from the point of Stasis being in play.
I do think Quirion + Stasis is fine as given by the success FatPow had with the deck linked previously.
I understand how Stifle works with Daze because I wasn't born yesterday. Stifle is a huge nonbo with Stasis and Dreadnought is just garbage in general.

@nwsw
- You noted that Lim Duls Vault is too hard to cast (which I think is probably correct) but it only has 1 Black mana in the cost and is therefore just as hard to cast as Seal of Cleansing and Enlightened Tutor (not to mention Councils Judgment and the suggestion of Supreme Verdict). If you are going to cut Undiscovered Paradise then casting non-blue spells becomes even harder.
- This is why I suggested Powder Keg as it is colorless removal for both Artifacts and Creatures (you can tick it up under a Stasis unlike Ratchet Bomb).
- I agree that Howling Mine generally sucks in legacy but your only way to sustain Stasis is Forsaken City (your list also has no way to bounce Stasis) so without a draw engine your deck will always implode. This is one of the reasons why I suggested Tezzeret, and if he turns out to be good enough to not rely on Forsaken City then you can eliminate the copies of Howling Mine and also use Ensnaring Bridge.
- The reason why Ponder/Brainstorm are the 'default' cantrips in legacy is that you can combine them with shuffle effects to make sure that if you see any cards you don't like then you don't have to draw them. If you are avoiding fetchlands for budget reasons they are therefore potentially inferior to Preordain, which is why I suggested it. (It is common to see Pauper decks play Preordain for this reason; Brainstorm and Ponder are legal in the format but Fetches aren't).

[Fox]

Dreadnoughts use phasing, phasing happens in the untap step. If you're going to screw around with the untap step, there is an entire pool of cards you have to know about, including a very low cost 12/12 (which is the main reason those cards see play).

In the Elves example, the point is that their deck can easily jam sideboard Stasis - that's zero build around in Elves (outside of some Trops swapped in, and an amount of Leovold b/c the card is good). This is a theoretically strong sideboard strategy for Elves b/c they don't need an untap step to win a game of legacy; that's theory, but the truth is having say 2x Stasis in the board of Elves is either unnecessary or won't translate into increasing win percentage. The key point though is that Elves is a deck which quite unintentionally will never need an untap step.

Stasis is a powerful card, but it requires a great deal of supporting cards to pull off; this is especially true if all you're trying to do is Stasis. While powerful, it's not good at winning games. Now if your game plan happens to not care about missed untap steps (elves) or actively wants them (dreadnoughts aka phasing), we now have favorable interactions which are parallel. When you don't need to build vertically (i.e. Stasis in play, City to sustain it, Black Vise to kill them - meaning the deck dies to internal inconsistency when it lacks the entire contraption), it is much harder to disrupt and it will flow more smoothly while also attacking from different angles. White is not a great color when it comes to doing complex things, but in a deck with Stasis it let's us use E. Tutor as virtual copies of Stasis - it also can enable other forms of internal combos which are selected primarily for playing nicely with Stasis and more importantly performing without Stasis in play.

Before moving to your next comment about SnT/Emrakul, we're talking about Stasis here - look at their match reports, City/Vise/Stasis is not a competitive deck. There is a very real difference between a deck with Stasis and a deck that does literally nothing without its namesake. You can believe whatever you want to about the viability of Dreadnought, but let's not pretend like SnT/Emrakul has any synergy with skipped untap steps. Dreadnought comes with a litany of phasing cards. To think the deck makes a 12/12, swings one time, and Stasis is always there so you can't untap it is not correct - even if that's all you were doing, you have to remember that Stasis decks have a high proclivity for bouncing the card Stasis on the opponent's EoT, meaning the Dreadnought sees one untap step...

There are a number of vastly different things Dreadnought and Elves can do, and when we're building around the untap step those different things can be mixed and matched with relative ease. Even if Stasis is out the whole time, it's pretty easy to pay for it by continually picking up a Trop and replaying it (which means you just untapped whatever creature you wanted to, perhaps it was a 12/12 trampler). In that example you don't even have to play Quirion Ranger, or green at all, Tidal Bore does the same thing while feeding Stasis another land drop. Unlike a normal legacy cards, untap step cards are degrees of magnitude more complex, modal, and janky.

Equipoise is about invalidating hate cards. The moment you add skipped untap steps, it's a prison - and the odds are your opponent will never reach 2 mana again, no matter how many lands they topdeck. This card is played b/c it's an amazing catch-all, and the upside is that alongside Stasis it turns into one of the most brutally unfair prison pieces in the magic card pool. This card makes stuff like CJ and EE look like unplayable draft chaff from the [very much skewed] viewpoint of Stasis. This card isn't here to cheat Dreadnoughts into play, it's there to completely invalidate normal cards with simplistic wording. This is easily the most powerful card in the phasing wheelhouse, the top-end is outrageous. Equipoise does things all by itself. Frozen Aether is more expensive and does nothing by itself. An opponent can have 4 Chalices, 4 Sanctum Prelate, 8 Thorns, and keep adding any amount of Land/Creature/Artifact hate (you can even give them all shroud and protection from you the player) - if you untap with Equipoise (without Stasis), you just send it all into the lovely realm of phased out, on each and every one of your turns, and operate completely unimpeded.

You're missing the modal aspect of Pongify. An opponent can cast the most uncounterable of Abrupt Decays (we're talking through a Thalia, paying the colorless with Boseju), and all it means to you is your guy turns into a 3/3 and Decay fizzles. A deck with a virtual 4 copies of Equipoise (or TITI for that matter. An 0/4 is pretty good at fogging a 3/3 token before sending it back to hand) can actually get away with this, b/c it's not actually clear that there's a downside when using cards like Pongify as conventional removal, and who doesn't love a good "Swagtusk'ify"?

As far as Marit Lage goes, it's [I]really hard have less lands in play than a deck with 6+ effects that return lands to hand. Good luck making a Marit Lage after that Equipoise trigger resolves in their upkeep. No amount of floating mana or Hexmages will help the Depths player, unless they can also resolve a Crop Rotation after that trigger (with 2 mana still in the pool).

Mentor is an amazing card. It's also amazingly bad in DnT. It is however so strong that you have to have a good enough reasons to not run it. The same is also true of decks that can run DRS, but choose not to. I am not saying Mentor has to be in every white deck, reasons exist to pass on it (for UWx decks in legacy that reason is usually SFM). Remember that Stasis is in many ways close to Elves; whereas the Elves combo turns its team into Dreadnoughts for a turn, an EoT Ensnare combined with bouncing Stasis is basically like resolving an instant speed NO/GSZ for Hoof if your team is an army of prowess monsters looking at a completely tapped out creature set on the other side of the board.

If all your deck Stasis deck can do is disrupt opponents....that's code for make them miserable, but then go on to beat you. You can't play independently dead topdecks like Frozen Aether, Propaganda, Howling Mine, Black Vise, Claws of Gix, Reliquary Tower, and Icy Manipulator totaling 10 slots in a deck where the effects don't really do anything without Stasis in play (or coming into play soon). The cards are independently dubious, but more importantly they barely interact favorably within that set of 10 (particularly without Stasis to bind them all together). The closest we get there is tapping down Howling Mine to break symmetry...but you're not playing the board, so you're gonna die to creatures before card advantage kicks in.

The best way to play Stasis in legacy is to interconnect as many pieces as you can without making them interdependent - the connections are going to be on the edges of what is mechanically possible which means cards have to be understood/do things relative to one another, not really read individually. We're either exploiting or purposefully ignoring one of the more important steps in a turn; you're gonna have to trust me on this one: you need to know Dreadnought to know Stasis...but you don't have to run Dreadnought itself to run Stasis (the tech just happens to work well together). A Stasis deck built correctly should not need to deploy the card Stasis to compete in legacy, but it should generally seek to when given the right opportunity. This play pattern is also characteristic of dedicated Dreadnought decks; they can make 12/12s, but it's generally not how they win - it's okay if that doesn't make sense. A more familiar example would be ANT: they can Ad Naus, they can PiF, they might even have the kill in hand; the important thing is that no matter what they do, all the cards are working together (even though PiF and AdNaus don't work together directly).

[kombatkiwi]

Dreadnoughts use phasing, phasing happens in the untap step. If you're going to screw around with the untap step, there is an entire pool of cards you have to know about, including a very low cost 12/12 (which is the main reason those cards see play).
Yes, both Stasis and cards with Phasing involve the untap step. Dreadnought combos with cards that can Phase it out at instant speed. However, if you phase out a Dreadnought while your untap step is skipped then the Dreadnought doesn't come back. There is no synergy here, it's the opposite. It's like suggesting playing Eon Hub alongside Oath of Druids.


In the Elves example, the point is that their deck can easily jam sideboard Stasis... the truth is having say 2x Stasis in the board of Elves is either unnecessary or won't translate into increasing win percentage. The key point though is that Elves is a deck which quite unintentionally will never need an untap step.

I agree that randomly splashing Stasis into a deck that isn't built around it will not succeed...


Stasis is a powerful card, but it requires a great deal of supporting cards to pull off; this is especially true if all you're trying to do is Stasis. While powerful, it's not good at winning games. Now if your game plan happens to not care about missed untap steps (elves) or actively wants them (dreadnoughts aka phasing), we now have favorable interactions which are parallel. When you don't need to build vertically (i.e. Stasis in play, City to sustain it, Black Vise to kill them - meaning the deck dies to internal inconsistency when it lacks the entire contraption), it is much harder to disrupt and it will flow more smoothly while also attacking from different angles. White is not a great color when it comes to doing complex things, but in a deck with Stasis it let's us use E. Tutor as virtual copies of Stasis - it also can enable other forms of internal combos which are selected primarily for playing nicely with Stasis and more importantly performing without Stasis in play.

... so if Stasis needs a great deal of supporting cards to pull off (which I agree that it does) then you aren't going to have any success trying to play a deck with Stasis alongside a few things that just happen to be okay with not untapping. (Again you seem confused as to how phasing/Dreadnought actually works). You are contradicting the previous paragraph where you said it would be dumb to splash Stasis in the sideboard of Elves, which I agree with. I pointed out this same contradiction in my previous post. If a deck has both 'A+B' and 'C+D' combos in it then yes, it does attack from different angles but it certainly does not 'flow more smoothly' and it becomes much easier to disrupt. Imagine Sneak and Show cut 4x Sneak and 4x Emrakul for 4x Rest in Peace and 4x Helm of Obedience. Previously a brick hand was '2x sneak/SNT, no fatty' or '2x fatty, no SNT/Sneak'. Now Grisel/Rip is a brick, SNT/Rip is a brick, Grisel/Helm is a brick, SNT/Helm is a brick. If I Thoughtseize you on turn 1 and I see SNT/Grizz and I take the SNT now you are topdecking to 3 more SNT only, because Rip/Helm don't do anything with Grizz. I thought this was just deckbuilding 101 that everybody knew but I guess not.


Before moving to your next comment about SnT/Emrakul, we're talking about Stasis here - look at their match reports, City/Vise/Stasis is not a competitive deck. There is a very real difference between a deck with Stasis and a deck that does literally nothing without its namesake. You can believe whatever you want to about the viability of Dreadnought, but let's not pretend like SnT/Emrakul has any synergy with skipped untap steps. Dreadnought comes with a litany of phasing cards. To think the deck makes a 12/12, swings one time, and Stasis is always there so you can't untap it is not correct - even if that's all you were doing, you have to remember that Stasis decks have a high proclivity for bouncing the card Stasis on the opponent's EoT, meaning the Dreadnought sees one untap step...

I agree that City/Vise/Stasis is probably not a competitive deck but it's what this person wants to play so I am trying to make it as best as possible with the restrictions he gave. I will believe about Dreadnought what the data tells me, which is that (from MTGtop8.com) the only appearance of Dreadnought in 2017 has been in a 0-color Eldrazi deck with 4 Illusionary Mask and the only appearances in 2016 were in 2 UR Delver decks which played 4 Stifle and 4 Trickbind to support it. From there you have to go all the way back to 2013 to find another list playing it. The card is just not good. If you can bounce the Stasis for an untap then you could have untapped an Emrakul too...(Not to mention that just attacking with Em once also destroys 6 of their permanents).
I agree that Emrakul has no synergy with skipping untaps but again, neither does Dreadnought, which is why I made the comparison in the first place.


Equipoise
I agree that this is a strength of Equipoise. Don't forget that you also have counterspells to deal with problematic things that might crop up and that generally you will only ever face down 0-1 of Chalice/Prelate/Thorn at a time.


Pongify
I'm not missing the modal aspect of Pongify, I'm deliberately disregarding it because without free creatures or creatures that actually want to die then this 'modal aspect' is garbage. If I decay your Dreadnought and you Pongify it in response then I am laughing at you. You can't seriously think this is a strength of the card. "Destroy my 12/12 Trampler? Haha, I spend 1 mana and 1 card, now you only put 9 -1/-1 counters on it and remove the ability! Gotcha.". And in the TITI example you wouldn't have to fog the 3/3 with anything if you had just used one of the many 1-mana removal spells in legacy that actually remove creatures.


Marit Lage
If you control Equipoise and 3 lands then your opponent can still make Marit Lage to kill you if they have Urborg/Mox. Still I guess this is kind of hard to do (and you might have even fewer lands) so this might be a positive aspect to the card I hadn't really thought about.


Mentor
If you've been spending your mana on paying for Stasis then you haven't been spending your mana on generating monks, and I'm not sure which spells you have in your deck to generate a flurry of prowess triggers on the turn you are attacking either.


Jank Artifacts and misc
If your criticism of these is that you are going to get run over before they do anything then you have to take Propaganda out of the pile, and the floor on Reliquary Tower isn't even that bad because it still just taps for mana. If we're being super nitpicky then Black Vise does combo with Howling Mine and I'm not sure how much shade you can throw at Claws of Gix given that you are also suggesting that playing cards to bounce your own Stasis is a worthwhile strategy. Orb/Aether are the answer to 'your opponent will be miserable, but then beat you'. If all your opponents current permanents are tapped forever and every future permanent will be tapped forever then your opponent literally cannot ever win. You can just slowly tick up Tezzeret and eventually ulti or kill the opponent with Black Vise.


Closing verbal diarrhea
If you really are the secret Dreadnought sensei who has mastered the 8 hidden paths of the untap step to draw interconnections on the edge of what is mechanically possible then why not post a list? Let's try:

So we need only 2 copies of Stasis, don't want to go overboard, just a couple will do. We still need to access it when we want it though, add those Enlightened tutors, how about 3? Dreadnought too, that card is fantastic, but Enlightened Tutor can find it, just like Stasis, so I guess 2 is the right number. How are we playing Dreadnought? Well obviously with a 'litany' of phasing! Oh, there are only 3 cards with phasing that actually combo with Dreadnought? Well Vodalian Illusionist is kind of bad, I guess we should just stick with 1 Reality Ripple and 1 Vision Charm. Don't forget Stifle though, because Stifle-Nought is the classic 1-2 punch and we want Daze for our Stasis, and Stifle and Daze is the classic 1-2 punch, the RUG delver, you know? But we already have 2 things that combo with Dreadnought so maybe we only want 2 Stifle. This list seems to be getting kind of tight, but 4x Brainstorm 4x FoW 4x Daze are confirmed, lock it in. We don't even have a way to Enlightened Tutor a Dreadnought into play yet! Obviously we are lacking interconnected yet non interdependent pieces. Chuck in 1 Torpor Orb. Of course our phasing litany wouldn't be complete without Equipoise so throw one of those in as well. Moving on, our deck has white in it, time for Monastery Mentor. Lets say only 2 for now. Now we have Mentor, it would be a crime to miss the combo kill of Ensnare + bounce Stasis, add it to the list. And I missed the part where 3 Planeswalker was a part of the core too, I guess 2 Jace and 1 Kiora, to satiate your inexplicable Kiora-boner. My goodness, we are already up to 31 cards. Lets say, 22 Lands? We have 4 Brainstorm and Daze but we also have 4-Drops and we need to make land drops for Stasis. 7 More slots to go. Well, we need the Quirion Rangers to power Stasis and untap our Dreadnoughts, at least 2 of those for sure. Oh, but we are supposed to use Quirion to combo with DRS, add a couple of those. Don't forget a black source! Rounding out the list we have 1 TITI and 1 Pongify. The last card is 1 Detention Sphere. It is both removal that can be searched with Enlightened Tutor, and a blue card for Force of Will, so it has double the number of connections - a dazzling masterstroke.



2 Dreadnought
2 Monastery Mentor
2 Quirion Ranger
2 DRS
1 TITI

2 Stasis
3 Enlightened Tutor
1 Vision Charm
1 Reality Ripple
2 Stifle
4 Daze
4 Brainstorm
4 Force
1 Torpor Orb
1 Ensnare
1 Rite of Undoing
2 Jace the Mind Sculptor
1 Kiora, Master of the Depths
1 Pongify
1 Detention Sphere

4 Tropical Island
2 Tundra
4 Misty Rainforest
2 Windswept Heath
4 Flooded Strand
2 Island
1 Plains
1 Forest
1 Forsaken City
1 Underground Sea

Voila
An absolute clown fiesta

[Fox]

One of the keys with phasing is that no legacy deck can interact with a phased out permanent (off the top of my head I can only name two cards that can prevent a phase out or pull creatures back into phase), so you blank any sorcery speed effect an opponent could run, then you untap and have all your mana for whatever sort of stack war an opponent wants to pick. When you run skip untap effects, you can create board states where you control how long things can remain hidden on board, and opponents can't compete on that axis. Stasis controls time, and phasing screws around with it; these angles of attack work independently, but when you combine them they throw games into what looks like complete disarray but is in fact very much controlled chaos. You have to really enjoy and understand what is mechanically possible with the legacy card pool to combine Stasis and Dreadnought cards - and guys that play Stasis clearly enjoy what they're doing. Playing Stasis like it's 93-94 isn't working for pretty knowable reasons, but the real take home lesson is that merely stopping time isn't good enough; you need a better plan (Elves angle) or more plans (Dreadnought cards).

If Stasis is a player's favourite card and they're determined to play it, putting it into the SB of Elves is probably the best way to get wins while doing it starting immediately. It will succeed b/c it's ~two cards in the sideboard of a marginally changed tier 1.5 established deck. A stock Elves deck is better, but Elves + SB Stasis is more than powerful enough to produce winning records as it's barely different. Make no mistake, this is a recipe for success. I don't think it's a dumb idea, there's just a better way to win with Elves (but that way doesn't have the lulz of casting Stasis). If you are really intent on laying down the law by banning the untap step, you're not going to get that fix by doing this b/c Elves doesn't really have the tools to find Stasis reliably (certainly not before a big Glimpse turn which will already kill the opponent) nor do they have the tools to make sure it is protected on the stack and in play. In MBH's 4-round legacy nights, it's going to be pretty rare that you get to live that game 2/3 dream where it's the Quirion/Stasis opener that just demolishes your opponent.

I'm not sure where you think I don't understand phasing; let's not forget who said "So rather than just exile your opponent's creature with Equipoise you want to destroy the creature with another card and then exile the leftover token with Equipoise?" I understand phasing to the point that what I'm saying doesn't make sense to players who play normal magic. Your interpretations of what I'm saying are conventionally correct, but that means you aren't understanding the actual points I'm making concerning phasing, and that's ok b/c most players will never have to have to understand magic on this skewed mechanical level. You have correctly stated that if Dreadnought taps to attack it won't untap under Stasis and that it won't phase back in while Stasis is on the table...but missing the concept of a board in constant flux where we are bouncing things and hiding threats under a Stasis such that removing it will reveal a vastly different board state. You are using static appraisal on an incredibly mutable and theoretical gamestate.

I have played cards like these for years, I am seeing multiple cards deep interactions. In your post you have mentioned Marit Lage, Equipoise, and Pongify - understand that I'm seeing a theoretical board state where I have a Quirion and Equipoise trigger on stack, the opponent makes Marit Lage (having the same or fewer creatures) and I respond with Pongify Marit Lage simply to boost opponent to 1 creature more than I have while Equipoise trigger is still on the stack; all of this just to let me phase out Marit Lage. There's nothing wrong with saying StP is better without the jank, but I'm not interested in a removal spell whose only modal implication is that I gain 12 life since it's a resource I can't use within the confines of being friends with Stasis. I don't care if an opponent can successfully resolve the intended targeting of Decay, I'd rather have a 3/3 (and other utility) than 12 life if the deck could conceivably negate (or exploit) the drawback of Pongify on multiple levels. In any format you will always know what your deck can do, but you have no control over what the opponent can; pre-boarding 'the best removal spell in the format' [StP] is an effective way to play legacy but the assumption of a complaint opponent (one who plays things to remove) is flawed, even if you're not punished routinely for it. You have to have as many backup plans for your interactive cards in decks that try to do something special, to the point that those backup plans are actually what we are weighing.

While this has been a fun discussion, minus the sometimes negative tone, the main points I'm making are brew Stasis from the point of understanding the pillars of the untap step (Elves and Dreadnought), choose cards that do things (always select a card like Equipoise over CJ), and if you're on white then use E. Tutor to create space and allow for rapid assembly of synergistic and independently functioning angles of attack. I don't think I'm really all that out there when looking at your list; those cards I highlighted kinda don't do anything unless the decks only plan [Stasis] can be enacted. The Stasis only plan is presumably going 1-3 and 0-4 rather routinely; the problem with the fundamental plan is something your list isn't addressing. I mean you can mock the Dreadnought approach, but I'm at least putting up suggestions of 1cmc plays that don't draw my opponents cards. If you look at my posts, I've been talking about some white cards but I'm really much more on-board with a BUG approach.

I've mentioned the just put Leo/Trops mainboard and some Stasis SB in Elves a few times as the best immediate bet, but @nwsw is on the Tundra FoW plan - I don't ever really use that land, but I do know how to recognize powerful white cards which work with Stasis and more importantly without it. I put up a U/W list that left about 14 slots unsolved, I don't really think there's much of a path forward there...Mentor only uses 3-4 slots, but what exactly are we doing if you can't use 1-drops like DRS/Quirion and Stifle isn't exactly great with Mentor. Don't get me wrong, you have Mentor and cast Ensnare and Rite of Undoing [target Stasis] on opponent's EoT and enter an attack step with +2 monks than can attack, and a Stasis recast for Prowess...it isn't going to take much assuming we cast any FoW or Daze before that Ensnare. You're getting into 2-3 more spells = 1 shot kill territory, which brings us right back to the problem of what our last 10 cards were. I don't know if there is a low cmc answer there which capitalizes on Stasis being a thing we've potentially done & access to E. Tutor if we're going on the hyper-efficient wincon plan. The easy answer in U/W is adding in SCM and StP, but this means that Stasis should no longer be in the deck. Given Daze, the next best thing (Ponder) doesn't help b/c we have a game plan that will picks up lands while pursuing a game plan that exists at 3+ cmc.

The heavy Mentor plan has a lot going for it, but the turn 1 and 2 plays aren't there in U/W, and Daze only adds to that problem. I don't know that you can really get down to playing on 1cmc in U/W, but cards that do work with 2 mana are Dreadnought, JVP, and TITI. Under that, Factory is your best bet....maybe. The other option at 2cmc is SFM with an amount of Bskull which fetches you into early Tundras for the loss to Wasteland. In U/W I'm more interested in any build that gives me more turn 1 plays, even if that's only Stifle it would be an improvement (this card that also protects City). Looking at your prior list you lack Brainstorm, and the only real turn one play that entire list can make is Preordain, Black Vise, and free countermagic. I don't think I'd play less than 10-12x 1cmc openers given the speed of legacy, and a card like E. Tutor isn't really an opener if it's finding the Stasis part of the deck, so you're looking for a proactive maindeck turn 2 play (if E. Tutor is being tallied as an opener). To be fair a turn 1 or EoT Brainstorm isn't great, but I think if your U/W options are 4x BS/4x Stifle/3x E.Tutor/free countermagic versus 4x Preordain/1x Black Vise/free countermagic, that we've improved the deck. Unlike U/W Rip/Helm, you can't really afford to durdle with removal spells b/c Stasis doesn't provide a combo kill, and it would much prefer to invalidate a threat by depriving it of untap steps rather than removing a card.

If I'm to play Stasis and I want to win games, it's gonna be in Elves for the short term. If I want a reasonably competitive deck within the confines of strictly U/W, I'd begin with something like:

-20 lands at most; City x2 max here (I don't like this card in multiples, but no green), I would play Wasteland x4, something closer to the legacy norms with 7x Fetch/7x mana producers

-Stasis x2
-Equipoise x1

-FoW x4
-Brainstorm x4
-Stifle x4
-Daze x4
-Ensnare x2
-E. Tutor x3
-Rite of Undoing x3
-Vision Charm x2
-Noxious Revival x2

-3 PWs, I don't much care for JTMS so maybe 1x and the other two being JVP, but that's more of a personal preference.

-6 Creatures, I'd run 4x Dreads, 2x Mentor.

There's no real point though to me telling you how I [personally] would start brewing a U/W list (before determining a board interaction package for a local meta) is there? Nor to discuss how/why I'd try pushing it towards face-down casting, because in a thread about 0-4 Stasis lists you've decided Dreadnought is comparatively worse than that. You can go with personal attacks about how I don't understand phasing, but c'mon man 19 islands/24 total lands, no fetches, no Brainstorm, basically no turn 1 plays, expensive cards that do pretty much nothing by themselves; you're gonna get there on 4 Stasis in legacy how??? You have to lower the floor to improve Stasis, how will an all-in list meet that simple requirement? If you're going U/W, and you're using E. Tutor, you have to have a low cost aspect of the deck able to function alongside and independent of Stasis - and E. Tutor has to be able to find it.

I see your list and I get all the interactions, they're pretty simple effects and *if* you can find and resolve a Stasis they will generate a win. That is however a big 'if' and all pieces are pretty high cost by themselves. If you don't find that City and Stasis right off the bat, you're going to have a very hard time extending a quick-paced game because this is actually one of the very first plays your deck can actually make. Let's say all that happens and opponent can't Wasteland the City or make you discard; I get that your deck's idea is to draw cards until it can deploy 2 islands and a Howling Mine (untapping City for Stasis puts you on needing 4 cards: 2 land drops, 1 Mine, and an exile each turn for City before the deck unlocks itself) and I get that's why you put in 19 actual Islands to reach JTMS mana after unlocking yourself - I just don't think that's viable deck theory.

[kombatkiwi]

1) I think you are still greatly overrating the power or viability of Dreadnought in current legacy.

2) Your argument that Dreadnought is justified in a Stasis deck because of synergy with phasing cards is betrayed by the fact that your list only has 2 Vision Charm and 1 Equipoise as anything that involves phasing, and Vision Charm has no positive interaction with Stasis, and Equipoise has no interaction with Dreadnought.

3) "Stasis controls time, and phasing screws around with it; these angles of attack work independently, but when you combine them they throw games into what looks like complete disarray but is in fact very much controlled chaos." Statements like this are just junk attempts to obfuscate actual ideas with fancy rhetoric (whether intentionally or not). Your posts are full of this. Likewise; "...but missing the concept of a board in constant flux where we are bouncing things and hiding threats under a Stasis such that removing it will reveal a vastly different board state. You are using static appraisal on an incredibly mutable and theoretical gamestate." Rather than describe a situation as 'incredibly mutable and theoretical' perhaps we could try to just spell out a typical example of how that situation would work? So you have successfully put Dreadnought in play, and your opponent casts Decay, or Push. You respond with Vision Charm (one of your only 2 copies, remembering that you already had to use a Charm or a Stifle to get the Dreadnought into play in the first place) on Dreadnought. Assuming you still have an untapped Island, you pay for Stasis and the game continues. Eventually you draw Rite of Undoing, which bounces your Stasis on your opponent's end step. You get 1 attack in with Dreadnought, dealing 12, assuming your opponent hasn't been able to play enough lands in the meantime to fire off another removal spell (because you don't play anything that taps your opponent's lands down). If you don't replay Stasis, your opponent gets to untap and will likely be able to answer the Dreadnought (or combo off, etc). If you do replay a Stasis (your 1 other copy) then you have to repeat the entire Charade once more before your Dreadnought is allowed to attack again...

4) You spell out a multi-card combo that enables you to kill an indestructible 20/20 with a Pongify and this is somehow a justification for playing the card? I agree with you as far as the okay argument of "I'm playing Pongify instead of real removal because I don't want dead cards when my opponent is not playing creatures". However, I don't think this argument has a real answer to the important question of "What do you do when your opponent is attacking your with Delver of Secrets?". Additionally, when your answer to the question of "What creatures do you have in play to Pongify for value?" is "Phyrexian Dreadnought" (which already requires wasting an additional card to even successfully put into play in the first place) major alarm bells should be going off. If you really want a spell to cast in response to removal on your Dreadnought then play e.g. Mizzium Skin, or more Vision Charm. If you want removal then play Swords. Yes, Pongify does function in both situations, but it is very bad in both situations, so why bother?

5) I didn't play fetchlands because the OP said he can't afford them and I didn't play Brainstorm because the deck has 0 fetchlands (I already explained this). I have a high number of lands because when Stasis is in play then topdecking lands is often desirable and I have 5-mana planeswalkers in the deck that I want to cast. I agree that if this is wrong, it is likely too many lands rather than too few.
I do think a better version of Stasis in legacy is the one in the thread I linked with Brainstorm/Fetches/Ancestral/As Foretold/Ral Zarek but that isn't compatible with what the OP wanted.

6) Random Noxious Revival x2? Why? If it's supposed to be just a random, decently good standalone card then why does no other legacy deck use it for this purpose?. If it's supposed to be a wonky tutor / combo enabler is it really worth the card disadvantage? If so, why does no other legacy deck use it for this purpose? Prowess enabler? I don't see any UR Delver decks featuring it. If you think this card is actually good then there is a good chance you are not respecting the card disadvantage element of Enlightened Tutor either.

7) "Unlike U/W Rip/Helm, you can't really afford to durdle with removal spells b/c Stasis doesn't provide a combo kill, and it would much prefer to invalidate a threat by depriving it of untap steps rather than removing a card." Of course you would much prefer to invalidate a threat by playing Stasis, but in the early game it's likely that you won't have enough of a setup to keep Stasis around for long, or that you simply won't have drawn a copy of it yet. One of the key play patterns for Stasis is "End of opponent's turn bounce Stasis, untap, play a PW threat, replay Stasis." If you can keep Stasis around forever alongside a Kismet effect then that IS a combo kill. Even without a Kismet then Forever-Stasis plus a threat that kills under a Stasis is a pretty strong combo. However, this 'combo' is far easier to do with more lands in play, therefore you want to play the first Stasis as late as possible, which means that durdling with removal spells is sometimes what you need to be doing.

8) 2 JVP over JTMS in your no-untap deck? I agree it makes sense with Dreadnought but I think this is again a case of trying to do too many things at once.

9) 'You're unfairly dismissing my ideas out of hand even though they must be okay because they're different to the list in the OP that went 0-4'. If I took a stock Grixis Delver deck and replaced 1 card in the SB with a Vizzerdrix it would still be better than 95+% of the decks suggested in the New/Developmental forum but this doesn't mean that we should entertain a discussion on the merits of 7 mana vanilla 6/6 creatures. Similarly, I think what you have presented is pretty clearly a bad Dreadnought deck, and unlike Grixis Delver, Dreadnought is already a poor strategy to begin with.
You might be correct in thinking that the most success Stasis can have in legacy is by making a worse version of an existing archetype by chucking in a couple of copies. But there is no point in anybody posting lists like this because whatever anybody comes up with will be less competitive than those existing decks that are already out there. A dedicated Stasis deck might not be good, but to work that out it's at least necessary to discuss what the best dedicated Stasis deck is, not be like "well this one guy went 0-4 at FNM with his brew so it's obviously a lost cause".

10) "If you don't find that City and Stasis right off the bat, you're going to have a very hard time extending a quick-paced game because this is actually one of the very first plays your deck can actually make." But if I scroll up just a bit you were saying I can't afford to durdle with removal spells? Now you're suggesting it's exactly what I should be doing?

11) In your paragraph talking about how you 'get all the interactions' and how the list unlocks itself from Stasis why is there zero mention of Tezzeret? I get that maybe you think he's too expensive to be playable but at least say that, rather than pretend the only way to gain mana under Stasis is with Forsaken City.

[Fox]

1) What works with Stasis, is low cmc, and attacks from a different angle. Mentor is the easiest answer (except for the 3cmc bit), but there's not really anything along the way that makes this viable in the U/W canon if we're still running a Stasis deck.

2) Your list's strategy cannot actually cast FoW (untap cost of Forsaken City) without delaying 2 more turns, or having a Howling Mine down [drawing opponent cards] before deploying Stasis. It doesn't matter how viable Dreadnought is or isn't b/c I'm talking about addressing fundamental low cmc flaws with someone who ignores the primary problem of Stasis being a slow contraption to assemble. If you want a positive interaction between Stasis and Vision Charm here you go: opponent plays an artifact, you phase it out, it doesn't come back until you let them have an untap step. So again, phasing is actually just removal in the context of no untap steps...but it's less fair than that with instant-speed bouncing of Stasis where you can still get an untap step. There isn't a ton of room for phasing in this deck, and as long as fetchlands are legal Stifle has a generally better backup plan (interaction) when not used for cheating in a 12/12.

3) If an opponent wants to Decay a Dreadnought over a Stasis, you're likely winning. If an opponent wants to tap a land for Fatal Push and potentially a second land due to Daze, it is similarly bad for them. If an opponent wants to leave in removal versus bringing in more countermagic post-board, this is also fine. In the list I provided it runs 3 bounce effects and 4 ways to replay that same bounce, but within the context of your example where we are executing the Stasis plan, all you're doing is telling them to tap out targeting a creature. This should start sounding like the role Orb of Dreams/Kismet/Frozen Aether play, except with those cards if you hit Stasis they do nothing - but if you target Stasis over a 12/12 reverse engineered tap you down effect... What my rough draft intends (kill you with creatures, Stasis lock inevitability, or mill you out) are all using interchangeable pieces that are meant to push any plan forward, at any time, while drawing interaction from opponents. Your analysis @kombatkiwi isn't wrong, but your analysis does take cards at face-value, and that's where we're not really speaking the same language.

4) The same can be said of U/W Stasis vs RiP Helm - why deny untap steps when you could win the game. StP is a fairly one-dimensional card versus a deck that is trying to attack from multiple strange angles. Pongify, and cards like it, have vastly more implications but are generically worse...which is why generic strategies don't select them. Let's stop though and look at your list, what plan does it have vs Delver that is better than creatures that can race it or buy time with a 2-drop that can shrink it to a 1/2 flyer?

5) If you're casting AF and casting actual Balance with it, why are you running Stasis and Ral Zarek? Even by cube standards, that's a pretty egregious compilation of effects. AF is legacy Splinter Twin, you just don't have to run 6-8x bad flash creatures and put a 4 drop enchant creature on them. The tools changed some, but that's still the same old tier 2-3 (depending on how one chooses to define tiers) Ancient Tomb/Chalice/access to Blood Moon/generally no 1-drop deck it has always been. It's definitely more consistent than Twin, but it also just does not function without AF in play (adding Stasis to that mix is pretty questionable; Ral Zarek has to have Stasis down first, and has to beat out CToD and JTMS).

6) Noxious is there as a green FoW vs yard combo, impedes DRS, can result in enemy loss to Wasteland, prevents loss to enemy Wasteland, allows JVP to necro any card type, gives more meaning to self mill with Vision Charm, makes enemy discard far less reliable, feeds into face-down casting (discussed, but not a part of list submitted)... The short answer is that it does things, it's not really integral and could just be more cantrips. The only real requirement is that all three aspects of attack have to be able to utilize it. Given the option between running E. Tutor and Noxious in the same deck vs giving opponent draws Howling Mine, I'd stick with the former.

7) You keep going back to Stasis in play cards...It's not always going to be there, deck construction has to be better than meaningless cards in its absence. I don't think you've got much space to build around Stasis and still have the luxury of diluting deck with cards like StP which might give you more turns (depends entirely on what opponent is on) while having no positive interaction with how the deck wins. U/W Helm can get away with it because its combo is immediate, and there is zero sustain required for RiP which disrupts more decks than Stasis can.

8) Just another wincon which offers card selection/advantage and can buy time early where JTMS can't. This card does more to reduce variance than to increase it.

9) No, the point is that dismissing Dreadnought b/c it's bad when we're talking about Stasis is pretty strange (that's the plan that actually has 1 cmc plays, and that's really the crux of the issue here). Stasis isn't a bad plan in Elves, it's a seamless inclusion in a deck inadvertently designed to sustain it; the issue is that deck will pretty much always combo out and instantly win. Add Stasis in there and you've got an opponent at negative life, so there's no real point to taking away their untap step.

10) Your deck has 1 plan, there is no backup plan. Removal like StP is directly opposed to that plan, it has no text against a non-compliant opponent who does not present targets. You can't cheese wins with Stasis like RiP can, there is no room for deficit spending of win percentage on the removal gambit.

11) I don't like the plan of Stasis and 4 cmc walkers, they kinda have to come down before a Stasis without everything going right. There's a world of difference between them and a 3cmc Kiora (does not exist yet) which you can power out on turn 2 while playing a deck with DRS, which supports Stasis. If you're one the plan of assembling 4cmc walker + Stasis, you're not attacking the mana base with Stifle/Wasteland plan in a deck that needs to be quicker to compete.