emidln
01-30-2007, 04:57 PM
About the Name
Sun Tower is my team's name for our R/G Legacy UbaStax build, derived from some conversations Team Blitzkrieg had about Stax theory. We use the name Sun Tower to avoid any confusion with random decks running Uba Mask/Sylvan Library. While we didn't invent this combo, this is the first deck to use it effectively, to my knowledge.
Introduction and History
Sun Tower is the name of family of R/G UbaStax decks to come forth from my team in the last year. They have been played by myself, some teammates, and a few associates to success in Chicago, Paris, and the Gencon meta, as well as testing well over MWS against a variety of opponents. I've prepared a bit of a primer, which I plan on adding to in this thread, to help get people started. I want to do this thread right, so if you have any questions, or want additional information, please ask.
To understand some of the card choices, a bit of a history lesson is in order. The original UbaStax list that I proposed was mono red and looked like this:
// Legacy UbaStax (May/June 2006)
4 Ancient Tomb
4 City of Traitors
4 Crystal Vein
4 Mox Diamond
3 Wasteland
1 Ghost Quarter
2 Barbarian Ring
4 Mountain
1 Wooded Foothills
1 Bloodstained Mire
// Stax
4 Smokestack
4 Crucible of Worlds
4 Tangle Wire
// Combo/Randomness Control
4 Chalice of the Void
4 Trinisphere
// Creature Control
3 Uba Mask
4 Ensnaring Bridge
3 Pyroclasm
2 Granite Shard
Notable deviations from standard Stax lists at the time (May/June 2006) include being mono-red, Uba Mask, Ensnaring Bridge, Granite Shard, and a full acceleration suite consisting of Ancient Tomb, City of Traitors, Crystal Vein as well as Mox Diamond and Crucible of Worlds. After a lot of testing we felt the need for a draw engine. Like every other Legacy Stax build we had no draw engine and, despite a rather strong game against aggro-control like UGW Threshold and a good game against Control, would randomly lose games due to bad topdecking.
Certain cards were isolated as being inefficient against Goblins and Threshold. Granite Shard, Uba Mask, and Ghost Quarter were cut for more creature control. The final version of mono-red UbaStax was actually Uba-less and included 4 Rolling Earthquake, 1 The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale, and 4 Pyroclasm. This version still had some consistency issues related to the one draw per turn problem, but was fairly good for a second attempt. At the time, we considered Goblins our worst matchup with the refined list, a theme that would unfortunately continue into the future.
Sometime before Gencon 2006, Yesphuyren let me in on a variation of his Vintage UbaStax list that was RG in order to get 8 Bazaar of Baghdad effects from 4 Sylvan Library. After some talking, this led me to try Sylvan Library + Uba Mask in Legacy UbaStax and soon it was realized that we had a draw engine. We continued testing and this is the list that I played at Gencon 2006:
// Sun Tower Gencon 2006
// Manabase
4 Ancient Tomb
4 City of Traitors
4 Crystal Vein
4 Taiga
4 Wasteland
2 Barbarian Ring
3 Mishra’s Factory
4 Mox Diamond
4 Crucible of Worlds
// Lock Pieces
3 Smokestack
4 Trinisphere
4 Tangle Wire
// UbaLibrary
3 Sylvan Library
2 Uba Mask
// Creature Control
4 Ensnaring Bridge
2 Rolling Earthquake
4 Pyroclasm
1 The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale
// Sideboard
SB: 4 Boil
SB: 2 Pyroblast
SB: 1 Uba Mask
SB: 2 The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale
SB: 2 Naturalize
SB: 4 Chalice of the Void
This list attempted to use The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale as another mass removal spell. This was spectacularly unsuccessful in actual tournament play along with the Tangle Wires. I noticed about half way through the tournament that Tangle Wire was getting boarded out in every match up for more relevant cards. Finally, out of my 5 losses, 4 of these were to Goblins when I had them locked out with Ensnaring Bridge but failed to find mass removal or a Smokestack to get rid of Siege Gang Commander. I finished X-2 at the Legacy Prelims, X-2 at the World Championships main event, and X-1-1 at the Legacy $500 tournament. I was in the top16 of each tournament, which, while not bad with a Rogue deck, wasn’t really what I wanted having only lost to Burn once and Goblins four times (out of eight) over the weekend.
Taking what I learned from my experience at Gencon (Tabernacle: bad; Tangle Wire: bad; SGC = gg) I started playing with lists. That led to a Burning Wish-based list that is extremely similar to my current list (-X Pyroclasm, +X Burning Wish), but took up a lot of sideboard space. This allowed for things like Life from the Loam, Shattering Spree, and mass removal in the board. This let me move out some of the lesser used board cards like Naturalize and Pyroblast.
In September 2006, I ran my Burning Wish-based list with Constant Mists at a Black Lotus/Time Walk tournament in Flint, MI. I finished the day X-2 losing to a series of major play mistakes and a UWB Fish deck playing Serenity. Serenity made me re-evaluate my deck. Is it even possible with a card that so thoroughly hoses the archetype? I talked to my teammate Colby Evenpence about it and he related his experiences with Serenity in the Vintage Fish vs Vintage UbaStax matchup: it’s merely a speed bump that Goblin Welder mostly ignores. Armed with this knowledge, I experimented with Welders in the board, and they were indeed insane against hate. So good that my standard sideboard plan became board in Welders for whatever isn’t working.
This is my most current list. It is what I believe to be the most advanced, consistent, and strongest Stax build. The current list is based on a fundamental change of goal for Legacy Stax away from resource denial to a focus on card advantage.
// Sun Tower 2k7
// Manabase
4 Ancient Tomb
4 City of Traitors
4 Crystal Vein
4 Taiga
1 Windswept Heath
// Hybrid Defense/Mana/Win Conditions
4 Mishra’s Factory
3 Barbarian Ring
2 Wasteland
// Non-land Mana Sources
4 Mox Diamond
4 Crucible of Worlds
// Card Filtering/Advantage Engine
3 Sylvan Library
2 Uba Mask
// X for 1 Card Advantage
4 Smokestack
4 Ensnaring Bridge
4 Chalice of the Void
1 Pithing Needle
3 Pyroclasm
2 Rolling Earthquake
// Busted
4 Trinisphere
// Sideboard
SB: 4 Goblin Welder
SB: 4 Razormane Masticore
SB: 4 Boil
SB: 3 Pithing Needle
This deck focuses on establishing a crushing board position through both virtual and actual card advantage. The deck plays a number of must-answer permanents that generate near infinite card advantage when on the table, and negate entire strategies by resolving. UbaStax focuses on "bombs". As far as things that have changed since Gencon, Tangle Wire was cut completely; Smokestack, Chalice of the Void, and Mishra’s Factory were incremented to playsets in the maindeck; Barbarian Ring and Wasteland numbers were tweaked, Windswept Heath was added to increase the colored mana available; and Pithing Needle, Goblin Welder, and Razormane Masticore were added to the general strategy.
Deck Discussion
The Manabase
It has been argued, time and again, that basics are required in Legacy. This is untrue if, and only if, your deck has outs designed around common land destruction/disruption. One out to land destruction is to win the game. If you are treating your land as a one-time use resource and win the game, land destruction isn’t relevant. Another out is to play lands and spells that cheat the fundamental rules of magic. I chose the later option. Sun Tower plays 12 lands which produce more than one mana, four Mox Diamonds which are effectively "basic" lands, as well as four Crucible of Worlds. These, combined with Pithing Needles, allow you to control, possibly negate, any land/mana denial strategies.
Sun Tower’s mana sources do a variety of things. In addition to generating resources for our spells, they provide uncounterable recurring damage, blocking, and removal, along with allowing us to out-accelerate other, similar decks. Our Crucibles, Moxen, and double lands let us compete with strategies like Goblins, Affinity, and Solidarity, which are far faster than we should be.
Because of our mana sources, our curve is very different from that of most decks. We effectively jump from the 0/1/2 spot with around 8-10 cards to the 3/4 spot occupied by the rest of the deck. We start life at 3 mana. That is, a Mox and a double land get us going. This is important to consider when considering slots for the deck as metagame answers, or potential major changes.
Card by Card Analysis
Card Advantage Engine
Sylvan Library
Sylvan Library is part card quality, part card advantage. In UbaStax, much like in Combo, your life is used openly as a resource to be abused. To this end, 1-2 cards taken extra off a Sylvan Library is normal and encouraged if it helps you out of a situation. This is my second favorite card to see early, as it always signifies a win if it resolves. (My favorite card to see early is Crucible of Worlds.) Sylvan Library lets you find the right card at the right time, while hiding cards that you don't need quite yet from Discard and Ensnaring Bridge.
As far as applications, a major use is to smooth out our draws. Once we hit 4 no-damage mana, we want to be playing lock pieces every turn. Sylvan Library facilitates that by giving us lock pieces when we need them, or land when we need them. Additionally, it allows control cards like Pyroclasm and Rolling Earthquake to be saved until you need them, hidden from Duress, Hymn, and keeping you at zero cards for Ensnaring Bridge. When combined with Uba Mask, Sylvan Library generates obscene card advantage, effectively drawing an extra two cards per turn for each Sylvan Library in play. That's three cards per turn for the first, five for the second, and seven for the third. Remember, since Uba Mask replaces all draws, you'll never deck yourself. You should probably protect your combo with Chalice set at two to avoid potential complications with Disenchant and Naturalize, or an appropriate Chalice/Pithing Needle if you suspect other tricks like Vindicate or Pernicious Deed.
Please note that Sylvan Library is a triggered ability at the beginning of the draw step. Since the draw per turn is always the first thing to resolve, you will have drawn three cards (if you resolve a Sylvan Library trigger) and must put back two of them or lose four life per card.
Uba Mask
Uba Mask is a piece of our card advantage engine that actually has four major functions.
(1) Enemy Disruption: this makes early draw spells terrible, shuts off countermagic/removal, and shuts off Aether Vial.
(2) Draw Engine: this allows us to "draw" multiple cards per turn.
(3) Lock Piece: this is a win condition with Goblin Welders creating "UbaLock" out of the board, as well as permanently enabling Ensnaring Bridge.
(4) Win Condition: this allows us the extra time to eat an opponent's board with Smokestack and end the game with Mishra's Factory or Barbarian Ring once the coast is clear. Additionally, against certain decks that abuse their library (Life from the Loam decks in particular), playing Uba Mask may grant them false hope that they won’t deck themselves which may allow you to remove Uba Mask in order to make them draw a card (thus losing).
UbaLock is when you have two Uba Masks, one in play, one in the yard, and a Goblin Welder, or two Goblins Welders, and one Uba Mask, along with another artifact in the graveyard. At the end of your opponent's draw step, you weld out Uba Mask for another Uba Mask, or alternately, weld Uba Mask into an artifact of your choice, and their ability to play their Removed from Game card ends. Unless they have an instant, they are essentially "locked". With Trinisphere, this can become a hard lock. Additionally, this is useful information if you need to remove certain troublesome permanents before they are played.
Ensnaring Bridge
This card is busted in UbaStax. With a deck as focused on "hellbent" as any other deck I'm aware of, this is effectively a Moat for everything. It negates attacking completely, forcing opponents to scramble for bounce/removal, or an alternate method of victory. This card allows us to execute our game plan, which is render as enemy cards dead as possible, creating massive card advantage. Since UbaStax is designed to accelerate out quickly, your hand is normally empty by turn three or four. Once you have 4 mana, you can play any spell in your deck off the top of your library, or use Sylvan Library to guarantee that you always draw something you can play. Uba Mask makes sure you hand will never increase.
This is a key card in most matchups, rarely boarded out.
With Uba Mask, Ensnaring Bridge, and Crucible of Worlds, you can largely ignore what your opponent is doing, and blindly fling Barbarian Rings at them every turn until they die. This is a very good backup win condition to wiping the board and attacking with Factories.
Note: when your opponent can no longer play spells (under Smokestack/Trinisphere/Crucible lock), this is a safe permanent to sacrifice to allow you to attack with Mishra's Factory. This turns a 10 turn clock into a 3 or less turn clock. This is important in tournament play with timed rounds.
Many times you will be faced at a situation that requires an Ensnaring Bridge, but you lack one. In this circumstance, empty you hand and wait for it to come. As a general rule, cards in your hand are bad with this deck, unless your opponent is running massive board clearning cards like Pernicious Deed or Akroma's Vengeance which you haven't dealt with yet through Chalice, Wasteland, or Smokestack. You should try to empty your hand as fast as possible unless there is a good reason not to.
Lock Components
Smokestack
This is the deck's namesake, as well as our catch-all solution to everything. If there is something we can't handle, we ramp the stack and reset the game. The applications are numerous, but generally fall into one of four circumstances listed below.
(1) Ramping Smokestack to save your life - this happens when something nasty hit the board for which you need a solution to asap. This could be a Leyline of the Void, something with a triggered ability, or you could not be finding creature removal. Ramp Smokestack and the problem goes away.
(2) Setting Smokestack at one preemptively - this is the most common occurance. You set Smokestack at one and feed it a permanent a turn, possibly land with a Crucible, possibly redundant permanents. This is usually one of the defining steps of the Stax lock.
(3) Ramping a Smokestack and setting another at one to lock the game: This is when you are moving in for the kill. Double Smokestack, signals a game loss for your opponent, as you will be able to ramp one up while you keep the other at one, wiping their board while maintaining a Smokestack at 1 for eventual hard lock once they run out of permanents.
(4) Playing it to get it out of your hand - there are situations, mostly involving an opponent playing with Exploration/Manabond and some way to recur lands, that you don't want to ramp Smokestack. You therefore play it to get it out of your hand to enable Ensnaring Bridge. This is a good pre-emptive strategy, as you never know when you'll draw that Bridge. Additionally, it is a permanent that sacs to other smokestacks, if that's all you need, although that generally forms a situation like (3), where you win from there.
When given a situation between playing Smokestack and something else, it's usually a good idea to play Smokestack first, as it has to wait a turn to come online. An important part of winning with UbaStax is forseeing the future, and planning your moves accordingly. As dumb as that sounds, it is possible for an experienced UbaStax pilot with a solid understanding of how the decks in their meta work to predict these things rather accurately. Along this line, you must know how to play each other deck in your meta, lest you will make mistakes with Smokestacks, Chalices, Pithing Needles, and mulliganing. Each of these errors results in a game loss. This is one of the least forgiving decks I've come across while playing magic.
Please remember to stack triggered abilities properly. You will lose if you don't. There are two on your own upkeep, and 99% of the time, you will want to add the soot counter trigger to the stack, and then the sacrifice trigger to the stack, so that you sacrifice fewer permanents than your opponent. There are some exceptions, mostly dealing with Chalices and imminent threats or imminent threats and Threshold.
A combo of note is Smokestack's interaction with Crucible of Worlds. With Crucible out, you can maintain Smokestack indefinitely until your opponent runs out of permanents. With a Trinisphere, this is close to a hardlock, as the only thing that will save them is a Spirit Guide. Most people concede to Trinisphere + Smokestack @ 1 + Crucible when they run out of permanents. If they don’t, and start to play slowly, make sure you get a judge to watch for slow play. Stalling the game repeatedly when they have no plays is cheating.
Smokestack @ 1 can also be maintained with a Smokestack in the graveyard and an active Goblin Welder in play. At the end of your opponent’s turn, weld the active Smokestack for the one in the graveyard. On your upkeep, stack sacrificing a permanent and then adding a counter.
Trinisphere
"Trinisphere accomplishes all of your goals in a single card." -- Colby Evenpence
Evenpence is right. This card was restricted in Vintage for a reason, it makes games uninteractive and only fun for a single player, the person who plays it. That's you. It's legal as a four-of here in Legacy, and it is mana denial/disruption, a lock, and proactive defense against opponents meddling spells all in one. This is a central part of your win condition, the so-called "Stax" lock of Trinisphere + Smokestack @ 1 + Crucible.
Trinisphere is played in multiples, as many as I legally can, since it is a card that you want to see early, along with Mox Diamond. The earlier, the better, with the best being turn 1 on the play. Turn 1 Trinisphere that resolves and isn't responded to by Wasteland, will win the game. Trinisphere itself will probably win, but without Wasteland they have no chance. If followed by a Smokestack, your opponent might as well start packing as you run five spells that aren't permanents. You have six chances of hitting a hard lock, and seven of finding a win condition. You opponent has to hit every land drop each turn, until they find Elvish Spirit Guide, a double land, or your miss a permanent drop. The odds are heavily in your favor.
If you find yourself with extra copies, they make great Smokestack fodder, as well as excellent Welder targets post-board. This is a card that is sometimes boarded out against aggro, as you only really need 1 to Lock them out in the end, and many times, Welder is better if you suspect tricks like Serenity. On the play, this card should almost always be in your deck.
Chalice of the Void
Chalice is an offensive defensive tool. It is used to negate certain strategies, and problematic cards for you, without the need for removal. Additionally, it allows you to obtain Threshold for your Barbarian Rings. You can quickly accelerate in settings of Chalice @ 2 and Chalice @ 3, if need be, along with a common opening of Chalice @ 1. It should be noted that Chalice can be sacrificed to Smokestack when it is no longer needed, or if you absolutely have to cast something at that spot (Burning Wish for example). Using Chalice is really dependent on the gamestate and situation, but here is a list of common Chalice settings:
Goblins: 1, 3, 5, 2
Angel Stompy: 2
Fish/EBA: 2 (1 if you have a Welder in play)
Threshold: 1, 2, 4 0
Solidarity: 3, 1, 2, 4 (in that order, unless you have multiple chalices, or Chalice is your opening play)
Iggy Pop: 0, 1, 2, 3
Salvagers: 0, 2, 3 (turns off Engineered Explosives/Lion's Eye Diamond, then Living Wish, then Pernicious Deed (may not be applicable))
43Lands: 2, 3, 0 (this highly build dependent past 2)
Pikula.dec: 2, 3 (1 is important if you have seen STP and you have Welder out)
Survival Variants: 2, 3
Landstill: 2, 3 (again, 1 is important is you have seen Bolt or STP and have Welder out)
Affinity: 1, 2, 0 (0 is to turn off Lotus Petal and EE for 0)
Rifter: 2, 3, 6 (this will happen sometimes)
Reanimator: 1, 2, 3 (depends on the build)
Faerie Stompy: 0, 3 (0 turns off EE, Crypt, and their Moxen while 3 turns off the rest of their deck)
Burn: 1, 2, 3 (especially for Price of Progress)
Pithing Needle
The Needle is a tool that is applicable in almost every matchup. In almost every matchup it serves a different Purpose. Sometimes, it is as simple as turning off Wasteland recursion when you are at a disadvantage. Other times it is turning off SGC to lock up the win. Yet more it prevents nasty equipment. This is highly dependent the matchup, and the build you are facing. Also, Pithing Needles hit fetchlands. This is a great way to manascrew combo, or decks in general that rely on many fetches, or fetch recursion.
Needle Targets to look for:
Land: Polluted Delta, Flooded Strand, Wasteland, Volrath's Stronghold, Nantuko Monestary, Cycling Lands
Artifacts: Aether Vial, Cursed Scroll, Powder Keg, Tormod's Crypt, Sword of Fire and Ice, Umezawa's Jitte, Engineered Explosives
Gold: Pernicious Deed
Black: Withered Wretch, Recurring Nightmare
Red: Siege-gang Commander, Goblin Sharpshooter, Goblin Tinkerer, Seismic Assault
Green: Viridian Zealot, Survival of the Fittest
White: Seal of Cleansing
Note, that if you play a Needle into a Chalice, you can get it back with Goblin Welder, as you name a card anytime it comes into play, not just from your hand. Needle, like Chalice, can be sacrificed when not necessary.
There are three more Pithing Needles in your board if you think the matchup needs them.
Meta Package
Rolling Earthquake
This is creature removal that doesn't cost two, doesn't target, and can be used on arbitrarily large creatures. It hits flyers, shadow creatures, etc. If you run into a creature with Horsemanship, you should probably win the game anyway. Additionally, this can be played for R with X = 0 to bring you closer to Threshold. Finally, this is an alternate win condition, or, in some cases, a draw condition, that will draw the game, and let you start fresh. With the mana that you generate, drawing a game with an opponent at 11 or 12 is not unheard of.
This is better than Pyroclasm because your acceleration allows you play it at almost all the same times, while avoiding Chalice @ two. This is worse than Pyroclasm when you are at two or less life.
Pyroclasm
Pyroclasm functions to kill small stuff while you set up your locks. This probably could be Burning Wish, but Burning Wish is worse against Goblins (your worst matchup).
Non-land Mana Sources
Mox Diamond
While it may seem rather basic, I'm listing this to be complete, and so the inclusion of Mox Diamond as a four-of is not questioned. This card is acceleration, colored mana, and a virtual "basic" land providing manabase stability. Games that open with Mox Diamond, pitch a land, land, play a spell are rarely lost because of the advantage Mox Diamond brings to the Sun Tower player.
Offhand, this card protects your manabase from:
Wasteland, Rishadan Port, Sinkhole, Smallpox, Wildfire, Devastating Dreams
at the cost of pitching extra lands to be replayed later with Crucible of Worlds. This is a "super-land" in our deck, one without so much as a drawback.
Please note, that you don't want to play an Uba Mask with a Mox Diamond in hand. This is the only liability of Mox Diamond, and one, that if you are careful, is easily avoided. Failure to do this can result in a game loss.
Crucible of Worlds
This is listed under the manabase because it is essential to accelerating out quickly. This deck, to attain the required speed to compete in Legacy, runs 16 mana sources that destroy themselves, three that are likely to be destroyed, and four that damage you. Additionally, there are no basic lands, outside of Mox Diamond to provide you stability against opposing disruption. Crucible Worlds fixes these problems.
As well as being part of the manabase, Crucible is a part of our win condition as well. Uba Stax has four win conditions, with three of them involving Crucible in some way.
(1) Concession (Usually to Trinisphere + Smokestack @ 1 + Crucible)
(2) Crucible + Mishra's Factory
(3) Crucible + Barbarian Ring
(4) Rolling Earthquake
In addition to all of these other uses, Crucible is a lock piece. Added to Smokestack, it allows us to maintain permanent advantage over opponents by continuously sacrificing and replaying the same lands. With an added Wasteland, Crucible is a locking mechanism of its own against decks that run many, or critical non-basic lands. Barbarian Ring, when added to a Crucible, becomes a significant road block as recurring removal, allowing as much as 4 damage (a maximum of 8 damage, but not sustainable) to a single target from a colorless source per turn.
List of common Crucible interactions:
Smokestack + Crucible: Recur Crucible for permanent advantage
Barbarian Ring + Crucible: Recur B. Ring for damage to creatures or players
Mishra's Factory + Crucible: Recur Mishra's Factory as a blocker or for an offensive rally
Wasteland + Crucible aka "Wastelock": Remove all of an opponent's non-basic lands from play, sometimes locking them out under Trinisphere
Fetchland + Crucible + Sylvan Library: Shuffle effect for 1 life to see 3 new cards and/or get another Taiga"
Sideboard
Goblin Welder
Goblin Welder has a variety of uses. Amongst his most prominent are lock piece protection (from removal and countermagic), as a win condition (he is a 1/1), as a blocker (he trades with Lackey when he needs to), and as a way to avoid upkeep costs on certain permanents (Smokestack and Razormane Masticore).
Goblin Welder is in the sideboard because he has very large targets on his forehead, chest, back, and a giant sign above his head that seems to scream “Kill Me!” with its large bold lettering. Welder is brought in when creature hate is boarded out and when you need some protection against removal.
Crucible + Mishra’s Factory provide Welder infinite targets to work with. This come comes up quite often, and is one of the reasons game 2 of every matchup is in your favor.
Razormane Masticore
Razorcore as we have come to call him, is a 5/5, first striking last stand against anything the legacy environment will likely throw at you. He bolts things on your draw step, kills things on your attack step or your opponent’s attack step, and very likely lives through all of it to present a very quick clock to your opponent. His upkeep cost is neglible since when you have Razorcore on the table you are winning. Razorcore’s upkeep cost incidentally fills the graveyard with nice Welder targets, allowing infinite Welding.
When you board in Razorcore, Goblin Welder is almost always brought in to protect him. Additionally, when Razorcore is boarded in, please remove Uba Mask so you can have draws to discard to Razorcore. This is very important.
Razorcore can come down as early as turn two to turn the tables on aggro and put them into a control role where you are playing Chalices, Trinispheres, and Smokestacks aggressively. Early Razorcore generally signify a game loss for the opponent if they cannot immediately deal with it.
Boil
Against 2/3s of the “tier one” in Legacy right now, Boil is a one-sided, instant-speed Armageddon that can be cast as early as turn 1 (theoretically, although this would be silly), and easily on turn 2 and beyond. Against a large part of the established decks that are not tier one, such as MUC, Landstill, Trix, and Counterslivers, Boil is again a one-sided Armageddon.
Boil allows is primarily played to give you another set of land destruction against Solidarity. If left alone with only a few Chalices and Trinispheres, Solidarity may still be able to combo off. This helps to make sure that they don’t have the luxury of biding their time.
Cards Not Played
I thought that it would be important to explain some of the cards that I have chosen to not include in Sun Tower. This might help to avoid questions in the thread about said cards.
Tangle Wire
I cut this card, not because it is counter-productive, but because it is bad. It is bad because it's either win more or lose more. It's win more in your good matchups (like Threshold) and lose more in your bad matchups (like Goblins). When I was looking at what Sun Tower is trying to do, it is generating card advantage. This is done through permanents that X for 1 my opponent. These are cards like Ensnaring Bridge, Chalice of the Void, and Smokestack. Tangle Wire doesn't actually provide card advantage in this way.
The reason Tangle Wire is played in Type 1 Stax is Mana Drain. Workshop Aggro uses it as a tempo card, but Vintage Stax is primarily interested in not letting Drain decks go busted on turn 2-3 off a free 3-4 mana. Advatange is accomplished by playing some cheap/free artifacts, then shop -> Tangle Wire. Our format does not have Mana Drain and we play very few free/cheap artifacts.
While some people will tell you this card is good against Aggro, they are wrong, at least partly. Aggro falls into two categories: fat aggro and swarming aggro. Fat aggro is aggro that uses a few fat creatures (or, alternately, a few small creatures with Equipment or other Aura-type things). Swarming aggro is aggro that uses many cheap creatures that are usually undercosted in an effort to overwealm the defenses.
UbaStax is naturally good against fat aggro. We have Ensnaring Bridge, which is a card fat aggro never wants to see. It must be dealt with for them to win. However, UbaStax is very weak against swarming aggro. We are forced to play non-permanent cards like Rolling Earthquake, Pyroclasm, and Burning Wish in an attempt to deal with fast, swarming aggro since we lack a reliable way to get and use Barbarian Ring early, as in Vintage. Also, since our ways of emptying our hand are less refined than Vintage (Bazaar and Null Brooch), we typically have more trouble getting Ensnaring Bridge online vs swarming aggro than we do fat aggro.
Tangle Wire's problem is that it is only good against fat aggro. Fat Aggro, like Threshold, only plays a few permanents a time, and is significantly set back by Tangle Wire. However, swarm aggro decks like Goblins, Affinity, and Life.dec (which usually goes Aggro vs UbaStax), rely on their small creatures to get in past the defenses of Ensnaring Bridge, and their own card advantage engines to survive Pyroclasms and Rolling Earthquake. Whereas Threshold invests a lot of resources (typically, 3-7 cards per creature), Goblins invests 1 card for 1 creature. Added to the fact that Goblins can produce more of themselves to generate card advantage, and suddenly they have more permanents than we do. Tangle Wire ends up Time Walking 3 times, but it's not like the Classic Trinisphere, Juggernaut, Tangle Wire "Time Walks" of old. These are Time Walk targetting me, Time Walk commendeered by you, Time Walk commendeered by you. This is because Goblins will have more permanents, and thus recover faster from Tangle Wire than you.
I cut Tangle Wire for cards that are actually useful in problem matchups. These cards include Pithing Needle, which is absolutely busted against Goblins, as it stops their win condition post Uba-Bridge lock.
The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale
As much as I really want to play this card, it doesn’t have a home in Sun Tower. Without a dedicated mana denial strategy involving things like Ghostly Prison/Propaganda, Winter Orb, multiple Smokestack effects or ways to simulate them, or other ways to tax an aggro player, Tabernacle just isn’t good. Threshold can generally afford to keep their few creatures, Goblins can afford to keep their problem creatures (Warchief usually), and Affinity will just sacrifice everything to Atog or Ravager and win the game. Perhaps Tabernacle tapped for mana it could be playable, but as-is, I don’t play with it.
Sphere of Resistance
This card is really bad because it is symmetrical. Sun Tower looks to generate advantage by playing lands that allow me negate the drawback of my own Trinisphere. Trinisphere is amazing partly due to the fact that most of Sun Tower costs 3 or more and is thusly unaffected. Sphere of Resistance will affect everything putting certain key spells out of reach (Uba Mask and Smokestack) and rendering Ensnaring Bridge much harder to play with.
Defense Grid
I don’t know why this card is continually talked about in the Stax sideboard. When I tested it I found that it really doesn’t do anything. Sun Tower is about generating advantage through X for 1 scenarios and I don’t see how this generates an X for 1 scenario. In every matchup involving countermagic, proper evaluation of the importance of lock pieces combined with playing them in appropriate order according to their importance has always been the best strategy. I posit that if you think you need Defense Grid you instead need to learn how to evaluate the value of your lock pieces.
Exploration
Exploration has two marks against it. The first is that I want to play Chalice @ 1 a lot of the time game one. The second is that we have no way to abuse multiple lands per turn. Except for winning faster with Barbarian Ring or Wasteland, this doesn’t seem to do anything. I classify this as win more in Sun Tower, although I would love to see a build that proves me wrong.
Wasteland #3 and Wasteland #4
These cards aren’t played due to testing and trimming. Due to the increased need for colored mana, as well as a need for the fourth Mishra’s Factory, two Wastelands were cut from the deck on the basis that they don’t significantly influence our worst matchup.
Quicksand
This was tested in early builds of Sun Tower but was removed for Mishra’s Factory. While Mishra’s Factory is slightly worse in the Goblin matchup, it is significantly better in almost every other matchup, as well as providing an efficient alternate win condition.
Cards Not Played That Could Be
Burning Wish
It was recently determined from testing that Burning Wish presented two problems. The first is that it required too many slots in your wishbord to be effective. This problem is felt when you consider the need for 4 Razorcore and 4 Boils with the want for 4 Needles total with 4 Welders to keep consistency. Burning Wish was only significantly better in the blue-based combo, blue-based control, and Deadguy matchups. The second reason cost of 2 damage vs Goblins and Affinity between Burning Wish and Pyroclasm. Pyroclasm costs 1R for 2 damage while Burning Wish for Pyroclasm costs 2RR.
Life from the Loam
This is an extra Crucible effect that combos with Goblin Welder by filling the yard with nice weld targets. Life from the Loam is really good in here, but not significant in enough matchups (Deadguy, Pox) where it is worth a spot in the main or sideboard.
Matchups
Goblins – about even
I’m starting out with the roughest matchup first so that you will know what you are getting into. This will likely be your most common matchup in a random metagame, and game one is only about 45% in your favor. The win is highly dependent on dice roll game one.
If you are on the play, your immediate goals should be Chalice @ 1, Chalice @ 3 and Ensnaring Bridge online. If you have a Pithing Needle, Siege Gang Commander (SGC) is a great target, as is Wasteland if your mana in your opening hand is sketchy, or Aether Vial if you don’t have the Chalice @ 1 to play on the same turn. You should play Smokestack and ramp it as soon as possible, as well as keeping the board clear of any obvious alpha strike. As the game progresses, you want to keep cards out of your hand and their board clear so they can’t abuse Siege Gang Commander. As mid-game approaches, you may be able to use Barbarian Ring with Crucible to rid random threats.
On the draw, you are in for a nearly impossible feat. Hands with Trinisphere and Chalice are basically hands with forced mulligans. Your ideal hand has moxen, land, crucible, bridge, and one to two mass removal spells. A hand with Crucible + factory early is nice, but dangerous due to their 8 land-based land disruption spells. If you make it out of the early game (you’ll know because you are alive on turn six), the game plan is much the same as it is if you are on the play. Use Ensnaring Bridge to avoid attacks while your removal focuses on removing alternate win conditions like Sharpshooter + Prospector, Siege Gang Commander, or Sharpshooter + your Smokestack. You will likely find yourself ramping one or two Smokestacks very highly to survive unless they keep a bad hand. Good luck.
In this matchup, you generally want lackey to hit you if you have mass removal in hand. Knowing the exact right time to play it can be tricky since they are capable of alpha striking in a single turn, but you generally don’t want to let Piledrivers stay on the table long.
Game two is a lot better for you. This is how I recommend that you board:
-4 Trinisphere
-4 Chalice of the Void
-2 Uba Mask
+4 Razormane Masticore
+3 Pithing Needle
+3 Goblin Welder
Even on the play, Trinisphere and Chalice are near worthless to you. You need cards that actually do stuff, and Pithing Needle, Goblin Welder, and Razormane Masticore do stuff. Needle shuts down Vials, Wastelands, Ports, and SGC. Razorcore holds down the fort by himself. Welder protects your important permanents like Ensnaring Bridge and Razorcore from removal, as well as pulling random tricks with Smokestacks and Pithing Needles.
Needle targets:
Aether Vial – if this is on the table, you really want to have a Needle naming it
Siege Gang Commander – this is their biggest (perhaps only) threat after Ensnaring Bridge becomes active.
Rishadan Port – depending on your draw, Port could wreck you (this is the Crucible + manlands draw). If this is the case, name it with Needle.
Goblin Tinkerer – depending on your board state, Tinkerer can wreck you. Tinkerer is most dangerous early game, as by mid game you likely have multiple bridges or ways of protecting yourself outside of bridge in motion.
Umezawa’s Jitte – this can kill you in spite of a bridge. Active Jitte is bad for you, just like everyone else in magic.
Threshold – extremely favorable
This is one of the reasons to play Sun Tower. In this matchup, almost every card in your deck is a must-counter due to destroying their strategy completely or enabling you to find more cards that destroy their strategy completely. You should rarely lose games in this matchup, let alone matches. UGW Threshold sideboarding Serenity is the best against you, but even Serenity doesn’t bridge the gap created by the matchup.
Game one, you want to play Ensnaring Bridge and Chalice @ 1 and/or Trinisphere. Use Crucible to recur Wasteland or Mishra’s Factory as blockers, and use Pyroclasm early to clear unthresh’d critters and Meddling Mage/Dark Confidant if they are played. Towards the mid game (around turn 4), you’ll be playing Uba Masks and Smokestacks, along with any lock pieces that were countered early. Don’t be afraid to Rolling Earthquake for 4 to get rid of Werebears.
Sideboarding for this matchup is almost unfair. Unless you suspect Serenity, the proper boarding strategy is -3 Pyroclasm, -1 Pithing Needle, + 4 Boil. If you do suspect Serenity, identify your least favorite cards (Rolling Earthquake and Uba Mask come to mind), and add in Goblin Welders. While Razormane Masticore and Pithing Needle (on fetchlands) are both stellar against Threshold, you simply have too much hate.
Postboard, Chalice @ 2 probably removes any hate they had, as well as half their deck. As usual, Chalice @ 1 takes away their draw engine as well as mongoose. You shouldn’t have much trouble with this matchup.
Solidarity – very favorable
This matchup is all about your opening draw. You need to have relevant lock pieces in there for the first few turns. Relevant threats include Uba Mask, Chalice of the Void, Trinisphere, and Smokestack. Chalice @ 1 and Chalice @ 3 almost ends the game (they can play around Chalice with Twincast, and a Chalice @ 2 or Smokestack will seal the game. You can lose game one in this matchup due to drawing too much creature hate. I’ve done it before, but I’ve never lost a match to Solidarity. Remember, with Uba Mask in play, they must bounce Uba Mask before they deck you. Don’t remind them of this as they may waste their only draw spell on you. If it comes up, point to Uba Mask and say “I replace the draw with Uba Mask”.
Game 2 is sorta like game 1, except that they likely cannot actually win this game. The reason is your board:
-4 Ensnaring Bridge
-3 Pyroclasm
-2 Rolling Earthquake
-1 Wasteland
+4 Boil
+3 Pithing Needle
+4 Goblin Welder
Here you take our irrelevant cards (well, Rolling Earthquake is kinda relevant) for cards that they can’t go off with if you have in play (or are holding in the case of Boil). Pithing Needle names their blue fetchlands to slow them down. Goblin Welder is less dead than the other cards, and can actually beat them if you resolve it turn 1 (you weld in Uba Mask in response to their draw spell since they put your entire graveyard in your library with Brain Freeze). Boil is kinda obvious. You usually play this at the EOT so if they remand it you can just play it again. Your goal in game 2 is the same as game 1 (Chalice @ 1, Chalice @ 3) but you have a lot of different outs. UbaLock is common in this game, as well as early Stax lock. Just play whatever lock pieces you draw and you’ll be fine.
Pithing Needle Targets
Flooded Strand – needling this slows them down if they have fetches in hand or happen to draw them as land. Remember, they only play 10-12 actual Islands so with a Smokestack or a few Boils, they could be permanently locked out under Trinisphere.
Polluted Delta – same as above
Chalice of the Void Settings
Chalice @ 1 – stops Brainstorm, High Tide, and opt/peek
Chalice @ 3 – stops Meditate and Cunning Wish
I'll be posting some more matchups when I have time to edit them into something at least as consistently bad as the above. Anyway, this thread is here to stay, thanks for reading.
Sun Tower is my team's name for our R/G Legacy UbaStax build, derived from some conversations Team Blitzkrieg had about Stax theory. We use the name Sun Tower to avoid any confusion with random decks running Uba Mask/Sylvan Library. While we didn't invent this combo, this is the first deck to use it effectively, to my knowledge.
Introduction and History
Sun Tower is the name of family of R/G UbaStax decks to come forth from my team in the last year. They have been played by myself, some teammates, and a few associates to success in Chicago, Paris, and the Gencon meta, as well as testing well over MWS against a variety of opponents. I've prepared a bit of a primer, which I plan on adding to in this thread, to help get people started. I want to do this thread right, so if you have any questions, or want additional information, please ask.
To understand some of the card choices, a bit of a history lesson is in order. The original UbaStax list that I proposed was mono red and looked like this:
// Legacy UbaStax (May/June 2006)
4 Ancient Tomb
4 City of Traitors
4 Crystal Vein
4 Mox Diamond
3 Wasteland
1 Ghost Quarter
2 Barbarian Ring
4 Mountain
1 Wooded Foothills
1 Bloodstained Mire
// Stax
4 Smokestack
4 Crucible of Worlds
4 Tangle Wire
// Combo/Randomness Control
4 Chalice of the Void
4 Trinisphere
// Creature Control
3 Uba Mask
4 Ensnaring Bridge
3 Pyroclasm
2 Granite Shard
Notable deviations from standard Stax lists at the time (May/June 2006) include being mono-red, Uba Mask, Ensnaring Bridge, Granite Shard, and a full acceleration suite consisting of Ancient Tomb, City of Traitors, Crystal Vein as well as Mox Diamond and Crucible of Worlds. After a lot of testing we felt the need for a draw engine. Like every other Legacy Stax build we had no draw engine and, despite a rather strong game against aggro-control like UGW Threshold and a good game against Control, would randomly lose games due to bad topdecking.
Certain cards were isolated as being inefficient against Goblins and Threshold. Granite Shard, Uba Mask, and Ghost Quarter were cut for more creature control. The final version of mono-red UbaStax was actually Uba-less and included 4 Rolling Earthquake, 1 The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale, and 4 Pyroclasm. This version still had some consistency issues related to the one draw per turn problem, but was fairly good for a second attempt. At the time, we considered Goblins our worst matchup with the refined list, a theme that would unfortunately continue into the future.
Sometime before Gencon 2006, Yesphuyren let me in on a variation of his Vintage UbaStax list that was RG in order to get 8 Bazaar of Baghdad effects from 4 Sylvan Library. After some talking, this led me to try Sylvan Library + Uba Mask in Legacy UbaStax and soon it was realized that we had a draw engine. We continued testing and this is the list that I played at Gencon 2006:
// Sun Tower Gencon 2006
// Manabase
4 Ancient Tomb
4 City of Traitors
4 Crystal Vein
4 Taiga
4 Wasteland
2 Barbarian Ring
3 Mishra’s Factory
4 Mox Diamond
4 Crucible of Worlds
// Lock Pieces
3 Smokestack
4 Trinisphere
4 Tangle Wire
// UbaLibrary
3 Sylvan Library
2 Uba Mask
// Creature Control
4 Ensnaring Bridge
2 Rolling Earthquake
4 Pyroclasm
1 The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale
// Sideboard
SB: 4 Boil
SB: 2 Pyroblast
SB: 1 Uba Mask
SB: 2 The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale
SB: 2 Naturalize
SB: 4 Chalice of the Void
This list attempted to use The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale as another mass removal spell. This was spectacularly unsuccessful in actual tournament play along with the Tangle Wires. I noticed about half way through the tournament that Tangle Wire was getting boarded out in every match up for more relevant cards. Finally, out of my 5 losses, 4 of these were to Goblins when I had them locked out with Ensnaring Bridge but failed to find mass removal or a Smokestack to get rid of Siege Gang Commander. I finished X-2 at the Legacy Prelims, X-2 at the World Championships main event, and X-1-1 at the Legacy $500 tournament. I was in the top16 of each tournament, which, while not bad with a Rogue deck, wasn’t really what I wanted having only lost to Burn once and Goblins four times (out of eight) over the weekend.
Taking what I learned from my experience at Gencon (Tabernacle: bad; Tangle Wire: bad; SGC = gg) I started playing with lists. That led to a Burning Wish-based list that is extremely similar to my current list (-X Pyroclasm, +X Burning Wish), but took up a lot of sideboard space. This allowed for things like Life from the Loam, Shattering Spree, and mass removal in the board. This let me move out some of the lesser used board cards like Naturalize and Pyroblast.
In September 2006, I ran my Burning Wish-based list with Constant Mists at a Black Lotus/Time Walk tournament in Flint, MI. I finished the day X-2 losing to a series of major play mistakes and a UWB Fish deck playing Serenity. Serenity made me re-evaluate my deck. Is it even possible with a card that so thoroughly hoses the archetype? I talked to my teammate Colby Evenpence about it and he related his experiences with Serenity in the Vintage Fish vs Vintage UbaStax matchup: it’s merely a speed bump that Goblin Welder mostly ignores. Armed with this knowledge, I experimented with Welders in the board, and they were indeed insane against hate. So good that my standard sideboard plan became board in Welders for whatever isn’t working.
This is my most current list. It is what I believe to be the most advanced, consistent, and strongest Stax build. The current list is based on a fundamental change of goal for Legacy Stax away from resource denial to a focus on card advantage.
// Sun Tower 2k7
// Manabase
4 Ancient Tomb
4 City of Traitors
4 Crystal Vein
4 Taiga
1 Windswept Heath
// Hybrid Defense/Mana/Win Conditions
4 Mishra’s Factory
3 Barbarian Ring
2 Wasteland
// Non-land Mana Sources
4 Mox Diamond
4 Crucible of Worlds
// Card Filtering/Advantage Engine
3 Sylvan Library
2 Uba Mask
// X for 1 Card Advantage
4 Smokestack
4 Ensnaring Bridge
4 Chalice of the Void
1 Pithing Needle
3 Pyroclasm
2 Rolling Earthquake
// Busted
4 Trinisphere
// Sideboard
SB: 4 Goblin Welder
SB: 4 Razormane Masticore
SB: 4 Boil
SB: 3 Pithing Needle
This deck focuses on establishing a crushing board position through both virtual and actual card advantage. The deck plays a number of must-answer permanents that generate near infinite card advantage when on the table, and negate entire strategies by resolving. UbaStax focuses on "bombs". As far as things that have changed since Gencon, Tangle Wire was cut completely; Smokestack, Chalice of the Void, and Mishra’s Factory were incremented to playsets in the maindeck; Barbarian Ring and Wasteland numbers were tweaked, Windswept Heath was added to increase the colored mana available; and Pithing Needle, Goblin Welder, and Razormane Masticore were added to the general strategy.
Deck Discussion
The Manabase
It has been argued, time and again, that basics are required in Legacy. This is untrue if, and only if, your deck has outs designed around common land destruction/disruption. One out to land destruction is to win the game. If you are treating your land as a one-time use resource and win the game, land destruction isn’t relevant. Another out is to play lands and spells that cheat the fundamental rules of magic. I chose the later option. Sun Tower plays 12 lands which produce more than one mana, four Mox Diamonds which are effectively "basic" lands, as well as four Crucible of Worlds. These, combined with Pithing Needles, allow you to control, possibly negate, any land/mana denial strategies.
Sun Tower’s mana sources do a variety of things. In addition to generating resources for our spells, they provide uncounterable recurring damage, blocking, and removal, along with allowing us to out-accelerate other, similar decks. Our Crucibles, Moxen, and double lands let us compete with strategies like Goblins, Affinity, and Solidarity, which are far faster than we should be.
Because of our mana sources, our curve is very different from that of most decks. We effectively jump from the 0/1/2 spot with around 8-10 cards to the 3/4 spot occupied by the rest of the deck. We start life at 3 mana. That is, a Mox and a double land get us going. This is important to consider when considering slots for the deck as metagame answers, or potential major changes.
Card by Card Analysis
Card Advantage Engine
Sylvan Library
Sylvan Library is part card quality, part card advantage. In UbaStax, much like in Combo, your life is used openly as a resource to be abused. To this end, 1-2 cards taken extra off a Sylvan Library is normal and encouraged if it helps you out of a situation. This is my second favorite card to see early, as it always signifies a win if it resolves. (My favorite card to see early is Crucible of Worlds.) Sylvan Library lets you find the right card at the right time, while hiding cards that you don't need quite yet from Discard and Ensnaring Bridge.
As far as applications, a major use is to smooth out our draws. Once we hit 4 no-damage mana, we want to be playing lock pieces every turn. Sylvan Library facilitates that by giving us lock pieces when we need them, or land when we need them. Additionally, it allows control cards like Pyroclasm and Rolling Earthquake to be saved until you need them, hidden from Duress, Hymn, and keeping you at zero cards for Ensnaring Bridge. When combined with Uba Mask, Sylvan Library generates obscene card advantage, effectively drawing an extra two cards per turn for each Sylvan Library in play. That's three cards per turn for the first, five for the second, and seven for the third. Remember, since Uba Mask replaces all draws, you'll never deck yourself. You should probably protect your combo with Chalice set at two to avoid potential complications with Disenchant and Naturalize, or an appropriate Chalice/Pithing Needle if you suspect other tricks like Vindicate or Pernicious Deed.
Please note that Sylvan Library is a triggered ability at the beginning of the draw step. Since the draw per turn is always the first thing to resolve, you will have drawn three cards (if you resolve a Sylvan Library trigger) and must put back two of them or lose four life per card.
Uba Mask
Uba Mask is a piece of our card advantage engine that actually has four major functions.
(1) Enemy Disruption: this makes early draw spells terrible, shuts off countermagic/removal, and shuts off Aether Vial.
(2) Draw Engine: this allows us to "draw" multiple cards per turn.
(3) Lock Piece: this is a win condition with Goblin Welders creating "UbaLock" out of the board, as well as permanently enabling Ensnaring Bridge.
(4) Win Condition: this allows us the extra time to eat an opponent's board with Smokestack and end the game with Mishra's Factory or Barbarian Ring once the coast is clear. Additionally, against certain decks that abuse their library (Life from the Loam decks in particular), playing Uba Mask may grant them false hope that they won’t deck themselves which may allow you to remove Uba Mask in order to make them draw a card (thus losing).
UbaLock is when you have two Uba Masks, one in play, one in the yard, and a Goblin Welder, or two Goblins Welders, and one Uba Mask, along with another artifact in the graveyard. At the end of your opponent's draw step, you weld out Uba Mask for another Uba Mask, or alternately, weld Uba Mask into an artifact of your choice, and their ability to play their Removed from Game card ends. Unless they have an instant, they are essentially "locked". With Trinisphere, this can become a hard lock. Additionally, this is useful information if you need to remove certain troublesome permanents before they are played.
Ensnaring Bridge
This card is busted in UbaStax. With a deck as focused on "hellbent" as any other deck I'm aware of, this is effectively a Moat for everything. It negates attacking completely, forcing opponents to scramble for bounce/removal, or an alternate method of victory. This card allows us to execute our game plan, which is render as enemy cards dead as possible, creating massive card advantage. Since UbaStax is designed to accelerate out quickly, your hand is normally empty by turn three or four. Once you have 4 mana, you can play any spell in your deck off the top of your library, or use Sylvan Library to guarantee that you always draw something you can play. Uba Mask makes sure you hand will never increase.
This is a key card in most matchups, rarely boarded out.
With Uba Mask, Ensnaring Bridge, and Crucible of Worlds, you can largely ignore what your opponent is doing, and blindly fling Barbarian Rings at them every turn until they die. This is a very good backup win condition to wiping the board and attacking with Factories.
Note: when your opponent can no longer play spells (under Smokestack/Trinisphere/Crucible lock), this is a safe permanent to sacrifice to allow you to attack with Mishra's Factory. This turns a 10 turn clock into a 3 or less turn clock. This is important in tournament play with timed rounds.
Many times you will be faced at a situation that requires an Ensnaring Bridge, but you lack one. In this circumstance, empty you hand and wait for it to come. As a general rule, cards in your hand are bad with this deck, unless your opponent is running massive board clearning cards like Pernicious Deed or Akroma's Vengeance which you haven't dealt with yet through Chalice, Wasteland, or Smokestack. You should try to empty your hand as fast as possible unless there is a good reason not to.
Lock Components
Smokestack
This is the deck's namesake, as well as our catch-all solution to everything. If there is something we can't handle, we ramp the stack and reset the game. The applications are numerous, but generally fall into one of four circumstances listed below.
(1) Ramping Smokestack to save your life - this happens when something nasty hit the board for which you need a solution to asap. This could be a Leyline of the Void, something with a triggered ability, or you could not be finding creature removal. Ramp Smokestack and the problem goes away.
(2) Setting Smokestack at one preemptively - this is the most common occurance. You set Smokestack at one and feed it a permanent a turn, possibly land with a Crucible, possibly redundant permanents. This is usually one of the defining steps of the Stax lock.
(3) Ramping a Smokestack and setting another at one to lock the game: This is when you are moving in for the kill. Double Smokestack, signals a game loss for your opponent, as you will be able to ramp one up while you keep the other at one, wiping their board while maintaining a Smokestack at 1 for eventual hard lock once they run out of permanents.
(4) Playing it to get it out of your hand - there are situations, mostly involving an opponent playing with Exploration/Manabond and some way to recur lands, that you don't want to ramp Smokestack. You therefore play it to get it out of your hand to enable Ensnaring Bridge. This is a good pre-emptive strategy, as you never know when you'll draw that Bridge. Additionally, it is a permanent that sacs to other smokestacks, if that's all you need, although that generally forms a situation like (3), where you win from there.
When given a situation between playing Smokestack and something else, it's usually a good idea to play Smokestack first, as it has to wait a turn to come online. An important part of winning with UbaStax is forseeing the future, and planning your moves accordingly. As dumb as that sounds, it is possible for an experienced UbaStax pilot with a solid understanding of how the decks in their meta work to predict these things rather accurately. Along this line, you must know how to play each other deck in your meta, lest you will make mistakes with Smokestacks, Chalices, Pithing Needles, and mulliganing. Each of these errors results in a game loss. This is one of the least forgiving decks I've come across while playing magic.
Please remember to stack triggered abilities properly. You will lose if you don't. There are two on your own upkeep, and 99% of the time, you will want to add the soot counter trigger to the stack, and then the sacrifice trigger to the stack, so that you sacrifice fewer permanents than your opponent. There are some exceptions, mostly dealing with Chalices and imminent threats or imminent threats and Threshold.
A combo of note is Smokestack's interaction with Crucible of Worlds. With Crucible out, you can maintain Smokestack indefinitely until your opponent runs out of permanents. With a Trinisphere, this is close to a hardlock, as the only thing that will save them is a Spirit Guide. Most people concede to Trinisphere + Smokestack @ 1 + Crucible when they run out of permanents. If they don’t, and start to play slowly, make sure you get a judge to watch for slow play. Stalling the game repeatedly when they have no plays is cheating.
Smokestack @ 1 can also be maintained with a Smokestack in the graveyard and an active Goblin Welder in play. At the end of your opponent’s turn, weld the active Smokestack for the one in the graveyard. On your upkeep, stack sacrificing a permanent and then adding a counter.
Trinisphere
"Trinisphere accomplishes all of your goals in a single card." -- Colby Evenpence
Evenpence is right. This card was restricted in Vintage for a reason, it makes games uninteractive and only fun for a single player, the person who plays it. That's you. It's legal as a four-of here in Legacy, and it is mana denial/disruption, a lock, and proactive defense against opponents meddling spells all in one. This is a central part of your win condition, the so-called "Stax" lock of Trinisphere + Smokestack @ 1 + Crucible.
Trinisphere is played in multiples, as many as I legally can, since it is a card that you want to see early, along with Mox Diamond. The earlier, the better, with the best being turn 1 on the play. Turn 1 Trinisphere that resolves and isn't responded to by Wasteland, will win the game. Trinisphere itself will probably win, but without Wasteland they have no chance. If followed by a Smokestack, your opponent might as well start packing as you run five spells that aren't permanents. You have six chances of hitting a hard lock, and seven of finding a win condition. You opponent has to hit every land drop each turn, until they find Elvish Spirit Guide, a double land, or your miss a permanent drop. The odds are heavily in your favor.
If you find yourself with extra copies, they make great Smokestack fodder, as well as excellent Welder targets post-board. This is a card that is sometimes boarded out against aggro, as you only really need 1 to Lock them out in the end, and many times, Welder is better if you suspect tricks like Serenity. On the play, this card should almost always be in your deck.
Chalice of the Void
Chalice is an offensive defensive tool. It is used to negate certain strategies, and problematic cards for you, without the need for removal. Additionally, it allows you to obtain Threshold for your Barbarian Rings. You can quickly accelerate in settings of Chalice @ 2 and Chalice @ 3, if need be, along with a common opening of Chalice @ 1. It should be noted that Chalice can be sacrificed to Smokestack when it is no longer needed, or if you absolutely have to cast something at that spot (Burning Wish for example). Using Chalice is really dependent on the gamestate and situation, but here is a list of common Chalice settings:
Goblins: 1, 3, 5, 2
Angel Stompy: 2
Fish/EBA: 2 (1 if you have a Welder in play)
Threshold: 1, 2, 4 0
Solidarity: 3, 1, 2, 4 (in that order, unless you have multiple chalices, or Chalice is your opening play)
Iggy Pop: 0, 1, 2, 3
Salvagers: 0, 2, 3 (turns off Engineered Explosives/Lion's Eye Diamond, then Living Wish, then Pernicious Deed (may not be applicable))
43Lands: 2, 3, 0 (this highly build dependent past 2)
Pikula.dec: 2, 3 (1 is important if you have seen STP and you have Welder out)
Survival Variants: 2, 3
Landstill: 2, 3 (again, 1 is important is you have seen Bolt or STP and have Welder out)
Affinity: 1, 2, 0 (0 is to turn off Lotus Petal and EE for 0)
Rifter: 2, 3, 6 (this will happen sometimes)
Reanimator: 1, 2, 3 (depends on the build)
Faerie Stompy: 0, 3 (0 turns off EE, Crypt, and their Moxen while 3 turns off the rest of their deck)
Burn: 1, 2, 3 (especially for Price of Progress)
Pithing Needle
The Needle is a tool that is applicable in almost every matchup. In almost every matchup it serves a different Purpose. Sometimes, it is as simple as turning off Wasteland recursion when you are at a disadvantage. Other times it is turning off SGC to lock up the win. Yet more it prevents nasty equipment. This is highly dependent the matchup, and the build you are facing. Also, Pithing Needles hit fetchlands. This is a great way to manascrew combo, or decks in general that rely on many fetches, or fetch recursion.
Needle Targets to look for:
Land: Polluted Delta, Flooded Strand, Wasteland, Volrath's Stronghold, Nantuko Monestary, Cycling Lands
Artifacts: Aether Vial, Cursed Scroll, Powder Keg, Tormod's Crypt, Sword of Fire and Ice, Umezawa's Jitte, Engineered Explosives
Gold: Pernicious Deed
Black: Withered Wretch, Recurring Nightmare
Red: Siege-gang Commander, Goblin Sharpshooter, Goblin Tinkerer, Seismic Assault
Green: Viridian Zealot, Survival of the Fittest
White: Seal of Cleansing
Note, that if you play a Needle into a Chalice, you can get it back with Goblin Welder, as you name a card anytime it comes into play, not just from your hand. Needle, like Chalice, can be sacrificed when not necessary.
There are three more Pithing Needles in your board if you think the matchup needs them.
Meta Package
Rolling Earthquake
This is creature removal that doesn't cost two, doesn't target, and can be used on arbitrarily large creatures. It hits flyers, shadow creatures, etc. If you run into a creature with Horsemanship, you should probably win the game anyway. Additionally, this can be played for R with X = 0 to bring you closer to Threshold. Finally, this is an alternate win condition, or, in some cases, a draw condition, that will draw the game, and let you start fresh. With the mana that you generate, drawing a game with an opponent at 11 or 12 is not unheard of.
This is better than Pyroclasm because your acceleration allows you play it at almost all the same times, while avoiding Chalice @ two. This is worse than Pyroclasm when you are at two or less life.
Pyroclasm
Pyroclasm functions to kill small stuff while you set up your locks. This probably could be Burning Wish, but Burning Wish is worse against Goblins (your worst matchup).
Non-land Mana Sources
Mox Diamond
While it may seem rather basic, I'm listing this to be complete, and so the inclusion of Mox Diamond as a four-of is not questioned. This card is acceleration, colored mana, and a virtual "basic" land providing manabase stability. Games that open with Mox Diamond, pitch a land, land, play a spell are rarely lost because of the advantage Mox Diamond brings to the Sun Tower player.
Offhand, this card protects your manabase from:
Wasteland, Rishadan Port, Sinkhole, Smallpox, Wildfire, Devastating Dreams
at the cost of pitching extra lands to be replayed later with Crucible of Worlds. This is a "super-land" in our deck, one without so much as a drawback.
Please note, that you don't want to play an Uba Mask with a Mox Diamond in hand. This is the only liability of Mox Diamond, and one, that if you are careful, is easily avoided. Failure to do this can result in a game loss.
Crucible of Worlds
This is listed under the manabase because it is essential to accelerating out quickly. This deck, to attain the required speed to compete in Legacy, runs 16 mana sources that destroy themselves, three that are likely to be destroyed, and four that damage you. Additionally, there are no basic lands, outside of Mox Diamond to provide you stability against opposing disruption. Crucible Worlds fixes these problems.
As well as being part of the manabase, Crucible is a part of our win condition as well. Uba Stax has four win conditions, with three of them involving Crucible in some way.
(1) Concession (Usually to Trinisphere + Smokestack @ 1 + Crucible)
(2) Crucible + Mishra's Factory
(3) Crucible + Barbarian Ring
(4) Rolling Earthquake
In addition to all of these other uses, Crucible is a lock piece. Added to Smokestack, it allows us to maintain permanent advantage over opponents by continuously sacrificing and replaying the same lands. With an added Wasteland, Crucible is a locking mechanism of its own against decks that run many, or critical non-basic lands. Barbarian Ring, when added to a Crucible, becomes a significant road block as recurring removal, allowing as much as 4 damage (a maximum of 8 damage, but not sustainable) to a single target from a colorless source per turn.
List of common Crucible interactions:
Smokestack + Crucible: Recur Crucible for permanent advantage
Barbarian Ring + Crucible: Recur B. Ring for damage to creatures or players
Mishra's Factory + Crucible: Recur Mishra's Factory as a blocker or for an offensive rally
Wasteland + Crucible aka "Wastelock": Remove all of an opponent's non-basic lands from play, sometimes locking them out under Trinisphere
Fetchland + Crucible + Sylvan Library: Shuffle effect for 1 life to see 3 new cards and/or get another Taiga"
Sideboard
Goblin Welder
Goblin Welder has a variety of uses. Amongst his most prominent are lock piece protection (from removal and countermagic), as a win condition (he is a 1/1), as a blocker (he trades with Lackey when he needs to), and as a way to avoid upkeep costs on certain permanents (Smokestack and Razormane Masticore).
Goblin Welder is in the sideboard because he has very large targets on his forehead, chest, back, and a giant sign above his head that seems to scream “Kill Me!” with its large bold lettering. Welder is brought in when creature hate is boarded out and when you need some protection against removal.
Crucible + Mishra’s Factory provide Welder infinite targets to work with. This come comes up quite often, and is one of the reasons game 2 of every matchup is in your favor.
Razormane Masticore
Razorcore as we have come to call him, is a 5/5, first striking last stand against anything the legacy environment will likely throw at you. He bolts things on your draw step, kills things on your attack step or your opponent’s attack step, and very likely lives through all of it to present a very quick clock to your opponent. His upkeep cost is neglible since when you have Razorcore on the table you are winning. Razorcore’s upkeep cost incidentally fills the graveyard with nice Welder targets, allowing infinite Welding.
When you board in Razorcore, Goblin Welder is almost always brought in to protect him. Additionally, when Razorcore is boarded in, please remove Uba Mask so you can have draws to discard to Razorcore. This is very important.
Razorcore can come down as early as turn two to turn the tables on aggro and put them into a control role where you are playing Chalices, Trinispheres, and Smokestacks aggressively. Early Razorcore generally signify a game loss for the opponent if they cannot immediately deal with it.
Boil
Against 2/3s of the “tier one” in Legacy right now, Boil is a one-sided, instant-speed Armageddon that can be cast as early as turn 1 (theoretically, although this would be silly), and easily on turn 2 and beyond. Against a large part of the established decks that are not tier one, such as MUC, Landstill, Trix, and Counterslivers, Boil is again a one-sided Armageddon.
Boil allows is primarily played to give you another set of land destruction against Solidarity. If left alone with only a few Chalices and Trinispheres, Solidarity may still be able to combo off. This helps to make sure that they don’t have the luxury of biding their time.
Cards Not Played
I thought that it would be important to explain some of the cards that I have chosen to not include in Sun Tower. This might help to avoid questions in the thread about said cards.
Tangle Wire
I cut this card, not because it is counter-productive, but because it is bad. It is bad because it's either win more or lose more. It's win more in your good matchups (like Threshold) and lose more in your bad matchups (like Goblins). When I was looking at what Sun Tower is trying to do, it is generating card advantage. This is done through permanents that X for 1 my opponent. These are cards like Ensnaring Bridge, Chalice of the Void, and Smokestack. Tangle Wire doesn't actually provide card advantage in this way.
The reason Tangle Wire is played in Type 1 Stax is Mana Drain. Workshop Aggro uses it as a tempo card, but Vintage Stax is primarily interested in not letting Drain decks go busted on turn 2-3 off a free 3-4 mana. Advatange is accomplished by playing some cheap/free artifacts, then shop -> Tangle Wire. Our format does not have Mana Drain and we play very few free/cheap artifacts.
While some people will tell you this card is good against Aggro, they are wrong, at least partly. Aggro falls into two categories: fat aggro and swarming aggro. Fat aggro is aggro that uses a few fat creatures (or, alternately, a few small creatures with Equipment or other Aura-type things). Swarming aggro is aggro that uses many cheap creatures that are usually undercosted in an effort to overwealm the defenses.
UbaStax is naturally good against fat aggro. We have Ensnaring Bridge, which is a card fat aggro never wants to see. It must be dealt with for them to win. However, UbaStax is very weak against swarming aggro. We are forced to play non-permanent cards like Rolling Earthquake, Pyroclasm, and Burning Wish in an attempt to deal with fast, swarming aggro since we lack a reliable way to get and use Barbarian Ring early, as in Vintage. Also, since our ways of emptying our hand are less refined than Vintage (Bazaar and Null Brooch), we typically have more trouble getting Ensnaring Bridge online vs swarming aggro than we do fat aggro.
Tangle Wire's problem is that it is only good against fat aggro. Fat Aggro, like Threshold, only plays a few permanents a time, and is significantly set back by Tangle Wire. However, swarm aggro decks like Goblins, Affinity, and Life.dec (which usually goes Aggro vs UbaStax), rely on their small creatures to get in past the defenses of Ensnaring Bridge, and their own card advantage engines to survive Pyroclasms and Rolling Earthquake. Whereas Threshold invests a lot of resources (typically, 3-7 cards per creature), Goblins invests 1 card for 1 creature. Added to the fact that Goblins can produce more of themselves to generate card advantage, and suddenly they have more permanents than we do. Tangle Wire ends up Time Walking 3 times, but it's not like the Classic Trinisphere, Juggernaut, Tangle Wire "Time Walks" of old. These are Time Walk targetting me, Time Walk commendeered by you, Time Walk commendeered by you. This is because Goblins will have more permanents, and thus recover faster from Tangle Wire than you.
I cut Tangle Wire for cards that are actually useful in problem matchups. These cards include Pithing Needle, which is absolutely busted against Goblins, as it stops their win condition post Uba-Bridge lock.
The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale
As much as I really want to play this card, it doesn’t have a home in Sun Tower. Without a dedicated mana denial strategy involving things like Ghostly Prison/Propaganda, Winter Orb, multiple Smokestack effects or ways to simulate them, or other ways to tax an aggro player, Tabernacle just isn’t good. Threshold can generally afford to keep their few creatures, Goblins can afford to keep their problem creatures (Warchief usually), and Affinity will just sacrifice everything to Atog or Ravager and win the game. Perhaps Tabernacle tapped for mana it could be playable, but as-is, I don’t play with it.
Sphere of Resistance
This card is really bad because it is symmetrical. Sun Tower looks to generate advantage by playing lands that allow me negate the drawback of my own Trinisphere. Trinisphere is amazing partly due to the fact that most of Sun Tower costs 3 or more and is thusly unaffected. Sphere of Resistance will affect everything putting certain key spells out of reach (Uba Mask and Smokestack) and rendering Ensnaring Bridge much harder to play with.
Defense Grid
I don’t know why this card is continually talked about in the Stax sideboard. When I tested it I found that it really doesn’t do anything. Sun Tower is about generating advantage through X for 1 scenarios and I don’t see how this generates an X for 1 scenario. In every matchup involving countermagic, proper evaluation of the importance of lock pieces combined with playing them in appropriate order according to their importance has always been the best strategy. I posit that if you think you need Defense Grid you instead need to learn how to evaluate the value of your lock pieces.
Exploration
Exploration has two marks against it. The first is that I want to play Chalice @ 1 a lot of the time game one. The second is that we have no way to abuse multiple lands per turn. Except for winning faster with Barbarian Ring or Wasteland, this doesn’t seem to do anything. I classify this as win more in Sun Tower, although I would love to see a build that proves me wrong.
Wasteland #3 and Wasteland #4
These cards aren’t played due to testing and trimming. Due to the increased need for colored mana, as well as a need for the fourth Mishra’s Factory, two Wastelands were cut from the deck on the basis that they don’t significantly influence our worst matchup.
Quicksand
This was tested in early builds of Sun Tower but was removed for Mishra’s Factory. While Mishra’s Factory is slightly worse in the Goblin matchup, it is significantly better in almost every other matchup, as well as providing an efficient alternate win condition.
Cards Not Played That Could Be
Burning Wish
It was recently determined from testing that Burning Wish presented two problems. The first is that it required too many slots in your wishbord to be effective. This problem is felt when you consider the need for 4 Razorcore and 4 Boils with the want for 4 Needles total with 4 Welders to keep consistency. Burning Wish was only significantly better in the blue-based combo, blue-based control, and Deadguy matchups. The second reason cost of 2 damage vs Goblins and Affinity between Burning Wish and Pyroclasm. Pyroclasm costs 1R for 2 damage while Burning Wish for Pyroclasm costs 2RR.
Life from the Loam
This is an extra Crucible effect that combos with Goblin Welder by filling the yard with nice weld targets. Life from the Loam is really good in here, but not significant in enough matchups (Deadguy, Pox) where it is worth a spot in the main or sideboard.
Matchups
Goblins – about even
I’m starting out with the roughest matchup first so that you will know what you are getting into. This will likely be your most common matchup in a random metagame, and game one is only about 45% in your favor. The win is highly dependent on dice roll game one.
If you are on the play, your immediate goals should be Chalice @ 1, Chalice @ 3 and Ensnaring Bridge online. If you have a Pithing Needle, Siege Gang Commander (SGC) is a great target, as is Wasteland if your mana in your opening hand is sketchy, or Aether Vial if you don’t have the Chalice @ 1 to play on the same turn. You should play Smokestack and ramp it as soon as possible, as well as keeping the board clear of any obvious alpha strike. As the game progresses, you want to keep cards out of your hand and their board clear so they can’t abuse Siege Gang Commander. As mid-game approaches, you may be able to use Barbarian Ring with Crucible to rid random threats.
On the draw, you are in for a nearly impossible feat. Hands with Trinisphere and Chalice are basically hands with forced mulligans. Your ideal hand has moxen, land, crucible, bridge, and one to two mass removal spells. A hand with Crucible + factory early is nice, but dangerous due to their 8 land-based land disruption spells. If you make it out of the early game (you’ll know because you are alive on turn six), the game plan is much the same as it is if you are on the play. Use Ensnaring Bridge to avoid attacks while your removal focuses on removing alternate win conditions like Sharpshooter + Prospector, Siege Gang Commander, or Sharpshooter + your Smokestack. You will likely find yourself ramping one or two Smokestacks very highly to survive unless they keep a bad hand. Good luck.
In this matchup, you generally want lackey to hit you if you have mass removal in hand. Knowing the exact right time to play it can be tricky since they are capable of alpha striking in a single turn, but you generally don’t want to let Piledrivers stay on the table long.
Game two is a lot better for you. This is how I recommend that you board:
-4 Trinisphere
-4 Chalice of the Void
-2 Uba Mask
+4 Razormane Masticore
+3 Pithing Needle
+3 Goblin Welder
Even on the play, Trinisphere and Chalice are near worthless to you. You need cards that actually do stuff, and Pithing Needle, Goblin Welder, and Razormane Masticore do stuff. Needle shuts down Vials, Wastelands, Ports, and SGC. Razorcore holds down the fort by himself. Welder protects your important permanents like Ensnaring Bridge and Razorcore from removal, as well as pulling random tricks with Smokestacks and Pithing Needles.
Needle targets:
Aether Vial – if this is on the table, you really want to have a Needle naming it
Siege Gang Commander – this is their biggest (perhaps only) threat after Ensnaring Bridge becomes active.
Rishadan Port – depending on your draw, Port could wreck you (this is the Crucible + manlands draw). If this is the case, name it with Needle.
Goblin Tinkerer – depending on your board state, Tinkerer can wreck you. Tinkerer is most dangerous early game, as by mid game you likely have multiple bridges or ways of protecting yourself outside of bridge in motion.
Umezawa’s Jitte – this can kill you in spite of a bridge. Active Jitte is bad for you, just like everyone else in magic.
Threshold – extremely favorable
This is one of the reasons to play Sun Tower. In this matchup, almost every card in your deck is a must-counter due to destroying their strategy completely or enabling you to find more cards that destroy their strategy completely. You should rarely lose games in this matchup, let alone matches. UGW Threshold sideboarding Serenity is the best against you, but even Serenity doesn’t bridge the gap created by the matchup.
Game one, you want to play Ensnaring Bridge and Chalice @ 1 and/or Trinisphere. Use Crucible to recur Wasteland or Mishra’s Factory as blockers, and use Pyroclasm early to clear unthresh’d critters and Meddling Mage/Dark Confidant if they are played. Towards the mid game (around turn 4), you’ll be playing Uba Masks and Smokestacks, along with any lock pieces that were countered early. Don’t be afraid to Rolling Earthquake for 4 to get rid of Werebears.
Sideboarding for this matchup is almost unfair. Unless you suspect Serenity, the proper boarding strategy is -3 Pyroclasm, -1 Pithing Needle, + 4 Boil. If you do suspect Serenity, identify your least favorite cards (Rolling Earthquake and Uba Mask come to mind), and add in Goblin Welders. While Razormane Masticore and Pithing Needle (on fetchlands) are both stellar against Threshold, you simply have too much hate.
Postboard, Chalice @ 2 probably removes any hate they had, as well as half their deck. As usual, Chalice @ 1 takes away their draw engine as well as mongoose. You shouldn’t have much trouble with this matchup.
Solidarity – very favorable
This matchup is all about your opening draw. You need to have relevant lock pieces in there for the first few turns. Relevant threats include Uba Mask, Chalice of the Void, Trinisphere, and Smokestack. Chalice @ 1 and Chalice @ 3 almost ends the game (they can play around Chalice with Twincast, and a Chalice @ 2 or Smokestack will seal the game. You can lose game one in this matchup due to drawing too much creature hate. I’ve done it before, but I’ve never lost a match to Solidarity. Remember, with Uba Mask in play, they must bounce Uba Mask before they deck you. Don’t remind them of this as they may waste their only draw spell on you. If it comes up, point to Uba Mask and say “I replace the draw with Uba Mask”.
Game 2 is sorta like game 1, except that they likely cannot actually win this game. The reason is your board:
-4 Ensnaring Bridge
-3 Pyroclasm
-2 Rolling Earthquake
-1 Wasteland
+4 Boil
+3 Pithing Needle
+4 Goblin Welder
Here you take our irrelevant cards (well, Rolling Earthquake is kinda relevant) for cards that they can’t go off with if you have in play (or are holding in the case of Boil). Pithing Needle names their blue fetchlands to slow them down. Goblin Welder is less dead than the other cards, and can actually beat them if you resolve it turn 1 (you weld in Uba Mask in response to their draw spell since they put your entire graveyard in your library with Brain Freeze). Boil is kinda obvious. You usually play this at the EOT so if they remand it you can just play it again. Your goal in game 2 is the same as game 1 (Chalice @ 1, Chalice @ 3) but you have a lot of different outs. UbaLock is common in this game, as well as early Stax lock. Just play whatever lock pieces you draw and you’ll be fine.
Pithing Needle Targets
Flooded Strand – needling this slows them down if they have fetches in hand or happen to draw them as land. Remember, they only play 10-12 actual Islands so with a Smokestack or a few Boils, they could be permanently locked out under Trinisphere.
Polluted Delta – same as above
Chalice of the Void Settings
Chalice @ 1 – stops Brainstorm, High Tide, and opt/peek
Chalice @ 3 – stops Meditate and Cunning Wish
I'll be posting some more matchups when I have time to edit them into something at least as consistently bad as the above. Anyway, this thread is here to stay, thanks for reading.