[Deck] Armageddon Stax

[schweinefettmann]

Not sure how active this thread is, but I’ve been bitten recently by the mono white stax bug. Not sure if it is to do with me needing a refresher after stints with high tide, aluren and painter.

Anyways, I’ve noticed that many players are ‘playing around’ non basic hate with a couple of (read:2-3) basic lands. I had done the sundering Titan against those players, but it’s a very sketchy proposition, since it needs an active welder. And they tend to die quick.

‘Mono white’ stax
4 Chalice of the Void
4 Ancient Tomb
4 Mox Diamond
1 The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale
4 Wasteland
2 Blast Zone
1 Cascading Cataracts
2 Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth
1 Riftstone Portal
3 Plains
2 Flagstones of Trokair
4 City of Traitors
4 Urza's Saga
4 Trinisphere
3 Smokestack
3 Tangle Wire
1 Humility
3 Karn, Scion of Urza
2 Karn, the Great Creator
3 Crucible of Worlds
1 Retrofitter Foundry
1 Expedition Map
3 Armageddon

Sideboard
3 Suppression Field
3 Lightmine Field
4 Leyline of the Void
1 Helm of Obedience
1 Liquimetal Coating
1 Moat
2 Choke

I know, it’s got choke, and technically not mono white. But you know, them islands gotta get locked down!

Anyways, some of the numbers I’ve been brewing on are based off card accessibility issues (I wish I had 4 humility and 4 moat), but this is approximately what I had in mind.

I feel like suppression field might not be the greatest in terms of actual utility, but there are a LOT of fetchlands and weird abilities like boseiju that simply need to be kept honest.

I’ve only been able to test this against myself goldfishing vs aluren, shortcake, meandeck doomsday and another stax deck I built using asmoranomardicaidastinaculdacar. It has legs clamping down the early game, but it just simply doesn’t hold on hard enough. Not sure what to do.

Anyone here with some ideas? I’m open to getting more humility if need be, but I’m not sure that’s the way forwards.


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[ESG]

Respectfully, Stax is hard mode in Legacy. It's a deck full of symmetrical effects in a time of asymmetry. You have to break the symmetry of Stax through deck construction, while the opposition gets to simply play whatever pushed cards they want.

Stax was successful historically because of the time it had to operate. The format is faster now, meaning you have less time to slow down the game, and if something slips through, it's likely going to end the game on its own. Additionally, the format requires less mana now across the different decks, making Armageddon worse. The Uro decks play Life from the Loam, Lands plays Life from the Loam, the combo decks don't need more than one or two lands, and that also applies to Delver. A better plan than Armageddon, I have found, is to accelerate out a Crucible of Worlds and simply recur Wastelands, Urza's Saga, and the occasional Buried Ruin. This is still a spotty plan. Lands executes the Stax gameplan better than Stax does.

Toying around with Stax myself recently, I concluded that Smokestack is not viable anymore, and I have never had good results with Suppression Field. I see it as a trap card. It's generally better to play cards with activated abilites than it is to try to deny everyone activated abilities. If the card cost 1 mana instead of 2, it would be playable, but too much happens in two turns for it to be the game-breaker it wants to be. I think it would also be playable as a creature.

Another challenge for Stax right now is that decks have far more answers to artifacts and enchantments. Prismatic Ending, Boseiju, Teferi, Skyclave Apparition, Knight of Autumn, and Force of Vigor are pretty routine -- to say nothing of the free counterspells, which are adept and flexible answers. Also, because of the success of 8-Cast, quite a few artifact hosers see play. Over the past three weeks, playing an artifact-based deck (but not Stax), I have run into Meltdown, Seeds of Innocence, Engineered Explosives, and Pernicious Deed.

I'm not trying to discourage you from brewing. I just think there are specific elements of the deck that aren't viable anymore and need to be swapped out for other things. For instance, I see Curses as a deck that plays out somewhat similarly to how Stax played, except it is better-positioned.

[Fox]

So the rules of magic have changed, and you need to update decks like these to reflect those changes:
-#1 we do not play Crucible in the maindeck, in any deck -> immediately change to Karn, and put Crucible in the board.
-#2 in a deck like this (mono-colored, i.e. horrible mana) -> reduce your mana variance and play Timeless Dragon.

^This is your starting point, assuming you want to make something competitive. Now to be competitive, you need to have a higher win % than another deck doing basically the same thing...or you need to be the only deck doing a certain thing (and thus possessing the highest win % with "the thing").

So the question is: what is this deck's "thing" it'll do better than anyone else?

If you think the "thing" is Sol Lands + Mox + 3ball/Tangle/Saga stuffs, then you are a worse knockoff of Tezzerator (which itself is a worse knockoff of either EchoCannon or 8cast). If you insist this is your "thing" then you are deliberately brewing a tier 3 deck, and we need to drop all pretenses of trying to make something competitive. Tier 3 = underpowered + inconsistent.

If you think the "thing" is Geddon-type spamming, then you have successfully identified the "thing" you can do better than anyone else. Total mana destruction is overpowered, but inconsistent so you're now brewing a tier 2 deck. The key to success of tier 2 is targeting tier 1 tropes while accomplishing your thing. In the very simplest of terms this means attacking Murktide & Uro. In more complex terms it means having a good matchup vs Daze/Bolt and having a good matchup vs Plow/Ending. All the other matchups in legacy can be ignored, because if you can't accomplish these two things, you don't have a competitive deck.

The first card we're never going to play is Chalice, b/c that dies to MurkGoyf and is a wasted turn vs Ending. The next group of cards we're not going to play are do-nothing artifacts (Karn can wish for those, so you don't die by drawing them). The other card we're not going to play is Mox Diamond...unless you're trying to specifically be a Land Tax deck (Parfait...which itself is going to need to prove it wins more games than UW/x Helmerator's Brainstorms and Fetchlands).

You have significant lifetotal problems vs Bolt, so you're playing Solitude. You have Daze problems so you're playing white March...and while this solves a reasonable amount of problems, you're not getting your Geddon on, are you precious? So what is the name of the card that both has play against Daze, interacts favorably with Geddon-type effects, and helps Geddon-types not get deleted by Daze? If you said Cosmic Intervention then ding ding ding, we have a winner.

Now that we've got that sorted, there's 2 schools of thought: murder the dudes it's Geddon into Tabby time vs murder the PWs it's Cataclysm time. That's your deck. Play some Fetches, play some Wastelands, you can keep some Flagstones b/c they work with Cosmic. You've got 8 plays Daze and Plow/Ending can't interfere with between plainscycling and foretell. Now cut the silliness Karn can wish out of SB and complete the 60 (and yes, you can still run some Tombs and Saga stuffs).

[ESG]

Here's a playthrough on MTGO from PunishingWaterfalls featuring a modified list (Staxless White Stax).


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9ZMfU5sll0

[schweinefettmann]

Haha wow.. didn’t expect there to be this much feedback.. but cheers!

Yea to be honest, I kinda knew it wasn’t gonna be setting the world in fire, and I know smokestack itself isn’t really a playable card in the current meta (or ever from now on as far as I can tell).

To me, it always just feels like stax should be a playable archetype, since it hits on the basic resources that almost every deck archetype needs. Ah wells.

Might have to take inspiration and see if it’s possible to jiggle smokestack in that build.

But yea I guess you’re right in that if I wanna go tabernacle, lands is the way to go.


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[itrytostorm]

https://youtu.be/KPQbjLcJ1q0

https://youtu.be/CVolWLlA64E

[Clark Kant]

New card spoiled that is basically a Crucible world and a Lurrus stapled onto a 3/4 angel body. A great way to recover after Armageddon.

Serra Paragon 2WW
Text: Crucible + Lurrus
3/4 Flying Angel

https://i.redd.it/9ltf4bxrjej91.png

[FTW]

Actual text: "Once during each of your turns, you may play a land card from your graveyard or cast a permanent spell with mana value 3 or less from your graveyard. If you do, it gains 'when this permanent is put into a graveyard from the battlefield, exile it and you gain 2 life.'"

Perhaps the best thing about Serra Paragon is that it dodges Bolt, Ending and Decay. It also has favorable combat with DRC, Delver, Endurance, Ledger Shredder, Thalia, Flickerwisp. So it stands a chance of sticking around to use the ability. It fails as a Crucible (cannot repeatedly use Wasteland or combo with Smokestack), but it can be used to return a dead engine piece once (Crucible of Worlds, Expedition Map).

The Armageddon + Cosmic Intervention plan sounds strong. It combos well with Urza's Saga -> Zuran Orb, Expedition Map -> The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale, and Karn, the Great Creator -> Crucible of Worlds. Lots of tech and tools.


//Lands: 26
4 Urza's Saga
4 Ancient Tomb
3 Wasteland
3 Flagstones of Trokair
2 Flooded Strand
8 Plains
1 Karakas
1 The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale

//Creatures: 12
4 Archon of Emeria
1 Serra Paragon
4 Timeless Dragon
3 Solitude

//Planeswalkers: 4
4 Karn, the Great Creator

//Artifacts: 4
1 Zuran Orb
1 Currency Converter
1 Expedition Map
1 Soul-Guide Lantern

//Spells: 14
4 Swords to Plowshares
2 March of Otherworldly Light
1 Sevinne's Reclamation
3 Cosmic Intervention
4 Armageddon

//Sideboard: 15
1 Mycosynth Lattice
1 Liquimetal Coating
1 Crucible of Worlds
1 Smokestack
1 Tormod's Crypt
1 Relic of Progenitus
1 Powder Keg
1 Ethersworn Canonist
1 Deafening Silence
1 Porphyry Nodes
1 Cast Out
2 Enlightened Tutor
2 Cataclysm OR Magus of the Tabernacle

By cutting the classic Chalice @ 1/3ball plan, you can just play StP for the best removal in the format. There's your answer to Murktide, Uro, Marit Lage, and other things that would kill you before Smokestack or Geddon would do their thing. No Chalice means it's easier to play Saga targets and use ETutor for more consistent access to SB cards. It might allow cutting City and Mox for more consistent mana sources.

Don't know if Magus of the Tabernacle would help the plan or just be too clunky.