Green Stax

So, this is more of a suggestion than a polished deck, but I'd appreciate advice on the idea.

The basic line of thought is that Garruk Wildspeaker could work well in a deck with the Stax shell (Trinisphere, Crucible of Worlds, Chalice of the Void, Smokestack, etc.). Additionally, it seems like Garruk could create some really one-sided situations in conjunction with Winter Orb, but I'm not sure if the Orb is good in this format. With Winter Orb down though, Garruk would let you untap three lands per turn as opposed to your opponent's one land. Also, Garruk gives you an additional win condition with his elephant tokens, although it's sort of slow.

Does anyone play a Green Stax build these days? Is green just really not the right color or something?

You could just run the green stompy. Doesn't abuse Garruk like Smokestacks would do, but he is indeed pretty good in that deck as he is pretty good against backbreaking cards like Deed.

The problem with splashing green in a control Stax shell is that the color doesn't really offer much. After Garruk, what else can you add? If you were to go an aggro-Stax route to capitalize on all the good 2G drops, there's already a thread for it.

Good with stax, in green, you have :
- Garruk
- Spawnwrithe
- Imperious Perfect

Which leads more towards an aggro stax. So far, lot of builds have been proposed, but none with great success.

Sylvan Library. Words of Wilding. Life From the Loam.

Exploration.

Garruk and Winter Orb is even sillier if you add Rishadan Port in the mix. During your turn, Garruk ability to untap a Port and a land that can add :1:, go, upkeep, tap your land that you untap from Winter Orb.

This is what I've been fiddling with this morning. It seems really cool.

4 Ancient Tomb
3 City of Traitors
4 Wasteland
4 Rishadan Port
3 Mishra's Factory
8 Forest
4 Mox Diamond

4 Chalice of the Void
4 Winter Orb
4 Tangle Wire
3 Trinisphere
3 Smokestack
3 Crucible of Worlds (Nihil is going to have a hissy fit)

4 Garruk Wildspeaker
3 Sylvan Library
2 Words of Wilding

Sideboard:
3 Choke
3 Quiet Disrepair
4 Ensnaring Bridge
4 Tormod's Crypt
1 Trinisphere

Ideally, I'd like to run 4 Smokestack and Crucible, but I don't know what to cut. Maybe Words of Wilding could go, but I'd be a bit leery about dropping to so few win conditions. Sylvan Library has been great at making mid-to-late game topdecks always be bombs. Garruk is absolutely nutty, especially with Orb and Port, as Tacosnape accurately predicted. The board is really goofy (Quiet Disrepair lol wut) so I'd love to hear suggestions.

@Jaynel, that list looks pretty cool, that's pretty much the type of thing I was thinking of. I think Horizon Canopy could be pretty tight as a draw engine...

I'm not totally sold on Tangle Wire, is this card really all that impressive in a deck that has no way to recur it? I think at any rate, you could drop one of these to add one more Crucible or Smokestack.

Personally, I think this deck could maybe use a big burly green creature to use as a more reliable finisher. I think Gigapede could be pretty tight, although I know five mana is a lot... It doesn't give them a target for spot removal, it has enough power to kill nearly any creature they'd trade against it, and you could just discard a land to get it back, then Crucible that land back into play.

As far as Sylvan Library: doesn't this card kind of suck without shuffle effects? I could get really excited about it if we ran 4 Windswept Heath and 4 Wooded Foothills, but I think there's no room for that in our mana base. And without shuffle effects it doesn't really seem to me to provide enough power. How is it working for you so far?

One more thing, you're running twenty-six lands and four Mox Diamonds, isn't that a little excessive on the mana sources?

Iwamori of the Open Fist is a good beater, except against that random Doran player.

Maybe Argothian Wurm too. Or even Mungha Wurm.

Or Tarmogoyf.

I don't really see Tarmogoyf going into this deck, because Stax is, by nature, very centered on playing permanents. So the Stax deck doesn't really play a lot of cards that reliably grow Tarmogoyf, and we play mostly the same types of spells (artifacts, a bunch of lands) instead of the wide array you find in decks with Tarmogoyf.

Argothian Wurm seems pretty pimp... believe it or not, I had actually thought about Iwamori, but I don't like the fact that he requires double green mana and he's legendary. Imperious Perfect is small and easily killed, but the ability to make assloads of 2/2 tokens is pretty ideal... I think some combination of Gigapede, Argothian Wurm, and Imperious Perfect is probably all the creatures this deck needs. Garruk already strengthens our kill conditions and he works to make the lock more one-sided for us, so I think six to eight kill conditions is the most we can fit in this deck along with all the Stax pieces. I'm not sure which is better between Words of Wilding and creatures like Arg Wurm or Gigapede... Words of Wilding is good because it provides inevitability, but it's pretty slow, and it makes us skip drawing...

About Sylvan Library: it seems to me that we get a better draw engine with Horizon Canopy. This card is the shiznit alongside Crucible, and although it doesn't give us the extra card selection of Sylvan Library, it takes up less space in the deck because it fits in the land slot... Although I'm not sure which land to take out for it, because we need about seven or eight of the two-mana lands, and obviously Wasteland is an automatic include. Also, we can't take out Forests for the Canopy, because we need to avoid taking pain from Horizon Canopy...

Any ideas on how to include Horizon Canopy in the land base?

One more question, about the sideboard: What types of decks does Stax generally lose to? I'm having a hard time coming up with a sideboard because I don't know Legacy well enough to know which weaknesses to try to fix.

I do know that Krosan Grip kicks all sorts of ass though, you should definitely do that instead of Quiet Disrepair, Jaynel.:eyebrow:

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Originally Posted by DukeDemonKn1ght

I don't really see Tarmogoyf going into this deck, because Stax is, by nature, very centered on playing permanents.

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What? Your deck plays Artifacts and Enchantments. Two of the hardest cards to get into the Graveyard. You even have a Plainswalker. Next to that you play Smokestack to make sure cards go the Graveyard, like creatures from your opponent. There you have a 5/6 Goyf that can be even bigger if an opponent plays an Instant( quite common in Legacy).

BB

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Originally Posted by Nightmare

Exploration.

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Best suggestion in the entire thread.

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Originally Posted by DukeDemonKn1ght

Any ideas on how to include Horizon Canopy in the land base?

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You could kick out 1 Wasteland and 1 Port for 2 Canopies, perhaps even a Forest out for a third Canopy, since it also produces :g:. You just need to draw 1 of each anyway. Then, instead of Sylvan Library you'll need something like Exploration, because you'll really need the extra landdrops. I know Exploration isn't tech with Chalice@1, but the thing is just too good to pass. I've been thinking about green splash in my Armageddon Stax just for Exploration, but there it's not worth it. In here, it's almos an auto-include. With Sylvan Library gone, Words of Wilding sucks, so you'll have to kick that out too. So get in that fourth Exploration and then you have 1 spare slot. For Crucible of Worlds I guess. Perhaps even kick out 1 Winter Orb/Garruk/Trinisphere/Forest/Ancient Tomb for that fourth Smokestack...

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Originally Posted by Skeggi

Best suggestion in the entire thread.

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You may be on to something here, Exploration is pretty pimp with Smokestack, but I'm a little worried that adding four copies of it would sometimes keep you from drawing business spells. Four Mox Diamonds and four Explorations just seems like a lot of acceleration spells, considering that Garruk also provides a little bit of acceleration. It's not like we're ultimately using a lot of mana up once we get our lock pieces in place... I might be wrong, but I could see either replacing some number of moxes for Exploration, or else running two Exploration and the full set of moxes.

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Originally Posted by Benie Bederios

What? Your deck plays Artifacts and Enchantments. Two of the hardest cards to get into the Graveyard. You even have a Plainswalker. Next to that you play Smokestack to make sure cards go the Graveyard, like creatures from your opponent. There you have a 5/6 Goyf that can be even bigger if an opponent plays an Instant( quite common in Legacy).

BB

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What I'm saying about Tarmogoyf, is that it's not part of our strategy to get our own cards into the graveyard. Most decks that use him to maximum effectiveness have a bunch of cards that either go to the graveyard as soon as you play them, or get sacrificed for some function. Stax likes to play a bunch of permanents and keep them in play.

Random thought: Would Living Wish be any good in this deck, or just pointless? I don't know if there would be much value to being able to keep finishers and lands in the sideboard, but it just seems sort of cool. Obviously, we wouldn't want to devote too many sideboard cards to the toolbox... What do y'all think?

Mana : (Stompy deck mana base) 26
4 ESG
4 City
4 Ancient Tomb
10 Forest
4 Chrome Mox

Stax elements : 14
4 Chalice of the Void
4 Smokestax
4 Tangle Wire
2 Trinisphere

Permanent makers + beaters : 12
4 Garruk
4 Imperious Perfect
4 Spawnwrithe

Tricks :
2 Umezawa's Jitte
2 Loxodon Warhammer (the creatures have no evasion)
4 Snakeform/Briarhorn

SB :
2 Trinisphere
rest to define

The deck takes advantage of its ability to generate a lot of creatures in various ways: with equipments/tricks and with Stax elements. According to me, these token generators are the only the reason for playing green. Appart from that, other colors do the same but better.

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Originally Posted by DukeDemonKn1ght

What I'm saying about Tarmogoyf, is that it's not part of our strategy to get our own cards into the graveyard. Most decks that use him to maximum effectiveness have a bunch of cards that either go to the graveyard as soon as you play them, or get sacrificed for some function. Stax likes to play a bunch of permanents and keep them in play.

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That's completely untrue. When you play Tarmogoyf, you don't give a thought to make it bigger, for the simple reason that you will probably face Tarmogoyfs yourself. Tarmogoyf is most of all a control element, that is used also as a kill. It's the best wall of the format, plus it's a kill.

Although, I also think that Tarmogoyf is not good in Stax, because it is not a card providing card advantage. It has nothing to do with your game strategy, and you can't afford to play in stax cards that do not help with the overall strategy. (it's a good protector for Garruk though)