[Deck] Armageddon Stax

The real problem with Monolith would be what to cut for it. If you got a Chalice at 2 to stick, mana is probably not your biggest problem.

Why even play it over Petal? It accelerates you by exactly the same amount. Chalice at 0 is even less of a problem than Chalice for 2 as both cards are really only good t1-2 to ramp you to 3-4 mana that possible crucial turn earlier.
Monolith stays behind for Smokestack and allows sandbagging mana for a big play, and we don't need W t1 anyway. I'd say Monolith is better if you have BSA and worse if you have post-board Suppression Fields (or anything else that costs 1W); but the similarities to Petal make me vary - 'cause Petal sucks.

The real crux, what to cut? You can cut big beaters; you can cut lock pieces (replacing A with B when is only useful if you have A), or you can cut lands (weakening diamond). I'd start with big beaters, frankly - for experimentation purposes only.

@ Alcibiades

Same thing happened to me at SCG Seattle. I had really bad draws in the first two rounds, but then did alright afterwards. Stax is definitely a solid deck.

I don't think Grim Monolith needs to go in here. It's a one-time boost, as you'll probably never get to untap. I'd rather have more lock pieces, myself.

-Matt

You all keep saying things like "Stax is a solid deck, I just lost to bad draws."

What you aren't realizing is that this is THE problem with the deck.

Almost every other deck in the format has brainstorm, standstill, some kind of card draw or card manipulation that makes their deck a lot more consistent. Even zoo has Sylvan Library. If we want Stax to be a competitive deck again, we need some kind of manipulation or draw, as well. Don't simply just say you got unlucky when that's how the deck is built right now-- with no way to change your luck.

Isei puts it quite well, I have always loved playing this deck but it lacks consistancy, Enlight. tutor always comes to mind but plays against chalice. I am at a loss, perhaps shifting to 3 to 4 horizon canopy gives us a pretty good draw engine with crucible.

Intuition.

I'm gonna try Crystal Ball. Gets around chalice and trini, nice price, scry2 seems decent also. We'll see.

(I haven't had a chance to read through the entire thread yet, so bare with me.)

I've been splashing Green for Choke in the SB for a while now. Lately I've been thinking about upping the splash to include Sylvan Library. With a mana base of 4 Flagstones, 4 Savannahs, and 4 Mox Diamonds, I think it's very doable. I'm curious why this hasn't been tried or why it's failed, so far it seems amazing.

Another thought might be to try Serum Powder.

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Originally Posted by Dzra

(I haven't had a chance to read through the entire thread yet, so bare with me.)

I've been splashing Green for Choke in the SB for a while now. Lately I've been thinking about upping the splash to include Sylvan Library. With a mana base of 4 Flagstones, 4 Savannahs, and 4 Mox Diamonds, I think it's very doable. I'm curious why this hasn't been tried or why it's failed, so far it seems amazing.

Another thought might be to try Serum Powder.

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Sylvan Library, like Horizon Canopy, has the problem that it costs life to produce real card advantage. The filtering is good, but not something other cards coldn't provide.


But the principal problem of Stax is that its opening hands are so inconsistent. With the mana engine, it would be easy to make a deck that would have an awesome matchup against almost any given deck (with the obvious exception of decks with a high t1 win ratio wher everything's a coinflip, but more importantly other decks using the Tomb/City mana base). Of course, that is not an option outside of very narrow metagames.

The result is that we have to split our lock pieces between different purposes; Chalice/3Sphere vs Ghostly Prison/Magus for example. Therefore we often get hands that are awesome against aggro when facing combo and vice versa; or hands that are awesome against aggro-control unless our first Chalice/3sphere gets countered or pridemaged.
(Compare that with Vintage Stax which has the luxury of being able to concentrate on spells almost exclusively rather than having to deal with creature swarms also.)
We get hands where we have to rely on Ancient Tomb to a high degree, losing 8-12 life in the first few turns, which is a plan if our lock works but a huge liability if it doesn't. We get hands where we need City of Traitors to work, forcing us to start out slow.



This is all largely a problem of the early game. Not that we don't get some sucky draws later, but that could be mitigated if we only had a more reliable early game, which, frankly, I see happening in one of two ways: a) a new, versatile lock piece is released or b) a new, reliable source of mana is released to play our lock pieces more reliably and quickly. We need solid replacements, not complements; the decks is tight on slots as is.
In other words, almost every option introduced - especially those that do nothing but draw/filter - are a liability in the first few turns because They Are Not A Lock Piece (TM), thus limiting our options in the early game, especially in the face of Force of Will, Grip, or Pridemage on our vital lock piece. And we do not want to spend our first one or two turns hoping to draw into a better hand either, regardless of what card we're playing to accomplish that.

This is my understanding at least, and there are a few ways to use it.
Basically, Stax has three categories of cards:
a) mana
b) lock pieces
c) attacker (optional)
I'd first look for a card to replace something in the deck rather than be added outright (with the possible exclusion of the attacker slot and cards with sufficiently high impact).
For example, if you want more draw, replace two lands with Canopies rather than cut an Angel and a lock piece for a card with minimal immediate impact that's a blank in the first few turns.
If you want an attacker, BSA is a lock against aggro, and KotR can get a Tabernacle to serve the same basic function a bit slower. They are not only attackers - and I merely label them as such because they can eliminate an opponent quickly if unchecked, even with no further support; I might easily have lumped them together with the lock pieces. Nobody's playing Goyf, for example.

Now, a card like Choke - main in the appropriate metagame or from the side, replacing a less relevant lock piece - seems awesome under this philosophy, and was indeed confirmed as a very good sideboard option. Another example would be Suppression Field against Lands. Neither helps the draw but both increase the density of highly relevant spells in the deck, which is exactly what we need early on.

A card like Crystal Ball (and yes, I'll try it too, like I have tried Well of Knowledge, Horn of Greed, and others) or Sylvan Library, by contrast, literally eliminates a slot from the deck. Since we're talking main, we're talking about making the deck less consistent early on in favor of making it more consistent incrementally, later. This is a problematic option in general.
Serum Powder is best when you need one seriously busted card from your deck very early. Stax demands the very opposite; a good opening hand must include at least three mana t2, preferrably two mana t1, (at least two cards) and a series of lock pieces to make sure you have at least one or two that are relevant (especially funny game 1 when you have no idea if you're gonna get combo'd out t2 or attacked with Goyfs; with variance), and preferrably that they interlock in a relevant way (this would necessitate two to three lock pieces easily, as one will often be almost irrelevant, an even a very good one will not be good enough against most deck). And the general problem remains; you will get to see see seven new cards, yes, but there's a distinct chance that you will see another (useless) Serum Powder during the course of the game.
As, indeed, for all you know, your hand would've been keepable without the Powder in the first place. This is true of pure filter/draw cards in Stax, but at least the do provide repeateable effects.




Argh. Wall-o'-text again.
To summarize, Stax is very tight on slots, and it needs those slots desperately, too. Cutting anything for something with a different function may result in better consistency later, but will always result in diminished consistency early.

I have been running tundras for intuition and have found it to be strong. It will always go get the card you want to see, often on the first turn. It is not a bad top deck and is great in the opening hand. Seriously, try it out.

I guess for reference, here is the deck I've been working with. My meta is pretty aggro heavy. Right now there's a lot of Goblins, but if they start getting replaced with Zoo I'll probably have to turn Damping Matrix into Suppression Field.

Artifacts 20
4 Chalice Of The Void
4 Crucible Of Worlds
4 Mox Diamond
4 Smokestack
4 Trinisphere

Creatures 5
3 Magus Of The Tabernacle
2 Baneslayer Angel

Other Spells 11
4 Armageddon
4 Ghostly Prison
3 Oblivion Ring

Land 24
5 Plains
4 Wasteland
4 Ancient Tomb
4 City Of Traitors
4 Flagstones Of Trokair
1 Savannah
1 Horizon Canopy
1 Kor Haven

Sideboard 15
4 Sphere of Law
3 Choke
3 Tormod's Crypt
3 Damping Matrix
1 Oblivion Ring
1 Magus Of The Tabernacle

So, really, I would be looking at the Oblivion Ring slots probably as far as Sylvan Library or some other card. Another thought I had would be Wall of Omens. It'd be pretty useless against Combo, but then again, so is O-Ring. It stalls Tarmagoyf and stops most Goblins. Just a thought.

Another question I had was on 24 VS 25 lands. I've heard that Mox Diamond really likes 25 lands to work, but we really don't need to ruin our late game draws any further.

That's almost the same Maindeck I run. Alternating between 24-25 lands and 3-4 Magi.

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Originally Posted by Dzra

So, really, I would be looking at the Oblivion Ring slots probably as far as Sylvan Library or some other card. Another thought I had would be Wall of Omens. It'd be pretty useless against Combo, but then again, so is O-Ring. It stalls Tarmagoyf and stops most Goblins. Just a thought.

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O-Ring was intended as a catch-all answer to stuff including but not limited to Teeg, fatties who paid their taxes, Serenity, EE/Deed, opposing Crucibles, Survival, as well as general randomness like freaking Elvish Piper, etc. I guess if you don't see problem permanents often you could cut them.
For some reason there's a lot of Teegs in my meta, as well as Deeds and a weird NO/Pattern of Rebirth deck that destroys my Stax everytime. (Lots of mana critters and it actually wants to sacrifice creatures. And Deed plus discard. I can't even side out enough stuff.)

Don't get me wrong, I like O-Ring and unless I find something better I'll definitely keep running it. The problem with it though is that it's so reactive. The point of Stax is proactive control. I'm going to lock you up before you can do something good. O-Ring is playing catchup. If they drop Teeg, we're already set back a turn (from playing Smokestack or Armageddon), assuming we even have the O-Ring in hand. I'm not sure what the answer is, but I believe if our early game consistency was improved then the need for midgame catch-alls like O-Ring would be SB material at best.

O ring is greatness because it can catch any card save land....and when I play stax, I hate losing to a lone tarmogoyf/fat creature on the board. But intuition looks interesting and is maybe the card for the deck since it dodges chalice and can get anything. And if you splash blue for intuition why not run a singleton academy ruins in place of a mishra's factory or something because it can do lots of good. And maybe include EE then since you run 2 colors but can tap for all five with mox diamonds it seems solid and can dodge chalice easily or be playing proactively turn 1 with 1 counter. Stax has always had consistentcy problems which is why it will never be a tier 1 deck but if that problem is solved, I can see it competing at major events possibly.

I've considered cutting the green splash to change Oblivion Rings into Vindicates. They don't have too much synergy with the 2 lands, I know, but they hit lands, including basics, making the mana denial plan that much stronger. Also, you don't necessarily need a big beater-- many lists have done well without them. We could go up to the full 4 vindicates by cutting off the beater slots and O-Ring slots. Any thoughts, or has anyone already tested this?

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Originally Posted by Isei

I've considered cutting the green splash to change Oblivion Rings into Vindicates. They don't have too much synergy with the 2 lands, I know, but they hit lands, including basics, making the mana denial plan that much stronger. Also, you don't necessarily need a big beater-- many lists have done well without them. We could go up to the full 4 vindicates by cutting off the beater slots and O-Ring slots. Any thoughts, or has anyone already tested this?

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Oblivion's Ring's beauty is that it's very reliable, which is important against the cards that forced us to play it in the first place. If you want to eat a Deed or even a Teeg, you can't spend a turn or two waiting for black. There will even be occasions where playing that black source would mean you have to sacrifice a City first.

But of the course the land kill is a solid bonus. I'd just goldfish a bit and see how stably and fast it comes online.




Yes, builds with fatties have done well; I myself am not playing BSA, mostly because I refuse to dish out that kind of money for a card that's only useful in one deck. Lotsa more versatile cards to get first.
However, that leaves you with a mere four Magi as a win condition. Plus, of course, Factories. Those can and often are played, but in addition to Wastes/Tombs/Cities they'd make Vindicate less reliable, what with taking up slots for fetchlands/duals.

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Originally Posted by Dzra

Another question I had was on 24 VS 25 lands. I've heard that Mox Diamond really likes 25 lands to work, but we really don't need to ruin our late game draws any further.

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Originally Posted by Isei

You all keep saying things like "Stax is a solid deck, I just lost to bad draws."

What you aren't realizing is that this is THE problem with the deck.

Almost every other deck in the format has brainstorm, standstill, some kind of card draw or card manipulation that makes their deck a lot more consistent. Even zoo has Sylvan Library. If we want Stax to be a competitive deck again, we need some kind of manipulation or draw, as well. Don't simply just say you got unlucky when that's how the deck is built right now-- with no way to change your luck.

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You can easely run a pair of these new M11 Crystal Ball/Temple Bell (not sure yet which one fits better - both have their pros and cons), replacing some combination of Smokestacks/Prisons/O-Rings.

These new cards seems like the flush of gas this deck always asked for. The Bell looks particularlly interesting when cast under an stablished lock (active Stack, redundant Geddons in hand, Wastelock, etc), where it can generate some real card advantage. The Ball seems better at the task of trading garbage for business, and doesn't help your opponent to find more lands. It seems a choice between Ball and Bell would depend on the build.

My guess is that neither will make it for the reasons I outlined. Crystal Ball has no immediate impact and everything is good under a lock (see Well of Knowledge).

Would it be feasible to run Enlightened Tutor? Obviously Chalice@1 and Trinisphere make short work of your own Enlightened Tutors. However, securing the t2 play seems too great an option. If you've gotten out a t1 Chalice/Trinisphere then your work is already done. With tutor, it'd easier to set up a t2 Chalice/Trinisphere/Prison if it wasn't in my hand. Not to mention it'd be easier to get the right lock piece for the right deck.

Enlightened Tutor seems like it would help consistency a whole lot. Mulligan less by helping to secure solid t2 plays, find lock pieces mid to late game, and find SB tech like Choke, Suppression Field, and Sphere of Law. I can understand why you wouldn't want to step on your feet by running the tutor, but the problem of consistency is just too great.

Intuition just seems so iffy @ 2U. I feel like we have to have better options than that.

ET has been suggested since the beginning, but now I can fully articulate just why it doesn't work as advertised instead of just saying "card disadvantage bad."

Consistency means that the same thing happens every time, and the way you get that is by running more of everything. If you add tutors, you have to take out something, and that aspect of your deck will take a consistency hit. While you'll be more likely to HAVE a tutor, you'll also be more likely to NEED a tutor. Decreasing the consistency of your deck is the first problem with the tutor.

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Originally Posted by Noman Peopled

But the principal problem of Stax is that its opening hands are so inconsistent.

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Getting bad opening hands can happen to any deck and is therefore not an inherent problem with Stax. As a deck, Stax is actually impressively consistent simply because of the number of 4-ofs we run. The problem is that we need a lot of pieces, and we need each one at a particular time. We're asking for the deck to predict future gamestates and always give us the perfect card. To do this, we need either card drawing engines or card quality engines. Oftentimes, one is enough for a deck: with enough drawing, you'll inevitably get to what you need. With enough sculpting, you make your one card per turn count. We have neither. What we DO have is tons of virtual card advantage, epitomized in the full lock where a few of our cards negates their entire deck.

Back to dzra: The tutor gives you the ability to search but it hurts your actual card advantage, which is the second problem with the tutor. If you think that the tradeoffs are worth it, then please do test and tell us what you find. Just understand there are tradeoffs in consistency and card advantage: the card worsens the problems that it was supposed to fix in the first place.

P.S. Intuition is awesome. Not only does it work wonderfully with Crucible, it also does fine with Chalice and Trinisphere, and maintains card advantage while increasing card quality. The only problem is that you need to weaken your manabase to use it, and if I'm going to splash I'd rather go green for Grip, Choke, Knight of the Reliquary, Horizon Canopy, etc.

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Originally Posted by kirbysdl

ET has been suggested since the beginning, but now I can fully articulate just why it doesn't work as advertised instead of just saying "card disadvantage bad."

Consistency means that the same thing happens every time, and the way you get that is by running more of everything. If you add tutors, you have to take out something, and that aspect of your deck will take a consistency hit. While you'll be more likely to HAVE a tutor, you'll also be more likely to NEED a tutor. Decreasing the consistency of your deck is the first problem with the tutor.

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That's exactly what I was trying to articulate.
I'd like to add that while a tutor technically does increas the number of basically everything in Stax, Stax may not be a deck that's able to utilize tutors (or at least not the ones available). They're either too costly to immediately use and play whatever they got during the same turn- which would be necessary to make them functionally on par with what they got - or too cheap and problematic with Chalice, and of course there's always the CDA of E Tutor which a deck with 28-29 mana sorces can't afford often enough.

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Getting bad opening hands can happen to any deck and is therefore not an inherent problem with Stax. As a deck, Stax is actually impressively consistent simply because of the number of 4-ofs we run.

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True to a point, but sufficiently inaccurate to make a difference I think.
We get enough keepable hands but know woefully little about whether they will work out even during the first few turns. (And we need the right combination of lands/Moxen to cast stuff, too.) The obvious example of course would be game 1 against combo? aggro-control? aggro? But any deck boarding and maindeck any removal/counters will do. Stax places its mana denial pretty consistently, but assuming this turns out to be insufficient due to meddling or whatever, it has to rely on the draw step. (Of course this in no way invalidades your - and indeed my - earlier point that draw helps you out of this but also make it more likely to get you into it.)

Contrast this with any deck that can filter through six cards during the first few turns, or one that has twelve one-drops, nine two-drops, and five three-drops plus versatile burn and removal. Or with a combo deck that can filter as well and is still playing twelve to sixteen accel cards just to draw enough.
Incoherence is not an inherent problem of Stax exclusively, but the variance is higher - as it is in any deck without a filter engine or a high number of sufficiently interchangeable cards. Else people wouldn't be looking for a CA/filter engine for Stax in the first place.

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The problem is that we need a lot of pieces, and we need each one at a particular time. We're asking for the deck to predict future gamestates and always give us the perfect card. To do this, we need either card drawing engines or card quality engines. Oftentimes, one is enough for a deck: with enough drawing, you'll inevitably get to what you need. With enough sculpting, you make your one card per turn count. We have neither. What we DO have is tons of virtual card advantage, epitomized in the full lock where a few of our cards negates their entire deck.

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The first part is the very definition of inconsistency, isn't it?
The second is also true, of course; we have tons of CA, but that's useless without the right virtual CA card for the situation.

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Back to dzra: The tutor gives you the ability to search but it hurts your actual card advantage, which is the second problem with the tutor. If you think that the tradeoffs are worth it, then please do test and tell us what you find. Just understand there are tradeoffs in consistency and card advantage: the card worsens the problems that it was supposed to fix in the first place.

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That and there's Chalice. The very idea concerning better filtering/draw is that it should increase consistency, not become irrelevant depending on situation. Stuff becoming irrelevant depending on situation is what we're trying to get out of, after all.
That said, I did play two E Tutors for a while to use against combo since 3sphere and Chalice are so important in the matchup and Prisons were irrelevant. (This was before Thorn of Amethyst.)

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P.S. Intuition is awesome. Not only does it work wonderfully with Crucible, it also does fine with Chalice and Trinisphere, and maintains card advantage while increasing card quality. The only problem is that you need to weaken your manabase to use it, and if I'm going to splash I'd rather go green for Grip, Choke, Knight of the Reliquary, Horizon Canopy, etc.

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I agree. The only upside to E Tutor is that it's so much faster.
As I mentioned, the way to make Stax better in principle, more than adding draw, is to replace lock pieces with better ones (or ones that serve one purpose with ones that serve a slightly different one). But that's purely hypothetical as we're basically playing every worthwhile lock piece in the format already. But it is exactly why I love Choke so much; and of course Knight is extremely versatile for such a huge beater.
If only World Queller cost 2WW :D