Thanks for clearing that up, folks. Yeah, I think I'll continue to use Magus+Geddon for now. Dutch Stax likes a lot of white mana symbols. I'm still considering using Elspeth over Angels though. Not sure, since the lifegain is very nice.
Printable View
Thanks for clearing that up, folks. Yeah, I think I'll continue to use Magus+Geddon for now. Dutch Stax likes a lot of white mana symbols. I'm still considering using Elspeth over Angels though. Not sure, since the lifegain is very nice.
I used 2 BSA for a long time and honestly, it was a win-more 90% of the time. The life gain is great but if you can resolve a BSA and it sticks around to swing, chances are you're in control of the game.
Speth on the other hand I haven't tried yet, but from what I hear she is awesome. I am psyched to try her as a 2-of in the slot of BSA but to be honest i'm too busy tinkering with Junk and UR Painterstone right now and not giving Stax enough attention :laugh:
This is why I asked how often folks get a sufficient lock to enter inevitability mode. There definitely seem to be times when I'm fighting to stay alive, and a huge life linking flier would be a huge boon. E.g. against black, chalice for one and two will shut down their removal, but they might be building up an army regardless. Landing an angel at that point is reasonably safe, but not win-more. Anyway, I might try getting some EKEs (doesn't sound as imposing as JTMS, does it) or just proxy to test.
for those who run crystal ball what do you kids think of running Tezzeret's Gambit? It can help by adding counters to smokestack, walkers and chalice if needed. Thoughts?
Hello everyone, I just came from our legacy tournament here in Manila, Philippines were I eneded with a 2-1-3 win-loss-draw mark.
And here's the list that i run:
4 city traitors
4 ancient tomb
4 wasteland
4 mishra's factory
3 flagstone of trokair
1 horizon canopy
5 plains
1 tabernacle pendrel vale
4 trinisphere
4 COTY
3 smokestack
4 COW
4 mox diamond
4 ghostly prison
3 humility
1 oblivion ring
1 WOG
4 armageddon
2 elspeth v.1
SB:
4 tormod's crypt
4 suppression field
1 oblivion ring
1 Day of judgement
1 WOG
4 leyline of sanctity
And so far, here's what i can recall.
RD1 UW blade
I won game one via mishra with the help of geddon, and 3 ghostly prison. But unfortunately I lost our G2 so sfm with jitte on her. It was a draw
RD2 uw_lab maniac combo
G3, time expired as i was 3 turns short from winning.
RD3 gw mavs
Lost miserably to pridemage and other loves.
RD4 gw mavs
Draw again, time expired. I was like a punch away from winning.
RD5 bw control
G1 geddon and trinisphere kept his spells at bay. mishra all the way for the win.
G2 imprison his deck via cotv set at one and two and three.
RD6 reanimator
was able to lock him down with my artifacts.
Hello there again.
It seems that I am the only one who is using this deck as of the moment.
:)
Anyway, I participated at yesterday's small legacy tournament where we had it 4rds.
And here's what I can still remember:
RD1 Junk
Both games one and two, I locked him out with cOTV set at one and two (game one) and geddon trinisphere with COW and smokestack (game two).
RD2 elfball-intuition-venge
Both games, vengevines out muscled me. Thus i lose
RD3 junk
G1, BSA was much faster than phyrexian crusader. G2, Leyline of sanctity gave me enough distance to set up my lock pieces. :)
RD4 belcher
COTV set at ZERO on both my won games gave me the victory needed.
At the end of the day, i managed to bagged 2nd place with a 3-1 win-loss-draw mark.
Here's the list that i used:
4 city traitors
4 ancient tomb
4 wasteland
4 mishra's factory
3 flagstone of trokair
1 horizon canopy
6 plains
4 trinisphere
4 COTV
3 smokestack
3 COW
4 mox diamond
4 ghostly prison
3 Baneslayer angel
2 Wrath of God
4 armageddon
3 suppresion field
SB:
4 tormod's crypt
3 timely reinforcement
3 oblivion ring
1 Day of judgement
4 leyline of sanctity
Uhhmmm...
Me again. ^_^
I participated in a 70 plus players at yesterday's legacy tournament here in Manila.
The meta was like well represented by decks of its kind. from A to Z (ANT to ZOO). So preparing your 15 cards SB is not that enough. Anyway, again, I used my white stax for the very last time and here's my list,
4 city traitors
4 ancient tomb
4 wasteland
4 mishra's factory
3 flagstone of trokair
1 horizon canopy
5 plains
1 tabernacle pendrel vale
4 trinisphere
4 COTY
3 smokestack
4 COW
4 mox diamond
4 ghostly prison
3 humility
1 oblivion ring
1 WOG
4 armageddon
2 elspeth v.1
SB
4 tormod's crypt
3 timely reinforcement
3 oblivion ring
1 Day of judgement
4 leyline of sanctity
And here's what I can still remember:
RD1 UW snapcaster-sfm control
G1: I won game one via trinisphere and armageddon. he was not able to drew a land. He concede and we went to game two.
G2: I got stuck with 3 lands.
G3: I drew too many lands, no spells. I lose
RD2 mono B
I won via artifact lock (COTV at one, then later trinisphere and geddon) for both games one and two.
RD3 MUD aggro
G3: forgemaster (I think that was) fetching BSC - ftw.
RD4 bw_junk
G1: two vampire 2/3 gave him the win.
G2: his life at 40 mine down to two. On his table he had 2 2/3 vampire again, together with 7 lands and a bob while mine was - trinisphere and a ghostly. I prayed for an armageddon or WOG or DOJ. Good lourd, it gave me geddon. :) from there he never recovered. i won via 4/4 token soldier flying
G3: same situation, though I was at 5 life. geddon, followed by two prisons, he tapped out.
RD5 slivers
Both games one and two, trinisphere and geddon with prison to keep his meathookers at bay, sealed the win i needed.
RD6 UW snapcaster-sfm control
he had mana leak, spell pierce, fow, counterspell. he counters all spells i play. then sfm into baterskull. ew! hahaha x_X
RD7 NO bant
I just gave him the win. I did not play anymore. :)
Well....
1. Elspeth, Knight Errant is no good with Ghostly Prison - She can still be attacked through Prison... This is why Moat and Elspeth go together, and Magus and Armageddon go together (even though Armageddon is still good with everything).
2. Kor haven will stop that Pesky Blightsteel Colossus...
3. Contimplating Tezzeret's Gambit.... does not seem bad at all. Ive always looked for a card to draw Cards in Stax (even trying Oblation). Gambit seems really good, costs 2 life, can be cast easily Turn 2, and Diamond can save you the 2 life. It may also allow you to run 3 Trinispheres...
4. As talked about Defense Grid in previous posts. May help against stoneblade?
Yeah, if you're gonna go Dutch, go all out. This means Humility + Moat + Elspeth. Elspeth can defend herself a little bit against 1/1s, but it's still suboptimal without Moat. Unfortunately, I don't like that route because of all the cards that need WW.
How was Timely Reinforcements? I just got some to put in my sideboard, but I'm thinking I'd probably rather have other stuff. And why is this the last time you'll run Stax?
About the timely, if I remember it correctly, I rarely drew/ used it. But, situationally, there were times that it saved me. It can produce 3 blockers and let you gain 4 life (well im assuming that ancient tomb is in the picture when you cast this spell most of the time). Having a distance of another 4life pts is a good barrier from losing. My build usually take a lot of punishments before i could set-up my stuffs.Quote:
Originally Posted by kirbysdl
RE: the last time
well, errrr..., I think im going to take that statement back, :-)
I sold my mox diamonds and city traitors after the tournament. So I thought that's the last time I'll be playing with my stax.
Then a couple of weeks after, I just could not resist the temptation, someone here is looking for a set of FOW. so i traded my set of FOW to a set of mox diamond plus cash, then spent the cash to buy myself a set of city traitors. :-)
I'm still inlove with stax. :-)
my next project after christmas - moat.
:-)
A version of Stax just got 13th at SCG St Louis. Interesting list...
http://sales.starcitygames.com//deck...p?DeckID=42537
This is the version that was Deck-tech'd with Caleb Dunward. Really interesting list with Hero of Bladehold and Lightning Greaves.
Caleb said in the interview that he would cut the Armageddons down to 3 and add in another Lodestone Golem. Although it appears Zack Strait went for the 1-of Elspeth in that slot.
http://www.starcitygames.com/events/...stax_with.html
Caleb's Deck tech. Seems like a very interesting build.
http://www.channelfireball.com/home/...no-white-stax/
Did a set of vids with adam barnello.
do you have a current list that is different than the one in the deck tech? (I dislike that the article only has his decklist and not yours)Quote:
Originally Posted by CalebD
Interesting video series by Caleb D. You're definitely one of my favorite Legacy deck designers, and it's great to see you and Adam put together a video series for the format that gets little video coverage. I'm looking forward to future videos.
As a Stax player I would have liked to see your side of the matches, but Adam's commentary was still good.
I'm going to say all this with the knowledge that your deck is not built like a standard Stax list and your game-plan is more along the lines of Stompy than traditional Armageddon-Smokestacks, but you posted your video in this forum, so I'm going to assume you are playing it as a control deck rather than an aggro list.
Your list from the Deck Tech is very interesting, but I'm still not sold on Stoneforge Mystic/Batterskull/Hero of Bladehold. After reading your Deck Tech, I see your argument for playing creatures is that sometimes your opponent can just "Draw out" of your lock, but I just haven't this experience very often.
I understand the thought behind playing Batterskull, as the deck has always had problems managing its life total, but it seems as though lock pieces would just be better in the 7 slots that the Batterskull package takes up. It seems like the Stoneforge package might be better against a UW Stoneforge list, but against a creature deck I'd probably rather have Magus of the Tabernacle than Stoneforge Mystic in that slot.
Hero of Bladehold, on the other hand, doesn't really fit with the rest of the Stax game-plan. Sure it wins you the game, but so does a sustained Smokestack at 1, and Smokestack has much better synergy with the rest of the deck, including Trinisphere, Crucible, and most importantly Ghostly Prison. Hero doesn't beat big Tarmogoyfs, and you'd rather have things that get rid of Tarmogoyfs instead of running into them.
If you are interested in moving the deck toward the Stompy game-plan Lodestone Golem seems awesome. He wears equipment and is both a lock-piece and a beater, and I could see you running more of him. If you're on the beatdown plan, it's probably a much better idea to board the Ghostly Prisons, because they don't remove blockers. They might be okay if you ran fliers like Exalted Angel and tried to race, but they seem weak with the current set-up. I'm not sure how good Lightning Grieves is in this list. It does make the Batterskull life gain one turn faster and gives shroud, but it seems like it could be a blank when you need another threat in a deck with no real card draw.
I like the idea of Gambit a lot more than I like Crystal Ball. In Stax you need to be drawing both land and lock pieces, not either or, and Gambit seems like a great way to do it. I tried a few games with it and speeding up Smokestack was awesome. The downside is that the life loss hurts a lot. Obviously you can play it with Mox Diamond to avoid this, but most of the time I needed it to cost 3. More testing is necessary, but my initial thoughts are positive.Quote:
Originally Posted by Moduloc
I am a beginner for this deck, and currently testing a W/G stax, to my understanding (please add any comments), mono-stax is untable and depends on luck, there is no draw engine and tools for searching key components
for w/g stax, Knight of the Reliquary can be a tool box for fetching lands in the lib, also can put choke and grip in the sb, but still no draw engine
here are my concerns:
1. is that possible to mix U in the deck? but this seems to break the mana base of it.. and i came across a u-stax deck on tc-deck, but found no Armageddon in the main deck, how does the deck finish the game? is that possible to add 'Cryptic Command '/'Sunder'/' Parallax Tide' in the main?
2. any one tried W/G/U stax? is that do-able?
3. in some cases, my own trinisphere just blocked Mox diamond....
Just completed this deck, fairly traditional version, but one thing I'm already interested in looking at is timely reinforcements in place of oblivion ring in some matchups, at a minimum im going to sideboard them, but i might put the o-ring's sideboard, the 6 life and 3 chump blockers from timely is really nice.
Green splashes do give a draw engine actually. Horizon Canopy plus Crucible of Worlds and to some extent even Sylvan Library. I think that a major rethinking of the deck, most likely using another color, is needed to make it truly competitive.Quote:
Originally Posted by killergates
I've been testing a version to try and take full advantage of the green splash.
Here's what I am working with.
4 Chalice of the Void
3 Trinisphere
4 Ghostly Prison
4 Crucible of Worlds
3 Engineered Explosives
3 Armageddon
2 Oblivion Ring
2 Sylvan Library
4 Knight of the Reliquary
2 Terravore
4 Mox Diamond
3 Mishra's Factory
3 Flagstones of Trokair
2 Savannah
4 Horizon Canopy
3 Plains
4 Wasteland
3 Ancient Tomb
3 City of Traitors
Sideboard
4 Leyline of Sanctity
3 Choke
1 Ground Seal
1 Oblivion Ring
2 Tormod's Crypt
3 Phyrexian Revoker
1 Karakas
EE has been an absolute house. Just from looking at the list, Prison may seem pretty weak, but I think it's getting the job done. You want to stick it turn one to three to slow them down so that you get time to stop the board. This happens by playing more of them or resolving geddon/EE.
Obviously it's a little bit slower, but with Canopy/Crucible and Library it really eases into the late game comfortably.
Thoughts?