Green Stax

I'm not really sold on the Stompy approach. I think the main reason to play green stax is because Garruk kicks ass, and he makes it possible to add Winter Orb to the mana denial aspect of the deck.

That said, you really need to be running Crucible of Worlds and Mox Diamond instead of Chrome Mox. I don't think there's space in the Stax shell to include a bunch of equipment cards either... Snakeform and Briarhorn are both terrible. I think Imperious Perfect is potentially really good, but I'm not sold on Spawnwrithe. Unless you manage to play it on the first turn, which is really unlikely, they're probably going to have either a blocker or a removal spell. The thing is, it has to go unblocked to work, and it's just a 2/2, so it's not that hard to block.

Basically, not to knock you too hard, but I think your build doesn't really run enough Stax cards to provide a strong lock. The creatures you're using have good abilities, but they're really easy to kill. And you're not really running enough creatures to make all that equipment necessary. Also, I consider Tangle Wire to be a subpar Stax element. I've noticed that most lists don't run it, I don't see any reason that we should.

If you really want to build a green Stompy-Stax, I'd try to find a way to make Kodama of the North Tree work. Three green mana is a lot, but that thing is a house... although, an un-equippable house.

Do you think that Garruk kicks ass more than Braids or The Abyss, more than Tezzeret or Transmute Artifact, more than Magus of the Tabernacle or Espeth, more than Burning Wish, Rolling Earthquake or Wildfire ?

Green will not outpower the other builds. You have to find a green based concept/synergies that would make the green build superior to its concurrents, or you're just losing your time.

I'd like to point out Exploration again. Multiple Explorations mean 3+ landdrops each turn, you can either set your Smokestack to a very high number, or keep it at 1, and still Waste every turn and draw an extra card from Canopy. Exploration is the true power in Green Stax imo.

That's a 3-card combo (exploration, crucible, stax) with no draw, library manipulation or tutor. Moreover exploration is 1CC which is antisynergic with the basis of common stax builds.

If you search a way to break exploration, play eternal garden, it's exactly what it does, but it does it with tutoring (intuition, crop rotation). I've even done a Staxy build of eternal garden: http://mtgthesource.com/forums/showp...&postcount=309
When you start playing around exploration, you don't want/need anymore to restrict yourself to 1 color.

It looks like this sort of deck could break the symmetry of Root Maze pretty hard. Elephant Grass could be pretty good, too.

Between those cards and Exploration, maybe Chalice isn't optimal? I suppose you could just set it at two a lot more often.

If your big problem with dropping Chalice is that it hurts the combo matchup, Root Maze is a big bump to fix that.

It honestly doesn't seem to be that big of a problem for combo. It doesn't affect LED which means you just wait the extra turn to combo with ad nauseam so you can float some mana. Without Chalice to worry about there's no penalty for doing so. All Tendrils decks can still also just kill you with Ill-Gotten Gains using Rituals and LEDs.

http://ww2.wizards.com/gatherer/Card...spx?&id=129722

did people forget about this card?

seems like it would allow the deck to do abusive things

The more I think about it, the more I really wish there was a way to splash green into Armageddon Stax for Argothian Wurm and Garruk, but I can't figure out any way for that deck to get the GG for Garuk consistently.

I also think that "Green Stacks" more likely doesn't want Chalice in. Root Maze is a quite rude way to slow the game down. It restrics your options since many cards become less effective. However, it slows down fetch manabases, shoots down artifact-based acceleration of comboes, allows to keep your opponents locked if you have enough LD (he drops, you destroy). It's a dead-draw, but it's a permanent which can be sacrificed with smokestack. Maze doesn't hurt you much with Garruk on the table. Taps trini, though.

In addition, a stupid thought: Root Maze allows to use Ghost Quarter better. The best way to use it looks like:
- with wasteland: destroy their non-basics, then start to fetch their basics to graveyard (with exploration it's not very long, ~2-3 turns).
- with maze and Garruk: play Quarter, untap, destroy a land in their upkeep (starting from basics)
- with maze without Garruk: the worst varriant. The same, but they would get an untapped basic (or you would use it each second turn).
I think the deck can use 1 Quarter, and some Crop Rotation. The latter one allow to stabilize the mana-base by limiting the count of utility-lands.

Another thought is that LftL cleans top deck, so paired with Library is very strong card-filtering.

Depending on how consistent the attacking of opponent's lands can be here, Winter Orb can be huge or overkill.

This kinda makes me want to play Stunted Growth in that kind of shell. With Exploration and 2-mana producing lands, could be nice, coupled with heavy mana disruption it does slow their game a lot.

I see this deck being alright, but maybe with a white splash for Armageddons. Red has wildfire, White has geddon effects. I can see Elephant Grass in this deck, to slow down the creatures from killing you

Seedborn Muse + Mishra's Helix=OMG

I can even see throwing in Horn of Greed if you will be running Exploration.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Maveric78f

Green will not outpower the other builds. You have to find a green based concept/synergies that would make the green build superior to its concurrents, or you're just losing your time.

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Green now has a good green combo to actually create a reason to play Green Stax decks over white, and he would be Progenitus.

For those of you that don't know what he does, here you go:

Progenitus

Legendary Creature - Hydra Avatar, Epic Rare
Protection from everything
If Progenitus would be put into a graveyard from anywhere, reveal Progenitus and shuffle it into its owner's library instead.
Illus. Jamie Jones p/t= 10/10

4 Tropical Island (for staff)
7 Forest
3 City of traitors
4 Ancient Tomb
4 Windswept heath
4 Mishra's Factory (win con + food for staff)
4 Mox diamond

4 Garruk Wildspeaker (Same as factory, good with elf tokens)

2 Progenitus (basically an empty slot if you draw him, but really the main way to win)

4 Natural Order (win con w/Proge)
4 Proteus Staff (Other win con w/Proge)
4 Gilt-leaf Ambush (blocks goyf + food for NA/staff)
4 Exploration (fast mana accel into Staff or NA)
4 Trini
4 Tangle Wire (stalls and stops WoG on Prog for enough turns to win, which is just about the only main played removal for him)

SB:
3 Krosan Grip (combo I guess)
4 Chalice (definitely combo)
4 Root Maze (secret anit-combo tech)
4 Elephant Grass (with the enourmous mana base you can support it)

It seems like it plays faster than White stax, plus the win-con punches you in the face, and the Staff can be used against opposing annoying things until you hit a man land or fodder.


I don't know whether to stick this in this thread or not, but here it is anyway.

Are you sure that using of Natural Order with 8 green creatures (Garruk + elves) is a good idea? I'd say no (waiting the second piece of your "combo" negates the advatage of winning fast). That said, Progenitus is not a "Great Unbalancer" for using exactly green stax (although I don't mean that the inclusion of
"combo"-finish is bad for stax).

I personnally think that the blue splash is unwanted. I also think that exploration is awful, and that Chrome mox is probably better in green Stax. It provides 14 slots (7 lands, 4*proteus staff, 4*exploration), for 4*chalice of course, 4*Imperious Perfect, 4*ESG and 2*Smokestax. As I think that smokestax should be as 4-of in such a deck, I would also try to find 2 slots among the following cards : Tangle Wire, Natural Order and Trini.

In SB, I'm not sure krosan grip is needed. Against what ?

Against aggro, I prefer anticreatures. About green anticreature (and they cantrip!), there are:
- Lace with Moonglove
- Snakeform
Snakeform is really good in SB, or even MD. But Gilt-leaf Ambush looks more fitting the deck's theme for the MD slot.

For anti-combo stuff, having more enchantment/artifact hate won't change nothing. Your opponent will play serenity and win on his next turn. Maybe wastelands in SB would help both to mana disrupt the opponent and to land a trinisphere earlier, in order to get a long term lock.

Some antigraveyard cards should be necessary too, or not. Difficult to say actually.

What I meant by "The Great Unbalancer" is that without an unbalancing difference between it and Whit Stax, Green Stax just sucks plain and simple. It had no reason to play it before, but Proge allows it to run a quicker finisher than any other stax deck, and that alone is worth playing the deck in some metagames.

Edit: *sigh* word games always get me into trouble... anyway, I took the advice of several people who replied, and went:

-1 Forest
-1 Staff
-4 Exploration (really useless after turn 1)
-1 Tangle Wire (really only need to see one)
+3 Call of the Herd
+4 MD Chalice

Still am using Staff because it adds to the number of win conditions, but could be replacing it. Natural order is as amazing as ever. Hoping to get more input on the deck idea.

I'm interested in this kind of deck. Has anyone had any success in testing???
I know it's an old thread but I really want to hear for some news.

In my local store some guy did well with a red version. He played 3 stone rains and shivan wumpus,. We have the green versions in ice storm and argothian wurm. Red has wizard of the moon, we have garruk!

I actually built this deck in Vintage years ago when landcraft was still legal in legacy. It was a weird deck that was at the same time combo (landcraft + squirrel's nest; Natural Order + Verdant Force); lock (smokestack + squirrel's nest or rancor or verdant tokens, mishra's helix + landcraft) and aggro mana ramp (landcraft, tinder wall, elves into blastoderms/verdant force/etc.), with survival of the fittest added for extra laughs and sacrificable rootwallas. It had fun moments like using Avoid Fate to counter opponent's rancors on your dudes and disenchants. Also, it performed surprisingly well on my meta until a combo deck arrived and put that mess of a deck in its place.

Wouldn't Dramatic Entrance be better than Natural Order, since you run so few green creatures? Staff also contorts your deck a lot, taking up space that could be spent with more disruptive cards.

I know Dramatic Entrance isn't great, since you need the hydra in your hand. But it seems better, to me.

Something like this?

// Lands
3 [TE] Wasteland
4 [TE] Ancient Tomb
8 [10E] Forest (1)
2 [FUT] Horizon Canopy
3 [MM] Rishadan Port
2 [EX] City of Traitors

// Creatures
3 [DS] Arcbound Reclaimer
3 [LRW] Garruk Wildspeaker
4 [FUT] Tarmogoyf

// Spells
3 [US] Smokestack
3 [5E] Sylvan Library
1 [MR] Mindslaver
3 [DS] Trinisphere
1 [ON] Words of Wilding
4 [US] Exploration
4 [SH] Mox Diamond
3 [10E] Crucible of Worlds
3 [NE] Tangle Wire
3 [5E] Winter Orb

// Sideboard
SB: 3 [ON] Ravenous Baloth
SB: 3 [8E] Ensnaring Bridge
SB: 3 [8E] Choke
SB: 1 [DS] Trinisphere
SB: 2 [TSP] Krosan Grip
SB: 3 [10E] Pithing Needle


Arcbound Reclaimer seems good to create a loop of Tangle Wire and let the deck work throught some counterspell effect. I added Mindslaver to have a backup plan instead of creatures, but i thought that if i wanna kepp reclaimer i'll probably drop Words to play Horochi Hatchery or Phyrexian Processor...