Green Stax

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Maveric78f

Mana : 34
4 ESG
4 City
4 Ancient Tomb
5 Forest
5 Snow-covered Forest
4 Chrome Mox
2 Fyndhorn Elves
2 Llanowar Elves
2 Birds of paradise
2 Noble Hierarch
// I'm really not sure about how to split them here. I'm afraid of plague obviously, but they are all druids except for birds. Wall of roots might be very good too.

Stax elements : 12
4 Chalice of the Void
4 Smokestax
4 Trinisphere

Permanent makers + beaters : 8
4 Garruk
4 Imperious Perfect

The Combo : 6
4 Natural Order
1 Prog
1 Primus

SB :
3 Tormod
3 Loaming Shaman
3 Wickerbought Elder
3 Krosan Grip
3 Choke

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It's what I'm testing right now. It was great against all decks I played up to now except tempo thresh, which was a slaughter. Pyroclasm, counterspells, mana disruption, trygon, submerge, efficient beaters, stifle on stax. Nothing I could do in this MU. The deck has serious weaknesses I don't know how to fix, except by winning before they come up. The main one is any flying beater. Sometimes I wonder if Tangle Wire does not better fit the deck than Chalice, since we already have T1 plays with trinisphere and mana guys.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Maveric78f

It's what I'm testing right now. It was great against all decks I played up to now except tempo thresh, which was a slaughter. Pyroclasm, counterspells, mana disruption, trygon, submerge, efficient beaters, stifle on stax. Nothing I could do in this MU. The deck has serious weaknesses I don't know how to fix, except by winning before they come up. The main one is any flying beater. Sometimes I wonder if Tangle Wire does not better fit the deck than Chalice, since we already have T1 plays with trinisphere and mana guys.

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Arboria would be an interesting way to go.

Fetches would give them 2 turns of attack. I'm not sure arboria is a good card to play in legacy.

No Sylvan Library? I would have thought that that was a good fit for a Stax-type Deck.

1) It's a permanent;
2) It's draw, something that most Stax-type decks need.

The thing against it is that it costs life for those cards.

4 life for a 0 CA, 8 life for CA+1 with no life gain, no shuffling effect (appart from NO which wins generally the game) ?

4 Life for CA1 8 Life for CA2...

What he said. Make sure you understand how a card works before you shut the discussion down. Basically, Sylvan Library lets you "brainstorm" each draw step. Draw 3, put 2 back, you get to pick. Also, they stack, with 1 giving you 3 cards, 2 giving you 5, 3 giving you 7 and 4 giving you 9.

There's a great combo used in Sun Tower (a UGx Stax list from last year when Emidln still dabbled in stax). It is Sylvan Library and any Words Enchantment. We used Words of War first, but Words of Wilding was a house against everything. You could ramp stax up to 4 on a pretty regular basis and still GAIN permanents each turn without saccing off a land. Its pretty intense.

Pce,

--DC

Quote:

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Originally Posted by rockSTAR

4 Life for CA1 8 Life for CA2...

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So you consider that ponder is CA1?

Sylvan library doesn't let you brainstorm, it lets you top for free at each upkeep (and you may pay life to draw, but you're already too much low in life to afford it in stax).

The combos with Sylvan Library are too random to be taken into account. Moreover the cards of the combo are bad on their own.

you know what you just said is exactly what they said, just comparing 2 different cards that do the exact same thing. pending on board state and life totals as such, being able to draw that extra card to win the game or get 2 cards needed to help win.

i didnt read through just skimmed real quick but did anyone mention harmonize? i know its not as good as library but it dodges cb and spell snare

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Maveric78f

Fetches would give them 2 turns of attack. I'm not sure arboria is a good card to play in legacy.

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I'm not quite sure what you mean. You're not playing any fetches. Arboria is probably inferor to something like Ensnaring Bridge in most cases, though. I was really thinking along the lines of "moat, but green".

The problem I see with this deck is you are putting yourselves in harm's way with the low casting cost cards.

In stax, I want to go:
Turn 1: Trinisphere
Turn 2: Smokestack
Turn 3: Crucible (followed immediately by my opponent's scoop phase)
(FYI: With this combo, the game ends unless your oppoenent has the ability to make 3 mana some mystical way because they will never be able to reach 3 lands to cast a spell)

I'll settle for:
T1: Chalice @ 1
T2: Trinisphere
Then take it from there.

It seems bad to have so many of your spells affected by your lock pieces. I realize you aren't generally playing chalice in your builds but I have still seen Trinisphere. In most stax builds, Mox Diamond (4 cards) are only affected by the lock pieces. Here you're putting 12+ (combinations of mox, goyf, Exploration and Root Maze) in which just seems wrong.

Test it. Test 4 Library, 3 Words of Wilding. I got lethally brain freezed on turn 4 playing against Solidarity and still won the game. I had out one library and one WoWilding.

Pce,

--DC

Also, in the M10 spoiler, there's a creature that makes more creatures for free each turn: Master of the Wild Hunt. Its second ability will be usually relevant as well, killing Goyfs and other non-Shroud men. It does cost 2GG, however.

It's been discussed, and the general thought is that it's worse than Garruk, and personally, I'm not a fan of Garruk. I wouldn't play Master of the Wild Hunt if a gun were held to my head. I'd rather splash for removal than play that card.

Pce,

--DC

The abundance of 1 mana producers was a weakness in 2 ways :
- pyroclasm, fire/ice, plague
- often the impossibility to play a turn 1 chalice@1

So finally, I kept the 4 elves but I replaced noble hierarches and birds with wall of roots.

Wall is less fragile than those 0/1, and overall it costs the same, since it produces G as soon as it comes into play. It's sometimes more difficult to play on turn 1, but that's not a big deal, since you can play chalice now.

In regards to the Chalice and Exploration debate, I would play four of each. A first turn Exploration can often facilitate a Chalice@1. Yeah it sucks when you have a Chalice@1 and draw into an Exploration but it's not game breaking. Being able to make your land drops AND start Waste locking your opponent is just too good to pass up IMO.

Green stax should run Words of Wilding + Sylvan Library, and make inf+1 bears ^^
That was quite a tech when I used to play Brandon's Rg Stax and Sun Tower
And also, sylvan is your best draw/lib manipulator option

One of the problems with playing a deck like Green Stax is that your opponents will invariably have ways to kill you, often despite your lock pieces. A single Krosan Grip in the midgame can often completely destroy a green stax player's gameplan because Green Stax, for the most part, lacks a solid mana denial plan. You either need to make it so that your opponent cannot play spells that break your locks or you need to win fast enough that hard locks aren't necessary. Sylvan Library/Words of Wilding provides a way to do that with cards that aren't fucking terrible on their own. If you want to not get attacked to death by Tarmogoyf, you'll need to play Ensnaring Bridge. If you want to win the game with a Bridge in play, you probably will have to look outside of Green if you reject Library/WoW.

Factories are a fine win condition if you can get the Stax lock active and online (which isn't the easiest thing to do when your opponent keeps shitting out dudes). They make a poor win condition if you have to win before an opponent simply finds and plays some removal for your bridges before a lethal sing. Garruk has a problem of requiring a million mana to be effective and is extremely suspect in the mid to late game (where your hand is generally empty or you could just play whatever you happen to have anyway) and his token generation is laughable. By the midgame, your opponent often has multiple dudes, dudes that probably laugh at your limited amount of 3/3s. Unless your opponent went infinite, they likely can't deal with a horde of Bear tokens.

Interestingly enough, White Stax opts to go the other way with Geddon effects to control the opponent's ability to effectively attack or play spells. They make it impossible to play expensive spells like Rushing River, Krosan Grip, and Pernicious Deed with geddons. This has a side effect of letting their Wastelands and Smokestacks hit the opponent's generally suspect manabase harder.

I'm still confused about the mechanics of the combo I guess.

Do you still lose 4 life per card you keep with Library + WoW? It's like, you draw the card for your turn... then 2 more goes on the stack, but you can replace those? Do you still get to keep the cards? I'm confused :laugh: :confused: Someone's gonna have to explain this to me I'm dumb lol

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Originally Posted by Mystical_Jackass

I'm still confused about the mechanics of the combo I guess.

Do you still lose 4 life per card you keep with Library + WoW? It's like, you draw the card for your turn... then 2 more goes on the stack, but you can replace those? Do you still get to keep the cards? I'm confused :laugh: :confused: Someone's gonna have to explain this to me I'm dumb lol

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With one Words of Wilding you can:

a) draw 3 cards, put back 2, lose 0 life

To do this: don't activate words of wilding and put back 2 cards while resolving Sylvan Library.

b) draw 3 cards, put back 1, lose 4 life

To do this: don't activate words of wilding and put back 1 card while resolving sylvan library.

c) draw 3 cards, put back 0, lose 8 life

To do this: draw your card per turn. While Sylvan Library is resolving, do not put back any cards.

d) draw 2 cards, get 1 token, put back 2 cards, lose 0 life

To do this: activate Words of Wilding one time in your upkeep. Draw 2 cards and put back 2 cards while resolving Sylvan Library.

e) draw 1 card, put back 0, get 2 tokens, pay 0 life

To do this: do not activate Words of Wilding in your upkeep. Draw your card per turn as a game action. With the Sylvan Library trigger on the stack, activate Words of Wilding twice. The if clause on Sylvan Library will not trigger since you have not technically drawn cards from this ability.

f) draw 1 card, put back 0, get 2 tokens, pay 4 life

To do this: activate Words of Wilding in your upkeep. Your draw per turn will be replaced. With Sylvan Library's trigger on the stack, activate Words of Wilding one time. While resolving Sylvan Library, it will notice that you did in fact try to draw cards. You now get to pay 4 life to keep the draw you didn't replace.

g) draw 0 cards, get 3 tokens, pay 0 life

To do this: activate Words of Wilding in your upkeep at least one time. With Sylvan Library's trigger on the stack, activate Words of Wilding at least two more times.


Personally, I don't recommend paying life very often. You can always get 1 token (d) , 2 tokens (e), or 3 tokens (g) from 1 Library + 1 Words of Wilding without paying life.