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I may try the green splash out for a little while to see how I like it. I agree that grips and choke are both great cards. I will give your SB a shot Scrow for week or so. Needle is huge card as well, i just never liked running them in tandem with chalices.
Well, I don't understand why a splash of green weakens your mana base, a lot of people say that a splash of any color would weaken it. I actually don't think so. Nobody seems to look at other decks, that runs 3 basic lands, of diff colors as well. Yet they still manage. Having Mox D and quite a lot of basics is enough for mana fixing and even if we ran 4 savanah's I don't think People will actually lock us out of basic lands. If I were the opponent I would actually want to wasteland 2 mana lands early on instead of savannah. I think splashing green is worth it since it shores up a lot of problems for stax, like deed ,blue based control decks and dreadnaught.
My sideboard with a green splash
3 exalted angel
2 O rings
2 Wrath of god --extra answers to gobs and aggro
4 K grips
4 chokes -- one sideed armageddon for blue based decks.
changed SB for mono white. feels pretty solid at the moment:
3 exalted angel
3 aura of silence
3 defense grid
2 ensnaring bridge
1 oblivion ring
3 runed halo
Here's a mini report from a 25 person 20 proxy Tournament at RIW Hobbies yesterday:
My List
4 Magus
3 Prison
1 Moat
4 Mox
4 Crucible
4 Chalice
4 Trinisphere
3 Stack
3 Armageddon
1 Ravages of War
1 Ravages of War Proxy
5 Plains
2 Savannah
4 Wasteland
4 City of Traitors
4 Ancient Tomb
3 Flagstones
2 Kor Haven
2 Mishra's Factory
Sideboard
3 Sphere of Resistance
3 Runed Halo
3 Suppression Field
3 Choke
3 Krosan Grip
My Matches:
Round 1 - My friend Tony with Eva Green:
I lose. I lose again. He wins the roll and opens on Ritual/ Duress Hymn. Then I can't draw answers to the Hippie that's taking my cards away.
Game 2 I mulligan into a Sphere of Resistance on turn 1 but I don't draw the right resources to play the Trinisphere in my hand. I believe it was City for the Sphere and no Tomb/City for the sphere on turn 2. Wombstalker stalks my womb.
Round 2 - BYE
I walk around and see a lot of Landstill, Aluren, 2 Aggro Loam, 2 Merfolk, 1 Goblins, 1 Burn and some other stuff. More diverse than last time, but still a lot of Islands.
Round 3 - Juan with R/B Goblins
I win. I win again. My game 1 hand features such all stars as Prison, Magus, Armageddon. Lackey gets in, he drops a warchief. I get attacked to somewhere around 6 before I start taking the Chief seriously, so Factory shuts the game down. Then I play Magus followed by Ravages and he scoops.
Game 2 pretty much happens the same way, but I have a Krosan Grip in my hand all game and he drops Blood Moon. I already have a lot of the lock down and this Moon isn't hurting me, but AEther Vial is already dead and I want to play this Grip. He comments how I "came prepared" and scoops a few turns later.
Round 4 - Brian DeMars with U/W Control
Game 1 I see Glen Elendra Archmage and get a little concerned. He taps out to play this on turn 4 and I consider playing Armageddon while I can, but I decide to wait for a 5th or 6th land. I play Magus on my turn. He lets the Archmage die and persist on upkeep, then taps out again to play a second Archmage. I resolve the Geddon, then keep resolving Geddons as I bait counters with Smokestack and Trinisphere. We move to game 2.
I remember playing an Early Magus when he has Archmage down and attacking because it died or something. Maybe he didn't have a Mage. He goes to 4 and I play Factory and pass. He drops Moat. Hey, only I can play Moat. I shrug and get sad for not playing Grip this game. He plays a second Moat, Oblivion Ring is out of the question now. I try to draw Stack, Armageddon and 2 things to bait counters with. Instead I drew sub-optimal cards and waited forever. He plays Kataki, War's Wage and I get nervous, I have Mox, Crucible, and Trinisphere in play. Also the same Magus has been sitting around on his ass because he can't swim. Then one turn I untap and draw a card. Magus, Trinisphere, Crucible and Mox diamond all go to my graveyard. This might be karma for all the people who drew a card and had their creatures die against me. I turn to my buddy Kurt, mumble "I really fucked that up" and shuffle for game 3.
I mulligan to 5 with Factory and City as my lands. Turn 2 Crucible gets Forced, Turn 3 Crucible sticks and he plays back to basics. I don't draw any land. I think I had Stack, Armageddon and Prison in my hand. A Kataki hits play and I offer the concession.
Round 5 - My friend Ghandi with Aggro Loam.
Ghandi is 3-1, I am 2-1. I give him the game because I'm doubtful of my chances at 3-1 into top 8. Later, I find out a 9 point made it. I didn't see tiebreakers, didn't care. Ghandi plays against Team America and loses hard. I sit watching, realizing I'd pummel this guy. Then I pay attention to the side event where more interesting things are happening.
Props:
People, for showing up.
Me, Chris Walton and Ghandi Jagasia for designing a deck only Paul Mastriano could defeat in the side event.
RIW, for hosting and being extremely gracious on the prize split.
Humungo-uber props to Jimmy McCarthy, for helping my friend Chris out with the split.
Slops:
People, for showing up an hour and a half late.
Brian DeMars, for losing his head in the top 8. If you're reading Brian, he was holding Decree the entire game.
Tony, for playing against me round 1 of every tournament we play in, and for playing Eva Green this time.
Me, for tossing the game 2 of round 4 out the window.
That's it until next weekend for Grand Prix: Chicago. I'll see you all there!
P.S. Somewhere, a group of people and I are going to be playtesting. We'll have a lot of decks built and proxied that anyone kind to us and use. We'll most likely be at the convention center, but if it's closed for some reason Friday night we'll end up in a couple hotel rooms. Anyone interested can contact me on this website.
Most mono whit lists run about 7 plains.Quote:
Originally Posted by f|i[p]
So if you want to splash a color you give in 4 duals, but 4 duals are to few for a splash and i never would go under 3 basic plains...
So what is your manabase?
Well you have 4 duals and 4 Moxen. And Horizon Canopy, if you play it. Here is my mana base:Quote:
Originally Posted by HdH_Cthulhu
4x City of Traitors
4x Ancient Tomb
4x Plains
2x Savannah
2x Wasteland
3x Mishra's Factory
3x Flagstones of Trokair
1x Kor Haven
2x Horizon Canopy
That gives me 8 sources of :g: when you only need to draw one. Seems pretty reliable to me.
Reliability is not the issue.
More vulnerable to wastelocks and non basic fucking is.
I do admit that the entire day I was worried that the Savannahs in my deck were going to screw me out of a win somehow. The situation never came up, and it rarely does in testing, but I've switched to 1 Savannah. I cut the Canopy, so with 5 green sources maindeck I feel comfortable. In fact, every time I cast a green spell yesterday I used a Mox Diamond.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mordel
Wow... I read my post.. and it missed a word...
I was actually trying to say that.. if I were the opponent and I had a wasteland, I would rather waste the 2 mana lands, rather than a savannah.We rely on 2 mana lands more than a savanah early on.
Which deck runs waste locks now a days? loam? stax.. only a few decks run it...
Mox D. shores up a lot of the decks color problems.. Non basic hate like back to basics and blood moon can be fixed by K. grip.
As for my mana base
4 ancient tomb
3 city of traitors
3 plains
3 savannah
3 flagstones
4 wasteland
2 mishras factory
1 horizon canopy
1 kor haven
I would still have to test this however... I don't like having more than 24 lands, in my deck as I have the tendency to draw lands a lot. If I find the mana base clunky, mishra is the first one thats going to get cut more or less.
Its been long since i've played stax but, after i faced against it in our local tourny i was wondering what if mishra's factory was changed to rishadan port giving the deck more mana denial tricks.
In the time i've been using geddon stax mishra's main role was:
1. win condition
2. recurring blocker
The green splash looks promising, maybe the green splash could add sylvan library + uba mask combo giving the deck an excellent draw engine plus removing threats that could be used by your opponent later on.
Fred Bear suggested green splash for, among other, Sylvan Library. It didn't work. Sylvan Library that is.
Grand Prix: Chicago
I've spent the last 10 or so months learning this deck in and out, evaluating cards and playtesting against every conceivable matchup. Here's the story about how none of that matters:
We arrived in Shaumburg Friday afternoon and I spend a good deal of time walking around looking at vendor prices, watching people play and enjoying being out of the car after 4.5 hours. The cards people were breaking balls on were:
Stifle
Dreadnought
Fetchlands
Engineered Explosives
Grindstone
Underground Sea
Tundra
Tarmogoyf
.... damn. Whatever. I look for any last minute foil cards and find a Chalice at 20. By the end of the night the metagame looks healthy, I see Goblins, Threshold, Landstill, all the normal stuff. Also, Merfolk. I didn't expect this much fish people, mostly because the deck isn't as powerful as goblins and can't control the game as well Threshold. I had heard it's a DTB, I guess that's correct now. I think about it for a few seconds and decide I have a good Mer matchup. We go back to the hotel and I can't fall asleep.
The next morning at the player meeting, we have a 1,260 players. Wow. Fucking wow. I feel immediate pity for the logistics staff and walk over to find my pairings. Table 58. I shuffle this up:
Armageddon Stax:
Patrick Becerra, with much help from friends at MTGTheSource.com
4 Armageddon
1 Ravages of War
4 Magus of the Tabernacle
4 Crucible of Worlds
4 Chalice of the Void
4 Mox Diamond
4 Trinisphere
3 Smokestack
3 Oblivion Ring
3 Ghostly Prison
1 Moat
6 Plains
1 Savannah
4 Wasteland
4 City of Traitors
4 Ancient Tomb
2 Kor Haven
2 Mishra's Factory
3 Flagstones of Trokair
Sideboard:
3 Krosan Grip
3 Choke
3 Sphere of Resistance
3 Runed Halo
3 Suppression Field
Round 1: George with Merfolk
0-2
We spend some time shuffling up and he wins the first roll of the day (I continue on to lose every roll today). My hand is a bunch of lands with Kor Haven and Armageddon. He opens with Island, go. I play some lands and he starts playing fish people. My draws are some lands, 2 Crucible and an Oblivion Ring. Wake Thrasher gets up in my business, and the Oblivion Ring gets Stifled. I see zero match relevant cards. Let's go to game 2 George.
+ 3 Choke, +3 Suppression Field
- I don't remember what I took out, probably Smokestack.
I open on land, go. He plays a Vial. I play Chalice at 2 (nuking his hand, I find this out after the match.) I play a Choke turn 3 with mana open and he plays another Vial. He has Wasteland and Mutavault, so Choke isn't doing anything. Again I see no cards to deal with Aggro and lose to Wake Thrasher. Pity.
Round 2: Jason with Dreadstill
1-2
I keep a hand with good cards. He plays an early Dreadnought and we move along.
+3 Krosan Grip, +3 Runed Halo
- some stuff
I play a turn 1 Prison and it resolves. Trinket Mage comes down and get's the Nought (side note: A friend of mine compared Phyrexian Dreadnought to B.F.M. from Unglued. They both take 2 cards to get into play, and they're both overcosted. I just think this analogy needs to be out there). I play something and he attacks me to 6. I drop Armageddon and ask "Does this resolve?". It does. I rebuild and Grip the Nought later. We go to game 3. I remember having a bunch of good cards and Trinket Mage killing me. Although I'm not describing the match well, it was the most fun I had in the main event.
Round 3: Matthew with Landstill
1-1-1
Game 1 he's slow and I resolve Crucible, Armageddon then Wastelock him. We move to game 2.
In: Grip, Choke, maybe Field
Out: Stack, Magus
We both do nothing for a while, I make a Trinisphere and it sticks. Later, he plays Bitterblossom. What? He boarded in Bitterblossom? This game literally takes forever. I have Ghostly Prison and his lands locked down. He's attacking with 1 token per turn. I drop Magus and they all die, save for 1. I needed to hit Armageddon to not die, but that didn't happen. This game took about 30 minutes.
Game 3: I play Moat early. I have a grip in my hand. We're at turn 10 with about 4 minutes left. I ask him if he'd like to draw, and he tells me "if everything goes just right I can win". I play Armageddon as recklessly as I can. It resolves. I ask for a draw again, and he agrees.
The judge comes over to verify results and is confused that we've drawn with 3 minutes left. My opponent tells the judge we played 3 games, drew the third and he has to pee. The judge goes away.
Round 4: Joe with Quinn the Eskimo
2-1
Game 1 he grinds me out turn 4, I'm irritated. Grindstone is the stupidest combo ever.
In: Grip, Halo, Field
Out: Magus, 1 Factory, some stuff.
Games 2 and 3 Chalice and Trinisphere buy enough time for me to set up Halo, Field and have Grips in my hand. He's never really in these games, though his record might have had something to do with that.
Despite winning and trying to earn points I drop and pick my girlfriend up from the hotel. We spend the rest of the day building Landstill and playing EDH 2HG. Though my performance in the main event was piss-poor I had a blast all weekend!
Post tournament thoughts:
I feel the turning point here was drawing poorly against Merfolk. I saw a lot of good matches at the high tables and bad matches at the low tables. I evaluated my play all day and I can't remember times when I made mistakes. I stand by my choice that Stax was a great deck to bring. A friend of mine played the Dutch build with Boil and Ajani Vengeant in the board. He played 4 good matches in a row and lost the next 3.
After a few weeks of use, I say the green splash is well worth it. Choke will blindside a lot of people and Krosan Grip helps in a lot of bad matches. I forget this a lot, but Krosan Grip can't be countered. The big problems it solves are Dreadnoughts, Crucibles in Landstill, Sensei's Top, Deed, Explosives, Serenity, whatever. It took Aura of Silence's spot in my board.
This is the last event I'm playing Geddon Stax in. It's been fun, but I need to learn how to play blue.
Patrick, nice write up and nice list. I'm going to have to pick up a Savannah and work that green splash. It seems you've sufferred from Stax's horrible weakness: inconsistency.
On a related note, yesterday I went to a local 17 player tournament. A friend was there without a deck and I let him use Stax as I was playing 4c Thresh and was using all my other relevant cards. He's an aggro player so I gave him some pointers before the tournament. He asked me what his bad matchups were and I told him almost none, and the inconsistency of the deck will cost him more games than bad matchups. Naturally, he cruises to 4-0-1 (including a win against Merfolk) in the swiss and wins the whole thing while I miss top 4 by losing in the last round.
The power level of Stax is insane - a god draw for Stax should beat almost anything - but you sacrifice consistency. Such is the nature of the deck.
This is odd, because I play Stax every week and I'd hardly say the deck is inconsistent. The closest thing I would say is you don't know which lock pieces you'll draw and sometimes you don't draw the right ones.Quote:
Originally Posted by Misplayer
So, you're saying it's inconsistent.... :rolleyes:Quote:
Originally Posted by Patrick
After attending the GP, I have only one comment about stax in general...
"Shattering Spree, lawl"
I suppose I wrote that poorly.Quote:
Originally Posted by Viscosity
What I was trying to say is all of the cards in Stax are good on their own, and most of them work together with most other ones to create a soft/hard lock that wins the game, or buys enough time to win the game. There are times when the pieces you draw don't interact well enough with each other to affect your opponent to a point when they can't operate efficiently. I'd say 1 in 12-15 games I draw cards where I just can't get something going, no matter how I play it. These numbers seem reasonable.
I've read through this thread and I don't think it has been mentioned.
Humility and Mobilization is an interesting combo for a Stax (or white control) deck.
Mobilization acts as a win condition, stax feeder, and a Moat (while humility is out atleast).
I have not really tested it yet as I find suppression field really really good in the current format (suppression field/mobility is not a good combo).
Is this a viable alternative? If not why? If so what would be some other lock pieces that would complement Humility/Mobilization?
What do you take out to fit Mobilization? The list is already tight as it is.
I think Elspeth is strictly superior to Mobilization despite the double-white mana cost. I'm thinking about going -4 ORing, -1 Mishra's Factory, +2 Elspeth, +2 Humility, +1 Plains. We'll see how that works out.