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Thread: [Deck] Armageddon Stax

  1. #2741

    Re: [Deck] Armageddon Stax

    I think nesting grounds is very good with sagas. This gives you additional hex parasites in the land slot. Due to its higher floor and synergy with saga and mox diamond, it could be better than the Non tutorable 1 ofs.

  2. #2742
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    Re: [Deck] Armageddon Stax

    Nesting Grounds has potential. You could also move soot counters off Smokestack or move fading counters from a dying Tangle Wire to a newer one. Much tech possible.

    The downside is it taps for colorless, so it competes with colorless lands or spells unless the deck just cuts white completely.

    What 1-ofs would you cut? Hex Parasite and Moxes are tutorable. 1-of Mox Opal is because in the video he often wants to tutor for mana but doesn't want to discard a land, making Mox Diamond awkward. If you're land flooded you can get Diamond, but if you're artifact flooded and land-light then you can get Opal.

    Court of Grace seems amazing with all the prison effects, although hard to cast. If it or Geddon are cut, maybe the deck should just go colorless?


    Colorless Stax


    //Lands: 28
    4 Ancient Tomb
    4 City of Traitors
    4 Wasteland
    4 Urza's Saga
    3 Nesting Grounds
    3 Flagstones of Trokair
    4 Plains
    1 Karakas
    1 The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale

    //Artifacts: 28
    4 Mox Diamond
    1 Mox Opal
    1 Hex Parasite
    1 Retrofitter Foundry
    4 Chalice of the Void
    4 Sphere of Resistance
    4 Tangle Wire
    3 Trinisphere
    3 Crucible of Worlds
    3 Smokestack

    //Planeswalkers: 4
    4 Karn, the Great Creator

    //Sideboard: 15
    1 Mycosynth Lattice
    1 Liquimetal Coating
    1 Grafdigger's Cage
    1 Sundial of the Infinite
    1 Ensnaring Bridge
    2 Sorcerous Spyglass
    2 Thorn of Amethyst
    3 Walking Ballista
    3 Thought-Knot Seer
    Last edited by FTW; 06-21-2021 at 11:25 AM.

  3. #2743

    Re: [Deck] Armageddon Stax

    Yah the double white spells are strong but double white is so much harder than single white in a stompy deck. With more artifacts you could also look into playing more mox opals, which could make the deck significantly faster.

    I didn’t like the tabernacle either just because you have no way of finding it. It should be either a 0 or a 2 imo.

  4. #2744
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    Re: [Deck] Armageddon Stax

    It just seems wrong not to play Tabernacle in Stax. Maybe with 1 Magus of the Tabernacle SB to have the redundant effect. I think in the colorless deck there is little cost to playing the 1 Tabernacle. In the white version it competes more with other effects or white sources though...

    Opal doesn't make mana on turn 1, so it doesn't actually speed up the deck, and it's bad with Spheres. It's much better on turn 4 than on turn 1, so it's a 1-of Saga target (Saga also helps make metalcraft).

    Edit: The donation deck ran some Ancient Den and the colorless version could run Darksteel Citadel to help Mox Opal and Constructs, but I think for this format the correct number of these is 0. No need to walk harder into Null Rods.

  5. #2745

    Re: [Deck] Armageddon Stax

    I have never played Sphere with my Trinispheres. Is the non-bo fine or should you run thorns/lodestone golems instead?

  6. #2746
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    Re: [Deck] Armageddon Stax

    Quote Originally Posted by Reeplcheep View Post
    I have never played Sphere with my Trinispheres. Is the non-bo fine or should you run thorns/lodestone golems instead?
    Yeah, Sphere doesn't make as much sense for Black Stompy but this is more like the old Geddon Stax decks.

    Lodestone would be ideal but in this format you really need a prison piece on turn 1. With 0 creatures maindeck Thorn of Amethyst risks being 1-sided for the opponent, might as well play Sphere main. Sphere has the same effect on this deck but oppresses the opponent more.

    The lack of business at 2 mana is probably why white stax has seen less play for a long time. White doesn't have Dark Ritual or Spirit Guides to help power out turn 1 3sphere or Moons. Unfortunately Chrome Mox doesn't work here and Mox Opal won't be active on turn 1, so the most acceleration is 4x Mox Diamond. Diamond is at least supported by the high land count and Crucibles. Other builds above were trying Winter Orb, which is good with Tangle Wire and Stax prison stuff but not good with Sagas and Nesting Grounds. Some played Suppression Field, but this is also bad with Saga and hard to power out turn 1 due to the white mana cost. Maybe the solution is just to stay out of white.

    What white does well is Flagstones of Trokair to support the Stax/Geddon plan. White Stax can pressure mana better than other Stompy decks.

  7. #2747

    Re: [Deck] Armageddon Stax

    Ok sphere for curve reasons makes sense. What about lodestone/Thalia/liquimetal torgueover 3 ball?

  8. #2748
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    Re: [Deck] Armageddon Stax

    Yeah maybe Lodestone over 3-ball. Turn 3 Lodestone is much slower than turn 2 3ball though. I think Lodestone needs a land like Eldrazi Temple to really make it in Legacy.

    Thalia has a better mana cost but is still hard to play turn 1 and risks being 1-sided in opponent's favor (Vial aggro, Elves, Maverick). This deck would love a Thalia-sized Lodestone effect!!

    In stompy decks like yours you really want 3ball early or it gets bad. In Stax lategame 3ball is good too, because Tangle Wire/Wastelock/Smokestack/Geddon oppress their mana. They can't just make land drops to get out of it. I'll try both out.

    I thought on paper the anti-synergy with Sphere would slow down this deck too much, but in the video the lock pieces worked well. Deserves more testing. I guess if you have too many lock pieces you're in a win-more position anyway, but when they have answers redundancy is good. Urza's Saga also makes it a lot easier for this deck to play under 3ball/Sphere by just making tokens. With Nesting Ground that plan gets even better. Mishra's Factory was another old trick to sneak under symmetrical mana & creature oppression.

    Edit: Nesting Ground is hilarious for Saga mirrors, letting you put your Chapter counters on opponent's Saga to kill it and give them 1 fewer construct.

  9. #2749

    Re: [Deck] Armageddon Stax

    Archon of emeria could be the consideration as a 3 cmc hatebear. Lands etb tabbed is powerful with smokestack and the rule of law makes it reasonable to accelerate out vs combo.

  10. #2750
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    Re: [Deck] Armageddon Stax

    Archon's a great idea. Deserves testing. Slowing down fetchland by an extra turn is big, and it punishes decks trying to chain cantrips and fetchlands.

  11. #2751

    Re: [Deck] Armageddon Stax

    Not sure how active this thread is, but I’ve been bitten recently by the mono white stax bug. Not sure if it is to do with me needing a refresher after stints with high tide, aluren and painter.

    Anyways, I’ve noticed that many players are ‘playing around’ non basic hate with a couple of (read:2-3) basic lands. I had done the sundering Titan against those players, but it’s a very sketchy proposition, since it needs an active welder. And they tend to die quick.

    ‘Mono white’ stax
    4 Chalice of the Void
    4 Ancient Tomb
    4 Mox Diamond
    1 The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale
    4 Wasteland
    2 Blast Zone
    1 Cascading Cataracts
    2 Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth
    1 Riftstone Portal
    3 Plains
    2 Flagstones of Trokair
    4 City of Traitors
    4 Urza's Saga
    4 Trinisphere
    3 Smokestack
    3 Tangle Wire
    1 Humility
    3 Karn, Scion of Urza
    2 Karn, the Great Creator
    3 Crucible of Worlds
    1 Retrofitter Foundry
    1 Expedition Map
    3 Armageddon

    Sideboard
    3 Suppression Field
    3 Lightmine Field
    4 Leyline of the Void
    1 Helm of Obedience
    1 Liquimetal Coating
    1 Moat
    2 Choke

    I know, it’s got choke, and technically not mono white. But you know, them islands gotta get locked down!

    Anyways, some of the numbers I’ve been brewing on are based off card accessibility issues (I wish I had 4 humility and 4 moat), but this is approximately what I had in mind.

    I feel like suppression field might not be the greatest in terms of actual utility, but there are a LOT of fetchlands and weird abilities like boseiju that simply need to be kept honest.

    I’ve only been able to test this against myself goldfishing vs aluren, shortcake, meandeck doomsday and another stax deck I built using asmoranomardicaidastinaculdacar. It has legs clamping down the early game, but it just simply doesn’t hold on hard enough. Not sure what to do.

    Anyone here with some ideas? I’m open to getting more humility if need be, but I’m not sure that’s the way forwards.


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  12. #2752
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    Re: [Deck] Armageddon Stax

    Respectfully, Stax is hard mode in Legacy. It's a deck full of symmetrical effects in a time of asymmetry. You have to break the symmetry of Stax through deck construction, while the opposition gets to simply play whatever pushed cards they want.

    Stax was successful historically because of the time it had to operate. The format is faster now, meaning you have less time to slow down the game, and if something slips through, it's likely going to end the game on its own. Additionally, the format requires less mana now across the different decks, making Armageddon worse. The Uro decks play Life from the Loam, Lands plays Life from the Loam, the combo decks don't need more than one or two lands, and that also applies to Delver. A better plan than Armageddon, I have found, is to accelerate out a Crucible of Worlds and simply recur Wastelands, Urza's Saga, and the occasional Buried Ruin. This is still a spotty plan. Lands executes the Stax gameplan better than Stax does.

    Toying around with Stax myself recently, I concluded that Smokestack is not viable anymore, and I have never had good results with Suppression Field. I see it as a trap card. It's generally better to play cards with activated abilites than it is to try to deny everyone activated abilities. If the card cost 1 mana instead of 2, it would be playable, but too much happens in two turns for it to be the game-breaker it wants to be. I think it would also be playable as a creature.

    Another challenge for Stax right now is that decks have far more answers to artifacts and enchantments. Prismatic Ending, Boseiju, Teferi, Skyclave Apparition, Knight of Autumn, and Force of Vigor are pretty routine -- to say nothing of the free counterspells, which are adept and flexible answers. Also, because of the success of 8-Cast, quite a few artifact hosers see play. Over the past three weeks, playing an artifact-based deck (but not Stax), I have run into Meltdown, Seeds of Innocence, Engineered Explosives, and Pernicious Deed.

    I'm not trying to discourage you from brewing. I just think there are specific elements of the deck that aren't viable anymore and need to be swapped out for other things. For instance, I see Curses as a deck that plays out somewhat similarly to how Stax played, except it is better-positioned.

  13. #2753
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    Re: [Deck] Armageddon Stax

    So the rules of magic have changed, and you need to update decks like these to reflect those changes:
    -#1 we do not play Crucible in the maindeck, in any deck -> immediately change to Karn, and put Crucible in the board.
    -#2 in a deck like this (mono-colored, i.e. horrible mana) -> reduce your mana variance and play Timeless Dragon.

    ^This is your starting point, assuming you want to make something competitive. Now to be competitive, you need to have a higher win % than another deck doing basically the same thing...or you need to be the only deck doing a certain thing (and thus possessing the highest win % with "the thing").

    So the question is: what is this deck's "thing" it'll do better than anyone else?

    If you think the "thing" is Sol Lands + Mox + 3ball/Tangle/Saga stuffs, then you are a worse knockoff of Tezzerator (which itself is a worse knockoff of either EchoCannon or 8cast). If you insist this is your "thing" then you are deliberately brewing a tier 3 deck, and we need to drop all pretenses of trying to make something competitive. Tier 3 = underpowered + inconsistent.

    If you think the "thing" is Geddon-type spamming, then you have successfully identified the "thing" you can do better than anyone else. Total mana destruction is overpowered, but inconsistent so you're now brewing a tier 2 deck. The key to success of tier 2 is targeting tier 1 tropes while accomplishing your thing. In the very simplest of terms this means attacking Murktide & Uro. In more complex terms it means having a good matchup vs Daze/Bolt and having a good matchup vs Plow/Ending. All the other matchups in legacy can be ignored, because if you can't accomplish these two things, you don't have a competitive deck.

    The first card we're never going to play is Chalice, b/c that dies to MurkGoyf and is a wasted turn vs Ending. The next group of cards we're not going to play are do-nothing artifacts (Karn can wish for those, so you don't die by drawing them). The other card we're not going to play is Mox Diamond...unless you're trying to specifically be a Land Tax deck (Parfait...which itself is going to need to prove it wins more games than UW/x Helmerator's Brainstorms and Fetchlands).

    You have significant lifetotal problems vs Bolt, so you're playing Solitude. You have Daze problems so you're playing white March...and while this solves a reasonable amount of problems, you're not getting your Geddon on, are you precious? So what is the name of the card that both has play against Daze, interacts favorably with Geddon-type effects, and helps Geddon-types not get deleted by Daze? If you said Cosmic Intervention then ding ding ding, we have a winner.

    Now that we've got that sorted, there's 2 schools of thought: murder the dudes it's Geddon into Tabby time vs murder the PWs it's Cataclysm time. That's your deck. Play some Fetches, play some Wastelands, you can keep some Flagstones b/c they work with Cosmic. You've got 8 plays Daze and Plow/Ending can't interfere with between plainscycling and foretell. Now cut the silliness Karn can wish out of SB and complete the 60 (and yes, you can still run some Tombs and Saga stuffs).

  14. #2754
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    Re: [Deck] Armageddon Stax

    Here's a playthrough on MTGO from PunishingWaterfalls featuring a modified list (Staxless White Stax).


  15. #2755

    Re: [Deck] Armageddon Stax

    Haha wow.. didn’t expect there to be this much feedback.. but cheers!

    Yea to be honest, I kinda knew it wasn’t gonna be setting the world in fire, and I know smokestack itself isn’t really a playable card in the current meta (or ever from now on as far as I can tell).

    To me, it always just feels like stax should be a playable archetype, since it hits on the basic resources that almost every deck archetype needs. Ah wells.

    Might have to take inspiration and see if it’s possible to jiggle smokestack in that build.

    But yea I guess you’re right in that if I wanna go tabernacle, lands is the way to go.


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  16. #2756
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  17. #2757

    Re: [Deck] Armageddon Stax

    New card spoiled that is basically a Crucible world and a Lurrus stapled onto a 3/4 angel body. A great way to recover after Armageddon.

    Serra Paragon 2WW
    Text: Crucible + Lurrus
    3/4 Flying Angel

    https://i.redd.it/9ltf4bxrjej91.png

  18. #2758
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    Re: [Deck] Armageddon Stax

    Actual text: "Once during each of your turns, you may play a land card from your graveyard or cast a permanent spell with mana value 3 or less from your graveyard. If you do, it gains 'when this permanent is put into a graveyard from the battlefield, exile it and you gain 2 life.'"

    Perhaps the best thing about Serra Paragon is that it dodges Bolt, Ending and Decay. It also has favorable combat with DRC, Delver, Endurance, Ledger Shredder, Thalia, Flickerwisp. So it stands a chance of sticking around to use the ability. It fails as a Crucible (cannot repeatedly use Wasteland or combo with Smokestack), but it can be used to return a dead engine piece once (Crucible of Worlds, Expedition Map).

    The Armageddon + Cosmic Intervention plan sounds strong. It combos well with Urza's Saga -> Zuran Orb, Expedition Map -> The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale, and Karn, the Great Creator -> Crucible of Worlds. Lots of tech and tools.


    //Lands: 26
    4 Urza's Saga
    4 Ancient Tomb
    3 Wasteland
    3 Flagstones of Trokair
    2 Flooded Strand
    8 Plains
    1 Karakas
    1 The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale

    //Creatures: 12
    4 Archon of Emeria
    1 Serra Paragon
    4 Timeless Dragon
    3 Solitude

    //Planeswalkers: 4
    4 Karn, the Great Creator

    //Artifacts: 4
    1 Zuran Orb
    1 Currency Converter
    1 Expedition Map
    1 Soul-Guide Lantern

    //Spells: 14
    4 Swords to Plowshares
    2 March of Otherworldly Light
    1 Sevinne's Reclamation
    3 Cosmic Intervention
    4 Armageddon

    //Sideboard: 15
    1 Mycosynth Lattice
    1 Liquimetal Coating
    1 Crucible of Worlds
    1 Smokestack
    1 Tormod's Crypt
    1 Relic of Progenitus
    1 Powder Keg
    1 Ethersworn Canonist
    1 Deafening Silence
    1 Porphyry Nodes
    1 Cast Out
    2 Enlightened Tutor
    2 Cataclysm OR Magus of the Tabernacle

    By cutting the classic Chalice @ 1/3ball plan, you can just play StP for the best removal in the format. There's your answer to Murktide, Uro, Marit Lage, and other things that would kill you before Smokestack or Geddon would do their thing. No Chalice means it's easier to play Saga targets and use ETutor for more consistent access to SB cards. It might allow cutting City and Mox for more consistent mana sources.

    Don't know if Magus of the Tabernacle would help the plan or just be too clunky.

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