Stax Decks Are Fun

[@ryrysamurai92]

fighting against stax is probably my favorite archetype to play against in Commander. it’s like solving a puzzle. using restraint, ignoring stax pieces that don’t bother you as much as the other players, and use the stax player as your shield to keep the other opponents pinned/ focused on them as you build a counter strike

[@Jundsac]

Playing against stax is a vital part of player development. You gotta play against every archetype to get good!

[@rocmochi1467]

Stax is cheap and you can compete with combo high powered decks. I am a fan of the theme.

[@rumpus5633]

This. Stax is the disgruntled labourer’s archetype.

[@al8188]

When I first returned to magic the table I was playing with was a who's who of powerful assholes, with some decks pushing 1200 bucks on their moxfields. I spent 90 bucks and beat their asses like 6 sessions in a row before they started cutting synergy pieces to add removal.

[@LawryBoyer]

It’s funny. I made a stax deck and it holds up at borderline CEDH tables but is crap at casual tables

[@xinot.2406]

@@al8188love it

[@smegmalasagna]

I agree with your takes. I have a dedicated stax deck which in the end is no longer seeing play since I don’t find it very fun, but when building a new list I always look at potential silver bullets that I could include. If I play a green deck with Sol Ring as the only artifact, why not put a Collector Ouphe in there as well? And your example of Rule of Law fitting in battlecruiser decks. In that sense, instead of just being interactive pieces, stax cards can also be seen as payoffs for certain strategies!

[@trfillid1107]

Finally another stax lover

[@thetrinketmage]

There are dozens of us!!

[@tylerrogers7639]

Smokestack is my favorite card in the game.

[@Keylime_Pi3]

I built the Food and Fellowship pre-con into a stax deck that wins the game through attrition. In addition to tons of stax pieces, I play about 12 targeted removal spells and as much protection and one sided board wipes as I can fit. My main win con is through cards like Mirkwood Bats and Agent of the Iron Throne. I intentionally left out some of the more enraging stax effects like Winter Orb or Armageddon, but if I was sure I could avoid the salt then I would play it. I have a ton of fun playing the deck, and wish more people enjoyed stax. My thought is that it keeps everyone at the table honest.

[@taimakesnoise]

Very intelligent video, I hope more people could appreciate how stax is one of the main things that makes MTG so complex, full of nuances, unique, opening the door on so many different strategies. It really scales the game, you can play a very easy deck where you just play what you have in your hand, or something like stax pieces, which you really need to think 3 turns ahead is it's a good idea or not. I understand the frustration around stax sometimes comes from playing against players not able to understand this concept, which often lose the game from their own stax pieces, because it's hard to re-think the rules of the game constantly and keep track of them during a 1-hour long game in multiplayer

[@lokifeyson]

Derevi is my fav deck and its always had some tax pieces in it, love out pacing my opponents. I prefer if you just pay the 1 or 2 lol

[@DarkDealer666]

Personally, I am not a fan of stax as an archetype at all really. That being said, you are basically correct in all the stuff you said. For one thing, if a game is obviously over by turn four, just concede. It may still be annoying, but no one is forcing you to keep playing it out for no reason. Second, a stax piece or two does not a stax deck make. I run Authority of the consuls and Blind Obedience in a couple decks, primarily for enchantment synergies and some good life gain. It is kind of crazy how much hate one card like that can generate. Also, though I don't think you really touched on this, a lot of players get confused about what stax is. I have been accused of stax because I played a sphere of safety and had given myself hexproof. Am I crazy, or is stax and pillow fort two different archetypes? Because I was pretty sure making it harder to attack you or target you is not stax.

[@Bobjdobbs]

I have two Stax decks, both with hard locks. I also run Chaos decks. And I have been on the other end of Stax and chaos. And honestly, I love them both. They are puzzles to be solved. And sometimes the solution is recognizing the strategy BEFORE the game changing pieces come down. From a puzzle solving point of view, I see Stax and Chaos as two sides of the same coin. Both deny resources, but in very different ways. Having said all that, I respect that we are coming from different places, with different experiences and opinions. So this is not me saying you are wrong. Only that my approach differs from yours.

[@xaphan7061]

I occasionally deploy a stax deck into my pod to keep the table honest. Every so often, I show up with Kutzil hatebears. If you're an all-in combo deck with minimal interaction and removal, or some kind of artifact goodstuff pile, Cat Grand Abolisher is going to play a Big Pig and Collector Ouphe and you're going to contemplate some stuff for a while. Many of my decks have softer stax pieces and often incorporate a some degree of stax elements because a lot of good pieces have a low opportunity cost, but if I play a Blind Obedience and your Brago deck has to pack it up and go home, your deckbuilding needs work. You only gotta do it to em a few times, and they start cutting 8 drops for removal.

[@cstaie85]

So, i built a Snow deck. And made it with a serious deck constraint. I could only use ice age block cards, or those that were snow covered from other sets. Jorn as the commander made it so when i play a stax piece. It is not symetrical if i attack with him. Since he untaps all the things i keep tapped with things like Freyalise wind, and winter orb. Yes, i am not immune to the stax, and if Jorn dies i am screwed. Also my wincon is snow creatires with high power. So it is a very jank deck. But can compete at higher power levels due to the stax pieces. And yes, no sol ring, no command tower, no popular mana rocks. Ect. And so little ramp. It is jank.

[@thetrinketmage]

That sounds pretty wild! Do you have a link to the full deck list I’d love to see it

[@cstaie85]

@@thetrinketmage I can make it for you today. Do you use Arkidect or EDH REC?

[@thetrinketmage]

I use moxfield but whatever works

[@gabbodj95]

“Noooooo my opponent doesn’t let me play my infinite combos and untap my infinite creatures, he’s so toxic 😭“

[@xinot.2406]

And then you should answer “all I hear is:..gna gna gna😭..”😂

[@cowonafarmstrategy3449]

I agree with all takes except for your blink moth land example just because for most people playing something super niece for a potential uncommon stax piece isn't worth it. However I do think that its a good idea when you have a dedicated group that you can tweek your deck in a way to get that "gotcha" feeling. A good example is in my pod I run Lighting Axe over Lighting bolt because my friends play commanders that are 5 toughness that bolt doesn't take care of as easily. Or Running a card like compost if your group loves black. Overall very good video! Its unfortunate that most people at LGSs dont really see this as fun :( (had to take apart my stax deck because of all the salt)

[@thetrinketmage]

I’m sorry you felt you needed to take apart your deck :( it’s always sad when you spend time and money on a deck just to have strangers tell you to take it apart… the blinkmoth example wasn’t me saying everyone should play that card, I just happened to have it when my opponent cast a static orb cause I was on some weird colorless deck

[@kadavercade3597]

Currently making an Erriete semi-stax deck that turns off creature activations and artifacts. My playgroup has little removal and full on combo decks. This will help, thanks 😁.

[@VictorianoOchoa]

Stax lover here myself, great stuff! I love how stax adds a whole new dimension to the game. Mono creature beat down is something I just cannot enjoy.

[@4lifejackhammer]

Actually building a stax deck currently, happy to be reaffirmed in shutting down the stormy decks.

[@CameronSMoore]

I love playing against star cards. Dedicated stack decks are just combo decks that get value with their lock pieces, which is fine, but not my favorite. Stay cards twist the game into a new, fun shape where it may not be correct to remove the problem. Always a good time!

[@SavvySavy2]

Been trying to work out what to do with the newest Thalia, honestly land destruction sounds like a pretty effective plan

[@mattd3978]

I enjoy stax too, except land effecting Stax for the most part. I enjoy the puzzle and game it creates every time. I just don't like seeing people's feelings hurt about it. And i agree nothing like chaos, my most hated archetype. I'd rather face down winter orb plus smokestack than that. I also generally don't care for combo/storm style stuff

[@joelhatterini6392]

Stax is basically the Commander format's control archetype. It's the equivalent of someone playing counter.deck in any 1v1 format, which doesn't work as well in Commander.

[@kaytokat]

Mono blue urza stax is one of my most powerful decks, 1v1 a hyper tuned elf ball deck if I can get urza and the static or winter orb out quick enough! It’s a fun way to play, but the slog through the mud is real, so wear your boots haha

[@jiridrabek599]

Do you think Thalia, Guardian of Thraben is playable budget Stax Commander? I enjoy the card and I am interested in the archetype, however all my attempts to build her did not end well.

[@thetrinketmage]

Problem with her is she can be strong against cEDH decks and these fast spell slinger combo lists. But most casual decks are creature piles so she doesn’t do much against them

[@jiridrabek599]

@@thetrinketmage Thank you very much for your answer, if I start to play cEDH I will definetly try to build a stax deck with her.

[@thetrinketmage]

@@jiridrabek599 if you want mono white stax in edh try oswald fiddle bender he is really good! Check out the cEDH deck list data base for information

[@JohnnyYeTaecanUktena]

Stax is just a insane value engine in of itself as like you say it can power up any bad deck like even to the level of cEDH but that would be hard. Like Stax and Control are the hardest wincons to pull off in cEDH but more so Control as if you counter the wrong spell someone is going to pop off and sometimes you have to trick the other people to use their counter spells through politics yes even in cEDH that casual element exists but differently. But overall if you built the deck right you can actually bring any strat aside from MLD to a competitive table and have a good shot to win in the pod like 25% if you play correctly like any other competitive player I say MLD as competitive players play mana rocks for their mana base MOSTLY so MLD is useless for a lot of them, HOWEVER there are some fringe decks where it would work good against but that's not the norm. SO something like a Karn, the Great Curator is perfect for any deck as he literally shuts down activated abilities of artifacts that your opponents control. So his 4 cmc is worth it like he has a lot of value that you can just ignore his cost, his +1 turns a artifact into a creature so you can start blowing up their mana base and if you have a Dauthi Voidwalker out while doing this since black has a lot of recursion you can just start stealing their mana rocks to make your deck go even faster. But you are not limited to their rocks it is any card that has a void counter on it in exile YES including counter spells and you don't have to pay their mana costs to cast them, just imagine playing a Control deck and the black deck is out countering you because of this lol If ya are playing a mono black deck might as well just throw down a Defense Grid while you are at it making each spell cost 3 more except during it's controller's turn, as let's be honest you are not going to be countering much stuff in mono black anyways as the counter spells for black are near non existent and do not matter with Defense Grid as in they are usually on a stick so you just need mana to counter stuff and it gets around the Defense Grid penalty. Now play out a Painter's Servant as well and declare a color that is on the counter on a stick, example Deathgrip it is a Enchantment cost BB and you can pay BB to counter target green spell. So death grip is a great pairing with Painter's Servant and Defense Grid out at the same time while overall also being a great card because Green is common to play against in competitive thanks to Wizards making it the best color in the game

[@laughingskuls7000]

People will really go insane the moment you drop one stax piece on the board. Rhystic studies, dockside, free counterspells, mana tithe is all completely fair play and nobody will bats an eye. The moment you play grand arbiter augustin the IV from your 99, all of a sudden you're staxing the table out and become the archenemy. sigh...

[@thetrinketmage]

There is a disconnect for sure! The rules committee told wizards that Elesh Norn, Mother of Machines was way too powerful for edh and would ruin the format... because it turns off dockside! Apparently 2 mana gain 8 mana is fine but 5 mana stop someone from popping off is not! For some reason enablers are fine no matter how overpowered and answers are not

[@Suhrvivor]

That's because people want to play their cards and stax make sure you don't.

[@tyrone3185]

what fucking magic player do you know that likes dockside or rhystic lol

[@laughingskuls7000]

@@Suhrvivor You know what really prevents you from playing spells? Losing before you can cast anything because some player had dockside, rhystic, smothering tithe combination and popped off getting an insurmountable lead on the rest of the table. My point is not to say you shouldn't run these cards, or that you should feel bad about running them. Play whatever you want, I'm just wondering if a four mana 2/3 that increases that increases costs of your generic spells by 1 is as big as a threat as these other cards? Grand arbiter could cost one less mana, be harder to remove and draw upwards of 5 cards a turn cycle, so long as it didn't tax no one would mind it. I know because that's literally what rhystic studies is.

[@Suhrvivor]

@@laughingskuls7000 That's another issue but two wrongs don't make one right.

[@gageriggs3914]

I friggin hate stacks and everyone who enjoys playing them, including myself. this is why i found therapy xD

[@thetrinketmage]

I hope you find peace one day…

[@BanditZRaver]

i played a Stax deck before, my auto reply was, "You guys go way to far with the infinite combos, and finally pushed me to the limit." The only reason people are "anti-Stax" is because they only care about playing Solitare with themselves, while really everyone else is just being polite about not scooping

[@baka030hydroid]

I don't hate stax, but I do think it's funny how a lot of stax players complain about other, far less powerful deck types like only stax decks should exist lol

[@starmanda88]

Love Stax absolutely hate Chaos style brews. I never have fun against chaos decks.

[@nelsoncaceres6005]

I play tayam stax, probably my favorite deck

[@AUNEDJ]

The problem of stax seems to have extended, in some tables, to board wipes. They hate board wipes even when the table is impossible to follow.....commander is not vintage/legacy with fast games.

[@volosguidetomonsters3440]

This is mean, but I think Smokestacks is reeeeeeally funny

[@Phychologik]

2:30 what is that song pls i need :( nvm I found it it's Lost Girl or noelle's theme from deltarune chapter 2

[@thetrinketmage]

Yea all the songs in this vid are from deltarune

[@EnemyToad]

chaos bad stax good

[@thetrinketmage]

Yup!

[@tyrone3185]

They are both the worst archetypes lol

[@JohnnyYeTaecanUktena]

How about a Chaos Stax deck?

[@TeethMeat-jm8ou]

I think blim with a knowledge pool would be an example of synergy chaos.

[@JohnnyYeTaecanUktena]

@@TeethMeat-jm8ou I fail to see the synergy

[@thedansi21]

I think stax could work in muldrotha

[@thetrinketmage]

Stasis is pretty good with Muldrotha

[@abzodolba473]

I play stax not because I want to, I play stax because I'm azorius

[@saveachip2620]

I thinkthe main problem with stax, which you touched on a little bit. Is the people who build it not really knowing how to play it, to where it creates a board state that is slowing the game down for no reason. Like playing a winter orb with nothing in hand to give yourself the advantage, just playing it to play it and hope you draw one of your synergy cards. To me if you have a clear strategy and an obvious way to take advantage of it, then stax is fine. As long as the game is progressing at a normal rate and someone is winning, I dont even mind that I might be losing as long as the game is not being slowed down for nothing.

[@EnderPryde]

Yeah... no. The problem with Stax is when that it's only really suitable for cEDH. Even at high power casual tables, I've ran into situations quite commonly where a Stax combo is about to go off and the only point of interaction that winds up resolving hits the balance-breaker rather than the lock. And when (not if) that hapens... well now the game is forced into that classic "now the whole game is a long drawn out slog, and it's the stax players fault" scenario. I cannot *count* how many time's I've had Kaalia players get their commander (equipped with a Darksteel Plate or some other indestructible effect) Swords-to-Plowshares'd in response to them casting Jokulhaups.

[@fastpuppy2000]

Run more removal? I mean, yeah. If you can't remove non-creatures then you're only prepared for a portion of the possibility space. The other side to this is most Commander players are really really really bad at deck building. The stax player probably has a very bad deck alongside everyone else. Don't run cards that don't get you closer to winning, and try to run as many cards to keep your opponents from winning, provided that you don't run enough that you crowd out the cards that lead to you winning. Commander is, in fact, way harder to build a deck for than 60-card. Having playsets means you might only need like 20 different cards in varying amounts for a deck, and you can ensure that you get a good mix of threats and answers if you understand probability / know how to use a hypergeometric calculator.

[@ChrisDavis-tt1dj]

Our LGS meta is combo heavy. Anyone hating on my Rule of Law is automatically sus.

[@awonderfulway]

mono red stax anyone?

[@Suhrvivor]

People don't like stax because they want to be able to play the game.

[@KamonXV]

Commented on the Chaos vid but i feel its best to reiterate here too and want to have a good faith discussion. I still personally think a Chaos deck is better/more fun to play with/against than Stax. Cards tied to the chaos theme often follow any of 3 themings 1. Whats Basically just Stax (rewriting rules and parity breaking with cards like Arboria, Blood Moon and Fate spinner) 2. Forcing players into bad situations (unavoidable loss of life, permanents or card advantage like Risky Move or Teferis Puzzle Box ) 3. Shaharazad (aka starting some sort of minigame within the actual game with cards like goblin game, Thieves auction or other cards the make the game longer) I think youre focusing too hard on the 3rd thing when saying chaos is unfun. In this video you say politics is part of the fun of stax and i think the same can be true for Chaos decks. Just playing every card that makes the game longer isnt what makes a good chaos deck. But a good Chaos deck can both take advantage of politics and the actual cards. If i play Goblin Game knowing the Blue player at the table potentially has a counter spell i can easily politics bait them into either wasting the counter and playing an even bigger spell or having them let it resolve into the whole table losing a ton of life because the blue player chose not to counter. It has the potential to be the other side of the coin that is stax. Stax revolves around limiting players options when you're in advantage. The way i view chaos is instead of limiting the options you actively allow players to make options and punish them for it. If the battle cruiser player has a huge board state you can easily disrupt their whole plan with cards like Confusion in the ranks and actively punish them for overstepping. Chaos is about controlling the boardstate by controlling your opponents perception of the board. They have to think more carefully when they know they could potentially lose everything or gain more than they can control at a moments notice. Its a lot harder for players to win when they can be forced to either lose half their life or gain a huge advantage they arent prepared to use properly. HOWEVER beyond all this the biggest reason i enjoy Chaos more than Stax is because Chaos still has to interact with the table and the people at them as a whole. I often see stax deckss turn into a game of Solitaire while im trying to top deck my removal after getting land wiped for the 4th time. Sorry for the long comment but i genuinely think youre looking at this from a misguided perspective and havent found the fun side of this deck type.

[@thetrinketmage]

I appreciate the long comment though I still disagree! I want to clarify that I don’t think I ever said any chaos card is unfun. I personally try to avoid that since fun is subjective and it means different things to different people. And in the chaos video I did say there is nothing wrong with using chaos cards to gain an advantage my issue is with people who are not using chaos cards for advance and instead are trying to just extend the game time without looking for a win. If you are controlling the board state as you say then that’s fine! I still think you are also wrong about stax. It’s the opposite of solitaire! It forces your opponents to interact. Other decks could just be ignored and everyone could just race to a combo of big board state without ever interacting. Stax means that you must interact and play the game! I also think the lack of agency from some chaos cards bothers me personally

[@Alucard_Ander]

Now stax is is top is bracket 4

[@jarekhartwell6235]

"I like playing agaisnt stax" No you don't

[@thetrinketmage]

This vid is kinda old but I still do love playing against stax!

[@jarekhartwell6235]

@@thetrinketmage I love a lot of your vids but this take is wild

[@Preaplanes]

@@thetrinketmage Pft. Red players, am I right?

[@valerielusa8000]

bro cannot possibly fathom someone having a different opinion than him. grow up

[@Preaplanes]

@@valerielusa8000 "Wot? Ya mean like when da white boyz say 'ya can't stomp me in da face'? Bleedin' soft 'un! Bad enough dey getta more life an' block, makin' it 'ard to smash 'em ain't fair!"

[@shytyva]

I watched your vid on Chaos earlier and I wanted to feed ur algorithm a bit while putting my 2c in. Stax,Chaos,Discard, and Mill are the worst archetypes from the perspective of the average player. I'm aware they are strong and for decks like my angels deck (Lyra btw) however they have to be the most INFURIATING thing i have experienced in MTG. In the deck-building process you pretty much have no way to fend off these archetypes unless you play black(I get the impression black) seeing as you can reanimate. But outside of that I have to ask what is the red deck going to do against a stax/Discard pile? The answer is literally nothing. Nobody likes to have their time wasted and all of these archetypes focus on denying resources which is super unfun in its own right but also drawing out games until people just scoop and don't play with you. Obviously if you have this convo with your group my point is unfounded but I don't know how many people tell me its a "fun" X deck or "Its not THAT kind of X deck man!" If u like it fine but if i see another stax player I'm going to suck the cerebrospinal fluid from their eyes.

[@shytyva]

no hate all love G

[@thetrinketmage]

I think red has answered to all of these things! Other than chaos… Red decks have impulse draw which is a direct answer to discard decks! As for stax red has some of the best artifact removal in the game! Mono red can struggle against enchantment based stax true, but red just struggles against enchantments overall. I also don’t think you need to sku your deck super hard to win against a stax deck. Politics is gonna be your best tool!

[@shytyva]

@@thetrinketmage that said should i be forced into playing these cards specifically for that archetype cuz i would say no. Its the same issue I have with reanimator in mid power. The fact that a single deck forces me to build in a specific way just to counter it is fucking stupid. I honestly hate rest in peace but its in all my white decks just because reanimator is insane.

[@thetrinketmage]

I see what you mean and that’s why I dislike cards like thassa’s Oracle because outside of blue you need stuff like torpor orb to beat it. But artifact removal should be in your deck no matter what and red causal has a lot of impulse draw so I’m not sure anything is being forced. I feel ya on the rest in peace but that’s just cause the graveyard is so strong you need something for it in every deck

[@blaze556922]

Fun for who? Lol

[@thetrinketmage]

For someone who dislikes combos I think you will appreciate some stax! A deafening silence can really stop a combo deck in its tracks and let your deck keep going!

[@dorkalicious7290]

You literally made a video whining about chaos decks for slowing down the game.

[@thetrinketmage]

Do I come off as whiny? And in the chaos video and this video I do specify that a deck that slows the game down is not inherently an issue. My problem with chaos is “why” not what it does.

[@dorkalicious7290]

@@SwagLord420Pi What chaos decks are you playing against that doesn't have some sort of wincon. Also chaos decks are leagues better to play against than say stax, because at least against chaos you are still playing the game .Otherwise 90% of stax matchups are sitting there twiddling your thumbs and passing while either zur beats you to death or the urza player stops looking at his cards and plays out his combo

[@Bobjdobbs]

@@dorkalicious7290- I think it is funny that you are trying to tell someone that their opinion, based not in fact but only in feeling and personal experience, is wrong! Lol! You are funny!

[@thetrinketmage]

I’m the chaos video I did say that chaos cards are fine to play as long as you use them for a win. I even gave examples about how to use some chaos cards like scrambleverse. I’ve played against many many chaos decks that are not trying to win at all and their only goal is to extend the time of the game. For stax if you are stuck twiddling your thumbs that means one of three things. Either they got a full hard lock and you should just go to the next game, no reason to wait or your removal is not efficient enough or you don’t run enough removal

[@dorkalicious7290]

@@thetrinketmage so the actual problem is not the archetype but the player. because I can just as easily say I've played against stax decks that's just win to salt scoops. Usually when I sit down at a table to play a pod and someone packs chaos, normally the group is there enjoying the game. When someone packs a stax deck, no one except the stax player is having fun or enjoying the game. It seems to me that you harbor a dislike for the player that's there to watch the world burn than someone who wants to win.