It's really refreshing seeing one of these channels that are dedicated to explaining 1v1 competitive magic. Like commander is cool and all but it does feel like a large player base does get missed out on
I love I can watch your videos calmly knowing you will explain each card and their interactions, with most other channels I have to constantly pause to understand. Never change that.
If I am remembering Bloodmoon's effect correctly, it also shuts off the effects of these nonbasic lands because it just turns them in to mountains... making it more devastating than just screwing with your opponent's mana base.
It does yes. They are mountains and have no ability other than tapping for red mana usually, I can't remember how layers work in the rules concerning blood moon
I've been planning to build a Grand Arbiter Augustin IV deck in commander just to be the grindiest, taxiest, most unfun stax deck I can possibly make. This is great inspiration for that!
I have a buddy who plays several versions of those. He just recently finished his prison deck which, compared to what some of these do, is actually pretty forgiving... depending on how mean he feels that particular day. We often joke that we can tell his mood based on how many (s)tax cards he put in his deck. But even in its mildest form, it's still no fun to play against. He only breaks it out if we request it or if he feels particularly slighted after a row of losses and needs to take it out on someone.
@@Xylarxcode That's basically the same use case this one will have, I'll only bust it out if people agree to have a grindy, miserable game for the hell of it. Because it can be kinda fun to try and break through a massive stonewall of stax and taxes just due to how brutal those decks can get. But I certainly won't be dropping it on the table during random chill games, that's for sure.
I'm basically just repeating what I put in another comment, but thought it might be worth mentioning if your friend enjoys prison decks. I've been into this little-known (apparently) format that's based off of the "old" Extended format. The card pool is Invasion block > Alara block, 7th Ed. > 10th Ed., and Coldsnap. I've been running a prison deck that seems particularly powerful in that format, based off of the old "Tezzerator" prison deck from the '08-'09 Extended seasons. It utilizes like 4 outta the 10 cards on this list, and the version I'm tuning uses 5 lol. Maybe encourage your friend to look into the format, it'd be cool if it caught on (although it's fairly niche I think).
Video idea: Best and worst card representing the same character. E.g. Strongest and weakest Niz-Mizzet or Chandra. It would let you start talking about the characters of MTG.
Worth noting that Magus of the Moon tends to actually be better than Blood Moon vs green decks like Amulet Titan (which are the main matchups it’s good against). It’s far easier and more efficient for those decks to remove an enchantment than a creature, which has made Magus more popular than moon in many sideboards lately.
funny enough, some years ago, when Lightning Bolt still reigned supreme in modern, it used to be the other way around! Now with boseiju being played more in decks that lose to moon, the magus is more popular
Aye, same here. Winter Orb limits you to untapping 1 land a turn and static orb restrictions you untapping 2 cards a turn. I get that 1v1 formats tend to be far slimmer and faster than say Commander, but how the heck such powerful and crippling pieces of stax that slowed the game play of your opponent right down is not listed here is beyond me.
Weird not to see cards like Winter Orb or, most of all, Smokestack mentioned. I mean, we are talking about the card that gave this effects their name. If nothing else it should be on the list for historic reasons.
I’m totally with you. Disclaimer for the next part of this, I mainly play EDH and have a strong opinion on what I consider tax vs stax. With that said I feel like this list includes both Tax and Stacks card. Including cards like Thorn of Amethyst, Trinisphere, and Tax Thalia are great to mention and are amazing at slowing down the game, but they feel much more like tax effects than stax effects. This list is missing some of the iconic and hated hard stax cards which can completely kill any semblance of tempo if made asymmetric e.g cards like Winter Orb, Stasis, or Smokestacks. Some cards I was half expecting to see on the list from an EDH perspective was a lot of the popular white hate/stax cards, Dranith Magistrate, Archon of Emeria, Deafening Silence, Aven Mindcensor, etc.
@@firespirit8026 as someone that primarily plays stax. Technically speaking, the definition of a stax piece is just 'a card with an effect that denies resources'. It's a broad term, if magic decks were animals and we were to classify them through taxonomy, stax would be the genus, and there would be multiple species in that genus. Tax would be one of those species, cards that tap down resources would be another species, cards that remove resources like 'Smokestack', would be a third, and cards that outright ban a resource like 'Drannith Magistrate' and 'Silverquill Silencer', would be yet another species within the genus of 'stax'. As to cards I'm sad didn't get on this list are those 'hidden stax' cards. Cards that don't really strike people as a stax piece upfront, or are even forgotten about in the conversation because they're generically useful in many archtypes or usually listed under a different type of card. 'Bojuka Bog', both 'Liesa, Shroud of Dusk' and 'Liesa, Forgotten Archangel' (who by the by is stupidly powerful as the commander in a creature heavy Orzhov stax), 'Drana and Linvala', 'Containment Priest', 'Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite', 'Damping Sphere', 'Ashes of the Abhorrent', 'Smothering Tithe' (because everyone always sees it as Ramp), 'Rhysic Study' (always lumped in as card draw), 'Opposition Agent', 'Uba Mask' (which is uniquely fun and asymmetrical with Drannith Magistrate out) and so on.
Special shout-out to Yasharn, Implacable Earth: the card that let's you go: "Yeah, all those Treasures, Clues, Food, and Blood Tokens you have? That fetchland you just played? Yeah, you can ignore those; they won't do anything while I'm around."
I really appreciate that you add the "This card is legal in: [formats]" Even if I'm kind of an experienced MTG player, it's nice to see in case one of these cards gives me a random bug of deckbuilding lmao Thank you for the content. :)
In early MH2 modern, I would run Meddling Mage in Domain/Cascade Zoo. The most common removal spells are so well known and seen everywhere that knowing your opponent's colors is a good indicator of their removal. A Turn 2 Mage into a Turn 3 Scion of Draco often made it unkillable. That was before more decks started using Fury, which made Mage less viable in my build. Still, I loved using it and hope I can find another deck to use it in.
I do believe you are forgetting the one card the entire genre is based on and has part of the name in it as well. Smokestack from Urza's Saga is a 4-cost Artifact with the ability that puts a spot counter on it during your upkeep and that each player sacrifices a permanent for each soot counter on Smokestack during their upkeep step. Another ability to make this card cancerous is proliferate, being able to multiply the counters before another players upkeeps is outright venomous!
Usually smokestack doesn't want to go past 1 counter because you'll have to sacrifice it yourself, but it can be handy if you have another smokestack in hand to eat up your opponents board to lock them under a sphere effect.
I've seen a few people citing Smokestack, and all of them leave out a very important word. 'May'. Smokestack is not a 'you must put a soot counter on it during your upkeep', it is a 'you may put a soot counter'. And while it is fun, typically you don't want to put more than one or two counters on it unless you are making a lot of throwaway tokens, or have some way to continually recur sacrificed permanents, otherwise it becomes hard even for a stax deck to play around. Like, I run it in my cEDH deck, because the commander is Liesa, Forgotten Archangel, sure I can sacrifice two or three cheap creatures, they're just coming back to my hand, that offsets a higher soot counter count, but if I wasn't, I wouldn't run it, or would keep the counters really low so it isn't affecting me much, but that downside is it's not being as impactful.
Bruh, just today told my playgroup I don't own stax decks yet and begun building one around Zedruu as a commander, and you decide to upload the perfect list for me to inspect the same day
several other cards you forgot to mention include the whole archtype's namesake "Smoke Stack, as well as Chains of Mephistophes (screws up draws, especially after a well timed Hymn or Mind Twist), or even the classic Stasis and Arcane Laboratory as well as another classic slow down card Tangle Wire.
Stax is used here in the modern, broader sense of the term, as « whatever impedes your opponent from playing normally ». A bunch of cards in this list wouldn’t be good in a dedicated Stax list, and are merely death&taxes pieces and other similar cards that don’t entirely lock games up, but buy a lot of time against opponents who « can’t draw the freaking answer » while you slap them down with a bunch of Standard creatures. I’m looking forward to reading the comment section of the « Top 10 Tempo cards ».
I probably would have mentioned that your #1 stax piece is so strong that it is also on the restricted list in Vintage. Enjoy all your videos, by the way! I already know everything you're discussing, but I still enjoy watching anyway. I suppose that's a testament to how high-quality and fun to watch your videos are! One trivial thing: Typographical errors. Here and there. (Nothing consequential.) In this particular video, I noticed two. Your work seems like it's very polished/professional, which tells me you are at least somewhat of a perfectionist about it. And that just seems totally at odds with having careless typographical errors like reversed letters on your final versions of videos you publish. Just my thoughts. (It's not like I have anything to critique about the substance, as that is fantastic.)
Those sorts of errors are very common on both this channel and the other one. He has multiple video editors who actually put the videos together, and they seem to have varying levels of quality control between them...
@@kennyrichardson3842 I'm sure there's some explanation for it. Like I said though, I'm really just nitpicking, most people probably don't even notice such things.
I've been into a little-known community-driven format that is based off of the "old" Extended format, before Wizards changed it, and it was ultimately replaced entirely (by Modern). The card pool consists of Invasion block up through Alara block, 7th through 10th Editions, and Coldsnap. The deck I've taken to using, and have been putting a ton of work into, is based off of the Tezzerator deck (the one that Kenny Öberg Top 8'd a Pro Tour with in 2008). It's a prison deck, and funnily enough utilizes 5 out of the 10 cards on this list hahaha (those being Chalice, Ensnaring Bridge, Trinisphere, Meddling Mage, and Blood Moon). No wonder people hate me 😓😓😓 lol
I like Rule of Law. "No, you can't play storm. Other combo decks are going to look a lot worse too." Making the game grindy for all is what Stax likes to do. I use activated and triggered abilities to break the symmetry.
Stax in MTG: a mild annoyance from just one asshole friend Floodgates in YGO: "Monkeyflipper, no brained, stalling ass...." Wall Stalls in PkmnTCG: "Sure, I'll use my Pokemon Catcher and hope for the best."
Ethersworn Canonist is pretty fridge these days, it was basically made obsolete by Deafening Silence in Legacy and Archon of Emeria in vintage which essentially hate out the same things
My Jodah deck really appreciates Thalia being Standard atm. Creature control spells are the bane of Legendary Humans (plus Ratadrabick) and they're the only Legendary at 4.
I have seen a bunch of comments about Smokestack not being on this list but I feel there are a few reasons its not on the list. Firstly it has been many years since it has been a relevant card in any format (despite how much I have tried) so its not really something to put on a top 10 list at this point. Also while yes it is where we get the name from it functions very differently than other cards we now think of as stax pieces. Making people sacrifice things does sort of restrict access to resources it does so very differently than the cards on this list. Having said that, I do think it could have been on the list or at least mentioned just do to its iconic status and then maybe a mention about how the game has moved past it. Also I think Back to Basics, Choke, Defense Grid, Sphere of Resistance, Damping Sphere, Leonin Arbiter, Opposition Agent, Hullbreacher, Aven Mindcensor, Stony Silence, Narset Parter of Veils, Leovold Emisary of Trest, Gaddok Tieg, and Suppression Field are all cards that I think could replace cards on this list in the right meta and other honorable mentions would be Chains of Mephistophiles, Stasis, Tanglewire, and Nether Void as they are very powerful but dont really have a home and havent for quite sometime outside of memes. Glowrider and Wryn Wingmare both see some vintage play in occasion but are just worse thalia but maybe could be mentioned in that slot. If you branched out to include cards like Smokestack, the Abyss, Tainted Aether, and Doom Fortold come to mind as the latter actually had some decent standard success. At least for 60 card formats those are the ones that are on the top of my head.
Maybe you could make a video going over the strongest card in each format, or videos going over the top 10 strongest cards in a format. Like top 10 strongest cards in Pauper, Commander, Vintage, etc.
If you do a follow-up and dip a little bit more into commander then Drannith Magistrate needs to be on the list for how it can basically turn off a key feature in a format. It also stops some interesting mechanics like Cascade and use to, and to some extent still can, enable some of the hardest game locks to break with cards like Knowledge Pool, Omen Machine, and Uba Mask.
Smokestack and its lil cousin Tangle Wire are good in the kinds of Stax decks that can flood the board with mana artifacts or tokens so they punish / lock down your opponent more than you. Play both and stack the triggers however you like on every upkeep! Lodestone Golem is a finisher in the fast mana decks; wrecks combo, creatures, and anyone who plays free spells It's a fine point, but I would have put those over Meddling Mage and the artifact hate, which are more "focused" disruption than how classic Stax wants to invalidate as much of your opponent's stuff as quickly and proactively as possible. Mb call the list Prison cards instead? One thing I like about a Yugioh player making these is how you sometimes highlight a card's availability to tutors, which is more relevant in Yugioh and less relevant in "newer" formats
Hey, as a total mtg noob who's trying to get into the game I can't really understand how chalice of the void works, it's xx mana to cast it so does it mean you could pay 3 mana (2 and 1) to cast it? If so, do you choose how many counters chalice gets? Can you choose to pay no mana at all and it will still counter 0 cost mana artifacts even though it won't have any counter on itself? I'm so lost on how this card works
XX means you have pay double the amount to get one effect out of the card. In the case of the Chalice, for it to come in with 1 counter, you need to pay 2 mana. If you want it to come with 2 counters, you need 4 mana and so on. I never thought of attempting to cast Chalice with odd mana total, but if I am remembering the rules correctly, you will not be allowed to spend odd mana to play the Chalice under NORMAL situations. For X spells, you need to declare the mana you will put in to get X effect... but since there are 2, any amount you declare would double. Only in situations where a "tax" card is in play (i.e Thorn of Amethyst, which was the t#10 card of this list that adds 1 additional mana for noncreature spells) can you pay odd mana to play Chalice Also, as far as I remember, you CAN play Chalice without paying mana, declaring Zero as the cost. It would then be able to counter spells with mana cost 0... which also includes creatures summoned as "Morph" creatures (in case you don't know: Morph is an ability for some cards to be played as a 2/2 colorless creature for 3 generic mana. These cards are considered to have 0 mana value. They generally have an ability to "flip" themselves up, the cost of which is printed on the card. When these creatures are temporarily removed from play, they come back as their face up versions) These are how I remember Chalice would interact, based on your questions. Hopefully, someone who has more recent experience can correct me. I played with the card back in its original printing about 10 years ago so there might be rule changes with this card that I am not aware of any more
@@bluedestiny2710 i can't thank you enough, your explanation is very thorough and it really helped me grasping the concept of a xx mana value card (I didn't know about morph cards, I've been googling almost daily all the keywords I've encountered in cards and I'm still baffled on how many there are in the game) Wish you a good day and thank you again
@@_Bailamme_ Magic has a LOT of keyword abilities... while MOST cards will explain what these keywords would do, cards with a text box full of text won't... so getting familiar with them will help you. Oh also, with XX costed spells, there are 2 more things you may need to note: - While rare, there are some XX spells with alternate cost. Right now, I am aware of one named "Empty the Graves", where it has Delve. Delve is an alternate way to pay mana for the spell. Instead of paying mana, you remove 1 card (exile) from your graveyard to pay 1 colorless mana to the total cost of your spell. I will use an easier example: Tombstalker. It is a 5/5 creature with flying and delve and costs BB5. You can cast this spell by paying 2 Black Mana, and then you can have any combination of paying 1 mana or exiling a card from your graveyard to pay for the remaining 5. So you can, for example, pay BB, 2 colorless mana, and exile 3 cards from your grave to summon this card. Now, for XX spells, banishing 1 card only pays for 1 of those Xs... the other X can be paid by 1 mana or exiling 1 card from your grave. While the card is considered terrible and I didn't see decks running it, there might be XX spells with Delve or other alternate cost in the future. I am guessing some XX spells would have the Convoke alternate cost ... as some regular X spells have it. Convoke is an alternate cost where you can tap a creature instead of paying mana for a spell. For each creature you tap, you pay for 1 colorless mana cost OR a colored mana if the creature tapped shares a color with it. Another example: Arboretum Elemental. It is a 7/5 green creature with hexproof and convoke but it costs a whopping GG7 (9 mana) to cast. To pay for that 9 mana, you tap 5 lands and 4 creatures. If you tapped 2 green creatures, you can also pay for that GG in the cost so if you don't have green mana available, you can still summon this. - Some XX spells will ask for an additional cost when you play them. In MOST cases, the additional cost will only require half of the mana you spent to cast it. Example: Recall is a blue sorcery card that costs UXX... then, you discard X cards from your hand to select X cards from your graveyard and add it to your hand... then you exile Recall from the game. This card will NOT ask you to discard 2 cards from your hand for each card you want to recover from your graveyard - Finally, when I checked the database, apparently there now exists XXX cards! I have no experience using these, but im guessing they just now costs 3 for each 1 effect you want it to do. Crackle with Power is a red sorcery that costs RRXXX, and its effect reads: this card deals 5 times X damage to each of up to X targets. This means that by paying the minimum cost of RR3, you will deal 5x1 damage to 1 target, If you paid RR6, this card deals 5x2 damage to up to 2 targets (so if there's only 1 target, its ok. If it doesn't say "up to"... you need exact number of targets) ... and then if you generate RR9, this card deals 5x3 damage to up to 3 targets. On an unrelated note: this card is now triggering my PTSD when I failed math in high school twice O.O
@@bluedestiny2710 This is correct, mostly, the intent is there, but the words are not quite correct in one particular spot. You are correct that in a mana cost of XX like Chalice (or even XXX on some newer cards), if you declare X=1, you pay 1 for each X, so you will never play a Chalice with an odd mana cost without a tax or a reduction. As is your assumption on X=0. Chalice can be played for X=0, and will counter spells with a mana value of 0. Now the part where you had the right intent but not the right words. Chalice counters based on mana value, not a mana cost. Force of Will can have a mana cost of 0 by exiling a blue card and paying one life, but it retains the mana value of 5, and would not be countered by an X=0 chalice. Alternate casting costs (excluding morph), along with taxes or reductions, do not change the mana value. Mana cost is the total amount of mana used to play the card, mana value is always the sum of the printed cost on the top right, as printed, and mana value is what chalice counters. Morph is a special case for mana value, and is the only alternative casting cost that creates a mana value of 0, and this is because the rules clearly define face down cards as having a mana value of 0. So when you play a card with morph, using the morph cost, because you a creating a face down card, chalice will see it as having mana value of 0, instead of the mana value of the front side. Mana cost can be changed, mana value is unchanging. Additionally, when determining mana value, any X in the printed value of the card is a zero for the purposes of determining the card's mana value. So a X=0 chalice, will counter another chalice being played, regardless of how much mana is paid for X, because Chalice's mana value is 0.
"Cards that do things other than restrict your opponent don't count". I suspect this was largely to exclude the Praetors and WAR planeswalkers. WAR Teferi, Narset, and Ashiok all do stax things as well as every Phyrexian Praetor and many would place high on this sort of list
If I play Tabernacle of the Pendrell Vale and Blood Moon can I tap Tabernacle for mana? Also surprised to not see Sphere of Safety in here; it's one of my favorites especially if you're running a lot of enchantments.
Yes. Tabernacle becomes a mountain and loses all abilities. So Blood Moon shuts off the Tabernacle's 'pay one for each creature or sac' while also making it produce red mana.
I think I've got an idea that would be good. Top 10 Mana Swarm Cards. These cards are the ones that pull mana out of the library and put it in your hand or on your field with the greatest efficiency or in the largest numbers.
My friends got PISSED when I flipped a blood moon in a 5 color only commander game… they didn’t know that i had only basic lands JUST to play bloodmoon
You forgot three cards: Winter Sphere (players can only untap one land per turn) Static Orb (players can only untap two permanents per turn) Solemnity.
Solemnity stops the following from getting counters of any sort from being applied to them while the other item is on the battlefield: Artifacts Creatures Enchantments Lands Players That last one shuts down Poison Counter decks and Aether Counter decks (from Kaladesh block). Basically, it means that the only things on the battlefield that can get counters are Planeswalkers.
I think. If not, and cards that say they enter with counters on them can bypass it, then it sucks, but Solemnity can still shut down decks that rely on counters on stuff other than Planeswalkers.
Who are writing these? I know it is not the person reading considering how many names he gets wrong. Though maybe that would also explain missing something as obvious as including Smokestacks…where the archetype gets its name…
I'm looking to make a new Gaddock Teeg edh deck to make everyone hate me. I used to have one and it was good but now I'm such a better player with several years under my belt instead of one year.
Quick mention: the name "Stax" comes from the card "Smokestack", another horrifying resource-denial piece. I will say that this list skews a lot heavier on newer cards and misses out on a fair few Stax pieces that have achieved infamy, like Winter Orb/Static Orb and Stasis.
I disagree with Ouphe being the most useful of artifact shutdown as it is only limited to decks in green while Null Rod can be put into any deck like you said. However i would not skip out on Karn, the Great Creator as he only shuts down your opponents artifacts not yours meaning it is way more useful plus his +1 ability basically kills any 0 cost artifact while his -2 you can add any artifact from your sideboard to your hand, his utility is so great he is restricted in Vintage unlike Null Rod or Ouphe And if i really wanted to pull what you did for Ouphe to say it is the best card that shuts down artifacts, black can search for anything not just creatures meaning Karn would be the best one instead as he also offers you so much value not just in a game of commander but all formats it is legal in so much that again it is restricted to 1 in vintage. Like Karn, the Great Creator came out in 2019 it's by no means a newer card that you would not have heard of as the video by the time of this comment is a year old. Like Karn, the Great Creator should be on the list as it just offers so much value other than shutting down the enemy and if we are talking competitive here as MOSTLY everyone plays fast mana rocks so it could mean win or lose in 1v1 formats if Karn resolves as you immediately grinded them to a halt so you can search for your combo and win. Or if you want to use the rest of your fast mana cast a Mycosynth Lattice that way they are just locked out, which you can keep the card in your wishboard so Karn can grab it when you resolve him I honestly think stax cards that offers more value other than shutting down your opponents or taxing them are inherently way better especially if you can easily slot them into any deck even if it is a non stax deck like Karn, the Great Creator To have a competitive stax deck is not simply to establish a lock fast before the other person or people if in multiplayer wins but also to win fast, as stax decks are slow and there are a lot of annoying people that when they see a lock won't just say "Ok you win let's just shuffle up and play another game" as they wanna run the clock especially in tournaments. Stax gets so much hate outside of competitive as people either don't run removal or just don't know when to give up when there is a literal lock on the game and pretty much the Stax player won as you are just passing turns to their wincon with nothing you can do
Can someone explain #10 to me, why is thorn better than sphere? Surely making everything cost 1 more makes more sense. Or is the advantage that you can build your deck to not be affected.
The latter. Asymmetrical stax is the best kind, as you can get ahead while your opponent falls behind. Thorn, with the right deck, can be basically asymmetrical.
I honestly find it absurd that game designers (not just Magic R&D but also video game devs and to a slightly lesser extent board game designers) so frequently make game elements that are designed to outright prevent an opponent from playing the game at all - it’s like they don’t ever play with it themselves. Like, how am I supposed to have fun if I don’t even get to play the game? Honestly, even from a balance perspective it makes no sense when you consider mental space as a resource. Part of the game’s difficulty comes in allocating that between making a game plan work and responding to your opponent’s actions, but by having things that effectively pre-empt the latter en masse you suddenly free all that up. I’ve thought about this a bunch, actually, and I’ve noticed a correlation between the volume of game elements like these in a given game and the tendency of that game’s community to have toxicity problems. On one end you have Euro games heavy in indirect player interactions and extremely low in player-to-player attack mechanics (I don’t generally hear many complaints about toxicity in communities centered around something like, say, feast for Odin) and on the other you have battle games like League where your entire strategy tends to revolve around preventing opponents from being able to play the game (and I think that community needs no further comment). And that’s not even to say that PvP battle games are all like that - take Super Smash Bros where respawns are instant and stun durations are (relatively) brief, or Twilight Imperium where you generally have to invest so much to attack another player in the early game that it isn’t worth doing straight up when there is at least one additional player who can capitalize. IDK what my point is except “stax pieces bad” and you can feel free to disagree but this is what I’ve observed. And to people who say that these elements are “necessary to counter certain otherwise broken strategies” they should be reminded that said otherwise broken strategies are also elements the designers introduced; this doesn’t make them necessary so much as a band-aid fix and an honestly pretty lazy one.
Hey Duellogs, sorry to be the party pooper but i noticed a lot of spelling mistakes in your videos recently. I know you produce a lot more videos( with other TGC), but a better quality control would be nice. I mean the videos will stay forever and to write "fomrats" right is not to difficult. Love your Videos! Keep the good work up.
Tabernacle is once again a "destroy" effect as it was always intended. Why did WotC ever errata it to a "sacrifice" effect that one time? It added so much needless confusion. :s
I hope this doesn't come off as rude, but the amount of spelling and grammar mistakes in the captions here is very distracting. Usually it is only a few per video, but here it feels like a few per entry
Like 8 out of 10 of these aren't stax. Hell, the video didn't even mention Smokestack, the definitive stax card. Most of these are just hate cards, calling them stax is misleading and ridiculous. Playing against stax in 2022: oh no my opponent played a 2/2 that's slightly annoying to my strategy! Playing against stax in 1999: I literally have no permanents
It's really refreshing seeing one of these channels that are dedicated to explaining 1v1 competitive magic. Like commander is cool and all but it does feel like a large player base does get missed out on
Because the average player won't or can't spend $3500 on one card.
@@Joe-rm7rrlol what you don't casually have a Tabernacle sitting in your binder?
He has an entire playlist for banned commander cards. You just want to complain about commander lmao
One little thing, IIRC Thalia is legal in standard due to the reprint
Yep!
And therefore Pioneer/Explorer too.
Correct. they're also putting her in a pioneer precon soon.
@@aidan_savage rip mono ______
Which one LMAO
I love I can watch your videos calmly knowing you will explain each card and their interactions, with most other channels I have to constantly pause to understand. Never change that.
If I am remembering Bloodmoon's effect correctly, it also shuts off the effects of these nonbasic lands because it just turns them in to mountains... making it more devastating than just screwing with your opponent's mana base.
It does yes. They are mountains and have no ability other than tapping for red mana usually, I can't remember how layers work in the rules concerning blood moon
This was the most simple explanation of Lantern Control I've ever seen. Awesome
I've been planning to build a Grand Arbiter Augustin IV deck in commander just to be the grindiest, taxiest, most unfun stax deck I can possibly make. This is great inspiration for that!
I have a buddy who plays several versions of those. He just recently finished his prison deck which, compared to what some of these do, is actually pretty forgiving... depending on how mean he feels that particular day. We often joke that we can tell his mood based on how many (s)tax cards he put in his deck. But even in its mildest form, it's still no fun to play against. He only breaks it out if we request it or if he feels particularly slighted after a row of losses and needs to take it out on someone.
@@Xylarxcode That's basically the same use case this one will have, I'll only bust it out if people agree to have a grindy, miserable game for the hell of it. Because it can be kinda fun to try and break through a massive stonewall of stax and taxes just due to how brutal those decks can get. But I certainly won't be dropping it on the table during random chill games, that's for sure.
I'm basically just repeating what I put in another comment, but thought it might be worth mentioning if your friend enjoys prison decks.
I've been into this little-known (apparently) format that's based off of the "old" Extended format. The card pool is Invasion block > Alara block, 7th Ed. > 10th Ed., and Coldsnap.
I've been running a prison deck that seems particularly powerful in that format, based off of the old "Tezzerator" prison deck from the '08-'09 Extended seasons. It utilizes like 4 outta the 10 cards on this list, and the version I'm tuning uses 5 lol. Maybe encourage your friend to look into the format, it'd be cool if it caught on (although it's fairly niche I think).
As a fellow GAAIV player, all I can say is: Derevi is better. It can cheat on commander tax and can manipulate Winter Orb by hersels.
Video idea: Best and worst card representing the same character. E.g. Strongest and weakest Niz-Mizzet or Chandra.
It would let you start talking about the characters of MTG.
Worth noting that Magus of the Moon tends to actually be better than Blood Moon vs green decks like Amulet Titan (which are the main matchups it’s good against). It’s far easier and more efficient for those decks to remove an enchantment than a creature, which has made Magus more popular than moon in many sideboards lately.
funny enough, some years ago, when Lightning Bolt still reigned supreme in modern, it used to be the other way around! Now with boseiju being played more in decks that lose to moon, the magus is more popular
Stasis and Winter Orb for me, mostly because they were the first stax pieces I ever ran into.
Aye, same here. Winter Orb limits you to untapping 1 land a turn and static orb restrictions you untapping 2 cards a turn. I get that 1v1 formats tend to be far slimmer and faster than say Commander, but how the heck such powerful and crippling pieces of stax that slowed the game play of your opponent right down is not listed here is beyond me.
Weird not to see cards like Winter Orb or, most of all, Smokestack mentioned.
I mean, we are talking about the card that gave this effects their name.
If nothing else it should be on the list for historic reasons.
I’m totally with you. Disclaimer for the next part of this, I mainly play EDH and have a strong opinion on what I consider tax vs stax. With that said I feel like this list includes both Tax and Stacks card. Including cards like Thorn of Amethyst, Trinisphere, and Tax Thalia are great to mention and are amazing at slowing down the game, but they feel much more like tax effects than stax effects. This list is missing some of the iconic and hated hard stax cards which can completely kill any semblance of tempo if made asymmetric e.g cards like Winter Orb, Stasis, or Smokestacks.
Some cards I was half expecting to see on the list from an EDH perspective was a lot of the popular white hate/stax cards, Dranith Magistrate, Archon of Emeria, Deafening Silence, Aven Mindcensor, etc.
@@firespirit8026 as someone that primarily plays stax. Technically speaking, the definition of a stax piece is just 'a card with an effect that denies resources'. It's a broad term, if magic decks were animals and we were to classify them through taxonomy, stax would be the genus, and there would be multiple species in that genus. Tax would be one of those species, cards that tap down resources would be another species, cards that remove resources like 'Smokestack', would be a third, and cards that outright ban a resource like 'Drannith Magistrate' and 'Silverquill Silencer', would be yet another species within the genus of 'stax'.
As to cards I'm sad didn't get on this list are those 'hidden stax' cards. Cards that don't really strike people as a stax piece upfront, or are even forgotten about in the conversation because they're generically useful in many archtypes or usually listed under a different type of card. 'Bojuka Bog', both 'Liesa, Shroud of Dusk' and 'Liesa, Forgotten Archangel' (who by the by is stupidly powerful as the commander in a creature heavy Orzhov stax), 'Drana and Linvala', 'Containment Priest', 'Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite', 'Damping Sphere', 'Ashes of the Abhorrent', 'Smothering Tithe' (because everyone always sees it as Ramp), 'Rhysic Study' (always lumped in as card draw), 'Opposition Agent', 'Uba Mask' (which is uniquely fun and asymmetrical with Drannith Magistrate out) and so on.
Special shout-out to Yasharn, Implacable Earth: the card that let's you go: "Yeah, all those Treasures, Clues, Food, and Blood Tokens you have? That fetchland you just played? Yeah, you can ignore those; they won't do anything while I'm around."
"Mighty fine lookin Oven ya got there. Whats it for?"
Yasharn
This is the one I've been waiting for. Because, like other few, I have a Stax addiction.
✨✨I’m sorry✨✨
We need to start a special, self-help group...we can call it "Prison Decks Anonymous".
I really appreciate that you add the "This card is legal in: [formats]" Even if I'm kind of an experienced MTG player, it's nice to see in case one of these cards gives me a random bug of deckbuilding lmao
Thank you for the content. :)
In early MH2 modern, I would run Meddling Mage in Domain/Cascade Zoo. The most common removal spells are so well known and seen everywhere that knowing your opponent's colors is a good indicator of their removal. A Turn 2 Mage into a Turn 3 Scion of Draco often made it unkillable. That was before more decks started using Fury, which made Mage less viable in my build. Still, I loved using it and hope I can find another deck to use it in.
I do believe you are forgetting the one card the entire genre is based on and has part of the name in it as well.
Smokestack from Urza's Saga is a 4-cost Artifact with the ability that puts a spot counter on it during your upkeep and that each player sacrifices a permanent for each soot counter on Smokestack during their upkeep step. Another ability to make this card cancerous is proliferate, being able to multiply the counters before another players upkeeps is outright venomous!
Usually smokestack doesn't want to go past 1 counter because you'll have to sacrifice it yourself, but it can be handy if you have another smokestack in hand to eat up your opponents board to lock them under a sphere effect.
I've seen a few people citing Smokestack, and all of them leave out a very important word. 'May'. Smokestack is not a 'you must put a soot counter on it during your upkeep', it is a 'you may put a soot counter'. And while it is fun, typically you don't want to put more than one or two counters on it unless you are making a lot of throwaway tokens, or have some way to continually recur sacrificed permanents, otherwise it becomes hard even for a stax deck to play around. Like, I run it in my cEDH deck, because the commander is Liesa, Forgotten Archangel, sure I can sacrifice two or three cheap creatures, they're just coming back to my hand, that offsets a higher soot counter count, but if I wasn't, I wouldn't run it, or would keep the counters really low so it isn't affecting me much, but that downside is it's not being as impactful.
Neat analysis video! Thanks for uploading!
Good old duel logs getting me back into old card games I used to play
Bruh, just today told my playgroup I don't own stax decks yet and begun building one around Zedruu as a commander, and you decide to upload the perfect list for me to inspect the same day
Wow, a video on how to get an entire tournament to kick my ass, gee thanks mister!
several other cards you forgot to mention include the whole archtype's namesake "Smoke Stack, as well as Chains of Mephistophes (screws up draws, especially after a well timed Hymn or Mind Twist), or even the classic Stasis and Arcane Laboratory as well as another classic slow down card Tangle Wire.
Stax is used here in the modern, broader sense of the term, as « whatever impedes your opponent from playing normally ».
A bunch of cards in this list wouldn’t be good in a dedicated Stax list, and are merely death&taxes pieces and other similar cards that don’t entirely lock games up, but buy a lot of time against opponents who « can’t draw the freaking answer » while you slap them down with a bunch of Standard creatures.
I’m looking forward to reading the comment section of the « Top 10 Tempo cards ».
Videos like these repeatedly remind me how misunderstood the term "Stax" really is.
Finally, some help with my commander decklist.
Surprised to see winter orb not being on the list, or stasis
Or smokestack the namesake of stax at all.
Or static orb
I probably would have mentioned that your #1 stax piece is so strong that it is also on the restricted list in Vintage.
Enjoy all your videos, by the way! I already know everything you're discussing, but I still enjoy watching anyway. I suppose that's a testament to how high-quality and fun to watch your videos are!
One trivial thing: Typographical errors. Here and there. (Nothing consequential.) In this particular video, I noticed two. Your work seems like it's very polished/professional, which tells me you are at least somewhat of a perfectionist about it. And that just seems totally at odds with having careless typographical errors like reversed letters on your final versions of videos you publish. Just my thoughts. (It's not like I have anything to critique about the substance, as that is fantastic.)
Those sorts of errors are very common on both this channel and the other one. He has multiple video editors who actually put the videos together, and they seem to have varying levels of quality control between them...
@@kennyrichardson3842 I'm sure there's some explanation for it. Like I said though, I'm really just nitpicking, most people probably don't even notice such things.
Surprised Winter Orb didn't at least get mentioned.
I've been into a little-known community-driven format that is based off of the "old" Extended format, before Wizards changed it, and it was ultimately replaced entirely (by Modern). The card pool consists of Invasion block up through Alara block, 7th through 10th Editions, and Coldsnap.
The deck I've taken to using, and have been putting a ton of work into, is based off of the Tezzerator deck (the one that Kenny Öberg Top 8'd a Pro Tour with in 2008). It's a prison deck, and funnily enough utilizes 5 out of the 10 cards on this list hahaha (those being Chalice, Ensnaring Bridge, Trinisphere, Meddling Mage, and Blood Moon).
No wonder people hate me 😓😓😓 lol
Ouphe> Stoney Silence and Blood Moon>Magnes of the Moon .... Got it :D
I like Rule of Law. "No, you can't play storm. Other combo decks are going to look a lot worse too." Making the game grindy for all is what Stax likes to do. I use activated and triggered abilities to break the symmetry.
Stax in MTG: a mild annoyance from just one asshole friend
Floodgates in YGO: "Monkeyflipper, no brained, stalling ass...."
Wall Stalls in PkmnTCG: "Sure, I'll use my Pokemon Catcher and hope for the best."
Absolutly amazing like alwais,thanks!
Ethersworn Canonist is pretty fridge these days, it was basically made obsolete by Deafening Silence in Legacy and Archon of Emeria in vintage which essentially hate out the same things
> Ensnaring Bridge
Damn Mystic Mine stun is also alive in MTG.
id love to see a top ten life gain cards!
Wassuppp Sphinx's Revelation and Tendrils of Corruption w/ Urborg boost!!!
todo: consider these for my deck.
My Jodah deck really appreciates Thalia being Standard atm. Creature control spells are the bane of Legendary Humans (plus Ratadrabick) and they're the only Legendary at 4.
I'm surprised you did not include smokestack. The original card for which stax decks get their name 😂
I have seen a bunch of comments about Smokestack not being on this list but I feel there are a few reasons its not on the list. Firstly it has been many years since it has been a relevant card in any format (despite how much I have tried) so its not really something to put on a top 10 list at this point. Also while yes it is where we get the name from it functions very differently than other cards we now think of as stax pieces. Making people sacrifice things does sort of restrict access to resources it does so very differently than the cards on this list.
Having said that, I do think it could have been on the list or at least mentioned just do to its iconic status and then maybe a mention about how the game has moved past it.
Also I think Back to Basics, Choke, Defense Grid, Sphere of Resistance, Damping Sphere, Leonin Arbiter, Opposition Agent, Hullbreacher, Aven Mindcensor, Stony Silence, Narset Parter of Veils, Leovold Emisary of Trest, Gaddok Tieg, and Suppression Field are all cards that I think could replace cards on this list in the right meta and other honorable mentions would be Chains of Mephistophiles, Stasis, Tanglewire, and Nether Void as they are very powerful but dont really have a home and havent for quite sometime outside of memes. Glowrider and Wryn Wingmare both see some vintage play in occasion but are just worse thalia but maybe could be mentioned in that slot. If you branched out to include cards like Smokestack, the Abyss, Tainted Aether, and Doom Fortold come to mind as the latter actually had some decent standard success. At least for 60 card formats those are the ones that are on the top of my head.
Chalice: "I win"
Proliferate: "Bonjour"
Maybe you could make a video going over the strongest card in each format, or videos going over the top 10 strongest cards in a format. Like top 10 strongest cards in Pauper, Commander, Vintage, etc.
If you do a follow-up and dip a little bit more into commander then Drannith Magistrate needs to be on the list for how it can basically turn off a key feature in a format.
It also stops some interesting mechanics like Cascade and use to, and to some extent still can, enable some of the hardest game locks to break with cards like Knowledge Pool, Omen Machine,
and Uba Mask.
Smokestack and its lil cousin Tangle Wire are good in the kinds of Stax decks that can flood the board with mana artifacts or tokens so they punish / lock down your opponent more than you. Play both and stack the triggers however you like on every upkeep!
Lodestone Golem is a finisher in the fast mana decks; wrecks combo, creatures, and anyone who plays free spells
It's a fine point, but I would have put those over Meddling Mage and the artifact hate, which are more "focused" disruption than how classic Stax wants to invalidate as much of your opponent's stuff as quickly and proactively as possible. Mb call the list Prison cards instead?
One thing I like about a Yugioh player making these is how you sometimes highlight a card's availability to tutors, which is more relevant in Yugioh and less relevant in "newer" formats
Unrelated question: do you pronounce it "Green Sun's Zénith" or "Green Sun's Zeenith"?
Hirumaredx? I’d recognize that voice anywhere 👀
Thorn reprint 🥳
Love the concept, but hate to play against it🤣🤣🤣
before the artifact block power crept enchantments, there was Aura Flux, enchantments have upkeep 2
Hey, as a total mtg noob who's trying to get into the game I can't really understand how chalice of the void works, it's xx mana to cast it so does it mean you could pay 3 mana (2 and 1) to cast it? If so, do you choose how many counters chalice gets? Can you choose to pay no mana at all and it will still counter 0 cost mana artifacts even though it won't have any counter on itself? I'm so lost on how this card works
XX means you have pay double the amount to get one effect out of the card. In the case of the Chalice, for it to come in with 1 counter, you need to pay 2 mana. If you want it to come with 2 counters, you need 4 mana and so on.
I never thought of attempting to cast Chalice with odd mana total, but if I am remembering the rules correctly, you will not be allowed to spend odd mana to play the Chalice under NORMAL situations. For X spells, you need to declare the mana you will put in to get X effect... but since there are 2, any amount you declare would double. Only in situations where a "tax" card is in play (i.e Thorn of Amethyst, which was the t#10 card of this list that adds 1 additional mana for noncreature spells) can you pay odd mana to play Chalice
Also, as far as I remember, you CAN play Chalice without paying mana, declaring Zero as the cost. It would then be able to counter spells with mana cost 0... which also includes creatures summoned as "Morph" creatures (in case you don't know: Morph is an ability for some cards to be played as a 2/2 colorless creature for 3 generic mana. These cards are considered to have 0 mana value. They generally have an ability to "flip" themselves up, the cost of which is printed on the card. When these creatures are temporarily removed from play, they come back as their face up versions)
These are how I remember Chalice would interact, based on your questions. Hopefully, someone who has more recent experience can correct me. I played with the card back in its original printing about 10 years ago so there might be rule changes with this card that I am not aware of any more
@@bluedestiny2710 i can't thank you enough, your explanation is very thorough and it really helped me grasping the concept of a xx mana value card (I didn't know about morph cards, I've been googling almost daily all the keywords I've encountered in cards and I'm still baffled on how many there are in the game)
Wish you a good day and thank you again
@@_Bailamme_ Magic has a LOT of keyword abilities... while MOST cards will explain what these keywords would do, cards with a text box full of text won't... so getting familiar with them will help you.
Oh also, with XX costed spells, there are 2 more things you may need to note:
- While rare, there are some XX spells with alternate cost. Right now, I am aware of one named "Empty the Graves", where it has Delve.
Delve is an alternate way to pay mana for the spell. Instead of paying mana, you remove 1 card (exile) from your graveyard to pay 1 colorless mana to the total cost of your spell. I will use an easier example: Tombstalker. It is a 5/5 creature with flying and delve and costs BB5. You can cast this spell by paying 2 Black Mana, and then you can have any combination of paying 1 mana or exiling a card from your graveyard to pay for the remaining 5. So you can, for example, pay BB, 2 colorless mana, and exile 3 cards from your grave to summon this card.
Now, for XX spells, banishing 1 card only pays for 1 of those Xs... the other X can be paid by 1 mana or exiling 1 card from your grave.
While the card is considered terrible and I didn't see decks running it, there might be XX spells with Delve or other alternate cost in the future. I am guessing some XX spells would have the Convoke alternate cost ... as some regular X spells have it.
Convoke is an alternate cost where you can tap a creature instead of paying mana for a spell. For each creature you tap, you pay for 1 colorless mana cost OR a colored mana if the creature tapped shares a color with it. Another example: Arboretum Elemental. It is a 7/5 green creature with hexproof and convoke but it costs a whopping GG7 (9 mana) to cast. To pay for that 9 mana, you tap 5 lands and 4 creatures. If you tapped 2 green creatures, you can also pay for that GG in the cost so if you don't have green mana available, you can still summon this.
- Some XX spells will ask for an additional cost when you play them. In MOST cases, the additional cost will only require half of the mana you spent to cast it. Example: Recall is a blue sorcery card that costs UXX... then, you discard X cards from your hand to select X cards from your graveyard and add it to your hand... then you exile Recall from the game. This card will NOT ask you to discard 2 cards from your hand for each card you want to recover from your graveyard
- Finally, when I checked the database, apparently there now exists XXX cards! I have no experience using these, but im guessing they just now costs 3 for each 1 effect you want it to do. Crackle with Power is a red sorcery that costs RRXXX, and its effect reads: this card deals 5 times X damage to each of up to X targets. This means that by paying the minimum cost of RR3, you will deal 5x1 damage to 1 target, If you paid RR6, this card deals 5x2 damage to up to 2 targets (so if there's only 1 target, its ok. If it doesn't say "up to"... you need exact number of targets) ... and then if you generate RR9, this card deals 5x3 damage to up to 3 targets.
On an unrelated note: this card is now triggering my PTSD when I failed math in high school twice O.O
You can pay nothing and then it counters all zero mana spells.
@@bluedestiny2710 This is correct, mostly, the intent is there, but the words are not quite correct in one particular spot. You are correct that in a mana cost of XX like Chalice (or even XXX on some newer cards), if you declare X=1, you pay 1 for each X, so you will never play a Chalice with an odd mana cost without a tax or a reduction. As is your assumption on X=0. Chalice can be played for X=0, and will counter spells with a mana value of 0.
Now the part where you had the right intent but not the right words. Chalice counters based on mana value, not a mana cost. Force of Will can have a mana cost of 0 by exiling a blue card and paying one life, but it retains the mana value of 5, and would not be countered by an X=0 chalice. Alternate casting costs (excluding morph), along with taxes or reductions, do not change the mana value. Mana cost is the total amount of mana used to play the card, mana value is always the sum of the printed cost on the top right, as printed, and mana value is what chalice counters.
Morph is a special case for mana value, and is the only alternative casting cost that creates a mana value of 0, and this is because the rules clearly define face down cards as having a mana value of 0. So when you play a card with morph, using the morph cost, because you a creating a face down card, chalice will see it as having mana value of 0, instead of the mana value of the front side. Mana cost can be changed, mana value is unchanging.
Additionally, when determining mana value, any X in the printed value of the card is a zero for the purposes of determining the card's mana value. So a X=0 chalice, will counter another chalice being played, regardless of how much mana is paid for X, because Chalice's mana value is 0.
I love that Smokestack didn't even make the list.
Anyone knows why the intro is bugged out? AM I the only one who has that problem?
"Cards that do things other than restrict your opponent don't count". I suspect this was largely to exclude the Praetors and WAR planeswalkers. WAR Teferi, Narset, and Ashiok all do stax things as well as every Phyrexian Praetor and many would place high on this sort of list
If I play Tabernacle of the Pendrell Vale and Blood Moon can I tap Tabernacle for mana? Also surprised to not see Sphere of Safety in here; it's one of my favorites especially if you're running a lot of enchantments.
Yes. Tabernacle becomes a mountain and loses all abilities. So Blood Moon shuts off the Tabernacle's 'pay one for each creature or sac' while also making it produce red mana.
I think I've got an idea that would be good. Top 10 Mana Swarm Cards. These cards are the ones that pull mana out of the library and put it in your hand or on your field with the greatest efficiency or in the largest numbers.
It is usually called ramp
1: Tempt with Discovery
My friends got PISSED when I flipped a blood moon in a 5 color only commander game… they didn’t know that i had only basic lands JUST to play bloodmoon
Why did WotC errata Tabernacle to say "destroy" instead of "sacrifice", even if a creature with this exact effect isn't errata'd?
the original wording from Legends says destroy
Another banger a video 💯
Damping Sphere is amazing against combo decks. Why it isn't on this list?
Linvala, Keeper of Silence is the only stax piece I play
Thorn of Amethyst is actually being reprinted in Brothers War
Alternative Title: Top 10 cards that'll garuntee you have no friends
Agree with everything on list but meddling mage. I think spirit of the labyrinth/containment priest/narset/hullbreacher are stronger.
You forgot three cards:
Winter Sphere (players can only untap one land per turn)
Static Orb (players can only untap two permanents per turn)
Solemnity.
Solemnity stops the following from getting counters of any sort from being applied to them while the other item is on the battlefield:
Artifacts
Creatures
Enchantments
Lands
Players
That last one shuts down Poison Counter decks and Aether Counter decks (from Kaladesh block).
Basically, it means that the only things on the battlefield that can get counters are Planeswalkers.
If you get lucky, you can even use it to shut down the Chalice by getting it out first.
I think. If not, and cards that say they enter with counters on them can bypass it, then it sucks, but Solemnity can still shut down decks that rely on counters on stuff other than Planeswalkers.
Who are writing these? I know it is not the person reading considering how many names he gets wrong. Though maybe that would also explain missing something as obvious as including Smokestacks…where the archetype gets its name…
I'm looking to make a new Gaddock Teeg edh deck to make everyone hate me. I used to have one and it was good but now I'm such a better player with several years under my belt instead of one year.
Quick mention: the name "Stax" comes from the card "Smokestack", another horrifying resource-denial piece.
I will say that this list skews a lot heavier on newer cards and misses out on a fair few Stax pieces that have achieved infamy, like Winter Orb/Static Orb and Stasis.
I disagree with Ouphe being the most useful of artifact shutdown as it is only limited to decks in green while Null Rod can be put into any deck like you said. However i would not skip out on Karn, the Great Creator as he only shuts down your opponents artifacts not yours meaning it is way more useful plus his +1 ability basically kills any 0 cost artifact while his -2 you can add any artifact from your sideboard to your hand, his utility is so great he is restricted in Vintage unlike Null Rod or Ouphe
And if i really wanted to pull what you did for Ouphe to say it is the best card that shuts down artifacts, black can search for anything not just creatures meaning Karn would be the best one instead as he also offers you so much value not just in a game of commander but all formats it is legal in so much that again it is restricted to 1 in vintage.
Like Karn, the Great Creator came out in 2019 it's by no means a newer card that you would not have heard of as the video by the time of this comment is a year old. Like Karn, the Great Creator should be on the list as it just offers so much value other than shutting down the enemy and if we are talking competitive here as MOSTLY everyone plays fast mana rocks so it could mean win or lose in 1v1 formats if Karn resolves as you immediately grinded them to a halt so you can search for your combo and win. Or if you want to use the rest of your fast mana cast a Mycosynth Lattice that way they are just locked out, which you can keep the card in your wishboard so Karn can grab it when you resolve him
I honestly think stax cards that offers more value other than shutting down your opponents or taxing them are inherently way better especially if you can easily slot them into any deck even if it is a non stax deck like Karn, the Great Creator
To have a competitive stax deck is not simply to establish a lock fast before the other person or people if in multiplayer wins but also to win fast, as stax decks are slow and there are a lot of annoying people that when they see a lock won't just say "Ok you win let's just shuffle up and play another game" as they wanna run the clock especially in tournaments. Stax gets so much hate outside of competitive as people either don't run removal or just don't know when to give up when there is a literal lock on the game and pretty much the Stax player won as you are just passing turns to their wincon with nothing you can do
Please do top 10 commons (Pauper Legal).
Can someone explain #10 to me, why is thorn better than sphere? Surely making everything cost 1 more makes more sense. Or is the advantage that you can build your deck to not be affected.
The latter. Asymmetrical stax is the best kind, as you can get ahead while your opponent falls behind. Thorn, with the right deck, can be basically asymmetrical.
Cards like Welder etc make Thorn way worse for your opponent than for you.
14:03 not to mention it'll completely shut down pretty much 99% of Elf decks
I see, so this is the MTG's equivalent of YGO's flood gates.
Pretty much.
I honestly find it absurd that game designers (not just Magic R&D but also video game devs and to a slightly lesser extent board game designers) so frequently make game elements that are designed to outright prevent an opponent from playing the game at all - it’s like they don’t ever play with it themselves. Like, how am I supposed to have fun if I don’t even get to play the game?
Honestly, even from a balance perspective it makes no sense when you consider mental space as a resource. Part of the game’s difficulty comes in allocating that between making a game plan work and responding to your opponent’s actions, but by having things that effectively pre-empt the latter en masse you suddenly free all that up.
I’ve thought about this a bunch, actually, and I’ve noticed a correlation between the volume of game elements like these in a given game and the tendency of that game’s community to have toxicity problems. On one end you have Euro games heavy in indirect player interactions and extremely low in player-to-player attack mechanics (I don’t generally hear many complaints about toxicity in communities centered around something like, say, feast for Odin) and on the other you have battle games like League where your entire strategy tends to revolve around preventing opponents from being able to play the game (and I think that community needs no further comment). And that’s not even to say that PvP battle games are all like that - take Super Smash Bros where respawns are instant and stun durations are (relatively) brief, or Twilight Imperium where you generally have to invest so much to attack another player in the early game that it isn’t worth doing straight up when there is at least one additional player who can capitalize.
IDK what my point is except “stax pieces bad” and you can feel free to disagree but this is what I’ve observed.
And to people who say that these elements are “necessary to counter certain otherwise broken strategies” they should be reminded that said otherwise broken strategies are also elements the designers introduced; this doesn’t make them necessary so much as a band-aid fix and an honestly pretty lazy one.
Am I the bad guy for running Lodestone Golem and Thorn of Amethyst together?
No, you're a man of culture.
Hey Duellogs, sorry to be the party pooper but i noticed a lot of spelling mistakes in your videos recently. I know you produce a lot more videos( with other TGC), but a better quality control would be nice. I mean the videos will stay forever and to write "fomrats" right is not to difficult. Love your Videos! Keep the good work up.
I have a copy of #3
Roblox making an appearance in this video was not expected
11:00 Thalia is legal in standard.
Tabernacle is once again a "destroy" effect as it was always intended. Why did WotC ever errata it to a "sacrifice" effect that one time? It added so much needless confusion. :s
I think they were trying to do what they would do had the card been printed now.
Fomrats at 5:57
Ah, a list of things for me to kill on sight in commander
I have had A LOT of fun locking my opponent out of swinging with Sphere of Safety
🌈 ancient tomb mana
where would Mystic Mine fall on the list?
I just want to find every card that makes things more to cast
where is defense grid?
fomrats and artifcats
No mention of the card "Smokestack" which is the card the word "stax" is derived from. sad.
putting Trinisphere in slot 4 was a wasted opportunity.
The text you have on Tabernacle is incredibly wrong
No Smokestacks?
Outclassed
@@fernandobanda5734 That is a pity. I still remember being obliterated by that card.
7:26 It's just "at".
There's no "of the" before Pendrell Vale.
If I had to guess, the script writer made the mixup, because "magus of the tabernacle".
Maybe it's me not playing in forever but
....
No love for Stasis?
Microsynth latice, but i guess its not just one card
💎🙏💙
Where's my favorite card, Stasis?
Top 10 Worst Mana Dorks
I hope this doesn't come off as rude, but the amount of spelling and grammar mistakes in the captions here is very distracting. Usually it is only a few per video, but here it feels like a few per entry
Tell me more things you read on discord
Like 8 out of 10 of these aren't stax. Hell, the video didn't even mention Smokestack, the definitive stax card. Most of these are just hate cards, calling them stax is misleading and ridiculous.
Playing against stax in 2022: oh no my opponent played a 2/2 that's slightly annoying to my strategy!
Playing against stax in 1999: I literally have no permanents
So floodgates.
Honestly I think Back to Basics is nastier than Blood Moon.
Stax list with out actual stax on it lol