“There is no teacher but the enemy. No one but the enemy will ever tell you what the enemy is going to do. No one but the enemy will ever teach you how to destroy and conquer. Only the enemy shows you where you are weak. Only the enemy tells you where he is strong. And the rules of the game are what you can do to him and what you can stop him from doing to you. I am your enemy from now on.” – Mazer Rackham, “Ender’s Game”
I’ve been working on Stax in Legacy for over a year. The original builds used all the two-mana lands and Mox Diamond, trying and power out Sphere of Resistance or Chalice of the Void for one on turn 1, then follow up with a Smokestack as soon as possible. Those builds did not have enough gas, and tended to fold to Aggro or strong Control strategies.
Interest renewed with Christopher Coppola (Machinus)’s White Stax, and when Stephen Menendian built his Flame Vault Stax deck. Grand Prix: Philidelphia was a disappointment for Prison decks. Outside of the Top 8 there were a handful, but none like either expected build. Peter Olszewski (Diceman) ended up behind at Philly after a draw with his old-school Prison deck, and Rich Shay (The Atog Lord) put two people into the Top 32 with his combo-style Fusillade deck running Stasis as an extra tool. Stephen Menendian opted not to play Flame Vault Stax.
I saw merits in all three lists, but none were optimal. I decided to build what I humbly called “Flame Vault: Evolution,” the ultimate Time Vault plus Flame Fusillade deck. I included the maximum setup for the combo (4 Time Vault, 4 Burning Wish, 3/1 Flame Fusillade, and 1 Fabricate in the board) and devoted the rest of the deck to playing a crushing offense that could also stall until the combo came online.
My original list:
3 Bloodstained Mire
3 Flooded Strand
2 Volcanic Island
6 Island
2 Mountain
4 Ancient Tomb
2 City of Traitors
4 Wasteland
3 Mox Diamond
4 Time Vault
3 Flame Fusillade
4 Burning Wish
4 Stasis
4 Smokestack
4 Crucible of Worlds
4 Propaganda
4 Trinisphere
Sideboard
1 Flame Fusillade
1 Echoing Ruin
1 Reconstruction
1 Overmaster
1 Meltdown
4 Pyroclasm
1 Flashfires
1 Fabricate
4 Red Elemental Blast
Several people simultaneously argued in favor of draw spells like Brainstorm. Instead, I put in three Sensei’s Divining Tops to improve the deck’s draws with a lighter Blue mana requirement. After testing against Goblins, the Tops were cut to two because the deck cannot afford to slow down and waste mana. When I overhauled the manabase on Menendian’s urging, the Tops came out for the fourth Burning Wish (which was cut for a Top originally) and the fourth Mox Diamond. I found that having the third maindeck Flame Fusillade is not as important in Aggro matchups as having four Propaganda and four Stasis, so the third Fusillade became a fourth Propaganda, leaving me with the following list:
Lands (26)
Spells (34)
There’s some dispute over a handful of the sideboard slots. I’m dubious at the one Rolling Earthquake instead of the fourth Pyroclasm, since it’s strictly inferior versus Goblins, but it has the potential to be crushing against Threshold and Affinity. I don’t have enough testing to state conclusively whether Rolling Earthquakes should be zero, one, or two. If you want, make it a Pyroclasm.
Flashfires is in the sideboard, in case you run into heavy White-based Control decks. Flashfires is a simple “game over” against such decks, and still gives you a serious edge against Rifter or something similar. If you need the sideboard space, cut the Flashfires.
The other question is Red Elemental Blast versus Disrupt. Disrupt is good against Control decks, but Red Elemental Blast ultimately seems better. I would never bring in Red Elemental Blast versus Threshold, so the real issue with the slot is usefulness against Control. Disrupt is aimed at combating B/W Confidant, but that deck is losing popularity anyway. The main problem is that in order to use Disrupt, you need to play Islands on your early turns and hold mana open instead of playing spells. If you take that approach, you will never win the matchup. If you really want a card to board in against B/W Confidant, use Sphere of Resistance. The matchup where you want help is versus Blue-based Control decks: against those, Red Elemental Blast is a much more efficient choice.
If you’ve seen my build of the deck before, you’ll notice there’s been some dramatic changes in the manabase. Stephen Menendian spent some time on the TheManaDrain.com boards convincing me of the effectiveness of a full set of Mox Diamond, City of Traitors, and Crystal Vein. He was right. The old manabase was forced to play too many slow hands, and lost because it ran too many basic Islands that only tap for one mana. In the current Legacy environment you cannot afford to wait until turn 4 to play Smokestack. Now, you can almost always mulligan a hand without a significant play on turn 1 or 2.
Next, I give you some alternate card choices. The first pair are Winter Orb and Tangle Wire. Winter Orb is a strong anti-Control card, and it’s worth looking at if your metagame is dominated by such. It’s a natural swap for the Propaganda, but it doesn’t do enough against Aggro, especially without Tangle Wire.
Tangle Wire got cut from this build because Stasis just seems one hundred times better. Tangle Wire does not do enough when you’re staring down an alpha strike, especially without Propaganda. Tangle Wire does, however, make it easier to establish a hard lock with Time Vault, if you have a Winter Orb to go with it. Tangle Wire also makes you skip your next turn because you never have enough permanents to keep playing through. It makes your other lock components better, but not as well as Stasis.
The real card you ought to consider is Transmute Artifact. It takes a much stronger Blue commitment and might force you to drop Red altogether, but Fusillade is not absolutely essential to the deck. It helps, but it is compensated by the ability to turn excess lock components into Smokestacks and Time Vaults. Transmute Artifact has two downsides: it requires a lot of Blue mana — slowing you down — and it makes you more vulnerable to removal and countermagic. I don’t think it’s the right card at this time, but it’s something to consider.
What the heck does the deck do?
The basic premise is to stop your opponent from doing anything relevant… ever. The easy way to do this is to combo Time Vault with Flame Fusillade to win before your opponent ever sets up. The more difficult way is to set up a hard lock so your opponent cannot deal you twenty before they deck themselves. This is difficult. Your deck burns resources frantically in order to lock down your opponent’s ability to play spells, and it is very important that you know the kinds of answers they will be bringing to the table. Especially when you sit back on a Time Vault “lock” it’s important to know whether you have a dedicated lock. This means knowing the kinds of decks and answers you can expect to face.
The best way you lock your opponent out of the game is to ramp a Smokestack at two or three soot counters, and skip all your turns with Time Vault until your opponent decks. Only do this if you have an actual lock and that they have no way to stop it. Goblins without maindeck Pithing Needle cannot stop it. In some matchups, you need to add Trinisphere to the board first to make sure they cannot generate mana with Moxen and Dark Ritual. Trinisphere guarantees that the opponent cannot generate three mana in one turn, but it adds another condition for the lock. Once that is in place, activate Time Vault and skip a turn. Repeat until they run out of cards.
Okay… that’s half the way the deck plays. The rest of the deck is based around slowing your opponent and generating an advantageous board position. Once you gain the advantage against another deck, you tend to keep that advantage, and winning will often just happen.
“Oops, I ramped Smokestack to three and topdecked Time Vault with a Stasis in play. Sorry.”
The key is learning how to use Time Vault correctly.
Example 1: I had a Time Vault out in a game against another Stax player, and he played a Tangle Wire. We both had less than four permanents on the board. I skipped my turn, and he was completely locked under the Wire during both his turns. I took two turns in a row when the Wire was at three fading counters, making land drops on each one and playing lock components. Then I played a Smokestack, and won.
Example 2: Against Tog at Grand Prix: Philadelphia, Rich Shay used Time Vault to skip a turn at his opponent’s end step. The Tog player tapped out for a Fact or Fiction, and Rich used the Vault to take the turn he’d skipped against a tapped out Control player.
Example 3: You play Stasis and Time Vault, and maintain Stasis for as long as you can to stall your opponent out. On the last turn, skip a turn with Time Vault, and then take your regular turn. Let Stasis die, and then take your extra turn. Now you get the first untap instead of your opponent, and you should be able to put forth a devastating offense.
Your games against Aggro decks are relatively very simple. If you have a Time Vault in play, you want to combo off with Flame Fusillade as soon as possible. If you don’t, you need to concentrate on managing your life total until you find a Time Vault or a Smokestack. You have several potent anti-Aggro tools, but the best is Stasis. You can infinitely maintain a Stasis with a Crucible of Worlds and a Smokestack at one.
Also, Propaganda is a great tool against Aggro. It has a powerful synergy with Stasis, Smokestack, Wasteland, and Trinisphere. Without Propaganda in play, Aggro decks can swing for six or more damage each turn, but Propaganda forces them to choose between making guys and turning them sideways. Either way, they are forced to slow their offense, giving you time to set up a lock. Since Aggro decks have fewer outs to your strategy and rely on killing you first, it’s easy to lock them out of attacking you. If you don’t ever get any lands, they cannot pay Propaganda. Propaganda makes the Aggro deck play honestly; without Propaganda they can sacrifice all their lands to Smokestack, make guys out of Aether Vial and swing in regardless of what you do.
Playing versus Goblins
Pre-board, you’re slightly behind versus Goblins
It’s hard to predict what Goblins can board for you. Versions with Pithing Needle or Price of Progress are worse for you. Expect modern builds to have more creatures to beat the mirror and Threshold, and fewer Disenchants as Engineered Plague does not have the presence people expect.
Sideboarding:
-3 Trinisphere
+2 Pyroclasm
+1 Rolling Earthquake
Your games against Goblins take one of the following forms.
- You win easily when you combo off with Time Vault and Flame Fusillade before they can kill you, or when you get down a lot of early disruption.
- You win in the games where you stall for a long time with Propaganda and Stasis.
- You lose every other game.
An exceptionally fast Goblins draw is dangerous, but unlike other decks in the format, you can race it. Because of your Ancient Tombs, even a slow Goblins draw is still dangerous to you, so the impetus is on the Stax player to act, not the Goblins player.
Aether Vial is a very bad card. Both Aether Vial and Goblin Lackey let your opponent make Goblins without mana, allowing them to circumvent Propaganda and Trinisphere. Propaganda is, obviously, key. Goblins can race Smokestack by sacrificing their lands, and using Vial set at three they can play plenty of creatures and swing for the win. Propaganda makes them play honestly by forcing them to pay to swing, and can stunt an Aggro deck’s early growth by forcing them to choose between attacking and playing more creatures. Propaganda neuters Goblin Piledriver by keeping their whole board from attacking. Trinisphere accelerates this process by making each beater cost three instead of one. Goblin decks win by playing a stream of cheap beaters, and simply swinging a few times — Trinisphere and Propaganda stop this plan, especially after you clear the board with Pyroclasm.
The main concern against Goblins? Get a Mox on the table, or keep a fetchland around. Your worst situation has you with Time Vault out and a Flame Fusillade in hand, but unable to produce Red mana due to Rishadan Port abusing your Mountain in your upkeep. Port even gets around Crucible of Worlds, so you have to be ready for it. Goblin’s Wastelands are rarely relevant, but they’re still a threat — play around when you can.
The sideboard brings Pyroclasms — and sometimes the psuedo-Pyroclasm in Rolling Earthquake — to keep the board clear. Be prepared for Pithing Needles naming “Time Vault”. You have an Echoing Ruin in the sideboard to Wish for… but just one. Don’t waste it.
Playing Versus Control
Most pure Control decks have a way to clear the board, whether it is Pernicious Deed, Nevinyrral’s Disk or even Akroma’s Vengeance. The card you fear the most is Nevinyrral’s Disk, because it costs the least and conceivably can come down turn 4 as a stalling tactic. Of the Blue-based Control decks, Landstill is the worst for you because of Disk and maindeck Disenchants. Something like Rifter is not as scary, because they have the same amount of removal as other decks but they do not have psuedo-removal in countermagic. Not having to play against countermagic drastically simplifies your decision tree. Because it is the only deck that has caught on, I’m going to focus on UW(r) Landstill.
The testing initially favors Landstill 60-70%, but this testing was done before I added a Boiling Seas to the sideboard as a Wish target, and overhauled the manabase. Your main losses to Landstill come when they play Nevinyrral’s Disk on turn 4, and counter your Echoing Ruin. You should be able to put enough early pressure down to keep that Disk from wrecking you.
Sideboarding:
-4 Propaganda
+4 Red Elemental Blast/Disrupt
Flame Vault Stax was built with Control decks in mind, and then tuned to have a working game against Goblins. The only path to victory against Control (and Combo) decks is to blow up their lands; neither life total matters, as long as they are both above zero. Either you’re keeping them from playing spells, or they’ve taken control and you are about to lose. Pure Control/Combo is going to ignore every lock component that doesn’t remove mana sources from play. Given time, every Control deck can play through Suppression Field, Trinisphere, Chalice of the Void — as long as you don’t lock out every mana cost — Tangle Wire, and Sphere of Resistance. I call those spells “soft lock components” since they only stall a Control deck. What you need are hard lock components: the cards that actually affect the Control deck’s manabase. These are Boiling Seas, Wasteland, Stasis (since it’s a “permanent” effect), and Smokestack. Crucible of Worlds also counts, because it allows you to permanently limit the Control deck’s expansion by recurring Wastelands.
If you’re playing a Control player who doesn’t have experience in the matchup, they’ll counter every card that seems threatening. They will see Trinisphere as a threat, and they might counter Propaganda, but allow you to play Time Vault and Crucible (even with no Wastelands in sight). You should be able to out-power a Control player who does not know the key to the matchup. If your opponent knows how to play, things get more interesting. You have to use your soft lock components, as both bait and stall mechanisms, to force through a hard lock component.
Here is a hypothetical scenario showing how to play through countermagic, and the value of soft lock components. If you get down a Trinisphere on turn 2, you can play two hard lock components on turn 3 and one of them will get through. Maybe your Crucible gets countered, but Time Vault resolves. That opens up Flame Fusillade as a path to victory, and allows you to play tricks with Stasis. Now you can play Smokestack, let it get countered, and then play Stasis against a tapped out opponent. You stack the turns so you untap first, then… guess what? Whatever you want to cast on that untap turn resolves because of Trinisphere. So why not counter Trinisphere instead?
In the above example, you went to all that trouble to set up a board position where you could get them tapped out and resolve a hard lock component. The Control player will only have about eight counters in total, and will only see two or three easily. If they waste one on Trinisphere, you’ll be able to find two cards that are relevant in the matchup and force the second one through.
Because Landstill depends on Disk so heavily, you want to Burning Wish early either for Echoing Ruin or Boiling Seas. Echoing Ruin is Disk removal, and getting a Boiling Seas will just give you another way to wreck them. The Control player might let something vital stick because they are worried about Boiling Seas.
Playing versus Threshold
You can’t lose.
Seriously.
Every card, except for the lands (and adding Wasteland), represents a threat. Testing by myself, Christopher Coppola (Machinus), and Dan Spero (Bardo) all confirm that this is incredibly lopsided for the Stax player. Okay, it’s somewhat less lopsided for Stax if the Threshold player goes first, but it still favors you.
Sideboarding:
None
The way you win this matchup is by being the Aggro deck. Play as if you’re playing against Landstill, but value Propaganda slightly higher. Because Threshold runs so few mana sources, they scoop to practically any resolved permanent. Threshold wants to put a beater on the board and protect it. When you play Propaganda you force the Threshold deck to decide whether it wants to counter your spells or beat down and ignore your spells. If Threshold lets you goldfish, you will run them over because of their fragile manabase. More likely, the Threshold player is forced to play a controlling game, but the deck can’t actually do that. They end up burning all their cantrips in order to dig for countermagic, and they will eventually fizzle out and lose. This is even worse if you get a Trinisphere on the table. Trinisphere is such a huge kick in the junk to Threshold that they might as well concede immediately. By the time they can get a threat or countermagic up through a Trinisphere (without being able to dig with cantrips) you will have an offense mounted and they will lose.
Playing versus Combo
Percentages depend on build, but you’re definitely favored. This is like playing Control without counters.
Sideboarding:
-4 Propaganda
+4 Red Elemental Blast/Disrupt
or
None
Playing against Combo is like playing against a weird mixture of Control and Threshold. Against most of these builds you have to expect a little countermagic or Duress, and plan mulligans accordingly. Trinisphere is the most important card here, and Wasteland/Crucible of Worlds decreases in value. Once you get Trinisphere down, unless you’re playing against a deck with Elvish Spirit Guides, you have a lot of time to get a kill condition into play… but be wary, because most Combo decks have a Wish into some kind of bounce/removal. Just remember that occasionally you can Combo off ahead of them, and all should be good. You don’t have to worry about stacking things properly with Tangle Wire to prevent High Tide from getting a partial untap step, but you have to remember that if High Tide gets a little mana it can break out of a Stasis soft lock if you don’t apply any pressure.
Why play Stax?
This deck has a few advantages to it that nothing else can claim. The Richmond Duel for Duals metagame is perfect for this deck. If you look at the results from the last Duel for Duals, you can expect a mix of Goblins, and bad Control decks. Since Grand Prix: Lille, Threshold has been the number one deck to beat, and Stax has the best game against Threshold in the format. Flame Vault (Stasis) Stax (Crucible Mox Wish…) stomps all over Threshold, bad Control decks, and bad Combo decks. You split with Goblins. The only decks you’re worried about, decks like B/W Confidant and some builds of Landstill, have completely fallen out of the metagame. Neither of the RGSA players from Richmond in 2005 had enough artifact destruction to scare you; they play a beatdown package instead. The only issue is Burning Wish fetching Seeds of Innocence, but you should be holding back extra artifacts anyway. Pyroclasm and Trinisphere also hurt RGSA because of their over-reliance on Anger and mana elves.
Stax is also an extremely difficult deck, both to play and to play against. Because you’re picking up the deck now, you have time to learn the deck properly. Flame Vault Stax is the deck that best allows a player to use their knowledge and playskill against their opponent. Stax creates lots of complicated board states where the better player has a strong advantage. If you’re used to the deck and you know how to maintain a Smokestack or a Stasis, you are going to pick up more free wins from unprepared or bad opponents than with any other deck. Also, not only can this deck go to the long game and win with Smokestack, it also has the potential to win from nowhere. In a tournament setting, when you win on turn 2 with no effort, you’re going to be able to take a break and grab food while all the other players are locked in Threshold mirror matches.
Kevin Binswanger
Anusien on The Mana Drain, StarcityGames, The Source
kbinswanger at gmail dot com
References and Resources:
“How to Play Stax” by Me (Kevin Binswanger).
“The $400 Solution: Improving Angel Stax” by Christopher Coppola (Machinus).
“Legacy in Hindsight” by Stephen Menendian.
“The Prisoners’ Dilemma – Time Vault combo in Legacy” by Stephen Menendian.
“StarCityGames.com Duel for Duals and the State of Legacy” by Me (Kevin Binswanger).
“Flame Vault: Evolution (TMD Thread)” by Me (Kevin Binswanger).
“Return of 1998 Prison (TMD Thread)” by Peter Olszewski.
“Behold, the Quad Glacier! (TMD Thread)” by Rich Shay.