The Need For The Deck
The results of the Legacy Championships and the Grand Prix trials demonstrate that the Legacy environment is dominated by two distinct archetypes – aggro and control. Landstill decks were very successful prior to September 1st 2004, and they continue to be so even with Mana Drain out of the format. The accessibility and simplicity of Goblins make it the more popular deck at the moment, although the two decks are about even when matched up with each other. These two archetypes are going to continue to develop in unknown ways in the coming months. Success in a competitive metagame will require the ability to beat both of these decks and their variants.
Notoriously absent from the championship field, in which the Top 8 consisted of five Red Aggro and three Landstill decks, were the other three major archetypes: combo, aggro-control, and prison. Aggro-control decks are traditionally quite strong against control but not against pure aggo, so the flood of Goblin decks may have contributed to their poor performance. Solidarity won the GP trial at GenCon, placing another in the Top 8, which included one ATS, two White Weenie, one Vial Goblins, one R/G Beats, and one Burninator. With the abundance of powerful mana accelerants such as High Tide, Lion’s Eye Diamond, and Lotus Petal, it is somewhat of a surprise that combo decks did not make a better showing. Combo is making good progress in the format, and still has a lot of room for improvement. Prison, however, is nowhere to be seen.
Although Legacy Stax has been talked about for months now, its absence in the metagame has never been more noticeable. A new archetype is needed that will diversify the format’s upper tier. Increased metagame diversity would generate a wider variety of threats and answers and make more room for innovation. Arguably, the top decks of the format would be stronger after evolving to deal with multiple tier one decks, and better prepared for future developments – such as combo. Combo is almost certain to become more prevalent in the near future, which makes Stax a prime candidate for development if it can successfully handle the other deck strategies in the format. Much experimentation has been done with traditional builds and attempts to port the deck from Vintage, but with little to no success.
Designing The Deck
I have experimented with Stax in several colors, and many different maindeck configurations. I am going to try to reconstruct the development of the deck, and explain the choices that I have made. This is by no means the definitive Stax list for Legacy, and such a thing might not exist. However, I do believe this is the strongest starting point for the future of Stax in the Legacy format.
The main goal of such a deck would be to capitalize on the available acceleration in the format and take advantage of the efficiency and low mana curves of aggro decks, since Stax naturally has a better game against control. The deck must be focused on destroying the fast creature offense of aggro decks, and then quickly establishing some kind of lock to prevent them from recovering. This strategy will also ensure that slower decks can never deploy their game plan. Dealing with aggressive decks is a much harder task, so priority needs to be given to cards that can deal with them.
Part I: Mana
The natural place to start in developing this deck is to explore the possible mana accelerants:
Mox Diamond
Ancient Tomb
City of Traitors
Chrome Mox
Lotus Petal
Lion’s Eye Diamond
Chrome Mox can be immediately dismissed because the deck is going to be full of artifacts. Lotus Petal does not offer a significant enough effect for the card disadvantage. Lion’s Eye Diamond likewise has terrible synergy with the rest of the deck. This leaves the remaining three cards for consideration, and they will be a strong core for the manabase, which would look like this:
4 Mox Diamond
4 Ancient Tomb
3 City of Traitors
The fourth City of Traitors is excluded because of the negative effect of drawing multiples, or having to rely on it too early. This can leave the deck behind in permanents and overly vulnerable to Wasteland.
Eleven mana sources is a good start, but not enough for a Stax deck, which ideally will want somewhere around 45% mana. Since the best colors for the deck are still undetermined, only a few more sources can be added at this point.
Wasteland is an obvious inclusion. The Rishadan Ports are a strong complement, as right now Legacy is a format almost solely dependent on lands for mana. The ports work very well with the other lock parts, since denying an opponent an extra one or two mana before their main phase can effectively buy turns until a harder lock can be established. In total there are 19 mana sources so far, which leaves enough slots for adding colored sources later.
Part II: Lock
The next step then is to figure out how the deck can execute its strategy as quickly as possible. As is clear from the manabase, two-mana lock parts will be the most important pieces of the deck, since only they can be cast on turn one with regularity. A quick examination of some possible lock components reveals the following cards:
Winter Orb
Chalice of the Void
Sphere of Resistance
Null Rod
Powder Keg
Null Rod is a great card, but it will likely do more damage to the Stax deck than the aggressive deck it is aiming for. Mox Diamond is a key element of the manabase, and there is a much better way of dealing with artifacts (like Aether Vial and equipment) and small creatures – Powder Keg.
Keg is perfect for this deck. It comes down early, and can take out a Vial before it gets ramped up to two counters. Against White and Black aggro, Keg for two can take out several threats at once. Keg for one is good against Red and Green aggressive decks, namely Goblins. The casting costs of Fish are varied, but destroying the Vial is a crucial play. Four copies of Powder Keg should definitely be included.
Chalice of the Void is another very strong card in Legacy, and therefore should be run as a four-of with Keg. Chalice of the Void for one will be the most common setting, but depending on your board position, it can be set to two against control with minimal negative effects. Here is a short list of commonly played spells that Chalice of the Void for one will deal with preemptively:
Aether Vial
Dark Ritual
Brainstorm
Pithing Needle
Duress
Cabal Therapy
Swords to Plowshares
High Tide
Chain of Vapor
Lighting Bolt
Cursed Scroll
Goblin Lackey
Mogg Fanatic
Llanowar Elves
Birds of Paradise
Grim Lavamancer
Jackal Pup
Kird Ape
Savannah Lions
Mother of Runes
Basking Rootwalla
Chalice of the Void for one also counters these less-commonly played spells:
Opt
Annul
Stifle
Oxidize
Rancor
Orim’s Chant
Gorilla Shaman
Chain Lightning
Enlightened Tutor
Mystical Tutor
What is most important about Chalice of the Void for one is that it prevents the opponent from developing their board position early. It could just be keeping them from brainstorming into another land, casting a threat, or dropping mana acceleration, but it buys time and shuts down cards in the opponent’s deck. On the play, the strength of Chalice of the Void at one makes it definitely worthy of maindeck space. Against slower decks, they can be sided out on the draw. While it may not come up often, setting it for zero is very useful against decks that use zero-casting cost artifacts, such as affinity and tendrils.
Winter Orb looks promising, but again the emphasis here is on defeating aggro decks. Winter Orb is terrible against aggro, and additional maindeck cards for the control matchup are unnecessary. The only other two-casting cost lock component worth consideration is Sphere of Resistance. It is a symmetrical card, but slightly in favor of the Stax deck, which has the advantage of consistent mana acceleration. Dropping a Sphere of Resistance early can be dangerous, but it is still a cheap lock piece that sets the opponent back one turn. It is a strong card for this deck, but due to the hindering effect it has in multiples, three are sufficient:
4 Chalice of the Void
4 Powder Keg
3 Sphere of Resistance
This is a solid start. Next are the three- and four-mana lock components. Based on what is in the deck so far, this part is actually quite easy. Tangle Wire is an obvious inclusion. Three Crucible of Worlds will mostly negate the drawback from Mox Diamond, and allow a strong lock with Smokestack. Smokestack is the engine that gives Stax control of the board after a few turns of being in play, and is necessary for the deck to function. Perhaps the only debatable inclusion is Trinisphere. It is a very powerful lock component that can come down frequently on turn 2, and will severely frustrate the opponent’s attempts at disruption or board development. The second Trinisphere is not likely to be a useful draw, so three are sufficient:
4 Tangle Wire
3 Crucible of Worlds
4 Smokestack
3 Trinisphere
This leaves us with a strong core of lock components, and a partially developed manabase.
Part III: Color
The biggest assumption that has been made so far in constructing this deck is the use of Chalice of the Void, mainly to be set at one counter. Legacy players who have been working on and playing Stax certainly do not all agree on this point. Many players do not run Chalice of the Void at all.
A common motivation for omitting Chalice of the Void is the use of Goblin Welder. Goblin Welder is a solid card against control and very good in Stax decks, where it can play tricks with lock components and achieve a significant advantage over the opponent. However, in Legacy, Goblin Welder is not the powerhouse that it is in Vintage. The artifacts available for welding out are more expensive (either in terms of mana investment, or cards, or both), and it cannot be abused nearly as quickly. In addition, the card is best used with Thirst for Knowledge, but the advantage gained is almost not worth the effort: since there are no Moxes or Mana Drains to support the deck, it would need to rely on much weaker cards such as Chrome Mox or artifact lands, slowing it down and greatly reducing its power. Finally, a two-color Stax deck without Chalice of the Void is prohibitively vulnerable in removal-saturated Legacy (Wasteland, Umezawa’s Jitte, Lightning Bolt and Swords to Plowshares are all very common). For these reasons, Welder is not a major factor in the development of this deck, and it is easy to focus deck development around Chalice of the Void. Using it will prevent the use of one-casting cost spells, which so far has not been a serious problem. However, in choosing a color, this is a major point.
Ignoring the discussion of Goblin Welder for the moment, Red and Blue at first seem like natural choices for Stax. With strong cards like Fact or Fiction, Thirst for Knowledge, Fire / Ice and Pyroclasm available for draw and removal, either or both of these colors seem like a good fit for the deck. However, continuing with the theme of this deck’s development, the emphasis is anti-aggro, and blue is very weak in this respect. Red has a lot of creature control, but the cards have poor synergy with the lock components, and its best card has already been dismissed. A cursory examination of black and green reveal the extent of their limited applicability to this deck in the current format. Naturally then, White stands out as the superior color to use in Stax. White is the best choice due to its efficient removal, robust kill conditions, and very strong sideboard options, which will all be discussed later. The additions to the manabase would look like this:
5 Plains
2 Windswept Heath
2 Flooded Strand
This brings total count of mana sources to 28, which is enough.
The deck cannot expect to use Swords to Plowshares with any regularity, due to the inclusion of Chalice of the Void. However, this is not such a bad thing. Answering multiple threats simultaneously buys the deck much-needed time to set up a lock, and contributes to the lock itself by reducing the opponent’s permanent count. Wrath of God is the natural choice here for removal, as it can answer multiple creatures starting on turn 3. Since the deck does not have draw spells, four Wraths are necessary in order to make sure that they are drawn early. (Additionally, a deck without a strong draw engine (like this one) needs to maximize its cards as much as possible, and in an aggressive format, Wrath of God will often answer multiple cards.)
Three slots remain, for the kill condition. Ideally, the choice of kill would behave like a lock part itself, while complementing the weaknesses of the rest of the deck and being a robust kill against both aggro and control. Fortunately, such a card exists – Exalted Angel. It can be flipped very early with the deck’s manabase, giving you the option of going turbo-angel. It acts a pseudo-lock part, by blocking creatures and gaining precious life points, which must be paid to ancient tomb in order to cast lock components. It can also kill quickly once the lock is in place. The card has such good synergy with the rest of the deck that a fourth copy could be considered for the sideboard or maindeck.
In addition to providing the maindeck cards Wrath of God and Exalted Angel, White offers many different sideboard options. Some of the best include:
Circle of Protection: Red
Hannah’s Custody
Seal of Cleansing/Disenchant
Aura Fracture/Tempest of Light
Abeyance/Rule of Law
Seal of Cleansing is one of the best sideboard options for this deck, and it is advisable to run four of them in the sideboard. There are many enchantments which can be a big problem for this deck, such as Back to Basics, Energy Flux, or Serenity, and depending on a particular metagame, it could be wise to include one or two copies of Aura Fracture in the sideboard. Circle of Protection: Red is obviously very good against Sligh decks, and the number of copies in the board depends on their popularity. Hannah’s Custody is invaluable against decks sideboarding Naturalize, Oxidize, Rack and Ruin, Shattering Pulse, Disenchant, etc., which should be every competitive deck. This deck has a good game against combo already, so additional combo hate is probably only necessary in a heavy combo area, if one exists. White has varied ways to deal with almost every problematic card type, so it should be easy to find cards suitable for a specific metagame.
There are also some artifacts to consider when constructing a sideboard:
Damping Matrix
Defense Grid
Tormod’s Crypt
Winter Orb
Winter Orb probably does not deserve sideboard space, as Defense Grid is far superior as an anti-control card. Damping Matrix can be good against decks with utility creatures, but they shut down Powder Keg, so including it would require significant modifications to the maindeck. Tormod’s Crypt has obvious utility against decks abusing the graveyard, such as U/G/W threshold or ATS.
A general sideboard would resemble the following list:
4 Seal of Cleansing
3 Circle of Protection: Red
3 Defense Grid
2 Tormod’s Crypt
2 Hannah’s Custody
1 Aura Fracture
Using The Deck
After this accelerated development, the maindeck looks something like this:
4 Chalice of the Void
4 Wrath of God
3 Exalted Angel
4 Smokestack
3 Trinisphere
4 Tangle Wire
3 Crucible of Worlds
3 Sphere of Resistance
4 Powder Keg
4 Wasteland
4 Rishadan Port
5 Plains
4 Mox Diamond
4 White Fetchland (2 Windswept Heath, 2 Flooded Strand)
4 Ancient Tomb
3 City of Traitors
This manabase is very consistent. There are seven lands that produce two mana, and four Mox Diamonds. There are also eight lands that disrupt the opponent’s manabase. The deck has thirteen White mana sources, and Crucible of Worlds to helpsecure White mana for the double-color spells.
From examining the decklist, it should be obvious that this deck is geared towards answering creature-based strategies, something incorporated into the design of the deck from the beginning. Four Powder Kegs should keep the board clear of immediate threats until a Wrath of God can be cast, allowing the lock components to take control. Going first, setting a Chalice of the Void for one can buy several turns, by shutting down cheap draw, burn, acceleration, and threats. Playing against aggro takes practice, and sometimes it is just too fast to keep up with. Wrath of God and Exalted Angel excel against aggro, as both can buy the necessary time to complete the lock and stabilize.
The control matchup is strong, since the deck can focus on mana disruption for the early turns, without fear of being attacked. Almost all the lock parts are huge against control – Crucible of Worlds, Chalice of the Void for two, Smokestack, Tangle Wire, and the spheres are all very damaging for the blue-based control strategy. Legacy control decks typically run less than 12 counterspells, which means that an opening for one or more lock parts to resolve is likely to be given early on with the help of Wasteland and Rishadan Port. If they do not have Force of Will, a lock component can be dropped on the first and/or second turn before they get to two mana. Getting a Crucible of Worlds down is a high priority against control, which can usually be accomplished with the use of Tangle Wire and/or the disruptive lands.
Against all archetypes, it is very important to start the game with a lot of mana. Hands that cannot produce a curve of two mana on turn 1, and three mana on turn 2, are usually too weak. The deck needs that kind of acceleration to stabilize in the mid game. Sometimes it can get three mana on turn 1, in which case dropping a Trinisphere, Exalted Angel, or Crucible of Worlds can be devastating. Most of the time, defensive play is rewarded, such as setting up Powder Keg and Wrath of God to take out several threats at a time, and denying the opponent as much mana as possible. If the deck can survive the primary aggro assault, getting a lock into play is the primary objective, which will usually involve a Smokestack and Crucible of Worlds or spheres. After the opponent’s mana production is sufficiently crippled, the deck can drop an Exalted Angel and deal twenty.
Future Development
I have designed and played many decks in the new 1.5. Some of them, including this Stax list, have won local tournaments. Stax has proven itself to be competitive and very flexible. Goblins, Burn, Suicide, Fish, and Landstill are all played in my area, and I would recommend this deck to a Legacy player in almost any environment.
As it exists now, Legacy is defined by the ubiquity of aggressive Red decks, which as previously mentioned held five of the eight Championship Top 8 slots. However, many other strong archetypes exist in the format, such as Survival, Landstill, High Tide, Fish, and Stax, and a lot of work is being done to diversify and streamline competitive strategies. The evolution of the format is likely to follow the larger events, which at this point consist of GP trials, big local tournaments, and special occasions such as the StarCityGames Duel for Duals tournament. Goblins perform well in these environments, but they are not nearly as dominant as they were at the championships, which basically got more coverage out of one article than all other legacy events combined. Blue-white control decks are going to remain a strong contender in the format, and combo is likely to become more prevalent. It is possible that aggro-control will produce several strong decks as well, other than the few Survival variants that exist. Stax is certainly a viable archetype in such an environment, and given the depth of the available card pool, could become a very successful deck in Legacy.
Legacy is a great format. Ever since Wizards gave it a name and legitimized the Banned and Restricted list, Legacy has exploded in popularity. The prices for the format’s staples have increased to Standard levels, and the interest in format has risen dramatically. Legacy is also starting to attract the attention of many Vintage players, who welcome the chance to play in a younger, less developed, and more innocent format. I have heard many players say the same thing about it – that it is a pleasure to build decks for, and to play. I wholeheartedly agree. The format is not broken, while at the same time, many old and powerful cards are legal. The card pool is the same size as that of Vintage, which makes deckbuilding a lot more fun than post-rotation Extended.
Ravnica block is going to increase the accessibility of the format, by providing new dual lands and some playable cards. GP: Philly is going to develop the image and identity of the format and earn more pro player interest. Wizards of the Coast has said they are going to continue to support Legacy, which is good news for players of Eternal formats. StarCityGames is supporting the format with great articles, coverage, and tournaments. I urge anyone who has even a passing interest in larger formats to give Legacy a try, and perhaps play Stax.
Christopher Coppola
Machinus at gmail