You know, I feel this. Being in a game where my Mono-black deck is doing the job of a control deck is painful, having to be the one who stops the person whose getting -way- ahead while the other two decks just kinda sit there and don't interact with the board is incredibly frustrating.
I think i may have made this comment before, but I would just like to praise your videos for a sec. You consistently make topics approachable, yet deep, push against common assumptions, and communicate so much in such a simple style. While Rhystic Studies might be my favorite mtg TH-camr for the quality of his production, you are my favorite for the simple originality of your products.
I think a big part of why "hard" stax is shunned upon is not just player agency, but also playtime. Nobody wants to sit through a Winter orb game, even if their deck was decently equipped to deal with it. Same goes for a turn 10 Armageddon. I reckon almost everybody would rather scoop, give the stax player the win and go to another game, instead of slugging it out for the next 45mins. This is even more important in low power formats and for people, that only have limited time to play.
I disagree. People would hate on so many other types of cards if playtime was a significant factor. If anything the amount of people who play various boardwipes as well as the formats high starting life total speak to the opposite motivation.
@@Yangblaze11 I think you're gonna have to elaborate on what you mean by "Do nothing" midrange is second only to tempo in difficulty. It goes: ??? Tempo Midrange Control Aggro Combo
@@arvidsteel6557 They do though. See the dislike for chaos spells, planeswalker decks, and excessive numbers of symmetric boardwipes being played in a game.
"Nothing compares to the real thing" is quite vague. What do you mean by that? Regarding what subject? Which videos? I've found a lot of mtg videos that were quite applicable to the "real thing" aka analysis of the game of magic is applicable to the game of magic.
I think there's a flaw in your logic regarding cards that add additional mana costs to spells. I don't think it's as clear cut as "these punish players who are ahead", b/c they also punish players who are behind, possibly even more so than players who are ahead. To put another way: +1 mana cost is not much for a player with 6 available mana, but certainly is for a player with 3.
I can see what you mean, but this implies that "players who are ahead" are as such based on their mana production alone, which isn't necessarily true. The player with 6 open mana has likely been spending a turn focused on ramping up to that point, while the player with 3 was spending their mana developing a more oppressive board state. Neither player in this circumstance is ahead of the other, they have just been focused on different goals.
It is certainly conditional, but I would say that generally a player with more mana is either A) Going to play the biggest spell they can or B) Double or even triple spell, while the players behind will more likely be playing their cheap build-up spells, so in those cases it would indeed tax the player ahead more. Definitely not always the case but I think that is the logic.
It would say the inverse is true, where like... even if you ignore the scenario where the person with more mana could have bigger things to do at the time under the restriction; and instead focus on board states where one player is at the advantage with what is committed to the board, they can instead focus towards holding back and kicking the ladder out from underneath them. This IS how the stax player often wins, locking people out of playing the game effectively while they get to progress the game state for themselves. Through this ability to accrue advantage, as well as usually running methods to mitigate stax effects on themselves, they end up usually being the one in the control seat, and because stax often ends up being so compact, this means they can often also be packing other control tools meant to fully destroy that ladder below you while they run away with the game. And as shown with the harshest stax pieces, when used in tandem, they can often prevent people from stopping the stax deck from doing stax. That is where it feels the twiddle metaphor somewhat falls apart, because sometimes the twiddle is 'ending the prison lock on all players', and that's getting stopped. When we look at what is used to bypass stax we realize that most of it is what already goes into CEDH deckbuilding, which itself has a huge problem in one major element: most of it is EXPENSIVE, and hard to put into your deck for resilience. This is why we have to be careful with what and how much stax we put in our decks, as the answers to well built midline stax are often things you will never be able to see at a table of 6&7s.
Landfall Stax decks are therefore the ultimate nightmare. I run Thalia and Gitrog as the commander of an abzan elf deck just to threaten trouble. I curve it so Simic decks cannot keep up, but if I see someone seriously lagging, I'll keep T&G on the wayside.
Mass land-wipes in particular are in sort of a strange place. The players they're best against (land heavy decks) are also the players most likely to actually recover from the land-wipe due to the quantity of lands in their decks and the amount of land ramp they run, while everyone else, including yourself, might just get stuck on no lands. As far as I know, they've yet to print a targeted mass land destruction card (like a River's Rebuke but for lands), even though theoretically that would be the best answer to greedy land ramp decks.
Land destruction needs to "catch up" to the rest of the game's mechanics. Resource accumulation is reaching a fever pitch in EDH, and the land destruction options we have NOW are not on par with the general power level of the game. "Destroy all lands" and "Destroy target land" isn't good enough anymore, it has to be "Destroy Target Land, " because otherwise all you're doing is just the same 1 for 1 resource trading. In order for these cards to be viable they'd have to have new versions printed, and SPECIFICALLY Edh players would need to "get over" their aversion to this particular strategy.
Honestly this is why I hope Wizards unbans Balance now that they're in control of the format. Sheldon originally banned the card in the early days of the format because he just hated the card. But with land ramp decks being able to rule the table, getting an efficient answer that doesn't destroy ALL the lands, but instead just brings everyone down to parity is a good answer to this. I think too many players have built the card up as a boogeyman in their minds...and I say this as I have Magus of the Balance in my Lurrus deck. I popped the magus off once and people suddenly after it resolving said "oh that's it?" and only really got annoyed when I started recasting the magus from my graveyard and ensuring no land ramp or greedy draw decks were able to get an advantage. Yes the land decks can rebuild, but that could be the same argument to how wrath effects don't really impact token decks as much since they can more easily repopulate their boards than decks running more traditional creatures
Something I dislike about mass land destruction is that it's really hard to break the parity in deck-building. I think many decks running "Destroy all creatures" effects probably shouldn't be when they're creature-focused decks; those wipes are dead cards when at parity or ahead, and they're arguably still terribly costly to cast when behind but not super far. A piece of targeted removal would be a better card when ahead or even, and could even be good when behind. Board wipes should really just be in the hands of creature-light decks planning to win in other ways. Either that, or go for less efficient but less 'even' wipes. In Garruk's Wake is way more mana but it's going to annihilate the table. The issue I have with mass land destruction is that everyone plays lands. Some play more, some play less, but everyone needs them - and the kind of decks that you might MOST want to strip lands from have more ways to play them, tutor them to hand or battlefield, or recur them. Landfall decks looooove flipping a fetchland out of the graveyard every turn for double landfall triggers and playing extra lands.
This is why I play decree of anihilation in my Obecka enchantment deck. If all of our lands, artifacts, creatures, and graveyards are gone and I still have my enchantments I’m probably going to win.
Commander is supposed to be a format were everyone’s favorite strategy has the room to work, and that worked when it was a niche format with not necessarily every type of player, but now that commander is the primary format it has to face the fact that some people’s favorite strategy is stopping people from playing the game.
The problem is everyone has a different definition of what playing the game looks like. To me I’m playing the game when I have a meaningful benefit to derive from paying attention to what’s going on. If I could write F6 on a piece of paper, walk away, and come back 10 minutes later and not miss anything and there still be no one clearly about to win that’s where I draw the line. I know that’s very different from where most people draw the line though.
@@sin6138 sure that’s one of the most egregious examples, but there are all sorts of reasons some even outside the game if players don’t know how to play their own deck and take an eternity to make decisions holding priority for many minutes on other players turns only to not use it and still taking ages to do their own turn. And everything in between those 2 extremes that both result in nothing of substance occurring.
@@Duchess_Van_Hoof usually not. I find solitaire deck players tend to play out their turns lightning fast and never hold up the game for ages on other players turns. If we’re just playing lots of mostly solitaire gameplay with most interaction being just attacks and blocks then at least we’ll get this over with pretty quickly and we can get on to the next game. Short and but only slightly sweet is much better than long and bitter.
the big problem with mass land destruction is that recovering from it is almost exclusively a green thing, with almost all of the "you may play additional lands" cards being green, outside of a few "everyone may play additional lands" artifacts, removing creatures is recoverable more quickly by just playing more creatures but the "one land per turn" limit means that land destruction is a lot slower to recover from, and being deprived of resources to do Interesting Stuff for that long just feels bad
This is really a myth. If anything green does not utilize mana rocks whereas other colors do, so other colors have 3 mana after MLD where green has 0. Also this greatly ignores the fact that even IF green can somehow ramp back to 5 mana while everyone else is at 3, well that is a lot better than green being at 10 mana while everyone else is at 5. But most of the time green has used their ramp cards early, exactly to ramp, these cards do not magically return to their hand. White has a multitude of tools to defend itself from MLD by making permanents indestructible, red has many treasures and rituals which spring it back up faster than green , and blue (in theory) should just draw more than green, thereby hitting land drops easier. It also greatly ignores that if MLD was widely played maybe most players would stop spamming every single land they have in hand, green vomitting every land from their hand into the battlefield would be greatly punished by another player holding back a land or two.
@@Steeks Green doesn't play manarocks specifically because they have the ability to play land ramp instead, which is the better option in a format where land destruction is frowned upon. You're making it sound like there are no manarocks green could use. There are plenty. It's just that getting lands out instead is almost always the better option since they are, for all intents and purposes, indestructible.
I like to denote the difference between Stax and Control as "You can try to do that but i will stop you" and "No, you are not allowed to do that". And i find stopping people engaging, while i find denying people the ability to play to be boring. But thats just me. Also, to be clear: Obviously Leyline of the void is a stax piece. what else would it be?
@@vileluca Countering my spells? Stax. Removing my permanents? Stax. Blocking my creatures? Believe it or not, stax. Lowering my life total? Stax. (Life is a resource, and you’re denying me that resource)
@@BOOMDIGGER do you consider an abundance of counterspells and removal spells to be stax? Because that is generally what i play. Just a pile of interaction and cards that generate value off the interaction.
Stax annoys me because every game I've been in with someone playing a Stax deck, the pieces just locked the players that were behind while doing absolutely nothing to the player who was getting far ahead and trying to combo off. It was usually the strongest deck in the pod to begin with, and Stax prevented us from even attempting to solve the problem in any way by locking our decks and doing nothing to the Combo player somehow.
I have had the exact opposite experience: stax decks have made weaker decks worse yes, but the most salty person is always the one trying to combo off but can't do so because of rule of law or such
@@leonvalenzuela4096 Of course, everyone's going to have different experiences. My most recent encounter with someone playing stax was the player tutoring to shut off GY against my deck(Coram) in the first few turns, then deploying pieces to hate out instants/sorceries and such against a spellslinger deck... Then the artifact deck combo'd off, and none of us had the ability to play any answers.
@@DoctorGreenbeard and? had that deck not stop them those other deck would have popped off, that's not the stax decks fault, that's how mtg works in the modern age; if your deck had been the only one not stopped you would be fine with it. maybe the correct response is to also play some targeted pieces that hurt stax decks if you don't like it, but everyone only complaining about the stax deck, not the combo deck is my biggest problem with the discourse, maybe your deck should have ways around the stax? or maybe you could also play hate cards
@@DoctorGreenbeard Yeah, it's a pretty humbling experience when your Blood Moon or Ruination fucks over the bounce land and tapland mana base while leaving the deck that fetched four basics off of Kodama's Reach and Cultivate intact...
Watching your videos has made my decks so much better over the course of time. Adding cards with more versatility and removal/interaction has made my decks more fun to play since I rarely get to do "nothing" in a game. The same can be said for what you described as stax cards.
Actually i was scrolling through the salt list just a few hours ago, and wondering "why on earth is teferis protection on here" (Score: 2.02). So thank you, you managed to answer my question with remarkable speed! A lot of your examples of pseudo-stax that isnt socially excluded seem to be pretty hated: The one ring (2.70) is the 8th most salty card legal in the format. Blood moon (2.20) is on the list as well. And of course so is cyclonic rift (2.40). Farewell (2.20) too.
Things people are salty about don't necessarily mean that they're actually bad for the format. Notoriously people generally hate having their spells countered or their game plan stifled through interaction at all really, and those things will naturally gravitate towards higher salt. But they're healthy for the game because they force players to adapt and respond to the other aspects of the game. This gets into the Timmy Johnny spike stuff for sure as well, much of the stuff with high salt scores really bothers the spikes on top of the things that normally bother Timmy..
Razia's Purification is "everyone chooses 3 permanents and sacrifices the rest", if you're looking for more effects that attack manabases but are limited in scope.
It's *not* exactly a *good* card, but I do run it in my Boros Angels deck, just because it's on theme and because my creatures are usually better than those of my opponents.
While my playgroup banned MLD, I suggested to unban Wave of Vitriol and From the Ashes, so that it turns to a Basic Lands issue and deckbuilding problem now. This is coming from a Lands player that wins via Maze's End.
@NoahMoorman kicked cyc rift, extra turns. It wins pretty regularly even through being focused down. With the caveat that noone runs much land destruction in my meta.
I recently slotted Fall of the Thran into my Megatron, Tyrant deck to punish the two guys at the table who seem addicted to getting 12 lands on the table in the first 4 turns. It brings parity to the table, I can get most of the mana to cast it from Megatron slapping around the ramp player who doesn't have an effective blocker, and gives everyone back some lands over some turns. Of course, Megatron himself is still slapping people around and generating mana in the meantime. And since I get the first returned lands I'll be the first one with 3 colored pips available, which is pretty sweet.
Fall of Thran was exactly what I was thinking of when he brought up less punishing land wipes! "You get your 4 favorite lands back" is enough to bring back less greedy cmc decks while punishing people who go all in on ramp. I still feel like the general edh player isn't fully ready for that conversation yet.
Bringing the table to parity is exactly why I've been arguing for years that they need to unban Balance Sheldon banned it decades ago because he just hated the card. I hope Wizards, now that they control the banned list, realizes the card has no business being on there when other effects that are far saliter are not, and when the effect itself still exists on two other legal cards.
26:34 I’d like to suggest “Natural Balance”, “Razia’s Purification”, and “Balancing Act” as more cards like Urza’s Sylex and Keldon Firebombers. They’re not the exact same, but they’re similar in practice.
27:55 I would have said exactly the opposite. Players who are ahead likely have extra mana to spend on taxes, while players who are barely scraping by (especially ones that missed a land drop or two) really get shut down by these effects
@@ricorero77depending on your creature composition crackdown could be good. Also archon of emeria(?) that lets you cast one spell per turn on a flier. The stax you play is very dependent on the deck you build, because you need to be able to break parity. Also meek stone possibly
@@ricorero77 Blind Obedience is a great soft stax piece for white aggro. You reduce the ability of everyone else to block by making things enter tapped, you often slow mana down, and you get chip damage while bolstering your life when you have extra mana. The creatures with similar effects also work, but are more vulnerable.
IMO the issue with stax is just that the most iconic stax pieces, the most powerful ones and thus the most run, are old designs overtuned to be so splashy and impactful for so cheap that the entire game is immediately defined by its presence if players aren't positioned to immediately deal with it. An early Winter Orb going unanswered due to no one at the table drawing into cheap artifact removal on the first few turns is positioned to turn a game into a real slog in a way that few other unanswered early drops can. Honestly, even though I'm not really wishing for any more bans after everything, I do feel like stax would be in a much more socially acceptable place (and the game better for it) if we just forgot about a bunch of those early stax options and had to use the much more interactive and interesting modern stax instead.
"Much more engaging" modern 'stax' pieces are all one sided effects and frankly I do not enjoy that nor do I find it engaging in the slightest. Half the fun of piloting stax is that you're not only establishing this grip on the game, you're also breaking parity to win. Having my pieces just affect my opponents from the card text alone is just...boring.
@@MoyVahn I agree. What makes stax effects fun is the deck design challenge that it invites you into. If you see a card that say "all attacking and blocking creatures are sacrificed at the end of the turn", you can immediately think of a myriad of ways to abuse that. Cards that bounce to your hand, cards that sacrificed themselves anyway, effects that prevent sacrificing, cards that resummon themselves from the GY etc. It's inherently evocative. I also think there is a good point about older designs feeling more unfair and uninteractive. Winter Orb is interesting mechanically but too strong at what it does. An updated version that costs more to activate or lets you untap 2 or 3 lands instead would feel better to play against. It's as much about your opponent trying to work around your stax with their toolbox to break that parity as it is you.
@@MoyVahn Yeah I like some of the modern stax cards in theory, but realising that they are entirely one sided so I don't even need to modify my deck is boring and uninteresting. I find stax pieces as a deck building challenge to be interesting.
We should ban good and efficient ramp too while your at it so it isnt lopsided due to shitty resource denial. But hey, ramping into a gazzilion lands and overrunning your opponent with land strategies is OK, but interaction is too evil.
One of the big issues with stax is that it's often played not to win the game, but to sit there and do nothing. Armageddon is an insanely powerful card if you use it to lock the board down - that was the old combo with Kaalia. Shutdown cards can be good to armlock opponents, if you're able to win with that leverage point. Blood Moon in a genuine mono-red hyper-aggro deck gives you enough leverage for that uncommon strategy to really compete, if you happen to draw it. Ruination also becomes a coup de grâce if you actually use it as a finisher.
The thing is that some decks could have a proper wincon in those slots, like something to get extra attack steps, as in response to the Armageddon someone might remove the most powerfull creatures and the game goes to top decking trying to find lands.
Stax being "not played to win the game, but to sit there and do nothing" is objectively false in almost every list I have come across. This theoretical universe where someone "plays four plains and casts Armageddon" simply does not exist - even the worst deckbuilders still have some vague synergy in there deck. And your explanation of why they "don't win the game but instead sit there and do nothing" is literally describing how they win: by setting up asymmetry and locks. It is your own fault if you are fully locked out of a game but instead waste everyone's time dramatically sighing, going "oh no I guess the game continues because I didn't draw a land," while simultaneously being on a few turns clock for the player to finish. Does everyone just sit there and wait for the thoracle consultation player to individually flip 6 cards at a time, or if nobody has interaction and the game is literally over, do they scoop? Perhaps think before you type, and consider the fact that, if a Liesa deck has three mana rocks and their commander on board and maybe one or two other pieces, if you don't want to lose, you should probably try running interaction before they cast their wipe. They won't cast it if it is bad to :)
@@xeoknight845 There is literally a player in one of my EDH groups who has Armageddon in a deck with no feasible wincons. Everything in that deck is stax and control pieces with no endgame. His explicitly stated goal in playing it was to make everyone think "I don't want to waste my time topdecking for lands so I'll just forfeit". And last time I was around to see it played, it didn't work because one of his opponents had enough mana rocks sitting out to continue playing and eventually burn him down. Perhaps think before you type, and consider that the worst deckbuilders are worse than you think.
@@bartoffer The problem with an Armageddon with a plan to win off of it is it’s an Armageddon without a plan to win with it, because every piece of removal has your name on it. “Aha, I have Avacyn! My permanents are indestructible!” “Swords.” “Fuck!”
I myself play Brago (it is a super budget deck build from my small collection) and I must say that the commander can get out of hand pretty easily. Therefore I would not mind my opponent playing Torpor Orb, because that is the simplest and best way to shut down the bullshit Brago is doing
I personally switched from having a soft spot for stax to absolutely loving control. It allows me to keep my strength in hand instead of on board and it gives my opponent the illusion that they are allowed to play too. In reality, they're only allowed to play things that don't affect my win.
Disclaimer: there is -technically- counterplay to Teferi's Protection. Some cards (Questing Beast most notably) have rules text that say "damage can't be prevented". T-Prot still prevents the player's life total from changing, but this creates a small opening for Infect and Commander Damage to apply.
13:25 I think of the distinction as "control is looking to answer a threat and to remove it entirely, while stax looks to wither render is useless or prevent it from happening in the first place"
To be honest Id rather have to wait to cast my commander until i removed a stax piece then it being counterspelled 3 times because who has commander cmc+6 lying around?
I’ve been playing 20+ years now and have seen a large paradigm shift in commander, and here is why (I think): wotc around 2008ish had a philosophy change in resource denial. It used to be a core part of the game, but since then was not. This means unless you played before then, or legacy, you aren’t used to playing against resource denial. The VAST majority of players are either new to magic, came from standard, or maybe modern. This means most players never played with resource denial as a strategy, despite for half the game’s history it being there. So tldr is players just aren’t used to it being the norm, despite it being the norm “back in the day”, so a format like edh where it is both new and old at the same time, this design change can clash.
Going back through files for early sets in the game is so funny, because they had such an appetite for both color hosers and land destruction. I think, even then, they turned that knob a little far, but the game is so much less vibrant without that element in it. Stench of Evil is a hilarious card, but the kind of thing that indicates that they hadn't yet reckoned with the game state that was going to induce. "I know I just blew up all your plains, but you can pay 2 per plains to mitigate some of that damage." Like? Thanks lmao, how about go next.
I feel like one of the issues is that stax stuff can feel arbitrary in its restrictions. When the zombie player pops off and gets a ton of 1/1s you can't beat, you've just been outplayed. Even if you lose, you can still try whatever you have in your toolbox. When the stax players casts "spells in your deck no longer have effects" as an enchantment, suddenly your toolbox just stops working *at all*.
He made this point and it didn't make sense. "You're 90% to lose whether the Ur-Dragon player had loads of creatures or the Stax player cast Ravages of War" is an absolutely ridiculous take. Losing in Legacy against a Delver and against Oops All Spells is not the same even if the win percentage is the exact same. One I can take meaningful game actions, the other I get force-checked on T0.
if the stax player casts "spells in your deck no longer have effects", that's a deckbuilding problem maybe brago shouldn't play with a deck that has nothing but etb effects, or at minimum run moonsnare prototype and otawara to get a torpor orb off the field
@@treycuret That's the point. Both cases meant that most of your actions can't matter, but one FELT different. How it feels to play against mattering was the point.
I told myself I'd save my argument until the end to make sure I got all the points on the issue. Which is good because the conclusion that was reached was the same I had. By the way the video was really well done and well reasoned I'm not denying that. Using the beginning to defend Stax, then going into admitting that the future of commander leaves hard symmetrical Stax behind, is to me saying that we're right about Stax being un-fun. In defense of board wipes hitting artifact and creature ramp, those come at a cost of spending your own resources and turn, with an effect that doesn't hit everyone equally. A board wipe may not stop a combo player or graveyard deck. Versus hard Stax effects that effect everyone equally, so that the player that is ahead can get more ahead. I gotta admit though, Urza's sylex type effects and rule of law type effects actually seem pretty cool. The other issue with hard Stax is that the person playing Stax needs to have a game plan. A pile of value synergy creatures can still swing in for damage. A pile of prison cards usually just means that no one is progressing the board and games get dragged out. You need two culture shifts: one to get people to stomach Stax cards, and for Stax players to have a game plan that's worth 3 players getting to do less on their turns.
Bro, your bias is showing. Stax doesn't hit everyone equally like you stated. Null rod doesn't the same to the guy without many artifact. Armageddon doesn't effect the guy with cheap spells or dorks. We get it. You think stax is un-fun, but your statements are contradictory.
How about a stax-license. If you can actually play your deck turns quickly instead of dawdling, durdling, and generally wasting everyone's time then cool - license approved. It's one thing to be slowed down by a stack piece in a vacuum, it's another thing entirely in a commander format where it takes 20 minutes to go around the table.
When I play stax with my stax okay friends, we're usually done or playing a normal looking game within 5 minutes. Turns can be really fast if people are just top decking for lands.
I wholly agree with your point about Teferi's pritection but there is technically one other kind of counterplay If someone has a card that makes it so that damge cannot be prevented, then, even if your life total can't change, you can still take Commander damage and lose that way thats obviouslt quite and edge case though
as someone drawn to the stax/land destruction vibe, i love your take and suggestions. ill be trying to introduce more pods to this aspect of the game in more confidence. cheers!
I have been putting together a Yuma, Proud Protector list - it is a very difficult theme, but I think he is probably one of the better options if you are planning on going that route. You have access to really great protection effects to stop people from blowing up stuff in response to your Armageddon, and the commander synergizes really well with the playstyle. Unfortunately the power level is capped at lower mid even with all the best cards in the colors included simply because of the fact that you have to run 13 or more terrible deserts
@2:23 I believe that if there was an indestructible land cycle with all the basic land's subtypes the armageddon wouldn't feel so bad as people would include those in their decks in case of land destruction. The artifact lands that has the indestructiblity ability can't be fetched as easily unless you play blue centric deck with fabricate or something similar. So, according to scryfall there are 12 cards that grant indestructible to permanents (including lands) and 6 cards that grant indestructible to lands specifically. Searching for "creature indestructible" nets you with almost 300 different options. So in a way the argument is nice. If in that reality there was only 20 obscure spells in the game that granted indestructible to creatures but were in very specific two or three colors or the card was something like Eldrazi Monument or Plaza of Heroes. People in that universe would see and understand that they should add Plaza of Heroes just in care someone plays a Wrath of God and wipes their creature but even then it's like 1/100th game if someone were to play it. But even in that universe if you were to search "destroy creature" or in this case cards that included words "destroy land". You would find around 300 different options to do so. Which is like 1 protection for 100 different land destructive effects. So in a way land destruction feels bad as there's not enough good options to pre-emptively protect and all you can do is react with curved and not so clear cut answers. Like, Negate is fine but what then when you had counter Acid Rain, Wasteland, Boseiju and many more. How much counter magic you are willing to spare in your hand until you just say: "I just can't."
I find the difference has almost nothing to do with a technical delineation, and everything to do with the human element. People like making their cards "do the thing", and especially in mid-level or casual games, they often care a lot more about that than they do about actually winning. If you make it 90% likely you'll win, but still let me touch all my cards and do my thing with em, I'll probably have fun losing. But if you make it 90% likely you'll win because I just, can't even try to do my thing unless I can answer yours first? I'm gonna be miserable just waiting to lose. Simply put, other than at really high-power competitive table, the statistical equivalency between 'being really ahead' and 'locking out other players' is irrelevant, because the win isn't the only point of the game. The game actions are, themselves, a reward of play, and preventing players from engaging in them is why stax and control receives so much vitriol. They represent a disconnect in player preference ('I wanna see cool cards' vs 'I want to accrue advantage'). I don't mean to paint Stax and Control players as WAAC, but I do think the players who prepare for them the least get so tilted because they'd really rather get out-valued than repeatedly stymied in their attempts to get their engine going. It's more fun to run the race and lose, than to stall on the starting line.
Yeah, hard agree on this. I'm part of the "I want to see cool cards" group, and it just gets crushed by some people. Early into when I started playing in real life, I was interested in every card in the game. Even though I made my commander decks, I couldn't remember every card in it, so I'd often be surprised by my own decks. One day, I drew a card I forgot was in the deck, and it had a super fun effect. I said "Oh, cool" out loud. In response to moving to my main phase, I got Silenced. The opponent's reasoning was "You gave away that you have something good in your hand, why would I let you do that"
perfectly articulated. it feels like a lot of stax and heavy control players want and expect commander to play like and carry the same social expectations as 1v1 competitive formats, that everyone is here to win and that they're going to do absolutely everything possible to do so and that end-goal is the only relevant variable.
@@themoops4006 Neglecting the social aspect and politics of the game is part of why they don't understand. If you make a 'good' play that statistically advances you but turns the whole table against you, you may in fact have done something counterproductive. An accurate assessment of the game state in EDH must necessarily include player feel and inclination to/against disrupting your board. Hence why group-hug can be a functional strategy here but completely pointless in 1v1.
@@trebacca9 completely agree, the fundamental structure both socially and in terms of actual gameplay and play patterns of a free-for-all multiplayer game is simply not the same as a 1v1 duel. those political and social variables just don't exist in a 1v1 and completely change how you have to approach what you play and when/how you play it. its not just 'make most optimal plays, win game' there's more to it than that.
@themoops4006 commander players are the only group of card game players I've ever seen who complain about people trying to win a game where the only goal is to win the game This isn't just you this is something I see all over I just don't understand it
endurance is one of my favorite pieces of interaction. It isn’t just graveyard hate, it is one of a very few number of non blue responses to Thassa’s Oracle. I like that as a free spell, the effect is fairly narrow instead of generically powerful like “counter target spell”
Every color has multiple ways to deal with Thoracle. White has Angel's Grace and anti-etb effects as well as several counterspelld. Black has Withering Boon and forced card draw. Red has Red Elemental Blast, Pyroblast, Tibalt's Trickery. Every color can run any of the multiple lands that force draw.
Excellent analysis (as usual)! I found that ending summation particularly insightful. One thing I would add is that part of why something like Teferi's Protection is much less objectionable to most Commander players than some hard stax piece like Amaggedon is that TP allows for more hope. In this case because it only lasts a single turn cycle at most (without recursion, which is a different matter). Certainly, buying just one turn with TP is often more than enough to close out a game, but it isn't necessarily guarenteed that the TP player is going to close it out. We can imagine a scenario where all your (living) opponents have TP'd this turn cycle and you're just stuck there spinning in place - and that feels bad - but you've got the relief that (provided you get another turn at all) your next turn isn't going to be like that. Whereas something like Armaggedon or Winter Orb not only denies that relief by promising that next turn will feel just as bad (or only marginally better) but actively inhibits your ability to accumulate or use resources to shut it off (now this isn't true for all stax pieces but it is particularly poignant in the cases of mass land removal/mana denial), further denying the hope that you or another player will be able to turn off their machine. It's not about one objectively being weaker or stronger - it's that one allows for more *hope*. And more generally this is a part of why many players would rather be stuck against a hopelessly ahead Elder Dragon player than a fully online stax machine that has softlocked you. Yes it's likely that the Elder Dragon player has counterplay for any attempt to clear their board (and even if you did they still have a full hand) but there is still the dream that you might topdeck Wrath of God. Sure, they'd also need to be unlucky in their draws and not have any protection in hand (or perhaps another player might chip in a counterspell of their own to ensure your Wrath goes through), and then more effort will need to be made by the whole table to level the card advantage. But still, the outs clearly exist, even if they're wildly unlikely in reality. Whereas your deck might not even have any ways of simply or efficiently levelling part of the playing field in a topdeck, even in your the most optimistic projections. Rationally your outs might be just as unlikely, but a stax-created softlock provides less outs to play for, even in theory. It doesn't matter if you draw that Farewell, because you're not going to be able to cast it because you're not going to untap any lands next turn. By making the fact that you're fucked more explicit, it kills your hope. And regardless of their objective chances to win, players don't like feeling hopeless. P.S: This also helps with further justifying why softer stax pieces and targeted land removal are cool and based.
Years ago, I was praised for my stax deck. Honestly, it wasn't really a stax deck but a badly built regular deck with a few too many stax pieces and chaos pieces. The praise itself came from the fact that my deck was seen as The Great Equalizer. Rule of Law punished the combo player way harder than the casual player who played one thing a turn most turns anyway. Blood Moon punished expensive dual lands way more than the casual player with mostly only basic lands they had lying around at home. Do note that this praise was at a time before precon commander decks were a thing. Either way, that's another way to look at it. Stax, with the right pieces, the great equalizer.
Cleansing, from The Dark, is a really fun, situational, MLD spell. Late game its an absolute game changer. It often ends up being WWW: each player loses 10-15 life, but when players are on less than 20 life it becomes VERY interesting.
My main issue with MLD specifically, is that it is wayyy too easy to stop someone’s “grand plan” with it most of the time. Like idk maybe it’s just me but I don’t think beating in with zurgo over 5+ turns after a land wipe is a very effective wincon. Basically, when someone kills your threat in response to the mld, or has protection for their own board, the caster basically just ruined the game for probably at least 2 people, if not for the entire table. I don’t really know anyone that wants to essentially restart a game after 8 turns like that.
Better deck builders have multiple payoffs and in white alone there are more than 5 ways to prevent your pieces from being removed mid-combo that I can think of. You could also have removed their pieces at any time beforehand; if you waited until it was on the stack, you only have yourselves to blame. It's identical to a symmetrical board wipe during a battlecruiser game at that point, one that sets players behind half an hour or more behind in terms of winning the game.
0:24:38 : I feel a big difference here is the game restriction that lets you only play one land each turn cycle. After a mass land wipe the game might take longer to get going again, delaying the conclusion potentially more than with other wipes. This excludes situations with Heroic Intervention effects accompanying the mass land wipe, which probably ends the game there and then because no one will likely be in the mood to fight this uphill battle. If just your dorks and rocks are hit you at least have your lands left to be able to play new dorks/rocks that ramp you back in. The later the game the more of these types of cards you would be able to play in one single turn, the faster you get your game back going.
The problem with accepting Armageddon into common EDH playpatterns is that the only color that can actually reasonably prepare against it is green (and no, holding up mana constantly to play a counterspell or teferi's protection isn't really preparation). Green is the only color that gets to play good recursion effects for lands, can rely on their creatures for mana, and can use ramp to recover after an Armageddon faster. Every other color only gets to rely on artifacts and artifacts get blown up ALLTHETIME (or get stolen, or get shut off). You end up nerfing every other color except for green.
Not really. Literally everyone plays mana rocks in EDH unless they have very deliberately chosen not too, which typically only occurs in green anti-artifact strategies. Yes, they get blown up all the time, but if people are blowing them up then they aren't casting Armageddon.
@schroecat1 the issue is that well people usually play like a third to about half the amount of mana rocks they do lands so there's not an insignificant chance that Armageddon just mana screws everyone. Which is fine if it wins the game if annoying. The problem comes when it doesn't
The premise of this video flirts with the slippery slope of "blocking my attacker reduces my ability to damage your lifetotal, therefore blocking is stax".
Caleb Gannon has some of the best versions of these "muddying a definition until it makes zero sense but if you squint hard enough it works" "A Mind Twist for 4 is Ancestral Recall" "If my opponent Strip Mines me when I have 3 lands in hand, I ramped a land" "Ponder is color fixing" "Mother of Runes is a repeatable counter spell" These are just jokes, but this video did almost get to this level on a certain points.
@@treycuret Mind Twist for X=3 does actually put you at the same card advantage math-wise. Card advantage isn't cards in your hand. It's cards you have access to compared to the other players. If you reduce their available cards, you are increasing your card advantage. This is the way competitive players think and it's how they do crazy shit, like saying "Worldly Tutor is Disentomb if you fetch Eternal Witness" and that's how they find such wild lines to their win conditions. It's all about the utility the card actually brings to the game.
@@treycuretOne can argue that for most of these the fundamental analysis regarding these is completely sound. All of them disregard the notion of tempo, granted, but all of them distill the sans-tempo discussion behind what the correct angle of attack is regarding the manner of deploying game pieces, and, largely, most decks are built with this in mind. Sacrifice tempo to gain long term advantage.
I legit just searched for stax content to listen to while I write stax primers, and find one of my favorite creators has uploaded this within 12 hours. Perfect perfect timing.
6:35 Well no it's way easier to come back against a board-based deck, since you can simply kill the stuff that is on board, while against a winter orb, you can't even cast a spell.
While I might watch Maldhound most as my MtG creator of choice, there’s a reason I have on notifications for the both of you. You’re an absolutely awesome wealth of knowledge, and I’m super thankful to have found you.
To me, stacks is somebody telling me they don’t want me to play the game. And at that point, my game plan changes from “I’m trying to win” to “I will do everything possible to make sure you lose”.
Wow that explain so well why I love Stax in EDH!!! I feel that the social fear of Stax is the equivalent of playing rock paper scissor without rock. I totally get playgroup that are all playing those value machine midrange deck, but the result of those type of meta environment that I have encounter is a meta where deck are just trying to be the biggest scissor. Stax and Agro/Turbo are in my mind thing that add depth to the game dynamic of a EDH game environment, so it will lead to more complex game that are a good thing for experience player, but will be for sure a "fun wall" for newcomer unequip/unprepare for those kind of tools in a deck.
The problem is that its inclusion always leads to the same response from the stax player; “just run more answers”, which devolves into every deck becoming extremely similar shells of the most efficient interaction and coverage they can muster with like 1/3 of the deck actually geared towards being what they wanted. That’s for CEDH, or a receptive pod, where people are fully in for that experience. It’s not YuGiOh, every deck shouldn’t be the same staples with a twist. It’s EDH, flavour/thematics are inherently limiting and building stax in a format where people are not prepared for it because that’s not the point of the format is a failure to read the room.
@@deifiedtitan Why do reactions to stax need to be efficient? If I play a game piece for 3 mana that shuts you down you can spend 3 or more mana to deal with it and be fine, and if everyones playing more removal then its not like everyone needs to run a third of their deck as removal, that's only needed if the other players are slacking. If my 6 stax enchantments in my deck outnumber the amount of enchantment removal the other 3 players have in total that's not a me problem.
@@auberry8613 "The problem is that its inclusion always leads to the same response from the stax player; 'just run more answers'" -Them "if everyones playing more removal" You, like clockwork. It's just a bad argument. Always has been a bad argument. People are running removal. There's 100 cards and none of the spells can be duplicates. 2 entire colors of the pie are basically fucked if a stax enchantment player sticks a couple pieces and they're not dipped into the other 3 colors that can handle it. Idk why most stax players can't just admit they enjoy inflicting an unpleasant play experience on others. I love stax in 1v1. I generally avoid it in EDH because my goal is everyone has fun, not just me.
@@kylegonewildSometimes some strategies will be hard to interact with in certain colors, that's just how the game is designed. Also, they were making the point that there are 3 opponents in EDH, not just 1, so if there isn't enough removal among 3 other players to deal with a strategy then the issue should be that, not the strategy itself.
Another difference between control and stax is that usually stax effects affect everything whereas control is more pinpoint with throwing answers. So against control you still get to use your fidget toy even if it doesn't do anything meaningful. Heck a control deck might allow you to do big plays as long as they don't affect them and people are suprisingly willing to take "I won't counter this but you'll let me win" deals (usually not phrased exactly like that but kinda boils down to it).
Fall of the Thran is vaguely similar to Keldon Firebombers and Urza's Sylex since it effectively puts everyone at four lands. There's also Razia's Purification which makes everyone sac all but three permanents.
My favorite rule card is Silent Arbiter, and it's basically a win con all of its own in any deck I include it in, so it's entirely deserved every time it's targeted.
Nuts. The one and only time I've gotten a rakdos charm kill was when I was getting swung at with a lethal 20 damage and the opponent had 3 creatures and 3 life.
I think what is important for most cards is for problems they create to feel solvable. Either that or they should win the game in a way that feels solvable in the next game. Sometimes solving a problem will involve some deck tweaking, but if the solution would involve too much tweaking then the decks weren't properly matched to begin with.
You can't solve most problems directly, you need to know how to play each table against each *strategy* overall instead. This is why it gets more elaborate but cedh just like any other competitive mtg format without informal, social contract restrictions, basically boils down to archetypes: Fast (Combo in cedh) beats Stax, stax beats midrange and midrange beats fast/combo. It's a rock-paper-scissors kinda deal but of course with more permutations of decks that sit in between places i.e. Blue farm (Tymna/Kraum) being a deck ready for midrange but that can at times, be as fast as combo, just not as dedicated to the combos. So with this in mind, is not that casual players need to have an answer to every possible strategy, they need to have a *plan* for it. It's adjusting to those plans that becomes unacceptable imho: Stax is frowned upon but the standard solution to stax which is combo, is equally unwelcome. Even midrange strategies (i.e. Control) are usually not readily embraced as most casual commander control decks will cry quite a bit at heavy control and spot removal, but it becomes "unacceptable" when the same control deck starts including efficient winconditions a.k.a. combos. This is why you don't see control as a HUGE staple of casual commander: it's difficult to pack enough control to manage a big table and still find room to beat down opponents with acceptable win conditions which are almost exclusive, creature damage.
I used to never play battlecruiser decks. Perhaps ironically you convinced me to build one with only 4 drops and up deck. The thing is that while it is one of my favorite decks it’s also easily the least consistent in terms of power level. On good draws I’ve won what was basically a game of archenemy against mid power decks and yet on a more medium draw I’ve been curbstomped by some precons because I was too slow to rebuild after the third board wipe. I think I finally get how people who like graveyard based decks feel because I feel like I’m playing unfair or cheating somehow if no one has any answers for my comically greedy jank yet too many answers makes my deck feel weak. Ultimately despite these problems it’s still one of my favorite decks. Although sometimes I feel quite guilty that a third of the game was spent by me flipping through my deck wondering why all 15 of the cards I could cascade into are in the bottom half of my deck.
Another key difference between 60 cards formats and Commander is the no sideboard and high variance, so drawing answers to non common strategies is harder and you don't want to lose space on cards that will be death draws on most scenarios.
The one thing I’ve learned about playing edh lately, is that players complain way too damn much about everything. It’s either you’re going way too damn fast (Fast mana) or you’re slowing the game down (Stax) make up your minds! Y’all can’t have an in between.
Man, you bringing up Teferi's Protection made me remember how bitter someone got when I explained to them that it didn't keep them safe from my Mystic Redaction and Psychic Corrosion, because it didn't change their life total, damage them, enchant them, block them, target them, or affect any of their permanents. As much as Teferi's Protection is often treated as "you and your stuff phases out until next turn", indiscriminate, untargeted mill is always an option
I had to do the same using a big X value Mind Grind Your library isn't a permanent, it's not safe. Not unless you've got a Rule 0 to run Animate Library XD
It comes down to two major concepts: tempo control and the risk vs reward of removal. Each deck has a particular speed that it likes to operate at. You can interact with tempo in two ways: by playing cards like generate resources to accelerate your tempo or by playing cards that decelerate your opponents tempo by removing resources. The green player’s Cultivate and the white player’s Smothering Tithe are both attempts to set the tempo of play. Removal then is your way of adjusting your opponents attempts to shift tempo. When it comes to removal, stax pieces are often just higher risk, higher reward removal spells. While a single counterspell can stop one spell, Rule of Law can stop an entire storm turn or it can do nothing if the opponent only planned on playing a big haymaker like Torment of Hailfire. Its applicability depends on your ability to gauge which types of actions your opponent will play and adjust accordingly.
As a Stax main I salute you sir. Alot of commander players are super soft to any kind of disruption to their 'fidget spinner' decks and love to cry stax. I even used to play a mana denial deck with cards like Pox and all the land destruction I could find, at least until the huge number of treasure producers made that not a viable strategy.
Recently i searched through archideckt for an inspiration, and found one very strange deck. The deck in question was a lantern pramikon that also makes a great emphasis on walls. The idea was to prevent all the opponents from attacking you, by making them pay mana, damage attacking creatures, or just straight locking the table with a Pramikon+Mystic Barrier combo. The deck only lacked wincons, as there were only 2 and a half cards that can allow you to win
I feel like this video runs on the premise that anything that is mass resource denial is stax, and I don’t agree. What makes a card a stax piece is specifically, at least imo, the aspect of repeatability/continuity of the effect, while still denying resources. But yes I agree running interaction is good, and that interaction can probably deal with most stax pieces.
Nah Teferi's protection is outrageous, and a terribly designed card. Complete invulnerabilty for 3-4 turns is stupid. Having all your permanents phase out as well is game winning on its own. Any game in which I've seen it, it has won the game.
As far as diversifying your decks to answer different problems: I can only have so many answers in a deck while still moving my own game plan forward. You just gotta accept that some matchups will be bad, and build for the kind of game you want to play.
Also, for land destruction: sure you can say just play heroic intervention and the like, and always hold up Mana, but the likelihood of all 3 opponents being able to save their board is very low. On spell table, sure, you can just go find a new game, but IRL, now 2 players get knocked out way early and have to sit around and wait. If you hit me with Armageddon online, I'll answer it or find another game lol. In person, I'd be a bit upset.
I play light stax in several decks. I’ve also played mass land destruction and against Winter/Static Orb. I have found these experiences to be wildly different, the former positive, the latter negative. A good stax and control lock that is assembled piecemeal, as I fend off my opponents’ attempts at foiling me, is very satisfying. It electrifies the game in a tug where the actions and consequences are looming and tangible. Wiping all lands (or popping down Winter Orb+Unwinding Clock), even if I end up winning relatively swiftly, has felt as underwhelming as any shitty two card combo.
Villainous Choice from the Doctor Who set generally felt pretty good as the effect was individually tuned for Commander, so I hope they can print more of that soon.
26:33 The other card like these I can think of immediately is Natural Balance. Another interesting similar card is Bend or Break. This one is interesting because it doesn't *have* to do anything, but with some politicking it can be used to set back players who have powered ahead of the rest of the table. After a conversation about ways to limit the untouchable quality of green ramp a few months ago, I put both of these (along with a Magus of the Balance in one deck and a Confounding Conundrum in another) into some more of my decks.
On the topic of Thalia and Archon of Emeria, From the Ashes is my absolute favourite way of dealing with lands. It screws over people who pack their entire deck with nonbasics, deals with problematic special lands without slowing the entire game down, and also combos extremely well with my Ankh of Mishra and Zo-Zu the Punisher.
In my pod, we have one player who sometimes plays stax, but it really only affects one of the other players. The affected player is definitely the highest power player there, and is typically the archenemy just by virtue of all of their decks being better than everyone else's. So when Mr.Stax shows up and makes their turn 4 Etali, Primal Conqueror into a turn 7-8 play, while everyone else is basically doing what they would already be doing whether Mr.Stax was there or not, it makes the game a lot more fun IMO since the other two players get to have answers to both Etali and Mr.Stax by that time.
@@racp777the Questing Beasts stops the damage prevention so the infect goes through and they lose. Damage prevention shut off + infect/commander damage kill through a Teferi’s Protection.
Having cards in your hand and not being able to play them is an awful experience. MTG already has mana flood/screw built in, it doesn't need decks that do it too.
One deck of mine I always enjoy bringing out at tables is my Grand Calculatron deck, named after the commander. It is in a sense a stax piece, limiting the order you can play cards in, with me breaking parity with discard outlets and suspend effects. But it also leads to one of the most interesting things - Games played with perfect information. If someone has a boardwipe in hand, you not only know about it but also what things they'll have to play to get to it. And counterspells can leave opponent's cards rotting in their hands, but you also have to be very careful because putting a card after it means you can't play it until you've stopped something. It leads to really fun play patterns only hindered due to the fact I was more focused on doing a cool thing than building in game-ending effects, letting some games drag on and on. But I would love to see Wizards try something similar, because it forces you to think in new ways about how you plan to play.
This is your best video and I’m not just saying that because I consulted on it lol. Home run. and I still 100% get infinite schadenfreude from a brago player pinned under a torpor orb.
Not gonna lie, most people I play with run 3-4 board wipes and extra card draw, so it really doesn't feel that bad. However, at more casual tables, I can see how frustrating they can be.
And this is why I run Deafening Silence to just see what happens, You are still allowed to play the game, however everybody (including myself) needs to play "fair" magic Also, Charitable Levy is an hilarious card in white, its ramp, its a cantrip, and its a taxing effect that only sticks around for a turn rotation for 2.
Good and meaningful control makes stories: “My wife countered his game winning Exsanguinate, then settled the wreckage his mass revenge attack.” Hard stax just makes you tell someone about a game where you got locked out. Another interesting card I see put in the stax category is Maze of Ith, a very beatable card if you use a bit of diplomacy, but when used to save someone else might get you an ally till games end. Great interaction potential.
Natural Balance is also an "Incomplete Armageddon Effect" if you wanted one more. From the Ashes and Wave of Vitriol are also adjacent to this but may vary depending on the contents of your opponent's decks.
Okay, I get what you're saying and I don't think there are any serious technical flaws in your argumentation: you make solid points and argue them well. It's true that we're inconsistent about what stax means, about which stax we allow and don't, and about how (probably all) interaction is effectively some form of proactive or reactive stax. My issue is mostly that this framing misses the real, underlying 'human' things we usually care about when it comes to stax. You'll have noticed that the stax pieces we object to the most have very 'blanket' effects: they affect a lót of the game for how much they cost (made worse by, as you noted, them originally being designed for 1v1) without further cost to their controller; these make the game difficult to play for 75% of the table. Even worse are probably the 'hosers' that shut down particular play patterns (like draw or graveyard decks) which lock out particular players from 'doing their thing' while everyone else is relatively unaffected. I don't think most people mind these effects to some degree, but rather care about 'how much' they affect the game. This is amplified by the fact that these stax effects often drag games out, which means you're sitting around frustrated for a long time, doing little to nothing while you wait for the stax players to finally turn the equlibrium to their favor. Goad is fine, Bojuka is fine, discard is fine, even land destruction is fine: the problem with the cards that generate these effects is not that they're stax; it's with how they're designed to be very oppressive and absolute in ways that are very difficult to come back from if they do catch you it. In that way they're very similar to the many 'I win if I get to untap this' board states that frequently hit before turn 7; you just 'feel' blown out in an unsatisfying way, but at least with the killer combo you got a chance to interact and the game will be over very soon. In my opinion the strongest part of your video is the end: we need stax cards with better designs. Monologue Tax > Smotherting Tithe for example, but there are so many stax effects that would be absolutely fine if they just had clauses like "the first time a player does X in a turn," or "x happens unless the player pays {1}", as well as limiters like "each opponent discards X, but never their last" or "destroy lands, but leave each player with at least 3" and so on. That way these effects can exist and disrupt players, they get to feel smart and rewarded for having interaction against these effects, but don't just sit there for an hour waiting to finally top-deck into the removal they need to start playing the game again. Thanks for the video! PS: also yes Teferi's Protection sucks.
My college group discovered edh way back in 2010 when the first precons were announced. Back then, our collections didn't really have many boardwipes, several 6 cmc's from phyrexia block, a child of alara (as a commander), a malphegor, chain reaction, and only 1-2 4 cmc's either DoJ or wrath. We played far more stax/denial, grand arbiter augustin IV, savra, zur into propoganda, silent arbiter, lodestone golem in pure artifact. We actually had quite a lot of mass land destruction back then, one deck was mono-red that won off of jokaulhops + greater gargadon, another was an enchantress deck that routinely powered out enchanted evening and then destroyed all enchantments (followed by recurring it's board back). Losing to it wasn't a big deal, either you spend a bunch of fast turns playing top deck hero, or you lose very fast, no different than losing to combo. When the precons came out, everyone owning an insurrection ended up being a lot more unhealthy for our playgroup.
Going to make a counter argument for board wipe vs MLD - while what you said is technically true, let's examine your example claims of how to prevent disaster in the face of an Armageddon: 1. Play more indestructible lands. The problem: WotC has ***GROSSLY*** underprinted these. If there were more available options rather than a single variant of only two color combinations, say, multiple mono-colored, multiple dual-colored, a few tri-color, and one or two all-colored lands, then I'd happily engage with this. I can't. The indestructible lands have a single artifact versions, no mono-colored versions, and aren't fetchable. 2. Diversifying your ramp package also really only favors Green as there are almost no other color dorks, forcing you to run *even more* mana rocks "in case of" Armageddon. 3. Placing a heavier emphasis on land recursion creates numerous dead draws if no one plays MLD, also screws mono-colored decks that don't run green or white, and in the case of things like Faith's Rewards, forces you keep *FOUR MANA UP AT ALL TIMES*... provided you even have the single card in your hand. 4. Running more extra land play effects is even worse, as it's almost exclusively green, and you have prioritize *NOT* playing lands "in case of" Armageddon, which means you'll likely need to run more lands so you can keep lands in hand *WHILE* not missing land drops - because that's bad, yo. This also requires you to play more and more card draw, as your lands, unless you're playing Landfall mechanics everywhere, become dead draws *UNTIL* you see MLD. 5. Run lower curve decks. This would be a great idea if powerful cards that have high costs see a low mana variation - but there are thousands of unique cards with high costs that do not, and will not, see a lower casting cost. To tell the community to keep your decks low "in case of" MLD is effectively homogenizing Magic to only a select amount of cards under a certain mana value. This is not only bad for the game as a whole, it's specifically damaging to a format like EDH where games with high costs is embraced - it's literally part of the philosophy behind the format. Bullet three under *CREATIVE*: "Promote an environment where players are not pressured to conform to any specific method of deckbuilding." You are taking a sledge hammer to this idea by saying "build your decks lower or suffer MLD." All of these ideas would be great... if you play green, anticipate Armageddon, experience it on a normal basis, and play only competitively where winning is everything, and decks must be made to every meta. But we don't. And even if we did, then we run into another issue... how many board wipes exists, and in how many colors? Now how many MLD cards exist, and ones that ONLY hit lands, not also artifacts and creatures (which effectively takes a massive dump all over reason number 2). The answer is not surprising... there are an exponentially growing number of creature, artifact, and enchantment board wipes spells, and in most colors (green doesn't really have any outside of things like Hurricane for flyers or purely enchantment removal like Tranquility); than there are MLD, which are pretty much just white and red. Designing every deck around the possibility of running into white/red, and those white/red decks running MLD seems incredibly foolish. The argument that "MLD is acutely painful because people don't prepare for it" is a slap in the face to Dimir, Izzet, Rakdos, and Grixis who have no real access to land recursion, no real use for it outside of MLD response, and no real land destruction prevention; and isn't a large part of the format because MLD isn't a large part of the game as a whole. MLD isn't seen in real number in ANY format - not in vintage, not in legacy, not in modern, not in pioneer, not in EDH, and not in standard. It is slow, sloggish, and often doesn't get you towards a win. It isn't just a social factor, it's a fact of the game as whole. As for comparing Wrath of God to Armageddon, the answer is simple. No. They are not the same. They can't be the same. Removing my creatures prevents a win, but doesn't stop me from playing. Every card I draw after a Wrath of God is still likely *NOT* a dead draw - I can still play my spells, I can regrow my board. My presence is deminished, but my resources aren't. After an Armageddon? Every card is a dead draw until I get enough lands to rebuild, every spell being completely useless if I can't cast it. An Armageddon at the right time can make a deck nigh *UNPLAYABLE* if enough lands are destroyed. They cannot, are not, and will never be equivalent. The moral of the story - MLD is only really in two colors (white and red) , two colors really only have sufficient answers for it (white and green), and there aren't nearly as many cards that do MLD, effectively being around 36, the typically played ones being mostly in red, and about half of those killing everything but enchantments. Board wipes, on the other hand, exist in almost every color (Wrath of God, Cyclonic Rift, Toxic Deluge, Blasphemous Act to name examples, but we can all think of several for all but green) and are seen with regular frequency because creatures are often the threats to answer with a clearing.
Comparing some Commander games to fidget toy parallel play was the comparison I didn't know I needed.
yeah that is the vibe
I have a storm deck i literally use as a fidget toy at home lol
I used to call it sand castles but yeah fidget toy sounds better
I can't really argue considering I spent a whole game last night activating a Perception Bobblehead on everyone's turn
You know, I feel this. Being in a game where my Mono-black deck is doing the job of a control deck is painful, having to be the one who stops the person whose getting -way- ahead while the other two decks just kinda sit there and don't interact with the board is incredibly frustrating.
I think i may have made this comment before, but I would just like to praise your videos for a sec. You consistently make topics approachable, yet deep, push against common assumptions, and communicate so much in such a simple style. While Rhystic Studies might be my favorite mtg TH-camr for the quality of his production, you are my favorite for the simple originality of your products.
I think a big part of why "hard" stax is shunned upon is not just player agency, but also playtime. Nobody wants to sit through a Winter orb game, even if their deck was decently equipped to deal with it. Same goes for a turn 10 Armageddon. I reckon almost everybody would rather scoop, give the stax player the win and go to another game, instead of slugging it out for the next 45mins. This is even more important in low power formats and for people, that only have limited time to play.
Midrange do nothing decks do the same thing no?
@Yangblaze11 no, because there are 3 other players at the table that can do things.
I disagree. People would hate on so many other types of cards if playtime was a significant factor. If anything the amount of people who play various boardwipes as well as the formats high starting life total speak to the opposite motivation.
@@Yangblaze11 I think you're gonna have to elaborate on what you mean by "Do nothing" midrange is second only to tempo in difficulty.
It goes:
???
Tempo
Midrange
Control
Aggro
Combo
@@arvidsteel6557 They do though. See the dislike for chaos spells, planeswalker decks, and excessive numbers of symmetric boardwipes being played in a game.
Destroy all lands. They can’t be regenerated.
Wrath of Farmers
Bury all lands.
@@MK-13337 damn that's deep
@@Evoleo Six feet deep, even
Got zombie lands, call that Unearth
I have found a dozen off-brand channels that give thoughtful analysis on mtg...but nothing compares to the real thing.
Does this channel only resonate with Spikes?
Nope
"Nothing compares to the real thing" is quite vague. What do you mean by that? Regarding what subject? Which videos?
I've found a lot of mtg videos that were quite applicable to the "real thing" aka analysis of the game of magic is applicable to the game of magic.
@@BlondeSancho-qb9hzRegarding this channel I assume
@@BlondeSancho-qb9hzall TH-cam comments must be written in Oracle text syntax
I think there's a flaw in your logic regarding cards that add additional mana costs to spells. I don't think it's as clear cut as "these punish players who are ahead", b/c they also punish players who are behind, possibly even more so than players who are ahead.
To put another way: +1 mana cost is not much for a player with 6 available mana, but certainly is for a player with 3.
I can see what you mean, but this implies that "players who are ahead" are as such based on their mana production alone, which isn't necessarily true. The player with 6 open mana has likely been spending a turn focused on ramping up to that point, while the player with 3 was spending their mana developing a more oppressive board state. Neither player in this circumstance is ahead of the other, they have just been focused on different goals.
It is certainly conditional, but I would say that generally a player with more mana is either A) Going to play the biggest spell they can or B) Double or even triple spell, while the players behind will more likely be playing their cheap build-up spells, so in those cases it would indeed tax the player ahead more. Definitely not always the case but I think that is the logic.
It would say the inverse is true, where like... even if you ignore the scenario where the person with more mana could have bigger things to do at the time under the restriction; and instead focus on board states where one player is at the advantage with what is committed to the board, they can instead focus towards holding back and kicking the ladder out from underneath them. This IS how the stax player often wins, locking people out of playing the game effectively while they get to progress the game state for themselves. Through this ability to accrue advantage, as well as usually running methods to mitigate stax effects on themselves, they end up usually being the one in the control seat, and because stax often ends up being so compact, this means they can often also be packing other control tools meant to fully destroy that ladder below you while they run away with the game. And as shown with the harshest stax pieces, when used in tandem, they can often prevent people from stopping the stax deck from doing stax.
That is where it feels the twiddle metaphor somewhat falls apart, because sometimes the twiddle is 'ending the prison lock on all players', and that's getting stopped. When we look at what is used to bypass stax we realize that most of it is what already goes into CEDH deckbuilding, which itself has a huge problem in one major element: most of it is EXPENSIVE, and hard to put into your deck for resilience. This is why we have to be careful with what and how much stax we put in our decks, as the answers to well built midline stax are often things you will never be able to see at a table of 6&7s.
Landfall Stax decks are therefore the ultimate nightmare. I run Thalia and Gitrog as the commander of an abzan elf deck just to threaten trouble. I curve it so Simic decks cannot keep up, but if I see someone seriously lagging, I'll keep T&G on the wayside.
Mass land-wipes in particular are in sort of a strange place. The players they're best against (land heavy decks) are also the players most likely to actually recover from the land-wipe due to the quantity of lands in their decks and the amount of land ramp they run, while everyone else, including yourself, might just get stuck on no lands. As far as I know, they've yet to print a targeted mass land destruction card (like a River's Rebuke but for lands), even though theoretically that would be the best answer to greedy land ramp decks.
Land destruction needs to "catch up" to the rest of the game's mechanics. Resource accumulation is reaching a fever pitch in EDH, and the land destruction options we have NOW are not on par with the general power level of the game.
"Destroy all lands" and "Destroy target land" isn't good enough anymore, it has to be "Destroy Target Land, " because otherwise all you're doing is just the same 1 for 1 resource trading.
In order for these cards to be viable they'd have to have new versions printed, and SPECIFICALLY Edh players would need to "get over" their aversion to this particular strategy.
Sunder
Honestly this is why I hope Wizards unbans Balance now that they're in control of the format.
Sheldon originally banned the card in the early days of the format because he just hated the card. But with land ramp decks being able to rule the table, getting an efficient answer that doesn't destroy ALL the lands, but instead just brings everyone down to parity is a good answer to this.
I think too many players have built the card up as a boogeyman in their minds...and I say this as I have Magus of the Balance in my Lurrus deck. I popped the magus off once and people suddenly after it resolving said "oh that's it?" and only really got annoyed when I started recasting the magus from my graveyard and ensuring no land ramp or greedy draw decks were able to get an advantage.
Yes the land decks can rebuild, but that could be the same argument to how wrath effects don't really impact token decks as much since they can more easily repopulate their boards than decks running more traditional creatures
Something I dislike about mass land destruction is that it's really hard to break the parity in deck-building.
I think many decks running "Destroy all creatures" effects probably shouldn't be when they're creature-focused decks; those wipes are dead cards when at parity or ahead, and they're arguably still terribly costly to cast when behind but not super far. A piece of targeted removal would be a better card when ahead or even, and could even be good when behind. Board wipes should really just be in the hands of creature-light decks planning to win in other ways. Either that, or go for less efficient but less 'even' wipes. In Garruk's Wake is way more mana but it's going to annihilate the table.
The issue I have with mass land destruction is that everyone plays lands. Some play more, some play less, but everyone needs them - and the kind of decks that you might MOST want to strip lands from have more ways to play them, tutor them to hand or battlefield, or recur them. Landfall decks looooove flipping a fetchland out of the graveyard every turn for double landfall triggers and playing extra lands.
This is why I play decree of anihilation in my Obecka enchantment deck. If all of our lands, artifacts, creatures, and graveyards are gone and I still have my enchantments I’m probably going to win.
Commander is supposed to be a format were everyone’s favorite strategy has the room to work, and that worked when it was a niche format with not necessarily every type of player, but now that commander is the primary format it has to face the fact that some people’s favorite strategy is stopping people from playing the game.
The problem is everyone has a different definition of what playing the game looks like. To me I’m playing the game when I have a meaningful benefit to derive from paying attention to what’s going on.
If I could write F6 on a piece of paper, walk away, and come back 10 minutes later and not miss anything and there still be no one clearly about to win that’s where I draw the line.
I know that’s very different from where most people draw the line though.
@@viviblue7277 You see why I detest solitair decks?
@@viviblue7277 So non-deterministic combo? The thing that Stax is the best at shutting down?
@@sin6138 sure that’s one of the most egregious examples, but there are all sorts of reasons some even outside the game if players don’t know how to play their own deck and take an eternity to make decisions holding priority for many minutes on other players turns only to not use it and still taking ages to do their own turn. And everything in between those 2 extremes that both result in nothing of substance occurring.
@@Duchess_Van_Hoof usually not. I find solitaire deck players tend to play out their turns lightning fast and never hold up the game for ages on other players turns. If we’re just playing lots of mostly solitaire gameplay with most interaction being just attacks and blocks then at least we’ll get this over with pretty quickly and we can get on to the next game. Short and but only slightly sweet is much better than long and bitter.
the big problem with mass land destruction is that recovering from it is almost exclusively a green thing, with almost all of the "you may play additional lands" cards being green, outside of a few "everyone may play additional lands" artifacts, removing creatures is recoverable more quickly by just playing more creatures but the "one land per turn" limit means that land destruction is a lot slower to recover from, and being deprived of resources to do Interesting Stuff for that long just feels bad
This is really a myth. If anything green does not utilize mana rocks whereas other colors do, so other colors have 3 mana after MLD where green has 0.
Also this greatly ignores the fact that even IF green can somehow ramp back to 5 mana while everyone else is at 3, well that is a lot better than green being at 10 mana while everyone else is at 5. But most of the time green has used their ramp cards early, exactly to ramp, these cards do not magically return to their hand.
White has a multitude of tools to defend itself from MLD by making permanents indestructible, red has many treasures and rituals which spring it back up faster than green , and blue (in theory) should just draw more than green, thereby hitting land drops easier.
It also greatly ignores that if MLD was widely played maybe most players would stop spamming every single land they have in hand, green vomitting every land from their hand into the battlefield would be greatly punished by another player holding back a land or two.
I'd note that White has a ton of 'land catchup' cards, which are quite popular.
@@Steeks Green doesn't play manarocks specifically because they have the ability to play land ramp instead, which is the better option in a format where land destruction is frowned upon. You're making it sound like there are no manarocks green could use. There are plenty. It's just that getting lands out instead is almost always the better option since they are, for all intents and purposes, indestructible.
"being deprived of resources to do Interesting Stuff for that long just feels bad"
hot take: good
people should feel bad more often
@@arc-sd8sk if people wanted to feel bad they can just go play standard. Commander is meant to be fun, not a slog.
I like to denote the difference between Stax and Control as "You can try to do that but i will stop you" and "No, you are not allowed to do that". And i find stopping people engaging, while i find denying people the ability to play to be boring. But thats just me.
Also, to be clear: Obviously Leyline of the void is a stax piece. what else would it be?
You're a blue player, playing stax, hidding behind "control"
@@BOOMDIGGER Stax isn't "anything I can possibly do to stop my opponent from doing something". Doom Blade isn't Stax. Gtfoh
@@BOOMDIGGER bait or mental defficiency, call it
@@vileluca
Countering my spells? Stax.
Removing my permanents? Stax.
Blocking my creatures? Believe it or not, stax.
Lowering my life total? Stax. (Life is a resource, and you’re denying me that resource)
@@BOOMDIGGER do you consider an abundance of counterspells and removal spells to be stax? Because that is generally what i play. Just a pile of interaction and cards that generate value off the interaction.
Stax annoys me because every game I've been in with someone playing a Stax deck, the pieces just locked the players that were behind while doing absolutely nothing to the player who was getting far ahead and trying to combo off. It was usually the strongest deck in the pod to begin with, and Stax prevented us from even attempting to solve the problem in any way by locking our decks and doing nothing to the Combo player somehow.
I have had the exact opposite experience: stax decks have made weaker decks worse yes, but the most salty person is always the one trying to combo off but can't do so because of rule of law or such
@@leonvalenzuela4096 Of course, everyone's going to have different experiences. My most recent encounter with someone playing stax was the player tutoring to shut off GY against my deck(Coram) in the first few turns, then deploying pieces to hate out instants/sorceries and such against a spellslinger deck... Then the artifact deck combo'd off, and none of us had the ability to play any answers.
@@DoctorGreenbeard and? had that deck not stop them those other deck would have popped off, that's not the stax decks fault, that's how mtg works in the modern age; if your deck had been the only one not stopped you would be fine with it. maybe the correct response is to also play some targeted pieces that hurt stax decks if you don't like it, but everyone only complaining about the stax deck, not the combo deck is my biggest problem with the discourse, maybe your deck should have ways around the stax? or maybe you could also play hate cards
@@DoctorGreenbeard Yeah, it's a pretty humbling experience when your Blood Moon or Ruination fucks over the bounce land and tapland mana base while leaving the deck that fetched four basics off of Kodama's Reach and Cultivate intact...
Watching your videos has made my decks so much better over the course of time. Adding cards with more versatility and removal/interaction has made my decks more fun to play since I rarely get to do "nothing" in a game. The same can be said for what you described as stax cards.
Actually i was scrolling through the salt list just a few hours ago, and wondering "why on earth is teferis protection on here" (Score: 2.02). So thank you, you managed to answer my question with remarkable speed!
A lot of your examples of pseudo-stax that isnt socially excluded seem to be pretty hated: The one ring (2.70) is the 8th most salty card legal in the format. Blood moon (2.20) is on the list as well. And of course so is cyclonic rift (2.40). Farewell (2.20) too.
Take the salt score with a grain of salt. Its mostly influenced by monetary cost and then to a lesser extent power level.
Things people are salty about don't necessarily mean that they're actually bad for the format. Notoriously people generally hate having their spells countered or their game plan stifled through interaction at all really, and those things will naturally gravitate towards higher salt. But they're healthy for the game because they force players to adapt and respond to the other aspects of the game. This gets into the Timmy Johnny spike stuff for sure as well, much of the stuff with high salt scores really bothers the spikes on top of the things that normally bother Timmy..
Razia's Purification is "everyone chooses 3 permanents and sacrifices the rest", if you're looking for more effects that attack manabases but are limited in scope.
while I think the effect is WAY over costed... Magus of the Balance is a strong method too
It's *not* exactly a *good* card, but I do run it in my Boros Angels deck, just because it's on theme and because my creatures are usually better than those of my opponents.
Urzas sylex is another, although it is also overcosted. “Exile urzas sylex. Each player chooses six lands they control. Destroy all other permanents.”
Also fall of the thran. On the turn it enters it destroys all lands but on the next 2 turns everyone gets 2 back.
While my playgroup banned MLD, I suggested to unban Wave of Vitriol and From the Ashes, so that it turns to a Basic Lands issue and deckbuilding problem now. This is coming from a Lands player that wins via Maze's End.
Someone in my playgroup metagamed my gates mazes end deck and added Confounding Conundrum. What a dick move😂
I explained to the gate player that I simply kill him now. The issue is that so does everyone else. So he is retiring his maze end deck now.
@@NoahMoorman mine is sultai with plenty of counters and sweepers. They try.
@@davestier6247 Everyone is a big talker until no one plays the game until you are dead. All counter spells all aggro and damage only goes one way.
@NoahMoorman kicked cyc rift, extra turns. It wins pretty regularly even through being focused down. With the caveat that noone runs much land destruction in my meta.
I recently slotted Fall of the Thran into my Megatron, Tyrant deck to punish the two guys at the table who seem addicted to getting 12 lands on the table in the first 4 turns. It brings parity to the table, I can get most of the mana to cast it from Megatron slapping around the ramp player who doesn't have an effective blocker, and gives everyone back some lands over some turns. Of course, Megatron himself is still slapping people around and generating mana in the meantime. And since I get the first returned lands I'll be the first one with 3 colored pips available, which is pretty sweet.
I like this
Fall of Thran was exactly what I was thinking of when he brought up less punishing land wipes! "You get your 4 favorite lands back" is enough to bring back less greedy cmc decks while punishing people who go all in on ramp. I still feel like the general edh player isn't fully ready for that conversation yet.
Bringing the table to parity is exactly why I've been arguing for years that they need to unban Balance
Sheldon banned it decades ago because he just hated the card. I hope Wizards, now that they control the banned list, realizes the card has no business being on there when other effects that are far saliter are not, and when the effect itself still exists on two other legal cards.
It was my thought and i might have to go find my copy to try in a deck.
26:34 I’d like to suggest “Natural Balance”, “Razia’s Purification”, and “Balancing Act” as more cards like Urza’s Sylex and Keldon Firebombers. They’re not the exact same, but they’re similar in practice.
This was really well done. Always like your stuff & takes. It’s obvious you’ve put a bunch of effort to make it super digestible & visually pleasant.
27:55 I would have said exactly the opposite. Players who are ahead likely have extra mana to spend on taxes, while players who are barely scraping by (especially ones that missed a land drop or two) really get shut down by these effects
he proved how fucked Stax pieces lol
"I saved us, guys! Now the person that just ramped four times needs to spend an extra mana on their bombs!"
I think soft stax is great for casual edh. I have been running more in my aggressive decks, and would suggest other people do the same!
care to share what you are running, I play aggressive monowhite
Thalia Gitrog stax is a good suggestion.
@@ricorero77depending on your creature composition crackdown could be good. Also archon of emeria(?) that lets you cast one spell per turn on a flier. The stax you play is very dependent on the deck you build, because you need to be able to break parity. Also meek stone possibly
One of my favorite decks was my Ghired stax list...just stax up and play ghired and make rhinos to beat everyone to death
@@ricorero77 Blind Obedience is a great soft stax piece for white aggro. You reduce the ability of everyone else to block by making things enter tapped, you often slow mana down, and you get chip damage while bolstering your life when you have extra mana. The creatures with similar effects also work, but are more vulnerable.
IMO the issue with stax is just that the most iconic stax pieces, the most powerful ones and thus the most run, are old designs overtuned to be so splashy and impactful for so cheap that the entire game is immediately defined by its presence if players aren't positioned to immediately deal with it. An early Winter Orb going unanswered due to no one at the table drawing into cheap artifact removal on the first few turns is positioned to turn a game into a real slog in a way that few other unanswered early drops can.
Honestly, even though I'm not really wishing for any more bans after everything, I do feel like stax would be in a much more socially acceptable place (and the game better for it) if we just forgot about a bunch of those early stax options and had to use the much more interactive and interesting modern stax instead.
Monologue Tax is súch a better design than Smothering Tithe...
"Much more engaging" modern 'stax' pieces are all one sided effects and frankly I do not enjoy that nor do I find it engaging in the slightest. Half the fun of piloting stax is that you're not only establishing this grip on the game, you're also breaking parity to win. Having my pieces just affect my opponents from the card text alone is just...boring.
@@MoyVahn I agree. What makes stax effects fun is the deck design challenge that it invites you into. If you see a card that say "all attacking and blocking creatures are sacrificed at the end of the turn", you can immediately think of a myriad of ways to abuse that. Cards that bounce to your hand, cards that sacrificed themselves anyway, effects that prevent sacrificing, cards that resummon themselves from the GY etc. It's inherently evocative.
I also think there is a good point about older designs feeling more unfair and uninteractive. Winter Orb is interesting mechanically but too strong at what it does. An updated version that costs more to activate or lets you untap 2 or 3 lands instead would feel better to play against. It's as much about your opponent trying to work around your stax with their toolbox to break that parity as it is you.
@@MoyVahn Yeah I like some of the modern stax cards in theory, but realising that they are entirely one sided so I don't even need to modify my deck is boring and uninteresting. I find stax pieces as a deck building challenge to be interesting.
We should ban good and efficient ramp too while your at it so it isnt lopsided due to shitty resource denial.
But hey, ramping into a gazzilion lands and overrunning your opponent with land strategies is OK, but interaction is too evil.
14:35 "How can this grizzly bear be rendered manifest" 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
One of the big issues with stax is that it's often played not to win the game, but to sit there and do nothing. Armageddon is an insanely powerful card if you use it to lock the board down - that was the old combo with Kaalia. Shutdown cards can be good to armlock opponents, if you're able to win with that leverage point.
Blood Moon in a genuine mono-red hyper-aggro deck gives you enough leverage for that uncommon strategy to really compete, if you happen to draw it. Ruination also becomes a coup de grâce if you actually use it as a finisher.
My playgroup has a rule...if you have the space in a red deck you play ruination...it's a house
The thing is that some decks could have a proper wincon in those slots, like something to get extra attack steps, as in response to the Armageddon someone might remove the most powerfull creatures and the game goes to top decking trying to find lands.
Stax being "not played to win the game, but to sit there and do nothing" is objectively false in almost every list I have come across. This theoretical universe where someone "plays four plains and casts Armageddon" simply does not exist - even the worst deckbuilders still have some vague synergy in there deck. And your explanation of why they "don't win the game but instead sit there and do nothing" is literally describing how they win: by setting up asymmetry and locks. It is your own fault if you are fully locked out of a game but instead waste everyone's time dramatically sighing, going "oh no I guess the game continues because I didn't draw a land," while simultaneously being on a few turns clock for the player to finish. Does everyone just sit there and wait for the thoracle consultation player to individually flip 6 cards at a time, or if nobody has interaction and the game is literally over, do they scoop? Perhaps think before you type, and consider the fact that, if a Liesa deck has three mana rocks and their commander on board and maybe one or two other pieces, if you don't want to lose, you should probably try running interaction before they cast their wipe. They won't cast it if it is bad to :)
@@xeoknight845 There is literally a player in one of my EDH groups who has Armageddon in a deck with no feasible wincons. Everything in that deck is stax and control pieces with no endgame. His explicitly stated goal in playing it was to make everyone think "I don't want to waste my time topdecking for lands so I'll just forfeit". And last time I was around to see it played, it didn't work because one of his opponents had enough mana rocks sitting out to continue playing and eventually burn him down.
Perhaps think before you type, and consider that the worst deckbuilders are worse than you think.
@@bartoffer The problem with an Armageddon with a plan to win off of it is it’s an Armageddon without a plan to win with it, because every piece of removal has your name on it.
“Aha, I have Avacyn! My permanents are indestructible!” “Swords.” “Fuck!”
I myself play Brago (it is a super budget deck build from my small collection) and I must say that the commander can get out of hand pretty easily. Therefore I would not mind my opponent playing Torpor Orb, because that is the simplest and best way to shut down the bullshit Brago is doing
I personally switched from having a soft spot for stax to absolutely loving control. It allows me to keep my strength in hand instead of on board and it gives my opponent the illusion that they are allowed to play too. In reality, they're only allowed to play things that don't affect my win.
Disclaimer: there is -technically- counterplay to Teferi's Protection. Some cards (Questing Beast most notably) have rules text that say "damage can't be prevented". T-Prot still prevents the player's life total from changing, but this creates a small opening for Infect and Commander Damage to apply.
13:25 I think of the distinction as "control is looking to answer a threat and to remove it entirely, while stax looks to wither render is useless or prevent it from happening in the first place"
To be honest Id rather have to wait to cast my commander until i removed a stax piece then it being counterspelled 3 times because who has commander cmc+6 lying around?
I’ve been playing 20+ years now and have seen a large paradigm shift in commander, and here is why (I think): wotc around 2008ish had a philosophy change in resource denial. It used to be a core part of the game, but since then was not. This means unless you played before then, or legacy, you aren’t used to playing against resource denial. The VAST majority of players are either new to magic, came from standard, or maybe modern. This means most players never played with resource denial as a strategy, despite for half the game’s history it being there. So tldr is players just aren’t used to it being the norm, despite it being the norm “back in the day”, so a format like edh where it is both new and old at the same time, this design change can clash.
Going back through files for early sets in the game is so funny, because they had such an appetite for both color hosers and land destruction. I think, even then, they turned that knob a little far, but the game is so much less vibrant without that element in it.
Stench of Evil is a hilarious card, but the kind of thing that indicates that they hadn't yet reckoned with the game state that was going to induce. "I know I just blew up all your plains, but you can pay 2 per plains to mitigate some of that damage." Like? Thanks lmao, how about go next.
I feel like one of the issues is that stax stuff can feel arbitrary in its restrictions.
When the zombie player pops off and gets a ton of 1/1s you can't beat, you've just been outplayed. Even if you lose, you can still try whatever you have in your toolbox.
When the stax players casts "spells in your deck no longer have effects" as an enchantment, suddenly your toolbox just stops working *at all*.
and that's what players don't like about it. losing because you couldn't play isn't the same as playing and still losing.
@@themoops4006 I think this is it exactly. Losing because you didn't play well just isn't the same as losing because you couldn't play at all.
He made this point and it didn't make sense. "You're 90% to lose whether the Ur-Dragon player had loads of creatures or the Stax player cast Ravages of War" is an absolutely ridiculous take. Losing in Legacy against a Delver and against Oops All Spells is not the same even if the win percentage is the exact same. One I can take meaningful game actions, the other I get force-checked on T0.
if the stax player casts "spells in your deck no longer have effects", that's a deckbuilding problem
maybe brago shouldn't play with a deck that has nothing but etb effects, or at minimum run moonsnare prototype and otawara to get a torpor orb off the field
@@treycuret That's the point. Both cases meant that most of your actions can't matter, but one FELT different. How it feels to play against mattering was the point.
I told myself I'd save my argument until the end to make sure I got all the points on the issue. Which is good because the conclusion that was reached was the same I had.
By the way the video was really well done and well reasoned I'm not denying that.
Using the beginning to defend Stax, then going into admitting that the future of commander leaves hard symmetrical Stax behind, is to me saying that we're right about Stax being un-fun.
In defense of board wipes hitting artifact and creature ramp, those come at a cost of spending your own resources and turn, with an effect that doesn't hit everyone equally. A board wipe may not stop a combo player or graveyard deck. Versus hard Stax effects that effect everyone equally, so that the player that is ahead can get more ahead.
I gotta admit though, Urza's sylex type effects and rule of law type effects actually seem pretty cool.
The other issue with hard Stax is that the person playing Stax needs to have a game plan. A pile of value synergy creatures can still swing in for damage. A pile of prison cards usually just means that no one is progressing the board and games get dragged out. You need two culture shifts: one to get people to stomach Stax cards, and for Stax players to have a game plan that's worth 3 players getting to do less on their turns.
Bro, your bias is showing. Stax doesn't hit everyone equally like you stated. Null rod doesn't the same to the guy without many artifact. Armageddon doesn't effect the guy with cheap spells or dorks.
We get it. You think stax is un-fun, but your statements are contradictory.
Ah, the old stax primer. The “Unholy Bible of Magic”. Always glad to see that get mentioned!
How about a stax-license. If you can actually play your deck turns quickly instead of dawdling, durdling, and generally wasting everyone's time then cool - license approved.
It's one thing to be slowed down by a stack piece in a vacuum, it's another thing entirely in a commander format where it takes 20 minutes to go around the table.
maybe people shouldnt be taking 5 minutes to pass turn when they've been locked out of making meaningful board actions
When I play stax with my stax okay friends, we're usually done or playing a normal looking game within 5 minutes. Turns can be really fast if people are just top decking for lands.
I wholly agree with your point about Teferi's pritection but there is technically one other kind of counterplay
If someone has a card that makes it so that damge cannot be prevented, then, even if your life total can't change, you can still take Commander damage and lose that way
thats obviouslt quite and edge case though
I've decked out people who have Teferi'd before. They're not as invulnerable as they think.
Or, just attack them next turn. Teferi's Protection is only once as it exiles itself.
Or just have all your mana open to blow them up on their turn, cause my agency begins next turn and not when I destroy 3 stax artifacts
as someone drawn to the stax/land destruction vibe, i love your take and suggestions.
ill be trying to introduce more pods to this aspect of the game in more confidence. cheers!
I have been putting together a Yuma, Proud Protector list - it is a very difficult theme, but I think he is probably one of the better options if you are planning on going that route. You have access to really great protection effects to stop people from blowing up stuff in response to your Armageddon, and the commander synergizes really well with the playstyle. Unfortunately the power level is capped at lower mid even with all the best cards in the colors included simply because of the fact that you have to run 13 or more terrible deserts
@2:23 I believe that if there was an indestructible land cycle with all the basic land's subtypes the armageddon wouldn't feel so bad as people would include those in their decks in case of land destruction. The artifact lands that has the indestructiblity ability can't be fetched as easily unless you play blue centric deck with fabricate or something similar. So, according to scryfall there are 12 cards that grant indestructible to permanents (including lands) and 6 cards that grant indestructible to lands specifically. Searching for "creature indestructible" nets you with almost 300 different options.
So in a way the argument is nice. If in that reality there was only 20 obscure spells in the game that granted indestructible to creatures but were in very specific two or three colors or the card was something like Eldrazi Monument or Plaza of Heroes. People in that universe would see and understand that they should add Plaza of Heroes just in care someone plays a Wrath of God and wipes their creature but even then it's like 1/100th game if someone were to play it. But even in that universe if you were to search "destroy creature" or in this case cards that included words "destroy land". You would find around 300 different options to do so. Which is like 1 protection for 100 different land destructive effects.
So in a way land destruction feels bad as there's not enough good options to pre-emptively protect and all you can do is react with curved and not so clear cut answers. Like, Negate is fine but what then when you had counter Acid Rain, Wasteland, Boseiju and many more. How much counter magic you are willing to spare in your hand until you just say: "I just can't."
I find the difference has almost nothing to do with a technical delineation, and everything to do with the human element. People like making their cards "do the thing", and especially in mid-level or casual games, they often care a lot more about that than they do about actually winning. If you make it 90% likely you'll win, but still let me touch all my cards and do my thing with em, I'll probably have fun losing. But if you make it 90% likely you'll win because I just, can't even try to do my thing unless I can answer yours first? I'm gonna be miserable just waiting to lose.
Simply put, other than at really high-power competitive table, the statistical equivalency between 'being really ahead' and 'locking out other players' is irrelevant, because the win isn't the only point of the game. The game actions are, themselves, a reward of play, and preventing players from engaging in them is why stax and control receives so much vitriol. They represent a disconnect in player preference ('I wanna see cool cards' vs 'I want to accrue advantage'). I don't mean to paint Stax and Control players as WAAC, but I do think the players who prepare for them the least get so tilted because they'd really rather get out-valued than repeatedly stymied in their attempts to get their engine going. It's more fun to run the race and lose, than to stall on the starting line.
Yeah, hard agree on this. I'm part of the "I want to see cool cards" group, and it just gets crushed by some people. Early into when I started playing in real life, I was interested in every card in the game. Even though I made my commander decks, I couldn't remember every card in it, so I'd often be surprised by my own decks. One day, I drew a card I forgot was in the deck, and it had a super fun effect. I said "Oh, cool" out loud. In response to moving to my main phase, I got Silenced. The opponent's reasoning was "You gave away that you have something good in your hand, why would I let you do that"
perfectly articulated. it feels like a lot of stax and heavy control players want and expect commander to play like and carry the same social expectations as 1v1 competitive formats, that everyone is here to win and that they're going to do absolutely everything possible to do so and that end-goal is the only relevant variable.
@@themoops4006 Neglecting the social aspect and politics of the game is part of why they don't understand. If you make a 'good' play that statistically advances you but turns the whole table against you, you may in fact have done something counterproductive.
An accurate assessment of the game state in EDH must necessarily include player feel and inclination to/against disrupting your board. Hence why group-hug can be a functional strategy here but completely pointless in 1v1.
@@trebacca9 completely agree, the fundamental structure both socially and in terms of actual gameplay and play patterns of a free-for-all multiplayer game is simply not the same as a 1v1 duel. those political and social variables just don't exist in a 1v1 and completely change how you have to approach what you play and when/how you play it. its not just 'make most optimal plays, win game' there's more to it than that.
@themoops4006 commander players are the only group of card game players I've ever seen who complain about people trying to win a game where the only goal is to win the game
This isn't just you this is something I see all over
I just don't understand it
endurance is one of my favorite pieces of interaction. It isn’t just graveyard hate, it is one of a very few number of non blue responses to Thassa’s Oracle. I like that as a free spell, the effect is fairly narrow instead of generically powerful like “counter target spell”
Every color has multiple ways to deal with Thoracle. White has Angel's Grace and anti-etb effects as well as several counterspelld. Black has Withering Boon and forced card draw. Red has Red Elemental Blast, Pyroblast, Tibalt's Trickery. Every color can run any of the multiple lands that force draw.
It also has saved my life in my muldrotha deck more times than I can count. Such a good card
Excellent analysis (as usual)! I found that ending summation particularly insightful. One thing I would add is that part of why something like Teferi's Protection is much less objectionable to most Commander players than some hard stax piece like Amaggedon is that TP allows for more hope. In this case because it only lasts a single turn cycle at most (without recursion, which is a different matter). Certainly, buying just one turn with TP is often more than enough to close out a game, but it isn't necessarily guarenteed that the TP player is going to close it out. We can imagine a scenario where all your (living) opponents have TP'd this turn cycle and you're just stuck there spinning in place - and that feels bad - but you've got the relief that (provided you get another turn at all) your next turn isn't going to be like that. Whereas something like Armaggedon or Winter Orb not only denies that relief by promising that next turn will feel just as bad (or only marginally better) but actively inhibits your ability to accumulate or use resources to shut it off (now this isn't true for all stax pieces but it is particularly poignant in the cases of mass land removal/mana denial), further denying the hope that you or another player will be able to turn off their machine.
It's not about one objectively being weaker or stronger - it's that one allows for more *hope*.
And more generally this is a part of why many players would rather be stuck against a hopelessly ahead Elder Dragon player than a fully online stax machine that has softlocked you. Yes it's likely that the Elder Dragon player has counterplay for any attempt to clear their board (and even if you did they still have a full hand) but there is still the dream that you might topdeck Wrath of God. Sure, they'd also need to be unlucky in their draws and not have any protection in hand (or perhaps another player might chip in a counterspell of their own to ensure your Wrath goes through), and then more effort will need to be made by the whole table to level the card advantage. But still, the outs clearly exist, even if they're wildly unlikely in reality. Whereas your deck might not even have any ways of simply or efficiently levelling part of the playing field in a topdeck, even in your the most optimistic projections. Rationally your outs might be just as unlikely, but a stax-created softlock provides less outs to play for, even in theory. It doesn't matter if you draw that Farewell, because you're not going to be able to cast it because you're not going to untap any lands next turn. By making the fact that you're fucked more explicit, it kills your hope.
And regardless of their objective chances to win, players don't like feeling hopeless.
P.S: This also helps with further justifying why softer stax pieces and targeted land removal are cool and based.
Truth spoken through insightful analysis. This channel is absolute gold. Never stop doing what you do, Snail.
Years ago, I was praised for my stax deck. Honestly, it wasn't really a stax deck but a badly built regular deck with a few too many stax pieces and chaos pieces.
The praise itself came from the fact that my deck was seen as The Great Equalizer. Rule of Law punished the combo player way harder than the casual player who played one thing a turn most turns anyway. Blood Moon punished expensive dual lands way more than the casual player with mostly only basic lands they had lying around at home.
Do note that this praise was at a time before precon commander decks were a thing.
Either way, that's another way to look at it. Stax, with the right pieces, the great equalizer.
Cleansing, from The Dark, is a really fun, situational, MLD spell. Late game its an absolute game changer. It often ends up being WWW: each player loses 10-15 life, but when players are on less than 20 life it becomes VERY interesting.
My main issue with MLD specifically, is that it is wayyy too easy to stop someone’s “grand plan” with it most of the time. Like idk maybe it’s just me but I don’t think beating in with zurgo over 5+ turns after a land wipe is a very effective wincon.
Basically, when someone kills your threat in response to the mld, or has protection for their own board, the caster basically just ruined the game for probably at least 2 people, if not for the entire table. I don’t really know anyone that wants to essentially restart a game after 8 turns like that.
yeah like if a kaalia deck plays cataclysm and you blow up kaalia in response it feels absolutely miserable
Better deck builders have multiple payoffs and in white alone there are more than 5 ways to prevent your pieces from being removed mid-combo that I can think of. You could also have removed their pieces at any time beforehand; if you waited until it was on the stack, you only have yourselves to blame. It's identical to a symmetrical board wipe during a battlecruiser game at that point, one that sets players behind half an hour or more behind in terms of winning the game.
0:24:38 : I feel a big difference here is the game restriction that lets you only play one land each turn cycle. After a mass land wipe the game might take longer to get going again, delaying the conclusion potentially more than with other wipes. This excludes situations with Heroic Intervention effects accompanying the mass land wipe, which probably ends the game there and then because no one will likely be in the mood to fight this uphill battle.
If just your dorks and rocks are hit you at least have your lands left to be able to play new dorks/rocks that ramp you back in. The later the game the more of these types of cards you would be able to play in one single turn, the faster you get your game back going.
The problem with accepting Armageddon into common EDH playpatterns is that the only color that can actually reasonably prepare against it is green (and no, holding up mana constantly to play a counterspell or teferi's protection isn't really preparation). Green is the only color that gets to play good recursion effects for lands, can rely on their creatures for mana, and can use ramp to recover after an Armageddon faster. Every other color only gets to rely on artifacts and artifacts get blown up ALLTHETIME (or get stolen, or get shut off).
You end up nerfing every other color except for green.
well it does benefit artifact focused decks too. but if ya don't draw them then well ya sad
Not really. Literally everyone plays mana rocks in EDH unless they have very deliberately chosen not too, which typically only occurs in green anti-artifact strategies. Yes, they get blown up all the time, but if people are blowing them up then they aren't casting Armageddon.
@schroecat1 the issue is that well people usually play like a third to about half the amount of mana rocks they do lands so there's not an insignificant chance that Armageddon just mana screws everyone. Which is fine if it wins the game if annoying. The problem comes when it doesn't
The premise of this video flirts with the slippery slope of "blocking my attacker reduces my ability to damage your lifetotal, therefore blocking is stax".
Caleb Gannon has some of the best versions of these "muddying a definition until it makes zero sense but if you squint hard enough it works"
"A Mind Twist for 4 is Ancestral Recall"
"If my opponent Strip Mines me when I have 3 lands in hand, I ramped a land"
"Ponder is color fixing"
"Mother of Runes is a repeatable counter spell"
These are just jokes, but this video did almost get to this level on a certain points.
I had to deal with an unironical "Repercussion is a tier 3 stax piece"...
@@treycuret Mind Twist for X=3 does actually put you at the same card advantage math-wise. Card advantage isn't cards in your hand. It's cards you have access to compared to the other players. If you reduce their available cards, you are increasing your card advantage. This is the way competitive players think and it's how they do crazy shit, like saying "Worldly Tutor is Disentomb if you fetch Eternal Witness" and that's how they find such wild lines to their win conditions. It's all about the utility the card actually brings to the game.
@@treycuretOne can argue that for most of these the fundamental analysis regarding these is completely sound.
All of them disregard the notion of tempo, granted, but all of them distill the sans-tempo discussion behind what the correct angle of attack is regarding the manner of deploying game pieces, and, largely, most decks are built with this in mind.
Sacrifice tempo to gain long term advantage.
@@Dracomandriuthus Yep, they all are true if you squint hard enough and muddy the traditional definitions of words. That's the point.
I legit just searched for stax content to listen to while I write stax primers, and find one of my favorite creators has uploaded this within 12 hours. Perfect perfect timing.
6:35 Well no it's way easier to come back against a board-based deck, since you can simply kill the stuff that is on board, while against a winter orb, you can't even cast a spell.
While I might watch Maldhound most as my MtG creator of choice, there’s a reason I have on notifications for the both of you. You’re an absolutely awesome wealth of knowledge, and I’m super thankful to have found you.
Your holistic view of the Game and its Players is extremely refreshing.
To me, stacks is somebody telling me they don’t want me to play the game. And at that point, my game plan changes from “I’m trying to win” to “I will do everything possible to make sure you lose”.
Wow that explain so well why I love Stax in EDH!!! I feel that the social fear of Stax is the equivalent of playing rock paper scissor without rock.
I totally get playgroup that are all playing those value machine midrange deck, but the result of those type of meta environment that I have encounter is a meta where deck are just trying to be the biggest scissor.
Stax and Agro/Turbo are in my mind thing that add depth to the game dynamic of a EDH game environment, so it will lead to more complex game that are a good thing for experience player, but will be for sure a "fun wall" for newcomer unequip/unprepare for those kind of tools in a deck.
The problem is that its inclusion always leads to the same response from the stax player; “just run more answers”, which devolves into every deck becoming extremely similar shells of the most efficient interaction and coverage they can muster with like 1/3 of the deck actually geared towards being what they wanted. That’s for CEDH, or a receptive pod, where people are fully in for that experience.
It’s not YuGiOh, every deck shouldn’t be the same staples with a twist. It’s EDH, flavour/thematics are inherently limiting and building stax in a format where people are not prepared for it because that’s not the point of the format is a failure to read the room.
@@deifiedtitan Why do reactions to stax need to be efficient? If I play a game piece for 3 mana that shuts you down you can spend 3 or more mana to deal with it and be fine, and if everyones playing more removal then its not like everyone needs to run a third of their deck as removal, that's only needed if the other players are slacking. If my 6 stax enchantments in my deck outnumber the amount of enchantment removal the other 3 players have in total that's not a me problem.
If i can only untap 2-3 lands per turn. The interaction HAS to be cheep or it womt actually get to be played because of mana cost. @@auberry8613
@@auberry8613 "The problem is that its inclusion always leads to the same response from the stax player; 'just run more answers'" -Them
"if everyones playing more removal" You, like clockwork. It's just a bad argument. Always has been a bad argument. People are running removal. There's 100 cards and none of the spells can be duplicates. 2 entire colors of the pie are basically fucked if a stax enchantment player sticks a couple pieces and they're not dipped into the other 3 colors that can handle it. Idk why most stax players can't just admit they enjoy inflicting an unpleasant play experience on others. I love stax in 1v1. I generally avoid it in EDH because my goal is everyone has fun, not just me.
@@kylegonewildSometimes some strategies will be hard to interact with in certain colors, that's just how the game is designed. Also, they were making the point that there are 3 opponents in EDH, not just 1, so if there isn't enough removal among 3 other players to deal with a strategy then the issue should be that, not the strategy itself.
next time i ‘geddon the boys imma hit em with “you shouldn’t have overcommitted to the board”
Imma use "You know they make indestructible lands, right? 😏"
I love Pit of Offerings as a bit of basically free graveyard interaction
BRB adding fidget toys to my stax box so I can hand them out and help the rest of the pod not be bothered by armageddon loops.
Wrath of god doesn't stop you from casting your commander, armageddon does.
Soft stax is an amazing solution. This video makes me want to make a deck majorly incorporating it. Great video.
Thank you for reminding me that Urza's Sylex exists. It will be replacing Decree of Annihilation in my Dihada, Binder of Wills deck.
Ahh, the MTG Salvation Stax primer by Phil. Good times
Another difference between control and stax is that usually stax effects affect everything whereas control is more pinpoint with throwing answers. So against control you still get to use your fidget toy even if it doesn't do anything meaningful. Heck a control deck might allow you to do big plays as long as they don't affect them and people are suprisingly willing to take "I won't counter this but you'll let me win" deals (usually not phrased exactly like that but kinda boils down to it).
Fall of the Thran is vaguely similar to Keldon Firebombers and Urza's Sylex since it effectively puts everyone at four lands. There's also Razia's Purification which makes everyone sac all but three permanents.
My favorite rule card is Silent Arbiter, and it's basically a win con all of its own in any deck I include it in, so it's entirely deserved every time it's targeted.
29:59 just got my first rakdos charm kill recently. It was a glorious 24 damage straight to the dome, and i popped off so hard ngl
Nuts. The one and only time I've gotten a rakdos charm kill was when I was getting swung at with a lethal 20 damage and the opponent had 3 creatures and 3 life.
Hell yeah
I think what is important for most cards is for problems they create to feel solvable. Either that or they should win the game in a way that feels solvable in the next game. Sometimes solving a problem will involve some deck tweaking, but if the solution would involve too much tweaking then the decks weren't properly matched to begin with.
You can't solve most problems directly, you need to know how to play each table against each *strategy* overall instead. This is why it gets more elaborate but cedh just like any other competitive mtg format without informal, social contract restrictions, basically boils down to archetypes: Fast (Combo in cedh) beats Stax, stax beats midrange and midrange beats fast/combo. It's a rock-paper-scissors kinda deal but of course with more permutations of decks that sit in between places i.e. Blue farm (Tymna/Kraum) being a deck ready for midrange but that can at times, be as fast as combo, just not as dedicated to the combos.
So with this in mind, is not that casual players need to have an answer to every possible strategy, they need to have a *plan* for it. It's adjusting to those plans that becomes unacceptable imho: Stax is frowned upon but the standard solution to stax which is combo, is equally unwelcome. Even midrange strategies (i.e. Control) are usually not readily embraced as most casual commander control decks will cry quite a bit at heavy control and spot removal, but it becomes "unacceptable" when the same control deck starts including efficient winconditions a.k.a. combos. This is why you don't see control as a HUGE staple of casual commander: it's difficult to pack enough control to manage a big table and still find room to beat down opponents with acceptable win conditions which are almost exclusive, creature damage.
I used to never play battlecruiser decks. Perhaps ironically you convinced me to build one with only 4 drops and up deck. The thing is that while it is one of my favorite decks it’s also easily the least consistent in terms of power level. On good draws I’ve won what was basically a game of archenemy against mid power decks and yet on a more medium draw I’ve been curbstomped by some precons because I was too slow to rebuild after the third board wipe. I think I finally get how people who like graveyard based decks feel because I feel like I’m playing unfair or cheating somehow if no one has any answers for my comically greedy jank yet too many answers makes my deck feel weak.
Ultimately despite these problems it’s still one of my favorite decks. Although sometimes I feel quite guilty that a third of the game was spent by me flipping through my deck wondering why all 15 of the cards I could cascade into are in the bottom half of my deck.
Another key difference between 60 cards formats and Commander is the no sideboard and high variance, so drawing answers to non common strategies is harder and you don't want to lose space on cards that will be death draws on most scenarios.
The one thing I’ve learned about playing edh lately, is that players complain way too damn much about everything. It’s either you’re going way too damn fast (Fast mana) or you’re slowing the game down (Stax) make up your minds! Y’all can’t have an in between.
8:36
For the record, Teferi’s protection is useless against un-targeted mill.
nothing like spending work time on a snail video
Man, you bringing up Teferi's Protection made me remember how bitter someone got when I explained to them that it didn't keep them safe from my Mystic Redaction and Psychic Corrosion, because it didn't change their life total, damage them, enchant them, block them, target them, or affect any of their permanents. As much as Teferi's Protection is often treated as "you and your stuff phases out until next turn", indiscriminate, untargeted mill is always an option
I had to do the same using a big X value Mind Grind
Your library isn't a permanent, it's not safe. Not unless you've got a Rule 0 to run Animate Library XD
It comes down to two major concepts: tempo control and the risk vs reward of removal.
Each deck has a particular speed that it likes to operate at. You can interact with tempo in two ways: by playing cards like generate resources to accelerate your tempo or by playing cards that decelerate your opponents tempo by removing resources. The green player’s Cultivate and the white player’s Smothering Tithe are both attempts to set the tempo of play. Removal then is your way of adjusting your opponents attempts to shift tempo.
When it comes to removal, stax pieces are often just higher risk, higher reward removal spells. While a single counterspell can stop one spell, Rule of Law can stop an entire storm turn or it can do nothing if the opponent only planned on playing a big haymaker like Torment of Hailfire. Its applicability depends on your ability to gauge which types of actions your opponent will play and adjust accordingly.
As a Stax main I salute you sir. Alot of commander players are super soft to any kind of disruption to their 'fidget spinner' decks and love to cry stax. I even used to play a mana denial deck with cards like Pox and all the land destruction I could find, at least until the huge number of treasure producers made that not a viable strategy.
Praise be Cataclysmic Gearhulk 🙏
I have been trying to explain this to players for years. BRAVO!
I love boardwipes
5+ in most of my decks
its so nice to be table police for the greedy mono green (+splash other colors) durdle decks
Recently i searched through archideckt for an inspiration, and found one very strange deck. The deck in question was a lantern pramikon that also makes a great emphasis on walls. The idea was to prevent all the opponents from attacking you, by making them pay mana, damage attacking creatures, or just straight locking the table with a Pramikon+Mystic Barrier combo. The deck only lacked wincons, as there were only 2 and a half cards that can allow you to win
I feel like this video runs on the premise that anything that is mass resource denial is stax, and I don’t agree. What makes a card a stax piece is specifically, at least imo, the aspect of repeatability/continuity of the effect, while still denying resources. But yes I agree running interaction is good, and that interaction can probably deal with most stax pieces.
Instructions unclear, added jokulhaups to my deck.
Nah Teferi's protection is outrageous, and a terribly designed card.
Complete invulnerabilty for 3-4 turns is stupid. Having all your permanents phase out as well is game winning on its own.
Any game in which I've seen it, it has won the game.
30 minute weekly snail. What an absolute banger
As far as diversifying your decks to answer different problems: I can only have so many answers in a deck while still moving my own game plan forward. You just gotta accept that some matchups will be bad, and build for the kind of game you want to play.
Also, for land destruction: sure you can say just play heroic intervention and the like, and always hold up Mana, but the likelihood of all 3 opponents being able to save their board is very low. On spell table, sure, you can just go find a new game, but IRL, now 2 players get knocked out way early and have to sit around and wait. If you hit me with Armageddon online, I'll answer it or find another game lol. In person, I'd be a bit upset.
Great stax conclusions and great vid!
I play light stax in several decks. I’ve also played mass land destruction and against Winter/Static Orb. I have found these experiences to be wildly different, the former positive, the latter negative. A good stax and control lock that is assembled piecemeal, as I fend off my opponents’ attempts at foiling me, is very satisfying. It electrifies the game in a tug where the actions and consequences are looming and tangible. Wiping all lands (or popping down Winter Orb+Unwinding Clock), even if I end up winning relatively swiftly, has felt as underwhelming as any shitty two card combo.
But, by all thise hypnotization. Is all interactable play a stax play then? I thought STAX was a static resource denial. But I guess I was wrong.
Villainous Choice from the Doctor Who set generally felt pretty good as the effect was individually tuned for Commander, so I hope they can print more of that soon.
26:33 The other card like these I can think of immediately is Natural Balance.
Another interesting similar card is Bend or Break. This one is interesting because it doesn't *have* to do anything, but with some politicking it can be used to set back players who have powered ahead of the rest of the table.
After a conversation about ways to limit the untouchable quality of green ramp a few months ago, I put both of these (along with a Magus of the Balance in one deck and a Confounding Conundrum in another) into some more of my decks.
On the topic of Thalia and Archon of Emeria, From the Ashes is my absolute favourite way of dealing with lands. It screws over people who pack their entire deck with nonbasics, deals with problematic special lands without slowing the entire game down, and also combos extremely well with my Ankh of Mishra and Zo-Zu the Punisher.
People don’t play mass land destruction in commander not because it’s frowned upon, but because it’s not very good.
In my pod, we have one player who sometimes plays stax, but it really only affects one of the other players. The affected player is definitely the highest power player there, and is typically the archenemy just by virtue of all of their decks being better than everyone else's. So when Mr.Stax shows up and makes their turn 4 Etali, Primal Conqueror into a turn 7-8 play, while everyone else is basically doing what they would already be doing whether Mr.Stax was there or not, it makes the game a lot more fun IMO since the other two players get to have answers to both Etali and Mr.Stax by that time.
Hey now, Teferi's Protection doesn't mean they can't be interacted with at all. You could hit them with a 10/10 Infect Questing Beast.
Although the TP player gets protection from everything for the turn cycle...
@@racp777the Questing Beasts stops the damage prevention so the infect goes through and they lose. Damage prevention shut off + infect/commander damage kill through a Teferi’s Protection.
Having cards in your hand and not being able to play them is an awful experience. MTG already has mana flood/screw built in, it doesn't need decks that do it too.
One deck of mine I always enjoy bringing out at tables is my Grand Calculatron deck, named after the commander. It is in a sense a stax piece, limiting the order you can play cards in, with me breaking parity with discard outlets and suspend effects. But it also leads to one of the most interesting things - Games played with perfect information. If someone has a boardwipe in hand, you not only know about it but also what things they'll have to play to get to it. And counterspells can leave opponent's cards rotting in their hands, but you also have to be very careful because putting a card after it means you can't play it until you've stopped something. It leads to really fun play patterns only hindered due to the fact I was more focused on doing a cool thing than building in game-ending effects, letting some games drag on and on. But I would love to see Wizards try something similar, because it forces you to think in new ways about how you plan to play.
This is your best video and I’m not just saying that because I consulted on it lol. Home run.
and I still 100% get infinite schadenfreude from a brago player pinned under a torpor orb.
Not gonna lie, most people I play with run 3-4 board wipes and extra card draw, so it really doesn't feel that bad. However, at more casual tables, I can see how frustrating they can be.
And this is why I run Deafening Silence to just see what happens,
You are still allowed to play the game, however everybody (including myself) needs to play "fair" magic
Also, Charitable Levy is an hilarious card in white, its ramp, its a cantrip, and its a taxing effect that only sticks around for a turn rotation for 2.
Good and meaningful control makes stories: “My wife countered his game winning Exsanguinate, then settled the wreckage his mass revenge attack.”
Hard stax just makes you tell someone about a game where you got locked out.
Another interesting card I see put in the stax category is Maze of Ith, a very beatable card if you use a bit of diplomacy, but when used to save someone else might get you an ally till games end. Great interaction potential.
Natural Balance is also an "Incomplete Armageddon Effect" if you wanted one more. From the Ashes and Wave of Vitriol are also adjacent to this but may vary depending on the contents of your opponent's decks.
Okay, I get what you're saying and I don't think there are any serious technical flaws in your argumentation: you make solid points and argue them well. It's true that we're inconsistent about what stax means, about which stax we allow and don't, and about how (probably all) interaction is effectively some form of proactive or reactive stax.
My issue is mostly that this framing misses the real, underlying 'human' things we usually care about when it comes to stax. You'll have noticed that the stax pieces we object to the most have very 'blanket' effects: they affect a lót of the game for how much they cost (made worse by, as you noted, them originally being designed for 1v1) without further cost to their controller; these make the game difficult to play for 75% of the table. Even worse are probably the 'hosers' that shut down particular play patterns (like draw or graveyard decks) which lock out particular players from 'doing their thing' while everyone else is relatively unaffected. I don't think most people mind these effects to some degree, but rather care about 'how much' they affect the game. This is amplified by the fact that these stax effects often drag games out, which means you're sitting around frustrated for a long time, doing little to nothing while you wait for the stax players to finally turn the equlibrium to their favor.
Goad is fine, Bojuka is fine, discard is fine, even land destruction is fine: the problem with the cards that generate these effects is not that they're stax; it's with how they're designed to be very oppressive and absolute in ways that are very difficult to come back from if they do catch you it. In that way they're very similar to the many 'I win if I get to untap this' board states that frequently hit before turn 7; you just 'feel' blown out in an unsatisfying way, but at least with the killer combo you got a chance to interact and the game will be over very soon.
In my opinion the strongest part of your video is the end: we need stax cards with better designs. Monologue Tax > Smotherting Tithe for example, but there are so many stax effects that would be absolutely fine if they just had clauses like "the first time a player does X in a turn," or "x happens unless the player pays {1}", as well as limiters like "each opponent discards X, but never their last" or "destroy lands, but leave each player with at least 3" and so on. That way these effects can exist and disrupt players, they get to feel smart and rewarded for having interaction against these effects, but don't just sit there for an hour waiting to finally top-deck into the removal they need to start playing the game again.
Thanks for the video!
PS: also yes Teferi's Protection sucks.
My college group discovered edh way back in 2010 when the first precons were announced. Back then, our collections didn't really have many boardwipes, several 6 cmc's from phyrexia block, a child of alara (as a commander), a malphegor, chain reaction, and only 1-2 4 cmc's either DoJ or wrath. We played far more stax/denial, grand arbiter augustin IV, savra, zur into propoganda, silent arbiter, lodestone golem in pure artifact. We actually had quite a lot of mass land destruction back then, one deck was mono-red that won off of jokaulhops + greater gargadon, another was an enchantress deck that routinely powered out enchanted evening and then destroyed all enchantments (followed by recurring it's board back). Losing to it wasn't a big deal, either you spend a bunch of fast turns playing top deck hero, or you lose very fast, no different than losing to combo. When the precons came out, everyone owning an insurrection ended up being a lot more unhealthy for our playgroup.
Going to make a counter argument for board wipe vs MLD - while what you said is technically true, let's examine your example claims of how to prevent disaster in the face of an Armageddon:
1. Play more indestructible lands. The problem: WotC has ***GROSSLY*** underprinted these. If there were more available options rather than a single variant of only two color combinations, say, multiple mono-colored, multiple dual-colored, a few tri-color, and one or two all-colored lands, then I'd happily engage with this. I can't. The indestructible lands have a single artifact versions, no mono-colored versions, and aren't fetchable.
2. Diversifying your ramp package also really only favors Green as there are almost no other color dorks, forcing you to run *even more* mana rocks "in case of" Armageddon.
3. Placing a heavier emphasis on land recursion creates numerous dead draws if no one plays MLD, also screws mono-colored decks that don't run green or white, and in the case of things like Faith's Rewards, forces you keep *FOUR MANA UP AT ALL TIMES*... provided you even have the single card in your hand.
4. Running more extra land play effects is even worse, as it's almost exclusively green, and you have prioritize *NOT* playing lands "in case of" Armageddon, which means you'll likely need to run more lands so you can keep lands in hand *WHILE* not missing land drops - because that's bad, yo. This also requires you to play more and more card draw, as your lands, unless you're playing Landfall mechanics everywhere, become dead draws *UNTIL* you see MLD.
5. Run lower curve decks. This would be a great idea if powerful cards that have high costs see a low mana variation - but there are thousands of unique cards with high costs that do not, and will not, see a lower casting cost. To tell the community to keep your decks low "in case of" MLD is effectively homogenizing Magic to only a select amount of cards under a certain mana value. This is not only bad for the game as a whole, it's specifically damaging to a format like EDH where games with high costs is embraced - it's literally part of the philosophy behind the format. Bullet three under *CREATIVE*: "Promote an environment where players are not pressured to conform to any specific method of deckbuilding." You are taking a sledge hammer to this idea by saying "build your decks lower or suffer MLD."
All of these ideas would be great... if you play green, anticipate Armageddon, experience it on a normal basis, and play only competitively where winning is everything, and decks must be made to every meta. But we don't. And even if we did, then we run into another issue... how many board wipes exists, and in how many colors? Now how many MLD cards exist, and ones that ONLY hit lands, not also artifacts and creatures (which effectively takes a massive dump all over reason number 2). The answer is not surprising... there are an exponentially growing number of creature, artifact, and enchantment board wipes spells, and in most colors (green doesn't really have any outside of things like Hurricane for flyers or purely enchantment removal like Tranquility); than there are MLD, which are pretty much just white and red. Designing every deck around the possibility of running into white/red, and those white/red decks running MLD seems incredibly foolish.
The argument that "MLD is acutely painful because people don't prepare for it" is a slap in the face to Dimir, Izzet, Rakdos, and Grixis who have no real access to land recursion, no real use for it outside of MLD response, and no real land destruction prevention; and isn't a large part of the format because MLD isn't a large part of the game as a whole. MLD isn't seen in real number in ANY format - not in vintage, not in legacy, not in modern, not in pioneer, not in EDH, and not in standard. It is slow, sloggish, and often doesn't get you towards a win. It isn't just a social factor, it's a fact of the game as whole. As for comparing Wrath of God to Armageddon, the answer is simple. No. They are not the same. They can't be the same. Removing my creatures prevents a win, but doesn't stop me from playing. Every card I draw after a Wrath of God is still likely *NOT* a dead draw - I can still play my spells, I can regrow my board. My presence is deminished, but my resources aren't. After an Armageddon? Every card is a dead draw until I get enough lands to rebuild, every spell being completely useless if I can't cast it. An Armageddon at the right time can make a deck nigh *UNPLAYABLE* if enough lands are destroyed. They cannot, are not, and will never be equivalent.
The moral of the story - MLD is only really in two colors (white and red) , two colors really only have sufficient answers for it (white and green), and there aren't nearly as many cards that do MLD, effectively being around 36, the typically played ones being mostly in red, and about half of those killing everything but enchantments. Board wipes, on the other hand, exist in almost every color (Wrath of God, Cyclonic Rift, Toxic Deluge, Blasphemous Act to name examples, but we can all think of several for all but green) and are seen with regular frequency because creatures are often the threats to answer with a clearing.
Disciple of Caelus Nin is a great way to punish teferi protection. Is it a little mean? Yes but oh so satisfying.