Before we begin I'm going to assume you know what the Stax archetype is. If you don't, then this link may be helpful.
Right, all caught up? Lets's go then.
I have recently been given the task of helping someone in my local group to build a stax commander deck on a budget, preferably in esper colours (WUB). This will be my process from beginning to (almost) end on how to achieve this.
Choosing the Commander
So, the very beginning. Choosing the commander for your deck is one of the first things you'll do. Whether you're choosing it because you want a deck in specific colours or you have an archetype in mind this is the first step you'll take in actually building your list of 100.
In this situation, I've got to find an esper coloured commander to take the lead in our stax deck. To Gatherer!! First we'll go to 'advanced search' and enter out restrictions - the card has to be black, white, blue and no other colours and a legendary creature. Our search comes up with 12 cards. Lets review these and see which can take advantage of the chaos we're about to cause:
Chromium - A big, flying beatstick. He might be an elder dragon but he doesn't cause the disruption that we need.
Dromar, the Banisher - This is more like it. Dromar causes disruption to the board by bouncing permanents of a chosen colour each turn. He's making it to round two.
Ertai, the Corrupted - Once the Wizard Adept, and now the Corrupted. Ertai sacrifices creatures or enchantments to counter spells. Sounds like disruption to me. He's through to the next round.
Halfdane - Halfdane can switch his power and toughness to that of another creature on the battlefield every turn. This isn't stopping anyone from doing anything! You're out.
Lady Evangela - Preventing combat damage? No thanks.
Merieke Ri Berit - Very interesting card with the ability to steal creatures from other players. That can be disruptive.
Oloro, Ageless Ascetic - Oloro gains life. That is all.
Sen Triplets - Playing your opponent's spells? Sounds great! But this isn't really a staxy thing to do. They have their own unique deck to pilot.
Sharuum the Hegemon - Recursion. Sharuum can take advantage of the symmetrical destruction cards associated with the stax archetype by bringing our own things back, as well as recurring our stax pieces after they've been hated away.
Sydri, Galvanic Genius - An artifact based commander competing with Sharuum...for an artifact based deck. Not quite what we need.
Zur the Enchanter - Zur can tutor for some of the stax enchantment cards which is nice.
Round Two
So at this point we're down to a shortlist of Dromar, Ertai, Merieke, Sharuum and Zur.
Piloting a stax deck is going to create a lot of hate. By the time the table realises what you're doing you'll be playing archenemy and naming yourself as the bad guy. So part of our choice in a commander will be based off this,
Dromar might help, if all your opponents share a colour or two across all of their decks. I'm betting this won't happen 100% of the time and right now we're not willing to spend card slots to change the colour of permanents. If we were then we wouldn't need any of the other stax elements in the deck because Dromar could keep threats at bay by himself.
Ertai, however, can counter spells. But since he needs to tap and sacrifice a permanent he's not going to be stopping a lot of things once our opponent's team up. Plus, sacrificing our own permanents, even for 'dies' effects, is going against what we're trying to do here.
Merieke can help with taking threats away from our opponent's and giving them to ourselves. Definitely not the worst choice on the shortlist.
Sharuum is great. The recursion can help us retrieve our artifact stax pieces that have been discarded, sacrificed, destroyed, etc. This gives us the ability to recover from the symmetrical stax disruption which is exactly what we want to be doing.
Zur can tutor for lots of enchantment based staxery (yes, that is a word) Whether it's a Phyrexian Arena to help save us from discard, a Phyrexian Reclamation to get our guys back, or a Mana Vortex to strip everyone of lands, Zur fits the bill.
At this point I'm stuck between Sharuum and Zur as the two that I'd choose. After consulting with the person I'm helping we've decided on Zur (mostly because he owns one).
Planning the Deck
When building stax, you have to decide which route to take - mostly taxing cards, large amounts of discard, mass tapping, mana denial, etc. Lets look at the common characteristics of a Zur deck to help us decide:
- Very few creatures on the battlefield
- Tutoring for a lot of cheap enchantments via Zur's ability
- Using pillowfort type enchantments for protection
Since Zur won't usually have more than two creatures on the battlefield at a time, we can go with a lot of creature destruction. His ability to fetch enchantments means we don't really need much card draw and since we can put whatever we want straight from the library onto the battlefield means we can run off very little mana. So targeting creatures and lands seems the right direction to go in here.
Finding the Pieces
Now that we know what we want our cards to do we can get back to Gatherer.
First will be for dealing with creatures. After a few different searches using different phrases I've found a few cards:
Vile Consumption - U/B enchantment version of The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale. This is exactly the type of thing we're after. The Tabernacle is a stax staple and is currently at $1000 and Vile Consumption is only $0.49.
Magus of the Tabernacle - The same as above except it's a creature so we won't be able to tutor for it. Again, much happier to pay $5 than $1000.
Meekstone - "Creatures with power 3 or greater don't untap during their controllers' untap steps." We can't tutor for this but we'll run it anyway. It won't affect Zur or vigilance guys like Sun Titan.
Wrath of God, Day of Judgment, Supreme Verdict - No explanation needed here. If your budget can stretch to a Damnation then that fits in too.
Next up are some searches for disrupting lands. These will either be land destruction or preventing lands form untapping.
Desolation - "At the beginning of each end step, each player who tapped a land for mana this turn sacrifices a land. Desolation deals 2 damage to each player who sacrificed a Plains this way."
Mana Vortex - "When you cast Mana Vortex, counter it unless you sacrifice a land. At the beginning of each player's upkeep, that player sacrifices a land. When there are no lands on the battlefield, sacrifice Mana Vortex." Slowly removes land from the battlefield. Keeps everyone at a standstill as long as they hit their land drops each turn.
Stasis - "Players skip their untap steps. At the beginning of your upkeep, sacrifice Stasis unless you pay U." Great for stopping everything, not just lands. It's upkeep cost can be paid with mana rocks. We just have to be careful with Zur out or we'll miss some attacks due to him being tapped. The best time to find this would be when your opponents have all tapped out. Even if this only stays out for the one turn before we decide not to pay it's upkeep cost, it would be like taking an extra turn.
Winter Orb - "Players can't untap more than one land during their untap steps." Can't be tutored for with Zur but it's a cheap stax staple so it's going in.
Overburden - "Whenever a player puts a non-token creature onto the battlefield, that player returns a land he or she controls to its owner's hand". Falls under both categories of disrupting creatures and lands. If your opponents really want that army of creatures then they will have to temporarily give up on their manabase or if they want to keep their lands to pay tax costs then they'll have to give up on having creatures.
Armageddon - "Destroy all lands". Simple. While everyone thinks this should cost quite a bit, in reality they can be bought for around $3 - $8.
There's not really a lot of cards here so we'll look for some other things to play alongside. Since we'll be restricting mana, a few general tax cards should do the job here.
Aura of Silence - "Artifact and enchantment spells your opponents cast cost 2 more to cast." By having this out we can stop our opponents having mana rocks on the battlefield to make up for our land destruction. That's our plan and they're not stealing it.
Propaganda + Ghostly Prison - "Creatures can't attack you unless their controller pays 2 for each creature he or she controls that's attacking you." These are the same card aside from one is white and the other is blue. Any creature's that your opponents manage to get to stick around won't be able to attack you.
Suppression Field - "Activated abilities cost 2 more to activate unless they're mana abilities." I love this one. Fetchlands now say "2, Tap, Pay 1 life, Sacrifice...".
Now we have the base of the deck we can look at it and see if there's anything that should also be included to help with our gameplan.
Vile Consumption
Desolation
Mana Vortex
Stasis
Overburden
Aura of Silence
Propaganda
Ghostly Prison
Suppression Field
Land Tax
Land Tax
Creature
Magus of the Tabernacle
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
Hokori, Dust Drinker
Lodestone Golem
Sun Titan
Artifact
Meekstone
Winter Orb
Tangle Wire
Chromatic Landern
Azorius Signet
Dimir Signet
Orzhov Signet
Thran Dynamo
Sol Ring
Mana Vault
Gilded Lotus
Expedition Map
Trading Post
Sorceries
Wrath of God
Day of Judgment
Supreme Verdict
Armageddon
Land
Ghost Wuarter
Strip Mine
Tectonic Edge
Tolaria West
At this point I'd say we're about halfway through building. The base of the deck is in place and we have 9 stax enchantments that we can tutor for with Zur, as well as the artifacts that make up the core of most stax decks and some creatures that also help. Now we can flesh out the deck with a few counterspells, as well as some choices based on our local metagame. For example:
- Face a lot of creatures frequently with "enter the battlefield" triggers? Then you can consider Torpor Orb and Hushwing Gryff.
- Playgroup full of graveyard based decks? Then Rest in Peace may find a spot.
- Have to deal with a lot of aggro decks? Add in Blind Obedience to slow them down.
- Someone keep tutoring with Scion of the Ur-Dragon or Arcum Dagsson? Leonin Arbiter and Aven Mindcensor can put a stop to that.
Just be careful that you're not adding too many extra creatures as we're trying to tax them with our Tabernacle type effects and don't want to be paying a lot just to keep them around.
Win Condition
All we need now is a win condition. A lot of artifact based stax commander decks will use a simple combo like Nevinyrral's Disk, Mycosynth Lattice and Darksteel Forge to finally lock out the game while everyone dies slowly to their artifact creatures in combat. We may as well use Zur as part of our win condition with something like Ethereal Armour and Rogue's Passage to make sure he gets big and connects with our opponents. It's simple enough to pull off with Zur's own ability finding the Armour, and Expedition Map or Tolaria West finding the Passage. Alternatively, we can slowly build up to an instant win with Azor's Elocutors or Darksteel Reactor whilst our opponent's watch hopelessly.
At this point we don't have a complete decklist, but I feel this is the place for me to stop and hand over to the player. I don't want to be presenting a complete list as I feel it would benefit the player and the game to have something that was, at least partially, made by them. If I was to give a full 100 card list then it would contain any card preferences on my part as well as anything that would reflect my playstyle and that would take away from the individuality of somebody else's deck, which I feel is an important part of the spirit of commander.
