Winterblast yeah that's fair, I didn't notice it got removed. It's more cute than it is powerful. I've never really had a full stax deck but this certainly looks like a pain in the ass to play against haha

Winterblast
I also just noticed you don't run a Force of Will. Why is that?

Florg that's because I don't have enough blue cards to pitch and FoW won't be free with all the taxing spheres. Imagine trinisphere and FoW - lose 2 cards and 1 life to pay 3 for a "free" counterspell

Great work here. Lots of thought put into the list and plenty of review leaves little to improve. Personally I dislike 3CMC mana rocks unless they are combo centric like Basalt Monolith. Do you think Chromatic Lantern could make room for anything better? Coalition Relic I have some reservations about as well but don't think this two color deck can afford not to run it.

Thank you Kaleo42!

Coalition relic has already been replaced by Prismatic Lens because of the lesser cost. Lantern is important because it enables lands that don't produce mana on their own, for example tabernacle, to make colored mana. Mishras workshop can be used to cast nonartifact spells as well then.

I have currently stuffed in Delay and Phyrexian Metamorph instead of telepathy and stroke of genius, but it might be changed back again. Updating again when I'm sure about it

Hey there Winterblast, I run a prison type edh deck that I'd like some advice on? After seeing this deck i figured you might be able to provide some tips? Maybe even an upvote if you like my idea?? Here is the deck:

"Fun." .... What a frivolity!

Commander / EDH* Atraxablaster

SCORE: 2 | 310 VIEWS | IN 1 FOLDER

A little surprised I'm not seeing static orb. Seems like an auto include for a stax deck.

Citrusjeans Augustin does nothing to break parity under "can't untap" effects, so it's not useful here. What he does is to create a resource disparity by taxing/reducing costs, which means more spells for me and less for my opponents...static orb would just prevent me from using all the mana rocks I need to overcome the taxing and land removal

Fellow Augustin player here Anti-Competitive GAAIV (Embrace the Hate) , always love to see how others are building him. Relative to combos....

1) would a Power Artifact be decent in your list, for another way to turn your monoliths infinite?

2) You mentioned a Fire and Ice.... would a Sword of Feast and Famine be better to give you another form of asymmetry with winter orb?

3) Do you see value in running Teferi's Protection or Faith's Reward to turn your MLD asymmetrical, or in the case of Teferi's to evade wipes?

4) Any reason in particular for not slotting Torpor Orb ?

Great list btw, looks like it'd be a blast to play, and would pilot quite differently than mine even though we share 80%(+) overlap. Good job =)

Nietzsky I'll answer your Points one by one:

1) power artifact is another Piece for infinite (colorless) mana but the Problem with it is that it doesn't do anything at all without one of the 2 Monoliths. I want to minimize the dead draws, and the other Combo pieces have their own use at least, Monoliths as mana rocks, rings for doubling all other sorts of activiated abilities from fetchlands to planeswalkers, paradox engine for overcoming all taxes and playing everything in the hand, staff of Domination for getting small effects out of mana left at the end of turns and to storm off manually with paradox engine...power artifact is just dead in the Hand without the other Combo part and even then you Need a mana sink (because the commander isn't)

2) SoFI might have been considered long ago but has been cut along with several other Cards that focused too much on lock/beatdown in Addition to Combo kills. The only Equiment I consider at the Moment is umezawa's jitte to Keep mana dorks and hatebears in check repeatedly (maybe instead of swords to plowshares). sword of feast an famine is irrelevant here because I don't run winter orb and I usually don't have many (or even any) lands in Play to benefit from the untapping. Winter orb is bad in this deck because the commander itself doesn't break parity under that effect - back to basics is better because I just Need to Keep it in mind when I consider my land Drops.

3) nope, reactive slots will be used for counterspells and not for a completely passive Action. My land removals are already asymmetrical because of the massive amount of nonland mana sources (yes, I die to null rod if I can't remove it) so I don't Need a two Card Combo to break parity on that. if an Opponent wants to remove something from my board it's better to just Counter that spell instead of removing myself from the game for a turn (and teferi's protection can be countered too)

4) Torpor orb is not that important anymore compared to cursed totem. I had it in the deck but eventually it became obsolete because ETB effects became less important when other decks became played more and quite a few of them pack Torpor orb themselves. If I need a complete shutdown of creature based strategies I will get Humility...I've added idyllic Tutor to the deck to get more felxibility with the enchantments as silver bullets.

Oh, just realized the update I was reading was back from August =P...

Makes sense for sure, though I will say on #4, Torpor helped me answer a Sisay combo/stax quite well, and saved me from quite a few Reclamation Sage s out of nowhere. ( Outside of Null Rod / Stony Silence , Aura Shards is prob what I'm looking for next to ruin my day, and people love trolling my Augustin with GW or GWB).

Would definitely say Back to Basics is phenomenal (am surprised at how few basics you're deciding to slot with it) ..... I am considering swapping Stasis for Mana Breach in my own list, how does it generally play for you? Wondering if it'd be a little win-more (I initially chose to slot stasis for another 2-card combo including Felidar).

On an unrelated note, what's your opinion on slotting a Felidar Sovereign wincon in Augustin? (Running Serra Ascendant and Blind Obedience as well, in an attempt to counteract the life I'm spending on early mana). I'm not saying your list should run one, more asking a fellow Augustin player whether they think it's a questionable choice overall for the commander/playstyle.

Yes, that's an old update...and I might have to clear something up in the deck description as well because the deck has changed quite a bit.

My general approach now is far less focused on achieving a boardstate that is an unescapable lock (even though getting rid of the lands while removing most or even all nonland permanents in combination with taxing effects can pretty much result in a lock) or answering all possible threats but rather to just slow down the game to a pace that is comfortable for this deck until pulling off the win cons is possible. This also means giving up some pieces for covering ALL possible threats in favour of more consistency in form of carddraw, card selection and Tutors.

tbh I wouldn't run ANY of the effects that prevent untapping because Augustin does nothing to break parity under these effects and everything in the 99 has to be found first. Green decks will always outrace you unless you get combo-like parity breakers out...so imo it's best to go for a completely different stax strategy, tax and destroy (or bounce). Mana Breach is one of the pieces that fit into that strategy. Looking at your deck I don't know if it really fits though.

If you have a look at my Cards that meddle with lands, you can see the two MLD spells you have too, Land Equilibrium, Mana Breach, back to basics. On top of that there are tax effects one of which is the commander. just looking at lands, the taxing effects push People to Play more lands in order to cast spells (also to re-cast bounced mana rocks/dorks for example). Armageddon and Ravages punish People for playing too many lands, land Equilibrium prevents land drops beyond the number of lands I have in play (which is usually very few) and mana breach both sets people's land Count back for each spell and also helps in getting my own lands away from the battlefield to make Land Equilibrium more effective. mana breached lands also help me with scroll rack because I can turn the bounced lands into carddraw. Back to Basics is the odd one out here because bouncing and dropping lands again would get around the don't untap effect...but it's a strong enough effect on ist own, often just as good as destroying the lands. These effects all interact with each other and punish people for trying to evade one of the effects. dealing with nonland mana sources is what needs to be adressed then, so that's why I am currently testing the weird looking aether gale for example.

I don't think the alternative win con is good there. blind obedience is good on its own, I haven't found a slot for it in my deck though...worth a try though. serra ascendant is also a good card but only useful if you actively want to lower life totals of players who need a certain amount of life to work, if they want to cast ad nauseam for example. for saving yourself it's probably better to just win instead of trying to fight damage based win cons with lifelink. I had more creatures in the deck for a while, serra ascendant, monastery Mentor and more, to be able to beat face really hard under a soft lock but eventually all that dmg usually wasn't enough to win by combat and the wasted slots made the stax/combo strategy less consistent. I already have alternatives for winning, there's helm/rip, metalworker/staff, Monolith/rings (+ divining top or staff or stroke) and paradox engine and staff for manually storming through the deck or engine + voltaic key + divining top for infinite draw...pieces are shared between these combos and another alternative win con like felidar doesn't do anything for them.

You have Mana Drain listed twice!

x12721 that's the custom view with categories. Sort it by card type and it's only there once...I tagged it with #mana and #counter

Ah, my apologies. I didn't know you could have a card in multiple categories!

What do you think of Teferi's Protection ? How often do you use Hurkyl's Recall to protect your own artifacts? And whats your prefered target to use Copy Artifact on, if there's no Metalworker?

VitalisStacs Teferi's protection is a weird card...it's very situational and even more passive than a counterspell because you can't use it to protect your own win. And there's the problem of having your stax pieces gone until your next turn, so people just win when you and your stuff are completely phased out. protecting stax by phasing all permanents out just allows everyone to play freely, so it's not a good response to removal.

Hurkyl's recall is most often used to bounce an opponent's mana or stax/combo pieces. The option of using it on myself is fine but not often relevant, for the same reason as Teferi's protection. If someone tries to remove one of my cards, removing all others as well for them isn't a huge trick. It's useful when more artifacts would be destroyed at once though, or when I need gas in my turn and bounce everything EOT so I could for example remove spheres, cast mana vault/monolith again for ramp, then cast the spheres again...more useful for saving single artifacts is Steel Sabotage because it's a Counter/removal/protection that leaves the rest of the board intact. I've had that situation two weeks ago for example, needed to cast hurkyl's on an opponent because he has an isochron scepter with nature's claim, in Response he wanted to destroy one of my important stax pieces and I saved it with steel sabotage and recast it again.

copy artifact is just useful, either for doubling up on spheres, tangle wire, mana...or to copy ramp of my opponents when I don't have something on my own side.