Name says it all--the goal of this deck is to achieve a hard lock as quickly and efficiently as possible. Once a hard lock is achieved, we just beat people to death with Stoic Angel and our general.
First, the Stasis hard lock. Pentad Prism and
Crystalline Crawler
are the go-to choices--they don't have to tap to produce mana, and Atraxa's proliferation refills them to pay Stasis's upkeep cost indefinitely. There's tutors and Transmuters a plenty to get us there.
Once the hard lock is in place, Venser, the Sojourner lets us blink all our tapped permanents vertical again. Garruk Wildspeaker untaps two lands--potentially massive, since we're running a full compliment of the Ravnica double lands. Sword of Feast and Famine is an absolute all-star--simultaneously beefing up our general while providing evasion and forcing opponents to discard while also breaking parity on a colossal scale. Teferi, Temporal Archmage can use his -1 indefinitely in a world where he gets proliferated during each of his controller's end steps. Tezzeret the Seeker is another power player--fetching our power artifacts, breaking parity, and letting us double-dip on our mana rocks.
Candelabra of Tawnos
and
Magus of the Candelabra
break parity and provide mana ramp and fixing with all the double lands. For extra style points, we drop either of them on turn 1, then activate it for 1 on turn 2 before dropping a double land. We drop our Azorius Chancery and bounce our tapped
Bayou
, then use the floating Candelabra trigger to untap the Chancery.
That's that ol' dirty shit...that Wu-Tang shit...that shit that's gonna get you high.
Crop Rotation is retarded if we've already got Crucible of Worlds, and can still fix mana or even save our asses even if we don't. Between Strip Mine, Maze of Ith, Academy Ruins and The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale, the ability to instant-speed put any land into play can be immensely powerful.
Tangle Wire is a fucking monster. It synergizes pretty beautifully with Gilder Bairn and all the parity breaking 'walkers. The main goal of Tangle Wire is to stall out the early game and buy us time to go searching for all the pieces of our Stasis lock. Even so, we've got to be careful not to play it too early--certainly never before our general, and only when we have a plan to work around it. Tangle Wire's final and maybe most important function is that it absorbs the Disenchant that you opponent should have been saving for Stasis.
Smokestack is a similar principle as Tangle Wire, though needs to be used with even greater care. In a perfect world, we'll have a Smokestack with 6 soot counters in play alongside an Elspeth, Sun's Champion, an Elspeth, Knight-Errant, a Sorin, Lord of Innistrad and a Bitterblossom. Doubling Season really shines in this context--beyond just bringing in our 'walkers with 2x the loyalty, it lets us safely build Smokestack into a menace even if we only have out one or two token generators. Smokestack also provides us a built-in way to get rid of any of our Stax pieces that have outlived their usefulness--not the least of which being Smokestack.
Academy Ruins, Eternal Witness and Yawgmoth's Will give us some do-overs for when things don't go our way.
Card advantage is maintained through Sensei's Divining Top, Scroll Rack, Dark Confidant, Rhystic Study and
Necropotence
. Atraxa's lifelink helps negate Bob and Necro's life-paying, and Crucible of Worlds works wonders with the fetchlands to reshuffle your library whenever your Scroll Rack deems it necessary. Wherever possible, we have deliberately eschewed some of the Top-of-Library tutors in favor of tutors that put cards directly into our hand. On the flipside, Aven Mindcensor functionally shuts down our opponents' ability to keep up.
Crucible of Worlds is maybe the final piece of the puzzle. It ramps with Crop Rotation and shuffles/fetches with all the fetchlands, but we're also running Strip Mine, Wasteland, Armageddon and Ravages of War. MLD is a serious part of our gameplan--our whole goal is to achieve a favorable board state and then freeze the game. Destroying everyone's lands often gets us there.
While this deck isn't exactly "interactive" in the traditional sense, it does take a degree of wits and skill to pilot effectively. Most of the instrumental cards in the deck require proper timing, or else they end up just shooting the pilot in the foot. As a general rule, Atraxa, Praetors' Voice should always come first. We're basically just playing a particularly controlly remix of Group Slug, so we need to make sure that we're braced for the impact before we unleash the sluggers.
THE MAYBEBOARD:
Academy Rector - Self explanatory, totally good enough for the deck, just need to figure out what to cut for it.
Ajani Steadfast - Utility superfriend, bonkers insta-ult with Doubling Season.
Blind Obedience - Seems real strong with Stasis.
Chrome Mox - Should already be running it, need to decide what to cut.
City of Traitors
- Strong with
Candelabra of Tawnos
and Crucible of Worlds, not super hurting for colorless mana though.
Grand Arbiter Augustin IV - All around powerhouse, goes with the theme of facilitating my own plays while inhibiting those of my opponents.
Ichor Rats
- The classic alternate win-con for Atraxa Stax. Seems superfluous though, Stoic Angel and Atraxa provide plenty of game-ending beatdown power inside a hard lock. Also potentially a liability in a mirror match.
Inexorable Tide - Seems real strong with planeswalkers and Lighthouse Chronologist. Speaking of which...
Lighthouse Chronologist - Seems awesome with Inexorable Tide, slow to the point of being strictly win-more without it. Demands experimentation.
Lotus Vale
- Strong with Crucible of Worlds and untap land effects.
Scorched Ruins - Strong with Crucible of Worlds and untap land effects.
Sorin, Grim Nemesis
- Card advantage, spot removal, win con insta-ult with Doubling Season.
Static Orb
- Stax classic, mean with Tangle Wire but ultimately much softer than Stasis.
Winter Orb - Stax classic, mean with Tangle Wire but ultimately much softer than Stasis.
Chromatic Star/Chromatic Sphere - Mana fixing + card advantage. 1 drop, never a totally dead card, just what do we cut for them?
Derevi, Empyrial Tactician - INSANE with Venser, the Sojourner and Stasis. Definitely making it, again just not sure what to cut.
Silent Arbiter - Pillowfort/soft boardlock
No Mercy - Pillowfort deterrent
Moat - Pillowfort/soft boardlock
Root Maze
- 1-drop, good with Stasis, not quite as good as Blind Obedience.
Tidal Force
- Seems like it might be godlike? Wish it didn't cost 5UUU though.
Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth - Makes Ith and Tabernacle a little more useful, ought to make
Necropotence
a little more manageable.
Tolaria West - Land tutor that also grabs 0-drop mana rocks and Pact of Negation? Seems strong, just kinda slow.
Llanowar Reborn
- There's already too many taplands and not enough creatures, but fuuuuuuuuck, yah'mean? Since lethal commander damage is already our primary wincon, a proliferating Graftland seems like it might actually shave a turn or two off this deck's kill time.
