Land destruction vs Stax
Commander (EDH) forum
Posted on Nov. 15, 2020, 2:46 p.m. by marco-piatti
Hi everyone,
I was talking with collegue of mine about the fun of playing stax or land destruction. In his opinion, Stax is worse for other players yet considered better while compared to land destruction by many because it basically reset the game for everyone and the effects are usually simmetrical. In my opinion land distruction is at least on the same level of stax in terms of "breaking the social EDH contract". Because you deny resources but your deck is specifically built to take advantage/be less disadvantaged by the situation. However, since stax requires permanent cards to work while land distruction effects are instants o sorceries that requires an immediate answer in my opinion the latter is more "unfair" to others.
I don't intend to blame anyone who plays stax or land distruction, i just want to know your take on this topic. Also how do you react to theese kind of decks? Would you ask a member of the paygroup to change deck or to tune a little bit differently their deck?
marco-piatti says... #3
Honestly it's not like we were being salty about these strategies. Also the "i hate you because you do something i don't like" was not the point of my thread. Denying resources to others in casual edh is something that impacts the experience of all the players at the table. The point of our discussion is that someone should take into account this aspect of the game while building a deck.
November 15, 2020 4 p.m.
GhostChieftain says... #4
The only time i frown upon either of those is when you do them without a way to close the game out
November 15, 2020 5:26 p.m.
FormOverFunction says... #5
GhostChieftain nailed it. To add, however, I feel like Stax is easier to manage because destroying enchantments and artifacts and whatnot is more doable (and can even be incremental) than recovering from a land wipe. That tips if, for me, to leaving Stax as less...I dunno...oppressive, troublesome, or whatever word you would want to use. None of it matters, though, if you have a clear path to victory after springing your trap. If you’re just trying to be the last one to run out of cards or scoop...that’s not as great...
November 15, 2020 6:19 p.m.
EleshNornsFs says... #6
I won't be upset with someone for playing either, but it doesn't mean I will enjoy the game. Personally, I'd rather face land destruction. Having to reset my board is better than not being able to play at all.
November 15, 2020 6:22 p.m.
Omniscience_is_life says... #7
Having played games against a boardstate with both Vorinclex, Voice of Hunger and Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur against me I can say that not being able to cast spells can still be a cool game. MLD, however, is highly uninteresting. But I generally don't care, if ya wanna play like that I will be sure to just counter your commander every time you play it, exile your combo pieces, and play as you seem to like it.
November 15, 2020 6:58 p.m.
I mean, stax is just resource denial so I would call MLD a type of stax. Squares and rectangles and all that.
I think GhostChieftain hit the nail on the head - as long as you're doing something advantageous for yourself, then there isn't an issue.
Don't get me wrong, being on the barrel end of stax sucks, but being on the barrel end of a combo or beatdown sucks too. And playing against stax is a good way to find a deck's deficiencies - a lot better than playing against aggro or combo. Very quickly you will realise where your deck linchpins are.
Now a lot of people don't like the idea of having their deck building methodology challenged, which is why we see playgroups who are vitriolic towards stax or combo. And that's fine, but it's not the way to get better at MtG.
November 15, 2020 7:34 p.m. Edited.
Tyrant-Thanatos says... #9
Don't get me wrong, being on the barrel end of stax sucks, but being on the barrel end of a combo or beatdown sucks too.
While I generally agree with the sentiment, the difference is that being on the barrel end of combo or beatdown means you're shuffling up to play another game real soon, whereas being at the barrel end of stax means you could be held hostage by moral/social obligations to not scoop for the next couple of hours wasting your time doing absolutely nothing.
November 15, 2020 10:49 p.m.
Tyrant-Thanatos: Sure, and it can be annoying. But generally with stax the writing's on the wall relatively quickly into the stax plan being implemented. And if your game is hung up for hours, then either something is wrong with your deck's ability ot play though stax or the stax player is taking their sweet time for no reason (in which case they've generally already broken the social contract so scooping is fine) or they stax deck is ineffective, in which case you're probably just playing a game of Magic.
But that's all a decision that you have to make as a player. I would say though that if your playgroup is "holding you hostage by moral/social obligations to not scoop" then that's a pretty crappy thing to do and it sounds like you have bigger issues to deal with than just playing against a stax deck.
November 15, 2020 11:45 p.m.
Tyrant-Thanatos says... #11
Yeah it's not an issue I've run into with any personal playgroups, it's something I encountered with some regularity at LGSs though, back when I did that whole thing. I'm sure my deck probably was ineffective at playing through stax, but I didn't, and still don't, know how I could have resolved that apart from just playing something completely different.
November 16, 2020 12:03 a.m.
In my experience, Stax or MLD decks will usually get primaried by the rest of the table. If they still pull off their win, congratulations.
November 16, 2020 1:24 a.m.
I agree with enpc about the whole "holding you hostage by moral/social obligations to not scoop" thing. I don't even understand what that statement means. If you are in a game where you cannot break a lock or cannot recover enough to provide a threat to the rest of the table, you are more than welcome to scoop. What would be the point of not scooping?
November 16, 2020 1:37 a.m.
Tyrant-Thanatos says... #14
With the way multiplayer magic works, one player scooping changes the way the game plays out, period. EVERY time I've witnessed a single player scooping in a multiplayer game it has provably changed who won. To me, that's unsportsmanlike and rude. It's a flaw in the rules of the game more than anything imo, but it's the way things are. I'm sure everyone's experiences are different, but the few times I've scooped in a multiplayer game, it's NEVER taken well by the rest of the table. Maybe I just have shitty experiences with randos at LGSs, idk.
November 16, 2020 2:38 a.m.
I think the other issue with resource denial decks is that the best way to combat them is to build a deck that just costs less mana to play.
If I am losing to beatdown or combo as a casual LGS player on a budget, I can still tech in some sub-optimal board wipes or middling counter magic (Cancel).
Against stax/mld where you slowly lose the ability to play, the only really good way to make sure you still have options is to make your deck cost less mana. What they actually translates to is “spend a lot more money on better, cheaper-mana versions of the cards in your deck”.
There is no sentiment which I’ve seen players hate on more, across all games, than a “pay to win/pay to not lose” model, and stax is a bully of a deck (against less competitive tables) which acts as an enforcer of that detested model.
Personally... I mean we live in a capitalist economy and blah blah blah, pay2win is just a fact of gaming. I don’t mind losing to stax once in a while. That said, it’s not a deck I would ever build or pilot against anyone who isn’t a devout cEDH player, because it frankly just seems unethical.
November 16, 2020 10:41 a.m.
People need to learn how to scoop
If someone successfully pulls off stax or LD and you feel you cant come out of it
just say gg and scoop
Its no different then any other win con
December 6, 2020 1:38 p.m.
Land Destruction is stax. It is just more consistently reliable than other stax pieces and hence frowned upon.
Stax is anything that prevents the other players decks from functioning and removing lands qualifies.
Blood Moon is a stax piece that ruins mana fixing. Destructive Flow is a stax piece that removes lands entirely.
They're just different flavors of the same thing. Saying one is ok and the other isn't is silly.
I built a stax deck, but I hardly play it. As the stax player, the rest of the table should try to kill you first before you lock them out of the game. Personally, I don't like 2 hour long games where the game grinds to a stop, and I also don't like dying in 4 turns because the table teamed up on me. One of those 2 things are going to happen when you play stax.
Reznorboy says... #2
I personally think that the social contract is terrible and should not exist, but that's kind of irrelevant.
As far as stax and land destruction, they usually play out very similarly. The staxtician is spending mana to take away others', same with land destruction.
I would think a better question is what are the opinions of people on chaos (cards like Possibility Storm), mass discard, wheels decks (cards like Wheel of Fortune, mass hatebears (like Archon of Emeria), pillowfort, etc.
However, in the end, I think it just boils down to, "I hate you because you won and I will claim it's for this reason, but it's really because you won."
Back to the social contract, I think a lot of people are dishonest or don't actually know what makes them angry. I really dislike the whole concept of Casual EDH for this reason primarily.
A lot of people think that, "If I just don't do X, people won't get angry at me." In reality, some people get angry at just about everything and seriously need to forget about it.
If someone has a problem, they should
Be honest with themselves and others about what the problem is, AND if it's even necessary to confront it
Confront it
November 15, 2020 3:26 p.m.