Red Stax Enchantments
Commander (EDH) forum
Posted on Oct. 9, 2019, 5:02 p.m. by dingusdingo
I just learned of some awesome new red stax enchantments and was wondering why they don't see more play.
Smoke is like a red winter orb for creatures. Most competitive green decks run a suite of 1 mana cost dorks, so this slows them drastically. Slows draws from Tymna, and beat down from stax decks. It has some serious defensive applications against wide decks.
Tectonic Instability seems like an obnoxious card, and potentially back-breaking with Winter Orb Static Orb Hokori, Dust Drinker Mana Web . At the very worst, this card reads "Your opponents lands ETB tapped"
Mudslide is another creature hoser, and while players can get out of it, it seems strong in combination with other taxing effects like Sphere of Resistance and friends. Once again this card robs mana dorks of their speed and resilience.
Are these stax effects strong enough to be viable?
RNR_Gaming says... #3
Viable in certain situations. Typically stax are just taxes and in certain situations they're great but in others they do nothing. For example Stranglehold is amazing if you're playing against someone running fetches and tutors but against someone playing fair top deck magic it's a 4 mana do nothing
October 9, 2019 8:28 p.m.
griffstick says... #4
In my atarka dragon deck I ran both Mudslide and Urabrask the Hidden as a stax combo. There's also Blood Moon And Magus of the Moon
October 9, 2019 10:15 p.m. Edited.
MagicalHacker says... #5
Would slot very nicely into red green enchantress, which is a deck I've had both a lot of fun and a lot of wins from on my YouTube channel.
October 10, 2019 7:59 a.m.
Stax is generally a cEDH strategy--more casual metas do not take kindly to decks that shut down playing the game, and will generally make that clear to the would-be Stax player. I think the red Stax pieces you outlined are strong cards for tuned, casual metas--but they're not enough to see play at the competitive level where you start to see more Stax.
Generally, cEDH games tend to have a lower reliance on creatures, decreasing the efficacy of Smoke and Mudslide . There's just much more utility in shutting down lands--everyone needs lands, regardless of if you are running creatures, artifacts, spellslinging, etc., and Winter Orb effects have a nice synergy with generic tax effects, like Static Orb . The anti-creature Red Stax effects are only going to work against a few decks, such as those with Green, whereas other options cover the whole table. They're just far to susceptible to what your opponents are playing.
Now, Tectonic Instability is a card that goes against lands, but it's really easy to circumvent. In the early game, when you're likely to use all your lands on a turn, you can simply tap for mana in advance of Instability's trigger resolving, and your play is unimpeded. You also give your opponents the option to simply not play lands. As the game progresses, and the need for new lands diminishes, Instability only gets worse.
enpc says... #2
Like all staxs cards, they are very situational to your meta. I'm guessing the reason they don't see much play is that they're a bit too situational and most Stax decks will try to run the common suite first.
On top of that, unless you're running Godo, tapping down all creatures seems bad as that's usually your wincon.
October 9, 2019 5:33 p.m.