To stax or not to stax. That is the question.
Commander Deck Help forum
Posted on June 20, 2016, 12:09 a.m. by PlattBonnay
Hey friends,
Been working on my Child of Alara (Lands) deck, and I'm finding more and more that the decks biggest weakness is fast combo decks. In response to this I've been adding some stax elements, but I'm still not convinced this is the best way to approach this problem. So I am looking for some suggestions. Should I go deeper into stax effects or move to a gameplan that interacts more so at instant speed (countermagic and extra removal)?
Stax and Control are actually two completely different strategies. If your biggest weakness is fast combo, then Stax would help you there. Control typically loses to Combo (in EDH), so adding in more control elements won't help your match too much.
June 20, 2016 1:11 a.m.
PlattBonnay says... #4
vault - How do you figure that combo loses to control? And further, stax is just a variation of control played by non-blue centric decks.
June 20, 2016 6:30 a.m.
PlattBonnay says... #5
*control loses to combo. Why can't comments be edited?
June 20, 2016 6:41 a.m.
I suppose I was referencing the competetive level, where counter-control is much less viable. In less competetive metas, I'm sure countering things is a reliable way to control the game.
June 20, 2016 9:10 a.m.
In a multiplayer format control is very difficult in its usual form (card advantage + a ton of counterspells). This is because every time you counter a spell the net effect is for you and the player you countered to be down one card compared to the other two players at the table. Worse, there's no way you're going to be able to hold up enough mana to counter threats from three people at once if all decks pose an equal threat level.
This is why control in EDH tends to be stax. Stax effects hit all your opponents at once. Counterspells, on the other hand, tend to be for protection of your own plays rather than primarily to stop your opponents. Use them in a pinch to stop someone comboing off, of course, but trying to stop multiple combo decks with just counterspells is going to end poorly for you in almost all situations.
June 20, 2016 9:18 a.m.
mtgThaen, Omeros, Control is still a viable and powerful strategy in cEDH and it is not the same as Stax. A traditional control deck in EDH relies rather heavily on politics when it can. It saves its counterspells for when it's ready to win unless it absolutely has to use them for other reasons. More often than not, it'll let the other players at the table do their thing and force them to stop one another. If someone is about to go off and no one else can do anything about it, that's when the control player steps in. All it does is keep the game going until it's ready to win.
If you want an example of a cEDH control deck, I advise you to check out Epoch's Damia, Sage of Stone deck. Not Stax. If you want to see a Stax commander, look for Thalia, Guardian of Thraben, Zur the Enchanter, or Gaddock Teeg.
Stax usually looks for a way to cheat spells or amass enough mana to get past its own taxes (Zur and Teeg, respectively) to advance it's own game plan. Stax can be in pretty much any color you want as most of the best Stax cards are artifacts. There are even completely colorless Stax decks.
PlattBonnay, What I said about control typically losing to combo is something I read either here or on /r/cEDH, but it makes sense when you think about it. A control deck cannot stop constant threats, it only intervenes when it absolutely needs to. But a combo deck will be constantly trying to combo. Combo decks have a multitude of combos within that usually all play off one another. That way, if one combo piece is removed in some way, you don't have to assemble an entirely new combo. Additionally, they will usually wait until they have multiple options that way they can ensure a greater chance of winning when they combo off. Stopping multiple win conditions in one turn isn't very easy.
Of course, everything I've said is heavily reliant on the skill of the pilot and is not at all an absolute. You can't just pick up a combo deck off the internet and expect to beat any control deck you come across.
If you want an example of a pure combo deck, sometimes called a Midrange Combo deck, you can check out my Ghave deck. Additionally, you can check through /r/cEDH for more information on the format and it's various archetypes.
June 20, 2016 5:49 p.m.
PlattBonnay says... #9
I'm confused by your insisting that stax is not control, vault. Control doesn't always mean counterspells and removal. A control deck is any deck that tries to control (thus the name) the flow of the game. Whether this is done with lock pieces or countermagic is irrelevant. It's all control. And in regards to your comment about control losing to combo, that's not true. What you are describing as a combo deck is simply a midrange deck with a combo finish. Combo decks (like storm or lab man) can often be disrupted by a well placed counterspell or kill spell, which is why they go for speed, not giving their opponents time to find removal or countermagic.
June 21, 2016 8:38 p.m.
The supposed control deck with Damia at the helm wants to combo out as soon as this can safely be done, emphasis on safely. It has just enough counterspell support to be able to time this for when it is best rather than trying to rush at full speed and pray it works.
If that's what control means to you, sure, call it control. To me it's just a combo deck with enough permission to deny faster combo decks a win.
mtgThaen says... #2
Stax is the control strategy of EDH. In a pod of usually 4 people, controlling the stack is tough, and often is not very feasible with mana restrictions (needing to spread your resources over 3 turns instead of 1). Instead, stax makes spells more difficult to cast, permanents much less permanent, or resources much more scarce, depending on your particular brand of stax. Run a few counterspells for emergencies, but largely let Winter Orb, The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale, and Invoke Prejudice do their thing, while you do yours.
June 20, 2016 12:42 a.m.