Favorite strategy in the format?

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TheAmericanSpirit
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Post by TheAmericanSpirit » 1 year ago

I figure I'll expand a little more on what I enjoy, considering my first response was more a statement of philosophy than specifics.

Of the three primary archetypes, I prefer aggro to control or combo.
I like decks that can snowball an advantage quickly, blitz attack out of the blue (shout out to my boi Tears of Rage!), or easily recover from common disruption.

I've had my "fun" with stax in the past, but I don't like the time sink or the complaints it tends to bring. Generally, I'm against MLD, stax, and lockdown strategies in an untrusted play environment these days.

Combo is on the opposite end of the spectrum, as I don't enjoy the anticlimax of a combo finish, even in the ludicrously late game.

I don't enjoy durdling or value-scraping. I just want to calculate exactly how much I need and get there. Superfluous value is a useless pursuit.

Control is fun, but exhausting to play well. Every once in a while is often enough for that archetype.

I don't like jumping through hoops for the sake of originality. I will just pilfer an easier idea rather than wrack my brain to make jank work. My creativity only extends within my expectations of efficiency.

I like consistency and lots of redundancy. I couldn't imagine building around a single card or a secret commander. Rather, I want a class of cards that are functionally interchangeable so I can ensure I get off the ground in the same way as often as possible.

In essence, I like consistent, fast aggro strategies that will either launch like a missile into enemy lifetotals or burn up in the atmosphere trying. Momentum is the name of the game.
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materpillar
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Post by materpillar » 1 year ago

My post got fairly long so a quick disclaimer. 3drinks I am honestly curious. I'm just poking at your thoughts because I genuinely don't really understand. Please take my questions as trying to peel back your opinions for my own clarity not as some kind of attack. It can be hard to properly display said tone of voice over the internet.
3drinks wrote:
1 year ago
It's like a puzzle, you race against time to find the avenue out from the stax piece, the way to break symmetry of the other piece, while as the player, you take advantage of all the "SpOt ReMoVaL iS bAd" players that don't realize the humble nature's claim|tsr would have solved their whole problem.
I guess I don't see the puzzle? If someone casts Winter Orb after you tap out the only option is draw low cmc removal or do absolutely nothing and lose to the deck built to function in this environment. That's not particularly a puzzle, that's the opposite. Your resources and outs are extremely clear. They either line up or you die assuming the stax player is competent. I feel as though stax dramatically decreases what you have to think about not increases it.

I guess I've played against stax-light decks in constructed formats, there's some puzzle solving about how to play around Winter Orb when your highest cmc card is 3. That isn't my experience with EDH decks though.

As far as taking advantage of "removal is bad" players how is stax more interesting that Chulane, Teller of Tales? You stick it, no one answers it and you drown people in your resource advantage. That's basically the same thing you're doing with a stax deck. If your goal is to punish those players isn't just a 2-card infinite combo significantly more efficient?
3drinks wrote:
1 year ago


"Stax is the eventual final evolution of a healthy, balanced, perfect metagame". A healthy metagame of four players will eventually reach the point in which all four players play stax and, while they recognize a combo is the fastest way to end the game, they recognize that going for it early will lose them the game as they respect that other players will have the answer.
In my opinion the perfect healthy metagame is a midrange grindfest where people can play "bad" pet cards that they enjoy and the winner is determined by their ability to negotiate/politic/analyze the board state and not by the powerlevel/theme of their deck. People recognize that a combo is the fastest way to end a game, but they realize that "removal or die immediately" cards drastically reduce the complexity and depth of a game of magic. This metagame will ideally have a lot of Doom Bladed dragons.

I'm unsure of how stax is the best way to respect other players play removal. Isn't playing basically any constructed format or limited tournament an even better way? Just in terms of sheet volume of games played and amount of removal faced?
3drinks wrote:
1 year ago
A healthy, stax-on-stax game doesn't feature a resource imbalance because everyone has diversified resources to not get blown out by null rod/cursed totem/back to basics, and cards like rhystic study become laughable as players stop feeding extra resources and inevitably the game, to the study player as it's correctly identified as a threat. Most metagames will never reach this ultimate final point of maturity however, because there's always that one player that never grasps this, will perpetually mis-time removal on the wrong threat, or just flat out complains about the game rather than takes it as a learning opportunity to improve and educate themselves further
Take your hypothetical, perfect metagame of flawless players who don't waste removal or complain. Now put them all on balanced precon decks. Why is that game less interesting for you than the 4 of them on stax decks? Same question but they're all running 10/10 cEDH vintage light combo decks. Why is that game less interesting for you than stax? I don't see why Cursed Totem/Null Rod are so interesting?
You'd be surprised the amount of heavy lifting a simple Sphere of Resistance does, especially these days as players aggressively cut lands for cheap ramp because they relied on that kodama's reach that now effectively costs four but they never got past their third land...
I've cast rule of law against Maelstrom Wanderer. I have no sympathy for the storm player staring down a Sphere of Resistance. I guess there's a pretty big difference to me between speed bumping some people with Thalia, Guardian of Thraben and completely locking them out with Smokestack. When you say stax as assume you mean the latter.

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Post by BeneTleilax » 1 year ago

I'm with AmericanSpirit on combat decks, though I'll respect combat-based infect and Strixhaven Stadium as essentially "turning creatures sideways" wins. I generally end up playing go-wide-ish decks with some aristocrats/recursion elements to let them grind through wraths, but I respect all combat-damage wins (except I guess Turns decks that nominally kill with a leftover 2/3 on their 80th consecutive extra turn).

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3drinks
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Post by 3drinks » 1 year ago

Well this was fun I think?
materpillar wrote:
1 year ago
I guess I don't see the puzzle? If someone casts Winter Orb after you tap out the only option is draw low cmc removal or do absolutely nothing and lose to the deck built to function in this environment. That's not particularly a puzzle, that's the opposite. Your resources and outs are extremely clear. They either line up or you die assuming the stax player is competent. I feel as though stax dramatically decreases what you have to think about not increases it.

I guess I've played against stax-light decks in constructed formats, there's some puzzle solving about how to play around Winter Orb when your highest cmc card is 3. That isn't my experience with EDH decks though.
Au contrare. If someone caught you with a winter orb when you were tapped out, that's you failing the puzzle. They saw a situation, and they capitalized on your shields down moment. As an addendum, the winter orb isn't even so much pressure if your curve isn't so ridiculously high. If you start at 4mv, the yeah the Orb will completely wreck you because you can't even average 1 spell/turn. That's a very real opportunity cost that you, the player, made a conscious choice to disregard in the deck build process.

I've definitely turned the tide vs Orb decks by cracking a misty rainforest for Dryad Arbor and then suiting it up with Sword of Body and Mind (or Mask of Memory to dig for help). I get the impression our finishers are very clearly vastly different.
materpillar wrote:
1 year ago
As far as taking advantage of "removal is bad" players how is stax more interesting that Chulane, Teller of Tales? You stick it, no one answers it and you drown people in your resource advantage. That's basically the same thing you're doing with a stax deck. If your goal is to punish those players isn't just a 2-card infinite combo significantly more efficient?
Anything is more interesting than a Chulane deck. Watching the paint on the fence across the street dry is a more interesting past time than yet another Chulane deck going wild because players failed to read it as the threat or didn't have removal because they're too busy looking for ETB value instead of just casting the spell to time walk the Chulane player during the shields down moment when they tried resolving it. Like, this is not an unknown quantity. If you don't interact with it, or you play less removal than necessary, you don't get to go surprised pikachu when it does what you know it does.
materpillar wrote:
1 year ago
In my opinion the perfect healthy metagame is a midrange grindfest where people can play "bad" pet cards that they enjoy and the winner is determined by their ability to negotiate/politic/analyze the board state and not by the powerlevel/theme of their deck. People recognize that a combo is the fastest way to end a game, but they realize that "removal or die immediately" cards drastically reduce the complexity and depth of a game of magic. This metagame will ideally have a lot of Doom Bladed dragons.
I don't agree. I fondly remember the days of using Defense of the Heart to pull up my two Shivan Dragon|5eds over the lunch table at school, but this is not what I would call a it's a healthy game. Inherently when everyone plays generic midrange value, it's a sign the metagame has gotten stale. Either {card x} has become centralizing and no one at the table has figured out an answer to it, or players are too scared to make a move for fear of a retaliatory crack back and so everyone just plays a 4hr durdlefest game.
materpillar wrote:
1 year ago
Take your hypothetical, perfect metagame of flawless players who don't waste removal or complain. Now put them all on balanced precon decks. Why is that game less interesting for you than the 4 of them on stax decks? Same question but they're all running 10/10 cEDH vintage light combo decks. Why is that game less interesting for you than stax? I don't see why Cursed Totem/Null Rod are so interesting?
The main difference is that precon decks are not equal, often times are themed and theme =/= balance. Every year there's always one "chase" deck of the set, right? In the ideal fully evolved metagame, players have the right mix of answers for the threats presented. In the precon example, players don't have enough interaction (or dig to find the interacton) and thus, some unchecked threat winds up bowling over the other decks. Thus, even in "perfect hands", the imperfect decks create a less than ideal i.e. unpolished metagame.
materpillar wrote:
1 year ago
I've cast rule of law against Maelstrom Wanderer. I have no sympathy for the storm player staring down a Sphere of Resistance. I guess there's a pretty big difference to me between speed bumping some people with Thalia, Guardian of Thraben and completely locking them out with Smokestack. When you say stax as assume you mean the latter.
Stax as a strategy is about resource management. From your example, I believe (and it's a very common misconception) you're likening a stax strategy with that of prison. I suppose there could be some overlap, though I'd argue the goal of a prison deck is to lock you from doing anything at all (Lantern Control in Modern for a very miserable example) whereas a stax pilot is going to maximize their resources over anyone else's i.e. if everyone has two lands the stax player is going to squeeze what they can from those two lands, not wanting to lose an ounce of potential, unless everyone else loses more potential in the move such that they (the stax player) stay ahead on resources. A prison deck is just trying to be the most obnoxiously unfair way to play Magic. A great example of prison is the old Kami of the Crescent Moon decks in 1v1 play that would play all manner of Exhaustion and Drain Power effects so you can't actually use anything while they play unhindered. Stax is really just another way of saying Control, tbh.

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BaronCappuccino
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Post by BaronCappuccino » 1 year ago

While I no longer play stax, I'm glad it exists, especially in commander. I like to ask myself what my deck would do against stax and control during deck construction -- what would I do against a deck that's more trying to stop me from doing my thing than doing its own thing? It reins in my natural tendency to dial a deck's concept up to 11 at the expense of function. I don't think commander would be as fun if the only decks that existed were fair and honest midrange aggro decks. I don't necessarily want to face nothing but stax and control all day long, but I want to expect the threat of facing one about as often as any other archetype.

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Post by plushpenguin » 1 year ago

Either super efficient snowball machines or weird constrained ideas that a color combination is not particularly known for.

Combos generally avoided but not disdained if unique enough.

Durdling I avoid unless my poor draws give me no choice.

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