Teaching Arena Zoomers About STAX | Against the Odds | Historic Magic: the Gathering (MTG) 

Seth: "Emoting when your opponent is roping makes you looks bad" Crim: "I crowdsurf the Karn the moment I see the timer come up"

you were right, the reason Heliod came back is because their devotion was only 4 without him on the board so he turns into a creature after he enters

Seth: Today we're going to prevent our opponents from playing Magic on Arena. MTGA Economy: Hey that's my job.

I absolutely love Seth clicking the smiley face on the did you have fun screen

New sub series of Against the Odds called "Teaching Arena Zoomers"? This is a sequel to Teaching Arena Zoomers About Hard Locks and Chalice

“You know crim would be crowd surfing karn” God yes I know he would

Mtggoldfish might be my favourite educational channel. Teaching new players all the important life lessons.

Containment priest/displacer loops against elves was so gross, I love it 😂

I love Seth educating arena zoomers about early magic.

When I first saw the video length, I legitimately thought you only played 2-3 games. Turns out that I underestimated Arena players. The match vs. Elves was one of the most beautiful things I've seen in a while.

Favorite moment: Following the one land, one keep defeat, Seth shrugs and says, "It's just one of those things. There's nothing we could have done. Nothing we could have done differently at all. The Magic Gods just didn't want us to win."

Watching Seth play, joke and give his opinion is magical, it's like having a Dumbledore showing you how Magic works

Seth, I was 100% sure you were correct about that Heliod re-entry being an arena bug so I did some digging. And it turns out, nope. “As a God enters the battlefield, your devotion to its color will determine whether any replacement effects that affect creatures entering the battlefield apply to that God. Because replacement effects are considered before the God is on the battlefield, the mana symbols in its mana cost won’t be counted when determining this.”

"How does your deck win?" You decide to concede. "No, I mean what's the wincon?" Destroying your will to continue

"I would click this twice if I could" was gold.

I love how the one deck to beat old school magic was an old school magic deck itself 😂 Also, the last game with lifegain: Drannith Magistrate shuts down Disturb creatures as well!

This warms my heart seeing all the stax ❤️

Seeing Stax work on arena makes me immeasurably happy.

I love these ones, learning about these kinds of decks is almost a right of passage for MTG players.

36:03 so i looked this up, apparently because Heliod only becomes a creature due to its OWN white pip giving enough devotion it avoids the Containment Priests effect, since upon entering it is considered an enchantment, and then immediately afterwards checks devotion count and becomes a creature. if the opponent had one more white pip on the board Heliod would have been exiled since it would have entered as a creature i believe. EDIT: should have watched a bit further, you immediately assumed the correct reason lol

i am very glad that you do such educational content also for your opponents

I've been trying to build this deck for ages! Thanks for this!

Another great video brother Set. I really enjoyed seeing people scoop up to you.

As I explained stax (even thought without the actual stax I'd argue it's more like D&T) once to a newbie friend : "Stax is breaking your legs in order to break your opponent's, except *you* can actually win with broken legs."

Ah fantastic, I thought you might have done this already but I look forward to this

Strict proctor was incredible in this. It’s a card I’ve seriously overlooked because I felt like everytime it hit the field it was doing work

loving the historic content!

This deck gives me such Teferi/Knowledge Pool vibes... so happy!!!

Some wholesome content. The world needs more of this.

This has to be one of the best intros ever. I fricking love it.

I loved this educational video so much!

Genuinely seems like a pretty sweet deck. Loved this episode.

This video was extremely satisfying to sit through 😂

Exciting deck, thanks for the video!

Amazing seth! love the Arena zoomers videos. I only hope that we one day get the cards to teach Arena zoomers about lantern control.

This is the wholesome content I subbed for.

I got the mutavault + book of exalted deeds combo off right before I was gonna lose, so the dude played it out until my only permanent left in play was mutavault from an ultimate, then when he had no cards left they used all their timeouts. Truely the best game of magic I’ve played.

I'm glad I can rely on you to teach the ways of old to these zoomers🤣

I cant believe how many salty ropes and instant scoops you got, that was filthy

4:10 That intro got me PUMPED UP. I can't wait to see how things turn out.

Can we get a full stream of this Seth?! It was so much fun to watch

I could watch this deck for hours 😍

Gotta love that evil stax laugh that only a fun game of stax can provide.

Makes me giddy when you’re “teaching Zoomers” videos come out nothing sweeter!! Thanks Seth you’re the best

I got into MTG by playing Legacy basically by accident because I didn't know any better, so these videos really take me back lmao

Damn, just looking at the deck tech RN. But wow, this is a masterpiece.

"We stax away their will to play magic, we got them" LOVED IT!

That was some insanely lucky draws against that elves deck. And containment priest + displacer is not a combo I would have thought of but its really fun to see.

Keeping a 1 lander lol. That was so painful to watch. Everything else was amazing, totally love the deck. I need to try this!

I could watch a couple videos of Seth playing stax every day and be happy.

First time showing us the survey, this was a monumental moment in Against the Odds.

as an arena zoomer i gotta say this deck looks incredibly sweeeet. plus anything that dunks on control has my approval

Making zoomer squirm with old archetypes is always fun.

If you are already doing arena exhibitions, i'd like to ask that you include the wildcard costs of the deck in the cost preview maybe? Knowing how much the deck costs in paper or tix kinda does jack in this instance. And it at least gives you a feeling of what you'd need to craft it yourself.

Oh my god I love Stax. I have to build this deck now.

So happy to see this video!

Watching elfball scoop to a displacer is great

"Did you have fun in that match?" God, what a perfect time for Arena to ask lmao

So the Heliod thing is, as you guessed, because they had exact devotion. By removing it you lowered their devotion so it wasn't a creature, then when it came back it's mana symbol gave them devotion again so it became a creature AFTER containment priest had already checked it.

Opponent: gets mana starved Seth: Yeah that was a good one!

That was fun!

36:20 Heliod is the 5th devotion, so it’s not a creature until Heliod enters

This video made me so happy. Take them to class Seth!

that elf matchup went perfectly lmao insane

I wish we had a Smoke Stack so we could complete the experience! Great video!

This was therapeutic

Arena zoomers really need to understand the hell that is a lock-out stax list. They just don't get how brutal it can be to play against.

When you played prison, I commented on the fact that that style of deck really preys on the historic meta. It seems this remains true

Beautiful stuff

Stax... my mortal enemy... My hatred for Stax is infinite... Only entertaining when I'm not the opponent...

“Opponent is on brand. I wonder if they are actually an elf.” - Seth, probably better known as “Saffron Olive”

So funny...I worked on a version of thus deck all night last night, using stone rain as well. Soooooo fun

that elves matchup was brutal it was like you kicked a puppy

This deck was legit. Very cohesive. In terms of game play, there were a couple times when you cast combat tricks at sorcery speed. 😅

That's some good educating right there

This reminds me the good ol days of locking fool with pool and teferi. Oh please revisit the good old lock decks. :)

I'd really love a tshirt with "Sweet, Sweet" as part of it!

I didn't know the Lotus Field combo, that's goin in my Stax deck

With all the value packed into creatures nowadays, ETB hate cards really saved the match-up. I recognized it even back in Ixalan with Tocatli Honor Guard. Way to show it to the Arena Zoomers!

Yeah man, Strict Proctor is an extremely good card. I remember pulling one right when STX came out and it was such a fun card to see people experience for the first time lol

That elves match was brutal. Absolute massacre

Nice Vid love this!

I ran UW control in Strixhaven standard and Strict Proctor won me almost every game it landed. It killed lands, life gain, elves, and a lot more. Nobody expected it since nobody played it and it was a total bomb.

I love how Seth explains where the name comes from and shows the card it was named after.

"Stax" comes from the card "smokestack" from Urza's Saga, one of the original pieces.

I really want to build a version of this seems so fun

Super interesting to watch you play Stax in historic after only ever heard of Stax as a commander boogeyman. With certain strategies like this, I do think it would be interesting to hear you talk about how to counter some of the strategies that you play in ATO. I know the answer might be "Opponent just needs to play magic" haha but would still be interested to hear. And not what deck I should play to counter it, more like "if you're playing tempo and encounter this in the wild, what should you do?"

"I wonder if they're actually an elf" that part actually killed me LOL

My first 10 games with this deck, my opponents apparently had about 4 non-creature cards in their deck. Ninjas, goblins, red-green stompy, elves. Literally the only 2 games I won were against artifact-only decks.

I would totally craft this decklist if I had the wildcards. Salty scoops were the best...

The Heliod thing would work if off his devotion was greater than 5 when Heliod re enters. when it was removed it became drops 4 and it becomes a regular enchantment meaning containment priest doesn’t effect it

I don’t see a single doom foretold which follows more with the smokestack theme which is where the term stax came from

I honestly don't think keeping that 1 lander was a mistake. Risky, but when you are in a bad match up, you often have to take risks or gets a little lucky to win. You needed 1 land out of your top 2 maybe 3 cards, that's a pretty high chance, your chances of getting an above average draw if you mulled to 6 was probably lower than that. In general I am more willing to either keep risky hands or mulligan hands that are a little below average in bad match ups.

People hate on stax, then they can't do anything about it. Funny how that happens!

Granted I'm a year late to the party, but I thought I'd put in my 2 cents on this deck. I think it's great, and I have a suggestion on something to add if you can avoid using instants unless it's your turn. Defense Grid makes all spells cost a whopping 3 more when it's not your turn, thus making control and burn decks MUCH harder to play if you can keep it on the table, and tbh control decks are most likely one of the few that can shut this one down if they manage to get the lands out on every turn and have the right color mana to cast the spells needed to do so. In addition there are a couple of enchantments that can be used as well. Aura of Silence and if you are willing to splash a bit of blue in, Monastery Siege. The first one makes all Artifact and Enchantment spells cost 2 more for your opponents, and you can sacrifice it to get rid of a really nasty Artifact or Enchantment causing you problems that is already in play. The second one lets you either draw an extra card every turn but then discard a card...OR, you can make all spells that target you or a permanent you control cost 2 more. There's also a white enchantment called Ghostly Prison that makes your opponent pay 2 mana for each creature they want to attack you with. There's a blue enchantment that does the exact same thing called Propaganda so you can have one of each in Commander decks thus getting around the 1x only rule. There's also a blue Planeswalker that makes opponents' spells that target your creatures or Planeswalkers cost an additional 2 mana as well. This deck can greatly benefit by going from a mono white deck to a UW deck due to the blue cards I mentioned that have good synergy with the theme, as well as having the added benefit of being able to run counter-spells if desired to keep your combo pieces around long enough to get them all in place and lock your opponent down.

New Elesh Norn is going to be cray cray

They're definitely gathering data on Karn/Nykthos and Rakdos decks. I'm getting those surveys almost exclusively in those matches. When I added Karn to my deck they pop up every couple matches now

Power move. Play lotus field into strict procter's ability for the combo, then pay the 2 and sac two lands anyway.

31:32 HE FINALLY FIGURED IT OUT! ITS A MIRACLE!

I honestly believe this guy would make a great super villain.