Why Commander Players Hate Stax | Magic: The Gathering 

Stax is the best way to maximize quantity of time with your friends.

cEDH player here. If you are playing stax please have an efficient way to win the game! Also if you’re playing against stax, DO NOT remove a stax piece unless you are positive you can win the game on that turn

Im literally making a stax deck for the first time, thank you for this information

Connoisseur's of the finest archetype in magic found their way here.

So happy this showed up right at the top of my feed! Been loving your IG content.

Great video again man! Loving the change of pace with some long form content. Absolutely LOVED the Infect video last week and this stax video is great too! I had no idea where the term STAX came from and that’s super interesting! The break down of everything from Playstyle to staple cards for the strategy at hand are a great help! I’d be curious to see some more “Hidden Gem cards” to give a deck more flavor or uniqueness from your run of the mill stax or infect or whatever strategy. But this is exactly the kind of video I need in deep diving a strategy I might not have tried on my own but now my interest is peaked😏

This is a great video! For some reason, I thought Gaddock Teeg was banned in EDH. Maybe I'm thinking of something years ago or maybe I just made it up? I love Stax! I find that running certain crucial Stax pieces can not only even out a game in an environment where you may play against decks at various different power levels, but if you have a Commander that accelerates the game it feels a lot less bad for your opponent's. My most recent Stax deck is Nelly Borca from the Karlov Manor precon. I run certain pieces like Strangehold, Trouble in Pairs, Rest in Peace, Aven Mindcensor, a good amount of stuff. However, since my Commander naturally accelerates the game with all of its goad shenanigans, I haven't ever really had issues with someone at the table feeling like they couldn't play. Rather, they've often focused on trying to figure out how to play around what my deck is forcing the rest of the table to do instead of what it's keeping them from doing. It helps that I have a bit of an Archenemy reputation anyway, and that Nelly Borca draws my opponent's cards, but overall Stax can encourage a table to work together and create a really fun environment if done correctly. Don't get me wrong, just slamming down a Grand Arbiter and Winter Orb can be fun, but Stax has been much more enjoyable for me when it's used in a much more specific and interactive way.

I went for Oswald Fiddlebender as my commander of choice for this type of deck: Being a 2 CMC is hard for most casual decks to actually stop him before I can tutor whatever I might need but a solid plan is to tutor Conqueror's Flail (A more expensive but almost always tutor-able version of grand abolisher since it's an artifact Oswad can tutor for) and Ethersworn Canonist or even Winter Orb on the 2 CMC pieces, then if I can I also immediately drop Orb of Dreams or Ensaring Bridge on the 3 part but if nobody has a quick answer I usually go for the win-con pieces like Basalt Monolith + Rings of Brightheart + Walking Ballista although I have space for other combos as well usually around blasting station or even just endless tokens.

this is a kick ass video, thank you for this.

Someone once told me targetted land destruction was banned. They then played a gaeas cradle. I brought my Kamahl Fist of Krosa all in Forrest ramp deck next time. He showed up the next week with a deck that plays Armageddon.

I quite like stax and i wish people would play it more. The most fun commander game i've ever played was a game where on turn 3 two different people had dropped a thalia, guardian of thraben and a 3rd person had a magus of the tabernacle. I was mana screwed and drew my 4th land on turn 8 but it was such a great experience having to think differently and managing the few resources i had

I love my liesa stax, it runs all the good stax stuff plus discard and usually kills with bloodchief and cataclysm

This video is great. The card recommendations for going agaist stax are really good. Stax is a fun archetype and deserves a bit more love than it gets.

just out of curiosity if you repeat the vid does that count as view for the youtuber i know its one out of thousands but anything counts to help

still need the niv review😔😔great video tho stax is wonderful

Im building a very nice stax deck right now 😅. It's Liesa, Shroud of Dusk, which is pretty nasty by herself! She basically just taxes spells with 2 life. Not bad that she's a 5/5 flying lifelink either. Theres lots of other cards that do similar things like painful quandry, blood chief ascension, creeping bloodsucker, rug of smothering, and syr konrad, the grim as well. It also has a good amount of other flyers, life gain, and pillow fort style cards because it gets a lot of hate at the table jusy draining people for playing the game!

One of my friends gets salty at almost anything. Mill, Counterspells, Infinite combos, 2 or 3 card combos, Extra turns, extra combats/upkeeps, and more! I cant wait to use this new stax deck against him. . I always ask, hey is it okay if I play x? he always says yes but the look on his face when I actually do the thing I said I was going to do is priceless and I cant wait to lock him out of the game then spend 80 turns decking him out since he refuses to concede. Am I the problem here? oh yeah for sure but he always has the option to say no :3

What is the srongest staxdeck in your oppinion? My top 3 would be Urza Winota Narset Enlightened LightPaws can also be good And Derevi seems also viable GrandArbiter is mostly lacking a wincon

Now let's see how we deal with proactive decks chalk full of removal

I ran pillow fort for a long time, Grand Arbitor and the deck won with Azors Elecutors or a horde of angels lol

My type of stax is Omen Machine, it turns off turbo card draw, nerfs future counterspells, and sets me up to cast big expensive haymakers. (Also people rarely hate on it unless they're playing control) Omen Machine {6} Artifact Players can’t draw cards. At the beginning of each player’s draw step, that player exiles the top card of their library. If it’s a land card, the player puts it onto the battlefield. Otherwise, the player casts it without paying its mana cost if able.

That would explain why my Ranar deck made last game go for a while lol

❤‍🔥🔥☠

Stax just feels like one of the only ways to actually get to play my funny little guys. Maybe its just my scene but everyone I play with is blue blasting counter spells constantly which seems to be fine and fun for others? But then Stax gets a ton of hate. At least with Stax they are intractable pieces instead of hearing "just play around counters" in a 4 way format

I love stax, prison, hatebears, etc. Aggro, stompy, combat decks and combo decks don't do much for me. I'm a control player at heart. Unfortunately, though, this doesn't translate to finding too many compatible EDH games.

Would Will of the Consuls and Blind Obedience be considered stax as well? I only just realised that my Queen Marchesa deck is considered stax because it's pillow fort...

Did you forget to turn your camera off after 60 seconds?

Stax mono blue urza 😎

Would a deck with 15 types of blasphemous act boardwipes in edh be considered a control/ stax deck that wins through burning players using earthquake spells? I play what I consider stax pieces like repercussion and burning sands that makes playing creatures problematic.

I brewed a Yasharn stax/tokens deck because I want to bring ruin to blue/treasure decks

A card i like to use against stax is enchanter's bane

Or play urza for winter Orb 😅

players need to play more removal, so they can deal with stax end of story

EDH is a social format. If you aren’t taking the table’s enjoyment into consideration when brewing, you aren’t welcome at my pod. Play stax, get told to gtfo

Why do I watch this video? To destroy that stax deck.

So you want to build a Stax deck?! Don't. Just. Don't.

The archetype has been around since the very beginning. it just had yet to be clearly defined until $t4ks came around. U/W Has always had pieces for this style of play, stasis, winter orb, land tax, balance, moat ect.

That shirt goes hard af. 🤌🏻🔥💯

There's a reason they don't like it. Pimping it for clickz won't change that.

Staxx is hated because it's a lame, slow, boring play style that wastes everyone's time and kills a good time. But, go ahead and be the guys that farts and stinks at the club to cast away the beautiful women.

How to play stax…dont.