Deckstats Forum
English-language Forums => Commander Discussion => Topic started by: UrizenII on December 08, 2023, 02:20:49 am
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TL;DR: I'm trying to find a creative/off-beat way of winning with Lavinia, Azorius Renegade (https://cards.deckstats.net/magiccard.php?utf8=1&lng=en&card=Lavinia%2C+Azorius+Renegade) without going full stax and using the standard combo with her and Omen Machine (https://cards.deckstats.net/magiccard.php?utf8=1&lng=en&card=Omen+Machine) and/or Knowledge Pool (https://cards.deckstats.net/magiccard.php?utf8=1&lng=en&card=Knowledge+Pool).
I hate stax. I don't like playing it, and I despise (https://cards.deckstats.net/magiccard.php?utf8=1&lng=en&card=Despise) playing against it. When I sit down to play Magic, I want to play the game. Stax says, "Well, you can't, and if you do, it costs more, comes in tapped, might cause you to lose resources, and oh, by the way, you can only cast one thing and draw one card per turn, if you can play at all."
Similarly, I hate playing in an environment where I feel like I have to play stax to stay competitive or have a chance at winning. The group of friends I have that I spend the most time with is the same group that got me into magic in the first place, but they tend to play faster/higher-powered than I like. For example, one guy has a Krark/Sakashima deck and had a Muldrotha reanimator deck; one had a Meren deck that turned into Kokusho, a Maelstrom Wanderer (https://cards.deckstats.net/magiccard.php?utf8=1&lng=en&card=Maelstrom+Wanderer) deck that started as cEDH and he tuned down some, and brewed a Pantlaza flicker (https://cards.deckstats.net/magiccard.php?utf8=1&lng=en&card=Flicker) deck as soon as the card was spoiled (before it dominated in tournaments a couple weekends ago); and the last guy has an Eldrazi (https://cards.deckstats.net/magiccard.php?utf8=1&lng=en&card=Eldrazi) tribal deck, a cascade-oriented Jodah, Archmage Eternal (https://cards.deckstats.net/magiccard.php?utf8=1&lng=en&card=Jodah%2C+Archmage+Eternal) deck, and insists on playing Mana Crypt (https://cards.deckstats.net/magiccard.php?utf8=1&lng=en&card=Mana+Crypt) and Moxes in every deck he builds. The other friend in the group who quit playing a couple years ago had OG Kaalia, Azusa, and Azami as three of his commanders.
All that being said, when Lavinia, Azorius Renegade (https://cards.deckstats.net/magiccard.php?utf8=1&lng=en&card=Lavinia%2C+Azorius+Renegade) got printed, I was so excited. She was the commander I'd wanted that could help shut down some of the more degenerate stuff that I didn't like playing against - free spells, fast mana, cheated costs on giant spells or creatures, etc. I'd then run things like Containment Priest (https://cards.deckstats.net/magiccard.php?utf8=1&lng=en&card=Containment+Priest) to prevent creatures from being cheated into play for free, Grafdigger's Cage (https://cards.deckstats.net/magiccard.php?utf8=1&lng=en&card=Grafdigger%27s+Cage) and Soulless Jailer (https://cards.deckstats.net/magiccard.php?utf8=1&lng=en&card=Soulless+Jailer) to stop animation of some disgusting or huge creature just Entombed, and Void Mirror (https://cards.deckstats.net/magiccard.php?utf8=1&lng=en&card=Void+Mirror) (which all but completely singlehandedly shuts down a colorless Eldrazi (https://cards.deckstats.net/magiccard.php?utf8=1&lng=en&card=Eldrazi) deck).
The problem is that, unless you play her full stax, there's really no clear or reliable win condition. She requires so much protection that I could go voltron, but that requires too much additional support for something that's only a 2/2. I thought about Human or Soldier tribal synergies, but then I'd just be better off playing Harbin, Vanguard Aviator (https://cards.deckstats.net/magiccard.php?utf8=1&lng=en&card=Harbin%2C+Vanguard+Aviator). I threw together a rough draft of what I'd like the deck to look like (didn't do anything special with the lands), but I can't figure out a reliable way to win with it beside the Knowledge Pool (https://cards.deckstats.net/magiccard.php?utf8=1&lng=en&card=Knowledge+Pool) or Omen Machine (https://cards.deckstats.net/magiccard.php?utf8=1&lng=en&card=Omen+Machine) combo with Lavinia that hard locks people out of the game - or a way to do it fast enough that I don't have to play hardcore stax - or what of my "play fair" cards I have to sacrifice to get a win condition in the deck. The idea is just to force people to "play fair," not to keep them from playing at all.
Any ideas? Apologies for maybeboard size; that's just a side effect of how I build decks.
https://deckstats.net/decks/115144/3295960-no-funny-business
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I can't really see a stax piece being used as a commander and not being a stax deck, but what about a Group Hug/Stax mix? Everyone gets to play, but everyone has to play nice until you just win the game.
https://deckstats.net/decks/168446/3317770-lavinia-azorious-renegade/en
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That would be one way to do it. Pure stax is gross (https://cards.deckstats.net/magiccard.php?utf8=1&lng=en&card=Gross), so my intention was to just disrupt (https://cards.deckstats.net/magiccard.php?utf8=1&lng=en&card=Disrupt) what I see as being some of the more "degenerate" mechanics/archetypes, namely free spells, infinite combos/storm, and severly cheating costs by playing creatures for free or reanimating them at a steep discount. I mean, yes, Lavinia is a stax piece, but frankly I don't think saying that you can't cast spells for free is all that unreasonable. I understand this wouldn't be a good deck. I just want it to enforce "fairness" in a viable way and still be able to somehow win.
In all honesty, I'm not too fond of cards that literally just say, "You win the game" either. Yes, there are conditions that must be met in order for them to actually win you the game, so you do have to work for them and they are fair, but it still feels dull and anti-climactic when that's how the game ends. The handful of games I've played that were won with something like an Approach were among the most boring, and it's even worse when you see it coming but aren't able to do anything about it. I do like the idea of things like Scholarship Sponsor (https://cards.deckstats.net/magiccard.php?utf8=1&lng=en&card=Scholarship+Sponsor) or Oath of Lieges (https://cards.deckstats.net/magiccard.php?utf8=1&lng=en&card=Oath+of+Lieges) that bring everyone up to par with the person who's the most ahead at the very least (as opposed to Balance-type effects that bring everyone down to the lowest).
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I don't think there's anything wrong with a little stax, but there seem to be a lot of conceptions about that I just don't agree with.
- Lavinia + Knowledge Pool (https://cards.deckstats.net/magiccard.php?utf8=1&lng=en&card=Knowledge+Pool) is basically not stax, it's a combo. Against the vast majority of decks (and certainly at almost all casual tables) it just means you win. It may as well say "you win the game" at that point, same as any other winning combo.
- People seem to think that if you play stax, you must be ALL stax. I've never really understood this; there are so many dimensions to the game, it seems a rather simplistic approach.
- Stax doesn't mean nobody can play the game. It just changes the rules a bit. If we go with the above: not being able to play the game is your loss condition. I can't play the game if you Craterhoof me for 1000, either (and that's significantly less fun, IMO). Furthermore, we don't have to be and often aren't able to accomplish that. Even a Winter Orb (https://cards.deckstats.net/magiccard.php?utf8=1&lng=en&card=Winter+Orb) (which is, admittedly, a pretty terrible card) just massively impacts your mana per turn, but doesn't make it zero; you can still play, just at a different rate.
- On that note, "slowing the game down" is a bit of an odd concept. "Oh, now I have to pass three turns before I can play a single spell!" people cry... but passing three turns probably took all of three seconds, so the actual time taken isn't impacted quite as much as you're making out.
- You yourself have said you hate stax... but then you went and said you want to "shut down some of the more degenerate stuff that I didn't like playing against - free spells, fast mana, cheated costs on giant spells or creatures, etc.". Well, that's what stax is. Stax stops people from doing stuff or makes it harder for them to do it... and if those things are things that they arguably shouldn't be doing in the first place, surely stax is a great thing? Again: there are many dimensions to stax.
- Owing to those dimensions: group hug stax is indeed a thing. For example, I let everyone draw cards ("group hug") but you can't untap your lands ("stax").
However you slice it, Lavinia is a stax commander. However, that doesn't mean that you have to be playing a stax deck. There aren't all that many ways to synergise directly with her abilities - the first perhaps wants you to smash (https://cards.deckstats.net/magiccard.php?utf8=1&lng=en&card=Smash) people's lands, and the second maybe symmetrical ways to cast stuff for free (that now only benefit you - but Omen Machine (https://cards.deckstats.net/magiccard.php?utf8=1&lng=en&card=Omen+Machine)/Knowledge Pool (https://cards.deckstats.net/magiccard.php?utf8=1&lng=en&card=Knowledge+Pool) are the extremes of this). Otherwise, I guess you can just think of her as a handy commander to have in a sort of generic Azorius deck of whatever type (some kind of goodstuff or classic Azorius control maybe) that doesn't rely on the commander too much. Though, at that point, I suspect that e.g. Grand Arbiter Augustin IV (https://cards.deckstats.net/magiccard.php?utf8=1&lng=en&card=Grand+Arbiter+Augustin+IV) does it better.
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Considering what OP has already said, I suspect classic azorius control would annoy him almost as much as stax. I have a vague memory of an Azorius bird token strategy that had a decent amount of control, but wasn't oppressive.
Edit. Maybe take an Alandra, Sky Dreamer (https://cards.deckstats.net/magiccard.php?utf8=1&lng=en&card=Alandra%2C+Sky+Dreamer) deck and modify it to include some of the white token synergies that Azorius opens up.
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Most common line in UW is: cast Spellseeker (https://cards.deckstats.net/magiccard.php?utf8=1&lng=en&card=Spellseeker) to search for Ephemerate (https://cards.deckstats.net/magiccard.php?utf8=1&lng=en&card=Ephemerate), cast Ephemerate (https://cards.deckstats.net/magiccard.php?utf8=1&lng=en&card=Ephemerate) to blink (https://cards.deckstats.net/magiccard.php?utf8=1&lng=en&card=Blink) Spellseeker (https://cards.deckstats.net/magiccard.php?utf8=1&lng=en&card=Spellseeker), search for Dramatic Reversal (https://cards.deckstats.net/magiccard.php?utf8=1&lng=en&card=Dramatic+Reversal), next upkeep rebound (https://cards.deckstats.net/magiccard.php?utf8=1&lng=en&card=Rebound) Ephemerate (https://cards.deckstats.net/magiccard.php?utf8=1&lng=en&card=Ephemerate) to blink (https://cards.deckstats.net/magiccard.php?utf8=1&lng=en&card=Blink) Spellseeker (https://cards.deckstats.net/magiccard.php?utf8=1&lng=en&card=Spellseeker) again, search for Enlightened Tutor (https://cards.deckstats.net/magiccard.php?utf8=1&lng=en&card=Enlightened+Tutor), cast Enlightened Tutor (https://cards.deckstats.net/magiccard.php?utf8=1&lng=en&card=Enlightened+Tutor) still on your upkeep to search for Isochron Scepter (https://cards.deckstats.net/magiccard.php?utf8=1&lng=en&card=Isochron+Scepter), draw Isochron Scepter (https://cards.deckstats.net/magiccard.php?utf8=1&lng=en&card=Isochron+Scepter) and cast it, imprint Dramatic Reversal (https://cards.deckstats.net/magiccard.php?utf8=1&lng=en&card=Dramatic+Reversal), make infinite mana, win somehow.
You can also fetch Spellseeker (https://cards.deckstats.net/magiccard.php?utf8=1&lng=en&card=Spellseeker) sacrificing Lavinia to Pyre of Heroes (https://cards.deckstats.net/magiccard.php?utf8=1&lng=en&card=Pyre+of+Heroes) (they're both humans), so your commander still makes sense besides her stax abilities etc.
Does that fit you?