- Author’s Note: This is the second article of the “In the Prime” series. If you wish to view my last article, you can find it via this link . This article is similar to a sequel of the previous one, so by reading the last article, you will be more in tune with this edition of 'In the Prime'. Thank you and enjoy.

The “Black Summer” was finally coming to an end as Necropotence was losing its power due to restrictions and bannings. Zuran Orb, Ivory Tower, and Black Vise had all become members of the restricted list in this short time period. Finally, Necro was lowering to a level of strength that was acceptable, and many decks began trying to capitalize on this loss. Players started realizing that The Skull had its imperfections just like every other deck. They also looked to the fundamentals of the deck to seek out what Necropotence was all about. They found that the deck had two major components. It had an extreme amount of card advantage components and also a lot of strength in its creatures. If the opponent was able to eliminate the factor of card advantage and shut down the decks creatures, they would have a better chance at defeating the brute. Now, the challenge was to find that card that would allow them to complete both of these tasks.

The card that they came upon was considered a bad rare, just as Necropotence had once been thought of. It completely shut down most creatures, and made it so that the Necropotence player gained nothing from their card advantage. In other terms, the card took away the untap step all together. This card was Stasis.

Stasis had but one drawback, and that was an upkeep of one blue mana. This meant that someone would have to play a land each turn to keep the cycle going, or they would have to find some other means of getting around the impediment. At first, people thought it impossible to be able to keep a steady amount of land cards flowing from their deck, so they went the other route, finding a game-sealing combo in Birds of Paradise equipped with Instill Energy. This would allow them to skip their untap step, yet still untap the Birds and tap it for the blue mana each turn. But as we all know, 3-card combos can become quite fragile. A well-timed Lightning Bolt or Disenchant could’ve ruined the entire game for the Stasis player. This meant that the deck would need to be perfected before it became tournament-viable.

Deckbuilders started analyzing the rest of the sets, looking for answers to the upkeep problem. There had to be some way to get around it. And finally the answer was found, in the form of Howling Mine. This solution would allow the Stasis player to draw enough cards each turn that they would most likely find an Island. This, in turn, meant that the Stasis player could go the whole game without letting the opponent untap. It was a brilliant idea, and it was quite a bit more stable than the Birds combo. Since the opponent’s lands were usually tapped down, it wouldn’t matter if he drew a lot more of his cards. This made the effect of Howling Mine biased in the Stasis player’s favor.

With the addition of the Mine in the build, new options for finishing the opponent became possible. Most decks up to this time had used Serra Angel for their finisher, because she was a solid beater that didn’t tap when she attacked (This meant she was unaffected by Stasis). But she wasn’t exactly the best option for a deck that was very conservative on its mana. So another concept popped into the minds of Stasis players. Since the opponent would be drawing a mass of cards due to the Mines, and they had little mana to play any of these cards, you could effectively mill the deck of the opponent after enough time. Hence, the name “Turbo Stasis” because of the quickness the Mine gave to milling the opponent. And choosing milling for the win condition would take up no extra room in the deck, as the addition of finishers did. Either that or the Stasis player could use the almighty Black Vise to their advantage, and kill the opponent off much quicker. With the opponent taking 3 damage each turn, it wouldn’t take long to win the game using this method.

Now that the deckbuilders had their engine for the deck (Stasis and Howling Mines), they looked back to cards that would assist them in their goal of shutting down the opposition. Kismet was one these cards, as it would bring the opponent’s lands and creatures into play tapped. This meant that the opponent had no way of producing mana via lands and no way of attacking with their creatures. These permanents would come into play tapped and stay that way due to the effect of Stasis. Kismet was a game-ender in the deck. Once it hit the table to join Stasis, the opponent really didn’t have any way of getting around it.

Another card that helped the deck win the game was Ivory Tower. Its role was to gain life off the extra cards that Howling Mine drew into. Since the Stasis player usually had a nice amount of cards in their hand, the Tower was often generating a sufficient amount of life to keep them alive. Even though, they usually didn’t need the extra life. Zuran Orb was integrated into the build because it allowed the Stasis player to sacrifice their used lands to gain more life. Again, this proved to be more of a win-more card than a card necessary to the deck.

Next, players had to look at what the deck needed to accomplish in order to ensure that they would be able to stay alive until the combo made its way onto the board. First, Stasis needed a few turns to set up board control. During this time, players found that cheap counterspells, such as Arcane Denial, Counterspell, and Force of Will, would keep them protected from early opposing threats. Aggressive decks had quite a hard time trying to get their creatures on the board when each of them was getting rejected by their own counterspell. And there was nothing like countering that first-turn Dark Ritual with a Force of Will, meaning that you had potentially stopped Necro from running rampant with a Hypnotic Specter.

The Stasis deck had another major problem that needed to be solved. Even though an Island was usually drawn in the flurry of cards that the Stasis player was receiving from the Howling Mines, they could never be guaranteed. And the deck needed to have a solution for these types of situations when it locked up. There were two ways of going about this; they could bounce Stasis back into their hand or they could destroy it. Boomerang became the staple answer in the deck because the Stasis player would simply play it at the end of their opponent’s turn, grabbing the enchantment back from the field. Then they would untap their lands during their untap step and replay Stasis. This would effectively reset their mana base, setting them up for at least a couple more turns of “lockdown.” Despotic Scepter was the secondary answer since they could simply blow up the enchantment. And, usually, they would have another one in their hand waiting to come down on the next turn.

Stasis had another dilemma that was clear to many. The deck had enough drawing power that it was possible to mill yourself, before you had the chance to take the game away from the opponent. And this is when Feldon’s Cane started making appearances in many of the Stasis builds. It allowed the Stasis player to renew their library at the end of the game, so as to not allow the opponent to win through decking.

Finally, deckbuilders could celebrate as they had completed the task of making the central core of the soon-to-be “Turbo Stasis” Archetype. It had its engine in Stasis and Howling Mines, meaning that it could keep drawing Islands and continually pay the upkeep cost. It had counterspell answers to keep early threats at bay, until it could effectively set up board position. Boomerang and Despotic Scepter gave Turbo Stasis good solutions to the occasional internal problems that the deck would run into. And the “life artifacts,” Zuran Orb and Ivory Tower, gave Stasis enough life gain to stay tough throughout the game. In addition, Black Vise became the new-found alternative finisher to decking the opponent with Mines.

The deck stood mighty, waiting to take on anything that came down its alley. It was the first full-bred Prison deck to ever hit the Magic scene, and would become one of the most well-known in Magic History. As Brian David-Marshall once put it, “Turbo Stasis was to prison decks what The Godfather was to gangster films.”

You can see from this deck piloted by Matt Place at Nationals 1996 that he chose to put a playset of Lim-Dul’s Vault in the deck, in order to tutor for Stasis. This is quite a nice idea in the build, since the deck revolves around getting the enchantment out early. At this time, players had little to no knowledge about the deck, and Stasis pilots used this to their advantage. The “surprise factor” alone, meant that this deck would have little to no metagaming against it.

But again, you must ask yourself why this deck did so well. Well, we can begin by looking at the playing environment that surrounded Stasis at that time. Necropotence was the paramount deck and many people played it simply because they knew it would win. Nothing had been created to even try and stop the onslaught that the deck brought on. But Stasis had two great strengths against Necro. It locked down their pump-knights after just one attack and kept their mana supply very low.

This meant that the pump knights were unable to attack effectively. For example, in most games the knights would be able to hit the table early and start attacking. And as the controller got more mana, he could use it to pump the knights accordingly. On Turn 3, the knight would attack for three. On Turn 4, the knight would attack for four, and so on. But Stasis prevented any of this from happening. The knight would be locked down after just one attack, and the extra damage that was supposed to come from additional mana never came.

It also meant that the Necropotence player had no mana with which to play spells that would recoup their life total. And they would eventually drive themselves to death with Necro, if they weren’t careful. Since they couldn’t play the cards that they drew, the “card advantage” factor was almost completely erased. And when you erase what a deck was built off of, you usually do pretty well against it. And that’s exactly how the Stasis players performed in their match-ups versus Necropotence.

Especially when they started to sideboard cards like Yotian Soldier and Wall of Air to fight off the initial attack that Necropotence gave with its Specters and Knights. This would usually allow the Stasis player enough time to find their game-locking enchantments, Stasis and Kismet, and play them accordingly. If they could reach these enchantments before the creatures had finished them off, they were usually in position to win the game.

- Author’s Note: There was still a little hope for the Necropotence player though. Against Turbo Stasis, if they were able to get down a first turn Skull via Dark Ritual, they would be able to skip their draw step. This, in turn, meant that the Stasis player’s Howling Mines would have no effect on them. And if Howling Mines were the only win condition of the build, the Necropotence player had literally sealed the deal on their first turn. They could no longer be decked by the Stasis player. At least, not by their Mines. This is why Force of Will became so popular in the Stasis deck. It gave them an answer to first turn plays such as this one, even without mana available. Boomerang also helped, but there’s a big difference between hard-countering a Necropotence and just bouncing it. And even with these answers in the deck, you must not forget that Necropotence packed enough discard that they could, actually, weed out all solutions and then play an uncontested Necro.

But don’t think that Stasis won simply because it could do well against Necropotence. No, no, this deck was powerful versus most of the builds it went against. Aggressive decks tried to attack with their creatures, but were saddened to find that they could attack but once, if that, with their weenies. Once Kismet was brought into play, the creatures came into play tapped and stayed that way for the rest of the game.

Control decks found it hard to build up enough mana to play their spells when facing the deck we know as Turbo Stasis. Once Kismet locked up the rest of their lands, the Control player would sit back and sulk, while he watched his deck slowly run out of cards. “If I could’ve countered that Stasis, I would have won the game,” was what some players thought. What they failed to realize was that the Stasis player already had another one in his hand, or had some type of plan where he could find one easily through “Mining” or tutoring.

- Author’s Note: Another reason why Stasis was successful in so many match-ups was because of the amount of time it took per game. Often times, the two players would sit down for a game, and that game alone, would use up all of their match time. This meant that if the Stasis player had won the first game, they had taken the match. The opposition didn’t even have a chance to sideboard against Stasis because the time limit was up. Either that or the judge would call the game soon after he saw the Stasis player had gotten control of the board. This meant that they had Stasis and Kismet in play, had Feldon’s Cane for back-up, and their opponent was completely tapped down. Through this method, the Stasis player could go 2-0 in a matter of minutes. Both techniques were pretty unfair to the opponent, because neither really gave them a chance to respond to the deck. But it really doesn’t matter because the deck was unfair overall, and that’s what won it matches.

These strengths against multiple decks led Stasis to the top in numerous later tournaments. People saw that if they gained enough “Board Control” against the opponent, anything was possible. Board Control was another fresh idea to many and they added it to their book of concepts. Now they could win through damage, card advantage, or board control. Players started converting to the innovative deck design, once they saw how commanding it was against Necropotence and the other top decks at that time. Because of this conversion, Stasis quickly became one of the most popular decks in the tournament scene.

Finally, the “Black Summer” had ended, and there was a new contender for many players to hope not to face. Although Stasis was an annoying deck to say the least, it was very powerful and had strengths against almost every deck. And best of all, it had ended the reign of a single deck, so that the metagame was no longer so uniform. But everyone knows that you can’t stay on top forever. And Stasis’ glory became brief once people started metagaming against it with maindeck enchantment removal and Serra Angels. One deck, in particular, used a collection of cards that would get the best of Stasis, and lead to its doom. But I’ve lectured you long enough and I think I’m out of time. I guess I’ll just have to leave that story untold until next time.


~Sincerely, FIRE REIGN 2

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