The premise of this article is based off the conclusion of another. Those of you who read my editorial Amongst the Giants will remember that I ended it by thanking Chris Newton for my favorite article from MDV, his piece on Stasis “Shifting Lineaments: Lessons in Being Punched in the Face”. In this article he spoke on how Stasis is still alive and kicking with the good old Brine Elemental + Vesuvan Shapeshifter or “Pickles” lock. In the forum responses, Amadeus voiced the question that had been tickling the back of my mind as I was reading the article and learning the premise behind “Stasis Theory”. He wrote:

“Tynion alluded to it but I don't think actually stated it... Would some build of Stasis (I'm thinking something using the actual card) actually be viable in a fairly competitive casual setting? What would it need to keep the hordes at bay? How would Stasis fare if it had been Time Shifted?”

And from that question, this piece is born.

The Objective: What am I doing?

So here is my goal: I want to find an old deck and rebuild it with cards from a newer card-pool with the exception of the deck defining card, playing with it as if it had been “timeshifted”. Let’s start with that.

Card: Stasis

Format: Originally I had planned to build this deck with the Extended card pool, but then I realized that it wouldn’t be much of a change from the original deck. Sure, the names would be a little different, certain aspects of the deck might be a little stronger, certain parts a little weaker, but all in all it would just be my interpretation on which cards seem most like the old ones. Instead, I decided to go for a challenge and build this version for the Type 2 Standard format (T2).

The Setup: An analytical look at Stasis-related cards

The first thing I do now is usually pull up the Gatherer and just start punching in some searches. I start with some cards I know, and then search for phrases from those cards and then just go wherever my brain process leads me, taking notes all the way. (For example, I think of Howling Mine to draw cards, then run search for other cards that allow me to repeatedly draw cards, and then go from there). Here are some of the results of my initial search:

Stasis: Obviously, this is the key to this deck. I thought that this would be a good place to start. So let's looks closely at the card. There are two very important things here. The first, and probably the part that makes the card so much fun to play is the skipping of the Untap Phase. The second is the continual upkeep of one Blue mana.

Let's start with the first bit. This means that the opponent essentially gets only one use out of each significant permanent (creatures without vigilance, lands, artifacts with tap abilities). However, this isn’t good enough. Given enough time, this could allow an opponent to build up enough resources so that they could play something particularly nasty that would finish the game (Akroma, for example). Therefore we need to do something about that. One way would be to find all of the ways to make those cards that your opponent plays come into play tapped (Such as Kismet in the original Stasis decks), thus not even allowing them that one use.

Result: 2 Hits

Frozen Aether: All you old school Stasis players rejoice! It’s your old friend Kismet handily reprinted in the same color as Stasis itself! It’s almost as if Wizards wanted to mock you by giving you the perfect tool to use in the Stasis lock, but not reprinting Stasis itself! This card does exactly what we want it to do. If we can get Stasis on the table with this, your opponent had better hope that they have some free enchantment destruction. Wait… free enchantment destruction doesn’t exist in Standard? Uh oh, I guess they’re in trouble then…

Root Maze: So this makes artifacts and lands come into play tapped? Well first of all, it doesn’t shut down creatures, which is a problem. But on the other hand it does shut down lands quickly, and could be used to blunt the speed of those fast aggro decks. Now most of you old school Stasis players must be looking at (or recalling from memory, for those of you who also played the STAX decks) the card and shaking your heads. You’re thinking that this goes against every bit of original Stasis theory. This card essentially shuts down the plan of the first Stasis decks: draw as many cards per turn as possible through Howling Mine, or cards of similar nature, and then play an Island each turn (untapped) so you can pay for the upkeep next turn. However, with Root Maze in play, this plan doesn’t work. Thus: clearly Root Maze is no good for Stasis decks! Well, this is the reason I want to write these articles. Lets see if we can work our way around this. (I’ll come back to it later.)

Now that we have gotten some basis for the first part of the card; let's look a little more at the upkeep cost. As mentioned before, the old strategy was to get several Howling Mine effects into play and then simply draw a Blue source each turn. Let's start there:

Howling Mine: Draw extra card each turn, pretty good stuff. It is also important to note that the opponent draws first. This means I win the milling battle as long as I draw no “uneven” cards. (In other words, as long as I don't draw a card when my opponent does not draw with me.) The problem I face here is that there is only one copy of this in the Standard cardpool right now, so if I were to play it, I would also probably have to play Sculpt Steel in addition to allow me to copy it.

Aeon Chronicler: This would be a possibility, but only a temporary one. We could set it up before the Stasis, and then draw a few cards through the next turns, and when it comes into play get a pretty big whack out of it. If I were to use this, I would probably want to run Delay as a way to re-use it. It also means I would have to find a way to “reset” my Stasis (remove Stasis so I get to Untap every once and a while) so I could use future Chronicler draws. Overall I think it could work, but I’m going to keep looking for something else for now.

Dormant Sliver: Another possibility, making each Sliver a cantrip (or actual card draw if I could get multiple Dormants on the table). If I went this route it would put me into Blue-Green, which isn’t too bad. Also considering that we get some cheap Slivers such as: Screeching Sliver (which works as a win condition), Gemhide Sliver (giving us that much more mana when we untap) and not so cheap Telekinetic Sliver (allowing us to tap down anything that somehow slips by our Stasis). If I did play the Dormant, I would probably also play the Frenetic Sliver, allowing me to risk each Sliver for the chance to “re-draw” when they come back into play. (Note: they also come back into play untapped, which is quite good. If only this didn’t rely so much on luck with the coin flip I would probably make this the core of the deck!)

Opaline Sliver: Just a Sliver to note, if we do end up using the Sliver plan, this could be handy just because it allows more card draw. It’s not great, because our opponents hopefully won’t have anything they can play that would target a Sliver once we get them with Stasis, but you never know. I’ll just keep it on my list for future reference.

Mesa Enchantress: The Enchantress struck my eye as a possibility if I end up trying to bounce and replay the Stasis to reset my lands. However, you then have to realize that you no longer need the card draw to draw that Blue source every turn now that your lands are untapping, so I guess she’s out.

Keen Sense/Ophidian Eye: If we could find some sort of evasive creature with vigilance, this would allow us to have recurring card draw as well as a win condition. (We’ll explore this more later.)

Sylvan Echoes: Hmm, similar to the Sliver plan; this would require some work . We would have to find some way to have free recurring clash in order to draw the cards. The downside is that like the basis of the Sliver plan, it’s rather inconsistent, which is rather frightening in a deck that just wants everything to work perfectly for 10-50 turns.

Street Wraith: I mention this because it gets the job done. However, we are most likely looking at this being more of a control deck. Control decks don’t like losing life, seeing as our biggest worry in those types of decks is keeping our life total above 0, and this just brings us that much closer to failing that goal. He's out.

Graveborn Muse: Free recurring card draw, how cool! Free life lose each turn, how not cool! Again, this deck wants to take 10-50 turns to win, and I simply don’t have 10-50 life to throw away. (That’s assuming only one is in play) It’s also expensive, color intensive, and just plain doesn’t seem like it will work in this deck.

Mishra’s Bauble: Works like the Street Wraith, but you don’t lose life. However you don’t get the card until next turn. These two cards are not so much card draw as card quality. Just allowing us to have 52 cards in our deck instead of 60. This could also be a problem seeing as if our win condition is milling. We are going to have to find some other way to force mill some of our opponent’s library.

Abundance: Oh wow, this just got my inner Johnny tingling… One thing we have to realize is that we are not actually looking to draw many cards a turn. What we are really looking to do is to draw one land card a turn until we win the game. This is actually quite a nice card because assuming we find a way to solve the “running out of lands” problem, this card actually saves us from decking because we can choose to look for a land, and then just not find one. I could see a deck using this as well as an evasive, vigilant creature serving as a win condition.

Jace Beleren: *Reads card. Pauses. Reads card again. Smiles. Giggles. Breaks into full blown diabolically evil laughing spasm!* Right then, sorry. This card is just about perfect; it gives us “even” card draw, “uneven” card draw, and a win condition! All Jace asks in return is some time to set up and protection from nasty creature attacks and burn to his face. Hey, what do you know? I’m a Stasis player! That’s what I do best!

So there is our card draw, a few good ideas, and a few not so good ideas - but now we at least have a pretty good sense of what we can use in that area. We have just two areas left to cover now: the possibility of a vigilant-based win condition, and ways to “reset” our Stasis or somehow untap our lands.

Serra Avenger: Well, this is perfect in that it is cheap, it needs some time to be played (not a problem, we are planning on a long drawn out game), it’s relatively large, and it has flying. However, it is double White cost, meaning that we would have to make a rather major splash of that color. Considering we also need to be drawing a Blue every turn, this is a little bit scary…

Skyhunter Prowler: A little more expensive, a little less powerful, but much easier on mana. I think I would take this one over the Avenger just for its reliability.

Merfolk Commerce: Although not a creature, much less a vigilant, it would allow me to re-use Merfolk each turn. If only there was some way to turn my Islands into Merfolk… sigh…

Scryb Ranger: This card might actually work, as it provides both a win condition (untap itself each turn) as well as renewable mana. Granted, it has to be Green mana, but we could probably find some way to fix that if we needed to. The other easy solution is to play Birds of Paradise and just untap him for a Blue every turn. I think I like this.

Garruk Wildspeaker: Please look up at my comments on Jace, and then imagine me doing that, but with about twice the intensity. THIS CARD IS AMAZING WITH STASIS! He untaps lands (yes… Islands too), he makes creatures to win with, and if you just want to be annoying he can even make those creatures bigger for you for an insulting final blow! I’m thinking Planeswalkers might have a spot in this deck!

The Conclusion – And next time…

Wait… what? I’m not done! How can I be writing the conclusion? Oh yeah, because I want to get your input! Before I go any further, I want to know what you guys think is the best build of this deck. Would you play the Sliver build? Run the Abundance engine? Vigilant creatures or milling for the win? Is anyone daring enough to try Root Maze or will everyone just go old school and draw an Island every turn for the rest of the game? I’ve done a bunch of the research (or if I’ve missed something, which I bet I have, find it and surprise me!). Now I want to know how you would build it!

Send me your responses (either decklists, or just general opinions) and I will use that input in part 2 of A Fresh Perspective: Stasis I’ve gotten a pretty good idea about how I would run it, but that will have to wait until next time!

You can discuss this article in the MDV forums here.
Find other articles by this author here.
Find other articles from this series here.

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Articles Spotlights from 2008:
How to Win with Milling: A Guide to a Slow Painful Death
Memories of an Old Magic Player 10: The Outsiders Journal #3.
The Apprentice Magician, Part Three.
Class-Wars Deckbuilding Contest Results!
Tribal Coffee: The Smaller Tribes.
[Mini-Article] Controlling the Game: Without Blue.
Raiding the Dollar Bins: Return of the Vault Ninja.
A Fresh Perspective: Stasis - Part One.
More Evil Than Evil.
Memories of a Jarhead.