Now that I’m a Vintage Workshops expert thanks to my recent success with UbaCaps (in a field where UbaCaps shouldn’t have been particularly useful, I might add), I think it’s about time to prevent another Workshop idea I had. I call it: GambleStax!
Gamble isn’t a particularly novel addition to Stax. People have tried running it in the past and have given up on it in favor of more broken plays. When you want to have something in hand, it might put it in the graveyard—an occurrence that gets more common as the game goes on and your hand size shrinks from casting spells. If you want to get the card to your graveyard, of course, and if you have cards in your hand, you might be just as likely to hold onto it and discard something else.
For the most part, Gamble just isn’t reliable enough to function in Vintage.
Just look at it, though:
GambleThe first two parts of the first sentence plus the second sentence, equals Demonic Tutor. Demonic Tutor is restricted! And it costs two! And it brings joy to the hearts of children, blush to the cheeks of women, and tears of happiness to the eyes of men!
R
Sorcery
Search your library for a card, put that card into your hand, then discard a card at random. Then shuffle your library.
Gamble is unrestricted and costs half as much! And yet it collects dust in the trade binders of Magic players everywhere.
The trick, I think, is not caring where the card you Gamble for ends up.
My best idea, then, is this:
4x Gamble
4x Crucible of Worlds
1x Crop Rotation
1x Fastbond
3x Exploration
1x Strip Mine
3x Wasteland
That’s the basis for a fairly substantial mana-denial plan right there, and it fits right into Stax, especially UbaStax since all you have to do is splash green.
The biggest problem is that you can’t always reasonably Gamble for Fastbond or Exploration. Uba Mask helps a lot here, though, because you can not only use Bazaar of Baghdad to draw cards, but now (since you’re using green) you can use Sylvan Library as well. Since the Library draws are replaced by the Uba Mask effect, you don’t have to put back any cards or pay any life. Drawing three cards a turn seems pretty good, especially when it finds you lock pieces.
I’m not sure whether Sylvan Library or Bazaar of Baghdad or some combination of both is best for this deck. Sylvan Library has always seemed underrated to me, and it doesn’t take up a land drop so there’s no fear that it will take that once-a-turn opportunity from Strip Mine. Bazaar, though, is the epitome of free. Both can draw you out of tight situations—Library costs life, Bazaar costs cards.
For now, we’ll stick with tradition and go with Ubazaar.
4x Uba Mask
4x Bazaar of Baghdad
Getting Fastbond, Crucible, and Strip Mine into play should be pretty simple with all of that. Plus, you’ve still got lock pieces like Uba Mask and Wastelands to go with them.
Since you’ll need more than just that to really put a hurt on your opponent, I say we go with some Welders for protection and Mox Monkeys for more disruption. Welders save your artifacts from counters and—in conjunction with the Monkey and a cheap artifact in your opponent’s graveyard—can kill any artifact on your opponent’s board. The Monkeys will mostly be used to keep your opponent off of artifact mana as well.
4x Goblin Welder
2x Gorilla Shaman
This deck really wants to run Root Maze to prevent combo decks from going off, but that kind of negates the purpose of the Strip Mine lock.
We’ve still got 28 slots left in the deck, though. We’ll start with mana:
5x Moxen
1x Black Lotus
1x Mana Vault
1x Sol Ring
1x Mana Crypt
1x Forest
1x Mountain
4x Taiga
3x Barbarian Ring
4x Mishra’s Workshop
It’s a lot of mana—a whopping 26 sources. Remember that we had three Wastelands and a Strip Mine in the first section. I figure that’s okay, though. We can get through it with Bazaars and we have a higher colored-mana requirement than other UbaStax lists.
That leaves us with seven open spaces. Probably the more effective tack to use those on would be Stax-type lock pieces: Smokestacks, Tangle Wire, Sphere of Resistance, Null Rod, etc. Feel free. I’d definitely include one for Trinisphere.
1x Trinisphere
4x Sphere of Resistance
2x Null Brooch
Sphere and Brooch should do the most to keep your opponent’s limited resources at bay. If they don’t hit you soon, they’ll just fall farther and farther behind.
I think I want the rest to be Workshop Aggro, because I’m a total noob. Plus, I feel that unless it has Karn, Stax doesn’t do enough attacking.
1x Trinisphere
4x Juggernaut
2x Solemn Simulacrum
The Solemn Simulacra are there to be a sort of multifunctional battle club for the deck. They draw cards and fix mana; they’re important traits since the combo requires green while the rest of the deck requires red to run. Juggernauts are just awesome and should be able to drop early pretty easily. Other options obviously include Sudering Titan, Duplicant, and Triskelion.
Anyway, it’s an idea.
Playing the deck would mean dropping some early threat or lock piece (especially Crucible) then going balls-out toward the Strip Mine lock. Plus, except for the redundancy of multiple Fastbond effects, each of the Strip Mine lock pieces has a unique function on its own or in smaller groups.
Using Gamble in conjunction with the open slots in the deck and graveyard recursion from Crucible or Welder can allow the use of more broken singles as well. Once Welder is in play for example, and you’re hitting your opponent’s mana pretty hard, you can Gamble for Trinisphere and really lock them down. Or you could Gamble for Duplicant against aggro or Oath, or similar silver-bullet answers against decks.
It would be a utility spell, sure, but it’s a darn good one in a deck so designed to make positive use of the graveyard.
I’m sure it will require some testing, but I feel like it’s a solid plan. You probably get a lot of concessions too, because who likes playing against land destruction?
And aren’t moxen won twice as sweet as moxen earned?
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