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Hey all,

In my quest to build a deck with red in it I realized that I don't have much of a red mindset in play so I sought to make a deck that used red that behaved in the polar opposite way that red typically behaves. I read Cz's excellent multiplayer guides and immediately fell in love with the stax concept. My W/U control deck is my favorite to play and locks down creatures on the board completely with Propaganda and Ghostly Prison before smashing faces with Eternal Dragon , Frost Titan , and Celestial Colonnade . Given that I like this, why not make a deck where it is almost impossible for the other players to do anything at all?

After extensive playtesting against my four other decks and after using one of Cz's stax decks as a guide, I came up with this:

Lands (20)
4x Darksteel Citadel
4x Great Furnace
4x Mishra's Factory
6x Mountain
1x Shivan Gorge
1x Tolarian Academy

Creatures (14)
4x Goblin Welder
2x Karn, Silver Golem
4x Lodestone Golem
4x Steel Hellkite

Artifacts (26)
3x Ensnaring Bridge
3x Smokestack
4x Sol Ring
3x Tangle Wire
3x Trinisphere
3x Voltaic Key
3x Winter Orb
4x Worn Powerstone

Twenty lands is pretty razor thin, though it didn't seem to have a detrimental effect when I playtested. Out of twenty games I played, five each against a B/G aggro deck, a U/B mill deck, a B disruption deck heavy on sacrifice, discard, and land destruction, and a U/W control deck, mana was never an issue and the deck went 16-4. If you advise against this I'd definitely be willing to swap in up to three more lands in place of the Voltaic Key s since they really only proved useful if I got a Sol Ring out on my first turn. If and when Winter Orb hits the field I can't rely on lands anyway and have to rely upon my artifacts for mana. Winter Orb played along with Tangle Wire pretty much denied the opponent deck mana very frequently in the games I ran, and when I had a Goblin Welder swap two Tangle Wire s each turn from the battlefield to the graveyard it ensured that the opponent would never have more than one land untapped if any were untapped at all.

Steel Hellkite helped to wipe the board to assure dominance and either had no resistance thanks to Smokestack or got enough permanents off the board for Smokestack to really make the opponent deck helpless. Steel Hellkite 's abilities also provide a nice mana dump for the ludicrous amount of mana I can harness with this deck.

Tolarian Academy is hilarious. I am so glad that I can finally use mine after years of it sitting in a card sleeve in my rares binder.

I don't have much in the way of artifacts that increase mana costs besides Lodestone Golem as Cz's guide recommended (such as Sphere of Resistance ) since in the meta I'm in there are alot of elves around so mana costs are easy to get around. Trinisphere is probably the most useful of the ones in my environment there are since most of the cards my Magic friends use cost less than three mana anyway except for Overrun and a pumped-up Hurricane (the latter of which is still affected by Trinishpere anyway).

Are there any weaknesses or issues you see with this deck?

Bonus question regarding Smokestack : The oracle text reads that at the beginning of my upkeep I may choose to put a soot counter on Smokestack AND I sacrifice as many permanents as there are soot counters on Smokestack . Since these both happen simultaneously, do I sacrifice as many permanents as there are soot counters during the current upkeep, or do I sacrifice as many permanents as there were soot counters during the prior upkeep?

Thanks!

Ooh, not being able to use Ensnaring Bridge like I thought is a game-changer. I could always use Goblin Welder to get them off the board though when I no longer need them (or Smokestack them off the board once I no longer need them) so they could still buy me time (maybe?). I was able to lock things down on games without Ensnaring Bridge though so maybe I could do without them altogether.

I can't run 4 Tolarian Academy since I only have one, and buying three more would be budgetary overkill. A fun thought though!

Concerning this deck being boring, one of my friends uses truly ridiculous decks. His elf/Eldrazi deck is the stuff of nightmares. Crazy decks are just part of the meta where I am so this deck might actually fit in reasonably well. In general the friend I play with most would rather lose a very long game than lose a game after my other friend summons loads of Eldrazi from outside the game. My W/U Propaganda / Ghostly Prison deck drags games out for an eternity too and nobody complains (they actually sort of find it funny).

I love smokestack. Use it in both a persist deck and in one of my heartless summoning decks as an alternate win con and general nusiance.

Key conecpt for my persist deck is,
kitchen finks
power conduit
blasting station
and then some form of infinity like Melira, Sylvok Outcast or juniper order ranger

Key concept for my heartless deck (red and black) is,
crack the earth
effects that count as more then one permanent, are cheap, and are a disadvantage to have out such as the heartless summoning itself plus others like sarcomancy .

Goblin welder is a bit pricey these days as are the stacks themselves.