Bears in cars
An Azorius Hatebears Primer
I've been working on this deck for quite awhile now. I was originally inspired to build it while I was thinking about the weaknesses of hatebears builds, and how we can shore them up. Other similar archetypes like Tana / Tymna Blood Pod apply life total pressure by attacking with hatebears and force people to react to creature combat damage while they are setting up any number of combo finishes. Tymna / Ravos is also a great pairing for this type of strategy, because Ravos allows you to put hatebears back into play when they are removed or swept.
Both of these decks tend to be good thanks to Tymna, who provides a strong, consistent source of card advantage in the command zone. They also both have access to black, providing a robust suite of tutors that support the combo finish game plan well.
How does GAAIV Stack Up?
This build of GAAIV is pretty drastically different than other Azorius hatebears lists. While researching this deck, I came across three primary strategies:
1) Helm of Obedience / Rest in Peace combo
2) Brago, King Eternal combo
3) Paradox Engine / Isochron Scepter Combos
Out of the three, I'd say Brago combo is the most worthwhile in these colours. One of the pieces is in the command zone, and the other piece (Strionic Resonator) is easily tutorable with both white and blue tutors. The combo does require a third piece, but there are so many redundant pieces (Venser, Shaper Savant / Rishadan Cutpurse / Rishadan Footpad / Man-o'-War / others) that fit the role that you're nearly guaranteed to naturally draw into one every game.
Helm / RIP is also a worthwhile combo, but it tends to be slow and inconsistent. The good news is that a lot of decks already want to be playing Rest in Peace, so at the very least the combo is slot-efficient, even if Helm is totally dead on its own.
Finally, I'd have to say the the Paradox Engine / Scepter combos seem a little forced in this colour identity. Hanna is really the only commander that I'd say is appropriate for these combos, because assembling them is hard enough when you don't have an outlet in the command zone.
GAAIV is not an infinite mana outlet, and doesn't provide card advantage, which means the deck has to focus on different things than Tymna / X to function well. In general, I'd say that this deck will perform worse than most similar Tymna / X decks, but in the right meta I'd say you can find a lot of success like this.
All in all, should you play this deck? Probably not. If your goal is to maximize your chances of winning there are likely better options in Azorius, and even better options in other colour identities for a hatebear shell. This deck is, however, a riot to pilot, and I'm not embarrassed at all to pull this deck out at a table of the regular cEDH suspects.
My Meta
My personal meta skews a little more towards fringe decks, but I frequently have to deal with Ad Nauseam, Breakfast Hulk, Najeela beats, a few different storm lists, Breya/Kess consultation, Gitrog, and Doomsday. This deck loves to tax, which stays Ad Nauseam, Doomsday, and Storm lists, and applies a significant amount of life total pressure that reduces Ad Nauseam's effectiveness if they manage to break your locks. Like most stax and control lists, you'll have a much easier time if you're reliably playing with another control player at the table. You just can't get enough different stax pieces into play to adequately pin down 3 other players if they're operating on different axes.
You might be able to get away with it if your opponents skew more towards midrange combo than fast combo, but even then it's a bit of a crapshoot. If your opponents are policing each other a little bit, this deck will likely play a lot better in your meta.
How do we win?
There are three main ways this deck can close out the game. In order of reliability, they are:
Vehicle Beats
Some of these vehicles are pretty beefy. If you can successfully make it to the midgame, you'll have some big creatures you can use to reliably pump out damage.
The primary reason for running vehicles is that it allows us to utilize our hatebears to reduce our opponents' life totals without exposing them to creature combat. We are able to get a better damage : CMC ratio by playing vehicles rather than just straight fatties.
The other reason for playing vehicles is that it reduced our exposure to boardwipes. If you play in a boardwipe-heavy meta full of spells like Toxic Deluge, a set of vehicles in play means we don't face quite as much of a tempo loss as other creature-heavy decks. Rebuilding a board of hatebears is quite a bit easier than rebuilding a board full of fatties, so having them stick around is great.
This card actually says "You win the game" on it, but it's a little tougher to pull off than simply beating people down with vehicles. Your typical targets here are going to be vehicles, but copying a Lodestone Golem, Thorn of Amethyst or Sphere of Resistance can be an absolute backbreaker. It allows you to ratchet up the taxes until people can't actually cast spells, at which point you can coast to a victory.
This is also the reason why Phyrexian Metamorph is in the list, as it allows you to copy a hatebear and suit it up with Mechanized Production. Most of the hatebear effects in this list don't actually stack, meaning you won't benefit from having more than one of them, but it helps to keep the effects in play in case your opponents draw into spot removal. Typically, though, you'll want to copy Banisher Priest, Glowrider, Recruiter of the Guard, or Sun Titan.
Helm RIP
This wasn't actually in the first draft of the deck, but I'm starting to come around on it. Even though it only kills one person at a time, it allows you to eliminate players who you haven't been focusing your efforts on. With Helm RIP we attack one player and helm another while reliably shutting down quite a few win conditions.
Stax and Tax
It should be pretty evident upon casual inspection that this is a relatively slow list. It lacks inevitability like other decks have when they have an outlet or combo piece in the command zone, and its card velocity is lower than decks that have card advantage engines in the command zone. This means that we have to slow the game down to a slog, which buys us time to remove threats and (more importantly) draw cards while we reduce our opponents' access to resources and winning lines. This - like with most decks - is the most flexible part. If you're going to sleeve this up, consider why I'm running each of these pieces and understand that your meta may dictate different requirements on which pieces you choose to include. These are the problems that my stax packages are designed to solve:
Ad Nauseam, Doomsday, and Storm
Sphere of Resistance
Thorn of Amethyst
Ethersworn Canonist
Glowrider
Lodestone Golem
Spirit of the Labyrinth
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
Aura of Silence
This package is designed to interfere with people's ability to cast multiple spells in the same turn. We do this through taxation and limiting card draw.
GX Creature-Based Strategies
Ballista Charger
Cursed Totem
Skysovereign, Consul Flagship
Torpor Orb
Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
Hushwing Gryff
Linvala, Keeper of Silence
Phyrexian Revoker
Tocatli Honor Guard
This package of cards is designed to reduce our opponents' ability to generate mana through creatures. Even though this deck is a creature deck, it's uniquely positioned in that it can play Cursed Totem and Linvala because the only activated abilities we're really looking to leverage are on noncreature artifacts (vehicles), which are totally unaffected by these abilities.
Phyrexian Revoker is a powerhouse in this deck because it can shut off big mana activated abilities like Selvala, Heart of the Wilds and Priest of Titania in addition to the other things you'd normally name with Pithing Needle effects.
This package also shuts down ETB abilities of creatures, which is important because these creature-based decks are often using Survival of the Fittest and potentially Sneak Attack to put Reclamation Sage, Manglehorn, or Bane of Progress into play as a way to clear out enchantment- and artifact-based stax pieces.
Hulk
Grafdigger's Cage
Aven Mindcensor
Containment Priest
Thalia, Heretic Cathar
Blind Obedience
Rest in Peace
Thalia, Heretic Cathar and Blind Obedience might seem like strange inclusions in here, but in my meta the Protean Hulk lines are primarily Kiki-related. Having creatures enter play tapped is useful, but I found I was able to cut Kinjalli's Sunwing because I didn't need a third redundant piece to fill this role - two was just fine.
Testing
These are the cards I'm currently looking at including:
I'd love to make this deck more resilient. This isn't the spiciest card or anything, but I think including a more robust suite of countermagic will help me deal with threats that squeeze through any on-board locks.
The deck needs more card draw, but I'm not sure this is the best place to get it. It would be awfully nice to swing my hatebears into open players to refill my hand, but 4 mana isn't really where this deck wants to be. Even with the GAAIV discount it's a little rough.
I'm actually really high on Mindlock Orb right now. This deck doesn't really need any particular card at any given time (which could be because it needs a more focused game plan), so putting a speed limit on the game by preventing everyone from tutoring can be pretty good. It's a coloured artifact, too, which means it gets cost reduced by GAAIV as well as Etherium Sculptor.
This one is a little more out there, but I think it has some merit. It essentially taxes Tymna decks and reduces their ability to draw cards, it allows us to attack with reckless abandon, and it gets cost reduced by both GAAIV and Etherium Sculptor just like Mindlock Orb.
3 power isn't irrelevant when it comes to crewing. I'm thinking I probably need to include more card draw if I'm going to think about enhancing my cost reduction suite at all.
Budget Considerations
This is a two-colour deck that doesn't really have any heavy mana coloured mana requirements due to the high artifact count. You can absolutely get away with playing zero fetches, which will reduce the deck's price by almost exactly a quarter. If you do this, don't get cute with loading up on lands that ETB tapped. Sea of Clouds is great, but you can get away with just running basics and the deck will run just fine.
If, after doing that, you're still coming in over budget, I would cut these cards in this order:
Transmute Artifact
Mox Diamond
Mana Vault
Mox Opal
Transmute could be replaced by Reshape without too much difficulty, and I would replace the rocks with Fellwar Stone, Mind Stone, and a cost reducer like Foundry Inspector.
Gameplay and Piloting
To be 100% honest, this deck mostly pilots itself. When you're working out how to sequence your plays, remember that extra coloured mana on the turn you cast GAAIV often means you get to cast a hatebear or two afterwards. The board can get pretty complicated sometimes, so make sure you double- and triple-check your math if you've got more than one tax effect out, because they'll often apply to different types of spells and can sometimes be cancelled out by your cost reducers.
Gameplay Examples
I piloted this deck in S1E2 and S1E4 of The Spike Feeders. Go check them out if you'd like to see this deck in action!
Conclusion
Although it's not the most effective stax deck I've ever played, I have to say it's an absolute blast. Playing a slightly stompier playstyle at a competitive table is a bit of a rush, and it's a nice break from playing a control/stax shell, which tends to be a lot more decision-heavy and stressful. I hope you enjoy this as much as I do!
