Brain Fart Stax

Commander / EDH Combo Competitive Control Multiplayer Stax UB (Dimir)

Winterblast

Land (29)

• 1x Academy Ruins
• 1x Ancient Tomb
• 1x Bloodstained Mire
• 1x Cabal Pit
• 1x Cephalid Coliseum
• 1x City of Brass
• 1x Command Tower
• 1x Darkslick Shores
• 1x Flooded Strand
• 1x Gemstone Caverns
• 1x Inventors' Fair
• 1x Island
• 1x Mana Confluence
• 1x Marsh Flats
• 1x Misty Rainforest
• 1x Morphic Pool
• 1x Polluted Delta
• 1x Reflecting Pool
• 1x River of Tears
• 1x Scalding Tarn
• 1x Snow-Covered Island
• 1x Snow-Covered Swamp
• 1x Sunken Ruins
• 1x Swamp
• 1x Underground River
• 1x Underground Sea
• 1x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
• 1x Verdant Catacombs
• 1x Watery Grave

Enchantment (5)

• 1x Copy Artifact
• 1x Counterbalance
• 1x Mystic Remora
• 1x Psychic Surgery
• 1x Rhystic Study

Planeswalker (3)

• 1x Ashiok, Dream Render
• 1x Ashiok, Nightmare Muse
• 1x Narset, Parter of Veils

Instant (24)

• 1x Ad Nauseam
• 1x Brain Freeze
• 1x Brainstorm
• 1x Cabal Ritual
• 1x Chain of Vapor
• 1x Cyclonic Rift
• 1x Dark Ritual
• 1x Demonic Consultation
• 1x Dramatic Reversal
• 1x Drown in the Loch
• 1x Flusterstorm
• 1x Force of Will
• 1x Mana Drain
• 1x Mental Misstep
• 1x Mystical Tutor
• 1x Narset's Reversal
• 1x Pact of Negation
• 1x Reality Shift
• 1x Swan Song
• 1x Tainted Pact
• 1x Thought Scour
• 1x Trickbind
• 1x Vampiric Tutor
• 1x Winds of Rebuke

Sorcery (15)

• 1x Demonic Tutor
• 1x Gitaxian Probe
• 1x Imperial Seal
• 1x Merchant Scroll
• 1x Mnemonic Betrayal
• 1x Peer into the Abyss
• 1x Ponder
• 1x Praetor's Grasp
• 1x Preordain
• 1x Scheming Symmetry
• 1x Timetwister
• 1x Toxic Deluge
• 1x Transmute Artifact
• 1x Windfall
• 1x Yawgmoth's Will

Commander (1)

Artifact (19)

• 1x Arcane Signet
• 1x Bolas's Citadel
• 1x Chrome Mox
• 1x Codex Shredder
• 1x Dimir Signet
• 1x Fellwar Stone
• 1x Ghoulcaller's Bell
• 1x Grim Monolith
• 1x Isochron Scepter
• 1x Lantern of Insight
• 1x Lotus Petal
• 1x Mana Crypt
• 1x Mana Vault
• 1x Mox Diamond
• 1x Mox Opal
• 1x Sensei's Divining Top
• 1x Sol Ring
• 1x Talisman of Dominance
• 1x Wishclaw Talisman

Creature (4)

• 1x Dark Confidant
• 1x Gilded Drake
• 1x Notion Thief
• 1x Thassa's Oracle

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Maybeboard

Instant (6)

• 1x Lim-Dul's Vault
• 1x Miscast
• 1x Muddle the Mixture
• 1x Spell Snare
• 1x Stifle
• 1x Tale's End

Creature (2)

• 1x Jace, Vryn's Prodigy  ^Flip
• 1x Thief of Sanity

Planeswalker (1)

• 1x Jace, Wielder of Mysteries

Land (1)

• 1x The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale

Sorcery (1)

• 1x Duress

Artifact (2)

• 1x Cursed Totem
• 1x Pyxis of Pandemonium

Enchantment (1)

• 1x Necropotence

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Lantern Control for cEDH. The gameplan is to pull off the combo with isochron scepter and dramatic reversal. Circu is the win con with dramatic scepter and also a weird piece of disruption on his own. The deck isn't actually "stax" as the deck name suggests. It's rather an adaptive combo deck that can go off quite early (t2/3 kill attempts are not unusual) but it has the potential of creating at least a soft lock on draws and hands.

"lantern control" in EDH works differently than in modern (obviously) and it doesn't even focus on actually having lantern of insight + mill rocks. It's rather about establishing a draw lock in general, for example by wheeling into notion thief, chains of mephistopheles and - worst of all - uba mask, which can possibly exile larger chunks of opponents' decks throughout the game to the point of making them unplayable. The lantern package disrupts early tutors, which is especially relevant against the fastest decks of the format, and it provides a great late game plan for a commander that doesn't have card advantage already built in.

If you are seriously interested in brewing with Circu or lantern control as a strategy, join the discord server

The Idea (under construction)

Dimir Lobotomy - Why Circu?

Circu is a commander choice that may raise some questions, especially since one part of his ability seems to be irrelevant in a singleton format. Playing competitively makes the „can’t play cards exiled with Circu“ part relevant because of format staples you will see in almost every deck – the more similar your meta decks are, the better this ability becomes. The actually important ability though is that playing an arbitrary large number of spells will result in exiling all cards in all opponent’s libraries. Circu is an outlet for combos that allow casting as many colored spells as you want, the best of which is Isochron Scepter and Dramatic Reversal.

As soon as there are 2 colorless mana on rocks available, the scepter combo works (assuming that Circu is in play) and if you can produce colored mana in excess of activating scepter, casting Circu after the first activations is possible. Compare this to other combo outlets in the command zone and you’ll see that it requires less setup because we don’t need to go mana positive with scepter.

Having the outlet for the combo in the command zone means that the deck needs to be focused on assembling the (actually very simple) combo and also having alternative options available should scepter or reversal be unavailable. As opposed to card advantage in the command zone, Circu demands a deck that makes up for that.

Why Lantern Control in EDH?

Transferring the idea of lantern into EDH is a weird choice but in the context oft he deck it makes sense. While we don’t have the density of mill rocks hat modern has, EDH offers other ways of meddling with people’s draws. Lantern of Insight together with the three cmc 1 mill rocks Codex Shredder, Ghoulcaller's Bell and Pyxis of Pandemonium isn’t suited to create a hardlock on draws as we know it from the modern deck. However, the mill rocks kill tutors to the top of libraries on their own and with lantern in play they can at least provide a softlock that is very cheap and still effective. Accompanied by cards that limit the number of cards people can draw per turn, such as Narset, Parter of Veils, the „lantern“ package is a viable choice to include. The aforementioned scepter combo turns the mill rocks into a kill, even if we have no colored mana to cast Circu as our nr. 1 combo outlet.

The lantern itself is a nice tool for knowing what the opponents draw and it makes Ad Nauseam better because you know exactly when to stop drawing, especially when you are at a low life total. Bolas's Citadel also benefits from the whole lantern/mill rock package because you can mill away cards that you can't cast and keep going in the same turn.

Plan B (or maybe even plan A sometimes)

As cheap and slim the scepter combo may be, it’s also easy to lose one of the two pieces. Having alternatives to the main combo is important, but the choices are not as wide as they used to be before the paradox engine ban. Today, Dimir absolutely wants to use Thassa's Oracle and Demonic Consultation as well as Tainted Pact. Only needing the commander and the scepter combo means that both cards that exile the library for oracle can also be used as tutors for parts of the scepter combo. You don't have to care about large chunkcs of your deck being lost in the process.

Praetor's Grasp and Mnemonic Betrayal can also get win cons from opponents if needed. Personally I have won some games with Ashiok, Nightmare Muse alone, getting it to ultimate quickly and winning off the free spells from opponent's exile.

Top Ranked	Achieved #34 position overall 6 years ago
Date added	6 years
Last updated	4 years
Legality	This deck is not Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	13 - 0 Mythic Rares 52 - 0 Rares 18 - 0 Uncommons 13 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	1.96
Tokens	Bird 2/2 U, Manifest 2/2 C, Nightmare 2/3 UB
Folders	Dimir Mills, Model EDH Decks, Interesting Commander Decks, Favorites!, EDH Decks, EDH decks, EDH, David EDH, edh decks, Favorites from other Planeswalkers