Why build a deck around stax pieces?
Stax pieces are among the most powerful effects in cEDH. Nearly all combos rely upon similar lines to victory (activated abilities, creatures, rocks, multiple spells per turn, color fixing, and the graveyard) and the right stax piece at the right moment can shut down all 3 opponents for a single card at 1-4 mana. While this is a dream scenario, simply hindering two opponents and mildly inconveniencing the other is often doable and is usually better value than a counterspell that may stop one person and leave the other two opponents free to do what they wish.
Another benefit of stax effects is they are additive in nature and sometimes their combined powers are greater than the sum of thier parts. In other words, stax effects become more oppressive when they are in play alongside thier breatheren. This can exhibit itself in two ways:
Notion Thief
+
Aven Mindcensor
represents a complimentary effect. Losing card draw or tutors is bad, but losing both is flat out terrible.
Cursed Totem
+
Rhystic Study
represents an enhancement effect. You will likely pay 1 to keep the study player from drawing a card but its far less likely you do this if all your dorks just got shut off.
Mixing or stacking effects feeds our best form of card advantage (our opponents inability to sit around and do nothing because their greedy deck design forces them forward or they get rekt). Unless played early, an effect like
Rhystic Study
can usually be played around. However, if we actively attack the efficiency and effectiveness of our opponents actions, they may not be able to advance their gameplan AND keep us from drawing off that action. Similarly, most decks can wait out an active
Mystic Remora
, but if you reset the remora after two or three turns and/or pair it with an effect or effects that ruin opponents ability to grind value through the tax (for instance, wiping the board clean with
Toxic Deluge
or stealing a draw engine with
Gilded Drake
) they may have to abandon the sit and wait approach and play into our hands.
Stax effects draw out the game and force bad decisions (ones where either option hurts them more than it helps). The longer the game goes, the worse many decks get and the more opportunities opponents have to make a critical error. Since we are taking a reactive approach and our cards stay relatively good, we have less opportunities for that critical error. Once we get ahead, we want to position ourselves to strike when the table has tapped out or expended their interaction.
While many slower decks want to play one sided hate pieces (i.e
Aven Mindcensor
), most decks cannot play global stax effects like
Rest in Peace
. Building around hate pieces allows us to play ridiculously powerful cards without the terrible downsides that usually come with such cards. Our cards stay pretty good, but our opponents cards get worse for each effect we manage to keep in play.
Isn't it easier to win than stop 3 decks?
If we were playing draw go control then sure, but we are not really commited to anything but grinding advantage over the table at all junctions. Being able to stop some deck with a single card, gives us the ability to pick our spots and be less actively involved in the direction the game takes as most paths benefit us. Moreover, the game is rarely just four decks racing eachother or one deck trying to hold back three. Other, decks often stop eachother and all in fast combo decks are getting shit on lately. The reality of hulk, raza, and dramatic scepter has led to many slower more interactive decks with resilient combos. As such there will likely be one or more of the following at the table with us: A staxy bear deck with complementary pieces to our own, storm decks that pack a full suite of countermagic and maybe even a control deck. These types of decks are often our allies and after the uninteractive fast combo decks are REKT, we can use our superior engines and combos to blow by the slower decks.
Since going fast (first) is not usually the best strategy for us, we aim to get a relevant hate piece down early alongside interaction and a value engine. From there we sit back and adapt as needed.