Why Blood Artist over Zulaport Cutthroat? Cutthroat gets around effects like Leyline of Sanctity and Shalai, Voice of Plenty which, while rare, do exist. It also requires fewer iterations of the Narcomoeba loop to kill a table and, probably most importantly, has one power, meaning it can draw you a card with Tymna. You miss out on triggers when your opponents' creatures die, but that only seems relevant in the mirror (though maybe that's the deciding factor).

TheFanatic Yea, the big one is messing with opposing death loops, as shalai and leyline are both rare, and trivial due to Gilded Drake/Relic warder multihulk lines, # of loops doesn't matter as long as you're killing them, and generally, you're not going to be swinging with either of them anyway, because any stray block can set you back quite a bit.

Hey man, I really like this list. What are some of the alternate wincons in case the Titan gets exiled or such?

Alexdagreat You can assemble Leonin Relic-Warder + Necromancy + Blood Artist/Altar of Dementia to win if the main combo gets distrupted.

Why include entomb? I can't see any line for it that is not obscure such as when you have a sac outlet and a reanimate spell in hand, and it doesn't seem good enough if that is its only purpose. I am sure I am missing something obvious though.

xan490 Entomb has one card combos with necromancy, apprentice necromancer, and Footsteps of the Goryo if you choose to play it, as all of them can trigger hulk.

I wonder though isn't it smart to put in gaea's blessing and the Titan? Just in case somebody reacts to the titan trigger with an ooze, a deathrite shaman or some other exile effect? Then you can respond to the exile trigger with more mill into gaea's blessing right? Or am i missing something here?

mithil12 those lines are currently considered slow play under current magic rules, at that point the combo becomes actual just 4 horseman ruled.

I see. That explains a lot. Thank you.

Why is that slow play?

Soren841 Under the current competitive rules for tournament use, if you attempt to loop to a specific gamestate, but you can't guarentee that you will get to that gamestate within a certain number of loops, you can't shortcut it, and you have to play through it manually, and during that, if you hit the same gamestate twice, ie you hit a shuffler before the second one, and you let it resolve so you have an empty graveyard twice in a row, then you are forced to stop the looping attempts and go do something else.

But you just loop in response and never resolve extra shuffles?

Soren841 The slow play from having two shufflers doesn't come from the normal combo, where you just keep milling until you hit the combo every time. It comes from the "safe" line, where you always stop milling after you hit the first shuffler, in order to have a second shuffler in deck to mill to in response to some disruption. This is non-deterministic (not guaranteed to combo within a set number of loops) and is what will run you into a slow play violation.

Tbh Magic rules need to be updated. Like you can't give the exact amount of loops but you know it will eventually happen..

Hey there, I am doing a bit of research on The more competitive decks out there for my Stax deck.

• So the first question is: what kind of "Stax" or "Hate cards" would shut this deck down or make it impossible for you to win under certain singular or combined Effects?

• And the second question is about Sanctum Prelate as I am trying to gather as much information about the stopping power of calling specific CMC with this card vs certain strategies, Would you consider CMC or CMC to be more effective here to disrupt your gameplan?

Kiyomei Well, for starters, Cursed Totem effects shut down both the Hulk line and the Freed from the Real line. Other stax pieces that the hulk line can't win through are Rest in Peace and friends, along with Grafdigger's Cage which is particularly effective. As for Prelate, it depends on the situation. 1 is more generally effective, but if the hulk player has resolved a tutor already, it would be wise to put it on 2.

Some questions: 1. Why is wild growth in this? 2.Only 2 answers to artifacts and enchantments? Abrupt Decay and Nature's Claim 3.Grand Abolisher?

You're forgetting Chain of Vapor and all the counterspells. Wild Growth is ramp and this deck does not need Abolisher.

breed697

Soren covered most of it, but yea;

1. Wild growth is 1 mana ramp that is mana neutral if you cast it the same turn, so I don't see a reason not to play it.

2. Along with Abrupt Decay and Nature's Claim, we also play Chain of Vapor and Leonin Relic-Warder, which means that pretty much any tutor in the deck can get a removal piece if needed, so we don't actually need that many

3. First of all, Grand Abolisher is very very awkward to fit into hulk piles for shuffle hulk, as you would need to be running Spellseeker + Reanimate for it to actually be playable, and that makes it unreasonable. Along with that, one of Shuffle Hulk's main strengths is its ability to win at instant speed, which makes Grand Abolisher useless in those cases, because it doesn't do anything on opponents' turns

Also, Arbor Elf is fun with Wild Growth.

Good points made - thank you @sickrobot and @soren841. I like the build very much and am interested to understand the purpose of each card on the list - I'm actually 5 cards away from completing the deck.

What are your thoughts on adding Auriok Salvager and Lion's Eye Diamond to this for an alternate plan?

I don't think adding bomberman solves any of the deck's problems. You're not already playing LED, so its only use is going to be as a combo piece, and bomberman loses to almost all of the stax that you would want a backup combo to dodge here (Can't combo through RIP, Cursed Totem, Null Rod, or even Rule of Laws). If you really don't want to play Bloom Tender + Freed from the Real, I'd look at some other similar infinite mana combo that doesn't use the grave to take advantage of Thrasios.

I just realized that wild growth can combo with Freed from the Real + Arbor Elf on a Tropical Island/Breeding Pool. With that in mind, would it possibly be worth cutting one of the green dorks for utopia sprawl as well to add redundancy while still ramping?

Utopia Sprawl can only enchant a Forest, so I'd give it a solid no

Whoa, I didn't even know that rule, does that apply to Gitrog Frog loops as well? I know some people like to play bother shuffle effects in that deck as well