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Staxshifter

Commander / EDH* Combo Competitive Control Multiplayer Stax WUB (Esper)

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Land (30)

Creature (4)

Planeswalker (2)

Artifact (28)

Sorcery (5)

Commander (1)

Commander: foil Aminatou, the Fateshifter

Instant (14)

Enchantment (11)

Aminatou Stax that focuses on resource denial to cripple our opponents while we sit back and break parity, drop more Stax pieces, durdle, and laugh at our opponents who can't play Magic because we won't let them.

The inspiration for this deck came from when I was talking to SynergyBuild about how I always wanted to get into playing Stax in EDH, but I didn't necessarily want to play the most common top tier Stax list in the metagame because a cookie-cutter deck like that feels like a bore and snoozefest to me.

I mentioned my favorite colors are blue, black, and kind of undecided between white and green for my third favorite color because my favorite shard is Esper, while my favorite wedge is Sultai and I love them both equally.

That's when SynergyBuild suggested Esper as their personal pick for the color combo, although they found a home in Abzan and green/white colors for their Stax lists. SynergyBuild initially mentioned Derevi and Teferi, but one of the guys in my playgroup exclusively plays a Chain Veil Teferi list, and Derevi is just the first commander that comes to mind when I think about Stax, so of course me being the quirky and different person I am objectively threw that idea out the window. Teeg and Anafenza were also discussed, but I already have an Anafenza Hatebear list that's a work in progress and Teeg lists are all too similar to her. I still wanted to try something different.

Then, Aminatou, the Fateshifter was brought up in our discussion. This was a commander I originally brushed off at the time of her release and saw her as more of a combo-oriented commander to interact with this dumb cat and other shenanigans. However, I never looked at her from a Stax perspective and was absolutely floored by her potential. Card filtering is incredibly useful in a Stax list, especially since we're using discard effects like Bottomless Pit and Oppression , and the Staxshifter can protect a card you don't want to discard by putting it on the top of your library. Her flicker ability is just great with a lot of things in the deck, such as breaking the parity we set up by blinking our myriad of mana rocks, or resetting our other planeswalkers' loyalty counters. We won't be using her ult a whole lot, but there are some spicy things you can do with it. Anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself, so we'll get to that later.

Needless to say, I loved the Aminatou suggestion, and SynergyBuild was even kind enough to draft a list for me to work from. The core was incredible, and the emphasis on graveyard hate with Leyline of the Void , Rest in Peace , and Grafdigger's Cage , storm hate with Arcane Laboratory , Rule of Law , and Damping Sphere , as well as ETB hate with Hushwing Gryff , Torpor Orb , and even my favorite card Humility all on top of the common theme of resource denial was perfect for my metagame. The list that I based this one off of was generously semi-budget to boot, but guess what my sweet children, daddy hit his bonus this past month so I obviously had to take the deck further.

Feel free to drop a comment regarding suggestions to improve my deck. Bonus points if you refer to current decklists in my meta and base your suggestions off of that and point out any major flaws or weaknesses my deck may face. I greatly appreciate all forms of feedback and I ultimately want to fine tune this deck to oppress any other deck I may face in my playgroup. Thank you!

I have to give a huge shout out and thank you to SynergyBuild for their contributions and help in making this deck possible. It's like they read my mind and knew exactly what I needed to contest my specific meta and provided a solid base for me to work from. I appreciate you.

I've had some experience with Oloro, Ageless Ascetic Stax/Pillow Fort and it was a blast. However, I found myself never actually casting Oloro and utilizing him on the battlefield. It just felt like I piloted a 99 card deck with a passive 2 life gain every turn, and I didn't like the disassociated feel to it.

Aminatou actually interacts nicely with the deck, and isn't hit by Humility which is huge! I mentioned above in the background of this deck that her card filtering ability is appreciated due the presence of our discard effects to prevent us from discarding a card we want to keep by putting it on the top of our library. This isn't necessarily card advantage, but we're not trying to keep a lot of cards in hand especially with an Ensnaring Bridge on the field. You're going to use this ability all the time, because it's some solid value to be able to peek at the top card of your library and either keep it there or replace it with another one.

Her second ability allows you to blink tapped artifacts to essentially just untap them under a Stasis effect. You can also reset walkers after using one of their abilities, so you can get a couple uses out of them each turn. For example, you can have Tezzeret the Seeker enter the battlefield and use his second ability to search for an artifact and put it in play. You can then blink him with Aminatou to reset his loyalty counters and search for another artifact or opt to untap two artifacts on the field and keep his loyalty high and get another activation out of them. Her ability also resets annoying Tangle Wire counters which is just great.

There is just a ton of utility we can get out of her first two abilities alone, and admittedly we aren't going to be using her ultimate a lot. There might be some interesting niche plays you can pull off if you manage to steal someone's board who is threatening lethal or close to it, but in cEDH this doesn't feel great. All you need to do is up tick and down tick Aminatou and you'll be fine.

If Tezzeret the Seeker resolves while Aminatou is in play, we more or less win the game. This list used to run Helm of Obedience in conjunction to Rest in Peace or Leyline of the Void , but this combo just felt sort of clunky and inconsistent. The only way we could get there is by durdling long enough until we could find the pieces we need, and even then we could only remove two players at most each turn if Aminatou was on the field to flicker Helm. Now we have two ways of killing our opponents primarily by dealing infinite damage to them, or by infinitely milling their library as a backup. The potential of Kozilek, Butcher of Truth or Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre residing within an opponent's makes the mill plan seem slightly worse, but most times it seems just as effective.

The Infinite Damage Route

Step 1: Have Aminatou, the Fateshifter and Tezzeret the Seeker in play.

Step 2: -3 Tezzeret, fetching and putting into play Rings of Brighthearth .

Step 3: -1 Aminatou, targeting Tezzeret to flicker him and reset his loyalty counters.

Step 4: -4 Tezzeret, copy the ability with Rings to fetch both Basalt Monolith and Goblin Cannon and put them onto the battlefield, killing Tezzeret in the process.

Step 5: Generate infinite mana with the Rings/Monolith combo, and dump the mana into Cannon for an arbitrarily large number of triggers to deal infinite damage and kill everyone at the table. The Cannon gets sacrificed after the first trigger, but every trigger you put on the stack will still resolve without Cannon in play.

The Infinite Mill Route

Repeat steps 1-3

Step 4: -3 Tezzeret, copy the ability with Rings to fetch both Basalt Monolith and Codex Shredder and put them onto the battlefield.

Step 5: Generate infinite mana with the Rings/Monolith combo, tap Shredder, and copy the mill ability infinitely many times by dumping mana into Rings to deck out your opponents' libraries and pass the turn to win when they lose on their draw steps.

Note that this is not a primer. This deck was made with my specific meta in mind to heavily oppress everyone at the table. Many of the inclusions here are strictly meta calls, which means there are plenty of flex spots in here. Feel free to use this deck as a reference if it helps you build a Stax list around Aminatou, the Fateshifter , but just know that you may not get the same results as me unless you finely tune your list to your meta as required.

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Staxshifter Overhaul — Dec. 18, 2018
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SynergyBuild, IAmTheWraith, and I have been brainstorming better ways to actually win with this deck aside from Helm of Obedience with Rest in Peacefoil or Leyline of the Void in play. Helm of Obedience has really felt like the only win con resilient to our hate, but even then it is incredibly slow and clunky in the cEDH realm because it can only kill one player each turn unless we flicker it. We have since removed Helm and replaced it with a more streamline combo. Now all we need on the field are Aminatou, the Fateshifterfoil and Tezzeret the Seeker to combo off. First we need to -3 Tezzeret to grab Rings of Brighthearth, and then we -1 Aminatou targeting Tezzeret to flicker him and reset his loyalty counters. From there we -4 him, copying the -4 with Rings to grab Basalt Monolithfoil and Goblin Cannon. We can then generate infinite mana and stack infinite Cannon triggers to kill everyone at the table. Aside from this major change, more tutors were added while redundant and less valuable cards were cut from the deck.

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Revision 12 See all

(4 years ago)

Top Ranked
Date added 5 years
Last updated 4 years
Legality

This deck is not Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)

5 - 0 Mythic Rares

54 - 0 Rares

21 - 0 Uncommons

11 - 0 Commons
Cards 95
Avg. CMC 2.17
Folders Aminatou
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Aminatou, the Staxshifter

SynergyBuild EDH
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