God-Pharaoh Stax
I went 9-1 in single queues w this, losing only to an interesting non-Survival, Vengevine deck I'd never seen before that blew me out w Crop Rotation all 3 games.
4 Mishra’s Workshop
4 Ancient Tomb
3 City of Traitors
2 Buried Ruin
4 Wasteland
4 Ghost Quarter
1 Tolarian Academy
1 Strip Mine
1 Black Lotus
1 Mana Crypt
1 Sol Ring
4 Bazaar of Baghdad
2 The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale
1 Chalice of the Void
1 Thorn of Amethyst
1 Trinisphere
1 Lodestone Golem
2 Null Rod
4 Phyrexian Revoker
4 Sphere of Resistance
4 Ark of Blight
3 Crucible of Worlds
4 Smokestack
3 God-Pharaoh’s Statue
Side
4 Grafdigger’s Cage
4 Ensnaring Bridge
3 Walking Ballista
2 The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale
2 Null Rod
This is the most brutal mana denial list I’ve ever run. Borrowing a page from the Prison Dredge concept, eschews moxen, here in favor of City of Traitors and Buried Ruin, which increases long game draw quality w little to no sacrifice in T1 threats.
I originally tried many versions w the new Karn alongside 4xGod-Pharaoh, and found the Statue more castable and game-sealing. I liked having 8 Null Rods, but 2c is still the price I want to pay. Two-sided Rod means no Grim Monolith, which makes Karn 4.0 out of budget. Similarly, Inventor’s Fair would be clearly bad here; wo moxes less likely to trigger life gain, nor get up to 4c-non-shop. And my card choice redundancy+Bazaar makes tutoring less relatively superior. Buried Ruin is similar function for half the cost, and rewards Bazaar milling. Tabernacle is the main anti-creature strategy, adds an Edict to every strip effect, of which I run 13.
Basically can’t lose post-board against anything not running a robust colored mana base, ie Dredge/Ravager/Eldrazi/Voltaic-Karn. Vengevine decks require tighter play since they can actually kill artifacts, but w a permanent-based strategy and no counter magic, is favorable in 3 games. Paradox I just bring in the 2 sb Null Rods, with the heavy anti-combo disruption main inherent to Stax. Its high variance but also overall favorable to win 2 of 3. Oath also high variance, but plays less mana and is more vulnerable to soot since they must win via a specific permanent in play for two consecutive turns.
Xerox decks are the fairest fight. Man those decks can shred you. Which brings us to Ark of Blight. The way to beat Pyromancer decks is to destroy/tax Every. Single. Land. I cut Tangle Wire bc it just doesn’t stop them and I desperately needed more active permanent removal. Tangle Wire is fairly good against the field, but doesn’t help the hardest match up.
First I tried Culling Scales for awhile, on the logic that running moxen-less, it would be one-sided against pertinent fast threats and artifact mana. Scales performed better here than I’d ever seen before, but it is still sloooww. 8 sac effects can rapidly chew up enemy board presence, and its nice to never worry about Mana Crypt long term, but often Scales is uncastable either on the play w Shop in opening hand and no other threats, or drawing it when I have some soft-lock pieces out and enemy is sitting on 3+ lands and they win easily.
Then I tried multiples Spine of Ish Sah, which is a hardlock w Smokestack, but keeping 7+ mana while feeding soot, is about as win more as it gets. Pretty much discarded to Bazaar every time, or way too late even killing their best permanent, or spiking an Island by the time they have 2+ other lands, etc. If they’d pushed it to colorless Desert Twister, and drop the sac recursion, would maybe be playable. So turns out 5c Stone Rain paid in two installments actually fits the strategy. Ark is best against Xerox, where I board out Null Rod, so it ends up as Bazaar fodder not that often. If Xerox resolves Dack un-Revokered, I lose, so best to just make sure they never have 3 mana. Its been awhile now since that mfer stole any of my shit, so I’m getting happy w this list. I might try a 2/2 Ark/Scales split. Maybe Sorcerous Spyglass, on top of Revoker? I'd rather kill mana for good than freeze it, but either way these are the weakest 4 slots in the deck.