Zephyr Stasis

Stasis gets a bad rap in casual circles.

Wait, hear me out.

Stasis can be appropriately casual. Maybe not like penny loafers or Quarum Trench Gnomes, but I would argue it has a place in kitchen-table-style playgroups like ours. The key to brewing with a card like Stasis is what you put around it.

In casual AL Magic (redundant, but for the sake of newcomers), we strive for an environment that allows all cards to see play… at least all cards through around 1996, after which it gets dicey because Old School staples start getting pushed out by more efficient options. Anyway, we do have a couple exceptions, namely Moat and The Abyss. While we don’t hard-ban these, they definitely have large asterisks due to their propensity to ruin games on their own. Your only wincons are Mountain Goats and Goblins of the Flarg and your mono-red deck doesn’t have Disks? On to game 2. Enchant Worlds provide an additional out to The Abyss, so somebody’s random Serra Aviary deck might be tech in multiple ways but most of the time matchup luck only gets you so far. I’ve long considered a white/green “Thallid-Moat” brew that wins by attacking with saproling tokens riding on Flying Carpets, but even then half my games would probably just end as soon as I cast the enchantment.

Haven't bought the Moat yet but otherwise good to go.

But that’s not Stasis, which falls into a somewhat less egregious class of casual-taboo cards like Nether Void, Winter Orb, and Armageddon: cards that don’t typically, by themselves, render a game unwinnable. It depends more how hard you break the symmetry. Behold, “Zephyr Stasis”:

LML September: 2-1 matches, 6-3 duels

I think I managed to toe the line with this one. It did win the league last month, but every match went to three games and Stasis only mattered a small number of times. More importantly, all my opponents enjoyed playing against the deck and didn’t feel it was too strong or unreasonably oppressive (or possibly they’re just good liars). The worse offender ended up being Black Vise, which sometimes gets there on its own when you also draw Twiddle, Time Elemental, and multiple Boomerangs. That only happened once though, and there’s only so much you can rely on Zephyr Falcons every game. I also won a duel by swapping my Yotian Soldier for Jim’s Sylvan Yeti with Juxtapose (the artifact swap was an even exchange of Yotians, so unremarkable aside from being hilarious).

The plan came together a couple times with multiple early Falcons followed by Stasis + Reset at 5-6 lands, but even then it wasn’t a hard lock, and the opponent still had several turns to figure something out. One of those times that something was Arboria, and Adam ended up going over the top with Terravore* and Wood Elemental, though I got him back in game 3 by Steal-Artifacting his tapped Sword of the Ages and sacrificing a Zephyr Falcon and Old Man of the Sea to it for lethal. In the end, there were a surprising number of duels where Stasis either wasn’t drawn or wasn’t relevant, which made the deck feel fairer and more versatile.

For this build, I eschewed countermagic in order to play more to synergy than finger wagging. Boomerang was an all-star throughout the month, and if anything felt too powerful it was that I had four copies. Icy, of course, put in work, as did Clone, and I never drew Sol Ring. Time Elemental was often kill-on-sight, which is a pretty good sign you’re playing the right format. I thought about going into white but Serra Angel and Kismet seemed like they might push things too far, especially with white removal.

So there you have it: an AL-approved Stasis deck you don’t have to feel bad bringing to the casual table at your local meetup. I’m not normally a blue player (actually somewhat to meme levels within our group), but feel there’s a balance you can strike with some of these “unfun” cards that allows their unique mechanics to exist in a healthy way even in a friendly, low-powered meta. Happy to hear your thoughts!

* Terravore is questionable in AL but you tend to get away with things when you run Wood Elemental.