Deck Spotlight - Shattergang Brothers Stax



Introduction
In early September I misplaced my Shattergang Brothers "soft" stax deck. I originally built the deck to combat Voltron strategies, Zedruu, and Helm / RiP combo decks that were dominating my local meta. The deck had an interesting side effect - it controlled games just enough that each player was unable to accomplish what they set out to do. Short, combo-finish games became long, drawn-out slugfests where participants were likely to finish the game with less than 10 life, and might die to something as innocuous as combat damage from mana dorks. This deck had a few glaring weaknesses that I'd like to address in this deck spotlight segment, and I'm hoping that acknowledging them will help me build a leaner competitive list that is straight up mean.

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Old Deck List
For reference, this is the decklist I was running prior to misplacing the deck. As I no longer own any of the cards on this list, it's fairly easy for me to make cuts and replace cards at this point as I'm building from scratch.

Strategic Goals
Having played this commander for a couple years now, I've been able to formulate a few strategic goals I'd like to accomplish through my card choices.

Consistent Ramp
Shattergang Brothers is the most mana-hungry deck I've ever played, by a very large margin. A 3CMC repeatable activated ability requiring coloured mana is a pretty tall order. I'll be focusing on making my land drops in the early turns, some of the standard early-game ramp spells that we have access to in green, as well as something that isn't really discussed very much - late-game ramp.

Tutors
When I first started playing Commander, I subscribed to the idea that tutors and other cards that increase consistency of gameplay work against the spirit of the format. While I still believe this to be true in casual Commander, competitive commander is a different beast entirely. A superior black tutor suite is going to be central to this decklist from the first draft.

Aggressive Stax
In a competitive meta, we need to look at extremely early-game resource denial. This deck thrives in the long game. The two-drop slot is going to be very important, as I need to ensure that there is a long game to get to.

Win Conditions
My old decklist was a little light on win conditions. I could very effectively slow the game down to my pace, but once the game was running at my pace, I had a lot of trouble closing it out.

Land Destruction
One of the shortcomings of my original decklist was that my meta - like many others - was uneasy with the idea of land destruction. Many metas fall into the trap of giving lands "social shroud". Now that my meta has embraced competitive play, it is definitely time to revisit land destruction as a way to get the most out of the red in Shattergang Brothers' colour identity.

Mana Fixing
In a three-colour deck, having reliable access to all of our colours untapped in the early game is a huge advantage. To do this, it is often necessary to include the ABUR dual land package that covers off all possible colour combinations, as well as Command Tower. For Jund, we'll be starting with the following:
 * BG - Bayou


 * RG - Taiga


 * BR - Badlands


 * BRG - Command Tower

Although it is not always a foregone conclusion, it is usually a good idea to follow up the ABUR duals with the corresponding suite of shocklands:
 * BG - Overgrown Tomb


 * RG - Stomping Ground


 * BR - Blood Crypt

To increase consistency, I will also be running the fetches in each colour combination. I may revisit this later and increase the number of fetches beyond the ones listed here. :
 * BG - Verdant Catacombs


 * RG - Wooded Foothills


 * BR - Bloodstained Mire

Acceleration
As a general rule, when you are running all of the ABUR duals and shocks in your colour identity, you want to include all of the fetches that can grab any of the ABUR duals and shocks on your list. That being said, the name of the game with this deck is going to be (often symmetrical) resource denial, which often includes nonbasic land hate. I will need to weigh my options later and compare the benefits of increased consistency to the ability to play around Blood Moon and Ruination. I will also be exploring the possibility of adding the Battle for Zendikar dual lands, which means I will need to keep a close eye on my basic land count.

To accomplish my first strategic goal of consistent mana ramp, I will be including a package that every black player should be familiar with:
 * Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth


 * Cabal Coffers

Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth has the added benefit of allowing my fetchland package to tap for black mana. Black is by far the most useful colour of mana to have available, as Shattergang Brothers' first ability is generally the one you're going to activate most in any given game. Additionally, some excellent staples in black require BB or BBB to cast, so the manabase is going to be deliberately skewed in that direction.

Utility Lands
Shattergang Brothers is one of the few decklists where I recommend using artifact lands. They tend to enable all sorts of strategies in artifact-based decks (such as Mox Opal in the very early game), but a well-placed Vandalblast can put you back several turns or keep you out of a colour of mana that you need to function properly. I'll be running the entire suite of on-colour artifact lands in this deck because they can be sacrificed to Shattergang Brothers in a pinch.
 * Darksteel Citadel


 * Vault of Whispers


 * Great Furnace


 * Tree of Tales

In addition to the mana-fixing lands above, I will be running a small package of top-tier utility lands:
 * Phyrexian Tower


 * High Market


 * Bojuka Bog


 * Strip Mine
 * The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale
 * Diamond Valley

Basic Lands
For now, I'm going to stick to this list of 21 nonbasics and fill the remainder with basics in even proportions. I'll be tweaking this later based on what my colour pie split works out to after cuts. The general knowledge suggests that you start with some arbitrary number, which then gets reduced by some number based on the number of mana rocks on your list. I've always felt that 40 lands in a deck is fairly high, so I'm going to start with 35 until I get a feel for how the new decklist runs. With 14 remaining land slots:
 * 5x Swamp


 * 4x Mountain


 * 5x Forest

The Stax Suite
This is going to be our bread and butter. Ensuring I have superior resource denial elements is the only way I'm going to make it to the late game.
 * Smokestack
 * Tangle Wire
 * Winter Orb
 * Torpor Orb
 * Static Orb
 * Pox
 * Fleshbag Marauder
 * Grave Pact
 * Dictate of Erebos
 * Vorinclex, Voice of Hunger
 * Blood Moon
 * Contamination
 * Drop of Honey
 * Agent of the Fates
 * Acidic Slime
 * Tormod's Crypt

Consistent Mana Ramp and Land Tutors
For the first cut of the list, I am going to focus on an artifact mana theme. While not ideal, it does provide a significant amount of acceleration in the early game. It also allows me to play around Winter Orb, Contamination, and Blood Moon. Aside from the artifact mana, I will be including a small suite of spells to tutor for lands and ensure that I make my land drops consistently.
 * Wood Elves
 * Chromatic Lantern
 * Sol Ring
 * Mana Crypt
 * Yavimaya Elder
 * Gilded Lotus
 * Khalni Gem
 * Farseek
 * Three Visits
 * Crop Rotation
 * Black Market
 * Boundless Realms

All-purpose Tutors

 * Demonic Tutor
 * Vampiric Tutor
 * Beseech the Queen
 * Diabolic Intent

Graveyard Recursion
As this deck is often forced to sacrifice its own permanents, it is incredibly useful to include a suite of creatures and enchantments that can be returned from the graveyard to the battlefield: In addition to the above, I also have a small package of cards that enable graveyard recursion strategies:
 * Bloodghast
 * Nether Traitor
 * Reassembling Skeleton
 * Rancor
 * Aspect of Mongoose
 * Fallen Ideal
 * Glistening Oil
 * Life from the Loam
 * Crucible of Worlds

Sacrifice Fodder
Token strategies tend to be quite useful, as they provide permanents that can be sacrificed to Smokestack, Shattergang Brothers, or a multitude of other sources for value. Grave Pact effects make utility tokens quite useful.
 * Bitterblossom
 * Awakening Zone
 * Everything on the Graveyard Recursion list

Sacrifice Outlets

 * Phyrexian Altar
 * Phyrexian Tower
 * High Market
 * Diamond Valley
 * Fallen Ideal
 * Smokestack
 * Prossh, Skyraider of Kher

Win Conditions
In this iteration of the deck, I am including an infect package as a way to speed the clock up. With the board relatively clear of creatures, my hope is that smaller utility creatures can become serious threats.
 * Grafted Exoskeleton
 * Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon
 * Glistening Oil
 * Phyrexian Crusader
 * Tainted Strike
 * Triumph of the Hordes
 * Viridian Corrupter