Learning from Brewing - Ral Zarek Stasis - LEGACY

What is the absolute, best deck I can make with Ral Zarek?

There’s a guy at my LGS whose abilities in Legacy have always impressed me. He was capable of performing with seemingly unplayable decks and even more questionable cards.

Panglacial Wurm.

Countryside Crusher.

Tymaret, the Murder King.

I realized it wasn’t because of supreme skill in brewing. At least not just that.

The king of ideas is not the king of brainstorming. Brainstorming is merely a creative process.

We can all brainstorm. Few can execute ideas.

I realized that he was able to make such peculiar decks perform and function because of his understanding of Legacy as a whole. He could see the problems his decks would face or find ways to exploit weaknesses of the format.

I set out to compete with him as a learning venture for myself, and to have a little fun.

Our first competition would be simple – play one of the following cards as a main-deck four of:

• Rest In Peace
• Ral Zarek
• Dark Confidant
• Final Fortune
• Exploration
• Phyrexian Altar.

I came up the list really with the only bias that I found the card “cool.”

Some of these cards are not pervasively powerful, but all of these cards require deck-building considerations.

I found myself wanting to build with Ral Zarek since I had toyed around once with Stasis, and I figured the only time Ral Zarek was playable was if he was in Stasis.

I looked to see what others had been trying with Stasis. Fatpow - whom you could sometimes see on Joe Lossett’s stream checking in on his Stasis builds with Equipose – wrote on RUG Stasis builds that used Ral Zarek and Garruk Wildspeaker in addition to Quirion Ranger and Squib Ranger to synergize with Stasis. His list would have been my ideal (and would have doubly fit in the brewer’s competition) because of its speed from its turn 1 ramp plays in Exploration, Birds of Paradise, and Green Sun’s Zenith. Ral Zarek without green in your deck means you can’t stick him until turn 4, and can’t play him with Stasis until turn 5.

But I still was ready to build a UR Ral Zarek stasis deck. I had some experience with a mono-blue stasis deck built around the lock that really just felt like a kitchen table deck; which showed in the clunky cards it played. Sure you could perfect the lock with Frozen AEther or Vedalken Mastermind and deploy the win condition with Chronatog or Ebony Owl Netsuke… but those cards do nothing on their own. So how could we build a Stasis deck that could play cards that could do something on their own merit but still assist the combo? If we were in a color that could permit us flexibility…

Prison control decidedly became the type of deck this should be. Stasis backed up by a lot of permission spells and the card’s most powerful spell: Brainstorm.

Notable card discussion

Howling Mine started as a three-of because it seemed like something I wanted but didn’t need. I came to realize it was the most realistic way to enable Stasis. I can give them all of the cards they need because they won’t have the mana to play them all anyway, and I can interact with the few cards they play that matter.

Stifle became a lynchpin of the deck. Hitting fetchlands is the most common use to keep them from playing spells in the early game, but served a lot of versatility in interacting with problematic cards such as Aether Vial that got them too far ahead too quickly, Wastelands that could hit Forsaken City, Eldrazi shuffling their graveyard into their deck, Stoneforges that try to cheat in a vigilant germ, and creatures that could interact with Stasis like Flickerwisp or Reclamation Sage.

Howling Mine was considered as a way to speed us up in finding Stasis. Games would often occur where if we could just draw Stasis we would be fine, and Muddle the Mixture is too slow to efficiently tutor it out. But there just wasn’t often enough time to do anything with the spell.

Repeal was high on the list as a way to slow our opponents by bouncing creatures that could also be used late game to bounce our own Stasis to recover access to mana.

Ivory Tower was a card I just completely missed. It is a card that would address the many times where we  deploy an early Stasis without a Ral Zarek to stabilize, but they then play out lands and play creatures as burn spells and burn spells of their own merit to close out the game.

I finally referenced Patrick Chapin’s book and could immediately see where the deck fit on the metagame wheel. And to my surprise the classic Stasis deck was still influential enough to have its own section!

I must say we are at a disadvantage as brewers when we don’t have the experience of a person like Patrick Chapin, a person that has been around the game since the beginning. Every deck has already been built and they have already seen it. They have an innate understanding of how to build a “cohesive deck” – a phrase thrown around so often I want to emphasize what it really means to have a cohesive deck. It is one where its purpose and function is clear, and every card slot is scrutinized for what it does as a whole. It is where the cards are players that form a deck as teammates.

Reading the section on Stasis was of course useful. It helped me realize how to cut the fat from the deck and make it lean. I laughed in agreement when he stated that the playability of this archetype in the current era was a 1.

He is of course totally right. The deck was bad. But I really think I built a deck that could play Legacy.

I brought it to the four-round store at my LGS and efficiently dispatched Storm by drawing an abundance of counterspells; miserly took a match against Cloudpost by winning a long game 1 with Stifles and drawing game 2; got beat up by RUG Delver; and got beat up by UR Delver.

I knew the Delver matchups were problematic, more so when they are high-velocity versions like the ones I played. I have to stabilize with a premature Stasis and they finish me off with Nimble Mongoose, Lightning Bolts, or Young Pyromancer elementals. Had I not missed Ivory Tower I might have had a better shot, but even that might be too slow.

I still was able to barely “outperform” my brewing buddy as someone hadn’t returned his Chalices which were necessary to give his creature-based Exploration deck a chance against combo decks. Of course he plays against Omni Tell the first two rounds. His third round was practically a bye in the 0-2 bracket but his round 4 match was a real match that meant he finished 2-2 as well.

It was all still for the thought experiment and challenging ourselves to tune brews. Anyone with an imagination can brew. What we can do, is find discipline and dedicate ourselves to harrowing down on our ideas until they are compelling. I am nowhere near that. And never will be close to someone like Patrick Chapin or even my brewing buddy. But it’s fun trying to work towards it.