What's not to love about a cuddly sloth who seems to have crawled out of a Carpenter horror film. He's so cuddly with his glowing tentacles.
Let me start off by clarifying that this Tayam deck is not Stax, it's Tax. Stax is no fun for anyone and I don't like playing it or playing against it. Stopping your opponents from doing anything basically means they don't get to play magic this game. Sure it's effective at winning, but it sucks at keeping people playing with you.
Tax on the other hand is tolerable, though groan inducing. This deck was inspired by @jesper_ejsing 's deck on @commandcast. His strategy reminds me of Dan Harrington's approach to tournament poker: "I'm not here to win all the chips, I'm here to be the last one with chips". I've made plenty of decks with more powerful strategies and combos that often get disrupted and lose. This deck is designed to disrupt the opponent more than getting raw power on the board for me.
Why Tax Bears work:
Decks are not ready to be taxed for mana or limited to one spell a turn. So many strategies depend on having one big turn. You take that away and they are quite easy to deal with.
If you aren't using a strategy, like slinging lots of instants and sorceries, than taking that away from all players is cheap in both mana and dollars. Tax bears cost very little.
40 life is not a lot of damage to inflict. You can still kill someone with a horde of 2/2 creatures just as effectively as with just a few giant eldrazi.
This deck is built around 3 CMC or less creatures with tax effects. We gum up the board with them, recur them as needed using Tayam and then finish the opponent off with a mass pump effect or wear them down with death triggers. Tayam's ability is extremely flexible, even allowing you to ramp by playing lands out of your graveyard.
I don't often cast 4 CMC spells in this deck, but when I do, it's Aluren. I first saw this card at a commandfest where someones Chulane deck took a turn that lasted a half hour and ended with him killing the entire table. Yes it helps your opponents, but their decks aren't mostly 3cmc or less creatures. Once this makes it to the board, you'll dump your entire hand and draw a good portion of your deck with our creature based draw engines like beast whisperer and guardian project. It's usually the last thing your opponents see.
Step 1: Aluren.
Step 2: Tax Bears.
Step 3: Victory
A tax bear is any small creature that slows your opponent down by:
Increasing mana cost
Restricting how many spells they can cast
Turning off strategies you don't need
Archon of Emeria is one of the better ones from the new Zendikar. You get two great Tax effects on one card.
One warning, watch out that your tax bears don't shut off your strategy. I've Gaddock Teeged myself with this deck as he prevents me from playing Aluren.
With that said, don't be afraid to tax strategies you intend to use as long as you have sacrifice outlets you can choose when an effect ends. For example, you can sacrifice Archon of Emeria at the start of your turn so you can cast more than one spell and then you can recur him with Tayam's ability so that your opponents are still stuck with only one spell on their turns.
Gotta have a win con. Once you have a bunch of creatures out, Mirror entity can let you swing in for a ton to finish out the game. Other options include Vito of the Dusk Rose to give all your creatures lifelink and damaging your opponent for all that life you gain. Even just having blood artist and a sacrifice outlet out is usually enough to get the job done.
Use their strength against them with Animate Dead, which Tayam can recur. You can literally keep their biggest threat on your side of the board by recurring this over and over. It's another hidden win con that doesn't rely on my hoard of tax bears.
I've been impressed by the consistency of this deck. Many of my other decks that focused on offence rather than disruption would often take out a player or two quickly, only to be destroyed by the rest of the table. The low curve of this deck and the power of taxation effects to limit all opponents let's it get in under the radar for the first few turns before the table realizes that there's little they can do. Once their stuck, I can usually find aluren and have a huge turn that usually wins the game.
Check it out and let me know if you have any favorite tax bears that I've overlooked for this deck.
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