The question was a good one, and I liked the way it was phrased. "Can Stax be 75%?" The venue? Predictably, it was the Commander subreddit. The discussion that evolved from a simple question was a good one, and there were differing viewpoints, which was also good. Ultimately, I came down on the side I usually do when difficult 75% question are concerned, which is usually "yes, but." Yes, but be careful. Yes, but why would you want to? Yes, but no one else will see it that way.

Last, the original poster of the thread, /u/765bro, hit me up in a private message after the thread petered out a bit. There was some good food for thought brought up in the thread, but the discussion must have discouraged him from trying 75% Stax. I think it can be done, but I think it would be very difficult to pull off and very difficult to convince people not to murder you in a giant, bloody dogpile the first time you wind-milled a Tangle Wire or Stasis.

I received a message from /u/765bro on reddit a few days later.

I wanted to look at a few Marchesa decks to see if I could find a good base, and then I remembered that Brainstorm Brewery finance writer and Gamers Helping Gamers scholarship winner Douglas Johnson had a 75% Marchesa list I liked when I smashed my 75% Nath of the Gilt-Leaf into it. Let's use his deck as a basis and see if we can't modify it a bit to suit /u/765bro's strategy. This is going to be fun.

Let's look at Doug's list.

75% Marchesa, the Black Rose ? Commander | Douglas Johnson

• Commander (0)

• Creatures (33)
• 1 Blood Artist
• 1 Carrion Feeder
• 1 Dack's Duplicate
• 1 Dark Impostor
• 1 Deathbringer Thoctar
• 1 Falkenrath Aristocrat
• 1 Flametongue Kavu
• 1 Flayer of the Hatebound
• 1 Glen Elendra Archmage
• 1 Mortician Beetle
• 1 Mulldrifter
• 1 Murderous Redcap
• 1 Necroplasm
• 1 Nightscape Familiar
• 1 Oona's Blackguard
• 1 Phantasmal Image
• 1 Preyseizer Dragon
• 1 Puppeteer Clique
• 1 River Kelpie
• 1 Sage of Fables
• 1 Sage of Hours
• 1 Scourge of the Throne
• 1 Simic Manipulator
• 1 Slumbering Dragon
• 1 Taurean Mauler
• 1 Spellskite
• 1 Exava, Rakdos Blood Witch
• 1 Garza Zol, Plague Queen
• 1 Grimgrin, Corpse-Born
• 1 Mikaeus, the Unhallowed
• 1 Olivia Voldaren
• 1 Sygg, River Cutthroat
• 1 Thraximundar

• Spells (23)
• 1 Crypt Incursion
• 1 Fire Covenant
• 1 Demonic Tutor
• 1 Mark of Mutiny
• 1 Toxic Deluge
• 1 Cyclonic Rift
• 1 Goblin Bombardment
• 1 Grave Betrayal
• 1 Ordeal of Thassa
• 1 Phyrexian Reclamation
• 1 Unspeakable Symbol
• 1 Blade of the Bloodchief
• 1 Cauldron of Souls
• 1 Contagion Clasp
• 1 Darksteel Ingot
• 1 Dimir Signet
• 1 Dragon Blood
• 1 Loxodon Warhammer
• 1 Power Conduit
• 1 Ring of Evos Isle
• 1 Ring of Xathrid
• 1 Sol Ring
• 1 Whip of Erebos

• Lands (43)
• 4 Mountain
• 4 Swamp
• 5 Island
• 1 Ancient Tomb
• 1 Badlands
• 1 Blood Crypt
• 1 Bloodstained Mire
• 1 Bojuka Bog
• 1 Cascade Bluffs
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Creeping Tar Pit
• 1 Crumbling Necropolis
• 1 Desolate Lighthouse
• 1 Dragonskull Summit
• 1 Drowned Catacomb
• 1 Graven Cairns
• 1 Grixis Panorama
• 1 High Market
• 1 Scalding Tarn
• 1 Shivan Reef
• 1 Steam Vents
• 1 Sulfur Falls
• 1 Sulfurous Springs
• 1 Sunken Ruins
• 1 Temple of Deceit
• 1 Temple of Epiphany
• 1 Temple of Malice
• 1 Underground River
• 1 Watery Grave
• 1 Winding Canyons
• 1 Miren, the Moaning Well
• 1 Phyrexian Tower
• 1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth

Buy This Deck

This will be easiest if we make a list of cards we want to jam in and then figure out what we can lose. Commander decks run about sixty cards, so changing ten to fifteen percent of the cards will have a real, appreciable effect on how the deck plays. We could swap as few as six cards and see a profound difference, but more would be fine, especially if we end up cutting some existing cards just because they're relatively irrelevant in the new strategy. We want to add a few more sac outlets, a lot more Threaten effects, and probably add more red to the mana base.

Doug already had Mark of Mutiny, which is cool. Let's add Insurrection, Threaten, Word of Seizing, Mass Mutiny, and Molten Primordial to make sure everyone gets a taste. While we're adding some Threaten effects from the Godo, Bandit Warlord article, let's add some of the same sac outlets: Phyrexian Altar, Ashnod's Altar, Breath of Fury, and Tooth and Claw. We have access to blue and black, colors we didn't have access to when we built a mono-red deck that was swiping stuff. I like Bribery, especially if you put the creature back in play rather than in someone’s ’yard if you play a little too rough with that player’s creature and break it.

Blue and black aren't really showing me any sac outlets we need to be playing with and aren't, so we're mostly going to try to jam these few cards in and fix up the mana base because we'll need more access to red than with Doug's list.

Jason's 75% Steal-Their-Creatures-Temporarily-for-the-Rest-of-the-Game Deck ? Commander | Jason Alt

• Commander (0)

• Creatures (31)
• 1 Blood Artist
• 1 Bloodshot Cyclops
• 1 Carrion Feeder
• 1 Dack's Duplicate
• 1 Dark Impostor
• 1 Deathbringer Thoctar
• 1 Falkenrath Aristocrat
• 1 Flametongue Kavu
• 1 Flayer of the Hatebound
• 1 Glen Elendra Archmage
• 1 Molten Primordial
• 1 Mortician Beetle
• 1 Mulldrifter
• 1 Necroplasm
• 1 Nightscape Familiar
• 1 Oona's Blackguard
• 1 Preyseizer Dragon
• 1 Puppeteer Clique
• 1 River Kelpie
• 1 Scourge of the Throne
• 1 Simic Manipulator
• 1 Slumbering Dragon
• 1 Taurean Mauler
• 1 Spellskite
• 1 Exava, Rakdos Blood Witch
• 1 Garza Zol, Plague Queen
• 1 Grimgrin, Corpse-Born
• 1 Mikaeus, the Unhallowed
• 1 Olivia Voldaren
• 1 Sygg, River Cutthroat
• 1 Thraximundar

• Spells (27)
• 1 Fire Covenant
• 1 Word of Seizing
• 1 Bribery
• 1 Insurrection
• 1 Mark of Mutiny
• 1 Mass Mutiny
• 1 Threaten
• 1 Toxic Deluge
• 1 Breath of Fury
• 1 Cyclonic Rift
• 1 Goblin Bombardment
• 1 Grave Betrayal
• 1 Phyrexian Reclamation
• 1 Tooth and Claw
• 1 Unspeakable Symbol
• 1 Ashnod's Altar
• 1 Blade of the Bloodchief
• 1 Cauldron of Souls
• 1 Darksteel Ingot
• 1 Dimir Signet
• 1 Dragon Blood
• 1 Loxodon Warhammer
• 1 Phyrexian Altar
• 1 Power Conduit
• 1 Ring of Evos Isle
• 1 Sol Ring
• 1 Whip of Erebos

• Lands (41)
• 4 Island
• 4 Swamp
• 5 Mountain
• 1 Blood Crypt
• 1 Bloodstained Mire
• 1 Bojuka Bog
• 1 Cascade Bluffs
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Creeping Tar Pit
• 1 Crumbling Necropolis
• 1 Desolate Lighthouse
• 1 Dragonskull Summit
• 1 Drowned Catacomb
• 1 Graven Cairns
• 1 Grixis Panorama
• 1 High Market
• 1 Scalding Tarn
• 1 Shivan Reef
• 1 Steam Vents
• 1 Sulfur Falls
• 1 Sulfurous Springs
• 1 Sunken Ruins
• 1 Temple of Deceit
• 1 Temple of Epiphany
• 1 Temple of Malice
• 1 Underground River
• 1 Watery Grave
• 1 Winding Canyons
• 1 Miren, the Moaning Well
• 1 Phyrexian Tower
• 1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth

Buy This Deck

I actually made the mana base worse. There weren’t a ton of ways to make red mana that aren't already in the deck—both Graven Cairns and Cascade Bluffs are already in, for example. I cut the Ancient Tomb and Badlands because I don't think they're necessary. If you have them—and a good MTG financier like Doug Johnson of course has them—jam them if you want. We like having ways to make red mana or ramping or losing life. I just don't want to advocate running expensive lands when we could just build a new deck. The mana was also really tight. It was really tough to find stuff to pull out. Again, if you'd rather run something I took out, run it.

I think we have a lot to work with here, and I like the spin I put on it. We could go a bit further toward the red, Threaten-heavy version if we wanted, but I think we have a nice balance between a 75% deck I like and a new direction to go. Remember that changing six cards changes ten percent of the playables in a deck, and that dramatically changes how the deck plays over the course of a few games.

What do we think? Should I have gone further? Do you like Doug's version better? Leave it in the comments or on reddit. As always, thanks for your input, and we'll see you next week with an article I know you're going to love.