Deck HistoryThe deck started with a much heavier focus on infect as a win condition and less on the planeswalker and stax plan . After playing this iteration of it and being thoroughly disappointed by the results , I decided to shift the plan to focus on a hard stax lock and dropped nearly all the infect cards in the deck minus Ichor Rats and Inkmoth Nexus . Doing this freed up more slots than I had anticipated so I added some more planeswalkers that would synergize with the strategy . Over the span of a few weeks I trimmed the list down to what it is now . It has put up incredible results , establishing hard locks as early as turn 34 depending on opening hand . StrategyThe idea behind the deck is to lock our opponents out early while getting set up to play through the constrained environment we intend to create . This requires us to be aware of what are opponents intend to do at each stage of the game and then devise a plan to prevent them from ever reaching that stage . Advantages The deck is designed with stax in mind so we have plenty of ways to break parity . We also have many options for grabbing specific pieces of removal and hate as needed throughout the game . All of these factors lend themselves to give us great consistency throughout the game and allow us to stifle our opponents while operating relatively unhindered . Disadvantages The deck is fairly challenging to pilot , without adequate threat assessment and an ability to think ahead of your opponents you ' ll be likely to misplay and end up hurting yourself more than your opponents . Removal and boardwipes can make keeping our value engine going somewhat difficult . We run as much protection as we can and a small counter suite to help offset this particular weakness . The ramp package also helps to mitigate the effect that the commander tax has on our ability to cast Atraxa consistently . The deck relies heavily on colored mana not only for our commander , but for a few of our hate bears and stax pieces . We run lots of rocks that tap for multiple colors as well as lands that can produce multiple colors of mana . Draw and MulliganOpening draws will determine how fast we can set up a lock . You ' ll want to mulligan until you have a hand with 12 lands and some cheap ramp pieces . Ideally , this hand should include Tangle Wire or some other lock piece or at the very least a way to tutor for a lock piece . The pieces you want to see in your opening hand will depend heavily on what you expect to see in your meta . If there are lots of mana dorks and commanders that rely on activated abilities Cursed Totem should be a big early target . If you deal with a ton of ETB creatures Torpor Orb will go a great way to hindering their strategy . Early GameThe goal for Turn 13 ish should be to ramp into Atraxa and ideally drop Tezzeret the Seeker or tutor for Tangle Wire or a lock piece depending on what you have on hand and what plays you expect from your opponents . The key early on is to be able to protect your commander and set up the value engine and prepare to establish the lock . Mid GameTurns 46 you ' ll be looking to land a lock , hopefully with some counter or removal back up . This is usually accomplished by grabbing Tangle Wire and keeping it at 5 the rest of the game . With Tangle Wire down adding in Root Maze , Stasis , or something like Winter Orb will make it virtually impossible for your opponents to recover . If you can ' t grab Tangle Wire the next best option is to use Stasis with Root Maze or Orb of Dreams to stop your opponents from getting untapped lands . This route is only really viable if you have Pentad Prism , Mana Bloom , Druids ' Repository , Tezzeret , Teferi or Garruk in order to be able to keep a constant supply of blue mana to maintain stasis . Late GameIf there are any players who still haven ' t scooped by turn 78 , we switch gears from trying to establish a lock to simply maintaining it while we beat down on our opponents with hate bears and Atraxa . During this stage , we also look to either crank down on the lock or simply blow past our opponents using planeswalker ults such as Dovin Baan , Narset , or Tamiyo . This will make closing out the game relatively easy to do , since a lock should already exist . If you have any questions or critiques regarding the list or write up please let me know I ' ll be more than happy to address them .