Stand Tall & Stall How To Win By Stalling by cecillbill *This article is presented in 3 parts for your reading convenience. This article is part 1 in the series. I am not a deck building expert, and I am humble enough to admit it. But I have won and lost many duels with stall so I have experience evaluating its' weaknesses and strengths.* ::Why Play A Stall Deck?:: Some Duel Masters players believe that blocker-heavy decks, known as a stall decks, are incapapble of winning many games and shouldn't be played. This belief stems from the fact that stall decks have several major weaknesses: no real early game in terms of strong attack attempts (its not Rush), no mana acceleration (if you don't combo with Nature), limited creature removal (if you don't combo with Darkness), and no drawing power (if you don't combo with Water). Those are certainly valid and serious issues that would kill a deck's chances of winning if stall didn't have good defensive legs to stand on. Depending on your metagame, good stall decks are capable of winning. I know this because I've won tournaments with stall decks. Stall decks are built to go against many deck types because they can "handle" attacks via blocking them. In many matchups, stall can win because it's about firing at shields from behind a huge wall of blockers. There is one deck type that presents the biggest problem for stall decks and that is Control. Control decks are the "numero uno enimigo" of Stall decks because they expose and exploit stall's weaknesses better than any other deck. An important thing to note is that Control decks may be dominating the game soon. Also, I don't yet know how the next set, Evo Crushinators of Doom, will help or hurt stall deck strategy. When the new set comes out, I'll probably revise this article provided stall is still a viable deck strategy. There are also different types of stall decks. For clarification, when I talk about stall I am refering to decks that wait until the late game to start seriously attacking shields with fatties. Why would anyone play a stall deck given all those drawbacks? Because they can be fun to play, are easy to understand, and can win duels. This brings me to an important point I have to address before going into the deck building aspect--exactly what a stall deck is and does. ::What Is a Stall Deck?:: A stall deck brings out fatties (double breakers) via heavy defensive postering. That means you play defensively for the better half of the duel until your guns come and you can safely attack. You drag out the duel long enough to bring out fatties like Urth, Hanusa, Gatling Skyterror and Roaring Great Horn and start to attack strategically with those fatties. One way to "drag out the game" is to use blockers in addition to any removal/tapping spells available to the civilizations you choose to have in your stall deck. Stall has a small amount of "control" elements to it, like removal, albiet not the strongest ones. With a stall deck you have to build a force of blockers and use them in the best manner to achieve victory through your fatties (or small hitters sometimes). Often that means knowing which blockers to use, and remembering to use them to attack tapped creatures (Light's blockers). A stall deck is played defensively even after you bring out your fatties. Why? Stall is not conducive to swarm, meaning that by the time you get your fatties out you often only have 1 or 2 main hitters on the field. You'll probably have out more blockers than hitters, and will want to protect your fatties even though they are a huge board presence by themselves. Stall achieves it's win condition by warding off attacks until you have your big guns out and can fire off shots yourself. In that respect, Control is a nuisance because those decks set the tempo of a duel by the time mid-game rolls around. Control and stall decks usually get pumping with the meat of their strategies around the same turn 5-6. In a head to head match up, slowing down the tempo of a duel (stall) is a much weaker strategy than setting the tempo of a duel (control). Stall relies on the ability to slow down the tempo of the duel via halting attacks, and Control limits that ability via heavy removal/bounce, discard and destruction. Stall decks are not for the impatient player because you're playing to overcome your own deck's weakness--having to setup up cover fire before dominating with attacks. Fire/Light stall decks are easy play because Light has the best blockers in the game and Fire has straight forward attackers that power up. The biggest base attack double breaker--Hanusa--one of the most annoying double breakers--Urth--and the double breaker that can reach the most insane attack power--Bolshack--are at your disposal. The game's best cost-to-power blockers are found in the Light civilization. They wouldn't necessarily be the best if they couldn't attack. They are the only blockers that can attack--and they can only attack creatures. If they couldn't attack, running Bloody Squito would always be better than running Senatine Jade Tree (Squito is 4000 for 2). Light also has one insane spell--Holy Awe--that is a defensive players' best friend. At 6 to play you can tap all your opponent's creatures for a free run at their shields with your double breakers. Even better is when this puppy goes off as a shield trigger because it can literally save you when your opponent slams into it and has a massive horde of creatures ready to take you out. It can win you the game when triggered because it leaves your opponent defenseless on your next turn. The other strong stall combo deck is Nature/Light. A Nature/Light stall deck has 1 obvious advantage over a Fire/Light stall, and that is speed in the form of mana acceleration and deck searching. You will be able to get to your double breakers faster and have more spell casting options because of extra mana sooner, especailly if you run Deathblade Beetle and max out on the Nature creatures that offer mana boost. You'll want to add in Natural Snare--Nature's best removal offer and a really annoying card to have played against you--and Dimension Gate to fish out your fatties faster. Nature/Light stall has faster deck deployment, so you have to think quicker in terms of having those next 2-3 turns planned out. You also have to know how to best play low level guys like Poisonous Mushroom, Bronze-Arm Tribe, Mighty Shouter. Not that you have to be a rocket scientist, you just have to accept that you prolly won't have an early game attack presence unless you want to suicide your Shouters to get mana, your opponent's deck is slow and you have an opening to hit low guys, you run & can use Deathblade Beetle, or you choose to use Light's unpowered weenies in your deck (Frei, Iere). Mighty Shouter is almost a trump card. If your opponent is foolish enough to waste a Crimson Hammer on him, smile. You just got mana and got him to waste a removal card. Your earliest double breaker, Deathblade Beetle, is a one-trick pony at 3000 base attack that you have to play wisely. While Nature/Light lets you get to the stall deck win condition much faster, making it accelerated stall, it comes at a price. Nature is weak when it comes to removal. And combo'd with Light, a civilization that has no removal, you are looking at trying to get to the finish line as quickly as possible. Natural Snare is going to be your only spell source of removal. The other is going to be your creatures themselves through attacking. Storm Shell would be viable removal for stalling with Nature if it didn't have such a high cost. I'd rather spend the 7 mana on Hanusa and Roaring Great Horns to get at the win. Another thing to note is the type of stall decks I discuss are not engineered to be deck out decks. They play close to the 40 card gamer's "deck building rule" because you need to be able to get your fatties from your deck soon. There are stallers that benefit from a deck out strategy. Many of them employ 3 civilizations and more than 50 cards. They pack extra removal, bounce and destruction and aim to drag the game on long enough to deck out an opponent or unleash field leveling creatures like Vampire Silphy, Scarlet Skyterror, Aqua Sniper and even minimal guys like Swamp Worm and Storm Shell. Those type of decks are really Control decks because they don't pack in the high amount of blockers that true stall does. Their "duel dragging" is afforded by the effects of their removal, bounce and destruction. They end the match through severely limiting an opponent's actions and not through blocking, tapping and removal. In summary, stall decks are not unplayable. While they carry their own set of limitations and weaknesses, in the hands of the right player they can perform well. By right player I mean a player who is comfortable playing stall. If you like to attack right off the bat, then stall is not the deck type for you. A Stall deck's primary focus is to win late game by carefully timed double breaker attacks. That's the deck's most reliable and sometimes only win condition. Stall decks are defensive decks that rely on blockers & tap spells to ward off attacks, simple creature removal to crush any rush and early game blockers it faces, and knocking down shields with huge attackers who are reinforced by blockers. Stall decks have weaknesses that make them a mixed bag when it comes to running them in tournaments. If your metagame is dominated by control decks, I wouldn't run a stall deck, especially one without a solid early game attack plan. But, if your metagame is dominated by fast attacking and other defensive decks, then stall decks are good to play. In short, stall decks are about building up a castle wall, then catapulting your nastiest attackers over it to smash your opponent's shields. In Part 2 of this article we'll build a stall deck, and in Part 3 we'll discuss strategies on how to play the deck we built in Part 2. Contact info--name: cecillbill; email: kaiserpso@hotmail.com.