Stasis: MTG Card of the Day #2

Welcome to MTG Card of the Day, where I show off one rad-as-heck Magic: the Gathering card, explain what I think makes it so cool, and share some interesting facts. You don’t need to know anything about Magic! Just have an appreciation for cool fantasy art, nerd history, and potentially broken game mechanics.

Stasis

I'm gonna go ahead and say least fun card ever… - Lifegainwithbite

Magic the Gathering turns into a game of "Who can put up with sitting here doing nothing the longest?" - Gameguy602

My favorite old school Magic cards come in two flavors: the completely ridiculous (looking at you, Chaos Orb), and cards that are dead-simple, but insanely powerful. Cards capable of completely changing how the game is played with just a couple words. 

“You play the rest of this match on the ceiling somehow. Good luck.”

Stasis, obviously, falls into this latter category. It’s so effect is so simple to explain, yet so thoroughly changes such a core fundamental of the game, that everyone’s reaction the first time they see it is to say “How the f…?”

Briefly for the unaware - when you “use” a card in magic - attacking with a creature, getting mana, activating a card’s ability - you typically tap it by turning it sideways. The card can’t be used again until you untap it, at the start of your next turn. Then they’re all fresh and ready to be used again.

But Stasis doesn’t allow anyone to untap anything at the start of their turn. So… the game basically grinds to a halt. Any time you use any card it just sits there and stays tapped. It’s wild. 

It was seemingly meant as a basic Blue card to stall or slow down the game. But players eventually figured out how to untap their own cards through other means, or figured out how to keep Stasis in play in their opponent’s turn but then return it to their hand before their own turn started. So your opponent was always under the effect of Stasis, never able to use any of their own cards, but you could carry on and play normally.

Pretty brutal.

Stasis is still actually legal in all play formats that allow players to use old cards like this, including Commander. Mostly because there are so many options for removing or destroying annoying enchantments like this. But if a friend tries to play a Stasis deck against you in casual play, I think you should tie their shoe laces together when they aren’t looking.

Have a hard you want to see appear in MTG Card of the Day? Leave a comment and lemme know!