A repeatable generator like Twilight Drover would work great with this. You opponent would have to sacrifice wayyy more permanents than they could generate.
FreakyM
★★★★☆ (4.0/5.0)(9 votes)
A great card. Forcing horrible choices upon your opponent turn after turn is good enough in itself, but once you combine this with the other cards traditionally played with the Stack - mana acceleration, tangle wires, and Trinispheres and Spheres of Resistance, those horrible choices are no longer horrible : they are pure despair.
An elegant card, which requires skill to utilize, and rewards it greatly.
Love this in the Land.dec, play the Stax and use exploration or mana bond to get a lot of lands out. Replay them with either Crucible of Worlds or Life from the Loam. Before you get the stax out, you can stall the game with wastelands, maze of iths, rishadan ports, and maybe trinisphere or other game slowers.
Stuntman
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.0/5.0)
I use it with enchantments like Rancor which I can play again after sacrificing. Also, you can choose to sacrifice permanents first before putting another soot counter on. On your first upkeep, you sacrifice nothing then put the soot counter on. On your opponent's upkeep, he has to sacrifice the first permanent.
I don't want to take a turn when this critter's on the table. Go ahead man, take three for me.
Ragamander
★★★★★ (5.0/5.0)(1 vote)
@ BegleOne
You should add Sundial of the Infinite to the list, with the added bonus of being able to put a soot counter on it during your turn without letting the sacrifice trigger resolve. And if you don't have a Smokestack, you can always drop a Phyrexian Dreadnought third turn.
Once your opponent has no permanents and after you've dropped an Eater of Days or two, you could Hex Parasite the Stack down to one counter during your upkeep and then sack it to itself. Or Shrapnel Blast; that's pretty good too.
For a much more awkward (but therefore equally more awesome) combo: combine the Stack with Teferi's Curse, March of the Machines, and Time and Tide on an Isochron Scepter/Panoptic Mirror/whatever will let you cast it on each of your turns. Just keep phasing the Stack in on your turn, so that it'll phase out before it triggers at the beginning of your next upkeep. Of course, this combo works for anything that is or can be made into a creature that has an effect (hopefully massive) on the active player each turn. If the effect is bad (e.g. Smokestack, Bottomless Pit, Mana Vortex), phase it in on your turn after its effect would trigger; if the effect is good (e.g. Font of Mythos, Shizuko, Caller of Autumn, Wild Evocation), phase it in on your last opponent's turn after its effect would normally trigger.
I really should know this, but I'm doubting myself here. So here goes:
These abilities both trigger during your upkeep. Since you control both, you can choose to stack them any way you want. So, you choose to have the counter-adding ability resolve after the sacc'ing ability. This way, you save yourself one permanent every turn. Am I right?
Bouchart
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.0/5.0)
Note the artwork. The gears on the smokestack are the same as the Urza's Saga set symbol.
raptorman333
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.0/5.0)
Descent into Madness is trying too hard to be this card. The fact that the permanents get exiled may look like it balances the fact that the mana cost went up, plus the color restriction, but it doesn't help that the sacrifice effect happens on only your turn. I miss Urza's block; I'm glad i grew up with that.
Kragash
☆☆☆☆☆ (0.0/5.0)
"Without anything but stack knowledge, you get a: 2 Turns: 1-for-1 3 Turns: 3-for-2 4 Turns: 6-for-3 5 Turns: 10-for-7" - blurrymadness
Close... it's actually: 1 Turn: 0-for-0 (the turn Smokestack was cast... no counters on opponent's turn) 2 Turns: 1-for-0 (sac 0 on your turn for a total of 0, add a counter... opponent sacs 1 for a total of 1) 3 Turns: 3-for-1 (sac 1 on your turn for a total of 1, add a counter... opponent sacs 2 for a total of 3) 4 Turns: 6-for-3 (sac 2 on your turn for a total of 3, add a counter... opponent sacs 3 for a total of 6) 5 Turns: 10-for-7 (sac 3 on your turn for a total of 6, add a counter... opponent sacs 4 for a total of 10)
But as you've mentionned, this is Smokestack without any synergies... Smokestack is usually played with a deck that synergizes with it (lots of permanents, recursion, counter manipulation) making Smokestack absolutely devastating to the opponent. While he's sacrificing creatures or land, you're sacrificing things like Flagstones of Trokair and getting a land back (which you can replay with Crucible of Worlds).
With Power Conduit you can effectively sacrifice 0 or 1 per turn while your opponent sacrifices 1 or 2 per turn.
And like you said, you can sacrifice it to itself to turn it off at anytime when your opponent is down to 0 permanents.
Kargash has corrected my old comment; and I've come back to mention the fun flavor of this card: Pollution! It not only pollutes everyone, but it pollutes them "equally." Further, if you manage your pollution you can live with it; or you can just let it go crazy until everything has been destroyed.
Comments (26)
An elegant card, which requires skill to utilize, and rewards it greatly.
Meditate?
Eater of Days?
Chronatog?
I don't want to take a turn when this critter's on the table. Go ahead man, take three for me.
You should add Sundial of the Infinite to the list, with the added bonus of being able to put a soot counter on it during your turn without letting the sacrifice trigger resolve. And if you don't have a Smokestack, you can always drop a Phyrexian Dreadnought third turn.
Once your opponent has no permanents and after you've dropped an Eater of Days or two, you could Hex Parasite the Stack down to one counter during your upkeep and then sack it to itself. Or Shrapnel Blast; that's pretty good too.
For a much more awkward (but therefore equally more awesome) combo: combine the Stack with Teferi's Curse, March of the Machines, and Time and Tide on an Isochron Scepter/Panoptic Mirror/whatever will let you cast it on each of your turns. Just keep phasing the Stack in on your turn, so that it'll phase out before it triggers at the beginning of your next upkeep. Of course, this combo works for anything that is or can be made into a creature that has an effect (hopefully massive) on the active player each turn. If the effect is bad (e.g. Smokestack, Bottomless Pit, Mana Vortex), phase it in on your turn after its effect would trigger; if the effect is good (e.g. Font of Mythos, Shizuko, Caller of Autumn, Wild Evocation), phase it in on your last opponent's turn after its effect would normally trigger.
Edit:
This deck rapes.
These abilities both trigger during your upkeep. Since you control both, you can choose to stack them any way you want. So, you choose to have the counter-adding ability resolve after the sacc'ing ability. This way, you save yourself one permanent every turn. Am I right?
2 Turns: 1-for-1
3 Turns: 3-for-2
4 Turns: 6-for-3
5 Turns: 10-for-7" - blurrymadness
Close... it's actually:
1 Turn: 0-for-0 (the turn Smokestack was cast... no counters on opponent's turn)
2 Turns: 1-for-0 (sac 0 on your turn for a total of 0, add a counter... opponent sacs 1 for a total of 1)
3 Turns: 3-for-1 (sac 1 on your turn for a total of 1, add a counter... opponent sacs 2 for a total of 3)
4 Turns: 6-for-3 (sac 2 on your turn for a total of 3, add a counter... opponent sacs 3 for a total of 6)
5 Turns: 10-for-7 (sac 3 on your turn for a total of 6, add a counter... opponent sacs 4 for a total of 10)
But as you've mentionned, this is Smokestack without any synergies... Smokestack is usually played with a deck that synergizes with it (lots of permanents, recursion, counter manipulation) making Smokestack absolutely devastating to the opponent. While he's sacrificing creatures or land, you're sacrificing things like Flagstones of Trokair and getting a land back (which you can replay with Crucible of Worlds).
With Power Conduit you can effectively sacrifice 0 or 1 per turn while your opponent sacrifices 1 or 2 per turn.
And like you said, you can sacrifice it to itself to turn it off at anytime when your opponent is down to 0 permanents.
fun
Fun stuff :)