Stax

Always-on prison permanents that strangle the core resources of mana and board presence, typically by skipping or limiting untap steps or by forcing repeated sacrifice. Winter Orb and Static Orb cap how many permanents untap each turn; Stasis skips untap steps entirely; Smokestack grinds every player's board down through compounding sacrifice; Tangle Wire taxes untapped permanents turn after turn. Distinct from control.tax_effect, which inflates spell costs rather than denying untaps, and from control.rule_of_law, which caps spells per turn; stax is the symmetric resource-choke layer. Also distinct from control.creature_hoser like power-based lockdowns, which target creatures by stat rather than throttling mana and untap economies.