  The compass model on a square lattice provides a natural template for
building subsystem stabilizer codes. The surface code and the Bacon-Shor code
represent two extremes of possible codes depending on how many gauge qubits are
fixed. We explore threshold behavior in this broad class of local codes by
trading locality for asymmetry and gauge degrees of freedom for stabilizer
syndrome information. We analyze these codes with asymmetric and spatially
inhomogeneous Pauli noise in the code capacity and phenomenological models. In
these idealized settings, we observe considerably higher thresholds against
asymmetric noise. At the circuit level, these codes inherit the bare-ancilla
fault-tolerance of the Bacon-Shor code.
