[Deck] Affinity Aggro-Combo

[Sarcasmic]

For my n00b post, I'd like to present a deck that I've enjoyed playing recently.  A little prehistory.  I wanted to make a Raffinity deck in type 1, mainly because I acquired some cheap Ravagers.  This deck went through three phases:

- "Type 2 with Sol Ring" - Basically it was just the Type 2 deck powered up.  It played exactly the same with Cranial Platings, Ornithopters, and Shrapnel Blasts.  Boring

- Next, I thought I could make something like GAT or Hulk Smash, as I thought that Ravager could work like Quirion Dryad.  This had promise, but didn't work as well as GAT/Hulk simply because those decks get to do powerful stuff with the cards that add counters to their main creature.  With Dryad, you can burn through your deck with draw/tutors/counters, and at the end of the day you have a big creature.  With Ravager, you have to cast a lot of artifacts that don't do anything except get sacced.  So this was abandoned for:

- Combo.  With other incarnations of this deck, I found that I could win without attacking at all - just by saccing to a Ravager with a Disciple in play.  This lead me to a Combo-ish approach to the deck using Draw 7's to refill my hand with cheap artifacts.  After a while, sac them all to the Ravager and use Disciple damage for the win.  If the combo doesn't succeed, I've still got a good sized army of Enforcers, Frogs, and Ravagers for beatdown.

So, with that in mind, here's the list

Combo:
4x Arcbound Ravager
4x Disciple of the Vault

Draw:
1x Ancestral Recall
4x Thoughtcast
1x Timetwister
3x Diminishing Returns
1x Wheel of Fortune
1x Windfall
1x Memory Jar

Tutor:
1x Demonic Tutor
1x Vampiric Tutor

Creatures:
4x Myr Enforcer
4x Frogmite
4x Shield Sphere

Mana:
1x Sol Ring
1x Mana Vault
1x Mana Crypt
5x Moxen
1x Lotus
1x Tolarian Academy
3x Glimmervoid
2x Ancient Tomb
4x Vault of Whispers
4x Great Furnace
4x Seat of the Synod


I don't think there's any outlandish card choices to explain (except maybe shield sphere - it just costs zero.  It could, and probably should, be Ornithopters).  The basic idea of the deck is above: drop a lot of artifacts, refill hand, repeat until Disciples and a Ravager hit the board, sac to win.  If there's not enough Disciple damage, swing with the artifact army just built.

The decks weakness is, of course, Null Rod.  The only thing I can think of doing to stop it is add disruption to the deck (Annul, Duress, FoW) but that may slow down the combo side.  It's always an option, maybe one that can fill a sideboard?

Speaking of which, I suck at building sideboards.  I blame my meta, because it consists of me and one other guy (stupid SoCal... how can there not be many Vintage players in the entire region?).  So that's probably #1 on the To Do List for this deck.  I can afford to lose a few Ravagers from the deck (One is all you need for the combo) so maybe I could even MD some disruption.

Anyways, enough of my newbie babble.  Your comments?

[NastyNate]

Ravager Affinity/Combo does indeed have potential. However the build you propose has glaring weaknesses. Not only is the deck hosed by null rod and trinisphere, but by adding draw sevens you will increase the chances of running face first into force of will.

The only way for the deck to be viable is to have MD solutions, like oxidize or seal of cleansing, and to have a strong draw engine that does not refill your opponent's hand. If there were a way to add your own FoWs to the deck, without slowing down the kill it would be nice too.

Alas I have yet to find an obvious solution to these speedbumbs. The deck needs play like an aggro/combo hybrid. So that it can overwelm control with a steady draw engine and stream of threats. It also needs to out-race other aggro decks (the easy part) and more importantly either out-race or out-disrupt the gameplan of dedicated combo.  

While tinkering around with this idea for quite some time, I've come to a rather simple conclusion. By adding the cards you need to beat null rod based decks, you slow down the good match-ups against other aggro decks, and control decks; furthermore by adding the elements needed to disrupt combo, you slow down the deck even more. You end up with a deck that has a slower clock than it's block constructed counterpart, even with full access to the P9 and busted bombs like Yawg-Will.

I have a personal build that has an average turn four gold-fish, with MD anti-hate, and a pretty good side board. I have however not playtested it as extensively as I should have, but it does well vs. Fish, Workshop Aggro and 4C Control, owns Dragon,  and almost auto loses against storm combo.

Ravager Affinity needs to be consistent, not uber-broken. It's nice to be able to "combo out," once in a while, but not at the expense of "stalling out," the very next match. If you would like to compere notes PM me.

[rvs]

The only way for the deck to be viable is to have MD solutions, like oxidize or seal of cleansing, and to have a strong draw engine that does not refill your opponent's hand. If there were a way to add your own FoWs to the deck, without slowing down the kill it would be nice too.

BS. You have 4/4's that are pretty easy to drop. Any deck that plays Null Rod dies to 4/4's.

@topicstarter: I don't think you are going about this the right way. The reason affinity is so strong in other formats is because it can play the aggro deck, AND combo out on someone. If you are looking to abuse Draw-7, play DeathLong/TPS/Belcher, since those decks have much more broken combos, and are thus inherently better at combo-ing out.
NastyNate makes a good point that if Affinity wants to have success in T1, it needs to be consistent.

[Sarcasmic]

Thanks for the comments, you make some good points.  You're right that if I want to rely on the Draw 7's (and Storm perhaps) that it would be better to just play Draw7 or TPS.  So the Draw 7's are gone, but what should take its place?

If I add disruption, then that slows the entire deck down or makes it strictly inferiour to GAT/Hulk.  The only other option is to add traditional Raffinity stuff, but then I'm back to the "Type 2 with sol ring" scenario.  I'm not saying that that's bad for the deck, but personally  I'd rather play something that's quite a bit different than T2 Raffinity.  Maybe that's just not an option though.

[NastyNate]

@Morefling, Null Rod is not a problem? I see a wopping total of six mana sources that provide any mana at all once the rod hits. I know that this will not stop you from dropping frogmites or enforcers into play, but most decks packing null rod also have wastelands, strip mine, FoW, and a few other conditional counters like daze, spiketail hatchling, and even circular logic or mana leak. Not to mention that their draw engine should still be going strong, while your own will be dead. Therefore how will one hope to resolve those devestating 4/4s. Post Board they'll bring in energy flux and/or some sort of artifact destruction like Rack and Ruin or Artifact Mutation. I seem to think that represents a HUGE problem.

The mana base cannot include artifact lands, with the possible exception of darksteel citadel. Or else you are doomed to lose every match against decks with puny creatures and standstills. These decks will continue to see play untill either moxen cost less (lol) or people stop making decks that automatically put fish into the winners brackets. Effective budget decks cannot be dismissed so lightly.

A mana base including some combination of city of brass, glimmervoid, blinkmoth nexus, darksteel citadel (strong maybe), and Tolarian Academy might be a good start. At least half of the mana in the deck should be Rod-proof, or you will be in trouble.

Myr Enforcer is not the answer to null rod, and I stand by this belief.

[kirdape3]

Myr Enforcer costs 0 when you have 7 artifacts in play.  At worst, unless their hand was good/yours was terrible, you sacrifice to make the Ravager a 5/5 or 6/6 and then wreck them with it in response to the Null Rod.

[NastyNate]

I think I'm being misread here. Say for example you have a couple frogmites, a couple of moxen, a couple of artifact lands, and a sol ring,  in play. Your opponent has a null rod, Mishra's Factory, volcanic island, spiketail hatchling, grim lavamancer enchanted with curiosity, and standstill on his/her side of the board. How do propose to cast that enforcer for zero, when they sac the standstill, drawing three cards, and then draw into daze, or force, or even just sac the spiketail?

I completely understand that the ravager can get large in response to a null rod that is still on the stack, and I understand that fish doesn't have big enough men to single-handedly take down anything 4/4 or bigger, but you have to resolve them without any mana, or any card draw. They will have board superiority, card advantage (both virtual and physical), tempo advantage, and can use more than one creature to chump, and burn out the big guys, if you do resolve one. This is all assuming we are playing a pre-sideboard match. Post board they have the removal spells to kill them in Rack and Ruin, and Flux.

You need to have dumped your entire hand on turn one or two, with a ravager, and a non-artifact mana source that is preferably a basic land and thus invulnerable to wasteland, in order to reliably win every game. I'm not saying that the match-up is unwinnable, just highly unfavorable. Fish will show up in numbers, because it is inexpensive; you will have to play against it, and you will lose most of the time. If you have a turn two 5/5 attacking ravager, yes you will most likely win, but how often does that happen against fish? Wouldn't it just be better to resolve a turn one seal of cleansing against them, and go about your business the following turn? Seal is not dead in the current gauntlet either, it's good vs. any workshop deck, Dragon, Crucible of Worlds, even worse case scenario, it still kills a mox.

There is a reason why Crushing Chamber evolved away from ravager to crusher and genesis chamber. Null Rod and U/R Fish in particular are that reason. I just happen to think that a multi-colored ravager deck can dump it's hand just as fast, with better SB options for the rest of the field, like ground seal, elemental blasts, artifact mutation, hell even sacred ground or creature removal would be nice. It's that pesky budget player standing in the way, that you will have to get past in every tournament, that keeps Ravager Affinity-Combo, or whatever you want to call it, from being played. No one diputes that ravager and skullclamp aren't powerful cards; so why then do they not see any success in tournament play? If null rod is not the reason, then I have no idea why. Let me in on the secret please.

[theorigamist]

Say for example you have a couple frogmites, a couple of moxen, a couple of artifact lands, and a sol ring, in play. Your opponent has a null rod, Mishra's Factory, volcanic island, spiketail hatchling, grim lavamancer enchanted with curiosity, and standstill on his/her side of the board.

Okay, so obviously you're playing against Fish here.  In that case, you shouldn't be in that situation.  You should've sacced the moxen and the artifact lands and sol ring in response to Null Rod to make the Ravager huge, then just ride a large creature to victory.  Fish can't deal with big creatures.

[NastyNate]

Ravager and Enforcer are the two cards in the deck that fish really needs to worry about. They might counter it...alas if you look at the quote you took, there was no ravager in play in the example. Even in my silly little example the fish player knew he had to FoW or Daze it. I'm through defending this. Go tell JP that you broke Ravager Affinity and it now wrecks U/R fish.

[theorigamist]

How ironic that you had just said you were being misread, and then I misread you.

However, for every situation you can set up like you did in your previous post in which Fish is clearly beating affinity, I could also suggest a situation in which affinity is winning.  The fact that Fish would win the game given Grim Lavamancer with Curiosity, Null Rod and Standstill on the table means very little.  I have not done much testing with Type 1 affinity, against Fish or anything else.  So I won't comment on its matchup with Fish.  I'll only say that creating hypothetical situations like that is a poor way to argue your case.

[NastyNate]

Well said Origamist; I can respect that opinion. I however have playtested Ravager Affinity, though admittedly not much recently, and cannot fathom why people feel that a deck based on artifact activated abilities, can expect to fight through Null Rod time and time again. There is a huge thread in the open forum called "Crushing Chamber." Many of the opinions I've expressed here, have been analyzed and confirmed by others in that thread. In fact Crushing Chamber exists only because it had a better game against U/R Fish, than Ravager Affinity did.

On a Side Note, I cannot believe how frustrated I've gotten trying to explain this. I appoligize if I came off a little rude.

Nate

[the boogie man]

I know that this is a really late response, but has anyone tried to run sphere of resistance in this deck? that would allow you to play your affinity stuff for the same amount, and everything else would cost more.

And as for the auto scoop in the combo match, goilla shaman (1) maindecked and three pyrostatic pillars from the side would help some, maybe even a chalice of the void?

As for the lands, I run
1x tolarian academy
2x darksteel citadel
4x city of brass
2x glimmervoid
4x mishras workshop
1x strip mine

[NastyNate]

I've indeed seen sphere of resistance used to good effect in a deck similar to this. Sphere slows down combo decks tremendously, often enabling you to win before they can go off. However you have to build a mana-base and deck, that supports the inclusion sphere. It becomes key to run quite a few lands that tap for more than one mana, and at least the 8 SoLoMoxenCrypt for accelleration. It is also good to have more affinity cards in a deck with sphere, like 4 Enforcer, 4 Frogmite, and 4 Thoughtcast. These cards costs are lowered by the spheres as well, effectively playing as though they are not even in play.

Sphere works best however in decks with fewer colored requirements. It
Hardly effects you when dropping a big dude (like juggernaut) every turn off the 6 mana you already have in play; When it stinks is when you've got a disciple, and a ravager, and a shrapnel blast in hand with that same amount of mana; then it slows you down almost as much as the combo player. Sphere punishes people for efficiency, and low casting cost spells. In order to offset it you can't play into it's game.  The best builds for abusing the sphere run a mono-brown mana base, and cards that help circumvent the sphere, ancient tomb, metalworker, and the above mentioned affinity cards for example.

In this build however, where the goal is to "combo-out," with disciple and ravager, as the original post implies, sphere would be terrible.

Nate