Affinity Re-Re-Re-Revisited

[Ben Kossman]

The purpose of this post isn't to discuss a traditional affinity build. What I'm proposing is to take affinitiy's strongest
attribute, namely speed and take full advantage of it. The best way to do this is clearly to remove the colored cards.
Here's what I've been testing over the past couple of months...

Artifacts:46
4 Myr Enforcer
4 Frogmite
4 Arcbound Ravager
4 Myr Retreiver
4 Arcbound Worker
4 Sword of Fire and Ice (so good...)
4 Cranial Plating
4 Skullclamp
4 Genesis Chamber
1 Memory jar
1 Grim Monolith
1 Black Lotus
5 Moxen
1 Mana Vault
1 Sol Ring

Land:14
1 Tolarian Academy
1 Strip Mine
4 Mishra's Workshop
4 Ancient Tomb
4 City of Traitors

This deck is straight aggro. Anything that slows it down is in my opinion unnecessary. Skullclamp gives it the draw
engine that beatdown has lacked since the days of Necro. Sword is the most recent addition to the deck and
isn't really as slow as it looks at first glance. I'm pretty happy with it but game two is going to be a nightmare
versus any competent player. This is the area that really needs to be worked on. As long as you can take the
draw this deck kills turn 3 around 60-70% of the time undisrupted. Please criticize it, it can be really great if  I
get some good feedback. I'll post my ideas for sideboard cards next...

[Pizzatog]

One card makes this deck extremely more reliable and powerful:

Arcbound crusher.
 (I'd probably remove some of the ravagers for it).

Id also include ornithopter, for the evasion.

4 swords is too much, and I think you could remove them altogether.

Id use blinkmoth nexus or factories, and I would try to include the crucible strip engine, since your deck needs no coloured mana.

[LizardCZ]

Where is the mana crypt!?!

There is a card that I have been trying since months ago in my Raffinity builds wich have a lot of sinergy with the modular ability. Triskelion is a machine gun in combination with Ravager (apparently Jesse River have used it in his affinity build that have made top8 in SCG).

Triskelion works like a Disciple of the Vault that doesn't die to Lava Dart or Fire/Ice and that can be recovered with Myr Retriever. The list that I built used Helm of Awakening in order to reduce costs and make an infinite recursion with Myr Retriever. If you add Genesis Chamber, then you have a huge amount of tokens to sacrifice with ravager and then ping with Triskelion.

Speaking of your build, I think it's fast, but don't have any kind of disruption aside SoFI. Tangle Wire is a great card in this deck because you use a lot of equipment, and Chalice of the Void could work also.

[Klep]

As long as you can take the draw this deck kills turn 3 around 60-70% of the time undisrupted.

If this is its speed undisrupted, this isn't fast enough.  Straight aggro in Type 1 needs to almost be combo in order to actually win.  You should probably abandon this route and work more disruption in, like the guy who Top 8-ed SCG yesterday.  He includes a full suite of strips, Tangle Wires, and Sphere of Resistance in addition to a few trikes, all of which combine to seriously disrupt his opponent and give him time to beat down.  His deck also contains Metalworker, which provides an insane boost of mana if you can untap with him on the table.  I strongly suggest you take a good look at his deck.

http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/event/9446.html

[That0neguy]

You definitely need to work in disruption.  Think of it this way meandeck tendrils can kill turn 1 60-70% of the time undisrupted but still isn't good enough.  Also undisrupted control slaver could power out a mindslaver by turn 3 which will most likely just wreck you.

BTW did anyone else realize that Jesse Rivers' "affinity deck" doesn't actually have any affinity creatures?

[JesseRiver]

The key to my deck is the speed combined with disruption.  Modular is the ability we should be focusing on, not affinity.  I think your deck really needs disruption, you can't even beat slow combo.  I have been playing this deck for about a year now and It has gone through many revisions, but this list is almost the same as the first.  Welder is also a huge problem, unless you put on a lot of pressure early.

I was very tired in the top 8, that's why I screwed up game 3 vs Jeff.  I could have pumped my servitor and started beating, but I gave him outs.  That was a huge mistake.  Yeah, Triskelion is quite absurd, he is the reason the deck can get 3rd turn kills.  The one crucible in the board was awful.  I would like something else to help with combo, besides chalice, as chalice also hurts this deck on 1 or 2. 

Thanks for the props guys!  This deck has been very successful in Minnesota and I hope some of you take the time to test/play with it.

Jesse

[Luiggi]

JesseRiver: congrats on your top-8! At the risk of having this thread move away from the initially posted decklist, can you comment a little bit about what your SB strategies were against the major archtypes? I haven't been able to read the top-8 coverage yet (I'm saving that for work tomorrow!), but I look forward to hearing any insights you might have, since it's not a typical Affinity build.

[JesseRiver]

Thanks for the congrats!

This is how I sideboard in the major matchups.

Vs Control Slaver +4 phyrexian furnace, -4 tangle wire

Vs Dragon +4 phyrexian furnace, --3 sword of fire and ice, -1 tangle wire

Vs TPS +4 chalice if the void, -3 sword of fire and ice, -1 tangle wire

Vs 5/3 7/10 workshop aggro +3 razormane masticore, +4 phyrexian furnace, -4 tangle wire, -3 sphere of resistance

Vs Stax +1 crucible, +4 phyrexian furnace(if welders), -4 tangle wire, -1 sphere of resistance

Vs Fast combo +4 chalice of the void, -4 tangle wire

Vs Aggro +3 Razormane masticore, -3 ?

Vs Landstill +3 phyrexian furnace, +1 crucible of worlds, -4 tangle wire

Vs Oath +3 Eon Hub, +4 chalice, -3 sword of fire and ice, -4 tangle wire

Tell me if I'm missing anything.

[Luiggi]

How'd the Eon Hubs work for you at the tournament? My main concern is whether it can come down fast enough vs. Oath for it to make a difference, and what sort of outs we have vs. Oath if it shows up too late...

Just so people know the decklist and SB being discussed, here's the list from StarCity:

4 Arcbound Ravager
4 Metalworker
4 Myr Retriever
4 Myr Servitor
3 Triskelion

1 Black Lotus
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mana Vault
1 Memory Jar
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Sol Ring
4 Skullclamp
4 Sphere Of Resistance
3 Sword Of Fire And Ice
4 Tangle Wire

4 Ancient Tomb
2 City Of Traitors
4 Mishra's Workshop
1 Strip Mine
4 Wasteland
1 Tolarian Academy

SB:
4 Chalice Of The Void
1 Crucible Of Worlds
3 Eon Hub
4 Phyrexian Furnace
3 Razormane Masticore

If you feel like writing a mini-report of what you faced in Chicago, I'm sure it would give us all some interesting insights into how your matchups are. Mods: if this kind of thing belongs in the Tournament Report forum, I apologize.

Luiggi

[JesseRiver]

Hub is also very effective against energy flux.  5cc is usually not a big problem for this deck, especially with Metalworker.

This is a very short report, I will be writing a longer report in a few days.

Round 1 Vs Eddie with 3 color control

Game one I get a quick metalworker, which allows me to clamp through a bunch of 1/1S and drop a ravager.  3 tangle wires later, Eddie scoops.
Game two I get out a quick metalworker, which is promptly disenchanted.  I try for another, in response to being equipped to a sword the metalworker is fried with a swords to plowshares.  Eddie gets down a damping matrix, which shuts down most of my deck.  We play draw-go for 3 or 4 turns, Eddie cycles decree for 4 guys and attacks for the win 5 turns later.  Onto game 3.  Eddie mulligans to 6 and reluctantly keeps his hand.  I start out slow, wasting his lands and gradually dropping threats.  He is stuck on 1 land for 4 turns, I eventually unload my hand with metalworker and Eddie scoops after seeing what I was about to play.

Sideboarding +3 furnace, -3 sword

Round 2 Vs Joel with 7/10

Game one I die to ancient tombs and a triskelion.  My only lands were the tombs.  Game 2 I get a ridiculous draw involving double sphere and a metalworker, oh yeah and 2 triskelion.  Game 3 Joel gets an early triske, backed up by a welder.  I get beaten down by a triske while my threats are welded into junk.

Sideboarding +3 Razormane, +4 Furnace, -3 sword, -4 wire

Round 3 Vs Jamison playing U/b/r tog

My deck does what it is supposed to:  draw a lot of cards and drop a metalworker.  Jamison gets locked under multiple wires, a sphere and 2 wasteland.  Game 2 I once again get 2 tangle wire and 2 wasteland, eventually small creatures beatdown for the win.  This match description is a little short because I was basically goldfishing with his board locked down.

Sideboarding no adjustments (I didn't know he was playing Tog until game 2)

Round 4 Vs Sam with Salvager combo featuring Death Wish

Sam starts the game off by dropping some quick mana and then playing a Deep analysis.  I play 2 spheres on my turn, one of which was forced.  He procedes to draw nothing as I beat him down with Ravager and an army of 1/1's.  All the while his Mana Crypt and his Mana Vault eat away at his life, eventually sealing his fate.  Game 2 he gets an awful draw and my 5/5 Ravager goes all the way.

Sideboarding +4 furnace, +4 chalice, -4 tangle wire, -3 sword, -1 Triske

Round 5 Vs Mark with Oath

Game 1 he gets a 1st turn oath, but I have the clamp for his token.  I try and get to a combo win, but I cease to draw land and he oaths up Akroma and smashes some face.  Game 2 I get 2 Eon hubs on turn 3, eventually I win with metalworker beatdown.  Game 3 mark can't draw a green mana source after my 3 strip effects.  He succumbs to the ravager triske combo.

Sideboarding +3 Eon Hub, +4 chalice, -4 tangle wire, -3 sword

Round 6 Vs Jesse with Goblins

I get a ravager equipped with sword swinging on turn 2 both games.  He is locked under tangle wire and I quickly win.

Sideboarding +3 razormane, -3 Sphere (this was probably wrong)

Round 7 Vs Lou with control slaver

My deck explodes both games with a turn one metalworker, and a full grip turn 2.  Lou was stalled on lands game two, his only out was for me to walk into a drain, I came close because I waited to waste his second blue until after I activated worker. 

Round 8 Vs Bryan with 7/10

I can't draw this round because my tiebreakers weren't very good.  Luke Ojala, a member of my team informed me that he had just drawn into the top 8.  Now I had to be another person from Minnesota to Top 8.  Bryan wins a long game one after getting triske and welder.  The board becomes stalled out game 2.  I manage to get 3 servitors and a clamp, but Bryan is playing threats left and right, tinker for memnarch, duplicant and a key rack and ruin made life hard.  I untapped with my last turn to live.  Bryan was at 7 and I was at 12.  I clamped 3 servitors, I needed to find a triske.  He shows up and I play triske ravager.  Instead of killing Bryan I decide to kill memnarch for some reason.  Bryan simply attacks with Razormane and passes the turn.  I stop acting like an idiot, play retriever, clamp him, bring back ravager and shoot Bryan for 8 points of damage.  Game 3 my draw is absurd.  I play a 1st turn metalworker off workshop, Bryan forces it, I drop Mana Crypt and Mox Pearl, this allows me to cast another Metalworker.  Bryan misses his land drop and passes.  I draw and unload my hand, including clamp, retriever and 2 triske.  Brian gets the lotus he needs and cast rack and ruin on one of my triskes and a clamp.  I untap and see my play I play a retriever, attack, shoot the retriever and replay the triske I grabbed.  Bryan attempts a duplicant triske shots him once and the duplicant once.  I untap and put him on a 2 turn clock.  Bryan doesn't find the answer and the game is over.  Those were the closest games I had all day.

Sideboarding +4 furnace, +3 razormane, -4 wire, -3 sword

Top 8 Vs Jeff Anand with Control slaver

I win game one with 5 creatures beating down, Jeff was locked under a sphere.  I believe he had fat creatures in his hand he couldn't cast.  An early tinker and a key rack and ruin wreck my chances at game 2.  Game 3 I get Jeff down to 13 when he gets off a slaver I sacrifice my ravager.  My board is clamp servitor, sphere and 3 moxes, Jeff clamps the servitor and draws the one retriever left in the deck, he gets clamped and ravager decides to eat my board and then sac himself.  Jeff drops a Pentavous and I concede.

[Luiggi]

Nice mini-report. I look forward to the full one whenever you have time to write it, .

I playtested the deck a bit on Apprentice and it's certainly very explosive. I'll do some more testing and see if it's something I can bring to a local Vintage tournament.

How's your game vs. decks like Fish? It seems like it should be pretty good, because of the explosiveness it had. What about Birdshit?

Luiggi

[JesseRiver]

Well, I haven't been able to test against Fish as much as I would like to.  The match up seems favorable unless they get a very early Null Rod.  After SB razormane eats them alive.  Some of my teammates tested the Bird***t  match up and it seemed 50/50.  The main reason the results changed so much was because it has swords and larger creatures.


Jesse

[rvs]

@Jesse: Nice work with the deck, and congrats on doing well. I'm definately going to try out your list.
Did you ever wish the Sword was something like a Cranial Plating?

@Original Poster:

4 Sword of Fire and Ice (so good...)
4 Cranial Plating
4 Skullclamp

Seems like an awful lot of useless cards ^^

[Luiggi]

The question, I guess, is whether the extra aggression of Cranial Plating is better that the protection and versatility that Sword of Fire and Ice gives us, and for a format like Vintage I'm tempted to say no. The deck already has a very easy way of doing a TON of damage (Ravager + Trike), and being able to kill Welders and other annoying critters with the Sword (and drawing extra cards to boot!) is just so nice to have.

Another question to ask is whether Cranial Plating will help our bad matchups more than Sword of Fire and Ice (either by allowing us a faster goldfish or otherwise), and I'll have to defer to Jesse on that one, since he piloted the deck and knows the matchups a lot better than I do, .

Luiggi

[rvs]

Well, I'm not saying Cranial Plating is better, but it might indeed allow a faster goldfish. Jesse also mentioned he wasn't too fond of the Swords in the maindeck in the SCG coverage of the event.

[Luiggi]

It's definitely true that it would allow a faster goldfish... Maybe a combination of the two would work? Say 2 Swords and 2-3 Platings? This would require cutting a few of the other cards in the maindeck, though, to make some room. Any thoughts Jesse?

Luiggi

[JesseRiver]

Well, sword is very nice because it fills your hand with more threats against control, as well as doing a lot of damage.  Cranial plating is very aggressive, but it doesn't help control welders, which is the main reason for sword.  I'm not sure if I would take it out of the deck, but it was underperforming the most for me.  Plating also doesn't make our creatures resilient to removal.  I did play a version of the deck once with arcbound crusher and plating, however, it lost to control because of it's vulnerability to removal.  Sword is very slow for the Type 1 format, and I think it might have to be cut just for that reason.

This deck has a very hard time with combo, plating would certainly help in that area.  But is it strong enough to warrent maindeck use?

Thanks for the comments!

Jesse

[Luiggi]

Regarding your matchup vs. Welder decks: how did the deck perform while not have an equipped Sword? If the deck worked well without it anyway then I imagine it can be replaced, but not if the opposite is true. I wouldn't cut it, I don't think, since it's just so good. With the explosiveness of this deck it's really not had to be swinging with en equipped Ravager on turn 2 and eat a large chunk of their life-total...

Moving Chalice to the maindeck is an option if we decide to cut Swords, if your combo matchup is so bad. Then again you have so many things at 0, 1, 2 and 3cc that I can't say it would end up helping us more than it would hurt us. I could be mistaken, however, due to lack of experience with the deck. Are there any other combo hosers that we could maindeck that wouldn't hurt us as much?

Luiggi

[JesseRiver]

Actually, I only got sword three times in the entire tournament.  Trike was the better way to kill welder.  Chalice actually really hurts this deck, like you said.  Our only really strong option against combo is Sphere of Resistance, and it is already maindeck.  Some people have said that Orb of Dreams is very solid against combo, i have yet to test it. 

I actually built a version of this deck based on using chalice to maximum efficiency

It looked something like monobrown stacker.

Jesse

[Ben Kossman]

Thanks for the info Jesse. Your sideboard seems solid to me as you played a fairly broad array of decks.
Does any one of them stand out as particularly brutal? I'm thinking that Genesis Chamber would be amazing
versus Stax and I concur that the first card to go should be the Swords despite their awesomeness. Sphere
of Resistance is also incredible versus TPS and stuff like that. I just enjoy having speed game one so my build
tries to play more like Stompy than Stacker. Obviously your version is superior though so I won't argue or anything.

[JesseRiver]

Actually the swords were chambers up until the the night before, when we changed them to swords.  Chamber is very good against control and stax, but it is lacking against aggro, where one sword can single handedly win you the game.

[Ben Kossman]

I just thought I would add the thought that winning versus Oath because they can't draw the COLORED mana they
NEED is a pretty strong argument for playing this deck as opposed to traditonal colored aggro. Also, the jitte from Betrayers
seems more effient than SOF&I. What do ya'll think ?

[JesseRiver]

Jitte doesn't draw cards.

[Khahan]

I just thought I would add the thought that winning versus Oath because they can't draw the COLORED mana they
NEED is a pretty strong argument for playing this deck as opposed to traditonal colored aggro. Also, the jitte from Betrayers
seems more effient than SOF&I. What do ya'll think ?

How is Oath not being able to draw the mana they need an argument for this deck?
Wouldn't that be more of an argument against Oath?
If you're referring to strip/waste/crucible, then that is more of an argument for those cards than this particular deck.

[Ben Kossman]

You don't get mana screwed with a colorless deck unless you play overpriced cards. The problem with traditional aggro is
the inherent limitations of the color wheel and the reliance on basic land which always a dead draw late game. I didn't
elaborate very well. Beating control due to mana screw is one of the advantages of playing traditional aggro. This
archetype takes it to a new extreme which is essential in such a quick format. And the Jitte is slow but you can kill multiple welders at instant speed so I'm going to test it.

[Ben Kossman]

So it seems the best route to take involves removing Plating,  Sword, and Chamber for disruption. What do ya'll think of MDing Furnace? It seems like an ideal card since it cantrips and is top notch versus Dragon, Welder based stuff and even Reanimator. Also Tangle Wire is  pretty one sided  in this deck and can be recurred with Retreiver. Here's my latest build...

Creatures:20
4 Triskelion
4 Arcbouind Ravager
4 Myr Retreiver
4 Arcbound Worker
4 Myr Servitor

Disruption:15
3 Tangle Wire
4 Sphere of Resistance
3 Phyrexian Furnace
4 Wasteland
1 Strip Mine

Brokenness:3
3 Skullclamp

Mana Base:22
4 Aether Vial
5 Moxen
1 Lotus
1 Sol Ring
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mana Vault
1 Tolarian Academy
4 Mishra's Workshop
4 Ancient Tomb

Sideboard
4 Genesis Chamber (vs. Stax, Keeper)
4 Cranial Plating (vs. Control)
3 Sword of Fire & Ice
4 Metagame Slots

I'm not really sold on Metalworker as the turn you spend casting it and waiting for it to become active could be used in
more productive fashion. Anyway thanks again for the top notch feedback. I think this archetype is going to be around for awhile and will only get better with testing.

[Ben Kossman]

Sideboard

+4 Pithing Needle

I was considering Jester's Cap but this is just so much better. Possibly good enough to replace furnace MD.