[Deck] Affinity

[Nocioni88]

Im building affinity once again! Some years ago i had a version with Tempered steel, and i had many top8 il local tournament with it. very fast, hyper aggro.


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[Nocioni88]

Maybe with ballista we can brew once again. How it goes with greensplash?


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[mistercakes]

haven't tested any games tonight yet. just been goldfishing. i'm also testing paradoxical outcome with 4 cradles and more memnites.

i still have a strong feeling that the deck is still better with the UB + tezz than with the gearhulk, but will continue to test.

if you're gonna go big you might as well get super greedy. this is the list i will test a bit more.

4 arcbound ravager
4 walking ballista
4 phyrexian revoker
3 verdurous gearhulk
4 disciple of the vault
4 baleful strix

4 mox opal
4 springleaf drum
4 aether vial
4 thoughtcast
2 tezzeret, agent of bolas

4 ancient tomb
4 seat of the synod
4 vault of whispers
3 tree of tales
3 gaea's cradle

sb:
3 ensnaring bridge
3 thorn of amethyst
3 winter orb
2 mandlehorn
2 krosan grip
2 garruk relentless

[Nocioni88]

Do you think vial is good? You have only 11 target with vial on 2. Ballista and gearhulk are impossible to vial out...


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[mistercakes]

I count 15 targets. I would be a bit happier with another good one drop. The old Vial affinity Vial lists ran 16/17 Vial creatures ( other creatures in those lists were frogmite and my enforcer)

Will need to test this a bit more, but Vial is a very powerful card. It's possible I should try the 4th strix over the 4th verdurous to give Vial another target. My other main regret here is not having cranial plating. While it still can be quite brutal on its own, there's quite a bit of removal being played and it's pretty mana intensive.

I do miss the welding jars, as they are quite strong.

For reference the old lists looked like this

1 Glimmervoid
4 Tree of Tales
4 Seat of the Synod
4 Vault of Whispers
3 Great Furnace
4 Blinkmoth Nexus
4 Arcbound Worker
4 Arcbound Ravager
4 Frogmite
4 Myr Enforcer
4 Disciple of the Vault
3 Atog
2 Myr Retriever
3 Cranial Plating
4 Thoughtcast
4 Chromatic Sphere
4 Aether Vial

[mistercakes]

after some more testing i'm not really ready for the green.

current list:


4 walking ballista
4 arcbound ravager
4 disciple of the vault
4 phyrexian revoker
4 baleful strix

4 thoughtcast
4 mox opal
4 springleaf drum
4 aether vial
4 galvanic blast
2 tezzeret, agent of bolas

4 seat of the synod
4 great furnace
4 vault of whispers
4 ancient tomb
1 darksteel citadel
1 academy ruins

sb:

4 thorn of amethyst
3 winter orb
3 ensnaring bridge
3 blood moon
2 pyroblast


the blasts are probably worth running since it can close out a game quicker and also deal with turn 1 DRS and delver.


I also wanted a non green way to stop chalice, but also have some game vs death and taxes. I took 2 copies of dack Fayden. Sure, you have to steal and then sac to ravager, but isn't that satisfying?


in a league

r1 spiral tide:
game 1 win. i only had 1 ancient tomb, eventually drew a 2nd and killed him with attacking ballistas. not very suspenseful. he couldn't find his combo.
game 2 i had a really strong 2 disciple turn 1 and i had turn 2 ravager which he forced. turn 3 strix into ballista. i got him to 1 before he wished for hurkyls.
game 3 had 2 thorns, but only creature i drew was 1 disciple. he beat me on turn 8 or 9. actually i drew 1 disciple, 2 thorn, 2 opal, 1 surgical and lands (so bad luck there) i think had i drawn a ballista, ravager, tezzeret, or winter orb the game was over. 2 thorns in play made his deck extremely fragile to any outs on my end.

[Nocioni88]

I dont like aether vial in this kind of deck, but it is imo. Is it performing well? Usually i have alredy tons of mana, okay, with vial u have istant uncounterable things, but im for cranial instead of vial


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[mistercakes]

It's up to you but I don't feel like this deck is attacking as much as other versions. Plating belongs more in the versions with 4 ornithopter and other evasive creatures. This version is to overplay on the synergies between Vial (2 drops) and raw power of ravager and ballista.

There's a number of ways to play affinity, and I'm not quite sure plating is what this deck wants to do. There's a ton of decks running 6+ removal spells maindeck and unless if you're running welding jars, you shouldn't expect to connect with a plated creature. (unless if you're running etched champion)

[mistercakes]

r1 spiral tide (1-2)
game 1 win
game 2 hurkyls recall (got him to 1)
game 3 had 2 thorns, but only creature i drew was 1 disciple. he beat me on turn 8 or 9. actually i drew 1 disciple, 2 thorn, 2 opal, 1 surgical and lands (so bad luck there)

r2 reanimate (1-2)
game 1 he turn 1 ritual, entomb, animate dead on griselbrand
game 2 side out 4 thoughtcast, 4 galv blast, 2 tezz. bring in 3 bridge, 3 surgical, 4 thorn
he reveals chancellor, i cast ballista for 0. my opening hand is disciple, 2 revoker, surgical.
he unmasks himself and tries to reanimate chancellor. i surgical. he never really recovers.
game 3 opening hand is 2 ballista, vial, ravager, 2 seat, surgical.
he is on play, reveal chancellor. petal, faithless (discarding tidespout, elesh, petal, reanimate elesh. (slow clock)
a very painful long game b/c he doesn't understand how to use his reanimated arcbound ravager + disciple. elesh kept most of my army away. i had him to 1 again because he actually sided out all his artifact hate on the play except for tidespout tyrant, which i exiled after seeing that. given the situation with elesh norn, i needed to get to 6 mana asap (just drawing cards) so i can cast ballista for x=3. unfortunately it took me a bit too long, and despite him having the win pretty easily...he was quite bad and gave me about 3 extra turns. :(

r3 spiral tide (0-2)
game 1 my hand is pretty decent, but don't draw a ravager or disciple and can't kill him fast enough. he's actually going off and if i hit a ravager off of a time spiral i can win,
game 2 i have to mull my first 3 hands due to 0 lands. next hand is unremarkable, i just scoop.

at this point i'm pretty aggravated because i played a match before i joined the league and it was vs....spiral tide. so 3 different spiral tide players out of 4 matches. i can't even understand why someone would play this deck when so many people are playing miracles or leovold decks. i guess they're just hoping they hit all the affinity players!



r4 (2-0)
he's on play, cast volc ponder. i cast tomb ravager (he goes FoW pitch daze..)
he has young pyromancer, but i recover with a 2nd ravager and 2 bolts on his delver/pyromancer.

game 2 he has anglar and some other guys, but i draw a hangarback walker and he can't just steamroll me over.

opening hand, strix, vial, furnace, ravager, thoughtcast, blast, disciple
i'm on the play and go furnace vial...he draws plays tundra and concedes? (wtf is this cockatrice, good b/c my next 3 cards were nonlands)

i cut 4 blast, 4 thoughtcast bringing in 2 orb, 4 thorn, 2 surgical. he concedes match before game starts. GREAT TESTING.

so

spiral tide loss 1-2
reanimator loss 1-2
spiral tide loss 0-2
4c delver win 2-0
Tundra 2-0

[crowe_1]

Have you thought about running a couple of Daretti, Ingenious Iconoclast? Since your build is more control-oriented it may be worth looking into; free blockers, free extra artifacts to sac to Ravager, convenient sorcery-speed removal when you need it. His Ult would just win for you in a lot of situations if you could copy Ravager. Or copy Strix for three cards is decent too.

[mistercakes]

i can try that. i just don't own any irl so i hadn't considered. seems good though.

also i played a match vs miracles after in casual room. he beat me 2-0.

game 1 was okay. i had a pretty strong start, went for a turn 3 tezz and he just blind flipped a jace. he then played the jace and tapped out with a snapcaster in play. i chose to play my 2nd tezz over the ravager in my hand figuring he was locking me out of 2 drops, but he had another jace on top.

i had a pretty strong game 2 with thorn + winter orb + ravager + strix. unfortunately for me i couldn't draw a disciple or ballista and though it took him a while, he got an engineered explosives for 2. i didn't draw a revoker either.

[mistercakes]

Bc of the banning I think now ethersworn Canonist is warranted in the 75. It also just make more sense to go away from Vial since no more terminus.

I'll continue testing Vial version to see how it plays out. Little worried due to a likely increase in chalice decks.

[Izor]

What‘s up guys. Anyone still playing this deck in legacy? I have been playing it as a secondary or tertiary choice pretty much forever and as I haven‘t been feeling like playing Storm lately, I took my Affinity list to two locals this month.

The list I‘ve been playing and tuning for a few years at this point makes use of maindeck Gitaxian Probe and Cabal Therapy to fill the hole that desperately needs to be filled to make the deck viable in Legacy. You obviously can‘t just go Modern-mode and expect to aggro your opponents out with a deck that‘s one and a half turns too slow for Legacy.

Therapy improves what I would claim are basically all matchups bar Dredge and a few other specific decks all while Probe lets you play 56 cards in a deck that‘s often looking to find its good cards as fast as possible. After playing Therapy in dozens of other decks before this one I can say that there is no other deck that utilizes (and effectively breaks) the card as well as Affinity due to the existence of the 8 zero-drops. Those dudes are a necessary evil to turn on the rest of your deck, and Therapy gives you something powerful to do with them past turn 2. Going turn 1 Probe into Therapy into 0-drop is hands down one of the most powerful turn 1 plays a fair deck can produce in Legacy.

Anyhow, this post is going to be a mini-double report of the two events I played recently. I had lots of fun and I‘ll definitely keep playing the deck in future events as well.


Event 1: 3 rounds

Round 1 (vs. 4-color Control)

My notes and memories of this event are a little blurry, so it won‘t be as detailed as the second one unfortunately. I win a close game 1 after therapying his counters away and resolving a Tezzeret.

Game 2 we trade some resources early on and we get into a pretty stale board with both players out of cards in hand. My opponent wins the topdeck war drawing Goyf into Brainstorm into True-Name and Fatal Push while I find mana sources off the top.

Game 3 was an incredibly close game in which we once again traded resources. I was sort of on the backfoot the entire game due to being on the play and having mulliganed. I had drawn one of my 2 Nexus early and couldn‘t cast Thoughtcast the turn it mattered, followed by my opponent topdecking Hymn and getting rid of it plus a Champion. In the end we‘re once again out of cards and my opponent has a DRS plus True-Name staring down my board of Cranial Plating plus lands. My opponent ends up losing the topdeck war this time, with him bricking for 3ish turns while I find more lands to pump my plated-up Nexus. I end up killing him (I think for exacsies?) being at 1 life myself.

2-1 (2-1) - 1-0 matches

Round 2 (vs Death and Taxes)

Game 1 sees me draw the kind of hand that can‘t really lose against a fair deck line DnT. I drop the old Land + Drum + Opal + Threat turn 1, resolve 2 Thoughtcasts early on and eventually beat down with a plated-up Champion.

Game 2 was much more competitive and close and it had the biggest stalemate I had ever witnessed in this matchup. We both had a board full of creatures but at the same time we completely blocked off each other‘s best cards. My opponent had resolved two Stoneforges, but her Batterskull was blocked by my Champion while her Jitte was needled. Meanwhile, my Champion couldn‘t attack because of her Revoker in play and said revoker shut down my Tezzeret on board. We basically topdeck warred, my opponent trying to find the second Council‘s Judgment (1st one already killed one Champion) and me trying to find either more Champions or something to pump my Champion on board. I ended up finding a Ravager and started pumping it up one by one to make Champion big enough. She tries to Swords it in resp to the last (and lethal) counter being added, I sac it in response, she tries to Vial in a Flickerwisp trying to target it and I explain that Ravager sacrificing itself is a cost, so she can‘t react to it. She scoops, revealing her 2nd Judgment as the top card. Welp. She complains about it for a little and I tried to explain that I had 4 Champions in my deck against her two Judgments, plus 7 pump effects I could draw into to win immediately.

2-0 (4-1) - 2-0 matches

Round 3 (vs Elves)

Playing against my brother in the finals, we know each other‘s decks inside out and we‘ve played the matchup countless times. Last time we played I crushed him, but the matchup is very swingy and depends a lot on who simply draws better (aka if Elves finds their tutor off the top fast enough after being therapied). My draws kinda end up failig me in this match, which is just something that happens with this deck. I lose game 1 in pretty fast fashion without much defense (no therapies).

Game 2 my matchup improves due to my sideboard cards, but I ended up mulliganing into a very risky 1-lander. I did end up finding the land after scrying a spell away, but my two lands are both non-artifacts and my development is very slow. I had a therapy which I used to strip his NO and his Green Sun‘s and I eventually had a plated-up Skirge in play that goes to work. We‘re already joking about how this game once again comes down to Elves topdecking a tutor for the win or not, as is so often the case. On the last turn before he dies to the skirge he slowrolls his top card, looks at it… and apologizes. It was a Natural Order.

0-2 (4-3) - 2-1 matches

I still ended up getting 2nd and one of my EMA prize boosters awards me a Sneak Attack. Fair enough.


Event 2 (4 rounds)

I play exactly the same list, partly because it felt really well-tuned, partly because I had no time to actually change anything before the event.

Round 1 (vs. MUD)

I roll my eyes as I get paired against a good friend of mine who always plays Chalice.dec and who always wins the die roll against me, which, in case you‘re unfamiliar, is pretty much all it comes down to when small robots are up against big robots. He obviously wins the die roll again, I obviously stare at the perfect hand with turn 1 land – drum – Orni – Opal – Vault Skirge – Thoughtcast – Therapy. He obviously goes turn 1 Chalice @0 plus Chalice @1. I miss my 2nd land drop and he drops Wurmcoil on turn 3. Onto the next one.

Game 2 I have a powerful hand again, but this time I‘m on the play and I get a flying creature equipped with a Plating going before his pretty slow hand (mulled to 6 too) does much of anything.

Game 3 he‘s obviously back on the play and I have to mulligan. My hand is pretty strong, but not exactly a match for his turn 1 Metalworker into turn 2 Steel Hellkite. When I‘m looking to chump for a few turns he also has a Forgemaster and Blightsteels me out.

1-2 (1-2) - 0-1 matches

Round 2 (vs. Sneak and Show)

My opponent goes turn 1 Volc, go. I go turn 1 Probe into Therapy into Ornithopter. Show and Tell plus Emrakul hit the bin (he did have the sol land for the turn 2 kill) and my turn 3 Tezzeret seals the deal before he can rebuild.

Game 2: My opponent once again goes turn 1 land, go. I have the nut opening again, but this time he Forces my first Therapy after I probed him. This is why you almost always play the zero-drop after the Therapy. He had the turn 2 Sneak Attack and was hoping I couldn‘t flashback on the same turn. Ends up I did though, and the turn ended up terrible for him, losing his Force and his Brainstorm while I also got his Sneak Attack. He also probably should have Brainstormed in resp to my Therapy instead of Forcing right away, but he didn‘t want to risk not finding a blue card and/or me calling the 50/50 correctly and getting the combo piece he needed to keep in hands in order to win next turn.

2-0 (3-2) - 1-1 matches

Round 3 (vs. 4-colored Delver)

I win the die roll for the first (and only) time of the day and I have a decent curve which unfortunately doesn‘t involve any Therapies. We sort of just drop things into play and get into a racing situation, but I end up resolving a Tezzeret after Probing him multiple times and knowing he had no counters. I +1 and find a Plating to go with my flyers in play, but I had to tap down in order to do so and if his Delver blind-flipped on the first chance he could kill my Tezz with it plus his DRS. His Delver does flip with FoW (not what I wanted to see, having that Plating in hand), but he goes in the tank. It appears that he somehow thought he could race me and he opted to use his DRS for mana to cast Pyromancer plus 2nd DRS and his Delver to attack me instead of Tezzeret. This way I was dead on board next turn (had lost tons of life to phyrexian mana), but I just -4‘d Tezzeret to drain for 12 and put my opponent down to 1. He draws and scoops. Had he not misplayed here I would have still been slightly ahead on board and in the damage race, but he may have had a chance to topdeck out of it still.

Game 2 was an odd game and it unfortunately wasn‘t very competitive. My opponent keeps a hand with 2 Volcanics as his only lands and double-Daze, Bolt and Ancient Grudge as his castable spells. Can‘t fault him for that, however, he ends up drawing zero fetchlands and zero cantrips in the first 5-6 turns of the game and instead racks up several uncastable black spells in his hand. My hand was weak because I was totally flooded, but that ended up being exactly what I needed against a hand with double Daze and nothing. I slowly resolve my beef playing around the Dazes and my opponent doesn‘t even find his green source to flashback Grudge by the time I resolved my 2nd Plating to equip my Champion. I feel bad for him, but at the same time there has to be a cost that comes with playing 2 Volcanics and Deathrite/Abrupt Decay in the same deck.

2-0 (5-2) - 2-1 matches

Round 4 (vs. Grixis/4-color Reanimator)

I don‘t expect to win much in this matchup, even though I do have 8 premium sideboard cards for it. Little did I know that this match would deliver me one of the most awesome stories I‘d ever tell.
I lose the die roll and prepare to scoop turn 1, holding a decent but slow Probe + Therapy + zero-drop hand. My opponent casts Looting off a Petal and discards two non-Fatties. There‘s hope. I take my turn and see his hand consisting of 2nd land, 2 Petals and Reanimate. After thinking about it for a long time I decide to leave him with the Reanimate and only take the Petals. Without the Petals he couldn‘t flashback Looting and for his Reanimate to do something he basically had a 1-turn window to topdeck either exactly Entomb or Looting into fatty. I desperately needed the zero drop still in play on my turn 2 because my mana worked out in a way that would let me cast a Thoughtcast cheap and follow it up with some action I could draw into, while without it there was a decent chance I just had to pass with no play. My opponent does end up drawing the Looting off the top, but he whiffs again, allowing me to take his Reanimate on my turn. His next turn saw him topdeck Entomb for Elesh Norn.
He only had to topdeck a reanimation spell now and I had a difficult decision. I could either cast and equip a Plating to my Skirge to beat down hard and fast, or I could drop a Ravager instead which would potentially let me survive an Elesh Norn in play. I decide to do the former, trying to give him one less draw step to find something, but he draws Animate Dead off the top immediately and Elesh hits play. I have exactly one out now, and that‘s one of my 3 copies of Tezzeret. After getting hit by Elesh a bit and him not drawing any major follow-up, I manage to topdeck my favorite planeswalker and make a 5/5 (effectively a 3/3) to go with my Plating in play. Unfortunately I didn‘t have a Citadel and I was also tapped out and couldn‘t equip the Plating right away, so I couldn‘t wall the Elesh and either had to chump or let my Tezzeret die when he attacked on his turn. I decided to let Tezzeret go, because chumping didn‘t accomplish anything. On my turn I suit up the 3/3 and force him to trade his Elesh for it, then resolve a Ravager. My opponent finds another reanimation spell right away (there may have been some Lootings involved here, I don‘t quite remember) and gets Elesh back into play, forcing me to sac almost my entire board to make Ravager big enough to block Elesh without dying. I can‘t really attack into it though, so I pass. My opponent topdecks again and he reanimates a Tidespout Tyrant, but has no spell to follow up to bounce my Ravager.
I draw a random artifact that makes my Ravager big enough to attack and force a block. Having a Champion in hand, I decide to to kill Elesh when he double-blocks. Elesh and Ravager gone, Tidespout still in play, my opponent at 2 life, me having Champion in hand but only 2 lands in play. Dicey.
I do manage to topdeck my 3rd land before he finds yet another way to make a fatty and I take game 1. Beating Elesh Norn plus Tidespout Tyrant in play with a deck with lots of creatures, zero of which are bigger than 2/2? No big deal at all…

Game 2 has him mulligan to 5, but that 5 involves Land, Petal, Looting (discarding Griselfather), Dark Ritual, Exhume. Not bad eh? Not as good as my opening-hand Surgical Extraction, though. 3 Griselbrands in exile later I take my first few turns and do some Affinity stuff. He topdecks Entomb and bins Elesh at some point, but this time I already had a Ravager and enough artifacts in play when he reanimates it a turn later. Once again almost my entire board is gone, but I do have that 8/5 Ravager in play with it, a Plating and a land being my only permanents in play. At some point his life is low enough that he has to chump block, but I can‘t follow up with much because I still only have that one land. He reanimates it again (that‘s like the 5th or 6th time Elesh has entered the battlefield this match now?) but he has to chump again. Only then do I draw my 2nd Surgical (timely, timely) and I‘m just praying he doesn‘t find some way to deal with my Ravager now. He draws and finally offers the handshake. He looks at the top card of his deck and shows me Abrupt Decay. Phew.

2-0 (7-2) - 3-1 matches

Ended up going 3-1 (7-2 in games) and got 5th winning some store credit. I spend our way home complaining to my friend (the round 1 MUD one) that my lost die roll against him kinda ruined my tournament, because I didn‘t end up dropping a single game after that while he ended up losing 3 in a row (die rolls as well as matches… That‘s Chalice.dec decks for you, gentlemen…). My therefore low opponent score meant I got last out of the 4 people with a 3-1 record. Welp. At least I had tons of fun and one of the most awesome matches I ever had.


Seriously though, Probe plus Therapy is incredibly powerful in this deck and, as you saw in the report, makes games and matchups winnable that Affinity has no business winning otherwise. I can only encourage people to try it out if they like to play the deck in Legacy still. With Miracles gone there‘s definitely one more reason to do so. I‘ll keep tuning and playing the deck for sure, because I love the deck (much more than the lame linear Modern-version).

Thanks for reading.

[mistercakes]

i think i'm the only other person actively posting on this forum, but would be happy to continue testing. what was your list?

edit: i remember playing cabal therapy in old extended affinity many years ago! i'm glad you're testing it.

[Izor]

Edited the report a little to get rid of spelling mistakes and such.

My list was the following:

4 Seat of the Synod
4 Vault of Whispers
4 Darksteel Citadel
2 Blinkmoth Nexus
2 Glimmervoid
4 Mox Opal
4 Springleaf Drum

4 Ornithopter
4 Memnite
4 Vault Skirge
3 Arcbound Ravager
3 Etched Champion

4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Thoughtcast
4 Cranial Plating
3 Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas

SB:
1 Arcbound Ravager (for any MUs with lots of removal and any MU where I board Surgery and/or Champion)
1 Etched Champion (any fair decks with no ways to deal with him)
2 Pithing Needle (Stoneforge decks and random Jitte decks, Sneak Show, Lands, Painter, etc)
2 Ratchet Bomb (Elves, Merfolk, Chalice decks, sometimes Delver)
1 Darkblast (Elves, Death and Taxes, Pyro Delver, etc. Seriously, this card just solo's those decks)
1 Thoughtseize (5th discard spell against combo or when I know they have Null Rod)
2 Invasive Surgery (Sneak and Show, Elves, Storm, Reanimator. Note that a Ravager in play pretty much guarantees Delirium, which is why he always comes in alongside them)
2 Surgical Extraction (Dredge, Storm, Reanimator, Lands and Show and Tell as well as other combo decks against which I can discard a combo piece and then extract it)
1 Tormod's Crypt (Dredge, Reanimator, etc.)
1 Grafdigger's Cage (Elves, Dredge, Reanimator, etc)
1 Blood Moon (Lands, 12-Post and most 3/4-colored decks on the play)


I'm not really 'testing' Therapy at this point. I've been playing Affinity with 4 of them in the main deck since New Phyrexia came out (EDIT: Actually I lied, I did play 4 Missteps first when NPH was released). Therapy is my favorite Legacy card and I have lots of experience playing it in all kinds of decks, including Dredge, Storm and Pyro-Delver, which certainly helps me maximize its value. The list above hasn't really changed a ton over the last few years. I recently added the 4th Skirge to the main and moved the 4th Champion to the side. I sometimes play 60 cards with only 3 Citadels, but when I expect lots of wastelands I go up to 61 with 4 of them. Cutting the 4th Skirge again would also be a way to get to 60, but I'm currently happy with the main deck and don't feel the need to change it.
The sideboard has changed over time, obviously. I cut the 3rd Needle when Top got banned, Surgery is relatively new and used to be some mix of Spell Pierce and/or more discard. Darkblast is relatively new as well. I used to run some number of Canonists and more Blood Moons, but the color requirement was a little too high for my liking and Canonist also doesn't synergize with Probe+Therapy, the latter of which are significantly stronger than Canonist overall and aren't worth boarding out/cutting for it. Spellskite is always a consideration because Infect is probably my worst matchup (unless they never draw Berserk or Stalker to get through my infinite chump blockers), but it's very narrow otherwise. Winter Orb was a strong contender when Miracles was around, but now I think it's also too narrow. Ensnaring Bridge is fine, but I prefer to use proactive disruption to prevent fatties from coming into play rather than forcing them to draw 7 until they find their removal spell for it.


EDIT:
If you'd like some feedback on your list you posted above. I highly dislike running straight 3 colors nowadays, because even with 8 rainbow sources you'll still get screwed more often than not, and in my opinion a third color doesn't really add enough to justify that. Citadel is really powerful both in conjunction with Tezzeret as well as against Wasteland. Wasteland makes it very easy for your opponent to screw you off of a color if you run 3 colors with no Citadels. Red gives us Blasts, which is fair enough, but especially when you're not really looking to burn your opponent out with them very often they just aren't very good. I'd rather dominate combat with Champions, Ravagers and pumped Vault Skirges than trying to 1-for-1 their creatures all the time. This is also why White is unnecessary (Dispatch) and Green has nothing exciting for the deck anyway.
I tried running a 2-drop centered Vial version a long time ago, but I was never satisfied with how clunky those lists are. Strix and Revoker are just often bad and easy to deal with when they're good in a lot of matchups. The Disciple + Ravager + Ballista combo is nice on paper and I'm sure it's great when you can make it work, but the problem with it is that every individual card is just very bad on its own in your deck. Disciple literally does nothing relevant without Ravager (which is the reason why people moved away from it a long time ago), Ballista is just not an eternal playable card without any +1/+1-counter enhancers like Constrictor and even Ravager is weaker in your list because you don't have anything good to put the counters on (Skirge, Champion, etc). I'm not saying the +1/+1 counters plan isn't viable, I'm sure there's a way to make that work and have a functional Legacy deck, but looking at your list it seems to me that your deck isn't very... focused. You're trying to make that combo work, and that's good, but the rest of your deck doesn't really support that very much. Strix and Revoker are clunky 2-drops that try to play an entirely different kind of game than the other part of your deck that is essentially trying to burn your opponent out. You're combining a Tezzeret-midrange build with a combo-finish burn-you-out style of Affinity and I'm not sure how consistently good that deck can be. Vial and Drum have historically been cards you don't run together. Either you have lots of zero drops and run Drum, or you have lots of two drops and run Vial. I don't see a creature that you're really happy about tapping for a Drum in your deck. What makes Drum good in something like my list is that it enables me to spend a total of 4 mana on threats between turns 1 and 2. Also, 4 Ancient Tomb and 4 Baleful Strix in the same deck are kind of asking for trouble.
Also, did I miss Plating somewhere in your list? Don't play Affinity without Plating, it's literally the best card in the deck.

[mistercakes]

i agree on all your points. for reference the last time i was using affinity competitively was with this list. the others are just brews i was screwing around with on modo.

http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/s...l=1#post999924


3 walking ballista
4 arcbound ravager
3 vault skirge
4 ornithopter
4 phyrexian revoker
2 etched champion

4 cranial plating
4 thoughtcast
4 welding jar
3 springleaf drum
4 chalice of the void

2 tezzeret, agent of bolas

4 mox opal
3 ancient den
4 vault of whispers
4 seat of the synod
4 ancient tomb

Sb
4 disciple of the Vault
3 ensnaring bridge
4 thorn of amethyst
3 winter orb
1 ethersworn canonist


keep in mind with the winter orbs as they were in there for the miracles metagame..which is a lot of miracles and a lot more abrupt decay. there's a lot of merit for the 2 color version with what you mentioned. with 4 welding jars you can circumvent wasteland and protect your colored mana. it is possible that i can try this list with citadels. the chalice functions in a similar way to the probe/therapy package you run.

the deck does struggle a bit from time to time with just finding the black/blue at the right time.

anyway, would love your thoughts on this version, as it's a version i've taken to tournaments and enjoy. (and less of a brew!)

btw here's my latest brew:


4 walking ballista
4 arcbound ravager
4 winding constrictor
4 arcbound worker
3 steel overseer
2 hangarback walker
1 ornithopter

4 hardened scales
4 cabal therapy
4 tangle wire
4 mox opal
3 springleaf drum

4 blooming marsh
4 llanowar wastes
4 tree of tales
4 vault of whispers
3 ancient tomb

SB
3 surgical extraction
3 fatal push
2 nature's claim
3 abrupt decay
2 engineered plague
2 hangarback walker



been rather fun. also constrictor + tangle wire = 5 counters. really pleased with this interaction.

[Izor]

That list looks much better and closer to mine as well, the main difference being the Chalice package over the Therapy package and the revokers.

I have never been a fan of Revoker in general because its very often just a 2 mana Pithing Needle that dies to creature removal. The body is often irrelevant against anything but the actual zero creature decks and the effect is dead in too many matchups. It's also just very clunky at 2 mana.

Welding Jars have a similar problem in that they're dead cards in a pretty large amount of cases. Pre-board, every unfair deck in the format as well as Elves, Lands, Death And Taxes as well as Stoneblade and other white-based fair decks do not care about it, and that is already enough reasons not to play it main, let alone 4 copies. It's a purely reactive card that has no text until its very specific application comes up and that application simply won't come up a lot of the time. I simply don't play situational and often dead cards like Revoker or Jar in Legacy.

The choice between the Chalice and Therapy package is certainly disputable. In a vacuum both have their pros and cons, however, I think they always have to be evaluated with the specific deck in mind. Even if Chalice was a better disruption strategy than Therapy overall, this may not necessarily be true for Affinity.
In fact, Chalice is way worse in Affinity than it is in other decks, because you have spells of all CMCs in your deck yourself. While Chalice @1 is doable, Chalice @0 and @2 are really harmful for your own deck. I'd leave that to the decks that can actually get full value out of the card, like MUD or Eldrazi. In fact, Chalice Affinity is hardly more than a different and mostly worse version of colorless Eldrazi.
Therapy, however, is a lot better in Affinity than it is in other decks due to the abundance of fodder for its flashback cost. There is no other deck in the format that can cast Probe into double Therapy on turn 1 without generating card disadvantage. For a deck to survive and be viable in Legacy it has to provide something very powerful and it has to do what it does better than all other decks in the format. Therapy Affinity does that, Chalice Affinity doesn't, at least in my opinion. But to each their own.

EDIT: I also don't think that 1 copy of Canonist in the side is a reason to play Dens over Citadels. Not at all, actually.

[mistercakes]

The revoker is there because it shuts down deathrite shaman and random other effects. the other big one is lion's eye diamond. the ability for welding jar to protect any of the cards in your deck has a lot of value. whenever i played the card both my opponent and i agreed it was one of the strongest permanents on the board.

you can get away with ensnaring bridge after board because of the welding jars. then they need to draw multiple removal spells for 1 bridge.

the maindeck isn't really my list. there's another guys list on mtgdecks that i saw was consistently t8'd events with it. i only swapped a few cards from it. the ballista has always been a threat. it eats FoW's, and obviously with ravager is quite powerful. with the increase in removal-based decks it might warrant squeezing back in the number of etched champions, but i like the idea of having some form of removal in the deck (esp vs planeswalkers).

anyway, it's a difference in philosophy at this point. your list looks fun and i will probably try it at some point, but i have more fun with ballista.

[Izor]

Revokers are totally playable, even if I find them too clunky and too irrelevant as Plating/Ravager targets, I simply don't like the card because of my own experiences with it. It's bad way too often for my liking and in many situations you don't even hit what you wanted to hit blindly. I see it more of a sideboard card, like Needle, because the chance is very high that if you drop it turn 2 against Unknown it just won't even have a textbox, because either your opponent doesn't have the card you named, didn't draw it, just shuffles it away with Brainstorm or just kills Revoker to play it anyway. All 4 of those things have to go exactly your way or it's just a 2 mana Needle.

What I like doing myself when playing against Revoker is tricking my opponent into naming the wrong card, and it's sad how often this actually works. Not because the opponent is bad though, but because they have no other choice. Sure, I'll run out that Deathrite and let you revoke it when all I'm really trying to do is take over with that Jace in my hand. I'll also drop a Petal for no reason with my storm deck just so people name that instead of the two LEDs in my hand. Sure, they could mind-read you or do the 'correct' play and name the worst possible card for them anyway, but then there's a decent chance that they played Revoker into an open activated ability and, again, just randomly named something you don't even have.

I'll hold my point on Welding Jar. It's a card without a text box a lot of the time and I refuse to play cards like those in a format like legacy. The combo matchup of that Affinity list is absolutely abysmal because Chalice is the only real interaction and even that can't be cast @1 turn 1 a lot of the time. I'm playing the heavy discard package main, have no dead Jars and still dedicate 7-8 cards in my sideboard to all those combo matchups, and there's a reason for that. Your chance to open a keepable hand with Chalice is under 40%. The chance that you have either Tomb or Opal + artifact land + zero drop is not much higher. Your actual chance to play a turn 1 chalice is therefore likely around the 20% mark.

I played a singleton copy a while ago and it never stayed in the deck for more than a few matches, because of how irrelevant the effect was. If you have different experiences with it sure, keep playing it, but mine were very bad. Champion doesn't die, Tezz can't be regenerated, Ravager doesn't care about dying most of the time, if one of your redundant low drops get bolted you also couldn't care less. I'm not even looking to do creature combat with the deck, because I'm just trying to kill in one or two big hit(s) once I have the necessary evasion/reach for it. Regenerating a Wasted land is alright, but a smart opponent will just take advantage of it. Either they just won't waste and use the mana for their own spells, or they'll target your land because they want you to waste the Jar on something they didn't even care about. The only situations where it would actually be consistently good is when they try to kill your Plating with Decay or some sideboard hate card, and that application is too narrow for me. On top of that, Affinity is already a deck that is terrible at mulliganing and which has very high requirements for its opener and playing 4 Welding Jars immensely increases the number of awkward speculative hands you have to keep just to brick on draws for 3 turns and lose. 2 Lands, Opal, Ornithopter, Revoker, double Welding Jar is an abysmal hand that has no game against the vast majority of the field unless you're lucky and topdeck out of it. Sure it can work out, but if you're actually trying to maximize your chances to win matches and the tournament, you have to avoid having too many of those hands.

[Scott]

For anyone adventurous with an affinity for Affinity...

Top 8 in a 98-person tournament a few days ago:

// Land (16)
4 Ancient Den
4 Ancient Tomb
4 Glimmervoid
4 Great Furnace

// Creature (21)
4 Akiri, Line-Slinger
4 Arcbound Ravager
3 Memnite
4 Ornithopter
2 Pia Nalaar
4 Vault Skirge

// Enchantment (4)
4 Blood Moon

// Artifact (19)
4 Chalice of the Void
4 Cranial Plating
2 Ghirapur Orrery
4 Mox Opal
3 Smuggler's Copter
2 Springleaf Drum

// Sideboard
SB: 1 Containment Priest
SB: 2 Etched Champion
SB: 3 Ethersworn Canonist
SB: 2 Phyrexian Revoker
SB: 2 Surgical Extraction
SB: 1 Wear // Tear
SB: 1 Whipflare
SB: 1 Ghirapur AEther Grid
SB: 2 Winter Orb