[Deck] Painter Affinity

[Volt]

In an effort to fit the Painter Servant combo into Affinity...

4 Ancient Den
4 Great Furnace
4 Plateau
4 Ancient Tomb
3 City of Brass

4 Enlightened Tutor
4 Pyroblast
4 Red Elemental Blast

4 Painter's Servant
4 Grindstone

4 Aether Vial
4 Arcbound Ravager
4 Arcbound Worker
4 Frogmite
3 Ornithopter
2 Cranial Plating

I can't say for sure that Imperial Recruiter doesn't belong in here, but I'm trying to avoid them because 1) They have cc3, and Affinity typical eschews non-affinity spells above cc2, and 2) They're IMPOSSIBLE to acquire.

[Isamaru]

I think a black splash for Disciple (and possibly Confidant then if you want to make the splash full) is worth it, or else you should try to fit Fling in. It looks good so far... I understand City of Brass over Glimmervoid here.

[Valtrix]

Well, personally I don't think the two fit together. Affinity wants to win by playing a bunch of things and attacking like no tomorrow. When you take out 12 slots for tutors and a combo that's helps the other gameplan almost not at all (Except artifact count), it seems like you'd slow down affinity's main gameplan. Then because one half of your deck is for affinity, you lose a lot of the control that painter usually likes to have to protect it. I think that it's stronger to focus on one or the other.

I'm not saying it's bad to have multiple gameplans, but I just don't think that these two don't seem to fit together well. Not to mention you're cutting out a lot of artifact lands that usually help affinity go faster...

[GreenOne]

I'd play it like a standard affinity build that sometimes can just lucksack into the combo.

Adding Blasts doesn't belong here.
The tutors, however, might be worth it.

I'm thinking about something on the lines of:

// Lands
4 [DS] Darksteel Citadel
4 [MR] Vault of Whispers
4 [MR] Seat of the Synod
2 [DS] Blinkmoth Nexus
4 [MR] Ancient Den

// Creatures
4 [DS] Arcbound Ravager
4 [DS] Arcbound Worker
4 [MR] Disciple of the Vault
4 [MR] Frogmite
4 [MR] Ornithopter
4 [MR] Myr Enforcer
4 [SHM] Painter's Servant

// Spells
4 [FD] Cranial Plating
4 [LRW] Springleaf Drum
4 [TE] Grindstone
2 [ARE] Enlightened Tutor

With the possibility of going +2 enlightened tutor -2 something (probably -1 grindstone -1 enforcer).

The tutors maindeck can allow for a savage silver bullet SB.
I love that kind of things.

[Volt]

.

[GreenOne]

I like what you're saying. I think I would definitely want to up the tutors to 3 or 4, and I'm pretty sure Vial > Drum for our purposes.

Yeah, vial would be good, but drum helps in finding the white mana for the tutor. 4 white sources in the entire deck = no good. Other than that vial doesn't help in hitting the 3rd mana to activate Grindstone where Drum does.
Drum is also overall better in the standard affinity beatdown mode.

So, if we want vials we need at least to raise the number of Glimmervoids/CoB, ar add Chromatic Stars, but I'd want vials only in the control matchup.

On a side note. We can name everything with Painter. I just had a match where it shutted down Ghastly Demise beacuse I chose Black.
Is there any other thing we should take into account when choosing the color vs specific decks?
I just recall Enforcer has Pro Black, for example, and obviously, naming blue against other Painters is just ugly.

[Sanguine Voyeur]

Blue allows your opponent to pitch anything to Force. Black allows you to dodge some removal and allows Ichorid to remove any creature to come into play. Swords can grant protection from white and black, but more commonly red and blue. Not much is going on for green.

[Dark_Cynic87]

I think this is a lost cause altogether, as even the regular Affinity builds are uber vulnerable to Needle, you are just giving more targets for an already pwned list.

Not trying to rain on your parade, but Affinity needs speed, not another combo.

I suppose the only way I see this working is by changing directions. Go affinity and let them pithing that, etc. make them go anti-aggro on your ass and then whip out the combo ftw. Game 2 that wouldn't work though. Maybe it should be a SB option. Go combo out of the blue. That presents sbing problems, however, for your bad matchups.

I'd go 4x Tutor, 3x of each combo piece. The tutors are more useful overall in the build, not to mention that you don't want your hand clogged up like that; I can see consistancy issues with 4x of each (2x of one, none of another).

Anyway, thought I'd put in a tad of constructive criticism.

EDIT::: Sorry, GreenOne. My bad.

[danyul]

Dude he is from Italy. Play nice.

[Dosan_the_Wisest_Leaf]

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My take without testing this deck. Pretty janky I know but hey what the heck.

4 Ancient Den
4 Great Furnace
3 Wasteland
4 City of Brass
3 Gemstone Mine

4 Red Elemental Blast
4 Pyroblast
4 Enlightened Tutor
2 Crucible of Worlds
2 Armageddon
2 Jaya Ballard, Task Mage
3 Painter's Servant
3 Grindstone
4 Imperial Recruiter
4 Sensei's Divining Top
3 Arcbound Ravager
4 Ornithopter
3 Cranial Plating

(No sideboard because until I know whether its worth making this deck )

[GreenOne]

I think this is a lost cause altogether, as even the regular Affinity builds are uber vulnerable to Needle, you are just giving more targets for an already pwned list.

Not trying to rain on your parade, but Affinity needs speed, not another combo.

I suppose the only way I see this working is by changing directions. Go affinity and let them pithing that, etc. make them go anti-aggro on your ass and then whip out the combo ftw. Game 2 that wouldn't work though. Maybe it should be a SB option. Go combo out of the blue. That presents sbing problems, however, for your bad matchups.

I'd go 4x Tutor, 3x of each combo piece. The tutors are more useful overall in the build, not to mention that you don't want your hand clogged up like that; I can see consistancy issues with 4x of each (2x of one, none of another).


I like 4x Painters in the deck. After all they're an artifact and a creature, so they can wield an equip and modular counters. Maybe it's a good choice to drop some of the Grindstone though.

If needle is going to do unfair things on us we can just board some Artifact hate or Blasts. We can also E.Tutor into Explosives, losing our grindstone in the process.

EDIT: we can tutor for Seal of Cleansing too.

[Dark_Cynic87]

You like them in the deck, but are they better than your other options? I don't think they are. 3 is plenty. If I were to jank up my affinity list, I'd do so with stuff for my bad matchups, not randomly toss an all artifact combo into the list...That's exactly what people do with goyf--toss it in any list that has even a smidgeon of green...

What matchup does this even help? Like you said, you just hope for the combo while playing it like an affinity list. This implies that it's there for a purpose. People don't just toss things in decks like this and expect them to be competetive. If you WANT a build with some affinity concepts with the painter combo included, you should start from scratch, not toss shit out of a list and shove 6-12 new cards in it just cuz...

Just my opinion...

Pce,

--DC

[GreenOne]

Food chain goblins packed a card that was not that impressive on its own: Food Chain. The deck was anyway strong because it allowed the deck to go combo when it had both Food Chain and Recuiter/Matron.
You could just stop the combo and being beated by the usual goblin horde or you could worry about the initial goblin wave, but if the opponent drew a Food Chain you were almost done.

Aggrocombo has the great advantage of attacking the opponent on 2 different fronts. and the opponent doesn't know what to answer when the game is starting. let's say you have 3 mana on the table + a drum, a painter out and a bunch of small critters. You play a cranial. The opponent can counter it, but in this case if you draw a grindstone/tutor he won't counter it and lose on the spot.

Affinity usually have 8 must counters: Ravagers and Platings. Ok, maybe atog+fling but this will screw you if it gets countered.

Adding the combo you add must counters to the deck: you must counter a Painter if there's a grindstone out and vice versa.

Playing 4 of each combo piece means you have a 22% of probability of having both the combo pieces in hand by turn 2 (not counting E.Tutor), likely resulting in a turn 3-4 win. This should help in the aggro matchups I guess. It also break stalemates against opposing goyfs. Playing a Painter with a grindstone out is a good recover from a wrath effect too.

That's it. There's a core of affinity cards you can't remove from the deck.
Ravagers, Cranials, Disciples, Frogmites, Ornithopters and Drum/Vial. Obviously Artifact Lands and some number of Nexuses. Enforcers and Thoughtcasts follows.
Other than those there are a lot of interchangeable slots. Fling, Atog, Shrapnel, Cromatic Star, Bob, Tarmogoyf, Needle, Tormod, Hoverguard and even Welding Jar.
So the question is why are Painters+Grindstone better than those?
1- They're artifacts. Not every other card listed in those slots is.
2- Alternative win condition other than beating face (we have disciples too for this)
3- Random wins on turn 3 (something like 1 game every 5)

What's the point in changing the core of the affinity deck in a deck called Painter's Affinity? Seems like changing the core of Goblin's deck when building Food Chain Goblins.

EDIT:
Some thoughts on the SB.
What about something like:
4 Needle
4 Chalice
4 Tormod's
1 EE
1 Seal of Cleansing
1 Rule of Law
Seal of Doom?
Hanna's Custody?
Jitte?
E. Plague?
Winter Orb?
Welding Jar?
Sphere/Thorn?

It looks crappy as it is, just wanted to throw some ideas in. Thoughts?