[Deck] Affinity

[4eak]

Vial Affinity

By: 4eak and GreenOne

This primer is intended to be a thorough review of the deck, card selections, and metagame concerns for the aggro-combo version of Affinity, aka. Raffinity, Ravager Affinity, Vial Affinity, etc. Hopefully, this will be a good resource and reference for long-time players of this archetype and a good starting place for all new-comers to Legacy Affinity.

Here is the old Vial Affinity thread:
http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/s...ead.php?t=8147


I. Introduction to Vial Affinity

Vial Affinity is an artifact-based aggro-combo deck; it is the quintessential “synergy deck.” The deck uses fairly powerful tempo enhancing effects such as the affinity mechanic (the namesake), modular, creature-centric mana acceleration, and scalable damage components to apply a great deal of early to mid game pressure. The aggro element is both powerful and versatile, and it has enough combat tricks to act as a combo deck in the last few turns of a game as it can often bypass many control features presented by an opponent (removal, blocking, unmanageable disciple life loss, etc.). Some might say that affinity breaks several of the expected design principles of magic as it possesses the ability: to play multiple extremely undercosted spells, to dodge pin-point control too effectively, and to put more permanents in play within the first 3 turns than a normal deck should.

The deck was born and banned in Standard. Due to the rigid nature of its synergy requirements, the deck did not change very much when ported to formats with larger cardpools. Affinity (and all of its variants) has never performed in other formats as successfully as it did in Type 2. The artifact hate and faster fundamental turn in formats with larger cardpools provide serious barriers to the success of the deck. Instead of being completely unfair in the Legacy format, Affinity is only a strong choice in aggro-control and control heavy metagames. It remains a fair deck, but never a broken one.

Here is a current decklist of Vial Affinity:

Lands: 18
4 Seat of the Synod
4 Vault of Whispers
4 Darksteel Citadel
3 City of Brass
3 Tree of Tales

Creatures: 28
4 Arcbound Ravager
4 Arcbound Worker
4 Disciple of the Vault
4 Frogmite
4 Ornithopter
4 Master of Etherium
4 Myr Enforcer

Spells: 14
4 Thoughtcast
4 Cranial Plating
3 Aether Vial
3 Springleaf Drum

Sideboard: 15
4 Pithing Needle
4 Krosan Grip
4 Chalice of the Void
3 Tormod’s Crypt

The deck sets up on turn 1 and attempts to regurgitate its entire hand on turns 2 and 3.


II. Metagames for Vial Affinity

Assuming that affinity is built and played correctly, this once dominating force from T2 is really hindered by two things in Legacy: 1.) Combo, and 2.) the amazing hate available. Each of these contributes to affinity becoming strictly a metagame deck. This deck can never be tier 1 or viable if widely sided against, but given the right metagame it is quite viable.

Affinity is known for being able to play effectively under mana-light or mana-denial conditions, and although less known for it, the deck has good odds against blue-based metagames. It is a bomby aggro deck that is resilient to many blue control strategies, including pin-point removal and CB/top softlocks, and it consistently puts up strong pressure.

Vial Affinity suffers from the classic aggro problem of not being able to disrupt or race Combo effectively enough. Affinity does not defeat well-played and well-built combo decks in Legacy. You can run CoTV, FoW, SoR, Stifle, Ethersworn Canonist, and Therapy, and you’ll still be lucky to go 50/50 against a competent combo player. Watering your deck’s strategy down puts you turns and turns behind on the board (on average), while your disruption simply delays the inevitable. Even if affinity can curb the losses in the combo department, it will usually require major sacrifices against other archetypes, negating the reason to play affinity at all. In environments flourishing with combo, you probably shouldn’t be playing this deck.

The other reason why Affinity could never be Tier 1 in Legacy is due to the amount of hate available -- affinity simply can't live through it. For example, Energy Flux, Shattering Spree, and Kataki are just a few of the many exceptionally deadly tools against Affinity. Combined with several other cards, sideboards prepared for affinity would impose insurmountable obstacles.

This “hate” problem doesn’t just keep Vial Affinity from being a Tier 1 deck, but to some degree it is a ubiquitous problem that every metagame already poses. Don’t expect this deck to be nearly as powerful, proportionately to the metagame, as it was in Standard. Like many of the Established decks, it is merely a good one, but not a great one.

Pretty much every deck in the format has at least some a) artifact hate, b) land destruction, and c) creature removal. While many aggro and combo decks can remain nearly immune against at least one or two of the above, almost any piece of board control remains at least somewhat relevant against Affinity. Despite the common presence of these control cards, due to the raw synergy of the deck and the resilience offered by cards like Disciple of the Vault, Cranial Plating, and Arcbound Ravager, the deck can sustain or avoid several control and disruption features presented by the format. They have lots of hate, but we have lots of resilience.

Vial Affinity, at best, is a metagame deck. You choose to play the deck because you know your opponents are not packing enough hate and that they can't outrace you with combo. However, with that said, if the metagame does not anticipate the deck (and it currently doesn't in many areas), it can be a very powerful ‘rogue’ deck. Affinity is a deck that is underestimated by many, and in part, this is why the metagame would allow for affinity to be a viable competitor. Affinity can play like a tier 1 deck, it simply can’t afford to play in a metagame that anticipates it like a tier 1 deck.


III. Synergy & Vial Affinity’s Evolutionary Requirements

The pivotal strength (and what some may eventually find to be a weakness) of affinity is its raw internal synergy. Vial Affinity exists in virtue of its synergy. The foundation of this synergy is the artifact land-base. For affinity spells, each land counts for double the mana, one for its tap effect, and the other to lower a spells cost through the affinity mechanic. The use of artifact lands allows for affinity spells to often be played for free even, and then mana is spent on other spells/abilities. Artifact lands also improve the offensive capacity of other spells such as Disciple of the Vault, Arcbound Ravager, Cranial Plating, and Master of Etherium which scale directly with the number of artifacts in play, and thus the artifact lands act not only as a source of mana, but also as a source of damage with each of these cards. This synergy comes at almost no cost because lands are uncounterable and free to play.

The internal synergy is also amplified by using artifact spells almost exclusively. With the exception of Thoughtcast for draw, Disciple for comboing and resilience to control, and rainbow lands for color smoothing, all other cards in the deck are artifact permanents that have synergistic impact with the other cards in the deck.

Vial Affinity rarely draws hands that it doesn't want to keep, and nearly every card you draw in the deck will have a positive interaction with all the other cards in the deck. Generally, everything in the deck is relevant to your current board position, and cards often have a multiplicative effect beyond their initial perceived relevance and power (artifact + disciple + ravager + modular + affinity factor + etc.). Essentially, the whole is much greater than the sum of the parts. When played correctly, the high average card relevance, synergy, and well-abused tempo mechanics gives affinity resilience and speed that is rarely matched by other aggro and aggro-combo decks.

This strength of its synergy, however, can act as a weakness in deckbuilding. There is a common misconception about how the deck can evolve in a format. Many people fail to realize the problems with a deck that requires every single piece in the deck to maintain synergy; essentially, it is very difficult to change the deck without upsetting the synergy of the deck itself. For example, even to add Legacy staples like Swords to Plowshares or Stifle, or using more unusual cards like Cloud of Faeries and Somber Hoverguards while subtracting other relevant artifacts, acts as a barrier not only to a proper mana base (and the abuse of it), but it waters the deck down, eliminating the very strength of its synergy.

If you cut artifacts for non-artifacts, you decrease your card relevance in terms of the average progression of your aggro-combo gameplan itself. Even cutting certain artifacts for others can demonstrate a decrease in synergy. Watering the deck down only prevents affinity from doing what it does best, which is the abuse of its internal synergy. This means that Affinity has very limited sideboard options and few evolutions available. Admittedly, this misconception is fairly widespread because it is difficult to see the web of synergy interactions that each card helps to compose.

While this might seem harsh to some, the truth needs to be said: Like a few other popular archetypes (Burn is a good example), Affinity has a well-earned reputation for bad players and poor builds. It is often a deck that is picked up by Legacy newcomers as it is an obvious port that most have encountered. Many people believe they've got an innovation or improved variant of Affinity, and in reality, they simply don't have a better deck.

Affinity is a deck that is shackled down by its internal synergy and is largely unable to evolve beyond a rare new card that comes out in a new set (e.g. MoE).

Taking into consideration the two-edged sword of synergy, Vial Affinity will fail to evolve away from a very specific type of aggro-combo. While there is work being done on agro-control versions of the deck, such as AfFOWnity, 8-Ball, Deep Blue, etc., none of these decks are concerned with the raw agro-combo role which is played by Vial Affinity. To add control components is to weaken its architecture as an aggro-combo deck. Even further, removing an aggro card for a control card is more than just a 1 for 1 substitution in affinity. The change forms a much larger loss in the aggro-combo functionality of the deck than merely 1 card (as synergy multiplies an aggro card’s relevance), while there only remains 1 control card to be gained. This loss isn’t worth it. For Vial Affinity, if you are playing control cards in the main, you have misassigned your role.

Vial Affinity will continue to specialize and develop as an agro-combo deck if it wishes to further its competitive advantage. Developing and modifying affinity requires a great deal of justification. Adding and subtracting cards from affinity is innately more difficult and complex to do correctly. The opportunity cost of running one card and not another is difficult to measure in this deck. Now, that doesn’t mean there aren’t innovations to be had, but with a deck that revolves so much around its internal synergy, the proponents of the status quo are fairly justified in denying the vast majority of “innovations and tech” that people prescribe. Just remember, it all adds up. All too often, modifications actually decrease the effectiveness of the basic shell of vial affinity.

As some will not fully recognize there are diminishing returns and limits to substitutions in this deck, we need to clarify a fairly universal principle for those individuals who wish to innovate and evolve affinity: There is a difference between a deck that can win a game and an optimal deck. Most every build can win some games, but some builds will win more than others. Optimal builds will have the best chance of winning (not just 'some chance'). Winning some is not the same as winning the most possible, and we are interested in optimal builds that have the highest probability of winning. This misunderstanding can make it difficult for many people to see why their tech is suboptimal or flat out sucks. They still win games in spite of their tech, not in virtue of their tech.

Clearly, Vial Affinity is at a disadvantage in terms of how it can evolve. It takes a new card from a new set, like Master of Etherium, to have serious impact on the archetype. Speaking of which, Master of Etherium has filled in the last few unknown slots of the deck, and it is safe to say we have a stable and optimized build of the deck because of this card. We don’t need to worry about filling in gaps with cards like Goyf, Confidant, or Fling. Until new cards born for the deck come out in future sets, innovations will be small for this deck. Vial Affinity is a deck to fine tune, not revolutionize.