“Hello.” She had felt so foolish. Hello… it was all she could think of to say. She had nothing to say to him really. But something small and tight had turned over in the pit of her stomach. She had had to look away. His bright blue eyes were too much for her, the way he searched her face, the way he smiled. Meeting those eyes was like trying to stare into the sun. He had been smiling down at her from his immense height. He was a huge, powerfully built man, with the classic shape required for his profession. She was wondering what he was thinking about her. He probably thought she was ridiculous. A groupie, or just a kid.
-Danielle Steele, Sunset in St. Tropez
I’m not sure why so many writers nowadays find it important to quote other writers at the beginning of their articles. I don’t understand it, but I’m certainly not one to stray from the path.*
The Extended season is rapidly approaching and I thought I would take some time to look at the decks you’ll be seeing. There’s really no better place to begin than with the deck that won the whole show, Affinity.
Pierre Canali-1st Place
4 Arcbound Worker
3 Cranial Plating
4 Arcbound Ravager
4 Thoughtcast
4 Frogmite
4 Chromatic Sphere
4 Disciple of the Vault
4 Aether Vial
3 Myr Enforcer
4 Meddling Mage
3 Somber Hoverguard
2 Glimmervoid
2 Blinkmoth Nexus
1 City of Brass
4 Seat of the Synod
4 Vault of the Whisper
4 Darksteel Citadel
2 Ancient Den
Sideboard
3 Engineered Plague
3 Chill
2 Seal of Removal
3 Cabal Therapy
1 City of Brass
3 Kami of the Ancient Law
Affinity is the best aggressive deck that has ever existed. It seems to dominate every format it gets played in. I recently attended a Marvel Pro Circuit event in Anaheim and played Affinity to an 8-3 record on Day 1. Coupled with the fact that it also happened to win the Pro Tour means that it has to be public enemy number 1. Although I am always a huge proponent of Affinity, even if the field may seem very hateful, that was in block. In Extended, the haters have much more available to them in their arsenal.
Despite the hate, Affinity manages to find a way to win sometimes, no matter how much the odds are stacked up against it. Now, I’m sure Pierre is a great player; he won a Pro Tour after all. However, I must say that his play against Olivier Ruel in the Top 4 in particular reminded me of an episode of Saved by the Bell I once saw. In this episode, Screech had the house all to himself while his parents were visiting Graceland. Screech invites Zack and Slater over to try on some bright neon colored t-shirts and party the night away. During their homo-erotic dance off, the guys get caught in the act by Kelly, Lisa and the rest of the girls. At this time, Screech falls of the couch and breaks his mother’s most prized possession, a statuette of Elvis Presley. Zack was there to save the day though, as usual.
Zack throws a huge party and manages to raise enough money to replace the statue with an exact replica. So in the end, no matter how many buffoonish blunders Screech manages to make, Zack is always there to bail him out. Now what does this all mean . . . well, nothing really, I’m just watching Saved by the Bell on TBS as I’m writing this article and got caught up in the moment. Although, I could say that in relation to that episode, Pierre is Screech, Arcbound Ravager is Zack Morris, and the match is that Elvis statue. So you see, no matter how many mistakes you might make, or how bad things might look for you, the fact is that Arcbound Ravager can always just show up and win the game for you somehow. That’s why Affinity is so good, because its cards and the interactions between them are more powerful than anything else out there.
Now, I’ve been trying Pierre’s build for a couple of weeks now to see how I like it. Right after the Pro Tour, I have to say I was very impressed with the Meddling Mages. It was a card I hadn’t considered and seemed like it would be very good with Aether Vial. Then I started to actually play the deck. The most annoying thing about Pierre’s build is that if you don’t draw an Aether Vial, you might as well just not bother playing. It’s certainly not a surprise to anyone that Affinity’s best draws involve Aether Vial, however the fact that there are four Meddling Mages in your deck make the Vials that much more crucial. With only nine sources of White mana in your deck, and the fact that it requires Blue mana as well, means that you need the Aether Vial to actually get the Mages into play.
The other problem is that you need to get those Mages into play by turn 4 for them to be really effective, so you have to draw an Aether Vial by turn 2 at the latest or have both a Blue and a White mana available to you by turn 4. Anyone who has played Affinity before knows that one of the two main ways you lose with this deck is through color screw, so you always want to limit the number of colored spells you play in your deck, and four Meddling Mages count as an extra 8 colored spells.
Here’s an Affinity list I’ve been testing that’s slightly different from Pierre’s.
4 Arcbound Worker
4 Thoughtcast
4 Disciple of the Vault
4 Aether Vial
4 Frogmite
4 Chromatic Sphere
4 Arcbound Ravager
3 Cranial Plating
3 Somber Hoverguard
3 Atog
3 Myr Enforcer
2 Blinkmoth Nexus
4 Seat of the Synod
2 Glimmervoid
4 Great Furnace
4 Darksteel Citadel
4 Vault of the Whispers
Sideboard
3 Seal of Removal
3 Welding Jar
4 Overload
2 Fling
3 Engineered Plague
Atog in this list serves the same role as Meddling Mage does in Pierre’s list, getting around hate. Whereas Meddling Mage tries to keep the hate off the board, Atog simply wants to kill the player before they can play their hate. When we were testing against Energy Flux before the Pro Tour, many of the wins came from stacking the effect, sacrificing everything to Atog and just killing them. Atog also becomes much better the more control decks there are in a format. Extended has many more control decks than block had in it, so as good as Atog was in block, it’s even better now. It also doesn’t have as heavy a color requirement as Meddling Mage does. The sideboard is also much different than Canali’s deck, mostly because we have a clearly image of the meta-game now. Overload is for the mirror matches you will certainly have to face, as well as giving you a way to deal with Isochron Scepter and Ensnaring Bridge. The Welding Jar’s are a way to deal with the increase in Meltdown’s and Pernicious Deed’s that will surely pop up. And Fling is a nice card that helps you accelerate your kill against the slower decks that try and beat you will massive board removal spells.
Although Affinity is a solid choice for the PTQ season, I must say that the hate that people have available to them in extended is a lot more difficult to deal with than in block. So although I certainly think it’s capable of handling the hate, I think it would be best for Affinity players to stay under the radar for the first couple of PTQ’s until people start to forget about it again.
The other deck that people will surely focus on is second place finisher Shuhei Nakamura Red Deck Wins.
4 Grim Lavamancer
4 Seal of Fire
4 Mogg Fanatic
4 Firebolt
4 Blistering Firecat
4 Cursed Scroll
4 Jackal Pup
4 Pillage
4 Magma Jet
8 Mountains
4 Rishadan Port
4 Wasteland
4 Wooded Foothills
4 Bloodstained Mire
Sideboard
4 Ensnaring Bridge
4 Blood Oath
3 Fledgling Dragon
3 Flametongue Kavu
1 Gamble
This deck did very well in Columbus, coming in second as well as earning a 9th place finish and another T16. In fact, I was very surprised that Shuhei ended up losing to Canali in the finals, because in our testing Affinity versus Red Deck Wins was a much closer matchup than the 0-3 beating would have you believe. Our Affinity list was also better suited for the matchup, as we even had Fire / Ice main to deal with the very annoying Grim Lavamancer. The only real difference between our RDW list and the Japanese list is that we had Lava Dart main instead of Pillage, so I’m not sure the problem was on that end. I think the discrepancies in our results had more to do with Pierre’s stellar draws. He managed to have a turn 1 Aether Vial all three games, which is the main thing Affinity has to do to win that matchup. He also drew many Arcbound Ravagers and Shuhei really didn’t have an effective sideboard against Affinity. I feel that despite the ease at which Pierre dispatched Shuhei in the finals, the Affinity versus RDW matchup is a lot closer than people may believe it is, and with a more dedicated anti-Affinity sideboard like Pulverize or Meltdown, it is certainly reasonable that the matchup goes from even to awful.
The problem that we faced was that the RDW deck simply has so much burn that it’s difficult to get anything to stick. Your only real weapon against them is Arcbound Ravager, which is why Aether Vial is so important against them, because you can play it at the end of their turn and nullify at least eight of their removal spells against it while you build up artifacts on your turn to make sure the Ravager doesn’t die to burn. This matchup is really draw dependent, which is why I think it’s so close to call, because RDW gets the same draws over and over again, it’s very consistent. That means that all the pressure in on the Affinity player.
Shuhei’s list is actually very solid, and the only thing I would consider is trying to fit in Lava Dart, perhaps in place of the Firebolts or Pillages. Lava Dart is just really excellent in the mirror as well as Affinity. The sideboard also needs to be adjusted to handle Affinity better, with Pulverize seeming better suited than Meltdown due to Chill.
The best thing about RDW is that it’s very consistent and has some really great matchups. I think that this deck is actually a better option for the first few PTQ’s, because it’s very difficult to hate out RDW and people always seems ill prepared to deal with it.
Here’s another option to RDW you might consider, it was built my teammate Patrick Sullivan and has been very successful. This is the list we used in our testing.
4 Jackal Pup
4 Seal of Fire
4 Goblin Cadet
4 Cursed Scroll
4 Mogg Fanatic
4 Volcanic Hammer
4 Blistering Firecat
4 Lava Dart
4 Grim Lavamancer
8 Mountains
4 Rishadan Port
4 Wasteland
4 Bloodstained Mire
4 Wooded Foothills
Sideboard
4 Ensnaring Bridge
4 Fledgling Dragon
4 Blood Oath
3 Pulverize
The main differences between lists are the absence of Pillage, Magma Jet and Firebolt in Patrick’s list. Patrick really loves Lava Dart and I can’t really blame him – as far as I’m concerned it’s strictly better than Firebolt in all the relevant matchups. Pillage is also a card I was never really a fan of, so I completely understood why Patrick wouldn’t want it in his deck. It does provide you with an effective answer to Arcbound Ravager later in the game, however it’s not really as good as a burn spell against every other deck. As far as the Magma Jet versus Goblin Cadet is concerned, Patrick’s main concern was that he really wanted eight two-power one-drops in his deck to maximize the number of aggressive starting hands he would get. I’m not sure which is better yet, but Magma Jet seems a lot better against both Affinity and the mirror, so for now I would recommend Magma Jet.
Next time I’ll look at some of the other contenders in the format, Reanimator and Life.
Until next time
Osyp “Joe Black” Lebedowicz