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Unless you have been hiding under a rock for about four months, you will know that the new and upcoming net-deck is Affinity. Those of you who kept track of Kobe progress will undoubtedly notice the high Affinity concentration, and more important, Skullclamp in Affinity. If you thought Skullclamp was good before, watch what happens when you throw it in a deck that casts half of its creatures for free.

Of course, that is Block Constructed, and this is Standard. While there are similarities, there is one card that makes a world of difference.

I’ve been toying with Centaur Glade ever since it popped up in Onslaught. Anyone who played against it or with it in Limited knows how good it can be. It never made a splash in Constructed, though. It was too slow. Boy, oh, boy, does it give control decks fits, though. If you can resolve one against a control deck, you can hold all of those spells in your hand and make them deal with uncounterable 3/3 Centaur tokens. That’s nothing to sneeze at. The question remained: How can I make this card work? The answer always eluded me… until now.

Nonbos are combos that almost work, but are either too slow or too inconsistent to win anything – at least, not every match in a long tournament. So, you ask, why should I read an article about combos that don’t work? Two reasons. First, knowing this may help you understand what a Regionals opponent is trying to do to you – at least in rounds one and two. These combos are good enough that people will try them. Second, I have wrongly called combos nonbos in the past. That means that there is a chance that I have the core of a real deck, but it just needs a little tuning.

So what you have with Skullclamp is a whole lot of people who know how good it is going to be and a smaller – but still substantial – number of people trying to figure out how to beat it. The thing is, you can’t necessarily go up against a Skullclamp and attack it directly. That’s like trying to play a G/W deck full of Uktabi Orangutans and Monk Realists in an attempt to beat Trix. Sure, you can technically destroy their relevant permanents, but you can’t do so in a timely enough manner for it to matter.

People, I’ve got Death Cloud on my mind like Georgia. A lot of the decks I’ve been cooking up lately have been trained on finding the proper combination of Magical Cards that turn an otherwise symmetrical spell into a one-way trip down Broken Street. There are two particular builds that I’m working with right now — one mono-Black and one Black/Green.

So what does a kid with a 2019 Contructed rating who can’t PTQ do for fun? Well apparently he goes 17-1 last weekend, winning oodles of prizes with a beatdown deck running four Skullclamps. Then he riffs on how Limited is like Legos, gives you deck construction recipes to avoid, and tosses in a rogue Vedalken Archmage deck to boot.

I’m back with all the news that’s fit to print about Sarnia Affinity, the control Affinity deck that’s grown in popularity amongst Type Two players ever since it was first unveiled by J.M. Babin at Ontario Provincials. I’ve pretty much taken over”official” Sarnia Affinity deck development post-Provincials, first cleaning it up and putting together a decent sideboard for the first article and now, putting together, testing, and publishing the post-Darksteel edition.

Way back when Mirrodin was still just Bacon, I was in rapture over Stompy Stomp. I had some good decks, and some laughs, but once the set actually came out, and the name changed to Tooth and Nail, I never got around to using it. It was always on my “decks to build” list, but nothing more. Then Kevin started beating on me with a Stompy Stomp deck last week, and I decided it was time to give it another try. In Type Two, no less.

The amazing thing is that the deck actually seems to work. Early Darksteel Colossus beatings are surprisingly effective…