State of the Army: Affinity in 2019

Hey guys, thanks for checking in. After publishing my last article on a few sources (MTGSalvation, Reddit, and my Twitter) I had asked for inspiration moving forward — “what kind of content do you guys want to see?” basically. Overwhelmingly, there were three topics agreed on:

• A new and updated Affinity Primer,
• A sideboard guide, and
• A “state of the archetype” style deck.

In true robot fashion, the community is locked in on finding “optimal” lists and updating constantly with new tech. One such piece of tech is Experimental Frenzy; replacing situational three-drops with a card that has potential to take over just about any game in which it resolves, Frenzy has divided the community. Let’s start here.

Why Do Some People Oppose Experimental Frenzy?

In short, the card doesn’t have potential to “win the game” on the spot by resolving, whereas both Master of Etherium and Etched Champion effectively have that in their textbox for some match-ups. For example, resolving the Master versus a noninteractive combo deck basically says “you have one turn to kill me or stop me”, and advances your damage the turn it resolves. Champion has similar applications in the interactive match-ups, so it makes sense to use this comparison.

Allow me to be transparent here: I was originally opposed to Frenzy, after playing with it in the SB for two Comp Leagues on MTGO and then in the MB for a third league. I didn’t have a large sample, and I found myself wishing it was a Master in a couple match-ups where Frenzy wasn’t exactly potent. I completely dismissed the card before SCG Columbus, and that was a hasty mistake.

Here’s Why You Should Be Playing Experimental Frenzy Today

After bombing the Team Open main event in Columbus (4-3), I registered Affinity again for the Modern Classic. I ended up with a 6-3 record, losing to KCI, Living End, and UR Phoenix (tournament report incoming! stay tuned), and this was after Top 8’ing back-to-back SCG IQ $1ks with 4-0-2 and 5-1 records. Those were right after a narrow Top 8 miss at SCG Regionals with another 6-3 record. That’s 25-10 in Competitive REL matches, translating to over 70% winrate with the deck.

The deck is performing well for me, and I’ve been championing the “Stock List” for almost two years now. So why am I advocating for a change?

Because the matches I’ve lost in the last 2 months would have been dramatically different if my top-end had been Experimental Frenzy instead of a split between Etched Champion and Master of Etherium.

Here’s the thing: resolving Etched Champion versus Jeskai Control is “basically” game over, and the same goes for Jund. But they can find ways to get it off the table, sometimes by removing Metalcraft and other times by sweeping the board. But those highly interactive decks have almost zero ways to deal with an Enchantment in Game 1, and their sideboards aren’t well-equipped for Games 2 and 3 either; Experimental Frenzy shines in these matches.

So what about in the fast match-ups? KCI, Dredge, Amulet, Burn, Storm — these are all decks that make up a large part of the current Metagame, and Frenzy isn’t at its best here… but it’s better than Etched Champion 9 times out of 10, because it gives you the nutty “well maybe I flip 5 artifacts into a Cranial Plating and just kill them” out.

And something I realized watching Daniel Brouillet (Zyrn/Zyrnak) pilot his list through the Modern Challenge this weekend: you can play 3 Frenzy with 2 Master and still have the fast clock versus the decks where you need it.

This is what truly opened up my perspective, and after watching only three matches, I immediately queued up on MTGO with Affinity playing his starting 60 (SB differences) and rattled off a quick 4-1. Two matches versus UWx really let the Enchantment shine, and it even pulled heavy duty in a gritty match versus Spirits.

I strongly encourage you to pick up the card. It is more potent than Karn ever was, by virtue of the fact it doesn’t die to damage-based removal or being attacked. It also presents more cards on average in a single turn than a Karn will produce in the life of a game.

Moving on from Experimental Frenzy to the archetype as a whole: Affinity is in a strong position, but you need to be prepared to change the way you play the deck in certain match-ups. Let’s start with the new players in the room…

Krark-Clan Ironworks

This is possibly one of our worst match-ups, but it’s closer than it seems. My teammate for SCG Columbus played the deck, and we tested for 6 weeks leading up to the event. We put in 6-8 hours a week of testing, KCI vs all of the top tier, then Affinity vs all of the top tier. We also tested KCI vs Affinity at least 10 matches a week, because we thought it would be over-represented in the Team environment (“every team wants one of the best deck” kind of thinking).

You’re probably already aware of what’s important in this match-up (speed) but something many Affinity players are overlooking: the power of manlands. The main way you lose to KCI in Game 1 is virtue of pure drag racing; their deck will kill you by turn 4 over 60% of the time without disruption (based on ~15 coverage matches + our own testing). With Galvanic Blast, you can often buy yourself a single turn if you know how to disrupt the combo.

This is huge, because most players don’t understand the play patterns KCI often employs.

The ideal turn 4 for KCI is: tap 3 lands + Mox Opal, cast KCI. Sacrifice Mox Opal + Darksteel Citadel, play 1-mana egg, then play Scrap Trawler.

Your only hope to disrupt the combo is killing Scrap Trawler with the very first trigger on the stack, and hope they don’t have a second copy. If they combo, your next hope is they’re incompetent and don’t know the rules surrounding a loop very well. Here’s the situation:

KCI is comboing off. They finally get to a situation where they can establish a loop. In several of their loops, they will net 0-3 mana and draw a card. This is important to note.

Once the opponent has demonstrated “how” the loop works, the rules state that both players must basically agree to a number of times the combo will execute, and then the loop will be executed that many times – without interruption. Here’s how you can pick up some wins:

When the KCI player demonstrates a loop that nets mana and draws a card, you can ask him the question: “How much mana are you producing with this loop?” and here’s what they should say:
“I’m going to repeat this loop X amount of times, where X is the number of cards in my deck.”

And here’s what they usually say:
“I’m making 14 million mana.”

This is when you call a judge, because your opponent has declared they are drawing millions of cards when their deck only contains ~40-50. You win this game. This rules interaction is 100% legal, and there is no “gray area” here. Once you confirm they have a loop, and they say they’re making some arbitrarily large number of mana, you win the game. They cannot reneg on their loop number once it’s declared and agreed upon. This goes without saying, but you’ll only get one win per opponent like this at best. Use this at your own discretion.

Once you get to sideboarding, the match is actually pretty interesting; I put in a single Ceremonious Rejection to accompany my pair of Stubborn Denials, because the hardest thing for KCI to beat is Counter Magic backed up with Pressure. Keep in mind they sideboard out ~6-10 cards versus us, so their combo is usually a lot less deterministic (they’re more likely to brick) and they will have a lot of interaction (so don’t all-in on Inkmoth into open mana).

U/R Phoenix

This match is one that’s hard to navigate because our opponents have so many decision points, and often prioritize different cards on our side of the table differently. If the opponent is trying to drag race us, or flip Thing in the Ice, it’s usually our game to win; if they’re playing a slower game, using Phoenixes to block and leveraging their ability to find their 6-10 removal spells every game, we’re in for a tough match.

Game 1, I tend to focus on making a single threat larger than 5/5. They play Lightning Axe, Bolt, and Gut Shot, so this can be pretty difficult, but if you can navigate the game to a point where you have double Ravager, or Ravager + Overseer, or Blinkmoth + other Nexus + Ravager, you should be in good shape.

Using your lands to kill here helps play around Thing in the Ice being cast + flipped in a single turn, which is sometimes counterintuitive. I’ve won several matches versus this deck (6-1 in Comp REL, and my loss at SCGCOL was to the guy I beat on my way to a $1k Top 8 the month before), but it is almost always close.

Small note regarding gamelan here: Thoughtseize is incredibly potent to keep them off triple-spell turns, and discard/counter a Faithless Looting early is extremely helpful to keep them from putting birds in the yard. I soft-stub turn 1/3 Faithless Looting very frequently. I also answer Manamorphose religiously, as it’s another huge enabler for their deck. Especially turn 3, countering Manamorphose will likely timewalk them for the turn.

Hardened Scales

This is a deck that’s been gaining steam over the last several months, with many prominent Affinity pilots making the switch. We’re finally starting to see those pilots come back to Traditional Affinity as they realize many of the busted starts from Hardened Scales also exist in Affinity, but they’re much weaker to Stony Silence in exchange for being stronger versus removal spells (which isn’t the state of modern currently).

For our match-up, there are very few things you can do to out-play the opponent in terms of tactics, so it’s important to have an overlying strategy. In general, whichever player is best with Arcbound Ravager will take the day; this gets blown completely out of the water if your opponent has an early Hardened Scales, but with Galvanic Blast you can usually check a Walking Ballista before it gets out of control, or kill their target for a large Modular buff.

When it comes to sideboarding, I think Spellskite is one of your best cards, followed closely by Thoughtseize. Nabbing a payoff from their hand is extremely important, more so than having Ancient Grudge, because Ballista and Hangarback both count for several cards upon resolution.

One of your other potent tools is Master of Etherium; a body larger than anything on their side of the table gives you large advantage, because Hardened Scales doesn’t play very many flyers. Building up an army of flyers while managing the board with Blasts will take you a long way. Keep Hangarback from getting too large, and always keep Blast up if you can represent it (holding a land, or even a Memnite if you have to). Opponent is very often dead to Inkmoth attacks because of this lack in the flight department.

Conclusion

Wrapping up today’s article, let’s look forward to our next few installments: a sideboard guide, and a new primer.

I’m looking for any and all input from the community, any tips or tricks (no matter how simple you might think they are… sometimes I forget the basics!), and any sideboard tech you guys have found potent. Keep in mind I will be building my guide based on the top 10 decks found on MTGGoldfish, so if you’re wanting to know the plan for a less popular (but competitive) deck, leave a comment below and I’ll do my best to include it.

As for the primer, my work is going to take a while. I plan to include everything from the history of the deck to the current strategies and tactics, as well as card choices and sideboard tech, so it’ll be a few weeks before I can get it published. If you have anything you’d like to input, shoot it my way or leave a comment; I’m very open to collaborating with other members of the community!

Finally, regarding requests for streaming: I’m just starting to come out of the slow season work-wise, so I’m trying to find about 10-15 hours a week that I can dedicate consistently to streaming. I’m also wanting to build that schedule around when you guys are most often available, so I’ll be putting a poll up on my Twitter in a couple weeks to determine the best time to stream that meets everyone’s needs.

That’s all for this week! Hope you are having a kick-butt start to 2019. 🙂