A year ago, I wouldn’t be caught dead playing a deck like this. One look at the list and two games later, and the proxies would be in the garbage. You have only four good cards and so many complete blanks.
Now, it’s a different story. You get to play four auto-wins? Sign me up! That’s around forty percent of my games won before I even start making real decisions, a good start on favorable matchups across the board. Don’t draw one? Guess I can mulligan or get there with some 2/2’s and top decks. Somewhere along the line, the disgust of looking at a hand of mediocre cards turned to excitement. How are we going to get there this time?
There are decks that have auto-wins and are still full of quality cards, but those don’t always exist. Sometimes it is enough to say I automatically crush you half the time, do nothing fifteen percent of the time, and the rest we have to play Magic. If your opponent’s decks aren’t insane, this is probably enough for favorable matchups across the board.
All that talk about card quality aside, this deck has some of the real remaining broken draws in Modern. Mull to five cards? No big deal, kill them on turn 3 on the play. I’ve even had a turn two show up, albeit under a couple small conditions and a perfect nine cards seen on the draw. Both of these are also playing a much more conservative version of the deck. When we were testing it for Philadelphia and it was geared towards that metagame, you could push all out and have an average clock on par with the combo decks.
What deck am I talking about? To answer Jeopardy style: What deck from the top 8 of Pro Tour Philadelphia had no cards banned from it?
Creatures (27)
Lands (11)
Spells (22)
Sideboard
Credit where credit is due to Chikara Nakajima, whose list I blatantly stole to start with and haven’t changed much.
Let’s break this down.
The Do Somethings:
Cranial Plating
Best card in the deck by miles. All the damage of a Ravager with none of the risk. It was the best card in past versions of Affinity and has only gotten better since Scars of Mirrodin. Mox Opal makes double black much more accessible; most of your creatures have some form of evasion with the addition of Signal Pest and Vault Skirge; Inkmoth Nexus doubles up the pump; and the new red spells start changing Cranial Plating from three hits to lethal to one hit to burn range. It’s not just a game-ending threat anymore; it’s Ball Lightning with buyback.
Arcbound Ravager
The fairy godmother itself, but not quite as intimidating as Plating these days. It works wonders against opponents without mana up, but instant-speed removal has come a long ways in the past eight years. The resilience of Plating is much preferred to the slightly reduced cost and pseudo-evasion of Ravager. Regardless, this card is still worth a ton of damage, and sometimes you just push and hope they don’t have it.
Atog
Without evasion, this guy does not fare well in the current metagame of fair decks with things like creatures to block with. Still, post-board against people trying to not play fair, you can just bash their face in. If things like Storm start flooding the metagame, his time may come again, but until now the ear-to-ear grin is relegated to the board.
Tempered Steel
This is the one card I wish I could play in this list but can’t. I only want three, as I imagine it would be clunky from time to time, but the card is obviously amazing. I’m just not sure how the mana would ever work for double white without just cutting most of the Nexuses, which is a sacrifice I don’t think you can make.
Almost Do Somethings:
Galvanic Blast and Shrapnel Blast
Red spells are why this deck is better than previous Affinity decks, which relied on keeping a single big threat alive and riding it to victory. These threats tended towards the three-mana range, making your draws clunky and altering your land count into awkward maxima of flood and screw. Your Ravager all-ins were much worse, as they had to reach further, and your random beats were complete blanks, as your win was either one card doing twenty or you just dying. Now that you play real red cards, these issues smooth out. Some chip shots and a couple fours and fives to the face easily adds to twenty; you can easily stop your curve at two mana; burn spells get much better in multiples while three-drops tend not to; and the distance your big threats have to reach gets closer to one or two hits.
On a complete tangent, the art for the FNM Shrapnel Blast is insane. I don’t know why, but the concept of the neurok’s head being a grenade is really cool.
Etched Champion
When all your big game amounts to suiting up a guy with equipment or Modular counters, may as well play an Invisible Stalker. In terms of mediocre beats, this guy serves up the best of them. Phantom Warriors and Lava Axes, good old Core Set Limited winning games in a semi-Eternal format.
Blinkmoth Nexus, Inkmoth Nexus
The counts on these might swap, as multiple Inkmoths is better than multiple Blinkmoths, as you get to have backup poison sources, but value is value. While it doesn’t synergize with the burn, infect comes up from time to time, turning the finishers into sure two-shots or sometimes even one-shots if you ping them a couple times with just the land to start.
Thirty-Five Stone Blanks:
These may sound bitter and spiteful, but if you want to play this deck, you have to face the facts. You get to play some busted cards on the condition the rest of your deck has to do some really heavy lifting.
Signal Pest
If we have all these blanks, maybe we can have one card that makes them marginal! That said, picks up a Plating well enough, and the fact it doesn’t actually fly is cute when you bin your board to a Ravager in response to Living End bringing back Deadshot Minotaurs.
Vault Skirge
Life gain is much worse in this format than Standard just based on creature size and deck game plans. There’s also the issue that with the pumps this deck has, you usually just kill them instead of having reasonable-sized hits of three damage with Tempered Steel.
Memnite and Frogmite
Good for a damage or two from time to time until they get blocked by anything with legs. Not having flying sucks. In Standard it’s a victory any time Memnite trades with any other card, and things are no different here. Frogmite has this history of leading to absurd starts, but today it’s a 2/2 in a world of 2/3s and even costs mana, as you don’t have the full contingent of artifact lands.
Zero power. At least it lifts a Plating over Tarmogoyfs. More often than not just gets haumphed to Battlegrowth a Ravager.
Mountains, Mox Opal, Darksteel Citadel, Springleaf Drum–
Mostly conditional mana, and you have to work to cast your splash (aka main) color. At least when you draw multiple Opals, you can use Ravager to turn them from complete blanks to Spirit Guides.
Sideboard Hate:
Ethersworn Canonist and Mindbreak Trap
Canonist is the worse of the two as Storm hate, as it dies to removal, the most common being Lightning Bolt and Magma Jet. Canonist is also the better card across the board. It shuts off Cascade combo and Elves where Trap doesn’t; Ad Nauseam can’t kill through it while Trap is just a step or two away from being worked around; and I’ve even boarded it against Splinter Twin to slow down their cantrips and prevent them from having counter backup for the kill. The split between the two is because you still want the most hate against Storm, as it is the only combo deck that can kill faster than you a relevant portion of the time. I would advise testing Storm and learning when to Trap them, as these lists have a lot of points where they can just win through it if you cast it incorrectly.
Spellskite
I’m not actually sure you want this against spot removal from normal decks, but it combats Twin while giving you the option of doing so. The one Torpor Orb is currently there, as I can’t imagine wanting more than two of this card elsewhere, but if enough Burn decks show up, it might switch back to the third 0/4. It is also worth noting it can redirect Modular triggers in the mirror or if someone else brings it in against you.
Blood Moon and Magus of the Moon
You should be boarding this in far less than you think. I’ve had a lot of scenarios where it’s just a clunky do nothing when you can just kill them by playing normally. There are obviously a bunch of decks it completely colds, but if it isn’t obvious, I would lean against bringing it in if anything real is on the line. Of course, if it’s just some random match, I would go for it, as you won’t learn otherwise. The reason for the enchantment over the 2/2 is Zoo, as holy crap is that matchup atrocious. You just have to mise them not casting spells ever, and the 2/2 is just going to get Bolted. Most of the other matchups, I would prefer to have the Gray Ogre, but things like Tron should be easy enough.
Tormod’s Crypt, Nihil Spellbomb, and Relic of Progenitus
I would rather attack Living End by not letting them cascade than letting them cast Wraths and get guys in by just cycling more in response or even just paying five and going to town with some Beetles.
Sweepers
I’ve tried Arc Trail and been seriously unimpressed. I also don’t know what matchups I would even want them in. Elves? Who even plays that?
Artifact Removal
The only artifacts I’ve run into that matter outside the mirror are Wurmcoil Engine and Engineered Explosives on two, neither of which Shattering Spree or Smash to Smithereens is good against.
Other things
I have this nightmare someone is going to Troll Ascetic Worship me or play some other absurd enchantment I have to read and can never beat. Until that happens, I’m fine with no outs. And yes, I realize you can poison someone out through Worship.
General Sideboarding:
The first cards to go out are usually Frogmites and Etched Champions. When Champion is bad should be fairly evident; if they aren’t blocking and aren’t using spot removal to control the board, it’s just a Gray Ogre. Frogmite seems odd, but once you play the deck, you realize it’s the worst of the blanks. The rest are all lands or one- and zero-drops that make your mana artifacts work. Against combo, I board out a Vault Skirge or two and maybe leave in a Frogmite, as it clocks a little better, but in general those seven are the bad ones. Conveniently, there aren’t many matchups you want Etched Champion, Blood Moon, and Spellskite, so there aren’t many scenarios you have to deviate from this plan. The only time I can think of you want all those is against Zoo, where my current plan is boarding out the Frogmites, a Memnite, and a Shrapnel Blast. The logic here is the ground guys can’t swing a Plating through, and Shrapnel Blast feels like a Force of Will, in that it puts you down on cards in what can be an attrition fight. This could easily be wrong, and it is very possible you want the Blast, as you need to punish them for having a mono fetch-shock mana base.
As for plans if someone shows up with spite for you, I’ve got nothing. Seriously. Ancient Grudge? Guess I better draw more Platings. Creeping Corrosion? Nexus beatdown time. Kataki? Well, I do have something for that. Gut Shot you back to 2004 when that wasn’t even a card! You actually have a ton of outs against that last one without teching between the non-artifact lands and Galvanic Blasts.
I’m not saying this deck is the best in the format. I’m actually sure it isn’t and that some deck with Cryptic Command and Snapcaster Mage is going to dominate by the time March rolls around. But it is going to crush unprepared opponents at the start of the season and at some point in the middle when people forget about it. At the very least, I’m going to keep playing it for now, but that’s mostly because I enjoy it way too much when I double Galvanic Blast someone out after random terrible cards do the other twelve.
On an end note, the absurd draws I was talking about earlier:
Turn two kill:
Opponent fetches a basic on one to Sleight of Hand (19). Turn one Memnite, Ornithopter, Darksteel Citadel, Mox Opal, Springleaf Drum, Atog. Opponent fetches again on turn two for some other cantrips (18). Turn two Blinkmoth Nexus, Vault Skirge, Shrapnel Blast something (13), Atog the other six artifacts and swing for exact lethal.
Turn Three off the mull to five:
Turn one Inkmoth Nexus, Memnite, Springleaf Drum, Mox Opal. Turn two play a land and a Ravager, sacrifice all the non-land guys to the Ravager and move it onto the Inkmoth. There’s probably a ton of other ways to do this, but I’m easily amused by poison kills despite MODO changing the message from Player A has been poisoned!!!!
Assorted Modern Technology I’ve Picked Up Along the Way:
–Living End is going to be all about what your non-combo spells are. Travis Woo won with it because of Leyline of the Void and Night of Soul’s Betrayal being relevant. Some of the cool utility options I’ve seen are Faerie Macabre (breaks the symmetry and is another free guy to pitch on top of Street Wraith), Dismember (see Oblivion Ring in the old Hypergenesis decks), and Jund Charm (removal, graveyard answer, and sometimes just the old fashioned combat trick for when your 4/4 Beetles run into their 5/6 Lhurgoyf), and I’m sure this is just scratching the surface.
-On the subject, Restore Balance is a thing. Again, you have to figure out what spells you want, but there’s so much more room for flexibility without having to run all the cyclers like Living End. It’s just a matter of figuring out which planeswalker you want to support. Tezzeret seems like the natural fit with all the Borderposts, but I’m not sure how the 2UB cost works with a deck trying to cast Violent Outburst and Ardent Plea. Ajani Vengeant and Garruk Relentless are the other two options, but the first isn’t great at actually killing people, and the other making tokens doesn’t mesh well with Balancing away the board. This is going to be my next project, so if it goes anywhere I’ll write about it.
-In terms of U/R combo, Storm is the real deal. Sometimes you just win on three, and it has Empty the Warrens so counters aren’t the end of the world. I’m not sure how much I like Desperate Ravings beyond the fact you can cast it off Ritual mana, but the rest of the stock list seems really solid. One card I’m not sure is common knowledge I mentioned above is Magma Jet, which is the best answer to hate bears. Lightning Bolt is probably a better option against Zoo, as it can kill a Kird Ape, but against these random Vial decks, I would rather scry two. Just wanted to remind people so they aren’t caught unaware by Grapeshots for 20 to the face and the like the first week of PTQs. Hive Mind is also a thing and is probably better against counterspells because of Pact of Negation, but I wouldn’t start the season with it, as it is behind Storm in raw power.
–Mistbind Clique has been showing up on MODO in reasonable numbers, but that might be because Zoo appears very underrepresented. I still really like the red lists from Worlds with Splinter Twin and Lightning Bolt but haven’t put in the time to brew up a list let alone actually assemble one.
-As for that Snapcaster deck I said is probably the best, I’m not sure if it is tempo or control. On the control side, I really like the Teaching deck that just ends the game by casting Cryptic eight times in a row, but a list on that has to wait until you have a real metagame. On the aggressive side, this is where I’m at with zero games of testing:
Creatures (16)
Lands (18)
Spells (26)
Sword might be a do nothing, but I like the rest. A red build has also been floating around MODO with Lightning Bolts and Delvers. Bolt seems like a real incentive if things move towards a Zoo heavy metagame, but the discard is better against most other things. As for Delver, I’m not sold on just Visions being enough to activate it.
-These are just scratching the surface. This is going to be a metagame where you can break it with a slightly suboptimal deck in terms of raw power that just attacks from a different angle. Have fun brewers; this format is for you!