Playing Affinity at the Grand Prix in Birmingham was a fantastic decision. Currently, the deck has only one truly bad matchup in the modern metagame (which is UW control) while also being one of the most consistent and powerful decks in the format. The deck executes its game plan effectively, even after most mulligans due to the power of cards like Cranial Plating and Steel Overseer. Even a five card hand involving Inkmoth Nexus and Arcbound Ravager can sometimes set up a kill on turn 3! Furthermore, the combination of Glimmervoid, Spire of Industry, Springleaf Drum and Mox Opal provide the deck with versatile sideboard options in order to combat bad matchups and fight against hate. This is necessary in a format as wide as modern where you can expect to play a large variety of different decks and maybe even completely dodge the best deck… Here’s the list that took me to an 11-4 finish at the GP, despite not even having any byes!

Deckbuilding Decisions

Currently, there’s very little that I would change about the deck list. Affinity is such a streamlined deck that there aren’t many flex slots for you to mess around with. The Hangarback Walker is basically the only card that I would even consider cutting and throughout the tournament, it completely over-performed. Many affinity players have opted for a single copy of Welding Jar in that slot which fills a very similar roll (adding resiliency against interaction) but has a few significant flaws:

1. It is a bad top deck in the late game
2. It makes hands weaker to discard spells
3. Unlike Hangarback Walker, it never improves draws when your opponent doesn’t have interaction.

The combination of Arcbound Ravager and Hangarback Walker proved unbeatable for almost every fair deck both during the tournament and in my testing leading up to it.

When moving onto the sideboard, you gain a little bit more freedom in deckbuilding. The two Etched Champions are a given but beyond that the world is your oyster! I took a fairly unique route compared to most by playing 3 copies of Thoughtseize and no counterspell effects like Stubborn Denial or Spell Pierce. In testing, I found that drawing counterspells after turns 1-2 always felt bad and that Thoughtseize’s ability to take Supreme Verdict in the most difficult matchup was crucial. Further, being able to bring in a full 3 copies of Thoughtseize and 2 Blood Moons in against RG Valakut truly swing that matchup into your favour – a fact that I was grateful of as I played Valakut 3 times in the tournament, twice more than I played even Death’s Shadow! Even if you couldn’t take a card from the opponent’s hand, the information gained from discard spells is a huge boon in a deck like Affinity when you are presented almost every turn with the option of going “all-in.”

Blood Moon was a card that I didn’t have much experience with in Affinity but as soon as I put it into my deck, I never looked back. Affinity is generally weak to three colour interactive decks such as the 4 Electrolyze Jeskai Control deck that has been gaining in popularity as well as traditional Jund and Abzan. Blood Moon catches many players off guard and even if they do play around it – using fetchlands to find basics, the mana constraints of these 3 colour decks means that sometimes, after game 2, Blood Moon can have any impact even if you don’t draw it. The “Get ‘em” factor is never to be underestimated.

Musings on the Tournament

Unsurprisingly for a modern tournament, I played a plethora of different matchups. This included (in no particular order): 1 Merfolk, 1 Jeskai Pyromancer, 1 Bant Eldrazi, 1 Death’s Shadow Aggro, 3 Burn, 3 Valakut, 1 Dredge, 1 Eldrazi Tron, 1 GB Tron, 1 Death and Taxes, 1 Affinity. My losses came from Dredge, GB Tron, Bant Eldrazi and Merfolk… round 1… after my opponent got a game loss for being late. Despite the slight feel-bad of losing the first round to an absolutely fantastic matchup, it’s interesting to see that 3 of my 4 losses were to decks that I would consider good matchups, with Dredge being the only bad matchup among them. This really goes to show that without mulligans against Merfolk and unluckiness against Urzatron, the deck and I were very close to being top 8 – top 32 material. For this reason, I feel that unless there is a dramatic shakeup in the Modern format, I’m going to be sticking with Affinity for the foreseeable future. Not only is it both powerful and skill intensive, gameplay is fantastic and involves a lot of bizarre interactions and combat math unlike any other deck.

Of course, the tournament itself wasn’t what made the Grand Prix so fun and enjoyable and I have to thank the rest of Team Troll Trader for making the weekend what it was. Highlights include Dom’s bad beats, Snop’s bad beats, casting turn 2 Blood Moons and George Channing’s crazy last round that locked him for the top 8. Lowlights include having to share a (very small) double bed with Pete Ward and Mattia Rizzi and having to spend an extended period of time with Matt Foulkes.

I hope you all enjoyed the article, next week I’ll be back with a complete Affinity deck guide, giving you all the tips and tricks you need to go out and win an FNM, PPTQ or even a GP with.