Congratulations and condolences to Bill Stark who lost in the Top 8 (finals I think?) of the Magic Cruise PTQ.

Bill played an Affinity deck with four main deck Delay!

Delay is a particularly good card in Affinity due to that deck’s sometimes vulnerability to Ancient Grudge. One Delay should give most Affinity draws more than enough time to just kill the Ancient Grudge packing opponent before the original Grudge resolves, let alone rebuy shenanigans.

Here is Bill’s deck list from Affinity for the Magic Cruise:

4 Seat of the Synod
4 Vault of Whispers
4 Great Furnace
4 Tree of Tales
2 Blinkmoth Nexus

4 Ornithopter
4 Arcbound Worker
4 Arcbound Ravager
4 Frogmite
4 Myr Enforcer
2 Master of Etherium
4 Springleaf Drum
4 Cranial Plating
4 Chromatic Star

4 Thoughtcast
4 Delay

Sideboard:
3 Trickbind
1 Stifle
3 Scrabbling Claws
1 Relic of Progenitus
4 Atog
3 Ancient Grudge

You can read Bill’s report in full on The Starkington Post.

And that, if it makes any sense (doesn’t) is my segue into this video about Bant Aggro-Control in a format with a rising Affinity component:

LOVE
MIKE

This video is a short showcase of Kenneth Ellis’s PTQ-winning Bant Aggro-Control deck. The Bant deck has numerous angles of attack and paths to victory (as well as opportunities to disrupt the opponent’s forward momentum). I would definitely consider playing it.

Consider this a sneak preview of this week’s Top Decks

Kenneth’s deck, which won the San Diego area PTQ the last week of January:

2 Sword of Fire and Ice
2 Umezawa’s Jitte

2 Glen Elendra Archmage
3 Spell Snare
2 Stifle
3 Vendilion Clique
2 Venser, Shaper Savant

4 Bant Charm
2 Gaddock Teeg
3 Rhox War Monk

4 Birds of Paradise
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Troll Ascetic

3 Breeding Pool
4 Flooded Strand
2 Forest
4 Hallowed Fountain
2 Island
1 Plains
1 Temple Garden
2 Treetop Village
4 Windswept Heath

Sideboard
3 Ethersworn Canonist
1 Gaddock Teeg
3 Kataki, War’s Wage
3 Relic of Progenitus
1 Stifle
1 Umezawa’s Jitte
2 Voidslime
1 Worship

Now when I say that I would consider playing this deck, I am of course lumping it in a general sense with “Critical Mass” per the previous post “What Would MichaelJ Do?”. I think that either strategy could potentially gain from Noble Hierarch, particularly on the Tarmogoyf fight (Tarmogoyf race)-winning side(s).

Kenneth’s deck also plays Gaddock Teeg, which was so troublesome for me when I was playing ponderous control strategies earlier in the season; I don’t know how that would intersect with Path to Exile at this point, other than the fact that Kenneth’s deck has some basics to find and could itself benefit from some Path to Exile attention.

As you will see in an upcoming video, while Red is nice in the Critcal Mass-style sideboards, White is just a hammer. Poor Affinity.

LOVE
MIKE