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
7 comments ↓
Kataki bears The Touch.
@GRat
Yeah, pretty sure I’ll be waging a little spirit war on Saturday. See you in Edison?
It was the semis to eventual champ Shaun Piazza, also on Robots. Looks like the deck is resurgent, but Affinity is one of those decks that gets big, gets taken seriously, and gets bad again.
FYI, Affinity list on the Cruise? “Bot Brew”. Eh? Eh?
Instead of 4 Delay main, what about 4 Spell Snare? The three most common/dangerous cards vs. Affinity would be Kataki, Hurkyl’s Recall, Ancient Grudge right? Those all cost 2. You still keep the same artifact/non-artifact ratio in the above list so the deck is still just as potent. And the colors are still balanced so no land/sideboard changes to accomodate an awkward casting cost.
Also, didn’t Bill Stark side out Delay in every single match? I think he only kept in 2 Delays twice that day, siding out all 4 in every other match.
@Bill_Stark
Welcome to Bill Stark!
I think Robots are worth respecting this week. GRat was defeated multiple times by them in Pittsburgh, and the metal menaces took that PTQ. We are looking to an Affinity + Fae weekend from my predictions, but I want to take on all comers.
That said, MWC should be fine for Affinity + Fae, but I am just worried about the psychic energy required to play MWC well through 11+ rounds to win a PTQ. I am playing to preserve my energy late in the day.
[…] and current meta game, which is more than enough magic for my schedule. But, I was looking over the Affinity deck list Mike Flores posted the other day and I thought to myself, I have most of those cards. When building […]
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