"Warning: The dominarian surgeon general has found that savage beatings can lead to chump blocks, life reduction, and even game loss."
(Graphic Violence, Unhinged set)
I wanted to update this deck, but the latest decklist took on another direction and it would seem weird to change that post's original primer. So I opted for a new thread, although parts of the primer have been extracted from the previous thread. Mods can close the other thread if needed.
Quipaffinity is the weird merging of two archetypes. Equipster & Affinity.
Affinity tries to beat the opponent fast and hard winning by turn 3-4 before the sweepers arrive and before the opponent gets a chance to combo out. After the initial wave it seems to lose all tempo and relies on top decks while pushing damage with whatever is still on the field. It has very few answers to combo decks which is why it goes for a fast all-in.
Equipster on the other hand has to survive the early game while setting up equips so that it can then start controlling the field and getting aggressive. It is very fragile in the early rounds and then shines past turns 4-5. The problem, obviously, is getting past turns 4-5.
One shines in the early game, the other shines in the mid/late game. By combining these two styles we have a more aggressive start while at the same time setting up the equips that allow us to outmaneuver the opponent in the mid/late game. This merging effectively lessens the reliance on Puresteel Paladin that most equipster decks suffer. Basically it is a working equip deck that gets bonkers with a Paladin but does not need one to win. It can essentially keep amazing control of the field with the basilisk combo while getting tons of damage through after stabilization. Basically it takes the fast and evasive aggro aspects of Affinity and mixes it with an Equipster engine and an all-around control toolbox for mid/late game aggro-control and to top it off it adds protection to make it stick on the board easier and longer.
It is a quick adapting deck. It has a 50/50 aggro/control ratio feel. However, the selection of equips and the capacity to tutor equips allows you to tip the scale for a 75/25 aggro/control or control/aggro playstyle really early. That is what makes it versatile since some decks require you to focus on control (basilisk combo), other decks require you to kill fast (cranial), and some require you to go into survival mode (Basilisk+cranial for huge chunks of lifegain). To which side should you incline must be quickly decided as soon as your opponent reveals his deck. You either go for a Cranial Plating for a fast beating or the Basilisk Collar + Viridian Longbow/Mortarpod to keep the field empty. The good thing is even if you decide to go 75/25 to either side, it balances back to 50/50 after a few tuns of dumping the rest of your equips.
Equipster:
Puresteel Paladin - The Enabling General. Turns every equip into a cantrip, which is just insane with more than one Paladin on field. It lets me re-arrange all equips for pre-combat shenanigan combos (Basilisk Collar+Viridian Longbow), then I can re-arrange them for combat and after that on main phase two I re-arrange them again to stand against my opponent's army. Most equipster decks complains revolve around the reliance on Paladin. It break the deck open undoubtedly, but my focus was on making a deck that could do well without paladin and turn bonkers once we got one out.
Mortarpod - Living Weapon. Pings. Combos with Basilisk.
Basilisk Collar - This is the decks MVE (Most Valuable Equip) as it combos with all other equips as an answer to diferrent situations. You can kill creatures by pinging with longbow or mortarpod, you can gain huge chunks of life with or without cranial and you can turn your blockers into assasins by giving them deathtouch. Its just too valuable in almost every situation.
Accorder's Shield - 0cmc, aids in metalcraft early. It gets any creature outside bolt's range and gives vigilance to your attackers allowing them to remain untapped for blocking purposes.
Viridian Longbow - On its own it allows you to ping players, creatures or planeswalkers. Combine it with basilisk and you got a lifegaining creature killing machingun. Once you empty the field no creature will be able to survive afterwards since you can kill anything at instant speed with the combo. Combine it further with mortarpod and you can tap for a ping and sac for another ping.
Flayer Husk - It aids on metalcraft early but its main purpose is to put up a body on the field while potentially being a cantrip.
Steelshaper's Gift - I wonder why equipster decks don't run this, it always finds the equip you need when you need it. Specially good when the deck's equips combine with each other rather than being stand alone powerhouses.
Affinity:
Ornithopter - A free flying body that aids metalcraft.
Etched Champion - The army of one. Once metalcraft is attained (usually turn 1 or 2) this becomes a serious threat to most every deck by having protection from all colors.
Cranial Plating - A powerhouse on its own, insane when combined with Basilisk Collar. Really sick when you got evasive bodies like thopters, champions and inkmoths.
Mox Opal - Its modern, who doesn't need some ramp? It also aids metalcraft itself. Could see some sick plays after the new legend rule is active.
Protection:
Spellskite - A great wall with a 4 toughness body. Can survive most burn spells. Protects the player and both creatures and equips. It just fits the deck so splendid. It hoses some decks on its own (infect, auras, etc) and when it starts equiping stuff on it becomes a serious threat.
Pithing Needle - Because not all decks rely on creatures.
Swiftfoot Boots - A paladin with boots on will go a long way, if your opponent can't get rid paladin there is not much they can hope for. Hexproof is excelent in an equip deck since losing a well equipped creatures means you lost turns ad mana equipping it.
Thoughtseize - The latest addition. It takes care of the opponent's biggest threat while letting me look at the opponent's hand which is essential in a paladin deck.
Lands:
Glimmervoid - Easily supported with the heavy artifact theme. Allows to play spells outside our colors.
Inkmoth Nexus - If all else fails, equip Cranial Plating. Some argue for Blinkmoth, but this one works just as good and works even better against lifegain decks.
I haven't seen but one or two equipster lists that runs Viridian Longbow for the Basilisk combo, which is more reliable and effective than Mortarpod since your creature doesn't die with longbow. Longbow costs 1 and can ping players, walkers or 1 toughness creatures.
They all run 1-4 of the swords of A & B set. This list runs none of those swords. The reason being that first, modern is too fast a format. And second, the swords are awesomely powerful, but they do not solve any of the usual problems the deck encounters. By the time you can abuse these swords you'll be way behind most always.
All of them run cards like Batterskull or high power equips which skyrocket the mana curve. My highest cmc and/or ability costs 3.
All of them run Sylvok lifestaff which is situational at best. The main reason for this is to gain lifepoints as you sac your creatures through mortarpod+basilisk. By combining Basilisk with longbow instead, you don't need to rely on lifestaff to stay alive.
Only a few run 1 swiftfoot boots, if at all. The boots are extremely useful to hexproof creatures on an equip deck, losing a well equipped creature means you lost all the turns and mana spent equipping. Plus haste is a godsend when you both go into topdeck mode.
On the creature part, I haven't seen one that runs Ornithopter, which is one of my key players with flying + equips and it aids metalcraft with its 0cmc, which also useful to have mana up for equip costs.
Very rarely do they run spellskite, which protects you, your creatures and your equips while having a toughness body and being able to equip things himself.
Not all of them run Etched Champion, and just a few of the ones that run it have 3 copies or more. Champion is the deck's best finisher. An argument could be made for Invisible Stalker, but stalker can't block like champion can.
Deck runs 3 Cranial Platings, most equipster decks run 1 and have no way to fetch it.
It also runs removal in Dispatch which is rarely seen in these other decks, and I have yet to see one that runs Steelshaper's Gift, which always finds the perfect equip at the perfect time.
In essence all the Paladin decklists I've seen so far have one single strategy, beef up your creatures and beat through the opponent's creatures, and the Basilisk combo is run as backup. My strategy is completely backwards, I try to keep control with the Basilisk combo, and then kill, even if I don't pull my combo the way I win is through evasive champion and thopter attacks rather than forcing a beefed up creature through an army.
There are other differences, just wanted to point out the most obvious ones.
This was a quick primer, I'll keep expanding on it and I will post testing pics periodically to show off what it can do. So far its doing much better than any previous list I've tested, specially with the addition of needles and thoughtseizes.
Good effort but this looks just like a regular Puresteel list.
At first glance yes, it does. But thats why I made this:
I haven't seen but one or two equipster lists that runs Viridian Longbow for the Basilisk combo, which is more reliable and effective than Mortarpod since your creature doesn't die with longbow. Longbow costs 1 and can ping players, walkers or 1 toughness creatures.
They all run 1-4 of the swords of A & B set. This list runs none of those swords. The reason being that first, modern is too fast a format. And second, the swords are awesomely powerful, but they do not solve any of the usual problems the deck encounters. By the time you can abuse these swords you'll be way behind most always.
All of them run cards like Batterskull or high power equips which skyrocket the mana curve. My highest cmc and/or ability costs 3.
All of them run Sylvok lifestaff which is situational at best. The main reason for this is to gain lifepoints as you sac your creatures through mortarpod+basilisk. By combining Basilisk with longbow instead, you don't need to rely on lifestaff to stay alive.
Only a few run 1 swiftfoot boots, if at all. The boots are extremely useful to hexproof creatures on an equip deck, losing a well equipped creature means you lost all the turns and mana spent equipping. Plus haste is a godsend when you both go into topdeck mode.
On the creature part, I haven't seen one that runs Ornithopter, which is one of my key players with flying + equips and it aids metalcraft with its 0cmc, which also useful to have mana up for equip costs.
Very rarely do they run spellskite, which protects you, your creatures and your equips while having a toughness body and being able to equip things himself.
Not all of them run Etched Champion, and just a few of the ones that run it have 3 copies or more. Champion is the deck's best finisher. An argument could be made for Invisible Stalker, but stalker can't block like champion can.
Deck runs 3 Cranial Platings, most equipster decks run 1 and have no way to fetch it.
It also runs removal in Dispatch which is rarely seen in these other decks, and I have yet to see one that runs Steelshaper's Gift, which always finds the perfect equip at the perfect time.
In essence all the Paladin decklists I've seen so far have one single strategy, beef up your creatures and beat through the opponent's creatures, and the Basilisk combo is run as backup. My strategy is completely backwards, I try to keep control with the Basilisk combo, and then kill, even if I don't pull my combo the way I win is through evasive champion and thopter attacks rather than forcing a beefed up creature through an army.
There are other differences, just wanted to point out the most obvious ones.
The core might be the same, Puresteel+living weapons, but the game plan is completely different which is why the equip and creature selection is different. Eg. No swords, no lifestaff, no batterskull, no glint hawks, no kor duelist, no vault skirge, etc. It focuses on one thing alone, dumping early creatures like affinity does and suiting them up with equips that when combined can control the field while gaining me massive amounts of life.
The other big difference is that puresteel lists tend to do rather bad without puresteel himself, which is what keeps the archetype from a competitive rank. This list does very good on its own and goes insane if you do happen to land a paladin. The way its able to do that is by running more 0 and 1cc equips and less 3 and 4 cc equips (swords, batterskull, etc). That way you have enough mana to suit up your thopters, champions, spellskites and germs regardless of the presence of puresteel. The other way its able to fare well on its own is the equip selection:
Cranial on its own kills.
Cranial + Basilisk will skyrocket your lifepoints giving you enough time to take control.
Basilisk on its own is sick, specially equipped on champion.
Basilisk + Mortarpod is the standard combo on every puresteel list.
Basilisk + Viridian Longbow is a creature killing machinegun that outshines mortarpod combo.
Those are the basic combos. Pretty cheap to play and equip regardless of paladin. Sure puresteel lists run these, but they do not focus on these, they run these as backups. So the numbers are different (1 Basilisk in most lists, 3 on mine and so on).
-Most lists rely on paladin for cantrips so they don't run gift and run too few copies of important equips so they can run powerhouse equips (swords, etc). This is why those lists suck when they don't draw paladin or it gets removed.
-No puresteel list that I have seen has ever had needle mainboard, which helps a lot versus top decks like tron, pod, twin, etc.
-No puretseel list has run discard options either because most of them are either mono white or W/U and just have one basice gameplan, beef up and beat up.
How does it share anything with affinity?
Aside from the early dumping strategy that it incorporates, the cards that come straight from affinity lists are:
Ornithopter - Present in no puresteel list at all until now. Etched Champion - Affinity's finisher, could be dumped turn 2 or even turn 1 once legend rule becomes active, at which point mox opal will be a 4-of. Cranial Plating - Run as a 1-of in SOME puresteel lists, this is what gives the deck its raw power better than any sword. Ask my last opponent who lost to a 22/1 flayer husk when I was down in my last 2 life points. Mox Opal - Due to legend rule this is rarely seen in puresteel lists.
Its not an affinity list, its an equipster list, it just took bits of affinity to make the early game more stable and fast.
Skirge only aids in lifegain AFTER it loses you life. Thopter does a better job at chump blocking due to its cmc and since I play 3 basilisk lifegain is inevitable in the deck. Basically, every creature in the deck serves a better purpose than skirge would.
Citadel's purpose would be to aid in metalcraft, but test the deck a bit and you'll notice metalcraft is constantly attained on turn 2 and often times on turn 1. Why would I run a colorless producing land to do something the deck already does? If run a colorless producing land it would be Academy Ruins, not Citadel. That way I could get back my thopters, champions and spellskites.
Upon testing, Etherium Sculptor is awesome, as is Academy Ruins. Will post a new uw version tomorrow. The affinity version is good, but the more the merrier.
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(Graphic Violence, Unhinged set)
.:Quipaffinity:.
3 Plains
3 Cavern of Souls
3 Marsh Flats
2 Inkmoth Nexus
1 Godless Shrine
4 Puresteel Paladin
4 Ornithopter
3 Etched Champion
3 Spellskite
4 Mortarpod
3 Cranial Plating
3 Basilisk Collar
2 Swiftfoot Boots
2 Accorder's Shield
2 Viridian Longbow
2 Flayer Husk
2 Steelshaper's Gift
2 Thoughtseize
Permanents: 3
3 Mox Opal
2 Pithing Needle
3 Wear/Tear
3 Grafdigger's Cage
2 Thoughtseize
2 Pithing Needle
1 Cavern of Souls
Quipaffinity is the weird merging of two archetypes. Equipster & Affinity.
Affinity tries to beat the opponent fast and hard winning by turn 3-4 before the sweepers arrive and before the opponent gets a chance to combo out. After the initial wave it seems to lose all tempo and relies on top decks while pushing damage with whatever is still on the field. It has very few answers to combo decks which is why it goes for a fast all-in.
Equipster on the other hand has to survive the early game while setting up equips so that it can then start controlling the field and getting aggressive. It is very fragile in the early rounds and then shines past turns 4-5. The problem, obviously, is getting past turns 4-5.
One shines in the early game, the other shines in the mid/late game. By combining these two styles we have a more aggressive start while at the same time setting up the equips that allow us to outmaneuver the opponent in the mid/late game. This merging effectively lessens the reliance on Puresteel Paladin that most equipster decks suffer. Basically it is a working equip deck that gets bonkers with a Paladin but does not need one to win. It can essentially keep amazing control of the field with the basilisk combo while getting tons of damage through after stabilization. Basically it takes the fast and evasive aggro aspects of Affinity and mixes it with an Equipster engine and an all-around control toolbox for mid/late game aggro-control and to top it off it adds protection to make it stick on the board easier and longer.
It is a quick adapting deck. It has a 50/50 aggro/control ratio feel. However, the selection of equips and the capacity to tutor equips allows you to tip the scale for a 75/25 aggro/control or control/aggro playstyle really early. That is what makes it versatile since some decks require you to focus on control (basilisk combo), other decks require you to kill fast (cranial), and some require you to go into survival mode (Basilisk+cranial for huge chunks of lifegain). To which side should you incline must be quickly decided as soon as your opponent reveals his deck. You either go for a Cranial Plating for a fast beating or the Basilisk Collar + Viridian Longbow/Mortarpod to keep the field empty. The good thing is even if you decide to go 75/25 to either side, it balances back to 50/50 after a few tuns of dumping the rest of your equips.
Equipster:
Puresteel Paladin - The Enabling General. Turns every equip into a cantrip, which is just insane with more than one Paladin on field. It lets me re-arrange all equips for pre-combat shenanigan combos (Basilisk Collar+Viridian Longbow), then I can re-arrange them for combat and after that on main phase two I re-arrange them again to stand against my opponent's army. Most equipster decks complains revolve around the reliance on Paladin. It break the deck open undoubtedly, but my focus was on making a deck that could do well without paladin and turn bonkers once we got one out.
Mortarpod - Living Weapon. Pings. Combos with Basilisk.
Basilisk Collar - This is the decks MVE (Most Valuable Equip) as it combos with all other equips as an answer to diferrent situations. You can kill creatures by pinging with longbow or mortarpod, you can gain huge chunks of life with or without cranial and you can turn your blockers into assasins by giving them deathtouch. Its just too valuable in almost every situation.
Accorder's Shield - 0cmc, aids in metalcraft early. It gets any creature outside bolt's range and gives vigilance to your attackers allowing them to remain untapped for blocking purposes.
Viridian Longbow - On its own it allows you to ping players, creatures or planeswalkers. Combine it with basilisk and you got a lifegaining creature killing machingun. Once you empty the field no creature will be able to survive afterwards since you can kill anything at instant speed with the combo. Combine it further with mortarpod and you can tap for a ping and sac for another ping.
Flayer Husk - It aids on metalcraft early but its main purpose is to put up a body on the field while potentially being a cantrip.
Steelshaper's Gift - I wonder why equipster decks don't run this, it always finds the equip you need when you need it. Specially good when the deck's equips combine with each other rather than being stand alone powerhouses.
Affinity:
Ornithopter - A free flying body that aids metalcraft.
Etched Champion - The army of one. Once metalcraft is attained (usually turn 1 or 2) this becomes a serious threat to most every deck by having protection from all colors.
Cranial Plating - A powerhouse on its own, insane when combined with Basilisk Collar. Really sick when you got evasive bodies like thopters, champions and inkmoths.
Mox Opal - Its modern, who doesn't need some ramp? It also aids metalcraft itself. Could see some sick plays after the new legend rule is active.
Protection:
Spellskite - A great wall with a 4 toughness body. Can survive most burn spells. Protects the player and both creatures and equips. It just fits the deck so splendid. It hoses some decks on its own (infect, auras, etc) and when it starts equiping stuff on it becomes a serious threat.
Pithing Needle - Because not all decks rely on creatures.
Swiftfoot Boots - A paladin with boots on will go a long way, if your opponent can't get rid paladin there is not much they can hope for. Hexproof is excelent in an equip deck since losing a well equipped creatures means you lost turns ad mana equipping it.
Dispatch - The best removal ever printed.
Thoughtseize - The latest addition. It takes care of the opponent's biggest threat while letting me look at the opponent's hand which is essential in a paladin deck.
Lands:
Glimmervoid - Easily supported with the heavy artifact theme. Allows to play spells outside our colors.
Plains - No explanation.
Cavern of Souls - A must since lots of top decks use counters in some way or another.
Marsh Flats - To fetch the lonely Godless Shrine if needed for a turn 1 Thoughtseize.
Inkmoth Nexus - If all else fails, equip Cranial Plating. Some argue for Blinkmoth, but this one works just as good and works even better against lifegain decks.
Godless Shrine - Just in case.
I haven't seen but one or two equipster lists that runs Viridian Longbow for the Basilisk combo, which is more reliable and effective than Mortarpod since your creature doesn't die with longbow. Longbow costs 1 and can ping players, walkers or 1 toughness creatures.
They all run 1-4 of the swords of A & B set. This list runs none of those swords. The reason being that first, modern is too fast a format. And second, the swords are awesomely powerful, but they do not solve any of the usual problems the deck encounters. By the time you can abuse these swords you'll be way behind most always.
All of them run cards like Batterskull or high power equips which skyrocket the mana curve. My highest cmc and/or ability costs 3.
All of them run Sylvok lifestaff which is situational at best. The main reason for this is to gain lifepoints as you sac your creatures through mortarpod+basilisk. By combining Basilisk with longbow instead, you don't need to rely on lifestaff to stay alive.
Only a few run 1 swiftfoot boots, if at all. The boots are extremely useful to hexproof creatures on an equip deck, losing a well equipped creature means you lost all the turns and mana spent equipping. Plus haste is a godsend when you both go into topdeck mode.
On the creature part, I haven't seen one that runs Ornithopter, which is one of my key players with flying + equips and it aids metalcraft with its 0cmc, which also useful to have mana up for equip costs.
Very rarely do they run spellskite, which protects you, your creatures and your equips while having a toughness body and being able to equip things himself.
Not all of them run Etched Champion, and just a few of the ones that run it have 3 copies or more. Champion is the deck's best finisher. An argument could be made for Invisible Stalker, but stalker can't block like champion can.
Deck runs 3 Cranial Platings, most equipster decks run 1 and have no way to fetch it.
It also runs removal in Dispatch which is rarely seen in these other decks, and I have yet to see one that runs Steelshaper's Gift, which always finds the perfect equip at the perfect time.
In essence all the Paladin decklists I've seen so far have one single strategy, beef up your creatures and beat through the opponent's creatures, and the Basilisk combo is run as backup. My strategy is completely backwards, I try to keep control with the Basilisk combo, and then kill, even if I don't pull my combo the way I win is through evasive champion and thopter attacks rather than forcing a beefed up creature through an army.
There are other differences, just wanted to point out the most obvious ones.
This was a quick primer, I'll keep expanding on it and I will post testing pics periodically to show off what it can do. So far its doing much better than any previous list I've tested, specially with the addition of needles and thoughtseizes.
Critic & Comment.
"When you get your opponent down to 0 sanity, you win the game!"
Also, Vault Skirge, Darksteel Citadel.
At first glance yes, it does. But thats why I made this:
They all run 1-4 of the swords of A & B set. This list runs none of those swords. The reason being that first, modern is too fast a format. And second, the swords are awesomely powerful, but they do not solve any of the usual problems the deck encounters. By the time you can abuse these swords you'll be way behind most always.
All of them run cards like Batterskull or high power equips which skyrocket the mana curve. My highest cmc and/or ability costs 3.
All of them run Sylvok lifestaff which is situational at best. The main reason for this is to gain lifepoints as you sac your creatures through mortarpod+basilisk. By combining Basilisk with longbow instead, you don't need to rely on lifestaff to stay alive.
Only a few run 1 swiftfoot boots, if at all. The boots are extremely useful to hexproof creatures on an equip deck, losing a well equipped creature means you lost all the turns and mana spent equipping. Plus haste is a godsend when you both go into topdeck mode.
On the creature part, I haven't seen one that runs Ornithopter, which is one of my key players with flying + equips and it aids metalcraft with its 0cmc, which also useful to have mana up for equip costs.
Very rarely do they run spellskite, which protects you, your creatures and your equips while having a toughness body and being able to equip things himself.
Not all of them run Etched Champion, and just a few of the ones that run it have 3 copies or more. Champion is the deck's best finisher. An argument could be made for Invisible Stalker, but stalker can't block like champion can.
Deck runs 3 Cranial Platings, most equipster decks run 1 and have no way to fetch it.
It also runs removal in Dispatch which is rarely seen in these other decks, and I have yet to see one that runs Steelshaper's Gift, which always finds the perfect equip at the perfect time.
In essence all the Paladin decklists I've seen so far have one single strategy, beef up your creatures and beat through the opponent's creatures, and the Basilisk combo is run as backup. My strategy is completely backwards, I try to keep control with the Basilisk combo, and then kill, even if I don't pull my combo the way I win is through evasive champion and thopter attacks rather than forcing a beefed up creature through an army.
There are other differences, just wanted to point out the most obvious ones.
The core might be the same, Puresteel+living weapons, but the game plan is completely different which is why the equip and creature selection is different. Eg. No swords, no lifestaff, no batterskull, no glint hawks, no kor duelist, no vault skirge, etc. It focuses on one thing alone, dumping early creatures like affinity does and suiting them up with equips that when combined can control the field while gaining me massive amounts of life.
The other big difference is that puresteel lists tend to do rather bad without puresteel himself, which is what keeps the archetype from a competitive rank. This list does very good on its own and goes insane if you do happen to land a paladin. The way its able to do that is by running more 0 and 1cc equips and less 3 and 4 cc equips (swords, batterskull, etc). That way you have enough mana to suit up your thopters, champions, spellskites and germs regardless of the presence of puresteel. The other way its able to fare well on its own is the equip selection:
Cranial on its own kills.
Cranial + Basilisk will skyrocket your lifepoints giving you enough time to take control.
Basilisk on its own is sick, specially equipped on champion.
Basilisk + Mortarpod is the standard combo on every puresteel list.
Basilisk + Viridian Longbow is a creature killing machinegun that outshines mortarpod combo.
Those are the basic combos. Pretty cheap to play and equip regardless of paladin. Sure puresteel lists run these, but they do not focus on these, they run these as backups. So the numbers are different (1 Basilisk in most lists, 3 on mine and so on).
And 3 cards you have never seen in a puresteel list: Steelshaper's Gift, Pithing Needle and Thoughtseize.
-Most lists rely on paladin for cantrips so they don't run gift and run too few copies of important equips so they can run powerhouse equips (swords, etc). This is why those lists suck when they don't draw paladin or it gets removed.
-No puresteel list that I have seen has ever had needle mainboard, which helps a lot versus top decks like tron, pod, twin, etc.
-No puretseel list has run discard options either because most of them are either mono white or W/U and just have one basice gameplan, beef up and beat up.
Aside from the early dumping strategy that it incorporates, the cards that come straight from affinity lists are:
Ornithopter - Present in no puresteel list at all until now.
Etched Champion - Affinity's finisher, could be dumped turn 2 or even turn 1 once legend rule becomes active, at which point mox opal will be a 4-of.
Cranial Plating - Run as a 1-of in SOME puresteel lists, this is what gives the deck its raw power better than any sword. Ask my last opponent who lost to a 22/1 flayer husk when I was down in my last 2 life points.
Mox Opal - Due to legend rule this is rarely seen in puresteel lists.
Its not an affinity list, its an equipster list, it just took bits of affinity to make the early game more stable and fast.
Skirge only aids in lifegain AFTER it loses you life. Thopter does a better job at chump blocking due to its cmc and since I play 3 basilisk lifegain is inevitable in the deck. Basically, every creature in the deck serves a better purpose than skirge would.
Citadel's purpose would be to aid in metalcraft, but test the deck a bit and you'll notice metalcraft is constantly attained on turn 2 and often times on turn 1. Why would I run a colorless producing land to do something the deck already does? If run a colorless producing land it would be Academy Ruins, not Citadel. That way I could get back my thopters, champions and spellskites.
"When you get your opponent down to 0 sanity, you win the game!"