MTG Salvation

Here's the data that I got from GP wins since May 2013 when Second Sunrise was banned:

GP Portland - May 11-12: Pod
GP Kansas City - July 6-7: Pod
GP Detroit - September 14-15: Pod
GP Brisbane - October 5-6: Affinity
GP Antwerp - October 26-27: RUG Twin
GP Prague - January 10-12: UWR Midrange
GP Richmond - March 7-8: Pod
GP Minneapolis - May 9-11: Scapeshift
GP Boston - July 25-27: Junk
GP Kobe - August 22-24: Burn
GP Madrid - November 14-16: RUG Delver
GP Milan - December 13-14: Pod
GP Omaha - January 10-11: Pod

Pod has won SIX out of the last THIRTEEN GP's. The next best deck, Affinity, RUG Delver, Scapeshift, UWR Midrange, RUG Twin, Junk, and Burn, EACH have ONE GP wins.

I get that Pod is the poster child of Modern and it has existed since Modern became a thing. But this deck has DOMINATED Modern since the combo decks with Seething Song and Second Sunrise were banned. Pod has as many GP top 8 appearances as BGx, and it has gone on to win SIX out of the NINE GP's where it top 8'ed. For Modern to become more healthy as a format, I really think Pod needs to go so that other aggro strategies like Zoo, Fish, and Burn can continue to exist. The deck is unfair, there's no good way to hate it out, and it's only going to become more ridiculous as more value creatures are printed over time. It's better to ban Pod when it's 15% of the format taking 45% of the GP titles than when it's 25% of the format since there are more money that players stand to lose. It's clearly by and large the BEST deck in the format whether players play it or not.

ktkenshinx I find it REALLY hard to keep defending Pod. You can say that Pod is only good right now now because it's metagaming against Delver, but take a look at the following 12 GP winners since the Second Sunrise ban.

GP Portland - May 11-12: Pod
GP Kansas City - July 6-7: Pod
GP Detroit - September 14-15: Pod
GP Brisbane - October 5-6: Affinity
GP Antwerp - October 26-27: Twin
GP Prague - January 10-12: UWR Midrange
GP Richmond - March 7-8: Pod
GP Boston - July 25-27: Junk
GP Kobe - August 22-24: Burn
GP Madrid - November 14-16: RUG Delver
GP Milan - December 13-14: Pod
GP Omaha - January 10-11: Pod

Pod has won SIX out of the last 12 GP's. NO OTHER DECK HAS ABOVE ONE WIN. Affinity, RUG Delver, Burn, UWR Midrange, Twin, and Junk each have one. Pre-KTK or post-KTK, Pod has take more wins than any other deck by far, and it's never in its existence been the most played deck in Modern. If I ever want to win a GP, I'd be stupid not to play Pod.

I gather that Wizards will keep defending Pod because it's a midrange deck, which they like, and doesn't violate the turn 4 rule. I think this deck has been broken for far too long, and the sooner we let it go, the better everyone will be.

Comment Hidden

The W splash is usually too light to afford double W except in late game.

Remand is awful against faster decks like Burn and Affinity where it doesn't slow down them at all, and the draw isn't helpful for developing your board. It's reasonable against control because you use it on their important spells that affect their board like Vendilion Clique or Ajani Vengeant, and since they're running Snapcaster Mage, it's a way to 0 for 1 the flashback. It's best against clunky decks like Mono U Tron and sometimes Melira Pod or Splinter Twin when you're ahead on board since they run a lot of 3 CMC+ cards. If you're behind on board, Mana Leaking a Splinter Twin or Birthing Pod is much better than Remanding it.

A few things as I learned while playing the deck.

Blind Gitaxian Probe before land drop on turn 1. It helps to know what lands you'll want to play, and you might draw into a top deck Delver or Serum Visions. There are enough turn 1 plays to pay the life for Gitaxian Probe unless you're going against a strong aggro deck.

Fetch your lands before playing Serum Visions so you're not forced to shuffle away cards you like.

Remember that you can use Delver triggers as a ghetto scry in conjunction with a fetchland if you don't like the top card so you can draw a different card. You can even flip the Delver and then shuffle away the top card.

The sequencing of Young Pyromancer is heavily dependent on what's in the opponent's hand. For decks without efficient removals like Melira or Storm, it's okay to play your threats on curve. For decks that have a lot of removals like Jund or UWR, it's likely best to wait until you have some sort of backup.

If you're playing Cryptic Command, it might be worth it to bounce Snapcaster Mage with part of Cryptic Command if it's late in the game. Likewise, using a Vapor Snag on your creature is sometimes the best play since we're light on threats.

Knowing when to be conservative with your life total and when to be aggressive is important. The deck is capable of doing a lot of damage to itself very quickly, but against RDW or Affinity, that is suicidal.

Usually, a hand with 1 blue source, 1 Serum Vision, and 1 Gitaxian Probe on the draw is good enough. Not many decks in Modern can keep 1 land hands like that.

I play this deck because it's the most fun deck in Modern in my opinion. There's a lot of interaction, a lot of opportunities to outplay your opponent, and you get to be very frisky with your life total between Gitaxian Probe, Steam Vents, fetchlands, and potentially Vapor Snagging your own creatures. Gitaxian Probe is a very powerful card, and this deck is the best shell for Gitaxian Probe in Modern.

That being said, UWR Kiki seems like a fine deck, like the one that Shaun McClaren piloted at GP Minneapolis. I daresay that it's better tuned for an unknown meta than UR Delver, which still lacks real participation from pros to tune for paper tournaments. At the end of the day, it's whichever deck you're most comfortable piloting, and for the longer tournaments, it's whichever deck you most enjoy playing.

Quote from myo »

I've considered this, and what I've found is that it will not make an impact often enough to warrant a slot. If we were playing a grixis deck with discard, it might make sense. However, ensuring you don't see a 2nd of something isn't always the best gameplan as they might not ever get to the 2nd one and you've spent a card/mana/life getting rid of it.

Basically this. If you're spending 2 life and a card to do something that doesn't affect the board, it'd better be worth it.

I'd be hard pressed to find a match up where I want to bring it in.

Sticking a Grim Lavamancer will usually win you the game against Merfolk, I usually side out Remand and Mana Leak games 2/3 in favor of burn spells like Magma Spray and Combust. Engineered Explosive is a house here. Spell Pierce and Spell Snare can be really good or awful, I would definitely keep Spell Pierce in on the play to potentially counter turn 1 Vial, but otherwise it's a pretty average card.

Against Tron, it is strictly can you do 20 damage before either a swing from Wurmcoil or Karn takes over the game? Turn 1 Delver or turn 2 Young Pyromancer are key here, as is disrupting turn 1/2 Maps/Sylvan Scrying and early Oblivion Stone. Admittedly, Vendilion Clique is much better here than Grim Lavamancer. Negate, Conterflux, and Spreading Seas/Blood Moon are key to winning this match up. I don't think it's a bad match up, you're free to shock yourself as much as you want here because your life total is irrelevant, Gitaxian Probe helps a ton in knowing when to overextend and when to hold back disruption.

I. Introduction:

Affinity is an Artifact-based aggro deck that also goes by the name Robots. The name comes from the mechanic in the Mirrodin block, primarily Affinity for Artifacts on cards like Thoughtcast, Frogmite, and Myr Enforcer. With the release of the Scars of Mirrodin block, Affinity has gained a ton of new tools and evolved into a powerful and synergistic deck that only uses only one Affinity card: Thoughtcast.

Affinity is a Tier 1 Modern deck and one of the few real aggro deck in the format with elements of combo and tempo. It combines low-costed creatures with evasion and highly efficient spells in the form of Thoughtcast and Galvanic Blast, and it is also highly resilient to removal and board wipes. The deck has numerous complex synergies that rewards strong pilots with faster clocks. Theoretically, the deck can win on as early as turn 2, although in reality it mostly wins on turn 4 or turn 5 with light disruption.

While Affinity seems like a simple plays all my creatures and turn them sideways deck, it's one of the most complex decks to play in Modern simply because it is one of the few decks in Modern with reliable mana acceleration and its spells are so cheap. Having access to 4 or more mana by turn 2 means there are many different possible lines, and it takes someone with an intimate knowledge of Affinity and also of the deck the opponent is playing to know the best line to take to maximize clock and minimize blow outs.




II. Card Choices:





III. Decklists:








IV. Opening:





V. Sideboards:





VI. Match Ups:





VII. FAQ:









VIII. Tricks:




IX. Links:

I was the Tezzeret player. About the Scapeshift matchup: apart from Witchbane Orb I played a bunch of discard (5 main 3 sb) and after sb I had 2 extirpates which can combine with Ghost Quarter to take away Valakut or with discard to remove Scapeshifts. For Titan there's Torpor Orb and Ensnaring Bridge or Executioner's Capsule. But I didn't really draw the relevant cards, or the Tezzerets (I played 7) to find them. Oh well.

I can post my list when I'm home if you want.

Here's a brief history of my version that raised recent interest. This is the list spanky_kc played the following day to 4-0 the DE.

Kaas' cascade balance list from Magic-League is the inspiration for this borderless version. His list isn't built to focus on the armageddon aspect. Rather, it attempts to mind twist the opponent so that they're left in topdeck mode to find an answer to a threat on the board.

From his comments:

"for the 'easily recovering' part. I think you're better off when your opponent is in topdeck-for-removal-mode than topdeck-for-land-mode. Because removal is very cheap nowadays. if you're opponent can keep 1 path to exile in hand, and only needs to topdeck 1 land, then you're *****ed if you don't have more than 2 creatures. Topdecking removal is harder to do, takes longer, and gives you time to recover as well, which is not so difficult if you already have 2 land or something or a suspended search for tomorrow, or a coalition relic."

For further commentary, I also found this interview a few days ago, which may be an interesting read for anyone interested in his take.

Sometime around RTR's release, I decided to take play around with Kaas' template to port it to a jund manabase. The keyrunes seemed like an upgrade to the coalition relics and cutting the 5-color manabase to 3 provided the room to add man lands. This added 5 additional threats that didn't count towards having a creature in play, increasing the opportunity to capitalize on damage after a balance. In the control match ups, it also punished players for wasting a turn on counter spell mana (or in the case of key runes, wasting counters on irrelevant spells or risk losing tempo and invalidating tax counters). Always consider using a Simian Spirit Guide to play a turn 2 keyrune. Decreasing your hand size pre-balance is a good thing in most matchups.

Despite having access to 11 cascade spells and a more consistent ability to suspend balance if drawn, I didn't like the idea of using gemstone mines. True, they do whittle down your land count when you balance, but in the control match ups you often wanted the land in play for the reasons above. 3 lands in play and a suspended Nihilith quickly puts a lot of pressure on rwu players. 6 in play and a Nihilith coming off suspend threatens to pay for the counter and potentially follow up with a more lethal cascade spell.

In my initial versions, I did try Liliana. The discard ability seemed good, but it wasn't the greatest since it was another symmetric effect. After all, if you're going to balance, you want to come out ahead on at least 2 of the 3 cases. Both players having empty hand sizes when balance resolved happened more than I would have liked. In addition, Liliana as removal was just that - a 3 mana removal spell that maybe fogged some damage. In both cases, balance is trying to do the same thing. Versus Jund, it was nice being able to wipe their Liliana but also annoying when your option is to let them sac a Bob or Deathrite and letting the 'Goyf in play gain an additional +1/+1.

Beast Within was also tested, naturally, given the proven synergy with the jund suite of cascade spells. However, similar to Liliana, it targeted card types that Restore Balance was supposed to handle. Vs. Aggro, trading an early drop for a 3/3 didn't give you the time that you wanted to draw into a cascader, and hitting a land vs. control pre-cascade came up less frequently than getting jammed with multiple Beast Withins in hand.

It was because of these constant awkward hands that I tried adding the cyclers. Having played Living End enough times to know the limited choices of cmc 3 or more spells and that plan 'B', which is playing them as threats, is a valid option for wins, it seemed like a good idea. Misleading the opponent to deck archetype is a bonus.

I'll try to follow up with a post about match ups later. I've had better results playing vs. rwu than what's discussed here and a few other discrepancies that's worth noting, but I've run out of time. Anyway, I thought bringing up the path to this version was worth adding to the thread.

After last time being called a troll and liar you can imagine my reluctance to post on here again... You villains owe me all the hugs.
I know I am a sensitive person, so don't go calling me names ever again please or this will be my last spoiler.


If anyone was actually reading between the lines (there was a person) on my Sorin vs Tibutt posts (literally as I resized my font) they would have noticed that I knew I would be the international spoilerface for this also.


And yes, I have opened a few boxes, 3 Goyfs later I think I may save the rest in the attic for a rainy day.

BANANAAAA!