Pioneer Affinity: The Deck!!!
Pioneer Affinity: The Deck Tech
Lands-22 Creatures-30
4-Darksteel Citadel 4-Ornithopter
4-Field of Ruin 4-Stonecoil Serpent
4-Spire of Industry 4-Walking Ballista
3-Inventors’ Fair 4-Steel Overseer
6-Island 4-Chief of the Foundry
1-Tomb of the Spirit Dragon 4-Foundry Inspector
3-Emry, Lurker or the Loch
3-Padeem, Consul of Innovation
Non-Creatures-8
4-Springleaf Drum
4-Metallic Rebuke
The Mana Base
This was a pretty fun mana base to put together actually. Darksteel Citadel is a staple in pretty much all artifact based decks. Field of Ruin is a solid choice to keep your opponents off of one or more of their colors as well as find your Islands to help you cast your non-artifact things. Spire of Industry is the artifact friendly Mana Confluence. Inventors’ Fair is a way to gain some life against aggressive decks as well as a tutor in the late game. I opted to only go with three because it is a legendary land and there’s other ways to find our things throughout the game as well. A single Tomb of the Spirit Dragon rounds out our non-basic lands as another way to gain us life for our colorless creatures. We then round out the mana base with six Islands to give us more ways to cast our non-artifact things. We don’t have things like Mox Opal in our card pool so we have to run more than one or two basics unlike your typical modern affinity deck.
The Creatures
A couple things to note with this deck is we don’t have access to things like Signal Pest, Arcbound Ravager, Memnite, etc. This deck does do what a typical affinity deck wants to do however, and that’s dump your hand early, make things big, then swing through. We do have the typical four of Ornithopter, Steel Overseer, Chief of the Foundry, and Foundry Inspector in our list so that hasn’t changed. What is a little bit different though is the rest of our creatures. We have one new card in Stonecoil Serpent as a four of. This card is undeniably great in various formats. It’s an “X” cost creature that has reach and trample. It also has protection from multicolored things so it survives quite a bit of removal in the format. Also, because it costs “X” it’s great at any point in the game. You can cast it on turn 1 or you can cast it on turn 8 and have it be useful. We also have ways to get it back later on if your turn 1 serpent does die. We also have four Walking Ballista. I chose this one over Hangarback Walker because while the walker is good, the ballista can ping things as needed to keep them off the board. Hangarback Walker is better in a ‘go wide’ strategy which we are not. The non-artifact creatures in the deck are there for a couple reasons. We have Emry which allows us to get our artifacts back from the graveyard. It’s also a potential 1 mana 1/2 just as a body on the field. Our other non-artifact creature is Padeem, Consul of Innovation as a three of. This guy serves 2 purposes. The first being protection for our artifacts in that it gives them all hexproof. The other being a card draw engine. We are almost entirely artifacts, granted low costed, aggressive ones but we will generally have the highest costed artifact in play allowing us to draw an extra card every turn.
The Non-creatures
We’re only running two non-creature spells and they’re both pretty straight forward. Springleaf Drum for color fixing to cast our colored spells. This one is also pretty typnical of affinity builds in modern. Our other main board non-creature spell is Metallic Rebuke. Most decks want some form of interaction and this is ours. It’s an artifact friendly Mana Leak. It costs 2U and has improvise and it counters a spell unless its controller pays 3. The improvise part of the card is great in that we can easily turn this into costing a single blue mana. Because of how many artifacts we’re running it should be fairly easy for us to cast it for U.
The Sideboard
1-Tormod’s Crypt
3-Abrade
3-Hangarback Walker
4-Brave the Elements
2-Cast Down
2-Naturalize
The sideboard was somewhat difficult to put together as we have tons of options because of our access to all 5 colors with both Spire of Industry and Springleaf Drum. I opted for 1 Tormod’s Crypt against graveyard strategies. Rest in Peace might be better but I wanted to make it a little easier to cast given it’s both an artifact and costs 0 to play, whereas RiP costs 1W. I wanted to not rely on our color making sources too much with this one as we’re doing it with most of our sideboard to begin with. Three Abrade come in in the mirror and other creature heavy match ups. It might be more correct to play this in the main board but it’s also meta dependent. It offers versatility, which I’m a fan of in any Magic card. Hangarback Walker is a three of to help recover from sweepers quickly. Brave the Elements helps protect us from spot removal like Fatal Push, Abrupt Decay, or Abrade. Cast Down against creatures, though only non-legendary ones. Finally, we have Naturalize against artifacts and enchantments. Leylines are pretty good in most match ups so we need some way to get rid of them. There were some other solid choices for the sideboard but they were either colored “XX” or “XY” and I didn’t want to constrain the decks resources that much seeing as we weren’t those colors as our base. Some of our options were things like Murder and Abrupt Decay but we aren’t base black or green for those to be good choices. Everyone’s individual meta might be different, especially with this being a fairly new format that’s still coming into its own so you might be able to get away with those more mana restrictive spells. Regardless of what sideboard tech you opt to go with have fun and brew away. Let me know what tech you’ve come up with.
Lands-22 Creatures-30
4-Darksteel Citadel 4-Ornithopter
4-Field of Ruin 4-Stonecoil Serpent
4-Spire of Industry 4-Walking Ballista
3-Inventors’ Fair 4-Steel Overseer
6-Island 4-Chief of the Foundry
1-Tomb of the Spirit Dragon 4-Foundry Inspector
3-Emry, Lurker or the Loch
3-Padeem, Consul of Innovation
Non-Creatures-8
4-Springleaf Drum
4-Metallic Rebuke
The Mana Base
This was a pretty fun mana base to put together actually. Darksteel Citadel is a staple in pretty much all artifact based decks. Field of Ruin is a solid choice to keep your opponents off of one or more of their colors as well as find your Islands to help you cast your non-artifact things. Spire of Industry is the artifact friendly Mana Confluence. Inventors’ Fair is a way to gain some life against aggressive decks as well as a tutor in the late game. I opted to only go with three because it is a legendary land and there’s other ways to find our things throughout the game as well. A single Tomb of the Spirit Dragon rounds out our non-basic lands as another way to gain us life for our colorless creatures. We then round out the mana base with six Islands to give us more ways to cast our non-artifact things. We don’t have things like Mox Opal in our card pool so we have to run more than one or two basics unlike your typical modern affinity deck.
The Creatures
A couple things to note with this deck is we don’t have access to things like Signal Pest, Arcbound Ravager, Memnite, etc. This deck does do what a typical affinity deck wants to do however, and that’s dump your hand early, make things big, then swing through. We do have the typical four of Ornithopter, Steel Overseer, Chief of the Foundry, and Foundry Inspector in our list so that hasn’t changed. What is a little bit different though is the rest of our creatures. We have one new card in Stonecoil Serpent as a four of. This card is undeniably great in various formats. It’s an “X” cost creature that has reach and trample. It also has protection from multicolored things so it survives quite a bit of removal in the format. Also, because it costs “X” it’s great at any point in the game. You can cast it on turn 1 or you can cast it on turn 8 and have it be useful. We also have ways to get it back later on if your turn 1 serpent does die. We also have four Walking Ballista. I chose this one over Hangarback Walker because while the walker is good, the ballista can ping things as needed to keep them off the board. Hangarback Walker is better in a ‘go wide’ strategy which we are not. The non-artifact creatures in the deck are there for a couple reasons. We have Emry which allows us to get our artifacts back from the graveyard. It’s also a potential 1 mana 1/2 just as a body on the field. Our other non-artifact creature is Padeem, Consul of Innovation as a three of. This guy serves 2 purposes. The first being protection for our artifacts in that it gives them all hexproof. The other being a card draw engine. We are almost entirely artifacts, granted low costed, aggressive ones but we will generally have the highest costed artifact in play allowing us to draw an extra card every turn.
The Non-creatures
We’re only running two non-creature spells and they’re both pretty straight forward. Springleaf Drum for color fixing to cast our colored spells. This one is also pretty typnical of affinity builds in modern. Our other main board non-creature spell is Metallic Rebuke. Most decks want some form of interaction and this is ours. It’s an artifact friendly Mana Leak. It costs 2U and has improvise and it counters a spell unless its controller pays 3. The improvise part of the card is great in that we can easily turn this into costing a single blue mana. Because of how many artifacts we’re running it should be fairly easy for us to cast it for U.
The Sideboard
1-Tormod’s Crypt
3-Abrade
3-Hangarback Walker
4-Brave the Elements
2-Cast Down
2-Naturalize
The sideboard was somewhat difficult to put together as we have tons of options because of our access to all 5 colors with both Spire of Industry and Springleaf Drum. I opted for 1 Tormod’s Crypt against graveyard strategies. Rest in Peace might be better but I wanted to make it a little easier to cast given it’s both an artifact and costs 0 to play, whereas RiP costs 1W. I wanted to not rely on our color making sources too much with this one as we’re doing it with most of our sideboard to begin with. Three Abrade come in in the mirror and other creature heavy match ups. It might be more correct to play this in the main board but it’s also meta dependent. It offers versatility, which I’m a fan of in any Magic card. Hangarback Walker is a three of to help recover from sweepers quickly. Brave the Elements helps protect us from spot removal like Fatal Push, Abrupt Decay, or Abrade. Cast Down against creatures, though only non-legendary ones. Finally, we have Naturalize against artifacts and enchantments. Leylines are pretty good in most match ups so we need some way to get rid of them. There were some other solid choices for the sideboard but they were either colored “XX” or “XY” and I didn’t want to constrain the decks resources that much seeing as we weren’t those colors as our base. Some of our options were things like Murder and Abrupt Decay but we aren’t base black or green for those to be good choices. Everyone’s individual meta might be different, especially with this being a fairly new format that’s still coming into its own so you might be able to get away with those more mana restrictive spells. Regardless of what sideboard tech you opt to go with have fun and brew away. Let me know what tech you’ve come up with.
Comments
Post a Comment