The Eye of Ugin: Ravager in Legacy Affinity

Hello all.

My name is Eugene Ho, a somewhat well known scrub currently living in Montreal for university. Despite being a scrub, I have befriended the one and only Kar Yung Tom, Captain Canada, and owner of Mana Deprived, on a recent trip to the Star City Games Open: Boston.

The trip was one hell of a trip, as KYT can certainly attest to. The road traveling team consisted of:

– The Real Jon Stern, winner of 13 PTQs
– Richard Fiorilli, GP Toronto top 16, Pro Tour Paris Competitor
– KYT, Captain Canada
– Eugene Ho, a scrub

The entire journey is a rather long and uninteresting story, not really suited for you audiences. What should be noted however, from the trip are the following two things:

– Apparently I’m this really funny guy, courtesy of KYT’s opinions.
– I playtested for legacy a bunch against KYT.

We didn’t really have a gauntlet of legacy decks, but KYT still had the Affinity deck he took down the Face to Face Games Invitational with, with some truly Alex Hayne inspired updates such as [card]Thopter Foundry[/card]/[card]Sword of the Meek[/card] combo, with [card]Stoneforge Mystic[/card] for extra oomph, and [card]Force of Will[/card] in the sideboard.

I had a BWG Junk and Taxes deck someone lent me, and Patrick Sullivan’s exact list that Rich happened to have on him. After KYT wiped the floor with the Junk deck, I started to play the red deck. Then surprisingly, even with my inferior play skill, I kept on beating KYT’s Affinity list. Surely when he got out the Thopter/Sword combo I just lost, but when he didn’t (most of the time), I destroyed him.

Most games will play out like this: I play 2/2 or a [card]Grim Lavamancer[/card].

He will play a ton of 1/1s, 0/2s, and 0/1s.

I block with my bigger creatures, or shoot his team down. Suddenly, all he has in play is [card]Mox Opal[/card], a land, and maybe [card]Springleaf Drum[/card] (LOL). If he plays Tezzeret, it was simple enough for me to burn it out.

At some point, a 4/4 [card]Figure of Destiny[/card] takes it down, or I burn him outright.

The burn deck was only scared of two things:

-The Thopter combo
-An infinitely large [card]Master of Etherium[/card].

Surely enough, in the Legacy Open I get paired with KYT in the second round in the 0-1 bracket, and I defeated him, courtesy of [card]Grim Lavamancer[/card]s turn 1 on both of the games I won. The games played out like how I envisioned them, with me maintaining control with burn spells and wait for the blowout [card]Smash to Smithereens[/card], and finally taking it down with dudes or some more burn spells.

After scrubbing out at Boston, I returned to Montreal, put some Nike shoes together with sub-minimum wage at ungodly hours, and bought myself the Merfolk deck.

I went to Face to Face to playtest with the multiple Pro Tours competitor Robert Anderson.

He took out a store deck, Legacy Affinity.

Then I proceed to keep beating Rob.

The situation was the same; he would keep having all these really small dudes, against my multiple lords. Then I counter his relevant spells ([card]Cranial Plating[/card], [card]Master of Etherium[/card], and Tezzeret. Anything else doesn’t matter) and shove the fishies in. Sometimes I just have enough lords that the spells he casts don’t even matter anymore. (To be fair though, Rob’s deck was a really, really, really, sub-optimal list)

So I started to think about Affinity. I looked into the various SCG decklists, and surprise surprise, only the one that won was there; there were virtually no other Affinity lists that topped the SCG Legacy Opens.

So I take a look at that one decklist, which no doubt most people use as their starting point when playtesting.

[deck title=Tezzeret Affintiy by Blake McCracken]
[Lands]
4 Darksteel Citadel
4 Sead of the Synod
4 Vault of Whispers
4 Blinkmoth Nexus
[/Lands]
[Creatures]
2 Etched Champion
4 Frogmite
4 Master of Etherium
4 Memnite
3 Myr Enforcer
4 Ornithopter
4 Signal Pest
[/Creatures]
[Spells]
4 Cranial Plating
3 Springleaf Drum
4 Mox Opal
4 Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas
4 Thoughtcast
[/Spells]
[Sideboard]
3 Pithing Needle
3 Relic of Progenitus
3 Ethersworn Canonist
3 Diabolic Edict
3 Thoughtseize
[/Sideboard]
[/deck]

Yep, the usual suspects, [card]Ornithopther[/card], [card]Memnite[/card], [card]Master of Etherium[/card], yadda-yadda.

Then it hit me.

Why isn’t this deck playing [card]Arcbound Ravager[/card]? You know, the one that broke Affinity wide open?!? Why was it only playing 3 [card]Myr Enforcer[/card]s? It’s basically the best card in the deck that’s hardest to get rid of in the sense that your opponent can’t really waste a removal spell on it, but it really hurts if he or she doesn’t deal with it.

I suddenly remembered this tournament way back, when Survival of the Fittest was still legal. It was a Face to Face Power Tournament, where the first place got a [card]Mox Ruby[/card] and the runner up got a [card]Library of Alexandria[/card].

The One and Only Dan ‘Dmac’ MacDonald played this thing of beauty:

[deck title=Thing of Beauty by Dan MacDonald]
[Lands]
4 Seat of the Synod
4 Vault of Whispers
4 Springleaf Drum
2 Glimmervoid
4 Ancient Den
[/Lands]
[Creatures]
4 Frogmite
4 Arcbound Ravager
4 Memnite
4 Orithopter
4 Master of Etherium
4 Tidehollow Sculler
4 Myr Enforcer
2 Etched Champion
[/Creatures]
[Spells]
4 Mox Opals
4 Cranial Plating
4 Thoughtcast
[/Spells]
[Sideboard]
3 Thoughtseize
3 Darkblast
3 Pithing Needle
4 Ethersworn Canonist
2 Tomods Crypt
[/Sideboard]
[/deck]

This deck ended up taking down the tournament, and Dmac won a [card]Mox Ruby[/card]. (Well, not really, but that’s another long and uninteresting story)

It was super aggressive, played actually good threats that have more than 1 power, and highly resilient to everything save for the fastest combo decks.

It had power, disruption, and resilience.

Most decks don’t have an answer to a resolved Ravager, unless if you have a removal spell right away. If you have Ravager on the field, your opponent cannot block profitably, no matter what.

When you compare this to that one SCG deck, you can see the shortcomings of that SCG deck immediately.

To start out with, the SCG deck has very little disruption.

There were only 3 Thoughtseizes in the sideboard; doesn’t this deck just fold to a dedicated combo deck?

Without the Ravagers, all the SCG deck plays are cards that have very little effect on the board; in Magic lingo I would say that the deck has very bad ‘questions’, so decks playing aren’t forced to have the right ‘answers’.

Imagine you’re playing that deck against a creature deck.

They can just block most of your guys favorably. Even if you have the Plating, they can probably kill the fliers and [card]Wasteland[/card] the [card]Blinkmoth Nexus[/card] if you try any shenanigans. You basically need [card]Master of Etherium[/card] to really gain an edge.

Against combo:
They go off before you kill them because your clock is too slow. Where’s your disruption?

Against control:
Believe it or not, they have no problem with all those tiny little robots. They’ll counter/remove the threats that actually matter because when you cast them they probably already have enough time to set up whatever their thing is.

Now look at Dmac’s deck:

Creature decks:
You have Ravager. They cannot block favorably at all.

Combo:
You have disruption and a faster deck. The matchup is not great, but is certainly better than it could have been.

Control:
Same as above, but the matchup is actually good.

Why are these people trying to play [card]Signal Pest[/card]?

I just don’t understand. [card]Signal Pest[/card] represents, maybe at most three extra damage per turn if and only you’re in Magical Christmasland where you have 4 creatures in play turn 1 and the opponent is completely sitting on air. If you’re in that scenario, wouldn’t a Ravager be better anyways? In addition, [card]Signal Pest[/card] can be countered by [card]Mental Misstep[/card], definitely something to be aware of. I literally cannot think of a scenario where I’d rather have Signal Pest over Ravager. If you can think of one, please tell me in the comments section below.

I do in fact, understand that the Tezzeret-affinity has a different general game plan, one that is less explosive but made up for the better late game, either trying to get Tezz going, or trying to attack with Plated evasion dudes ([card]Signal Pest[/card], Thopter, Blinkmoth) What I don’t get, is what are these decks trying to accomplish? Adding Tezzeret does give you reach, but in my opinion makes the deck less focused. Don’t get me wrong, Tezzeret is incredibly powerful, but is trying to win the game by tapping 4 mana really the best thing you should be doing?

It’s like the true and tried quote in Legacy again: “Why are you playing a ‘fair’ deck in an unfair format?”

I honestly do think that Ravager plus a bunch of dudes on turn one is unfair. Trying to play Tezz on turn 5 isn’t. It turns their usually useless cards like Spell Pierce live.

After a Tuesday night Legacy at Face, KYT talked to me about how his man-crush Drew Levin said that Slag Fiend was actually good. We laughed about it, and I said, “Well, I guess it could be good in a dedicated Ravager-affinity build”.

That was obviously a misplay, as KYT coerced me to write this article for exchange for his ‘everlasting friendship’. Well, that and the new Mana Deprived t-shirt.

Well here you go, a decklist:

[deck title=Slagffinity by Eugene Ho]
[Lands]
4 Seat of the Synod
4 Vault of Whispers
4 Great Furnace
2 Ancient Den
[/Lands]
[Creatures]
3 Slag Fiend
4 Frogmite
4 Arcbound Ravager
4 Memnite
3 Ornithopter
4 Master of Etherium
3 Myr Enforcer
[/Creatures]
[Spells]
4 Mox Opal
3 Springleaf Drum
4 Galvanic Blast
2 Shrapnel Blast
4 Cranial Plating
4 Thoughtcast
[/Spells]
[Sideboard]
4 Thoughtseize
3 Engineered Plague
3 Pithing Needle
3 Ethersworn Canonist
2 Tomods Crypt
[/Sideboard]
[/deck]

Obviously this is just a rough list I pulled out of my ass to make KYT happy. I hereby add a disclaimer that I am not suggesting that this is a good deck to take to Providence. However, if you are truly curious about the power of [card]Slag Fiend[/card]… well you gotta start somewhere.

Since [card]Slag Fiend[/card] represents a great end game, I don’t really think Tezzeret is necessary as good as he may be. Instead of a Tezzeret-affinity build, the deck becomes more of an affinity-burn style deck. The deck (hopefully) has the same explosive draws with added resilience (hopefully). And you can (hopefully) live the dream with 10/10 [card]Slag Fiend[/card]s after your opponent actually managed to deal with all your threats.

And then, in your best Alex Hayne impersonation, scream on top of your lungs:

“WHAT UP BRO? STILL HAD ALL DEEZ!!!”

If that’s not living the dream, I don’t know what is.

-Eugene Ho