Modern Affinity Primer

Modern Affinity Aggro Artifact Competitive Primer

Walker2148

Mana (25)

• 3x Blinkmoth Nexus
• 4x Darksteel Citadel
• 2x Glimmervoid
• 4x Inkmoth Nexus
• 1x Island
• 4x Mox Opal
• 3x Spire of Industry
• 4x Springleaf Drum

Core (23)

• 4x Arcbound Ravager
• 4x Cranial Plating
• 3x Memnite
• 4x Ornithopter
• 4x Signal Pest
• 4x Vault Skirge

Variable (12)

• 2x Galvanic Blast
• 2x Glint-Nest Crane
• 4x Master of Etherium
• 4x Steel Overseer

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Sideboard

Other (15)

• 2x Ancient Grudge
• 2x Dispatch
• 4x Etched Champion
• 2x Ghirapur AEther Grid
• 2x Rest in Peace
• 2x Thoughtseize
• 1x Whipflare

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Affinity, sometimes called "robots", is a top-tier Modern deck that aims to dump its entire hand onto the table and run its opponent into the ground with powerful artifact-based synergy cards like Cranial Plating and Arcbound Ravager. The deck is named after the "affinity for artifacts" mechanic, which was prevalent in the original iterations of the deck. While the deck no longer uses many cards that actually have this mechanic - Thoughtcast sees play sometimes, but its use is no longer as widespread as it used to be - the name stuck, and Affinity has been one of the most powerful decks in the Modern format since its inception.

I've been playing Modern for about two and a half years now. Affinity was my first Modern deck, and it remains my favorite. My current list is based off the 75 Frank Karsten played at GP Vegas '17 and wrote about in his CFB article "6 Weeks of Travel, Magic, and Affinity". Comments, suggestions, and criticisms are welcome, and feel free to upvote if you like the deck!

Critters

What makes Affinity work is the plethora of small, cheap, and evasive artifact creatures available to power up the heavy-hitters that win the game for you.

Ornithopter - he doesn't look like much, but this is one of the best cards to see in your opening hand. He flies, powers out a turn-1 Mox Opal, wears Cranial Plating like a champ, grows Arcbound Ravager, and gets huge with Steel Overseer. The quintessential Affinity card. Run 4.

Memnite - he's not Ornithopter, but the artifact synergies he enables are powerful enough that he's still worth playing. Run 2-3.

Signal Pest - the 0 power is deceptive, as when paired with the other creatures on this list, he actually hits quite hard. The pseudo-flying ability makes him hard to block, so you rarely have to decide between keeping him alive and getting his attack trigger. That being said, he needs other creatures to function well, and against any deck that keeps the board clean (UWx Control) or any deck that runs lots of little fliers (Lingering Souls, Bitterblossom, or the mirror match), he's usually the first to get boarded out. Run 4.

Vault Skirge - a 1/1 lifelink flier for 1. What more could you possibly want? The lifelink on this guy is backbreaking against other aggro decks if you can stick a Plating on him. You can pay the full price if you have extra colored mana laying around, but early in the game it's almost always better to just pay the 2 life and use the extra mana to play another 1-drop. Run 4.

Blinkmoth Nexus - it's a land when you need mana, and a 1/1 artifact flier when you don't. As a land, Blinkmoth also has the perk of being immune to certain flavors of removal, most notably Abrupt Decay and Oblivion Stone. Even better, it also has the ability to give any Blinkmoth (including itself!) a boost, which can make combat very difficult for your opponent if you have more than one. Knowing when to animate your lands to get some more damage in at the risk of exposing them to removal is one of the trickier parts of playing the deck, but also one of the most rewarding decisions to make correctly. Run 3-4.

Glint-Nest Crane - an unorthodox choice, but I've been extremely pleased with her performance so far. The flying + 3 toughness maker her excellent on defense (she blocks Lingering Souls, Goblin Guide, Monastery Swiftspear, and Signal Pest forever), and if you stick a Plating on her she can get in the red zone with the best of them. Of course, the real reason she's here is that she grabs a Cranial Plating or a Steel Overseer off the top of your deck, which is fantastic in grindy matchups. If you choose to play her, run 1-2.

Threats

The high-end threats run in an Affinity deck are among the scariest in all of Modern.

Cranial Plating - the most threatening card in the deck, hands down. With a handful of artifacts in play, Plating turns any one of your small fliers into a game-ending threat. Stick it on an Ornithopter and suddenly your 0-mana 0/2 flier is a 6/2 flier. If the thopter takes a Fatal Push, you've still got the Plating, and now it's your Signal Pest that has 6 power. Even better, you can pay BB to move it around at instant speed, so sometimes your opponents just can't save themselves no matter where they point that Path to Exile. Run 4.

Arcbound Ravager - you can't truly understand how terrifying this card is until you've played against it. Because you can sac the Ravager to itself to put its counters on something, you have a nearly unlimited amount of options, and this is the single hardest card in the deck to play both with and against. You can eat a creature in response to removal, eat mana rocks for additional power, make an Inkmoth Nexus lethal in a single turn, pump a Skirge to survive a Lightning Bolt, move all your power to the one creature that wasn't blocked... the list goes on and on. Run 4.

Steel Overseer - if he goes unanswered, you win. Period. Run 3 or 4.

Inkmoth Nexus - every opponent's life total becomes 10 when staring down the dreaded Inkmoth Nexus. Pumps from Signal Pest , Steel Overseer, Master of Etherium, Arcbound Ravager, and Cranial Plating all count double when the damage comes in the form of poison counters. Even better, an animated Inkmoth has the Blinkmoth creature type, which means you can power it up with a Blinkmoth Nexus . Feeding your entire board to a Ravager to make a Nexus lethal in one or two turns can be risky, but a 5/5 infect flier that's immune to sorcery-speed removal will end the game real fast. Just watch out for Ghost Quarter. Run 4.

Master of Etherium - three mana is a lot, and two and a blue is even harder. That being said, he puts an absurd amount of power on the board, and in the matchups where you need to win NOW, like Storm and Valakut, he gets the job done. Any number of these is fine.

Burn

A few burn spells round out the deck.

Galvanic Blast - sometimes, something REALLY needs to die (read: Vizier of Remedies and Goblin Electromancer). Also, sometimes that something is your opponent, and 4 to the face for 1 mana makes Burn decks jealous. This deck runs 2 - mostly to leave room for Crane and the full sets of Master and Overseer - but most decks run 3-4.

Mana Base

Mox Opal - the true heart of the deck, enabling you to outrace nearly every other deck in the format and giving you your best shot at running over control decks before they can stabilize. While the legend rule makes it a poor card to draw in multiples, the "god hand" (Mox, Ornithopter or Memnite, and a second 0-drop or Darksteel Citadel enabling a 2-drop on turn 1) is nearly unbeatable and gives affinity the legendary explosiveness it is known for. Run 4.

Springleaf Drum - the best mana rock available to us after Mox Opal. Remember that you can use newly-played creatures to power the drum, even though they have summoning sickness. Run 4.

Darksteel Citadel - with its colored-mana-producing cousins sacrificed to the ban hammer, Citadel is the only true artifact land left in the format. Fortunately, most of our deck is colorless, so the Citadel suits our needs just fine. Remember that under a Blood Moon or a Spreading Seas, it loses Indestructible but retains the artifact supertype, so it still counts toward Mox Opal, Etched Champion, Cranial Plating, and the like. Run 4.

Blinkmoth Nexus - it's a land that's also a creature! See 'critters' above. Run 3-4.

Inkmoth Nexus - another creature land, but this one is twice as scary. See 'threats' above. Run 4.

Glimmervoid - providing pain-free colored mana since 2003. The drawback is pretty brutal, but it's rarely an issue after turn 1, especially when paired with a Citadel. Just be very, VERY careful about playing turn-1 Glimmervoid into Signal Pest without any other artifacts, because if they have the Fatal Push, you will be a very sad panda. Run 3-5 Glimmervoids/Spires in any combination.

Spire of Industry - the release of Aether Revolt gave us the option to trade in Glimmervoid's end step trigger for a point of life here and there. Fortunately, most of the time you'll be using it to make colorless mana anyway. Run 3-5 Spires/Glimmervoids in any combination.

Island - enough decks run Path to Exile and Ghost Quarter that it's worth throwing a basic land in here. Some decks run a Mountain, or 2 basics, or no basic at all, but I recommend 1.

Sideboard

Etched Champion - for a control or midrange deck, nothing is scarier than a beater they can't block and can't target with spot removal. As long as you keep Metalcraft up, the only way they can remove the Champion is with a board wipe, and the only ones that see large amounts of play are Supreme Verdict and Engineered Explosives. He blocks Tarmogoyf and Death's Shadow with impunity, and if you manage to stick a Plating or a few +1/+1 counters on him, the game's as good as over.

Dispatch - sometimes, Galvanic Blast just doesn't get the job done. A cheap and permanent solution to Endbringer, Reality Smasher, and Gurmag Angler, and an extra answer to any combo pieces out of Storm and Company decks.

Ancient Grudge - all-purpose artifact removal. An answer to Chalice of the Void and the best card you can possibly draw against the Affinity mirror or Lantern Control.

Ghirapur AEther Grid - a fantastic win condition in grindy games. Shoots down Lingering Souls and small fliers from other Affinity decks with ease. Even better, it works under a Stony Silence.

Whipflare - a cheap, one-sided board wipe against creature decks.

Rest in Peace - the single most powerful piece of graveyard hate in the format. It is very, very difficult for Storm or Dredge to win with this card on the table, and if you land it early you can keep huge delve creatures stranded in your opponent's hand and make Snapcaster Mage useless. Even if it gets removed, the cards remain exiled, which means this card will always leave an impact even after it's gone.

Thoughtseize - buys you an extra turn against control decks if you can snag the Supreme Verdict before it comes down, or against Valakut if you can grab Primeval Titan or Scapeshift.

Matchups

Hatebears - good. Their deck relies on mana denial and disruption to get ahead, but we dump our hand too fast for their hand disruption to really hurt us, and we avoid most of their taxes; Leonin Arbiter can't stop our fetches because we don't run any, Darksteel Citadel is immune to Ghost Quarter, and the vast majority of our cards are creatures, which dodge Thalia, Guardian of Thraben. They have a few tricks with Aether Vial and they get Stony Silence post-board, but our creatures are bigger and the only flier they have is Flickerwisp, so we come out on top most of the time.

Lantern Control - good. Their main form of protection against aggressive decks, Ensnaring Bridge, is very ineffective against us, as Ornithopter and Signal Pest both have 0 power and we can make them huge after declaring the attack by moving a Cranial Plating at instant speed or feeding our entire board to an Arcbound Ravager. Their only way of killing us is by milling us out one card at a time, and we almost always kill them far before they come close to doing that.

Merfolk - good. Spreading Seas turns on islandwalk for their creatures and most of ours have flying, so very little blocking happens and the matchup is a flat-out race. Fortunately, racing is what we do best, and we are heavily favored game 1. Post-board, they get Hurkyll's Recall , but besides that it's smooth sailing.

Storm - good. We kill them faster than they can combo off most of the time. Postboard gets better for them (expect Lightning Bolt and Shatterstorm , Shattering Spree, or Anger of the Gods), but not by much.

Tron (without Eldrazi) - good. Most non-Eldrazi Tron decks only run at most one copy of Walking Ballista, so as long as you dodge that and Pyroclasm, you can run them over while they spend their first few turns setting up Tron. On the play, they might have enough time to crack an Oblivion Stone before you close out the game, but at the end of the day, Tron is designed to out-grind midrange and control decks and struggles to handle us.

Death's Shadow - even. They help us deplete their own life total and they have very few answers to Cranial Plating, but they have removal for everything else and a 5/5 Angler in your face doesn't give you much time to rebuild. Post-board they get Ceremonious Rejection and a few fancy tricks like Izzet Staticaster, while we get Etched Champion.

Eldrazi Tron - even. This matchup depends directly on whether or not they find a Walking Ballista, which most decks run four of. If they do, they will probably crush you, but if they don't, you won't really care about anything they do and can kill them before they kill you. An early Chalice of the Void for 0 or 1 can really hurt, but they have to be on the play to catch you before you dump your hand, and post-board you have Ancient Grudge to remedy the situation.

Junk - even. This matchup looks terrible on paper, but I've actually done decently so far. Lingering Souls and Liliana, the Last Hope are a beating, but we fly over everything else. Post-board, they get Stony Silence, but they basically have no outs to Etched Champion.

Valakut - even. The lack of fetch lands and shock lands in our deck means we rarely go down to 18 life on our own, so they need an extra land to kill us with Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle. If they resolve a Primeval Titan or Scapeshift, it's probably game over, but they don't interact much and you can more likely than not kill them before they combo off. However, post-board, they get a TON of artifact hate, and you'll probably see Lightning Bolt, Anger of the Gods, Sweltering Suns, or Engineered Explosives in addition to Ancient Grudge and Nature's Claim. Many decks even run Reclamation Sage, which they can search out with Summoner's Pact. Cross your fingers and hope to count to 20 before they bring Valakut online.

Burn - poor. They kill us faster than we kill them, and it gets even worse post-board. If we can stick a Vault Skirge and make it big we have a chance, but they're not likely to let that happen. Expect Destructive Revelry, Stony Silence, and Path to Exile after side boarding.

Company - poor. I've never actually faced this matchup since Vizier of Remedies was printed, but in my testing it's been awful. With only two Galvanic Blast main deck, we have very little power to interact with them, and they can straight-up kill us on turn 3 with turn-2 Devoted Druid into turn-3 Vizier, make infinite mana, Chord of Calling for Duskwatch Recruiter  , get Walking Ballista, gg. They have tons of ways to search out the combo pieces, so even if they don't have the nut draw, we're still on a very tight clock. Post-board, we get slightly more disruption, but they get tons of ways to make our life miserable with Kataki, War's Wage, Stony Silence, and a huge pile of spot removal.

UW Control - poor. Between Path to Exile and various other white removal spells, it's very difficult to kill them before they stabilize with Supreme Verdict, and once they untap with Cryptic Command over an empty board it's impossible to get ahead. After sideboarding, the matchup gets even worse; they pick up Stony Silence, and while we do get Etched Champion, it still dies to Verdict and isn't easy to sneak in under a counterspell.

Date added	7 years
Last updated	7 years
Legality	This deck is Modern legal.
Rarity (main - side)	4 - 0 Mythic Rares 24 - 8 Rares 13 - 5 Uncommons 18 - 2 Commons
Cards	60
Avg. CMC	1.35
Folders	Modern Maybe Builds, favs