I wouldn’t be too worried about bans. Just because the community is packed with ban maniacs, doesn’t mean Wizards has this problem internally. Indeed, their willingness to let Amulet Bloom and Grishoalbrand survive the last round of bannings proves how consistent, reasonable, and predictable they are as format managers. With all the anti-Affinity hate out there, the format has plenty of police mechanisms to ensure Affinity never takes over.

Thanks for the support! You can always expect at least 1 article per week from me, and a few metagame articles every month. There’s a lot of room for Modern to grow with regard to metagame knowledge, and I love doing my small part to help it happen.

Really wish you keep it up !

No bans are needed. Affinity may be a high-performing deck but it’s not dominant. It’s performing right where Jund was earlier in the year, and Twin/Abzan/Burn before that at various points. It’s unfortunate that Modern players see frontrunning decks and immediate think about bans, and I want to move us away from this mentality wherever possible.

You don’t need to dedicate 4-5 super narrow slots to the matchup. You do need to have 4-5 slots that are relevant in the matchup with overlapping impact elsewhere. The issue arises in this current metagame where players are relying on Kolaghan’s Command with 1-2 Affinity hate slots. That’s the story of Worlds in a nutshell, and it’s our fault if we can’t adapt.

Shatterstorm is great against Affinity, but Wear/Tear is almost never enough. You’d be better off splashing green and just going with Grudge at that point. Bolt should also be enough to buy you the 1-2 turns needed to combo off. Between Shatterstorm and Bolt in the board (plus maybe 1-2 Grudge if you really want the splash, which I don’t necessarily advise), you should be okay for that matchup.

I’m not super surprised about Amulet’s finishes here, nor particularly impressed by its numbers. Amulet will often do well when it’s flying under the radar, and with only half of its few Day 2 pilots making the T32, it’s performing about where I expect. Scapeshift is more interesting because that deck has been largely absent from the top-tiers for a while. I wonder if it can start putting up more numbers with the metagame polarizing around midrange matchups or the creature groundwar.

No no no! Dont incourage that!

Actually affinity are facing a lot of hate. The problem is people are not respecting the deck enough. They have the false illusion that kolaghan’s command is enough or ancient grudge is enough. Affinity worst hate is in white, red and green. If it is your poor match-up and it is popular, dedicating 3-4 sb hate is reasonable. Of course those hate should have splash value. I think beside kolaghan’s command, they could play pyroclasm and such. With these sort of splash hate, you could garner enough card advantage to win them. Bfz have some good creatures that could stop etched champion and could be splash in any colour. I think affinity advantage will reduce once bfz comes in.

My thoughts on the change in style to elves deck are people are boarding graffdigger’s cage and anger of the God style of boardwipe against them in game 2 and 3, collected company do not help in these scenarios and became dead cards. Lead the stampede and sylvan messenger refill their hand after a boardwipe which give gas. It is a response to the meta sideboard strategy which nullify their sideboard plan.

Theree are certain metas where wear//tear can be good, but it isn’t for affinity. In my storm list, I played 2 shatterstorm as my only sb slots for affinity.
You don’t want to be drawn into a grindy game, so one-for-ones aren’t really worth it unless they’re also efficient tempo plays like lightning bolt.
Storm is faster in a race anyways, so you don’t have to dedicate too much to the matchup.

If I recall correctly, he ran 0 Hibernation in his sideboard. Hibernation is the tech many merfolk players, including myself, pack for matchups like elves. I didn’t get matched with elves at all at OKC and I haven’t playtested the matchup much, so I can’t comment much on it. Reitzl is a hall of famer, so I trust his judgement. Perhaps he felt Elves wasn’t a significant enough deck to dedicate any sideboard tech to.

Ali Aintrazi also Top16’d SCG Charlotte with the deck last month.

I am a UR storm player, and was wondering, though, do you think that a few Wear//Tears and possibly a Shatterstorm can be enough to fight against affinity?

Wear//Tear can be helpful against Twin (they probably keep the combo in against fast decks) and other misc. cards.

Plus, Storm’s finishes here are inspiring! I love Modern’s diversity.

Most likely. He was relying on Harbinger of the Tides which is not the most reliable interaction outside of racing situations or tempo matchups. Cutting a few for Vapor Snag or Dismember may have helped some, but Elves is a terrible matchup for Merfolk so it may have made no difference.

One day it might return! You (or others) will have to keep playing, tuning, and mastering it to know for sure.

It’s a cool deck and a great finish, but it’s hard to read too much into it because it could be an isolated event. At least Lantern Control had a few other T16 performances throughout the summer, giving us some context around the deck’s power. Modern Rally Combo has seen a few appearances since June, but we’ll need more data to know for sure about the deck’s power. If nothing else, it’s a great testament to the power of rogue decks in open formats like Modern!

Agreed, although I mention this in the article:
“Elsik, who had already cracked the Top 16 at Charlotte with the deck earlier in the summer, was so confident in his deck and its card choices that he played an identical maindeck a few months later at Oklahoma City.”