Comments on: Deck of the Week: Hardened Scales Affinity

By: Bart C

Bart C — Sun, 05 Mar 2017 20:19:08 +0000

It’s still possible though:
T1: scales
T2: ballista
T3: ravager and worker, sac all, swing for 10 & ping 10

By: Chris Striker

Chris Striker — Tue, 28 Feb 2017 15:20:01 +0000

I also am in love with this deck :). I think its interesting that youve chosen the straight BG version to highlight, which hasn’t gotten as much attention as Abzan from other regular content providers. For reference, here’s the first article revisiting the concept I’ve seen: http://www.channelfireball.com/articles/modern-abzan-aggro-legless-walkers/

I think that Dromoka’s Command is surprisingly powerful in answering many of the problems that this deck has. Rarely is a removal spell so flexible. The card is an answer to Blood Moon, a counterspell for burn, and a way to turn your snake into a 4/5 all at the same time. Granted, it is also by far the weakest card in the deck, because the Command lacks two modes to be cast in vacuum a la Kolaghan’s Command.

Having been jamming with the deck for a little while, Abzan is very swingy, feeling like a competitive deck when you open with a Scales or Constrictor, and feeling like a bad casual deck when you don’t, even with that deck’s use of Traverse to smooth out opening hands. This BG version does a lot to mitigate by adding in Steel Overseer as another counter lord, which seems like a great idea alongside the Abzan Traverse. However, the BG version looks like it goes way too “all-in” on the Affinity part of Affinity. The only real payoff card for that is Ravager, which is itself a stepping stone to get you to Hangarback or Ballista. Actual Affinity also has Master of Etherium, Plating, and Etched Champion. The deck also doesn’t really need Mox Opal when, in actual colors, it has access to Heirarch if ramp is what you need, and going for so many colorless lands generates serious problems, as you’ve noted in the discussion above. I think the variety of builds does show that there is enough in the shell to be worth developing.

By: João Victor Santiago

João Victor Santiago — Tue, 28 Feb 2017 02:44:58 +0000

I really belive that people should stop tacking “affinity” on any deck with small artifact creatures….
The current “affinity” already have close to zero cards with affinity mechanic (only Thoughtcast survived and is not even auto include on all lists), but at last it was an evolution of the old affinity deck and has a pretty similar play style, now this one has close to nothing to do with affinity beside a few shared cards and plays a very different game.

Anyway, this deck seems pretty nice, although I like the Abzan version more, since it adds two nice late game plans: gavony twonship and vault of archangel.

By: Roland F. Rivera Santiago

Roland F. Rivera Santiago — Mon, 27 Feb 2017 23:30:28 +0000

I have to say that I’m unreasonably fond of the “BG Snek” nickname the deck has picked up in honor of its Standard incarnation. As for the deck itself, it’s certainly interesting. Vulnerable to early disruption (especially if you kill the Constrictor itself), but very difficult to stop once it gets going. Hangarback Walker and Ballista give it more game against grindy decks than Affinity, but those “kill you on T3 unless you interact with me” hands are absent (probably for good reason – most every deck out there right now can interact with those hands). I don’t think it’ll supplant Affinity, but it might emerge as an alternative version that waxes whenever Affinity wanes.

By: kkab

kkab — Mon, 27 Feb 2017 23:11:05 +0000

With the amount of value that this deck gets from sacrificing artifacts and taking advantage of modular to proliferate counters I think an additional sacrifice outlet apart from Arcbound Ravager might be useful.

Two that come to mind and are on color are Syndicate Trafficker and Viscera Seer. The Seer is cheaper and doesn’t need mana like the Ravager but the Trafficker gets additional value and is a hard hitting resilient threat.