I don't have any experience with affinity, but i consider Nissa Eldrazi one of the most brainless idiot proof decks i have ever seen.
If Nissa Eldrazi is has a score of 60 out of 100 for brainless idiot proof deck, how much would affinity have?
30? you just drop all your artifacts? affinity is as dumb as hypergenesis in extended. you just lay your hand down and let the cards play itself. in the past, the only card that affinity had to worry about was pernicious deed, and the funny thing was, the deck couldn't even play around it.
nissa eldrazi at least is a little better than ww.
WW is pretty weak atm and needs a good pilot to work. Thats the reason why there was 1 guy playing WW with 16 lands or something. Kithkin is over, WW atm is pretty lacking.
ww is not weak. there was one in the top 8 at world. people have realized that going white is one of the best route against jund.
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30? you just drop all your artifacts? affinity is as dumb as hypergenesis in extended. you just lay your hand down and let the cards play itself. in the past, the only card that affinity had to worry about was pernicious deed, and the funny thing was, the deck couldn't even play around it.
nissa eldrazi at least is a little better than ww.
The OP was talking about the standard environment Jund, Affinity and Faeries were in and why was Jund the more popular in its own standard.
Pernicious deed is from Apocalypse and it wasnt even in the standard Affinity was in. Affinity was only present during the ONS-MIR and MIR-KAM standard..
Affinity is not like Hypergenesis. With Hypergenesis, just play the card and let the trigerred abilities take care of the rest and attack FTW next turn. You have to make different choices with Affinity and it has its own trick. Its a part Combo deck. You have Vial and Cranial Plating tricks and you have to plan ahead with your attack step. Affinity had to deal with ALOT of hate during its standard compared to Jund right now
Have you even read the posts as to why Affinity is harder to pilot than Jund in the standard they were in?
If all you do is solitaire or goldfishing then Affinity is indeed brainless but if you consider the fact that your playing against someone and there was ALOT of artifact hate before thats what made Affinity harder to pilot than Jund.
Affinity is aggro-combo sometimes even control while Jund is Aggro-midrage, Affinity is not just playing stuff for free then a fattie. You need to think in advance if you need to combo out on the attack phase and you need to play around with the hate against it..
Im really doubting if you've really played affinity before..
Affinity Control???? What! Are you serious?????? I'm really doubting if you've really played magic before..
Yes, it [Jund] is synergestic and well rounded. Those are valid reasons. More new players and easy to pilot are not valid reasons for the strong showing at worlds.
Have to take issue with the statement that Jund is synergistic... it is not. At all. Unless you consider "This spell can Cascade into that one" a form of synergy.
I'm going to put 4 misty rainforests and 1 island in my jund deck, and put in 4 negates. I have just invented JUND CONTROL everyone. YESSSS...
counterspells do not equal control.
Affinity has two things that make it ideal for aggro control. 1st, it has a large number of aggressive threats for low cost. This lets it keep counterspell mana up while playing aggressively. The second thing is the massive amounts of cheap card draw. Thoughtcast is essentially draw 2 for one, and Skullclamp was repeatable draw. With 6-8 counterspells, you could count on having a counter in hand for most of the game.
Affinity ended up being an aggro combo deck with little to no control because it works more effectively like that after the bannings, but it had all the tools it needed to be a scarier aggro contorl deck than faeries ever was. That's the problem with affinity, it was powerful in every aspect of the game.
You don't call "dying to removal" if the removal is more expensive in resources than the creature. If you have to spend BG (Abrupt Decay), or W + basic land (PtE) to remove a 1G, that is not "dying to removal". Strictly speaking Goyf dies to removal, but actually your removal is dying to Goyf.
I'm going to put 4 misty rainforests and 1 island in my jund deck, and put in 4 negates. I have just invented JUND CONTROL everyone. YESSSS...
counterspells do not equal control.
You really dont know anything about affinity. Previous affinity builds before ravager affinity was Aggro-control. I only cited couterspells as it was one thing that made it control. It also had card advantage which was plain obvious.
Yep. Even current Jund is really a neutered version of 4c Blood which was one of the weaker top tier decks last season. The power level of everything has dropped.
-It's not as expensive to make as other top-tier decks in the past.
-It's not so much about Jund being powerful, but the lack of power in other decks.
Consider that while Fairies were dominating, Reveillark, Cruel Control, Turbo Fog, Combo Elves and other very potent stuff was around.
Judge not the top deck's power by its own standing, but what else it has to stand against.
I think this is the best answer so far for why there was so many jund decks at worlds (50% of the meta). There is just no other deck thats has as solid of matchups that jund has right now. This makes the best choice to just play jund and tech out for the mirror.
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Jacerator is an aggro deck - it just wins by attacking the library, it doesn't really control the board other than to play a few Fogs
I'm going to put 4 misty rainforests and 1 island in my jund deck, and put in 4 negates. I have just invented JUND CONTROL everyone. YESSSS...
counterspells do not equal control.
Those who have obviously never even seen pre-ravager affinity (or played the ravager version, apparently) should stop making stupid comments about said deck.
Affinity required a mathematical approach to attack - when to play what, how to get the most out of the affinity mechanic, how to play against a bajillion hate cards, how to place modular counters, when to leave mana open for counters. The ravager version often won by the skin of its teeth by calculating the proper alpha strike and then using ravager/disciple combo after damage.
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Combo is a part of magic. If you cant deal with combo then your not a magic player.
Are you guys just pulling numbers out of your asses? I seen almost half a dozen people refer to jund being 50% of the metagame at worlds, when in fact it was just over a third... stop giving fault statistics to confuse people please.
As for the other question, jund is more popular than affinity because affinity was a lot easier to hate. We can argue that the naya lightsaber deck was designed to beat jund, but jund still had a reasonble match up against it. If you saw the 04 worlds where it was a G/W slide deck designed to beat affinity, that was a BLOWOUT. 4 oxidize 4 viridian shaman 4 wrath, slide, akroma's vengence, wing shards, eternal witness. The other decks in that format was tooth and nail, big red, U/W control all had at least 8 cards that did nothing to any other deck in the format except affinity, and proud to play it. Not to mention a tooth and nail or a akroma's vengence is pretty much gameover against affinity, and that still didnt stop the deck from being popular.
I was a Tooth and Nail player myself. I thought about playing affinity, because it looked challenging and some of the tricks it could do were cool. But I never acquired all of the cards. And I decided smashing face with Darksteel Colossus and Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker was more fun in the end.
I play Jund now for the same reason. I have thought about joining the "anti-Jund" brigade, but for now I will stick with Jund because it is fast-paced, face-smashing action. That's not to say the deck plays itself: some matchups require a *little* thinking.
Are you guys just pulling numbers out of your asses? I seen almost half a dozen people refer to jund being 50% of the metagame at worlds, when in fact it was just over a third... stop giving fault statistics to confuse people please.
people misinterpret the data. 51% of the metgame that were junds were either 6-0 or 5-1 on day 1 at world. this result is based on the top decks in standard that wizard has given.
Easy to play
Cheap to build
Strong because control is so weak
Strong because other aggro / midrange builds can't generate as much card advantage (Getting spells for free helps, I hear)
Lol at affinity being so easy ..
Well let me tell you it wasnt SO easy before the bannings .
You had to make a lot calculations and you could do so many mistakes (like what to sac to ravager etc ) .
And yet, despite making multiple mistakes in a game, the Affinity would still be able to easily win the game despite the opponent devoting literally their entire sideboard to artifact hate.
Affinity was ridiculously forgiving. Jund has nothing on a deck with much more overall explosiveness than it as well as being directly responsible for players quitting the game in masses.
remember jund was around when faeries were around and honestly not to much changed in jund from then. honestly it doesnt use to many cards from zendikar.
its the top played because it has a good power level and is forgiving when mistakes are made. its main weakness is its mana base.
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Affinity required a constant analysis of the board state, as well as playing around very real hate and knowing when to pull the trigger and where and when to move your modular counters. When to sacrifice Ravager itself, etc.
Sure, any noob could win with Affinity, but only someone playing well could win in situations where noobs would lose. Thats what makes Affinity a deck that allows for some skill. Like I said, it wasn't a really complex deck, but it was far, far more complicated than Jund.
Jund plays itself. There's 0 decision making involved. Literally, 0. I could write an elementary computer program in a few hours that could play Jund. Well.
Everyone stuck with what worked pre-rotation because Zendikar turned out to be such a crap set. The two builds hit the least by the rotation were Jund and Bant aggro, except Bant lost Shorecrasher Mimic and is now a shadow of its former self. Jund lost Ram Gang and replaced it with a better card: Sprouting Thrinax.
Seriously, that's the reason. Jund is going to continue to dominate and be the most popular deck unless some decent stuff comes out of WWK to open up some unique build possibilities.
And honestly, I'd hardly call Double Negative and Mindbreak Trap Jund hate. Double Negative hurts Jund if you happen to draw one, but that's only four cards in a 60 card deck. MBT was a gift to the eternal formats, and that's about it. Rarely will Jund ever trigger its trap, and you'll be stuck leaving 4 mana open every turn in anticipation of a cascade. Add to the fact that no one is playing blue, much less any kind of competitive permission control in which MBT could even be played, and there you have it. No true Jund hate.
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And to think there's another 2 or 3? solid months of this same format... Jund is so obviously the best deck mainly because cascade is such a busted mechanic. The other cascade cards really pale in comparison to BBE and BitBlast. There's no single card that can be better than auto 2 for 1s Jund enjoys, Double Negative is a decent answer as the poster above me has said, but 4 cards does not make a deck. I've already stopped playing standard, traded most of my playables for fetches and got out.
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To the affinity players: Look just about ANY deck requires alot of playskill to play at an optimal level, that doesn't change the fact that the edge playing affinity preban vrs non-affinity allowed for scrubs to still steal games even when playing badly. The deck was extremly forgiving.
Fae wasn't that forgiving actually, I've literaly made a mistake so minor as to play the wrong land on turn 2 and it factored into my loss 8 turns later. However it did allow for Lucksack wins with bitterblossom and mistbind clique.
Jund is a mix of both without being broken, the cascade allows for those lucksack wins mentioned and all the free spells makes the deck forgiving.
A deck being forgiving can be different from a deck being mindless- 42 Bears.dec is rather mindless yet not very forgiving in that it doesn't give you any cushion to win with.
Jund is mindless. Its one of the most obvious decks to pilot in a long time.
Jund is really easy to play. I played some Columbian guy on lackey who had just gotten his deck from the internet and he told me he didn't even know what the cards did and I may need to help him read some of the english, and the games with him were still close.
It's like Wizards tried to make an autopilot deck that no one could possible fail to play properly.
Then again Jund is the primarily red shard, and red is a very straightforward color to play so I guess this makes sense. I think its easiness is one of the reasons Jund is so popular
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30? you just drop all your artifacts? affinity is as dumb as hypergenesis in extended. you just lay your hand down and let the cards play itself. in the past, the only card that affinity had to worry about was pernicious deed, and the funny thing was, the deck couldn't even play around it.
nissa eldrazi at least is a little better than ww.
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ww is not weak. there was one in the top 8 at world. people have realized that going white is one of the best route against jund.
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The OP was talking about the standard environment Jund, Affinity and Faeries were in and why was Jund the more popular in its own standard.
Pernicious deed is from Apocalypse and it wasnt even in the standard Affinity was in. Affinity was only present during the ONS-MIR and MIR-KAM standard..
Affinity is not like Hypergenesis. With Hypergenesis, just play the card and let the trigerred abilities take care of the rest and attack FTW next turn. You have to make different choices with Affinity and it has its own trick. Its a part Combo deck. You have Vial and Cranial Plating tricks and you have to plan ahead with your attack step. Affinity had to deal with ALOT of hate during its standard compared to Jund right now
Affinity Control???? What! Are you serious?????? I'm really doubting if you've really played magic before..
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Did you notice when i said "aggro-combo sometimes even control"?
You do realize that there were several builds of Affinity before Raffinity was established as the best one? Some Affinity builds had counterspells..
I'm going to put 4 misty rainforests and 1 island in my jund deck, and put in 4 negates. I have just invented JUND CONTROL everyone. YESSSS...
counterspells do not equal control.
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Have to take issue with the statement that Jund is synergistic... it is not. At all. Unless you consider "This spell can Cascade into that one" a form of synergy.
Affinity has two things that make it ideal for aggro control. 1st, it has a large number of aggressive threats for low cost. This lets it keep counterspell mana up while playing aggressively. The second thing is the massive amounts of cheap card draw. Thoughtcast is essentially draw 2 for one, and Skullclamp was repeatable draw. With 6-8 counterspells, you could count on having a counter in hand for most of the game.
Affinity ended up being an aggro combo deck with little to no control because it works more effectively like that after the bannings, but it had all the tools it needed to be a scarier aggro contorl deck than faeries ever was. That's the problem with affinity, it was powerful in every aspect of the game.
-It's not as expensive to make as other top-tier decks in the past.
-It's not so much about Jund being powerful, but the lack of power in other decks.
Consider that while Fairies were dominating, Reveillark, Cruel Control, Turbo Fog, Combo Elves and other very potent stuff was around.
Judge not the top deck's power by its own standing, but what else it has to stand against.
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You really dont know anything about affinity. Previous affinity builds before ravager affinity was Aggro-control. I only cited couterspells as it was one thing that made it control. It also had card advantage which was plain obvious.
I think this is the best answer so far for why there was so many jund decks at worlds (50% of the meta). There is just no other deck thats has as solid of matchups that jund has right now. This makes the best choice to just play jund and tech out for the mirror.
Those who have obviously never even seen pre-ravager affinity (or played the ravager version, apparently) should stop making stupid comments about said deck.
Affinity required a mathematical approach to attack - when to play what, how to get the most out of the affinity mechanic, how to play against a bajillion hate cards, how to place modular counters, when to leave mana open for counters. The ravager version often won by the skin of its teeth by calculating the proper alpha strike and then using ravager/disciple combo after damage.
UBRGW T.E.S.
UUUSpiral Tide
Modern:
UBR Grixis Control
EDH:
UB Oona, Queen of the Fae
Combo is a part of magic. If you cant deal with combo then your not a magic player.
As for the other question, jund is more popular than affinity because affinity was a lot easier to hate. We can argue that the naya lightsaber deck was designed to beat jund, but jund still had a reasonble match up against it. If you saw the 04 worlds where it was a G/W slide deck designed to beat affinity, that was a BLOWOUT. 4 oxidize 4 viridian shaman 4 wrath, slide, akroma's vengence, wing shards, eternal witness. The other decks in that format was tooth and nail, big red, U/W control all had at least 8 cards that did nothing to any other deck in the format except affinity, and proud to play it. Not to mention a tooth and nail or a akroma's vengence is pretty much gameover against affinity, and that still didnt stop the deck from being popular.
I play Jund now for the same reason. I have thought about joining the "anti-Jund" brigade, but for now I will stick with Jund because it is fast-paced, face-smashing action. That's not to say the deck plays itself: some matchups require a *little* thinking.
people misinterpret the data. 51% of the metgame that were junds were either 6-0 or 5-1 on day 1 at world. this result is based on the top decks in standard that wizard has given.
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Easy to play
Cheap to build
Strong because control is so weak
Strong because other aggro / midrange builds can't generate as much card advantage (Getting spells for free helps, I hear)
And yet, despite making multiple mistakes in a game, the Affinity would still be able to easily win the game despite the opponent devoting literally their entire sideboard to artifact hate.
Affinity was ridiculously forgiving. Jund has nothing on a deck with much more overall explosiveness than it as well as being directly responsible for players quitting the game in masses.
its the top played because it has a good power level and is forgiving when mistakes are made. its main weakness is its mana base.
Tooth & Nail........Grishoalbrand....Living Dominance....Tezzerator.........Vannifar Pod
My Decks that have been BANNED
DRS Jund | Kiki-Pod | Bloom Titan | Splinter Twin | KCI
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Affinity required a constant analysis of the board state, as well as playing around very real hate and knowing when to pull the trigger and where and when to move your modular counters. When to sacrifice Ravager itself, etc.
Sure, any noob could win with Affinity, but only someone playing well could win in situations where noobs would lose. Thats what makes Affinity a deck that allows for some skill. Like I said, it wasn't a really complex deck, but it was far, far more complicated than Jund.
Jund plays itself. There's 0 decision making involved. Literally, 0. I could write an elementary computer program in a few hours that could play Jund. Well.
0 Karn
W Darien
U Arcanis
B Geth
R Norin
G Yeva
UW Hanna
RB Olivia
WB Obzedat
UR Melek
BG Glissa
WR Aurelia
GU Kraj
BRU Nicol Bolas
RGB Prossh
BGW Ghave
GUB Mimeoplasm
WUBRG Sliver Overlord
GWU Treva, the Renewer
EDH Spike:
U Azami, Lady of Scrolls
Trades
Seriously, that's the reason. Jund is going to continue to dominate and be the most popular deck unless some decent stuff comes out of WWK to open up some unique build possibilities.
And honestly, I'd hardly call Double Negative and Mindbreak Trap Jund hate. Double Negative hurts Jund if you happen to draw one, but that's only four cards in a 60 card deck. MBT was a gift to the eternal formats, and that's about it. Rarely will Jund ever trigger its trap, and you'll be stuck leaving 4 mana open every turn in anticipation of a cascade. Add to the fact that no one is playing blue, much less any kind of competitive permission control in which MBT could even be played, and there you have it. No true Jund hate.
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Fae wasn't that forgiving actually, I've literaly made a mistake so minor as to play the wrong land on turn 2 and it factored into my loss 8 turns later. However it did allow for Lucksack wins with bitterblossom and mistbind clique.
Jund is a mix of both without being broken, the cascade allows for those lucksack wins mentioned and all the free spells makes the deck forgiving.
Jund is mindless. Its one of the most obvious decks to pilot in a long time.
0 Karn
W Darien
U Arcanis
B Geth
R Norin
G Yeva
UW Hanna
RB Olivia
WB Obzedat
UR Melek
BG Glissa
WR Aurelia
GU Kraj
BRU Nicol Bolas
RGB Prossh
BGW Ghave
GUB Mimeoplasm
WUBRG Sliver Overlord
GWU Treva, the Renewer
EDH Spike:
U Azami, Lady of Scrolls
Trades
It's like Wizards tried to make an autopilot deck that no one could possible fail to play properly.
Then again Jund is the primarily red shard, and red is a very straightforward color to play so I guess this makes sense. I think its easiness is one of the reasons Jund is so popular