Community

Jan 4, 2013 -- 10:47AM, Rush_Clasic wrote:

Dec 31, 2012 -- 2:30PM, Stasis_20 wrote:

Prior to Skullclamp/Ravager affinity, there was quite a bit of diversity in the meta.  There was some affinity, but very little.  I remember a very clunky blue/white control that was being played with success at the time, and the early stages of a Tooth and Nail deck.  Goblins was very prevalent still, and there were a handful of other decks, but nothing was particularly dominant.  Skullclamp/Ravager sucked the air out of the room.  Prior to banning skullclamp, there was almost nothing that could beat that deck.  It was so unbelievably consistent, and even pure hate decks made very little ground against it.

Meh, not that diverse. There was Goblins, GoblinBidding, Slide, and Big White. Competitively, Affinity was always tier 2 until Darksteel came out. One of the bigger problems is that the two blocks didn't mesh at all. There were no decks using both Mirrodin cards and Onslaught cards since both designs were so insular. That made it best block deck vs. best block deck. Tooth and Nail wasn't a deck until Darksteel, really.

Skullclamp , funny enough, increased the diversity. There were a myriad of viable decks, but you always had to play the Clamp. Elf and Nail, GoblinBidding, and Raffinty were still the best clamp decks, though, so it didn't help a whole lot.

Cranial Plating was the last straw for me. As if the deck wasn't good enough already.

Affinity was quite a major deck right from the beginning, it wasn't just a little part of the metagame. Broodstar Affinity (Or Sarnath Affinity, in some circles) was a dominant block force and a Tier 1 deck, along with RW Slide, W/x Control decks, Goblins, Big Red/Anan-Go and to a lesser extent Elves and White Weenie/Soldiers.  Those Affinity decks started to move to Anti-Affinity decks with Furnace Dragons and Seething Songs as a sideboard. At the first block PT (Kobe), Gabriel Nassif took TwelvePost Tooth and Nail to 2nd place, and TwentyUrza became a thing in Standard. 

Then Darksteel hit, the earliest Clampfinity decks were mainly red using Slobad, Atogs, Furnace Dragons... they then started dropping their curves as they added Ravager and AEther Vials until the nearly-all-artifact builds arose. Meanwhile, Goblin Bidding and Elf & Nail also became a big thing now it was fueled with Skullclamp - it didn't take long for every other deck to be eliminated from serious contention in Standard - it was basically just those three (Big Red decks also in Block, because they would just hope to fight Affinity every game).

Ravager Affinity was quite cheap at the time, and the fact that it could just Shrapnel Blast and Disciple it's way through games without trying meant it was a hugely popular deck. It was typically hitting 50%+ attendance, even though the decks Elf and Nail were actually putting up better results in many tournaments because of its slightly-better-than-even matchup with Affinity decks.

Then the bans came shortly before 5th Dawn. Goblins basically started dying out to Affinity, since it had similar speed and Aggression but more consistency and Shrapnel Blasts/Disciples to combo-kill - The release of Eternal Witness, Krark-Clan Ironworks and Cranial Plating returned Affinity to the top tables alongside Tooth and Nail, Ironworks combo, UG Crystal Shard/Rude Awakening decks, and GW Slide.

Kamigawa then rotated in; Goblin and Slide vanished, and no Kami block decks really made it into Standard competition against Tooth, Ironworks, and Affinity. Affinity was still making like 50% minimum attendance, and attendance numbers were dropping rapidly. Affinity wasn't getting all the wins, but it was boring people - every tournament, it would be an expectation to play Affinity every second round, and it was not surprising to play 4 or 5 rounds of Affinity in a row.

Feeling the falling attendance, and the poor sales of Kamigawa product (good for drafting, terrible for everything else), R&D stepped in and banned every key piece of the Affinity deck - Disciple, Ravager, the lands, AEther Vial. Their goal here wasn't to make Affinity 'fair' - it was to eliminate it entirely because they needed to guarantee that players wouldn't have to play against the bugbear anymore, so they'd start coming to tournaments again. They were also concerned that if they just banned Ravager and Disciple and Vial, the Affinity players would just switch to Krark-Clan Ironworks, and the problem would repeat.

tl;dr - Affinity and Tooth and Nail were both very powerful and popular decks from Day 1; the banning of Skullclamp did little to change that; Affinity was banned because it's overpopulation and consistency killed tournament attendance, even though it was not the "best performing" deck at the time of the Clamp bans or Affinity bans.

Jan 4, 2013 -- 10:09PM, MrIndigo wrote:

Affinity was quite a major deck right from the beginning, it wasn't just a little part of the metagame. Broodstar Affinity (Or Sarnath Affinity, in some circles) was a dominant block force and a Tier 1 deck, along with RW Slide, W/x Control decks, Goblins, Big Red/Anan-Go and to a lesser extent Elves and White Weenie/Soldiers.  Those Affinity decks started to move to Anti-Affinity decks with Furnace Dragons and Seething Songs as a sideboard. At the first block PT (Kobe), Gabriel Nassif took TwelvePost Tooth and Nail to 2nd place, and TwentyUrza became a thing in Standard.

I definitely remember it differently. Broodstar Affinity was showing up, but it was never dominating that I saw, and was much less successful than the other tier 1 decks of the time. The problem with verification is that we don't have any big Standard tournaments at that time to use, at least, none that I could find. Furnace Dragon and 12Post definitely came after Ravager Affinity became dominant, though, all three really becoming decks after Darksteel was released.