Dime a Dozen #25: War Machines

Posted on June 25, 2013 by Jason Moore

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  1. M3G1: You had no reason to play that Fling (and Galvanic Blast). You can simply pump the Atog to lethal damage and pass priority with mana floating: If he does do something, you can response with Fling (and if needed Galvanic Blast). If he does nothing, you lose the floating mana and the game proceeds to the Combat Damage step, resulting in lethal damage from the Atog without him being able to do anything before that.

  2. Christian – Glad you pointed that out! At the time I didn’t think that was the case, and was too paranoid for my own good. Thanks for the comment!

  3. Hey Jason, what do you think of soul’s fire in this deck? It’s fling for one more mana that doesn’t sacrifice the creature. Seems very good with Atog – you can sac all of your permanents, cast it, and then hit them with the atog. Maybe a split with fling?

  4. Anonymous – Hi! I’ve never heard of that card before — good find! It doesn’t seem too bad, even though Affinity plays a low land count. By the late part of the game you will have that much mana.

    Not sacrificing isn’t always too helpful, since if you’re going for a lot of damage you need to sacrifice most of your stuff anyway (so it’s pretty all-in regardless). I still think it could be playable.

  5. Soul’s Fire is much easier to disrupt than Fling, since your opponent can kill the creature in response and then you get nothing from your spell. The only way to disrupt Fling is with a hard counter — that’s part of what makes it such a powerful spell, IMO.

  7. I get the feeling that the original affinity list is much better than this.

    I never played it much but I guess the reason it plays 4 springleaf drums is because it has 4 Disciples of the vault to ramp you early. Not playing black to have more mana fixing artifacts doesn’t really make your deck more consistent manawise, it just makes it slower as your earliest creatures to use drums of off is atog or frogmite.
    Also the reach they provide is very relevant when you need to steal the game by pumping to atog, or just saccing your mana fixers.

    I’d say the effect of not playing black on your mana base is irrelevant comparing to how much worse your atogs, flings and drums become. It also means you have a worse sideboard plan vs. fissure and stompy.