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Editor:Audrey Chin-Quan. Monday 5th September 2005.
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 The Evolution of Erayo Affinity.
It all began on some day in the USA. Some guy (forgotten his name, sorry) decided to pilot Erayo into the Top 8 of an American regionals Type 2 event. Since that day the world has had to ask itself a couple of important questions, is Affinity actually dead? Didn't we do enough to kill it? Perhaps Cranial Plating was the culprit after all? But then of course there were those who were asking a different set of questions, I was one of these people. Was this guy a savage cheater or what? How did that deck make top 8 with 4 Genesis Chamber and 4 Myr Servitors?
Version 1.0
When I first saw the original list for Erayo Affinity I laughed at how bad it looked. There was no Chrome Mox and there were the aforementioned 8 very bad cards. I decided to build the deck anyway to see what exactly this deck did, it was pretty obvious but I wanted to make sure. The deck did flip Erayo ok if you drew her but usually on turns 2 or 3, that's not acceptable at all I said, and what are these crappy Myr Servitors and Genesis Chambers doing for me? Nothing is the answer so it turned out my first instincts about the deck were correct. I immediately cut the 4 Genesis Chambers for 4 Chrome Moxes and then cut the Myrs for Somber Hoverguards. The deck turned from flipping Erayo on turn 2-3 to flipping her on turns 1-2 (This is if you drew her in your opening hand), much better I thought.
1st Testing session
I decided to run this deck Vs Tooth and Nail and Mono Red for a bit at a friends house to see if it could pull out any wins, I mean it should right? It made top 8 at a large regionals event.
The first round of testing actually went very well for Erayo. Tooth and Nail seemed to be getting smacked around something shocking. The Tooth and Nail match-up seemed to be at least 60/40 pre-board and we figured Tooth and Nail didn't have much to board against us. The post-board could only get better so we counted that match in Erayo's favour and moved onto Mono Red.
Erayo seemed to have a pretty good game against this deck too as it was actually faster than red and the old turn 1 Slith Firewalker really wasn't as scary as it is for other slower decks. The games that the red decks were winning were the ones where it managed to draw lots of early burn and then ritual out a slogger to shore up the late game. It was because of these games that the addition of the 4th Scale of Chiss-Goria was added to the main deck. The 4th scale made an immediate impact making the red deck cry when it tried to shock those Ornithopters with Cranial Plating. The match-up VS Mono Red was looking agreeable and the Tooth and Nail match-up was well and truly 1 sided. Somewhere along the way that night we added 2 Ninja of the Deep Hours for extra fun with turn 1 Ornithopter and as we were still running a mono blue mana base we could easily put them into play on turn 2 for extra fun Vs Tooth and Nail. I think the Hoverguards got cut for the Ninjas and the 4th Scale of Chiss-Goria. I think at this stage I removed a land from the deck too, 18 lands are too many, what was that guy thinking?
The initial version for that first night ended up looking something like this.
Version 2.0
I felt we were really onto something good here. After a bit of discussion the next day at work via email we decided to do something radical. Instead of the crap mana base that the original builder had designed of just Islands and Blinkmoth Nexus we decided to go with the more potentially broken mana base of cutting another land and adding in Tendo Ice Bridge, Glimmervoid, and City of Brass. Shortly after this mana base was revised we found out that City of Brass was not going to be in 9th so we switched over to Shivan Reef as we were changing the main deck again to include Shrapnel Blasts. We stuck 2 in there for answers to Tooth and Nail after Triskelion/Vampire and for dealing with Arc Slogger, which seemed to be a good move.
Version 3.0
2nd Testing session
During the next round of testing we discovered that the deck had picked up a bit of pace with the cutting of lands and became a bit more solid in games where Tooth and Nail resolved. Before the Shrapnel Blasts were added the deck could not actually win if your opponent Toothed for Triskelion/Vampire, but now that we had Shrapnel Blasts we could either blast the Triskelion or we could blast their face for the last 5 points of damage. The Mono Red match-up didn't seem to change much except that we were starting to realise that Ninja of the Deep Hours wasn't exactly the house against Red. Some more revising was needed here. I had the suspicion that the deck was picking up too many coloured spells so I wanted to explore that a little more.
This version was played and tested a bit for a few weeks before the next changes emerged. During the 2 testing sessions we had done the deck had picked up another fan in the form of Jeremy Neeman. Jeremy decided that he would give testing Erayo a go too. Apparently he had been testing Erayo at home for the few weeks after we had changed to the Shrapnel Blast version and had made some adjustments. We were at an FNM draft when he pulled out the newest version to test against my version. Now I must tell you the Erayo mirror-match is probably the dumbest mirror in a long time and is pretty much not worth testing. Basically one person will have a much better draw than the other and will win because of it. Its like playing type 1 in some ways. So we sat down to have a game and Jeremy flips Erayo turn 1 or something and I sigh. "No wonder people hate playing against this deck" I say. I do some stuff but ended up losing that game (as you do against turn 1 flipped Erayo). It was only in the second game when Jeremy Chrome Moxed a Night's Whisper on turn 1 to cast a 2nd one from his hand that I realised what he had done. The extra card advantage was huge in the mirror-match. Because he had 8 card drawing spells and I only had 4. Jeremy ended up winning almost every game we played that night. I was starting to look at those Shrapnel Blasts with distaste. Jeremy told me he had also cut down to 14 lands instead of my hefty 16, and running 2 main deck Pithing Needles too. He told me that in his testing the deck only really lost when you drew extra lands. I could see where he was coming from there but 14 did sound a little suicidal. I decided to go back to the drawing board.
Version 4.0
Now just so you know, part of the reason the mana base changed from the mono blue version to the newer fancier mana base was because I found that I really wanted to move the Cranial Plating around at instant speed but couldn't with all those crappy Islands in my deck. Adding Tendo Ice Bridge and Glimmervoid helped that out a lot. The new mana base was even better than that in the end because now black was your second main colour which made moving Cranial Plating a breeze!
I decided that at this point I couldn't see myself cutting the land count of this deck below 15 as you always want a land in your opening hand and you risk that by cutting more lands. Hence the 1 lonely Pithing Needle and not 2.
3rd Testing session
It was in this testing session that Erayo had its best and worst results to date. Jeremy had ripped a version of Tooth and Nail off the net and tweaked it a little, as he does, and brought it a long to test. He had done the same thing with Mono Red.
I sat down Vs Tooth and Nail and then proceeded to lose more games than I won. I was surprised at the results against the deck we had earlier written off in the match-up. Whatever was different about that version of Tooth and Nail was making a big difference. The match win % was moving down to 50% and then possibly even 45%. I was worried. Had I gone wrong somewhere in my changes? What was making the draws I was getting so much worse than the other versions? Was it because I cut lands? The deck was having a bad night basically. The newer version was fine, I was just getting all its bad draws out of the way it seemed.
On to Mono Red I decided. Maybe this will cheer me up it thought. The Mono Red match-up was about the same as it was before, maybe slightly better though. The version Jeremy had brought was the Seething Song, Arc Slogger, Sword of Fire and Ice version. This version has since been altered because of the inconsistencies of the deck. The Mono Red match-up was pretty good that night. The Night's Whispers were helping a lot against red as they really only start burning you to the head or getting through damage after they have shored up the board position. Against Erayo it tends to be hard to get damage through with Frogmites and Myr Enforcers clogging up the ground. Scale of Chiss-Goria was beautiful as usual in this match-up due to the red player having to factor in 1 extra toughness for all of the Affinity deck's men. The Mono Red match-up was looking good.
Just a side note here for all you hard-core players. The testing done here was all pre-sideboard. Usually in 'true' testing most of the games are played post-board to help find out what happens in the important games. Testing post-board also helps you find out what you need to put in your sideboard against various decks. Finding a good sideboard for Erayo didn't seem difficult but there are a lot of ways to go wrong with it. This will be discussed later on.
1st Tournament testing for Erayo Affinity
Finally it was time to take Erayo to a tournament and see how she ran. Unfortunately the tournament was way too small for any real results to be gained from it. We had a massive field of 6 players there that day and no Mono Red decks in the field at all, how disappointing! Before the tournament got started we all did the usual scrounging for the last few cards we needed to play. In a last minute switch Jeremy decided to play Tooth and Nail so that John Paul Kelly could borrow his Chrome Moxes and Blinkmoth Nexi and I could borrow his Pithing Needles, meaning everyone won in the end, Jeremy gets to play the dominant deck in the field and JP and I get to play decks with all the cards we needed. I ended up having to finally build a sideboard for Erayo though which was good as it helped me figure out what future sideboards would look like. My sideboard looked something like this.
Please note that I didn't actually mean for my sideboard to look like this. I basically just found random cards lying around my room before I left that morning to chuck in. The real sideboard was this in essence.
6 other cards.
On to the main event!
Round 1.
I get paired up with the best player in the room (Jeremy) and the best deck in the format at the time (Tooth and Nail).
Jeremy proceeded to tear me apart 2-0. "Stupid deck" I say pointing at the ridiculousness that is Tooth and Nail. In a 3 round tournament losing your first round is bad :(
Round 2.
I get paired up with JP playing mono black aggro. This match-up had been briefly tested when the Erayo deck still had Shrapnel Blasts in it and the Erayo deck pounded it into the ground. I was looking forward to this match-up especially since adding Pithing Needle to the deck. Stupid Umezawa's Jitte!
JP had some very average draws and I ran over him 2-0. Not much to be said there. He did stall me for a while, as he was running 4 Pithing Needles main as I recall and he kept dropping them down and naming Cranial Plating, which is quite a pain.
Round 3.
I think I played against some form of control deck here but to be honest I can't really remember much about what went on. I think something like Ornithopter with Cranial Plating + other artifacts happened twice in a row making it 2-0 to Erayo again.
2-1 for Erayo only losing to Tooth and Nail seems ok. I ended up 3rd that day thanks to JP going 1-2 for my resistance. WW ended up 2nd.
So all in all it was a pretty average day. The deck performed ok, it only lost to the deck it had the bad match-up against so I wasn't too fussed about that.
I think at some point just before the Tournament, maybe a couple days, I ended up cutting that extra land as Jeremy did and played the deck with 14 lands and added the extra Pithing Needle.
2nd Tournament testing for Erayo Affinity
Thankfully I think we got 8 for this tournament. Not much of an improvement but some at least. I managed to actually make a suitable sideboard this time and the results show.
Round 1.
First round I played against Jacob Bennett who was running Tooth and Nail. I knew Jacob was running Tooth before he even sat down because that's pretty much all he ever plays. I sighed and shuffled up for the match.
Jacob wears his emotion on his sleave most of the time when he is playing Magic; he would make a terrible poker player with faces and body language like that :)
1st game.
I won the dice roll and elected to play first. I think it was something like turn 1 Ornithopter, Arcbound Worker, Welding Jar, go.
Jacob played random Uratron piece, played a Sensei’s Divining Top and said go.
I Chrome Moxed a Night's Whisper, played a land, dropped a Frogmite, cast Cranial Plating, equipped Cranial Plating, and swung in for 7.
Jacob used his Top and played another land and finished his turn.
I Thoughtcast and dropped another Frogmite and a Myr Enforcer or something stupid like that and swung in for 9 putting Jacob on 4 on turn 3.
Jacob topped and looked at his hand, sat there thinking for a minute or 2 and then declared my draw to be a "God draw" and scooped. I laughed to myself and with the others around at the Tooth and Nail deck complaining about other decks being overpowered. Tooth and Nail deserves to die and Erayo in all her glory shall be the one to do it!
I sideboarded in the extra 2 Pithing Needles, 4 Tooth of Chiss-Goria and 2 Echoing Truths and removed the 4 Scale of Chiss-Goria and 4 Night's Whisper.
Jacob decides to play and played a forest and said go.
I played a land and said go.
Jacob played another forest and a Sakura-Tribe Elder and passed it back.
I drew and then played a land, cast Erayo, played Ornithopter, Welding Jar and another Ornithopter, and flipped Erayo on turn 2 :) go me!
Jacob frowned his big frown and almost sacked his Sakura in response. He then read Erayo and we went back to his turn.
Jacob missed a land drop and said go.
I cast a Thoughtcast, played a couple of free Teeth of Chiss-Goria, and swung in for 2 with my Toothed up Ornithopter.
Jacob sacrificed his Sakura-Tribe Elder at the end of my turn to find a land.
Jacob played a Divining Top soaking up Erayo's ability and cast a Naturalize killing my flipped Erayo. Everyone around made disgusted noises as Jacob cast his ugly white-bordered Naturalize and I laughed as I commented, "That shouldn't even work". We all have a laugh at the ugliness of the white-bordered card and Jacob comments that he had no choice; his brother gave him the cards for the deck as they share a collection.
Just a note for those of you out there who play with white-bordered cards. They are actually bad luck so you should cut them from your deck wherever possible :). Jacob knew this but his hands were tied. On another side story regarding this, the last tournament mentioned in here John Paul had the opportunity to either play a white-bordered Uncle Fester (Festering Goblin) or to not play one at all, he chose to not play one at all and all was well in the world.
Back to the action!
After Erayo bit the dust it was a slow game. I was swinging in for 2 a turn with my Tooth-powered Ornithopters and Jacob was not drawing lands very well. Jacob finally managed to get down a piece of the Urzatron but it was a little late by that point. I drew 2 Blinkmoth Nexi and was swinging with them before Jacob even showed signs of life. Jacob drew a couple more lands and finally drew an Oblivion Stone that he dropped that turn. Jacob didn't have enough mana to activate the stone yet though so he had to pass the turn. Jacob had 5 mana in play so I knew that if he untapped I would lose most of my stuff. I could keep swinging with my Nexi but they would be slow and Jacob would have 2 turns to draw something to win with. So I did what any lucky bastard does and peeled the Pithing Needle off the top and slapped it down to Jacob's disgust. I laughed and swung in for 3 putting Jacob on 3. Jacob frowned again as he drew his card and cursed his bad luck. Jacob scooped up his cards.
Yay, Erayo beats Tooth and Nail!
"2-0 to Jas" I tell G (Glenn Doyle, Manager of Logical Choice in Canberra).
I was very happy to have managed to force a win through against Tooth there. Jacob was a bit cut that I killed him on turn 4 the first game and flipped Erayo on turn 2 the second. He questioned me on how often that happens and Andrew Vance who was sitting nearby told him that it actually wasn't that infrequent. Jacob was still looking quite disturbed by the deck's good showing against his time and again proven Tooth and Nail deck. Jacob actually won Regionals in the ACT this year with that Tooth and Nail deck so I was very happy about the win.
Round 2.
I was paired up with Neil Kane in the 2nd round of the tournament knowing he was playing U/W control.
Game 1.
I played a Pithing Needle on turn 1 naming Oblivion Stone and Neil sort of looked at me funny and then flashed me a Damping Matrix from his hand. The background of this was Neil and I were playing a few games of this match-up a few days earlier and I asked him why he wasn't running Oblivion Stone. Neil's answer was because he was running Damping Matrix main and there was some very bad anti-synergy there. So when I played a Pithing Needle and named Oblivion Stone he obviously laughed a little inside. Thing is it didn't matter because I had no other 1 drop and Neil had nothing in his deck that I could actually name anyway.
Neil failed to draw plains in his first game against me and I ran over the top of him. Neil has had some major mana problems with that deck when playing against me for some reason. Time to go to the sideboard.
I took out the Pithing Needles against Neil for the above-mentioned reason. I put in 2 Shrapnel Blasts for some extra damage, swapped out the Scales of Chiss-Goria for Teeth and took out the Night's Whispers for Echoing Truths. I know Neil is running Prismatic Angel and Damping Matrix so the Truths will help there. Note: I will not be trying to bounce his Angel, just the Worship should he have any in there.
Game 2.
Neil drew 'fantastically' again and I think mulliganed to 6 keeping an average hand. I kept mine and off we went. Neil decided that he is still only playing mono blue and doesn't play plains for the first few turns. :)
My start was a bit slow, I hit him a with a couple of Frogmites and an Arcbound Worker and had an Ornithopter or 2 in play. I really wanted Cranial Plating.
Neil was still struggling with his lands when I drew some card drawing and dropped a Blinkmoth Nexus. Neil has his own Blinkmoth Nexus and a Blue Genju down. I swung in and put Neil on 10 life. Neil drew a plains finally hooray! I looked at the Myr Enforcer in my hand and wondered if it was worth playing that next turn or not. If I dropped it in my next turn I could have swung in for the win the turn after but I am not sure whether to over extend or not because of the risk of Wrath of God. I decided that I have a Nexus anyway and no Cranial Platings have shown up so if I get Wrathed I can still win in the next couple turns anyway. I decided to play the Myr Enforcer and swing in. Neil drew nothing but he did have an out. Neil cast Worship with just enough mana to activate his Blinkmoth Nexus to save himself from the huge damage coming over. I decided to just be rude and drew an Echoing Truth off the top for the win.
2-0 for Erayo
Round 3.
Round 3 comes along and I have to face yet another Tooth and Nail deck piloted this time by Andrew Vance. This is the same Tooth and Nail deck that beat me last tournament. I really should have stopped lending that deck out!
Andrew knows how to play against Erayo as he has been part of the core testing group of myself, Jeremy, Anatoli, John Paul and to a lesser extent Neil.
Game 1.
Andrew got an average draw, but mine was a little too slow. Andrew spent a few turns getting set up while I hit him with some dudes. Andrew then just cast Tooth and Nail entwined and I have to pack up after 2 turns of beats from Triskelion Vampire.
Sideboarding: Same as against Jacob in round 1.
Game 2.
Andrew started to get unlucky from here on in. He had to put back his first hand as it contained bad opening hand cards (Darksteel Colossus, Kiki-Jiki, Mephidross Vampire, etc). Andrew kept his 6-card hand and I started off.
My hand was a little faster than the previous game and I dropped down guys early and start swinging. Andrew struggled for lands and dropped an Oblivion Stone. I peeled the Pithing Needle off the top for the win.
No changes to the sideboard.
1-1.
Game 3.
Andrew and I both got pretty ok draws in this game. Andrew dropped some land and a Sensei’s Divining Top, Sakura-Tribe Elder for more lands, that sort of thing.
I dropped Ornithopters and Frogmites with Teeth of Chiss-Goria to speed it up some. I also drew 2 Pithing Needles so I named Oblivion Stone and Triskelion.
Andrew was having a bit of trouble finding the pieces of Urzatron he needed to cut sick. I suspected he had a Tooth and Nail in Hand but his mana wasn't up to the task yet. Andrew managed to top into a Sylvan Scrying to find the last piece of the Urzatron and cast Tooth and Nail with Entwine. He went and fetched a Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker and a Duplicant to try and shut down my guys. In his turn Andrew eats my enforcer with the original Duplicant and then ate a Frogmite with the copy he made.
I tapped the top of my library asking for the Cranial Plating I have been waiting for and peeled it straight off the top and directly into play. I attached to one of my 3 Ornithopters and swung in for the win. Andrew then realised that he had played his turn incorrectly and that he shouldn't have used the Kiki in his turn but should have waited for the attack. We called it my game but went back to see what would have happened. I played the Cranial Plating and attached it to an Ornithopter and ran in with them all. Andrew Duplicanted the one with the Cranial Plating but I had the correct mana available to move it at instant speed to another Ornithopter for the win anyway.
2-1 to Erayo over Tooth and Nail.
Erayo was now 3-0. That was an improvement on its 2-1 showing the previous week. I was quite happy with the way the deck had played on the day and I was looking forward to playing the final round of the tournament.
Round 4.
My 4th round opponent was my occasional lunchtime testing partner Hugh Glanville (Teamtom on the forums). I know Hugh is running WW because I loaned him 3 Paladins and Worship that morning.
WW can be a tough match-up given that they run 2 very scary cards for Erayo in the form of Umezawa's Jitte and Worship. Thankfully Hugh doesn't have any main deck Worships. Other versions contain Damping Matrix but Hugh was running the equipment and Aether Vial version instead at this stage.
Game 1.
Game 1 was a non-event. I decided to be an idiot and keep a bad hand and Hugh proceeded to beat me up for my arrogance. Mulligan when you should! I am slapping myself for that one as I move to game 2 with my best game out of the way.
I sideboarded in 2 Pyroclasms, 2 Pithing Needles, and 4 Echoing Truths. I sided out Night's Whisper and all the Erayos.
I figured Erayo was pretty bad in that match-up as he was running Aether Vial.
Game 2.
Game 2 started off well with me having opening hand Pyroclasm. I play lands for the first 2 turns while Hugh played a Savannah Lions and then 2 1/1 flyers. I cast Pyroclasm and Hugh looked disturbed. I found out later that Hugh had a Glorious Anthem in hand for his guys :). I then dropped some dudes and swung them into him until he died without anything else major happenening. Hugh did stall on 2 lands for a bit there.
Game 3.
No sideboard changes made.
Hugh dropped Aether Vial and said go. I dropped some dudes and we start trading creatures, or so Hugh thought anyway. I swung in early on with an Ornithopter with a Plating on it and Hugh Vialed out a 2/2 flyer to trade, fortunately for me I had the Scale of Chiss-Goria to make sure that the trade was a little too 1 sided for Hugh's liking. I ended up swinging Hugh down to low life with him having a Paladin down with a Jitte. For some reason things looked quite complicated at the end of this game. I must admit I did almost bone this game up but common sense prevailed. In the end the Paladin ended up back in Hugh's hand and with nobody worshiping I could swing in for the win. I think we may have played the end of the game in a slightly more difficult way but that's how it all panned out in the end.
Erayo is 4-0 at the end of the day. Hooray!
Well, another day and another good showing from Erayo Affinity. What did I learn from this last tournament? Well, lets take a look. Seems like I sided out those Nights Whispers a lot didn't I? I am not sure whether I needed to dedicate some main deck slots to more Needles/Echoing Truths or not but they did seem to come in a lot. I was pondering whether to test the deck without the Night's Whispers or whether to leave them in and just side them out when I need to.
After this tournament I did test the Echoing Truths and 4 main deck Pithing Needles and they both seemed solid choices. Echoing Truth main deck helps against the WW decks and their occasional main-deck Worships and the Pithing Needles are just good against everything at the moment.
This weekend coming is Nationals Weekend so it's definitely time to make up my mind about what I will be playing and what version. I have not qualified on rating and I missed regionals because of a friend's Birthday so I might just go grinding and see what happens. I also need to practice up on my Type 1 because as 2 time winning Nats Type 1 event guy, I need to protect my title. Especially now that there is an official title to be earned!
Well I hope you have enjoyed this Darwin Sponsored article on the Evolution of Erayo Affinity. I hope to have seen you all at Nationals. Sadly in the interest of keeping what I will playing at Nationals and grinders a secret and also to prevent anyone but me winning the main event with this version of Erayo I will have to send this in the the Paradise Team after the main event is already over. This will help ensure that nobody will see it in time to build it :).
My apologies for keeping this secret tech secret but you guys have the rest of the net to pick from before Nats so maybe you should just go listen to what Kai has to say :P
Thanks for listening, I know it was a hard slog but you're there now :)
Hope you all had a great time at Nationals and if you played me I hope you got savagely mana screwed :)
Until next time I wish you good flipping times.
Jason Scott
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