Friday Night Magic recap for October 3

Welcome back to Dave and Adam’s FNM recap. Khans of Tarkir is still barely in people’s hands and players have been dying to delve into it. Our Standard winner’s deck from October 3rd was the first we’ve seen in to use the new cards:

4 Elvish Mystic
4 Sylvan Caryatid
4 Courser of Kruphix
2 Goblin Rabblemaster
2 Reaper of the Wilds
4 Polukranos, World Eater
4 Stormbreath Dragon
2 Read the Bones
2 Drown in Sorrow
2 Murderous Cut
4 Hero’s Downfall
1 Xenagos, the Reveler
1 Sarkhan, the Dragonspeaker
2 Temple of Malady
2 Temple of Malice
1 Temple of Abandon
4 Llanowar Wastes
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
3 Wooded Foothills
2 Bloodstained Mire
5 Forest
2 Mountains
2 Swamp

Sideboard:
4 Thoughtseize
3 Despise
2 Bile Blight
2 Unravel the AEther
3 Feed the Clan
1 Xenagos, the Reveler

Steven’s deck should look fairly familiar, as he’s piloted it to some success here in the past. His deck is the first we’ve seen to use cards from Khans of Tarkir, including the ubiquitous fetchlands and Sarkhan, the Dragonspeaker. Steven’s deck was packed to the gills with removal and resilient creatures, and used card advantage from sources such as Courser of Kruphix and even Read the Bones in order to try to out-attrition his other midrange opponents. Jund looks like it is well positioned going forward, due to the fact it has 2 fetchlands available to it, as well as most of the creatures from last Standard that made the deck as good as it was.

Our winner from Modern that same week was Andy Skorik, who brought Affinity:

1x Island
4x Inkmoth Nexus
4x Blinkmoth Nexus
4x Darksteel Citadel
3x Glimmervoid
4x Springleaf Drum
4x Galvanic Blast
4x Mox Opal
3x Ensoul Artifact
4x Signal Pest
4x Vault Skirge
4x Archbound Ravager
4x Cranial Plating
2 Etched Champion
2x Master of Etherium
4x Ornithopter
2 Memnite
3 Steel Overseer
Sideboard:

1x Etched Champion
2x Spellskite
1x Master of Etherium
1x Relic of Progenitus
1x Grafdigger’s Cage
1 Whipflare
1x Dismember
1x Topor Orb
2x Ancient Grudge
2x Thoughtseize
2x Nature’s Claim

We’ve had other Affinity decks in the spotlight before, and his list looks to be fairly straightforward. While Robots (as it’s also known) is considered to be the best aggressive deck in the format, that by no means makes it an easy deck to pilot. Experienced players can sometimes go all the way through extra turns in the mirror match. Andy has stretched his mana to the limits with his deck, opting to run Ensoul Artifact, Master of Etherium, Galvanic Blast and Thoughtseize in his mostly colorless beatdown deck, although it is eased somewhat with cards like Springleaf Drum, Mox Opal and Glimmervoid.

If you want to see these decks and more, come out to Buffalo’s largest Friday Night Magic tournament every week at our Transit Road store.