The Affinity Mechanics - Failed MTG Designs
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- čas přidán 11. 07. 2024
- Affinity is a very infamous mechanic, famous for almost killing the game back when it was introduced all the way back in the original Mirrodin Block. However, despite the issues with the mechanic, it’s still around today, continuing to get new cards printed to this day. Affinity is, for several reasons, a very powerful and fun mechanic that has had a very rocky history. So today, we’re going to go over the mechanic, talk about how it failed, why it failed, and how Wizards eventually fixed it.
Script by Pumkinswift
Editing by Iason Autic
├ The List
Intro: (0:00)
What is Affinity?: (0:25)
How Wizard's Balanced Affinity: (1:05)
The Math: (2:56)
Where Things Went Wrong: (3:51)
How Affinity Broke Standard: (6:05)
Affinity for Artifacts in the Modern Day: (8:21)
Why Affinity for Artifacts Was Broken: (10:02)
The Bad Affinity for Artifacts Cards: (11:14)
Bringing Affinity Back: (13:06)
Conclusion: (15:54)
#mtg #tcg #magicthegathering
(Just a note, we have people who actually know the game very well making the scripts for this channel. As the owner of the channel (Theduellogs/hirumaredx) is a total newbie to the game.)
I don't think you touched on this, but all of the original Affinity cards you showed are commons. Affinity is a metagame defining deck in the Pauper format, where it sees high winrates by combining speed and value.
Yep, Dust to Dust has been a sideboard staple for years in Pauper thanks to exiling two artifacts.
Spot on. Affinity refuses to die in Pauper. All That Glitters downshift has rocketed Affinity back to the top.
I love magic
"thoughtcast" was called toughcast and that killed me lol
Yeah its gotta be interaction bait at this point lol, I cant take him pronouncing everything wrong, meanwhile the yugioh videos he is word for word perfect
The narrator does not play MtG regularly. He reads a script from MtG players and edits the videos.
Worst of all, he mispronounced it most of the video, but then pronounced it correctly towards the end.
@@KuromiAKBut he knows English right? So he should know the difference between tough and thought, maybe man's got dyslexia
@@GrayVMhan He doesn't, his Yugioh videos have perfect pronunciation. It's just for engagement farming.
I like how the examples he used for frogmite actually allow it to be free on turn 2
Wait, why wouldn’t it be turn 1?
Well on turn one, you play your normal land, [insert that artifact name here] which creates a blood token, [so currently 2 artifacts] then on turn two, play a second copy of the artifact from turn one creating another blood token, so now you have 4 artifacts. Making Frogmite free
@@daponagegoogenburg807 oh right, duh lol thank you for taking the time to explain
Did you account for the mox tapping a mana so he could get it down turn 1?
@@Varooooooomno problem
A lot of people don't seem to understand how something being too powerful can be a huge failure. Balance is key in game design. More strategies remaining competitive means more players enjoying the game doing what they like to win and more variance in play patterns.
Especially when it's not planned to break the format. It's one thing for WotC to release on purpose overpowered cards like they did in Modern Horizons, but when you completely miss what's going to happen like in Mirrodin block, that is truly a major fail.
Fun fact: Blinkmoth Infusion is the only card in the game that has a mana value of 14.
It's weird how 15 is 4 times more popular before we go back to 16 with 1 card.
This does not include uncards.
I remember getting back into magic after a break of playing yugioh for a few years and started playing again when mirrodin dropped. I was so terribly confused by not only how busted nearly the whole set was but also by how affinity basically turned magic into yugioh for a period of time. Playing cards for basically at absolutely no cost and just emptying hands like it was vintage. It felt like I never left yugioh at all for a while at the speed that standard played at the time.
blood fountain reduces the cost by 2 not 1, because it creates and additional artifact token on etb
Yeah, that was the worst 1-mana artifact they could've chosen.
Thoughtcast was never tough to cast
I doubt many people watching will know another CCG called Shadowverse, but something similar kinda happened there in two different ways lol, though mainly in the equivalent of the Modern format.
We firstly have the Artifact archetype which coincidentally shares the same name, but Artifact in Shadowverse is a creature type rather than an entirely different card type. The problem was that artifacts was typically 1 Mana tokens, and there were cards that refunded mana whenever you summoned an Artifact, the main one being a 1 Mana spell that for this turn, each time you summon an Artifact, draw 1 and refill 1 mana. The idea was that these tokens typically had to be shuffled into your deck and so they were sparse, and the board limit was only 5 so it can't go too crazy. The problem was that Shadowverse loves the Artifact mechanic and once it rotates out of standard which is the main game mode, they print more artifacts (including maindeckable ones... That cost 1 Mana...)... And more... And soon it's super reliable to keep cycling your artifacts. So similarly to Artifacts in MTG, you can easily fill your board while spending effectively 0 Mana, then you can either blow your opponent out with Artifact board buffs or with cards that scale with the number of artifacts that died this game.
The second one would be Spellboost which is similar to the "Affinity" mechanic. When you cast a spell (creatures are not considered spells in Shadowverse, so basically when you cast an instant or sorcery), all cards with the Spellboost keyword in your hand get Spellboost once (Which can be tracked since Shadowverse is digital), and Spellboost can give various effects but the most important is cards that, when spellboosted, reduce their cost by 1. This isn't so much an aggro deck, but is more of an absurdly quick combo deck. The key thing is that, over the years, Shadowverse has printed a ton of cards that have their cost reduced when spellboosted, and also draw a card and spellboosts cards (either directly mention or because it's a spell) in hand when played. Since there are so many rotations, like half your deck are cards that can get cost reduced to 0, then draw a card and further reduce the cost of cards in your hand. They weren't in standard together, so it wasn't crazy there, but it just hit a critical mass where you can reliably find and cast three of your 20 Mana spells that gives you an extra turn on Turn 5 or 6.
Broodstar actually saw a lot of play in early versions of affinity shortly after Mirrodin released, then Darksteel came along and Arcbound Ravager basically replaced it. Even after that it still saw quite a bit of play in budget versions of the deck, which were very popular at smaller events like FNM.
I think the big issue with this mechanism is that Artifacts were already pretty good and already seen a lot of play
Affinity was so utterly broken that most people didn't even realize Kamigawa was in rotation.
I would argue Affinity more “went horribly right” than “failed”
Edit: Also, the Artifact Lands made the “Affinity for Artifacts” problem far worse than it needed to be. Mark Rosewater is on record as that being the reason we don’t have Enchantment Lands.
And a good thing that urza's saga goes away after three turns.
These videos are named "Failed *Designs*" when talking about mistakes that were overpowered as opposed to underpowered.
Overpower is a fail in design
@@Glenn_1358 Only if it's OP DUE to the mechanic... Like this case. Indeed it's a fail like companion, Dredge or Delve; btw, I'm sure the latter two can compliment eachother a bit too well.
I once played against someone who proxied all of his basic lands into artifact lands. It was a very annoying time to play Magic. I never saw anyone play a card called Toughcast though.
It's in green and has a negative affinity for artifacts. It's just so rare that nobody knows about it.
That's because the card is called THOUGHTcast.
@@stationdisatrous647 What? OOOOOHH! I see now! Thought, not tough! But what about the card Toughsieze?
@@AnkhInfinitus it's the toughest black card lol
I can't believe they made something like "affinity for rats" or "affinity for food" yet
They made affinity for tokens which is very close
Affinity for keywords
:D
Soon they could make a "affinity for creatures with power 4/5 or more"
Affinity for food is in LOTR!
@@williamw8590 cool
Affinity for rats is such a good idea my god.
Affinity for basic land types should come back. Also I do not think the average rate for 4 mana is 4/4 anymore looking at recent sets... sheoldred is a fucking 4/5 for 4.
4/4 for 4 is a good statline assuming it has a relevant ability. 4/4s for 3 are very incredibly rare without a downside or a very intense cost (Magus of the Bridge, Anafenza, etc.) Bloated Contaminator is the only one I can think of.
Sheoldred sometimes feels like a universal misprint they never copped to. Like it was supposed to be 3BB instead of 3B, it approaches tolerable at that rate while still being strong.
@@breadgehog Sheoldred is very strong but I don't think 4/5 for 2BB that only changes life is out of this world (there are a lot of them, monocolored, easy to cast and with upside). At the very least her stats are not a huge issue.
@@fernandobanda5734 The problem is that she's format warping in Standard and Modern. If you don't have removal ready to go immediately her impact is felt more and more every turn, I think it's telling that she's still commanding a $70 US pricetag on average. In Standard you either have an answer to her or she takes over the game, and a big part of that is the 4 MV.
Also worth noting that convoke is basically 'fixed affinity' - in that it reduces the cost for each matching card, but since you have to tap them, you're not able to spam your hand in the way you could with affinity.
Convoke and Improvise.
Do Infect next.
The mechanic is heavily disliked but I don't think it qualifies as a failure. It got a rework/renaming for phyrexia all will be one, so there was something usable there.
How did Infect fail?
Maybe Poisonous/Wither/Infect/Toxic as a family since its seems to be shades of the same thing and while each separate ability didn't live to see another day they clearly tried it again with a different flavor of the same ability? It seems like there is potentially wrong as these abilities (in my opinion) seem ridiculously hyper aggressive as you only need 10 points/counters to kill someone.
@@SabreAran if you're going to put them in one family, then you absolutely can't call them a failed mechanic when Toxic was literally a headline mechanic in sets not even a year old at this point.
Infect made me almost quit Magic. Its just way to easy to kill your opponent out of nowhere with a 1/1 elf and a few buffs. Starting the game of with basically 10 life and lifegain switched off before any cards where played felt horrible (at least for one side). And lifegain was already pretty bad to begin with...
The affinity with artifacts has two additional issues: artifacts is the type most used for mana accelerants, and the increasing trend of cards with incidental artifact productions over the years.
Blood tokens aren't much used, but cards producing blood tokens have found use in pauper (and sometimes older formats) in affinity decks for exactly that reason. And then there are treasure tokens, which are already an issue of their own.
And due to shenanigans on how casting spell works Lotus Petal, treasure tokens and accelerants that sacrifice themselves can be counted toward affinity and be used to pay the cost. Artifact land+Lotus Petal means Frogmite on turn one.
Your opening statement only really holds true for specific formats. Modern, for example, doesn't tend to use artefacts to accelerate mana
@@chadmrrsn I wouldn't agree: artifacts are by design the main source of fast mana, that's a core part of the game.
The meta not making much use of it in some formats doesn't change the design issue at the base, every new mana rock or affinity card could break the balance.
Same with the cards that produce artifact tokens, particularly treasures, with new ones being printed often. It's a built-in way to break the mechanic just waiting for the right card.
@themantyf1116 new affinity cards have been printed into nodern, and of them one was playable, and it was pretty mid, although I suspect that might be because the amount of artifact removal is quite high as well as efficient in the format whereas in a format like standard where there is a lot less artifact removal they could run Rampant
@@chadmrrsn they have also more success in format with access to older card.
Still, the point wasn't about power-level, but design issues.
They print new ones (like they have printed new storm cards), but their nature requires them to be extra careful and hypercompensate, and also to think everything around them because even like this all it would take is one decent enabler to break it.
Modern doesnt lack fast artifact mana because its bad
It lacks it because its banned.
I played an infect affinity in vintage got top 4. Spring leaf drum is awesome
I remember that Broodstar used to be played when Mirrodin was released and it had a good run, boy how hard it fell. Dark Steel made it pretty weak and niche when Ravager came crushing the format and by Fifth Dawn Cranial Plating made it completely irrelevant by equiping it on an Ornithopter.
Maybe Mutate can be the next Failed mechanic
the next one is dredge..
It it also important to mention that most of the best affinity for artifact cards are artifact themselves, which fuels itself and snowballs very fast (maybe you mentioned it but I missed it)
Affinity is fine. The true mistake, as pointed out by other comments and by Wizards themselves in the Modern Banlist, are the original cycle of Artifact Lands. The value of generating 1 Affinity and Mana with your land drop is absurd even today.
The afinity starter deck was like my second mtg product behind 7th ed gobins
I love this series! Very informative, and also helpfull for making custom cards.
Every so often, I forget that your magic videos generally talk about cards in relation to Standard, not Commander, which is what I play exclusively.
Also, Vedalken Archmage allows you to draw by casting artifacts, which could power a storm-like turn
Mycosynth Golem is a cornerstone of my favorite colorless commander deck. Combine that with Mystic Forge and I can drop a ton of cards at once. Add a card that gives my artfacts/colorless cards flash like Shimmer Myr or Liberator and I can pop off. I also have a few ways to search it out quickly, my go-to is usually Planar Bridge.
I started playing the game during that time. It was funny because most people at my LGS were kids who couldn't afford the expensive affinity cards, so they relied on Broodstar to win the game. I was playing a mono-blue deck based on the 8th edition starter deck that had quite a few counterspells (something non-existent for the meta then), so all I had to do to win is hold back some mana and counter when they played Broodstar. After that, their deck was pretty much dead and they lost to Wind Drakes and Air Elementals. Best Magic times of my life.
Toughcast has convinced me he does it on purpose.
You can tell he's a YGO Player by the way he pronounces Thoughtcast
Lol once Thought Monitor came up he got it right from there on out lol
Metalwork Colossus is a great example of how artifact affinity can be balanced. It helps incentivize doing more than just spamming the cheapest.
"Toughcast"! Okay, that REALLY does it.
It'd be really interesting to see one of these for storm.
Turn 1:
Darksteel citadel into
Springleif drum
Memnite, ornothopter, frogmite, frogmite
Tap springleif drum and ornothopter fror blue, cast thoughtcast, draw 2, draw memnite and a thought monitor, play memnite. Go.
I have done this (or something like this) often in modern with my esper affinity deck.
Gate Colossus was meta-defining in limited, notably! I loved that card
Ah yes, the most notorious affinity card TOUGHcast 1:30
Tough cast 😂😭
It is Thought-Cast, not Tough-Cast. Little tilting, but always loving your vids.
Thoughcast
He does this every video to a card probably to bait replies for the algorythm :D I think he butchered Palinchron as well some videos ago
@@timboerijn bruh move. dont think it was ever as noticeable for me as today before tho
@@mishatpr3306 there are also several mistakes in the video, saying the bridges produce double colorless for example. Pumping out top 10 lists and abusing algorythm tricks has always been how he runs, even on the HS and WOW related channels. Its the YT equivalent of Mcdonalds food, you always get what you expect
I think the reason that affinity for artifacts is so bad is that all the cards that have it are artifacts themselves so it snowballs fast.
Yes. This is a huge reason that wasn't explained in the video.
At least Yuriko, the Tiger's Shadow commander decks love Blinkmoth Infusion and are glad the card exists! 14 burst damage to the whole board is pretty awesome!
imo for artifact sinergy I think the metalcraft approach was very interesting, the card gets better if you have artifacts in play, but does not scale out of control
-Says toughcast for half of the video, then suddenly says thoughtcast
I see you, you ain't slick LOL
the old days, last thing I remember of Mirrodin is to cast 2 Broodstars on turn 6 and equip them with cranial platting and my oponent just call that bs and storm out of the store, I never played again becasue nobody wanted to play against artifacts, Myr Incubator the finisher of most decks bakc in the place I used to visit to play magic.
As far as recommendations for this series:
Amplify
Provoke
Couriers? Not sure if that's really a failed design...
Spiritcraft? Again, not sure if that's a failed soft mechanic...
Any of the original Ravnica guild mechanics that receive playerbase hate (radiance, haunt, etc.)
I do think that not using the words "affinity for" on things that are effectively that has less to do with the mechanic being broken and more to do with block specific mechanics. Anything that wasn't evergreen. However, I do believe they've had a recent shift, due to the shift to Commander as a primary format. Now, Wizards doesn't seem to mind using an old keyword in a new set just once or twice. I could see cards that essentially had affinity for something being given that keyword in a reprint. But obviously, affinity in colorless spells with no colored pips was obviously broken. At this point, they could return to pure affinity for artifacts, but I would think using the colorless symbol first used with Eldrazi to make sure nothing is free with affinity for artifacts and therefore nothing is so broken.
Anyone else notice "Tough-cast" instead of "Thoughtcast?"
Edit: he did eventually get it right. :o
"Tough-cast" is killing me
Amazing!!!!🤩
"tough-cast" ...i cant do this anymore, logs. youre killing me here...
I started playing in Kamigawa and I feel that how broken Mirridon was is the reason why Kamigawa is on the weaker side. WotC tends to swing hard when a set is too powerful. I do think Affinity is a strong mechanic and is worth visiting but it should never be that strong again. There is a simple way to keep Affinity for Artifacts in check and its to keep a minimal cost to it. If we wanted to add it on to colorless sources again the colorless mana symbol can be used since Affinity only effects generic cost. For example a new Frogmite could look like 3C so it would cost 3 generic and 1 colorless mana. With Affinity that could drop it to only costing a colorless mana which is on rate.
Kamigawa block's "weakness" was a direct result of how busted Mirrodin block was, which was basically a repeat response from Urza's block into Masques block.
Imagine playing chrome mox in ravager affinity. [it was played in broodstar affinity decks that existed only before darksteel came out]
The most powerful card in the deck was very very easily skullclamp. The other cards in the deck in a vacuum aren't really all that powerful, the thing with the deck was that all the cards had an intense level of synergy. The lands with affinity cards and ravager. Cranial plate with ornithopter/somber hoverguard. ornithopter/welding jar with affinity cards. Ravager with all the artifacts and then furthermore with ornithoper and blinkmoth nexus. Ravager and shrapnel blast with disciple of the vault.
It was nothing for the deck to play out like this.
land-orni-jar-worker-frog
land-rav swing for 3
disciple disciple sac everything to ravager, then dump 7 counters to the unblocked ornithopter. 12 from disciples+ 7 from onrithopter.
easy turn 3 kill with breathing room so you could keep your frogmite alive. Happened a ton, truth be told.
Wait holy shit, i didnt even realize this was the same dude who runs TheDuelLogs until 30 seconds in and thinking, "What a great voice".
When you talk about cards in the context of old blocks, it'd be nicer if you used printing from that block.
surprised it wasn't mention that that entire standard era of affinity is arguably the is one of the big reasons the first kamigawa visit was arguably the worst set in the history of magic
Thought Monitor? Not Tough Monitor :P I think I cried every time I heard "Tough cast"
I wonder if adding restriction for artifacts to be in the gy for it to work instead of field would allow for it to be slow enough where its not broken. Artifact lands would only work with some cards but not all of them unless they are in gy
Perhaps do a take on problems that often plague a card game like I'm the case of mtg colorless cards or the ability to just pay generic mana for a card can often warp the meta around it.
i think another thing worth noting is that a lot of the 'affinity for artifact' cards were themselves artifacts. this made a sort of feedback loop, making it easier and easier to cast your affinity spells. MOST of the new cards with affinity dont share a card type with the thing they have affinity for.
Yeah broodstar was budget affinity if you couldn't afford ravager and great thing to note affinity was a great budget deck because the core was commons and uncommons
Broodstar saw actual play in that Standard format.
I quit MtG for the first time (and standard entirely) during mirrodin block because of affinity. The eternal formats seemed much more interesting and didn't rotate out so quickly, and wizards didn't seem to know how to manage bans
I find it funny that the reason why affinity failed is because they forgot that some artifacts tap for mana on top of being cheap, thus the cost reduction is greater than expected.
Some artifacts. Lile the lands they just printed...
the best part is that in you example card, another artifact is created, therefore, making this things cost 2 less for only one black, making it savage.
I had this deck !
Nice to see that devs CAN learn from their mistakes and fix a mechanic/the game... too bad not all cardgames "devs" can 😅
Tough-cast 💪
I need to know the tirtle of the bgm
The frogmite example at 3 minutes in? If they have 2 blood fountain and 2 blood token the frogmite cost 0.
Affinity for Kobolds when?
The reason I quit MTG and came back during RTR block.
Honest question:
What's your problem? "Tough Cast"? "Whenever any Equipment Creature you control attacks" - are you OK? 24/7 stroke? And all that in a youtube video, where you can fix things in post very trivially. Low standards?
WoTC needs to make Lifegain Affinity a deck type for 2024. With a full cycle of Lifegain lands all in White.
All they had to do was have affinity be "nonland" for anything that wasn't affinity for a land type and I think this would have had been a fine mechanic. Either that or just make most of these effects at least 2 colored mana.
Or just not print artifact lands that acted as basics with no downside.
Mycosynth Golem is over $30. Though that could be due to its power in Commander.
Toughcast
You said two colorless mana instead of two colors of mana or two specific colors of mana. Not angry simply letting you know about the issue. I have an ultimate power deck that is almost exclusively singleton and is capable of winning on turn two with every single card in all players decks under my control, though not likely. The turn two win requires a perfect or nearly perfect hand and at least one perfect draw though it can win on turn two while not having a overwhelming power situation. On a side note I have played a game style that is known as narrowing focus. The basic idea is to have a minimum of three players but four or more is best as long as you don't exceed six players per group. The way it works out is every time a player wins or loses they are actually eliminated from the game and play continues with the remaining players. The first player to be eliminated from each group goes on to play against those in other groups that were eliminated as long as there are a minimum of three players in each new group. Total group winners get a number of points equal to the number of players in each group and the number of points decreases until the last person is eliminated from each group. Every player gets a minimum of one point and all players participate in every round and loosers are paired with winning groups as much as possible.
idc what anyome says its the best mechanic ever!
Back then, affinity decks were so broken, you're either playing affinity or you're not playing MtG.
Wait wait wait wait wait.
Frogmite costs mana?
Did bro really just call thoughtcast TUFFcast?!
TOUGH CAST?!
THOUGHT CAST NOT TOUGH CAST
Affinity needs a buff now lol it’s nowhere to be seen
Nowhere to be seen cuz if it were made strong enough to break into meta again we'd have a repeat of Mirrodin standard
I think it could use something like this.
Sorcery - 5RR
Affinity for artifacts
Exile your hand, then draw a card for each artifact you control with mana value 1 or greater
It had draw engines. What it needs is skuclamp, cranial plating, and the artifact basics back.
They did reprint a functionally equivalent cranial plating with some dumbass overcomicated mechamic like city's blessing' attached to it doe, recently.
Ill continue playing urza for 3 if you don’t mind
Tuffcast is making me sad.
Did you.. call it TOUGH cast, not thoughtcast?
Do you make WoW videos also?
Toughcast
LOL
Why can't you read Thoughtcast properly? It's Thought-cast.
“Toughcast”?
A lot of these "broken" mechanics were not balanced around the eternal formats and to be honest, the eternal formats are very unbalanced and broken to begin with anyways.
Although still powerful, I don't think Affinity for Artifacts would be nearly as broken as they are with the Artifact Lands alone, it's the TONS of already extremely powerful zero mana Artifacts in the eternal formats that really breaks it.
Pure missodin block affinity goes toe to to with 12post, I tested it.
It can outpace scam. Its more consistent than splintertwin. I dont know how it measures up to domain zoo, but it does kill via face damage on turn 3 with not insignificant frequency. Its as fast as a combo deck, as consistent as monocolor aggro, and has no good removal targets. Your best chamce against it is hand disruption, to delay the turn 1 chaining of free creatures.
Tough cast huh
3:55 I kinda want Enchantment Land versions of these... I'm sure Wizards is afraid to make them but I don't think they'd be as powerful
Green white enchanent aggro is already stron enough. Giving that deck more enchantments for their 3 saga buff is just pointless
Are you saying “THOUGH cast”?
thought cast
Can a deciduous mechanic be considered a ‘failed mechanic’
I understand the affinity for artifacts in mirrordin is broken, but seems more like mirrordin problem not an affinity issue
Pure mirrodin affinity is jointly the strongest deck in the game with also mirrodin block tron analogue 12post. Ateast in any format past Urza's Saga.
Im not familiar with the decks of combowinter and the vintage meta.
toughcast 💀
TOUGH CAST! This has got to be the worst so far