Esper Affinity Sideboard Guide

Introduction

Esper Affinity is a growing part of the Pauper field at 2.3% of the metagame, up from a fringe deck over the summer. The Zeta downshifts that became Pauper-legal in September handed it Dispatch and Baleful Strix, and the lists that adopted them have been climbing the standings since. The deck turns its lands into artifacts and surrounds them with cheap artifacts so that Refurbished Familiar, Utrom Monitor, Myr Enforcer and Thoughtcast cost next to nothing, then it wins in the air with flyers like Glint Hawk and Kor Skyfisher while Dispatch exiles blockers and Cryogen Relic keeps the cards flowing.

Recent results back the deck up. Esper Affinity lists took second place at the paper event PORCHEDDON on September 27, placed third and sixth in Pauper Challenges in the last week of September, went undefeated at a paper CPC Qualifier on September 20, and posted a 5-0 League run earlier in the month. This guide covers the midrange build: Cryogen Relic, Glint Hawk and Kor Skyfisher for card flow, Baleful Strix to hold the ground, and Dispatch as the removal suite. A faster aggro build that runs Frogmite and Springleaf Drum also appears under the Esper Affinity name, but it plays differently and is outside this guide.

The deck beats aggressive creature decks that fight on the ground and the disruptive blue decks that try to trade one cheap answer for each of its threats, because its flyers go over their blockers and its steady flow of extra cards outlasts their removal. It is favored against Mono Red Madness, Blue Terror, Dimir Faeries, Bogles, Mono Red Rally, Grixis Affinity, Familiars, and Flicker Tron, and slightly favored against Golgari Gardens and Madness Burn.

It struggles against combo decks that ignore the board entirely, and against control and ramp decks that either answer every small flyer one by one or go over the top of them with bigger threats, because its clock is slow and its only way to touch the opponent's hand lets them choose what to throw away. It is slightly unfavored against Dimir Terror and Gruul Ramp, and unfavored against Monster Tron, Elves, Spy Combo, Jeskai Ephemerate, White Aggro, and Dimir Control.

General Strategy

Esper Affinity wants every permanent it controls to be an artifact. The lands are artifacts, the cheap enablers like Blood Fountain and Giant's Boulder are artifacts, and most of the creatures are artifacts, so each one that enters makes Refurbished Familiar, Utrom Monitor, Myr Enforcer and Thoughtcast cheaper to cast. Once that board exists, the deck plays several spells a turn off a handful of lands, attacks over the top with flyers, exiles whatever gets in the way with Dispatch, and keeps its hand full by bouncing and replaying Cryogen Relic. The one thing that matters above everything else is the artifact count: it is your mana, it is the discount on every affinity spell, and it is what turns Dispatch from a tap effect into exile. Protect it, grow it, and sequence every turn around it.

The engine has two halves. The first is cost reduction: artifact lands plus one-mana artifacts (Blood Fountain, which also leaves a Blood token behind as a second artifact, and Giant's Boulder) push the count high enough that Refurbished Familiar and Thoughtcast cost a single colored mana. The second is card flow: Glint Hawk has to return an artifact to hand when it enters or be sacrificed, and Kor Skyfisher has to return a permanent, and returning Cryogen Relic draws a card as it leaves and another when it is recast. That drawback becomes a repeatable two-card bonus, and Reckoner's Bargain tops the hand up again by cashing in a creature or artifact for two more cards and some life.

A game runs in three phases. The setup turns are artifact lands, a one-mana artifact and a cheap flyer such as or . The payoff comes once the count makes , and cost one mana each and close to free, so two or three of them land in a single turn and the opponent is suddenly facing a full board. The close is combat: , , and attack over ground blockers every turn, holds or pushes the ground, and exiles the one creature that blocks a flyer or races you.

The Cards

Glint Hawk

A 2/2 flyer for one white mana that must return an artifact you control to hand or be sacrificed. In this deck the return is the point. The best pickup is Cryogen Relic, which draws a card as it leaves and another when you recast it; Blood Fountain makes a fresh Blood token when replayed, Giant's Boulder scries again, and Refurbished Familiar or Baleful Strix repeat their enter-the-battlefield effects. The cheapest fallback is an artifact land that enters untapped, which you simply replay. You choose what to return as the trigger resolves, so the opponent cannot kill the artifact you were going to pick up once you have named it. Remember that every pickup lowers the artifact count by one until the card is recast, which raises the price of the next affinity spell.

Kor Skyfisher

A 2/3 flyer for two that returns any permanent you control, not just an artifact, and does not target, so nothing can be done in response to the choice. It does the same Cryogen Relic trick as Glint Hawk and can also pick up Glint Hawk itself to be recast. Three toughness matters: it survives most one- and two-damage effects that kill the deck's smaller flyers, and it blocks small ground attackers without dying.

Cryogen Relic

Two mana for an artifact that draws a card on entering and another on leaving, so it replaces itself and then pays out again whenever Glint Hawk, or moves it off the battlefield. Its activated ability, which sacrifices it to put a stun counter on a tapped creature, is the deck's way to stop a single large attacker: wait until the creature has attacked and is tapped, then stun it so it stays tapped through its next untap step, and collect the leave-the-battlefield card at the same time. While it sits on the battlefield it counts toward affinity and metalcraft, so only sacrifice it when the stun buys a full turn you need.

Role Assignment

Esper Affinity is a midrange deck that is semi-interactive and tempo-neutral: it has a real clock in the air, but a slow one built from two- and three-power flyers, and its interaction is a few removal spells (Dispatch), the discard on Refurbished Familiar, and the seven-mana sacrifice on Giant's Boulder. Its inevitability is medium: the Cryogen Relic loops and Thoughtcast outdraw most fair decks, but a deck that goes over the top or never fights on the board outlasts it. Every matchup is decided on some mix of five axes: whether the opponent can keep your artifacts off the battlefield, whether your flyers win the race, whether your card flow beats theirs in a long game, how their cheap removal lines up against one- and two-toughness bodies, and whether their key threats are creatures Dispatch can exile.

Vs. Aggro. Against aggressive creature decks you are the control. Their ground clock is faster than your air clock, so racing is a losing proposition; instead you block with Baleful Strix and Myr Enforcer, exile the one creature that would get through with Dispatch, and let Thoughtcast and the Cryogen Relic loop bury them in cards once the board is stable. The play that defines the role is holding Dispatch for their best attacker rather than their first one, and casting Reckoner's Bargain on a creature that was going to die anyway to buy the life that gets you to the turn where your flyers take over.

Vs. Midrange. Against other fair midrange decks the game is an attrition war and you are usually the control, because the Cryogen Relic pickups and Refurbished Familiar discards generate card advantage while leaving a creature on the battlefield. The exception is a midrange deck that carries artifact removal: then the artifact count is the axis, the long game favors them, and you become the beatdown, deploying your threats before their hate arrives. The play that shows the default role is choosing returning for two cards over the same mana spent on an extra attacker.

Play Patterns

When Glint Hawk or Kor Skyfisher enters, return Cryogen Relic ahead of a land or any other artifact whenever you can afford to recast it. The Relic draws a card when it leaves the battlefield and another when it enters, so the pickup converts the creature's drawback into two extra cards; a land returned to hand gains nothing and usually leaves you a land short for the turn.
Cast Refurbished Familiar and your one-mana artifacts before Thoughtcast, and cast Glint Hawk after it whenever the Hawk has to return an artifact you will not replay that turn. A spell's cost is locked in when you cast it, based on the artifacts you control at that moment: every artifact that has already resolved takes one mana off the next affinity spell, and an artifact the Hawk has picked up puts one back on. On turn two with Giant's Boulder out from turn one and Seat of the Synod as the second land, three artifacts make Refurbished Familiar cost only the black mana from Vault of Whispers; once it resolves the count is four and Thoughtcast costs only the blue from the Seat. Lead with Thoughtcast instead and it costs two mana off three artifacts, tapping both lands with the Familiar still in hand.
Pay for colorless and off-color spells with the lands you can spare, keeping one blue source for each Thoughtcast and one black source for each Refurbished Familiar you will cast that turn. Affinity only removes the generic part of a cost, so each discounted colored spell (Refurbished Familiar, Thoughtcast, Utrom Monitor) still needs one mana of its own color no matter how many artifacts you control, while colorless needs none. This bites hardest on turn three, when a white creature, a blue and a black all want to be cast off three lands: tap the wrong land for a cheap artifact and a one-mana affinity spell is stranded in hand for the turn.

Black Sacrifice

Carrion Feeder - emblematic card for this matchup — Read the Black Sacrifice full guide →

Matchup - Even

Black Sacrifice is the faster deck here, and it is also the more linear one: most of their nonland cards cost one mana, so they set the early pace while our affinity threats only get cheap once several artifacts are out. Their clock rests on a few growth creatures, though, and once those are gone they are left with a board of 1/1s that cannot attack through our bodies. That makes us the control deck in this pairing. We hold the ground and exile their growth creatures first, let our extra cards pull ahead, and only then start attacking in the air, where their only flyers are the Insect tokens Infestation Sage leaves behind. The die roll matters more for them than for us: on the play their one-drops attack and start growing Carrion Feeder before our two-mana blockers arrive, while on our play Baleful Strix or Kor Skyfisher is already out before their first attack.

The race is theirs to win on the ground before our flyers take over. They clear blockers with Shambling Ghast triggers, with Accursed Marauder in the lists that run it, and with Snuff Out or Tragic Slip in the minority of lists that run removal main. Nothing they play removes an artifact land or a noncreature artifact, so our mana and our affinity discounts hold up all game, and late in the game our draws are cheap flyers, Dispatch and card draw while theirs are 1/1s that only matter with a growth creature and an outlet already on the battlefield. Dispatch is our best card and it goes on the creatures that grow: Carrion Feeder, Mortician Beetle, Bloodthrone Vampire or whatever wears Sadistic Glee. Aiming it at Nested Shambler, Infestation Sage or Nezumi Linkbreaker is a waste, since with an outlet out they sacrifice the target in response and keep the death trigger. Cast it on their turn, after attackers are declared or in response to a Bloodthrone Vampire activation: exiling the biggest attacker removes both its damage and the body they meant to feed to Rite of Consumption after combat, exile gets around Supernatural Stamina, and against the Vampire the creature they already sacrificed to pump it is thrown away.

On the ground, Myr Enforcer, Utrom Monitor and Kor Skyfisher make their unpumped 1/1s unable to attack profitably, and Baleful Strix stays back for Carrion Feeder or Bloodthrone Vampire specifically, because deathtouch kills either no matter how large it gets while any other blocker can lose to the Vampire's pumps after blocks. Once the ground is stable we attack in the air, but keep our life above what Rite of Consumption can drain, which is the sacrificed creature's power after any pumps. Their removal on Myr Enforcer or Utrom Monitor is answered by sacrificing the target to Reckoner's Bargain in response for 7 or 5 life and two cards, and that life is what offsets the drain. When nothing is being removed and Mortician Beetle is out, pay for Reckoner's Bargain with a noncreature artifact such as Cryogen Relic instead, since every creature we sacrifice grows the Beetle.

Key Threats

Carrion Feeder is their main clock against our ground blockers. It cannot block, so it only attacks, and every creature they sacrifice to it adds a permanent counter until it outgrows anything we hold back. The trap is treating their fodder as targets: block or point removal at a small creature while the Feeder is out and they sacrifice the doomed creature to it first, so our action becomes another counter, and the grown Feeder is then the creature they feed to Rite of Consumption. Exile it with Dispatch before it grows, and block it with Baleful Strix when it attacks.

Bloodthrone Vampire turns their spare creatures into a combat trick. Block it with anything but Baleful Strix and they sacrifice fodder after blocks until it kills our creature and survives; leave it alive into their second main phase and they pump it with whatever is left and sacrifice it to Rite of Consumption for its pumped power. Exiling it in response to an activation is the cleanest answer, since the creature they already fed to it is lost for nothing.

Mortician Beetle grows off sacrifices by either player, which means our own lines feed it: the creature we give up to Accursed Marauder and any creature we pay into Reckoner's Bargain add counters on top of what their outlets provide. While it is on the battlefield, sacrifice artifacts rather than creatures wherever we have the choice, and treat it as a Dispatch target of the same rank as Carrion Feeder.

Rite of Consumption is their only damage outside combat and their way back into a race our flyers are winning: it drains for the sacrificed creature's power and gains them the same amount, so a grown Carrion Feeder or a pumped Bloodthrone Vampire moves both life totals at once. Do not race down to a low life total while they still have a grown creature or a Vampire with fodder next to it; the post-combat drain is how they finish a game they were losing in the air.

Sideboard Plan

In:

2 Arms of Hadar

Out:

2 Thoughtcast

Arms of Hadar comes in as a one-sided sweep that kills every creature and token they have that has not grown past 2 toughness, and a Nested Shambler that dies to it makes no Squirrels. It is our best answer to their wide boards once Dispatch has removed Carrion Feeder or Bloodthrone Vampire, since with an outlet out they sacrifice the rest of the board in response to grow one creature out of range.

Thoughtcast is the draw spell that does least while their one-drops are attacking: unlike Cryogen Relic it does not count toward affinity or the three artifacts Dispatch needs, and unlike Reckoner's Bargain it gains no life against their race. Two copies stay because once the ground is held, extra cards are how we outlast a deck that runs out of creatures to sacrifice.

Sideboarding comes out about level. We gain a real one-sided sweep against a deck whose creatures all start with 1 toughness, but they bring more cards aimed at us, cheap or free removal that picks off our flyers one at a time, so neither side pulls ahead after game one.

Post-board Strategy

Arms of Hadar gives us a one-sided sweep that kills everything they have that has not grown past 2 toughness, while they add Tragic Slip, Spinning Darkness and more Snuff Out to pick off our flyers one at a time. Sequence the sweep around their outlets: with Carrion Feeder or Bloodthrone Vampire on the battlefield they will sacrifice the rest of the board in response to grow one creature out of range, so Dispatch the outlet first, ideally during their combat, and cast Arms of Hadar on our next turn once no outlet is left. The Insect from Infestation Sage and the Mercenary from Nezumi Linkbreaker arrive after the sweep and survive it, so expect a couple of 1/1s to remain.

Their added removal changes which creatures we lean on. Tragic Slip kills anything once a creature has died this turn, which their free outlets arrange at instant speed; Spinning Darkness and Snuff Out only hit nonblack creatures, so Baleful Strix and Refurbished Familiar are safe from both, and Myr Enforcer survives the 3 damage from Spinning Darkness. Our creatures that draw or take a card on entry still come out ahead of one-for-one removal, so keep deploying them, answer removal with Reckoner's Bargain when we can, and use Blood Fountain to return two creatures in a long game. The removal they add takes slots from their creatures and sacrifice spells, which slows their clock and leaves Arms of Hadar fewer targets, but it pushes the game long, where our extra cards count most.

Some lists bring in Drown in Sorrow, which kills Baleful Strix, Refurbished Familiar and Glint Hawk along with most of their own board, while Kor Skyfisher, Utrom Monitor and Myr Enforcer survive it, so lean on the bigger bodies and avoid committing every small flyer at once. Extra copies of Accursed Marauder mean more forced sacrifices, and every creature we play is a nontoken creature, so keep one that has already paid for itself, such as a Baleful Strix that drew its card, on the battlefield to give up instead of our best flyer.