Affinity and Cluestones
Modern forum
Posted on March 17, 2016, 1:02 p.m. by JakeKita
I am an avid Affinity player and I always love looking at the new spoilers to see if there is anything that can add some new flavor to my deck. One thing I got really curious about were cluestones.
Now these are pretty cool. They enter as an artifact and you can pay 2 mana and sacrifice them. I didn't think too much about it at first but then I started hearing really good things about it in Commander (Tamiyo's Journal is stupid for EDH).
After hearing some god things about this new mechanic, I started thinking how could I realistic utilize this new mechanic for modern. The benefits? I can sacrifice at instant speed to draw a card which is great if I have nothing to do with my mana. It is an artifact which will help as well (of course). So it will add this strange new utility. The question remains: is there a cheap way (so far) to put out cluestones. I have so far found one way: Thraben Inspector. Why would I run this? Well, I have been trying out a U/W Affinity build that runs one Plains and one Island (dropping one Glimmervoid). Path to Exile is huge in my LGS and I see it quite often and so is land hate (people trying to attack Eldrazi lands). I replace my Galvanic Blasts with Dispatch to act as a free Path to Exile. I plan on testing out this new mechanic. I am curious if there are other, easier ways to get cluestones and everyone's opinion on this idea.
I have used those however, a cluestone adds power to Arcbound Ravager (if needed), adds to Cranial Plating and acts as a Thoughtcast (and powers but, I wouldn't want to run both). WIth current spoilers, it doesn't seem like something I will be doing but, I wanted to play around with the idea.
March 17, 2016 1:48 p.m.
On the face of it, it seems like it would dilute Affinity's core strength - it's incredible explosiveness - without doing much to improve it's core weakness - the quality and variety of hate it has to fight through.
It might be worth experimenting with some kind of Disciple of the Vault build though.
March 17, 2016 1:58 p.m.
If they spoil a card that plays fairly well with the rest of Affinity, AND puts one or more clue tokens into play... then it would make sense to consider.
If Thraben Inspector were an Artifact Creature for 1CMC... it would be good as it adds 2 artifacts for 1CMC... as it sits (1CMC for one artifact), you may as well just run a 1-drop artifact creature.
Epochalyptik says... #2
Why not just use Thirst for Knowledge or Thoughtcast?
March 17, 2016 1:26 p.m.