Sami, Wildcat Captain Affinity

Commander Overview

Sami is one of my favorite commanders from Edge of Eternities. While it is pricey, we can get to six mana pretty quickly, and once we get Sami, things start getting a little crazy, like dropping a Blightsteel Colossus or Kozilek, Butcher of Truth crazy. Sami is such a fun deck, Affinity is such a strong mechanic, and being able to cast big things for free is an absolute blast. I was excited for Sami when they were spoiled, and I truly fell in love with them when I started playing them.

How to Play the Deck

Playing the deck is pretty simple overall, casting Sami and slinging as many artifacts as we can is pretty much all we do here, there really isnt a ton of complex interactions here, big and heavily discounted spells as quick as we can, our gameplan is helped a ton by cards like Big Score and Unexpected Windfall which create treasures in the early-game which do count when Sami comess out. As long as you have a good understanding of the game and how affinity works, this deck is very straightforward to pilot.

Synergy’s in the deck

The whole deck is synergized on Sami, it’s the main reason we are running a lot of mana rocks, being able to cast Sami is the key to getting our gameplan started and start dropping some crazy stuff. Since the whole deck is built around Sami, we have a ton of artifacts and big colorless synergies. By far my favorite is Krark-Clan Ironworks with Spine of Ish Sah. If we have Sami and Spine is free, we can sac it and destroy all of our opponents’ permanents. At the same time, it can be hard to pull off and is quite mean, but it is a great way to close out a game and leave our opponents with nothing!

Phases of the Game

Early-Game: The early-game is very important for our deck, this is when we start dropping some early artifacts and try to cast Sami as quick as possible, we can be functional without Sami but getting them out ASAP is key. To do this we drop some strong early-game rocks like Sol Ring, Arcane Signet or Mind Stone. Getting Sami out is the main priority of the early-game.

Mid-Game: The mid-game is when thinngs start to get a little wild, we hopefully have Sami out by this point and when we do we truly get after it, with some of the cards in our deck having a high colorless cast we can reduce most if not all of the cost and start dropping some stuff, whether its something huge like Blightsteel Colossus or a support piece like Unwinding Clock casting things for free is powerful.

Late-Game: We really hope we don’t have to get to the late-game, but if we do, we can start dropping huge things quickly and truly overwhelm the board and our opponents.

Card Breakdowns

Ramp

We are pretty good at ramping, we have a ton of mana rocks and spells like Unexpected Windfall and Big Score can get some easy treasures and up our count to ramp Sami out. Since Sami is a key part of our deck, getting them out is a top priority, and getting our artifact count up for when we drop them is key as well.

Card Draw/Card Advantage

Boros always has a tough time with card draw. Still, we do have some consistent sources that can be pretty strong for us, like Canoptek Spyder, which is almost always cast for free and can give us a ton of card draw. It’s even better if we have Sami out, since we can chain spells and keep on casting! Beyond that, we only have Unexpected Windfall and Big Score, which provide card draw and more artifacts for Sami. Even though we are in Boros, we are good at drawing cards.

Removal

We are a very selfish deck; for the most part, we don’t care what our opponents are doing at all. We do have a few sources like Path to Exile and Swords to Plowshares, which are cheap and efficient pieces of removal for the deck reserved solely for the biggest threats. We are perfectly ok with being selfish and responding as we need to.

Protection

Since we are such a selfish deck, we want to keep Sami on our board as long as we can. Because of that, we do have some single-target removal protection to keep Sami on the board and let us keep free-casting a ton of our stuff. Cards like Loran’s Escape and Shelter allow us to keep Sami on the board and dodge the removal that our opponents are no doubt saving for Sami. While it is expensive, we can easily free cast The Walls of Ba Sing Se and protect our creatures from removal, board wipes, and anything that isn’t -1/-1 counters or exile.

Utility / Support

Let’s go over some of my favorite cards in the deck. Nothing feels better than casting a card like Eldrazi Conscription or Cityscape Leveler for zero mana. These can both be huge power swings in the game and drastically shift the game in our favor. While big splashy plays are common in this deck, we do have cards that are amazing support pieces like Bronze Guardian, which oftentimes can be cast for only one mana and is a great way for us to protect our creatures from removal and make our creatures harder to remove. I also love Reckless Fireweaver and Weftstalker Ardent, which can turn our artifact spells into some damage, which can be a great way to whittle down our opponents, for when we start hitting with big creatures. Since we have so many artifacts, we can get a lot of work out of Organic Extinction, it’s a great way for us to ruin our opponents and save the majority of ours! I want to finish off with Alibou, Ancient Witness, a card that is amazing to deal a ton of damage to an opponent directly, and can be a great way to kill a creature as well.

Mana Base

We don’t have a super interesting mana base, but we do have some cool non-basics that work well with the game plan in Ancient Den and Great Furnace, which count towards our affinity and are quite hard to remove. Besides that, our mana base is pure efficiency. Inventor’s Fair is an extremely strong tutor for the deck and can be a great way to get a big artifact in our hand like Darksteel Forge. During my testing games, I had no trouble with this manabase.

Win Conditions

Our main win condition is combat, whether we use an Eldrazi Conscription or just hit hard with a Kozilek, Butcher of Truth or a Blightsteel Colossus, we can hit like a truck.

Strengths of the Deck

Once we have Sami out, we can explode on the board very easily. We can start from nothing but some artifacts to an unstoppable board very quickly.

A lot of the creatures that we play off Sami are very hard to kill.

Weaknesses of the Deck

We can be weak to mass artifact hate like Vandalblast.

Our commander is our whole deck, without them we can struggle.

Deck Testing/Matchups

I tested this deck against three different decks

Game 1: Vs Edgar Markov. Matchup Record: 3-2

This was a favorable matchup record-wise, but it was quite tough. They can go very wide, truly a lot wider than we can handle a lot of the time, but once we get established and start exploding on the board, they can have a lot of trouble dealing with us. Early game, we tend to take a lot of damage, but we can stabilize pretty well in the mid-late game. I would say this matchup is favorable, but it is totally losable.

Cards that worked really well in this matchup:
Generous Gift, Sol Ring and Geode Golem.

Game 2: Vs Mr. House, President and CEO. Matchup Record: 4-0

I did not have trouble with this matchup. They start quite slow, just like we do, but they can’t explode onto the board nearly as easily as we can. We are just a lot better in the mid- to late game. I rolled over this deck.

Cards that worked really well in this matchup:
Cybermen Squadron, Myr Battlesphere and Eldrazi Conscription.

Game 3: Vs Fire Lord Azula. Matchup Record: 1-3

This was a pretty rough one; they have removal and artifact hate in abundance, and they are a lot faster than we are. We can stabilize against them late, but it can be tough. I struggled to keep Sami on the board in this matchup.

Cards that worked really well in this matchup:
Loran’s Escape, Shelter and The Walls of Ba Sing Se.

Conclusion

Thanks so much for reading to the end! This deck is so much fun to play, at least for us. In my testing games, many of my opponents did not love this one. But hey, free spells pretty much always feel amazing, and this deck has them in abundance. While it’s not the best deck in the format, it can hang with a lot of the best commanders in the format.