Affinity (2004) vs. Golos Field (2019) | Best Standard Deck Ever Top 64

Hello everyone, and welcome to the next match in the Best Standard Deck Ever Tournament! This week, we have what I believe is a record number of cards that were banned in Standard. On one side, we have the iconic aggro / combo deck Affinity from 2003, playing a total of 23 cards that were banned in Standard. On the other, we have Golos Field of the Dead Ramp from 2019, playing 20 cards that were banned in Standard! Which deck is moving on to face 2009's Jund in the top 32, and which is going home? Let's get to the video and find out! Oh yeah, you can find all the decklists and the bracket for the Best Standard Deck Ever Tournament here.

Affinity vs. Golos Field

2004's Affinity almost destroyed the game of Magic, literally! The artifact deck is built around the "affinity for artifacts" mechanic to reduce the cost on cards like Frogmite and Thoughtcast. It can win like an aggro deck by beating down with creatures, or like a combo deck by playing a bunch of cheap or even free artifacts and then sacrificing them all to Arcbound Ravager or Atog to drain the opponent out of the game with Disciple of the Vault. 

At first, the deck was fueled by Skullclamp. Originally, the equipment boosted the equipped creature's toughness. But thanks to a late, untested change in the design process, it ended up giving the equipped creature –1 toughness, which broke the card by letting you kill your own creatures easily to draw two cards. Wizards quickly realized the mistake and banned Skullclamp in June 2004, just a few months after printing it. But the Affinity deck was so strong that it remained the clear best deck in Standard.

Over the following year, Standard devolved into Affinity vs. anti-Affinity decks, which was such a miserable format that players started quitting the game altogether. Dropping attendance forced Wizards into another massive round of bannings in March 2005, with all the artifact lands, Arcbound Ravager, and Disciple of the Vault all being banned from Standard, which finally killed the archetype. Nearly a decade later, the same plan would emerge as one of the premier aggro decks in the new Modern format, despite Skullclamp and the artifact lands being banned there as well.

How good was Golos Field in 2019 Standard? The Simic Oko deck—the deck built around the greatest planeswalker of all time in Oko, Thief of Crowns, and the deck that broke all the records when 69% of people played it at Mythic Championship VI—existed in the same format, but Golos Field got banned first! 

The two key cards in the deck—Golos, Tireless Pilgrim and Field of the Dead—were both printed in Core Set 2020 (which was released in 2019). Backed by a weird, mostly singleton mana base to support Field of the Dead, Golos Field won with inevitability by making an endless horde of Zombies for free just by making land drops. Eventually, Golos, Tireless Pilgrim would tutor up all four copies of Field of the Dead, meaning every land drop would make four 2/2 Zombies. This was impossible for most decks to beat, especially considering the rest of the deck is mostly 29 lands and a bunch of ramp spells to help make as many Zombies as possible once Field of the Dead is online. 

While the deck was dominant, it didn't last for long. Core Set 2020 was released in July 2019, and its namesake Field of the Dead was banned in October (a month before Oko, Thief of Crowns was emergency banned), effectively killing the archetype.

Over the next year, several more cards from the deck were banned due to their power in other archetypes, including Once Upon a Time, Veil of Summer, Growth Spiral, Agent of Treachery, and Teferi, Time Raveler, thanks in part to the fact that all of this was happening during the release of Magic Arena and a big push from Wizards to make Magic a "Top 5 eSport," which led to the company being very aggressive in banning problematic cards that were harmful to the Standard format. 

Updated Bracket

Each week, we'll update the bracket with the results of last week's match. (Today's matchup won't be included until next week, to avoid spoiling the results if you haven't watched the video yet.)

Next Week: RecSur (1998) vs. Bant Company (2012)

Next week, we have RecSur—the combo of Recurring Nightmare and Survival of the Fittest—from 1998 taking on Bant Collected Company from 2016! Which deck will move on, and which will go home? Come back next Monday to find out!