KCSai? KCSigh? Thoughts, Results, and Developments.

Ever since I saw Matt Nass playing KCI on camera at one of the 3 GPs he made the Top 8 of, I've been engrossed by this mess of a deck. It burst onto the modern scene in the hands of Nass and others a few months ago, and has forced players to respect its power and resiliency ever since. After recent success with the deck at local PPTQs, including a win, I thought it might be worth me writing a post about how I ended up on KCI, where I think it sits now, and formalising some of the thoughts I have about where it's going in the future.

No More Affinity?

Picking up a new deck in modern is always a risk. Even if you ignore the financial cost, modern is a format known for rewarding mastery over a specific deck or archetype. This isn't just a line spouted by commentators when they have nothing better to say, but a true reflection of how open the field is and the impossibility of reaching the required level of competence with a new deck, while also understanding the intricacies of more than 20 different common matchups, in just a few testing sessions. As evidenced by my finals appearance, alongside my team, at GP Sydney, I think I'm pretty good at playing Affinity; I've put a lot of effort into getting good at leading that ragtag crew of mechanical men to victory. But unfortunately, Affinity is in a bad place right now, something we realised early in our testing for the Pro Tour. I chalk this up to three main reasons.

The first is the prevalence of UW control decks. UW really has come a long way in the past few months, turning what used to be the solid but uncommon deck choice of a few control specialists into a more general metagame trend. As a side note, I've been thinking of trying Hardened Scales as it's pretty well positioned against the ways others are trying to beat aggro decks at the moment, while also dodging some of the more traditional artifact hate cards.

The second main reason for Affinity's poor placement is that it isn't even the best aggro deck in the format anymore. The addition of Humans and Hollow One to the format have made it hard for Affinity to keep up. Neither of those matchups is bad per se, but they offer a similar clock that is also backed up with proper, effective disruption when in the hands of skilled pilots.

Finally, the mere existence of KCI makes Affinity worse. Affinity's effectiveness has always ebbed and flowed based on how much hate there is in people's sideboards, but these days almost everyone is forced into having some kind of dedicated hate due to KCI being a part of the format. Not everything aimed at KCI hits Affinity, but there's more general artifact hate in Sideboards than there has been for a long time, and that hate isn't likely to vanish for a weekend to allow Affinity to show up and take down a tournament.

PT Preparations

After realising that Affinity wasn't going to be the right choice for the PT, we turned to other options. The safest option was to put James on RG Tron. He knows the deck inside and out, and we felt pretty good taking it into what we expected of the metagame. I still wanted to do my due diligence and KCI a try though, and jumped into goldfishing it. I put a lot of time and effort into being able to combo off quickly and effectively, knowing that the worst case scenario was that I'd be all set for the upcoming modern PPTQ season. There was also a large amount of value in having at least one person on the team who knew the deck inside and out, as it's often quite difficult to successfully target it with hate cards and know when to pull the trigger to cripple them as effectively as possible. In the end, after discussing all of the expected field and matchups, we decided to go with Tron as a safer choice. It ended up serving us quite well too, with James having the best record out of the 3 of us by a significant margin. 

Sai

Of all the things Sai offers to KCI, the pun potential is definitely the most controversial. (Art by Adam Paquette)
After a few solid weeks of learning standard for the PT my attention turned back to KCI in preparation for the upcoming PPTQ season. After seeing the list produced by CFB and piloted by Ben Stark to the finals (albeit with a 7-7 individual record), My attention was caught by the same thing as everyone else. 3x Sai, Master Thopterist in the sideboard. I won't lie, I wasn't convinced at first. I'd liked the plan of Wurmcoil and Defense Grid out of Matt Nass' earlier RG lists, and the fact that you could find those sideboard cards off Ancient Stirrings and inventor's Fair, but couldn't find Sai, was concerning. However, it didn't take me long to realise how powerful the card is in postboard games. As an Affinity pilot, I'm no stranger to sideboard plans that aren't about stopping your opponent, but instead dodging their hate cards. Sai does this for almost any hate card your opponent has, and also prevents many of your aggressive opponents from winning the game via the combat step. There are very few matchups where I don't want Sai to come in, and I'm quite close to promoting one to the main, which brings us to:

My Current List

Decklist:

2 Pyrite Spellbomb
4 Mox Opal
4 Mind Stone
2 Myr Retriever
3 Buried Ruin
4 Darksteel Citadel
2 Forest
4 Grove of the Burnwillows
2 Inventors' Fair
3 Yavimaya Coast
4 Scrap Trawler
4 Ancient Stirrings
3 Chromatic Sphere
4 Chromatic Star
4 Terrarion
3 Engineered Explosives
4 Ichor Wellspring
4 Krark-Clan Ironworks

Sideboard:

3 Sai, Master Thopterist
3 Swan Song
4 Nature's Claim
3 Lightning Bolt
1 Galvanic Blast
1 Island


There aren't many major differences between my list and other KCI lists. I think trying to be too different, just for the sake of it, is a mistake, and of all the lists that have succeeded in high level events have been almost the exact same 60 aside from changes to the manabase to accommodate the blue sideboard options. I've basically taken the CFB list from the Pro Tour and made 2 adjustments. I've changed one Lightning Bolt into a Galvanic blast in order to further tax my opponent's Meddling Mages. The traditional logic is that Bolt will sometimes be relevant against buffed Meddling Mages or Kambal, where the extra damage from Galvanic Blast rarely comes up (and it isn't always trivial to achieve metalcraft when things aren't going smoothly, and that's usually when you need a removal spell). Despite this, I think that having one spell with a different name is important enough to warrant playing one Galvanic Blast. The other major change is Swan Song over Negate. Negate is a way of pushing wins through opposing counter magic from UW and also dealing with permanent-based hate cards like RiP and Stony Silence. A major point in its favour is that it's useful in the mirror, but I didn't expect anyone else to be playing the deck at these PPTQs, so I began looking for alternatives. My friend Aidan (who is responsible in part for my dislike of negate) suggested Swan Song, and I immediately made the upgrade. Enchantments, Instants and Sorceries are an unusual combination of card types to care about, but they also just so happen to be the only card types I actually need to care about, and costing half as much as Negate makes it much better at actually dealing with early hate cards and enemy countermagic. Unless your metagame is full of mirror matches, I would highly recommend Swan Song, and even then it's close.

I'm quite happy with this list moving forward, but am considering 3 small changes:
Firstly, -1 EE, +1 Walking Ballista. This would give extra game against Meddling Mage from Humans while also letting you do more against smaller creature decks like infect and affinity on occasion.
Secondly, as mentioned above, I'm thinking about spots where Sai could make his way into the main deck.
And lastly, losing the sideboard Defense Grid hurts. There may be ways to get it back in but I need to test more against UW specifically before making that decision.


Sideboarding

Sideboarding with this deck is quite difficult. There are a lot of moving pieces in the main deck and it's hard to know how much you can dilute the combo. Once you've made a couple of general philosophical decisions about how to sideboard though, it becomes easier. The most important thing I've realised while trying to figure this all out is that Sai does not dilute the combo. Sai is actually one of the most independently powerful combo pieces in the whole 75, allowing you to combo off form a smaller base with absurd consistency. The only reason he's in the board is that he's just not necessary or quite fast enough for the main deck. This allows you to be quite bold with sideboard plans, and board in up to 11 cards.

In general, the cards that come out are Mind Stone, Terrarion, Retriever, Sphere, Spellbomb, and EE. The rest of the deck is almost untouchable. Mind Stone is a little slow when you want to be making reactive plays on turns 2 and 3, as often slowing the game down a turn or two favours you in aggressive matchups. Likewise, Tarrarion makes early plays difficult due to entering tapped. Retriever and Spellbomb come out when we don't expect graveyard hate from opponents, and even then can sometimes still come out if we're bringing in Sai to win the game instead. EE is great in most matchups, but sometimes is a little too slow. Regardless, you always leave one in in case of unexpected sideboard cards, and you still need a 0 cost artifact for most of the loops. Chromatic Sphere sometimes comes out if we expect to be able to resolve a KCI easily, as it doesn't draw a card when sacrificed for mana.

Below is the full plan I had for the PPTQs I played. I haven't tested all of these matchups, so some of my plans may be off, but I've done my best to work through my opponents plan and how to combat it. It's also not comprehensive, just representative of what I expected from the local metagame.

OpInOutCards they haveMatchup
Humans4 Bolt
3 Sai
1 Island
4 Mind Stone
2 Terrarion
1 Retriever
1 Forest
Damping Sphere,
Kataki,
Rec Sage,
Khambal
Meddling Mage is the key here. Stick an EE on 2 ASAP and save it as a last resort.
Burn4 Bolt
4 Claim
4 Mind Stone
2 EE
1 Terrarion
1 Sphere
Destructive Revelry,
RIP,
Stony
EE is too slow here, just kill Eidolons and whatever else you need to survive. Claim can also destroy your own eggs/target a Citadel for 4 life.
Affinity3 Sai
4 Claim
1 Island
1 Forest
2 EE
1 Spellbomb
4 Mind Stone
Damping Sphere
RiP
Wear//Tear
Grudge
Counter Spells for U.
Can afford to cut a spellbomb bc they don't exile many things and we have Sai. Again, EE is a bit slow.
Hardened Scales3 Sai
4 Claim
1 Island
1 Forest
1 EE
1 Spellbomb
1 Retriever
4 Mind Stone
Damping Sphere
Claim
Surgical
Natural State
Can afford to cut retriever here as well as spellbomb.
Hollow One3 Sai
4 Claim
1 Island
1 Forest
2 EE
1 Chromatic Sphere
4 Mind Stone
Grudge
Leyline
Sai is great here, they can't remove him or punch through.
GDS3 Sai
1 Island
4 MindstoneCounterspells
Leyline
Surgical
This matchup is terrible.Try to figure out if they have Leylines or not and board Claims in appropriately.
Spirits3 Sai
4 Claim
1 Island
4 Mind Stone
2 Terrarion
1 Sphere
1 Forest
Damping Sphere
RiP
Stony
Again, difficult. Sai is once again one of the best cards we have.
UW3 Spell Pierce
3 Sai
4 Claim
1 Island
4 Mind Stone
2 EE
2 Terrarion
2 Sphere
1 Spellbomb
Counterspells
RIP
Stony
Spell Queller
Boarding up a land here helps against Field of Ruin/Path to Exile. They will often be forced to tap out to resolve something early, try and make it count.
Tron2 Claim
3 Spell Pierce
1 Terrarion
1 Retriever
2 EE
1 Spellbomb
Relic
Surgical
Claim
Sometimes chalice
This matchup is quite interesting. OStone can either be terrible for you or just help you combo faster. If they have Surgicals consider bringing in Sai.
Pyromancer2 Bolt
3 Sai
4 Claim
1 Island
4 Mind Stone
1 Retriever
2 Terrarion
2 Sphere
1 Forest
Surgical
Wear/Tear
Leyline
Kambal
Stony
Not 100% on this one, but I think this is the correct configuration.
BridgeVine4 Claim
3 Sai
1 Island
1 Forest
4 Mind Stone
2 Terrarion
1 Sphere
Grudge
Leyline
Revelry
This is a race. Claim once again can be used to swing the combat maths in your favor.
Infect4 Bolt
3 Sai
1 Island
4 Mind Stone
2 Terrarion
1 Sphere
1 Forest
Spell pierce,
Nature's claim
Quite bad, just try and get them quickly.

Moving Forward

I really like playing KCI, and think it's an incredibly powerful choice moving forward in the modern format. I don't think we've found the perfect 75 yet, and there are powerful options available to us. There's also the possibility that the card Sai, Master Thopterist is independently powerful enough to support his own archetype, which is another avenue that I'm exploring. Despite the fact that I think it should be banned for play pattern reasons (which is a discussion for another time), I'll probably be playing it for as long as the deck is legal and still good, which I expect to be for a while.

I hope you've found this interesting and informative, please don't hesitate to ask any questions/leave a comment.

Until next time,
May your opponents never resolve an enchantment for 1W.

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