
Afanas hit in WFM midseason patch
Afanas received an errata limiting his capability to continuously press card advantage while boosting characters in the Whispers from the Maze midseason patch. The change goes into effect Aug. 11 on Board Game Arena and for in-person play, allowing competitors in World Championship Qualifiers to adjust to the changes. No other changes came with the patch except the addition of Axiom’s Bugfix to the watchlist.
Hero ability changes
The change adds “Spells you play with Hand Cost 1 or less are Fleeting,” to Afanas’s ability while maintaining the rest as-is.
“The crux of the issue comes from repetitive sequences where players would abuse 1-cost spells by returning them to hand thanks to uniques with effects like ‘you may return a Spell from your Reserve to your hand,’” according to the official post. “This game plan allows players to pass the turn for a low cost while exploiting Afanas’ power to develop enormous stats on the board.”
The errata changes how Afanas interacts with cards such as Magical Training, Beauty Sleep and Helping Hand (before its own suspension in the WFM season patch), all of which cost 1 mana played from hand. Other current (but used less-often) 1-mana Yzmir spells include Sleight of Hand, Joyride, common and rare Rime Frost and rare Sap Infusion. Now, when Afanas plays any of those cards, they immediately gain fleeting, sending them to discard after a single use. Beyond the “return to hand” effects from particular uniques, other Yzmir cards are capable of bouncing spells from reserve back to hand, such as Hathor or Flamel, though at a much higher cost than the cited uniques tend to require.
Continued competitive presence
The change comes after months of ongoing attention to Afanas’s performance in competitive play, with some of the earliest acknowledgment showing up in the initial watchlisting of Small Step, Giant Leap in the Trial by Frost midseason patch. That led to a rule change related to when game win conditions are checked and suspension of Yzmir’s version of Helping Hand in the WFM season patch.
Despite those checks, Afanas has remained undeterred across two sets and almost twice as many patches as one of the most dominant decks in the game, winning the most competitive online victories overall in March and May, tying with Sigismar in April and coming in second (again to Sigismar) in June.
Many decks at the World Championships Qualifier event in Lille were developed specifically to counter Afanas, according to the article. But focusing on being prepared to play against Afanas means opening the deck to weaknesses which can be exploited by other decks. Afanas’s general decklist has “versatility and ability to exploit resources make it particularly resilient to targeted counters.”
After the adjustments from previous patches didn’t cause the desired slowdown, the team chose to broaden one of the deck’s major weaknesses by making characters and card advantage more vulnerable.
Competitive play impact
While a midseason patch isn’t typically expected to bring heavy changes to the game, the errata was released now rather than at the end of the season to allow players in competitive spaces to adjust and acclimate to the change before events such as the World Championships. The Dallas, Texas, World Championship Qualifiers (Aug. 9) will still operate with the previous hero ability for Afanas. The European-focused BGA Online Qualifier (Aug. 16-17) will be the first official event played with the errata. The WFM Tumult Championships, running Aug. 15-Sept. 14, will also operate under the new patch.
The errata is the first change to another hero since the TBF season patch that affected Waru, who had led one of the game’s dominant decks up to that point.
Axiom’s common and rare Bugfix were added to the watchlist based on a new combo appearing in some competitive Treyst decks that connects to uniques that return a card from reserve to hand when creating a Brassbug. The setup allows for continuously looping Brassbugs to repeatedly play the card. While the play is powerful, it isn’t currently oppressive within the meta, and Treyst decks don’t rely on it to achieve results. Since its debut, Bugfix hasn’t appeared in the top 10 most-played cards in competitive online decks in either its common or rare form.
Not added to the watchlist is the staggeringly powerful License Withdrawal, which rocketed to the top of the most-played Ordis commons in competitive online decks in June after its debut in the WFM set and has remained there through July. Yzmir’s Helping Hand remains suspended as the results of the Afanas errata are examined, alongside the Ordis rare Baba Yaga and all unique Moonlight Jellyfish (which have been on the suspension list since the TBF season patch).
As with previous patches, the player compensation system is still being developed, and would be retroactive.
Our full list of current errata, suspension and bans has been updated accordingly.
DAMN!!!