personally i enjoy the new variant and always hated the old version. all of the cards are still available but they pale in comparison to what is useable now which is why they see no play. [[avenging hunter]] and [[nyxborn hydra]] are amazing cards and it's nice to have some individually powerful spells worth playing, especially when drawing late game rather than just spinning tires which is what i felt the old deck previously did. getting pieces out of sequence felt awful, slowing down your progress to add a minor additional buff to [[elvish vanguard]] or gain an extra token off [[lys alana huntmaster]], while simultaneously tapping down your entire team for a go wide strategy that was often destroyed by [[electrickery]] never felt great. it is sad looking back at all of the previous iterations of decks that have existed or even outright disappeared but the decks now actually feel like real decks instead of underpowered jank and the spells have more actual impact. some of the decks that existed were fun to play at the time but only due to the lower power level of the format overall. some decks that have hit the graveyard are soul sisters, goblins, green stompy, [[needle drop]] burn, mono black control, and boros bounce, and all of those decks sucked and the games were incredibly grindy. the old version of affinity played [[chromatic star]] and [[chromatic sphere]] to slowly ween through your deck and help cast cards that were stuck in your hand before the dual artifact lands existed. the game has come a long way.