Welcome to Extended, Conflux… now let’s see if you’ve got what it takes to compete.
Extended is a world of high power and maximizing the bang for your buck; card synergy is important and we are reminded of the good old bad old days of Magic, where anything that cost you four or more mana had better win you the game right there if you want to even consider including it. While this isn’t necessarily exactly how it works right now, and some folks bank on casting Azami, Lady of Scrolls every great once in a while, the overall spirit of the rule applies: you have to be cheap, and you have to be among the best of the best, if you want to cut it here.
That said, I think Conflux has a good amount of ‘what it takes’ to cut it on this stage, and its addition to legality (effective immediately!) should have a noticeable effect on the Extended metagame. Some decks get new toys that are clear improvements, others may grow out of nothingness to exist to prey upon the metagame, and the argument over Path of Exile is bound to rage for quite a while.
White:
Celestial Purge — Right colors for Standard, wrong colors for Extended. Sorry, awesome sideboard card. You aren’t even an awesome sideboard card in this format.
Court Homunculus — While we don’t usually think of White as the Affinity color, we do have a 2/2 artifact creature for W, which merits at least some consideration for the Affinity archetype. Additional one-drops to go next to Arcbound Worker are worth looking at, but sadly costing a specific colored mana instead of colorless makes the likelihood of him being a turn 1 drop lower, and thus he really needs further comparison to Frogmite rather than consideration as a true one-drop. Would Frogmite be better if it cost W instead of 4 with Affinity? Not by any way I’ve been taught to look at these things, but even at that, some number greater than zero may end up being effective because who says the number of Frogmites you want to play is limited to only four?
I’d believe some people looking at this from that perspective and cutting Myr Enforcer for this not-quite-Frogmite, since Enforcers are generally well-regarded but tend to be thought of as the least necessary creature in the Affinity starting lineup.
Martial Coup — Some sort of crazy Akroma’s Vengeance / Decree of Justice action all wrapped up in one tasty package, and thus worth considering in some sort of Mono-White Control deck like we’ve been seeing lately, or as part of a Tron package. I would assume that getting five 1/1’s is about equivalent to blowing up all of Affinity’s lands as far as “blowout” is concerned, so it’s still worth considering there… but the real problem comes from the fact that it will never cycle when you do not want it. Mike Flores is about the biggest proponent of Akroma’s Vengeance in any format ever and has been since the card was printed, playing it first in Block, then in Standard, then in Extended, and who knows, maybe eventually in Legacy too. And Mike admits on his blog that he cycles Akroma’s Vengenace about half of the time… so I suspect that labels this non-cycling version as much harder to get behind, and thus less likely to show up even in the corner-cases I’ve already mapped out as its very unlikely possible future home. Sorry, Martial Coup. Go win a draft or something.
Path To Exile — And so the debate begins.
Path To Exile gets better the smarter you use it. It is effectively a suicidal play early in the game because of how much tempo you’ll give up, giving your opponent a fresh land drop, but after the first three or so turns of the game you’ll note the card’s “problems” drop off steeply: we’re ‘only’ giving card disadvantage now, instead of card disadvantage and a huge tempo boost. Smart players who apply the logic of “treat it like Serra Avenger” will find it is an awesome creature removal spell, and one that conquers Tarmogoyf and Sower of Temptation alike, unlike the frequent best removal spell in Extended, Smother.
Personally, I think its utility in Tarmogoyf wars labels it for obvious inclusion somewhere in the format, and expect this fact to perhaps even be the death knell for All-In Red decks, already belabored by the fact that it isn’t even the best deck playing Desperate Ritual anymore. Suddenly a turn 1 Deus of Calamity is a laughable worry as you spend a White and a card to four-for-one the opponent’s one threat for the game, with the downside of “they get to search up a Mountain.” The fact that it is “mana-fixing” is unlikely to come up in Extended… in fact, some decks won’t even have a basic land, such as Affinity where this is just an awesome spell, or Zoo who has either zero or one basic to its name depending on whose version you are playing.
The immediate application I see for the card is replacing Oblivion Ring in the Domain Zoo decks, trading the sorcery-speed utility for a sleeker mana cost and Instant-speed package, since most of the time it’s either targeting a Jitte (which Path to Exile can rob at one mana invested against their first four, and maybe they get one back) or targeting Tarmogoyf. On its face, it is at least worthy of the consideration, and it is up for testing to figure out.
That said, I have also seen a lot, and by that I mean a LOT, of B/W utility decks sporting Path to Exile floating around in peoples’ testing pools, and B/W/G Doran Rock-style decks taking advantage of it as well. It must be worth at least some of the hype, because I’m seeing these sorts of decks working to good result. I’ve even been playtesting some myself with an “absolute garbage” deck, to try and come up with the “clever!” B/W deck that others might be testing something nearly akin to, and have found it winning a good deal more frequently than I expected to be… I put together a deck I figured would go 40% against the metagame with, only to actually win a considerable number of my matches with, and thus there’s reason to suspect there may be at least some merit to Path of Exile’s recent hype:
4 Fetid Heath
4 Flagstones of Trokair
3 Flooded Strand
3 Polluted Delta
2 Godless Shrine
2 Snow-Covered Swamp
1 Hallowed Fountain
1 Snow-Covered Plains
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
3 Chrome Mox
3 Engineered Explosives
4 Path of Exile
2 Smother
4 Smallpox
4 Thoughtseize
4 Bitterblossom
4 Dark Confidant
4 Tidehollow Sculler
4 Descendant of Kiyomaro
3 Ghost Council of Orzhova
Sideboard:
2 Smother
3 Nikko-Onna
3 Extirpate
3 Persecute
4 Porphyry Nodes
This deck is by all rights utter garbage… but it was doing surprisingly well in testing, and Path of Exile is pretty awesome in it as a cheap removal spell. Don’t be surprised to see something looking to pull off much this same sort of trick at your next PTQ, as a lot of enthusiasm has been steering towards decks of this sort. While Path of Exile is currently being either loved or loathed by the community of “intelligentsia” (read: “we writers”), I think it will play out somewhere between the two but definitely have an impact. For example, in this deck here, I might very well want four Smothers and two Path of Exile, as a final result of extensive testing… but as a starting point it doesn’t trip over the Paths nearly as much as some would love to believe it should.
Blue:
Controlled Instincts — I’ve heard a lot of talk about this as the new end-all, be-all sideboard card against Kird Ape-and-Wild Nacatl decks, but I for one am not sold on it. It’s fast and it’s cheap, to be sure, but it also guarantees that you take a hit before it actually stops anything. As sideboard-card fodder, I’m more impressed with a card to be seen later (Wretched Banquet) or even just Deathmark, which misses the Kird Apes but kills Nacatl and Tarmogoyfs before they can attack you, as well as having splash utility against Tidehollow Scullers against Domain Zoo. Since I tend to think that the better Faerie decks can afford Black on turn 1 just as readily as Blue, I’m hesitant to think this is that important… and as a sideboard card of choice against creature decks like this, I expect either Repeal or Threads of Disloyalty to be more relevant out of the sideboard still. The simple truth is that they still get to punch you once first, and against these sorts of decks you need to conserve your life total… and thus, don’t want to concede a hit at your life totals first.
Esperzoa — A theoretical ‘fair’ card for Affinity, a deck that is not necessarily interested in playing fair. There may be some uses to this after all, though, simply based on the fact that this “drawback” has historically been one that can be capitalized on for benefit, from back in the actual good old days of Stampeding Wildebeests in the frequently-discussed-when-mentioning-this-card “Stupid Green Deck” designed by Seth Burn and Rob Kinyon. While I expect its likelihood of being relevant is small, it is nonetheless still nonzero: a format with Artifact lands is the right one for this one to really be worth considering. It fights for slots currently given to Master of Etherium, however, and it loses that fight by a country mile… so it would take a deck of a more unique design aiming to capitalize on its effect to see play.
Inkwell Leviathan — The new Reanimation creature of choice, alongside good old Akroma, Angel of Wrath. While a traditional Reanimator strategy is not something we might expect to reappear anytime soon (that space is currently being occupied by the non-traditional Reanimator strategy, a.k.a. Dredge), if it appears anytime in this creature’s lifetime, you can expect this to be something that is looked at keenly thanks to the fact that it defends itself from targeted removal such as Path of Exile, which will be present alongside it for its entire lifetime in Extended.
Telemin Performance — A fun sideboard card worthy of consideration in one odd strategy or another. 3UU: Win The Game is one way to answer the Mind’s Desire deck, after all, and I’ve seen crazier things work.
Black:
Dreadwing — Let me preface this with a “Probably Not.” However, we have a one-mana Zombie, which is a relevant creature type for tribal synergies, and an activated ability that gives it evasion and a significant punch, and doesn’t happen to say “use this ability only once per turn,” a fact which I saw neglected repeatedly at the Prerelease this weekend. It is however a one-drop creature with considerable attacking power in a relevant creature tribe, so it is a definite “Maybe” even if in reality it is a “Probably Not.” I’d expect it to continually cross peoples’ minds in Gatherer searches for years to come, and maybe even be included sometimes.
Nyxathid — Forget the ‘traditional’ use of this card, such as in a discard-based deck like as the B/W deck listed above for Path of Exile… sure, he’ll come to some use there, but will as a rule be overshadowed by Tarmogoyf. Here, however, you have a creature you can realistically call upon that compares favorably alongside Tarmogoyf, and thus is a potential sideboard creature for Tarmogoyf-based Red decks that are polychromatic so long as they can realistically ever cast a BB spell. I’ve seen “Dark” Zoo decks in the past that focus more heavily on Black spells, and wouldn’t be surprised to see such again in the future… in the mid- to late-game this is the biggest thing on the table, and trying to outlast it by keeping cards in hand is frankly not an option. It is a reasonable card to consider, even if it isn’t an incredibly obvious one to apply.
Rotting Rats — As a Dredge enabler, disruption spell, and creature with Unearth, this little 1/1 deserves note for a few key reasons. Sometimes, just sometimes, cards like this make it into Constructed formats, and while I’d generally say “no, not really” here, the fact of the matter is that Dredge is a powerful mechanic and thus Unearth is a potent word to have tacked to a random card in your graveyard. If Fatestitcher can make the cut a reasonable amount of the time simply because it says the magic words “Unearth,” I think the Rats can be considered as well, even as we say that it probably won’t ever get there.
Salvage Slasher — Another card for Affinity to consider, and another card that Affinity would maybe actually play if he wasn’t himself an artifact. Add a fragile one toughness to that mix and it has to be a sad day indeed for this guy to win a fight… but it is definitely worth at least noting because a turn 2 Slasher in Affinity, followed up by a turn 3 Arcbound Ravager eating all of your permanents save the Slasher, attacks for a hell of a lot of damage.
Wretched Banquet — An effective replacement for Innocent Blood in the future, and one that has the ability to kill the first creature played by a Zoo deck, by Elves, and by All-In Red. Where Path of Exile is awesome for its cheap cost and amazing utility in the mid- to late-game, Wretched Banquet is awesome turn 1, and thus worthy of consideration.
Red:
Banefire — I don’t expect this is a card that will fit into any traditional patterns right now, but I do see a means by which it could be interesting and sound for inclusion. Currently the color combination of the moment for Tron decks is U/B… but these decks so far have also not been succeeding in the current metagame, often too ponderous to truly keep up with the Elves deck and too readily prey to the Faeries decks of the format. Red allows for sweepers like Firespout or Volcanic Fallout, while also letting us re-explore “corner case” cards like Detritivore that might deserve attention in a format committed to abuse by Riptide Laboratory and full of nonbasic lands. In such a deck, Banefire is the ultimate finisher: nothing answers it, and as a card by itself it can take the opponent from 0 to 20 in one fell (uncounterable) swoop… just add mana.
Certainly you could say this was already an option with Demonfire, but Banefire is simply the easier-to-apply uncounterable mechanism. Demonfire requires you to be Hellbent, which lets weird cards like Venser not just bounce your spell but make it counterable, and turns Cryptic Command or Repeal into spells that make your win condition counterable. While the Venser problem won’t just go away, and is in fact why I look at Detritivore to target Riptide Laboratory as a necessary part of this new design, the point remains that we have something powerful at our disposal that needs us to recalculate our world-view and potentially find something new and interesting that we didn’t see before.
Hellspark Elemental — An interesting Red burn-spell of a creature, a Spark Elemental that asks for more mana but potentially does more damage, too. Hellspark Elemental fits nicely alongside Keldon Marauders as a creature that is generally uncaring about a single creature removal spell that is likely to do damage to the opponent even if it is answered, and can potentially deal five-plus damage if unanswered. While Spark Elemental is debatable and easy to leave out of that strategy to focus on a more streamlined approach, Hellspark Elemental is of interest because it doubles up on damage and happens to use Unearth, which is uncounterable the second time around. That second part is especially relevant on a spell you’re now walking into Spell Snare, but Red cards that can potentially deal damage to an opponent from the graveyard are always playable… if you don’t believe me, it’s because you remember Scorching Missile, but in my defense even Conflagrate has been played in Extended.
Volcanic Fallout — This is a key card potentially in both the possible U/R Tron deck I’d theorized about above, and also just in a Red Burn strategy. Red Burn right now is a little soft against Faeries, but could be answered by this both to halt their damage-dealing capabilities and to deal the last points of damage. It’s a card that is good against Elves and Faeries, is instant speed, happens to be uncounterable, and at the worst still deals two to a face. I’d considered Flamebreak to at least be theoretically playable in this format, ultimately proving not to be due to its triple Red mana casting cost and the fact that the Red burn decks want Blinkmoth Nexus and Darksteel Citadel to enable Shrapnel Blast. This is a reasonable alternative and an Instant besides, and thus deserves at least some token nod of consideration. It’s a high-power card and should be regarded as such, even if the high water mark for damage is three against the R/G/x aggressive deck’s best creatures.
Green:
Macta Rioters — If you can do this, you can cast Woolly Thoctar and/or Doran. Try those first.
Might of Alara — We have seen this before, and it was a functional part of Domain Zoo before. It will require readjustment of that strategy to consider this potent spell, but it’s not an “automatic” addition by any means… there will be good reasons to consider its inclusion, and good reasons as well to decide not to include it, all depending on the metagame. Five damage for one mana is a lot, though, so clearly this has a home in Extended so long as we’re allowed to play with fetch-lands and Ravnica duals. This, then, is the other Conflux card that asks to potentially fill the Oblivion Ring slots that I’d suggested might potentially be filled with Path To Exile, and in less creature-based metagames (such as Storm-heavy ones) this is readily the better call: aggression is frequently right, while “answers” can often be wrong.
Noble Hierarch — Show me a deck playing Birds of Paradise right now and I’ll show you a deck that could maybe want this guy. We’re in the wrong portion of the metagame for this guy right now, and his big sin at the moment is lacking the creature type Elf. He’d be a $10 Fyndhorn Elves if he had it…
Yep, that’s it. What did you expect from Green anyway? At least they got ONE card you can clearly play in Extended; that’s better than usual.
Gold:
Vedalken Outlander — Galina’s Knight was at times playable in Extended; Vedalken Outlander, then, should prove so as well. Likely not today, and probably not tomorrow, but it’s within the realm of possibility.
Zombie Outlander — “Protection from Tarmogoyf.” Pro-color bears are powerful… if admittedly narrow. Again, though, we have that useful creature type to keep track of just in case.
Malfegor — An interesting dumb creature for reanimation strategies, due to his ability to absolutely decimate an army on the board.
Nacatl Outlander — I wish I could say this was relevant, but Blue = Vedalken Shackles by most reckonings, and thus Protection From Blue =/= Protection From Blue.
Knight of the Reliquary — The most obviously “high powered” card in the set, Knight here starts with half a Terravore worth of size, which likely makes him a 4/4 or 5/5 if used in a Zoo-type strategy. His ability also gives him a certain odd utility for fixing lands, that merits his possible inclusion elsewhere… after all, he can work profitably with Life from the Loam just by sacrificing lands, but can also get a cycling land and a Ravnica karoo to return it to your hand, allowing you to go Dredge-crazy and turn your engine on if you have Loam and Knight but no Cycling land. Alternatively, he can just sacrifice lands and get Flagstones of Trokair, pumping himself massively quickly and thinning your deck besides… there’s a lot you can do, which makes this a crunchy creature. He’s also the ‘right’ half of a Terravore, which Countryside Crusher does not; he gets his +1/+1 up front instead of only counting what it sees while it’s in play, which might make the difference between the two… one of which is currently not played in any format despite being basically awesome.
Ancient Ziggurat — Unconventional dual lands are worth considering and, like Pillar of the Paruns, this one can potentially be put to good use. Potentially alongside Pillar of the Paruns, this could be quite interesting indeed… if what you want to be casting is multicolored creature spells, you have eight free dual lands to do it with before even applying Gemstone Mine to the equation, so surely you could ‘go crazy’ if you wanted to, at a cheaper price life-wise than the fetchlands-and-duals assortment currently allows.
And that, unfortunately, is it. It’s still a considerable amount of things, which might alter the metagame. We’re already beginning to see Extended adjust to include Path To Exile, and can reasonably expect that so long as experiments dabbling in that card are played, even if they aren’t particularly successful, All-In Red will cease to exist as an actual archetype. In addition to its multiple foibles already well-known, it also has to contend with seemingly random decks that happen to have a one-mana creature removal spell that makes their entire deck pointless. Zoo needs to re-analyze what it is trying to accomplish, to adjust its current design with not one but two potent one-mana instants, each working towards very different purposes. Faeries can even consider stretching to include that one-mana instant and should re-analyze what it’s trying to do and at what cost it might pay to do so; Smother was a frequent addition to the U/B versions, and so long as you aren’t Rampant Growthing your opponent on the first few turns, Path To Exile is all upsides when you hit a Sower, Deus, or what-not with it.
Beyond that one card, which some love and some hate, we get a solid shot in the arm for Red mages everywhere, with a variety of tools big and small that might add to that color’s arsenal. We see an interesting new land that is powerful and might be worthy of attention, a variety of interesting creatures, and good ways to spend a lot of mana alongside powerful effects you can get for only a little bit of mana. To be fair, only a small portion of cards are even worth considering for Extended… but that’s every set in Extended, really, and not Conflux’s fault.
Sean McKeown
s_mckeown @ hotmail.com