I wanted to look at the end of the Extended season. Actually, I was planning on doing this next week. I had written a different article for this week. Then a funny thing happened. This sort of thing.
I had finished writing and proofing my article. I was really happy with it. I was attaching it to the email to Craig when I got a strange error message — this file corrupted / not found. Then the file name vanished off the insert files list. It was not attached to the email. It was not in the “articles I write” folder. Word could not find it. Various search techniques could not find it.
After three hours and seven different recovery tools, I had recovered a file with the appropriate name — and only one of the tools could discover that. I copied that file to a separate drive, but Word could not open it. Neither could anything else, including all the open-anything tools to which I have access.
After this, I can testify to the fact that swearing for four straight hours makes you jaw sore.
I don’t have that article.
I will try to rewrite it, but I will have to take some time. First, it is now past deadline. Second, any attempt to recreate an article immediately never goes well. You have too many problems misremembering whether you included parts, and trying to recreate the exact phrasing. The result never flows. It is too choppy, and often disjointed.
So, I’ll do the Extended recap instead.
I pulled a lot of these numbers from the StarCityGames.com deck analysis tools. They do most of the analysis that I used to do in Excel spreadsheets and databases. Very powerful. Evan Erwin wrote/talked about the tools a few weeks ago, so check out his descriptions.
The short explanation: if you search up any deck using the StarCityGames.com deck database, you can find the link to the database of Extended decks. Here’s a quick visual guide.
Start here:
That link will take you to the search tool. You can search by deck name, by format, by color, by player, result, etc. etc. Then just find a deck — any deck. I clicked on a Standard deck. The link to the Hollywood database is present in Standard deck views as well. Here’s what to look for:
The database does not — at least not as I am writing this — include the results from the two recent GPs. [They’re up now — Craig.] I pulled the data into a spreadsheet, added the GP Top 8s, and then massaged the data a bit. I wanted to look at the major archetypes, so I’m only listing those decks that made Top 8 more than five times. That eliminates a lot of decks that appear in the database. I then ranked the remaining decks by various statistics. I ranked them by number of times the deck made Top 8. I also ranked them by number of first place finishes. Finally, I ranked them by the odds that, if they made Top 8, they would take home the blue envelope.
Decks Ranked by Number of Top 8 Finishes:
Doran the Explorer: 46
Dredge: 43
Red Deck Wins: 35
Goblins: 30
Enduring Ideal: 30
Death Cloud: 27
Next Level Blue: 27
Affinity: 26
Gaea’s Might Get There: 25
The Rock: 25
Mind’s Desire: 18
U/G Tron: 18
Burn Deck Wins: 14
Aggro Loam: 10
Previous Level Blue: 10
Domain Zoo: 7
Decks Ranked by Number of First Place Finishes:
Dredge: 7
Next Level Blue: 5
Gaea’s Might Get There: 5
The Rock: 5
U/G Tron: 5
Red Deck Wins: 4
Goblins: 4
Death Cloud: 3
Burn Deck Wins: 3
Aggro Loam: 3
Enduring Ideal: 2
Affinity: 2
Previous Level Blue: 2
Doran the Explorer: 1
Mind’s Desire: 1
Odds of Winning if in the Top 8:
Aggro Loam: 30.00%
U/G Tron: 27.78%
Burn Deck Wins: 21.43%
Gaea’s Might Get There: 20.00%
The Rock: 20.00%
Previous Level Blue: 20.00%
Next Level Blue: 18.52%
Dredge: 16.28%
Goblins: 13.33%
Red Deck Wins: 11.43%
Death Cloud: 11.11%
Affinity: 7.69%
Enduring Ideal: 6.67%
Mind’s Desire: 5.56%
Doran the Explorer: 2.17%
I love looking at statistics like this. Look at a couple of archetypes.
Domain Zoo made Top 8 seven times during the season. It never won. Its average showing was 4.29 — meaning that it generally ended up losing in the quarterfinals, or occasionally the semis. The one missing piece of data is how many players who did not make Top 8 played Domain Zoo — if almost no one played it, and it still made seven Top 8s, maybe it was a decent choice if your goal was to place in the Top 8.
Alternatively, look at Doran the Explorer. It was the single most common deck in the Top 8s throughout the season. It also won just once in 46 Top 8 showings. This is clearly the deck you want to play if your goal is Top 8, but you really don’t want to qualify. This is a very clear indication that the deck is powerful enough to smash through the Swiss, but that knowledgeable players who know their decks (e.g. other Top 8 competitors) can beat Doran decks. Forty-six entries and one win is an incredible stat. A stat like that means this is probably a very bad choice to qualify with.
On the other end of the spectrum, Aggro Loam decks made Top 8 ten times, and won it all three times. It also won with different pilots. That makes it a good choice to qualify with — provided you are very comfortable and experienced with the deck.
Assuming that this article is not eaten by e-gremlins, you will be reading this on Wednesday — four days before the last qualifiers of the season. It is probably too late to use the database to choose a deck to play, and especially to assemble a playtest gauntlet. Of course, if you are looking for decklists for the last few days of playtesting, take a look at the statistically-averaged builds of the following decks. These decks were hot in recent weeks.
Red Deck Wins
Gaea’s Might Get There
Flow Rock (actually, just test against Adrian Sullivan version)
Previous Level Blue
and the UW control deck from GP: Philly.
Rotation
Last week I was in a store playing oldies music. You know how you hear a song and get it stuck in your head. It happened to me. The song was “Turn, Turn, Turn” by, I think, the Yardbirds. Then, when I started writing this section, I suddenly realized that the Magic Show could use a song like that as theme music to talk about the format rotating.
Now the damn song is stuck in my head again.
The worst part is that I only know maybe three lines of the song, so those three lines keep repeating. It’s like Odyssey Block with its endless string of UG Madness on Mono-Black control matches.
Moving on.
As part of the last banned and restricted list update, Wizards announced a change to the Extended rotation. Previously, Extended was to lose three years worth of sets every three years. Under that policy, come November, everything before Mirrodin block was set to leave the format. That would have been a huge change.
Huge. Really.
Imagine the format without fetchlands.
Right.
Instead, next Fall, Invasion block, Odyssey block, and Seventh Edition will all rotate out. That will still have a significant effect, but the effect on various decks will be mixed.
Let’s look at them deck by deck. Obviously, we cannot know everything about the Extended format for next spring until we see the cards in the next four sets (Shadowmoor, Son of Shadowmoor, the Fall set, and — for the end of the Extended season, at least, the Spring 2009 set.) Still, we can at least speculate on which decks can survive, and which will be crushed under the big rotating wheel.
Doran the Explorer:
Forty-six players rode this deck to a Top 8 slot.
The statistically average deck is here.
The deck will lose the following cards: Cabal Therapy, Vindicate, Pernicious Deed.
The loses are huge. Pernicious Deed will hit me hardest, because I have played it in nearly every Extended deck I have fielded since it was printed. It is not crucial to Doran, perhaps, but it will be hard to replace. Even harder will be Vindicate, which kills everything. Vindicate has almost no legal equivalents: Doran is not going to be the same if it is reduced to playing Saltblast.
Cabal Therapy is also a very important loss, but we will talk about that more next deck.
Dredge:
Forty-three players earned their Top 8 pins with this deck.
The statistically average deck is here.
The deck will lose the following cards: Ichorid, Cabal Therapy, Cephalid Coliseum, Breakthrough, Careful Study, Putrid Imp, Tolarian Winds, and Tireless Tribe
Wow. That’s an awful lot of the deck that will no longer be legal. Sure, a card or two may be reprinted in Eleventh Edition in Summer 2009, but don’t count on it. You certainly cannot count on any significant number of cards being reprinted. Don’t count the archetype out, however. Remember, Dredge was a strong contender in Standard for a while, and the Standard version of the deck had none of those cards.
Cabal Therapy may, arguably, be the biggest loss for the deck. Sure, Careful Study, Coliseum, and Breakthrough are all critical cards, to draw cards for the deck. Cabal Therapy, however, is the cost-free method of stopping the hate that can kill Dredge — and one that, unlike Thoughtseize, it can be cast even after being milled into the graveyard. That, plus the fact that it can hit twice in more normal decks, make the loss of Cabal Therapy a huge impact.
Red Deck Wins:
Thirty-five players chose this deck and made it to the Top 8 slot.
The statistically average deck is here.
The deck will lose the following cards: Grim Lavamancer, Barbarian Ring, plus Terminate out of the Sideboard at times.
Not too bad. Grim Lavamancer is a really strong card, and it interacts really well with fetchlands. It is also a lot cheaper to activate than Magus of the Scroll. However, Red decks have survived the loss of a lot of cards that were features in RDW, and its successor RDW2k.
Goblins:
Thirty little Red players played little Red guys.
The statistically average deck is here.
The deck will lose the following cards: Goblin Ringleader, Goblin Matron, Cabal Therapy out of the board.
The deck does not lose any of the big, fast beaters — at least not this time. Piledriver and Warchief are going to be here for another season. What the deck will lose, however, are the guy that refills hands and the guy (gal) that tutors for the one-offs. Those are critical impacts. That, plus the loss of Cabal Therapy, will have an impact. Without the tutors and discard, Goblins looks a lot like Kithkins. I don’t remember seeing Kithkin on the list of Top 8 decks. Let me check.
Nope — not there.
Goblins needs the beater/tutors and beater/hand refillers to take the deck to the next level. Without them, it just looks like a good Standard deck. Extended has a higher standard. That said, expect Goblins to appear at the early PTQs no matter what. Goblins, like poverty, hunger, and athlete’s foot, are always with us.
Enduring Ideal:
Thirty players stopped casting spells during the Top 8 this year.
The statistically average deck is here.
The deck will lose the following cards: Ancient Spring, Sulfur Vents, Tinder Farm, Burning Wish, Solitary Confinement, Pernicious Deed, Fire / Ice, Orim’s Chant.
The deck loses its mana acceleration, its primary tutor, its main defensive spells and its most important protective enchantments.
It will be fine.
I’m joking, of course. The deck is in real trouble. I don’t expect the deck to reappear anytime soon. That said, I plan on buying a playset of Ideals online this time next year, when I should be able to get them 3 for a ticket. The deck will suck until a lot more cards are printed / reprinted. On the other hand, Ideal is a method of getting expensive stuff into play, and those things are always dangerous. Look at Dragonstorm — it keeps making a comeback. For what it’s worth, I will keep a playset of Tooth and Nail, Ideal, Dragonstorm, etc. around, just in case these make a comeback. They may well do so — and they will be really expensive if you wait until after they come back to buy them.
Death Cloud:
Twenty-seven players liked killing things with poison gas.
The statistically average deck is here.
The deck will lose the following cards: Pernicious Deed, Cabal Therapy, Duress.
The nasty core of the deck — the Death Cloud and the planeswalkers that survive it — are all going to be around for a few years. What will be disappearing are the critical board sweepers and most of the early discard. That makes the survival of this deck very questionable. Moreover, this is a metagame deck — it preys on a certain part of the existing metagame. If the metagame changes significantly, it will have to adapt — and it may or may not have the tools to do so. The loss of Deed is huge — nothing else does quite as good a job of wrecking Affinity, Goblins, and the like.
Next Level Blue:
Twenty-seven players played decks StarCityGames.com calls NLB to a Top 8 slot. The builds vary slightly, but they all clearly derive from Patrick Chapin masterpiece.
The statistically average deck is here.
The deck will lose the following cards: Counterspell.
Let me check again.
Okay, a few versions ran things like Stormscape Apprentice and Upheaval, but the average build just loses Counterspell. The format will have potential replacements, like Faerie Trickery and Cancel. True, they cost a little more (er, 50% more), but the format will slow down a bit with two blocks and 7th Edition leaving, so I would not bet against this deck failing anytime soon. I’m not selling my Vedalken Shackles.
Next Level Blue should be a test gauntlet staple for the next Extended PT.
Affinity:
Twenty-six players rode this deck to a Top 8 slot.
The statistically average deck is here.
The deck will lose the following cards: Cabal Therapy.
The people who playtested Darksteel and Fifth Dawn have a lot to apologize for. The deck is still good, even with critical parts — like Skullclamp and Disciple of the Vault — banned. The deck’s only loss, going into next season, will be Cabal Therapy. It is hard to overemphasize how big that loss might be, however. Cabal Therapy was a great answer to combo decks, and a great way to fight hate. Nothing else can be as good, especially in a deck that does not mind when Arcbound Workers die.
Gaea’s Might Get There:
Twenty-five players played a fragile manabase held together with fetchlands into the Top 8 slot.
The statistically average deck is here.
The deck will lose the following cards: Grim Lavamancer, Gaea’s Might, Vindicate, Terminate, plus Armadillo Cloak in the sideboard.
Stick a fork in it, it’s done. This deck survived because it had a bunch of cards that could deal an extra five damage for almost no mana, because it could have domain on turn 3. It can still get domain that quickly, but without the Might it has less to do with domain once it gets there. Some form of multicolor good-stuff aggro will probably appear every season, but it will not be an evolution of this deck.
The Rock:
Twenty-four players rode this deck to a Top 8 slot at a PTQ, and another own a GP with it.
The statistically average deck is here.
The deck will lose the following cards: Cabal Therapy, Pernicious Deed, Duress, Living Wish, Vindicate.
Sob.
Pernicious Deed has been my constant companion for years. We are soul mates. Now it is leaving.
I don’t know if I can go on.
The Rock has lost Yavimaya Elders, Phyrexian Negators and Plaguelords, Deranged Hermits and on and on. I don’t know that it can survive this. I’m sure that a GB mid-range / aggro deck may reappear, but it will not have the control elements of Deed and the cheap discard. Plague Boiler is not Pernicious Deed.
Mind’s Desire:
Eighteen players stormed the Top 8 with this deck.
The statistically average deck is here.
The deck will lose the following cards: all but 3 lands, Cabal Ritual, Burning Wish.
Let’s make this simple: get yourself another combo deck. Sure, Mind’s Desire and storm are broken cards, but without the lands the deck is much slower, and without Burning Wish it cannot fit enough silver bullets and tutors to survive the hate. That said, the storm mechanic is still broken, so I may pick up a playset when the prices drop. Wizards has a long history of reprinting / replacing the components that let a broken mechanic rise again.
U/G Tron:
Eighteen players decided Uzra’s infrastructure — his mine, tower and power plant — is worth exploiting.
The statistically average deck is here.
The deck will lose the following cards: Moment’s Peace. That’s it.
I haven’t played this deck enough to have a really strong opinion on whether Moment’s Peace is critical. I know it is very good. Its loss will be serious. Nonetheless, this will certainly be on my shortlist for decks to test when the cards for next winter’s Extended format are out / spoiled.
Burn Deck Wins:
Fourteen players like burning their Top 8 opponents.
The statistically average deck is here.
The deck will lose the following cards: Barbarian Ring.
Barbarian Ring was an uncounterable, immune-to-Wrath-and-Naturalize source of colorless damage. That’s nice, but not necessarily critical. The rest of the deck survives, and Wizards has been pretty good about printing that sort of thing on occasion. They may do so again — if not, Mutavault could be a substitute. Don’t count this archetype out.
Aggro Loam:
Ten players liked digging in the dirt.
The statistically average deck is here.
The deck will lose the following cards: Terravore, Cabal Therapy, Burning Wish, Devastating Dreams, Hull Breach, Nostalgic Dreams, Boil, etc.
The loss of Hull Breach kills this deck. It’s done for.
Actually, it’s the loss of Hull Breach, plus the Burning Wish that fetches it, and the Terravores that win the game once you cast it. This whole archetype is now toast.
Previous Level Blue:
Ten players followed LSV’s lead and took this deck to a Top 8 slot.
The statistically average deck is here.
The deck will lose the following cards: Counterspell, Force Spike.
As I discussed above, Some Level Blue is extremely likely to play some part in the next Extended season. Counterspell is a loss, and the alternatives are expensive, but that does not mean that the deck is not equally powerful. Force Spike will be a loss, but that might well be reprinted sometime.
Domain Zoo:
Seven players made Top 8 with this deck.
The statistically average deck is here.
The deck will lose the following cards: Grim Lavamancer, Vindicate, and Firebolt.
This is pretty much the same sort of archetype as Gaea’s Might Get There — and it faces the same fate. The loss of Vindicate is huge for the deck. For that matter, losing the reusable damage sources does not help, either.
Some multicolored aggro good-stuff deck will appear, but it won’t be based directly on this build.
Conclusions
The format is a lot of fun now. It looks like the new rotation policy will keep that going. Eighteen months from now, on the other hand… I can’t imagine Extended without the fetchlands. Of course, I once bemoaned the coming rotation because I could not imagine Extended without the original duals, so times may change. The DCI announced that the duals would rotate, and a few months later the fetchlands appeared. Extended was saved. Who knows what Wizards may do to save Extended in the future — I just hope it is something as colorful as the fetchlands. I hate mono-colored Extended formats.
I have to get this to Craig now. Unless he has somehow unraveled that broken file, he will need to get this up. I apologize for any cards I missed, or cards I identified as rotating that will survive. I’m pretty sure I checked everything, but I have been known to mix up the subsets of Odyssey and Onslaught block, and sh** happens.
For those of you who can make it to a PTQ this weekend, good luck. For the rest of us, here’s to next year!
PRJ