TagExtended

Extended is coming, and all eyes turn to the older cards. In today’s Deep Analysis, Richard debates the nature of power in the format, and defines what he believes are the twenty most powerful decks. If you’re looking to distil the metagame before your next PTQ, let Richard lead the way!

Extended PTQ season is right around the corner, and today’s Peebles Primers takes a look at some of the decks that could be strong going in. Using a Zoo deck as a litmus test, Benjamin Peebles-Mundy puts Zac Hill’s Rock and Nail and Brian Kelly’s Mono-Blue Control decks through their paces against the five-color beatdown menace. How do they fare against the fire?

With Worlds firmly behind us, all eyes now turn to Extended. The qualifier season for Pro Tour: Hollywood is gearing up, and tournament players across the land are looking for those edges that could bring home the Blue Envelope. Adrian takes a look at the metagame and makes some suggestions, before bringing us an interesting and powerful rogue deck that could make quite a splash at your next PTQ…

A Standard Pro Tour looms in the New Year, and who wouldn’t want a trip to Hollywood? In order to qualify, one must triumph at an Extended PTQ. The season kicks off in January… but Mike likes to be prepared. Today’s Flores Friday sees Mike share an interesting multi-colored deck based around powerful Lorwyn cards and overlooked mana-fixing. If you’re serious about qualifying for PT: Showbiz, you can’t miss this!

In preparation for Pro Tour: Valencia, Portugal’s Andre Coimbra joined forces with Steve Sadin, Mike Flores, Brian David-Marshall, and more. Together, they looked to demolish the blossoming metagame with a mixture of strategies both old and new. In his first article for StarCityGames.com, Andre shares the development of the deck he played at the PT, updates it for Lorwyn, and reveals his sideboarding strategies. Welcome aboard Andre!

Going into Pro Tour: Valencia, Tiago Chan had nothing more than a vague idea about his weapon of choice. After a prolonged chat with Frank Karsten, he took up his seventy-five select and attempted to bring home the big check. Sadly, things didn’t go well for Portugal’s finest… and believe me, after some of the bad beats, that’s definitely an understatement! For more tales from Tiago’s table, read on!

Extended, it seems, is a wide-open format. The variety of the stronger decks in Pro Tour: Valencia was staggering, and new strategies sat proudly alongside format stalwarts like Domain Zoo and Dredge. One such innovative deck was the Feldman, Hill, and Lybaert offering, Rock and Nail. Today’s Deep Analysis takes us through the concepting and initial design of the deck, which place both pilots in the money when the final cards were flopped…

Tiago is currently bunkered up in Valencia, cracking fetchlands and preparing for Extended onslaught. Today’s Levelling Up takes us through his playtesting regime and shares his opinions on the format going in. He brings us an excellent overview of the metagame as he sees it, with sample decklists for all the major players. Will his testing translate into a Top 8 performance?

The Extended Pro Tour kicks off this weekend… and you can be sure that some folk will run with the Overpowering Robots of Doom. Affinity has cast a long shadow over many a format, but does it still have the metaphorical grapes to run with the big dogs (and bigger Goyfs)? John “The Cak” Pelcak, a man with an affinity for Affinity, takes us through the motions.