MTG Salvation

I was looking to get into Extended because I was sick of having Standard dominated by Jund and Vampires, with very little hope for a unique deck to emerge and be viable.

But then I took a hard look at the number of Extended decks played and it made me sick.

I'll agree that having the 7 (it was 7, right?) sets that Extended had made room for awesome combos, synergies, and just a larger card pool for something unique, but at the same time, there were a couple of things that turned me away.

A - Ravnica duals and other cards were "staples..." or "required" cards to buy to make a deck competitive


B - There were 3 decks that through my Web-crawling I noticed were dominating and were played by a majority of Extended players:

1. Hypergenesis
2. Thopter+Sword of the Meek
3. Dark Depths

So what was I gaining by joining a format that had "big bads" that held down while other decks floundered about? It didn't seem that much of a change, and just felt like a more expensive Standard, and resulted in me having not played for a few months, waiting on a few more for Alara to rotate out of Standard.

I think I can be excited for the new Extended. Jund may dominate, it may not. 5 color control coming back? I welcome it. A format where Reveillark can be used and be viable at the same time, even without its Time Spiral friends that made it broken? Sign me up. I think with this new format, Jund will still be heavily played (after all, last I checked it still made up the majority of Standard, so it will be easy to transition to the new Extended), but at the same time there are more options, and old decks that will have a second shot at glory.

Or maybe I'm just excited to recycle "old" cards. Yeah probably that. I'm sorry for you Extended veterans who think you've lost a format when a player like me thinks he's gained a new format.

Not all mythics automatically mean big bucks in order to play, I can point out some mythics who were $1 rares when they came out... and non-mythic rares that are easily as expensive as some mythics. That's a terrible argument, each card's individual worth is tied to how often its played and how tournament viable it is for any format.

If you want to play a U/W Control deck, you're looking at dumping a lot for the Baneslayers and Jaces, and I know those cards are just as expensive as Goyf was, but those are for only two colors. If you wanted to play in Extended it was almost a "requirement" to pick up the Ravnica lands in order to be viable for the Extended tournaments.

sungkwon, all the mythics with good test results mean big bucks in order to play. the difference with the ravnica lands was that wizards knew that the lands (being as necessary to the game as they are), at the time, needed to be easier to seek out than the card that has potential to warp formats (Tarmogoyf, Baneslayer, Jace ect). So the lands themselves, somewhat like the fetchlands of zendikar (although different because all 5 fetchlands were introduced in 1 set, and the shocklands were 4 3 and 3 in 3 sets), were about 3-5 per box (this was when they were in standard). if an extended player wanted to get the shocklands they werent that hard to obtain on 50 bucks a week, and you got 3-4 of them for your money if you didnt already have them (trust me, I did that before I had the money to jump in). And to be quite honest, the fetchlands were the bigger cause of worry for people...but it meant you didnt need so many shocklands (hence, the issue of shocklands gets smaller, AND there are still fetchlands to worry about in standard, which takes a little from your statement). See, wizards knows what sells boxes, people looking for the cards necessary to blow away the opponent. the high price value on cards like goyf and baneslayer and jace are what sell boxes to competitive players and vendors nowadays. So while the ravnica dual lands were somewhat of a necessity for extended, they were a near-necessity in standard too. But wizards knew that cards like Tarmogoyf (who would be mythic if printed again -and I say if knowing that it wouldnt likely happen-) Baneslayer Vengevine and Jace TMS can win games by tipping one of the many scales of the game in your favor. so it becomes Game Winner =/= Manabase Support and basically what im saying is that since they were created for two different purposes to players, they cant easily be compared.

Quote from ThatStoryTeller120

the ravnica lands stabilized at 12-14 a piece, and in most cases you only needed 6-9 of them. Through use of the fetchlands, which are about the same amount, and are used in standard, through all this the cards still dont even add up the same way because you had a manabase that could carry a deck's progress. with most of these cards now you have a finisher or support albeit very stable ones. There really is no comparison but for 1 jace you could have 6+ pieces of a stable good-old-extended manabase depending on the colors you were in. So as a person who knew people wanting to play competitively extended was the format to get in because the Ravnica lands were guaranteed to be in the format for at least another 2 years, quite possibly even at the same price as their usefulness didnt change amid the format.

So true, you only need a couple of shocklands in each deck... Zoo only use 8 and its 5 colored deck :/