MTG Salvation

Quote from Madding

Hello Gavin.

It looks like Wizards is testing out Modern Magic and will probably be keeping an eye on the community response to their upcoming event. Frankly, I think the format sounds great. I feel like the new card borders are an interesting starting point and offer an actual reason to start at a specific block without just picking one (like Invasion) to keep powerful Legacy cards out.

That said, I think Overextended sounds good too.

But surely you must feel that if Wizards has already chosen a direction to go for this 'middle Magic' format then your cause is futile. I'm interested in your response to Modern Magic -- because I think players are going to get behind it, and it's already ahead of your idea by coming from WOTC themselves.

Appreciate the work you do for this game, by the way!

Hey Madding,

This is an important point and I'm going to talk about this some in a post I'm hoping to have up on the site tonight/tomorrow. In a nutshell, Modern seems like just as much of a test format as Overextended right now.

Wizards announced Modern and instantly wanted feedback on it, showing that they weren't sure about it and wanted to know what people thought. They're debuting it at the Community Cup to see how it goes, and I expect revisions to happen. It'd be a much, much different story if they announced a Modern PTQ season, but that's not at all the situation. The only thing distinguishing Modern from Overextended right now is that Modern has a single casual-level event acknowledged by Wizards. Let me quote a piece out of my article:

Last Thursday, Wizards announced that the “Modern” format would be used for the Magic Online Community Cup. The Modern format is a brand new format to be used at the Community Cup that is all the cards with new card frames. (So 8th Edition forward.) This announcement comes with rather impeccable timing considering I had planned on announcing this today, so since we have the opportunity, I'd like to take a moment to look over their format proposal and provide some thoughts.

First, I want to say that what I presume they are doing is giving the idea of a non-rotating current age of Magic format a trial run. After all of the discussion surrounding a new format, where better to test out the idea than a tournament where new and crazy formats are used anyway? However, importantly what I do not believe is that they have married themselves to the Mirrodin forward plan. Most likely, they are looking to try out ideas, had an internal discussion on the topic, and came up with Mirrodin forward.

If anything, Wizards' Modern format proposal is good news for Overextended. It shows that they are seriously considering a new format. Now it's just a matter of which set to start from.

On top of all that, some people have criticized my decision to go ahead with Overextended despite Modern being announced. Why go in a completely different direction that Wizards? Why be so pompous as to try and split the format? However, the opposite is true. Overextended just gives Wizards more knowledge to play with. The results of Modern and Overextended provides them with more results and information to draw upon for creating a new format. It's not like there are Modern events I'm drawing people away from to play Overextended; both discussions can exist and the data collected from both can be the fuel behind a new format.

I hope that helps answer your question.

Hey everyone!

Gavin here. Thanks for all the discussion. This has been a great to read! I want to comment on a few different popular topics of discussion to answer any questions you guys have. I'd be happy to answer any others as well.

1. This is an attention seeking move/way to get invited to the community cup.

This is an attempt to promote Overextended as a format. If you think it's an attention seeking move there's nothing I can do about that, but I assure you, it isn't. The only proof I can provide is this: who started this thread?

If I was just trying to promote myself, I would be posting everywhere, spreading myself further . Instead, I want people who are genuinely interested to talk about the format. If there isn't a community large enough to push this format by talking over it in forums, then how is it going to have any legs in the first place? I started the spark, but I want other people to set the discussion ablaze.

And as far as the Community Cup goes, I was already there once and, from what I've heard, they don't want to do repeats. Doing all this work now with the intent of having a slim-none chance of making the Community Cup again next year is a pretty big stretch.

2. Talking to the community first

I actually did talk to the community a lot about Overextended, just not on here. There have been several discussions on Twitter about the format. Additionally, I have had two rather long posts on my Facebook with nearly 200 total replying comments on the subject. If you're questioning my use of Facebook as a medium for this discussion, I'm friends with a lot of people from casual to competitive and, since I don't post here much anymore, it gave me a good range of people to receive feedback from.

What I learned, however, is that (as we have seen here) getting a large group of people to agree on anything is impossible. So I took the information I learned from those discussions and began to play games, craft a banned list, and write about the format.

I had to take initiative on the format because nobody else was going to. As noted, the discussion has been around for a year and amounted to little more than something fun to reference. We're all great at talking, but seldom does someone actually put all of those words into action.

I'm certainly not trying to be the god of Overextended, just a leader that could create some action. In fact, the posts on this thread and some of the other feedback on the format are giving me some great ideas already! I'm more than happy to listen to all of what you guys have to say. For example, I am considering unbanning one of the three Dredge cards come the next Overextended B&R announcement (July 7th) thanks to all of your discussion. We'll see what happens in the events, and I would definitely look for some banned list updates after more people play the format. (More on that below.)

Also, to the specific comment from The Cardfather about not responding to your Tweet, I apologize. I definitely remember seeing that tweet. I often quickly check my Twitter via phone while I'm out, and sometimes I see something, get back to doing whatever what I was supposed to be doing, and then forget to reply. Not replying was entirely my mistake, and I'm sorry if it seemed like I ignored you

3. Banned List

There are some important notes before addressing specific cards. First off, the Overextended banned list has several purposes. (Check out this page if you haven't read it already.) In short, the banned list needed to address unfun cards, too powerful cards, and potentially help differentiate the format from Legacy.

Another important note is that I wanted to encourage innovation. If it's a close call, I would rather see what innovations people come up with and then slowly release banned cards if they seemed safe in the format than start with all of the banned cards legal and then ban several of them, changing the format entirely and making a lot of the data useless. (It's worth noting that Dark Depths is legal for the inverse reasons.)

As far as individual cards go:
[CARD]
AEther Vial [/CARD]

It's actually pretty interesting this question came up, because I was asking the same question last year: why was Vial banned in Extended? I felt like it could be safely unbanned and began to do research. When I asked several pros about the topic, they all agreed it was unsafe for various reasons ranging from Faeries, to Affinity, to raw power. We built some decks with it and Vial was pretty insane. There's a lot more you can do than just put Silvergill Adepts onto the battlefield. (Though that isn't bad either.)

Aside from that, AEther Vial is a defining Legacy card. People have called for Vial to be banned at several points in time in Legacy, and by banning it in Overextended it helps differentiate the format at first. This wasn't the main reason to set it aside, but it was certainly a factor. However, I could see unbanning it at some later point once the format is more defined.

With all that said, most of my Overextended testing was pre-Mental Misstep. Now that Misstep exists, Aether Vial might be okay. This is definitely a card that will be considered for unbanning July 7th.

Sensei's Divining Top

Top, however, is a card I cannot get behind unbanning. The card is immensely powerful and would be played in a ton of decks alongside fetches. For those are suggesting you just ban Counterbalance, Top would still see a ton of play. Also, don't forget why Top was originally banned: because it really slows games down and caused too many draws. That's definitely a factor. Having played a ton of Extended with and without Top, I am definitely happy to have it banned. It also helps differentiate the format from Legacy, which is a plus.

Hypergenesis

I think a lot of you are still thinking old Extended here. With all of the Invasion cracklands (Sulfur Vent, etc), Chancellor of the Tangle, and Simian Spirit Guide, Hypergenesis can very consistently go off on turn 2. Turn 2! The right turn for combo decks in this format feels like 4, and turn 2 is far earlier than Hypergenesis should be resolving.

Instead, you can still just play Living End. It's much more interactive, can't combo out on turn two, but still a very powerful, yet much more fair, combo deck. It's a much better fit for the format.

The dredge hate cards (Narcomoeba, Bridge From Below, Dread Return)

Some people say that I must "really hate losing to Dredge" because of this banned list. In fact, it's quite the opposite! I've played a ton of Dredge in Standard, Extended, and Legacy. I know just how powerful the deck can be. In it's hyper-fast version, it just isn't a good deck to have exist in Overextended. It's unfun, warps the format, and overly powerful. You can play the same maindeck and 10-12 of the same sideboards as the Feldman Legacy version!

With all of that said, it's probably okay if some kind of graveyard deck that revolves around Dread Return and Ichorid/Llanowar Mentor wants to exist. There is a good chance one of these three cards will be unbanned come July 7th.

Hopefully that helps answer some of your questions! I'll be reading this thread, so if you have any questions feel free to ask. I may be slow to respond this week because I'm leaving for GP Providence, but I can definitely reply after I return on Monday.

Thanks for all of the great posts and feedback!

Gavin

I am curious to know what makes people laugh, why it makes you laugh, and how you combine that information to hierarchically rank the concept of "funny."

Here is an list of 20 arbitrarily chosen television comedies. Rank them from what you feel is most funny to least funny, then tell us why you ranked them that way. Choose whatever criteria you feel is appropriate to define "funny."

If you haven't seen a show, just don't include it on your list.

The list:

30 Rock
Arrested Development
Big Bang Theory
Breaking Bad
Chuck
Community
Family Guy
Friends
Futurama
Glee
How I Met your Mother
It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Portlandia
Scrubs
Seinfeld
South Park
The Office
Two and a Half Men
Weeds
Whose Line is it Anyway?

This should make for a fun exercise in comparing what makes us laugh. I'm curious to see the differences in everyone's belief of "funny," and I look forward to seeing your lists!

Hey there,

DVRobin sent me an e-mail and asked me to check in here after my article, and I've been in contact with Marximus via e-mail in the past as well.

Number one, I really don't feel like you guys are running enough lands. You do have cost reducers, but I kept getting mana screwed with the builds you proposed. This deck has a ton of things in can do with its mana, and hitting your land drops consistently lets you just cast some of your big spells if plan A doesn't work.

I liked the Golems in the games I played just because it gave you something else to do when you had a slow draw or things weren't working out. Every deck in Extended is doing insanely powerful things. What makes what we're doing any better than what they're doing? What makes our strategy better than something like Wargate, which probably gets hurt a similar amount from cards like Nature's Claim but can also pack countermagic and a two-card combo?

I felt like to prevent this deck from just being a worse combo deck in a world of other combo decks I just wanted something else to throw them off. That's probably what Summoning Trap does too. I think you can run several different cards there, but it needs to be something that attacks the opponent from a different angle. Despite the redundancy this deck has, it is a fragile, one-dimensional combo deck. So are other decks - but this deck doesn't really have the protection necessary either. You need to be doing something else.

Every good deck is really two or more decks. Keep that in mind. (Yes, even Mono Red.)

Hey everybody!

I spent the better half of today getting all of the envelopes sealed and ready to go. They're all set to be dropped off in the morning. Here's the complete list of who is getting who's cards.

SENDING----------------RECEIVING
Pet Snake - Jack_From_NC
Surging Chaos - Pet Snake
Malacoda - Surging Chaos
jack_from_Nc - malacoda
Biomechanika - Boderhampster
Boderhampster - Ookiespookie
Ookiespookie - Sidestepper
Sidestepper - biomechanika
Therestless - Immersa
Demon_locke - cardtransmuter
Shoe - demon_locke
Powdered_blackblade - shoe
raistlinmajere - powdered_blackblade
pstmdrn - raistlinmajere
grant1 - Tyorl
Stardust - grant1
Lordgrim200 - Stardust
Slavan K. Guiser - Lordgrim200
Darktzar - Slavan K. Guiser
Stu1212- Warden
Warden - Wcsae
Takalonti - Darktzar
Tyorl - knightofthem
Wcsae - pstmdrn
Stoogeslap - Serrot_29
Numotflame96- stoogeslap
Andyscout - Numotflame96
minsarker - fumblingbeeble
Fumblingbeeble - Lesurgo
Lesurgo - jarvis221
Robothouse - Therestless
Ar_Donut - Robothouse
lussuria - ar_donut
Memnarch - lussuria
Chainsawromeo - memnarch
Sensitive penguin - Chainsawromeo
Cardtransmuter - sensitivepenguin
jarvis221 - Stu1212
Serrot_29 - Minsarker
Zturchan - Andyscout
Knightofthemist - Zturchan
Immersa - Takalonti

ADDITIONALLY I want to clear up the whole MTGkaioshin thing. It's one big misunderstanding. You see... MTGKaiosin is the one who sent the cards that made everything take longer!

Back at the Wizards Community Cup earlier this year, we were each given foreign sets of Rise of the Eldrazi. MTGkaioshin, being the kind person he is, decided he would donate and alter most of the set to the exchange expecting nothing in return. He sent me a ton of cards - including several rares and mythics - with perimeters for their distribution, and I have distributed them as such.

What does that mean for you?

In each envelope, there were will be a handful of foreign Rise cards altered and signed by him. They're just extra freebies for you all. Enjoy! They're going off in the mail in the morning... You should have yours in just a few days!

Several people have expressed concern about their cards arriving in time. That combined with the requirements of a certain someone's package (you know who you are ;)) means I'll wait for any new entries through tomorrow and send everything off Monday morning.

I think this was the largest year yet. The sheer amount of envelopes stacked up is unbelievable. Great work, guys!

Quote from maddd0g

I can't for the life of me figure out where to find this challenges submissions.

You can find them here. (Scroll down and click on the person's icon to see their cards.)

I actually think Loucks' common cycle hit it out of the park this week. While maybe some of the stats are a slightly off, the idea is what's important. "Every color has a big dinosaur" feels like something that should be in the set. It both helps dinosaurs show up in packs often and represent how every color has a big guy. It appeals to new players.

It also fantastically tailors limited. On turn six, you can expect any player to slam down a dinosaur. It helps every player gain access to big creatures which seems about right for the theme of this set. Finally, It helps support "battlecruiser" decks and really adds nice flavor to the set. Though it's certainly not a flashy cycle, I feel like it's a great idea.

Quote from pstmdrn

Lesurgo, can you please update whose cards you received through the weekend? The Post Office said you should get it by Saturday.

Yep. Your cards arrived on Saturday.

Everybody who has PM'd me should have a response.

And the cards are starting to arrive! There's some pretty cool stuff this year, guys. Good work!

Everyone should have a response from me by now. If I told you to send your address back and you already sent me your address, feel free to ignore it - mistake on my part.

If you sent me a PM, you should have a response by now.

Quote from raistlinmajere

So I have not noticed, but I am guessing that whether you alter one or ten cards your going to get someone else's lot whether they altered one or ten cards also.

Yep, that's right. You will receive an entire lot which will not necessarily equal the number of cards you sent out.

I sent him a PM. The issue should hopefully be resolved.