The New Extended

Features

KrazyCaley

18 June 2010

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Wizards had a big announcement for us today, and by "us" I mean "People who play extended."

First- banned are Sword of the Meek and Hypergenesis, which instantly takes the guts out of their respective decks, Thopter-Sword and Hypergenesis.

More importantly, Wizards says the old Extended is dead. The new Extended is, simply put, the most recent four years' worth of cards. This means that today, "extended-legal" means a card, other than Hypergenesis or Sword of the Meek, that is in these blocks:

Time Spiral

Lorwyn and Shadowmoor

Alara

Zendikar

And these core sets:

Tenth Edition

Magic 2010

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The banning of Sword and Hypergenesis, and stripping Mirrodin, Kamigawa, Coldsnap, and Ravnica out of Extended leaves the field wide open. Indeed, by this fall, Time Spiral will also rotate and be replaced by Scars. So where does that leave us?

My prediction is that we'll see the revenge of decks long-dead in standard, Reanimated and given access to a wider variety of cards than they ever before dreamt of. And what were those standard Kings of old?

Jund

Jund is still the most popular standard deck, but it is no longer enjoying the dominating success that it used to, partially because it became too big and the rest of the metagame arose to topple it. That said, it still continues to merrily plug away in standard to this day. Get all the fancy expensive planeswalkers and Baneslayers you want, Bloodbraid Elf into Blightning will still kill you quite dead.

So it's natural that people will salivate at the thought of suddenly having access to Lorwyn and Time Spiral for their Jund decks. Jund is good, this we know. But what about some sort of horrific Jund-Elves monster made possible with 2010 and Zendikar cards? What about Jund with Assault / Battery? Or Jund with SLIVERS? Scary.

Five Color Control

Five color control died as a concept because of the loss of two things- Cryptic Command *list*, its staple counterspell, and the Vivid lands, i.e. Vivid Creek, plus Reflecting Pool. In a limited format like this new extended, 5CC could be back with a vengeance. A lack of superior counterspells being printed recently doesn't do any big favors for 5CC, but Cruel Ultimatum can be joined by the Eldrazi as a finisher, and though they cost more a Cruel, they win even more sure-handedly when you cast them.

Faeries

In Lor/Sha/Ala standard, this deck was master of all it surveyed. It was just unstoppable. Spellstutter Sprite and Bitterblossom and, perhaps the most blood-pressure-raising, Mistbind Clique. Rather than ban the deck's pieces, Wizards actually responded with custom-tooled Faeries-killers like Scattershot Archer and Volcanic Fallout. But even those didn't work to kill off the deck; only the rotation of standard did that. Heaven only knows what Faeries could do with access to four sets.

But as for me.....

It's all about my girlfriend from Future Sight.

Jhoira of the Ghitu. Emrakul, the Aeons Torn. And I'll see YOU in four turns. Or less, probably, you know, what with all these Rift Elementals and Jhoira's Timebugs I have laying around.