Pattern Recognition #65 - The Case of Extended

Features Opinion Pattern Recognition

berryjon

26 April 2018

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Hello everyone! I am berryjon, your resident Old Fogey. Welcome back to Pattern Recognition, Tappedout.net's most regular article series - barring the occasional week off for work or just because I'm out of energy. I endeavor to provide insightful, thought provoking and educational material for you all. Or at least a convenient target for all of you to aim your Goblin Barrages at.

Today's article will be delivered to you all on the day before the release of the newest set, Dominaria. And in response to that, and the way that Wizards has been messing around with the way Standard counts it sets, means that we can say fare-thee-well with total completeness to Shadows over Innistrad and Eldritch Moon.

What? I know they're already gone. I just want to commemorate their unlamented passing from play and into the binders and storage boxes of players.

Welcome to Standard! A constantly rotating constructed format that utilizes the most recent sets in order to provide a means for new players to get into the tournament scene without needing to get a lot of cards as they can just pick up some packs and go!

Yeah, not selling it all that well, am I?

Standard is, according to Wizards, the most prolific tournament format, with the most people playing it and the largest player scene. However, this also means that it is one that has the most attention placed upon it, bringing the flaws in it out in ways that may just be blown out of proportion.

Let me try to explain here. Standard is what we call a rotating format, and it is currently the only one. Because Brawl doesn't really exist yet. (insert smugface here.) Now, a rotating format is one where as new sets are added into the format as legal card choices, it also removes an equivalent number of older sets. This is designed to encourage constant experimentation, new and interesting decks and perhaps most importantly, give new players an entryway into tournament Magic.

I'm repeating myself on some things. I know. Don't worry. It's all part of my cunning plan!

Almost all the other formats in the game are what we call Eternal. That is, they have a definitive starting set, which is Alpha, and then they include everything that comes after it. So each new set is added to a greater whole and nothing leaves. Well, technically. Apparently Eternal is something that starts with Alpha, and Modern has a specific start date which I'll get to in a moment.

So, here's my first concern. As of the release of Dominaria tomorrow (are you excited? I'm excited!), the sets that will be in Standard will be Kaladesh, Aether Revolt, the Welcome Deck 2017 (didn't realize that, did you?), Amonkhet, Hour of Devastation and Dominaria itself. Oh, and the cards that appear exclusively in the relevant Planeswalker decks, like Vraska, Scheming Gorgon. This means that cards printed from 30 September 2016 through 27 April 2018 will be legal for Standard usage.

However, the next step up in officially supported tournament style play that isn't Commander (or by extension, Brawl), is Modern. Modern came into being in August 2011 as a replacement for the Extended Format, formally killing off the Type 1, Type 2 and Type 1.5 nomenclature of the time. With an official start date of Eighth Edition's release - 28 July 2003 - Modern started with eight years worth of cards, in comparison to Standard's then two years worth of selection.

And Modern hasn't removed any sets from its allowable cards. That means as of today, Modern has FIFTEEN YEARS of cards to choose from - while Standard has eighteen months. One and a half years.

The reason for this chosen start date though, turns out to be pretty basic. Eighth Edition represented a whole new process in printing cards, and the resulting quality was much, much higher than it was before. So everyone was using the new standard in cards!

Now, as time went by, the cards that make up Modern became harder and harder to get a hold of. I talked a bit about this a few weeks ago when I addressed my concerns regarding how the Modern Masters sets have failed in one of their stated goals. That being, to provide reprints of cards in the Modern format that can no longer be reliable acquired. And when you've got fifteen years and counting of cards to work through, there should be no shortage of cards that need to come back!

And no, I'm not looking at you, Jace, the Mind Sculptor. You can stay in the pile of "WHY?!?!" cards.

Modern has another issue, one that deserves to be looked at in more detail, but not at this time. Modern is, not exactly a 'solved' format like Tiny Leaders, where there is one-true path to victory. Rather it is, in my opinion, a calcified format, where there is a set of acceptable tournament level decks, and it takes something massive to change it up. You have Infect, Delver, Soul Sisters, RDW, Merfolk, Elves, Bogles, and others still. These are names. These are archetypes.

Play them, or do something so spectacular that no one knows how to deal with you if you want to try and win a Modern tournament. Hell, the last time I saw Modern get upset was with the release of Battle for Zendikar and Oath of the Gatewatch, which brought the colourless Eldrazi to the fore. This resulted in the banning of Eye of Ugin for being too good when combined with the Devoid mechanic. I mean, a turn 2 Call the Scions gives you four effective mana on that turn.

That was back in 2015.

Three years later, and only one real change to the format. Everything else has just been one incremental change or another. A card changed out here, a card in the sideboard there to deal with a change there. It's all very ... regimented. You pick your deck and see what the other person is playing. You might not even need to actually play the game, just compare the archetypes!

Standard has the opposite problem, though I think it's a feature, not a bug. The game is constantly changing, encouraging new deck designs, more experimentation and yes, buying new cards.

These are two extremes to constructed formats. And my problem is that there is nothing that can help bridge players from one format of 18 to 24 months of cards to fifteen years or more.

What about Frontier you might ask?

Well, that is another non-rotating format like Modern, whose starting point is 18 July 2014 and the release of Magic 2015 Core Set. Like the starting point of Modern, M15 was marked by improvements to the card layout and design. And that's it.

But Frontier has the same problem as Modern, only less apparent. It's a format where it will eventually calcify into a set of optimized decks where it takes some serious new mechanic or design to shake things up.

So what is there? Is there something that can help bridge the gap?

Well, I'm going to presume you read the title of the article first for your answer.

I want to make the case to bring back Extended as a format.

The first and most pressing issue is one of timing. As I should have beaten the drum on enough by now, there is a colossal gap between the available card sets between Standard and Modern. I have seen one of the serious arguments against Modern being that it is simply too much for a player to get into. That the width and breadth of cards that open up are too daunting.

But on the other side of the spectrum, can it not be said that Standard is too restrictive? That with only so many cards, and the necessity of buying more and more, you drive away players who don't want to spend more money, but be comfortable with what they have, and only make minor purchases on the secondary market?

I think Extended is the best of both of these. With either a four-year rotation, or even a full seven-year rotation, players can buy into the format through Standard, and slowly grow at their own pace in the format, picking up small purchases for their chosen deck, rather than needing to invest heavily every few months. In addition, the rotation allows for problem cards to slowly drop out of the running, as well as giving Wizards themselves more leeway in printing cards to address problems.

I'm not a fan of the concept of the Silver Bullet card - I've seen it taken to horrible extremes, trust me - but Extended has the unique capacity to allow for cards to be printed that can help curb poor excesses in terms of deck design without shoehorning them in like Standard, or throwing up their hands in annoyance and banning a key card or two in Modern.

Sorry, I put two points in there.

First one is that Extended creates a situation where a player's card set doesn't immediately become binder-fodder the moment it leaves Standard because they don't cut it in Modern.

The second is that Extended as a rotating format gives Wizards more tools for dealing with problematic cards and archetypes.

You know, this idea sounded better in my head. And I think I'm not doing it proper justice. It's just that while I like Modern, there are still problems with it. Mostly the fact that cards from over five years ago or more still dominate, and that new players who try to get in get told that they can't compete because they're too late.

Standard gets a bad rap because Wizards keeps trying to 'fix' it without understanding what's wrong with it. Yes, I think this includes Brawl. But when you go back and look at the changes to how Standard rotates over the past few years, I see a sense of confusion.

So remove the confusion. Keep Standard rotating regularly (because people like a pattern when they see it), and bring back Extended to fill in a gap and to help stabilize the transition from Standard to Modern.

But understand this. I'm not trying to say that Standard is wrong, or failing and that we should all just move to Extended. I think there needs to be a better progression of formats, one that isn't quite so binary. And I think that Extended fits those needs quite nicely.

Hrm, you know, I can't find any information about why Extended was dropped, save Wizards announcing that Extended and Modern were sort of in competition with each other, and one or the other had to go. The more popular Modern stayed.

If I had to hazard a guess, the shifting rotation of Extended, skipping between four and seven years, combined with the larger base selection from Modern caused the latter to reign supreme.

But now? Seven years later? I think there's room for Extended to come back.

But on the other hand, is there really room for one more style of tournament? Wouldn't Wizards have to lessen support for Modern or Standard for Extended to gain traction? Assuming even then that people would want to play a format that would be "Standard, but with more Cards" or "Modern, but not as many cards"?

I ... don't know. If I did though? I'm pretty sure that if I did though, I would be working for Wizards as some sort of amazing guru of some stripe or another.

Thank you for listening to my ramblings. Join me next time, when I should have drawn some pretty pictures for you all to look at!

Until then, please consider donating to my Pattern Recognition Patreon. Yeah, I have a job, but more income is always better. I still have plans to do a audio Pattern Recognition at some point, or perhaps a Twitch stream. And you can bribe your way to the front of the line to have your questions, comments and observations answered!