GP Oakland is in the books, taken down by newcomer Matt Nass with the latest revision of Elfball after overcoming format heavyweight Thopter/Depths in the finals. These are both true extended decks, focused on card combinations that never existed together in standard in years gone by. Extended though has been derided in the past as 'Last Year's Standard', implying that the extended metagame is basically the same as the standard metagame from the year before. While an exaggeration, this claim does contain a germ of truth - you can see at Oakland, decks like Mystical Teachings (Time Spiral - Ravnica standard) and Faeries (Time Spiral - Lorwyn standard) have carried over their dominance into the larger format. The ever present Affinity is practically a Mirrodin block deck!

Vampires

In an exciting twist on this, though, a few decks from the current standard format made their way to day 2 at Oakland. Curiously enough a mono-black Vampires deck made the cut, dropping the expensive finishers of the standard version for powerful and cheap card advantage tools like Dark Confidant and Bitterblossom as well as a maindeck disruption suite including Smallpox, Ghost Quarter and the ubiquitous Umezawa's Jitte. The deck was designed by Mathias Hunt, and you can check it out below:

[cardlist]2 Ghost Quarter

3 Marsh Flats

4 Mutavault

9 Swamp

3 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth

2 Verdant Catacombs

3 Bloodghast

4 Dark Confidant

4 Gatekeeper of Malakir

3 Vampire Nighthawk

3 Bitterblossom

2 Chrome Mox

2 Duress

4 Smallpox

4 Smother

4 Thoughtseize

4 Umezawa's Jitte

Sideboard

2 Damnation

2 Darkblast

4 Deathmark

4 Extirpate

3 Leyline of the Void[/cardlist]

Red

Even more intriguing is the evolution of one of my favourite standard decks by one of my favourite deck designers, Red maestro Petr Brodzek. He's taken the Boros-landfall deck that has fallen out of favor in standard and turned it into a monster aggro machine, winning on turn 3 through Steppe Lynx, Zektar Shrine Expedition and a torrent of lands entering play. Here's a short list of the ways Brozek can get more than one landfall triggers on a single turn-

• Crack Arid Mesa or Scalding Tarn fetching a land
• Playing a second Flagstones of Trokair, meaning both will be buried by the legend rule
• Sacrificing Flagstones to Shard Volley
• Path to Exile on his own creature
• An opponent Pathing one of Petr's creatures
• Ghost Quartering his own land to fetch up a basic land
• Ghost Quartering his Flagstones, letting him fetch up two more lands

None of these are exclusive either, so its quite possible to have 6/7 Steppe Lynxes and Zektar Shrines being charged up immediately. The burn selection, in addition, is marvelous, with 17 direct damage spells backing up the furiously aggressive creatures. Petr took this relatively simple aggro deck all the way to the Top 8 and judging by the hype that has developed around it you should expect to see more than a few players powering up Zektar Shrines and Ghost Quartering themselves at your next extended tournament, myself included!

[cardlist]4 Arid Mesa

4 Flagstones of Trokair

4 Ghost Quarter

3 Mountain

1 Plains

3 Sacred Foundry

4 Scalding Tarn

4 Goblin Guide

1 Jotun Grunt

4 Plated Geopede

4 Steppe Lynx

4 Lightning Bolt

4 Lightning Helix

2 Magma Jet

3 Path to Exile

4 Searing Blaze

3 Shard Volley

4 Zektar Shrine Expedition

Sideboard

3 Damping Matrix

2 Joetun Grunt

1 Oblivion Ring

3 Refraction Trap

3 Smash to Smithereens

3 Volcanic Fallout[/cardlist]

Now, the success of these two explorers got me to thinking - what other decks from Zendikar or from Lorywn standard might make the grade at a higher level? Lorwyn in particular developed a reputation as a very powerful block, and current standard has been dominated for months by Jund. Let's take a look at a couple of the more powerful archetypes to grace standard in the past couple of years.

Kithkin

Kithkin

One of the strongest tribal strategies to emerge from the full Lorwyn/Shadowmoor block was Kithkin, the latest variation on tribal white weenie. Utilizing a non-legendary Isamaru, a Lord of Atlantis style 2 mana lord, the incredible Figure of Destiny and one of the strongest two card synergies available in the format – Spectral Procession plus Windbrisk Heights; Kithkin had a lot of powerful cards available to back up its aggro rush and it was well equipped to recover from board sweepers through its token generators and Ajani Goldmane.

From the mono-white base people tried many splashes, using the loose mana of the format to full advantage – Black for Zealous Persecution and Bitterblossom, or Green for Dauntless Escort and Overrun were both popular. I think the best place to start will be the mono-coloured version, however, as if we are going to take a lot of damage off our lands we should probably just play Zoo. Here's a mono-white deck that performed respectably in a magic online extended PTQ, piloted by gunmaster7:

[cardlist]4 Mutavault

12 Plains

4 Rustic Clachan

4 Windbrisk Heights

4 Honor of the Pure

4 Path to Exile

4 Spectral Procession

2 Umezawa's Jitte

4 Cloudgoat Ranger

4 Figure of Destiny

4 Goldmeadow Stalwart

4 Knight of Meadowgrain

2 Ranger of Eos

4 Wizened Cenn

Sideboard

2 Baneslayer Angel

3 Burrenton Forge-Tender

2 Ethersworn Canonist

2 Pithing Needle

4 Ravenous Trap

2 Runed Halo[/cardlist]

This is in fact a LOR-M10-ALA standard deck, plus 2 Jittes, and 4 sideboard Ravenous Traps. That's all. One of the perils of porting tribal decks to larger formats is that they generally want to maximise the number of creatures with the appropriate type, which for Kithkin – who are virtually exclusive to Lorwyn – means there are slim pickings in terms of creatures outside of that block. There are a couple of cards we might like to try out from other sets, though.

Conqueror's Pledge – A straight swap for Cloudgoat Ranger, this produces an extra power across 6 creatures rather than 4 which seems like a definite upgrade. The tokens aren't Kithkin, but that's only relevant with Wizened Cenn on the battlefield as you can't reveal Cloudgoat Ranger for Stalwart or Rustic Clachan. Cloudgoat Ranger has certain advantages – it makes a 3/3 that survives Volcanic Fallout type sweepers, tapping tokens can give you a flier - so this swap will require testing but I certainly feel it is reasonable.

Stoneforge Mystic – Something of a sleeper from Worldwake, this has already hit the big time in Conley Woods' top 8 Oakland deck searching up the ubiquitous Jitte and could perform the same duty here. There are tons of powerful equipment floating around and if you come across some you really want to fit in to any white weenie strategy please consider the Mystic. Here he faces some very stiff opposition at the 2 mana slot, and those little Kithkin stick together – cutting any weakens your overall strategy so you'd better make sure what you're making room for is worthwhile.

Kor Firewalker – Depending on the expected level of Red opposition this could be an excellent sideboard option, despite not being a Kithkin. It is debatable whether this is superior to Burrenton Forge-Tender but this new bear is worth keeping in mind.

Damping Matrix – One of the most powerful (and previously underused) hosers in the format, this artifact just says ‘no' to Thopter Foundry, Knight of the Reliquary, and critically to Engineered Explosives, one of the most popular board wipers. This should definitely be considered for extended Kithkin sideboards as a versatile and powerful answer to many difficult questions.

Kithkin is a powerful, resilient aggro strategy with a great deal of synergy. It doesn't have the raw speed or reach of Zoo or the new Boros landfall deck, but it has the ability to build a serious army of creatures and a surprising amount of late game power. When tuning, be sure to keep your Kithkin count high and don't lose sight of the advantages of this archetype – if you just jam in the best creatures available or go for pure speed, you might as well play a different, existing deck.

Merfolk

The fish were always there or thereabouts in Lorwyn standard, but near the end of the format they really began to dominate. Let's take a look at a standard Merfolk deck from 2009, which Sebastian Thaler used to win German Nationals:

[cardlist]4 Glacial Fortress

8 Island

4 Mutavault

2 Mystic Gate

2 Plains

4 Wanderwine Hub

4 Cryptic Command

4 Path to Exile

2 Sage's Dousing

2 Merfolk Sovereign

4 Merrow Reejerey

4 Reveillark

4 Silvergill Adept

4 Stonybrook Banneret

4 Sygg, River Guide

4 Wake Thrasher

Sideboard

4 Burrenton Forge-Tender

2 Glen Elendra Archmage

4 Meddling Mage

3 Sower of Temptation

2 Sleep[/cardlist]

The deck has an extremely high degree of synergy between its creatures and it already plays some extended stalwarts – Cryptic Command, Path to Exile and sideboarded Meddling Mage. Reveillark is still one of the strongest creatures ever printed, and it can return every other creature in the deck from the graveyard to play. That said, there are several edits I would make to turn this into an extended-ready deck:

Lord of Atlantis – This one seems like a no-brainer, as this old lord is just much better than Sovereign. I would go up to four, trimming a couple of Wake Thrashers as well. With the number of Islands (and blue dual-lands) in extended having an Islandwalking team is generally better than one big Merfolk, and Wake Thrasher also loses some marginal value without Sovereign to make a single creature unblockable.

Hallowed Fountain – Again an obvious one. This is an easy upgrade to the already solid mana that will make it easier to hit UU for Lord of Atlantis and W for Path to Exile as early as possible.

Sejiri Merfolk – The newest Merfolk on the block has really impressed for me in drafts and that is without any tribal support! This guy is essentially Knight of Meadowgrain for blue, as first strike makes his lower toughness fairly irrelevant and you should always be able to get a Plains – it's possible some Misty Rainforests should be added to ensure this. The difficulty is finding something to cut but I suspect Stonybrook Banneret might not be up to the task in extended, so that is where I'd start. It could be that Sejiri Merfolk just isn't good enough either, but I'm keen to find out.

Spell Snare – Without Banneret, Sage's Dousing become significantly worse and I'd trade it in for one of the format's most specific yet powerful counterspells.

Umezawa's Jitte – Why not?

Bant Charm – Zoo decks are straining their 3 colour mana bases just to play this versatile answer, which has been described as one of the best spells in the format. Of course, adding a green splash suggests the question of Tarmogoyf's potential inclusion, but this article is long enough without a ‘Goyffolk' tangent.

Merfolk is another powerful, synergistic aggro strategy that has the natural advantage of being situated in blue giving it access to some excellent disruptive tools. In tuning Merfolk for extended make sure you play up this angle to the deck, as to justify playing an aggro deck that's slower than the fastest one you need a good reason – countering spells like Living End and Scapeshift is one such reason.

Just like that old time Rock & Roll

I hope this trip down memory lane has given you some ideas for extended outside the mainstream. While the format is anything but stale following the diverse top 8 at Oakland it never hurts to re-evaluate past strategies and with the insane creature power increase over the last few blocks there's no reason our standard decks can't run with the big dogs of extended. I'd love to hear your thoughts on the above archetypes and what chances you think they have, plus any other old decks you'd like to revisit like GB Elves or 5 Colour Control. Sound off in the comments!