Ah the great beast that is the Extended format. We are currently nearing the home stretch of our Extended season. We have had three separate Grand Prix's as well as a multitude of PTQ’s that all have fed into Pro Tour Honolulu. There's only a few more weeks of qualifiers coming up and these will determine who the lucky chosen-ones are that get to go for a weekend of sand, surf, sun and of course some Magic the Gathering.

One of the biggest hurdles of getting into competitive magic is figuring out what in the world constitutes a good deck these days. It seems there is a new top tier deck popping up every other week, or at the very least a new take on an existing deck. So that gets back to the question: "What in the world do I play?"

The short answer is that there is no totally dominant deck this season. There is no one deck to rule them all (Lord of the Rings reference--CHECK). The Extended format is refreshingly open we don’t have a beast on the level of last year's 'dredge' deck to contend with this year. Although it’s quite nice to have so many options available to use these same options, with their multitude of slight variations, can leave you right back where you have started.

Let's take a survey of the field:

Faeries/Wizards

Well the deck on the tips of everyone’s tongue is the mighty beast that is Faeries/Wizards. Faeries/Wizards is extended’s version of the monster control deck that most magic formats have at least one of. These winged devils have been ruling the format for some time now, and hate to say it folks but these Spellstutter Sprite shenanigans are here to stay. This deck has it all. It has everyone’s favorite annoyance with a healthy dosing of counter-magic. Usually in the form of Stifles, Mana Leaks, Spellstutter Sprites, Glen Elendra persistence, and occasionally the counter that does it all, Cryptic Command. It uses the most abused popular equipment since Affinity's Skull Clamp in Umezawa’s Jitte. It has the mass Removal in the extremely useful Engineered Explosives, and it has the ability to make sure all the creature based threats keep coming back in Riptide Laboratory. Finally, it has the creature base that ties all of it together. It usually consists of some combination of Spellstutter Sprite, Vendillion Clique, Glen Elendra Archmage, and the Boomerang on a bear with Venser, Shaper Savant. All of these elements combine to create an extremely versatile and powerful control deck.

Bant

Call it 'Bant Aggro,' 'Bant Control,' 'Bant Aggro/Control,' 'Dark Bant' or whatever. In truth its just slight variations on the same deck. This is another powerhouse of a deck. It uses a nice dose of counter magic usually just Mana Leaks and Stifles as well as the extremely powerful Bant Charm. Some efficient acceleration in Noble Hierarch and Birds of Paradise. Some extremely powerful equipment, usually some combination of Umezawa’s Jitte and Sword of Fire and Ice. Some spot removal in Path to Exile, and mass removal in Wrath of God. And then finish it all up with some extremely efficient creatures in Kitchen Finks, the giant beatstick that is Tarmogoyf, or the RIDICULOUSLY difficult to kill Troll Ascetic. I can’t stress this enough if you have any means possible to keep the Trolls from hitting the board; that is easily the best course of action for you.

Zoo

There is a multitude of ways to build this deck. But there are two distinct variations that stand out. There is the Self Hating domain zoo, and there is the slightly less painful Naya Zoo (which I might add Tomoharu Saitou played to absolute perfection in the most recent GP) The main idea behind this deck is to play very cheap very efficient creatures and some amounts of burn to try and clear the way or kill the opponent before they even have a chance to stabilize. This is mostly accomplished through efficient burn spells like Seal of Fire, Lightning Helix, and Tribal Flames. Tribal Flames is usually specific to the domain zoo build) and a creature base usually consisting of Wild Nacatl (almost always a 3/3 for 1.) Kird Ape is a 2/3 for 1 on turn 1. And the ever popular Tarmogoyf.

Rock

Rock has two different builds now. These builds have only one real major difference that difference being one version has DC and one version does not. This deck seeks to control the board through removal like Putrefy and Smother, hand disruption in Raven’s Crime and Thoughtseize and mass removal in Damnation and Death Cloud. This deck will almost always run the incredibly powerful Life from the Loam engine to feed its late game finisher of Worm Harvest. It also has the ability to win with putting a Jitte on whatever happens to be on the board at the time.

TEPS

TEPS is an acronym for 'The Extended Perfect Storm.' THE combo deck of extended. It plays a deck full of cantrips and rituals to try and build a high storm count and before then playing a kill card in either Grapeshot + Pyromancer's Swath (usually known as Swath Storm) or Tendrils of Agony. It plays limited removal in spells like Electrolyze, Shock, and Remand.

ElfBall!

This is another one of the combo decks in Extended. It plays a large amount of 1cc creatures and seeks to dump most of their deck on the field by turn 3-4. It usually plays a finisher in Mirror Entity or occasionally Grapeshot. Now these are all what many consider to be the tier one decks this isn’t to say other decks won’t win just that these decks statistically have done better than the others. Now for the rest of the field.

Lightning Bolt.dec

This is the burn deck always in the format sometimes quite good sometimes not as much. All this deck does is seek to burn out its opponent before they die themselves they usually play with whatever their opening hand is with next to 0 searching ability. Now played correctly I fully believe this deck has the potential to be a Tier 1 deck. Although this deck is not absolutely amazing it is a viable force in this meta-game. So if you go into a PTQ expect at least one game against burn.

Astral Slide

The final deck that I believe needs to be here is Astral Slide. Astral Slide seeks to use a deck full of cycling cards to try and abuse Astral Slide and Lightning Rift. In essence Slide boils down to a slightly aggressive control deck. I believe this deck has the potential to be Tier 1 as well. It has an extremely strong game against decks like Fairies and Zoo and considering the prevalence of those in the field expect to see at least a few variations of slide running around your local PTQ. Especially if you live anywhere near Osyf because, well he is the undefeatable master of all things related to Onslaught enchantments.

Now back to the question of what in the world do I play? The answer to that ends up being, since there are so many strong and extremely different decks in this current format play whatever you feel most comfortable with. Because even if you play the 'OMG UBER BEAST.dec' if you aren’t familiar with it you won’t do well.

The best advice I can possibly offer to anyone else on this PTQ grind is practice practice practice with your deck. As I know from personal experience make sure to test for every possible matchup because if theres one deck you don’t expect to see or that you don’t think will be a problem. That will be the deck you will lose to.

As far as top 8’s go on average they usually end up being 1-2 combo decks, 3-4 fairies, and either some Zoo or some Bant. You will occasionally get a new player in the Top 8 be its something like the absolute mastery that is Jonathan Louck and his Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker combo deck, or Astral Slide or occasionally even whatever variation of rock happens to be the flavor.

As a side note if you have any plans to go to the Sacramento PTQ in a few weeks expect to see me there slinging some variation of astral slide.

-- Dan