Extractor

This is an idea i've been toying with for a long time, ever since SaffronOlive from MTG Goldfish played with a similar list on Modern and simply RAN OVER a League on MTGO. Naturally, i have not developed a sideboard yet, cause i don't know exactly if this is a good plan or not, but here's my take on Esper Extractor for Legacy:

2 Engineered Explosives
4 Snapcaster Mage
4 Surgical Extraction
4 Extirpate
4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
1 Force of Negation
4 Polluted Delta
3 Flooded Strand
1 Interplanar Beacon
3 Underground Sea
1 Scrubland
1 Tundra
1 Karakas
2 Island
3 Swamp
3 Kaya, Orzhov Usurper
4 Thoughtseize
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
2 Unmask
3 Ponder
2 Unmoored Ego

The idea of the deck is to make our opponent discard forever, then use the Extraction effects to remove those cards from their deck until they're left without a game plan. Then, if that's not enough to control the game, we play Kaya and ult her FTW.

Problem I've had with these types of decks is a simple flipped Delver and a timely counter on your removal is all it takes to kill you.
As much as I love this type of deck, it folds to the simplest of turn 1 threats.

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Originally Posted by PirateKing

Problem I've had with these types of decks is a simple flipped Delver and a timely counter on your removal is all it takes to kill you.
As much as I love this type of deck, it folds to the simplest of turn 1 threats.

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It's the legitimate: if our opponent cannot create a palpable and resilient threat against us until turn 2, they won`t win. But if they can, we will have a hard time not losing.

I was working on SB for this deck, trying to find a few spells that could deal with those things when an Explosives or a Kaya cannot. Fun fact, as it stands, is we don`t have to worry with gravehate SB slots. :P

Decks like this have been proposed in Legacy ever since Extirpate was printed, and again with Surgical Extraction was printed. They never really took off, despite many tries.

Typically they do really well against unfair decks (Storm, A+B combo), especially GY based ones (Reanimator, Dredge). You can target the few pieces that make their deck run, remove them from their deck, and they lose hard.

Unfortunately the same gameplan is terrible against fair decks. Fair decks tend to run this over, because these decks run a lot of card disadvantage through Surgical and Extirpate, and not much interaction with resolved threats on the board.

Maybe you can add things like Swords to Plowshares/Eliminate and planeswalkers to help manage fair creatures. Abrupt Decay might be very strong here just because then the opponent can't counter your removal. Maybe BUG is better than Esper.

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Originally Posted by FTW

Decks like this have been proposed in Legacy ever since Extirpate was printed, and again with Surgical Extraction was printed. They never really took off, despite many tries.

Typically they do really well against unfair decks, especially GY based ones (Reanimator, Dredge). You can target the few pieces that make their deck run, remove them from their deck, and they lose hard.

Unfortunately the same gameplan is terrible against fair decks. Fair decks tend to run this over, because these decks run a lot of card disadvantage through Surgical and Extirpate, and not much interaction with resolved threats on the board. Maybe you can add things like Fatal Push and planeswalkers to help manage fair creatures.

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I was working on the SB and i did just that. Put some copies of Fatal Push and Swords to Plowshares for creatures and Liliana of the Veil as sort of an 'all-problem-solver', and i'm thinking of adding two copies of Eliminate, since it's the closest to Decay i can get with the colors the deck run. I understand the deck would have to make somewhat of a flip in its strategy when sideboarding against 'fairer' decks, but beyond this, i think i could use some suggestions :P

Fundamentally, you need a way to recoup the card disadvantage inherent in this strategy. Ancestral Vision or Jace, the Mind Sculptor might be good. Baleful Strix might be good at holding off early creatures and keeping you up in cards. You could also try to manage creatures with X-for-1s like Dead of Winter, which also helps you catch up in cards vs 1-for-1 removal.

I just edited my comment to include better removal spells, the more I thought about what was possible. White doesn't offer you much. Splashing green for Abrupt Decay and Oko, Thief of Crowns might go very far to managing problems on the board. They can't counter Decay, so it solves problems for good. Meanwhile Oko is just unfair. If you can use your discard, counters and Surgicals to remove their ways of interacting with Oko, you should be able to beat fair decks too.

Basically, you use cards like Oko was a way to turn fair matches into unfair matches. Oko beats most of their deck, so you only need to extract a smaller set of anti-Oko cards to win, instead of having to extract everything.

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Originally Posted by FTW

Decks like this have been proposed in Legacy ever since Extirpate was printed, and again with Surgical Extraction was printed. They never really took off, despite many tries.

Typically they do really well against unfair decks (Storm, A+B combo), especially GY based ones (Reanimator, Dredge). You can target the few pieces that make their deck run, remove them from their deck, and they lose hard.

Unfortunately the same gameplan is terrible against fair decks. Fair decks tend to run this over, because these decks run a lot of card disadvantage through Surgical and Extirpate, and not much interaction with resolved threats on the board.

Maybe you can add things like Swords to Plowshares/Eliminate and planeswalkers to help manage fair creatures. Abrupt Decay might be very strong here just because then the opponent can't counter your removal. Maybe BUG is better than Esper.

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I thought about Plowshares against any creatures and Eliminate against Okos and planeswalkers in general, but the fact i run Esper over Sultai is, basically, because the main wincon of the deck and one of the best ways it has to control the board, is Kaya. She can take all of those exiled cards and turn them into life loss for the opponent, life gain for me, and deal with small but problematic permanents such as Vial, Chalice, Explosives, even Delver. I think that's the extra piece of consistency/aggression that most Extraction builds missed to close out the game without having to hope our opponent is not a sadist as to keep playing even with no game plan left on their deck.

But how would you make this list as BUG? Now i'm curious.

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Originally Posted by pedropohren

But how would you make this list as BUG? Now i'm curious.

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See above. Basically, you take advantage of the fact that Legacy has more broken cards than Modern. Like Oko. Oko is a better 1-card wincon than Kaya.

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Originally Posted by FTW

Decks like this have been proposed in Legacy ever since Extirpate was printed, and again with Surgical Extraction was printed. They never really took off, despite many tries.

Typically they do really well against unfair decks (Storm, A+B combo), especially GY based ones (Reanimator, Dredge). You can target the few pieces that make their deck run, remove them from their deck, and they lose hard.

Unfortunately the same gameplan is terrible against fair decks. Fair decks tend to run this over, because these decks run a lot of card disadvantage through Surgical and Extirpate, and not much interaction with resolved threats on the board.

Maybe you can add things like Swords to Plowshares/Eliminate and planeswalkers to help manage fair creatures. Abrupt Decay might be very strong here just because then the opponent can't counter your removal. Maybe BUG is better than Esper.

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Quote:

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Originally Posted by FTW

Fundamentally, you need a way to recoup the card disadvantage inherent in this strategy. Ancestral Vision or Jace, the Mind Sculptor might be good. Baleful Strix might be good at holding off early creatures and keeping you up in cards. You could also try to manage creatures with X-for-1s like Dead of Winter, which also helps you catch up in cards vs 1-for-1 removal.

I just edited my comment to include better removal spells, the more I thought about what was possible. White doesn't offer you much. Splashing green for Abrupt Decay and Oko, Thief of Crowns might go very far to managing problems on the board. They can't counter Decay, so it solves problems for good. Meanwhile Oko is just unfair. If you can use your discard, counters and Surgicals to remove their ways of interacting with Oko, you should be able to beat fair decks too.

Basically, you use cards like Oko was a way to turn fair matches into unfair matches. Oko beats most of their deck, so you only need to extract a smaller set of anti-Oko cards to win, instead of having to extract everything.

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I like the Ancestral Vision/Jace angle very much. I'm not sure what i would take off to put Strixes, but Dead of Winter as a SB card is indeed amazing tech. However, i was just trying not to use Oko, since IMO if i intended to use Oko i'd better build an Oko.deck instead of trying to experiment with cards that rarely see any play the way i put. I understand it's a really powerful card and what marvels it would make to the overall winrate, it's simply a matter of... It's not worth it. I'd tear the whole strategy apart. Still, if i was to build a BUG version of Extractor, i'd very much probably use Oko, after all. It would somewhat look like Modern Jund.

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Originally Posted by FTW

See above. Basically, you take advantage of the fact that Legacy has more broken cards than Modern. Like Oko. Oko is a better 1-card wincon than Kaya.

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Fair enough.

Okay, you win. I will try and build a BUG list.

While not exactly what your deck sets out to accomplish, there are two similar paths: mill (has draw 3 card based on GY size, works fine with Wrath + Scheming Symmetry tutor) or something more fair (Vantress/Thieves' Guild Enforcer + Drown in the Loch + Daze/Wasteland).

The extractor stuff doesn't really have a different enough playstyle to progress past needing to have higher win % than the other two strategies. (Otherwise it's the same, just worse) - identifying the best strategy of these three before focusing on perfectly tuning a list.

How are you building surgical extraction memes and not playing Psycogenic Probe? I played against this in modern and it was hilarious, won an ok amount of games too. In legacy at least infernal tutor, wishclaw talisman, intuition, entomb, gample, crop rotation and ponder are more commonly played than gifts ungiven. in addition the extract effects it also synergizes with scheming symmetry. It solves the card disadvantage problem because now your 0 for 1s are shocks and you are a weird burn deck with a good combo mu.

If you go all in on shuffle portent and assasins trophy are decent cards on their own to consider.

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Originally Posted by pedropohren

Fair enough.

Okay, you win. I will try and build a BUG list.

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BUG Extractor:

3 Snapcaster Mage
1 Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath
2 Ice-Fang Coatl
4 Brainstorm
3 Extirpate
4 Surgical Extraction
2 Abrupt Decay
4 Force of Will
1 Force of Negation
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Polluted Delta
3 Prismatic Vista
2 Tropical Island
2 Underground Sea
2 Snow-Covered Swamp
1 Snow-Covered Island
1 Snow-Covered Forest
4 Oko, Thief of Crowns
1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
2 Ancestral Vision
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
4 Thoughtseize
2 Unmoored Ego

2 Force of Vigor
2 Abrupt Decay
2 Assassin's Trophy
1 Dead of Winter
1 Maelstrom Pulse
7 free slots, trying to think of what else i need on SB for the BUG list.

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Originally Posted by Reeplcheep

How are you building surgical extraction memes and not playing Psycogenic Probe? I played against this in modern and it was hilarious, won an ok amount of games too. In legacy at least infernal tutor, wishclaw talisman, intuition, entomb, gample, crop rotation and ponder are more commonly played than gifts ungiven. in addition the extract effects it also synergizes with scheming symmetry. It solves the card disadvantage problem because now your 0 for 1s are shocks and you are a weird burn deck with a good combo mu.

If you go all in on shuffle portent and assasins trophy are decent cards on their own to consider.

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Good ideas as well. This is what the Esper list would look like with those implemented:

2 Psychogenic Probe
4 Snapcaster Mage
4 Surgical Extraction
4 Extirpate
2 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
1 Force of Negation
4 Polluted Delta
3 Flooded Strand
1 Interplanar Beacon
3 Underground Sea
1 Scrubland
1 Tundra
2 Snow-Covered Island
3 Snow-Covered Swamp
1 Snow-Covered Plains
3 Kaya, Orzhov Usurper
4 Thoughtseize
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
2 Unmask
1 Unmoored Ego
3 Ancestral Vision
3 Scheming Symmetry

3 Ensnaring Bridge
2 Engineered Explosives
3 Swords to Plowshares
3 Eliminate
1 Karakas
2 Liliana of the Veil
1 Dead of Winter

Unmask and Unmoored Ego are nice, but I think Cabal Therapy should see some slots, especially in the list with Snappy and Ice-Fang Coatl. Cabal Therapy gives you the following line:

T1/T2 - play Thoughtseize/Inquisition, get a look at their hand. Surgical Extract something.
T3 - Cabal Therapy, Snapcaster on Surgical, Therapy again if needed, then cast Surgical Extraction.

Cabal Therapy is a way to generate card advantage, as you will be getting 2 cards for the cost of 1 (or even more, if they have multiple copies of a spell in hand).

If you do choose to play Scheming Symmetry in a deck with Extractions, isn't Thought Scour an ace? I mean, you mill their top two and then hit whatever it was they wanted?

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Originally Posted by Michael Keller

If you do choose to play Scheming Symmetry in a deck with Extractions, isn't Thought Scour an ace? I mean, you mill their top two and then hit whatever it was they wanted?

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Mill is strong with Scheming Symmetry, yes.

The question is if OP wants to build towards a mill deck, or stick with the discard + counters + extract plan. The strategies are slightly different and seem better as separate decks, which I think is what Fox was getting at.

Scheming Symmetry is very strong in UB mill beside Hedron Crab (fetch to kill the card they got) and Archive Trap (Symmetry's forced search makes it cost 0, then it gets rid of the card). That's a different deck though.

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Originally Posted by Whoshim

Unmask and Unmoored Ego are nice, but I think Cabal Therapy should see some slots, especially in the list with Snappy and Ice-Fang Coatl. Cabal Therapy gives you the following line:

T1/T2 - play Thoughtseize/Inquisition, get a look at their hand. Surgical Extract something.
T3 - Cabal Therapy, Snapcaster on Surgical, Therapy again if needed, then cast Surgical Extraction.

Cabal Therapy is a way to generate card advantage, as you will be getting 2 cards for the cost of 1 (or even more, if they have multiple copies of a spell in hand).

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Wow. Hadn't thought about it. May as well try and implement this.

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Originally Posted by Michael Keller

If you do choose to play Scheming Symmetry in a deck with Extractions, isn't Thought Scour an ace? I mean, you mill their top two and then hit whatever it was they wanted?

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Thought Scour would be playing with luck. The idea is to aim the extractions at very specific pieces, so that worst case scenario at the very first 3 effects i can already disrupt their entire game plan, if not completely, enough to put opp back a handful of turns. Maybe if i played it along with Symmetry, but as FTW said, this works much better with Mill decks than with an Extractor strategy.