[Discussion] Melting Pot For Thoughts On Extirpate

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Originally Posted by TheInfamousBearAssassin

Like, first of all? Fetchlands don't let you see another card. Already you're throwing your logistical credentials out the window.

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But fetchlands do let you see more cards, since Brainstorm is probably the one of most played card in Legacy (actually, 2nd most, right behind FoW, according to DeckCheck). Brainstorm/Fetch lets you see 2 additional cards (or like 1.9 something cards if you calculate probability) compared to Brainstorm itself. That's what I'm assuming emidln means, because that's the course of action that tends to happen, brainstorm/fetch.

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Secondly, I asked about the likelihood of drawing 3 out of the 4 copies of a spell. You talked about seeing 2. This distinction is relevant, since your argument was that Extirpate could strip multiple Forces. But this scenario means that one Force has to be in the yard, and two in hand. Conversely, with Therapy, you can strip two Forces simply by their having drawn two Forces.

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Why the triple FoW? 2 FoW, 1 in hand, 1 hidden can do alot to disrupt the FT strategy. Extirpate gets rid of the hidden one (or the extra one in hand). Why does there need to be 3 FoWs? I don't think I've ever got 2 FoWs out of my opponent's hand so far, since all I really want to do is resolve Chant, and Extirpate lets that happen easier since it's got the Split Second clause and it usually disrupts 1 for 1 and gets in a free Peek.

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Originally Posted by Apex

it usually disrupts 1 for 1

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If by 1 for 1 you mean 1 for 0. Far more often than not they do not have a copy of the card you are extirpating in their hand.

Well, actually, then it becomes no worse than failing to find the 2nd FoW with a Therapy or Duress after your first disruption piece got countered.

I'd be happy to make a 1 for 0 trade if it means my opponent doesn't have a FoW left in hand so I can combo out. Extirpate+Disruption has benefits that double Chant/Chant+Duress sometimes don't, so it's played as a singleton in FT.

Information revealed by testing results isn't relevant here. The relevant information is the way in which the game plays as it affects the card choices, particularly that of Extirpate. Testing this matchup has shown that I am more successful when I wait as long as possible to combo off. This is because blue-based decks put very little pressure on me and my card quality engine of Brainstorm/Sensei's Divining Top/Ponder/Fetchlands/Mystical Tutor allows me to find disruption faster and in larger quantities than they can produce protection. Further, because for a long stretch of the game I am actively not playing spells worthy of countering, they will build up a quantity of nasty countermagic, very possibly multiple Counterspells or Force of Wills, even despite potentially countering something very early or having it Duressed away.

Therapy never strips two Force of Wills unless they also lack blue cards. Given the period of the game that Tendrils attempts to win vs the color blue (which is very late), Cabal Therapy will almost always be countered by Force of Will to protect Force of Will. This still leaves them with a Force of Will which is what I'm trying to prevent.

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Further, Therapy would let you pre-emptively answer Halos, Counterbalance, Chalice, etc., etc...

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Through blind luck? Most combo decks run few few creatures they can even sacrifice to Therapy, let alone the potential for the creature to be useful or needed by itself.

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Originally Posted by Apex

Well, actually, then it becomes no worse than failing to find the 2nd FoW with a Therapy or Duress after your first disruption piece got countered.

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Except for the fact that duress and thoughtsieze don't fizzle if they don't have a FOW, they can take other cards like oh idk say counterbalance.

Not to mention duress/thoughtsieze/cabal therapy can handle the first FOW, which extirpate never can. I think that is a pretty majorly important factor here.

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Originally Posted by quicksilver

Except for the fact that duress and thoughtsieze don't fizzle if they don't have a FOW, they can take other cards like oh idk say counterbalance.

Not to mention duress/thoughtsieze/cabal therapy can handle the first FOW, which extirpate never can. I think that is a pretty majorly important factor here.

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No it isn't. Extirpate isn't meant to be first tier disruption against blue. It is meant to complement Duress, Pyroblast, Orim's Chant, and Krosan Grip by permanently removing problematic cards. Extirpate isn't brought in against ultra-fast decks because the roll Extirpate serves is as a late-game bomb ensuring the successful resolution of a storm engine. Cabal Therapy nor Duress/Thoughtseize can fill this critical roll as well as Extirpate.

I think one of it's best abiliities is that fact that it's a Split Second card, and largely uncounterable, which in turn goes to it's most common use in storm; getting rid of hard counters.

It's good against Ichorid (It helps a lot) and against AdN-based combo (wins Chant-Wars effortlessly).

The point of Extirpating Force of Will isn't always to make sure they don't have a force of will, but it does eliminate the chance of them having FoW #2 as well as gathers you information much the same way duress does in letting you know if a.) they have anything else that would hinder you from going off and b.) what you need to play around.

I'm glad someone mentioned landstill, as they run 3x-4x copies of Extirpate themselves...It's funny that it's being used as an argument against 'Pate. Different context of course, but the irony is still noted.

Pce,

--DC

Since you're waiting a million turns against Landstill anyway, which is apparently the only matchup you care about, why not just run Haunting Echoes and be done with it?

In fact, if you really want to beat Landstill painfully slowly, just play MBC or Train Wreck.

From personal experience in tournaments, I'll go ahead and tell you that strategies that rely on hitting turn 20 are fundamentally terrible. They put you at an enormous disadvantage in a real round with time limits, where the opponent can easily win twice while losing once within 50 minutes, where you can't.

And again, if you were going to go that route, Echoes would be better anyway.

@Apex: 3 because in order for Extirpate to hit the 1 in hand and the 1 in Top range, you need 1 to be in the yard. Extirpate isn't Cranial Extraction. I feel like people keep overlooking this point.

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Originally Posted by TheInfamousBearAssassin

Since you're waiting a million turns against Landstill anyway, which is apparently the only matchup you care about, why not just run Haunting Echoes and be done with it?

In fact, if you really want to beat Landstill painfully slowly, just play MBC or Train Wreck.

From personal experience in tournaments, I'll go ahead and tell you that strategies that rely on hitting turn 20 are fundamentally terrible. They put you at an enormous disadvantage in a real round with time limits, where the opponent can easily win twice while losing once within 50 minutes, where you can't.

And again, if you were going to go that route, Echoes would be better anyway.

@Apex: 3 because in order for Extirpate to hit the 1 in hand and the 1 in Top range, you need 1 to be in the yard. Extirpate isn't Cranial Extraction. I feel like people keep overlooking this point.

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1) Haunting Echoes costs mana on your main phase and can be countered.
2) The example I gave was seeing 20-30 cards. Tthe case I actually suggested was seeing roughly 22 cards in 11 turns (initial 7 + standstill + fetch thining/brainstorming/etc, + 9 turns of factory beating face).
3) Extirpate isn't just for Landstill. Threshold' clock isn't actually all that fast. It can be super-quick if they land 2-3 creatures but it isn't usually all that fast. I use the very same principle of waiting until the last moment against threshold.
4) Extirpate doesn't just hit Force of Will. It wants to hit Force of Will, but it's just fine hitting any hard counter. Counterspell is just fine. For example, against UGR Thrash, between Duress and Sensei's Divining Top drawing out hard counters combined with my digging for those two, a hard counter is extremely likely to have hit my opponent's graveyard. The same is true against Landstil. Extirpate is less amazing against UGR CB Thresh and UGW/b CB Thresh because they play fewer hard counters. Consequently, it is far easier to resolve Orim's Chant to begin wtih and Extirpate isn't needed (once you solve the initial problem of CB itself which is what tech like Duress, Pyroblast, and Krosan Grip are for).

Landstill isn't what I'm worried about, but rather one of the more relevant lists to the conversation as it runs Extirpate AND Extirpate is good against it.

I think the comparison between Extirpate and Cabal Therapy is grossly ignorant; possibly even an insult to the players on this site. I am a good enough player (as are most people on this site) to realize that hiding cards is a good strategy if you don't need them at the moment. This is increasingly easier to do if you play blue and run top, and decent players understand this.

Scenario:

You: Cabal Therapy?
Them: Response, Brainstorm.
You: Ok.
Them: It resolves.
You: Force of Will?
Them: Reveals hand, no Force of Will.
You: Combo off.
Them: Response to your Meditate off the Doomsday pile, Tap top//play brainstorm, Force.
You: Crap.

However, here is a different scenario.

You: Chant?
Them: Response, Force of Will.
You: Ok, resolves. Extirpate on Force of Will.
Them: Crap.

I want to point out that you can Extirpate any time and it remains to be true for the rest of the game, whereas if you play Therapy, it's only known to be true until they draw another card.

On the Cranial Extraction bit: In what world is Cranial Extraction good, or even Mediocre, or even comparable to Extirpate? Extirpate's uses are so much different than Cranial Extraction's it's not even funny.

I think the word that needs to be brought up is "synergy". This card doesn't belong in every deck that plays a black mana source, this is true. However, when it's run in conjunction with nonbasic land hate such as Wasteland/Sinkhole, it can be a very strong way to win. Same can be (and has been) said about other forms of disruption such as Duress/T-Seize/Therapy/Unmask/random discard, but only when the goal is to devestate their mana base, or to strip their defenses of all relevant spells.

Synergy is what can and does make this card good.

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Originally Posted by Dark_Cynic87

Scenario 1:

You: Cabal Therapy?
Them: Response, Brainstorm.
You: Ok.
Them: It resolves.
You: Force of Will?
Them: Reveals hand, no Force of Will.
You: Combo off.
Them: Response to your Meditate off the Doomsday pile, Tap top//play brainstorm, Force.
You: Crap.

However, here is a different scenario.

You: Chant?
Them: Response, Force of Will.
You: Ok, resolves. Extirpate on Force of Will.
Them: Crap.

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You're comparing Apples and Oranges where. In the 1st situation the opponent has at least FoW and Brainstorm in hand, Top on table with at least 2 mana free. Let's replace Cabal Therapy with Extirpate in the SAME situation.

Situation 1
You: (can't do anything with Extirpate until you get FoW in the yard)
Them: (maybe you're playing multiplayer - sorry, grammar joke) Wait to build a better hand which should be easy to do since he has Top AND BStorm.

Extirpate is clearly worse in this situation because it does NOTHING. Now let's replace Extirpate with Therapy in Situation 2:

Situation 2

You: Chant
Them: Response, FoW (resolves)
You: Therapy naming a relevant card. If you still fear FoW, name it.
Them: Damn, where's my hand? If only he cast Extirpate and got nothing out of my hand, but instead he was smart enough to name Daze (or whatever) and took it :(.

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Originally Posted by Peter_Rotten

Situation 1
You: (can't do anything with Extirpate until you get FoW in the yard)
Them: (maybe you're playing multiplayer - sorry, grammar joke) Wait to build a better hand which should be easy to do since he has Top AND BStorm.

Extirpate is clearly worse in this situation because it does NOTHING. Now let's replace Extirpate with Therapy in Situation 2:

Situation 2

You: Chant
Them: Response, FoW (resolves)
You: Therapy naming a relevant card. If you still fear FoW, name it.
Them: Damn, where's my hand? If only he cast Extirpate and got nothing out of my hand, but instead he was smart enough to name Daze (or whatever) and took it :(.

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You: Chant
Them Response, FoW (resolves)
You: Extirpate on FoW (resolves); you see their hand, and make game decisions from there without ever worrying about Force of Will from there on out. Seems better for combo.

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Originally Posted by Dark_Cynic87

On the Cranial Extraction bit: In what world is Cranial Extraction good, or even Mediocre, or even comparable to Extirpate? Extirpate's uses are so much different than Cranial Extraction's it's not even funny.

I think the word that needs to be brought up is "synergy". This card doesn't belong in every deck that plays a black mana source, this is true. However, when it's run in conjunction with nonbasic land hate such as Wasteland/Sinkhole, it can be a very strong way to win. Same can be (and has been) said about other forms of disruption such as Duress/T-Seize/Therapy/Unmask/random discard, but only when the goal is to devestate their mana base, or to strip their defenses of all relevant spells.

Synergy is what can and does make this card good.

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This excerpt from the above post represents a fundamental misunderstanding of the way that statistics and probability apply to Magic. I'm saddened to think this is the way people continue to think about this card, and Magic in general. I've left the conversation to this point, and will again, because I feel like if you can see things this incorrectly, there's no way I can help you see them in the correct manner.

Does it say nothing to any of you that the creators of some of the most prominent Black-based control decks in the format are on the "Extirpate is terrible" side of the argument?

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Originally Posted by Dark_Cynic87

You: Chant
Them Response, FoW (resolves)
You: Extirpate on FoW (resolves); you see their hand, and make game decisions from there without ever worrying about Force of Will from there on out. Seems better for combo.

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Duress would have done the same thing better. And, it doesn't suck. And you wouldn't have walked one of your best spells against control into Force like a donkey.

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Originally Posted by Dark_Cynic87

You: Chant
Them Response, FoW (resolves)
You: Extirpate on FoW (resolves); you see their hand, and make game decisions from there without ever worrying about Force of Will from there on out. Seems better for combo.

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Actually, why wouldn't Therapy then Chant be better here than Chant then Extirpate?

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Originally Posted by Peter_Rotten

Actually, why wouldn't Therapy then Chant be better here than Chant then Extirpate?

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I believe that was the sentiment behind Nightmare's last post.

I suppose I'll throw my 2 cents into the ring, as apparently this thread isn't going to die no matter how much I ignore it.

Extirpate is highly situational, and is generally better off as something else. Except in a very select cases that involve both a) your opponent having a specific deck that has some sort of limited, not-backed-up card central to their strategy, AND b) you having a specific kind of deck that can make sure this central, specific, card gets into the opponents graveyard, and then has the ability to abuse their lack of that card; and incorporate the opponents lack into your own strategy.

A few of these senarios have been detailed in this thread (sometimes with their authors bending logic over backwards in their conception), and these senarios are so select that it should almost never be a maindeck card, and it's inclusion in either the maindeck or the sideboard should always be thought through for how exactly it fits your deck's strategy in each particular match.

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In what world is Cranial Extraction good, or even Mediocre, or even comparable to Extirpate? Extirpate's uses are so much different than Cranial Extraction's it's not even funny.

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Cranial Extraction was a lot better than Extirpate could ever have hoped to be in Kamigawa Gifts mirrors.

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However, when it's run in conjunction with nonbasic land hate such as Wasteland/Sinkhole, it can be a very strong way to win.

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Re-read the thread.

All scenarios so far I've argued for Extirpate involves 2 FoW (or even 2 Counterspell, which is not as bad, but potentially just as hard to play against in the late game), and that's where Extirpate actually shines (which is why it's often played as a singleton in the maindeck in a blue heavy field, or as a singleton in the sideboard in FT). It's because that's the way it often comes down to when FT plays against Landstill etc: "Draw, land, go, Draw, land, go, Mystical, break Standstill, try to combo in one big turn".

A couple of scnearios:

Opponent (2 FoW in hand).
You: Chant.
Opp: FoW
You: Extirpate FoW
Opp reveals hand so you get rid of their 2nd FoW and combo around soft counters (Dark Ritual instead of Cabal Ritual first if you've got 2 mana open so it doesn't get Dazed, bait Spell Snare, etc).

Notice that a second Chant/Duress/Therapy would not have done the trick here, because they can just FoW both your disruption, and still have mana open for soft counters, and often, one misstep on the storm player's part will mean GG.

Here is another situation where I've lost a couple of games to:

Opp (1 FoW in hand, the other FoW in top 3 of library due to Brainstorm in response to Duress 1 or 2 turns ago, top on board).
You: Chant
Opp: FoW from hand
Now I've got no cards in FT that deals with the hidden FoW, I can only try baiting, which is not that effective if my opponent is a good player.

Extirpate gives a good out in this situation, since it strips their 2nd FoW (that they've got access to with the top, so it's effectively in their hand anyway) from their library. Duress/Therapy/Thoughtseize can't touch the hidden FoW (I actually loathe to advocate this as a strategy, because I play storm mostly, but Landstill etc should really look into hiding their FoWs on the top 3 of their library with top when fighting FT).

Again, I can only speak for it in storm, and I never claimed that it is good in other decks. There is a reason it gets played as a singleton in the main/side often, since there aren't many (or dare I say it, any) card that does what Extirpate does (an uncounterable, cheap, tutorable solution in the late game against specific blue decks) for storm decks.

It's also a great card in combo mirrors, since it's mostly all about the Chant wars. You Chant and Extirpate them in response of their Chant is so backbreaking, since it allows you to Mystical/Ponder/Brainstorm/Top into another Chant, which they now have 0 solutions to, and basically, whoever resolves Chant first wins in combo mirrors.

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Originally Posted by Apex

Notice that a second Chant/Duress/Therapy would not have done the trick here, because they can just FoW both your disruption, and still have mana open for soft counters, and often, one misstep on the storm player's part will mean GG.

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How does it not do the trick, if they FOW both your disruption, then you have in fact dealt with both force of wills. They still ahve the same amount of mana open. Only diffrence is they have one less card in hand. Seems not only to do the trick but be superior.

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Originally Posted by quicksilver

How does it not do the trick, if they FOW both your disruption, then you have in fact dealt with both force of wills. They still ahve the same amount of mana open. Only diffrence is they have one less card in hand. Seems not only to do the trick but be superior.

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In addition to the "FoW floated with SDT" scenario, seeing your opponent's hand on the EOT before you have to go off is pretty huge when you're playing combo. You know exactly what to play around: much easier to do than plan for an unknown combination of Daze/Stifle/other counters/FoW3&4/etc. in hand. The only mystery possibly left is in the top 3 cards if they have a Brainstorm or Top, and even then you can still safely assume that there's no Force of Will in there.