Anyone remember the hype around Ghost Quarter? That's really the card that Extirpate reminds me of the most. Peoples can't count CA.
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Anyone remember the hype around Ghost Quarter? That's really the card that Extirpate reminds me of the most. Peoples can't count CA.
I believe that in a reactive strategy, extirpate is a much more reliable card.Quote:
Originally Posted by TheInfamousBearAssassin
Leyline is a turn four answer unless you muligan for it.
Personally, I love a free hymm to tourach, or hymm plus against an opponent who is desperate for a leyline, especially if I am packing bounce/whatever for it.
Extirpate, unlike leyline, can be cantripped for/dug up/tutored for reliably without incident... instead of mulliganing for it.
Extirpate is also a much more versatile card all around... being able to take out all of a certain card can be very potent sometimes, especially in today's metagame.
Saying that 'pate is bad because it is card disadvantage is a sorry excuse to not run it.
Uhhh.
No, card disadvantage is a great reason not turn a card.
I mean, that's why Sunscour isn't the hot shit.
Card advantage matters. The pretense that it doesn't is idiotic and symptomatic of the laziness endemic in Legacy strategic thought. The "two equally hot chicks" phenomenon, if you will.
The fact that you can play pretty much any card you want in Legacy is factual, not normative.
I really don't understand why some people call the card bad.
Sure, it isn't an auto-include in every deck, however it really has it's use in certain decks. Overhyped? Sure, it still is. Bad? Not really.
Extirpate is a good card, it certainly isnt the card we believe it to be.
Many have said it already, but one must realize that Extirpate is good only in slow decks. You dont usually win a game from resolving an Extirpate (Unless wasteland on TRopical island extirpate against ThreshThreshThreshThreshThreshThreshThreshThresh, IE, removing some bridges/ichorid or whatever)
I see extirpate as a way of limiting the kill conditions of my opponent or his responses. To lose all your tarmogoyf (doesn't you would have drawn a second one) hurts the deck. You can say whatever you want, but that is true. Bad use of Extirpate happens when you remove the wrong card or when you remove a card that is of no threat to your deck. I have seen many time people removing Force of will but they also play Duress/Thoughtseize. In my sense, this is stupid. You simply use duress to discard the fow before playing a spell, and saving that extirpate on relevant targets
Also, Extirpate is so much better than Leyline. Leyline is like the most limited SB card ever (exagerated). Does it worth 4 slots? (some argues that you dont need 4. To respond to them, this is very stupid. How do you expect to get leyline in your starting hand reliably without 4? Also, talking about getting it in starting hand, leyline does nothing or little thing when played on turn 4. Talk about a worse SB card, please)
On Card disadvantage. It's not always Card disadvantage. To pay 1 black, to remove a single cards from deck/hand/grave AND to get information on hand, is not Card disadvantage in my opinion. We can also add that it has possibility of affecting the opponent's hand. Suppose you extirpate a creature. He might have 1-2 copy in hand.
Many of you are saying that extirpating a certain card will weaken your opponents deck enough that the card disadvantage is worth it but one point I don't see being made enough is that even though you got rid of all their tarmogoyfs or all of their life from the loams they will still draw a card. Extirpate does not say remove all these cards and on the turn you would draw named card skip that draw.
If a deck loses because you extirpate away a win condition then it probably deserves to lose and not because you used extirpate but because their deck is poorly designed with only one path to victory. Surely people playing bad decks with only one or two win conditions isn't a good reason to run a card that is dead until something of value hits your opponents graveyard.
Also, many of these arguments are assuming that cards will hit the graveyard that are worth extirpating. Unless you know the person's hand it just doesn't seem worth it to extirpate something that doesn't recur itself, have an ability from the graveyard, or isn't their main win condition.
Using extirpate without knowledge of someone's hand in an attempt to actually affect the game is like trying to blind flip a 3 drop for your conterbalance, no skill involved just luck. Oh look, I extirpated your fetchland, damn you don't have any more of that fetchland in your hand, say what? that fetch in your graveyard means you still got a land into play? I may as well have just mulliganed to 6 and boarded out those extirpates.
Edit: Actually, everyone here should run extirpate as a 16 of mainboard (This card is hotter than hot). See you all at the Source Tourney!
This deserves a separate thread, but some cards are a lot more relevant than others; I'd almost always rather cast Intuition and do something retarded with it in ITF than cast Standstill and draw three random cards.Quote:
Card advantage matters. The pretense that it doesn't is idiotic and symptomatic of the laziness endemic in Legacy strategic thought. The "two equally hot chicks" phenomenon, if you will.
Extirpate doesn't have that level of versatility. If it were a one mana, split second Cranial Extraction, it'd probably be worth the hype it's getting. But the fact that the card has to be played first simply limits it on a number of levels. A lot of the cards you most want to hit, whether Devastating Dreams, Decree of Justice, Pernicious Deed, or Tendrils of Agony or whatever, you really can't afford to let an opponent put them in the graveyard the natural way most of the time. This reduces you to playing bad combos with discard. The card's being compared to graveyard hate because that's the limit on versatility it has; unless the opponent buries the cards for you, most often the card is simply shit. Removing all their Tarmogoyfs is terrible because it assumes that first they've drawn a Tarmogoyf and it's already dead. And it still doesn't answer the next threat. The damning tension is that the more you want the card in their graveyard gone from their deck, the more damage it's probably already done to you just by getting there. How many Standstills, Sinkholes, Goblin Ringleaders or whatever does the opponent really have to go through to win, especially when you're throwing away cards to prevent a possible draw off the top?
If you're just so desperate to cripple an opponent's late game, anyway, I know this little card called Haunting Echoes...
Reliability Chart:
[1]
Basic Island
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Squire
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Peter_Rotten's Personal Computer
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Extripate
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Falling Star
[10]
I believe the appropriate comparisons for Extirpate in terms of effectiveness in Legacy are Krosan Grip and Cabal Therapy. Krosan Grip is a card that is either invaluable (probably a bit less than 50% of the time) or next to useless, depending mainly on what you are facing and how the opponent chooses to deploy assets. Cabal Therapy is a card that requires a significant support element to play effectively against most decks and that is dicey in terms of actual card advantage gained by playing it. Both Grip and Therapy can be decisive cards, however they can also be limiters.
All three of the cards require some foreknowledge of what the opponent is playing to reach their highest levels of effectiveness. All three can be essentially useless in game one depending on what the opponent is playing.
This is, I believe, doesn't really help either side of the debate. It's like saying StP is only good against creatures. Or Islands are only good if you are playing blue cards.Quote:
Originally Posted by FoolofaTook
Also, Grip affects the board. It kills a problematic Enchantment/Aritfact.
Therapy can be a bad peek, but more often than not, it is at least a Thoughtsieze without life loss. And sometimes it is decent to amazing card advantage.
No need to go back that far. Extirpate's first debut is far enough. Back when people thought the card was oh so broken, and enamored of the fact that you could even Extirpate your opponent's fetchland. (Who'll likely thank you for it.)Quote:
Originally Posted by TheInfamousBearAssassin
All I'm saying is that it's an extremely useful tool against Loam decks. As a control deck, it turns your game plan from "pray" into "Extirpate Loam, counter Wish, kill some dudes" (and if it's not Aggro Loam, they're not even very big dudes), which is eminently doable. It's great here precisely because it's so much more reliable than the other options. With any one-shot grave removal like Crypt, they can save Loam with a cycling land (and hold back a useful land or two in hand or play), or just draw into another. Leyline is only really good if you draw it in your opening hand, and it can be Gripped. Countertop is a two card combo you need to assemble, and can be Gripped. You might easily find yourself under Wastelock before you can get off Cranial Extraction or Haunting Echoes. Extirpate is a single mana and makes sure Loam (or Wasteland) is gone for good, no matter what. (Assuming you can counter Burning Wish, which is not hard). I'm entirely willing to take a short term hit on technical "card advantage" if it's going to make almost literally the rest of my opponent's deck turn to shit. (By the way, is Crypt not also card disadvantage, by the same metric?)
(Note that this is primarily from the perspective of a blue based, long game control deck which doesn't necessarily run Countertop and/or Goyf maindeck. If anyone wants to argue that any deck where Extirpate is good is bad, feel free, but you're on much shakier ground there, I think.)
This reminds me of Jamie Wakefield’s issue with thawing glaciers in reverse. He knew intellectually it was a good card, that he should play it, but he hated the card for various eccentric reasons. And, despite it being good, he faired worse when he used it, for various eccentric reasons. I think that people who like extirpate, play it despite that it is card disadvantage because the information it provides them, the opportunities it presents and the cards theoretical potential interests them. So like Wakefield in reverse, they play a card that isn’t as good as some other list of similar cards, yet it helps them play better, and they enjoy their experience playing more. Which does matter, and I for one always play better when I like the cards I have in my deck. I never do well playing some meta-game decision that I am not committed too.
I tend to agree with Deep6er, my crypts hold a spot in many sideboards, and my one extirpate sits in my trade binder. But I don’t think that I would ever tell any one who really loved the card to replace it, because that matters.
It matters because there is not some scale with good magic player on one side, and shitty magic player on the other, and we all fall on that one line somewhere. People come to the game with different interests and expectations. And not like some “the archetypes of magic players” crap like Maro writes about, but even among top competitors, there is a huge range of skills and points of entry. (Points of entry being why you play, what drives you, why do you care, etc.)
The types of things that Forbiddian is talking about, seeing their hand, seeing their deck, shuffling their deck, etc as a byproduct of a reasonable (yet not tire one) card, matters. They are the kind of thing that I can imagin a (type of) GOOD player wants to know, and 'pate provides that information. While the primary ability of ‘pate may be a bit of a coin toss, those by-products are not, they are always there.
Extirpate fulfills a role that very few other cards in magic can actually perform. It, along with a handful of other cards, can completely deny a strategy independent of opponent's card advantage over you and their ability to manipulate their hand. The strategy that I'm most concerned with, my opponent's ability to play spells that negate my own spells is a role that Extirpate only has a few potential equals to in the entire game (Meddling Mage and Cranial Extraction being the least disruptable). Extirpate is a lot better than either of those two cards in decks that, if left to their own strategy, do not care about the "in play" zone. This is because Extirpate can efficiently deny and opponent the ability to execute a particular strategy (hard counters and split-second shuffling are the strategies of interest to me) in such a way that is difficult to deal with (manipulating your own graveyard with triggers or replacement effects is far harder than manipulating any other zone). Meddling Mage does the same thing, in a less limited way even, but Mage is far more vulnerable to an opponent's arsenal of Magic. Cranial Extraction provides the same lack of limitations, but it requires a heftier mana investment at a slower speed (and can be countered much easier).
For this function of denying an opponent a particular strategy, I submit that Extirpate is the absolute best at what it does. The issue is that many players have a mistaken view that Extirpate is merely graveyard hate. Even against Ichorid, you are not hating their graveyard as much as you are denying them access to a limitless supply of zombies, massive hand disruption, or free creatures.
Just a quick chime-in, since I haven't read this whole discussion yet:
I'm not understanding why Extirpate is being labeled bad because it is card disadvantage when other graveyard hate is also card disadvantage. Leyline comes out of hand and sits on the table; it can be considered virtual card advantage, depending on the matchup it comes in against... but it's still card disadvantage initially. Especially if you couldn't mulligan into it and cannot hardcast it. Crypt is, again, card disadvantage... yes it hits multiple cards in a graveyard, but Extirpate hits multiple cards too.
I'm not arguing here whether or not cards like Leyline or Crypt are stronger than Extirpate. I'm simply questioning why the card is being argued as bad on the pretense of card disadvantage when the other forms of graveyard hate are also card disadvantage.
The way i understood people calling it bad is because it doesnt affect the game state.
Robert
I've never touted it as card disadvantage, I've merely called it an uncounterable Coffin Purge. At least Crypt hits the whole yard for free.Quote:
Originally Posted by Hanni
Ebony Charm has versatility at least.
The thing about Extirpate is that all it really does is graveyard removal. And there's usually more effective graveyard removal, unless you're really that worried about counters. Hulk-Flash was actually one of those matchups where you might want Extirpate over Crypt. Maybe if Cephalid Breakfast were big again. But Life from the Loam and Ichorid have other things to play around with. Crypting a twenty card graveyard tends to set them back permanent like, though.
Did everyone ignore my posts about how Extirpate is reasonably effective in situations where it's NOT graveyard removal?
Probably. Whatever, keep talking about how you'd rather have Tormod's Crypt than Extirpate in one specific matchup. Examples like that are totally relevant to the overall effectiveness of Extirpate.
Reasonably effective is definitely not a good reason to run a card in the board. I want all my sideboard cards to be devastating at what they're supposed to do. As yard hate, extirpate is not devastating. It is no where near as effective as crypt, leyline, or jailer against ichorid, and I don't think it is better against aggro loam either. In other matchups it can be mediocre to ok. I can see a slight argument for a combo deck like fetchland tendrils to have a few in the board, but even there it seems like there could be something better.Quote:
Originally Posted by Forbiddian
The decks against which extirpate is a bomb are few and far between. If you are running yard hate that doesn't at least hose ichorid you should probably reconsider that slot.