[Discussion] Melting Pot For Thoughts On Extirpate

[frogboy]

Having Extirpate be uncounterable means you don't have to blow a counter defending the assault on the opponent's man-lands, meaning that you are still well equipped for the counter battle over their StP's.

Landstill standoffs with Mishra's staring at each other and the first person to make a move giving up some advantage in the process while both people wait to draw a waste or another factory unnecessarily prolong many games.

The gist of this seems to be "my control deck can't beat a 2/2."

What the hell?

[The Rack]

Does anyone else realize that extirpate is combo hate too? Crypt is not, they can respond to that, they can't, however, respond to an Extirpated TEndrils or Dark Ritual. With all the tutoring and drawing this becomes much more apparent that drawing or searching multiples is not uncommon. Extirpate can totally fuck with their calculations too. If they leave 7 floating and you Pate the LED after IGG resolves you win. It's great against combo too. Am I alone in seeing this?

[FoolofaTook]

The gist of this seems to be "my control deck can't beat a 2/2."

What the hell?

Without your own 2/2's it becomes an issue. Landstill minus the man-lands is kind of a slow very clunky control deck that has trouble playing it's signature card and responding when it's opponent does so.

What's your solution as a Landstill player, playing another Landstill player, when your wincons are 2x Eternal Dragon, 1x Decree of Justice or putting EE back on top with Academy Ruins until the opponent decks? Particularly if you face the prospect of having another Extirpate show up in the near term?

[frogboy]

Well, like I said, poor deck construction.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

Extirpating Tendrils of Agony.

Yeah. Good luck with that.

I also posted two other sets of probabilities that were pertinent to raping baseless arguments.

And how they did so is a matter that you'll reveal as soon as national security allows, but we should rely on your word, dammit.

[Deep6er]

I really don't see any combo players running Cabal Ritual out there before Dark Ritual. Generally, if it's TES, they're going to use a protection spell. If it's Belcher, they will generally just run headlong into Force because that's how the deck approaches those match ups.

When I was playing Extirpate against both Belcher and TES, I found it pretty awful. I'd always use it like you said, but it was generally terrible. It makes pretty awful combo hate because it's so unreliable. Thoughtseize is way better, while also allowing you to pursue other strategies that don't rely on you keeping mana open all the time. Even for decks without Force (and ways to find it, like Brainstorm), that's important.

Every single one of your arguments has come up while I was playing the card. My experiences have told me otherwise. I can only ask what deck you've been playing Extirpate in, and what you've been playing against. My testing and playing experiences have taught me, time and time again that Extirpate is bad. What is different for you? Is it that I'm terrible? Do you think that's it? Or are you just mind-numbingly superior? I'm legitimately curious Forbiddian.

[thefreakaccident]

Well, like I said, poor deck construction.

The excepted base for winconditions in landstill usually is:

2-3 decree of justice
3-4 mishra's factory
1 eternal dragon


One extirpate can go a long way here... especially if you have other ways to deal w/ their other winconditions...

I have actually lost games where my opponent had two extirpates leaving me w/ my single dragon to try and fly over...

And good luck if you already have your humility out... then you will have to jump through hoops to try and win this game.

[Obfuscate Freely]

Attacking a control deck's win conditions represents a misassignment of role, unless for some reason they have to be the beatdown. This is basic theory.

If we're talking about a Landstill mirror match, in which Extirpating Factories could reactive your Standstills, then it isn't misassignment of role, but it's still bad. You're really going to leave Standstills in your deck in the hopes that you can combo them with Extirpate targeting Factory? How do you know how many Decrees the opponent has? Monasteries?

[thefreakaccident]

Attacking a control deck's win conditions represents a misassignment of role, unless for some reason they have to be the beatdown. This is basic theory.

If we're talking about a Landstill mirror match, in which Extirpating Factories could reactive your Standstills, then it isn't misassignment of role, but it's still bad. You're really going to leave Standstills in your deck in the hopes that you can combo them with Extirpate targeting Factory? How do you know how many Decrees the opponent has? Monasteries?

For black based control decks, hitting your winconditions is their only priority... then they can try to win the game.

In a landstill mirror, you can hit their win-conditions... I was just pointing out to him that it does not symbolize bad deck design for extirpate to affect your win-base.

Personally, I usually hit draw with extirpates in the landstill mirror... b/c if you have more cards to work with than your opponent you will generally win the match.

IDK

[Nightmare]

Personally, I usually hit draw with extirpates in the landstill mirror... b/c if you have more cards to work with than your opponent you will generally win the match.

IDK

Then why wouldn't you just run more draw in that slot? Maybe you're finding that they're outdrawing you because you're using a card disadvantage engine like Extirpate to try and create card advantage?

[Nightmare]

Does anyone else realize that extirpate is combo hate too? Crypt is not, they can respond to that, they can't, however, respond to an Extirpated TEndrils or Dark Ritual. With all the tutoring and drawing this becomes much more apparent that drawing or searching multiples is not uncommon. Extirpate can totally fuck with their calculations too. If they leave 7 floating and you Pate the LED after IGG resolves you win. It's great against combo too. Am I alone in seeing this?

If you put Crypt on the table, they no longer have the option of trying to go IGG, which means that you get to win anyway.

Haven't we at least made it clear that as GY hate, Extirpate sucks? I mean, I guess I can see where the coolness of its effect can trick you into thinking its good against control, but seriously, as yard hate, it's a bad Cremate.

[Nihil Credo]

Then why wouldn't you just run more draw in that slot?

Because card drawing doesn't do double-duty as graveyard hate.

[Nightmare]

Because card drawing doesn't do double-duty as graveyard hate.

Neither does Extirpate.

[Adan]

There are 2 threads contradicting each other.

On one side, there's AggroLoam. A lot of Americans realized that it's actually a good deck because it has got a huge card-drawing engine which is able to protect itself from Tormod's Crypts or the likes. If you try to remove Life, they simply dredge it in response.

Extirpates prevents that via Split Second and additionally removes every other copy of Life from the Loam. The draw-engine which makes the deck so good is then shut off. So isn't sutting off a draw-engine not in a way cardadvantage? (By the way, 1 Extirpate disposes 4 Life from the Loam, that's CA, too, is it not?).

Extirpate must not be understood as pure graveyardhate but as a versatile sideboard card that is able to fulfill a similar role like Pithing Needle or Meddling Mage.

As pure graveyardhate, Tormod's Crypt is indeed superior to Extirpate, but that is not the main point of the debate.

[morgan_coke]

I think Extirpate is best in two situations which it is almost never used for:

#1) to take advantage of badly built decks and/or decks that try to stretch for a bridge too far. ITF is a great example of the second type. It's low wincondition count makes it extremely vulnerable to Extirpate on 'Goyf. Many other decks with highly limited but recursive win conditions/lock pieces are equally vulnerable to this strategy.

#2) as a secondary piece of graveyard hate. Extirpate is crap as a main plan vs. mass graveyard strategies like Loam and Ichorid. But it's very good if it's your SECOND piece of hate in supplement to Crypt or Leyline. It's also very good as a way to deal with low-level but highly problematic GY recursion like Genesis or Eternal Dragon or singleton Loams.

For purpose #1, Cranial Extraction is actually better at that job, but costing 4 makes it a significantly worse card.

Extirpate can also work as part of an overall "empty your library of relevant cards" strategy if used in conjunction with things like Hide/Seek and Cranial Extraction. The problem with a strategy like that is that it is highly vulnerable to decks that do things which affect the board.

I still believe Extirpate was printed SOLELY as a counter to Life from the Loam, if it wasn't for so many loam decks also running Burning Wish, Extirpate would be highly valued in that role imho.

[Nihil Credo]

Neither does Extirpate.

Yes, it does. Extirpate disables the graveyard engine it targets for the rest of the game (with Burning Wish as the lone exception). That, in my book, is graveyard hate.

Moving a step forward, it is also a graveyard hate effect that many decks want - as a rule of thumb, those that take more than two or three turns to win from a tabula rasa position (which are also the most well-equipped to occasionally take advantage of its secondary pseudo-Cranial Extraction side). For example, I am currently running it in Landstill variants, Rock variants, CounterTop black decks, and some controllish Survival builds.

Maybe your deck and your metagame may get more mileage out of the 0cc Moment's Peace effect of Tormod's Crypt, or the 40%-auto-win effect of Leyline of the Void. Whether that is the case or not, it does not remove Extirpate from the current lineup of top-notch graveyard hate options.

[Nightmare]

So isn't sutting off a draw-engine not in a way cardadvantage? (By the way, 1 Extirpate disposes 4 Life from the Loam, that's CA, too, is it not?).

No, it's not. For the same reason that Traumatize isn't card advantage. It seems like it should be, but it isn't, in practice. This is the same reason Dredging LftL is good, regardless of the top three cards of your library. You can't calculate the value of a card based on the hidden top card of your library.

Extirpate must not be understood as pure graveyardhate but as a versatile sideboard card that is able to fulfill a similar role like Pithing Needle or Meddling Mage.

Both of these are proactive, and deal with a threat before it has been used. Extirpate deals with future copies once they have already been dealt with, or used by their owner. See the difference?

As pure graveyardhate, Tormod's Crypt is indeed superior to Extirpate, but that is not the main point of the debate.

It absolutely is. The people arguing that Extirpate is bad are trying to force you into seeing that in essence, yard hate is really all Extirpate is - outside of niche cases where it's situationally good. We're also trying to tell you that had you played other cards in its stead, you could probably have solved those situations anyway.

[Nightmare]

Yes, it does. Extirpate disables the graveyard engine it targets for the rest of the game (with Burning Wish as the lone exception). That, in my book, is graveyard hate.

How many times do Ichorid players need to tell you that Extirpate is a speed bump before you people listen?

Maybe your deck and your metagame may get more mileage out of the 0cc Moment's Peace effect of Tormod's Crypt, or the 40%-auto-win effect of Leyline of the Void. Whether that is the case or not, it does not remove Extirpate from the current lineup of top-notch graveyard hate options.

Maybe your habit of downplaying the effect of better yard hate cards will make me reconsider my choices. Probably not though.

Look, I've played with the card, even against the decks you're telling me you really want them against. I've Stripped the Loams out of aggro-loam, and been trounced by Terravores making use of my own fetchlands. I've been beaten up by Crushers that shut off the mana development, but don't shut down their owners hand. I've nuked Landstill's Factories, only to die to Ajani, or Decree, or both. And I've blown up Survival's Survivals and Goyfs, and lost to random 2/x beats. I'm not here trying to tell you guys not to play the card, because honestly I don't care what you're playing, but as far as the card doing what you want it to, in game situations, more times than not your opponent will be like, "whatever." and keep winning. It's not going to get you ahead from behind. It's not going to make a losing game a victory. It will trick you though, into thinking that the card is the reason you won, when in fact, you were probably headed toward a win without it, or with a different grave hate card in its place.

[quicksilver]

It absolutely is. The people arguing that Extirpate is bad are trying to force you into seeing that in essence, yard hate is really all Extirpate is - outside of niche cases where it's situationally good. We're also trying to tell you that had you played other cards in its stead, you could probably have solved those situations anyway.

Absolutly

[Nihil Credo]

Look, I've played with the card, even against the decks you're telling me you really want them against. I've Stripped the Loams out of aggro-loam, and been trounced by Terravores making use of my own fetchlands. I've been beaten up by Crushers that shut off the mana development, but don't shut down their owners hand. I've nuked Landstill's Factories, only to die to Ajani, or Decree, or both. And I've blown up Survival's Survivals and Goyfs, and lost to random 2/x beats.

But what other cards do you suggest would have been better in those specific matches? Leyline, if deployed in time, would have made the big guys smaller, but you mention losing to your own fetchlands pumping 'Vore and Crusher's hand-fixing ability, neither of which is affected by Leyline; Crypt would not have done even that. Against Survival or Landstill, both would have been even less helpful.