Overextended: The Birth of a Format

[ktkenshinx]

Everyone on this forum has probably heard about the concept of "Overextended" at least once, whether on this site or on another. Simply put:

Overextended is a new Eternal Format that begins with blocks AFTER the Reserve List was phased out by Wizards. It is a distinct format with its own banlist. It is designed to have all the format diversity, innovation, and intricacies of Legacy without Legacy's high price tags and fixed supply of staple cards.

Today, May 23 2011, Gavin Verhey posted a succinct and persuasive plea for Overextended on Starcitygames.com:
http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/e...d_Or_Bust.html

Mr. Verhey not only argues for Overextended and its importance as a format (not to mention its importance relative to the newer announced format of "Modern Magic"), but he also offers a site that would serve as a hub of Overextended development, theory, and strategy. At the very least, the site would be the origin of future format growth:
http://mtgoverextended.com/

I encourage all Legacy players, both veteran and new, to look at these pages and join in the conversation. Whether you support the format, are skeptical about it, or even are flat out dislike it, those are all valuable voices towards its development.

Here are a few critical FAQs that will probably come up about Overextended. These are not necessarily conclusive answers, but I hope that they can start discussion.

1. "Does Overextended replace Legacy or otherwise endanger it?"
NO! Overextended is meant to supplement, not supplant, Legacy. It serves as a cheaper Eternal format that is supportable in a Pro Tour format, more accessible to newer players, cheaper (owing to the lack of the Reserve List), and just as fun.

2. "Is this an "official" format?"
Sadly it is not. Overextended, like EDH before it, requires wide community support from the internet and the real world to become a reality. That means ANYONE who wants to help and develop should take this chance to rise to the forefront of the upwelling format.

3. "Why the Invasion Block cutoff? Why not Mercadian Masques? Or Mirrodin?"
Mr. Verhey offers a persuasive argument about Invasion Block here:
http://mtgoverextended.com/?p=19
While it is not an airtight argument, it is a pretty good one. No Masques block means no Daze/Ritual/Brainstorm/Port/Dust Bowl/Tangle Wire/Rebels/etc. clogging up the works of innovation and new decks. It lowers the speed and powerlevel of a lot of decks, which is generally healthy for new formats. Also, Invasion was the first (oldest) set released on MTGO, so it allows older MTGO players to capitalize on their old investment and hopefully return to the game.

4. "How is this different than "Modern Magic" which was just announced by Wizards?"
By starting at the Mirrodin block, Modern Magic has a few problems from the beginning. It loses all of the wonderful cards from Onslaught/Odyssey/Invasion block that make up their own decklists. Tribal strategies, graveyard strategies, flashback, threshold, etc. All are gone as a result of this arbitrary cutoff. Moreover, this leaves a sizable chunk of MTGO player investments out of the loop. It would be more fun for players and more profitable for investors if the cutoff were changed. This means that "Modern Magic" would need to be replaced with "Overextended", or at least heavily modified.
Given that Wizards seems to be launching "Modern Magic" as a sort of trial, giving input in the "Overextended" Invasion+ direction would probably be better received at this point. Make your voices heard now!

If there are any other questions I missed, I will add them later as they are asked. I hope for this thread to be a sort of "The Source hub" for discussion of future Overextended activity.

-ktkenshinx-

[dahcmai]

Ugh, stirring up this one again. Nice rumor it was, but I doubt wizards cares.

[The Wolf]

I’m confused, why would I want to play a format that has nothing unique about it (EDH), no prize support (type 2), no constantly changing landscape (type 2) and no powerful cards (vintage and legacy)? There is a reason extended has never been anything but a PTQ format. Altering which sets are involved won’t change the issue of a midrange format not adding anything to existing formats.
Extended/Overextended are aimed at the imaginary player that has extra time to play another format, but for some reason the current ones aren’t enough (vintage, legacy, standard, draft, sealed and casual/EDH).

I know this sounds very negative, but I really don’t understand the push for overextended. I play a lot of magic, and don’t know anyone who complains there are not enough formats for them to play.

[ktkenshinx]

Ugh, stirring up this one again. Nice rumor it was, but I doubt wizards cares.

This time, it is not just a "rumor", because the player strategy is different. Instead of hoping for a rumored format to appear, players who WANT the format to appear are going to support it off the books. Just like EDH and 2HG (and Legacy, years ago) started out as player supported and maintained formats, so too will Overextended. Wizards does care about these formats when they attain enough popularity; this is clear in their formal sanctioning of all of the above formats.

I’m confused, why would I want to play a format that has nothing unique about it (EDH), no prize support (type 2), no constantly changing landscape (type 2) and no powerful cards (vintage and legacy)? There is a reason extended has never been anything but a PTQ format. Altering which sets are involved won’t change the issue of a midrange format not adding anything to existing formats.
Extended/Overextended are aimed at the imaginary player that has extra time to play another format, but for some reason the current ones aren’t enough (vintage, legacy, standard, draft, sealed and casual/EDH).

I know this sounds very negative, but I really don’t understand the push for overextended. I play a lot of magic, and don’t know anyone who complains there are not enough formats for them to play.

I am glad that you raise those objections. I do not think they sound overly negative at all. If anything, they are legitimate questions and anyone should be skeptical about them. Let me try and address some of them quickly:

1. "why would I want to play a format that has nothing unique about it (EDH)"
Overextended has a number of unique factors that differentiate it from other formats. It is different from Standard (and the current defunct Extended) in that it is an Eternal format. The cards from Invasion onwards never rotate out, so collections are always valuable and potentially useful.
So how is it different from the other 2 Eternal formats? It is clearly different from Vintage in its power level, and that doesn't need too much explanation. Vintage is a more expensive, more high powered, and generally inaccessible format for new players.
What about different from Legacy? For one, because it starts later, a lot of "legacy staple" strategies and cards are out. That means the Overextended metagame is full of unique decks from previous Standard and Extended seasons. Without cards like Wasteland, Force of Will, and Lion's Eye Diamond, Overextended has a lot of strategies that are simply not viable in Legacy but are still tons of fun to play and play against. Dragonstorm, Slide, Living Death, Bubble Hulk, Enduring Ideal, Mono Black Control, Tron, Tooth and Nail, White Weenie, Pyschatog, All In Red, and a huge variety of other decks (too many to gather here) al lbecome available. Indeed, with the proper banlist, Overextended hopes to become home to MORE viable archetypes than even Legacy has.
Equally important, Overextended is not burdened by the Reserve List. That means Wizards can print cards to drive popularity and keep prices tame. It means that Tier 1 decks do not need to cost as much as down payments on cars. It means that more new players will come with cheaper decks and cards, and more tournament and competitive options will exist. It means that Overextended players can easily have multiple decks that they like to run, because most decks are relatively accessible (financially speaking).
These are all reasons that Overextended is its own unique format.

2. "no prize support (type 2)"?
Legacy, EDH, 2HG, and other "unofficial player-created formats" all started off without formal prize support. But with enough participation and some small tournament entry fees, local organizers and independent players could easily have their own tournaments with prizes. With time, this would grow, and a prize structure would ultimately exist. Unlike Legacy, which will never be a Pro Tour format, Overextended fully intends to become THE Eternal format of choice for the PTQ scene.

3. "no constantly changing landscape (type 2)"?
The landscape would change just as much as Legacy metagames change with time. Legacy has certainly gone through many metagame shifts away certain archetypes and towards new ones. Overextended, being an Eternal format with a banlist and new cards entering, would also fluctuate. Player philosophies and preferences would also drive these changes. A well managed banlist would prevent any one archetype from becoming degenerate and unfun, and would ensure that not all players immediately adopted the single most dominant decklist in the format.

4. "no powerful cards (vintage and legacy)"?
In the case of Overextended, you would trade a little bit of the broken power of some cards (LED, Ritual, FoW, Wasteland) for a more diverse metagame with more archetypes. There would still be powerful cards (Chrome Mox, Aether Vial, Tarmogoyf, Thoughtseize, Entomb), but there just would not be some of the most overpowered ones.
Also, a new metagame would necessarily force people to rethink what "powerful" means. Standard players view Batterskull as tremendously powerful, and they are quite happy with that definition of power. Extended players view Cryptic Command as immensely powerful, and that is their level of power (MUC in Legacy also uses it, but it has hardly broken into any tier of "powerful cards). Overextended players would have their own definition of power that was closer to Legacy, but would be more encompassing of new cards. There would, with proper banlist management, be a diverse metagame with lots of viable decks, all of them using "powerful" cards.

These are some of the reasons to play Overextended and to invest both time and energy into its early creation days. I hope these words have been helpful, and let me know if I was ever unclear/wrong/etc.

-ktkenshinx-

[Pastorofmuppets]

Dredge has been banned into oblivion. Sounds like a bunch of your development staff are a bunch of whiny combo haters.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

I think the basic argument is correct. Without Wizards being willing to break the reserve list, Overextended is simply an inevitable necessity.

I disagree with the notion that this would "supplemment" Legacy; it would clearly be competition that would, if pushed hard enough, kill Legacy as a format.

It may be the next best alternative, though.

I think it would be important to start at Masques and include promo sets released after Masques, so as to widen the card pool as much as possible. Hopefully they would also reprint Force of Will, Wasteland, Hymn to Tourach and StP in this format (and Priest of Titania, Show and Tell, High Tide, etc., basically anything that's not on the Reserved list and sees play).

Legacy probably isn't salvageable as a competitive format in the long-term.

But it can be rebuilt.

We can make it better. Stronger. Cheaper at any rate.

(The alternate solution at this point would be to merge the banned and reserved lists.)

PS: Why would you want another site for this? Just use The Source.

[ktkenshinx]

Dredge has been banned into oblivion. Sounds like a bunch of your development staff are a bunch of whiny combo haters.

The banlist is not set in stone. i fully agree with your statement above though. I for one hate the current banning of Dredge off the map. Does some element of the deck need to be banned? Probably, sure. Get rid of Bridge and call it a day. The deck is still viable without it, and DR/Narco have applications in other decks.

With enough thoughtful input from thoughtful players, the banlist will take an ideal form. There will be no arbitrary DCI bannings and hidden reasoning processes. Players will speak for players and the banlist will be made right with time.

It may be the next best alternative, though.

I think it would be important to start at Masques and include promo sets released after Masques, so as to widen the card pool as much as possible. Hopefully they would also reprint Force of Will, Wasteland, Hymn to Tourach and StP in this format (and Priest of Titania, Show and Tell, High Tide, etc., basically anything that's not on the Reserved list and sees play).

I would personally be fine with an MM cutoff. I certainly advocated for that pretty hard a bunch of months ago. I think that the problem with this cutoff, however, is that it relies on Wizards printing cards. All of the ones you mentioned should probably be reprinted, folded into a new format, and that could be a "new Legacy" of sorts. But we players, at a grassroots internet level, can't really do that with any legitimacy.

The format should be able to stand alone, survive, and even thrive, with just Invasion forward cards and a healthy banlist. The "glues" that hold Legacy together will probably not be needed in the Overextended world (IF that banlist gets constructed in an intelligent way).

As to why there is another site, I think that Mr. Verhey just wanted to separate it from Legacy as much as possible. I for one intend on discussing the format in as many venues as possible.

-ktkenshinx-

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

The banlist is not set in stone. i fully agree with your statement above though. I for one hate the current banning of Dredge off the map. Does some element of the deck need to be banned? Probably, sure. Get rid of Bridge and call it a day. The deck is still viable without it, and DR/Narco have applications in other decks.

With enough thoughtful input from thoughtful players, the banlist will take an ideal form. There will be no arbitrary DCI bannings and hidden reasoning processes. Players will speak for players and the banlist will be made right with time.



I would personally be fine with an MM cutoff. I certainly advocated for that pretty hard a bunch of months ago. I think that the problem with this cutoff, however, is that it relies on Wizards printing cards. All of the ones you mentioned should probably be reprinted, folded into a new format, and that could be a "new Legacy" of sorts. But we players, at a grassroots internet level, can't really do that with any legitimacy.

The format should be able to stand alone, survive, and even thrive, with just Invasion forward cards and a healthy banlist. The "glues" that hold Legacy together will probably not be needed in the Overextended world (IF that banlist gets constructed in an intelligent way).

As to why there is another site, I think that Mr. Verhey just wanted to separate it from Legacy as much as possible. I for one intend on discussing the format in as many venues as possible.

-ktkenshinx-

In what reality do the people behind this live where Invasion cards are accessible but Masques is somehow out of reach.

I mean I could understand a cut off at like Mirrodin or Ravnica as trying to actually reduce costs, but there's way too many expensive cards in Invasion (and Odyssey) for this to be buyable. I mean Christ, then they go ahead and unban Entomb too.

[swoop]

Sounds bad.

[jamesh]

no chance

[Gheizen64]

The problem of cutting at Invasion instead of Masques, is, simply put, that it miss the point of such a format anyway.
Why people started playing legacy? Because after Extended died (the big rotation that removed duals, wasteland, etc...), new Extended was completely different and you couldn't play your old decks anymore, while Vintage was too costly. People didn't want to spend too much time and money costantly buying new packs and switching decks. This was some years ago. People had some duals, dark rituals, all those nice cards and whatever, and wanted to play with them, they really wanted to continue to dark ritual into hippies T1 and all that. Now the problem is that too many people wanted to play such a format where you could, more or less, continue to play your favorite deck of years ago, so price got out of control, and, due to the ******** list, this problem isn't solvable easily. Now what? If you want to salvage as much as possible, you cut as the very end of the ******** list, so as much people as possible can continue playing their favourite deck. If you remove Ritual and Brainstorm the format COULD be more varied (not that i'm all that sure, even with ritual storm still haven't got LED, petal, AdN is more costly when your mana bases hurt like shit etc... not to say even without FoW you still have MM + Daze), but you also remove one of the biggest incentive for people to actually play a format, that is, to play a deck they like.

[ktkenshinx]

In what reality do the people behind this live where Invasion cards are accessible but Masques is somehow out of reach.

I mean I could understand a cut off at like Mirrodin or Ravnica as trying to actually reduce costs, but there's way too many expensive cards in Invasion (and Odyssey) for this to be buyable. I mean Christ, then they go ahead and unban Entomb too.

For paper alone, then Invasion is probably no less/more accessible than MM. For MTGO, however, Invasion was the first set that came out, and a lot of people have Invasion/Odyssey/etc. cards sitting around that they want to use. The rationale would be that this is a strong MTGO eternal format.

If the format got proper official support from Wizards, cards could be reprinted because the Reserve List does not hold the format back. In the past, this has been sort of a dream by us Legacy players/Overextended hopefuls. But Wizards recently printed the "entry tournament level" decks for standard, with 2x Stoneforge plus other cards! This shows that Wizards is more than happy to print "expensive" cards to increase accessibility. Overextended would strongly benefit from this.

As to the price of these cards, the Invasion block cards are really not all that expensive. The vast majority are under a dollar, and even the most expensive cards don't crack $5 in most cases. Odyssey cards are certainly a bit more expensive, but even there, the lack of Reserve List holdback means that they will be attainable by average players.

Sounds bad.

I am sure that this was said many, many times about Legacy, EDH, and 2HG in their infancy. Thankfully, some people did not listen to such naysayers.

-ktkenshinx-

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

Oh, right, online. I guess people aren't exactly clamoring for Masques block online.

Well, if the format picked up steam, that would actually get people interested in playing Masques, since it brings in a lot of that would be widely played; Daze, Brainstorm, Dark Ritual, maybe Port, Tangle Wire and Food Chain.

The problem there being that the best cards are mostly common.

[Koby]

For paper alone, then Invasion is probably no less/more accessible than MM. For MTGO, however, Invasion was the first set that came out, and a lot of people have Invasion/Odyssey/etc. cards sitting around that they want to use. The rationale would be that this is a strong MTGO eternal format.

MTGO has it's own reserve list policy - no OOP set may be released (promo events) more than 1% of existing sales per year.

Compounded with the low availability of actual playables,
Pernicious Deed [AP] Buy:33 Sell:39
Vindicate [AP] Buy:61 Sell:sold out (supernovabot)

Makes for another format hurt by high prices on highly desirable cards.

MTGO has it's own problems with making formats playable, and most of them have nothing to do with the actual cards themselves, but rather that lack of good tournaments and player support.

So, no I don't think Overextended is the best solution to the middle ground between Standard and Legacy.

MTGO already has the following formats:
Pauper (commons only)
Standard Singleton (60c)
100 Card Singleton (pseudo-Legacy)
Kaleidoscope (gold cards only)

Of these, only Pauper has a large penetration. Extended is still regarded as a red-headed stepchild which no one plays because it's been butchered so many times in the last 12 months, and only relevant for 3 months out of the year for PTQ-grinders. I don't see how adding another MTGO format that mirrors paper will stir up support online.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

MTGO has it's own reserve list policy - no OOP set may be released (promo events) more than 1% of existing sales per year.

Is this written up in a big formal statement? If not they can just break it.

[Koby]

Is this written up in a big formal statement? If not they can just break it.

Once Wizards of the Coast declares that an online card set is off sale, we will never sell the product again. We will, however, make a very small amount of the product available for use in limited tournaments and as prizes as we deem appropriate. The amount of an out-of-print set that we release in a year will be less than 1% of the initial online print run of that product. Print run is defined as the product purchased in at the Magic Online store as well as product awarded as prizes between the onsale date and offsale date of the product in question.

They can also just renege on this agreement seemingly at will too. But for the Classic set releases (MVW, Tempest, etc) they open up the product in the store and offer it at retail for drafters.

[flrn]

This time, it is not just a "rumor", because the player strategy is different. Instead of hoping for a rumored format to appear, players who WANT the format to appear are going to support it off the books. Just like EDH and 2HG (and Legacy, years ago) started out as player supported and maintained formats, so too will Overextended. Wizards does care about these formats when they attain enough popularity; this is clear in their formal sanctioning of all of the above formats.

Given the current popularity of Legacy, if they would care as much as you guess, they would throw away the reserve list and finally reprint legacy staples. I don't care about losing some money due to reprints and neither does anyone I have spoken to about that topic.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

Given the current popularity of Legacy, if they would care as much as you guess, they would throw away the reserve list and finally reprint legacy staples. I don't care about losing some money due to reprints and neither does anyone I have spoken to about that topic.

They were clearly planning to do this last year, but did an about face at the last moment and tightened the reserve list instead of striking it down. The whys and witherfores are up in the air but it doesn't look like the reserve list is going anywhere.

[lorddotm]

I don't get why we need a replacement for Extended, why not replace the PTQ format with something fun, like Teams or 2HG (Teams could be Sealed, Standard, Legacy, that would be really interesting...)

As far as a replacement for Legacy, nothing will replace it, they need to break the reserve list.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

Most pros hate team formats.

I'm not sure if that's a good enough reason not to do a team PTQ season, though.