This year's Extended environment is, in my opinion, the healthiest in the history of the game. There is no super-broken combo deck, no rock-paper-scissors cycle like there was last year*, and at least twelve viable deck choices that fit into every play style. This environment has spurred a tremendous amount of debate, from specific card choices to the viability of certain decks. Of course, it has also seen a great deal of criticism from people, arguing that certain cards are now taking over the environment.

Before I continue, please do yourself a favor and take this with a grain of salt. What I'm about to write is based on only my observations and testing. Your metagame is different. Some of what I write will be controversial, so if you have something to say, well... There's a nice message board link above.

I will begin with a claim that has been made since the beginning of the season. The first time I heard people saying this was at Neutral Ground, but since then it has visited the forums on this very site and graced the front page of Teamacademy.com as well. I am talking about none other than...

Fallacy Number 1 - Black Dominates Extended, And Vampiric Tutor Should Be Banned.
Sligh. U/G Madness. White Weenie. None of those decks use swamps, and two of them are definitely tier-1, with the third depending on the build. Sligh sees play in lots of places, while UG Madness is popular here in New York. If you look through the results on this site, you will see that just those two decks comprise a great deal of Top 8 spots. In addition to these decks, there is also Oath - which uses black only for Pernicious Deed - and Psychatog, which uses it for its namesake and a few removal spells. In fact, the only decks in the metagame with a heavy black component are The Rock and Reanimator. This certainly seems balanced to me.

Moving on to the second, and more ridiculous, claim I've heard, we have the Vampiric Tutor debate. A card in need of banning is one that either unbalances the metagame enough to make many possible decks obsolete, or one that is present in almost every deck used. Until I see a"silver bullet" deck with 4x Vampiric Tutor that is capable of winning 75% of its matches, I refuse to think of this card as overly powerful. In fact, most of the decks that use it do not have more than one or two silver bullets, and instead use the Tutor to fetch the most appropriate"regular" card for the occasion. In addition, these decks often use only one or two Tutors instead of the allowed four. If the Tutor were so powerful, wouldn't it be a four-of? And wouldn't it also be in every deck with swamps - including Psychatog, Oath, and Super-Goo?

For another argument against banning the Tutor, let's take a look at the more flexible Wishes. While the Tutor requires you to use maindeck slots, the wishes allow you to put the sometimes-dead silver bullets into the sideboard. Although the wishes cannot get any card like the tutor can, the wishes do not result in card disadvantage and do not make you lose life. In addition, a well-designed deck will have answers to anything in a form that the wish can fetch. Remember that there are creatures that function like enchantments (Genesis, Wonder), instants that work like creatures (Beast Attack), and even sorceries that work like instants (Rout). If you were to ban any sort of tutor in Extended, it should definitely be one or both of the Wishes. However, I wouldn't do this either, as it would allow Vampiric Tutor to actually become too powerful.

The last argument people might make about the tutor is for its sheer speed in Reanimator decks. For those who don't know, if Reanimator has the relatively common opening hand of either Entomb or Reanimate along with the Tutor, they can get any fatty in their library in play on turn 2. This appears broken - but given that it is so easily hated with bounce, graveyard removal, or hand destruction, it is rarely even played anymore.

Moving right along. I have seen a few articles about rogue decks both on this site and on MTGPlanet that appear viable. Sometimes they involve a creature horde, other times a combo of some sort. All of these articles (and I mean every one of them) complain about one specific card as a problem, while some of them extend this complaint to a second card. I'll address the second card first, as it is a bit more limited in scope. I'm talking about...

Fallacy Number 2: Oath Of Druids Makes Many Decks Unviable.
I have seen WW builds that complain extensively about this. I've also seen Stompy, Suicide Black, and even a Fish deck talk about how Oath is ruining their day. Allow me to list below the early-game answers each color has to Oath.

Red - Speed. If speed didn't beat Oath, Sligh wouldn't be viable.
White - Disenchant, Reprisal, Radiant's Judgment, Mother of Runes
Blue - Boomerang, Unsummon, Annul
Green - Naturalize, Elvish Lyrist, River Boa
Black - Terror, Duress, Cabal Therapy, Dauthi Slayer
Multi - Vindicate, Pernicious Deed, Anurid Brushhopper

Note that I included some evasion creatures: This is because even the Oath deck that runs Phantom Nishoba only has a 50% chance of flipping one (since they also use 2 Battlefield Scrounger). The one that uses Cognivore might not even be fast enough since they do not have the lifegain to go with the damage.

Sure, there will be times where Oath succeeds, but this is just part of a healthy metagame. If you could beat it every time, Oath itself wouldn't be viable. Personally, since I play Tog, I don't think Oath is very good. However, people will always play it, so be ready.

Above, I mentioned that there were two cards that people always complained about. I said that some decks complained about Oath, but every deck complained about another card. I'm sure by now you know what it is. So without further ado, I present...

Fallacy Number 3: Pernicious Deed Makes Many Decks Unviable.
Actually, I will admit that this statement is almost right. Allow me to correct it. Pernicious Deed makes many decks unviable to the lower level of players. Deed, just like its brother Nevinyrral's Disk before it, can be played around without too much trouble. Yes, it is a good card, but as long as I still see mono-colored aggro at the Pro Tour, it is definitely not broken. What it does do is stop less-skilled players from even considering aggro or enchantment-based combo decks. But it shouldn't even do that much.

First, remember that only two decks actually use Pernicious Deed. Oath uses four copies, and the Rock uses an average of six (virtually, thanks to Tutors). So first you have to be paired against one of these decks, then they have to draw it. In a PTQ, this probably happens in an average of two out of six or seven matches depending on the metagame. If your deck beats"everything but Deed," as I hear claimed so often, and you can pull out one of those matches, you're in the Top 8, buddy!

Second, even the lower fringe of players can learn to play around Deed. If you did any testing at all, you should have some idea how, even if you are not the most skilled of players. If you didn't test, then you don't deserve to win anyway.

Third, there are cards out there that battle Pernicious Deed. They are not as flexible as the anti-oath cards, but many of them cycle if they have to.

Red - Burn. Deed can't blow up cards in your hand.
White - Presence of the Master, Spectral Lynx, Parallax Wave
Blue - Interdict, Annul, Wormfang Drake (great for Skies!)
Green - Bind, Vine Dryad (for Stompy), River Boa
Black - Duress, Cabal Therapy, Faceless Butcher
Multi - Spiritmonger

That is a pretty large list - and basically, any deck you make could include some of these cards. Presence of the Master is great for control and non-enchantment based combo decks, such as the Iron Phoenix deck discussed by Jeremy Muir. Bind recently made a maindeck appearance over on Brainburst as part of an Enchantress deck by JJ Stors. I've seen Interdict in a few sideboards, including my friend's Skies deck. The others are (or were in the past) major pieces of archetypes. This makes it apparent to me that some of the Magic community has realized that Pernicious Deed is not an infallible giant. I hope that the rest of the community will now realize this.

There are a few more topics I would like to address. These have not been as prominently debated as the above ones, but still warrant consideration. One of these again comes from the StarCity message boards. Although there really isn't a"fallacy" per se here, I will try and make it into one for the purposes of continuity. So we have...

Fallacy Number 4: There is a strictly better choice between Spike Feeder and Ravenous Baloth.
I will say this once - this is a metagame decision. I have seen explanations that try to defend one over the other, but they always include something like"X is slightly worse against Sligh" or"you might want to side in Y instead of X against Oath."

For arguments sake, let's assume that I thought that the Feeder is better in every matchup except Sligh. (I actually do, but that's not important.) In my no-Sligh metagame here in the Big Apple, it would be foolish to play the Baloth. However, I cannot say that everyone should play Feeder - because there are places, especially on the PTQ circuit, where 50% of the metagame is Sligh. If I lived in one of these places, I'd play the Baloth. Simple.

Another factor is play skill. Lesser players should use the Baloth; it is bigger, ends the game faster if unfettered, and does not have as many tricks. More skilled players should use the feeder, since there are more options. In addition, these players will have a better idea of how to survive with a smaller creature.

As for my opinion, I'd play the Feeder in an unknown metagame if I were to play Rock. However, I play Psychatog so it really is a moot point.

I think I've covered most of the major issues out there. Keep in mind that I welcome criticism, flames, or whatever else you might deem fitting to say about this. My email box is open and the message boards are even more open. But before I go, I must raise one more really important point. Call me crazy, but this point involves my second-choice deck for PTQs this year. In fact, the only reason I didn't play it is because it rarely beat my first-choice deck. So I present you with the most important fallacy of all...

Fallacy Number 5: Draco-Explosion Is A Bad Deck.
Happy New Year, everybody.

John Healy
ispeakasian@netscape.net

* - Trix, Sligh, and Miracle Gro. Sligh beat Gro, Gro beat Trix, Trix beat Sligh.