Every year, the first individual Pro Tour of the season coincides with the release of the new base set. This first tournament, of course, is always Extended. Each and every year, Mark Rosewater and Randy Buehler wait with bated breath to see which of their newest cards get played at the Pro Tour. In the past, sets like Odyssey and Onslaught debuted around forty or so cards to the environment.

This year, Mirrodin broke the sixty-card barrier - with twenty-eight less cards to work with in the set (Wizards reduced the base set size from 330 to 302 this time around).

That means that 20% of the set was seen as being Extended tournament playable by the Pro Tour community at large. One out of every five cards in Mirrodin was powerful enough to hang with a format that reaches back through over seven years of card pool.

Let's see who made the cut:

1) Aether Spellbomb - Played in the sideboard of several Tinker decks.

2) Ancient Den - Run as an alternate to Plains in a couple of white deks.

3) Annul - Dozens of decks ran this artifact hoser to combat the multitude of Tinker decks and Goblin Charbelchers in the field.

4) Arc-Slogger - Found a home in Ponza.

5) Bonesplitter - Suicide Black ran this as a way to pump shadow creatures.

6) Bosh, Iron Golem - Both Tinker and Stax decks ran Bosh as a finisher.

7) Bottle Gnomes - Anti-Goblins tech for many decks.

8) Chalice of the Void - Tinker decks used Chalice of the Void to shut down Goblins and Red Deck Wins... And it wasn't horrible in the mirror, either.

9) Chromatic Sphere - Used in Stax decks for both card acceleration and for Goblin Welder food.

10) Chrome Mox - Who wasn't running this potentially bannable mana accelerator?

11) Clockwork Dragon - The Germans ran this as their kill card in Tinker.

12) Damping Matrix - A great sideboard card in a format full of artifacts and creatures with special abilities.

13) Dream's Grip - Part of the Japanese Mind's Desire build.

14) Duplicant - Ran as a sideboard card in Tinker.

15) Electrostatic Bolt - Anti-artifact creature hate.

16) Elf Replica - Strictly in the sideboard.

17) Fabricate - A part of a some Tinker decks.

18) Gilded Lotus - More new components of Tinker. Surprising how the artifacts in the artifact set were used in the artifact deck, no?

19) Glimmervoid - Guess which deck played this! If you do, you win a fabulous prize.

20) Goblin Charbelcher - This card was everywhere - Goblins, combo deck, and Tinker all used the Charbelcher as part of a combo kill.

21) Goblin Replica - Some Gobvantage decks used the replica as artifact hate off the board.

22) Grab the Reins - One deck ran Grab the Reins. Just the one.

23) Great Furnace - Tons of Tinker and Stax decks used Furnace in the place of basic lands.

24) Grim Reminder - Great for the mirror match for black-on-black. Too bad there were essentially no black decks in the format.

25) Icy Manipulator - There weren't any prison decks, but there was an Icy Manipulator.

26) Isochron Scepter - Control, Oath and Psychatog all abused the Fork stick to good effect. We all learned that Final Fortune plus Isochron Scepter plus Platinum Angel equals fun!

27) Leonin Bladetrap - Why, God why? But alas, it was so.

28) Leonin Skyhunter - This got played in White Weenie - but Soltari Priest and Soltari Monk did not. What has the world come to?

29) Lightning Greaves - A standard in Stax decks as Goblin Welder-bait and to speed up large, recycled creatures.

30) Mass Hysteria - A replacement for Anger and Dragon Breath in a couple of Hermit decks.

31) Mind's Eye - Strictly sideboard, strictly Tinker.

32) Mindslaver - Mindslaver was used to make Hermit Druids millstone during upkeeps. It made opponents pay twenty life for their Phyrexian Processors. It made Chain of Vapor bounce a ton of permanents. Mindslaver goooood.

33) Molder Slug - The Rock used this beefy boy as hate against all the artifacts in the format.

34) Molten Rain - Ponza, thy name is Molten Rain. Thy brothers are Pillage and Stone Rain.

35) Myr Incubator - A kill card in Tinker.

36) Oblivion Stone - Way too slow for this format, but it showed. You didn't see people playing Amulet of Unmaking back in the day, did you?

37) Pentavus - Stax decks used this in conjunction with Goblin Welder to make theoretically infinite Pentavi. Take off all seven tokens, sac a token to get back Pentavus, wash rinse repeat.

38) Plated Slagwurm - It's big, it can't be targeted, and it gave Sutured Ghoul +8/+8 when the Ghoul hit play.

39) Platinum Angel - Tinker used this as both a"don't be killed" and"kill" card.

40) Pyrite Spellbomb - Fodder for red aggressive decks to kill non-existent Silver Knights and Narwhals.

41) Raise the Alarm - Good on Isochron Scepter - oh wait, it's not that good. When you have a choice between infinite card drawing, infinite countermagic, infinite Fogs, infinite lifegain, infinite direct damage, or making a couple of piddly 1/1 guys, why in God's name are you fooling around with this filler?

42) Scrabbling Claws - Anti-Hermit tech. Zonk the Ghoul, draw a card.

43) Sculpting Steel - For the Tinker-on-Tinker mirror match.

44) Seething Song - Japanese players used Seething Song for turn two kills all day long. First-turn Chrome Mox/Ancient Tomb/Goblin Recruiter, second-turn Ancient Tomb/Goblin Charbelcher/activate it to do a billion.

45) Seat of the Synod - Black, green, red and white decks didn't use Seat of the Synod, for they were Tinkerless.

46) Shatter - Great for the metagame. Just like Naturalize or Disenchant, but half as powerful for the same mana cost!

47) Shrapnel Blast - Played in Stax decks.

48) Slith Firewalker - Red Deck Wins did some losing backed behind this hasty and tasty Shock-bait.

49) Spellweaver Helix - Used as part of the Japanese Crush of Wurms deck.

50) Talisman of Dominance - Just a tad bit better than the Mirage Diamonds.

51) Talisman of Progress - Just a tad bit worse than Alpha Moxen.

52) Terror - Not so great for killing Platinum Angel, Triskelion, Pentavus, and Clockwork Dragon.

53) Thirst For Knowledge - Both Tinker and Reanimator-based Hermit decks ran this in equal numbers.

54) Thought Prison - Sideboard in Tinker.

55) Tree of Tales - Run in the same decks that ran Thirst for Knowledge.

56) Triskelion - Stax food. Since when were Type One players allowed to take part in the Extended metagame?

57) Troll Ascetic - Great for those decks that like to have out an untargetable 3/2 regenerator in the face of thirty 1/1 myr tokens on turn 3.

58) Vault of Whispers - Shh, quiet. We're hunting wabbits.

59) Viridian Shaman - Better than Uktabi Orangutan, because nobody is copulating in the background.

60) War Elemental - A couple of Red Deck Wins builds tried running War Elemental - but instead, War Elemental ran them.

61) Welding Jar - Great for accelerating Broodstars, Thoughtcast, and Myr Enforcer. Oh, wait - nobody played a single affinity card in Extended.