Well, I'm back with another look at the Extended Metagame.  Let's take a look at the last three weeks and see what kind of trends there are.

This is my first analysis of the metagame.  Nothing is above 11%, so at this point in time it's really difficult to prepare your sideboard.  Since then, I've combined some of the smaller decks into the "other" category and tried to clean up the graph a bit.

This was 2 weeks ago.  Zoo and Scapeshift were both gaining popularity and everything else started slipping a bit.  Also Scapeshift started showing up as two different variants.  These variants were the Aggro version with Tarmogoyf and Jitte and the control version with Counterspells and Wood Elves.

 Now, last week Hexmage made a huge jump in the metagame as many players started to run Hexmage with the alternate plan of Sword of the Meek and Thopter Foundry since all of those cards cost 2 mana and can be searched for with a Muddle the Mixture.  It should be noted that even with all of these shifts in the metagame, the number of different competitive decks is still great and much more diverse than Zendikar Block or Standard.

Here are the numbers for last week including every deck that made at least 3-1 in a daily event or posted a result in a Premiere Event.

Here are the top players that finished at least 5 times with a published deck during the week.

For reference, here are the events from the past week that I used to compile this data.  They are taken directly from the "Decks of the Week" page on Wotc website.

Here is an example listing of every kind of deck I saw in Extended in the past week.

 The Rogue Decks of the Week

UG Coatl Dryad - weasel22 (3-1)

Extended Daily #889179 on 01/23/2010

Creatures 3 Lorescale Coatl 3 Quirion Dryad 4 Tarmogoyf 2 Vendilion Clique 12 cards Other Spells 3 Cryptic Command 1 Engineered Explosives 4 Mana Leak 4 Ponder 4 Remand 3 Spell Snare 4 Telling Time 2 Umezawa's Jitte 25 cards

Lands 2 Breeding Pool 1 Flooded Grove 1 Forest 1 Ghost Quarter 7 Island 4 Misty Rainforest 4 Scalding Tarn 1 Stomping Ground 1 Tolaria West 1 Treetop Village 23 cards Sideboard 2 Fracturing Gust 3 Kitchen Finks 2 Krosan Grip 3 Shadow of Doubt 1 Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir 2 Tormod's Crypt 2 Wheel of Sun and Moon 15 cards

Spell Snare is a key to this deck.  Most of the dangerous combolicious spells in the format cost 2 mana (Hexmage, Thopter Foundry, Jitte, Tarmogoyf, Isochron Scepter, etc) and being able to stop all of those cards is key.  The main strategy behind this deck is to counter your opponent's key strategies and watch your threats grow until you can defeat your opponent.

Deus Warrens Karlosvr (3-1)

Extended Daily #889185 on 01/25/2010

Creatures 3 Arc-Slogger 4 Demigod of Revenge 4 Deus of Calamity 3 Magus of the Moon 4 Simian Spirit Guide 18 cards Other Spells 3 Blood Moon 3 Chrome Mox 4 Desperate Ritual 2 Empty the Warrens 4 Rite of Flame 4 Seething Song 20 cards

Lands 22 Mountain 22 cards Sideboard 4 Chalice of the Void 3 Dead/Gone 2 Ravenous Trap 3 Shattering Spree 3 Volcanic Fallout 15 cards

Two of the dominant combos in this format are stopped cold by Blood Moon. (Dark Depths and Valakut)  So it makes sense that if you can put out a Blood Moon on turn 1 or 2 you should be able to cripple your opponent's plans.  Especially if they are using a lot of dual lands and aren't playing red.  I like this deck because of it's simplicity and the fact that it doesn't require any nonbasic lands.

Spotlight on Scapeshift

So, what can we learn from all this?  Well, there are a few common themes across all 5 decklists.  

1) A full set of Sakura-Tribe Elders and Wood Elves are the only maindeck creatures.

2) The necessary maindeck spells are Remand Scapeshift Peer Through Depths and Search for Tomorrow.  4 of each of these appear in each deck.

3) Each deck has exactly two Valakuts, and somewhere between 8 to 10 Mountains via mostly shocklands.

4) The counterspells vary from deck to deck.  Given the power of 2 drop combos in the format, I like sMann's version of the deck for its inclusion of a couple of spell snares.  As an anti-counter strategy, Paulrall has included Gigadrowse.  This also seems like a nice inclusion given that some of the most popular decks right now have strong control elements, and Zoo decks are noticeably down. 

 Now, let's look at the aggressive version of the deck. 

You'll notice that the maindeck portion of these 5 decks is identical.  This is not uncommon with a new decktype.  Variations usually come when players have had enough experience with a deck to know which cards can be changed without hurting the deck.  So, when I see a new deck or variation on an existing deck comes out, most of the copies of that deck match up very closely.  This is because new players usually just copy the deck from the initial creator or creators of the deck.  Variations usually take time to evolve, and right now, the only variations are in the sideboard and mana base.  Blood moon is very interesting in the sideboard because it effectively nullifies Valakut.  Also, several players are splashing black for discard in the sideboard.  Thought Hemorrhage can be a powerful tool against combo decks, but it seems a bit slow in a deck with slow.  One of the strategies that I would like to try would be to splash white for Path to Exile, which can take care of 20/20 indestructible flying creatures as well as accelerate you to 8 mana if you play it on your own creatures.  White in the sideboard also gives you access to Celestial Purge which is a nice card against both Hexmage and Thopter Foundry.  I haven't had time to test that version yet, but I can tell that with time, we'll see more variations in the aggro version of the Valakut/Scapeshift deck just like we've seen them in the control version.

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Well, thanks for reading.  I hope you've found this information to be useful in your Extended endeavors.

-Marcus "Shuyin Knight of Zanarkand" on Magic Online