Keeping up with this Extended season has been a full-time job.

The adventure began at Worlds 2001, where a metagame for the format was reestablished. Secret Force, WuWeenie, Stompy, Oath, and other classic decks were running rampant, and it looked like the format was picking up right where it had left off. With the exception of no Necros, Survivals, Consults, or Replenishes, of course. In terms of technological advances in Extended, they were minor, such as adding in a few colors to White Weenie and occasionally throwing a Wild Research into Oath. Perhaps the most shocking change was Bob Maher removing Abundance from the maindeck of his beloved Oath deck.

Pro Tour: New Orleans was where the format was completely blown open. Trix was back, this time in the form of a pseudo-control deck, a Blue/Red monstrosity packing the Intuition/Accumulated Knowledge engine and tools like Fire/Ice and Ruination. More than one person in the room was heard muttering, “Why won’t this bastard die?” At the same time, though, decks such as Junk and Three-Deuce began a resurgence, and Tomi Walamies presented Dumbo Drop to the world. Even Reanimator made a huge comeback, placing incredibly well, including two Top Eight slots.

So with Trix taking New Orleans in the hands of Kai Budde, it should be the defining force in the metagame, right? Wrong. Part of Sol Marka’s vision came to fruition at Grand Prix: Las Vegas, as his creation, The Rock and His Millions, appeared in two slots in the Top Eight, and Mike Pustilnik drove it to the finals and the win. Rob Dougherty introduced Wild Zombies to the Top Eight spotlight. Junk, Three-Deuce, and a rogue deck based around Armageddon broke into the Top Eight. Most remarkable occurrence? There were as many maindeck Chokes (1, in Pustilnik’s deck) as blue-producing lands (1, a City of Brass in Dougherty’s deck) in the Top Eight. Trix, the deck that everyone was predicting would dominate Extended, was only able to make 20th.

One of the most important developments for Extended was indeed at New Orleans, but it wasn’t in the Top Eight. No, it was in ninth place. Alan Comer had played a deck named Miracle-Gro, and while the smallest of tie-breakers kept him out of the Top Eight, his deck would come back to haunt us all.

While Sin City was seeing Blue die a horrible death, Grand Prix: Curitiba was going on at the same time. The Top Eight looked radically different from Vegas: Dumbo Drop, Finkula, Reanimator, a Geddon-based deck, and Blue/Black control rushed the Top Eight, along with the usual suspects Three-Deuce and The Rock. So between the two Grand Prix events, we had in the Top Eight:

Junk
Three-Deuce
Dumbo Drop
Wild Zombies
Reanimator
Two Geddon-Based Rogue
Blue/Black Control
Finkula
The Rock and His Millions

Obviously, Trix was dead, and a new breed of decks was beginning to reform Extended.

Enter Grand Prix: Sendai. Not one, not two, not three, but FIVE Trix decks made the Top Eight, with the rest of it being filled in by Wild Zombies, the all-new Zombie-Go, and Mike Long…piloting Miracle-Gro (oooh, sense the foreshadowing). So Trix was dead only to come back a week later in force, and the metagame shifted again for what seemed the thousandth time in the season.

Alan Comer and Mike Long’s successes with Miracle-Gro made people take notice. So many people, in fact, that Grand Prix: Houston, held this past weekend, was flooded with it and its bastard offspring, Super-Gro. Two Miracle-Gro and two Super-Gro decks made Top Eight, and the sea of Gro decks set the planets just right for a Sligh and Oath deck to hit it as well. Junk once again managed to sneak in. When all was said and done, however, a rogue Blue/Black/Green control deck piloted by Josh Smith took the crown.

I’m at a complete loss for words when I think back on the hours I spent with the people I test with, turning Extended inside and out to drain it of tech. Eventually, everyone but myself and one other person had walked away completely. It was impossible, they said, to pin down a metagame that was going all over the place. Was that true?

God knows it’s hard as hell to figure out where things are going at the moment. Clearly, the deck to beat is Miracle-Gro and its variants, but look at how Trix has faired this season. It was the deck to beat, and it’s nowhere to be seen now. Who’s to say that Miracle-Gro won’t be the same story this coming weekend at Grand Prix: Lisbon?

The only true stability in Extended right now is Junk. No matter what the metagame, no matter what the current random deck tearing through the ranks, Junk has found a way to be consistently successful. Oh, it’s gone through its share of changes, with Apocalypse changing how the entire deck looks and Odyssey shaping it further, but the core of Junk has remained the same: efficient creatures backed up by efficient board and hand control. Junk is the CounterSliver of years gone by, always seeming to find a way to Top Eight.

Grand Prix and Pro Tour events shape qualifiers, and if you’re like me, you’re going to be trying to pin down the Extended metagame in hopes of qualifying for Pro Tour: Osaka. That means that paying attention to the events at the recent Grand Prix events goes a long way towards beating the metagame. It is, however, hard to figure out exactly what portion of the metagame you should be paying attention to.

The first thing to keep in mind for Extended qualifiers is that, no matter how bad Sligh sucks at any given time, it will put in at least a small appearance at every single Extended qualifier. This is just a fact, one that escapes all reason, but a fact nonetheless. Second, you will always see Oath, Three-Deuce, and Trix, although normally not in the same quantity as Sligh. This isn’t to say that the decks are junky, but no matter how bad the metagame is for them, they always tend to show up anyway.

With that being said, it’s time to try breaking the 2002 Extended metagame for the qualifiers. Much of what the metagame will consist of is based on region; for example, here in the Ohio Valley region, Three-Deuce is often played more than it should be, as there’s always been a fondness for it. However, there is a more general metagame to look at, and to differing extents it will be mirrored in every qualifier.

Best to start with the freak deck of the season, Miracle-Gro. It’s hard to argue that it isn’t the best deck at the moment, surpassed only by its bastard offspring Super-Gro. You have to consider it a threat at the qualifiers, and thus you have to have a deck that can beat it. I agree with Seth Burn; it’s unacceptable to decide on a deck that loses to Miracle-Gro.

The decks that have won Grand Prix events in the weeks before qualifiers are always played, so that means to count on seeing The Rock and His Millions. The deck is very strong in the midgame, propelling itself into the late game and more often than not the win. Be sure to plan on The Rock when designing your sideboard, if not the maindeck.

Junk, being the stable force that it is, will see more than its fair share of play. In fact, many testing teams are considering it to be the largest threat. Junk doesn’t have a truly horrible match, at least one that I’m aware of. Yes, some matches are better than others, but Junk always has a fighting chance. If you’re undecided about what to play for a qualifier, you might want to take a good long look at this deck.

So the qualifier metagame is looking something like this:

Miracle-Gro
The Rock and His Millions
Junk
Sligh
Oath
Trix
Three-Deuce

Other decks to remember include Raisin Bran, Dumbo Drop, Geddon-based designs such as do Dentinho, Finkula, Reanimator, and Wild Zombies.

I know that this is basic to many people, but not only is listing out what to expect helpful to those not familiar with Extended and its qualifiers, but it works as a refresher to those of us burned out from the season.

This is the year of the rogue, my friends. 2002 has kicked off with a bang, filling Extended with a metagame that no one could have predicted after Worlds, or hell, even after Pro Tour: New Orleans.

Speaking of rogue decks:

CELL

3x Oath of Druids
2x Gaea’s Blessing
4x Land Grant
1x Spike Weaver
1x Choke
1x Sylvan Library
1x Abundance

4x Pernicious Deed
1x Spiritmonger

4x Vampiric Tutor
4x Diabolic Edict
1x Spirit of the Night
4x Duress

2x Phyrexian Furnace
4x Chimeric Idol

4x Bayou
4x Wasteland
1x Dust Bowl
9x Forest
5x Swamp

Sideboard
3x Choke
4x Phyrexian Negator
1x Crater Hellion
1x Spike Feeder
4x Emerald Charm
1x Massacre

I’m not certain on the Massacre in the sideboard at all, but it comes in handy from time to time and my brain isn’t producing anything better. I’m considering adding in the four Oath instead, however.

Basically, Cell is a Green/Black deck based around Oath of Druids, but not in the traditional Oath deck fashion. Instead, it seeks to produce active threats in the form of hard-to-kill Oathed out creatures and Chimeric Idols, which interact quite well with Oath in this type of deck.

I chose my creature base due to what I expect the metagame at the Columbus January 19 qualifier to be, which is a mesh of control and aggressive decks. Spirit of the Night is a bad mammajamma that can only be effectively contained by Swords to Plowshares or a Mystic Enforcer with Threshold. Ironically, both of these problems are combated with Diabolic Edict, and each has an additional solution: Swords/Duress, and Enforcer/Deed. Spiritmonger is an absolute beatstick, one which I’ve been choosing even over the mighty Morphling lately in decks that can support either. While it doesn’t have a built-in answer to Plow the way that Morphling does, it is larger a better threat on the defense, in my opinion. Setting that aside, this Oath deck won’t support Morphling, so Spiritmonger makes the cut.

Spike Weaver is the non-aggressive threat in the deck, as it provides a means of defense against decks using fast clocks and can occasionally put some +1/+1 counters on a Monger or Spirit. Even less frequently, due to the recycling of the Weaver through the Oath/Blessing interaction, it can put a LOT of counters on a Monger or Spirit.

Chimeric Idol may seem out of place here, but rest assured that they are gold. Besides being a 3/3 for three mana with a relatively minor activation drawback, it interacts well with Oath. The Idols are just plain old artifacts in the graveyard and deck, after all, so Oath won’t stop on them. An added bonus is in the Dumbo Drop matchup, where the Idol can not only kill off Elephant tokens, but survive the Wrath of Gods as well. If there’s a better option, I’m not seeing it. While the “tap all lands” part isn’t exactly tech with Spike Weaver’s fogging, correctly using the deck usually makes this a moot point. Just try to keep a land in hand to play after the attack phase.

Land Grant is basically in there to thin land out of the deck, as Thawing Glaciers was just too slow in testing. It also gets silly with the Blessing/Oath recursion, often netting five or more lands a game.

Everything else should be obvious, including the Sylvan Library/Abundance combo in the deck. It’s a combo best used in a more controlling version of Oath, but it’s really too good to pass up. Two oddities are the maindeck Choke and two Phyrexian Furnaces, but I’m planning on a heavily Blue metagame, along with decks using the graveyard for things like Accumulated Knowledge and Call of the Herd.

The sideboard is interesting. The presence of the four Phyrexian Negators is for decks such as Trix and Dumbo Drop, where Oath of Druids is a subpar card. The Spike Feeder is to bring in against decks such as Sligh and Stompy, where the life gain swings things into your favor handily. Crater Hellion comes in against Miracle-Gro and Super-Gro, where it can tear through entire armies after being Oathed out just once. Not to mention that it comes in handy against Finkula, Sligh, Stompy, and White Weenie as well. Choke obviously is a beating against anything displaying Islands, although Tsunami might be a better option.

Emerald Charm is for enchantment-reliant decks such as Trix and Oath, not to mention Miracle-Gro. Always remember that the Charm has other abilities besides blowing up enchantments; I’ve made a Miracle-Gro creature lose flying to die to an Idol, Monger, or Weaver more than once.

The original reasoning behind Massacre was that White Weenie will more than likely put in an appearance, plus it’s not half-bad in matchups where you hardcast it. As stated directly below the deck, it’s probably not the optimal card, but that sideboard slot is being worked on.

If you’re going to be at the Columbus qualifier on January 19, keep an eye out for me and come say hello. I’ll be sporting my spiffy MOTL shirt and probably be quite loud at times.