With all the hubbub surrounding Extended and the changes being made to it, plus the amount of hotheads that keep claiming that they will quit (and no doubt come back, complaining about all of the good cards that they used to have), I feel somewhat compelled to add something important that people have overlooked. Extended will change, and continue to change, and T2 will continue to be for people with deep wallets and young kids, but both are vital to the survival of this game we love.

As painful as it is, without Type 2 and the new Extended, this game would crumble and turn to dust.

Argue with me if you want, but I'm right. Sure, Wizards could add new set after new set to the enjoyment of the casual player. We could see Moxes and Nantuko side by side (I'm just picking an example here, don't bloody think I'd stick Moxes in that kind of deck if I had 'em.) But there would be no new influx without tournaments and the like; there would be the great minds that found ways to truly break cards and make great decks, but there would be no forum for them to showcase what they know. There ones underneath only capable of understanding the great deck, and playing it to within an inch of it's life. Then there would be the rest. The people you learned to play Magic with. The people who maindeck 4 Bloodfire Colossus. But eventually, you would get sick of running up against the same kind of deck, the same brand of people, so you would get together with people who are better, or you would quit. You might even start a to! urnament, and hey, maybe everyone comes. You, being an intelligent Magic player, would realize that it was unfair to some of the newer players that the older players had more of the older and better cards, so you might split up the tournament into 2 divisions. You might start to recognize that some cards were too powerful to be allowed 4 of, or 17. I mean this is just casual play, after all.

Bingo, we're right back to square 1.

So where am I going with all of this rambling? I'll tell you where. My Dad always used to say that it was stupid for people to complain about the price of prescription drugs. "If you didn't have the drug that you needed to stay alive" he would say "you would pay any fucking price to get it, so quit whining that it costs you 20 bucks." Same here. If all the Magic cards in the world just went away, we would be writing them down on little pieces of paper before we forgot them all. If everything went away but Type 2, we would beg to have those cards so we could play that.

Face facts people, supply and demand dictates that once the demand for a product goes down, so does the price. If in 5 years people are still playing with Illusions/Donate because an effective way to stop it still hasn't been printed, has the Illusions/Donate player spent any money on Magic between the time he put together his deck and then? Maybe a pack here or there, but not the kind of money that Wizards demands that we spend to keep their sorry asses afloat. Do we like it? Hell no. But until we find a better way to do it, we gotta keep spending money to keep the cards flowing.

Point? Everyone shut up and quit bitching, or quit. So Oath goes, and Junk, and Illusions/Donate. Good riddance. I, for one, am glad that now I can get the Duals and Force of Wills I need for, -gasp!- casual play. So wait for people to find new ways to break the game, or try and do it yourself. People will keep playing. They always have. We survived when they took out Dark Ritual, we would survive if they took out Counterspell. I am beyond sick of people saying "But I just finished my set of Duals, now what am I supposed to do with them?"

Well, for starters, you could try playing a little Magic with them.