Well, here we are at the end of another constructed season, and the Still Had All These team acquitted themselves fairly well… except for yours truly, of course. G Pelly had two top 8 finishes, including a final, and Dwayne and Kasey both got to the top 8 in Portland. Dwayne also had a cash performance in GP Houston. I cubed a lot and played a lot of Catchphrase.

Now’s not the time to dwell on past failure, though, but to look ahead at what removing Mirrodin will do to Extended by taking a look at major archetypes and see what they lose from the artifact block.

Affinity – This deck, as we know it, is dead. Affinity may return as a mechanic in Scars of Mirrodin, but I highly doubt we will see artifact lands again (at least in the state we saw them in Mirrodin. Maybe ETB tapped ones.) and the cards will be tested a lot more stringently than the Mirrodin cards were.

Chalice of the Void

No more countering Living End the easy way!

Zoo/Bant Aggro/Doran/Dark Zoo – Most of the other creature aggro decks lose almost nothing from the rotation out. Damping Matrix is the most relevant card going away vs. Thopter Sword. They gain from the loss of Engineered Explosives and Chalice of the Void as answers to their various strategies. It will probably be another strong year for Zoo.

Red Deck Wins – RDW loses a lot of its reach as Shrapnel Blast, Blinkmoth Nexus and in some builds Magma Jet go away. Chalice of the Void and Engineered Explosives going out will help the deck some, but RDW was using Chalice to beat the zero casting cost spell decks as well, so they lose a sideboard tool. Molten Rain is going away as well, weakening a land destruction route for the red decks.

Thopter Sword (Depths) – Goodbye, Chrome Mox and Thirst for Knowledge! The combos that make up these decks aren’t going away, but the pieces that make them consistent enough to dominate Extended for part of the season are. These decks also lose the occasional Echoing Truth, and the U/W Thopter Combo decks also lose Engineered Explosives and Vedalken Shackles. Losing artifact lands hurts as well. I think the future of Dark Depths combo is more in the black/green versions that showed up near the end of the season using Into the North to tutor up Dark Depths and Beseech the Queen and Shred Memory to find Vampire Hexmage. The future of the Thopter combo decks is likely to be the U/W decks or the Bant Thopter decks, either tilting more toward traditional control elements with Thopter/Sword as a backup or a more aggressive route with access to a transformative sideboard. Maybe Gifts Ungiven will be the card that keeps this combo around.

Scapeshift – Nothing major happens to Scapeshift. It just loses the sideboard options a lot of decks are losing (Engineered Explosives, Chalice of the Void and Damping Matrix).

Hypergenesis – Hypergenesis loses a good target in Sundering Titan, but the big Terastodon had made up that slot already in a lot of builds. Chalice of the Void leaving the format is a benefit to this deck.

Living End – Living End gets the same benefits that Hypergenesis gets as Chalice of the Void is gone. It loses nothing to the rotation.

Dredge – Dredge loses Echoing Truth as a sideboard option, making it a little bit harder to get out from under multiple Leyline of the Voids. It may get some blowback as well as the counter to cascade combo decks may become Nix instead of Chalice of the Void.

All-in Red – Losing the ability to turn one Chalice of the Void for zero against cascade combo hurts. Its big bads like Demigod of Revenge and Deus of Calamity stick around, but the storm kills like Empty the Warrens get weaker since there are no more relevant free spells for the deck. Chandra Ablaze will likely get more popular for this deck, but without Chrome Mox, this deck may be too weak to even make a showing as a rogue choice.

Mindslaver

Guys! Guys! Remember when I could lock up the game?

Elves – Elves only loses Eternal Witness and gains huge from the loss of Chalice of the Void and Engineered Explosives. This is another deck that will benefit from the rotation.

Faeries – It’s going to be a while until this deck starts losing tools again – other than an Echoing Truth here and there, Faeries will do nothing but benefit from the rotation – no Chalice of the Void to kill Bitterblossom tokens and no Chrome Mox powered starts to blast past Spellstutter Sprite.

The loss of Mirrodin will have a major effect on only a couple of decks (DDT, All-in Red and Affinity). The biggest change will be to sideboards, as cheap, efficient artifact answers to a lot of problems will no longer be available. Overall, the cards that were one popular from Mirrodin block for extended fell by the wayside quickly this season (Tooth and Nail, Mindslaver, Triskelion, Trinket Mage) and what saw a lot of play were the best sideboard cards in the format in Chalice of the Void, Engineered Explosives, and Damping Matrix. We will see what Rise of the Eldrazi, M11 and Scards of Mirrodin bring to the format, but it looks like most of the strong decks at this point stay strong except for DDT, and the wild cards of the format like RDW, AiR and Affinity are going to need to retool, or are just getting decimated altogether. (Sorry, Arcbound Ravager!)