With the release of Ravnica, the first set to come after Kamigawa block finishes, the 3 oldest blocks of Extended and the oldest core set will rotate out of the format. That means 6th Edition, Tempest, Saga, and Masques. No more Vampiric Tutors, no more Fanatics, no more Masticores, no more.. well, I guess Masques didn't have that much to offer. But the change is not a small one, and will simultaneously kill and give birth to many decks.



Color Hosers: Red, which has been on the recieving end of the most shafts in Extended, is finally being freed from Chill. Monoblack has been freed from Light of Day, which set an upper limit on how strong the deck could be. Perish is also leaving, which is too bad because before rotation monogreen didn't exist but post-rotation it will be out in force, with at least four decks containing large amounts of green creatures.

Mana Denial: Pretty much everything's going here. The loss of Wasteland, Rishadan Port, Tangle Wire and even Dust Bowl means that decks like Ponza and RDW will have to look for new strategies, while slower decks with more colors become more secure. Red players should exploit the move to multicolor with Blood Moons and Dwarven Blastminers.

Mass Artifact Hate: Extended loses Energy Flux, Shatterstorm, Rack and Ruin, Pulverize, Meltdown, Rebuild and Serenity. The big loser here is blue, who has nothing left to fight Affinity with except Reduce to Dreams. Affinity has been hyped to stronger than it is, so expect a lot of artifact hate and more enchantment hate than you'd normally encounter for the first few months after rotation. You may see some KCI and Belcher as well, though the loss of combo-enablers makes them a lot weaker post-rotation.

Blue Drawing Insanity: Accumulated Knowledge and Brainstorm are both leaving, slowing down blue significantly and making blue decks a lot more prone to discard and manascrew since the remaining draw spells are more expensive and Brainstorm can't hide your best cards. Serum Vision will be popping up a lot.

Search: Vampiric Tutor, Enlightened Tutor, and Intuition are all gone, marking the end of 3rd turn combo decks and Intuition for 3 AKs. Wishes are the best remaining option.

Quick Fat: Exhume, Reanimate, Goblin Welder and Show and Tell are all leaving, meaning an almost guaranteed death of 2nd or 3rd turn Akromas and Titans. Between the loss of Titan and Wastelands and the coming of Ravnica, multicolor decks should start appearing everywhere.


Massive Green: Green is gold right now, holding at least 3 of the format's best 5 cards. Eternal Witness, Plow Under, Troll Ascetic and Naturalize, along with a million ways to ramp up mana and use it makes green the new blue. Eternal Witness with Plow Under can throw two lands onto your library by turn 3 and another two by turn 5, so don't entirely remove your discard and counterspells, because those are the only things that will save you from this potential game-wrecker as well as Troll Ascetic. How convenient that green also happens to have Dosan... If you don't pack green, you better have multiple ways to help you fight it, especially the Troll. Heavily green decks have a tendency to run very little draw outside of Witness, so if you can maintain a steady defense its possible to run them out of gas.

The Fall of Blue: Blue loses countless important cards in the rotation, gains enemies in Dosan, AEther Vial and Boseiju and doesn't lose Choke or Boil in the rotation. Because Vial and Boseiju can be played in any deck and blue has few non-counterspell answers to permanents, don't expect many monoblue or even mostly-blue decks around.

Gold Cards: According to our Rumor Mill, Ravnica will have a plethora of gold cards that benefit each other. You may not want to blow your savings on a Goblins, Monogreen or MBC deck just yet.

Engineered Explosives: A cheap counter to tokens and massed weenies, Engineered Explosives can be easily used by plenty of decks because of multilands and land searchers. If you're a speculator these will probably get fairly popular, and if you're not you should get them anyways as they'll be very relevant soon. And try to spread out the CMC of your creatures if you can help it; for example, an Explosives for two can really wreck Fish (see below) and get you out of a Standstill, and an Explosives for one can kill a bunch of Birds and Elves, crippling your opponents' mana development. There are very few decks with expensive or big creatures, so Explosives should be able to take out most threats.




Enchantress – Auratog, Argothian Enchantress, Rancor and Ancestral Mask.

Reanimator– Reanimate, Exhume, and Show and Tell. Besides Life/Death and Stitch Together, the only reanimation spells left cost four mana or more.

Aluren– Aluren. That’s all that really matters.

Turboland– Horn of Greed, Exploration.

Sneaky-Go– Sneak Attack, Gamble, all the 2-mana lands. Not to mention that the deck was shaky to begin with.

Rector Burst – Academy Rector, Pattern of Rebirth, Pandeburst Combo, and the Parallax Enchantments.

Suiblack – Dauthi, Negator, Reaver, Skirge, Tangle Wire, Wasteland, Hatred, Zombies. The only cards left are the discard spells and the Shade, which can’t run a deck by themselves.


Life – Nomads en-Kor, Shaman en-Kor, Worthy Cause, Task Force. That means switching to free equipment, which will be hit by Affinity hate. Your combo pieces go from 2/2/2 to 2/1/1, which isn't good, especially when the combo occurs at sorcery speed. Orim's Chant and Steelshaper's Gift may give this deck some life, but it will likely just be a shell of its former self since what made the deck special (the amazing redundancy of all of its combo pieces) is gone.

RDW– Fanatic, Wasteland, Port, Tangle Wire, Seal of Fire, Cursed Scroll. More creatures means it's less likely that Slith Firewalker will get through, especially since there's no mana disruption to prevent creatures from being played. While not actually dead, it’s probably best that red players revert to R/G Beats or Goblins for the time being, who suffer much less from the rotation.

Temporary Solution– Parallax Wave, Armageddon, Soltari, Gilded Drake, Enlightened Tutor. That is, all the game breakers. With Parallax Wave gone, white lacks the cheap unconditional spot removal it so desperately needs. Wizards is reprinting the completely inadequate Reciprocate in 9th edition, so the day when White Weenie becomes a threat again in Extended is a long ways off.

Teen Titans – Welder, Exhume, Intuition, Reanimate. Massive reconstruction is needed here, if the deck can even survive without Welder; it would involve a quick Titan or Bosh using Trash for Treasure and Life/Death. The creatures' high CMC would make them resistant to red Affinity hate, but decks with green would roll over this like nothing, so no.

NO Stick – Artifact hate for Affinity and Vials dodging Chant makes life much harder for NO Stick, even though the deck itself only loses a few draw spells (which, admittedly, cuts heavily into the number of Scepter targets). Perhaps it can survive by mixing with Temporary Solution; otherwise both decks will probably be replaced by U/W control as they weren't dominating to begin with and both lack good creature removal.


GAT - Gro-A-Tog technically doesn't lose anything it NEEDS to survive, but the loss of free spells is really, really painful. We'll have to see if cheap spells can do as a replacement, but with the horde of aggro coming down my guess is no, since that's not Gro-A-Tog's best matchup. Like a lot of decks, a simple Troll Ascetic makes life hard and GAT does nothing really special to make it stand out from the crowd or make its creatures extra-deadly. The deck's greatest asset right now is its multicoloredness and wide range of acceptable cards, meaning it has potential to benefit from Ravinca, but otherwise it's not significant.

GAT
Creatures 4 Quirion Dryad 2 Psychatog Card Advantage 4 Serum Visions 4 Sleight of Hand 4 Obsessive Search 3 Fire // Ice 3 Merfolk Looter 3 Thought Courier Counters: 4 Force Spike 3 Disrupting Shoal 3 Circular Logic 2 Stifle	Utility 2 Umezawa's Jitte Mana: 4 Chrome Mox 4 Yavimaya Coast 4 City of Brass 3 Polluted Delta 3 Island 1 Swamp	Sideboard 4 Oxidize 4 Ghastly Demise 3 Engineered Plague 2 Stifle 2 Static Orb

Cephalife– Exhume, Nomads En-Kor, Shaman En-Kor, Reanimate, Worldly and Vampiric Tutor, Worthy Cause. Has all the problems Life does. A quick Umezawa's Jitte or Meddling Mage naming Shuko makes your life miserable, but since reanimation is dying there will be less graveyard hate so you can be more assured to Stitch Together your Sutured Ghoul if you can get to that point. You can try to play it, but the deck will be slower and more prone to disruption. Still very playable, though.

TurbulentDirge's Cephalife
4 City of Brass 4 Forbidden Orchard 2 Llanowar Wastes 2 Tarnished Citadel 2 Adarkar Wastes 2 Chrome Mox 2 Starlit Sanctum 1 Forsaken City 1 Underground River 1 Yavimaya Coast 1 Brushland Creatures 4 Birds of Paradise 3 Cephalid Illusionist 3 Daru Spiritualist 1 Trinket Mage 1 Sutured Ghoul 1 Krosan Cloudscraper	Utility 4 Shuko 4 Living Wish 4 Cabal Therapy 4 Steelshaper's Gift 3 Eladamri's Call 2 AEther Vial 1 Life // Death 1 Dragon Breath 1 Krosan Reclamation 1 Stitch Together 1 Lightning Greaves	Sideboard 1 Starlit Sanctum 1 Cephalid Illusionist 1 Trinket Mage 1 Daru Spiritualist 1 Flametongue Kavu 1 Blinkmoth Well 1 Mesmeric Fiend 1 Eternal Witness 1 Kami of Ancient Law 1 Meddling Mage 1 Viridian Shaman 1 Leonin Shikari 1 Dragon Wings 1 Dragon Shadow 1 Ray of Revelation

Draco Explosion – Enlightened Tutor, Scroll Rack, Brainstorm. That is, every quick way to get Draco on top of your library if it’s not already there and you haven’t drawn it yet. Sensei's Divining Top can hold it there once it appears, but then that means you can't use shuffle effects or Fact or Fiction and just have to wait to draw the Explosion or a Burning Wish. And if the Explosion is in your hand, nothing is keeping it from being Duressed away. Insidious Dreams is a much more reliable way of drawing the combo, but that means it goes off turn 5 or later. That's not horrible, but it's also wishful thinking with all the disruption in the new environment. You'll have to rely on early discard to prevent Condescends, Tooth and Nails and Plow Unders from ruining your day. The deck survives, but the power level drop will probably place it below where it was in the rankings.

Super-risky Draco
Combo 4 Draco 4 Erratic Explosion Search 4 Night's Whisper 4 Cunning Wish 3 Insidious Dreams 1 Wild Research Control 4 Magma Jet 4 Fire // Ice 4 Duress 4 Addle 3 Terminate	Land 5 Swamp 5 Mountain 4 Polluted Delta 4 Sulfurous Springs 2 City of Brass 1 Island	Sideboard 4 Engineered Explosives 4 Cranial Extraction 4 Echoing Truth 1 Insidious Dreams 1 Urza's Rage 1 Terminate

Tooth and Nail is the only remaining deck that can consistently drop fatties without paying for them. If that's your style, Tooth is the way to go, and since all other fast fat decks are gone you may see fewer edicts. However, Tooth is very disruptable, and can't easily protect itself from Plow Under, Cranial Extraction, Counterspell or mass removal. The advantages Tooth has over regular monogreen (see below) are rapidly decreasing.. however, if you can pull off a Tooth the game will usually be yours. Depending on the hand and amount of disruption, Tooth also "combos" about turn 4 or 5. Many versions use Living Wish for utility, extra defense, or Tooth targets.

Tooth and Nail

Creatures 4 Sakura-Tribe Elder 3 Eternal Witness 1 Darksteel Colossus 1 Sundering Titan 1 Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker 1 Triskelion 1 Mephidross Vampire 1 Ravenous Baloth Utility 4 Sylvan Scrying 4 Kodama's Reach 4 Burning Wish 3 Tooth and Nail 3 Moment's Peace 2 Pernicious Deed 2 Reap and Sow 2 Sensei's Divining Top Land 10 Forest 4 Cloudpost 2 Llanowar Wastes 2 Karplusan Forest 1 Mountain 1 Swamp 1 Boseiju, Who Shelters All Sideboard 4 Naturalize 4 Engineered Plague 2 Mindslaver 1 Rude Awakening 1 Fireball 1 Pyroclasm 1 Cranial Extraction 1 Tooth and Nail

Confinement – Squee and Intuition are both leaving, which means reverting back to Genesis (although you could also use Grim Reminder), which can serve as your kill as well. Having two enchantments as a win condition seems risky, but Genesis/Confinement kills plenty of decks; Mystic Snake and Kami of False Hope can lock out a couple more, and there are creature options in the sideboard when you want to go for the kill. Once again, Reanimator leaving means less Coffin Purges for Genesis and thus a more stable lock.

WUG Confinement
Combo 4 Solitary Confinement 2 Genesis 1 Eternal Dragon 1 Krosan Tusker Control 4 Condescend 4 Circular Logic 3 Wrath of God Search 4 Howling Mine 4 Living Wish 4 Sterling Grove 3 Compulsion 2 Trade Secrets	Land 6 Island 4 Windswept Heath 4 Yavimaya Coast 4 Adarkar Wastes 3 Forest 3 Plains Win Condition 2 Spirit Cairn	Sideboard 4 Moment's Peace 1 Krosan Tusker 1 Genesis 1 Eternal Dragon 1 Kami of False Hope 1 Meloku, the Clouded Mirror 1 Kami of Ancient Law 1 Meddling Mage 1 Viridian Shaman 1 Ravenous Baloth 1 Mystic Snake 1 Auramancer

Krosan Tusker + Genesis = sweet.


Desire – Cloud, Snap, Turnabout, City of Traitors, Medallion, Meditate, Brainstorm, AK, Intuition. The untap spells are what drives Desire. Since all the blue ones are leaving, Desire will have to add a large component of green for mana generation, card recursion and Moment's Peace, and perhaps white as well for Sunscape Familiars. The presence of Moment's Peace actually makes UG Desire stronger against aggro than current Desire, and the departure of Volrath's Stronghold makes the matchup against Rock marginally better. I personally prefer the Heartbeat version over the Twiddle version, but both are playable.

UG Twiddle Desire
Acceleration 4 Fertile Ground 4 Wild Growth 3 Sunscape Familiar 2 Sakura-Tribe Elder Engine 4 Mind's Desire 4 Dream's Grip 3 Early Harvest 2 Future Sight 1 Nostalgic Dreams Search 4 Deep Analysis 3 Cunning Wish 2 Fact or Fiction	Control 2 Memory Lapse Land 10 Forest 6 Island 3 Windswept Heath 2 Flooded Strand 1 Plains	Sideboard 4 Moment's Peace 4 Oxidize 1 Stifle 1 Hibernation 1 Brain Freeze 1 Chain of Vapor 1 Early Harvest 1 Fact or Fiction 1 Mana Short

WUG Freeze
Acceleration 4 Sakura-Tribe Elder 4 Kodama's Reach 4 Heartbeat of Spring 3 Sunscape Familiar Engine 3 Early Harvest 2 Eternal Witness 2 Rude Awakening 1 Nostalgic Dreams Search 3 Cunning Wish 3 Deep Analysis 3 Fact or Fiction 2 Trade Secrets	Control 4 Moment's Peace Land 9 Forest 5 Island 4 Yavimaya Coast 3 Windswept Heath 1 Plains	Sideboard 4 Echoing Truth 4 Oxidize 1 Stifle 1 Hibernation 1 Brain Freeze 1 Chain of Vapor 1 Early Harvest 1 Fact or Fiction 1 Mana Short

Macey Rock – Rancor, Recurring Nightmare, Feeder, Yavimaya Elder, Treetop Village, Stronghold, Dust Bowl, Vampiric Tutor, Wall of Blossoms. Quite a handful. Macey or Aggro Rock, however, only loses Village, Rancor and Tutor, which is survivable. The resurgence in aggro bodes well for the Rock, and it should do fine in the new environment considering that Pernicious Deed wrecks aggro and especially Affinity. When extended rotates you might want to switch out your Therapies for Duresses until the top tier decks and decklists emerge. Be warned Macey Rock doesn't have the resiliency old Rock does, and if the game starts getting drawn out you may find yourself being beat by decks packing more recursion than your two Witnesses. With the removal of combo Macey Rock may actually revert back to old Rock if it can find the cards, since cards like Mesmeric Fiend and Wild Mongrel in a deck without draw aren't very good in an aggro field. Fiend is very good for putting dangerous cards where Witness can't retrieve them, however.

Macey Rock
Creatures 4 Birds of Paradise 3 Llanowar Elves 4 Mesmeric Fiend 4 Troll Ascetic 3 Wild Mongrel 2 Eternal Witness Utility 4 Cabal Therapy 4 Sword of Fire and Ice 3 Call of the Herd 3 Smother 2 Pernicious Deed 2 Genju of the Cedars	Land 11 Forest 7 Swamp 4 Llanowar Wastes	Sideboard 4 Engineered Plague 4 Naturalize 3 Chainer's Edict 2 Duress 2 Cranial Extraction

Monogreen – Deranged Hermit, Masticore, Rofellos, Priest of Titania, Crop Rotation, Gaea’s Cradle. Of course, green has gotten more than its fair share of goodies in the past few sets, like Witness/Plow and Ascetic/Jitte. Birds allow you to create large Engineered Explosives, and Rude Awakening or another token generator plus Fangren Firstborn can create instant unexpected armies. Green also gets the lion’s share of artifact removal. This deck will be huge in extended for a long time, since its strongest cards are Type-II legal. In fact, this deck is Type-II legal.

Green Control
Creatures 4 Birds of Paradise 4 Sakura-Tribe Elder 4 Troll Ascetic 4 Eternal Witness 3 Beacon of Creation 2 Meloku the Clouded Mirror 2 Fangren Firstborn Spells 4 Plow Under 3 Kodama's Reach 3 Umezawa's Jitte 3 Sword of Fire and Ice 2 Rude Awakening	Land 20 Forest 1 Swamp 1 Island	Sideboard 4 Engineered Explosives 4 Naturalize 3 Cranial Extraction 3 Dosan the Falling Leaf 1 Beacon of Creation

Goblins – Mogg Fanatic, Mogg Flunkies, Food Chain. That’s it. That’s very survivable, and red is #2 in artifact removal with Overload, Hearth Kami, and Granulate. Chill is also leaving the format, and since Goblins is the only viable red deck left, fewer decks will be packing hate against it. However, the loss of the 1/1 lava dart and the larger presence of creature decks may hinder the deck, as will the extremely common Engineered Plague and Troll Ascetic. Adding Sparksmiths and Meekstones go a long way towards hindering large opposing creatures, and Goblin King can solve the Plague problem.

RG Goblins
Creatures 4 Goblin Matron 4 Goblin Ringleader 4 Goblin Sledder 4 Goblin Piledriver 4 Skirk Prospector 4 Goblin Warchief 4 Gempalm Incinerator 2 Sparksmith 2 Siege-Gang Commander 1 Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker 1 Goblin Sharpshooter	Acceleration 4 AEther Vial 2 Chrome Mox Land 11 Mountain 4 Wooded Foothills 4 Karplusan Forest 1 Forest	Sideboard 4 Naturalize 4 Blood Moon 4 Pyrostatic Pillar 3 Goblin King

Affinity– All this really loses is Fling and maybe Tangle Wire, which can be replaced by Static Orb. With combo leaving, Meddling Mage is far less important.
Affinity has been hyped a lot in the past few months, so expect to face a lot of hate in the form of recurring Viridian Shamans and Naturalizes via Eternal Witness and Astral Slide, as well as the new Affinity-killer Wizards has promised. There is a very good chance that Affinity will be hated out of the format at least for the first few months of the rotation, and may or may not come back.

Affinity
Creatures 4 Arcbound Worker 4 Disciple of the Vault 4 Frogmite 4 Arcbound Ravager 3 Myr Enforcer 2 Atog Utility 4 AEther Vial 4 Thoughtcast 4 Standstill 4 Chromatic Sphere 3 Cranial Plating 1 Shrapnel Blast	Land 4 Seat of the Synod 4 Vault of Whispers 4 Darksteel Citadel 2 Great Furnace 2 Glimmervoid 2 Blinkmoth Nexus 1 City of Brass	Sideboard 4 Engineered Plague 4 Cabal Therapy 4 Stifle 3 Shrapnel Blast

U/G Madness – Loses Intuition, Bouncer, Daze, plus Drake, Chill and Energy Flux in the side. Bouncer can be replaced with Bursts, Truths, or splashing for removal. Intuition can be replaced with Quiet Speculation, Gifts Ungiven, or just dropped altogether. Energy Flux can be partially spoken for with Naturalize, but both Chill and Drake are irreplaceable. U/G Madness will pretty much stay as it was, but with a worse sideboard like everyone else. Gifts should usually fetch Genesis, Wonder, Gigapede and Deep Analysis because whatever is chosen, the Gigapede will quickly hit the graveyard and discard the remaining cards.

UG Madness
Discard Outlets 4 Careful Study 4 Aquamoeba 4 Wild Mongrel 1 Thought Courrier 1 Merfolk Looter 1 Gigapede Discard Benefactors 4 Basking Rootwalla 4 Arrogant Wurm 4 Circular Logic 3 Deep Analysis 3 Roar of the Wurm 1 Wonder 1 Genesis	Search 3 Gifts Ungiven Land 8 Island 8 Forest 4 Yavimaya Coast 2 City of Brass	Sideboard 4 Naturalize 3 Stifle 3 Umezawa's Jitte 2 Rushing River 2 Quiet Speculation 1 Roar of the Wurm

Tog – Intuition, Gush, Foil, AK, Sapphire Medallion, Brainstorm. Brainstorm becomes Serum Visions and Medallion becomes Nightscape Familiar, which opens doors for adding red. Post-rotation Tog will be a lot more creature oriented, adding Meloku and Finkel or plenty more removal. Vedalken Shackles is also possible, but being an artifact makes it risky. The biggest problem Tog will face post-rotation is recurring Extractions via Witness and the loss of Energy Flux. Boseiju, Who Shelters All and first-turn AEther Vials are also getting pretty popular, which could be very problematic for a deck that's almost 25% counterspells.

Typical Tog
Creatures 4 Psychatog Counterspells 4 Force Spike 4 Counterspell 3 Circular Logic 3 Mana Leak Utility 4 Smother 3 Cunning Wish 3 Fact or Fiction 3 Deep Analysis 3 Engineered Plague 2 Upheaval	Land 13 Island 4 Polluted Delta 4 Underground River 3 Swamp	Sideboard 4 Vedalkan Shackles 2 Night of Souls' Betrayal 1 Hideous Laughter 1 Hibernation 1 Ghastly Demise 1 Fact or Fiction 1 Circular Logic 1 Engineered Plague 1 Stifle 1 Brain Freeze 1 Recoil

Fish– Cloud, Fanatic and Daze. The only replacable one is Fanatic for Frostling. RDW players who don't like Goblins may want to check this out since the deck plays fairly similarly to RDW but doesn't get shut down as easily by hate. Grim Lavamancer, Razorfin Hunter and Fire // Ice all do a good job of shutting down early mana producers, and a flipping out a Standstill after an AEther Vial or Grim Lavamancer is an easy three cards, though if your opponent also plays Vial the card is pretty worthless.
The deck is still solid, but with combo disappearing you may want to start searching out the more aggressive R/G instead, as counterspells are less useful against aggro decks. If your field is filled with Plow Unders and slow decks, however, stick with Fish. Engineered Explosives is paticularly painful for this deck, and there's no way to stop it going second. Stifle will see a lot of switching in from the sideboard to combat Explosives, Deeds, Genesis, Circular Logic and Brain Freeze. Some versions of Fish are splashing white and making the deck more wizard-y, adding Meddling Mage, Patron Wizard and Stormscape Apprentice for extreme lockdowns.

UR Fish
Creatures 4 Grim Lavamancer 4 Spiketail Hatchling 4 Voidmage Prodigy 3 Razorfin Hunter 3 Flametongue Kavu Utility 4 AEther Vial 4 Mana Leak 4 Fire // Ice 3