Extirpate in the sidebard of control decks: How is it used?

[marcb]

I wanted to start a thread about this topic beause I have noticed several top 8 control decks that have chosen to use extirpate as a 1-2 of in the sideboard and I'm not sure what decks and specific strategies this combats.

From a purely theoretical standpoint, I assume the card is better in control decks packing snapaster mage and duress effects. Snapcaster allows a flashbacked copy to be played that might allow you to choose a card that is not only in the opponent's graveyard but may be in his/her hand (since the first copy revealed his/her hand) negating the virtual card disadvantage of extirpate if you loose a card from your hand and don't return the favor. Duress gives similar knowledge of the opponent's hand plus might remove a card worth "extirpating" without requiring they cast it yet. I imagine for similar reasons extirpate might also be better in a control deck with Vendilion Clique for the same reason. Finally, I assume Wasteland might have synergy if you were to try to use extirpate as potential land destruction. All of this being stated, Extirpate rarely makes the cut as a main deck card, so there must be a better reason to sideboard Extirpate.

Clearly, it is at its best against graveyard strategies such as Dredge or Combo relying on Yawgmoth's Will, but as a sideboard card, there are much better options to combat Dredge such as Leyline of the Void, Rest in Peace, Nihil Spellbomb, etc, and against combo, there is always flusterstorm and the rest of the control deck that is maindecked to have an advantage against combo. This leads me to believe that Extirpate is being used from the sideboard against other decks, which give the card a net advantage over these other narrower options to combat Dredge or Combo, specifically. My question to those who use it is "What decks do you bring it in against and how do you use it?", assuming you have cards such as snapcaster, counterspells, duress, wasteland, Vendilion Clique for support. Do you play it against shops and attempt to extirpate mishra's factory if you wasteland it? Do you play it against control to remove future Force of Will? It is clearly also good against oath if you manage to put one in the graveyard. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated as my gut tells me it is often just card disadvantage unless you know something (or have a great suspicion) for what's in the opponent's hand, yet people far better than I are putting this card in their sideboard. Thanks in advance.

Marc

[A.-1.]

In short, it's a great utility card. It has some value versus almost every deck in the format. Think of it like Pithing Needle.

Your reasoning is correct. Acquiring perfect knowledge of an opponent's hand is a very strong effect, as is removing all copies of a problematic or key card in their deck. The only other main reason I could think of that you missed is that Extirpate negates topdeck tutors.

Extirpate suffers the same cons as cards like Extract. Even if you do Extirpate Gush, Jace, Oath, etc., the opponent still has other avenues of victory. Extirpate is more suited to slowing a deck down or making it more linear and isn't as crippling as it once was with decks playing more win conditions nowadays. I believe it is best suited in the sideboard of a combo deck like Doomsday or Turbo Tezz where you want perfect information before going off.

[ramrodjon]

I typically board in 2 copies vs. Drain decks, mostly to hit Force of Will, Mana Drain, Jace, or Bolt, but I've also been able to Extirpate Oath of Druids and force them into an alternate win-con.  This weekend at TPG, after my opponent fate-sealed me with an active Jace, I Extirpated my own Extirpate, just for the shuffle effect.  I top-decked a much needed V. Clique!  With that being said, there are certainly better blanket options, but like Rob mentioned, knowledge is powerful, and removing a crutch card can be crippling to the opponent. 

[TheWhiteDragon]

I typically use it to answer problem cards.  It's hard to duress/counter all 4 copies of a particularly problematic card.  But if I can thoughtseize early and yank one copy of the problem card, I can then extirpate and rip all 4 copies.  It's usually card disadvantage, but it prevents me from having to worry about the 1 card I fear most from my opponent.  After stopping just 1 copy, I no longer have to worry about having future answers to that threat.  Sometimes it's a crippler, like pulling oath  or tendrils, etc...but sometimes it can just get you a bunch of tempo (yanking gush for example) or help you fight your spells through (nabbing FoW) or just hit the one troubling card (like a killed/countered golem).  It actually doesn't feel so great against dredge to me since they have so many things that can kill you from the grave, but against things like snapcaster decks, you can negate the CA of the snapcaster as well as clear out a utility card of theirs.  Against decks like dragon, it can just flat out win too.

[Guli]

I used Surgical Extraction to acquire information about the opponent's deck and hand. This allowed me to use Meddling Mage and Phyrexian Revoker more efficiently. Extirpate can be used to do the same, but obviously it is a matter of speed versus certainty of resolving your threat (split second).

[Soly]

Extirpate can break open Control Mirrors, and I almost ALWAYS include 1 in my sideboards if my deck can cast the card.   I view it as a duress.  You can't ALWAYS assume your opponent is going to do nothing;  in the games that you're at a stalemate, you can hit Force of Will or Flusterstorm.

The card is insane against Landstill too.  If you can get rid of one of their Jaces or a Standstill and then Extirpate it, they're deck turns from bad and grindy to slow and terrible. 

More than anything, it's the best card you can have against the Snapcaster Bug decks right now.

[vaughnbros]

The card is insane against Landstill too.  If you can get rid of one of their Jaces or a Standstill and then Extirpate it, their deck turns from bad and grindy to slow and terrible.  

If landstill is so bad why are you running a sideboard card to beat it?

Extirpate is overall a solid card though with the exception of decks without draw engines, like shops.  Hitting the pillar of your opponent's deck as a control player or hitting a counterspell as a combo player can make a huge difference in how the rest of the game is played.

[TheBrassMan]

To offer an alternate opinion, I've found extirpate weak-to-embarrassing in my experience. Full disclosure, I've only rarely played with the card in my own deck (or similar cards like Surgical Extraction), because the results have never been positive enough to justify playing it at multiple events, or spend valuable testing time using it. I can't recall ever losing a game to Extirpate, though it's possible my memory is failing. When Extirpate was first printed and I was running Recoup-based Gifts Ungiven decks, I was afraid of the card being a one mana blowout answer to Gifts - but I never saw the card actually play out that way in practice.

More than one person in the thread so far have mentioned using other, information-gathering cards to counteract Extirpate's inherent card disadvantage - which in and of itself should be a pretty major red flag. Historically speaking, when you have to assemble a two card combo just to build an average card effect, the component cards aren't worth running.

While at best Extirpate is mildly annoying (like when they make a Yawgmoth's Will worse but you still win because it's Yawgmoth's Will), often it's simply dead ... but I've been in a number of games where Extirpate was worse than dead. I've played a number of games where an opponent's Extirpate HELPED me win.

Extirpate players (in my experience), tend to be pretty excited to knock out cards that exist in multiples, like counters, lands, cantrips - but typically speaking these are the worst cards in a player's deck. The best cards are, quite obviously, one ofs, as the best cards are restricted. When a player Extirpates Force of Wills, they INCREASE the odds of a player drawing powerful engine cards and winning immediately. This is even more true against the decks that, in my experience, tend to run Extirpates - slower decks with less threats worthy of using Force of Will on.

Extirpate targetting fetchlands is so good for the opposing player that I would consider running duplicates of the same fetches (i.e. 4 delta over a 1/1/1/1 split) if I thought there was a chance people might be extirpating them. If my opponent is hitting my fetches with extirpate I typically WANT them to remove as many as possible

If you remove draw spells, they're STILL digging through their deck faster - instead of drawing the Gush or Preordain, they're drawing the first card they would have gotten them without having to cast anything. Sometimes that's worse than drawing Gush ... but often it's better - and you actually spent a card and a mana to give them that advantage.

Extirpate costs you a mana and a card to increase the probability that your opponent draws restricted cards. I have won more games from my opponent's Extirpate HELPING me than I have lost to their Extirpate hurting. I can think of specific situations where Extirpate would be a blowout, but in practice I just haven't seen them happen remotely as often as the card is dead or worse. (as a tip to anyone who insists on playing the card, most of the "good" extirpates I've seen included countering an enemy Vampiric/Mystical Tutor with the mandatory shuffle effect - as a way to buy back some advantage) It seems actively bad against combo and control decks, and underpowered against Dredge (not to mention being almost strictly worse than Surgical Extraction in that particular matchup)

In short, I would not recommend running Extirpates in all but extremely specific circumstances (maybe a field with lots of Dragon and no Dredge?). Unless of course you're playing against me, in which case I recommend the full set of four pleasethanks.

[boggyb]

I used to run them from time to time and found them to be like 25% great upside / 75% terrible downside-type cards in a lot of matchups, especially against any Blue deck with broken stuff in it. I don't think that kind of effect is worth devoting a lot of energy to in Vintage. Maybe as a 1-of trick here and there but not any more than that.

For example, wasting a T1 Underground Sea -> Extract the Sea can be very powerful when combined with other mana denial elements.

On the other hand, a play like Bait out Force -> Extract the Force (or any number of plays like this) is usually awful. Can be kind of a subtle and effective play if you're hyper-aware of the matchup and how your opponent wants to play against you, but in general that kind of thing is just loose play and not worth the time.

Extirpate is one of the best cards to break a Standstill with at EOT, though, I will give it that.

[shrewarmies]

The greedier the control deck the stronger extirpate gets. I rmember running Extraction in dark times and extracting a Gro players Tropical Islands leaving them with only Emerald and Lotus as green sources. In cases like this extraction can flat out win a game.

In most situations it is not as great, it seems fine as a card but I find it does not make the cut for most decks I play.

[AmbivalentDuck]

Extirpate is best when it's important to answer a particular engine card such as Narcomoeba. The best cards are not necessarily restricted, if only because of situational value and a restricted list that doesn't always keep up with the facts on the ground. Back in the 4x Brainstorm meta, Extirpate was much better since decks were less highlander-ish and counterspell diversity was much lower. In Doomsday especially, nailing the opponent's FoWs could be very effective.

[Soly]

Cards I have extirpated to great success:

Narcomoeba
Bridge from Below
Cabal Therapy
Force of Will * really any hard-counter*
Oath of Druids
Flusterstorm
Abrupt Decay *I was on Doomsday and I won because of this as he had one AND snapcaster in hand*
Wasteland * This is rare, but it DOES happen*
Worldgorger Dragon
Jace, the Mindsculptor
Standstill
Mishra's Factory.


I had a game where my opponent let me resolve Snapcaster to block his Factory, and I flashed back Extirpate, blocked factory, and then extirpated them.   I had already extirpated his Jace's.   It was glorious

[personalbackfire]

Really the only reason I ever consider playing Surgical or Extirpate is if I am really tight on sb slots. Lets say my sb is full of shop and fish hate and I only have 4 leylines for dredge with one slot remaining for blue decks or an additional dredge hate. In that case I might consider Surgical since it's okay against both. But really my experience has been more in line with what Brassman suggests with the card, it's underwhelming. In the scenario I just stated I think I would be more inclined to just choose playing a Nihil Spellbomb or Relic of Progenitus since they are both better gy hate than Surgical/Extirpate and are passably good against blue decks because of the cantrip.

If you have sb space, better cards exist for fighting graveyards and disrupting blue decks/ gathering information.

[zeus-online]

.

[forests failed you]

Cards I have extirpated to great success:

Narcomoeba
Bridge from Below
Cabal Therapy
Force of Will * really any hard-counter*
Oath of Druids
Flusterstorm
Abrupt Decay *I was on Doomsday and I won because of this as he had one AND snapcaster in hand*
Wasteland * This is rare, but it DOES happen*
Worldgorger Dragon
Jace, the Mindsculptor
Standstill
Mishra's Factory.


I had a game where my opponent let me resolve Snapcaster to block his Factory, and I flashed back Extirpate, blocked factory, and then extirpated them.   I had already extirpated his Jace's.   It was glorious

You missed the best one!  Extirpate all Gush!

[TheWhiteDragon]

Extirpate is a good 1 or 2-of in SBs and almost never main.  It has marginal use against a few decks, but not great against most.  It isn't better than ANY hate against any one particular deck, but universally useful enough to make a decent board card.  It IS great against narrow decks where you know pulling the lynch pin will cripple it.  Yanking oath from an oath deck puts them on a really tough and much more fragile win con.  Buys you time to win.  Ripping burning wish from the wish decks is awesome and when you have additional hate like cage, you basically leave them winconless.  i find it best when your main deck runs 8 duress effects already.  Counters are okay, but duress also gives you knowledge of their hand, so you can not only pull the lynch pin for extirpating, but can show you if they have a hand of 3 gush and you can snag great value pulling a supplemental card that isn't necessarily their win card.