Looking at this card, I shudder at the prospect
of having to play in Standard with it. Mostly
because of the art, but the actual effect is
pretty disturbing too. Extirpate was quite
popular in its day, for its ability to
completely derail combo decks by eliminating a
combo piece, and to hamstring control decks by
snatching their best win condition. I can see
this card make short work of Valakut Ramp by
eliminating Primeval Titan, dismember Vengevine
Aggro by cauterizing the namesake card, or
disrupt Caw-Blade by extracting Stoneforge
Mystic. And you can do it all at instant speed,
even when tapped out!
The drawback, of course, is that your target
must be in their graveyard. But of course,
that's no difficulty for a black deck. Turn one:
Duress, Surgical Extraction. Or in older
formats, Thoughtseize, Surgical Extraction. Sure
you paid 4 life to pull that one off, but their
whole deck's raison d'etre is sitting forlornly
in the exile zone. Heck, you can pull this one
off BEFORE your first turn-- if you're on the
draw and your opponent cracks a fetchland or
casts an instant or sorcery, you can Surgical
Extraction before you ever even get a turn. And
you don't even need a single black mana source
in your deck for this thing to be a nightmare.
Turn One: Island, Tome Scour, Surgical
Extraction. You've got up to five choices for
what to rob them of! Get lucky and hit a Valakut
or a Primeval Titan and life looks bad for
Valakut Ramp! And you never know what sort of
deck will spring this on you either-- even
monowhite decks can drop a Surgical Extraction
in response to just about anything. No library
is safe anymore!
Some historical trivia for today: this card is a
callback to Spinal Embrace from Invasion, which
was itself a reference to the lore about
Phyrexian control implants that replaced the
victim's spinal column. Now that the Phyrexians
are consolidating their control over Mirrodin,
I'm not surprised to see the implants return,
but I'll be quite surprised if this card doesn't
make an impact on gameplay. Its function mimics
Extirpate, which was popular as an answer to
graveyard-based strategies and certain combos,
and has even appeared in maindecks in the right
metagames. And if that function can now appear
in literally any deck, no-one will ever know
when they're safe again.
Welcome back readers today we continue review
cards from New Phyrexia. Surgical Extraction is
by far one of the most hyped phyrexia mana cards
and illustrates the concept perfectly. In
standard this card will see a fair amount of
play removing a titan or a decks other win
condition can be devastating and combined with
discard and land destruction it can punish
Valakut decks as well. This card can go in any
deck as well meaning it will appear in a lot of
sideboards. In extended and eternal this card
will see a fair amount of play due to the
presence of powerful cards and the universal
nature of phyrexian mana. In casual and
multiplayer it can punish a player if you know
they have multiple copies of powerful cards such
as instant win cards or just powerful cards. I
am not sure it deserves a spot in your deck as
it may not do much in the course of a game and
it may not find a powerful target. In limited
its doubtful your opponents have multiple copies
of a problematic card but right now it could be
a rare draft its hard to grade this card as its
possibilities have not been fully explored.
Overall a perfect conept of phyrexian mana and a
hyped card from the set believe the hype.
Today's card of the day is Surgical Extraction
which can cost either one mana or two life and
allows you to exile non-basic land cards from a
target player's hand, library, and graveyard
with the same name as a target in their
graveyard. For the cost this is an
incredibly efficient form of disruption that
works best when combined with hand or library
destruction. Even without one of those if
your opponent uses a key card or you destroy a
key permanent once this can remove the threat of
seeing any additional plays of that card for
that game. Being able to use this at
instant speed and without mana, on the first
turn, or whenever needed makes it even better.
This will definitely see play either maindecked
or at least in the sidedeck and with the option
of paying life won't be exclusive to Black
decks.
For Limited the lack of multiples of cards make
this the exact opposite of Constructed formats
and a nearly unplayable rare. It is
unlikely your opponent will have multiples of a
card and even if they do they may not even see
them in a single game. Aside from a card
that can get returned to play there is little
use in playing this card and the primary reason
to draft it would be for rarity alone. In
Sealed this should always be left in the
sidedeck and only switched in if you really want
to see someone's deck, know they have multiples
of a major threat, or some way of returning a
big threat into play.
Welcome to New Phyrexia
preview week here at Pojo.com! Today we take a
look at Surgical Extraction. Surgical Extraction
is an instant that costs one black Phyrexian
mana. This means that you can either pay one
black mana or two life to cast Surgical
Extraction. Surgical Extraction allows you to
choose a target card in a graveyard except for
basic land, then search that players hand,
graveyard, and library for all cards with the
same name as the chosen card and exile them.
That player then shuffles their library.
There has been no shortage of these kinds of spells recently.
Cards designed to attack players where it hurts,
everywhere! In Scars of Mirrodin Memoricide
quickly ran up the chain as a must play for
several deck styles including Black/Blue
Control. Now with Surgical Extraction, it should
continue. The reason is simple, cast anything
that forces discard, and then if they pitch
something good, you merely give up two life to
ensure they never see that card again. Take for
instance any card with a shuffle clause, such as
Emrakul. When discarded, its shuffle clause goes
on the stack, you respond by casting this for
two life (or one black mana) and there goes
Emrakul. Or in staying with block, perhaps this
comes up at the prerelease or booster draft,
Blightsteel Colossus. When the card would get
shuffled, it instead vanishes to exile, bringing
all copies of it with it.
Surgical Extraction and all the similar cards can literally
kill combo decks, simply by removing one
critical piece of the equation. A counter spell
followed by Surgical Extraction could spell doom
if not careful. And what’s better, due to the
fact you don’t need mana to cast Surgical
Extraction, it very well could find a new home
outside of a black deck. A lot of players went
to black and blue control instead of white
simply because of Memoricide. Now they can
return to their white and blue, and just add in
Surgical Extraction.
