considering that fish was on the draw, and thus, did not have a possible daze available (no lands in play), this example is subpar. In the example, sphere of resistance was played using workshop mana, which is odd considering that you could have used your moxes to play it, or play the chalice for 0 after the sphere of resistance (which isn't a great play since you burn for 1 if your sphere of resistance gets countered). I could understand if you bluff a reb or something, but it just feels subpar.

it was fairly predictible that the uba stax composite list looked very close to 'the original' because the variations of uba stax were all based on the same decklist.

I am sure if you politely ask for others to complete/review your article, they will do it. You could kind of approve/reject the modifications/new stuff that the other people adds and that would team up to a great article

playing with the old mulligan rule would result with decks running no lands, where you mulligan until you hit the perfect hand.

ok, but then, if you read my post, what do you make out of mindslaver turns ?

I've seen it done quite a few times, though usually not with gifts decks. With that said, I believe that you are right, and there should be an exception to the rule, because it feels truly like abusing the rules. Extra turns gained shouldn't count towards the 5 remaining turns. Unfortunately that wouldn't take care of the case of mindslaver 'stealing' a turn, but I am not too sure what to do of that case.

you definately should run 1 weathered wayfarer. The wayfarer can be used to fetch that strip and 4x waste, and most importantly, the LOA. Use it in response to the sacrifice of the fetch/strip/wate, so that you get less lands than your opponent.

Besides, this deck is not a deck anymore without ancestral recall, time walk and LOA. The deck really *needs* those cards.

I cannot understand how you can get 3 mana to pay for your rushing rivers. You should not have to use the werebears to cast them. In any case, you should have some ninja of the deep hours. And also mental notes

If you ban will, you end up making mana drain even better than it already is. By removing yawgmoth's will, you make combo pretty much absolete for the most part. By removing combo, you make only aggro, control and prison dominate (and dragon somewhere in there). This can only lead to a much worse case where control ends up dominating all, because the prison archetype has historically been ruined by a resurgence of rack and ruin.

Well, in that case mana drain is 'sub-par', but you must keep in mind that there's hardly another card that is going to get the job better done than mana drain. Misdirection would, but that card has high probability of being useless in a good number of matchup. Even then, it is less likely that you have an extra blue card in your hand than the likelyness you have UU open. I would say that the best way to interpret that scenario is that mana drain would be optimal if it would counter a 2cc+ spell. But in this case it's still very good to have the ability to deny the opponent from drawing 3 cards. Plus, you might draw into a mana source on the next turn, so that 1 mana could allow you to cast your gifts ungiven. This is also why mana drain is soo good; since you don't want your opponent to abuse it, your own spells will tend to be in the 2-3cc range, with some 4cc. If you analyse the curve you quickly realize that it becomes very easy to make use of the mana that mana drain grants you, 'whatever the amount'. Now take that into consideration, and compare it to this:
. I have explained why I do not agree with that statement.

Correct. But even just having one black lotus can turn welder into something really broken. The 'setup' required to make goblin welder is very minimal, and it IS a 1cc threat. What you need to keep in mind is that it is 'conditional', but the cost of the card itself is so low, that even if it is conditional, it is still worth running. It can be used to return the artifacts you got countered, and can be used to mess with the opponent cards (ie: welder/shaman to destroy null rods, etc). The number of cases where this card is dead is rather minimal to really consider the card much conditional.

That is exactly why coretapper isn't much played. It is better to counter the artifact than the coretapper. Which means in fact that we don't really care as much about the coretapper, since it is hardly a threat by itself.

You have yet to prove that point.

I fully agree that otherwise crap cards can turn into good cards when the interaction is found. Recoup has long been ignored, until gifts started getting more play. I even believe it was used with intuition at the beginning, but anyway, it's not relevant to the conversation. Tormod's crypt was long crap, until the metagames changed / new cards appeared. However, the interaction must be really strong to make the card playable. Which brings me to the next point.

If you take a look backwards at the evolution of decks, you will notice that almost all of them evoluate in a way that they abuse and revolve around the most powerful cards around, the rest being just more-or-less fillers. Yawgmoth's will, being invariably the most powerfull spell, is the card that all decks try to abuse as much as possible. If you take a look at the last 2 years of deck evolution, it has been a race towards decks that abuses the most yawgmoth's will. One example would be the suicide-virus deck, by mike long (I believe). The sole purpose of the deck is to play yawgmoth's will. Even the 'article'/email that unleashed the deck very much squarely said that the best decks should be built around the best cards. While the suicide-virus decklist is arguably crap, it is still designed by someone who (should) know what hes talking about. This leads me to my point: the 'crap' cards cropping up tends to be played only because they revolve around the best cards on your deck. The only way you can play a conditional card is because it has a strong interaction with the best cards of your deck. Recoup (and arguably burning wish) are very-much-so exactly that. Conditional cards are played when the delta (difference) is high between the lost tempo of when you cant use them (due to their conditiality) and the tempo gained from when they are actually good (condition met). In other words, the benefits must justify their conditionality. The only way you get a benefit worth mentioning is when your 'crap' card interacts with your best cards. The only other case I can think of to use a conditional card would be one that is gives you a lot of tempo, but is very narrow (ie: rack and ruin). But that is a different discussion since narrow cards and conditional cards arent the same thing.

You don't play freespells in a deck because you can. You play the cards that best matches your game plan and that improves the most your worst matchups. Alternatively, if you make a hate deck (which by definition is crap, and rarely wins big tournaments), then you will ignore your bad matchups and keep playing more cards towards hating decks x and z. In both cases, it is not indicative towards just 'playing free spells'. Play the cards that gives you the most tempo, not the ones that costs you the less tempo.

you try to make an article, yet you fill it up with personal opinions.

mana drain is not really conditional since it will almost never happen that your opponent will not cast spells. it is also very likely to be a 'mana advantage' in the sense that you pay UU to counter a spell that costs more than 2 mana, then you also get additional mana on your next main phase.
If you don't like playing decks that don't tap out, then you might reconsider playing instants. Playing instants rather than sorceries 'nullifies' the UU untapped problem.
Additionally, you seem to misunderstand that depending on the deck, mana drain can be played as a mana accelerant, and doesn't really care about what spell you counter, as long as it gives you mana on the following main phase. The 'countering' is just added sugar under that scenario. But also, depending on the deck, it could also be the mana that's the added sugar.
In almost every conceivable way mana drain is broken. There is almost no reason not to play it, unless your metagame has tons of fish and/or stax.


You seem to misunderstand the role of 'conditional' cards, and to apply the concept too broadly. By today' standards, goblin welder is hardly conditional. Assuming that you play goblin welder with TFK, it is almost never a dead card, or something you are unhappy to have, or that you could be replaced by something better. If your deck only used goblin welder as a way to 'screw' opposing welders and tinker, then yes, in that case, it would be narrow.
Yawgmoth's will is hardly conditional because your ENTIRE DECK just happens to couple well with it if you run one of the established skeletons. Replaying time walks, moxen, recalls, brainstorms, demonics, etc. is soo powerful that it is absurd by itself. You see, if you run an established skeleton, yawgmoth's will will not be conditional for the simple reason that all the other cards in the deck just-so-happens to work wonderfully with yawgmoth's will, rendering it hardly conditional.

Using conditional spells is very much ill-advised, since by doing so you open up the possibility of making your conditions never happen. Or worse, you open up yourself too much to getting your 'combo' disrupted, or open up the possibility of giving a 2-for-1 to your opponent if he counters one of the parts, making the other useless. For example, if your opponent counters your chalice, then your coretapper turns into ass. You will probably try and get me to admit that it pumps out aether vials, but I wont. It might, but then it just illustrates the fallacy of the card. You play turn 1 vial. turn 2, coretapper. At this point, your coretapper should be useless. You likely don't run creatures costing much more than 2, because your vials wouldnt be that good, and your creatures would be crap if you didnt drew your aether vial, so essentially, if you were to do so, your CREATURES would be conditional to your aether vials + coretapper combo, because no weenie/fish deck would be able to pump 3cc/4cc creatures. But then, since we'll assume that you don't run much 3/4cc creatures, that means you have 2cc creatures for the most part (which should come as no surprise). If you consider that scenario, and that you laid a first turn vial, 2nd turn coretapper, your coretapper is essentially useless, since your vial is already at 2. Your coretapper is only really good if you manage to get a chalice into play. In other words, if your opponent counters your chalices, then your coretapper become junk.


That depends on your gameplan. Many decks try to ignore the opponent as much as possible, and go for the goldfish (ie: combo). Your vision of deckbuilding seems to ignore the different playstyles/gameplans that exists, and seems to assume the only existing decks are all aggro/control. Combo does not wants to deal with the opponent's cards, and thus, is under no need to have a free spell.

no! That izz freench kanadianz *speaking englizh* with und germaan accent!

darksteel colossus is good because it shores up the otherwise bad matchups for a more traditional gifts combo deck. Having 2 opposite kill mechanism makes it that much harder to hate out the deck, and allows you to adapt your game plan accordingly so that you pick the best kills vs your opponent.

you also missed out that you can win the turn *after* your colossus hits play. you put your library in your graveyard, then use your krosan reclamation your yawgmoth's will, and proceed to play your entire deck, giving you an 'instant' kill. Against, I will stress the point that you only have to do the safest kill amongst the 2 depending on the game, but you can switch from one to the other with ease.

But you fail to realize that the entire point of running darksteel colossus was to have a different kill than a combo kill. It is purely intentional. You are just rehashing the same idea, and adding arguably not much to the deck by trying to use the salvagers kill rather than the combo kill.

Recoup only allows to replay sorceries. Gifts ungiven is an instant. Additionally, your suggestion ends up adding conditional cards: pyrite spellbomb and auriok salvager. Auriok salvagers is junk if you don't have the lotus (and importantly: the white mana to return it the first time). Additionally, it's total junk if your opponent has one of the many listed hates (chalice, null rod, sphere, needle, etc.). Then there's pyrite spellbomb, which isn't blue and isn't really improving your gameplan.

Darksteel colossus is good because it is hard to hate out. The only 2 good hates against it are swords to plowshares and bounce. Swords to plowshares isn't that great at hating it simply because it gives you 11 life, which might represent 1-2 turn; more than enough to set-up your combo. And bounce, well, it is good, but only for so long; every brainstorm you draw might turn into a darksteel colossus if you have an active oath. Or alternatively, you can just forego the colossus kill and go for the combo.

the 2 decks I referred to earlier made top-8, both in the 5-8 quadrant. They got to split 600$ amongst the 4 guys.

There's at least 2 2 guys from montreal in the top-16. One plays Dragon, the other plays control slaver.

I already knew that, fact is, most decks are based off the same common base of cards (ex: brainstorm/drain/fow/etc.) and very often are taken off from an existing deck with some 'minor' tweaking. I mistakenly said the deck was created after, but what I meant was that the -last revision- of the deck was done with stax in mind.

Regardless whether or not that was the case, or whether or not the deck is very similar to what Shay played a year ago (and thus proving the deck wasn't made with stax in mind), my question still hasn't been addressed by any of you. The conversation is about the win/loss ratio of TFK gifts vs stax in comparison to MD gifts vs stax. I can understand that you want to discredit my argument by shooting the weakest part of my argumentation (common practice in politics), but you still haven't addressed the main issue.

In other words, while trying to compare why TFK gifts fared better than MD gifts, you conclude that MD gifts didn't fare as well simply because MD gifts is that much harder to play. But what you failed to address is the difference between the win/loss ratio of TFK gifts vs stax and compare that to win/loss ratio of MD gifts to stax. The real discussion lies there. I believe TFK gifts fares better against stax than MD gifts (for the reasons I have listed), it is up to you to refute that argument.

You can make a point and say that MD gifts could certainly have made it to TFK gifts' players top-8 results should the players be good enough to wield it, but then again, the conversation becomes barely more than a fight over some very minor win/loss percentage difference. Then that very percentage can get trumped extremely badly by external results, such as bad pairings, luck and/or stax just beginning the match. (ignoring here all the other matchups, where we both assume they are all in favor of gifts decks).

Gifts decks with TFK fared better because the deck was designed AFTER MeanDeck Gifts. MeanDeck Gifts was unleashed around the same time stax started becoming popular (incidentally, uba stax came out about the same time as well). As a result of the good showing MeanDeck gave, people started adapting more to it, packing more gorilla shaman than usual (amongst other things -- COTV is worthy of mention as well). Also, it resulted in more people picking up the various stax decks, since they have a very good match against gifts decks.

In other words, MeanDeck gifts was not designed with stax in mind. As such, it gets 'badly' raped by it. TFK gifts, taking Probasco's list as a reference (the one that was released a while ago in an article), takes stax into a consideration by playing cards such as 2x pithing needle maindeck, as well as engineered explosives (which, at worst, serves as smokestack fodder). Also, and this is the most crucial part, it relies more on TFK rather than gifts, because TFK costs less mana.

TFK gifts fared better simply because most of the field was stax. It has no relationship with whether or not you believe the gifts version with 4x gifts are strictly better than TFK gifts, it only has to do with the fact that 4x gifts decks are more hateables.

Wow, 2 players made the exact same mistake. If you were playing against any kind of decent dragon player that knows the AP-NAP rules (actice player / non active player), he would have known that all he had to do was comboing out with necromancy DURING YOUR TURN and not his, resulting in a favorable stacking of effects (effectively nullifying the ankh of mishra's damage). The same applies to planar void ; it does not stops dragon from comboing.

Anger requries a mountain in play in order to make your creatures haste. RTFC.

The pyrite spellbomb is really useless. Aether spellbomb/phyrexian furnace does the same job, and as was pointed out, when you combo-out, you draw your entire deck, return all your opponents creatures to their hands, have a hand full of counter, and additionally, something that nobody mentioned yet, you blow up every permanent that costs between 0 and 5, and remove their graveyard from the game.

salvager + lotus + engineered explosives is the part you guys missed out. All the big CC cards are creatures anyway, if not, then it's mindslaver, but that usually doesn't remains in play.

The vials are good because they serve as thirst for knowledge food should they become useless, and they really undermine any kind of control deck. When you play versus control, you don't have to try and combo-out right away like most people seem to do. You just play crappy creatures and keep your counters up, then slowly beatdown. At some point, your opponent deals with your creatures, then you do the fatal blow: salvagers + lotus (combo-out). In short, you put them between 2 hard plates, and force them to deal with your junk, so that you end up 'forcing' the combo kill.

They are also good because they ruin stax decks, or at the very least forces them to play their null rods. (which is what you counter and/or name with meddling mage, obviously).

It was clearly the best metagame choice, even before meandeck gifts was publicly revealed, and before stax started winning the big tournaments (and that for some ungodly reason people are just like sheeps - the follow blindly whatever deck won the last tourney). Basically, all the stax players were just on the border between top-8 and not top-8, and they all got amongst the top tables. What happenned is that the pairings turned in a way that the stax eliminated themselves. I am sure that the 9th-10th positions are stax players.

In addition, I believe that every stax deck player at least 2 null rod, in foresight of the expected metagame. It is hard to explain how such a clearly great choice didn't turn up into more wins, but I guess that it can be mostly attributed to the pairings, from what I can recall.

There is, but they are posted in french in a different website.

You can run a budget stax list with metalworker and many draw-7/meditate and/or well of knowledge (soo retarded to double your hand size each turn).

Here's what I used to run a year ago, as I recall it

5x strip
1x tolarian
4x ancient tomb
3x city of traitors
4x volcanic island
2/3x shivan reef

1x sol ring
1x mana crypt
1x mana vault
1x grim monolith
1x voltaic key
1x candelabra of tawnos (budget forces you to play sub-optimal accelerants :/ )

4x metalworker
2x welder
1/2x sundering titan
2x triskelion
1x karn, silver golem

4x tanglewire
4x smokestack
3x crucible of world
1x trinisphere (back then, it ran 4x trinisphere)
0-4x chalice of the void / sphere of resistance  (was trinispheres back then)

1x tinker
1x memory jar
1x wheel of fortune
1x windfall
2x well of knowledge

As far as I know, it is not legal to run a type-1 FNM. FNM are strictly supposed to be type-2 stuff or drafts.
With that said, if I am wrong, please tell me, since I would be damn glad to inform the store owner I go to that he can run type-1 FNM instead of type-2 FNM.

Well, it would have been strange to have Wizards print all the double lands in ravnica for the simple reason that (from my point of view) it would be *more* interesting to get the 'new ones' that are black bordered instead of getting the same card in revised/white border. I would take the black border one that is cheaper and much easier to get. That could have ended up lowering the price of the old ones because they would be more expansive and 'less pimp' from the white/black border perspective.

Vintage is the only format I play as well, and unfortunately, I didn't get a 'cheap price' nowhere near the price you paid for your cards. Vintage is more like a format that you slowly accumulate the cards to play into. You can't just go and, out of a impulsive buy urge, buy all 40x duals at 1000$ CAN, and realize that you can't a)find them with ease b)use them to build a deck right-off the bat. You need to really gradually go search the card you need (which can be hard to get in trade/cash, let alone find someone willing to trade/sell). In short, power 9 or not, if you play vintage you pretty much have no choice to very gradually build up your deck(s).

I do keep in mind steve m. comment that people won't play vintage tournaments anymore with budget decks: people only want to play if they have the full deal. Well, I have something to add to that. If Wizard was to print a hoser soo good that would render powered deck very much a vulnerability, and make non-powered decks very much compete, that would probably get the trend to start reversing. I do understand the caveat that printing such a hoser would likely end up making a new stax deck, or make the games one-sided if the hoser is not 'properly done'. I know it's hard to ignore that we already have chalice, null rod, gorilla shaman as very good hosers, but would they make something really insane I believe they could reverse the trend.

I think that all it means is that you will see more proxies, nothing much more. I don't believe that vintage would start 'falling down' because of the lack of real power cards.

playing 5 colors and using incarnations don't really work together. Anger requires a mountain to work.

Even though I don't think the deck is good, i am fairly sure that there are many errors in your build.

1- blue is pointless. It messes up your mana base.
2- you definately should run at least 2 gorilla shaman. theyre good against stax and md gifts.
3- you should give a shot at root maze/orb of dreams. they really mess up a lot fetchlands. Additionally, it is important to note that enchantments do mess up rebuilds/hurkyl's recalls. It's also less vulnerable to the sidebord hate people will bring against you.
4- anger is really good, but wonder is virtually pointless. if you need help for aggro (which you shouldnt) then you may consider running it on the side. But I would rather run more duplicant instead.
5- genesis is way too slow
6- you don't need 4x goblin welder with 4x survivals
7- remove lyrist and play platinum angel instead. it's your out against oath and combo game 1.
8- i'm fairly sure you can't run eternal witness. the tempo loss is far too big and the effect is subpar.
9- su-chi + welder + gorilla shaman is fun, even against null rod. (i wouldnt cut 4xsu-chi)
10- darksteel colossus is pointless. You should aim for disruption as much as possible.
11- i would put the heretic as a personal/meta choice, but it's still very much a mana hungry creature, particularly when coupled with sotf.
12- im fairly sure masticore/razormane masticore is suboptimal choice. it does not disrupts the opponent fast enough.
13- wheres memory jar ?

Yes, and then shoot the sharpshooter? wtf

I would probably give a try to a teched out stacker/TNT. Yes, I know the deck has been put in the scrap pile 1-2 year ago, but with 3/4 maindeck root maze, perhaps some pyrostatic pillars even (if lots of combo) and 1/2 gorilla shaman (use welder to weld su-chi to make mana to eat null rod, if that ever becomes an issue).