How strict is everybody when playing with their friends?  I'm talking about a group of people who go to tournaments regularly and think hard about the game, not casual players.

Do you play like it's a tournament?  Do you allow small takebacks?  What's the general tone of the game?

What do you think the chances are that the DCI will unrestrict Brainstorm, Ponder, Flash and/or Gush?  I tend to agree with you that Merchant scroll would have been a good starting point, and probably would have accomplished the goals of the DCI without causing such turmoil.

What cards get cut as you increase the utility slots? 

How exactly?  I'd have to choose something like {Thirst, Mindslaver, Triskelion, Pentavus} to get even one down there.  If I've got the active welder he just puts the Slaver and the Pentavus in my hand. 


This is true; at different times Gifts can be a tutor, a draw engine, and a graveyard filler.  The problem I have with it is it doesn't perform any one of those function particularly well.  Your opponent is always going to give you the two cards that hurt the least.  So to have a big impact, you'll need to have 3 game-changing effects in your deck, and be willing to lose the best two of them to the graveyard, and still have the mana left to cast the 3rd one. 

I would like very much to be convinced here.  Like I said earlier, it must just be that I don't know how to play with it, but everytime I think about it, it seems Fact or Fiction is better.  I like being able to grab a specific card from the pile if I need it, and it's pretty rare that they'll stack it 4:1.  You usually get a land and the card you want.

How is it potentially symetrical?  There are a few rare cases where this might be true, but nine times out of ten he sits there as I shuffle 8 or 9 cards around in my hand.  If he's very lucky he gets to counter two of them, more likely than not he gets one or none.

The other upside is that it activates the welder very nicely.  It puts the jar in the 'yard so you can weld things in and out like trike and top, and it probably drops another artifact bomb down there.

I'm not currently running it, but I am unconvinced either way about it.  I played a game just last night against stax where I would've loved to have it as a tinker target.



Yea, I'm pretty well convinced on the petal.  Running those numbers alone did it.  Like you said, even beyond that, it does some very nice things.  Still having a little trouble wanting to run 10 Artifact Mana and 15 other blue sources, but maybe I'll come around eventually.  Right now it's 10 Artifact Mana, 14 Blue Lands, and 1 Library. 


I'm going to play around with it a little more, but I think you're right.  As a mostly unrelated question, how many maindeck slots are you providing for disruption/metagame stuff?


Very nice.  I agree now it's not a maindeck card.  It does depend too much on your first game plan failing.  I think it's a good 1-of or 2-of in the sideboard though.  It helps a lot of matchups where they sideboard in the hate.


Alright, total newbie question.  How are you using gifts?  I think the reason I don't like this card is that I'm terrible with it.  What are some common targets? 

Lotus Petal Math:

The odds of drawing {Petal, Mana Drain, Blue Source} in that order are (1*4*16) / (60*59*58), or  (64 / 205320).

There are six permutations of these cards, so you have a 6 * (64 / 205320) percent chance of drawing these in a 3 card hand. (384/205320)

There are 35 ways you can draw three cards in a 7 card hand, so the odds of having a starting hand with these three cards pre-mulligan is 35 * (384/205320), or ~6.54%.

I've got a few questions about the choices you made.  I've been trying to put together a slaver list I like and there are some things about the lists you put forward that I don't understand.

Memory Jar - Why no memory jar?  It generates massive card advantage and loads up your graveyard for the welder.

The Mana Base - 15 Lands, 10 Broken Artifact Mana.  Any reasoning behind this?  I was running 13 lands, 1 library, and 9 artifact mana at the last tourny I played, and I didn't run into mana problems.  I tend to think I should increase my count by one island, but I'd like to hear what you think in general.

Lotus Petal - Why?  You have this in most of your lists, and you offered two reasons that I saw; One, to fuel a first turn mana drain, and second, when your opponent plays bad and doesn't see you have a petal you can weld in to support a drain. 

I calculated a 6.5% chance of having {drain, petal, blue mana} in your starting hand.  This doesn't account for the 20-30% of the time that you're not going to want to drain his first spell (if he casts one).  I think realistically this factors into about 4% of your games.  I won't argue that it's a very nice 4%, but is it worth a slot?   I'm not convinced either way.  How much is this worth?  [As an aside:  I'm much more convinced this is right after running the numbers.  My first faulty calculation showed it as being relevant about 2% of the time.  4% is a lot more.]

There are certainly other upsides to it; It has the nice trick with welder/drain, it has synergy with yawgmoth's will, it activates the welder/top draw engine early (often times I'll have the top and welder but no artifact in the graveyard).  I'm just having trouble justifying it, it seems like you could use that slot for another bomb.  Could you expand on your thinking some here?

Mindslaver:  Why two?  You talk about how 3 and 4 probably aren't right in your article, and I agree with that, but it seems to me you'd rather have a wide variety of bombs available rather than two of the same.  In a lot of places you'll have access to whatever bombs your running, two slavers is pretty redundant here.  It seems having a diverse toolbox is more valuable than having a redundant slaver.  I've only been playing the deck for 2 months now, but I've never had it come up where I had will'd and activated a slaver and had to remove the slaver from the game.
 
Counterbalance:  Any thoughts on this card?  Helps the long matchup, very synergetic with top, and just all around annoying. 

Aether/Pyrice Spellbombs:  Any good?  I haven't gotten a chance to test them yet.  My impression is that they're gonna be junk.

Empty the Warrens:  I want this main deck.  Our deck gets very sad when it's up against a leyline or even a single tormod's crypt.  I think it's good to have another non-graveyard based win.  EtW seems like a very good choice.

Fact or Fiction vs Gifts Ungiven:  Why do you like Gifts better?

And to piss everyone off:

Brainstorm:  Do we really need one?  The deck is incredibly tight.  Top is nearly as good immediately and much better long run. 


This is what I'm currently working with.  It's 61 cards and I've got 6 more that want in.

Draw Engine (9):
4 Thirst for Knowledge
1 Recall
1 Library of Alexandria
1 Gifts Ungiven
2 Sensei's Divining Top

Tutors (4):
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Merchant Scroll

Metagame Slots (4):
1 Tormod's Crypt
1 Gorilla Shaman
1 Echoing Truth
1 Counterbalance

Win Conditions (5):
1 Darksteel Colossus
1 Triskelion
1 Pentavus
1 Mindslaver
1 Empty the Warrens

Counterspells (8):
4 Mana Drain
4 Force of Will

Misc:
4 Goblin Welders
1 Yawgmoth's Will
1 Time Walk
1 Tinker

Artifact Mana (10):
5 Moxes
1 Black Lotus
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mana Vault
1 Sol Ring
1 Lotus Petal

Land Mana (14):
2 Island
2 Underground Sea
4 Volcanic Island
3 Flooded Strand
2 Polluted Delta
1 Tolarian Academy

Cards that want in:
1 Intuition
1 Fact or Fiction
1 Brainstorm
1 Memory Jar
1 Fire//Ice
1 Rack and Ruin

Thanks for running the event Simon.  The heat was wicked, but otherwise it was a good time.   You can put my handle next to 10th place, that was me.

Does 6th place wanna post up his deck list?  I'd love to see a winning tog list.

How come you think the sphere's are better than sensei's divining top?  It seems to me that the top will be much stronger.

What is TGZ?

Yea, the deck is slowly getting dismantled.  It's not overpowering the meta-game, so we don't mind it.  It's actually kinda nice to have, because we don't have many other control-esque decks, and it helps simulate a control matchup.

The sligh deck he's talking about can be seen here, and the WW deck is the legacy angel stompy that zilla put together.

It's an illegal variation on Kai Budde's Blue artifact deck.  I'm doing this from memory, but it should be right:

4x Grim Monolith
4x Thran Dynamo
4x Voltaic Key
1x Sol Ring
1x Mana Vault
2x Sky Diamond

2x Karn Silver Golem
2x Masticore
2x Urza's Blueprints
2x Mishra's Helix
2x Tangle Wire

4x Counterspell
4x Tinker
1x Braingeyser
1x Stroke of Genius
2x Capsize

That's not the actual deck list, but it shows the idea.  It was originally a legal type 2 deck back when Urza's was around, we just kinda let it live since it wasn't abusing the mana cards too bad.