Discussion on the optimal Gifts Deck

[P_f]

There's a bit of a heated debate on the main Vintage Forum but due to forum status, I can't post there. So I am posting here.

I've only been updated on Gifts decklists as recent as Waterbury and in that tournament, Carl's deck seems to be the one thats most optimally built right now.

Here's my build of the Gifts deck:

Mana: (25)
9X SoloMoxenCryptVault
4X Delta
3X Underground Sea
2X Volcanic Island
2X Island
1X Swamp
1X Strip Mine
1X Academy
2X lands (either island, boseiju, and/or LOA.)

Tinkers: (8)
4X Gifts Ungiven
1X Vamp
1X Demonic
1X Mystical
1X Tinker

Light manipulations: (10)
4X Brainstorm
4X Thirst for Knowledge
1X Ancestral
1X Time Walk

Disruption: (12)
4X Duress
4X FOW
4X Drain

Utility, win, broken: (5)
1X Yawgmoth's Wil
1X Darksteel Colossus
1X Recoup
1X Burning Wish
1X Damping Matrixl

The game plan is to play a gifts ungiven to get tutor/recursion in order to resolve tinker. You usually resolve tinker after you've scouted with Duress.

So far, wish targets are only primitive justice and mind twist, not sure there's a necessity for more. Platinum Angel is in the board against aggro/disruption decks.

Some comments I want to make on the deck before I leave this discussion open:

1) I've seen a few gift/tinker decks that runs few or no Thirst for Knowledge. I would say this is a mistake because drawing colossus is pretty much always bad and you need more than just brainstorm to shuffle the colossus back into the deck.

2) The Severance/Belcher in SSB seems llike it requires more mana than to just tinker, walk, win. I don't think this needs inclusion so you can have an alternate victory condition.

3) This deck plays poorly against mana denial decks like prison and fish. Either it goes broken before going under their lock or it loses. The deck needs some way to combat this. All I can think of right now is put in additional mana, which makes for a poor solution.

4) This deck plays around null rod well, which slaver and belcher decks can't do. It can also play around graveyard hate well. The ability to play around these 2 kinds of disruption is a really good advantage. MD Matrix helps against welder, slaver, top, furnace, tormod, salvager, etc.

5) There's some debate on how Colossus is a bad card because its vulnerable. I'm very sure this deck is capable to handle all the things that can disrupt a resolved colossus. There's only 4 types of cards preventing Colossus beats:

Bounce
STP
Welder
Meddling Mage/Chalice

2 of these are reactive and 3 are proactive. Against reactive spells, you usually hold duress until you get your setup, then you cast it to clear away the disruption.

Against active welders, you Gifts to get gifts, vamp, mystical, and demonic. You should be given mystical and vamp. From there, you can choose to resolve tinker twice via yawgwill or vamp for matrix then tinker for colossus. If by chance you are given Gifts and mystical, get recoup off Gifts.

Against Mage/Chalice, I am going to assume people aren't going to name tinker with Mage as shutting down 4 cards instead of 1 seems like a more reasonable play. Chalice for 3 is more reasonable but its also mana intensive to set it at 3. Unlike the Mage, you can see what chalice will try to shut down which allows you to simply Force/Drain it should it be set at 3.

Burning Wish is there for additional answers should your primary answer fail.

[cryolyte]

I've been playing SSB for two weeks now, in two tournaments. I've not done well, but I didn't 0-2 drop either. I can say from experience that dropping severance/belcher is not a good idea. What do you do when your colossus gets Swords to Plowshared? Scoop? Adding more thirsts and duresses could be great, but not at the expense of a good win condition. Also, 4 gifts is too many. I have been playing with 3, but I really don't like to see one in my opening hand. While it is possible (I guess?) to combo out on turn 1 or two with this thing, I would rather control a little bit and then lay the smackdown.

As for wish targets:

Pyroclasm is a house vs various flavors of fish and welders too

Echoing Ruin? I haven't tried it yet but it is sorcery speed artifact destruction that could potentially take out multiple artifacts. ie chalice for 0 and 1

Tendrils of Agony - I have mixed feelings about this: Yes if it's late game and you resolve Yawg will you could theoretically wish for it and win by storm. but if you yawg you just severance and then either tinker or play belcher again if it got blown up. I keep it there as a 3rd longshot win condition, but I haven't used it yet.

What are your thoughts of running a second Recoup in the board? once in a great while I have found myself holding multiple combo pieces without having a way to get them through a counter wall. I don't know.Just thinking out loud I guess. Like I said, I've been playing a whole two weeks.

My meta has switched over almost entirely to Control Slaver vs Fish variants, and I think this deck needs more thirsts (or any draw really). I was just plain outdrawn (and thus out controlled) in most of my slaver games.

[Luiggi]

If you run something like CrazyCarl's build you still have access to both Severance+Charbelcher and DSC, so your win condition of choice can vary depending on what deck you're facing, so you don't run into the problem that cryolyte mentioned. If you're playing vs. U/W Fish, for example, and you Tinker for DSC but somehow your opponent's StP resolves, you still have the "backup" of Severance-Belcher. By that same token, if your opponent has a Phyrexian Furnace/Tormod's Crypt on the table, you can simply bash him to death with DSC.

The main point of contention in Carl's deck that is being discussed in the closed forum is the lack of Welders and trimming down the number of Thirst For Knowledges available, which I feel makes sense once you decide to cut out the Welders, but that requires its own justification. But anyway, there are arguments for both sides, as the closed forum discussion has shown.

A feasible solution would be to just run a more standard Gifts build like SSB and add a Darksteel Colossus, giving you free wins vs. Fish and any other random aggro decks if your Tinker resolves, but still letting you Slave your opponent and recur it with Pentavus should you want to.

Luiggi

[cryolyte]

For clarification, the first tournament I ran Kowals SCG list with welders and went 2-1-1. My problem was random aggro and a draw with CS. The second one, last night, I ran crazy Carl's waterbury version and was 1-2-1, with losses to Meandeck Tendrils and to CS. The deck seemingly has no way to deal with fast combo, without mulliganing aggressively to FoW. The tie was U/W fish, which I should have won but made a critical play error (duh, recoup flashes back dumb&^%). I liked the utility of burning wish and am thinking that maybe porting it to Kowal's list could be good. That's what I will be trying next week.

[P_f]

The problem with running welder/slaver lock is that welder is suffering from a lot of hate. Artifact destruction, creature removal, graveyard hate. Those all shutdown welders.

Basically, so many people are prepared for welders right now, making welder not as good as it used to be.

The severance/belcher is still legitimate but its a slower win condition. If you plan to win the severance/belcher way straight off gifts, I assume you are going to grab severance, tinker, recoup, blank. So after you spend 4 mana, you still need at least another 5 mana in order to have belcher in play.

If you want to go straight for the colossus win, its much simpler, gifts to get mystical, mystical for tinker, tinker into colossus. This always require only 8 mana as opposed to AT LEAST 9 for the belcher/severance win. Of course, your opponent will not be stupid and both severance and tinker will end up being in the yard from the gifts. In that case, you'd have to try to recur these 2 spells some other way which means 10+ mana starting from gifts to having your win condition on the stack.

Furthermore, what did you drop so that you can include the belcher/severance combo? Duress and a draw spell? If you sport the additional duress and draw instead of the 2ndary win condition, it makes the deck that much stronger in protecting your primary win condition. Furthermore, having them early doesn't hurt either.

Cryolyte, SSB should be able to wreck aggressive combo decks and MD Tendrils is only a consistent 3rd turn combo deck. Its quite possible to get drain online  before they can win or simply brainstorm into duress or FOW to stop them. Its still pretty luck-based but one that tips in your favor.

[Kowal]

The problem with running welder/slaver lock is that welder is suffering from a lot of hate. Artifact destruction, creature removal, graveyard hate. Those all shutdown welders.

Basically, so many people are prepared for welders right now, making welder not as good as it used to be.

Please, PLEASE board in Rack and Ruin and Lava Dart against me.

The severance/belcher is still legitimate but its a slower win condition. If you plan to win the severance/belcher way straight off gifts, I assume you are going to grab severance, tinker, recoup, blank. So after you spend 4 mana, you still need at least another 5 mana in order to have belcher in play.

Have you read Yawgmoth's Will?  Instead of costing 5 mana to get a belcher, you spend 5 mana to win the game.  Even if you can't muster whatever you need to technically kill this turn, you can still flashback Recoup on Tinker the following turn and resume killing people.

If you want to go straight for the colossus win, its much simpler, gifts to get mystical, mystical for tinker, tinker into colossus. This always require only 8 mana as opposed to AT LEAST 9 for the belcher/severance win. Of course, your opponent will not be stupid and both severance and tinker will end up being in the yard from the gifts. In that case, you'd have to try to recur these 2 spells some other way which means 10+ mana starting from gifts to having your win condition on the stack.

Colossus is also considerably easier to effectively remove.  And I say effectively, because in most cases having a Rack and Ruin when I have a mindslaver or charbelcher won't help you.

Furthermore, what did you drop so that you can include the belcher/severance combo? Duress and a draw spell? If you sport the additional duress and draw instead of the 2ndary win condition, it makes the deck that much stronger in protecting your primary win condition. Furthermore, having them early doesn't hurt either.

Having the additional spells gives the deck some much needed flexibility. This isn't something I'd be able to convince you of with words, but trust me when I say the fact that I had multiple methods of winning came in handy a lot.  And I can also honestly say there has never been a time where I wished I had a Colossus--  Not even against fish.

Cryolyte, SSB should be able to wreck aggressive combo decks and MD Tendrils is only a consistent 3rd turn combo deck. Its quite possible to get drain online  before they can win or simply brainstorm into duress or FOW to stop them. Its still pretty luck-based but one that tips in your favor.

Wreck them might be a poor choice of words, but if you play correctly you should definitely be winning more than you're losing.

[Toad]

Running 4 Gifts Ungiven and no Mana Severance / Goblin Charbelcher combo is do-able. That's what the Germans run, and they have no problem with that. The Darksteel Colossus plan is far more reliable than any other plan you can have for the deck, even the Goblin Charbelcher one. Charbelcher should never be your primary win condition. Darksteel Colossus is damn impossible to kill if you play the deck correctly (in 2 tournaments, I never had my Colossus killed), especially if you run 4 Duress as the Germans do. That's because when Darksteel Colossus hits, you have won the game. There is just a few situations where Goblin Charbelcher is better than Darksteel Colossus, and I'm not even including Goblin Welder in that list, because my build has the ability to win with Colossus when facing an untapped Goblin Welder. That is, running Mindslaver is a very very bad idea, because you are going to spend an awesome amount of mana to just activate Mindslaver once, when you could just win instead (obviously better!). Cutting Mindslaver allows you to cut Pentavus, because getting a 5/5 body as a Tinker target is wasting an awesome card for getting a suboptimal creature on the board. Not running these also means more room in the deck for true utility, protection and draw, which is very good.

[The Atog Lord]

If a Colossus is your only means of winning, does that mean that an opponent getting his own Colossus into play results in your getting decked? I'd at least have an answer to this situation to Burning Wish for with that build.

[cryolyte]

The Meandeck Tendrils deck won first turn through FoW games 2 and 3. The first game they killed themselves spoiling on turn one. It wasn't much fun for me.

I haven't played the deck enough to take sides on this gargantuan argument thats leaping into every forum on here (which is awesome, I'm gaining SO much insight, thanks guys), but I do have to say that logically Toad's arguments make more sense to me; to summarize:

gifting to get colossus and win via walk is objective #1, and if you can't pull that off you still can get the belcher severance combo in short order. Gifting and then toying with slaver and with welders is WIN MORE, because when you gifts you should just win.

Now I know that's a huge oversimplification, but he's written enough.

I also agree with skeletal scrying in the deck. It is a mana sink for drain mana if you don't want to gifts yet, you always have stuff in the yard, and it suits this deck better than TfK #4, because his build doesn't care about welders. With the build Toad has offered, you can gift for anything you may need to get you out of a bind - land, broken, win, or draw.

What do you guys think of Echoing Ruin as a sideboard choice in the deck sporting the burning wish? It is wishable artifact destruction for nullrod or other annoyances, and can wreck multiple artifacts if need be (affinity, stax with identical lock peices out)

[Toad]

I'd at least have an answer to this situation to Burning Wish for with that build.

Chainer's Edict is enough.

[P_f]

I have to start agreeing with including severance/belcher.

The german innovation might aesethetically look better because you are replacing the high mana artifacts that you won't hard cast with good cards like duress and card drawing. Even in a tempo-dominant game (fish, madness, wasteland heavy decks), drawing a draw spell like gifts is better than drawing something like mindslaver.

However, I think the inflexibility of only having 1 win condition does a bit more harm than good. If your opponent has something or plays something that stops your only win condition, you inevitably have to deal with it before winning. Having an alternate win means you don't have to deal with it, you can just play around it. Often times, by playing around cards instead of dealing with them will take less tempo out of your game.

However, I agree that Colossus is always your primary win condition since its so much easier to put tinker on the stack than to try to put a bunch of other spells on the stack that allows you to win with belcher.

The 2 cards I hate seeing however, are the Goblin Welders still taking slots in SSB. Should they be cut or is their ability to weld good stuff into play still a necessity?

On the issue of the board, the wish targets definitely haven't been set in stones yet but I have a strong cringe that you only want 2-4 actual wish targets. So its a good idea to try and confine all possible answers that you'd need into only a couple cards. The other SB slots need to be devoted to REB, BEB, Rack and Ruin and other actual SB cards.

[Kowal]

The original SSB list had 4 welders.  They're good when you see exactly one of them.  As such, I didn't feel bad to go to 2.  The very worst thing in the world is to Brainstorm in to two welders.

[Wildthing]

I have played both versions of gifts decks and I am liking Toads list more. Maybe because I am facing some aggro decks and colossus is usually game, althought i think it has a weaker game against workshop decks like stax if they can play their lock components early, this is a matchup when welders are really helpful.
I played a small shop tournament yesterday and i faced ur landstill, meandeck tendrils, tps and slight and win almost everygame quite easily. I lost against control slaver first game due to misplays and second due to tinker targeting sundering titan with boseiju in play.
I had problems sideboarding against intuition slavery I would thank if any of you can tell me what is your sideboard plan. I did something like this (list and sideboard are almost equal to Carl´s list):
-1 Darksteel colossus
-1 Gifts ungiven
-1 Burning wish
-1 Fact or fiction
+1 Pyroblast
+1 Red elemental blast
+1 Lava dart
+1 Duress

Any thoughts?