[Single Card Discussion]Deja Vu/Sage's Knowledge

[TheStu]

Deja Vu - 2U
Sorcery
Return target sorcery card in your graveyard to your hand.

Portal brings us this on-color recursion for Gifts Ungiven. I think it will see play. I know we've had Relearn available to us, and it can recur instants as well, but it pales in comparison due to it having UU in its mana cost, not to mention Gifts game-winning spells are sorceries, so the instant recursion is sort of irrelevant. I think this card is a perfect fit for the deck as a one-of.

[elias]

But gifts already has Recoup to make the engine run. It's be just another redundant slot which costs 1 more mana to play. Some people might use it to get around chalice though. And recoup can do what Deja Vu does twice (if in hand).

[heiner]

Moving ToA to the maindeck, red could be entirely cutted with recoup not needed anymore. This would allow a mana base with only one or two duals. SB REBs would have to be compensated with Duress, so 2 Usea sound better then one. I dont think that R&R can be compensated by additional rebuilds though.

Deja Vu + Will is 6 mana compared to recoup + Will for 7 mana.

The real bad thing is that you would have to gift for Will+Deja Vu+Relearn + X instead of recoup+Will+X+X.

Recall is another alternative.

[Dozer]

I think it will see play.[...] I think this card is a perfect fit for the deck as a one-of.

I don't. Gifts has no need at all to run another recursion card besides Recoup. The fact that this is blue is seriously mitigated by the ability to get back Sorceries only. Your only targets are Yawgmoth's Will, Burning Wish and Tinker, maybe Time Walk. To get any value out of this, you must put Will or Tinker in the Gifts stack, because those are the only real business spells there. If you do, you are unlikely to get either. Even if you put Ancestral and Lotus next to Will and Deja-Vu, you effectively lost a card that could otherwise have been useful for you even while in the graveyard (Recoup). Sure, in the scenario you get Ancestral and Lotus, but simultanely you put one of your win conditions out of your current reach.

If you get Tinker, Will, x and Deja Vu, it's even worse since you just have narrowed your ways to win down to exactly one barring the Recoup you hopefully still play -- but then there was no reason not to go for Recoup in the first place. I see that sometimes, it will be useful to have a second instance of a regrowth spell, but I think that is mainly down to not enough practice with the correct timing of mana fetching, the timing of Recoup itself and appropriate Gifts stacks. You only need Recoup, and if that fails, you always have plan B with Tendrils. I think you are much better off running a business spell or an extra counter or maybe Personal Tutor in that slot, if you even manage to free one up.

The deck is still very hard to play well. Wrong decisions often lead to situations where suboptimal or redundant cards would help, but that weakens the deck's power. Only if one feels that one won't get any better and constantly needs such a fall-back could one argue for its inclusion. But then another deck would be the better choice anyway.

Dozer

[Whatever Works]

Gifts doesnt run red for recoup as much as it does for the amazing sideboard options that let it be able to have a chance vs. stax, and REB isnt exactly bad either...

I can think of much more broken things to recur using this card then the 1's you have listed though.

Kyle L

[forests failed you]

This is a good card.  It just doesn't belong in Gifts becaues Recoup is strictly better.  However, I am working on a new combo deck that plays this card.  If it is noteworthy I will post the list in the Vintage Open Forumn within a week or so.

[Komatteru]

This has been legal for years and is a lot more flexible.  I don't see Deja Vu seeing a lot of play, despite the easier casting cost.

[Liam-K]

First of all, red can NOT be cut from gifts for a recoup replacement, even ignoring the sideboard.  Burning Wish is extremely important.

Secondly, recoup can be played out of the graveyard without recur.  This is important because a gifts with yawgwill/dejavu/something/something is vulnerable to having both Yawgwill and the recur spell sent to the yard.  Recoup doesn't have this problem because sending it to the graveyard just gives the gifts player an extra card.