Gifts vs. Uba Stax play scenario

[Vegeta2711]

Turn 3, gifts players turn

Gifts-
RFGd: TFK
Graveyard: FoW, Mystical Tutor, Ancestral Recall
Hand: TFK, 2x Gifts Ungiven, Brainstorm, Mana Crypt

Board: U. Sea, Mox Ruby, Island

Uba Stax Guy
Graveyard: Welder, Lotus
Hand: 3 cards

Board: Mountain, Bazaar, Welder

What's the optimal play for the Gifts player to make?

EDIT: Fuck I can't lock the thread. Meh. This was originally just for the IRC guys, but whatever, you can anwser too if you want.

EDIT #2: Man this new avie is cool. Thanks reb.

[Eddie]

Not an easy choice. The biggest problem (besides choosing to force the welder, which I wouldn't have done) is that you only have 1 basic land in play, and you will fall behind if you fail to drop a land this turn. You could thirst, discarding crypt. But if you don't see any mana source, you're screwed. Thirst is not a good option here.

The basic plan is to brainstorm, which can be followed with a gifts for land if needed. The gifts will also shuffle back any bad cards you see from the brainstorm.

The big question is when do you brainstorm? I would rather not brainstorm in my turn, and fake a drain. Yes, you could storm in land and play a land that turn. It might even contain a drain. But if you can't find the land, then your opponent knows he can cast anything he wants. Your opponent can waste your sea of course, but he won't be able to cast anything relevant the same turn if he chooses to. This is probably the hardest choice to make. I would drop crypt and pass the turn. Then on my opponents EOT, or if he plays something relevant (e.g. Uba Mask), I'd brainstorm. Now, the following step is completely dependant on this brainstorm. No land or even only 1 non-basic? Gifts for flooded, polluted, snow-covered, island. Land and an artifact? Thirst is possible, but I still think a Gifts is better. If you have mana, you can gifts for brainstorm, drain, time walk, needle (for bazaar) or something like that.

Of course, you don't need to brainstorm, and you can even choose to gifts for land in your main phase, dropping a land and faking the drain, but I believe the above it better.

Edit: I am assuming it's brassman gifts that doesn't have rebuild maindeck. Otherwise, the gifts pile might be something different.

[Evenpence]

It's also worth noting that if you wait until the Uba player's turn to Brainstorm, he can put out a cheap artifact mana (which he would have to draw), then bazaar away Uba Mask while your Brainstorm is on the stack and weld it in.  Not exactly sure what bearing this will have on this discussion, but it's probably worth noting.

Also, just wondering...how did the board state get to be where it is?  Did the Uba player break the Lotus for a welder?

[Eddie]

It's also worth noting that if you wait until the Uba player's turn to Brainstorm, he can put out a cheap artifact mana (which he would have to draw), then bazaar away Uba Mask while your Brainstorm is on the stack and weld it in.  Not exactly sure what bearing this will have on this discussion, but it's probably worth noting.

Well, you can't play the cheap artifact at EOT, and you would of course brainstorm in response to said cheap artifact. We are considering the fact that both players know how to play against each other...

Also, just wondering...how did the board state get to be where it is?  Did the Uba player break the Lotus for a welder?

Yeah, I though the same thing. The Uba player shouldn't have used the lotus, and the gifts player shouldn't have forced the welder.

[Evenpence]

For the record, that board position for Ubastax is so unbelievably rare...  I can't imagine that board with a bazaar on the table.  Good Uba players would have bazaared last turn in hopes of hitting cheap artifact accel to power out threats that turn if the welder was active.  If he wasn't active, that means that our Uba player used a Black Lotus to play a single Goblin Welder.  In any case, this needs to be an unbelievably bad player, so any decision the Gifts player makes is correct.  I can't imagine what those three cards in the Uba player's hand are.

It's also worth noting that if you wait until the Uba player's turn to Brainstorm, he can put out a cheap artifact mana (which he would have to draw), then bazaar away Uba Mask while your Brainstorm is on the stack and weld it in.  Not exactly sure what bearing this will have on this discussion, but it's probably worth noting.

Well, you can't play the cheap artifact at EOT, and you would of course brainstorm in response to said cheap artifact. We are considering the fact that both players know how to play against each other...

We shouldn't assume that when the board looks like it does. 

[MaxxMatt]

With that Gifts' hand, the 3 cards in the Uba-player one should be really good, or there were really few things that would prevent him from recovering from almost anything.


The situation Vegeta proposed implies a couple of things:

1) The Ubaplayer must have another land or other two artifacts' bombs in his hand or it should have mulliganed once.
2) Ubastaks' player most deadly cards combination would include Wasteland + CoW + Rod, but his board is really useless at now ( or it would be useless without artfacts to switch with Welders and enhance Bazaars discarded cards ).

Ubaplayer could abuse of few things while Gifts player can take advantage from his good mana development without too much effort.

2° Mainphase
Play, Mana Crypt, Tap 4 mana, Undeground Sea open. Resolve this Gifts: Island, Needle, Darkblast, Brainstorm

With this combination you would neutralize his board at all.
He could surprise you with a CotV for 1, but you can use FoW on it and the possibly Welded one would enter the board only with 0 counters in it.

Your opponent would probably give you Island and Brainstorm. You can kill his Welder losing a single draw from it and tapping you out.
His board consist of nothing more than a single Bazaar, without other possible interaction with the grave.
You have two more fresh new cards and another Gifts, a TFK and a FoW in your hand, plus a Brainstorm.

In your next turn you could always go for the win or play more carefully, only in response to precise opponent's plays.

I choose to add Island instead of Academy in the first Gifts, because I feel really more confident on 2 stable mana fonts rather than 1. If I would have added Academy in it, I would have had more moves to do

I cannot find a lot of opponents' configurations that could have blocked my moves.
If his hand consisted of Wasteland, Strip and Rod, he could have played the denial plan with some hopes. I would have Bazaarred again in the next turn ONLY if my hand would have had another Welder.
The difficulty of his mana development blocked him from producing two threats in the turn next this one.
It could be possible to resolve things ONLY with a rare combination of Ruby/Welder#3/Strip/Wasteland/Rod....
Really cool if it happened in real life at least once


MAxxMAtt

[Eddie]

Play, Mana Crypt, Tap 4 mana, Undeground Sea open. Resolve this Gifts: Island, Needle, Darkblast, Brainstorm

Assuming you have darkblast main... Most gifts don't. I think we can assume this one doesn't have any welder removal if the force the welder. Good pile otherwise.

He could surprise you with a CotV for 1, but you can use FoW on it and the possibly Welded one would enter the board only with 0 counters in it.

....
You have two more fresh new cards and another Gifts, a TFK and a FoW in your hand, plus a Brainstorm.

You don't have the FOW. Also, you didn't put 2 cards back

[Darkenslight]

Having no experience of Vintage at all, I'd play the Crypt and pass.

This gives me a number of options:-

1) I'm faking Drain/counterspell mana.  This means that the opposing player has to play around at least one counter.

2) At end of turn (or in response to my opponent's Bazaar/Welder shenanigans[i.e. after they've Bazaared but before they've Welded) I can play either TfK or Brainstorm (TfK leaving Drain mana open, Brainstorm leaving Gifts mana).

3) If I either don't find a basic land with these spells, Use the second Gifts for more land (Flooded, Polluted, Island, Snow-covered)

4) If I DO find a land, control Gifts...I can now wait for a little while..I hope.

[dicemanx]

Gifts should not pass the turn here without playing its draw spells. Feigning a Drain is useless, because the Uba player has little choice here but try and drop a cheap artifact to exploit the Welder + Bazaar and hope that you're bluffing. You don't bluff a desperate opponent. He's likely to activate Bazaar end of turn, then again on his turn, seeing 5 new cards in total. He's still got a long way to go in recovering, but might do so if you give him a window of opportunity. His most damaging spells to Welder back are Null Rod and Uba Mask (to discourage any Brainstorm or TfK at eot).

I would try Brainstorm here first. If I see a Needle, or Will, or Time Walk, then I pretty much win on the spot. If I see a FoW or Drain and a land I also just bought another turn for myself as I can Gifts up a pile for mana first (Lotus, Tolarian, Pithing Needle, Mox Sapphire), and still have the second Gifts to make a game ending pile next turn during the main phase (involving Will and Recoup, Lotus Petal, Time Walk). If I see anything else, I might go for the mana pile anyways, using Needle to force certain cards.


Another option is to play it in the following way to GUARANTEE either a Needle in play or winning via Will:

Assumption: they will do anything in their power to prevent Needle from hitting play

Play Crypt and Gifts (tapping all but the Underground) right away for:

Tinker
Needle
Academy
Lotus

The idea is to force the Lotus and Academy, because Tinker represents a game ending Needle. Then play Academy and Lotus, tap Academy and Underground for Gifts #2 for:

Time Walk
Recoup
Needle
Will

They cannot give you Will or Needle, so you play Time Walk off Lotus and Brainstorm in the process, and next turn you have Recoup into Will easily winning.

Uba's best plan then is to go back to the first Gifts, and give the Gifts player both Tinker and Lotus, negating our assumption. In that case the Gifts player will Brainstorm first, put back his weakest cards, then Lotus-Tinker either the Crypt or Ruby (most likely Ruby, but it depends what Brainstorm showed you) into Needle. I don't like this plan that much because it wastes resources, and Uba might still try and draw out of it via Bazaar into a land (Shop) and drop something meaningful like Null Rod, or draw into a Waste/strip and bring you down to 2 mana sources if Crypt was sacrificed, potentially cutting off your TfK if it was kept.

[MaxxMatt]

Without Darkblast maindeck, the Dicemanx's plan is good.
The commonly used build of Brassman Gifts, usually packs a couple of different answers/tools/tricks for the opponent's threats. I really like Darkblast maindeck, I saw it at least in two or three different build and I'm confidant that its only inclusion could change the approach to a game like this one.
I have a maindeck Rebuild too, but it is only me.





I would like to argue here that the scenario presented almost no real tricks or dark surprises for the Gifts' player.
Why Vegeta argues about it?
Have we forgotten something really important?


@Added Difficulties@
I don't want to interact and change too much the first Vegeta's intent, but THINK ABOUT HOW MUCH the scenario would have been WORST for the Gift's player IF Ubastacks' one would have had A SINGLE MOX in play.

It would have guaranteed him at least one switch from his grave and the cards in his hand could have been used in a proper way for sure, instead of being clunked there without no use at all.

If that Mox would have been a Mana Crypt, Uba-player could have singlehandly won the entire match if the switch would have involved a single Jester's Cap ( activating it EoT is NASTY ).



@Vegeta.
The Uba.player start can be considered really "strange", if not nonsensical.
Why breaking Lotus with a possible first turn mountain in hand?
Only because of Welder x2 in his first turn?
Have him started with Bazaar, Lotus ( resolve ), Welder ( countered ), Welder ( resolve ), Burn for one?
Did he draw the Mountain during his subsequent draw phase?
Which are the other cards that would not make the cut?

Without too much thinking, he kept a TOO MUCH risky hand.

1) If Lotus would have been countered, he should have hoped for a single other mana in his next draws
2) If Lotus resolve and Welder resolve, he would have played spells ONLY through Welder/Bazaar recursion. A single stop/counter/answer to this plan would have prevented him from resolving almost anything.

Maxx

[Vegeta2711]

Uba Stax player had mulliganed already and was on the draw, that's why he only has 8 cards total in the scenario.
Yes originally he did play Lotus and double Welder and yes one was forced, since the Gifts player had no outs to it except one Echoing Truth.
I have no idea when the Mountain or Bazaar was actually drawn. Take a guess.

The only reason I even posted this, was to ask a few people what the best play for the Gifts player was, because I couldn't figure out which would be considered the absolute best play in the scenario (I don't really play Gifts). I don't really care about how 'rare' or whatever the game position is because I literally just took this from an actual game state I happened to see and modified like one variable.

His most damaging spells to Welder back are Null Rod and Uba Mask (to discourage any Brainstorm or TfK at eot).

Sundering Titan probably wouldn't be much fun for you either, since it'll basically win if it happens to get Welded in.

One other thing Peter, what about this scenario if the Gifts player had no Pithing Needle maindeck?

[dicemanx]

Sundering Titan probably wouldn't be much fun for you either, since it'll basically win if it happens to get Welded in.

Its probably a safe bet that Titan isn't in UbaStax if people are netdecking. However, another damaging card could be Jester's Cap if Null Rod isn't played, which might affect how the Gifts player's turn in played.

Before I answer the question again (since there are no Pithing Needles main), I need full information about the main deck. What win conditions are there? What disruption/card drawing/tutors?

[Vegeta2711]

Hm.

4 BS, 4 TFK, 1 FoF, 2 Gifts
2 Duress, 4 FoW, 4 Drain
AR, Tinker, DSC, Time Walk, Recoup, Will
DT, Vamp, Mystical
Echoing Truth, Tormod's Crypt
Flame Vault kill
26 mana

Something along those lines.

Btw, you don't HAVE to answer if you odn't want ;0 I was just curious how you'd handle it in a build w. no needles

[MaxxMatt]

@Vegeta.

The scenario you proposed now is far more troubling for the Gifts' player.
Both Tormod's Crypt and Echoing Truth can be considered good answers to Bazaars and Welders but you cannot simply put them into a Gifts as Needle or Darkblast and hope to be able to play them in the same turn, especially with the mana development at our disposal.

I try to elaborate a bit more on this issue.
In my experience, you have to fear the Bazaar-Welders recursion as a plague, so you have to do as much as you can in this turn.
If you pass without having done something crucial, you be completely smashed by his possible nasty artifacts' interactions.
You have to capitalize your cards trying to take care of the Welder, the worst things in his board.
Bazaar would remain active during all the match barring the presence of a single Stripmine in the Gifts' maindeck.
Having no data for this precise card's choice, I can assume that I haven't this card at all


My plans are two, really different and unluckily for me, not game ending.
They bring you in a good position but they didn't assure the victory.

(A)
You can simply try to draw 6 cards thanks to TFK & Brainstorm, hoping to Walk once or to find one of the two maindeck answers or to be able to Tutor for them.
IMHO, this is a good plan, but the risk is high, because you have a lot of cards left in the deck and you cannot maximize the draws at all with this process.



(B)
After a bit of thinking, I realized that you can Gifts twice, add more permanents on board and play a Walk, still holding that Brainstorm and that TFK in your hand.
( During this process I ended not being able to play Recoup+Y.Will because of a single mana missing ).

The process is really resources intensive, but you would end the turn with a better mana development, a thinner deck and a grave ready to be loaded into opponent's face.


1) You can play Mana Crypt and you have 5 mana on table.
1.1) You can play land and rise that count up to 6 but it would not be the right choice.
2) You can play Gifts for Tormod's Crypt, Echoing Truth, Academy and Lotus, using 4 mana but probably gaining additional 6 mana from the pair Academy+Lotus
3) You have now Academy+Lotus+1 mana floating for a total of 7 colured mana floating (UUURRRB).
4) You can Gifts again Petal, Mana Vault, Walk, Recoup with 3 coloured mana floating (UBR). Your grave grew a lot into this process and Y. Will would be game ending soon. You would probably gain Mana Vault and Petal. The total mana at you disposal would be UBR3. With a single additional mana on table you could have played Petal, Vault, Y. Will, Recoup for the win, but with this configuration you can only untap thanks to the Recoupped Time Walk.


It isn't the best play available.
But it is the one that help you much more than you can think.
You have all the Tutors ( except Mystical ) and Y.Will into the deck. You have other artifact mana fonts and your winners in it, too.



You board would be:
Island
Undeground Sea
Mana Crypt
Mox Ruby
Mana Vault ( tapped )
Academy



Your deck is 8 cards thinner than before and you have Brainstorm and TFK ready to use.
Calculating the cards that you used until now, you have played 12 cards before the two Gifts and you tutored 8 more cards after them for a total of 20 cards.
You have 40 cards left instead of 48 and there are better percentages of drawing one of the key cards for this situation.

You have 8 mana on board, all the needed colours and you can see 6 new cards thanks to TFK and Brainstorm yet.

There are a lot of cards combination that would put you in the position to win the game :
You can draw both Y.Will or F.F. or Mystical Tutor or Vampiric Tutor and kill the Welder and the game.
TFK+Brainstorm+F.F. would let you kill the Welder and gaining a lot of tempo.
TFK+Branstorm+Y.Will would win the game

Also, there are a lot of other combinations that can improve your board or give you additional tempo:
You can draw into FoF and other mana fonts
You can draw into F.F.-Vault combo
You can draw into Burning Wish and find solutions or Walk again
You would be able to add counter his artifacts with additional Drains-FoWs-Duresses for at least one turn, barring any grave recursion

I'm sure that this sequence of spells can "counter" by itself some of his possible way to lock you down.
One among Rod or Titan or CoW+Waste or Wire or Smokestack cannot be considered a real threat for the next turn.
Of course, coupling a lot of them would kill you.
On the other hand, while he can see 5 new cards ( bazaar, draw, bazaar ), he cannot active Welder during yur EoT and he have to resolve a single artifact to switch back something from the grave.
The small amount of cards into his hand can be considered crucial for us.

Eot he Bazaars once, draw 2, discard 3, hand size 2,
Draw phase, add a card, hand size 3,
He can Bazaar again, drawing 2, discarding 3 and remaining with 2 cards left in your hand.
In the process he would have probably discarded the overcosted artifacts, leaving the low cost ones into his hand.
If they are 2 Moxen, we are fucked up, excluding double counters' backup.
If they are a Wasteland and a Mox, he cannot prevent you from Draining/FoWilling it because of your good mana development
If they discarded shit, you can weight  the need of a counterspell on that mox, comparing your board situation with his board situation.
He can even not use the Bazaar the second time if the cards drawn would have been really good, but there are really not so many highly probable cards' configurations that would help him so much.



The best play that he can stack could be this one:
- Discard Titan and other two other good/bad cards.
- Hold 2 Mox into his hand
- Draw a Wasteland, kill your Academy with it
- Resolve one of the two moxen
- Switch back the Titan killing both Island and U.Sea.

If you had not drawn another land during the previous turn, you would remain with useless Ruby, Crypt and a Tapped Mana Vault on board.
Game Over for us

MaxxMatt

[Gabethebabe]

Maxx: Mana Fonts ==> Mana Sources.

I don´t understand why nobody asks what kind of UBA Mask we´re up against. Do they run Null Rod, Jester´s Cap?

My first idea was to just develop your position, Gifts for Academy, Lotus, Island, Sapphire, followed by Thirst. You still have Gifts in your hand, have digged three deep with Thirst and Brainstorm to dig deeper if needed.

1) You can play Mana Crypt and you have 5 mana on table.
1.1) You can play land and rise that count up to 6 but it would not be the right choice.
2) You can play Gifts for Tormod's Crypt, Echoing Truth, Academy and Lotus, using 4 mana but probably gaining additional 6 mana from the pair Academy+Lotus
3) You have now Academy+Lotus+1 mana floating for a total of 7 colured mana floating (UUURRRB).

1.1 You don´t have a land to play.
2) I would give you Echoing Truth and Crypt. Only an idiot would give you the two most broken mana accelerants that exist in Magic. You can´t even play Truth. Crypt only counters one Welder activation. No problem at all for UBA.

[MaxxMatt]

@Gabe

If you give me Crypt and E.Truth, I could play safe for at least two turns.
I pass the turn with a Crypt in play. If he activate the Welder once during his own turn, I would break his grave once.
He would be able to play a threat, but with those few cards, the most broken things could not be resolved AND actived in that turn.
During my next turn I could play my draw spells, bounce the Welder back to his hand and gain another turn during which he cannot do anything nasty with his grave.
He almost have no hand and no grave ( excluding the Bazaar activation during his previous turn ).

If I'm not in a good position after resolving Brainstorm+TFK+Gifts ( a couple of turns needed for them )while he cannot do almost anything, I'm sure that would be something flawed in my reasoning.

If he was playing NullRod-UbaStacks, I'm sure that I would fear less threats but more denial.
Brainstorm+Gifts could be enough to protect me for a while.

If he was playing Cap-UbaStacks, I'm sure that with a single Bazaar activation, playing both MW and Jester, could be considered an unfrequent combination of cards. On the other hand, if he managed do dump his Jester into the grave, you have time to bounce back and counter his Welder, while if he tried to resolve JesterCap during his next mainphase, he cannot activate it too soon, giving you the needed time to find a possible winner to hold into your hand

Being the UbaPlayer, I cannot say to you which cards I would decide to five to you after the first Gifts.
The lack of knowledge about his hand, force me to reason by percentage and both the situations ( the one described by me and the one described by you ) are nasty to handle for him.

Maxx

[warble]

Well that's why I have welders in my Gifts.  Gifts for welder, lotus, sol ring, fetchland into next turn win with FlameVault.  Only mox monkey can ruin your game then and you'll still have enough advantage to make it a tough battle.

If you don't have welders gifts for sol ring, fetchland, darkblast/pithing needle, tolarian/demonic.  They will give you sol ring fetchland, use it to thirst this turn setting up next turn gifts -> time walk -> will -> FlameVault win on your time walk turn (you will be mana shy your first turn).

Basically, use the first gifts to set up your mana base for your next turn and draw 3 cards with Thirst.  Use the second gifts during your next turn to get time walk and a tutor for Yawgwin, and use your walk turn to tendrils for the win.  If you don't run tendrils use a pithing needle to shut off the welder and tinker out DsC and walk, then use yawgwin to walk the colossus all the way.  Gifts should in this instance solidify your mana base with little risk, because an opponent who gives you darkblast + sol ring can't expect you to miss your mana drop this turn, hence you will get the fetch and sol ring.

Gifts is broken because you use your card advantage and tutors to force a certain gifts stack.  Force that stack by using cards that you do not need, but can use in a yawgwill turn and "look threatening".  Learning to stack gifts is difficult, and it requires intimate knowledge of what is considered a threat against the opposing deck as well as knowledge of the total number of tutors in your deck.  The reason I would only use demonic here is to leave the remaining tutors for your next turn gifts stack.

This is a really aggressive way to play gifts, especially given that the uba stax player will be drawing 5 cards during the next turn.  If I suspect a bad gifts stack I might actually just drop the mana crypt and pass the turn, hoping to use the gifts to answer the threats that are dropped in the yard.  However, you are in a terrible position as you have no mana and there is an active welder + bazaar for your opponent.  I would hope to at least plop out enough mana to withstand a trinisphere/titan.  Any way you look at it a competent uba stax player will beat you by shutting off your mana base either this turn or next turn, so solidify what you can.  welder + bazaar owns control.  At least you might topdeck a force and you can win next turn.

Edit:  I did not notice you suggest running such a narrow gifts deck.  There's virtually no way to win with the cards you described aside from getting lucky during bazaar time for the Uba Stax player.  This post is for people who consider a less narrow approach to gifts.  CS players with gifts, gifts tendrils variants, flamevault tendrils...  Being narrow means you have to gifts for the mana and go for the flame vault win next turn anyway after a couple of walks.  A competent uba stax player has shut off your colossus without will and the only way will will be useful here is if null rod or SoR aren't dropped next turn in the top 5 cards.  Edited the post after review of Vegeta's last post.

[yespuhyren]

Like everyone is saying, its a hard decision.  The Uba player has severely misplayed.  If his first turn was Lotus->double welder (with you forcing one), he would have 4 cards in hand.  I would play bazaar AND use it right away, to try and dump fat artifacts and if possible, hit a chalice and a shop for next turn.  The 2nd turn, I would have 2 card in hand, I would draw, bazaar again, digging for the same as Turn 1 as well as shops.  This would give me a turn 2 welder for some fat.

Basically, if I ever resolve Welder+Bazaar turn one, I play the turbomill game, milling my self like nuts to weld in fat artifacts.  Why your opponent passed the turns without ever bazaaring once surprises me greatly