Meandeck Gifts

Given the extent to which Meandeck Gifts relies on Power for effectiveness, I was pretty uncertain as to whether a budget build was even worth looking at. After all, some of the deck's most powerful dyanmics: chain of vapor on its artifacts, Gifts-ing for broken mana sources, gifts-ing for Power that are essentially extra win conditions...all are impossible without Power. What's more, the deck relies on Mana Drains for any semblence of speed in the absence of factories.

All that's to say I know taking MG and stealing the Power and Drains is like taking the engine out of a car. And I know there's a chance it's pretty much impossible to make a thoroughly viable budget Meandeck Gifts. Still, I like the concept of the deck and very much want to play it without dropping the grand or more it would require to flesh it out with favorite cards. The metagame in my area for Vintage is very very very laidback and weak, so super-viability isn't necessary for it to be fun. So instead of suggesting I play Fish or Landstill or some other more easily budget-ed deck, please do help me build this into a better deck. First, the list.

Mana
2 Flooded Strand
5 Island
2 Volcanic Island
2 Underground Sea
1 Mana Vault
1 Tolarian Academy
1 Chrome Mox
1 Lotus Petal
1 Sol Ring
1 Mox Diamond
4 Polluted Delta
1 Lion's Eye Diamond
1 Grim Monolith
2 Dark Ritual

Disruption
4 Force of Will
4 Misdirection

Draw/Tutor
4 Gifts Ungiven
4 Brainstorm
1 Fact or Fiction
4 Merchant Scroll
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Hurkyl's Recall
2 Careful Study
1 Grim Tutor
1 Demonic Tutor

Misc.
1 Recoup
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Yawgmoth's Will
1 Tinker
1 Chain of Vapor
1 Rebuild
1 Darksteel Colossus

I approached this deck by taking an optimized (non-budget) decklist and removing the power/drains, then trying to account for their absence. The mana acceleration include almost all of the obvious non-Power accelerants, excepting Mana Crypt (not sure if I want to shell for it). It works about as well as can be expected. I'm a little unsure as to whether Grim Monolith shouldn't be replaced by something else - for now I'm leaving it. The Dark Rituals don't seem too burdensome, despite the the fact that the deck is, obviously, far from black-heavy; they're wonderful for lending the all but the U of Gifts' cost, or for pumping out Yawgmoth's Will, etc. I lent a little farther into mana both to make up for the deficiencies of the chosen cards v. power and to compensate for the absence of Drains.

Disruption's straightforward enough. No Drains, and since they're not there, there's no point including anything but more misdirections. I didn't find Mana Leaks to really be worth it at all. I only run 8 disruptors because without Ancestral, Time Walk, etc., there's need for a little bit more engine.

As for the engine, everything's essentially the same as in the standard version of this deck. Careful studies fill the holes, U for showing 2 cards is about the best I could do, or at least I thought so. Suggestions here are welcome, it feels about as solid as is reasonable to expect.

The deck on the whole goldfishes quite well. I consistently land turn 3-4 kills, have done a turn 1 and some turn 2s, and every once in a while land past four turns. Still, given the card choices, the slower the deck explodes the more I tend to have FoW or Misd.s to play with, so generally the speed of the play balances with the deck's control ability. What I find, often as not, is that where a powered version would explode on a given turn, this deck generally takes another turn after that - simply because when I Gifts for mana sources they're just not as fast to come out, so usually when I do that I then end up waiting for the next turn to use the new mana and deliver the killing blow.

Thanks in advance for your suggestions and help.

Lands: 16, Spells: 43, Crt: 1   60