[Article] Gifts Ungiven Belcher Control

Finally going to build the deck this weekend. I am really looking forward to playing it and think that combo control is definitly the way to go.

In terms of the vamp over the mystical tutor, the other big card that it can get is the Lotus or a piece of artifact mana, which more often than not can be big.

One thought i had (no testing or anything to back it hence it is just a thought), what about a platnum angel in the build to go along with the Trike, so you end up with somewhat of a control slaver-ish type of build with the combo. With the thirsts, the extra artifacts can not hurt you, I am not going as far as to say that a slaver is a good idea, but the core of the decks are similar, so it may be worth a look.

I am more encouraged by this deck after I played a powered TPS build at a local T1 this past weekend. I played a TPS with gifts and found that if I were able to resolve a gifts, I would never lose, which I thnik is also true with this deck. I went 3-1 in the torney losing to a mono blue with 12 counters. He had suberb draws and I made a few play mistakes, but I also had tight matches against other decks, one of which I had to win by hard casting the DSC. Point is that I like this deck with 8 counters and duress more than the 4 force 4 duress TPS in the long run. I just dont feel like a more "pure" combo deck like TPS can win in the long run, the heavy control matches are hard and you will always find them. I think that this is a much more stable idea and really want to run with it.

Thanks for the inspiration