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Author Topic: Gifts Variant  (Read 3932 times)
Smmenen
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« on: June 24, 2005, 12:33:06 pm »

This is a Gifts Variant that I developed about two weeks before Richmond.  I showed it to Brassman there and we played some games and he was impressed.  I subsequently took it apart becuase I came up with another Gifts list that is radically different which I will talk about on Monday.

But I thought I'd share this one just to get it out there:
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Fact or Fiction
3 Gifts Ungiven
3 Intuition
4 Accumulated Knowledge
4 Brainstorm

Disruption:
3 Duress
4 Force of Will
4 Mana Drain

The Combo:
1 Yawgmoth's Will
1 Time Walk
1 Tinker
1 Recoup
1 Darksteel Colossus
1 Burning Wish

1 Mystical Tutor
1 Demonic Tutor

3 Island
1 Snow-Covered Island
2 Polluted Delta
2 Flooded Strand
3 Underground Sea
3 Volcanic Island
1 Tolarian Academy

1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Emerald
1 Sol Ring
1 Mana Vault
1 Mana Crypt
1 Black Lotus
1 Lotus Petal

Ok some comments:

Weaknesses:

1) One huge flaw in this deck is that it has no bounce spelll.  It needs bounce to even compete with Fish

2) It has no inherent ability to deal with Chalice aside from draw.  It has serious issues which cards like Null Rod

Advantages:

3) Intuition and Gifts have really powerful synergy.  The deck becomes far more focused around abusing Yawgmoth's Will

4) Intuition AK is a strong draw engine - and this deck shines in control matchups. 

I'll just leave this here for community reference - and if anyone really likes to play decks like this, I hope you enjoy it. 

Steve
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doylehancock
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« Reply #1 on: June 24, 2005, 12:43:10 pm »

Steve I like the deck though I am not certain if it is better than shortbus' list.

I would like to suggest either a pair of cunning wishes or echoing truth.  I think I will throw this together and give it a run.  What do you like most about this deck?  least?
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« Reply #2 on: June 24, 2005, 12:53:45 pm »

I have seen snow covered lands pop up recently, only one or two. My question is what do they offer over regular islands? I am just curious... Thanks
You can fetch an island AND a snow-covered island with gifts ungiven, so there's really no reason not to run one.
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« Last Edit: June 24, 2005, 01:50:33 pm by Jacob Orlove » Logged

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Smmenen
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« Reply #3 on: June 24, 2005, 02:14:28 pm »

Steve I like the deck though I am not certain if it is better than shortbus' list.

I would like to suggest either a pair of cunning wishes or echoing truth.  I think I will throw this together and give it a run.  What do you like most about this deck?  least?

Well, I think comparing it to the short bus list is a bit difficult since the win condition is entirely different.  A more appropriate comparison would be to the Gifts.fr or the list that Toad and Diceman were promoting.  Another comparison might be to Tog 

I like playing with Intuition and AK - this feels very much like Goth Slaver did last summer.  Its very aggressve in its playstyle.  I dislike the mana.  Intuition AK is more mana intensive and more suited to a control metagame - not one filled with Fish. 
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« Reply #4 on: June 24, 2005, 04:12:28 pm »

Steve I like the deck though I am not certain if it is better than shortbus' list.

I would like to suggest either a pair of cunning wishes or echoing truth.  I think I will throw this together and give it a run.  What do you like most about this deck?  least?

I honestly don't see any attraction towards the Short Bus version (SSB) of gifts anymore. The belcher win condition is slow, clunky, and requires way too much mana. I haven't even heard anything about the Short Bus version as far as improvements since Toad and others posted the more focused Colossus-win version of the deck.

With that said, I've been trying to develope a gifts list lately that is nothing like Salavagers or the Meandeck Colossus version, and boy is it tough to do so. There's so many options that the task of building a deck around gifts better than the previous mentioned two becomes dawnting. Steve, can't wait to see your totally different gifts list on monday. I think it's time for more Manadrain members to find more original ways to abuse this powerful card.

Nick
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MaxxMatt
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« Reply #5 on: June 24, 2005, 05:42:08 pm »

Hi Steve.

Now that you showed this deck to all, I would add some lines to your previous comments because I tested this build a month ago when Toad proposed it to me via PM.

I appreciated a lot the idea as soon as I receive the PM but the results were a lot different from my initial feelings.


Quote from: Steve
Advantages:
3) Intuition and Gifts have really powerful synergy.  The deck becomes far more focused around abusing Yawgmoth's Will
4) Intuition AK is a strong draw engine - and this deck shines in control matchups. 


I piloted the deck for an entire week any day in our game-shop trying to figure out how to win against tier1.
I finally find out that I can't flat out win against any deck that packs AK+Intuitions+Drawers because I relied only on AK+Gifts/Intuitions and with the Gifts that cannot be properly used to produce pure cards advantage as in different Gifts.dec.

In the Draw war you would always lose to decks like Moden-rTPS, Modern-Atog and Modern-C.Slavery. They pack your draw engine and Another One ( TFK or Deeps or Anything different ) and, as you would know, being forced to AK early is a bad move when your opponent can take advantage from them and ESPECIALLY when it is the only thing that you can do not to be forced to topdeck.

Control games are not won by that pesky DSC so I'm sure that there are a few little but not too problematic things that can be changed from this deck, as I proposed to Toad one month ago.

Add 2 Deeps analysis.
Those cards let you win the AKs' Mirror with ease, especially when you are packing so many good and istant tutors.

I proposed those changes to Toad.

-1 Intuition
-1 GIfts
+2 Deeps

The same that I'm going to propose to you all.
They let me play a winning role against other control decks, without relying too much on Gifting for the winner blindly hoping that my opponent is playing a bad deck or making Voodoo Ritual avoiding Bouncers.
I played with the 2/2 Intuitions/Gifts configuration and they are enough for my usual game plan:

1) Intuition for Deep Deep Duress or Gifts for Deep Duress Ancestral FoF ( or anything more appropriated and less standard Wink)
2) Win some wars thanks to Drains, FoWs and Duresses
3) Resolve the winner with plenty of advantage.

On a side note.
With the 3 Wishes maindeck, I don't feel the need of any bouncers maindeck. CotV for 3 would be your only huge threat to take out of the board, with Null Rod extremely near to it for the problems with your mana base that it can generate.
If you suspect some hate, you can proactively resolve a wish for somthing needed to bounce things and the game immediately shift on your favour.
 



I'll hope that it could be of some help Wink

MaxxMatt

 






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« Reply #6 on: June 24, 2005, 06:05:14 pm »

After team CAB spend some time on gifts, I was very interessed about the interaction of gifts and intuition + ak, so I spend some time on it, it's very fun to play, it can outdraw opp. very easy, and then just win with gifts.

http://www.themanadrain.com/forums/index.php?topic=21565.0 nr. 6
http://www.themanadrain.com/forums/index.php?topic=22265.0 nr. 2
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« Reply #7 on: June 25, 2005, 08:00:10 am »

On a side note.
With the 3 Wishes maindeck, I don't feel the need of any bouncers maindeck.

In the above list, there is only one Wish, which is a Burning one. I played an old Gifted-variant with Cunning Wishes in a small local tourney a while ago, and the Wishes absolutely sucked. The deck has a Gifts setup for every situation, even if it may not be appearent (or should have). Rather than drawing a Cunning Wish, I'd take Gifts, Intuition or even Deep Analysis any time, since Wishing for any solution is slow, mana-intensive and does not allow your opponent to make a mistake (Gifts and Intuition do that). The single bounce should probably be in there, maybe in the form of Echoing Truth. Depending on the metagame, the 3rd Duress can probably move to the sideboard to be replaced by Truth.

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Smmenen
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« Reply #8 on: June 26, 2005, 12:28:54 am »



Putting aside the problems with the lack of bounce/removal, Deep Analysis is not a good addition.  DA is really bad right now for reasons I don't fully understand.  This deck doesn't need help with control matches - it needs to be able to beat everything else. 

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Machinus
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« Reply #9 on: June 26, 2005, 12:31:14 am »

Putting aside the problems with the lack of bounce/removal, Deep Analysis is not a good addition.  DA is really bad right now for reasons I don't fully understand.  This deck doesn't need help with control matches - it needs to be able to beat everything else. 

My version of gifts only has real trouble with mana denial. Many decks run mana denial in different forms, but they are all difficult obstacles to overcome. However, Gifts can win easily if it doesn't have to deal with wasteland, chalice, null rod, gorilla shaman, sphere of resistance, etc.
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MaxxMatt
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« Reply #10 on: June 26, 2005, 05:32:18 am »

Sorry steve but while I argumented why playing with more Tutors that can tutor ONLY AKs is bad, you answered saying that the deck won the control matchups "for some reasons"..
Ah.. and you added that DA are bad, not because you realized why that they are bad.. but.. "for some reasons"...
Maybe you are so boubtful, incomplete and not able to respond WHY beacuse of the lack of some actual data?

I'm sure that DA could not be the good answers to the problems of that deck, but saying only "no without saying more" put you in the position of the Daddy with his blatant LittleChild. You have to prove me that they are better out of the deck and you have to explain your winning plane against TPS, Tog and CS, espeically when they draw cards without AKs...

I'm not Child
I'm not blatant
I'm sure that you can argument more if you can.

Smile

« Last Edit: June 26, 2005, 06:47:41 am by MaxxMatt » Logged

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Smmenen
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« Reply #11 on: June 26, 2005, 12:56:42 pm »

Sorry steve but while I argumented why playing with more Tutors that can tutor ONLY AKs is bad, you answered saying that the deck won the control matchups "for some reasons"..
Ah.. and you added that DA are bad, not because you realized why that they are bad.. but.. "for some reasons"...
Maybe you are so boubtful, incomplete and not able to respond WHY beacuse of the lack of some actual data?

I'm sure that DA could not be the good answers to the problems of that deck, but saying only "no without saying more" put you in the position of the Daddy with his blatant LittleChild. You have to prove me that they are better out of the deck and you have to explain your winning plane against TPS, Tog and CS, espeically when they draw cards without AKs...

I'm not Child
I'm not blatant
I'm sure that you can argument more if you can.

Smile



The real problem with this deck is that the primary use of Intuition isn't actually to get AKs but to get broken cards like Yawg Will, Recoup, Tinker - or just to deposit the nuts cards in the yard to support the standard gifts.

So its completely and utterly wrong to say that there is no Intuition targets aside from AKs.  Most of the time I was just getting restricted cards with Intuition. 
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MaxxMatt
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« Reply #12 on: June 26, 2005, 05:16:49 pm »

Quote from: steve
The real problem with this deck is that the primary use of Intuition isn't actually to get AKs but to get broken cards like Yawg Will, Recoup, Tinker - or just to deposit the nuts cards in the yard to support the standard gifts.

In any deck that I played with Gifts Ungiven, I have been able to win through "the standard gifts" only against aggro decks and bad decks.
Against any deck that pack in Counters and Duress and Broken Spells, I have "to win in some other ways" before to win with "the standard gifts".
The deck that I play now and that packs Gifts, aside to them, had powerful drawers that are not a two razor knife as AKs when they are played as your only real engine.
I can, as you,  Gifts-out Broken things or "the Win", but while I Can Play the control-role Gifting out strong and multiple SAFE drawers to take control of the game and then go for the win with any plan that I decide to use, you have to cheat to your unprepared opponent, because he didn't know that if you resolve a Gift or an Intuition, he could possibly win BETTER and EASIER, because of your deck structure.


Any card as Y Will and Tinker and Burning or Recoup don't give you inherently advantage.
They gave you advantage if you are pushing pressure to your opponent. If your quick Intuition/Gifts grow a possibly fast Y Will, the opponent's quick Intuition/Gifts would give  him MORE actual cards, answers and resources to stop your simple plan.
When you are forced to use your own drawers to try to recover, they would be ready to use them better than you.

While you are trying to do a beatiful thing before the opponent ( making a fast Will or Win Quickly ), you are not seeing that you are opening too much your own defences.

Try to play against a player that is conscious of the lack of different drawers aside AKs and Ancestral and FoF and that didn't play AKs of his own. You can win or lose.
Try to play agains the same player but with him playing Aks AND Intuitions as you, but with OTHER things to use to gain advantage during the early game. You would lose almost any game, if we exclude the Broken-Dominated ones.

In the first post I referred to the use of Cunning Wishes because the Toad's List used them.
The deck consist on an Atog deck without Atogs, Deeps, less Wishes and with some Gifts and a Recoup.
I suggested to switch something for the two additional Deeps.
From my own tests it worked wonderfully.
I find myself playing an "Atog" deck without having a flat winning plan, with consistent and great cards' advantage but with more Tutors than before.




Quote from: steve
So its completely and utterly wrong to say that there is no Intuition targets aside from AKs.  Most of the time I was just getting restricted cards with Intuition.

But, aside from Ancestral and FoF, you have no way to produce pure cards' advantage with them.
Play a Gifts with Y Will Recoup and Ancestral and FoF. I can give you the two sorcery and bar my defences consisting only on a possibly Duress on your Y Will and a counterspell on the recoup.
Not considering that a bit of grave hate and you would lose too much even when resolving good Gifts or Intuitions.

The usual and standard Gifts.dec are stronger because they play any games without relying too much on single cards as this deck is supposed to win. They would not win because of Y Will or Tinker or a fast combination of such those things.

They would win outdrawing the opponents.


MaxxMatt








« Last Edit: June 27, 2005, 03:42:55 am by MaxxMatt » Logged

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Smmenen
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« Reply #13 on: June 26, 2005, 09:15:08 pm »

I guess you just don't play the deck as aggressively as I do. 
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« Reply #14 on: June 27, 2005, 03:03:39 am »


4) Intuition AK is a strong draw engine - and this deck shines in control matchups. 


Intuition AK is a nice draw engine vs. aggro because it is so cheap/fast and has no constraints like cards in graveyard/discards etc. But in contradiction it really sucks in control games, as your opponent just has to handle ONE AK and you are done for the day having no draw engine left. Only DA makes Intuition a must counter as you can't handle - DA for 2 - three times in a row.
Also gifts is pretty much worthless in that configuration in the control mirror. Gifting for 4 different draw spells like scrying, thirst, FoF, gifts/ANC before gifting for the kill, is just key in the control matchup.

You are right that gifts need help vs all the other decks though. It looses badly vs. fish because it is more mana dependent as any other control deck and it really has problems against stax and dragon as it cannot handle bazaar/workshop. The matchup against TPS is decent but cannot be improved by boarding chalice because of playing duress on your own.
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« Reply #15 on: June 27, 2005, 05:22:42 am »

Quote from: Maxx Matt
On a side note.
With the 3 Wishes maindeck, I don't feel the need of any bouncers maindeck.

Could it be that you were testing the same deck I have been (the adapted italian Tog list)? It is kind of similar to Steve's list, although the win condition is ofcourse (partly) different. Relative to Steve's list, I tested:

-1 Burning Wish
-1 Mystical Tutor
-1 Fact or Fiction
-1 Lotus Petal
-1 Mana Vault
-1 Mana Crypt
-1 Tolarian Academy

+3 Cunning Wish
+1 Psychatog
+1 Engineered Explosives
+1 Underground Sea
+1 Library of Alexandria (though this sucked as bad as I thought it would)

Not that I pretend this is necessarily better than Steve's list; it's just that I think MaxxMatt was initially discussing this list rather than the one Steve posted. I've been doing relatively OK with this list in testing (except against Hypermud, obviously). I have since given up on it.


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« Reply #16 on: June 27, 2005, 07:25:14 am »

Why not using the power of Intuition without the easy to hate Knowledges? I cannot see anything bad in adding 2-3 Intuitions to the deck. It would make Will and Tendrils-based kills a lot better. What about a list like this:

// Lands
    1 Library of Alexandria
    3 Volcanic Island
    3 Underground Sea
    2 Polluted Delta
    2 Island
    2 Flooded Strand
    1 Tolarian Academy
    1 City of Brass
    1 Tundra

// Creatures
    1 Darksteel Colossus

// Spells
    1 Yawgmoth's Will
    1 Fact or Fiction
    4 Brainstorm
    1 Burning Wish
    1 Recoup
    3 Duress
    1 Mox Emerald
    1 Mana Crypt
    1 Mox Jet
    1 Mox Pearl
    1 Mox Ruby
    1 Mox Sapphire
    1 Ancestral Recall
    1 Time Walk
    4 Mana Drain
    4 Force of Will
    1 Sol Ring
    1 Demonic Tutor
    1 Vampiric Tutor
    1 Mystical Tutor
    1 Tinker
    3 Gifts Ungiven
    3 Thirst for Knowledge
    1 Lotus Petal
    1 Engineered Explosives
    1 Balance
    2 Intuition
    1 Black Lotus

// Sideboard
SB: 1 Duress
SB: 1 Chainer's Edict
SB: 2 Pyroclasm
SB: 1 Cranial Extraction
SB: 1 Primitive Justice
SB: 3 Chalice of the Void
SB: 3 Phyrexian Furnace
SB: 1 Mind Twist
SB: 1 Turbulent Dreams
SB: 1 Tendrils of Agony
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MaxxMatt
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« Reply #17 on: June 27, 2005, 07:37:25 am »

@Bram.

I would correct your changes for clarity.
-1 Atog
-1 E.E.
+1 FoF
+1 Crypt
+1 Burning ( if I dind't remember badly, it was 61 cards, with 25 mana fonts in it ).

The two list are so similar to each other that those little tweaks that you and me exposed now are clearly inessential when discovering and try to correct the deficences of the the deck.

Otherwise, thanks for posing attention to them. I would not be precise intentionally, because Toad told me of it and it is not my own creation.

Have you found and felt the same feelings that I had playing that deck?



@Heiner
I almost agree on the first part of your statement.
I played and proved on myself sadly losses against TPS with different Gift-based decks.
I played with CotVs in the side as well and, even if not game sealing, they are a great addition to the maindeck during game 2 and 3 because they let you to rise the number and the density of threats against that combo deck. Relying only on Drains, Duresses and FoWs are usually not enough. I pack in at least 3 CotVs and the 4th Duress, leaving in some Tutors or solutions to get rid of them if I have too many unplayble spells in hand. Those strategy let me win more games than I lost and at now, I didn't find nothing better against TPS.
Boseju is KEY during those games. It let you play cotvs for 2 and for 3 being able to resolve YOURS!



@Sveve
Sorry Steve, I respect you but I can resist...

Quote from: steve
I guess you just don't play the deck as aggressively as I do.

Very Happy LoL? Very Happy


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« Reply #18 on: June 27, 2005, 07:58:01 am »

I have been testing it a bit more and I like it.  The only worry I am currently having it swords.  Since UW landstill, and UW fish are around you have to worry about swords.  Maybe either have a nother win condition main or use tendrils in the side (since burning wish it already in the deck).

What do you guys think?
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« Reply #19 on: June 27, 2005, 09:40:58 am »

That Tendrils og Agony is an auto include in the sideboard Smile
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