[Premium Article] The Case for Thirst for Knowledge in Vintage Gifts

[MaxxMatt]

Another way out is the Cunning Wish that Matt promoted above, by the way. With Cunning Wish, you can grab the bounce you need just before you win, although that doesn't help much against suppressed Fetchlands. You'll have to bite the bullet and just pay for the fetch ability.

Try to focus on a build with Cunnings.
You have more blue and a lot of islands and some duals.
You don't need red or black to win soon, you can easily wait a bit and dig into the deck until you draw Undergrounds and Volcanics.
All the engine and the solutions to problems are almost blue.

Retrospectively speaking, playing with 2-3 Cunnings, you can easily drop down to4 the fetchlands, losing really few on tempo when facing Suppressed Field.

On a minor point, fetchlands#1 is usually faster to break when compared with resolving Suppressed Field #1. It all comes down to flip coin. You can have a free-search effect or not, regardeless which configuration you are going to play.

As an aside, I find the storm requirement on Brain Freeze quite taxing, more than the black mana on Tendrils. How is your experience? Do you fizzle more often than with Tendrils, and how much setup energy goes into a Brain Freeze kill?

Killing with Brainfreeze is a quantitatively more difficult than killing with ToA, but qualitatively really simpler.

To avoid frequent fizzles, I add to my sideboard free spells such as Gush and bouncers such as Rebuild.
The plan usually involve a good combinations of drawers and Y Will.
Gifts is "THE Y. Will enhancer" and, supported by all my 10-mana accelerators, I cannot be able to deck my opponent only a couple of times ( compared to 10-15 Brainfreeze kils ).

I found playing the two blue spells ( Cunning + Brainfreeze ) to be far more simpler than playing the red and the black one.

Even if both of the killing methods usually involve resolving an huge Y Will, I found really interesting to have two kills that can attack the opponent from two different sides: his life points AND his cards.

Playing against good opponents ( the ones who play with the blue cards and some drawers ) isn't unusual to win with brainfreeze with only 10-12 spells, an amount of spells comparable to the one needed to kill men with ToA.
More than they draw and dig for solution, more you can slow down the game, refill your hand with good spells, rearrange you godly hand and win.

....Sometimes I lost to Life.dec.. now it cannot be possible anymore...



Maxx










 

[Chamelet]

Brain Freeze is bad because it can't kill Oath.
Also, I used to play MDG with Gush maindeck to increase storm-count. Just to note.

Another thing, what do you think Ravnica will bring that'll change this build (aside from Suppression Field)?
Edit: Oh, and do you think any trasmutes can come in? Maybe that 4 mana bouncer that can act as a tutor for Gifts/FoF/Belcher? Or Muddle the Mixture for Drain/Severance/Walk/Wish/Recoup?

[Eddie]

Brain Freeze is bad because it can't kill Oath.

Don't be silly. Of course it can kill Oath. Blessing isn't that much of a problem.

[Chamelet]

Brain Freeze is bad because it can't kill Oath.

Don't be silly. Of course it can kill Oath. Blessing isn't that much of a problem.

I don't see how.

[Necrologia]

Brain Freeze is bad because it can't kill Oath.

Don't be silly. Of course it can kill Oath. Blessing isn't that much of a problem.

I don't see how.

Mill them, then with the Blessing trigger on the stack Recall them. It doesn't come up that often, but then how often do you expect to play against Oath?

Considering the fact that most Oath players only run 1 Blessing anymore, it's also entirely possible for them to have simply drawn it at some point. Milling's not ideal against Oath but it can be done.

[PipOC]

Mill them, then with the Blessing trigger on the stack Recall them. It doesn't come up that often, but then how often do you expect to play against Oath?

Brain freeze resolves milling blessing off. the stack becomes this

Stack:
[top]
Gaeas Blessing
Brain Freeze copies
[bottom]

The blessing trigger resolves shuffling everything back, then the rest of the brain freeze copies mill into futility.

[nataz]

Mill them, then with the Blessing trigger on the stack Recall them.

But I thought that doesn't really work against an opponent who knows not to just scoop...

In order for the AR plan to actually deck an opponent, doesn't the blessing have to be within the last 6 cards?
(i.e., within the range of the last mill effect (3) from the bottom of the library, + what the AR can actually force the opponent to draw (3))


I know that you couldn't just "win" with the old dragon and sensei decks against blessing, because even it it was infinite, you still eventually had to deck them. It is no guarantee that blessing will ever be in the last 5-6 cards or so, and therefore you can't just call it a game.

[Moxlotus]

Blessing triggers when it is put into the grave, but the current milling effect goes until it is finished-AKA, it can be until the entire library is in the yard.  With blessing on the stack, Recall them-they lose before the Blessing occurs.

I'm an Oath player and have lost to Ancestral Recall before.

Edit: Typed this out too fast.  I also gave the standard Dragon answer.  It works differently with Brain Freeze.

[Lelolith]

Each Brainfreeze copy is seperate, so if blessing finds itself in the graveyard, it'll put an effect on the stack to put itself back in the library, (and cards currently in the grave) before another 3 cards can be milled. So yes this can be responded to advantageously with recall if there are 2 cards left in the deck. but this is unlikly

[cosineme]

Hrm, so you are saying each freeze goes on the stack individually? that's interesting...i always thought that to beat blessing you had to freeze twice.

freeze
blessing
freeze
then some card draw.

[Lelolith]

Yes, Freezing Twice would work, If they're not running another Blessing  :lol:

[Necrologia]

Brain freeze resolves milling blessing off. the stack becomes this

Stack:
[top]
Gaeas Blessing
Brain Freeze copies
[bottom]

The blessing trigger resolves shuffling everything back, then the rest of the brain freeze copies mill into futility.

For the record this is correct, and I was mistaken. The trick I'd mentioned only works if the mill is one effect, or if you can respond to the blessing with another mill. I was in a hurry and just typed out the standard answer to "how does dragon deck someone if they have blessing" without thinking. I apologize for giving incorrect info.