Gifts with Flame-Vault

[mr_rogers]

I recently went to the Waterbury tournament.  Day 2 allowed the use of Ravnica and Portal, so I took a gifts build with the Flame Fusillade-Time Vault combo.  I really like this kill in the deck as it is easier to pull off than both charbeltcher and tendrils.  I'm going to post my build with some explanations to follow.

Mana
4x Island
3x Volcanic Island
2x Underground Sea
2x Polluted Delta
2x Flooded Strand
1x Library of Alexandria
1x Mana Vault
1x Mana Crypt
7x SoLoMoxen
1x Tolarian Academy

Creatures
1x DSC
1x Gorilla Shaman

Counter/Disruption
4x FoW
4x Mana Drain
2x Pithing Needle
1x EE
1x Echoing Truth

Draw/Combo
4x Brainstorm
3x Thirst for Knowledge
2x Gifts Ungiven
1x FoF
1x Ancestral Recall
1x Fame Fusillade
1x Time Vault
1x Demonic Tutor
1x Mystical Tutor
2x Merchant scroll
1x Burning Wish
1x Recoup

Broken
1x Tinker
1x Time Walk
1x Yawg Will

Sideboard
1x Flame Fusillade
1x Rushing River
1x EE
1x Echoing Truth
2x Stifle
2x Hydroblast
2x REB
1x Pyroblast
1x Mind Twist
3x R'n'R

  Most of the deck is pretty standard.  I ran the Truth maindeck not knowing what to expect day 2.  I was unsure about the Library till I actually got there and saw 4-5 Gifts decks running Flame-Vault on day 2.  I only got to use the Flame-Vault kill once the entire day, So I'd like to test that more. 

  I was pretty happy with the board for that metagame.  I would probably cut the Mind twist though and run a third hydo or third stifle.  Both are great against Dragon, which has been popping up a lot lately.  So that's what I played and want to make better for the next big tourny.  I would appreciate any suggestions/comments on the deck or sideboard.

[Greenebean]

Pretty decent deck list mr.rogers, since waterbury I have been looking into Gifts, and reading everything I could...on the other hand, I too am building a Gifts build, but it is secret until it is fully tested and such...but a very good start....Team WTF!?!? all the way:-D

[yespuhyren]

I like the concept, but the most important thing for me to give you insight, is

A) What was your record
B) What did you lose to?

[mr_rogers]

I went 1-2 drop. I lost to ubastax in the first round.  He drew smokestack turn one all three games and I had FoW only one time.  I also lost to FCG but it was really close.  I would have won game three if I had drawn a black source, Flame Fusillade, or Burning wish.  I had time vault in hand and a bunch of mana open.  I think I may up the Seas to three as I need the black mana sometimes.  I may also just up the fetch count to 5 to more guarntee the black mana.

[Smmenen]

Vault Fusillade is alot better than Belcherr/Severance in SSB.  Everyone knows that.

[mr_rogers]

@ smmenen: thanks for pointing out the obvious.  Do you have any advice or critism on the deck?  Maybe something I'm missing? 

[Cross]

It's cheaper, not better, which is a big distinguishing factor.

I won plenty of games off severancing myself early at waterbury, causing everything I drew to be very bomby. In fact I would not have beat mono-blue in the top 16 if it wasn't for severance.

I'm not saying either is better, because there are tons of situations where one is better than the other, but severance is really, really good.

[mr_rogers]

@ Cross: Cheaper = easier which usually means better.

I really like the Flame-Vault kill much more than sev-beltcher.  You don't even need the Time Vault sometimes.  You can just finish them off with a bunch of permanents on the board. With the Flame Fusillade you can also cast and kill welders or Gobs to buy time till you can combo or drop DSC.

[Cross]

Yes but belcher can also be played over turns, which flamevault can't. Also flame vault necessitates no welders or artifact destruction be in play, as you can just destroy the vault in response.

[mr_rogers]

Well I admit the kill has some flaws but so does the beltcher kill.  No kill in the deck is going to be perfect, it's a preference thing.  I prefer the Flame-Vault kill in my build as it is easier and the Fusillade can be useful by its self. 

[timmy]

Welders should not be to big of a problem for this deck when its comboing.  Just Cast Flame first and welder can't do a thing, same with artifact destruction.  Another nice thing to think about is the fact that flame has much more bluff potential.  If you know your opponent has a FOW or mana drain, you can cast the flame first, which will be much more likely to draw a counter, since they won't want their welders/utilities creatures killed off and time vault is much cheaper than a belcher + activation.  Severance, while increasing your card quality, most likely won't draw a counter as much of the time.

[Jacob Orlove]

Just Cast Flame first and welder can't do a thing

And neither can the Vault. It only gets the tap ability if it is in play when you cast Fusillade.

[rakso]

Steve, could that statement about Vault v. Belcher be less than absolutely true?

My local meta (not a good argument, I know) is aggro-control heavy, and I do appreciate how Belcher can pick off weenies.

That, plus you can actually win off a few Belcher activations without finding Burning Wish.

Otherwise, it's a 1-mana difference unless you hardcast Time Vault. Still, Wish for Fusillade requires double red.

[Greenebean]

Mr. Rogers is right, it does all come down to a preference for each individual player. Yes it is true that the Vault-Fusillade requires less mana to activate, but I feel the more important reason Vault-Fusillade is better is sometimes Severence-Belcher cannot be activated the turn it come into play. This is where I feel Vault-Fussilade "takes the cake" just for its speed factor.

Right now I have began testing on my own version of Gifts, which is going to be different from any other version that has been written about. This topic however is for another time, but I have only done limited testing, and it is no where near ready to be released or played.

[Dozer]

Do you have any advice or critism on the deck?  Maybe something I'm missing?

I bet there won't be much advice here until all the teams have showcased their build of Flame Vault Gifts. Plus, I am not sure if Oath Gifts isn't actually the better deck. Just wait until the end of the month, there'll be a plethora of Flame Vault builds to talk about. Let's see whose version gets the highest finish! The tournaments to watch are SCG Chicago on Oct. 29th. and the Dutch Vintage Champs on Oct. 30th.
Haven't you noticed that everyone has avoided mentioning the Flame Vault combo in Gifts threads like the devil the holy water? That ususally means everybody is cooking up something.

I went 1-2 drop.

Just a general note: I used to play only three Gifts, too. That's bad. However you structure your draw, you need to max out on at least Thirst or Gifts. Smmenen had it right when he devoted eight slots to the draw engine in Meandeck Gifts; I don't think any of the subsequent build can get away with less.

The big question about Flame Vault Gifts will be: Do people still play Rebuild main for the Tendrils kill? You don't, so you replaced the Tendrils in the board with a Fusillade. What was your reasoning behind that? We'll see how different teams tackle this differently. No Personal Tutor and no Imperial Seal either MD or SB surprises me (unless it was a non-proxy event, since Imperial Seal is pretty hard to get hold of).

belcher can also be played over turns, which flamevault can't. Also flame vault necessitates no welders or artifact destruction be in play, as you can just destroy the vault in response.

You can spread Flame Vault over turns, you just can't cast Fusillade first. The destruction of Belcher in response to Severance has much the same effect as the destruction of Time Vault in response to Fusillade: Your win condition is gone. (And with Severance, you have both increased your draws and made yourself vulnerable to land destruction.)

Dozer

[rakso]

I feel the more important reason Vault-Fusillade is better is sometimes Severence-Belcher cannot be activated the turn it come into play. This is where I feel Vault-Fussilade "takes the cake" just for its speed factor.

If you burning Wish for it, though, sometimes you don't have double red.

Off topic: Dozer, just HOW hard is it to get a hold of Imperial Seal?

[Necrologia]

Off topic: Dozer, just HOW hard is it to get a hold of Imperial Seal?

At Waterbury the only one I saw was going for $120. They ebay for $90-120 depending on the seller's feedback. Though I can't confirm it, Portal 3 Kingdoms was supposed to have a print run on par with some of the earlier sets in Magic. That would make it comparable to LoA: powerful, hard to find, and thus expensive.

[Blitzbold]

The approx. number of sold P3K starters ans booster in Germany is even less than in the US. To be precise, P3K cards are close to non-existant. Additionally, there are only a few big shops over here so the best way to get one is probably ebay, too.

[mr_rogers]

Just a general note: I used to play only three Gifts, too. That's bad. However you structure your draw, you need to max out on at least Thirst or Gifts. Smmenen had it right when he devoted eight slots to the draw engine in Meandeck Gifts; I don't think any of the subsequent build can get away with less.

The list for the deck is pretty tight already. I had 4 thirsts at first but wanted to be able to run a couple of metagame cards(echoing truth, shaman) in the deck.  I also needed to make sure I had enough artifacts to justify the TFKs in the deck.  I went over the list two or three hours and the only thing I could cut was one TFK.

As for the personal tutor, imperial seal thing all i can say is there is no room main deck, I couldn't even fit Vampiric Tutor in. I may run a seal in the sb to wish for but it is really hard to cut what's in the deck right now.  The one card I wish I had in my sb that I totally forgot about is Pyroclasm, as that would have won me the FCG match up I lost.

I didn't run the tendril's kill because I consider it too hard to pull off.  I was kind of new at playing Gifts and wanted kill conditions that I knew would work well. 

[Whatever Works]

I like Severence/Belcher alot better then Flame/Vault...

Vault is an extremely dead card ALWAYS... Belcher is not... Flame Fusilade is an expesive sorcery that is dead on its own generally unless late game (when you probably should have already won). Severence is never truly dead, and can be used to thin out the deck of lands improving draws.

After talking to several people who played the deck at waterbury most came to agree that though flame/vault can be a little bit more explosive in the right situations, and the kill being essentially unstoppable after it begins. Those advantages are completly negated when factoring in that both cards are extremely dead on there own with a good comparison being illusions/donate (though not that bad).

[mr_rogers]

just because a card is dead on its own does not mean the flame-vault kill is bad.  You use Donate/Illusions as an example.  For two cards that are dead on they're own the Trix deck was great for many years. Even today some Rector-Trix decks do well when unexpected. Flame-vault may or may not be better than sev/belcher but only future tounaments and testing will tell for sure.

[JigglyPuff]

Severence/ Belcher is the best of the two....take it from the stats....at waterbury there were 4 top 16 belcher decks...flame combo scrubbed out....(sorry gg)....before playing day 1 a good friend told me that the combo wasnt very stron yet his team ALL played it anyway and all scrubbed out...Belcher won me three games ALONE at waterbury(including the most broken turn 5 in extension to win the game against the mirror..)


                                                               

[mr_rogers]

@ JiglyPuff: I assume you are talking about day 2 since Rav was not legal day 1.  I didn't stick around for all of that day, so I didn't see the results of the top players. I still like the Flame-vault kill and am going to test it against more decks.  If i find that the belcher kill is better then I'll switch back but so far I'm like the Vault kill.

[Ufactor]

It's cheaper, not better, which is a big distinguishing factor.

I won plenty of games off severancing myself early at waterbury, causing everything I drew to be very bomby. In fact I would not have beat mono-blue in the top 16 if it wasn't for severance.

I'm not saying either is better, because there are tons of situations where one is better than the other, but severance is really, really good.

I can verify this.  Cross is right, Smmenen is mistaken.  It was a belcher that resolved (WITHOUT severance) that killed me in the Waterbury quaterfinals day one.  Time Vault hardly wins matches without it's counterpart.

[JigglyPuff]

btw.....if any1 wants it here is my list early... for day 1 (thanks null rob)
T-Money.dec  (3rd place)
4 force of will
4 mana drain
4 thirst for knowledge
4 brainstorm
2 gifts NOT given
2 gorilla ahaman
1 pithing needle
1 rack and ruin
1 tinker
1 DS colossuss
1 goblin charbelcher
1 mana severence
1 burning wish
1 recoup
1 yawg will
1 fof
1 echoing truth
1 merchant scroll
4 islands
2 deltas
2 strands
1 sno covered island
2 volc. islands
2 u.seas
1 LOA
1 tolarian

SB
3 annul
3 reb
2 engineered plague
2 pyroclasm
2 pithing needle
1 rack n ruin
1 deep analysis
1 echoing ruin

[mr_rogers]

Bringing Day 1 of Waterbury results to this topic is no help.  Ravnica was not legal Day 1 so no one could've done well with the Flame-Vault kill because the could not have played it.  If anyone knows what won Day 2 or if the Gifts decks running that kill on Day 2 did well or bombed feel free to chime in.  Please try to stay on topic with the thread.

[Null Rob]

Bringing Day 1 of Waterbury results to this topic is no help...Please try to stay on topic with the thread.

This is completely untrue.  In order to know whether or not FlameVault is worth running, it is necesary to analyze how the deck performs with the alternate combo.  To reiterate what Cross said, and was quoted on, the COMBO itself is cheaper than casting Severence, Casting / Tinkering for, and activating Belcher.  However, part of the beauty of the Belcher/Severence list was its ability to win by casting just one of the combo pieces after both players had expended all of their gas or had just fought a counter war over an important spell.  Let's face it: hardcasting Belcher is a fairly fast clock even without Severence, and forces the opponent to either waste time dealing with it while you build up a hand to combo them out, or it makes them race what is usually about a 3-5 turn clock.  Hardcasting Severence is also amazing when you are behind in a game and need to topdeck better, or in the mid-to-late game when you want to draw your gas before your opponent draws theirs. 

That said, FlameVault has its clear advantages.  Gifts decks run pretty much all of the broken acceleration in addition to Drains, and it is MUCH easier to go off on turn 2-3 if you draw both combo pieces and some acceleration, whereas having a Belcher and a Severence in your hand almost always equals a mulligan.  Fussilade isn't a blue card, and not being able to pitch it to FoW will matter sometimes.  If your hand is FoW, Severence, Gifts and your opponent casts a must-counter, you will almost always pitch the Severence (obviously there are certain cases where it is not the play, but the majority of the time it is correct).  However, if the Severence was a Fussilade, you will end up pitching the Gifts and be forced to enter topdeck mode. 

just because a card is dead on its own does not mean the flame-vault kill is bad.  You use Donate/Illusions as an example.  For two cards that are dead on they're own the Trix deck was great for many years.

You are somewhat correct in saying that dead combo pieces doesn't necesarily mean that the combo is bad; what it does mean, however, is that you NEVER want to see the combo pieces on their own, which will increase your mulligans, and in effect reduces your hand size by one when you draw one of them, especially when neither one is Blue and therefore can't even pitch to Force like Illusions or Donate could.

To be honest, I'm still not sold as to either combo being better.  I actually think it highly depends on the metagame.  For example, our team was expecting a good amount of Workshop decks at Waterbury, and ran a list closer to SSB than GG Gifts to have Welders, which drastically improves our matchup against Stax or Shop Aggro.  With Welders, Belcher becomes a lot better than Vault because you can win small by playing a Welder, Thirsting a Belcher into the yard, and just activating it for 4-5 turns for the win.  If you are expecting a lot of Combo decks or fast aggro decks, you may want to run FlameVault because it can out-combo combo much more effectively than Severence Belcher can.  It is also worth noting that if you are running Severence Belcher and your opponent is running FlameVault, you can cast one of your "combo" pieces as a win condition or a pseudo-win condition and they cannot, which effectively gives your deck 2 more must-counter spells than your opponent's deck.  I mean, you're not too concerned if your opponent has a Time Vault on the table unless they have Fussilade in hand.  But they certainly have to be concerned if you have a Belcher in play, or if you aren't going to topdeck any more lands for the rest of the game.

Edits: Fixed quotes and gotta give mad props to my boy JigglyPuff.  Congrats on another excellent finish!

[rakso]

Why are you overly focusing on Severance or Fusillade main?

[Null Rob]

I'm not entirely sure what you're asking.  Are you wondering why the combo piece (Severence or Fusillade) is in the maindeck as opposed to the sideboard?

[rakso]

The slot is generally held by Burning Wish so you can combo with Time Walk or Severance/Fusillade, so I was wondering if you meant something else in the discussion about pitching Severance or Fusillade to Force.