If you read reports to understand why people play the way they do, and how their superior knowledge of sideboarding and proper action in-game took them through the rounds like a hot knife through butter, then you're screwed. This here is a tale of evil, not Magical cards. It is a tale... of Baldwinsville.
Our adventure begins as I peel out of work and make it back to my apartment in record time, only to discover that the Brass Man is as usual running quite late. When he finally arrives two hours later, we take off in my car and head up to visit Crossman Wilkins in beautiful Troy, NY. Some cold pieces of pizza and some sideboard creation later, we're ready to pack in the sleep as though we're like, good or something.
I leave Crossman's place with the BrassMan and his usual entourage in tow-- Outlaw and Crossman. Another two and a half hours of driving (and near death experiences due to a lack of windshield wiper fluid and too much salt) and we locate the town of our nightmares.
Nestled amongst the quieter parts of upstate New York, Baldwinsville was constructed immediately above an ancient indian burial ground. If you are alone and stand very still outside, you can hear curses coming from the very earth under your feet. There are unseen forces affecting everything, from the air you're breathing to the electricity pumping through the poorly maintained, festering remains of the work of dedicated men and women from over a half a century ago. It is a place of evil, where the wind is always bitter cold, the hustle and bustle of townsfolk is rare to see and always the silent shuffle of the living dead. Dogs and cats, living together-- Mass hysteria.
The crown jewel of the town of Baldwinsville lies in the Tri-County Mall. To get a good idea of the crushing relentlessness of decay on the town, here are some images of the once-magnificent splendor of this particular venue.
http://www.deadmalls.com/malls/tricounty_mall/To my immediate dismay, we're playing in the food court of this mall. Things are just getting better and better. Here's what I registered.
Priapism
4 Brainstorm
4 Thirst for Knowledge
4 Force of Will
4 Mana Drain
3 Gifts Ungiven
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
1 Tinker
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Yawgmoth's Will
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Imperial Seal
1 Recoup
1 Flame Fusillade
1 Rack and Ruin
3 Pithing Needle
1 Darksteel Colossus
1 Time Vault
1 Black Lotus
1 Sol Ring
1 Mana Crypt
1 Lotus Petal
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Library of Alexandria
1 Tolarian Academy
1 Strip Mine
4 Island
4 Polluted Delta
1 Flooded Strand
2 Volcanic Island
2 Underground Sea
SB
4 Red Elemental Blast
3 Rushing River
2 Tormod's Crypt
2 Pyroclasm
2 Engineered Explosives
2 Rack and Ruin
Some notes about the list-
I know that not a single person who's sold on any other version of gifts is going to be convinced by this list or by these results. Let's face it-- This was a small tournament. While the metagame was not really questionable (tournaments like these basically draw hardcore players only, so we end up with a room of 40ish very solid players and 15 locals) it's still a pretty sketchy thing to bank any sort of hard evidence on. That all said, I'm still going to try to at least touch base on why you're playing the wrong build if you aren't playing this build in an upcoming SCG article. In the mean time, the usual crap:
1) Flame-Vault is the most superior 2-card killing combo in the game. It has an extremely low mana cost, with only one specific color involved. Both halves of the combo are immune to red elemental blast, and given the high amount of colorless mana in the costs, these spells are very easy to protect with Mana Drain. Given the high concentration of tutors in the deck (3 gifts, 1 demonic, 3 team card disadvantage tutor) assembling these two cards in the early turns with a disruptive hand will win pretty much any game. Many people have made their arguments for Tendrils in their gifts list-- Maybe in YOUR gifts list, it works great. But it's a fucking terrible way to win in the ideal gifts build. There's a ton of setup involved (and anybody who says differently is blatantly lying-- playing 9 spells and still having 2BB open requires a whole lot of assembly, and putting 4 mana artifacts, a rebuild, and a tendrils together is just a two card combo that costs far more than flamevault, is not immune to red elemental blast, and has the added drawback of needing moxes to play) and it's far simpler to disrupt. If you are playing the kind of hand that can "go aggro" with tendrils as you can with flamevault, you could be killing people with pretty much anything, since the requirement to do that is a busted ass early will, or a hand of like, Rebuild, Tendrils, Sapphire, Jet, Crypt, another mana artifact, and X.
2) Imperial Seal is bad, but as mentioned above, it makes it a very simple endevor to assemble your two card "oops" combo and go off without having to play the game at all. If you're playing correctly, you should fairly regularly (60% of the time or more) have a method of getting whatever card you Seal'd for immediately, so even burning it to get Ancestral or Tinker isn't bad. It's also one more card that gets Academy, which is what cracks the mirror most of the time.
3) Pithing Needle did what Pithing Needle does. Most of the time it was fed to Thirst or used to pump Academy. Whenever it was not, it was the only card that would work in whatever situation arose, and won the game almost by itself.
4) Okay guys, I confess. I don't understand why the Strip Mine is good. Basically what we came up with is that strip effects have the potential to be really unbalancing, and the drawback of running one fewer blue source is heavily outweighed by the number of times Strip Mine saves your ass against opposing Libraries, Bazaars, or even just cuts off access to a color. More than one game in the past two weeks was determined when I was able to strip mine Tolarian Academy, giving me the free and clear to play my own and start going crazy.
DISCLAIMER: I didn't take notes and my memory blows, so if these details are wrong, I'm not trying to make shit up, I just don't remember. To the best of my knowledge, this report is accurate.
Round One: 2 Land Belcher
I debate keeping a totally sketchball hand on the draw. It's got a ton of artifact mana including Sol Ring, so if he's playing Stax, I pretty much just win. It has a Pithing Needle, so I can keep up with Dragon, and a Vampiric Tutor, so it might be able to fight a hole through something else. He leads with Land Grant and reveals a hand containing mana and Goblin Charbelcher. He's shy a mana of being able to cast the belcher now, so he commits some artifacts to the board to set up for his next turn, and passes. I drop a bunch of acceleration, a Pithing Needle on Goblin Charbelcher, and cast Vampiric for Tinker. Colossus beats his brains out long before he finds a solution.
Game two he starts setting up with board commitment again, and will have Channel online the next turn. I've got Time Vault and Demonic in hand, but no artifact mana, so basically I'm sitting on Drain or I'm dying. By the time he's ready to start throwing spells at me, I've got four lands in play, and a Time Vault that's tapped. He goes for Channel and I drain it, leaving him with a clear hole in which to win the following turn. I untap, demonic tutor for Flame Fusillade, and blow him up.
2-0, 1-0
Round Two: Severance Belcher Gifts
I don't remember this match terribly well. I believe I had to mulligan very heavily game one, prompting me to just not play spells so as to sideboard appropriately and leave him very confused. This plan didn't work when my deck handed me the gas to have a chance at making a comeback, and my opponent didn't play anything but Tinker for Colossus and some brainstorms. Thankfully my sideboard plan for every deck that does that is pretty much the same. His man goes the distance.
Game two I cast Gifts.
Game three I have a pretty gassy hand and set up Flame-Vault on turn two or three with double force backup. There wasn't really much he could have done.
2-1, 2-0
Round Three: Identical Maindeck as me!
I ID with Outlaw and get some greasy pizza. It is delicious, but it's so greasy it actually physically hurts to consume it.
0-0, 2-0-1
Round Four: Oath of Druids
Fuzzy on details here again. I believe he was cut off from green mana by a Strip Mine, which bought me enough time to set up a busted Will.
Game two he has Oath online, has Akroma on board, and will win the next turn. I take a ton of beats from my mana crypt while I try to set up the Flame-Vault combo, but my deck isn't playing nice. I do some Time Walk recursion, and eventually find Imperial Seal, which is followed with Brainstorm, which is followed with the Fusillade for the win.
2-0, 3-0-1
Round Five: Bomberman
Those wacky Canadians! This guy was a class act. Apparently he also is the guy responsible for coming up with Bomberman. The obnoxious thing about the deck is that the combo almost never happens-- Basically, everybody wastes their resources trying to prevent the combo, and meanwhile stupid little guys are beating you up and your life total decreases a lot faster than you anticipated.
Game one we're beating eachother up for a while. He gets a Salvager to stick, which I follow with a Pithing Needle on Salvager. I get a Colossus to stick, and he follows with Aether Spellbomb. I believe I ended up forcing him to pop the bomb and then Yawg Willed, brainstorming him away and Tinkering him back out again with a Time Walk for backup.
Game two I keep a sketchy hand, and get punished. Hard. His strip mine poops on my manas and I never ramp to anything.
Game three I have to play super hard and super fast. He keeps a hand that's heavy on winning and light on win prevention, and I keep a hand that wins turn three.
2-1, 4-0-1
OMG GG.
Round Six: ChangStax
Roland and I ID. Victory tastes sweet, and slightly greasy.
0-0, 4-0-2
At this point we get some 'wonderful' news. Apparently the attendance is too low to have the prizes.... today. So we're given the option of walking with a teeny tiny bit of cash (400, 200, 150, 150, 75, 75, 75, 75) instead of the real prize structure, or waiting as long as three months for our prizes. We basically have a top eight meeting twice more over the course of the night to re-evaluate the situation, but we go with the waiting plan. While getting cash in pocket now is good and reliable, I mean seriously, look at the cash payout vs what we're promised. I make the suggestion we get our agreement from him in writing for the cards, and essentially we all have him write out contracts to each of the top eight members.
Top Eight: SX
No lies. This guy apparently cut a swathe through the swiss. He and Roland were unde-freakin-feated, and when they ID'd and played for fun, SX guy tooled him. I have no idea what's going on, but I figure it's Baldwinsville's evil at work.
Game one he land grants. I'm holding Pithing Needle and my heart skips a beat, but then he shows me a hand of a million cantrips and I'm very upset. He drops his land, considers his options, and says go. I draw Tolarian Academy. I decide to drop the Pithing Needle, but there's not anything in his deck that Needle actually affects. I name Darkwater Egg even though it doesn't work, and suddenly my academy is online for UU. He plays a bunch of stuff on his turn two, and if I recall correctly he runs out of gas when I mana drain Ancestral Recall. I mystical on my upkeep for Rack and Ruin, nuke his artifacts, and Strip Mine his land.
Game two he has a beautiful setup, which forces me to either Mana Drain Cabal Ritual when he's got UUB floating with a Chain of Vapor, Mox Jet, and Mox Sapphire, or let me Mana Drain the Chain of Vapor, which puts his storm at 8 when I'm at 16 anyway.
Game three I have the most busted hand I've seen all day. Lotus, Ancestral, Brainstorm, Sol Ring, Fetch, Mox, Mox. He tries to play it safe turn one, assuming that since I drew 6 cards, I had to have a Force of Will. I didn't, but I did have end of turn Gifts Ungiven for cards that win, untap, and Vampiric Tutor for Yawgmoth's Will.
Top Four: Bomberman again
This match is where I started getting loopy. Anybody who put up with my antics gets mad props for not getting fed up and throwing shit at me. I was pretty loud and obnoxious the entire time.
Game one was quick and painful. I keep a sketchy hand, which gets met with Strip Mine, and a bunch of little beaters that hit me in the face.
Game two almost ended the same way as the first. He's got my mana shut down with a Strip Mine, and all I've got to handle it is two forces and two blue cards. However, he has Mana Crypt in play, and I managed to get a Pithing Needle to stick on Salvagers, so basically I'm trying to kill him with crypt flips before his men go the distance. Throughout the game I have to do things like Force of Will an explosives at zero to prevent him from killing his crypt. The key to this game was the coin involved-- Canadian money! This particular coin had Queen Elizabeth on one side, and a friggen bear (presumably what knows Kung Fu) on the other side. I mean seriously, how can you not just bet on Da Bears every time? So that's what I did. And the friggen bears won the super bowl when I was at 1 life. I also have to credit some of this game to Manamana (doo doo, dee dooodleoo) Manamana (doo doo-doo doo)
Game three he leads with Island, Brainstorm, go. I have a hunch and go with Flooded Strand, bust for Sea, Pithing Needle naming Flooded Strand. I feel pretty happy with the decision when he draw-gos me with no land drop. I was so pleased, in fact, that I went and got Strip Mine to seal the game, and then promptly combo'd him out.
Finals: Severance Belcher... again
Game one is pretty brutal. We fight over all sorts of crap, but eventually I get a Colossus to stick with Mana Drain online for backup. He has Mana Drain backup as well for his own Tinker, and follows it up a couple turns later with a Yawgmoth's Will that results in me taking 22 to the head.
Game two I get a fairly early colossus, and he answers it, again, with his own Tinker for colossus. He tries to set up Burning Wish in to the GG, but instead I am super win the game, and I gifts three times followed by just casting my combo.
Game three he has active Library on the draw, and I boarded out my Pithing Needles. I debate going the distance with Tutor-Strip, but he's so far ahead of me at this point that I don't think I can waste the cards on that. So instead I seek to overwhelm, casting a bunch of junk with adequate protection. Eventually he is forced to get off Library to answer my crappy spells, and he starts trying to commit to the board he's neglected for a couple turns. I resolve a Thirst on his turn, which gives me the green light to combo him out. I vampiric tutor end of turn for the Fusillade, and drop both of them for the W.
What I'd change about the list-- Nothing. The maindeck is savage. The sideboard certainly has some subpar slots that could be changed around, but I'm content with the Explosives for now. I like having access to Pyroclasm as a solution to the obnoxious confidant decks as well as most aggro-control, but having Explosives on hand for crap like Wild Mongrel and Werebear when Pyroclasm isn't enough is kind of comforting.
So we do our pretend power-draft, I make fun of Roland for not fighting me in the finals (by instead getting pwnt by the deck he trumped like five times at GenCon including in the finals) and then we're off... Sort of. Baldwinsville wasn't content with just taking our souls and our health-- it also took my car. Thankfully, I have a "work" switch under the steering column, and suddenly my car functions again. Take that Baldwinsville-- My car has a staples gimmick. Easy button ftw. We take off in to the blizzard, which is very difficult to drive in given that we're doing like 30 mph on the highway. Total suck.
If any of you find yourself in the position where you have to drive like 7 hours and you haven't slept in a long time, I seriously recommend the Starbucks Doubleshot. While I personally despise Starbucks, there is no single energy drink that will give you as much spunk as one of those teeny little cans. It's usually like 25 cents cheaper too, and since energy drinks taste like shit, having the smaller can is definitely a bonus.
Obligatories:
Props:
Andy Probasco, for building the deck that pwns so hard that even Baldwinsville cannot stop it, and for hookin a brotha up with a couple dranamana (doo doo dee doodleoo) and a time vault
Crossman Wilkins for putting us up, as well as putting up with us
Flame Vault
Slops:
Roland Chang for being a big old scrubby mc scrubbington and sucking it up against Belcher Severence-- You promised me a finals match, bitch! I'll just have to crush you on your home turf next time. :p
Justin Timoney for being a little girl and sleeping the entire way home, pausing only to whine about the cold. Such a vagina.
Not receiving power
Stay tuned for some sort of Gifts-related article on SCG within the next month or so. If I don't answer questions of yours to your satisfaction in this thread, go ahead and PM them to me and I'll try to cover them in that article.
