Quality over Quanity: The Gifts-FoF Debate

[Ged]

That's horrible. You have Timetwister on the stack; you don't care what goes in their hand if your Timetwister is going to resolve. They're NOT getting Drain (if they can cast it) and they're NOT getting Force, unless I think they have another counter in their hand, anyway.

You do care if they have red mana available, and considering they went for reb and pyro I'd say that's pretty likely.

[forests failed you]

FOF lets you see five cards and put at least one into your hand and the rest into your discard pile.

Gifts lets you TUTOR UP FOUR BUSTED CARDS and eventually put two into your hand and two into your graveyard.  Tutoring for four cards when there are at least four cards in every deck that are busted is not even remotely fair.  As far as the cards are concerned GIFTS is objectively a much more powerful card, especially in the hands of a good player.  Chaining FOF into more FOFs is good because it gives you card advantae and over the course of a game it allows you to lock an opponent out of a game via card advantage.  On the other hand a well placed gifts allows you to win the game on the spot when you uptap.

Gifts is an aggressive threat, I view it as a combo card.  FOF is a slower card that I view as a control card in most situations.

[ashiXIII]

That's horrible. You have Timetwister on the stack; you don't care what goes in their hand if your Timetwister is going to resolve. They're NOT getting Drain (if they can cast it) and they're NOT getting Force, unless I think they have another counter in their hand, anyway.

You do care if they have red mana available, and considering they went for reb and pyro I'd say that's pretty likely.

I wasn't referring to the actual Gifts pile gotten, but the hypothetical one that was presented preboard. The pile containing 2 counters, Yawg Will, and Recall, if you're trying to answer Twister is bad, because it's not answering Twister, AND you're not getting the two busted cards (unless you're lucky with Recall)

[Liam-K]

The reason Fact is restricted and Gifts is not is with Gifts, your opponent gets to choose what goes to the graveyard.

This is the key difference.  With FoF, not only do you tear through your deck at a retarded pace (5 cards at a time?  wtf?), you always always get the card you need the most when you flip.  With Gifts, you can Gifts up stuff you need, but you have to concede that the 2 most dangerous cards you take are going to be gone until you are ready to win.  You get 1 good good countermagic pile, answer/threat splits (which means you're probably coming from behind), and the I-win stack, but Gifts for card advantage is not only a serious tempo hit, it sends restricted draw spells to chill in the graveyard.

Because of this, for this reason, Gifts is not as swingy.  You will VERY rarely say oops-I-win after casting a Gifts without a) shit tons of mana or b) some sort of setup vulnerable to disruption, most probably finding your yawgwill.  FoF can win the game with 4 mana on the table before your opponent has had time to fuck with you, Gifts has a very hard time doing this.

[klu]

Some things I would answer..
IMO, R&B list is not done by people that understand all to type 1. If i was at their place i would unrestrict some cards a lot more often.. At least to see if people are able to build better decks.. abusing of them.. : what if they unrestrict dream's all, frantic search, crop rotation, enlightened tutor, entomb or even fact or fiction?.. Do you really and honestly think people will abuse of them enough to make them restricted again?
Let the deckbuilders use their brain..

a huge difference between fact and gift is that with gift ungiven, YOU choose the card your opponent will give you. If your gift was well done, if your opponent does not give you what you expect, you just take a huge advantage on the game.. With fact or fiction, first you don't know the card it will reveal, second you do not choose the pack you will take, your opponent does. That's sure fact can be more broken than gift can be because of the 5th card but nothing is garanteed where gift acts like a tutor.

You will VERY rarely say oops-I-win after casting a Gifts without a) shit tons of mana

Give me 5 mana and a few "good cards" in grave (a mox and a brainstorm for exemple) and i win the game. fact does not have that tempo.

Gifts is an aggressive threat, I view it as a combo card.  FOF is a slower card that I view as a control card in most situations.

I agree with that point of view.

[PucktheCat]

Give me 5 mana and a few "good cards" in grave (a mox and a brainstorm for exemple) and i win the game. fact does not have that tempo.

All right, klu.  Here's the scenario.

You have Mana Crypt, Island, Volcanic Island on the board.  In hand you have Gifts Ungiven and Polluted Delta.  In your graveyard you have Mox Jet, Brainstorm, Flooded Strand, Force of Will, and Thirst for Knowledge.  A Mana Drain is removed from the game.  For the sake of discussion we can say that you have all of the cards in Kowal's Richmond build available + Burning Wish and Rebuild.  That gives you access to all of the common Gifts win conditions.

EOT, you cast Gifts.  Show me the pile that wins before your opponent gets another turn.

Now show the pile you get if your opponent has a Chalice=0.
How about if instead of the Crypt you have two more Islands and your opponent has a Null Rod?
How about if they have a Tormod's Crypt?
How about if you suspect they may have Orim's Chant?  Swords to Plowshares?

[Evenpence]

Some things I would answer..
IMO, R&B list is not done by people that understand all to type 1. If i was at their place i would unrestrict some cards a lot more often.. At least to see if people are able to build better decks.. abusing of them.. : what if they unrestrict dream's all, frantic search, crop rotation, enlightened tutor, entomb or even fact or fiction?.. Do you really and honestly think people will abuse of them enough to make them restricted again?
Let the deckbuilders use their brain..

I don't have any problems with Dream Halls, Enlightened Tutor or Frantic Search being unrestricted.  Many people here on TMD share my sentiment.  However, the other ones you've listed pose serious problems.

Entomb and Fact or Fiction are debatable.  I really don't have any problem with either, but many people do, as we all remember four-entomb Dragon, and BBS.

Crop Rotation ALWAYS has to stay on the restricted list because of the ability to get Tolarian Academy.  One G to get an untapped Academy?  Where do I sign up?  You can Braingeyser yourself with Force backup to get Mind Over Matter into play next turn (or that turn if you're playing with faeries, which people would) and start going crazy.  Having Five Academies in your deck is not something that I really want to see.

So for a brief summary to the quandry you've presented, the B&R list is for the most part correct, save VOLTAIC KEY.  People over at Wizards do know what they're talking about, because they have eyes which can see tournament results.  They would never allow something like Crop Rotation to be unrestricted, although Fact or Fiction is debatable, because we don't have 4x Mana Vault anymore to make BBS a monster.  Gifts is already tearing up the results of many top 8's, and as the poll I started a while ago noted that most TMDers think Gifts is the deck to beat, I don't think FoF will be coming off anytime soon.

[Juggernaut GO]

what the heck is BBS, that deck was before my time in competitive type 1, anyone have an old list hanging around?

[Machinus]

what the heck is BBS, that deck was before my time in competitive type 1, anyone have an old list hanging around?

Actually, I think Smmenen played a version at Gencon either last year or the year before, so look up those decks and it should be there.

[Evenpence]

Blue Bull Shit (BBS) was a deck that abused fast mana to get Morphlings out to swing for the win while countering everything the opponent did, and Powder Kegging up the things that got through.

The deck basically looked like this:

Lots of Islands
Lots of Counterspells
Tons of Colorless Mana Acceleration including 4x Mana Vault
4 Fact or Fiction
3-4 Impulse
3 Powder Keg
4 Ophidian
2-3 Morphling

Unless you were playing a heavy black deck with a bunch of duresses and random discard outlets, as well as Negator, you really couldn't beat the deck.

Smennen's recent version was more Back-to-Basics centered and was no where near as powerful.

[Akuma]

BBS existed in a different time. BBS was just the most well known and successful of the FoF fueled decks of the time (FoF was played in Workshop Aggro in Europe, posting good results). IMHO, that deck wasn't as good as many believe. If FoF was unrestricted today, you would not see a resurgence of BBS, but more of a re-tooling of something like Slaver or Gifts-type of decks.

FoF is dumb, no questions there. BBS on the other hand, not quite the powerhouse many believe it to be...

[ashiXIII]

Some things I would answer..
IMO, R&B list is not done by people that understand all to type 1. If i was at their place i would unrestrict some cards a lot more often.. At least to see if people are able to build better decks.. abusing of them.. : what if they unrestrict dream's all, frantic search, crop rotation, enlightened tutor, entomb or even fact or fiction?.. Do you really and honestly think people will abuse of them enough to make them restricted again?
Let the deckbuilders use their brain..

I don't have any problems with Dream Halls, Enlightened Tutor or Frantic Search being unrestricted.  Many people here on TMD share my sentiment.  However, the other ones you've listed pose serious problems.

Entomb and Fact or Fiction are debatable.  I really don't have any problem with either, but many people do, as we all remember four-entomb Dragon, and BBS.

Crop Rotation ALWAYS has to stay on the restricted list because of the ability to get Tolarian Academy.  One G to get an untapped Academy?  Where do I sign up?  You can Braingeyser yourself with Force backup to get Mind Over Matter into play next turn (or that turn if you're playing with faeries, which people would) and start going crazy.  Having Five Academies in your deck is not something that I really want to see.

So for a brief summary to the quandry you've presented, the B&R list is for the most part correct, save VOLTAIC KEY.  People over at Wizards do know what they're talking about, because they have eyes which can see tournament results.  They would never allow something like Crop Rotation to be unrestricted, although Fact or Fiction is debatable, because we don't have 4x Mana Vault anymore to make BBS a monster.  Gifts is already tearing up the results of many top 8's, and as the poll I started a while ago noted that most TMDers think Gifts is the deck to beat, I don't think FoF will be coming off anytime soon.

Unrestricting FoF would be a serious mistake. The card is insanely powerful, and only gets more powerful in multiples. The card seems 'innoccent' enough, but it gets ridiculous when you have 4 of them. I've been able to resolve ONE in games where I was losing, and win off it. In the last round day 2 at Waterbury, actually, my opponent (who was WAY ahead) actually scooped to the 5 cards I revealed from FoF. This card is that swingy. There have been a couple of discussions to this point, so I won't go any further into depth here.

[Smmenen]

what the heck is BBS, that deck was before my time in competitive type 1, anyone have an old list hanging around?

http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/article/7699.html

Read this article I wrote.  I played all of the VIntage banned decks against each other:  GroAtog. Long, Academy, Rack Balance, 4 Necro Trix, and BBS and see what wins.

Someone should update that article but play Trinistax as one of the decks.

If Fact was unrestricted, this deck would be amazing:

2 Underground Sea
2 Volcanic Island
5 Island
1 Tolarian Academy
5 Fetchland
10 Artifact Accellerants

4 Fact or Fiction
4 Merchant Scroll
4 Mana Drain
4 Force of Will
4 Brainstorm
3 Misdirection
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
1 Tinker
1 Yawgmoth's Will
1 Recoup
1 Burning Wish
1 Darksteel Colossus
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Gifts Ungiven
1 Rebuild
1 Echoing Truth

This deck would be insane. 

That is only the beginning.

4 Facts would probably go in Slaver, go in lots of other decks.

It has to be remembered that Fact is an engine like Necro.  Facting gets you into more Facts.  That's something that people forget when they only get to play with one.

I played during the BBS era and know it deserves restricted, even today. 

[Rapalaman1]

I played during the BBS era and know it deserves restricted, even today. 

4 FOF BBS was bustedness beyond anything any Gifts deck has ever seen.