[Premium Article] Tweaking (and further exploring) Meandeck Gifts

[Storm]

http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/article/12800.html

Blurb:

In this excellent and comprehensive article, Stephen takes us through the latest developments of his most potent Vintage creation - Meandeck Gifts. The tweaks he suggests leads to a considerable tempo advantage over the old lists, and he backs up these changes with detailed match analysis. Another wonderful article from the master of Vintage writing.

I'm very proud of much of the analysis in this article.

I think exploring gifts piles in far more depth than has previously been done - approaching Gifts more as a Dday scenario or a Combo puzzle -- is what is presently called for.   

The vast majority of Gifts players are far too flaccid in their gifts decision making.   This article is designed to act as a jolt to such complacence. 

[frucile]

it was an excellent article--i especially enjoyed the issue on descision making in reference to flores.

as always, well done.

[Storm]

Thank you very much!   

I was afriad that no one was reading this article.   I hate it when my articles go up on Thursdays.  It's the worst day of the week to publish an article and most of mine go up then.

Anyway, I'm glad at least one person read the piece.  This is possibly my favorite article I've written this year and without so much of a peep of response here, that's pretty disconcerting.

[Mr. Nightmare]

It must be because you're just a basic user.

I read it this morning and enjoyed it.  This type of in-depth article on a deck is my favorite of the ones you write, and it shows that you have a lot of passion for the decks you work on.  Not that we didn't already know that.

[Ged]

This was, in my oppinion, one of your better articles I've read lately. Your fear of no one reading your articles is either a false modesty or a misconception. Thursday or no, T1 crowd will read it.

I think exploring gifts piles in far more depth than has previously been done - approaching Gifts more as a Dday scenario or a Combo puzzle -- is what is presently called for.

That's the article I (and probably many others) are waiting for a long time.

[Dakkon]

What does you sideboard look like now? Since you dont run Burning wish anymore I'm guessing you took tendrils and pyroclasm from the sideboard. What do you fill those slots with now?

[49 Cents]

Great article Steve. You truly are one of the best players in the world.

[LordHomerCat]

Nice article.  That scenario you asked people to post on sure is complicated.  I spent like 20 minutes trying to puzzle out how to win on the spot, but having Emerald instead of Ruby was catching me (and no tutors for after Will).  Did you plan to win right there, or take it slow and cast another gifts or two over the next couple turns?

[FrenchBob]

Waoh, I'm not a premium member but since the comments on this article rate it as excellent and since Meandeck Gifts is one of my favorite decks ever, I'm definitely considering premium membership.

I just can't wait to read it (I'm particulary excited about the gifts piles detailed in the article).

ps : sorry for my poor English.

[Storm]

What does you sideboard look like now? Since you dont run Burning wish anymore I'm guessing you took tendrils and pyroclasm from the sideboard. What do you fill those slots with now?

It's not that I have hot sb tech, but that I want to have some prerogative to keep some tech to myself.   

However, I would say that the sb changes are not nearly as important as playing Gifts optimally - which this article tries to get us to think about more deeply.

[sean1i0]

I'm really curious though, how does this new version compare with what I'll refer to as MDGifts 1.0 in matchups?  Are any of the bad matchups made better or vice versa?  Again though, I really liked the article.  It was very well written and informative.

[DoubleDrain]

Steve,

Great read. Keep up the good work!

Travis

[Storm]

Well, the tweaks are pretty small.   IMO, you get objectively stronger.   I have continued to play more and more against Fish and I think that having Tendrils md is actualy incredibly strong.  Why?  Because you can win so fast that the Fish player, sometimes, won't even see it coming.   It's not even clear to me if how fast the deck can actually win now.   

The only change I hesitate over is cutting Rebuild for Hurks.  I can see in a heavy Chalice environment keeping Rebuild, but I really enjoy Hurks so far. 

I think your combo match is stronger, obviously - and that's an important match.


So, who is going to take me up on my offer? 

[DoubleDrain]

Steve,

I finally cut the wish for maindeck tendrils, but i hesitate to cut rebuild simply because chalice @ 2 is such a strong play for the workshop player ( and also easy to pull off turn 1 with shop + mox). I don't care TOO much about loosing Drain, but not being able to merchant scroll for bounce is tough...


EDIT:  If I were expecting zero stax decks, I could see cutting rebuild for hurkyl's, but in an unknown meta, I like having the rebuild. The little bit of extra speed isn't as important to me as knowing I can power through chalice 2 easily enough via vamp (or mystical) into rebuild.


Travis

[Cross]

I actually played a similar list in Boston and the deck is really fast. I comboed Ashok out on turn 2 or so, and I had a turn 1 win, but I screwed it up and knocked myself out, on a really hard play mind you.

The situation was: I am on the play, and there’s like no time left in the round. I have lost game 1, but if I take this game I tie the match and I get in top 8 at x-0-3 on breakers, so plenty of pressure.

I ran duress instead of misdirection mainly because everyone was playing misdirection, which weakens the card if everyone is playing it. So duress becomes strong because it can’t be stopped by misdirection, and it’s a proactive play; however, duress becomes my undoing as I will describe.

My hand consists of black lotus, duress, mana crypt, mox emerald, demonic tutor, island, and gifts ungiven. The play I make is, play all the mana, then crack lotus for black. Duress, he has nothing relevant to me winning right now. So I play gifts off crypt, mox and island. It then become apparent that with so few good mana sources left in the deck, there is no way to create enough mana to demonic tutor for yawgmoth’s will, and I pass the turn with like mana floating, and proceed to lose.

The correct play was just to go balls out, and not duress. If I lost because he forces, then I lose anyways. If he doesn’t have force I win, and make it into top 8. Unfortunately I didn’t have the foresight to see the situation and got knocked out anyways.

Also the only thing misdirection would have helped with is getting rid of the temptation to duress, so situationally misdirection would not have been better, as there was nothing to pitch to it.

Which brings me to my next point. I had heard you were writing this article, and that you felt you had sped the deck up. I got excited because I was testing cabal ritual in the list at the time, and it seemed to increase the tempo of the deck, and provide insane mana gifts piles. Upon reading the article I was disappointed to find that your changes were actually really minor. I have gone from running cabal ritual, to cabal ritual and dark ritual. Have you tested either of these cards? It speeds the list up so much, and suddenly makes gifts a giant cantrip, rather than a huge mana hole.

To make space for this I cut burning wish and skeletal scrying, which my teammates have run with success.

For reference, my list, with some changes since boston:

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

// Creatures
    1  Darksteel Colossus

// Spells
    1  Recoup
    1  Yawgmoth's Will
    1  Chain of Vapor
    1  Vampiric Tutor
    1  Lotus Petal
    1  Mana Crypt
    1  Mana Vault
    1  Sol Ring
    1  Black Lotus
    1  Mystical Tutor
    1  Demonic Tutor
    1  Rebuild
    4  Mana Drain
    1  Ancestral Recall
    1  Time Walk
    1  Tendrils of Agony
    4  Gifts Ungiven
    4  Force of Will
    3  Merchant Scroll
    4  Brainstorm
    1  Mox Jet
    1  Mox Emerald
    1  Mox Pearl
    1  Mox Ruby
    1  Mox Sapphire
    1  Pyroblast
    2  Duress
    1  Dark Ritual
    1  Cabal Ritual
    1  Tinker

Duress has been really good, as has main board pyroblast. They both seem really good right now with EVERYONE else running misdirection. At this rate I wouldn’t be surprised to see stax players playing the dam thing because they can pitch tinker and ancestral to it.

[Komatteru]

I finally cut the wish for maindeck tendrils, but i hesitate to cut rebuild simply because chalice @ 2 is such a strong play for the workshop player ( and also easy to pull off turn 1 with shop + mox). I don't care TOO much about loosing Drain, but not being able to merchant scroll for bounce is tough...

Not being able to cast the bounce (that you can't search for) is also not so good.  Since Chalice for 3 is hard to pull off, and less likely of an early play, Hurkyl's Recall has the problem of falling into Chalice 2, which is stronger anyway because of Scroll, DT, Recoup, Time Walk, etc.  It's harder to pull off the Tendrils win if Chalice 2 is out, and you can forget it if SoR is out there.  Since you must bounce SoR, and Chalice 2 is already anyway, cutting out your only way to bounce it for something that falls into it doesn't seem so good.

Rebuild also cycles, which can never be counted out.

[Mon, Goblin Chief]

As posted on SCG in response to the article:

As quite obviously the opponent is out of counters here, the best Gifts-pile would definitly be

Petal
Ruby
Walk
Recoup

This Gifts-pile wins always this turn... should be the best.

To illustrate, results depending on what you get:

-mana A means any kind of your choice-

Petal Recoup

Mana: UUUUA2 Used: 3RUUU
Recoup->Walk, Scroll->Mystical->Will

Walkturn:

-> Island, Will, Petal, Lotus, Merchant, CoV, Mystical+Ancestral-> Tendrils Win
(Mana produced: AAAA2UUUUUUUUU; needed: 6UUUUBB)

Petal Walk or Ruby Walk

Mana: UUUUA2 Used: 2UUU
Walk, Scroll->Mystical->Will

->see above

Petal Ruby

Mana: UUUUUAR2 Mana Used: UUUR5
Recoup->Walk, Scroll, Mystical->Will

-> see above

Recoup Walk

Mana: UUU2 Used: UUU2
Walk, Scroll->Mystical->Will

-> See above

Recoup Ruby

Mana: UUUUR2 Used: 3RUUU

Recoup->Walk, Scroll->Mystical->Will

-> see above


If your opponent looked at your hand and decided to run the craziest bluff ever and has a FoW for the Will, well, you just probably lost. Seems not to likely, though.

[Storm]

Quite impressive Carsten!  I'm going to check your math and get back to you!

@Cross: We have tested Dark Ritual, which my whole team agrees is superior to Cabal Ritual, which we first entertained.  I considered cutting a mox for it, but in the end I didn't.  I don't know what to cut, but I agree that Dark Ritual is strong. 

[chewy01234]

The title of this article alone made me sign up for premium lol.

I'm not a big fan of reading but I am a big fan of knowing everything there is to know so when I started reading this article I was predicting a confusing detail oriented play by play in the latter section. I was really surprised to see that you layed out the game in a very easy to read fashion. I got exactly what was going on and I didnt have to reread anything.

I think I have just made myself look like an idiot here but you all know what I mean...when you're reading something with a lot of specific data and lists and what not you read it once and then go...wait...wtf did i just read?....

yeah. I thought so.

ANYWAY!

Point is steve, your writing skills are a very welcome bonus to the wealth of knowledge you provide for the vintage community.

[desolutionist]

Hurkyl's Recall's inclusion over Rebuild is questionable.  The games won from its advantages aren't worth the ones lost due to its disadvantages.  You're sacrificing flexibility to increase probability that you'll combo out on turn x by mere fractions of a percent.  The "never-dead" characteristic of Rebuild is significant enough to be worth the single extra colorless mana.

Scenarios where Hurkyl's Recall is strictly better than Rebuild are extreme and more often than not the extra mana doesn't hinder your ability to combo out.  The moment you draw Hurkyl's against something like Dragon, you've conceded your draw for that turn.

Certainly drawing Hurkyl's when it is irrelevent will occur more often than it will sit next to a particular combination of cards in your opening hand.  And need I bring up Chalice?

[Disburden]

Quite impressive Carsten!  I'm going to check your math and get back to you!

@Cross: We have tested Dark Ritual, which my whole team agrees is superior to Cabal Ritual, which we first entertained.  I considered cutting a mox for it, but in the end I didn't.  I don't know what to cut, but I agree that Dark Ritual is strong. 

The list I started to test today is running a singleton Dark Ritual in place of Fact or Fiction. I moved fact into the board for the Control mirror. I see less control in my field now and I don't really miss Fact. How do you feel about Ritual in place of Fact? It's ability to increase the speed of the deck even further after meandecking Tendrils is pretty intense. Your article on this deck was really good. I look forward to anything about Meandeck Gifts, since I think it is the deck Drain deck ever created.

Lets try to get this thread moving again!

[AJFirst]

I've been testing a version like that for a while as well. I haven't taken it to a tournement yet, and Top 4ed last weekend with my normal list (FoF has never been in it).

If you do that plan like I am going to, might I suggest Cabal Ritual instead? It's another mana, which makes it 2 more mana than Dark Ritual coming out of Will which allows you so much more flexability. Threshold is hardly a problem since if you're going for the Will-->Tendrils, then you've either already resolved Gifts filling the bin, or just a lot of set-up cards. Thresh is obv not hard to obtain in this deck making Cabal significantly better than Dark.
-AJ

[Disburden]

I've been testing a version like that for a while as well. I haven't taken it to a tournement yet, and Top 4ed last weekend with my normal list (FoF has never been in it).

If you do that plan like I am going to, might I suggest Cabal Ritual instead? It's another mana, which makes it 2 more mana than Dark Ritual coming out of Will which allows you so much more flexability. Threshold is hardly a problem since if you're going for the Will-->Tendrils, then you've either already resolved Gifts filling the bin, or just a lot of set-up cards. Thresh is obv not hard to obtain in this deck making Cabal significantly better than Dark.
-AJ

I agreed with Cabal Ritual at some point earlier in the week actually, but I ended up leaning towards Dark Ritual instead. Cabal Ritual is good with threshold, but the extra mana in the casting cost will be annoying when you're not going off with Tendrils or with Will. Sometimes you get an early Ritual that you can use to accelerate into Gifts Ungiven and tapping Jet and Pearl for the same effect with Cabal ritual can be a little bit of a waste. Dark Ritual is meant to help you accelerate your Tendrils kill, but there will be games where you draw it early and just want to use it to play spells. E.O.T dark ritual-Gifts ungiven for example is pretty nice. Then reuse the Ritual off a Will later on.  I love Cabal Ritual, but sometimes you want the easier mana cost of dark Ritual instead. It's a toss up that you can only decide on by testing TONS of games.

Edit: I Would also like to hear from Steve on this subject, but I think he was banned or something.

[desolutionist]

I agreed with Cabal Ritual at some point earlier in the week actually, but I ended up leaning towards Dark Ritual instead. Cabal Ritual is good with threshold, but the extra mana in the casting cost will be annoying when you're not going off with Tendrils or with Will. Sometimes you get an early Ritual that you can use to accelerate into Gifts Ungiven and tapping Jet and Pearl for the same effect with Cabal ritual can be a little bit of a waste. Dark Ritual is meant to help you accelerate your Tendrils kill, but there will be games where you draw it early and just want to use it to play spells. E.O.T dark ritual-Gifts ungiven for example is pretty nice. Then reuse the Ritual off a Will later on.  I love Cabal Ritual, but sometimes you want the easier mana cost of dark Ritual instead. It's a toss up that you can only decide on by testing TONS of games. 

Cabal Ritual as anything more than a singleton isn't acceptable for obvious reasons; Every other card in MDG is better.

So, if you want to use it consistently it has to be a member of your Gifts piles.  In every scenario that you would Gifts for a Ritual (never), you might as well get Hurkyl's, CoV, or Rebuild instead to increase storm and most likely increase the magnitude of your mana pool more significantly than the Ritual would.

[pyr0ma5ta]

This is a question for the forum at large, since I've been mostly out of sync with the T1 community for the last several months.  Doesn't the advent of Wipe Away and Trickbind basically destroy MDG? 

[Prometheon]

No, not really. It just means is has to adapt, maybe by adding Duress maindeck. Also it's not like every deck in the format is going to play both cards and always have both in hand with mana to cast them.

[dicemanx]

Perhaps the best adaptation is to return to the potentially superior BMG or GiftsX with main deck Duresses? TfK was never as terrible as certain MDG proponents made it seem, and at least one person made an effort to keep its legacy going with great success over the past few months.

[Namingway]

I assume Duress is going to replace Misdirection. In that case, I think a third Underground Sea would be needed. The risk of having it Wasted is far outweighed by being able to stop Trickbind/Wipe Away, IMO.
On the other hand, Duress seems to slow this deck down a little. An extra mana can do quite a bit, especially when it's a black mana.
What do you think?

[InfinityCircuit]

I'm a bit confused as to why people believe that MDG cannot support Duress without an extensive overhaul of its manabase.  4 REB/Pyroblast out the board works just fine, and I don't understand why 4 Duress in the main would function any differently.  Another thing to keep in mind is that Misdirection is getting steadily worse in an environment full of Misdirections (Pitch Long).  However, in this case I agree with dicemanx that GiftsX is probably a better choice because of TfK in this environment (or maybe StuffyGifts? )

EDIT: A bit off topic, but if GiftsX were rebuilt to include Tendrils of Agony this might be the best hybrid (or maybe I'm just behind the curve and this has already replaced Flame Vault)

[Komatteru]

The difference between maindeck Duress and sideboard REB is that you know you can fetch out dual lands in control and combo matches without fear of Wasteland, while if you are casting Duress in game 1, you won't know whether or not you are playing against a Wasteland deck or not.  Casting a turn 1 Duress might prove to be costly if they Wasteland your Underground Sea immediately afterwards.