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Author Topic: [Deck Primer : BomberGifts]  (Read 7045 times)
kalisia
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« on: December 02, 2009, 05:05:27 pm »

Imagine this situation:

You are playing a game and you are on the draw.
Your opponent Duressed you, played Time Walk and played Tinker for Inkwell Leviathan.
On the extra-turn, Leviathan swings and you are at 13 life.
Now you draw Library of Alexandria. You play, and at that moment this is your board:
Tolarian Academy, Mox Emerald tapped for Sol Ring, and Mox Pearl.
Your hand is: Intuition and Polluted Delta.
Your Graveyard is: Mystical Teachings (of course the card Duressed because it could find a bounce for the 7/11). Imagine that you sided out all the blue bounces of your deck, so you can’t deal with the 7/11, even with Intuition.


And now here is the problem: how a hand with Intuition could save you?
The answer is that you can win before that Leviathan kills you.
But how the hell Intuition could win this game???

We will see this now……..Welcome into the world of ……BomberGifts!



[Primer - BOMBERGIFTS (i.e.  Salvagers of Agony)]



First of all, I’ll give the answer:

1)   Of course, Leviathan swings and you are at 6 life. At the end of opponent’s turn, tap Tolarian Academy for UUU and play Intuition….on Black Lotus, Auriok Salvagers and Mystical Teachings.

2)   
a) If the opponent gives you Auriok, you win at your turn with this method:
Drop the fetchland, fetch a Tundra, play Auriok and recurse infinitely the Black Lotus. With the infinite mana, play the flashback of Mystical Teachings and grab Gifts Ungiven. Then include Aether Spellbomb in the four cards set-up. Then draw your deck with Spellbomb, until you draw Tendrils of Agony. And then play Tendrils.

b) If the opponent gives you Mystical Teachings, you tap Tolarian and Emerald to play Teachings and you search Shallow Grave. You drop the fetch and sacrifice it for an Underground Sea. Tap the Sea and the Ring to play Shallow Grave on Auriok. Use Pearl and the remaining colorless mana to activate Auriok and recurse Lotus. After you use the same method than in a) to Tendril your opponent.

c) If the opponent gives you Black Lotus, play it. You even don’t need the fetchland in your hand. You have yet 11 manas which is sufficient. Sacrifice Lotus for BBB. Use B and five manas to play the flashback of Teachings on Shallow Grave. Then use B and one mana to play Shallow Grave on Auriok. Then use Pearl and another mana to recurse Lotus. Kill your opponent with the same method as seen before.


Now we’ve seen that Intuition is sometimes enough to win games alone, so I’ll explain how this concept has come to my mind and how I developed it.
The following primer is a result of my knowledge of the concept, after many monthes having practicized the deck. I hope you will enjoy the article, and that some player will want to try it. Have a good reading!


The restriction of Gifts Ungiven has, in the mind of many players, sealed and even killed the Gifts.decks era. That is the impression we may have if we look at the top8 tournaments results. The card itself continues to be heavily played in the blue-based deck, which seems logical if we note the natural power of the card. As Steve Menendian says, Gifts Ungiven, even alone, is a « game winner » (almost at the same level than Yawgmoth’s Bargain for example). But, we didn’t see any deck trying to build its strategy principally around this card.


In my opinion, the concept was not dead, we just needed to find the cards who could replace those lost on the restriction.
Recoup was really so strong in a deck packing 4 Gifts Ungiven. But the fact is that in a list allowed to play only one copy of the blue instant, Recoup becomes almost awful, and the restriction of Scroll also hurts the deck.
The main idea concerning Gifts Ungiven has always been that, if Demonic Tutor is so broken while it’s Sorcery and it finds only one card, so a spell that is a quadruple tutor, blue and instant, should be completely amazing if we could minimize the impact of the opponent’s choice concerning the two cards we get in hand.

To minimize the importance of opponent’s choice, we have several tools:

1)   Using reclaiming (Regrowth-like) cards, allowing to transform Gifts Ungiven in a real Demonic Tutor. To show the idea, if you play Gifts Ungiven and you search for Yawgmoth’s Will, Recall (not the Ancestral one, I mean the XXU spell!), Recoup et Regrowth, it is quite clear that each possible choice of your opponent can’t avoid to give you a way to play Yawgmoth’s Will!

2)   Using multiple tutors. Here, the technique is different because we will be able to cast Gifts Ungiven in order to make some four-card set-ups without including the spoiler that we are looking for.
Three tutors are enough to force your opponent to give you something that will get you in hand the spoiler card you want. This spoiler will almost always be Yawgmoth’s Will, and the classical tutors to find it will be Demonic Tutor, Vampiric Tutor, Mystical Tutor, even we can as well consider Imperial Seal, Personal Tutor and Grim Tutor as complementary possibilities.
Other cards may be interesting, like the pseudo-tutor Lim Dul’s Vault, or like Muddle the mixture or Perplex, which can also tutor some spoilers. Perplex had been used in Intuition Tendrils, because it could find game breakers like Yawgmoth’s Will, Tinker, Timetwister or Necropotence.

3)   If we want to keep this same “optimization” spirit for Gifts Ungiven, cards with flash-back can be efficient.

4)   Don’t forget that Gifts Ungiven is a strong card alone, and even if the tutors or « Regrowth-like » cards are on the graveyard, casting Gifts Ungiven on 4 powerful cards is always strong, and almost always broken. For example, cast Gifts Ungiven on Ancestral Recall, Tinker, Brainstorm, and Thirst for Knowledge will usually give you a good situation in a game.

Remembering Gifts.fr and Gifts Salvagers :

In Gifts.fr, Recoup was very strong because the kill was Tinker on Darksteel Colossus, with the purpose of a double Time Walk not to leave time to an opponent’s answer. The kill with Belcher, asking for an incredible amount of mana, had been replaced by a Tendrils of Agony in the sideboard, targetable via Burning Wish.

Then the Tendrils of Agony has been included in the maindeck to help his playability and use his “uncounterable-like” aspect. The bad point of the deck was the match-up against the big control decks. For example, Control Slaver was protected against Tinker with his Goblin Welders. The only solution for Gifts was to resolve a big Yawgmoth’s Will and kill with Tendrils of Agony.


In Gifted Salvagers by Matthieu Durand (Toad), Tinker wasn’t played, the kill was entirely based on two Auriok Salvagers and their combo.
This concept was good in 2005, but the kill has been really hurt by some new cards, for example Extirpate. You can see that this kill was also blocked by Chalice of the Void (at zero, at one and at three), by Pithing Needle, Tormod’s Crypt, Null Rod, and that the deck had a very bad match-up against Shop decks.
 
Trying to improve the concept:
The idea has been to group the two decks in a new list, which will try to re-use the power of these decks, and minimize their weaknesses.
So I saw that I would want two really different kills, in order to resist to Stax, and in order to have at least one kill which is not dependent from the graveyard, because of all the grave-hate cards that have been printed.

I thought the best choice was clearly Darksteel Colossus. It’s an efficient kill, and since the restriction of Brainstorm and Thirst for Knowledge, the other Robots seemed really hard to reshuffle into the library, once in your hand. As Tinker is an incredible card in this deck, as a ‘’multi-function’’ card, I would be a mistake not to insert a kill-target in the deck.

The second kill had to be THE kill which was abusing Gifts Ungiven, and also had to be the less ‘’mana-hungry’’ combo, and a very fast kill.
The set-up Yawgmoth’s Will/Recoup/Time Walk/Tinker was wrong because it would use Darksteel Colossus, and I searched an independent second kill. The best combo I founded, which was using less mana, was the combo of Gifted Salvagers. With this combo, with 5 mana (and sometimes less, depending on your hand), you could play a Gifts Ungiven end of turn, which was allowing a kill on your next turn.
The bad point was I needed to play White, which is usually not a strong color in Vintage. And moreover, that was not the only problem…I realized I also would need to play Green for Regrowth! This concept was forcing me to play a 4-color list. Regrowth was really important, because the typical targeted set-up of Gifts Ungiven should be: Yawgmoth’s Will, Regrowth, Auriok Salvagers, Black Lotus. Without Regrowth, no recursion. No recursion, no fast Gifts Ungiven kill.

Choice of the second kill:
You can see that this setup of Gifts Ungiven gives an access to infinite mana/storm, so I needed a fast kill, which is not depending on the Auriok combo, but which works with the combo….so Tendrils of Agony is by far the best choice! You can note that now, with the new rules, you will not mana burn yourself with the Auriok – Lotus combo, and you can generate infinite mana and storm without any stress! Now we will see how to optimize Gifts Ungiven since the restriction of it and the restriction of Merchant Scroll.

Searching and finding Gifts Ungiven:
Everyone will agree that just one copy of the card is not enough if we don’t find a trick to find it quickly and easily. After trying a lot of cards, I found th best card for this job wast Mystical Teachings.
That creates other issues: this spell costs 4 mana, which is relatively bad if we want to win fast. In fact, we lose at least one turn compared to Meandeck Gifts for example. The turn we could play Gifts Ungiven (in the old Gifts versions), we will play the intermediate Mystical Teachings, which finds Gifts Ungiven.

I tried to add all the best accelation artifacts like Lotus Petal, Mana Crypt and Mana Vault, but it doesn’t solve the BIG problem of Null Rod.

Using some specific lands?
Once we have looked at the artefact pool, a remaining solution is to search in the land pool…and one thing that came to my mind: why not try to use Ancient Tomb? Perhaps there would be a problem with the life points and the mana base would become weaker, but I thought it was something to really test, because the gain of speed seemed to be really interesting!

In theory, it seems good: fetchland turn 1, and Ancient Tomb on turn 2, allows us to do many things : play Thirst For Knowledge on turn 2, or play Intuition…Even Ancient Tomb on turn 1 may be interesting to play for example Sensei’s Top and look immediately 3 cards on top. And over all, Ancient Tomb can allow to do broken things, like playing Gifs Ungiven, fact or Fiction, or mystical teachings on turn 2 for example!

I like the idea of Ancient Tomb, but the problem of the life points needs to be solved.
As this deck has to be played like Meandeck Gifts, I consider it often should be able to win on turn 5. If we assume that the deck would use Ancient Tomb 3 or 4 times, I think that losing 6 or 8 life is not something unacceptable. Against control, life points are not an issue. Against aggro, it may be a problem, but the main plan will always be to win fast with Tinker, before losing to much life with this land.

The idea is to use Ancient Tomb just for the 3 or 4 first turns of a game, and give an incredible acceleration to play high cost spells like Mystical Teachings and Gifts Ungiven.
After turn 4, the deck doesn’t really need the mana provided by this land.
Note that Ancient Tomb permits also to quickly play cards like The Abyss or Force of Will.

Concerning the mana base, I think it’s possible to keep a base strong enough to resist to Wasteland and denial decks.


Multi-colored mana base necessary:
As I said before, the inclusion of Auriok and Regrowth forced me to add two colors and use a 4-color mana base. This is why decided to add two City of Brass in order to give a better access to each color at any moment.

I come back in the deckbuilding part of the deck: if you look at the standard set-up of Gifts Ungiven (Auriok, regrowth, Lotus, Yawgmoth’s Will), you will see that something is missing!
The truth is that Gifts Ungiven on Yawgmoth’s Will, Regrowth, Auriok Salvagers and Black Lotus doesn’t give you an automatic win. For example, even if the opponent gives you Black Lotus and Auriok Salvagers, you can produce infinite mana and storm, but you won’t automatically be able to win. The 2005 Gifted Salvagers used the high proportion of Cunning Wish / Phyrexian Furnace (three of each!) to almost always be able to kill, by searching (on the sideboard) and playing Brain Freeze, or by drawing the entire deck with Furnace. These cards were stealing important slots in the maindeck, which could be used for more powerful tools.

Furthermore, (but it is a personal opinion here), I don’t like Brain Freeze because it’s more dangerous than other kills (like tendrils of Agony) that end the game more efficiently.

The idea to play a blue-based kill like Brain Freeze was interesting, but the two remaining negative points are:
1)   The fact that this kill requires almost automatically the combo with Auriok. It is almost impossible to win with Yawgmoth’s Will and Brain Freeze because you will ususally need to generate a 15-to-18 storm.
2)   The problem that freezing the opponent’s deck is not a guarantee of the win. If there is a Krosan Reclamation/Gaia’s Blessing or if the opponent plays Darksteel Colossus (with Yawgmoth's Will in hand), it is not so easy to win.
But here is coming the second idea of the BomberGifts concept!
I wanted to play cards that are strong alone, and that also help to assemble the combo and the kill! And this ‘’miracle’’ comes again from Mystical Teachings!
More than just find Ancestral Recall, Gifts Ungiven, counterspells, bounces, Vampiric and Mystical tutors, Mystical Teachings has flashback, and this the real incredible power of this card!

For example, we suppose you played Mystical Teachings on Gifts Ungiven.

Now, this Mystical Teachings (even if it seems an inactive card on the graveyard) will transform the Gifts Ungiven you have in hand into a complete kill. Indeed, if we suppose I have 5 mana available on the turn I resolve Gifts Ungiven, then a choice like Yawgmoth’s Will + Regrowth + Auriok Salvagers + Black Lotus will give the victory, whatever the two cards the opponent gives me. Almost always, the opponent WILL NOT give us Yawgmoth’s Will, which is clearly comprehensible. From this point, you can consider Gifts Ungiven as a « Super Intuition » where the opponent has not other choice than give you a winning combination of two cards. Auriok + Black Lotus is evident. Regrowth and one of two other cards will allow taking back the missing piece from the graveyard.

With 5 mana available on the board, you have just what you need to start the combo. Then you can produce infinite mana and infinite storm. From this point, there is nothing easier than play the flashback of Mystical Teachings to find Intuition. Note that if you have FoWs in hand, just don’t forget to produce infinite blue mana to be able to hardcast every FoW!!! Once you have Intuition in hand, just play it and search two cards + Aether Spellbomb. Then you can draw all your deck like a Bomberman deck, with the only (but big!) difference which is that you have Tendrils of Agony in your deck!
You kill your opponent on the spot, which is an improvement compared to the old Bomberman style.
All this method is the reason why Intuition is completely necessary in this deck, Gifts Ungiven alone can’t make the deck work.

The power of the reclaiming cards:
The necessity to play Intuition gave me the idea to try a second ‘’Regrowth-like’’ card.
I thought it could be interesting because it would add some good tricks and a recursion that would be safe for the deck.
In fact, it’s true that when Gifts Ungiven is played on Yawgmoth’s Will, Black Lotus, Auriok Salvagers and Regrowth, we lose the best cards of the deck, and moreover, if the opponent gives us Auriok and Lotus because he holds something that destroys the combo (Extirpate, Counterspell on Auriok, …), we can lose the most important part of power of the deck! Then we would have just Tinker to win.

The idea has been to try Reclaim. In my testing, the card has been really good, and tricky! It gives a security to the deck because of its possibilities of recursion for the silver bullets like Yawgmoth’s Will, Tinker, Auriok or Tendrils.
Reclaim allows you to use Intuition like an instant Demonic Tutor. For example, if you want Tinker, you can play Intuition on Tinker + Regrowth + Reclaim. In this case, Reclaim is also good because you don’t need to necessarily include tutors in the set-up of Intuition (or in the set-up of Gifts Ungiven).
For example, with 4 mana available, Gifts Ungiven on sur Yawgmoth’s Will, Black Lotus, Auriok Salvagers and Reclaim allow you (if the opponent doesn’t give you Yawgmoth’s Will) to produce infinite mana and storm, and almost always to win on the spot.

Cards not included:
There are some other cards I didn’t test that might be interesting. For example, Lim Dul’s Vault and Worldly Tutor could fit well in the deck. Animate Dead could also be tried. But Animate Dead would be good only if you find slots to include other creatures, like Dark Confidant. I tried also Cunning Wish, with a slot in sideboard for Shallow Grave. This is not bad, but a little slow. The fastest way (in mana cost) to assemble the combo is to play Shallow Grave in the maindeck, but in this case, this card will be sometimes a dead card in your hand (but sometimes Time Vault and Voltaic Key are dead cards in Tezzeret as well, so this choice should not be necessarily a mistake). Entomb could be tested as well, but I think that Gifts Ungiven and Intuition should be enough to put some wanted cards on the graveyard.

"One" card played nowhere :
One of the last cards I have found in my ‘’frantic’’ search is : Artificer’s Intuition !

This is a weird card, that is a able to create funny combos. But as it requires an artifact in hand to be active, it will often create card disadvantage. One benefit is that it discards Darksteel Colossus (which is nice since the Brainstorm & TFK restrictions). But after some tests, I found that Trinket Mage in one-of slot was better, even if it doesn’t provide as many combos as this enchantment.
But don’t forget that if you have an artifact in hand, this card, with Auriok, wins the game on the spot. For example, if you have Artificer’s Intuition on the board, Auriok and DSC in hand and two mana available, end of turn, you may pay U to discard DSC to search Spellbomb. Then you may pay U to discard Spellbomb and search Black Lotus. Then in your turn, you can drop a land, play Lotus, play Auriok, produce infinite mana/storm, play Spellbomb, draw your entire deck and kill the opponent on the spot. After tests, I finally found that Trinket Mage was usually better, and he also could get (slowly in two actions) both Spellbomb and Lotus without card disadvantage.


Mana base and different ways to play the deck:

I come back a last time on the mana base:
The choice on the mana base will largely depend on the style of the player.
The deck can be played controlish, but can be played as a real control-combo deck, with a very fast finish.
If you want to play the deck in the style of Meandeck Gifts, you can try Ancient Tomb, to see if you like the incredible mana acceleration of this type of land. In this case, you will want to win quickly, and with colorless lands on the board, you won’t be able to protect your bombs with Mana Drain. I suggest decreasing to 3 Drains ans add for example 2 Misdirections.
If you want to play the deck with more control (if you want to have Drain playable as soon as possible), play Islands or fetches over the Ancient Tombs. In this case, I also suggest playing Duress/Thoughtseize over Misdirections, because the deck will be slower and will need more disruption/control to resist in the first turns.


Reclaim is a controversed card. I agree that the card is increasing the card disadvantage already produced by Vampiric & Mystical Tutors. But the effect is sometimes so strong with Gifts Ungiven & Intuition that the card is rarely bad in hand. It allows ultra fast kills, but for people who dislike Reclaim, it is completely possible to replace it by a draw or disrupt spell for example.
In this case, you can’t include Yawgmoth’s Will in the set-up of Gifts Ungiven. But you can include tutors that find Yawgmoth’s Will. For example, Gifts Ungiven on Mystical Tutor, Auriok Salvagers, Black Lotus and Regrowth is usually strong enough to win quickly.

If you have enough mana available, you can choose Mystical Teachings instead of Mystical Tutor, because the combination will provide you a complete kill, whatever the choice of the opponent. If the opponent gives you Teachings, you will find Yawgmoth’s Will via Vampiric or Mystical Tutor. If the opponent doesn’t give you Mystical Teachings, you automatically grab Auriok (in hand via opponent’s choice, or taking it back form graveyard via Regrowth). Once Auriok in your hand, you can play it to produce infinite mana/storm, and the flashback of Teachings will give you Intuition, then the victory.


So here is the end of the primer’s part concerning the creation of the first BomberGifts version.
This deck made some results, you can find some lists here:

http://www.morphling.de/top8decks.php?id=1014
http://www.morphling.de/top8decks.php?id=1066


Right, so now, I will begin a second part concerning a small evolution of the deck, built after the Thirst of Knowledge restriction, with the purpose to erase some big issues of the first lists.
Here are the points that needed to be solved:
1)   A really weak mana base, due to the 4 colors
2)   Too many cards could be potentially dead cards in hand, or sub-optimal (Reclaim for example because of the card disadvantage created)
3)   The combo was too mana intensive
4)   Gifts Ungiven piles were perfectible, because until now the piles could generate infinite mana/storm, but could infrequently win directly.


The first purpose has been to absolutely improve the quality and the strength of the mana base.
I first thought of Gush, to ‘’save lands’’ against Wasteland or Strip Mine. Gush was also transforming Mystical Teachings into an instant two-card drawer for 4 mana.
For sure, Gush was clearly not enough to get a safe mana base.
For this reason, the deck had to go towards a 3-color build.
As blue and black were necessary, and as white was the heart of the build with the Auriok combo, the only way to reduce the color number was to find a substitute to Regrowth/Reclaim for the recursion part.
After searching and testing many days the best ways to do that, I finally found that black was containing the best cards to do the job.
1)   Animate Dead ( /or Dance of the Dead)
2)   Shallow Grave
3)   Reanimate

At the beginning, inspired by the excellent work of Meadbert and his ‘’TurboGush” (with the wonderful concept of a combo kill with Fastbond, Crucible of Worlds, …)I believed I had found a good idea with the use of Animate Dead and Argivian Find.
In fact, as Argivian Find can put in hand (better than Reclaim) Animate Dead or Black Lotus, it seemed an ultimate card for the deck! A Gifts Ungiven pile including Auriok, Lotus, Argivian Find, Animate Dead seemed really strong. But I realized that if the oppenent was giving you Auriok and Animate Dead, you needed 6 manas to just make the infinite mana/storm combo, without having the missing piece to draw your entire deck. So it was not realy better than Regrowth, except the fact to reduce the build to three colors. Moreover, Animate Dead was sensible to a lot of hate cards, so I preferred to try something else.

*Reanimate:
This card allows doing some awesome tricks in this deck as well.
It’s a less ‘’dead card’’ than Shallow Grave because it can be used to reanimate an opponent’s creature you just countered before for example. It can reanimate a good robot discarded by the opponent (like Titan, Sphinx or Leviathan). If you play Confidants, it can also reanimate one of them. Reanimate has another advantage (over Shallow Grave): it allows playing winning Yawgmoth’s Wills with a very small amount of mana. Reanimate can be played easily since the graveyard via Yawgmoth’s Will, since it is totally unefficient to do it with Shallow Grave.
A simple example is better than a long speech: in the graveyard, if there are Auriok, Reanimate, Time Walk and Spellbomb/Teachings. If you a 3 mana on the board and Black Lotus and Yawgmoth’s Will in hand, you win on the spot. You can play Lotus, sacrifice it, play Will, replay Lotus, and play Time Walk and Reanimate. Then you take your extra turn, play Auriok, and win with the combo.
For people who like Dark Confidant, I advise to play Reanimate and not Shallow Grave.
The disadvantage of Reanimate is that it is necessary to use an extra tutor to find it (Shallow is found by Mystical Teachings).
Example: Gifts Ungiven on Auriok, Lotus, Teachings, Mystical Tutor. If the opponent gives you Lotus and Teachings, you will have to play Teachings on Vampiric Tutor to find Reanimate.


*Shallow Grave:
This card is may be the strongest one for the recursion. The only problem is that the card does absolutely nothing by itself and may be a dead card in some games. It needs Gifts Ungiven or Intuition to be useful. Other issue : to use it properly, you can’t reanimate what you want. The other creatures must not interfere with Auriok. So the best way to have an optimal use is to play Darksteel Colossus as the target for Tinker. Like this (as DSC never goes in the graveyard), if you don’t play more creature than these two ones, the combo with Shallow Grave will work perfectly.
Otherwise, Shallow Grave is an incredible card for this combo! You can tutor it with Mystical teachings and this is an important point.
For example: you have five mana on the board (Sol Ring, Underground Sea, Tundra, and Fetchland). If you play Gifts Ungiven on Black Lotus, Auriok Salvagers, Mystical Teachings, and [Vampiric/Mystical] Tutor, you will find a complete kill in five of the six possible combinations. The last combo is the case the opponent gives you Auriok Salvagers and Mystical Teachings, but so you just need another white mana source in hand (or on the board like a fetch) in order to win on the spot with the six mana and Auriok.

Here is the latest list I used:


UBw BomberGifts

1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Sol Ring
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mana Vault
1 Sensei’s Divining Top
1 Aether Spellbomb
1 Darksteel Colossus
1 Duress
1 Shallow Grave
1 Skeletal Scrying
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Yawgmoth's Will
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
4 Mana Drain
2 Mystical Teachings
1 Deep Analysis
1 Gifts Ungiven
1 Intuition
1 Repeal
1 Chain of Vapor
1 Hurkyl’s Recall
1 Merchant Scroll
1 Thirst for Knowledge
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Tinker
1 Time Walk
1 Trinket Mage
1 Auriok Salvagers

3 Flooded Strand
3 Island
4 Polluted Delta
3 Underground Sea
2 Tundra
1 Tolarian Academy
1 Library of Alexandria



Sideboard suggestion:

1 Extirpate
3 Planar Void
1 Yixlid Jailer
1 Pithing Needle
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Disenchant
1 The Abyss
1 Hurkyl’s Recall
1 Rebuild
1 Sphinx of the Steel Wind
1 Darkblast
1 Duress
1 Balance

 

I hope that you enjoyed this article, and that some of you might even enjoy playing this deck list or a similar one at a future event.

Special thanks to meadbert for his great help!



Cheers!

Manuel.
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« Reply #1 on: December 02, 2009, 10:49:48 pm »

Fascinating read.

I had never even once considered Mystical Teachings as something Salvager decks would want.  But you laid out your case very well.  Was Flash Dudes like Teferi or Aven Mindsenser ever a consideration?

Also, I have always included Ancient Tomb in any of our builds of Salvagers, although my reasoning was based on having 4 Trinket Magest and 2-4 Salvagers in the deck.

Lastly, Toad's build of Salvagers is one of the few lists that rely on Tinker/Will/Combo to win the game, without the reality of Trinket Beats as the win condition.  (other than say, Oath Salvager builds of the early days).  Would one Sadistic Sacrament (THe BBB Jester's Cap) completly ruin this decks day?  Can it live through normal hate? ie, Does it die to a lowly Chalice for 0, Leyline of the Void, Sphere of Resistance?)

You have given us much food for thought, thanks for sharing.
« Last Edit: December 02, 2009, 11:16:21 pm by LotusHead » Logged

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« Reply #2 on: December 03, 2009, 02:25:10 pm »

If you play it as a combo deck, why not just play Pyrite Spellbomb instead of Aether Spellbomb and remove Tendrils?
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« Reply #3 on: December 03, 2009, 05:10:19 pm »

You do know that you can't combo with salvagers when you've played will, right?
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« Reply #4 on: December 03, 2009, 05:22:56 pm »

Do any of his walkthroughs include that?  I thought I checked.

If you have enough mana, you can't go off but you can cast Salvagers from the GY, cast Lotus from the GY, cast Time Walk from the GY and win in the walk turn.

I've had people sideboard in things like Leyline of the Void against me in Bomberman and found them spectacularly useless.  You don't have nearly the same options to play around them.  Do you lose in testing to Leyline and Extirpate?

Can you fit Time Vault in?  It's so much easier to set up if you go for Will.  Heck, you can easily make an Intuition pile like Time Vault, Voltaic Key, Mystical Tutor and they have to give you Voltaic Key.  (Dumb opponents may give you Vault and let you find Salvagers to win.)
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« Reply #5 on: December 04, 2009, 07:54:14 am »

He just talks about gifts for Regrowth, lotus, Will, salvagers....He did not say it directly, but it sounded like his plan was that will would END the game, which it will not do with that combo.
He can setup infi mana on the next turn, that's true...But at no point did time walk get mentioned as a requirement for this to work.
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« Reply #6 on: December 04, 2009, 09:23:47 am »

I think the idea was that the Lotus + Yawg pile is broken enough on its own that you are unlikely to get it.
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« Reply #7 on: December 04, 2009, 11:45:11 am »

I took a look at this last night and played around with it, I really like it but I’ve noticed a few things.
There doesn't seem to be any standard gifts pile, -more gifts serves as an enabler for after you've gone off and need a win condition. I think that another intuition might be better (in my goldfish list I have 4) because it will get you everything you need pre combo and post combo. Also in this list intuition is usually as good as gifts. There’s so much chaff that you usually have some of it and having a shallow grave in hand means that you can win for 4 mana post intuition.
I’ve also dropped aether spell bomb and tendrils for pyrite and chain of vapor (you get hit by every hate card in the format).
It’s a blast to play and mystical teachings is a definite one of and maybe two of, this deck can actually race ichorid, which is cool. I also like impulse in here.
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« Reply #8 on: December 13, 2009, 11:43:35 am »

Thanks for the interest and the questions/comments!

@LotusHead:

Yes, I thought to Tefeiri and Mindcensor. I don't think Tefeiri would be easy to include in the deck (for the same mana cost, it will be better to play Tezzeret and its combo). But Mindcensor should be considered  as a potential side card against all the decks playing many tutors (Control like Tezz, Combo,...).

Happy to see that the idea of Ancient Tomb had been yet considered to increase the speed of this deck type.
But I realized that I prefered slow the play and avoid mana color issues, by replacing Tombs by Islands or Fetchlands.
Also, Mana Drain is central in this list, we absolutely need the extra mana to cast Teachings/Gifts, and blue colored lands are better for that.

Concerning Sadictic Sacrament, for sure, in the list I proposed, it removes almost totally the win conditions.
I remember a weird game I played in a tourney in Zurich. I was not sold on a slot of the list and was hesitating between Duress and Trinket Mage. The morning, just before the tournament, I opted for the Trinket, and it won me
the round against Patrick Wild. He explains the game here :  http://www.blackborder.com/q/node/4322
So, he removed all my win conditions except a Trinket Mage...and I won! I knew I had to counter EVERY creature spell he would cast, but finally I did it. Two things to conclude from this:
1) Never scoop if it remains even one hypothetic win condition (even a 1/1 creature with no capacity!)
2) Having more than 2/ 3 win conditions in a deck is a good option in the current metagame

Concerning Chalice for 0, Leyline of the Void, Sphere of Resistance:
May be it is my fault if the primer focused on one special part of the deck.
This IS NOT an "Auriok" deck. It would better to consider the list as a Gifts / Drain Tendrils deck which contains an additional combo.
We can see some Drain Tendrils with the Vaut-Key combo included. So you can see this deck as a Drain Tendrils with an extra Bomberman combo added inside.
So the typical cards like Chalice, Leyline or Sphere don't hurt the deck more than a normal Drain Tendrils.
If you can't win with the combo, you still have the Tinker plan, or the "Hurkyl's/Rebuild EOT + Yawg - Tendrils" plan.
But of course, post game 1, I advise to play things like Spell Snares, Rebuilds or whatever to help against the denial matchups.



@zeus-online:

You're right, the standard set-up in the 4-color version (Regrowth, YawgWill, Lotus, Auriok) can't always finish the game on the spot.
But as meadbert said, in a gifts pile, give Yawgwill to the opponent is usually quite risky. If they do that, you'll usually take a too important advantage for them to recover on the game.
I consider that the 3-color version is better. I'm now playing with Reanimate, and it works fine.
A Gifts pile like "Auriok, Lotus, Mystical Tutor, Vampiric Tutor" normally wins the game. I confirmed again yesterday against an Oath deck.
I played Teachings to find Gifts. Then I resolved Gifts on the pile here-over. He gave me Mystical and Lotus, Mystical (played on my upkeep) found Reanimate and won the game.
So in this version, if you really need to win on the spot, it's better to NOT include Yawg on the pile and it should be better to search tutors.



@Anusien:

Pyrite Spellbomb is the last card I would want to play in this list.
First, it's bad to play a card which only works with the combo. And I wouldn't like to add a fourth color (red splash) just for it.
Ans even if other red cards could be added in the sideboard, there are too many denial decks in the current metagame to risk another splash.
Secondly, the sole card does nothing. Pyrite needs the combo, whereas Tendrils is sufficient by itself and is strong in the Dark Confidant field.
And I would add that the list is built to be able to support Tendrils. An opponent at 12 or 14 life (thanks to Confidant for example), a Hurkyl's Recall in hand, Tendrils needs nothing else to win this kind of games. In fact, I would that Pyrite is not good in this list for the same reason it is not good in Bomberman : Aether Spellbomb is better.
Your comment about Time Vault / Key has to be considered. I tried to include the combo, but have been disappointed by it. It's maybe because I don't really like this combo, or maybe because I don't play it properly.



@median:

I arrived to your conclusion concerning Mystical teachings : it's a 1-of or 2-of maximum.
I'm confortable with two copies, but I play 17 lands to ensure to be able to cast these 4cc spells.
Concerning Intuition, I agree this is a good card, but it really can't be compared to Gifts Ungiven.
Alone, Intuition is sometimes heavy in hand (not enough powerful to win the game as Gifts, and high mana costed for an under-tutor as it can be).
In order to have a stronger Intuition, for this reason I thought adding Deep Analysis was interesting.
If you want to add more Intuition, maybe you should consider the Intuition-AK engine? But it's hard to find slots for that.
Your last comment is right. It is really uncommun to win on turn 1 with this deck, but it's never unconfortable to know that it is able to do it!
I remember a round where I killed a Ichorid deck on turn 1 with a hand like: Lotus, Auriok, Mana Crypt, Fetchland, Mystical Teachings and two other randoms cards.
Even if this kind of opening hands are rare, turn 2 and turn 3 kills are more frequents. An example, yesterday, I beat a Tezz with this hand on the draw : Mox Ruby, Tundra, Lotus, Auriok, Thirst for Knowledge, Yawgmoth's Will, Mana Drain. He had Mana Drain in hand, but as he didn't have FoW, I could resolve Auriok on turn 1. On turn 2, when you have infinite mana/storm, it is difficult to loose Wink...


Regards,


Manuel.
« Last Edit: December 13, 2009, 11:54:11 am by kalisia » Logged
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« Reply #9 on: December 13, 2009, 12:57:13 pm »

i actually think now in hindsight i was playing you deck incorrectly. and i think if i was to pick it up again i would resort more to your strategy.
my plan with your deck, was to hold one combo piece in hand and cast intuition, playing the deck like WGD. i would end up animating the salvagers, pay two to bring back the lotus, then win.
i think this is incorrect.
in going for the fastest gold fish with the bomber intuition/gifts engine i wasn't gaining enough board position. you have done well with this deck, so i'll default to you on how to play bombergifts. but i quite like it.
the only change i would make to your original list now (i no longer think it needs more intuitions) is some inherit plan b.
bomberman has a beatdown/disruption strategy, something like that would be nice.
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« Reply #10 on: March 01, 2010, 05:21:01 pm »

Yesterday, the deck splitted the finals of a 33-players tournament in France (Molsheim), beating Ichorid two times, Noble Fish, ANT, Painter, Goblins.

The list doesn't have any really bad match-up, with a slightly adapted sideboard.
I came back to a 4-color shell, because Regrowth is too powerful to be ignored and not to be added in the deck. With just one white card and one green one, the mana base has been made to resist to denial.
In a more comboish metagame, the addition of Duress can be considered (maindeck or in the SB), but I could beat an ANT without it, so I'm not sure if more disrupt is really necessary...
Any comments welcome Wink...


”BomberGifts”

1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Sol Ring
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mana Vault
1 Sphinx of the Steel Wind
1 Sensei’s Divining Top
1 Aether Spellbomb
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Yawgmoth's Will
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Ancestral Recall
3 Repeal
1 Hurkyl’s Recall
1 Deep Analysis
1 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
4 Mana Drain
2 Mystical Teachings
1 Fact or Fiction
1 Gifts Ungiven
1 Intuition
1 Merchant Scroll
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Time Walk
1 Thirst for Knowledge
1 Tinker
1 Auriok Salvagers
1 Regrowth

2 Island
2 Misty Rainforest
3 Flooded Strand
3 Polluted Delta
3 Underground Sea
1 Tropical Island
1 Tundra
1 City of Brass
1 Tolarian Academy


Sideboard:

3 Yixlid Jailer
3 Relic of Progenitus
2 Tormod’s Crypt
1 Darkblast
1 Perish
1 Massacre
1 Balance
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Hurkyl’s Recall
1 Inkwell Leviathan

« Last Edit: March 01, 2010, 05:26:22 pm by kalisia » Logged
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« Reply #11 on: February 26, 2011, 12:56:15 pm »

Here under are the links concerning four successive top4s (including two wins) the deck made in the 3 last months.
The main change has been the removal of [Intuition + Spellbomb] for 2 Dark Confidants. In the end, I concluded that Intuition and Spellbomb aren't necessary to win when the combo Auriok & Lotus is assembled. Most of the time, Teachings is enough to find both [Mystical-T/Vampiric-T] AND a draw spell to win with Tendrils Smile.

http://www.morphling.de/top8decks.php?id=1337
http://www.morphling.de/top8decks.php?id=1370
http://www.morphling.de/top8decks.php?id=1380
http://www.morphling.de/top8decks.php?id=1397

Cheers!

Manuel
« Last Edit: February 26, 2011, 12:58:54 pm by kalisia » Logged
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« Reply #12 on: February 27, 2011, 08:01:46 am »

From a first look your deck seems very light on shop hate, especially for a combo deck (I found repeals to be next to useless once an opponent has more than 1 lock piece on board). Perhaps this is because shops is not played as much in your area, but could you elaborate a bit more on the gameplan vs MUD?
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« Reply #13 on: February 27, 2011, 01:50:10 pm »

In the last tourney I won (decklist on the last link I posted yesterday), I could beat two MUD decks without real difficulty.
The deck is maindeck designed to have a better match-up against MUD than many other control-combo decks (like the 14/15 lands gush decks).
Post side, 2 Hurkyl's Recall, 1 Rebuild , 1 Balance and 2 Steel Sabotage seem to me really enough to fight against MUD decks.
In our metagame in Europe, there are a lot of MUD decks, but MUD isn't a complicated match-up for this deck.

Concerning Repeal, I agree with your opinion (but don't forget they can be useful for Chalice), and usually I replace them postside by Steel Sabotage.
 
« Last Edit: February 27, 2011, 02:12:04 pm by kalisia » Logged
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