Gifts Ungiven has structural versatility in a way that many combo decks have to work hard to design. It is a tutor that also generates card advantage, and is fairly unique in that regard. The ability to find multiple cards to solve whatever problem your opponent has presented you is extremely powerful, and something that combo-control lacked before Gifts unrestriction. Gifts is a pretty fundamental broken blue spell. Grave hate is not a a stone wall that needs to be smashed through, just a closed window which needs to be opened for a single turn so the Gifts pilot can combo off. A Gifts pile with a solution to hate and other broken spells threatens to win the game now by opening the window, or win the game at any point in the future by doing whatever broken things your opponent gifted you instead of hate-window-lifters.
One of the smartest posts I've read on TheManaDrain in a long while.
It's odd to think that one of the issues that is bubbling up in this thread is the viability of Combo-Control strategies centered around Time Vault, Tinker and Yawgmth's Will. It really wasn't that long ago that this strategy, fueled by 4X Thirst For Knowledge, was dominant in this format. Do folks really not remember that? The brief flirtation with Dack fueled Control Slaver this past summer/fall was yet another reflection of the impulse to design around those pillars. Hell, this strategy, anchored by Dark Confidant and Snapcaster Mage, won the Vintage Championship just a few years ago.
It's absolutely true that this strategy has had a difficult time proving it's viability in recent years, and there are good reasons for that. Successive waves of BUG and then Delver decks pushed this strategy to the margin of the format (Delver pushing BUG to the margin in turn). But the notion that this strategy is little more than a glass cannon combo and general skepticism about the viability of these pillars is fairly astonishing. These strategies have enjoyed long turns of dominance in this format, such that any knee jerk skepticism regarding them is puzzling, to say the least. Is it really that hard to believe that the unrestriction of one of the format's most broken historical draw engines could elevate these strategies once more to viability? The obvious explanation for such reflexive incredulousness is that some players here simply weren't playing during those periods, despite the fact that they constitute the bulk of this format's existence in its current iteration as "Vintage."
In short, I'm acknowledging that Grixis style Combo-Control decks have fared poorly in Vintage of late, but claiming that the unrestriction of Gifts Ungiven, one of the best draw engines ever printed for Vintage, revives them, or least, elevates them to competitive viability. To simply assert that decks built around Time Vault, Tinker, and Yawgmoth's Will are bad, as some sort of blanket assertion or generalized opinion, does not adequately account for the fact that Gifts is one of the best things these decks could possibly do. Does anyone doubt that unrestricting Thirst For Knowledge would make these strategies viable? Gifts Ungiven has at least some arguments for being the better card - after all, it took 6 years for Thirst to get restricted, but only 3 for Gifts.
Saying "I've basically had all my success in vintage beating decks which look like your Gifts pile"is internally contradictory, because these decks without Gifts are not the same. They are fundamentally different. Mueller's post attempts to delineate those differences. But, to make the point a bit more concretely (and less metaphorically), Gifts Ungiven gives these decks a viable draw engine for the first time in years. Part of the reason these strategies have been marginalized is that they have been neutered by DCI policymaking, restricting Gifts, Thirst, etc. Another reason is that the unrestriction of Gush has made Delver viable, which renders Dark Confidant, the most recent draw engine for these style of decks, unviable.
Now to more specific questions/concerns:
Is it just me or does it seem like the deck is super super reliant on the grave and something like a Grafdiggers cage or RIP can give this deck a tough time?
From the article:
Second, there is more graveyard hate than ever before. Cards like Grafdigger’s Cage did not exist in 2007, and would surely have been effective solutions to the Recoup combo at the time. Part of the reason Gifts was so strong is that it was so versatile. But Cage would prevent Tinker and Yawgmoth’s Will, Gift’s most powerful friends, from doing their dirty work.
Third, there are more ways to prevent Gifts from being cast than ever before. Not only are Workshops far more oppressive with more Sphere effects than ever before (and Gifts is not a cheap spell), but there are more viable effects that prevent you from targeting your opponent (which Gifts does) than ever before. Cards like Leyline of Sanctity neuter Gifts, if it were to become too much of a problem.
The article was structured to try to provide a balanced look at the upsides and challenges for Gifts in 2015. There is no doubt that there are more ways to defend against Gifts than ever before, which is, I believe, part of the reason that the DCI thought it might be acceptable to unrestrict it. But, balanced against these negatives are some pretty amazing positives. As a card, looked at in relative isolation, Gifts has never been more powerful. I alluded to this in the OP and discussed it some in the article. Rather than remain overly opaque, I'll note a few:
1) Gifts has never been unrestricted with current Time Vault errata. Gifts is a natural way to assemble the Key/Vault combo in a single card.
2) The diversity of spells in the format and close substitites, like the variety of countermagic, makes Gifts better than ever.
3) Snapcaster Mage radically amps up Gifts power level. Having an already playable card with such ridiculous synergy with Gifts makes Gifts an even stronger play. Not to mention unrestricted Regrowth.
Throughout the article I discussed the challenges to Gifts. For example, directly responsive to your question (RTFA
:
Because I’m so afraid of Cage, I often just generally sideboard in 2-3 Ingot Chewers against any deck I suspect will bring them in.
That actually turns out to be a fine plan. I don't mind attacking with creatures and trying to win that way, and then finishing them off with mini-Tendrils if need be.
Especially cage...it turns off 4 snapcsster, tinker bot, and yawg will. I'm actually surprised you didn't go with a bug she'll for abrupt decay potentially?
Oh, it's definitely an option. I just felt that red was slightly stronger than green as a tertiary color. I could well be wrong about that.
While the article didn't fully convince me (your section about Shops seemed a bit made up), the replays did.
While I appreciate your candor, I don't believe that any persuasive gap between the article and the replays has to do with any fault of the article (which is supposed to be a brief, short article for Gifts Week), but rather knee-jerk skepticism, or, perhaps, in part, the limits of strategy articles as persuasive writing. I think the fact that the replays affected your perception of the deck also points toward either the limitations of an article format or the upsides of streaming as a pedagogical and persuasive tool. Either way, I thought it wise to include some streaming for that reason.
I'm not sure how or why the section on Shops seemed "made up." That's kind of an odd, somewhat insulting thing to say. If you are referring to the broken hand example of being on the play against Shops, did you think I invented that? Vintage is the format of broken hands, and I'm sure that to most readers it's within normal variance. Not sure why that sounded made up. If you play enough games, you get lots of examples. That hand wasn't even the best hand or near so that I've executed against Shops, nor even close to the best I could make up. I can stream that game if folks don't believe it. That was a pretty fun match.
The deck was working surprisingly well, and I was especially impressed about how strong Snapcaster was in every situation. I love Snapcaster a lot, but in the latest decks I tried him in, he often felt clunky and didn't have the targets I wanted for him. This is very different in your deck.
Again, interesting that that wouldn't have been as apparent in an article, but only came through the replay stream. I'm not sure how to write an article that can do that.
In the videos you made a lot of misplays and had a lot of options for Gifts piles. I like how you pointed them out and often considered new or different lines.
Have you never seen my streams before? Or read any of my tournament reports? That's how I write tournament reports since, I dunno, 2002. I analyze every play, and dissect my options and errors.
I'd like to see more of these replays as I think we can learn a lot from them. Also, 3 matches are just too few to provide a reliable sample size.
I agree with both statements, although they may appear to be in some tension. Streaming is incredibly useful for teaching/learning purposes, but there is no way that I would have the time or interest in streaming sufficient matches to reach statistical significance. That wasn't the purpose or the intent, but rather to show some general ways in which this deck plays out, and some interesting lines of play and Gifts piles. I'll try to stream more in the near future, time permitting.
Your match against Shops was quite lucky for you,
Any time someone makes an assertion like this, I take a big grain of salt with it. If anything, I was extremely unlucky. My first hand had 6 mana sources, and my first two draws were more mana sources.
as he made a couple of weird plays and in g3 you couldn't have had a better opening hand given that you were losing to your clock without Tinker. The match against Belcher was just crazy. In g1 you kinda gave him the out, even though you argue with math.
I argue with math? I polled the stream chat, as you can see, and the mathmatician who made Top 4 at Vintage Champs this past year said he would have done my play, as did many of the folks in the chat.
I thought I explained this in the chat, but the choice was between a low probability event with a great potential for harm, and a slightly higher probability event, with lower risk for harm. It was far more probable that he'd have cards like Diminishing Returns, Twister, a Belcher, and more artifacts than Time Vault. So, actually, the math was on my side, but more than simple math was at issue. Probabilities can't resolve the right play, because you have to weigh the risk of harm from each event, not simply the chance of the event occurring.
EDIT: A helpful analogy may be the difference between a car crash and plane crash. A car accident is a higher probability event, but a lower risk of serious harm.
I think my assessment of UR Delver is accurate.
Except that UR Delver has, both online, and in tournaments like the Vintage Championship, proven itself capable of competing with Workshops. Diophan beat how many Workshops on his way to top 4? And others, like Dario, Ryan Glacken, etc.
You must have too because you added Green to shore up that match up, at my behest in the same thread you linked.
It's true I added green, but Workshops was only part of the reason for that. I also added green for Oath. Moreover, I did so to *strengthen* the Shop matchup, not to "shore it up." Big difference. UR Delver was more than capable of competing against Shops as proven in ample tournament evidence.
I wasn't the only one playing Null Rod. All Terra Nova decks do and they made up a sizeable portion of the meta. Other players have finished well with Stax and Rod aside from me in the past 6 months. Just because you ignore a trend that doesn't fit your narrative doesn't make it go away.
*sigh*. I never claimed that you were the only one playing Null Rod. I'm simply pointing out the empirical fact that the best performing Workshop variants in the last 4 months tend not to run Null Rod. For example, the two Workshop decks that made top 8 in the Vintage Championships? Neither ran Null Rod. Looking at recent tournament results, it's clear that the most successful Workshop decks moved off Null Rod because it's terrible against Delver, the best deck in the format until the restriction of Treasure Cruise.
I understand there's ways to beat graveyard hate post board. But it doesn't look good enough to me. Are you going to bring chewer in to beat grafdiggers cage, that every non broken deck plays?
The very same argument could be leveled against Oath of Druids decks. This deck has clear game against Cage, and a number of viable plans (Hurkyls, assemble Key Vault, Gifts for answers, attack with Snapcasters/Chewers, Burning Wish, etc). That's pretty much all you can ask for.
I feel comfortable with the following configuration for handling hate:
Main deck:
1x Ancient Grudge
1x Nature's Claim
1x Repeal
SB:
4x Ingot Chewer
2x Nature's Claim
I run 2x Tropical island main (to support Fastbond, regrowth, etc.) So I can easily bring in both Nature's Claims for games 2 and 3.
Sounds reasonable to me.
so gifts actually targets an opponent. are your mud opponent's not playing 1-2 witchbane orbs post sideboard?
So does Oath of Druids. I guess Witchbane Orb renders Oath unviable as well, right?.
Gifts Ungiven is an insane Vintage card, and it's marginality in the last few years was because it was restricted. Now it's not.
Gifts Ungiven is also one of the most skill intensive cards ever printed. Superior players should naturally gravitate towards it, and I have no doubt they will.
Thanks for writing the article, Steve.
You're welcome
