I'm trying to build a deck around the idea of tutoring for a combo with Gifts Ungiven and including Noxious Revival in the pile to get the piece you need. Consider the following piles:
Pile A Garruk Wildspeaker Wurmcoil Engine Scapeshift Noxious Revival
Noxious Revival is generally considered bad because it isn't card advantage since it takes away your draw step but that's OK if the card quality is high enough. One of the issues people have raised about Splinter Twin in particular and other combo decks generally, is that you really aren't doing much without the combo and sometimes one of the pieces will just rot uselessly in your hand.
I'm hoping a combo gifts package will cut down on the overall space the combo needs to take up. This will allow the deck to take a more traditional aggro-midrange-control approach. Basically the deck will be working towards a win condition but have the combo available as a finisher.
Now for the cons... This is incredibly slower than the more traditional decks these combos run in. I'm not sure there will be enough consistency picked up to justify the tradeoff. Also, they can all still be disrupted. Again, they're not necessarily any stronger and arguably weaker as the opponent will now what's coming in a turn or two after sorting the gifts pile.
Thoughts? I've got a couple lists built around each, but I'm more concerned with how people thing a deck like this should be structured in general. What colors? How much countermagic? How many creatures? Would you go all in or not?
This is my favorite topic, I love gifts piles. Some tricks to change them up and make them a little less fragile are possible, but as it stands a lot of them are a little cute.
The classics of course are unburial rites / fattie of choice. Against a whole lot of archetypes, elesh norn in play is the same as dealing 11 poison on turn 5--don't forget the borin' ol' standby gifts combos....which leads me to the next thing.
in UR storm, gifting for anything besides win-cons with an active ascension is pretty much an instant win--PiF is nuts with gifts.
Because Gifts is a 4 mana spell best played at the end of your opponents turn, control and combo are really only the decks that are going to be trying to play it to any success. Load up on acceleration or alternatively removal and counters or discard. The interesting thing about the card is that its really probably one of the most powerful spells in modern, but the things you can find with it typically don't allow for instant-wins.
I've played gifts control in old extended and I've durdled with it in modern.
The problem with gifts is that it's slow. I don't mean to say that the piles don't take over games, but forcing through a gifts ungiven against an opposing blue deck won't happen until turn 7 or 8 usually, at the earliest. Most "win the game" piles are weak to graveyard hate, and most value piles just keep turning on incremental advantage, while STILL being easily disrupted by graveyard hate. In old extended, I used to play with a ghost quarters-crucible-academy ruins/gifts ungiven pile in my gifts control for g2/g3 in the control mirror, because repeated ghost-quartering could win games. However, the tools we have in modern are weak enough in comparison and the format is fast enough that there isn't really any match where you want to try and grind out an advantage like that. As a result, most of your piles are either a value package of countermagic with snapcaster mage and another gifts, or a win-the-game pile with unburial rites + fatty. If you just want to assemble a compact combo like splinter twin or scapeshift + countermagic, you're much better off just playing dig through time anyway, as playing several of those leads to chaining them into your combo or into each other and then into your combo.
If I had to put my money on a deck to take advantage of gifts at some future date in modern other than a gifts-tron build, I would say it's likely to be a 3 or 4 color loam shell, using life from the loam, flame jab, raven's crime, and other retrace spells with loam to generate insurmountable card advantage.
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Primary Decks:
Modern: Esper Draw-Go
Legacy: RUG Lands
EDH: Sidisi turn-3 storm
Pile A
Garruk Wildspeaker
Wurmcoil Engine
Scapeshift
Noxious Revival
Pile B
Pestermite
Eternal Witness
Splinter Twin
Noxious Revival
Pile C
Master Transmuter
Blightsteel Colossus
Treasure Mage
Noxious Revival
Noxious Revival is generally considered bad because it isn't card advantage since it takes away your draw step but that's OK if the card quality is high enough. One of the issues people have raised about Splinter Twin in particular and other combo decks generally, is that you really aren't doing much without the combo and sometimes one of the pieces will just rot uselessly in your hand.
I'm hoping a combo gifts package will cut down on the overall space the combo needs to take up. This will allow the deck to take a more traditional aggro-midrange-control approach. Basically the deck will be working towards a win condition but have the combo available as a finisher.
Now for the cons... This is incredibly slower than the more traditional decks these combos run in. I'm not sure there will be enough consistency picked up to justify the tradeoff. Also, they can all still be disrupted. Again, they're not necessarily any stronger and arguably weaker as the opponent will now what's coming in a turn or two after sorting the gifts pile.
Thoughts? I've got a couple lists built around each, but I'm more concerned with how people thing a deck like this should be structured in general. What colors? How much countermagic? How many creatures? Would you go all in or not?
The classics of course are unburial rites / fattie of choice. Against a whole lot of archetypes, elesh norn in play is the same as dealing 11 poison on turn 5--don't forget the borin' ol' standby gifts combos....which leads me to the next thing.
academy ruins/life from the loam/wurmcoil engine/unburial rites is solid. I don't understand what you're trying to do with garruk and scapeshift.
you can also go life from the loam/snapcaster mage/noxious revival/scapeshift (just play scapeshift with fetches)
in UR storm, gifting for anything besides win-cons with an active ascension is pretty much an instant win--PiF is nuts with gifts.
Because Gifts is a 4 mana spell best played at the end of your opponents turn, control and combo are really only the decks that are going to be trying to play it to any success. Load up on acceleration or alternatively removal and counters or discard. The interesting thing about the card is that its really probably one of the most powerful spells in modern, but the things you can find with it typically don't allow for instant-wins.
The problem with gifts is that it's slow. I don't mean to say that the piles don't take over games, but forcing through a gifts ungiven against an opposing blue deck won't happen until turn 7 or 8 usually, at the earliest. Most "win the game" piles are weak to graveyard hate, and most value piles just keep turning on incremental advantage, while STILL being easily disrupted by graveyard hate. In old extended, I used to play with a ghost quarters-crucible-academy ruins/gifts ungiven pile in my gifts control for g2/g3 in the control mirror, because repeated ghost-quartering could win games. However, the tools we have in modern are weak enough in comparison and the format is fast enough that there isn't really any match where you want to try and grind out an advantage like that. As a result, most of your piles are either a value package of countermagic with snapcaster mage and another gifts, or a win-the-game pile with unburial rites + fatty. If you just want to assemble a compact combo like splinter twin or scapeshift + countermagic, you're much better off just playing dig through time anyway, as playing several of those leads to chaining them into your combo or into each other and then into your combo.
If I had to put my money on a deck to take advantage of gifts at some future date in modern other than a gifts-tron build, I would say it's likely to be a 3 or 4 color loam shell, using life from the loam, flame jab, raven's crime, and other retrace spells with loam to generate insurmountable card advantage.
Yes, I am a local area mod.WELP. GOOD LIFE CHANGES ALL HAPPEN AT ONCE AND SOME ARE MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVEPrimary Decks:
Modern: Esper Draw-Go
Legacy: RUG Lands
EDH: Sidisi turn-3 storm
You can also do academy runes, 1x Buried Ruin, 1x Mindslaver 1x Crucible of Worlds to mind lock people
http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/modern/modern-deck-creation/582901-grixis-gifts-blightsteel