MTG Salvation

Hello everyone,

I've decided to play Gifts Ungiven. What do you feel is the most competitive deck that utilizes the card? These are the Gifts variants that I know of:

- UW Tron
- Esper Gifts control (usually with a heavy emphasis on Gifts-Rites combo)
- 4C Gifts control (Esper Gifts control splashing green for Life from the Loam and some other quality cards)
- Junk Gifts (some Abzan midrange build splashing blue for Gifts Ungiven and maybe Snapcaster Mage, low on counters and heavy on LotV/Souls/Goyf/Tasigur/Rhino)

Am I missing something? And if you had to choose one, budget not considered, which one would you pick up for competitive events?

There's also this deck:

http://www.channelfireball.com/articles/the-quintessential-modern-tezz-gifts-faq/

Unless you're playing a Ux tron variant, most of the gifts-based control decks would generally do better to run a mystical teachings engine instead. The power of gifts involves the fact that it is a double-entomb at instant speed when necessary, and a value tool otherwise.

either 4cc gifts or junk gifts.

uw tron is not a good deck in the meta right now, and esper gifts it the same than 4cc gifts without the loam and green (and either esper or 4cc you are screwed to blood moon so better go for the greedy manabase).

A friend of mine plays 4C Gifts and it can be an absolute monster if built and tailored to the meta correctly. I highly recommend the deck if you're not afraid of decision trees and control.

Not allot of people realize it but gifts is tailored to play every deck. The deck itself is so situational that you have to think of every problem into the future while playing and building.

It's mostly between Junk Gifts and regular 4C Gifts, and I'm leaning towards Junk Gifts on the basis that Junk/BG Souls is probably a better deck than 4C control if you subtract the Gifts-oriented cards, and because it would have a better fallback plan if the Gifts plans fail. In Junk Gifts, if going for some specific package isn't powerful or reliable enough, you can just gifts for some combination of good beaters, Lingering Souls and/or Unburial Rites for CA/value. Three good creatures plus Rites gives you three creatures either way, though you might end up with Rites in your hand and paying 4B to reanimate a Goyf. The question is how a Junk Midrange deck works when you dilute it with combo pieces, since the super high density of quality standalone cards is one of the things that makes Junk Midrange work. Thoughts on that?

For the sake of completion, I also have to mention UWRb Gifts Control, which resembles regular UWR Control a lot but packs the usual Iona and Norn reanimation. I suspect that it actually doesn't fold to Moon.

Scapeshift with Gifts has also become pretty popular since Dig Through Time got banned.

I've seen at least a few Storm players running Gifts Ungiven mainboarded (Not Ritual Gifts, Pyromancer Ascension). The ability to generate a bunch of mana then grab a guaranteed Past in Flames is surprisingly good.

I believe there's a discussion in the Grixis Twin thread to run a sideboarded Gifts package because Kolaghan's Command gives you some surprisingly decent plays.

UW Tron is the only deck there that doesn't rely on Gifts to win and is competitive. When you play decks like Tezzeret Gifts or 4C Gifts, you're mostly relying on the combo to win games. It's difficult to grind out wins with Tezzeret or whatnot, but UW Tron still has Emrakul/Mindslaver as a win condition.

I also think UW Tron is perfectly fine in this meta. The two worst matchups are 4C Gifts (or any Loam/Tec Edge deck) and RG Tron, which are all not that popular. We don't fold that hard to Blood Moon (2 basics and 4-5 Signets), and I've won Daily games after my opponent resolved Blood Moon.

Quote from darksteel88 »

UW Tron is the only deck there that doesn't rely on Gifts to win and is competitive. When you play decks like Tezzeret Gifts or 4C Gifts, you're mostly relying on the combo to win games.

I've been trying out Junk Gifts for two weeks now, and this statement is not true for that deck. I win more games playing attrition midrange while my opponent is worried about stopping me from comboing out, and I value Gifts for threats or answers as often as I reach for Rites combo.

Looking at the Tezzeret Gifts list posted earlier, I'm having a hard time believing that it can't win without Gifts either. It looks like it attacks at least as much from the Tezz angle as the Gifts angle. Haven't tried it though, but it looks more like some Gifts cards in a Tezz deck than the other way around.

The best? Junk gifts and 4c gifts or some version of both of them. You want a typical gifts deck with an early clock which is goyf. And to make goyf good you need discard. So its basically discard+goyf+gifts+life from the loam+reanimation package and you fill in the rest.

Don't forget about Ritual Gifts. I play this deck all the time still, and get pretty decent results. There was a moment when Dig Through Time was legal and Ritual Gifts was feeling crazy powerful though. Being able to grab DTT with Merchant Scroll was awesome. Still though, this deck is easily one of my favorite Magic decks of all time. Absurdly fun, and supremely satisfying to play.

Lately i've been playing a RUG Assault Loam deck with Gifts Ungiven though, and it feels pretty insane. Here's the list i've been jamming most recently..



Feels good against almost everything really. One of the most consistent decks i've played in a long time.

Lavamancer is something new i'm trying. Can't say yet how i really feel about him. He's been good for sure, but i can't decide if it's the most efficient use of those slots. I've had so many cards in the last 3 slots, which right now is the Mancers and Chandra.. Can never seem to feel fully satisfied with those last slots though

-1 lavamancer +1 bolt? Maybe make some cuts in the 75 and fit in academy ruins + engineered explosives? Is the third snapcaster mage unreasonable?

There is a thread I created for the discussion of 4C Gifts midrange/control decks in modern.

Here is my current interpretation of Gifts in modern.

You have here the most recent placings of Gifts Ungiven, since the sad sad banning of Deathrite Shaman. As mentioned above, the decks needs to be heavily tailored to your metagame. And you will fold to blood moon unless you can float the mana to cast Abrupt Decay or Sultai charm.

Best of luck. Stop by our thread

Could you post both lists by any chance? The BUG and the Esper Gifts lists?

This is my esper list I'm currently running, I have a sun titan package main so I can cast threats while maintaining control, and then side into the fatties I need.

http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/31-03-15-esper-gifts/

4c can be much more rewarding because you can tune it for literally any meta but it's also a much more painful mana base and folds to blood moon much easier.

Caleb Durward recently did a vid series of tezzeret gifts that had legs against pretty much everything he faced. Interesting take.

Do you have a link for it?

Link

Greetings,
Kathal

Quote from Shaboogamoo »

Do you have a link for it?

http://www.channelfireball.com/videos/channel-calebd-modern-tezzeret-gifts-2/

Saw that redddit a while back. Seems like a pretty interesting deck. My take might look something like this.

Honestly, it's good 1-2 of in Grixis Control. The card can be used as a pseudo tutor in this deck for grabbing a specific hate instant/sorcery or for grabbing a specific creature:

Scenario 1: Sideboard instant/sorcery Grab:

-Cast Gifts:
Search out: Snapcaster Mage, Rakdos Charm (or other hate card), Jace, Vryn's Prodigy, Damnation (or other hate card)
whatever choice they give you, you will eventually get to cast the card you want

Scenario 2: Finding Value Creature/late game bomb:

-Cast Gifts:

Search out: -Tasigur, the Golden Fang, Kolaghan's Command, Keranos, God of Storms(can be subbed for something like bitterblossom), Grave Titan (can also be another delve creature)

Again no matter what they give you, you got the late game bomb.

I believe that Gifts can be used like this in more decks