"Master the chaotic forces of nature, and you shall master magic."
—Yare-Tiva, warden of Gramur forest
What is Ritual Gifts
Rituals Gifts is a Combo/ Control deck for Modern. Similar to CrypticShift in the sense that it is a control shell housing what is essentially a one card combo. By using the incredible tutoring power of Gifts Ungiven you can set up a 1 turn storm combo finish. You will spend the first few turns controlling the game with removal, and counter magic, before exploding in a chain of spells, powered by Past in Flames, and ending with a lethal Grapeshot. By taking advantage of powerful tutor effects like Merchant Scroll, this gives the deck the ability to find answers and essential combo pieces as well as freeing up space for control magic.
The History of Ritual Gifts
The story of Ritual Gifts actually starts in vintage, several years ago. When Gifts Ungiven was first printed, the top performing control deck in vintage was Control Slaver, a strategy which used the broken mana acceleration of the format combined with Mana Drain to power out Mindslaver, and recur it with Goblin Welder, and a draw engine in the form of Thirst for Knowledge. When Gifts was printed, the first decks anyone tried it in were modified Control Slaver lists. However, it proved not to be that strong.
Then, Vintage pro Stephen Menendian tried his hand at building a Gifts list. His list, named Meandeck Gifts after his team (team Meandeck), worked by realizing the inherent brokenness of Gifts Ungiven in a format full of broken cards you can only play 1 of. His deck used Merchant Scroll to search out for Ancestral Recall, Gifts, Mana Drain or pitch countermagic, and so on, to make a very strong draw engine, then used a combination of Yawgmoth's Will and Recoup to make unbeatable Gifts Piles. It would finish with a giant Will into either Tinker for Darksteel Colossus combined with Time Walk or a lethal Tendrils of Agony.
Over the next few years, Meandeck Gifts slowly gathered momentum, until during late 2006 and early 2007 the format was basically defined by Meandeck Gifts and Storm Combo. The deck was neutered by the restriction of Gifts Ungiven, but lived on, and later would cause the restriction of Merchant Scroll, Brainstorm, Gush, and indirectly also Thirst for Knowledge. It's mark is only now finally fading from the vintage scene. The strategy, at its peak, has proven to be one of the best decks in Vintage History, and by extension, all of Magic.
Now, remember the key combination of the deck: Yawgmoth's Will and Recoup to use gifts as a tutor for a 7-mana Yawgmoth's Will. We have basically the same thing, but more effective, in the form of Past in Flames, which has Flashback.
From here a few varying lists were created for use in the Modern format. At first more all-in storm lists showed up using Gifts Ungiven and Past in Flames to power a large storm turn, but the deck eventually evolved to play a slower, but more controlling, and inevitable game. By abusing Seething Song and Increasing Vengeance, the deck could generate huge amounts of mana out of nowhere and set up a sequence of spells ending with a lethal Grapeshot.
Eventually Wizards decided Seething Song was just too powerful for Modern, and hit it with the ban hammer. A few ideas, such as using Plasm Capture were discussed but nothing proved a sufficient replacement for Seething Song. There was one ritual left though that could make 5 mana, the catch being it's a 4 mana green card. None the less when played with Increasing Vengeance you could still generate 15 mana, and while it's certainly no Seething Song, Channel the Suns actually helped in 1 area; having access to blue mana after being flashed back. With Seething Song you needed Manamorphose and mana filter lands, but with Channel you will have access to more than enough blue mana to finish the combo.
The shell had a few other small changes now that Seething Song couldn't be used to fuel insane plays, but the deck is still incredibly powerful, albeit challenging to pilot. That challenge however, provides an incredibly rewarding experience.
Why play Ritual Gifts
Ritual Gifts is incredibly explosive: I've played many games where my opponent seemed to be winning, then I resolved a Gifts on their endstep, untapped, and brought them from 20 to 0 in one turn, and they could do nothing to stop it. The deck is basically a control deck, but one that doesn't give the opponent time to interact with the win condition, and can bring that win condition online very early in the game. Its topdecking power and tutor effects make it very resilient to hate. And, even if you aren't winning the game very quickly, Ritual Gifts is a perfectly respectable control deck. Basically, this deck is a control deck that, once it gets the advantage, doesn't just stabilize or drop a threat. It kills you. Immediately.
However, a word of caution: if you're a fairly new player, or just getting into eternal formats, that's wonderful, but play Boros. Or Affinity. Or Jund. Or Tron. But not this. This is perhaps one of the most difficult decks to play I've ever seen, and is vulnerable to a lot of sideboard hate if you can't play the deck almost perfectly. It's fundamentally a tutor-based deck, which means that it will give you a lot of decisions to make each turn, and making even one wrong decision can easily lose you the game. I don't say this to discourage prospective players from playing it. This deck can seem absolutely unbeatable if you're really on your game. But you can expect to lose a lot at first.
How it works
The deck works by controlling the early portion of the game with its counters and removal. Generally speaking you need to find 2 of 6 essential combo pieces and a Gifts Ungiven. By resolving Gifts Ungiven at the end of your opponents turn with 5 mana available on your next turn, you can grab the other 4 combo pieces and no matter what your opponent gives you, you win on your upcoming turn.
The combo works by abusing Mana Seism,Channel the Suns, Increasing Vengeance, and Past in Flames to generate an enormous amount of mana out of nowhere. Increasing vengeance has the unique ability to double Fork a spell when played from the grave, and it has a fairly expensive flashback, but when flashbacked with Past in Flames, it cost only (r)(r) and you can triple cast Channel the Suns for 15 mana. With all that mana you can play Gifts a 2nd time from the grave for another pile containing Grapeshot for the win.
Usually 1 Grapeshot isn't enough as your storm will most likely be around 10-11, so what we do is use Remand to counter our original Grapeshot. What happens is all the storm copies get added to, and stay on the stack, but the actual Grapeshot goes back to your hand, ready to be played again for lethal.
To win, you want to cast Gifts on the end of your opponents turn. In most cases you will need 5 lands available on your upcoming turn and 2 of the 6 essential combo cards in your hand already. Then you would grab the other 4 with Gifts and no matter what your opp gives you, you win.
- If you have a PIF in the grave or hand you can get Manamorphose, if you have no PIF you can grab one. The point to remember is you need a draw-spell in hand or grave to draw into Grapeshot if they put it in your grave.
So the last pile sets up the win. No matter what they give you you can use Revival/ PIF/ Morphose to get Grapeshot into your hand where you can then cast it, Remand the original Grapeshot back to your hand, but all the storm copies still get added to the stack, then you Grapeshot again for the win.
Winning with Ritual Gifts
Figuring out when to pull the trigger on Gifts can be tough. Here are all the options for 2 combo cards in hand, what the requirements are to get the win, and how to do it. For these, the "what the opponent will give you", is what their best choice is, not the best choice for us.
Before resolving Gifts In Hand- Gifts Ungiven, Past in Flames, Manamorphose Lands in Play- 6 lands
Gifts for- Pyretic Ritual, Mana Seism, Increasing Vengeance, Channel the Suns What the opponent will give you- Increasing Vengeance, Mana Seism
After resolving Gifts In Hand- Past in Flames, Manamorphose, Increasing Vengeance, Mana Seism Lands in Play- 6 Lands In Grave- Ritual, Channel the Suns, Gifts
To Win-
- Vengeance your Morphose - 2RRRG - 2 storm
- Mana Seism up to 7RRG and cast PIF - 4RG - 4 storm
- Ritual to 3RRRG, then Vengeance the Channel - RRRRWWWBBBUUUGGG -7 storm
- Cast Gifts from the grave for the win
Before resolving Gifts In Hand- Gifts Ungiven, Past in Flames, Increasing Vengeance Lands in Play- 6 lands
Gifts for- Manamorphose, Mana Seism, Pyretic Ritual, Channel the Suns What the opponent will give you- Mana Seism, Manamorphose
After resolving Gifts In Hand- Past in Flames, Increasing Vengeance, Mana Seism, Manamorphose Lands in Play- 6 Lands In Grave- Ritual, Channel the Suns, Gifts
To Win-
- Vengeance your Morphose - 2RRRG - 2 storm
- Mana Seism up to 7RRG and cast PIF - 4RG - 4 storm
- Ritual to 3RRRG, then Vengeance the Channel - RRRRWWWBBBUUUGGG -7 storm
- Cast Gifts from the grave for the win
Before resolving Gifts In Hand- Gifts Ungiven, Past in Flames, Mana Seism Lands in Play- 6 lands
Gifts for- Manamorphose, Increasing Vengeance, Pyretic Ritual, Channel the Suns What the opponent will give you- Increasing Vengeance, Manamorphose
After resolving Gifts In Hand- Past in Flames, Mana Seism, Increasing Vengeance, Manamorphose Lands in Play- 6 Lands In Grave- Ritual, Channel the Suns, Gifts
To Win-
- Vengeance your Morphose - 2RRRG - 2 storm
- Mana Seism up to 7RRG and cast PIF - 4RG - 4 storm
- Ritual to 3RRRG, then Vengeance the Channel - RRRRWWWBBBUUUGGG -7 storm
- Cast Gifts from the grave for the win
Before resolving Gifts In Hand- Gifts Ungiven, Past in Flames, Pyretic Ritual Lands in Play- 5 lands
Gifts for- Manamorphose, Mana Seism, Increasing Vengeance, Channel the Suns What the opponent will give you- Increasing Vengeance, Manamorphose
After resolving Gifts In Hand- Past in Flames, Pyretic Ritual, Increasing Vengeance, Manamorphose Lands in Play- 5 Lands In Grave- Mana Seism, Channel the Suns, Gifts
To Win-
- Vengeance your Ritual, then Morphose into - RRRRRRG - 3 storm
- Cast PIF which bring you to RRG, then cast Mana Seism - 5G - 5 Storm
- use Manamorphose to 4RG, cast the Ritual 3RRRG, then Vengeance the Channel - RRRRWWWBBBUUUGGG - 9 storm
- Cast Gifts from the grave for the win
Before resolving Gifts In Hand- Gifts Ungiven, Past in Flames, Channel the Suns Lands in Play- 5 lands
Gifts for- Noxious Revival, Mana Seism, Increasing Vengeance, Pyretic Ritual What the opponent will give you- Increasing Vengeance, Mana Seism
After resolving Gifts In Hand- Past in Flames, Channel the Suns, Increasing Vengeance, Mana Seism Lands in Play- 5 Lands In Grave- Revival, Ritual, Gifts
To Win-
- tap your lands for mana then cast Mana Seism for - 5RRG - 1 storm
- now you can Vengeance your Channel and cast PIF - RGGUUWWB - 4 storm
- Ritual from the grave, then Vengeance Channel again - RRRRGGGGUUUUWWWBBB - 7 storm
- Cast Gifts from the grave for the win
Before resolving Gifts In Hand- Gifts Ungiven, Manamorphose, Increasing Vengeance Lands in Play- 6 lands
Gifts for- Ritual, Mana Seism, Channel the Suns, Past in Flames What the opponent will give you- Past in Flames, Channel the Suns
After resolving Gifts In Hand- Manamorphose, Increasing Vengeance, Past in Flames, Channel the Suns Lands in Play- 6 Lands In Grave- Gifts, Mana Seism, Ritual
To Win-
- Manamorphose into Vengeance on Channel - RRGGUUWWBB - 3 storm
- PIF into Ritual, into Seism - RRGGU6 - 6 storm
- Vengeance on Channel again - 3RRRGGGGUUUUWWWBBB - 8 storm
- Cast Gifts from the grave for the win
Before resolving Gifts In Hand- Gifts Ungiven, Manamorphose, Mana Seism Lands in Play- 6 lands
Gifts for- Ritual, Increasing Vengeance, Past in Flames, Channel the Suns What the opponent will give you- Increasing Vengeance, Past in Flames
After resolving Gifts In Hand- Manamorphose, Mana Seism, Increasing Vengeance, Past in Flames Lands in Play- 6 Lands In Grave- Gifts, Ritual, Channel
To Win-
- Vengeance your Morphose - 2RRRG - 2 storm
- Mana Seism up to 7RRG and cast PIF - 4RG - 4 storm
- Ritual to 3RRRG, then Vengeance the Channel - RRRRWWWBBBUUUGGG -7 storm
- Cast Gifts from the grave for the win
Before resolving Gifts In Hand- Gifts Ungiven, Manamorphose, Ritual Lands in Play- 5 lands
Gifts for- Past in Flames, Increasing Vengeance, Channel the Suns, Mana Seism What the opponent will give you- Past in Flames, Increasing Vengeance
After resolving Gifts In Hand- Manamorphose, Ritual, Past in Flames, Increasing Vengeance Lands in Play- 5 Lands In Grave- Gifts, Mana Seism, Channel the Suns
To Win-
- Vengeance your Ritual, then Morphose into - RRRRRRG - 3 storm
- Cast PIF which bring you to RRG, then cast Mana Seism - 5G - 5 Storm
- use Manamorphose to 4RG, cast the Ritual 3RRRG, then Vengeance the Channel - RRRRWWWBBBUUUGGG - 9 storm
- Cast Gifts from the grave for the win
Before resolving Gifts In Hand- Gifts Ungiven, Manamorphose, Channel the Suns Lands in Play- 6 lands
Gifts for- Past in Flames, Increasing Vengeance, Ritual, Mana Seism What the opponent will give you- Past in Flames, Increasing Vengeance
After resolving Gifts In Hand- Manamorphose, Channel the Suns, Past in Flames, Increasing Vengeance Lands in Play- 6 Lands In Grave- Gifts,
To Win-
- Manamorphose into Vengeance on Channel - RRGGUUWWBB - 3 storm
- PIF into Ritual, into Seism - RRGGU6 - 6 storm
- Vengeance on Channel again - 3RRRGGGGUUUUWWWBBB - 8 storm
- Cast Gifts from the grave for the win
Before resolving Gifts In Hand- Gifts Ungiven, Increasing Vengeance, Mana Seism Lands in Play- 5 lands
Gifts for- Noxious Revival, Ritual, Channel the Suns, Past in Flames What the opponent will give you- Past in Flames, Channel the Suns
After resolving Gifts In Hand- Increasing Vengeance, Mana Seism, Past in Flames, Channel the Suns Lands in Play- 5 Lands In Grave- Gifts, Revival, Ritual
To Win-
- tap your lands for mana then cast Mana Seism for - 5RRG - 1 storm
- now you can Vengeance your Channel and cast PIF - RGGUUWWB - 4 storm
- Ritual from the grave, then Vengeance Channel again - RRRRGGGGUUUUWWWBBB - 7 storm
- Cast Gifts from the grave for the win
Before resolving Gifts In Hand- Gifts Ungiven, Increasing Vengeance, Ritual Lands in Play- 5 lands
Gifts for- Manamorphose, Past in Flames, Mana Seism, Channel the Suns What the opponent will give you- Manamorphose, Past in Flames
After resolving Gifts In Hand- Increasing Vengeance, Ritual, Manamorphose, Past in Flames Lands in Play- 5 Lands In Grave- Gifts, Mana Seism, Channel the Suns
To Win-
- Vengeance your Ritual, then Morphose into - RRRRRRG - 3 storm
- Cast PIF which bring you to RRG, then cast Mana Seism - 5G - 5 Storm
- use Manamorphose to 4RG, cast the Ritual 3RRRG, then Vengeance the Channel - RRRRWWWBBBUUUGGG - 9 storm
- Cast Gifts from the grave for the win
Before resolving Gifts In Hand- Gifts Ungiven, Increasing Vengeance, Channel the Suns Lands in Play- 5 lands
Gifts for- Revival, Ritual, Past in Flames, Mana Seism What the opponent will give you- Past in Flames, Ritual
After resolving Gifts In Hand- Increasing Vengeance, Channel the Suns, Past in Flames, Ritual Lands in Play- 5 Lands In Grave- Gifts, Revival, Mana Seism
To Win-
- Ritual then Vengeance your Channel the Suns - RRGGUUWWBB - 3 storm
- play PIF, then Ritual and Vengeance Channel again - RRRRGGGUUUWWWBBB - 7 storm
- Cast Gifts from the grave for the win
Before resolving Gifts In Hand- Gifts Ungiven, Mana Seism, Ritual Lands in Play- 5 lands
Gifts for- Past in Flames, Increasing Vengeance Channel the Suns, Manamorphose What the opponent will give you- Past in Flames, Manamorphose
After resolving Gifts In Hand- Mana Seism, Ritual, Past in Flames, Manamorphose Lands in Play- 5 Lands In Grave- Gifts, Increasing Vengeance, Channel the Suns
To Win-
- tap your lands for mana then play Mana Seism - RRG5 - 1 storm
- play Manamorphose into the Ritual to RRRRG4 then play Past in Flames - RRRG1 - 4 storm
- Manamorphose into the Ritual again to RRRRGG then Vengeance Channel - RRRGGGUUUWWWBBB - 8 storm
- Cast Gifts from the grave for the win
Before resolving Gifts In Hand- Gifts Ungiven, Mana Seism, Channel the Suns Lands in Play- 5 lands
Gifts for- Manamorphose, Past in Flames, Increasing Vengeance, Ritual What the opponent will give you- Past in Flames, Manamorphose
After resolving Gifts In Hand- Mana Seism, Channel the Suns, Past in Flames, Manamorphose Lands in Play- 5 Lands In Grave- Gifts, Increasing Vengeance, Ritual
To Win-
- tap your lands for mana then play Mana Seism - RRG5 - 1 storm
- Channel the Suns to RRRGUWB2 then Manamorphose - RRRGGUWB1 - 3 storm
- Past in Flames which brings you to RRGGU then Ritual - RRRGGU - 5 storm
- now you can Vengeance the Channel - RRRGGGUUUWWWBBB - 7 storm
- cast Gifts from the grave for the win
Before resolving Gifts In Hand- Gifts Ungiven, Pyretic Ritual, Channel the Suns Lands in Play- 5 lands
Gifts for- Noxious Revival, Increasing Vengeance, Past in Flames, Mana Seism What the opponent will give you- Past in Flames, Increasing Vengeance
After resolving Gifts In Hand- Pyretic Ritual, Channel the Suns, Past in Flames, Increasing Vengeance Lands in Play- 5 Lands In Grave- Gifts, Revival, Mana Seism
To Win-
- Ritual then Vengeance your Channel the Suns - RRGGUUWWBB - 3 storm
- play PIF, then Ritual and Vengeance Channel again - RRRRGGGUUUWWWBBB - 7 storm
- Cast Gifts from the grave for the win
So out of all 15 possibile configurations, only 6 of them need 6 mana to guarantee a win no matter what you get.
Past In Flames - Manamorphose
Past In Flames - Increasing Vengeance
Past in Flames - Mana Seism
Manamorphose - Channel the Suns
Manamorphose - Increasing Vengeance
Manamorphose - Mana Seism
A few of these can get wins with 5 lands, but there's a possibility for your opponent to pick the right 2 and cut you off. With 6 lands they are assured. The other 9 Configurations however, can guarantee a win on just 5 lands
These ones are interesting because they can win on 5 lands, but you wanna Gifts for Noxious Revival rather than Manamorphose with these ones.
Search-
The deck uses these cards to tutor and dig for Gifts, answers, and essential combo pieces. Gifts Ungiven- This is the central card of the strategy, and is critical to the entire deck. Gifts can be used offensively to set up a combo win, or it can be used defensively grabbing a pile of answers. Merchant Scroll-This card is a very strong tutor in this deck, capable of searching out a Gifts Ungiven, cheap countermagic to protect a bomb, or various answers to other decks or hate cards such as Repeal, Trickbind, and Hurkyl's Recall. It can make it easier to resolve an early Gifts and makes sideboarding a lot easier, but has a huge drawback in it's sorcery speed. Mystical Teachings-This card has natural synergy with the deck, searching for Gifts, answers, combo pieces, and providing a way to optimize Gifts piles. While sometimes it can be slow at 4 mana, it makes up for it by being instant speed. Additionally, it allows for a painless transformative sideboard plan, involving Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir and whatever fatty you like most. Serum Visions- Serum Visions can really help smooth out draws, and find land drops. Running Visions lets you keep looser hands and still have a lot of play. It's downside comes from the fact it's only looking 3 cards deep, and may not find you what your looking for. Peer through Depths- Digging 5 deep for Gifts, answers, and combo pieces at instant speed sounds good to me. On top of that you can splice Desperate Ritual onto it. The downside is the inability to grab lands, creature, and artifacts. Telling Time- Instant speed and digs 3 deep. Its not amazing, but less limiting than Peer Through Depths. Forbidden Alchemy- At 3 mana it can be a bit slow, but digs 4 deep for anything. Putting cards in the yard isn't such a bad deal in this deck either. Dig Through Time- Filling up the yard is fairly easy with this deck, and casting this card is rarely an issue. It's fetchable with Scroll, and can be amazing at setting up your combo, or just finding an answer. This isn't a card you want to see multiples of though as it's casting cost can be prohibitive.
Rituals-
These what the deck uses to create huge amounts of mana. Desperate Ritual/Pyretic Ritual- These are important to being able to power out early Gifts, combo turns, and having mana to get through soft counters like Spell Pierce. Desperate Ritual is Strictly better than Pyretic Ritual due to its ability to Splice onto itself and Peer through Depths. But Pyretic provides another ritual with a different name to grab in Gifts piles. Manamorphose- Essential for making the right combination of green and red mana for Channel the Suns, and Increasing Vengeance. Mana Seism- Helps make large amounts of mana on the combo turn. At 4 lands it a 2 mana Seething Song, and at 5 it does a pretty decent Cabal ritual impression. Channel the Suns- The replacement for Seething Song. When flashbacked with Increasing Vengeance you end up with a huge 15 mana to play with.
Counterspells-
Half of our control game comes in the form of countering our opponents spells. Remand- You have to have at least one as It's critical to the Grapeshot Kill, but is a very strong spell on its own, and you will probably want to run 3-4. Muddle the Mixture-This card is an incredibly versatile tool, both protecting your combo in the late game and tutoring for the critical Grapeshot. It also dramatically expands your bullet suite, since you can use Merchant Scroll to tutor for it and then transmute it for a ritual, additional bullets, almost anything. Mana Leak- A fairly strong counterpsell for anything at just 2 mana. Izzet Charm- Incredibly versatile doing a great Spell Pierce impression as well as playing Shock, or Careful Study. Spell Pierce- Stops all sorts of disruption, discard, and counters as well as planeswalkers and varying sorts of hate. Unfortunately it gets worse and worse as the game goes on. Spell Snare- Modern is full of a ton of powerful 2 drops and this stops them all. On top of that, it stops a decent amount of opposing countermagic as well. You don't want all that many of them, though, as they get worse in multiples very quickly. Cryptic Command- If your mana base can support it, Command is one of the most powerful cards available to the deck. Whether you're giving yourself a turn tapping down creatures, countering a critical spell, or bouncing hate, Cryptic Command will always be useful. Pact of Negation- This can make comboing out much easier, and is easy to include as a singleton and fetch with Gifts or Merchant Scroll.
Removal-
The other half of our control game comes by keeping our opponents creatures in check. Lightning Bolt- The best removal in Modern. Flame Slash- Sorcery speed but can kill Restoration Angel, Deceiver Exarch, Eidolon of Rhetoric, and more. Mizzium Mortars- Tuterable with Muddle, kills all sorts of guys, and can be a late game sweeper. Izzet Charm- Incredibly versatile doing a great Spell Pierce impression as well as playing Shock, or Careful Study. Pyroclasm- Can mop up plenty of hatebears, and other critters, but if Zoo is a thing in your area you may want to consider the 3 mana sweepers instead. Anger of the Gods- The best of the available 3 mana sweepers. Great against pod. Slagstorm- Another 3 mana sweeper, this one capable of killing planeswalkers. Firespout- Easily the weakest of the 3 mana sweepers, but worth running for Gifts piles. Volcanic Fallout- Instant speed and uncounterable, but only deals 2 for 3 mana. It hits planeswalkers though and that can be handy. Worth noting that it can be fetched with Teachings as well. Engineered Explosives- A well rounded catch-all capable of hitting varying opposition.
Combo-
This is how the deck actually wins the game. Past in Flames-This is your finisher. Resolving one usually means that the game is over. This is how the deck creates huge amounts of mana, as well as reach a lethal storm count. Increasing Vengeance- A versatile card well worth its inclusion even outside its role in the combo. You can copy a Gifts in response to Counters, double a Peer, or Bolt, etc. Its real power comes when flashing back Channel the Suns for the triple Fork. Noxious Revival- Necessary in the final Gifts pile to get Grapeshot back in your hand for the Grapeshot-Remand finish. Revival can do some other neat tricks as well though, like put a fetch on a land flooded opponents library, bring back a countered Gifts and more. Grapeshot- This is the kill card. Storm makes it almost uncounterable, while Remand makes it much easier to reach the necessary storm to kill them. Because of the tutor power of the deck, you only need to run 1.
Alt Win Conditions-
Sometimes relying on just the storm finish can get you in trouble. Here are some of the other ways to win the game. Unburial Rites-What would a gifts deck be without this card? Relies on the grave, but can be easier to pull off than the storm finish. Griselbrand/ Iona, Shield of Emeria/ Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite/ Inkwell Leviathan- Various fatties for Unburial Rites. Empty the Warrens- A possible option instead of Grapeshot. Doesn't really get past Leyline of Sanctity though as you can't cast Gifts with Leyline out anyway. Martial Coup- A win-con in early versions of the deck. This card can represent an offensive threat, as well as a defensive board wipe. Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir- Great against control decks, and Surgical Extraction/ Extirpate. As well as providing a back up win condition. Can be tutored with Teachings, and after he's on the board you can Teachings for any other creature. Batterskull- A decent back up win condition. Easy to cast, and hard for most decks to deal with when backed up with a strong control game. Wurmcoil Engine- Great fatty that most decks have a hard time dealing with. Works great when paired with Tefari, and Teachings. Meloku the Clouded Mirror- An Alternate win condition used in earlier versions of the deck. This guy is pretty awesome turning mana into an army at instant speed, and can close a game fast. It's even nicer when you can recur Halimar Depths every turn. Inferno Titan- There aren't many creatures that can beatdown like Inferno Titan can for 6 mana. He does a great job at controlling the board as well as finishing games very fast. The downside is the lack of any protection. Kiora, the Crashing Wave- Something new i have been trying out. At 4 mana it's easy to cast, and every ability is actually super useful for the deck. Downside being she starts at 2 and can get pinged by burn spells fairly easily.
Lands-
You want to play more lands than other storm decks, but less than other control decks. Somewhere between 19 and 22.
Fetchlands/Shocklands: If you have them, run them Misty Rainforest/ Scalding Tarn- Being able to grab Islands can be important when playing against Blood Moon. Steam Vents/ Breeding Pool- Most relevant of the Shocklands. Helps having consistent mana for sweepers and Channel. Sulfur Falls- Helps provide correct mana for sweepers, and makes casting Cryptic Command, and Tefari a piece of cake. Fungal Reaches/Dreadship Reef- These lands can be strong in control decks that prefer to play reactivate. Preferable you want to leave mana open for your opponents turn and play accordingly, if they don't play anything worth responding to you can store some mana. A few turns of stored mana can help tremendously in getting the combo through. Desolate Lighthouse- This deck is fairly prone to flooding, and wants to draw one of a fairly small number of absolutely massive game-ending bomb spells. This card digs into your deck for them, provides a good mana sink, and fills your graveyard all at once. Halimar Depths- Deceptively strong. You have a LOT of shuffle effects, which makes this a lot stronger. I'm not currently running any, but it's definitely an option.
Sideboard-
There is all sorts of hate people are going to bring in against us, as well other powerful decks we need to worry about. Dispel- Stops any opposing counterspell for just 1 mana. Negate- A fairly strong 2 mana counter worth bringing in against combo and control. Counterflux- Very strong against combo and control. Torpor Orb- Stops Pod and twin combos. Damping Matrix- Stops Pod and Twin combos. But also shuts down Scooze, Relic, and a slew of other bad guys. Spellskite- Great against Infect, and Bogle. Decent against Twin, and Burn. Blood Moon- Obviously good against tron variants, but Modern is host to a large amount of greedy mana bases, and Blood Moon does a great job crushing their dreams. Can be great against control and limiting their available blue mana, therefor limiting their ability to play counterspells. On top of all that, Blood Moon also crushes Zoo as well. Sometimes nearly soft locking them, as they often only play a few red creatures. Sowing Salt- Great hate for Tron variants. Shatterstorm- Great against Affinity. Kills Etched Champion. Shattering Spree- Another option against Affinity. Cheaper and can be played earlier but can't hit Etched Champion. Hurkyl's Recall- Good at stalling Affinity, and bouncing hate rocks. Can be tutored with Merchant Scroll, and Muddle. Gigadrowse- Decent option against control decks, and can be tutored with Scroll. Cyclonic Rift- This card does a LOT for you, acting as both a way to bounce a problematic hate spell and as a late-game bomb that can potentially end the game on its own. Chances are, if you don't have one of these in your main or sideboard, you're doing something wrong. Echoing Truth- Super versatile bounce for all sorts of creature baddies and hate cards. Wipe Away- Super versatile bounce for all sorts of creature baddies and hate cards. Split Second laughs at Relic of Progenitus. Hibernation-Decent option against Zoo and Jund. Fetchable with Scroll. Combust- Great removal against Twin and UWR. Dismember-Kills plenty of guys for just 1 mana. Decent against Twin. Vendilion Clique- Can provide hand disruption as well as a possible back up win condition. Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir- Great against control decks, and Surgical Extraction/ Extirpate. As well as providing a back up win condition. Can be tutored with Teachings, amd after he's on the board you can teachings for any other creature. Batterskull- A decent back up win condition. Easy to cast, and hard for most decks to deal when back up with a strong control game. Wurmcoil Engine- Great fatty that most decks have a hard time dealing with. Works great when paired with Tefari, and Teachings. Leyline of Sanctity- Discard heavy decks can be a huge pain. Opening with Leyline makes those matches a breeze. Witchbane Orb- A hardcastable option if you don't like mulling into oblivion for a Leyline. Can be too late though by the time is resolves. Surgical Extraction- Great grave hate that doesn't touch our own yard at all. Nihil Spellbomb- More grave hate that wont touch our yard.
(These are a little outdated. I'm working on updating them soon.) Twin-
Twin variants can be tough because they pack plenty of counterspells as well as an easy to assemble 2 card combo. Their combo is easier to set up than ours is, but we have a few decent options for sideboard hate to bring in. When playing against Twin you need to be patient and methodical as any wrong move can end in a game winning combo on either side. Try to play to your strengths and work around what they have. One thing Twin has going against it is a lack of real card advantage. If you can survive the first few turns, in many cases Twin will be left with just a few cards in hand making it much easier to play around. What they can bring in-
Counterspells/ Counterflux/ Mindbreak Trap What you can bring in-
Counterspells, Torpor Orb, Damping Matrix, Spellskite, Combust, Wipe Away.
Pod-
Pod variants are incredibly versatile and consistent which makes a tough match up for us. They have the ability to both combo out of nowhere, and if that doesn't work they have a very solid beatdown plan as back up. Top that off with the ability to tutor out hate bears and we have a rough match on our hands. A few solid sideboard cards can slow them down, but you gotta make sure you're on your game when playing against Pod. Similar to playing against Twin, you gotta make sure you take your time and think things through because Pod can pull a win out of nowhere with Birthing Pod, and Chord of Calling. What they can bring in-
More hatebears to Pod into, as well as varying grave hate. Ethersworn Canonist, Eidolon of Rhetoric, Rest in Peace, Relic of Progenitus, etc. What you can bring in- Torpor Orb, Damping Matrix, Anger of the Gods, as well as various bounce for hatebears/haterocks.
BGx-
Be it Jund, BG Rock, or other BGx variants, they have a ton of options to disrupt our game plan. They have plenty of hand disruption to throw us off, as well as grave hate in the form of Scavenging Ooze, and a decent clock to boot. If they can land an early beater and back it up with relentless discard it's gonna be a tough day. That being said, the match isn't completely terrible. Ritual Gifts has incredible top deck power and even if you get your hand mangled you can often just top deck a Gifts and proceed to go off next turn. The key here is weathering the early storm, and keeping Bobs, Scoozes and Lilis off the table. What they can bring in- Surgical/ Extirpate, Rakdos Charm, Slaughter Games, as well as additional discard. What you can bring in- Lightning Bolt, Spell Pierce, Leyline of Sanctity
Affinity-
Affinity can be incredibly explosive, but has a tendency to over-extend, which makes it fairly easy to stabilize, and leave them too far behind to catch up. You do need to watch out for Inkmoth Nexus and Arcbound Ravager tricks, but as long as you're focused, everything Affinity has to offer can be handled with relative ease. Sometimes they can get the nut draw though and finish you off quick, but outside of crazy openers this match up shouldn't be too much of a problem. Not to mention g2-3 you get to Scroll for Hurkyl's Recall. What they can bring in- Chalice of the Void, Thorn of Amethyst, Ethersworn Canonist, Relic of Progenitus, Tormod's Crypt, Surgical Extraction What you can bring in- Hurkyl's Recall, Shatterstorm, Shattering Spree. Unfortunatly for Affinity, most of their hate for us folds to the hate we would bring in against them anyway.
UWR-
Despite how it may seem on paper, this is actually a pretty good match for us. UWR midrange can pose more of a threat than the pure control lists, but either way as long you play smart you should be fine. The only real difficulty can come if they land an early threat with counter magic back up, but more often than not they will play draw-go for a while, until they eventually slip up, or you coax them into misplaying. When the right time hits, and they tap out for Sphinx's Revelation, or Restoration Angel you can go ahead and Gifts for the win. What they can bring in-
More Counters, Rest in Peace, Relic of Progenitus, Ethersworn Canonist, Rule of Law. What you can bring in- Dispel, Wipe Away, Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir
Tron-
Tron is generally seen in 3 different forms, GR, UW, and Mono U. GR gives up counterspells for speed, while both the UW and Mono U play a slightly slower but far more controlling game. All 3 of these lists can be incredibly explosive, and over all the matchups feels very close. GR may not run counters but they do have maindeck Relic of Progenitus to watch out for. UW is often packing Gifts as well as a Rites package. And can pull it off very quickly. The one thing that helps here will be their lack of blue mana. In most cases They will play a lot of colorless lands and rely on Talismans or Signets to get their colored mana. Hopefully you can bottleneck their blue mana, and then go for the kill. What they can bring in-
Most of what you see here is going to be artifact based. Relic of Progenitus, Grafdigger's Cage, Mindslaver, and sometimes they will bring in Surgical Extractions. What you can bring in- Blood Moon, Sowing Salt, more Counterspells, and bounce for haterocks.
Fae-
Any deck that can present fast efficient threats and back that up with disruption will be a challenge, and that's exactly what Faeries will be doing. They run a ton of counters, hand disruption, and cheap creatures that often have disrupting abilities. G2-3 you also have to worry about Surgical Extraction and Extirpate, which is never fun. All that being said the match is winnable. All it takes is 1 well timed Gifts. What they can bring in-
More counterspells and discard, Surgical Extraction, Extirpate, Shadow of Doubt, Trickbind. What you can bring in-
More counters, Tefari, and a back up win condition so their extraction can't just beat you on the spot.
Zoo-
Zoo can sometimes get nutty draws and you just won't see any removal, but outside of those scenarios this shouldn't be a terrible matchup at all. You can't rely on them over extending and using your Sweepers to stabilize because a good Zoo player will just play 1-2 hyper efficient threats and beat you down. The good thing is they have minimal disruption that matters. All we have to worry about here is a few hatebears.. and of course staying alive. Try to use your removal accordingly, keep Thalias off the table, and go for Gifts when you get the chance. Keep in mind they have a fair amount of reach with their burn as well. What they can bring in- Thalia, Ethersworn Canonist, Dryad Militant, Gaddock Teeg, Rest in Peace. What you can bring in- Blood Moon, Anger of the Gods, Lightning Bolt, various bounce for hatebears/ haterocks.
Scapeshift-
They run a similar game to us in the sense that they are a control deck with a 1 card combo. They will try to get to 7 lands as fast as possible and cast Scapeshift for the win. Their mana ramp gives them an edge here as well because they will usually have more mana to sink into counterspells. What i try to do is slow down their mana ramp, and wait for the right opportunity to Gifts. What they can bring in-
More counters, Relic of Progenitus, Leyline of Sanctity What you can bring in-
More counters, Wipe Away
UR Storm-
This is actually a great matchup for us. UR storm can be very explosive but the catch is 95% of the time they need to resolve a key engine piece in order to do so. If you can keep Pyromancer Ascension and Goblin Electromancer from doing any work this matchup will be a piece of cake. What they can bring in- Blood Moon, Counterspells What you can bring in-
More counterspells, bounce for Ascension, Trickbind,
8- Rack-
This is never a fun match. But not always terrible. The key is getting past the initial onslaught of discard, then surviving long enough to find and resolve a Gifts. Remember, even if your hand gets mangled you can still be just 1 top decked gifts away from victory. Just be very wary of Extraction in G2-3. This is one of the matches where you really want to side in an alternate win condition. What they can bring in- Surgical Extraction, Extirpate, Leyline of Sanctity/Void, Grafdigger's Cage,Withered Wretch . What you can bring in-
Counters, Bounce, Leyline of Sanctity, Tefari, and an alt win.
Burn-
This should be a fairly easy match as they don't really provide much in the way of disruption. Survive the early assault and then go for the win. Burn has a tendency of running out of gas pretty quick, so as long you can counter a few burn spells, and kill a Goblin Guide, chances are they'll be left top decking, and you will still be good to go. What they can bring in- Blood Moon, Rakdos Charm, Grafdigger's Cage, Eidolon of the Great Revel. What you can bring in-
Counterspells, Wipe Away, Spellskite.
Delver-
Any deck that can provide an early threat and countermagic will be a tough match. They run light on land though, so if you can survive the first few turns, you will eventually overtake them in resources and be able to power through Gifts with counter backup for the win. What they can bring in-
More counters, Vendilion Clique, Trickbind, Blood Moon, What you can bring in-
More counters, Volcanic Fallout.
If there is anything i can improve on, make sure to let me know. Criticism, suggestions, and opinions are more than welcome.
A special thanks goes out to Legit Karona, and I-Never-Smile for putting so much time, and effort into the deck in the past. With out those guys Ritual Gifts probably wouldn't be a deck at all right now. Credit for the -Why play Ritual Gifts- section, as well as the beginning of the -History of Ritual Gifts- goes to Legit Karona.
Great Primer! (maybe add dropdowns to reduce scrolling) - I honestly don't know why this isn't stickied - I see this deck all the time at local tournaments and it is a very strong competitor. Congrats on the Feature!
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Legacy:B The Gate // B Pox Modern:RGB Dredge // RBG Goblins // B The Gate // UBR Tezz AoB Control // RBG Prison Pox EDH:RBU Thraximundar // R Norin the Wary // RWB Kaalia of the Vast // BUR Grixis Combos // BU Gisa and Geralf Tribal Tiny Leaders:BUW Sydri, Galvanic Genius // R Feldon of the Third Path
Well done opener! The old ritual gift thread needed to be updated. Very appreciated! Time to pick the deck up again! Like what jwelt said, some spoilers would make it look better.
Thanks for the opportunity to to be the Featured Thread! I really appreciate it! I hope when people see the deck still works without Seething Song, and is actually very powerful and consistent, some interest will grow in the deck again.
I added some spoiler drop downs to ease up on the amount of scrolling. I just wish i could get the drop down boxes in the middle of the screen.. Not a huge fan of the way the new spoiler boxes look.
But yeah, unfortunately there hasn't been much of anything in the way of MTGO performances. But you have to remember the deck had been largely forgotten about since the banning of Seething Song. But even before that, the deck struggled to gain much notoriety. Not a lot of people want to put so much effort into learning such a complicated deck when it's relatively unproven. Depending on how you look at it though, that's one of the things that's so exciting about Ritual Gifts; the fact that there actually isn't a "stock" list right now.
The archetype has a ton of potential, we just need to get some people playing it, thinking about it, and tinkering with it. The combo itself is incredibly reliable and consistent, but finding the right cards to go around it is where it gets tricky. As Acclimation pointed out, one of the toughest aspects is striking that perfect balance of Search, Combo, and Control.
I like this idea. I was thinking it might be even easier to cut this right to U/R by using an Artifact strat like Tezz control, but using Reshape and Trash for Treasure + artifacts to get this off the ground.
Maybe it's less of a Storm deck. Probably needs it's own development.
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My Modern decks: B/R/G Living End G/R/B G/R Tron R/G U/W/G/R Gargageddon R/G/W/U R/W/G Naya Burn G/W/R
For those who did not follow the old thread, it's ritual gifts, except it uses Spellweaver Volute as a slower Past in Flames that can continually replay Gifts Ungiven, eventually looping to enough storm to cast a lethal Grapeshot. It's confusing, and it has some weird rulings (Spellweaver Volute is the only card that does anything like it).
It's fun though, and has some great surprise factor. We discussed it a little bit in the previous thread, and I've been tinkering with the list. It dies to fast aggro and is fairly mana intensive, and I have yet to determine if it's better than regular Ritual Gifts. I've unfortunately not had that much time to play in tournaments, and get some good practice.
I don't think it's gonna take much to make it decent though. If Punishing Fire ever comes of the Banned List, we might have ourselves something cool.
If there's enough interest, I can do some explanation as to the general combo process.
Does anyone have example videos of the deck in action? The deck sounds incredibly cool, but it would be really nice to have some good examples of how the deck plays out in a real game.
Yes please. It seems like you Rewind a whole bunch?
Yea, basically. So the basic combo goes something like this: It assumes you have rewinded something earlier in the game.
Play a Gifts, fetching a couple lands, life from the loam, and flame jab. Flame jab will be your recurring sorcery.
Untap, play a volute, and stick it on rewind in your graveyard (note that volute can actually land on your opponents instants as well)
Untap again (with 5-6 mana) and either dredge the life from the loam for your turn if it's in the gy, or just draw a card.
Retrace/Cast Flame Jab, triggering volute. Play the copied rewind targetting your own flame jab, and tap some lands, floating the mana. Rewind resolves, and you untap 4 lands. Put volute on your gifts in the graveyard.
Either cast Flame Jab again, or cast Life from the Loam, netting a free gifts. Note that you must choose a new target for volute before your gifts can resolve. If you have another instant in your GY, put it on that, or on an instant in your opponents gy (my favorite is a lightning helix, if they have it).
Gifts should fetch another gifts and another rewind. You can then cast another sorcery to trigger your gifts to cast the placeholder instant you chose above, and put it on the rewind. Now you can more or less just loop the above steps to gain mana and storm (the volute copies do count for storm).
Your last gifts should get Mystic Retrieval, Grapeshot, Remand, and Card (I like manamorphose, as it can be extra mana if needed under a volute). Your opponent should give you Retrieval and Manamorphose, assuming you have other instants in the yard. It is not safe to go for this step without instants in the yard, as your opponent can screw you out by giving you the two instants here. Volute goes on some random instant. Cast the mystic retrieval, getting a copy of random instant, and put volute on remand. Get your grapeshot back. Cast a grapeshot, triggering remand, and remand the original copy. Cast the copy again for lethal.
Basic combo process. There are some tricks here and there, and it's not always so set in stone. Playing this is sort of like playing High Tide in legacy, where you just need to think about maximizing your mana production while maintaining your other resources.
As for wild growth et al, it could be a thing. In general, I don't really like those type of effects, especially the one lander ones. If I was going to play an effect like that, I'd start with Heartbeat of Spring, but I've since moved away from that card. As I've said before, the deck is still very raw, and really anything can be tested. Ramp has been something I felt like I wanted in the deck, and maybe the extra mana effects could be good for that, as they help during the combo turn.
Has anyone considered running one white shockland maindeck and an Unburial Rites package in the sideboard? It would help beat Storm hate.
Yes, actually it's mentioned in the Alt Win Conditions section of the -Card Choices-. And also the 3rd list in the -Sample Lists- is running a Rites package.
As for the mana ramp enchantments in Volute combo. I agree that those cards aren't that great but it seems like a legit way to ramp into that 5 mana Volute as well as make a ton of excess mana off Rewind. In my testing of the deck i ran out of mana comboing off a ton. I could be sequencing wrong though.
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Not just the Tendo King, the power of the Galactic Leyline surpasses that of the Tempa Emperor, No!, It's magnificent power is even greater than that!
Has anyone considered running one white shockland maindeck and an Unburial Rites package in the sideboard? It would help beat Storm hate.
Yes, actually it's mentioned in the Alt Win Conditions section of the -Card Choices-. And also the 3rd list in the -Sample Lists- is running a Rites package.
As for the mana ramp enchantments in Volute combo. I agree that those cards aren't that great but it seems like a legit way to ramp into that 5 mana Volute as well as make a ton of excess mana off Rewind. In my testing of the deck i ran out of mana comboing off a ton. I could be sequencing wrong though.
Yea, basically. So the basic combo goes something like this: It assumes you have rewinded something earlier in the game.
Play a Gifts, fetching a couple lands, life from the loam, and flame jab. Flame jab will be your recurring sorcery.
Untap, play a volute, and stick it on rewind in your graveyard (note that volute can actually land on your opponents instants as well)
Untap again (with 5-6 mana) and either dredge the life from the loam for your turn if it's in the gy, or just draw a card.
Retrace/Cast Flame Jab, triggering volute. Play the copied rewind targetting your own flame jab, and tap some lands, floating the mana. Rewind resolves, and you untap 4 lands. Put volute on your gifts in the graveyard.
Either cast Flame Jab again, or cast Life from the Loam, netting a free gifts. Note that you must choose a new target for volute before your gifts can resolve. If you have another instant in your GY, put it on that, or on an instant in your opponents gy (my favorite is a lightning helix, if they have it).
Gifts should fetch another gifts and another rewind. You can then cast another sorcery to trigger your gifts to cast the placeholder instant you chose above, and put it on the rewind. Now you can more or less just loop the above steps to gain mana and storm (the volute copies do count for storm).
Your last gifts should get Mystic Retrieval, Grapeshot, Remand, and Card (I like manamorphose, as it can be extra mana if needed under a volute). Your opponent should give you Retrieval and Manamorphose, assuming you have other instants in the yard. It is not safe to go for this step without instants in the yard, as your opponent can screw you out by giving you the two instants here. Volute goes on some random instant. Cast the mystic retrieval, getting a copy of random instant, and put volute on remand. Get your grapeshot back. Cast a grapeshot, triggering remand, and remand the original copy. Cast the copy again for lethal.
Basic combo process. There are some tricks here and there, and it's not always so set in stone. Playing this is sort of like playing High Tide in legacy, where you just need to think about maximizing your mana production while maintaining your other resources.
As for wild growth et al, it could be a thing. In general, I don't really like those type of effects, especially the one lander ones. If I was going to play an effect like that, I'd start with Heartbeat of Spring, but I've since moved away from that card. As I've said before, the deck is still very raw, and really anything can be tested. Ramp has been something I felt like I wanted in the deck, and maybe the extra mana effects could be good for that, as they help during the combo turn.
This is really convoluted.
You know what would help is if the OP or yourself actually used OBS while playing this on MTGO to show how it all works.
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My Modern decks: B/R/G Living End G/R/B G/R Tron R/G U/W/G/R Gargageddon R/G/W/U R/W/G Naya Burn G/W/R
No problem, that was a great suggestion. Unburial Rites in Ritual gifts can be a double edged sword. Yes, it is definitely easier to pull off than the Storm combo, and can be a huge bomb that ends most games. The drawbacks are: the fact that it doesn't always actually end the game, forces you to play a weaker mana base, and is a dead draw most of the time.
The other thing to take into account is the fact that Rites folds to grave hate, and most of the Storm hate people bring in is actually grave hate.
What i love about it though, is the diversity of threats it provides. It keeps the opponent confused because they don't know if your going to storm them out, play Iona t4, or just drop a Batterskull and go on the beatdown.
Generally speaking, I'm not a fan of Unburial Rites, since it worsens the mana base, isn't really much faster than giftsing for the combo, and doesn't diversify us out of any hate.
I think it's worth comparing Ritual Gifts to Scapeshift, as they are both combo/control decks that play a similar game. Using a sample list, we get:
In order to be at least as good a deck, we need to be looking at similar numbers, and ideally being able to put more into removal and protection without compromising the combo. The first two lists in the OP broadly match up here, but I'm going to generalize a bit, and discuss options:
Combo Pieces 16
2 Manamorphose
2 Desperate Ritual
1 Pyretic Ritual
1 Channel the Suns
1 Mana Seism
1 Increasing Vengeance
1 Noxious Revival
2 Past in Flames
1 Grapeshot
4 Gifts Ungiven
Pretty sure these are mostly all necessary. It would be worth working out if a Manamorphose (or even both?) can be cut, and I don't really like Noxious Revival, but this is at least the same amount of combo-centric spells that Scapeshift runs. Note that lack of ramp spells mean we have to play less at Sorcery speed, which is partially negated by the fact that ramping (especially on STE) is fairly useful, whereas our rituals sit in our hand and do nothing. Gifts is obviously more useful than Scapeshift since it can be used for vlaue.
Dig 4
4 Peer or 4 Scroll
This is all we really have space for, and I'm pretty sure Telling Time is worse than both. Peer digs deep at instant speed for everything that isn't a land (sometimes annoying) whereas Scroll guarantees Gifts and can find Cryptic/Pact of Negation/sideboard bounce, but is stuck at sorcery speed. By and large, Scapeshift does ok with Peer, but Scroll can be pretty good (although sorcey speed is bleh)
Removal 7
1 Anger of the Gods
1 Firespout
1 Slagstorm
3 Lightning Bolt
1 Izzet Charm
Sweepers seem pretty good to me, especially since we can gifts for them. Pyroclasm is probably not enough these days. You could probably play up to 5, and maybe only 2 maindeck and one or two in the board. Lightning Bolt is obviously very good at killing dorks (important). Less important since we don't need to get an opponent under 18 like Scapeshift, but flashbacking bolts off PiF makes getting a kill easier (and might not be the worse value play if you're desperate and have mana). I am personally a big fan of Izzet charm, but 2 damage is not as good with Nacatls around. The guy who wrote the above Scapeshift list calls it "the 5th Remand, 5th Lightning Bolt, and as a 5th Peer Through Depths at the same time. The only trade off is being bad at all of them at the same time." which is a pretty fair assessment.
This set of protection is from list 1 in the OP. Remand is amazing in this deck, particularly because of remanding your grapeshot, so you must play 4. Cryptic is insanely strong, and as a blue deck that wants to see turn 4, we should probably be playing it. It's not as good as in scapeshift since we can't play it turn 3, and we won't have enough mana to use it to protect gifts (as they do with Scapeshift) so 2 is a solid number. Bounces maindeck hate too. Muddle is a solid spell that acts as a way to get Grapeshot/remand/manamorphose/ritual. I feel like it is overkill to have both Muddle and Noxious Revival, assuming a pile can be made with just one. I am not so convinced with Spell Pierce: it is a narrow maindeck card to be running 3 of, so I'd rather see it as Izzet Charms, repeals, or maybe spell snare. Maybe even mana leak.
Land 23
Fetches, shocks (1 breeding pool), 2 Halimar Depths, 1 Desolate Lighthouse, maybe some Dreadship reef.
You could go down to 22 lands, but land drops are very important to the deck (you really want to hit 5), so the side of caution is preferred.
****
So as you can see, we can quite easily echo the makeup of a standard Scapeshift list. There are some flex slots around exactly which cards should be run (particularly around removal and protection suites), but by and large it seems silly to reinvent the wheel when we can learn from a pretty successful deck that tries to do something very similar.
Generally speaking, I'm not a fan of Unburial Rites, since it worsens the mana base, isn't really much faster than giftsing for the combo, and doesn't diversify us out of any hate.
I tend to agree. Unburial Rites is great in a few matches, but like you said, it still folds to grave hate, which a lot of players will be bringing in against us anyway. What it has going for it though, is it literally turns Gifts into a 1 card combo. You don't need anything else but Gifts to get Rites online, where the Storm combo needs some other cards in your hand or grave. It actually can be considerably easier to force out Rites than the entire storm combo in some matches. I'm trying to stay open minded about it, but so far i'm leaning towards lists without Rites. I would rather focus on doing 1 thing great, than a few things alright.
I think it's worth comparing Ritual Gifts to Scapeshift, as they are both combo/control decks that play a similar game.
In order to be at least as good a deck, we need to be looking at similar numbers, and ideally being able to put more into removal and protection without compromising the combo. The first two lists in the OP broadly match up here
I agree whole heartily. When working with the deck in the past i have looked a lot to Scapeshift for inspiration, and sort of as a base test to go by. We have to be at least as good as Scapeshift, or what is the point in playing this deck? I also spent a lot of time looking at UW Tron, and more recently Twin lists as well.
I think the one thing that can get us into trouble trying to emulate Scapeshift to much though, is their mana ramp. They have the ability to ramp up their mana, so their whole control game runs a bit differently than any other deck, as they can easily out resource opponents.
It would be worth working out if a Manamorphose (or even both?) can be cut, and I don't really like Noxious Revival...
Gifts is obviously more useful than Scapeshift since it can be used for value.
The original lists were running 4 Manamorphose because of how well they played with Seething Song, and because you really needed them to get blue mana during the combo turn. Now without Seething Song, you don't exactly need 4 anymore, but unfortunately you're definitely going to need at least 1. On the combo turn, Manamorphose really helps in making sure you have (r)(r)(g)(3) available, so you can Vengeance your Channel the Suns. I have tried going down to 1, and i even tried cutting them completely but it gets you into trouble more often than not.
Noxious Revival is required for the final pile, to make sure you can get Grapeshot into your hand. But besides that there are a ton of cool tricks it can do, and it plays extremely well with Gifts. You can put junk on top of a mana screwed players library, or put fetches on top of a mana flooded players library. Revive discarded, and countered spells, and more. Also having 1 in your hand when you go for the Gifts-Storm pile makes it even easier to set up the combo as your getting 3 cards in hand from gifts instead of just 2. I understand it's not always awesome, but i feel like it more than holds it's weight here.
When comparing Scapeshift to Ritual Gifts, i think one of the things we having going for us is how versatile Gifts is. While Scapeshift does literally nothing outside of the combo win, Gifts can both set up the combo, and find counters, removal, hatecards, etc.
Sweepers seem pretty good to me, especially since we can gifts for them. Pyroclasm is probably not enough these days. You could probably play up to 5, and maybe only 2 maindeck and one or two in the board. Lightning Bolt is obviously very good at killing dorks. I am personally a big fan of Izzet charm, but 2 damage is not as good with Nacatls around. The guy who wrote the above Scapeshift list calls it "the 5th Remand, 5th Lightning Bolt, and as a 5th Peer Through Depths at the same time. The only trade off is being bad at all of them at the same time." which is a pretty fair assessment.
I think sweepers are good here for multiple reasons. What we're really trying to do is stall the game until we have the resources to win, and i think having stabilizers like that can be really helpful. I want Pyroclasm to be good, but i just don't want to end up dead in the water. It doesn't seem like Zoo is doing all that well right now though surprisingly, so maybe it's safe to play. When it comes down to it, there are a lot of good removal options in red, so it's kinda hard to find the perfect selection. As for Izzet Charm, i like it, it's versatile, it's a decent Scroll target. But like you said, it's just good, not great at anything.
Remand is amazing in this deck, particularly because of remanding your grapeshot, so you must play 4. Cryptic is insanely strong, and as a blue deck that wants to see turn 4, we should probably be playing it. It's not as good as in scapeshift since we can't play it turn 3, and we won't have enough mana to use it to protect gifts (as they do with Scapeshift) so 2 is a solid number. Bounces maindeck hate too. Muddle is a solid spell that acts as a way to get Grapeshot/remand/manamorphose/ritual. I feel like it is overkill to have both Muddle and Noxious Revival, assuming a pile can be made with just one. I am not so convinced with Spell Pierce: it is a narrow maindeck card to be running 3 of, so I'd rather see it as Izzet Charms, repeals, or maybe spell snare. Maybe even mana leak.
So Remand is the *****, that has been established. I can't really see an argument to run less than 4. All we're trying to do is stall the game for a few turns until we can combo out, and that's exactly what Remand does for us.
Command on the other hand is a great card, and it's incredibly versatile, but i'm starting to think maybe we shouldn't play it. Like you said, without that mana ramp to back it up, 4 mana is quite a bit. We are never going to be able to bounce hate, or counter a spell, and cast Gifts in the same turn either.
Spell Pierce is actually great at forcing through Gifts at 5 mana, rather than 6 which can be a task to hit that many land drops, and be alive still. It's also a boss at keeping Liliana off the field. But i'm getting to the point where i agree it's not quite good enough to have 3 maindeck.
Ok, so i love Muddle the Mixture. It's great in the deck, but how can you make a win pile without Noxious Revival? There is no way to set up a pile that will get Grapeshot in your hand, without at least 1 Revival.(Unless i'm completely missing something) *Edit* Ok, you Gifts for (Merchant Scroll, Past in Flames, Remand, ???). Now no matter what you get you can PIF->Scroll for Muddle->Muddle into Grapeshot.
The problem with that is if Muddle or Grapeshot is in the grave already it won't work.
So as you can see, we can quite easily echo the makeup of a standard Scapeshift list. There are some flex slots around exactly which cards should be run (particularly around removal and protection suites), but by and large it seems silly to reinvent the wheel when we can learn from a pretty successful deck that tries to do something very similar.
So like i was saying earlier in this post. I do agree it's good to look towards Scapeshift when building this deck, but not to go to far with it. We can't just recreate Scapeshift with different cards, because we are a different deck. Their ability to mana ramp and play a control game warps their strategy and card choices to a point. So more recently i was looking a lot at Twin lists, and i got to thinking about something. I have been putting so much effort into being a decent control deck, more focused on stabilizing midgame and getting the combo, when i think what we should be focusing on just being able to consistently stall the game a few turns.
I have been having some consistency issues with the mana in the deck for a while. In most versions i have played, you need a fair amount of luck finding your land drops. There's no good way to dig for lands in previous shells, and often i would find myself stuck at 2 lands for 5 turns, or drawing 6 lands in a row. And with a lot of expensive sweepers, and cards like Cryptic Command, you can find yourself behind on resources and being a pretty sub-par control deck. That's not to say it always happened like that, but it was certainly a problem.
I got to testing some unorthodox lists, and trying out some things that are fairly at odds with the fundamental theory going into this deck, but i found a list that has been giving me a lot of success.
So this is obviously against the grain of a lot of what i have said in the past. First thing being the inclusion of Serum Visions. I mean heck, in the intro paragraph for the deck i wrote it says we don't play cantrips, yet here i am with a list playing cantrips. The reasoning behind this is the mana issues. Having a cheap cantrip really helps in smoothing out your draws.
I had initially tried 2 lists; 1 with Sakura-Tribe Elder jammed into my old list, and this list here that i posted. The STE list worked, but still felt slow, and somewhat sluggish at times, while this list felt incredibly consistent, and played so smooth. I have honestly been very surprised when playing this list at how much nicer it runs than previous incarnations.
I gave up the Cryptic Commands, and maindeck sweepers in order to play cheaper spells. By playing cheap cantrips rounded out by cheap efficient removal, you get to keep much looser hands, and still have a lot of play. I have complained about it so much in the past, but getting blown out due to mana screw is the worst feeling. The new list deals with that issue fairly well by dramatically lowing the mana curve, and having cheap library manipulation. With the cheaper spells, Snapcaster becomes a whole lot better as well.
The other big change is the Scroll package. The fully fleshed out Scroll package can be sweet, but here we essentially have Gifts 5-6, with a mini package. Scroll can find Gifts obviously, it can find a counter to protect Gifts, and a bounce spell for a hatebear. For maindeck purposes, is there anything else you would really need?
I look forward to playing this on Friday if I can for the first time, and so far through goldfishing I think I have the basics worked out for how to "Gifts, I win" with different combinations of hands. I have yet to read the other thread yet, but I what do we do about a resolved Rest in Peace. I understand MD has a lot of counters to prevent one, but after Board do we just have to hold onto Enchantment Destruction (I copied Alleyway's Jack from above and throw in a Hallowed Fountain and Ray of Revelation) / Echoing Truth to be ready the turn we go off? Seems easily doable, but I want to make sure I'm not missing any super secret tech before I give this thing a shot. Definitely looks like a blast to play.
Red should be burn, Goblins, Dragons, draw/discard, and Standard-unplayable 5CMC cards with insane, lengthy effects that take 10 minutes to figure out what they do and another 20 to actually make their effects work on the field.
Nice! Good luck! I really hope it works out for you.
Yeah for the most part, just Scroll for Echoing Truth or some other bounce. Rest in Peace is definitely a pain in the ass though, as you're going to end up needing 5-6 mana to bounce and Gifts EOT. If you're playing someone that you know is going to be siding in RIP, i would bring in Batterskull or some other alt win just in case an essential combo piece ends up getting exiled.
You could run Spell Pierce over Dispel in the board if you were really worried about non creature-permanent hate. That's really a choice of whether you want a solid late game hard counter or better early game. I'm not even 100% on what the best option is to be honest.
One thing i have been thinking about now that i'm not playing Cryptic Command, is whether i want to cut a fetch and a Sulfur Falls for 2 Storage lands. Sometimes i really do miss them; they make plays like bouncing a haterock, and playing Gifts so much easier. What i'm torn on, is whether i want extremely consistent mana, or potentially more powerful- yet slightly less consistent mana. What gets me, is drawing hands with no colored mana. It just drives me crazy, but with only 2 colorless lands, it feels pretty safe. Something i'm trying to figure out right now..
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Not just the Tendo King, the power of the Galactic Leyline surpasses that of the Tempa Emperor, No!, It's magnificent power is even greater than that!
I figured that would be the plan and that really seems like the only choice. Cage seems annoying as well but at least you can continue to stock up the yard until the turn you need it gone. I would definitely bring in the Batterskulls against almost anyone in white (maybe RB too for Rakdos Charm). Can always threaten the combo but still have one of the best beaters available if need be.
I put 2 Swan Song in my sideboard so far in addition to the Dispels. Swan Swong hardcounters RiP any stage of the game and functions the same role as Dispel. I feel that when I need the Swan Song a 2/2 Flier isn't going to matter as much, and it also functions as Twin hate if needed as well, instead of just a counter war.
Personally I don't think 2 colorless would be that bad. The only time it matters is when you are racing to outcombo someone else, and due to the counters in the deck you can probably slow them down enough that the lands won't be a hindrance. UR Twin for example uses Desolate which taps for colorless and they don't seem to have issues going off with those included. If the lands came in tapped that would be a whole different story and since there are no Cryptic's we really don't need a ton of colored mana at any given point. The most I can see is needing RRGx for Vengeance and Channel.
Red should be burn, Goblins, Dragons, draw/discard, and Standard-unplayable 5CMC cards with insane, lengthy effects that take 10 minutes to figure out what they do and another 20 to actually make their effects work on the field.
Wow, nice to see a new and updated primer!!! I've been off Magic a month or so, but I was playing this deck and now that I'll be having more time I'm looking forward to improve this deck and it's playing! So ok, here's the list I ended up with at the beginning of April, which is the second list in the Sample Lists section with a couple tweaks (-1 Manamorphose, -1 Repeal, +1 Think Twice, +1 Snow-Covered Island):
Sideboard was pretty messy and I think I'll just rebuild it from new ideas in this thread. Running Hurkyl's Recall is a must if you play Merchant Scroll though, and Ancient Grudge doesn't get mentioned while it's flashback makes it excellent in defensive Gifts piles. Devoting as little as 2 sideboard slots against Affinity can really turn the match into a nightmare for them with the reliability this deck has to find the hate cards (I've won the 3 matches I played against affinity with this deck in tournaments) and in my country you pretty much can't expect to not meet one.
I wanna make a special mention about Izzet Charm and Electrolyze as Scroll targets: having a reliable way to get rid of a Scavenging Ooze is a must IMO, as well as having easy tutorable removal spells. On the Scroll matter, I've tried to switch it for a playset of Peer Through Depths in my deck and it simply didn't work. As this deck is pretty much a mash up of combo and control, I didn't find Peer to be reliable enough to find what I was in need at the time. Your odds of hitting a removal with it when you really need it aren't high enough IMO, and let's not get started about how Scroll is better at finding Gifts
Sorcery speed is something I really had to get used to while playing this deck though, and since I started playing this deck I feel that the card I've gained most experience with was Scroll, as firstly I was just casting it always turn 2 and opening myself to many stuff. You really have to find the right moment to cast it, and it gets really difficult to discern if you need to leave mana open or rush a Scroll (I think mastering this skill is clue to playing this deck well, and you have to know the matchups and be able to get a read on your opponent's plans, which is much easier to write about than actually doing it). It does feel strong when used correctly and it does create a lot of uncertainty in the lines of play, and I actually make tons of mistakes with this deck after playing with it for months (I bet I make more than I realize).
@Alleyway Jack I've had the same problem with land drops. Really, this deck is just super weak when it falls behind on land drops. I've moved up to 25 lands in the past, but now at 24 I feel decently comfortable. Storage lands are REALLY useful in combo turns in the grindy matchups.
I find your Serum Visions approach really interesting, and I'll be running your list this week a bit to see how it plays. From looking at it, I feel that it's more streamlined than mine, which makes sense if you are dropping some Merchant Scrolls as you won't be able to get your bullets as reliably as before. That will make your control game more consistent though. Do you find Vapor Snag really good? It's great to bounce a hate bear and Gifts for the win on just 5 mana, and I know I've wished I had it mainboard more than once... I've been running Repeal and it isn't as great against Twin, for example, but the fact it replaces itself and that it can bounce other things too makes me like it a bit more.
On the rest, I agree Cryptic ended up being kind of slow and more importantly you want to be casting Gifts by that time so having a card that competes with it didn't feel useful... I mean I just prefered to cast Gifts most times I had both in my hand. And Spell Snare is a beast, really, I've been considering moving up to 3. The fact that it counters Remand and Mana Leak hardly makes it one of the best tools against Scapeshift, Twin and UWR.
@Acissathar: I haven't seen Rest in Peace in a long time, but always be sure to leave at least 1 bounce spell in for games 2 and 3 because you really don't like to see such permanents... I prefer bounce over enchantment destruction because it's broader and it can be live if your opponent doesn't play a hate card.
Okay, I'll be posting regularly and taking this to play whenever I can, I hope some people get on the train too
Acissathar, did you end up playing the deck tonight?
@Lueseto
How do you feel about that one of Think Twice? I have honestly never been a huge fan of that card to be honest, but i guess it could work. I have been really happy with Serum Visions in the deck actually. It honestly helps so much in smoothing out your draws and hitting land drops. If you haven't tried it yet, you should. Merchant Scroll is good, but it's really not great in multiples. Running only 2 has been good for me. There hasn't been a game yet where i didn't manage to find a Gifts.
What you were saying about Izzet Charm is true, being able to reliably kill Scooze, and have a Scroll-able Shock is super convenient. I switched around some things in my list to add one in.
The Vapor Snags were actually under-preforming so took em out and just put an Echoing Truth in.
Another thing i realized is we don't actually need both Rituals. I took out Desperate Ritual, now i'm only running 1 Pyretic Ritual, and so far i haven't had any issues.
You were right about Spell Snare also. So far that card has been killing it.
So far this seems like the most consistent list i have played. I haven't gotten around to trying out the Storage lands again, but if i do, i think i'm going to go with 1-2 Fungal Reaches. The hardest part about getting the combo to go through is having the (R)(R)(G) available after Past in Flames, so i'm really not that interested in the blue and black mana off Dreadship Reef.
The History of Ritual Gifts
Then, Vintage pro Stephen Menendian tried his hand at building a Gifts list. His list, named Meandeck Gifts after his team (team Meandeck), worked by realizing the inherent brokenness of Gifts Ungiven in a format full of broken cards you can only play 1 of. His deck used Merchant Scroll to search out for Ancestral Recall, Gifts, Mana Drain or pitch countermagic, and so on, to make a very strong draw engine, then used a combination of Yawgmoth's Will and Recoup to make unbeatable Gifts Piles. It would finish with a giant Will into either Tinker for Darksteel Colossus combined with Time Walk or a lethal Tendrils of Agony.
Over the next few years, Meandeck Gifts slowly gathered momentum, until during late 2006 and early 2007 the format was basically defined by Meandeck Gifts and Storm Combo. The deck was neutered by the restriction of Gifts Ungiven, but lived on, and later would cause the restriction of Merchant Scroll, Brainstorm, Gush, and indirectly also Thirst for Knowledge. It's mark is only now finally fading from the vintage scene. The strategy, at its peak, has proven to be one of the best decks in Vintage History, and by extension, all of Magic.
Now, remember the key combination of the deck: Yawgmoth's Will and Recoup to use gifts as a tutor for a 7-mana Yawgmoth's Will. We have basically the same thing, but more effective, in the form of Past in Flames, which has Flashback.
From here a few varying lists were created for use in the Modern format. At first more all-in storm lists showed up using Gifts Ungiven and Past in Flames to power a large storm turn, but the deck eventually evolved to play a slower, but more controlling, and inevitable game. By abusing Seething Song and Increasing Vengeance, the deck could generate huge amounts of mana out of nowhere and set up a sequence of spells ending with a lethal Grapeshot.
Eventually Wizards decided Seething Song was just too powerful for Modern, and hit it with the ban hammer. A few ideas, such as using Plasm Capture were discussed but nothing proved a sufficient replacement for Seething Song. There was one ritual left though that could make 5 mana, the catch being it's a 4 mana green card. None the less when played with Increasing Vengeance you could still generate 15 mana, and while it's certainly no Seething Song, Channel the Suns actually helped in 1 area; having access to blue mana after being flashed back. With Seething Song you needed Manamorphose and mana filter lands, but with Channel you will have access to more than enough blue mana to finish the combo.
The shell had a few other small changes now that Seething Song couldn't be used to fuel insane plays, but the deck is still incredibly powerful, albeit challenging to pilot. That challenge however, provides an incredibly rewarding experience.
However, a word of caution: if you're a fairly new player, or just getting into eternal formats, that's wonderful, but play Boros. Or Affinity. Or Jund. Or Tron. But not this. This is perhaps one of the most difficult decks to play I've ever seen, and is vulnerable to a lot of sideboard hate if you can't play the deck almost perfectly. It's fundamentally a tutor-based deck, which means that it will give you a lot of decisions to make each turn, and making even one wrong decision can easily lose you the game. I don't say this to discourage prospective players from playing it. This deck can seem absolutely unbeatable if you're really on your game. But you can expect to lose a lot at first.
How it works
The combo works by abusing Mana Seism,Channel the Suns, Increasing Vengeance, and Past in Flames to generate an enormous amount of mana out of nowhere. Increasing vengeance has the unique ability to double Fork a spell when played from the grave, and it has a fairly expensive flashback, but when flashbacked with Past in Flames, it cost only (r)(r) and you can triple cast Channel the Suns for 15 mana. With all that mana you can play Gifts a 2nd time from the grave for another pile containing Grapeshot for the win.
Usually 1 Grapeshot isn't enough as your storm will most likely be around 10-11, so what we do is use Remand to counter our original Grapeshot. What happens is all the storm copies get added to, and stay on the stack, but the actual Grapeshot goes back to your hand, ready to be played again for lethal.
How to play Ritual Gifts
To win, you want to cast Gifts on the end of your opponents turn. In most cases you will need 5 lands available on your upcoming turn and 2 of the 6 essential combo cards in your hand already. Then you would grab the other 4 with Gifts and no matter what your opp gives you, you win.
Here's an example:
Your hand is- Desperate Ritual, Manamorphose, Gifts, Land, and you have 4 Lands in play.
--> You want to play Gifts on your opp EOT and grab (Mana Seism, Channel the Suns, Increasing Vengeance, and PIF) From here it won't matter what you get, but most people will give you Vengeance and PIF to try and cut off your mana.
--> On your turn, untap, draw, play your land. From here you can Vengeance your Ritual(7 mana 2 storm), Manamorphose, PIF(3 mana, 4 storm) from your grave play the Ritual then play Mana Seism(7 mana{RR5}, 6 Storm) now Manamorphose so you have {RRG4} and play Channel the Suns, with an Increasing Vengeance(15 mana{3 of each color}, 9 storm). From here you want to play Gifts again from the grave for (Grapeshot, Remand, Noxious Revival, PIF/or Manamorphose)-
- If you have a PIF in the grave or hand you can get Manamorphose, if you have no PIF you can grab one. The point to remember is you need a draw-spell in hand or grave to draw into Grapeshot if they put it in your grave.
So the last pile sets up the win. No matter what they give you you can use Revival/ PIF/ Morphose to get Grapeshot into your hand where you can then cast it, Remand the original Grapeshot back to your hand, but all the storm copies still get added to the stack, then you Grapeshot again for the win.
Winning with Ritual Gifts
In Hand- Gifts Ungiven, Past in Flames, Manamorphose
Lands in Play- 6 lands
Gifts for- Pyretic Ritual, Mana Seism, Increasing Vengeance, Channel the Suns
What the opponent will give you- Increasing Vengeance, Mana Seism
After resolving Gifts
In Hand- Past in Flames, Manamorphose, Increasing Vengeance, Mana Seism
Lands in Play- 6 Lands
In Grave- Ritual, Channel the Suns, Gifts
To Win-
- Vengeance your Morphose - 2RRRG - 2 storm
- Mana Seism up to 7RRG and cast PIF - 4RG - 4 storm
- Ritual to 3RRRG, then Vengeance the Channel - RRRRWWWBBBUUUGGG -7 storm
- Cast Gifts from the grave for the win
In Hand- Gifts Ungiven, Past in Flames, Increasing Vengeance
Lands in Play- 6 lands
Gifts for- Manamorphose, Mana Seism, Pyretic Ritual, Channel the Suns
What the opponent will give you- Mana Seism, Manamorphose
After resolving Gifts
In Hand- Past in Flames, Increasing Vengeance, Mana Seism, Manamorphose
Lands in Play- 6 Lands
In Grave- Ritual, Channel the Suns, Gifts
To Win-
- Vengeance your Morphose - 2RRRG - 2 storm
- Mana Seism up to 7RRG and cast PIF - 4RG - 4 storm
- Ritual to 3RRRG, then Vengeance the Channel - RRRRWWWBBBUUUGGG -7 storm
- Cast Gifts from the grave for the win
In Hand- Gifts Ungiven, Past in Flames, Mana Seism
Lands in Play- 6 lands
Gifts for- Manamorphose, Increasing Vengeance, Pyretic Ritual, Channel the Suns
What the opponent will give you- Increasing Vengeance, Manamorphose
After resolving Gifts
In Hand- Past in Flames, Mana Seism, Increasing Vengeance, Manamorphose
Lands in Play- 6 Lands
In Grave- Ritual, Channel the Suns, Gifts
To Win-
- Vengeance your Morphose - 2RRRG - 2 storm
- Mana Seism up to 7RRG and cast PIF - 4RG - 4 storm
- Ritual to 3RRRG, then Vengeance the Channel - RRRRWWWBBBUUUGGG -7 storm
- Cast Gifts from the grave for the win
Before resolving Gifts
In Hand- Gifts Ungiven, Past in Flames, Pyretic Ritual
Lands in Play- 5 lands
Gifts for- Manamorphose, Mana Seism, Increasing Vengeance, Channel the Suns
What the opponent will give you- Increasing Vengeance, Manamorphose
After resolving Gifts
In Hand- Past in Flames, Pyretic Ritual, Increasing Vengeance, Manamorphose
Lands in Play- 5 Lands
In Grave- Mana Seism, Channel the Suns, Gifts
To Win-
- Vengeance your Ritual, then Morphose into - RRRRRRG - 3 storm
- Cast PIF which bring you to RRG, then cast Mana Seism - 5G - 5 Storm
- use Manamorphose to 4RG, cast the Ritual 3RRRG, then Vengeance the Channel - RRRRWWWBBBUUUGGG - 9 storm
- Cast Gifts from the grave for the win
In Hand- Gifts Ungiven, Past in Flames, Channel the Suns
Lands in Play- 5 lands
Gifts for- Noxious Revival, Mana Seism, Increasing Vengeance, Pyretic Ritual
What the opponent will give you- Increasing Vengeance, Mana Seism
After resolving Gifts
In Hand- Past in Flames, Channel the Suns, Increasing Vengeance, Mana Seism
Lands in Play- 5 Lands
In Grave- Revival, Ritual, Gifts
To Win-
- tap your lands for mana then cast Mana Seism for - 5RRG - 1 storm
- now you can Vengeance your Channel and cast PIF - RGGUUWWB - 4 storm
- Ritual from the grave, then Vengeance Channel again - RRRRGGGGUUUUWWWBBB - 7 storm
- Cast Gifts from the grave for the win
In Hand- Gifts Ungiven, Manamorphose, Increasing Vengeance
Lands in Play- 6 lands
Gifts for- Ritual, Mana Seism, Channel the Suns, Past in Flames
What the opponent will give you- Past in Flames, Channel the Suns
After resolving Gifts
In Hand- Manamorphose, Increasing Vengeance, Past in Flames, Channel the Suns
Lands in Play- 6 Lands
In Grave- Gifts, Mana Seism, Ritual
To Win-
- Manamorphose into Vengeance on Channel - RRGGUUWWBB - 3 storm
- PIF into Ritual, into Seism - RRGGU6 - 6 storm
- Vengeance on Channel again - 3RRRGGGGUUUUWWWBBB - 8 storm
- Cast Gifts from the grave for the win
In Hand- Gifts Ungiven, Manamorphose, Mana Seism
Lands in Play- 6 lands
Gifts for- Ritual, Increasing Vengeance, Past in Flames, Channel the Suns
What the opponent will give you- Increasing Vengeance, Past in Flames
After resolving Gifts
In Hand- Manamorphose, Mana Seism, Increasing Vengeance, Past in Flames
Lands in Play- 6 Lands
In Grave- Gifts, Ritual, Channel
To Win-
- Vengeance your Morphose - 2RRRG - 2 storm
- Mana Seism up to 7RRG and cast PIF - 4RG - 4 storm
- Ritual to 3RRRG, then Vengeance the Channel - RRRRWWWBBBUUUGGG -7 storm
- Cast Gifts from the grave for the win
In Hand- Gifts Ungiven, Manamorphose, Ritual
Lands in Play- 5 lands
Gifts for- Past in Flames, Increasing Vengeance, Channel the Suns, Mana Seism
What the opponent will give you- Past in Flames, Increasing Vengeance
After resolving Gifts
In Hand- Manamorphose, Ritual, Past in Flames, Increasing Vengeance
Lands in Play- 5 Lands
In Grave- Gifts, Mana Seism, Channel the Suns
To Win-
- Vengeance your Ritual, then Morphose into - RRRRRRG - 3 storm
- Cast PIF which bring you to RRG, then cast Mana Seism - 5G - 5 Storm
- use Manamorphose to 4RG, cast the Ritual 3RRRG, then Vengeance the Channel - RRRRWWWBBBUUUGGG - 9 storm
- Cast Gifts from the grave for the win
In Hand- Gifts Ungiven, Manamorphose, Channel the Suns
Lands in Play- 6 lands
Gifts for- Past in Flames, Increasing Vengeance, Ritual, Mana Seism
What the opponent will give you- Past in Flames, Increasing Vengeance
After resolving Gifts
In Hand- Manamorphose, Channel the Suns, Past in Flames, Increasing Vengeance
Lands in Play- 6 Lands
In Grave- Gifts,
To Win-
- Manamorphose into Vengeance on Channel - RRGGUUWWBB - 3 storm
- PIF into Ritual, into Seism - RRGGU6 - 6 storm
- Vengeance on Channel again - 3RRRGGGGUUUUWWWBBB - 8 storm
- Cast Gifts from the grave for the win
In Hand- Gifts Ungiven, Increasing Vengeance, Mana Seism
Lands in Play- 5 lands
Gifts for- Noxious Revival, Ritual, Channel the Suns, Past in Flames
What the opponent will give you- Past in Flames, Channel the Suns
After resolving Gifts
In Hand- Increasing Vengeance, Mana Seism, Past in Flames, Channel the Suns
Lands in Play- 5 Lands
In Grave- Gifts, Revival, Ritual
To Win-
- tap your lands for mana then cast Mana Seism for - 5RRG - 1 storm
- now you can Vengeance your Channel and cast PIF - RGGUUWWB - 4 storm
- Ritual from the grave, then Vengeance Channel again - RRRRGGGGUUUUWWWBBB - 7 storm
- Cast Gifts from the grave for the win
In Hand- Gifts Ungiven, Increasing Vengeance, Ritual
Lands in Play- 5 lands
Gifts for- Manamorphose, Past in Flames, Mana Seism, Channel the Suns
What the opponent will give you- Manamorphose, Past in Flames
After resolving Gifts
In Hand- Increasing Vengeance, Ritual, Manamorphose, Past in Flames
Lands in Play- 5 Lands
In Grave- Gifts, Mana Seism, Channel the Suns
To Win-
- Vengeance your Ritual, then Morphose into - RRRRRRG - 3 storm
- Cast PIF which bring you to RRG, then cast Mana Seism - 5G - 5 Storm
- use Manamorphose to 4RG, cast the Ritual 3RRRG, then Vengeance the Channel - RRRRWWWBBBUUUGGG - 9 storm
- Cast Gifts from the grave for the win
In Hand- Gifts Ungiven, Increasing Vengeance, Channel the Suns
Lands in Play- 5 lands
Gifts for- Revival, Ritual, Past in Flames, Mana Seism
What the opponent will give you- Past in Flames, Ritual
After resolving Gifts
In Hand- Increasing Vengeance, Channel the Suns, Past in Flames, Ritual
Lands in Play- 5 Lands
In Grave- Gifts, Revival, Mana Seism
To Win-
- Ritual then Vengeance your Channel the Suns - RRGGUUWWBB - 3 storm
- play PIF, then Ritual and Vengeance Channel again - RRRRGGGUUUWWWBBB - 7 storm
- Cast Gifts from the grave for the win
In Hand- Gifts Ungiven, Mana Seism, Ritual
Lands in Play- 5 lands
Gifts for- Past in Flames, Increasing Vengeance Channel the Suns, Manamorphose
What the opponent will give you- Past in Flames, Manamorphose
After resolving Gifts
In Hand- Mana Seism, Ritual, Past in Flames, Manamorphose
Lands in Play- 5 Lands
In Grave- Gifts, Increasing Vengeance, Channel the Suns
To Win-
- tap your lands for mana then play Mana Seism - RRG5 - 1 storm
- play Manamorphose into the Ritual to RRRRG4 then play Past in Flames - RRRG1 - 4 storm
- Manamorphose into the Ritual again to RRRRGG then Vengeance Channel - RRRGGGUUUWWWBBB - 8 storm
- Cast Gifts from the grave for the win
In Hand- Gifts Ungiven, Mana Seism, Channel the Suns
Lands in Play- 5 lands
Gifts for- Manamorphose, Past in Flames, Increasing Vengeance, Ritual
What the opponent will give you- Past in Flames, Manamorphose
After resolving Gifts
In Hand- Mana Seism, Channel the Suns, Past in Flames, Manamorphose
Lands in Play- 5 Lands
In Grave- Gifts, Increasing Vengeance, Ritual
To Win-
- tap your lands for mana then play Mana Seism - RRG5 - 1 storm
- Channel the Suns to RRRGUWB2 then Manamorphose - RRRGGUWB1 - 3 storm
- Past in Flames which brings you to RRGGU then Ritual - RRRGGU - 5 storm
- now you can Vengeance the Channel - RRRGGGUUUWWWBBB - 7 storm
- cast Gifts from the grave for the win
In Hand- Gifts Ungiven, Pyretic Ritual, Channel the Suns
Lands in Play- 5 lands
Gifts for- Noxious Revival, Increasing Vengeance, Past in Flames, Mana Seism
What the opponent will give you- Past in Flames, Increasing Vengeance
After resolving Gifts
In Hand- Pyretic Ritual, Channel the Suns, Past in Flames, Increasing Vengeance
Lands in Play- 5 Lands
In Grave- Gifts, Revival, Mana Seism
To Win-
- Ritual then Vengeance your Channel the Suns - RRGGUUWWBB - 3 storm
- play PIF, then Ritual and Vengeance Channel again - RRRRGGGUUUWWWBBB - 7 storm
- Cast Gifts from the grave for the win
So out of all 15 possibile configurations, only 6 of them need 6 mana to guarantee a win no matter what you get.
Past In Flames - Manamorphose
Past In Flames - Increasing Vengeance
Past in Flames - Mana Seism
Manamorphose - Channel the Suns
Manamorphose - Increasing Vengeance
Manamorphose - Mana Seism
A few of these can get wins with 5 lands, but there's a possibility for your opponent to pick the right 2 and cut you off. With 6 lands they are assured. The other 9 Configurations however, can guarantee a win on just 5 lands
These ones are interesting because they can win on 5 lands, but you wanna Gifts for Noxious Revival rather than Manamorphose with these ones.
Past in Flames - Channel the Suns
Increasing Vengeance - Channel the Suns
Increasing Vengeance - Mana Seism
Pyretic Ritual - Channel the Suns
Card Choices
This is the engine that the powers Ritual Gifts. The deck needs these to function.
3-4 Gifts Ungiven
2 Past in Flames
1 Pyretic Ritual/Desperate Ritual
1 Mana Seism
1 Channel the Suns
1 Manamorphose
1 Increasing Vengeance
1 Noxious Revival
1 Grapeshot
1 Remand
Search-
The deck uses these cards to tutor and dig for Gifts, answers, and essential combo pieces.
Gifts Ungiven- This is the central card of the strategy, and is critical to the entire deck. Gifts can be used offensively to set up a combo win, or it can be used defensively grabbing a pile of answers.
Merchant Scroll-This card is a very strong tutor in this deck, capable of searching out a Gifts Ungiven, cheap countermagic to protect a bomb, or various answers to other decks or hate cards such as Repeal, Trickbind, and Hurkyl's Recall. It can make it easier to resolve an early Gifts and makes sideboarding a lot easier, but has a huge drawback in it's sorcery speed.
Mystical Teachings-This card has natural synergy with the deck, searching for Gifts, answers, combo pieces, and providing a way to optimize Gifts piles. While sometimes it can be slow at 4 mana, it makes up for it by being instant speed. Additionally, it allows for a painless transformative sideboard plan, involving Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir and whatever fatty you like most.
Serum Visions- Serum Visions can really help smooth out draws, and find land drops. Running Visions lets you keep looser hands and still have a lot of play. It's downside comes from the fact it's only looking 3 cards deep, and may not find you what your looking for.
Peer through Depths- Digging 5 deep for Gifts, answers, and combo pieces at instant speed sounds good to me. On top of that you can splice Desperate Ritual onto it. The downside is the inability to grab lands, creature, and artifacts.
Telling Time- Instant speed and digs 3 deep. Its not amazing, but less limiting than Peer Through Depths.
Forbidden Alchemy- At 3 mana it can be a bit slow, but digs 4 deep for anything. Putting cards in the yard isn't such a bad deal in this deck either.
Dig Through Time- Filling up the yard is fairly easy with this deck, and casting this card is rarely an issue. It's fetchable with Scroll, and can be amazing at setting up your combo, or just finding an answer. This isn't a card you want to see multiples of though as it's casting cost can be prohibitive.
Rituals-
These what the deck uses to create huge amounts of mana.
Desperate Ritual/Pyretic Ritual- These are important to being able to power out early Gifts, combo turns, and having mana to get through soft counters like Spell Pierce. Desperate Ritual is Strictly better than Pyretic Ritual due to its ability to Splice onto itself and Peer through Depths. But Pyretic provides another ritual with a different name to grab in Gifts piles.
Manamorphose- Essential for making the right combination of green and red mana for Channel the Suns, and Increasing Vengeance.
Mana Seism- Helps make large amounts of mana on the combo turn. At 4 lands it a 2 mana Seething Song, and at 5 it does a pretty decent Cabal ritual impression.
Channel the Suns- The replacement for Seething Song. When flashbacked with Increasing Vengeance you end up with a huge 15 mana to play with.
Counterspells-
Half of our control game comes in the form of countering our opponents spells.
Remand- You have to have at least one as It's critical to the Grapeshot Kill, but is a very strong spell on its own, and you will probably want to run 3-4.
Muddle the Mixture-This card is an incredibly versatile tool, both protecting your combo in the late game and tutoring for the critical Grapeshot. It also dramatically expands your bullet suite, since you can use Merchant Scroll to tutor for it and then transmute it for a ritual, additional bullets, almost anything.
Mana Leak- A fairly strong counterpsell for anything at just 2 mana.
Izzet Charm- Incredibly versatile doing a great Spell Pierce impression as well as playing Shock, or Careful Study.
Spell Pierce- Stops all sorts of disruption, discard, and counters as well as planeswalkers and varying sorts of hate. Unfortunately it gets worse and worse as the game goes on.
Spell Snare- Modern is full of a ton of powerful 2 drops and this stops them all. On top of that, it stops a decent amount of opposing countermagic as well. You don't want all that many of them, though, as they get worse in multiples very quickly.
Cryptic Command- If your mana base can support it, Command is one of the most powerful cards available to the deck. Whether you're giving yourself a turn tapping down creatures, countering a critical spell, or bouncing hate, Cryptic Command will always be useful.
Pact of Negation- This can make comboing out much easier, and is easy to include as a singleton and fetch with Gifts or Merchant Scroll.
Removal-
The other half of our control game comes by keeping our opponents creatures in check.
Lightning Bolt- The best removal in Modern.
Flame Slash- Sorcery speed but can kill Restoration Angel, Deceiver Exarch, Eidolon of Rhetoric, and more.
Mizzium Mortars- Tuterable with Muddle, kills all sorts of guys, and can be a late game sweeper.
Izzet Charm- Incredibly versatile doing a great Spell Pierce impression as well as playing Shock, or Careful Study.
Pyroclasm- Can mop up plenty of hatebears, and other critters, but if Zoo is a thing in your area you may want to consider the 3 mana sweepers instead.
Anger of the Gods- The best of the available 3 mana sweepers. Great against pod.
Slagstorm- Another 3 mana sweeper, this one capable of killing planeswalkers.
Firespout- Easily the weakest of the 3 mana sweepers, but worth running for Gifts piles.
Volcanic Fallout- Instant speed and uncounterable, but only deals 2 for 3 mana. It hits planeswalkers though and that can be handy. Worth noting that it can be fetched with Teachings as well.
Engineered Explosives- A well rounded catch-all capable of hitting varying opposition.
Combo-
This is how the deck actually wins the game.
Past in Flames-This is your finisher. Resolving one usually means that the game is over. This is how the deck creates huge amounts of mana, as well as reach a lethal storm count.
Increasing Vengeance- A versatile card well worth its inclusion even outside its role in the combo. You can copy a Gifts in response to Counters, double a Peer, or Bolt, etc. Its real power comes when flashing back Channel the Suns for the triple Fork.
Noxious Revival- Necessary in the final Gifts pile to get Grapeshot back in your hand for the Grapeshot-Remand finish. Revival can do some other neat tricks as well though, like put a fetch on a land flooded opponents library, bring back a countered Gifts and more.
Grapeshot- This is the kill card. Storm makes it almost uncounterable, while Remand makes it much easier to reach the necessary storm to kill them. Because of the tutor power of the deck, you only need to run 1.
Alt Win Conditions-
Sometimes relying on just the storm finish can get you in trouble. Here are some of the other ways to win the game.
Unburial Rites-What would a gifts deck be without this card? Relies on the grave, but can be easier to pull off than the storm finish.
Griselbrand/ Iona, Shield of Emeria/ Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite/ Inkwell Leviathan- Various fatties for Unburial Rites.
Empty the Warrens- A possible option instead of Grapeshot. Doesn't really get past Leyline of Sanctity though as you can't cast Gifts with Leyline out anyway.
Martial Coup- A win-con in early versions of the deck. This card can represent an offensive threat, as well as a defensive board wipe.
Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir- Great against control decks, and Surgical Extraction/ Extirpate. As well as providing a back up win condition. Can be tutored with Teachings, and after he's on the board you can Teachings for any other creature.
Batterskull- A decent back up win condition. Easy to cast, and hard for most decks to deal with when backed up with a strong control game.
Wurmcoil Engine- Great fatty that most decks have a hard time dealing with. Works great when paired with Tefari, and Teachings.
Meloku the Clouded Mirror- An Alternate win condition used in earlier versions of the deck. This guy is pretty awesome turning mana into an army at instant speed, and can close a game fast. It's even nicer when you can recur Halimar Depths every turn.
Inferno Titan- There aren't many creatures that can beatdown like Inferno Titan can for 6 mana. He does a great job at controlling the board as well as finishing games very fast. The downside is the lack of any protection.
Kiora, the Crashing Wave- Something new i have been trying out. At 4 mana it's easy to cast, and every ability is actually super useful for the deck. Downside being she starts at 2 and can get pinged by burn spells fairly easily.
Lands-
You want to play more lands than other storm decks, but less than other control decks. Somewhere between 19 and 22.
Fetchlands/Shocklands: If you have them, run them
Misty Rainforest/ Scalding Tarn- Being able to grab Islands can be important when playing against Blood Moon.
Steam Vents/ Breeding Pool- Most relevant of the Shocklands. Helps having consistent mana for sweepers and Channel.
Sulfur Falls- Helps provide correct mana for sweepers, and makes casting Cryptic Command, and Tefari a piece of cake.
Fungal Reaches/Dreadship Reef- These lands can be strong in control decks that prefer to play reactivate. Preferable you want to leave mana open for your opponents turn and play accordingly, if they don't play anything worth responding to you can store some mana. A few turns of stored mana can help tremendously in getting the combo through.
Desolate Lighthouse- This deck is fairly prone to flooding, and wants to draw one of a fairly small number of absolutely massive game-ending bomb spells. This card digs into your deck for them, provides a good mana sink, and fills your graveyard all at once.
Halimar Depths- Deceptively strong. You have a LOT of shuffle effects, which makes this a lot stronger. I'm not currently running any, but it's definitely an option.
Sideboard-
There is all sorts of hate people are going to bring in against us, as well other powerful decks we need to worry about.
Dispel- Stops any opposing counterspell for just 1 mana.
Negate- A fairly strong 2 mana counter worth bringing in against combo and control.
Counterflux- Very strong against combo and control.
Torpor Orb- Stops Pod and twin combos.
Damping Matrix- Stops Pod and Twin combos. But also shuts down Scooze, Relic, and a slew of other bad guys.
Spellskite- Great against Infect, and Bogle. Decent against Twin, and Burn.
Blood Moon- Obviously good against tron variants, but Modern is host to a large amount of greedy mana bases, and Blood Moon does a great job crushing their dreams. Can be great against control and limiting their available blue mana, therefor limiting their ability to play counterspells. On top of all that, Blood Moon also crushes Zoo as well. Sometimes nearly soft locking them, as they often only play a few red creatures.
Sowing Salt- Great hate for Tron variants.
Shatterstorm- Great against Affinity. Kills Etched Champion.
Shattering Spree- Another option against Affinity. Cheaper and can be played earlier but can't hit Etched Champion.
Hurkyl's Recall- Good at stalling Affinity, and bouncing hate rocks. Can be tutored with Merchant Scroll, and Muddle.
Gigadrowse- Decent option against control decks, and can be tutored with Scroll.
Cyclonic Rift- This card does a LOT for you, acting as both a way to bounce a problematic hate spell and as a late-game bomb that can potentially end the game on its own. Chances are, if you don't have one of these in your main or sideboard, you're doing something wrong.
Echoing Truth- Super versatile bounce for all sorts of creature baddies and hate cards.
Wipe Away- Super versatile bounce for all sorts of creature baddies and hate cards. Split Second laughs at Relic of Progenitus.
Hibernation-Decent option against Zoo and Jund. Fetchable with Scroll.
Combust- Great removal against Twin and UWR.
Dismember-Kills plenty of guys for just 1 mana. Decent against Twin.
Vendilion Clique- Can provide hand disruption as well as a possible back up win condition.
Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir- Great against control decks, and Surgical Extraction/ Extirpate. As well as providing a back up win condition. Can be tutored with Teachings, amd after he's on the board you can teachings for any other creature.
Batterskull- A decent back up win condition. Easy to cast, and hard for most decks to deal when back up with a strong control game.
Wurmcoil Engine- Great fatty that most decks have a hard time dealing with. Works great when paired with Tefari, and Teachings.
Leyline of Sanctity- Discard heavy decks can be a huge pain. Opening with Leyline makes those matches a breeze.
Witchbane Orb- A hardcastable option if you don't like mulling into oblivion for a Leyline. Can be too late though by the time is resolves.
Surgical Extraction- Great grave hate that doesn't touch our own yard at all.
Nihil Spellbomb- More grave hate that wont touch our yard.
Merchant Scroll targets-
Gifts Ungiven
Counterspells/ Muddle the Mixture
Echoing Truth/ Cyclonic Rift/ Wipe Away
Rapid Hybridization/ Pongify
Aetherize/ Evacuation
Repeal
Vapor Snag
Gigadrowse
Trickbind
Hibernation
Frost Breath
Izzet Charm
Electrolyze
Turn // Burn
Shadow of Doubt
Dig Through Time
Mystical Teachings targets-
(all of the Merchant Scroll targets)
Increasing Vengeance
Desperate/ Pyretic Ritual
Manamorphose
Volcanic Fallout
Consume the Meek
Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir
Snapcaster Mage
Sample Lists
4 Sakura-Tribe Elder
-Search-
4 Merchant Scroll
4 Gifts Ungiven
1 Dig Through Time
-Control-
4 Remand
2 Spell Snare
1 Izzet Charm
1 Electrolyze
1 Repeal
3 Lightning Bolt
1 Anger of the Gods
1 Pyroclasm
1 Snapcaster Mage
-Ritual-
2 Manamorphose
1 Pyretic Ritual
1 Mana Seism
1 Channel the Suns
2 Past in Flames
1 Increasing Vengeance
1 Noxious Revival
1 Grapeshot
-Land-
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Scalding Tarn
4 Sulfur Falls
3 Steam Vents
1 Breeding Pool
1 Stomping Ground
3 Island
1 Mountain
1 Forest
4 Leyline of Sanctity
2 Negate
1 Sudden Shock
1 Combust
1 Damping Matrix
1 Torpor Orb
1 Echoing Truth
1 Hurkyl's Recall
1 Batterskull
1 Inferno Titan
1 Wurmcoil Engine
2 Merchant Scroll
4 Serum Visions
4 Gifts Ungiven
-Control-
4 Remand
2 Mana Leak
2 Spell Snare
4 Lightning Bolt
2 Flame Slash
1 Echoing truth
1 Izzet Charm
2 Snapcaster Mage
-Ritual-
2 Manamorphose
1 Pyretic Ritual
1 Mana Seism
1 Channel the Suns
2 Past in Flames
1 Increasing Vengeance
1 Noxious Revival
1 Grapeshot
-Land-
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Scalding Tarn
4 Sulfur Falls
3 Steam Vents
2 Breeding Pool
4 Island
1 Mountain
4 Leyline of Sanctity
2 Negate
2 Anger of the Gods
1 Inferno Titan
1 Wurmcoil Engine
1 Echoing Truth
1 Combust
1 Damping Matrix
1 Torpor Orb
1 Hurkyl's Recall
3 Peer through Depths
3 Merchant Scroll
4 Gifts Ungiven
-Rituals-
2 Manamorphose
2 Desperate Ritual
1 Pyretic Ritual
1 Mana Seism
1 Channel the Suns
-Combo-
2 Past in Flames
1 Increasing Vengeance
1 Noxious Revival
1 Grapeshot
-Control-
3 Anger of the Gods
1 Firespout
1 Slagstorm
1 Izzet Charm
4 Remand
3 Spell Pierce
2 Cryptic Command
-Land-
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Scalding Tarn
4 Sulfur Falls
3 Steam Vents
2 Breeding Pool
4 Island
1 Mountain
2 Batterskull
2 Dispel
2 Lightning Bolt
2 Sowing Salt
1 Shatterstorm
1 Wipe Away
1 Cyclonic Rift
1 Hurkyl's Recall
1 Torpor Orb
1 Spellskite
1 Combust
4 Merchant Scroll
4 Gifts Ungiven
-Rituals-
2 Manamorphose
2 Desperate Ritual
2 Pyretic Ritual
1 Channel the Suns
1 Mana Seism
-Combo
2 Past in Flames
1 Increasing Vengeance
1 Noxious Revival
1 Grapeshot
-Control-
3 Lightning Bolt
3 Remand
2 Repeal
2 Spell Snare
1 Spell Pierce
1 Mana Leak
1 Izzet Charm
1 Electrolyze
1 Muddle the Mixture
1 Snapcaster Mage
4 Scalding Tarn
2 Misty Rainforest
2 Steam Vents
2 Breeding Pool
1 Mountain
1 Island
1 Forest
3 Sulfur Falls
2 Cascade Bluffs
1 Reflecting Pool
1 Dreadship Reef
1 Fungal Reaches
1 Molten Slagheap
1 Halimar Depths
2 Vendilion Clique
1 Anger of the Gods
1 Firespout
1 Echoing Truth
1 Combust
1 Dispel
2 Ancient Grudge
1 Hurkyl's Recall
1 Counterflux
1 Negate
1 Gigadrowse
1 Sowing Salt
1 Memory's Journey
2 Merchant Scroll
2 Mystical Teachings
4 Gifts Ungiven
-Control-
3 Lightning Bolt
1 Anger of the Gods
1 Slagstorm
1 Volcanic Fallout
4 Remand
2 Mana Leak
2 Spell Snare
1 Izzet Charm
1 Muddle the Mixture
-Rituals-
2 Manamorphose
2 Desperate Ritual
1 Pyretic Ritual
1 Mana Seism
1 Channel the Suns
2 Past in Flames
1 Increasing Vengeance
1 Noxious Revival
1 Grapeshot
1 Unburial Rites
1 Griselbrand
-Land-
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Scalding Tarn
4 Sulfur Falls
2 Steam Vents
2 Breeding Pool
2 Hallowed Fountain
4 Island
2 Flame Slash
2 Dispel
2 Sowing Salt
1 Shatterstorm
1 Wipe Away
1 Cyclonic Rift
1 Torpor Orb
1 Spellskite
1 Damping Matrix
1 Iona, Shield of Emeria
1 Wurmcoil Engine
1 Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir
Matchups
(These are a little outdated. I'm working on updating them soon.)
Twin-
Twin variants can be tough because they pack plenty of counterspells as well as an easy to assemble 2 card combo. Their combo is easier to set up than ours is, but we have a few decent options for sideboard hate to bring in. When playing against Twin you need to be patient and methodical as any wrong move can end in a game winning combo on either side. Try to play to your strengths and work around what they have. One thing Twin has going against it is a lack of real card advantage. If you can survive the first few turns, in many cases Twin will be left with just a few cards in hand making it much easier to play around.
What they can bring in-
Counterspells/ Counterflux/ Mindbreak Trap
What you can bring in-
Counterspells, Torpor Orb, Damping Matrix, Spellskite, Combust, Wipe Away.
Pod-
Pod variants are incredibly versatile and consistent which makes a tough match up for us. They have the ability to both combo out of nowhere, and if that doesn't work they have a very solid beatdown plan as back up. Top that off with the ability to tutor out hate bears and we have a rough match on our hands. A few solid sideboard cards can slow them down, but you gotta make sure you're on your game when playing against Pod. Similar to playing against Twin, you gotta make sure you take your time and think things through because Pod can pull a win out of nowhere with Birthing Pod, and Chord of Calling.
What they can bring in-
More hatebears to Pod into, as well as varying grave hate. Ethersworn Canonist, Eidolon of Rhetoric, Rest in Peace, Relic of Progenitus, etc.
What you can bring in-
Torpor Orb, Damping Matrix, Anger of the Gods, as well as various bounce for hatebears/haterocks.
BGx-
Be it Jund, BG Rock, or other BGx variants, they have a ton of options to disrupt our game plan. They have plenty of hand disruption to throw us off, as well as grave hate in the form of Scavenging Ooze, and a decent clock to boot. If they can land an early beater and back it up with relentless discard it's gonna be a tough day. That being said, the match isn't completely terrible. Ritual Gifts has incredible top deck power and even if you get your hand mangled you can often just top deck a Gifts and proceed to go off next turn. The key here is weathering the early storm, and keeping Bobs, Scoozes and Lilis off the table.
What they can bring in-
Surgical/ Extirpate, Rakdos Charm, Slaughter Games, as well as additional discard.
What you can bring in-
Lightning Bolt, Spell Pierce, Leyline of Sanctity
Affinity-
Affinity can be incredibly explosive, but has a tendency to over-extend, which makes it fairly easy to stabilize, and leave them too far behind to catch up. You do need to watch out for Inkmoth Nexus and Arcbound Ravager tricks, but as long as you're focused, everything Affinity has to offer can be handled with relative ease. Sometimes they can get the nut draw though and finish you off quick, but outside of crazy openers this match up shouldn't be too much of a problem. Not to mention g2-3 you get to Scroll for Hurkyl's Recall.
What they can bring in-
Chalice of the Void, Thorn of Amethyst, Ethersworn Canonist, Relic of Progenitus, Tormod's Crypt, Surgical Extraction
What you can bring in-
Hurkyl's Recall, Shatterstorm, Shattering Spree. Unfortunatly for Affinity, most of their hate for us folds to the hate we would bring in against them anyway.
UWR-
Despite how it may seem on paper, this is actually a pretty good match for us. UWR midrange can pose more of a threat than the pure control lists, but either way as long you play smart you should be fine. The only real difficulty can come if they land an early threat with counter magic back up, but more often than not they will play draw-go for a while, until they eventually slip up, or you coax them into misplaying. When the right time hits, and they tap out for Sphinx's Revelation, or Restoration Angel you can go ahead and Gifts for the win.
What they can bring in-
More Counters, Rest in Peace, Relic of Progenitus, Ethersworn Canonist, Rule of Law.
What you can bring in-
Dispel, Wipe Away, Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir
Tron-
Tron is generally seen in 3 different forms, GR, UW, and Mono U. GR gives up counterspells for speed, while both the UW and Mono U play a slightly slower but far more controlling game. All 3 of these lists can be incredibly explosive, and over all the matchups feels very close. GR may not run counters but they do have maindeck Relic of Progenitus to watch out for. UW is often packing Gifts as well as a Rites package. And can pull it off very quickly. The one thing that helps here will be their lack of blue mana. In most cases They will play a lot of colorless lands and rely on Talismans or Signets to get their colored mana. Hopefully you can bottleneck their blue mana, and then go for the kill.
What they can bring in-
Most of what you see here is going to be artifact based. Relic of Progenitus, Grafdigger's Cage, Mindslaver, and sometimes they will bring in Surgical Extractions.
What you can bring in-
Blood Moon, Sowing Salt, more Counterspells, and bounce for haterocks.
Fae-
Any deck that can present fast efficient threats and back that up with disruption will be a challenge, and that's exactly what Faeries will be doing. They run a ton of counters, hand disruption, and cheap creatures that often have disrupting abilities. G2-3 you also have to worry about Surgical Extraction and Extirpate, which is never fun. All that being said the match is winnable. All it takes is 1 well timed Gifts.
What they can bring in-
More counterspells and discard, Surgical Extraction, Extirpate, Shadow of Doubt, Trickbind.
What you can bring in-
More counters, Tefari, and a back up win condition so their extraction can't just beat you on the spot.
Zoo-
Zoo can sometimes get nutty draws and you just won't see any removal, but outside of those scenarios this shouldn't be a terrible matchup at all. You can't rely on them over extending and using your Sweepers to stabilize because a good Zoo player will just play 1-2 hyper efficient threats and beat you down. The good thing is they have minimal disruption that matters. All we have to worry about here is a few hatebears.. and of course staying alive. Try to use your removal accordingly, keep Thalias off the table, and go for Gifts when you get the chance. Keep in mind they have a fair amount of reach with their burn as well.
What they can bring in-
Thalia, Ethersworn Canonist, Dryad Militant, Gaddock Teeg, Rest in Peace.
What you can bring in-
Blood Moon, Anger of the Gods, Lightning Bolt, various bounce for hatebears/ haterocks.
Scapeshift-
They run a similar game to us in the sense that they are a control deck with a 1 card combo. They will try to get to 7 lands as fast as possible and cast Scapeshift for the win. Their mana ramp gives them an edge here as well because they will usually have more mana to sink into counterspells. What i try to do is slow down their mana ramp, and wait for the right opportunity to Gifts.
What they can bring in-
More counters, Relic of Progenitus, Leyline of Sanctity
What you can bring in-
More counters, Wipe Away
UR Storm-
This is actually a great matchup for us. UR storm can be very explosive but the catch is 95% of the time they need to resolve a key engine piece in order to do so. If you can keep Pyromancer Ascension and Goblin Electromancer from doing any work this matchup will be a piece of cake.
What they can bring in-
Blood Moon, Counterspells
What you can bring in-
More counterspells, bounce for Ascension, Trickbind,
8- Rack-
This is never a fun match. But not always terrible. The key is getting past the initial onslaught of discard, then surviving long enough to find and resolve a Gifts. Remember, even if your hand gets mangled you can still be just 1 top decked gifts away from victory. Just be very wary of Extraction in G2-3. This is one of the matches where you really want to side in an alternate win condition.
What they can bring in-
Surgical Extraction, Extirpate, Leyline of Sanctity/Void, Grafdigger's Cage,Withered Wretch .
What you can bring in-
Counters, Bounce, Leyline of Sanctity, Tefari, and an alt win.
Burn-
This should be a fairly easy match as they don't really provide much in the way of disruption. Survive the early assault and then go for the win. Burn has a tendency of running out of gas pretty quick, so as long you can counter a few burn spells, and kill a Goblin Guide, chances are they'll be left top decking, and you will still be good to go.
What they can bring in-
Blood Moon, Rakdos Charm, Grafdigger's Cage, Eidolon of the Great Revel.
What you can bring in-
Counterspells, Wipe Away, Spellskite.
Delver-
Any deck that can provide an early threat and countermagic will be a tough match. They run light on land though, so if you can survive the first few turns, you will eventually overtake them in resources and be able to power through Gifts with counter backup for the win.
What they can bring in-
More counters, Vendilion Clique, Trickbind, Blood Moon,
What you can bring in-
More counters, Volcanic Fallout.
Hate
--Permanent Based--
-Storm Hate-
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
Ethersworn Canonist
Gaddock Teeg
Thorn of Amethyst
Chalice of the Void
Lodestone Golem
Trinisphere
Spirit of the Labyrinth
Rule of Law
Eidolon of Rhetoric
Eidolon of the Great Revel
-Grave Hate-
Dryad Militant
Scavenging Ooze
Withered Wretch
Grafdigger's Cage
Tormod's Crypt
Nihil Spellbomb
Relic of Progenitus
Rest in Peace
Leyline of the Void
Wheel of Sun and Moon
-Other-
Leyline of Sanctity
Leonin Arbiter
Aven Mindcensor
--Spell Based--
-Storm Hate-
Counterflux
Mindbreak Trap
Trickbind
Silence
-Grave Hate-
Surgical Extraction
Extirpate
Ravenous Trap
Rakdos Charm
Faerie Macabre
-Other-
Shadow of Doubt
Angel's Grace
Hardest part about constructing a list is striking the correct balance between combo and control.
Has there been any recent lists that have done well on mtgo?
DDFT UBWR
Tinfins
Back to back turn 1 kills at SCG St. Louis:
http://blip.tv/scglive/scgstl-leg-rd-8-logan-creen-vs-joe-skirmont-6602155
Modern: RGB Dredge // RBG Goblins // B The Gate // UBR Tezz AoB Control // RBG Prison Pox
EDH: RBU Thraximundar // R Norin the Wary // RWB Kaalia of the Vast // BUR Grixis Combos // BU Gisa and Geralf Tribal
Tiny Leaders: BUW Sydri, Galvanic Genius // R Feldon of the Third Path
Projects:
Gisa and Geralf Extreme-Tribal EDH
Esper Eldrazi Processor Control
Brewing with Kuldotha Forgemaster
Primer: "The Gate" - Mono Black in Modern
Modern Prison Pox - building a better plague
Modern
ResidentSleeper
Legacy
UWRUWr MiracleRWU
I added some spoiler drop downs to ease up on the amount of scrolling. I just wish i could get the drop down boxes in the middle of the screen.. Not a huge fan of the way the new spoiler boxes look.
But yeah, unfortunately there hasn't been much of anything in the way of MTGO performances. But you have to remember the deck had been largely forgotten about since the banning of Seething Song. But even before that, the deck struggled to gain much notoriety. Not a lot of people want to put so much effort into learning such a complicated deck when it's relatively unproven. Depending on how you look at it though, that's one of the things that's so exciting about Ritual Gifts; the fact that there actually isn't a "stock" list right now.
The archetype has a ton of potential, we just need to get some people playing it, thinking about it, and tinkering with it. The combo itself is incredibly reliable and consistent, but finding the right cards to go around it is where it gets tricky. As Acclimation pointed out, one of the toughest aspects is striking that perfect balance of Search, Combo, and Control.
Maybe it's less of a Storm deck. Probably needs it's own development.
My Modern decks:
B/R/G Living End G/R/B
G/R Tron R/G
U/W/G/R Gargageddon R/G/W/U
R/W/G Naya Burn G/W/R
4 Gifts Ungiven
3 Spellweaver Volute
1 Snapcaster Mage
1 Noxious Revival
1 Grapeshot
2 Manamorphose
1 Life from the Loam
1 Flame Jab
3 Merchant Scroll
1 Mystic Retrieval
1 AEtherize
1 Firespout
1 Anger of the Gods
1 Slagstorm
1 Gitaxian Probe
1 Echoing Truth
3 Vapor Snag
1 Faithless Looting
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Steam Vents
1 Snow-Covered Mountain
2 Temple of Mystery
1 Snow-Covered Island
4 Scalding Tarn
2 Sulfur Falls
2 Island
1 Mountain
2 Breeding Pool
For those who did not follow the old thread, it's ritual gifts, except it uses Spellweaver Volute as a slower Past in Flames that can continually replay Gifts Ungiven, eventually looping to enough storm to cast a lethal Grapeshot. It's confusing, and it has some weird rulings (Spellweaver Volute is the only card that does anything like it).
It's fun though, and has some great surprise factor. We discussed it a little bit in the previous thread, and I've been tinkering with the list. It dies to fast aggro and is fairly mana intensive, and I have yet to determine if it's better than regular Ritual Gifts. I've unfortunately not had that much time to play in tournaments, and get some good practice.
I don't think it's gonna take much to make it decent though. If Punishing Fire ever comes of the Banned List, we might have ourselves something cool.
If there's enough interest, I can do some explanation as to the general combo process.
UGR Ritual Gifts
Legacy Decks
UBRG Storm Decks
---------------------------------------------------
The Storm Boards
Storm Crow is strictly worse than Seacoast Drake.
Yes please. It seems like you Rewind a whole bunch?
My Modern decks:
B/R/G Living End G/R/B
G/R Tron R/G
U/W/G/R Gargageddon R/G/W/U
R/W/G Naya Burn G/W/R
Yea, basically. So the basic combo goes something like this: It assumes you have rewinded something earlier in the game.
Basic combo process. There are some tricks here and there, and it's not always so set in stone. Playing this is sort of like playing High Tide in legacy, where you just need to think about maximizing your mana production while maintaining your other resources.
As for wild growth et al, it could be a thing. In general, I don't really like those type of effects, especially the one lander ones. If I was going to play an effect like that, I'd start with Heartbeat of Spring, but I've since moved away from that card. As I've said before, the deck is still very raw, and really anything can be tested. Ramp has been something I felt like I wanted in the deck, and maybe the extra mana effects could be good for that, as they help during the combo turn.
UGR Ritual Gifts
Legacy Decks
UBRG Storm Decks
---------------------------------------------------
The Storm Boards
Yes, actually it's mentioned in the Alt Win Conditions section of the -Card Choices-. And also the 3rd list in the -Sample Lists- is running a Rites package.
As for the mana ramp enchantments in Volute combo. I agree that those cards aren't that great but it seems like a legit way to ramp into that 5 mana Volute as well as make a ton of excess mana off Rewind. In my testing of the deck i ran out of mana comboing off a ton. I could be sequencing wrong though.
Sorry, I missed that.
Storm Crow is strictly worse than Seacoast Drake.
This is really convoluted.
You know what would help is if the OP or yourself actually used OBS while playing this on MTGO to show how it all works.
My Modern decks:
B/R/G Living End G/R/B
G/R Tron R/G
U/W/G/R Gargageddon R/G/W/U
R/W/G Naya Burn G/W/R
No problem, that was a great suggestion. Unburial Rites in Ritual gifts can be a double edged sword. Yes, it is definitely easier to pull off than the Storm combo, and can be a huge bomb that ends most games. The drawbacks are: the fact that it doesn't always actually end the game, forces you to play a weaker mana base, and is a dead draw most of the time.
The other thing to take into account is the fact that Rites folds to grave hate, and most of the Storm hate people bring in is actually grave hate.
What i love about it though, is the diversity of threats it provides. It keeps the opponent confused because they don't know if your going to storm them out, play Iona t4, or just drop a Batterskull and go on the beatdown.
@Spitlebug
What is OBS?
OBS = Open Boradcaster Software. It's a free recording program. Download link here
I think it's worth comparing Ritual Gifts to Scapeshift, as they are both combo/control decks that play a similar game. Using a sample list, we get:
Combo Pieces 16
2 Valakut
4 Sakura Tribe Elder
4 Search For Tomorrow
2 Farseek
4 Scapeshift
Dig 4
4 Peer Through the Depths
Removal 7
4 Bolt
2 Firespout
1 Izzet Charm
Protection(/Value) 10
4 Remand
4 Cryptic
2 Snapcaster
Lands 23
In order to be at least as good a deck, we need to be looking at similar numbers, and ideally being able to put more into removal and protection without compromising the combo. The first two lists in the OP broadly match up here, but I'm going to generalize a bit, and discuss options:
Combo Pieces 16
2 Manamorphose
2 Desperate Ritual
1 Pyretic Ritual
1 Channel the Suns
1 Mana Seism
1 Increasing Vengeance
1 Noxious Revival
2 Past in Flames
1 Grapeshot
4 Gifts Ungiven
Pretty sure these are mostly all necessary. It would be worth working out if a Manamorphose (or even both?) can be cut, and I don't really like Noxious Revival, but this is at least the same amount of combo-centric spells that Scapeshift runs. Note that lack of ramp spells mean we have to play less at Sorcery speed, which is partially negated by the fact that ramping (especially on STE) is fairly useful, whereas our rituals sit in our hand and do nothing. Gifts is obviously more useful than Scapeshift since it can be used for vlaue.
Dig 4
4 Peer or 4 Scroll
This is all we really have space for, and I'm pretty sure Telling Time is worse than both. Peer digs deep at instant speed for everything that isn't a land (sometimes annoying) whereas Scroll guarantees Gifts and can find Cryptic/Pact of Negation/sideboard bounce, but is stuck at sorcery speed. By and large, Scapeshift does ok with Peer, but Scroll can be pretty good (although sorcey speed is bleh)
Removal 7
1 Anger of the Gods
1 Firespout
1 Slagstorm
3 Lightning Bolt
1 Izzet Charm
Sweepers seem pretty good to me, especially since we can gifts for them. Pyroclasm is probably not enough these days. You could probably play up to 5, and maybe only 2 maindeck and one or two in the board. Lightning Bolt is obviously very good at killing dorks (important). Less important since we don't need to get an opponent under 18 like Scapeshift, but flashbacking bolts off PiF makes getting a kill easier (and might not be the worse value play if you're desperate and have mana). I am personally a big fan of Izzet charm, but 2 damage is not as good with Nacatls around. The guy who wrote the above Scapeshift list calls it "the 5th Remand, 5th Lightning Bolt, and as a 5th Peer Through Depths at the same time. The only trade off is being bad at all of them at the same time." which is a pretty fair assessment.
Protection/Value 10
4 Remand
2 Cryptic
1 Muddle the Mixture
3 Spell Pierce
This set of protection is from list 1 in the OP. Remand is amazing in this deck, particularly because of remanding your grapeshot, so you must play 4. Cryptic is insanely strong, and as a blue deck that wants to see turn 4, we should probably be playing it. It's not as good as in scapeshift since we can't play it turn 3, and we won't have enough mana to use it to protect gifts (as they do with Scapeshift) so 2 is a solid number. Bounces maindeck hate too. Muddle is a solid spell that acts as a way to get Grapeshot/remand/manamorphose/ritual. I feel like it is overkill to have both Muddle and Noxious Revival, assuming a pile can be made with just one. I am not so convinced with Spell Pierce: it is a narrow maindeck card to be running 3 of, so I'd rather see it as Izzet Charms, repeals, or maybe spell snare. Maybe even mana leak.
Land 23
Fetches, shocks (1 breeding pool), 2 Halimar Depths, 1 Desolate Lighthouse, maybe some Dreadship reef.
You could go down to 22 lands, but land drops are very important to the deck (you really want to hit 5), so the side of caution is preferred.
****
So as you can see, we can quite easily echo the makeup of a standard Scapeshift list. There are some flex slots around exactly which cards should be run (particularly around removal and protection suites), but by and large it seems silly to reinvent the wheel when we can learn from a pretty successful deck that tries to do something very similar.
I tend to agree. Unburial Rites is great in a few matches, but like you said, it still folds to grave hate, which a lot of players will be bringing in against us anyway. What it has going for it though, is it literally turns Gifts into a 1 card combo. You don't need anything else but Gifts to get Rites online, where the Storm combo needs some other cards in your hand or grave. It actually can be considerably easier to force out Rites than the entire storm combo in some matches. I'm trying to stay open minded about it, but so far i'm leaning towards lists without Rites. I would rather focus on doing 1 thing great, than a few things alright.
I agree whole heartily. When working with the deck in the past i have looked a lot to Scapeshift for inspiration, and sort of as a base test to go by. We have to be at least as good as Scapeshift, or what is the point in playing this deck? I also spent a lot of time looking at UW Tron, and more recently Twin lists as well.
I think the one thing that can get us into trouble trying to emulate Scapeshift to much though, is their mana ramp. They have the ability to ramp up their mana, so their whole control game runs a bit differently than any other deck, as they can easily out resource opponents.
The original lists were running 4 Manamorphose because of how well they played with Seething Song, and because you really needed them to get blue mana during the combo turn. Now without Seething Song, you don't exactly need 4 anymore, but unfortunately you're definitely going to need at least 1. On the combo turn, Manamorphose really helps in making sure you have (r)(r)(g)(3) available, so you can Vengeance your Channel the Suns. I have tried going down to 1, and i even tried cutting them completely but it gets you into trouble more often than not.
Noxious Revival is required for the final pile, to make sure you can get Grapeshot into your hand. But besides that there are a ton of cool tricks it can do, and it plays extremely well with Gifts. You can put junk on top of a mana screwed players library, or put fetches on top of a mana flooded players library. Revive discarded, and countered spells, and more. Also having 1 in your hand when you go for the Gifts-Storm pile makes it even easier to set up the combo as your getting 3 cards in hand from gifts instead of just 2. I understand it's not always awesome, but i feel like it more than holds it's weight here.
When comparing Scapeshift to Ritual Gifts, i think one of the things we having going for us is how versatile Gifts is. While Scapeshift does literally nothing outside of the combo win, Gifts can both set up the combo, and find counters, removal, hatecards, etc.
I think sweepers are good here for multiple reasons. What we're really trying to do is stall the game until we have the resources to win, and i think having stabilizers like that can be really helpful. I want Pyroclasm to be good, but i just don't want to end up dead in the water. It doesn't seem like Zoo is doing all that well right now though surprisingly, so maybe it's safe to play. When it comes down to it, there are a lot of good removal options in red, so it's kinda hard to find the perfect selection. As for Izzet Charm, i like it, it's versatile, it's a decent Scroll target. But like you said, it's just good, not great at anything.
So Remand is the *****, that has been established. I can't really see an argument to run less than 4. All we're trying to do is stall the game for a few turns until we can combo out, and that's exactly what Remand does for us.
Command on the other hand is a great card, and it's incredibly versatile, but i'm starting to think maybe we shouldn't play it. Like you said, without that mana ramp to back it up, 4 mana is quite a bit. We are never going to be able to bounce hate, or counter a spell, and cast Gifts in the same turn either.
Spell Pierce is actually great at forcing through Gifts at 5 mana, rather than 6 which can be a task to hit that many land drops, and be alive still. It's also a boss at keeping Liliana off the field. But i'm getting to the point where i agree it's not quite good enough to have 3 maindeck.
Ok, so i love Muddle the Mixture. It's great in the deck, but how can you make a win pile without Noxious Revival? There is no way to set up a pile that will get Grapeshot in your hand, without at least 1 Revival.(Unless i'm completely missing something)
*Edit*
Ok, you Gifts for (Merchant Scroll, Past in Flames, Remand, ???). Now no matter what you get you can PIF->Scroll for Muddle->Muddle into Grapeshot.
The problem with that is if Muddle or Grapeshot is in the grave already it won't work.
So like i was saying earlier in this post. I do agree it's good to look towards Scapeshift when building this deck, but not to go to far with it. We can't just recreate Scapeshift with different cards, because we are a different deck. Their ability to mana ramp and play a control game warps their strategy and card choices to a point. So more recently i was looking a lot at Twin lists, and i got to thinking about something. I have been putting so much effort into being a decent control deck, more focused on stabilizing midgame and getting the combo, when i think what we should be focusing on just being able to consistently stall the game a few turns.
I have been having some consistency issues with the mana in the deck for a while. In most versions i have played, you need a fair amount of luck finding your land drops. There's no good way to dig for lands in previous shells, and often i would find myself stuck at 2 lands for 5 turns, or drawing 6 lands in a row. And with a lot of expensive sweepers, and cards like Cryptic Command, you can find yourself behind on resources and being a pretty sub-par control deck. That's not to say it always happened like that, but it was certainly a problem.
I got to testing some unorthodox lists, and trying out some things that are fairly at odds with the fundamental theory going into this deck, but i found a list that has been giving me a lot of success.
2 Merchant Scroll
4 Serum Visions
4 Gifts Ungiven
-CONTROL
3 Lightning Bolt
2 Flame Slash
2 Vapor Snag
4 Remand
2 Mana Leak
2 Spell Snare
2 Snapcaster Mage
-RITUAL-
2 Manamorphose
1 Desperate Ritual
1 Pyretic Ritual
1 Mana Seism
1 Channel the Suns
2 Past in Flames
1 Increasing Vengeance
1 Noxious Revival
1 Grapeshot
-LAND-
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Scalding Tarn
4 Sulfur Falls
3 Steam Vents
2 Breeding Pool
4 Island
1 Mountain
4 Leyline of Sanctity
2 Batterskull
2 Dispel
2 Anger of the Gods
1 Echoing Truth
1 Wipe Away
1 Damping Matrix
1 Torpor Orb
1 Hurkyl's Recall
So this is obviously against the grain of a lot of what i have said in the past. First thing being the inclusion of Serum Visions. I mean heck, in the intro paragraph for the deck i wrote it says we don't play cantrips, yet here i am with a list playing cantrips. The reasoning behind this is the mana issues. Having a cheap cantrip really helps in smoothing out your draws.
I had initially tried 2 lists; 1 with Sakura-Tribe Elder jammed into my old list, and this list here that i posted. The STE list worked, but still felt slow, and somewhat sluggish at times, while this list felt incredibly consistent, and played so smooth. I have honestly been very surprised when playing this list at how much nicer it runs than previous incarnations.
I gave up the Cryptic Commands, and maindeck sweepers in order to play cheaper spells. By playing cheap cantrips rounded out by cheap efficient removal, you get to keep much looser hands, and still have a lot of play. I have complained about it so much in the past, but getting blown out due to mana screw is the worst feeling. The new list deals with that issue fairly well by dramatically lowing the mana curve, and having cheap library manipulation. With the cheaper spells, Snapcaster becomes a whole lot better as well.
The other big change is the Scroll package. The fully fleshed out Scroll package can be sweet, but here we essentially have Gifts 5-6, with a mini package. Scroll can find Gifts obviously, it can find a counter to protect Gifts, and a bounce spell for a hatebear. For maindeck purposes, is there anything else you would really need?
Yeah for the most part, just Scroll for Echoing Truth or some other bounce. Rest in Peace is definitely a pain in the ass though, as you're going to end up needing 5-6 mana to bounce and Gifts EOT. If you're playing someone that you know is going to be siding in RIP, i would bring in Batterskull or some other alt win just in case an essential combo piece ends up getting exiled.
You could run Spell Pierce over Dispel in the board if you were really worried about non creature-permanent hate. That's really a choice of whether you want a solid late game hard counter or better early game. I'm not even 100% on what the best option is to be honest.
One thing i have been thinking about now that i'm not playing Cryptic Command, is whether i want to cut a fetch and a Sulfur Falls for 2 Storage lands. Sometimes i really do miss them; they make plays like bouncing a haterock, and playing Gifts so much easier. What i'm torn on, is whether i want extremely consistent mana, or potentially more powerful- yet slightly less consistent mana. What gets me, is drawing hands with no colored mana. It just drives me crazy, but with only 2 colorless lands, it feels pretty safe. Something i'm trying to figure out right now..
I put 2 Swan Song in my sideboard so far in addition to the Dispels. Swan Swong hardcounters RiP any stage of the game and functions the same role as Dispel. I feel that when I need the Swan Song a 2/2 Flier isn't going to matter as much, and it also functions as Twin hate if needed as well, instead of just a counter war.
Personally I don't think 2 colorless would be that bad. The only time it matters is when you are racing to outcombo someone else, and due to the counters in the deck you can probably slow them down enough that the lands won't be a hindrance. UR Twin for example uses Desolate which taps for colorless and they don't seem to have issues going off with those included. If the lands came in tapped that would be a whole different story and since there are no Cryptic's we really don't need a ton of colored mana at any given point. The most I can see is needing RRGx for Vengeance and Channel.
2 Misty Rainforest
2 Steam Vents
2 Breeding Pool
1 Mountain
1 Island
1 Snow-Covered Island
1 Forest
3 Sulfur Falls
1 Reflecting Pool
2 Cascade Bluffs
1 Dreadship Reef
1 Fungal Reaches
1 Calciform Pools
1 Halimar Depths
4 Gifts Ungiven
1 Think Twice
2 Desperate Ritual
2 Pyretic Ritual
1 Manamorphose
1 Increasing Vengeance
2 Past in Flames
1 Channel the Suns
1 Mana Seism
1 Grapeshot
1 Noxious Revival
1 Repeal
3 Remand
1 Spell Pierce
2 Spell Snare
1 Mana Leak
1 Izzet Charm
1 Electrolyze
1 Muddle the Mixture
1 Snapcaster Mage
Sideboard was pretty messy and I think I'll just rebuild it from new ideas in this thread. Running Hurkyl's Recall is a must if you play Merchant Scroll though, and Ancient Grudge doesn't get mentioned while it's flashback makes it excellent in defensive Gifts piles. Devoting as little as 2 sideboard slots against Affinity can really turn the match into a nightmare for them with the reliability this deck has to find the hate cards (I've won the 3 matches I played against affinity with this deck in tournaments) and in my country you pretty much can't expect to not meet one.
I wanna make a special mention about Izzet Charm and Electrolyze as Scroll targets: having a reliable way to get rid of a Scavenging Ooze is a must IMO, as well as having easy tutorable removal spells. On the Scroll matter, I've tried to switch it for a playset of Peer Through Depths in my deck and it simply didn't work. As this deck is pretty much a mash up of combo and control, I didn't find Peer to be reliable enough to find what I was in need at the time. Your odds of hitting a removal with it when you really need it aren't high enough IMO, and let's not get started about how Scroll is better at finding Gifts
Sorcery speed is something I really had to get used to while playing this deck though, and since I started playing this deck I feel that the card I've gained most experience with was Scroll, as firstly I was just casting it always turn 2 and opening myself to many stuff. You really have to find the right moment to cast it, and it gets really difficult to discern if you need to leave mana open or rush a Scroll (I think mastering this skill is clue to playing this deck well, and you have to know the matchups and be able to get a read on your opponent's plans, which is much easier to write about than actually doing it). It does feel strong when used correctly and it does create a lot of uncertainty in the lines of play, and I actually make tons of mistakes with this deck after playing with it for months (I bet I make more than I realize).
@Alleyway Jack I've had the same problem with land drops. Really, this deck is just super weak when it falls behind on land drops. I've moved up to 25 lands in the past, but now at 24 I feel decently comfortable. Storage lands are REALLY useful in combo turns in the grindy matchups.
I find your Serum Visions approach really interesting, and I'll be running your list this week a bit to see how it plays. From looking at it, I feel that it's more streamlined than mine, which makes sense if you are dropping some Merchant Scrolls as you won't be able to get your bullets as reliably as before. That will make your control game more consistent though. Do you find Vapor Snag really good? It's great to bounce a hate bear and Gifts for the win on just 5 mana, and I know I've wished I had it mainboard more than once... I've been running Repeal and it isn't as great against Twin, for example, but the fact it replaces itself and that it can bounce other things too makes me like it a bit more.
On the rest, I agree Cryptic ended up being kind of slow and more importantly you want to be casting Gifts by that time so having a card that competes with it didn't feel useful... I mean I just prefered to cast Gifts most times I had both in my hand. And Spell Snare is a beast, really, I've been considering moving up to 3. The fact that it counters Remand and Mana Leak hardly makes it one of the best tools against Scapeshift, Twin and UWR.
@Acissathar: I haven't seen Rest in Peace in a long time, but always be sure to leave at least 1 bounce spell in for games 2 and 3 because you really don't like to see such permanents... I prefer bounce over enchantment destruction because it's broader and it can be live if your opponent doesn't play a hate card.
Okay, I'll be posting regularly and taking this to play whenever I can, I hope some people get on the train too
@Lueseto
How do you feel about that one of Think Twice? I have honestly never been a huge fan of that card to be honest, but i guess it could work. I have been really happy with Serum Visions in the deck actually. It honestly helps so much in smoothing out your draws and hitting land drops. If you haven't tried it yet, you should. Merchant Scroll is good, but it's really not great in multiples. Running only 2 has been good for me. There hasn't been a game yet where i didn't manage to find a Gifts.
What you were saying about Izzet Charm is true, being able to reliably kill Scooze, and have a Scroll-able Shock is super convenient. I switched around some things in my list to add one in.
The Vapor Snags were actually under-preforming so took em out and just put an Echoing Truth in.
Another thing i realized is we don't actually need both Rituals. I took out Desperate Ritual, now i'm only running 1 Pyretic Ritual, and so far i haven't had any issues.
You were right about Spell Snare also. So far that card has been killing it.
Anyway here's were i'm at now.
2 Merchant Scroll
4 Serum Visions
4 Gifts Ungiven
-CONTROL
4 Remand
2 Mana Leak
2 Spell Snare
3 Lightning Bolt
3 Flame Slash
1 Echoing truth
1 Izzet Charm
2 Snapcaster Mage
-RITUAL-
2 Manamorphose
1 Pyretic Ritual
1 Mana Seism
1 Channel the Suns
2 Past in Flames
1 Increasing Vengeance
1 Noxious Revival
1 Grapeshot
-LAND-
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Scalding Tarn
4 Sulfur Falls
3 Steam Vents
2 Breeding Pool
4 Island
1 Mountain
4 Leyline of Sanctity
2 Batterskull
2 Dispel
2 Anger of the Gods
1 Echoing Truth
1 Combust
1 Damping Matrix
1 Torpor Orb
1 Hurkyl's Recall
So far this seems like the most consistent list i have played. I haven't gotten around to trying out the Storage lands again, but if i do, i think i'm going to go with 1-2 Fungal Reaches. The hardest part about getting the combo to go through is having the (R)(R)(G) available after Past in Flames, so i'm really not that interested in the blue and black mana off Dreadship Reef.