MTG Salvation

Quite spicy at first glance, still there are a few things that come to mind: You have not very much (early) disruption going on, neither discard nor early interaction you are eager to cast (Path isn't really a pleasure in the first 3 turns), Fatal Push is a pretty natural inclusion in a deck relying on B and we can consistently trigger revolt with the fetchlands. Brutality is of course fine, but occasionally whiffs on important cards, be it creatures, enchantments (looking at Blood Moon) or planeswalkers, Inquisition and Thoughtseize (maybe Duress, depending on your meta) are often better.

At a second glance, the mana base looks a little awkward, I have counted only 6 fetchlands (Field of Ruin not counted). Contrary to that, I play 10 of those with the same number of basics as you do, together with 2 colourless sources and 25 lands in total due to the lack of dorks, which sounds about right going through the numbers. I have however come to the point where I don't like mana dorks, Birds are just too fragile right now, on turn 2 I rather have disruption and/or removal available, turn 3 usually is occupied with LotV. Turn 3 Gifts is of course nice, but drawing a dork later in the game feels terrible in grindy matchups, hence I skipped them altogether.

The 3BB Liliana seems fine, more or less the same effective cost as an Unburial Rites in your hand with additional upside. Baneslayer is also a nice reanimation target in certain matchups, be it Burn or more recently Izzet Phoenix, although the default options also do the trick most of the time here. I am not a fan of Sun Titan, there is not much to get back apart from Champion, Snapcaster, Azcanta and lands. Maybe add a second Snapcaster in that slot? I have always enjoyed having multiples and 2 seems to be the sweet spot. Doom Whisperer is definitely spicy, I don't see it do much though to be honest, it is even underwhelming in Standard most of the time.

I have tried Azcanta as well, but in the grindy lists it has always conflicted with the disruption plan, as it fits more in a traditional, permission-based control shell. Maybe it does the job in your build, definitely nothing wrong with including that one. How have the wraths been doing for you? I feel that merely destroying creatures isn't enough, which is why I have gone over to using Terminus in one of my current UWgb Gifts builds, together with Growth Spiral as the primary ramp option to hold up interaction on turn 2 (as opposed to disruption in attrition-based lists). This of course requires at least 3 JtMS and a more heavy lean on U, hence skipping LotV completely, which works out fine so far. Alternatively, Ensnaring Bridge seems like an option for build with heavy discard, removal and most importantly LotV. Has a nice synergy with Lingering Souls, too and can be disposed of rather easily if needed, although drawing up to 3 cards to swing with pumped tokens or leaving back Iona is both fine, the game at this point is fairly locked up then.

The sideboard does seem a little messy, still. Worm Harvest without Life from the Loam? I also think you need more GY interaction, Surgical Extraction and Extirpate synergize pretty well with Snapcaster Mage and can be searched for in a deterministic pile. This could replace the Spellbombs (since you have no artifact synergy, i.e. Academy Ruins) and the Unmoored Ego, which is often too slow I suppose. Eternal Witness is nice with Titan of course, but I found GG to be always a little rough on the mana side, but maybe your dorks pull the weight for you. Runed Halo is spicy, but this and the rest seems legit, in the end I have of course no idea how your (local) meta looks like, so take everything in this paragraph with a grain of salt.

I noticed you mention LOTV in your post but it's not in your list. Do you no longer use her? I haven't played 4c gifts competitively in a couple years now, but I always thought she was critical to the deck. No Eternal Witness also seems odd to me but I again I have no recent experience with the deck.

I could see myself getting back into this archetype if the mana dork version were more viable. But as it stands, Gut Shot is far too prevalent in the meta game to play Birds or Noble.

Good luck with your list. I like your spicy inclusions, namely: Doom Whisperer, Champion of Wits, Worship out of thy Sideboard

@ EoTGifts:
I’ve found that the not using the hand disruption coupled with the t2 ramp helps to save enough life where I can reliably use a t4 or t5 wrath to reset the board. Netting a solid 3+ for 1 card advantage. While yes there are threats that can be recurred after the threat it will buy you another 2-3 turns to start putting up your own board which will outclass theirs.
Caryatid has really pulled its weight, it keeps small beats and chip damage from being an issue letting me hold up hard removal for more impactful threats and it forces the opponent to commit more to the board to go around the caryatids making my wraths net more advantage. The any color ramp it provides is crucial for the mana base, allowing me to not shock lands in as often. Drawing them late game in my list generally acts as a 2 mana fog the biggest attacker since they can’t push/bolt it, not the greatest draw one could ask for but better than a land.
As far as the mana base goes- I wouldn’t mind adding a replacing 2 shocks with fetches if I can find them in trade. I think it would help power up KotR/Worm Harvest in the board, help to flip Search and increase the reliability of colors. I didn’t add a Loam for the harvest as I thought the point was to be able to turn all the normally dead land draws into action via harvest. I don’t see myself loaming and harvesting same turn (7mana up G b/g b/g). I see myself harvesting every turn and holding up a path or trophy for interaction forcing the control player to keep answering the harvest with counters or waste wraths on their turn to answer the swarm.
I agree that Doom whisperer might be a dud, but I figured I would devote a FNM or 2 to see if it might surprise me. You’re right that titan doesn’t always have great targets main, his options go up greatly in the board though. And recurring a land isn’t always bad when I have Elesh Norn in hand, champion in the grave or just want to wrath +threat in a turn. It is also required for the Troll Worship Pile I want to test- (Eternal Witness, sun Titan, Worship, Caryatid). If I had a second snap available, I’d probably run him over the doom whisperer. The Nihil spellbomb was picked for grave hate as it can work with titan and at least generate card advantage.


@Funeral of God- I mention LOTV as it’s a format staple so in some matches they’ll cause us to discard and its worth mentioning its counter role for unburial. And I would like those that run LOTV to have something to think about if they have a flex slot they aren’t sure what to do with. I have had good luck with the caryatid in place of bop. I would say in the current meta if you want to ramp instead of discard caryatid is the only dork that doesn’t just eat a bolt/push.
I’m testing a single Ewitt in the side for the Troll worship purposes but honestly Ewitt isn’t great in the current build. When I had her as a 1 of main it was my first cut 99% of the games. It’s a dead draw in the early game as it competes color wise (T3 GG T4 WW/WWb T5 BB/WW) and without ways to sculpt the grave it generally would have limited selection late game. It also turns on the fatal pushes I’ve designed this list to make them a bad draw game one.

@Everyone-
Our list hasn’t been top tier in a long time. The meta has changed drastically. I do think its time to start trying the off the wall ideas and testing less played cards. Gifts Unburial biggest strength is how compact it is (7 cards in the 75).

I’ve converted my excel sheet that I use to help build my Gifts deck to a Gdoc and made it public. Feel Free to use it. It has a mana calculator with recommendations based on the newer article for CFB and a Pile maker so you can see the 6 possibilities with any 4 cards you can think up. Lastly I’ve started a list of known piles for easier reference.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Gder-KHe2CSk0f-Gag_7KDutpE5ofqUbkAD0q2sCBYo/edit?usp=sharing

Last night I decided I wanted to track my progress on this deck, so I created an excel sheet to do so. The results were a little surprising as I was able to go back to 11/09/2018 via the DCI and pull all my modern tournaments (I’ve only been playing 4c).
• SB Wins is honestly filler where if I won twice I counted 1 sb win but if I won once I got 0 sb wins (this should even out over time).
• You’ll see a high number of games for Deck: Unknown – that’s because DCI only reports wins/ and losses. If I wasn’t able to remember what the matchup was or find it in one of my tournament reports I put it down as an unknown. Sadly that means for now the meta share’s are not accurate.
• Here’s a version of my tracker if you want to start tracking your own- https://filebin.net/jm9apnr6f4xj80zv
You input your win /loss and deck on the “Game Logs” Tab. Then follow the instructions in Readme.txt or Deck Import to import those decks on the Match Stats page. Everything else auto calculates, and has conditional formatting for highlighting Red/ Green/ Yellow

Just placed 3rd at a 19 man local tournament. The deck feels really good, I’m still really impressed with Caryatid- its ability to ramp and save some life by blocking small creatures is really solid. I feel like control decks are my version's current weak spot and there seems to be a wave of players picking up versions of control. My version has proven extremely resilient to grave hate. My opponents tend to bring in Rip/ nihil spell bomb which I ignore for the majority of the time, as I’m am well equipped to play as a fair midrange/control. I tried the Worms, loam, gq, bog against esper control, but they have enough incidental grave hate that kaya exiled worm and loam.... I think my control package is going to look at a Thrun, the Last Troll as it has synergies with worship anyways.

Notable changes from previous versions:

• Changed tarpit to wildwood as the reach can be important and white/ green are the more important colors for me.
• Sun Titan changed to Gideo Ally- its a lower costed threat that can be found by Search, Titan had lackluster options to bring back from the grave.
• Went down to 3 Gifts and pulled the Settle from the Side to the main.
• Flipped the split of Tropy and Decay
• Dropped a KoA for a Unmoored Ego in the board.
• Added Extirpate to the sideboard allowing for what I call the Crumble to Dust package to help with tron/valukut.

Congratulations to your finish, I am always glad to see 4C Gifts putting up results. Interesting how your impression is that the control matchups are the more difficult ones, apart from Sultai Teachings (which is rather bad due to all their instant speed shenanigans). A resolved Gifts is half a win due to Loam/Crime/Souls and there is almost always a window to resolve Gifts against UWx archetypes, also Inquisition, Thoughtseize, Brutality and Liliana are really good against those decks. That's one point I absolutely like about this deck, shifting the main colours leaves so much space for customisation. As it currently stands, I might just try your list and report my findings.

I totally agree with cutting Sun Titan for Gideon, walkers that protect themselves are great here. Regarding the colour focus, I guess Wildwood is fine as well, but I would thoroughly miss my Tar Pits against opposing planeswalkers. Why Baneslayer over Lyra? Occasional synergy with Iona and a split between Lyra/Baneslayer in MB and SB works fine. I am still not entirely sold on Caryatids, if you're already heavier on GW you might try Growth Spiral in that slot, which gives you access to Wraths a turn earlier and hence might as well save you some life while not dying to your own sweepers. And it cantrips later in the game, which makes it superior to dorks as well. Do you like the 4th Wrath better than the 4th Gifts? I almost always want to see Gifts in my games. As far as the sideboard is concerned, try Raven's Crime instead of Worm Harvest in the board against control, it's great. Have you considered Surgical Extraction as well? Synergises pretty well with Snapcaster Mage and can provide a nice Gifts pile with Unmoored Ego, Extirpate and such.

How did you like Field of Ruin so far? I have the fear of running out of basics, especially when recurring it with Loam. I am tinkering with a more WUGb midrange-ish list currently, as I always end up jamming Knight of the Reliquary into Gifts decks. I might draw some inspiration from your list, I like the bigger Liliana, Gideon and Thrun (+ Worship). Last time I tried this approach I went 0-4-1 in my local FNM, so maybe this time...

Why Baneslayer over Lyra? I had a baneslayer sitting around in my angel collection while lyra is in an EDH deck. Honestly there isn’t a real reason to not have Lyra in her place unless you are worried about demons and dragons.
Spiral vs Caryatid: Caryatid is too good to give up. Growth spiral will give a land if you have/draw which isn't guaranteed but caryatid will always be a 5c dork and it can block 74% of the modern creature meta.
Wildwood vs Tarpit: Almost every creature caryatid can’t block has flying and it being out of bolt range lessens the odds of activating it to just have it die.
4th wrath vs Gifts: I do like the extra wrath over gifts, as most of my game 1 gift piles are for wraths anyways.
Surgical: I have considered surgical but with $$ restrictions I haven't ran it. The extirpate could theoretically be important
Field of Ruin: Field of ruin is ok, running out of basics is a possibility but if your recurring it with loam to land lock them that's not much of a concern and it allows for piles like loam, field,gq,bog to just hit their lands and graves.

Crime Vs Harvest: I did actually drop worm harvest when I retooled the sb from my control match experiences. For the same 5 mana I can get 1 counter or make them discard 3 so that + thrun made it an easy decision. In a control matchup if we’re in a topdeck war I think I have better odds, as their counters will just get crime while I remove their threats or play my own.
On control- normal versions of 4c have good strength against control thanks to the discard, but my main is low on discard so that’s what makes it a hard matchup, though I’m confident with my revised sideboard the matchup will change drastically.

Here is my Decklist with more information about the card selections: HERE

So, I in fact strongly dislike Caryatids currently and the reasons are twofold: First of all, it feels just so bad when you need to immediately get a Wrath package to have your dorks die just after you have played them. Secondly and somewhat related, keeping up T2 interaction allows for Growth Spiral at the end of the opponent's turn, leaving you with the exact same amount of mana sources on T3. Given that lists with Spiral play a smidge more lands than those with dorks, having a third (or fourth) land is very likely in these lists.

Kind of similar experience with a more creature-heavy list, the bigger dudes such as Lyra or Baneslayer Angel just immediately eat removal and do nothing apart from being a massive tempo swing in favour of the opponent. I think it's better to let the opponent's removal be dead and make our own creatures have an immediate impact on the board (Snapcaster and Elesh Norn, basically) or even be removal proof in certain situations such as Iona. Apart from that, running Kalitas is kind of a meta choice with Phoenix and Dredge around, the above argument equally applies unless we can kill and hence exile creatures in response. Apart from that, I have found the lack of discard to be a little concerning, we have no hand disruption beyond Brutality, which does only take instants and sorceries. Taking Azcanta, Teferi, Jace or Reclamation is often crucial, to name a few.

In the end it might be a meta choice, I'll move back to a more control-ish list.

I agree it doesn't feel great to wrath with a fresh caryatid but generally he saves you 2 life (blocking a small guy the turn he comes out) and wraths on t3. Caryatid is both ramp and fixing as opposed to Spiral is not a guarantee to have a land or have a land of the right color. I agree that baneslayer is dead in some matchups simply because the risk to tempo, but haven't decided on a threat that could replace her as a board stabilizer.

Sidenote: I won't be posting much for the next few months I'm having a kid soon so MTG and 4c gifts will be getting set aside for awhile.

First of all, congratulations of becoming father and all the best for the future!

Secondly, Caryatid can't block that many guys in the current metagame if you want her to survive. Since you are not supposed to chump when you want to wratch the board on turn 3, you don't save any damage is the opponent has creatures with power 3 or more (that is, Hollow One, Amalgam, Tarmogoyf, Tracker to name a few). Regarding that Spiral is a much better topdeck and the manabase is fine even without them (go up a land when going from dorks to cantrips, though), I think it's correct to run Spirals if the colour focus of the deck can support it. I'm also not sure if you need to stabilize with some big dude on the board, planeswalkers usually do a good job in keeping the opponent at bay at some point, especially LotV, JtMS and big Teferi, depending on your colour pie again.

A couple of weeks ago, I revisited the Thomas Riedo GP Lyon Top 32 list. I was able to get the few last foils I needed to have 74 of the 75 foiled (missing a single Marsh Flats). It seems like a fun list, but I chickened out at FNM and played Humans instead, getting a 3-0-1.

I think at least in my own meta, that it may not be the deck to run. There are at least 2 players who run Gaddock Teeg main board, so without Path to Exile or Collective Brutality, this really slows us down.

Here is the list for reference -
https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/948719#paper

I have played a similar list at some point in the past and I absolutely did not like it. It is way too durdly and frankly, quite janky. Of course the results speak for themselves, but there is a whole pile of problems I see with this particular configuration. First of all, the Bring to Light router is even slower than the traditional approach, which in itself is borderline at the current speed of Modern. Sure, once in a while you search for Thragtusk or Sigarda, but you haven't saved yourself any mana but needed to spend WUBRG instead of 4G or 2GWW, respectively. The colours worked out fine, to be fair.

Secondly, there is way too much air in this list and far too little interaction. Personally, I wouldn't mind Gaddock Teeg at all since it does not apply a significant amount of pressure and dies to Push, Path, Decay, Trophy, Brutality, Liliana and Pulse. That's 13 outs still not counting turn 1 discard effects (5 of those, additionally) should it be necessary, so please be my guest and play Teeg on turn 2. What does Bring to Light help if there are no proper outs to search for or if you would have to spend 5 mana instead of a simple removal spell + something that puts you ahead? Cut the Search for Tomorrow, cut the Bring to Light, cut Sigarda and Ashen Rider, cut Pentad Prism, switch to proper mana dorks if you insist on playing them, skip Faithless Looting and drop the 5th colour. Instead, play things that interact with your opponent (and Liliana of the Veil, she's great), that's the only route to victory as this deck is impossibly faster than any remotely competitive deck in Modern. Improving your topdecks is key in many matchups.

If you want to have a go at janky creature combo, try 4C Saheeli Evolution, that's a blast to play and potentially pretty fast.

I looked at your list and it's pretty certainly better in the current meta. Your list is more straight forward and basically a Midrange list that is going bigger by adding Gifts and Jace, the Mind Sculptor. This list is utilizing more of a toolbox at the cost of hurting one's mana.

But I personally think it is more fun. I know that's a subjective word. I personally don't enjoy Midrange much. The toolbox includes several cards that just DESTROY the opponent. It is much less a collective effort and that can be appealing to some players. I may also like Saheeli Evolution to be fair. I enjoyed Jeskai Saheeli for a while, as well as Vannifar Evolution more recently, so 4 Color may definitely be a blast to play for me.

But I will reiterate that I am more certain that by the looks of it, your deck list is way more streamlined to win in this current meta. I cannot deny that.

I would disagree that the list plays out as midrange, compared to other GBx archetypes we lack a clock alltogether. The early builds had often more than 10 creatures in their deck, among them things like Goyf, Knight of the Reliquary, Tireless Tracker, Grim Flayer, Scavenging Ooze und such. Contrary to that, I currently play 5 creatures, reanimation targets included. I think the best description for this strategy is attrition-based control, contrary to permission-based archetypes like UWx. That said, there is an adaption of the 4C Gifts strategy to the latter approach, see for example https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/1644845#paper. Growth Spiral was kind of the missing piece in this kind of list.

If you don't enjoy midrange matches, this could regardless be a deck for you. Gifts gives you access to a plethora of answers, some of which are:

• Life from the Loam, Raven's Crime, Urborg and Tectonic Edge in grindy matches and/or control mirrors.
• Life from the Loam, Academy Ruins, Engineered Explosives + X for permanent-based control and/or prison strategies, recurring removal.
• Abrupt Decay, Assassin's Trophy, Snapcaster Mage, Maelstrom Pulse lets you deal with any (nonland) permanent.
• Life from the Loam, Academy Ruins, Ensnaring Bridge + X for dealing with slower creature-based strategies.

This did not include the obvious Gifts/Rites against things like Humans, Merfolk or Storm to name a few examples. Depending on the board state you can extend the Gifts piles or search for the Gifts/Rites package + extra value stuff like Loam, Crime or Souls, just pitch the creature to an active Liliana. There is virtually no board state you can't get out of, given you fetched correctly in the early turns.

Edit: Somewhat off-topic, but maybe you want to have a look at 4C Saheeli: https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/1860239#paper

With MTGsalvation closing in the next few months, does anyone want to move to a discord or other service to continue working on the deck? I could create one if there's interest.

Oh, this came a little surprising but sure, I'd be in for some way of communicating on the archetype, especially with MH1 on the horizon.

It's been awfully quiet in here. No posts or comments during which 2 sets being spoiled. Has anyone seen any new tech for the deck in the sets? Anyone working on a variation?

I'm still rocking my ramp and removal heavy list. Pretty solid coin flip on games and matches. For those wondering here is my current list: Click Here

I love this deck but currently is just a pet deck. There is waaaaay too much graveyard hate around, the deck is slow and Unburial T4 doesn't win on the spot (save a few matches, of course).

I'm considering building it just Esper with 3feri. Not really sure how the 60 should look like though.

I don't think there's a savage-enough lock to grab with Gifts to make this archetype competitive at the moment. There are too many decks that don't care about Elesh Norn or Iona. And I feel I'd really want to play some amount of Faithless Looting which means addressing another color. In the right meta game I still think 4C gifts can dominate. But it has to be rather fair, as decks like Red Phoenix and Tron will just Slaughter you

I tried to toy around with Hall of Heliod's Generosity and an enchantment package similar to the artifact package in the more traditional lists, it did not seem too good to be honest and was a somewhat diluted enchantress build with some Gifts synergies. As for the rest, mostly agreed, yes, the Gifts/Rites package is underwhelming against quite a portion of the current metagame. However, against Dredge (and slower draws of the former HogVine builds) Elesh Norn is not bad, a proper split of Extirpate and Extractions together with Snapcasters can give enough time to reach turn 4 a reasonable amount of time, the same can be said for Phoenix and Iona, at least in my (in fact limited) experience. What works quite nicely is the matchup against UW Control, the important point here is enough early discard (6-7 slots, say), LotV and the Loam/Crime package. The only thing is trying to not get the Gifts countered, getting Loam countered repeatedly afterwards eventually grinds through their ability to keep up.

Do you have experience in the Sultai Reclamation matchup? If so, of what kind?