MTG Salvation

Looking good!

I dont think I have to repeat what Alpharius said; I agree on all his points. Thought scours should go if your main colors are Abzan. It will force you to fetch too aggressively at the beginning of the game and it isn't worth the life loss. You aren't trying to fill the graveyard with cards for early tasigurs and anglers like grixis control is. Lingering souls should be at least 3 copies in our deck because it is such an amazing card. 1 more discard won't hurt either.

Damnation should be used instead of languish in the sideboard and the price should have dropped significantly since the reprint for you to pick it up. Languish feels bad against goyfs and eldrazis and multiple lords. Stony silence is a must, run at least 2. Terastodon is your goto for Tron if they are present in your meta.

I'm partial to Void Winnower against Tron Eldrazi.

Howdy all! Long time Gifts player, first time joining in the discussion. This is the list I am taking to FNM tonight. It changes fairly often. Right now I'm just trying to ramp into great cards, not going so much for the control roll, but the pieces are still there if necessary. I'm getting my last two Tarmogoyfs next week, so I think I'll probably go to a more Junk style build with hand disruption to make the Goyfs better, cutting some number if not all of the mana dorks. Also, the new Liliana is absolutely bonkers. Wish I could afford to play a second copy.

Deck felt great overall. Ended up going 2-2, but they were all great games. Round 1 I was fortunately enough to 2-0 R/G Tron. Definitely like having a higher threat density. That being said, I missed my Wrath effects in my two loses, which were against Affinity and B/W midrange, which went to game 2 and 3 respectively. Engineered Explosives is definitely going back in the deck, which probably means Academy Ruins earns a spot again. My last match was against a sweet B/G Mimic Vat deck, where we ended up going to game 3. I like all the Birds, as they help me cast Liliana on 2, but but the Nobles often warped how I fetched so I could have double black on 2. One opening hand I had consisted of only G/W sources, Nobles, Paths and a Liliana. I might add an Arbor Elf or two to replace them. Thoughts on the deck? Ideas for improvement?

Heyo folks, been returning to Gifts lately and made 7th place in a local GPT (maybe 40 players, not sure).



Based the deck roughly on Draytons last list (cheers for posting btw, list looks sweet) with some changes due to preference and availability (got no Flayers for example) I wanted to try Knight out as additional pressure, with Caryatid adding more consistency on T3 for either an early Gifts, Discard+Threat or just fixing, but neither card really felt perfect for this particular build. Sideboard was hastily pieced together, so don't pay too much attention there - especially ignore the Crumble to Dust, which I only realized I couldn't cast without Caryatids in the last round of swiss (too used to having Birds)

Matchups were:
2-0 vs Bogles (g1 I was able to discard his only threat and follow it up with Lili, g2 he mulls to 6, I take his threat, EE the other thing, and that's it)
0-2 vs Ad Nauseam (g1 I mull to 5, discard him into oblivion but can't find any pressure while my opponent also wasn't finding anything relevant, super weird game ^^ g2 he has Leyline, I can't remove it, I die)
2-0 vs Cruel Control (weird, fun deck that a friend of mine pieced together; he was flooding in both games and didn't get enough threats out to stop me from beating him down after clearing his board)
2-0 vs UW Spirits (g1 he keeps a interaction-heavy, threat-light hand, so I discard his threat, resolve Lingering Souls, shoot down some flyers and that's the game, g2 he floods like crazy after getting his early game ruined by discard and a greedy keep, Souls+Township close it out eventually)
1-2 vs GW Tron (g1 I have a very reasonable hand with lands, caryatid, ghost quarter, discard and liliana, but never find a 3rd land while my opponent throws worldbreakers at me, g2 I have a double goyf start which prompts him to crack his relic early, which then gets punished by gifts->terastodon, killing 2 lands and a karn, leaving me with 19 power on the board, g3 I kept a risky hand on the back of the power of pithing needle, find a stony silence, path a wurmcoil, am ready to trade knight+pulse for the second one... and get obliterated by ulamog ^^)
QF: 0-2 vs Blue Moon (g1 I take lots of damage from thoughtseizing and get tempo'd out of the game by vapor snags and snapcasters, g2 I start ripping apart his hand and get into the groove of Life+Crime, until he plays the new 3cmc drake that gets bigger for each instant/sorcery he has in his bin, which two-shots me after not finding removal or souls to block xD)

All in all I played fairly mediocre, the SB wasn't tuned and the Knights/Caryatids felt mostly unnecessary. Nonetheless, coming back to Gifts felt great, especially with a more midrange-y build than I'm used to. Gonna try the 2 Ooze/2 Flayer split out next, looks pretty sweet (-2 Caryatid, -3 Knights, +1 Souls, +2 Ooze, +2 Flayer) Also would appreciate any more ideas for improvement you guys might have for a build like this

@Pathrogas

Congrats man! Thank you for the report. Really dig the list man. Similar to Drayton, I am running the list with no dorks and many 2 drop beaters. I think if you want to run dorks, you need at least 4 because you want them in your opening hand. Dorks are good, and with bolt showing up less and less it may be a good time to go back, but I hate getting hands with discard and a mana dork and having to choose between the two.

Other than that, the only other suggestion I could make would be with your single Blooming Marsh. Similar to mana dorks, this is a card you want to be in your opening hand, try to run 3 or 4 of them, or none at all. Also consider adding another land as we want to hit turn four gifts every game on time. How has gearhulk been for you? There was some earlier discussion on it however I haven't been able to test it.

@ProtossPaul
Thanks Generally agreed on the dorks; while it was nice to have them at times, the 2 Caryatids often felt kinda pointless and misplaced. Don't agree with the fastlands however. Yes, you preferably want them early, but having 3 or 4 means you are also likely to draw them after already having 3 lands in play, which sucks. Not super hard, since we only have 5ish spells to cast past CMC 3, but still. I've played 1 or 2 fastlands quite a lot and have been fairly happy with them in lower numbers. 24th land might be necessary, yeah :/ Kinda dislike playing land-heavy decks without filtering, but I guess it gives me more space for manlands, which seems pretty nice in this shell.

Never had the Gearhulk out. I've played him in different decks tho, so I can say that the card itself is very powerful against "go-wide" strategies like Elves or Fish, and especially against artifact-heavy decks ala Affinity or Lantern. I think he'll perform pretty good in here as well

Changed some things (-1 TS, -2 Caryatid, -3 Knight, -1 Township, +1 Horizon Canopy, +1 Wildwood, +4 Flayer, +1 Souls) and went 3-1-1 at my LGS today. Matchups were: 2-0 vs Blue Moon, 2-1 vs Esper Control, 0-2 vs Dredge, 1-1-1 vs Esper Control, 2-1 vs UWR Control.

Just some points, too lazy for a proper summary right now: more early threats felt great, and Flayer helps with the grindy matchups by finding more threats, lands, whatever we need really. Loam/Crime package was pretty boss post-board against all those control decks. Pithing Needle single-handedly won me two games by naming Flooded Strand after checking with discard on t1 (and did the usual "shut your manland down, shut your relic down" stuff). SB needs work like usual, but I'm pretty confident that I want a second Pulse. Also probably some more grave hate (since no ooze main) to better deal with fast grave-based decks. The 24 lands felt... alright. Sat on 2 or 3 lands enough to consider cutting back down to 23, but for now I'll leave it like that. Canopy is a decent topdeck in the long game, and the 3rd Thoughtseize feels somewhat heavy on the life total.

Didn't really get to combo someone out sadly Also didn't get to test Gearhulk :/

@Cornax
Heyo, welcome to the deck
So one thing you could try is going the Bring to Light route, since you're already looking for a toolboxy style of deck. BtL can then give you easier access to your combo as well as to basically everything else (cept Tasigur and B-Skull). Would require 1 Stomping Ground and maybe 2 more Birds of Paradise, otherwise you're set already with the full set of Caryatids. Other than that I'd definately add an Eternal Witness for more recursion, as Witness/Noxious/X/Y always gives you X and Y over time. Snappy is another good 1-of for that reason. Jace VP is usually better as a 2- or 3-of, because he won't get things back immediately if you use him as part of the Gifts package.

Otherwise... I'd suggest a 3/2 split of IoK and Thoughtseize over the 4/1, to be able to snatch Tasigur, Cryptic Command, Karn, etc. (especially without Lili), maybe adding a third easy way of discarding your monsters (2nd Brutality perhaps) and maybe adding more Lingering Souls for consistency if you're not going with BtL. After that it'll be just a matter of finetuning the numbers and adapting to your meta.

Hi to everyone! I'm starting building bringing gifts(my previous deck was bant gifts), here my list. I need help with manabase, can u post budget and non budget variants of it? I already have 1 of different RAV lands, urborg, 1 rg, 1 uw, 1 gw fetchs, uw, ug, gw playsets of checklands. And maybe u have some suggestion about list?


Creatures
4 x Sylvan Caryatid
2 x Eternal Witness
1 x Thragtusk
1 x Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
1 x rhino
1 x baneslayer angel
1 x Huntmaster of the Fells
1 x grave titan/wurmcoil (want another target for rites, except iona)
Spells
4 x Gifts Ungiven
3 x Bring to Light
3 x Abrupt Decay
1 x Maelstrom Pulse
1 x Unburial Rites
3 x Inquisition of Kozilek
2 x Path to Exile
1 x Lingering Souls
1 x Damnation
1 x collective brutality
3 x serum vision
1 x Sever the Bloodline(wanna have removal that worse to bringing)

Side
1 x Raven's Crime
1 x Life from the Loam
1 x iona
2 x timely
2 x wrath
1 x blood baron
1 x witness
6- ???

@SryForMyEng
Hey there! Generally I'd say you want 1 fetchable land of each colour combination with the exception of red lands, where 1 should be enough (Stomping Ground). After that, look at how many cards of each colour you have and add more lands dependant on what colours you need most. You have a lot of green, so adding green utility lands or additional green shocklands might be nice.

I'd personally play Iona over something like Grave Titan or Wurmcoil. If you don't want Iona for whatever reasons, Empyrial Archangel is pretty big business as well.

Went 2-3 yesterday at the weekly Modern tournament. Matchups were: 2-0 vs Abzan Midrange (my Flayer hit before theirs could), 0-2 vs Grixis Delver (overrun by t2 flipped Delver g1; flooded out a bit too much g2, was close tho), 0-2 vs Skred Red (g1 I strip his hand into topdeck Chandra, Koth, Pia, Stormbreath, g2 I find no threats after he deals with Souls), 1-2 vs BUG Midrange (his Flayer hit before mine could) and 2-0 vs Esper Midrange/Tokens (g1 I was able to outvalue him with Gifts, g2 he mulls to 6, keeps a 1-lander and never finds a blue source).

All in all the deck still feels very powerful. Some inconsistencies in draw are to be expected with midrange type strategies, flooding/threat-screw happens. I feel like maybe I was supposed to take the Mind Stone over the Skred/Anger vs Skred Red (wanted to protect my Flayer in hand), but I'm not sure. Can't remember how much time he would've lost before hitting his required land drops. What do you guys think about the matchup?

Think match is ok, but I do not play against skred by 4c gifts. I'm dont know what biggest problem is? Blood moon, main relik, bridge, that can be destroyed by dicey, or that we can't do anything with pw, except attack or puls. Just mulligan into gifts and slam iona? Also ty for helping, in thursday will be my first games with this deck, and ill try to post smth about that =33

Been a little while since people posted in here I see... After I'm done with this weekend's GP, I'm thinking about trying out 4 color gifts. Anyone have any thoughts on the deck in the current meta?

Hi there,

I played 4C Gifts for 2 years to middling-to-good results. By no means an expert but I do thoroughly enjoy the deck. However, following my local GP (Vancouver), I decided to finally switch decks and try something new. I've been jamming Sun and Moon (RW Prison w/ Planeswalkers) and absolutely love it and actually think I've been doing better, but recently with a subtle change in the meta I think I really want to go back to my first favourite deck (4C Gifts).

I'm thinking this for a few reasons:
1. Hand disruption spells feel extremely good right now, particularly so with a lot of combo type decks (the dearth of coco decks, Storm, Ad Nauseum, and more). Also, mirrored disruption vs Shadow feels good.
2. Lots of removal and sweepers. At least, my lists have them. Feels like we've moved back to a wider creature meta with the coco decks, affinity, D&T etc. Also lots of removal for incidental creatures like in Gifts Storm.
3. Elesh Norn blanks a ton of these wider creature decks. Particularly Bant and Abzan Coco, with many lists not running Path MB. Also, Vizier/Druid has to happen during their turn, so the only thing a Coco response to reanimate during your main is the infinite life combo with Kitchen Finks. However, I've actually won games because my opponent couldn't beat Elesh Norn and I deck them because I had infinite recursion with Academy Ruins/Batterskull when they couldn't play anything again
4. Iona blanks the Shadows of the World, and many Coco variants. And is also frequently GG vs Burn and mono/mostly-monocoloured decks like 8-rack, etc.

Cons:
1. Eldrazi/RG Tron still feel like very tough matchups, and the Eldrazi version is fairly rampant. The 4C list I had ran the GQ/Life/Raven's Crime/Urborg package to strip lands, but otherwise you're hoping for enough hand disruption and for them to whiff hitting an early thought knot/reality smasher. In some ways, it's not TOO bad because you can pitch a Lingering Souls after Path-ing a Smasher, or similar plays... but it still feels tough.
2. Heavy control decks - Jeskai, Esper, Lantern, etc, which are heavy on Counterspells - feel miserable to play against. However, combination of Snapcaster recursion and heavy disruption from IoK, Thoughtseize, and a resolved Liliana make it feel navigable. Lantern feels extra miserable since the BGUW versions have to win with creatures.
3. Inconsistency. Most of the T1 and T2 decks right now have remarkable redundancy and consistency. Yes, we are technically a toolbox with the ability to not have to live off the top. But the nature of Gifts control/midrange decks is you have a lot of single/two-of cards and often run into problems if you can't find Gifts and don't draw the right opener/answers for your matchup.
4. Mana base is steep, and hurts you a lot. I enjoyed RW prison because Blood Moon feels very good in Modern in general, and it really hurts 4C Gifts. Also any kind of LD from Ponza, D&T, Eldrazi Tron, etc, can really hurt a four color mana base. There are a number of decks picking up Blood Moon strategies right now as well.

In sum, I think 4C Gifts could be well positioned if the meta stays in a predominantly wide-strategy state for a while. In particular, it feels great vs. Affinity and Bant/Abzan Counters Company, which are both top dogs at the moment, and it feels about even with Death's Shadow (Jund and Grixis) due to the disruption and removal suite.

Sidenote: The versions I've ran never had Grim Flayer. I played more control-style versions, though the one I ran at GP evolved into something closer to Abzan midrange with blue for Gifts, Serum Visions, and Snapcaster mage (and a Hurkyll's Recall in the side).

@SurfNSlam88

The current meta seems to be the following:

Grixis Shadow
Eldrazi Tron
Burn
Dredge
Counters Company
Titan Shift
UR Storm
Jund Shadow
Abzan
Living End
UW/Jeskai Control
Humans Counter
Affinity

4C Gifts have plenty of interaction in forms of hand disruption and cheap removal which will be favorable against grixis shadow, counters company, jund shadow, abzan, humans counter, affinity, and UR storm. Keep removing their threats and we can topdeck better, especially with the help of gifts which immediately kills go wide strategies with Elesh. Death's shadow decks have surged in popularity but I believe gifts deck has enough removal to deal with all their threats and gifting into 4 removal spells is probably best option since elesh and iona both feels mediocre, especially on a field with resolved fish, tasigur, or shadow. Both control and midrange version of gifts seem favorable against these matchups.

Eldrazi Tron packs the best of Eldrazi and Tron and it can be a very difficult to deal with the variety of threats. Even though it does not hit any of their relevant creatures, keep abrupts in order to snipe out chalices on one which destroys our deck (counters IoK, TS, Path, Push) or to kill a timely map or 0-stone with no mana open. Along with Tron, this is one of the toughest match-ups and be prepared to lose to their godly top decks. Long game is generally unfavored and midrange version of gifts would be better suited as goyf puts a fast clock on them before they can jam out threat after threat.

Burn will always be burn. We either die shocking ourselves with our 4 manabases or we get an Iona and win. Sideboard makes or breaks the game but I do not think we are the underdog in this matchup.

Living End/Dredge are still a force to be reckoned with and if we don't pack enough grave hate in our sideboard, we may be in for a quick loss. Nihil spellbombs and surgicals are your best SB options. Timely disruption through discard may buy you enough time to stabilize. Always remember to check dredge's graveyard for conflagrates that can bring your life total to 0 and reanimating Elesh Norn is your best bet at winning this blazingly fast matchup. When Living End plays their namesake card, you may gifts for Elesh Norn and Iona to reanimate both, and call black on Iona so that they cannot wipe the board anymore. Both matchup depends on whether or not your SB is prepared for them.

Titan shift is manageable through discard and a clock with goyf. Gifts into Iona calling green is GG. Control version of 4C Gifts will struggle to put meaningful pressure. Even to favorable in my experience with midrange gifts. Liliana is the best card in the match-up but beware of obstinate baloth from their SB.

UW/Jeskai Control is an attrition match. Lingering souls shines and so does Raven's Crime/Life from the Loam combo. It can be an easy match depending on how many relevant cards you can make them waste through discard or force them to play. Focus on wasting their counters on your creatures/discards so that you can resolve Liliana who can win you the game by herself or Gifts into Iona naming white for path or cryptic command if you know they do not have any more paths for her.

Overall, I think 4C gifts is well-positioned in the current meta in which removal spells and Lilianas are favored and our gifts plan of Elesh or Iona hoses every deck except Tron variants and shadow decks. The most important thing is that we know our match ups well enough to maneuver around their plays and prepare our SB for what we expect to see.

@Drayton120

Are you still on the same deck list? I have been thinking about buying into the deck. Would you recommend it?

I am still on the same decklist with but I went back to an eternal witness, removing gearhulk since its usefulness has died down in my meta.

I have been playing this deck since the original Innistrad with the printing of unburial rites when I first began playing magic. It began as a control deck similar to esper solar flare in standard with forbidden alchemy, sun titan, and phantasmal images but it changed over time into a proper modern deck as I accumulated more and more modern pieces. It has never been a Tier 1 deck, and I don't think it will ever be a Tier 1 deck, but I think we speak for everyone on this thread that we play this deck because we love the versatility, the complex decision making, and grindy value that this deck offers. I am not saying it is not a good deck; it definitely has game against most decks, even an unfair advantage against certain decks (Elesh and Iona can be backbreaking for certain decks) but gifts combo may not win on the spot, the 4 color manabase can be atrocious at times, and specific cards may be dead and rot in your hand the entirety of certain matchups,

If you acknowledge and accept this part of gifts, you have a whole paradise waiting for you to explore when it comes to deckbuilding. 4C gifts has no set decklist and you can tailor it to your own liking. Like control? Build gifts with serum visions, snapcasters, and esper charms. Like abzan midrange? Build gifts with goyfs, oozes, and flayers. Like creatures? Build gifts with full set of nobles, birds, and knights.

I have played all three versions of gifts over the years and I missed the creature pressure when playing pure control (and I hate losing to Tron, our worst enemy) and I missed the hand disruption and information when playing the dorks version. Abzan midrange fit my playstyle the most and I have been enjoying it ever since I picked up goyfs but the bottom line is that all three versions have merit and you should play what you find enjoyable. There is a reason this thread is still active because all the players who are passionate about gifts.

PS. This post ended up becoming a general introduction to gifts but if you have any specific questions about abzan midrage gifts style that I play, I would be happy to answer them for you!

Its strange someone tells this, when jeff did like 3-4 4-1s on MTGO and saying the deck is in a reasonable place spot and it gets so many free wins with the gifts package right now. Maybe it's because he is in the esper goryo's list, but u have like 4-5 vods of leagues with it on his channel, and he seems to do it pretty well against most decks, with chances of defeating everything at least.
Just notice he dropped every lotv from the deck because metagame is absolute garbage to play her. It's like one of the worst planeswalkers, at least on mtgo, right now.

Has anyone tested the Hoogland version of gifts? He said in twitter he was writing an article about the deck.

I don't have the Goryo's to playtest it, maybe I'll proxy his list up and play some games. I find it interesting (although not new, as Goryo's + Ghost Council is not new).