I'm playing Eggs this weekend because it was my fallback deck, but I think I'm going to put some work into this concept for the next PTQ (assuming I don't Q in 2 days).
I didn’t make many changes, as I’m fairly comfortable with this list. I basically only want Increasing Vengeance as a Gifts target, so I’m only using 1 now. Aside from that, there isn’t much to explain.
There were about maybe 50 Players there. 5 rounds of Swiss, then top 8.
Round 1 vs. Jund: Game 1 I mull down to 5 and get blown out by Inquisition into Liliana of the Veil. Game 2 I get a turn 2 Empty for 4 off a lucky hand and he can’t recover in time. Game 3 I go turn 2 Merchant Scroll for Gifts, turn 3 Manamorphose+Pyretic Ritual into Gifts for Increasing Vengeance, Past in Flames, Seething Song, and Desperate Ritual. He gives me Vengeance and Past in Flames. I untap on turn 4 and go: land, Pyretic Ritual, Increasing Vengeance copying Pyretic Ritual (RRRRRR in mana pool), Past in Flames, flashback Pyretic Ritual, flashback Pyretic Ritual, flashback Desperate Ritual, Seething Song, Flashback Increasing Vengeance on Seething Song to add 15 R to my mana pool. Flashback Manamorphose and Gifts for: Past in Flames, Grapeshot, and Remand. No matter what he gives me, he’s getting Grapeshotted for 24. Wow.
1-0
Round 2 vs. RUG Delver: Game 1 I get basically the same sequence as R1G3. Game 2 I get an early Gifts out, but have no mana, so I get: Timely, Slagstorm, Firespout, EE. He Gives me Timely and EE. I Timely, then wipe his board, then resolve a second Gifts through a Cryptic Command (Courtesy of Spell Pierce and a Seething Song off the top with Manamorphose in hand).
2-0
Round 3 vs... Something: This is the same opponent who knocked me out last tournament, with a deck that is, if anything, even cooler. Game 1 He mulligans and spends 4 turns durdling until I kill him with Grapeshot (basically the same sequence). Game 2 I found out what he was doing. Turn 1 Land, Faithless Looting, suspend Lotus Bloom, go. Ok, bad storm deck. Or maybe Ad Nauseam. Something like that. Turn 2 Gitaxian Probe and Pentad Prism for 2. Me: Merchant Scroll. Him: Turn 3, land, tap out+remove counters, “Magus of the Jar.” MAGUS OF THE JAR???!!! What is he playing over there? Well, I can’t counter it, so I just draw-go. Too late. Next turn Lotus Bloom comes in, he drops Seething Song and Desperate Ritual, cracks the Magus to draw 7, plays a few more rituals, flashbacks Faithless Looting, cantrips for a bit, plays double Seething Song, and casts... Time Reversal. I might have known. 5 minutes later, I’m Grapeshotted for 46. Game 3, the same thing happens, only his final draw7 draws me into my Trickbind and a bunch of Rituals and a Past in Flames, when I have a Gifts in my yard, so I counter his storm finish, then untap and explode, killing him.
Well, that was different.
3-0
Round 4 vs. U/R Storm: Game 1 he gets a giant turn 4 Empty the Warrens, which I respond to with a Gifts for: EE, Firespout, Slagstorm, Martial Coup. He doesn’t look happy. I nuke his board, then kill him a couple turns later with... a giant Empty the Warrens. I could have gone for Martial Coup, but I had total control of the game and it’s those simple bits of poetic justice that you treasure for the rest of your life. Game 2 I Merchant Scroll for Trickbind and that’s basically game.
4-0
Round 5 vs. Jund: Game 1 I get a turn 4 Martial Coup which turns out to end the game, though I probably could have stormed him out with Grapeshot if I had bothered to work it out. In hindsight, that was probably a play error. Game 2 we grind each other out until eventually I topdeck a Past in Flames with a stacked graveyard, a Seething Song in hand and 6 lands in play, and that’s game.
5-0
Quarters vs. Affinity:
Game 1: I get torn apart by a very fast draw involving Cranial Plating and approximately 1 bajillion Ornithopters. Did I mention he had a Steel Overseer?
Game 2: I again get absolutely crushed, dying of poison on turn 5.
Game 3: I go off on turn 4, while he can’t do a thing to stop me.
Game 4: I blow him out with a turn 2 Slagstorm, then kill him on turn 5.
Game 5: He has Ethersworn Canonist. I develop my board, eventually Merchant Scroll for Repeal and kill him.
Well, that’s the Quarterfinals. I know I didn’t say much, but all the games were just really one-sided.
Semis vs... Something Completely Different.
Game 1: I thought I knew what I was doing when he went turn 1 Urza’s Mine Expedition Map. Silly me. We sculpt our hands for a while, until he gets the tron and casts Gifts. I can’t counter it through the tron, so it resolves, and he gets... Snapcaster Mage, Noxious Revival, Hive Mind, Pact of Negation. Now THAT’S a Gifts Pile. I eventually give him Noxious Revival and Snapcaster, and he kills me 2 turns later.
Game 2: I go off turn 4, while he durdles with Thirst for Knowledge.
Game 3: I get a turn 4 Unburial Rites bringing back Iona. He never recovers.
Game 4: We sculpt our hands for a little while, then start leveling giant haymakers at each other. I counter his Gifts, he Commandeers mine. Yes. Commandeer. Impressive Sideboard tech there. Eventually, I Gifts out Jin-Gitaxias and Unburial Rites before he can get the mana to cast Hive Mind with 2 up for Spell Pierce, and I win. That was tough.
Finals vs. Mirror.
Game 1: I get stuck on 2 land while he goes off for Empty the Warrens on turn 4. Note: He used Faithless Looting.
Game 2: I scroll for Trickbind on turn 2, and that buys me the time I need to go off. He starts to laugh when I grab Increasing Vengeance with Gifts and tells me, “why didn’t I think of that?”
Game 3: I get a Spell Pierce on his Gifts, and win pretty soon after. Note: at this point, I don’t know what role to assume in the mirror, so I’m just going off my draw. In hindsight, I think the beatdown is more likely to win.
Game 4: He manages to destroy me with Merchant Scroll for Trickbind of his own. I eventually get a Vendilion Clique for it, but he goes off right after I do it, so it’s pointless.
Game 5: I know you may wish this were some climactic, epic battle, and so do I, but the sad truth is that I had to mull to 4 and he tore me a new one.
So there we have it. It was a very good tournament, though I wish my deck had been a bit kinder to me in the finals. In the end, I received 6 packs of Dark Ascension for my troubles, one of which contained, ironically enough, a foil Increasing Vengenace.
If I were to play the tournament again, this is what I would play:
Just a few sideboard tweaks, and with the addition of Increasing Vengeance Empty becomes absolutely useless. The Grapeshot-Remand kill is much stronger, especially with a singleton Pact of Negation to Gifts for.
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Now THAT'S a thought. My worry is that Increasing Vengeance as I'm using it now can basically serve the same purpose, but can you imagine a Gifts pile of Increasing Vengeance, Past in Flames, Seething Song, and Mana Seism with 5 lands in play? a single ritual or Manamorphose and you just explode.
Also: How much interest is there in a primer explaining card choices, matchups, play style, lists, etc.? If no one wants to read it, obviously I'm not about to write one, but the deck seems to be starting to catch on a little, so for any prospective players it might definitely help.
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You may also know me as the guy in the art of Dark Confidant. No, not Bob Maher, the OTHER one.
Now THAT'S a thought. My worry is that Increasing Vengeance as I'm using it now can basically serve the same purpose, but can you imagine a Gifts pile of Increasing Vengeance, Past in Flames, Seething Song, and Mana Seism with 5 lands in play? a single ritual or Manamorphose and you just explode.
Also: How much interest is there in a primer explaining card choices, matchups, play style, lists, etc.? If no one wants to read it, obviously I'm not about to write one, but the deck seems to be starting to catch on a little, so for any prospective players it might definitely help.
I would like a primer as this deck interest me. It is stupidly complicated which I love. It also seems to allow plenty of room for personalization which most decks these days just don't allow.
this deck is ready for developing competitive at the least. Just needs a primer and your own matchup data against tier 1. And I'll say that increasing vengeance is house in what little testing I've done since you mentioned it, but i'm not too keen on seism unless it's just a 1-of as a gifts target. Don't forget, if you get dusted, you just lost everything, and it's not going to help you set up like normal rituals. You just don't pass a turn after seism, and you won't be flashing it back any time soon. Say what you want, but that's a liability that strikes at the heart of this deck. If you have good results with like, a 1-of in place of 1 ritual for gifts piles, however, that would be welcome feedback =)
That's exactly how I feel about it. Mana Seism is a 1-of that aids the deck in building Gifts piles for copious amounts of mana. It's not even valuable more than once on the combo turn, so it's definitely just a singleton...but one which seriously kicks the deck up another notch.
Some other rituals I was researching: Inner Fire--seems overpriced, but it does make a bajilion mana if your hand is full. The kind of ritual with which you would open right after sticking a Gifts, when you have 7-9 cards in hand. The upside to this is that it's relevant again with Past in Flames after you flashback some cantrips. Ideally you would use this in conjunction with Ideas Unbound.
Infernal Plunge-It is viable with Misty Rainforest-->Dryad Arbor, with Khalni Garden, and/or with Pact of the Titan. I would probably just play one for Gifts Piles, but this is only if the deck seems to really want that other ritual, or if the plan is to somehow hybridize with Hive Mind.
Also: How much interest is there in a primer explaining card choices, matchups, play style, lists, etc.? If no one wants to read it, obviously I'm not about to write one, but the deck seems to be starting to catch on a little, so for any prospective players it might definitely help.
I have about a dozen pages of notes from testing games and from goldfishing this deck while watching basketball/live Starcraft 2 streams, so I could probably scrap together something. I don't know if it's such a good idea to advertise this deck and then go play another PTQ in 3 weeks, but I wouldn't mind helping with a guide if it's being written.
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My build eschews Merchant Scroll (in the maindeck) for a set of Peer Through Depths to function more at instant-speed, and something I've been doing more and more is setting myself up to splice a Ritual onto a Peer Through Depths and then Fork it a few times. I've been doing it practice playing around Extirpate on Gifts and/or Past in Flames, and it's pretty promising. If you ever get a chance to double-splice 2 Rits onto a PTD and Fork it, I don't know if it's even possible to fizzle. That's an 8-mana setup, but if you're doing that instead of casting a Past in Flames or Gifts, it's not a huge deal...especially considering that this is the kind of play you make in a longer game to combat serious disruption with banked-up spells and stored mana. It translates into 3/15 cards off the top into your hand, a seriously stacked lower section of your Library, and 13 red in the pool after that. I was pretty happy with this kind of potential from the deck's workhorse setup cards. I think this warrants a number of Ideas Unbound, but that should be a 1-of (at minimum) for Gifts Piles, anyways. I'm currently trying 3 of those to see how I feel about it being a bigger focus of the deck, and it isn't disappointing me thus far....
I'm looking into some other splice/arcane cards, and I wonder about Disrupting Shoal. I think it might be strong for the sideboard, especially since you can do things like play it for its pitch cost, splice a Desperate Rit, and cast Gifts on 3 lands while screwing up your opponent's turn. The other card that really caught my eye was Horobi's Whisper, which is completely viable due to fetchlands and shocklands...and it does kill Deceiver Exarch alongside most hate-bears and Tarmogoyf.
I've tried that kind of thing before, and it's fine in theory, but hasn't really worked in practice. The thing is, the deck really can't just be a goldfish deck. Because you have to cast first Gifts, then Past in Flames, there's a fundamental turn-4 limit (barring an absolute God Draw) on the deck, which makes it slower than the fast draws of comparable decks. Its greatest strength is the ability to interact effectively, and that build just takes up too many slots in the deck. You need to have some defensive gifts Piles available, and plenty of countermagic, and the combo. While I like Peer Through Depths, the deck fundamentally has to resolve a Gifts to win, pretty much. While that sounds hard, Merchant Scroll really makes it pretty easy, as your control spells are strong enough to buy time until you can draw any of 7 bombs (Gifts or Scroll for Gifts)
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I've actually had a lot of both goldfishes and actual games where I have won without resolving a Gifts Ungiven at all, or where I have casted one mid-combo after resolving a Past in Flames. This is probably working better for me because, while I don't play 7 Gifts Ungivens, I am overall playing more digging than you. I use a set of Halimar Depths in my manabase (alongside fetches and Peer Through Depths), I use more cantrips in additional Remands and Repeal, and I conserve space by playing the backup win conditions and board sweepers in my sideboard. I also took all of the Pyretic Rituals out of the deck because that card is just terrible, so that frees up space.
I have that critical mass of digging that replaces your extra copies of Gifts, and the critical mass is capable of winning without Gifts if the situation demands it. This is like how Doomsday decks are usually fully capable of winning without their namesake card; you can just draw what you would tutor for and win that way with an Ill-Gotten Gains or big Meditate with that deck.
I might as well post my current list here; a picture is worth a thousand words:
Fundamentally, my version is built upon the idea that you hold mana open like a permission deck, on most turns before you combo. On most every turn, you're going to Remand something, Repeal something, or play some other kind of valuable instant that interacts. If you don't do that, then you have the ability to be productive EoT; hence the storage lands and Peer Through Depths alongside the Gifts Ungivens. I'm not playing to win as fast as possible, just to win the race by a turn or two. With storage lands, you can sit through 3-4 strong pieces of disruption and generate a bunch of extra mana while you wait.
If you look at things a little differently, you don't actually need Gifts in order to win games or even in order to set up the combo turn. If your combo turn involves a Past in Flames and resolving 3-4 Peer Through Depths, you'll be hard-pressed to lose.
I think the fundamental difference here is how dedicated the deck is to Gifts. My deck is very dedicated to it, and survives because it's incredibly good at finding it. Yours is more a kind of Storm Combo deck with enough control elements to not just be a bad combo deck and a major bonus in Gifts. That's why Pyretic Ritual sucks for you: You don't really need to cast a turn-3 Gifts.
I think what the best option would be is a mixture of them: I never thought of Storage Lands, and there probably should be more instant-speed answers in the deck. But I'm very far from sold on the arcane engine.
My plan at this point is to write a primer on the deck. I'm primarily going to talk about my build of it, but I'm sure your build is just as viable a choice for any prospective users, so if you're prepared to talk about your build, PM me with what you want to write and I'll add it in as another part of the primer.
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You may also know me as the guy in the art of Dark Confidant. No, not Bob Maher, the OTHER one.
I absolutely agree with everything you have said; I think it's all accurate. I want to add that I am less dedicated to Gifts in this deck because of a matter of playstyle. I always try to play strategy games in a very adaptive manner, and this definitely extends to playing combo. If that means McGuyvering my way through a combo turn, I enjoy the puzzle represented therein. I'm not seeking to build the deck around Desperate Ritual splicing onto a bunch of Arcane spells, but it's nice to know that all of these support cards (which I would be playing anyways) can be used in tough situations to pick up the slack. For those games when your opponent has gone overboard on the grave hate or when your Gifts have all been Extirpated, that's when it's useful to be able to go Song, filter into double blue, Ideas+Splice and Increasing Vengeance. That takes 5 cards and 4 lands, which isn't too much of a tall order so long as you're sculpting, and it nets 6 fresh cards and 6 red in the pool with the Rit still in hand and an IV in the yard. Again, I wouldn't build the entire deck around splicing and Forks, but I'm not going to complain about the versatility it presents.
You definitely hit the nail on the head about Pyretic Ritual: it literally was cut when I decided that I didn't want (or need, really) to lean on casting a turn 3 Gifts, and it didn't pull its weight much elsewhere. When I figured out that Mana Seism exists, I left one Pyretic Ritual in the deck for about a day before cutting it--I literally never wanted to put it in a Gifts pile at that point.
I'm glad that your build and your philosophy are both on the other end of the solar system from mine, because it gives both of us a completely different perspective with which to work. I'm not sure if both of our builds will ever meet in some kind of complete median, but the mutual influence has so far been very positive from my end.
I will think about what I want to write for this primer.
Go to my blog, Musings of the False God, for in-depth guides playing the game, from the building blocks of deck design to deceiving your opponent through clever game play!
You may also know me as the guy in the art of Dark Confidant. No, not Bob Maher, the OTHER one.
Oh yeah. Oops. What post should have been: Volcanic Fallout. I think many of the deck's problems (having to tap out, trouble beating fast Delver decks) just completely evaporated. This card has to be included.
Also, I just found this in the gp coverage. It's one of the undefeated decklists from day 1:
Go to my blog, Musings of the False God, for in-depth guides playing the game, from the building blocks of deck design to deceiving your opponent through clever game play!
You may also know me as the guy in the art of Dark Confidant. No, not Bob Maher, the OTHER one.
I saw that list. It reminds me a lot of the ones floating around on MTGO, especially because of the Leaks in the Splinter sideboard. I don't particularly care for the Serum Visions in the deck (If anything, they should be Sleight of Hands, due to all the shuffle effects--or a split because it's relevant for Gifts and there is no Ascension in this build), but it was obviously an effective list if it day 2ed a GP with 700+ players.
Oh yeah. Oops. What post should have been: Volcanic Fallout. I think many of the deck's problems (having to tap out, trouble beating fast Delver decks) just completely evaporated. This card has to be included.
Yep. I already play one in the board, and it deserves to be a bigger part of the deck. The big question is: How many do we run? And do we still run a split between this and other sweepers? Right now, I'm leaning towards 3, with at least one in the main.
This is to anyone else who has been testing with this deck: Do you have any game logs with your versions? If so, send them to me. I'm having a bit of trouble with matchups (not enough versus URzatron, Melira Pod, and Mono-U fae especially).
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You may also know me as the guy in the art of Dark Confidant. No, not Bob Maher, the OTHER one.
If you want, I can test with you on MWS. I have no problem playing netdecks to run you through the gauntlet, and I know how to play all the decks at least decently.
I can understand issues with Tron and Fae, but what's happening that makes Melira Pod difficult? Or are you just trying to get a bigger sample size against that deck?
I meant I just don't have enough logged matches. I'm already testing with the rest of my team. There's a lot of fairly large-money tournaments in this area, so competition is suprisingly high. I just want the primer up as fast as possible, so if you have any insights, please share them.
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You may also know me as the guy in the art of Dark Confidant. No, not Bob Maher, the OTHER one.
Just an update: I'm now done with the card choices section of the primer, and am partway through matchups. I'll probably have the primer up by tomorrow at the latest.
One thing, though: I've found I almost never want to side in Vendilion Clique, and I want more cards for the Jund, Tron, and Monoo-U fae matchups. Any ideas?
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You may also know me as the guy in the art of Dark Confidant. No, not Bob Maher, the OTHER one.
The primer is up, ladies and gentlemen! Anyone posting a good record with a different list can PM me if they want the list included in the primer. I'll also be adding on matchups, new lists, new card choices, and updates as I develop them, and possibly a few sample games with a detailed play-by-play, to help people get a feel for the deck.
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You may also know me as the guy in the art of Dark Confidant. No, not Bob Maher, the OTHER one.
Perhaps this thread belongs up in the UR Storm section? Hope you don't mind if I ask theCardfather to move it up.
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In case I didn't tell you, I don't care about your opinion I just want your facts. And not the facts that make you seem smart. I want the ones that are actual facts.
I've been thinking about that. My problem there is that it could debatedly belong in the Gifts section. I honestly don't know where it belongs, but I agree that it doesn't belong in Deck Creation anymore. I'm fine with moving it, I'm just not quite sure where.
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You may also know me as the guy in the art of Dark Confidant. No, not Bob Maher, the OTHER one.
One thing, though: I've found I almost never want to side in Vendilion Clique, and I want more cards for the Jund, Tron, and Monoo-U fae matchups. Any ideas?
I just don't think it's worth the sideboard space. I have tried a lot of transformative and semi-transformative beatdown plans with various Storm combo decks over the years, and very few of them actually work out. The problem is that there isn't really support for a 3/1 flier built into the maindeck of this archetype. So, if you want it to work, you need to either change the maindeck (making it less consistent/less powerful) or you need to make the Vendilion Clique SB plan a full-on transformation and really ignore the potential to go off in games when you run the Cliques. That just isn't worth it, to me.
The best experiences I have had with man-plans for Storm have been when the creature supports the combo and the combo supports the creature, like using a Palinchron in High Tide or using a Dark Confidant in Spanish Inquisition. Bob is great because it draws you cards, which applies the best kind of pressure--card advantage. They have to remove it quickly, or you're going to just win the game. Bob is also good in those decks because they already run a low number of high CMC cards due to Ad Nauseam, and/or they're playing things like Ponder/Sensei's Divining Top to manipulate their topdecks anyways. They can manage his downside. That's kind of what Pyromancer Ascension does, but I don't like running Ascension in this deck (after testing it) because it requires too much support from low-quality 1-mana cantrips which I would rather nix in favor of singletons and interactive cards.
Palinchron was good for me in Solidarity because it was an answer to Show and Tell; I would play Tides and float mana in response, they would put an Emrakul on the table, and I would put Palinchron into play and untap my mana, then combo off hard. It also gave me a way to go off on my turn, using a Tide or two and a bunch of lands, so I could blow out players by EoT fake comboing and then bounce my combo pieces with Remands and go off the next turn while they were tapped out/out of resources. And Palinchron was just a good finisher that let me play like a mono-blue control deck, since I could roll it out there, still have mana open, and it would lock down board positions because it's as big as most Goyfs and it's bigger than Vendilion Cliques. It even protected itself from most removal and pitched to Force. Palinchron did things that the deck wanted to do, and it did things the deck otherwise couldn't do. That's what I want out of sideboard cards.
Maybe there isn't a man-plan as good as Palinchron in High Tide decks, but I would try to find one that has synergy with the deck. Unburial Rites and Iona is one way to go down this path, but I think it's half-baked. It relies on the Gifts engine, and I think you shouldn't need a man-plan if you're able to get the Gifts engine going...that's part of why you're transforming, right? It's also graveyard-dependant. If you're able to stick Gifts and resolve cards from your graveyard, I'm guessing the problem is either Chalice of the Void or Rule of Law...in which case you can save a lot of trouble by just boarding Ancient Grudge/Ray of Revelation and throwing the appropriate one in the Gifts pile. I would rather do that and Gifts for 4 cards than Gifts for 2 cards and -1 card advantage myself, in case the Iona plan doesn't pan out. Though, I guess you could put a Faithless Looting into that pile and that would basically solve things.... I don't know. I just think a better man-plan would be something like Teferi, which is like a Silence effect that also can beat down or come into play to block stuff conveniently (like Canonists and Meddling Mages). It doesn't require you to stick a Gifts, either. That's the kind of creature I like to board in--it's good enough at beating down to win the game on its own if you want to play control, but it will also do something to seriously support your combo and it doesn't take up a lot of space, and it isn't affected by the typical hate cards that make your deck cringe.
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I was going to PM the following to LegitKarona, but I think I'll just post this in the thread for everyone to see.
I really like how you put together the primer, especially where you talk about playing the deck to your strengths. I don't know if there's anything I would even want to add to that--well done.
As far as what I can add to your primer:
-For card choices, I think you should include Ideas Unbound. When you are comboing off, it's a straight up 3-for-1 with basically no downside. It doesn't care about the graveyard or any other stipulations; it simply turns itself into 3 fresh cards off the top. For the purpose of a Gifts storm deck, this is perfect. It's another bomb you can put into piles, and it has insane synergy with both Desperate Ritual and Increasing Vengeance. God forbid you splice a Ritual on it and Fork it a couple of times--which is not out of the question. So, for me, this card is worth one slot as the cheap bomb draw spell you can tutor and then flashback with PIF and Fork.
As a set-up card, IU isn't exactly the premium tool--but it is a very good card for post-board situations because it can find land drops (unlike Merchant Scroll and Peer Through Depths), and it generally digs very hard to find solutions to hate cards. It's not bad to play one glorified Careful Study before the combo turn and pitch the 3 weakest cards in hand, so I think it's fine to have one of these in place of some other cantrip as part of the draw suite. It's also nice to be able to Gifts for a bunch of different dig spells and throw this one in there.
-As far as the Splice mechanic is concerned, I think it's probably the strongest way to play through some of the toughest hate in the form of Extirpate on Gifts or Extirpate on Past in Flames. If someone nicks Grapeshot or some other win condition with Extirpate, it's not a huge deal because you can play some other win condition at the end of the combo turn. However, if a primary engine piece is taken away, going off is a much bigger challenge. You can't always stop this--sometimes you just get Thoughtseize-->Extirpated without a chance to interact. So the best way to handle this, in my opinion, is to have alternate ways to chain together draw spells and rituals to combo off.
Desperate Ritual is a pretty obvious 4-of in each build because you need a bunch of rituals, and you can only play 4 Seething Songs in the deck. So it's already in the deck--you don't have to make any changes to include the best splice card printed. And, for me, I was already playing a set of Peer Through Depths as my cheap dig spell because it's an instant and it provides the deck with strong consistency. Tack on one or more Ideas Unbound, and you have 8 arcane cards that you can splice onto.
If you splice a card onto an arcane spell, it literally adds the spliced card's text onto the arcane spell. So if you have a Peer Through Depths with a Desperate Ritual spliced onto it, it reads:
Look at the top five cards of your library. You may reveal an instant or sorcery card from among them and put it into your hand. Put the rest on the bottom of your library in any order. Add {R}{R}{R} to your mana pool.
If you copy the spell, it copies all of it--including the part where it generates 3 red mana. So casting Increasing Vengeance on Peer Through Depths will not only Impulse for 5, but it will also net you +1 red mana. If you flashback the Vengeance, you will trade either 5 or 2 mana (depending on Past in Flames being part of the equation) for 6 red and a double Impulse to dig you 2/10 of the top of your deck. Even if you hardcast the flashback of IV to Fork the spliced Peer, it gives you a net of +1 mana and +2 cards, which is a profit on both ends of the spectrum. And usually, if you're digging through the top 15 cards of your library and taking 3 cards, you're going to find just about anything in your deck you need.
This is even better when you splice a ritual onto Ideas Unbound, or splice 2 rituals onto anything. If you double-splice onto an Ideas Unbound and cast+flashback Ideas Unbound, you're going to draw 12 cards and turn an initial 2UURRRR(8 mana) into 19 Red, assuming you pay 5 for the flashback. If you draw another fork while the original Ideas is on the stack, you can Fork it again! It's ridiculous. You can even just leave it on the stack, the cast a Gifts in response, throwing an Increasing Vengeance into the pile. What does your opponent do? The game is over.
It's not like you need to bend over backwards to put these cards in the deck. You're playing 4 DesRits anyways. Peer Through Depths is a very legitimate setup card without even having the Arcane quality. And Ideas Unbound should be a 1-of in the deck, anyways, for the sake of Giftsing for it on combo turns to produce a lot of gas. I definitely think you it's fine to win with just Gifts and Past in Flames, but it can't hurt to have another way of not only comboing off, but going off very hard. That answers potential problems with Extirpate, and gives the deck faster wins when it can't stick a Gifts early (or can't find a Gifts before going off).
____
I am going through the grueling process of evaluating all my options for disruption and sideboard plans, so I've stripped the deck down to its core and gone from there. I may also put some extra dig spells (testing Merchant Scroll heavily again, as well as potentially Mystical Teachings) and another win condition into the maindeck. At this point, I have to do this because I always build my maindeck with sideboard plans in mind.
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I'm playing Eggs this weekend because it was my fallback deck, but I think I'm going to put some work into this concept for the next PTQ (assuming I don't Q in 2 days).
http://officeofstrategicinfluence.com/spam/ <---- kills spam, fyi.
1 Island
2 Arid Mesa
4 Cascade Bluffs
1 Hallowed Fountain
2 Misty Rainforest
2 Reflecting Pool
1 Sacred Foundry
4 Scalding Tarn
3 Steam Vents
4 Desperate Ritual
3 Pyretic Ritual
4 Seething Song
4 Manamorphose
4 Merchant Scroll
3 Gifts Ungiven
2 Past in Flames
1 Increasing Vengeance
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Firespout
1 Slagstorm
1 Timely Reinforcements
1 Repeal
2 Remand
3 Spell Pierce
3 Spell Snare
1 Martial Coup
1 Grapeshot
1 Empty the Warrens
1 Unburial Rites
1 Iona, Shield of Emeria
1 Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur
3 Combust
1 Gigadrowse
1 Hurkyl’s Recall
1 Remand
1 Timely Reinforcements
1 Trickbind
3 Vendilion Clique
1 Wipe Away
I didn’t make many changes, as I’m fairly comfortable with this list. I basically only want Increasing Vengeance as a Gifts target, so I’m only using 1 now. Aside from that, there isn’t much to explain.
There were about maybe 50 Players there. 5 rounds of Swiss, then top 8.
Round 1 vs. Jund: Game 1 I mull down to 5 and get blown out by Inquisition into Liliana of the Veil. Game 2 I get a turn 2 Empty for 4 off a lucky hand and he can’t recover in time. Game 3 I go turn 2 Merchant Scroll for Gifts, turn 3 Manamorphose+Pyretic Ritual into Gifts for Increasing Vengeance, Past in Flames, Seething Song, and Desperate Ritual. He gives me Vengeance and Past in Flames. I untap on turn 4 and go: land, Pyretic Ritual, Increasing Vengeance copying Pyretic Ritual (RRRRRR in mana pool), Past in Flames, flashback Pyretic Ritual, flashback Pyretic Ritual, flashback Desperate Ritual, Seething Song, Flashback Increasing Vengeance on Seething Song to add 15 R to my mana pool. Flashback Manamorphose and Gifts for: Past in Flames, Grapeshot, and Remand. No matter what he gives me, he’s getting Grapeshotted for 24. Wow.
1-0
Round 2 vs. RUG Delver: Game 1 I get basically the same sequence as R1G3. Game 2 I get an early Gifts out, but have no mana, so I get: Timely, Slagstorm, Firespout, EE. He Gives me Timely and EE. I Timely, then wipe his board, then resolve a second Gifts through a Cryptic Command (Courtesy of Spell Pierce and a Seething Song off the top with Manamorphose in hand).
2-0
Round 3 vs... Something: This is the same opponent who knocked me out last tournament, with a deck that is, if anything, even cooler. Game 1 He mulligans and spends 4 turns durdling until I kill him with Grapeshot (basically the same sequence). Game 2 I found out what he was doing. Turn 1 Land, Faithless Looting, suspend Lotus Bloom, go. Ok, bad storm deck. Or maybe Ad Nauseam. Something like that. Turn 2 Gitaxian Probe and Pentad Prism for 2. Me: Merchant Scroll. Him: Turn 3, land, tap out+remove counters, “Magus of the Jar.” MAGUS OF THE JAR???!!! What is he playing over there? Well, I can’t counter it, so I just draw-go. Too late. Next turn Lotus Bloom comes in, he drops Seething Song and Desperate Ritual, cracks the Magus to draw 7, plays a few more rituals, flashbacks Faithless Looting, cantrips for a bit, plays double Seething Song, and casts... Time Reversal. I might have known. 5 minutes later, I’m Grapeshotted for 46. Game 3, the same thing happens, only his final draw7 draws me into my Trickbind and a bunch of Rituals and a Past in Flames, when I have a Gifts in my yard, so I counter his storm finish, then untap and explode, killing him.
Well, that was different.
3-0
Round 4 vs. U/R Storm: Game 1 he gets a giant turn 4 Empty the Warrens, which I respond to with a Gifts for: EE, Firespout, Slagstorm, Martial Coup. He doesn’t look happy. I nuke his board, then kill him a couple turns later with... a giant Empty the Warrens. I could have gone for Martial Coup, but I had total control of the game and it’s those simple bits of poetic justice that you treasure for the rest of your life. Game 2 I Merchant Scroll for Trickbind and that’s basically game.
4-0
Round 5 vs. Jund: Game 1 I get a turn 4 Martial Coup which turns out to end the game, though I probably could have stormed him out with Grapeshot if I had bothered to work it out. In hindsight, that was probably a play error. Game 2 we grind each other out until eventually I topdeck a Past in Flames with a stacked graveyard, a Seething Song in hand and 6 lands in play, and that’s game.
5-0
Quarters vs. Affinity:
Game 1: I get torn apart by a very fast draw involving Cranial Plating and approximately 1 bajillion Ornithopters. Did I mention he had a Steel Overseer?
Game 2: I again get absolutely crushed, dying of poison on turn 5.
Game 3: I go off on turn 4, while he can’t do a thing to stop me.
Game 4: I blow him out with a turn 2 Slagstorm, then kill him on turn 5.
Game 5: He has Ethersworn Canonist. I develop my board, eventually Merchant Scroll for Repeal and kill him.
Well, that’s the Quarterfinals. I know I didn’t say much, but all the games were just really one-sided.
Semis vs... Something Completely Different.
Game 1: I thought I knew what I was doing when he went turn 1 Urza’s Mine Expedition Map. Silly me. We sculpt our hands for a while, until he gets the tron and casts Gifts. I can’t counter it through the tron, so it resolves, and he gets... Snapcaster Mage, Noxious Revival, Hive Mind, Pact of Negation. Now THAT’S a Gifts Pile. I eventually give him Noxious Revival and Snapcaster, and he kills me 2 turns later.
Game 2: I go off turn 4, while he durdles with Thirst for Knowledge.
Game 3: I get a turn 4 Unburial Rites bringing back Iona. He never recovers.
Game 4: We sculpt our hands for a little while, then start leveling giant haymakers at each other. I counter his Gifts, he Commandeers mine. Yes. Commandeer. Impressive Sideboard tech there. Eventually, I Gifts out Jin-Gitaxias and Unburial Rites before he can get the mana to cast Hive Mind with 2 up for Spell Pierce, and I win. That was tough.
Finals vs. Mirror.
Game 1: I get stuck on 2 land while he goes off for Empty the Warrens on turn 4. Note: He used Faithless Looting.
Game 2: I scroll for Trickbind on turn 2, and that buys me the time I need to go off. He starts to laugh when I grab Increasing Vengeance with Gifts and tells me, “why didn’t I think of that?”
Game 3: I get a Spell Pierce on his Gifts, and win pretty soon after. Note: at this point, I don’t know what role to assume in the mirror, so I’m just going off my draw. In hindsight, I think the beatdown is more likely to win.
Game 4: He manages to destroy me with Merchant Scroll for Trickbind of his own. I eventually get a Vendilion Clique for it, but he goes off right after I do it, so it’s pointless.
Game 5: I know you may wish this were some climactic, epic battle, and so do I, but the sad truth is that I had to mull to 4 and he tore me a new one.
So there we have it. It was a very good tournament, though I wish my deck had been a bit kinder to me in the finals. In the end, I received 6 packs of Dark Ascension for my troubles, one of which contained, ironically enough, a foil Increasing Vengenace.
If I were to play the tournament again, this is what I would play:
1 Island
2 Arid Mesa
4 Cascade Bluffs
1 Hallowed Fountain
2 Misty Rainforest
2 Reflecting Pool
1 Sacred Foundry
4 Scalding Tarn
3 Steam Vents
4 Desperate Ritual
3 Pyretic Ritual
4 Seething Song
4 Manamorphose
4 Merchant Scroll
3 Gifts Ungiven
2 Past in Flames
1 Increasing Vengeance
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Firespout
1 Slagstorm
1 Timely Reinforcements
1 Repeal
1 Pact of Negation
1 Remand
3 Spell Pierce
3 Spell Snare
1 Martial Coup
1 Grapeshot
1 Unburial Rites
1 Iona, Shield of Emeria
1 Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur
3 Combust
1 Gigadrowse
1 Hurkyl’s Recall
1 Timely Reinforcements
1 Trickbind
4 Vendilion Clique
1 Wipe Away
Just a few sideboard tweaks, and with the addition of Increasing Vengeance Empty becomes absolutely useless. The Grapeshot-Remand kill is much stronger, especially with a singleton Pact of Negation to Gifts for.
You may also know me as the guy in the art of Dark Confidant. No, not Bob Maher, the OTHER one.
Also: How much interest is there in a primer explaining card choices, matchups, play style, lists, etc.? If no one wants to read it, obviously I'm not about to write one, but the deck seems to be starting to catch on a little, so for any prospective players it might definitely help.
You may also know me as the guy in the art of Dark Confidant. No, not Bob Maher, the OTHER one.
I would like a primer as this deck interest me. It is stupidly complicated which I love. It also seems to allow plenty of room for personalization which most decks these days just don't allow.
http://officeofstrategicinfluence.com/spam/ <---- kills spam, fyi.
That's exactly how I feel about it. Mana Seism is a 1-of that aids the deck in building Gifts piles for copious amounts of mana. It's not even valuable more than once on the combo turn, so it's definitely just a singleton...but one which seriously kicks the deck up another notch.
Some other rituals I was researching:
Inner Fire--seems overpriced, but it does make a bajilion mana if your hand is full. The kind of ritual with which you would open right after sticking a Gifts, when you have 7-9 cards in hand. The upside to this is that it's relevant again with Past in Flames after you flashback some cantrips. Ideally you would use this in conjunction with Ideas Unbound.
Infernal Plunge-It is viable with Misty Rainforest-->Dryad Arbor, with Khalni Garden, and/or with Pact of the Titan. I would probably just play one for Gifts Piles, but this is only if the deck seems to really want that other ritual, or if the plan is to somehow hybridize with Hive Mind.
I have about a dozen pages of notes from testing games and from goldfishing this deck while watching basketball/live Starcraft 2 streams, so I could probably scrap together something. I don't know if it's such a good idea to advertise this deck and then go play another PTQ in 3 weeks, but I wouldn't mind helping with a guide if it's being written.
________
My build eschews Merchant Scroll (in the maindeck) for a set of Peer Through Depths to function more at instant-speed, and something I've been doing more and more is setting myself up to splice a Ritual onto a Peer Through Depths and then Fork it a few times. I've been doing it practice playing around Extirpate on Gifts and/or Past in Flames, and it's pretty promising. If you ever get a chance to double-splice 2 Rits onto a PTD and Fork it, I don't know if it's even possible to fizzle. That's an 8-mana setup, but if you're doing that instead of casting a Past in Flames or Gifts, it's not a huge deal...especially considering that this is the kind of play you make in a longer game to combat serious disruption with banked-up spells and stored mana. It translates into 3/15 cards off the top into your hand, a seriously stacked lower section of your Library, and 13 red in the pool after that. I was pretty happy with this kind of potential from the deck's workhorse setup cards. I think this warrants a number of Ideas Unbound, but that should be a 1-of (at minimum) for Gifts Piles, anyways. I'm currently trying 3 of those to see how I feel about it being a bigger focus of the deck, and it isn't disappointing me thus far....
I'm looking into some other splice/arcane cards, and I wonder about Disrupting Shoal. I think it might be strong for the sideboard, especially since you can do things like play it for its pitch cost, splice a Desperate Rit, and cast Gifts on 3 lands while screwing up your opponent's turn. The other card that really caught my eye was Horobi's Whisper, which is completely viable due to fetchlands and shocklands...and it does kill Deceiver Exarch alongside most hate-bears and Tarmogoyf.
You may also know me as the guy in the art of Dark Confidant. No, not Bob Maher, the OTHER one.
I have that critical mass of digging that replaces your extra copies of Gifts, and the critical mass is capable of winning without Gifts if the situation demands it. This is like how Doomsday decks are usually fully capable of winning without their namesake card; you can just draw what you would tutor for and win that way with an Ill-Gotten Gains or big Meditate with that deck.
I might as well post my current list here; a picture is worth a thousand words:
4 Halimar Depths
4 Cascade Bluffs
4 Scalding Tarn
1 Arid Mesa
2 Steam Vents
1 Island
1 Snow-Covered Island
1 Mountain
1 Snow-Covered Mountain
1 Calciform Pools
1 Dreadship Reef
1 Fungal Reaches
Rituals (13):
4 Desperate Ritual
4 Seething Song
4 Manamorphose
1 Mana Seism
4 Peer Through Depths
1 Ideas Unbound (I have been trying 2 more of these in place of various other cards)
2 Increasing Vengeance
4 Gifts Ungiven
2 Past in Flames
1 Noxious Revival
Offense/Defense (10):
1 Spell Pierce
1 Dispel
4 Remand
1 Gigadrowse
2 Repeal
1 Engineered Explosives
Win (1):
1 Grapeshot
1 Molten Slagheap
1 Echoing Truth
3 Combust
1 Pyroclasm
1 Slagstorm
1 Volcanic Fallout
1 Electrolyze
1 Shattering Spree
1 Hurkyl's Recall
1 Tormod's Crypt
1 Banefire
1 Empty the Warrens
1 Storm Entity
Fundamentally, my version is built upon the idea that you hold mana open like a permission deck, on most turns before you combo. On most every turn, you're going to Remand something, Repeal something, or play some other kind of valuable instant that interacts. If you don't do that, then you have the ability to be productive EoT; hence the storage lands and Peer Through Depths alongside the Gifts Ungivens. I'm not playing to win as fast as possible, just to win the race by a turn or two. With storage lands, you can sit through 3-4 strong pieces of disruption and generate a bunch of extra mana while you wait.
If you look at things a little differently, you don't actually need Gifts in order to win games or even in order to set up the combo turn. If your combo turn involves a Past in Flames and resolving 3-4 Peer Through Depths, you'll be hard-pressed to lose.
I think what the best option would be is a mixture of them: I never thought of Storage Lands, and there probably should be more instant-speed answers in the deck. But I'm very far from sold on the arcane engine.
My plan at this point is to write a primer on the deck. I'm primarily going to talk about my build of it, but I'm sure your build is just as viable a choice for any prospective users, so if you're prepared to talk about your build, PM me with what you want to write and I'll add it in as another part of the primer.
You may also know me as the guy in the art of Dark Confidant. No, not Bob Maher, the OTHER one.
You definitely hit the nail on the head about Pyretic Ritual: it literally was cut when I decided that I didn't want (or need, really) to lean on casting a turn 3 Gifts, and it didn't pull its weight much elsewhere. When I figured out that Mana Seism exists, I left one Pyretic Ritual in the deck for about a day before cutting it--I literally never wanted to put it in a Gifts pile at that point.
I'm glad that your build and your philosophy are both on the other end of the solar system from mine, because it gives both of us a completely different perspective with which to work. I'm not sure if both of our builds will ever meet in some kind of complete median, but the mutual influence has so far been very positive from my end.
I will think about what I want to write for this primer.
You may also know me as the guy in the art of Dark Confidant. No, not Bob Maher, the OTHER one.
Huh? Look like you might have started a post and then accidentally posted it incomplete.
Volcanic Fallout. I think many of the deck's problems (having to tap out, trouble beating fast Delver decks) just completely evaporated. This card has to be included.
Also, I just found this in the gp coverage. It's one of the undefeated decklists from day 1:
3 Island
2 Misty Rainforest
2 Mountain
4 Scalding Tarn
4 Shivan Reef
1 Steam Vents
4 Sulfur Falls
4 Desperate Ritual
3 Empty the Warrens
4 Gifts Ungiven
4 Gitaxian Probe
1 Grapeshot
4 Manamorphose
1 Noxious Revival
2 Past in Flames
3 Pyretic Ritual
4 Remand
4 Seething Song
4 Serum Visions
4 Deceiver Exarch
1 Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
3 Mana Leak
3 Pestermite
4 Splinter Twin
Look familiar?
You may also know me as the guy in the art of Dark Confidant. No, not Bob Maher, the OTHER one.
Yep. I already play one in the board, and it deserves to be a bigger part of the deck. The big question is: How many do we run? And do we still run a split between this and other sweepers? Right now, I'm leaning towards 3, with at least one in the main.
You may also know me as the guy in the art of Dark Confidant. No, not Bob Maher, the OTHER one.
I can understand issues with Tron and Fae, but what's happening that makes Melira Pod difficult? Or are you just trying to get a bigger sample size against that deck?
You may also know me as the guy in the art of Dark Confidant. No, not Bob Maher, the OTHER one.
One thing, though: I've found I almost never want to side in Vendilion Clique, and I want more cards for the Jund, Tron, and Monoo-U fae matchups. Any ideas?
You may also know me as the guy in the art of Dark Confidant. No, not Bob Maher, the OTHER one.
You may also know me as the guy in the art of Dark Confidant. No, not Bob Maher, the OTHER one.
Cockatrice username: Blackcat77
You may also know me as the guy in the art of Dark Confidant. No, not Bob Maher, the OTHER one.
I just don't think it's worth the sideboard space. I have tried a lot of transformative and semi-transformative beatdown plans with various Storm combo decks over the years, and very few of them actually work out. The problem is that there isn't really support for a 3/1 flier built into the maindeck of this archetype. So, if you want it to work, you need to either change the maindeck (making it less consistent/less powerful) or you need to make the Vendilion Clique SB plan a full-on transformation and really ignore the potential to go off in games when you run the Cliques. That just isn't worth it, to me.
The best experiences I have had with man-plans for Storm have been when the creature supports the combo and the combo supports the creature, like using a Palinchron in High Tide or using a Dark Confidant in Spanish Inquisition. Bob is great because it draws you cards, which applies the best kind of pressure--card advantage. They have to remove it quickly, or you're going to just win the game. Bob is also good in those decks because they already run a low number of high CMC cards due to Ad Nauseam, and/or they're playing things like Ponder/Sensei's Divining Top to manipulate their topdecks anyways. They can manage his downside. That's kind of what Pyromancer Ascension does, but I don't like running Ascension in this deck (after testing it) because it requires too much support from low-quality 1-mana cantrips which I would rather nix in favor of singletons and interactive cards.
Palinchron was good for me in Solidarity because it was an answer to Show and Tell; I would play Tides and float mana in response, they would put an Emrakul on the table, and I would put Palinchron into play and untap my mana, then combo off hard. It also gave me a way to go off on my turn, using a Tide or two and a bunch of lands, so I could blow out players by EoT fake comboing and then bounce my combo pieces with Remands and go off the next turn while they were tapped out/out of resources. And Palinchron was just a good finisher that let me play like a mono-blue control deck, since I could roll it out there, still have mana open, and it would lock down board positions because it's as big as most Goyfs and it's bigger than Vendilion Cliques. It even protected itself from most removal and pitched to Force. Palinchron did things that the deck wanted to do, and it did things the deck otherwise couldn't do. That's what I want out of sideboard cards.
Maybe there isn't a man-plan as good as Palinchron in High Tide decks, but I would try to find one that has synergy with the deck. Unburial Rites and Iona is one way to go down this path, but I think it's half-baked. It relies on the Gifts engine, and I think you shouldn't need a man-plan if you're able to get the Gifts engine going...that's part of why you're transforming, right? It's also graveyard-dependant. If you're able to stick Gifts and resolve cards from your graveyard, I'm guessing the problem is either Chalice of the Void or Rule of Law...in which case you can save a lot of trouble by just boarding Ancient Grudge/Ray of Revelation and throwing the appropriate one in the Gifts pile. I would rather do that and Gifts for 4 cards than Gifts for 2 cards and -1 card advantage myself, in case the Iona plan doesn't pan out. Though, I guess you could put a Faithless Looting into that pile and that would basically solve things.... I don't know. I just think a better man-plan would be something like Teferi, which is like a Silence effect that also can beat down or come into play to block stuff conveniently (like Canonists and Meddling Mages). It doesn't require you to stick a Gifts, either. That's the kind of creature I like to board in--it's good enough at beating down to win the game on its own if you want to play control, but it will also do something to seriously support your combo and it doesn't take up a lot of space, and it isn't affected by the typical hate cards that make your deck cringe.
______
I was going to PM the following to LegitKarona, but I think I'll just post this in the thread for everyone to see.
I really like how you put together the primer, especially where you talk about playing the deck to your strengths. I don't know if there's anything I would even want to add to that--well done.
As far as what I can add to your primer:
-For card choices, I think you should include Ideas Unbound. When you are comboing off, it's a straight up 3-for-1 with basically no downside. It doesn't care about the graveyard or any other stipulations; it simply turns itself into 3 fresh cards off the top. For the purpose of a Gifts storm deck, this is perfect. It's another bomb you can put into piles, and it has insane synergy with both Desperate Ritual and Increasing Vengeance. God forbid you splice a Ritual on it and Fork it a couple of times--which is not out of the question. So, for me, this card is worth one slot as the cheap bomb draw spell you can tutor and then flashback with PIF and Fork.
As a set-up card, IU isn't exactly the premium tool--but it is a very good card for post-board situations because it can find land drops (unlike Merchant Scroll and Peer Through Depths), and it generally digs very hard to find solutions to hate cards. It's not bad to play one glorified Careful Study before the combo turn and pitch the 3 weakest cards in hand, so I think it's fine to have one of these in place of some other cantrip as part of the draw suite. It's also nice to be able to Gifts for a bunch of different dig spells and throw this one in there.
-As far as the Splice mechanic is concerned, I think it's probably the strongest way to play through some of the toughest hate in the form of Extirpate on Gifts or Extirpate on Past in Flames. If someone nicks Grapeshot or some other win condition with Extirpate, it's not a huge deal because you can play some other win condition at the end of the combo turn. However, if a primary engine piece is taken away, going off is a much bigger challenge. You can't always stop this--sometimes you just get Thoughtseize-->Extirpated without a chance to interact. So the best way to handle this, in my opinion, is to have alternate ways to chain together draw spells and rituals to combo off.
Desperate Ritual is a pretty obvious 4-of in each build because you need a bunch of rituals, and you can only play 4 Seething Songs in the deck. So it's already in the deck--you don't have to make any changes to include the best splice card printed. And, for me, I was already playing a set of Peer Through Depths as my cheap dig spell because it's an instant and it provides the deck with strong consistency. Tack on one or more Ideas Unbound, and you have 8 arcane cards that you can splice onto.
If you splice a card onto an arcane spell, it literally adds the spliced card's text onto the arcane spell. So if you have a Peer Through Depths with a Desperate Ritual spliced onto it, it reads:
Look at the top five cards of your library. You may reveal an instant or sorcery card from among them and put it into your hand. Put the rest on the bottom of your library in any order.
Add {R}{R}{R} to your mana pool.
If you copy the spell, it copies all of it--including the part where it generates 3 red mana. So casting Increasing Vengeance on Peer Through Depths will not only Impulse for 5, but it will also net you +1 red mana. If you flashback the Vengeance, you will trade either 5 or 2 mana (depending on Past in Flames being part of the equation) for 6 red and a double Impulse to dig you 2/10 of the top of your deck. Even if you hardcast the flashback of IV to Fork the spliced Peer, it gives you a net of +1 mana and +2 cards, which is a profit on both ends of the spectrum. And usually, if you're digging through the top 15 cards of your library and taking 3 cards, you're going to find just about anything in your deck you need.
This is even better when you splice a ritual onto Ideas Unbound, or splice 2 rituals onto anything. If you double-splice onto an Ideas Unbound and cast+flashback Ideas Unbound, you're going to draw 12 cards and turn an initial 2UURRRR(8 mana) into 19 Red, assuming you pay 5 for the flashback. If you draw another fork while the original Ideas is on the stack, you can Fork it again! It's ridiculous. You can even just leave it on the stack, the cast a Gifts in response, throwing an Increasing Vengeance into the pile. What does your opponent do? The game is over.
It's not like you need to bend over backwards to put these cards in the deck. You're playing 4 DesRits anyways. Peer Through Depths is a very legitimate setup card without even having the Arcane quality. And Ideas Unbound should be a 1-of in the deck, anyways, for the sake of Giftsing for it on combo turns to produce a lot of gas. I definitely think you it's fine to win with just Gifts and Past in Flames, but it can't hurt to have another way of not only comboing off, but going off very hard. That answers potential problems with Extirpate, and gives the deck faster wins when it can't stick a Gifts early (or can't find a Gifts before going off).
____
Here is my current mainboard:
4 Cascade Bluffs
4 Scalding Tarn
1 Steam Vents
1 Island
1 Snow-Covered Island
1 Mountain
1 Snow-Covered Mountain
1 Calciform Pools
1 Dreadship Reef
1 Molten Slagheap
1 Fungal Reaches
1 Open Land Slot (TBD)
4 Seething Song
4 Manamorphose
1 Mana Seism
4 Peer Through Depths
1 Ideas Unbound
4 Gifts Ungiven
2 Past in Flames
2 Increasing Vengeance
4 Remand
7 Open Slot
I am going through the grueling process of evaluating all my options for disruption and sideboard plans, so I've stripped the deck down to its core and gone from there. I may also put some extra dig spells (testing Merchant Scroll heavily again, as well as potentially Mystical Teachings) and another win condition into the maindeck. At this point, I have to do this because I always build my maindeck with sideboard plans in mind.