I'm a long time magic player, I just generally lurk rather than post as I'm usually playing established decks where the only changes I've made are meta-dependent, ergo not terribly interesting. I enjoy this deck for a few reasons: I pilot Doomsday/ANT and High Tide in legacy, and this deck tickles that same itch for decision-trees. I've always wanted to play Gifts Ungiven as a 4-of and the reanimator style of this deck just didn't fit my personal play preferences. I've been surfing MTGsalvation for awhile, I believe I stumbled into this thread after reading the "Green's Sun's Zenith" thread.
I think the Primer is very well done, I particularly enjoy and used the "Winning With Ritual Gifts" section. The explanation of the piles accelerated my learning of the deck. If anything, I'd add an "respice adspice prospice" section. Your graveyard and your library(if you have the tutors) are almost like your hand. You can use them to look behind (use your GY) and look ahead (tutor in your library). If you have combo pieces in your hand, there may be some situations where you can use them for non-combo plays. For example, noxious revival + manamorphose can be utilized to grab a remand from your yard, put in your hand, and use all for a total of -1 mana and -1 card while turning two "meh" cards into a counterspell. Likewise, sculpting your hand full of bounce/counterspells can set you up for an impossible to counter gifts.
I think my strongest pull to this deck is that its the closest cousin to doomsday in modern. Mana Seism is just a colorless Rain of Filth, Gifts can make interesting piles in a manner not unlike Doomsday, and this deck doesn't rely on an enchantment like Pyromancer Ascension, meaning I almost never have to tip my opponent off as to what my time table (e.g. Time to Kill) will be.
Is Ritual Gifts better than normal modern storm? Probably not. Its biggest sin is that it is slow, and in a format where aggro can kill you on t3/t4, that can be an issue. But I do believe it can compete. Slower decks like UWR are a cakewalk, they have to hold up countermagic at essentially every point in the game, slowing them down considerably. I'm eager to fight some Scapeshift to see whose take on the same style is better; will our tutoring give us the edge? Or will their ramp and access to Cryptic win out?
Congrats on that tournament!! Glad to see someone doing well. Your list is pretty similar to what I was playing, but I have a couple questions:
Don't you ever feel the need for a Desperate Ritual in the deck? I found that having this "little" red rituals in hand is very useful pre-combo as it lets you fork something if they give you Increasing Vengeance, plus having a differently named ritual in your deck can come handy pretty often. I'd replace the second Manamorphose with it. I don't ever Gifts for Manamorphose until the Grapeshot-Noxious pile, unless I REALLY need a counter and go for the pile of Morphose+Counter+Noxious
Speaking of which, don't you feel the need for being able to Scroll for a hard counter at times? I used Muddle the Mixture back when the format was a bit slower and would many times even use the transmute ability for Snapcaster or a Ritual when I needed one in hand (in extremely late-game scenarios, it's another topdeck that can find a Scroll for a Gifts... I know that doesn't come up often but the transmute is more useful than you'd think). Maybe nowadays the card is not that brilliant, but I wouldn't leave home without something like Negate in the maindeck because I don't feel like you are beating Scapeshift without the ability to Scroll for real protection. They are as fast as we are, but they'll have more lands and they have Cryptics.
Lastly, I've found Repeal to be more of my liking than Echoing Truth. It doesn't have the versatility Echoing Truth has, and getting 5 mana to bounce a Leyline of the Void can be really difficult, but I found that in games 1 I'd often just Repeal a small dude, so I ran 1 as a versatile Scroll target plus an Echoing Truth in the side. It can be too much bounce, but Repeal not costing a card makes it an excellent tempo card against creature strategies, and tempo plays are what this deck likes the most.
I like your sideboard a lot, the Leylines are so good against burn, and that's a pretty tough matchup from my experience. I love the 3 different-name fatties SB plan as well. Maybe we could consider Sagu Mauler too, that card looks pretty good and is a really solid finisher should we need one. I'd advice fitting 1 Ancient Grudge in there just because how good it is with Gifts Ungiven. You do have a lot of sweepers maindeck, but against Arcbound Ravager and Cranial Plating you are likely going to want at least 1 artifact destroyer in your 75 (I'd bring it in against pod any day too)
For, me the excess Rituals are more often just a brick than anything else. I cut down to just the one because really, outside of the combo, or occasionally ramping into a fatty, the Rituals don't really do anything. It can be frustrating drawing dead cards like that, so i don't really think running more 1 is actually necessary.
As far as Muddle the Mixture, i actually like that card in the deck a lot. I think that's the card i dropped for Dig Through Time as well. Being able to Scroll for a hard counter is important though. We have Negate from the board at least, but i find myself Scrolling for Snare when i want counter protection. Aside from Cryptic Command, most of the other counters we need to worry about all cost 2. I do think squeezing Muddle back into the deck could be good though. It's just such a versatile tool to have.
I could definitely see swapping Echoing Truth for Repeal also. That's something i wanna test right away. Seems really good.
Unfortunately we actually need 2 Past in Flames and 2 Manamorphose. If you run only 1 PIF you can find yourself in situations where you have to flashback Past in Flames in the first stage of the combo which will leave you unable to get Grapeshot back in your hand later. The same goes for Manamophose. You can find yourself in situations where the Morphose was exiled in the first part of the combo leaving without a way to draw into Grapeshot once it's on the top of your library. Versions of the deck with Serum Visions got around by having a cheap drawspell they could cast to draw the Grapeshot. Without a cheap way to draw that Shot though, you need the 2nd Morphose.
Pact of Negation i never actually liked in this deck. You can't actually use it to protect Gifts. You almost always cast Gifts on the opponents end step, so if you use Pact there, you'll have to pay for it on your next turn, preventing you from comboing.
Ancient Grudge is something i always want to play but just can never seem to find room in the board for. The sideboard is already so incredibly tight. It is a great card though, and just slipping 1 into a Gifts pile is pretty sweet. If you can fit it in, it seems worth playing.
Academy Ruins actually is kind of interesting, but then we would have to run Life from the Loam also, which i just don't think is worth it here.
Chalice of the Void actually seems like really sweet tech though. Chalice on 1 basically just beats Delver on its own.
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Not just the Tendo King, the power of the Galactic Leyline surpasses that of the Tempa Emperor, No!, It's magnificent power is even greater than that!
Unfortunately I couldn't make it to any games this week due to work. Hoping to rectify that by playing in at least 2 modern small tournies this week.
The one hesitation I have with Chalice is that it blanks Noxious Revival and lightning bolt making the combo kill slightly more awkward. I actually forgot to mention that I ran Muddle the Mixture over a snapcaster. This could, mana willing, allow us to still tutor for the combo kill with Muddle acting as the proxy for Grapeshot. But its possible we just can't function without Noxious Revival for the combo-kill and must say au revoir to Chalice of the Void.
I'm looking at a 4 creature gifts package in the sideboard. Something like Thragtusk, Wurmcoil Engine, Inferno Titan, and Batterskull. This still allows us to use our best card, Gifts Ungiven, and put two nasty creatures in our hand. I chose Thragtusk as the final one because he does two things I enjoy, he's a hard(ish) to deal with, leaving at least a 3/3 on the board, and gives us 5 life, allowing us to potentially race. The only creature there that isn't hard to deal with is Inferno Titan who is just a value house anyway.
I'll be subbing in Savage Knucks over Thragtusk just to give him a whirl; a 4 mana haste 4/4 that can bounce itself isn't the worst card in the world.
Lastly, watching world's, I wouldn't be surprised if people start boarding in Ethersworn Canonist-esque cards as anti-storm tech in a panic move, meaning we really want to make sure our alt-win con is robust.
Actually, the second Manamorphose isn't actually NEEDED. In fact, I never played 2 of them. I only fit one into my deck for the final standard Gifts pile (Remand, Noxious Revival, Grapeshot, Past in Flames). Take into account that with the standard go-off (double-forking Channel The Suns) you are going to have just enough mana to go through all the Grape-Remand-Grape thingy. The non-PiF pile you put up there using Snapcaster is definitely good and less mana intensive (costs 12 mana pre-Gifts, and the standard one costs 15), but won't allow you to fetch out a Remand if you don't have it. It's really hard you are hitting 12 mana without Channel the Suns though, so you'd might end up never needing to go for it. So I guess you always want the option to go for that second PiF if the first one hits the yard.
Drawing into Rituals means dead cards in some kind of way, but this deck needs a mana producing ritual in hand to go off (unless you have a crapload of mana). If your only forkable rituals are Pyretic, Channel, and Manamorphose (kind of) odds are you are going to have a hard time going off when you don't magically draw into one of them. This deck can go off with five lands and a Ritual+Morphose in hand post Gifts. To go off handless from a single resolved Gifts you'll need 10 mana if they give you IV+PiF (you PiF, then cast Channel, then fork it, with Channel in the stack you use the forked mana to flashback IV after filtering it with a Mphose or Ritual that was in your pile to have the RR in the FB cost). At least, that's the lowest requirements I can think of now if you have an empty hand.
In my testing, when I was running too little rituals, I found myself in a crapload of situations where I had temporarily controlled the game, could resolve a Gifts, but could not set a game-winning pile because of not having any Ritual in hand. This doesn't mean you are going to run 4 Pyretic and 4 Desperate to draw into them and combo reliably because the aim here is not to be an all-in combo deck, but you'll want an amount enough that almost every resolved Gifts will be backbreaking. So it's all about balance: with the mediocre card selection in the format, I don't think that running the bare minimum amount of rituals will work because you need one in your hand, and that can't be set up with a Gifts pile that needs to also search for PiF and IV. I've found that balance to be 2 Desperate and 2 Pyretic aside from Channel and Seism. I might be wrong though, but I don't think you want to be as reactive as possible and forgo all your speed in this fast format. This is not a deck prepared to durdle forever, and needs to have an I win-button.
On Ancient Grudge, Affinity was and is predominant in my meta, and running a single Hurkyl's Recall plus the Ancient Grudge ensured I never lost a match against it, although I did lose Games 1 quite often. Grudge is even more versatile than Recall because Recall doesn't come in against Pod, for example, while I'd be tremendously happy keeping a Pod player off their broken tutoring machine by just slipping a Grudge in any Gifts pile.
On Life from the Loam, I've thought about the EE "lock" with Academy Ruins, but whenever I tried Ruins in this format it seemed way to slow to me. I've thought of adding the Loam+Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth+Raven's Crime pack, but maybe that's just because I'm a fan of that one in any Gifts deck I don't think we need a pile like that against controllish opponents. Keep in mind that anything involving Loam will get hit by graveyard hate too, so I'm really liking the 4-fatties idea. I think Thragtusk is an excellent option, and I totally think 3 sources of lifegain are where we wanna be against aggresive opponents.
PS: Barely off topic, has anyone paid any attention to the UWR Jeskai Ascendancy deck that Team CFB played in the World's Championship? The idea behind the deck is to play control as we do, and go off with a compact combo which doesn't involve a lot of dead cards. The deck is really sweet and we could definitely learn some things about it, and even runs Gifts as a SB plan
In case any of you has been living under a rock, here is the basic idea: You get an Ascendancy in play with 1 or 2 mana producing creatures (Fatestitcher or Faerie Conclave in this case) and then start chaining cantrips with help from the untap and loot effects Ascendancy provides, until your dudes are enormous and you can swing for lethal. In case you haven't tried it, that card is freaking broken and going off hard is really easy, and you can almost always cycle through your deck.
It seems like they are using DTT in the same kind of way we are using Gifts: to pull ahead on cards, fetch answers, and to set up a combo kill. I think DTT is the better card here though, as it lets you run a more streamlined deck and you don't need to be full of 1-ofs for the card to be reliable. They are running Thought Scour to enable heavy delving and as a combo cantrip, while it's also able to bin a Fatestitcher for value.
So, the question is: can we build a deck heavily focused on Dig Through Time, and still keep the Ritual Gifts win condition? Is it worth it? What are the pros/cons to it? Just brainstorming here, but if we are able to support a full playset of DTT, we might not need Merchant Scroll anymore. Though DTT isn't likely to get you a Gifts Ungiven before Turn 4 like Scroll can. I might start brewing something with this in mind after Christmas, but I won't have much time until that. But I think that taking a deep look at that deck will tell us a lot about what a good combo-control deck needs to be doing in this format (given by the first look, it needs a crapload of cheap removal xD).
I will start playing this deck next year, since I hadn't enough time to learn it thorough for GP Milano (will play a Grisselbanned version there).
So now some thoughts:
I agree with Lueseto, that you can't play the minimum number of Rituals, since you need 1 in your hand when you go off. I would play 4, 1 Pyretic and 3 Desperate. The reason for 3 Desperate is, that you can (if you have 6 mana) cast one, splice another fork it and you are at 12 mana. With this idea, it is better to play 2 Manamorphoses, since you need the U/G mana for Gifts Channel (although, you don't need channel anymore, since you can just cast PiF (8), Ritual + Splice (4) Fork (2) + Cast Ritual from the Hand = 21xR, this gives you a Storm count of 7). I know, this play is pretty narrow, but it occurred in testing several times, where I went of with this line of play.
I love the idea of playing the storage lands (never thought about those in this deck) and also the Halmar Depths are nice (forgot, that this card even exist).
For the SB plan I agree with you. We need a non Graveyard based strategy post SB. I like the 4 fatty Gifts plan but you could also play Planeswalker (5mana Garruk e.g.) but I don't know, if the walker can protect itself, since it dies to 2 creatures pretty fast :(. I don't like the Thragtusk, since it is only 5/3 and dies to Bolt, which they will never board out (a simple Lava Spike can win games). There are some 'playable' fatties, beside Wurmcoil, Inferno, Batterskull: Deep-Sea Kraken can be suspended early and finishes the game pretty fast Frost Titan can tap something down and has a build in Spell Pierce, but he is probably to bad Keranos, God of Storms probably to slow Pearl Lake Ancient can't be countered, can't be double bolted, and can be bounced, if it is necessary Sagu Mauler Huge body, hexproof and has trample (big plus) Simic Sky Swallower probably to expensive, but can't be killed (exception is Lilli) and has a huge body Sagu Mauler is probably better Surrak Dragonclaw can't be countered is nice, but he has no trample/flying or another decent effect Thundermaw Hellkite the red Baneslayer Angel, he is pretty nice and kills all those lingering Souls tokens. Stormbreath Dragon the buddy from Thundermaw. I don't know, which one is better to be honest, but I think it is Thundermaw since he has a 5/5 body.
I probably missed some good finisher. So I would play Inferno, Wurmcoil, Skull, + a card from the above list (probably Sagu Mauler or Garruk, since both are immune to removal spells)
Greetings,
Kathal
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What I play or have:
Modern/Legacy
either funpolice (Delver, Deathcloud, UW Control) or the fun decks (especially those ft. Griselbrand)
I only have like 5 minutes so i can't fully explain this.. You don't need a ritual in hand to go off. Look at the "Winning with Ritual Gifts" section in the primer.
Past in Flames - Ritual
Past in Flames - Channel the Suns
Manamorphose - Ritual
Increasing Vengeance - Mana Seism
Increasing Vengeance - Pyretic Ritual
Increasing Vengeance - Channel the Suns
Mana Seism - Pyretic Ritual
Mana Seism - Channel the Suns
Pyretic Ritual - Channel the Suns
All of those win with 5 lands. The other options i didn't list win with 6 lands.
You don't need to have a Ritual in hand, and most of the time that Ritual you draw will be a complete brick. I adamantly disagree with you here. There is just zero reason to run more than the minimum needed for the combo. The extra Rituals just do nothing outside the combo, and i can't see enough reason to run them when you don't actually need to.
Also the 2nd Morphose is needed. I'm not sure how your deck is working with no ramp, and only 1 Morphose.
For example.
You have 5 lands, but never had a chance to fetch a green producing land. This forces you to Gifts for Manamophose or you won't be able to get the green for Channel the suns. Now if the opponent puts Morphose in the bin, it's going to get exiled when you flash it back. Now when you go to do the 2nd pile you won't have a way to draw into grapeshot after you put it onto your library. I ran the deck with only 1 morphose when i switched back from the cantrip list i was running and immediately ran into this problem and realized you need a 2nd draw spell in the deck to make sure this never happens.
Garruk would probably strain the mana base a little bit, but the rest are decent options, though I think Deep-Sea Kraken and Pearl Lake are way too slow for modern. I think 6 mana is the most I'd choose, as there is really no need to stretch out further manawise with the card pool in the format. Well, if we had Jace, the Mind Sculptor we could probably run 4 copies maindeck and have an alternative wincon but I guess everyone would be doing so. I used to run a couple Vendilion Clique in the side too, and found it amazing, but it does die to everything and it would suck against Delver and Burn, so I guess we just want fatties now. I played 1 Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir when I was playing Mystical Teachings, but Teachings might be too slow nowadays. LegitKarona used to run Meloku the Clouded Mirror if I recall correctly.
Splicing is broken with Vengeance, but people never gave me Desperate Ritual from my Gifts pile because of the Splice itself, so I ended up splicing just if I drew both, in which case opponent is already dead once you resolve Gifts anyway, so I figured I just wanted to diversify ritual names as much as I could.
I've been playing casually amongst friends when I have the time, N= ~70 games, and I have to agree with Lord Hazanko. Given 3 or so ramp, which is slightly more robust than rituals as you can get non-red mana, I haven't felt the need for a ritual to go off. You need 2 combo-pieces and Gifts, but I've always been able to wiggle my way around and still go off no matter the combination. Its one of the highlights of the deck, really.
Garruk is double green, which is rather difficult for this deck to cast. Its why I didn't consider things like Obstinate Baloth. Sarkhan is interesting but he provides himself no protection from creatures on the board.
Sagu Mauler is interesting, and quite the house in my mid-range Sultai deck in standard. He's certainly a possibility, but a very vanilla one. You can't slam him down against an onboard lili like you can with Batterskull or Inferno Titan. I like Thragtusk because he'll eat at least two bolts or trade with a flipped delver, in addition to the 5 life gain. This can be eminently important in delver/zoo matchups, and make their life a bit hellacious trying to find a good gifts pile. He's only tentative, and I'll be trying out a few creatures in his slot, but I like the idea of him.
Kraken is really, really slow and could just eat a terminate/path. Our strongest play would be around 5 and 6 mana, an EOT t4 gifts into a batterskull/wurmcoil is where I feel we want to be. Surrak Dragonclaw is a wet noodle, he doesn't have trample himself and we're a counter deck our self, so I'm not concerned with our stuff getting countered. Frost Titan doesn't rattle the cages like our other choices, and I'd like to get a 2/2 split of 2 very powerful, hard to deal with 6 drops and 2 great 5 drops. This makes EOT T4 gifts a harder split for the opponent because they have to decide on what threats matter (all of them should), and what we can play (do we have a ramp spell in hand if he gives us 2 6s?).
I usually run two Hurkyl's, but a 1/1 split of hurkyl's and ancient grudge might be the ticket. I've only faced robots/affinity 6 or so games, so we'll see.
My inclination is to lean away from storage lands. It improves match-ups that we're already decent/great in and does nothing for aggro/midrange where we have to spend our turns controlling the board. But perhaps our Scapeshift match up needs the help, I'll probably get around to testing them.
Finally, the ascendancy deck is not a ritual gifts deck, at least I don't see them as similar. They're a fast combo deck, with hardly any control elements. Ritual Gifts is a control-combo deck, its less storm and more Scapeshift, with storm just as the win-con. The Asc deck sb into the reanimator gifts package because GY hate does nothing to the main combo and dodges enchantment hate. It takes a lot of cantrips and loot effects to support 4 DTT. Even in my delver deck I only run 3 cruises because i found the 4th very difficult to play.
I find the arguments in your posts to be somewhat confusing...
@Lord Hazanko: First, you are saying you don't need a ritual in hand to win, then you cite 9 pair of cards which can win from 5 lands and all of them have a ritual in them, so I really can't see where you are going. I've read the whole old primer and the new one multiple times, and I assure you I'm pretty familiar with the winning lines of play. All the piles you stated to win on 5 lands have 2 combo pieces you need to naturally draw into, be them rituals or other stuff, and all have a forkable ritual in them, save for the IV+Seism one, in which you can go for PiF + 3 Forkable rituals so you get one in hand at the end. But drawing 2 combo pieces is necessary. Of course you won't need a ritual in hand if you have the combo pieces to force the opponent to give it in your hand, but you drew PiF/IV and that was a dead card too. The debate is around how many combo pieces is correct to run.
I don't like your argument for the 2nd Manamorphose. Saying you need it because you couldn't fetch out a Green producing land just speaks wrongly of your manabase, and I'd rather be able to work that out. If the mana base is consistent, this shouldn't come up enough to be relevant IMO.
@UselessDoctrinarian: Again, the ritual in hand I said is obviously non necessary if you have 2 combo pieces because you can actually put the ritual in your hand with Gifts. Trust me, I've done the math in paper of what is needed for the IV+Channel thing, and you need 2 pieces as you are stating, to go off by turn 5. Combo pieces are dead cards too. Having more of them means it's more likely for you to draw the 2 necessary to go off.
The Garruk they were talking about costs 2GGG so it's even harder to cast. I think Baloth could be decent if you build your manabase with that in mind. We are in modern after all, and 3 color decks have never been problematic with manabases.
The Ascendancy deck being played in the Worlds Champs is DEFINITELY not a fast combo deck. It's running 10 removal and 7 permission pieces (Izzet Charm counts as both), and 4 Broken card advantage and Selection pieces and if you've seen any of Leyton's games, you'll see how he plays a totally controllish role against Sam Black in Pod, going off in like 7 lands both times and being able to control the flow of the game in a very decent manner.
Hm, I guess that's what I get for not looking at the decklist itself. Only watched the one round in World's where it was 3 or so matches of Asc vs. Storm, the games I watched had very little permission cards from either deck. So I assumed. And ya know what they say about assuming.
For the rituals: Essentially, in the early game ramp substitutes itself for a ritual spell. You can still combo t5 regardless of the pieces in hand if you hit at least one ramp spell by turn 3, given that t4 is gifts and t5 is the kill. But perhaps adding one more ritual is an idea as you can use it the turn you draw it, as opposed to a ramp spell that requires you to set up beforehand. I don't really know the answer, given that the math involved is exceptionally lengthy and out of my 'ken. Are the people in favor of adding in another ritual feeling like, on average, you're going off after t5 due to lack of rituals?
@GriffinMR
I don't play any utility lands. We're busy at all turns of the game versus our bad match-ups, meaning I wouldn't want Halimar depths at any point except turn 1. I've also found myself to be very colour constrained. We're attempting to support double red sweepers (anger, and I'm running fallout), as well as DTT (double blue), and we need at least 1 green source to get Channel the Suns. Then things get even more mucked up if you're preparing yourself for a counter war during your combo turn, necessitating more blue sources. I just don't feel that storagelands are where we want to be at, given that delver is both very aggressive and can have a few counters. But I could be wrong, certainly worth testing.
In my experience 22 land is too little, I always played 24-25. You are running Serum Visions though, and that will probably help you out. I think there even was a theory about how every two 1-mana cantrips you run, you can lower your land count by one, or something like that so I guess you'll be fine!!
Steam Augury seems interesting. I really like how it fills the grave for delve spells and FB spells, though this is reverse card selection: you won't end up with what you need if your opponent is smart enough. Definitely not Gifts Ungiven. I tried the card in UWR control and the big con I found to it was that, although absolutely bonkers on turn 4, as the game progresses, the value in the piles is greatly reduced and you end up just flooding with a fistful of lands and low impact cards. Turn 4 you'd better be off casting Gifts Ungiven in this deck though, but in some grindy games you'll just want many cards and Augury is decent for that.
I'd been wanting to try Peer Through Depths, maybe as a 2-of. Some lists run it instead of Scroll, but it isn't reliant enough IMO.
Since having cards in the graveyard on the combo turn is almost like having them in your hand, I'd less concerned about my opponent guessing what I need and not giving it to me than having a sub-par card eating a slot. Your point about it not being what I really want on turn 4 is definitely true. I was mostly interested in its potential as a mana tool (let's say you flip your five cards and they're Merchant Scroll, Channel the Suns, Mana Leak, Breeding Pool, and Island, your hand is Gifts, Vengeance, and Past, but you only have 4 land. You can separate the cards into Scroll/Channel/Leak or two land, and your opponent is forced to decide if you're trying to force land or trying to make them think you're trying to force land in order to get combo pieces), but like you said, as a turn 4 play it is not optimal and everything after that makes it less effective. I'm gonna proxy up some lands and playtest assorted combinations this week to find out what to cut, and I have a feeling Steam Augury will be the first to go. (I understand that my scenario here is highly unlikely)
I'm not sold on Serum Visions, it just seems kind of weird to play blue in Modern without them. If I cut them I'd probably need to go up to 24-25 land. Peer Through Depths was in my list for a while, but at two mana I figured I'd just rather have Scroll. It can get a few cards Scroll can't (Anger, Flame Slash, Channel) but honestly it just seems inferior.
I am very interested in this style of the deck. Not only does the main deck seem pretty consistent while remaining blisteringly fast, but the main deck is set up very well to transition into a solid all-in Twin build. It is getting the combo-lover in me all in a tizzy. That said I have a couple of questions to help my grasp on how exactly this build would run.
First, I am a little surprised that you are not playing a singleton Noxious Revival. I have done some play and a lot of testing with a more standard build and Revival has been crucial in making certain Gifts piles work and making sure I can get Grapeshot when I need it. Has it just been unnecessary for you? Or was it not worth the times it was dead in your hand?
Second, I am struggling somewhat in understanding exactly when the deck should be going off and what your Gifts piles should look like. Clearly in your build the Gifts piles will vary a fair bit based on your hand, field, graveyard, and your opponent's field, but are there any general rules for what you should be fetching in order to go off properly? Or is it really something that is best learned through doing it and getting used to the fluid piles you can build? If at all possible I, like others have said before, would be very interested in seeing any kind of recording you can do of a real game or two to show how the whole thing comes together in a real match.
I'm gonna do a fuller post tomorrow when i finally have some extra time. There is a lot i wanted to respond to. Real quick though, i just ran into a situation with Repeal that is no good.. We can't actually beat Chalice on 1 with Repeal. Chalice on 1 stops us from using Noxious Revival to get our Grapeshot back, and without Echoing Truth in the deck we can't beat it.
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Noxious Revival is not always necessary, so I wouldn't go as far as to say that we can't beat it; you'll need a greater storm count for sure, but you should be able to kill anyone who hasn't gained a ton of life without needing to Remand Grapeshots if you are given enough time. Chalice decks aren't usually fast, save for that bizarre Chalice Zoo decks that have been seen here and there (I don't think they're good though, and they will certainly do a bit of damage to themselves). It will slow you down a bit (there's obviously a reason why Revival is in the deck) but you can beat it if you manage to achieve a storm count high enough to kill with a single Grapeshot.
If you ABSOLUTELY want to bounce the Chalice, you can copy your Repeal with Increasing Vengeance, and the copy won't be countered, but that's more of a cute observation than a practical advice cause it isn't likely to happen in all MTG history
On 2 PIF- You need 2 PIF in case the first one goes to the yard in the first pile. Then when you flash it back for the triple Channel, you won't have a way to get the Grapeshot pile to work. Yes the Snapcaster pile works, but only if you don't need a Manamorphose or Remand. If you already played Snap, or don't have Remand/ Manamorphose in the grave/hand already, you won't be able to get a working pile.
On 2 Manamorphose- Again if the first 1 ends up in the grave, and you don't have a 2nd, you can lock yourself out of the Grapeshot pile. With a mana base of
and with 4 Sakura-Tribe Elder in the main I almost always have perfect mana, still though, depending on how a game plays out, you can find yourself needing Manamorphose to get through the choke point in the combo. Getting 3(g)(r)(r) for the flashback Vengeance-Channel can sometimes be a pain, and you'll need to use your Morphose to get the right colors. So if you find yourself in this situation you better hope you didn't play Morphose already, or that the opponent didn't put the Morphose in the grave off your first Gifts pile, because you won't be able to draw into Grapeshot later without a 2nd Morphose
So basically not running a 2nd Morphose means you have to be very careful not to let the sole Morphose hit the grave, and if it does hit the grave, remember that you can't use it to clear the choke point.
I think just running the 2nd is a better idea. It makes it easier to clear that Choke point, and also makes the other Morphose not so bad. If i have a Morphose in hand early in the game, I'll almost always burn it to draw a card. That's something you can't do as confidently with only 1 in the deck.
So out of 15 possibilities, 10 of them don't include a ritual. There is no reason to run 4 Rituals in the deck, when they do absolutely nothing outside the combo, and only make up a small percentage of possible combo hands. Also worth noting that Manamorphose is the only card here that can be played outside the combo, another reason why running 2 Morphose is better than excess Rituals.
I'm not a fan of Steam Augory at all. In the past people have suggested it, and i guess it seemed OK then, but now that we can Scroll for Dig Through Time, i can't see any reason to run Augory.
I've been playing 22 lands for a while now and it feels great. But i also run mana ramp, so that makes up for running less lands. I suppose if you're on the pure combo/control list, with no ramp, you'd want more lands. I do think 4 Tribe Elder are actually extremely good in this deck though. One of the biggest issues the deck has is getting to 5 mana consistently. Tribe Elder gets you to 5, fixes your mana, and stalls the opponent. That's a large chunk of what this deck is trying to do.
As far as Repeal and Chalice, i think I'm sticking to Repeal in the main, just because it really has been awesome. And really, how many decks play maindeck Chalice?? So if anything, if i somehow get beat g1 by Chalice i'll just take it, and side in Echoing Truth/ Hurkyl's Recall for g2/3
*Edit*
Oh! and also, as far as our Alt win creatures. I don't really think we need to worry too much about removal on them. Unless we're talking a local event where people know what you are doing, who is honestly keeping in their Path to Exiles, etc, against a creatureless combo deck?
Haven't been playing too much, but got in a few games last week. I have a few thoughts.
I'm really, really enjoying thragtusk. The 5 point life-swing and incidental 3/3 means that t5 thragtusk into t6 inferno titan (the most common pile given to me) is very hard to deal with. Savage Knuckleblade is a total dud, though. He's a 4/4 beater on t3, sure, but so is Goyf a lot of the times. His abilities don't allow you to progress your board and are lackluster for their cost. Wurmcoil/Batter are also complete houses.
I wonder if we can fit a few more 1 cmc counters. Both Dispel and Spell Pierce are very good to protect your combo while not being heavily mana intensive. A few times I came across a t5 kill but I had to use too much of my red/green mana to cast remand/negate and thus couldn't combo off. Counters are flying thick and furious with both Scapeshift and Delver being very popular decks.
Muddle the Mixture has been utterly depressing. I think its a card we want, but probably in the board for matchups against control elements. I can almost never find the time to transmute against pod/delver and the UU cost is somewhat crippling. Maybe its just better to replace it with another Dig through Time or counterspell?
Repeal is great, but the utility of Echoing Truth is very hard to beat. In many games it'll bounce lethal attacker(s) for less mana than Repeal, meaning you can incorporate into Gifts piles and force your opponent to bin it, giving you a larger range of combo opportunities and allowing you keep up counter mana or progress the board.
I actually like the idea of playing Thagtusk here. I just can't seem to find room in my board for a 4th creature..
This is what i'm currently running..
The only thing i could think of would be cutting a Leyline. I just don't know how i feel about only having 3 Leylines and trying to draw/mull into them. What's your board look like with all 4 creatures?
It's a shame that Savage Knuckleblade didn't work out. But i guess in hindsight, it really doesn't seem like he does enough anyway. I think the combo of Thragtusk - Batterskull - Inferno Titan - Wurmcoil Engine is pretty mean though. Every one of those guys have some pretty significant impact if they resolve.
Muddle the Mixture is a card i have used a lot in the past, but with the addition of Dig Through Time i dropped it. I do actually really like Muddle, it's a pretty versatile card, and like Lueseto mentioned, it can be nice having a hard counter available. When it comes down to it though, in countless games i think i have only ever transmuted Muddle maybe 2-3 times, where as almost every single game i play i cast Dig Through Time and it works wonders.
I like Repeal and Echoing Truth both a lot. They are good for different reasons. For now i'm going to keep jamming Repeal in the main and see how i like it. So far being able to bounce, and cantrip has been awesome. Bouncing a flipped Delver and drawing a card for (u) is crazy too. It's mana cost can sometime be prohibitive, and annoying, but generally speaking, in g1 i think I'd rather have access to Repeal.
As far as 1 mana counters i don't know. I'm not apposed to the idea. I think for the most part Spell Snare is my go to counter protection. It's a hard counter against Mana Leak, Remand, Izzet Charm, Shadow of Doubt, and most of the common counter magic other than Cryptic Command. I'm running 2 Negate in the board, but maybe a split of Negate - Dispel/ Swan Song/ Spell Pierce could be good? I do really like Negate as a solid hard counter though.
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This is my tentative sideboard. I'm just now replacing 1 Echoing Truth and combust for the chalices. We'll see how it goes. Sideboarding is far more meta-dependent but I think i'll always have 8 slots locked between the leylines and the creature package.
My one hesitation with running only Spell Snare is that a lot of our combo is very weak to that very same card. Increasing Vengeance, Manamorphose, Mana Seism, and desperate ritual are all countered by Spell Snare. I like Spell Snare and don't think it should be replaced, but I am considering replacing a few remands with pierces/dispels. We need some way to keep at least a counter up on the turn we go off to protect it. And against delver/aggressive tempo decks we don't always have the luxury to sculpt our hands/mana.
I like the idea of Swan Song, especially if Ascendancy Storm becomes more popular. It protects us against all relevant threats and we don't much care about the 2/2 flyer as we're running bolts and 'clasms.
I have been testing the usage of Treasure Cruise and so far I'm positively impressed. Between fetchlands, Steves, Scrolls and countermagic, this cards just gives you fuel in grindy matchups. It really rewards you just to play magic. Currently, running 3MD. 4 seems overkill as I won't chain them together. I'm thinking about cutting to 2 and run 1 DTT, since people are having a lot of good feedback from the card and tutoring it with Merchant Scroll is available.
Dig through Time is insane in this deck, compared to Treasure Cruise the Cruise is crap. Try it, it is just awesome. The instant speed and the ability to pick the 2 best cards from 7 is just insane. Furthermore, this decks requires some specific cards and don't rely that much on redundancy so Dig > Cruise.
Greetings,
Kathal
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What I play or have:
Modern/Legacy
either funpolice (Delver, Deathcloud, UW Control) or the fun decks (especially those ft. Griselbrand)
How the eff havent I seen this deck yet? Gifts Control was my first modern deck and was pretty cool, but was always a combo player at heart. This seems awsesome! Going to pick up my missing pieces on MTGO tonight probably and start testing and getting familiar.
Question, can this deck go off on turn 3 ever?
Also, whats the best card to replace the misty rain forests, since i dont ahve them. I have a playset of all the ktk fetches and i think 1 or 2 singles of zendikar fetches
Cool to see you take interest in the deck Pistallion. As far as going off turn 3, that's not gonna happen. If you're running some kind of mana ramp in the deck, the earliest you can go off is t4. I would say though that I usually go off t5-7 more often than not. Sometimes games can get kind of grindy.
Any blue fetches would be preferable, that can fetch you Steam Vents, Breeding Pool, and Island in the face of Blood Moon. Not running Misty and Tarn will definitly have an impact on the mana though. Having off color fetches makes it a bit harder to properly sequence your land drops, and you'll often end up taking more dmg trying to get the right land.
As far as Treasure Cruise in the deck, maybe it could be pretty good, but Dig through Time is insane. I swear everytime i cast that card it just feels ridiculous. I love being able to grab my last combo piece and a counterspell, or 2 pieces of disruption, or whatever, it's just so good. Also because it's fetchable with Scroll, i honestly end up casting Dig in almost every game i play. I think that card alone has made this deck much more consistent.
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I think the Primer is very well done, I particularly enjoy and used the "Winning With Ritual Gifts" section. The explanation of the piles accelerated my learning of the deck. If anything, I'd add an "respice adspice prospice" section. Your graveyard and your library(if you have the tutors) are almost like your hand. You can use them to look behind (use your GY) and look ahead (tutor in your library). If you have combo pieces in your hand, there may be some situations where you can use them for non-combo plays. For example, noxious revival + manamorphose can be utilized to grab a remand from your yard, put in your hand, and use all for a total of -1 mana and -1 card while turning two "meh" cards into a counterspell. Likewise, sculpting your hand full of bounce/counterspells can set you up for an impossible to counter gifts.
I think my strongest pull to this deck is that its the closest cousin to doomsday in modern. Mana Seism is just a colorless Rain of Filth, Gifts can make interesting piles in a manner not unlike Doomsday, and this deck doesn't rely on an enchantment like Pyromancer Ascension, meaning I almost never have to tip my opponent off as to what my time table (e.g. Time to Kill) will be.
Is Ritual Gifts better than normal modern storm? Probably not. Its biggest sin is that it is slow, and in a format where aggro can kill you on t3/t4, that can be an issue. But I do believe it can compete. Slower decks like UWR are a cakewalk, they have to hold up countermagic at essentially every point in the game, slowing them down considerably. I'm eager to fight some Scapeshift to see whose take on the same style is better; will our tutoring give us the edge? Or will their ramp and access to Cryptic win out?
Don't you ever feel the need for a Desperate Ritual in the deck? I found that having this "little" red rituals in hand is very useful pre-combo as it lets you fork something if they give you Increasing Vengeance, plus having a differently named ritual in your deck can come handy pretty often. I'd replace the second Manamorphose with it. I don't ever Gifts for Manamorphose until the Grapeshot-Noxious pile, unless I REALLY need a counter and go for the pile of Morphose+Counter+Noxious
Speaking of which, don't you feel the need for being able to Scroll for a hard counter at times? I used Muddle the Mixture back when the format was a bit slower and would many times even use the transmute ability for Snapcaster or a Ritual when I needed one in hand (in extremely late-game scenarios, it's another topdeck that can find a Scroll for a Gifts... I know that doesn't come up often but the transmute is more useful than you'd think). Maybe nowadays the card is not that brilliant, but I wouldn't leave home without something like Negate in the maindeck because I don't feel like you are beating Scapeshift without the ability to Scroll for real protection. They are as fast as we are, but they'll have more lands and they have Cryptics.
Lastly, I've found Repeal to be more of my liking than Echoing Truth. It doesn't have the versatility Echoing Truth has, and getting 5 mana to bounce a Leyline of the Void can be really difficult, but I found that in games 1 I'd often just Repeal a small dude, so I ran 1 as a versatile Scroll target plus an Echoing Truth in the side. It can be too much bounce, but Repeal not costing a card makes it an excellent tempo card against creature strategies, and tempo plays are what this deck likes the most.
I like your sideboard a lot, the Leylines are so good against burn, and that's a pretty tough matchup from my experience. I love the 3 different-name fatties SB plan as well. Maybe we could consider Sagu Mauler too, that card looks pretty good and is a really solid finisher should we need one. I'd advice fitting 1 Ancient Grudge in there just because how good it is with Gifts Ungiven. You do have a lot of sweepers maindeck, but against Arcbound Ravager and Cranial Plating you are likely going to want at least 1 artifact destroyer in your 75 (I'd bring it in against pod any day too)
As far as Muddle the Mixture, i actually like that card in the deck a lot. I think that's the card i dropped for Dig Through Time as well. Being able to Scroll for a hard counter is important though. We have Negate from the board at least, but i find myself Scrolling for Snare when i want counter protection. Aside from Cryptic Command, most of the other counters we need to worry about all cost 2. I do think squeezing Muddle back into the deck could be good though. It's just such a versatile tool to have.
I could definitely see swapping Echoing Truth for Repeal also. That's something i wanna test right away. Seems really good.
Unfortunately we actually need 2 Past in Flames and 2 Manamorphose. If you run only 1 PIF you can find yourself in situations where you have to flashback Past in Flames in the first stage of the combo which will leave you unable to get Grapeshot back in your hand later. The same goes for Manamophose. You can find yourself in situations where the Morphose was exiled in the first part of the combo leaving without a way to draw into Grapeshot once it's on the top of your library. Versions of the deck with Serum Visions got around by having a cheap drawspell they could cast to draw the Grapeshot. Without a cheap way to draw that Shot though, you need the 2nd Morphose.
Pact of Negation i never actually liked in this deck. You can't actually use it to protect Gifts. You almost always cast Gifts on the opponents end step, so if you use Pact there, you'll have to pay for it on your next turn, preventing you from comboing.
Ancient Grudge is something i always want to play but just can never seem to find room in the board for. The sideboard is already so incredibly tight. It is a great card though, and just slipping 1 into a Gifts pile is pretty sweet. If you can fit it in, it seems worth playing.
Academy Ruins actually is kind of interesting, but then we would have to run Life from the Loam also, which i just don't think is worth it here.
Chalice of the Void actually seems like really sweet tech though. Chalice on 1 basically just beats Delver on its own.
The one hesitation I have with Chalice is that it blanks Noxious Revival and lightning bolt making the combo kill slightly more awkward. I actually forgot to mention that I ran Muddle the Mixture over a snapcaster. This could, mana willing, allow us to still tutor for the combo kill with Muddle acting as the proxy for Grapeshot. But its possible we just can't function without Noxious Revival for the combo-kill and must say au revoir to Chalice of the Void.
I'm looking at a 4 creature gifts package in the sideboard. Something like Thragtusk, Wurmcoil Engine, Inferno Titan, and Batterskull. This still allows us to use our best card, Gifts Ungiven, and put two nasty creatures in our hand. I chose Thragtusk as the final one because he does two things I enjoy, he's a hard(ish) to deal with, leaving at least a 3/3 on the board, and gives us 5 life, allowing us to potentially race. The only creature there that isn't hard to deal with is Inferno Titan who is just a value house anyway.
I'll be subbing in Savage Knucks over Thragtusk just to give him a whirl; a 4 mana haste 4/4 that can bounce itself isn't the worst card in the world.
Lastly, watching world's, I wouldn't be surprised if people start boarding in Ethersworn Canonist-esque cards as anti-storm tech in a panic move, meaning we really want to make sure our alt-win con is robust.
Drawing into Rituals means dead cards in some kind of way, but this deck needs a mana producing ritual in hand to go off (unless you have a crapload of mana). If your only forkable rituals are Pyretic, Channel, and Manamorphose (kind of) odds are you are going to have a hard time going off when you don't magically draw into one of them. This deck can go off with five lands and a Ritual+Morphose in hand post Gifts. To go off handless from a single resolved Gifts you'll need 10 mana if they give you IV+PiF (you PiF, then cast Channel, then fork it, with Channel in the stack you use the forked mana to flashback IV after filtering it with a Mphose or Ritual that was in your pile to have the RR in the FB cost). At least, that's the lowest requirements I can think of now if you have an empty hand.
In my testing, when I was running too little rituals, I found myself in a crapload of situations where I had temporarily controlled the game, could resolve a Gifts, but could not set a game-winning pile because of not having any Ritual in hand. This doesn't mean you are going to run 4 Pyretic and 4 Desperate to draw into them and combo reliably because the aim here is not to be an all-in combo deck, but you'll want an amount enough that almost every resolved Gifts will be backbreaking. So it's all about balance: with the mediocre card selection in the format, I don't think that running the bare minimum amount of rituals will work because you need one in your hand, and that can't be set up with a Gifts pile that needs to also search for PiF and IV. I've found that balance to be 2 Desperate and 2 Pyretic aside from Channel and Seism. I might be wrong though, but I don't think you want to be as reactive as possible and forgo all your speed in this fast format. This is not a deck prepared to durdle forever, and needs to have an I win-button.
On Ancient Grudge, Affinity was and is predominant in my meta, and running a single Hurkyl's Recall plus the Ancient Grudge ensured I never lost a match against it, although I did lose Games 1 quite often. Grudge is even more versatile than Recall because Recall doesn't come in against Pod, for example, while I'd be tremendously happy keeping a Pod player off their broken tutoring machine by just slipping a Grudge in any Gifts pile.
On Life from the Loam, I've thought about the EE "lock" with Academy Ruins, but whenever I tried Ruins in this format it seemed way to slow to me. I've thought of adding the Loam+Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth+Raven's Crime pack, but maybe that's just because I'm a fan of that one in any Gifts deck I don't think we need a pile like that against controllish opponents. Keep in mind that anything involving Loam will get hit by graveyard hate too, so I'm really liking the 4-fatties idea. I think Thragtusk is an excellent option, and I totally think 3 sources of lifegain are where we wanna be against aggresive opponents.
PS: Barely off topic, has anyone paid any attention to the UWR Jeskai Ascendancy deck that Team CFB played in the World's Championship? The idea behind the deck is to play control as we do, and go off with a compact combo which doesn't involve a lot of dead cards. The deck is really sweet and we could definitely learn some things about it, and even runs Gifts as a SB plan
Here are the lists for anyone who has not seen them: http://magic.wizards.com/en/events/coverage/2014WC/moderndecklists
In case any of you has been living under a rock, here is the basic idea: You get an Ascendancy in play with 1 or 2 mana producing creatures (Fatestitcher or Faerie Conclave in this case) and then start chaining cantrips with help from the untap and loot effects Ascendancy provides, until your dudes are enormous and you can swing for lethal. In case you haven't tried it, that card is freaking broken and going off hard is really easy, and you can almost always cycle through your deck.
It seems like they are using DTT in the same kind of way we are using Gifts: to pull ahead on cards, fetch answers, and to set up a combo kill. I think DTT is the better card here though, as it lets you run a more streamlined deck and you don't need to be full of 1-ofs for the card to be reliable. They are running Thought Scour to enable heavy delving and as a combo cantrip, while it's also able to bin a Fatestitcher for value.
So, the question is: can we build a deck heavily focused on Dig Through Time, and still keep the Ritual Gifts win condition? Is it worth it? What are the pros/cons to it? Just brainstorming here, but if we are able to support a full playset of DTT, we might not need Merchant Scroll anymore. Though DTT isn't likely to get you a Gifts Ungiven before Turn 4 like Scroll can. I might start brewing something with this in mind after Christmas, but I won't have much time until that. But I think that taking a deep look at that deck will tell us a lot about what a good combo-control deck needs to be doing in this format (given by the first look, it needs a crapload of cheap removal xD).
I will start playing this deck next year, since I hadn't enough time to learn it thorough for GP Milano (will play a Grisselbanned version there).
So now some thoughts:
I agree with Lueseto, that you can't play the minimum number of Rituals, since you need 1 in your hand when you go off. I would play 4, 1 Pyretic and 3 Desperate. The reason for 3 Desperate is, that you can (if you have 6 mana) cast one, splice another fork it and you are at 12 mana. With this idea, it is better to play 2 Manamorphoses, since you need the U/G mana for Gifts Channel (although, you don't need channel anymore, since you can just cast PiF (8), Ritual + Splice (4) Fork (2) + Cast Ritual from the Hand = 21xR, this gives you a Storm count of 7). I know, this play is pretty narrow, but it occurred in testing several times, where I went of with this line of play.
I love the idea of playing the storage lands (never thought about those in this deck) and also the Halmar Depths are nice (forgot, that this card even exist).
For the SB plan I agree with you. We need a non Graveyard based strategy post SB. I like the 4 fatty Gifts plan but you could also play Planeswalker (5mana Garruk e.g.) but I don't know, if the walker can protect itself, since it dies to 2 creatures pretty fast :(. I don't like the Thragtusk, since it is only 5/3 and dies to Bolt, which they will never board out (a simple Lava Spike can win games). There are some 'playable' fatties, beside Wurmcoil, Inferno, Batterskull:
Deep-Sea Kraken can be suspended early and finishes the game pretty fast
Frost Titan can tap something down and has a build in Spell Pierce, but he is probably to bad
Keranos, God of Storms probably to slow
Pearl Lake Ancient can't be countered, can't be double bolted, and can be bounced, if it is necessary
Sagu Mauler Huge body, hexproof and has trample (big plus)
Simic Sky Swallower probably to expensive, but can't be killed (exception is Lilli) and has a huge body Sagu Mauler is probably better
Surrak Dragonclaw can't be countered is nice, but he has no trample/flying or another decent effect
Thundermaw Hellkite the red Baneslayer Angel, he is pretty nice and kills all those lingering Souls tokens.
Stormbreath Dragon the buddy from Thundermaw. I don't know, which one is better to be honest, but I think it is Thundermaw since he has a 5/5 body.
Garruk, Primal Hunter the best PW for this deck (can protect himself and can draw cards, if it is necessary)
Sarkhan, the Dragonspeaker decent choice, but I would play Garruk over him
I probably missed some good finisher. So I would play Inferno, Wurmcoil, Skull, + a card from the above list (probably Sagu Mauler or Garruk, since both are immune to removal spells)
Greetings,
Kathal
Modern/Legacy
either funpolice (Delver, Deathcloud, UW Control) or the fun decks (especially those ft. Griselbrand)
Past in Flames - Ritual
Past in Flames - Channel the Suns
Manamorphose - Ritual
Increasing Vengeance - Mana Seism
Increasing Vengeance - Pyretic Ritual
Increasing Vengeance - Channel the Suns
Mana Seism - Pyretic Ritual
Mana Seism - Channel the Suns
Pyretic Ritual - Channel the Suns
All of those win with 5 lands. The other options i didn't list win with 6 lands.
You don't need to have a Ritual in hand, and most of the time that Ritual you draw will be a complete brick. I adamantly disagree with you here. There is just zero reason to run more than the minimum needed for the combo. The extra Rituals just do nothing outside the combo, and i can't see enough reason to run them when you don't actually need to.
Also the 2nd Morphose is needed. I'm not sure how your deck is working with no ramp, and only 1 Morphose.
For example.
You have 5 lands, but never had a chance to fetch a green producing land. This forces you to Gifts for Manamophose or you won't be able to get the green for Channel the suns. Now if the opponent puts Morphose in the bin, it's going to get exiled when you flash it back. Now when you go to do the 2nd pile you won't have a way to draw into grapeshot after you put it onto your library. I ran the deck with only 1 morphose when i switched back from the cantrip list i was running and immediately ran into this problem and realized you need a 2nd draw spell in the deck to make sure this never happens.
Splicing is broken with Vengeance, but people never gave me Desperate Ritual from my Gifts pile because of the Splice itself, so I ended up splicing just if I drew both, in which case opponent is already dead once you resolve Gifts anyway, so I figured I just wanted to diversify ritual names as much as I could.
Garruk is double green, which is rather difficult for this deck to cast. Its why I didn't consider things like Obstinate Baloth. Sarkhan is interesting but he provides himself no protection from creatures on the board.
Sagu Mauler is interesting, and quite the house in my mid-range Sultai deck in standard. He's certainly a possibility, but a very vanilla one. You can't slam him down against an onboard lili like you can with Batterskull or Inferno Titan. I like Thragtusk because he'll eat at least two bolts or trade with a flipped delver, in addition to the 5 life gain. This can be eminently important in delver/zoo matchups, and make their life a bit hellacious trying to find a good gifts pile. He's only tentative, and I'll be trying out a few creatures in his slot, but I like the idea of him.
Kraken is really, really slow and could just eat a terminate/path. Our strongest play would be around 5 and 6 mana, an EOT t4 gifts into a batterskull/wurmcoil is where I feel we want to be. Surrak Dragonclaw is a wet noodle, he doesn't have trample himself and we're a counter deck our self, so I'm not concerned with our stuff getting countered. Frost Titan doesn't rattle the cages like our other choices, and I'd like to get a 2/2 split of 2 very powerful, hard to deal with 6 drops and 2 great 5 drops. This makes EOT T4 gifts a harder split for the opponent because they have to decide on what threats matter (all of them should), and what we can play (do we have a ramp spell in hand if he gives us 2 6s?).
I usually run two Hurkyl's, but a 1/1 split of hurkyl's and ancient grudge might be the ticket. I've only faced robots/affinity 6 or so games, so we'll see.
My inclination is to lean away from storage lands. It improves match-ups that we're already decent/great in and does nothing for aggro/midrange where we have to spend our turns controlling the board. But perhaps our Scapeshift match up needs the help, I'll probably get around to testing them.
Finally, the ascendancy deck is not a ritual gifts deck, at least I don't see them as similar. They're a fast combo deck, with hardly any control elements. Ritual Gifts is a control-combo deck, its less storm and more Scapeshift, with storm just as the win-con. The Asc deck sb into the reanimator gifts package because GY hate does nothing to the main combo and dodges enchantment hate. It takes a lot of cantrips and loot effects to support 4 DTT. Even in my delver deck I only run 3 cruises because i found the 4th very difficult to play.
@Lord Hazanko: First, you are saying you don't need a ritual in hand to win, then you cite 9 pair of cards which can win from 5 lands and all of them have a ritual in them, so I really can't see where you are going. I've read the whole old primer and the new one multiple times, and I assure you I'm pretty familiar with the winning lines of play. All the piles you stated to win on 5 lands have 2 combo pieces you need to naturally draw into, be them rituals or other stuff, and all have a forkable ritual in them, save for the IV+Seism one, in which you can go for PiF + 3 Forkable rituals so you get one in hand at the end. But drawing 2 combo pieces is necessary. Of course you won't need a ritual in hand if you have the combo pieces to force the opponent to give it in your hand, but you drew PiF/IV and that was a dead card too. The debate is around how many combo pieces is correct to run.
I don't like your argument for the 2nd Manamorphose. Saying you need it because you couldn't fetch out a Green producing land just speaks wrongly of your manabase, and I'd rather be able to work that out. If the mana base is consistent, this shouldn't come up enough to be relevant IMO.
@UselessDoctrinarian: Again, the ritual in hand I said is obviously non necessary if you have 2 combo pieces because you can actually put the ritual in your hand with Gifts. Trust me, I've done the math in paper of what is needed for the IV+Channel thing, and you need 2 pieces as you are stating, to go off by turn 5. Combo pieces are dead cards too. Having more of them means it's more likely for you to draw the 2 necessary to go off.
The Garruk they were talking about costs 2GGG so it's even harder to cast. I think Baloth could be decent if you build your manabase with that in mind. We are in modern after all, and 3 color decks have never been problematic with manabases.
The Ascendancy deck being played in the Worlds Champs is DEFINITELY not a fast combo deck. It's running 10 removal and 7 permission pieces (Izzet Charm counts as both), and 4 Broken card advantage and Selection pieces and if you've seen any of Leyton's games, you'll see how he plays a totally controllish role against Sam Black in Pod, going off in like 7 lands both times and being able to control the flow of the game in a very decent manner.
For the rituals: Essentially, in the early game ramp substitutes itself for a ritual spell. You can still combo t5 regardless of the pieces in hand if you hit at least one ramp spell by turn 3, given that t4 is gifts and t5 is the kill. But perhaps adding one more ritual is an idea as you can use it the turn you draw it, as opposed to a ramp spell that requires you to set up beforehand. I don't really know the answer, given that the math involved is exceptionally lengthy and out of my 'ken. Are the people in favor of adding in another ritual feeling like, on average, you're going off after t5 due to lack of rituals?
@GriffinMR
I don't play any utility lands. We're busy at all turns of the game versus our bad match-ups, meaning I wouldn't want Halimar depths at any point except turn 1. I've also found myself to be very colour constrained. We're attempting to support double red sweepers (anger, and I'm running fallout), as well as DTT (double blue), and we need at least 1 green source to get Channel the Suns. Then things get even more mucked up if you're preparing yourself for a counter war during your combo turn, necessitating more blue sources. I just don't feel that storagelands are where we want to be at, given that delver is both very aggressive and can have a few counters. But I could be wrong, certainly worth testing.
4 Merchant Scroll
4 Gifts Ungiven
1 Steam Augury
1 Dig Through Time
4 Remand
3 Mana Leak
2 Spell Snare
2 Spell Pierce
2 Izzet Charm
1 Muddle the Mixture
2 Electrolyze
1 Flame Slash
2 Past in Flames
2 Manamorphose
1 Channel the Suns
1 Mana Seism
1 Desperate Ritual
1 Increasing Vengeance
1 Noxious Revival
1 Grapeshot
By my count, I need to cut 6 cards before adding land if I want to run 22. Thoughts?
| Omnath | Zada | Alesha | Scion |
| Mazirek | Animar |
Modern
UR Storm RU
UBRG Dredge GRBU
Standard
UR Thermo-Thing RU
Steam Augury seems interesting. I really like how it fills the grave for delve spells and FB spells, though this is reverse card selection: you won't end up with what you need if your opponent is smart enough. Definitely not Gifts Ungiven. I tried the card in UWR control and the big con I found to it was that, although absolutely bonkers on turn 4, as the game progresses, the value in the piles is greatly reduced and you end up just flooding with a fistful of lands and low impact cards. Turn 4 you'd better be off casting Gifts Ungiven in this deck though, but in some grindy games you'll just want many cards and Augury is decent for that.
I'd been wanting to try Peer Through Depths, maybe as a 2-of. Some lists run it instead of Scroll, but it isn't reliant enough IMO.
I'm not sold on Serum Visions, it just seems kind of weird to play blue in Modern without them. If I cut them I'd probably need to go up to 24-25 land. Peer Through Depths was in my list for a while, but at two mana I figured I'd just rather have Scroll. It can get a few cards Scroll can't (Anger, Flame Slash, Channel) but honestly it just seems inferior.
| Omnath | Zada | Alesha | Scion |
| Mazirek | Animar |
Modern
UR Storm RU
UBRG Dredge GRBU
Standard
UR Thermo-Thing RU
I am very interested in this style of the deck. Not only does the main deck seem pretty consistent while remaining blisteringly fast, but the main deck is set up very well to transition into a solid all-in Twin build. It is getting the combo-lover in me all in a tizzy. That said I have a couple of questions to help my grasp on how exactly this build would run.
First, I am a little surprised that you are not playing a singleton Noxious Revival. I have done some play and a lot of testing with a more standard build and Revival has been crucial in making certain Gifts piles work and making sure I can get Grapeshot when I need it. Has it just been unnecessary for you? Or was it not worth the times it was dead in your hand?
Second, I am struggling somewhat in understanding exactly when the deck should be going off and what your Gifts piles should look like. Clearly in your build the Gifts piles will vary a fair bit based on your hand, field, graveyard, and your opponent's field, but are there any general rules for what you should be fetching in order to go off properly? Or is it really something that is best learned through doing it and getting used to the fluid piles you can build? If at all possible I, like others have said before, would be very interested in seeing any kind of recording you can do of a real game or two to show how the whole thing comes together in a real match.
Thanks for your time and your work on the deck!
If you ABSOLUTELY want to bounce the Chalice, you can copy your Repeal with Increasing Vengeance, and the copy won't be countered, but that's more of a cute observation than a practical advice cause it isn't likely to happen in all MTG history
On 2 Manamorphose- Again if the first 1 ends up in the grave, and you don't have a 2nd, you can lock yourself out of the Grapeshot pile. With a mana base of
4 Scalding Tarn
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Sulfur Falls
3 Steam vents
1 Breeding pool
1 Stomping Ground
3 Island
1 Forest
1 Mountain
and with 4 Sakura-Tribe Elder in the main I almost always have perfect mana, still though, depending on how a game plays out, you can find yourself needing Manamorphose to get through the choke point in the combo. Getting 3(g)(r)(r) for the flashback Vengeance-Channel can sometimes be a pain, and you'll need to use your Morphose to get the right colors. So if you find yourself in this situation you better hope you didn't play Morphose already, or that the opponent didn't put the Morphose in the grave off your first Gifts pile, because you won't be able to draw into Grapeshot later without a 2nd Morphose
So basically not running a 2nd Morphose means you have to be very careful not to let the sole Morphose hit the grave, and if it does hit the grave, remember that you can't use it to clear the choke point.
I think just running the 2nd is a better idea. It makes it easier to clear that Choke point, and also makes the other Morphose not so bad. If i have a Morphose in hand early in the game, I'll almost always burn it to draw a card. That's something you can't do as confidently with only 1 in the deck.
Now as far as how many Rituals to run in the deck. When i say Ritual i specifically mean Pyretic/Desperate Ritual. We all agree on 1 Mana Seism, 1 Channel the Suns, and at least 1 Manamorphose(I firmly believe you should be running 2)
Past In Flames - Manamorphose
Past In Flames - Increasing Vengeance
Past in Flames - Mana Seism
Past in Flames - Channel the Suns
Manamorphose - Increasing Vengeance
Manamorphose - Mana Seism
Manamorphose - Channel the Suns
Increasing Vengeance - Mana Seism
Increasing Vengeance - Channel the Suns
Mana Seism - Channel the Suns
So out of 15 possibilities, 10 of them don't include a ritual. There is no reason to run 4 Rituals in the deck, when they do absolutely nothing outside the combo, and only make up a small percentage of possible combo hands. Also worth noting that Manamorphose is the only card here that can be played outside the combo, another reason why running 2 Morphose is better than excess Rituals.
I'm not a fan of Steam Augory at all. In the past people have suggested it, and i guess it seemed OK then, but now that we can Scroll for Dig Through Time, i can't see any reason to run Augory.
I've been playing 22 lands for a while now and it feels great. But i also run mana ramp, so that makes up for running less lands. I suppose if you're on the pure combo/control list, with no ramp, you'd want more lands. I do think 4 Tribe Elder are actually extremely good in this deck though. One of the biggest issues the deck has is getting to 5 mana consistently. Tribe Elder gets you to 5, fixes your mana, and stalls the opponent. That's a large chunk of what this deck is trying to do.
As far as Repeal and Chalice, i think I'm sticking to Repeal in the main, just because it really has been awesome. And really, how many decks play maindeck Chalice?? So if anything, if i somehow get beat g1 by Chalice i'll just take it, and side in Echoing Truth/ Hurkyl's Recall for g2/3
*Edit*
Oh! and also, as far as our Alt win creatures. I don't really think we need to worry too much about removal on them. Unless we're talking a local event where people know what you are doing, who is honestly keeping in their Path to Exiles, etc, against a creatureless combo deck?
I'm really, really enjoying thragtusk. The 5 point life-swing and incidental 3/3 means that t5 thragtusk into t6 inferno titan (the most common pile given to me) is very hard to deal with. Savage Knuckleblade is a total dud, though. He's a 4/4 beater on t3, sure, but so is Goyf a lot of the times. His abilities don't allow you to progress your board and are lackluster for their cost. Wurmcoil/Batter are also complete houses.
I wonder if we can fit a few more 1 cmc counters. Both Dispel and Spell Pierce are very good to protect your combo while not being heavily mana intensive. A few times I came across a t5 kill but I had to use too much of my red/green mana to cast remand/negate and thus couldn't combo off. Counters are flying thick and furious with both Scapeshift and Delver being very popular decks.
Muddle the Mixture has been utterly depressing. I think its a card we want, but probably in the board for matchups against control elements. I can almost never find the time to transmute against pod/delver and the UU cost is somewhat crippling. Maybe its just better to replace it with another Dig through Time or counterspell?
Repeal is great, but the utility of Echoing Truth is very hard to beat. In many games it'll bounce lethal attacker(s) for less mana than Repeal, meaning you can incorporate into Gifts piles and force your opponent to bin it, giving you a larger range of combo opportunities and allowing you keep up counter mana or progress the board.
This is what i'm currently running..
2 Negate
1 Sudden Shock
1 Combust
1 Damping Matrix
1 Torpor Orb
1 Echoing Truth
1 Hurkyl's Recall
1 Batterskull
1 Inferno Titan
1 Wurmcoil Engine
The only thing i could think of would be cutting a Leyline. I just don't know how i feel about only having 3 Leylines and trying to draw/mull into them. What's your board look like with all 4 creatures?
It's a shame that Savage Knuckleblade didn't work out. But i guess in hindsight, it really doesn't seem like he does enough anyway. I think the combo of Thragtusk - Batterskull - Inferno Titan - Wurmcoil Engine is pretty mean though. Every one of those guys have some pretty significant impact if they resolve.
Muddle the Mixture is a card i have used a lot in the past, but with the addition of Dig Through Time i dropped it. I do actually really like Muddle, it's a pretty versatile card, and like Lueseto mentioned, it can be nice having a hard counter available. When it comes down to it though, in countless games i think i have only ever transmuted Muddle maybe 2-3 times, where as almost every single game i play i cast Dig Through Time and it works wonders.
I like Repeal and Echoing Truth both a lot. They are good for different reasons. For now i'm going to keep jamming Repeal in the main and see how i like it. So far being able to bounce, and cantrip has been awesome. Bouncing a flipped Delver and drawing a card for (u) is crazy too. It's mana cost can sometime be prohibitive, and annoying, but generally speaking, in g1 i think I'd rather have access to Repeal.
As far as 1 mana counters i don't know. I'm not apposed to the idea. I think for the most part Spell Snare is my go to counter protection. It's a hard counter against Mana Leak, Remand, Izzet Charm, Shadow of Doubt, and most of the common counter magic other than Cryptic Command. I'm running 2 Negate in the board, but maybe a split of Negate - Dispel/ Swan Song/ Spell Pierce could be good? I do really like Negate as a solid hard counter though.
1 Dampening Matrix
1 Thragtusk
1 Inferno Titan
1 Batterskull
1 Wurmcoil Engine
1 Negate
1 Dispel
4 Leyline of Sanctity
1 Torpor Orb
2 Chalice of the Void
My one hesitation with running only Spell Snare is that a lot of our combo is very weak to that very same card. Increasing Vengeance, Manamorphose, Mana Seism, and desperate ritual are all countered by Spell Snare. I like Spell Snare and don't think it should be replaced, but I am considering replacing a few remands with pierces/dispels. We need some way to keep at least a counter up on the turn we go off to protect it. And against delver/aggressive tempo decks we don't always have the luxury to sculpt our hands/mana.
I like the idea of Swan Song, especially if Ascendancy Storm becomes more popular. It protects us against all relevant threats and we don't much care about the 2/2 flyer as we're running bolts and 'clasms.
Greetings,
Kathal
Modern/Legacy
either funpolice (Delver, Deathcloud, UW Control) or the fun decks (especially those ft. Griselbrand)
Question, can this deck go off on turn 3 ever?
Also, whats the best card to replace the misty rain forests, since i dont ahve them. I have a playset of all the ktk fetches and i think 1 or 2 singles of zendikar fetches
URStormRU
GRTitanshift[mana]RG/mana]
Any blue fetches would be preferable, that can fetch you Steam Vents, Breeding Pool, and Island in the face of Blood Moon. Not running Misty and Tarn will definitly have an impact on the mana though. Having off color fetches makes it a bit harder to properly sequence your land drops, and you'll often end up taking more dmg trying to get the right land.
As far as Treasure Cruise in the deck, maybe it could be pretty good, but Dig through Time is insane. I swear everytime i cast that card it just feels ridiculous. I love being able to grab my last combo piece and a counterspell, or 2 pieces of disruption, or whatever, it's just so good. Also because it's fetchable with Scroll, i honestly end up casting Dig in almost every game i play. I think that card alone has made this deck much more consistent.