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Thread: Ritual Gifts

  1. #21
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    Re: Ritual Gifts

    Yeah sorry i messed up my count, not sure what i missed, Probably cabal.

  2. #22

    Re: Ritual Gifts

    Tutors:

    Merchant Scroll: This finds every blue card in the deck but itself and ponder.
    Gitaxian Probe likes to have a word with you.

  3. #23
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    Re: Ritual Gifts

    I like the concept a lot but there are a couple of points worth discussing:

    1) the deck needs a lot of blue mana to re-cast all its cantrips and/or Scrolling for a Freeze, with the obvious exception of Gitaxian Probe, after Past in Flames. I'm testing the UR version and I'm finding this to be a frequent need. It can be solved by either adding Manamorphose, which I currently dislike, or slightly slowing the way to play the deck so that you can, by turn 4, win on the back of a solid Gifts Ungiven by having fetched all your basics. Related to this point, I'd advice to trim down the number of Volcanic Islands (4 are really unnecessary) and play at least 4 Islands and just a single Mountain. This pattern, already wildly consolidated in ANT, also makes the deck almost immune to Wasteland and capable of not losing to screws or randomic stuff.
    2) A single Pact of Negation is needed in the maindeck, because it's the only protection spell that can be used twice after PiF and deals with Stifle from tempo decks.
    3) As already mentioned, the main kill spell should be Brain Freeze and not Empty the Warrens.
    4) We have to point out objective criteria for which it's preferable to play this over Spiral Tide. While I'll concede that the Gifts+PiF engine avoids the randomicity and shitty draws Time Spiral provides from time to time, I think it's more prone to fold to discard spells on the accelerants and has a more fragile decision tree. I mean, what you have to do is to resolve a Gifts Ungiven and recycle your yard with Past in Flames; although packing protection and bounce along with a tutor effect, this strategy could easily become obsolete if the deck was to break into the scene. Keep also in mind that it can also be hated by a lot of common sideboard cards: Extirpate, Pyroblast AND Gaddock Teeg. The other Storm combo decks use to suffer only 2 among those.
    5) Since an optimal goldfish is around turn 3,5-4 if undisrupted, I wonder how's the matchup against Tendrils. You have 4 Force of Will and 3 Spell Pierce as protection, but they tend not to be enough. Spiral Tide at least has the advantage of being able to fetch a Mindbreak Trap if it reaches turn 3 by Cunning Wish. I suggest taking Flusterstorm into consideration: although it doesn't nab Counterbalance, it's just that good in the current metagame shift towards tempo and combo.

    (I know that the costant comparation to ANT and Tide may sound arrogant and pretentious, but Legacy is a high-level format that requires to build the top decks in order to compete at the top, and the room for optimal new combo decks is particularly narrow).
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  4. #24
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    Re: Ritual Gifts

    Quote Originally Posted by DeadCities View Post
    Gitaxian Probe likes to have a word with you.
    Nice one-post troll account bro. Honestly, who cares?

    On-topic: I like this idea a lot, as I love both storm and gifts. I'll be interested in how the development goes. OP, you may want to check out the old "Spellweaver Gifts" thread on the Storm Boards - although it was for extended, there may be some relevant content there.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Julian23 View Post
    Since playing against Spiral Tide provides a lot fun for both players is something only someone who's not had sex for quite a while could enjoy, I pull out GW Maverick.
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  5. #25

    Re: Ritual Gifts

    Is Ponder really better than Preordain? I realize that the former looks one card deeper in many cases but it also gives you less flexibility when some of those cards are bad. I guess if your goal is to just make buckets of mana with Rituals and Past in Flames then there is not a lot of difference between the two cards (since the contents of your graveyard eventually become more important the top X cards of your library), but I still feel like Preordain is better in the first couple of turns.

    Also, in your UR version, I feel like Grapeshot would be a better kill than EtW. By the time you go off, EtW will be a lot less of an inevitable kill condition that Grapeshot would.

  6. #26
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    Re: Ritual Gifts

    Quote Originally Posted by Aggro_zombies View Post
    Is Ponder really better than Preordain? I realize that the former looks one card deeper in many cases but it also gives you less flexibility when some of those cards are bad.
    Ponder is generally better in combo decks because you are more interested in digging for a particular card than in carefully filtering your draws (see TES or various Doomsday brews that play Ponder over Preordain).
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    Quote Originally Posted by Julian23 View Post
    Since playing against Spiral Tide provides a lot fun for both players is something only someone who's not had sex for quite a while could enjoy, I pull out GW Maverick.
    Quote Originally Posted by Brainstorm Ape View Post
    Spikes are supposed to enjoy winning by leveraging their talents, but this card can't fetch the most SKILL INTENSIVE card in all of Magic?

    Clearly aimed at Modern plebs, not gonna be a pillar of our format.
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  7. #27
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    Re: Ritual Gifts

    Quote Originally Posted by Piceli89 View Post
    I like the concept a lot but there are a couple of points worth discussing:

    1) the deck needs a lot of blue mana to re-cast all its cantrips and/or Scrolling for a Freeze, with the obvious exception of Gitaxian Probe, after Past in Flames. I'm testing the UR version and I'm finding this to be a frequent need. It can be solved by either adding Manamorphose, which I currently dislike, or slightly slowing the way to play the deck so that you can, by turn 4, win on the back of a solid Gifts Ungiven by having fetched all your basics. Related to this point, I'd advice to trim down the number of Volcanic Islands (4 are really unnecessary) and play at least 4 Islands and just a single Mountain. This pattern, already wildly consolidated in ANT, also makes the deck almost immune to Wasteland and capable of not losing to screws or randomic stuff.
    2) A single Pact of Negation is needed in the maindeck, because it's the only protection spell that can be used twice after PiF and deals with Stifle from tempo decks.
    3) As already mentioned, the main kill spell should be Brain Freeze and not Empty the Warrens.
    4) We have to point out objective criteria for which it's preferable to play this over Spiral Tide. While I'll concede that the Gifts+PiF engine avoids the randomicity and shitty draws Time Spiral provides from time to time, I think it's more prone to fold to discard spells on the accelerants and has a more fragile decision tree. I mean, what you have to do is to resolve a Gifts Ungiven and recycle your yard with Past in Flames; although packing protection and bounce along with a tutor effect, this strategy could easily become obsolete if the deck was to break into the scene. Keep also in mind that it can also be hated by a lot of common sideboard cards: Extirpate, Pyroblast AND Gaddock Teeg. The other Storm combo decks use to suffer only 2 among those.
    5) Since an optimal goldfish is around turn 3,5-4 if undisrupted, I wonder how's the matchup against Tendrils. You have 4 Force of Will and 3 Spell Pierce as protection, but they tend not to be enough. Spiral Tide at least has the advantage of being able to fetch a Mindbreak Trap if it reaches turn 3 by Cunning Wish. I suggest taking Flusterstorm into consideration: although it doesn't nab Counterbalance, it's just that good in the current metagame shift towards tempo and combo.

    (I know that the costant comparation to ANT and Tide may sound arrogant and pretentious, but Legacy is a high-level format that requires to build the top decks in order to compete at the top, and the room for optimal new combo decks is particularly narrow).
    1) I usually just recast rituals with past in flames and Probe if my life is high enough, I think trying to cast your entire graveyard off of Past in Flames will stall out the game longer than wanted. This is probably because I started testing Past in Flames in TES first and remaining Hell Bent for infernal tutor was very important. I don't know if it's worth the extra turns just to try to get one storm when going off.

    2) I hadn't looked at pact that way. I had always thought of it as a worse misdirection, but I can't flashback misdirection. I'll replace misdirection with pact in the main list.

    3) I agree that brainfreeze is better than empty the warrens in the U/R list. The original decision tree with the standard pile in that list allowed for the opportunity to generate only 18 goblins depending on what your opponent gave you. That changed before the current pile and now a lethal brainfreeze should be possible most of the time. Getting UUR1 and a ritual effect post gifts will be the main challenge with this variant.

    4/5) This deck has a difficult role to fill, it wants to beat both counterbalance and combo.
    Building to beat combo is fairly easy. If the deck played 8 chant effects + Force of Will it would be the worse match up for combo period. If the deck played Wipe away and Pyroblasts beating counterbalance would be easier also. I think the fact that it can play the amount of disruption against both archetypes is what makes this deck preferable to spiral tide and what makes it a threat to TES / ANT and makes finding the right balance of maindeck hate cards is important.

  8. #28
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    Re: Ritual Gifts

    Thanks for the responses, especially on the last point.
    I was wondering a thing before: how does this deck play against conditional counters, given you usually have to leave 2 blue mana free for Merchant + Freeze? For example, let's take a common scenario:

    You: 3 lands in play, Mountain Volcanic Volcanic. Cast Rite of Flame from Mountain.
    Opponent: Spell Pierce your Rite of Flame.

    At this point you're forced to hard counter the Spell Pierce because paying for it would mean cutting yourself the possibility to either play cantrips and Brain Freeze. You can't even play Ritual in responses to pay for the Pierce because Rite of Flame is at sorcery speed and Desperate Ritual would still let you with a red mana in pool, the wrong color. I'm thinking that this could become a serious issue when testing against decks ala Merfolk or Tempo Thresh. I mean, getting that degree of trouble from a single Pierce should draw some serious thinking about what the deck needs to be resilient. Again, the only thing I find in UR in these scenarios is Manamorphose. Card sucks per se, though.

    Or, at this point, we could forego completely the Merchant route and cut it for Burning Wish. It doesn't grab Gifts nor is synergic with the graveyard, but it does get Past in Flames, a kill spell for hatebars, and Empty the Warrens plus Grapeshot. Thus, it works in a similar way. Not pitching to Force should be a minor issue if you consider that you can build with it entirely red hands that will play better in the aforementioned scenarios, requiring a single colour.
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  9. #29
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    Re: Ritual Gifts

    Your right it will be countered unless you have a hard counter. Gitaxian probe is in the deck to allow you to know when you have to play around counters, as well as put cards in your hand to deal with any situation.
    I think a better solution than Burning wish is more land (that situation would happen if you had more). I've tried Burning Wish in place of Scroll time and time over and can never get it to work, more land or perhaps lotus petals seem like a better idea.
    One thing that this deck does like to do is use merchant scroll to find Force of Will, Burning wish can't do that. Force of Will is probably the card i look for the most with Scroll, it helps a lot.

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    Re: Ritual Gifts

    Needing UBR1 to go off, while fighting off fast aggro, GY hate post board, wasteland, and other combo decks seems a little greedy. . .
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  11. #31
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    Re: Ritual Gifts

    You'd think that...
    But ANT/TES needs 7 mana to win unprotected and have bigger problems with aggro/wasteland. This deck has the best ability to circumvent graveyard hate of any deck that has to deal with it in merchant scroll, while also using that to fight storm hate and storm.

  12. #32
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    Re: Ritual Gifts

    Quote Originally Posted by John Cox View Post
    You'd think that...
    But ANT/TES needs 7 mana to win unprotected and have bigger problems with aggro/wasteland. This deck has the best ability to circumvent graveyard hate of any deck that has to deal with it in merchant scroll, while also using that to fight storm hate and storm.
    You want to tell us that TES has bigger problems with wasteland/aggro than a turn 4 all-grave-depending combo deck that needs 3 different colored lands in it's kill-turn? Serious?

    Merchant Scroll is a sorcery so the opponent can see your eot wipe away coming. This is not an all-upside solution; it eats up a whole turn. Fighting storm with merchant scroll isn't that hot: you tap out turn 2, pay 2 for tutor FoW and TES pays 1 for duress/chant (in their 2nd or 3rd turn). Who made the better deal? This is not Vintage where both (duress and scroll) are turn 1 plays.
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  13. #33
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    Re: Ritual Gifts

    Quote Originally Posted by Lemnear View Post
    You want to tell us that TES has bigger problems with wasteland/aggro than a turn 4 all-grave-depending combo deck that needs 3 different colored lands in it's kill-turn? Serious?

    Merchant Scroll is a sorcery so the opponent can see your eot wipe away coming. This is not an all-upside solution; it eats up a whole turn. Fighting storm with merchant scroll isn't that hot: you tap out turn 2, pay 2 for tutor FoW and TES pays 1 for duress/chant (in their 2nd or 3rd turn). Who made the better deal? This is not Vintage where both (duress and scroll) are turn 1 plays.
    As has been mentioned by others, Merchant Scroll fulfills the role that could be played by Burning Wish in this deck. The advantage of Scroll is that you can get free counter magic with it. This makes scroll more useful than Burning Wish. Scroll is not Duress in these lists, the tricolor list actually plays duress and that is the tricolor list's advantage.
    Many people often struggle with the low land count in TES/ANT. Both lists in this thread have a higher land count and run basics. If fetching three different lands is too difficult (and in wasteland heavy metas it can be) the UR list is much more basic friendly.
    I don't want this to turn into a flame thread so I would like it if we could be more constructive from here on out.

  14. #34
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    Re: Ritual Gifts

    Worthy to note that against combo, scrolling for a Mindbreak Trap can be devastating, as long as they don't discard it :P

    I think the list will have some issues with fast combo, but having Fow/Pierce/Pact/MBTrap postboard seems to make the matchup better and not an autoloss.
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  15. #35
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    Re: Ritual Gifts

    After some testings, I came to some conclusions:
    1) Manamorphose is necessary for the combo turn, when you need to start from a single red mana to chain rituals and what you need is blue mana to cast Merchant and cantrips (from the graveyard). 3 is the minimum number, debating whether to play the fourth.
    2) Gifts Ungiven is pretty slow, although it's very good. I'd search for some sideboard cards that can get interesting effects with Flashback, like a hatebear solution; but the only thing that comes to my mind now is the Shock with the fb at 4R, or Deep Analysis against control. Pretty mediocre cards.
    3) Force of Will is by miles the worst card in the deck. Never happy to open a hand with one, since it requires to pitch a combo key or a cantrip. I guess it's a necessary evil, but hell, I think it's as bad as it is in Solidarity.
    4) Gitaxian Probe, along with Rite of Flame, is by miles the best card in the deck, as long as you're able to flashback it after PiF.

    3) The deck seems to lack some advantages of the other storm combo decks: instant rituals from ANT, gameplan flexibility from TES, total consistency from Tide. The way it works is pretty schematical and straightforward, plus it's slower than those. I'll recognize, though, that at least, unless Tide, it doesn't require to make a "ritual" resolve to combo, and unless the other twos, it's more solid and has a better disruption suite. Being UR, it's obviously more suited to endure Counterbalance. Still, I've got the feeling it still lacks some of that punch and brokenness that could push this to an interesting new contender in the Storm panaorama. Red rituals are pretty weaksauce and Gifts, as said, requires a lot of setup. It doesn't offer a robust alternate way of winning that doesn't imply the graveyard (for instance, Etw is NOT solid). So I'm still skeleptical.
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  16. #36
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    Re: Ritual Gifts

    Quote Originally Posted by Piceli89 View Post
    After some testings, I came to some conclusions:
    2) Gifts Ungiven is pretty slow, although it's very good. I'd search for some sideboard cards that can get interesting effects with Flashback, like a hatebear solution; but the only thing that comes to my mind now is the Shock with the fb at 4R, or Deep Analysis against control. Pretty mediocre cards.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Julian23 View Post
    Since playing against Spiral Tide provides a lot fun for both players is something only someone who's not had sex for quite a while could enjoy, I pull out GW Maverick.
    Quote Originally Posted by Brainstorm Ape View Post
    Spikes are supposed to enjoy winning by leveraging their talents, but this card can't fetch the most SKILL INTENSIVE card in all of Magic?

    Clearly aimed at Modern plebs, not gonna be a pillar of our format.
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  17. #37
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    Re: Ritual Gifts

    Quote Originally Posted by Piceli89 View Post
    After some testings, I came to some conclusions:
    1) Manamorphose is necessary for the combo turn, when you need to start from a single red mana to chain rituals and what you need is blue mana to cast Merchant and cantrips (from the graveyard). 3 is the minimum number, debating whether to play the fourth.
    2) Gifts Ungiven is pretty slow, although it's very good. I'd search for some sideboard cards that can get interesting effects with Flashback, like a hatebear solution; but the only thing that comes to my mind now is the Shock with the fb at 4R, or Deep Analysis against control. Pretty mediocre cards.
    3) Force of Will is by miles the worst card in the deck. Never happy to open a hand with one, since it requires to pitch a combo key or a cantrip. I guess it's a necessary evil, but hell, I think it's as bad as it is in Solidarity.
    4) Gitaxian Probe, along with Rite of Flame, is by miles the best card in the deck, as long as you're able to flashback it after PiF.

    3) The deck seems to lack some advantages of the other storm combo decks: instant rituals from ANT, gameplan flexibility from TES, total consistency from Tide. The way it works is pretty schematical and straightforward, plus it's slower than those. I'll recognize, though, that at least, unless Tide, it doesn't require to make a "ritual" resolve to combo, and unless the other twos, it's more solid and has a better disruption suite. Being UR, it's obviously more suited to endure Counterbalance. Still, I've got the feeling it still lacks some of that punch and brokenness that could push this to an interesting new contender in the Storm panaorama. Red rituals are pretty weaksauce and Gifts, as said, requires a lot of setup. It doesn't offer a robust alternate way of winning that doesn't imply the graveyard (for instance, Etw is NOT solid). So I'm still skeleptical.
    1) I would't run more than one as a gifts target. I also would use Merchant Scroll to find Brain Freeze. After the first past in flames cast Gifts From your grave For Brain Freeze+Seething Song+Past in Flames+Manamorphose. Flash back Past in flames and use the ritual to pay for everything.
    2) The only thing that comes to mind is a gifts pile with volcanic spray + lava dart for the UR version. I don't think Gifts is a particularly good engine to use against hate bears since it gets hit by most of them. Scroll -> Bounce seems like a better solution to hate bears. wipe away could even go in the deck.
    3) My opinion is different, I feel this deck needs Force to function. I can't see winning game one against Reanimator or Zoo without it.
    4) I agree.


    3) The one advantage it has is inevitability. Gifts nets you a ritual If you somehow ended up with 6 lands out you could hard cast the ritual and Past in Flames and win from there. The fact it's a one card win condition is probably the biggest advantage of this deck over any other out there.

  18. #38
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    Re: Ritual Gifts

    Studied the UR version. I came to these conclusions:

    1. There needs to be 2 Grapeshots in the main.
    2. The initial mana required after casting the first Gifts is 13, at least two of which is blue - this doesn't include the ritual/s that you get from Gifts.
    3. For every mana that you get from a ritual that is not part of the Gifts pile, you subtract one from the initial mana required (e.g. If have 2 Seething Songs, which is +4 mana, in hand, the initial mana required is down to 9; 5 you get from lands and 4 you get from the 2 Songs).

    The UBR version is much less complicated though. Much, much less - it just wins after one Gifts. The UR version sometimes has to go through 2 Gifts piles and 2-3 castings of Past in Flames to get a lethal grapeshot or 2 Grapeshots off.
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  19. #39

    Re: Ritual Gifts

    Hey...
    any updates about the deck???

    Thx in advance

  20. #40
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    Re: Ritual Gifts

    Quote Originally Posted by ComboMan View Post
    Hey...
    any updates about the deck???

    Thx in advance
    The decks been shelved,
    for the time being I think these are better routes to break Past in Flames
    http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/s...inding-Station
    http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/s...n-Flames-Combo

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