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Thread: [SCD] Gifts Ungiven

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    [SCD] Gifts Ungiven

    I've been a big fan of Gifts Ungiven for a long time and I've been developing decks with the Unburial Rites combo lately. I feel that this is incredibly powerful, whether it be Iona, Griselbrand, Elesh Norn, or even something on the fringe like Tidespout Tyrant or a good old Angel of Despair. I know most decks that go for Gifts Ungiven are control-oriented for the 4-card control stack. This is fine as a secondary use in my opinion, as I see the most powerful interaction being Modern's 4-mana Entomb + Reanimate as a one-card combo.

    Other thoughts? I think Gifts is an incredibly powerful tool right now and I wonder why more decks aren't taking advantage of it, especially decks like WUR mid-range/control, Esper, or even Grixis.
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    Re: [SCD] Gifts Ungiven

    It costs 4 in a turn 4 kill format. Deathrite Shaman and Scavenging Ooze are now prevalent (as is sideboard hate for graveyards). Also, you have many dead cards to draw into while you're trying to stay alive for the first 4-5 turns in the game that you want to set it up for.

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    Re: [SCD] Gifts Ungiven

    Card is sweet and has put up decent results. Here is the most recent thing I can find, but you generally have to play perfectly or else you die, and it requires a huge amount of practise to understand the deck. You need to know what to Gifts for, how to play your Gifts, and how to not die to Shaman/Scooze. It's not too hard to play, but certainly harder than something like Patriot, purely because every other deck wants to land a T1 Deathrite. Your plan is heavily Life from the Loam-based, too, which makes it incredibly fun.

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    Re: [SCD] Gifts Ungiven

    What I like about Gifts is that it can be a compact win condition (4x Gifts, 1-2x Unburial Rites, 1-2x Iona/Grizzle/etc.) For 8 or less slots in your deck you can have a pretty solid 'combo' that can win you the game. I think in particular the URW control lists could make good use of this. Their win conditions are typically Celestial Colonnade, Snapcaster Mage, or in some cases Ajani Vengeant or Thundermaw Hellkite. I've played the deck in an event and I went to time in two matches (one in the mirror.) Gifts does a pretty good job of setting up a fast win. Dispel out of the sideboard helps fight the countermagic and removal if you need it.

    Gifts as a 4-card enabler, as most folks say, is incredibly challenging and skill testing. I agree wholeheartedly with this sentiment. However, simply going for Rites/Iona isn't that challenging at all. Kill the deathrite, kill the ooze, EOT Gifts, your turn reanimate Iona or Griselbrand. It seems fairly easy to work around actually, mostly because you'll want to be killing Shamans/Ooze anyways. Rest in Peace is harder to work around, and Relic of Progenitus seems about the worst case scenario. It's cheap and can be easily activated at the right time for hosing.
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    Re: [SCD] Gifts Ungiven

    It doesn't really just take up 6-8 slots though since you'd usually want to run something like Thirst for Knowledge alongside it in case you natural draw the Unburial or the target. Running doubles can make up for that if you aren't extremely unlucky at drawing, but that means running additional cards you never want to see in your hand.

    It's great if you can live that long, which means the rest of your deck needs a higher concentration of disruption/removal than normal decks would who don't have 8/36ths of their playable card slots full of late game stuff. Most of the places it's seen play are in sideboards, against decks you know can't stop it from going off. Some of those decks though you could just full on hate with those sideboard slots. For example, Elesh Norn was a big one against affinity decks, but having a sideboard of 2-3 Gifts + 1 Unburial + 1 Elesh Norn might be just plain worse than running 5 dedicated slots against small creatures or artifacts.

    It'll always be a flashy win, which makes it feel like it's doing more than the cards like Electrolyze you could be playing, but many times the less flashy games where you grind out the win are going to give you a higher win percentage than the soul crushing victories that sometimes are brought to you by Unburial + Fatty.

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    Re: [SCD] Gifts Ungiven

    Hmmm...funny you should mention Thirst for Knowledge and a heavy-duty control package. I'm developing a deck right now with those elements, with Gifts as my win-condition. I haven't posted it yet because its still in development and I fear making a new thread (which I've done in the past and alas, it died.)

    EDIT: and I agree, sometimes its better to be good than flashy.
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    Re: [SCD] Gifts Ungiven

    Well, UW Tron is my favourite pet deck for Modern, so I'm all ears when it comes to Gifts and TfK. ;)

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    Re: [SCD] Gifts Ungiven

    Quote Originally Posted by Mr. Safety View Post
    What I like about Gifts is that it can be a compact win condition (4x Gifts, 1-2x Unburial Rites, 1-2x Iona/Grizzle/etc.) For 8 or less slots in your deck you can have a pretty solid 'combo' that can win you the game.
    i really don't know what your talking about. you have failed to point out the combo. are you saying that you'd pick gris, iona, unburied rites and what? you only get 1 card with the same name and your opponent chooses.

    im failing to see any combos here except with loam. Please point them out as I hope im wrong. It would probably also facilitate responses in the thread.
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    Re: [SCD] Gifts Ungiven

    Quote Originally Posted by apple713 View Post
    i really don't know what your talking about. you have failed to point out the combo. are you saying that you'd pick gris, iona, unburied rites and what? you only get 1 card with the same name and your opponent chooses.

    im failing to see any combos here except with loam. Please point them out as I hope im wrong. It would probably also facilitate responses in the thread.
    12/1/2004: You can choose to find fewer than four cards if you want, but your opponent will still put two of those cards into your graveyard.
    Grab Unburial Rites + Random Fatty, gg.

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    Re: [SCD] Gifts Ungiven

    Quote Originally Posted by H3llsp4wn View Post
    Grab Unburial Rites + Random Fatty, gg.
    ok the opponent chooses to put the fatty in your hand... now what? you have a fatty you cant cast..
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    Re: [SCD] Gifts Ungiven

    You know Unburial Rites has flashback, right? The opponent HAS to choose two cards.

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    Re: [SCD] Gifts Ungiven

    Quote Originally Posted by H3llsp4wn View Post
    You know Unburial Rites has flashback, right? The opponent HAS to choose two cards.
    but you have to pull 4 cards out of your library all with different names... if your opponent puts the fatty's in your hand then you are screwed...

    give an example or two of amazing pile choices.
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    Re: [SCD] Gifts Ungiven

    Quote Originally Posted by apple713 View Post
    but you have to pull 4 cards out of your library all with different names... if your opponent puts the fatty's in your hand then you are screwed...

    give an example or two of amazing pile choices.
    You just pick the fatty and the unburial rights. The opponent has to pick 2 cards to put in the graveyard. You don't have to pick 4 cards, you can "fail to find" any more than just the fatty and unburial rights.

    Then you get 2 cards (unburial rights + fatty) in the graveyard and go to town with em.

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    Re: [SCD] Gifts Ungiven

    Quote Originally Posted by Phoenix Ignition View Post
    You don't have to pick 4 cards, you can "fail to find" .
    the version of the card i was reading just said search for 4 cards not upto. the new wording clarifys. this is the piece of information i was missing.
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    Re: [SCD] Gifts Ungiven

    You should just work on your reading comprehension skills, as I pointed that out in the first reply.

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    Re: [SCD] Gifts Ungiven

    Quote Originally Posted by apple713 View Post
    the version of the card i was reading just said search for 4 cards not upto. the new wording clarifys. this is the piece of information i was missing.
    I could be wrong but I'm pretty sure it wouldn't need to say "upto". Since it has a requirement on the cards you can get (cards with different names) you can "fail to find a card" as stated above. You can do the same thing with something like Merchant Scroll, and just find nothing even though it doesn't say "upto". However you can't do this with something like Increasing Ambition (Flashbacked), since it has no requirement on the cards you can get, you have to get two cards (although i'm not sure what happens if you only have 1 card in your library).

    I'm no Judge though.

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    Re: [SCD] Gifts Ungiven

    Quote Originally Posted by Yellowsmiley View Post
    I could be wrong but I'm pretty sure it wouldn't need to say "upto". Since it has a requirement on the cards you can get (cards with different names) you can "fail to find a card" as stated above. You can do the same thing with something like Merchant Scroll, and just find nothing even though it doesn't say "upto". However you can't do this with something like Increasing Ambition (Flashbacked), since it has no requirement on the cards you can get, you have to get two cards (although i'm not sure what happens if you only have 1 card in your library).

    I'm no Judge though.
    I believe that it has to specifiy "up to" on the card because of the situation you could get into with intuiton.
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    Re: [SCD] Gifts Ungiven

    "up to" is probably just there because people don't realise they are allowed to fail the search for specific cards in hidden zones on purpose.

    701.15b If a player is searching a hidden zone for cards with a stated quality, such as a card with a certain card type or color, that player isn't required to find some or all of those cards even if they're present in that zone.
    Example: Splinter says "Exile target artifact. Search its controller's graveyard, hand, and library for all cards with the same name as that artifact and exile them. That player then shuffles his or her library." A player casts Splinter targeting Howling Mine (an artifact). Howling Mine's controller has another Howling Mine in her graveyard and two more in her library. Splinter's controller must find the Howling Mine in the graveyard, but may choose to find zero, one, or two of the Howling Mines in the library.

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    Re: [SCD] Gifts Ungiven

    Can we continue to talk about Gifts properly now? You can search for two, end of discussion.

    The best part about gifts is that it is in of itself a one-card combo. You play it to get guy + Unburial Rites on their End Step, untap and kill them, or you find Loam, Raven's Crime, two randomly good cards (Ghost Quarter & Tech Edge) or Damnation, Wrath, Infest, and Snapcaster Mage against the decks that do that. All of your sideboard plans consist of just two ofs of two different Spells that do similar things, that are good alongside Loam. The deck is super consistent, the downfall comes from a high skill threshhold, and it being poorly placed in the newly Scoozed format.

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    Re: [SCD] Gifts Ungiven

    I really like this post, because I agree: one card combo. I play it in UWRb instead of the traditional BGwu setup, but it is the same idea. Play 4 copies of Gifts, turn 4 set up the win. In my case I end up almost always doing the 2-card setup with Rites/Iona because UWR provides a bunch of tools to hold off the early game (Mana Leak, Bolt, Helix, Spell Snare, Firespout, Pyroclasm, Path to Exile, etc.)

    My gifts piles are usually wiper oriented (Supreme Verdict, Wrath of God, Day of Judgment, Firespout) or to set up an engine (Academy Ruins, Engineered Explosives, Thirst for Knowledge, Sphinx's Revelation.) Occasionally I will set up a counterspell suite against a combo deck (Negate, Counterflux, Cryptic, Mana Leak/Spell Snare) but that is really rare. If you can disrupt them off the combo long enough it's usually better to just Gifts for Iona/Rites and shut off their win condition.
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