Ghetto Gifts

[BenKossman]

I've been playing and winning against my friends with a U/B/G Gifts deck that uses Gifts to set up an infinite loop with Eternal Witness/Crystal Shard/Academy Ruins/ Life from the Loam to infinitely recur a suite of silver bulltes. The reason I'm calling it Ghetto Gifts is because I don't have access to Thoughtsieze, Tarmogoyf, or Duel Lands but it works really well and doesn't get mana screwed as often as you'd think. The beauty of this deck lies in it's versatility and the multiple angles of attack it offers including but not limited to Jitte beatdown, or infinite Extirpate to deck an opponent in a longer match...

Artifact:4
1 Nevinyrral's Disk
1 Crystal Shard
1 Umezawa's Jitte
1 Sensei's Divining Top

Blue:7
3 Gifts Ungiven
4 Ponder

Black:7
4 Dark Confidant
1 Damnation
1 Smallpox
1 Extirpate

Gold:5
1 Vorosh (There are probably better choices but he's on color)
1 Simic Sky Swallower (This guy actually wins a lot of games for me in spite of looking ponderous)
1 Psychatog
1 Putrefy
1 Crime/Punishment

Green:13
3 Eternal Witness
4 Sakura Tribe Elder
3 Birds of Paradise
1 Plow Under (This is far an away the most obnoxious card you can possibly recur...)
1 Recollect
1 Life from the Loam

Land:24
1 Wasteland
1 Academy Ruins
1 Cephalid Colliseum
1 Lonely Sandbar
1 Tranquil Thicket
9 Forest
6 Island
4 Swamp

Cabal Therapy is certainly worth consideration but other than that the deck works quite well... Comments?

[Slag]

Until you get the duals, one or more Back to Basics would be good for punishing more expensive mana bases. I would definitely recommend going with Cabal Therapy, which gets really gross with witness and birds, and since some form of disruption is necessary in competitive legacy.

[BenKossman]

Until you get the duals, one or more Back to Basics would be good for punishing more expensive mana bases. I would definitely recommend going with Cabal Therapy, which gets really gross with witness and birds, and since some form of disruption is necessary in competitive legacy.

Yeah, that's a strong plan. I've got recurring Wasteland and Plow Under but BTB would almost be worth devoting multiple slots to...

[Nihil Credo]

A list of random thoughts follows:

Where is Volrath's Stronghold?

Also, Shriekmaw.

Are you sure that Primal Command isn't better than Plow Under? It's certainly more versatile.

Regrowth is cheap, so it should replace Recollect.

Engineered Explosives >>> Nevinyrral's Disk in the current meta, especially when you can always set them to 3 and up to 5 with Birds. If the opponent lands a Humility or something, you can hit it with Punishment, Primal Command, and Putrefy for artifacts.

Stampeding Serow/Wildebeest seems an improvement over Crystal Shard.

A singleton Chainer's Edict plays well with Gifts Ungiven and lots of mana. Same for Deep Analysis.

I'd switch the numbers around on Birds vs. Elders.

Do you need Vorosh in addition to SSS? If you add Stronghold, I'd say definitely not.

On Cabal Therapy and similar: I wouldn't bother. You won't beat combo without also throwing in Thoughtseizes and a faster clock (read: Goyf), and you have enough recursion to handle non-aggro, non-combo decks anyway.

Your curve is quite high, and you have only a singleton Top which can take a while to Gifts into play. Have you considered switching to Shadowmage Infiltrator?