Legacy TPS

[benthetenor]

You'll probably notice as you scroll down that this deck looks a lot like ANT, and I would have been just fine posting this in the ANT forum but it felt odd to call it ANT without any Ad Nauseam. I've noticed (as I'm sure a lot of combo players have) that the Ad Nauseam in ANT is not usually something that you're excited to cast. It's much, much better in TES due to the lower cost of the rituals, and often you can't really cast it against an aggressive opponent. So ANT has, naturally, evolved to be more of a Past in Flames deck than an Ad Nauseam one. So I cut it. There are a couple of benefits to playing a Tendril's-based deck without Ad Nauseam in it, first and foremost being able to play larger, more impressive spells without hurting your ability to win (Treasure Cruise, Reforge the Soul, and Gifts Ungiven) along with generally feeling safer playing more cards that cost mana and life (Thoughtseize, Grim Tutor, more fetchlands, Gitaxian Probe and City of Brass). There is absolutely a downside, being that Ad Nauseam is a very, very powerful card that does not rely on the graveyard, so building without it has potential potholes.

I cut my teeth playing combo in Vintage, from the original Burning Long deck in 2003 up to modern Gush-based combo. Having done so has given me a very wide and deep appreciation for all of the different ways that you can count to 10, so I saw the design constraints of Treasure Cruise fitting into basically two different kinds of decks; the first, something closer to Belcher with an over-abundance of cantrips designed to fill the graveyard very fast and cast Treasure Cruise equally fast, and the second being a slower, more controlling combo deck like ANT or High Tide that fills the yard more naturally and uses Treasure Cruise to refill the hand and win. Having played all versions of combo, I have much more appreciation for Demonic Tutor than for Street Wraith, so I went in the slow vein.

I tried a lot of different slower shells, and again the design constraints of Legacy pushed me towards this list. I really wanted to play something with Force of Will, as I think that that's the hallmark of a lot of very powerful combo decks in Vintage which were certainly fast enough to survive there (TPS and Gifts-Tendrils being some of the highlights), but in Legacy we don't have moxes (or at least not good ones), so we are forced to play with Lion's Eye Diamond which necessarily pushes the deck towards discard rather than counterspells as it's protection suite. It's a lot more difficult to control a game with discard, but we aren't exactly trying to be Miracles so it's no big deal.

What I noticed over and over again is that casting Gifts Ungiven in a slow Tendrils + Past in Flames shell is always, always game over, so I really wanted to try to incorporate that. Here's where I was left:

TPS (Now for Legacy!) - as of 10/12

4 Polluted Delta
3 Flooded Strand
1 Bloodstained Mire
1 Swamp
2 Island
2 Underground Sea
1 Volcanic Island
4 Lotus Petal
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Dark Ritual
4 Cabal Ritual

4 Thoughtseize
3 Cabal Therapy
1 Chain of Vapor

4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
3 Gitaxian Probe
4 Infernal Tutor
1 Grim Tutor
2 Treasure Cruise
1 Gifts Ungiven
1 Reforge the Soul
1 Past in Flames
1 Tendrils of Agony


This deck is roughly the same speed as ANT, though in return for more reliance upon the graveyard you get upgraded protection spells and more haymakers, along with the ability to play Gifts Ungiven. You exchange a few stability cards (Preordain mostly) for the ability to win out of nowhere and a more consistent kill. Some card choices:


The Mana:
8 Fetchlands, 2 Island, 1 Swamp, 2 Underground Sea, 1 Volcanic Island - I modeled the lands after TPS in Vintage. While that deck was built to defend against a very different threat (Stax), I find that this land configuration is very solid against a lot of the mana-denial decks that we face in Legacy without screwing ourselves out of colors by playing too much around Wasteland and Stifle. Alternately, you could run a mana base with City of Brass, Gemstone Mine and a few duals, but I find fetchlands to be too valuable in any deck with Brainstorms. City of Brass is, however, excellent in a deck without Ad Nauseam.

4 Lotus Petal, 4 Lion's Eye Diamond, 4 Dark Ritual, 4 Cabal Ritual - These are some of the most efficient fast mana sources we have access to. I tried a lot of different configurations here, often featuring hits like Rite of Flame and Mox Opal, but I feel that the late-game power of Cabal Ritual suits the slower nature of the deck. I tried so very hard to make Mox Opal work, since Gifts Ungiven loves moxes, but there are just not enough good, cheap artifacts to make that work.

0 Chrome Mox - there is a strong chance that Chrome Mox should be in the deck as it plays well with the more top-heavy cards in the deck and the extreme redundancy in cantrips and discard spells, along with allowing the deck to play a slightly faster game, but as the power of the deck is much more turns 3-4, they are not currently in the list. As many as three could be correct.

The Protection:

4 Thoughtseize, 3 Cabal Therapy, 1 Chain of Vapor

I wanted a lot of this kind of effect because the game will go on slightly longer and because it's really the only means we have to disrupt the opponent and take control of the game. There's a lot of potential variance here when it comes to exactly which spells you'd want to run and in what proportion; for instance, if you find yourself taking too much damage, some number of these cards could become Duress to mitigate some of the damage done by Thoughtseize. But with Gitaxian Probe now in the deck alongside the other discard spells, Cabal Therapy is strong. Chain of Vapor is the best card for the main deck if you're only going to play a singleton bounce spell as it gets everything except for Chalice of the Void on 1, which is real bad for us (as it is for pretty much every storm deck), but the lack of Chalice in the metagame and the added utility of using Chain of Vapor on ourselves to increase the storm count gives it the nod.

I started with a four Force of Will, three Thoughtseize split, and while I really liked having counterspells in the deck (theoretically), they are terrible with Lion's Eye Diamond and you can't afford to play without Black Lotus. They helped you to play more of a control role early but they did nothing to protect you while you were going off except in very specific circumstances. Again, if we could play with Moxes (not even Black Lotus! Come on, Wizards!) I would probably not play LED and play more of a control shell, but we don't really have a choice.


The Setup Spells:

4 Brainstorm, 4 Ponder, 3 Gitaxian Probe

Most notable here is for what is missing, namely Preordain. This is also a section of the deck that I am least sure about, as cantrips and Storm go hand in hand, but I needed to shave, and honestly I wouldn't be completely upset playing fewer of this type of card to get at more of more powerful spells. Unlike other Storm decks, storm count is pretty much never a problem for this deck due to a reliance on Past in Flames and a very, very efficient manner of filling the graveyard, so the older plays where you would use cantrips to pad the storm count are much less important than it would be in something like ANT and TES.


The Gas and the Kill:

This is the meat of the deck, and the part that underwent the most drastic changes throughout testing. This section, along with the fast mana, really defines the fundamental turn of the deck and the overarching strategic goal. This has had everything in it from Burning Wish and Empty the Warrens to Griselbrand and Dig Through Time. I settled on these numbers based on a lot of testing, and here's a more detailed breakdown:

4 Infernal Tutor, 1 Grim Tutor - This is the same split that a lot of ANT decks have been running and it works well for me. Grim Tutor hurts a lot less when Ad Nauseam isn't even an option, and it helps me tutor for things I need to get set up, as opposed to Infernal Tutor which is most often the last spell in a chain. The Merchant Scroll that was here (and may still make an appearance in the sideboard) was a little loose (and I sure wish Treasure Cruise was an instant) and was largely a holdover from when the deck had Force of Will in it. It is still valuable as a second Gifts Ungiven or bounce spell, and at worst it's a Brainstorm when you really need one, but it ended up not pulling it's weight. In general, these tutors are better with Past in Flames than Burning Wish would be, though I tried to make it work. In the end, I found that I only wanted five-six tutors total, so that's where I ended up. Burning Wish is awesome, though.

2 Treasure Cruise - Two feels correct. I played four and three and both felt too greedy given that Past in Flames is our primary win and we are (relatively) lacking in cheap cantrips, but two gives us the ability to see it a lot and use it as Ancestral Recall while going off or to recover from heavy discard. It can also be used with Past in Flames if your graveyard is particularly stocked, as Delve and Past in Flames work exactly the way you want them to. That being said, and in spite of the fact that Treasure Cruise was the impetus for building this deck, it's entirely possible that you'd rather at least one of these were something else, like Gifts Ungiven and/or Reforge the Soul because casting it feels a little underwhelming and it does require some setup. Good, but still not Ancestral Recall. I think it's something you want some of, but it's surprisingly not all that exciting.

0 Dig Through Time - This guy was in the deck for a while and I like what it did, particularly with Merchant Scroll. In the end it got cut because most of the time I'd rather just be casting Gifts Ungiven as the mana saved wasn't usually relevant and the dissynergy with Past in Flames wasn't really helping it. To be clear, the deck can absolutely support both Past in Flames and a Delve card, it was just that I'd rather be casting Treasure Cruise or Gifts Ungiven most of the time.

1 Gifts Ungiven - As I said, resolving a Gifts Ungiven wins on the spot, as most of the time you're able to Gifts for something like Dark Ritual, Cabal Ritual, Past in Flames and Infernal Tutor (assuming you've got very little else in your hand/yard) and there's no pile they can give you that doesn't just beat them. Gifts Ungiven is Cabal Ritual's best friend, and it can be used as more of a value card if you're in that stage of the game, getting Treasure Cruise and discard spells. Being an instant means that you can use it as a setup (or bait) spell at the end of the opponent's turn and then untap and win the game, though it's often better and fairly trivial to just make a few more mana and win all at once. Context dependent.

1 Reforge the Soul - A while back there were four of these in the deck as my initial idea was to build things more like a Vintage deck with lots of Draw 7's and tutors, and potentially getting it to flip for the miracle cost all the time, but it didn't end up being necessary or even all that good. I will say that it is not in the deck because of it's miracle cost, though there are some times when you can cast it for two and you feel like you just did something naughty, but don't go overboard trying to set it up; it's still perfectly serviceable at five mana. It's in the deck because you can't just scoop to graveyard hate, and it does a reasonable job of getting you back into the game or winning. Not as good as Ad Nauseam would do, but in spite of all of the discussion below, this is NOT AN AD NAUSEAM DECK. I tried a lot of other things here, and something like Time Spiral or Time Reversal may be better in some situations, but I like the fact that Reforge the Soul fuels Past in Flames and Treasure Cruise, and that it can occasionally be cast for two, so it's my current choice. I would not play Diminishing Returns simply because I only have 1 win condition and I'd hate to scoop it up roughly 20% of the time that I cast that card. If the deck had Burning Wish, Diminishing Returns would rock.

1 Past in Flames - The best storm engine in Legacy, provided that you are playing with instants and sorceries. Two rituals and a tutor will still get you there almost every time, and the beauty of playing a tutor-based combo deck is that you can mostly ignore otherwise dead cards in the deck since drawing them isn't necessarily deadly. This is the source of the heavy graveyard commitment, but it is a guaranteed on-the-spot kill so I like it. Actual besties with Gifts Ungiven.

1 Tendrils of Agony - It kills them. Of all of the decks in Legacy that count to 10, this one fizzles the absolute least, so there's no need to hedge with Empty the Warrens. I'd probably play 1 even if I were playing with Burning Wish because it's always more convenient to just draw it mid-combo or to be able to fetch it with all of your tutors rather than just some of them.


Potential Sideboard Cards:

Chain of Vapor/Echoing Truth/Wipe Away/Hurkyl's Recall/Rebuild/Repeal - bounce and combo go together like peas and carrots, and with a large amount of sideboard space there's a lot of room for these types of cards. Given the deck's natural heavier dependence on the graveyard, having a means to fight graveyard hate is imperative in the post-board games where you are most likely to see those cards.

Pithing Needle - A good anti-anti-graveyard card, hits things like Deathrite Shaman, Tormod's Crypt and Relic of Progenitus. Could also be used as a control card against Sneak and Show.

Lightning Bolt - a firm, consistent and permanent answer to hatebears at one mana.

Dread of Night - kills Thalia and Mother of Runes, turning on your bounce spells for other hatebears.

Massacre - kills every hatebear for free but is turned off by Gaddock Teeg.

Duress/Cabal Therapy - if you feel the need for additional discard

Ingot Chewer - a very strong anti-artifact card for if you need to kill, rather than bounce, an artifact. Gets around Chalice on 1.

Leyline of the Void - given the controlling nature of this deck, Leyline could easily be the correct call in the face of other faster decks like Dredge and Reanimator. Incredibly castable off of Dark Ritual and Cabal Ritual.

Dark Confidant - while Ad Nauseam is not great, The Great One could still be a strong choice in a grindy matchup.

Merchant Scroll - a strong choice as a 1-of, can be brought in for a longer match or in concert with bounce spells to provide additional redundancy.

Tropical Island - opens up sideboard space for cards like Abrupt Decay and Carpet of Flowers



Why play this deck?

Honestly? Because you want to cast Gifts Ungiven. That card is insane. On the speed continuum, it probably goes something like:

Oops! All Spells -> Belcher -> Reanimator -> TES -> Elves -> THIS DECK -> ANT -> Sneak and Show -> Omnitell -> High Tide

With probably some wiggle room in there between decks, but this deck is faster than High Tide while being better at converting since it uses tutors and I-Win spells rather than a long cantrip chain, and is roughly as fast as some of the premier combo decks in the format. It also has a lot of discard which will propel you through a lot of hate, and is still faster than the aggro decks of the format, though those don't really exist anymore. The mana base is strong and resilient in the face of Wasteland. It can be more difficult to pin down with hate cards by playing a non-linear gameplan with cards like Gifts Ungiven and Reforge the Soul.


Why not play this deck?

It has a very heavy reliance upon the graveyard, and it doesn't make up for it in speed like something like Reanimator. It has slightly less consistent draws than something like ANT or Spiral Tide due to having fewer cantrips. You prefer Belcher.


One advantage to playing with more engine cards like Gifts Ungiven and Reforge the Soul is that drawing a dead card hurts a little less than otherwise, so sideboarding should be done robustly but within reason. I wouldn't bring in nine cards, but you could probably get away with four or five much more than any other combo deck could. The sideboard cards above are merely a suggestion based upon what other similar-speed combo decks would bring in, while also taking into account our extra need to defend against the graveyard hate present in the format.

I encourage you to test this guy for a few dozen games before you start making changes. It's not perfect but there's a lot of thought here. I'm not sure if it's the right time to be leaning heavily on the graveyard (given how excited everyone is about Treasure Cruise), but the format feels like it's in a good place speed-wise for this deck. It's also entirely possible that we will experience a slight depression in the power (if not the amount) of graveyard hate, as a lot of the decks that would want to be playing a card like Rest in Peace, for example, will also want to be playing Treasure Cruise and so will have to play something less intense like Surgical Extraction or Tormod's Crypt.

This deck has proven it's ability to handle a large, strong gauntlet and so has proven to me to be a legitimate deck. What it needs now is more eyes and more people willing to try it. It performs about as well as any other combo deck against the field, with some strength over slower matchups (like Miracles) and more grinding ones (like Jund).

[Lemnear]

The deck just loses to graveyard-hate. Running Moxen + Cabal Ritual + Treasure Crusie is a conceptional Desaster. There is also no reason to not run Gitaxian Probe. Manabase is unable to support hardcast Reforge other than Burning Petals. There were plenty of questionable decisions made imo. I cannot see this having ANY advantage over ANT

[Mhenlo]

I agree with Lemnear on everything. I wouldn't run Chrome Mox in a list w/o Ad Nauseam, I'd rather play Rite of Flame. You are basically adding
1 Merchant Scroll
2 Treasure Cruise
1 Gifts Ungiven
1 Reforge the Soul
and removing the Ad Nauseam possibility while still adding 3 Chrome Mox and making the deck less consistent. I don't plan on ever trying this but, I would consider playing Rain of Filth to fill the graveyard.

Also why is this in Established Decks instead of New and Developing?

[iamajellydonut]

Unless I'm missing something, I think it's literally impossible for the list to win without using either Past in Flames or ridiculous tutor chaining. Which is not a great place to be.

[benthetenor]

Well that was fast.

The list is in Established Decks because the requirement is that it has been thoroughly tested, not that it has done anything of note. It has been thoroughly tested.

This deck leans heavily on Past in Flames. I say as much. In return you get a more stable Past in Flames and you never fail to draw a tutor. In the face of graveyard hate, it has the option of going Infernal Tutor -> Reforge the Soul which is eminently castable off of Lion's Eye Diamond, Lotus Petal, Volcanic Island, etc. If you don't think you can win that way, you've never played Storm in Vintage. I win that way a significant amount of time.

This isn't me just throwing a list up here without any thought or testing. It's been heavily tested and it runs basically the same as ANT with a slightly stronger late game. Ad Nauseam is not good in ANT. It's played because it has to be, but it's not good. If you think otherwise, I'm not sure how much you've really played that deck.

If you think it's garbage, test it. That's all I ask. Or, you know, dismiss it off hand. It really doesn't matter to me, I just wanted to show people what I've been working on.

Also Lemnear, I think you mean "conceptual," unless you think that the deck is having sex with someone.

[Lemnear]

Well that was fast.

The list is in Established Decks because the requirement is that it has been thoroughly tested, not that it has done anything of note. It has been thoroughly tested.

This deck leans heavily on Past in Flames. I say as much. In return you get a more stable Past in Flames and you never fail to draw a tutor. In the face of graveyard hate, it has the option of going Infernal Tutor -> Reforge the Soul which is eminently castable off of Lion's Eye Diamond, Lotus Petal, Volcanic Island, etc. If you don't think you can win that way, you've never played Storm in Vintage. I win that way a significant amount of time.

This isn't me just throwing a list up here without any thought or testing. It's been heavily tested and it runs basically the same as ANT with a slightly stronger late game. Ad Nauseam is not good in ANT. It's played because it has to be, but it's not good. If you think otherwise, I'm not sure how much you've really played that deck.

If you think it's garbage, test it. That's all I ask. Or, you know, dismiss it off hand. It really doesn't matter to me, I just wanted to show people what I've been working on.

Also Lemnear, I think you mean "conceptual," unless you think that the deck is having sex with someone.

I disagree with the "strong lategame" because you are harvesting your own graveyard with TC and make lines of flashbacking cantrips via PIF to access more mana or IT impossible. The comparison between Reforge and Vintage draw7s like Wheel of Fortune is lacking as Wheel, Twister and Windfall cost only 3 and can be naturally played during your turn 1 after dropping your VaCrySoLoMoxen for actual cardadvantage. This is not possible in Legacy and outright weaker than Ad Nauseam for the same amount of mana especially under the likely assumption that you refill your opponents hand with counters. If neither of the two problems mentioned above occured in your "thoroughtly testing" I would like to know your testing setup. Ad Nauseam is still in ANT because it offers a playline Which doesn't require your graveyard as a resource. I don't see an advantage in removing a plan B.

[Megadeus]

Yeah i don't see the advantage to dropping a 5 mana draw 15 spell for a 5 mana wheel

[HrishiQQ]

Prefacing that I have very little experience with legacy storm. However, I have a lot of experience with Vintage storm. Hurkyl's recall is often used as a storm enabler in vintage kills. Now I realize that legacy does not have moxen to enable easy Hurkyl's kills, but would this be a possibility with the number of 0 costed artifacts being played?

[Koby]

I don't think Echoing Truth is the preferred bounce spell in this style of deck. Sure, Chalice of the Void absolutely trashes Storm, and this build just as much. However, Chalice as a strategy in Legacy is so much less played compared to Vintage. Thus, it can be ignored and chalked up to a bad matchup and fixed with good sideboarding.

Thus, Chain of Vapor provides both Storm as well as permanent clean-up that hinders storming (possibly even together!). There is no other card in Legacy that has this functionality, and makes it worthwhile.

I am hesitant that such a Storm list isn't including Gitaxian Probe as it's free storm and immense synergy once Past in Flames is resolved.
In fact, I'm not sure how this list is better in concept than Grinding Station Linked here (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?22550-Introducing-Grinding-Station).

The list here is proposing worse draw engines than exist in currently Established Storm variations.

[benthetenor]

The draw of Draw-7s in Vintage combo is not so you can go turn 1 drop your hand and play a Draw-7, it's threat density. Playing that many threats gives you the ability to run the opponent out of counterspells with your spells with the intent that if one does resolve you're in a great position. So you go turn 1 Windfall (countered), turn 2 Demonic Tutor (countered), turn 3 Wheel of Fortune which resolves and you crush him. Believe me, no one has played more Vintage combo than I have. If you manage to make the play that you mention stick then you're crushing him anyway, but that's not the purpose of the cards; it's to increase threat density.

The issue I have always had with Legacy combo decks is a distinct lack of threat density. You try to make up for it by playing 4-7 discard or protection spells, but when your ONLY line of play is to resolve a tutor with mana floating it is a very easy line to beat with the proper tools. Having Ad Nauseam in the deck only intensifies this difficulty as it naturally restricts you to playing Ad Nauseum, Past in Flames, and some tutors. I'm trying to ameliorate that.

In ANT it was 5 tutors and an Ad Nauseum. I've added two must-counter spells to that list in Reforge the Soul and Gifts Ungiven. It's not a lot because Legacy's card pool is not great for combo, but it's a step. I would also appreciate you not speculating on lines of play unless you've played with the deck. I understand that you've played a lot of combo; a lot of the issues that you have with my deck have not happened, in my experience. I have no major issue, for instance, casting treasure cruise on turn 3, removing fetchlands and artifacts (and cantrips as a last resort), and winning from that point with threshold and with Past in Flames. After a long, grindy game I'd much rather cast Ancestral Recall from my hand than Ponder off of Past in Flames. As for refilling the opponent's hands with counters after a draw-7, I also refill my own hand with discard.

To clarify, I am not saying that this deck is superior to ANT. It is a different take that has slightly different strengths and weaknesses. I understand why you like Ad Nauseam as you play TES. It is not a card that I've ever heard an ANT player say that they like, myself included, so I'm trying to build the deck differently.

[benthetenor]

I don't think Echoing Truth is the preferred bounce spell in this style of deck. Sure, Chalice of the Void absolutely trashes Storm, and this build just as much. However, Chalice as a strategy in Legacy is so much less played compared to Vintage. Thus, it can be ignored and chalked up to a bad matchup and fixed with good sideboarding.

Thus, Chain of Vapor provides both Storm as well as permanent clean-up that hinders storming (possibly even together!). There is no other card in Legacy that has this functionality, and makes it worthwhile.

I am hesitant that such a Storm list isn't including Gitaxian Probe as it's free storm and immense synergy once Past in Flames is resolved.
In fact, I'm not sure how this list is better in concept than Grinding Station Linked here (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?22550-Introducing-Grinding-Station).

The list here is proposing worse draw engines than exist in currently Established Storm variations.

I don't disagree with a lot of what you're saying, particularly about Chain of Vapor; assuming that Ad Nauseam is off the table for the deck, what would you cut from the proposed decklist to make room for 4 Gitaxian Probe?

[apple713]

it's probably better if you are to go all in on a past in flames strategy that you dump cards into your grave without casting them first via spells like glimpse the unthinkable / heron crab / other stuff i haven't thought about but am sure is out there.

In doing so you even have access to pinpoint spells like entomb.

[Mhenlo]

If I ran a deck that used Past in Flames so heavily I'd run 2, I've seen ANT list cut the Ad Nauseam and run a 2nd Past in Flames.
1 Person testing does not mean it is tested fully, metagame decks have been tested my many players all discussing, the numbers you posted are several orders of magnitude away from number of games from real decks that have had many successful tournament placings and tournament reports. A hivemind of testers will always have more match results to have better understandings of the match up.

You can't say the RUG Delver match up is 50-50 from 30 games.

[benthetenor]

If I ran a deck that used Past in Flames so heavily I'd run 2, I've seen ANT list cut the Ad Nauseam and run a 2nd Past in Flames.
1 Person testing does not mean it is tested fully, metagame decks have been tested my many players all discussing, the numbers you posted are several orders of magnitude away from number of games from real decks that have had many successful tournament placings and tournament reports. A hivemind of testers will always have more match results to have better understandings of the match up.

You can't say the RUG Delver match up is 50-50 from 30 games.

Agree completely, and I am not trying to make that claim. I am imploring other people to test this thing out, which is apparently something that is frowned upon. The numbers were simply there to show people that I'm not just talking out of my ass.

The second Past in Flames is not a bad idea at all, as going off with it in hand is great as well. So far I haven't had any trouble finding it (or tutors for that matter) in 300+ games, but it's something to keep in mind.

[Lemnear]

Played against:

U/W miracles - 30 games.
Won 16 lost 14

RUG Delver - 30 games
Won 15 lost 15

BUG Delver - 20 games
Won 12 lost 8

Belcher - 10 games
Won 6 lost 4

UWR Delver - 30 game
won 19 lost 11

Kinda interresting as RUG is a pretty good matchup for traditional ANT due to Basics and the 8 "Black Lotus". Testing in a gauntlet is fine if your testing partner is a decent Legacy pilot. Do you have a SB for that list as the results against Miracles (SB RIP) and WUR (SB RIP & Meddling Mage) are quite surprising.

In general, I have Troubles to see this list fueling the graveyard without Probes and only 5 Fetchlands, but running TC. Maybe I'm not the only one left behind confused about design decisions like this especially as the OP doesn't waste a word on why some storm-Standards got dismissed

[benthetenor]

Kinda interresting as RUG is a pretty good matchup for traditional ANT due to Basics and the 8 "Black Lotus". Testing in a gauntlet is fine if your testing partner is a decent Legacy pilot. Do you have a SB for that list as the results against Miracles (SB RIP) and WUR (SB RIP & Meddling Mage) are quite surprising.

In general, I have Troubles to see this list fueling the graveyard without Probes and only 5 Fetchlands, but running TC. Maybe I'm not the only one left behind confused about design decisions like this especially as the OP doesn't waste a word on why some storm-Standards got dismissed

I wouldn't dream of drawing any conclusions about how good or bad any specific matchups are based on 20 or 30 test games. I have a number of test partners and they are each quite good at a variety of Legacy decks, so there's no issue there. There's no set sideboard yet as I have yet to actually take the deck to a tournament, but I find myself having 3-5 cards for each deck, usually Pithing Needles and bounce spells. Between Repeal, Echoing Truth, Chain of Vapor and Hurkyl's Recall and Rebuild (even Abrupt Decay if that is something you want to splash for) you should have no trouble finding a good mix for the sideboard within 6-7 bounce spells to take care of everything and sideboard heavily with, which is half of the sideboard but a there are no Burning Wishes or the like there's a lot of room in the sideboard. As I said earlier, Meddling Mage or any very specific hate like that is less of an issue for this deck than it would be a traditional Ad Nauseam deck given that I can both find more answers with Grim Tutor, Merchant Scroll and Gifts Ungiven and also play around Meddling Mage on a particular card since there's a lot of non-linearity in the deck with Reforge the Soul and Gifts Ungiven.

It really is not difficult to fill the graveyard quickly, putting two and three cards in a turn is really not difficult between fetchlands and cantrips, and that seems to be the same rate as a pretty standard Legacy deck. It's also only two cards; it's not like I'm playing four and constantly taking cards out of the graveyard. I posted about the reasons why the cards that are in the deck made the deck. If you have a card you would like to ask about, ask. I can't possibly imagine every card you'd want to put in, but rest assured I tried every card I could think of. I didn't just take an ANT deck and swap out some cards; I started with a Burning Tendrils deck from Vintage circa 2003 and it morphed into the deck above over lots and lots of trial and error.

[Mhenlo]

Agree completely, and I am not trying to make that claim. I am imploring other people to test this thing out, which is apparently something that is frowned upon. The numbers were simply there to show people that I'm not just talking out of my ass.

The second Past in Flames is not a bad idea at all, as going off with it in hand is great as well. So far I haven't had any trouble finding it (or tutors for that matter) in 300+ games, but it's something to keep in mind.

I'm not trying to say anything bad about the deck, I've even given some of my ideas, I just think it should be in Developing for a while, at least while we are still first discussing the deck.

[Garritano]

I tried the deck for four matches on MTGO (2 man ques) just to see what it was like.
(I usually play ANT)

While playing the deck, I immediately got a feeling that this list could be superior to ANT in the non-Delver matchups.
However, I think this deck is weaker against UR / RUG Delver than ANT. If those claims are true, then this immediately means that TPS could be a serious consideration over ANT, depending on the meta's composition. Obviously, today's meta happens to be incredibly Delver-full, but there are MANY reasons to consider playing this deck.

This deck, and at minimum the 1 Gifts, 2 Treasure Cruise shell, should definitely be taken seriously. It has serious advantages not offered by ANT.
Unfortunately, I have problems with the manabase, and in particular, the cantrip package + Chrome Mox.

I can attest to the claim that "you always have a tutor." Gifts Ungiven really changes the tutor count of this deck, as you go up to 7 tutors (1 Merchant Scroll, 1 Grim Tutor, 1 Gifts Ungiven, 4 Infernal Tutor). This dramatically changes how the deck plays against Aggro, because you're basically guaranteed to goldfish them by turn 3. ANT can occasionally fall to such a low life total that it may only win with a PiF loop, which is difficult to do unless you draw an Infernal Tutor AND at least two rituals. This deck can kill without rituals, meaning when you're goldfishing, you can substitute LED for CR/DR in a way not permitted by ANT.

Gifts Ungiven is incredible in this deck.
1) It enables busted Infernal Tutor "win from nowhere" plays, similar to Infernal Tutor
2) If you have 0 tutors in your hand, Gifts Ungiven is a all-in-one PiF loop.
3) It enables you to run 6 Infernal Tutors and bump into the "two infernal tutor" problem less often.
4) It reduces the life total burden from Thoughtseize
5) It doesn't get worse as your Life Total drops.
6) Merchant scroll goes from being a joke to a qausi Infernal Tutor, giving you 7 tutors, which is an insanely high TNT/TES-like number.

There are a lot of theoretical reasons why this deck could be better than ANT.

What May Be Good
Being able to run Thoughtseize improves matchups that rely on turn 2 hatebears, which right now is burn. Thoughtseize against Burn is actually very good, because Eidolon is game-endingly broken.
All that being said, this deck could happily swap the Thoughtseizes with Therapies and not change much. You can't do that with ANT.

The Treasure Cruises could be insane, and obviously improve the Miracles matchup. Yes, Ad Nauseum is one of our ways of winning (and even beating a CB lock), but it's possible that Gifts is close enough in power level that being able to add 2x Ancestral Recalls (which aren't countered by CB) makes the trade worth it.

Cruise may be a new way for slow (non-TES) storm to fight Miracles, which is by far the hardest matchup among the major decks.
Losing Ad Nauseum for Gifts doesn't change your clock against decks like Elves, and in fact allows you to win after taking a ton of damage (e.g., against Burn). We board out Ad Nauseum so often that many top ANT players start Ad Nauseum in the board.

So yes, there are theoretical reasons to experiment with this list, or at minimum the 1 Gifts +2 Treasure Cruise shell, over ANT.

What May Be Bad
I suspect that decklist's manabase + cantrip package is unstable, and would be improved with adding lands.
The 3x Chrome Mox makes mulligans much worse than ANT, and more likely.

Things I Haven't Verified Yet
-If I'm wrong about Chrome Mox
-If Reforge the Soul helps

Questions

1) Do we need Reforge the Soul game 1?
Your explanation about having a way to win when your graveyard is attacked makes sense, but I could see moving it to the board game 1.
This card is dead in a lot of situations.

2) Do we need the Chrome Moxen, and especially at such a high number?
While playing the deck, I encountered this scenario a few times:
2 LEDs, 1 Infernal Tutor, 2 mana. (nothing in graveyard)
From here, normal ANT goes for an Ad Nauseum kill with B floating, hoping to draw CR + LP/DR along with LED + IT
However, this deck actually can't win, unless I'm missing something.
However, if you have 1 more mana, you can go for a sick Gifts Ungiven PiF loop.
Chrome Mox appears like it could help in this scenario, but I don't know if it helps more than a fetchland would, and fetchlands have the bonus of making your Brainstorms / mulligans significantly better.

3) Can we just run maindeck Pithing Needle?
I'm already experimenting with boarding them against Miracles anyway. This deck is particularly hit by Relic / Crypt / DRS, so 2x Needle in the board seems like an obvious inclusion.
However, hitting DRS is so nice, that it almost makes me want to just maindeck ~2 of them.
Because DRS is one of Elves few ways of conceivably winning against you, I can imagine not minding Needle game 1 against elves.
Needle is decent against Deathrite-Delver, Miracles, non-Miracles Control decks.
It's bad against UR Delver and Burn game 1, but good against Burn game 2.
Something to think about.

4) Should the Merchant Scroll AND the Grim Tutor be in the maindeck?
You're basically at 6 Tutors + Gifts. I don't know what the correct number is, but if it's 5, one of the {Grim Tutor , Merchant Scroll} set should be cut.
I can definitely see moving one to the board, and this prospect is really exciting.
The idea of being able to +1 Merchant Scroll against non-Delver sounds really powerful.

5) Is Helm-Line actually good in the board?
1x Helm actually sounds pretty exciting. I think it's HelmLine or have the ability to play a Grinding Station strategy and just natural storm them out.

6) The Gifts / Treasure Cruise shell has such a small footprint, can we just use them in ANT?
Given how suspicious I am of Chrome Mox / Reforge, this is my gut reaction. However, it's possible that I'm just wrong about Chrome Mox / Reforge.

Thanks for posting this deck benthetenor, it's fascinating.

Lastly, I should note something which isn't irrelevant: this deck is loads of fun to play. Casting Gifts is one of the most fun things you can do in Magic and leads to some interesting puzzles.

[Lemnear]

I tried the deck for four matches on MTGO (2 man ques) just to see what it was like.
(I usually play ANT)

While playing the deck, I immediately got a feeling that this list could be superior to ANT in the non-Delver matchups.
However, I think this deck is weaker against UR / RUG Delver than ANT. If those claims are true, then this immediately means that TPS could be a serious consideration over ANT, depending on the meta's composition. Obviously, today's meta happens to be incredibly Delver-full, but there are MANY reasons to consider playing this deck.


If you are looking at non-blue matchups to see a niche for this deck, you have already strong, established combo decks like Belcher which are much more constant than this deck. Against Delver or DRS which occupy a large slice of the metagame-pie-chart, being even slower than ANT AND totally reliant on your graveyard are huge downsides. With the average penetration of blue decks in Legacy rising above 65% atm, draw7-effects like Reforge the Soul or Diminishing Returns are a critical terrain especially as the primer also feeds your opponents Treasure Cruises while draeing them into cheap threats and counterspells, you are forced to handle after.

This deck, and at minimum the 1 Gifts, 2 Treasure Cruise shell, should definitely be taken seriously. It has serious advantages not offered by ANT.
Unfortunately, I have problems with the manabase, and in particular, the cantrip package + Chrome Mox


One mayor topic the whole OP does not adress is, why you should cast Gifts into PIF to create cardadvantage and setup the combo instead of running more PIF to use them midgame to flashback your cantrips for cardadvantage and flashback itself later for the combo. There is no need to durdle with Gifts or TC with the later removing fuel for your PIF and Cabal Ritual and the Primer being insanely mana-intensive as a setup against Daze and Spell Pierce. The key to meddle with Gifts-piles in this deck is obviously to NOT give the caster the mana into his hand he tutored for but the business. I've played enough Dark Gifts in Vintage to see the chokepoints here. Example: Bin DR + CR and give your opponent PIF and Infernal into his hand and see if he has enough mana/turns to turn these into Advantage

I can attest to the claim that "you always have a tutor." Gifts Ungiven really changes the tutor count of this deck, as you go up to 7 tutors (1 Merchant Scroll, 1 Grim Tutor, 1 Gifts Ungiven, 4 Infernal Tutor). This dramatically changes how the deck plays against Aggro, because you're basically guaranteed to goldfish them by turn 3. ANT can occasionally fall to such a low life total that it may only win with a PiF loop, which is difficult to do unless you draw an Infernal Tutor AND at least two rituals. This deck can kill without rituals, meaning when you're goldfishing, you can substitute LED for CR/DR in a way not permitted by ANT.


does no one see the Nonsens in Grim Tutor for a deck which is labeled slower than ANT? Didn't we agree that Delver is a serious threat in Legacy? Turn 3 Goldfishing if you need to cast Gifts turn 2 then is far from reality not to talk about Merchant Scroll -> Gifts. The word "guaranteed" is far too big and "the deck can kill without rituals" is hilarious to bring up as a selling point

Gifts Ungiven is incredible in this deck.
1) It enables busted Infernal Tutor "win from nowhere" plays, similar to Infernal Tutor
2) If you have 0 tutors in your hand, Gifts Ungiven is a all-in-one PiF loop.
3) It enables you to run 6 Infernal Tutors and bump into the "two infernal tutor" problem less often.
4) It reduces the life total burden from Thoughtseize
5) It doesn't get worse as your Life Total drops.
6) Merchant scroll goes from being a joke to a qausi Infernal Tutor, giving you 7 tutors, which is an insanely high TNT/TES-like number.


Gifts is a 4-mana tutor for PIF. How do you plan to start a loop if you have to burn a ritual for casting Gifts and your opponent is binning your mana you fetched for with gifts? You trade 2 cards for 2 cards if you cast gifts off a ritual (Softcounter laugh at a possible 1-for-2). Scroll into Gifts into PIF is hilariously mana-intense. Thoughtseize is plain bad in this deck. I say it now as the topic will repeat later in this post. Do you really want to pay 2 life while Delver is mauling you and you are even slower than ANT? Like really?

There are a lot of theoretical reasons why this deck could be better than ANT.

What May Be Good
Being able to run Thoughtseize improves matchups that rely on turn 2 hatebears, which right now is burn. Thoughtseize against Burn is actually very good, because Eidolon is game-endingly broken.
All that being said, this deck could happily swap the Thoughtseizes with Therapies and not change much. You can't do that with ANT.


no, just no. Thoughtseize does nothing against multiple hatebears in your opponents hand or topdecked ones. What saves you against the inevitable turn 2 hatebear is speed, but this deck refuses to support that angle. Casting a card that loses life and ties your mana against burn is blatant nonsense. Most likely you trade a Lightning Bolt for a Shock instead but invest a mana and a card for basically preventing 1 fucking point of damage. If you consider this a fine trade, all hope is lost.

The Treasure Cruises could be insane, and obviously improve the Miracles matchup. Yes, Ad Nauseum is one of our ways of winning (and even beating a CB lock), but it's possible that Gifts is close enough in power level that being able to add 2x Ancestral Recalls (which aren't countered by CB) makes the trade worth it.


Miracles doesn't need to fight TC if all your Rituals you draw are countered via counterbalance anyways. All that matters here is common knowledge to Legacy storm players aka "how to remove Counterbalance and beat SDT (with floated counter)". TC or Gifts have no impact at the matchup at all.

Cruise may be a new way for slow (non-TES) storm to fight Miracles, which is by far the hardest matchup among the major decks.
Losing Ad Nauseum for Gifts doesn't change your clock against decks like Elves, and in fact allows you to win after taking a ton of damage (e.g., against Burn). We board out Ad Nauseum so often that many top ANT players start Ad Nauseum in the board.


see above. TC has no impact on Miracles in terms of being a tool to beat them. The way to beat lots of damage dealt is either PIF or a tutor chain, but with only 5 fetches, zero Probes, 4-mana-setup-spells and TC feasting on your graveyard, fueling CR quickly to setup that tutor-chains or PIF is out of reach. Ad Nauseam is a valid play turn 1-2 even against burn.

So yes, there are theoretical reasons to experiment with this list, or at minimum the 1 Gifts +2 Treasure Cruise shell, over ANT.

What May Be Bad
I suspect that decklist's manabase + cantrip package is unstable, and would be improved with adding lands.
The 3x Chrome Mox makes mulligans much worse than ANT, and more likely.


Mox is a card for decks which aim at an early combo turn. Seeing it in a deck slower than ANT is stange and not justified. It looks like someone looked at Beta Moxen, Mana Cault, Mana Crypt, Sol Ring, Gifts Ungiven, Chain of Capor/Hurkyls Recall and Yawgmoths Will and drew the wrong conclusion. There is no Legacy equivalent to the stormcount- & manaengine of tapping VaCrSoMoxen for mana, bounce and replay them like it is in vintage which indeed doesn't require Rituals to perform that loop. Neither are the possible Gifts Targets nearly as scary.

[.Ix]

I'll test the deck. I killed myself twice with Ad nauseam last time I played ANT, and it looks like a really fun deck.

[benthetenor]

Lemnear, if you would like to add to the discussion, I ask you to test the deck rather than just theorycrafting. The points that Garritano brings up are all true and, while counterintuitive when you're looking at the list are all things you find when you play the deck. If you'd like to have a discussion, give the deck a fair shot first. I admit it looks like an awkward deck when compared to something that's had, literally, years of development, but it does us no good to have you say "this is clearly suboptimal so I won't even try it."

I agree about the Chrome Mox, I just think that the deck needs something, anything to keep it from falling too far behind. Getting a Chrome Mox down on turn 1 or 2 leads to much more cantripping and much easier casting of Gifts and Grim Tutor a turn ahead of schedule, which is, I think, a net positive for the deck. I really don't mind pitching a spare cantrip or a spare discard spell (or a spare tutor since we have so many) to make Chrome Mox work, though multiples is rough. Maybe 2 is the correct number. I've played the deck with them as fetchlands and I like it a little more with Chrome Mox than I do without.

[Lemnear]

Lemnear, if you would like to add to the discussion, I ask you to test the deck rather than just theorycrafting. The points that Garritano brings up are all true and, while counterintuitive when you're looking at the list are all things you find when you play the deck. If you'd like to have a discussion, give the deck a fair shot first. I admit it looks like an awkward deck when compared to something that's had, literally, years of development, but it does us no good to have you say "this is clearly suboptimal so I won't even try it."

After playing with Diminishing Returns for years before we cutted it for a reason, I don't have to use this particular deck to know why draw7s in Legacy are in a tough spot and it has a lot to do with the average +2 mana compared to Wheel of Fortune and friends (aka playable turn 1) and the manasources you use to play those. In addition the current structure of Legacy is toxic for those kind of spells for reasons mentioned in previous posts.

I dunno if you can demand people giving the deck a fair shot after simply dodging every question asked in regards to card choices, strategic approach & potential problems. I've outlined my thoughts and critique on certain points several times throughout this thread and still miss productive reactions. If you label ideas like suggesting Thoughtseize against Burn.dec and others "all true", I doubt I have to test this deck to see the obvious flaws made in building.

[benthetenor]

After playing with Diminishing Returns for years before we cutted it for a reason, I don't have to use this particular deck to know why draw7s in Legacy are in a tough spot and it has a lot to do with the average +2 mana compared to Wheel of Fortune and friends (aka playable turn 1) and the manasources you use to play those. In addition the current structure of Legacy is toxic for those kind of spells for reasons mentioned in previous posts.

I dunno if you can demand people giving the deck a fair shot after simply dodging every question asked in regards to card choices, strategic approach & potential problems. I've outlined my thoughts and critique on certain points several times throughout this thread and still miss productive reactions. If you label ideas like suggesting Thoughtseize against Burn.dec and others "all true", I doubt I have to test this deck to see the obvious flaws made in building.

I personally don't care if you, or anyone, tests and plays this deck, but if you feel no need to test it, then kindly stop trying to discuss it. This deck is not TES, it is a late-game combo deck, and it has no interest in firing off a Draw-7 on turn 1 or 2. I have no interest in having a discussion with someone who won't test something because they think they are above it.

As I said above, if you have a card you would like me to discuss, I will, but I need you to bring it up or I will have no idea what cards you'd like to see in the deck. But if you want to have a discussion about the deck, I need you to test it.

[iamajellydonut]

Why does Ad Nauseam suck? Why does Chrome Mox not suck? Why does Reforge the Soul not suck? Why does Gifts Ungiven not suck? So on. So forth.

Also, "this deck is rly rly good against BUG. seriously." is not a tournament report. An actual tournament report would display thought process and lines of play. We don't want to test the deck. Common sense says that it looks like a pile of shit and therefore we have no reason to test this deck over the thousands of other decks that have been posted in the last year. What we want, what we need, and what we probably won't get, is a reason.

[benthetenor]

Why does Ad Nauseam suck? Why does Chrome Mox not suck? Why does Reforge the Soul not suck? Why does Gifts Ungiven not suck? So on. So forth.

Also, "this deck is rly rly good against BUG. seriously." is not a tournament report. An actual tournament report would display thought process and lines of play. We don't want to test the deck. Common sense says that it looks like a pile of shit and therefore we have no reason to test this deck over the thousands of other decks that have been posted in the last year. What we want, what we need, and what we probably won't get, is a reason.

I'm not going to play the deck for you. I'm sorry if that's what you're expecting. If you can play ANT, you can play this deck.

Ad Nauseam sucks because, past turn three or four you are going to not have enough life to reliably win with it. As ANT is a slower deck, and this deck is a slower deck, the odds of going off on turn one or two is drastically smaller than it is with TES, making Ad Nauseam a liability in ANT and an unnecessary restriction in deck construction. ANT is a Past in Flames deck with a poor backup plan. This deck is an even stronger Past in Flames deck with a weaker, but still viable, backup plan. It strengthens the strength of ANT and makes a PiF kill faster and more consistent, and the deck will not fail to find a tutor in time to set up the chain to kill the opponent. If that's unbelievable to you, test the deck.

Chrome Mox is on the fence. It is in place of lands currently, and it speeds the deck up slightly. The deck is already roughly as fast, if MAYBE a bit less consistent (due to fewer cantrips), as ANT, so the addition of Chrome Mox would theoretically make it a touch faster than ANT. The card disadvantage is irrelevant. Again, I can spout theory at you, but until you test the deck you won't see what I'm talking about.

Reforge the Soul sucks. But it is necessary to not just scoop to Past in Flames. The advantage to playing with Reforge the Soul over Ad Nauseam is that you get to play with Treasure Cruise and Thoughtseize and Gifts Ungiven and Grim Tutor. The card itself is not good, but what not playing with Ad Nauseam does is frees up deckbuilding constraints so you can play with other powerful cards and diversify your gameplan so you're less easily hated out.

Gifts Ungiven is an extremely powerful setup spell for Past in Flames. It ensures that, no matter what, when you cast it, you win the game. It is different from other tutors in that you can cast an Infernal Tutor in the same situation and still not win because you don't have enough rituals or other cards in the graveyard to not make it go. It is card advantage against even decks with active graveyard hate. It is restricted in Vintage. I do not feel I need to explain why it is a powerful card.

[Lemnear]

I'm not going to play the deck for you. I'm sorry if that's what you're expecting. If you can play ANT, you can play this deck.

Ad Nauseam sucks because, past turn three or four you are going to not have enough life to reliably win with it. As ANT is a slower deck, and this deck is a slower deck, the odds of going off on turn one or two is drastically smaller than it is with TES, making Ad Nauseam a liability in ANT and an unnecessary restriction in deck construction. ANT is a Past in Flames deck with a poor backup plan. This deck is an even stronger Past in Flames deck with a weaker, but still viable, backup plan. It strengthens the strength of ANT and makes a PiF kill faster and more consistent, and the deck will not fail to find a tutor in time to set up the chain to kill the opponent. If that's unbelievable to you, test the deck.


I say against decks like Miracles, BUG control or Deathblade, a turn 3-4 Ad Nauseam is perfectly fine due to their slow clock and an insane topdeck. You also miss out on the herp-derp-7-mana-I-win-button for turn 1 or 2 for imo no particular reason. You even play 3 Moxen which would support early Ad Nauseams perfectly.

I know where you a heading with Gifts, but with the presence of Wasteland and Softcouters on top of the possibility to clog your hand with other mana-intense cards like Scroll/ToA/Reforge/Scroll, I have to wonder why you consider gifts to be a better setup for the combo than chaining something like Preordain, filling your graveyard for t.hold and Filtering for PIF/IT/Rituals?

Chrome Mox is on the fence. It is in place of lands currently, and it speeds the deck up slightly. The deck is already roughly as fast, if MAYBE a bit less consistent (due to fewer cantrips), as ANT, so the addition of Chrome Mox would theoretically make it a touch faster than ANT. The card disadvantage is irrelevant. Again, I can spout theory at you, but until you test the deck you won't see what I'm talking about.


if you can't profit from the early bursts with AN or EtW, cutting Moxen for more Fetches (t.hold, Delve) is a natural step also with the lategame in mind.

Reforge the Soul sucks. But it is necessary to not just scoop to Past in Flames. The advantage to playing with Reforge the Soul over Ad Nauseam is that you get to play with Treasure Cruise and Thoughtseize and Gifts Ungiven and Grim Tutor. The card itself is not good, but what not playing with Ad Nauseam does is frees up deckbuilding constraints so you can play with other powerful cards and diversify your gameplan so you're less easily hated out.


I don't see running Thoughtseize as an advantage as pointed out before and TC meddling with Cabal Ritual and PIF is questionable. I can not let those cards count to justify running Reforge over Ad Nauseam. The recurring question is if all those cards are better than creating a virtual redundancy with cantrips.

Gifts Ungiven is an extremely powerful setup spell for Past in Flames. It ensures that, no matter what, when you cast it, you win the game. It is different from other tutors in that you can cast an Infernal Tutor in the same situation and still not win because you don't have enough rituals or other cards in the graveyard to not make it go. It is card advantage against even decks with active graveyard hate. It is restricted in Vintage. I do not feel I need to explain why it is a powerful card.


"Ensures" is another word too strong in the context. I know about the strengh of Gifts but drawing parallels to vintage is off due to reasons I mentioned earlier.

[benthetenor]

Wasteland is not nearly that much of a concern for this deck given that the manabase is designed to function perfectly using nothing but basics. There will be situations where you have to fetch out a non-basic, but by and large that's something that's unavoidable given that there are only 4 Polluted Delta. The red splash is only necessary on the turn you are going off, so having a Volcanic in there to fetch out on exactly that turn is worth it. The ability to thrive on basics, in addition to the late-game power of the deck and the extreme number of discard spells makes the tempo matchups viable. I'd say positive, but I can't really comment on how good or bad certain matchups are until people who aren't me and my friends are playing the deck in the open metagame.

The reason why Gifts is a superior setup card is because it always gets you exactly what you want, both in the hand and in the graveyard. For instance, one line which is obscenely common for me is to have something like two rituals, a Lotus Petal and a Gifts Ungiven in hand with three or four lands and having already torn apart the opponent's hand over previous turns. I will use the first ritual to power out Gifts, giving them 2 rituals (or a ritual and a LED), a tutor and Past in Flames. If I get all rituals, I flashback Past in Flames and win. If I get no rituals, I still have enough mana with the ritual in hand to cast Past in Flames and win from there. If I get a weird split, I'm there anyway. The reason why it's superior to just having more cantrips is that sometimes, even with all the cantripping in the world, you will still not draw an Infernal Tutor to get the chain moving, or you will have some difficulty setting up a good Past in Flames. It doesn't happen all the time, but it is not so rare as to not be a consideration. So far in the close to 350 games I've played with this particular build, I have never failed to draw a tutor or business spell. That's not a small sample size, and it's enough that I feel comfortable saying "never" and not having it be much of an exaggeration. It is absolutely possible that it will happen sometimes, but it's never happened to me yet.

Treasure Cruise DOES NOT mess with threshold and/or Past in Flames. It doesn't make sense from a theoretical perspective, but while playing with the cards it's actually irrelevant. This is perhaps partly due to only playing two of them, but also when you cast Treasure Cruise you get three new cards and odds are you can put those cards right back into the graveyard. Between Fetchlands, Lotus Petals, Lion's Eye Diamonds (with or without spare lands in hand), cantrips, discard spells and rituals, the graveyard is always full, even after taxing it with Treasure Cruise. It's also not uncommon to burn a Dark Ritual on Treasure Cruise, as that makes a turn 2 Treasure Cruise very easy to do, given that Dark Ritual is virtually 4 of the 8 mana required. So Dark Ritual plus 3 cards in the graveyard plus two lands is a full Treasure Cruise right there, and if I have a spare card like a Lotus Petal or something in the graveyard, I even get to keep the Dark Ritual for later Past in Flames. It's usually a good thing to trade 2 fetchlands, a discard spell and a Dark Ritual to cast Ancestral Recall on turn 2, and that's to say nothing of LEDs and Lotus Petals sitting in the graveyard later that cannot interact with Past in Flames.

Thoughtseize is the best discard spell we have available to us. It gets everything. Cabal Therapy is strong too when you are running Gitaxian Probe, and it's strong enough that I will still run it as one of a medley of other discard spells (and I am also personally a fan of being good enough to run Therapy out there blind, a la Dredge), but Thoughtseize requires no additional setup to be good and it gets hatebears in addition to Force of Will. It is not impossible to play combo without it (clearly), but it would be silly to say that being able to support Thoughtseize isn't an advantage for a combo deck.

The only thing I will say about Gifts Ungiven is that, when it resolves, I win the game, on the spot, often with no other setup required. I recognize that this is not Vintage, but that is not a statement I can even make about something like Ad Nauseam in ANY deck that runs it.

[menace13]

Ad Nauseam sucks because, past turn three or four you are going to not have enough life to reliably win with it. As ANT is a slower deck, and this deck is a slower deck, the odds of going off on turn one or two is drastically smaller than it is with TES, making Ad Nauseam a liability in ANT and an unnecessary restriction in deck construction. ANT is a Past in Flames deck with a poor backup plan. This deck is an even stronger Past in Flames deck with a weaker, but still viable, backup plan. It strengthens the strength of ANT and makes a PiF kill faster and more consistent, and the deck will not fail to find a tutor in time to set up the chain to kill the opponent. If that's unbelievable to you, test the deck.

Drastically smaller? By how much of a percentage is drastically? Do you have the numbers, or are we just spouting off? Is TES faster? Yes. Drastically? Wut? Ad Naus being a liability in its own namesake deck is a preposterous statement. The back up plan being why those variants are widely more played and successful than other storm variants. Mainly the ease of executing Ad Naus for a relatively low life payment. Strengthening PiF at the cost of weakening the back up plan is a poor choice. PiF is as strong in TES and ANT as it is in your list. Possibly even stronger due to having a legit real back up plan that doesnt hinge on drawing a random 7 for 5 mana. One which opponents cannot allow to resolve. Your deck is based on Diminishing Returns as a back up plan. ANT/TES have Ad naus as a back up plan. How foolish to think that hose 2 cards are even comparable in a game where they also play PiF as an equally if not more so powerful win condition.


It is restricted in Vintage.
Restricted in Vintage for none of the reasons it is not in Legacy.

[benthetenor]

PiF is as strong in TES and ANT as it is in your list. Possibly even stronger due to having a legit real back up plan that doesnt hinge on drawing a random 7 for 5 mana..

This statement is nonsense. The strength of the backup plan has nothing to do with the strength of casting Past in Flames.

It's statements like that that make me wonder if you've ever actually played ANT and TES. There is a noticeable difference between how those two decks function, how they use Ad Nauseam and Past in Flames, etc. Since the printing of Past in Flames ANT has been much, much more comfortable going off with that card over Ad Nauseam due to a very legitimate speed difference between the two decks. TES casts Ad Nauseam/Past in Flames maybe 70/30, ANT is 30/70. This is not speculation on my part, and I'm sure anyone else who plays either of these decks can back me up on that.

[Garritano]

no, just no. Thoughtseize does nothing against multiple hatebears in your opponents hand or topdecked ones. What saves you against the inevitable turn 2 hatebear is speed, but this deck refuses to support that angle. Casting a card that loses life and ties your mana against burn is blatant nonsense. Most likely you trade a Lightning Bolt for a Shock instead but invest a mana and a card for basically preventing 1 fucking point of damage. If you consider this a fine trade, all hope is lost.


Thoughtseize is very good against burn.
I think that because you play TES, you don't know how bad ANT / Doomsday's win percentage against post-Eidolon burn is.
If you had played ANT post-Eidolon, you'd have seen the matchup is much closer to 60/40 than its historic near-autowin for ANT. If they dedicate enough sideboard space to you, I believe they can drop that percentage below 55%, which is totally remarkable considering that we're playing combo against aggro. (good sideboard cards would obv be stuff like Pyrostatic Pillar, Relic of Progenitus)

If you Thoughtseize and don't see Eidolon, you were going to win the game anyway (unless they hit their ~4/51 and kill you)
If you Thoughtseize and see one Eidolon, you are now going to win the game unless on their exact next turn they hit their ~3/51 and kill you. Congrats.
If you Thoughtseize and see two Eidolons, well, sorry. You could have only one the game if you had drawn Therapy instead of Thoughtseize.
IMO, storm should be running 4x Cabal Therapy before running Thoughtseize, so I don't approve of this lists's 3/3/2 split, but that isn't the point.
As 4x CT is what makes sense, meaningful analysis compares Thoughtseize to Duress, and Duress loses when they 1 or 2 Eidolons. Thoughtseize beats the 1 Eidolon case. I think a lot of Storm players underestimate how often a 4 of shows up in their opening grip b/c they don't factor in their opponents mulligans. Regardless, the "he opened with Eidolon so now I lose" event happens very frequently.
Boarding and then drawing Chain of Vapor / Abrupt Decay (which you can only do game 2-3) doesn't solve the problem. Abrupt Decay usually leaves you with 1-2 nonbasics, which turns on PoP, and both plays are tempo loses. To add insult to injury, those spells even trigger Eidolon, meaning they have the same lifepoint loss compared to Thoughtseize.

Thoughtseize is so good against burn, that when I ran Doomsday w/ a Thoughseize in the board, I would sideboard it in to increase the number of ways of stopping the game-ending Eidolon.
You play TES, which has Empty, which is a way of making Eidolon a joke. Empty into as little as 8 goblins and now you WANT them to cast Eidolon so that they commit suicide when they

Where Thoughtseize is bad, is:
1) You play Doomsday and your combo causes you to lose half your life
2) You play Ad Nauseum and your combo causes you to a significant amount of life
3) The two points is relevant to the clock.

Case 3 occurs SPECIFICALLY against Delver, where Thoughtseize is worse than Duress.
My post was SPECIFICALLY about burn, and I stand by the claim that Thoughtseize is a good discard spell against burn. I implore people who think otherwise to just play a game of ANT on MTGO. When your opening 7 against burn has therapy, you win unless they 1) topdeck Eidolon or 2) topdeck a sideboarded anti-graveyard spell. Allowing Thoughtseize to become Therapy #5 slightly increases that win percentage.

[Garritano]

This statement is nonsense. The strength of the backup plan has nothing to do with the strength of casting Past in Flames.

It's statements like that that make me wonder if you've ever actually played ANT and TES. There is a noticeable difference between how those two decks function, how they use Ad Nauseam and Past in Flames, etc. Since the printing of Past in Flames ANT has been much, much more comfortable going off with that card over Ad Nauseam due to a very legitimate speed difference between the two decks. TES casts Ad Nauseam/Past in Flames maybe 70/30, ANT is 30/70. This is not speculation on my part, and I'm sure anyone else who plays either of these decks can back me up on that.

I think this characterization of ANT is perhaps the strongest reason to consider this decklist.
I would go so far to say that Ad Nauseum is < 15% of a typical ANT player's win. We almost exclusively go for IT chains and PiF loops.
Ad Nauseum enables the turn one kills and its an instant-speed threat against Miracles, but the card is a liability in a huge percentage of matchups. If you played ANT and started AN in the sideboard, I would not think you're crazy.

Although this probably should be discussed elsewhere, it's plausible that ANT should be renamed, as TES is the better Ad Nauseum-deck by far. ANT is really a slow discard PiF loop deck. (note, slow means "slow relative to decks that support Empty the Warrens").

[Garritano]

Lastly, using Gifts I think is cute, but "Pick 4, keep 2" is not anywhere near as strong as "Draw 17, kill you" or "Wish, find answer, kill you". There is nothing I can see on offer here that makes me want to put down TES for this. While I like new things, I feel like they need to offer something of significance or answer problems that have arisen. I feel like this list as of yet offers nothing better over per existing builds and does not answer any issues currently faced by storm to a degree worthy of being anything more than a curiosity.

I don't think we should compare this deck to TES. We should compare it to ANT*.
TES's solution to heatbears / counterbalance is to win before they matter.
ANT is so slow that many excellent players experiment with stuff like 2x SDT maindeck, or quasi-transformational sideboards against Miracles to fight the resolved Counterbalance (e.g., "2 pithing needle to kill SDT + 3 Abrupt Decay" or "2 tops, 3 Abrupt Decays, 2 Krosan Grips to turn into Grinding Station"). For a similar reason, you often see things like 3x Dread of Nights in the board.
(don't win before Mother of Runes / Thalia lock hits, instead dig for DoN and win afterwards)
This list may provide a better game against Miracles and BUG Delver than ANT. (not saying anything about TES here).
I personally believe this list is worse against UR / RUG Delver than ANT, but I don't have sufficient data to back that up. I also don't have sufficient data to back up my Miracles claim. However, if this variant is similar to ANT while trading match-win % from red Delver and increasing the match win against Burn /Miracles/BUG Delver, then this deck has to be examined seriously.

Now, it's conceivable that TES has a good matchup has such a good Miracles/BUG Delver matchup that the solution to beating those decks is to throw away ANT and pick up TES, but if that's the case, the discussion shouldn't be limited to this thread.

*(I would suggest we compare this deck to TNT, but there is almost no discussion about TNT development on this forum and from what I can tell, almost no one plays it.)

[Lemnear]

Thoughtseize is very good against burn.
I think that because you play TES, you don't know how bad ANT / Doomsday's win percentage against post-Eidolon burn is.
If you had played ANT post-Eidolon, you'd have seen the matchup is much closer to 60/40 than its historic near-autowin for ANT. If they dedicate enough sideboard space to you, I believe they can drop that percentage below 55%, which is totally remarkable considering that we're playing combo against aggro. (good sideboard cards would obv be stuff like Pyrostatic Pillar, Relic of Progenitus)


oh I have and Pyrostatic Pillar was a SB card for ages too. The difference is that now you have a Pillar on leg's Maindeck, but your burn opponent won't mull for it or favor a hand with Eidolon in it game 1 if you play in an anoymous tournament. In game 2 you remove the discard anyways for CoV so the question you correctly answered below is "if you want to strip Eidolon in 100% of cases, why not running Therapy instead of Thoughtseize?" Obviously Therapy comes with Gitaxian Probe which creates a virtual redundancy in the deck so you don't have to run 8 Discard effects or 6+ Tutors at all. I could write another hundred words about how good Probe works as "Virtual discard Spell" if you don't see an Eidolon or must-discard in your opponents hand, but I guess this isn't required :)

If you Thoughtseize and don't see Eidolon, you were going to win the game anyway (unless they hit their ~4/51 and kill you)
If you Thoughtseize and see one Eidolon, you are now going to win the game unless on their exact next turn they hit their ~3/51 and kill you. Congrats.
If you Thoughtseize and see two Eidolons, well, sorry. You could have only one the game if you had drawn Therapy instead of Thoughtseize.
IMO, storm should be running 4x Cabal Therapy before running Thoughtseize, so I don't approve of this lists's 3/3/2 split, but that isn't the point.
As 4x CT is what makes sense, meaningful analysis compares Thoughtseize to Duress, and Duress loses when they 1 or 2 Eidolons. Thoughtseize beats the 1 Eidolon case. I think a lot of Storm players underestimate how often a 4 of shows up in their opening grip b/c they don't factor in their opponents mulligans. Regardless, the "he opened with Eidolon so now I lose" event happens very frequently.


Do we asume your opponent also has Pyrostatic Pillar in their SB? I usually do and so a lot of which was said about isn't correct for postboard games, starting with Duress being able to strip Pillar and climaxing into suddenly having to do the math with up to 8 Pillars. In the end, you gamble game 1 against an opponent who likely doesn't know you are on storm and therefore favoring an Eidolon in his hand ontop of the question mark left between Therapy and Thoughtseize. Matchups like this, MUD, D&T and others make me question why there wasn't one single slot in the MB spare for a quick I-win-Button like EtW or Ad Nauseam from the start

Boarding and then drawing Chain of Vapor / Abrupt Decay (which you can only do game 2-3) doesn't solve the problem. Abrupt Decay usually leaves you with 1-2 nonbasics, which turns on PoP, and both plays are tempo loses. To add insult to injury, those spells even trigger Eidolon, meaning they have the same lifepoint loss compared to Thoughtseize.


why don't you credit the ability to remove an optional threat on demand rather than having to miraculously snatch it from your opponents starting grip blindly?

At this point I like to ask why this deck, due to it's slow nature even bothers with MB bounce and dedicated discard for hatebears instead of running LIGHTNING BOLT. I'm serious. It kills any Hatebear, Delver, SFM while also presenting a nice way to speed up Tendrils. I guess this is the tool you need for going for a longer game in Legacy. Think about it. I know Lightning Bolt is not a stranger to ANT

Thoughtseize is so good against burn, that when I ran Doomsday w/ a Thoughseize in the board, I would sideboard it in to increase the number of ways of stopping the game-ending Eidolon.
You play TES, which has Empty, which is a way of making Eidolon a joke. Empty into as little as 8 goblins and now you WANT them to cast Eidolon so that they commit suicide when they


then why not reserving a sigle slot for stuff like EtW?

[Garritano]

Obviously Therapy comes with Gitaxian Probe which creates a virtual redundancy in the deck so you don't have to run 8 Discard effects or 6+ Tutors at all. I could write another hundred words about how good Probe works as "Virtual discard Spell" if you don't see an Eidolon or must-discard in your opponents hand, but I guess this isn't required :)

I 100% agree with you, and baring some sort of strange Doomsday-control deck, I can't imagine playing any legacy Storm list without 4x Gitaxian Probe maindeck.



Do we asume your opponent also has Pyrostatic Pillar in their SB? I usually do and so a lot of which was said about isn't correct for postboard games, starting with Duress being able to strip Pillar and climaxing into suddenly having to do the math with up to 8 Pillars. In the end, you gamble game 1 against an opponent who likely doesn't know you are on storm and therefore favoring an Eidolon in his hand ontop of the question mark left between Therapy and Thoughtseize. Matchups like this, MUD, D&T and others make me question why there wasn't one single slot in the MB spare for a quick I-win-Button like EtW or Ad Nauseam from the start


These are very good points, and I definitely agree with you. You make a compelling case for EtW belonging in at minimum somewhere in the 75, possibly maindeck.



then why not reserving a sigle slot for stuff like EtW?


This is an extremely good point.
The original list should have at minimum one in the 75, as Gifts doesn't offer the turn one I win button. The turn 1-2 "I win" event happens so often that 1 Empty should really improve the match win % against a variety of decks.
I personally don't approve of the Chrome Moxen, but they actually increase the value of Empty.



why don't you credit the ability to remove an optional threat on demand rather than having to miraculously snatch it from your opponents starting grip blindly?

I actually still board in CoV / Abrupt Decay against Burn, and my post was a bit inaccurate. I was just pointing out that Thoughtseize helps answer Eidolon without some of the problems associated with those sideboard cards. I normally play a fairly normal ANT list and use a fairly standard CoV / Abrupt Decay response.



At this point I like to ask why this deck, due to it's slow nature even bothers with MB bounce and dedicated discard for hatebears instead of running LIGHTNING BOLT. I'm serious. It kills any Hatebear, Delver, SFM while also presenting a nice way to speed up Tendrils. I guess this is the tool you need for going for a longer game in Legacy. Think about it. I know Lightning Bolt is not a stranger to ANT


This is a really good point, and we should definitely bring this up in the ANT thread.
I was thinking about this exact card a few weeks ago when thinking about how it helps the "natural tendrils" plan, but hadn't seriously considered it.
This is a REALLY good idea.


Thank you for your analysis.
When I'm not running ANT, I'm experimenting with a hybrid of this / ANT (with 4 Cabal Therapy / Gitaxian Probes, more lands, and 2 preordains), and I absolutely will try Empty the Warrens and experiment with a bolt sideboard + extra red source in the main.

[Lemnear]

Full credit for ANT with EtW over Ad Nauseam in MB plus Lightning Bolts (also in the MB) goes to SloshTheDark. I just remembered it as he uses this setup locally afaik

[benthetenor]

Updated the first post with a new decklist and added in potential sideboard cards. The main changes were converting Chrome Mox to fetchlands and shaving a few cards to bring in some Gitaxian Probe, and then tweaking the disruption suite and manabase to accept the changes. I am not as yet fully convinced that these changes are correct, but they felt natural and have been testing fine. The speed difference without Chrome Mox is evident, but not so drastic as to make me want to go back just yet.

There's a desire to add in a fourth Gitaxian Probe, but I do not want to go below 30 mana sources which is where we're at right now. Granted, there is not a large difference between 30 and 29 (particularly with a full four Probes) but that is the reasoning as to why there are currently only three. With a fourth Gitaxian Probe, I would likely reverse the split between Thoughtseize and Cabal Therapy.

[Lemnear]

I still doubt this deck deserves a seperate thread as it basically only switched the usual slots occupied in ANT by either LDV/Grim Tutor/Ad Nauseam/Burning Wishes/Preordains/2nd PIF/EtW/SDT/etc. out for Gifts/TC/CoV/Reforge. We are talking about the same slots people rotate now for years forth and back. :/

I feel this topic would have had a much easier time, if brought up in the ANT thread with the question "what about Gifts Ungiven instead of the Preordains in this deck?"

[.Ix]

If he posted it in the ANT thread, people might have just told him to eat shit because the deck is "not ANT". I think the deck is better with its own thread. It is different enough that any serious discussion about it in the ANT thread could completely derail the thread. However, this is clearly a moderator's call.

I'd love to contribute to the actual deck discussion but I've only goldfished a few games so anything I can say about it is going to be useless. A little less useless than the opinions of people who played zero games, but still useless.

[Lemnear]

If he posted it in the ANT thread, people might have just told him to eat shit because the deck is "not ANT". I think the deck is better with its own thread. It is different enough that any serious discussion about it in the ANT thread could completely derail the thread. However, this is clearly a moderator's call.

I'd love to contribute to the actual deck discussion but I've only goldfished a few games so anything I can say about it is going to be useless. A little less useless than the opinions of people who played zero games, but still useless.

Its 5/60 cards off from ANT (I'm not hairsplitting because of the selection of Lands), for gods sake! Shall we force a new RUG Delver thread just because some people try Hooting Mandrills over Goose and claim its a totally different deck now and players who are used to Goose have no clue about the new deck and how it works?? Take the UR Delver thread as an example, as they dropped staples like Wasteland and Stifle for Treasure Cruise and Swiftspear without starting a new thread and I hope we can agree that those changes were more significant than switching LimDuls Vault for Gifts Ungiven.

[JamieW89]

The differences between the list now in the OP and ANT:
(2nd Island over another land)
-1 Land
-1 Probe
-2 Cantrip (Preordain/Sdt)
-1 AdN/EtW
+2 Tcruise
+1 Gifts
+1 Reforge
+1 Chain of V

- 14 lands.
You become even slower so you play less lands, I don't get this. It seems you used to have Moxen, maybe that's why?

- Less cantrips, more business:
This depends on personal taste, I really don't like reforge though.

- Regarding more graveyard dependency:
How about playing more gy-related stuff g1 and boarding to less gy? This could be aiming for AdN/EtW g2, this could be going for Doomsday g2 (with tops main) etc.

- MD bounce
I'm not sure an answer is needed, but you might want to go down to 6 discard + 1 answer if you do.

What I suggest:
Test both Gifts and TC in the existing ANT shell (without Chain, Reforge the Soul etc) and see if they add anything. Gifts seem mana-intensive to me, but it might be okay. I'd also test Dig Through Time in similar fashion (and Lim-Dul's Vault, although it has been tested). I do think this discussion has a better place in the ANT thread. The earlier idea involving moxen seemed to have inconsistent ideas.

[Mhenlo]

Are you sure that Gifts is better than Intuition, it's less mana intensive, you still get the cards you want for PiF, it can also be used as a Tutor. I would also consider a Flusterstorm to Merchant Scroll for.

Also how is this an Established Deck but Infect is in Developing.

[Garritano]

This sentence tells all

So because you decided to exclude certain cards, any discussion or argument supporting those cards is undesired in this thread? Ad Nauseam vs Gifts vs 2nd PIF is no topic for you as I talk about it for 3 pages now without response. EtW, which can be run alongside Gifts and Profits from quick starts to overwhelm D&T, Elves, Burn, etc. isn't worth a word. Lightning Bolt as a tool to reach the mid-/lategame and Speeding up ToA instead of bounce/Thoughtseize against Delver/Hatebear isn't worth a mention for you.

Best part: you don't even bother to adress issues with cards IN the deck like Reforge giving your blue opponent a fresh grip right after you spend your discard on them to resolve Reforge or successfully casting a 4cc setup Spell against Daze/Pierce/Wasteland/FoW which you likely have to burn a Ritual for and your opponent gladly counters for cardadvantage.

Well, I can attest that your contributions to this thread have been exceptional.
benthetenor actually updated the first post to include Gitaxian Probe, Cabal Therapy + lands, remove Chrome Mox, and to mention Lightning Bolt in the sideboard options.
I think that benthetenor's frustrations were not directed towards you, and were directed towards previous post. One of the posters in this thread said ANT used Ad Nauseum as the primary kill, and PiF was a backup used after the opponent exhausted his resources stopping AN.
Of course, this is not correct, as the preferred and most common kill is the simple PiF loop, regardless of the meta. The 2nd most common is natural storm with or without an IT chain, and Ad Nauseum comes in at 3rd. Many ANT players run 0 Ad Nauseum in the maindeck and run 1xEmpty (e.g., nevilshute)

If Ad Nauseum actually was the best kill in ANT, this thread would be a total non-starter.
Now that being said, I understand if there are other, non-Ad Nauseum arguments to make this thread a non-starter.

I think it is valuable to have a high-casting cost Storm thread somewhere on the source.

The Gifts shell gives access to an IT target that gives an instant kill when you have excess mana while also supporting Treasure Cruise.
However, as you pointed out, Empty the Warrens allows a similar function, but at a significantly lower mana cost. (e.g, 3R instead of ~8 mana).
That being said, I think a high-casting cost Storm deck could split Empty / Gifts and even Ad Nauseum / TC somewhere in the 75, as the footprint of these cards is minimal on the decklist. I think Empty is an autoinclude in the 75, and I prefer it in the maindeck.

There are a multitude of reasons why this development is very theoretically interesting, and getting insight from storm experts will be crucial for development, so I truly hope you continue posting in this thread.

Lastly, Gifts Ungiven has received almost no mention in the ANT or TES threads, but this deck's innovation of Gifts is so potentially powerful that I may add Gifts to my ANT sideboard, so that against decks like burn or UR Delver, I'll have the Empty, PiF, and Gifts kills available.

[Shaman]

TC in traditional Storm is not good because it makes you play without Ad Nauseam (that's ok) and makes all your cabal rituals much more weaker along with PiF (that's not ok).
For this reason, if I had to play TC into a Storm shell, I will test a build starting with 4x Brain Freeze. I know there were some lists around when PiF was spoilered and somebody even placed well sometimes. Maybe it is time to dig for them instead of going for Gifts/Reforge routes.

[Surfinbird]

Lastly, Gifts Ungiven has received almost no mention in the ANT or TES threads, but this deck's innovation of Gifts is so potentially powerful that I may add Gifts to my ANT sideboard, so that against decks like burn or UR Delver, I'll have the Empty, PiF, and Gifts kills available.

How can we kill via Gifts without using PiF?

[Lemnear]

Well, I can attest that your contributions to this thread have been exceptional.
benthetenor actually updated the first post to include Gitaxian Probe, Cabal Therapy + lands, remove Chrome Mox, and to mention Lightning Bolt in the sideboard options.


I noticed them. What bugged me from the start is that despite claiming he played literally hundreds of Games, he never noticed any conceptual flaw (like Mox+CR+TC with only 5 fetches/0 Probes)? Something wasn't sound.

I think that benthetenor's frustrations were not directed towards you, and were directed towards previous post. One of the posters in this thread said ANT used Ad Nauseum as the primary kill, and PiF was a backup used after the opponent exhausted his resources stopping AN.
Of course, this is not correct, as the preferred and most common kill is the simple PiF loop, regardless of the meta. The 2nd most common is natural storm with or without an IT chain, and Ad Nauseum comes in at 3rd. Many ANT players run 0 Ad Nauseum in the maindeck and run 1xEmpty (e.g., nevilshute)


get me right: I played with Gifts in Vintage and tired it in Legacy storm, which were the reasons I was interrested in this thread and looked forward discussing Gifts' advantages and merrits compared to a 2nd PIF/EtW/Ad Nauseam/etc. and while the inclusion of Gifts instead of the regular flexslots Preordain/SDT/Grim makes sense to look at (and to an extend rules out Ad Nauseam due to the high mana cost), we never reached the point to discuss if the heavy graveyard-focus makes sense with the future metagame battling Treasure cruise and graveyards anyways.

In the end, the deck had 3 graveyard-engines in the MB (Gifts, PIF & TC) but no viable alternative to get around hate (partly due to it's slowness and lack of quick combo engines). Testing should have shown that his is a significant weakness with RIP and DRS commonly played, but for reasons I can only speculate about, neither this strategic linearity, the backlash of Reforge nor design weaknesses like Mox+CR+TC, did.

This deck is trying to reinvent the wheel and want to see it justified by drawing twisted parallels to Gifts in Vintage, ignoring that Vintage combo is much more compact than in Legacy and most parts are also restricted. There is no Time Vault + Voltaic Key/Tinker -> Blightsteel/Yawgmoths Will/Tolarian Academy + VaCrySoLoMoxen in Legacy, offering a very compact kill for Vintage Gifts-piles. Legacy storm takes up A LOT of slots in your maindeck and therefore automatically creates a certain redundancy of pieces. The question, according to the given redundancy, is, if Gifts is really THAT better for finding 4-/8-off in this deck than cards like Preordain (which doesn't clog your hand, deal that much damage while being revealed to Ad Nauseam, help to make landdrops, etc)?

To answer this particular question and others in context of Gifts Ungiven, the ANT thread would have been my favorite choice, as if you cut all the cards which were and are remains of "Treasure Cruise is flavor of the month! Lets include it in EVERY deck", what's left is just an ANT shell. Therefore starting a new thread, which you can basically break down to "Gifts in ANT", was making things up for my taste.

If Ad Nauseum actually was the best kill in ANT, this thread would be a total non-starter.
Now that being said, I understand if there are other, non-Ad Nauseum arguments to make this thread a non-starter.


the only things that made this thread a "non-starter" is claiming that Reforge is a better Backup-engine than Ad Nauseam/EtW/etc., that a deck which occasionally runs up to 16(!) cantrips needs further redundancy in form of Gifts to find business and that you need to support a graveyard-engine which requires a full graveyard (PIF) with another which empties the graveyard (TC).

I think it is valuable to have a high-casting cost Storm thread somewhere on the source.


if "high-cost" implies "being intended slow", I'm certain "storm" is not the right shell as you need to afford being slow with control-elements. however, if we stick to Gifts Ungiven + Dark Ritual as our topic, I would think about a much more compact kill condition like Laboratory Maniac + Doomday compared to Storm

The Gifts shell gives access to an IT target that gives an instant kill when you have excess mana while also supporting Treasure Cruise.


I seriously doubt that and it's highly questionable if TC feasting on Cabal Rituals and PIF even makes sense given how the graveyards will be hated out in the near future.

However, as you pointed out, Empty the Warrens allows a similar function, but at a significantly lower mana cost. (e.g, 3R instead of ~8 mana).
That being said, I think a high-casting cost Storm deck could split Empty / Gifts and even Ad Nauseum / TC somewhere in the 75, as the footprint of these cards is minimal on the decklist. I think Empty is an autoinclude in the 75, and I prefer it in the maindeck.


the EtW/Gifts split at least clearly support the early game rush, sidestepping graveyard-hate and the lategame power aspect, but aside from you, no one seems to care much to discuss EtW vs. Reforge as a natural secondary engine and honestly, I doubt there is much to discuss as EtW has proven its playability in ANTs MB already.

There are a multitude of reasons why this development is very theoretically interesting, and getting insight from storm experts will be crucial for development, so I truly hope you continue posting in this thread.


this is kinda funny stuff as one of the main arguments I had with the OP was his claim that pure deck-theory and previous experiences with storm subtypes doesn't apply to this deck. :p

[benthetenor]

Ok, so let me get this straight: I test the deck for hundreds of games and decide that I do not like Gitaxian Probe in the deck due to the fact that it's a stronger card in a faster deck (due to being unable to support stronger cards like tutors, and thus relying on cantripping into a solid hand/setup for Past in Flames/etc.), and you don't like that and say it can't possibly be correct in spite of having never played a game with this deck. Then, I cave and decide to test Probe again, having decided that maybe, just maybe, I made a mistake and it's something that deserves a second look, and now you suggest that it means that I didn't even test the deck in the first place? I can't win with you, apparently.

The reason why I did not have Gitaxian Probe in the first deck was because, as the game goes longer, I'd much rather be casting powerful spells rather than spending life/mana to cantrip into powerful spells. Why run Gitaxian Probe when I could run more discard to both look at their hand AND advance my gameplan, or run more tutors and JUST WIN THE GAME rather than durdling around with Gitaxian Probe. I don't need the extra storm, as once I go off, I have literally never had an issue making the storm count. It amounted to paying extra life for an effect I didn't need. I am absolutely not convinced that Gitaxian Probe is correct, so perhaps I shouldn't have updated the decklist, I was just hoping to cut out some of the bitching. Guess that didn't work.

I feel you have NO AUTHORITY to claim how slow or fast this deck is having never played a game with it. If you want to know why the deck has no serious issues with Rest in Peace/Deathrite Shaman/commonly played graveyard hate that I clearly would have run into at this point, perhaps you should stop spouting theory and pick up the damn deck? I can assure you, between 7-8 discard spells, a stocked sideboard, and the ability to win on turn 1, sometimes graveyard hate just doesn't do anything. But then, you can't know how fast this deck can be without having played with it.

But perhaps it's my fault for overstating the speed comparison to ANT in the first few posts. I really hoped you'd at least pick up the deck at some point and get a feel for it yourself to see what kind of speed this deck has. It can win on turn 1, just like ANT and TES. It kills on turn 3 more consistently than ANT, thanks entirely to casting Gifts Ungiven rather than wasting the turn setting up with cantrips. Turn 2 is not difficult. In fact, the most common line of play for me is turn 1 discard spell, turn 2 cantrip and discard spell, turn 3 win. The next most common play for me is turn 1 cantrip, turn 2 discard spell and win.

I can understand a desire to understand the theoretical benefits of one deck over the other, but if you don't ever pick up the deck to test your theories, you're just masturbating.

[Lemnear]

Ok, so let me get this straight: I test the deck for hundreds of games and decide that I do not like Gitaxian Probe in the deck due to the fact that it's a stronger card in a faster deck (due to being unable to support stronger cards like tutors, and thus relying on cantripping into a solid hand/setup for Past in Flames/etc.), and you don't like that and say it can't possibly be correct in spite of having never played a game with this deck. Then, I cave and decide to test Probe again, having decided that maybe, just maybe, I made a mistake and it's something that deserves a second look, and now you suggest that it means that I didn't even test the deck in the first place? I can't win with you, apparently.


this isn't a matter of speed or tricks with Brainstorm + LED which make Probe worthwhile, but a matter of decreasing the number of Lands/Discard/Business actually needed in the deck due to basically playing only 56 cards. Being a 0cc "check my opponents hand for counter" instead of having to spend a black mana on a discard spell to basically do the same, filling your graveyard for Cabal Ritual (or TC in your case), interacting with Therapy and being free storm and carddraw with PIF are advantages on top of that. All this are storm-basics and have nothing to do with "you have never played THIS storm deck". I don't see why running 8 discard effects plus Grim/Gifts/Scroll/Reforge was more appealing. That is all.

The reason why I did not have Gitaxian Probe in the first deck was because, as the game goes longer, I'd much rather be casting powerful spells rather than spending life/mana to cantrip into powerful spells. Why run Gitaxian Probe when I could run more discard to both look at their hand AND advance my gameplan, or run more tutors and JUST WIN THE GAME rather than durdling around with Gitaxian Probe. I don't need the extra storm, as once I go off, I have literally never had an issue making the storm count. It amounted to paying extra life for an effect I didn't need. I am absolutely not convinced that Gitaxian Probe is correct, so perhaps I shouldn't have updated the decklist, I was just hoping to cut out some of the bitching. Guess that didn't work.


you rather use merchant scroll to fetch Gifts to fetch PIF afterwards for 6 mana than pay two life to draw into like Ponder/Infernal to dig for PIF for mere 1-2 mana? You also rather pay a black mana and 2 life to check for a counterspell than paying ZERO mana and two life while drawing a card. You act as if there isn't a topic of "being too slow for my opponents deck" for this particular build.

I feel you have NO AUTHORITY to claim how slow or fast this deck is having never played a game with it. If you want to know why the deck has no serious issues with Rest in Peace/Deathrite Shaman/commonly played graveyard hate that I clearly would have run into at this point, perhaps you should stop spouting theory and pick up the damn deck? I can assure you, between 7-8 discard spells, a stocked sideboard, and the ability to win on turn 1, sometimes graveyard hate just doesn't do anything. But then, you can't know how fast this deck can be without having played with it.


What about this: Give us a) a reasonable example of how you want to win against graveyard-hate backed up with a clock (say Delver) and b) a reasonable example to win turn 1? If you can come up with something that doesn't come straight from magical christmas land, I'll shut my mouth. A real bargain, no? I'm a bit bored of that ever same bullshit of "you may played Burning Desire/Long.dec/Pitch Long/Grim Long/Meandeck Gifts/Dark Gifts/TPS/ANT/TES/TNT since 2003 but have NO CLUE how THIS storm deck works! You have to play it to see that 5 slots CHANGE ALL!"

But perhaps it's my fault for overstating the speed comparison to ANT in the first few posts. I really hoped you'd at least pick up the deck at some point and get a feel for it yourself to see what kind of speed this deck has. It can win on turn 1, just like ANT and TES. It kills on turn 3 more consistently than ANT, thanks entirely to casting Gifts Ungiven rather than wasting the turn setting up with cantrips. Turn 2 is not difficult. In fact, the most common line of play for me is turn 1 discard spell, turn 2 cantrip and discard spell, turn 3 win. The next most common play for me is turn 1 cantrip, turn 2 discard spell and win.


I'm looking forward to at least one realistic example of those mysterious turn 1/2 kills and in the meanwhile I try to not get mauled by Delver and self-inflicted Damage due to fighting through defense with Thoughtseize or having a hard time against DRS + FoW in game 1

I can understand a desire to understand the theoretical benefits of one deck over the other, but if you don't ever pick up the deck to test your theories, you're just masturbating.


I'll swing the deck into some tough compedition while you come up with answers to the questions above, deal?

[Asthereal]

On Topic:
I think using Gifts in Legacy Storm is an interesting idea.
I'm not a Vintage player, so can anyone explain how one would win with Gifts using the list in the OP?

[Lemnear]

Note to all posters here: I have reported this thread to the moderators. Where this thread belongs is a mod thing. They will have a look. Please keep in mind that the OP cannot move or merge threads, so complaining in the thread doesn't add anything. If you feel the thread should be somewhere else, be it in N&D or in the ANT thread, please just ask the mods.

On Topic:
I think using Gifts in Legacy Storm is an interesting idea.
I'm not a Vintage player, so can anyone explain how one would win with Gifts using the list in the OP?

Rule of thumb: search out what you lack for your combo. Example: Make a pile of DR/CR/PIF with the last slot being either IT/ToA/Discard depending on your hand. If played eot you have suddenly the Tutor + Rituals + PIF + disruption available for your turn. Biggest issue in Legacy compared to Vintage is that giving you the mana into your hand to flashback/play PIF is an obvious no-go and that you have no quick, permanent mana sources like Moxen to fuel the initial costs of Gifts & PIF

[Asthereal]

So we should aim for Gifts at end of turn, and win the turn after.
This raises some questions:
- How do we find Gifts in the first place? Infernal won't work most of the time, because...
- Winning on the same turn as we cast Gifts costs waay too much mana. Like, Dragonstorm mana. Or do I miss something?
- (Ignore if q1 gets valid answer.) So if we don't find Gifts, why not just play a few extra? Tuning a deck around a one-of we cannot relyably search for other than with cantrips seems bad.

[iamajellydonut]

seems bad.

All of the questions you asked roll into this. I'll admit, it is satisfying to cast Gifts, but it's unplayed for a reason. There may be some brilliant plan where we all smack our foreheads and exclaim "it was right in front of us the whole time!", but this isn't it. Ad Nauseam kicks a mean dick.

1) Merchant Scroll and cantrips are really the only way to find it.

2) It does in fact cost Dragonstorm mana. Tutor+Gifts Ungiven+Past in Flames unless you cast it the turn before. Then it's only Dragonstorm mana over two turns.

3) The problem with loading up on Gifts Ungiven is the same problem that has existed all through the history of Magic. Dead cards.

[Lemnear]

So we should aim for Gifts at end of turn, and win the turn after.
This raises some questions:
- How do we find Gifts in the first place? Infernal won't work most of the time, because...
- Winning on the same turn as we cast Gifts costs waay too much mana. Like, Dragonstorm mana. Or do I miss something?
- (Ignore if q1 gets valid answer.) So if we don't find Gifts, why not just play a few extra? Tuning a deck around a one-of we cannot relyably search for other than with cantrips seems bad.

In all Fairness, Gifts isn't a business Spell, it's another Tutor which also dumps Ritual in the graveyard as a side-effect. It isn't intended to cast Gifts + PIF in one turn. Gifts interacts poorly with LED which makes it a lackluster to draw either early in the game or in combination with the poor Mans Lotus

[Asthereal]

Right. So it's basically a grave dependent tutor that can only be used before going off, and costs four mana. That's quite a few limitations. OP, sell this to me. How is this good? What are your reaons to want this instead of the other options in Storm?

(Note: I did read the entire thread.)

[Aggro_zombies]

Jesus Tap-dancing Christ, let's try not to turn this thread into UW Tempo: The Revengeance. Those guys got banned for a reason.

[benthetenor]

Good, so now that we are no longer in the "Established Deck" section, we can actually talk about the deck without that distraction.

Lemnear, this deck wins turn 1 much the same that ANT wins turn 1, meaning it's not something you do all the time but sometimes the opportunity is there. It involves a hand of a land, fast mana and Infernal Tutor. Really not all that difficult to set up. You just go through the PiF chain and count to 10. Not magical Christmasland. I'd say it happens roughly one game in ten or fifteen. Even when it's there, it's often preferable to wait on a discard spell or cantrip into one, but the point is that it's not a ridiculous feat. If you believe this deck to be ANT with no Ad Nauseam, then you have to accept that it will sometimes get draws like ANT.

I understand how Gitaxian Probe works to make the deck smaller. What I am saying is that running Thoughtseize and Gitaxian Probe and Fetchlands and Grim Tutor is a lot of life to give up for free, and that there are actual costs to running the card. One of those costs is that you have to cut 4 cards from an already tight 60 card list, and a lot of the cards that are on the chopping block are cards I'd like to be casting, rather than hoping that the card I would tutor for is sitting on top of the deck, for instance. There's a reason why not every deck ever plays Gitaxian Probe, and the benefits that it gives to other combo decks in Legacy (information, smaller deck, life being irrelevant, not a great topdeck, filling the graveyard) are not things I'm really in the market for with this deck as I already have it all covered very, very well. I understand that it interacts well with Past in Flames and Cabal Ritual and Treasure Cruise. I need you to understand that the cards I'm putting in in place of Gitaxian Probe interact even better because they do all the same thing while actually advancing my gameplan.


As for winning against graveyard hate, there are two different gameplans:

1) pre-board - graveyard hate is practically non-existant aside from Deathrite Shaman. In the case that I can't get DRS from hand with Cabal Therapy/Thoughtseize, and that I can't win before DRS is active, the plan is to either overload DRS by having two tutors in hand when we go off, just like ANT would do in a PiF chain, or to ignore DRS with the slot currently taken up with Reforge the Soul. I know you don't like Reforge the Soul, and I agree it is much weaker than Ad Nauseam, but it's not all that difficult to wheel into fast mana, a discard spell and a tutor as that's literally all that is in the deck. I don't need to start over storm-wise as I've likely already used 5-6 storm just setting up Reforge the Soul (and will have a lot of mana floating, given that I've cast lots of rituals and LEDs), so a piece of fast mana, a discard spell and a tutor is all I need to hit off of 7 new cards for lethal, and it happens well over 80% of the time that I go for that plan. And against the decks like Jund that have DRS but no counterspells, that plan gets much, much easier since I don't have to hit or cast discard.

2) post-board - being able to board in 5-6 specific cards to deal with their hate cards, whether by guessing for game 2 or after having seen them going into game 3, goes a long way towards blanking their ability to beat me. This deck does not require threshold to be built over time, and is extremely capable of going from no graveyard to threshold in the span of one turn, so going eot bounce your graveyard hate, untap and win is the plan. Again, this is assuming I don't have a chance to hit their graveyard hate with discard spells first, and that I can't win before they get theirs down.

All of this can be easily accomplished by turn 4, turn 5 at the latest. All that is required is a bounce spell and an extra turn. That gives me plenty of time to play around Daze/Spell Pierce while still being able to win before Delver of Secrets beats me.


As for using Gifts, it is very true that it can be played eot to setup a strong kill on the next turn, but that's not how I usually use it, and Lemnear I would appreciate if you didn't tell people what kind of plays you should be making with this deck when you have yourself never played this deck. For instance, I would literally never put Tendrils of Agony into a Gifts pile. There's just no reason to expose it and there is always a more efficient card you could get. The reason why it's usually not correct to cast it end of turn is that, usually when you can do that, you actually had the ability to cast it on the turn proceeding and just win, so what you've done by spreading it over two turns is given the opponent an extra card and the ability to untap and defend himself. The vast majority of the time that I cast Gifts, I will have a hand that will look something like Gifts, LED, Cabal Ritual, Dark Ritual, blank x3 (cantrips or discard or lands). So what ends up happening there is I use my turn to cast LED, cast Gifts off of Dark Ritual and a land, and I set up two pieces of fast mana, a tutor and Past in Flames. No matter what they give me, my hand is still Cabal Ritual with three mana floating, threshold, and whatever other cards he gave me off of Gifts. From there winning is academic. Or if I have the tutor in hand, I'll Gifts for the big three accelerants and Past in Flames and I will always get at least one accelerant to go along with my tutor in hand. If he gives me LED and Past in Flames, I just use the LED to discard Past in Flames and cast it from the graveyard. There is literally no bad thing that can happen to me once Gifts resolves.

It's also very, very important to point out that, given that Gifts Ungiven is a one-of in this deck, this is not a Gifts Ungiven deck. The idea that I have to cast Gifts Ungiven to win is false; it is just a very, very strong tutor that gets me exactly what I need everytime I cast it. I am toying with the idea of a second one, but it's really not the most important part of the deck. My reasoning for wanting to play Gifts Ungiven in a storm deck is because it completely eliminates the chances of wanting to cast Past in Flames and not having the resources to kill from there. With ANT, there exist games where you cast Past in Flames and have to use cantrips to actually draw your way into a kill. That does not happen with Gifts Ungiven because you've already searched up everything you need and it's sitting right in your graveyard, waiting for you.

Finally, adding Gifts Ungiven to this deck does nothing to add dead cards to the deck. All of the cards I find with Gifts Ungiven are all cards I'd be playing anyway. Playing Gifts simply ensures that I will have all of those cards exactly when I need them.

[Asthereal]

The reason why it's usually not correct to cast it end of turn is that, usually when you can do that, you actually had the ability to cast it on the turn proceeding and just win, so what you've done by spreading it over two turns is given the opponent an extra card and the ability to untap and defend himself.
You mean preceeding, I presume? I hope I have explained clearly enough in the next bits why there are only few situations where casting Gifts will win the game on the spot.


The vast majority of the time that I cast Gifts, I will have a hand that will look something like Gifts, LED, Cabal Ritual, Dark Ritual, blank x3 (cantrips or discard or lands).
That's quite the hand. This needs serious time and cantripping to set up.


So what ends up happening there is I use my turn to cast LED, cast Gifts off of Dark Ritual and a land, and I set up two pieces of fast mana, a tutor and Past in Flames. No matter what they give me, my hand is still Cabal Ritual with three mana floating, threshold, and whatever other cards he gave me off of Gifts. From there winning is academic. Or if I have the tutor in hand, I'll Gifts for the big three accelerants and Past in Flames and I will always get at least one accelerant to go along with my tutor in hand. If he gives me LED and Past in Flames, I just use the LED to discard Past in Flames and cast it from the graveyard. There is literally no bad thing that can happen to me once Gifts resolves.
Okay so your Gifts pile is Dark Ritual, Cabal Ritual, Infernal Tutor, Past in Flames. If they hand you Tutor and PiF, you will need a lot to go off. After Gifts, going off requires R3 + B1 + BB2, plus all mana you need to cast and recast your Rituals. I wasn't kidding when I mentioned Dragonstorm mana. This requires indeed LED, Dark Ritual and Cabal Ritual with Threshold. And Flashbacking both Rituals. Without these Rituals this doesn't work. Note that you probably need the Dark Ritual to cast Gifts in the first place. This is a VERY demanding set-up.


It's also very, very important to point out that, given that Gifts Ungiven is a one-of in this deck, this is not a Gifts Ungiven deck. The idea that I have to cast Gifts Ungiven to win is false; it is just a very, very strong tutor that gets me exactly what I need everytime I cast it.
True, but all I said is that when you tune a deck to work with Gifts, and you have no way to actually find it, you may want to play multiple copies. Playing just one kind of tells us sceptics that you don't really believe in it, and that you are basically trying Gifts instead of Lim-Duls Vault/2nd Grim Tutor, as was suggested earlier. The bigger difference of your list compared to ANT is the inclusion of Treasure Cruise, which -surprisingly- has only sparked half of a discussion. Obviously TC and Ad Nauseam don't like eachother much, and Ad Nauseam is VERY powerfull, but so is Cruise, so let's focus on that.

To make Cruise -or its counterpart Dig Through Time- work, we need to fill up the yard with stuff. You mentiond you don't really like the suggested Gitaxian Probe, but let's face it, not many cards work better when you want to fill up the yard as soon as you can. I would definitely recommend 4x Probe in a Storm list that utilises the Dredge mechanic. Apart from that notion, I would like to suggest you thoroughly test TC against DTT. I feel the latter should be much better in a combo shell. You need specific cards, and getting 2 chosen cards out of the top 7 is almost always better than a random 3. The additional cost of U can be an issue, but still both are turn 3 earliest, and you should have two blue lands by then.

[Garritano]

I was in the process of writing a post to explain the Gifts engine, but the OP addressed several of the misunderstandings.
However, I believe the way I organized my response will help explain why Gifts is in the deck. The OP didn't outline in detail the kill, which is understandable as the kill requires you to evaluate contingencies. I repeat, the deck can kill with Gifts WITHOUT ToA / IT by using Gifts to net mana and cast a free PiF, which you use to recast your cantrips. The free PiF happens to allow you to deterministically kill if you hit ToA/IT/GT in the early game, but this isn't necessary.
(note, I didn't come up with this kill, it was developed by benthetenor (the OP), I just played the OP's list and encountered it in my first game. Furthermore, I am very inexperienced with using this kill, as I only started trying this deck on Saturday. So, my detailed explanation of Gifts with mana requirements may be incorrect, as I usually play ANT).

There was a significant amount of discussion claiming that Gifts was a slow tutor that did "nothing" and "seemed bad." I implore you to read this post and the OP's recent post on Gifts, as it is completely impossible to discuss this deck without understanding the Gifts kill, which is not simple. I believe the OP requested players to play the list because seeing the way the deck can kill with Gifts isn't obvious, as one of the main things the deck does is generate BBBBBBBUUU with an active PiF, which enables you to cantrip around for your kill. (you should have TC / Ponder / BS / etc in your yard).

If I showed you a Doomsday list and didn't understand the deck, you'd think I was an idiot running cards like 4x SDT and 1x Ideas Unbound. Calling Gifts "slow" is a similar level of misunderstanding - it enables an ANT style kill. Remember, most of ANT's kills use PiF or IT Chains, not Ad Nauseum. I know we've discussed this a lot, but there seems to be a bit of confusion about how ANT operates from non-Storm players.

Summary
Gifts can be used to generate a Past in Flames kill with similar (but different) mana requirements seen in a standard ANT PiF kill. The "kill" generates around 10 mana, 3 of which is blue. If you have your kill in hand or graveyard (IT/GT/ToA), you immediately win. If you don't, you use the 10 mana to cast a cantrip/Cruise chain into IT/GT/ToA. Care has to be taken not to kill yourself by Treasure Cruising into lands w/o an LED to turn on IT.

This kill doesn't rely on the graveyard being appropriately stocked. Furthermore, Gifts has utility in situations not

What Gifts is NOT
Gifts is NOT typically a slow setup card. I have used it as such on occasion, but this is quite rare. When you do use it, you probably have a hand without rituals and are missing threshold.
This is actually a pretty awesome side effect of Gifts, as it lets a hand light on Rituals jump up to 2 Rituals in hand with +4 cards in the yard. (assuming you used a ritual to cast Gifts).


Details
As the OP explained, Gifts can be used in a fashion similar to Infernal Tutor to act as a kill spell. As the OP explained, you never actually Gifts for Tendrils during normal game play. There are several reasons for this, but the most obvious one is that you literally cannot, as your first Gifts pile should contain PiF and 3 mana sources, meaning that when you flashback PiF you've exhausted the deck's PiF. Even if you could, in storm decks of this variety you don't want to "expose" ToA (as the OP mentioned) to a card like DRS, which is an automatic loss if you're running the 0x Empty list. (which is the OP's version). Note this is how the "stock" ANT list is constructed, Slosh and nevilshute bucked this trend, but those players moved Ad Nauseum to the board and run highly unusual lists. I believe Slosh actually runs a 61 card list, and both players frequently experiment with 2x SDT maindeck. (nevilshute runs 60)

In a deck like this, finding Grim Tutor / Infernal Tutor is our surrogate for fetching ToA. The draw power of this deck is pretty extreme, so you can TC / Ponder / BS into your ToA during your combo turn (discussed later)

I think part of the problem with this thread is that the Gifts kill is a little hard to spot.
It has requirements similar to several Past in Flames requirements, but unlike the Past in Flames requirements, allows a lot of soft kills during your "combo turn." These "soft kills" involve casting draw spells (e.g., Treasure Cruise) after you've started comboing out (like traditional, non-legacy storm combo decks). So, the Gifts "kill" is really a storm machine which nets you mana and gives you a free PiF, which enables you to draw into IT/GT if you don't have it, or just win. If the deck were constructed slightly differently and used multiple PiFs/ToAs + cards Thoughtscour, you could mill a win con a little easier and use that prior to Gifting, but that isn't part of this deck's current game plan. (prior to adopting Gifts, I experimented with this strategy. CalebD recently wrote an article on channelfireball where he uses this).

Gifts is indeed a business spell in this list and has mana requirements similar to the PiF loops.
I only started playing this list over the weekend. However, in my first game playing the deck ever, I actually used the Gifts kill, which is why I am so enthusiastic about this decklist. I have played a lot Doomsday and ANT in the past, and "seeing the win" with a new storm mechanism is totally exciting.

An Example Gifts Kill with Mana Costs Similar to some ANT PiF Kills
This deck can often use Gifts during the Combo turn as variant quasi-infernal tutor, and at a similar mana cost as a standard PIF kill. Normal PiF kills require around 8 mana (obviously it drops to 7 if your yard / hand is stocked).
Here is such an example:
You have zero LEDS, but access to 8 mana.

Cast Gifts with access to 4 mana, ideally BBUR.

A note on notation: "f" means "flashback."

Gifts Pile = [PiF, DR, CR, other mana source]
(other mana source = usually LED)

If you get PiF, LED (the worst combo), you use LED to discard PiF, cast PiF floating Bx*
in detail:
Gifts: BBUR floating/access.
Allow gifts to resolve, get handed LED and PiF
Cast LED: BBUR (floating from before, LED costs zero)
Activate LED, discarding PiF: BBB BBUR (In this kill, I will exchange "x" with "U", as at this point you just need it to be blue)
Cast PiF: BU
DR: BBBU
CR: B BBBBBU

At this point, if you have anything in your graveyard like ToA / IT / GT, you win. You likely used a DR / CR to cast Gifts in the first place, but if you didn't, if you have one in the yard you can set yourself up to recast 3 Cantrips while floating around 8 black mana, meaning that if you hit your tutor / ToA you win.
Here is the rest of the sequence:

(One DR in GY)

fDR: BBBBBBBBU

fGifts: BBBBB [LED, IT, GT, CR]
If you get IT or GT, you instantly win.
If you get LED+CR, you can get to
BBBBBBBBUUU with an PiF active, and that should be enough to TC / Ponder / BS into a kill.
If you get IT / GT, you of course instantly win

Summary of the example Gifts Kill
So, if you have the ability to generate 8 mana w/ Gifts in hand, you actually have the ability to generate 10 mana with an active Past in Flames. This puts Gifts at +2 mana and a free cast Past in Flames.

For a meaningful analysis of the utility of Gifts, it's useful to compare it to IT, which we typically think of as the best tutor in legacy. (BW is good too!). This deck already runs 4 IT, so it's not like we're cutting one for Gifts, but the comparison illustrates that Gifts is actually very powerful.

Comparison to Infernal Tutor (IT)
What does IT do? IT usually uses 7 or 8 mana (depends on your hand) to generate a ~7-9 storm, then kills with Tendrils. In practice, you usually don't have to fret the storm count and easily reach the 10 storm, because the combo turn usually involves fighting over dark rituals and/or you casting Cabal Therapy (exception involves things like Batterskull). Of course, if you have enough mana, you can IT->IT before PiF, which enables the flashbacked IT for IT-> CR, which increases the storm count by 3. (of course, you can also just toss 2 mana for 1 storm at will with IT->IT).
For IT to work, you need 3 rituals/LEDs, or you need 1 CR and 1 other ritual with threshold.
For Gifts to work, you need 1 ritual ONLY, and that ritual can even be in your yard. (now, you still need 8 mana, which is a lot, which practically makes the ritual count similar between to the two kills. However, with Gifts, you can use lands, LP, or LED for as much mana as you like as long as you have 1 Ritual in the yard. This is nicer when you're up against Hymn / Thoughtseize / Ravenscrime / opposing ANT players who destroy your hand)

In summary, the Gifts kill (without other cards in hand, such as IT) allows a Tutor-less, ritual-light hand to basically generate +2 mana and flashback everything in its graveyard. Its overall cost is similar to the IT PiF cost.

On the other hand, if you have good stuff in hand or yard (IT), you get a deterministic kill with no worries. This can be really nice, as IT*2 while holding 1x DR is actually not that great, but IT+ GU with DR is insane.

An Even Cheaper Gifts Kill (7 mana, same as IT->Ad Nauseum)
(credit to Mhenlo and to the deck's creator)
If you have an Infernal Tutor in your graveyard, you lower the mana requirements by 1 mana of any color.

Cast Gifts with access to 3 mana, ideally BBR.

Gifts Pile = [PiF, DR, CR, other mana source]
(other mana source = usually LED)
If you used a DR, storm count is 2


If you get PiF, LED (the worst combo), you use LED to discard PiF, cast PiF floating Bx*
in detail:
Gifts: BBR floating/access.
Allow gifts to resolve, get handed LED and PiF
Cast LED: BBR, storm 3 (floating from before, LED costs zero)
Activate LED, discarding PiF: BBB BBR (In this kill, I will exchange "x" with "U", as at this point you just need it to be blue)
Cast PiF: B, storm 4
DR: BBB, storm 5
CR: B BBBBBB, storm 6
IT: B BBBB, storm 7
If you go for ToA, you get 16 lifeloss.
Note: if you have a disruption spell in your hand or graveyard, you hit 18 lifeloss here, and the way you made your 4UBR may involve freshly cast LP / LED, making the requisite storm likely here.

If you go for LED rather than ToA, things get exciting, as you can flashback Gifts.
At this point, we need to know the exact decklist, as having 2x GU and 2x PiF actually allows for a deterministic kill here. (fairly long solution).
Not having 2x GU + 2x PiF involves a terribly complicated scenario where you have the option to make a Gifts pile that forces your opponent to hand you an [LED,CR], meaning you'll be floating 4 blue mana (with a billion black mana) and an active PiF. At this point, playing correctly here requires a bit of research, as you're giving yourself a ton of mana and an active past in flames but at the cost depleting tutors from the deck. Rather than state the correct solution, I'll state that the possibility to do 30+ storm exists, but it won't be deterministic unless we modify the list to add +1 GU + 1 PiF.

Gifts as IT #5
In a sense, because IT and Gifts are both kill cards, you can sort of think of as Gifts as IT #5. This is different from a tutor which digs for IT. (e.g., Gifts isn't some slow clunker like Personal Tutor).
However, when you draw both IT and Gifts, Gifts allows you to stock up on Rituals and/or disruption and at instant speed.

This has some interesting advantages over multiple ITs. When you get multiple ITs, you usually IT to clone a Ritual. (a hand with multiple ITs is likely Ritual light). On your combo turn, this is a pretty cool because a common way to natural 20 your opponent is to use the spare IT to generate +2 storm>
This is HIGHLY relevant in the 2014 metagame because Delver is now dealing 2-4 damage to itself with a very high frequency, and many Delver variants are sporting good graveyard disruption in their 75.
On your combo turn, Gifts will net you mana with
[LED, DR, CR, RoF] (if you run Rain of Filth). If you don't, it'll still ensure you reach Threshold, and will certainly ensure that IT-> PiF is lethal

Gifts Interrupted - Slight Protection against Conditional Counters
One difference between Gifts and IT->PiF, is that when you're operating on exactly 8 mana, Gifts is slightly better against Daze on occasion. I had a game vs Delver where my opponent couldn't interact with me via Daze until after Gifts resolved, which is a better situation to be in than an IT chain initiating, as Gifts fueled my yard so much that a drawn ritual allowed me to resume going off on a later turn.
I believe this scenario is likely fairly rare, but did occur.

Utility with Merchant Scroll
The OP didn't explicitly mention this, but in his current decklist, he includes a singleton blue bounce spell. Because Gifts is a kill card, this means that cards that search for blue instants can do double duty and either search for a utility card or for a kill spell.

The issue of running Merchant Scroll is very controversial in this thread, and I personally prefer to start it in the board, and I am open to cutting it entirely.
However, it compresses the sideboard and makes a singleton like Hurkyl's / Rebuild or a singleton Flusterstorm go up in value. (e.g., against Storm you board in Merchant + Flusterstorm, because the games typically involve both players whrecking each other's hands, but the nature of LED/LP / graveyard thresh allows you to accumulate mana resources on the board).
Sadly, this deck doesn't really combo with SDT, which is obviously the most busted card to use with Flusterstorm in the storm mirror, but that isn't the topic for this post.

Some Implications
The Gifts kill becomes totally deterministic when you have an IT / GT / ToA in the yard. This increases the value of Thoughtscour / Mental note / other self mill cards, which in turn increases the value of making the deck graveyard dependent. Something to note when you think about this list.

[Mhenlo]

If you had that much mana wouldn't Ad Nauseam be just as good?
I'd probably run a second Past in Flames before a 2nd Gifts. Also I'd think you should have the 4th Probe over the CoV.
I'd probably run a more TNT w/ Gifts version.
-1 Grim Tutor
-2 Treasure Cruise
-1 Reforge the Soul
-1 Tendrils of Agony

+3 Burning Wish
+1 Ad Nauseam
+1 Empty
You might want to consider 1 Rain of Filth in your list for Treasure Cruise.

[Garritano]

You mean preceeding, I presume? I hope I have explained clearly enough in the next bits why there are only few situations where casting Gifts will win the game on the spot.

I think it happens more often than one would expect.

That's quite the hand. This needs serious time and cantripping to set up.



Okay so your Gifts pile is Dark Ritual, Cabal Ritual, Infernal Tutor, Past in Flames. If they hand you Tutor and PiF, you will need a lot to go off. After Gifts, going off requires R3 + B1 + BB2, plus all mana you need to cast and recast your Rituals. I wasn't kidding when I mentioned Dragonstorm mana. This requires indeed LED, Dark Ritual and Cabal Ritual with Threshold. And Flashbacking both Rituals. Without these Rituals this doesn't work. Note that you probably need the Dark Ritual to cast Gifts in the first place. This is a VERY demanding set-up.

I think with this exact hand you only need 8 mana. ANT requires 8 mana in this same situation. CR+Flashback can allow you to drop to 7 mana, but 8 mana out of ANT is fine.



True, but all I said is that when you tune a deck to work with Gifts, and you have no way to actually find it, you may want to play multiple copies. Playing just one kind of tells us sceptics that you don't really believe in it, and that you are basically trying Gifts instead of Lim-Duls Vault/2nd Grim Tutor, as was suggested earlier.

This deck runs the standard Storm Engine.
The reason the OP (and now me as well apparently) constantly talk about Ad Nauseum is that ANT doesn't use Ad Nauseum to win that often, it uses PiF. This deck has the PiF engine completely in tact, no cards missing. You don't need Gifts to win, period. Gifts allows you to act as IT #5 for a PiF kill in addition to providing many other things to the table.
Seriously, you could put a Kobold in the Ad Nauseum slot and ANT would still be a strong deck. Gifts happens to have combo footprint similar to IT. IT is the reason ANT is a deck, and not because IT gets Ad Nauseum...because IT gets PiF, which costs negative 2BB, adds 3-5 storm, and puts ToA in your hand.




The bigger difference of your list compared to ANT is the inclusion of Treasure Cruise, which -surprisingly- has only sparked half of a discussion. Obviously TC and Ad Nauseam don't like eachother much, and Ad Nauseam is VERY powerfull, but so is Cruise, so let's focus on that.

Gifts has other advantages over Ad Nauseum. Yes, Ad Nauseum is a more powerful card, and yes, drawing it is awesome because it means you're going to turn 1 kill. However, Ad Nauseum sucks turn 3+ against a huge percentage of the field, most notably Delver. I don't know if Slosh does, but a lot of ANT players have discussed boarding -Ad Nauseum against decks like RUG Delver, and UR Delver is A LOT faster than RUG Delver.


To make Cruise -or its counterpart Dig Through Time- work, we need to fill up the yard with stuff. You mentiond you don't really like the suggested Gitaxian Probe, but let's face it, not many cards work better when you want to fill up the yard as soon as you can. I would definitely recommend 4x Probe in a Storm list that utilises the Dredge mechanic.

I actually agree, and run 4x GP when I test this list.



Apart from that notion, I would like to suggest you thoroughly test TC against DTT. I feel the latter should be much better in a combo shell. You need specific cards, and getting 2 chosen cards out of the top 7 is almost always better than a random 3. The additional cost of U can be an issue, but still both are turn 3 earliest, and you should have two blue lands by then.

I had the same gut reaction and tried it in Doomsday, didn't like it. I haven't tried it in the Gifts PiF shell because of the importance of UU. UU during your combo turn is crazy hard to do unless you're using an LED with PiF

[Asthereal]

An Example Gifts Kill
This deck can often use Gifts during the Combo turn as variant quasi-infernal tutor, and at a similar mana cost as a standard PIF kill. Normal PiF kills require around 8 mana (obviously it drops to 7 if your yard / hand is stocked).
Here is such an example:
Cast Gifts with access to 4 mana. You need a lotus petal or dual land for this to work, otherwise your opponent can hand you a pile which kills you. So, if you have 3x, go ahead and continue:

A note on notation: "f" means "flashback." x = "can tap for multiple colored sources," in this case I believe it has to be the choice between U/R, which is satisfied by LP / lands (e.g., Volcanic Island)

Gifts Pile = [PiF, DR, CR, other mana source]
(other mana source = usually LED)

If you get PiF, LED (the worst combo), you use LED to discard PiF, cast PiF floating Bx
in detail:
(Gifts on the stack): BBBx floating
...

Wait, whaaaat?
You have 4 mana floating after casting Gifts, and you didn't even crack LED?
You have got to be kidding me! That means the LED would net you 11 mana!
That's Wish into Dragonstorm mana!
This is a turn 5 kill consistently. Earliest.

[Garritano]

If you had that much mana wouldn't Ad Nauseam be just as good?
I'd probably run a second Past in Flames before a 2nd Gifts. Also I'd think you should have the 4th Probe over the CoV.
I'd probably run a more TNT w/ Gifts version.
-1 Grim Tutor
-2 Treasure Cruise
-1 Reforge the Soul
-1 Tendrils of Agony

+3 Burning Wish
+1 Ad Nauseam
+1 Empty
You might want to consider 1 Rain of Filth in your list for Treasure Cruise.

I agree with you on the GP count and the CoV count.
I have experimented with the 2nd PiF in a shell with extra Thoughtscours, I kind of like it. I actually went up to 3 in a experimental build, but am at 1 right now (1 PiF, 1 EotW).

The mana requirement is similar to the mana requirement of PiF, which everyone in the storm community agrees is a great way to win.
ANT wins almost all of its games with PiF.
Ad Nauseum is not always a good card. Sometimes you have 8 mana but only 10 life.

I think TNT struggles with Delver, for the same reason Doomsday struggles with Delver. (Burning Wish is horrible as a turn 2 play when you aren't TES, you just lose tempo and then get wastelanded).
I think the main advantage of this deck is going to be its Miracles matchup. From what I can tell Miracles is usually storm's worst matchup - in this list, preliminary results (not mine) show that Storm might be favored, which is huge. I basically gave up on DDFT b/c of the Miracles match, which I feel is unwinnable game 1 as as DDFT, it will be a welcome break to have a way to overpower Counterbalance w/ cards like Cruise.

I feel like TNT doesn't add anything to the table for the Miracles or Delver matchups. (I personally am very excited by TNT, I just have been sobered everytime I run it. If I had my way, I would play TNT with a transformational DDFT board, but everytime I do stuff like that I play against Delver / Counterbalance and regret everything. It's hard to even construct theoretical arguments for BW in ANT other than to increase threat density)

This deck feels worse against Delver (and the OP's numbers were pretty bad, especially against decks like RUG), but it's really hard to tell with such a small sample size and my relative inexperience. Furthermore, most of my storm vs delver is pre-Cruise. Maybe the "bad feeling" I have playing Delver is just the new norm, and the games I got of ANT versus post-cruise Delver were from players who don't play Delver but bought UR Delver so they could cast Treasure Cruise.

In principle, taking ANT and cutting Ad Nauseum and putting in Gifts improves your turn 3+ against Delver (where Ad Nauseum fails), but removes some of your "oops I win" turn 1 kills. It's hard to figure out what that does on balance.

[Garritano]

Wait, whaaaat?
You have 4 mana floating after casting Gifts, and you didn't even crack LED?
You have got to be kidding me! That means the LED would net you 11 mana!
That's Wish into Dragonstorm mana!
This is a turn 5 kill consistently. Earliest.

When Gifts resolves, you get an LED and a PiF. (this assumes your opponent plays optimally)
Using the LED that Gifts just gave you, you cast PiF.
There may be an error in my math elsewhere, but the point of this is when you're done, Gifts nets you 2 mana with a free past in flames. Importantly, it'll net you two blue mana. There is almost no way in legacy to do that.

[Mhenlo]

When Gifts resolves, you get an LED and a PiF. (this assumes your opponent plays optimally)
Using the LED that Gifts just gave you, you cast PiF.
There may be an error in my math elsewhere, but the point of this is when you're done, Gifts nets you 2 mana with a free past in flames. Importantly, it'll net you two blue mana. There is almost no way in legacy to do that.

So you still need atleast 3 mana floating to Flashback the PiF and cast a ritual? 7 mana is the usual IT->Ad Nauseam mana the only thing I see is that you will only be able to have 1 color if you have exactly 7 mana and if you don't have an IT in your GY it requires more 1 more mana making it 8 mana. I think there should be an Empty the Warrens to give a way to have a win con at 6 Mana with an IT.

I'm still unsure of Treasure Cruise, while it doesn't always make PiF worse it seems like against DRS decks it would be a big problem. Has it been that good that it doesn't matter?

[Garritano]

So you still need atleast 3 mana floating to Flashback the PiF and cast a ritual? 7 mana is the usual IT->Ad Nauseam mana the only thing I see is that you will only be able to have 1 color if you have exactly 7 mana and if you don't have an IT in your GY it requires more 1 more mana making it 8 mana. I'm still unsure of Treasure Cruise, while it doesn't always make PiF worse it seems like against DRS decks it would be a big problem. Has it been that good that it doesn't matter?

Your characterization is right on both counts: getting a Gifts kill w/o an IT in yard is 8 mana, but the IT in yard opens the door to a 7 mana kill.
That is so significant that I am going to write out a deterministic way to reach storm and the greedy way of building the blue / black mana with an active PiF and edit my post, thank you for catching that.
The Gifts kill is slightly more mana (either 0 more mana or 1 more mana, depending on yard), but more significantly, the Gifts kill requires access to a blue / red mana pre-Gifts, meaning that you're more reliant on LP/LED/land than Ad Nauseum.
However, in the early game (turns 1-2) it's very difficult to turn on Cabal Ritual, meaning the IT->AN kill usually uses an LED on turn 1 or turn 2. If Gifts has access to LED, it can use the LED to relieve one of the colored mana requirements, so if the extra colored mana either comes from a LP or an IT, it starts playing catch-up and can start trying to go for a turn 2 kill.
All that being said, Gifts is clearly slower than IT->AN.

btw, I am Woggle on Stormboards. I wish I had selected a better name. I'll see the mods over there will let me switch my name so that it's easier across sites.

[Lemnear]

Good, so now that we are no longer in the "Established Deck" section, we can actually talk about the deck without that distraction.

Lemnear, this deck wins turn 1 much the same that ANT wins turn 1, meaning it's not something you do all the time but sometimes the opportunity is there. It involves a hand of a land, fast mana and Infernal Tutor. Really not all that difficult to set up. You just go through the PiF chain and count to 10. Not magical Christmasland. I'd say it happens roughly one game in ten or fifteen. Even when it's there, it's often preferable to wait on a discard spell or cantrip into one, but the point is that it's not a ridiculous feat. If you believe this deck to be ANT with no Ad Nauseam, then you have to accept that it will sometimes get draws like ANT.

The most "common" way for ANT to win turn 1 is via Ad Nauseam, as it is near impossible to reach t.hold for Cabal Ritual with your initial hand to setup a PIF loop, which requires at least 7 mana to setup and a minimum of 6 mana total to generate after PIF, which boils down to at least 2 Dark Rituals, LED, Infernal Tutor and an Inital Mana Source in your starting grip. As the number of turn 1 kills with ANT is very low in general and Ad Nauseam is not part of the deck to profit from starting grip combinations which feature 7 mana mainly in artifacts/CRs, the rate for T1 kills is even lower. I'm in the subway to work, so I skip on doing the math for drawing a hand like the beforementioned. :)


I understand how Gitaxian Probe works to make the deck smaller. What I am saying is that running Thoughtseize and Gitaxian Probe and Fetchlands and Grim Tutor is a lot of life to give up for free, and that there are actual costs to running the card. One of those costs is that you have to cut 4 cards from an already tight 60 card list, and a lot of the cards that are on the chopping block are cards I'd like to be casting, rather than hoping that the card I would tutor for is sitting on top of the deck, for instance. There's a reason why not every deck ever plays Gitaxian Probe, and the benefits that it gives to other combo decks in Legacy (information, smaller deck, life being irrelevant, not a great topdeck, filling the graveyard) are not things I'm really in the market for with this deck as I already have it all covered very, very well. I understand that it interacts well with Past in Flames and Cabal Ritual and Treasure Cruise. I need you to understand that the cards I'm putting in in place of Gitaxian Probe interact even better because they do all the same thing while actually advancing my gameplan.

yes, opening with Fetchland into Probe into Thoughtseize to snatch a Delver feels like the worst (had it yesterday during the promised test; on the other hand not being able to probe INTO Thoughtseize would have been even worse), but I'm in no way convinced, that Grim and Thoughtseize serve the deck as a whole better than Probe (which you can play for mana too which isn't unreasonable if you have nothing else to neccessary cast anyways). I would like you to not think of Probe having you to draw into your business-spell directly, as if Probe draws you into a Ponder and the Ponder you cast draws you into the desired business spell (say Gifts) the whole process was still cheaper than casting Merchant Scroll to fetch the Gifts directly. Possibilities of hitting that specific one-off aside I choose for the example, I'm 100% sure that the existing redundancy in the deck makes running a greater amount of "hard-tutors" like Grim unneccessary as by chaining 2-3 cantrips together (filling your graveyard for CR) you'll see about 1/5 of your deck looking for a 4-off like Infernal which grants to access to 1-offs like PIF. The redundancy within the core of Brainstorm + Ponder + Gitaxian Probe is found not only in Storm but also in S&T archetypes as well as in Delver variants. Heck, even Elfes ran Probes for a T16 finish lately! XD


As for winning against graveyard hate, there are two different gameplans:

1) pre-board - graveyard hate is practically non-existant aside from Deathrite Shaman. In the case that I can't get DRS from hand with Cabal Therapy/Thoughtseize, and that I can't win before DRS is active, the plan is to either overload DRS by having two tutors in hand when we go off, just like ANT would do in a PiF chain, or to ignore DRS with the slot currently taken up with Reforge the Soul. I know you don't like Reforge the Soul, and I agree it is much weaker than Ad Nauseam, but it's not all that difficult to wheel into fast mana, a discard spell and a tutor as that's literally all that is in the deck. I don't need to start over storm-wise as I've likely already used 5-6 storm just setting up Reforge the Soul (and will have a lot of mana floating, given that I've cast lots of rituals and LEDs), so a piece of fast mana, a discard spell and a tutor is all I need to hit off of 7 new cards for lethal, and it happens well over 80% of the time that I go for that plan. And against the decks like Jund that have DRS but no counterspells, that plan gets much, much easier since I don't have to hit or cast discard.

Maybe the near future, players will react due to Treasure Cruise being everywhere and run more yard-hate or MB Pyroblasts which is something to have in mind if you ask me. Snatching an active 1cc-Drop with a blind therapy or Thoughtseize while having to be on the play is an adventurous gameplan. I guess you realize how handy Probe would be against DRS to fill the graveyard quicker than they can exile it over turns, so that you can get t.hold for your Cabal Rituals to perform a tutorchain or IT->IT->PIF loop (with the mana neither being a chockepoint).

You might remember that TES ran Diminishing Returns for the idea of "float mana, build up storm, cast DimRet to draw 7 new and kill with the additional spells"? The card had to go as TES removed Silence from it's 75 despite the metagame becoming even more blue. Reforge is the same as DimRet (yard-filling aside) and therefore has the same issues if you spend your resources/discard to power your Reforge through counters just to have to deal with an opponents hand packed with counterspells once more. The problem is that the bolded part is not true, as you can hit lands, cantrips, multiple business-spells/discard (possibly blocking your Infernal if you don't draw an LED in addition) too and that can easily result into yourself bricking mid-combo and your opponent taking advantage of a fresh hand. It isn't unlikely that you end up in a loosing position after casting such an effect in the current Legacy metagame with 65%+ of decks being blue, in fact casting Reforge against a the average blue deck in Legacy is suicide, both because of variance in your draws and your opponents drawn protection.

Mind that so far we haven't even touched the factor of being under pressure of a Delver/Tarmogoyf/Goose/Swiftspear/etc. while playing around the yard-hate


2) post-board - being able to board in 5-6 specific cards to deal with their hate cards, whether by guessing for game 2 or after having seen them going into game 3, goes a long way towards blanking their ability to beat me. This deck does not require threshold to be built over time, and is extremely capable of going from no graveyard to threshold in the span of one turn, so going eot bounce your graveyard hate, untap and win is the plan. Again, this is assuming I don't have a chance to hit their graveyard hate with discard spells first, and that I can't win before they get theirs down.

we haven't talked about SB in this thread and I don't think you want to head into the direction of Boarding plenty of solutions to every possible hate you face, diluting your deck postboard. The eot bounce plan requires time and no defense (left) to setup which is a mayor concern I have. It's not that your opponent will sit behind a Rest In Piece, doing nothing for the next 10 turns. If a Delver hits the battlefield and your thoughtseize suddenly are questionable tools to dismember your opponents defense prior to your bounce or a Canonist/MeddlingMage/counterbalance/etc. joins the Game quickly goes down the drain if you HAVE to handle the yard-hate as a result of not being able to sidestep it. You know where I'm heading with this


all of this can be easily accomplished by turn 4, turn 5 at the latest. All that is required is a bounce spell and an extra turn. That gives me plenty of time to play around Daze/Spell Pierce while still being able to win before Delver of Secrets beats me.

once again you asume that your opponent is doing close to nothing. There is no second piece of possible graveyard-hate/Flusterstorm/Pyroblast/MeddlingMage/GrafdiggersCage/Canonist/FoW/AcceleratedDamageOutput/etc. taken into consideration and neither is the possibility of your opponent flinging his Daze/Pierce at your early cantrips, disrupting your setup.


As for using Gifts, it is very true that it can be played eot to setup a strong kill on the next turn, but that's not how I usually use it, and Lemnear I would appreciate if you didn't tell people what kind of plays you should be making with this deck when you have yourself never played this deck. For instance, I would literally never put Tendrils of Agony into a Gifts pile.

I have in the meanwhile. Putting ToA in a Gifts-Pile is a valid option if your hand is bricked with lands so using Infernal is not possible. As I said: the 4th card depends on your hand configuration


There's just no reason to expose it and there is always a more efficient card you could get. The reason why it's usually not correct to cast it end of turn is that, usually when you can do that, you actually had the ability to cast it on the turn proceeding and just win, so what you've done by spreading it over two turns is given the opponent an extra card and the ability to untap and defend himself.

what hinders your opponent to cast a threat just to be surprised by Gifts eot while he tapped mana for a Tarmogoyf which won't matter anymore once you untapped? Casting Gifts + PIF in a single turn requires a minimum of 7 mana to initiate (PIF+DR+CR+LED pile) PLUS having enough mana to flashback PLUS having IT/several cantrips in hand/grave!


The vast majority of the time that I cast Gifts, I will have a hand that will look something like Gifts, LED, Cabal Ritual, Dark Ritual, blank x3 (cantrips or discard or lands). So what ends up happening there is I use my turn to cast LED, cast Gifts off of Dark Ritual and a land, and I set up two pieces of fast mana, a tutor and Past in Flames. No matter what they give me, my hand is still Cabal Ritual with three mana floating, threshold, and whatever other cards he gave me off of Gifts. From there winning is academic. Or if I have the tutor in hand, I'll Gifts for the big three accelerants and Past in Flames and I will always get at least one accelerant to go along with my tutor in hand. If he gives me LED and Past in Flames, I just use the LED to discard Past in Flames and cast it from the graveyard. There is literally no bad thing that can happen to me once Gifts resolves.

where are the floating mana come from in that example? You are aware that this scenario ignores possible defense like softcounters and still considers 4 lands and access to 12(!!) mana total granted (LED, T.hold Cabal, DR, U mana for gifts, B to cast Ritual into gifts, two more Lands to cast CR for t.hold after you reached it via Gifts and there was no talk about casting DR->CR->Gifts. If we asume CR for t.hold is cast right after DR, we can do this off two lands which leaves us cold to stuff like Daze but "only" requires 10(!!) mana.

PS: I can't even believe we now seriously argue with 10+ mana playlines. You could cast 3 cantrips a Tutor, PIF and still have initial mana left for the flashback of Rituals for the same amount of mana :/

PPS: I have to force myself to finish this post after breakfast @ work as it takes too long to answer during my subway-ride


It's also very, very important to point out that, given that Gifts Ungiven is a one-of in this deck, this is not a Gifts Ungiven deck. The idea that I have to cast Gifts Ungiven to win is false; it is just a very, very strong tutor that gets me exactly what I need everytime I cast it. I am toying with the idea of a second one, but it's really not the most important part of the deck. My reasoning for wanting to play Gifts Ungiven in a storm deck is because it completely eliminates the chances of wanting to cast Past in Flames and not having the resources to kill from there. With ANT, there exist games where you cast Past in Flames and have to use cantrips to actually draw your way into a kill. That does not happen with Gifts Ungiven because you've already searched up everything you need and it's sitting right in your graveyard, waiting for you

Finally, adding Gifts Ungiven to this deck does nothing to add dead cards to the deck. All of the cards I find with Gifts Ungiven are all cards I'd be playing anyway. Playing Gifts simply ensures that I will have all of those cards exactly when I need them.

That is correct and no one doubted that. The questions in regards to Gifts were ever targeted to the tradeoffs you make running it, like higher graveyard-dependancy, the 4 mana to setup compared to stuff like Preordain which can also slowly dig up all the cards you need for the kill, etc. I stated that a "slow" combo deck in general, an even more linear gameplan (graveyard) in upcoming times of increased graveyard-hate and MB Pyroblasts to battle TC and 4-mana setups with Daze on an all-time high, isn't where you want to be atm.

[Garritano]

I think there should be an Empty the Warrens to give a way to have a win con at 6 Mana with an IT.

I agree completely and I run 1x Empty in my list. (thanks to Lemnear/Slosh/nevilshute).
At minimum, I believe it should be at least a 1 of in the board, but greatly prefer it in the maindeck for the exact reason you specify.



I'm still unsure of Treasure Cruise, while it doesn't always make PiF worse it seems like against DRS decks it would be a big problem. Has it been that good that it doesn't matter?

This is a damn good question.
I can say that the card is very powerful in this deck, but I think I would prefer it in a more cantrip heavy (e.g., Thoughtscour) deck.
I think the primary matchup where Treasure Cruise will matter is Miracles, but I think online Miracles has declined a bit and I haven't played against it in a while. I have experimented with boarding them out against RIP decks, as their footprint is pretty small. (Note, I play a list a bit different from the OP and run more cantrips). The OP reported that he had a winning record against Miracles, and CalebD reported that his PiF/Thoughtscour/ 4 TC list had promising results against Miracles. If the results continue to hold, it will be terribly significant for legacy.

My games against DRS typically come from Deathblade and Elves, which are already good matchups. (Elves, of course, is Storm's favorite matchup).
There, the DRS has little impact, and I think you can blow by the DRS while you're on the play and overpower it w/ Fetchlands+Cantrips. If they're on Elves, if you can disallow DRS-> fetch, them paying B every turn is tough on their development.

However, the important question is how does Treasure Cruise play against Grixis Delver / BUG Delver, and for that, I simply do not know yet.
On MTGO, everyone is playing UR Delver right now. I think BUG Delver has dipped in popularity as it's very expensive (Wasteland is a little over $100 on MTGO) but doesn't get to fully utilize the new Khans cards the way UR Delver does. (which is super cheap on MTGO compared to Goyf / Liliana / TNN)
It'll be hard for me to ever get a good sample of this, as I need to draw TC the same game as my opponent draws his DRS.
BUG Delver also runs Hymn, Liliana, and Wasteland, all of which encourage Treasure Cruise. I suspect on the play against DRS Treasure Cruise goes up, and on the draw it's worse, which might mean they should get boarded depending on the game #.

[Garritano]

where are the floating mana come from in that example? You are aware that this scenario ignores possible defense like softcounters and still considers 4 lands and access to 12(!!) mana total granted (LED, T.hold Cabal, DR, U mana for gifts, B to cast Ritual into gifts, two more Lands to cast CR for t.hold after you reached it via Gifts and there was no talk about casting DR->CR->Gifts. If we asume CR for t.hold is cast right after DR, we can do this off two lands which leaves us cold to stuff like Daze but "only" requires 10(!!) mana.


Gifts for [DR,CR,PiF,LED] does some dirty things for 8 mana. (gets you to 10 mana + free PiF).
If we added a 2nd GU and a 2nd PiF, it's a deterministic kill. (? sorry I will check this later)
In the OP's example, you're guaranteed a kill, but at a much higher mana cost.

I have almost strictly gone for: [PiF,LED,DR,CR] and used to attempt a kill on that turn.

[Lemnear]

I think the primary matchup where Treasure Cruise will matter is Miracles, but I think online Miracles has declined a bit and I haven't played against it in a while. I have experimented with boarding them out against RIP decks, as their footprint is pretty small. (Note, I play a list a bit different from the OP and run more cantrips). The OP reported that he had a winning record against Miracles, and CalebD reported that his PiF/Thoughtscour/ 4 TC list had promising results against Miracles. If the results continue to hold, it will be terribly significant for legacy.

My games against DRS typically come from Deathblade and Elves, which are already good matchups. (Elves, of course, is Storm's favorite matchup).
There, the DRS has little impact, and I think you can blow by the DRS while you're on the play and overpower it w/ Fetchlands+Cantrips. If they're on Elves, if you can disallow DRS-> fetch, them paying B every turn is tough on their development.

However, the important question is how does Treasure Cruise play against Grixis Delver / BUG Delver, and for that, I simply do not know yet.
On MTGO, everyone is playing UR Delver right now. I think BUG Delver has dipped in popularity as it's very expensive (Wasteland is a little over $100 on MTGO) but doesn't get to fully utilize the new Khans cards the way UR Delver does. (which is super cheap on MTGO compared to Goyf / Liliana / TNN)
It'll be hard for me to ever get a good sample of this, as I need to draw TC the same game as my opponent draws his DRS.
BUG Delver also runs Hymn, Liliana, and Wasteland, all of which encourage Treasure Cruise. I suspect on the play against DRS Treasure Cruise goes up, and on the draw it's worse, which might mean they should get boarded depending on the game #.

After seeing his 'Vintage restricted/Legacy Banned series" and opponents I have no respect for Calebs storm deckbuilding, playskills and opinion left. Miracles can either run Pyroblast or RIP to mess with your TC (and Gifts and PIF; thats why I annoy the fuck out of the thread with the graveyard-topic) while even can ignore the draw spell itself, if all cards you drew fell victim to CounterTop due to their cmc regardless.

Elves can become tricky between them running Discard and NO for Ruric Thar while you have to bother about their DRS + untappers which can easily squeeze out 3 DRS activations per cycle per untapper with only a single Bayou in play.

The question of how good TC is against BUG is tied to "can you combo with 3 fresh cards if your hand is close to hellbent after Thoughtseize+Hymn postboard?" this match is all about exploding before their discard mauls you and not about regaining handcards in the mid- & lategame while Tarmogoyf slapped you left and right for turns. I also see no chance to EVER get to play these 7+ mana playlines in turn 4 we had discussed before.


Gifts for [DR,CR,PiF,LED] does some dirty things for 8 mana. (gets you to 10 mana + free PiF).
If we added a 2nd GU and a 2nd PiF, it's a deterministic kill. (? sorry I will check this later)
In the OP's example, you're guaranteed a kill, but at a much higher mana cost.

I have almost strictly gone for: [PiF,LED,DR,CR] and used to attempt a kill on that turn.

I want to highlight: 8 mana (among them a minimum of UR or your opponent can screw you by giving you DR+ PIF in hand; thought of that?), no Daze, no Pierce, no Wasteland, no FoW, no graveyard-hate, t.hold seen as given, IT/ToA already in hand or graveyard, not having to cast Discard regardless of the fact that your opponent had a whole turn sculpting his hand.

Arguing with such required circumstances goes totally against my philosophy of designing decks. This IS a rare cornercase. This IS magical christmas land stuff. We CAN'T ground a combo-mechanism on that stuff.


Edit:
At this point I can repeat my question from page 1 asking why not running a Second PIF instead. If you have 8 mana pre-PIF and the PIF in the hand like we asumed before with the Gifts, while also having access to IT and/or plenty of cantrips in the graveyard, wouldn't the PIF acchieve the same lethal chain in the end?

[Garritano]

After seeing his 'Vintage restricted/Legacy Banned series" and opponents I have no respect for Calebs storm deckbuilding, playskills and opinion left. Miracles can either run Pyroblast or RIP to mess with your TC (and Gifts and PIF; thats why I annoy the fuck out of the thread with the graveyard-topic) while even can ignore the draw spell itself, if all cards you drew fell victim to CounterTop due to their cmc regardless.

Elves can become tricky between them running Discard and NO for Ruric Thar while you have to bother about their DRS + untappers which can easily squeeze out 3 DRS activations per cycle per untapper with only a single Bayou in play.

The question of how good TC is against BUG is tied to "can you combo with 3 fresh cards if your hand is close to hellbent after Thoughtseize+Hymn postboard?" this match is all about exploding before their discard mauls you and not about regaining handcards in the mid- & lategame while Tarmogoyf slapped you left and right for turns. I also see no chance to EVER get to play these 7+ mana playlines in turn 4 we had discussed before.



I want to highlight: 8 mana (among them a minimum of UR or your opponent can screw you by giving you DR+ PIF in hand; thought of that?), no Daze, no Pierce, no Wasteland, no FoW, no graveyard-hate, t.hold seen as given, IT/ToA already in hand or graveyard, not having to cast Discard regardless of the fact that your opponent had a whole turn sculpting his hand.

Arguing with such required circumstances goes totally against my philosophy of designing decks. This IS a rare cornercase. This IS magical christmas land stuff. We CAN'T ground a combo-mechanism on that stuff.

(this post will address the GU side of your post, and I will try to evaluate the Treasure Cruise side of your post at a later time. Right now I just agree with your analysis about it wrt to Miracles, but would like to test it regardless because of how it could change game 2-3. When I play ANT, I transform into Grinding Station against Miracles, and Treasure Cruise seems like it'd be okay there. Not sure though until I get some games in.)

You raise many valid points, but if we operate in an "ANT as standard for comparison framework" the meaningful choice isn't "8 mana" or "something awesome," it's 8 mana (which unfortunately is a very expensive 8 mana, as it includes UR) versus 7 mana which includes R. There are actually PiF kills that also cost 8 mana. (double LED)

If you have IT in yard / hand it's 7 mana (again, with awkward color restraints which require at least 2 lands + 1 LP). If you used LP + LED for a Gifts win, it's the same as IT for a PiF win.
In matches where Ad Nauseum is an unlikely kill (e.g., burn / UR Deler), you'd often rather just not draw Ad Nauseum and see Gifts, which is a quasi-Infernal Tutor #5 with some interesting upsides.
I personally think that regardless of what happens with this deck, we should start thinking about putting 1 Gifts Ungiven in our ANT Sideboards.

Now, the difference between 7 mana and 8 mana really is big.
If you're arguing that this extra mana (or, doing 7 mana with the UR constraint, which I did address in my post) is the difference between viable and non-viable, that is a fine argument for tons of relevant matchups. (Daze).
However, we're not that far off from saying "it's meta dependent."

Lastly, this deck isn't choosing between Gifts and IT #5, it's really choosing between Gifts and Grim Tutor #2. The deck already maxed out on IT and will win most of its game with PiF loops, just like ANT.

All that being said, I concur with you completely about deck compression / GP count / cantrip count, and I accept that it may be the cast that the deck doesn't even want the 5th bad infernal tutor. However, I think this hasn't been fully explored, simply because the rules of the game never gave us a real environment where we had to choose between 4 ITs and 5 ITs.
Analogies to BW are kind of appropriate (related to the mana cost, extra Tutor denisty), but BW LITERALLY costs 9-10 mana with RR, compared to GU cost of 7-8 mana with UR.
The fact that TNT is disliked by the majority of the storm community doesn't disprove the potential use of GU as IT #5, nor does it really say much about the optimal tutor number. We simply don't know.

Lastly....(for real this time)....all of these GU arguments most certainly apply to regular ANT, so it's even more important that we do a great job tearing GU down / building it up in this thread, as if GU actually works as IT #5, it'll be a new tool in the storm toolbox and could apply to other decks. (mainly, ANT)

[Garritano]

Edit:
At this point I can repeat my question from page 1 asking why not running a Second PIF instead. If you have 8 mana pre-PIF and the PIF in the hand like we asumed before with the Gifts, while also having access to IT and/or plenty of cantrips in the graveyard, wouldn't the PIF acchieve the same lethal chain in the end?

I have been thinking about a 2nd PiF also. I was testing it before you suggested Empty (I was using it w/ 3 Thoughtscours )
After you suggested Empty I cut Thoughtscours for Preordain and swapped PiF #2 for EtW.
I want to try PiF #2 again. I'm not sure if I want to give up on Thoughtscour / Mental Note.

Woah I just reread your post and realized you wanted to cut Gifts for PiF #2.
That is a really compelling argument.

[Asthereal]

When Gifts resolves, you get an LED and a PiF. (this assumes your opponent plays optimally)
Using the LED that Gifts just gave you, you cast PiF.
There may be an error in my math elsewhere, but the point of this is when you're done, Gifts nets you 2 mana with a free past in flames. Importantly, it'll net you two blue mana. There is almost no way in legacy to do that.
Yes, yes. The example you mentioned starts you off with 8 mana.
8 mana. That's hardcast Griselbrand mana.

Grisel is also harder to counter (Counterbalance with Jace on top, Pyroblast/REB, Spell Pierce and Flusterstorm don't work). If going off on the same turn as you cast Gifts is your plan A for the card, my suggestion would be to ditch your beloved Gifts and try a one-of Griselbrand. If you have a million mana, you can even Infernal for it. This also reduces your dependancy on the graveyard, and attacking with Grisel could be a win through Gaddock Teeg or a Meddling Mage on Tendrils.

Pending better arguments and my own testing with Gifts just for fun, I maintain my opinion that Gifts isn't what Storm needs. Let's go back to Treasure Cruise, because in the OP list, that's the main innovation. Why Cruise over Dig Through Time?

[Lemnear]

(this post will address the GU side of your post, and I will try to evaluate the Treasure Cruise side of your post at a later time. Right now I just agree with your analysis about it wrt to Miracles, but would like to test it regardless because of how it could change game 2-3. When I play ANT, I transform into Grinding Station against Miracles, and Treasure Cruise seems like it'd be okay there. Not sure though until I get some games in.)


testing is ALWAYS fine if you are interrested in the results. You can also look into the Miracles thread, ask Miracles players and see what the other side of the table thinks about the card, the impact and possible countermeasures. If there was discussion about adding more graveyard-hate and/or Pyroblast for example, I would ask myself if Gifts & TC are really the right tools to turn around an already unfavorable matchup. This is all part of deck-theory and metagame-observations/predictions.

You raise many valid points, but if we operate in an "ANT as standard for comparison framework" the meaningful choice isn't "8 mana" or "something awesome," it's 8 mana (which unfortunately is a very expensive 8 mana, as it includes UR) versus 7 mana which includes R. There are actually PiF kills that also cost 8 mana. (double LED)


if you draw the potential second PIF instead of the Gifts we might talk about 5 mana to start a loop versus 8 mana if your graveyard is packed in both cases. We can also name a few more "common" storm lines like IT->EtW for 6, IT->AN for 7, BW-> SB IT->AN for 9, IT->BW->PIF for 8+, IT->PIF for 6+ etc. to compare mana- & setup requirement. The Gifts piles we discussed, mark an undisputed top position in terms of demand (mana & setup) which is something to let sink in

If you have IT in yard / hand it's 7 mana (again, with awkward color restraints which require at least 2 lands + 1 LP). If you used LP + LED for a Gifts win, it's the same as IT for a PiF win.
In matches where Ad Nauseum is an unlikely kill (e.g., burn / UR Deler), you'd often rather just not draw Ad Nauseum and see Gifts, which is a quasi-Infernal Tutor #5 with some interesting upsides.
I personally think that regardless of what happens with this deck, we should start thinking about putting 1 Gifts Ungiven in our ANT Sideboards.


i mentioned the 7-mana-play before, but what you miss is that with Gifts you need to have IT available in addition OR enough mana in the right colors flood, to a) include IT into the pile itself, or b) to flashback cantrips from your graveyard instead.

Drawing Ad Nauseam turn 1 or 2 is amazing vs. burn and UR Delver as you can still get enough cards to kill the same turn or setup the next. Obviously, not drawing yourself dead, in the face of the next attack, if you have to pass the turn, is key ;P

Now, the difference between 7 mana and 8 mana really is big.
If you're arguing that this extra mana (or, doing 7 mana with the UR constraint, which I did address in my post) is the difference between viable and non-viable, that is a fine argument for tons of relevant matchups. (Daze).
However, we're not that far off from saying "it's meta dependent."


The current meta is statistically 65%+ blue. Delver (which runs Daze) got a new hype-tool with TC. We cannot design the deck for a
Daydream-metagame with no one running blue and everyone being an easy victim to Reforge the Soul as no one ever runs counterspells.

Lastly, this deck isn't choosing between Gifts and IT #5, it's really choosing between Gifts and Grim Tutor #2. The deck already maxed out on IT and will win most of its game with PiF loops, just like ANT.


because it IS ANT :)

All that being said, I concur with you completely about deck compression / GP count / cantrip count, and I accept that it may be the cast that the deck doesn't even want the 5th bad infernal tutor. However, I think this hasn't been fully explored, simply because the rules of the game never gave us a real environment where we had to choose between 4 ITs and 5 ITs.


Carsten Kötter played ANT for years and is convinced 4 IT + 1 Grim + 1 AN is right and Martin prefers a second PIF + EtW + 4 IT, Kai 2 AN + 1 PIF + 4 IT. I guess it's really up to yourself.

Analogies to BW are kind of appropriate (related to the mana cost, extra Tutor denisty), but BW LITERALLY costs 9-10 mana with RR, compared to GU cost of 7-8 mana with UR.
The fact that TNT is disliked by the majority of the storm community doesn't disprove the potential use of GU as IT #5, nor does it really say much about the optimal tutor number. We simply don't know.


TNTs problem of supporting double/triple red mana for Wish->PIF chains while running Cabal Ritual is the decks main concern even if it made top 4 at BoM8. In regard to optimal tutor number, Carsten wrote quite some articles with that question as content

Lastly....(for real this time)....all of these GU arguments most certainly apply to regular ANT, so it's even more important that we do a great job tearing GU down / building it up in this thread, as if GU actually works as IT #5, it'll be a new tool in the storm toolbox and could apply to other decks. (mainly, ANT)


I'm not sure there is much to say about Gifts as it isn't really fulfilling a duty as toolbox unless we discuss about options like Ancient Grudge for the sideboard. Atm it really only functions as a 4cc tutor which also dumps Rituals in the graveyard :/

Edit:

Yes, yes. The example you mentioned starts you off with 8 mana.
8 mana. That's hardcast Griselbrand mana.

Grisel is also harder to counter (Counterbalance with Jace on top, Pyroblast/REB, Spell Pierce and Flusterstorm don't work). If going off on the same turn as you cast Gifts is your plan A for the card, my suggestion would be to ditch your beloved Gifts and try a one-of Griselbrand. If you have a million mana, you can even Infernal for it. This also reduces your dependancy on the graveyard, and attacking with Grisel could be a win through Gaddock Teeg or a Meddling Mage on Tendrils.

Pending better arguments and my own testing with Gifts just for fun, I maintain my opinion that Gifts isn't what Storm needs. Let's go back to Treasure Cruise, because in the OP list, that's the main innovation. Why Cruise over Dig Through Time?

Lawl

I don't think that either TC or DTT have a spot in Cabal Ritual Storm or any deck with Ad Nauseam which is basically every storm deck aside High Tide which indeed adopted DTT. Personally, I would say because the redundancy and requirements of the deck you might favor the raw draw because you need more cards for the combo unlike decks like S&T, which only have to stick 2 cards together.

I dunno if sticking hype cards in every deck possible should be considered "innovation" as the previous OP list didn't even bother to fuel TC at all.

[Garritano]

Yes, yes. The example you mentioned starts you off with 8 mana.
8 mana. That's hardcast Griselbrand mana.

Grisel is also harder to counter (Counterbalance with Jace on top, Pyroblast/REB, Spell Pierce and Flusterstorm don't work). If going off on the same turn as you cast Gifts is your plan A for the card, my suggestion would be to ditch your beloved Gifts and try a one-of Griselbrand. If you have a million mana, you can even Infernal for it. This also reduces your dependancy on the graveyard, and attacking with Grisel could be a win through Gaddock Teeg or a Meddling Mage on Tendrils.

Pending better arguments and my own testing with Gifts just for fun, I maintain my opinion that Gifts isn't what Storm needs. Let's go back to Treasure Cruise, because in the OP list, that's the main innovation. Why Cruise over Dig Through Time?

Is ANT unplayable? PiF kills cost 7-8 mana, they are how ANT wins the vast majority of its games.
Have you ever played ANT? If you are a TES player and think ANT is philosophically bankrupt that is fine (there are legit arguments in favor of TES), but is that your exact opinion?
Gifts can be a 7 mana kill. What is your threshold for when you write without sarcasm? There are countless reasons to legitimately criticize this deck. With respect to Gifts the primary one is not the CMC, it is the UR requirement. Did you understand this?

It is meaningless to talk about this without simultaneously talking about the ANT kills. Do you know how they work?

[Lemnear]

Is ANT unplayable? PiF kills cost 7-8 mana, they are how ANT wins the vast majority of its games.
Have you ever played ANT? If you are a TES player and think ANT is philosophically bankrupt that is fine (there are legit arguments in favor of TES), but is that your exact opinion?
Gifts can be a 7 mana kill. What is your threshold for when you write without sarcasm? There are countless reasons to legitimately criticize this deck. With respect to Gifts the primary one is not the CMC, it is the UR requirement. Did you understand this?

It is meaningless to talk about this without simultaneously talking about the ANT kills. Do you know how they work?

CMC mainly matter if you play Ad Nauseam or if a high CMC card is blocking your Infernal and you can't get rid of it, like I had once in the few Games I tested.

Edit: I think that was a funny hyperbole with Griselbrand.

[Asthereal]

Is ANT unplayable? PiF kills cost 7-8 mana, they are how ANT wins the vast majority of its games.
Have you ever played ANT? If you are a TES player and think ANT is philosophically bankrupt that is fine (there are legit arguments in favor of TES), but is that your exact opinion?
Gifts can be a 7 mana kill. What is your threshold for when you write without sarcasm? There are countless reasons to legitimately criticize this deck. With respect to Gifts the primary one is not the CMC, it is the UR requirement. Did you understand this?

It is meaningless to talk about this without simultaneously talking about the ANT kills. Do you know how they work?
Of course I do. I have been playing various Storm lists since 2008. ANT, TES, TNT and whatever other brew I made. I only never played Doomsday competitively. Anyway, running the risk of a spam warning, I will spell it out for you, since you seem to be missing the point completely

Both ANT and TES can go off for 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 (or more) mana.
4: Empy the Warrens from hand.
5: Ad Nauseam from hand.
6: Infernal or Wish (if you run that) for Empty the Warrens, or Brainstorm-Probe-Ad Nauseam win.
7: Infernal for Ad Nauseam, or Infernal for Past in Flames-flashback Rituals and Infernal for Tendrils.
8+: Infernal for Ad Nauseam with mana floating, or any other Past in Flames win (TES style), or natural spell chain.
Lion's Eye Diamond in hand can be used to fuel any of the 6+ mana wins, AND if you have 7+ mana you always have multiple options for going off. Grave dependant, life dependant, row of Goblin tokens or in TES even Diminishing Returns.

The flaws in the Gifts win are that you must find U3 initial mana for Gifts plus a way to generate enough of both R and B mana after Gifts resolves, or it just doesn't work. Post Gifts, you have to cast Past in Flames and have black mana floating to flashback Dark/Cabal Ritual. So it's rather expensive. Plus it still always uses the graveyard, while being susceptible to REB/Pyroblast. To recap on your scenarios:

Infernal in hand or in the grave means this Gifts pile wins: Past in Flames, Dark Ritual, Cabal Ritual, LED. This requires 7 starting mana, blue and black required. Assuming you don't get above three lands (not realistic in a meta full of Wastelands and the fact that you run 15 max), you need two accellerants, not being 2x Petal or Petal + Dark Rit, plus Infernal and Gifts in hand. If you have that minus the Gifts, you have an ANT/TES win. Why bother with Gifts. If you have Infernal in the grave, this would indeed be a win. But more importantly, 2x accellerant, Gifts AND Infernal is a four card combo, and of one card you play only four copies. This is both worse and slower than OmniHalls, apart from the fact that three lands, two good accellerators and a tutor should already be game over. So the only really interesting Gifts win is the one where you have just Gifts:

Like you said, to make Gifts work on its own, you need more mana. Past in Flames, Infernal, Dark Ritual, Cabal Ritual would be a possible pile. But they give you Past in Flames and Infernal. So you need 5 mana after Gifts. Four for Past in Flames and one to start flashbacking the Rituals. This is 9 mana total. There's the Dragonstorm. Or hardcast Griselbrand through Daze. So I feel the only thing that Gifts really does well, is the fact that you can try it at end of turn and untap and win immidiately after. Which you and the OP were hating against.

So here's what I am saying:
ANT and TES do the same but more efficiently. They make better use of the accellerators, they have more options when going off, not just the graveyard dependant one. All in all they are both better in every way than any attempt to a Gifts win we have discussed so far.

But I shouldn't just burn down your remarks without suggestions to improve. I mentioned a one-of Griselbrand to hardcast. Seems outrageous, and I of course mentioned it to demonstrate the flaw in the Gifts win. Here's a better one: play 3-4 Burning Wish and 3 Infernal Tutor main plus the 4th on side to Wish for. Reforge the Soul goes to the sideboard, an Empty the Warrens goes to the main and a 2nd in the board, and lastly we add a Tendrils and a 2nd Past in Flames to the side. Here you have more business spells and nice flexibility in both the combo turn and the setup phase (Wishing for discard or removal). This leaves you with an ANless ANT list. Seems very playable to me, and since you don't run Ad Nauseam, you get to keep Treasure Cruise or Dig Through Time.

Speaking of which: when is anyone going to answer my real question?

[Lemnear]

I guess, Elvis has left the building

[Asthereal]

Edit: I think that was a funny hyperbole with Griselbrand.
Thanks! :smile:

I was trying to prove my point by overexaggerating. It seemed not to work very well though...

[benthetenor]

All I can say is that, in testing, I have not had an issue getting the requisite mana to go off with Gifts Ungiven, which is perhaps why I don't see it as a ridiculous amount of mana. Maybe it's the way I prioritize my Ponders and Brainstorms, maybe it's making me theoretically weaker to Daze and Spell Pierce, but in testing it just literally has not been an issue. I seem to always be able to go off with three large pieces of acceleration when I end up on the Gifts plan, so having mana floating and going for the CR/DR/IT/PiF pile is almost always the one I go with, which requires just access to red and black. I wish I could say what it is that I'm doing differently than the rest of you, but I honestly don't know as it all seems very obvious to me and not all that difficult, given the way the deck has been built and the way my test games (and since the first post, more than a few non-gauntlet games) have gone.

I wish I could post more often (work gets in the way) because I know that there are a lot of things that I'm going to miss commenting on because the discussion has been very good, but here are my impressions on what I've read:

At an early point in the development of this deck, there were actually two Griselbrand in it, in place of Reforge the Soul and something else. I was drawn to it for the reasons that Asthereal mentioned, but in the end it was just unbelievably costly. 8 mana isn't, but usually it ended up being 10 and had none of the mana savings of Gifts Ungiven. I would not recommend Griselbrand, as it did not test well, but I did test damn near everything before the deck started looking a lot like ANT.

Treasure Cruise vs. Dig Through Time - I did test this, and if you'd read all of the opening post I talked about it a little. I found that, in a deck with so many tutors, DTT was just unnecessary and I wanted to be casting Treasure Cruise much, much more.

Treasure Cruise in general is (and has always been) on the fence. I like what it does in slower discard-heavy and permission-heavy matchups, but it is a liability against tempo decks, and of course it does nothing to ease the graveyard reliance that the deck has. It works well, it's just a lot of hoops to jump through to make it amazing and the deck is not setup like something like UR Delver or even Miracles to have it just be automatically amazing. Even with a full four Gitaxian Probes (which I have been testing since I posted the latest list), Treasure Cruise's natural home is likely a deck that tries to control the game early with 1-for-1s and then pull ahead with Treasure Cruise. It's not bad in a combo deck, just not completely natural.

What I find with this deck, and the reason why I have resisted cutting Gifts Ungiven for more cantrips, is that when I play a deck with a lot of cantrips, the desire to cast them all is very strong, and the upside generally makes it difficult to ignore. What I mean by that is, if I have a perfectly good turn 2 kill with ANT, and have already probed them the turn before to see that the coast is clear, but I also have a Preordain in hand, the desire is to cast the Preordain to try to find something else to make sure they haven't draw a Daze or Spell Pierce or anything relevant in the intervening turn. I am not saying that this is right or wrong, I am saying that the tendency to want to do that is what I find slows the deck down more than anything else. The idea that the deck can wait and so should wait to play around most things. It is also more difficult to play cantrips than Gifts Ungiven. I do not think that that should be a deal-breaker, but when I see the two ideas as tied, my vote will always, always go for the idea that leads to fewer decisions in an already decision-laden deck. Again, I've played some kind of storm deck since the storm mechanic existed, I have no problem piloting "difficult" combo decks, but I always find that mental agility is a finite resource, and anywhere I can save myself thinking without giving up percentage points is a win. When Gifts Ungiven resolves, I know I win the game because they would have stopped it if they could and I now have all the tools to kill them quickly. When Preordain resolves, I need to figure out if I should be digging for a discard spell to fight Force of Will or another ritual to power past Daze or another cantrip if I see one of those but not both, or another land so I can take an extra turn. Gifts gives me none of those decisions because once it resolves, the path is clear.

To be clear, I do really like the ability of ANT to play every cantrip and sculpt its hand exactly the way it wants to, I just have found the number of times that I sit around doing nothing but cantripping and casting discard spells without ever hitting a kill card to be unacceptable. In my mind, with the way I've currently built this deck, ANT is already something like 90% a graveyard-based deck anyway, so it makes sense to me, rather than to hold on to a backup plan that is untenable the longer the game goes on, to push the deck the rest of the way towards the graveyard and fix the problems it causes with sideboard cards (and
some maindeck protection), particularly when it allows me to play something as incredible as Gifts Ungiven.

At no point in this thread have I ever advocated for this deck above any other combo deck, which is perhaps where we've run into the most trouble. I think that this deck is a legitimate branch of the Storm combo tree, but I will not say that it is better or worse than any other combo deck, as I would not say that about any combo deck. All these decks are merely different, and some have strengths that are weakness for others. I think that this deck has a strength that ANT does not have, which is why I think it's worthy of consideration and why I give almost no credence to the discussion as to how good, for instance, Gifts is compared to Ad Nauseam. They are simply different cards that do different things. I'm not trying to find a grand unified theory of storm, mostly because I've found in the more than 10 years since Tendrils of Agony has been a card, across all formats, it doesn't exist. There has never been a "best" storm deck, only a lot of them on the power/consistency continuum. The thing that makes me excited about Gifts Ungiven is that it warps the continuum slightly. Not so much as to be banned, or necessarily even so much as to make it the obvious "best deck", but with this deck you can ensure to goldfish on turn 3 with no consideration for life total, which is, I think, something worth considering this deck over something like ANT. I do not think that a goldfish is a good opponent to play against, or a realistic one, but, well, sometimes you face burn in a tournament.

My last thought for this long post is that probably the only deck that severely punishes me for going all-in on the graveyard would be something like BUG Delver, given that it has access to both Deathrite Shaman and to counterspells to draw off of a Reforge the Soul, and even BUG Delver in game 1 is about as likely to draw discard as they are counterspells. I would also argue that BUG Delver is about as bad as it gets for any combo deck, so Reforge the Soul isn't, in practice, any worse than Ad Nauseam against them. Against every other deck that has a mess of soft counterspells, the plan is business as usual as if this were an ANT deck, with discard, basic land drops, and probably just an IT chain or maybe even Gifts Ungiven, which has the distinct advantage of not being an all-in spell that I have to cast and break a LED for in the event it meets a counterspell.

[Asthereal]

My last thought for this long post is that probably the only deck that severely punishes me for going all-in on the graveyard would be something like BUG Delver, given that it has access to both Deathrite Shaman and to counterspells to draw off of a Reforge the Soul, and even BUG Delver in game 1 is about as likely to draw discard as they are counterspells. I would also argue that BUG Delver is about as bad as it gets for any combo deck, so Reforge the Soul isn't, in practice, any worse than Ad Nauseam against them. Against every other deck that has a mess of soft counterspells, the plan is business as usual as if this were an ANT deck, with discard, basic land drops, and probably just an IT chain or maybe even Gifts Ungiven, which has the distinct advantage of not being an all-in spell that I have to cast and break a LED for in the event it meets a counterspell.
Welcome back!

I fear you underestimate the impact that Treasure Cruise is going to have on the meta. I have been following all blue deck threads since its release and everybody is trying it out. UR Delver is now a thing, and the usual suspects are also all playing it. I hope you understand this will warp the format's sideboards towards more grave hate and Red Elemental Blast/Pyroblast to stop the opponent from Cruising or Digging to an unstoppable card advantage.

This warp is VERY bad for a combo deck that is highly reliant on the graveyard. Since your list has focus on Past in Flames with the addition of Gifts, this will be a major issue. Also, your alternatives are easy to stop for a blue mage: Reforge the Soul refills the opposing hand with Force of Will, Daze and I know not what they have these days, so a natural spell chain is basically all you have left. That's quite limited. You mentioned Reforge not being that much worse than Ad Nauseam, but it is. Ad Nauseam only draws you cards, and much more than Reforge, while Reforge draws you only seven cards, which is often not even enough to win (search the TES thread for Diminishing Returns winning odds - someone has calculated them, and note that TES is better at a draw-7-kill!), plus your opponent gets a fresh grip of possible countermagic.

So that's why I mostly advocate you use 3-4x Wish, 3x Infernal and one Infernal on side, instead of Gifts. Garritano somewhere mentioned that Wish into Past in Flames kill costs the same amount of mana or more than the Gifts kill. And he is wrong. It is exactly the same amount, which I will show below, BUT Wish can do more than just a grave dependant kill.

Gifts grant us:
1. A Past in Flames kill for 9 mana, or with Infernal in hand/grave a Past in Flames kill for 7 mana.
(Vulnerable to grave hate, REB/Pyroblast and BEB/Hydroblast.)
2. (I cannot think of anything - please add other wins you know of.)

Burning Wish grants us:
1. A Past in Flames kill for 9 mana (Wish>Tutor>PiF) or with Infernal in hand/grave a PiF kill for 7 (Wish>PiF).
(Vulnerable to grave hate, BEB/Hydroblast.)
2. An Empty the Warrens kill for 6 mana.
(Vulnerable to board presence, sweepers and BEB/Hydroblast.)
3. A Reforge the Soul/Diminishing Returns kill for 7 or 6 mana, but preferably more so we can float some.
(Vulnerable to fizzling, drawing of new countermagic by the opponent, REB/Pyroblast and BEB/Hydroblast.)
4. A Natural Spell Chain win.
(Vulnerable to BEB/Hydroblast.)
5. Flexibility in the setup phase (finding Discard or Removal).
(Slow, vulnerable to BEB/Hydroblast.)

My mention of Griselbrand was an exaggeration in order to make my point. I don't really believe it's any good. :wink:

[benthetenor]

I think it is simplistic to think that graveyard hate will simply increase with the advent of good Delve cards. The reason why I think that is it assumes that all of the decks will be fighting, rather than playing, Delve cards, so it will drastically change what sort of graveyard hate will be used.

For instance, Miracles is a deck that I could very easily see wanting to play Treasure Cruise. It plays very naturally with the gameplan of control the game with 1-for-1s and then do something huge and win. In the past, Miracles would play Rest in Peace, probably the best card for hating on graveyards ever printed. But now if they want the power of Treasure Cruise, they have to change what card they play there. If it were me, it would probably be Surgical Extraction to play with Snapcaster Mage, but I could also see more aggressive cards like Tormod's Crypt being correct. Now, this does two things for us:

1) What used to be very, very difficult graveyard hate to beat (as it both stopped us from going off and also killed Threshold) is now either a card that can be eliminated with a discard spell, or a card that can be bounced before going of (like Rest in Peace) but also opens up the opportunity for the opponent to misplay.

2) Because of the fact that they can no longer run a card that has splash damage against some of the most played creatures in the format (mostly I'm thinking of Deathrite Shaman and Tarmogoyf, but it's also a permanent answer to Nimble Mongoose and Grim Lavamancer and enemy Snapcaster Mages), the Miracles deck will be forced to cheat a little more towards creature removal, both main and side, which is a good thing for us.

Add this to the fact that many people will believe (and I think correctly so) that graveyard hate is not nearly as effective at beating Delve cards as something like REB, and we may actually see a decline in graveyard hate. This is just one example, but I believe that the same tension will play out among pretty much every deck that previously would opt for a strong card like Rest in Peace or Relic of Progenitus. In the battle between running the best graveyard hate and running slightly worse graveyard hate + Treasure Cruise, I think the power of Treasure Cruise will be too much to ignore. There's also the herd-immunization effect where some will choose to skip graveyard hate entirely, figuring that the rest of the field will hate on the graveyards effectively enough to weed them out of the later rounds of the tournament. People seem to be particularly ignorant as to just how important graveyard hate is, and they seem to greatly exaggerate, if only in their heads, just how powerful the hate they run actually is. Here, I'm thinking about when Deathrite Shaman was printed and the decks that would play him almost immediately cut their sideboarded graveyard hate down to almost nothing, thinking DRS was enough to beat a deck like Dredge or Reanimator, only to get destroyed when people finally started playing those decks. It will probably balance out eventually, but the biggest point is that graveyard hate in sideboards is still much lower now than it was pre-DRS, so there is reason to believe that the equilibrium point for brutal graveyard hate will sink further.

[Mhenlo]

Just realized if you don't have Threshold on your Cabal Ritual it becomes almost impossible to use Gifts as the win con.

[benthetenor]

Just realized if you don't have Threshold on your Cabal Ritual it becomes almost impossible to use Gifts as the win con.

It's true. Luckily for us, Gifts gives us +3 cards in graveyard and +2 cards in hand, so the chances of wanting to cast Gifts to win the game and not having threshold are approximately 0.

[Asthereal]

I think it is simplistic to think that graveyard hate will simply increase with the advent of good Delve cards. The reason why I think that is it assumes that all of the decks will be fighting, rather than playing, Delve cards, so it will drastically change what sort of graveyard hate will be used.

For instance, Miracles is a deck that I could very easily see wanting to play Treasure Cruise. It plays very naturally with the gameplan of control the game with 1-for-1s and then do something huge and win. In the past, Miracles would play Rest in Peace, probably the best card for hating on graveyards ever printed. But now if they want the power of Treasure Cruise, they have to change what card they play there. If it were me, it would probably be Surgical Extraction to play with Snapcaster Mage, but I could also see more aggressive cards like Tormod's Crypt being correct. Now, this does two things for us:

1) What used to be very, very difficult graveyard hate to beat (as it both stopped us from going off and also killed Threshold) is now either a card that can be eliminated with a discard spell, or a card that can be bounced before going of (like Rest in Peace) but also opens up the opportunity for the opponent to misplay.

2) Because of the fact that they can no longer run a card that has splash damage against some of the most played creatures in the format (mostly I'm thinking of Deathrite Shaman and Tarmogoyf, but it's also a permanent answer to Nimble Mongoose and Grim Lavamancer and enemy Snapcaster Mages), the Miracles deck will be forced to cheat a little more towards creature removal, both main and side, which is a good thing for us.

Add this to the fact that many people will believe (and I think correctly so) that graveyard hate is not nearly as effective at beating Delve cards as something like REB, and we may actually see a decline in graveyard hate. This is just one example, but I believe that the same tension will play out among pretty much every deck that previously would opt for a strong card like Rest in Peace or Relic of Progenitus. In the battle between running the best graveyard hate and running slightly worse graveyard hate + Treasure Cruise, I think the power of Treasure Cruise will be too much to ignore. There's also the herd-immunization effect where some will choose to skip graveyard hate entirely, figuring that the rest of the field will hate on the graveyards effectively enough to weed them out of the later rounds of the tournament. People seem to be particularly ignorant as to just how important graveyard hate is, and they seem to greatly exaggerate, if only in their heads, just how powerful the hate they run actually is. Here, I'm thinking about when Deathrite Shaman was printed and the decks that would play him almost immediately cut their sideboarded graveyard hate down to almost nothing, thinking DRS was enough to beat a deck like Dredge or Reanimator, only to get destroyed when people finally started playing those decks. It will probably balance out eventually, but the biggest point is that graveyard hate in sideboards is still much lower now than it was pre-DRS, so there is reason to believe that the equilibrium point for brutal graveyard hate will sink further.
The Cruise decks that play white will most certainly board out Cruise for Rest in Peace. Others might as well do something similar. The green/blue decks are getting more and more dependant on the graveyard now, with Cruise plus Goyf and Deathrite already needing the yard. You can bet there will be an increase in Rest in Peace, Nihil Spellbomb and Relic of Progenitus (the latter two not even costing you a card since they cantrip).

But my whole post was one big argument why you don't want Gifts: it does less than Wish, AND it's graveyard dependant. Against the upcoming meta you can bet Gifts will be worse than before, and it already was worse than Burning Wish, as I demonstrated.

[benthetenor]

If I were playing UW Miracles, there is almost no chance I would have both Treasure Cruise and Rest in Peace in my 75 together. There's just no reason to waste card slots like that. In fact, whatever decks used to play both Rest in Peace and Snapcaster Mage now have even less of a reason to have Rest in Peace in the sideboard because it now plays poorly with probably six or seven cards in their main deck instead of just two or three. I also do not believe that it is a wise plan to fight delve cards with graveyard hate, as, again, almost any deck that could play Treasure Cruise will also be playing Brainstorms and fetchlands meaning that you greatly increase the chances that you slam down your Rest in Peace against UR Delver only to have them Brainstorm away their now dead Treasure Cruises and beat you to death with Delver of Secrets because you played a card against them that is not effective. In that spot, for instance, REB is almost infinitely more effective and flexible. I could see something like Nihil Spellbomb being good there since it replaces itself, but it's the only graveyard hate card that replaces itself and only nukes one graveyard, and it has a color requirement.

This is not to say that graveyard hate is poor against this deck (it clearly isn't), but I'm fairly certain I'm not the only one who came to this conclusion that boarding in graveyard hate to combat Delve is generally a losing proposition.

[Asthereal]

If I were playing UW Miracles, there is almost no chance I would have both Treasure Cruise and Rest in Peace in my 75 together. There's just no reason to waste card slots like that. In fact, whatever decks used to play both Rest in Peace and Snapcaster Mage now have even less of a reason to have Rest in Peace in the sideboard because it now plays poorly with probably six or seven cards in their main deck instead of just two or three. I also do not believe that it is a wise plan to fight delve cards with graveyard hate, as, again, almost any deck that could play Treasure Cruise will also be playing Brainstorms and fetchlands meaning that you greatly increase the chances that you slam down your Rest in Peace against UR Delver only to have them Brainstorm away their now dead Treasure Cruises and beat you to death with Delver of Secrets because you played a card against them that is not effective. In that spot, for instance, REB is almost infinitely more effective and flexible. I could see something like Nihil Spellbomb being good there since it replaces itself, but it's the only graveyard hate card that replaces itself and only nukes one graveyard, and it has a color requirement.

This is not to say that graveyard hate is poor against this deck (it clearly isn't), but I'm fairly certain I'm not the only one who came to this conclusion that boarding in graveyard hate to combat Delve is generally a losing proposition.
Are you unwilling to consider my argument that Wish does the same as Gifts and more? You keep responding to my side note, which gives me the idea that you are trying to avoid the real point I made.

[DoorDie]

Not to throw more potatoes into an already overboiling pot, but what's the analysis for Intuition versus Gifts Ungiven? (This was asked earlier in the thread.)

Same graveyard dependency, lower cmc, three cards instead of four, but notably can be used as an instant speed Demonic Tutor for any 3-of left in the deck. The last part seems like a huge upside in contrast to the Gifts Ungiven uniqueness clause since it provides flexibility and power (ex: Intuition for 3x Rite of Flame w/ Past in Flames in hand).

I'm not a Storm player for the record, so I might well be missing some details here.

[benthetenor]

Are you unwilling to consider my argument that Wish does the same as Gifts and more? You keep responding to my side note, which gives me the idea that you are trying to avoid the real point I made.

First, I would argue that if a deck brought in REB against us, they are likely making a mistake as we have both a) fewer cantrips than most combo decks and b) only one line in three (gifts ungiven) where that card actually does anything against us. And a deck boarding in counterspells (BEB) specifically to fight a card with flashback (PiF) is certainly not making a good sideboarding decision. As to your question about Burning Wish, the only actual advantage that I see listed in the Burning Wish set of advantages (in terms of costing less mana) is the ability to grab Empty the Warrens for much less mana. If that's where you want to be, it's much more compact to simply play or board in an Empty the Warrens. What having Burning Wish in the deck does for us is:

1) reduces the number of tutors that loop effectively with Past in Flames, from 5 to 3
2) by not playing gifts, you are reliant upon cantripping to stock a yard to make Past in Flames effective, which is the whole reason why I like Gifts Ungiven
3) you increase the lines of play without actually eliminating any potential hate cards, depending on which path you choose, which increases the chances of choosing the wrong path or otherwise making an unnecessary error and losing that way.
4) you fairly strongly increase the deck's color commitment to red, which while not a huge deal, isn't nothing.
5) you turn this from a strong Past in Flames deck with a very weak plan B into a significantly less strong PiF Deck with the same weak plan B. At that point there would be no reason to not just run Ad Nauseam and play TES.

I think adding Burning Wish into the deck increases the deck's complexity to no real gain in either stability or in speed, so it seems as though it would be a lesser move.

[benthetenor]

Not to throw more potatoes into an already overboiling pot, but what's the analysis for Intuition versus Gifts Ungiven? (This was asked earlier in the thread.)

Same graveyard dependency, lower cmc, three cards instead of four, but notably can be used as an instant speed Demonic Tutor for any 3-of left in the deck. The last part seems like a huge upside in contrast to the Gifts Ungiven uniqueness clause since it provides flexibility and power (ex: Intuition for 3x Rite of Flame w/ Past in Flames in hand).

I'm not a Storm player for the record, so I might well be missing some details here.

I think Intuition is a very strong card, but I think Gifts Ungiven is stronger. The extra mana matters very seldomly, and in return you get a little card advantage and the ability to set up piles where you cannot lose no matter what they give you. Intuition does a great job at filling the graveyard and setting up Past in Flames, but for instance, you couldn't ever get a pile like two rituals and a tutor because there's the chance they just give you a card that you can't win with. Where Intuition is a great setup card, Gifts Ungiven is both a great setup card and a kill condition all on it's own.

[Mhenlo]

It's true. Luckily for us, Gifts gives us +3 cards in graveyard and +2 cards in hand, so the chances of wanting to cast Gifts to win the game and not having threshold are approximately 0.

If they give you CR and PiF, your graveyard is Gifts, DR, LED, the 2 cards in hand do not help reaching Threshold. You still would need 4 other cards in your graveyard, and atleast 3 mana (1BR), 4(1BRU) if you don't have an Infernal Tutor in your graveyard/can't get hellbent.

[Mystical_Jackass]

I feel like the biggest competition of this deck, well, imo... if comparing two U/B/x gy vulnerable decks with similar shells of brainstorm, ponder, thoughtseize, lotus petal, ritual, etc. what advantage would someone have picking up this list over something like Reanimator, which can drop Iona/Grizzy T1-T2 with more lands and less setup?

[benthetenor]

If they give you CR and PiF, your graveyard is Gifts, DR, LED, the 2 cards in hand do not help reaching Threshold. You still would need 4 other cards in your graveyard, and atleast 3 mana (1BR), 4(1BRU) if you don't have an Infernal Tutor in your graveyard/can't get hellbent.

As I said above, you are technically correct, but I have literally never had an opportunity to cast Gifts Ungiven in this deck and not had Threshold once it resolved. Literally never.


I feel like the biggest competition of this deck, well, imo... if comparing two U/B/x gy vulnerable decks with similar shells of brainstorm, ponder, thoughtseize, lotus petal, ritual, etc. what advantage would someone have picking up this list over something like Reanimator, which can drop Iona/Grizzy T1-T2 with more lands and less setup?

For me, the key difference is that once I do my combo, the opponent is dead. With Reanimator, in addition to being open to the same disruption as this deck (counterspells, discard and graveyard hate), you are also vulnerable to creature removal, and depending on when and how you pull the trigger, you could still theoretically get raced even after getting Griselbrand in play because you still need to actually attack the opponent to death. A lot of it is personal preference and semantics since once you assemble your combo with Reanimator you're a heavy favorite to win, but I much, much prefer, once I've executed my gameplan, to have my opponent actually dead instead of 98% dead. I like that Reanimator can play a control game in the meantime, and I do think it's a fine deck, but my preference is to leave the opponent 0 outs once I've executed my gameplan.

[Richard Cheese]

I feel like the biggest competition of this deck, well, imo... if comparing two U/B/x gy vulnerable decks with similar shells of brainstorm, ponder, thoughtseize, lotus petal, ritual, etc. what advantage would someone have picking up this list over something like Reanimator, which can drop Iona/Grizzy T1-T2 with more lands and less setup?

Or if you really want to play storm with the added vulnerability of graveyard dependence, play TinFins and combo off for 1:b::b:.

[benthetenor]

It's true. As I said, all combo exists on a continuum between speed and stability. Picking the combo deck you want to play is largely a matter of where you want to fall on that continuum, and you can tell when a combo deck should have some bannings associated with it because it doesn't fall neatly on that continuum. Usually by being too consistent and not equally slow.

[Lemnear]

For instance, Miracles is a deck that I could very easily see wanting to play Treasure Cruise. It plays very naturally with the gameplan of control the game with 1-for-1s and then do something huge and win. In the past, Miracles would play Rest in Peace, probably the best card for hating on graveyards ever printed. But now if they want the power of Treasure Cruise, they have to change what card they play there. If it were me, it would probably be Surgical Extraction to play with Snapcaster Mage, but I could also see more aggressive cards like Tormod's Crypt being correct. Now, this does two things for us:

1) What used to be very, very difficult graveyard hate to beat (as it both stopped us from going off and also killed Threshold) is now either a card that can be eliminated with a discard spell, or a card that can be bounced before going of (like Rest in Peace) but also opens up the opportunity for the opponent to misplay.

2) Because of the fact that they can no longer run a card that has splash damage against some of the most played creatures in the format (mostly I'm thinking of Deathrite Shaman and Tarmogoyf, but it's also a permanent answer to Nimble Mongoose and Grim Lavamancer and enemy Snapcaster Mages), the Miracles deck will be forced to cheat a little more towards creature removal, both main and side, which is a good thing for us.


I still don't see any reason why Miracles should bother running Treasure Cruise rather than RIP. Their whole deck is about creating cardadvantage anyways and RIP is shutting down Goose, Tarmogoyf, TC and like the whole deck we discuss here. Your plan cannot seriously be to discard or bounce the RIP ignoring that the card you lose too is Counterbalance which also protects the RIP from bounce and their hand from discard. I don't even want to think about Clique here. Miracles is not a deck you can come by with bounce or by trying to win in the long run. I think your analysis lacks here

The only decks which will favor Pyroblast over hard gy-hate will be delver-decks. BUG has already DRS to empty their opponents graveyard and fuel their own TC with the mana DRS provides.


Just a question from a historical perspective: Why did you name this thread TPS, a deck which is clearly linked to vintage and not sharing the core design with this deck (which I still think doesn't deserve it's own name or thread ;D)? TPS was a storm deck build to battle Staxx and the Artifacts intoduced with Mirrodin like Chalice & Trinishphere by adding FoW, Basics and Rebuilds to play "land, go" for turns and bounce the board eot to have your opponent defenseless, while having FoW + Duress to prevent Trinisphere from hitting the board. Vintage Gifts however has its roots in ... tatata ... germany! The interaction between Mana Drain and Gifts to setup a lethal Yawgmoths Will (used Recoup to flashback Will) was the core of this CONTROL-deck which finished it games with either Tinker for Darksteel Colossus or Tendrils of Agony fueled by Chain of Vapor to bounce and replay mana-artifacts. The deck was later popularized by Team Meandeck and Stephen Menendian with an important addition: Merchant scroll. This card not only fetched Gifts Ungiven or ancestral Recall, but also was able to get hands on FoW turn 1 off a pretty common start of Island + Mox which was key to Travis Spero winning the 2006 Vintage World Championship in a brutal fight between him piloting Meandeck Gifts and his opponent being on Grim Long.

[tescrin]

It's true. As I said, all combo exists on a continuum between speed and stability. Picking the combo deck you want to play is largely a matter of where you want to fall on that continuum, and you can tell when a combo deck should have some bannings associated with it because it doesn't fall neatly on that continuum. Usually by being too consistent and not equally slow.

Not true. There are a number of combo decks that could exist in legacy but simply not be good enough on either measure. Were those decks included in your "analysis" (used loosely, because you did none) then the decks like S&T would be banned immediately (more reliable and faster than other combos.) Similarly, before elves got it's boost from Craterhoof, it was a slower combo; as is Enchantress, as is NO RUG, and I could easily continue.

Why do you think you can handpick your datapoints to form some kind of continuum? Further, why would YOUR deck be on said continuum? It is not proven or tested by anyone but you? What criterion do you have that makes it so you get a data-point and my casual goblin-fueled Mana Echoes Comet Storm deck not? Why isn't my Thawing Glaciers Amulet of Vigor comet storm deck on your continuum?! Don't those existing and being worse by the reliability/speed measurements than ANT mean that ANT would be banned if such a continuum existed and your hypothesis correct?

One can only reasonably deduce that you, sir, are full of garbage.


I hate to rag on you for such a tiny thing, but this thing does not exist. Handpicking datapoints is anathema to actual science, actual data, and actual knowledge. Your claim is that the best and most reliable combo decks (or indeed any deck) would be banned if it fell off of some claimed continuum, but that would mean that all combo decks are created equal in some balanced sphere, which I've proven is not the case by citing examples from the past that either became competitive (Elves), remain fringe (Enchantress), or simply don't exist anymore (Bloom, NO RUG.)

[benthetenor]

You don't like my Chain of Vapor? :-P

Drain-Gifts and TPS are indeed very different decks. TPS is based on having lots of basic lands, some control cards, a bunch of restricted cards, a draw 7 or two (as opposed to five or six) and wins by eventually stocking the graveyard and resolving a Yawgmoth's Will for a lethal Tendrils...which is basically what this deck does. Stax isn't a huge threat, so there's less need for bounce, but honestly I could see incorporating cards like Repeal and Remand into the main deck to delay the game until this deck has an unbeatable advantage in the form of a bunch of basic lands and a full hand and graveyard. The idea behind this deck is not to win as quickly as possible and blitz past the opponent, but rather to develop the board and graveyard and overpower the lategames of various decks and win with a big Yawgmoth's Will. We use the tools we have access to. I don't know if it's a better or worse plan than what currently exists in Legacy, but that's the impetus and the reason for all of my card choices. The fact that the deck turned out (so far) to look almost exactly like ANT is kind of a coincidence, but probably understandable seeing as how ANT tries to do a similar thing.

[benthetenor]

Not true. There are a number of combo decks that could exist in legacy but simply not be good enough on either measure. Were those decks included in your "analysis" (used loosely, because you did none) then the decks like S&T would be banned immediately (more reliable and faster than other combos.) Similarly, before elves got it's boost from Craterhoof, it was a slower combo; as is Enchantress, as is NO RUG, and I could easily continue.

Why do you think you can handpick your datapoints to form some kind of continuum? Further, why would YOUR deck be on said continuum? It is not proven or tested by anyone but you? What criterion do you have that makes it so you get a data-point and my casual goblin-fueled Mana Echoes Comet Storm deck not? Why isn't my Thawing Glaciers Amulet of Vigor comet storm deck on your continuum?! Don't those existing and being worse by the reliability/speed measurements than ANT mean that ANT would be banned if such a continuum existed and your hypothesis correct?

One can only reasonably deduce that you, sir, are full of garbage.


I hate to rag on you for such a tiny thing, but this thing does not exist. Handpicking datapoints is anathema to actual science, actual data, and actual knowledge. Your claim is that the best and most reliable combo decks (or indeed any deck) would be banned if it fell off of some claimed continuum, but that would mean that all combo decks are created equal in some balanced sphere, which I've proven is not the case by citing examples from the past that either became competitive (Elves), remain fringe (Enchantress), or simply don't exist anymore (Bloom, NO RUG.)

Sorry dude, that's the way the world works. Belcher is fast and inconsistent compared to Spiral Tide which is slow but very consistent. If Spiral Tide could win on turn 2 as consistently as it wins on turn 5, it would be a busted deck and cards would get banned.

[Lemnear]

You don't like my Chain of Vapor? :-P

Drain-Gifts and TPS are indeed very different decks. TPS is based on having lots of basic lands, some control cards, a bunch of restricted cards, a draw 7 or two (as opposed to five or six) and wins by eventually stocking the graveyard and resolving a Yawgmoth's Will for a lethal Tendrils...which is basically what this deck does. Stax isn't a huge threat, so there's less need for bounce, but honestly I could see incorporating cards like Repeal and Remand into the main deck to delay the game until this deck has an unbeatable advantage in the form of a bunch of basic lands and a full hand and graveyard. The idea behind this deck is not to win as quickly as possible and blitz past the opponent, but rather to develop the board and graveyard and overpower the lategames of various decks and win with a big Yawgmoth's Will. We use the tools we have access to. I don't know if it's a better or worse plan than what currently exists in Legacy, but that's the impetus and the reason for all of my card choices. The fact that the deck turned out (so far) to look almost exactly like ANT is kind of a coincidence, but probably understandable seeing as how ANT tries to do a similar thing.

I was just wondering as this deck has basically nothing in common with it's Vintage brother of 2006-2008 which didn't really rely on Yawgmoths Will but on threat density in UB which the restricted List offers :P

The TPS, Grim Long and Pitch Long decks of that time were much more focused on Necro, Bargain and Tinker than on Gifts or Fact or Fiction (also a result of the restriction of Scroll, Brainstorm, Ponder and Gifts).

[benthetenor]

It's true. I really wish there were any kind of Necro that was even remotely playable, which is why I tried so hard to make Griselbrand happen, but it's just too much mana. Though in a deck with Burning Wish, there's actually a little play where you could have a Show and Tell in the sideboard to wish for in put Griselbrand in play, which is a trick I learned from the newer Burning Long deck that plays with Griselbrand and Oath of Druids. But again, all terrible.

[Lemnear]

I don't want to discuss Burning Wish either as we would go down the Route of TNT or TES in arguments.

[Asthereal]

First, I would argue that if a deck brought in REB against us, they are likely making a mistake as we have both a) fewer cantrips than most combo decks and b) only one line in three (gifts ungiven) where that card actually does anything against us. And a deck boarding in counterspells (BEB) specifically to fight a card with flashback (PiF) is certainly not making a good sideboarding decision. As to your question about Burning Wish, the only actual advantage that I see listed in the Burning Wish set of advantages (in terms of costing less mana) is the ability to grab Empty the Warrens for much less mana. If that's where you want to be, it's much more compact to simply play or board in an Empty the Warrens. What having Burning Wish in the deck does for us is:
Siding in REB to counter Brainstorms is a fine strategy. Better than keeping Bolts, StPs or Punishing Fire.

Siding in BEB seems loose, but your deck often needs Past in Flames to go off, and countering a four mana spell stops the combo turn, which is usually all a midrange deck needs to beat combo. Stop the combo once and kill him with Delvers. On the other hand I just mentioned it because I saw people add it to their boards. It's not the main point.

The advantage of Wish is not just that you can grab Empty the Warrens. It's the fact that you get to choose to either grap EtW, or PiF, or Reforge/Diminishing, or just make a natural chain. Gifts doesn't let you choose, it forces you to take the PiF route, and if the route is blocked you can just scoop 'em up.



1) reduces the number of tutors that loop effectively with Past in Flames, from 5 to 3
No, it increases it from 5 to 7. You can Wish for Infernal.

2) by not playing gifts, you are reliant upon cantripping to stock a yard to make Past in Flames effective, which is the whole reason why I like Gifts Ungiven
That has always been the case. Try to look beyond Past in Flames. There are other ways to Rome, and Gifts won't show them to you, but Wish will.

3) you increase the lines of play without actually eliminating any potential hate cards, depending on which path you choose, which increases the chances of choosing the wrong path or otherwise making an unnecessary error and losing that way.
Terrible argument. You make the deck more complicated which will make an idiot lose with it? I am a bad Storm pilot, but that doesn't and never will be an argument to suggest Belcher instead of Doomsday. We are discussing a deck, trying to make it better. If Wish is better, but more complex, so be it.

4) you fairly strongly increase the deck's color commitment to red, which while not a huge deal, isn't nothing.
True. But LED can net you RRR. Also, we have Volcanic Island and Petals to make red mana.

5) you turn this from a strong Past in Flames deck with a very weak plan B into a significantly less strong PiF Deck with the same weak plan B. At that point there would be no reason to not just run Ad Nauseam and play TES.
No, Past in Flames is equally strong, we just have additional options, that are more reliably accessible.



I think adding Burning Wish into the deck increases the deck's complexity to no real gain in either stability or in speed, so it seems as though it would be a lesser move.
No real gain? I have written down the gains in my previous post. They are quite extensive. A summary:
- More options to go off, which allow you to win past various hate, where Gifts is just a one trick pony.
- A tutor for sideboard protection spells.
- An increase in business spell density, compared to ANT or your list, so less chance of cantripping into nothing while looking for a tutor.

[Garritano]

...
Both ANT and TES can go off for 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 (or more) mana.
4: Empy the Warrens from hand...
(link included for reference, as my post addresses this post by Asthereal, which compares Gifts to non-Gifts storms on several metrics, most notably cost. It ends with several suggestions on directions to take the deck, and opens discussion on whether Treasure Cruise is appropiate)

Thank you for your thoughtful reply, which I particularly appreciate because my last post was quite rude. I apologize for writing a sarcastic reply rather than contributing to the discussion. I feel that Gifts may allow a kill for 7 mana without use of an Infernal Tutor, and I was getting frustrated at people's characterization of the mana cost which ranged from 8-13. I feel that 7 awkward mana is a more accurate measure of the mana cost.

Gifts Ungiven as IT #5, or why I'm am so touchy about the CMC of a Gifts kill
Currently, Grim Tutor is used in many ANT lists as IT #5, so evaluating Gifts Ungiven against IT isn't fair - this deck already is maxed out on ITs. We need to compare it to Grim Tutor (or Empty / PiF / Burning Wish, etc). If we compare Gifts Ungiven to Grim Tutor in matchups were we don't fetch Ad Nauseum, Gifts Ungiven is VERY competitive with Grim Tutor. Gifts Ungiven allows for PiF kills with esentially zero resources in the yard. On occasion, ANT needs 8 mana for a PiF kill because of an awkward draw, which usually revolves around having more artifacts than rituals. (at 8 LED/LP and 8 DR/CR, getting hands like 2 LED 1 LP 1 DR are a very real possibility. Obviously we control our draws with cantrips, but this occassions do occur in real games.).

With Grim Tutor making the PiF kill cost 8-9, and occasionally making it extraordinarily expensive (e.g., 0 CRs, 1 DR, 1 LED) , Gifts Ungiven a possible contender for the Grim Tutor slot in a PiF deck in certain mathchups (notably, Burn).

Now, the caveat of "don't fetch Ad Nauseum" is a pretty big one, even if GT costs 3 life. So, at this point, the rest of the deck's high CMC and/or the metagame composition have to combine into making Gifts Ungiven a serious contender for the GT slot.
Does this warrant maindeck inclusion? Perhaps not. If you argued "yes, moves Gifts to the board," I would see the merit in that. Once we move it to the board, we need to perform an analysis on its merits compared to the card it replaced. It's totally plausible that Gifts is just worse than Empty #2 in all the matchups we want a replacement card for Ad Nauseum, or that EtW's utility in other matchups make it an overall board decision. Regardless, I think it's worth analyzing, as it could be a new tool in the storm toolbox. A lot of analysis by you, Lemnear, and mhenlo suggest that its utility is limited.

Onward to your post!

I actually appreciate you summarizing the ANT/TES wins at the various mana costs, and feel that this isn't a waste of time. Explicitly constructing the mana-cost to storm-strategy table is very instructive.

I will address the middle of your post first, then the beginning of your post. At the end of your post, you suggest a very compelling idea which summarizes what this deck is trying to do and offers an interesting alternative.
It provides a very strong argument against this deck. However, I think I need more time to organize my thoughts and digest what you wrote, and expect that my post will end up being quite long, so I will have to address it at a later time. The exception is Dig Through Time, which is too important to not discuss.



Like you said, to make Gifts work on its own, you need more mana. Past in Flames, Infernal, Dark Ritual, Cabal Ritual would be a possible pile. But they give you Past in Flames and Infernal. So you need 5 mana after Gifts. Four for Past in Flames and one to start flashbacking the Rituals. This is 9 mana total. There's the Dragonstorm. Or hardcast Griselbrand through Daze. So I feel the only thing that Gifts really does well, is the fact that you can try it at end of turn and untap and win immidiately after. Which you and the OP were hating against.

I believe that Gifts can make a plausible, non-Infernal Tutor attempt at a kill at 8 mana. It requires access to cantrips in the yard, and isn't a guaranteed kill. I have detailed the sequence in a previous post, but if you "go all in" and cast Gifts and exhaust BBUR, you end up with ten mana, 3 of which are blue (specifically, BBBBB BBUUU), and with PiF resolving.
I think this line makes Gifts #1 similar to a bad Infernal Tutor #5.
Of course, when you have more resources, the Gifts line goes from a compelling "10 mana + PiF" line to a lethal kill, but these scenarios aren't particularly groundbreaking for Storm. It isn't too hard to construct scenarios in which "enough resources" make a storm kill. (e.g., even an Entomb is nearly lethal when you have enough mana)



The flaws in the Gifts win are that you must find U3 initial mana for Gifts plus a way to generate enough of both R and B mana after Gifts resolves, or it just doesn't work. Post Gifts, you have to cast Past in Flames and have black mana floating to flashback Dark/Cabal Ritual. So it's rather expensive. Plus it still always uses the graveyard, while being susceptible to REB/Pyroblast. To recap on your scenarios:

This is unfortunately absolutely correct.



Both ANT and TES can go off for 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 (or more) mana.

This table is quite instructive and is a useful reference when discussing any storm variant. I agree with the inference from your table, that the Gifts kill is particularly resource intensive relative to many thoroughly tested Storm kills.
However, it's notable that this list is a summary of things that the ANT/TES decklists can perform, and in the context of the Gifts discussion, we should be mindful that Gifts is a one-of that enters the deck after we've added cards like IT#s 1-4.

I completely agree that this deck should run EtW, which means that if you construct a table like this for my variant of the OP's list, you end up with:

4: EtW from hand
6: IT-> EtW
7: ANT-style PiF loop or multi-card combo Gifts kill
8: ANT-style PiF Loop
8.5: Gifts risky-kill
9: Gifts guaranteed kill

I have explicitly made the Gifts kill 8.5, to help note that its mana requirements are actually more punitive than the other kills in this table.

This table is notably missing the various Ad Nauseum wins, which dominate ANT's turn 1 kills. However, it is not out of the question to have 1x SB Ad Nauseum to speed up the deck, letting the deck pick up speed identical to ANT game 2-3. It also isn't out of the question that Ad Nauseum is just better than Gifts, and that Gifts should be at most a sideboard card.

So, how bad is losing the early wins in exchange for adding wins that appear strictly inferior (in mana requirements) to above chart?
Well, discussing that sort of brings us to the end of your post, where you write:


So here's what I am saying:
ANT and TES do the same but more efficiently. They make better use of the accellerators, they have more options when going off, not just the graveyard dependant one. All in all they are both better in every way than any attempt to a Gifts win we have discussed so far.

I believe that adding EtW to the maindeck helps address some of the speed issues.
Your post gets at the heart of the issue whic is this:
"Is the Gifts+TC shell, which clearly slows the deck and gives it inferior kills, even the appropriate shell?"
I think your suggestions were quite good, and I will need to stew on them.
[/Quote]
(referring to the question of "why Treasure Cruise over Dig Through Time?")
...
Speaking of which: when is anyone going to answer my real question?
[/Quote]
I think Dig Through Time might just be better.
I tried testing DTT in Doomsday and found it interesting, but DTT really wants you to play a deck that casts it cantrips and uses its fetchlands. If you go ahead and play into DTT, the Doomsday manabase becomes unstable against Delver, so I gave up on DTT-Doomsday when I spotted this deck. This deck shouldn't have trouble casting it cantrips and using fetchlands, so I was incorrect to stop testing DTT.

The OP didn't like it in his testing, but I really want to give it a shot.
I think playing this deck with the Grinding-Station "let's see if I can Tendrils you" style has a lot of merit, and DTT seems awesome for that.
This deck is encouraged to do stuff like LED for UUU and cast PiF floating black.
DTT and LED/PiF seem awesome together. A line like "ritual, cabal ritual, fetch, duress, LED, PiF, flashback rituals, DTT" seems REALLY interesting. LED/Duress/1-2 fetchlands are approaching the requisite 6, and you might just end up with more black mana than you know what to do with.
DTT also just seems philosophically really in line with what slow-storm is trying to do.
I hate to bring it up, considering how unpopular the Gifts-kill is, but the 7 mana PiF kill works really well with DTT.
You go to 9 mana, 3 of which are blue w/ an Active PiF.
You can DTT the Gifts, 1-2 fetchlands, 0-2 artifacts, all but ~2 cantrips, your discard spells, and then pay the remainder from your pool.
If you get a DTT on the stack with PiF active and BBBBBBU floating, I think you're going to win. (if you have enough cantrips, even LED is basically lethal, as it represents 3 preordains/brainstorms/ ponders to get you to your win condition).

[benthetenor]

Siding in REB to counter Brainstorms is a fine strategy. Better than keeping Bolts, StPs or Punishing Fire.

Siding in BEB seems loose, but your deck often needs Past in Flames to go off, and countering a four mana spell stops the combo turn, which is usually all a midrange deck needs to beat combo. Stop the combo once and kill him with Delvers. On the other hand I just mentioned it because I saw people add it to their boards. It's not the main point.

The advantage of Wish is not just that you can grab Empty the Warrens. It's the fact that you get to choose to either grap EtW, or PiF, or Reforge/Diminishing, or just make a natural chain. Gifts doesn't let you choose, it forces you to take the PiF route, and if the route is blocked you can just scoop 'em up.



No, it increases it from 5 to 7. You can Wish for Infernal.

That has always been the case. Try to look beyond Past in Flames. There are other ways to Rome, and Gifts won't show them to you, but Wish will.

Terrible argument. You make the deck more complicated which will make an idiot lose with it? I am a bad Storm pilot, but that doesn't and never will be an argument to suggest Belcher instead of Doomsday. We are discussing a deck, trying to make it better. If Wish is better, but more complex, so be it.

True. But LED can net you RRR. Also, we have Volcanic Island and Petals to make red mana.

No, Past in Flames is equally strong, we just have additional options, that are more reliably accessible.



No real gain? I have written down the gains in my previous post. They are quite extensive. A summary:
- More options to go off, which allow you to win past various hate, where Gifts is just a one trick pony.
- A tutor for sideboard protection spells.
- An increase in business spell density, compared to ANT or your list, so less chance of cantripping into nothing while looking for a tutor.

I do not believe that there is a good reason to need Burning Wish in the deck. I already have plenty of business spells, and in spite of what you are suggesting, Burning Wish weakens Past in Flames, especially compared to something like Gifts Ungiven, simply because it does not loop with Past in Flames. You can put an Infernal Tutor in the sideboard to wish for, but at that point you're spending twice as much mana as if you'd just had Infernal Tutor main, or you're costing the same amount of mana as Gifts Ungiven except that you both cannot cast it as an instant and you have done nothing with that four mana to further setup Past in Flames. You become more reliant on cantripping your way through the deck to setup PiF and that is the EXACT REASON why I like Gifts Ungiven in a Past in Flames deck. You can shrug that off by saying that "it's not the only way to win with Past in Flames", which is pretty clearly true, but it is the way I am interested in, and judging by the activity in this thread, it's pretty much the only reason someone would pick this deck over something like ANT. So if you like to cast Burning Wish with your Past in Flames, I suggest you look to TES or something like it. I have tried it and found that I much prefer Gifts Ungiven in a deck that revolves around Past in Flames.

[Garritano]

For instance, Miracles is a deck that I could very easily see wanting to play Treasure Cruise. It plays very naturally with the gameplan of control the game with 1-for-1s and then do something huge and win. In the past, Miracles would play Rest in Peace, probably the best card for hating on graveyards ever printed. But now if they want the power of Treasure Cruise, they have to change what card they play there. If it were me, it would probably be Surgical Extraction to play with Snapcaster Mage, but I could also see more aggressive cards like Tormod's Crypt being correct. Now, this does two things for us:


I really disagree here. I'm willing to say Miracles will never run Treasure Cruise.
I played a bit of Miracles, and I can say the card could conceivably used as crazy sideboard tech in some matchups against rogue decks, but I would almost never want to see TC in most matchups. Betting against Treasure Cruise is a dangerous thing to do, but I'll do it here.

Miracles is good at getting many basic lands into play, which most decks in legacy are bad at. (e.g., before UR Delver got TC, it was basically a rogue deck. Every other Delver decks ran 0-1 basic land). Treasure Cruise is insane because you can go ahead and fetch different dual lands and use them to cast cards with different colored mana requirements, usually black/red or blue/red. Even better, if you feel crazy and play a third color, you won't get punished doing something like "Death Rite, Delver, Bolt" which requires 2 differently named nonbasics.

If you're using colorless mana, or using infinite basic lands, you just fetch your basics and cast your two colors.
Miracles is happy with exactly 1 white mana until the end game, and is happy using islands for everything else.
The only tension on the manabase in Miracles is "how do I cast Counterbalance on turn 2?" If you don't have Island/fetch/plains, you have to expose your white source to Wasteland if you lay turn 2 CB. Aside from Stifle-based considerations or games where you use your red cards, that's literally all you have to do w/ Miracles mana requirements in the wasteland format.

Furthermore, Miracles doesn't actually want to draw cards. Miracles uses lock pieces / Terminus to generate tempo AND card advantage in the early game, then obviates card advantage by casting Entreat or Jace, both which are so completely broken that they often allow you to ignore your opponent's decklist / board and just win. "Oh, you're going to play draw go? Well, I will Brainstorm every turn of the game. Oh, you built your deck so that you can kill in the late game using something that I can't stop? I'll Karakas+Clique you every turn"

It's not like 2000, where control wants to counterspell the relevant cards, use removal to stay alive, then "get ahead" by casting a draw spell. Miracles just "finds" Entreat / Jace to end the game with 1 card in hand, rather than kill you with Morphling will sitting on 3 hard counters.

Even weirder, Miracles is actually BAD at grinding. I have tested the Elves / Miracles matchup extensively (I always play Miracles), and one of Elves only ways of winning is to go for a grindy game where they have permanent sources of card advantage that blank Miracles' best cards. If Elves uses Pithing Needle, Wren's Run Packmaster, and Cavern of Souls, they can neutralize several of Miracle's card advantage sources. At this point, the fact that Miracles decklist is full of lands makes Elves competitive in the top-deck grind fest! If you're drawing Green Sun's Zenith / Symbiote / DRS and the other guy is drawing Jace, STP, you actually have a chance at winning. Jace is still awesome, but Miracles can't Terminus you, you can use Pendelhaven to overwhelm Jace with 2 creatures. The way Miracles win in these weird games is by just making the long-slow attrition war end with Entreat.

So in summary, Treasure Cruise is awesome because this format revolves around Wasteland. TC lets you cast multiple cards with different colored mana costs with 2-3 lands, and have access to a source of card advantage.

Decks that have lots of basics and don't like grinding would rather just draw Jace.
Miracles is clearly the best non-Delver, non-Combo deck that I have trouble even imagining a world where Treasure Cruise is used by a real control deck.

Legacy is really the closest thing Magic has to format that supports the Rock-Paper-Scissors metagame, but sadly the power level of the permanents printed in the last three years and the introduction of unplaytested sets have made it so that the only control deck in the format will continue to play 0 card drawing spells, even when it could play late game ancestral recall.

[Garritano]

I don't want to discuss Burning Wish either as we would go down the Route of TNT or TES in arguments.

This is a tough question, and how the posters in the thread choose will have tremendous influence on how productive the discussion is.

For better or for worse, there is no TNT thread on the source, and TNT discussion is sort of split between the ANT/TES threads.

This makes TNT development almost impossible, because there isn't any list the community can reference as "the stock list" other than Timo Schünemann's list, which was pre-Return to Ravinca, and legacy has completely changed since then. (e.g, no more Zoo / Goblins / Gaddok Teeg / nonCounterbalance Control, hello Deathrite Shaman tempo)

Even worse, I think that Burning Wish may be useful as a 2x in Slow Storm list. This would be a radical departure from TNT/Doomsday, which are the closest lists to a slow-storm deck running BW, and discussing this topic in the TES thread would be totally off-topic.

Part of this dilemma arises from the community's dislike of TNT, which may be warranted. Pretty much all of the excellent storm players on The Source dislike TNT, as the red requirement encourages you to run Rite, and if you run Rite+BW in a storm deck, playing anything other than TES is almost certainly wrong.

I think that Burning Wish in a non-TES storm list can't get developed unless it's specifically in this thread, or the moderators at The Source change their policy. (I believe former TNT threads have been combined with ANT).

If Khans of Tarkir has changed the viability of BW in slow storm, this may be the only play to develop a Khans+BW slow storm list.
I don't have an overall conclusion about whether to discuss BW, just reservations about not discussing it. Right now, my gut is leaning with Lemnear and benthetenor.

[Garritano]

(my post references several previous posts)

I feel like the biggest competition of this deck, well, imo... if comparing two U/B/x gy vulnerable decks with similar shells of brainstorm, ponder, thoughtseize, lotus petal, ritual, etc. what advantage would someone have picking up this list over something like Reanimator, which can drop Iona/Grizzy T1-T2 with more lands and less setup?


Or if you really want to play storm with the added vulnerability of graveyard dependence, play TinFins and combo off for 1:b::b:.


Not true. There are a number of combo decks that could exist in legacy but simply not be good enough on either measure. Were those decks included in your "analysis" (used loosely, because you did none) then the decks like S&T would be banned immediately (more reliable and faster than other combos.) Similarly, before elves got it's boost from Craterhoof, it was a slower combo; as is Enchantress, as is NO RUG, and I could easily continue.

Why do you think you can handpick your datapoints to form some kind of continuum? Further, why would YOUR deck be on said continuum? It is not proven or tested by anyone but you? What criterion do you have that makes it so you get a data-point and my casual goblin-fueled Mana Echoes Comet Storm deck not? Why isn't my Thawing Glaciers Amulet of Vigor comet storm deck on your continuum?! Don't those existing and being worse by the reliability/speed measurements than ANT mean that ANT would be banned if such a continuum existed and your hypothesis correct?

One can only reasonably deduce that you, sir, are full of garbage.

I hate to rag on you for such a tiny thing, but this thing does not exist. Handpicking datapoints is anathema to actual science, actual data, and actual knowledge. Your claim is that the best and most reliable combo decks (or indeed any deck) would be banned if it fell off of some claimed continuum, but that would mean that all combo decks are created equal in some balanced sphere, which I've proven is not the case by citing examples from the past that either became competitive (Elves), remain fringe (Enchantress), or simply don't exist anymore (Bloom, NO RUG.)

This discussion is derailing the thread, but some terrible compulsion is forcing me to write about this.
I actually strongly agree with tescrin about the speed-stability continuum.

Aside about "Stability"
There are a lot of blisteringly fast combo decks which are actually pretty stable, including Belcher. The difference between combo decks like this is best characterized by how they deal with FoW, Delver's mana-denial / soft counter suite, and RIP/DRS.

There certainly are decks which are "strictly worse than" other decks if you think of combo decks as being characterized along their speed/stability/protection dimensions.

Yes, it is true that in math, there isn't one solution when you have two variables. (speed / stability)
However, you can get decks which are equivalent in one dimension, but better in another. ("pareto superior").
So, in magic, you can't confidently say something like "Belcher is better than Spiral Tide" because one deck is better at speed and the other is better at protection.

For these reasons, I'm open to the possibility that TinFins could be paretosuperior to a graveyard reliant storm deck.

However, this deck isn't actually as graveyard reliant as it looks.
A lot of post-sideboarded games with ANT require you to kill both without PiF and without AN. To do this, you just "natural storm" them out. This is such a powerful strategy that much of storm's historical development actually resembled strategies like this. Because "natural storm" kills don't force you to resolve any specific engine-peace (e.g., Past in Flame / Doomsday / etc), it's actually one of the best ways to beat blue-based control decks that have access to cards like RIP. The strategy is referred to as "Grinding Station," which pays homage to a pre-Past in Flames storm deck that was completely reliant on natural storm to win.
Both ANT and this deck are setup to be able to have a plausible Grinding Station gameplan, meaning you can win against a resolved RIP or an active Relic of Progenitus.
Tin-Fins / Reanimator don't have that strategy. They have to either retool to Show and Tell or remove the RIP.

This is really important to discuss, because if this deck didn't have access to the natural storm kill, I think it actually WOULD be just be strictly inferior to Reanimator.
Reanimator is such a good deck, that almost any legacy deck has to ask itself what it can do that Reanimator can't.
To some extent, the same is also true of Dredge. In a world without Graveyard hate, Dredge and Reanimator would simply be the aggro-combo and combo-controls in the format. (and actually, probably the best decks in the format)
All discussion in this thread has the "win with natural storm" as an implicit assumption by all the posters, because I think we all play storm regularly.

So yes, although strictly speaking it's possible for decks to pareto-inferior / pareto-superior on the speed/protection (or stability, whichever dimension you prefer), TinFins and Reanimator are NOT strictly superior to storm because every viable storm deck can win through RIP/DRS. Yes, Tin-Fins and Reanimator can sometimes beat those cards, but in the theoretical world of "better/worse," there is a theoretical metagame where Tin-Fins /Reanimator is completely unplayable. (e.g., if Helm/line or CounterTop-HelmRIP become dominant, or even if Grixis Delver ran something 3-4 Extirpate)

[Lemnear]

This is a tough question, and how the posters in the thread choose will have tremendous influence on how productive the discussion is.

For better or for worse, there is no TNT thread on the source, and TNT discussion is sort of split between the ANT/TES threads.

This makes TNT development almost impossible, because there isn't any list the community can reference as "the stock list" other than Timo Schünemann's list, which was pre-Return to Ravinca, and legacy has completely changed since then. (e.g, no more Zoo / Goblins / Gaddok Teeg / nonCounterbalance Control, hello Deathrite Shaman tempo)

Even worse, I think that Burning Wish may be useful as a 2x in Slow Storm list. This would be a radical departure from TNT/Doomsday, which are the closest lists to a slow-storm deck running BW, and discussing this topic in the TES thread would be totally off-topic.

Part of this dilemma arises from the community's dislike of TNT, which may be warranted. Pretty much all of the excellent storm players on The Source dislike TNT, as the red requirement encourages you to run Rite, and if you run Rite+BW in a storm deck, playing anything other than TES is almost certainly wrong.

I think that Burning Wish in a non-TES storm list can't get developed unless it's specifically in this thread, or the moderators at The Source change their policy. (I believe former TNT threads have been combined with ANT).

If Khans of Tarkir has changed the viability of BW in slow storm, this may be the only play to develop a Khans+BW slow storm list.
I don't have an overall conclusion about whether to discuss BW, just reservations about not discussing it. Right now, my gut is leaning with Lemnear and benthetenor.

Burning Wish has 3 serious downsides, with one being disrupting any approach to rely on Basics, not working well with Cabal Ritual and reserving SB space. In non-TES storm decks the whole BW->EtW plan is hard to accomplish and it's pretty much reduced to grabbing answers to certain gamestates like Massacre, Duress, Void Snare, PIF and so on. It's pretty much a matter of taste if you want to give up your stable manabase for a toolsbox. Most people don't accept a vulnerable manabase like TNT requires for a Medium speed storm deck, especially as Wish does not work well with PIF anyways. One of the neat advantages of Wish however is that it allows you to run Treasure Cruise without the danger of flipping it to Ad Nauseam, but see this just as a lil' remark :)

[benthetenor]

I'd honestly be shocked if I were the person who came up with the idea that all combo decks can be placed at some point on a continuum between speed and stability/resilience, mostly because to me that seems like such a natural conclusion you draw by observing combo decks in a working format. It has one presupposition, and that is that a deck which cannot compete in a metagame is ignored. For instance, it's extremely possible for a deck to be both slow and inconsistent, but why would such a poor deck even factor into your decision-making when it comes to what combo deck you want to play? I would assume that that would be obvious. The reason why this dimension exists is because cards are generally either used for comboing or for defense, so where a particular deck falls on the continuum is largely a matter of what the mix of disruption vs. actual combo cards looks like.

Even in the case of Reanimator, which looks on the surface to be "resilient" due to being able to play cards like Force of Will, Daze and Thoughtseize, I would argue that the deck, due to it's inherent additional weaknesses (some of which are extreme, like graveyard hate), is still not as resilient as something like TES or ANT, which makes it's additional speed acceptable, at least in Wizard's eyes. Compare it to Flash-Hulk, which was able to play Force of Will and also to actually win (not just combo) as early as turn 1, and you see why there needed to be bannings to stop that deck. It was brutally consistent (with 8 tutors), very resilient (with 8 free counters) and it won unbelievably fast. If, for instance, it were somehow unable to play Force of Will and Pact of Negation, it would probably still exist today as a slightly better version of Belcher. But it broke the speed/stability continuum and it got banned.

What makes a combo deck powerful then, according to this theory, is to what degree it pushes the continuum. It's the only way we can even have a discussion about what makes a combo deck powerful, and it's the only way we can compare decks, one to the other. For instance, with this deck, it is more susceptible to graveyard hate than ANT, but in return I feel it is slightly faster due to never having those games where you durdle around with cantrips until turn six before you can kill a goldfish. The decision as to whether or not this deck is "better" than ANT, or even worth playing at all, to be honest, is the degree to which the slight speed increase interacts with the lowered resiliency in the face of graveyard hate.

[davelin]

I'd honestly be shocked if I were the person who came up with the idea that all combo decks can be placed at some point on a continuum between speed and stability/resilience, mostly because to me that seems like such a natural conclusion you draw by observing combo decks in a working format. It has one presupposition, and that is that a deck which cannot compete in a metagame is ignored. For instance, it's extremely possible for a deck to be both slow and inconsistent, but why would such a poor deck even factor into your decision-making when it comes to what combo deck you want to play? I would assume that that would be obvious. The reason why this dimension exists is because cards are generally either used for comboing or for defense, so where a particular deck falls on the continuum is largely a matter of what the mix of disruption vs. actual combo cards looks like.

Even in the case of Reanimator, which looks on the surface to be "resilient" due to being able to play cards like Force of Will, Daze and Thoughtseize, I would argue that the deck, due to it's inherent additional weaknesses (some of which are extreme, like graveyard hate), is still not as resilient as something like TES or ANT, which makes it's additional speed acceptable, at least in Wizard's eyes. Compare it to Flash-Hulk, which was able to play Force of Will and also to actually win (not just combo) as early as turn 1, and you see why there needed to be bannings to stop that deck. It was brutally consistent (with 8 tutors), very resilient (with 8 free counters) and it won unbelievably fast. If, for instance, it were somehow unable to play Force of Will and Pact of Negation, it would probably still exist today as a slightly better version of Belcher. But it broke the speed/stability continuum and it got banned.

What makes a combo deck powerful then, according to this theory, is to what degree it pushes the continuum. It's the only way we can even have a discussion about what makes a combo deck powerful, and it's the only way we can compare decks, one to the other. For instance, with this deck, it is more susceptible to graveyard hate than ANT, but in return I feel it is slightly faster due to never having those games where you durdle around with cantrips until turn six before you can kill a goldfish. The decision as to whether or not this deck is "better" than ANT, or even worth playing at all, to be honest, is the degree to which the slight speed increase interacts with the lowered resiliency in the face of graveyard hate.

See Carstens article called Combo Continuum on SCG.com where he talks about the contiunuum between speed and resilience and where he thinks each deck belongs.

[Garritano]

I'd honestly be shocked if I were the person who came up with the idea that all combo decks can be placed at some point on a continuum between speed and stability/resilience, mostly because to me that seems like such a natural conclusion you draw by observing combo decks in a working format. It has one presupposition, and that is that a deck which cannot compete in a metagame is ignored. For instance, it's extremely possible for a deck to be both slow and inconsistent, but why would such a poor deck even factor into your decision-making when it comes to what combo deck you want to play? I would assume that that would be obvious. The reason why this dimension exists is because cards are generally either used for comboing or for defense, so where a particular deck falls on the continuum is largely a matter of what the mix of disruption vs. actual combo cards looks like.

The continuum exists and I don't think anyone was debating it. It's just that it's possible for a deck to be superior in all dimensions to another deck, like in the flash-hulk example you provided. The idea the Reanimator is superior to other graveyard Storm decks is pretty reasonable.
However, this deck has a legitimate way of winning without the graveyard, making the comparison harder to do.

[Lemnear]

The continuum exists and I don't think anyone was debating it. It's just that it's possible for a deck to be superior in all dimensions to another deck, like in the flash-hulk example you provided. The idea the Reanimator is superior to other graveyard Storm decks is pretty reasonable.
However, this deck has a legitimate way of winning without the graveyard, making the comparison harder to do.

Only having the natural Tutor chain left if the graveyard is shut down, equals Reanimator boarding S&Ts. The comparison is pretty easy to do imo. THE significant advantage of storm compared to Reanimator is dodging creature removal and being able to win on the spot rather than in the combat zone (EtW aside).

A few requests: can we stop acting as if this is an original deck or design? Can we stop making strange assumptions like Miracles running TC and therefore skipping on RIP, just to have a point? Can we stop to act if the "combo continuum" was invented in this thread rather than being a known concept several writers already have written articles about over the last 11 years (the oldest I know is from 2003)?

I have a tough time to take this thread serious after the posts made on the last two pages, guys. Thx

[benthetenor]

Well, for one thing, I think I'm the first person to put Gifts into a Legacy storm deck. Cite me if I'm not, but I've never seen that before. So I would say that that classifies this deck as original. We can argue semantics all day long, but I've never seen my 60 anywhere before, and judging by how much resistance I've met it's not surprising, since most people seem to think I had to have a lobotomy to remove Ad Nauseam from ANT (which is not what I set out to do). And the only reason I was having a discussion about the combo continuum is because that joker Tescrin seemed to think what I was saying was ridiculous. I don't believe I've invented the idea, as for one it's been around since a little after I began playing Vintage competitively, which was way back in 2001. I have no idea where I first heard of it, but I really didn't think (and in fact, didn't say) it was my doing.

Finally, I really don't think it's ridiculous to think that Miracles might want to play with Treasure Cruise. At it's heart, Miracles is a control deck, and I don't know any control deck that wouldn't love a shot at Ancestral Recall, particularly when the cost is very low. Just because a deck currently works well one way doesn't mean it couldn't possibly work better with new cards. It is absolutely true though that that is tangential; this deck can beat any graveyard hate post sideboard, and we have no way of actually knowing what the metagame will look like in even a month, let alone this time next year.

[TheYoungster]

I feel like intuition might be a better card in this shell than gifts as its cheaper and you could always go for something like double ritual and Past in flames. In a pinch you could always find 3 LEDs that might be necessary to go off or other things of that nature. It also seems great at setting up the natural past in flames or if you have a tutor by going for 3 cabal rituals or dark rits depending on the situation.

[Dark Ritual]

Reforge the soul is an awful magic card. The reason it didn't break legacy is because it's 5 mana. The delve synergy seems irrelevant. Gifts ungiven is a very interesting card. It does not have a place in legacy with the current cardpool. The deck is way too reliant on the graveyard, which more people are hating on now due to cruise. We lose to a tormod's crypt. That's my gigantic problem with this as the graveyard reliance is way too high in this list. Don't think that reforge the soul as a way to win without the graveyard is at all reliable. I've cast quite a few 3 mana draw 7s in vintage and fizzled with way more broken cards with those draw 7s. In legacy that's even more exacerbated.

When I look at this list I just wonder why you wouldn't play doomsday other than the difficulty level doomsday looks way better on paper. Doomsday doesn't lose to tormod's crypt. It has 7 business spells in the form of 4 wish 3 doomsday. It has more cantrips and a better manabase as well as an insane long game as the longer the game goes with doomsday in my experience the better off you are unless you're facing miracles but even then they have to draw lots of countermagic or have the right cards on top for countertop as well as redundant counterbalances to dodge abrupt decay(s). Doomsday is comparable to gifts in that you get 5 cards that win the game while gifts obtains 4. However, doomsday can be faster because it costs just BBB for doomsday, extra cantrips are obscene with it in terms of going dark rit -> doomsday, probe into LED, LED, tap to draw crack for UUU, win the game on the spot. With gifts ungiven you need more mana. You have more dead draws as drawing a 5th ritual effect isn't really helping you but in doomsday that is far less likely considering you run 10 mana acceleration spells in the form of 4 dark rit, 4 LED, 1 rain of filth, and 1 lotus petal. You're running 4 CRits, 4 LED's, 4 DRits, and 4 petals. How good is cruise going to be with so much mana to draw into? Cruise sees the same number of cards as brainstorm. Brainstorm is broken no doubt about it. But if you're trying to win the game with just 3 cards? Questionable even without putting cards back. There's a reason spanish inquisition doesn't see much play since it runs just draw 4's as card advantage. If you're trying to use it as a value spell dig through time seems vastly superior as finding the 2 best cards out of 7 is likely better than 3 blinds that are likely to include a redundant ritual, land, or cantrips. Dig through time is like the lovechild of gifts ungiven and fact or fiction. You get the 2 best out of the top 7. With gifts a properly constructed pile with sufficient mana wins on the spot but that will not always occur. Gifts, FoF, and dig are all typically +1 card in hand though with only FoF being the card that doesn't automatically grant +1 card in hand as it is determined by the opponent how the piles are split.

[Garritano]

When I look at this list I just wonder why you wouldn't play doomsday other than the difficulty level doomsday looks way better on paper.

I've played a lot of Doomsday, and I hate to admit it, but Doomsday is almost unplayable until something happens to Miracles. CB on 0-3 means you can't win.
0 = LED (used 2x in basically every efficient pile)
1 = used in all kills, due to SDT (recast), Gitaxian Probe, and Brainstorm
2 = Ideas Unbound and Burning Wish (obviously need this game 1, and you probably aren't boarding in your 2nd Tendrils against Miracles)
3 = Doomsday
The joke if it, is you might not even be able to beat a CB on 4 ;)
4 = Tendrils of Agony. Yes, it's relevant...most Doomsday kills are ToA + 8 storm. Obviously it's pretty easy to generate the extra storm, I'm being a little silly here.

Even if you board in Infernal Contract as the Ideas Unbound slot, you're still losing to CB on 0 or CB on 1. ANT variants are way better at beating a resolved CB, and can happily run 7 discard spells to hope to win via dumb luck.

Emrakul/Shelldock loses to the new legend rule (Karakas), and adding Wipe Away brings you to 3x suspicious sideboard slots in a deck running Burning Wish that already has a bad Omnitell matchup, which you aren't beating unless you play white. If you do play white, you lose even harder to CB / Chalice, as you now have at most ~3 discard spells to hope for a turn 1 miracle duress to knock them off the hate spell.

If you don't play white (and you're on 7 discard spells), you have trouble beating URx delver, as you need to actually discard all of there counterspells AND their lightning bolts. (Doomsday life loss)

To top it off, Doomsday plays worse against Burn than this deck. (Doomsday needs to fetch 4 colors if they Abrupt Decay Eidolon, and regardless of what they do, Doomsday says "lose half your life rounded up" on it)

I truly truly truly wish I could say that Doomsday could compete with this deck*, but I don't think it can right now and doubt it'll be good anytime soon. If you build Doomsday to beat Miracles, you give up to much in your tempo matchups. Now that BUG Delver is declining, I think you can build a green Doomsday list with maindeck Carpet of Flowers, which may be able to beat both tempo and Miracles, but dear lord are we really forced to maindeck Carpet of Flowers and Abrupt Decay in a combo deck?

*by "this deck" I also include ANT

[Lemnear]

Doomsday + Laboratory Maniac is still a valid and Compact kill even within a storm-shell. Just saying

[Garritano]

Doomsday + Laboratory Maniac is still a valid and Compact kill even within a storm-shell. Just saying

I'm am SO close to trying that. (but without Lab Maniac)
I was going to write you a reply about how Doomsday usually runs 1 now, and blah blah blah, then I realized you were probably hinting that we should consider DD to win against a resolved RIP / Relic of Progenitus, and that DD shells could support cards Ad Nauseum shells can't.

I have been wanting to do a Transformational DD sb to go from ANT to DD after game 1, but the sideboard is slightly too small to support it unless you're willing to play TNT, which I'm not.
Basically the rationale is to dodge RIP while having access to Doomsday's chain of vapor pile after game 1. The Chain of Vapor trick is really powerful, but isn't really relevant in game 1. (it used to be when Gaddok Teeg was good, but now the only permanents people play to stop you happen to stop the entire Doomdsay deck, such as Chalice for 1 or Counterbalance)

The SB requires 4 DD, 3 BW, and 1 Ideas Unbound. In addition, you really need the SDTs, but that's easy to do with ANT, as you're happy having access to them in a variety of matchups. The remaining slots have to go to at least 1 CoV, and then your way of beating Miracles (usually 3-4 AD + some special tech to help give a few win percentage points such as Dark Confidant or whatever). You want at least 1 Massacre if you're going to have BW, and at that point...you're pretty much out of slots, so you're going to lose to Omnitell and have a bad storm mirror.

The crux of the problem is I was boarding out Infernal Tutor for engine pieces, but if Infernal Tutor stays in, you can use an SDT + IT to win for 8 mana.
(IT, sac LED for UUU, fetch Doomdsay, cast Doomsay for [Ideas Unbound, GP, LED, LED, ToA/Burning Wish], etc)

Unfortunately, you need SDT in play, otherwise you need to naturally draw your Doomsday.

Doomsday ran Burning Wish mainly as DD #5-7 (it also uses it in place of a maindeck Tendrils).
It's conceivable that Dig Through Time lets you get away with running 4 DDs, in which case the sideboard footprint of transforming into Doomsday after game 1 is only 5 cards. (Ideas Unbound, 4 Doomsday).
Doomsday, of course, laughs all day long at Rest In Peace.

It's plausible that this deck w/ Dig Through Time and Sensei's Divining Top could just transform into Doomsday after game 1 against decks that are good at running graveyard hate. Lab Maniac would even be conceivable in such a list, but I think I prefer 1x Chain of Vapor.

It's also conceivable that a Doomsday package like 1 DD 1 Ideas Unbound could be used as an emergency "beat RIP" win, but the fact the kill requires SDT in play makes me a little hesitant. If RIP hits play, it's plausible the game will last long enough that you'll find your SDT. Sadly, SDT and delve cards aren't friends, so trying to use DTT to allow you to cut Burning Wish from a transformation would discourage you from maindecking SDT.

[Lemnear]

You're going too far with Wishes and the complete trans-SB. I just wanted to say that having 1 DD + 1 Lab Man (possibly 1 Ideas/SDT too) CAN be a kill which dodges graveyard-hate, isn't vulnerable to -1/-1 effects like EtW, is pretty quick if needed and "somewhat" life independent. Just general brainstorming

[Garritano]

You're going too far with Wishes and the complete trans-SB. I just wanted to say that having 1 DD + 1 Lab Man (possibly 1 Ideas/SDT too) CAN be a kill which dodges graveyard-hate, isn't vulnerable to -1/-1 effects like EtW, is pretty quick if needed and "somewhat" life independent. Just general brainstorming

This is a really exciting idea, and might even work without the Lab Maniac.
We can always just build [Ideas Unbound, GP, LED, LED, ToA]. If we have SDT in play and used IT-> DD (along with 2 rituals to give us BBBBB), we'll be at 9 storm Tendrils. (assumes we had LED in play for IU or access to 1UU elsewhere)
The issues are
1) Need SDT in play
2) Need to use 2x Sideboard slots
3) Drawing Ideas Unbound isn't great
4) Drawing Doomsday and Infernal Tutor simultaneously is pretty rough.

Lab Maniac brings two things to the Doomsday table: it gives you a way to beat a resolved Teeg / Leyline without using Chain of Vapor, and it lets you beat discard with a 1UU pass the turn pile. It has fringe benefits of being able to beat large amounts of life gain, which to Doomsday is anything about 24 life. The last benefit is it is another named win condition, helping you beat extraction effects. Many decks that run RIP also run Stonefroge Mystic and can gain life off Batterskull, which is a consideration.

It's plausible we'd want more than 1 DD if we did this, and we definitely can't try this w/o some SDT. SDT doesn't work well with Delve, but it's a truly amazing card in slow storm regardless.
As we increase the DD count, we weaken the Infernal Tutors but make the normal non-SDT DD wins more plausible. (e.g., combinations of Gitaxian Probe, Brainstorm). Doomsday is really fast when you naturally draw it, and the main reason ANT is faster than Doomsday is because Doomsday needs to run cards like Burning Wish to be able to fish for Doomsday quickly. If we used Doomsday in small numbers for the backup plan, we're happy bumping into unless we also bump into Infernal Tutor.

Putting SDT into this deck seems good. I'm not sold on Treasure Cruise (I'm currently testing Dig Through Time). I still don't have enough data to know what's better, or if those cards are even better than SDT, which is pretty amazing in ANT.

DTT works really well with Doomsday, as pile costs actually drop in a weird non-linear fashion, putting good selection at a premium. (e.g., 1 SDT and 1 GP is a pile cost of 0, however, 2 GPs costs 1 and 2 SDTs costs 2), so it's plausible the deck can run a Delve card + SDT + the Doomsday backup plan in the board, but it's definitely a reason to not play DTT/TC. Of course, once you cut those, the deck wants Ad Nauseum more.

Btw, as it stands, I run the Ad Nauseum in the board and bring it in against non-red decks, making my list look very close to nevilshute/slosh's, only I have Gifts and weird Delve cards (for now).

[Lemnear]

The reason for Lab Man is to get around stuff like Chalice, Thalia, Canonist, Flusterstorm, Teeg, etc. which you usually have to remove before being able to combo which is annoying if you build pass-the-turn-piles with Doomsday. Mind that the storm-approach requires you to cast Doomsday AND draw into the pile the same turn (not to talk about stormcount) which usually is 6 mana (BBBUUU) without SDT (still cheaper than Gifts and with less requirements ;D) while the Maniac-core is fine with slow rolling and building in protection into the pile to exchange dead cards in your hand with a Brainstorm on top of the pile. I'm sure, that here common Doomsday-pile knowledge kicks in, so I don't need to spend time writing as Stephen Menendian wrote enough about Doomsday already

[Dark Ritual]

I cut emrakul out of doomsday a long time ago by long time I mean when they changed the legend rule I sold my emrakul and didn't look back. As for combo'ing off through an active countertop? I haven't the faintest idea as to why you would try that unless you actually can assemble a pile that deals lethal while removing the counterbalance/you have 2 cantrips and enough mana to draw decay to decay counterbalance. Basically requires your own sensei's top as the opponent will likely have a 1 on top or a top in play to flip to a probe, ponder, or brainstorm. As for this deck combo'ing off through active countertop? Try it. There's a reason countertop is our worst enemy when we're playing storm or hell any deck in legacy except 12post because we, like a great many legacy decks, rely on 1-2 drop spells.

You need to fetch 3 colors to abrupt decay in storm. Tropical island/bayou + swamp/underground sea. Unless you're cheating by casting decay off volcanic island/basic island..? You don't always need red mana in storm unlike black or blue mana that you generally always need short of you turn 1'ing someone without brainstorm/cantrips.

Burn is a very winnable matchup. The number of instant speed burn spells they have is quite low (4 bolts, 4 fireblast, 4 price of progress that can be played around and they have to have 2 mana up for.) Eidolon is the same as countertop to me. You can't combo off with any storm deck with eidolon in play unless you want to die by making say 8 empty the warrens tokens that will be easily raced by burn.

Delve cards are a nombo with doomsday. If they weren't and you could cast treasure cruise post doomsday for 1 mana why hello there vintage power level deck in terms of piles as ancestral recall is apparently even better when you stack your deck with cards that will instantly win the game. Ideas unbound costing 2 is miles more. But 1 mana? I wish.

[Mhenlo]

[QUOTE=Garritano;840185]I've played a lot of Doomsday, and I hate to admit it, but Doomsday is almost unplayable until something happens to Miracles. CB on 0-3 means you can't win.
0 = LED (used 2x in basically every efficient pile)
1 = used in all kills, due to SDT (recast), Gitaxian Probe, and Brainstorm
2 = Ideas Unbound and Burning Wish (obviously need this game 1, and you probably aren't boarding in your 2nd Tendrils against Miracles)
3 = Doomsday
The joke if it, is you might not even be able to beat a CB on 4 ;)
4 = Tendrils of Agony. Yes, it's relevant...most Doomsday kills are ToA + 8 storm. Obviously it's pretty easy to generate the extra storm, I'm being a little silly here.


0= Use Rits Rits and BW/Tendrils it requires some more mana floating but not difficult
1= this is the tough one but you can still IU LEDs BW becomes a lot easier if you have a SDT in play already
2= this is also a tough one but is possible with Lab Maniac and cantrips
3= Natural BW->Tendrils, Silence->BW->Time Spiral
4= Doesn't matter.

In order for DD to beat Miracles atm you need to commit a lot of SB slots.
I don't think DD would be a good transformational SB for any deck. It would probably be best in Tin Fins and even there it wouldn't be good.

[Garritano]

[QUOTE=Garritano;840185]I've played a lot of Doomsday, and I hate to admit it, but Doomsday is almost unplayable until something happens to Miracles. CB on 0-3 means you can't win.
0 = LED (used 2x in basically every efficient pile)
1 = used in all kills, due to SDT (recast), Gitaxian Probe, and Brainstorm
2 = Ideas Unbound and Burning Wish (obviously need this game 1, and you probably aren't boarding in your 2nd Tendrils against Miracles)
3 = Doomsday
The joke if it, is you might not even be able to beat a CB on 4 ;)
4 = Tendrils of Agony. Yes, it's relevant...most Doomsday kills are ToA + 8 storm. Obviously it's pretty easy to generate the extra storm, I'm being a little silly here.


0= Use Rits Rits and BW/Tendrils it requires some more mana floating but not difficult
1= this is the tough one but you can still IU LEDs BW becomes a lot easier if you have a SDT in play already
2= this is also a tough one but is possible with Lab Maniac and cantrips
3= Natural BW->Tendrils, Silence->BW->Time Spiral
4= Doesn't matter.

In order for DD to beat Miracles atm you need to commit a lot of SB slots.
I don't think DD would be a good transformational SB for any deck. It would probably be best in Tin Fins and even there it wouldn't be good.

I wrote my post about CB 0-3 to illustrate that a naked Counterbalance is very close to unbeatable in the Miracles vs Doomsday matchup.

Against a random deck that has reasonable a CC distribution, a naked Counterbalance has a good chance of beating us.

I have won against a Counterbalance lock w/o Abrupt Decay once in my life while playing Doomsday, and I was running a rogue Doomsday list that featured unplayable cards designed to beat Miracles. (e.g., Abeyance, sb in Time Spiral +Boseijui Who Shelters All, totally unusable in almost any non-Miracles matchup. It allows you to construct late game piles that beat an active CB / infinite counter magic. Rather than BW-> TS you just put Time Spiral in the pile and use lands, which makes the mana costs doable. Not advocating this strategy obviously b/c you ruin your sideboard and still don't even have that high of a miracles matchwin % b/c they still randomly win games w/ their other good cards like Jace / Blood Moon / V Clique+karaks, etc. ).

Seriously, Doomsday can't beat a naked Counterbalance from Miracles turns 2-4 unless they flip Jace / FoW, and if it's literally turn 2, Jace actually IS relevant.
As a joke, I wrote that CB on 4 could matter. This is because on turn 2 (before they assemble SDT or draw a brainstorm, both of which are game winning cards for them), it's not easy to generate 10 storm, which is what you need to beat a CB on 4.

Have you ever beaten a naked Counterbalance from UW Miracles ever?
The question isn't "have you ever beaten a naked Counterbalance," because some people put Counterbalance in rogue decks that lose for other reasons.
A single naked Counterbalance is so damn good against Doomsday that the rest of your opponent's deck could be a type 2 aggro deck and you will struggle to win.
Rather than being a type 2 aggro deck, Miracles is crammed with FoW, Spell Pierce, Jace, Entreat, REB, Vendilion, Counterspell, Snapcaster, Ponder, and post board, Flusterstorm.
It doesn't matter if we can Doomsday through a Chalice for 1 for a billion mana - when Miracles plays their version of Chalice for 1, it doesn't affect their REB / Spell Pierce / Flusterstorm, all of which can counter our Ideas Unbound, literally winning the game.

[Garritano]

I cut emrakul out of doomsday a long time ago by long time I mean when they changed the legend rule I sold my emrakul and didn't look back. As for combo'ing off through an active countertop?

I wrote my post b/c I was suggesting that Doomsday can't even beat a naked Counterbalance. This is very different from an active Counterbalance + Sensei's Divining Top.

Miracles won't assemble the turn 2 combo that often for a multitude of reasons. If you play the discard version, it should be easy to keep them off the combo before turn 3. (1 Duress means they need to hold mana back for Spell Pierce, Brainstorm, or need an FoW, all of which slow the Miracles or make it less likely that they drew well against you)

I wrote a simulator to compute how often Miracles draws a protected naked Counterbalance.
(That is, they have FoW, Spell Pierce, Brainstorm + Counterbalance). I programmed in mulligan rules so that Miracles didn't keep hands they knew would lose to Storm.

I felt that the simulation created generalized results that I didn't want to put it in a specific storm thread, but the results are horrible for Doomsday. By horrible I mean "more than 30% of the time, expect Counterbalance + a card that protects it."

I bumped into this result because at stormboards some players were discussing revisiting Daze, which was used pre-Abrupt Decay in some Doomsday lists to beat CB + FoW. For other reasons, Daze is pretty bad in combo right now (won't get too into why, but it largely is b/c the best decks other than Miracles are very good against Daze, decks like Elves / Delver / deck running Gitaxian Probe, which is a lot now), so I wanted to see how often the case of "miracles has CB + FoW comes up."
After finding the number (it's 13.5% btw), I wanted to help explain how much like SDT in ANT vs Miracles in the ANT thread, so I wrote a post on the relative merit of SDT v Duress on turn 1. I originally wrote the post w/o simulation results, but felt that the result was so obvious that I didn't need to clutter the post w/ my probabilities, as I felt such a post belongs in a more generalized thread b/c the results extend to basically every matchup against Miracles. (btw the post w/o Probabilities here this:

Sensei's Divining Top Against Miracles
)

Long story short I think Doomsday is guaranteed to lose over 30% of the time against Miracles game 1 based on my simulations.

In contrast, ANT actually occasionally wins against a naked Counterbalance, and occasionally wins against a Counterbalance lock. This puts ANT's game 1 percentage ceiling way higher than Doomsday's.

I think Doomsday needs to run a maindeck answer to a resolved Counterbalance until Miracles stops being Tier 1.
I have tried to maindeck Abrupt Decay, but it just ruins the manabase. If you cut white, floated counterspells from SDT become a serious threat, and then you need to run a 2nd weird card to fight that. (e.g., Xantid Swarm / Autumn's Veil / City of Solitude). For a little while I tried "green Doomsday" which used Abrupt Decay / Veil / City, but the deck is just too slow. Drawing City over Therapy is a disaster in a metagame rich in Delver, and now that Treasure Cruise had enabled a cheap UR delver deck, I wouldn't dream of running a 2G disruption spell maindeck, unless I also maindeck Carpet of Flowers.

As an aside, maindecking Carpet of Flower is a serious strategy in slow-storm decks. Most of the meta is blue anyway, and when you're not playing against a blue deck you sometimes have a near autowin (Elves / Dredge).

At this point, I'm so far down the rabbit hole that I'm saying "Doomsday might be good vs Delver /Miracles if you ran maindeck Abrupt Decay, Carpet of Flowers, City of Solitude/Autumn's Veil." And by "good" I mean "doesn't lose all the time," not actually "good." Then, you get paired against Elves and wonder why you're playing legacy.

Note: If Autumn's Veil stopped REB, it would be so good that I'd play BUG Doomsday. I think you could get a 40+% match win against Miracles with BUG Doomsday (w/o running a terrible sideboard) if they print a variant on Autumn's Veil that hits REB.

[Garritano]

The reason for Lab Man is to get around stuff like Chalice, Thalia, Canonist, Flusterstorm, Teeg, etc. which you usually have to remove before being able to combo which is annoying if you build pass-the-turn-piles with Doomsday.


The card is usually thought of as the "Chain of Vapor" slot for the reasons you outlined, but I have so little experience playing it that I'll have to revisit it.
Chain of Vapor is a good card in Storm anyway (it's a fine draw to a resolved Eidolon) so I was hoping to get double-duty w/ using Chain of Vapor as both "a storm sideboard card" and as "the Chain of Vapor/Lab Maniac slot in the Doomsday backup kill."

However, I don't really understand the Lab Maniac piles very well (other than the pass-the-turn piles). I will have to revisit Lab Maniac and evaluate its mana cost at beating the cards you listed compared to the standard DD piles.
Considering the point of the DD kill in this deck is to serve as a backup plan in difficult scenarios, the Lab Maniac might be very well worth the slot. Sadly, this brings up the number of bad draws (Gifts Un-...um...I mean Ideas Unbound / Lab Maniac) and increases the sb footprint.



Mind that the storm-approach requires you to cast Doomsday AND draw into the pile the same turn (not to talk about stormcount) which usually is 6 mana (BBBUUU) without SDT (still cheaper than Gifts and with less requirements ;D)

Touché. ;)
Seriously this made me laugh at out loud.