[Article]Eternal Europe: Less Treasure, More Gifts

[Mon,Goblin Chief]

A day late so I could take a look at the IQ results from this weekend, here are finally my reactions to last week's B&R announcement. Enjoy :)

http://www.starcitygames.com/article/30178_Less-Treasure-More-Gifts.html

[amalek0]

Glad I didn't have to boycott. Now to dig through and see if I can manage to sleeve up a vintage gifts build with 9 or fewer proxies. I think I can make that work now that we get gifts back.

[lyracian]

A day late so I could take a look at the IQ results from this weekend
A nice round up of the weekends results. I was surprised you did not mention Fred Edelkamp's 24th Placed Stoneblade with Monastery Mentor, TNN and 4x Dig. It is a somewhat different approach to your suggested Mentor deck but I would have thought it worth comparing?

I was planning on a Team America approach for Cloud-nought but I am not sure if BANT with Nobel Hierarch for ramping may be better? Mirri's Guile replaced Ponder to allow setting up draws every turn; although just going all in on Sylvan Library may be better.

Creatures 14
2 Phyrexian Dreadnought
4 Deathrite Shaman
4 Delver of Secrets
4 Tarmogoyf

Spells 27
3 Daze
4 Force of Will
3 Spell Pierce
4 Abrupt Decay
4 Brainstorm
4 Stifle
3 Cloudform
2 Mirri's Guile

Lands - 19 Wasteland, Trop, Sea and Fetches

[Svknoe]

Great article!

Do you have any thoughts on a sideboard for UW control?

[leegoo]

I like the U/W list, but I don't think you want ponder > preordain in a more dedicated control deck. Also, I wonder if the cipt on Colonnade is just too big of a negative to warrant not running any at all.

As for gifts... snapcaster is almost certainly just a straight replacement for recoup, being good in most piles and not a bad draw on it's own. Not having access to vault key also looks like an oversight... vaultkey in the 60 can make for some degenerate "i win" piles.

good article :)

[Finn]

Having [Dig Through Time] legal but not Treasure Cruise should provide a solid shove towards those fair blue strategies...I don't see how this is good. Why would anyone want a shove toward any kind of blue? Blue sure as hell does not need a shove. It is not a natural or certain thing that we have blue-based aggro, blue-based control and blue-based combo duke it out all the time. I will be happy as a clam to see Dig end up being marginal rather than pivotal.

[Mon,Goblin Chief]

@amalek0: Hehe, well, as I said in the article, there was no way I wasn't going to mention Gifts but I was definitely happy to see someone else as excited to start thinking about a list :)

@lyracian: Edelkamp's list looks pretty sweet actually, I can only assume I somehow completely missed it when writing the article because I really don't remember seeing CB/Top plus Mentor anywhere. I definitely like what he's doing there.

As for the CloudNaught list, I'd definitely turn to Sylvan of Guile in a heartbeat. Not only is Sylvan a much stronger card, it also allows you to turn StPed Naughts into three more cards (you will be using Stifle instead of Cloudform enough to make that relevant). Running only two Naughts also seems suspect. You have no way to tutor for them and already have four Stifles to help enable in hand copies. I suspect the deck will want the full four or it simply isn't worth going to this much effort to set things up.

@Svknoe: Thanks :) Haven't figured out a board yet, but a lot of usual suspects apply (Flusterstorm, VClique, a Pyroblast or two, more EEs, Meddling Mage, Containment Priest, Cage, etc).

@leegoo: Happy you liked it :)

I'm unconvinced Preordain is ever better than Ponder as long as you run enough Fetchlands to usually be able to shuffle your Ponder. I might be wrong, but Ponder just feels much more powerful than Preordain whenever I play them.

As to Vintage, Snapcaster can't replace Recoup because there's no pile involving Snapcaster Mage alone that guarantees you get to Will unless you run other bad cards such as Regrowth. In my opinion not having access to guaranteed Will just isn't an option. As to Vault-Key, I excluded that quite consciously. Tinker Walk is only a single mana more than Vault+Key+activate and the deck is good enough at setting up that kind of instant win that I don't want more terrible cards in my deck than absolutely necessary (and I think we can both agree that neither Vault nor Key would be even close to making a Vintage deck like this if they didn't team up so well). Figuring out that we didn't need any dedicated combo to win with Gifts and could rely on just Tinker-lossus to end games was actually one of the key breakthroughs to my mind when I was developing the original Gifts deck with Maxim. Having a deck that is all just disruption, mana, broken cards and carddraw is pretty busted and Tendrils plus DSC is the leanest package that gives you maximum flexibility.

@Finn: Maybe that wasn't clear enough: I was talking about strategic developments inside the spectrum of blue strategies, not concerning the format as a whole. I very much think a push towards replacing Delver strategies with other blue strategies would be good for the format. I agree wholeheartedly that the format as a whole does not need a push towards blue strategies.

[leegoo]

you could be right about recoup, but really in the situation where you're getting will + recoup + your other two (lotus and ~ possibly) are you doing much better than will + snapcaster + tinker + time walk? Or if you really need Yawgwin does a tutor pile not do fine?

Sure you don't run Regrowth but Recoup as a whole is not so great of a card and just much worse than Snapcaster outside piles.

[Mon,Goblin Chief]

you could be right about recoup, but really in the situation where you're getting will + recoup + your other two (lotus and ~ possibly) are you doing much better than will + snapcaster + tinker + time walk? Or if you really need Yawgwin does a tutor pile not do fine?

Sure you don't run Regrowth but Recoup as a whole is not so great of a card and just much worse than Snapcaster outside piles.

Gifts piles are hard to discuss in a vacuum because what you can do is so dependent on what you've drawn already. However, as I said, I don't think any Gifts set up that can't guarantee that you cast Will is reasonable to play over one that can (because Will is the one thing that can win you almost any game when you get it to resolve no matter how far behind you are) and all of those force you to have at least one mediocre card in your deck (Regrowth, Noxious Revival, Recoup, probably others). With that being the case, I'd rather have the one that allows for the most busted Gifts piles available.
For example, Recoup, Will, Lotus, Mana Crypt or some minor variation of this pile (Lotus Petal/Academy) often is a really easy way to turn a medium-stocked graveyard into a straight Tendrils win (a way to find the Tendrils and the Chain of Vapor is usually enough at that point assuming an in-play Mox or two) or at least an overwhelming advantage Will, because you're paying effectively zero mana for the Will compared to your available mana pre-Gifts (they have to give you Recoup plus Mana Crypt or Recoup plus Will for you to just break even on mana because everything else means your Will actually produces mana).