MTG Salvation

Here are some cards from MH1 and M20 that I think might be worth discussing/ testing:

Kaya's Guile its alot like KoA in that it's a swiss army knife for various uses- lifegain for burn, edict for boggles, gravehate that doesn't touch our grave and can make a token for blocking or edicts at us. I don't think we should consider the entwine cost in evaluating it because if we're alive with 6 mana we are already ahead in the game.

Echo of Eons - It could be a filler in gift piles where if they bin it we can reset hands and graves but at 6 mana to cast normal I can only see this as a pile filler or pitched to brutality/search

Mind Rake - I wonder if the overload (1b) is worth considering, our deck is really good at discarding its own cards for later use and many lists use Lotv so this would be like 2 turns at once (though lotv is strictly better) blind discard is always worse than targeted discard though.

Watcher for Tomorrow - this card is interesting. Its like anticipate or augur of bolas but it digs deeper and can get lands or other cards as needed. I have felt our deck is prone to bad draws and lacking of ways of digging through the deck effectively

Canopy Lands - these obviously are powerful and I wonder how many if any we can fit in our already greedy manabase.

Hall of Heliod's Generosity - like academy ruins but currently I don't think there is a strong enough lock that can be set up off a t4 gifts into t5. EOT what piles did you test with?

Nether Spirit - depending on the build I could see this as a one of as it's a recursive threat/blocker and we normally don't have any creatures in our grave unless we're reanimating.

Shatter Assumptions - wonder if this is worth looking at as a sb card when you have lots of tron, eldrazi and artifact prison. Making them discard all their action could be powerful. I don't think there is currently a deck that is primarily multi colored spells to hit with it.

Are we thinking something like


Or are we thinking of going red?

I'm not going to lie Red does seem to have useful cards in Looting, Kcommand and Seasoned. But if we go to a 5th color splash I think bop or my preferred caryatid would be required to help with mana. Also once we hit 5c it might be worth looking at a bring to light or 2 in the 75. I can vouch that seasoned will more than likely be a strong part of any 5c version as my experience with champion of wits has shown that drawing and discarding part/whole unburial is amazing and I can only imagine getting 2 1/1's out of the deal on top of it. Im not sure of a 60/75 yet if we go 5c but I'll look into a theoretical list.

Unearth seems like an oversight in my MH1 listing.

In my example I actually am suggesting to drop green from the deck completely. Allow us to play basically a Mardu with some light blue splash for utility. I played a few matches with thy deck and I made some changes to my list above. I'm rather enjoying this actually


The deck can be a little slow and grumbling but I increased the looting to 4x since it's the only card selection I have really outside of some Jace activations. Getting the Sun Titan online with Fulminator is so savage against decks like Tron, Jund, or UWx. Hopefully I have enough raw removal to deal with fast aggro though. I need to play more matches

Any thought on testing Izzet Charm in your list? Instant speed looting that can also shock creatures or spell pierce sounds like it might be a nice inclusion in the list though it does up the number of blue spells and need for blue mana.

With the new mulligan starting today. I decided to rework my build some. I think we heavily benefit from this change as our deck mulligan-ed pretty badly. As there was always a chance that a mulligan would hit Iona etc and we would effectively go down 2 cards on that mulligan.

According to a CFB article the decks that can assemble a winning hand with 4 cards will now be able to have that opener 70% of the time (previous 45%).

So I see there are a few ways to handle this change:

1. Try to develop a deck with a solid 4 card opener that can be aggressively mulliganed to for wins [(2 lands ramp, Gifts) Then you just need to draw a land in the first few draws]
2. Prey on the decks abusing the optimal 4 card openers with targeted discard as discard gets better against their smaller and more focused hands.
3. Some mixture of 1 and 2 that costs us slots for removal or utility.


With that said the article points to the biggest gains under this mulligan will be Dredge and Tron. In my experience these are our worst match-ups.

I decided to try to work the build on Option 3. Ramp and Discard. So the ideal hand for this deck is 5 cards {1 discard (preferably IOK) 1 Ramp, 2 lands, Gifts.} and a solid hand is the same minus discard. So the sequence would be t1 discard, T2 ramp, T3 gifts, t4 unbury/wrath.

The only change I haven't been able to work in this list is I would love to follow the meta and have some amount of main-deck grave hate. I think 2 Nihil Spellbomb is the best option but I'm not sure what to cut. I don't want to cut on souls. Nor do I want to cut on Gifts as I need the 4of to get the 70% mull rate.


Article in question: https://bit.ly/30yhAPt

Just finish another FNM (20 players) - 3-1 record 6th place finish.

Jund Deathshadow Win 2 1
Local player homebrew variant of Shadow. Used rythm of the wilds to steal game 2. Game 3 I locked him under worship and beat him with soul tokens.

WB soul sisters Loss 0 2
He had hand disurption and was able to back it up with bitter blossom tokens game 2 he pumped his team with his splash for gavony township.

Jund Delierum Win 2 1
Gravehate was key as this deck is nowhere near as powerful without delirium for traverse and flayer. Game 1 got a concession when named on black against a single goyf. Game 3 gravehate plus souls beat down.

Esper Deathshadow Win 2 1
Game 1 we go long, he thoughtsiezed my Iona and I top-decked the unburial for the win. Game 2 he disrupts my hand and small token beats for the win, but extirpate allowed me to see his board was full of gravehate but only t3ferie could do anything with a resolved worship. So game 3 I abandoned the unburial plan for the worship lock. Was able to assemble the lock with 2 caryatids. From there I used the flip search to find my 3 copies of brutality to burn him out in the final turns.


Overall thoughts:
The deck design change of trimming back on spot removal and utility slots for discard worked extremely well. I don't think I'll fit in the usual 4/2 split with thoughtseize as brutality allows alot of versatility and utility for bad draws. The steve's and Nihil spellbomb work to fuel the grave for search to azcanta. I'm not sure if steve will stay in the deck for the long haul as I feel a champion of wits for its late game ability would be useful and worship might be worth the main. Worship is amazing at least in my meta and after realizing that creeping chill doesn't drain but deals the damage it becomes an even better sb card.I'm honestly considering it as a main deck card to get some game 1 'gotcha' wins as most decks don't have enchantment removal until sb.

I am really considering replacing the steves with one of the 2 sb locks, crime/loam or noxious/worship. This is the current meta according to MTG top 8 over the entirety of 2019. So the question becomes which is the better lock for the field. Control and Urza would be crime/loam but the other's don't have much in the way of game 1 outs to worship.

Dredge 8 %
Humans 7 %
UW Control 7 %
UrzaTron 7 %
Red Deck Wins 6 %
Death's Shadow 4 %

Nice, congrats on the result.
No longer running the single Champion of Wits?

Didn't run him last night though I'm already really considering dropping the 2 Steve's so he might make it back in somewhere in the 75. Last night's build wanted 6 ramp and 6 discard to maximize the odds of t1 discard t2 ramp t3 gifts

Hi Guys,

I really like this 4C Gifts deck. Does anyone have a deck list that I can start off with, and then customise after I play with the deck? Also, what cards would you guys consider to be the 'flex slots'?

The deck is extremely flexible. You just need to have some strong early game interaction so you can force them into late game where you can lock them out with a Gifts. The only "core" of the deck is as follows:


The other colors and overall play style of the deck is really up to you. Obviously Esper colors are required, but you can splash green, red, both, etc. I like playing basically BGx with a light blue and white splash for the Gifts package. But my recent list I've been working on is Mardu with a blue splash. See post #3980 above

Thanks for the reply! I'm going to start by using trixster87's decklist (http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/10-11-18-NJm-4c-gifts/), and then modify it to suit my local meta. I'm going to the modern GP Birmingham in August, so if the deck performs better than my pet deck (Zombie Loam) I'll take it to the GP


Also, how do you guys combat tron? It seems to be on the rise now that Hogaak has gotten a bit worse and it doesn't look like a great match up for 4C Gifts

Against Tron - You need discard spells in your opening hand, preferably Thoughtseize. Then you need to gifts for this pile as soon as possible;

• Sun Titan
  
• Unburial Rites
  
• Fulminator Mage
  
• Unearth

Alternatively this other pile is great against them:

• Surgical Extraction
  
• Unearth
  
• Snapcaster Mage
  
• Fulminator Mage

Which of these piles to go for will depend on the game state. If you have the mana to cast Unburial from hand, then I would go for the first pile as it allows repeatable land destruction. The second pile is less mana intensive and assures you will lobotomize a tron land from their deck.

For my money, I would always play a single Fulminator in the main deck just because it's so good against Tron and UWx. Both decks can be very problematic for Gifts so I like to have an option in game one.

I stopped using Tappedout a few months ago - here is my newest list it runs some discard with the ramp.
https://archidekt.com/decks/54404#4C_Gifts

The flex slots are the Nihil spellbomb and Steves in the main. bane slayer, loam/crime the brutality and ruined halo and the second ego in the board.

If you look through the posts you'll see I've tried some spice but of that a single champion of wits worked the best in the main. I've been considering testing bring to light bring to light in the board.

Edit: question answered in deck description

Forgot to answer the Tron Question:
Tron is by far our worst matchup. Neither of the unburial locks do anything against their deck. Barring major changes Game 1 is a wash, you're best served playing to figure out what flavor they are on and scooping to board and hope to get g2 and 3.

There are a few piles that my version can make in the board to help combat tron but if you think you'll see alot of tron it might be worth tossing in a terrastadon to unburial so you can blow up their lands.

Crumble to Dust
Snapcaster Mage + Noxious Revival + Ghost Quarter | Field of Ruin|assassin's trophy + Extirpate/surgical
Allows you to destroy a nonbasic land and get rid of all copies of it not in play, just like Crumble to Dust .

Loam/Crime Package
Raven's Crime + Life from the Loam + Ghost Quarter + Value Card
From the board you can bring in Loam and Crime to combat control by stripping their hand so they can’t counter your removal. You can also grab Bojuka Bog to arrange a grave lockout by playing Bojuka Bog every other turn as you must Ghost Quarter your own bog and use loam to get it back.

These piles work on top of damping sphere and unmoored ego. I also think Thrunn might be a sleeper in this matchup- as their outs are low (Ugin and the stray all is dust) just like in uw control matchups. They can put out big creatures to block with but our removal should be enough to tempo through it.

I made a new primer on MTGNexus-
https://www.mtgnexus.com/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=733

[Posting here and on the Nexus thread]
So, here is a list that I am trying to put together/attempt: https://archidekt.com/decks/148666#4C_Gifts_"Singleton"

It is a take on trixster87's list, but taken in a more singleton direction. Since this would just be for casual FNMs and MF side events, and because I am largely a Commander and Canadian Highlander player with a singleton collection, it just makes more sense for me to build in this type of direction. The duplicates are cards that I already own multiple copies of. I would love to get some feedback and some possible alternatives for the less powerful choices I made.

Sideboard is still a work in progress since I need to get a mainboard to play before a sideboard.

It's showing as an empty deck - make sure it's not marked as private in the settings of the deck.

Weird. My deck is... gone? Maybe I didn't save it right. I will update it this evening.