5c Gifts Rock, a new take

Mod_Counter · Joined: 03 Aug 2008 Posts: 26

After Ive been messing around with several Gifts Rock versions over the last months, I finally build a version I feel very good about.

I really liked the Groves/Punishing Fire combo Kibler played in his Zoo version to have the edge against decks that rely on "small" creatures like Zoo, Doran or Faries and wanted to try to build the combo into a Gifts Rock deck, and this is what I ended up with after some playtesting:

Lands (26)
Fetch Lands:
4 Arid Mesa
4 Misty Rainforest
Normal Lands:
2 Forest
2 Plains
2 Sacred Foundry
1 Temple Garden
1 Stomping Ground
1 Steam Vents
Utility Lands:
4 Grove of the Burnwillows
1 Ghost Quarter
1 Academy Ruins
1 Horizon Canopy
1 Oran-Rief, the Vastwood
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth

Creatures (16)
4 Noble Hierarch
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Knight of the Reliquary
4 Kitchen Finks

other Spells (1 Cool

4 Path to Exile
4 Punishing Fire
4 Gifts Ungiven
2 Umezawa's Jitte
1 Raven's Crime
1 Worm Harvest
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Life from the Loam

Sideboard (15)
4 Meddling Mage
4 Tormod's Crypt
3 Ghost Quarter
2 Ancient Grudge
2 Engineered Explosives

The gameplan of this deck varies, it depends on the deck your opponent is playing, but mainly you want to resolve a Gifts Ungiven to search up little combos that create an absurd card advantage and to find the right answers or threads.

I will now explain my card Choices and synergies between the different cards in the deck:

The Creatures:
I wanted to run as many creatures as possible in the deck to be able to put some early pressure on control and combo decks and to force a window to cast Gifts Ungiven through their counter spells.
Against Zoo or Doran I like to oppose their creatures with my own creatures, I believe there is no better defense against creatures than other creatures.
As additional reason I wanted to be able to play Jitte, which is just sick once it got counters on it.

Knight of the Reliquary:
is probably the most important creature, its not only a very good threat, it helps finding exactly the utility land you need for the respective situation.

Noble Hierarch:
Just an insane 1 Drop for this deck, it is a great mana fixer, which is very important and it helps accelerating you into turn 2 Finks or Knight or even better turn 3 Gifts. And it can carry a Jitte if u need it to due to exalted.

Tarmogoyf and Kitchen Finks:
I think they explain themselves.

The Combos and Spells:

Punishing Fire + Groves of the Brunwillows:
As i said, its just such a good combo against creature based decks and nothing stops it but a Chalice for 2 or well timed GY hate. (which should not happen if you are careful)
And the cards are good on their own, Punishing Fire kills Gaddock Teegs, Vendilion Cliques, Meddling Mages, Dark Confidants etc... and Grove is a very good land on its own.
Thats the reason i chose this combo over the Thopter Foundry/Sword Combo, because these cards dont do anything on their own...

Raven's Crime + Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth + Life from the Loam:
Raven's Crime just kicks ass against every control deck, once you resolve Gifts and Tutor this Package early in the game you just win.
It can also be nice against Combo decks like Dark Depths and Hypergenesis if u can stall them out long enough. Only Chalice for 1 stops this.

Worm Harvest + Life from the Loam:
Its your plan for the late game after the attrition war is over.

Engineered Explosives + Academy Ruins + Life from the Loam:
Your Answer for anything, since you have acess to all 5 colours, you are able to kill most threads in every deck expect Hypergenesis and Marit Lage tokens. The only real Problems are Pithing Needles.

Path to Exile, Gifts Ungiven, Umezawa's Jitte:
There is not much to explain about those cards, they speak for themselves =)

Lands:

Ghost Quarter:
Your Life ensurance against Emeria, the Sky Ruin and especially Dark Dephts, also gets rid of Academy Ruins and Manlands.

Horizon Canopy:
Provides good Manafixing and the cantrip ability works nice with Knights, Loam and Worm Harvests.

Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth:
Enables the Raven's Crime package, provides the 5th colour for Explosives and helps a lot to play Worm Harvest.

Oran-Rief, the Vastwood:
It has a good synergy with Kitchen Finks, if your opponent cant deal with your Finks via Path to Exile or something like that, it just happenes to return and return and return...
It also makes your freshly made Worm Tokens into 2/2 Bodies, wich can be pretty relevant.
Although the card is very situational and only helps in like 1 of 5 games, it won me too much games to put it out, sometimes its enough that your Tarmogoyf is just a little bit bigger than your opponents is. Wink

The Sideboard:

Meddling Mages:
They kick ass against Hypergenesis, Dredge, Scapeshift and Roflthopter-combo

Ghost Quarter:
Helps to stop Dark Depths and also gets boarded in vs Hypergenesis

Tormod's Crypt:
Insane vs Dredge and I like to board 1 or 2 in against other decks that rely on the GY as well, like Roflthopter-combo, some Death Cloud versions or other Gifts Decks, since they can be searched out with Gifts + Life from the Loam and Academy Ruins.

Acient Grudge:
Good against Affinity, Tezzerator + Dark Dephts(Chalice and Needle) some Faerie versions with Shackles and Roflthopter-combo.

Additional Engineered Explosives:
I board 2 in against Tezzerator and Dark Depths to get rid of Chalices and Pithing Needles (if they name cards like Ghost Quarter) and 1 against agressive decks in exchange for Raven's Crime, which does nothing against them. Can be used against Roflthopter-Combo, I used to put them in G3 after they saw the Meddling Mages to have other options to deal with the combo.

Matchups:

I did like 30 games against a various number of decks and I just say how I feel like the Matchups are, I dont claim the predictions to be right.

"Good" MUs (I say good here but its only like 55/45 something, nothing outstanding):
Faeries:
Punishing Fire and Raven's Crime rape this deck, but its sometimes hard to get through the counterspells, Vendilion Clique and Shackles are annoying too
Zoo:
Well, they can of course be faster than you, but you should be able to hold them off long enough until they run out of gas.
Dark Depths:
You got so many answers against it, its hard for them to combo out, especcialy after sideboarding, but its still far from impossible for them to win.
Dredge without Leyline:
you are slightly favoured since you have many ways to kill their and your creatures to keep the bridges removed from game, jitte is very good here, g1 is still bad but not unwinnable. After SB crypts and mages just rape them.

Bad MUs:
Doran:
They are just way more effective than you are: hand disruption to get rid of gifts and knights, better creatures, good removal.
Tezzerator: They shut you down with Needles and Chalices and Cliques, after SB it gets better, but its still very hard.

Very Bad MUs:
Hypergenesis:
Ouch, they often just rape you. g1 you lose and after SB you have to hope to stripe mine them out of mana with ghost quarters and have your meddling mages ready.
Dredge with Leyline:
Gifts are Dead, no Crypt or explosives recursion with academy ruins, no punishing fire... its awkward.

Something about Graveyard hate:
If your opponents play any Graveyard hate it gets very tricky what to choose with your gifts and sometimes they manage to remove your key cards from the GY, but dont surrender too quickly in the shape of a tormod's crypt, you still have many good cards that work without the GY, like the creatures and the jitte.

Well, im done, I would really enjoy some feedback, even if you didnt read all the stuff i wrote down here, just post your thoughts about how to improve this deck and what you think of it,
Im willing to dicuss and I want to discuss some card choices, because Im still not sure about some cards.

Spyx · Joined: 31 Oct 2004 Posts: 1009

1 eternal witness?

clayparson · Joined: 04 Sep 2004 Posts: 54

I've been toying around with a handful of different Gifts decks, so here's my take:

Feel like you may be playing too many aggressive cards. Knight of the Reliquary, Hierarch, and Jitte all seem unnecessary. Also, Kitchen Finks is a card that really shines in aggro match-ups, and doesn't matter against combo or many other control decks; thus i think it would be best used in sideboard, if at all considering how awesome you should be against aggro thanks to EE and P-Fire/Willows.

If you do take my advice and push towards less aggressive, play wrath effects. Gifts piling WoG, DoJ, and Firespout/Damnation/Hallowed Burial/EE is a really great option to have.

In general i think you could use a more diverse set of strategies. You're playing Academy Ruins but your only real target is EE (and Jitte, i guess.) Maindeck a Chalice, Crypt, or Relic.

Your mana base could be better, but that will come with time.

I'd recommend checking out Chapin/Nassif/Heezy's list and Yasooka's list from Pt: Austin. Both decks have some innovative ideas on how to use Gifts in the format.

gypsy · Joined: 15 Jun 2007 Posts: 1118

how is this rock in anyway

darkwizard42 · Joined: 02 Sep 2005 Posts: 83

It takes the hand disruption and creature control of Rock and packs some efficient aggro

Its similar in its goals as this Gifts Rock deck

http://www.deckcheck.net/deck.php?id=12348

rentintin3 · Joined: 11 Dec 2008 Posts: 62

Ok I like gifts right now. But you for sure lose to dredge I don't know who is playing dredge against you but I think it might be a walk for them
I realy like oran-reif its the shit with Haverest and finks.,

I would think your matchup vs Hyper wouldn'tbe that bad? Alot of people don't play a basic. Also mage is good vs them. Idk if anyone else think spellpierce isn't the sickest cards ever? I love peirce it stop duress on the play a opps gifts. Its like a weird super force spike
the only really revalant card that it doesn't hit is goyf...

Mod_Counter · Joined: 03 Aug 2008 Posts: 26

Thx for the reactions, i will work through them now:

@Spyx: I dont like Witness in the Deck, since you dont have any important cards to get out of the GY with it when you cast Gifts, once you got Life from the loam you can get all important cards out of your graveyard anyway.
And its just not as good as a Kitchen Finks or Knight in your starting hand to put pressure on conrol decks or to serve as defender against zoo.

@clyparson:
I started building this deck with a Wrath Package consisting Wrath, Day of Judgement, Firespout and EE and a more diverse strategy set, for example playing Ancient Grudge, Clearwater Goblet, Crypt, Oblivion Ring, Witness and Reclaim.

But I decided to remove most of the 1 ofs as they often just filled up my hand doing nothing against certain decks and i found myself never really searching up those packages with Gifts, because i would rather get one of the Loam packages instead, that are mentioned in my first post.

For example, the Wrath package would be useful against decks like Zoo or Doran, but the cards are just bad against all kinds of control or combo decks. And Wrath is a 4cc card that requires 2 white mana to cast, so its a real slow card and is often not enough to stop zoo from winning.

And about the strategy diversity, i again found myself only searching up Gift packages with Worm Harvest, Ravens Crine, EE or Crypt to deal with certain threads.

I then decided to play cards, that are good against EVERY deck, and cards that are good against every deck are threads, aka fast and strong creatures.

So i got many independent cards in the deck that all work together very well but can also win a game on their own, which is important against GY hate as well, you got far more win conditions apart from Worm Harvest.

Also the Thread diversity helps to confuse your opponents and make their SB decisions much harder.
They often dont know what to prepare for when they see a bunch of strong creatures and a Gitfs Ungiven in one Deck.

Chalice is your biggest enemy, it stops ravens crime for 1 and punishing fire for 2, so you never want to play it on your own, and relic removes your own GY as well, which is... dumb.^^

You are right when you say the mana base is kinda tricky, do you have any advice on how to improve it?

And where to find the Decks of Nassif, Chapin and Herbeholtz? They didnt make it Day 2, so their decks are not on the MTG Homepage...

Thanks for your feedback, I hope you see that I already tested your suggenstions before and that my arguments are comprehensible. =)

@darkwizard42: thanks =)

@rentintin3: Spell Pierce will not find its way in this deck, as i only got a Steam Vents as a Turn 1 blue mana source.
But I like the card too, my Faeries deck run 3 in SB against Duress like Cards or control Mirrors.

Im glad you like the Deck, maybe you can build a version that can reliably cast spell pierce Turn 1 =)