☣ Four Color I Don't Know What I'm Doing ☣
Modern Competitive Control Gifts Ungiven GWUB Loam Midrange Reanimator
Land (25)
-
1x
Academy Ruins
- 1x Breeding Pool
-
1x
Celestial Colonnade
-
1x
Forest
-
1x
Ghost Quarter
-
1x
Godless Shrine
-
1x
Hallowed Fountain
-
1x
Island
-
1x
Lumbering Falls
-
1x
Marsh Flats
- 2x Misty Rainforest
-
1x
Overgrown Tomb
-
1x
Plains
- 1x Polluted Delta
-
1x
Polluted Delta
-
1x
Polluted Delta
-
1x
Swamp
-
1x
Tectonic Edge
- 1x Temple Garden
-
1x
Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
-
2x
Verdant Catacombs
- 1x Verdant Catacombs
-
1x
Watery Grave
Sorcery (11)
- 1x Damnation
- 2x Inquisition of Kozilek
-
1x
Life from the Loam
-
2x
Lingering Souls
- 1x Maelstrom Pulse
-
1x
Painful Truths
-
1x
Raven's Crime
-
1x
Thoughtseize
-
1x
Unburial Rites
Artifact (2)
Planeswalker (3)
Sideboard
Creature (3)
Enchantment (3)
Instant (2)
Sorcery (5)
Welcome to my take on 4C Gifts!
My list is still very much similar to slovakattack's list which I've used as a base reference, however I'm slowly shaping it more to fit my local meta bit by bit.
On first glance, this deck legitimately probably looks like I have no idea what I'm doing, but I promise after the primer you'll get it.
Gifts is an archetype that has earned its name from the namesake card that it runs, Gifts Ungiven , and the name of the game with the deck is recursion and utilizing the graveyard as an extension of the hand. How does the deck do this? Well simply stated, the deck uses cards that interact neatly with graveyard usage such as Snapcaster Mage , Life from the Loam , and even Raven's Crime to get around the fact that Gifts Ungiven throws some of the cards we search for into the graveyard.
So now that we understand that Gifts and its very core is a value control deck, how does it win? Well, there are a couple basic packages that Gifts plays that are designed to either shut out the opponent, create a win condition, or even do both. The common packages are as follows:
1 - The "Combo Package": Iona, Shield of Emeria + Unburial Rites or Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite + Unburial Rites . Basically, Gifts Ungiven reads that we can search for "up to four cards of different names" but that our opponent has to pick two that go to the graveyard. This is often referred as the "Double Entomb " effect and is very efficient at cheating large creatures into play. Iona, Shield of Emeria sometimes just outright wins games if they don't have much on board and you can shut them out of removal with the color you pick, and Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite kills almost every creature in modern, and those that don't die to it can't swing into it profitably for the most part.
2 - The "Loam Package": Life From the Loam + Raven's Crime + Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth + Ghost Quarter. Recursion is the name of the game in this deck and this is a pretty good example of how it does it. With this package, if you'll notice, it doesn't matter how they split the piles you will have access to all of these cards. The functionality of this package focuses on two combos that can do a very good job shutting an opponent out of longer games, Life from the Loam + Raven's Crime to eat their hand and Ghost Quarter + Life from the Loam to eat up their mana and eventually get to a Strip Mine effect since most decks don't run a ton of basic lands. The Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth is for the Raven's Crime lock as it allows us to have a plethora of black mana to use.
3 - The "Artifact Package": Life From the Loam + Academy Ruins + Batterskull + Engineered Explosives. Much like the previous package, this one can create a pseudo lock out for the opponent. This time it is done via Academy Ruins + Engineered Explosives . This is an interesting package to grab because it also gives us a hard to permanently remove win condition as well in Academy Ruins + Batterskull . The Life from the Loam is included in this package to simple ensure we get the Academy Ruins back.
Creatures:
Sylvan Caryatid
: This card while seemingly derpy and terrible is actually amazing and incredible for the deck.
Birds of Paradise
and a body that blocks
Goblin Guide
s all day long that can't be
Lightning Bolt
ed is sometimes what we need to stabilize as well as color fix without having the crack fetches into untapped shocks too often.
Jace, Vryn's Prodigy : Previously Snapcaster Mage 's slot, Jace is our new king of recursion at the two drop slot. His loot ability allows us often to just pseudo draw a card, since or yard is often just an extension of the hand with things like Life from the Loam and Lingering Souls . Then once flipped he can help keep creatures pinned down, or buy back a spell out of the yard to kill your opponent's stuff. Jace just oozes value for this deck.
Thragtusk : He's back in. Thraggy is just very affordale to cast color-wise, and is incredibly hard to one-for-one outside of having him hit by Thoughtseize d or hit by counter magic.
Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite : Another Unburial Rites target. I often go for her when playing against aggro as a sort of instant wrath effect that doesn't die to anything besides hard removal like Path to Exile or Terminate .
Iona, Shield of Emeria : One of my Unburial Rites targets, usually gone for to shut and opponent off of a color and create a very hard to remove threat.
The Non-Creature Spells:
Engineered Explosives : What would a control deck without wrath effects be? A bad one. I particularly enjoy Explosives in this deck due to the ability to fetch into it with the artifact package as well as its variability. With the use of Sylvan Caryatids this can theoretically go up to CMC 5 or even just go down for zero. Either way I'm probably nuking most of the important things.
Slaughter Pact : A very efficient kill spill that I can cast when I'm tapped out. Always nice against Twin to fake them out and get them when they tap out for the combo.
Inquisition of Kozilek : Hand disruption is big in modern, and especially to this deck. Since the deck doesn't run counterspells we rely on being able to pick apart their hand and removing what we don't to get us there.
Thoughtseize : Similar reasoning to IoK, sometimes though you need to be able to take a spell with a higher CMC like a Splinter Twin .
Raven's Crime : Hand disruption on a stick almost with the use of Life from the Loam combo.
Path to Exile : 1 CMC removal is amazing, and the fact that it's basically unconditional makes it all too worth it to run these.
Abrupt Decay : Removal that kills almost all of the things in the format while being uncounterable is pretty good I hear.
Life from the Loam : A fairly key part of the deck. It enables a couple of soft locks that the deck employs while also simply allowing us to keep hitting our lands on time.
Painful Truths : With the sudden lack of Burn in my local meta, this has become a much, much more viable spell in the deck. Being able to refill on gas against decks like Twin and / Eldrazi is too good to not have this right in my opinion.
Maelstrom Pulse : A good "catch all" answer to most things, often very funny against B/W Tokens as a pseudo board wipe.
Lingering Souls : Hands down one of the best spells in modern right now. Paying for a grand total of 4 flying 1/1s can sometimes just win the game on its own. Has all sorts of value when flipped dredging Life from the Loam or when discarding cards to LoTV
Liliana of the Veil : Lili is kind of a big lynch pin for the deck. In a deck where the name of the game is graveyard based recursion, discarding cards really isn't a big deal for us, not necessarily so for our opponent though. Her -2 also is incredibly helpful against Bogles and the rouge Geist of Saint Traft .
Damnation : Another one-of wrath effect with no restrictions this time. We also pick this over Wrath of God in the board since we're working towards double black on turn three for LoTV anyways and this makes it easier on our mana to cast it early if need be.
Gifts Ungiven : The card that very deck hinges upon. Can be cast for simply value or to set up combos or soft locks, which makes it an absolute four-of and you shouldn't be running any less in Gifts. Honestly I think this is one of the most thought intensive cards in magic and my personal favorite.
Unburial Rites : A one-of that we run purely for the Double Entomb Package.
Batterskull : A win condition with lifelink attached that's hard to remove? Sure, that seems pretty good.
The Lands:
The mana base is a little odd at first glance, as is often the case when you’re talking about a four color deck or any deck that plays Life from the Loam .
Verdant Catacombs : Since the deck is primarily Abzan splash for six cards, the core fetches need to be on those colors. Hence three copies.
Polluted Delta : With the splash being fairly critical to the deck blue fetches help immensely, and the majority of our spells needing black makes this another 3 copies.
Misty Rainforest : Green is still a large piece of the pie, but black sources are more important, 2 copies.
Marsh Flats : A one off way to find a basic white source, and since black is our most important color to fetch we’re picking this one over Windswept Heath or Flooded Strand .
Then we have one of each shock that doesn’t tap for since the deck requires a specific timing of colors that changes with almost every game.
One of each basic land to respect Path to Exile , Blood Moon and aggressive decks.
Lumbering Falls : The go to man land in the truly long game matches. Due to the inability to deal with a hexproof creature outside of blocking it often becomes an issue for decks like Twin and B/G/x.
Celestial Colonnade : Classical win condition for many control decks, and it certainly gets there when games go longer and we just need to hit a couple times and hold up Path to Exile .
Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth : With black being our primary color, this land is a bit of a no brainer. It even makes fetches usable after I run out of fetch targets or no longer want to take life.
Academy Ruins : Critical to lock out strategies with Engineered Explosives and recurring a win condition in Batterskull in the Gifts “Artifact” package.
Ghost Quarter : Our most easily usable way to handle utility lands for fairly little investment.
Tectonic Edge : Another way to handle utility lands that is fetchable off Gifts alongside the Ghost Quarter .
The Sideboard:
So that was a look into the 60, so let's delve into the 15.
Engineered Explosives : An extra for the decks that it is incredibly efficient against such as Affinity, Abzan and Tokens.
Negate : Solid against combo and control shells, can sometimes just protect a Gifts going off or trying to Unburial Rites into a win.
Lingering Souls : An extra copy against aggro decks and control to simply be able to spew more bodies to block or provide threats.
Timely Reinforcements : For burn and aggressive decks. It'll hard to not meet the requirements to get creatures to block AND the life from this spells against those kinds of decks.
Leyline of the Void : For other yard based strategies like Loam Pox, or particularly for Grishoalbrand.
Wrath of God : An extra wrath effect for creature heavy strategies. We play this over another Damnation to help with Gifts Ungiven requiring four cards of different names so we can force a wrath effect to go off if we need to.
Linvala, Keeper of Silence : Good against Twin and Scavenging Ooze s to prevent the former from comboing and the latter from eating the entire graveyard.
Ob Nixilis Reignited : Solid option to bring in against more midrange shells and Twin. I like Murder and Think Twice on a stick.
Sigarda, Host of Herons : B/G/x midrange decks simply can't touch this. It even just simply makes their LoTV's terrible against me for the most part.
Sun Titan : Solid beater to bring in against control shells since he can bring back Liliana of the Veil s as well as Ghost Quarter s when he comes into play or attacks.
I hope you enjoyed reading up on the deck, I'm very proud of it and as you guys can see I'm working towards foiling it out. So I apologize for the awkward way in which cards are laid out due to differing numbers in foils and non-foils. Also, if you like the deck don't forget to clickity-clack the upvote button!
Also, if you liked this deck you can check out the other ones I play below!
Modern:
deck-large:elf-company-overrun
EDH:
☣ And then, she just stormed off! ☣
Commander / EDH
SCORE: 68 | 35 COMMENTS | 9464 VIEWS | IN 27 FOLDERS
ⓛⓞⓐⓓⓘⓝⓖ ⓘⓝ ⓟⓡⓞⓖⓡⓔⓢⓢ … ¦ ⓅⓇⓄⒼⓇⒺⓈⓈ ⒸⓄⓂⓅⓁⒺⒶⓉⒺⒹ
Commander / EDH
SCORE: 84 | 81 COMMENTS | 13416 VIEWS | IN 39 FOLDERS
( Ezuri, Claw of Progress , Title comes out weird.)
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| Top Ranked |
|
| Date added | 9 years |
| Last updated | 3 years |
| Key combos | |
| Legality | This deck is Modern legal. |
| Rarity (main - side) | 16 - 4 Mythic Rares 33 - 5 Rares 6 - 4 Uncommons 1 - 2 Commons |
| Cards | 60 |
| Avg. CMC | 2.77 |
| Tokens | Beast 3/3 G, Emblem Jace, Vryn's Prodigy, Emblem Ob Nixilis Reignited, Phyrexian Germ 0/0 B, Soldier 1/1 W, Spirit 1/1 W |
| Folders | Modern Ideas, too expensive, (B) Other Players' Modern Decks, Potential Modern Builds, Expensive but Good decks , Disgustingly good, Interesting, Cool Decks, D, Modern |
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