At Grand Prix: Philadelphia, Osyp Lebedowicz came up to me and boasted of the discovery of a new draw engine in Standard – one that could potentially obsolete Mono-Blue Control as the best deck in the format. I was, of course, skeptical… But curious. Osyp posited that the raw volume of cards drawn via the new engine would allow that deck to get so far ahead of Mono-Blue that Jushi Apprentices couldn’t keep up. I questioned whether the engine had the ability to resist a Wildfire strategy, to which Osyp chuckled. He would love to put out some Wildfires with this strategy.
You see, Osyp didn’t have a full deck — he had only an engine… But it was a strong idea. His engine: Trade Routes and Life from the Loam.
With input from my young apprentice and hull Josh Ravitz, we put together a deck using Osyp’s engine. In the first full night of MODO brawling, I faced my customary one-million Flores Blue opponents, mingled with some (misguided) aggro players. The only match I lost was the one where I actually had my Trade Routes in play!
Wild Gifts Alpha
4 Sensei’s Divining Top
1 Ink-Eyes, Servant of Oni
1 Nightmare Void
4 Gifts Ungiven
1 Meloku the Clouded Mirror
2 Trade Routes
1 Grave-Shell Scarab
3 Putrefy
3 Arashi, the Sky Asunder
4 Farseek
3 Life from the Loam
4 Sakura-Tribe Elder
4 Wildfire
1 Boseiju, Who Shelters All
3 Forest
1 Island
1 Minamo, School at Water’s Edge
3 Mountain
1 Oboro, Palace in the Clouds
1 Okina, Temple to the Grandfathers
4 Overgrown Tomb
1 Shinka, the Bloodsoaked Keep
1 Shizo, Death’s Storehouse
1 Swamp
4 Tendo Ice Bridge
3 Watery Grave
At that point I realized that while Osyp’s idea was strong, Life from the Loam was broken in and of itself; Trade Routes was completely unnecessary.
Looking at this deck, it is probably not obvious why, even in its nascent stage, it is so unbelievably powerful. The machinery incorporated into the deck’s warp-nine engine makes the original Gifts/Spice technology seem like a lone caveman trying to extinct the mighty mastodon using only an armful of pebbles. While Wild Gifts Alpha build didn’t have an “infinite” setup with Hana Kami, the flexibility and power of its resolved
Gifts Ungiven consistently generated four or greater turn advantage. This generally put your opponent in an untenable position within two turns.
Consider some of the common Gifts Ungiven sequences that might occur during a game. Keep in mind that these depend on your board position and number of Life from the Loams already accessible via hand or dredge:
The Wasteland Draw
Life from the Loam; Minamo, School at Water’s Edge; Oboro, Palace in the Clouds; Shizo, Death’s Storehouse
This one is pretty simple and may presuppose Boseiju, Who Shelters All access. Basically, you go for Life From the Loam and three legendary lands – ones that the opponent either have in play or have in their deck. You want to wipe his access to mana over the course of one to three turns.
Against Critical Mass, you would substitute Shizo with Okina – the above setup is the anti-Blue configuration. Either way, the goal is to either generate dead draws, or Wasteland the opponent in the short game, while you will always be able to recover with Life from the Loam. You will also be able to set up other elements of your strategy. This Gifts configuration is best when you don’t yet have Wildfire, but you still want to harass the opponent, set up Life from the Loam (interactive) card advantage, and have access to at least one Red source of mana, even if tangentially.
The Mana-Screw Long Game
Boseiju, Who Shelters All; Minamo, School at Water’s Edge; Oboro, Palace in the Clouds; Shizo, Death’s Storehouse
This is similar to the first scenario, except you want Boseiju and are already representing multiple Loams and a Wildfire (though if you had only one Life from the Loam, you would still Gifts for one against a Blue deck). The legendary lands fight in the short term as a semi-bluff – the opponent will likely be scrambling (in vain) for positional resources. Because of that, they are thrown off your Wildfire plan until it’s too late. Come turns 6 to 8, when you plan on actually hitting the Wildfire, you should have Boseiju untapped and be ahead by so much mana that even Jushi Apprentice would not be able to save a Blue mage. I like this setup because it generally leaves a Blue deck with no lands and you with two to three after the resolved Wildfire, which enables a much faster post-Wildfire reload sequence.
The Strategic Long Game
Boseiju, Who Shelters All; Grave-Shell Scarab; Life from the Loam; Nighmare Void
Boseiju can be substituted for something else relevant in the matchup (e.g. Darkblast*) when not facing Blue. This setup is the one best used for winning attrition wars over the course of several turns. This Gifts Ungiven represents a win that has to be made without Wildfire, and is one made by looking ahead several turns to maximize Sensei’s Divining Top – assuming that you already have the tools to cripple the opponent with Wildfire and want to make sure he is behind on all fronts (mana, creatures, and cards).
Note that the tactical sequence subsequent to this Gifts is usually a blind Loam dredge, followed by strategic Top-dredging. You aim to wallop your opponent while digging towards a second Wildfire. Against a truly crippled opponent, you just have Grave-Shell Scarab go for the throat.
The Wildfire Short Game
Mountain; Sacred Foundry*; Shinka, the Bloodsoaked Keep; Tendo Ice Bridge
Remembering that you can’t actually Gifts for Wildfire in this deck, this setup is used to dig for Red sources to fuel a Wildfire you already have (or can float). You can just as easily go for three Red sources and a Life from the Loam, but in some games – especially against beatdown decks – you won’t have time to dredge.
One interesting note: In testing, it was usually right to give the Wild Gifts deck Sacred Foundry and bury Mountain, because then the Gifts player would have to take two damage. Since all the lands were going to disappear immediately via Wildfire, the two damage was the most relevant bit in this sequence from the opposing side.
Against permission decks, it is usually right to Gifts Ungiven for Life from the Loam even if you’ve already got access to one in hand, because if the opponent has Hinder, dredge doesn’t matter. You will often have to play two copies of Loam in a single turn and still dredge once before you get access to an online Boseiju.
More than the backbreaking/long-term planning Gifts Ungiven element of the deck, the Wildfire long game of this deck makes this a different and special deck. The secret of this deck is that between Life from the Loam and Sensei’s Divining Top, the short-term symmetry of Wildfire is erased over the course of several turns. Simultaneously, continuous selection and the ability to dredge lands into the graveyard for Ancestral Recall-like card advantage over the course of three to four turns allows the deck to play up to four Wildfires consistently.
As far as I can tell, this is a frustrating and baffling phenomenon for the opponent – many Magic Online foes have angrily decried my “lucksack” ability to Wildfire multiple times per game. This is due to their inability to understand the deep synergy between dredge (specifically for three) and Sensei’s Divining Top. Life from the Loam allows you to quadruple the number of “safe” looks for Wildfire in the mid-game (after the first Wildfire), while Nightmare Void allows you to manage Wildfire via dredge two — you float Wildfire with the Top until it is profitable to play a your copy. Life’s main purpose (returning lands) gives you the room you need to continuously deploy lands and spells.
While there are many different plausible mid-games with this deck, the one I like to play (in the abstract) is one where you Wildfire the first time, gain short term advantage with Life from the Loam, manage my opponent’s position with Nightmare Void, while dredging past non-Wildfire threats. I play Arashi, knowing that my opponent has one peel to kill it before my second Wildfire kicks in — and this is after my opponent has finally hit three to four lands.
It’s actually easier than it sounds. Just draw Gifts Ungiven and the process is essentially automatic.
Activating Life from the Loam
While the deck has many early plays (Sensei’s Divining Top, Sakura-Tribe Elder, Farseek, and creature removal), it doesn’t have a lot of early-game action. To really come alive, Wild Gifts has to be able to “activate” Life from the Loam. Without a catalyst, Life from the Loam doesn’t do very much – and seeing that it is the primary source of long term card advantage for this deck, that means that the deck can fall behind – mainly due to having too many mana sources and relying primarily on one-for-one answers.
As such, the lifeblood of this deck is to either Gifts Ungiven for Life from the Loam (setting up two or more lands in the graveyard) or to shuffle/Top into a fifth turn Wildfire with Life from the Loam in hand – the major resource advantage of this deck comes after the first bomb has dropped.
Sometimes I get e-mails from players telling me that they lose to White Weenie or Boros Deck Wins with my States-era Mono-Blue Control deck. Usually this is because they don’t understand the radical tactical and time management shifts that you have to make with my deck as the game progresses. These players understand how to play the early game – counter and bounce key threats – but they play the entire game the same way, ultimately falling behind. They think that just because they are drawing an extra card per turn with Jushi Apprentice that they can stay ahead, but this just isn’t true. The Mono-Blue deck has a limited number of hard counters, whereas the Boros deck runs two to three fewer lands and can therefore draw more action through the mid-game, eventually overwhelming the poor (and poorly played) Blue deck.
The Mono-Blue player has to understand that Jushi Apprentice is best served trading with a Savannah Lions (if he can there), and that the match is all about tapping out for Meloku on turn 5 followed by Keiga on turn 6. The Mono-Blue player should then play turtle behind countermagic for the few turns it takes for the game to end. The idea of “total control” – a strategic fallacy if ever there was one in the case of the Mono-Blue deck – is a precarious trap that some players can fall into. It is a trap that not only costs games in the short term, but adversely affects deck decisions down the line.
Understanding the philosophical “activation” limitation of the Wild Gifts deck is one of the first steps players can make while encountering this powerhouse – it will help them avoid the same kind of strategic pitfalls here.
Like Mono-Blue, Wild Gifts plays modally — it literally plays like two or more different decks with multiple game plans. In the early game, Wild Gifts is about relative positional development and finding key cards. Against aggressive decks, that might involve trading one for one until Wildfire (and hopefully Life from the Loam) shows up. Against an old-school Gifts deck, that might mean accelerating past the Spice so that Wildfire can come online before being Cranial Extracted to high heaven.
In the mid-game, Wild Gifts is all about turn economy. It gets a quick burst from the first Life from the Loam, which is a shot in the arm enabling it to play spells – Nighmare Void or threats – until the next Wildfire shows up. Usually, two Wildfires is more than enough to collapse any opponent, but such is far from certain. The deck’s endgame achieved by winning with a fatty – either while protecting it or recurring it, while the opponent desperately tries to rebuild his horrendous game state.
In any case, the removal of Trade Routes allowed me to make the deck more consistent. Notable in the Beta release is the swap of Watery Grave for a basic Forest (the deck’s thirteenth Green source), which is enabled by both the de-emphasis of Blue, and the inclusion of more spot removal.
Wild Gifts Beta
4 Sensei’s Divining Top
1 Darkblast
1 Ink-Eyes, Servant of Oni
1 Nightmare Void
4 Gifts Ungiven
1 Meloku the Clouded Mirror
1 Grave-Shell Scarab
4 Putrefy
3 Arashi, the Sky Asunder
4 Farseek
3 Life from the Loam
4 Sakura-Tribe Elder
4 Wildfire
1 Boseiju, Who Shelters All
4 Forest
1 Island
1 Minamo, School at Water’s Edge
3 Mountain
1 Oboro, Palace in the Clouds
1 Okina, Temple to the Grandfathers
4 Overgrown Tomb
1 Shinka, the Bloodsoaked Keep
1 Shizo, Death’s Storehouse
1 Swamp
4 Tendo Ice Bridge
2 Watery Grave
In the forums of My Own Private PTQ, a level-seven writer lamented my having to playtest against “MODO lowlifes” when working on Chapin Zoo. While Wild Gifts initially did a lot of brawling in the MODO Casual Room, it eventually had the benefit of what I like to call the “Super Secret Playtest Session.” The session itself was not actually a secret, but we did partition the private gaming area at Neutral Ground for a day with the express purpose of breaking Standard. Said session was remarkably professional, with everyone getting to Neutral Ground on time (excepting yours truly, of course), and with everyone showing up with physical copies of the decks assigned for the gauntlet.
Huzzah!
As would any good playtest cadre, we brought multiple identical copies of the Mono-Blue Control deck – but my main goal was to introduce the group to Wild Gifts.
a) Left out the anyway, added a dash for emphasis, added italic for emphasis.
Fear not, Geordie! The only lowlife in the Worlds playtest group was that loveable liar, Osyp Lebedowicz. Our foursome was rounded out by characteristically unhappy U.S. Nationals quarterfinalist and Kuroda-style Red aficionado Josh Ravitz and universally reviled Pro Tour: Los Angeles finalist and Texas mountain man Billy Moreno.
Billy pointed out that Wild Gifts was a little behind against aggro decks in game one, which furthered along the development of the mana base… Thanks to adding Loxodon Hierach to the sideboard.
Creatures (10)
- 4 Sakura-Tribe Elder
- 1 Ink-Eyes, Servant of Oni
- 1 Meloku the Clouded Mirror
- 3 Arashi, the Sky Asunder
- 1 Grave-Shell Scarab
Lands (25)
Spells (25)
- 4 Sensei's Divining Top
- 4 Wildfire
- 4 Gifts Ungiven
- 1 Darkblast
- 4 Farseek
- 3 Life from the Loam
- 1 Nightmare Void
- 4 Putrefy
Sideboard
I had originally intended the Hierarch slots to be four Shocks, but Shock is a lousy card that is played mostly in lousy decks. Pyroclasm serves the same purpose during the same window – even Hypnotic Specter decks — with the potential to sweep up lots of White Weenies. Shock and Loxodon Hierarch would both have come in against aggressive opponents, but the big Elephant battled against the bottom-up problem that this deck can face from a burn opponent. Controlling the board against aggression isn’t so much the problem as the life total of the Wild Gifts player once the board has been brought under control. With no lifegain main deck, Wild Gifts can fall prey to topdecked Char and Lightning Helix — this makes Loxodon Hierarch a better choice than Shock.
This change required (and still requires) additional mana tuning. The Plains is swiched for Boseiju against aggressive decks. The Sacred Foundry (which I asterixed when I discussed the first build of this deck) debuts in this incarnation of Wild Gifts.
Additionally, there’s the issue of the fourth Green source — which, as you may recall, came in the form of a Forest, swapped in for the third Watery Grave. I run it as a Temple Garden, and I believe Osyp has it as a Yavimaya Coast (reinforcing the Blue). He relies on using Sakura-Tribe Elder or Farseek plus Sacred Foundry to cast his Hierarchs.
At the time of this writing, Osyp is 3-3 and Josh is 4-2 at Worlds. I don’t think Billy was able to get all the cards for Wild Gifts’ billion-dollar mana base. I can’t say that I’m overwhelmed by their records, as I thought Wild Gifts would dominate on the numbers. I’ll have to wait for my friends to get back to hear exactly what happened, but Josh did sweep Masashi Oiso two games to none, in what was inexplicably not a Feature Match. Go figure.
The Matchups
Mono-Blue Control
This is the deck Wild Gifts was built to beat. Despite the fact that I handed Josh his chin 6-4 in playtesting last weekend using Mono-Blue Control, once you figure out how to play this matchup, it is almost academic. Osyp avenged Wild Gifts by following Josh with a three-to-one drubbing of yours truly by the young Padawan.
Jushi Apprentice is the most dangerous card to face in this match, and will blow Gifts out roughly one game in four. In the other games, Wild Gifts’ game plan is to basically ignore Counterspells and legendary flyers, pop off Wildfires, and dig up lands while emptying the opponent’s hand.
Sideboarding gets tricky for both decks. Blue gains access to Cranial Extraction for Arashi, which is trump in game one. However, Wild Gifts adds Extractions of its own, alongside a fourth copy of the deadly Arashi.
Boros Deck Wins (Or Generic Aggro)
The cards that give aggro decks an advantage here are pretty arcane. Bathe in Light is potentially game over for you, and Paladin en-Vec requires a high amount of creativity to work around in the first game – you basically have to put Arashi in front of it.
Strategically, Wild Gifts has all the chips. The percentages are close, though, just because aggro decks – especially if on the play, or if Dark Confidant is involved – can go to the dome against this permissionless deck. I’ve won a lot of close games with Wildfire backed by Nightmare Void, but those games tend to be nail-biters that can fall to a topdecked Shock regardless of how well played.
After board, Wild Gifts gains both tactical and strategic advantage over aggressive decks by pulling out clunky card drawing in favor of short-term pressure enders like Loxodon Hierarch and Pyroclasm. I wouldn’t want to play this high stress matchup all day, but if I did, I would go in with a solid plan and the knowledge that I was the favorite over the course of three games.
Eminent Domain
Once you figure this matchup out, it is embarassingly easy – especially considering the opponent is also a Wildfire deck. If you don’t know what’s going on, you can lose the same way Adrian claimed Mono-Blue did to Eminent Domain (it doesn’t)… Which revolves around flawed strategic execution.
Basically, your opponent has no shot in any game where you draw Gifts Ungiven. If your Gifts resolves, you dictate every element of the game and simultaneously invalidate Eminent Domain‘s proactive suppression strategy. Wild Gifts has a superior mana-acceleration plan and Eminent Domain‘s important threats are so slow that it is feasible to just Wildfire the opposing Wildfire deck into oblivion. If you can hit Wildfire before the opponent, you almost always win with followup Life from the Loam.
It is not hard to get ahead on mana because Putrefy kills their mana accelerators, and their kill cards all cost six. Certainly there are some annoying cards from the other side of the table – I’ve even been Shocked to death in games where I didn’t draw Gifts until very late – but you really can’t lose if you draw Gifts early, excepting an Annex-heavy draw on their end.
Eminent Domain‘s main kill card in this matchup is Spectral Searchlight and you can just Gifts for Minamo and Loam. When they go to burn you, just name Blue mana and untap Minamo with itself, preventing any loss of life regardless of how many Spectral Searchlights are in play. You should be able to get Nightmare Void online quickly — certainly faster than they can get one of their few Dragons online. Two or three Wildfires later, you might even boast the legendary “Flawless Victory,” leaving your opponent on with no board and no hand (though staying at twenty life will likely escape you).
After sideboards, Cranial Extraction and Naturalize remove most of their threats, but watch out for Shadow of Doubt – it is one of the few cards Eminent Domain has in its tactical arsenal that can stop your plan. If the opponent can keep you away from Minamo, he can potentially kill you with his inefficient burn engine.
Fungus Fires/Ghazi-Glare
I haven’t personally played against Ghazi-Glare ,but I don’t see how they can win. They have a little acceleration, but no Kodama’s Reach. Glare of Subdual should do exactly zero in the mid-game against Wild Gifts. Vitu-Ghazi decks, in general, fold to Wildfire decks because they are incapable of holding any lead they put up.
Yosei, the Morning Star is a potential problem, but you still have the better 5/5 creature in your deck, in terms of both speed and numbers… At least, in the main deck. Hokori is not a Legendary Spirit you want to face, but you should have Pyroclasm to deal with their tokens anyway, and Cranial Extraction is ultimately a solution to both of these creatures.
As for Fungus Fires, I don’t know why people play this deck in the first place. It just looks horrendous to me… But I can see how it would be able to burn down Wild Gifts at least some of the time. Fungus Fire doesn’t really have the tools to recover from multiple castings of Wildfire, and it shouldn’t be able to handle a strategically-cast fatty. Still, any deck with a huge volume of burn (topping off with Flames of the Blood Hand or Hidetsugu’s Second Rite) will steal games here and there. I don’t think you will have to
worry too much about the Fungus Fire though, as it is incapable of sustained viability in the current Mono-Blue-dominated metagame.
Gifts Ungiven
This match is up for grabs, depending on their engine. The current World Championship coverage said that Stuart Wright put together a deck just like mine – and any Gifts deck with a Loam engine will be able to put up a fight. A Gifts deck with both Cranial Extraction and Life from the Loam main is going to start miles ahead of you. You probably won’t win if they cast Gifts, to be honest.
I’m not even sure how I would suggest approaching this problem, because the straight-Gifts opponent simply has a better long game than you if he has Loam access – infinite Arcane combos, Death Denied with legendary creatures, massive discard. If they are playing straight Spice, though, they won’t have a chance. Spice doesn’t really have an answer to a second Wildfire… Though it probably won’t fold to the first.
Wild Gifts Versus Mono-Blue Control – Which Is Better?
The question is, “Why would you play Wild Gifts instead of playing of Mono-Blue Control?” Is Wild Gifts a better deck?
In the abstract, no. For the States-era metagame, Mono-Blue Control was the best deck because it handed both aggro and Gifts Ungiven their tails consistently. In the post-States metagame, with a large number of players adopting Mono-Blue themselves, Wild Gifts is may be a superior choice. It is inferior to Mono-Blue Control against Boros… But it demolishes Mono-Blue Control itself. The attraction of having a 75% win percentage against Mono-Blue in place of a mind-numbing mirror match is huge.
Wild Gifts might not be good against random decks I haven’t thought of, and should be infinitely weaker against Heartbeat of Spring decks — at least for game one. For its part, Mono-Blue Control is superb at crushing random decks, especially those that run ponderous White creature kill cards or those that have slow endgame strategies. By contrast, Wild Gifts can deny resources but ultimately can’t say “No.”
The reason I think – or thought, going into Worlds, anyway – that Wild Gifts was the best deck in the format was my prediction that the format would have a large scale shift towards Mono-Blue Control as the accepted deck to play – which did happen. I felt that Wild Gifts has the most raw-power of any deck in the format (which is still true). If you live in an area where everyone plays Boros, by all means play Mono-Blue… unless the “Boros” is Pat Sullivan’s Boros Guildmage deck, in which case you’re on your own. (May I suggest Black-splash Critical Mass Update? —Knut)
Synergy, on the numbers:
1. Wildfire costs six and buries four lands. This automatically implies Life from the Loam mana on the subsequent turn.
2. Sensei’s Divining Top lets you look at the top three cards of your deck; Life from the Loam has dredge three. As long as you know you are not dredging away a Wildfire, you can dump cards at your leisure to get a fresh look at three new cards a turn. This is important when looking for an incremental Wildfire in the mid-game.
3. Sensei’s Divining Top lets you look at the top three cards of your deck; Nightmare Void has dredge two. You can always keep a single strategic spell on top of your deck with the Top while continuously dredging for Nightmare Void. Executing this strategy after the first Wildfire and immediately after the first Life from the Loam dredge is one of the main ways Wild Gifts wins mid-game positional advantage – while at the same time removing the opponent’s strategic drops in anticipation for the next Wildfire. Nine times out of ten, Wildfire is the card that the Divining Top is protecting.
4. Arashi, the Sky Asunder has five toughness; Wildfire deals four damage. It is the main creature in Wild Gifts capable of living through Wildfire.
5. The structure of this deck allows it to Gifts Ungiven for four different sources of any single color (e.g. Plains, Sacred Foundry, Temple Garden, Tendo Ice Bridge or Overgrown Tomb; Shizo, Death’s Storehouse; Swamp; Watery Grave).
Love,
Mike
* I know these cards are not in the Alpha version of the deck.