Daily Digest: My Head Hurts

I feel really bad for all of Bret Lee’s opponents in that Invitational Qualifier. I mean, how in the world are you supposed to play against this monstrosity? He could find anything off of Eldritch Evolution and I wouldn’t be surprised.

Siege Rhino? Yeah, obviously.

Restoration Angel? That makes sense.

Sigarda, Host of Herons? A little weird but I’ve seen it before.

Wurmcoil Engine? Okay, suuure buddy.

Terastodon? Just get out.

I would be so thrown playing against this that I’d probably play around Inferno Titan for the entire game before realizing that he doesn’t have red in the deck.

And as difficult it is to play against, piloting it has to be harder. Just look at the numbers. There are 41 distinct cards in the maindeck. That means that there are a total of 101,270 possible four-card Gifts Ungiven piles. When you add in the “just Unburial Rites plus creature” piles that I’m sure you find a lot, that total becomes 101,290. There are another ten singleton creatures in the sideboard, whose inclusion in these numbers yields a final total of 249,930 potential Gifts Ungiven piles.

Everybody take five. My head hurts…

…

Okay, where were we? Oh yeah, big numbers.

Of course, a lot of those piles are never going to come up, and you’ll likely settle into some reasonable patterns that greatly limit these decision trees, but you’re still going to have plenty of close games where finding the winning Gifts Ungiven pile is the proverbial needle in the haystack.

This deck is the ultimate puzzle. You have near-infinite customizability in both deck design and play patterns. This isn’t a toolbox so much as the ultimate decked-out tool chest that Tim Taylor dreams about. And yes, that was a twenty-year-old sitcom reference.

I imagine playing this deck means a lot of long, lonely nights on Gatherer trying to find the perfect four-mana creature to help against Infect and Affinity while also still being fine against Jund. Sideboarding is so fluid that you can bring out narrow cards that your opponent saw in Game 1 or 2 because the threat of them will be nearly as valuable as the effects themselves.

But mostly, you’re playing on fear. Specifically, the fear of the unknown that is constantly gripping your opponents. A single misstep against this deck can lead to a blowout, so plenty of your opponents will be hyper-cautious. Of course, the myriad value creatures punish conservative play by allowing you to out-value anyone.

So your opponent’s options are to play aggressively to not lose to value creatures and get punished by silver bullets, or to play conservatively to not lose to the bullets and lose to value creatures.

I think I might like this deck.

Four-Color Eldritch Gifts

Bret Lee

1st Place at Star City Games Invitational Qualifier on 08-20-2016

Modern

Creatures (26)

• 4 Birds of Paradise
• 1 Spike Feeder
• 1 Eternal Witness
• 3 Kitchen Finks
• 1 Noble Hierarch
• 1 Grave Titan
• 1 Wurmcoil Engine
• 1 Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
• 1 Blade Splicer
• 1 Scavenging Ooze
• 1 Restoration Angel
• 1 Sigarda, Host of Herons
• 1 Thragtusk
• 1 Voice of Resurgence
• 1 Archangel of Thune
• 1 Sylvan Caryatid
• 1 Anafenza, the Foremost
• 2 Siege Rhino
• 1 Reflector Mage
• 1 Thalia, Heretic Cathar

Lands (24)

• 3 Forest
• 1 Plains
• 1 Swamp
• 1 Island
• 4 Windswept Heath
• 2 Polluted Delta
• 1 Overgrown Tomb
• 1 Temple Garden
• 1 Watery Grave
• 1 Godless Shrine
• 1 Breeding Pool
• 1 Ghost Quarter
• 1 Hallowed Fountain
• 2 Marsh Flats
• 1 Misty Rainforest
• 1 Verdant Catacombs
• 1 Gavony Township

Spells (10)

• 3 Gifts Ungiven
• 4 Path to Exile
• 1 Unburial Rites
• 2 Eldritch Evolution

Sideboard

• 1 Gifts Ungiven
• 1 Engineered Explosives
• 1 Aven Mindcensor
• 1 Gaddock Teeg
• 1 Shriekmaw
• 1 Kitchen Finks
• 1 Iona, Shield of Emeria
• 1 Terastodon
• 1 Linvala, Keeper of Silence
• 1 Spellskite
• 1 Restoration Angel
• 1 Eidolon of Rhetoric
• 1 Reclamation Sage
• 2 Eldritch Evolution