The biggest obstacle to success with Meandeck Gifts is knowing which role to assume. The primary engine of the deck is composed of tutors: Merchant Scroll and Gifts Ungiven. As a result, there are many decisions to be made in any given game which shape and determine the role one assumes. Each card tutored for can create a more defensive or aggressive posture depending upon what it was. Choosing the wrong role leads to game loss. Knowing which role is “proper” can be difficult to see.
Take the Control Slaver match. If you fan open a hand that has a couple of accelerants and some pitch magic with Gifts Ungiven, it can be tempting to just force through a very early Gifts and try to combo out. This plan will more often than not create a tenuous game state and may or may not work. Tinker for Darksteel Colossus can be undone by the simple play of Volcanic Island, Goblin Welder. Moreover, the tempo loss made by the early Tinker that failed to seal the game may well put you so far beyond developmentally that you are effectively unable to win.
There are reasons that it makes sense to try and play the Control Slaver match aggressively. Take a look at the interactive cards in both decks in game one:
Meandeck Gifts has:
4 Force of Will
4 Mana Drain
3 Misdirection
(as well as 1 Rebuild and 1 Echoing Truth)
Control Slaver has:
4 Force of Will
4 Mana Drain
(and 1 Echoing Truth and likely 1 Rack and Ruin)
Because Meandeck Gifts has more interactive cards, the decks are not symmetrical. Meandeck Gifts is more effective at getting cards to resolve in the early game. Therefore, it would seem logical to try to play Meandeck Gifts to combo out as quickly as possible. This is a recipe for losing.
Control Slaver is a very good deck. If it isn’t on your gauntlet, you need to put it on there immediately. My recommendation is to take Brad Granberry’s list from the SCG Chicago Top 8 and cut the Tormod’s Crypt for either Gorilla Shaman or Rack and Ruin.
Control Slaver is consistent and it is powerful. It isn’t awe-inspiring but it gets the job done. When Control Slaver explodes, its early game doesn’t look that different from an explosive Gifts game. Control Slaver’s variance is narrower than Gifts. It has more lands and so it is not likely that you won’t have enough lands. Meandeck Gifts runs three fewer lands maindeck. Control Slaver is amazingly adept at getting Slaver active very quickly. Control Slaver is the perfect “Rich Shay” or “Brian Demars” deck. It is consistent, reliable, and if played perfectly is very likely to put you at the top tables if not the Top 8. However, it is also a deck that can be beaten if the opponent knows what they are doing and if they don’t make mistakes. The trouble is that people infrequently meet both requirements
Put yourself in the Control Slaver player’s position for a moment. What are you afraid of? The Gifts deck has only one or two more accelerants than your deck, so you aren’t really that scared of them going absolutely broken because you have the speed to do the same. You aren’t afraid of the Gifts deck’s strongest weapon, Tinker, because you have Tinker yourself for the same threat, Darksteel Colossus, and because you have Goblin Welders. Your Tinker is arguably stronger since Slaving Gifts is very often a game win. You are afraid of basically two things: First, an early Yawgmoth’s Will after the broken start. Gifts is the stronger deck at setting up and executing an early Yawgmoth’s Will. Yawgmoth’s Will, even if not used to replay the best cards in the deck, can provide such a nice tempo and card advantage boost that you can’t claw your way back into the game. Second, you should be afraid of the superior counter-magic.
Armed with this information, what should the Gifts player do? Setting up an early Will involves huge risks. To resolve a Gifts often means trading two cards for one and sometimes more because you are using Misdirections and Force of Wills to stop their Mana Drains. Once they have Mana Drain on the stack, you simply cannot let them take advantage of the Mana Drain mana – it must be countered. You don’t really gain card advantage of off Gifts in the Control Slaver mirror because you are trading pitch countermagic for the spells that Gifts finds. What you get out of the Gifts is card quality that can lead to card advantage or a huge tempo boost. The problem, as already stated, is that Tinker isn’t a big threat against Control Slaver. In my games against Control Slaver where I tried to aggressively Gifted, I was winning only half of the games or less. In my games against Control Slaver in which I assumed the control role, I was winning substantially more.
In order to beat Control Slaver in game one, it is critical that you assume a control posture. Playing the combo role can lead to game loss. Think about what I’ve already said: the Control Slaver player has two disadvantages: the threat of an earlier Yawgmoth’s Will and inferior counterpower. If you can use your Misdirections to protect your Mana Drains, Gifts will win the game. It’s really just that simple. Using Misdirections to protect Gifts is not good enough. If you can assume a defensive posture and play mono blue, you will win.
How do you do this? Gifts opening hands are sometimes not amenable to this position. The high accelerant, low land, and high tutor count can create a situation where you get hands like this:
Island,
Mox Emerald,
Mana Vault,
Rebuild,
Gifts Ungiven,
Misdirection, and
Burning Wish
These hands are difficult to play well in a control mirror because they lend themselves to a fast, aggressive game plan. The Burning Wish is pretty much useless in this example, effectively creating a six-card hand. The Misdirection’s best use seems to be to protect a turn 1 Gifts.
It is my opinion, all other things being equal, that if you can, you should try to turn your hands into counterspell heavy hands with the mana to support. Let me try to explain what I mean.
Let’s say your hand is:
Mox Pearl,
Island,
Polluted Delta,
Mana Vault,
Brainstorm,
Merchant Scroll,
Force of Will, and
Gifts Ungiven.
Given this position, you have the opportunity to play a turn 1 Merchant Scroll for Ancestral Recall and play both Ancestral Recall and Gifts Ungiven on turn 2. I believe this seeming intuitive play to be incorrect in the Control Slaver match, game one. Why? Because you only need one bomb. Here, you have two. The idea behind using two is to double your chances of resolving a bomb, chances which are further increased by the fact that you have Force of Will to protect them. But at what cost? You are sinking many resources into these plays that you don’t need to spend. Moreover, you are giving up the chance to stop your opponent from Tinkering or resolving Thirst for Knowledge on their second turn. The result is that the game becomes a race that you lose if they can get Mindslaver into play or into their graveyard with Goblin Welder in play.
In my view, the proper play is to Merchant Scroll for Mana Drain. Therefore, on turn 2 you will be holding up Mana Drain with Force of Will backup.
So the game will look like this:
Turn One:
You play: Mox Pearl, Island, Merchant Scroll for Mana Drain
Turn Two:
Play the Fetchland and pass the turn.
The tricky part comes up when you try to break your fetchland. The timing of fetchland breakage is really important.
If on their endstep you play Brainstorm, then they have an opportunity to play Thirst for Knowledge without your ability to Mana Drain it. The probably stronger play is to simply hope that you draw a land on the second or third turn so that you can drop it into play and Brainstorm with Mana Drain up. However, you also want to maximize your Brainstorm by having a Fetchland up. This is tricky situation that depends almost entirely upon what your opponent does. I have found that use of the mana base in the early game is very important. You need to weigh all your options before coming to a solution. You need to consider the consequences of breaking fetchlands on their first mainphase, second mainphase, attack step, end step, your upkeep and even your draw step. Mana Vault, by the way, is a card that you will likely want to continue to hold to Brainstorm back into your library.
So how do these games play out? If you are able to present multiple countermagic to the Control Slaver player at every turn despite them having Goblin Welders up, then the game will progress in one of two basic ways. You only need to seal up the game for a certain amount of time. If you do nothing, the Control Slaver player with an active Welder has inevitability because with ten mana they can hardcast Slaver, get it countered, Weld it back and then Slave you. This will happen sooner than you think. Your job is to box in the Control Slaver player for a short amount of time – say turns 1-5 or so (maybe longer), and then turn your game on a dime. Once you have enough mana developed, your key play (e.o.t. Gifts Ungiven) will end the game. The only true limitation on Gifts is mana. Trying to set up an early Yawgmoth’s Will is problematic because you don’t have the full mana to abuse it. This is not true if you can buy time by setting up a counterwall in the early game.
Game two is an entirely different animal. They can try to use cards like Gorilla Shaman, Red Elemental Blast, and the like to stop you. You will want to sideboard in Pithing Needles and Red Elemental Blasts – as many of both as you can muster. My advice it to sideboard out Mystical Tutor, Demonic Tutor, two Merchant Scrolls, and the two bounce spells. Demonic Tutor adds pressure to your mana base because you will want to fetch out Underground Sea. To support your impressive Red Elemental Blasts, Volcanic Island is the only thing you should be fetching out. Pithing Needle should come into play only after a threat reaches the table in order to maximize its effect. However, the card is incredibly potent. It can shut off Tormod’s Crypt, Goblin Welder, Mindslaver, and even Gorilla Shaman, among others. I think you want at least three.
Just naming Goblin Welder is sufficiently strong because the Control Slaver player has to seriously contemplate how the game is going to play out. Without the ability to take advantage of the Thirst For Knowledge drawback, their whole game plan has to be rethought.
The Mana Base and Mulliganing
There are really only two reasons to mulligan with this deck. But I have heard complaints from many sources that they are forced to mulligan frequently. The first reason you mulligan is because there are, by necessity, three dead cards in an opening hand: Recoup, Burning Wish, and Darksteel Colossus and to a lesser extent Yawgmoth’s Will. If you see either of the two maindeck Red cards in your opening hand, it is a functional hand of six. If you see both, you almost have to mulligan.
The second reason this deck mulligans is mana base related. The deck only has 15 lands. Control Slaver has 18. As a result, you will draw into no land hands between 6 and 8 percent of the time (if anyone wants to do the actual math that would be great). That doesn’t mean you can’t keep those hands – sometimes they will have Black Lotus or Mox Sapphire and they may be keepable. But the point is that the light land count can increase your need to mulligan. Here I am going to point out some basic rules for not getting mana screwed and then talk about my changes to the mana base.
First of all, if you have a Fetchland and a basic Island in play and you are playing against a Workshop deck, play the Fetchland first unless there is a really good reason not to. Why? If your opponent was lucky enough to draw Strip Mine, you will be upset. If you play the Island first, you can’t cast turn 2 Merchant Scroll nor can you Brainstorm and then fetch.
Second, if you keep a one-land hand with Brainstorm, I have formulated some guidelines about how to minimize the risk that you get mana screwed. If you are on the play, play the land and then pass the turn. On your second turn, wait until after you have drawn a card, and then play the Brainstorm on your first mainphase. This will likely cut you out of being able to Mana Drain, but all things being equal, it is better to be cut off from Mana Drain than to have that second land be the fourth card down with the result that you won’t be able to Mana Drain until turn 4. If you wait until your second turn mainphase to Brainstorm, you’ll have a better shot of having Drain up on turn 3. If you are on the draw, however, I would just Brainstorm on your opponent’s endstep as you usually would.
I fiddled with the idea of adding another basic land to the deck just to help ameliorate the frequent accelerant-heavy-but-land-light hands that this deck is wont to draw. I cut a spell and upped the mana count to twenty six and I found it was quite good against Chalice of the Void packing decks. However, the extra land was not necessary in the control matchups. I then moved the land to the sideboard to sideboard in against Chalice decks, but found the land to be a luxury, not a necessity.
The Mishra’s Workshop Match
The first principle for beating Mishra’s Workshop decks is making your mana base as strong as possible. That was one of the reasons I toyed with adding more land. I also fooled around with as many different mana bases as I could imagine including one that had 7 basic Islands, 1 Underground Sea, 1 Volcanic Island, 1 Tolarian Academy, and five Fetchlands. This mana base works fine with an all-Blue sideboard, including the bomb Back to Basics. However, the experience of testing with that mana base demonstrated that Red is the critical sideboard color. There is no reason to run a Black spell in the sideboard and therefore, I discovered, there was no reason to run a second Underground Sea. Opponents armed with the knowledge that I only had one Underground Sea could try to exploit it in Fact or Fiction splits, but no one would know. The only two Black spells between the maindeck and sideboard are Demonic Tutor and Yawgmoth’s Will. With a final Gifts sometimes being Black Lotus, Mox Jet, Tolarian Academy, and Lotus Petal, the lone Underground Sea was not a problem.
Therefore, the final maindeck land base that I settled on was:
5 Island,
6 Fetchland
1 Underground Sea
2 Voclanic Island
1 Tolarian Academy
I am not sure whether the 6th Island would be superior to the 6th Fetchland, but in retrospect it probably is. That life loss can add up and you don’t always just need more Fetchlands (esp. against decks like Fish).
Therefore, here is the mana base I recommend:
6 Island
5 Fetchland
1 Underground Sea
2 Volcanic Island
1 Tolarian Academy
Now that you have a rock solid mana base with no need to fetch out a colored source in the Workshop match, you can finally obviate concerns about Wasteland and begin to focus on how to beat them.
Mana Drain decks have a one critical important inherent advantage over Workshop decks: they have flexibility that Workshop decks can never attain. With the restriction of Trinisphere, Mana Drain decks, if packing enough basic lands and if included a sufficient number of diverse answers in the sideboard (such as Hurkyl’s Recall, Rack and Ruin, Artifact Mutation), should not consistently lose to Workshops. The problem is that Mana Drain decks often don’t have enough basic lands and pack a narrow set of answers such as a few Rack and Ruins. Diversity is important because Workshop players try to stop certain Drain deck answers with individual solutions. Chalice for 2 can cut off half of your anti-artifact spells making Rebuild or Rack and Ruin important in addition to Hurkyl’s Recall. Moreover, it isn’t just artifacts that need to be answered but enchantments like Choke and In the Eye of Chaos and creatures like Goblin Welder need to be dealt with. However, there is a nice overlap in the solutions in cards like Echoing Truth. Echoing Truth can deal with artifacts, creatures, and enchantments.
The point is that Mana Drain decks have historically had a sizable advantage over Mishra’s Workshop decks because the quality and variety of answers has always been deeper and more powerful than the threats presented. The classic example of this was the GroAtog era. GroAtog was the last deck to truly dominate Vintage. For a brief time, it seemed like Stax would be the anti-GroAtog deck. That was until Artifact Mutation was discovered. The answer was more powerful and flexible then the threat presented.
What really makes this fact so important is this: The Mana Drain decks run Brainstorm. The Mana Drain decks can use Brainstorm to find the answer, fix their board to be able to use the answer, and use Force of Will to buy time. On the other hand, the Mishra’s Workshop decks cannot do the same. They have no Brainstorm (with very rare exceptions) and they can’t power out non-artifact solutions out of their biggest weapon: Mishra’s Workshop.
Now that we have an impervious Mana Base established, we can proceed to a discussion of how to deal with each of the Workshop matches.
Each of the Stax decks requires a different sideboard response. Uba Stax is very different from Cron Stax which is very different from the traditional Stax list that won the Vintage Championship. They each merit an individualized discussion. You need to be able to recognize the Stax variants.
Traditional Stax uses Tangle Wire, Sphere of Resistance, Crucible of Worlds, Goblin Welder, and Smokestack as the primary lock parts along with Wasteland. The deck is pretty reliant on Mishra’s Workshops but their Goblin Welders aren’t that devastating. You have several turns to deal with Goblin Welder – it isn’t a hugely pressing threat. Traditional Stax is the only Stax variant that uses Tangle Wire.
Cron Stax eschews Goblin Welder and Tangle Wire and focuses on Sphere, Crucible, Stack and cards like Chains of Mephistopheles, Gorilla Shaman, and In the Eye of Chaos. This Stax list is the most consistent Stax list because it is the least reliant upon Mishra’s Workshop.
Uba Stax is the scariest Stax variant because it has the most lethal Goblin Welder and it also uses Null Rod. The upside is that you are very unlikely to face this deck because in a non-proxy environment, it is almost impossible to build. It requires 4 Bazaars and 4 Mishra’s Workshop as well as all artifact Power. This team has a huge power collection with many of us owning multiple copies of the same power card and many owning full playsets of Workskhop, but I believe I’m the only one who owns 4 Bazaars and 4 Workshops. Uba Stax is more consistent as Traditional stax – although it is quite reliant upon Mishra’s Workshops, it also has the Bazaar + Welder combo to get scary artifacts into play.
Uba Stax v. Gifts
There was no way in hell I was going to go to Gencon with Meandeck Gifts until I had a solid understanding of the Gifts v. Uba Stax match. Before we begin, I want you to be aware of a very insightful article written by “Puck the Cat” on precisely this topic.
One of the first lessons I had to come to understand was how Uba Stax functioned in this match. For that reason, the first time it came down in testing on turn one, I intentionally let it resolve to see what happens. Here is that game:
Turn 1:
Meandeck Gifts: Island, Brainstorm, pass
Uba Stax: Mishra’s Workshop, Mana Crypt, Uba Mask, burn for one, pass.
Turn 2:
MDG: Reveals island and plays it, pass.
Stax: Reveal Smokestack and play it. Force of Will pitching Gifts Ungiven. Barbarian Ring. Tap it for Red and play Goblin Welder. Force of Will pitching Rebuild. Unfortunately for the Gifts player, there was no Mana Drain.
Turn 3:
MDG: Reveals Volcanic Island and play it. Pass.
Stax: Reveal Tolarian Academy and play it. Play Solemn Simulacrum. It resolves. Pass.
Turn 4:
MDG: Reveals Darksteel Colossus and pass removing Colossus from game.
Stax: Reveal Uba Mask. Play Duplicant as a 2/4. Play Bazaar of Baghdad and activate it revealing Duplicant and Bazaar of Baghdad – neither of which can be played. Beat with Simulacrum. Pass
Turn 5:
MDG: Reveal Brainstorm and play it seeing Mana Crypt, Fetchland, and Underground Sea. Play the Sea and Mana Crypt and pass.
Stax: Reveal Uba Mask. Bazaar into Null Rod and Uba Mask. Play all three spells and attack for 4.
Turn 6:
MDG: Lose Mana Crypt roll -> 10 life. Reveal Rebuild. Rebuild now.
Stax: Replay all of my artifacts and the Goblin Welder I drew this turn except that I discard Simulacrum and Duplicant.
Turn 7:
MDG: Reveal Merchant Scroll and play it for Ancestral revealing: Tinker, Jet and Ruby. Scoops.
There are several things that can be illustrated from that game alone.
Although it is hard to see, the card I fear most out of the Uba Stax deck is actually the Null Rod and the synergies. Uba Mask by itself can be pretty damaging. It forced me to play Rebuild at a time I did not want to play it making it almost useless. It also removed my Darksteel Colossus from game. But the real devastating impact of Uba Mask came from repeated use of Bazaar of Baghdad permitting what was, in essence, free draws with no drawback.
Meandeck Gifts cannot sit there in a parity situation and hope to win if Uba Stax is drawing three cards a turn with no discard drawback.
One other lesson I learned in a later game is that the difference between two and three mana is quite significant. The fact that artifact accelerants comprise basically 40% of your mana base means that you could be sitting on Island, Island, Mox and unable to play that Rebuild with a dual land in your graveyard that got Wastelanded. Null Rod is so potent because you could be in a winning position, ready to go off with that Rebuild in hand that you just Merchant Scrolled for only to have Null Rod hit the table and suddenly 40% of your mana is gone and you are forced to expend your Rebuild on their first mainphase after which they just replay everything again anyway. Null Rod acts like a Tangle Wire there – it forces you to play your solution at an inopportune time.
What that taught me wasn’t that I couldn’t beat Uba Stax, but that my tools would have to change.
The first and most important solution to Uba Stax, is Hurkyl’s Recall. Vroman doesn’t run Red Elemental Blast for some reason, and therefore, Recall has no chance of being stopped. He has added Sphere of Resistance, so this makes Rebuild an even worse choice. Second, his Goblin Welder must be stopped. Uba Stax has the most potent Goblin Welder in the format. Because of its combos with Uba Mask and Bazaar of Baghdad, it must be dealt with. Traditional Stax’s Goblin Welders eventually become deadly, but they are not immediately so. They hang around for a few turns waiting for spells to get countered before they spring into action. Not so here. Therefore, you really need three Pithing Needle. Although Hurkyl’s Recall is certainly my preferred solution – Hurkyl’s Recalling them on their endstep and then winning – for reasons I have already discussed, diversity is also necessary. I think that Rack and Ruins are the second best solution. I have found that a Gifts for Hurkyl’s Recall, Rack and Ruin, Merchant Scroll and some other card is brutal. I think running at least one Rack and Ruin in the Uba Stax match is important. Some real card advantage can be very helpful – not just bounce. At a minimum, I would board in 2 Hurkyl’s Recall, 1 Rack and Ruin, and 3 Pithing Needle. I would sideboard out 1 Mystical Tutor, 1 Demonic Tutor, 3 Misdirections, and one other card which, on the draw, will often be Mox Pearl. One word of caution: do not, under any circumstances, sideboard out more than one Gifts Ungiven. That includes not only the Workshop match, but any match. Vroman’s current sideboard plan against Gifts is merely Price of Glory, a largely irrelevant card you can safely ignore if you can’t stop it. However, if you are worried, just bring in a second Echoing Truth to round out the Gifts pile listed above.
In my view, Uba Stax is the most threatening of the Stax archetypes, primarily because of Null Rod and ruinous Goblin Welders. However, it is the least effective at actually stopping you from playing spells.
Cron Stax v. Meandeck Gifts
Cron Stax will have a wholly different set of threats to throw at you. It will use cards like In the Eye of Chaos to try and slow you down. If that card resolves, it will demonstrate why Echoing Truth and Hurkyl’s Recall are so important. Rack and Ruin is just an ineffective answer. My view is that all you need to sideboard against this deck is 2 Hurkyl’s Recall and a Rushing River – or if you don’t have a River, another Echoing Truth. Bounce, bounce, win, should be your mantra.
The sad truth is that Cron Stax is much less effective at stopping Meandeck Gifts than it would seem on paper. Cronstyle Stax is not super effective in the metagame right now because it lacks effective two-mana spells aside from Sphere of Resistance.
The one thing you should be concerned about against Cron-style Stax is getting them from stopping your mana development. As such, it is important to play proactively. Remember to keep your eye on the ball: your goal is to bounce their stuff and then Gifts and win. For example, if your opening hand has:
Merchant Scroll
Merchant Scroll
Mox
Land
Land
Blue Spell
Blue Spell
And you are on the play, the correct turn 1 play is Mox, Land, Merchant Scroll for Force of Will. Then you Force their turn 1 bomb and proceed with Land, Merchant Scroll for Ancestral Recall (assuming you have not drawn a Mana Drain this turn) and then hopefully draw one more Force of Will. At that point, if they don’t win, you will. You will have mana up to Drain them and their only game plan is to sit and topdeck to hope to overwhelm the Mana Drain before you can win. Their chances of doing that are quite slim. Cron Stax will win a non-trivial amount of games just through broken starts, but you will have a difficult time losing matches.
Traditional Stax – Chang Stax v. Gifts
Roland and I had a knock-out fight at Origins where we played in the Top 8 of the Vintage Championship qualifier. However, Roland and I had tested together and we both knew that I had a favorable match. Things went pretty much according to plan. Fetch out basic lands, Merchant Scroll for countermagic.
Basically my opinion is that it is a tempo match. If you can get both decks into topdeck mode – both the Workshop deck and the Gifts deck – the Gifts deck has already won. Why? If the Workshop deck doesn’t completely lock you out, then any topdeck is very likely insufficient to finish the job. Meanwhile, any topdeck from the Gifts deck that isn’t horrible, is going to push you way ahead.
My instinct is to play control. That is, to play focusing on card advantage. What that involves is not countering something you can play around. The problem is that in focusing on card advantage you miss the huge tempo boost. Gifts primary advantage is that it has a very nice explosive factor. Think about what Workshops can do. They have no Force of Will. They can’t control anything you do on your turn at all beyond what they have done on their turn. The only way they can stop you is to deny you mana on their turn. If you aggressively FOW they can’t pump out enough threats for them to stay ahead. As in the CronStax match, Scroll for FOW on turn 1 and then Scroll for Ancestral on turn 2 and hopefully draw another FOW. If you don’t, you’ll likely see bounce and then just keep laying Islands and you’ll be out of their lock.
Gifts Ungiven is extremely powerful because like restricted cards before it (Fact or Fiction and Necropotence), it has a very good chance of just winning the game when it resolves. Getting to use it effectively can turn upon the role you choose in any given match and the cards you have to fight the opposing strategy. This article will undoubtedly help the people looking for ways to fight Gifts, but hopefully the Gifts players can stay ahead of the curve.